Plug-o-rama!

Lots of brilliant people have been making so many great films and podcasts and magazines recently that I thought a little wanton pulgging was in order. On that note…

First up is Barry. A short film, written by Rupert Raby and directed by John Michell:

Ella is seven. Her best friend is the best friend a girl could have: Barry. Her rabbit. They don’t care what other girls say about them.  They like to spend days in the park, having picnics, sharing secrets and dreams of escaping. But how can she when her dad’s best friend was once her’s too?

The Barry crew are currently trying to raise funds, they’re about half way there so help them out. It’s bound to be good and if you’re generous enough you get to go to the premier!

The Invisible Tour Guide is bonkers and genuinely, rib-ticklingly hilarious, with a full complement of silly voices, crazy twisting plots and wonderful characters. Oh, I should probably say that it’s a podcast (one of the many that’s kept me going over the past month of exams/project deadlines). The first five episodes were followed up by an old timey radio play:

‘Behind the Tour Guide’ is an imaginary documentary following two weeks in the life of world renowned expert, imaginary Professor Byron Frump, as he battles a tricky conspiracy involving 11 foot tall aliens from the Bacchanalian dimension, the grand inquisitor of the Royal Society, and an Italian masquerading as a ladies unmentionables millionaire.

Catch up with episodes 1 to 5 and the Behind the Tour Guide show by subscribing.

Coming soon is EXIT Magazine. It’s very mysterious and very good. It’ll be around in the last week of May. But for now I can’t say any more. (Disclaimer: I wrote an article Exit)

Also coming soon is Pinpoint Radio, another great podcast this time by a bunch of fantastic broadcast journalism students. It will feature radio documentaries, magazine shows and more great talk radio. (Another disclaimer: I produced some of these shows)

A Cartoon in a Cartoon Graveyard

A man tries to walk into the room. He gets stuck in the doorway as a much shorter man tries to walk in at the same time. The room is bare apart from two chairs. They sit down, turn to each other and shake hands. Then they turn to the camera and just at the instant when Paul Simon is about to start singing Chevy Chase starts gesticulating and lip-syncing the lyrics…

A man walks down the street. He says “why am I soft in the middle now? Why am I soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard? I need a photo opportunity. I want a shot at redemption. Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard…

‘You Can Call Me Al’ was released in 1986. Chevy Chase was the perfect man to mime those words.

Simon and Chase made the video for the song with the help of Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels. It turned out to be pretty popular at the time, Simon was having a big comeback on the strength of Graceland and Chase was at the height of his career. The late eighties were a good time for Chase, he stared in two sequels to National Lampoon’s Vacation and he hosted the Oscars in ‘87 and ‘88, greeting the crowd with the infamous opening line “Good evening Hollywood phonies!”

Then in the nineties Chase’s career nosedived. His movies flopped and in ‘93 his short lived chat show on FOX was axed after six weeks. Despite the occasional accolade, such as receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1994, his career as an actor was over.

Paul Simon wrote ‘You Can Call Me Al’ after his trip to South Africa in 1986. One of the interpretations of the song is that it’s a subtle critique of apartheid. That doesn’t hold any water with me, neither do the references to that Depression era tune Brother Can You Spare A Dime. The only way of understanding this song is to treat it as a joke: it’s about Simon suffering an identity crisis, ‘finding himself’ in Africa and at the same time mocking the whole process.

“A man walks down the street…” could be the opening line of any stock groaner. The whole Betty and Al thing is just an inside joke on a bit of identity confusion at a party Simon attended. Hell “ got a short little span of attention” is a penis joke.

With hind-sight when Simon sings these words they’re tongue in cheek. But when Chase lip-syncs them in the video, it’s borderline tragic. We’re presented with the image of the aging comedian prophesising his impending cultural irrelevancy yet making self depreciating jokes about his crisis while still trying to pull off his same old schtik.

I need a photo opportunity. I want a shot at redemption. Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard…

In 1998 he turned down the role of Lester Burnham in American Beauty. He feared it would damage his image. Kevin Spacey took the part and subsequently won Best Actor at the Academy Awards.

Was that Chevy Chase’s shot at career redemption?

Yes Man

About three summers ago some strange things happened. It all began when I called round to a friend’s house to find him mailing a passport photo of himself to someone called Danny Wallace, so that he could join his cult. Considering he’s usually a pretty level headed guy, I found it a little disturbing that he was willing to send photos of himself to a total stranger, a cult-leader at that. Specifically so that he could join this cult. Very odd behaviour. Naturally I asked him what the hell was he doing. He replied “don’t worry it’s not really a cult, it’s more like a collective” and chucked a book at me called Join Me. It was written by this sinister Wallace fellow.

So while he was messing with stamps and envelopes, I humoured him and began to flick through Join Me to find out what this Wallace chap was up to. Mass-suicide? Midnight witchery? A voyage to re-connect with our extraterrestrial masters?

Not exactly…

In fact, it seemed that at first he didn’t really want to plan anything at all. He just wanted people to ‘join him’ by sending him a small photo of themselves. And this book, Join Me, wasn’t so much a call to arms or a manifesto, but more of a memoir of how Danny Wallace apparently managed to convince thousands of people to join his collective and eventually spread good karma every Friday by performing one act of random kindness towards strangers. I spent the following night and day reading Join Me. I couldn’t put it down, it was fantastically funny, suspenseful, cringe-worthy and fascinating. Sure it was no crowning achievement of the English language, but it was impossible to stop reading.

Once I’d finished it I needed more. I swiftly picked up a copy of Yes Man and also moved on to the books of his partner-in-crime Dave Gorman, Googlewack and Are You Dave Gorman? But it was Yes Man though that really rocked the boat. Disillusioned with his increasing hermit resembling existence he undertook a mission to answer yes to any yes/no question he was asked for six months. The sheer insanity of this ambition as it played out was astounding. It started with a confused cold-caller trying to sell him double glazing and ended up with Wallace hopping all across the face of the planet following his quest. His adventure exposed to him to the whims of anyone he interacted with and yet at the same time it was marvellously hilarious. Yes Man captured my imagination so much that I undertook a number boy-projects myself (boy-projects is how Wallace’s long-suffering girlfriend bitterly described them). Some remnants of these are still online, here and here.

Since then Wallace has done a number of TV shows, and just recently published a new book Friends Like These. In the meantime Yes Man has been turned into a Hollywood movie. It’s still in production but Jim Carey will play Wallace and Zooey Deschanel will play the female lead Renee Allison (since character names have been changed from the book I guess she’ll be playing Hanne, Wallace’s ex-girlfriend). I’ve liked both of these actors in the past but I can’t help feeling their going to ham it up. It fact I think as an American production the nature of this eccentric and distinctly British comedy will change, probably for the worse. Even Wallace, as he has written over on his page, seems to be in on the changes to the original story that will inevitably take place:

“I saw a first cut last month and loved it… plus, I’ve written a whole new chapter for the tie-in edition of the book that’ll be coming out in December, with Jim’s beaming face on the cover…”

Either way the film will be out on December 19th. I know I don’t really want to see it, but I probably will anyway for nostalgia’s sake. In the meantime I’m going to start reading Yes Man all over again…