Nobody Knows Anything

One cinema visit marked with a *. I inadvertently ended up with a season of Cameron Crowe films that ought to be called Bring Me the Head of Cameron Crowe. But isn’t. Though you can imagine that it is if that makes you feel better.

Elizabethtown (2005)

William Goldman makes great play of beginnings and endings in Adventures in the Screen Trade, and how good the end of North by Northwest (1959) is and how bad the end of Excalibur (1981) is by comparison. Unfortunately, this film fits into the latter category. It is another warm film about people and your ability to tolerate it may depend upon your like or dislike of Orlando Bloom or Kirsten Dunst. I liked it, but Crowe has got the ending badly wrong. Without giving too much away, the film ends with a (much-criticised) road trip. The problem is that Crowe hasn’t realised that the road trip is his equivalent of Hitchcock’s MacGuffin, an item the characters in a film care intensely about, but which should be of no importance to the audience. And the road trip lasts ten minutes at a time when the film is basically over. All you would need is about one minute of road trip running over the main end credits, then the film’s ending and that’s it, out in two minutes. Without nine minutes of padding that it doesn’t need.

Say Anything… (1989)

After his unhappiness at the way his script of The Wild Life (1984) was brought to the screen, he was determined to direct his next script. And this was the result, a great movie from the 80s, a teen romantic comedy no less, that has none of the horribleness of the John Hughes movies, or, even worse, the sub-John Hughes movies.

Singles (1992)

Even though I think it had been some years since Crowe worked for Rolling Stone, he’s remained in touch with popular culture in the way that other film directors haven’t. Hence his next film, which is what Friends (1994) could have been like if it hadn’t been made for TV, is set in Seattle miraculously as the thing that journalists labelled grunge was happening. So there’s the amusing spectacle of Kyra Sedgwick and Campbell Scott politely moshing at an Alice in Chains gig. Alright.

Jerry Maguire (1996)

Even though it has a picture of Tom Cruise smiling on the cover, this is a film about failure. It has its moments of warmth, but for most of the movie, Jerry Maguire is dancing on the abyss of emptiness at 33. It also highlights how darned good Tom Cruise is as an actor, an actor cursed with movie star good looks. For all the well-deserved flak he’s taken recently, what remains is his performances, as long as he works with a good director who pushes him.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) *

As the books have got longer, the films have turned into a kind of precis rather than the overly slavish approach of Chris Columbus in the first two movies. Although it may seem rather gratuitous to some, I actually saw this at the Imax with the final 20 minutes in 3D. And wow is all I have to say about that. Bring on The Dark Knight (2008), that’s what I say. Harry Potter isn’t for everyone, but it is cool to see how the actors have grown into their roles.

Untitled (2000)

For the record, this was the extended version of Almost Famous in DTS 5.1. Very nice. The film won an Oscar for Best Sound, a fact that may seem rather strange until you realise that it won it for the onstage sequences where in a film, you actually had the sound, the volume, the depth, the bass, that you would have got if Stillwater had performed at a real concert. The film is nostalgic in the best sense, an elegy for a way of life and a time and a place that have disappeared forever, except in the memories of the ones who were there. Almost Famous is the culmination of Crowe’s interest in people, relationships and character, and it will be interesting to see what happens next after the criticism of Vanilla Sky (2001) and the financial disappointment of Elizabethtown (2005).

Well the lady don’t mind
No no no the lady don’t mind
She just turns her head and disappears
I kinda like that style

Ed examines the leaflet. It has been cheaply produced, printed on what feels like thin slippery toilet paper, but it announces news of an underground rock concert. Tonight, Andy Warhol presents the Velvet Underground on what is their only English date. ‘One night only’ proclaims the leaflet, a message that is re-emphasised when Ed arrives at the venue that evening, a surprisingly spacious cellar off Oxford Street, where he sees the only announcement of the concert on a poster over the door: ‘One Night Only’. “Great name for a group,” Ed overhears a kid dressed in Mod gear say as Ed descends into The Cellar, which soon fills up, soon heats up from the warmth of human bodies and from the cigarettes which hang disjointedly from everyone’s mouth. Ed scans the crowd for The Girl until the lights go down, the group come on, and a wail of feedback announces the Velvet Underground. The music is loud and tight, the vocals harsh, shrill, and the light show is something special. Lots of many coloured slides dance across the stage, behind which clips from Warhol movies are projected. Edie Sedgwick crosses and recrosses her legs in the Kitchen and a man and a woman kiss and kiss and kiss and a building dominates the frame until Sylvia Miles and The Chelsea Girls flit across and a man and a woman kiss and kiss and Edie Sedgwick crosses and recrosses her legs in the Kitchen and in front of the band on stage a hooded figure carries out a strange sado-masochistic ritual, brandishing a whip at the audience. And the band played on…

