Just threw my hat over the wall.
I'll be shooting House on the Witchpit in early 2011.
More details to follow.
Stay tuned.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
That's due back on Tuesday before ten.
Back in 1996, I worked in a video shop.
Loads of people who want to make movies end up working in video shops and cinemas, for at least a while, whilst they try and get their careers started. I worked in Blockbuster Video, Westcliff. Blockbuster had just taken the store over when I joined; previously it had been a Ritz Video, and the takeover had meant all of those thousands of distinctive yellow sleeves had been replaced with blue and white ones. I'd attended an interview but failed to get a job at Ritz about a year previously, so the new regime of blue and white had bolstered my confidence to reapply. Exactly the same guy interviewed me, asking much the same questions, but this time I got the job.
Lucky, lucky me.
The vast majority of jobs are little loops of routine presented with very minor variations on a daily basis until you are fired or die, and this applies to jobs in shops even more than most. From the opening rituals to the closing rituals, it started out unfamiliar, then became comfortable, then became soul destroying. I can still picture every shelf, and could have a pretty good stab at telling you where the majority of individual titles were located upon them.
After I'd been there a few months, an edict came down from head office that all branches were to play a single 45 minute trailer tape, presented by Ulrika Johnson, on a loop throughout business hours. This is the sort of thing that doubtless sounds wonderful in a board room but can have a calamitous effect on the sanity and well-being of staff; at least Bill Murray had a whole day to play around with in Groundhog Day, whereas living the vast majority of your waking hours feeling trapped in a single 45 minute loop is cruel and unusual torture. I kept a tape of music labelled 'The Jonsson Solution' tucked under the counter, and would play it over the shop's PA system whenever I felt like I was at breaking point. To this day I can't hear her voice without wincing, and will forever associate the first song on that tape ("Ever Fallen In Love With Someone (You Shouldn't Have Fallen In Love With)?" by The Buzzcocks) with sweet, sweet relief from Jonsson's voice.
I wrote the first odd little fragments of what would eventually become the screenplay for TrashHouse whilst standing in that video shop, although those fragments wouldn't end up gelling into any sort of coherent whole for six years or so. I can clearly remember writing 'It's raining. A girl in a red cloak walks up a hill towards a dark house' on a notepad beside the cash register, and that became the opening scene of the movie.
Except the hill.
And the cloak.
And the rain.
And it wasn't quite the opening scene, because we had to add a pre-credits sequence to get a gore shot in nice and early.
But there was definitely a girl and a house, so the point remains valid.
I quit Blockbuster at one point, then somehow ended up getting rehired a few months later when desperate for money. I can remember that first shift back, standing behind the same counter, looking at the same shelves, thinking "Fuck, I'm never going to get out of here". Every time I see the last shot of Clerks 2, it resonates within me so much I can't express it.
On 20th February 2006, TrashHouse was released on DVD across the UK. I went for a long walk that day and spent a lot of time thinking. In the early afternoon, I found myself in Blockbuster Westcliff. I hadn't been there for a few years, even as a customer, (I'd moved house a couple of times and it was no longer my closest branch), but I walked in and saw my movie on the shelf. It was, actually, the first time I'd seen one of my films on a shelf anywhere. Available to the public.
Available to rent in the shop where I'd stood for thousands upon thousands of hours, dreaming of making films but worrying in my heart of hearts that I'd never get to do it.
If I get ten moments as good as that in my whole life, I've got nothing to complain about.
Loads of people who want to make movies end up working in video shops and cinemas, for at least a while, whilst they try and get their careers started. I worked in Blockbuster Video, Westcliff. Blockbuster had just taken the store over when I joined; previously it had been a Ritz Video, and the takeover had meant all of those thousands of distinctive yellow sleeves had been replaced with blue and white ones. I'd attended an interview but failed to get a job at Ritz about a year previously, so the new regime of blue and white had bolstered my confidence to reapply. Exactly the same guy interviewed me, asking much the same questions, but this time I got the job.
Lucky, lucky me.
The vast majority of jobs are little loops of routine presented with very minor variations on a daily basis until you are fired or die, and this applies to jobs in shops even more than most. From the opening rituals to the closing rituals, it started out unfamiliar, then became comfortable, then became soul destroying. I can still picture every shelf, and could have a pretty good stab at telling you where the majority of individual titles were located upon them.
After I'd been there a few months, an edict came down from head office that all branches were to play a single 45 minute trailer tape, presented by Ulrika Johnson, on a loop throughout business hours. This is the sort of thing that doubtless sounds wonderful in a board room but can have a calamitous effect on the sanity and well-being of staff; at least Bill Murray had a whole day to play around with in Groundhog Day, whereas living the vast majority of your waking hours feeling trapped in a single 45 minute loop is cruel and unusual torture. I kept a tape of music labelled 'The Jonsson Solution' tucked under the counter, and would play it over the shop's PA system whenever I felt like I was at breaking point. To this day I can't hear her voice without wincing, and will forever associate the first song on that tape ("Ever Fallen In Love With Someone (You Shouldn't Have Fallen In Love With)?" by The Buzzcocks) with sweet, sweet relief from Jonsson's voice.
I wrote the first odd little fragments of what would eventually become the screenplay for TrashHouse whilst standing in that video shop, although those fragments wouldn't end up gelling into any sort of coherent whole for six years or so. I can clearly remember writing 'It's raining. A girl in a red cloak walks up a hill towards a dark house' on a notepad beside the cash register, and that became the opening scene of the movie.
Except the hill.
And the cloak.
And the rain.
And it wasn't quite the opening scene, because we had to add a pre-credits sequence to get a gore shot in nice and early.
But there was definitely a girl and a house, so the point remains valid.
I quit Blockbuster at one point, then somehow ended up getting rehired a few months later when desperate for money. I can remember that first shift back, standing behind the same counter, looking at the same shelves, thinking "Fuck, I'm never going to get out of here". Every time I see the last shot of Clerks 2, it resonates within me so much I can't express it.
On 20th February 2006, TrashHouse was released on DVD across the UK. I went for a long walk that day and spent a lot of time thinking. In the early afternoon, I found myself in Blockbuster Westcliff. I hadn't been there for a few years, even as a customer, (I'd moved house a couple of times and it was no longer my closest branch), but I walked in and saw my movie on the shelf. It was, actually, the first time I'd seen one of my films on a shelf anywhere. Available to the public.
Available to rent in the shop where I'd stood for thousands upon thousands of hours, dreaming of making films but worrying in my heart of hearts that I'd never get to do it.
If I get ten moments as good as that in my whole life, I've got nothing to complain about.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Bordello Death Tales Festival Screenings
The first chances for the public to catch our sensational terror anthology Bordello Death Tales (with brand new interlaced stories from James Eaves, Al Ronald and my bad self) are coming up over the next couple of weeks.
The flick is nasty, funny and full-tilt.. The first online review can still be read over at MJ Simpson's site and the first festival dates are as follows..
September 1st , 7pm, at Cine Olido, Brazil (Part of Cinefantasy Festival)
September 4th - Portobello Film Festival, London, UK Click Here
September 9th , 6pm, at Centro Cultural, São Paulo (Part of Cinefantasy Festival)
Friday, August 13, 2010
Strippers vs Werewolves Announcement
The full story is over at Dread Central..
Click here to check out the full story & teaser art
The short version is that SvW is a go. Directed by me, produced by Jonathan Sothcott and starring the wonderful Adele Silva.
Folks, this one's gonna be great fun. Trust me.
Should be shooting either late this year or early 2011. I shall keep you posted!
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
The VHS Mountain
Back when I was doing my A-levels in 1991, I filmed a short documentary about film censorship. As the opening shot, I stacked up a selection of my VHS collection and made a wall out of them, so that I could crash through the wall, sending them tumbling, and deliver the line "In the UK, movies are big business" straight to camera. This anecdote will probably lead you to conclude a few things about me.
1) I have a flair for the over-dramatic which is probably better suited to fiction than documentary
2) I am no longer able to describe myself as being in my early 30s.
3) I had a VHS collection big enough to build a wall out of in 1991.
