Rob Bennett - Sculptor - Artist - Dad

Joining me this week, Rob Bennett

Rob is my dad, and I come from a family that’s always loved film. My parents’ tastes have had a huge influence on my own journey, so it felt only right to invite one of them onto the podcast. Since my mum prefers to stay out of the spotlight, my dad stepped up.

Rob has lived a fascinating life. Growing up in post-war London, he witnessed the city transform during some incredible decades for art and culture. His career placed him right at the heart of creative circles—working as the art editor of 19 and Honey magazine, as well as a photographer, and even producing light shows. He’s seen and experienced a remarkable range of artistic worlds.

Unsurprisingly, his film choices reflect that rich background—spanning genres, exploring bold themes, and never shying away from challenging subjects.

I hope you enjoy the episode.

My letterboxd: 

My film Reel Terror: 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is your life in film. I'm your host, Ted Bennett. Joining me this week, Rob Bennett, or as I know him, Dad. I got my dad on uh this week. Some of you listeners will know that I've talked about him quite a lot in previous episodes. We were we were film people growing up. So, you know, my parents have drove me quite a lot of films. So I thought it was fitting to have my dad on. I did ask my mum, but uh she didn't want to do it, which is fine. Uh whatever. Um yeah, dad's got some great choices, and since recording this episode, I've watched a few of the films that we had mentioned, and I can really say like some of them are really good. I haven't watched all of them. During the recording, uh their dog Rufus comes in. So every now and then there's a weird noise, growl, or bark. I do address it during the recording, but um yeah, just thought I'd let you I'd give you the heads up before you got confused. Anyway, uh enjoy this week uh me talking with my dad about film.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

There was crap on the telly, but uh Prime actually have a um you know a plethora of uh foreign movies, old ones, and and if you get a theme then it will give you a load more. Yeah. Um and so I was going through loads of old French films that I'd not seen before, just trying them, see if they worked.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

And it's it's when the um algorithm starts working for you, you know, and you're like, oh yeah, go on then, get the right films offered to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

No, the the new oh what's coming up now, what's new, what's sort of uh you know, the same story but with different, you know. Yeah, it's like boring.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

It does get boring. And you try and you find as many, you think like this I w I I want to give everything a fair shot, but I don't feel like they're giving the audience a fair shot. They're coming in thinking like, well, you're probably an idiot, so we're gonna treat you like one.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

You're like, no, no, no, let's Oh, they're suit films, aren't they? They're just made by suits, so they get bombs on seats.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

So, you know, you you'll get a rare there used to be this thing that, oh, Steven Spielberg wants to get an Oscar, so he does he does Schindler's List.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

And that's the one he's gonna get it for. He's not gonna get it for Hook. No, you know. Where he could have got it for Duel, you know, and which would have been a really good one because it was a what's going on. An interesting thing. Yeah, instead of just is documentary, really. I mean very, very good. Don't get me wrong, but But it's of course it's an Oscar film. It's like a showreel film, you know. It's like it's not like, oh god, look at this blokey did this. What's this? And in fact, no one cared who it was. It was like, what's Jewel?

SPEAKER_00 2:36

And I I've started recently to try and find directors' first films, yeah, because they're a lot more interesting.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Stuff that's why I like foreign films, because I don't I can't don't understand what they're saying. Yeah, and they uh especially French, they have a way of doing films that has a silence about them too, which which is really nice.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

So I think the French look at art a lot better than maybe not England, but definitely America, where they respect it in its own world, so they don't just go, well, that's art, they go, no, no, no, this is film, and then they'll sort of they'll sit you down with a film, and they'll be like, Well, this is this is the story, this is the the things we want to show you and tell you. And if you don't understand it, then this isn't for you, and that's fine. Whereas Hollywood's very much sort of like, hey, look, here's here's a sexy people, like go look at them, and you're like, Well, I don't like it. You don't like it? Oh, you probably like that niche stuff, and it's like, no, no, no, I just I just want something that's a bit, you know, I want to be treated seriously. And European and French cinema is very good at showing you those bits that are like, here's a nice story. Yeah. Like what that's all I'm gonna give you. And yeah, there's silence, yeah, there's actors you don't know as well, which I think is always nice.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

I watched Thesis, which is a Spanish film, and uh it it was wonderful. It was a this woman was trying to do a thesis on audiovisual violence, and she discovers a snuff film, and then that's the journey it takes. And you know, it came out before an eight millimeter film, but it was it was just this good old two people running around a university asking, what's going on? What's going on?

SPEAKER_01 4:22

And European cinema also doesn't necessarily always give you a happy ending, which is more realistic, which is more well yeah, because the the happy ending is not there, but the hope beforehand is and the hope is the what takes you through the film.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Hope drives you through.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

So that's that's you always got to remember that with, you know, and root rooting sometimes is okay, but then rooting is not the same as the person you're rooting for constantly being beaten down, it's the being it's the beaten down that you don't like and that you follow because you want it to get better soon, you want it to get better soon, a bit like the news, yeah. And and that's the other thing that you follow it that way. I mean, uh I hadn't seen uh Freddy Lestrada, never seen it. Often seen the pictures of his wife as the little clown and Anthony Quinn, uh, and I've never seen it, and I watched it every Christmas, and it was it was really good. It's lovely, it's but it was very sad. Not a Christmas film. Oh, I don't like Christmas films, but I was happy that it was like that. I mean, you know, the guy had found something that he thought he could push away and you know, push away, defend yourself, push away, push away, push away, push away. Couldn't push her away. And um, and that was that was awful, but it was really good, yeah, but it was so simple.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

It's it's frustrating how simple and how wonderful Italian films seem to Italian films are very good at just sort of going like, I'm gonna make you feel something over nothing. You know, especially all your like Paisan and Rome Open City, where it's just here is a long old story essentially about nothing. Yeah. And you're gonna at the end of it be like, Fucking hell, I'm drained. Yeah. But that was good, yeah. And it's like, well done.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Yeah, and I don't mind that. I like that a lot. I don't like knowing that I'm being I've got oh, I'm watching a lovely condescending film. Uh just for me.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

I I feel like English rom-coms turn into that. They just turn into that, like, look, it's all twe and lovely, and it's gonna end up alright. Yeah, and you're just like, yeah, that's not real life though. I'm not watching a film because I haven't got real life, but I I I want I want something more than just a happy ending. Because I'll watch a musical if I just want a happy ending, but I want something that's got a bit more edge to it. Happy endings.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Well, they're all right, wonderful life. If you've got enough Kleenex, but then it just takes you back to your youth when that used to be watched.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Well, I was saying that to some people that there are certain films which I always remember as you know, oh, that was the film that was always on at Christmas, or that's the thing that's then. I don't think I've ever seen Sound of Music.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Yeah, keep it that way.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Yeah, and I and I'm fairly certain I've only seen It's Wonderful Life once.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

I've seen that with Words at the Bottom and A Bouncing White Ball with John Roberts. Oh and the Hastings cinema with Mum's friends. Yeah, you were. And then Sound of Music, and they all dressed up as stuff, and they thought it was hilarious. And me and him were just like we were nursing hangovers anyway, and we were watching this, and it was a bouncing ball at the bottom, they were singing the songs, and then I'd seen it at my mum's at Christmas at the yonks. Um, and I thought, Wait, oh, it looks like it's winding up. Oh, I think it's winding up. No, winding up for the interval. So it was like there'd now be an interval. So we went off, we had a great big breakfast and a pint of beer afterwards, and come back and he said, How's it going? What's up?

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Yeah. Now we can get back in.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Didn't really we'll never do that again.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

No, there's certain things that there's certain films I know I've missed culturally, but I don't feel the need to watch it like Greece I've never seen. And everyone wouldn't watch that.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Well, Faye Lady's nice to look at because of all the gowns and all the art direction of Cecil Beaton. Yeah. I mean, it I saw that in and Cinerama when I was really nine or something, and it wasn't the remade, yeah, reconstructed film, it was the original one. And we saw it up in O'Compton Street in the sit in the theatre there when they were doing that. After that, I think they did with How the West Was Won. And then oh no, that might have been up at St. Martin's Lane, where the uh the English National Opera is now or was. But um Yeah, we were sort of there, and there it was curved and going round the corner, and it was like, What?

SPEAKER_00 8:55

I would love to see that because they did that more recently with One Battle After Another, the new Paul Thomas Anderson thing. Oh, I want to see that. That's bloody good. But he did that in VistaVision, so that's a similar thing. Just huge Jerry Anderson. I mean that could be good. Um and they're starting to do more of those sort of big screen things, and I I I think they're interested. I saw Lawrence Arabia 4K, but that wasn't in the big old Cinorama or whatever. But I I would love to see it in that because I think like that's that's what you want to see. I want to see an expanse that I just can't not see. Yeah, I want to be immersed in it.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

Yeah, yeah. I think Butch Catherine could have been in Cinerama, actually, it would have been good. Yeah, it's it's a really nice film to look at anyway. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yeah, Cinerama. But I do like those yeah, all those films from that era, Hollywood Renaissance, where it was all Newman and Redford and Hoffman and Beattie, all just sort of coming up with like, here's some stories for you, and you're like, oh yeah, go on then.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Well, you was rooting like the great escape, Steve McQueen. I mean, yeah, we were at school. Well, I went to see that when I was at school, but everybody wanted we had one guy there at school called Steve, who had that blonde hair and a suede jacket. Yes. And was really yeah yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

I guess I'll play Dickie Attenborough.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Uh but everybody would, you know, just Mr. Cool. And he was like the in the same in um the Magnificent Seven. Yeah, well, that's that great story, but everybody was out cooling each other on it. So if he bends down in the river to pick some water up with it with his hat, what have I got? What am I doing? What have I got to do?

SPEAKER_00 10:37

How am I gonna do this?

SPEAKER_01 10:39

You know, so which is very funny.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

I liked in um Once Upon a Time in Hollywood when they redid the shots, whereas Rick Dalton was meant to be in Great Escape and they redid it with Leo. That's a very good film. That's great. And that's why I mentioned that in an earlier episode that I was not interested, and you were like, no, no, no, give it a second go. And I gave it a second go, and I was like, Oh, I was a hundred percent wrong.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

This with a boy spent on New York and Hollywood. Well, yeah, because the whole thing was the Manson family, yeah. And he'd done a what if. And and what if they didn't go to Sharon Tate's house, but they went to this stunt man's house instead. Fucked them up instead. And he blew the crap out of them, and I thought it was wonderful. Yeah, you know, it was like the other beyond the valley of the dolls, which is a absurd, but you're like, What?

