Lionel Revisited

It wasn’t the greatest of weather, but I was determined.

I didn’t have the time to see anyone else before my planned flight-date, but there was one friend who I was darn well going to make time for. If I didn’t, I would never forgive myself.

Lionel.

So, despite my laziness, I forced myself onto a train down to Margate this afternoon, and then into a taxi.

2½ years ago Lionel, in his 70s, had retired to New Zealand to live out his days in a backpackers’ hostel, only to suffer a stroke and get deported back here again. The last time I’d seen him had been in Auckland Hospital last November, the day before his departure.

Today it was good to catch-up with him again at the retirement home where he now wishes to escape from. He told me how he wished that he was back in Auckland Hospital again, as even that was better than here.

We went through photos, I listened to him as usual, and it was all very very normal. Several people of course assumed that I must be his son. As we sat down to eat dinner together, it was just so nice to see that, although his arm was still paralysed and he had difficulty standing, at least he was up and dressed instead of going out of his mind stuck in bed all day.

The Year in one Month

I like my friends. But trying to cram a whole year's worth of socialising into one month can be a bit draining.

During my last ‘brief’ visit to the UK, I contacted several of my friends quite early on – to deliberately get seeing them out of the way. Don’t get me wrong – they’re my friends and I wanted to spend time with them – but I didn’t want to spend my final week burning myself out hopelessly trying to cram them all in either. I needed to relax. So, I met up with several people quite early on, considering.

Strangely, most of these meetings concluded with the same exchange:

Them: “So, when are you going back to New Zealand?”
Me: “I’m going back on (INSERT DATE HERE).”
Them: “How long will you be back there for?”
Me: “I really don’t know – I’m open-minded.”
Them: “Do you like living in New Zealand?”
Me: “Yes.”
Them: (thoughtfully)”Well – we must get together again before you go – when are you next free?”

So much for keeping the final week of my holiday clear.

This year then, I was ready. When I got back to the UK, I simply didn’t tell anyone I was back. Well, I wasn’t going to tell anyone until the last fortnight anyway. It seemed the best, politest solution. After all, as I’d told several friends in New Zealand, I’d spent the past year being extrovert to survive, and now I really needed to go home and be introverted again for a bit.

So, my first few weeks passed, and I did very little. In fact, I did call one or two friends, but had trouble getting hold of them. Serves me right, perhaps.

In “the good old days” we used to all get together to make movies. Long, bizarre, silly films that only I really wanted to make, and which to this day are still not finished. I would worry that some people thought I was more interested in the films than in them. The truth is that while I needed my friends to finish the films, I wanted them because I liked them.

Eventually this month I found myself sitting back on the Richmond Riverside development, no doubt downing yet another Frijj drink, and saying “God – I really need to film.”

Generally speaking, one doesn’t really feel friendships, but I really wanted to advance my films a bit closer to completion while I was here.

It is true that some of my friends would not have been phoned had I not still needed some more footage of them.

It is also true though, that over the years, filming has really enabled me to stay in touch with so many friends that I would probably otherwise have lost contact with.

As a result, my final full week here has indeed been stressfully crammed with seeing as many of my friends as possible… and it’s been wonderful.


Chris was the first friend I saw here. Ironically I know him from Edge Church in Auckland. He’s effectively become my opposite number by travelling over here looking for work. He’s been staying at my house, but has just found a flat and moved out.

Oh wait a minute, I forgot the 3 family cats…


Left to right on the armchairs are Seven and her son Pompey, while watching from behind is the big-eyed newcomer Erik. Erik used to belong to my Auntie Joan, however he moved here after she died last February.



A new friend, rather than an old one. Can you spot them? Click to enlarge.


Left to right: Me, Cousin John, Cousin-Once-Removed Jean, Cousin-Once-Removed-In-Law Paul and Mother Josie.


I can’t even name all these people, but next to me, right to left, are my oldest friend Alistair, David and Pam. Also present are Alex (in blue) and Dave (by door), and the photo was taken by Jo. (reflected behind the flash in the window)


Kiwi Chris again, helping out with filming.


