Stewart Lee, Stories We Tell and extremely melancholy whores − Reviews #250

We're at a quarter millennium of reviews, but they're not getting any better. This time: autobiography, corrupt cops and more (but worse) Huey Long.

LIVE



Stewart Lee: Content Provider at Leicester Square Theatre (02/12/16) − A show with all the virtues and vices of a remarkable, occasionally infuriating stand-up. It's been marketed as Lee's first full-length show in five years, but that's semantics: it's simply that he's no longer honing half-hour segments for a TV show, since that TV show's been cancelled. As he pungently points out, though, the BBC does still have the resources to fund a reboot of Are You Being Served?, which given the demise of the British department store should rightly be filmed in an Amazon warehouse, where Mrs Slocombe makes various oblique references to her cat, as a collection of Eastern Europeans look on in confusion.

And really it's no more coherent or cohesive than his previous shows, perhaps less so, without the through-line that his intro (or sporadic meta-commentary) suggests. He pitches it as a commentary on the life of the individual in this social media age, or says it would have been if Brexit and Trump hadn't got in the way. To be honest, that's to his advantage, as he's superb on politics, great at providing a dual-level experience − utilising a constructed persona who's vain, arrogant and contemptuous of his audience and his peers − and able to corral his audience's anger and angst into catharsis, without giving it an easy ride.

But whereas he deliriously, hilariously dismisses Game of Thrones without having seen it, his lack of understanding of modern technology critically undermines his deconstruction of it. There are many things wrong with social media, but if your starting point is that you don't understand the point of Twitter and you think Tinder is a paid-for app where you tick boxes about your interests, then you're fatally undercutting the significance of anything you have to say on the subject. That's the starting point of a Grumpy Old Men audition, not the bleeding edge of British comedy.

That hobby horse also powers a never-ending routine about homemade S&M equipment in the '30s, which extends a throwaway bit from his last tour into an interminable rant about the easy availability of everything in the modern world. I like the idea of alighting on something so perverse and obscure, I admire comics who play with the very rules of stand-up, and I know Lee's repetition, recounting and belabouring of a point are as integral to his work as the principles that underpin it, but the routine doesn't work. If he'd done something as conventional as tying it to an indictment of nostalgia, it might have, but as it is it just sort of lies there, a hollowness at its centre. I feel it's also beset with a pretentiousness that can stop Lee's shows stone dead, jettisoning much of the audience while giving a few of them the chance to show very loudly that they understand the joke; it was the same in January when he brought an unbearable joke about anarcho-syndicalists.

There's material here that's as good as anything anyone is doing right now. Surrounded by dozens of £0.01 DVDs from less-acclaimed, more popular comedians, he revives his assault on Russell Howard by seizing on a TV trailer in which the younger comic says that after running out of loo-roll he wiped his arse on a sock. Lee seizes on this faux-proletarian utterance by declaring it "observational comedy from a Victorian mental hospital", launching him into a superb juxtaposition of chummy Live at the Apollo-style stand-up and horrific human rights violations.

He follows it with an extended bit about other comics' reactions to his taunting of Howard (the sentence: "Why you say those things about Russell Howard, mate?" said perhaps 80 times, Lee's face and voice horrifically contorted) which is daring, inspired, stupid, clever, very funny and deceptively deep, while recalling interviews with Howard, John Robins and others about Lee's thin skin and yet how impervious he is to the idea that he might be genuinely upsetting young comics who idolise him by destroying their reputations in public. (I should add that I've met Stewart Lee a couple of times (once after a show and once on the street) and he was really nice and weirdly shy.)

He's now in an exalted position and I'm glad, because he's an artist who takes chances, someone with a distinctive, doggedly unconventional style, and I think that pretension is often merely what happens when your ambition overtakes your ability or the boundaries of the form, boundaries that are moved over time. But that doesn't mean you can't point out shortcomings in his work, even if he tends to obliterate anyone who does so in a whirlwind of blistering sardonism and repetition. (3)

***

FILMS



Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012) − If you're ever worried you might be oversharing, watch Sarah Polley's immaculate 2012 documentary, Stories We Tell, in which the incisively intelligent, staggeringly honest writer-director of Take This Waltz lays bare her family's history while telling the story of her late mother, Diane.