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

So that's that's really good, yeah. But um when they go to the wrong house, I thought they thought that was very, very clever. That's very good.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

And yeah, I I was I was so pleased that watching it back, I was like, Oh, I was wrong, great.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Yeah, because you don't understand that when there's people on fire in the swimming pool with the flames, that that's not the bit you're laughing at.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

No.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

What you're laughing at is the bloke's head who realizes that they've come to the wrong house.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

I've done it, I've got I've made a huge mistake.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

I'm in the wrong pool.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

But yeah, I might have to rewatch that. Re go for it.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Yeah, well, that's a really nice thing where he goes to the commune as well, isn't it? And there's a guy who's up the top of the end uh with the stairs up to it, and the girls coming down. That set is really good. It's a beautiful set. Tyres are done on the car, it's really simple little things that add tension there when he goes to see him, doesn't it? And then while he's out there, he comes back and the tires are done. It's an old standard thing, but it was really well done again, and it was all too quiet and no one was around, and it was all gonna kick off. Really good.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

He did do a good job on that one.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Yeah, yeah, I thought that was excellent. That was a good one.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Yeah. Alright, let's uh let's get into these things. I mean, you've already mentioned a couple of bits like um Great Escape when you were a kid and but you know what was the first film you saw at the cinema?

SPEAKER_01 12:50

Well, uh I think apparently it was Davy Crockett, which came out in 1955. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

That's uh I have memories of you mentioning a Davy Crockett hat.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Yeah, my nan made them in the full outfit. So the the uh tunic was sort of silk not silk but nylon silk with embroidered Davy Crockett on, which I'm sure he didn't have because people probably thought it's probably him anyway, doesn't need to put it on his shirt. So I had all that and I had leopard skin trousers, which he probably didn't have. Would have been envious of it.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Sounds like you're wearing a very different outfit. Satin vest and leopard.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

And a rubber tomahawk, which isn't the condition. So there was that, but then I was thinking about it again, and a lot of the early things I saw was Tom and Jerry in news theatres at Piccadilly Circus. Okay. There'd be tiny little theatres, news theatres, and in some old films you'll see people in black and white films, they're going down there and they're saying Oh, the jelly's coming over and all that. Well, we used to go those and see the news. You could just, if you were walking around town, you could pop down and check in the news. It's like ten minutes if that, and you just pay tap and soap trippants, and go in, and you'd there'd be the news, what's happening? Because it wasn't really on the telly, the newspapers, or that was at six o'clock. But if you could do that, and they'd always have Tom and Jerry. So that and all that that's Bugs Bunny, but all all of that was up big and at a slight angle, because we were down the sort of front because I wanted to see it. So I always saw them at a slight angle looking left. Nice, but huge and lots of whops and bashes and crashes and screeches. Um, yeah, so I loved them. Those those are probably the the first films I saw.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

I do like um that that's the the cinema used to be more of a social place for your news, or just like you'd get some cartoons before you'd get your A film and your B film. Yeah, I liked that it was a lot more.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

It wasn't just well, I'm gonna pay 20 quid to go see one film Perland Dean and a bit of film about the local curry house and then a which shit dog?

SPEAKER_00 15:05

I love, I love all that. I think it's a real shame that we don't sort of local businesses should be like, no, no, no, put my ad.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

But instead it's all ads for Coca-Cola and Yeah, and it's they're quite boring, they're and they all think they're clever.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Well, none of the ads there hasn't been a good ad in about 20 years, I don't think.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

No, they and we all everybody'd loved the idea of somebody up the back because they couldn't afford a film ad, but they could afford a slide.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

So you'd see it go in if the bloke was not bothered.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

Oh, well when I worked at the cinema.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

In and out of focus a bit.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

When I first worked at the cinema, we had a 35mm slide projector, and before the trailers played, we would play these things, and they would be on the carousel, but sometimes we would draw on them, and you know, you'd try and do the best sketch of Indiana Jones or something and pop that in, and just when it came up, let it show for a second, then flash it again. So everyone's like, What was that? And it's like, nothing.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Nothing, didn't put anything in there, no porn. But you'd you'd you'd do it and you'd hope that it was just like, Well, that's something else, that's something someone's looking at. Yeah, and I think people used to want to go to the cinema to watch the film. I mean, there used to be people bunking in, yeah. Um, if X films and stuff like that, you'd they'd all run in at the side and then be oisted out. But I would try to run in and look casual, but oh underage casual. There was one kid when I went out to breath out of breath and underage casual.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

There was one kid at the cinema who would who would always like sneak into films, and I was always told, like, go get him out. So I one day I went in and I said, like, look, I don't I don't give a shit if you sneak in, just don't make it obvious. If you don't make it obvious, I don't have to kick you out. And he was like, You sure? And I was like, Look, I'm not gonna chase you. They tell me, go find you, I'll find you, and I'll say I'll wicked you out, but otherwise be fine. And he was like, Okay, and he was good for a couple of months, and then one day there was a sore film on 18 rated thing, and he was 11. And he sat in there, and someone said, There's a child in there, and I was like, What do you want about? And I went in, I saw him, and I was like, Don't make it obvious, mate. I don't care what you go in, but don't make it obvious. And he was just like, Oh, I couldn't watch any of that. No, they're all nonsense.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

No.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

So the Tom and Jerry's one, now not Tom and Jerry's, Tom and Jerry one. Um, did your mum take them? Your dad take them?

SPEAKER_01 17:17

No, my nan, my dad's mum, uh she would um before my sister was born, would take me up west or into a big department store and um kit me out. So my mum would be upset when I came back, not in a little red siren suit with a hood and jumpin' jack shoes, you know, the ones where the sole goes up the back of the heel. I'd come back with um a grey pair of school trousers and socks and garters and shiny black shoes and a grey V-neck and stripy tie and a lovely blazer and a big coat to go over it, so it must have cost bloody fortune. Um so that would be look at here's Robert. So so we'd we'd go up the west, and that's she would to take me and treat me. We used to also go to the Wardorf in the in the Aldwich, yeah, and we'd have tea and fancy cakes in there when I was about s nine or something. And downstairs was a little palm court violin, you know, quartet. They'd be playing sort of Stepan Graffelli type music and things. Um can I remember that? I remember seeing that that never could never work out where it was, never work out where it was. And then decades later, a friend of ours uh got married and it was at the ward off the reception and went in, and it was like, Oh yeah, oh I know this place. It's lovely when that happens. Yeah, yeah. It was Bruce and Maxine. Oh, nice. Yeah, so uh yeah, so that's oh yes, that's the balcony.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

I'd be on the balcony looking down at the I had a similar thing, but in a much less grand way, when a mate of mine lived around the back of Turnpike Lane. Yeah. So I came out of like the station and I looked, and I just looked across the street, and I was like, wait a minute, that used to be a Burger King, and there used to be like a an outdoor shop that sold balaclavas, and I always wanted the one with the holes in the eyes, and you said you kind of have one of those, that's what terrorists wear. Yeah, anyway, they're always sold out. I was just like, oh, oh, I remember it. And I was like, when I was a kid, I would never have thought that that's the little corner before you go up into whatever. But it was like that's that's how it is now, and it's like, oh, and it's weird when you have those little like yeah, this is this is a memory, but this isn't where I thought it was, this isn't how I thought it was.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

Now this just stayed. You left, did other things, and this stayed just evolved in its own little way, and you come back sometimes, and it's oh and it's not yours anymore, really. Your head's got you know, the the ghost of what it was is overshadowing is overprinting what you're actually looking at. That's interesting, it's not yours anymore, is it? It's it's somebody else's as well.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

Now doing it as someone else's local area, and it's just now just your memory of it.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

Yeah, so you can't go in there all pushy and say, no, no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, there's gonna be a 144 bus coming around the corner here and you know, an old Austin van. No, no, no. No. And cows would be coming down from the field from the forest, and there used to be uh you could you could um herds of cows could just roam free in Epping Forest. Okay. And they built an all-circular road and it wasn't always fenced off. Yeah. So where we lived, just over that Wotton Bridge, sometimes cows would just come around the north circular road before it was that awful. Yeah. And they just began walking on down into Walthamstow, so you had to get the police to take them back again. So busy boys. You wouldn't think that now, though. No, no, no. See, now that wouldn't be there.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

I think if I saw a cow in Walthamstow, I'd assume it was uh like a promo for something.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Yeah, no, they these were this was very close to the only animals I would explain. Well, that's it, yeah, but they weren't never there when we were kids. So just red squirrels.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Maybe greyhounds.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

So it was the Tom and Jerry films and the Davy Crockett film, and yeah, I mean those are the first ones, and then sort of you get a little bit older, and then you go with your family, so you go see Swiss Family Robinson with your cousins.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Well, that's the this first question I always find interesting because you know there's people who sort of as an adult they I love Italian cinema or as you know, I love horror, or I love all these things. But you didn't get to choose what your first film was. Your first film was whatever your parents thought.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

What parents thought would deem be oh it's a Disney film, so you go to see it. And that's an afternoon out, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 21:51

And sometimes it has an effect and sometimes it doesn't. Like with Hook being the first one that I remember being taken to, it feels very much like Well, I now know the effect that Steven Spielberg has had on me as a film lover, and knowing that Hook was the first thing I saw, and also Robin Williams and Bob Oskins, which I've always said in my mind, you are a mix of the two. So to me, it's very much like, well, then there's there's dad on the screen essentially, and we're but also the screen's big and it's rich and it's full of interest. Oh, and the telly at home.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Yeah, and and you don't you when you're a kid, that's it's a world up there.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

I always remember she's coming out of the cinema and thinking like we're still in that world. I remember we went to see Oh, of course, yeah. Like 101 Dalmatians, and we came out of the cinema, it was dark and it was snowing. And I remember in my head just being like, We're in that world still. We're still there. And I was walking through to the car park, and the from the front doors to the car, it's slowly just going. Yeah, it was there.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

And characters. I mean, the local cinema uh we saw Guns and Have our own there, we saw the I saw the Alamo there with kids at school. Um but and when you come out with the guns and have our own, we were all on that island with machine guns. You were Nevin. We were all hiding behind dustbins and you know, attacking non-existent Nazis. But we did that all the way home, and I was I was Gregory Peck until I got to my front door, and sometimes even further. But uh, I don't think I probably sounded like him when and the same with the Alamo with you know you'd be John Wayne for Yonks, and it would take ages for it to wear off because it had really gone in. And you wanted yeah, that's really good.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

I like what's going on with that. I want to be that guy, I want to watch that.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Yeah, it's a bloody good game they're playing.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

Yeah, it is a good game. You know, so look at that game. I remember we would do that. Um, Sam and I would play a lot of sort of Jurassic Park style games at the farm where Louis would play a raptor and he would chase us. And he would just have to find us and then chase us as a raptor, and we would be like, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

You weren't squealing though, were you?

