FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
Hypnotic, newly colorized footage of Pink Floyd on ‘American Bandstand’ in 1967


Pink Floyd circa 1967.
 
Ten years ago, upon the passing of Dick Clark, a long-time contributor to Dangerous Minds Marc Campbell homaged Clark by posting footage of Pink Floyd’s appearance on American Bandstand. As Campbell pointed out, Clark would select acts for Bandstand and his choice of Pink Floyd in 1967 demonstrates how far ahead of the musical curve Dick Clark was. Now, with a hat tip to another long-time contributor for DM, Ron Kretch, let me treat your eyes to newly colorized footage of Floyd dreamily miming along to their third single “Apples and Oranges” on stage at ABC Studios in Burbank (or perhaps ABC Television Center studios as an intrepid DM reader has noted), California on November 7th, 1967.

Before we get to this nothing short of glorious colorized footage, I’d like to touch on the fact that it took nearly a year of work to recreate this moment and it shows. A YouTuber based in Sweden known as Artist on the Border has been creating their own visual representations of Pink Floyd for the last two decades. The colorization adds a dream-like appearance to the members of Pink Floyd who had just arrived in America for the first time a few days before their appearance on American Bandstand. So stop whatever it is you were doing and let the colorized chill of Pink Floyd wash over you. Also, beware the colorized version of Syd Barrett may give you a hell of a contact high. In the event the footage below becomes unavailable, click here to view it on YouTube. 

 

Pink Floyd’s performance of ‘Apples and Oranges’ on American Bandstand, 1967.

Posted by Cherrybomb
|
01.11.2022
04:22 pm
|
A Momentary Lapse of Reason: When Dario Argento Interviewed Pink Floyd in 1987 


Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and director Dario Argento.
 
Let’s get a few fun facts out of the way before we take a look at the eight or so awkward minutes shared between Pink Floyd vocalist and guitarist David Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason and Italian horror master, Dario Argento. For Pink Floyd, 1987 was a new beginning without bassist Roger Waters—a founding member of the Floyd along with Nick Mason. After years of legal hassles, the Waterless version of Pink Floyd released A Momentary Lapse of Reason. The subsequent tour (which started before the album was completed), was full of challenges, legal and otherwise. When it was all said and done, the tour in support of A Momentary Lapse of Reason would be the most successful U.S. rock tour of 1987. And that’s saying something, as David Bowie’s Glass Spider tour played 44 U.S. dates that same year. When it comes to Dario Argento and his relationship with Pink Floyd, we go back to 1975 when Italy’s version of Alfred Hitchcock tried, unsuccessfully, to engage the band to record the soundtrack for Profondo Rosso (aka, Deep Red, and The Hatchet Murders) as they were deep in work on their ninth album, Wish You Were Here. This, of course, didn’t turn out to be a bad thing. It gave us all the gift that is Italian prog-rock pioneers, Goblin, who were engaged to rewrite the score composed by Giorgio Gaslini, who had previously composed the score for Argento’s 1973 film The Five Days. It would also leave room for Argento’s collaboration with Keith Emerson of ELP, who composed the insanely good soundtrack for Argento’s 1980 film Inferno

Now, let’s get back to the eight minutes of international time-delayed satellite video connection which had to be translated live in Italy and New York City. You might want to sit down because the combination of Dario Argento and members of Pink Floyd can make one quite dizzy. 

Dario Argento was perpetually busy in the 1970s and 1980s. But he still somehow found time to do a self-hosted television show in Italy called Gli incubi di Dario Argento (The Nightmares of Dario Argento). Only nine episodes of The Nightmares of Dario Argento were filmed as part of the television series Giallo. He was often joined by Italian actress Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni dolled up like Siouxsie Sioux. You may recall, Cataldi-Tassoni was the star of Argento’s 1987 film, Opera. Though it’s a little unclear exactly when this segment aired, Pink Floyd was noted to be in New York City at the time. Since the video shows both Gilmore and Mason staying at the Ritz Carlton’s Central Park location, that would probably put the filming of this magic mushroom moment sometime during their three-night stint at Madison Square Garden. At the beginning of the “interview” Argento praises A Momentary Lapse of Reason, calling the album “stupendous.” Then, Argento’s complex, esoteric questions seem to mystify both Gilmour and Mason—and the live translation, which at times is not accurate, does not help matters one bit. I don’t want to reveal any more of what goes down in this very strange video, but had Roger Waters seen it back in the day, it would have pissed off his already very pissed off self.
 

Dario Argento interviewing David Gilmour and Nick Mason of Pink Floyd in 1987 via satellite. What a world.
 

Another segment of ‘The Nightmares of Dario Argento.’

Posted by Cherrybomb
|
08.30.2021
11:41 am
|
Completely brilliant sculptures of the cast of UK cult TV show ‘The Young Ones’
08.25.2021
05:55 am
Topics:
Tags:


A sculpture of actor Adrian Edmondson in character as Vyvyan Basterd from the UK cult televsion series, ‘The Young Ones.’
 
