The Obscurer

Category: Reviews

Wednesday 27th April 2005

Shepperton Babylon

Probably the finest work Harry Enfield has ever done was a one-off spoof documentary for Channel 4 entitled Norbert Smith – A Life. In the style of a South Bank Show special, and even “presented” by Melvyn Bragg, it followed the life and career of the fictional celebrated actor Sir Norbert Smith, a sort of Gielgud/Olivier/ Richardson composite. Through various parodies of different films we see Enfield/Smith star alongside Will Silly in Oh, Mr Bankrobber; in the gritty northern kitchen sink drama of It’s Grim Up North; as the uncool father in the Cliff Richardesque Keep Your Hair On, Daddio; and performing a song and dance routine in the MGM-style musical Lullaby Of London.

At one point we see a clip from Smith’s 1964 film Rover Returns Home, introduced as being part of the Rover series of films, poor British imitations of the successful American Lassie films (it also claims to be the first film to feature the chameleon like versatility of Michael Caine…as the dog). Curiously enough I have recently found out that there actually was a British series of Rover films; but rather than being copies of American movies the first Rover film actually predates Lassie by nearly forty years. Furthermore, 1905’s Rescued by Rover features the first use of many of the innovative cinematic techniques usually attributed to DW Griffiths in his landmark film The Birth of a Nation, which was released a full decade later in 1915.

The source for this information is a new book Shepperton Babylon – The Lost Worlds of British Cinema by Matthew Sweet, and I think the above example rather neatly makes the author’s point, and indeed the premise of the book; that British films have always been under rated and under valued, and that “no-one has hated British film more than the British” themselves.

And who is Matthew Sweet? Well, according to the blurb at the front of the book he is a “writer and broadcaster” who has been, among other things, the “film critic for The Independent on Sunday, presenter of Radio 4’s The Film Programme, and a reporter for BBC2’s The Culture Show”. Strangely absent from this CV is that Matthew and I were at school together, and although we have lost touch with each other over the years I count him as a friend. So, is this post just a plug for an old friend’s book? Well, yes it is, but if you cannot plug a friend’s book in your own barely read blog, then what can you do? (Jonathan Calder has beaten me by several weeks to writing the first review of this book in a blog; he is obviously a far faster reader than I am).

Matthew’s previous book Inventing the Victorians was a re-evaluation of that era, where he sought to show how the stuffy and staid image often associated with the period is false. In Shepperton Babylon he tries to show another side to the much-derided British film industry. An author with a penchant for revisionism then? Perhaps, and both books are clearly personal views; but even if you don’t agree with the author’s opinion (and when discussing films you haven’t seen you have to take a lot on trust) the style of writing is always engaging, and you cannot read his opinions without being fascinated, and becoming more open minded about the subject.

The book follows a largely chronological path beginning during the pioneering days of film, when Hollywood was just “a tangle of cacti and orange trees”, but Hove in Sussex hosted a studio on rails that was moved during the course of the day in order to catch the sun. I think there is something inside all of us that understands the magic of those early days of cinema, some innate sense of wonder; it is the same feeling I remember from watching my dad’s old super-8 cine films which seem so much more evocative and thrilling than the DV clips I have taken on my camera, inspite of the far superior technology we have today. In the early days of British cinema film-makers were happy to create movies with such fantastic names as That Fatal Sneeze (where weights were attached to the camera to mimic the ultimate sneeze itself), The Lure Of Crooning Water and the Venetian romance of The City Of Beautiful Nonsense, and presumably kept a straight face as they did so.

That last film featured Chrissie White and Henry Edwards, who though largely forgotten nowadays appear to have been the Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward of their age, and it is surprising how often you are reminded of the present while reading about the past. In 1928, long before 9/11 and the building of the channel tunnel, High Treason concerned itself with a terrorist attack on a cross-channel rail link. If you think Little Britain is an original and inventive comedy it is interesting to read about 1952’s Mother Riley Meets The Vampire, where Arthur Lucan performs what Matthew describes as “not quite a drag act”; dressed in bonnet and shawl Lucan shrieks, “I’m a Lady…and I defy you to prove it!” It is also strange to read about the 1916 film East Is East based around a Fish and Chip shop, just like the more well known, but entirely unrelated, film of 1999.

