D. Mark Lawson
B&W and Colour
A fascinating documentary about the strange and very much neglected and forgotten fact that, whilst Clint Eastwood was the world’s biggest film star in the 1970s, he made frequent appearances on Radio 4 light entertainment shows. This may require some context for overseas’ readers: the BBC’s Radio 4 is a cultural institution in the UK; a talk radio station where high-minded drama mixes with sitcoms, panel shows and sketch comedy, as well as documentaries and hard hitting news exposes. I don’t think there’s another station in the world quite like it and us Brits are all rightly proud. Clint obviously liked it too, as between 1968 and 1979 he made forty-two appearances on various Radio 4 shows. Predominantly he showed up on comedy panel shows, but also in sketch shows, sitcoms, panel discussions and headlining the odd drama. All whilst making Dirty Harry films, ‘The Outlaw Josey Welles’, those movies with the orang-utan and generally dropping box-office gold wherever he went. Even in his pomp Clint seems to have taken every opportunity to cosy up with Nicholas Parsons and Clement Freud and show off his verbal dexterity.
(This isn’t the only surprising revelation from this fascinating documentary. I was completely unaware that Woody Allen had a three month stretch in 1967 as Cousin Wally on ‘The Archers’, or that Susan Sarandon once plied her trade reading the shipping forecast).
‘Just a Minute’ is show where panellists show off their erudition and love of words by speaking on a subject they are given for sixty seconds without hesitation, repetition or deviation. It’s a tough game, particularly when other panellists are so keen to challenge for infractions. And it’s bizarrely a show Clint appeared on twenty times in the 1970s. There are archive shots with him sat with Nicholas Parsons, Peter Jones, Derek Nimmo, Clement Freud and Kenneth Williams (and how bizarre and incongruous it is to see Harry Callaghan laughing side by side with Percival Snooper). We hear him discuss subjects that were obviously chosen for him, such as ‘Hollywood’, ‘Cowboys’, ‘Golf’; but occasionally much more challenging, such as ‘Salmon Fishing in Scotland’ and ‘The Best Way to Hail a London Cab’. And through it all he isn’t bad. Okay, he lacks the verbal gymnastics of a Kenneth Williams, or the dry wit of a Clement Freud, but he pushes through with a mix of charm and self-depreciation and the occasional wry aside. ‘Just a Minute’ was clearly his favourite, but he also went through the silliness of ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue’, cameoed in the radio adaptation of ‘Dad’s Army’ (as an American general who really got up Mainwaring’s nose) and starred in that most bizarre thing – a radio adaptation of ‘A Fistful of Dollars’, not a single second of which seems to have survived. How the vast desert landscapes and the lead character’s lack of dialogue were realised on radio is anyone’s guess, but I would quite possibly sacrifice my little finger to find out.
As I said, it’s an entertaining documentary, but one with a big hole in the middle: there’s no interview with Eastwood himself. Yes, we get Nicholas Parsons, Clement Freud, Tim Brooke-Taylor and a whole bunch of other surviving Radio 4 luminaries, but nothing from the man himself. As such there’s no clue as to why this man who famously hated dialogue decided to expose himself to this dialogue heavy medium again and again, or why he stopped. Instead we get a bunch of still photos and some sound clips which are absolutely tantalising.
Showing posts with label documentary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label documentary. Show all posts
Wednesday, 21 May 2014
Sunday, 18 May 2014
The Beatles: The Future (1976)
D. Winston O’Boogie/Apollo C. Vermouth
B&W, with flashes of bright and scary psychedelic colour
Here’s an absolutely bizarre and barely seen movie which is exactly the kind of film this blog is duty-bound to bring to wider attention. ‘The Beatles: The Future’ is a surreal faux documentary which looks at what would have happened if The Beatles hadn’t broken up. Constructed using fake talking head clips, fake footage of The Beatles and even really amateurish cartoons, this is a head-spinning montage which revels in love for the 1960s and disappointment in the 1970s. Clearly the filmmakers believed the 1960s was the ushering of a utopia which cruelly never actually happened, and that the 1970s (which when this began filming were only three years old) were struggling to cope with all that failed promise. The Beatles were of course the great symbol of the 1960s and perhaps another group of filmmakers would have used their continuing presence as the salve that the decade needed; another film would have suggested that if The Beatles were still around the 1970s would have been much brighter and better. But that’s not what this movie does. Yes, The Beatles were part of the more hopeful age of the 1960s, but if they’d stayed around for the following decade they’d have been tarnished along with everything else.
