Dustin Hoffman, The Black Dahlia, and bent coppers – Reviews #267

... in which I arrive five years late to the Line of Duty party to find that all the bent coppers have already been caught.



Black Dahlia Avenger by Steve Hodel (2003/2015) − In 2003, former LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel held a press conference to announce that he had solved perhaps the most notorious unsolved murder case in American history: the 1947 slaying of the 'Black Dahlia', an aspiring actress named Elizabeth Short, whose brutally mutilated body was found in a parking lot in Los Angeles. The unforgettable appellation − often misattributed to tabloid hacks repurposing the film noir title, The Blue Dahlia − was actually Short's nickname in life, and, with the singularly horrifying manner of the body (cut in two with surgeon-like precision), may explain why it became such a sensational newspaper story. Yellow journalism fanned the flames of a tale that had everything − a beautiful victim, a sadistic villain, and innumerable conspiracy theories − turning the hunt for the killer into a dark parlour game, rather than it remaining what it should always have been: the search for justice after the death of a young woman, almost certainly murdered by an abusive ex-boyfriend. By 1950, she was a line in Sunset Blvd. Four decades later, James Ellroy revisited the crime in the dark, semi-fictional opening novel of his LA Quartet.

Hodel's theory, which made his book an international best-seller, is that the killer was his own father: a doctor, former musical prodigy and bona fide genius, by the name of George Hill Hodel. And for a third of its 500-page length, Black Dahlia Avenger − the name the killer gave himself, and Steve's self-appointed role here − is a gripping read: clumsily written and riddled with typos, but presenting a compelling narrative piecing together a timeline from innumerable press cuttings, fascinatingly documenting George's past, underscored by Steve's uneasy but loving relationship with him, and incorporating a remarkable gallery of supporting players, from Maltese Falcon director John Huston to surrealist, sadistic photographer Man Ray, and the big players in law enforcement in 1940s LA.

Then we get to the 'evidence' and it's sketchy as hell, Steve consistently going about a third of the way to proving something, and then considering the job done, and calling back to it, with an "as I have shown". The bits at the beginning were decidedly questionable too, including two supposed pictures of Short in George's personal effects which don't look like her at all (one of them has since been proven, by Steve himself, not to be her), but I'd hoped that was just the catalyst for his investigation, not a central part of it. Parts of the investigation at least support the case for further analysis of Hodel, Sr as a suspect − particularly handwriting comparisons − but the author seems conspicuously unable to differentiate between credible evidence, coincidence and batshit conspiracy theory. He'll also do things like (on p. 275 of the 2015 edition) show how his dad looked just like a composite picture, by airbrushing out his dad's moustache. Yes, OK, but your dad had a moustache. At one point he suggests, without further elaboration or investigation, that the "wealthy Hollywood man" being sought by police must have been his father.

"Who's your father?"
"George Hill Hodel."
"Ah yes, George Hill Hodel, the only wealthy man in Hollywood."

I do have some sympathy for Steve. His dad was clearly an awful, awful person − as evidenced by his rape of Steve's 14-year-old half-sister, of which he was cleared, but clearly guilty − and he may well have been capable of this crime. He may even have done it. But the author's obsessive attempt to link him to every unsolved rape and homicide in LA in the 1940s is less than convincing. His cries of a cover-up, as supposedly evidenced by the 1949 grand jury hearings into the failure to find the killer, are also patchy. In the 'Aftermath' section, added in 2005, we hear from Lt Jemison, appointed by the DA's office to look into the initial LAPD investigation, who attributes the failings to incompetence, rather than wrongdoing.

It's in the Aftermath section − missing, of course, from the original 2003 edition − that we realise Steve wasn't as mad as we thought. He may have begun the investigation because he decided that a photo of a random woman was Elizabeth Short, but his father really was a suspect, to the extent that he was bugged, and his phone tapped, by the DA's investigators. And there, in the transcripts, he seems to hint at some complicity in the Black Dahlia killing ("Supposin' I did kill the Black Dahlia? They couldn't prove it now"), while practically confessing to the murder of his secretary, Ruth Spaulding. But, as we see from Jemison's subsequent report, something cleared Hodel, Sr from suspicion, and he was eliminated as a suspect. Steve's contention that Jemison was being forced to drop the investigation into his father, and used the phrase "tends to eliminate him as a suspect" to show his unease, is unconvincing and not backed up by any evidence.

It's a frustrating book, then, and by no means 'case closed'. And while Steve clearly cares about Short, and makes a good fist of reclaiming her as a lovelorn young woman, rather than the dissolute slut painted by misogynistic cops and writers down the decades, he also wallows in the depravity and sadism of her murder and countless other murders of young women. I was suckered in by my fascination with Ellroy, LA noir and an unsolved mystery, but found myself feeling sickened, exploited and depressed by the end.

Hodel has since alienated most of his defenders by asserting that his dad was also the Zodiac Killer. (2.5)

See also: For a long time I avoided 'true crime', because it made me feel either guilty or unhappy. Those concerns were overridden by a couple of books which sounded too fascinating to neglect: Michael Finkel's True Story and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Now I may be back where I started.

***



The Folks That Live on the Hill by Kingsley Amis (1990) – Amis’s blinding wit can’t always rescue this poisonously misanthropic book about outwardly avuncular academic Harry Caldecote and his troubled family: the bereaved Clare, alcoholic Fiona, henproteckted Freddie, brutalised Bunty, and feckless, possibly criminal Piers, who exist in a Torily-realised London of crushing mundanity, waspish disgust and drab, brownly toneless multiculturalism. And at times even that voice fails altogether, turning in on itself to birth such laboriously self-satisfied sentences as the Amis of Lucky Jim would himself have lampooned, and necessitating that one read each of them several times to unpick the text, subtext, etc. That’s a parody of one of them.

There are others when the author’s unparalleled, deliciously English turn of phrase still dazzles, Amis cramming deadpan observations and dismissive putdowns into exposition and description, places where most other writers wouldn’t dare (or indeed bother). But he’s forever punching downwards, the malevolence and jaundice of his worldview rendering his work less than human, while he articulates the working class experience about as effectively as David Mitchell attempting a cockney accent. Or Andrea Leadsom. Occasionally, particularly towards the end, he offers his characters a little solace and understanding – if not a lifeline – but for far too long Amis seems to treat his characters with contempt, smugly revelling in not only their imperfections, but in the misogyny and absence of compassion that he mistakes for charming roguishness.

It’s also boring: rooted in a time and place (the Primrose Hill of 1990) that seems not only fleeting but also desperately uninteresting, people by characters whom it’s difficult to care about, since the man who created them can’t really be bothered. Amis displays flashes of lucid empathy – particularly in the deeply moving final chapter – where he effectively humanises and empathises with Clare, while I found the passages dealing with why an alcoholic like Fiona drinks truthful and even profound, but the bulk of this detached, inert book has uninteresting characters doing almost nothing aside from thinking about why they dislike one another, a prejudice that ultimately I couldn’t help but share. (2)

***

FILM



CINEMA: Little Big Man (Arthur Penn, 1970) – This revisionist Western from Bonnie and Clyde director Arthur Penn is unfocused when it should be freewheeling, and cartoonish in a way that undermines its seriousness and integrity, but it has a few vivid moments, and helped pave the way for not only Blazing Saddles and Altman's Buffalo Bill, but Jarmusch’s deadpan Dead Man and Costner's brilliant Dances with Wolves, which also portrayed the bluecoats of the U. S. Cavalry as lying, duplicitous murderers.

Dustin Hoffman is Jack Crabb, at 121 years old the only white survivor of the Battle of Little Bighorn (or 'Custer's Last Stand'), that monument to arrogant, genocidal, imperialist complacency. During the film's 139 minutes, Crabb becomes a multitude of genre archetypes, from orphaned pioneer kid to gunslinger, Indian to Indian Fighter, medicine man to town drunk, hermit to trail scout, as the film swings wildly between sincerity and surrealism, subversion and sex comedy.

It’s possible to be both cartoonish and deftly satirical – Frank Tashlin did it with his 1957 masterpiece, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? – but Little Big Man is far too erratic to sustain that for more than a few minutes of time, drifting from its fine opening 30 into spoofs of Stagecoach, Shane, The Searchers and My Darling Clementine and some risible sex comedy little better than what you’d find in a Carry On film (the same year, Peckinpah interrupted his superb, elegiac Western, The Ballad of Cable Hogue with Benny Hill-like inserts), even if having Faye Dunaway deliver it means that you can at least gorge yourself on her translucent beauty (those cheekbones, fuck me).

Its passages in the Indian camp are often affecting, sensitive and richly ironic, deeply rooted in a wise, glowing humanity, and blessed with a fantastic performance from Chief Dan George as Hoffman’s adopted grandfather (George played a similar role in Clint’s The Outlaw Josey Wales). There are also flashes of brilliance in Penn’s direction: Sunshine framed in the tepee doorway, silence after a killing, and the chilling and unforgettable first appearance of the cavalry – announced by Hoffman’s desperate sprint through the camp-site, which is captured on handheld camera, and eerily, masterfully utilising the music and iconography of the bluecoats familiar from a hundred films in which they were the heroes (perhaps most memorable, Ford’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.

But the film as a whole is a bit of a shambles: tonally incoherent, frequently and offputtingly aloof, and rarely as pointed and furious as it needs to be: Richard Mulligan’s Custer is amusingly trivial, but playing him as a vainglorious imbecile makes him seem more like Maid Marian and Her Merry Men’s Robin than the deluded, arrogant bigot of history, and the climactic battle – crucial to the whole picture – is irritating and badly-staged, trading comprehension for what it imagines wrongly to be visceral excitement, and then trading any vestiges of that for low comedy and sledgehammer satire.

Hoffman is also way out of his depth for much of the film. Perhaps he’s here as a post-modern joke – because you wouldn’t expect to find a titular Jewish nebbish as a Western hero, because his recognisable persona only really makes sense in 1970s America – but he seems merely miscast, and cast adrift by a script that chucks out its sense of anger and purpose not only at will, but for not discernible reason, aside from the instant gratification of a cheap laugh. (2.5)

***

TV

Here are some thoughts on Line of Duty. My 8,000-word fan theory on how the length of Vicky McClure's hair relates to the scale of her inner turmoil is still to come.



Line of Duty: Season 1 (2012) – OK, I'm finally diving in. A principled counter-terrorism officer (Martin Compson) botches a case and winds up in anti-corruption, where he's asked to investigate the charismatic, popular Tony Gates (Lennie James), whose crime-solving stats are off the scale. It's not great timing for Tony, who's just helped his mistress (Gina McKee) cover up a hit-and-run, or perhaps for ambitious young cop Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure), trying manfully to get on his team. This gripping, consistently surprising cop series is simply too far-fetched and melodramatic at times, but it's also beautifully acted – especially by James and McClure – with above-average dialogue from creator Jed Mercurio, and intelligent, extremely effective direction, with a blue tint to proceedings, and characters up-close-and-personal, or dwarfed by monolithic buildings or the enormity of their burdens. Its greatest virtue, though, and it has a few, is its scope of characterisation. It's not non-judgemental, exactly, it's more that it's even-handed, with Mercurio assured in his ability to economically, and without warning, skewer our sympathies: to engender sympathy for a villain or cause us to rage at a hero's sanctimony. That shifting perspective, allied to an impeccably-plotted narrative, saw me race through the bulk of this in one sitting. (3.5)

***



Line of Duty: Season 2 (2014) – A sometimes stunning second season: a bit messy, a bit silly, but keeping you guessing throughout, and with a fantastic performance from Keeley Hawes. She’s DI Lindsey Denton, the sole survivor of a hit on a protected witness, and so ripe for investigation by Steve (Martin Compston), Kate (Vicky McClure) and their hard-nosed, Roman-nosed boss (Adrian Dunbar). But is she a criminal mastermind, a victim or something else entirely? Line of Duty can be gimmicky at times, with a bit of screenwriting-by-the-book – the oldest trick in that book being to give every supporting character a quirk (like the pathologist with a heavy cold in the first series), or to half-inch your highlights, the hospital sequences here using tricks familiar from both The Godfather and Nighthawks – but it’s also thrilling and gripping and with truly great set-pieces, including the powerhouse interview sequences that are its calling card, and are now prefixed by that ominous, unpleasant honking on the tape.

The show does a good job, too, of drawing you in, both by developing its characters and by withholding information about them: that tends to work better when you’ve got an actor like Mark Bonnar (as a questionable DCC) rather than Sacha Dhawan (whose performance I found both flat and unconvincing), a truth underlined by McClure working wonders with a somewhat underwhelming subplot about an affair. Former Ken Loach discovery, Compston, is also so effective – and defines the tone and feel of the series – with a very definite style that initially struck me as woodenness, but is a sort of unyielding, unpolished and awkward stoicism. The important thing, I think, is just how wrapped up in this all I became: it’s possible to pick holes in it, perhaps even to pick it till it unravels, and I don’t think it quite matches The Shadow Line – that weird, dark and bleak vision of endemic moral and professional corruption – but I just can’t wait to return to it. I’ve started Season 3 already. (3.5)

***



*A FEW SPOILERS FOR SERIES 1 AND 2*
Line of Duty: Series 3 (2015) – One of my problems with the (delightful) French cop drama, Spiral, is that is has no memory: it ended its first series on a cliffhanger that was never mentioned again, while undercover agent Sami disappeared from the series for four years, and wasn’t brought back again until the writers got a bit stuck in Series 4. Line of Duty looked to be going down the same route for a while, but by the beginning of Series 3 it became clear that the revelations of its past two seasons hadn’t been forgotten about, they’d just been put on a timer, and they were about to blow. The result is the best season yet, taut, compelling and compulsive, giving two knockout characters – historically corrupt DI, Dot Cottan (Craig Parkinson), and it’s-way-more-complicated-than-that DCI Lindsey Denton (Keeley Hawes) – extraordinarily gripping storylines.

This one kicks off with hotheaded, bullying tough-nut Danny Waldron (Daniel Mays) shooting dead a suspect, and dressing it up as self-defence. As always, it takes a little time to acclimatise to the new characters (I just want to see Ted, Steve and Kaaaaaate), but Mays is explosive and arresting (ironic, really), and his storyline’s topicality is just the sort of thing TV should be doing, even in this showy, tabloid way. The other new cops are less than convincing – with the supporting cast members either average (Arsher Ali) or actively poor (Leanne Best and Will Mellor, who was once excessively rude to my secondary school am-dram group at a charity event) – but our intense personal investment in these people (and particularly the relationship between Steve and Kate) informs the programme’s balance of characterisation and rug-pulling revelation, which reaches fever pitch in the final two episodes (the last a bumper edition).

