GAFFE NEWS!
BUG, WIZ, McAVOY & MEADOWS
So last night I hosted the first BUG pop video night at the BFI Southbank (formerly the NFT, re-branding fans) and on the whole it was a good show I think. I came a bit unglued when it was time for me to interview 6 up and coming video types on stage at the same time though. I felt as if I didn’t really have the interview skills to get the best out of them and my anxiety was compounded when throughout the evening a bloke at the back of the auditorium kept calling out random questions. He seemed especially keen to talk about the work of top video director WIZ who had 2 videos being shown on the night. Because I wasn’t really prepared to take questions from the audience and he was anyway being fairly oblique, I deflected his enquiries in a hopefully humorous and not too insulting way to allow me to keep the evening moving.
I was concerned that the guy may have felt snubbed however and when the show was over I tracked him down to apologise. He turned out to be wheelchair bound which probably for all the wrong reasons, made me feel worse about having cut him off in mid flow, but he was perfectly nice about it and we chatted for a while about the videos we’d just seen. He was with a couple of friends one of whom started videoing me as I was talking which I guess made me quite uncomfortable but not wanting to be precious I didn’t say anything. Eventually he asked me what I thought of one of WIZ’s videos for Dizzee Rascal that we’d shown and I explained that although I really like a lot of WIZ-works, it wasn’t my favourite. He asked me why and I tried to explain that I thought some of the imagery (grotesque fox hunting toffs on horseback chasing down Dizzee, police-style, in a grim nocturnal estate) was a little lame and heavy handed. I’d just finished explaining when my brother showed up and I said my goodbyes and went off to chat to him.
A few minutes later someone told me that the guy filming me was WIZ. The bloke who’d been asking questions was his mate. In fact it had crossed my mind when I said hello that it might be WIZ, who I’d met very briefly when I hosted the CAD awards last year, but I didn’t recognise him and I just decided by the way his friend was talking about his stuff as if he wasn’t sat right there, that it couldn’t be him. Well, the fact that I’d cut WIZ’s friend off in the show and then described his video as lame as he filmed me doing so was enough to make feel quite ill. Of course I didn’t say anything I didn’t mean and I did preface my comments by saying I really like most of his stuff but…aaaargh! I hate it when people make a point of coming up to me and telling how much they dislike what I do, so to do it to someone else like that (albeit unknowingly) made me just want to die immediately. Oh when will time travelling become practical and affordable? Maybe that’s not what I need though. I’d be zipping back and forth correcting gaffes so often my life would effectively stand still.
Anyway, apart from putting my foot in it with legendary promo directors it was a fun night and I believe, the first of many at the BFI for BUG. The next one is on July 5th. Now I’m off to try and find the DVD of Starter For 10 that I rented from Blockbuster and was due to return today, which my youngest son ejected from the DVD player and hid when we were out of the room. We’ve tortured him quite badly (played loud Robbie Williams, teased him about his ridiculous hair etc.) but he’s not saying where he put the frigging disc. My eldest son Frank did the same thing with a borrowed copy of Dig a few years ago and it turned out he’d stuffed down between the floorboards. I wonder how much Blockbuster will charge me for the Starter For 10 disc? If it’s not more than about £30 I won’t mind because I loved the film. It’s fairly by the numbers but James McAvoy in particular provides so many brilliant moments that that it doesn’t feel in the least bit pointless and thin the way a few British films can. There’s one scene where he goes on a date and ends up crying in front of this hot girl that makes you realise why he’s getting so much work. And Mark Gatiss as Bamber Gascoigne! Ah haaa haaa!! He’s fucking great!
Speaking of fucking great Brit film geezers (this is turning into Guy Ritchie’s blog…) I’m excited about the South Bank Show on ITV this Sunday at 11pm. It’s all about Shane Meadows new film This Is England which is apparently er, fucking great. Can’t wait for that. If you’ve still not seen Shane Meadows film Dead Man’s Shoes starring Paddy Considine who also co wrote the thing, it’s on Film Four on Monday at 11.15pm. It’s the one to beat although I see that Rotten Tomatoes, a collection of reviews from US critics has some bafflingly lukewarm write ups for it. “The film is filled with deeply unpleasant and stupid people whose vapid speech is largely incomprehensible due to thick regional accents.†?!! That from the Hollywood Reporter no less! Critics eh? Not much better than the comments on You Tube for goodness sake. On that note, here’s a You Tube peach you may well have enjoyed already but it’s a tasty one! It was made by Saam Farahmand, one of the directors I was talking to last night at BUG. Now, one last Starter For 10 search before the long walk to Blockbuster…
