“Never say ‘no’ to adventures. Always say ‘yes’, otherwise you’ll lead a very dull life” – Ian Fleming
2015 is fast shaping up to be the big and small screen’s YEAR OF THE SPY…..
Author: Mark O'Connell (Page 29 of 33)
Mark O’Connell is a comedy writer. He has written for a range of top comedy actors, directors and performers including the legendary Ronnie Corbett, plus numerous sketch shows, sitcom projects, stand-up acts, promos and online shorts. His work features on the BBC, Channel Four, Five, various Edinburgh Fringe productions and various comedy and film festivals. He has worked with leading comedy names, such as Jon Plowman, John Sullivan, Paul Mendelson, and Jonathan Harvey (who Mark featured alongside in a BBC3 The Last Laugh documentary about gay comedy).
Mark has won the Jerwood Film Prize for Skedaddle, the Lloyds Bank Film Challenge for Carrying Dad, one ninth of a BAFTA, repeat praise from Time Out and the Coen Brothers, plus a Five Star album from a local radio phone-in he has yet to receive.
He was also chosen by London 2012 and BT to be one of the official Storytellers of the London Olympics.
CATCHING BULLETS - MEMOIRS OF A BOND FAN is his debut book. It has received great reviews, a starry line up of contributors and was shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize 2013.
O'Connell is working on a second book.
Opening on a quietly hilarious riff on the all-macho city-break that is Deliverance, Season 2 of HBO’s intelligent, honest and razor-witted Looking once again rows gloriously upstream against the tide of gay telly clichés with a tighter confidence one only gets in the sophomore year.
“I really think that this weekend should be about the three of us together, not two hundred naked homos crammed in a pool” – Patrick (Jonathan Groff), Episode 1, Season Two
Of course it is not long before Patrick’s sober plans to hug ancient redwood trees and observe rare woodpeckers are swiftly replaced by booze, pills, plentiful peckers of a different kind and doing all sorts of nocturnal things against trees. One party invite from some sandbank-partying homos (“bring the clone and the seal pup!”) and a camp Cockette-ish fawn giving directions in the moonlight and we’re off – lost in music amidst a glorious opener marked by savvy slo-mo, some sharp editing and rich photography, a Sister Sledge classic and some pretty hot censor-baiting loving.
So where are our triumvirate of characters now? Ex-artist and career narcissist Augustin (Frankie J. Álvarez) is still trying to be less Augustin with varying success. Pop-up restaurateur wannabe Dom (Murray Bartlett) is now playing gay rugby and half-dating the “Dame Gladioli of The Castro” and flower shop mogul Lynn (Scott Bakula), but still over-panicking at the hands and minds that want to help him. And unlike the audience, main character Patrick (Jonathan Groff) appears to be over the soulful, barber boy Richie (Raúl Castillo) and the romance which so marked out Looking at the non-cynical tableau of gay American life. Or is he…? Following the end-of-season cliff-hanger (though Looking is not really a cliff-hanger show – it just ends on perfectly random anthems and bittersweet conclusions), the single Patrick is now seeing British software boss Kevin (Russell Tovey) who it seems is far from single. Series Two very quickly (though quietly) does not want us to like this new direction for Patrick.
Afraid to tell close friends Augustin and Dom he has been seeing Kevin all over the workplace, over-sensitive Patrick is however more confident about sex – both doing it and talking about it. The joy of Looking is the raw, fresh and recognisable dialogue. Looking talks like people talk (“straight people never have to think about squirting water up their ass before sex”). It is not about being candid or shocking. It is about being real. Part of the continued authenticity in season two is that – from the outset – these three characters believe they have evolved and learnt their lessons. The show naturally has to update and evolve. But Looking knows life is not like that. There is of course a sense of progression, but possibly marked more by the side characters taking to the story podium too. This is still Patrick, Dom and Augustin’s gig. However, Wave Two of Looking astutely lets some the support figures evolve proceedings too.
We learn more about Tovey’s Kevin and his British childhood in Romford (“is that like Wimbledon?” wonders Patrick). He confesses to adolescent stirrings over breakfast TV to boy-band Take That (and many a Brit guy of a certain age will wholeheartedly attest to taking that as all we could get pre -internet) and the click-rate on one of the band’s earlier twinky videos will rise when folk see Kevin’s rendition of the dance moves in question. He is not painted as such, and it is because he is not the kind Richie (in many ways the most personally sorted and clued up of all the Looking characters), but Kevin increasingly feels like the series villain despite thawing towards Patrick when their sex life finally finds a bed rather than a works store cupboard to continue in.
