PARAPRODOKIAN: MAYBE YOU JUST HAD TO BE THERE (John and Lucy Mills, 2007)

...like a meandering monolgue without a punchline, only moreso, herein we see a playing out of the Monty Python's Funniest Joke in the World sketch, that frustratingly perfect device in which the promised gag is withheld; For this documentary, about the comedian Alex Paraprodokian, labelled by Time magazine as 'The Funniest Man In The World, Sketching' contains no sign of Paraprosdokian himself, as the filmmakers could not track him down. We have no primary evidence of his hilarity either, as none of his jokes have been recorded, on audio or visual media. What we do have is a series of talking heads giving vaguely remembered descriptions of how funny he was, leading to the suspicion that the whole exercise is a spurious gag at our expense. One after another, screen comedians appear to sing the praises of a man who may only be a rumour. These famous, successful comedians all bow down to the almighty Paraprodokian; Stephen Wright, Rodney Dangerfield, Sandra Bernhard, and more, but none can remember an exact joke, none can bring us proof. Time and time again, we're told: I guess you had to be there.

One woman's funny mount is another's vast edifice of nonsense; for one individual, 'because it's there' is reason enough to go to the top, for another, it is an exercise in pointlessness. No one comedian can ever stand above every other, an Everest in fact and feet. I could go on about the highest mountains being below sea, but the metaphor splits in my hands, overstretched with weight. The point being: successful comedians need not be funny, but can merely offer enough of an impression of a funny person to suffice. Silly voices and faces are a start. A speculative experiment finds that, contrary to popular expectation and hope, those that might attempt to sue (to pick someone entirely at random) Adam Sandler, say, for, 'distress caused by gross unfunniness' perhaps,would only ever lose. If his face is on the poster (and it always is) then the viewer only has himself to blame, a hypothetical judge might conclude.

A Hypothetical Judge Might Conclude (1999) is a comedy that revolves around several high-profile comedians reading pre-written jokes in front of a camera (some of which are attributed to the hidden Paraprodokian), which records them. If the delivery is poor, they have the opportunity to record the joke again. When the entire sequence is complete, it is edited together into an apparently seamless and spontaneous piece, known as a 'film'. This approach is, by this point, a tried and tested formula, supported by a multi-million dollar machine that creates the best possible conditions for a successful recording. All possible problems have many opportunities to be eliminated by many of the hundred people involved in the project. And yet. And yet. 'Perhaps we are in a truly 'If you don't buy a ticket you can't win the lottery' industry, and Universal Pictures reason that the more American Pie films are made, the greater their chances of finding a joke,' says Mark Kermode. He too had no idea of Paraprodokian's existence until Paraprodokian came out, and was among the prominent critics suggesting it to be a hoax: That Alex Paraprodokian does not exist. Several comedians in New Jersey have claimed to either be Paraprodokian or to have played a character onstage called Paraprodokian, but none have proved to be very funny. Not proof of their lie in itself; but it does bring with it the ghost of a suggestion that no-one can be that funny, ever.

'Comedy is essentially anarchy, and cannot be bottled' said Bob Hope, of all people. 'The comic, like the Indian, has a piece of his soul stolen by the camera.' Which apart from bringing the story of Alex Paraprodokian to mind, is clearly the kind of mythologising bullshit we support every day; the kind of artist-as-indefinite-divinity system that invented him.

The film concludes in the woods of Conneticut, where the makers have come to find the supposed place of Paraprodokian's birth. The Mills' crew finds nothing, other than a clearing where a house used to be.

Alex Paraprodokian has his place in the OED:

Paraprodokian (n): 1. Name given to an item of brilliance that there is no accountable evidence of. 2. An unseen presence in a room of people.

Paraprodokian: Maybe You Just Had To Be There Directed, Written and Produced by John and Lucy Mills Starring Stephen Wright, George Carlin, Sandra Bernhard, Rodney Dangerfield, Don Rickles, Janeane Garofalo, Damon Wayans

ADOLF HITLER '68 COMEBACK SPECIAL (Tom Lancaster, 1973)

'Without 'two world wars and one world cup', as the song goes, the English would have disappeared from even their own imaginations by the year 2000.' Peter Handke

'Without the Beatles, England are Portugal; Empireless and small.' Ian Svenonius, The Psychic Soviet

' [These comedies] come with the idea: we the British, and more specifically, we the English, can laugh at ourselves, and that is what makes us better than you. But it also contains the more troubling thought: we can laugh at ourselves, because whatever we are, we know we're better than you.' Stephen Fry

When England were paired with Germany in the World Cup last week, it resurrected age-old cliches that even the brazen seemed to use half-heartedly, aware that the ground had shifted. But use them they did, and when Our Boys were ambushed by a swashbuckling young German side filled with various ethnicities, the great unspoken English response was: that should be us. But naturally, it couldn't be, not right now, because deep introspection and radical projection isn't natural for the English (we use a French term, avant-garde, remember, because we have no equivalent of our own).

The goal that wasn't was one of those poetic echoes that sport, unscripted, throws up, a beautifully crafted red herring, in this case.

The Second World War gave Britain several things: A renewed feeling that her innate sense of moral superiority was correct (the geographical spread of the Nazi forces everywhere but the islands is both a fact and a metaphor), a celebratory complacency (for while America thrived in a consumerist glee adrenilized by rock'n'roll/Vietnam/Space Race euphoria, and the rest of Western Europe rebuilt and modernized itself, Britain clung to a sepia infrastructure) and a ribald miscellany of comic types to sustain itself for twenty years, thirty years, forever.1 From the kinky Gestapo officer to the tediously punctual guard, to name but two, the Nazis as joyless sadists turn up again and again, especially in the Nineteen Seventies,when every sitcom/stand-up routine/sexploitation comedy of English origin had one.

Always, it is the notion of spirited, fair-playing Englishmen which prevails, the plucky geezer fighting the robotic enemy. Of course, a berserk romanticism on the part of the Nazi's is key to what undid them. but its kinder (and lazier) to think about them as automatons consistently outgagged and outsmarted by an Englishman, with common sense,wit and attitude.

