Features

Music video week | Sound and vision: a potted history of an artform

Permanent Plastic Helmet is taking a simultaneous trip down memory lane and into the future with a very special week dedicated to the mercurial wonder of the music video. To kick us off, here’s a selective, slightly personal tour through the history of this still youthful artform.

David Bowie’s ‘Ashes To Ashes’

Music videos take off

“Don’t you wonder sometimes, ‘bout sound and vision?”, queried David Bowie on 1977’s ‘Sound and Vision’. The chameleonic singer clearly did, and was one of the first major stars to latch onto the emerging music video zeitgeist of the time with the characteristically odd, eyecatching promo for ‘Ashes To Ashes’, directed by David Mallet in 1980. A pre-MTV blast of creativity, the video’s compelling blend of self-mythology, formal invention and striking visuals seemed to foreshadow the following decade in which music videos became one of the key mediums for musical artists to market their product, experiment creatively, and construct indelible images for themselves. Music videos sometimes complemented the lyrics and content of the song, sometimes they were simply flights of imaginative fancy.

The idea of integrating music with image was nothing new, from the iconic opening scene of D.A. Pennebaker’s Dylan doc Don’t Look Back (‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’), to The Beatles sophisticated efforts like ‘Rain’ and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever‘, to Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody‘ and even film musicals like Tommy and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but my focus starts with the era when music videos solidified as an integral promotional and image-making tool for artists looking to reach out to a wider fanbase.

Top of the Pops in the UK, Countdown and Sounds in Australia, and various cable shows in the US had offered a platform for largely rudimentary early attempts at music promos, but it was the launch of MTV in 1981 that really kicked things off on a grand scale. The first video shown was the prophetic ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’, a 1979 single by British group Buggles. As a business, MTV earned $7 million in advertising revenue in the first 18 months. Soon, the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) launched to introduce a competitive element to proceedings.

With this unprecedented 24/7 support framework in place, music videos began to experiment increasingly with form, content and budget. A pre-digital music industry was awash with cash, and in a position to throw millions at directors and artists. Some of the most eye-catching promos of the decade looked to innovative animation techniques (Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’, a-ha’s ‘Take On Me’, to name but two), while others attempted to craft entire narratives replete with oft-regrettable attempts at acting, and scripted, distractingly overlaid dialogue (“Hello! Yes I’m talking to you, Lionel Richie”). Many instead simply opted for semi-integrated concert footage.

As was ever thus in the music world, image was everything, and what better way to promote your image than by beaming an idealised version of it to millions of viewers? For example, on record, Duran Duran were marked largely by Simon le Bon’s honking vocals and impenetrable lyrics, but thanks to their lavish promos (of which ‘Rio’ – directed by experienced Aussie maverick Russell Mulcahy – is surely the most memorable), the boys from Birmingham held captive an international audience which viewed them with jealousy and admiration as pastel-suited playboys larking around on yachts. Similarly, Robert Palmer cemented his dapper image with a string of suave, deadpan vids featuring stateuesque models as his backing band. It all went deeper than that, though. With 1983’s neon-noirish, floor-lit ‘Billie Jean’, Michael Jackson was largely credited with breaking the insidious colour barrier maintained by MTV, who, despite their undoubted innovation, had pretty much shut out successful black artists up until that point.

Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’, directed by John Landis

The role of the director

The 1980s also saw the first instances of directorial heavyweights from the cinema world muscling in on the act. American Werewolf in London director John Landis’ remarkable 14-minute opus ‘Thriller’ remains the only music video to be inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress and is perhaps still the high-concept watermark of the genre. Jackson later teamed up with Martin Scorsese (and a pre-fame Wesley Snipes) for 1987’s ‘Bad’. Spike Lee helmed videos for rap titans Public Enemy as well as Prince. Respected actors would take a chance on music vids, like Donald Sutherland in Kate Bush’s ‘Cloudbusting’. Meanwhile, music video self-reflexivity reached its apotheosis in Brian de Palma’s 1984 absolute sleazefest of a film Body Double, in an astonishing scene in which the narrative completely dropped out in favour of an extended Frankie Goes To Hollywood video.

Over time, the music video became one of the premier forums for creative visual talents to express themselves, and displaying a skill with the artform itself became something of a “calling card”. Towards the end of 1992, MTV began to credit the director at the start and end of each video, in the process significantly promoting the idea of authorship within the artform. Now, viewers could look out for the names of directors and pick up on recurring tropes, ideas and visual motifs. Many made the leap into feature film directing (including Tarsem, David Fincher, Mark Romanek, Hype Williams, McG) and though the “music video” label is often used pejoratively, connoting style over substance and a kinship with advertising, there’s no doubting the impact these filmmakers have made, if not always critically, then commercially.

Of the MTV2 generation in the 1990s, perhaps the three most influential music video directors were Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, and Chris Cunningham, whose trailblazing work was immortalized in a series of DVDs entitled Directors Label, the first of which were released in 2003. Both Jonze and Gondry have gone on to estimable directing careers (Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind my own respective personal favourites of theirs), while UK counterparts Jonathan Glazer and Jamie Thraves (both garlanded for their respective Radiohead videos ‘Karma Police‘ and ‘Just‘) followed suit.

Changing times

As the presence of music videos grew in pop culture discourse so, of course, did their ambition. Early pioneer Michael Jackson would later go on to participate in the most expensive promo of all time, the effects-laden ‘Scream’, with his sister Janet in 1996. Others in the top ten include two from Madonna (‘Express Yourself’ and Bond theme ‘Die Another Day’), and – astonishingly – ‘Cartoon Heroes’ by Danish pop chumps Aqua, which clocked in at the cost of a cool $4.7m. R&B act TLC’s ‘Unpretty’ – a song which earnestly preached the value of staying true to oneself –  boasted a million-dollar make-up budget.

Jonas Akerlund’s controversial promo for ‘Smack My Bitch Up’

The manner in which audiences consumed music videos evolved significantly over the years. MTV faced some competition with the lighter, more MOR-oriented VH1 and then The Box, while in the UK the weekly Top Of The Pops – which switched between live or lip-synched performances – was complemented by Saturday morning’s The Chart Show, which ran in the UK on Channel 4 between 1986 and 1988, then on ITV between from 1989 up until its 1998 cancellation. When I didn’t have satellite TV, I was restricted to the likes of the short-lived Dr Fox’s Video Jukebox on LWT.

MTV developed as a company to serve other genres. In 1988, Yo! MTV Raps heralded a new platform for hip hop and rap (The Beastie Boys and Ice Cube among those to embrace the genre with relish), while MTV’s alternatively focused programme 120 minutes became a cornerstone of first the main channel (for 14 years), and then a further three on its sister channel MTV2. It was the UK iteration of MTV2 which proved central to my own appreciation of music videos, after the intermittent output of the terrestrial channels. MTV Base catered for the R&B genre. In 1993, MTV were also behind Mike Judge’s brilliantly puerile animation Beavis and Butthead, which featured the two eponymous, sniggering morons commenting snarkily on music videos from the comfort of their own homes: an eerily prescient foreshadow of today’s keyboard warrior culture.

Theme and content-wise, the 1990s also saw a more pronounced turn toward the controversial in music videos. Though the 80s were hardly without scandal (Duran Duran’s ‘Girls on Film’ and Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘Relax’ spring to mind), the next decade possessed it in spades. My 12-year-old self was hugely excited to see the uncut version of Jonas Akerlund’s promo for the Prodigy’s POV sex, drugs & vomit rampage ‘Smack My Bitch Up’, even if it looks a little tame now. Conversely, time has done little to diminish the visceral impact of Chris Cunningham’s enormously creepy vid for Aphex Twin’s ‘Windowlicker’ (which used body horror to subvert tired hip hop video cliches) or Glazer’s harrowing promo for Unkle’s ‘Rabbit In Your Headlights’, which featured French actor Denis Lavant being repeatedly struck by speeding cars in a tunnel.

Particular genres carved out their own particular styles. Rap videos, for example, became overwhelmingly associated (in the mainstream media’s consciousness at least) with a bling n’ bitches aesthetic that was parodied acidly and brilliantly by The Roots in their 1996 video for ‘What They Do’. More outre artists like Missy Elliott, OutKast and Busta Rhymes carved out their own unforgettable niches, often with the help of fish eye lenses. Meanwhile, doomy rock acts like Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson often favoured a scratchy, industrial, blue/grey paletted template. While all this was going on, bands like Radiohead and Tool developed reputations as being forward thinking and collaborative in their music video art, breathed new life into the idea of the compilation video.