Like her earlier film, it's a movie that talks about things we know and recognise and are terrified by, and yet rarely discuss: the centrality of sex to everything, the difficulties and disappointments of relationships, and the often irresistible attractions that threaten to sever those crucial ties, perhaps irreparably. It's a film about secrets, about stories, about a search for identity, about the way we manufacture narratives to make sense of our memories and our lives.

At the start of the film, one of Polley's relatives asks why she's making it, since who else could be interested in this story? The answer, I think, is everyone. Because if you’re honest, you'll surely recognise parts of yourself in some of these characters, and perhaps in all of them. And all of them are honourable in some ways, spitefully selfish in others, wrestling with agendas and virtues and tragedies.

I don't want to say any more about either the subject or the style, as to do so would numb the impact of its surprises, but it is a remarkable film: haunting and bravura and with a genuine ovaries-out bravery that knocked me sideways. (4)

***



The Seven Five (Tiller Russell, 2014) − The apparently shameless Michael Dowd waves his arms about a lot as he explains how he made thousands of pounds committing robberies and drug deals as a New York cop in the 1980s. This is basically Cocaine Cowboys but not set in Miami and a bit more nuanced, thanks to a minor but appreciable grasp of morality and a central bromance as Shakespearean as the relationship between Paul and Frances in last week's Apprentice. (2.5)

***



Tight Spot (Phil Karlson, 1955) − A clunky, unconvincing crime film, with hapless lurches in tone, about luckless model Ginger Rogers sitting in a hotel room talking, as she tries to wriggle out of testifying against an underworld kingpin. Edward G. Robinson is the tough, plain-talking DA., with Brian Keith an irascible, sweaty cop who starts to warm to her.

For an hour, it's exceedingly stagy, its mannered script cursed with a uniquely irritating sense of humour; though there is one really sweet scene in which Rogers and Keith dance to a song on the radio, and the thaw sets in. Then finally the film judders into real life, transcending its origins to set up for a tense climax with a couple of really nice little touches in both the script and direction.

I've only ever seen Rogers give one great performance, in Gregory La Cava's dazzling comedy-drama Stage Door and she's all over the shop here (as is her accent), in a role that would have best suited a 1933 Barbara Stanwyck; for all that, she has odd moments of clarity and believability, and as a HUAC cheerleader doubtless cherished getting to state the case for informing. Keith isn't bad, if rather too hulking and obvious, so it's left to Robinson to take the acting honours, as assured as ever, in easily the least interesting of the three parts. (2)

***

TV



Huey Long (Ken Burns, 1985) − A poor documentary about one of the most fascinating figures of the American century: the rabble-rousing Louisiana radical (and spit of Frank McHugh), Huey Long, who wielded more power over his state than any politician in history and was gearing up to run for president when he was gunned down in 1935.

I've just read T. Harry Williams' phenomenal, Pulitzer Prize-winning biography and, next to that, Ken Burns' film seems embarrassingly trite and shallow, conspicuously lacking in a coherent narrative voice. Williams got to the crux of every matter: from charges of fascism and racketeering to laying bare Long's extraordinary qualities and his acts of petty-minded vindictiveness. Here, one person says one thing, another says the opposite, and you've no idea which of them is telling the truth.

I was interested to see Robert Penn Warren interviewed, as Long is mostly remembered today (if at all) as the inspiration for his book, All the King's Men − twice adapted as a film − but his only telling contribution is to read a couple of excerpts, the second accompanied by a touching montage.

It's slim pickings all round, really. Long's son Russell provides the best of the insights − including the memorable contention that by subverting democratic institutions and safeguards, his father actually promoted democracy, because for the first time people got what they had voted for − Randy Newman sings a nice song over the closing credits, and there are a few choice archive clips, but just read the book. (2)

***

BOOK



Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel García Márquez (2004) − More profound and moving than any novel about a 90-year-old hiring a 14-year-old prostitute for his birthday has any right to be. Its language like silk or sand, its narrator pitiful and poetic and precise, his moments of nobility and beauty offset by a pestilent past and a pitiless self-awareness, as he moves from voracious self-involvement to reflective idealism and finally a cagey understanding of the same. Some of its grace notes (like citing numerous books I could hardly break off to read) seem perversely obscure, as does Márquez's starting point, as if he's trying to prove that he can fashion something rhapsodic, pure and mature out of the most offputting material. Or he's just a bit sexist. I'm new to his work. (3.5)

***

Thanks for reading.

Joel McCrea, The Night of the Hunter, and feminism - Reviews #216

I've been busy writing and with work, but here are a few things I've watched or read lately. I also saw (and met!) Dave Gilmour, which was amazing. I'm listening to Dark Side of the Moon as I write this.



*SOME SPOILERS*
The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955) is one of the great films, a beguiling, bewitching, sometimes bewildering collision of Gothic horror and fairytale, a haunting, hypnotic vision of pure evil, of goodness, of redemption, of innocence lost and perhaps regained, of greed and guilt, loss, delusion, sexual obsession and puritanical perversion. It has some weak acting, wild lurches in tone and even a little Schufftan silliness, and yet also many of the most striking, magical sequences of its era, climaxing with a half-hour confrontation between good and evil that is amongst the most indelibly artistic and impossibly moving passages of pure cinema ever put onto celluloid.

Robert Mitchum is a psychotic, phony preacher on the hunt for a $10,000 stash hidden away somewhere by a recently hanged bank robber (Peter Graves). Inveigling his way into the lives of Graves’s widow (Shelley Winters) and two children – John (Billy Chapin) and Pearl (Sally Anne Bruce) – he seduces her, charms their friends at the local ice-cream parlour and a picnic in the park, and terrorises the young ‘uns, convinced that they know where the money’s hidden. Which they do. It’s in Pearl’s dolly.

Laughton, a famed stage and screen actor directing his first and only film, drew on the then-derided medium of silent film for his visual inspiration, basing his visuals primarily on the work of German Expressionist director F. W. Murnau: the early sections draw transparently on Nosferatu and Faust, the later ones on Sunrise and particularly City Girl. He’s helped, immeasurably, by Stanley Cortez, who had shot arguably the most ambitious and attractive film of the previous decade, Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons, before it was unfortunately slashed to shreds by a bunch of dicks. Almost literally.

Mitchum was one of the best actors of his generation, and a favourite of David Lean, but he got most of his power from underplaying, in movies like Out of the Past, The Lusty Men and The Friends of Eddie Coyle. In a role of this kind, that approach simply wouldn’t work, and so he plays it big: at first brilliantly – the ‘story of left hand, right hand’ is a dazzling set-piece – but then increasingly as a sort of satanic panto villain, hamming it up outrageously, and even growling in a way best filed under ‘extremely silly’. Laughton and Cortez use him superbly, as does the story, but I don’t see his performance as one of his best; in fact, not even close.

There are also weaknesses in the children’s performances: Bruce’s line readings are mostly exactly the same as one another, while Chapin alternates between articulating resourcefulness and stoic belligerence and just acting quite poorly: as in that moment where he blurts out something ill-advised and then belatedly gasps and clutches a hand to his mouth. At other times he’s spot-on, but essentially playing the Bobby Driscoll part from The Window, you can see the gulf in class between the two.

And yet despite those shortcomings, it’s never less than utterly astonishing, creating a seductive, artistically enriching world so rich with symbolism, so blessed by love, craftsmanship and even - dare I say it - genius that you can’t help but be enraptured. There’s the stunning, eerie use of wholesome American song. The shot of Mitchum framed as if in a chapel, as he clutches skywards, channelling his God. Winters in the water: one of the most astounding, unforgettable images in all of American film. The entrancingly beautiful boat ride, entirely fresh, yet utterly timeless.