Buying movies was my thing, from the mid 80s onwards. It's easy to forget nowadays, but the retail market for films was non-existant back then; the tapes stayed on the shelves of rental shops until they snapped or got stolen. Very, very occasionally somewhere would sell off some tapes; in 1986, when I was twelve, my parents bought me an ex-rental copy of Gremlins for £56 because I had been renting it nearly every week since the film's release the previous November and it was bound to work out cheaper in the long run. The other early additions to the collection were also ex-rentals, which included Ghostbusters, Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment and Spies Like Us.
Then, something strange happened. My family were on holiday one summer (presumably 1987) and a batch of feature films were for sale in the local WH Smiths. All Warner Brothers titles, and all brand new. All priced at £14.99. The video market in the UK had launched the idea of 'sell-through' pricing, where the units were priced for consumers to purchase rather than for rental shops. The market had caught up with me, and my insatiable desire to own movies, and suddenly the idea of building a collection became an actual possibility.
To say that I spent all of my money on videos would be an exaggeration. I also bought cheeseburgers, whenever I went into town at the weekends. To buy videos. Once the water had been tested and the public got the taste for buying rather than renting their movies, suddenly you could buy them everywhere.
And I did.
By 1991 I could, as previously mentioned, build a decent wall out of my collection. That was just the beginning. By this point, video stores selling off ex-rentals was the norm rather than an oddity, so I was not only assembling a collection of sell-through ("small box") titles, but a collection of ex-rental ("big box") and the collection just grew and grew. In 1992 I headed off to University, which meant that the collection had to be broken in two. A select couple of hundred titles accompanied me to Exeter, the remaining thousand or so stayed put at my parents' house. Like mythological beast or a simple earthworm, both sections of the collection continued to grow post-split, meaning that both my shared house in Exeter and my family home in Essex were groaning under the weight of eclectic videotapes by the time I graduated in 1995 and reunited the collection.
DVD killed it, of course. The arrival of the new format, so perfectly pitched at film fans like myself who had long dreamed of seeing deleted scenes, hear directors talk about their work or simply watch a movie in a format that didn't crop a third of the picture off, meant that my collection went from prized possession to retro throwback more or less overnight. Ebay was the other nail in the coffin, of course; it takes all of the damn fun out of collecting. My decade plus of rummaging around in second hand shops and car boot sales for titles was rendered meaningless by the takeoff of Ebay; there's nothing impressive about owning an obscure original pre-certification release of The Evil Dead when any bugger with a thick enough wallet and a little bit of patience could pick one up from Ebay any day of the week.
That's one of the reasons that my DVD collection has never grown to the size and diversity of my VHS one, too.. Collecting stuff just seems a bit pointless in the on-demand age.
My Blu-Ray collection numbers less than a dozen discs.
With apologies to Stand By Me, I never had a film collection later on like the one I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, does anyone?
1) I have a flair for the over-dramatic which is probably better suited to fiction than documentary
2) I am no longer able to describe myself as being in my early 30s.
3) I had a VHS collection big enough to build a wall out of in 1991.
Buying movies was my thing, from the mid 80s onwards. It's easy to forget nowadays, but the retail market for films was non-existant back then; the tapes stayed on the shelves of rental shops until they snapped or got stolen. Very, very occasionally somewhere would sell off some tapes; in 1986, when I was twelve, my parents bought me an ex-rental copy of Gremlins for £56 because I had been renting it nearly every week since the film's release the previous November and it was bound to work out cheaper in the long run. The other early additions to the collection were also ex-rentals, which included Ghostbusters, Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment and Spies Like Us.
Then, something strange happened. My family were on holiday one summer (presumably 1987) and a batch of feature films were for sale in the local WH Smiths. All Warner Brothers titles, and all brand new. All priced at £14.99. The video market in the UK had launched the idea of 'sell-through' pricing, where the units were priced for consumers to purchase rather than for rental shops. The market had caught up with me, and my insatiable desire to own movies, and suddenly the idea of building a collection became an actual possibility.
To say that I spent all of my money on videos would be an exaggeration. I also bought cheeseburgers, whenever I went into town at the weekends. To buy videos. Once the water had been tested and the public got the taste for buying rather than renting their movies, suddenly you could buy them everywhere.
And I did.
By 1991 I could, as previously mentioned, build a decent wall out of my collection. That was just the beginning. By this point, video stores selling off ex-rentals was the norm rather than an oddity, so I was not only assembling a collection of sell-through ("small box") titles, but a collection of ex-rental ("big box") and the collection just grew and grew. In 1992 I headed off to University, which meant that the collection had to be broken in two. A select couple of hundred titles accompanied me to Exeter, the remaining thousand or so stayed put at my parents' house. Like mythological beast or a simple earthworm, both sections of the collection continued to grow post-split, meaning that both my shared house in Exeter and my family home in Essex were groaning under the weight of eclectic videotapes by the time I graduated in 1995 and reunited the collection.
DVD killed it, of course. The arrival of the new format, so perfectly pitched at film fans like myself who had long dreamed of seeing deleted scenes, hear directors talk about their work or simply watch a movie in a format that didn't crop a third of the picture off, meant that my collection went from prized possession to retro throwback more or less overnight. Ebay was the other nail in the coffin, of course; it takes all of the damn fun out of collecting. My decade plus of rummaging around in second hand shops and car boot sales for titles was rendered meaningless by the takeoff of Ebay; there's nothing impressive about owning an obscure original pre-certification release of The Evil Dead when any bugger with a thick enough wallet and a little bit of patience could pick one up from Ebay any day of the week.
That's one of the reasons that my DVD collection has never grown to the size and diversity of my VHS one, too.. Collecting stuff just seems a bit pointless in the on-demand age.
My Blu-Ray collection numbers less than a dozen discs.
With apologies to Stand By Me, I never had a film collection later on like the one I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, does anyone?
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Live shows and writing
A lot of my time recently has been taken up with live shows and writing screenplays, which are a million miles apart in terms of action and reaction.
See, one of the things I used to love about doing stand-up (the gravestone of my stand-up "career" reads 1998-2002) was that the reaction was instantaneous. If I said something, I knew straight away whether people liked it or not. They laughed or didn't, applauded or didn't.. There was no real waiting involved. This principle carries across to doing live shows about filmmaking, to a degree; I know how a show is going from the reaction of the audience and the feedback/questions I get throughout. It's nice. No waiting.
Writing a screenplay, on the other hand, is nothing but waiting. I wrote a great gag for the Strippers vs Werewolves screenplay today. How long am I going to have to find out to hear an audience reaction to that gag? Best part of two years, in all likelhood, by which point I will be so sick to death of the gag that I won't actually find anything funny about it myself anymore. The delay between action and reaction is so interminable that I'll be a different person by the time I get to the payoff.
So maybe that's why I enjoyed the live shows so much. I'd be up for doing some more, so if any educational establishments/film festivals/film clubs or whatever fancy booking a 90 minute show about making low-budget horror movies and getting them distributed around the world, feel free to get in touch.
If I can keep the instant gratification itch scratched, that might hopefully prevent me from going back to the fickle arms of stand-up again. I suspect that my millennium bug routines are now somewhat dated..
See, one of the things I used to love about doing stand-up (the gravestone of my stand-up "career" reads 1998-2002) was that the reaction was instantaneous. If I said something, I knew straight away whether people liked it or not. They laughed or didn't, applauded or didn't.. There was no real waiting involved. This principle carries across to doing live shows about filmmaking, to a degree; I know how a show is going from the reaction of the audience and the feedback/questions I get throughout. It's nice. No waiting.
Writing a screenplay, on the other hand, is nothing but waiting. I wrote a great gag for the Strippers vs Werewolves screenplay today. How long am I going to have to find out to hear an audience reaction to that gag? Best part of two years, in all likelhood, by which point I will be so sick to death of the gag that I won't actually find anything funny about it myself anymore. The delay between action and reaction is so interminable that I'll be a different person by the time I get to the payoff.
So maybe that's why I enjoyed the live shows so much. I'd be up for doing some more, so if any educational establishments/film festivals/film clubs or whatever fancy booking a 90 minute show about making low-budget horror movies and getting them distributed around the world, feel free to get in touch.
If I can keep the instant gratification itch scratched, that might hopefully prevent me from going back to the fickle arms of stand-up again. I suspect that my millennium bug routines are now somewhat dated..
