It's Only a Movie: Reel Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive (30 page)

I loved doing the graveyard shift, not least because I got to haul my sorry arse up to Manchester which was about 180 miles nearer to Linda (who lived in Liverpool) than London. I recently bumped into Radcliffe at the Sony Awards (did I mention this already?) where we both commiserated with each other about the fact that we would surely go home empty-handed, and then both went on to win our respective awards (no, really, stop me if you’ve heard this one …), making us look like self-serving
faux
-modest tossers who had
expected
to win all along.

When Radcliffe departed from the Radio One arts programme
The Guest List
to host the graveyard shift, I took over as the programme’s presenter and it became one of a string of formerly successful programmes that have been killed by the ‘curse of Kermode’. Other victims of this uniquely paralysing power have included
The Antique Records Roadshow
(which ran for years under Andy Kershaw’s steady
hand but which I killed in two short series),
Clingfilm
(the horribly entitled Radio One film programme which I both spawned and sank, though at least I wasn’t responsible for that godawful name); the
Movie Update
(ditto, with a little help from James King); and Danny Baker’s short-lived BBC TV show
After All
on which I was musical director and which similarly withered on the vine. I have also sunk not one but two movie magazines (
Fear
and
Flicks
, the latter of which had been going for donkeys’ ages till I came along), an entire radio station (the aforementioned Radio Five) and of course the Film4 Extreme Cinema strand which briefly flourished before going the way of all things in which I have had a hand. Last year the
Observer
newspaper (for whom I am a regular writer) pluckily bucked the accursed trend by weathering doom-laden reports about its ‘uncertain future’ for which I hold myself cosmically accountable. By the time you read this book, it is very probable that its publishers Random House will have gone bust, in which case let me take this opportunity to say how nice it was to work with them and how sorry I am to have put them all out of a job.

At the height of my tenure hosting
The Guest List
most of my time seemed to be spent on trains to and from Manchester. On Mondays and Tuesdays I’d watch films in London before heading up North to do the show with Mark and Lard on Wednesdays, finishing at midnight after which we’d decamp to an uninviting club around the corner from the BBC whose sole allure was the fact that it sold tuna sandwiches and chips until 2 a. m. On Thursdays I’d present
The Guest List
which would include a film-review slot in
which someone other than me would tell me what they thought of the new releases while I kept quiet as if I hadn’t seen them yet. Then I’d plod back to the hotel where I’d watch German-dubbed reruns of
Kojak
(‘das ist eine troublesome murder case, Saperstein’) on the only twenty-four-hour channel in town before getting the 5. 20 a. m. train back to London to do my own movie slot on the Mayo show wherein I would babblingly evaluate the new releases about which I’d been so ignorant the night before. Anyone listening from 9 p. m. to 11 a. m. would presumably have got the impression that I’d somehow watched all those films in the wee small hours of Friday morning, and if asked I would tell people that that’s
exactly
what I did. Why spoil the magic?

So all this stuff was going on simultaneously with the Mayo show, and if Simon is reading this now (which he won’t be, obviously) I hope he realises just how popular I was back then and just how many other offers and suitors I had to beat off in order to plight my radio troth to him and how much better I could have done if I had wanted to which I didn’t but that was my choice and
don’t you forget it
thank you very much no don’t mind me I just work here incidentally here’s your coffee, oh don’t mention it, not that you’ve ever got coffee for me oh no far too busy being famous on the radio while I do all the hard work …

Am I hamming this up?

If so, it’s only because that’s how it feels sometimes – hammy, with a side order of cheese.

At the time of writing, Mayo and I have been ‘together’
for around sixteen years, give or take a two-year break between me leaving Radio One and him taking up residence at 5 Live whereupon we picked up pretty much where we had left off – which, basically, was bickering. I’m fairly sure that my first words on his 5 Live show were ‘And another thing …’ and it all just continued from there.

The odd thing, of course, is that despite being professionally joined at the hip we’ve never really socialised together, probably because we have very little in common. He’s intelligent, interested in current affairs, and keen on football. And I’m not. In fact the only thing that genuinely bonds us is the fact that we both have families in whose company we’d much rather spend our spare time.

In the summer of 2009, entirely by coincidence, the pair of us ended up in an East Anglian village and for three consecutive nights Simon, his wife Hilary, Linda and I went to the pub together and experienced something akin to normal human interaction. We sat, we drank, we laughed, we moaned, we ordered more drinks, ate too many crisps, and we all developed pleasantly low-level headaches. At some point Hilary and I discovered that we had been in Manchester at around the same time and we swapped enthusiastic reminiscences about the old haunts until Simon got the hump and banned any further talk of Manchester on the grounds that he hadn’t been there and couldn’t join in. Through the haze of a few pints of Johnny-Knock-Me-Down I argued that Linda hadn’t been in Manchester either, but then she pointed out that she
had
been there and it was bloody typical of me to forget that that was where we
met
, so I slunk off to get more
drinks and crisps and by the time I got back to the table Simon was drawing up his plans for world domination on the back of a scrappy table napkin in between bouts of earnest tweeting.