You would expect a book of this sort to wax lyrically about a slew of lost gems, and indeed the descriptions of such films as the 1929 IRA drama The Informer (“a scene in which he offers his condolences to the weeping mother of the man he has helped to kill is as powerful as anything in Cinema”) and the early Ealing films such as Pen Tennyson’s There Ain’t No Justice, and Went The Day Well, leave you itching to see them; but Matthew is happy to put the boot in when required. The Woman From China is “comprehensively hopeless”, and as he is one of only a handful of people who have seen it he is “qualified to pronounce upon the irredeemable awfulness” of the film. Similarly, the gay western of The Singer Not The Song gets a less than favourable review, and unsurprisingly failed to kick start a new film genre.

Just reading the two pages of acknowledgements at the front of the book gives you some idea of the work that has gone into Shepperton Babylon. How many of us can say we have interviewed Googie Withers? Well Matthew can. He has also suffered for his art, and gone places I wouldn’t dare; interviewing the unbearable Nicholas Parsons for one (I saw Parsons on a TV programme the other day talking about his time as a comedy straight man where he said “Although I am not a pompous person in real life, I am very good at playing pompous characters”; oblivious to the fact that only a truly pompous man would come out with such a line). His interview with Norman Wisdom is described as “an overpowering experience: my five hours with him feel as much like a hostage crisis as an interview”; Wisdom even feels the need to “perform a comedy stumble” when they are introduced. Christopher Lee, however, proves to be a rich source of unintentional humour. Irritated that people view him as being just a horror actor, and attacking “sloppy journalism”, he states he hasn’t starred in a horror movie since 1975; which makes you wonder what sort of genre his movies Curse III: Blood Sacrifice (1991) and Talos The Mummy (1998) fall into. He must have been furious when his 1970 film The Bloody Judge, a biopic of the 17th century Lord Chancellor George Jeffreys was released as Night Of The Blood Monster. Poor bloke; even when he breaks free from the shackles of horror and appears in Eugenie…The Story Of Her Journey Into Perversion (1991) he “insists he had no idea he was appearing in a porn film”.

The book is almost worth reading for the author’s descriptions alone; Barbara Cartland is a “flushed meringue”; Gracie Fields a “clog-shod Britannia”; George Formby looks like “a human being reflected in a tap”; Diana Dors is “a monstrous Zeppelin of blondeness”; while Dirk Bogarde “manages to suggest barrack-room bullying and buggery just by the way he leans on a mop” in one film; in another he resembles a “quiffed eel”.

As the book tells its story it is fascinating to see relatively unknown actors (at least, unknown to me) like the fantastically named Tod Slaughter make way for more familiar figures such as Lawrence Olivier. With the rise and fall of the studio system movies better known to me hover into view before I am in unfamiliar territory again with the chapters on exploitation and sexploitation films (honest). Along the way there are hundreds of revelations, some quirky, some significant; that 1936 saw the first screen kiss between black actors in Paul Robeson’s Song Of Freedom; how Rank’s move from making big prestige films to mass-market cheaper pictures was partly due to producer Filippo Del Giudice being fired for accidentally urinating on J.Arthur’s feet; that Kenneth More’s first role in cinema was literally in a cinema, monitoring “the audience for telescopes, binoculars, opera glasses and masturbation”; that Larry Taylor featured in the sexploitation film The Wife Swappers before finally finding “fame” as Captain Birds Eye (I will leave you to make up your own jokes).

The book ends on this note, dealing with the sub-Carry On… films of the seventies, a curious time when Adventures Of A Taxi Driver out-grossed Taxi Driver and filmmakers battled to win the Golden Phallus at the Wet Dreams festival in Amsterdam. I personally cannot even abide the Carry On… films, and I am unable to share Matthew’s obvious enthusiasm for them; so when he says that Emmanuelle In Soho is “a kind of endgame for British cinema” from which “ there was nowhere to go but upmarket” you know it must have been a stinker.

We largely know the path British film has taken since then; Matthew writes that “more has been written about the last twenty years of native production than the previous seven decades put together”, and so for a book dealing with “the unknown, the forgotten, the unrecorded” it is time to call it a day. Matthew is obviously a fan of many of these overlooked films, but he is never sentimental; he even asks us not to mourn the passing of such famous names as Elstree and Shepperton. By way of an example he recounts attending a party at the old Gainsborough studios in 1999, shortly before they were demolished in 2002. At one point he sneaks off, hoping to chance upon the ghost of Ivor Novello, but instead encounters only dead and dying pigeons.

In Paul Auster’s novel The Book of Illusions the central character David Zimmer discovers the films of the silent movie star Hector Mann, and it is captivating to read Auster’s descriptions of these imaginary lost works such as The Snoop and Mr. Nobody. I always wanted to be able to watch these films, but unfortunately they are all the work of Auster’s imagination. Matthew Sweet casts a similar spell with his book; the difference being that here he is describing films that actually exist, and which you are able to see. He fires your interest and persuades you of the value of these lost masterpieces, inspires you to endeavour to track them down for yourself; and that is reason enough for me to consider Shepperton Babylon a success.