SPEAKER_00 23:55

I hope.

unknown 23:56

Woo!

SPEAKER_00 23:57

I I mean couldn't say anything about Sam, he probably doesn't. Um but uh yeah, it was obviously coming from a period of time where there wasn't much replay of films. What did you watch over and over again? I guess.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Uh when I saw Jason and the Arkanauts a few times, and that that was in 1963 that came out, so I was about f twelve. Okay. Uh I remember seeing that a few times. 101 Dalmatians. Um Yeah, it it would depend if they're if they came round. I mean, they if they came round again, you'd you'd see it. Yeah. Um they might be on a different it's in different uh theatre companies like Granada or Majestic, so they had different um rotors, so there'd be that's why you get about four different films on in an area. Right. Because there were different companies pr promoting those films. So you you could go and see, you know, four and a week, and they're all different, they're not they weren't multi-complex cinemas either, they were just one film. So you just went and saw that. You never it was later on, I think, when you get older that you'd you sort of go back and you want to watch those films again. Yeah. So you do that. I mean, that's and I think that's where you know, like Jason and the Arkanaults and and things. You always wanted to see them again because you desperately wanted those figurines that Harry Harryhausen went.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

I think that's as well with things like Harryhausen, you you think, well, I've never seen that. I don't know what I'm looking at. Well, I want to do that. I want as we see the modelling stuff that I'm doing it all the time. And but that is one of the reasons that I that it's people that are who are artistic and creative. I think it's very interesting, very telling the films that they watched when they first saw films, I think the formative films, and whether they affected what you're doing now or whether it was just media.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

Oh, I think definitely those figures, yeah. I mean, I think I made I made my first figure in about 1971 when I worked on when I worked on Nine Teen magazine, and it was a friend of mine's dad's birthday. So I made a figure out the wrong sort of clay, obviously, because I didn't know about what what now, yeah, but did it. Um and yeah, but now I just sent off what the 20th set of dad's army figures that I've done. Yeah. Well, over you know, 20 years. Yeah. I've done loads, and I just sent them off and they go up on my website of Facebook site, and people are going, Oh, can you do me this? Can you do you know? Open all hours, can you do I've done loads done loads. I get three or four um people that just want me to keep doing sets of things, so that's quite a good turnover.

SPEAKER_00 26:41

I always liked the Fred Dibner one that you did. Yeah, I always like that his wife gave it the okay. Seeing those Harry Howers and stuff and it sort of forming a a place where you think, like we were saying, like with the Alamo and like Guns of Navarro, it's environments that it's like, well, I've not I've never seen, you know, is it Tenerife where Navarone is?

SPEAKER_01 27:02

No, it's in Greek Islands.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Greek Islands, yeah. Um, like I don't know the Greek, you know, you hadn't been to Greece at this point, I assume. And but they're realistic in the sense that like, oh, I can look at a magazine and I can at least see them. But when you see those Harry Housen things, it's like that's not real. And it's not a cartoon. That's real people interacting with skeletons.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

Like that must be uh yeah, you're a kid, so you've got a f you've got a either you've got well m most people had uh an army, an American army fort, and some American soldiers and Native Americans, and um if you didn't have them, you had Confederate soldiers and you had Union soldiers, of which I was also on the Confederate side. Now I'm not. I think it was just the old yeeha sort of like oh I always went Confederate for the styling.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

I've always thought like before I knew anything political, I was like, the Confederates seem pretty cool. I'm like, that seems fun. There was David Crookett and all that.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

And then you read one book and you're all one thing and you're like, ah, these You probably wouldn't you would have been better off just being an Indian scout if you had everything on there.

SPEAKER_00 28:10

When I think of any of those, it's like no no no, I think I'd want to be one of the like indigenous Americans just living nice in the forest, having a lovely time.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

Absolutely, but not back then, because you're only fed certain things. Yeah. So, you know, there there was goodies and baddies. Oh, and they're the baddies. They were baddies. Because they wanted their land backs didn't explain the situation. They were just goodies and baddies. No. So you don't know. No. Which is uh scary, you know. Oh yeah, it's horrible when you think about it like that. Yeah. So quick reverse of you know, thoughts about all of that. But yeah, that was that's what you had. So what I was gonna say was that when it comes to Harry House, and you just had the statics, you had like this fault that was on the floor, and you know, you had all the abadis that were hiding behind a cushion on the floor, and then they were gonna come around the corner and attack the fault and get in and win, and um, but it was all static, but there was lots of you know, like sublutio hand moves with all the soldiers, whereas Harry House and you could do stop motion, which was like, oh, so what's going on here? Yeah, I mean I did use that later on when I did light shows, I would do little animation things like that, and I would do um effects for uh I had a I had a an eight mil camera on a tripod facing down into uh a meat dish full of water uh dyed with black ink and a spotlight by the side of the lens but out of flare area, and then I would just drop little pellets of plasticine, yeah, and it would hit the black water, and then ripples would come out and they'd be caught by the light of the big bulb.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

So it was basically a black and white film because of that, it was so bright. So when we did light shows and someone did a drum solo, we'd just put that projector on the drum and there'd just be ripples coming out of the out of the drum and up the back. Uh not as bright as I would have liked, because nonetheless, it was only on old sheets that it was put up.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

But I think, yeah, we had quite a few famous drummers had that effect.

SPEAKER_00 30:18

I I I think it's good as well that it's the bringing that um animation that you see, sort of like mu like shockwaves of sound and trying to bring that into the real world. I think it's a very fun sort of way to play it.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Yeah, it's an it's an atmospheric thing, isn't it? And that's the that's the other thing, you know, the the the you pick up on the atmosphere in films. And uh I think like in things like Dr. Chivago, when it's like they're in that old place and it's all snow, but you never in a million years think that the snow was inside and the frost was inside the house, yeah. All over the all nate, you know, Edwardian stuff. It was just like what? There's fantastic sets, you know, which which you're taken to with films, yeah. So and that that's that's a really good thing. I mean, I I I do like gritty real things, um, but sometimes there's set pieces, you know.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

Old Hollywood though really gave a shit. So when the set pieces in like older Hollywood films, they're so beautiful that you you can't just dismiss them. So they have to be like you you look at them and you think like these are excellent.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

And they're beautifully designed as well.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

And it's like, what? Well, I watched was it You Only Lived Twice the other day, and I'm not a Bond guy, as we all know, but um Ken Adams's set design for Blofelds. Oh yeah, and it was just like the fuck this is.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

But they were just enough again, just little playrooms for people to act out a bit of action and it's fall over balconies with land piles of boxes.

SPEAKER_00 31:58

Yeah, but a lot of you know great stuff. But it's like I don't think they do it anymore. I don't think they they don't make it.

SPEAKER_01 32:07

It's all God knows, the more green screen and rubbish. Yeah, um and I suppose that's alright, but it can't be much fun. I'd rather be going to some bunkers set on the Bond Studios in El Street or wherever it was, and say, What? I mean I didn't uh there's some other things that I know from in further on in in these questions where I was told certain things that went on. Do you have to tell you now? No, no, we'll get to the cave time.

SPEAKER_00 32:37

Right, well I sort of go for it. Well no no, we'll we we'll get to them when we get to them or if all right, no, no, well carry on.

SPEAKER_01 32:45

And what was the question? Do you know? I think that was just a story. It didn't come out of a specific question. A specific question, no. And if there was what of what has um you known about the film world before a f a film or something before it came out, I mean there's that's not a question. No, it's not a question, but it's yeah, I know a few things. Go for it. Yeah, I used to have a girlfriend and she lived up in Chelsea, and um she shared a flat with this bloke called Max Bell. And Max Bell was in charge of Dolby Sound. Oh shit. In in England. I didn't know anything about that. But he would come home and uh he they weren't really you know, they weren't having a relationship or anything, but he was a very nice bloke and um he said, Whoa, because just where you been? He goes, Well, Elstree. There's gonna be a new film coming out soon called Star Wars. And I goes, Yeah, because it's a bit like some of the old 40s and 50s sort of science fiction. Well, there's gonna be like three of them. Really? He goes, Oh yeah, you see what they're doing there, it's huge. And he would go on about these stories, yeah. And then we got tickets, uh, and he said, You come to the the press the very first show. Oh, nice. So we all went to to that, yeah, you know, and and that was amazing. Yeah, and uh and then another time he came back and he said, I'm doing this thing with Stanley Kubrick. And I go, Really? Really Max? Come on, man. He goes, Yeah, because they've built a hotel in the studio, and it's completely snow ridden, totally snow ridden. And I go, Yeah, he goes, Yeah, and there's a big, huge model of it as well, and there's a maze, and they've got this gantry with a camera on a track that follows the actor, I think it's Jack Nicholson, roaring round. And you go, Oh, oh, yeah, it's incredible.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

It sounds good.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

So we go, oh, really? But you didn't you didn't, this is like 76, 77. So you didn't really, you know, know anything about these things until they came out.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

But uh, yeah, a couple of things like that you'd be told. Ah yes. And uh because you don't tell anybody. Obviously, would I? Who am I gonna tell? Would I ever, would I ever?

SPEAKER_00 35:09

I always love it when people say, like, don't tell anyone this, and I'm like, of course not, of course not. And then the second that I'm like, hang up the phone, I'm just like, Kirsty, come here, what I've just been told. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:19

No, it's told they fed this bit because he shouldn't have said anything, but he would be telling you.

SPEAKER_00 35:24

Sometimes you can't not tell someone though. When you've seen something or you've witnessed something that you're like, fucking hell, that's gonna be good. Yeah, you've got to say something.

SPEAKER_01 35:32

It was all chuffed at the end of Star Wars. I think it's the end of Star Wars. He says, 'cause at the end it says Dolby System and it says Max Bell UK. Oh shit. I think I think I did see his name up on the screen, he was very chuffed about that. But um, I don't know, I can't remember which film it was. I think it was that one. I think it was the first Star Wars.

SPEAKER_00 35:50

Was it him that did he go off to do ILM or something?

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Did you ever make that didn't? No, I uh we'd split up with this girlfriend and I don't know whatever and she moved and I saw him a couple of times and he'd say hello, but I didn't say what are you doing now? Got any goss? Got any goss or any jobs? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Um so we're sort of moving into uh being a bit older. So what was uh the first X film you saw? And how old were you?

SPEAKER_01 36:18

Uh I was fifteen and it was The Curse of the Werewolf. Came out in 1961. Hammer? Hammer?

SPEAKER_00 36:26

No, Universal. The Curse of the Werewolf. Yeah. And was that um that'd be a universal one, wasn't it? So it was was it logical?

SPEAKER_01 36:33

Oliver Reed. Oliver Reed. Oliver Reed, of course, yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I thought I'd sneaked into that. Spooked you? Well, we desperately wanted to see horror films and everybody was all there was horror comics and everybody was drawing Frankenstein and you know, not so much, it was more people were drawing Frankenstein than it than any other things, and no one bothered with the mummy because it was too fiddly. But Frankenstein's head in his boots and short shirt short short jacket you're in, bit like school uniform. Exactly. But uh yeah, there was that. And we had a horror club uh around my friend's uh in his shed, and uh we had a ledger that I'd made because I could ooh, art, we need a ledger. I made it in the shape of a coffin and stapled it so you could open it up and you put your names in that you that you appeared on this Saturday, Who's Here? You know, here is spirit. So yeah, but no, that that was that was the first one.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

Um had was other read a pull for you at that point, or had you not quite understood?

SPEAKER_01 37:38

No, he was just in it. Yeah, there was not not much that he'd done before then, really. It's too 61, I think. Okay, yeah. So it was I think it was 61. I've written it down here, but I haven't written it down wrong, maybe. But um, I think it was very early. And um then there was lots of other other hammer films that there would be sort of hammer films, are not too dissimilar to carry-on films.

SPEAKER_00 38:05

No, they are.

SPEAKER_01 38:06

There's a tankness to it where you're a bit like the colour, the studio lighting from above, you know that the walls are flat. Um, you know, and um yeah, they're yeah. I love them though. I love them. Yeah, oh they're they're wonderful, they're they're quite cozy in a funny way.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

They're very cosy. I think being all that sort of very flamboyant Victorian, and then some real lovey actors all giving it their best. Yeah, there's something about it. Obviously, lovely, big, busty women in very tight dresses made it a lot easier to watch as well. But being able to be in that little world where you're like, oh, this is all quite nice. I'm not scared, but I'm enjoying the spook of it all, if you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

Yeah, it was sort of grown-upy thing. Yeah. I mean, I did see Oliver Reed uh later on, not much later on, in a film called The Shuttered Room. Yes, and uh I found that very scary. That put the wind up me for ages about this chains being sort of drawn across the floor the floor of the attic upstairs and knocking, you know, go finding the corridor and then going up to the door, which is a bit Jane Eyre, but um Oh, it was awful. I but awfully good, really.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

I think there's definitely something in that sort of uh if you're creatively minded, your own imagination being allowed to run wild with chains upstairs. What the fuck's up there? Is far more scary than sort of like, oh, there's a zombie, there's a Dracula, there's a no, it's just like these are fun, but that's not scary to me.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

No, some demented teenage blonde girl on a rockin' horse in the attic going la la la la la la. That's scary. Yeah. You're like, uh no. I don't wanna be there. Don't wanna be there.

SPEAKER_00 39:57

You can close the door to walk away. I think I won't be doing that. No, that's uh but um when I remember films when I was growing up, the films that you remember I remember you telling me that were terrifying were things like The Omen.

SPEAKER_01 40:11

Yeah, I never liked that. Well I did, but the the the graveyard.

SPEAKER_00 40:15

Yeah. And when I watched it, it it didn't affect me in the same way.

SPEAKER_01 40:19

Well, I was in the room, I was running the room downstairs by myself, and you know, the person I was with was upstairs. Okay. So I just got the wind up with it and didn't like the idea of it at all. Fair enough. Uh you sort of like that growling from behind you in the shadows, it's not not a good thing. Fair enough. I did I did like Night of the Demon, which is now quite a cult film. Um that's really Night of the Demon. Um about the woman No, there's a runes on a piece of paper. Okay Andrews, Peggy Cummins. Yeah, that's really it's a really good one. People be passing a a note to them. And um if you receive the note, yeah uh it then tries to escape from you. And once the note's escaped from you, flickering in your fingers and goes into the fire and burns, then the demon uh comes and gets you. And you could be just going, um, driving your car down the lane, yeah, and you see that here this sort of like sounds a bit like Doctor Who's TARDIS, and f it's all done in back of camera and rubber models and things with this funny old thing coming down the road and a and um excellent. Excellent. Add that to the watch list. Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. Night of the demon is really good one.

SPEAKER_00 41:40

Um, so you were never you although I would always say you weren't a horror fan. Surprised me that you had a horror club.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

Well, yeah, it was quite young, and it was a it was a an American there was the Munsters, remember? Yeah and the Adams family. Yeah. So they were on the telly and they had a style about them that you would like to have as well. So that's where in Herman Munster, you know, with the head, I mean, I got some fabric and made like a big pill box that was too big and pushed it down and then put some um sort of fur fabric around it.

SPEAKER_00 42:16

Oh nice.

SPEAKER_01 42:17

And made and made a Frankenstein hat Tommy Cooper stroke Frankenstein hat. That kind of stuff. So uh yeah. Oh no, that was that was then, but that was you were younger then, and yeah. You sort of grew out of that really, being at school. Yeah. And then leaving school. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:33

And then rock music and yeah, I guess ippies and rock hadn't because obviously when it got into metal with Sabbath, which Oh yeah. That's when horror I think became more attributed to music.

SPEAKER_01 42:49

Yeah, but uh harped back. It harped back to you know Black Sabbath and all that.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

But be yeah. But when it was stones, stones aren't no uh horror rock there.

SPEAKER_01 43:01

The bet the I I went remember once I was I think I was still at school, um, and we were near near the high the high street and the Grenada Walthamstow, where um a lot of famous people had played there, the Beatles had played there, and you know, the Walker Brothers and Royal Wilson and the Kinks and God knows Rolling Stones, etc. Um, they'd just got help by the Beatles, and we were just uh we'd been down the market with my mate, and then he said he wanted to see it, and we had enough money, but we needed to tell our parents we'd be a little bit late for tea. So we got on a call box and rung them up, and then we went and saw help. Nice. And then that was stunning.

SPEAKER_00 43:40

Oh, I love help.

SPEAKER_01 43:42

The beginning where they're in the basement and they're playing, and it's all close up and there's shafts of light coming from the basement windows, and there's loads of fags going, there's all this and they're just all these heroic faces of you know, like idols. Up there that big. Yeah. Joking. Not doing a stage production. No, being silly. And then but then playing amazing instruments really well.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

Harrison setting off the chattering teeth to cut the lawn in his bedroom. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:19

Yeah. Miriam Margot is, you know, is a and uh Eleanor Bronn. Yeah. And there's load loads of stuff like that in the the houses that are all linked together in the sunken bed and bonkers stuff. Really good. Really, really good. I mean it didn't really matter. And it was well one of the first pop promos, really.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

Yeah. Yeah. It's a series of music videos, essentially, that have been strung together with a film.

SPEAKER_01 44:43

Exactly, exactly that.

SPEAKER_00 44:44

But it's wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 44:45

Yeah. And nobody else was doing it. No. They'd done the one before, Hard Day's Night.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

Yeah, which is not as good.

SPEAKER_01 44:51

Which there is a wonderful bit in the corridor with John Lennon and this actress, and she goes, I know where he is. And he goes, Do you? Because they're talking about him. She goes, Yes, he's over there. He just left that corridor. Did he now? Well, I've been looking for him too. Yes, well, keep it quiet. Be careful, I will. And it's like, why is that all rubbish? That is good. But that's like that's so nice because it's like, What you can't just I mean, a a a big you know, t TV or film uh mogul couldn't justify that nonsense.

SPEAKER_00 45:24

No.

SPEAKER_01 45:24

And say, What did you put what's that in there for? That's not leading anybody anywhere. Let's just have Paul's granddad, because everybody knows him, Wilfred Ibwright. No, not Wilfred Ibright, Wilfred Bramble. Um, let's have him doing soppy things and getting lost because that's yeah, they did Benny Hill music. Um, but that was like a film noir. It was like, what's going on there?

SPEAKER_00 45:46

There is it's nice when it's on with just for a second, throws you that way for a bit.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

Yeah, you've just gone that way for a bit, and then you go back, so you're pushed and pulled, you know, and and that is a pleasure, really. So you're not not really being led too much about some of that abstract way of doing those things.

SPEAKER_00 46:05

I guess it's then no surprise that like Eric Idle was friends with George Harrison, because it that Python humour was their kind of humour, and it was before that humour became you know big and well known. So it's quite an interesting, like that's the humour.

SPEAKER_01 46:22

But it was all everybody wanted the goons. So it all came from Spike Mulligan. Yeah. But and everybody just sort of polished off bits that would suit them more and added surrealism and things, you know, and it was just like, what's going on? Yeah. Like the mad silly walk thing, when that first starts, he leaves his house and he does a city walk across an old sort of um tenement houses, you know, with no front, no front gardens, and it just doors, doors straight onto the street, and there's just all these plumbers in a huge, about 50 of them in a row, all queuing up to go into this house in a zigzag, because that's part of another sketch, and him doing a silly walk past them, and it's like what that what's that? What's that?

SPEAKER_00 47:07

It's gold, is what it is.

SPEAKER_01 47:08

Yeah, but someone said, Oh, we can do this, we can just we just put things up.

SPEAKER_00 47:13

There's no there are rules, but we don't have to follow them. We can just keep doing what we want to do.

SPEAKER_01 47:18

You you can find that out later on.

SPEAKER_00 47:19

You don't need to know the audience will tell you whether they like it or not.

SPEAKER_01 47:22

Yeah, and that's you don't need to know yet. No.

SPEAKER_00 47:25

So enjoy.

SPEAKER_01 47:26

Yeah, well, hook hook you. You know, you if I told you now what it was, you might go, oh well, that's that. Yeah. It's always you know the question question of don't read the back of the book. Yeah. But every page you thought was like, Oh my goodness, what's gonna happen? What's that? Very obscure, but really good. And it and I think it that becomes sort of like a a way of thinking. I always found that that that all those things taught me to think abstractly. Yes. Because well, you just do. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if it was there already, but abstract just falls into place. It just it like I don't know what it is, it just lines itself up and out it comes.

SPEAKER_00 48:05

I I I I think with those abstract thoughts, it they're there, and if no one told you don't think like that, then you're allowing yourself to or if someone told you to try and think like that, you'd say, Well, what should I put first?

SPEAKER_01 48:17

You said, Well, no, that's not how it works. Just do what you like. What do you think? Well, well, I don't know what I'm gonna say, don't know. So you've got to be f you don't be frightened. Yeah. You know, if you do find that you are talking rubbish, then fair enough.

SPEAKER_00 48:29

You could joke out of that and shut up.

SPEAKER_01 48:30

Yeah. Otherwise, you could be a be a comedian.

SPEAKER_00 48:34

I mean, that's yeah, I I do think that uh the abstract comedy has always been a thing that's been in our family. And I would find it so boring if we weren't joking like that.

