It's Only a Movie: Reel Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive

by Mark Kermode

  But standing out on that deserted street in London without even my mother to call for reassurance (I hadn’t told her about the repeat appearance after the disaster of the first) I felt nothing other than despair and defeat. I had tried my best to be good at something and I had wound up being even worse than I was the first time round. Hell, as far as I could see I didn’t even know the difference between good and bad any more. I was lousy at listings and even worse at radio. I had run away from Manchester only to blot my copybook in London and the walls were closing in. Any minute now someone was going to blow the whistle on my budding career and I was going to be revealed for the talentless fraudster that I truly was.

  That I truly am.

  I needed to escape.

  I needed to put clear blue water between myself and my very public failures.

  I went home and listened to Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ third album Don’t Stand Me Down and heard Kevin Rowland speaking to me and me alone, impeaching me to ‘Go west, go west young man …’.

  So I did.

  Chapter 4

  CALIFORNIA ÜBER ALLES

  Like Withnail & I, who went on holiday by mistake, I arrived in New York more by accident than design.

  I was aiming for Los Angeles, following in the footsteps of my close friend Tim Polecat who was sending back daily reports about how much better it was than England because the restaurants actually understood the meaning of the word ‘service’ and the garage owners didn’t make that oddly British tooth-sucking noise every time they looked under your bonnet meaning you were about to be screwed for a grand and your car wouldn’t be ready till Wednesday. Tim used to live in Mill Hill, and it was there that he and I had cemented our friendship over a shared appreciation of the complex time structures and artistic merits of the entire Planet of the Apes movie cycle which (as we know) played such an important role in my political education. We had also bonded over a mutual belief that the seventies celluloid car-crash Caligula was actually some weird form of masterpiece, rather than just an expensive porno flop with big-name stars like Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole and Sir John Gielgud talking in between the interstitial Penthouse Pet sex scenes. Several years later I would oversee a clumsy but effective Channel 4 recut of Caligula which removed all the hard-core porno shots (which had been stuck in willy-nilly by Penthouse -owner-cum-movie-producer Bob Guccione) in a belated attempt to prove that Tim and I were on to something. When Guccione’s lawyers started making threatening noises, I took it as proof that we had been right all along.

  Tim had recently moved to LA with his then wife Jenny, an aspiring Scandinavian-American model-slash-actress who had already experienced fleeting fame as the woman who opens the fridge in the ‘Milk’s gotta lotta bottle!’ TV ads. Tim, meanwhile, had enjoyed a couple of Top Thirty hits with the previously mentioned rockabilly rebels the Polecats (hence the name, obviously) and had more recently designed the front cover for a 12-inch EP which I had made with a couple of friends under the catchy moniker ‘The Trumpeting of Mighty Jungle Beasts’. Despite being ‘Second Single of the Week’ (or something similar) in Sounds and ‘hotly tipped’ in the NME, we had failed to break big, and would probably have split up due to musical differences if we had actually existed as a ‘real band’. Which we didn’t. So we couldn’t.

  Back to New York. The plan went something like this. Tim and Jenny would set up base in LA, from whence they planned to dominate the world with their new band Destroy All Monsters, named after the 1968 Japanese monster movie which featured an assortment of rubbery beasties including Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah and more. Tim would play guitar and sing, Jenny would play bass, and I would help out by making lots of Day the Earth Stood Still sci-fi bloop-bloop noises in the background with a range of electronic gadgetry that none of us really understood. We already had a couple of synthesisers and I had my eyes on a theremin at which I could gesture in the virtuoso manner of Jimmy Page in The Song Remains the Same. I had no doubt that DAM would be massive – after all, they’d already been on a Saturday morning TV show in the UK where they had been interviewed by a rubber puppet called Gilbert the Green Alien. How could they fail? As for me, I would divide my time between occasional pop stardom and more regular movie journalism, the latter of which would be boosted by the fact that I would be living in Hollywood where everything movie-tastic was happening.