And then, just when you think it can’t get any better, silent screen icon Lillian Gish turns up, armed with the only truly worthy role of her sound career: an aged version of the heart-rending heroines she played in Griffith’s rural tone poems, Way Down East and True Heart Susie, with so much love to give and so much empathy for the meek, the weak and those children who “abide and they endure”. It is as good a performance as I have ever seen in a movie, for once conceived and shot with as much intelligence and reverence for an actor of Gish’s mercurial, majestic gifts as she deserved; and every time she opens her mouth, I want to cry. The only other performance that has ever had that effect on me is Wendy Hiller’s Major Barbara: both performances are true and both characters are gentle and selfless, but have a rod of sheerest steel at their centre.

I must have seen the film 30 times and there are still new things to enjoy, to marvel at, to be astounded by: like the little tell-tale paper figures blowing unseen past Mitchum’s feet. But it’s the old things I love the best, particularly that incomparable scene in which Mitchum once again commandeers that wondrous hymn, Leaning on the Everlasting Arms, to creep the hell out of Chaplin and Bruce. But this time Gish, in silhouette and cradling a rifle as she sits in a rocking chair, joins in, her voice rising and harmonising, in perfect tandem over his haunting, horrifying vocals. He’s not on top any more – in the story or in the film – because Lillian Gish is here. (4)

***

Joel McCrea Westerns, because why the hell not?



Border River (George Sherman, 1954) - Everyone has comfort movies. Mine are mostly old rom-coms, and '50s B-Westerns starring Audie Murphy, Randolph Scott or particularly Joel McCrea - the only one of the three who could actually, like, act.

This McCrea oater is better and better-funded than most, with a nice balance of intrigue, action and romance, as his Confederate bank robber turns up in a Mexican town, attracting the attention of merciless mercenaries, a slick crime kingpin with his own private army, and the kingpin's girlfriend (Yvonne de Carlo), who likes money, but likes McCrea more.

There are some pleasant if sparing location shots, several unexpectedly fantastic lines - as well as a couple of sillier exchanges, including one about a pig - and plenty of plot twists, even if a few could be seen as mildly convenient. And though it wobbles a tad in the final third under the weight of a frankly ambitious number of subplots, the climactic set-piece delivers, with one fantastic stunt, and a fascinating piece of off-kilter imagery.

I doubt the film would work half as well without the effortless charisma, lovely voice and leathery tanned skin of McCrea, one of the most likeable and - within his limitations - underrated actors ever to grace the American screen, but with him in the saddle it's fine if admittedly flawed fun. (3)



Wichita (Jacques Tourneur, 1955) - A po-faced, pastel-shaded and action-packed Western about the cleaning up of Wichita, featuring a Wyatt Earp who's a little too good to be true. It's great fun, though, despite its artificiality, with plenty of incident, a fine cast led by Joel McCrea, and a theme song that works as a lovely motif, once shorn of its extremely silly words. There are also some cracking visual compositions, right from the get-go, and weightier observations than you might expect about gun control and law and order, the film rather more progressive on the former than the latter. (3)



Stranger on Horseback (Jacques Tourneur, 1955) - A sensational little Western about the coming of law and order, with gun-toting circuit judge Joel McCrea trying to bring the son of a powerful pioneer to justice.

Made by McCrea and director Jacques Tourneur the same year as Wichita, it's a vastly superior outing in every way: a tight, slim oater that does wonders with a tiny budget, boasting a riveting story, a crackling script that includes a superb monologue for villain John McIntire and a stunning climax making full use of whip-cracking desert dominatrix Miroslava. There's also a colourful supporting part for long-faced John Ford favourite, John Carradine.

McCrea's Westerns are one of my enduring cinematic pleasures, but they're rarely as good as this intelligent offering, one of the few as impressive as his central characterisation: which here is assured, multi-faceted and effortlessly imposing. The only real downsides are a couple of duff effects and the fact that no colour negative for this film still exists, so the existing print looks a little odd and oversaturated.

