This Location of Unknown Possibilities

by Brett Josef Grubisic

When English Professor Marta Spek is offered a film consultant's contract, she's fighting a bad case of year-end doldrums. She signs on, imagining that exotic hands-on work at the sandy location shoot for a made-in-Canada biopic will open doors of opportunity and spark her creativity - or at the very least supply interesting material for her family's annual Labour Day gathering. Meanwhile, her soon-to-be boss, the handsome cynic Jake Nugent, who's well experienced with shoot dynamics in remote sites, hopes only to stamp out inevitable problems before they swallow the budget and cost him a job. Script changes (massive), on-set mishaps (minor), and after-hours misadventures (many) guarantee that Marta and Jake won't easily forget this week in the Okanagan Valley. A wry look at the shoestring end of a billion-dollar industry and the occasional but profound foolishness of the human heart, This Location of Unknown Possibilities makes a case for black comedy being the best lens for viewing contemporary life.

Genres: Satire, Comedy, Canadian Literature, Fiction

342 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2014

About the author

Brett Josef Grubisic teaches contemporary literature at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He is the author of Understanding Beryl Bainbridge as well as the novel The Age of Cities. He is the co-author (with David L. Chapman) of American Hunks: The Muscular Male Body in Popular Culture, 1860–1970 and co-editor (with Andrea Cabajsky) of National Plots: Historical Fiction and Changing Ideas of Canada (WLU Press, 2010).

Reviews

[Warren Planck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aka, 'The Professor and the Sleazeball Make a Movie.'
Funny and flat out ridiculous now and then, but never just a series of sitcom jokes minus the laugh track.
The two main characters took me a while to warm up to.
One's so dour and unsmiling and her opposite is a guy whose center of gravity can be found at the crotch of his jeans (inside his underwear if he wore any).
But the more time spent with them and the more they're involved with the grind of making a TV movie, the more vulnerable, funny, and, well, real, they become. And that's when you really want to turn the pages to see what happens...

[Owen P · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked lots but didn't love this.
The all-guy character and his quests for sex in the middle of nowhere (while on a location shoot) was never not enjoyable, but the English prof, dour and joyless and of "national average height", just seems like the kind of person I'd steer far away from. She's such a drag.
The B-movie script within the story (a UFO and an alien in 19th c. Lebanon) made me laugh out loud several times each time it appeared.
A SyFy network should scoop it up...and make another bad movie starring Tiffany or some other forgotten pop star from the '80s.

[Mj Wilsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Basically I bought it for the UFO on the cover (it piqued my curiosity) and a promised plot about Lady Hester Stanhope, the aristocratic Victorian adventuress who left England and settled in the Middle East.
Turns out, the book is a highly funny account about the making of a TV movie in contemporary Canada that is *supposed* to be about Lady Stanhope. Naturally, the movie-making never quite goes according to plan.
And that's at least half the pleasure of the story.
The other plus is Dr. Marta Spek. Remember Constance Ledbelly, the comically mousy academic of "Goodnight Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet"? Marta belongs to the same family of hard-done-by and easy-to-overlook English professor types who yearn for more. But 'be careful what you wish for', right?
She's hired to work on the location shoot, in a remote a desert region in Canada, and doesn't exactly get what she believes she wants... I won't give any more plot. But I will say her boss (Jake Nugent, who is no gent) is another fine piece of work.
A funny, purposefully silly, and strangely poignant story.

[Amberle Husbands · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really struggled with this novel. Gave up twice and sighed and tried again... Finally, about sixty pages in, I started to actually enjoy the story itself. That -- the basic bare-bones of the plot -- and the promised humour were what saved the whole thing, for me.
The writing itself remained a headache-inducing challenge through and through. The prose here is so very, very convoluted... And the thing is, I like convoluted! I have a personal love affair with the never-ending-miles-long-without-breathing-points hyphenated-phrase. I like the twisted, introspective, adjective-heavy paragraph. I see the beauty in a tangled, neurotic stock-quirky-character's vehicle-chapter. But this novel really put that style in a sock and bashed me over the head with it.
Still, the storyline, characterization, and the undeniable humour pulled me through, and ultimately I'm glad. This book was a first-reads giveaway, and I did enjoy it.

