Permanent Plastic Helmet
Ashley Clark
Hey! Wha’happen?
You might have noticed PPH has been a bit quiet recently; this lack of activity can be attributed to a nasty combination of extreme business in other areas and le flu d’homme (translation: quite a bad cold that won’t go away).
However, PPH will return with exciting new content next week, and I’m also excited to say that we (by which I mean, I) will be present in my Permanent Plastic guise at the 5th BFI Future Film Festival next weekend (18-19 February) running blogging workshops. More information will follow, but it would be great to see you down there at London’s BFI Southbank, so mark it in your diaries!
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this amazingly, ridiculously brilliant clip from the unsung comedy genius Fred Willard in Christopher Guest’s A Mighty Wind. “I CAN’T DO MY WERRRK!”
Carnage
Thankfully, the title of Roman Polanski’s brisk, four-character comedy of manners Carnage is the most distressing thing about it. A Manhattan-set adaptation of Yazmina Reza’s French play The God of Carnage, this sneaky chamber piece casts a beady eye over the fallout of an incident in which one schoolboy injures the other with a branch. In a nice touch, the incident is shown underneath the opening credits in a distant, Michael Haneke-esque long take.
The boys’ parents (the perpetrator’s played by Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet, the victim’s John C Reilly and Jodie Foster) convene to sort out the mess, but before long they are arguing with other, and riffing on all sorts of issues of parenting, class, wealth and relationships. Also, it seems that deep down, they all really, really hate each other.
At just 79 minutes, Carnage is lean, but even so starts to feel a little stretched by the end, as the escalating hysteria of the characters (inspired by copious whisky consumption) becomes a touch enervating. The underlying theme is that adults are just as capable of behaving as appallingly as children, and the cast demonstrate this with absolute relish. Christoph Waltz has a field day as the unctuous, smug lawyer Alan, and Kate Winslet gives brilliant drunk. Jodie Foster’s portrayal of a neurotic writer feels rather forced, but it’s a type of role I’ve never seen her play before, and is least a refreshing change. John C Reilly is also excellent, but may need to consider disassociating himself from roles in films which feature subplots about cruelty toward hamsters (see this and We Need To Talk About Kevin). The RSCPA will be onto him before long.
Although (*COLOSSAL INSIGHT ALERT*) Carnage feels rather stagey and a tad contrived, the dialogue is sharp, the apartment set feels appropriately claustrophobic and there are plenty of laughs to be had, the majority of them excruciating. Fans of movie vomiting scenes will also be delighted to find there is a sequence (sickuence?) which nearly matches that of Team America: World Police for comedy/gross-out value.
BFI Future Film Festival – The Winning Pitch Competition
18-19 February 2012 @ BFI Southbank
The 5th BFI Future Film Festival takes place at the BFI Southbank across the weekend of 18-19 February, and I thought I’d take this opportunity to promote the amazing competition that they’re running, aimed at budding young filmmakers.
Over to the guys at FFF:
As part of this year’s Future Film Festival, Doc Next Network is hosting the Pitching Masterclass with an industry professional. Before the event, we’re asking you to send us a 140 character pitch for a documentary you’d like to make, either by Twitter @BFI with the hashtag #FFPitch, or in an email to futurefilminstitute@bfi.org.uk by Wednesday 8 February.
We will then select six finalists, who will be invited to the Festival and given a free weekend pass. These finalists will have to pitch live at the end of the masterclass, and The Winning Pitch will get the opportunity to go to a filmmaking workshop with one of our partners in Amsterdam, Spain, Poland or Turkey, expenses paid!
Terms & Conditions
• To enter the competition you must be aged 15-25 years old
• Travel to the Festival is not included
• You must be able to attend the Pitching Masterclass on Sunday 19 February at BFI Southbank
• Deadline for entries is Wednesday 8 February
• Winners will be notified on Monday 13 February
• Expenses will be paid up to a value of £500
So get involved, and good luck!