Of course firecracker fag hag Doris (the brilliant Lauren Weedman) is on early hand to lead the boys astray – “so you guys thought you were going to have your little sausage party without me?!”. But instead of being some comedy appendage, or “catnip for the lesbians” as she describes herself, Doris is soon afforded her own love story as the forty-something party girl meets her own [tangled] love story. Though that is very much after we are told Doris was last seen at the redwood party topless on a jet ski and offering a Navy salute to the lesbians. And there is a new character in the bear-shaped, Trans support worker Eddie (Mean Girls’ Daniel Franzese) – “the hairy assed mother of the Mission”. One moonlit skinny dip later and the kind Eddie is soon embarking upon a steadier, purer friendship with Augustin that the latter might be used to. Added to that, Castillo‘s Richie is accidentally back in the mix (yay!) and Bakula’s Lynn is possibly a gift horse with sharper teeth than Dom imagined.
When it launched in early 2014, everything the detractors threw at Looking was exactly why it worked. As Season Two underlines now even more, it is still not a peaks and troughs screaming cliché of a comedy-drama. If anything – and this is possibly the point – Tovey’s gossip-shy Kevin is the queer cliché, the less content and more troubled victim of the piece. Kevin is soon part of the uncomfortable Richie/Kevin dilemma Patrick is battling with – all of which is heightened with the latter’s scary talk of work-visa expirations and asides about gaining citizenship through marriage. At least Augustin’s problems don’t stem from his homosexuality. Or Dom’s. Or even Patrick’s. They might think they do with a private sense of martyrdom that some gay guys are wont to have, but the skill of Looking is it adeptly pricks all that with narrative ease and a scathing quip – always suggesting the characters fears, inadequacies and paranoia are actually universal to us all.
HIV/AIDS and the [now] higher agenda of the Trans communities situation have a greater presence than Season One. Hypochondriac Patrick gets a whole episode to worry that letting the bed bug bite might be something worse in a town where HIV tests are “given out like coffee stirrers“, and bear Eddie’s “Home In Virginia” status and telling tattoo is introduced with an ease and normalcy San Francisco has of course had to become the master of.
The momentum of the glorious nirvana that is the opening episode is somewhat lost in the couple that follow, but that is no fault. Every triumphant weekend needs a comedown – especially in San Francisco. Still sharply aware of the corridors of social media all our thumbs roam up and down (“You can’t shout at a homeless person…homeless people have Twitter accounts“), show runner Andrew Haigh, creator Michael Lannan and fellow writers are now free of the need to establish these characters and their world. Now is the time to enjoy the series template they have established. San Francisco is still the fairy godmother to the show, but without the gay landmarks turning into postcards of themselves. This is still a very familiar gay-by-the-Bay town. With a clever and often joyous soundtrack (continuing Looking’s musical habit of reminding you loved certain tracks you haven’t heard for years), it is already a TV privilege to be in these character’s company again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLTCEMqDR84
Season 2 of Looking begins in the US on January 11th 2015 and in the UK on Sky Atlantic at 2255 on 5th February 2015.
Some thoughts on Season One of the show, Through the LOOKING Glass.
With thanks to Sky Atlantic and HBO.
I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold, and very well made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad.”
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming, 1954
Under the apt PR guise “PROJECT TUXEDO”, the world’s luxury vodka brand Belvedere has announced its new global partnership with James Bond 007 and 2015’s SPECTRE.
“We are delighted to announce that when it comes to his martini, Mr Bond Knows The Difference” says Charles Gibb, President of Belvedere Vodka.
First created in 1993 when the taboos and trade boundaries of Cold War Russian vodka were lifting (and 007 was of course about to enter into an officially sanctioned marriage with Smirnoff – his and the Bond image’s on/off vodka of choice since 1962’s Dr. No), Belvedere Vodka has hit the ground running in its two decades tenure. Generating a new standard and thinking around vodka and its side industries and variants, Belvedere has quickly established itself as a bespoke vodka striving for excellence and distinctive character. Made in Poland from Dankowskie Rye and blended with water, Belvedere’s taste profile is a must for premium restaurants, eateries, bars, hotels and clubs. And now Bond fan gatherings, birthday lists and – yes, I asked – bachelor party libations.
In total, James Bond orders 19 vodka martinis and 16 gin martinis in Fleming’s work.
But as much as this is a cracking marketing angle for both Bond and Belvedere, there is more to this new relationship than sheer profile. Belvedere’s chief of mixology Claire Smith is ‘the first lady of vodka’. At a private demonstration of Belvedere and vodka martinis in an equally private Armed Forces private members club in London (and one with its own Ian Fleming links, of course), Smith proves not only her passion for vodka – and of course Belvedere’s new relationship with 007 – but that she wants the revival of the vodka martini to continue. According to Smith there is a momentum of interest in vodka martinis (no doubt revived by 2006’s Casino Royale and its presentation of the Vesper cocktail). People are wanting to know more from their barman, they are wanting to get that martini and their drinks right just for them. Like our evolving food tastes and knowledge, we are all wanting to know what is in our drinks. We are also moving away from that 1970s and 1980s menu of cocktails and spirits (there was no Babycham at the bar of this particular club).
