William Gibson: No Maps for These Territories

Al Gore may have taken the initiative in creating the Internet, but fiftyish author Gibson was the one who popularized the idea in the public consciousness, and was also the one to coin the phrase "cyberspace," a word he calls "evocative and essentially meaningless." Still, his ideas have always been more interesting than his actual storytelling. The much-reviled film adaptation of his short story Johnny Mnemonic, for example, isn't actually all that different from the original -- good concept, absent story. So it's quite a pleasant surprise that Gibson in person turns out to be far more interesting and entertaining than most of what he writes. Filmed by and large in the back of a moving car, with periodic use of special effects to mess with the images outside the vehicle or the image of Gibson inside it, No Maps allows the author to expound on everything from the death of poet William Burroughs to organized religion (which he likens to a chicken franchise) to some truly hilarious firsthand accounts of the 60s drug scene ("A wank is OK, but you really should know that it's just a wank"). To keep things visually stylish, there's lots of other imagery flashing by at a seizure-inducing pace, from stock footage to highways, machines, and even images of Gibson on the beach, all scored by the haunting music of Tomandandy, Daniel Lanois, Brian Eno, and U2's the Edge (who makes several appearances on-screen, along with bandmate Bono). The overall effect is a bit reminiscent of Tom Tomorrow's early cartoons, when he was still focused on futurism and advertising rather than politics. As in the recent drama Memento, the style perfectly matches the subject matter: Writer-director Mark Neale and editors Rochelle Ford and Nicholas Erasmus have created the most compellingly watchable documentary of the year thus far.