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Martha Marcy May Marlene is a mostly gripping, yet slightly smoke-and-mirrors study of one young woman’s psychological distress following a traumatic experience, marked by an excellent central performance from newcomer Elizabeth Olsen (yes, younger sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley).
The film begins with our heroine Martha escaping a commune in the Catskills to find refuge in the house inhabited by her elder sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and her husband Ted (played by the very English Hugh Dancy). Gradually, it is revealed that the troubled Martha has extricated herself from a sinister cult presided over by the shamanic Patrick (John Hawkes) and populated by a host of servile young women and none-too-bright young bucks.
The film cross-cuts back and forth from past to present, augmented by some terrific, slinky transitions from editor Zachary Stuart-Pontier that blur the line between real and imagined, while an abstract threat constantly lingers in the background thanks to the atmospheric use of sound and a discordant score.
Olsen is superb, alternately fierce, cocksure, naive and vulnerable, and it will be no surprise if lazy journalists (not me, you understand) begin to refer to her as this year’s Jennifer Lawrence who, of course, gave good woman-in-backwoods-peril opposite Hawkes in the Oscar-nominated indie Winter’s Bone. Hawkes as Patrick cuts a wiry, even disturbingly thin, figure and has a charismatic verve, though his rent-a-cult aphorisms begin to pall after a while, and the commune and its inner workings are particularly – and disappointingly – thinly drawn.
Within this tense thriller lie some interesting themes, for example the binary opposition of Martha’s past and present living conditions. A heavily influenced and naive Martha seems to conflate the rural simplicity and routine of the commune with freedom despite the various abuses she has suffered, and rebels against the monotonous materialism personified by the bland domesticity of Sarah and Ted’s married life. Dancy (whose stiff, declamatory Englishness is used for something approaching comic effect) delivers a pompous dinner table defence of capitalism which goes some way to underlining her mistrust of such conformist living.
Martha Marcy May Marlene, however, is far from perfect. Even with the knowledge that much of what happens is filtered through the unreliable psychological state of our heroine, there are one or two staggering plot inconsistencies that undermine the drama to damaging effect. It would be wrong to give too much away, but you will certainly be wondering why the cult let Martha get away so easily when you find out what they’ve been up to, and perhaps even more frustrating is Lucy’s howlingly irritating disinterest in finding out about the details of her younger sister’s ordeal – it takes over an hour for her to conclude that the clearly distressed Martha “might need help”, and she never seriously enquires about what she has been through.
Despite its flaws, Martha Marcy May Marlene is well worth seeing, and marks a promising debut for writer-director Sean Durkin, provided he goes down the route of adding a bit more substance to his films.
The Bill’s Reg Hollis in Hollywood?
So presumably everybody else knew about this, then…
Yeah it’s the same guy. Apparently he won the Best Actor award at the Manhattan Film Festival last year for his part as a German in 1940s Russia in a film called Under Jakob’s Ladder. Well I never.
Source: The Sun
“It’s not a significant bullet” – Werner Herzog gets shot
While writing a short piece for Little White Lies magazine recently about the German director’s latest film (the excellent death row doc Into The Abyss), I remembered the time he was shot mid-interview by a madman in L.A. with an air rifle. Confirming his reputation as a badass extraordinaire, he barely bats an eyelid. Here it is:
Hollywood Costume: an exhibition at the V&A
Permanent Plastic Helmet has received news of a very exciting sounding exhibition coming up at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.
Hollywood Costume, which runs from 20 October 2012 – 27 January 2013, will be the first exhibition of its kind worldwide since 1970, and will no doubt entice a huge number of film, culture and costume enthusiasts from all over the world.
The exhibition will house the original costumes worn by the likes of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver, Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns, Keanu Reeves in The Matrix and Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men (the press release didn’t mention if his hair would be making an appearance) and many others. As well as the costumes, there will be design sketches, photographs, scripts, photographs and film footage from some of Hollywood’s greatest films to date.