This new promotional pairing between SPECTRE and Belvedere is also about democratising the vodka martini – forever a perceived requisite of out-of-reach high-end establishments or disappointingly bad office party Bond nights with some bloke in a corner mixing drinks like Tom Cruise in Cocktail . Treated by bar consultancy and drinks wizard Joe Stokoe to three stunningly realised standards – a Dry Martini (stirred, not shaken), a Wet Martini and a Reverse Vesper – I was instantly able to discern the differences created by preparation and experience. My preference would be the Reverse Vesper (1 part Vermouth, 1 part Tanqueray and 3 part Belvedere vodka). A twist on the iconic Vesper (which is not necessarily the onscreen vodka martini Bond has always had), this Belvedere imbued cocktail was a saucy strapless dress of a glass – attention grabbing but refined with a whisper of Lillet and lemon rind.
“One medium dry vodka martini mixed like you said sir, but not stirred”
Dr. No, 1962
Claire Smith’s engaging and easy passion for mixing, presenting and augmenting vodka is all about creating “a dialogue” between the consumer and bartender. Smith spends time opening up the consumer’s confidence. She wants us to build relationships with our barman. How many of us have wanted to be James Bond and take our place at the bar with that just arrived poise only to fall at the first hurdle – confidence. One of the mainstays of Belvedere and tenets of Smith’s approach is to arm the consumer with the realisation that there are no rules. Bond’s own iconic shaken, not stirred vodka martini is itself an alleged faux-pas of ingredient-bashing excess. Some gin and martini scholars would have you believe stirring and not shaking is the end goal – that shaking can excessively aerate the core components. But Smith and Stokoe are quick to encourage “there are no rules”. What is one person’s martini foible at the end of the working day is another’s starting pistol or refreshing interlude before dinner. Know Your Martini is a recent mantra of Belvedere Vodka and one that equally applies to its marriage with Eon Productions and James Bond. The renowned vodka house wants more than just a fiscally beneficial union. “Vodka is so often overlooked as being neutral, anonymous. And vodka is so much more dynamic than that.” notes Smith. “The future of bar-tending lies in trying to find elegance and beauty and simplicity and making that compelling for the consumer to really get involved with. That’s really what I’m interested in.” Belvedere teaming up with Bond is more than commercialism. It makes bespoke, aesthetic sense.
Of course the panic-peddlers and naysayers will all have their headlines primed about 007 selling out and movie producers taking product placement too far. The Heineken usage in 2012’s Skyfall was scorned by easy headline makers, but when a secret agent is in a backpackers beach bar in Turkey I am kind of assuming ordering a “vodka martini, shaken not stirred” is not quite going to cut it as much as a cold beer. It is worth noting too that Ian Fleming himself would drop in names and products – because they were part of his world and hence 007’s, but also because there is an immediacy and westernised reality about labels. Our homes and daily technology are bound by labels and familiar monikers. Why should 007 the character be exempt from that? And why should 007 the film franchise not seek out and align itself with the finer leanings of a house like Belvedere? Belvedere join a rich array of Bond beverage “co-stars” including Bollinger, Absolut Vodka, Smirnoff, Macallan and Finlandia.
Head of Belvedere Charles Gibb is a quietly proud man right now. “It’s the size and scale of everything that is James Bond” – he notes – “This union is unique because an integral part of our brand and Bond’s character meet in this wonderful intersection called the Martini. The fact that Ian Fleming and Bond are credited with re-energising the building of what is today the modern-day Martini – and the vodka martini – I think that’s a very unique partnership, you don’t often find something with such a unique crossroads.”
And there is no fear of this business fit not finding the same enthusiasm and knowledge within the Bond family camp. “They certainly know their history of vodka“, remarks Gibb. “They certainly know their history of the martini. And they certainly know their way around a vodka bottle”.
Gibbs continues – “the thing for me is we’re going to create our own advertising around it. What that looks like, how that looks is at the moment probably subject to another discussion“. Of course Gibbs, EON and Belvedere are being tight-lipped about just how their vodka will be incorporated into SPECTRE and maybe beyond (I tried to ask of the long term relationship, but ex-Army officer Gibbs is not going to spill this particular bottle of insight and, to be fair, 007 and Belvedere are merely at hand-holding first base right now).
Belvedere will produce two custom-made, limited edition bottles to celebrate Bond’s shaken, not stirred vodka martini and this new partnership with SPECTRE. A 007 twist has been added to Belvedere’s quite beautiful Silver Sabre bottles (they have their own light switch and vague hints of snow-globe flakes inside – I know, right!). The famous Belvedere Palace blue bottles and emblem will be replaced by that of MI6’s Vauxhall headquarters and in February 2015 a marketing campaign will launch with a focus on “on-premise establishments and retail stores” across the globe. Dwight Caines, Theatrical Marketing for Sony Pictures says, “James Bond’s cool attitude and stylish sophistication have always gone hand in hand with his choice of vodka martini. Belvedere is a perfect match“.
