It's Only a Movie

by Mark Kermode

  Several years later, Broomfield was on 5 Live talking about his career which had gone from strength to strength in the wake of our brief on-air altercation. I wasn’t in the studio that day, but Simon Mayo inevitably brought up the subject of the Kurt & Courtney walkout and asked the director if he had anything to say about it. Broomfield replied that the reason he had walked out was nothing to do with my line of questioning but was entirely due to the fact that I smelled really bad. Apparently he had found it intolerable being in the same room with my stinky breath and simply had to dash out to get some fresh air.

  In his defence, I have to concede that there may be some truth in this. I have never considered a Mary Archer-like fragrance to be an essential part of film criticism, and have probably spent too little time worrying about personal hygiene, partly on the advice of Wreckless Eric who once memorably complained in song about people who ‘partially stifle [their] natural odour with underarm spray’ (ahh, they don’t write songs like that any more). So perhaps when people tell me that my opinions stink (as they frequently do) they are speaking literally rather than metaphorically. Perhaps I really am the world’s most offensive critic in every sense, the film hack equivalent of John Waters’ scratch ‘n’ sniff masterpiece Polyester. Coming soon to a cinema near you ‘The Mark Kermode Story… In glorious Odorama!’

  (Hang on, I think that’s Jason Isaac’s agent on the phone telling me his client is pulling out …)

  More importantly, Broomfield’s comment reassured me that our long-standing run-in was indeed nothing more than a childish spat, something which pleased me since I have been a fan of much of his work since. I particularly liked his docudrama Ghosts, a very moving piece (‘inspired by real events’) about the tragic deaths of Chinese cockle pickers at Morecambe Bay. In fact, I met Broomfield last year for the first time since 1998 in a toilet at a swanky London venue where I was co-presenting the Index on Censorship Awards. We shook hands, smiled politely, and made friendly small talk, the bad blood between us apparently forgotten.

  Or maybe he just thought I was Jesse Birdsall.

  Despite this détente, there has been plenty of ‘comeback’ from other film-makers about whose movies I have been unkind, along with journalists and filmgoers who feel that my opinions are on a par with the plague. Many people think that all critics do is slag off other people’s work without any sense of how hurtful this can be, but I’m proud to say that I’ve been on the receiving end of much vituperative spleen-venting and know exactly what it’s like to be enthusiastically badmouthed in public. If you’re in any doubt about this, just Google the words ‘Mark Kermode’ and ‘Wanker’ and see what fun awaits you out there on the internet. Best of all was a site entitled ‘Fifty People More Annoying than Mick Hucknall’ on which I featured for years, with visitors leaving a string of anatomically impossible suggestions for things I should attempt to do with myself. Sadly, the fabulous exclusivity of this club has since diminished, and it now seems to exist as the altogether less impressive ‘1,000 People More Annoying than Mick Hucknall’, a clear indication of declining standards.

  Indeed, such is my status as a figure of contempt amongst the film-making fraternity that I have even featured as a deeply unflattering ‘fictional’ character in a novel entitled The Golden Age of Censorship by an industry insider of whom I have never heard. I have been forced to the not unreasonable conclusion that this character is based on me because a) he is called ‘Mark Carmody’; b) he uses phrases which are pretty much direct quotations from things I have said in print and in public; and c) he is a totally obnoxious arse whom everyone else in the novel (as much as I read of it) hates.

  After a while, you get to pick up on these subtle signs.

  I’m not complaining about this – on the contrary, I actively encourage it. In fact, I think it’s good to be regularly reminded just how crap some people think you are. It’s healthy. And if you’re not annoying half your audience at least half of the time, then frankly you’re just not trying.

  So I took it as a compliment when recently I was ‘playfully’ punched on the arm live on-air by Benedict Cumberbatch on behalf of his Atonement co-star Keira Knightley as punishment for calling her ‘Ikea’ and referring to her acting style as ‘flat-packed’. It was an oddly nostalgic experience which took me back to my youth in Manchester and getting thumped in the Cornerhouse bar for being rude about Blue Velvet – happy days!

  And it’s not just individuals whom I have managed to offend – apparently I can get on the wrong side of entire film festivals (or they can get on the wrong side of me). For example, despite its status as the world’s premier celluloid knees-up I was for many years a Cannes Conscientious Objector who once impolitely suggested that if North Korea wanted to test their nuclear weapons, the Croisette would be a good place to start. My problems with Cannes were born out of a five-year stint reporting on the festival for Radio One who (like almost everyone else at that godforsaken place) were more interested in celebrity interviews than film reviews. When I look back on my Cannes coverage in the nineties, I remember not a carefully selected smorgasbord of international cinema but a Kafkaesque round of bizarre confrontations with befuddled famous faces. I remember chasing – or perhaps ‘stalking’ – Sly Stallone for thirteen hours before finally cornering him in his hotel lobby after being effectively told that if I didn’t get Stallone I needn’t come back to England. In the ensuing three minutes of monosyllabic grunting, Sly told me that he was now a serious actor; that he had put action roles like Rocky and Rambo behind him, and that doing any more sequels would be ‘stoopid’ – comments that came back to haunt me as I sat through screenings of his recent Rocky and Rambo sequels, which were very ‘stoopid’ indeed.

  And then there’s the ‘round-table interviews’, which were clearly invented by people who hate film critics. I can still vividly remember being herded into a spacious cupboard (literally) with six other international hacks at the Hotel du Cap and being told to ‘Attendez en silence!’ until the previous group’s four-minute encounter with Johnny Depp had wound to a close. Then being rudely dispatched to ask a single piercing question (‘So Johnny … how are you enjoying yourself here at Cannes?’) before some guy from the Netherlands started rambling on about an eighties TV programme which, it turned out, Depp wasn’t actually in. By which time, of course, we were ‘Finis!’ and it was back into the cupboard to wait for Benicio Del Toro. As it happened, I really liked Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas, which Depp and Del Toro were nominally in town to promote. But somehow the subject of the film itself never really came up.

  Other memories of Cannes are no better. I recall struggling to maintain a veneer of enthusiasm while Queen’s guitarist Brian May talked earnestly about scoring a new film version of Pinocchio (‘totally different to Disney’) and Eric Clapton fretted about whether Trainspotting glamourised heroin. Worst of all, I remember weeping tears of relief when Robin Williams imitated my ‘hilarious’ British accent at a press conference for his after-life epic What Dreams May Come, thereby giving me a genuine ‘scoop’ – a personal, public mocking from a real-life celebrity!

  My low point came during a screening of Lars von Trier’s massively self-indulgent Dogme epic Idioterne about a group of annoying Danish arseholes who go around pretending to be handicapped. Hilarious. Having sat reverentially through an hour or so of hand-held Euro-twaddle, the assembled Cannes cognoscenti were duly rewarded with a few fleeting seconds of hard-core porno action for which von Trier (in clear contravention of Dogme’s fastidious ‘vow of chastity’) employed a ‘stunt-knob’ since his main actors apparently weren’t up to the task. The sequence was utterly pathetic but prompted fawning applause and murmurs of ‘Bravo!’ from the assembled hacks who love nothing more than to praise the kind of ‘groundbreaking’ fare which has become old hat to the honest hand-shandy brigade.

  Rattled by the heat, exasperated by the festival, and appalled by the dual standards which apparently rendered this dreary spectacle ‘art’
rather than ‘exploitation’, I cracked. Rising from my seat and summoning up whatever remained of my long-failed O-level French, I began to growl: ‘Il est merde! Il est le plus grande merde… dans le monde!’ OK, so the grammar was lousy, and the delivery shambolic, but the sentiment was clear enough to ensure that I was escorted swiftly through the doors and out on to the Croisette.

  Later, I would queue for an hour to see an incomplete print of Michael Bay’s preposterous Armageddon (not in competition, obviously) only to discover that the ticket I held was not a ticket for the unfinished film but for some promotional fairground ride which had been erected specially for this non-event. It was a moment which seemed to define the exquisite negativity of my entire experience of Cannes: not being allowed to see a film that was neither good, nor finished, nor indeed part of the actual festival. Oddly enough, our old friend Nigel Floyd, with whom I habitually shared lodgings in Cannes, had an absolutely spiffing time at that very same festival – catching up with Liv Tyler, spending ‘quality time’ with Steve Buscemi, and making entirely sound judgements about the wide variety of films it had been his pleasure to watch. A BBC documentary crew followed the pair of us around that year, and captured on camera our last day on the Croisette – Nigel a picture of smart festival chic; me, a man barely alive.

  Not unlike Russia, really. But at least (according to the programme makers) it was ‘quite funny’.

  In the wake of my Cannes meltdown I gave the festival a miss for several years, returning only on condition that I didn’t have to speak to any stars, attend any parties, go to any red-carpets, hide in any cupboards, or chase after Sylvester Stallone and his Planet Hollywood cronies. That arrangement has served me pretty well in recent years, but I still get a headache the minute I set foot in France which lasts right through until I arrive back in Southampton and wash away the pain with a pint at the Mayflower.

  And there are still plenty of people to annoy back here in Blighty. My most recent triumph was being publicly handbagged by Her Majesty Helen Mirren after declaring that The Queen was little more than a TV film and wasn’t best served by being screened in cinemas. As you’ll probably know, The Queen went on to win umpteen major awards all around the world, with Dame Helen picking up deserved Best Actress gongs at the Globes, the BAFTAs, the Oscars, and more. By the time she got her hands on the coveted statuette at the Academy Awards, Mirren had effectively ascended to the status of royalty, her public appearances provoking the kind of awestruck admiration usually reserved for Brenda herself. In fact I’m pretty certain that if shown a photograph of Helen Mirren most Americans would identify her as ‘the Queen of England’. And in a way they’d be right.

  The Oscars were still in the future, however, when Dame Helen decided it was high time to send me to the Tower. The occasion for our meeting was the British Academy Film Awards (or BAFTAs, as they’re more commonly known) which I had been proudly attending for a few years, despite being told rather pointedly by one A-list film-maker that ‘It must be difficult being in a room with all these people who you’ve slagged off …’.

  On this particular occasion Linda and I were in the upstairs foyer of the Royal Opera House, an extremely grand building filled with film-makers in their finery. We were dressed up too: Linda looked lovely, I looked like an undertaker – so, business as usual. As is my wont I was keeping my head down and generally staring at my shoes when a hand tapped Linda on the shoulder.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said an oddly familiar voice, ‘but I want a word with your partner.’

  Linda looked around and was greeted by the sight of an extremely imposing figure upon whom all eyes in the room were turned.

  ‘Blimey,’ said the voice inside Linda’s head, ‘that’s Helen Mirren.’

  The voice outside her head, however, said, ‘He’s all yours,’ in an appropriately awestruck fashion.

  Meanwhile, the voice inside my head was saying something along the lines of, ‘Hey, I just had a moderately pally conversation with Ricky Gervais who was nice to me and knew who I was, I must be doing really well …’ because, with my usual flair for social networking and top-flight celebrity reportage, I was looking the other way when the most famous person in the building decided to doorstep my wife. Consequently the first I knew of Dame Helen’s designs upon my person was when a regal voice appeared as if from out of the heavens and sayeth clearly unto me: ‘Oi, what do you mean “It’s not a real film”?’

  I looked around, wrong-footed, and was greeted by a shimmering vision of magisterial wonderment, clad from head to foot in radiant white (at least, that’s how it looked to my momentarily blinded eyes), bedecked with handsomely appointed jewels (again, my memory may be embellishing this bit), glowing iridescently with radioactive presence (poetic licence) and clocking in at about six foot seven in her heels (OK, I’m definitely exaggerating here – she’s five foot four – but I’m aiming for ‘emotional truth’ rather than hard facts, and the truth is that Helen Mirren seems quite tall).

  By a peculiar coincidence, the voice inside my head said exactly the same thing that the voice inside Linda’s head had said just moments earlier, i. e.’Blimey, that’s Helen Mirren!’ I take this as a sign that Linda and I are soulmates who were meant to be together in much the same way that I place great significance on the fact that she hated Lars von Trier’s wanky Breaking the Waves every bit as much as I did. The latter was a defining moment in our relationship because we went to see it together at the Harbour Lights cinema in Southampton after I’d dismissed the film on first viewing as a piece of misogynist claptrap. Others disagreed, and despite my negative response Linda was intrigued by the positive reactions of those whose opinions she trusted – which was basically anyone but me.

  In an attempt to be open-minded (not a quality for which I am renowned) I’d agreed to give the film a second look, but after the first five minutes it was clear to me that my contempt for the movie was going to increase rather than abate. I spent the next two hours in utter torment worrying about how I was going to cope if Linda actually liked the film, which seemed to be getting a reverential response from everyone else in the cinema. Would we be able to carry on together with such a massive chasm between us? Or would we simply fall apart, citing ‘irreconcilable cinematic differences’ in the ensuing divorce-court showdown which would surely follow?

  Was this the end of everything?

  When the lights went up, we filed out together in silence, the sombre adulation of others (‘a masterpiece, so artful, so true …’) ringing in our ears. Finally I could stand it no more and blurted out: ‘So, what did you think …?’

  ‘Of the movie?’ asked Linda, as if I could possibly be asking about anything else, such as the quality of the seating, the crispness of the popcorn, or the behaviour of the audience.

  ‘Yes the movie,’ I cried in despair.’What did you think of the movie?’

  She paused, briefly, and then said simply: ‘Utter bollocks.’ And that was that.

  I love Linda very much. Very very much indeed.

  Anyway, back to the Royal Opera House.

  So there I was, face to face with Helen Mirren, being unexpectedly confronted with a perfectly accurate precis of my complaints about The Queen (I had indeed suggested that it wasn’t a ‘real film’ at all) and quite legitimately being asked to explain myself, young man.

  Unfortunately, all I could think of at first was Caligula, which frankly didn’t help matters. In fact, my gut reaction was to leap into a heated defence of director Tinto Brass (of whom Mirren has spoken fondly) and thence to an earnest attack upon producer Bob Guccione for cut-and-pasting all that hard-core sleaze into the movie. But somehow, this did not seem like the right time or place to speak of such things.

  What was required was a polite but well-argued defence of my line about The Queen being an essentially televisual enterprise (it did start life as a TV movie) mingled with a willingness to accept that the tide of public opinion was against me, and topped off with a fulsome appreciation o
f Dame Helen’s flawless performance and a fence-building complaint about Michael Sheen being overlooked in the Oscar nominations. Flattering, then, but also firm on the issue of small-screen versus big-screen on which point I would remain immovable. Claiming that I ‘hadn’t really meant it’ was out of the question, because clearly if I was going to say that The Queen ‘wasn’t a real movie’ on the radio and in the newspapers then I damn well ought to be able to say it to Dame Helen’s face. And the fact remained that I wasn’t having a go at her, but at the film – or rather the ‘not film’, as the case may be.

  Whatever happened, I knew that this was an ‘important’ moment and if I wasn’t up to the challenge then frankly I should get out of film criticism forthwith. As I had discovered with the Broomfield episode, you can’t lie about your opinions just to avoid a potentially awkward encounter, although that’s exactly what every atom of my being wanted to do right there and then.

  But I didn’t. Instead I took a deep breath, gathered myself (think Kate Winslet, minus the posh head-girl charm), tried to expel all thoughts of Caligula from my mind, failed, tried again, failed again, tried a third time, did rather better, took another deep breath, and began to speak – slowly, calmly, clearly.

  If you’d been there with a tape recorder, you would have been proud of me. Because despite the temple-crushing pressures of the moment I did not deny having said that The Queen was not ‘a real film’, but rather offered an explanation of my opinion which was at once firm but fair, critical yet kind. I conceded that other opinions were available, and that my complaint was clearly a minority view. I praised the cast of The Queen for their sterling work, and congratulated Dame Helen for the awards which she had already won and for those which were undoubtedly to follow. I finished by conceding that ‘not all films need look like Pan’s Labyrinth’ (a phrase which Dame Helen had whipped out of thin air – she’d clearly done her homework) but that many very fine screen stories were perhaps best enjoyed from the comfort of one’s armchair. I even suggested that this might be a blessing, and that ‘televisuality’ may simply be another word for the ‘intimacy’ we share with films which we would wish to invite into our homes, like old friends.