On a personal level, I’m hoping for lots of costumes from Walter Hill’s The Warriors. Now that would be something! Fingers crossed for the chance to see the famous leathers and feathers in close-up.
Finally, on the subject of costumes, I’d also like to take this opportunity to point you in the direction of a brilliant blog entitled Clothes On Film which is dedicated to examining costume and identity in movies, and features dazzlingly detailed articles on outfits, reviews, news and exclusive interviews. Ch-ch-check it out.
Studios will make literally ANYTHING these days…
But kudos to Gerard Butler for branching out; this looks like it could be a painful role.
“We made Letitia Dean cry” The PPH Interview: Simon Hickson
Simon Hickson - (c) Bill Wadman
For years now I’ve been attending the BFI’s legendary Film Quiz. Taking place on the second Wednesday of each month at the BFI IMAX bar, it’s an entertaining, competitive and unbendingly alcohol-fuelled audio-visual experience helmed by the estimable Rachel, Michael and Rhidian (all followable on Twitter, hence the hyperlinks).
Being a BFI film quiz, it tends to attract some serious cinephiles and there’s one team in particular who carry the fight to an almost punishing degree on a monthly basis. Among this team, there’s one face – usually semi-obscured under a natty black pork-pie hat – who’s always stood out.
It took me a moment or two, but once I’d placed that face, I could barely hide my joy at being in the proximity of one of my childhood idols.
Anyone of a certain age will know (and love) Simon Hickson as one half of Trevor and Simon, the gloriously anarchic duo who occupied a regular spot on Saturday kids’ TV bulwark Going Live! (later Live & Kicking) during the late 80s and into the mid 90s. They played the improvisatory live TV game to the hilt, swinging their pants with reckless abandon, riffing ingeniously on contemporary pop culture and terrifying unsuspecting special guests. They were an influence on the work of Reeves and Mortimer and cleared the path for the next generation’s lords of misrule on kids’ TV; the lesser yet similarly uproarious Dick and Dom.
I caught up with Simon recently over a pint and some crisps in a charming Forest Hill boozer (not the Wetherspoon’s) to chat about his comedy career, his love of film and in what ways the cinema influenced his and Trevor’s inimitable brand of humour. What a lovely chap he was, too.
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GOING LIVE! AND KEY INFLUENCES
PPH (in bold): How did you get started on Going Live!?
Simon (in regular): Trev and I met at Uni where we started doing a double act. We decided we wanted to do that for a living. We gigged in London and a BBC producer saw us and said they were looking for acts for a new Saturday morning show. Our first audition didn’t go down too well and they said we only had one joke which was suitable, but we went through a stage of auditions. We got the job for four weeks, and those four weeks eventually became 10 years.
What you were doing was pretty different at the time. Who were the key influences on your style of comedy?
We liked double acts. We loved Morecambe and Wise. But a strong cinematic double act was Abbott and Costello. We used to read a lot about the background and the true stories of these people. We loved that Abbott and Costello were dysfunctional as a double act outside the films. Bud Abbott was completely bullied by Lou Costello and I think that the financial split between them was something like 70-30. Theirs was a skewed business partnership and the bullying character, you could argue, was the funny one although I guess they were both funny. We loved the violence of their routines. Take the Niagara Falls sketch, for example, which is based around Costello being in a prison cell, and this comedian Sidney Fields is an old hermit who’s driven mental by a tragedy that happened to him in Niagara Falls. Whenever the words “Niagara Falls” are mentioned he just strangles him. It’s very funny but very violent.
There were double acts like Mayall and Edmondson, too. At Uni our tutor was David Mayer and his daughter Lisa co-wrote The Young Ones with Ben Elton and Rik Mayall. We were also massively influenced by SNL, and in particular Dan Aykroyd. So many of Trev’s performances were an attempt to be Dan Aykroyd! Aykroyd, Steve Martin, John Belushi, The Wild and Crazy Guys. Stuff like that was a big influence on us.