PostScript: The relevance of the picture? Well, it features the cast of the children’s programme Balamory, including the original and best Josie Jump (her in the yellow). On the far left, wearing pink, is Archie, the Inventor, who for me bares a striking resemblence to Matthew Sweet. Coincidently, next to Archie is PC Plum, who it is claimed is a dead ringer for myself. This is something I refute entirely; but in this matter, as in so many others, I appear to be in a minority of one.

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Thursday 24th March 2005

Barley Whine

I was in two minds about discussing Nathan Barley (AKA trashbat.co.ck), the Channel 4 sit-com that ended last Friday; but then I thought of a piss-poor pun as a title and decided “what the hell”. I don’t have a great deal to say about the programme, so feel free to skip this post, but for what it’s worth I have enjoyed this series and it has been well worth videoing of a weekend, and watching it as and when. The main problem with taping it has been the possibility you end up with some of the dreadful Friday Night Project as well, but it is easily (and best) ignored.

While I have liked the series as it mocked the pretentious and moronic people who populate the dot.com and meeja landscapes, I did keep thinking that I should have been enjoying it more and finding it funnier. I appreciated much of Barley’s absurd lingo (“peace and fucking!”), and thought it was clever; but I wasn’t exactly laughing, just sort of smiling to myself. I don’t know, but I wonder if some of it went a bit over my head, that unless you are part of London’s medialand you simply won’t get some of the in-jokes. I could be wrong, but as I sat there being mildly amused by some of the comic scenarios, I couldn’t help imagining others creased up on the floor, screaming “oh it’s so, so true”. Perhaps that explains why I thought that the funniest moment was probably when Dan Ashcroft accidentally killed the barber’s cat. Not very subtle, perhaps, or nice; but I did laugh.

That said, I thought the series improved as it went along, and it started hitting a few more bullseyes; perhaps it was because I became more familiar with the style, but I also think that some of the later episodes included more recognisable and better drawn caricatures such as Mandy the teenage coke-head and the Commissioning Editor of Channel Seven; earlier figures such as the piss “artist” 15Peter20 and tabloid fodder Dajve Bikinus (great name though) seemed far weaker.

The acting was generally very good; Julian Barratt as Dan was perfect, you could really feel his world weariness seeping through the screen. Similar praise must go to the rest of the cast, but in particular to Nicholas Burns as the self facilitating media node himself, Charlie Condou as Jonatton Yeah?, Richard Ayoade & Spencer Brown as the two idiotic SugarApe journos and Claire Keelan as Dan’s sister.

Unfortuantely for me Dan’s sister, Claire, was one of the weak points in the series; she was clearly meant to be the most sympathetic character as she toiled to make a serious documentary while everywhere she looked there were idiots getting commissions. The problem was that she spent most of the time (understandably) moaning and complaining and saying “God, Dan!” or “I mean it, Dan!” or “Get me my money, Dan!”, so it was a bit difficult to see her as likeable. You could sympathise, but not exactly empathise with her.

Whatever my reservations, however, I have enjoyed Nathan Barley and will look forward to another series where perhaps some of the characters can be explored further. If nothing else it is something of a tribute to writers Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker that people are already referring to “the Nathan Barleys of this world”, in the same way that Alan Partridge (who also came to our attention via Morris) has entered the language, and that can’t be too bad. They must be doing something right.

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Thursday 3rd March 2005

Grave Architecture

I have been reading a fascinating book recently, entitled Played in Manchester by Simon Inglis. It is published by English Heritage, and is in effect a history of sport and leisure in the city and surrounding areas. I suppose you don’t have to be a Mancunian to enjoy this book, although it probably helps; however, this is just the first book in the Played in Britain series; further publications on Liverpool, Glasgow and Birmingham are in the pipeline, along with other books covering such subjects as the football stadia designer Archibald Leitch and the best of British lidos. Played in Manchester relies heavily on Francis Frith type photographs to tell its story, and personally I could look at old pictures of the Victorian and Edwardian era all day long, lost imagining others’ lives.

The book reveals countless surprises. I had no idea that the first ice rink (or Glacarium) outside London was built in Rusholme in 1877, cashing in on the craze for “rincomania”. It was John Gamgee’s refrigeration process that allowed skating on real ice during the summer months; a huge improvement on the concoction of crystallised alum, hog’s lard, soda salt and melted sulphur that had been used as one of the earlier substitutes for ice.

