Well, I did it! Just got back and my legs have only now stopped wobbling.
Battersea Power Station seems to have always lurked in the background of my life. We used to drive past it constantly when visiting relatives when I was a kid, it’s appeared in many of my favourite films and TV shows, including Monty Python’s Meaning of Life (“A fish, a fish, afishafishafish”), The Dark Knight, Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and a few episodes of Doctor Who.
But for me it will always be the cover of Pink Floyd’s Animals that shows the building at its most iconic. As a teen I bought a wall-sized poster from Carnaby Street, plastered it on my wall and imagined that I lived in an apartment looking down on it (What? I didn’t have a girlfriend, so gimme a break!).
That album’s song Dogs opens with the words “You gotta be crazy” and I have to admit that this refrain was repeatedly whizzing through my head as a small group of us were led into the main shell of the building.
My one regret today is that we weren’t allowed to take cameras with us into the building. The inside is incredible and you can see why it attracts film makers looking for something big and apocalyptic. Shafts of light beam through broken windows, cracked wooden rafters and rusting zig-zag stairwells, illuminating the wreckage below. Decades of neglected debris. Twisted iron girders, resting on hunks on concrete. The perfect playground for an adventurous boy. It’s slightly ruined by a giant plastic gazebo in the middle of it all – a room for corporate events and such – but I did my best to ignore that.
We were led up seven flights of steps up onto the roof, a large flat area about two football pitches long, and all in the shadow of those giant chimneys. One of the organisers cheerily settled our nerves by telling that we weren’t really that high, just 140 feet or so. She took us to where three scaffolds perched over the edge of the wall.
They asked for a volunteer and, in a weird sort out of body experience, I heard myself saying “Yeah, I’ll go!” Oh well, best to get it over with I guess. I clambered up the middle scaffold where a very calm man explained that the green rope was my safety rope and would hold me just in case I decided to do anything stupid. Bit late for that, I thought as he asked me to step over a red rope and lean all my weight back. I looked down, found Claire, Em and George and gave them a wave…
Photos – click to embiggen and enjoy ironic captions…
“Kids, if I end up as a splat on the ground you can have the Games of Thrones Blu Rays, but no watching till you’re eighteen…”
I didn’t realise the dress code was shorts/hot pants.
No need to suck my guts in after she did this up nice and tight… oof!
Big innit?
This was the worst bit. Turning my back on a 140 foot drop…
Oh no, wait, THIS was the worst bit! Leaning back over a 140 foot drop.
This was a close second.
He asked me to smile. I could only grimace.
I ran out of wall here and started spinning…
I’m not dead yet!
Might need some new pants though.
I can afford to be cocky on the ground.
I’m pretty sure this is where they shot the artwork for The Who’s Quadrophenia.
It was all over far too quickly. Once you get over the initial primeval voices in your head screaming “What are you doing? Get back on the roof! Are you mad?!” it’s just you and your feet gently bouncing off the wall as you feed the red rope through the belay.
I might have developed a taste for this. The cheery lady had said that they used to do these off the top of Guy’s Hospital, which is four times higher… maybe. Dunno. Maybe.
It’s not too late to sponsor me! Today raised over a hundred grand for Cancer Research, which is amazing, but every little helps. Click here: http://t.co/DUFOktZCLu or text STAY73 £5 (or whatever amount) to 70070.
Thanks to everyone who sponsored me. I know everyone’s skint at the moment, so I was delighted to get at least £450! I promise not to make a habit of it.
Okay, so not the sexiest subject heading ever, and I’m only really putting these online for my pal Cowboy Steve, but some of you may get some enjoyment from this collection of Spanish language Western posters at the Cinema Museum at “Mini Hollywood” in Almeria…
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What sort of middle-aged movie dad would I be if I didn’t take the opportunity to drag the family to some remote location just because it was once featured in a film?
