May 16, 2006
FROM THE ADAM & JOE VAULTS
A&J’S AMERICAN ANIMATION ADVENTURE: GUNBOY
Here we have Gunboy part 1 and Gunboy part 2, the fourth of the 6 episodes in this series for your jaded perusal. In many ways this is my favourite, at least it’s the one that actually makes me laugh more than once when I’m watching it, despite the fact that it’s pretty straightforward stuff. Basically it’s me and Joe doing our bad cockney accents and swearing a lot at all the incredibly sweet and helpful people we meet in LA as we pretend to be two wide boy twats (Mick Knutz and Nick Knox) trying to cause an internet stir with our super-cynical, ultraviolent animation: Gunboy (“He’s got a shooter for a hooterâ€) The voice-over was supposed to be having a pop at the insane intonation surfing favoured by Lisa Ianson on shows like Ibiza Uncovered. In fact it comes over as being a bit annoying in itself. Of course that’s always the risk with the kind of razor sharp satire found in our work…
I forgot until I loaded it this morning that this episode also contains our weird spoof of Madonna’s What It Feels Like For A Girl, the original video for which was directed by Guy Ritchie and featured Ciccone driving around town, mugging, robbing and generally misbehaving in a profoundly risible fashion. The producer of Adam & Joe’s Animation Adventure, Gregor Cameron, had an ‘in’ with Boy George and somehow convinced ‘the gender bending pop sensation’ (as he was known when I was a totty) to take part in the Mick Knutz and Nick Knox version of the video which we called What It Feels Like For Boy George! Ha ha ha ha ha! Come on, it should have worked! Somehow though, it manages to be not that funny, but I’m still happy it exists. And I got to drive around Hampstead dressed as on old woman with Boy George! Heady days.
The denoument of Gunboy in the offices of I-Film used to leave a bad taste in the mouth because I remember being in a horrible mood the day we shot it and my final febrile attempts to steal the TV and subsequent use of the ‘c’ word came from a very real place. We parted on good terms with the chap though, and now I think it sort of works. The midget baseball thing at the very end makes me laugh too, it’s so fucking pathetic.
As I’m writing this a lot of quite good semi glamorous, name droppy memories are coming back to me about this shoot… That the last thing we did for this episode was the interview bit with Joe and myself on the veranda of this lovely house in the Hollywood hills that belonged to a record producer friend of our producer Gregor who was working with Gregor’s hot/talented girlfriend Amanda Ghost at the time. When we finished shooting Amanda and the record producer and all these very attractive LA types showed up and we had a party! A real sexy Hollywood party! At one point I found myself talking to the most beautiful woman I have ever actually had a conversation with. She turned out to be the record producer’s wife though. That sentence seems to imply that if she hadn’t been married she would have been begging me to join her for a nude Jacuzzi session. In fact I’m fairly sure she would because I was being very funny and charming I seem to recall.
At that same party the record producer said that he’d passed a copy of The Adam & Joe show on to one of the Beastie Boys who had watched it with Spike Jonez. Having watched our 20% Free prank (available on our DVD of course!) Spike exclaimed that this kind of homemade pranky stuff would make a great TV show. Mere months later they shot the pilot for Jackass! So you see, Adam & Joe single handedly invented Jackass! I’ve since met Spike Jonez and he didn’t deny it so it must be true! I mean, I didn’t actually ask him if it was true obviously because that would have been incredibly uncool but he didn’t deny it and that, in law is known as ‘lack of denial pointing to it’s true’ or something. OK I’m all name dropped out…
For more on this episode (more?!) and the series as a whole, proceed to the April 2006 section of this site. Next week: Right Toon Reply!