It's Only a Movie Read online

  I loved doing the graveyard shift, not least because I got to haul my sorry arse up to Manchester which was about 180 miles nearer to Linda (who lived in Liverpool) than London. I recently bumped into Radcliffe at the Sony Awards (did I mention this already?) where we both commiserated with each other about the fact that we would surely go home empty-handed, and then both went on to win our respective awards (no, really, stop me if you’ve heard this one …), making us look like self-serving faux-modest tossers who had expected to win all along.

  When Radcliffe departed from the Radio One arts programme The Guest List to host the graveyard shift, I took over as the programme’s presenter and it became one of a string of formerly successful programmes that have been killed by the ‘curse of Kermode’. Other victims of this uniquely paralysing power have included The Antique Records Roadshow (which ran for years under Andy Kershaw’s steady hand but which I killed in two short series), Clingfilm (the horribly entitled Radio One film programme which I both spawned and sank, though at least I wasn’t responsible for that godawful name); the Movie Update (ditto, with a little help from James King); and Danny Baker’s short-lived BBC TV show After All on which I was musical director and which similarly withered on the vine. I have also sunk not one but two movie magazines (Fear and Flicks, the latter of which had been going for donkeys’ ages till I came along), an entire radio station (the aforementioned Radio Five) and of course the Film4 Extreme Cinema strand which briefly flourished before going the way of all things in which I have had a hand. Last year the Observer newspaper (for whom I am a regular writer) pluckily bucked the accursed trend by weathering doom-laden reports about its ‘uncertain future’ for which I hold myself cosmically accountable. By the time you read this book, it is very probable that its publishers Random House will have gone bust, in which case let me take this opportunity to say how nice it was to work with them and how sorry I am to have put them all out of a job.

  At the height of my tenure hosting The Guest List most of my time seemed to be spent on trains to and from Manchester. On Mondays and Tuesdays I’d watch films in London before heading up North to do the show with Mark and Lard on Wednesdays, finishing at midnight after which we’d decamp to an uninviting club around the corner from the BBC whose sole allure was the fact that it sold tuna sandwiches and chips until 2 a. m. On Thursdays I’d present The Guest List which would include a film-review slot in which someone other than me would tell me what they thought of the new releases while I kept quiet as if I hadn’t seen them yet. Then I’d plod back to the hotel where I’d watch German-dubbed reruns of Kojak (‘das ist eine troublesome murder case, Saperstein’) on the only twenty-four-hour channel in town before getting the 5. 20 a. m. train back to London to do my own movie slot on the Mayo show wherein I would babblingly evaluate the new releases about which I’d been so ignorant the night before. Anyone listening from 9 p. m. to 11 a. m. would presumably have got the impression that I’d somehow watched all those films in the wee small hours of Friday morning, and if asked I would tell people that that’s exactly what I did. Why spoil the magic?

  So all this stuff was going on simultaneously with the Mayo show, and if Simon is reading this now (which he won’t be, obviously) I hope he realises just how popular I was back then and just how many other offers and suitors I had to beat off in order to plight my radio troth to him and how much better I could have done if I had wanted to which I didn’t but that was my choice and don’t you forget it thank you very much no don’t mind me I just work here incidentally here’s your coffee, oh don’t mention it, not that you’ve ever got coffee for me oh no far too busy being famous on the radio while I do all the hard work …

  Am I hamming this up?

  If so, it’s only because that’s how it feels sometimes – hammy, with a side order of cheese.

  At the time of writing, Mayo and I have been ‘together’ for around sixteen years, give or take a two-year break between me leaving Radio One and him taking up residence at 5 Live whereupon we picked up pretty much where we had left off – which, basically, was bickering. I’m fairly sure that my first words on his 5 Live show were ‘And another thing …’ and it all just continued from there.

  The odd thing, of course, is that despite being professionally joined at the hip we’ve never really socialised together, probably because we have very little in common. He’s intelligent, interested in current affairs, and keen on football. And I’m not. In fact the only thing that genuinely bonds us is the fact that we both have families in whose company we’d much rather spend our spare time.

