December 14, 2009
SPIKE JONEZ INTERVIEW NEWS!
INTERVIEW PODCAST & PATHETIC SLAP FOOTAGE!
Hello there. Just before new year’s resolution: post more bollocks on this blog. To kick off, here’s a picture of me and Spike Jonze at the BFI Southbank after I interviewed him about Where The Wild Things Are at The Apple Store in Regent Street on Saturday 5th December 2009. It was a really exciting day, as you may be able to tell from my special slightly-too-smiley smile.
Photograph by Linda Nylind
Listen to the podcast of the Spike Jonze interview HERE
I thought Spike might appreciate a break from the kind of indepth Q&A’s he must usually get and decided instead to read him some of the comments the You Tube trailer for Wild Things has accrued which I copied into photoshop for the audience to see. I’ve been doing the You Tube comments thing at BUG for a couple of years now and I’ve done it with my own clips at the odd live gig too and it’s always fun. I’m thinking of ways to do it on You Tube too so the whole process comes full circle. Anyway, here are the comments I used for Spike for you to enjoy at your own pace.
Luckily Spike had a sense of humour about it as I imagined he would and he seemd to enjoy himself as much as I did although upon listening back to the podcast I was a little shocked by how inarticulate I was at times. I was nervous and interviews are not my forte but still, I don’t think Mark Kermode concludes his critical musings by saying ‘…and stuff’ as much as I flipping do. Also it takes a while for me to get the ball rolling and it seems an age before you hear Spike do anything but breathe and chuckle. When he was finally allowed to speak however, he was as engaging and candid as I’ve seen him in front of an audience and though our conversation never got particularly indepth there’s some interesting moments I think.
One of the things we mention briefly is the time in 2003 that Spike and I found ourselves reading through the script for The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy for our friend Garth Jennings who was vaguely considering Mr Jonze as a possible Ford Prefect. Below is a brief clip of us reading through a scene for the first time, which Spike decided to punctuate by slapping me hard on the face. It doesn’t look like much in the video but as I say in the podcast I was genuinely shocked albeit a little excited at having been slapped by Spike Jonze.
Another thing we mention in the interview is the video for UNKLE that was cut from the skate video Fully Flared that Spike worked on with Ty Evans. It’s pretty explosive stuff! (That’s a funny thing to say because the video involves explosions so I’m using the word ‘explosive’ both literally and metaphorically. Not bad eh?) Check it.
That’s enough Spike news.
Go and see Where The Wild Things Are though, I thought it was lovely!
Adam 14-12-09
April 9, 2008
STARDUST FUN!
STARDUST: ALTERNATE ENDING
I went and bought Stardust on DVD the other day so my sons could see their Dad with an axe in his head and a good time was had by all, but I couldn’t resist tweaking the ending slightly for my own puerile amusement. No disrespect meant to Danes, Cox, director Matthew Vaughan or anyone else involved, it was just a scene that was begging for some very lame tweakery. Or was it? In fact this is so lame I may remove it fairly soon. (in fact I did remove it but a few people asked me to put it back and I saw that Neil Gaiman linked to the clip from his site so if he’s OK with it, so am I!)
Strange that I would be anxious about offending the creators of a fantasy film when I posted far more disrespectfully tweaked footage of the Pope’s funeral for which I’ve received all kinds of faintly alarming threats, giving the lie to the notion that it’s only Muslim fundamentalists who love grabbing the wrong end of the stick. My priorities need looking at. OK, if that’s everyone offended I’ll be on my way.
October 20, 2007
A&J STARTING ON 6 MUSIC & STARDUST PREMIERE NEWS!
ADAM & JOE ON 6 MUSIC, SATURDAY MORNINGS 9-12 FROM 27th OCTOBER 2007!
It’s finally official! Joe and I are taking over the Saturday morning show on 6 Music as of next Saturday (27th October). We’ve signed on for a years worth of shows (minus a few holiday weeks) so it’ll be the longest unbroken run we’ve ever had on the radio (unless we get fired/suddenly very ill etc.) In some ways it’s a little daunting because both Joe and myself are as busy as we’ve ever been with various odds and sods, but a regular show at the great Big British Castle is too good an opportunity to pass up.
Our new producer will be Jude Adam who also produces Stephen Merchant’s very good Sunday afternoon show at 6 and used to produce Roundtable which I went on a couple of times years ago so I’m pleased we’ve got her! As far as the podcast goes we’re having a meeting next week to establish what we will be able to do with these. Joe and I are very keen for it to be as much like our old Xfm ones as possible, ie around half an hour containing good bits of the broadcast show and a few new tittles too. I really hope we can find a way to do it without it being as time consuming as it used to be at Xfm.
