Obsessive Compulsions: Orson Welles and the Frozen Peas

The first in an occasional series of small valentines to the jagged shards of popular culture I keep stabbing into my insatiable brainmeat over and over again. As I incessantly relive these small and perfectly-formed moments of wonderment, the enthusiasm overflow is going to spill out right here.

Many years ago, whilst recording the narration for a Findus commercial in the UK, the great Orson Welles, in all his eloquent, curmudgeonly, Dionysian glory, starts sniping and arguing with the producer and the director. It’s all on tape. And it is phenomenal.

I cannot stop listening to this recording. I just can’t. For nearly two months now, whenever I need an irrational laugh, I listen to it. And it gets funnier every time. Partly because of Orson’s rumbling, irritable baritone. Partly because of his glorious turns-of-phrase. Partly because of the ineptitude of the crew working on the commercial, and their inability to placate the talent. Partly because of the surreal experience of hearing a great man arguing about something so patently trivial. It’s all here and more.

I’m not sure that I can articulate exactly why I love this so damn much. I’m pretty sure that I don’t need to. It’s enough to know that I do. And who needs my shapeless musings, when you can get at the good stuff yourself with a couple of canny keystrokes? For your edification (and for my own personal reference), here is a slew of stuff relating to that recording session and it’s crumb, crisp coating. Links ahoy!

To hear this piece of unintentional comedy gold, click here.

For greater detail on that recording session, as well as a transcript, click here.

For more Orson Welles insanity, here he is absolutely shit-faced trying to get through a Paul Masson wine commercial:

Some more Frozen Peas love! The classic episode of Pinky and the Brain entitled Yes, Always that spoofs the infamous recording session:

And one last thing – an interview with Maurice LaMarche who used Welles as the basis for The Brain’s voice, and some nice anecdotes about his own love affair with that tape.

Got all that? Good. Now, altogether now: “We know a remote farm in Lincolnshire, where Mrs. Buckley lives. Every July, peas grow there...”

The Majestyk

This is indescribably fantastic. Indisputable evidence (as if we needed it, and we really didn’t) that Charles Bronson was one of the coolest motherfuckers ever to walk the earth. Revel in the Awesome:

Awakenings

“BE ALERT. BRITAIN NEEDS MORE LERTS.”
An unattributed bit of graffito that I remember seeing in one of those old Nigel Rees compilation books of Graffiti. Probably the first one, Graffiti Lives OK published in 1979, which means I’ve mentally stored this arcane piece of useless trivia for 28 bloody years, since I was seven years old. Curse my eidetic memory!

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how to get my brain kick-started in the mornings. Some days it’s a lot easier than others.

There are days when it’s pretty easy to hit the ground running. You just need the right trigger. Days that begin with the sound of my daughter’s laughter always start well. Or a day when I can flick on the radio and out comes Jackie Wilson’s Higher And Higher, setting me up perfectly for the travails of the coming 24-hours. Both of those things have occurred in the last week, which is why it is so easy for me to draw on them as examples.

But serendipity, like caffeine, only goes so far.

Despite the fact that I will never, ever be a Morning Person (I have always been a Creature of the Night by nature), I do try and make sure that I get out of bed about an hour and a half before I have to head out to work. The Reason? Well, it’s the only time I’m going to have to myself for the entire day, so I might as well make the most of it and gently ease myself into a state of readiness for battle. If I get up late and just run out the door, I spend the rest of my day on the back foot trying to get myself up to speed.

By getting up early, I can have a leisurely cup of coffee, read a few e-mails or maybe a comic, and sift through the illegible scrawls in my notebooks or on the shreds of paper that I seem to accumulate, making sense of the fleeting thoughts that I hurled onto the page the previous day.

But that still doesn’t address my main point. Getting myself into a state of alertness. Making my brain spark and fire to life, instead of stalling in a low-key, purely functional level of ponderous mental plodding. It’s a goddamn art, I tell ya! And I haven’t quite figured out a surefire way of doing it yet.

Sometimes maybe all it takes is a good night’s sleep, but those can be in short supply, especially when your young daughter is ill, as has been the case recently. Now, most kids, when they have a runny nose, either wipe it away with their sleeve, or just allow the mucus to slowly creep out and settle on their upper lip. Not my Buttercup. Oh no, she won’t touch it. This has lead to the repeated refrain of “Daddy! My nose is coming out!” resounding off the walls of AKA Central recently. Which means that someone has to get up and wipe her nose for her, despite the fact that we have tried to get her to do it herself. In fairness, she is capable of doing it, and if she wasn’t feeling so fragile, she wouldn’t hesitate. But not at the moment. And Snot Never Sleeps!