The Beatles – none of whom are really played by the same actors from one scene to the next, let alone right away from the movie (so working out who is who is can be a trifle hard) – are instead portrayed as doing all the ridiculous 1970s rock star stuff. This is a movie which comes to slaughter, rather than praise, its idols. The not so fab four preach a Marxian tune of shared belongings, but move to Monaco to stop paying taxes; they talk peace, whilst employing thuggish bodyguards; they festoon themselves in ridiculous kaftans and shawls, demanding attention even as they claim to be “just four ordinary lads from Liverpool” (the accents are atrocious btw); and when they do play a concert, it’s a pompous three hour event in front of the pyramids at sunset which proves disastrous, leading to a stampeded “where eight people and fourteen beautiful camels died tragically”. They also have other more Beatles-centric concerns, with Yoko and Linda very much to the fore so that the band end up releasing albums as ‘The Beatles Collective’; including a four disk number, the side Ringo is in charge of apparently benefiting from actually being some fun.
Actually for a musical film there’s little in the way of music. Obviously they couldn’t afford the rights to actual Beatles songs and your jobbing songsmith can’t just knock out a genuine Lennon/McCartney. So what we have here is ramshackle affair with little music and from scene to scene difficulty in telling which Beatle is which, but if you’re a Beatles fan and want to watch something which is occasionally witty and clever and pointed about the failures of heroes, then this is a bit of a slog but well worth tracking down.
My favourite scene? In 1973 when The Beatles are getting truly bad coverage, a press conference is called. John Lennon tears up poster-size covers of the NME, Melody Maker, Rolling Stone and others – all of whom have had the temerity to criticise the band – but for each one torn up The Beatles take off an item of clothing. It ends with four chubby and hairy Beatles impersonators in a line, wearing only Y-fronts and socks, doing the kind of stamping dance which one imagines inspired Madness. I don’t know what it all means, but in it’s clearly fucking mad way, it captures the whole shabby vagabond spirit of the film.
B&W, with flashes of bright and scary psychedelic colour
Here’s an absolutely bizarre and barely seen movie which is exactly the kind of film this blog is duty-bound to bring to wider attention. ‘The Beatles: The Future’ is a surreal faux documentary which looks at what would have happened if The Beatles hadn’t broken up. Constructed using fake talking head clips, fake footage of The Beatles and even really amateurish cartoons, this is a head-spinning montage which revels in love for the 1960s and disappointment in the 1970s. Clearly the filmmakers believed the 1960s was the ushering of a utopia which cruelly never actually happened, and that the 1970s (which when this began filming were only three years old) were struggling to cope with all that failed promise. The Beatles were of course the great symbol of the 1960s and perhaps another group of filmmakers would have used their continuing presence as the salve that the decade needed; another film would have suggested that if The Beatles were still around the 1970s would have been much brighter and better. But that’s not what this movie does. Yes, The Beatles were part of the more hopeful age of the 1960s, but if they’d stayed around for the following decade they’d have been tarnished along with everything else.
The Beatles – none of whom are really played by the same actors from one scene to the next, let alone right away from the movie (so working out who is who is can be a trifle hard) – are instead portrayed as doing all the ridiculous 1970s rock star stuff. This is a movie which comes to slaughter, rather than praise, its idols. The not so fab four preach a Marxian tune of shared belongings, but move to Monaco to stop paying taxes; they talk peace, whilst employing thuggish bodyguards; they festoon themselves in ridiculous kaftans and shawls, demanding attention even as they claim to be “just four ordinary lads from Liverpool” (the accents are atrocious btw); and when they do play a concert, it’s a pompous three hour event in front of the pyramids at sunset which proves disastrous, leading to a stampeded “where eight people and fourteen beautiful camels died tragically”. They also have other more Beatles-centric concerns, with Yoko and Linda very much to the fore so that the band end up releasing albums as ‘The Beatles Collective’; including a four disk number, the side Ringo is in charge of apparently benefiting from actually being some fun.
Actually for a musical film there’s little in the way of music. Obviously they couldn’t afford the rights to actual Beatles songs and your jobbing songsmith can’t just knock out a genuine Lennon/McCartney. So what we have here is ramshackle affair with little music and from scene to scene difficulty in telling which Beatle is which, but if you’re a Beatles fan and want to watch something which is occasionally witty and clever and pointed about the failures of heroes, then this is a bit of a slog but well worth tracking down.
My favourite scene? In 1973 when The Beatles are getting truly bad coverage, a press conference is called. John Lennon tears up poster-size covers of the NME, Melody Maker, Rolling Stone and others – all of whom have had the temerity to criticise the band – but for each one torn up The Beatles take off an item of clothing. It ends with four chubby and hairy Beatles impersonators in a line, wearing only Y-fronts and socks, doing the kind of stamping dance which one imagines inspired Madness. I don’t know what it all means, but in it’s clearly fucking mad way, it captures the whole shabby vagabond spirit of the film.
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