In creating a chamber Western that's credible, invigorating and constantly keeps you guessing, Tourneur and his writers effectively anticipated the 'Ranown' cycle: the Budd Boetticher movies starring McCrea's contemporary and rival, Randolph Scott, which kicked off the following year with the astounding Seven Men from Now. The two stars were eventually united in Sam Peckinpah's second and greatest film, Ride the High Country. (3.5)

***



Séance on a Wet Afternoon (Bryan Forbes, 1964) - A dark, atmospheric thriller about false-nosed asthmatic Dickie Attenborough being forced to kidnap a child by his wife, a terrifying, chameleonic psychic played by Kim Stanley.

It's extremely well-acted, with superb use of sound - augmented by John Barry's syncopated score - and one notably fine sequence making the most of London's Underground.

For all that, it's not exactly enjoyable, and while the shifting dynamics and periodic revelations keep you guessing, the forced withholding of information, Gothic-lite back story and excessive use of interiors prevent it from scaling the heights it otherwise might.

As ironic pay-offs go, though, that last line is very deftly done. (3)

***



Bitter Sweet (W. S. Van Dyke II, 1940) - Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald's seventh of eight films together is no match for their early classics - Naughty Marietta, Rose Marie and Maytime - with a poorly-paced story, unmemorable songs and an interminable gypsy opera finale.

It's set largely in Vienna, with exactly the supporting cast you'd expect (Felix Bressart, Sig Ruman and Herman Bing), as well as George Sanders proving comprehensively that amongst his considerable arsenal was not the ability to do accents.

The film starts quite well and thereafter occasionally sparks into life, courtesy of the Singing Sweethearts' singularly evocative harmonising or a funny scene with Bing that riffs cleverly on the absurdity of their image, but mostly it's distressingly mediocre, with barely any story at all - and then much too much. It's also somewhat garish and flatly directed by Woody 'One Take' Van Dyke, despite rather hilariously - in the wake of The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind - being billed as "Technicolor's greatest spectacle".

Noel Coward was reportedly so outraged by the changes made to his play that he never let Hollywopd touch another one; the result is a reheated reimagining of Maytime with little of the sweetness and none of the peril or intense romantic feeling.

Eddy and MacDonald's movies are often (and unfairly) dismissed nowadays as kitsch or camp, but at their best they do as good a job as any of crystallising the extraordinary escapism that MGM was capable of crafting: the Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life sequence in Naughty Marietta remains perhaps my favourite scene of the studio era. (2)

***

BOOK:



A Book for Her by Bridget Christie (2015) - A shocking, impassioned, insightful, incisive, passionate and hysterical* book about where comedy and feminism intersect**, from the most blistering, blissfully funny talent on the current stand-up scene. It notably overuses one joke format, is occasionally unfocused and has more than its fair share of typos, but I loved it to pieces. Give it to the feminist in your life. Or to the unreconstructed sexist prick. Either works. (3.5)

*as in 'funny'. I'm not saying Bridget is hysterical, or that all women are. Though they are. **this is a pun about intersectional feminism. Hear me roar.

***

THEATRE:



Hangmen (The Royal Court Theatre) - In Bruges writer-director Martin McDonagh returns to the London stage with a killer new play about the country's second best hangmen (David Morrissey) - on the day that hanging is abolished. It's both perilously dark and astonishingly funny, McDonagh weaving together his comic and thriller-ish strands with utter majesty, as a mysterious blonde stranger appears in Morrissey's Oldham pub, setting in motion a truly grisly chain of events. After the partial misfire that was his Hollywood debut, Seven Psychopaths, this is a stunning, seamless return to form from one of the sharpest, wittiest and most interesting writers working today, a work so incredibly entertaining that it's only when the dust settles that you realise there was real meat on these bones. Perhaps its ending is telegraphed a little too clearly considering the near-constant surprises served up beforehand, but it's a must-see for anyone who loves the stage, with a superb ensemble, a couple of dazzling coups de théâtre and the best new material you'll hear this year. (4) (Also in the interval I met Kate Tempest and she recommended me an early McDonagh play. I love Kate Tempest. I'll let you know when I've read it.)