SPEAKER_01 48:43

Not being able to just There's one in the barrel you don't know about yet. Yeah, and and I didn't know I was gonna fire it.

SPEAKER_00 48:48

And it's very interesting as well when you meet someone who's talking to you who doesn't have that abstract thought process, and you just sort of go like, What do you mean you didn't your brain your brain went to the right thing first? Well, why would it do that? Yeah, you've got to go to the wrong thing first.

SPEAKER_01 49:04

I used to do when I was doing graphics, I would do variations of logos because it I just started using a Mac. So I'd do all these really pretty little jewels, like little brooches of things, and uh we'd take it into the meeting, and then they say this woman used to say, What are these? So are they just thoughts? But we're doing this thing. I go, Yeah, well, maybe one of them might suit that. She went, Oh that yeah, that's nice. That's nice. Yeah, it that what so we I said, no, there's just thoughts. Just do it. She goes, Oh, right, well, I don't know what you're taking, but don't stop. And I wasn't taking anything. It was just like, if I think about what I've been asked to do, then yeah I'm limited. Yeah. If I don't worry about that and I've doing something else, then I can plop that on the top of something else I thought of.

SPEAKER_00 49:51

Left with your own devices, it is sort of just like, oh, what's what's triggered uh a thing? Sounds silly. I was lying in bed earlier and I had rubbed my eyes, and you know when you rub your eyes and you see that sort of weird sparkle and stuff. I saw that and I was like, hold on. And I sort of pushed my eye a bit more to try and get a bit clearer, and I saw this wonderfully weird sort of like black moon with a thing going on, and I was like, oh, that's nice, all like that. And I thought, I'm gonna get a canvas later, I'll paint that. Yeah, and it's that thought process of just you've gone mad, and you've just thought, like, no, it's there again, it just dropped in.

SPEAKER_01 50:31

The a film you're making, it starts with this wonderful moon in this black thing with the clouds going past, and then someone says, So did you poke your did you poke your eye or is it bit of grit? And then it just turns around. There's somebody going like this, but you were going like, oh yeah. Oh, this is good. This is nice. So I guess I've nearly got it out. Ah yeah, exactly. So it it throws people one way, then pushes them back the other. Exactly. And why? And why not?

SPEAKER_00 51:00

And why not? I think that's because every it's yeah, and why not?

SPEAKER_01 51:03

And uh don't write it down if you don't want to, but just just keep them coming, really.

SPEAKER_00 51:08

I think that's another thing as well, is that we're we're not uh a group of people, a family, if you want to call them that, um, who worry that the idea we've got is our last one. So the amount of times I've gone like, oh that's a good idea, I'll write that down. And then I've gone, if I don't remember it in three hours, it probably wasn't worth remembering.

SPEAKER_01 51:24

You might it's best if it's just they'll probably stay in there. They're in there if I'll it'll come out when it needs to come out. If it yeah. I mean, yeah. It's like when you you say, Oh, you're gonna do these things, you know, with film. I say, Well, do a load of nothinks. Do a load of nothinks.

SPEAKER_00 51:40

That's what I said to the guys yesterday, actually. I said, you know, we'll uh these are the list of things we should make. And I said, and we'll make them for us.

SPEAKER_01 51:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:48

And if they're shit, well, wasn't it fun that we made something? It just and if they're good, we'll send them out.

SPEAKER_01 51:53

Yeah, you know though, those always the same, and I'm sure you can buy them in the shop, that if there's a TV cop thing, there's a wall with pictures and maps and red wool and pins, and every one of them adopts the same way of doing it. Yeah, but they must have like this sort of like studio warehouse full of these different which map should we use for this one? Yeah, it's like where's the area and what kind of why did that and it's like it's it's what is it?

SPEAKER_00 52:20

I wonder if anyone's ever looked at the the paper and been like, I don't even know how you've made that connection.

SPEAKER_01 52:26

Oh, I can see my house from there.

SPEAKER_00 52:29

Oh shit, they've got my I'm a pin. Oh, that's my house. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 52:34

Yeah, so there's that.

SPEAKER_00 52:36

Um, so what was the first film that you watched that you considered grown up?

SPEAKER_01 52:42

Well, I think the first film I went with my dad and we saw Tunes of Glory. Okay, I don't know. Alec Guinness and Susanna York and John Mills, okay, and it was about um military in Edinburgh Castle, the hierarchy, and one person being belittled and pushed down to the point of suicide. Uh did your dad know what this was before he took you? I don't know. I don't know, but we watched it anyway. So yeah, and it was really good, and it was mostly at night on the sort of the Edinburgh Castle battlements, snowy, you know, um and then inside warm and sort of like they're really drinking grog and it's all military sort of like huge room with all the flags and stuff hanging down and previous battles and things. Yeah, it was good. Yeah, it was good. But that's I considered it growed up growed up because I I didn't know what was going on really, but it it I did like the act, I did like the look of it. And you know, yeah, no, yeah, it was that really. And then we were we went and saw this um film um Madaba, it was and it was called what was it called? Life or was it called the human body? But um it was about it was about the human body and one of the people in it was the editor, I think, of Oz, which was a hippie comic. Oh yeah, much controversial thing, and they had in a black screen on in a in a black room in velvet and felt two people making love. This was in the film, right? And we went, and I think my dad was probably taking me there so uh he wouldn't have to tell me anything later on.

SPEAKER_00 54:31

So and I thought and he was also like taking notes.

SPEAKER_01 54:36

And some people said, absolutely disgusting, oh good God, and strolling off, stropping off, yeah. So that was pretty grown up, but I I felt like yeah, so I couldn't really take that quite as serious as I was probably meant to. Um but yeah, I think June's Glory was a serious film. And did you and Grandad talk about it afterwards? Not really, yes, but it was a bit of a gap, a bit it's like, oh right, well, fair enough. And he said it was alright. I don't think we did my mum said was it any good? We didn't bring that up until later on. Yeah. But uh yeah, I think that was just I don't know why we went and saw that, but just well just did. Fair enough. I can't remember his name now.

SPEAKER_00 55:17

Anyway, does it but I guess that's a um that does fall into the thing where to you it was uh I wonder why you took me in to your dad it could have just been about the afternoon free. Save the boy too.

SPEAKER_01 55:28

Yeah, it was in the evening as well, so it it was a sort of a night thing. I know there was no connotations about things like that. No, so it was just controversial as opposed to you know slanted towards perverse or slanted towards you know paedophilia or the n whatever nowadays. Um it was none of that, it was just sort of controversial and new another. Oh my god. I mean, there was the killing of Sister George, which was all about lesbianism, but uh that was just what it was. No one sort of went, Oh dear, you know, and and a brilliant film, an absolutely brilliant film. Um yeah, so no, there wasn't any sort of worry about it. We just watched it and that was that. It's moved on. Fair enough. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:14

Um I've always, you know, when I've thought of you, for some reason there are certain films that have always come up. Mononcle being one, Blade Runner is another for some reason. But um, what's a film that holds a special place in your heart?

SPEAKER_01 56:28

Well, some of the times I go right back. Um History of Mr. Polly, which is an old film in the 40s I think or 50s with John Mills. I can't remember who wrote that. I'll just look it up. Oh no, I'll look it up later on. But uh the History of Mr. Polly is a really lovely film about this guy who uh decides that his life isn't good enough for him, even though he's trying to get it better. He was a dreamer and it was written uh by uh H. G. Wells. Okay, and um it's a bit mild a bit like how his life was when he was young. He worked in the milliners, I think it was, or a clerk in a in an office, but a bit of a dreamer, so he would nip off down to the basement where the storage stuff was and read books. So he got sacked, but then his dad died and left him, I don't know, five hundred pounds, which was a lot of money. Some of money then. Yeah, Victorian times, uh Ed Audian. And um he lived with his uh uncle and his wife, and he says, So what are you gonna do with that money? And he goes, Oh, I don't know. Because he wasn't bothered because it's a bit of a dream, but he goes, Well, you should invest that into a little shop. A little shop. So he goes, Oh, I don't know, yeah, I'll do that. So he remembered at the wake and at the funeral, there's aunt had gone there with some daughters, and they she was after getting him to marry one of them. So he thought I'd go and see him, so he went on his bicycle and um saw one. Other things evolve and stuff like that. So he gets to the shop and he doesn't want that either.

SPEAKER_00 58:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:02

So he runs off and uh just decides he's going to leave. And he comes across this little uh the Potwell Inn, this little inn by uh a river where there's a little f uh punt that would take people across if if they so required. Yeah. And he spoke to the landlady there, uh Megs Jenkins as the actress, and they hit it off very well, and he did all the odd jobs and he would do the punt if anybody came across. Okay. But um her sister's husband was an old drunk and he kept coming by and then wanted to nick money and bash her something awful, and um he had to go and sort her sort him out. Yeah. So yeah, that's a really lovely film. I've and it's so beautifully filmed. Okay. It's black and white, but it's just a lovely thing. Yeah, there's that um Dr. Chivago again.

SPEAKER_00 58:52

Nice. Um someone referred to that to me the other day as it's Lawrence of Arabia but in the snow.

SPEAKER_01 58:57

Well, they're all these films are a bit Yeah. Yeah, uh yeah, but there was something again, I think it's that dark. Um, like the the the the um cavalry killing everybody in the square. I mean, there was this darkness and uh vastness of the continent was was shown. I suppose that was the same within Lawrence of Arabia, but that was just void, wasn't it? Just that sand. Nothingness, yeah. No, that's a that's a good one. Um and other ones I'd go back to see? Well uh Psycho. Oh really? Yeah, I I I like that. Uh oh Topsy Turvy, Mike Lee. Yeah, I love Topsy Turvy. Is that your favourite Mike Lee? I think one of them, yeah. Yeah. I can't think of the other ones I've had at the moment. Secrets and Lions? No, uh Topsy Turvy is my favourite one. Fair enough. Yeah, there's just something it's a different film that he normally does.

SPEAKER_00 59:49

That's fair. I when I think of all the other Mike Lees, they're all quite miserable, but in a very different way.