And were there any films in particular that rubbed off on you?
Time Out got in touch with loads of comedians recently for their top 10 films. I had Neighbours in mine – weirdly it was directed by Rocky‘s John G. Avildsen – in which a nice middle class guy is living with his family and the neighbour from hell walks in. Surprisingly, John Belushi plays the nice guy and Aykroyd is the neighbour from hell which is not the way around you’d expect! It’s very creepy and very weird.
Another one we liked was John Landis’ Into The Night with Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer. Landis had been sued because the actor Vic Morrow and two young children were decapitated by a helicopter on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie in 1982. John Landis was sort of held responsible for this. And the next film he made was the grimmest comedy you’ll ever see. It fit into that yuppie syndrome that Scorsese mined in After Hours and Jonathan Demme did in Something Wild, but I think it’s the best one. Goldblum is an insomniac and his life goes horribly wrong. It’s really dark, really weird. And I liked that darkness.
These films became very “culty” for us and they certainly influenced the style me and Trevor were going for.
If you watch clips of Going Live! on YouTube now, some of your material feels quite close to the bone. Obviously when I was 7, 8, 9 years old much of it went straight over my head. Did you ever get a telling off?
Yes, we did. Looking back on it I do think to myself, “That was a bit cheeky”, and as an older man I wouldn’t have done that. When you’re young you don’t think about things too much; that’s what producers and directors are for. Look at the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand thing. Someone should have stepped in.
In doing comedy you should always do what makes you laugh. You shouldn’t try to second guess your audience. We did have producers who did research and said “kids want to see this or that” and we were even then of the opinion that you may not know what you want to see until you see it. Our angle was “you come into our world”. We were largely given free rein.
And did you get any complaints from the public?
We had a handful of complaints. Most were from people who were frankly nutters. When we did [hippie duo] The Singing Corner, we did a record with (60s folkie) Donovan, and we shot a video which went on [children's news show] Newsround. Because it was on Newsround rather than Saturday morning TV, a Donovan fan saw it and wrote in to the BBC to complain, and said: “I was really appalled to see my hero Donovan openly cavorting with two homosexuals”. As far as I’m aware, we never stated the sexuality of The Singing Corner!
I recently watched the one with The Who’s Roger Daltrey (above), who seemed very game for a laugh. Do you have any good special guest stories? Anyone who couldn’t get down with the anarchic style?
The bigger the star, the better they were. It was perhaps the less well-known ones that were a bit insecure. We used to think “why are they being so arsey?” but to be honest if I’d come on somebody else’s show and they said “do this” and I didn’t want to do it, I’d defend my right not to. There was only two people – or groups of people – in 10 years that ever said no. One was Bros. The other was Jonathan Morris from Bread! Sam Brown (of Stop fame) got overwhelmed mid-sketch and walked off. Oh, and once we made Letitia Dean cry. She appeared in Trevor and Simon’s Summer Special in 1995 and we made her dress up as an aubergine. We did a mock up of a Hello magazine shoot in her home and it was possibly a bit cruel and she cried when we showed her it. We felt bad about that one.
In terms of big stars who did play along, Paul Simon came on on his birthday and he was really ill. But his record company insisted that we gave him a birthday cake. They had a cake made up of the American flag, which was weird as he’s not exactly “Mr George Bush”! They got us dressed up as The Singing Corner to give it to him. So I had to try and maintain the dignity of this Singing Corner character – essentially singing “la la la” in a high-pitched voice – while giving a cake to a man who’s really not well. All the kids were crowded around him singing happy birthday to him and one kid was whacking him with a balloon! Poor Paul Simon.
What’s your favourite comedy creation that you’ve done?
Oh, Ken and Eddie Kennedy the barbers. A friend of ours came up with the name. We did some one-offs that I liked, too. We did the ArtHaus, they were German art critics. Our boss thought it was too weird.
Do you still work with Trevor?