I always wondered why Lacrosse was so popular in my local area, when it is virtually ignored elsewhere in the country. It seems to be down to a quirk of fate. Some former members of the Stockport Rugby Club, disbanded in 1876 due to a player’s death, were on a train stuck at signals in Longsight when they saw an exhibition match between the Montreal Club and the Caughnawaga Indians. Fascinated, they decided to try the game out, and Stockport Lacrosse Club was born; it is still the world’s oldest surviving lacrosse club.

The book reveals many lost sporting grounds I didn’t know existed; there is the convoluted history of the Castle Irwell race course, now just wasteland; the White City botanical gardens and amusement park in Stretford, where only a the white entrance arches survive, standing isolated and alone on Chester Road like some sort of folly; the Fallowfield Stadium, accessed via a narrow path off Whitworth Lane, which hosted the 1893 FA Cup final when 45,000 converged on a stadium built for 15,000 (a University Halls of Residence now stands on the site, but there is no memorial plaque).

There are also the tales of the places I do remember such as Victoria Baths, winner of the first BBC Restoration programme. It is a truly beautiful building, with stained glass, mosaics, the words “well loved” emblazoned on its clock tower; yet when I went there as a child I just remember it as being old, cold and dirty. Some things are wasted on the young. Especially evocative is the chapter devoted to Belle Vue, which from memory was like Blackpool Pleasure Beach transported to East Manchester. I know that sounds tacky, but bear in mind there is no such word in a 10 year old’s vocabulary, and I remember it as a wonderful place with its big dipper and lake, its zoo and miniature railway. On my last visit, to the annual circus, I was one of about 3000 cubs who pestered Joe Corrigan for his autograph, poor bloke. Apart from the greyhound stadium, the whole of Belle Vue has now been levelled.

But as Mark E Smith once said, “Vimto and Spangles were always crap / Regardless of the look back bores” and there is more to Played in Manchester than nostalgia. There is a chapter devoted to SportCity, the area redeveloped for the 2002 Commonwealth Games, and Inglis details many of the more recent changes and developments in the region’s sporting grounds. I was particularly struck by the information regarding the redevelopment of Old Trafford football ground that began in 1995; the architects chosen were Atherden Fuller Leng, the same firm who, as Atherden Nutter, had developed OT during the 1960’s. I was impressed that a large public company such as Manchester United had stuck loyally with the same architects over four decades. It seemed a testimony to the firm’s work. Later in the book the author returns to the matter of the work done by Atherden and partners; I continued to read about their designs for stadia throughout the North West and London, including Liverpool’s Anfield ground.

It was reading this piece of information that made me reconsider my opinion of Atherden. Is the word epiphany? Whatever, as soon as I discovered that they had been involved with both the Old Trafford and Anfield redesigns I immediately saw the similarities.

Anfield first. I have only been there once, to watch a 6-0 trouncing at the hands of Liverpool; it was the game where the chant “Alan Ball’s a football genius” made its first appearance. I was sat with a Liverpool supporting friend of mine in the new Centenary stand, and the cartilage in my knees still bears a groove formed by the back of the next seat down. To say the bloke in front of me was close really doesn’t do justice to the whole proximity thing. They really did squeeze us in; next time I will bring a shoehorn. We were sat on the far left side of the stand, right by the Kop; my mate was sat to my right, but the seat to my left was empty which was a good job, as they’d had to slice off one corner of that seat to squeeze it in next to the concrete wall dividing our stand from the Kop. There was even the frame next to that seat presumably with the intention of fitting another spectator in, but they had been unable to make use of it.

Old Trafford is little better. The past few times I have been, borrowing another mate’s season ticket in the K stand, I have had a similarly uncomfortable experience. United fans get a lot of stick from their club for standing up throughout the game, but I don’t blame them; it is the only way to get through the 90 minutes pain free.

Now I am not a particularly big bloke – 5’10, that’s all – so I really pity some people who regularly attend either of these grounds. In contrast City’s ground is great; it may not be perfect – the so-called extra wide concourses are nothing of the kind – but at least you can watch the game in relative comfort. The Kippax where I used to sit at Maine Road was also fine. Hats off to Arup Sport then, designers of the City of Manchester Stadium, showing how it can be done.

Who is to blame? It may be that Atherden have set out their stall as a firm who are happy to undercut their competitors by cramming as many seats as possible into the available area. Perhaps though it is down the football clubs themselves, giving a commission to architects, and telling them not to worry about such quaint notions as deep vein thrombosis and blood circulation. It would be interesting to listen in to the discussions between architect and client when designing a new stadium, to see where the comfort of the paying customers comes into the equation. Unfortunately, I would imagine it will often come pretty low down the pecking order. Football fans blind loyalty leaves us open to exploitation most of the time, I fear.