Our primary destination for the day was Oasys – one of a handful of western theme parks in the area trading on their movie history, though this one got extra Brownie points from the kids as it was a location for the Doctor Who episode A Town Called Mercy. It was originally built for For A Few Dollars More and then The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, and then the extras bought it and set it up as a theme park.
The town itself is impressive, especially if you’re a Spaghetti Western nerd like me. You can explore many of the buildings, clamber up the steps onto the landings and generally stride across the middle of town feeling like Clint Eastwood (it also helps that they play Ennio Morricone’s greatest hits through a tannoy the whole time).
Mini Hollywood, Ameria
There are also museums housed in a couple of the buildings. First up was a museum of cinema, which was little more than a collection of old projectors and Spanish Western posters. My favourite was the one for Y Ahora Le Llaman Aleluya (aka Deep West), in which the hero uses a machine gun disguised as a sewing machine…
Double stitch THAT, y’bastard!
The other museum was dedicated to coaches, starting with horse-drawn buggies, and fire trucks and, er, a BMW 3 series from the 80s. That made me feel old, and I questioned its value in a museum, as you could probably get one on eBay for under a grand. There was no real attempt at curation in these museums, but who cares when you have such wonders to entertain you?
At noon we joined the crowds for the first Western show of the day. I was looking forward to this as the leaflet promised that it would be performed “by actors” no less. Just in case anyone was expecting the real Hole in the Wall Gang to show up and start blowing people’s heads off. Over the distorted tannoy a recorded voice explained that “Mffrm meefle frrp villainous brothers grlgle flan frrop arrested furgle jail.” Oh, good to get all the exposition out the way, eh?
So a man was dragged to jail, his brother came to the rescue, a Sheriff fell off a balcony onto a poorly-disguised crash mat, another fella was dragged through the dirt by a horse, there was lots of shooting, and this guy…
This is still better than pretending to be a tree on the Edinburgh Fringe.
… died first and spent the remainder of the show face-down in the dirt in the blistering heat. I guess he does this three times a day, six days a week. Now THAT’s acting – take that RSC!
Just waiting for my Spanish Equity membership and then I can join in too!
My horse allergy started to kick in (the only thing stopping me from becoming a massive Western movie star) and so we left the Western town and explored the zoo at Oasys, an expansive collection of enclosures featuring some fairly miserable-looking animals. There were no keepers to be seen and no evidence of the kind of zoological research undertaken in UK zoos. But if you’re a fan of bored animals skulking in tiny slivers of shade to stay out of the relentless glare of the sun, then this is the place for you!
We ended the park experience by the family pool, and the kids had great fun. There are a couple of slides and a bacteria-filled jacuzzi with a sign declaring in many languages that it was strictly for adults only (it was packed with kids).
But it was in the gift shop where I made an important discovery. We knew that one of my favourite scenes from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was shot near here, but looking it up online could only give us a vague destination. However, the gift shop had a Spanish-language book that had more detail and, more importantly, gave us the name of the beach – Playa de Monsul. We punched it into the sat-nav and hit the road.
It took about an hour to get there and the kids were getting tired. ‘Hang on,’ George said, ‘we’ve come all this way just to see a rock?’
But Emily got it, ‘I love my geeky daddy,’ she said.
The road ran out of tarmac and the sat-nav was trying to send us into neighbouring fields, but we followed the signs along 5 km of incredibly rocky road. I spent much of that drive quietly muttering ‘Don’t get a flat,’ over and over as the car rocked perilously from side to side (there is also a bus service available, but at this time we still didn’t know if we were in the right place).
We eventually came to a row of parked cars. Even now, as the sun was low in the sky, the place was busy. It’s a beautiful beach. Isolated, with gentle waves and perfect for families.
And there was the rock. We took a few photos, gazed upon it in admiration and I quoted from the film in my best Sean Connery.
“Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds in the sky…”
That wasn’t enough for George, though. The rock he’d bemoaned en-route now presented him with a challenge. He climbed all the way to the top. When he returned he reported that from up there he could see “six boobies and two couples making out.”
