Where Daydreams are Nightmares,
and Death is a Way of Life...
Online for the first time ever...
Part One: the first 7 minutes.
More to come...
I posted this ages ago, but it's a bit more relevant here...
The story behind the movie, part one.
Of the story, that is, not of the movie.
"Gordon the Movie" grew out of my frustration with only ever filming documentary material.....only filming whatever happened in front of the camera, always beyond my control.....obviously I could choose the venue, and the event, and to an extent pick my shots, but always on the fly, and never with any say in the action or the content, or in deciding who did what, to whom, with what and when.
But alongside creative frustration, I had a few other problems.....for one, I was scared shitless of even beginning to attempt to organise anything or anyone, and so although the answer to my frustration was obvious.....put together a project of my own and make it into a movie.....I had another frustration to contend with....that of my own inability to overcome fears and anxieties about getting out there and actually doing it.
Of course, if I came up with a scenario of my own, quite deliberate and specific, with "I made this! " stamped all over it, yet another major fear rears it's ugly head......I'll be setting myself up to be judged......if I make a crap film everyone will know I really am crap, or even worse, make an alright film and people will know I finally pulled something off and start having expectations of me.
Oh No!.......The Horror........The Unimaginable Horror.......
And so far, I'd managed to get away with producing so little complete material on which to be judged, that I was quite safe from any of this. And when I accidentally did do something ok, like the film of the Nuclear Waste Train Ambush at Sharpness in '79, it could be put down to being a mere flash in the pan. "He'll soon get over the hump and settle back down to being crap again."
So there I was, hoist by my own, if I say so myself, not inconsiderable petard.
Safest place to be is, as always, in stasis.
Do nothing, risk nothing, remain quite safe.
Of course whilst getting nowhere.
But that's the object of the exercise, isn't it??
But in this funny old Universe of ours, things have a funny old way of turning around, so that even with the worst, the most negative intentions in the world, you can all of a sudden find yourself inadvertently being propelled screaming and shouting in the most unlikely of positive directions.
So dammit if one day shortly afterwards I wasn't out testing a new camera, running off footage around Walcot Village Hall in a cavalier, devil-may-care fashion, when out of the blue and into my frame danced one Gordon Robbins.
Gordon was in his fifties, and had been around the Walcot scene for years, doing stuff with the Arts Workshop and playing piano around the pubs. He'd even played toy piano live on stage with Bath's first punk band, "Discharge".
He was a talented but ne'er do well piano player, and liked a little more than a drop, as they say. He had only to hear a tune once in order to perform his own extraordinary version of it.
His renditions of "The Laughing Policeman" and of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" were legendary in these yer (those yer) parts.
So he and I sparred around the camera for a minute or two. I said how about doing this and he tried it out. He said he could try doing that and we tried it out. We threw things back and forth to one another, the camera acting as the focus point. I realised I'd found someone who would do what I asked them to in front of the camera, enhance it with their performance, and be happy doing so.
So I had a first element.
A character, albeit a real one, comfortable in front of the lens, but eccentric and not exactly a traditional romantic male lead.
So I started thinking....who else could I work with.....who else would consider working with me for that matter? Who was un-snotty enough to take direction from me? Who was un-snotty enough even to turn up, let alone turn up over and over again? I thought about the Natural Theatre Company stalwarts, but we're talking big egoes here, and I thought them unlikely to work ongoingly on a project of mine without ongoingly giving me problems.
Then I thought of Mick Banks, also a member of the NTC, but of a different breed entirely, and with another Theatre Group running concurrently for performing his and partner Corinne D'Cruz's material.
Mick and I had always got on well, there would be no ego battle to contend with there. So .......maybe I had two characters, well no, actually two actors, well, one character, one actor......in fact no characters, no plot, no story, just two people......basically two people who would allow me to boss them around, and who would also agree to be committed for the duration of the project, however lengthy. So something was possible, but what???
So now it's winter 1979.I have two people who have agreed to commit themselves to my will, well at least they have up to a point! But I don't have much else. A few images, ideas, snatches of dialogue, some fragmentary plot ideas, but nothing like a movie.
So I'm out for a wander around the town and it's freezing, snow on the ground and more falling.
I'm cold and wet and thoughtful as I huddle down in a shelter in Victoria Park.
I'm sort of watching people around me hurrying home in the dark, but sort of not. Definately more sort of not.
Images, ideas, memories all start to swirl around in front of me.....it's hard to distinguish one from another, remembered nightmares merge with ever present fears, a haunting gas hallucination from the dentists as a child merges with characters from a theatre production, all the more entangled with my worst moments in movies.
Gordon playing the piano becomes my own terrifying Lon Chaney in the original "Phantom of the Opera". Ralph Oswick wearing a massive rotting wedding gown is a decrepit greaving Miss Faversham in my own variation on "Great Expectations".
Mick Banks is now the terrifying plastic surgeon wheeling the restrained and horrified Rock Hudson off to the slaughter in "Seconds", and a vividly blood curdling encounter with my dead grandmother whilst tripping as a youngster merges with the recent news story regarding the kidnapping from it's grave of Charlie Chaplin's dead body.
Images of flames, blood, offal, blackness and death surround the characters, all these and many more, intertwined and interconnecting, flooding and billowing around me.......the reality of the park and it's passersby has diminished to nothing.....the vision is all encompassing.
I come to.
The park is back.
I'm frozen, but I have my movie.
There are some big fat gaps, but it's there.....I know it, I just watched it.
The directors first cut.
Always the deepest, as they say.
I realise that I have to start shooting immediately, otherwise the vision and it's feeling of being translateable onto film will fade.
I also realise that although I have lots of middle bits, and an ending, I am short of a beginning.
So I fix a day, and decide that the following Wednesday, I will start shooting.
And first things first, I'll start with the end.
First.
That way at least I always have an end.
Which has to be a good start. I think.
So now for the horrors of actually organising something......what if this? what if that? what if no-one takes me seriously? what if no-one turns up?The ending is based on a terrifying experience I had many years before, whilst still suffering the aftermath of excessive longterm LSD usage, an experience involving Lon Chaney as The Phantom of the Opera.
Chaney's image in the 1920's silent classic had terrified me from being a child. (It still does, I shudder as I write this now!).
So much so that I'd always avoided watching the film on the basis that if just the still image did my head in, seeing the movie would probably finish me off completely.
So it's 1973 and I'm staying up all night for a mammoth editing session at Bath Film Unit's HQ behind Great Pulteney Street, all alone but for some cold takeaway, as was my wont.
Somebody has kindly left me a roll of unknown ancient silent movie footage and an equally ancient projector, so I can scan through it for amusement when I need a break from editing later on. And about four in the morning, with a hangover and a cold chicken and mushroom pie lodged firmly, I proceed to run the mystery reel.
Oh what fun, I exclaim. Very dim black and white. Lots of flicker. Trailers....trailers for westerns from the twenties. Oh and trailers for dramas from the twenties.
Oh what joy, and, oh, something a little more substantial than a trailer, we're drifting slowly towards, what is that?.....the images projected by the 1930's home movie projector are none too clear.....yes, it's a massive piano, no, a theatre organ, and there's somebody there with their back to me, wearing a cloak, playing the thing, now we're closer............at this point, although I'd never seen the film, the hairs on the back of my neck clearly recognise both the movie and the actor, and they know exactly what's going to happen next..............as the camera closes in behind the figure, Lon Chaney, the Phantom of the Opera, for it is he, turns slowly round to camera and I'm face to face with the most terrifying image I've ever avoided in my whole life.
All the blood drains from my body....there's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
I am not a happy bunny.
So this, according to my park hallucination, is my ending.
Easy.
Nothing to it.
Make a list.
Tick things off.
Cameraman? Me.
Sound man? Me.
Lighting man? Guess who.
Grand piano? Walcot Village Hall has a baby one.
The hall is available next Wednesday afternoon.
Wheelchair for the slow tracking shot? The Red Cross have one available for hire.
Someone to push it? Kitty from the Arts Workshop's shop agrees to push me in it.
The Pianist/Phantom? Gordon is available....( by now, I'm so efficient that I actually checked that one first.)
So Wednesday comes....I'm in a state of disbelief.....all the elements are there.
Everyone and everything arrives.
I station the props and set up the lighting.
I already know which piece of music, I hallucinated that too. It's the Third Man theme.
We take our start positions. Gordon begins to play.
The wheelchair borne camera tracks slowly along the floor, towards Gordon's back.
With a tungsten bright movie light pointing directly towards camera from beyond Gordon, in camera he is barely a silhouette, the white light flashing around him with each movement of his head and body, until as we track in closer and closer towards him, he abruptly stops playing the Third Man theme and turns slowly to camera.
We are now in close up as he throws his head back and starts to laugh.
With my prompting, the laughter becomes ever more maniacal, as he whoops and cackles to camera.
I signal to him to tip his head back slightly and keep laughing.
He does so.
The light flashes through between his jaws.
That image became the poster for the movie. We do one more take, but use the first.
We've used up nearly a whole 3 minute roll!
Damn the expense!
And I know the heavily outdated stock will overexpose the image like mad, giving Gordon an enormous flashing cloud sized halo.
Perfect.
I have my revenge.
I've made the Phantom of the Opera my own.
More to come.
Don't hold your breath.
