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
January 28, 2008
SAVE THE RHINO (& MY EGO)
I’m glad last week’s over. I spent most of it feeling thoroughly deflated. Mentally that is. Physically I look and feel as if I’ve had a compressed air pump shoved up me.
Last Monday’s Save The Rhino gig at The Comedy Store went well and a good time was had by all. I’d asked to be first on as I was keen to get back home early, but it was fun seeing people like Tom Basden, Dan Clark, & Noel Fielding backstage before the gig and after I’d done my 10 minutes of Famous Guy (which went down fine I thought) I decided to hang out and keep chatting as well as catching the other performers (including Paul Kerensa, Jack Whitehall, Vicky Frango and MC John Fothergill, all very good indeed). I’ve been sat in my nutty room doing radio bits and pieces and going slightly mental for the last few weeks so it was great to get out and see some nice people. Thanks to all of you who came along. It was very good meeting those of you who said hello.
Here’s a pic of Famous Guy in off duty gear (taken by Alex Sudea). Usually I would do this character dressed in a flight suit, as if he’d just come from the set of one of his exciting films (you’ll see a clip in my MeeBOX pilot, transmission date still pending) but I wanted to try out some new bits for which his regular clothes would be more appropriate. In the end I ran out of time and ended up doing the usual stuff.
In this pic, Tom Basden and his guitar, backstage at The Comedy Store. Noel in background revising. If you haven’t properly investigated Tom’s sometime comedy family ‘Cowards’, you really should. They’re the real deal.
Here we see the charming Paul Kerensa, Dan Clark (who has his own series coming up on BBC3), Adam Buxton (who wishes he had his own series on BBC3) Noel Fielding (who practically owns BBC3) & the ludicrously young and talented Jack Whitehall.
Despite all the rhino saving fun and bonhomie I woke up the next day feeling inexplicably blue. During the afternoon my agent called to say I’d been bumped from Thank God You’re Here, the ITV improv show on which I was due to appear last weekend (Saturday 26th Jan). There was a clause in my contract for the show saying I shouldn’t discuss my appearance as it was supposed to be a surprise for the audience or something but it turned out I was listed as a guest on their website for a couple of weeks before I was due to appear and was there still on the weekend.
My Ma left a message saying she’d seen I was going to be on the prog and was very excited as she ‘d watched it before and thought I’d be good. I was excited too! I think I might have done a decent job! Someone at ITV didn’t agree and I was booted in favour of bigger names. The people from the production company were very nice about it indeed but it’s always hard in these situations not to feel like a kind of pathetic loser. I spent much of last week trying not to imagine someone from ITV bursting into the production offices and yelling, as if in a scene from Moving Wallpaper: “you booked Adam Buxton?! I had to fucking Google him to remind myself who the fuck he fucking is!! Did you see him on Have I Got News For You?! We don’t want people to instantly fall asleep for fucks sake! Get me Vernon Kaye immediately!” SLAM! (That’s them storming out in my mind). I had to phone my Ma and break the news.
I spent the rest of last week trawling through our first 10 or so 6 Music shows to find stuff we might include in a possible extra podcast in addition to specially recorded bits (which was how we did our Xfm podcasts). That did nothing to lift my spirits. I hate listening to myself unedited! Part of the reason we did the Xfm podcasts was so we could have something that wasn’t just unedited chunks of rambly crap, which is fine if it’s in the context of a live show with music and all, but not so great for a podcast. There’s a totally different feel to stuff that Joe and I do when it’s not a live show and we can be more offhand safe in the knowledge that the really worthless bits can be chopped (more for my benefit than Joe’s who’s much happier off the cuff than I). However now that the 6 Music podcast is out there (the condensed version of our Saturday morning can be found here) it seems a little superfluous to have another one. We’ll see.