R Kelly gets ‘Trapped In The Closet’

The digital impact

The next major sea change in the music video was launch of YouTube in February 2005, which suddenly opened up the doors to a treasure trove of music videos most people though they’d never see again, because not every band had gotten round to releasing a greatest hits video (or later, DVD). Though a slightly haphazard strain of copyright protection and advertising got in the way of unfettered enjoyment before long, it really is difficult to overstate the revolutionary impact of the near-magical unveiling of this audio-visual pandora’s box rich with delight, embarrassment and memories. Sony and YouTube clubbed together in 2009 to create Vevo, a dedicated area of YouTube for music videos, which has been a success, seeing record labels directly benefitting financially from large advertising revenues.

The YouTube revolution also allowed for variations in form, personified most egregiously by R Kelly’s utterly mental R&B opera ‘Trapped In The Closet’; a lurid, one-note melodrama cleaved into a scarcely believable 22 separate parts. This year, Kelly announced there would be even more. Indie band OK GO, in much the same way that Sacha Baron Cohen’s publicity stunts are now widely regarded as better than his films, are perhaps the first band to be genuinely more well known for their videos than their songs. They reached their zenith with James Frost’s extraordinarily complex and daring Mousetrap-inspired promo for ‘This Too Shall Pass‘. Meanwhile, talented directors like Patrick Daughters, Shynola, Floria Sigismondi and Dougal Wilson were, like Tim Pope (famed for his work with The Cure in the 1980s), able to carve out distinctive visual styles of their own.

The seemingly unstoppable rise of the internet coincided with – and no doubt influenced – the decision of MTV to ultimately jettison its programming of music videos in favour of reality TV garbage like ‘Jersey Shore’ in February 2010 (it had been going down this path for a while). Its absence has had scant effect on the restless creativity and output of innovative music videos. Neither has the form’s capacity to create controversy abated. Music videos remain a punchy canvas for daring artistic statements, and it’s now not uncommon for the release of music videos to be treated as events. Romain Gavras’ faintly ludicrous, but visually bracing, “ginger holocaust” promo for M.I.A’s ‘Born Free‘ provoked a hailstorm of controversy, while Lady Gaga’s fantastically overblown ‘Telephone’ featured a meta-cameo from Beyonce and was released to a huge storm of media opinion in 2010. The year prior, KanYe West’s shameful but hilarious rant aimed at Taylor Swift at the VMAs (‘I’m really happy for you and I’m a let you finish but Beyonce has one of the best videos of all time!”), is an indication of the importance placed on the form from current artists.

Adam Buxton hosting BUG live at the Odeon Leicester Square in Nov 2011

What now, and what next?

And what about those making the music videos in this new era? Well, says up-and-coming music video auteur David Wilson, it’s now “a international sharing community of like-minded artists”, who use the likes of Vimeo and YouTube to upload, promote and comment on each others’ work. The hope is that these videos, if not promoted aggressively by the band or the band’s label, will go viral. In the UK, comedian and radio host Adam Buxton has flown the flag for music video art with his BUG Music Video showcase (performed bi-monthly at London’s BFI Southbank) which is being turned into a TV show for Sky Atlantic. Innovative new directors like DANIELS, AG Rojas and David Wilson are making names for themselves, armed with digital technology that’s a damn sight cheaper than the actual film stock commonplace throughout the 80s and 90s. Unofficial, fan-made videos are now par for the course as anyone with a camera and computer can make a music video.

So, what to conclude from all of this? Well, whereas in the early days the landscape often seemed geared solely toward burnishing the egos, images and bank balances of the labels and stars, the flexibility and opportunity to shine provided by the artform’s broad canvas moved us into an era of music video director as-star (let’s look at Spike Jonze’s crazed turn as an evangelical dance instructor in his promo for Fatboy Slim’s ‘Praise You’ as the high watermark of this phenomenon). In this respect, perhaps we can draw an analogy with the New Hollywood cinema of the late-1960s and early 1970s when a new generation of directors like Arthur Penn, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Body Double‘s de Palma took unprecedented risks in the wake of the crash of the Hollywood system. Now, with the advent of the digital age and its impact on the music industry, options are wildly increased from both a consumer and creator point of view, and there’s a neat, digitally enhanced synthesis between the director-as-star and young creative-as-director. There seems to be a much an egalitarian attitude present in, and an enthusiastic drive toward, music video making as evidenced by the barrage of fantastic new videos which seem to crop up on the internet at a rapid rate. The future, without a shadow of a doubt, looks bright.

Over the coming week we’ll have a selection of interviews, articles, contributors’ lists and competitions. Follow us on Twitter @PPlasticHelmet, and if you want to join the conversation, use the hashtag #MusicVideoWeek.

The PPH interview | David Somerset of BFI African Odysseys

African Odysseys is an ongoing monthly programme of films and events which takes place at London’s BFI Southbank, and focuses on cinema by and about the people of Africa and the African diaspora. Permanent Plastic Helmet recently caught up with African Odysseys programmer David Somerset to find out more about this successful strand.

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PPH (in bold): Let’s start with the here and now. The next event in the African Odysseys strand is Ivan Dixon’s controversial 1973 film The Spook Who Sat By The Door (on Saturday May 26 – tickets here). Can you tell me a bit more about that?

David Somerset (in regular): Yeah, basically it’s a real cult item. It was the first film of Ivan Dixon, who was a rising star in the black American film world, and it’s been limited to bootleggers or the occasional short run DVD release. To the best of my knowledge it’s never been screened theatrically in the UK, so we’re massively excited to have it here. It’s about a black American ex-CIA operative who returns to Chicago and uses his skills to prepare his brothers for revolution. It was hugely controversial at the time – this is early 1970s America we’re talking about – so the FBI deemed it cause for concern and all but one of the existing prints were seized and destroyed. It’s a great film, really exciting.

Going back a bit, when did African Odysseys start at the BFI? 

African Odysseys started in 2007 at the BFI as a programme of educational screenings that reach out to wider audiences. I had just taken up the post and was a huge film fan. I knew of a Cuban classic film from Tomas Guiterrez-Alea, called The Last Supper about a plantation in 18th century Cuba. We showed this title to a sell out audience during the last RISE anti-racist festival in London. Speaking to collaborators such as Tony Warner from Black History Walks I said, “Why dont we get a bunch of cultural groups and individuals together and devise a programme?”. That’s the simplest explaination of what happened.

What was your inspiration/drive for the programme, and why do you consider it to be important? 

I believe in genuinely collaborative programming and not programming that is simply driven by economic imperatives – that’s why I like working in a cultural institution. I believe cultural institutions should not only think about wider audiences but also work in conjunction with them. These are both things that such institutions rarely do in a meaningful way but at the BFI I have been able to pursue this on an educational level. I also love to do this because I am constantly educated about new films, films that I have never heard about, films such as The Spook Who Sat By The Door that have been deliberately written out of history as a result of both political represssion and ignorance; an ‘educated’ elite who simply cannot look beyond the limited horizons of their education, who have never learned to think for themselves, ‘outside the tent’.

What other groups/organizations are involved in African Odysseys? 

A whole range of cultural and community organisations and individuals. Lobby groups, archives, film festivals directors, cultural activists – I couldnt begin to name them for fear of leaving some out. I dont hear from some contributors for a while and then they get in touch and say that they have a film and will we take a look at it. But there is also a core of people who attend all meetings. Some are politically driven and committed to the need to promote exposure in the face of a media and wider society that refuses to deal with representation unless its on a banal and inert level.

Where did your own interest in African diasporic cinema stem from? 

Well, I have always loved cinema per se. Diversity and creativity are inseperable and I am into genuinely creative cinema. Diaspora cinema is a difficult concept. Do we mean national cinema? Or cinema that deals with diaspora experience? Or just cinema that includes diverse, disapora casting? Its a broad category. Working with wider audiences I always look for resonant work that raises pertinent issues within a particular community, for which there is a wider discussion to be had. I am also attentive to the universal experience and if we are concerned about human rights, for example, it should be a concern for everyone and not just a particular region or background. So the ideal is to mix up audiences, share experience, recognise common ground as well as specific experience and there’s no better medium to do this than cinema.

Do you think that African cinema currently gets the respect and exposure it deserves? If not, why not?  