To officially launch Bond’s new bond with Belvedere, a “smart and chic” party was held at Covent Garden’s Bond In Motion exhibition in December 2014. With Charles Gibbs, the CEO of Moët Hennessy Christophe Navarre in attendance (Belvedere is part of the LVMH group – Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy), representatives from EON Productions and more in attendance the night was a slick and charming way of toasting 007’s newest marriage to the Polish house of vodka. The music decks were manned by one Tinie Tempah and the likes of Douglas Booth, Pixie Geldof, Kim Hersov, Lily Cole and this Bond fan lent some star appeal to proceedings (I didn’t lend star appeal at all, despite sporting a suit in DB5 silver).
Tinie Tempah spinning / clicking some tunes (c) Mark O’Connell / 2014
Joe Stokoe was also on hand again to keep an eye on three martini bars spread amidst Bond’s car heritage, and various plinth-proud bottles of Bond vodka stood tall. Each bar had a theme – Wet/Dry, Shaken/Stirred and Reverse Vesper. Glimpsed was a new SPECTRE edition of Belvedere as well as the rarest of the rare – edition number ‘007’ of Belvedere’s Palace bottle. In true Elliot Carver launch style, Gibbs and Christophe Navarre unveiled the bespoke bottle just as Tempah filled the room with Kanye West’s Diamonds Are Forever (Diamonds From Sierra Leone).
Moet Hennessy’s CEO Christophe Navarre and Belvedere’s Charles Gibb unveil the rare ‘007’ edition of the equally limited MI6 bottle. (c) Mark O’Connell / 2014
Though one SPECTRE vehicle was sadly absent from Bond In Motion on the night. Resigned to the cloakroom for probable safety where it was surrounded by coats and satchels, SPECTRE and Blofeld’s Bath-o-Sub from Diamonds Are Forever was kept out of harm’s way and sadly didn’t get to see just how the new SPECTRE agents conduct themselves. Quite right too.
For more photos of the launch night and more go to Catching Bullets on Facebook.
With special thanks to Belvedere Vodka, Charles Gibb, Claire Smith, Remmert Van Braam, Joe Stokoe, EON Productions, Sony Pictures Entertainment and the Mission team.
www.belvederevodka.com
“SPECTRE is a nod to the Connery cat-stroking years”
Talking Bond, SPECTRE, Vodka Martinis and villain’s monorails on Five News…
“SPECTRE goes right back to the heart of Bond”
And taking things with a twist of lemon and a spin of the SPECTRE dice….
With thanks to the team at Five News.
“There’s not, I think, a single episode of Dallas that I didn’t see”
Abba, The Day Before You Came, 1982
I’ve met Lucy Ewing. Oh yes. Her alter-ego Charlene Tilton was strutting like a Texan Babs Windsor to a theatre in Guildford that just happened to be where my mum and I would park for our ‘half-term look around the shops’ treat. For this fan of the Texan Greek tragedy that was Dallas seeing Lucy Ewing was the best half-term holiday anecdote I had for quite a while. I was quickly crushed when friends’ non-interest curtailed that encounter from even being an “anecdote” at all. So when I recently read a few years back ago over breakfast that Dallas was coming back (which was apt as show matriarch Miss Ellie was always receiving bad news over breakfast), I was somewhat guarded. The dying embers of the show’s final seasons saw remaining cast members themselves having to direct, write and set the patio wind machine to “full”, subsequent 1990s TV movies had drowned in the Southfork pool and a movie notion of John Travolta as JR and Shirley Maclaine as Miss Ellie and turning the show that was all about hairspray into some Hairspray II mistake was – unlike that petrol tanker that nearly wiped out Pam Ewing – thankfully avoided.
Beginning in 1978, David Jacobs’ landmark soap was the very definition of riding the moment. Denver rival Dynasty had yet to launch and find its camp feet and the 1980s was ideal for Dallas to ride through bareback with its oil, glamour, wealthy perms and pool parties. If Dynasty was the camp sister-in-law, then Dallas was the masculine ranch-hand flanked by a few drag queens passing off as women. In a time before box-sets and spoilers (the episode reels were flown to Heathrow under armed guard when the UK discovered Who Shot JR ages after America did), Dallas was a weekly treat – a romp of a saga whose heroes and villains would pinball their allegiances at the drop of a Stetson as long as everything ended on a freezeframe cliff-hanger at 50 minutes. But would any of this overcast millarkey ever find new favour in a dusty television landscape of Mad Men, over-concepted sci-fi mysteries and Danish detective heroines in misshapen sweaters?
New show-runner Cynthia Cidre certainly knew her oil. And her TV. Wisely pitching the revival as a continuation rather than a dreaded “reboot”, the new Dallas coyly straddled the worlds of oil and – may Jock Ewing not spin in his grave – renewable energies. Oil is not the quite the story allure it used to be. BP and global warming saw to that (though how delicious would it have been for the new show producers to attribute BP’s woes to a bad JR Ewing deal?). But the greatest renewable energy on show here is easily in the programme’s writing. Whereas the original series – like Bobby Ewing’s famous exit and reappearance – became a bad dream that saw the Ewings petering off to Paris, Moscow and chain gang prison sentences, the new show opted for a smaller family tree with Southfork as hub once again. Death and egos have put many of the original cast at bay, but Cidre’s masterstroke was retrieving Patrick Duffy, Linda Gray and Larry Hagman from the Where Are They Now show circuit. Without balancing the show’s dynamic on the nostalgia casting of this trio (though it was always more interesting when they took centre stage), new Dallas realised that the Ewing kids John-Ross and Christopher are where this show has to now work. Just like Bobby and JR back in the day, John-Ross (Josh Henderson) and Christopher (Jesse Metcalfe) are oil and water, but only so long as the plots allow and their pecs allow. And of course they are rather lovely to look at – with Henderson inching ahead on who this writer would like to wake up to discover having an end-of-season cliffhanger shower in my apartment. Yes, the allegiances and back-stabbings pinball around the plots with scant grace. But wasn’t that – like the windy garden parties, signature canary yellow awnings and revelations around the driveway – the original show’s appeal? Isn’t that why it became a global sensation – because first and foremost it was entertaining?
If anything, this new incarnation was better paced and possibly less ridiculous. It is certainly better directed with Patrick Duffy leaving behind that Texan-mulleted heartthrob nonsense to age into a reassuring patriarchal Jock Ewing figure and the show’s conscience. His new wife and First Lady of Southfork Ann Ewing (played by Brenda Strong) was not only channelling the dignity of Barbara Bel Geddes’s Miss Ellie, she was pitched too with grace, sympathy and a fortunate love of horses. Thankfully Ann Ewing remembered the time-honoured Dallas trope of endlessly brushing horses as everyone else tries to save the family firm. And of course there’s Sue-Ellen’s on/off quaffing of the Bourbon (which even in New Dallas made for some glorious hip-flask clutching cliff-hangers).
And of course there is Larry Hagman, the show’s villain and chief protagonist. Hagman was clearly ailing throughout shooting Season One. But never once did the onscreen results lose that spark, that utter conviction in his character and the show. In an age of unending memes and ugly-fonted wisdom, it was refreshing to get back to the show that invented the putdown, with Hagman still afforded a rich oilfield of one-liners – “Like my Daddy always said – where’s there’s a way, there’s a will”, “You’re just like your Daddy – all hat and no cattle”, “Son, never pass up a good chance to shut up” and “Angry Birds? Honey, I don’t need any more angry birds in my life”. And when he passed on, enter Judith Ryland (Judith Light) – the best TV bitch the small screen has seen since, well, Dallas and Dynasty first came to an end.
American culture cannot get its head round the British pantomime. But Dallas is the only pantomime the Americans ever got right, with Bobby as Buttons, a whole carousel of Ugly Sisters and Harris Ryland poised as chief villain. Old characters cameo back and forth to please the purists (go on – give us Katherine Wentworth), but they take no prisoners with backstory. There was scant pandering here to any newcomers in the audience when Ray Ewing (Steve Kanaly), Lucy Ewing (Charlene Tilton), Gary Ewing (Ted Shackleford), Valene Ewing (Joan Van Ark), Cally (Cathy Podewell) and Afton Cooper (Audrey Landers) drop by. You either watched the show before or you didn’t. Yes Cynthia Cidre and her team of writers spray on some brief exposition and allusions to the show’s past – but that is more to reward those that did watch, not those that didn’t.
Whether new Dallas continues is now questionable. Hagman’s passing was not signposted and ratings have lessened. As a television show it survived the loss of JR. That ”riding the moment” luck has maybe not quite happened for the new show. But it doesn’t need it. It pitched itself as a continuation of the show’s original pulse and drives, in which it has wholly succeeded. Just put Lucy Ewing doing that sassy turn to camera back in the opening titles!
The art, craftsmanship and genius of production designer Ken Adam cannot be overlooked. Of course his legacy and links with the Bond films goes without question, but so too does the grip and influence he has to this day on film and public architectural design (London’s Canary Wharf is allegedly modelled on the Ken Adam style).
Opening in December and continuing until May 2015, BIGGER THAN LIFE – KEN ADAM’S FILM DESIGN is a new exhibition housed at Berlin’s Deutsche Kinemathek. In 2012 Adam gave his entire artistic output to the Deutsche Kinemathek – including more than 4000 drawings, personal documents, sketches and designs for such titles as GOLDFINGER, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME and MOONRAKER plus his non-Bond work including BARRY LYNDON, THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE (for which Adam won the Oscar), ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES, DR STRANGELOVE and unused artwork for PLANET OF THE TITANS (which became STAR TREK THE MOTION PICTURE) and more.