Thursday, June 03, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Scene X
There's a video on YouTube that I don't want you to watch. You probably haven't seen it. It's one of the truly great moments in horror cinema, and I don't want you to go and check it out under any circumstances. In fact, I'll be genuinely pissed if any of you do go and check it out as a result of reading this blog. Don't do it, kids.
In fact, sod it, I'm going to call it 'Scene X' and won't even tell you which movie it's from. Because if you watch it on YouTube, you won't actually see it in any meaningful sense.
Scene X has got a whole load of heartbreakingly crass and badly written comments underneath it. "This is supposed to be scary? ROFL", "its not even scary", "I thought ti was hilarious" and so on, the dull echo chamber of fuckwittery reverberating through the bowels of the internet. The sound of the barely literate congratulating themselves on their lack of engagement with a thirty-year old clip removed from any sense of context.
The reason that Scene X is one of the greatest scenes in horror history isn't the scene itself, it's because of all the rest of the movie around it that isn't Scene X. An ear-splitting gunshot in the middle of a Terminator movie might not even be noticed, whereas an ear-splitting gunshot in the middle of a film of a child playing would have a very different effect indeed. It's all context, and if you rob a powerful scene of that you reduce it to meaningless pixels on a screen and then wonder why it doesn't engage you.
So, no, I'm not going to tell you what Scene X is. Irritatingly, even knowing that there's a brilliant scare-shot on the way will massively dilute your experience of the movie. The movie which is almost impossible to get hold of regardless.
So now you'll probably never see it at all. Because I've painted myself into a corner, where telling you the title would be a meta-spoiler.
My name's Pat Higgins, and my conscience is clear.
In fact, sod it, I'm going to call it 'Scene X' and won't even tell you which movie it's from. Because if you watch it on YouTube, you won't actually see it in any meaningful sense.
Scene X has got a whole load of heartbreakingly crass and badly written comments underneath it. "This is supposed to be scary? ROFL", "its not even scary", "I thought ti was hilarious" and so on, the dull echo chamber of fuckwittery reverberating through the bowels of the internet. The sound of the barely literate congratulating themselves on their lack of engagement with a thirty-year old clip removed from any sense of context.
The reason that Scene X is one of the greatest scenes in horror history isn't the scene itself, it's because of all the rest of the movie around it that isn't Scene X. An ear-splitting gunshot in the middle of a Terminator movie might not even be noticed, whereas an ear-splitting gunshot in the middle of a film of a child playing would have a very different effect indeed. It's all context, and if you rob a powerful scene of that you reduce it to meaningless pixels on a screen and then wonder why it doesn't engage you.
So, no, I'm not going to tell you what Scene X is. Irritatingly, even knowing that there's a brilliant scare-shot on the way will massively dilute your experience of the movie. The movie which is almost impossible to get hold of regardless.
So now you'll probably never see it at all. Because I've painted myself into a corner, where telling you the title would be a meta-spoiler.
My name's Pat Higgins, and my conscience is clear.
Friday, May 07, 2010
Indie Movies Online at Cannes
I'm kind of gutted that I won't be at Cannes this year. I love it and I want to get back there.. Hopefully next year. In the meantime, our good friends over at IMO have set up a special Cannes Film Festival site to help me keep up to date with what's going on and miss it even more. And whilst you're over in the IMO neck of the woods, don't forget that if you're based in the UK you can still check out our award-winning flick The Devil's Music by clicking below..
And if you've already seen TDM, why not check out one of the other movies on the site?
When I haven't been getting all nostalgic about long-closed cinemas or doing Q&A sessions, I've been working on the House on the Witchpit screenplay again. Don't know if it's my mood in general, but the pendulum is swinging back to slightly lighter tonally once more. Maybe I just can't handle writing dark stuff for months..
And if you've already seen TDM, why not check out one of the other movies on the site?
When I haven't been getting all nostalgic about long-closed cinemas or doing Q&A sessions, I've been working on the House on the Witchpit screenplay again. Don't know if it's my mood in general, but the pendulum is swinging back to slightly lighter tonally once more. Maybe I just can't handle writing dark stuff for months..
Thursday, May 06, 2010
The Classic, Westcliff on Sea
This is what I remember, although you can't call it a memory.
Poster frames outside. Six frames, left to right. The two central ones are advertising 'Now Showing'. When I try and focus on the one second from the left I can't get a firm image in my head. It might be advertising local businesses. It's certainly not as interesting as the others, which are advertising all sorts of coming attractions. The one furthest to the right is advertising late night shows on Fridays and Saturdays. The posters for the late shows are pretty lurid, and either scare me silly or tempt me with the forbidden depending how old I am at that particular moment. Scanners, Videodrome, Play Misty for Me, Come Play with Me, Lemon Popsicle, Confessions Of.. through to The Witches of Eastwick, Ruthless People and beyond. Movies I'm not allowed to see. By the time I'm old enough to do so, many of them will be quaint relics of another age.. So the power lies in the posters, and for me at least it always will. In the tease, not the strip. Sell the sizzle, not the steak.
Inside, the lobby smells of cigarette smoke, candy and popcorn. An assistant looks out from behind glass, dispensing little numbered tickets depending on what screen I was heading to. The assistant, who much have changed a dozen times over the years but is present in my mind as either a cheerful balding guy or a faintly disapproving middle-aged woman. They ask my age once only (Lethal Weapon 2, 1989) and the rest of the time just check smoking or non-smoking.
Screen One is downstairs. A whole bunch of memories trip over one another as I try and picture the screen. I'm sitting looking at the pillars and the cladding on the walls whilst waiting nervously to watch The Black Hole, the advertising for which both scares and intrigued me. I glance at my Scooby Doo watch and wonder how many minutes until the film starts. Scooby's arms are the hands of the watch, and I'm getting pretty good at working out the time. Then suddenly, I'm sitting with my Mum eating Revels and watching Breakdance, whilst some kids smoke dope a couple of rows behind us. Then I'm watching Howard The Duck with my buddy Dan Rice, and we're the only people in the screen until about a minute before the film starts.
But this film isn't in Screen One. It's in the smaller screen upstairs, which means walking past another 'Coming Soon' poster midway up the staircase. It's for Damien: Omen II and now I'm too scared to go past it because I'm only a toddler. But somehow I manage it, and I end up in the upstairs lobby looking at a big cardboard stand for Battle Beyond The Stars which looks brilliant, and suddenly I'm a couple of years older and I'm at Saturday Morning Cinema. Screen Two is full of a hundred or so kids all about my age, and a long suffering member of staff called Uncle something is entertaining us and handing out prizes prior to the films. The films are a collection of shorts and cartoons. The main feature is called Electric Eskimo and is about 50 minutes long. There's a serial called Chimp Mates which we see a different episode of every week, except we don't because it's now 5 years later and Uncle something doesn't do the Saturday Morning Cinema anymore, and they show proper, actual films and don't give out prizes. The only criteria is that they have to be PG, so the films aren't always tailored to a crowd of 7-13 year olds. Thus we watch Police Academy 2. And then I'm once again too old to be going to Saturday morning cinema.
And then I'm making plans to go off to University, and I'm too busy thinking about sex and music and pubs and girls and videos to particularly worry about that little cinema down the road because I've, quite frankly, got a lot of other stuff on my mind. And I don't even bother to go to the final show there in 1991.
And then I'm 36, I'm married and I'm probably as grown up as I'm ever going to get.
I'm looking at a Halfords in Westcliff that happens to be standing where some cheap little second-run cinema used to stand. I've stopped by because I need some antifreeze for the car engine but, for some unknown reason, I'm fighting the urge to cry.
Poster frames outside. Six frames, left to right. The two central ones are advertising 'Now Showing'. When I try and focus on the one second from the left I can't get a firm image in my head. It might be advertising local businesses. It's certainly not as interesting as the others, which are advertising all sorts of coming attractions. The one furthest to the right is advertising late night shows on Fridays and Saturdays. The posters for the late shows are pretty lurid, and either scare me silly or tempt me with the forbidden depending how old I am at that particular moment. Scanners, Videodrome, Play Misty for Me, Come Play with Me, Lemon Popsicle, Confessions Of.. through to The Witches of Eastwick, Ruthless People and beyond. Movies I'm not allowed to see. By the time I'm old enough to do so, many of them will be quaint relics of another age.. So the power lies in the posters, and for me at least it always will. In the tease, not the strip. Sell the sizzle, not the steak.