Adolf Hitler '68 Comeback Special seizes the same turf, initially, as Heil Honey I'm Home, or 'Allo 'Allo: it's mean panto season, then, and our ugly sisters wear swastikas. Shot with the same tone as the Robin Asquith 'Confessions...' flicks, and often with a similar cast and locales (Southend stands in for Paraguay, Brixton is Manhattan), John Le Mesurier plays an eerily un-uncanny Erwin Rommel in the style of Roger Moore, trying to guide the second coming of Hitler (Tony Booth) back from the jungle hideaway in Paraguay he has inhabited since 1945. His plan: Career resurrection, Broadway style. He books a televised show (under the pseudonym Johnny Fuhrer, a name later adopted by the singer of shock punks The Swasticklers) at Carnegie Hall where he will unveil the fourth reich, supported by hypnotism, which he hopes to conquer the new empire of America with. Only his timing is awful, as he discovers that the night he has booked is the same night that Elvis Presley's Comeback is being televised from Las Vegas. The entire world will be looking elsewhere.

Against advice, Hitler plays the show anyway, and to an audience of three, he performs a play, 'Spy Finkel and the Gormless Rotunda', in which a member of the Reich infiltrates America and discovers its pitiful and horrific daily existence.1 The joke is that Hitler's grandly pompous narrative arc, approaching fifteen hours with the menace of a panzer division's progress through Ukranian frost, is so devoid of entertainment (especially in comparison with Elvis' charm) that no-one could ever sit through it comfortably. But this is dealt with so smugly, that one comes away feeling immense sympathy for the misunderstood auteur of epic plays/mass genocide/ethnic cleansing. The underlying feeling is that this Hitler, failing Austrian painter, is an outsider talent being crushed under the wheels of an ignorant entertainment industry. Fuelled by Nazi bullion and a dream he books a rundown theatre for a year, and continues to play the show to nobody, heroically.

Tony Booth is grandly sypathetic, coaching from the front row every night, convinced that with slight script tweaks and absolute commitment he'll have his hit. John Le Mesurier plays Rommel as a resigned but dutiful right-hand, coping with the Fuhrer's eccentricities and his own alcoholism with suave and offbeat style. His white-suited Rommel is immaculate even when waking from the gutter. They're both too likable and foolish to hate, which somehow seems like the grandest faux pas of all.

And then Nazis fell out of fashion, at least in comedy. Stephen Frears' Somme Girls Are Bigger Than Others (1986) was a late, independent dig, mixing First and Second World War metaphors with death-by-Thatcher northern yearning. But the archetypes live on, and on, perpetrated mostly by English minds 'who have already decided on their place in the world, and it is at the top table.'4

Adolf Hitler '68 Comeback Special Directed by Tom Lancaster Produced by Bert Harris Written by Tom Lancaster, Simon Humphries Starring Tony Booth, John Le Mesurier Rank Organisation Release Date UK: Aug 1974, US:N/A, 104 mins Tagline 'The Most Notorious Act of the Century is Back!'

1. And by Britain, in this case, I mainly mean England. Wales and Scotland have other nationalistic crutches to cling to. The Northern Irish.... well, I'll leave the Northern Irish alone for now.
2. Sam Mendes directed a version of this play on the London stage in 2000. It was restricted eight hours, but received some minor praise.

3 .I quote German thinker Pierre Littbarski: 'The English are forced to use a French term, 'avant-garde', becauser they have no equivalent. Their children are stripped of dangerous thoughts, punished under a grammar hammer. The cleverest English are comedians and popular musicians. Ask an Englishman to name a clever fellow countryman,and they will say Stephen Fry. Or Morissey. 'Yes, that bugger's a smartarse.' Philosophical questions must be framed in these highly accessible forms. This is not necessarily a bad thing. So: navel gazing about the war is restricted to casual romanticism.'

4. George Bernard Shaw.

PROCEDURAL (Joel Schumacher, 2004)

It came, as always, way too late. The creaking mechanisms of the filmic industry wither ideas by the time they churn them, causing that aching taste for popcorn on your tongue. When the idea is second-hand, this fresh window is even smaller. So we have our familiar, our Type: A character named Hunch (because, hey, he has lots of them, and also because, naturally, he has a stoop caused by some dramatic injury in the past), whose presence in three different long running television shows has shorn him of what small novelty he contained. Perfect for the big screen, then. Not a mistake in itself, but waiting until that point at which people are forgetting him, but before they're ready to remember him, to make the film: disaster. Pity actor Vince Cannon, whose face is fused to the face of Hunch, because they are one and the same, and will always be.

Cannon briefly threatened to be a going concern, before settling for a life mugging for the gallery. His appearance in Walter Hill's Startled Leprosy (1982) as a complex hood promised a dangerous arc through the netherworlds of character dramas. But he ended up where he ended up so very quickly that his ealy excellence can be seen as an aberration, rather than an example of snuffed promise. Soon he was the star of a plethora of prime-time television dramas, his deadpan delivery of gauche cliche witnessed in the cop shows MALAPROP COP (1993-1995), PROCEDURAL (1998-2007), EXPOSITION (2008-2009) and HUNCH (1985-present). The latter three, in which he plays the ever-so-slightly offbeat detective Christopher 'Hunch' Hunchowski, (who greets each case with the too-wry (too-wry, too-wry-ay) line 'Stevie, Didn't we solve this one last week?' Reply: 'Hunch, don't you say that every week?'), is a precise mixture of perfect formulas. Hunch himself is a hash of implied backstories that include flickers of post-'Nam mysticism, suggestions of cataclismic addictions and hollow flashbacks to A Very Disasterous Personal Event that are never outlined or examined, but serve as a huge dollop of explanation (or lack thereof) for what we see before us, the deep and erratic zen-like logician.

The other characters serve as a Greek chorus of 'This-guy' raised eyebrows,
and the plots that pollute Hunch are never allowed to get in the way, being so familiar as to drift into a babble of Beckettian absurdity. Each episode requires a scene after 35 minutes where Hunch narrates his own brain movements for the benefit of the audience, preferably over ponderous light classical chords; Frequently, he is sitting at his art deco desk (which is carved from, in his words, 'maple and pain'1, and serves as an symbol of the titular detective's affectations), which he strokes like a pony. 'But what if the victim was ambidextrous?' says the voiceover, mysteriously, several minutes after your Dad had, contemptuously.

