PLUS: The 'Venue' magazine article which preceded the premiere...
THIS IS THE 'GORDON THE MOVIE' ARTICLE IN BATH AND BRISTOLS' 'WHAT'S ON?' MAGAZINE 'VENUE' WHICH CAME OUT JUST BEFORE THE FILM'S PREMIERE AT THE LITTLE THEATRE CINEMA IN BATH ON FRIDAY 19th NOVEMBER 1982.
BELOW THE SCANS IS A MORE EASILY READABLE TEXT VERSION OF THE ARTICLE.
'Venue' magazine were great supporters of the film, happily printing articles, giving me the front cover, ( a rare instance of a single Super 8 frame being blown up to front a magazine cover), paying for the film posters to be printed and loaning us their fly posting team.
My belated thanks to Dougal Templeton, the then editor and Dave Higgitt the film editor for their courageous support....neither ( luckily) had seen the film at this point. I also had great support from the (in)famous Johnny Walker on Great Western Radio, who did several live interviews and regularly plugged the film. True to character, his first words to me were "Hi...got any drugs man?"
Following on from this, one of the interviewees, a renowned and normally erudite local magazine editor invited in to give a review of the premiere, was inopportunely reduced to jibbering jelly when Johnny thrust a large fat one into his mouth seconds before the interview commenced.
The resulting interview went something like this... ( think Cheech and Chong here.....)
"So tell me about this film Gordon the Movie?...."
...." well, this guy Nasher maaaan, he's like made this ummm, film with, like absolutely nothing man....it's amazing, he's just like, done it man with like, nothing, no money man.......amazing...."
And on and on....etc etc....maaaan.
TEXT ONLY VERSION OF DAVE HIGGITT'S ARTICLE:
NASHERVISION
"You've heard of low budget - well, this is no budget!" Yes folks, it's finally here: the cheapest, wierdest feature film in the history of film making. Inspired by and starring a Bath piano-playing tramp who died before the film could be completed, 'Gordon - The Movie' is a home movie product with a big screen vision. It's tacky trash; plotless, bizarre and hauntingly surreal. Filmed in and around the less scenic parts of Bath and Bristol, 'Gordon' was four years in the making and is the work of a life time (so far anyway) by Paul 'Nasher' Nachman, part time philosopher and full time film nut. DAVE HIGGITT reports.
THE STORY behind the making of 'Gordon - The Movie' is a remarkable one, both tragic and funny. It was back in 1978 when Nasher happened to be out filming in the Walcot Village Hall. Well-liked down-and-out and pub pianist Gordon Robbins moved into frame and broke into an impromptu tap-dancing routine. Gordon had been in the Bath scene since the early sixties, dossing around, bashing key boards, sleeping rough and doing stints with the Bath Arts Workshop. He was a hard drinker but a man with a mind of his own. He enjoyed performing, Nasher enjoyed filming him...and the movie began.
"It had no real beginning as such," explains Nasher. "I had some ideas and images. I knew I wanted to involve Gordon and Mick Banks. I suppose if there was a moment of inspiration it was one winter afternoon when I was sitting in a hut in Victoria Park. I was freezing my balls off, it was getting dark. And I just sat there and hallucinated the whole film."
Gordon and the very thin and very talented street performer Mick Banks made a commitment to be available for however long it took to complete the project, and a variety of musical and acting talent from Bath would be drawn on when the need or opportunity arose over the next few years. With such a grandiose plan, Nasher decided that a bit of funding from South West Arts would not go amiss. So he wrote a script of sorts, applied for a £1,200 grant and got back the inevitable rejection.
"I thought it was quite cheap for a feature length film, but the only comment that filtered back from S.W.A. was that the whole idea was 'nihilistic'. I looked the word up in the dictionary and thought - oh yeah, that's how I think, I suppose. I was quite surprised to see a description of the inside of my head in a dictionary!"
"Still, it spurred me on to produce the film. I thought, I've never been called an '-istic' before - so it's gotta be art, innit?!"
"The film had to be cobbled together in dribs and drabs with old film stock and borrowed money. I don't really regret not getting the S.W.A. money -except that if the film could have been completed earlier, there's a chance that Gordon might still be alive. He died at a stage when we'd completely run out of money. He gained an enormous amount of self-respect from his involvement in the film."
Surely Nasher is not accusing the much-maligned South West Arts of MURDER? "Heaven forbid, heaven forbid, yes -whoops - no, nothing like that at all!"
One of the most charming (or should that be irritating?) aspects of 'Gordon' is that it deliberately plays on the numerous pitfalls of ultra low budget Super 8 film making: handheld camera, different film stock, 'natural' (poor) lighting, muffled dialogue and so on. These are woven, with baffling disregard for such niceties as clarity and plot development, into the film's fabric. And when I say fabric, I'm thinking of materials like hessian rather than silk!
One material which caused some very tricky problems was a piece of archaic black and white Super 8 stock (reputedly the first type ever produced) which was used to film some valuable footage of Gordon having a day out at the seaside (at Severn Beach, poor chap). Nasher: "It came back from the processors completely black. We messed around with some chemicals to try and rescue something.. We tried everything from hydrochloric acid downwards. Hydrochloric acid produced clear film which was going a bit far! It was like retrieving material from the grave - very much so with Gordon being dead. We finally got the balance right - the image we came up with a peculiar yellowy black and white. A very wishy washy splodgy sort of effect. . . " (Which works a treat, by the way).