Then Ed saw Her sitting at the bar at the back sipping a drink through a straw. While Ed stares at Her, he fails to notice the movement of Her hands. As people pass Her, they extend their left hands as if in greeting and close them around Her left hand, only for a moment, but that is enough. A tall coloured man in a beret standing next to Ed presses a note into his left hand but Ed doesn’t notice, his eyes focused on the beautiful simplicity of The Girl’s face as coloured liquid flows up the straw and vanishes into Her mouth. After a time, The Girl notices him and stares back at him just as intently. Ed doesn’t notice, continues to watch Her, until The Girl nods imperceptibly and a crowd comes between them, appearing from nowhere, bustling, chatting, fashionably dressed. The crowd soon disperses, and The Girl has gone. Ed slowly realises this. His left hand seems to be holding a piece of paper, which he examines. ‘Blow-Up isn’t the only film being shot in London at the moment. Meet me on the set of Repulsion tomorrow at…’ and a time and an address of a location where Catherine Deneuve is accosted by a group of workmen on the way home from the hairdressing salon where she works.

Ed looks towards the camera, panning across the London street scene. A funny enthusiastic little man is the director. ‘Polanski’ it says, on the clapperboard. When Ed sees The Girl arriving and watches Her as She gets out of a car, approaches Polanski, hands him a small something, then She crosses over to Ed, stands square in front of him, raises Her left hand, puts up Her index finger and beckons. Once. Ed follows Her as if She were leading him by means of a chain attached to a collar round his neck. She holds open the passenger door of Her car, Ed gets in, sits down and the car drives off, The Girl’s eyes fixed firmly ahead, Ed’s head turned towards her, watching, waiting, willing her to speak, wanting her to say something.

The world was moving she was right there with it
And she was

The car arrives at a junkyard on the Isle of Dogs, where yet another film is being shot. A long, railway-like, camera track snakes through the middle of the wreckage. Tall coloured men wander around, one reading aloud from a Marxist text book, another shouting Black Power slogans, and a group of Black Men arranged in a firing squad calmly ‘shooting’ young girls dressed in white, while the camera glides slowly along the track. “Jean-Luc Godard is making a film about the Rolling Stones called ‘Sympathy For The Devil’” says The Girl, bringing the car to a halt in front of the camera. She rises from Her seat and walks away. Ed self-consciously follows, looking back into the camera lens. The Girl leads him deeper into The Junkyard. They pass beneath cars piled overhead and down the sides to create a passageway which stretches out over a considerable distance, twisting and turning here and there. Ed is all the more surprised then when they emerge into a weird grove, a clearing surrounded on all sides by crushed cars piled forty feet high. One car squats in the middle of the grove, its wheels removed. The interior has been pulled out and replaced with a table and four chairs. The Girl indicates where Ed is to sit by opening one of the rear doors. She Herself gets in the front and sits down. They face each other.

“I believe you wanted to talk to me,” she says.

“I-we, I mean, my boss needs a replacement presenter for ‘Ready Steady Go’ and he sent me to London to find one this weekend because London’s the centre of the universe and what a story it would make: Girl Plucked From Obscurity etc etc and so I wandered around and I saw You on Friday night and You’re perfect. You’re The One.”

“No.”

Ed is thrown completely by this. Was The Girl crazy? No to what? Why? “Why?” he says.

The Girl pauses, considers, weighs Her response, and then reaches for a metal toolbox lying on the floor. When She opens it, it blossoms into separate tiers of hollow sections. As she speaks, the index finger of Her left hand points to a different section of the toolkit with each item. “Marijuana, hashish, cannabis, several varieties, cocaine from all over the world, a good spread of heroin, LSD, and the current number one, PCP, angel dust. These are just the popular ones. I have an extensive supply of pills and powders from the States, all available on prescription, all as potent as the strongest drug here. If I haven’t got whatever you may require, I can get it for you within the hour. You see, I cannot possibly accept your offer. Please leave me now.” Ed rises from the chair. “No luck?” says Mike as Ed sits down in the chair in Mike’s office on Monday morning.

“No luck,” replies Ed.

“Then the weekend stops here.”

Well we know where we’re goin’
But we don’t know where we’ve been
And we know what we’re knowin’
But we can’t say what we’ve seen
And we’re not little children
And we know what we want
And the future is certain
Give us time to work it out

(Lyrics extracted from the Talking Heads LP ‘Little Creatures’, in order of appearance: Perfect World, And She Was, The Lady Don’t Mind, And She Was, Road To Nowhere.)

Un Story De Robert Sharp

Copyright 1986 Robert Sharp

One cinema visit this week, marked with a *. Running a bit late too, but I’ve been playing Diablo II under OS X, so I’ve been busy. Oh yes, contains strong language too.

The Bourne Identity (2002)

The Bond franchise has been forced into two reboots recently. The first happened with the departure of Timothy Dalton in 1989. For the record, I thought Dalton was excellent as Bond and Licence to Kill (1989) was exactly the kind of Bond film I wanted to see. The result was Pierce Brosnan cast in Goldeneye in 1995, where Martin Campbell as director set the tempo for the rest of the Brosnan era films and directors, which climaxed with the “jumping the shark” invisible car in Die Another Day (2002). And then this film was released, having made it to the screen after four separate reshoots and a ton of production troubles, none of which are apparent on screen. Where Bond had become fantasy, Bourne offered reality.

The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

The second reboot happened with Casino Royale (2006) and the introduction of Daniel Craig, which turns out to have been so fucking smart it isn’t even funny. For the first time in decades, a Bond movie appeared with both scenes and dialogue taken from the original book, in preference to taking a title and remaking You Only Live Twice (1967) again, or whatever wacky shit the fabled Bond screenwriters came up with. The test, obviously, will be Daniel Craig’s 2nd Bond movie. Meanwhile, Bourne continued on his merry way, the second film being something of a Manhunter (1986) reunion for Joan Allen and Brian Cox, who never met on screen 18 years ago. Paul Greengrass turned out to be the perfect choice to take up the baton from Doug Liman.

Donnie Brasco (1997)

Anne Heche had her chance and she blew it. Or did Hollywood prejudice shut her out? She was the next big thing in the mid 1990s. You couldn’t go to the cinema without Anne Heche turning up in a role and being great and making you think why can’t this woman get the big Julia Roberts style roles and salaries? You know, a woman who can act. She was definitely being groomed for it. This movie, which concerns itself with a FBI agent going undercover in the Mafia, showcases exemplary work from her as the agent’s wife in a small role which both acts as a balance to the Al Pacino/Johnny Depp double act and serves as a reminder of what was at stake for Joe Pistone, the real life guy who did what Johnny Depp only plays. And then she met Ellen DeGeneres, and it was bye bye film stardom for her. What a rotten shame, but that’s modern Hollywood for you, run by liberals who turn out to be dyed in the wool conservatives when it comes to modern sexuality and a woman’s right to choose.

Scarface (1983)

Pacino’s turn in Donnie Brasco was so great, I wanted to see more of the master at work, and there are few better examples than this. Mark Cousins, who’s put himself about a bit in media circles and has even written a book called The Story of Film (you can look it up and everything), took over as presenter of the sadly missed Moviedrome on BBC2 from Alex Cox, where Alex would deliver an ultra dry five minute intro and then they’d play a cult movie, like El Topo (1970) or Trancers (1985)… or Scarface. So when Scarface turns up on the Moviedrome schedule, and Mark Cousins has to do his intro, instead of waxing lyrical about an unappreciated work of genius that’s entered not just popular culture but hiphop culture with a vengeance and a reach any other movie made in the 1980s has been utterly unable to reach [except perhaps for Wild Style (1983)], Mark Cousins said he just didn’t like it. I don’t think you can trust a film critic who doesn’t like Scarface. For Mark and I, it’s just never been the same.

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) *

So as if the makers of Bond 22 (2008) didn’t have enough on their plate, they have to contend with this, which is, if anything, more brilliant than the first two films put together. In particular, the chase over the rooftops and through the alleyways of Tangiers may be more accomplished, more terrifying and more disorienting than my favourite nightmarish chase scene: Leatherface pursuing Marilyn Burns in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974).