Inside, the lobby smells of cigarette smoke, candy and popcorn. An assistant looks out from behind glass, dispensing little numbered tickets depending on what screen I was heading to. The assistant, who much have changed a dozen times over the years but is present in my mind as either a cheerful balding guy or a faintly disapproving middle-aged woman. They ask my age once only (Lethal Weapon 2, 1989) and the rest of the time just check smoking or non-smoking.
Screen One is downstairs. A whole bunch of memories trip over one another as I try and picture the screen. I'm sitting looking at the pillars and the cladding on the walls whilst waiting nervously to watch The Black Hole, the advertising for which both scares and intrigued me. I glance at my Scooby Doo watch and wonder how many minutes until the film starts. Scooby's arms are the hands of the watch, and I'm getting pretty good at working out the time. Then suddenly, I'm sitting with my Mum eating Revels and watching Breakdance, whilst some kids smoke dope a couple of rows behind us. Then I'm watching Howard The Duck with my buddy Dan Rice, and we're the only people in the screen until about a minute before the film starts.
But this film isn't in Screen One. It's in the smaller screen upstairs, which means walking past another 'Coming Soon' poster midway up the staircase. It's for Damien: Omen II and now I'm too scared to go past it because I'm only a toddler. But somehow I manage it, and I end up in the upstairs lobby looking at a big cardboard stand for Battle Beyond The Stars which looks brilliant, and suddenly I'm a couple of years older and I'm at Saturday Morning Cinema. Screen Two is full of a hundred or so kids all about my age, and a long suffering member of staff called Uncle something is entertaining us and handing out prizes prior to the films. The films are a collection of shorts and cartoons. The main feature is called Electric Eskimo and is about 50 minutes long. There's a serial called Chimp Mates which we see a different episode of every week, except we don't because it's now 5 years later and Uncle something doesn't do the Saturday Morning Cinema anymore, and they show proper, actual films and don't give out prizes. The only criteria is that they have to be PG, so the films aren't always tailored to a crowd of 7-13 year olds. Thus we watch Police Academy 2. And then I'm once again too old to be going to Saturday morning cinema.
And then I'm making plans to go off to University, and I'm too busy thinking about sex and music and pubs and girls and videos to particularly worry about that little cinema down the road because I've, quite frankly, got a lot of other stuff on my mind. And I don't even bother to go to the final show there in 1991.
And then I'm 36, I'm married and I'm probably as grown up as I'm ever going to get.
I'm looking at a Halfords in Westcliff that happens to be standing where some cheap little second-run cinema used to stand. I've stopped by because I need some antifreeze for the car engine but, for some unknown reason, I'm fighting the urge to cry.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Tickets for special festival screening of The Devil's Music
A rare chance to see The Devil's Music on the big screen with a Director's Q&A. I've never done a Q&A for this particular movie before, largely because it's more fun to lie about it. But, on Saturday, for one day only, I'm planning to tell the truth. So, if you're anywhere near Southend (which is only 45 minutes outside London) on Saturday 1st May, you can book your tickets here..
Click here to purchase tickets
Click here to purchase tickets
Saturday, April 24, 2010
The Octopus that wasn't in The Goonies
I think it’s fair to say that it all started with 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
My Mum took me to see a cinematic re-release of the 1954 Richard Fleischer version back in the Seventies. Common sense tells me it must have been around 1978, when I was four, but the official date for the re-release was apparently 1976, which would place me at the tender age of two. Either way, I’d seen the ads on the TV and had badgered my already long-suffering mother into taking me. My poor old Mum still had untold delights of genre cinema awaiting her over the next few years, until I reached such an age as I could be safely abandoned in the cinema on my own. The arrival of this date may have ultimately been somewhat hastened by her sense of parental responsibility failing to outweigh her desire not to sit through Krull for a fourth time.
My four/two year-old self had been looking forward to 20,000 Leagues for one reason alone, and that reason had tentacles and a snapping yellow beak. The TV ads for the re-release had focused on the squid fight scene to such an extent that I genuinely think I expected Giant Squid: The Movie rather than the well-meaning Jules Verse adaptation that unrolled before me. Result: I fidgeted. A lot. I suspect that I may have engaged in thoughtful discussion regarding the narrative with my mum; discussion along the lines of ‘Will the squid be on soon?’ every couple of minutes throughout the lion’s share of the running time.
But when those tentacles finally crept onto the screen, I fell silent. How could I not? I was absolutely and utterly transfixed. The bastard was glorious. I left feeling that I’d seen the single greatest sequence ever filmed, and the tiny seeds of cheerful, fanboy obsession were scattered onto the fertile soil of my pre-school mind. Without seeing that squid attack, who knows? Maybe today I’d be the kind of guy who feels more comfortable with a rugby ball in his hand than a box of popcorn. Maybe I’d have never fallen in love with film. Of course, this being in the days before VHS, it was years before I got to see the sequence again. So, in the meantime, I hunted for memorabilia and photos. But, more than that, I hunted for more movies with enormous rubber cephalopods.
Pickings were pretty slim. A few years later, I fell instantly in love with Warlords of Atlantis and was more than willing to overlook its flaws on the basis of the wonderful stop-motion octopus. I tried, but failed, to find somewhere showing Tentacoli after hearing it luridly described by my uncle, but was delighted when that same uncle (genre writer Tim Stout, who had a novel and a couple of anthologies of short stories published in the seventies and early eighties) pointed me in the direction of It Came From Beneath The Sea on ITV one Sunday lunchtime.
The years passed, and the arrival of VHS meant that I was suddenly able to compile my favourite mollusc moments on one dog-eared tape. I’d sit with play and record set to pause, waiting for the brief arrival of an octopus or squid in countless movies, such as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, where I felt that such an appearance would be inevitable. My interests broadened and my tastes became more varied, but the root of why I grew to love cinema in the first place always remained.
I was eleven years old when pre-publicity started turning up for the big Spielberg-produced Christmas movie that year, The Goonies. By this point, I was devouring any information about film that I could lay my hands on. I used to obsessively collect bubblegum cards just to catch glimpses of scenes that hadn’t yet seen the light of a projector bulb. I used to read novelisations that were released before the movie’s launch.
And that was where I found it.
First page of the novelisation of The Goonies. On the inside leaf; a teaser bit of text from later in the novel, designed to whet your appetite. A description of an octopus attacking the kids, in a flooded cavern with a pirate ship floating sedately in the background.
For those couple of weeks, pocket money went exclusively on Goonies bubblegum cards. Early on in my quest, I picked up an index card. I noticed that cards 43 and 44 were listed Tentacles of Death! and The Rockin’ Octopus! respectively. Those were my Grail. I tore packets and chewed neon pink bubblegum until my teeth were falling like rain. Eventually, I got both cards. Tentacles of Death! was actually a split image, meaning there were two pictures on one card. Two smaller pictures, in other words. I squinted and squinted. I even used a magnifying glass. My appetite was most definitely whetted. The Rockin’ Octopus! showed the beast in all its glory, and took my breath away when I opened the packet. I bought the soundtrack album and grooved to the absolutely dreadful sounds of Eight Arms to Hold You by the Goon Squad, the song that I knew would ultimately score the scene.
I can still remember how I felt, queuing to see the movie a couple of weeks later. When it finally hit the screen, I knew virtually every line in advance from all my background reading. My impatience to get to the octopus stopped me from enjoying it fully. Twenty minutes from the end, the kids splashed down into the cavern with the pirate ship. I knew that, at any moment, Stef would start accusing Mouth of groping her underwater, not realising that it was a tentacle brushing past her leg.
Except she didn’t. The kids got on board the pirate ship without incident.
I did a double-take. I simply didn’t understand. I watched the rest of the film in a sort of daze, wondering where my octopus had gone. In the final scene on the beach, when a policeman asked the kids about their adventure, Data piped up;
“The giant octopus was pretty bad. Very scary”
It was everything I could do to stop myself crying.
I went to see the film again the following week at a different cinema, hoping that somehow there’d been a mix-up at the initial screening and that a reel had been missed. When it finally became apparent that all prints were mollusc-free, I wrote to Warner Brothers demanding the scene be reinstated. Or for them to send me a copy, whichever was easier. They didn’t reply. I collected any magazines that might be able to explain the situation, even spending the majority of a week’s pocket money on an imported issue of Cinefex which featured a couple of photos from the scene and, at last, a vague explanation of why it was removed. The word ‘unrealistic’ was cruelly bandied around.
It was another thirteen long years before I finally got to see the octopus scene in any form. During that time I considered various way-out plans to get to see the footage, including applying for a job at Burman Studios (who made the octopus) and asking for a copy of their showreel. I dreamt about the scene more times than I care to think about.
Then, one day in the late nineties, a grainy video clip turned up on a Goonies fan site. It had been video-captured from a US screening on The Disney Channel which reincorporated the scene. I sat and watch it a couple of dozen times, not really able to process the experience or even tell whether I was enjoying it or not. It was a further two years before I got to see it on a decent size screen, (on the final, nowadays inevitable, special edition DVD release), and probably another three for me to come to terms with the truth.
The truth about the octopus scene is very simple and straightforward. It’s crap. It doesn’t work. It’s badly executed, has no logical place in the movie and no pay-off. The flick works better without it.
But that’s a 36-year old screenwriter writing those words, and every time I even think about the subject the 11-year old that I used to be starts crying. And I can’t live with that.
So, the campaign for a director’s cut starts here.
And you can stick the rubber Suicide Squid back into Red Dwarf whilst you’re at it.
My Mum took me to see a cinematic re-release of the 1954 Richard Fleischer version back in the Seventies. Common sense tells me it must have been around 1978, when I was four, but the official date for the re-release was apparently 1976, which would place me at the tender age of two. Either way, I’d seen the ads on the TV and had badgered my already long-suffering mother into taking me. My poor old Mum still had untold delights of genre cinema awaiting her over the next few years, until I reached such an age as I could be safely abandoned in the cinema on my own. The arrival of this date may have ultimately been somewhat hastened by her sense of parental responsibility failing to outweigh her desire not to sit through Krull for a fourth time.
My four/two year-old self had been looking forward to 20,000 Leagues for one reason alone, and that reason had tentacles and a snapping yellow beak. The TV ads for the re-release had focused on the squid fight scene to such an extent that I genuinely think I expected Giant Squid: The Movie rather than the well-meaning Jules Verse adaptation that unrolled before me. Result: I fidgeted. A lot. I suspect that I may have engaged in thoughtful discussion regarding the narrative with my mum; discussion along the lines of ‘Will the squid be on soon?’ every couple of minutes throughout the lion’s share of the running time.
But when those tentacles finally crept onto the screen, I fell silent. How could I not? I was absolutely and utterly transfixed. The bastard was glorious. I left feeling that I’d seen the single greatest sequence ever filmed, and the tiny seeds of cheerful, fanboy obsession were scattered onto the fertile soil of my pre-school mind. Without seeing that squid attack, who knows? Maybe today I’d be the kind of guy who feels more comfortable with a rugby ball in his hand than a box of popcorn. Maybe I’d have never fallen in love with film. Of course, this being in the days before VHS, it was years before I got to see the sequence again. So, in the meantime, I hunted for memorabilia and photos. But, more than that, I hunted for more movies with enormous rubber cephalopods.
Pickings were pretty slim. A few years later, I fell instantly in love with Warlords of Atlantis and was more than willing to overlook its flaws on the basis of the wonderful stop-motion octopus. I tried, but failed, to find somewhere showing Tentacoli after hearing it luridly described by my uncle, but was delighted when that same uncle (genre writer Tim Stout, who had a novel and a couple of anthologies of short stories published in the seventies and early eighties) pointed me in the direction of It Came From Beneath The Sea on ITV one Sunday lunchtime.
The years passed, and the arrival of VHS meant that I was suddenly able to compile my favourite mollusc moments on one dog-eared tape. I’d sit with play and record set to pause, waiting for the brief arrival of an octopus or squid in countless movies, such as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, where I felt that such an appearance would be inevitable. My interests broadened and my tastes became more varied, but the root of why I grew to love cinema in the first place always remained.
I was eleven years old when pre-publicity started turning up for the big Spielberg-produced Christmas movie that year, The Goonies. By this point, I was devouring any information about film that I could lay my hands on. I used to obsessively collect bubblegum cards just to catch glimpses of scenes that hadn’t yet seen the light of a projector bulb. I used to read novelisations that were released before the movie’s launch.
And that was where I found it.
First page of the novelisation of The Goonies. On the inside leaf; a teaser bit of text from later in the novel, designed to whet your appetite. A description of an octopus attacking the kids, in a flooded cavern with a pirate ship floating sedately in the background.
For those couple of weeks, pocket money went exclusively on Goonies bubblegum cards. Early on in my quest, I picked up an index card. I noticed that cards 43 and 44 were listed Tentacles of Death! and The Rockin’ Octopus! respectively. Those were my Grail. I tore packets and chewed neon pink bubblegum until my teeth were falling like rain. Eventually, I got both cards. Tentacles of Death! was actually a split image, meaning there were two pictures on one card. Two smaller pictures, in other words. I squinted and squinted. I even used a magnifying glass. My appetite was most definitely whetted. The Rockin’ Octopus! showed the beast in all its glory, and took my breath away when I opened the packet. I bought the soundtrack album and grooved to the absolutely dreadful sounds of Eight Arms to Hold You by the Goon Squad, the song that I knew would ultimately score the scene.
I can still remember how I felt, queuing to see the movie a couple of weeks later. When it finally hit the screen, I knew virtually every line in advance from all my background reading. My impatience to get to the octopus stopped me from enjoying it fully. Twenty minutes from the end, the kids splashed down into the cavern with the pirate ship. I knew that, at any moment, Stef would start accusing Mouth of groping her underwater, not realising that it was a tentacle brushing past her leg.
Except she didn’t. The kids got on board the pirate ship without incident.
I did a double-take. I simply didn’t understand. I watched the rest of the film in a sort of daze, wondering where my octopus had gone. In the final scene on the beach, when a policeman asked the kids about their adventure, Data piped up;
“The giant octopus was pretty bad. Very scary”
It was everything I could do to stop myself crying.
I went to see the film again the following week at a different cinema, hoping that somehow there’d been a mix-up at the initial screening and that a reel had been missed. When it finally became apparent that all prints were mollusc-free, I wrote to Warner Brothers demanding the scene be reinstated. Or for them to send me a copy, whichever was easier. They didn’t reply. I collected any magazines that might be able to explain the situation, even spending the majority of a week’s pocket money on an imported issue of Cinefex which featured a couple of photos from the scene and, at last, a vague explanation of why it was removed. The word ‘unrealistic’ was cruelly bandied around.
It was another thirteen long years before I finally got to see the octopus scene in any form. During that time I considered various way-out plans to get to see the footage, including applying for a job at Burman Studios (who made the octopus) and asking for a copy of their showreel. I dreamt about the scene more times than I care to think about.
Then, one day in the late nineties, a grainy video clip turned up on a Goonies fan site. It had been video-captured from a US screening on The Disney Channel which reincorporated the scene. I sat and watch it a couple of dozen times, not really able to process the experience or even tell whether I was enjoying it or not. It was a further two years before I got to see it on a decent size screen, (on the final, nowadays inevitable, special edition DVD release), and probably another three for me to come to terms with the truth.
The truth about the octopus scene is very simple and straightforward. It’s crap. It doesn’t work. It’s badly executed, has no logical place in the movie and no pay-off. The flick works better without it.
But that’s a 36-year old screenwriter writing those words, and every time I even think about the subject the 11-year old that I used to be starts crying. And I can’t live with that.
So, the campaign for a director’s cut starts here.
And you can stick the rubber Suicide Squid back into Red Dwarf whilst you’re at it.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Fake Blood on the Lens
Got some live stuff coming up.
I'll be presenting a short workshop about the low-budget horror industry. This is part of the Southend Film Festival (http://www.southendfilmfestival.com/)and should be good fun. 12pm at Southend Central Library on 1st May. Free to get in, first come first served. It's gonna be like a cut down version of the full Fake Blood on the Lens show, which can next be caught at.. Oh, more of that later.