To compound my state of self absorbed mania I spent far too long on my Net Piracy song for last week’s Song Wars. At one point it was well over 3 and a half minutes and I was way too into it! It was my Smile! I have to confess I was pleased with my final song and I cycled into town for our 6 Music show on Saturday morning feeling upbeat. However, I’m ashamed to say my merciless drubbing for the previous week’s Instructional Songs For Children got to me and I’m afraid lost it a little bit. Of course the thing to do in the face of a humiliating defeat is to buck up your ideas and plough on (this is jolly Britain after all!!!) but I suddenly had a vision of myself a few months from now having done nothing but try in vain to beat Joe at Song Wars. My wife would have left me and taken the children, the BBC would have laughed off the idea of commissioning a show from me and I’d be sat in a room rocking back and forth listening to my Frozen Meatballs song over and over and wondering why no one had voted for me. And I’d look like…
So as of this week Song Wars is on sabbatical. But the weekend still had one more ego bruising biff to deliver. When I got home and checked my e-mails I saw that I’d been sent a link for a review of the Rhino gig by Evening Standard comedy critic Bruce Dessau. You can read it here. He seemed to have mentioned every performer that night except me! What was that all about?! Thanks James from London for pointing out the fact below the review (I appreciate it even if you’re my Mum or my agent masquerading as an audience member) but it wasn’t enough to stop me e-mailing Mr Dessau to ask if there was a special reason he blanked me…
I hasten to add that I would never think to question or complain about a shitty review but in my post-bump paranoid state, I was just genuinely curious to establish whether it was an oversight or a more pointed omission. He would have had every right to ignore me but he replied very quickly explaining that his main aim that night was to review Noel Fielding and had only mentioned a few of the other acts in passing. He pointed out that I was not the only person he hadn’t mentioned as well, which on closer inspection was true. Of course it’s a shame he didn’t think enough of Famous Guy include a reference to it, but that’s entirely his prerogative. I’m just lucky he didn’t blacklist me for e-mailing him like a total psychopath. Jesus, what a week.
I’m hoping this one will be a little jollier (as long as nothing I’ve written here gets me into trouble somehow!) I’m very much looking forward to BUG 05 on Thursday. I’m very glad to say it’s sold out so apologies if you were unable to get tickets, but if there had only been 6 people there I think they would have witnessed a full scale ego collapse of the sort normally reserved for Amy Winehouse gigs, except without the amazing talent.
Pipples!
Love Adam, 28th January 2008
PS. Halfway through series 2 of Battlestar Galactica and it’s getting good now. I’ve already had death threats after calling it ‘fracking rubbish’ on the show last weekend. It’s just Mary McDonnell’s brave, sad smile I can’t handle. Still at least she’s done for. Hang on a second, what’s Baltar doing with that half Cylon, half human blood?! No you moron, no! Oh Christs. She’s smiling her brave sad smile again…
October 28, 2007
CONSUMER NEWS (SOME CHRISTMAS PRESENT IDEAS)!
Hello phantom friends. Today’s post is going to be a little like a consumer guide in a glossy magazine for thick men or half-witted women. Funnily enough Joe and myself have been offered the job of writing just such a column a few times and we’ve been tempted because we’re both a bit thick and we both like free stuff, but usually we come to our senses before the contract is signed. Anyway, today amongst all the other self regarding eyewash, I’m going to impart to you some top purchasing tips which have improved the quality of my life in recent years. I should stress that no money has changed hands for these endorsements (although if any of the companies involved would like to just send me some free things and/or money, that would be fine). These are just UK based companies I’ve stumbled across who in my experience provide an excellent and efficient service and sell stuff that isn’t a total rip. I like getting these kinds of recommendations from friends so I thought you might dig it too. Plus it’s Christmas in about 15 minutes isn’t it!
CAVEAT!
If any of these recommendations don’t turn out as well for you as they did for me, I’m sorry but please resist the temptation to tell me about it in great detail. As much as I’d like to be, I’m simply not Nicky Campbell.
6 MUSIC AND DIGITAL RADIOS!
Thanks if you tuned in to our first Saturday morning show on BBC 6 Music. We’re there for the next year (!) from 9-12 every Saturday so if you haven’t already, invest in some kind of DAB radio and plunge into the superior world of digital listening! I get many of my electronicals from Stone Audio here. They deliver the quickest of anyone I’ve used on line for this kind of thing and they send you e-mails written by actual humans with real names if your product is out of stock so you can select an alternative. If you’re after a digital radio I’d go for a Tivoli DAB or for a lovely sounding, compact i-pod speaker/radio (although this one’s NOT digital) may I recommend the Tivoli Audio Model PAL (Portable Audio Laboratory) Radio. Many of my close friends have received one of these as a birthday present over the years and they always go down a treat.
Of course if you just want to listen again to our 6 Music shows you can do so from their website here. As the weeks wear on I hope we’ll get round to providing the BBC webfolks with some more recent pics. It would be nice if we were still as fresh faced as the fairly ancient photos on the site suggest, but it’s probably best for all of us if we simply come to terms with the older, jowlier versions. Isn’t ageing terrific!?
As we mentioned on the show yesterday we haven’t yet nailed down the details of the podcast situation but we’re thinking along the lines of doing a monthly digest featuring the best of the Saturday morning shows as well as a good few specially recorded nuggets where we can be a little more free wheeling than we might be on air. I’ll keep you posted.