I think we have to begin from a standpoint that recognises the limitations to any cinema exhibition. Unless we are fortunate enough to travel to film festivals, the public get to see a minute drop in the ocean of the work that is produced on an international level. There are festivals in London and the UK and if one goes to these niche platforms, its possible to get an insight into what is being produced in Africa. And what is being produced is not getting sufficient exposure, certainly not at multiplex cinemas but also at the smaller rep chains that have become increasingly streamlined in their programming. But I hold broadcasters to account, too. In the 80s, I’m sure that an appetite for African cinema sprang from a rich output on BBC2 and Channel 4 where you could discover not only drama that represented a diversity of UK experience but also scheduled great African cinema from people such as Regina Nacro, Sembene, Cisse, Mambety – great film makers. Nigeria is doing some exciting stuff now and moving away from the admittedly popular (but local and low-budget) to the international, and doing it despite wider ignorance and with an attitude of “if you dont know about us, too bad ’cause we’re coming anyway”.

How much of the programme deals specifically with Africa? 

In January we screened a doco by a new director about witchcraft in Northern Ghana. Last year’s Mahamat-Saleh Haroun season at the BFI was tremendous, especially A Screaming Man which overwhelmed audiences. We also welcomed Gaston Kabore and Wend Kuuni which was a joy. I’d always like to see more. In July as part of African Odysseys we are screening a film about Algeria, Outside the Law. In August we have a doc about African religion in a double bill with a newly discovered record of the late, great Fela Kuti and his trip to NY in 1986. In November we are hoping to put together some new Nigerian films. At heart I believe people will take a chance if given the opportunity! Sometimes the industry is ignorant to its own economic criteria and miss commercial films that would actually make a good profit for them.

Have there been any particularly controversial screenings so far? 

Have there been any that aren’t? I am amazed at the discussions that come out of screenings and the different views that come from speakers and audience. The remarkable Raoul Peck’s film Moloch Tropical took aim at a sacred cow and outraged a good section of the audience. But a strongly divided audience makes for tremendous discussion. This was certainly the case with the shock documentaries Addio Zio Tom and Africa Addio. The discussions were second to none. When we all think the same way there’s no debate.

African Odysseys continues at the BFI Southbank with The Spook Who Sat By The Door on Saturday 26 May. Book tickets here, and view the forthcoming programme here. 

Blogalongabond – Licence to Kill: A Song to Die For

Contributor Michael Mand takes a look at the rich history of Bond music, culminating with an appreciation of his own personal favourite theme tune.

The word ‘iconic’ is often overused; however, when it comes to the James Bond film series, there are undoubtedly numerous iconic elements, from the cars to the catchphrases and the actors themselves. Perhaps the most iconic Bond feature of all, however, is the music. This includes both the original Bond theme (perhaps the most instantly recognisable piece of music in all of cinema) and the individual films’ disparate theme songs, recorded by an array of contrasting artists and always the subject of competition and debate.

The iconic James Bond theme

“The James Bond Theme” sets out the blueprint for the series; teeming with drama and menace, flailing horns and grandiose production. Written in 1962 in the surf rock style popular at the time, the original, defining riff was played by guitarist Vic Flick (who received a generous one-off fee of six English pounds for his performance). The authorship of the theme has been the subject of dispute over the years. Initially credited to Monty Norman, the theme was recorded by the John Barry Seven. Barry, who would go onto become the composer most associated with Bond, claimed credit for the piece, culminating in a court case which came down on the side of Norman. Since its debut in Dr No (celebrating its 50th anniversary this year) each Bond film has seen a different arrangement of the theme, often reflecting the film’s setting, star and title song.

Flick later worked with The Beatles on A Hard Day’s Night, coming under the production eye of George Martin, one of a number of producers/composers who would take the helm when Barry was unavailable. Martin teamed up with Paul McCartney for the first time post-Beatles on 1973’s Live & Let Die. The list also included Michael Kamen, Eric Serra, Marvin Hamlish & Bill Conti before David Arnold stepped into the breach full time. With directorial duties passing to Sam Mendes for the forthcoming Skyfall, Arnold has been replaced by Mendes’ long-time collaborator Thomas Newman.

Another notable musical trademark of the Bond series is the increasing tendency to use snatches of famous soundtracks from other films, as well as self-referential appearances of previous Bond themes and even the use of classical scores. One such example of the former is the appearance of Maurice Jarre’s ‘Theme from Lawrence of Arabia’ during The Spy Who Loved Me’s desert scene.

For every film an individual theme song

If the Bond series’ incidental music is familiar, then far more debate and speculation surrounds the individual theme song which usually accompanies each film’s title sequence. Matt Monroe’s version of ‘From Russia With Love’ was the first vocal track to accompany a Bond film (though it was played over the closing titles), while the following year saw Shirley Bassey make her Bond debut with Goldfinger. Bassey went on to record two further themes, and remains the only person to have had the honour of performing more than one. The use of Tom Jones and Lulu in subsequent films continued the standard pairing of mega-lunged singer with brassy, show-stopping tune.

By the 1970s and early ‘80s, this approach had given way to drippy ballads performed by female singers, including Sheena Easton’s ‘For Your Eyes Only’, Carly Simon’s ‘Nobody Does It Better’ (from The Spy Who Loved Me) and Rita Coolidge’s ‘All Time High’ (Octopussy); the latter two rare examples of theme songs which don’t share the film’s title (this trait has recently reappeared, but then you try shoe-horning Quantum of Solace into a song lyric). There was also a conscious effort to make the songs reflect contemporary musical trends, while retaining their ‘Bond-ness’; this manifested itself in the disco feel of the pre-title music in 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me and the choice of ‘80s pop titans Duran Duran & a-ha to soundtrack A View To A Kill and The Living Daylights respectively.

Increasingly, the choice of artist recording the Bond theme has become the subject of fevered speculation, competition and controversy, perhaps as much as the choice of actor to play Bond himself. While recent performers have ranged from the hopelessly naff (Madonna, Chris Cornell) to the bizarre (Jack White’s duet with Alicia Keys), it’s interesting to look at the artists who missed out, in the same way as I previously considered the actors who almost played 007.

The Pet Shop Boys submitted a version of ‘The Living Daylights’ in 1987, which was later reworked as their 1990 album track ‘This Must Be the Place I’ve Waited Years to Leave’; Alice Cooper and Blondie recorded unused versions of ‘The Man With the Golden Gun’ and ‘For Your Eyes Only’; the 1997 film Tomorrow Never Dies attracted entries from Pulp, Marc Almond, Space & The Cardigans, before the bizarre decision to opt for the dismal Sheryl Crow. Speculation is already rife about the theme to this year’s Skyfall, with Adele, Noel Gallagher, Muse & Lady Gaga among the motley crew apparently in contention. A personal preference would be for Radiohead (take a listen to ‘Down is the New Up’ from the extended In Rainbows for a taste of how this might sound) or Arctic Monkeys (recall their Glastonbury cover of ‘Diamonds Are Forever’?), while the great might-have-been is perhaps the late Amy Winehouse.

Note to Eon: Robbie Williams must NEVER be allowed near a Bond theme.

The greatest Bond theme of all time

So, to my personal favourite. As this was ostensibly to be an article about Timothy Dalton’s 1989 swansong Licence to Kill, let us turn to the film’s true star: Gladys Knight. While the film itself is a solid effort, featuring a more confident turn from Dalton than in the preceding drear-fest The Living Daylights, a plot involving personal revenge and the suspension of Bond’s 00-status (plus a surprisingly fresh-faced Benicio Del Toto as a henchman), the most memorable aspect is Knight’s magnum opus of a theme song.

The Empress of Soul (for it is she) beat a mooted collaboration between Flick and Eric Clapton to the gig and, in the absence of Barry, was paired with Narada Michael Walden (he of ‘Divine Emotions’, ‘80s fans), Jeffrey Cohen and producer Walter Afanasieff. The result was the definitive Bond theme. Borrowing liberally from Bassey’s ‘Goldfinger’, it was suitably self-referential, featured trademark brass and bluster and benefitted from a soaring vocal performance from Gladys herself. Topped off by a somewhat gangsta lyric which suggested that our Glad was ready to pop a cap in the ass of anyone who might dare try it on with her man, it was even cool enough to make its debut on Radio 1’s Big Beat Show, normally the home of hip hop and R’n’B.

‘Licence to Kill’ was the last of the great Bond themes, encapsulating all of the traits that had been established in the decades before, and overshadowing the disparate shambles who have since taken up the mantle. Somehow, I just don’t see Noel Gallagher living up to a song that remains one of the great film openers, with or without The Pips.

Blogalongabond is the ingenious brainchild of blogger The Incredible Suit. Contributor Michael Mand can be followed on Twitter @grindermand.