Yes, we do a podcast. We’ve also written a film. We got funding from the European media fund and now we’re just waiting for someone to make it. We’ve done various things. We wrote an episode of My Parents Are Aliens. Through the company Kindle (who we did My Spy Family with) we did the film script I mentioned. It’s always been my dream to write a film. They went for it, we pursued it and now we’re trying to get it made. It’s frustrating. We’ve had lots of very nice “no’s” and what we need is a very nice “yes”!
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Trevor and Simon in character
ON FILM
You’re a regular at the BFI Film Quiz, would you describe yourself as a big film buff?
Yes, I’m a film buff, or film fan. For my age, I definitely am. I think there are times in your life when film matters more than others, and films can then inform what become your world. When I do the film quiz, the one thing I always lose out on is “teen 80s” films, anything that’s got Huey Lewis and the News in it. The others’ll know every answer and there’s ones I don’t know anything about.
In terms of actors, I had a look at your De Niro piece today, I thought it was fantastic, and it really made me nostalgic for the early De Niro. His early films had the most profound effect on me and liking film. I tend to go with your piece which argues “let’s hope he’s got one or two gems left in him, but give the old guy a break! He’s allowed to make rubbish films if he wants”.
When I was a student in Manchester they showed double bills, and they tended to be films that were two or three years old. I remember seeing things like Mad Max 1 & 2 together and being really excited but perhaps the one that blew me away was when I went to see The Exorcist – which is one of my favourite films now but I’d not seen then. The film that was on with it I couldn’t care less about because I’d never heard of it. It was called Taxi Driver. That’s the weirdness of how you can be thrown into something. I was 18 and it was like when you see something you’ve never seen before, and it blows you away, and it’ll stay with you forever.
For me, it’s all about going to the cinema and being alive when you’re watching something. I want to see films where the directors, the actors etc feel that it’s a vocation. They had to do it. Nicolas Cage, for example. There’s a man with passion!
What would your film of the year [2011] be?
I’d pick Melancholia as my film of the year. Though I thought Antichrist was bollocks. Lars von Trier is a cheeky filmmaker but I felt for him that Melancholia was quite heartfelt. To enjoy the film and get something from it, it helps to be tolerant to a filmmaker who’s going to indulge in very personal stuff. I’m no expert on depression but I do feel that film tackled it well – it got to grips with something real that people don’t like to talk about. I also felt that it was very honest.
You run a film blog – 20th Century Mummified Fox [named in honour of a mummified fox Simon once found on top of a car] and in it you mention that the last film you walked out of was Cop Out. That bad, huh?
Cop Out was atrocious. The only other film I’ve walked out of was Hard Bodies, which I shouldn’t have walked out of, because I was young enough to appreciate a film with gratuitous nudity. Cop Out was appalling. It tries to be a knowing buddy movie, but look to the great ones like 48 Hours and Midnight Run, there’s a real dynamic between two characters who shouldn’t be together. It was truly appalling. Kevin Smith gets Tracey Morgan, who’s great in 30 Rock, to do all of these movie references and it’s just embarrassing. Find me a movie nerd who actually thinks it’s good rather than awful. It’s the worst film I’ve ever seen! I know a lot of people love Kevin Smith, and I know a lot of people laughed at Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back… it’s funny but overall he’s one of those who’s got loads going for him, but he just can’t direct a movie.
Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia - Simon's favourite film of 2011
A film that annoyed me was The Tree Of Life. The main thing I thought was – oh, Terrence Malick why don’t you become a photographer? I didn’t have a clue what he was up to. I think more people should say that, but instead they like to say it’s profound. What the fuck was Sean Penn up to? He was using Sean Penn as a Sean Penn avatar. All we had to go on was: he’s Sean Penn, he’s moody and he’s got great, wavy hair. It’s frustrating because Penn’s much better than that. And another thing, it’s got all this bloody flickering light. That made me angry. Oh, and if there’s a Christian message in the film, that’s fine. But tell us what it is!