Nasher continues: "The messiness of the quality was very much a part of the plan. I've actually re-shot some of the film off a screen to make it look worse, more grainy, more sludgy." Other technological innovations which ensure the film's 'unusual' visual appeal never drops off include 'Sludgerama' and 'Nasher-vision'. Sludgerama involves sticking a wide-angled lens on the camera - this makes the whole image go slushy, a bit like looking at the world through a large fried onion! Nashervision is more straight forward - the public screenings of the film will be projected, cinemascope style, onto an oversize screen, with the top and the bottom of the image being unceremoniously lopped off. Apart from losing the occasional head and feet, Nasher assures us, this will not affect the film's quality overmuch.
Trying to glean some sort of sense from 'Gordon's' plot is a painstaking task. Gordon, it would seem, earns a living from selling bits of famous dead people (a warning to Elvis Presley fans - you may find this film offensive). Throughout the film he is haunted by a tall thin man (Banks) who pops up in a variety of disguises. It is never made clear if Gordon is persuing Banks or vice versa. Is Gordon's past catching up with him? What is the tall thin man's intention? Is he one man, or many? Paranoid nutter or innocent victim? Does it even matter?Nasher: "I'm not really into plots. There are hundreds of interpretations but I am as disinterested by the answer as I'm intrigued by the fact that I don't know the answer." Quite so. If Nasher doesn't really know what it's all about, what chance have we got?
Why, for example, is there a crazy, illogical car chase stuck in the middle of the film? Nasher: "Uhm. . . well, the link sequence which explains why, never got shot. But what the hell; if all those Hollywood films can have car chases, why shouldn't I?" In a sense, the budgetless, timeless manner in which the film was shot has created its own structure. As we go to press a number of scenes still haven't been shot -including the ambitious opening sequence. This little cracker will (hopefully) make Orson Welles and Cecil B de Mille look like shoddy B movie directors. A camera will hover like an eagle 500 feet above the barren wastelands of Severn Beach and then shoot down at alarming rate and focus in on the figure of Gordon. How it's done? Well it's got something to do with balloons, long pieces of string and a lot of luck.
But hold on. How can Nasher still be making footage of Gordon if that good gentleman died over a year ago? "Well. . . we made a dummy of him. It's pretty realistic; you can't tell the difference at 20 yards." But isn't that in rather bad taste? "No, not in the slightest. I think Gordon would have liked the film finished by whatever means possible. Anyway, I think we're ignoring 'taste'. We're not into taste, just into making a film..."
And by hook or by crook, he's done it. Four years of begging, borrowing, conning, stealing (yes, stealing). . . and two deaths in the cast aside from Gordon himself. It's parochial surrealism on an epic scale, the sort of grandiose lunacy which makes Herzog's 'Fitzcarraldo' look like a day trip to Margate.
'Gordon' also captured a lot of the energy and talent coming out of Bath in the last few years. There's a lovely hypnotic soundtrack from two excellent local musicians, Charles Dodgeson and JJ. Reble; some rare footage of the long defunct band Interview, featuring none other than Manny (Tears for Fears) Elias; and a superbly over the top cameo from Brian Popay in his last ever appearance as Elvis fanatic and part-time grocer, Rocky Rickets.
Something for all the family? Hardly. 'Gordon - The Movie' is a difficult, often frustrating experience; but if you're looking for something different, a film which has 'CULT' stamped all over it, you need search no more.
The last words go to Paul Nachman (who else?): "I don't really care if anyone thinks it's a good or a bad film. I think a few people at least will have an unusual or enjoyable or somethingable time. I'm not trying to con people into seeing a 'normal' feature film. It's a film made with no money and that alone should make it worth watching."
Public Screenings
World Premiere.
Friday November 19th, 11 pm, Little Theatre, Bath, £2. Gaze in wonder at the stars! Brian Popay, Mick Banks, Jenny Potter and Nasher himself will arrive for the show in a chaffeur-driven Daimler! Relax in comfort as the good members of the Natural Theatre Company (dressed for the occasion in red plastic mini skirts) greet you and usher you to your seats!
Further Showings.
Saturday November 26th and Sunday 27th, 1 1 pm Europa. Cinema, adj Holiday Inn, Bristol £2.
ALL Screenings...
Will feature LIVE entertainment! Tony 'Birdman' Durant will keep you amused with his bird impressions and one man interpretations of Star Wars and the Battle of Britain. A real local eccentric, this guy. And those loveable Bath doo-woppers, The Wimptones, will have you bopping in the aisles before 'Gordon' arrives.
Tickets.
Can be bought in advance from Rival Records, Music Market, Hat and Feather, Walcot Reclamation Yard Cafe, Bilbos Bookshop and the Little Theatre (Bath); Rival Records, Music Market, Revolver, Full Marks, Virgin, Europa (Bristol). Or get them on the night.
SPECIAL OFFER!!
An exclusive offer to VENUE readers- 20 pairs of tickets for either of the Bristol screenings at £3.00 a pair! Just pop into our offices Monday to Friday between 2pm—5.30pm.