Cyrobra or: The Three Ages of Tormented Man

Ladies and gentleman, please put your hands together for the three troubled and taciturn male heroes of 2012 to date: Cyril Catoul from The Kid With A Bike, Roman Kogler from Breathing and Brandon Sullivan from Shame. In this article, I shall contrast their different brands of turmoil and speculate as to what fate has in store for them as an uber-amalgam character who we’ll call Cyrobra (even if it sounds like the name of a monster in a Greek myth).

First up is Cyril, the “Cy” portion of this creature. Disappointment has come early for the 11-year-old, who’s forced to stare down the barrel of his father’s abandonment with only a packet of crisps to cushion the rejection. Motherless and as good as fatherless, all that stands between Cyril and the children’s home we see him fleeing is a caring hairdresser/guardian angel. The coupling of harsh reality with almost incongruous good fortune is a feature we’ll also see when Cy grows into Ro.

For now, we’ll stick with Cy, who, perhaps because of his age, is the most demonstrative of our heroes. There’s rarely a scene that doesn’t feature him kicking, screaming, shouting or cycling furiously. His reaction to misfortune is instinctively physical. Thomas Doret plays him like a snarling cornered animal. Life hasn’t treated him reasonably and he’s returning the disfavor.

Transport is a revealing, if essentially transitory, medium throughout Cyrobra’s screen life. In TKAB, Cy’s little bike – like Wendy’s dog Lucy in Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy - serves as a symbol of emotional and social wellbeing. It’s no coincidence that the kid loses both his dad and bike in one cruel stroke. The guardian angel restores the bike and with it hope. Later, the bike is stolen by local Bad Sorts that Cyril subsequently falls in with but, in keeping with her job description, the guardian angel comes through, and at the end of the film we see them enjoying a joint cycle ride. She is keeping him company in his world, on his terms. He travels alone no more.

Thomas Schubert as Roman Kogler

Breathing opens with how life plausibly could have gone for Cyril if the guardian angel left or evaporated (hard to know where you are with fairy-tale creations).  In her absence, it would have been back to the children’s home where the combination of bad luck and feral instincts might have driven him, like Roman, to an act for which punishment is a juvenile detention centre.

Now 19, and in his “Ro” stage, our hero has subdued his wild physicality to the point where he is almost robotic in motions and speech. Only the odd freak-out hints at a molten core. Eyes and hair have changed colour but growing up is a funny business. Physically, he is still wiry and watchful and having lost his sympathetic kid stature, people treat the inscrutable man-boy with a little more hostility.

Thomas Schubert plays his character with a captivating stillness, letting narrative progress provide the context. His father is never mentioned and his mother gave him up when he was a baby. Like Cyril, he is effectively an orphan. The narrative has a break in store for him but, unlike with Cyril, this comes not from a fantasy savior, but through his own quiet development. In this respect, Breathing, like its protagonist, is the more grown up of the two films.

Roman has also outgrown the bike as a mode of transport and instead spends a sizable amount of the screen time aboard a train commuting to and from work. It is on one of these necessary trips that his dreary life gets a fizzling injection of age-appropriate excitement. A pretty American backpacker takes a shine to our hero and they flirt over a beer bought from the conductor. It is a joyful scene imbued with idea that, despite his past, Roman at age 19 has it all to play for. In the next scene he is humiliated by a guard, but even this brutal editing cannot erase the possibility of what went before. As in Cyril’s childhood, relationships explored in transit give us an idea of the character’s potential.

Looking at where Brandon is at the beginning of Shame rather punctures our hopes for where Cyrobra may have ended up. Although at this “Bra” stage of life, he has found a place for himself in the world outside of institutions it has come at the price of meaningful relationships. As Brandon, Michael Fassbender channels both the assured stillness of Roman and – during the compulsive sex scenes – the frantic energy of Cyril.

Michael Fassbender as Brandon Sullivan

Fassbender’s performance is a masterclass in micro-acting. The passing years have taught our hero to hone the art of turmoil containment until it will not be contained, and rises explosively out of him in sex addiction.  Brandon lives out the lonely life that might have been the fate of Cyril without a guardian angel or Roman without the self-development. Shame is the most adult film of the three, offering, in the context of our amalgam character, the conclusion that TKWAB and Breathing were both false dawns, high points in a cycle rather than hope-filled end points.

A bit of a cognitive leap is required to make “Bra” an extension of the previous characters. For one, he has a sister and for two, his relationship with his parents, though now defunct, seems not to have been a clear-cut case of abandonment. Director Steve McQueen is deliberately vague about Brandon’s background, and prefers instead to focus on the addiction rather than its genesis. Henceforth, the strange attitude that Brandon and his sister Sissy have to each other’s nudity and Sissy’s revealing line, “we’re not bad people, we just come from a bad place”, suggest that theirs wasn’t the rosiest of family homes. There may well have been abuse.

Whatever the cause, the darkness that Brandon carries around with him and the limits it sets on his personal relationships means that his revelatory transport scene is significantly less tender and innocent than his predecessors’. Like Roman, he commutes to work, underground on the subway rather than overground by train, and it is here that his roaming eye alights on a striking redhead. She seems to reciprocate his lustful interest until something in the intense carnality of his gaze causes her to flee in fear. There is no space in Brandon’s tormented headspace for positive, nurturing relationships. All he can manage are brief animal exchanges.

So, what will become of Cyrobra and those like him; men with difficult pasts that have not learned to communicate and instead alternate between stoical silence and destructive outbursts? Let’s infuse the core meanings of TKWAB, Breathing and Shame and draw a conclusion coloured by the latter’s ambiguous narrative shape. The pain, illustrated by Brandon’s rain-soaked breakdown, will keep on coming but so too will the bursts of self-determination that led to Roman’s ascension and the blind luck that landed Cyril an angel to love. There is hope for these people – or rather our strangely named amalgam character – but it is just one part of a frustrating emotional cycle.

Shame is available on DVD now. Contributor Sophie Monks Kaufman can be followed on Twitter @sopharsogood.

“Phew for a minute there I lost myself” – an unlikely influence on Ceylan’s Anatolia?

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s extraordinary thriller Once Upon A Time In Anatolia, as Little White Lies’ David Jenkins astutely puts it, “forge[s] a new template for the police procedural”. It’s a dark moral tale about an assorted group of men (comprising police, soldiers, gravediggers, a doctor, and suspects) searching for a corpse on a long, dark night, illuminated by stunning widescreen panoramas of infernally autumnal landscapes, and very occasional nods toward magical realism. To watch the film is to subject yourself to a quite unique sensory and temporal experience; when you leave the cinema, you feel as though you’ve been trapped in there all night; the boredom and frustration experienced by the characters is transposed viscerally – yet paradoxically thrillingly – onto the audience.

Now: a small, perhaps fanciful observation about an amazing piece of work which may or may not have acted as an influence on Ceylan’s film. It took me a little while to put my finger on it, but when I was watching Anatolia the for the first time, there was something nagging me; a haunting memory. When it finally hit, I couldn’t help but draw comparisons. I was thinking of Jonathan Glazer’s brilliant promo video for Radiohead’s 1996 single ‘Karma Police’.

Glazer’s video is a masterpiece of creepy, largely unresolved tension. As the doomy, reverb-heavy acoustic chords of the song begin, the camera, positioned in the front of an empty car and presumably representative of the driver, glares out into the night’s blackness ahead. We hear anonymous footsteps, and the car door opens and shuts. The car starts, a light shines illuminating a long country road framed by half-lit greenery, and Thom Yorke’s vocals begin. Gradually, something becomes visible in the distance; as the car advances, the image sharpens, it’s a man, running away from the car. Periodically, we pan back to a morose-looking Yorke murmuring along to the lyrics, then eventually giving up.

The car pulls closer and closer to the man, who eventually collapses in exhaustion. The car pulls back, as if giving itself a run-up to mow the man down. Switching to the man’s point of view, he, and we, notice that the car has been leaking petrol. Clambering to his feet, the man fumbles for a match, lights it, and tosses it onto the trail. The flame kicks up in an inexorable trail while the driver/camera POV backtracks furiously to no avail. The flames engulf the car, the windscreen cracks, and the stand-off is over. As the ‘Sexy Sadie’-lifting bassline creeps upward and the distortion begins on the record, there’s a final twist: when the camera – now animated and anguished rather than dispassionate for the first time – pans back around, there’s nobody there. Thom Yorke, or the manifestation of Thom Yorke’s conscience, has escaped or vanished. Was there anybody really there in the first place?