BOOK NEWS!
A while back I went for a meeting at Faber & Faber who were interested in hearing any book ideas I had. Days later however I got the commission for my BBC3 pilot MeeBOX which has taken up most of my time since so my literary pretentions had to be popped on the bookshelf for a while. Shame though cos I had some great ideas for books.
10,000 THINGS THAT ARE SOOO CRAP
This would be just a long list of things that I think are crap. Mainly I would just write them all down in no particular order without even really justifying why I thought they were crap. Every now and then there would be a childish drawing of one of the things I thought was crap but it wouldn’t even be on the same page as the thing it corresponded to. Here are some of the things that would be in there: Trees (so crap!) Bad Food (yuck!) Metal (the point anyone?) Fish (hate them!) and the letter ‘p’ (Piss off!) You get the idea. There would also be a tie in TV show. In fact I think I’m going to make it and put it in MeeBOX as a clip.
RAPPER MOUSE
This would be a children’s book based on a story that I made up for my sons one time. There’s a mouse and he wants to be a rapper. He’s called MC Mouse. The book would be cute but also streetwise and there’d be a lot of quite rude jokes that would go over the kids heads. I would illustrate it myself to ensure that I got more money, even though the illustrations would be embarrassingly poor. The kids won’t mind, have you seen how crap their drawings are? Anything looks like genius to them. There would also be a tie in movie and of course an album both of which would also be sub par.
I WAS BULLIED AT SCHOOL
A very slim collection of memories from my school days when I was often bullied. I would make it sound as if the bullying was very bad although it was actually fairly low level. I would leave out the times when I was a bit of a bully myself, or maybe I’d mention those times but make it sound as if I learned some valuable lessons. Perhaps I’d even track down some of the people that bullied me and the people I bullied. Has someone done this already? Fuckit, I’ll do it again but it’ll be different cos I’ve got a different name. Again, could also be a TV series.
ADAM BUXTON’S POLAROIDS OF COCKS
I travel the world at great expense for a year taking pictures of people’s penises with a Polaroid camera then put them in a book. Some of them are famous people, others are just ordinary people, some of them are homeless etc. What do their cocks say about their lives? You decide. I’d do cocks first as I’m not gay so it would appear that prurience was not my primary motivation. A year later I would do Adam Buxton’s Polaroids of Twats. Both would sell very well. Again, I don’t care if this has been done before, I’m doing it again with my name on it.
Unfortunately Faber & Faber tend to concentrate on slightly different kinds of books but I bet I could talk them round. My meeting there concluded with me being given an armful of their recent publications which all turned out to be very good. Particularly entertaining were Ten Bad Dates With De Niro, a great collection of well written movie top tens for both the high brow and low brow film fan, and Simon Reynold’s excellent Rip It Up And Start Again, about post punk music from 1978 to 1984. If you like bands like Talking Heads, New Order, Devo, Pere Ubu, Orange Juice and their arty experimental pop colleagues then you will love this book. He covers the story of pretty much every single significant act from that time with enough love and enthusiasm to make you want to listen to all their stuff again, even the really quite rubbish stuff (the rubbosity of which is also acknowledged). It does for this most interestingly diverse and rewarding period of music what The World At War did for WW2! I’m telling you!
RADIO CONTROLLED PLANE NEWS!
Last Christmas my wife got a cheap looking RC plane for one of our young sons and it looked so unpromising that after the initial unwrapping euphoria it lay untried for the next few days. However on New Year’s day (surely one of the most depressing days of any year) driven to desperation by physical misery and unable to watch more frigging telly, we found the nearest field and gave it a go. It worked pretty well! It was hard to steer but Frank, aged 4, was able to keep it in the air for several satisfying minutes at a time and since then we’ve become rather skilled at making the thing do what we want. All it needed to be ready to fly was a 20 minute charge from the controller which we started as we left the house. By the time we arrived on the airfield, we were ready for takeoff!
We’ve lost a few to roofs (rooves?) and wear and tear but they’re cheap enough for it not to be the end of the world so I keeping ordering new ones and the newer models are even better. What’s more, the place I order them from, Wonderland Models delivers the next day, and again if they don’t have what you need they call you up and suggest alternatives. Along the way I’ve tried buying other similarly priced RC planes and helicopters and not one of them is as satisfyingly easy to use and hardy as these X Twin planes which have provided me and the boys with some of the most enjoyable afternoons ever. Hope they do the job for you too.
October 12, 2007
LADIES & GENTLEMEN & A&J COKE PODCAST VIDEO!
LADIES & GENTLEMEN, TONIGHT AT 10:30pm ON CHANNEL 4!
