...BY FAR THE BEST OPTION IS TO TAKE THE LINK TO YouTube BELOW AND THERE YOU CAN FILL YOUR SCREEN WITH THE MOVIE INSTEAD OF STARING AT A TINY IMAGE HERE ON MY APPALLING BLOG...However don't forget all the extra Gordon related jottings here that you won't find anywhere else...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uhFIJr09bE
DON'T MISS THESE NEW JOTTINGS BELOW..
WHY 'GORDON THE MOVIE' SHARES DISTINCTIONS WITH THE FILMS OF BELA LUGOSI AND BRUCE LEE...
WHY 'GORDON THE MOVIE ' NEARLY MADE SID VICIOUS'S MUM SICK...
WHY DID DILYS POWELL AND KEN LOACH IGNORE ME?
HELPFUL CAREER ADVICE FROM MY ESTEEMED HEADMASTER.
WHY GORDON TURNED BLACK AND THEN RETURNED.
WHY GORDON THE MOVIE HAS A CONNECTION WITH WHITEHALL AND THE CIA.
FIRST UP---GORDON AND BELA AND BRUCE???
Amongst many other strangenesses, 'Gordon the Movie' is also noteworthy for it's parallels with Ed Wood's 'Plan 9 from Outer Space' and with 'Game of Death' starring Bruce Lee.
Gordon Robbins, the film's star, having died during the film's making, was replaced by a lifesize dummy with a sculptured head and an articulated wooden frame body. Bela Lugosi similarly died during Plan 9's making, and was replaced by an actor a good foot taller, disguised by a well flourished cloak.
Gordon Robbin's actual funeral, at which appear both his victim from the film, and his replacement the dummy, is the final scene in the film.
'Game of Death', an exploitation (Bruceploitation) film cobbled together after Bruce Lee's death likewise includes footage of his actual funeral.
As far as I know, these are the only films to share these dubious honours with Gordon the Movie.
The dummy of Gordon was stored at my flat for some time after it's use in the film, trapped behind a seldom used door which was kept propped open. On one occasion the door broke free, as did Gordon the dummy, which on bursting into new life, promptly attacked my terrified mother. And they say there's no such thing as Karmah!!
The dummy went on to open the 1985 Bookshop on the groundfloor of the Longacre Hall in Bath, after which it disappeared. In the late 90's a woman ( whose name shall not here be revealed) admitted to me that it was she who had been in charge of returning Gordon the Dummy to me, and had failed to do so. She also admitted to living in shame and avoiding me at all costs for many years as a result.
But maybe he's still sat in someones flat, somewhere in the Bath area.
Or maybe not, of course.
GORDON AND THE SEXY PISTOLS???
Then there's the lack of connection with the Sex Pistols.
Through a mutual friend, a punk named Twit, I approached Anne Beverley, Sid Vicious's mum, to ask if she would agree to appear as a customer of Gordon's, who buys (apparent) parts of her infamous dead son with which to provide the main course for an extra-special celebratory dinner. I realised I was pushing the envelope a bit here, but I was still disappointed at her refusal. Surely it couldn't have been on grounds of taste ( no pun intended).
In the end, 'Gordon the Movie' got it's Pistol's connection...it showed at a Jamie Reid exhibition in the early 80's somewhere I've forgotten in London.
GORDON AND ME AND KEN AND DILYS???
When I expressed a fervent interest in directing films as a youth, and for wont of any other career interests, my father took it upon himself to write to famed Sunday Times and later Punch film critic Dilys Powell for career advice for me in the film industry. She expressed such great hope for my future that my parents wrote off the whole idea. She pointed out that getting into the film business was near impossible and it would be disheartening to even try. Brilliant positive advice for a budding young filmaker.
However I kept the letter.
When it came to sending out press packs prior to the premiere of my first epic feature film, 'Gordon the Movie', I made sure to send good old supportive Dilys one, complete with free ticket and copy of Venue with my movie on the cover.. I also included a copy of her encouraging letter in the spirit of fuck you. Oddly, she never turned up.
Amongst other significant non-arrivals was Bath resident and UK independent film stalwart Ken Loach.
My mate Phil Nutman met him in the kebab shop on the night of the World Premiere and gave him a ticket.
Fuck you too, Ken!!
ME AND FUCK WIT???
While on the subject of helpful career advice, I remember that the only career related activity at my appalling secondary school was when we were required to write an essay about our future employment prospects for the headmaster, and then have an in depth interview with him on the subject.
I obviously wrote about my enthusiasm for going into the production side of filmaking, to eventually direct.
It was clear that I was knowledgable on the subject, and that it was not just a momentary fad.
When the time came for the interview, forward thinking progressive Headmaster F.W. ( for Fuck Wit?) Scott told me how girls all wanted to be nurses and airline hostesses, and boys all wanted to be astronauts or fighter pilots, and had I thought about chartered accountancy?
He obviously hadn't checked my maths grades.
Or any others for that matter. Nor, quite obviously, had he taken more than the most cursory of glances at my essay.
This is the man/fuckwit who was described in his 3/4 page Independent obituary a couple of years ago as a forward thinking and progressive headmaster.