  In the summer of 2009, entirely by coincidence, the pair of us ended up in an East Anglian village and for three consecutive nights Simon, his wife Hilary, Linda and I went to the pub together and experienced something akin to normal human interaction. We sat, we drank, we laughed, we moaned, we ordered more drinks, ate too many crisps, and we all developed pleasantly low-level headaches. At some point Hilary and I discovered that we had been in Manchester at around the same time and we swapped enthusiastic reminiscences about the old haunts until Simon got the hump and banned any further talk of Manchester on the grounds that he hadn’t been there and couldn’t join in. Through the haze of a few pints of Johnny-Knock-Me-Down I argued that Linda hadn’t been in Manchester either, but then she pointed out that she had been there and it was bloody typical of me to forget that that was where we met, so I slunk off to get more drinks and crisps and by the time I got back to the table Simon was drawing up his plans for world domination on the back of a scrappy table napkin in between bouts of earnest tweeting.

  At this point, our future together seemed worryingly uncertain. Despite Simon’s conversational ban, the subject of Manchester just wouldn’t go away because 5 Live was moving there en masse and Simon had made it clear that he wasn’t going with it. There were rumours of a new job for him at Radio Two, and even though he’d assured me that nothing was going to break up the old team I was going through all the usual paroxysms of thinking that I was about to be dumped – or ‘chucked’, as I believe the teenagers still have it. Simon’s career was clearly going from strength to strength, and the possibility of being left behind seemed very real – like Cynthia Lennon missing the train at Euston station because a policeman didn’t believe that she was the superstar’s wife.

  So when no one was looking I slipped Simon’s scrap of paper off to one side, huddled into a corner, unwrapped it furtively, and scanned it to make sure that my name was on it.

  Somewhere.

  Anywhere.

  To be honest, there wasn’t much of anything on that napkin scrap. Circles and triangles, some numbers underlined, an ink splodge here and a beer stain there. It looked unimpressive, but if you’ve ever seen Nelson’s hastily drawn plan of action for the Battle of Trafalgar you’ll know that it wasn’t much better; some crosses, an arrow, a couple of squiggly lines, and the rest is ‘Kiss me Hardy …’.

  Eventually my sore eyes settled on something amidst the crisp crumbs and doodles which, if you turned the paper a certain way in the half-light, looked like it might just be a pair of initials.

  My initials.

  ‘MK’.

  Followed by a question mark …

  Chapter 7

  NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL QUITE FUNNY

  I have a rule about walking out of movies – I don’t do it, unless they involve scenes of actual cruelty to animals or the abuse of children. Or they feature Julian Sands. (Only kidding. Sorry Julian. Old habits.) The reasons are obvious, and are to do with consent. Whereas grown-ups can agree to be filmed while hammering nails through their genitals (as the late ‘supermasochist’ Bob Flanagan did in Kirby Dick’s terrific documentary Sick), animals and children need to be protected from the whims of film-makers who are often less than kind in their attitude to the on-screen talent (Hitchcock famously said that actors should be treated like cattle, and he’s generally regarded to be a genius).

  To me this issue of consent seems inarguable, but
you’d be amazed by how many problems it causes for our censors who are forever attempting to balance concepts of freedom of expression with the harsh realities of the law. Let me offer two examples which seem to crystallise the madness around these issues.

  Firstly, take as typical the case of acclaimed European director Emir Kusturica’s 2004 film Life is a Miracle which offered the director’s usual mix of politics, fantasy, war, and loud brass bands. Having played to muted but reverential applause in Cannes the film was submitted to the BBFC who noted that it contained a brief shot of a cat mangling a live pigeon, an image which appeared to be unsimulated and which could therefore fall foul of the 1937 Cinematograph Films (Animals) Act which outlaws the mistreatment of animals on film. The BBFC duly presented the distributors with two options: provide credible evidence that the scene was simulated; or make a cut of slightly less than two seconds. After some consideration, the distributors plumped for the second option, apparently considering the issue unworthy of a protracted verification process.