At Toy-Con in London in 2020, one of the exhibitors was UK sculptor, artist, and toymaker Mike Strict, who we can all thank for making our mid-80s dreams come true by sculpting up figures based on the unforgettable characters from the UK sitcom The Young Ones. Only twelve episodes exist of The Young Ones, but the impact the show made is still felt by its dedicated fan base to this day. Strict chose to create three sculpts/figures of fictional Scumbag University undergrad students Vyvyan Basterd; an angry heavy metal fan and medical student, played by Adrian (Ade) Edmondson; Rick, a sociology student and genuinely unlikable make-believe anarchist, played by the late Rik Mayall; and Neil Wheedon Watkins Pye, the lentil-loving, suicidal hippie played by Nigel Planer.

Usually, Strict is a strictly one-off kind of toy/figure/sculptor, but this time he did create more than one of his Young Ones figures, sold at Toy-Con. It’s not clear how many Strict made, but what I can tell you is that it appears they were all, rather unsurprisingly, sold. However, that does not mean you are out of luck if this is exactly what your collectible collection is missing, as Strict does accept commissions. At Toy-Con, his Rik, Vyvyan, and Neil figures sold for $75 USD—something to keep in mind if you’re going to try to acquire one. Much of Strict’s work is dark and creepy (YAY!) and includes nods to horror films. So if you’ve ever wanted a play-set based on the 1973 film The Wicker Man starring Christopher Lee, then Strict is your man. Or, perhaps you’ve been pining away for a sculpted diorama of Chuck D and Flavor Flav of Public Enemy, featuring their iconic image of a man in a hat caught in the crosshair of a weapons scope. Because, yeah, Strict made one of those in 2019.
 

Rick.
 

Neil and his everpresent pot of lentils.
 

 

 

 
More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Cherrybomb
|
08.25.2021
05:55 am
|
A super-cringey interview with Lemmy Kilmister & Sigmund Freud’s great-grandaughter in bed


The late Lemmy Kilmister hanging out in bed. Photo by Ray Palmer.
 
2021 marks my seventh year here at Dangerous Minds. During my time here I’ve posted over 1200 articles on everything from satanic strippers, Axl Rose threatening to kill David Bowie, puppet porn, a fringe film featuring an adult baby, and on several occasions, the subject at hand today-Lemmy Kilmister. On September 12th, 1987, Motörhead released their eighth studio album, Rock ‘n’ Roll with Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor back behind the kit. Prior to the release of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Lemmy had played a meaty role in director Peter Richardson’s film Eat the Rich for which Motörhead configuration of Lemmy, Würzel, Phil Taylor, and Phil Campbell had written and recorded the film’s ripping theme tune (which also appears on Rock ‘n’ Roll), specifically for the film. The soundtrack itself is nearly exclusively comprised of Motörhead and if you’ve never seen it (a massive critical flop upon its release, it deserves the cult status it now holds), I highly recommend you add it to your “must view” queue.
 

A still from ‘Eat the Rich’ featuring Lemmy and actor Ronald Shiner.
 
Sadly, like Eat the Rich, Motörhead’s eighth record was also a bit of a letdown for their fans, and even Lemmy has reflected dimly on Rock ‘n’ Roll alluding that it was a “waste of time” (as noted in Lem’s 2002 autobiography White Line Fever). At any rate, regardless of this blip in the vast heavy metal continuum that is/was Motörhead, the point is this—with more than a few silver and one gold record (1980’s Ace of Spades), under their bullet belts, Motörhead were a force to be reckoned with. This was, of course, especially true of Lemmy Kilmister. We’re all familiar with the notion that “looks can be deceiving,” and one should “never judge a book by its cover.” Yet, this is what inevitably happens all the fucking time. Including the time Lemmy got into bed with Emma Freud, the host of the UK television show Pillow Talk, and the great-granddaughter of the founding father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.

And, as the title of this post states, things get really weird and super uncomfortable fast, and stay that way for nine excruciatingly long minutes. The majority of the awkwardness was caused by some of the dumb questions posed to Lemmy by Freud.

Usually, guests of Pillow Talk would wear their pajamas on the show, just like Freud. As I’m pretty sure Lemmy didn’t actually own any PJ’s, Lemmy showed up dressed as Lemmy, fingers full of his signature silver rings, and got under the covers. As the show begins we hear Freud musing about how she selects guests for her show. Such criteria included being “terribly attractive,” “very handsome,” and “extremely sexy.” For lots of people, Lemmy checks all those boxes and I’m not gonna be the one to say he doesn’t because he checks all those boxes for me as well. Unfortunately, the show rapidly becomes super uncomfortable thanks to Freud’s cringey questions. Perhaps she was merely trying to get a rise out of Kilmister or, respectfully, she just didn’t do her research on Kilmister and Motörhead – the latter being a point Lemmy politely takes Freud to task for. As one YouTube commenter noted of the exchange, Lemmy managed to “intellectually spank her while whacked out on speed,” over and over again. This nine minutes from the life of Lemmy Kilmister is one for the ages, folks.
 