But with so many new stadia being built at the moment, I will keep my eyes open to see who is getting the contracts, and what the subsequent reaction is from the fans. If your club is getting a new ground, it may be worth asking a few questions, particularly if Atherden Fuller Leng get the job. We may no longer fit 45,000 people into stadia built for 15,000, but perhaps it’s not for the want of trying.

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Thursday 6th January 2005

The Obscurer Awards 2005

It is time now for the inaugural “Obscurer” awards, which already no-one is referring to as “The Obbies”. So, let’s kick it all off with…

  • Best Single – The Strokes/Reptilia. When I initially heard The Strokes, and the first few singles from their debut LP “Is this it” I thought they sounded quite good, but I didn’t fancy the idea of listening to a whole album. All the songs sounded a bit samey, like a band doing an “Iggy Pop and The Stooges” tribute. But then they released “12:51“, a cracking song which was markedly different to their previous tracks, very reminiscent of “Pavement”, which for me is high praise indeed. They then followed this up with “Reptilia” which was just superb, a poppy, choppy guitarfest which briefly seemed to be heard just about everywhere. It was a song I couldn’t get out of my head, and that is surely what being single of the year is all about. The Strokes had apparently graduated from tribute band to great band; or so it seemed. I got the album; it consisted of 12:51, Reptilia and 9 other songs which sounded like Iggy and The Stooges. Oh well; better luck next time.
  • Best Album(s) – Badly Drawn Boy/One Plus One Is One, Elliot Smith/From a Basement on the Hill.These two records are in fact linked. I first heard Elliot Smith when his song “Waltz #2” became my single of the year in 1997. Unlike my experience with Reptilia , the LP from which it was drawn, “XO” was equally fantastic and I became a fan. A few years later when I heard “Once around the Block” by Badly Drawn Boy I loved it, and part of the reason was because it reminded me so much of Elliot Smith’s work. When earlier this year Badly Drawn Boy released “One Plus One Is One” it instantly became a fixture on my stereo; a real return to form after the lacklustre and uninspired “Have You Fed The Fish?“. Taking its inspiration from such diverse subjects as his family, the First World War, the film “It’s a Wonderful Life” and The Blossoms Pub in Stockport it felt more like a follow-up to “Hour of Bewilderbeast” and “About a Boy“, a beautiful example of the singer-songwriters’ art with intelligent lyrics and some great melodies. However, buried at the bottom of the CD sleevenotes I read the words “This record is dedicated to…Elliot Smith…”. A quick check on the internet revealed the worst; that Elliot had died the previous October from an apparent suicide. On the anniversary of his death this year his final, unfinished LP was released, and it acts as a fitting memorial. Like Jeff Buckley’s “My Sweetheart the Drunk” it is perhaps impossible not to read more tragic meaning into the lyrics than you should, and one is also left to wonder whether the sparse arrangement of the songs was intended by the artist or is a consequence of them being remixed and completed after his death. In Smith’s case it all works works beautifully; his songs always wore the influence of The Beatles on their sleeves, but this time round they also capture some of the haunting, fragile beauty of the White Album. It doesn’t come much better than sounding like the the best album by the best band of all time; at some times the guitar scatters and shimmers like George Harrison, at others the bass fair bounces along like Macca in his prime (ie. before 1970). All in all a wonderful yet tragic recording.
  • Best Novel – William Sutcliffe/Bad Influence. Sutcliffe fans have had quite a wait since 2000’s “The Love Hexagon“, and when I bought “Bad Influence” and saw it weighed in at a mere 163 slight pages I feared a case of writers’ block. Furthermore, although the reviews I read were encouraging, the book’s subject matter concerning the tale of 3 ten year old boys was a move away from the sort of thing I so loved about “Are You Experienced?”, his hilarious tale of backpackers in India. I needn’t have worried. This new novel still features the author’s characteristic sense of humour, but from the off there is also an atmosphere of impending menace, as the narrator Ben meets the new lad in town, Carl, a disturbed and disturbing individual, who gradually exerts a worrying influence on Ben’s best mate, the classically easily led Olly. Sutcliffe is brilliant at recapturing the feelings of being ten years old, when losing you best friend can seem the most terrible thing in the world, and where being accepted as part of the gang can lead you down the wrong path. In the end you see where the novel is going, and that it is going to turn out even darker than you imagined; you feel yourself pulling away, back peddling, refusing to accept the inevitable, appalling conclusion. Sutcliffe stops short of describing the final details, but he has already fully hinted at how it will end; these hints and the power of your imagination mean you are not spared the full horror. Brilliant.