  Sadly, no one asked Emir about this, and when he got wind of the decision, he hit the roof. Outraged at the censoring of his fine work, Kusturica told the British media that he would rather see Life is a Miracle shelved indefinitely than ‘butchered’ by the BBFC. Asked to reconsider their decision, the Board pointed out politely that they were simply complying with a statutory regulation which was not theirs to overturn – the film seemed to depict a live animal being mistreated, and it was therefore incumbent upon the film-makers to prove that such was not the case before they could grant a certificate. Quick as a flash, Kusturica shot back that the pigeon was already dead, and that he had found it lying by the side of the road. The BBFC pointed out that since the pigeon was still moving (its wings are demonstrably flapping in the scene) it seemed probable that (unlike Monty Python’s infamous parrot) Kusturica’s pigeon had yet to join the choir invisible. Unless, of course, Emir could provide evidence to the contrary.

  Having backed himself into a corner with his own threats of pulling the movie, and apparently realising that both common sense and UK law were against him, Kusturica admitted that, yes OK the pigeon was moving, but only because he had cleverly wired it up with bits of string, in order to simulate the writhings of a live creature. When asked to verify this assertion, the director promptly produced a letter attesting that no pigeons were harmed during the making of Life is a Miracle – honest. Displaying the patience of Job, the BBFC duly looked at the scene again and conceded that, yes, unlikely as it sounded, it was just about possible that the bird in question was part of some Gerry Anderson-esque puppet show. Since they were unable to prove that Kusturica wasn’t telling the truth, and since (contrary to popular belief) they don’t like cutting movies unless they absolutely have to, the Board agreed to reverse their initial decision, and allowed Life is a Miracle to be passed uncut.

  Personally, I would have tied Kusturica up with a piece of string and thrown him to the pigeons.

  Which, incidentally, reminds me of a related incident also involving our feathered friends: the case of John Waters’ seventies cult classic Pink Flamingos. The film, which has become a milestone of self-aware trash cinema famously climaxes in transvestite icon Divine eating dog shit – for real. This is fine by me – after all, in my younger years I ate at McDonald’s. But there’s also a sequence in which a live chicken is used as an unwilling sexual aid, and that’s where I draw the line – from the chicken angle, rather than the sex angle, obviously.

  I was in Cannes in the late nineties when Pink Flamingos was getting a twenty-fifth anniversary re-release and John Waters (whose work I generally like) was doing the rounds of press interviews. Inevitably the subject of chicken sex reared its ugly head and I felt compelled to tell Waters that I still thought that scene was unforgivable.

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ said Waters with a flamboyant flounce.’Everyone still goes on about that damn chicken scene. I honestly don’t know what all the fuss is about. People eat chicken all the time. With Pink Flamingos, the chicken got fucked, got to be in a movie, and then the cast ate it that evening. And I bet you all those people who complain about that scene went straight out and ate a chicken sandwich.’

  I pointed out that, as a vegetarian, I did no such thing.

  ‘OK,’ he conceded, ‘but it’s not like you keep chickens as pets, right?’

  I pointed out that this was exactly what I did, and that Elvis, Priscilla, Clarrie and Shula were very much a part of my extended family.

  He thought about this for a moment.

  ‘Fine,’ he said after a while.’To you, the keeper of the chickens, I apologise. Everyone else can kiss my ass.’

  See how much fun I can be in interviews?

  You’d think the situation would be more clear-cut in relation to the protection of children, but inevitably it is not so. The most bizarre case of which I have had personal experience was that of Baadasssss!, a docudrama by actor-director Mario Van Peebles celebrating the work of his father Melvin who made the seventies blaxploitation classic Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song. In the late nineties, in my role as host of Film4’s Extreme Cinema strand (which, as previously noted, fell foul of the ‘curse of Kermode’) I had introduced a screening of Sweetback which tells the story of a young man’s journey from wide-eyed innocent to militant outlaw. The film, in which Melvin plays the adult Sweetback, opens with the hero’s younger self (played by someone who looks an awful lot like a fourteen-year-old Mario) losing his virginity to a prostitute. Despite being simulated, the scene is somewhat explicit, and I was surprised that it hadn’t been cut under the Protection of Children Act. So I rang the BBFC who told me that they had on file a letter from Melvin Van Peebles attesting that the actor in that scene was not in fact his son Mario, but Hubert Scales (who was over eighteen), an assurance the Board were inclined to accept since Melvin was hardly likely to have placed his own son in a potentially compromising situation.

