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
September 16, 2008
MOJO SONG WARS NEWS!
MOJO SONG WARS INTERVIEW AND 2 NEW SONGS!
Well, I say songs, they’re more like extended jingles that I did for the music magazine Mojo after their deputy editor Andrew Male came and interviewed us for their website a few weeks back.
Read the short Song Wars interview here.
I love Mojo mag. I read a lot of music and film mags and Mojo is the only one that I have never thrown across the room in disgust. I am one of those men of an uncertain age who has piles of back issues in the attic and occasionally I’ll get a few random numbers down (we call them ‘numbers’ in the sad-mag-man universe) and read a few articles I skipped the first time round or maybe re-read some reviews of albums I’ve grown to love to see if our opinions tally. It’s also interesting to see how the tone of the mag has changed over years. Hey, it’s a party round my way, I tell you!
The other day I was thumbing a number from 2000 and was shocked to find how negative bits of the mag were then. I forgot they used to have an anonymous gossip section called The Walrus that made silly catty remarks about various bands as if someone working at Mojo felt they needed to get a slice of the Pop Bitch cake or something. I’m glad they’ve dropped that. Fuck anonymous gossip sections! Not that I’m in favour of blanket toadying, but I’ve always preferred publications that supply me with dispassionate information rather than ready made carping as if I’m not able to catch my own carp. The day I finally agree to write a bitchy opinion piece for some mag or website is the day you’ll know the vaults of the Banco de Buckles have got very bare indeed (which may be sometime towards the end of this year).
Anyway, as an expression of my ongoing affection for Mojo I came up with these extended jingholes in the style of Beck (circa Odelay) and The Fall (with M.E.Smith’s more recent growling vocal style, although I can’t pretend the music is too similar). They’re on the Mojo website but I thought I’d make them keep-able here.
Rooty toot!
love Adam 16th September 2008
April 4, 2007
INTERVIEW NEWS
O RUSSELL’S WIG & B3TA INTERVIEW
Well, it’s been a few days and I’ve digested David O Russell and his wig. I don’t think there’s much I can add to the whole thing other than to say it’s a little disappointing to find that maybe his fall out with George Clooney on the set of Three Kings was more down to him than Clooney who I was much more excited about disliking (especially after trying to stay awake through Goodnight And Good Luck having been told by everyone how AMAZING and IMPORTANT it was. Jesus of Christmas!) But hey, everyone’s allowed to blow their wig once in a while, right? Especially when they’re dealing with actors who can be the most infuriatingly obtuse people at the exact point a director needs them to just do the job they’re being paid a lot of money to do, which sometimes comes down to just doing what you’re told even though it may ‘go against your instincts’. (Here’s more Huckabees friction from Tomlin to illustrate although she seems cool enough about it all now). I guess if you’re going to go all nutty at them it’s best not be filmed doing it is the thing. David O Russell is great though. I wasn’t a massive fan of Huckabees but Three Kings is just about perfect for my money. He can call me a cunt any time.
Anyway, I’ve just been answering a string of ludicrous questions sent to me by Rob Manuel of B3TA who have been kind enough to feature a few of my You Tube clips in the past so I thought I’d post the full screed here for you as a kind of pathetic exclusive with the only person who’ll give me an interview! Just before that though, in the course of plugging our Coke podcasts for this I was checking the link and noticed that beneath the little biog thing they have for us are these LOVES and HATES:
Loves: 100 greatest’ TV shows.
Hates: The industry, the establishment, the man. Jamie Theakston.
Presumably someone was being ironic but just in case there’s any confusion we do not in any way love 100 Greatest TV Shows and if we were really the kind of people who proclaimed our hatred for ‘the industry, the establishment and the man’ we probably wouldn’t be doing a podcast for Coca Cola. Also neither of us has anything against Jamie Theakston at all. While we’re clearing up misconceptions that are threatening to plunge the world into deeper turmoil, I like and admire Leigh Francis of Bo Selecta fame very much.
OK, let’s move on to this important interview, which is made up from questions posed by the users of B3TA. As an exercise in pointless time wasting I tried to answer every single question I was sent. Thank fuck I’m not in a band. If I had to do this kind of thing more than once a year I’d be on heroin like a shot!