  • Best Film – Fahrenheit 9/11. When you have a child, going to the pictures becomes a major event. You either have to really want to go to the cinema to see a specific film, in which case you get a babysitter in, or if your wife isn’t too fussed about a film but you would like to see it, then you just nip out to the UGC in Parrs Wood one Saturday Morning when neither of you are working. This year, I only saw one film, which I nipped out to see one Saturday morning, and so it wins this award by default. It is quite a good film though, as I have already discussed.
  • Sporting Moment – Tottenham Hotspur vs Manchester City FA Cup 4th Round.Sport is a very partisan affair. This is the reason that, despite the many great moments from the Olympics, and the fact that this has been a magnificent year the England Cricket team, and that this year saw a remarkable victory for Greece in Euro 2004, this for me was my sporting highlight; an absurd and ridiculous match that for the football fan repays the investment shelled out watching an abject 0-0 draw on a rainy Tuesday evening against, say, Lincoln. On the day of this match I was at work, due to finish at 20:45, and so I had already planned to go straight to the pub after work to watch the second half. Whilst at work the news began to filter through; we were 1-0 down, then 2-0 down. When I left work, I spoke to another City fan who had just come on for the night shift; he told me we were now 3-0 down. “Oh well,” I said, “let’s concentrate on the league”. When I got to my car and turned on my radio I found it was even worse. Nicolas Anelka, our best player, was injured, and Joey Barton had lived up to my nickname of him as the new Michael Brown by being pointlessly sent off. So, 3-0 down, our best player in the stands and down to 10 men; could I be bothered to go to the pub? Well, fortunately I am an alcoholic, so off I went. I listened to the opening few minutes of the second half in the car, and from kick off it sounded like we were having a good go at Spurs; already the commentators were mentioning what an incredible comeback it would be if we could manage it. I parked up just as Sylvain Distan scored with a header, and I raced into “The Weavers” to see if the impossible could happen. The comeback could have ended dead in its tracks had reserve ‘keeper Arne Arison not made a physically impossible double save soon after; on replay Arison is way out of camera shot from his first save as Spurs try again, and he is still out of shot as the ball reaches the 6 yard box; then he suddenly appears from nowhere and just manages to tip the ball to safety. Shortly after, a deflected shot from Paul Bosvelt makes it 3-2, but surely we can’t keep this pace up can we? With about 10 minutes to go Shaun Wright-Phillips breaks free and scores his trademark goal; wide on the right, ridiculing a mere mortal left-back with pace and skill, then whipping the ball across the goalkeeper and into the net before he knows what has happened. 3-3! I phone my wife and explain that I will be back late; it looks like were are going into extra time. Then, in the final minute John “First-division player” Macken receives a cross on his head and loops it over the Spurs’ defence and into the net! 3-4! I explode, as does the rest of the pub; full of City fans who are used to the unexpected, but nothing quite this weird. I phone my wife again; “4-3. We’ve won! I’m coming home!”. I walk home, chuckling to myself and shaking my head, leaving a pub full of people doing exactly the same thing.
  • TV Moment – Alistair Campbell on Fantasy Football Euro 2004.I stopped watching “Fantasy Football” long ago, not least because it has been off our screens for years. However, while on my break at work, and with nothing else on TV, I watched Skinner and Baddiel do their stuff in a mildly amusing fashion. If you are aware of the format then you know that just before the half time break there is a ring of the doorbell, and in comes the guest for the day. Well, the bell rang on cue, Frank (or David) answered it, and in came Alistair Campbell. The reaction of the TV audience was bizarre; my impression of the “Fantasy Football” audience is that, faced with Campbell, half would say “who’s he”, while the other half would clap like seals regardless. But they didn’t; they booed him, and I just loved it. You could just tell from his expression that he wasn’t expecting it and was somewhat surprised that he was the cause of such antagonism. I was also surprised, and delighted. I think Campbell is a bit like Max Clifford, in that they think of themselves as popular heroes, only disliked by some media types, but they are wrong, very wrong, or at least I hope they are. Perhaps Campbell’s appearance on “Fantasy Football” went some way to curing him of this notion.
  • Radio Moment – Mark and Lard’s Final Show. After nearly seven years in the afternoon slot, Mark and Lard went their separate ways, Mark Radcliffe to Radio 2 and Marc Riley to BBC 6 Music. I’ve not heard Lard’s show yet, but Mark Radcliffe has just picked up where his old Radio 1 evening show left of a few years ago, with the same guests (Ian McMillan, Simon Armitage) and many of the same records. It is a treat. If you never heard the afternoon show then it is a bit late now really, but the website includes an archive of many fine moments, including their final show together; worth listening to for the hilarious introduction from David Bowie, and their version of Mull of ‘kintyre from Lard’s Vinyl Vault. Priceless.
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Thursday 21st October 2004

