The Otherwise

by Mark E Smith

  THE

  OTHERWISE

  THE

  OTHERWISE

  An Original Feature Film

  MARK E. SMITH & GRAHAM DUFF

  also by graham duff

  Foreground Music: A Life in 15 Gigs

  The Future’s Here To Stay: The Singles of The Fall

  THE OTHERWISE

  Mark E. Smith & Graham Duff

  First published by Strange Attractor Press 2021

  The Otherwise © 2015 Graham Duff & Mark E. Smith

  Foreword © 2021 Elena Poulou

  Other texts © 2021 Graham Duff

  All lyrics quoted © Mark E. Smith

  Cover illustration by Graham Humphreys

  Design/Layout by Maïa Gaffney-Hyde

  ISBN: 9781913689186

  Graham Duff has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Strange Attractor Press

  bm sap, London,

  wc1n 3xx, uk

  www.strangeattractor.co.uk

  Distributed by The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  And London, England.

  d_r0

  CONTENTS

  foreword

  MY TELEVISION IS ALWAYS ON…

  Elena Poulou

  FRENZ

  THE OTHERWISE

  An original feature film

  THE INEXPLICABLE 1 & 2

  The Original TV Pitches

  REAL, ASSUMED OR IMAGINARY

  MY FAVOURITE WHILE

  Conversations with M.E.S.

  LAST ORDERS

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  THANKS & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  In memory of Mark E. Smith,

  a hero who became a friend and collaborator.

  It was an honour and a solid hoot.

  MY

  TELEVISION

  IS ALWAYS ON…

  Elena Poulou

  Is there an active way of watching TV?

  Yes.

  Is there a way to relive what it was like to watch TV with Mark?

  No.

  Television can be an educational tool, a glimpse into the world of the others, a background noise, a ritual. Inspiring signals can come through the TV. The sounds and sights of series, both known and unknown, news programme intro music, jingles, TV ads from our childhood. Core sentences can evoke memories that are soothing. Or unsettling. Just like smells.

  Mark said the first TV programme he remembered watching was Watch With Mother. It was sweet how he would sing “WEEEED! Bill and Ben…”

  When we met, we realised we liked lots of the same shows and films: Orson Welles and Fassbinder, Dallas, as well as that other oil family: The Beverly Hillbillies. But Mark also showed me a lot of stuff I didn't know.

  When I first visited him, we watched TV shows like Bewitched in the morning, and English comedy classics like Rising Damp, Nearest And Dearest, Keeping Up Appearances and The New Statesman with the great Rik Mayall, who we both loved. Later we went to the theatre to see Mayall perform the character when they were dumped by the TV channels.

  We watched a lot of comedy: the Marx Brothers films and spoofs like Fear Of A Black Hat and John Waters and Mel Brooks films, especially High Anxiety. We enjoyed US comedy like The Larry Sanders Show with Rip Torn, and contemporary British shows like Toast of London. But we sometimes preferred children's programmes as they often were wittier than shows for adults, shows like Chucklevision or Horrible Histories. History was a big passion for Mark and World At War was a firm favourite. When Freeview came to life the Yesterday channel was on all day.

  Mark loved Bette Davis films, like All About Eve, as well as James Cagney films, especially White Heat. He was a fan of Double Indemnity, and ‘Ma’ from Public Enemy, as well as French films, like the comedy Heartbreaker, or Lemmings with Charlotte Rampling, who we both liked.

  When we first moved in together, we were too poor to own a TV so we would watch at his mother's house, or in the pub. Through watching TV with Mark, I learned a lot about British culture and society of the past and present. We would make fun of terrible daytime or morning programmes like The Wright Stuff and Richard and Judy.

  He would make the everyday extraordinary, and amuse me by making even the most mundane daytime television show into a cartoon, a proto meme, a piece of art.

  After Mark broke his leg in Great Yarmouth, Ed bought us a TV/VHS device and we could record Mark's typical cut up tapes again, as well as watch the ones he'd already made. He'd compile VHS's that were like a combination of a mix tape and a diary.

  He showed me comedy like Lenny Bruce, Bernard Manning, Les Patterson, Bill Hicks, Rab C. Nesbitt – back in those days when you could still buy official VHS tapes. Mark's favourite films were Zulu and Waterloo. These videos would be watched a lot.

  Sometimes we'd also tune in to crap TV like a Franz Ferdinand concert in Paris, as “school TV” as Mark would call it. Watching it in order to know what NOT to do, what NOT to sound like etc. Funnily enough, he also loved watching Eurovision.

  Daytime TV, with its relentless jangly theme tunes, was very fruitful. Even the worst show on earth like, let's say, Doctors, was great entertainment when you watched it with Mark. Something that's very common on live daytime TV is mistakes. Mark loved those. The intro to the song ‘Systematic Abuse’ is a glitch from This Morning.

  He enjoyed the randomness that comes with the TV programmes you don't control or choose. When you were watching TV with Mark he would often know what was about to come up next. This is something I'd experienced myself, but once I was with Mark it started happening all the time. We'd be watching TV and Mark would have just been talking about something, say an obscure American actor, we'd flick the channel and there they'd be. Or a show would come on TV and we'd suddenly see something that was connected with an idea we'd been working on or thinking about.

  Often Mark would ask me to record TV sounds, either from beloved films, or satirical shows like Alistair McGowan's Big Impression and Dead Ringers. He'd always be creating something out of the everydayness of life. Be it an overheard conversation, a coincidence, or a snatch of film dialogue.

  He liked the BBC ghost stories of M.R. James, as well as films like Tales From The Crypt, and of course The Twilight Zone. Mark was a story consumer and fan himself: he was in the Arthur Machen society and The Prisoner fan club. Although, he despaired at every film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's books. We went to see A Scanner Darkly in the cinema, but Mark was appalled – especially at Keanu Reeves's performance (Mark called him Kanoo).

  We also watched mainstream series like The Americans, and I am very sad he didn't live to see the final season. We would watch German TV through a satellite dish, especially the soap opera Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten (Good Times, Bad Times). Mark even talked about The Fall covering the theme tune.

  He would always find a way to make me laugh. He would do Carrie's stare from Homeland, I would do Brody's facial expression. Mark also could mimic that guy from The OC who ended up playing a cop in Gotham. We would dance to music programmes, he would sing the Coronation Street theme tune with the lyrics a lady walking around Prestwich in the 70s would do.

  We would swap tapes and DVDs with our dear friends Charlie Ritchie and Rona Landragon. Charlie told me how he once took Mark to an old video store: a smaller version of Blockbusters. Charlie said there was usually nothing good to ever be found in there. But Mark was in there for 30 seconds and grabbed lots of great tapes like Nearest And Dearest
. It was like he actually just knew it was there. Mark could find really good stuff without even looking.

  Whilst away on tour, it's especially insightful to watch the local channels, the local news and ads, as well as the local soaps. We particularly loved the infomercials of the new country. I'd try and learn the language by watching say Spanish films with subtitles. Paradoxically, you also find unknown shows from countries other than the host country. So for example we saw an amazing Dutch series in a hotel in Athens, and a great French series in a hotel in Utrecht. The first time I saw Brideshead Revisited was in yet another hotel in Athens. Mark and I ended up watching it every day at 2 pm.

  If I ever wanted to make Mark laugh, I would sing the theme tune to the best of my abilities. i.e. not quite accurately. Mark would also sing certain theme tunes and commercial jingles, especially Opal Fruits and a Caramac tune that he had invented, to the melody of ‘Zabadak’. Another favourite was the Dallas theme tune, which changed every season. I actually played it on my Casio keyboard when The Fall had a show in Dallas.

  Mark thought about television a lot. The song ‘The Early Days of Channel Führer’ is about Channel 4 being crap and not doing their job as a cultural channel. We even made songs about particularly hilarious characters from TV series, like Nate from Gossip Girl, and oblivious TV personalities like Matthew Wright. We would make cartoons about them, or write letters to newspapers about bad programming.

  What would watching TV with Mark be like now, in the autumn of 2020? Right this minute, we would be watching our friend Mark Aerial Waller on Radio Caroline's isolation station twitch tv: making clay figures, playing Greek and Indian music (Mark and I had invented our own Bollywood dance routine). Mark Aerial Waller is an amazing person and artist, so warm and intelligent. He understood Mark's essence like no other. There is an unreleased film of his where Mark is playing Agamemnon.

  Mark and I wrote a few scripts together. For example The World Age 4: a film script about animals taking over the earth. Countless little scripts and poems and letters remain, but these pieces of paper and my words cannot convey the magic that was Mark's spirit and his love of life.

  Mark was so effervescent and creative, a true writer and inventor. In his always curious and unjaded state he would play with the most banal of storylines and embellish them. Observations of everyday life, thoughts and events filtered by his perception. He often took expressions from real life and made them feel like dialogue:

  “See ya mate!”

  “Yeah. See ya mate.”

  He overheard sentences and made them feel like poetry:

  “Nobody has ever called me Sir in my entire life.”

  Fall songs are often script-like. When writing a script the aim is to form those images and ideas into words then turn those back into a visual medium, by performing and filming them. With Mark's songs he achieved that, too, by richly describing the scene, the images would unfold in the listener's mind.

  Writing songs is ideally a description of the world around us, as well as the world inside us. One can also describe things that have not happened yet, and invent things. The unseen and unheard.

  Graham Duff had been using tracks by The Fall in his hilarious show Ideal. Then one day he asked Mark to play Jesus. It was a stroke of genius. Mark and Graham stayed in touch and started working on some script ideas for a television series. A new type of Twilight Zone one could say.

  The three of us became very good friends and later Graham invited me to play a pretentious choreographer called Astrid in a couple of episodes. Graham had a great team of actors and also acted brilliantly himself.

  Thank you, Graham, for your friendship and for making this script with Mark. I believe Mark could have directed and written films, written books. But he chose the medium of song to express himself. Also because he thought that the music industry was lacking. So he wanted to create something new all the time. I still think of him as a writer. Not a songwriter.

  Dear reader, I hope flashes of Mark's being come to your mind whilst reading The Otherwise. I feel sure Mark's voice and thoughts and writing and his spirit will permeate our lives and those of future generations. Like a drizzle, a gentle megaphone, like a notification on your phone – every day and night, reminding you of his presence and existence beyond his earthly being.

  Elena Poulou – Autumn 2020

  FRENZ

  Friday February 16th 2007

  I'm waiting in the reception at the BBC Building on Oxford Road in Manchester. I'm waiting to meet Mark E. Smith. I'm nervous. I wish I wasn't. But I am.

  I've met quite a few famous people during my career: actors, singers, musicians, composers, writers, directors and so on. Over time I've managed to train myself not to get nervous or overawed. I've learnt to be myself and relax. Despite suffering from an acute case of imposter syndrome, this almost always works: but not today. Today I am definitely nervous.

  This isn't even our first meeting. I've actually met Mark multiple times over the last 30 years. Although to be fair, these have predominantly been fleeting moments after Fall gigs, where our exchanges have largely been of the ‘That was amazing’ and ‘Cheers cock’ variety.

  I first became fascinated by The Fall in the summer of 1978. I was fourteen, and a very recent convert to punk music, when my school friend Steve Dunn lent me his copy of Short Circuit Live at the Electric Circus. A various artists album, this was The Fall's vinyl debut. On the strength of just two snub-nosed songs featured on this release, The Fall immediately became my favourite group.

  Within weeks I'd bought their studio debut: an EP entitled Bingo-Master's Break-Out! I was deeply impressed by how each song suggested its own secret world. In fact, I was so inspired by Mark's words I copied them out in the back of a school exercise book in blue biro so I could read them in isolation.

  Two months later, I saw The Fall play live, in a place called Kelly's, on Amber Street in Manchester. The group's attack, their intensity and their otherness connected with me directly. It was more than just music. It felt like another realm was opening up.

  By then, I'd already attended a few gigs: The Jam, The Clash, Suicide, The Rezillos, Gang of Four and 999. Each one of those had been genuinely thrilling experiences. Yet, by the end of The Fall's set, performed in a venue so small there wasn't even a stage, I realised I had just seen the best gig of my life.

  Before I left Kelly's, I had to let The Fall know how good they were. The audience was clapping and cheering, Mark was standing by the amps, wearing a drab green shirt and talking to drummer Karl Burns. I tapped him on the arm. He turned around, looking slightly bemused as I gave him a thumbs up.

  “That was amazing,” I said, raising my voice above the applause.

  “Cheers cock,” he said with a confident little nod before turning back to Burns.

  As I walked out of the venue that night, I couldn't have known that decades of Fall albums and singles lay ahead of me. Or, that I would go on to attend another 49 Fall gigs. Some of which would be even more exciting than that first one: although none would be quite as inspirational.

  At fourteen, I had already decided I wanted to be a writer. So, under the influence of Hancock's Half Hour writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, Doctor Who writer Terrance Dicks, and Mark E. Smith himself, I began to fill endless notebooks with stories and scripts and ideas.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Three decades later and I'm still filling notebooks. I'm now in the fortunate position that some of these ideas are being made into TV and radio shows.

  I'm currently finishing off writing the scripts for the third series of my TV sit-com Ideal. It revolves around a lazy Salford-based weed dealer called Moz, played by Johnny Vegas. Unsurprisingly, I've already used quite a bit of The Fall's music on the show's soundtrack.

  In the upcoming series, there's a storyline concerning a mentally disturbed Christian builder called Alan. Alan has a vision of Jesus who instructs him to kill Moz. But I don't imagine Jesus with a beard and flowing robes. I wa
nt him to look like some guy you might meet down the pub. Suddenly it becomes obvious who has to play the role of Jesus.

  The show's production assistant finds Mark's contact details, and I send him a letter asking if he might fancy coming along to play a Salford messiah. To my delight, it turns out Mark and his wife and Fall keyboardist Elena Poulou are already fans of the show.

  The letter he sends back to the production office is signed

  All the best,

  Your Lord

  M.E. Smith.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I'm not sure whether it's a good omen or not, but when the clapper board is lifted into shot for the first take of Mark's scene playing Jesus, miraculously it turns out to be slate number 666. This elicits a wave of uncertain laughter through the crew. Mark is clearly out of his comfort zone and initially struggles with running through the material. He's a man who famously doesn't like to do exactly the same thing twice. So repeating the same lines over and over is something of a struggle. Peter Slater, the actor playing Alan, has his work cut out to keep the scene moving, as Mark's delivery becomes increasingly fragmentary.

  In the end, director Ben Gregor manages to tease out a subtle and funny performance. The final on screen result – Mark bathed in a golden glow, giving foul mouthed godly instructions, soundtracked by the strange celestial sounds of Coil, is the highlight of the third series. And it's definitely my proudest TV achievement.

  Following the recording, I sit talking with Mark in his dressing room. I ask if he's ever thought about writing narratives for TV. He says a few years ago he'd developed some horror ideas for a Welsh TV company.

  “Nothing came of it in the end. I think they lost them or summat.” I say if he's interested in resurrecting them I'd be keen to help him pitch them to TV companies.