It's Only a Movie

by Mark Kermode

  Inevitably, the workload at Time Out took its toll on the staff who would occasionally find solace in the welcoming arms of a liquid lunch. During my brief spell as a TO office boy, I never got used to the phenomenon of watching one particularly talented editor and writer order a bottle of wine with the bill and then go back to the office where he would put in a solid afternoon’s work functioning more creatively, efficiently, and amusingly than I could ever do. I have never been able to drink at lunchtime – the minute alcohol invades my bloodstream my neurological system gets the message that all work is over and we’re on the slow but inexorable road to shutdown. That’s what I like about alcohol – the fact that it makes all thoughts of work go away, thereby relieving stress, tension, and anxiety in a wonderfully reliable way. But the idea of trying to work after consuming even a half of lager shandy is anathema to me. I’m just not built that way.

  I am, however, wired up to feel profoundly uncomfortable and horribly guilty about doing any job badly, and despite the handsome reward of the weekly pay cheques (when the chips are down the capitalist bastards will always treat you better than the breast-beating liberals) I knew that I was letting Time Out down. So after scraping by for a few more weeks I cornered Geoff in private and told him what he already knew – that I just wasn’t up to the job. He agreed, but with great largesse congratulated me on having owned up to my own shortcomings and promised to honour his earlier offer of writing work. He would later tell me that this had been a turning point – that he would have had to fire me had I not offered my own resignation, but that doing so had somehow saved my reputation and made me seem reliably honest rather than just unreliably rubbish.

  I learned an important lesson too – when it comes to work, always find the door before they show it to you.

  We agreed to muddle through until someone better could be found to handle listings cover, and I found myself spending more and more time in the Time Out office with little to do other than answer the phones and ‘help out’ in vague and frankly unspecified ways while filing the occasional film review and getting under Michael’s feet, which became my new favourite pastime. This suited me just fine, because I got to watch real journalists at work while making some great friends like Nigel floyd, with whom I would end up going to Russia with disastrous results (see Chapter Five).

  I also got to review some films, generally low-rent genre stuff which (as before) provided my passport to ‘proper journalism’. You can say what you like about trash cinema – in terms of my career it has served me better than all the Oscar-winning art in the world. Any idiot can review an acclaimed mainstream blockbuster like Gandhi (which prompted my oft-repeated maxim about ‘SIR’ Ben Kingsley that ‘when he’s good he’s very good but when he’s bad he’s Gandhi’) but it takes a special kind of idiot to get the measure of an underfunded piece of gory knock-off schlock, or indeed the sequel to an underfunded piece of gory knock-off schlock.

  The problem with printed reviews, of course, is that there’s something horribly permanent about them, allowing gross misjudgements to be waved in your face years after the initial error has been committed. I have always tended to treat everything that appears in print as some kind of journal of record, and have never quite got my head around the idea that yesterday’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip papers. And indeed, in the age of the internet, it isn’t– as Julia Roberts so eloquently explains to Hugh Grant in Richard Curtis’ oddly enduring Notting Hill.

  And so it is with a sense of trepidation that I now reach for the weighty Time Out film Guide which would become the ultimate resting place for all the blather that I and many others wrote for the mag in the pressure-cooker environment of that steam-driven office. I know that most of what I wrote for City Life wasn’t very good, but it also wasn’t very widely read and hasn’t been properly archived outside of Andy Spinoza’s filing cabinets. So, as long as we all felt good about it at the time, then that’s all that really matters. But those early Time Out reviews are still out there in the world, and are indeed accessible online as part of a frighteningly thorough archive of which none of us could have ever dreamed (and for which, therefore, most of us never got paid …).

  But let’s stay with print. If memory serves, the first review I ever had published in Time Out was for a cheapie schlocker entitled Watchers. All I can remember about it now is that (as the title suggests) there was a running motif about eyeballs – other than that, it was fairly unremarkable stuff. Now, the natural tendency when you start reviewing films is to resort immediately to hyperbole, declaring middle-of-the-road fodder to be somehow exceptional because from where you’re standing, frankly, it is. I was clearly guilty of this at City Life, and hadn’t entirely grown out of the habit by the time I arrived at Southampton Street. I remember, for example, declaring in Time Out’s sister magazine 20/20 that the Falklands War drama Resurrected was ‘the most important, and indeed difficult, film you will see this year’ – a brash claim which promptly wound up on the film’s poster. It has been to my infinite relief that this comparatively little-seen movie’s young director Paul Greengrass has subsequently blossomed into one of the most talented and imitated film-makers of his generation, helming the hit Bourne sequels, and picking up an Oscar nomination for the 9/11 drama United 93 . The fact that Greengrass has had such remarkable success, becoming a film-maker who is bankable and credible on both sides of the Atlantic, makes my untrammelled praise for his debut feature seem uncannily prescient – indeed, I have never failed to remind Greengrass whenever I bump into him in Soho that I was there first and that therefore he owes his entire movie career to me. Yet the truth is that I just got lucky, and the fact that I was so bowled over by a movie which happened to herald a major new talent was more down to good fortune than good judgement. Remember, I’m the guy who predicted (again in print) that in the race for muscle-bound superstardom, Dolph Lundgren would triumph over both Jean-Claude Van Damme and Arnold Schwarzenegger because of the three of them he was the only one who could do a passable American accent.

  Dolph and Jean-Claude were recently to be found re-teaming for the action franchise reboot Universal Soldier: Regeneration, having both served time in the hellish ‘straight- to-video’ market.

  Arnold, meanwhile, runs California.

  Good call, Kermode.

  It’s partly for this reason that I tend not to revisit my own reviews – the sense of self-loathing and shame is just too much to bear (‘Sweet heavens, did I really say that?!’). But flicking through the Time Out film Guide I discover that I pronounced Watchers to be ‘good cheap nonsense’, an assessment by which I’ll stand. Elsewhere the remnants of my work in the Guide are marginally less harrowing than I had imagined – which says more about the quality of TO ’s editors than it does about my writing. I did get to have a crack at a couple of mainstream movies, such as Star Trek V: The final Frontier (‘warped factor five’ – boom boom), but the two reviews I’m most proud of from this period are of solidly marginal fare: Surf Nazis Must Die, which I really hated; and Piranha Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death, which I gave an enthusiastic thumbs up!

  As I intimated previously, there’s really nothing remarkable about being able to identify a ‘proper’ film like Schindler’s List as an ‘important’ movie about the Holocaust (although the true value of Spielberg’s movies is always inversely proportional to their seriousness – hence War of the Worlds is a better film than Munich in the same way that Jaws beats Schindler’s any day). But it’s quite another thing to be able to pass judgement on the similarly Third Reich-themed Surf Nazis Must Die , a film whose title announced that it was utter garbage, but which might actually have turned out to be brilliant by mistake (which it didn’t). Equally, while everyone quacked on endlessly about how important The Accused was in putting serious gender issues up there on screen, far fewer trumpeted the merits of Piranha Women which was widely imagined to be an unpolished turd but which was actually a very witty feminist satire with more to say on the sex war
than most films of the eighties.

  Things were made particularly complicated in this period by the rise of home video and the subsequent expansion of the knowingly trashy – and thus allegedly postmodern – genre market which threw up titles like A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell (‘Where the prehistoric meets the prepubescent!’) and Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (‘They charge an arm and a leg!’). Brand leaders in this area were Troma films, who had made a killing distributing the retitled cheapie sleaze-fest Blood Sucking Freaks (formerly The Incredible Torture Show) against which our old friends Women Against Pornography had campaigned in the US.

  Capitalising on the negative publicity of their early success, Troma had cashed in on the burgeoning belief that some movies (like Ed Wood’s infamous Plan 9 From Outer Space) could be ‘so bad they’re brilliant’ and proceeded to distribute a string of films whose titles suggested rancidly rotten delights aplenty. In some cases, they simply bought off-the-shelf grot and repackaged it for the ‘cult’ market’ – like Rabid Grannies whose protagonists, as Nigel floyd pointedly observed, were in fact ‘possessed aunties’. They were also Belgian (like JCVD, Plastic Bertrand, and Tintin) and were originally named Les Mêmes Cannibales. But more importantly they were rubbish. As was Surf Nazis Must Die, which I described in my characteristically temperate Time Out review as ‘Utter horse shit’. Even accounting for the lowered expectations engendered by Troma’s reputation for unwatchable dreck, Surf Nazis was a massive viewing disappointment, and I’m proud to have said so. By comparison The Toxic Avenger , in which a janitor falls into a vat of slime and becomes a mop-wielding melty-headed anti-hero, was almost bearable. Almost, but not quite. Yet to this day there are airheads who will tell you that Surf Nazis Must Die is a must-see ‘cult classic’, morons who were taken in by Troma’s extraordinary talent for hyping junk, and who still think there’s something hilariously rebellious about watching genuinely terrible films.

  Part of the reason for Troma’s success was the fact that co-founder Lloyd Kaufman was actually a terrific talker who was great fun to be around – unlike his movies. When the NFT ran a somewhat misjudged Troma retrospective in the early nineties Kaufman tore the place up, his resemblance to Mel Brooks proving to be more than merely physical. The audience positively rocked with laughter which was only quelled when one of Lloyd’s bloody awful movies started playing. I also had the strange pleasure of interviewing performance artiste and Toxic Avenger sequel star Phoebe Legere who tried harder than anyone I have ever met to appear zany, madcap and weird, thereby leaving me with the impression that she was fantastically ordinary and a bit dull. Our interview took place on the balcony of a waterfront hotel in Chelsea where Phoebe greeted me in electric pink leggings and a tutu, a large piano accordion strapped across her chest which she played whilst unsuccessfully attempting to affect an air of casual insouciance. To her credit, she didn’t appear to actually like (or even to have seen) the Toxic Avenger movies in which she featured, so maybe she was smarter than she seemed. Frankly, if I was promoting movies that bad, I’d take up playing the piano accordion.

  In truth, despite what the fans will tell you, movies which are actually ‘so bad they’re brilliant’ are rarer than hens’ teeth, and are almost never the result of someone setting out to make a cult movie in the first place. Cross-dressing cult hero Edward D. Wood Jr, now widely hailed as the world’s worst film-maker, seems to have genuinely believed that both Glen or Glenda and Plan 9 From Outer Space were going to be decent shoestring-budget movies and would have been appalled by his posthumous elevation to world-beating crap status. That’s what makes Tim Burton’s affectionate biopic Ed Wood such a monochrome delight – the fact that its subject (energetically played by Johnny Depp in one of his finest screen roles) is a wild-eyed dreamer rather than a cynical old hack.

  In the best scene from Ed Wood , Depp’s titular anti-hero storms off the set of his latest low-budget disaster because the financiers are interfering with his vision, but his sour mood turns to elation when he spies his hero, Orson Welles, drinking quietly in the darkened corner of a nearby bar. Still attired in full Angora-sweatered drag, Wood strides over to shake Welles’ hand and share his troubles, and rather than laughing at him Welles offers a sympathetic ear. His own career, the maestro admits, was dogged by studio interference, with Citizen Kane (which critics now regularly label The Greatest Film Ever Made) being the only film on which Orson got final cut. But, Welles tells Wood, it is important not to give up – never to abandon your dream or lose sight of your vision. Wood is so fired up by his idol’s wise words that he gets straight up and storms back into the studio to make what would become the winner of the Golden Turkey Award for Worst film Ever.’This is the one!’ beams Depp’s Wood with glee.’This is the one I’ll be remembered for …’

  The only example I can think of in recent years of a film that is genuinely ‘so bad it’s brilliant’ is Mamma Mia!, the screen adaptation of the surprise hit stage play in which a collection of Abba songs are clumsily arranged around a hideously literal narrative to perversely crowd-pleasing effect. I never saw the stage show, although a close friend whose judgement I trust told me after opening night that it was worse than Carrie: The Musical, a horror-film adaptation (via Stephen King’s novel) in which showering high-school girls threw tampons at each other while chanting ‘Plug it up! Plug it up!’ to a toe-tapping beat. Carrie: The Musical was so legendarily terrible that it spawned the catchphrase ‘Not since Carrie…’ although my friend assured me that this would now be superseded by ‘Not since Mamma Mia!...’

  But it was not to be. Despite some stinky reviews Mamma Mia! became a smash hit stage play on both sides of the Atlantic, attracting the great and the good with its unique feel-good mix of indescribably bad scriptwriting and indestructibly good pop songs. Meryl Streep has publicly declared that the play helped her to get over the trauma of 9/11, its relentlessly escapist optimism proving the perfect antidote to the horrible realities of modern international terrorism – apparently. Indeed, it was as a result of her writing to the producers to tell them how much she had enjoyed the show that she wound up starring in the godforsaken film adaptation which has gone on to become the most successful British-backed movie ever.

  Now, only a certifiable maniac could claim that the film of Mamma Mia! is actually any good. It isn’t – it’s knee-tremblingly terrible in every conceivable respect. The plot, if one may call it such, goes like this: a former Chiquitita-turned-ageing-Dancing-Queen faces her Waterloo when her Nina Pretty Ballerina daughter discovers that her Mamma Mia doesn’t know which Man After Midnight Gave her Gave her Gave her a child. After sending out an SOS to her Honey Honey, the Angel Eyed kid decides to Take a Chance on three potential suitors to prove their possible parentage, with the Winner Taking It All up the aisle at her impending nuptials. Voulez-Vous? Not ’arf, pop-pickers.

  If you think the plot sounds ropey, try getting your head around a cast which pairs up stalwart Scandinavian thespian Stellan Skarsgård (in a role reportedly turned down by Bill Nighy) with rumbustious British treasure Julie Walters who (according to legend) triumphed over an equally well-known comedian who was told at the auditions that the role was hers unless she sang ‘like a cow in labour’ – which, it seems, she did. Oddly, the bovine procreation rule doesn’t appear to have been extended to Pierce Brosnan who is without doubt the worst ‘singer’ ever heard in a sound motion picture, ever– and I’m including in that hallowed list Charles ‘no neck’ Gray in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Peter Boyle’s monster-clumping massacre of ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’ from Young Frankenstein. Is that the QE2 docking – or Pierce ‘Any Key Will Do’ Brosnan searching for a middle C? The moment in Mamma Mia! when I realised that Pierce was actually going to take a running jump at ‘SOS’ sent me quite literally (as opposed to metaphorically) into the head-between-the-knees-thank-you-for-flying-air-atonal brace position.’Sooo weeeheeen yrrrrrrrr nrrrrrrrrrrrrrr meeeeeee,’ screeched Pierce at the top of his paint-peeling
voice, ‘da-ha-haaarrrrlin cayant ya hrrrrrrrrrrrr me ESSSSS OOOOOO ESSSSS!’ Duck and cover! Run for the hills! Hide under tables and keep your face away from the screen for fear that your ears will be melted off by the buttock-clenching squonk-fest that is Brosnan’s singing. Screw nuclear weapons, if North Korea or Iran ever start to get antsy again we could just drop Pierce behind enemy lines to sing a few bars of ‘I Have a Dream’ and surrender would surely follow apace. Also, he could prove a useful deterrent against global warming because the temperature of the screening room I was in dropped about a million degrees the minute Brosnan took a deep breath and let fly. The iceberg lettuce in my sandwiches stayed crunchy fresh for a week.

  While Pierce was taking it upon himself to redefine the parameters of the popularly accepted rules of musical engagement, Muriel, Her Majesty Mrs Strepsil, was going at the works of Benny and Björn as if they were the outpourings of the Bard himself. Her interpretation of ‘The Winner Takes it All’ owed more to the murder scene from Macbeth than to the pure pop traditions of Eurovision. When Muriel said/sang that ‘I don’t wanna talk …’ you understood that she really did not want to talk. At all. Ever. EVER. Agog, I waited for her Shakespearean take on Abba’s worst Scando-English lyric ‘A big thing, or a small’ and was not disappointed. By the time the song was finished the palms of my hands were bleeding, my uncut nails having dug into them in a fever of pseudo-stigmatic ecstasy.