  The only fly in the ointment was my own nervousness about moving to America, land of drive-by shootings, ambulance-chasing lawyers and twenty-four-hour terrible television. Also I was completely incapable of organising any form of journey further than a trip to the Phoenix East finchley to catch a late-night double bill of The Enforcer and Dirty Harry . So when a neighbour offered me a free standby ticket to New York which he had somehow managed to win through a prodigious consumption of instant coffee, I thought, ‘New York is in America. And so is Los Angeles! They can’t be far from each other.’ And off I went.

  Problems started early on. At Heathrow, I was assured that I wouldn’t be allowed to enter America at all unless I had either a) a visa (which I didn’t – I thought we had a ‘special arrangement’ since World War Two), or b) a return ticket to prove that I was going to come back. When I pointed out that my free coffee air-miles voucher did indeed cover the trip back, it was explained that ‘free coffee tickets’ didn’t count. You had to have paid money to come back, otherwise it would look like you didn’t really mean it. This seemed ridiculous to me – I mean, who wouldn’t want to come back to a country overrun by ten years of Thatcherism and the advent of the ‘snood’? But by the time we’d sorted out our disagreements I was £200 down, a serious dent in my travel plans.

  The first standby flight shipped out at three in the afternoon, and pulled into New York around 9 p.m. local time. Before hitting the notoriously unfriendly US customs and immigration desk I had studiously removed all outward signs of my former revolutionary communist affiliations, viz. a hammer and sickle insignia on my leather jacket, a badge with an embossed silhouette of Lenin, and a copy of the Communist Party Manifesto which I had been carrying around in an inside pocket for years without ever actually reading it. As it turned out, the guy behind the glass couldn’t have cared less if I was carrying a Kalashnikov rifle and singing ‘Arise ye starvelings from your slumbers’. This was more than a decade before 9/11, and the main defence issue of the day was whether or not you looked Mexican.

  It wasn’t until I was in the main concourse, attempting to get a cheap flight to LA, that I began to realise just how big America was. Clearly my initial plan of working against the time difference and being in Hollywood before late tea was not going to work out. Worse still, I had shipped up on the eve of something called Thanksgiving which apparently was ‘not a good time to travel, sir’ – particularly for those in search of bargain-basement deals. After several hours negotiating, it became clear that my only option was to buy a ticket for the day after Thanskgiving, which meant spending a few nights in New York.

  ‘Hey, no problem,’ I thought.’I know someone in New York. My old school friend Saul Rosenberg, who’s doing postgrad studies at Columbia University. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to see me, and to put me up. Unannounced. At Thanksgiving.’ OK, so I didn’t actually have his number in New York. But I did have a number for his mum and dad who lived in Willesden and who would doubtless be thrilled to hear from me. After all, they were smart cosmopolitan people who had been extremely nice about allowing our awful band to practise VERY LOUDLY in their front room and they had even been gracious enough to come and see us play an equally eardrum-threatening gig at the Moonlight Club in West Hampstead. Surely calling them up would be no trouble.

  Unfortunately, having no head for figures, I had made a catastrophic miscalculation on the time difference and somehow concluded that London was five hours behind New York. It isn’t – it’s five hours ahead. But I hadn’t figured that out yet.

  So I called them.

  Saul’s mum answered, sounding unaccountably s
leepy and not her usual vibrant self at all.

  ‘Hi, it’s Mark,’ I blathered, ‘you know, Saul’s friend. From school. Remember me? We used to be in a band together, many years ago, and we rehearsed in your front room. Terrible racket. Anyway, how are you?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Whaaaaaaa?’

  Another pause. I tried again.

  ‘Yes, anyway, I’m in New York and I need Saul’s phone number. Could you give it to me?’

  Silence. The sound of the phone being passed to another hand. A lower voice. Saul’s dad. Also sounding sleepy.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Oh hi, it’s Mark, Saul’s Friend. Band. Terrible racket ha ha ha! Anyway, do you have Saul’s phone number?’

  More silence. Then, ‘Are you hurt?’

  Strange question.

  ‘Er, no. I just need —’

  ‘DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?’

  ‘Um, yes, it’s eleven o’clock here, and you’re five hours behind so it’s six o’clock there. Isn’t it?’