As far as the Saturday show goes it’ll be the usual sort of thing: me and Joe talking a lot of bollocks about TV, movies, music and anything else that occurs to us on the way in. I imagine Text The Nation will return, and I’m keen to continue our version of Sean Keavney’s feature Band Aid, with Joe and me pitching home made tunes against eachother to play out at the end of the programme. Anyway I need to talk to Joe and Jude about all this so I should shut up for now but I’m very excited and I really hope you like it. The picture above is from a few weeks back of us at 6 Music with Jenny who assisted us so wonderfully when we were covering for Sean. We really need to get some new pictures taken.
STARDUST PREMIERE GOSSOP!
I’ve been increasingly busy with the BBC3 pilot so I failed to deliver exciting premiere gossop immediately after the exciting premiere, but to be honest it wasn’t the most exciting night of all time, for me at least although it was great being there with my Ma. For a start I was feeling quite fluey and then me and Mummy (to use her proper name) made the mistake of turning up to the Odeon Leicester Square on time, ie. much too early. If you arrive with all the famous people you can pretend that the paparazzi and the crowd are screaming for you as well as Tina Sparkle or whoever, but when you’re alone on the red carpet and not a single person has a clue who you are it tends to bring you back down to earth in a way that’s unwelcome at the premiere of a film you’re actually in.
Of course even if they’d seen the film they would have a hard time picking me out of a Krypton Factor style line up, but that’s not the issue. I consoled myself with the fact that these days the red carpet and screaming crowd has been replaced with a small rather antiseptic press enclave, temporarily walled off to exclude the throngs of passers by and honest everyday folk for whom I am a kind of legend. If they’d let the REAL people in, the place would have gone mental when me and my Mum showed up. They probably just didn’t have the police to deal with it is all.
Once inside we were ushered into an empty VIP holding cell downstairs, as I was going to be going up on stage with the rest of the cast before the film. I felt bad that the place wasn’t rammed with people I could point out for my Ma, but she seemed to be having a good time, sipping her warm, flat champagne and checking out the wall of old black and white photos from 50 odd years of premieres at the Odeon. Odd to see them all there in that lost world of old school movie stardom, smoking and drinking away luxuriously, looking young and sexy and properly famous, no cheeky TV presenters waiting nearby to spit in their face. It must have been fun, surely.
Finally it was time to join the other members of the Stardust cast on stage with director Matthew Vaughn. There was no De Niro, Danes or Pfeiffer (although Michele did appear briefly for the cameras outside) but most of the Brit comedy types showed up. On our way down the side of the auditorium a few people saw Ricky Gervais and Dave Walliams and started snapping away on their camera phones. One guy called out to Dave ‘here he is! What a joker!’ which made David laugh. Then we all stood about rather awkwardly in the wings waiting to be introduced. I found myself stood next to Jason Orange (Take That did a song for the film) and we shook hands for something to do. He seemed nice although I noticed that none of The That said their names when being introduced to people as if there was no possible way you wouldn’t know who they were. Even Mark who I thought would have better manners. Ricky and David amused eachother in the gloom and Sienna Miller squeezed my arm affectionately, possibly by accident as I’m sure she didn’t know who or what I was. Rupert Everett didn’t acknowledge me in the slightest, despite having spent a good 5 days working with me and the others on our ghost scenes last year. Perhaps he’d read an interview I did recently where I described him as a bit of a twat when you first meet him but very nice after a while and didn’t appreciate it. Or perhaps he was just nervous to meet me again. Yes, that’s probably it.
Here’s a picture I took from my spot on the stage. On the extreme left you can see the edge of Julian Rhind Tutt’s face, next to Mark Strong who is looking at Walliams and Sienna Miller and that’s Vaughn behind her with Ricky Gervais behind him. Then there’s Take That at the end.
Favourite part of the night: meeting Neil Gaiman and chatting with he and Dave Walliams about Lou Reed whom, Dave pointed out repeatedly, Neil resembles somewhat (see pic below). Neil told us a story about having supper with the irascible ex-Velvet a while back. Apparently Lou was interested in getting Neil to turn his album Berlin into a graphic novel of some kind. What a whimsical delight that would have been! According to Neil he was not the cantankerous tyrant of legend. That doesn’t surprise me. I’m sure he’s not the easiest of people but when you think of all the tedious questions he must get asked over and over again by half witted rock journos, is it any wonder he occasionally decides to behave like a prick, if only to give them something fun to write.
And that was about it. I was sorry not to hve seen Jonathan Ross and his wife Jane (who co-wrote the screenplay) as Jane got me involved with the whole thing in the first place by suggesting me to Matthew Vaughn for the role of Quintus when Noel Fielding had to drop out, but it’s always impossible to have a normal conversation with anyone at those things even if you can find them so hopefully I can say thanks under more normal circumstances in future. Premieres tend to be a bit anti-climactic unless you’re off to some party or other, but I wasn’t so I stepped out of the cinema into the small gang of onlookers hoping to catch a glimpse of someone exciting. By this time the walled press enclave was gone so it was open season for onlooking. And still there were no screams when I emerged. Bastards. I think my Ma had a good time though and that after all, should always be the main thing, right?