The Play That Goes Wrong (Duchess Theatre) - A neat idea that doesn't quite work in practice, as we watch an am-dram production fall to pieces in a litany of minor ways. It's too slapsticky, its farcical elements don't make sense and too many of the running performances and running gags are unforgivably broad* (a sound engineer who loves Duran Duran? I mean, really?), though there are a few jokes that really land - including a killer one about improv - and the way that James Marlowe's incompetent thespian repeatedly breaks the fourth wall with his bashful grin is rather delightful. (2.5)

*unforgivably in a transitory theatrical context, I have forgiven them all now

***

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.

Jeff, jail and Judith Hearne - Reviews #144

*MINOR SPOILERS*
The Kid with a Bike (Dardenne brothers, 2011) - A young boy (Thomas Doret) with behavioural issues tries to reconnect with his absent father (Jeremie Renier), is fostered by a selfless hairdresser (Cecile De France), then gets involved with a vicious, supercilious gangster (Egon Di Mateo), in this astonishing human drama. I've met quite a few people like the damaged, confused, painfully insular and sporadically aggressive hero of The Kid with a Bike, but I've never seen a movie about one before, and capturing real life on film in this way is to be applauded in itself.

The script and performances are note-perfect, and there's also an invigorating lack of extraneity in the storytelling: the linking scenes you'd find in most films are ruthlessly excised, so everything - even the scenes of the titular kid on his titular bike - serve the gutting, heartbreaking narrative, in which the viewer's response to almost every exchange is, "That's a shame", in which the aimless, lonely protagonist - devoid of masculine guidance - smashes two people with a baseball bat as an act of love for two male role models who throw the gesture back in his face, in which the only real point of comparison - in terms of bleakness, bicycles and the welcome shaft of light at the close - is De Sica's Bicycle Thieves.

The film has elements of fatalism without being pessimistic, tells a simple story that never looks for an easy way out, and eschews sentimentality while radiating a bold and uncompromising sense of humanity. It moved me very deeply.

***



Jeff, Who Lives at Home (Jay and Mark Duplass, 2011) – An emotionally articulate, unusual and deceptively wise film about fate, the universe and the frustrations and disappointments of adulthood, as full-time slacker Jason Segel ventures out from his mum’s basement and begins a tentative day of discovery, interacting with his uptight brother (Ed Helms) and trying to read some mysterious cosmic signs (following several viewings of the film Signs) that relate to the significance of the name Kevin. It’s funny, unpredictable and full of insights about love, loneliness and life, aided by Segel’s fine performance, though a subplot about mum Susan Sarandon’s romantic re-awakening seems a bit forced – and smugly progressive – in comparison. Despite that, and some concessions to conventionality, this consistently interesting indie is still likely to blindside you with the originality of its plotting, the strength of its dialogue and the courage of its convictions. Not that the film doesn’t have a couple of kindred spirits, recalling Matt Bissonette’s – which also concerned two brothers re-connecting during one long, strange day, and is even better – as well as The Tao of Steve, another movie with a philosophical stoner for a hero. (3.5)

***



The House I Live In (Eugene Jarecki, 2012) is a powerful polemic against the War on Drugs, which Jarecki argues is really a war on communities that began as an issue of race, and is now one of class. Assisted by scholars, addicts, dealers, law-enforcers, a judge, one of the creators of The Wire and a series of prisoners (500,000 US citizens are currently in jail for non-violent drugs-related offences), he forms a compelling and invigorating case filled with revealing and shocking detail. Like how the media storm around crack cocaine in the ‘80s (powder cocaine + baking soda + water + heat) saw the introduction of sentences 100 times more punitive than for the original form of the drug. That a “three strikes” policy advocated on film by Clinton has seen a drug addict who trafficked to feed his own habit jailed for life – without parole. And that while only 13 per cent of crack users in the US are African-American, 80 per cent of those behind bars for crack offences are. I didn’t think I could think less of how the US treats its African-American community after Steve James’s The Interrupters, but it turned out I could. As a film, it’s a little messy – curious, considering that Jarecki was responsible for that sleek, streamlined, immaculately-edited Reagan doc – while the decision to frame his investigation in the first person feels misguided, leading to some weak and irrelevant passages, but it’s an important and impassioned work that raises many crucial questions, all of which must be answered by American law-makers. (3.5)