Its imperfections, particularly its underwhelming bit-players and concessions to ridiculousness (not to mention unnecessary inaccuracy) can frustrate, because it is so nearly great. As it is, it’s great fun: addictive, immersive and with passages of brilliance. A mention too for Neil Morrissey, whose supporting bits are always welcome, even though the second series changed his storyline from one of quiet, bitter pathos to one of astounding and off-putting cynicism. (3.5)

***

Thanks for reading.

Allan Ahlberg, High Fidelity, and a bundle of old things – Reviews #266

Three all-new reviews, and a few I've had lying around since last year.

FILM:


O.J. "in full Naked Gun mode", as the film so superbly and disgustedly puts it

O.J.: Made in America (Ezra Edelman, 2016) – While the montaged credits and eerie theme tune suggest that this got green-lit because ESPN wanted the closest thing they could find to Making a Murderer, this complex, even-handed and multi-faceted five-part documentary portrait of O. J. Simpson is really an exceptional addition to the recent spate of documentaries about African-American history (The 13th, I Am Not Your Negro), viewing his remarkable story – quite reasonably – through the prism of race.

It’s all here: exhilarating footage of Simpson at his athletic zenith, the Hertz ads (“Go, O. J., go!”), the Naked Gun years, the Bronco, the trial, the glove and the acquittal – which the film convincingly argues only makes sense in the context of post-Rodney King L. A. The narrative of his football career could be neater, and the convoluted Las Vegas debacle doesn’t exactly emerge in crystal clarity here, but the crux of the series – his abuse of his wife, the subsequent double-murder and the trial – is simply hypnotic*: brought to life through recordings, court footage, rare documents, news reports and a brilliant selection of interviewees from jurors to laywers to journalists and preachers (Jeffrey Toobin and Rev Mark Whitlock are my MVPs), who don’t just contextualise the trial, but seem to embody the very viewpoints they’re espousing.

It remains a heartbreaking indictment of America that the only black man to benefit from its justice system was a multi-millionaire who had refused to engage with the civil rights movement, purposefully become an honorary white and only reconnected with his proud heritage to avoid being convicted of murdering his wife. His acting, cunning and cultivation of distinct, useful personas is chilling and extraordinary. Did I mention that he is an absolute piece of shit? And his nickname’s rubbish. I only learned recently that he’s called ‘The Juice’ not because of his stamina and speed on the football field, but because in America they call orange juice ‘OJ’. Also lol at the court clerk fluffing her one line, that gets me every time.

*especially for a legal or quasi-legal nut like me: I love courtroom dramas, have been obsessed with HUAC for years and did my undergrad dissertation on Stalin’s show trials

***

BOOKS:



High Fidelity by Nick Hornby (1995) – “Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?” Rob Fleming is a 34-year-old North London record store owner whose life is dominated by rejection, top 5 lists and music: pop, rock, Motown, STAX, oddities, dance numbers, floor-fillers and melancholy, idealistic, shimmeringly beautiful songs that have given him some unrealistic ideas about love, lust and break-ups. Unceremoniously dumped by girlfriend Laura, a former human rights lawyer who has grown out her spiky hair and moved into corporate work, he muses about men, women and relationships, while hanging out with exes, prospects and the two losers who work in his shop.

Hornby’s neatly-titled 1995 novel – made into a Hollywood film starring John Cusack four years later – is remarkably incisive, insightful and honest, in a way that makes me wish I’d read it 10 years ago and not turned my personal life into a binfire… and then makes me realise that basing our life choices on popular culture is exactly what this book is guarding against. It’s very 1990s – with a Harry Enfield cover quote and a left-leaning hero who’s unapologetic in his maleness, rather than drowning in self-loathing like the contemporary equivalent – and Hornby’s irritating, pedantic riffing on familiar phrases is a stylistic shortcoming (that “negative interest scenario” passage), but High Fidelity is also fast and funny and subversive, breaking the fourth wall while allowing us to judge the selfish, self-justifying Rob, and stripped of extraneous elements like lengthy scene-setting or laborious description.

I expected it to be funny and accessible (and London-centric and nerdy about music), but its concentration of hard-earned wisdom took me completely aback. (3.5)

***



The Bear Nobody Wanted by Allan Ahlberg (1992) – This children’s classic concerns a nameless bear who arrives off the production line feeling smug and superior – after all, a bear’s character is defined by his facial features – only to be tossed in a bin, rescued, rejected, burnt, used as a duster, savaged by a dog, repaired, briefly welcomed, relegated, forgotten, lonely, nameless, catatonic and bombed by the Nazis, on the way to a cathartic and happy ending. Telling the story in the third person but from the bear’s perspective, Ahlberg’s prose is beautiful, witty and whimsical, offering a lesson in humility and empathy, and peppered with memorable, perfectly-sketched characters and bits of human (or bearish) warmth – even as the story becomes perilously melancholy and dark.

It also economically evokes the vanished Britain of the author’s childhood: that world of smoking chimneys, cobbled streets and poky working-class houses which he wrote about so memorably in his great memoir, The Boyhood of Burglar Bill (and its sister title, My Brother’s Ghost), while ushering in a little of the timeless warmth of contemporary popular song, from 'My Blue Heaven' to 'Look for the Silver Lining'. It’s an offbeat, timeless and chokingly poignant book, and the line drawings by Janet Ahlberg (Handsome bears staring out of giant windows? Check. Chubby women with chubby sock noses? Check) are the perfect accompaniment. (4)

***

OLD REVIEWS COVERED IN COBWEBS

And now some odds and ends I saw or read last year, but never wrote about, because I was citing the books in the pitching of my novel, because the films were presents and I felt bad for criticising them, and because I forgot I'd written the one about the McGarrigles DVD.

FILMS


When you're playing an impoverished Irish waif but you're a star in 1930s Hollywood.

The Plough and the Stars (John Ford, 1936) - An abrasive, tone-deaf and dreadfully conceived film about the Easter Rising, which condenses Sean O'Casey's four-act play into just over an hour of shouting. There are a few passages of quiet lyricism, one memorably utilising the beautiful old Irish song Kathleen Mavourneen and another trading on Barbara Stanwyck's miraculous sensitivity, but for the most part it's loud, unconvincing and ugly: where badly framed bombs meet bombastic Blarney. (1.5)



Frontier Blues (Babak Jalali, 2009) - Proof that you can make any old shit and if it's in a foreign language it'll find an arthouse audience (1.5)

***

DVD



A Not So Silent Night (Gerard Schmidt, 2009) - Well that was extremely disappointing. I had high hopes for this December 2008 Christmas concert from the McGarrigle clan – Kate, her sister Anna, her children Rufus and Martha Wainwright, and assorted relatives – but it’s just completely shambolic: not in the charming, ramshackle manner it might have been, but in a crowded-stage, everyone-singing-from-sheet-music, Anna’s-lost-her-voice, tons-of-tuneless-guest-stars kind of way. Occasionally it does spark into life, with Lily Lanken kicking arse on 'Cherry Tree Carol', Rufus doing a heartbreaking 'What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve', and Martha singing 'I’ll Be Home for Christmas' with a crack in her voice, before a storming, punk-inflected Christmas Wrapping (the effect is of Greta Gerwig playing Patti Smith and just as wonderful as that sounds), but four songs out of 24 isn’t a great success rate, and the direction is lifeless and witless, fading out between songs to ensure that we don’t hear any cheering or really feel like we’re there. (2)

See also: I wrote about the obscure McGarrigles documentary from 1982 here.