If there were a fight between The Customer and Goold, who would win?


Left to right – Gideon (who I haven’t seen for 8 years) and Rob. (who I haven’t caught up with for 4!)


Reunited with Monty at the old Christmas Cracker restaurant. We filmed some shots beforehand, but got started late, and then overran, so I was absolutely gutted when our meal wound up rushed. Must clear an evening properly next time, like I did with...


College friend Suze! No filming whatever with her. We finished that in 1999, and haven’t seen each other for 7 years! Since then she’s been in Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet, The Archers and Walking With Cavemen. And all because she filmed with me first. :)


Gideon again – how can I resist including a friendly photo like this one?


And back to Chris again. No, this isn’t Chris, but this is where I met him tonight - Equippers Church - at the London School Of Economics in Holborn. That place was so full of kiwis, that walking in there was literally like walking through a door back into New Zealand again.

I’m very grateful to Chris. He’s been an unexpected line of continuity for me while I’ve been back, and like so many of my friends, he even helped me out filming too!

It’s been great to see so many people, and actually do something with so many of them.

Stressed? Yes. Burnt-out? Yes.

If only every week was like this.

Stage-Fright

Last night Herschel had a dream about Mel Gibson not paying his bus fare.

the Street Cleaner

A while back Herschel was offered the leading role in a movie as a superhero, until someone realised he looked more like a villain.

Undeterred, he became one of the film’s assistant producers instead.


He has no money, no powers, and no competition. He’s London’s first superhero. He calls himself.. The Street Cleaner.

“All the best names are taken.”

It’s a fine premise for a movie – a superhero who actually could be you or I. And the script clearly knows how key a sense of fun is to enjoying the genre.

Despite a deadly serious story in a depressingly mundane world, this script is funny, and most of the humour comes from the head-on collision of comicbook idealism with real-world numbness.

So, of course crime is harder to find. Of course he wins fights by accident. Of course no-one takes him seriously. He’s a superhero trapped in the body of a loser trapped in the boring old real world. He can’t even settle on a costume. Heck, he can’t even settle on a name.

And that’s his appeal – we could all be The Street Cleaner. (if we only took judo lessons)

Currently only one reel of this film exists – shot on a low-budget to advertise the potential of a full-length version to investors. As such it’s not that glossy, which gives it an indie feel rather than a Hollywood one.

On that level I'm curious whether a $200 million budget would ruin it.


Trailer and further info here.

“It’s Prof. Again”

One of my favourite TV shows as a kid was Vision On. The only problem with liking Vision On so much was that I just wasn’t its target audience.

Its target audience was children who were deaf.

Relying principally on its pictures then, much of this weekly half-hour featured increasingly surreal things happening, often with little or no soundtrack. As this was in the days before video, I used to audio-tape the programme off our black-and-white 405-line TV, and then listen to the cassette back, trying to re-imagine what the pictures had been.

To anyone who’s never seen the show, it’s very hard to convey what it was like. However thanks to the miracle of YouTube, now I can just show you:


Looking back, in some ways it was the anti-Sesame Street.

In a typical show, Tony Hart would spend several minutes painting a life-size dinosaur on the ground, only for it to then roar and walk off.

A girl would chat to her tortoise whilst taking it walkies in a series of still photographs.

Mr Sylveste would wait for a train, with a crowded platform of people all played by him.

And then… there was… The Prof.


Every week the Prof, in his lab coat, would get persecuted by inanimate objects on a farm. Or be run over by himself pretending to be a train. Or go swimming in a grassy field, only to get sucked down a gigantic plughole.

(I have to wonder if deaf kids had nightmares afterwards)

He was brilliant, even if the laws of physics did hate him.

When I was four, we lived above a shop. One day I looked through the window down onto the main road below, saw a delivery-van pull-up, and was elated to see a man in a long white coat get out.

The Prof!