24 Hour Party People (2001) [Tony Wilson 1950-2007] FACDVD424

I wasn’t even aware that there was a Factory story until the mid 1980s. I’d heard of Ian Curtis’ suicide, and slowly started to get into New Order, who made the famous left turn in pop when they put out Blue Monday (FAC 73). By the time of The Perfect Kiss (FAC 123), the first New Order record I bought, the importance of Tony Wilson’s accidential achievement had become apparent, independent record labels had sprung up everywhere and music was undergoing enormous, significant and long-lasting change. Nowadays, it’s a bit trendy for CUNTS to disparage indie music and dismiss it with as much enthusiasm as those same CUNTS embrace Duran Duran and similar underachievers. The Factory story has a suicidal beginning, a middle section full of hope where everything looks possible, and then a squalid end mired in murder and drugs. Most of the middle section was mired in drugs as well. Anyone watch this film and think it’s a bit riotous and out of control? Safe to say, the reality of the Factory story was way more extreme, as, by all accounts, was the making of this film, which included a closing night in an exact recreation of the Haçienda (FAC 51) that the Haçienda itself never had. RIP Tony Wilson, it’s always the visionaries who die too soon.

COMING SOON: RUSS MEYER (but not next week)

The world was moving she was floating above it
And she was

But She has vanished so Ed spends the next four hours at The Experience searching for Her, wandering here, looking there, becoming slow, becoming stale, becoming tired, until it occurs to him to ask The Clone at the entrance.

“Have you seen A Girl?” “I’ve seen A Girl.” “I’m talking about A Girl In Green PVC, you can’t miss Her.” “I’ve seen A Girl In Green, she was…” “Yes, what was she?” “…different to the others, She was dressed in green, and She was…” “Where can I find Her?” “…going to the ‘Blow-Up’ shoot in the morning but it’s morning already, at ten o’clock sharp…” “Where is this shoot?” “It’s a film and it’s at…” and The Clone finally gives Ed an address, and because Ed feels tired now, he seeks and finds a back room full of sleeping corpses and squeezes into a corner and sleeps in the morning a hand shaking his shoulder a voice calling his name: “Ed! Wake up, Ed!” Ed comes round for a moment and it’s Her! The Girl! She has eyes and a nose and a smile and her lips are moving and Ed falls asleep again

and wakes again in the morning it’s nine o’clock and he only has an hour to get to the film location. The Room that was full last night is empty now, but when Ed leaves The Room through the only door he is back on the front steps of a house. Ed looks behind him and sees one room with no other exit, yet he has no memory of walking outside and this house looks familiar and this street looks familiar and this taxi driver looks familiar when Ed hails a cab and mumbles the location address.

Ed leans back and watches the early morning river, sunlight reflecting and refracting the gentle motion of the water, as the taxi passes along The Bridge. Gulls wheel overhead and a pleasure-boat glides beneath, the still water barely stirring in its wake. On the other side of the river girls in the latest Mary Quant mini skirts mix with businessmen in bowler hats; men with hair down to their shoulders stroll alongside unhappy old age pensioners, pointing out the signs of the permissive society. The taxi arrives at the location and Ed leaves The Taxi Driver grumbling at the size of Ed’s “keep the change”.

While Ed watches out for The Girl, the action of the scene being shot becomes apparent. A car driven by David Hemmings as The Photographer draws up outside a flat, David presses the horn, and Jane Birkin as The Model leaves the front door of the building, gets in the car, and David drives off. At the time Ed arrived, they were onto the nineteenth take of this scene. Ed approaches a man lingering near the camera and asks, “Who’s the director?” “Some Italian.” “Are you with this film?” “Only as photographic adviser.” “Adviser, eh? What’s the film about?” “I dunno, I haven’t read the script, but it’s all to do with photography.” “How do you know that?” “It’s called ‘Blow-Up’. And I presume it’s why I’m here.” “Have you seen A Girl In Green PVC?” “Oh, I know Her.” “Really,” says Ed, trying not to give anything away. “I’m shooting Her this afternoon.” “I beg your pardon.” The Photographer raises his hands in front of his face and mimes the operation of a camera. “Click,” he says. “Click-click-click,” as he moves ‘the camera’ around an imaginary model. “You’re a photographer then,” (The Photographer nods rather obviously), “could I meet Her? It’s really important.” “How important?” “Very.” “Come here at two. I’m needed now.” The Photographer leaves, handing Ed a business card: ‘Bailey – Photographer’ and an address and a phone number. “In fact,” calls David Bailey, “there She is now.” Ed follows the direction of David’s outstretched left arm and his eyes alight on a MG pulling away from the kerb. The Girl is driving, David Hemmings sits beside Her, and as the car disappears down the road, Ed thinks he sees them exchange something, but he can’t be sure. However, Ed is certain of one thing: he will have to wait for afternoon to arrive before he can meet The Girl.

Ed passes the intervening time by heading for Carnaby Street and strolling round the boutiques. The clothes use less and less material and become more and more expensive. Then, in one shop, whose main trade is in currently out of fashion leather goods, Ed overhears a couple of girls chatting. “And at Apple they’re giving stuff away today – for free.” “What? Free? For nothing?” “Yes. Today only.” “Only today?” “Well, and tomorrow, and the day after.”