***

BOOKS

I was reading lots of kids' books to help me pitch my own novel for eight to 12-year-olds (no, nothing yet, though Miranda Hart has a book deal).



Timecatcher by Marie Louise Fitzpatrick (2010) - An enjoyable, flavourful children's book, set in a Dublin-button-factory-turned-detective-agency, about a lonely girl who becomes involved with ghosts and a time travel portal. The writing is mediocre, relying on cliché and with a dubious understanding of how modern children talk, but the plot is exceptional, with a succession of brilliant twists and a most satisfying conclusion. (3)



Dead Man's Cove by Lauren St John (2010) - A magical detective story with a rich sea-swept atmosphere, in which 11-year-old heroine Laura Marlin finds her first permanent home − in St Ives, with a mysterious, brooding uncle − while pursuing a mystery just as dark and fascinating as the novels that have given her such welcome escape. It was sold with Blyton comparisons but aside from the title, a couple of minor plot elements and a helpful canine companion, it's not very similar and indeed dynamically subverts such expectations, while creating a gripping plot, an endearingly imperfect protagonist and the welcome promise of much more to come. There's one development near the close that I found simply too twee and clichéd, but for the most part it's an absolute winner. (3.5)



Kidnap in the Caribbean by Lauren St John (2011) - A dire sequel to the delightful Dead Man's Cove, which seems to have been written in one hell of a hurry. Laura Marlin is tricked into attending a pleasure cruise to Antigua, and from there on in it's all predictable plot-twists, painful expository dialogue and interminable polemicising about why we should protect sealife. Don't get me wrong, we should, but not like this. (1.5)



Skellig by David Almond (1998) - This short, simply-plotted story about a boy who finds a mysterious, winged man in his garage has a deceptive emotional impact. Some of that's down to Almond putting a seriously ill baby in the centre of his story - not perhaps the most subtle way of pulling at our heartstrings - but even if I'm not quite sure that Skellig is the unassailable, timeless classic it's often painted as, there's something special about it, in its intuitive understanding of childhood emotion, the author's graceful, spare and precise prose (when it isn't just going on about dead bluebottles again), and an agreeable lack of sentiment in its treatment of the titular character. (3)



Magyk by Angie Sage (2005) - A long, richly-textured book - attractively written and gorgeously designed - about a 10-year-old princess and the family of wizards who raised her and are now trying to keep her alive in the face of deathly danger, with the help of a ghost, an arrogant ExtraOrdinary Wizard in snakeskin boots, and a brainwashed former army cadet called Boy 412. Its big reveal is obvious, its villain is cliched and it sometimes feels as if Sage is making up the rules as she goes along, but its world is a fun place to visit, it's stuffed with incident and there's a pleasant unsentimentality about the book's emotional subtext, which manages to move you without being maudlin or mawkish. Sage also makes the most of the endless possibilities of writing, with an extremely ambitious action climax that comes off fairly well. (3)

***

Thanks for reading.

Next time: Line of Duty: Series 1 (I'm diving in at last), and a book by an LAPD detective who is convinced his dad committed the perhaps most notorious unsolved murder in American history.

Emily Watson, Fences and Hollywood alienation – Reviews #257

I went to the BAFTAs this week – yes, nice, thank you. Then I pathologically reviewed all of my other cultural endeavours. Here you go:

BOOK



The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West (1939) – A nasty, nightmarish blast of Hollywood alienation, full of foreboding, about Tod Hackett, a hulking set-designer on the fringes of Tinseltown, who falls in love with cruel aspiring actress Faye Greener while fraternising with a panorama of grotesques: the detritus of tinseltown. Written in Hollywood’s greatest year, the near-mythical 1939, it’s an unremitting horror story in economic sentences: an acidic counterpoint to Steinbeck’s contemporaneous novels, depicting the unified masses not as a humane, nourishing whole, but as a blankly vicious mob, hooked on an unfulfilling dream, and chillingly ripe for fascism. The characters in the foreground all seem ripped from some forgotten B-movie, each one warped, pathetic or both. Most memorable of all is an ailing ex-accountant who moves to California for his health, and finds only emotional brutalism and unfulfilled longing. His name? Erm, Homer Simpson. (3.5)

West's other best-known book, Miss Lonelyhearts, was adapted twice for the screen. The first version gave its name to my blog (though I was also riffing on the fact that those smitten with Old Hollywood often find a solace in it that others find in love), though the film was a faithless cash-in looking to repeat the success of Lee Tracy's breakthrough vehicle, Blessed Event. The second version stars two of my favourites: a post-accident Monty Clift, and Myrna Loy in one of her sporadic character parts.

***

FILMS



CINEMA: Fences (Denzel Washington, 2016) – An astonishing drama, based on August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which tells an archetypally American story in the manner of Eugene O'Neill or Arthur Miller, but does so to elucidate the African-American experience, which as 13th so eloquently expressed, is the result of decisions that have never been in their hands.

Denzel Washington is Troy Maxson, an unyielding, fiercely proud working-class black man in '50s America, who's the king of his castle, a house he bought with his sweat and blood and the $3,000 his brother got for having half his head blown off in the war.

Across 140 minutes, via dazzling set-pieces both restrained and marauding, Wilson lays bear the virtues, vices, triumphs and compromises of Troy's existence, and that of black Americans both then and now: poverty, incarceration, brutal fathers, restricted choices and mistakes inherited and repeated across the generations. Viola Davis, who like Washington played her role on Broadway in a 2010 revival, is Troy's wife Rose, a fond, no-nonsense and fiercely loyal co-conspirator whose entire worldview is about to take an almighty beating.

To say more would be to undermine the film's ability to astound and confound, so I'll add simply that it is both extraordinarily original and utterly timeless, with a polemical power that comes along rarely, and two of the finest performances in years. Davis won a BAFTA at my office last night, but Washington is every bit as good, and probably even better – presumably the reason he's not scooping every gong going is because his character is so complex, and decidedly difficult to like. There are passages here that mesh together every emotion of a sidelined people fighting for self-worth: righteous but corrosive anger, well-earned but worthless pride, a cod-Biblical relationship with mortality and temptation that runs the gamut from twinkly-eyed gameplaying to supernatural terror.

He's haunted by his father, and he haunts his son.

There's superb support too from the likes of Stephen Henderson and Mykelti Williamson, and while the film perhaps has a couple of endings too many (with shades of Edna Ferber sagas or The Place Beyond the Pines' daddy issues), its epilogue does ultimately justify itself, at least in giving Davis another chance to shine, and articulating Wilson's final verdicts on manhood, on creativity and on Troy.