What did we get from that extra few hours out of our day? I’m not sure. Pilgrimages are weird things. Religious folk will talk about how they feel kindred spirits in a place, I know football fans who will go out of their way to visit a stadium if they’re in a particular city, and I love to just be where films have been made. Maybe it’s that thing of wanting to step through the screen and be part of that world – surely the sign of a successful movie? – or maybe it’s knowing that every time we watch the film from now on, we can all yell “We’ve been there!” Who knows? All I know is, we went all that way and I forgot to pack a bloody umbrella…
Postscript:
After a day of western-themed activities, it was sad to come home and find that Elmore Leonard, author of many fine Westerns, had passed away. Most writers will know his ten rules for writers. If you don’t, here they are, and heed every word, they are wise and sublime.
ELMORE LEONARD’S RULES FOR WRITING
Never open a book with weather.
Avoid prologues.
Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” … he admonished gravely.
Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”
Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.
Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
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Sorry the blog’s been quiet recently. OUR ROBOT OVERLORDS has been in production, and I’ve been very busy with something very cool that I hope to announce very soon.
In the meantime, my friend Jennie McCann causally suggested that I join her abseiling down the side of Battersea Power Station on 31st August, and like an idiot I hastily agreed.
I get vertigo*. Not the “Ooh, aren’t we high up?!” kind of vertigo, but the proper lizard-brain-telling-you-it’s-a-good-idea-to-jump kind of vertigo. I first discovered this on a trip to Paris in 1999 when I was wandering around Notre Dame and suddenly found myself high up in its ramparts. It occurred to me just how old and crumbly the building was, and how the whole thing could come tumbling down any second now, so why not save myself the aggravation and hurl myself off now. I shook this off as an abberation, but then later that day I found myself at the top of Eiffel Tower (which is full of holes and was only built to last a few years!) and – holy shit – that’s a tall frickin’ structure. I clung to the centre of it like a limpet, only occasionally shuffling to its edges.
Weirdly, I’m fine in planes. No problem at all hurtling through the air at thirty-thousand feet. Work that one out, if you can.
But Battersea Power Station is just too hard to resist. I’m a massive Pink Floyd fan and the station adorns the cover of their 1977 album Animals, and I had a huge poster of this on my wall as a teenager. Also, many of my favourite films have been made there and if flinging myself off the side of it means I get to explore this hallowed ground, then so be it.
Me and Battersea Power Station in happier times (I’m on the ground!)
I’ll be doing this for Cancer Research UK. Too many of my friends and family have suffered from cancer, and I’m very impressed with their work. So do please donate whatever spare shekels you have into the pot. It all makes a difference!
Yesterday I had a call from Jon, who kindly took time from his one day off this week (and I know that a director never really has a day off – he’ll be getting calls and emails all day) to give me an update on the first week of shooting for OUR ROBOT OVERLORDS.
Exteriors started with a night shoot in Bangor. Photo (c) Pinewood Films No.6 Limited
The crew are working like a well-oiled machine, up against a tight schedule that leaves little room for error. The young cast – Callan, Ella, James and Milo – have bonded brilliantly and are delivering outstanding performances. Our headliners – Gillian Anderson and Sir Ben Kingsley – are just knocking it out of the park, and our army of extras on Twitter have decreed that Tamer Hassan may have delivered one of the best headbutts in screen history.
It’s fantastic to hear that it’s going so well, and my first instinct is to jump on a plane and see them in action first thing tomorrow, but being a writer on set can feel like being a stranger at your own birthday party.
I was delighted to be present at the very first shot of the shoot on Friday 31st May, giggling like a loon to see the story that Jon and I had worked so hard on finally coming to life. But after an entire morning of shuffling to one side, apologising to make room for various crew members who hustle by with big cables and lenses, you soon realise that you’re just in the bloody way.
The previous week of rehearsals was a different matter entirely. Working with Jon, Callan, Ella, James and Milo to get the scenes on their feet – spotting the bits that work and the bits that don’t, and then tweaking the script to play to everyone’s strengths – that was an incredibly productive time. I felt energised in a way that I’ve not been since running my own theatre company back in the day.