I watched that guy, fascinated, for his entire delivery. I was a little disappointed that his clipboard and boxes didn’t growl at him and chase him off down the street, but at the same time I was able to make the distinction between the real world, and that jerky sinister place where he lived on television. When he eventually drove off – at normal speed - I didn’t quite know why things were different in his world, but I knew that they were, and that those things just didn’t happen here.

Fast-forward 20 years and I was working at the BBC programme library, marvelling once again at his old exploits on the show. I learnt this visionary genius’ real name – David Cleveland – and that his masterpieces had not in fact been made by the BBC, but simply by him and his friends in their spare time. They’d given-up God knows how much of their lives to film much of this stuff one frame at a time, just to make him get chased across a field by a wardrobe or something. One time, Cleveland had sat, freezing cold, in a deckchair for a whole four hours, while his mates filmed the tide suddenly coming-in around him at super-speed.

They say that you should never meet your heroes, because they will disappoint you. The irony is that, while I indeed have never met him, in my twenties I rediscovered David Cleveland, because he was now a leading expert on film preservation – in particular with the ever scarcer film-gauge that I was shooting on. Now I found myself pouring over terribly serious articles by him on how to store archive film for the future.

And, in a circular sort of way, I was reading these articles because I wanted to preserve the movies that I had now made, that had doubtless in some way been inspired by his ones.

David Cleveland retired a couple of years ago, and around the same time I actually did write to him. Not a fan letter, or a scientific one – but to order a home-made DVD of some of his films from 30 years ago. I’d seen them advertised on http://its-prof-again.co.uk. When it arrived, there was a little standard letter with it, simply signed “The Prof.”

Tonight I sat down and once again enjoyed his barmy sense of reality, taking in his specially-filmed sequences from other programmes, many of which I had no recollection of.

And, at age 35, I felt thoroughly, thoroughly inspired by him once more.


Clips here.

Steptoe and Son in Murder at Oil Drum Lane

***** CONTAINS SPOILERS *****
The sitcom Steptoe And Son has a chequered history. It started in the 1960s in black-and-white. Then it continued into the 70s in colour. They also made 2 movies, several BBC radio episodes, and finally an Australian stage show. Well, almost finally. Now, with both the lead actors dead, it’s just come back for one final stage show, written by one of the original two writers – Ray Galton - and old hand John Antrobus.

And yet, this is undeniably Steptoe at its best. There are no desperate attempts to re-evoke the original show – it just is the same show. Two men arguing on a single set for a long period of time – yes, yes this is definitely Steptoe And Son.

Mind you, the plot – which involves Albert returning as a ghost to haunt his son – would never have fitted-in with the tone of the original TV show, but in another medium it’s possible to ask the audience to decide for themselves whether or not this is canon. And my vote would be yes, simply because I can see this sort of subject matter working as another one of their movies. Or maybe radio.


And with both the original actors long-since deceased, stage is probably the best way to do this. The audience is necessarily so far from the stage, that without the benefit of any close-ups, the two new leads (the perfect Harry Dickman and Jack Nightingale) appear identical to the originals. The theatre programme made the obligatory statement about how the new actors had been asked to bring their own fresh take on the roles, and not to impersonate the originals, but for me this just wasn’t in evidence. They were the same.

The mean-spirited hatred between Albert and his son Harold is as uncompromising here as it ever was before. In fact, some of it is easier to believe on stage than on TV. (as perhaps is Harold's gleeful chatting to the audience!)

There’s also an uncomfortable moment towards the end, when one character does something so unmotivated, that deep in my heart I knew it couldn’t be true. And thanks to such reliable writing, it turned out that it wasn’t.

If I have any problem with this production, it would purely be the cost-cutting production standards (an actor doubling-up, which always disappoints me, and you wouldn’t get on TV), and simply my own differing spiritual beliefs to the ones required for this story to be true. And those really are forgivable.


9 out of 10. Rest in peace Steptoe And Son, I was really happy to see you off today.

(Final giveaway moment here.)