The workshop is followed by a special one-off screening of The Devil's Music over at The Dixon Studio (next door to the Palace Theatre) in Westcliff, Essex. The show's at 2.45 and I'll be around for Q&A, tickets are only £2 from the Palace Theatre box office (or via http://www.thecliffspavilion.co.uk/ as soon as they update the film list.. We're a replacement for 'Grave Tales' on the original listings)
Then, there's the full Fake Blood on the Lens show taking place at 7pm, 17th June as part of the Southend Festival (different to the Southend Film Festival.. I know it gets confusing). Not sure of prices or tickets yet, I'll let you know closer to the time.
I'll be presenting a short workshop about the low-budget horror industry. This is part of the Southend Film Festival (http://www.southendfilmfestival.com/)and should be good fun. 12pm at Southend Central Library on 1st May. Free to get in, first come first served. It's gonna be like a cut down version of the full Fake Blood on the Lens show, which can next be caught at.. Oh, more of that later.
The workshop is followed by a special one-off screening of The Devil's Music over at The Dixon Studio (next door to the Palace Theatre) in Westcliff, Essex. The show's at 2.45 and I'll be around for Q&A, tickets are only £2 from the Palace Theatre box office (or via http://www.thecliffspavilion.co.uk/ as soon as they update the film list.. We're a replacement for 'Grave Tales' on the original listings)
Then, there's the full Fake Blood on the Lens show taking place at 7pm, 17th June as part of the Southend Festival (different to the Southend Film Festival.. I know it gets confusing). Not sure of prices or tickets yet, I'll let you know closer to the time.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
BDT - The First Review
And the first review of Bordello Death Tales, courtesy of the esteemed MJ Simpson, hits the web:
BORDELLO DEATH TALES REVIEW
BORDELLO DEATH TALES REVIEW
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Bordello Death Tales screening
Saturday rolled around, and we had the first screening of Bordello Death Tales. We held it in a seriously unconventional venue, (Gallery 491 in Leytonstone), which had a giant paper-mache squid suspended from the ceiling in the screening room.
Myself, Jim and Al were interviewed by a film crew from Gorezone (for inclusion on a future covermounted DVD), including a section where I was interviewed by a rotting puppet cat. The cat also had a little puppet cock poking out from underneath its Megan Fox t-shirt; a detail that's bound to occur to me when I'm sitting in an old folks' home one day, and prompt the staff to think that I've finally gone off the deep end.
The screening was pretty terrific, and crowded enough that I actually ended up having to stand through it (seeing as I missed the scramble for seats as I was onstage with the other two introducing the movie!). I'm sure that a review or two will crop up soon enough. I know I've sung the praises of the flick before, but it really is pretty damn funky, with something for every type of horror fan.
Of course, Hellbride hit DVD in the UK this week too. Good to see it on shelves across the country. I've been keeping an eye out for print coverage but I'll probably miss some; any of you folks out there spot some coverage in a mag I might have missed drop me a line via Twitter and point me in the right direction.
House on the Witchpit writing still going well. Cannot wait to shoot the damn thing, but it still might be a while.
Myself, Jim and Al were interviewed by a film crew from Gorezone (for inclusion on a future covermounted DVD), including a section where I was interviewed by a rotting puppet cat. The cat also had a little puppet cock poking out from underneath its Megan Fox t-shirt; a detail that's bound to occur to me when I'm sitting in an old folks' home one day, and prompt the staff to think that I've finally gone off the deep end.
The screening was pretty terrific, and crowded enough that I actually ended up having to stand through it (seeing as I missed the scramble for seats as I was onstage with the other two introducing the movie!). I'm sure that a review or two will crop up soon enough. I know I've sung the praises of the flick before, but it really is pretty damn funky, with something for every type of horror fan.
Of course, Hellbride hit DVD in the UK this week too. Good to see it on shelves across the country. I've been keeping an eye out for print coverage but I'll probably miss some; any of you folks out there spot some coverage in a mag I might have missed drop me a line via Twitter and point me in the right direction.
House on the Witchpit writing still going well. Cannot wait to shoot the damn thing, but it still might be a while.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Big week approaching..
On Saturday, Bordello Death Tales gets played before an audience for the first time. It's a movie that's been hovering in post-production for far longer than we ever intended; we'd intended to do it pretty quick and dirty, and anticipated locking some time towards the end of 2008. Buuuut, things get polished, then tweaked, then changed, and the whole process took an awful lot longer than we'd intended.
As I've previously mentioned on this blog, screening a movie for the first time is always a strange experience. As a filmmaker, you'll have seen the movie a million times before, but you've never truly seen it until you've seen it with an audience. Every tiny flaw that you thought you could get away with suddenly looks absolutely massive. Every scene that you felt you'd cut down to the bone could suddenly use another 40 seconds cut from it to really make it zing. Oh, the wisdom of the filmmaker watching his movie with a crowd for the first time. If only he could go back and tell his previous self the things he's learned. At least this time I've got two fellow filmmakers enjoying the same experience; because BDT is, of course, the child of three fathers we all get to worry equally. I've never had anyone to share the experience with before.
In other news, Hellbride finally hits UK DVD on Monday. You can go and pre-order a copy off Play for a meagre £2.99 by clicking on the lovely cover below. Go do it now, it's okay, I'll wait.
There, back now? Good. Hope you enjoy it. It's been interesting to see the reactions we've been getting from the UK reviewers as opposed to how the flick went down in the US. There are new reviews springing up daily.
Elsewhere in my ridiculous life, I've been asked to make a couple of festival appearances over the next few months. The first will be at the Southend Film Festival, where I'll be talking about low budget horror on Saturday May 1st. Not quite sure what people are going to want to hear; if you've got any ideas or requests feel free to hit the contact buttons.
I'll keep you posted as to how the screening goes.
Rock on,
Pat
As I've previously mentioned on this blog, screening a movie for the first time is always a strange experience. As a filmmaker, you'll have seen the movie a million times before, but you've never truly seen it until you've seen it with an audience. Every tiny flaw that you thought you could get away with suddenly looks absolutely massive. Every scene that you felt you'd cut down to the bone could suddenly use another 40 seconds cut from it to really make it zing. Oh, the wisdom of the filmmaker watching his movie with a crowd for the first time. If only he could go back and tell his previous self the things he's learned. At least this time I've got two fellow filmmakers enjoying the same experience; because BDT is, of course, the child of three fathers we all get to worry equally. I've never had anyone to share the experience with before.
In other news, Hellbride finally hits UK DVD on Monday. You can go and pre-order a copy off Play for a meagre £2.99 by clicking on the lovely cover below. Go do it now, it's okay, I'll wait.
There, back now? Good. Hope you enjoy it. It's been interesting to see the reactions we've been getting from the UK reviewers as opposed to how the flick went down in the US. There are new reviews springing up daily.
Elsewhere in my ridiculous life, I've been asked to make a couple of festival appearances over the next few months. The first will be at the Southend Film Festival, where I'll be talking about low budget horror on Saturday May 1st. Not quite sure what people are going to want to hear; if you've got any ideas or requests feel free to hit the contact buttons.
I'll keep you posted as to how the screening goes.
Rock on,
Pat
Monday, March 08, 2010
What makes a band a band?
I love the band Pop Will Eat Itself. Always have, always will. Their 1989 album 'This is the day.. This is the hour.. This is This' was the first album I ever bought with an 'explicit content' warning sticker on it; I can remember walking up to the counter and not actually knowing whether or not the shop would sell it to me as I was under 18. It felt like contraband, and, God, I loved that album. Within a week of owning it I knew every word.
The years went by, and I went to see PWEI a whole bunch of times. By the time I saw them in 1996, it was clear that something wasn't quite right anymore. Founder member Graham Crabb had quit, and one night in Hammersmith I saw the remaining members play the shortest set I'd ever seen them play, heavy on new material which sounded like it was lacking inspiration. For the first time, they didn't look like were enjoying themselves, and I wasn't very surprised when the band called it a day not long after.