Ed walks to the Apple boutique – everyone seems to know where it is – but he is unable to enter because of the crowd thronging the only entrance. People are shouting and shoving, forcing their way inside, where, apparently, you can just take clothes off the rack and leave, if you can get out again. Ed glances at his watch. Damn! Half two! And there are no taxis to be seen. Ed asks a passer-by which underground station the studio is near but he only finds out after spending ten minutes deciphering the man’s truly incoherent accent. Ed rushes to the underground station speeds down the stairs, buys his ticket after a queue at the ticket office stamping his feet in impatience, glaring back at the faces of Julie Christie and Twiggy staring from magazine covers at a newsagent’s, flies down an escalator and onto the platform just slipping into the train before the doors shunt shut. And it’s the wrong train. Ed leaves at the next station and runs round a maze of stairs and escalators to the other side of the platform, stares at the opposite wall in silence with its posters advertising Jane Fonda in Barbarella, catches another train time now approaching three o’clock, Ed’s left foot taps out an irregular rhythm on the black rubber floor as the train draws ever nearer to the station and he only has the incomprehensible word of a stranger that it is the correct station for the studio. The train arrives Ed leaves the train sprints up stairs and asks again at the top for the address is directed there by an Australian and arrives knocks and enters silent into silence, broken only by the faint click of a closing shutter and the quiet words of The Photographer.

Ed rounds a corner and sees a girl being photographed by Someone hidden behind the bright dazzle of artificial light. A voice directs poses from the dark beyond and other figures lurk in the background, nodding their heads in approval. The Model is wearing a sharply-cut wig, so Ed cannot see if it is Her. As The Model changes position at the request of The Voice, Ed circles (“Sultry”) round slowly behind (“More”) the camera, the girl’s (“Provocative”) face remains hidden (“More”) from view as Ed moves (“More”) to the front and sees (“Perfect”) that it isn’t Her. (“Languid”) Ed approaches one of David’s aides (“Back”) and asks where The Girl In Green PVC is (“Relax”) and The Black Man says, “Oh, She finished (“Sexy”) half an hour ago, said She was going to some exhibition in the East End (“Vulnerable”) at…” and the aide gives Ed an address (“Innocent”) and Ed leaves through the door

and walks in through The Door of an East End art gallery, which is holding a Warhol exhibition. Ed wanders the galleries, looking for The Girl, admiring the soup cans and the Marilyn screenprints, until he sees Her at the information desk by the entrance being handed a leaflet and leaving and he’s unable to get to Her because he discovers he’s watching Her through a glass window and he tries to attract Her attention but She’s already left.

Ed approaches the desk and asks who The Girl was. “What Girl?” is the reply. “The Girl you just gave a leaflet to.” “What leaflet?” says the woman behind the desk, holding a number of leaflets in her left hand. Another Head, thinks Ed, that’s all I need, so he removes a leaflet from the woman’s left hand and leaves the gallery. Of course, The Girl is nowhere in sight. Back in the gallery a tall coloured man in a beret approaches The Receptionist and asks a question. “What man?” is the reply.

END OF PART TWO

Copyright 1986 Robert Sharp

No cinema visits again this week. I’m gonna miss ‘em. It’s not good. At least nobody famous in the film world died this week so I don’t have to pay tribute to them.

The Abyss (1989)

For the record, this was the Special Edition of the film with almost half an hour of mostly character related footage edited back in. I’ve always liked The Abyss, even though 20th Century Fox probably shouldn’t have given James Cameron quite as much freedom to realise a longheld childhood ambition to rip off both E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) – but underwater – as they did. However Cameron was the golden boy after the success of Aliens (1986), and Fox execs suffered a similar rush of blood to the head as that experienced by the execs at United Artists who greenlit Heaven’s Gate (1980) in the wake of The Deer Hunter (1978).

Match Point (2005)

Finally got around to seeing whether or not Woody Allen’s return to form was real or not. Answer: yes. And then no British release for Scoop (2006), which he made a year later. One of the things that I remember the film being criticised for was its lack of, for want of a better phrase, working class people. As if Woody Allen was going to relocate to London to make a film about market traders or bus drivers. Instead he sticks to the world he knows best, that of the moneyed elite. And does Woody Allen have interesting things to say about the hypocrisy, laissez faire attitudes and moral corruption of the moneyed elite? Oh yes he does. So it seems rather stupid to criticise the film for what it’s not, doesn’t it? But then I find this is a common form of criticism from people who don’t understand art and how it functions. Shoot ‘em in the brain, that’s what I say, it’s the only way to be sure.