Go on watch it. I’ve no idea how Channel 4 decide which of these Comedy Showcase programmes will get a series but if you watch it and dig it and then talk to people about it and the digging of it then maybe someone at Channel 4 will overhear and be impressed. I think that’s kind of how TV works isn’t it? Surely it can’t just be the frigging ratings!
The show itself is a kind of cross between Friends and Father Ted set in Victorian times and it’s quite silly and amusing. My Mum loves it and thinks it should be a series. My Dad says he can’t imagine how anything could be less funny, but then again he’s hated pretty much every single thing I’ve ever been in on TV so that’s not a total surprise. I like it and I would love to do more so set your brainium to ‘extremely positive’ and watch the heck out of it for the team!
LAST ADAM & JOE COKE PODCAST NEWS!
After a highly enjoyable 12 month stint doing these, the 13th and final Coke podcast is now available for free download from i-tunes or the Coke website. It’s not the best but we recorded it one morning immediately after doing the breakfast show on 6 Music a while back and I was totally exhausted having been up late with vomiting children the night before, which is why I more or less just mumble in agreement between whatever Joe says then confuse myself about whether or not to continue joking about the end of the world.
We could have continued doing these podcasts for a while but we kind of want to get back to doing another one that’s more just me and Joe talking about whatever we like without the music, albeit great music(!) As I’ve said before we should have some news about when that might happen in the next week or so (honestly!) so hang in there. As far as the Coke podcasts go, I’m going to try to put together a bumper ‘best of’ without music before Christmas so I’ll let you know when that’s done. Listening back to a few of them the other night, there’s actually some fairly funny moments in there, but they could use filleting!
Thanks to Coke for having us though. We didn’t feel abused or exploited once, which was nice! Also our producer Ben Bond was amazing and very skilfully wove shows out of even the most aimless rambling some months. I really hope we get to work with him again.
A while back I said I might post some footage of us recording one of these shows so here you go. It’s an unedited chunk of us burbling in a studio off Covent Garden for podcast 11 in July of this year. Because it’s unedited you’ll notice we repeat the odd sentence a few times, not because we can’t speak, just because we’re retaking it! Also we can’t really speak. Oh, and in case you think it’s in black and white to add gravitas, I accidentally left the camera on the night vision setting so it was all sickly grey green and I thought black and white would be preferable. It’s not a rollercoaster ride of hilarity but I thought a couple of people might find it interesting. The end makes me laugh though. ‘What, you find decapitated women funny?’ said a friend who heard it. What do you say to that?
July 9, 2007
VARIOUS NEWS!
HI HO!
So much to crap on about inconsequentially, so little time to devote to it! I’m on the verge of giving up telling people about our Coke podcasts. There are now 9 of the little twats sitting there on the Coke website and on I-tunes, all featuring Joe and myself introducing music from unsigned bands and talking rubbish between the tracks as is our wont, but they haven’t exactly grabbed the nation by the joolies and gone supernova with Angela Bassett. Anyway, we recorded a couple of new shows last week (we’re aiming to make them half an hour each now!) and I filmed the sessions so I might put some of it up when the next one comes out, so you can see what our stupid faces look like when we’re coming out with our drivel. Actually, maybe I’ve talked myself out of doing that…Now, other news!
GRAHAM POOLE’S FILM NIGHT @ THE ALBANY 8PM THURSDAY 12th JULY 2007
Nick Tanner and Dave Armand have another of their comedy and short film nights at The Albany on Thursday this week and I’ll be appearing as Famous Guy once again. Details here. Amazingly I’ve actually written some new ballcrap for this character so I’ll be doing it for the first time that night! Just imagine, you could be witnessing the birth of a slice of future legendary genius that will be talked about by nerds for tedious aeons (or ‘tedaeons’)! Or it could be a lump of old cowshit. Come and find out!
Speaking of Famous Guy, I taped an appearance on the Paramount TV show Edinburgh and Beyond at the Bloomsbury Theatre the night before the 100 Club gig. I’m not sure when it’ll be on TV. It went OK but I haven’t done a TV thing in front of an audience that size before and I was a little too nervous. Also I think most of the audience was there to see Al Murray (the show’s host), for which they can’t be blamed because he is extraordinary. Properly funny and clever with it but totally unpretentious. Along with Graham Fellows, that guy is just about the perfect character comedian in my book. Still, I did alright-ish. I just got this nice message from someone, which sums it up:
I just wanted to drop you a message someway to say that I enjoyed Famous Guy at the paramount recording at the Bloomsbury last week. Very good stuff, although some annoying bugger beside me couldn’t understand and was just making confused noises the whole time. Very funny material, thanks for the laughs.