In 2005, the band played a series of reunion gigs with all members, including Graham. The gig I saw in Shepherd's Bush was possibly the best I'd ever seen them; they sounded fantastic. It was one of those gigs where you can buy a CD as soon as the set is over, and I still play that CD pretty regularly. It's a pretty perfect memory. There were various suggestions afterwards that the band were working on a new album. Little taster snippets were put online and sounded good, but it soon became apparent that the project wasn't really going to fly after all due to scheduling commitments.
All of this led to the creation of a band called VileEvils, from the ashes of the PWEI reunion. They were pretty damn good too, and I ended up doing a video for their single NoFear (leaning fairly heavily on unused material from the shoots for TrashHouse and KillerKiller). Here it is:
VileEvils were due to release their first album at towards the end of this month, but.. Suddenly, a press release. One that starts like this..
dPulse Recordings has announced today the opening of a new chapter in the storied legacy of Pop Will Eat Itself - one of the most influential names in the history of electronic rock music – as Graham Crabb, the band’s principal songwriter and co-lead vocalist, ramps up with a new era for the PWEI legacy.
With a string of Top 40 UK and US hits, Pop Will Eat Itself rose to prominence fueled by Crabb-penned tunes such as ‘There Is No Love Between Us Anymore’, ‘Bulletproof’, ‘RSVP’, ‘Get The Girl, Kill The Baddies’ and many, many others.
With the new Pop Will Eat Itself single ‘Axe of Men (2010)’ currently making its rounds on DJ and radio promo worldwide, Crabb and PWEI will release a new album in summer 2010. That album will include tracks originally planned for the now-cancelled Vile Evils album Vive Le Vile Evil, which was scheduled for release by dPulse Recordings 23 March.
With news of this announcement, Graham Crabb and long-time collaborator and PWEI member Adam Mole have mutually and amicably disbanded their project Vile Evils, effective immediately.
There's more at http://pwei.info if you're curious.
So, this summer I'm going to get to go and see PWEI, except that there won't be a single person on the stage who was also on the stage at that Hammermith gig in 1996. Soooo.. What makes a band a band?
Another of my favourite 90s bands, Carter USM, also amicably disbanded in the late 90s. Many years later, they played a series of gigs under the banner "Who's The Daddy Now?", the encores of which consisted of both founder members of Carter USM (Jim Bob and Fruitbat) onstage, playing Carter USM songs. They billed themselves as the only covers band to contain all the original members. So was that Carter USM? Or not Carter USM?
(Incidentally, I also directed a video for one of Jim Bob's solo singles, which is below if you haven't already seen it..)
Is a band a statement of intent? A specific collection of human beings? Presumably like the 2010 version of PWEI, the versions of Hole and Smashing Pumpkins currently touring both only have one member in common with their previous incarnations. The current line-up of The Wonder Stuff also caused quite a bit of controversy when first unveiled, but that's a whole other story.
I love music an awful lot, and I'll support the new version of PWEI just as I supported the old one. In fact, I'm rather excited at going to see them. I've just never quite been able to shift this question as to what makes a band from my mind.. Maybe the Sugababes will provide us all with an answer, as they argue it out in court.
The years went by, and I went to see PWEI a whole bunch of times. By the time I saw them in 1996, it was clear that something wasn't quite right anymore. Founder member Graham Crabb had quit, and one night in Hammersmith I saw the remaining members play the shortest set I'd ever seen them play, heavy on new material which sounded like it was lacking inspiration. For the first time, they didn't look like were enjoying themselves, and I wasn't very surprised when the band called it a day not long after.
In 2005, the band played a series of reunion gigs with all members, including Graham. The gig I saw in Shepherd's Bush was possibly the best I'd ever seen them; they sounded fantastic. It was one of those gigs where you can buy a CD as soon as the set is over, and I still play that CD pretty regularly. It's a pretty perfect memory. There were various suggestions afterwards that the band were working on a new album. Little taster snippets were put online and sounded good, but it soon became apparent that the project wasn't really going to fly after all due to scheduling commitments.
All of this led to the creation of a band called VileEvils, from the ashes of the PWEI reunion. They were pretty damn good too, and I ended up doing a video for their single NoFear (leaning fairly heavily on unused material from the shoots for TrashHouse and KillerKiller). Here it is:
VileEvils were due to release their first album at towards the end of this month, but.. Suddenly, a press release. One that starts like this..
dPulse Recordings has announced today the opening of a new chapter in the storied legacy of Pop Will Eat Itself - one of the most influential names in the history of electronic rock music – as Graham Crabb, the band’s principal songwriter and co-lead vocalist, ramps up with a new era for the PWEI legacy.
With a string of Top 40 UK and US hits, Pop Will Eat Itself rose to prominence fueled by Crabb-penned tunes such as ‘There Is No Love Between Us Anymore’, ‘Bulletproof’, ‘RSVP’, ‘Get The Girl, Kill The Baddies’ and many, many others.
With the new Pop Will Eat Itself single ‘Axe of Men (2010)’ currently making its rounds on DJ and radio promo worldwide, Crabb and PWEI will release a new album in summer 2010. That album will include tracks originally planned for the now-cancelled Vile Evils album Vive Le Vile Evil, which was scheduled for release by dPulse Recordings 23 March.
With news of this announcement, Graham Crabb and long-time collaborator and PWEI member Adam Mole have mutually and amicably disbanded their project Vile Evils, effective immediately.
There's more at http://pwei.info if you're curious.
So, this summer I'm going to get to go and see PWEI, except that there won't be a single person on the stage who was also on the stage at that Hammermith gig in 1996. Soooo.. What makes a band a band?
Another of my favourite 90s bands, Carter USM, also amicably disbanded in the late 90s. Many years later, they played a series of gigs under the banner "Who's The Daddy Now?", the encores of which consisted of both founder members of Carter USM (Jim Bob and Fruitbat) onstage, playing Carter USM songs. They billed themselves as the only covers band to contain all the original members. So was that Carter USM? Or not Carter USM?
(Incidentally, I also directed a video for one of Jim Bob's solo singles, which is below if you haven't already seen it..)
Is a band a statement of intent? A specific collection of human beings? Presumably like the 2010 version of PWEI, the versions of Hole and Smashing Pumpkins currently touring both only have one member in common with their previous incarnations. The current line-up of The Wonder Stuff also caused quite a bit of controversy when first unveiled, but that's a whole other story.
I love music an awful lot, and I'll support the new version of PWEI just as I supported the old one. In fact, I'm rather excited at going to see them. I've just never quite been able to shift this question as to what makes a band from my mind.. Maybe the Sugababes will provide us all with an answer, as they argue it out in court.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Hellbride UK
It looks like Hellbride is coming out in the UK.. Well, it went through the BBFC this week, anyway.
BBFC rates Hellbride 15 uncut
I had no idea that it was coming out, so I haven't got any details just yet!
BBFC rates Hellbride 15 uncut
I had no idea that it was coming out, so I haven't got any details just yet!
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Barely Legal
I saw a late-teenager (probably around 17 or 18, I reckon) get asked for proof of age when buying a 12 rated DVD last week. The kid was indignant and angry, but ultimately caved and showed some ID.
Whilst travelling the States in 2002, I saw a 55 year-old woman get refused alcohol in a San Francisco comedy club because she didn't have ID with her.
On a similar tack, I got asked for ID buying a bottle of wine a couple of years ago. 33 years old I was at the time (as I indignantly told the woman behind the counter; "I'm the same age as JESUS!") and it was the first time I'd been asked my age buying alcohol since I was 17.
All of these examples are utterly fucking stupid, and I worry that they're indicative of a growing culture where using your judgement is seen as a dangerous and unneccessary risk. If you seriously aren't comfortable enough with your judgement that a grey-haired, not-particularly-well-preserved woman can be served alcohol, I'm really not comfortable with you doing ANY job whatsoever. It comes down to the old argument that by operating like a machine and insisting on ID for everyone, you are potentially stopping a single 17 year old getting served. And that's got to be a good thing, right?
Bollocks. Here's my two pennies; cash 'em in for the currency of your choice. Drumroll..
