June 15, 2007
VARIOUS NEWS!
HOT FUZZ OUT ON DVD!
But you know that, right? It’s hard to miss the roar of the Hot Fuzz publicity machine. As usual Edgar and the gang have done a brilliant job providing fans with as much extra material and insight into the production as they could possibly hope for, thanks to a large degree to the skills of their trusted videographer and music whiz Dan Mudford, who created such great behind the scenes pieces for the Spaced (I think) and Shawn Of The Dead DVD’s as well as scoring Shawn Of the Dead of course. There’s a great moment on the Hot Fuzz making of where a tired and irritable Edgar barks at him to ’stop filming Dan, for fucks sake!’ It’s not something I can ever recall seeing on another behind the scenes thing and you’d imagine it happened all the time.
I watched Overnight the other day. In that documentary a couple of friends of director Troy Duffy film as their painfully arrogant buddy (a cross between Tony Soprano, Quentin Tarrantino and Elton John) gets a film deal for his screenplay The Boondock Saints then a record deal for his band The Brood within the space of a few weeks. They continue filming as both deals turn to shite and the once tight gang of friends around the increasingly unpleasant Duffy disintegrates. At one point they continue filming as Duffy’s brother, the heart of the band, dementedly struggles and fails to stop himself weeping as he tries to explain to Troy that his attitude might be ruining things. At this point I should admit that, being a confrontation-phobic middle class Anglo Saxon, I’ve been in that spot a few times myself but if anyone had a frickin’ camera pointed at me, I would ask them to step out BEFORE I started stuttering and bawling! I guess for a while now the mentality of some people has been that any shameful behaviour is legitimised by a camera crew and the promise of being immortalised, even if it’s as an utter fuckwit, is worth any humiliation (see Dig! for more of the same). Of course from the perspective of the documentarian, the maxim is ‘keep filming, whatever’ but if it’s your mates, come on, sort your priorities!
All that said, if Edgar was throwing a David O Russell style fit, you’d have to film it wouldn’t you? Thing is, Edgar would never do that, because he’s too decent so instead he gets slightly annoyed, asks Dan to stop filming, and Dan obliges. That my friends is the difference between how we do things here in Her Majesty’s United Queendom and how those crazy Yankees do it over in the lawless, unprincipled West! Anyway, it’s a great two disc DVD, did I say that already? Here’s a few more pics from my time on Hot Fuzz to celebrate.
I’M DOING A GIG WITH DAVID CROSS ON WEDNESDAY 27th JUNE 2007 @ THE 100 CLUB
David Cross, the super-talented star of Arrested Development and the legendary Mr Show, to name but two of his many amusing achievements, is playing a series of stand up gigs at the 100 Club in London’s crappy Oxford Street. I’ll be providing 15 or so minutes of snivelling, possibly video assisted support on Wednesday 27th. Book tickets here but hurry, it’s a tiny venue and this guy’s a big deal. People will be excited about David Cross too. Ha ha ha! That’s the kind of amazing joke I’ll be doing on the night yo! If you’ve never heard of David Cross, here’s a sketch from Mr Show that is certainly one of the funniest and cleverest bits of comedy I’ve ever seen.
ADAM & JOE’S BIG JABBA
Finally here’s an old Adam & Joe dingleberry from the 4th series of The Adam & Joe Show. This was one of the Star Wars toy parodies we did that was not included on our DVD but a couple of people have asked me to post it, so here you go! It went out in 2001 after the first series of Big Brother aired on Channel 4 in the UK the previous year (we were always a bit slow to react) and it was one of Joe’s babies, with me coming in after he’d shot the toys to add voices. I forgot that we had the line in there about reality TV feeling passé, even in 2000! How deeply depressing that the miserable wagon is still trundling on 7 years later with no sign of being consigned to the crusher just yet, overblown race scandals sadly notwithstanding. Still, if you have fond memories of Caroline (AKA ‘Caggy’) and her hideous cackle, Nasty Nick or Craig saying ‘your shelf’ instead of ‘yourself’ you may enjoy this. To Joe’s credit, it kind of still works as a parody of any series really. The faces may change, but it’s always more or less the same pointless poop, no matter what the year.
Oh yes, and it’s not Wicket…it’s Logray. Thanks for the heads up friendly nerds!