“When you do a scribble and everything seems to work … that is the most exciting part“ – Ken Adam
A full catalogue accompanies the exhibition featuring essays by renowned authors on a diverse range of previously unexamined aspects of Adam’s career – such as the artistic roots of his Gesamtkunstwerk and his influence on art, design and architecture. The catalogue will be available to buy.
BIGGER THAN LIFE – KEN ADAM’S FILM DESIGN
Deutsche Kinemathek / Dec 2014 – April 2015
For more on the Deutsche Kinemathek, click here.
Deutsche Kinemathek
Museum für Film und
Fernsehen
Potsdamer Str. 2
10785 Berlin
Balor (Damian Lewis) is an anachronistic reverend, ex-naval officer and turn of the century bible-thumper. Pitched in a post WWII world of revived gender, sexual and even atheist confidence, Balor is a defiant Presbyterian cart-horse charged with keeping afloat the dwindling Christian instincts of an unnamed Scottish island (though shot on the Isle of Mull) in an unnamed year. “To expect happiness in this life is a form of arrogance” says Balor to a life-weary parishioner. Married to Aislin (Andrea Riseborough), Balor is both stranger and religious drill sergeant to his kindly spouse. Recovering from the loss of their child singlehandedly, Aislin is dutiful but privately proud of her resistance to Balor’s sense of a God. Hers is a world of nature and nurture, of quietly ignoring her husband’s sense of Christ and the medieval guilt that comes with it. But such defiance comes at a price – and one Aislin has long assumed is her lot to accept in a world without friends and where leisure time and reading in the bath is heresy.
Enter Fionn (newcomer Ross Anderson), a strapping, ex-shipyard tyke assigned by mainland naughty-boy wrangler Mr Smith (a far too brief John Sessions) to possibly reform, or at best learn the error of ways he knows were never errors. Respectful and patient himself, the hardworking Fionn admits to sorting contraband for the dockers and shipmen of his orphaned youth whilst learning all about women along the way – an admission that betrays a quietly curious Aislin and her lack of decent male contact, be it physical or emotional.
Pallid and glacial in his emotions, Damian Lewis’s Balor is cut from a similar cloth as Stanley Baker in Zulu or Richard Harris in This Sporting Life – marked by a simmering and very British onscreen masculinity at increasing odds with a femininity and modernity he cannot control. Prone to bouts of [almost] Pythonesque martyrdom (almost because the hyperbole levels are deliberate) and Calvary-inspired physical acts, Lewis creates a crumbling bull of a man at odds with the modern world and the breakdown nailing him to his own cross. A cracking sequence sees Balor singlehandedly haul the contents of his austere chapel onto his own Ark – and one with no dove of peace or chance of salvation.
Riseborough’s Aislin is less clear-cut. Equally pallid yet not the indulgent witch she is painted as, Riseborough plays the God widow with a sympathy that avoids sentiment. With her abilities to cure an ailing ram through herbs rather than prayer, Aislin is at one with the nature of an island she equally loathes. As all her femininity is almost pared away, Riseborough’s wife holds an earthly wisdom and controlled sexuality that grates with husband Balor. Aislin knows that God is not found on the hard wooden pews of a remote chapel but the private herbs, fauna, flora and respect for others she surrounds herself with. Ross Anderson’s Fionn is possibly the soul of the film. Handsome, agile yet still the child who can be scolded, Anderson allows Fionn to become the audience’s entry point to a sad story of a couple that already feels over when the film opens.
Writer/director Corinna McFarlane forever steers the emotions of The Silent Storm (or clear lack of them) to various cliff edges of revelation or despair, but often pulls back from what is expected when telling the tale of such matrimonial decay (a rot that has mostly already set in before the film starts). The burgeoning friendship between Aislin and Fionn is loaded with preconceptions that do not always manifest where moments of reconciliation and hope are often swiped aside. The tonal upshot is ultimately one of emotional honesty and a romance not always dealt the obvious cards by the writing. At times reminiscent of the God/protagonist divide of Peter Mullan’s Orphans, The Silent Storm is never a sermon.
Cinematographer Ed Rutherford’s stark palette of pastel blues, enamel tea cups, grained chapel pews and ashened skies of course underline the film’s characters and McFarlane’s intent but never over-define it. Just as Aislin’s lot verges on a Dickensian misery, Rutherford and McFarlane refresh proceedings with rich burnt oranges, greenery and beautifully shot flora and fauna. A treasured book of poetry is prized by Fionn because of its contents, but McFarlane’s eye marks it out simply because it is blue in a palette of Calvinistic browns and greys.