October 3, 2007
MeeBOX, STARDUST, LADIES & GENTLEMEN PILOT NEWS!
MeeBOX NEWS!
I’ve just had a couple of days filming with a proper digibeta crew this week for my BBC3 pilot, MeeBOX. Pop video/commercials whizboy Dougal Wilson was directing and every department was top notch. One of the things we shot was a fake clip from one of my Hollywood star character Famous Guy’s films (a sci-fi thriller) and it looked exactly as I’d hoped it might, which is very seldom the case with these things. In fact everyone was so good at what they were doing that a couple of times I felt a little embarrassed of some of the less well formed ideas that we were working on. Thing is, a couple of days like this eats up a large proportion of our meagre budget so you may as well shoot as much as you can even if you only end up using a couple of bits. The majority of the show (which is broadly internet themed) is going to be shot on mini DV, webcams, digital cameras and the like.
The digibeta shoot was a lot of fun though and we got some great stuff but when I got back last night I felt a little sick that I hadn’t spent some more time thinking about the point of a couple of bits! We’ll see how they look when they’re edited. I’m indebted to those who came along to help with little scenes here and there including Jo Bobin, Gareth Tunley Leah Charles, Tony Law, Jo Neary, Matt Berry, Emma Pierson and my dad, a.k.a. BaaadDad. I hope they had a good time too.
The only downside was that the filming coincided exactly with the worst cold I have had in a while. I was feeling a little dodge on the eve of the first day but assumed it was the usual feeling of vague physical collapse I often get before I do anything of personal importance in my life but it just got worse over the course of Monday and Tuesday and now I’m writing this in bed having had a night of feverish dreams. One of them was about working in a deserted fast food joint that had pubes scattered about the counter. That can’t mean anything particularly good can it? Anyway I’m feeling pretty positive about the pilot, which we still have a good couple of months left to work on so I’ll keep you briefed from time to time.
STARDUST PREMIERE ILLNESS QUANDRY NEWS!
The question preoccupying me right now, is am I going to feel well enough to attend tonight’s star-pebbledashed premiere of Stardust in London’s glamorous Leicester Square? I asked my Mum to come along with me and she’s making the long journey from Reading this afternoon so I don’t want to let her down, but what if I go along and sneeze on De Niro then he gets my cold and it affects his performance on the incredible ‘return to form’ film he may be working on? Not that he isn’t on form in Stardust of course, he’s great and very funny but still, I have to be responsible. Oh fuckit, I’m going to dose up on Lemsip Max and go along. Apart from anything else I want to say a personal thankyou to Neil Gaiman, the author of the graphic novel from which the film was adapted. He got in touch the other day to say that he’d brought me back a Stardust poster from Japan and I’m on it! How cool is that? And how incredibly nice of him to think of bringing me one back! So unless I take a significant turn for the worse later to day I’m going to put a bad suit on and head over there!
I’M IN ‘LADIES AND GENTLEMEN’, C4, FRIDAY 12th OCTOBER 2007, 10PM
The pilot I shot back in June by Peep Show writers Sam Bain and Jessie Armstrong is being shown next week as part of Channel 4’s Comedy Playhouse series. The cast includes Reece Shearsmith, Darren Boyd, Lucy Punch and Rosie Cavaliero as well as myself and is a sitcom set in Victorian England. I have no idea what its chances are of getting commissioned as a series but I was a little unsettled by the fact that Radio 4 recently ran a series with a superficially similar sounding conceit called Bleak Expectations starring Mitchell & Webb regular James Bachman. Apparently it was very good although I didn’t hear it. I can’t quite work out if that’s a good thing for Ladies and Gentlemen’s chances or not. Regardless, I hope you’ll check out the show when it airs on Channel 4 on the 12th. This is a picture I put together as an invite for a screening a while back as well as a picture of me and Reece who I’m still kind of in awe of being a big League Of Gents fan. Excitingly, he and Steve Pemberton are going to be making a new show for BBC2 next year! Should be wickles.
CHECK OUT THE PETER SERAFINOWICZ SHOW, THURSDAYS, BBC2, 9:30PM!
I’m not in it or anything, I’m just excited about it. Here’s a bit here. Apart from being someone whose work I enjoy hugely, Peter is the person who got me into You Tube, which I guess you could say has indirectly lead to me being able to do this BBC pilot so cheers Peter! I’ve no doubt his BBC2 series is going to be a smash so why not get in at ground level and check it on Thursday then you’ll be the one with the hot new catchphrases in the playground on Friday morning. Is that how it still works with comedy? I need more Lemsip.