B3TA INTERVIEW
NOW
Who pays more? The BBC or C4? (Lanc)
Unless you get more than about 4 million viewers for any one thing you do, TV doesn’t pay that well anywhere, especially these days. Advertising, now that’s different…
What have you been doing for the last 10 years? (Hummel)
Hiding from you.
What was it like working with Armando Iannucci? (connor)
I didn’t see him that often as most of my Time Trumpet bits I did on my own in my studio, but on the days when we had meetings or we were shooting the talking heads stuff, he was scrupulously polite, funny, encouraging and well groomed. I like him very much.
How is YouTube changing the process of getting comedy on TV? (Monty Propps)
Now they can steal all their ideas from just one place. I’m joking! The best way to get people in television excited about something is to just make it yourself so they can see what you’re on about. Then if you can put it up somewhere like You Tube it means they don’t have to go to all the effort of unwrapping a package, reading your crap letter and loading a tape or a DVD (which often won’t work in their shit old machines). Now of course it’s a question of whether it needs to be on TV at all. There’s all sorts of financial opportunities opening up on the net for people making their own stuff and TV is looking more and more like an unnecessary headache fraught with compromise and unhelpful second guessing. It still seems somehow more legitimate though doesn’t it?
Did your mainly student audience grow with you? Or are you now making comedy for another lot of poncy student grant types? (mongychops)
Don’t know about that. People that come to my gigs or say hello in the street are either my age or about 18. They’re never poncy though and I can’t tell if they have grants. They deserve them.
Do you use YouTube for material you know you’d never be able to clear, copyright-wise, if it were on a traditional TV channel? (Fraser)
In part, yes.
How long did it take to learn the words to ‘Help the Police’? (pep)
3 days.
Are you really like that dad in the car (you are, aren’t you?) (pep)
Yes.
Do you feel insulted when… I say that I thought Jimmy Carr played Tim Messenger in Hot Fuzz? (Palmer the person )
Not in the least. Jimmy has always commented on our round faced similarities. I’m a little less successful and a little rounder in the face, but it I’d rather people mistake me for him than oh I dunno, Hitler.
Has Joe Cornish turned into a bitter and twisted hermit due to your new lease of fame? (prodigy69)
Is this my new lease of fame? Could you tell me when the lease runs out? I think Joe now owns his fame so he’s certainly not jealous of my lease.
Want to pimp your latest project? Then pimp it here – hard. (Rob)
Project pimping, hmmm. Well it would be great if people would check out our Coke podcasts on I-tunes or the [Coke Music website] but apart from that I’m working on a couple of things which I’ll be able to say more about when they’re more advanced. If people are interested the best place to find out more is my blog.
GENERAL
Who the bloody hell are you? (Much easier than checking wikipedia) (god save the queen)
Just a man. With a man’s courage.
Should we be more concerned that Google are trying to take over the world? (Prof Undercover)
They’ve asked me to be king of quite a large part of it, so yes, I think you should be very concerned because I’m going to be a very bad king.
What would you mostly likely have ended up as if the funny thing didn’t work out? (Prof Undercover)
Glad you think it’s worked out. I would have carried on being a bartender. Still might go back to it. It’s a fun job. Have you seen Cocktail? That’s exactly what it’s like.
Do you sleep with your beard over or under the covers? (Afinkawan)
I’m clean shaven at the mo. When it was giant it lay above the covers in it’s own little sleeping bag.
Aren’t you old Westminsters? How did school affect your humour? (The Alchemist)
When you get there they inject you with a cocktail of hauteur and self hate. It’s a delicious blend, which informs a lot of what we do.
Tell us what Dido was like at school? (Rob)
She was a few years below us and anyway, if she was blonde and sexy she wouldn’t have given us the time of day. Giles Coren (of Times restaurant critic and channel 5 film show fame) was a contemporary of ours though and he was a twat for a long while, but then he went nice and we got to be friends. I was a twat too mind. Other old Westminsters include synth pop pioneer Thomas Dolby, scandal prone education secretary Ruth Kelly, Bush ponce /Gwen Stefani foil Gavin Rossdale and genius drunky Shane McGowan (who was expelled unsurpsingly). See? The world’s full of public school wankers. We’re not so bad!
What about Louis Theroux? (brianftang)
He’s a very old friend. He was always annoyingly clever but very funny. You can see footage of him from those days in the extras on our Adam & Joe DVD. He was always one of those people you knew was going to do alright.