Ghost World (2001)

Intrigued by the Scarlett Johansson-ness of the previous film, I felt in need of more Scarlett, with added Thora Birch. I like Ghost World so much I own both R1 and R2 DVDs, since both have different and intriguing extras. There’s so much that’s great about Daniel Clowes’ original comic book that it would seem a highly unlikely subject for translation to the big screen. Terry Zwigoff didn’t have a problem though. The film is rammed with great, smart dialogue and nicely acerbic characterful performances.

Galaxy Quest (1999)

Perhaps a bit too inside for some, but since I’m reasonably familiar with the history of Star Trek and the world of sci-fi conventions, an awful lot of this film hits close to home. Only if you don’t know anything about this world would the film fall flat. This was also the first film where Missi Pyle drew my attention with the first of her many highly game out there comedic performances. She’s the younger generation’s Jennifer Coolidge and a face to watch out for.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

After the spoof, the real thing. There are few moments in cinema better than the revelation about halfway through that for Kirk there are indeed possibilities, and James Horner hits the highpoint of his score in the moments that follow. Although I pride myself on defying received wisdom, I do fall into line on the Star Trek movies: the even numbered ones are the best ones. This should be of some concern to JJ Abrams, who is currently signed to direct Star Trek Eleven. Uh oh.

Solaris (2002)

After the real thing, a real movie. Solaris’ modest box office performance seems particularly puzzling until you see the theatrical trailer, which basically promises Aliens 2, a slam bang, slam dunk summer action movie, and Solaris is anything but that. Because it’s science fiction though, fandom will give the film an afterlife in the after market (if indeed that hasn’t already started to happen). In a world of ersatz blockbusters, this is once again the genuine article, a harsh film about tough issues with a career-best performance from George Clooney.

Well I know what it is
But I don’t know where it is
Where it is
Well I know where it is
But I don’t know what it looks like
What it looks like
Well I know what it looks like
But I don’t know where she comes from
Well I know where she comes from
But I don’t know what’s her name

The Man carefully replaces the receiver. He has a serious problem. After some years, Cathy McGowan has finally decided to leave ‘Ready Steady Go’. The Man is The Producer of The Show and the index finger of his left hand casually reaches out and presses a button on the intercom, the fourth button from the left. “This is Mike here,” he announces, “send Someone in.” There is a short pause during which Mike sets off his Newton’s Cradle, the ticking as regular as the beating of his heart. The Door opens, The Cradle stops, and Someone walks in. He is wearing tight black trousers and a white polo neck, just like David McCallum in ‘The Man From UNCLE’, but unlike David, Ed does not possess blonde hair. “I’ve got a problem,” says Mike. “I’m sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do to help?” is the reply. “Cathy’s leaving The Show, and we need a replacement. Fast. I want you to deal with this. Your train leaves for London in half an hour. Your ticket is with my secretary.” “What do I do?” “It is perfectly simple,” underlines Mike, “it’s summer 196—, London is the centre of the universe. It shouldn’t be difficult to find some pretty girl on the streets just dying to become presenter of The Show on television. Today is Friday. The time is four in the afternoon. You have until nine Monday morning. The weekend starts here.” Ed turns to go, then instinctively pauses, awaiting the final words of his boss. “And good luck.” Ed opens The Door, his left hand curling around the aluminium handle and pulling. The Door closes. “You’ll need it,” Mike says to himself. His left hand restarts The Cradle and reaches down to open a desk drawer and withdraw a small bottle of multicoloured pills. “How happy do I want to feel?” he muses, prior to his selection.

A Man sits on a train. Distant landscape flies by the window. England. Summer. Lots of green and brilliant blue speeding past. Ed glances at his wristwatch. Good. He will be in London before nightfall. The Door to the compartment slides open and a bearded, coloured man in a combat jacket walks in, wearing a black beret with a single gold star. “Is that seat taken?” booms his voice, deep and American. “No.” Ed’s reply is short and sweet, resentful of the unnecessary aggression. “Do you want to buy one of these?” Ed glances up. The Black Man is holding a bundle of newspapers which he seems to have magicked out of thin air. Ed nods. “Two shillings.” Ed scrabbles in his pocket, finds two coins and hands them over. The Black Man leaves, and Ed spends his the rest of his journey leafing through ‘The International Times’ with its fervent relation of underground happenings. One advert in particular catches his eye.