But on set, I’m a fanboy, watching the cool director and cast, buzzing around them a focussed and hardworking crew – this is the kind of stuff you see on DVD extras, and yet here I was in the thick of it… with bugger-all to do, but stand and watch and admire and be first in the queue for the catering (I heartily recommend the chili!).
Would it be different if Jon and I hadn’t co-written the script together? Possibly. Writers are a paranoid bunch, constantly convinced that we’re about to be screwed over (because we often are!). But Jon’s the guardian of the script on set, and I have complete faith in him, and I know that if there’s any kind of problem with it, he’ll be on the phone to me straight away. I am completely relaxed that the show is in very good hands, and I can’t wait to see the first rushes.
I’m hoping to be on set in about ten days’ time, so maybe another update then! In the meantime do follow us on Twitter @Robot_Overlords
PS. Also check out some of our tweeting extras – all wonderful people:
Is there really any more you can say about Star Wars? Type those two words into Google and you get “About” 1,110,000,000 results. That’s roughly a third of the number of stars in our galaxy. And I’ve already written about how it changed me when I first saw it, so what’s new?
This Robot Occupation Movies thread is, let’s be honest, a thinly-veiled rip-off of Desert Island Discs. A radio show where you tell your life story through 8 pieces of music. And I couldn’t tell my life story without referring to Star Wars. Slice me in two and you’ll see this logo running through me like a stick of rock:
Today marks the 30th anniversary of the release of RETURN OF THE JEDI, which made me think back to when I first saw it at the Odeon in Hastings. I was on holiday, it was quite late in the summer, I still hadn’t seen it, and was panicking that I might never. My mum was more of a Coronation Street fan and didn’t want to watch it, so, after checking with the lady at the box office that someone could keep an eye on me (oh, mum!), she paid for my ticket and I went in alone. The cinema was far from full; just a handful of people scattered around the auditorium, and so I found a quiet row and settled in. The sense memory from that first screening is still with me now, the thrills I got from watching Luke and Vader duke it out still resonate, and I have to confess that there were a few tears. It was over. Oh, there were rumours of more films to come, but I somehow knew that this would be it.
Of course, now we know that it wasn’t the end. But here’s a quick timeline of my Star Wars experience. Starting before the dark times… before the Jar-Jar…
My fifth birthday. Dad taking me to see it for the first time. I’m pretty sure it was at the Odeon in Woolwich.
Now a church… pfft…
The next film I went to see was a re-release of Disney’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. As queued to get in, we stood by lobby cards showing scenes from Star Wars. It was still showing! I remember being annoyed that we couldn’t go and see it again.
So, I begged and begged until mum took me to see it again. I remember boasting to a lady on the bus that I was going to see it for the second time.
For my next birthday I got the film score: Star Wars highlights on one side, and Holst’s Planets suite on the other.
Collecting the trading cards, playing flicksies and winning more, chewing on the rock-hard pink, powder-dusted gum.
Bad guys! Boooo!
Being friends with Gregory, the kid next door, because he had a cool Stormtrooper gun.
Going to the Brent Cross shopping centre to blow my birthday money on figures and an X-Wing. Reading the Marvel comics every week and loving that Han was fighting alongside a giant green rabbit called Jaxxon…
Only 10p!
Feeling betrayed and disappointed that suddenly everyone in my class was now into this Superman film! I thought we all loved Star Wars!
Buying a second-hand hardback copy of the Star Wars novel at the school jumble sale (which I still have!) and reading it again and again and wondering why it wasn’t exactly the same as the film – Luke is Blue Five?!
Being told by my uncle that a friend of his played a Stormtrooper! (I never verified this, but he did know a stuntman called Nosher Powell who is credited on IMDb).
Watching the Star Wars Holiday Special at Christmas in Ireland and getting cross with my granddad who kept switching over to the horse racing (of course, I now realise he was doing me a huge favour).