 

Posted by Cherrybomb
|
04.02.2021
04:18 pm
|
What if Derek Raymond’s violent, bleak crime novels were made into a 1970s TV show?
11.20.2020
12:19 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
Author and filmmaker Adam Scovell—whose second novel How Pale the Winter Has Made Us was published earlier this year to great acclaim—sent me this wonderful trailer that asks “What if there was a gritty 70s UK TV series based on the black novels of the notorious crime author Derek Raymond?”

Adam writes:

“For some time now, I’ve daydreamed about adapting for the screen Derek Raymond’s Factory series of novels, following the unnamed sergeant at A14 or the Met’s Department of Unexplained Deaths. Raymond’s work was adapted twice in film, both in the 1980s by French directors. For a quintessentially London writer, his work didn’t quite translate to Paris no matter the qualities of those films. Equally, even if a modern adaptation was possible, it would still have to contend with the vast shifts taken place in London itself since the novels were written. The shabby, industrial vision of the capital, so essential to Raymond’s work, would be difficult to recreate authentically. Instead, I wanted to imagine a “what-if” vision of Raymond’s brutal but beautiful Factory novels, looking to British Television produced a decade before he wrote the first in his series, He Died With His Eyes Open. Finding a range of material in a number of London Weekend Television and Thames Television dramas, it was clear that there was enough to make a trailer. In my daydream, I cast Tom Bell as the intrepid sergeant, and found a wealth of villains, from Brian Glover to William Marlowe. Archive television of the 1970s is replete with work that deals with the themes that Raymond would pursue and push into the realm of the transgressive, so I see a natural fit between programmes and dramas made in this era and the relentless novels he would produce in the following decade.”

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
11.20.2020
12:19 pm
|
EXP-TV: Freaktastic new video channel will rip your face off and eat your brain
06.29.2020
02:36 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
There are certain things you don’t know you’re missing in life until you’re exposed to them, right? EXP TV just might be one of those things. It’s got an aesthetic that hovers around the same territory as Everything is Terrible! and Vic Berger, it even reminds me of Mike Kelley’s stuff, but that’s only going to get you in the ballpark. Which is good enough, but you just have to click on the link and see for yourself. It’s a barrage of strange imagery and is really quite an inspired—not to say elaborate and work intensive—art project. And just in time for a pandemic. Bored with Netflix? Have enough Amazon Prime? Maxed out on HBO Max? You need to tune in, turn on and drop your jaw to the floor at what’s screening on EXP TV.

EXP TV the brainchild of Tom Fitzgerald, Marcus Herring, Taylor C. Rowley.  I asked them a few questions via email.
 
What is EXP TV? What should someone expect to see when they get there?

EXP TV is a live TV channel broadcasting an endless stream of obscure media and video ephemera from our site at exptv.org.  We stream 24/7.

The daytime programming is called “Video Breaks”—a video collage series featuring wild, rare, unpredictable, and ever-changing archival clips touching on every subject imaginable. Similar to how golden era MTV played music videos all day, daytime EXP TV streams non-stop, deep cut video clips filtered through our own distinct POV.

What treasures would reward the loyal Video Breaks viewer?  Ventriloquist dummy sales demos, Filipino Pinocchios, LSD trip-induced talking hot dogs, Liberace’s recipe tips, French synth punk, primal scream therapy seminars, Deadhead parking lots, empty parking lots, Israeli sci-fi, scary animatronics, teenage girls’ homemade art films, Belgian hard techno dance instructions, Czech children’s films about UFOs, even Danzig reading from his book collection. And that’s all in just one hour!

We’ve been collecting obscure media for decades, but we’ve sorted through it all and cherry-picked the funny, the bizarre, the relevant, the irrelevant, the visually stunning, the interesting, the infamous, the good, the bad and the fugly.  We’ve done all that so the viewers don’t have to.  They get to kick back and experience the sweet spot without having to dig for rare stuff themselves or sit through an entire movie waiting for the cool part.

Our Nite Owl programming block features specialty themed video mixes and deep dives on everything under the sun: Bigfoot, underground 80s culture, Italo disco, cults, Halloween hijinks, pre-revolutionary Iranian pop culture, midnight movies, ‘ye ye’ promo films, Soviet sci-fi, reggae rarities, psychedelic animation and local news calamities. On any given night you could watch something like our Incredibly Strange Metal show followed by a conceptual video essay like Pixel Power—our exploration of early CGI art.

Aside from our unique tone and deep crate of video materials, one thing that really sets us apart in 2020 is our format.  We are *not* on demand, we are *not* interactive—just like old TV!  You can tune in anytime and something cool will be on. 

That’s EXP TV in a nutshell.  It’s funny, it’s art, it’s music, it’s infotainment, it’s free and it’s 24/7.

It’s 24/7?

Yes.

What does EXP stand for?

EXP stands for…experimental, expanded, experiential, expert, exploration, expressive, expounded, exposed, explained, expeditionary, unexpected, exponents, expatriot, expedited, expectorant, exposure, expelled, expendable, expensive, express, exploded, expired…EXP TV!

