100% Happy listening; Lee Child makes film cameo in Jack Reacher

Alice Jones' Arts Diary

Most Sold 4. Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher books (Reuters)

He’s been called the “antithesis of feel-good” by at least one critic but the playwright Martin Crimp has released an album titled - ironically? - 100% Happy.

The CD, on sale at the Royal Court, contains songs from his current play In the Republic of Happiness and from a Dutch version of Attempts on Her Life.

It was at the latter production in 2007 that Crimp came across the work of the Dutch musician and lead singer of Dutch indie band Caesar, Roald van Oosten and commissioned him to write more.

The electro soundtrack includes “I Never Go Deep” (Chorus: “It’s a new kind of world/And it doesn’t come cheap/And you’ll only survive/If you don’t go deep.”) Listen to a sample (above).

Reacher for the stars

The cheque isn’t bad but a cameo is the real perk of the job when your novel is picked up by Hollywood. Lee Child is the latest writer to enjoy it as he appears in the new Jack Reacher film.

The creator of the character, who has appeared in 17 novels so far, has a scene in which he plays the desk sergeant at a police station as Reacher (Tom Cruise) is released from a night in the cells.

Child hands Cruise back his sole possession, which as all fans of the books know, is a folding toothbrush. It was a moment freighted with significance, according to the writer. Cruise asked him to play the part.

“Cruise wants me to play the sergeant at the desk, as if the toothbrush is a baton, and I am passing it to him, just temporarily. The sergeant would have no lines, but he’d shrug, a little quizzically”, said Child.

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