Rambling, aren’t I? OK, that’s enough for now.

Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc

“I love writing but I hate starting. The page is awfully white and it says. “You may have fooled some of the people some of the time but those days are over, giftless. I'm not your agent and I'm not your mommy, I'm a white piece of paper, you wanna dance with me?" and I really, really don't. I don't want any trouble. I'll go peaceable-like.”
Aaron Sorkin from his Introduction to The West Wing Script Book: Volume 1

Also, something that occurred to me this morning as I was fighting my way through a particularly brutal hangover – many years ago, after I’d flamed out of my Law Degree realising that it just wasn’t for me, I dusted myself off and decided to re-enter the hallowed halls of higher education. I applied to get on to a bunch of media and film studies degree courses. I was rejected for all of them. I wasn’t considered to be suitable material for such endeavours. Now, universities use things that I’ve written to teach their film students.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. All those people who turned me away? Fuck them. Fuck them up their stupid asses.

Ah, and that’s enough of sucking my own dick for today. The white page beckons.

Chops

Horn players call it their embouchure. Practicing every day keeps their embouchure strong. If they don’t, mastery of their instrument starts to slide and they have to build up to that level of excellence all over again.

My embouchure is pitifully weak at the moment. Seeing as this blog sometimes acts as my Jiminy Cricket, getting all of this out of my head will keep me honest and maybe even stick a much-needed foot in my ass.

My writing at the moment feels flabby and dull. It’s not writer’s block. I have no problem getting the words out. It’s just that they all seem so lacklustre, as if everything is stuck at the level of a first draft, and I don’t have the magic dust in my arsenal of tricks to bring the words to life.

January zipped along in a tumult of flailing fingers as the writing ticked over nicely, and I made strong and steady progress on my long-gestating screenplay Rotten Timing. Unexpectedly, an opportunity came up that was too good to dismiss, and I shifted my brainspace over to something else and started banging together a proposal for a non-fiction book.

Since that was sent off, I’m having trouble reclaiming the part of my brain that was preoccupied with it. I’ve been doing what writers should never, ever do. I’ve been giving my proposal a messy autopsy, violently slicing into it and thinking that “I should have punched that section up a bit” or “Damn, I shouldn’t have put that in there”. And it’s all futile, because it’s out of my hands now, and I should just forget about it and move on to the next thing. If the book gets picked up, great. And if it doesn’t? Well, shit, at least I rolled the dice and gave it a shot. (Of course, if the proposal is rejected, this is probably the last you’ll ever hear about it).

Another thing I’ve been doing (and I am positive that all published writers with a tantalisingly open web browser do this) is googling myself. It’s odd to discover that something I wrote is considered to be required reading on a variety of Asian Cinema Studies courses at prestigious London and American Universities. Kind of blows my mind a bit, to be honest. I’m no fool - I’m not the leading anything in any field. Nevertheless, it’s flattering and motivating and at least I know my words are reaching people.

But it also leads to a weird disconnect between differing realities and conflicting perceptions. Here I am struggling to squeeze words into meaningful sentences, convinced that I am creatively barren at the moment, and elsewhere I’m held up as some kind of authority on something. It’s fantastic, but it’s also confusing.

I don’t know what I’m trying to say. Maybe all writers are always painfully self-critical and dissatisfied with their efforts. Maybe I’m trying too hard to write my way out of an illusory slump. Maybe life is like a school report card, and I keep seeing the words “Must Try Harder” burnt into every page I fill. Maybe it’s OK to try your hardest and do your best, whatever the results, as long as you really are trying to do your best instead of just half-heartedly chipping away at something.

Anyway, enough of that. I know what I have to do. I’ve known all along. Must Try Harder.

Shit Just Got Real

Four years ago, after having just sat through Bad Boys II, I scrawled the following in the back of a notebook:

“Pure, unadulterated, could-have-been-made-ten-years-ago, big-screen madness. Extreme car chases, extreme shoot-outs, gratuitous foreign drug dealer accents, gratuitous swearing, deafening music, extreme gore and carnage, gratuitous nudity…it’s a pure distillation of the late 80s-early 90s action aesthetic, and I loved it like it was my first born child. And NO CGI!! Take that, you Matrix-loving bastards! Blowing shit up is much more pleasing than elaborate pixels jumping around in a soulless cinematic epileptic fit.”