Fly-A-Kite 9/11

On Monday, Michael Moore’s film “Fahrenheit 9/11” was released on DVD, and I am quite looking forward to seeing it. It is not to see what all the fuss has been about; I saw it at the pictures when it was first released. And it is not because I thought it was so good that I can’t wait to see it again, although I did think it was good. It is because there has been such criticism leveled at the film, that I really want to see for myself if it is as good as I remember, or was my anti-war prejudice blinding me to its many faults.

First of all, I must explain where I am coming from. I have been a fan of Moore’s from his early “TV Nation” days. I have bought 3 of his books and enjoyed them, although I always read them as subjective satirical writing rather than books of incontrovertible fact; any statement he makes I take with a pinch of salt but try to bear it in mind. His Website has been an excellent source of information. That said, I wasn’t a fan of “Bowling for Columbine”; its approach often seemed scattergun and directionless, its conclusions woolly, and the final interview with Charlton Heston was a toe-curlingly embarrassment, a guilt tripping haranguing of a confused old man. Also, his website has recently gone seriously downhill; it is currently little more than publicity for his books and films, and his self styled one man mission to prevent a Bush second term smacks of egotism.

“Fahrenheit 9/11” does have its fault; japes like reading the Patriot Act from an ice-cream van and asking Senators if they would sign their children up for military duty in Iraq are TV Nation style sketches which have passed their sell by date. Trying to build a conspiracy theory from the White House’s blocking of James Bath’s name when publishing Bush’s National Guard record is very weak. (James Bath is named as a money manager for the Bin Laden family, and a link between the Bin Laden’s and the Bush’s). A perfectly reasonable reason for blocking the name out is one of privacy; I have subsequently read that for the White House not to have blocked the name would have been a breach of federal law. But whatever the reason, conspiracy theory it is not.

In many ways there is not much in the film that is new for those who have followed Moore’s work and read the newspapers, but it is still well done. The links between the Bush’s, the Bin Ladens, the Saudi’s and the Carlyle group may not land a solid blow, but I thought they built up an effective picture of potential conflicts of interests in the White House. The Patriot Act is dealt with well (apart from the ice-cream van moment), and the absurdities of Airline security allowing 2 lighters and 4 boxes of matches on a plane while not allowing expressed breast milk in a plastic bottle is a neat juxtaposition. Some have criticised the intrusion into the grief of Lila Lipscomb who’s son was killed in Iraq, but although I normally hate this sort of thing, I thought it was extremely well done; indeed it reduced me to tears. Perhaps it was because I felt the issue warranted it, or perhaps it was because Ms Lipscomb has been a vocal promoter of the film.

What has interested me about most of the criticisms of the film has been how poor and nonsensical they have been; if people have to criticise the film by talking rubbish, then you feel perhaps Moore is doing something right.

Top of the shop is Dave Kopel’s “59 deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11”. When I first learned of this website I rushed to read it, anxious to see if I had swallowed a pack of lies. And I am glad I did, as it was hilarious. Kopel wants you to know, for example that Bush wasn’t reading “My Pet Goat” in a school class when he heard word of the second plane hitting the twin towers. No. the book was “Reading Mastery 2”; “My Pet Goat” was just an exercise within the book. Admittedly that is listed just as a “cheap shot” rather than a full blown “deceit”, but it illustrates well where he is coming from. Another supposed deceit is that at one point Moore says of Bush “perhaps he just should have read the security briefing that was given to him on August 6, 2001 that said that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack America by hijacking airplanes”, then goes on to say that perhaps the vagueness of the title “Bin Laden determined to strike in US” put him off. This qualifies at 2 deceits; there is no evidence given that Bush did not read the memo, and the memo’s title is given as a reason it was not read. Kopel clearly has no sense of humour to take this point seriously; even the slowest child watching the the film would not think Moore is actually alleging that Bush didn’t read the briefing. He is making a satirical and sarcastic point. Later Kopel says “…Flint, Michigan, which Moore calls ‘my hometown.’ In fact, Moore grew up in Davison, Michigan, a suburb of Flint. Davison is much wealthier than Flint”. This qualifies as a deceit apparently, one of the 59. Now you know. So, just in case you bump into Dave Kopel, just be careful on how precise you are about where your hometown is, or you too may be accused of deceit. For me the only deceit it that Mr Kopel thinks he should be taken seriously. He makes about 5 decent points, a poor strike rate out of 59. The rest are either nit picking, nonsensical or due to a sense of humour failure.