We have a little bumper on our Instagram @exp.tv that illustrates this

How much material did you have in the can, ready to go at launch?

We had been quietly working on the channel for over a year so we had quite a bit of material.  When the pandemic hit, we decided to launch early as a beta so people could have an alternative to the big streaming channels - something totally different.

In this modern world of all these different streaming platforms, it feels like you spend more time deciding what to watch than you do actually watching something.  We wanted to make something you could just turn on and leave on for hours—days even—and you’d be guaranteed to catch something interesting.  We basically just made the channel we wanted to watch.

Right now, we have about 60 hours in rotation and we are regularly adding new material—new Video Breaks, new episodes of our ongoing series, and hatching entirely new concepts for shows. Stay tuned for Kung Fu Wizards coming soon!

More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
06.29.2020
02:36 pm
|
The Montauk Project: The idiotic conspiracy theory that inspired ‘Stranger Things’
05.04.2020
09:31 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
This is a segment from my Disinformation TV series that originally aired late nights on UK television’s Channel Four network in 2000 and 2001. This and many more bits from the series are streaming at Night Flight Plus. Get a full year membership for $29.99 ($10 Off) for a limited time with discount code: DANGEROUSMINDS.

In January of 1999, I started to put together the pilot episode of what would become a two series run of a show produced for Britain’s Channel 4 called Disinfo Nation if you lived in the UK, and Disinformation in the rest of the world. The very first day of shooting was such an outrageous experience that it was really never topped during the subsequent two years of production, 24 zany months that saw me going to fetish clubs, listening to the sounds of plants communicating and “investigating” behind the scenes of various ludicrous conspiracy theories.

A film and video producer I knew by the name of Chica Bruce—well known around New York for her work on Yo! MTV Raps—had become an aficionado of the “Montauk Project” conspiracy theory book series and when she heard about the TV pilot order I’d gotten from Channel 4, she strongly encouraged me to do a segment on her new obsession. I thought this was a good idea, having read several of the Montauk Project volumes myself, books I considered to be mind rot at its absolute finest. (It has been said that the Montauk Project books inspired the Stranger Things TV series.)

Chica had become acquainted with the key players in the conspiracy, as well as several “Montauk experiencers,” as she put it, disturbed young men who had “feelings” that they too were a part of the nefarious goings on at a disused Air Force base on Long Island. How this generally occurred, she explained to me, is that they would read the Montauk Project books and their own repressed memories of working on the project would resurface. There were more than ten “Montauk Boys,” but fewer than twenty. Chica, a very attractive woman, was apparently the sole female traveling in such a circle, for reasons that would soon become pretty obvious. She scheduled interviews with two of the main Montauk players—and possibly a third—during a weekend shoot on Long Island. I also planned to interview Chica herself and have her show me around the site of the former Montauk Point Air Force base. I found her innocent willingness to buy into the obvious tall tales these clowns told added an entirely new layer to the story I wanted to tell. Chica could put herself through metaphysical logic loops that would have left someone with a less hardy appetite for weirdness feeling dizzy. Having a photogenic character like her to play off Jabba The Hutt-like Preston Nichols and Stewart Swerdlow—an effete goateed married man who told me on camera that he was sent back in time to assassinate Jesus Christ—was pretty perfect.

I always endeavored to present the conspiracy theory material with a completely straight face. I was heavily influenced by Chris Smith’s classic American Movie and the films of Christopher Guest. I wanted to make “real” mockumentaries. The goal was to produce something that lived up to a conceit of a title like Disinformation (meaning a mixture of truth and lies used as an information smokescreen) and the show’s cheerfully snarky tagline: “If you’re not wondering if we made this stuff up, we’re not doing our job right.”

The idea was to force the audience to ask themselves if it was real or if it was scripted—several times—during the course of each show. For that to work, it had to seem like I believed it, too, no matter how preposterous or insane what the subjects were saying was. I also had to convince the interviewees that I bought into their reality, too.

I hit upon my interviewing style on the first day and it really worked for me: I’d ask extremely detailed questions, designed to elicit extremely detailed answers and then I’d have plenty to work with in the edit room. But there was an additional, less obvious psychological benefit to this approach. Here’s an example of what I mean by that: In the case of my interview with Preston B. Nichols, I went through every single page of his totally crazy books and instead of asking broad questions like “So tell me about your involvement with the Montauk Project…” I’d ask something more along the lines of “How were you recruited for your first job on the base or did you apply for the job? Was it a friend or a family member who told you about the job? I guess I’m a little unclear about how you found yourself there in the first place” and then he would be obliged to clarify it for me.

I’d follow that up with “Did you have to pass any sort of top secret security clearance before you started work there?” and I would drill down from there.

