Screenwriter

As the web giveth, it taketh away, writes DONALD CLARKE

Coming from a middle-class background, I have involuntarily accumulated a vast number of anecdotes and aphorisms involving the sport of golf. Here’s one.

A keen but indifferently gifted golfer dies and goes to hell. On the first day, far from waking up to the poking of red-hot tridents, he finds himself invited to join a foursome with (you know how these things go) Hitler, Vlad the Impaler and the Devil himself.

Our hero whacks the ball off the first tee and is astonished to see it power straight down the fairway, onto the green and into the cup for a hole in one. This doesn't seem very much like hell. Then all three of his opponents do exactly the same thing. The devil turns to the late golfer and says: "Oh, down here, we all get holes in one every single time."

Last week, Blockbuster Video, once as ubiquitous on high streets as ground-in chewing gum, admitted that it was facing imminent bankruptcy and, in so doing, triggered a number of obituaries for the traditional mode of movie rental. The internet – by offering instant digital downloads and efficient mail-order services – appears to have killed off yet another industry. Chandlers must have felt the same way when they saw the first light bulb.

What's the connection between this news story and the stupid golf joke? Well, the point of the anecdote (I think) is that life would be unbearable if it were stripped of all challenges. Hence the traditional problem – see The Lovely Bones– with representing heaven effectively.

For 30 years or so, serious movie fans railed at the difficulty they encountered when trying to locate some long-unavailable Italian horror film or under- appreciated episode from a 1950s science fiction serial. (In the decades before that, owners of small-gauge projectors worked even harder at tracking down prints of their favourite films.)

Specialist video stores became, for such enthusiasts, charged with almost unimaginably exotic potential. A fan might travel for miles just to hold a tattered VHS of Dario Argento's 4 Flies on Grey Velvetin his or her sweaty palm.

A similar situation existed for music fans. For those living away from major conurbations, the gap between reading about, say, Crispy Ambulance and actually hearing the music could – if John Peel wasn’t obliging – extend into tantalising months.

“If only there were some way of getting the movies and music instantly,” you would say. “If only I lived in some Philip K Dick novel and could access the media immediately after hearing about it.”

Well, you can (I hope) see where this is going. Now, when a pal phones up to recommend an ancient film, there’s every possibility you’ll have it on the screen before he hangs up. Music is even more easily available. It’s nice that, after reading Martin Scorsese on some ancient horror film, we can instantly summon it up on YouTube. But we are, surely, bound to treasure the material less fervently when it has become so much easier to attain. We get holes in one all the time down here.