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| Comrades and competitors - another film highlights the fun that was Fleet Street It's Tony Delano movie season in London just now. Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. Last week, a packed audience at the BFI had the pleasure of watching The Great Paper Chase, the BBC drama based on Delano's book about the failed attempt by Scotland Yard and Fleet Street to lure Ronnie Biggs back from Brazil in 1974. More on that experience in a moment. First, though, dates for your diaries if you happen to be in London at the weekend. There are to be two showings of film heavily influenced by another Delano book, Joyce McKinney and the Case of the Manacled Mormon.Saturday (16 October) marks the UK premiere of a US documentary called Tabloid, about the remarkable story of McKinney, a former American beauty queen who kidnapped a Mormon missionary in Britain in 1977 for her sexual pleasure. (Oh yes she did. See Wikipedia).The film is part of the BFI Festival, but it's being screened at the Vue Cinema in Soho at 6pm. A second showing in the same cinema the following day starts at 3pm. It is clearly based around Delano's cracking 1978 book, though the producers sadly do not credit him.Made by the Oscar-winning director Errol Morris, it has received reasonable reviews at festivals in the US and Canada, including the Toronto International Film Festival (see here and here). Morris, in talking about the film last month to the Wall Street Journal, said: "The [tabloids] were able to tease out two stories: the virgin and the whore, and to exploit both of them. It's not something that I manufactured: you don't really know which story it is. I don't know. And that's what I liked about it."To get a handle on the way the media treated McKinney - which is the point both of his film and Delano's book - Morris invited two former Fleet Street journalists to LA to tell their stories on camera. Peter Tory, then a staffer on the Daily Express, was McKinney's "minder" in the US after she jumped bail.He was with her when Daily Mirror photographer Kent Gavin tracked down a set of compromising pictures, a scoop that damaged her pristine image and effectively ruined the Express's own exclusive. In other words, McKinney - like Biggs - was the subject of an old-fashioned Fleet Street battle. For us, if not for them, the battles were lots of fun.That's why I found myself laughing loudly throughout the Biggs film last Thursday evening, as were all the veteran Fleet Street hacks in the theatre. The portrayals of Express editor Ian McColl, executives Brian Vine and Brian Hitchen, reporter Colin MacKenzie, photographers Bill Lovelace and Micky Brennan and US correspondents Ralph Champion and Anthea Disney were amusing in themselves (though they didn't catch Hitchen and Disney properly).Then there was the comic figure of Detective Chief Superintendent Jack Slipper, a fish out of water once he reached Rio. But the movie's real success lay in capturing the contradictions that sprang from the mixture of journalistic competitiveness and camaraderie. They drank and joked together while doing their best to stab each other in the back. There was a wonderful slapstick element to the hacks' intensity as they took part in an enterprise that, in essence, was pointless.Media events and conferencesDaily MirrorRonnie BiggsDaily ExpressPoliceRoy Greensladeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Video: Exclusive clips from Mandelson: The Real PM? Filmed during the eight months before the general election, Hannah Rothschild's documentary follows the then-business secretary through planning Labour's manifesto to the leaders' debates and into the fallout following Labour's defeat. It premieres at the London film festival next Sunday guardian.co.uk |
Comedian Mike Birbiglia The stand-up comic talks to TIME about Twitter, the comedy world and decorating while asleep feedproxy.google.com |
Psycho: the No 1 horror film Alfred Hitchcock, 1960Author Robert Bloch, on whose novel Joseph Stefano's screenplay was based, described Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho as embodying "the fear of the boy next door". The terror, for Bloch, lay in the fact that the killer "could be the person sitting next to you". Bloch had been inspired to write his potboiler (copies of which Hitchcock reportedly bought up to keep the end a surprise) by news reports about Ed Gein, the seemingly ordinary Wisconsin loner who was revealed to be a murderer and necrophile. Dubbed "the Wisconsin ghoul", Gein made ornaments and clothing from the skin of the dead and inspired a legacy of fictionalised screen shockers, ranging from the trashy Deranged to the epochal Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Oscar-winning The Silence of the Lambs. But it was Anthony Perkins's maternally obsessed misfit in Psycho who most perfectly distilled the modern fear of the monster who looks just like you. "My name is Norman Bates," sang British synth combo Landscape in 1981, "I'm just a normal guy …" proving that Perkins's creation still had pop cachet two decades after his first appearance.Dispute still rages as to the provenance and power of Psycho's notorious shower sequence, which has become perhaps the most iconic murder scene in the history