You see what I was doing, demonstrating a better than usual familiarity with the backstory—I’d clearly done my research, which showed respect—but not getting it quite right so he’d be obliged to correct me on a small detail. I was a TV guy slickster in an expensive suit on his turf, so it was imperative that I disarm whatever nervousness or intimidation my persona presented him with and get him on my side from the very start or I wasn’t going to be able to get the sort of footage I needed. This little trick—and the fact that I can keep a straight face with the best of them—worked wonders for me.
 

 
Preston Nichols’ home was a tiny old house that looked extremely incongruous among the million dollar McMansions that surrounded it. As we drove closer and saw the weed-covered yard and modified school bus in the driveway, it became obvious to us that we were indeed in the right place. Nichols lived there with his father, a morbidly obese old fellow who watched football perched on a La-Z-Boy® recliner. He reacted to the crew and myself like Gollum would after being exposed to light for the first time in years. He was so fat that it was hard for me to tell if he had any bones. He didn’t even bother moving as we tried to set up around him and he passed gas frequently, in front of us, without any shame.

Their home was one of the filthiest places I’ve ever seen and a huge stack—and I do mean huge, there were at least 500 cans—of Spam (yes, the processed meat product) sat piled in one corner, stacked neatly on a wooden palette. Semi-eaten cans, with spoons stuck to them, were seen all over the place, as if it was all the pair ate. Directly from the can. There was junk everywhere. The bathroom was a rusty, pissed-covered scandal. The toilet seat had been cracked completely in half and then put back together with several rolls of thick cellophane tape. Preston wore a sweatshirt that had dried food and Spam gravy spilled all over it. It was not pretty and he smelled real bad, too.

Although he was obviously quite suspicious of me—and not without good reason, of course—I got exactly what I needed from the interview (Except for one thing: Preston’s dead mother had constructed a memorial shrine to the actor Yul Brynner, an entire wall of framed photographs, newspaper clippings and magazine articles next to the massive pile of Spam. Afterwards, in the van, I asked the cameraman if he’d gotten some good shots of it, but alas he had not, thinking it had nothing to do with the story. No Spam pile, either.)

Next up was Stewart Swerdlow, a curious fellow who told me in great detail, not only of his involvement with the project, but of his time spent in federal prison for a crime he told me that he’d been brainwashed to commit. I also met his new wife who explained that she’d been introduced to him while he was in prison by a psychic who told her that Stewart was her soul mate, and soon afterwards she divorced her husband for him. Stewart himself, as you will see, admits ruefully that he’d been “manually deprogrammed” by Preston Nichols, as he quite self-consciously alludes to this incident during the interview.

Lastly there was Chica Bruce herself, valiantly trying to convince me that I had not seen what I had just seen with my own two eyes—that Preston was a fat fibber/closet case using conspiracy theories for ulterior motives and that Stewart being a blatant New Age con man (He was purveying “color therapy” at the time and offered to “do my colors” for a discount. I passed). I did an interview with Chica and then she took me on a tour of the decommissioned air force base (now a state park).

As we walked around the park—it was fucking freezing—she kept asking me things like “Don’t you feel that? C’mon man, you don’t feel ANY like inter-dimensional weirdness going on here? NOTHING?

“No, sorry, I ‘feel’ nothing.”

Chica was earnestly looking for the Montauk Project conspiracy. There was a conspiracy all right, just not the one that she was looking for…

With this background, have a look at “The Montauk Project”:
 

 
Watch more Disinformation on Night Flight Plus, the only place to watch original episodes of the cult 1980s series Night Flight. Get a full year membership for $29.99 ($10 Off) for a limited time with discount code: DANGEROUSMINDS.

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
05.04.2020
09:31 am
|
Brice Taylor: Mind-controlled Sex Slave of the CIA, Bob Hope and Henry Kissinger
04.22.2020
08:50 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
This is a segment from my Disinformation TV series that originally aired late nights on UK television’s Channel Four network in 2000 and 2001. This and many more bits from the series are streaming at Night Flight Plus. Get a full year membership for $29.99 ($10 Off) for a limited time with discount code: DANGEROUSMINDS.

This piece, one of my favorites, focuses on the self-proclaimed “mind-controlled sex slave” of the CIA, “Brice Taylor” (not her real name) but actually did not make it to broadcast. “Brice” is the author of one of the craziest books I have ever encountered, Thanks For The Memories: The Truth Has Set Me Free! The Memoirs of Bob Hope’s and Henry Kissinger’s Mind-Controlled Slave in which she alleges being a victim of the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program, specifically something called “Project Monarch” which groomed “mind-controlled sex slaves” for rich and powerful people.

This was the SOLE piece, the only one out of all the shit I dropped in their lap for two years (“Uncle Goddamn,” Kembra Pfahler sewing her pussy shut, the extreme porn segment, etc., etc., etc.) that the Channel Four lawyers docked from the show. They were amazingly lenient with me for nearly everything—I cannot believe what I got away with, looking back on it—but this one could not be salvaged because British libel laws are such that you can’t knowingly publish a false claim or untruth, and the law is pretty cut and dry on this.