What’s the video all about? Well, many of the same themes and troped that run through Ceylan’s film, I’d argue. Morality, retribution, persistence, facing one’s demons, the inscrutability of evil, the elemental struggle between life and death. Both works exist on the frayed, liminal edge of wake and sleep. The video is reportedly based upon a dream experienced by Yorke, while the major narrative pivot in Anatolia occurs when the exhaustion simply becomes too much for the key suspect, and his mind gives way to hallucination in the presence of a beautiful, spectral local village woman.

Though Glazer’s work is more oblique, I think both are distinctly moral fables. I’ve always read the camera/driver figure of the video to represent somebody easily led into acts of destruction who, at the video’s conclusion, gets his comeuppance, while the dark forces driving him (perhaps embodied by Yorke) get away; this idea, in turn, chimes with Anatolia’s mentally-challenged suspect, who is possibly coerced into committing the heinous crime of murder by his brother.

Perhaps most striking in ‘Karma Police’ are the visual similarities with the first half of Anatolia, which begin with the pastoral nocturnal setting, and the claustrophobic location of the automobile. In the film’s opening sequences, the car is the scene of a long, discursive chat among the officials about – of all things – the differences between cheese and yoghurt. While the officials continue their absurd discussion, Ceylan’s camera dollies – achingly slowly – into the hollowed, inscrutable face of the prime suspect, who, like taciturn backseat driver Yorke, may or may not be responsible for the crime and the chase unfolding henceforth. Both are iconic, unforgettable images, while the car is both is the vessel of investigation, transporting, searching, locating. Furthermore, the foreboding atmosphere created by the video is disarmingly similar to Ceylan’s work: There’s the struggle between light and dark, the crushing claustrophobia in spite of vast natural space, the oblique spatial unknowability of the struggle. The body, like Thom Yorke at the video’s conclusion, could be anywhere.

My imagination continued to run wild with the delicious physical similarities between the runaway target of the “Karma Police” (that is to say Thom Yorke and his driver), and one of Anatolia’s most fascinating characters, the driver Arab Ali (Ahmet Mümtaz Taylan); a doughy figure who is brought to tears in one of the film’s most elliptical, ambiguous scenes, which uses confusing sound bridges and image overlaps to connect the psychological states of two characters.

Even Yorke’s ever-oblique lyrics seem to chime with the film’s themes of crime, punishment and mystery. “Karma police, arrest this man he talks in maths / He buzzes like a fridge / He’s like a detuned radio” sounds like a petulant order from some busybody in a totalitarian state, afraid of that which he does not understand. Naci, the police chief, is worn down by the machine of bureaucracy within which he acts as a small cog, and his quick temper and thirst for retribution echoes Yorke’s darkly intoned mantra “This is what you get… This is what you get when you mess with us”. It’s almost as though Yorke is summoning the dark forces of chance and obfuscation that bear down upon Ceylan’s beleaguered cast of characters.

Now I’m not entirely sure there’s any overarching theory at work here above and beyond the links I’ve mentioned – or if the Turkish auteur is indeed a fan of Oxford’s finest – but I do think that the two pieces complement each other extremely well as morosely effective studies in atmospheric, sweaty, exhausting night terrors. In many ways, ‘Karma Police’ could be an effective subtitle for Once Upon A Time In Anatolia. In a world where films are called things like The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift and The Raid: Redemption, it might not be such a bad idea after all.

Go ahead, watch the video for yourself and see what you think. It’s followed by the Anatolia trailer.

*     *     *     *     *

P.S. In writing this post, all sorts of musical reference points popped into my head, not least of which was Public Image Ltd’s utterly chilling ‘Poptones’, (video here) the lyrics of which read:

“Drive to the forest in a Japanese car
The smell of rubber on country tar
Hindsight does me no good
Standing naked in this back of the woods
The cassette played poptones
I can’t forget the impression you made
You left a hole in the back of my head
I don’t like hiding in this foliage and peat
It’s wet and I’m losing my body heat
The cassette played poptones
This bleeding heart
Looking for bodies
Nearly injured my pride
Praise picnicking in the British countryside
Poptones”

Swap British for Turkish, and you’re pretty much talking about Once Upon A Time In Anatolia. Spooky, eh?

Blogalongabond – The Living Daylights: How Do You Solve A Problem Like Bond?

I recall that the appointment of Timothy Dalton as the fourth official actor to play James Bond, following the retirement of Roger Moore, caused some confusion in my postal district. Up until that point, Dalton had been largely known as a stage actor and was only familiar to us as Prince Barin in the enjoyably barmy Flash Gordon. Dalton’s debut came in 1987′s The Living Daylights, which I will confess remains perhaps my least favourite Bond film, and makes Dalton my least favourite Bond (George Lazenby’s brief miscasting aside).

A Bond fan’s view of their favourite era tends to depend on age; my parents’ generation grew up with Sean Connery, the suave, definitive Bond (in their eyes), while I was used to Roger Moore’s irony-laden, eyebrow-raising model. Those who came of age in the ’90s will have enjoyed Pierce Brosnan’s amalgamation-Bond, and Daniel Craig has brought the franchise up-to-date, with his post-Bourne/post-9/11 action hero. The character has something in common with Doctor Who, as an icon with a dedicated fanbase, with each reinvention the subject of enormous interest and controversy.

Theatrical poster

Dalton, however, seems to have fallen through memory’s cracks, almost obscure enough to warrant a quiz question, but too recent to have been entirely forgotten. However, the story of his casting as 007 reveals a wider tale of missed chances, second chances and actors being in the right place at the right time (and vice versa). Indeed, Dalton only got the role when he did because Brosnan was unavailable due to contractual obligations with the TV show Remington Steele. In many ways, the history of those who didn’t play Bond is more interesting than that of those who did, and takes us into some surprising areas.

Bond’s creator – Ian Fleming – was keen to bring his character to the big screen and was involved in the production of an early screenplay called James Bond, Secret Agent, written with Richard Burton in mind. However, Burton rejected the role and the Bond film was shelved until Cubby Broccoli’s production company Eon obtained the rights and a film dynasty was born. Eon initially held a contest to ‘find James Bond’, which was won by an obscure model named Peter Anthony. It quickly became clear that Anthony could not act, leading Eon to begin a search for an established actor capable of filling 007′s shoes.

Many stars of the day were linked with the part – James Mason, Trevor Howard and even Cary Grant were considered – but, following the decision of first choice Rex Harrison to reject the role, Broccoli settled on a young Scottish actor named Sean Connery (incidentally, this casting choice influenced Fleming’s later portrayal of his hero in his books, as he added a previously unheard of sense of humour and Scottish heritage). Connery retired (briefly) from the role in 1968, at which point a then 22-year-old actor was approached to replace him. His name? Timothy Dalton. Dalton refused the part, believing that he was too young for the role, the first of a series of fateful decisions which would come to define the Bond series. Instead, Lazenby was cast (apparently beating One Million Years BC star John Richardson to the part), making his only appearance in 1969′s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service before Connery returned.

Briefly researching the list of those linked with role of 007 is notable for the sheer number of actors considered, but even more surprising is their disparate styles; from professional Yorkshireman Sean Bean to Cold Feet posho Robert Bathurst; from tuxedo-sporting Bond wannabe Clive Owen to anti-Semitic has-been Mel Gibson; from family friendly Hollywood star Sam Neill to Brodie-from-The-Professionals Lewis Collins; and from ballet dancer Antony Hamilton to actual Frenchman Christopher Lambert.

"Actual Frenchman" Christopher Lambert

Those of you who have read Fleming’s original Bond books will recall that his creation was a rather different character to most of the portrayals which have appeared on the big screen over the fifty years since Connery first took to the screen in Dr No. Fleming’s Bond was a difficult and conflicted man, displaying many of his creator’s own prejudices (sexism & homophobia were par for the course). He is described in the novels as having been born in the early 1920′s, resembling musician Hoagy Carmichael, with a scar on his cheek, grey/blue eyes, a cruel mouth and as standing six feet tall, with a thin build. From this we can perhaps judge which Bond actor has been most faithful to the original 007; we can probably discount Moore’s ironic, elderly stint, which seemed to be based more on his earlier portrayal of The Saint than Fleming’s novels. Connery, as mentioned, became more of an influence on the Bond novels than they were on him, while Brosnan’s reinvention seemed to be an amalgamation of his favourite aspects of Connery and Moore, a smug, post-cold war heartthrob mixed with a witty, heart-in-the-right-place ironist. As good as Craig’s current incarnation may be at running up cranes and modelling swimwear, he surely bears no resemblance to the James portrayed in Fleming’s books. Perhaps then we should re-evaluate Dalton’s contribution to the canon?