Christopher Hitchens in Slate got himself worked up into a such a state he clearly couldn’t think straight. He argues that in the film, Moore makes it clear he thinks that “Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell” for 9/11, and that the Iraq War was a distraction from bringing him to justice. This, says Hitchens is at odds with Moore stating in 2002 that Bin Laden “should be considered innocent until proven guilty”. Well obviously they are not at odds, and for someone as intelligent as Hitchens to not get it, and indeed to regularly repeat his contention that these two beliefs are at odds is quite depressing. It is of course totally consistent to think someone is guilty, to want every available resource to be spent on detaining them and bringing them to justice, and yet still think they should be treated as innocent until proven guilty. Later Hitchens states Moore “wants to have it both ways” when he accuses the Bush administration of “overlooking too many warnings” in relation to 9/11 itself, and yet then taunts them for “issuing too many” terror warning to stoke up fear among the public after 9/11. Now whether or not you agree with Moore’s point, there is clearly a difference between “overlooking” and “issuing”. You would hope no warning is overlooked, and that only the relevant warnings are issued, but quite apart from the fact that Moore is comparing two different time periods (ie. before and after 9/11), it is quite possible for bogus warnings to be issued to stoke up fear at the same time as serious threats are being overlooked. Hitchens also objects to Moore’s reference to Iraq as “a sovereign nation”. Hitchens points out that “In fact, Iraq’s ‘sovereignty’ was heavily qualified by international sanctions, however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N. resolutions”. True, but by that measure all nations sovereignty is qualified by the UN, the EU, NAFTA, the IMF etc. Iraq was a sovereign state, albeit a brutal and tyrannical one.

Mark Steyn’s criticisms are fewer and a little less daft in the Telegraph. He thinks the main problem with the film is that it just makes George Bush look stupid. He is right, it does, but that is not necessarily Moore’s fault. But he also goes for the idea that Moore contradicts himself when he paraphrases Moore as saying “Because of Bush, the Taliban were in bed with Texas energy executives. Because of Bush, the Taliban got toppled.” “Whoa, hold up a minute,” says Steyn “I thought he was all pals with the Taliban.” Again, this is not a contradiction. Yes, Bush ousted the Taliban after 9/11 because of its links with al-Qaida, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t act very differently towards the terrorist sponsoring, human rights abusing Afghan leaders whilst he was governor of Texas. The contrast between his attitude to the Taliban before and after 9/11 is a valid point.

Kopel, Hitchens and Steyn, along with others such as David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen all complain about a particular scene in “Fahrenheit 9/11”; images of happy Iraqis going about their daily business peacefully just before the Coalition start bombing, most notably a boy flying a kite. Now, this is without doubt the worst moment in the film; it has the feel of propaganda about it, a real Leni Riefenstahl moment, and in my opinion it shouldn’t be there; although why an Oscar winning film-maker should listen to me I really don’t know. Now perhaps I am being unduly generous to Moore, but I don’t think for one minute that he is claiming that Saddam’s Iraq was a “sweet and simple” “peaceable kingdom”, a”Baathist utopia”. He was trying to humanise the people of Iraq under Saddam, to say they were not just people under the yoke of oppression who didn’t mind bombs falling on them for the cause of WMD, democracy or oil. I don’t think this scene is aimed at the writers I have already quoted; it is aimed at the the sort of people I have spoken to who morally pronounced that we “have to do something” about Iraq, but who also said “why should we bother” about Liberia, Haiti, Congo and Sudan. One charge is that Moore could have shown some pictures of people being tortured by Saddam’s regime, to show the reality in Iraq. Well, yes, he could, but in fairness his film wasn’t about the brutality of Saddam, it was about Bush. Are we saying that whenever we see images of mass graves or torture in Iraq we should also see images of happy boys flying kites to show another side of Iraq? No, of course we are not, yet that is the logic of this criticism.

I have picked just a few of the bizarre complaints about the film, and I could be accused of being selective, but believe me, there are many more strange points in the articles I have mentioned. I am not saying that these critics didn’t raise any good issues, and I will try to bear them in mind when I watch the film again. But by making so many out and out silly points, they have clearly shown the sort of lack of objectivity they so dislike in Moore.

Actually, I don’t know if I can be bothered. I may wait until it is shown on telly.

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