At this point, our future together seemed worryingly uncertain. Despite Simon’s conversational ban, the subject of Manchester just wouldn’t go away because 5 Live was moving there en masse and Simon had made it clear that he wasn’t going with it. There were rumours of a new job for him at Radio Two, and even though he’d assured me that nothing was going to break up the old team I was going through all the usual paroxysms of thinking that I was about to be dumped – or ‘chucked’, as I believe the teenagers still have it. Simon’s career was clearly going from strength to strength, and the possibility of being left behind seemed very real – like Cynthia Lennon missing the train at Euston station because a policeman didn’t believe that she was the superstar’s wife.

So when no one was looking I slipped Simon’s scrap of paper off to one side, huddled into a corner, unwrapped it furtively, and scanned it to make sure that
my name
was on it.

Somewhere.

Anywhere.

To be honest, there wasn’t much of anything on that napkin scrap. Circles and triangles, some numbers underlined, an ink splodge here and a beer stain there. It looked unimpressive, but if you’ve ever seen Nelson’s hastily drawn plan of action for the Battle of Trafalgar you’ll know that it wasn’t much better; some crosses, an arrow,
a couple of squiggly lines, and the rest is ‘Kiss me Hardy …’.

Eventually my sore eyes settled on something amidst the crisp crumbs and doodles which, if you turned the paper a certain way in the half-light, looked like it might
just
be a pair of initials.

My
initials.

‘MK’.

Followed by a question mark …

I have a rule about walking out of movies – I don’t do it, unless they involve scenes of
actual
cruelty to animals or the abuse of children. Or they feature Julian Sands. (Only kidding. Sorry Julian. Old habits.) The reasons are obvious, and are to do with consent. Whereas grown-ups can
agree
to be filmed while hammering nails through their genitals (as the late ‘supermasochist’ Bob Flanagan did in Kirby Dick’s terrific documentary
Sick
), animals and children need to be protected from the whims of film-makers who are often less than kind in their attitude to the on-screen talent (Hitchcock famously said that actors should be treated like cattle, and he’s generally regarded to be a genius).

To me this issue of consent seems inarguable, but you’d be amazed by how many problems it causes for our censors who are forever attempting to balance concepts of freedom of
expression with the harsh realities of the law. Let me offer two examples which seem to crystallise the madness around these issues.

Firstly, take as typical the case of acclaimed European director Emir Kusturica’s 2004 film
Life is a Miracle
which offered the director’s usual mix of politics, fantasy, war, and loud brass bands. Having played to muted but reverential applause in Cannes the film was submitted to the BBFC who noted that it contained a brief shot of a cat mangling a live pigeon, an image which appeared to be unsimulated and which could therefore fall foul of the 1937 Cinematograph Films (Animals) Act which outlaws the mistreatment of animals on film. The BBFC duly presented the distributors with two options: provide credible evidence that the scene was simulated; or make a cut of slightly less than two seconds. After some consideration, the distributors plumped for the second option, apparently considering the issue unworthy of a protracted verification process.

Sadly, no one asked Emir about this, and when he got wind of the decision, he hit the roof. Outraged at the censoring of his fine work, Kusturica told the British media that he would rather see
Life is a Miracle
shelved indefinitely than ‘butchered’ by the BBFC. Asked to reconsider their decision, the Board pointed out politely that they were simply complying with a statutory regulation which was not theirs to overturn – the film
seemed
to depict a live animal being mistreated, and it was therefore incumbent upon the film-makers to prove that such was not the case before they could grant a certificate. Quick as a flash, Kusturica shot back
that the pigeon was already
dead
, and that he had found it lying by the side of the road. The BBFC pointed out that since the pigeon was still
moving
(its wings are demonstrably flapping in the scene) it seemed probable that (unlike Monty Python’s infamous parrot) Kusturica’s pigeon had yet to join the choir invisible. Unless, of course, Emir could provide evidence to the contrary.

Having backed himself into a corner with his own threats of pulling the movie, and apparently realising that both common sense and UK law were against him, Kusturica admitted that, yes OK the pigeon was moving, but
only because he had cleverly wired it up with bits of string
, in order to
simulate
the writhings of a live creature. When asked to verify this assertion, the director promptly produced a letter attesting that no pigeons were harmed during the making of
Life is a Miracle
– honest. Displaying the patience of Job, the BBFC duly looked at the scene
again
and conceded that, yes, unlikely as it sounded, it was
just about possible
that the bird in question was part of some Gerry Anderson-esque puppet show. Since they were unable to
prove
that Kusturica wasn’t telling the truth, and since (contrary to popular belief) they don’t like cutting movies unless they absolutely have to, the Board agreed to reverse their initial decision, and allowed
Life is a Miracle
to be passed uncut.

Personally, I would have tied Kusturica up with a piece of string and thrown him to the pigeons.

Which, incidentally, reminds me of a related incident also involving our feathered friends: the case of John Waters’ seventies cult classic
Pink Flamingos
. The film, which has
become a milestone of self-aware trash cinema famously climaxes in transvestite icon Divine eating dog shit – for
real
. This is fine by me – after all, in my younger years I ate at McDonald’s. But there’s also a sequence in which a live chicken is used as an unwilling sexual aid, and that’s where I draw the line – from the chicken angle, rather than the sex angle, obviously.