Humour? It is there, often in elaborately set up lines that Hunch gets to deliver. The best pun of the show's history has been re-used many times, and it goes something like this:

COP: She was a junkie, is all.
HUNCH: She was a victim of society's ignorance and apathy.
COP: What's the difference between ignorance and apathy?
HUNCH: Nobody knows, and nobody cares.

(Insert meaningful silence, as COP stares into distance, looking confused. Hunch walks away. COP finally gets it, smiles, turns to HUNCH; HUNCH is gone.)

The film version, pieced together by Joel Schumacher in one of his lean moods, isn't horrible. Vince Cannon, wisely, is allowed a reprise, and his new cragginess gives a certain poignancy. But as if knowing his face can't carry a film, the script leans heavily on a rookie-cop following Hunch, and an intredid (and beautiful, of course) reporter trying to get under Hunch's aviators. Both can't keep up.

Procedural Directed by Joel Scumacher Produced by Vic Ledgor Starring Vince Cannon, James Gandolfini, Claire Forlani, Tom Skerritt, Andrew McCarthy Written by Andrew Kevin Walker Columbia Pictures 105 mins release date UK/US: March 2004 Tagline: 'Hunch has got a hunch. And a feeling in his gut.'

1. Country singer Earl Lance 'Unlucky' Duckett recorded a eulogy to cops with the title 'Maple & Pain' ('Maple and Pain/ Is all I need to bring it all back again/ Boys in blue/ Carrying memories and Badges too')

HICK (Smith Hyphen-Jones, 2000)

Hick by Ted Hughes

'They waited and waited for him to begin
But when he did he was already gone
The bear with the uneasy grin
Is walking back once again from the sun
His legs
too slow to guard the door
Interloper's grenades split his
bat
Limpid agitated swafts in place
Of cultured
darting strokes
Our hopes
Cling
On
On Colonial burial grounds
A hired soldier fights a rearguard action
One hundred and Seventy Eight
In the heat and haze
But it's too late now
31.32
The answer to a question
We know not what'

'A maths problem even more complicated than the one at the start of the film Rushmore. We know that the answer is 31.32, Hick's bewilderingly modest Test average, but we all arrive at that figure in a different way. Was it an 'aversion to the short ball + Curtly Ambrose x selectorial inconsistency = 31.32'. Or 'mental fragility – flat tracks x too long a qualification period x simple misfortune = 31.32'. Or simply 'Graeme Hick ÷ Ray Illingworth = 31.32'. Nobody will ever truly know, but everybody has their own take on it.' 1



When Ted Hughes, poet laureate, composed his poem about the enigmatic Zimbabwe-born England batsman Graeme Hick in 1998, it fired few imaginations, buried as it was in a collection of detritus verse named Detritus Verse. Hick, remembered mostly as a failure for his country, despite being a perennial bully on the County circuit, was described by Ted Hughes as having 'the care of all sport etched on his smile'. Another poet named Hughes, the legendary Australian Merv, had an instructive verse of his own for Hick: 'Mate, if you just turn the bat over, you’ll find the instructions on the other side.' The collected works of Mervyn Hughes remains a wondrous untapped source for cinema (if you exclude the excretable Aussie comedy Slugger McGabe (Jeff Thomas, 1995), clearly based on the life and times of the mustachioed one), and indeed the world of cricket is somewhat under-represented. The rumours that Paddy Considine has signed on the play Ian Botham in the biopic Beefy to shoot next year may end the drought.

Until then we cling to this: Hick. Which makes every attempt to secure Hick's place in the misunderstood genius camp by serving up 90 minutes of footage of him in languid slo-mo foisting Indian spinners to the rope and silkily pocketing slip chances with ease. Over the top is laid the poetry of Ted Hughes read by Brian Blessed, whose bullfighter-in-China delivery renders the exercise hilarious, especially when he uses his rumbling whisper at moments of high tension (a whisper that is more volumnious and heavy than his booming conversational tone). This is matched by strident Elgar pieces, bulging and billowing, which is hardly very Hickian; This Blessed and Elgar one-two might suit the hairy-lipped violent battery of a Gooch or a Robin Smith, but surely the shy Zimbabwean hulk is better suited to another combination, and all kinds of pairs can be imagined. No-one is suggesting Geilgud and Mozart, but perhaps Nighy and Chopin? No, too slippery perhaps. Broadbent and Walton? Too English. Fry and Debussy? Not quite. Any one of these combinations would create a completely different personality for Hick and for Hick, and all are possible. For Hick stands as a modern enigma, a would-be legend who failed, a loved letdown who also won. An experiment might involve the same footage being played over and over, with the same words read over the top, but each time by a different actor and with different orchestral accompaniment. One might then turn on the lights each time and ask the gathered schoolchildren 'What kind of man was Graeme Hick?' and then tabulate the results. Because, it may well run the gamut. Might Laurie reading over Scarlatti conjure a murderous Hick in the minds of the babes? Might Forsyth (Bruce, naturally; although repeating the dose with Frederick might be worth attempting, in carefully controlled conditions) reading over Reich cause them to dance giddily for the ice cream man? Or weep for some punishment not yet offered?

Myself? I'd plump for a wearily shrill Kenneth Williams reading over some Satie. That's my Graeme Hick, at least today.

Hick Directed by Smith Hyphen-Jones Produced by Smith Hyphen-Jones Narrated by Brian Blessed Boundary/Film Four Pictures Release Date UK: June 2000 US: N/A. 92 mins Tagline: None.

1. Rob Smyth, The Guardian, May 2008

THE ALBATROSS (Remi Ataka, 1982)

'Often, when bored, the sailors of the crew
Trap albatross, the great birds of the seas
Mild travellers escorting the blue
Ships gliding on the ocean's mysteries.'

Charles Baudelaire, The Albatross.