What’s the most ridiculous bit of trivia you know? (Afinkawan)
Robbie Williams
Would you ever go on Big Brother? Why? (pep)
Don’t think so. It’s evil. Didn’t you know?
Will you lend me £10? (the RAND corporation)
Surely that’s the oldest thing you can put as a question in one of these things. If you’re genuinely in trouble, I’ll see what I can do.
Who’s your favourite comedian/comedy show? (mofaha)
I’m sort of obsessed with the Boosh and Snuff Box right now. All that lot are hard to beat in my book. Tony Law makes me really laugh. Joanna Neary. Vic and Bob, Harry Enfield, oh you know, the usual people. I’ve just got a DVD of this Irish show called Soupy Norman which is a Polish soap that was re-edited and re-voiced by Barry Murphy and Mark Doherty, a couple of legendary Irish comics who did some stuff for Time Trumpet (they did the Dragon’s Den stuff). It’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in a very long time and it’s in 10 minute chunks so if someone hasn’t put it on You Tube yet, it has to be a matter of time before they do.
What music do you like ? (connor)
Indie/arty pop mainly but a bit of everything really. Pixies, Bowie, Frank Black, Tortoise, Eels, Kings Of Leon, Built To Spill, Guided By Voices, Travis, James Brown, Radiohead, Jim Noir, Guillemots, Yo La Tengo, Beach Boys, The Shins, The Fall, Sparks, Beatles, Dylan, Eno, Talking Heads, Magazine, Spoon, Silver Jews, lots and lots! I wish I was a great musician more than anything.
What websites do you visit obsessively ? (connor)
Don’t really visit any one obsessively but Graham Linehan’s blog is always interesting as is Fat Pies.
What nerdy thing did you do recently ? (connor)
I went to a BBC ‘talent’ dinner last night and sat round the table were, Harry Enfield, Paul Whitehouse, Dara O’Brien, the bloke from Top Gear who nearly died, Paul Merton, Jack Dee, Mitchell & Webb, Ian Hislop, Graham Norton, Dom from Dick’n'Dom, Claudia Winkleman and a load of other well known faces. I waited til everyone was pretty pissed then got out my camera and starting snapping away until I started to get weird looks and one of the waiters came over and asked me to stop. I think he thought I’d sneaked in. Is that nerdy enough? Maybe it’s just uncool.
Why the hell did you grow a beard? (P3te)
- To help me ‘get into character’ for my Edinburgh show in 2005
- To see if I could
- To hide my double chin.
Daddy or chips? (SkUG)
Fuck Daddy. Fuck chips.
Have you ever smeared Marmite over your face and pretended to be a badger? (ShittingBabies)
Nice name there ‘ShittingBabies’. Is that an old Navajo moniker? I think you know I haven’t smeared Marmite on my face and pretended to be a badger. You’re just working some kind of angle aren’t you?
Have you ever raced midgets? (ShittingBabies)
You again? What’s your angle?! Should I pretend I have raced Midgets? Would that make me look good? Would you be happy about it? Where can it all go?
Have you ever worn womens underwear? (Sticky Label)
Yes.
What’s the meaning of life? (connor)
If you’re looking for it on the internet you’re in for a frustrating trek.
Where do babies come from? (ShittingBabies)
Oh Christ. Amazon. Is that the right answer?
I caught my penis in my zipper before a school play once. What have you done to your penis? (ShittingBabies)
What is this, a zany private audience with ShittingBabies? Yes I caught my knob in my fly too. It really hurt. Now what?
Batman or Superman? (I bet it’s Batman) (mofaha)
Bad betting there mofaha. It’s Superman.
Do you find ginger people aborent? (KaiserPro)
Some very disappointing spelling here chaps, come on buck up! Finding ginger people abhorrent is like finding David Hasselhoff kitsch and amusing. A bad use of time.
What did you want to do when you were younger? (Palmer the person )
I wanted to be either an astronaut, a corner shop owner or a gynaecologist. True.
How would he have made the Star Wars Prequels good? (HappyToast)
Who’s ‘he’? George Lucas? Well he should have got people like me and Jimmy Carr to do cameos in them. Then they would have been amazing! Justin Lee Collins would have made a brilliant Chewie come to think of it. It’s all in the casting.
Should Gillian McKeith be destroyed? (Watney Heckbulb uhnnnnnnnn)
Maybe not destroyed but sequestered certainly.
Do you know Dom Jolly? Is he as big a prick as I imagine? (Prof Undercover)
Don’t really know him. I’m told he’s alright.
How many pillows do you like to sleep with? (Letum)
Can’t believe you bothered to type that question and I’m bothering to reply. Isn’t the internet amazing!? I sleep with one pillow.
Have you ever thrown dog poo into your neighbour’s garden? (The Neville)
Fuck dogs. Fuck poo. Fuck neighbours and Fuck gardens. Is that unequivocal enough for you?
If you could have one thing in the entire world named after you, what would it be? And why? (The Neville)
Ricky Gervais. Then everyone would think I was a genius.
How do you get your spring water tasting so watery? (Count Vanderhoff)
Yeah.
What were the best and worst nicknames you ever got given? (Afinkawan)
BEST: Let me see… on a good day I used to get called Genius Boy, Rimshot Masterclass, Fiery Apollo 5000, The Lazer Briefcase, Jimmy Bignutz, Harrison Ford, Cleverhandsome or Jesus Strength. WORST: On a bad day it would be either Failure Face, Shitlamp, The Ugly Man, Shit On Face, Shithair, Dogshit Face & Neck, Fat Queer or Shit Instead Of Head. I think some of the names came from the fact that I had a bit of shit near my head in those days. Kids can be cruel.
Tell us a joke? (rob)
Fuck jokes.
ADAM AND JOE
Who’s got this biggest penis? You or Joe? (ShittingBabies)
ShittingBabies, back with the hard-hitting questions again. I’ve never seen Joe’s winky but he tells me it’s large. I’m medium/large so I guess Joe has the edge.
Tell us about the disturbed cat featured in the adam and joe show intro? (mofaha)
If you’re nerdy enough to be asking me about disturbed cats you should be nerdy enough to know we did a different title sequence for each series so I’m not sure which one would have featured the cat in question. Doesn’t ring any bells though, sorry.
Whose star wars figures did you use for the Adam and Joe show? (ShittingBabies)
Those were mine. My Ma saved them in the attic all those years, along with many of the old toys that we exploited so relentlessly on the show. Good old Ma.
Was the piss up in the brewery the single greatest dare ever pulled off? (ShittingBabies)
Piss Up In A Brewery was one of our slightly better stunts/pranks. It’s not exactly world class as far as daring goes though is it? Dick & Dom kicked our ass many times on that front.
Who was the giver, Adam or Joe Cornish? (Bats)
Is this an anal sex question? I bet you’re straight, right Bats? Why do straight men LOVE chatting about bottom sex so much more than any gay man I’ve ever met? But maybe this is not a bottom question but a charity question. If so, I’m the giver. And if not.
What’s your favourite song you’ve made? Mine was the Jazz Queens! (ShittingBabies)
Jazz Queens was a good one, glad you like it. I personally think the Robert De Niro Calypso takes some beating. I could listen to that one for pleasure.
Should Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad Dad stand for parliament? (ShittingBabies)
That would be deeply depressing. I know I wasn’t supposed to take that question seriously but I suddenly did.
What was the greatest idea put forward that you weren’t allowed to use? (Neon Blue)
Well we pretty much used everything we ever came up with, didn’t you notice? I always wanted to leave a bike unattended and film from a distance as some shitbird went to steal it then I’d jump out and confront them, but that idea got over-ruled every time I brought it up for being too lame and pointless. Then a few years later there was a show called SWAG on Channel 5 that did exactly that. And it was lame and pointless.
What’s Baaad Dad up to nowadays, and how did he cope with the fame? (jme)
He lives by the Sussex Downs where he enjoys walking and drinking expensive booze. He loves it when he gets recognised. He calls me up and tells me all about it every time.
Has george lucas ever demanded royalties? or made any other comments about your old starwars toy sketches? (mutated monty)
No. The closest we came to hearing from the Lucas camp was when we passed on a tape of some of our Star Wars toy things to Rick McCallum (producer of the prequels who used to frequent a shop run by a friend of ours). He told our friend that George had seen them and thought we were ‘crazy’. The question is, did he mean crazy-brilliant or crazy-nutty or just crazy-unhappy? Or was it the more likely crazy-what-a-pair-of-twats? Whichever way he wasn’t feeling litigious about it.