Coming eight years after the original, absolutely no-one was eagerly awaiting this belated sequel to the Will Smith-Martin Lawrence buddy cop-movie. I certainly wasn’t. After a long summer choked by leaden FX-heavy misfires like Hulk (Don’t make it Ang Lee. We wouldn’t like it when it’s Ang Lee) and The Matrix Reloaded, I was just forcing myself to sit through the last of the summer 2003 blockbusters.

Critically reviled in all quarters, I was surprised and exhilarated by the delirious excesses of Bad Boys II. My friends all thought I’d finally lost my shit when I kept talking about how brilliant it was. Big-ass explosions will always defeat dodgy renderings of lumpen green monsters or the turgid pseudo-mysticism of Keanu Reeves.

For the last four years, I was convinced that I was the lone fan of the unfashionable Bad Boys sequel. Finally, Hot Fuzz has come along to prove that I was never alone. Just as Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost moulded Shaun of the Dead from their abiding love of the Romero zombie movies, Hot Fuzz is where they pledge an oath of fealty to the over-stylised, explodo-fests of Michael Bay and Tony Scott. And it is Great!

Cannily blending the milieu familiar from numerous sedate Sunday evening rural copper dramas with the all-star cast of a good Agatha Christie adaptation, Hot Fuzz plays with all the conventions of both the noisy American action movie and the gentle British portrayal of small-town police without once treating the story as mere pastiche. Simon Pegg is as terrifically impassive as the T-1000 as he chases after evildoers, and the oleaginous Timothy Dalton is wonderful. 2007 at the movies is shaping up pretty well so far. Bring the noise!

Buck Up

An apology is in order.

Glancing at the previous blog entry, I am stunned and disappointed to notice that I failed to make a glaringly obvious and reasonably amusing joke. I will rectify this oversight post haste.

I should, of course, have finished that post with the sentence: “Twiki gets a booty call”, or maybe even, “Now that’s a booty call!”

The fact that I was recovering from the ill effects of an evening of heavy drinking when I wrote that post is no excuse. It won’t happen again. I will endeavour to acknowledge every double entendre, no matter how puerile, from this point forwards.

I thank you for your patience and understanding at this difficult and joke-free time.

I will now go back to waiting for the postman to deliver my Buck Rogers in the 25th Century Season 1 DVD boxset, proving once and for all that inconsequential musings can and do lead to unnecessary expenditure. I can’t wait…

The Year is 1987

I know, I know. There have been interviews to attend, colds to endure, a day-job to suffer through and writing projects to wrestle with. But I’m back now.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about the dying art of television opening title sequences. There’s nothing quite like devoting valuable brainspace to pop culture ephemera. It helps me relax.

As much as I admire the ominous minimalism of the Lost opening, with the lone word tilting, blurring and drifting away with a single noise crashing over the top of it, I miss the days when, in one rapidfire burst of sound and vision, you’d be handed the entire premise of the show.

There are many fine title sequences from the 70s and 80s, but one of my undisputed favourites has to be this: William Conrad’s gravely baritone gives you the backstory, as concentric circles scroll away delivering the good stuff: spaceships and phasers; alien women and small robots; and Erin Gray in white lycra, whilst a bombastic chunk of epic music tells you that you are About To Be Entertained. In just over a minute, nothing says “Here Come The Fun” quite as efficiently as the opening of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. And I can prove it. Look:

What ever happened to Gil Gerard anyway?

As a parting shot, I give you this – a moment of supreme oddness in a show that was full of them. Dumb, but undeniably Fun. Enjoy:

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

The other day I was speaking to my Mum on the phone. The conversation went a little something like this:

Mum: So, seen any films this week?
Me: Yeah. Smokin’ Aces.
Mum: Smoking Arses?
Me: No. Smokin’ Aces.
Mum: Smoking Anus?
Me: What is wrong with you??

I don’t know what I found more troubling about this exchange: uncovering my Mum’s newfound love of coprohiliac humour, or the fact that she thinks I spend my free time watching movies called Smoking Anus.

Anyway, that telephone conversation was the most entertaining thing that came out of sitting through Smokin’ Aces. Because it’s not good. And here comes the bit where I tell you why.