An age restriction system works better when it leaks. When it is flawed. When 17 year-olds occasionally get served beer in pubs and get into 18 movies. Because if you're a 17 year old in an environment that you're not meant to be in, there's at least a chance that you'll shut up and keep a low profile. That you'll hang back and see how things are done. If you know that if a particular bartender notices you you'll get thrown out, you'll avoid drawing too much attention to yourself. You'll blend. You might even take it relatively easy on the booze intake. Your introduction to the adult world is gradual and subdued, since you know you don't really belong there yet.
If, on the other hand, every age restriction works 100%, by the time a kid hits his 18th birthday he's got a massive sense of entitlement backed up by absolutely no experience whatsoever of the environment that he's entering. He walks in, flashes his newly minted ID, never learns any sort of bar etiquette, gets shitfaced and falls over or starts a fight. He knows that he won't be ejected until he's done something actively bad, and never learns the ropes because he doesn't need to.
Movies work the same way. I fondly remember my first underage 15 at the cinema (Good Morning Vietnam) and my first underage 18 at the cinema (Misery). I sat in the darkness, terrified that the usher would suddenly click and think 'Hey, that kid looked a bit young', hunt me down in the darkness and throw me out. So I sat through the movies in silence, and.. Guess what? The habit stuck. I went from being a kid who yabbered in movies to being an adult who knew to shut the fuck up as soon as the certificate hit the screen. If I'd been robbed of that experience, if the first time I'd sat in an age-restricted movie I'd have been brimming with a sense of my entitlement to be there, maybe that process of growth would never have happened or been severely delayed.
Every time a supermarket increases the age at which you 'might' be ID'd, for the good of us all, it breaks my heart a bit. The woman who ID'd me for the wine was essentially arguing that maybe, just maybe, I might possibly be 25 and just have aged horribly badly. Her sign told her that if customers looked under 25 they must show ID to prove they were 18. Therefore a 33 year old has to prove that they're not 17. Or a 55 year old has to spend her comedy night without a glass of wine. Madness. Not only that, but by boosting the ages of 'forbidden fruit' to 21 (as most States in the US have) they are introducing another element into the mix in the shape of cars. In the States, a kid might have been driving for 5 years by the time they get served in a bar. By that time they're reliant on cars and unfamiliar with their alcohol limits; another recipe for disaster, especially in a country like the US where it's hard enough to be a pedestrian in the first place.
I vote for a return to people using their judgement, and if the odd kid gets through a few months underage it might actually end up improving things in the long run.
Basically I just want teenagers to shut up in cinemas, and I'm willing to try anything.
My name's Pat Higgins and my conscience is clear.
Whilst travelling the States in 2002, I saw a 55 year-old woman get refused alcohol in a San Francisco comedy club because she didn't have ID with her.
On a similar tack, I got asked for ID buying a bottle of wine a couple of years ago. 33 years old I was at the time (as I indignantly told the woman behind the counter; "I'm the same age as JESUS!") and it was the first time I'd been asked my age buying alcohol since I was 17.
All of these examples are utterly fucking stupid, and I worry that they're indicative of a growing culture where using your judgement is seen as a dangerous and unneccessary risk. If you seriously aren't comfortable enough with your judgement that a grey-haired, not-particularly-well-preserved woman can be served alcohol, I'm really not comfortable with you doing ANY job whatsoever. It comes down to the old argument that by operating like a machine and insisting on ID for everyone, you are potentially stopping a single 17 year old getting served. And that's got to be a good thing, right?
Bollocks. Here's my two pennies; cash 'em in for the currency of your choice. Drumroll..
An age restriction system works better when it leaks. When it is flawed. When 17 year-olds occasionally get served beer in pubs and get into 18 movies. Because if you're a 17 year old in an environment that you're not meant to be in, there's at least a chance that you'll shut up and keep a low profile. That you'll hang back and see how things are done. If you know that if a particular bartender notices you you'll get thrown out, you'll avoid drawing too much attention to yourself. You'll blend. You might even take it relatively easy on the booze intake. Your introduction to the adult world is gradual and subdued, since you know you don't really belong there yet.
If, on the other hand, every age restriction works 100%, by the time a kid hits his 18th birthday he's got a massive sense of entitlement backed up by absolutely no experience whatsoever of the environment that he's entering. He walks in, flashes his newly minted ID, never learns any sort of bar etiquette, gets shitfaced and falls over or starts a fight. He knows that he won't be ejected until he's done something actively bad, and never learns the ropes because he doesn't need to.
Movies work the same way. I fondly remember my first underage 15 at the cinema (Good Morning Vietnam) and my first underage 18 at the cinema (Misery). I sat in the darkness, terrified that the usher would suddenly click and think 'Hey, that kid looked a bit young', hunt me down in the darkness and throw me out. So I sat through the movies in silence, and.. Guess what? The habit stuck. I went from being a kid who yabbered in movies to being an adult who knew to shut the fuck up as soon as the certificate hit the screen. If I'd been robbed of that experience, if the first time I'd sat in an age-restricted movie I'd have been brimming with a sense of my entitlement to be there, maybe that process of growth would never have happened or been severely delayed.
Every time a supermarket increases the age at which you 'might' be ID'd, for the good of us all, it breaks my heart a bit. The woman who ID'd me for the wine was essentially arguing that maybe, just maybe, I might possibly be 25 and just have aged horribly badly. Her sign told her that if customers looked under 25 they must show ID to prove they were 18. Therefore a 33 year old has to prove that they're not 17. Or a 55 year old has to spend her comedy night without a glass of wine. Madness. Not only that, but by boosting the ages of 'forbidden fruit' to 21 (as most States in the US have) they are introducing another element into the mix in the shape of cars. In the States, a kid might have been driving for 5 years by the time they get served in a bar. By that time they're reliant on cars and unfamiliar with their alcohol limits; another recipe for disaster, especially in a country like the US where it's hard enough to be a pedestrian in the first place.
I vote for a return to people using their judgement, and if the odd kid gets through a few months underage it might actually end up improving things in the long run.
Basically I just want teenagers to shut up in cinemas, and I'm willing to try anything.
My name's Pat Higgins and my conscience is clear.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Post-Christmas Avatar Blues
Well, it was a nice Christmas and New Year. Highlights included Rage Against The Machine getting to the Christmas Number One (which was mainly fun because it demonstrated the very public breaking of a pre-determined narrative, and proved that we actually still have a say in popular culture) and the 3D overload that was Avatar.. I walked out of it feeling like I'd just seen something incredible, but the next day couldn't quite shake the feeling that if I'd seen it in 2D on a small screen I'd have been mocking it quite a lot. If you haven't seen it yet, *please* check it out on the big screen in 3D, if only so when you inevitably see it in a smaller, flatter, rather more flaccid form in the years to come you can feel a little bit embarrassed about just how much you liked it.
The Devil's Music also finally came out on DVD, of course, which was great. From the feedback I've received so far, folks seem to be really digging the disc.
We've also been looking around for a decent screening venue for the cast and crew screening of Bordello Death Tales, prior to letting critics look at the sucker. I always feel that cast and crew should see a movie first.. The idea of a critic seeing a flick before one of the cast does just feels wrong somehow, but this screening has been a long time coming. Hopefully not much longer. The problem seems to be that all the venues are either too big or too small; there are a lot of screening rooms with 35-odd seats, there are a lot of cinemas with 300-odd, but there aren't all that many with around 80.
And, of course, the writing continues. In an ideal world, we'd do another back-to-back shoot in the summer of 2011 the same way that we did in the summer of 2006, but I sadly can't see the money coming together so I'll have to flip a coin..
The Devil's Music also finally came out on DVD, of course, which was great. From the feedback I've received so far, folks seem to be really digging the disc.
We've also been looking around for a decent screening venue for the cast and crew screening of Bordello Death Tales, prior to letting critics look at the sucker. I always feel that cast and crew should see a movie first.. The idea of a critic seeing a flick before one of the cast does just feels wrong somehow, but this screening has been a long time coming. Hopefully not much longer. The problem seems to be that all the venues are either too big or too small; there are a lot of screening rooms with 35-odd seats, there are a lot of cinemas with 300-odd, but there aren't all that many with around 80.
And, of course, the writing continues. In an ideal world, we'd do another back-to-back shoot in the summer of 2011 the same way that we did in the summer of 2006, but I sadly can't see the money coming together so I'll have to flip a coin..
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