I read the piece as I sat in Doolally's supping morning coffee, gleefully scoffing at his alleged achievements, and chuckling happily at his demise.
Mind you, he was right about the chartered accountancy.
It's been a real boon for me.
GORDON : BLACK OUT, WHITE OUT AND SLIGHT RETURN???
Due to a lack of budget, the film stocks used on 'Gordon the Movie' varied somewhat. I used full and part used cassettes of all makes and speeds, colour and black and white, sound stock and silent, recent and ancient. They were interspersed with little, or sometimes no regard for the niceties of matching the cuts.
I used Super 8, Single 8 and Double Super 8. I used Ektachrome, Kodachrome, Fujichrome, and best of all Dynachrome.
You probably haven't heard of that one.
It started off as Kodachrome I, the first ever available Super 8 stock in 1965.
It was quickly superceded by new improved Kodachrome II, and Kodak sold off the remainder, complete with processing plant, to Gratispool, who sold it as Super 8 Gratispool.
When the stock got a bit old, and sales got a bit low, Gratispool cut their losses and sold their remainder off to another firm, who marketed it as Dynachrome, a very cheap black and white stock!
Why black and white?
Well, the colour wasn't coming out too well by this time. So the colour processing plant had been sold to somewhere in Belgium, and Super 8 Kodachrome I was now a black and white stock.
By the time I bought some, about 1978, it was around 15 years past it's sell-by date and about 40 pence a cartridge.
Bargain.
But by now, things had gone downhill even further.
You couldn't get the stuff processed by Dynachrome anymore, as they'd ceased to exist.
So it was an obvious choice for shooting most of the footage shot at Severn Beach, which is the opening part of the film.
Because of the problems with getting it processed, after shooting the cartridges lay around unprocessed for quite some time, in fact until well after Gordon had died.
Then they lay around a bit longer due to the depression that set in after my star deigned to die during shooting.
Eventually, when the project was restarted, I remembered this forgotten footage and found a tiny obscure back-room laboratory in Yorkshire which would do what no one else could or would, and sent the several rolls off for black and white processing.
When the rolls returned, I gleefully slapped them onto the editing table and lo...loads of black, but no white.
I rapidly slapped them onto the projector.
Nothing.
And with Gordon dead, there were no reshoots.
The opening sequence, except for a couple of colour short ends was kaput. Several weeks later for some unknown reason, I thought I'd give it one more go. This time on the monster Xenon Arc projector we used for public showings such as large halls and cinemas.
Still nothing. But persistant ( desperate?) is my middle name.
I tried one last time, projecting with enough light to fill a cinema screen, but zoomed in onto the centre of a white card, giving a tiny one inch wide picture.
And lo, no really lo this time, in amongst the blackness, was a definate image. The moving picture was there, buried, embedded in this black murk. Hello there tiny weeny Gordon.
Ok, black murk removal. Luckily one of my pet subjects. The best bet had to be hydrochloric acid. A murk killer if ever there was one.
And it worked...after some rather disturbing fizzing and bubbling, gone was the murk, but also gone was the image...leaving nothing but sparkling clear celluloid. Ok, perhaps something a little less fervent than acid...
I happened across an advert for a kit of chemicals called Colorvir in a stills photography magazine. The idea was you could add special effects to already processed or printed stills and slides.
Thinks. Slides are reversal stock. The same as Kodachrome. Or Dynachrome even.
So I sent off for a set and started dabbling, sploshing any and every possible mixture onto test lengths of the film.
Days passed, and so did nights.
Colours came and went.
Solarization became popular and then went out of fashion.
High contrast waxed and waned.
Highlights became ever greyer.
Backgrounds took on any one of many sepia tones.
Everything combined with anything did just about anything to everything. But the black lived on forever, and buried in it, like some stubborn time capsule, remained the seemingly unretrievable image.
Gordon trotting about at the seaside. Licking lollies. Sitting on benches. Unreachable. Unrescuable. Doomed to obscurity for all eternity.
Then of course, like all happy endings, eventually one right day, one right moment, one right mixture and I was Pasteur, I was Nobel, I was...successful.
I raised up the short piece of film, shook off the chemical droplets, and there in something like black and white, was the image itself, finally revealed, in all it's glory.
The overiding blackness had lifted.
Well, it had rinsed away.
It turned out that the black anti-halation backing had hardened with age and had stayed immune to the chemicals which during processing were designed to remove it.
I then similarly treated the rest of the footage in a movie processing tank and there it all was.
Genuine lost and found footage.
In fact, the images had a textural quality not unlike the skin of an orange, a kind of puckered effect, and were a little more black and orange than black and white. But for this movie, an exercise in strangeness if ever there was one, that was a plus.
Lucky really.
Oh, sorry, anti-halation backing....you don't know?
I had to.
Look it up!
GORDON AND MARGARET AND RONALD AND LEONARD???
Ok, this is where I work Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, the CIA and British Intelligence into the 'Gordon the Movie' story without even making up porkies!
(For legal reasons I must point out that absolutely nothing in this piece is true and none of the characters or events bear any relation to any real characters or events whether real or not or living or dead or imagined or even depressed.)