Would you come round my house and record an episode of “Vinly Justice” starring me an’ my record collection? (The Neville)
That’s just not practical The Neville. Plus I used to hate doing those things anyway. Only Stereolab and Frank Black ever made us feel properly welcome. Otherwise it was invariably awkward and uncomfortable (mainly our fault for invading their real houses, dressing up like freaks and doing bad comedy copper voices). Actually Cerys Matthews was very nice too. And Gary Numan. The rest of them were cunts. Except for Nick Heyward and Neil Hannon. And Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci. OK, it was just Dave Navarro who was a cunt. And Dweezil Zappa (Ahmet and Moon Unit were nice). Ray Manzarek was bit of a toolkit too. Mark E Smith started off being nice then went cunty for a while then went back to being nice. It was stressful though. I can’t go through all that again, not even for you The Neville.
March 28, 2006
INTERVIEW, MARCH 2006
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF ADAM BUXTON
This is a piece I wrote last week for a local magazine that’s due to be published in a month or so. I hope they don’t mind if I put it up here first. I suspect that there won’t be a disastrous slackening of sales if I do.
7:00am
I’m woken by the sound of the baby monitor crackling to life as my 3 and a half year old son Frank starts talking loudly to whichever Bionicle is sharing his bad at that moment. “Hello Vazok. Did you sleep alright? Did you have bad dreams about a scary man? You shouldn’t be scared. You could easily kill that man until he’s completely dead. I love you Vazok†etc. My wife gets him and his younger brother up and gives them their breakfast while I lie in bed. Sometimes I feel guilty that she always does the morning routine and I never do, but she seems to really love it and I’m just not prepared to take that joy away from her. Plus I have some of my best ideas lying in bed in a semi conscious stupor.
Just today I came up with a new show set in a lighthouse. I would be the lighthouse keeper and I would have an army of tiny humorous creatures who live beneath the lighthouse and help me present the show, which could incorporate all kinds of surreal and hilarious items! This is an amazingly good idea and I would not have had it if I’d been changing nappies at 7am instead of lying face down on my pillow.
8:30am
In the bath I realise that my idea is Fraggle Rock. My wife goes to work and leaves our youngest son with our nanny while I take Frank to school on my bike. He likes the bike so much that he insists I use it even if it’s raining quite heavily. I don’t mind because it’s so enjoyable listening to him singing and crapping on to Vazok behind me as I peddle. It’s a very good way to start the day.
9:30am
Back home I have my breakfast whilst reading music magazines. Some of the pieces in Mojo and The Word are so well written, I don’t feel as worried as perhaps I should that they constitute the main part of my literary diet. Bad music journalism (of which there is a lot of course) makes me want to kill not only the journalist responsible but myself and the bands they’re writing about too. Maybe I’m taking it too seriously which I shouldn’t because I hate it when other people get dogmatic about music. Why would you want to bring the ultimate artform down to the level of politics or sport or religion? Discussing music is enjoyable but spitting contempt at people for their musical taste is a drag.
10:00am
By this time I’m usually in my studio, which is a glorified shed at the bottom of the garden. Here I turn on the computer and check my e-mails. Nothing. I never get anything until at least 10:30 when my agent gets in. If I’m lucky I’ll get a few offers to increase the girth of my winky, or fraudulent requests to confirm bank details but that’s it.
10:30am
Check my e-mails again. Could this be the day that Larry David’s people have finally got in touch with my agent having had a tape of some of my stuff passed on by some Hollywood Brit? No, it could not. If there are any e-mails from my agent they’ll go something like this:
Hi Adam. Any interest? Please see below
Dear Jenny,
I’m writing with regard to the availability of Adam Buxton for Telly Bestest! (I made this show up!) an exciting new project currently in production for Channel 4. Tottymax Films (I invented this name!) have been commissioned to create an 8 hour programme featuring clips from some of the greatest programmes ever shown on TV and we think Adam Buxton would be perfect to sit in a dimly lit bar and pretend he remembers them. I should stress this is not just another 100 Greatest show! Telly Bestest (made up!) will feature over 500 clips and interviews with every important person ever born so if Adam Buxton refuses to take part, he’ll look like a dick!
Yours truly, Tina Foogash (invented name!)