[Marcus T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

With two main characters I wouldn't actually want to hang out with normally (an uptight English professor who has no sense of humour; a bisexual movie industry d-bag who's never met a hottie he didn't want to bed), I wasn't all the sure.
BUT once the plot gets moving (the egghead is hired to work with the d-bag for a week on a location shoot of a SyFy-style B-movie), so does the satire and the after-hours mishaps and personal humiliations. And instead of keeping the characters as shallow comic types, the author gradually gives them traits (heroic and flawed) that I cared about. Funny, yes, and cynical too, but all-over a memorable story.
(If one ever happened, I'd watch the film version of it too.)

[Carol-Anne Nielson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strange, weird, funny, clever.
This novel is quite layered and complicated. At the basic level of plot and characters, though, it's the kind of novel that causes grins and guffaws and then a wrinkled nose when one of the characters (the male ones most often) says or does something gross and semi-disgusting.
Marta, the heroine of the story, goes from being rigid and judgemental to (a little bit more) relaxed and life-embracing, all while acting as a glorified but hassled go-fer in a cheap movie studio's rented production office. Her boss and coworkers are a riot.
I don't know if the novel says anything truthful about film production and on-set activities, but who cares. It's an entertaining fictional story, not the History of Film 101.

[Laurel Mosse · Rating 4 out of 5]

My second review!
I'm on a kick with west coast writers, so this one caught my eye.
With comically over-the-top characters that are either all Id (Jake, who lives for sex, and Chaz, who eats everything in sight) or repression (Marta, who never met a joke she didn't like), the novel risks falling into the trap of being a silly farce, just one set behind the scenes on an outdoor movie set.
Gradually, however, the story spends more time with them (and their adult plights related to career, love, and purpose) and they grow on you. The movie-script-within-the-novel bits remain present, so the whole novel never gets all the serious.
Fun but warm. And enjoyable read right till the end!

[Barb Tarelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Years ago I had a professor (in Econ) who looked sensible and mild-mannered and more than a touch dowdy. Students speculated about her off-campus life and wondered how she livened things up when she wasn't lecturing or reading or researching. We could never imagine a 'private life' that matched her wool skirts and wire-framed glasses.
Anyhow, this many-layered comedy and its sensible English professor (who secretly yearns for a bigger and wilder life) made me think of her for the first time in years.
It answers my questions about my actual Econ prof, but I know the answer (I'll give nothing away) is hyperbolic in the extreme.
Very funny and full of inventive touches!

[Benj O'Connor · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with Ruth Ozeki's 'My Year of Meats', I really enjoyed the writer's juggling of plot elements.
There's an on-location film shoot in a small desert town during the height of summer. Samples of the TV movie's (laughable) script. The interactions of four characters in that movie's rented production office. And nighttime romantic or sexual quests on the part of Marta, a prissy prof, and her boss Jake, a horndog who's used to getting whatever he wants.
I doubt that movies actually get made like that, but the fictional version sure made movie-making seem like crazy (and high-stress) fun.

[Travis Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

If there's such a thing as grey comedy (gunmetal comedy? = a little less dark than black comedy), then this is an excellent funny example. An uptight English professor, an god's gift type who lives at groin level, and a cheap TV knock-off of 'Cowboys and Aliens' set in Victorian-era Lebanon (but shot in some desert area of Canada), the plot gets more ludicrous page after page, but the story has plenty of heart too. Whoever believes Canadians comes in two flavours (nice or boring) should give this a read.

[AC in BC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based on the book, I bet the author spent at least a few years making movies in Canada and also taking courses at college. But then quit both careers because he felt disgusted by them.
He definitely knows his way around a film set and has an in-the-know attitude about the Ivory Tower and what makes it so... well, let's just say that this novel isn't going to encourage anyone to become an English prof.
The movie script within the novel is hilarious. The after-work behavior of the main characters also made me laugh - out loud - quite a few times.