***



*SPOILERS*
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (Jack Clayton, 1987) – A great performance in search of a great film, as meek, lonely, religious Irish spinster Maggie Smith loses her faith and her mind after being spurned by selfish would-be entrepreneur Bob Hoskins. Smith is absolutely extraordinary – fully immersed in a characterisation so real and true that the film feels almost intrusive – and her flashback sequences, reflecting on a her life spent caring for her addled aunt driven mad by a stroke, provide at least one truly great scene for the mighty Wendy Hiller. But the story is all over the shop, sometimes boring, often laughably overwrought, with supporting characters who’d seem more at home in either gothic melodrama or ‘70s sitcoms – especially ludicrous, slimy, be-moobed poet Ian McNeice – while Hopkins is oddly poor (and cursed with a lousy American accent), and the film expects us to be more disgusted by his character wanting Hearne for her money than the fact he’s a rapist. When Smith’s pitiful, self-pitying character is on screen it works and there are some incredibly powerful passages towards the end, particularly her drunken confrontation with parish priest Alan Devlin and subsequent explosion of emotion at the altar, railing furiously at God, before scratching desperately at the tabernacle and pleading to join him. It’s just a shame that such a remarkable performance, such a stunning study of mental illness, religious doubt and abject loneliness, isn’t housed in a more credible, coherent film, though it’s still worth it to see Smith at the peak of her considerable powers. (2.5)

***


I don't know what you're looking so smug about.

Orange County (Jake Kasdan, 2002) – When an aspiring writer (Colin Hanks) with a dysfunctional family sees his attempts to get into Stanford University scuppered by an incompetent school administrator (Lily Tomlin), he decides to drive there to talk them round, with his girlfriend (Schuyler Fisk) and stoner brother (Jack Black) in tow. Fisk is excellent, Kevin Kline has an unexpectedly effective bit near the close (the way he's incorporated is almost magical) and there are amusing cameos from Tomlin and Ben Stiller, but I found this an unimaginative, comedically lazy film, hampered by an emotional fraudulence that renders its stabs at poignancy completely hollow. It probably would have worked a bit better with Tom Hanks in the lead, mind. Even in 2002. (2)

The funniest film of all time? - Reviews #74

The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey, 1937) is perhaps the funniest film of all time - particularly in its first 50 minutes - as Cary Grant delivers an absolute masterclass in light comedy. Everything he does, from revelling in Ralph Bellamy's enthusiastically terrible nightclub dancing to trying on a hat, is just hysterical. His facial mannerisms, his throwaway delivery, his unexpected pratfalls - it's all just perfect. Grant plays a supposedly progressive husband who goes out of his "continental mind" upon discovering his wife's apparent infidelity, and begins divorce proceedings. Gloriously, his foil is Irene Dunne, who gave Myrna Loy a run for her money as the finest female American comic of the '30s. Her inimitable vibrato sigh, infectious laugh and playful persona are just a joy, her delighted lie that Jerry's family refer to him as "Jerry the Nipper", due to his endless tippling, merely one of a host of highlights.