SPEAKER_01 59:54

There's just some wonderful bits where there's three actors, they've been in all the doily carts, these people, and now they're gonna be doing uh Mikado. So they've got to pretend that they're Chinese or Japanese and they're sort of like hamming it up a little vaudevillian bit. Uh and they've got to be a but they go in a little bit sort of like vaudevillian cockney. So they'd be like, Oh, don't you know? Give with a fist, and you go, No, no, that's not how they say it. And I do not know what you do. Why do you put the cockney on it? Oh, sorry, governor, I just thought I'd add a little bit of oity toy. No, no, no, we don't want that. We want it as this would be said, yeah. And uh as Jim Broadbent doing it, and and it's just really worth it. They all want to do their little to be seen, to be different, you know, on the stage. And there's that the other bit where there's three three little maids from school, and um they get they they go down the middle of they're rehearsing, yeah, and uh and they're just along the strand by the Kolol pub, um, which I used to go in there occasionally when I worked up there. Uh so I knew what it was like, so that was quite a nice thing to put in there. But the three little maids walk down the middle of the stage, and he would say, No, that's not how you do it. And he goes, Well, what do you mean? She goes, Well, no, they're three little maids from school, and you're walking really not like that. So they got he gets three there's a big show on in Kensington about Japan, or I think it's Japan, and um they get three tree Japanese girls in their kimonos and everything to come along, and then she asks them to walk three little maids from school to walk down the middle, and of course they've got their outfits on and everything, but they're they're very, very nervous and they're sort of self-conscious. So they walk down like that, and he goes, That is what I want you to do. But they're just self-conscious, and yes, they're three little maids from school, and it's like very good. Yeah, I do need to watch it.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:51

I do need to re-watch it. I don't think I've seen it since I think it came out. And I would have been too young to enjoy it then.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:56

I there's a load of other stuff that I'd say I could go on that I really like, like almost famous. And there's another film that didn't come out in 2022 called Dirt Road to Lafayette, whereas this guy was really good and didn't it wasn't getting much he was living with his dad and he was by himself and he was in the wrong t area of America, but he could play the accordion really well, and I think it's the accordion. Then you go they go down to Lafayette and he gets to know some people and he starts to play, and then they say, Oh no, come and stay and play, and things like that, and he doesn't know if he wants to. It's a really nice film though. I don't know this one, and then there's all the Woody Allen, small time crooks, radio days, Crimes of Mr. Meadow, Sweet and Loud, Low Down, Midnight in Paris, Amacord, The Haunting, which is really scary. That was 1963. Yeah, that's it. Woodstock. Then we're into performance, what's up, Doc Cabaret, Name of the Rose, Old Brother, we're at though, Devil Wears Prada, Royal Tannenbaum's Avatar. Avatar? Yeah, love film. It's amazing. Oh, it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:59

I saw it in 3D. Did you see any of the sequels? Ah, yeah, but the water one I didn't.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:04

I no point. No. No, no point because there was there was nothing you weren't really rooting as much as you were at the beginning because they were your new friends. Yeah. And they're your new friends. Now these are friends uh from ten years ago. These are new friends. This is great. You know, you could put I could put alien in there again. There's a lot of things that you don't need prequels to or no, no, or no, you don't need prequels or sequels too.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:29

No, there's a lot of things that you don't need more of it. And uh some people I know get really weirdly protective over the sequels. They're like, Well, they've made the sequel and I don't like it and they've ruined it. And I'm like, they haven't ruined anything. You can still watch the original one you enjoyed. And they're like, oh no, but they've ruined it now. And it's like, what do you mean? Like, because there's what, four Jaws films? I've seen one of them. I don't need two, three, or four. And everyone's like, How can you not watch two, three, and four if you love Jaws? It's like, 'cause I love Jaws. I don't need any more. No. Like the the gang, the that's what's happened, and that's finished. Yeah. But um, yeah, I mean, all the films that are sort of you can just sit and watch and enjoy. It is a hard woman, this sort of like what's the one that what's the one that holds a special place? You're like, well, depends if I'm feeling in my mood. Yeah, like what I'm up for. Do I fancy sitting and watching four hours of Scorsese documentary, or do I actually want a quick 90-minute I I like watching those.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:26

I mean, that Martin Scorsese thing, yeah. He's done some films.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:30

The Voyage to Italy ones.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:32

Yeah, bit sad though. Yeah. Um, but they're really, really good. I mean, the the way he did that, he did the the whole thing about there was a thing about Martin Scorsese. Yeah. There's that film about how he started up.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:46

And uh he knew this.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:48

Still only two episodes in.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:49

Knew this kid from the other side of the street down in New York, Robert Bobby, Bobby De Niro something. Bobby something. And he was always nodded. We didn't know each other. And it's like That's so that's the that's the that thing we were saying earlier. That you know, how how come you knew that and you knew this? Because it was nothing then.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:07

It was just the guy around the corner.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:09

Him trying to do one thing and you trying to do another, and he said he'd do that. And there was that thing where they gave him uh when he was doing the taxi driver and uh they were all chatting and in this room, and Robert De Niro had his Mohican haircut and the gun and the woo in the mirror, and um he just sort of nobody was doing anything but a coffee and a a a bit of a relax, and De Niro just went, looked in the mirror and said, You talking to me? You talking to me? And they went, What? That's something. That's something fucking weird. That's staying. And yeah, and it And that nobody had written that, he just said it.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:46

Just bits to yourself. Bits. Letting someone play. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:50

Were you gonna do it?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:51

What are you gonna do in that room? Crack on.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:53

See how that goes. And then all of a sudden, oh, we're you know, we're off on a little journey that way.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:59

I've never liked it. Whenever I've heard directors being really sort of no, this is my script, you're reading it verbatim. And it's like, well, then you get good at acting because you don't you don't want an actor, you don't want to collaborate.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:10

You're not, you're not yeah, it's not a collaborating, you're not you're not allowing the person in to do their job.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:16

Like they're they're the professional actor, they know what they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:18

You get Ray Harryhausen to have some make some models for your dialogue. And it's like I I Oh yeah, with Anderson, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:25

I just want I just want someone to sort of like, here's the world, here's the words, and here's where I want it to go.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:30

I mean, sometimes I've there's been things where people over ad lib and they'll just say anything and they'll pick the worst sort of muckiest, smuttiest, soppiest rubbish, which I can't stand.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:42

I think we're coming out of that now, which I'm pleased about because when it's when you get a truly funny person ad-libbing, that's great.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:52

When everyone's ad-libbing, it's like, ooh, you're not you're not one of the things that you're gonna do. You're not a funny person, so don't try and be funny. And just because you said something funny once doesn't mean you got it in you.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:04

Yeah. Just read the lines. Well, there was a thing about in the loop and in the thick of it that we're talking about, Amano and Lucci, and um when they were doing the things inside like number 10 and stuff like that, he insisted that every room was set up perfectly, no storage of anything. This is as it would be for the day. And he told the actors what you what this is this is the story, yeah. And then they were to do and go wherever they wanted, and the camera would be walking backwards in front of them, but wherever they wanted to go, and if they did, they stopped and went, yeah, fuck it and go in this room, then the camera would follow behind them. And it worked so well, everybody loved doing that because it was frightening, because they didn't know what they were gonna do, and all of a sudden they were doing something that they never thought was gonna happen.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:51

No, I think it's was it Roger Deakin's a big fan of like you like the room, not the scene. So then the actor can go wherever the fuck they want. Yeah, and then if they can go wherever the fuck they want, they're being a lot more performative in their work.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:04

Yeah, I mean you've 'cause it it all depends what you're saying as well, because it may be that you need a bit more space to say it. Yeah. Because you're just standing there in the corner, squeaking it out. It's you may need to come on.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:16

Waffer wafted around. Um Richard Pryor says it about jazz players. He doesn't like a saxophone player that just stands there. Because if you you if they're not really bending and getting that jazz out, I don't want to hear it. Like I want to hear them fucking get it out of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:30

Yeah, when you hear that intake of breath, yeah. And you're like, yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:33

I want to see someone fucking go for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:36

Not just but yeah, that was there used to be like um da da da be rock and roly jazzy things, yeah, like Ronnie Scott type thing. But the bloke would have started off with a a s a black suit and tie on and a white shirt, and then playing the saxophone, probably baritone, but doing high notes and riffs and stuff on it. But he was getting hot, so he just tie and come off, and then all of a sudden, like the shirt was hanging out a little bit too much, and then he had one foot at the back as an anchor, and the front one was at the front doing tapping and going somewhere, and he was like blowing balloons, and it was just like, Oh, look at that, and he's bet he's probably wearing brew cream as well, and it's just fantastic. Excellent stuff, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:18

But you want to see someone really fucking go, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:20

Yeah, the the drummer picking up on it, and it's like trying to keep up. Well, jazz, yeah. That's what that is.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:27

Um, what's your controversial opinion on a famous film?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:31

Uh I yeah, I've looked at that, and the c I don't know if it's controversial. I know that it is a thing that people do to carry a film they're not sure of. And it it was uh the Thursday Murder Club and they used everybody famous in it. Right. And you didn't need to.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:54

No. You didn't need to do that. Just because you can get the names doesn't mean you should get the names. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:59

Yeah, Richard Osman didn't need he never he just did a book that was very good, and in your head there was these people, and they weren't everybody that you know, all these oh, we've got everybody in it. So why if you thought this book was so good, why are you not letting people that you they've got good acting talents? Why can't they have that as their vehicle? Why can't they own that? Why can't they be oh, you're the guy who played this, or you're the lady who played that in there? No, oh Helen Mirror, no, she did this, she did this, she did this, she did, did that. Helen Mirror and the chat doesn't need jack. Jack did this, Jack did that, oh look Brad, Brad, Brad. And it's like no. But it's because it's bums on seats, yeah. Which is But I don't want to see those people played doing that because it it it needed something else in there.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:52

Well, one of the things that I've always had an issue with is because I've only ever seen at the time I'd only seen modern Meryl Streep films, and everyone's like, oh, she just you she gets lost in every character she's in. And I'm like, no, she doesn't, she just plays Meryl Street. Wow. And it's because I'm only seeing later performances where she was able to just be Meryl Street. When I go back and watch older things, I'm like, oh no, she's fucking excellent, she's a really good actress, like she's wonderful in most of the early stuff she's done. And it's the same with like Pierce Brosnan Now is just doing Pierce Brosnan Now, Helen Mirren is just doing Helen Mirren, and that's fine, but like you're saying, if it's a good story, you don't need them to carry it along. It and when I read Thursday Murder Club, it was Jean Round the Corner, you know, it was Steve from the bar I used to work at. They were the characters, they weren't I wasn't picturing handsome beauties, I was picturing.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:43

And the and the bloody place was soppy.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:47

It was huge, and it had loads of people doing exercises and things, and it wasn't like that. It would be more like a medical centre bungalow complex, a low thing that went out, hexagonal rooms with windows all the way around.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:02

And what's the word I want to use? Like what's the um not council, but it's that sort of it feels like municipality. Definitely municipal type thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:12