Fences must have been staggering on stage back in '83 and in its 2010 revival, but this filmed version is about as good as you could imagine – a little obvious symbolism here and there, like the rose falling to the floor – utilising cinema's virtues (close-ups, full sets, cuts and multiple takes) without sacrificing the intensity or authenticity of the material. Fences stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the great American plays of the mid-20th century; now in 2017 it can tell the kind of story that was kept off our cinema screens for too damn long. (4)

Many thanks to the NSPCC for inviting me to their preview screening.

***



The Great Lie (Edmund Goulding, 1941) – A far-fetched melodrama, in which an affecting Bette Davis unfathomably feuds with concert pianist Mary Astor for the affections of smugly stolid George Brent, the most objectionable leading man in ‘40s Hollywood. The first half is good fun, reaching its apogee with a beautiful wedding sequence augmented by dramatic and audial grace notes – a little black kid in a tree singing a spiritual as the newlyweds recline on a first-floor patio – but the film goes increasingly awry, degenerating into histrionics and inexplicable plot developments, and then failing to deliver the cathartic climax that would have made that halfway worthwhile.

There’s a fair amount going for it, including one of Davis’s most appealing characterisations: her Maggie is defined only in relation to a man, which is a missed opportunity in the writing, but her performance is perfectly balanced: joyous, explosive, then noble and sad: marinaded in misery, commandeered by confusion. The film is further enhanced by Max Steiner’s lush score, fitfully thoughtful direction– with crane shots and intelligent Tony Gaudio compositions, around a third of the time – and particularly Hattie McDaniel’s lovely supporting turn, the great African-American actress mining humanity from a role as Davis’s housekeeper that on paper’s not much more than a ‘mammy’ stereotype.

Unfortunately the story, the casual misogyny and the limp dialogue prevent it all from amounting to very much, a problem compounded by two of the central actors. Astor is promisingly cast as the villain, but her one-dimensional, Oscar-winning (!) performance becomes merely annoying after a while. It’s also oddly sterile: I remain baffled that possibly the most sexual woman in Hollywood doesn’t know how to be sexy on camera. When it’s beside the point – as in The Palm Beach Story or Midnight – she sizzles, with an offhand attitude that’s immensely attractive, but when it’s demanded of her to be alluring, she ballses it up: in The Maltese Falcon she’s neurotic rather than fascinating, here’s she’s superficial and irritating in a way that fatally undermines an already compromised script. Despite her shortcomings, though, Astor’s character remains a passionate artist, and the idea that these vital women would be warring over someone as unappealing as Brent’s vapid, uninspired and casually sexist aviator is altogether incredible.

It’s still just about worth it for the film’s virtues, the greatest of which is Bette at her lofty zenith.

See also: I write about Bette Davis a lot, like here, for example.

***



CINEMA: Her Man (Tay Garnett) − A stunning little Pre-Code movie from Tay Garnett, with Helen Twelvetrees utterly irresistible as a hard-boiled waterfront prostitute who spies escape from under the heel of brutish pimp Ricardo Cortez when charming, fairheaded Phillips Holmes sails into town.

This is the meeting point of von Sternberg's vivid, melodramatic Docks of New York and Garnett's own ship-based romantic tragicomedy, One Way Passage, with a rich atmosphere created through Edward Snyder's sumptuous, jawdropping tracking shots and Twelvetrees' tough-but-tender characterisation.

It's messy as hell, with a touch of the stiltedness inevitable in early talkies, plenty of incomprehensible comedy from James Gleason and Harry Sweet, and ad-libbed crowd dialogue three years after that stopped being a good idea, but it's also remarkably innovative, in both its technical wizardry and the story such mastery is serving. It begins novelistically: opening on a man dropping his luggage into the ocean, zoning in unerringly on Marjorie Rambeau's dipsomaniac, and then roaming around the busy Havana streets in search of its heroine.

And though the comic passages have a distressingly low hit-rate, despite an amusing bit for Franklin Pangborn and a Tashlin-esque climax, the central story that renders them a nuisance also makes them an irrelevance.

It's really something: deeply affecting and enduringly fresh, as Twelvetrees' archetypal bad girl − her eyebrows at right angles, her upper lip curling into a sneer − is transfigured and transformed by love, while Holmes goes all gooey and Cortez's knife-wielding psychopath prepares for war.

That story, based unpromisingly on the murder ballad, Frankie and Johnny, is augmented by some gorgeous photography: a hatless corpse spreadeagled on a barroom floor; Twelvetrees' ecstasy turning to veiled terror as Cortez approaches her in a broken mirror; the pain in her eyes as she rearranges her face, while preparing to break Holmes's heart. (And a brunette Thelma Todd in a backless dress, because why not?)

It ends with carnage, Holmes like a prototype of Mitchum's he-man in His Kind of Woman as he bulldozers his way through a barroom full of heavies, using cans, a table and eventually just his fists, before Rambeau laughs, sighs and says those words we've been waiting for. (3)

***

TV



Apple Tree Yard (2017) − I watched this four-part BBC serial because of Emily Watson, whose performance in Breaking the Waves 21 years ago remains perhaps the finest characterisation I’ve ever seen (Robards, Gish, Rylance, Henry Fonda and Wendy Hiller are all in with a shout too), and whose subsequent career has been littered with breathtaking work. I think there’s an argument that she is the best actor around today, or at least the actor working today who has scaled the greatest heights; admittedly the past five years have offered few parts worthy of her virtuosic talents. This is more of the same: she’s given a prominent role, which is welcome, but the programme is bafflingly erratic: compelling one minute, repellent the next; so passionate that its stilted writing brushes erudition, then so laboured that it’s utterly embarrassing (a special mention for the awful girl talk sequences between Watson and best bud Susan Lynch).

Watson plays Dr Yvonne Carmichael, a married mother – and renowned gene specialist – who falls for mystery man and apparent spook Ben Chaplin (giving a forced, detached fraction of a performance), after meeting him in the Commons lobby. Their passionate encounter in the Emily Davison broom cupboard sparks a destructive chain of events, which begin with a truly horrifying scene that has polarised audiences. My feeling was that it was entirely justified in the context, but others who are better placed to comment think otherwise. The series then plods along for more than two hours: two hours dominated by heavy-handed writing, but punctuated by both tragedy and the odd moment of insight, before juddering into life for its final half-hour.

At its best, it’s thoroughly worthwhile: its depiction of the dehumanisation and persecution faced by rape victims is timely and fittingly nauseating, the shifting dynamics of Carmichael’s relationships are effective, and there are small moments of moral grace (a postcard, a gesture from the public gallery, a dinner party rant), before an ending that tries to be maturely unresolved and then opts for being gleefully trivial and yet altogether unforgettable (who cares about social polemicising when you can Shyamalan the shit out of it). But taken as a whole, it’s absolutely all over the shop: a baggy, plodding, self-satisfied series that seems to regard its every move as remarkable or revelatory, when we’ve seen the vast bulk of this before: a woman violently punished because she steps outside the accepted social norms. Apple Tree Yard doesn’t think that’s acceptable, but it’s still the story it tells, rather than another one.

Watson can’t always wring quality from a script this weak, directed in such a pedestrian fashion (she somehow managed in Julian Fellowes’ risible Separate Lies, though was sunk by Miss Potter, having been overlooked for the main part, *sigh*), but she has some fine moments, particularly in the courtroom climax. Next time, why not give her something better to work with? (2.5)

***

Thanks for reading.