Likewise, Sharon Long’s costume work is a sallow wardrobe of braces, reverend bibs, collars and hair ties holding back the emotions within just as long as things look in order to the outside world. Credit too must go to Alistair Caplin’s blustering, Calvinistic roar of a score. At times intrusive and almost too heavenly in its bombast it also reminds – like Riseborough’s Aislin – that God is in every cliff edge, moss-covered tree, cave nook and mountain stream. Providing a more contemporary Celtic sound than the film’s austere visuals, Caplin’s orchestral and choral work (he contributes his own vocals more than once) ably serves the film with a hope and religious scope The Silent Storm needs to work before it can pull it down. Or at least kneel before it with what it knows and wants us to know about the human condition and spirit.
Developed and produced by Barbara Broccoli, Michael G Wilson, Eon Productions and producer Nicky Bentham, The Silent Storm is a sparse but progressively forceful work.
The Silent Storm – a Neon Films production in association with Eon Productions and West End Films.
The film opens in the UK on May 20th 2016.
The Silent Storm’s world premiere was held during the 2014 London Film Festival with Damian Lewis, Andrea Riseborough, Ross Anderson, Corinna McFarlane and Nicky Bentham on hand to introduce the film to the gathered crew, artists, executive producers and at least one James Bond.
Photo © Mark O’Connell / 2014
Photo © Mark O’Connell / 2014
Photo © Mark O’Connell / 2014
Photo © Mark O’Connell / 2014
Photo © Mark O’Connell / 2014
Move over Secret Cinema before someone sabotages you down the stairs of immersive moviegoing!!
“There’s always someone younger and hungrier coming down the stairs after you”, chirps Cristal Connors (Gina Gershon) in Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 – er – ‘classic’ flesh-fest, Showgirls. Well if it’s hunger you need, then San Francisco’s schlock-fest doyenne Peaches Christ is certainly younger and hungrier than most for this film and is bringing that schlock-fest passion to London in October. Teaming up with the Amy Grimehouse and a gathered ensemble of San Francisco queens, kings and no doubt a few British princesses for good measure, Peaches is bringing her volcanic-ally explosive night Showgirls to the Rio Cinema and Bearbarella to Manchester’s Cornerhouse.
This writer was fortunate enough to catch Peaches’ sixteenth Showgirls night at the Castro Theatre. This is what British audiences have in store when a peach bursts your cherry….
Christ’s A Night of a Thousand Showgirls is a now famed event in gay San Francisco – an annual on-stage tribute to the gobbling turkey that is Verhoeven’s critically mauled flick. Recently celebrating its seventeenth slide down the pole of affectionate ridicule, Peaches Christ’s pre-show extravaganza has built up quite a head of steam. Infinitely bolder and cleverer than the film itself – which is only glorious because it knows not of its pitfalls (“you got something wrong with your nipples?”), A Night of a Thousand Showgirls is a must in the Castro’s must-ladened calendar and this Showgirls virgin was luckier than Kyle MacLachlan’s [then] bottom wrangler.
Located in ideal seats by our Showgirls-savvy friends in the beautiful old paddle steamer of a cinema that is San Francisco’s Castro Theatre, the night’s merriment was already apparent. Audience participation is to be as key as audience enjoyment. This is what the Rocky Horror Picture Show fan movement was before provincial tours starring Blue Peter presenters diluted the naughtiness for midweek audiences. Here is a party where day-glo drag drifts through the aisles, bearded Vegas showgirls mingle with fluorescent leotarded weaklings, a quarterback in oddly becoming stilettoes trots to the Gents, space vixens glitter alongside Gaga reinventionists, girls are boys, boys are girls, boys are boys and the statuesque RuPaul’s Drag Race candidate and drag loyalist Honey Mahogany shows them all how it’s done (“too real”, dismisses host Christ with a wink at Honey, “too real!”).
The thing to remember with San Francisco is that people put in the effort. For scant fiscal returns, this town is bustling with many a creative hustler like Verasphere’s Mrs Vera and Mr Tina, Club Something’s David Glamamore, Honey Mahogany and – in this instance – Peaches Christ (and her alter-ego Joshua Grannell) who push their friends and collaborators’ time and talents to bring out a one-off yearly night that celebrates cinema, cinema-going and the city’s crucial LGBT scene. From an elaborate and hilarious pre-show film written by Christ to on-stage dance numbers and the night’s signature moment (which we will come on to), this is an event that celebrates Verhoeven’s filmic monstrosity but more crucially tips a hat/wig/Michael Myers hockey mask (I’m sure I saw one) to the creative counter-pulse of San Francisco itself. Quite clearly revelling in the support of the current and proven generation on the drag and cabaret circuit – Mahogany, Lady Bear, Cousin Wonderlette and Penny L’eggs – as well as giving a step up to newer creations still finding their feet (and kitten heels), my night with a thousand showgirls soon became so more than a bit of camp filler for an otherwise bad film. And to label anything of this thinking as camp or drag is to miss the point. This is not about expression, not impression. These girls and boys are not aping Showgirls, they are using it as a spot-lit springboard for their own identities however temporary or fleeting. Marshalled by Peaches as – naturally – Gershon’s bi-hi Cristal Connors, this pre-film rollercoaster is a slick affair whose edges are only rough because that makes everything funnier. Life is always going to be a lot more entertaining when you can take the rise out of something so risible as Showgirls. But there is nothing suspect about the cast’s insight into the phenomenon of this movie. Real support players from the 1995 original join the choreographed mayhem, the production values echo the tackier excesses of the Las Vegas settings and part of the momentum to the hilarious chaos is the audience’s familiarity with Christ’s set-up and shtick.