  More silence. I thought I heard the phrase ‘stupid boy’ being muttered in the background. Some banging around. Then the low voice again.

  ‘Mark?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you well?’

  ‘Oh, yes thanks.’

  ‘And your mother and father? They are well?’

  ‘Yes, great, thank you.’

  ‘Good. Here is Saul’s phone number. And Mark, although you are always welcome to call and we are pleased to help put you in touch with Saul, may I point out that it is in fact four o’clock in the morning here in England.’

  ‘Is it? Oh, sorry. But thanks. And say thanks to Mrs Rosenberg. When she wakes up …’

  Lovely people, the Rosenbergs – slow to chide, swift to bless.

  I rang Saul’s number. Amazingly, he answered.

  ‘Hi Saul. It’s Mark. I’m in New York. Which is great. And I need to come and stay at your place. Until Tuesday probably. So, where are you? And how do I get there?’

  Silence.

  Then (inevitably), ‘Whaaaaaa?’

  Oh for heaven’s sake.

  ‘Look, I haven’t got time to discuss this, and I really don’t have anywhere else to go, and hey Saul it’s me, Mark, you know, Mark, from the band, terrible racket, blah blah blah, and I really need to know how to get to wherever it is that you live.’

  Saul considered this for a moment. It turned out that not only was it Thanksgiving, but also that he was up against some horrible academic deadline and he’d essentially planned to spend the next four days with his head down concentrating on work and the last thing he needed right now was Mark from the terrible-racket band turning up on his doorstep. But to his great credit, he did not say any of this out loud – at least, not yet. Instead he said simply: ‘83rd and Columbus. Take a taxi.’

  ‘Can’t do that,’ I replied, omitting the usual niceties about ‘thanks a lot, you’re a real life saver’ etc.’Don’t have the money for a taxi. Don’t have the money for anything actually. Can’t I get a train? Or a bus? Or something?’

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake. Right, here’s what you do. You get to the subway, you look at the map, and you follow the red line to 79th and Broadway and you get off there and walk. You do not talk to anybody . You do not look weirdly at anybody. And you do not get off anywhere else. Have you got insurance?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Of course not. Right, in that case, you do not cross any roads. If you get hit by a car, tell the ambulance man that you’re me and that you have Blue Cross. But don’t get hit by a car.’

  I thought about telling Saul that this wouldn’t work because if I went to hospital there’d be tests and nakedness and whatnot, and someone would realise that key parts of my anatomy did not match up with his name and we’d all end up in court and that would not be good because I needed to get to Los Angeles as soon as possible. But the money was running out, so I decided to hold that thought till later.

  So, where was the subway? There was a sign with a picture of a bus, a car, and a train, so I figured that had to be a good start. I found a bus and got on it. We travelled around for about forty minutes, stopping at various empty car parks, before arriving back at the airport where we started. Apparently I had missed the train station. We tried again. This time I succeeded. I got a ticket, I got on the train. So far, so good. The train was virtually empty and suddenly I felt like Tom Cruise in Risky Business in that scene when Rebecca De Mornay tells him that what she really likes to do is to ride around on the subway after dark – if you know what I mean. I looked out of the window and saw nothing but desolation, poverty, and trash. It was brilliant!

  The train went subterranean, and if Jason Isaacs were still on board with that TV Movie of My Life he’d probably be wondering about now whether he hadn’t accidentally signed up for a remake of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (these being the days before Tony Scott took a sledgehammer to Joseph Sargent’s original and did it all over again with more shouting, shooting, and swearing but apparently without a camera tripod). By the time we pulled into an underground station I half expected to see Gene Hackman ordering a ‘fruit cup’ before being craftily given the slip by Fernando Rey in The French Connection. (On the subject of which, director William Friedkin once told me that Rey had only got the job as ‘Frog One’ because he had told his casting agent to ‘go get that guy out of Belle de Jour ’, and it wasn’t until Rey got off the plane in New York that Friedkin realised he wasn’t the guy he’d seen in Belle de Jour – Francisco Rabal. As William Goldman famously observed, in Hollywood nobody knows anything.) By the time we got to 79th Street, I had somehow mutated into John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever and you could tell by the way I used my walk that I had neither the time nor the inclination to talk. The swagger lasted all the way up the escalator until I got to street level, where I was greeted by the sight of someone taking a dump in the snow, clenching his buttock with one hand while simultaneously pan-handling with the other. I realised that I was way out of my depth, and ran the two blocks to Columbus Avenue, entirely forgetting Saul’s advice about not crossing roads or getting hit by cars.

  Saul’s apartment was up on the eighth floor, and by the time I got there, it was close to one o’clock. But by then I was buzzing, and I really wanted to do something you couldn’t do in England at this hour. At least not back then.

  ‘Hi Saul. Let’s go for a drink!’

  Saul started to protest – he had work to do, it was really late, he was really really tired – but he soon realised that I’d probably be less trouble if sedated by alcohol, so he gave up and agreed.We walked out into the freezing night, across the filthy snow-covered streets, to a diner where I ordered ‘A beer. And a whiskey. Together’, and was absolutely thrilled when I got both without argument. I enjoyed this experience so much that I did it again, almost immediately, and by 2 a.m. I was completely smashed, and not a little crazy. Saul sighed, took me back to the apartment, showed me the sofa, and went back to work on his studies.

  Sometime the next day I wandered groggily into the kitchen in search of caffeine. I found a cup, a kettle, milk in the fridge, and something which, according to the label, was ‘Choc Full O’ Nuts!’ – a proud boast, although I still can’t see why on earth this should be a good thing. Undeterred, I used my English superpowers to concoct a hot caffeinated drinking substance from these alien ingredients, and I was feeling pretty damned pleased with myself when Saul appeared, looked at me, and rolled his eyes heavenwards.

  ‘You know this is a kosher kitchen?’ he said, wearily.

  ‘Sure,’ I lied.’No problem.’ Having grown up in North London I figured I could do kosher. No bacon. Only bagels. And lox.

  ‘Right. Then you’ll have noticed that all the china has either a blue or a red mark on it.’

  I hadn’t.

  ‘So, for example, that cup you’re holding has a thin red line round the top.’

  I looked carefully
. And he was right – there was a red line. Clear as day.

  ‘So the red china is for meat, and the blue china is for dairy.’

  I thought about this.

  ‘So I have to drink meat out of this cup?’ I asked, before adding feebly, ‘Like Bovril?’

  ‘No, but you have to not drink dairy out of it.’

  ‘Oh, fine. Well that’s no problem, because this is coffee.’

  ‘With milk. Which is …?’

  ‘Oh. I see. Sorry.’

  ‘No worries,’ Saul smiled.’Enjoy your drink.’

  I did so. When I’d finished, Saul quietly took the cup, broke it on the side of the table, and put the pieces in the bin.

  I had been in New York less than twelve hours, and so far I had managed to annoy Saul’s parents, mess up his work schedule, and driven him to start destroying his kitchen. I really needed to get to Los Angeles, for both our sakes.

  Three days later, I arrived at LAX which looked for all the world like an old thirties sci-fi movie. Only in colour. This was not surprising, since for the last few months I’d been gazing at images of LAX which had been cunningly reconfigured to look just like an old thirties sci-fi movie (only in colour) in the video for Destroy All Monsters’ first single ‘Stranger than Fiction’. (Incidentally, I just checked and that video is now up onYouTube and is, frankly, brilliant. Go take a look, and you’ll see why I was so excited.) I was met by Tim and Jenny who drove me to their apartment in Hollywood with tales of just how brilliantly everything was working out here in Sunny California – a place where, they assured me, ‘having an English accent is a qualification’. Indeed, Tim had already picked up some design work doing retro graphics for some fairly big movies (he’s since become an established film designer, as well as an ongoing Polecat) and Jenny was going to acting classes where some Hollywood thesping guru was teaching people how to be a banana. Or to behave like a banana. Or something. Better still, there was a cash-in-hand crewing assignment on the cards doing a video for some dodgy heavy-metal band which would sort out my financial problems forthwith.