Another film I didn’t like was The Hangover: I thought it was shit. It really annoyed me. The film I’m a fan of is Very Bad Things, which wiped the floor with The Hangover. In Very Bad Things, these guys are terrible, but they’re traumatised by guilt. It’s really dark. The films I find funniest are very dark.
I’m a big fan of these British film oddities that fall by the wayside – like the Gordon Ramsay cooking comedy Love’s Kitchen. And Kill Keith [a comedy-horror starring Keith Chegwin!]. And you’ve written a treatment for Kill Keith Vol. 2. Can you tell me a bit more about that?
That’s a weird thing. That’s very odd. I’ve got a weird history with Keith Chegwin. Trev had told me about Kill Keith, and I thought he’d made it up. So I went away and wrote up an idea for a Kill Keith movie with me and Trevor. And he said, “No, it exists!”. But I put the treatment up on my blog ‘cos I thought it was funny. The people behind Kill Keith got in touch with me and we got invited to the premiere. I kind of enjoyed it and thought I should write a review of it. The truth is, it’s not without its merits, but it would have been cruel to write about it. I think it was a missed opportunity, not what it should have been. It would have been good if it was a bit darker, or more consistent in tone.
When we were on Saturday morning TV Keith Chegwin used to go around banging on people’s doors, and he did that to me. In my youth I might have been a bit precious, and I thought “well he shouldn’t do that”. Now I wouldn’t care. I did meet him and did some filming but I never let him forget it! So, yes, I wrote a jokey thing of Kill Keith where we actually kill him.
For you what makes a great British comedy?
I’m a real miserablist when it comes to comedy, so that element I guess! I’ve been watching Life’s Too Short recently. It has five minutes of greatness, but other than that there’s not much to it; nothing that Ricky Gervais hasn’t already done. Rev’s very good. I’m a massive Stewart Lee fan. When I watch him do his stuff I wonder why other comedians even bother.
According to your website you’re a handy pool player. The Americans have had The Hustler and The Color Of Money. Why hasn’t there been a great British pool film?
Not pool, but snooker. You’ve obviously never seen Number One, then? Well, neither have I, to be honest. It clearly has an Alex Higgins character in the lead part, and guess who plays him? What Irish personality from the 80s would you put in it?
Terry Wogan?
No… it was Bob Geldof! There is a good one out there somewhere, I’ve just not seen it.
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And with that passing reference to a snooker film starring Bob Geldof that neither of us had seen, we decided it was time to wrap up the interview and enjoy another pint and some more crisps. If you’re keen to re-acquaint yourself with more of the Trev and Simon oeuvre, check out these links:
Trevor and Simon’s website (including links to podcast)
Shut Up And Play The Hits – first trailer released for LCD Soundsystem doc.
As anyone’s who’s heard me bang on about Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense will know, I love a good music documentary. So you can imagine how excited I was when I discovered about this new doc covering the final moments of one of my favourite bands of the last 10 years: LCD Soundsystem. The film will debut at Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival (Jan 19-29) alongside other exciting new releases including Spike Lee’s Red Hook Summer and Sheldon Candis’ first feature LUV.
Here’s hoping it makes it to the inaugural UK iteration of the festival, which runs from 26-29 April at London’s O2 arena. The programme will be announced in March.
Over to the press release for more on Shut Up And Play The Hits:
“On April 2nd 2011, LCD Soundsystem played its final show at Madison Square Garden. LCD frontman James Murphy had made the conscious decision to disband one of the most celebrated and influential bands of its generation at the peak of its popularity, ensuring that the band would go out on top with the biggest and most ambitious concert of its career. The instantly sold out, near four-hour extravaganza did just that, moving the thousands in attendance to tears of joy and grief, with NEW YORK magazine calling the event “a marvel of pure craft” and TIME magazine lamenting “we may never dance again.” SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS is both a narrative film documenting this once in a life time performance and an intimate portrait of James Murphy as he navigates the lead-up to the show, the day after, and the personal and professional ramifications of his decision.”