Smokin’ Aces is this year’s Lucky Number Slevin or Confidence. The kind of movie endlessly and irritatingly described in reviews as “Tarantinoesque” or “Post-Tarantino”. You know the kind of thing – a slew of extended cameos by stars and recognisable character actors dressed as over-stylised hipsters and hoodlums, peppering faux-hard-boiled dialogue with jarring pop-culture references, before everything descends into a melange of double-crosses and twists, bullets and blood all the way to the end credits.

But here’s the thing – Quentin Tarantino takes his love of genre films, whether they are blaxploitation movies or Shaw Brothers movies or heist movies, and not only pays homage to the very things he loves, but he also moulds them into exciting and resilient films that light up the screen and stand up in their own right. Tarantino’s movies may reference the past but they are resolutely modern or, even better, timeless. His inspirations and influences are clear for all to see, but his skill as a filmmaker elevate his films beyond simple retreads of the familiar. The difference between Quentin and Smokin’ Aces is the same as the difference between homage and plagiarism, passion and hackery, creativity and laziness.

What is Smokin’ Aces about? Well, it’s about fifteen minutes of clunky exposition distributed amongst the cast in tedious and unnecessary detail, replete with text flashing up on the screen to tell you who everybody is. You won’t care. Most of the cast are cannon-fodder anyway. The remaining hour and a half of the film is essentially the shootout at the end of True Romance stretched way past breaking point.

That’s not to say that there aren’t some small pleasures to be gleaned from Smokin’ Aces. There are odd moments of weirdness that made me smile, but nowhere near enough to sustain the entire movie. I’d watch Andy Garcia in pretty much anything. (I’m a sucker for that mellifluous Cuban lilt and that steely gaze). Jeremy Piven does his best with what he’s saddles with (but for me his finest hour will always be Very Bad Things). And yet again I’m impressed and frustrated with Ryan Reynolds. He is always very good in poor movies. He’s got a great screen presence and he can do comedy, whilst still having considerable “straight” acting chops. Kinda like a young Michael Keaton, with that same crazed intensity when he needs it. He was by far the best thing in Blade: Trinity. He was great in the passable Clerks knock-off Waiting. Someone needs to show some compassion and give this man a decent movie! Either that or fire his agent.

Other than that, Smokin’ Aces is hollow entertainment, all cordite and quips, but when the smoke finally clears, the biggest con is the one that swindled me out of 108 minutes that I’m never getting back.

Mind Adventures

"The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size." Oliver Wendell Holmes

Things have been mighty quiet here at Casa Del AKA, I know. I’ve been busy working hard on my screenplay Rotten Timing.

I’ve got the beginning, I’ve got the ending, I’ve got the spine and the skeleton and the structure of it all worked out. Now, I’m just trying to add muscle and meat to it - the laughs and the horror and the excitement and the drama and the tears.

Mostly, I’ve just been bouncing ideas like a messy ball inside the walls of my skull, letting them ricochet off the ganglia and coming up with wonderful things. Lots of reading, reading, reading. I try and scrape together the time to wade through the mounds of research material that I’ve accumulated, sitting quietly soaking it all up until a flare gun blasts inspiration into the darkness, lighting up the corners that hold things that I never knew were hiding there. This starts a bout of frantic scribbling, before the cycle begins anew with another round of reading.

I’ve been avoiding fiction since I jumped back into this project. Other people’s ideas leak into my own too easily that way, and its best avoided. Instead, I’m mired in quantum physics and determinism and the teachings of Buddha.

Other than that, work is kicking my ass. Getting out of this job has become a priority. It’s become soul destroying. The only thing that gets me through it is the knowledge that I will be back home with my family at the end of the day. Buttercup continues to be an endless source of pleasure and delight. If I’m lucky, I get home in time to read her a Mr. Men story before she goes to sleep, and then we sit and talk about the story for a couple of minutes before I tuck her up in bed.

This morning, I was heading for the door and I could hear her calling me. I went to see what she wanted.

Buttercup: Daddy! Daddy!
Me: Yes, Baby.
Buttercup: I want to play with you, Daddy.
Me: I want to play with you too, darling, but I have to go to work.

She throws her arms around my neck and gives me a big hug. I give her a kiss and disentangle her before placing her back in her mother’s arms. I’m leaving all this for a four hour round-trip commute and eight hours of being ignored or mistreated in the middle of a concrete wasteland?

Walking out of the front door, the cold wind dried my damp eyes.