Mum and dad calling me downstairs to see a clip from the new film THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK on TV – it was the “I love you… I know” bit, and I recall welling-up and being terrified that Han was going to die.
Dad taking me to see TESB at the Odeon Leicester Square. We were in the front row of the balcony, and he ripped my bag of popcorn open, spilling it on the poor people below. Sorry if you were one of them.
Being in a daze afterwards, wondering if Darth Vader was lying out of his arse, or if Ben was the fibber.
More comics, though of course, they didn’t have Han in them any more. People moan about Ewoks, but we had Hoojibs…
The longest wait between films ever.
Trying to use the Force one day. Didn’t work. The day I discovered disillusionment.
Watching a trailer for Return of the Jedi on the Jonathan King‘s show Entertainment USA and nearly exploding with excitement.
That screening of Jedi in Hastings and thinking it was over forever.
Years of keeping the faith, reading and re-reading the comics and the books. Watching the movies on VHS again and again and again.
Reading the Timothy Zahn novels and liking that the franchise had grown-up a bit. The characters still felt alive.
Thinking about having the Throne Room and Finale cue for our wedding march music, deciding against it and later regretting it.
Working at Unity Theatre with the wonderful Declan Mulholland – the original Jabba the Hutt! – and learning that Harrison Ford loved a pint with the cast and crew.
Hearing rumours of a new movie. Maybe episodes 7-9!
A prequel, you say? Hmm… interesting…
Hearing the title THE PHANTOM MENACE for the first time, and not being too worried that it was silly. All the titles are a bit silly if you think about it, aren’t they (the years of denial began here).
Seeing the trailer on The Big Breakfast and sharing everyone’s excitement.
Listening to the soundtrack in the car with friends and liking Duel of the fates.
Watching the Phantom Menace and, honestly, being okay with it. The anger came much later.
Giving my nephew my old Star Wars figures, which he then eventually gave to his younger brother, who then handed them back down to my kids.
Watching the movies with my kids, and making it clear that any preference for the prequels over the originals will result in immediate ejection from the home.
I wouldn’t go that far, but for a movie about knights, scoundrels, droids, princesses and dark lords, it’s had a pretty profound affect on my life. I didn’t name my kids Luke, or Leia, but I did become obsessed with its making, and through it discovered how movies were created. I started reading Science Fiction and Fantasy literature, I fell in love with film scores and classical music. Through its contemporaries I found Coppola, Spielberg, Hammer Horror, David Lean, Ridley Scott, Peter Weir, Kurosawa and so many other artistic avenues that I might never have found without it nudging me in their direction.
So, thank you Star Wars. It’s been and up and down relationship, but I wouldn’t be the same without you.
“When I’m getting serious about a girl, I show her RIO BRAVO and she better f-ing like it!” says Mr Tarantino of his prospective dates. Now, putting aside whether or not someone should “test” one’s sweetheart, or indeed what that says about your attitude to relationships, the desire for the film fan to share their favourite films with those close to them is a strong one. And we’d be lying if we didn’t judge people based on their responses. It’s entirely wrong, of course, but I’m sure sports fans do the same when they take their beloveds to the big match (do they still call it that? Who cares…).
Then, imagine my trepidation when taking the girl I loved to see RESERVOIR DOGS for the first time. Our first date film had been HOOK, a crashing disappointment, and so a lot was riding on this exciting debut that I’d read about in Empire. I’d like to pretend that I was cool and knew all about the Hong Kong movies that had inspired Reservoir Dogs, or that I was entirely cognisant of how he was subverting the genre, but I didn’t. All I knew was that this was the film that everyone was talking about, and I just had to see it. Also, he worked in a video rental store and so did I, so maybe there was hope for me yet. Back then, an indie film like this rarely got a chance to be seen outside of London (actually, that’s pretty much the same now), but the UCI cinema chain used to run Director’s Chair screenings of foreign and indie films on Tuesday nights, and Dogs was showing for one night only. The lights went down and we sat through 99 minutes of mayhem, violence, betrayal, torture, and the finest on-screen swearing since GOODFELLAS.