11:00am
After I’ve replied to all my exciting requests I take some time to get some other miserable tasks out of the way. Every day several joyless hours are devoted to at least one of the following: bill or tax paying, clothes washing, computer upgrades or malfunctions. I reckon these are the things that really make people want to be rich and famous. I’m pretty sure that George Clooney seldom spends soul-mincing hours on the phone to a helpline trying to configure his modem. I’m sure he has to do other soul-mincing things but I bet it’s glamorous mincing!
There’s also the weekly trip to Sainsburys. I pretend to my wife that this is a massive chore but I actually look forward to it. I swish through the aisles alone, listening to music and feeling on the verge major creative breakthroughs. By the time I’m at the checkout, as well as far too much pitta bread I’ve got at least 3 ideas for amazing new films or TV shows!
1:00pm
Back home I realise once again that I’ve thought of 3 very slight variations on Fraggle Rock. I eat my lunch and flick through satellite channels in the hope of seeing something that might be useful, either for a sketch or for the radio show I do with Joe on Xfm wherein we spend a lot of time talking about film and TV. I try to record everything I’m watching for that reason but it means I have hundreds of crudely labelled DVD’s lying around my shed, which I’ll probably never watch again.
3:00pm
Collect Frank from school. However fruitless my day has been up to this point the sight of Frank hopping up and down delightedly when he sees me is enough to make me feel perfectly happy.
4:00pm
In the afternoon I might have a meeting or two. These usually take the form of an hour of excited chatter with someone from a production company about a project that will never happen, either because it turns out I’m too busy or we realise it’s Fraggle Rock or more often than not it simply ‘goes away’.
This is a phrase I hear a lot when I ask how something is coming along. “Oh, didn’t you hear? It went away†Where did it go? “It just went awayâ€. I’m never quite sure if this means they changed their minds about using me, or lost enthusiasm, or maybe just forgot. I’m just as bad though. I have sketchbooks lightly stuffed with ideas I was once very excited about that ‘went away’. The thing that makes very successful people different is that they refuse to let anything get away it seems to me, especially in TV where most ideas are so thin that unless you feed them up immediately the slightest gust of indecision sends them floating off.
Perhaps that’s why I often end up working alone. I can set my own pace, do things the way I want them done and there’s only my enthusiasm levels to maintain. Most of the time it’s great fun to be sat at my computer playing with bits of footage or writing short sketches or stand up material but I look forward to getting involved with something more substantial that forces me to work with other people again. Ditch digging perhaps. I’ve got some great ideas for ditches. I need to line up a meeting and pitch some ditch.
7:30pm
Unless I’m doing a gig or filming (both fairly rare) I shut down my computer and head upstairs to read to the boys before they go to sleep. This is one of my favourite parts of the day unless they’ve been watching TV in which case we have to nurse them through the withdrawal when the set is switched off. It’s frightening to see how nutty it makes them but I have to be careful not be too hypocritical. I have after all made a living out of watching a lot of crap TV for a while now. The main thing I try to explain to them is that too much crap TV leads to apathy, lardiness and in extreme cases Gillian McKeith, and nobody wants that.
9:00pm
What I don’t explain is that as soon as they’re sleeping soundly the TV goes right back on so me and my wife can trawl the filthy airwaves for a couple of hours before bed. To stop us going completely mental we try to have at least one good show on DVD that we know we can fall back on. At the moment it’s This Life but in the past many happily vegetative hours have been spent in front of 24, The Shield, ER and best of all The Sopranos which really is the kind of show that makes you believe that TV is the best medium going. Having said that, Celebrity Big Brother this year came pretty close too. If only they’d set it in a lighthouse with me as the lighthouse keeper and added even more hilarious creatures, it would have been just about perfect.
END
Adam Buxton 20/03/06
July 29, 2005
The Times: Adam’s Big Adventure (25 July 2005)
July 25, 2005
Edinburgh
Adam’s big adventure
Dominic Maxwell
Our new comedy critic finds one half of Adam and Joe is looking beyond television to the single life of the Fringe
NEXT WEEK, scores of young comedians will make their annual pilgrimage to the Edinburgh Fringe. All of them will be out to sell tickets and get laughs; some will even nurture fantasies of making their money back. And most will deem their wildest dreams to have come true if they come home with a deal to make their own Friday night Channel 4 show.
So, you have to wonder: why is Adam Buxton going to Edinburgh to make his debut as a live character comic, when he’s already the veteran of four seasons of Channel 4’s cult Friday night hit The Adam and Joe Show? “I’m doing my career in reverse,” he beams, his mouth a short bus ride behind the outrageous beard he’s been growing for the show since December. “Next year, I’m hoping to get a job in a bar. Year after that, maybe wash some tables.”