[S_smyth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best comic novel I've read in a while.
The plot is suitably ridiculous and farcical. Marta and Jake, the main characters, are opposite sides of the same coin, blind to their own desires and stumbling through thinking they know it all. Their attempts to find what they are looking for results in disaster - of course - and when they find what they actually need, the novel's plot is arranged in such a way as to make it all make sense...
The scenes with Jake alone in the orchard and Marta at the 'UFO crash site' are a riot!

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a script moves from LA to Canada, its content changes from pretentious and arty to commercial and mass-appeal. And as the two main characters move from their urban comfort zones (a university campus, a studio office) to a location shoot in the middle of a field (that's in the middle of nowhere), they also undergo transformations.
Mr. Grubisic plays with a reader's expectations and is merciless-but-generous with his flawed characters. He gives them a chance to change and grow and they begrudgingly do so.
The terrible evolving scripts are a hoot too!

[Em Sanders · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've never read a novel about the making of a bad TV movie in Canada before, and now I'm glad I did. Very funny, bit not just silly farce.
While comic 'types', the characters are all fun and well-rounded, and their transformation from selfish and neurotic to...less selfish and neurotic is handled with subtlety and confidence.
Why not 5 stars? There's a whiff of Rick Moody (i.e., long and complicated sentences) that, now and then, interferes with the enjoyment of the story.

[Christian B · Rating 5 out of 5]

I agree with most of the other reviewers here: funny and sharp, but not mean or heartless.
I also enjoyed the little inventions, like the moronic screenplay and exconfessio.com, the website where people can anonymously confess to (comically) awful things they've done to other people.
And the professor who was born Speck but then changed her name to Spëk in order to escape a fate of being a Nobody... It made me laugh every time I saw the name.

[Ted Beckmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crude and funny and sharp-tongued at a whole bunch of different levels.
The characters are deeply flawed but fun companions while you're reading and the entire making-of-a-cable-network-movie situation was insightful and satirized in fresh ways. The Craigslist postings are so gross they must have been lifted from the real place...
There were elements (chapter titles, I noticed) that struck me as a bit English professor-y. But I suppose if the author is a prof too, it kinda makes sense.

[Flora F. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tossed-together salad of hopefulness and jadedness, farcical high-jinx and (some) gross-out comedy, and romantic get togethers... All in a plot that gives us a thorough understanding (I suppose) of the day-to-day goings on in front of and behind a camera that's capturing scenes of a ridiculous TV movie.
I was touched by the main character and repelled by her temporary boss, but also found myself rooting for them both.

[Dasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Couldn't finish this book. The premise seemed right up my alley, and the writer has a very strong, talented voice, but I was taken aback by the overly sexual descriptions in some chapters. They were there to portray one of the characters, I suppose, but those sections just really weren't for me. Overall, between the two main characters, the book failed to grab me enough to keep reading. I found myself struggling, wanting to give it more of a chance, but it just didn't work out.

[K Laster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Big and fun and silly, and not afraid of mocking academia and the movie business but also not afraid of showing affection and compassion for the same objects of ridicule. I especially loved the professor character, who yearns to be at center stage but is afraid to walk there (and whose very name - Speck - looms over her like an unwanted destiny).

[Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a publisher I'd never heard of (author too), I was more than slightly surprised. Funny, warm and inventive, the story's a hoot (and the author appears to be jaded but witty in a dry English-y kind of way...)!

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Opposites don't attract in this hilarious story of a serious professor hired to work behind the scenes of a remote location shoot of a ludicrous movie. Her arrogant boss is...a real keeper.
A snapshot of 'Hollywood North' that's anything but glam and magnetic. More like a train wreck!

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The middle section (the longest part) is a lot of fun. The bookend pieces are kind of silly. Push through the first one to get to the good stuff. Then read the last one only to see how it all works out. But don't read the book for those bits.

[Tan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in Hollywood North and full of satire, this novel also featured the most male-masturbation I have yet to read.

[Brett Grubisic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, why not.
And to quote from RuPaul's stockpile of useable wisdom: "If you don't love yourself, then how the hell are you gonna love somebody else? Can I get an amen?"
Amen.