It is the first time Ed has seen the new-look Railway Station. He passes through the ticket barrier, handing his ticket to an unhappy inspector, and he leaves The Station through doors which slip apart at his approach. Curiously, Ed still feels like he is inside. Evening is drawing on as Ed hails a taxi, which pulls up behind a red bus, and says one word in reply to the driver’s “Where to, guv’nor?”: “Sensetaria.”

This word appears as the centrepiece of a Peter Blake designed advert in ‘The International Times’ for what is billed as ‘the psychedelic experience’. The venue is somewhere near the Hammersmith Odeon, but the actual location is not indicated. Prospective members of the audience are advised to open their eyes, follow their ears and kiss their minds goodbye.

The Taxi Driver tries to engage Ed in some sparkling conversation concerning “those bloody long-haired, foul-mouthed hippies, I’d shoot the bleedin’ lot o’them,” but Ed refuses to be drawn on the subject, leaving The Taxi Driver mumbling “bleedin’ lib’rals.” Ed remains silent, collecting his thoughts in preparation for the promised mind-blowing experience. The Taxi Driver grumbles at the size of Ed’s “keep the change” and vanishes into the night, leaving Ed standing alone on the road outside the vast façade of the Hammersmith Odeon. ‘ALL THIS WEEK: THE WHO’ proclaim posters. Another message pasted across these posters reads ‘SOLD OUT’. From inside there is the distant sound of arms cartwheeling in dry ice, expensive equipment exploding as it’s hurled across the stage and rampant feedback as another guitar neck vanishes into the audience.

As Ed moves away, the night becomes almost perfectly still. Then dustbins sitting on pavements rattle as an underground train rumbles underneath. Steam flies up from an open manhole cover, the red-striped sides of a workmen’s temporary hut flap in the slight breeze drifting down from The North, and yellow warning lights blink like feline eyes in the jungle night. Ed looks out into the darkness, strains his ears to hear, prepares his mind to expand, and then hurls himself towards the pavement as a MG speeds by. Two girls stand upright in the back, long hair streaming behind them, dressed alternately in black and white. One wears white pullover, black skirt and white tights, the other black tights, white skirt, black pullover. The car’s red lights recede into the distance, brakes squeal, and then the red sports car swings to the right and is gone. Silence again. Ed picks himself up and follows.

When Ed rounds the corner, he sees the parked vehicles of the rich and famous lining the street which must mean that The Experience is near now. One Rolls Royce resembles the proverbial explosion in a psychedelic paint factory. The street itself seems quite ordinary; two rows of suburban houses whose front doors are reached up a flight of stone steps. Ed slowly walks down the street, then, behind him, a door flies open, light shafts out, and a figure is propelled out of the light, into the night, and down the steps into the dustbins. Ed moves to help, but The Head just smiles at him and waves him away. “This is the place,” Ed says to himself, climbing the steps. Ed knocks on The Door—wood painted on metal—and The Door is opened by A Jean Shrimpton Clone with large eyes too much makeup perfect hair and a pure white pure wool all-in-one figure-hugging dress who without further ado raises the index finger of her left hand in front of Ed’s face waves it to and fro a couple of times then draws it back with Ed following until the finger points up the flight of stairs rising up out of the carpet four yards from the door and as Ed climbs up coming closer to the repetitive thudding from above he passes a couple of Heads dressed military fashion like the Beatles on the Sgt Pepper cover sharing a crooked cigarette which smells “so sweet” one of them says to the other and Ed reaches the top of the stairs turns left down a corridor pushes open double doors at the end and he’s there: Sensetaria. Multicoloured lights flash fast then slow then faster, amoeba film slithers across the walls, fast music like the Rolling Stones at 78 threatens the audience with submission from six foot square speakers placed quadraphonically but the audience fights back shrieking shaking convulsing hair flying clothes jumbled together in insane colours and the smoke in the air not produced by any machine, and as Ed struggles down the stairs to the dance floor, a girl swathed in green PVC standing on a trapeze descends towards him her mouth opening and closing one word “Welcome” never ceasing, and as the trapeze reaches Ed she steps off and vanishes into the crowd and then the strobe is switched on and the music slows down, the motions of the crowd slow down and Ed attempts to track The Girl In Green PVC because She’s The Girl he’s looking for, She’s The One who’ll be presenting ‘Ready Steady Go’ next Friday because She is The One.

END OF PART ONE

Warhol’s unmistakable image of Marilyn – screen-printed in countless variations as a consumer product, it is a perfect symbol of pop-art styles.
Copyright 1986 Robert Sharp

One cinema visit this week marked with a *. The week was marked by the passing of two great directors, to whom I paid tribute in my own way.

Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007)

Although I hate to be the first to speak ill of the dead, Bergman’s reputation as a filmmaker has plummeted in recent years, especially in comparison with someone like Andrei Tarkovsky, who’s remained an inspiration 20 years after his own death. Bergman’s films seem to belong to another age when existentialism was all the rage and religious disquiet and bleak Scandinavian suicidal depression and terminal illness and death were proper subjects for serious filmmakers. The silence in The Silence (1963) is God’s silence. Very deep. I thought it would be nice to dig out one of his films from my DVD collection to watch as a kind of tribute before I realised that I don’t own any. I like Persona (1966), but I just haven’t got around to buying it yet.

Attack of the Clones (2002)

Of the three infamous Star Wars prequels, I like this the most. I did get to see this digitally projected, and it looked fabulous. To me, this is what the essence of Star Wars is all about: solid B-movie heroics, pulpy adventure cliches, stupid jokes, and all done on an A-list budget. Sad Star Wars geeks from my generation who were all 10 when they first saw Star Wars (1977) in the cinema and think George Lucas has betrayed their childhood seemed to have expected the prequels to be the equivalent of the New Testement. Star Wars was only a movie, and not a very good one at that. Expecting it to contain the meaning of life is idiocy of the highest order.

Sexy Beast (2000)

Mysteriously, it’s taken me seven years to get around to watching this, and it was beyond great. Entire cast explodes, as they say, especially Sir Ben Kingsley, who can and has spent the succeeding years popping up in a variety of dreadful genre flicks in the sure and certain knowledge that he will be forgiven by critics because he acted the role of Don Logan in Sexy Beast.

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)

If there was anything funnier in 2004 than Ben Stiller saying “freaky naughty” with a 70s porn star moustache, then I’d like to see it. Because I don’t particularly believe in research, I like to think that there really is a world series of dodgeball on ESPN 8, also known as The Ocho.

Shrek the Third (2007) *

I don’t know what’s the matter with people. Maybe this won’t seem as good when I watch it again on DVD, but I liked this one more than I liked Shrek 2 (2004). The first Shrek (2001) was so good that I wasn’t very keen on the idea of a 2nd film; I very much felt it had all been done. So in theory a 3rd one should have been even more redundant, except it wasn’t. Roll on the fourth, I say.

Blowup (1966) [Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007)]

Unable to mark the passing of Bergman with a DVD watching style tribute, I was able to do so when the news came a couple of days later of the death of Antonioni. As anyone remotely familiar with arthouse cinema knows, Antonioni had been in poor health for a number of years. But back in 1966, he was one of the icons, and Blowup is an extraordinarily rich film, to which I am not going to do justice here. Not only can you write a book about Blowup, people have. Not only is it a thriller, not only does it capture the zeitgeist of the 60s, not only does it have a young working class photographer as its hero, not only does it have Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck on guitar, not only does it have Jane Birkin’s pubic hair, but it’s a film about film in a postmodern sense, a film about the more you look, the more you see, and about political and emotional commitment as well. Although Thomas (David Hemmings, who hung around with Terence Donovan and David Bailey to research the role) doesn’t find out the truth about the murder (if there was a murder), he does start to interact with other people instead of just photographing them in a voyeuristic way (as indicated by his fetching of an imaginary tennis ball at the end of the film). The film both has and hasn’t dated. The surface has changed but the depths remain. It is the work of a director at the height of his powers. And I think Zabriskie Point (1970) is a work of genius as well and we could really do with it on DVD, hint, hint.

Blow Out (1981)

Famously, Brian De Palma’s film is a conflation of both Blowup (1966) and The Conversation (1974), as well as a film informed by the slasher genre success of Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980) and the political cynicism of Watergate and the Carter administration. And it has one of John Travolta’s best onscreen performances, wondrous cinematography from Vilmos Zsigmond, a nicely sleazy turn from Dennis Franz, and Nancy Allen, who is as cute as a button and was Mrs Brian De Palma at the time. This film rotates at the top of Quentin Tarantino’s all time best movies list as well. When the film came out in 1981, it failed at the box office because Ronald Reagan had just been elected and the film’s dark tone was entirely out of keeping with the public mood of the time. Nevertheless, it is another one of those films that fits into the category “last great films of the 70s” along with Heaven’s Gate (1980) and Raging Bull (1980) - in some ways, it may be better than either of those two. And it’s certainly as fully realised a film as its prestigious antecedent, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup.