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The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Big sharks, coded love letters, a movie fiasco: the strange Australian chapter of celebrity cowboy writer Zane Grey
The story begins with a shadow beneath the waves. A great white, pitiless and silent. Dorsal fin like a mean knife. Eyes dark and empty. The setting: a tight-knit coastal town where the locals are being picked off, one by one. They need a hero – a man with the audacity to challenge a legend. There's blood in the water. The cameras are rolling. Movie history is being made. Behind the scenes, it's chaos. There's a mechanical shark that barely resembles a living creature, and is far more trouble than it's worth. The production is beset by so many delays and accidents it begins to feel cursed. But the crew push on. There's a lot riding on this big fish film: fortunes, careers, legacies. You know this story. Or you think you do. But rewind the reel: this isn't Jaws, and Spielberg is nowhere in sight. We're in Australia, four decades earlier – drifting in the waters of the Great Barrier Reef. The film is White Death (1936), and the man calling the shots is a celebrity novelist turned monster catcher: Zane Grey. Today, his name barely registers: a footnote in fishing lore, a ghost in vintage paperbacks. But in his heyday, Grey was stratospherically famous. A reluctant dentist turned adventure novelist, Grey's pulp westerns sold in the millions. His travels made front page news. He was Hemingway before Hemingway (some even say The Old Man and the Sea was cribbed from one of Grey's tall tales). Even death couldn't slow him down: Grey's publisher sat on a stockpile of manuscripts, and kept rolling out new titles for decades. On the page, Grey built a mythic vision of the American West. Hollywood made it global, with dozens of adaptations, including Riders of the Purple Sage, The Lone Star Ranger and The Rainbow Trail. You may not know his name, but you know his frontier. 'It's extraordinary to me that he's fallen from social memory to such a degree,' marvels Vicki Hastrich, Grey's latest biographer. Hastrich stumbled on to the author by accident while tracing the lineage of the literary western. Grey's name popped up, not just as one of the genre's defining figures (he wrote more than 80), but also as the namesake of a caravan park in Bermagui on the coast of New South Wales. Why was a cowboy writer from Ohio venerated in an Aussie beach town? There was a story here, and Hastrich was the perfect person to tell it: author, angler, cartographer of the deep (her 2019 memoir, Night Fishing, is a quicksilver marvel of Australian nature writing). Hastrich knows the cultural weight a fish can carry. Her swashbuckling new book, The Last Days of Zane Grey, is the story of a very big fish; a tale of obsession and fading glory. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning A lifelong sport-fisher, Grey spent his twilight years chasing a dream: to hook a great white. Australia lured him in 1935, and again in 1939, with the promise of shark-rich waters (there was also a secret lover in Sydney). Hastrich traces the arc of that quest: the role Australia played in Grey's final chapter, and the unlikely mark he left on the national imagination. A deep-sea detour into the Australian psyche. 'We just went crazy for him,' Hastrich tells me. 'As far as I can tell, there were something like nine of Grey's films in circulation when he arrived in Australia in 1935.' And arrive he did – with 166 pieces of luggage and the full weight of his own legend. The welcome bordered on hysteria, something the country wouldn't see again until The Beatles. The reporting was relentless. 'If he sneezed or farted, it made the papers,' Hastrich says, not entirely joking. 'I was able to track him day by day – almost hour by hour.' Thousands of people followed Grey up and down the east coast, camping alongside him as he trawled the sea for record-breakers: marlin, swordfish, tuna (Grey is credited with kickstarting Australia's tuna industry with a single hefty catch). But beneath the glitz and spectacle, the 63-year-old author was struggling. He was financially over-stretched and fraying at the edges. The Australia trip wasn't just another adventure; it felt like a last chance to do something magnificent. Underwater photography was cutting-edge. If Grey could land a monster shark on film, he wouldn't just make history, he'd put himself back at the centre of it. Enter White Death. The behind-the-scenes story of Grey's great white flop is pure writer bait: a top-shelf fiasco. Cameras failed. Boats broke. The weather was hellish. The cast and crew were bitten, burned, and blown up. A brush with the notorious 'suicide plant' (the gympie-gympie) nearly cost one actor his sanity. And the star refused to show. No amount of burley or patience could summon a 'villain fish' from the deep, so Grey had to settle for a much smaller reef shark – painted white by the art department, and filmed from a distance. And yet it's here, in this laughable disaster of a film (you can watch chunks of it online), that Hastrich comes closest to understanding Grey's cultural pull. 'He's not a gifted actor, that's for sure. He's very wooden in that film. But there's a presence about him,' she says. 'He has this sort of stillness on screen, a kind of physical charisma.' Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion For all the drama on screen, Hastrich's richest material turned up elsewhere: a cache of love letters from Grey to his Australian lover, the Sydney poet Lola Goodall. Hastrich still doesn't know how – or why – Grey's letters to Lola were preserved (Lola's replies were destroyed), but reading them required a crash course in code-breaking: all the racy parts were written in cipher. 'I thought I had the key, but it didn't match what I was seeing,' says Hastrich. 'Just when I was about to give up, I realised what was going on, and I could add symbols to the code. It was so slow: literally one alphabet letter at a time for ages.' Lola had always been treated as a blip in Grey's story – dismissed as a dalliance. But the affair Hastrich uncovered was substantial, with hundreds of letters stretching over years. Lola was a middling poet in her mid-50s, still living with her mother, pretending – at least on paper – to be decades younger. Grey was ageing, lonely, carving out space for one last big love. 'I came to think of them like two drowning people,' Hastrich says, 'clutching and clawing at each other as they went down. They could both see their relevance in the world slipping.' It's the women, including Lola, who give this story its guts. There's Dolly, Grey's formidable wife, quietly running the family empire, and largely unfazed by all the girlfriends (she organises their travel). Miles Franklin makes a surprise cameo, impressing and infuriating Grey in equal measure. And we meet Chickie Nathan – an ice-skating socialite turned marlin wrangler – who holds her own against Grey at sea. (Chickie is a scene stealer; she deserves a biography of her own.) Hastrich also offers a fish-eye view of interwar Australia: a country blind to the scale of its ocean bounty, and its fragility. 'That's the story nudging at the edges here,' she reflects. 'Just as we're starting to comprehend how abundant things are, they're already depleting.' Code-breaking wasn't the only new skill Hastrich had to master; she braved a trip in a shark cage, determined to see Grey's nemesis for herself. 'The water was this sort of teal blue, a veil of particles of colour. And this shark loomed out of the veil, scuffed and scarred,' she tells me – still awed. 'It was like this great, slow-moving bomb – and then it was just gone. That was the moment I understood the perennial allure of this formidable fish.' That's the thing about great whites: they come ready-made as metaphors. In the end, The Last Days of Zane Grey isn't just about a man chasing a shark: it's about a man in a duel with death itself. 'This story didn't need any massaging,' Hastrich laughs. 'Everything you needed to make a narrative was already there.' Now she's hauled in Zane Grey, what's next? 'I'm ready to go and catch another fish.' The Last Days of Zane Grey by Vicki Hastrich is out through Allen & Unwin
Russia Today
21-07-2025
- Russia Today
Ex-Ukrainian police chief found dead in Spain
A man who was found dead in Spain in June from an apparent drowning has been identified as a former Ukraine police chief who once served on an organized crime task force, according to media reports. The death took place in the same apartment complex in the coastal town of Villajoyosa where a Russian military pilot who defected to Ukraine was killed last year. According to El Espanol, the body of 61-year-old Ukrainian national Igor Grushevsky was discovered floating in a shallow community pool on June 29. Grushevsky had reportedly purchased a unit in the building a few months earlier. Reporters later identified the deceased as a retired police chief who led operations against organized crime in Ukraine's Cherkasy and Kirovograd regions during the 1990s. Ukrainian diplomats confirmed the man's identity on Monday. Grushevsky appeared to have kept a low-profile with no official record of residency in Spain, leading to speculation he may have been in hiding. Spanish officials have not announced any formal investigation into foul play. Neighbors told El Espanol they believed Grushevsky may have suffered a stroke. The body reportedly showed no external injuries, though blood was seen coming from one ear. The death, described by the media as 'mysterious,' has unsettled the local community as it comes less than a year and a half after the high-profile killing of Maksim Kuzminov, a former Russian military pilot who defected to Ukraine. Kuzminov was living under a false identity in Villajoyosa with Ukrainian state protection when he was shot in what appeared to be a professional hit. Kuzminov allegedly received $500,000 from Kiev for flying an Mi-8 military helicopter into Kiev-controlled territory. Ukrainian officials claimed his two crewmates were 'liquidated' during the operation but did not specify whether Kuzminov was directly responsible for their deaths. Western outlets have accused Russia of orchestrating Kuzminov's killing in retaliation. Moscow has neither confirmed nor denied involvement.