The Living Daylights, based on a late short story by Fleming, sees Dalton reinvent Bond as a harder, more serious character than we had seen previously. The rather convoluted plot sees 007 deployed to oversee the defection of a KGB agent and discovering that the KGB themselves appear to have rebooted their policy of “Smert’ Spionam” (“Death to Spies”). As he crosses Europe and Afghanistan, it becomes clear that Dalton’s Bond has more in common with the character of the early novels than that of his film predecessors; gone are the painfully comic asides, the easy charm and the much parodied silliness. Instead we have an actual spy thriller, with all the complexities that involves. The problem is, that’s not what I look to Bond for; having scratched my head through last year’s inexplicably lauded Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, I clearly lack the intellectual chops to deal with any spy film which doesn’t involve chasing Russians through space. Perhaps I’ve come to love the screen Bond as an entirely different character to that of the books; for me Dalton is just too damn straight.

So, where next for James Bond? A quick perusal of the internet shows that bets are already on for Craig’s successor in the iconic tuxedo, with CGI’s Sam Worthington the hot favourite, followed by Tom Hardy & Christian Bale (a potentially over-serious 007 if ever there was one). There is also the ongoing debate about whether it’s time for a black Bond, with Will Smith (rather absurdly) being mentioned; my own preference would be Adrian Lester. This appears to be a controversial subject (Bond’s a white guy, right?), but I refer you to Idris Elba’s quote in Bim Adewunmi’s excellent recent article in The Guardian: “Can a black man play a Nordic character? Hang about, Thor’s mythical, right? Thor has a hammer that flies to him when he clicks his fingers. That’s OK, but the colour of my skin is wrong?”

Bond remains Fleming’s creation, but has evolved so many times that he is essentially the property of whichever actor is playing him at the time. This makes him a character for the ages and goes some way to explaining why Dalton’s ‘true to the text’ 007 in The Living Daylights is perhaps the least fun of any film in this much loved series.

Blogalongabond is the ingenious brainchild of blogger The Incredible Suit. Contributor Michael Mand can be followed on Twitter @grindermand.

Moebius: Human After All

Jean Giraud passed away on 10 March 2012, aged 73. To comic book fans around the world he was mostly known – and revered – as Moebius, a nom de plume the French artist used when he imagined sci-fi adventures, or Gir, the one he used to draw the enduringly popular “baguette western” Blueberry. “Cowboys versus aliens” would be a great way to sum up Giraud’s oeuvre, if it wasn’t also the title of a terrible movie.

Though it may seem like a bit of a stretch to justify the title of this piece, in many ways, Moebius was all by himself the Daft Punk of the comic-book world. His own brand of French Touch was largely influential on both sides of the Atlantic; from Marvel comics to avant-garde bande-dessinées – and all the way to Japan. Giraud himself surely liked the duo, maybe not for their music, but their bionic look. Indeed, the publishing house he co-founded to print the cult magazine Metal Hurlant and free himself from the constraints of the conservative Franco-Belgian strips is named “Les Humanoïdes Associés” (“Humanoids Inc.”). Hell, the robotic duo even make an appearance in Tron Legacy, the sequel of the 1982 film for which Giraud was largely aestheticlally responsible. The desertic setting and bizarre bursts of nudity in their own movie Electroma are pure Moebius.

Since PPH is not a graphic novel or comics blog, I’ll have to send you to Steve Holland’s apt obituary in The Guardian for a more detailed overview of Moebius’s impressive career in his favoured field. What I’d like to do here is focus on Giraud’s cinematic heritage, particularly his extensive influence on the last thirty years of sci-fi, from Blade Runner to The Fifth Element.  This is something I already started when I wrote about “french comic-strip maverick at the movies“ for Sight and Sound magazine a few years back.

Interviewed by the prestigious newspaper Le Monde a couple of years ago, Moebius declared, “I’ve always tried, since [my] earliest childhood, to make films on paper.” So let’s take a closer look at Giraud’s “filmography” – on paper and on film – as a parting homage to the visionary he was.

Alien (1979)

Concept artist 

In 1978, the “adult” comics magazine Metal Hurlant (co-founded by Giraud and later developed in the US under the name Heavy Metal) published The Long Tomorrow. Penned by Dan O’Bannon, a close collaborator of John Carpenter on Dark Star, it was a parodic transposition of Raymond Chandler’s universe into the future, providing Ridley Scott with the sci-fi meets noir concept that would make Blade Runner so distinctive.

Scott didn’t yet know he would make such a film, but Moebius became some kind of obsession: ”At the time I was staring at Moebius magazines – I had them stacked in my study when I was a commercial maker, even before I did The Duellists - and I was thinking, my god, they’re a great vision of futuristic ideas. I was influenced almost totally by Moebius.” Consequently, the English filmmaker didn’t hesitate when, a few years later, he stumbled upon a script entitled Alien, written by… Dan O’ Bannon.

Moebius immediately got the call to help define the visual identity of the film, along with H.R Giger. The Swiss sculptor elaborated the viscous, Bacon-esque creature while Giraud drew the iconic spacesuits (some kind of samuraï armour topped with a diving bell) and costumes. “I wanted them to look like space truck drivers, wearing plain T-shirts and functional, random clothes.“

Blade Runner (1982)

Inspiration / Uncredited 

Extract from "The Long Tomorrow"

Infitine skycrapers. Flying cars. Neon everywhere. Populated by shifty androids and bitter humans, the baroque metropolis of The Long Tomorrow is undeniably the blueprint upon which Ridley Scott based his futuristic Los Angeles in Blade Runner. The director gladly admitted it in the DVD commentary of the recent final cut reissue but neither Moebius nor O’Bannon are mentioned in its end credits.

Contractual issues seem to be the reason why Moebius didn’t effectively work on the film like he did on Alien. His fingerprints are nevertheless everywhere, fuelling the enduring vision of Scott that would mark the sci-fi aesthetics of the following decades from the cyberpunk movement of the 1980s to mangas like Ghost in the Shell (1995), and family blockbusters like Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element (more on this later).

Jodorowsky’s Dune (unreleased)

The genesis of both the above films actually comes from another science-fiction white whale, the adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic novel Dune. In 1974, the avant-garde Mexican director Alejandro Jodorowsky was stil basking in the cult success of his “acid western” El Topo, that earned him the lifetime admiration and financial backing of John Lennon. Backed by an obscure montage of international financiers, he embarked on the project to adapt the reputably unadaptable opus. To tackle the near-impossible task, he assembled a creative unit in Paris, comprising of Moebius, Dan O’Bannon, H.R Giger and Chris Foss (a British illustrator known for his sci-fi covers) – all working together for the first time.

The project was a typical mid-seventies extravaganza. The rumour mill had it that Orson Welles and Salvador Dali were part of the cast, with the surrealist painter allegedly demanding $100,000 a day to play the Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV. Pink Floyd, along with other psychedelic groups, started working on some songs for the soundtrack. Among other follies, the main protagonist was to be played by Jodorowsky’s son and the film duration was planned to reach 14 hours.

A year later, Giraud had drawn 3,000 sketches for the film, the script was “the size of a phonebook” according to Herbert, and  $2 million of the $9.5 million budget had already been spent in pre-production. The American distribution company involved in the project pulled the plug, and soon enough the French producers still on board called it a day. The rights of the book were sold to Dino de Laurentiis, and the rest is history. David Lynch’s version, released in 1984, didn’t reuse any of Jodorowsky’s preparation, and was later disowned by its director.

Nevertheless, without Dune, Dan O’Bannon wouldn’t have written The Long Tomorrow out of boredom on his days off and given it to Giraud. Also, he wouldn’t have been depressed by the failure of the film to the extent of writing Alien. Which in turn wouldn’t have given the Ridley Scott the opportunity to reassemble the winning trio of O’Bannon, Giger and Moebius for Alien. Nor would the material at the origin of Blade Runner have existed. Jodorowsky went on to pen dystopic sagas for Moebius with the successful Inkal series (from 1981 to 1989), which updated The Long Tomorrow imagery and ended up as the primary influence on Besson’s The Fifth Element.

Put simply, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unseen Dune is probably the most successful failure in sci-fi history.