But weren’t her claims of making mother/daughter dolphin porn directed by Sylvester Stallone a little too preposterous to be believed? The fact that no one would believe any of it didn’t really matter, as corporate lawyers, they very simply just could not let this story run. None of it. I was so happy with the way that it had turned out that this seemed like a bitter defeat at the time, but it’s been seen elsewhere since.

The backstory behind this is that I contacted Brice Taylor via her website and told her about the British TV show and invited her to be on it. After an initially wary exchange, I suggested that we speak on the phone.

Her concern, she told me bluntly, was that I was going to make her look like a kook. I then proceeded to give her the well-honed standard rap that I gave to every kook I wanted to get on camera: “Brice, if I have video rolling and you are saying kooky things, look, I’m a television producer, so I’m probably going to use that footage, yes, but if when the cameras are on, you’re true to yourself, you’re poised, you stay on message and you’re satisfied when I leave that you didn’t embarrass yourself, no, I’m not going to go out of my way to make you look like a nut. How would that work anyway unless YOU give me the kooky footage in the first place? So just don’t act like a kook when you’re on camera, okay?”

AS IF, but that line of reasoning did seem to win her over a bit, although she still wasn’t convinced. I upped the ante: “Okay, what if we do the piece from YOUR point of view? In fact, aside from me asking you a question or two off-camera or something minor, the entire piece can be in YOUR voice—we can use the introduction to your book as the narration, it’s perfect, we’ll just mic you up and have you read it a couple of times—and you being interviewed on camera. You have my word that I will basically keep myself out of it. You will write the piece, how’s that?”

She was very definitely “in” after that and the very next day, the fearless cameraman and editor I worked with on the show, Nimrod Erez, one of the show’s producers Brian Butler, and I drove to a place in San Diego where she was staying (it was a gorgeous home in the hills that belonged to her therapist, who she also worked for doing some sort of New Age water therapy/memory retrieval thing that I didn’t really understand).

Upon our arrival, we were greeted by 6’4” retired FBI Special Director Ted Gunderson, a name well-known to fans of the most far-out variants of conspiracy theory. Gunderson, now deceased, but then about 75, was known for being an idiotic bigmouth who hounded the producers of shows like Geraldo! and A Current Affair for appearances. We were told that he was there to provide “security” for “the little lady” as he called her and he’d also invited himself to be on camera (something that she seemed to want, too) to bolster her bonafides. I was only too delighted to accommodate a blithering fucking idiot who would have a lower third (accurately) identifying him as a former FBI bureau chief! In the context of a show that didn’t want the audience to be able to tell if it was a put on, or real, this was a gift.
 

 
A few asides about Gunderson: One, he lived in Las Vegas (where he hosted a low watt radio conspiracy theory show) and brought along three framed photographs on his long-ass drive to San Diego. One was him with Gerald and Betty Ford. Another was of him with Ronald Reagan. The third was a portrait of John Wayne, just a regular studio promo shot, not even signed to him or anything. Listen to him speak in the piece. He thought he sounded like John Wayne and he wanted me to somehow connect him to the actor in my mind. Maybe I’d even compare him to John Wayne, he told me.

The second thing was that it was OBVIOUS—and I mean OBVIOUS—that Ted thought he was going to get laid. He followed “Brice” around like a male dog sniffing around a female dog’s ass. When I wanted them both on camera at the same time, she balked and took me aside to admonish me not to “make it look like we’re a couple.” She wasn’t into him, not in the least, but she wanted him there on camera to make her seem more credible.

With a guy like Ted there to buck up your credibility, you obviously ain’t got much to begin with! The best way to describe Gunderson is that he was like Jethro pretending to be a “double-naught spy” on The Beverly Hillbillies. At one point during his law enforcement career he oversaw 700 plus officers of the FBI’s Southern California bureau, and yet frankly, he’s one of the stupidest people I’ve ever met. Whenever someone asks me how he got into such a position, I tell them, “He’s big and he’s pushy.” (I’d run into him a few more times over the years, including when we interviewed him about Satanic cults for another spot on the show. He was a comic foil for me twice in the series.)

As the lights were getting set up, an anxious Brice asked me where the show would be seen and I told her what Channel Four was and I said “It’s network, not cable. One of the main channels over there” and explained that there were fewer television stations in the UK than in America and this caused her to perk up. “So you mean to tell me, like they’ve only got four or five TV channels? And that’s what everyone basically watches? Do you think the Queen of England watches Channel Four?

I was confused about where she was going with this and I demurred “Well, yeah, I’m pretty sure, of course, that she’s watched Channel Four, yes…”

“OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! TED! TED! He says the Queen of England might see this show! Maybe I can get a message to her about my son!”

She turned to me, obviously cycling maniacally at this point: “So you really think the Queen of England will see this???”

Not wanting to dampen her instantaneous enthusiasm for the task we were about to embark on, I replied that if the Queen of England was up watching late night TV and flipping channels while the Duke of Edinburgh snoozed, then, yes, perhaps there was perhaps a certain mathematical possibility of that occurring… (!)