And she hooted with laughter throughout!
It was then that I knew I had met the woman I would marry. Not only could she tolerate A-grade film brutality but she also knew that what we were watching was essentially a black comedy with great dollops of psychological drama. At the time we were both auditioning for drama schools, and we were in awe of the acting chops on display. I asked Claire about it today (yup, we’re still married!) and she said that she’d never seen a film like it before. She’d always seen nice family movies like ET and BACK TO THE FUTURE, so what Reservoir Dogs was, as she just put it, “Opened her up to new experiences…”
Which is why our next date movie was BASIC INSTINCT. But that’s another story…
At a recent Gollancz marketing meeting (yes, we plan this stuff) it was suggested that someone write a blog entry about the divisive and controversial subject of Ewoks. What followed was like a scene from a Western, where chairs are scraped across the floor, tables thrown to one side, as gunslingers reach for their sidearms.
Divisive doesn’t even begin to describe the hot passions on display.
The arguments against the Ewok peoples are slim, getting old, and, let’s be honest, racist.
1. They’re too cute
Naysayers will argue that they’re “too cute”, as if Lucas hadn’t done cute already…
Aww… look at that widdle poonum!
But they’re far from cute. When they go into battle, they hit the Stormtroopers in their blind spot, smashing them on the back of the head with socking great lumps of wood. The vicious little buggers really lay into the Emperor’s most elite legion, using fight techniques surely honed in the nightclubs of Blackpool, “Glass him Teebo! Cut his face!” (there’s a reason the Ewoks don’t get subtitles – they’re uncouth, sweary, little mofos…)
And we can’t say that we didn’t see this coming. After all, their first reaction to finding armed outsiders was to try and spitroast Luke, Han and Chewie (I’ll let that image settle for a moment).
Cute?! Do me a favour…
This little hoodlum has already swiped your wallet and keyed your landspeeder.
2. They’re dumb
Dumb, eh? Well I would point m’learned friend to their keen sense of strategy. When it all kicks off, the Ewoks are smart enough to draw the Empire’s forces away from the safety of their bunker and into the woods, into the Ewoks’ own territory. This gives them the upper hand, using the forest itself against the invaders. Pity the poor crew of the AT-ST smashed between two logs. They didn’t stand a chance against these cunning little warriors.
Film fans will know that Lucas very nearly made Apocalypse Now. In the battle for Endor, Lucas finally gets that out of his system – this was his chance to do Vietnam, he just chose to do it with short, hairy football hooligans.
3. They’re only in the movie to sell toys!
There are those who suggest the Ewoks were a toy marketing ploy… because up till then Lucasfilm hadn’t even thought of releasing any toys from the film. Oh, waitasec…
Got, got, got, NEED!
Oh, and these are kids’ films, you big galoot! What kid wouldn’t love a movie featuring teddy bears beating the crap out the bad guys? The Ewoks tap into a huge childhood fantasy: if you’re small and repressed, you’re going to love these guys. Anyone who doesn’t, must be the Empire!
You may have been young enough to enjoy Star Wars, but too much of a cynical teenager to fully appreciate the Ewoks. Yes, if you hate Ewoks, you had lost your innocence by 1983 and that’s heartbreaking.
So there you have it. The Ewoks are awesome, and anyone who says otherwise is a cynical, old racist. The defence rests…
It was the 90s, and poster budgets were smaller then…
“Mum! Mum! You have to see this!”
Have you ever watched a film that was so uncannily like your own life that you were convinced that the film-makers were monitoring and recording your every move? For me, LIFE IS SWEET was that movie.
I’m not talking about the events in the story, but all the way through there were little character moments that chimed so precisely with the world I lived in (still living at home with mum, dad and sister, in a house too small for us all) that once I finished watching it, I rewound the tape, dragged my mum and sister into the room and made them watch it too.
They did so, with wide eyes and open mouths. One scene in particular had them screaming with recognition…
We were used to seeing a sort-of hyped-up reflection of reality in soaps on TV, but they were always done in such a rush, with such a sense of melodrama, that it was hard to take them seriously. But Life Is Sweet is a Mike Leigh movie. The actors spend weeks, if not months, working on their characters, rehearsing and refining them through improvisation. It’s a fairly unique method of film making, but gives the dialogue a naturalistic rhythm that would look impenetrable on the page.
To say that this film was a major influence on my early writing, especially my first play, would be a massive understatement. It gave me licence to write characters that sounded like people I knew.
Leigh gets a lot of flack for being patronising to his audience, characters and even the working classes*, but in Life Is Sweet, and the better-known SECRETS AND LIES, I saw truthful representations of ordinary people I recognised, and the trials they faced. Not epic struggles against monsters or aliens, but just people coming to terms with life in an ordinary suburban world. I’m learning that story is all about characters discovering who they are, reconciling the conflicting parts of their own selves. If you can pull that off, whatever the setting, you’ll have the ingredients of a great drama. And Leigh’s films have this in spades.
*Though I only ever see this criticism from middle class journalists, so…
Psycho was the first film that I ever studied in any kind of depth. Up till then, films were just films to me. Good, escapist fun, but nothing I ever thought about in any kind of academic sense. I’d seen Psycho on TV. My dad, just leaving the house for a night out, saw that it was on, ‘Psycho. You’ll like that,’ he grinned, leaving me alone in the house and possibly scarring me for life.
It was unlike anything I’d seen before. I’d enjoyed horror movies with my friends, but they were always in glorious technicolor, never black and white. This one felt slow and talky, and there were only a couple of murders. To this teen, it was okay, but I preferred a bit more claret with my horror. But, that aside, there was definitely something odd about it. It made me think, for a start, which no other horror movie had achieved so far.
Then one of our teachers announced that he would be running an after-school film club and Psycho would be our subject. By now, I’d seen a few more of Hitchcock’s movies and was aware of Psycho’s importance, but I hadn’t seen it since that original TV viewing.
Well, we took that baby apart. We analysed everything: shot composition, shot lengths, the importance of light and shadows, the motif of birds – Crane, “Eats like a bird”, Phoenix, the positioning of the stuffed birds in shots – the abundance of reflective surfaces throughout, and even the colour of Janet Leigh’s underwear before and after she steals the money.
And the shower scene? Took it apart shot-by-shot. All 3 minutes and 50 cuts.
From then on, I would never look at movies in the same way. It made me aware of symbolism, motifs, music, casting, lenses, lighting, sound – all the building blocks of a movie. And, most of all, it had me hooked. Movies were now my thing. More than music. More than books.
Not long after that, my friends and I made a short movie for a national schools competition. Fresh off our Psycho experience, we thought we knew it all. Of course, the end result was mostly dreadful, but there was one scene where dozens of kids came charging out of their classrooms into a hallway (our film was about a revolution in a school), and seeing that cut together – the doors crashing open, the feet pounding, the kids running – was the first time that anything we’d done actually looked like a movie. The stuff we’d learned watching Psycho had, for a few seconds, paid off. We can do this, I realised.
Despite ripping its guts out, Psycho is still fun to watch. My sister and I still talk about it (it’s one of her favourites too), and its power hasn’t been diminished by the 1998 remake, or the poor sequels (though Psycho II isn’t that bad!).
The original was on TV just this week, and I subjected my 13-year-old daughter to it. She talked over the shower scene, ‘That’s what you get for using all my hot water!’, but stuck with it till then end. And now she’s asking questions… That’s what the movie does. Provokes dark and disturbing thoughts. Some have been explored in documentaries, films and books, not least Stephen Rebello’s excellent Alfred Hitchcock and the making of Psycho, but the mysteries of the human frailties of jealousy and murder will always remain. So let’s leave the last word to the master himself…
Mark Stay Writes 