Mankiewicz, The Shadow Line and the original House of Cards - Reviews #235

FILMS



Somewhere in the Night (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1946) - This was unexpectedly terrific: a very, VERY underrated movie from the great writer-director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz. It’s a brilliantly-plotted mystery-noir, full of that classic Mankiewicz dialogue: wise, hard-boiled and exceedingly sarcastic.

John Hodiak plays an amnesiac war hero searching for a shadowy hoodlum by the name of Larry Cravat, his Third Man-ish investigations bringing him into the orbit of a wry, warm-hearted chanteuse (Nancy Guild), her nice guy suitor (Richard Conte) and a gently omniscient detective (played with great charm by Lloyd Nolan).

There are outstanding self-contained, character-led scenes, including an absolute gem featuring Josephine Hutchinson (a former Warner female lead who never quite made it), fine, unexpected examples of jocular post-modernism – in the shape of meta movie gags about Lugosi, lighting and how detectives behave – and a succession of quite magnificent surprises, right up to the finish.

From the film’s reputation, I was expecting something fairly shabby and perfunctory, but instead got a film that’s impressive, interesting and almost impossible to second-guess. The leads are strictly second-tier, but while Hodiak is fairly bland, the director takes Guild into strong territory (like Hutchinson before her, she was on the cusp of superstardom that never came) – the actress emerging as a sort of Ella Raines-Ronnie Lake hybrid, with a gift for a one-liner – as Nolan and Conte hoover up everything that’s left. (3.5)

See also: I wrote about Mankiewicz's masterpiece, All About Eve, here.

***


They're even giving great performances in the publicity stills.

Watch on the Rhine (Herman Shumlin and Hal Mohr, 1943) - A talky, grown-up and extremely powerful propaganda piece - from Lillian Hellman, via Dashiell Hammett – about German émigré Paul Lukas, his American wife (Bette Davis) and their three children moving to the States, where they face persecution from a dissolute, amoral Nazi sympathiser (George Coulouris). There’s a false note in the characterisation of the kids, who speak in that generic ‘foreign’ Old Hollywood way (all stilted full sentences), and Beulah Bondi is wasted in a weak part as a French maid, but much of the film is truly great, with perfect performances from Lukas and Davis, and mature, incisive writing that hammers its points across – even while showing the Nazis as cruel, sadistic thugs, rather than the genocidal ethnic cleansers they were soon confirmed to be. (3.5)

***



Darling (John Schlesinger, 1965) - A ‘60s time capsule with a European feel about the romantic adventures of capricious British model Julie Christie, who moves through relationships with a TV journalist (Dirk Bogarde), a louche, selfish playboy (Laurence Harvey) and an ageing Italian prince (José Luis de Vilallonga), on her way to partial self-discovery. It’s inconsistent and holds you at arms’ length, but Christie is very good in her Oscar-winning role, and there are some excellent insights and fine lines from Frederick Raphael – who went on to write one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen on TV, the BBC’s novelistic, challenging and brilliant adaptation of his book, The Glittering Prizes. Jim Clark’s editing is also extremely good, full of tricks inspired by the Nouvelle Vague, though the direction from John Schlesinger includes too much that simply feels like padding, particularly a party sequence as incoherent and unfulfilling as the one with which he almost sank Midnight Cowboy. The film’s bagginess and aloofness is compounded by a motivational murkiness and lack of clarity that’s not intentional: it strives to be adult and complex, but comes off as merely unclear, despite Christie’s best efforts. The idea that anybody would go after Harvey while they had Dirk Bogarde at home is also, of course, ridiculous. As you would expect, Harvey is as dreadful as ever. (2.5)

***


It is only as terrible as this half the time.

Excuse My Dust (Roy Rowland, 1951) - A broad, nostalgic musical-comedy about an aspiring inventor (Red Skelton) at the birth of the automobile revolution. Skelton is as funny as a hernia (and his various car crashes as funny as, well, a car crash), but the Arthur Schwartz-Dorothy Fields songs are good and Monica Lewis puts her numbers across with great gusto, sass and style. I like the hilariously incongruous ballet featuring female lead Sally Forrest too: it's very stylish and well choreographed and confusing. In support, Preston Sturges regulars William Demarest and Raymond Walburn are rather wasted, though Demarest does blow a sort of weird raspberry at one point. In addition, an uncredited Buster Keaton came up with a few of the gags and worked behind the camera (some of the Skelton business is a little better than normal, though he himself is dire), while the star's car was previously seen in Orson Welles' butchered 1942 masterwork, The Magnificent Ambersons, which is where the similarities between the two rather cease. (2)

***

BOOKS



The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford (1945) – Nancy Mitford’s romantic comedy about the pretty, fickle, impulsive, small-eyed Linda Radlett is a playfully heightened, impeccably-written slice of escapism, laced with insight, understated emotion and dazzling wit, based upon her own life – and her experiences as a member of Britain’s most notorious family. It’s not especially ambitious in terms of scope, but it is magnificently realised, full of brilliantly-drawn characters, sublime running gags and effortlessly turned phrases. The chance to get a tour of Mitford's world and her brain is a rare sort of treat, and despite her rarefied upbringing, there’s a worldiness and a compassion here, allied to a rare intelligence and a matchless, piercing viewpoint, that can’t be missed. The foreword by her sister Decca is hilarious too. (4)

***



The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett (1934) – Hammett’s celebrated crime novel is, well, a bit of a damp squib, really. I came to it as a fan of the movie (which came out later the same year, having been shot in just 12 days!), the defining mystery-comedy of its era, and the first time that a modern, happy and equal marriage (at least within the parameters of its period) had been depicted on screen, touched with the alchemic chemistry of stars William Powell and Myrna Loy. All I can say now is that screenwriters Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich did an incredible job of adapting this book, which is less escapist, more cynical, more repetitive, less funny and conspicuously less fun than the film, consisting chiefly of second-gen Greek immigrant PI Nick Charles saying that he’s not sure who committed a murder, while various dislikeable supporting characters try to either stitch up or have sex with one another. The relationship between Nick and his wife Nora (based on that of Hammett and his long-term partner, Lillian Hellman) isn’t bad, and sometimes the book’s eruptions of violence, drunkenness and cutting sardonism draw you in, but there’s always a long lull just around the corner. A real disappointment. (2)

***

TV

The House of Cards trilogy:



House of Cards (1990) - One of the most exquisite achievements in the history of British TV: a paraphrasing of Macbeth, with a repulsive psycho-sexual undercurrent, about Tory chief whip Francis Urquhart (Ian Richardson), who reacts very poorly to being overlooked in a cabinet reshuffle, and proceeds to destroy everyone in his path to power. Andrew Davies’s script – including those celebrated, conspiratorial fourth-wall-busting asides – the immersive direction, and a pair of sensational performances from Ian Richardson and Susannah Harker (as his mistress and most prized media contact, Mattie Storrin) make it simply unmissable: a dark, daring and delicious satire about an old soul poisoned by avarice, but with a twinkle in his eye. (4)