Bellamy, forever the spare in these romantic triangles, also delivers a terrific characterisation. The scene in which he tries to laugh along with Grant's quips and misbehaviour, only to be silently told not to by Dunne, is a particular favourite. The cast is rounded out by Joyce Compton as a faux-Southern showgirl and Molly Lamont, playing a cipher of a socialite. The script, by female playright Viña Delmar, is sheer battle-of-the-sexes magic - magnificently conceived and executed - and there are flashes, fragments of effortlessly-judged sentiment scattered through the film, often in the most unlikely places, which make it all the more special. While the film loses its momentum a little in the last half hour - it's still funny, but it's not as frantically, breathlessly hilarious - the sweet ending, heavy in wordplay and Lubitsch-esque door gags, is original, appealing and even kinda sexy. (4)

Trivia note: The leads reunited for My Favourite Wife, which is less coherent and well-rounded but extremely funny, with another astonishing comic performance by Grant. There's a moment where he dashes out of a lobby phone booth, having pretended to be somewhere else, runs smack into his wife and instinctively emits a curious hum, that is just sublime.

Comedy review: Richard Herring at Harrogate Theatre

Monday, March 7, 2011



A ball of fire hits the stage of Harrogate Theatre and Richard Herring slumps to the floor.

“I do believe in you, God, ” he whimpers. “I’ve just been showing off, trying to impress girls.”

It’s the silly, whizz-bang climax to a two-hour show about Jesus that made me laugh harder than just about anything I’ve seen since Herring’s last visit to the town a year ago.

To me, he’s the best stand-up around at the moment. While his freeform internet broadcasts, written within a week or entirely improvised, are touched with brilliance, they’re also wildly erratic, almost by definition.

His touring shows, on the other hand, are honed night after night until they’re just about flawless.

Despite a few abrasive lines, this one isn’t the Christian-baiting shock-fest you might fear, but an incisive and entertaining look at Herring’s atheism and his apparently contradictory obsession with Jesus, boasting his usual strong suits of elevated pedantry and faux self-obsession.

In it, he offers his own aphorisms (which bear an uncanny resemblance to the opening lines of TV theme tunes) and parables (a succession of hysterical stories he penned as a child) and attempts to recruit some disciples.

“Ask me if I’m Jesus, ” he tells his first follower.

“Are you Jesus?” the man enquires.

“That is what you say, ” Herring replies.

The comic also tries to answer some of the big theological questions, like: “Why did Jesus always call Simon ‘Peter’? Is it like the way Trigger always called Rodney ‘Dave’?”

Three of his routines are so effective that the audience seems to be collectively willing him to stop so it can catch its breath.

Stupid plonker-wallies

Scrutinising the Ten Commandments, he laments the over-writing and confesses that he once failed to honour his father and mother, calling them “stupid plonker-wallies” to their faces.

Then he pours scorn on page one of Matthew’s gospel, adopting the persona of the disciple’s publisher to declare: “It’s rubbish, Matthew. Begat isn’t even a word.”

Herring knows what he’s talking about, incidentally. He spent four days memorising the opening genealogy, then five minutes on stage taking the mickey out of Booz of Rachab’s name.

Early in the second half, he launches into an inspired riff based on a letter he received about his show from an irate Christian, containing eight instances of people who’ve mocked God and then been brutally killed.

“This is definitely true, ” he says, moving on to the final example. “You can tell by the way none of the people have names and it obviously never happened.”

“Jesus did say: ‘If someone offends thee, send them a threatening passive-aggressive email’, ” he adds.

But Herring does concede that an extremely drunk heckler, who invites the whole audience to a party, may have been sent by God to punish him. When he isn’t removed, Herring speculates that he must be a local dignitary.

In fact, “God” intervenes in more showy fashion near the close, as the lights go off, there’s a small explosion and Herring immediately begins to mock-repent.

That takes us into the unexpectedly reverential final spiel, where the comedian becomes more serious, ultimately expressing his admiration for Jesus and for Christian values, detached from his distaste for organised religion.

Along with two extended dream sequences - in which Herring engages in a bike race with Jesus - it effectively crystallises the dichotomy at the heart of the show, if slowing the laugh-rate a little.

Early in the set he’d asked who really believed Jesus was the son of God.

I’m not really one for audience participation, but I figured this was quite important, so I raised my hand.

At the end, he asks from the stage if he’s managed to change my mind.

I’m afraid not, I say.

Great show, though.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This article was written by Rick Burin and appeared on Page 21 of the Harrogate Advertiser, March 11, 2011.