Tron (1982)

Art consultant / Storyboarder

Giraud, probably marked forever by the Dune fiasco, was always rather dismissive of his experience in the film industry. Tron is the exception. Hired by Disney to draw the integrality of the storyboard, Moebius remembered fondly working on the first ever movie to use computer generated images : “My involvement in this film was much more intense and important than the work I did on Alien. I love this film.” Indeed, the clear lines and curves of Tron‘s cyberworld bear without a doubt the mark of Moebius’ unique style.

In the following years, Giraud kept on drawing for Hollywood, creating visuals for the seminal heroic-fantasy turkeys (and also terrific mid-80s guilty pleasures) Masters of the Universe and Willow. However, George Lucas didn’t use any of his designs, nor did James Cameron, who found his ideas of the subaquatic creatures in The Abyss a bit too leftfield.

The Fifth Element (1997)

Art director 

From L'Inkal, by Jodorowsky and Moebius.

The Fifth Element is probably the film that owes the most to Moebius, even more so than Blade Runner. It didn’t just keep the flying taxis hovering over the bottomless metropolis of The Long Tomorrow and L’Inkal – it also recycled Giraud’s humour and esoteric penchants.

Moebius was hired by Besson as early as 1991 to work on a script entitled Zaltam Bleros. The project was be revamped until it became the high-camp space opera we know today, but most of the sets and costumes come from this first draft. On The Fifth Element, Moebius shares the “artistic direction” credit with Jean-Claude Mezieres (another figure of French bande-dessinée and a friend of Giraud from art-school ), which is euphemistic, so much does the movie looks like an adaptation of his oeuvre. Indeed, the script bears so many similarities with Moebius’ Inkal series and Enki Bilal’s work (a disciple of his also published in Metal Hurlant), that Les Humanoïdes Associés sued Besson for plagiarism. A case which they ultimately lost.

Blueberry / Renegade (2004)

Creator / writer 

An art student in Paris during the peak of the Nouvelle Vague movement in the early 1960s, Giraud had no choice but to become an instant cineaste. Logically, Jean-Paul Belmondo became the model on which “Gir” based his rogue lieutenant Blueberry. They were countless cowboys adventures in French bande-dessinées at the time, but Giraud’s creation, along with writer Charlier, instantly made a difference. Infused with a real sense of frame and montage, its incredibly detailed landscape and overall ruggedness owed everything to American Westerns.

“Cinema is the image reservoir for Blueberry,” Giraud used to say. “It owes a lot to Sam Peckinpah. The Wild Bunch overwhelmed me. There’s also some Sergio Leone there. But as for Blueberry‘s close relationship with Indians, I got that from John Ford, who, all his life, was torn between his own white machismo and the consciousness that oppressed minorities also existed along the conquest of the frontier.”

Vincent Cassel in "Renegade", by Jan Kounen (2004).

Starring the badass trio of Vincent Cassel, Juliette Lewis and Michael Madsen, Jan Kounen’s 2004 adaptation of Blueberry (renamed Renegade outside France) marked the first time Giraud’s work was directly adapted for the big screen. Unfortunately, despite its great cinematography, the film bombed with audiences and critics who expected a faithful, mainstream rendition of the heritage bande-dessinée. What they got is an experimental albeit clumsy transplant of Moebius’ psychedelic fantasies into Blueberry’s more conservative universe (which many called a treason of Gir’s work) with a ten minute, pre-Enter The Void CGI peyote trip slapped into the third act.  None of this fazed Moebius, who credited his experience of hallucinating drugs in his early twenties during a nine month trip to Mexico to be responsible for his creativity, schizophrenic production and split personality.

Moebius’ heritage

“I was involved in several projects as a director in the past, but in the end, I didn’t complete any. I wouldn’t say that cinema left me dry on the road, but that I just let it pass me by.” Indeed, his unique directorial effort is the rather disapointing 3D animation short, La Planète Encore, which was shown during his retrospective at the prestigious Fondation Cartier in 2010.

South Park's Major Boobage

Moebius’ creative flair must be found elsewhere – and it’s almost everywhere. In his close friend Hayao Miyasaki’s surreal fables for example, or Christopher Nolan’s attempts at cerebral sci-fi. “Inception develops the motifs of parrallel worlds and dreams that were present in my comics, like Le Chasseur Déprime,” Giraud would say to Le Monde. Just a couple of years ago, David Fincher, Zach Snyder and James Cameron seriously considered remaking Heavy Metal (1981), the Canadian animation film derived from the American version of Metal Hurlant, the publication Moebius created as an output for his “deviant” production. The project, despite being many fanboys’ wet-dream, never happened. Instead, Trey Parker and Matt Stone put out Major Boobage, a South Park episode in which Kenny, after snorting cat’s pee, would get high and dream himself in the world of Heavy Metal, riding dragons and meeting bare-breasted desert princesses. Now if that’s not a sign of Moebius’ importance in pop culture, I don’t know what is.

Rest in peace Jean “Moebius” Giraud.

Further viewing: the excellent Moebius Redux documentary, broadcast on BBC4 a couple of years ago.

Sound It Out: A Eulogy for the Record Store

Contributor Michael Mand takes a wistful look at Jeanie Finlay’s music shop doc Sound It Out.

During my recent review of Michael Dowse’s hockey comedy Goon, I reflected on my youth in North East England and suggested that the local ice rink provided the city’s youth-cultural centrepiece. I was of course referring to those healthy beings who value such vulgar activities as ‘fun’ & the company of others; for the rest of us, there was Volume Records.

For the benefit of younger readers: in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, music was largely available in three formats – vinyl, cassette and the new technology of compact disc – but could be bought from a range of outlets. There were the obvious chain stores (Durham had not one, but two branches of Our Price), non-specialist shops such as Woolworth’s and, in my case, the local newsagent (which sold ex-jukebox singles at 50p a pop); meanwhile, for those who dared enter, there were independent record shops.

Volume was one of these shops; a small, dark and musty space, secreted down a narrow street and staffed by the largest array of cultural snobs north of the Royal Opera House. To enter was to brave the judgement of older, cooler men and confront a bewildering array of records, posters and flyers, a cacophony of unfamiliar noise and the stench of both ageing cardboard and bizarrely attired individuals. Friends of mine who worked there attest to the absurdly competitive and superior owner – think Comic Book Guy with a Wearside accent.*

Shane: “There’s nothing like doing 6 solid nights of Quo, one after the other”

“Barry, Dick and I have decided you can’t be a serious person if you own less than 500 records…”

Anyone who has read Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity or watched Stephen Frears’ excellent film adaptation will be familiar with the type personified by Rob, who represents all of us downtrodden by the male compunction to own, to collect, to hoard. There’s an anthropological study to be made of this phenomenon but, for now, Hornby must do, such is his bull’s-eye depiction of these once-hipsters trapped by their obsessions (Rob), geeky music-librarians struggling to socialise outside of their artificial, vinyl environment (Dick) and aggressive record-snobs who can only assess themselves (or others) via a personally approved musical pantheon (Barry).

This is a world in which everything and anything can be safely compartmentalised in All-Time Top Five lists, in-jokes and an obsession with obscure fact and arbitrary opinion. Jack Black’s seemingly OTT performance will seem natural to anyone who has encountered that type in a shadowy record shop or stained-carpet ROCK pub. The stereotype calcified in Hornby’s book – and its predecessor, the football crazy’s crazy football bible, Fever Pitch – along with the likes of Loaded magazine, reduced us chaps to the status of one-track minded monoliths in the 1990s. Despite this, I believe that there is an emotional richness to the male collector; a wish to surround himself with something meaningful, beautiful and to possess something he might one day leave behind.

“They’re as close to being mad as makes no difference…”

All of which makes it all the stranger that the melancholy yet uplifting documentary Sound It Out (recently released on DVD) should be so sympathetically directed by a lady, specifically Jeanie Finlay. Her film heads twenty miles south of Durham City, to run-down Stockton-upon-Tees, and focuses upon the only remaining independent record store in the town, the eponymous Sound It Out. The shop is run by a real-life ‘Rob’, Tom Butchart, who’s making vinyl’s last stand in an obscure part of the north. This is not a trendy London outlet, not a Rough Trade, or any Portobello Road boutique; the shop is a refuge and supplier to a range of troubled local souls, who look to Tom as a kind of guru.

Finlay is an unobtrusive presence, documenting the irregular comings and goings of the local refugees. There’s a formerly suicidal fan of anything subtitled ‘metal’ who credits the music he finds in Rob’s shop as his salvation;  a pair of local hip hop wannabes, hoping that music might lift them out of the dead end of recession-hit Britain; a now successful London-based female singer-songwriter, back to her hometown for a shop-based show. There’s even room for the random characters from the pub opposite the shop, who occasionally appear to slur questions about songs they have cocked an ear at on the boozer juke.  Each one is treated with complete, interested and non-patronising respect, and sometimes followed home by Finlay to their (usually) celibate flats, in order to further discuss this music thing.

Shane is my favourite; a balding, middle-aged, denim-jacketed yet eloquent oddball who encapsulates the power of the music that we addicts rely on like seatbelts. Shane has seen Status Quo live between 450 and 500 times, yet claims he is “not fanatical” (“there’s nothing like doing 6 solid nights of Quo, one after the other”); he lives alone and has never washed his patch-ridden Quo jacket. Growing up with a physical disability, Shane discovered what those of us with a social disability also identified at some point in our teens: music enables a form of internal, yet real conversation that can’t possibly be matched in the local park or ice rink. Finlay deftly reveals that, in his record collection, Shane has found the comfort he might otherwise have sought in the enriching career or relationship he’s been wrongly denied. As with the depressed metal fan, these are Morrissey’s literal “songs that saved your life”.

Pop to Sound It Out and that Jesus Jones badge could be yours

“I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like… Books, records, films – these things matter…”

The near-anachronistic milieu evinced by Sound It Out got me thinking about how we consume music today. In my youth, the modern capacity to access music would have seemed a crazy sci-fi dream. Reduced to scouting for music in Volume-type stores or record fairs (my original vinyl copy of The Smiths’ Meat Is Murder cost me £4.50 from a church charity sale in Crewe), or to taping the Top Forty from a crackling Radio One, the idea that virtually every record ever made could be available at one’s fingertips would have appeared magical. However, even as I take advantage of technology in consuming music, I can’t help but feel that this ease of access in some ways devalues the music itself. MP3 players have traduced the role of the album –  a cohesive whole which rewarded time spent with it – in favour of single tracks, shuffles and the downloading/deleting of unloved digital files. Gone also is the artwork, the craving for liner notes – for information. I own a much loved picture book which details in glorious colour every sleeve of every record released on the Factory label; such tactile pleasures don’t exist with the iPod.

Of course, the ability to download music, or find thousands of tracks on Spotify or YouTube, has wonderful benefits, opening up a whole world of sound from across the decades. However, this sea change in the way we consume music is sounding a death knell for the record collector’s Mecca: shops like Sound it Out.

“Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music…?”

Tom seems more balanced and far happier than High Fidelity’s Rob, but is still a fanatic at heart . It’s easy to sense the desolation that will be felt if and when his one man crawl against the tide comes to an end; at one point, Tom explains that for him, records are “all about emotions & memories”. In many ways, Sound It Out also holds just these things for so many of his dwindling disciples.

As a piece of documentary film, Sound It Out has much in common with the music it celebrates. It is engrossing and heart warming, but it is also deeply sad and reveals many truths about the present in which we live which far transcend the obscure world of the independent record shop it enthusiastically profiles. Tom’s assistant, previously made redundant by a mainstream record outlet, expresses his fear that he may soon be out of a job again, and suddenly a film about a subset of people takes on a wider resonance, reflecting the changing times and providing an account of the decay of towns like Stockton, as businesses collapse and shops stand empty or are changed into bargain outlets.

On a recent return visit to Durham, I passed the narrow side street where Volume Records used to be. There, in its place, now hides a discount electrical goods store. In the ancient market place, even the likes of Our Price and Woolworths are now a Haagen Dazs ice cream outlet and a Tesco supermarket, standing incongruously amid the cobblestones. Around the statue teenagers, as ever, gather in groups, MP3 players in their pockets, headphones covering their ears.

Sound It Out is out now on DVD, released by Dogwoof. Extras include: filmmaker and cast interviews, Jeanie Finlay’s first short documentary film Love Takes and another music themed short docu by Tim Mattia - The Chapman Family is not a Cult. Also included are additional music videos and trailers.

*Though, to be fair, Volume’s Führer would be kind enough to gift certain of us outdated window displays, leading to the decoration of our sixth form common room with an entire wall of Teenage Fanclub album covers, a life size cardboard cut-out of the members of James and large posters hyping records by Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Therapy? and Cypress Hill.

Style & Identity in Do The Right Thing

I recently wrote about the style and significance of Ruth E. Carter’s brilliant costume design in Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing for the really rather excellent website Clothes On Film. You should bookmark COF immediately (and follow on Twitter @ClothesOnFilm), and you can read my piece HERE.

Blogalongabond – A View To A Kill: Visual & Vinyl Villains

In 1985, Roger Moore celebrated his final appearance as James Bond in the film A View To A Kill. He also celebrated his 58^th birthday. Unfortunately, these two events are difficult to separate when watching Moore’s swansong; when Sean Connery (who also played Bond into his fifties) derides you as “too old”, it’s time to think about turning in your licence to kill.

Moore disliked AVTAK, later describing himself as “horrified” by the film’s violence while self-deprecatingly admitting, “I was only about four hundred years too old for the part”. This observation cannot really be denied: at times Moore resembles a condom stuffed with walnuts, while maintaining the air of a boxer who has taken on one fight too many – Ricky Hatton in a tuxedo, perhaps?

Despite this complaint – and the fact that AVTAK holds the lowest rating on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes of any official Bond movie – I maintain a level of affection for the film, largely based on three factors: my age, my memories of the theme tune, and the mighty Grace Jones.

AVTAK was the first Bond film I ever saw at the cinema and, despite the fact that the character on screen bore little resemblance to the 007 I had recently read about in Ian Fleming’s original novels (and my mother’s insistence that “Connery is the real Bond”), I was ready to accept the aged figure creaking his way up the Eiffel Tower as the genuine article. (Anyway, since Fleming’s Bond is a physical wreck of a man, perhaps Moore’s portrayal is more accurate than Daniel Craig’s Bourne-inspired superman thug-hunk)?

Prior to AVTAK, Bond theme songs had been largely recorded by long-established crooners, such as Shirley Bassey and Tom Jones and, despite their success, bore little relevance to the pop music of the day. This all changed, however, when Duran Duran’s Bond-loving drummer John Taylor ran into producer Cubby Broccoli and insisted that it was time to let “someone decent” have a crack. I will leave it to you, Dear Reader, to judge whether Le Bon’s yacht-dwelling fops do actually fall into the “decent” category, but it cannot be denied that, at the time, they were hot property on both sides of the Atlantic.

(At this point, I shall admit to having purchased said single, but will not dwell on this further, other than to point out that it remains the most successful Bond theme ever in chart terms, having reached number one in the US, so I was clearly riding some kind of zeitgeist. Also, I was nine.)

So, to GRACE! One of the weaknesses of the later Moore films lies with the routinely unthreatening villains – the anti-feminist pushover Octopussy and business-bore Aris Kristatos to name but two – but AVTAK provides us with a double-dose of charismatic anti-heroism, in the shape of Jones’ May Day and the abominable Max Zorin (a surprisingly fresh-faced Christopher Walken). Zorin is the super-intelligent yet psychopathic result of Nazi medical experiments, out to dominate the world’s microchip market by triggering a massive Earthquake on the San Andreas Fault which will flood and destroy Silicon Valley. His relationship with May Day is complex, falling somewhere between co-conspirator, lover and martial arts teacher/pupil.

Walken, of course, is a man able to look intimidating while tap dancing and, having seen Jones performing in person last summer, I can confirm that even at 63 years of age she still cuts the kind of figure that you might imagine eats British secret agents for breakfast. May Day is a woman of few words, leaving Jones to convey menace via a serious of turn-to-stone glowers. If not technically accomplished, it’s still a captivating performance, not least as a rare example of female empowerment in the Bond series; Jones’s sheer physical presence pre-empts Famke Janssen’s Xenia Onatopp, Goldeneye’s thigh-crushing femme fatale.

Re-watching AVTAK today, it seems overlong and unnecessarily convoluted, though there are highlights: 007 snowboards down a mountain to the sound of the Beach Boys, a sequence credited with kick-starting the sport’s popularity; a tense horse racing scene gives new meaning to the phrase “raising the bar”; we meet a female henchwoman named Jenny Flex, which may or may not be a pun on the word ‘genuflex’, a name aiming much higher than the standard Pussy Galores. Generally, however, the film’s saving grace lies with its charismatic pair of villains.

One final thought: AVTAK was the end of an era in two ways. Not only did it mark the end of Moore’s tenure as James Bond, but the original line-up of Duran Duran would not record together for another quarter of a century. Small blessings indeed…

Blogalongabond is the ingenious brainchild of blogger The Incredible Suit.