Geek Tyrant
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Mackenzie Davis Joins Josh Hartnett in Netflix's Untitled Newfoundland Creature Thriller — GeekTyrant
Mackenzie Davis has officially signed on to star opposite Josh Hartnett in Netflix's upcoming limited series set on the rocky shores of Newfoundland, Canada. Stranger Things star Charlie Heaton has also joined the cast,. The currently untitled project comes from creator Jesse McKeown and will center around a small coastal town grappling with a mysterious threat from the sea. This six-episode series casts Hartnett as a hardened fisherman who finds himself battling to protect his family, his community, and a way of life that's disappearing fast—just as something terrifying and unknown washes up from the depths. Davis' role is still under wraps, but she's great and this seems like a great project for her, as it seems like this will be character-driven survival story set against a remote and haunting backdrop. McKeown will serve as showrunner and executive producer. Writing duties are handled by an impressive team including Karen Walton ( Orphan Black ), Perry Chafe ( St. Pierre ), and Natty Zavitz ( Edging ). The series will be directed by Jamie Childs, Helen Shaver, and Stephen Dunn. Davis recently starred in Blumhouse's Speak No Evil opposite James McAvoy and appeared in Swimming Home directed by Justin Anderson. On the film side, her credits include Blade Runner 2049 , Terminator: Dark Fate , Tully , and The Martian . Her television work is just as stacked, having led HBO Max's Station Eleven and starred in AMC's Halt and Catch Fire . She also made memorable appearances in Black Mirror and Love, Death & Robots . Behind the camera, Davis' directorial debut Woaca screened at both TIFF and the London Film Festival. Up next, she's set to headline Netflix's crime noir series The Undertow .
The Guardian
08-07-2025
- Lifestyle
- The Guardian
Young people in the UK: share your experiences of living in a coastal town
The Guardian is launching a year-long reporting series, Against The Tide, that will put young people at the forefront. For the past six months we have been travelling to port towns and seaside resorts around England to discover how younger people feel about the places they live and what changes would enable them to build the futures they want. We will continue our reporting over the next 12 months. Are you aged between 18-25 and live in a coastal town around England? What's it like living there? What are the bonuses and also the challenges? How do seasons affect your experience? If you're a parent or work with young people, please get in touch. And if you live in a coastal area around other parts of the UK, we'd like to hear from you too. You can share your experiences of living in a coastal town using this form. Please include as much detail as possible. Please include as much detail as possible. Please note, the maximum file size is 5.7 MB. Your contact details are helpful so we can contact you for more information. They will only be seen by the Guardian. Your contact details are helpful so we can contact you for more information. They will only be seen by the Guardian. If you include other people's names please ask them first. Contact us on WhatsApp at +447766780300. For more information, please see our guidance on contacting us via WhatsApp. For true anonymity please use our SecureDrop service instead. If you're having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.
The Guardian
07-07-2025
- Lifestyle
- The Guardian
Young people in the UK: share your experiences of living in a coastal town
The Guardian is launching a year-long reporting series, Against The Tide, that will put young people at the forefront. For the past six months we have been travelling to port towns and seaside resorts around England to discover how younger people feel about the places they live and what changes would enable them to build the futures they want. We will continue our reporting over the next 12 months. Are you aged between 18-25 and live in a coastal town around England? What's it like living there? What are the bonuses and also the challenges? How do seasons affect your experience? If you're a parent or work with young people, please get in touch. And if you live in a coastal area around other parts of the UK, we'd like to hear from you too. You can share your experiences of living in a coastal town using this form. Please include as much detail as possible. Please include as much detail as possible. Please note, the maximum file size is 5.7 MB. Your contact details are helpful so we can contact you for more information. They will only be seen by the Guardian. Your contact details are helpful so we can contact you for more information. They will only be seen by the Guardian. If you include other people's names please ask them first. Contact us on WhatsApp at +447825903400. For more information, please see our guidance on contacting us via WhatsApp. For true anonymity please use our SecureDrop service instead. If you're having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.