of cinema. Designer Saul Bass's preparatory storyboards so closely detail every moment of the sequence that some have suggested he should share directorial credit with Hitchcock. Others argue that it is Bernard Herrmann's stabbing score, with its screeching atonal strings, which packs the real punch. But it was the maestro's flair for carnivalesque showmanship that made Psycho headline news – from the unforgettably camp trailer in which Hitchcock led audiences around the "scene of the crime" before throwing back the shower curtain to reveal a screaming Vera Miles, to his much-publicised ruling that no one be allowed to enter the theatre once a performance of Psycho had begun. "Any spurious attempts to enter by side doors, fire escapes or ventilating shafts will be met by force," announced a cardboard lobby cut-out of Hitchcock, pointing sternly at his watch. "The entire objective of this extraordinary policy, of course, is to help you enjoy Psycho more."Its edgy exploitation aesthetic and taboo-breaking "toilet flush" shot (even more controversial than the shower scene) have meant Psycho forged a template for the money-spinning slasher franchises that still thrive – or fester? – today. It directly inspired Halloween (which starred Janet Leigh's daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis) and Friday the 13th (in which the murderous mother-son relationship is sneakily reversed), and spawned a string of sequels including a TV movie that brought Bates's legacy into the direct-to-video age.Groaning artworks followed too, from Gus Van Sant's allegedly post-modern colour-copy remake, to Douglas Gordon's puzzlingly feted installation 24 Hour Psycho, which simply slowed the appropriated film to a snail's pace. Hitchcock would never have been so pompous; he made Psycho fast and cheap (it cost a mere $807,000) to entertain a mainstream audience, using his regular TV crew and shooting in black-and-white to give the production a vérité news-footage feel. Many viewers still insist that the blood running down the plughole after Marion's murder is bright red, but it is the power of their imaginations that makes the brown chocolate syrup seem so. After half a century of terror, Psycho is still ensuring that no one feels safe in the shower.HorrorAlfred HitchcockMark Kermodeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Portrait of the artist: Baz Luhrmann, director 'I feel funny about owning art. I don't want to say, "Come and see my Monet – it's in a dark room in the cellar" 'What got you started?My father made sure that I had lots of levels of education – from ballroom-dancing to painting, commando training, theatre and magic. He was a war photographer in Vietnam, so I also learnt photography from a very young age. Telling stories and putting on shows just came naturally.What was your big breakthrough?Meeting Jim Sharman, who created The Rocky Horror Picture Show, at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney. He started telling everyone: "I think this young chap's got something." Soon I was directing a series of Strindberg and Brecht, and devising a play set in the world of ballroom dancing that became Strictly Ballroom. Sharman ensured I was busy, and I've been busy ever since.What's the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you?I spent a short time with [director] Peter Brook on The Mahabharata, and he said: "What are you doing watching me? Go and get on with it." So I did.Will British film survive the axing of the UK Film Council?Gee, I'm not a local, so I risk being another windbag throwing out an ill-thought-through opinion. But I do think that both Australia and the UK aren't like Hollywood, where young spawn get to grow and be nourished. In both countries, the government needs to feed the next generation of film-makers.You have also directed operas. Should opera-makers try to widen its appeal? That's been the catchphrase since I've been involved in opera. Opera was the cinema of its time, so to bring back that popular appeal, you just need to unleash its visceral immediacy and excitement. Most productions don't manage that – but when an opera does do it, you never forget it.What's the worst thing anyone ever said about you?It's a very long list.What work of art would you most like to own?I feel funny about owning art. I don't really want to say: "Wow, come and see my Monet – it's in a dark room at the bottom of my cellar."Which other artists do you most admire?I'm heading towards 50, and I feel like I'm just getting going. So I look at Picasso and Shakespeare, and I think, their work is a true reflection of the curvature of their lives.Complete this sentence, please: At heart I'm just a frustrated . . .Well, I know the truth – but it would cause such a headline, I won't even go there.In shortBorn: Sydney, 1962.Career: Films include Strictly Ballroom, Australia, Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge! The latter two are available on Blu-Ray from 1 November.High point: "Achieving so many of the dreams I had as a kid – from going to the Oscars to getting a letter from Marlon Brando."Low point: "Haircut, the first show I directed with my first theatre company in Sydney, was a very high-profile failure."Baz LuhrmannLaura Barnettguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |