February 14, 2007
TV & FILM NEWS
RICHARD & JUDY/INSECURITY/HOT FUZZ PREMIERE!
Wow! What an intense 24 hours! Like a demented fast cut, sound FX heavy scene from Hot Fuzz itself! Let me tell you a bit too much about it…
Richard & Judy was great as usual. Everyone very polite and smiley. I was feeling good about being there although I was a tad self conscious have just read a message via my You Tube channel from someone calling themselves something like Donkeybasket or Slut300 or Rayjazz or whatever that said simply ‘Stop ageing! It’s starting to showâ€. Now normally I would of course ignore this kind of thing as it’s never a good idea to be too thin skinned on the scary internet as Rob Buckley will attest (peace Rob!), but this time I let my vanity get the better of me and replied saying ‘if you’ve got a problem with the passage of time, you’re in for a rough ride chief. Plus, it’s rude to tell people they look old, didn’t your parents ever teach you that?’ Yeah, that’ll learn him for calling me old!
A few hours later I was all dressed up in suit and tie, sat on the couch next to Richard & Judy watching some You Tube clips as everyone in the studio hooted with laughter. Quite odd. But fun. Dave Gorman was deeply impressive at being funny and relaxed and the couple who learned the whole Dirty Dancing routine for their wedding video were dead nice too. I had a whole bunch of amusing You Tube insights in my head but as usual when the time came to speak all I could manage was my goofy big-faced grin and some stumbly crap about legal strictures. They showed a bit of my You Say We Pay video though, albeit edited for daytime, but I have to admit it was a very pleasing moment to be watching it sat next to R&J themselves and have the circle of shite completed in such style. Not that Richard & Judy are shite of course, they’re excellent and I unreservedly love them.
From the Richard & Judy studios in Kennington I was driven to Leicester Square for the premiere of Hot Fuzz!
It was raining by then and I was keen to get inside but there were a few people asking me to sign stuff, (some of them even had Adam & Joe DVD’s!) so I wanted to oblige as much as possible. If you were standing there in the rain and I failed to do your bidding I apologise but my wife was feeling like a lemon over by the paparazzi so I had to re-join her.
Once inside I immediately saw about 5 or 6 people I know but hadn’t seen for ages and the anxiety of either forgetting their names or not being able to pull off the non-rude micro catch up chat started to overwhelm me. I imagine everyone feels the same at those things so a handshake or hug and a ‘how you doing!’ is all you can reasonably expect. I should explain at this point that I am in the film in a small but pivotal role, so I knew more people there than I would normally have done at a film premiere! Top name drop moments: hugs with Paddy Considine and Derren Brown, quick nods with Matt Berry, Chris Cunningham and Tim Dalton (though not sure if Dalton remembered me) and I also did a wee next to Harvey Weinstein! Soon the lights were dimmed and the movie was starting!
HOT FUZZ SPOILERS FROM HERE ON IN
I hadn’t seen any of the film before so I was nervous about how it had all turned out. By the time it was over I still couldn’t really tell, it was so overwhelming! The barrage of fast edits, bass heavy sound FX and ultraviolence as well as the multitude of very funny gags, some enjoyably cheesy, some utterly original were just too much for me to take in on first viewing. You’ve got to see it though, it’s quite something. Nick Frost is fucking hilarious and Simon Pegg anchors it all with proper A-list charisma. Edgar Wright is of course a kind of evil genius and if you find me in any way irritating you will, thanks to him, take great pleasure in seeing me die in an extraordinarily satisfying way.
I hadn’t mentioned having done the film before in this blog because I didn’t want to accidentally piss anyone off before it opened, but I hope they won’t mind if I post a few pics from the shoot now.
These are all from the few days I spent on the set last summer. I play the part of Tim Messenger, an annoying local reporter who accidentally unravels the (not desperately hard to unravel) murder mystery at the centre of the film only to get gorily despatched for his trouble. I had an amazing time doing it and got to hang out with people I admire and like enormously for a couple of the happiest weeks ever. I’m pretty happy with my contribution too, although, yes I do look older. But, well I am older.
When I got home after the premiere I had a quick look at my You Tube clips to see if Richard & Judy had had any effect and sure enough, a lot more people had checked them out and even sent me some nice messages. There was however also a response from the guy I had replied to earlier in the day. He was less happy with me:
Message header: lol omg lolzer wtf?!!!11111eleventyone
Message:
Whoa! Where did all that crap come from punk?
Sheesh!
Is that your default attitude to me & the other 7 people who enjoyed the shows you appeared in in the past?
You should have a tiny bit of gratitude here Adam. I am actually ‘talking to you’ buddy..so please don’t go down that road.
Clearly my jests seem to be a deep seated issue in you then Adam? – How boring.
I was indeed joking on your hangups which are VERY transparent in your hum-drum posts on (your?) website that noone visits.
Don’t message me again you pathetic failure.
Now, wrinkled Chinese-Anglo dwarf LOSER – be gone please!
The guy’s clearly disgruntled in all kinds of special ways but it’s always a drag when anyone gets pissed off like this and never an enjoyable experience to read, made worse by the creepy one way anonymity of this kind of on line correspondence. Sometimes I read comments and criticisms of other people’s stuff on line that conjure an image of the authors creeping round the web Gollum like, being driven mad by the power of their invisibility, flying into a rage when they see or hear something that doesn’t sit well with them and committing it to type before they’ve had a chance to take a second look. I’ve done it myself of course and I regret that I encouraged this bloke to get all bent by responding to his innocuous tease in the first place. Can’t we all just get along? I tried to send him one more message, saying sorry if I’d rubbed him up the wrong way, but he’d blocked me. Oh well. I’m pretty sure calling me a “wrinkled Chinese-Anglo dwarf LOSER†is some form of racist bullying though. Can’t the cops look into that when they get finished with Danielle Lloyd? Where are Pegg and Frost when you need them?!