There comes a moment of false in so many Remi Ataka movies- the good (Fraudulent Doctrines, Tapas Dancing, Um Bungo), the great (Singed Songs Saved From The Fire), and the decidedly mediocre (The Singing Menstrual, Trojan Whores II: Roost, Roast, Rest, Repeat) when he reveals The Vortex, the name we have collected and attached to that whirling, writhing face he finds at moments of high conflict.1 Suddenly, he starts the audience with such a display of unhinged anger (be it at the English filmmakers attempting to replace his village with a more 'accurate' fake one in Um Bungo, or when fighting the ghost of his suicide bride at the end of The Singing Menstrual)- a blast of tool-sharp intensity that punctures the screen with it's power. Ataka is more than one of African film's great icons- he is an ambassador of entire human conditions, bringing messages from such foggy bays as Resentment Squared and Revenge Infinity, areas of such extremely disfigured emotions as to be almost comical. Especially to a modern Western audience.

Essentially, Ataka is an actor with one tic up his sleeve, but what a tic. Raised in the Congolese jungle by a traditional family, he was educated in the art of dance and performance in ritualistic situations. 'Everyone of my cousins laughs at my acting. They are all able to perform this war-cry that the newspapers have called 'The Vortex.' Many of them perform it better than me, and find my films to be funny and lacking in depth because of this.'2

The Albatross, which Ataka directed and starred in himself, is not good, great or decidedly mediocre. Its seriousness and fire drags it into another entire realm, where judgements so superficial are disgustingly arbitrary, like price tags on sheep's heads or women's thighs. It came at a point in Ataka's career when, aged 29, he was the most famous man in his home country. The films he had starred in previously were made in Zimbabwe, under the last vestiges of British rule. The Hammer studios had paid for several of them, and Tapas Dancing (1978) and Bushman II: The Whites of Their Thighs (1978) had gained much success in parts of Africa, despite being unreleased in Europe and America. Ataka set out his stall as a serious actor in both films, utilizing method techniques for his roles in all his films, whatever their budget. And the budgets ranged between modest and non-existent.

He headed back to the Congo prodigally, with a slick crew and the biggest budget his home counntry had ever seen. Employing many local non-actors, his film set out to discover the astonished heart of Africa. As such, The Albatross is an inverse-Heart of Darkness, an alterna-Aguirre, with Ataka playing a leader of a a group of tribesmen protecting a religious artefact as colonial soldiers approach. They wait, and as they do so, they think. And think. Heightened anticipation over days and weeks takes a toll: the threat of the advancing men distorts, until they become convinced that the devil's own foot-soldiers are on their way. Visions jump from the trees, the air is a vast echo chamber rebounding whispers into fear. An unbreakable vanguard is destroyed from the inside, by fear bombs. When the white man does arrive, he is not fearless and strong, he is vain and completely ignorant of the artifacts. Sad ironies litter the compound amongst the mad bodies.

'Imitation is the sincerest form of flattening,' said Kip Lowry of Fox when his company embarked on a series of remakes of foreign films in the early 1980s. 'The only way we can destroy competition in the territories is to give them shinier versions of their own stories.' Ataka, offered a join-us-or-be-forgotten ultimatum, chose not to be a part of Fox's damply polite remake of The Albatross, which forgetably starred Michael Douglas and Laurence Fishburne in 1984. He did however reprise his role of Femi in the fish-out-of-fish-sauce drama Lucid Intern. The original, made on a budget in 1980 by Ataka's uncle Jean-Luc, followed Femi as he moved from the country to a job at a law firm in Cape Town. The remake throws him to the liars by inevitably sending him to New Yotk City, Hollywood's ultimate city as a character.

'Hollywood swallowed me', said Ataka in 2000.3 Roles in such mediocre fare as Crocodile Dundee III: Crocodile Rock Star (1995) and the later Trojan Whores films left him examining the wreckage of his career on the world stage. He did star in Timid with Jennifer Jason-Leigh as late as 1998, but nobody saw that, and he had a subsequent recurring role in CSI:Voyager to a little acclaim. All of these roles have required him to pull out his old moves, weak parodies of The Vortex, but with less and less success: Hollywood, more than any other place, is subject to the law of diminishing re-runs. Ataka finally realised this, leaving America in 2003. Since then he has kept radio silence, emerging only in 2007 to announce he would be commencing work on a Congolese film version of Wagner's opera Parsifal.

But then nothing. Ataka has always had a cult following of fans in Europe, but he may well already be spinning in his grave disposition at his champions. 'He wanted to be Brando, or Eastwood. But now the only people in the West who know him are the the kind of world music clapping, tofu-munching, miso-horny types he always felt patronised by.'4


The Albatross Directed by Remi Ataka, Produced by Remi Ataka, Jean-Luc Ataka, Lomana Lomana, Written by Joseph Smith, Remi Ataka Starring Remi Ataka, Jean-Luc Ataka, Lorolei Samuel, Tresor Pasquale Vision Pictures/Afrika Films 203 mins Release Date: UK/US: N/A, Africa: April-December 1982, Tagline: 'The Ghost Stalks'

1. Perhaps author Will Self has given the best description of 'The Vortex': 'It is as if his face collapses, becoming a cavemouth that surely leads to Hell, or some kind of purgatorial punishment at least'.

2. New York Times interview, March 2002.

3. Rolling Stone interview, March 2000.

4. Will Self, The Independent, April 2008

BLAST! (Alfred Hitchcock, 1978)

If indelible sources are to be believed, the eastward tilt of 's Alfred Hitchcock's candlestick after 1970 was not as a result of the miraculous cleansing of his muddied windshield (the Damascan turnpike event that legend dictates changed his pictures forever, 'The Accident'1 is merely a red herring here), nor because of a return home to a land of chocolate biscuits and hung parliaments; no, his Frenchified fervour for seditionary sang-froid was caused by, no drumroll necessary, a blonde. So bewitched was the octogenerian psycho-sex-genius by model Hansa that he stowed his boat down a river of blood and pledged solidarity with the blue collar rioters, made a racket akin to a thousand bombings of Coventry and turned up on late night television, stepping up through the gears of his Alfred Hitchcock Presents strand and shooting into the Third Eye directly with opiated visual nightmares that singed viewer and unviewer alike. 'Quick, Hitch is on the telly,' became a fearful warning as much as an invitation.