To Play the King (1993) - An interesting sequel to House of Cards, about Francis Urquhart (Ian Richardson) locking horns with the Prince of Wales (Michael Kitchen), resulting in a constitutional crisis. It’s less novel and more of-its-time than the original, but exceptionally well-written and acted, with an unforgettable climax containing more than a hint of The Godfather Part II. Kitty Aldridge’s performance as Urquhart’s new mistress, Sarah Harding, is emblematic of this sequel’s standing: better than almost any you’ll see on TV, but not in the same league as Susannah Harker’s last time out. Still, I can't help but think that this was a major influence on one of last year's most overrated plays, Charles III, which has an almost identical storyline (though was written in blank verse). (3.5)

The Final Cut (1995) - A very good but nonetheless slightly disappointing conclusion to the House of Cards trilogy, with prime minister Francis Urquhart (Ian Richardson) dealing with revolt and rebellion that threatens to push him out of Number 10. For the most part, it feels more like a cynical political drama than the black satire of House of Cards – while traversing some rather over-familiar ground – and the supporting cast isn’t in the same class as before (Isla Blair and Paul Freeman are simply lightweights compared to Richardson), but it’s still consistently entertaining, with confrontational storytelling, fine dialogue and a flamboyant if conventional pay-off. (3)

***



The Shadow Line (Hugo Blick, 2011) - The BBC at its best, a bleakly brilliant mini-series from writer-director-producer Hugo Blick that plunges you into an unexplained, nightmarish and narcotic netherworld, then begins to illuminate and tie up a few threads while leaving others dangling for the longest time. Chiwetel Ejiofor is a cop with a past, Christopher Eccleston a dealer with a heart, Rafe Spall an out-there gangster (whose tics are a thing of joy) and Stephen Rea a tall, quiet mystery man by the name of ‘Gatehouse’. It’s idiosyncratic and almost matchlessly imaginative, with more than an echo of Edge of Darkness (arguably the finest thing the Beeb did in the ‘80s) in its marriage of introspection and action, the latter showcased in a succession of creepy, eerie and ultimately breathtaking set pieces. (4)

***



State of Play (David Yates, 2003) - A dazzling drama from the pen of Paul Abbott, about a political scandal that begins to mount after the death of a political researcher, who was having an affair with her boss, up-and-coming MP David Morrissey. As reporters John Simm and Kelly MacDonald begin to investigate, further revelations follow thick and fast, impacting on the livelihoods – and lives – of them all, as well as editor Bill Nighy, a pale, sexy, floppy-haired, cool-as-flip freelancer (James McAvoy), a callow, irritating PR weasel (Marc Warren) and Morrissey’s unhappy, conflicted and opinionated wife (Polly Walker). The meshing of acting styles is simply exhilarating, the direction from future Harry Potter helmer David Yates is swift and immersive, and the writing is absolutely extraordinary: clever, funny, thematically complex but entirely accessible, and eloquently and pointedly personal while operating within a moral morass.

I always remember Abbott telling Charlie Brooker (in a personally inspiring special edition of Screenwipe about how to write) that he would throw in outrageous twists at will, then say to himself: “Write yourself out of that corner, you bastard”, and that gloriously abrasive, unconventional approach works absolute wonders here. It’s only Warren’s subplot that seems a little out-of-place, a cartoonish, relentlessly one-note storyline that occasionally stalls a mini-series of otherwise unstoppable momentum – and magnificence. (Also: Kelly Macdonald is bae, especially her voice.) (4)

***

Thanks for reading.

Rick tries to write sketch comedy

I write. A lot. Features, reviews, stories, emails to my brother, even the odd poem (not to my brother). But I've never tried to write sketch comedy before a week last Thursday. Here, for reasons of vainglory and masochism, are the (sadly rejected) efforts I sent to Newsjack, the BBC's rather excellent open source topical comedy show. I've also added some brief explanations of what the hell I was playing at, in case you weren't bored enough. Anyway, I'll keep plugging away, and if I get anything on Newsjack, you'll be the first to know, and probably the second, possibly also the fifth, as I'm unlikely to shut up about it.

WEEK TWO

Sketch 1: Nigel Hitler



INTRO
In that prime time slot just before How Clean Is It Behind Your Fridge? - presented by Godfrey Bloom - Channel 4 News reported that the teenage Nigel Farage was regarded as a "fascist" by some of his teachers, and had sung Hitler Youth songs, a claim he denied. When Hitler was a teenager, of course, he also faced criticism from his teachers.

Knock on the door.

HEADTEACHER
Ah yes, Hitler, I wanted to see you.

TEENAGE HITLER (in a voice a lot like Nigel Farage)
What seems to be the problem, sir?

HEADTEACHER
I've had some complaints from the other teachers about your behaviour, young man. Apparently you've been sitting outside class on a bar stool, smoking and enjoying a leisurely pint, surrounded by photographers. You insist on coming to school dressed in tweed, Frau Schlemmer tells me you interrupted her lesson yesterday to make an impromptu speech against inheritance tax, and now you're demanding that your little army of followers refer to you as "Nigel". You've even shaved off your moustache. I don't think this behaviour is really befitting of a prefect.

HITLER
Listen here, headteacher. Germany's been sold down the river by the despised EU pig-dogs: joyless bureaucrats who don't have anything in common with the likes of us. They think ordinary folks like you and I shouldn't be allowed to smoke in pubs, have a beer at work or annex the Sudetenland.

HEADTEACHER
Annex the-?

HITLER (interrupting)
Exactly. If we want to have a laugh with our mates, watch the footy on the box or deport anyone whose first name isn't Franz, I suppose it's inevitable that some jumped up little... little... Mussolini is going to take offence. Cigarette?

HEADTEACHER
Thanks, I don't mind if I- Damn it, Hitler, you've done it again. You're just so persuasive.

HITLER
Thanks chief. Was that all?

HEADTEACHER
Yes Nigel. Now please send in Goebbels, he keeps pretending to be Lembit Opek.

Notes: This sketch uses the old Private Eye gimmick of reversing the roles in a news story, so rather than having Nigel Farage supposedly aping Hitler, it has a teenage Hitler adopting the mannerisms of the UKIP leader. I'm not equating the two parties, that would be stupid; the point of the sketch is the fraudulence of couching hideous ideas in avuncular language and misleading palliness. It's not a particularly original concept, but I was quite pleased with how it came off. The last line is a bit too broad and has no political bite, but at least possesses the element of surprise.

***

Sketch 2: I Have a Bloom



INTRO
UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom went rogue - actually, stayed rogue - this week, carpet-bombing his own party's conference with his unique brand of 18th century sexism and pamphlet-based violence. Godders has form, of course, as this delve into the Newsjack Archives shows.

NEWSREEL-STYLE VOICEOVER
What looked like a potentially historic speech from Dr Martin Luther King, an address which could have given new momentum to the civil rights movement, was today spoiled by a dick in a UKIP tie.

Martin Luther King is giving his I Have a Dream speech.

KING
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

A voice cries out in dissent. It is Godfrey Bloom.

BLOOM
What a racist comment is that? How dare you! That's an appalling thing to say. You're picking people out for the colour of their skin. You disgust me.

KING
I think you may have misunderstood the point I was trying to-

BLOOM
You, sir, are a racist. I, for example, hadn't noticed that you were black, if indeed you are.

KING (trying to continue)
I have a dream today!