Thanks man!
ADAM & JOE ON BBC RADIO 6 MUSIC, AUGUST 20th – 31st
We’ll be filling in for our old Xfm chum Shaun Keaveny on 6 Music while he’s away on holiday for two weeks in August. Unfortunately he does the breakfast show from 7-10am every weekday morning so we’re going to be getting up earlier than we ever have done for almost 2 whole weeks straight, but we’re looking forward to being on 6 Music where we’ll be allowed to play a lot of our own choices as well as the excellent mixture of old and new that Shaun usually has on his show. I’ll let you know nearer the time if there are any changes or developments!
DAVID CROSS GIG & BUG 02
THE 100 CLUB
On Wednesday 27th June I did my Famous Guy character at the 100 Club as part of an evening of comedy from David Cross and his brilliant Stateside comedy pals Todd Barry, Eugene Mirman and Kristen Schall. I was pretty nervous about this one because Cross, being the highly respected comedian he is, was bound to attract a large crowd of rabid comedy scientists of the sort typified by this whiney review of one of the earlier nights from the charmingly named ‘Hecklerspray’. Sure, they love comedy dearly, but sometimes these kinds of audiences can really suck the fun out of an evening if they don’t get exactly what they have decided they want and let’s face it, Adam Buxton doing his stupid film star character is unlikely to be on that list.
As if to prove that I don’t know anything and should never prejudge an audience, my set went as well as it possibly could have. Also several people came up to me afterwards and professed to be readers of this blog, so if you’re reading this, thanks for coming along and it was great to meet you, I hope you enjoyed the night as much as I did. And yes, it would be amazing if me, Joe and Zac did The Robert De Niro Calypso live one day. I’ll try to line it up.
David Cross incidentally was fucking funny and very nice indeed as were Todd, Eugene and Kristen. We all went out for some Chinese food after the show and it was the perfect end to a perfect night, although I got into a strange conversation with David about drugs which left me looking like rather a prude, which is crazy of course because I’m one of the most dangerous, on the edge kinds of people in the area! I just think before you explore heroin and crack you should probably explore the Amazon or even The Lake District, you know?
BUG 02
I also had a very enjoyable night hosting the second BUG night at the BFI South Bank last Thursday and everyone who came along seemed to have a good time. The first one of these in April was way too long but this time it was a lot more concise and subsequently more pleasurable for everyone I think. Again, thanks if you came along and introduced yourself afterwards. I hope I didn’t stare through you blankly or ask you for sex. It can happen on Thursdays. The next BUG will be on Friday September 14th so why not call the BFI and book your comfortable cinema seat now! And don’t forget, if you’re a fan of booze, not only can you take booze into the auditorium with you, but there’s an amazingly swanky bar that’s just opened up in the building that stays open til 1am after the show! Pop video party time!
ADAM & JOE @ GLASTONBURY 2000
Watching the coverage of this year’s festival (and some of the hilariously rubbish moments provided by the Diana and Live Earth concerts!) made me nostalgic for the fun Joe and I had back in 2000 when we provided our own coverage of the festival for BBC Choice (BBC3 as it is now). As I’m not putting up so many new video bits at the moment (I’m stockpiling them for my BBC pilot later this year!) I thought I’d find some ‘choice’ (ha ha!) moments from our nutty, madcap coverage so I flicked through the old VHS copies I had of that weekend. Oh Jesus. It hasn’t aged very well. To be fair it was our first ever attempt at presenting live and there is the odd moment of ramshackle charm but more than anything I’m reminded of why I avoid this kind of thing now. Thing is, I was so excited about being at Glastonbury for the first time with my back stage pass, surrounded by musicians I liked and admired, I just got quite pissed and acted like a bit of a show off, but with nothing to show off. Kind of how Robbie Williams must feel all the time. Sorry! Got to stop being unpleasant about Robbie now that Joe’s met him and he was nice. I haven’t met him yet though…
Anyway Jimmy Bignutz has posted a performance by Badly Drawn Boy (whose debut album was coming out the following week) singing Once Around The Block with me providing black and white cutaways on my handycam. I’ve also put up one of the links that didn’t make me curl into a ball of embarrassment when I watched the tapes back, with me being Mellow Man Ace from Cypress Hill and Joe interviewing me. It’s a little embarrassing to look back soberly 7 years later on what was quite a drunken shambles, but I do remember having a fantastic time with Joe and a great crew, many of whom were as smashed as we were by the end of each evening. You wouldn’t get that nowadays eh? Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing…
Toodle pish!