The strange event with dancers and spacey music in the second part of the film is the 'Mind and Body Exhibition' in Bristol, circa 1979. Mick Banks and Corinne D'Cruz of 'British Events' theatre company, (still going today, but now based in Germany), agreed to do a piece of guerilla theatre at this very un-guerilla theatre styled event.
We all trooped in and started to look for a spot in which to shoot the piece.
I then happened across someone I knew, one Lenny.
AKA Francis Leonard.
I told him of our plan, and he kindly suggested we set up and shoot in front of his stall. He of course will clear it for us with the appropriate people.
How helpful of him.
Of course, as it turns out, it's not his stall.
He doesn't have a stall.
In true Lenny fashion, he's just blagged some wall space on the side of someone elses stall and generously donated it to us. And hasn't informed them about it.
Luckily, although you can't see them, (although you can hear them applauding in the background) there is a whole cafeteria-full of punters behind the camera, and due to this the actual and seriously disgruntled stallholders refrain from causing a fuss and having us expelled, enabling the shoot to continue, although the vibes are bad, man.
So we go unknowingly go ahead.
And as Gordon rounds the corner, you can just glimpse Lenny, with long red Californian mane, chatting up a charming young lady as per usual. (Also at that point you can spot my then baby daughter Hannah being propelled in her pushchair by her mum, Sophie!)
Anyway, as soon as the shoot is over we run for the doors as the angry stallholders start to vent spleen. We are keen to leave before Body takes over from Mind.
So Lenny?? Who he?
Well, in the early 70's he ran an operation called Earth Star Structures.
He used to blag scaffolding off companies like SGB and build domes with it, using the tri-strut method demonstrated wordlessly to him by a Tibetan monk interweaving three blades of grass...yeah right Lenny.
And where in the South West do you think long haired soft spoken Californian accented Lenny's hippyshit operation was based in the 70's.
Yep, you guessed it.
Glastonbury.
I met him there in '72 when we went to discuss filming a dome structure to be built over Battlefields mansion on Lansdowne, near Bath, whilst reroofing was undertaken. He latched onto me as I was the youngest of the bunch from Bath Film Unit, and (he assumed) therefore obviously the most gullible. He took great pains to let me handle pieces of moon rock and name drop icons like Buckminster Fuller. Ooooh a Whole Earth catalog...you're so cool Lenny.
Lenny really was full of both kinds.
The bull, and the shit.
The film project, which we unwittingly agreed to undertake, was to last for two weeks, as that was how long the scaffolding structure would take to build.
In reality, the project broke the Bath Film Unit's financial back, as after 6 months, they still hadn't finished building. In the main, ( thanks to that Tibetan monk) the basic structure worked, but they had to make up the covering system as they went along, and it became more and more complicated.
The Bath Film Unit folded.
Lenny continued to blag scaffolding.
He continued to blag projects.
And then when Thatcher came to power, he was just what The Lunatics needed for their newly taken over asylum.
Thatcher, Carter, Reagan, Whitehall and the CIA were in need of a counter measure to throw against the rapidly rising CND. They came up with the CPS, the 'Coalition for Peace through Security', an organisation which offered the enlightened combination of peace and a massive nuclear deterrent.
Have your cake and blow the oven out of the window as well.
But who could they get to run this appalling shitpile of an operation???
Think-Tank time...
I know, I've got it....let's get what's his name on the line...
You know, the smooth talking Californian long haired bullshitting fake hippy whatever he's called this week...
Francis Leonard, Leonard Francis, Francis Halloran, Francis Leonard O'Hallorhan, Leonard O'Halloran, Francis Holihan, Leonard O'Holihan...
You know, AKA Lenny.
So they tracked him down, made him an offer he couldn't refuse, ( no horse head in the bed needed here), and installed him in an office in Whitehall.
He firstly joined and infiltrated the CND, and then having gained access to their plans he went off with his team to the States, and toured the "Coalition for Peace through Security" roadshow.
Coincidentally, throughout it's itinerary, it toured just ahead of the CND roadshow, which arrived in every location to find it's publicity already blown apart by Lenny and the boys.
For the CND a complete disaster.
That's why they never took hold in the States when it mattered most.
And then Glastonbury, I think 1982 ish, Lenny blags his way onto the main stage of this major CND fundraiser, and delivers his 'Peace through Security' bullshit speech over the PA, just as a 'plane flies over dragging a giant 'Peace through Security' banner.
Eventually after a particularly mucky muck slinging campaign against the CND's stalwarts, even The Lunatics in charge realised he had gone too far, and fired him from the CPS.
The last words (of bullshit, of course) go to who else but Lenny...taken from his appalling simpering commentary over the Battlefields dome movie, finally completed ( unlike the dome itself ) and entitled 'Earthstar'... "Even though our heads are in the clouds, our feet remain placed firmly on the ground, and so we call ourselves Earth Star Structures..."
(Don't forget the soft stoned Californian accent when you read this....)
Some poor Japanese contra-rotating helicoptor designer with his new sales and bullshit manager (AKA Lenny?), taken a few years ago...allegedly.