BLOOM (seizing the microphone)
Me too: I have a dream today, and it has three parts to it. Firstly, it's crucial that the space behind every fridge is perfectly and unaccountably clean - for some reason this seems to be of the utmost importance. Secondly, more gender-based profanity in the workplace, especially if the word you want to use had a different and very specific meaning some 300 years ago. And, thirdly, the severing of all trade links with Bongo Bongo Land, which for some reason I don't seem quite able to place in my British Empire atlas of 1848.

KING (trying to shout into the microphone)
I have a dream!

BLOOM
No, I have a dream, an exquisitely bonkers dream - and I've just thought of some more bits of it. Maternity leave should include a six-month jail sentence, mad bald men should be allowed to shoot journalists on sight, and anyone who changes pounds into Euros should be stoned to death.

KING
I have a dream!

BLOOM
As do I - Nigel Farage masks for all women!

KING (trying to get to the microphone again)
Free at last!

BLOOM
Yes! At last! Free healthcare for anyone earning over £100,000 a week, free housing for anyone with a second home in Corfu and free Wi-fi for life if you vote UKIP in 2015.

VOICEOVER
And so it was that Dr King surrendered his landmark address to beat Mr Bloom about the head with the text of his speech, to cheers from the crowd.

BLOOM
Ow! Get off. I have a dream - I have a dream! A dream you're all sluts!

Notes: This one isn't as good (clearly). I was really pleased with the basic premise: that Godfrey Bloom's disingenuousness (and hilarious quotes) when dealing with Michael Crick would also apply to Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, but I wasn't quite sure how to follow up on this, as you can see. Having Bloom take the microphone meant I could spoof his litany of ludicrous beliefs, but doesn't necessarily make any sense. The pay-off is a bit cheap, but that could have worked, I think.

***

One-liners:



BBC presenter Simon McCoy baffled viewers by reading out the news whilst holding a packet of photocopier paper, which he'd mistaken for an iPad. His attempts to account for the mistake failed, as he tried to send a tweet on a calculator, conducted a phone interview down a banana and posted a letter of explanation into a man with high blood pressure who happened to have stopped on the street.

The iPhone 5 hit stores this week. With even the budget model priced at more than £450, it looks like this Mark Duggan inquest has come along at just the right time.

***



WEEK ONE

Sketch: Voyager 1

INTRO
This week, Voyager 1 was confirmed as the first ever to leave this lovely solar system of ours. Launched in 1977, the probe contains photos and music from Earth.

The sound of an explosion, followed by a man running and panting, then a knock on the door.

COMMANDER (MALE VOICE)
Enter.

The door opens.

COMMANDER
What is it, Blerk?

BLERK (FEMALE VOICE)
This just fell out of the sky, sir. I think it's important.

COMMANDER
It doesn't look important, it looks like a birthday present strapped to a satellite dish on a tripod. Bring it over here.

Sound of paper being torn off the parcel.

COMMANDER
Good heavens, what's this? It appears to be a message from some sort of... primitive race. And they've printed out all the pictures onto glossy paper, like my nanna does. Look at their gargantuan sideburns, they look like they've got doormats glued to their heads. I don't think we'll be bothering to converse with them. And oh... oh, that's just revolting. This gentleman has put a safety pin right through his nose.

BLERK
There's something else in the envelope, sir.

COMMANDER
So there is. Oh... oh this is priceless - look at this, they're still using phonograph records. Do they think it's 1977? We should write back to them: "Dear puny Earthlings, we're coming to take your planet, please don't poke us with your bayonets. I'm worried that if we get on the wrong side of your president he'll batter us to death with his Betamax player."

BLERK
You never know, sir, it may be that this parcel has taken 36 years to arrive.

COMMANDER
I doubt that very much, Blerk - I don't think Earth will have privatised its postal system.

Notes: This was the first sketch I'd ever written, which is probably painfully obvious. It's pretty bland, though I was pleased with a few of the details (the joke about his nanna and the one about the president), and although the last line is a bit wordy and laboured, I did manage to give the sketch a point by tying together two topical stories.

***

One-liners: You're not seeing the one-liners, they were shit.

Ken Russell - Reviews #96

I met Ken Russell once. For about 15 seconds. In that time he signed a piece of card and a friend's book, working out at a cool 7.5 seconds a signature. He was gruff but friendly and had a big red face.



Russell - who took Billy Wilder's first commandment of moviemaking ("thou shalt not bore") to extremes - made his name with rapturously-received arts documentaries for the BBC. Among the most acclaimed was TVM: Elgar: Portrait of a Composer (Ken Russell, 1962, 3) is one of Russell's famed docu-dramas for the BBC. Seen today, it's a fairly effective biography, with several very potent passages - especially the WWI footage cut to Land of Hope and Glory - but a stiff, strangely-written third-person narration that leaps from one event to another, often makes no sense (the "turning point" in Elgar's life turns out to be nothing of the sort) and undermines its sense of authority by inexplicably inserting the word "apparently" at regular intervals. Still, the monochrome photography is ravishing and the use of music is suitably thrilling. Particularly Elgar's exquisite cello concerto, which makes me cry.



His great success was Women in Love (Ken Russell, 1969, 3), for which Glenda Jackson won the 1969 Best Actess Oscar. It's a messy but magnificently-acted adaptation of the D.H. Lawrence novel, with Alan Bates as a bearded, gabbling amateur philosopher obsessed with manly love, Jennie Linden his clingy beau, Oliver Reed his best friend - rocking a fearsome moustache and permanent 10-yard stare - and Glenda Jackson as Reed's spiky, free-spirited bit of posh. Bates and Jackson are astonishingly good, Reed and Linden a touch below, with Eleanor Bron (of Bedazzled and BT recorded messages renown) suitably annoying in support. The script isn't always quite on-the-money, Vladek Sheybal seems oddly cast, but it's always interesting - I liked the stylistic shifts underscoring the film's changing moods - and packs a latent emotional thwack.



After the notorious 1971 movie, The Devils - cited by Mark Kermode and Alex Cox as a masterpiece, but pilloried by many and now long out of circulation (a DVD is imminent) - he opted for a change of tack, and made a backstage musical, The Boy Friend (Ken Russell, 1972, 4). It's an inspired melange of The Entertainer and 42nd Street, as a seedy seaside revue is visited by a Hollywood producer, and all concerned indulge in Busby Berkeley fantasies. Twiggy is excellent in the lead – playing an ingénue who takes over when the star (Glenda Jackson in a delicious extended cameo) breaks her ankle – and there are several spectacular songs and production numbers, amidst the campy backstage squabbling and Barbara Windsor’s boob-jiggling and caterwauling. With Bugsy Malone and All That Jazz, Russell’s typically extravagant, confrontational musical is one of the most striking and original of its decade. It's also the best film I've seen so far this year.



Even great directors get it wrong, though, and as with Orson Welles's The Stranger, proving you're a safe pair of hands with your backers' money often results in a dull film. Such was the case with The Rainbow (Ken Russell, 1989, 2) a pervy tedious prequel to Women in Love, about the sexual awakening of a school leaver (Sammi Davis; though not, alas, Sammy Davis, Jr.). It's well-directed, with some stunning cuts, and there's a wonderful score by the great Carl Davis, but the story just isn't very interesting. Davis's mannered, slightly wooden performance does grow on you. Glenda Jackson appears as the mother of her character in Women in Love, but has almost nothing to do.

Russell passed away in November, 20 years after his last major film, the nattily-titled Whore.