I don’t want to give too much away for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but we discussed beforehand that when I would feed her the question about the Queen, she would shift from speaking to me, to addressing the camera/Queen directly for some added dramatic oomph!

With the interview, the B-roll and the voice-over in the can, we decamped to Kinko’s to get color photocopies of her family photographs. Gunderson came with us, at one point comically showing off that he was packing heat to try to impress her, but by then it was obvious that she’d gotten what she wanted out of him (the drive from Las Vegas to San Diego is hardly trivial) and she started making “Well, I’ve got to be getting home now” noises to clue him in that he wasn’t getting any of that Project Monarch pussy anytime soon.

While the piece was being edited, I invited my pot delivery guy, a fat queeny dude (think “Cam” on Modern Family) to watch it. When it was over, he looked at me and said “You know you’re going to Hell, right?”

Perhaps he’s right, but at least I kept my word about letting Brice tell her own story, her way. Although the piece did not air on Channel Four as I’d hoped, when “Brice” got a VHS of the segment, she seemed thrilled and sent me a copy of her book inscribed with a thank you.

Over the years, when I’ve been invited to screen the Disinformation TV shows at museums and repertory cinemas, the most ridiculous question anyone has ever asked me about this piece—and it gets asked nearly every time!—is “How much of what she says do you think is true?”

Um…. how’s about none of it?

As a weird footnote to this piece, I’ve seen it passed around by various “believers” and “truth seekers” on Facebook and elsewhere for years, as if it’s an actual news piece, or a true documentary. Just last week it was seen on Twitter as a QAnon something or other. I felt like razzing this person for a moment, but soon thought better of it for obvious reasons!

And now, without much further ado, take it away Brice Taylor, mind-controlled sex slave of the CIA…

Watch more Disinformation on Night Flight Plus, the only place to watch original episodes of the cult 1980s series Night Flight. Get a full year membership for $29.99 ($10 Off) for a limited time with discount code: DANGEROUSMINDS.
 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
04.22.2020
08:50 am
|
The story behind Michael Palin and Terry Jones’ comedy classic ‘Ripping Yarns’

02ripyarcov.jpg
 
Poor Terry Jones, what a fucking dreadful way to go. Dementia—which sick fucker came up with that one? Death’s a right evil bastard. My old man had dementia and Alzheimer’s and a whole load of other shit, and I tell you it is not pleasant to watch anyone go through that disabling, destructive, and utterly horrendous disease. If that ever happens to me, well, I’ll be getting the shotgun out, so long as I can remember where I put it…

Terry Jones was an immensely talented, genuinely funny, intelligent, cuddly man, who along with his cohorts in Monty Python changed comedy as the Beatles changed music. With his long-term writing partner, Michael Palin, Jones produced some of the best comedy sketches and series and movies of the past sixty years. My word, that’s a helluva a long time.

One of the highlights that Jones and Palin devised, wrote and made was Ripping Yarns. Now, there were three series that came out of Monty Python that had an equal revolutionary effect on television comedy. Firstly, and only in order of broadcast not in order of success, there was John Cleese with Fawlty Towers (co-written with Connie Booth); then Eric Idle’s god-like series Rutland Weekend Television—from which came the Rutles; and thirdly, Palin and Jones’ Ripping Yarns, which planted its flag on the map first long before The Comic Strip Presents….
 
01ripyarhhead.jpg
 
After the Pythons went their separate ways, there was an idea idly passed around the controllers at the BBC over lunch and in the club that maybe there should be a Light Entertainment show with that lovely Michael Palin. It seemed a winner. Palin was approached but no one had the right idea what The Michael Palin Show should be. Only Palin was certain it should be different, original, and breaking new ground. Though the BBC seemed to only want to work with Palin, he was determined to work with his writing partner Jones. The two writers came up with a new kind of comedy series called Ripping Yarns, with a different story, a different genre every week, and no repeating characters. It was a bold move. The BBC tested out the writers’ idea with pilot called Tomkinson’s Schooldays.

Loosely based on Palin’s own experiences at school, Tomkinson’s Schooldays was a tremendous hit with both the public and critics alike, and the BBC immediately commissioned a series. Each episode presented a mini-comedy drama in 30-minutes. Tales of derring-do from a bygone age, well, really from the Boy’s Own stories popular when Palin and Jones were lads. The first series contained six episodes. A second series was commissioned, but due to production costs the BBC lost its nerve and cancelled the show after three episodes. A great loss, which also had a detrimental effect on the writing partnership of Palin and Jones who drifted apart after the series.

Over ten years ago, I was fortunate enough to produce a documentary strand for the BBC called Comedy Connections, which examined the stories and connections behind classic British TV comedy shows—just like the title suggests. I had a shortlist of what I wanted to make for the series, but had to drop some favorites like Rutland Weekend Television and The League Gentlemen in favor of programs like Sorry! I know, you’ve never heard of it either. Anyway, thank fuck I didn’t have to do Duty Free or The Brittas Empire. However, I did squeeze in quite a few faves, including Michael Palin and Terry Jones’ brilliant Ripping Yarns. Now, run VT.
 