Hansadid her work, changed the man, and vanished, as if imaginary. She and her like flit through 20th Century history, changing important people but never threatening to be important; Eva Brauns, one and all, obscured by events and ideas, muses for geniuses and tyrants.

Those last five years, until his death in 1980, the clearly fretful Alfred clocked several hours of scorched earth television and an ignored final film, Blast! (1978), in which a ragged Mae West drove all over England in a Ford Cortina searching for nuclear oblivion. The film kicks and wails. Full of classic West lines ('I don't know if saying I love you means I love you or if it's just a phrase I'm going through'), it follows a rejected singer who, trading on her lost-foreigner schtick, picks up young hitchhikers, only to kill them. And kill them she does, splendidly, with the pay-off 'but I never said I was going to Plymouth.'

It's Hitchcock's Peeping Tom, of course; but instead of killing his career as that earlier film had done for Michael Powell, this was left to slide, because, well, by this point nobody much minded what Hitchcock did one way or the other. Legends reach such a status, and some reach it early, so that even pouring luminous vomit over their legacies fails to stain them, such is their power. Hitchcock was so far in credit by this point that nothing was at stake. Ditto David Bowie, whose Herculean efforts through the seventies has bought him many years of larking about as Laughing Dave. Imagine, if you will then, the dreck we might have had from Paul McCartney if he hadn't died at the height of his fame: cashing in his Fab Four chips (which happen to be some of the worthiest currencies in the house) with children's songs and nagging charity efforts, no doubt, and endless permutations of that Beatles sound, forever square-rooted until insignificance. Or Bob Dylan: what if his motorcycle hadn't slipped on wet roads, killing him in 1967, just a year after McCartney had gone? It is a pop parlour game, a nonsense to imagine his next moves, but such is the power of rock'n'roll that it is never more potent when it is gossipy, never more dangerous than when apparently ephemeral (think of the sweet sting of the sudden dynamic chorus intruding on a previously inane ballad, the cruel drama of a hated has-been hitting gorgeous payola for two and a half-minutes), and so these games stretch beyond philosophy. For my diceroll, I'm going to say that had Dylan lived he would have become a television actor, star of a detective show. In the mid 1980s he would have made a musical comeback, dovetailed with a run for Senator of Minnesota, then insane riches, a Rickenbacker Rockerfeller. Snake eyes for me, perhaps. But every dream in a pop world (which is based on fabrications of mythologies anyway) adds a slither of substance to its history. Just look at how many people believe that Elvis lives. Smoke and mirrors only add to the illusion of depth, and Mr Presley is alive because people all over the world see him going about his business frequently.

I digress. As West does throughout Blast!, going to the places her passengers request, only without them. She expends her wit at service stations ('Whadda ya gawkin' at, lady? I gotta penchant for ponchos') and in grim post-coital scenarios (West: 'Best three minutes of my life.' Man: 'Hey, if three minutes is all Motown needs, it's good enough for me.' West: 'More of an opera buff myself.'), but it is all wasted on West's greyscale fellow travellers. It is as if Hitchcock, after thirty years in exotic locales with Ingrid Bergmans and Princess Graces, was horrified to find his homeland still drifting in postwar ruin, and unleashed a Hollywood ghost: West as Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates as Mother, an aged blonde in a frightwig with a knife. And in doing so, the Leytonstone Lugger locks into a nebulous mind-meld with British culture, somehow finding himself in the same waiting room as Peter Sutcliffe (as played by Ian McKellen in Derek Jarman's Ripper Yarn (1983), John Lydon and Billy Bremner.

Reporter: Why did you kill 'em, love?

West: I was hungry.

Reporter: Any final words for our readers?

West: When referring to God, use an upper case H for all personal pronouns,
just in case.

Reporter: That's it?

West: That's it.

Blast! Directed by Alfred Hitchcock Produced by Alma Reville Written by James Costigan, Alfred Hitchcock Starring Mae West, Barry Foster Universal Pictures Release Date UK: Oct 1978 US: Nov 1978 Tagline: '...move. Stick and move. Stick and move. Stick and...'

1. Hitchcock's boating accident in 1970 in Cuba has been widely discussed to the point of invisibility, so I won't add any more reportage here; I'll simply pause to nod to its iconic power on his myth, before dismissing its significance completely. One, he fully reccovered, two, no charges were brought, three, Hitchcock was shooting again inside a week. Hansa, the
Austrian pummel horse, comes six months later, like a premonition. Hitchcock didn't shoot for three years after her arrival. She's the BC/AD coin-flipper here, if there is one.

QUOTES (Woody Allen, 1989)

Allen: 'Intrinsic to my understanding of history is this: The Witch never said 'You're not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy Gale.'
Minnelli: 'But she did.'
Allen: 'Exactly.'
Minnelli: 'Contrarily, Dorothy did say 'There's no place like home,' several times, but she was lying.'
Allen: 'Of course. Will you marry me?'
Minnelli: 'No-one said anything to make you say that.'
Allen: 'Jimmy Stewart. Philadelphia Story.'
Minnelli: 'Hepburn said no to Jimmy Stewart. She remarried Cary Grant.'
Allen: 'Well we can't all be Cary Grant.'
Minnelli: 'No. Some of us even less so than others.'


Woody Allen and Liza Minnelli in a scene from Quotes.

'The truth is that as a filmmaker (if not as a performer), Woody Allen has almost no personality of his own. Respect him as we may for preferring pastiche (or imitation as the sincerest form of flattery) in a period when the American cinema has capitulated to the whorish charms of parody (or imitation as the sincerest form of derision) , we ought not to elevate a pasticheur's talent into the temperament of an authentic artist. Allen is Zelig, Zelig is Allen. Brought into contact with Bergman, he turns into Bergman (Interiors, Another Woman); with Fellini, he turns into Fellini (Stardust Memories, Radio Days); with Pabst, he turns into Pabst (Shadows and Fog)... and so it has always gone. Zelig however, is the exception that once truly does prove the rule, and so Quotes is a rare stride towards something else, as if there exists in Allen a true original he is straining to supress. Quotes is Allen's career writ large and exploded, a cavalcade of every filmmaker he loves at once, a collection of brilliant techniques that serves to provide a mixed salad, avec dressing, with a small man in glasses sitting in sorrow in the middle.' Gilbert Adair, Flickers

'QUOTES is a blast. Take an inspired idea- the referencing of everybody else, and I mean everybody else- pepper with a gag or two, then stew in wit for aeons, and voila! a Cannes hit that will make minor rewards in Western territories. But Allen, for once, goes further, and his intricate web of references and borrowed dialogue becomes something beyond postmodern or meta.' Geoffrey Standage, The Sunday Times

'Allen alienates adroitly and aims angry arcs at any anti-Allenists (and Allenist alike) attending, acutely aware at all affects an arrogant audience anticipates. A+' Arsula Andress, San Francisco Chronicle

'Allen of course, must know that his presence in his own movie can cheapen his directorial nous somewhat, in that his verbal prodding can sometimes replace what greater directors do from behind the camera. But he is also smart enough to know that this gives him something to, and Quotes allows him to provide a director's cut from within. His character can talk about film style as he himself gives us film that contradicts that style.' Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

''If bad puns a comedian doth make, then Allen is very funny indeed.' Here's one for you: Waiting for Godard.' Blixten Tongstress, Twice Weekly

'Allen never gives us three chords and the truth; three chords and the Truffaut, maybe. Even his tenderest moments are not wrought with any feeling other than nervous self-examination, leaving his voice to be that of a whinnying karaoke singer. Which as we all know, can be perversely poignant.' Mark Kermode, Videodrome

'If we see Allen's work as a schizophrenic dance between Bergman and something sillier, then this boils it down to the barest credentials. Insipid and inspired. A petulant stamp from an undergrown intellectual. Four stars.' Tom Bonnet, Sight & Sound

'Only eternal love between Farrow and Allen would provide the trust necessary for her to don that particular outfit and say those particular lines.' Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun

'Allen used to have a stand-up line that he re-used over and over, he liked it so much: 'I'm not scared of death... I just don't want to be there when it happens'. Well, he has been there when it happened many times: Hollywood Ending, Match Point and Whatever Works, to name but three deaths. But every time I reach back for Annie Hall or Manhattan I only feel sad for an auteur now lost. Only Quotes keeps me excited. It is an enigma, a flashing message not quite understood.' Paul Auster, Notes on Film Signs

'You know, people ask me who I am, and I presume it is a trick question. So then they ask what kind of man I am, and I realize that if they think I'm a man then I've actually tricked them.' Woody Allen

Quotes Directed by Woody Allen Produced by Robert Grenhut Written by Woody Allen, Mia Farrow Starring Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Liza Minnelli Orion Pictures/Warner Brothers Release Date UK/US: Mar 1989 99 mins Tagline: 'Umm.. I Really Don't... I Gues Yuo Need Something For The Poster... Use Something From Ben Hur.'

THE TRANSCENDENTALIST (Charles Laughton, 1951)

The Transcendentalist finally makes peace with itself about an hour in, settling into a nonsense rhythm reminiscent of another sub-prime classic you'll have on the tip of your tongue, like the name of a minor lover you spent a long week promising to never forget on one of the more tousist-ridden Greek islands when you were eighteen and promptly didn't write to, ever, despite wanting to. (Why didn't you?) Gary Cooper, heretoforth vibrating with alacrity between folksy hero and weary cynic (a pendulum on which almost every Hollywood lead swings, at least if they're not on the one that ticks on homespun innocence and tocks, unbelievably but inevitably, on genius and glory. Neither are exclusive; many character arcs greedily take in both donging devices, or an unholy mixture of both), takes sixty minutes of chewing gum (beautifully, slowly, sexily, evoking the old Wrigley's slogan 'Too much mastication will make you go blind', a minor classic of inverse-advertising that made the kids chew their way through the fifties) before he ups the gears into something more, something om; He discovers a fifty-foot meta-Cooper at exactly the same time as James Agee and Dirk Langston's script begins to sing a second simultaneous song, spreading melodic shards in many new curves; this is also the exact moment that Charles Laughton's direction seems to twist into a new heaven, somehow capturing the exact moment that Western Philosophy meets east, causing a blissful Oz to permeate the director's canvas/Kansas.

Hyperbole? Watch it, and you too will think that the film suddenly shifts from black and white to colour. But it doesn't; it just seems that way, an illusion created by a coincidence of genius. ' Every one of my mother, Colin Cowdrey, Eleanor Roosevelt and Rin Tin Tin see the ending in colour,' said Graham Greene in a Times piece in 1956, going on to refute the myth that dogs are colourblind, instead suggesting that they see in fact a dim rainbow, in which blue is especially noticeable to their eye... 'so perhaps Rin Tin Tin appreciates the waterfall sequence here in a somewhat nuanced way'.

A metaphysical detective story becomes decadent, endless inqury; Cooper wanders into the golden countryside, not leaving a linear plot behind but somehow multiplying it tenfold and making even more sense. The gates of noir are flung apart.1 Somehow, you wonder, if in fact mankind would have been condemned long ago but for these curious puzzles we create to confuse the gods. Art doesn't just amuse us, it buys us time, until we can figure out a suitable escape plan. And so flippant jokes can actually be mordant philosophies, and Gary Coopers can actually be religious vessels, carrying our fevered hopes as far as they can before their knees buckle and they grow tired and tiresome.

'Our noons were in the same sky,' said Cooper of his time working with Laughton, Agee and Langston. The public wavered, however, finding the hard stare of genius too much to bear, and went to see other entertainments instead. 'Such is life,' remarked Laughton, I shouldn't wonder that if Christ was resurrected in our lifetimes, we would surely fail to notice.'

The Transcendentalist is the first of two one-hit wonders of Laughton's directorial career in Hollywood, the other being Night of the Hunter (1955), another slice of sublime dissonance.