And this is all before the evening’s signature moment unfurls itself like Nomi Malone spewing forth from a Verhoeven volcano. “Free lap dance with every large popcorn” boasts the posters throughout the Castro. Was there really to be a thousand showgirls filling the rafters in the two-tier Castro Theatre? Well maybe not quite a thousand, but the finale of Christ’s elaborate spectacle is a now infamous tsunami of drag as at least a hundred acts, personas and gender benders tear into the audience searching for prey clutching a box of large popcorn. They just happen to feel like a thousand. This is the moment the night scores its infamy as the drag dial is turned to “Ken Russell” and all manner of faux-hedonistic ribaldry and slap and tickle fun spills into the very suspecting audience. Popcorn ejaculates in all directions, camera flashes make out the dry humping and comedy squats of the writhing figures and – like San Francisco itself – the lines of sexual orientation are fantastically blurred.
This is also the moment of no return for Showgirls the film. It cannot follow this. But it does, albeit with a slight sadness from this audience member that Peaches herself has not re-shot the whole film with her pals (though the filmed homages over the years are no doubt building up and could one day see no need for Elizabeth Berkeley and her unrehearsed twists to camera). But wait. What is this? Watching Showgirls in this context becomes an utter joy as its’ weird and sometimes brutal twists become total car-crash entertainment, its excruciating dialogue are gems of bad hindsight (“here, wipe your nose”), MacLachlan gets his twin peaks out for the boys and eventually nothing that road kill of a movie vomits up surprises us. The upshot is a totally immersive grand guignol of an experience, all refereed by Peaches Christ’s and her A-grade enthusiasm for the B-movie in us all. And I would put money on the Vegas gambling tables that to do this all over again next time is even more fun. But for now, my Showgirls cherry was not just popped. It was rolled in glue and petrol-blue glitter and stamped on with an eight inch heel. Get yourself to the Rio Cinema in October. Now.
“Aren’t you gonna come here and give me a big kiss?”. Actually, I think I might.
As part of the BFI’s Days of Fear And Wonder, Peaches Christ’s Bearbarella is at Belfast’s BlackBox on Thursday 9th October as part of Outfest, Glasgow’s Film Theatre on Friday 10th October and Manchester’s Cornerhouse on Saturday 11th October.
In association with The Amy Grimehouse, Peaches Christ’s Showgirls is at London’s Rio Cinema on Friday 17th October.
And of course Peaches Christ has a great top shelf of a cine-skewed site.
A Sunday in March, 1964
Auric Goldfinger’s Ford Country Squire station wagon motors its charge along Main Street on a Sunday afternoon, passing the Embassy Picturehouse and pulling up dutifully at the lights. Its Mustang poppy-red and faux wooden panelling is 1960s Ford personified and the car’s wide dimensions spill into neighbouring lanes of traffic.
But this is not America. And the car’s fictional owner Auric Goldfinger is not at the wheel. Nor is his fictional chauffeur, Oddjob. James Bond is not even sat captive on the back seat as he does in Goldfinger.
This is Esher, Surrey. The year is indeed 1964, but Jimmy O’Connell is driving, his wing man is my Uncle Gerald and my dad, John, is sat in the back. The locals frequenting the pubs of Esher – including Jimmy’s much-loved The Bear – are most intrigued by the left-hand drive and Yankie expanse of the Ford …. and how it handles “like a tart’s waterbed on wheels”. Not very James Bond.
(extract from Chapter 8, Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eszhV1M3Dk8
“Like all institutions that must safeguard their survival, the Bond series adapts and adopts. Three films in and we already recognise where the villains, heroes and those in between are positioned. The film’s glossy calling-card of dousing Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) in gold paint is not just a proficient and nasty way of telling the audience all we need to know about Auric Goldfinger. It tells us what this film series now wants to be – bespoke action adventures, a little bit kinky, a little bit violent, often original, always stylish, yet forever aimed at mass audiences. The Bond films are now in the business of showing their intent rather than telling it.”
(extract from Chapter 8, Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan)