The truth, shame to say, is a little more prosaic. It’s four years since he and his schoolfriend Joe Cornish made their final Adam and Joe Show. After four seasons of digicam digs at pop-cultural staples — the film spoofs acted out by toys; the rubbishing of celebrities’ record collections — Channel 4 pulled the plug. More recently, Buxton’s TV sitcom, the excellent if downbeat The Last Chancers, was left on the shelf for a year before leaking on to the box just before Christmas. It has not been recommissioned. So to get his homemade parodies and wild personas to an audience, he’s decided that he has to go live. “Edinburgh is something I’ve been wanting to do for ages,” he says. “I used to watch that show Edinburgh or Bust!, which followed comics taking their shows to the Fringe, and think, That’s not very good, I can do better than that!
“And seeing that I’m not doing any TV stuff — cos I called a moratorium on presenting work two years ago, in the hope I would do more acting, but actually the acting failed to materialise, though obviously it’s about to go BALLISTIC! — I thought I’d go to Edinburgh, see if this character had legs, and also get to show all the video stuff I’ve been doing.”
The character in question is Pavel, a very hairy, very pretentious East European animator. Pavel makes alarmingly avant-garde cartoons full of abstract shapes and jarring sounds — the sort of thing that used to play in two-minute bursts on BBC Two. And as the outlandish animator tells his ludicrous life story — from troubled beginnings as the only child of a clown and a strongwoman, to troubled endings as a lubricious lecturer at a London art school — character comedy blends with Buxton’s lovingly assembled pre-recorded videos.
“I know I’m going to get some stick for using so many props,” says Buxton. “People will go: that’s not what Edinburgh’s about, it should be one man and his mike! But there’s lots of other men and their mikes. I’m sure there’s room for something like this.”
The something like this includes a video of his 2-year-old son Frankie in his cot, playing a TV executive who will commission shows only if they star Jimmy Carr. Pavel, like Buxton, is a victim of the rigid formatting required in a competitive multichannel universe. And then there’s the extended Star Trek farting sequence — far better than it sounds, thankfully — suggested by his director, David Sant. But Buxton is a little worried what his script adviser, Graham Linehan — co-creator of Father Ted — will make of the show’s flatulent new direction.
“Graham hasn’t seen the fart material yet. He’ll go: ‘Oh, Adam. . .’ Graham’s a real — not a fascist exactly, but he’s a real comedy scientist. Which is the opposite of me. I shamble my way through, and he goes, ‘More jokes! More jokes!’ I’m not used to thinking about jokes as such. Edinburgh is all about seeing if I can make a fist of these things.”
Newcomer though he is, Buxton’s TV fame means he won’t be eligible for the Perrier Award. At the age of 36, he’s nobody but a desperate commissioning editor’s idea of over-the-hill. He and Cornish would love to make more Adam and Joe Shows, given the chance, but Buxton knows that he needs somehow to make his name — again — in a TV comedy culture in which content counts for little unless you can sell it in a catchphrase.
“I was supposed to audition for a couple of sketch shows earlier this year. Then I heard that they didn’t want me because I was too big a name. And I thought, ‘Since when was I too big a name?’ I’m too big for Channel 4, but not so big that they’ll hire me! I seem to have fallen between two stools in a very frustrating way.”
Hence some big hopes for Edinburgh, albeit moderated by the knowledge that it all might come to nothing. “I know that people will poke holes in it: ‘What’s the point of Adam Buxton, I thought we’d got rid of his annoying student antics and here he is again.’ And I’m worried that I’ll come out thinking, Why did I do all that? Why haven’t I spent the past nine months trying to get a proper job on TV?”
So if you can get past Pavel’s preposterous accent, he has rather a lot in common with his creator. Both are creative types who insist on doing things on their own terms (“though I might be less choosy about my TV work if I stopped getting voiceovers”). Both believe in untrammelled artistry — albeit, in Buxton’s case, in a populist form. “I’m an ex-art school guy,” he says. “I love the idea of all these people going up to Edinburgh and trying things out. Exposing themselves. I’m quite a pretentious sort of person at heart.”
# I, Pavel is at the Pleasance Courtyard (0131-556 6550) from Aug 3