(Nance... Nancy- that was it her name, knew her for a week in 1993. Or Susan. From Stepney, or Colchester. A six-foot tall tomboy in a West Ham shirt on the verge of blooming into a stunner, a fact of which she was all too oblivious. She was relatively spiteful in play on holiday, but wrote two letters full of longing back home. There was no response. She is thought of seldomly, but once every six months a girl with her likeness walks past and causes a wave of wistfulness.)

The Transcendentalist Directed by Charles Laughton Produced by Paul Gregory Written by James Agee, Dirk Langston, United Artists 92 mins Release Date US: Jan 1951/UK: Aug 1951

Tagline: 'He's gone.'

1. David Lynch was heavily influenced by The Transcendentalist, and the central motif of a detective encircled by mysterious evils was evident in Twin Peaks, with Lynch even naming his Special Agent hero after Gary Cooper.

HOW AUSTRALIA TOOK US (Franck Boston-Tobias, 2010)

Scene: In the midst of some kind of national crisis, a young man (Noah Taylor) sits in a police interview room, accused by a detective (Nick Cave) of murdering his lover (Isabelle Huppert). The young man proceeds to attempt to justify his actions by explaining that the cause of the American apocalypse is a disease which causes lovers to see, at the point of orgasm, every one of their partner's previous conquests. He suggests that this disease is an act of sabotage from outside. Monologue:

Australia's army was small, but their nous was acute. They picked off the sex-psychics first, exploded their skulls with cuckold imagery. Invasion unnecessary. No Billabong kids with crackling jaws were required to cross our borders, those smirking goblins just spent down their dreams to a fast edge to catch us cold. Smiling, the cool bullies infected us from afar, destroying our orgasms, rendering our small deaths into enflamed confusions. A series of internal bombs, hoaxes and smokescreens confuse us; secret war twitches our pens. When the key is the anagram of sex, the vanquished can't write.

The near-flaw in their plan of aiming for the libido of the nation was that they overestimated the value of sex to America. Our frigidity almost saved us. While they considered our fleshy levees to be lugubriously swelling, they were in fact obscured from our view, our decadence uncalculated. We appeared, at a deep glance, to be obsessed with rutting, but this disguised the facts. Unvisited orchards produced only apples.

But the plan worked, nonetheless. There's always enough sex to bring any civilisation down.

They scrambled our endings, Victoria's secretions. Before we knew what they had done, it was too late. No parachutes from the edge of the sky, no bloody hacking into our procrastination. After all, there was a labyrinth no interloper could ever pass through at the heart of our pentagon. Walls of fire, an infinity of code. Which we knew, because each previous failure to overthrow us had been paraded headless and hollow on television. Our digital safety was thus pledged. And as we were convinced that the only way they could come was through our plastic keyboards, we were comforted. But they found a backdoor we didn't know we had. Fantasies were sabota-
'-Mr Smith, you mean to say you didn't kill your girlfriend? That a foreigner did?'

Leading question. Tone of slight derision. It isn't Australia the country, but something more
elusive. Australia is the name we have for them, and it doesn't suffice. I'll tell him again.
He has the numbers: Domestic violence rose, but he'll say it always had. The divorce rate soared, but then it always had. The curse that had been put on us, the trick they were fooling us with, might have been a gift to a more enlightened people. Instead, we found that seeing images as we climaxed that revealed who our partner had slept with previously only hurt.
Previous lovers in this context were vampires reflected in surfaces.

For that was what they did.

Somehow, they managed to poison us. During sex with another person, we would see, every
time we closed our eyes, all of their previous sexual partners, stacked up, or in a line. There were those that may have been spies, sleeping with groups of friends, entire families. The greys and cool oranges of my city appeared to change. Although the invasion was not to be seen around us- there were no gunposts above bars, checkpoints as the occupying force marshalled space- our vision was suspect. Our eyes were all vichy eyes, lying to themselves. Some ran anywhere, just to get a jump on death, a couple of days.

'Mr Smith, you're ignoring the subject.'

'Sir, this is the subject. Our country has fallen into disrepair. They caused it. A skreeing satellite pixelated our thoughts. One moment we were scraping moondust from our boots, shedding ideas, almost controlling Time, period. But we didn't see that dark was the night, and it was falling. Now, before we know it, we are segregating ourselves. Fence wires are cut and snap back like guitar strings. A black humming in the distance might have given the game away. Church gatherings, street corners. We're burden bearers, licking friends, naming our afflictions to weaken their power. Uncrushed, dreams of blacked victory. Revenge flickers in cities, not coherent enough to rise like a threat. Names of towns haven't changed, but they now seem sad, echoing dully, devoid of Revelators to convey. Talent contests unfinished. TV towers hum, our bluesmen. Trains run as usual, but listlessly. We hold pretty things in our hands, and don't know where to look.'

'Not everyone is killing their girlfriend, Mr Smith.'

'The stories, complexities, were dotted among the news, but no pattern was traced to link them. Hetero concerns remain hidden, colourful ones pastiched into ridicule. It happened to me, one, twice, a hundred times before I linked it to the outside world, the passages in misspelt news
that leapt, the seasoned broadcasters' disdain for nothing much at all. We are a matrix, a clogged artery, a segue upon a segue. The East Coast hummed with this and everything else, a cold electrocuted corpse, over there and out of reach. In camps, some of the homeless rutted endlessly, and every time it hurt, they did it more. And once sex is gone, pleasurelessness will kill us before lack of reproduction does. We don't need children to refresh our cities, but we need stimulae.'

'You murdered her.'

I remember V, late, that middle of the night away from all. Her room was above the street, and even after she no longer worked in the bar below, she stayed. Fried smoke always found its way in. She'd change into a T-shirt, smile from the hall, slow right down to the speed of a record. Do you think I should cut my hair? She lifted it up into a bundle on top of her head, and pouted sideways at me. No. Never.

V, inverse opening, long-legged receptacle, on her back. She'd be below me, but would govern my action. V, a crooked seagull coasting on her own air. Sweat, fogged lenses, happy cheeks. The picture appeared in a cloud of activity, and I lost it in her ear canal: Her other lovers, on the wind, gone. Hundreds, thousands, all caring less than me. We ate cold lasagne while sitting on top of the sheets. She talked about her day, I forgot B momentarily. Christmas lights jumped, it was midnight in March. I knew I couldn't live with her anymore.

She died while wet, cut off from the shore. My withheld knowledge of the tidal situation incriminates me. The day was hot, so we went to the coast. Drove quickly, leaving behind a run of bad luck, frustrated bank accounts, percussive arguments. She proposed the escape, twenty-four hours away, and I agreed quickly. She was a brave swimmer, not a strong one. I wasn't even aware of my plan until it was all over, but by the time her cold lungs had stopped, I realised that my intention all along had been to end it here.

'That's a confession, Mr Smith?'

'I suppose. But I must add something. Her love was palindromic, you could approach her from both sides. Before and after the heat were identical, her smile distant, glances over your shoulder to future interests. Even in our special case, as victims of sabotage, she bore no ill will: She was just as warm as before our romance, and just as cool. But we were a special case. Our love ended at the phantom invasion, when one million homes sank like red herrings, tetchy and confused. I was a victim as much as she. We all were. Are.'

'Anything else?'

'Yes. Some of her hair was left in the bathtub. It suggests a message. But I could not decipher it. Could some of your experts have a look?'

'We'll have a look at the whole house, sir. Don't worry.'

How Australia Took Us Directed by Franck Boston-Tobias Produced by Hobson Tragic, John Boston-Tobias Written by Franck & John Boston-Tobias Starring Isabelle Huppert, Noah Taylor, Melissa George, Nick Cave, Music by Nick Cave & Warren Ellis HBO/Film Four Release Date US/UK: November 2010 Tagline: 'They took nothing but our sex'

LA MORT DE ROBERT REDFORD (THE DEATH OF ROBERT REDFORD) (Jean Rouch, 1974)

Introduction: 'La mort d'une étoile.'
When he went, his edifices were scrawled on by well-wishers. His cheeks were garlanded with red-penned declarations that we would never see his life again. Panic had elapsed, following the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and we had fallen into a frayed acceptance, beyond hysteria. The end seemed but weeks away, and the murder of the totemic Bob seemed to reflect this.

Scene One: 'Pourquoi tournez-vous, monsieur? C'est la fin, il n'y aura personne quitte pour regarder le film'
As the news broke that Redford was murdered attempting to board a train at the Gard du Nord, Parisians took to the streets. January, 1973. Documentary-maker Jean Rouch took his camera. 'Individuals who were not old enough or brave enough to commit to the riots in 1968 were here. They were attempting to make up for something. They were responsible for most of the damage. Efforts at a greater symbolism rarely can be good if they are so preconceived.'

Scene Two: 'En Amerique la police a des fusils. Mais pas ici.'
Suicide by cop is an early verdict, which brings more riots. A man appears on camera. He is old, ninety perhaps, and has wild grey hair. His eyes are an agitated blue. 'ils l'ont tué! Les bâtards du droit religieux lui ont offert comme un sacrifice! Imbéciles!' Rouch translates: 'He says they killed him... the religious right offered him as a sacrifice.' The old man looks at the camera. In English he shouts: 'bastards! I call them religious bastards! Say what I say!'

Scene Three: 'La discussion du symbolisme de blonds, avec les cigarettes.'
The discussion of the symbolism of blonds, with cigarettes. At one point, a student breaks into English to interrupt. 'This is exactly what the world thinks we do in France! We riot, and then we sit in cafes discussing philosophical concerns.' Rouch spends the rest of the scene prompting the assembled to discover if they agree.


Scene Four: 'Déformation de personnalité.'
He had ideas above his station, perhaps. The fact that this icon had the temerity to be beautiful and a scientist upset the extremes of left and right, as well as capillary demons of the nth eye. His suggestion: That a calendar year of 400 days would suffice our needs. Stretch the year to capacity, leaving 25 year-old wrinkled people wandering the planet. This idea threatened many interested parties. Assassinations can fall into several categories. All contain traces of hero-worship. Gilles Deleuze appears on camera. 'In the death of a famous figure like this, one wonders if the abrubt event in everyone's lives is not some form of personality warp, in which we all are meshed in a non-linear paradigm; a world seen only by a third eye, not our own'.

Scene Five: 'Apocalypse Maintenant'
Psychic mistakes do not appear immediately. They fester and burn, showing up as symptoms on maps of the poorer districts. It is easy for the deniers to derail theories, pass such events off as the quirk and spite of the under-appreciative ethnic castes. Even when a rich blonde or two is afflicted with the tawdry, kipnapped and drugged and thrown insanely from a cliff, say, or being brainwashed into being unwashed and homeless, even then still their probes do not quiver unduly. How many apocalypses must we enjoy? JG Ballard suggests that 'thousands of celebrities could die in the Paris night, and our civilisation would be stronger, not weaker.'

Scene Six: 'Le ligers de Paris'
President Georges Pompidou wonders, on camera, if Redford's last will and testament implies that his safari park will be left to the French people. 'Currently, Paris' rainbow ligers are an illusion, created by a series of holograms placed in front of regular ligers. But a real one would be a great posthumous gift to the city.' Some feel that this is inappropriate. But it does suggest that our leaders have confidence that the world has some future.1

Scene Seven: 'Le hot-dog, en sautant la grenouille, Albuquerque.'

We calm down. The world does not end. Generations later can see Rouch's account of the death of the most famous man in the world, and his account of that account (recorded simultaneously). Humanity continues. In his honour, the Utah Film Festival is renamed 'Sundance'. Redford's last words are recorded as the cryptic 'Hot dog, jumping frog, Albuquerque'.2 Who knows?

La Mort de Robert Redford Directed by Jean Rouch Produced by Jean Rouch, Edgar Morin Fisk Productions/BBC Films Release Date Fra: Oct 1974 US/UK: Jan 1979 Tagline 'J'étais là Quand une Etoile est Morte.'

1. Georges Pompidou died three months after appearing in this documentary. He was 62.

2. These words were the inspiration for the chorus of Prefab Sprout's 1987 hit 'The King of Rock'n'Roll', and also for the title of Stan Brakhage's 1979 short Albuquerque Frog.