  So far, so good. Until, that is, the now grown-up Mario came to make Baadasssss! in 2003, wherein he restaged the filming of the infamous scene from Sweetback with his younger self in the starring role. Rather than merely skirting the issue, Baadasssss! went into great detail about how Melvin (here played by Mario) insisted that his own son perform the scene because it wouldn’t be right to ask someone else’s kid to do it – a version of events which hardly tallied with Melvin’s letter to the BBFC.

  When I first saw Baadasssss!, I wondered whether this retrospective admission would have any effect upon the BBFC’s previous decision. Surely if Mario was now telling the world that he had performed the scene in question, then Melvin’s assurances to the contrary were, to say the least, suspect. Sure enough, in the wake of Baadasssss! the BBFC took another look at Sweet Sweetback, taking into account ‘information that has come to light since 1998 [that] has cast considerable doubt on those assurances’ formerly offered by Melvin.’It now appears’, the BBFC concluded, ‘that the actor in the scene in question was in fact the director’s son Mario Van Peebles, who cannot have been older than fourteen years at the time of filming.’

  This ‘new information’ presented the Board with a very grave problem for, unlike issues of taste or potential offensiveness, the Protection of Children Act offers no room for manoeuvre. If a scene of a sexual nature features an underage performer, it runs the risk of indecency, regardless of dramatic or artistic intent. Despite appreciating the historical and cultural significance of the movie the Board had no choice but to show the sequence first to their own specialist advisor, and then to ‘one of the leading QCs in this area’, to determine whether the scene fell foul of the law.’The legal advice was unequivocal’ they discovered.’The sequence was likely to be considered indecent under current UK law.’

  The ramifications of this conclusion were far-reaching, and included the BBFC having to contact the distributors of previously uncut editions of the Sweetback video to warn them that the ‘18’ certificate had been rescinded, and furthe
r distribution could incur prosecution. Despite much woolly liberal rhubarbing about the retrospective ‘desecration’ of an accepted classic, I think the BBFC were right and were left with no option but to enforce cuts. The only people the Van Peebles have to blame for the cutting of Sweetback is themselves.

  For the record, I’d also like to state that since a major regime change at the end of the nineties the BBFC have been doing a sterling job of allowing adults to decide what they watch whilst still policing legally unacceptable images with discretion, insight and patience. This is good news for UK filmgoers, but has a downside for me because the Board’s thoughtful vigilance means that there are now precious few occasions on which I find it legitimate or justifiable to walk out of a movie. Which is a shame, because there are few things quite as satisfying as being able to storm indignantly out of a really terrible film. At the Cannes Film Festival (of which yet more later) the seats in some screening rooms are of the flip-down variety which make a pleasing banging sound when swiftly vacated. During particularly ‘problematic’ screenings one can thrill to an increasing crescendo of percussive clatters which invariably starts with a random single beat before advancing toward a free-form jazz drum solo of thumping disgust. That sound is one of the few things I actually like about Cannes.

  So, to answer a question I get asked all the time, yes I really do watch all those movies from beginning to end, even the ones I really hate. Even Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Very occasionally, I confess, I have succumbed to sleep, which I suppose is the psychological equivalent of walking out – your body’s still there, but your mind has left the building. A recent example would be the really very boring ‘comedy’ Year One which failed to raise a titter despite the presence of Jack Black and Michael Cera, both of whom I generally find innately humorous. But the film was a stiff – such a bore, in fact, that when Radio One film critic James King lost all patience and decided to take a toilet break (another variation on the ‘walkout’, offering only temporary escape) he had to wake me from my slumbers in the seat next to him to let him out. Film executive Jack Warner used to judge movies by how often he had to go to the bathroom, famously calling Bonnie and Clyde ‘a three-piss picture’. Now that’s what I call constructive criticism.