 
More from ‘Ripping Yarns,’ after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
01.29.2020
08:57 am
|
Down the Rabbit Hole: Watch Jonathan Miller’s Swinging Sixties ‘Alice in Wonderland’

01alicemill.jpg
 
Jonathan Miller first considered the possibility of making a film of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland during a party in the early 1960s. Miller was discussing the book, over the percussive clink of ice cubes on glass and the tidal rise and fall from excited chattering voices, with the playwright Lillian Hellman. Miller explained that although Carroll’s book had been filmed before it had never been done properly. These previous efforts, he claimed, had been “too jokey, or else too literal..and…had always come unstuck by trying to recreate the style of Tenniel’s original illustrations.” Copying Tenniel might work in animation but never, oh never on film.

Miller considered Alice in Wonderland “an inward sort of work, more of a mood than a story.” Before he could turn it into a film he wanted to make, he had to discover “some new key” with which to unlock the book’s hidden feeling. To find the possible answer, Miller asked:

What was Charles Dodgson (alias Lewis Carroll) about?

and:

What is the strange secret command of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)?

His answer, as he explained in article for Vogue, December 1966: “Nostalgia and remorse.”

Like so many Victorians, Dodgson was hung up on the romantic agony of childhood. The Victorians looked on infancy as a period of perilous wonder, when the world was experienced with such keen intensity that growing up seemed like a fail and a betrayal. And yet they seemed to do everything they could to smother this primal intensity of childhood. Instead of listening to these witnesses of innocence, they silenced them, taught them elaborate manners, and reminded them of their bounded duty to be seen and not heard.

Lewis Carroll’s novels about Alice in a magical wonderland were books “about the pains of growing up.”

Everyone Alice meets on the way…represents one of the different penalties of growing up. One after the other, the characters seem to be punished or pained by their maturity.

Cor blimey! The wonderful Mr. Miller had an incredible intellect, a polymath, an immensely talented polymath who seemed to want to rationalise everything he encountered. But often, perhaps too often, in doing so, the dear old doctor took some of the magic away. I greatly admired Jonathan Miller, he was one of my childhood heroes, but I am willing to believe in the rhinoceros under the table (or the elephant in the room) as much as there ever so might just be fairies at the bottom of the garden—as G. K. Chesterton (jokingly) believed. Or, as the great comedian Eric Morecambe once joked about religion: Two goldfish swimming in a goldfish bowl. One said to the other, “Do you believe in God?” “No, of course not. Why?” “Well,” the first replied, “Who changes the water?”

It’s all about perspective.
 
02alicemill.jpg
 
Miller cut Carroll’s artifice of wonderfully exotic creatures (the White Rabbit, the Gryphon, the Caterpillar, and so on) and turned them into the academics he believed they were based on. A startlingly brilliant idea at a point in history when everyone was supposedly questioning everything about the Establishment and the old tenets of Queen and Country, religion and class—all of which were (rightly) under attack. As Miller noted:

The animal heads and playing cards are just camouflage. All the characters in the book are real, and the papier-mache disguises with which Carroll covers them all up do nothing to hide the indolent despair.

Once this was clear, the way to make the film fell neatly into place. No snouts, no whiskers, no carnival masks. Everyone could be just as he was. And Alice herself? Not the pretty sweetling of popular fancy. I advertised fro a solemn, sallow child, priggish and curiously plain. I knew exactly what she would be like when I found her. Still, haughty and indifferent, with a high smooth brow, long neck and a great head of Sphinx hair.

Apparently, seven hundred children applied, or at least their parents did, but Miller did not interview any of them, until he chanced upon a photograph of Anne-Marie Mallick, “a dignified schoolgirl of Indian-French stock with a mane of dark hair.” Who, as Miller’s biographer Kate Bassett notes, represented an Alice who “was exclusively a child of the director’s era, manifesting the auteur’s (rather than the original author’s) divided personality and ambivalence towards authority figures.”

The former co-star of Beyond the Fringe, recognised Carroll’s satire as “amusing youngsters by sending up old, sententious types” which “tallied with the spirit of the 1960s.”

Thus the perceptive viewer of the film was able to see double: the two decades translucently overlaid, though a century apart, as if it were a pleat in time.

Made for BBC Television, Alice in Wonderland was filmed over nine weeks in a dreamy English summer. Miller created a masterpiece of television and film—which was as much influenced by Orson Welles’ The Trial as it was by Ken Russell’s The Debussy Film or Pasolini’s The Gospel According to Saint Matthew. All of which Miller acknowledged. Miller wrote the screenplay, and did collect one of the best casts imaginable including Peter Sellers, Peter Cook, John Gielgud, Michael Redgrave. Alan Bennett, and Leo McKern, amongst others, all for a flat fee of £500 each. And the music score by Ravi Shankar is highly effective.
 

 
Watch the rest of Miller’s ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
12.12.2019
05:34 am
|
Page 1 of 203  1 2 3 >  Last ›