Yeah, and it would be like that. There might be some old stuff out the back, but this was new stuff that had been built near the road. Yeah. Uh but they'd done it like it was AI, basically, looked completely AI. So far, it was all fucking far too sunny, uh, the colours were all too pastely, the rooms were all not right, you know. It just that wasn't where you were looking for the sunshine, you know. They don't brighten up the room just because you can't write a good script for this, you know. That's not gonna make it look nicer. It's just silly. So that's that's my gripe. The people that rubbish, rubbish, well-known casts that are just you purely it's a payday for everyone.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:51

No one's doing this because they love to do it. Yeah. When you could get, like you were saying, a load of actors who Well, look at any French film and you go, Oh, that was a really good film.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:01

Did you know anybody in it? No. No. I don't need to. I don't always need to. Because they became those people as soon as they opened their mouth.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:08

They was that there was that guy. There's that guy who does that.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:11

That's true, because there's a lot of there's only a few actors now, like Hollywood actors, that I think, you know, you you you lose that character, you lose the the actor into the character, whatever the thing is. Yeah. There's only a few of them that can do it. Otherwise, what I'm watching is Benedict Cumberbatch being X, or I'm seeing Can you Benedict, can you say this that way? Nope. I can do it in my normal.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:35

But if someone if someone you don't know, so you've got no pre on him or her, starts talking, you don't know what their attitude, what their opinion of anything is, or what they've done in the past, or which way it's going to keep it. I don't know if you're a bad guy. Yeah. So they they start talking, and then if the script's any good, it you suddenly just go, Oh, you already go and you're in.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:58

I think you'd hit it right in the head if the script's any good. Yeah. Scripts aren't as scripts are churned out nowadays because there's content.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:04

If they um and R and mumble and sort of like sort of try and jazz up the atmosphere or something, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. And it's it's it's it's like you can look at a lot of things and there'll be too much mumbling going on and people just doing you know stances and yeah, and it's no good. I mean it's like when you watch, say, for instance, uh Snooker, um, they might get to the point no billiards, they get to the point no snooker, sorry, you might get to the point where there's so many red balls around one round the the white ball, you can only just touch it so that you're safe.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:41

And that's no good. But then you get a the game frees up, and all of a sudden you're knocking the green ball over there. No one knew that was gonna go there, no one knew that was gonna go there. That's really good, but when it all gets down to this fiddly ass stuff, it never works. No, it never works, and I know people that try and do that by sort of doing ad lib, uh, and we'll see how it goes, but I think sometimes it does, it should be the people that you don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:05

I think the people you don't know is always you're getting you're not going any with preconceived notions of like, well, I know how they're gonna play it. I know that they're never the bad guy, so they're never gonna be the bad guy. And if everyone's trying to do their if everyone's trying to do a Merrill, everyone's trying to do a Helen Mirror and everyone's trying to do a thing, then where's where's the discovering? Where's the sort of looking at someone and being like, oh, that face, they're doing a face in the background. That's really they're all I'm the front, I'm the front, show look at me, look at me, and everyone's waiting their turn to do their bit. You're just like, yes, yeah, nothing in there. It's not the story, as well. Which is going back to what we said earlier, that's why I'm really enjoying watching directors' first films, because maybe their mate turned into a big actor, but usually there's fucking nobody's in it. And you're watching them and you're like, Well, these guys are they're learning too.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:55

They're learning too, they're learning too. They've they've put something in that wasn't there. Because that's what I was looking for. Yeah. You know, oh, or uh yeah, right. Or uh oh, we covered what I just said perfectly. That's what I was meaning. He's getting it, so you don't really want to go over to Brad Pitt and say, Oh, now you're getting it, because he won't have it. But if you tell somebody who's trying their best now you're getting it, he's gonna be impressed that you said and thought that.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:23

Someone someone asked me a while ago, they said, um, what is it? Like it I was a it was odd that they asked it, but they said, Do you ever see yourself directing someone like Sam Jackson? And I was like, um I I I don't think I'd want Sam Jackson because then I'd have to have Sam Jackson. Like, well, I can't tell you how to do your job how I want you to do your job. Well who the fuck am I?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:46

And then look at Rasmussen or Sazy how many parter it is and see how he got on.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:51

And that's the thing, it's like I want people that are up and coming and still going, or people who are collaborative or haven't got that big ego on.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:58

It it seems the the way that you know you have to be very strong and play the the corporate studio game and yes and no, and yes and nod to everything, and he's gonna do what you want.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:10

Yeah, that's very interesting that Scorsese.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:13

Terry Gillam and Martin Scorsese. And and they would they both laugh because it was just silly money they're playing with anyway.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:19

But that's the thing. That was there was a they were in a wonderful time where they were very good and there was money to be had.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:25

Oh yeah, I mean it's it it was the same with record companies, putting people on tour like Bob Dylan and that, and they'd be an entourage of you know 50 people, but they everybody was on the payroll. Everyone was on the play and they were hoping they might get an album out of it, and uh everybody went to see it, but people used to stand outside and see it as well, yeah. You know, so they didn't pay.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:44

But that's not annoyingly, that's not how that's done anymore.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:47

No, no one's dishing out cash. No, no one's dishing out cash. But then I think that it's a bit like you know writing a novel and not publishing it. I mean, you still write the novel. Yeah, you still gotta have it's it's like it's like saying well, there's no money. So what they're gonna what are they gonna promote that you've done?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:05

Yeah, I think you've got anything in the box.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:08

No, but the point is.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:09

But I've got the ideas. No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:10

No, no, no, no, no. Get that. No? Bad that. No? Yeah. About that. Yeah. No? What about that? And the book's going, oh no, you no, hang on. And you've you've got ten ideas you've just put there that you you if you didn't have those in the back and just the thought of oh, they never give out any money, you've really got to sort of like flood them with that I can do all these.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:36

And also, I think there's something in the thing when someone goes like, what about this? No, what about this, what about this, no? And then they go like, but this person also has a fuckload of ideas. It's exactly. It's not even that I don't even want to make the ones that you've shown me, but you've got them. You've got more coming, haven't you?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:51

It's ten. So we'll have that one, that one, and that one. Right? Now we'll mix them three together. Put bits of that in there. And then what what about that about that story?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:02

I mean, but you don't you can do that yourself before you tell anybody that's. I was told how'd you come up with sort of uh novel or original ideas? He goes, We'll have six ideas, so then put three together, and then put another three together and see how it goes. And if those two are really good, then maybe put those two together. Yeah. Then that might be careful because we'll have all the ideas in one thing, and then we're fucked again.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:25

But it it's just that pick out the the the three or you know, but you you got do have to have a pile of books with that's why yesterday when Ollie and I sat together, it was like, here are the scripts or ideas we've got, and also here are the weird little scenes I want to shoot. Yeah. And then it's like I was saying, I like the idea of doing something like this, and I explained the scene to him, and he was like, I don't think that would work in this, but I like what you've said so much that I want to use that somewhere. So then we think how we can use that, and you're like, right, okay, okay, let's get that in something, and then Well, that's like those books I gave you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:00

I mean, put that in there, make it out, see what it looks like, and then it's like that that we did that.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:05

That can work.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:06

But then you have to get to the point where you say, Well, I'm gonna stop with what I've got so far and see what I can make out of that, yeah. And then and then to see what happens after that. I have to. Because you have to be careful, you're not your your ideas and your the way you you're crafting will get too good for the first things you thought of. And it may be that that's not what you really want.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:31

So you've got to get some so where some so far and then assess what that is. Yeah. I think. I mean, you can keep it, it's only drawing. Yeah, that's the thing. It's but the the the the thought process has got to be kept kept going. You've got to keep that that going all the time, really. Oh, I just burn burn it burn into nothing because you keep Yeah. Well, it's like doing this. I mean, you start chatting away, you think, What am I gonna say? And all of a sudden you just get a little vein of oh blah blah blah. And um, you know, it's almost like you have to filter out some of the gibber. But there's bits in there, yeah. You know, that's how it that's how it works.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:08

And for the listener, if you can hear a uh groaning in the background, that's the dog deciding that he wants to chat as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:13

Yeah, it's disagreements there. I said the camera should be over there. No, I think there's a wren in the garden. How dare it. A lady in the air force. That would be funny. Walking past, saluting. Ah, let's all get up and dance to a song that was a hit. Oh yeah, there's a robin over there. Yeah. Um, so what have you been watching recently? I the other day I watched Lee about which is very good. Is that the Kate Winslet thing? Yeah. I haven't watched it. No, it's really good. Lee Miller. She um uh how would you call it? Opportunist um headstrong woman. Uh that uh certain things fell into her lap a bit. But well the biggest thing that fell into her lap was that she was she was in New York and she got I think hit by a car accidentally. And it was the guy who hit her and picked her up and made sure she was alright, was Condin Ast.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:17

And soon she was on the cover of Ogue.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:19

So, you know, I think that's in being there with I think there's opportunists, but also you have to have the husband the look to buy.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:28

Oh, yeah, yeah. But she it's a Lee Miller's story is remarkable. The fact that she wanted to be a war photographer for for Vogue of all places, and that she uh films the worst atrocities you can imagine. Um that's not what you thought it was gonna be like. She never thought it was gonna be like surrealists, you know, Vogue, Man Ray, and all that, and it's all gonna groove along.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:53

Um, it's the same for Annie. Annie Libowitz did that as well. She did a bit of war photography for Annie Leibowitz.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:02

She did. Well, it wouldn't have been Vietnam.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:05

No, it wasn't that. It was I feel like it might have been um Kosovo. Ma may have been.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:10

I don't know about what she did as far as war things were concerned.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:13

Oh, because I remember seeing some of it and being very like, oh, why wouldn't she? You know? Don McCullum, why wouldn't he? That's what you did, wasn't it? You just did what you the job that was available to you.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:24

Yeah, I think Don McCullum started off just doing a little pack shot. He was just asked, he just popped knocked on the door like I did, and you sort of see if you get in or not. Do you mind? Can you photograph those boxes of Smarties and then Sure? Oh, okay. Oh, we've got to do this. Can you get it?

SPEAKER_00 1:23:39

Well these pictures of teddy boys in burnt out buildings. Well, let me show you.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:44

Yeah, I mean it's and it's just that experimental things and off off you go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:49

Yeah. So other than uh the Lee thing, what else have you been watching? Um Holdovers.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:54

Um they're not that new, but the Holdovers is lovely. Which I I was that's one of those films that has I know it's got one guy in it that we all know, but he he's Mr. Anybody and it's Mr. Everybody.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:06

He's one of the people that he was the sort of um he's a bit of a Richard Dreyfus, quite you know, a young Tom Hanks, a real everyman. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:15

It's great, and everybody in it was really good. And uh the the story of the cook and then going to see a friend with a and it just it it it went sideways so many times, and that you know they didn't hold on to what the story was, and but everybody got to be better from that experience of that amount of time together, and that was just like really nicely done and very real, and I've got that yeah that's that's a lovely film.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:44

I also like that it was shot in quite like that the camera was quite there's a lot of bloom in the image that made you it felt like a memory, yeah, and you're like, Yeah, I know they said like oh it's shot to look like it's in the 70s, and you're like 70s films aren't shot like that, but you remember that they're shot like that because it's a memory of these things.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:04

Because sometimes they they they get the colour wrong, they get the colour on the colour and they think it's right. Tinker Taylor Soul Just Buy was one of those things where they thought, Oh, we'll do it like this, and you say, Well, you've got the camera angles and the wide angle and the panning right, but you got the colour wrong because they wouldn't have that colour on something this good. Yeah, they would have had that on a smaller film, you know, and with a course of grain, and no.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:27

And it's it's weird how they get things wrong when it comes to like the really minor details about the one for me, is always hairstyles. They always everyone's got the hairstyle like they've just come out of the salon, and it's like you've got the style right, but they've had that shit in a fucking hair net for a week, yeah, trying to keep it nice, and it's not as good as it was when they first got it. Everything's too clean, too fresh, and they wanted to make it like it's the 60s, and it's like, yes, but the 60s everyone didn't have the newest furniture, they had furniture from the 40s and the 50s, and the hairstyles weren't great because they didn't afford to do it every day, and like well, but Polanski did Oliver Twist.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:07

And Fagin's house was in Georgian, old knackered Georgian, because that's what would be there. Yeah. And so he got that right. So he didn't do just the bog standard, same old brick walls. He did, it was an old house, and it was everything was falling to bits, but it was Georgian. And that's like really, you know, a a thought, a thoughtfully done thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:31

Yeah, and I think it really going back to the beginning with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, like everyone looked great and glamorous, but they all looked great and gr glamorous of that time because it wasn't overly clean. Everyone looked, you know, they looked their best, but it wasn't it wasn't the sort of um MGM Yeah, and also the they sort of the romantic memory of what it what they're like, the romanticism of the 80s that everyone seems to do at the moment, where it's like, oh everyone's wearing these, they got the big hair and the glasses and they're wearing those kind of things, and you're just like yeah, but they wouldn't have looked like that. They'd be wearing the shit that no one remembers because it was the cheap shit.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:17

People that wore a lot of that stuff would would have been in American films with lots of saxophones, yeah. And if they weren't in that, they would have been a few exit excited and adventurous students at the Blitz, which we used to pass. Yes, I've been watching that. The other one I'll um there are old films again, but it's a rainy day in New York by Woody Allen, which I don't know that one. It came out in twenty nineteen, but it came out at the time of the Me Too and what with Woody Allen's back blog history, um it got held off.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:53

Was it is that Timothy Chalamane?

SPEAKER_01 1:27:55

It's it it's the Timothy Chalamet, and he's brilliant in it. Oh, he's excellent. Well, I never thought he would be. I thought he was some little French git.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:01

No, he is very good.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:02

And he's very, very good. And he's funny. And he's really he's wonderful in this. I can imagine. Uh he he left college. He was gonna be blah blah blah. Yeah. But he left. And he lives in New York. And um he for a living um to make money, he plays poker, big poker.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:24

And if he's not doing that, he plays jazz piano in a club. Which is like, oh, we all want to do that. Of course. We all want to do that. And he's got a big pad. And one of the girls at uh that we're he's at college with, she comes to see him uh because she wants to do a journalist course and she wants to interview this famous actor, which I think is where the me too thing comes in, because the actor wants to take advantage of her one uh after the end of a lovely day, but being impressed, and she goes back to his flat and she's a bit worried, and then the doorbell goes, no, the door at door is opened, and his wife's come back, so he's like a cheating git. Yeah. So but it's just really well done. Okay. So that I think's on prime. Alright. So yeah, that's that's um the other one I I watched. I haven't watched anything new, I can think of really.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:23

Other than one battle after another.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:25

I haven't wanna s I want to see that. It is really good.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:28

It's a very good film. Um and Leo is very good in it because he's fucking useless. Well, in this, because he can't be asked. Because he's just an old fucking stoner who's just been doing fuck all for the last ten years in this, and he's trying with everything he's got, but it doesn't matter. Oh right. It's very good what's happening. No, I'll have to have a look. But I mean it's Paul Thomas Anderson, so it's you know, boogie knights. It's not a lot of things. Yeah, that was a lovely phantom.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:59

Oh, that could have gone in, couldn't it? Boogie Knights, that's a you see, that's the problem. There's so many that there are good. It's not that you've forgotten them because there weren't any good, it's because there's just a big pile of them. Oh, and they're but they all seem to be of the same interesting ilk, really.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:16

Uh it's stories told well.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:19

Yeah, and like Boogie Knights has wonderful Alfred Molino with his guns, absolutely just firing off blanks. And they're and they're trying to do him. Yeah. And it's you know, this isn't Quinton Tarantino. This is not him. He didn't make this film. And it's like we see Quentin, you can have a look at this, see how you go.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:42

See how you don't have to be violent, but you can have horrible.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:46

Everyone, the tension is like, oh, please. I love that scene. Yeah. Skidaddle. Crashing the car, Wiley Coyote.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:58

It is Wiley Coyote as well. But it's a caper, it's there. And I I think a lot of films I really enjoy are capers. Yeah, well, like What's Up Doc. And but they're just you don't get capers anymore.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:09

No.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:09

And I I miss them. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:12

The caper capers would there are certain people that could do capers. Yeah. And there'd be a right, but there'd be certain people that you'd say, Can you do caper? And he would do it in the style of caper, and that that would be no good. That would be no good.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:26

I think that's the in the style of is another one that's the problem.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:31

There's an actor, TV actor, David Mitchell, um, who does Ludwig, which is really well done. But he could do caper because he he gets exasperately cross about inaccuracies and things like that, and he has that voice which would be perfect for that sort of thing. But I thought we were going that way, and there's not many people can say that without matter-of-fact irritation that it's not going quite right for them, and that that sort of voice is always good. That's true, yeah. And if you look at if you listen to some of the the the films of um the 50s and 60s, I think there's too many crooks with Sid James and Bernard Breslau and Brenda Basban Bres Brenda Basburgane, they've got accents in them that are proper characters, yeah. And they go in different directions. And sometimes you don't get that in films now because it's it's a bit of a cliche to have actors that go in different directions all the time. You have to get people that are trying to be on the same page, yeah. But these are sort of like, oh, I know we're meant to be doing it, but oh that oh that way, and it's oh and you so someone can do that, you know, as opposed to just running round corners and skidding.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:50

And it's uh the working class doesn't really exist in the films anymore because if they're working class, they're gritty. They're never just normal guys and gals just who happen to be working.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:05

You know, it's a big industry now, and it really doesn't need to always be all about money, and they should spend more money on adventurous stuff to see how it pans, if otherwise, they're not gonna get anything new coming up.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:20

They spent, was it Netflix spent something like 350 million on a film last year that I I don't know anyone who's watched it. Yeah, and it's phrases.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:30

If it ain't fix if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And so that's one, so that's what they're doing at the moment, they just keep doing things, and then the other one is reinventing the wheel.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:40

Well, which is good. I think we're in a bit of a cycle at the moment because when the Hollywood films of the golden age, everyone got a bit sick of them, and that's when you got your Scorsese's, your Milos Foremans, that's when like Cuckoo's Nest and all those things came out, and that was independent guys trying to be like, Well, how about we tell a story that's a little bit different? Then that built into blockbusters, and then in the 80s, when it was all just big guns, big tits, and big muscles, everyone got a bit like, oh, can we have something else? The American Independent stuff came out, and that was all like Spike Lee, Spike Jones, Quentin Tarantino. And everyone was like, Oh, this is a bit more interesting. I'm kind of hoping that now that we've had all of our big Marvel films and all the cape shit, oh, forgot about those, yeah. Like, that we can actually now go, like, well, how about you show us some stories about fucking nobody's trying really hard to just get through the day? Because that's interesting. We can all relate to that.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:40

Like, I'm kind of hoping that we're getting there, but I don't think we No, but I don't think you're alone in those thoughts. Um, I hope I'm not. No, uh no, I don't think you're alone. I didn't see much uh when you were doing your last film and we were going to those shows. Um the screenings of other I didn't see many I saw oh, and there's an edge to that, and oh there's an edge to that, but it wasn't uh it wasn't a psychological edge. It would it was it was always sort of a pooky one, yeah. Or it involved lots of punching. Yes. Um which isn't uh if it was funny punching, yeah, it would have been, oh god, did you see that was awful, awful, terrible bloody carnage, but god I love my head off. Yeah, you can imagine you could do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:28

Oh, I would love to find the next Jackie Chan. Yeah. If I could find the next Jackie Chan, I'd be fucking laughing.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:32

There was magnificent men of their flying machines and and on all those the great race. I mean, when everybody has a great big sort of custard pie fight at the back. I mean, everybody's so happy at the end of that that they're all it's a real relaxant for the audience to go, oh that was good. Oh, yeah, look at that. And it's like it's a bit a little swanny whistles and but crashing cymbals, but but really lovely, you know. Yeah, they could do it with some bit a bit more sort of silliness, I think, sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:00

Well, last year they did a new naked gun film with Liam Neeson, and it was he might work with Liam Neeson might work in there. He was excellent in it. Yeah, the films that Pam Anderson was in it, she was great, she's hilarious. No one gives her enough credit for it. Pamela Anderson, she's fucking hilarious. Really? She's so good. And it was the first time I'd seen a comedy at the cinema where everyone was laughing, everyone was laughing, and then people were laughing at different bits, and I was like, why were you what did you find funny about oh that was good? You know, and I thought maybe it was a one and done, and then we watched it over Christmas again, everyone was laughing again. And I was like, Oh, good, good, good, good. So if they start making more silly films like Airplane, I'm up for it because it's all silliness and it's everyone you don't need to take the world so seriously.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:48

Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean the one that was really good for doing that was Tropic Thunder. Yes. Which was basically the three amigos. Yes. Uh both were right, really, really funny.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:01

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:02

They're good though. Uh well, Tropic Thunder, they're they're just uh stars in the films that are put in the real world and the star thing doesn't just and I think it's great that they were able to take the piss out themselves for those roles as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:21

I think that's good. It's all good.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:24

Yeah. Yeah, no, they're excellent, those things. Yeah, well let's hope that that is a trait that comes back. Well, thank you very much. No, that's alright. Some good stuff. It's a pleasure to pleasure to ramble through that lot. I'm gonna have to definitely add some stuff to the watch list. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you should. You should. Yes. Try dirt road to Lafayette.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:45

Yeah, I'll definitely find that one. That'd be a good one.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:54

No one was talking to you, man.