Horatio's Drive: America's First Road Trip

My car had its annual road-worthiness inspection yesterday morning and sadly she failed to pass muster, a repair job will be required to make her, in the words of Warren Oates’ GTO, a real road king again. The timing of the car test dovetailed nicely with a documentary I caught on PBS later in the day, Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan’s 2003 film, Horatio's Drive: America's First Road Trip, a wonderful account of Horatio Nelson Jackson’s automobile journey across the United States, the first of its kind, made in the summer of 1903. Accompanied by expert mechanic Sewall Crocker and faithful pit bull Bud, Jackson set out from San Francisco on May 23rd and 63 days later arrived in Manhattan, conquering near insurmountable terrain, surviving inclement weather, and beating two other rival cars competing for the honor. It's a fascinating slice of oddball history, and yet, incredibly romantic too as Jackson's epic drive skirted around Idaho's Sawtooth mountains, along a rugged stretch of wilderness which became known as Craters of the Moon, and past such mythical place names as Bitter Creek and Cheyenne - the North American continent transformed into a vast landscape of imagination...

Stepping Razor Red X

I had penciled in two Bruce Springsteen documentaries for the w/end but when my connection failed to deliver the goods, I turned to a music documentary from my own collection, the 1993 film Stepping Razor Red X, a film on the life of reggae firebrand Peter Tosh. Forfeiting a conventional biopic narrative for an abstract, fragmented structure, the film is as confrontational and aggressive as its subject, with Tosh's own voice-over (courtesy of some recordings known as the Red X tapes) railing against the poverty of Trenchtown and the violence of apartheid. The film also builds a compelling case that Tosh's murder at his home in 1987 was politically motivated rather than a simple armed robbery. Tosh's music is well represented too with plenty of excellent live footage. Superb stuff. Finally, one interesting connection to muse over - the film was written and directed by Nicholas Campbell who might be better known as one of David Cronenberg's regular players, appearing in Fast Company, The Brood, Naked Lunch, and perhaps most memorably as Frank Dodd, the Castle Rock killer who becomes a victim of his own handiwork in The Dead Zone...

Beautiful Darling

A belated post marking Candy Darling's birthday yesterday, and as a tribute I watched the 2010 documentary Beautiful Darling earlier, a superb and affectionate portrait of the gorgeous and talented Warhol superstar who passed away in 1974 aged just 29 following a short illness. What emerges most strongly from the film is Candy's commitment to living her life as a woman, an act of sheer heroism that exacted a heavy price in terms of her romantic relationships (none of her friends remember her with a partner), as well as her health - the toxic transgender medicine she took probably shortened her life. But for the most part the documentary is a celebration rather than a lament, with friends sharing warm memories of this very sweet girl, from Factory survivors like Paul Morrissey and Gerard Malanga to John Waters and Jayne County (who admonishes those who would refer to Candy as a he). Fantastic footage too of Candy appearing in some decidedly off-Broadway productions and more intimate home movies. Final thought comes from Candy herself, in an extract from her diary read by Chloe Sevigny: “I will not cease to be myself for foolish people. For foolish people make harsh judgments on me. You must always be yourself, no matter what the price. It is the highest form of morality.” Words to live by.

Ornette: Made in America

I've been dipping into Shirley Clarke's filmography over the last forthnight and this afternoon I watched Clarke's 1984 film Ornette: Made in America, a free-wheeling portrait of the great composer and jazzman Ornette Coleman. The film is set against the backdrop of a performance of Ornette's third stream orchestral work Skies of America accompanied by the Fort Worth symphony orchestra (pictured below), and flashes forwards and backwards thru various era's of Ornette's life (including some dramatic vignettes from Ornette's childhood). It's not a wholly successful film - some sequences treated with psychedelic and video effects date it quite badly, and at times the film is edited to within an inch of its life with dizzying flash cuts and strobe lighting. But the real meat and potatoes of the film, Ornette's extraordinary music, survives intact, and there's fantastic footage of man in performance with Prime Time and in conversation, revealing an incredible probing, radical intellect. The film also comes with a cameo appearance by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin at the opening of the arts centre the Caravan of Dream, with Burroughs reading a selection of texts from his books. After years of unavailability Ornette: Made in America is back in circulation again as a very fine DVD/Blu and is warmly recommended.

Filmed in Supermarionation

Sky Arts served up a treat last night with the 2014 feature length documentary Filmed in Supermarionation, which celebrates the work of Gerry Anderson and the team of supremely talented puppeteers and designers who created Thunderbirds... This very comprehensive film gathers together all the key players and includes a wealth of archive photographs and vintage behind-the-scenes footage - and particularly wonderful to see designers and technical people interact with the puppets and models. What emerges most emphatically from the documentary is the Herculean task of creating Stingray, Thunderbirds and later series like Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and Joe 90, the evolutionary leaps Anderson and his team made from early puppet series like The Adventures of Twizzle to the Thunderbirds films. Anderson's productions were still regularly aired on TV when I was growing up (Terrahawks from 1983, I particularly remember), but I was in too much of a hurry to move on to more adult fare, and often scoffed at what I thought was Thunderbirds' corniness. But in recent years I've grown to admire Anderson's series more and more and have come back to it via Kaiju jamborees and the films of Jan Švankmajer and the Brothers Quay... Filmed in Supermarionation gets a second airing on Sky Arts later this evening at 6:45pm, and is highly recommended.

Welles

I generally don’t watch films on weeknights but last night I secured an hour and a half of the TV to watch Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles, recorded off Sky Arts at the w/end. I’d been looking forward to this 2014 film for the past few days but it turned out to be a major disappointment, being little more than a competent assembly of film clips and talking head interviews. At 90mins the documentary is simply too short, and there’s a sense of getting the whole damn thing over with as quickly as possible, with surgically cut and pasted interviews and the occasional skating over of key films – Mr. Arkadin and The Immortal Story are dismissed with a few seconds of footage, clips from The V.I.P.s and A Man for All Seasons go uncredited and more infuriating, the film wastes precious time with excerpts from RKO 281, Cradle Will Rock, Me and Orson Welles, and Ed Wood, and at one point a celebrity chef (!) talking about Welles’ love of food – hardly essential stuff. Still, there are positives - Simon Callow and Peter Bogdanovich are present to provide their usual expert testimony and it’s a treat to see films like The Stranger and Journey Into Fear in such stellar quality. Ultimately the film makes for a good foot-in-the-door introduction to world of Welles but seasoned fans will find little new here. If you’re in the UK and Ireland, Sky Arts will no doubt have this on rotation for the next few weeks and I would recommend catching it there rather than investing in the BFI DVD...

It's About Nicolas Roeg

Just watched BBC's Nicolas Roeg documentary It's About Time, and it's very good, if just a little too short at 60mins. I won't reveal too much for anyone who has yet to see it, but the documentary provides a fine analysis of Roeg's films and their preoccupations, mostly by Roeg's collaborators and admirers, although the best stuff comes from the director himself as he ponders on the strange, hidden connections in life (relating a wonderful anecdote of meeting Stephen Hawking on a flight to Los Angeles) and I enjoyed Roeg reading W.H. Auden ("At Last the Secret is Out") and delighting in his poetry's cinematic quality - "I think somehow, it's like a film plot...there's a dozen there. It's terrific"...

Watching documentary I was interested in something director Bernard Rose mentioned - that Roeg was fired as DP off Doctor Zhivago which I had forgotten about, so I went to Kevin Brownlow's 1996 biography of David Lean for more info... Roeg was Lean's second choice for the film after Freddie Young, but by the time Lean was ready to go on Zhivago, Young was booked to shoot the historical epic Khartoum, so Roeg was drafted. Roeg in an interview for the book recalls that from the outset the Zhivago set was tense. Roeg had to work with much of Freddie Young's crew and he felt he was something of a "Judas" for stepping in for Young. As the shoot progressed, Lean and Roeg clashed on the cameraman's methods, Roeg's remembers lighting one particular shot of Omar Sharif: "Zhivago was sitting huddled with his cap on and I lit him so he looked like a skull, so that his eyes were black, with the tiniest pinprick in his black eyes. David hated it. "You've lost his beautiful eyes" he said. I realized I was on the wrong planet". Lean later commented: "It was a terrible thing asking him to go. But he behaved impeccably and we're good friends now, we meet and talk and there are no hard feelings that I'm aware of". Roeg went on to shoot Far From the Madding Crowd and Freddie Young, released from Khartoum when filming was delayed by seven months joined David Lean in Spain to photograph Doctor Zhivago.

One last musing... The music used to open the documentary, The Subterraneans by David Bowie made me smile as this track is said to have contained some DNA of Bowie's abandoned soundtrack for The Man Who Fell To Earth, specifically the reverse bass motif heard in the song. Surely not a coincidence that it appears in the Roeg documentary ?

Graham Greene

I'm in between books at the moment, and have so many disparate things jostling for attention, I'm not sure what to read next, but am gravitating towards something by Graham Greene. This is on the back of two Greene documentaries I've watched in the last week or so - Dangerous Edge: A Life of Graham Greene, currently doing the rounds on Sky Arts, and Graham Greene: The Hunted Man which came as one of the supplements on Criterion's Third Man DVD. Dangerous Edge, from 2013 serves as a fine, well-rounded introduction to Greene's work and is salted with some of the more insalubrious aspects of the author's life - his shadowy work as a British Intelligence agent in West Africa, his extramarital affairs and his battles with depression.

By contrast, Graham Greene: The Hunted Man, originally made in 1968 for BBC's Omnibus arts series takes a more sober if unconventional approach to its subject - Greene consented to be interviewed for the documentary on the proviso that his voice alone be used, so the documentary is augmented with travelogue montages and short dramatic stagings from Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, and The Heart of the Matter. Over the course of the interview sessions, taped on board the Orient Express en route from Paris to Istanbul, Greene speaks candidly and quite brilliantly about his life, his deeply felt religious sensibility, his need for travel and the nuts and bolts of his writing - when asked about planning the framework of his books, Greene reveals: "I generally have the beginning clear, the end clear, a mountain range between the two and then hope for surprises". I'm not entirely sure if I have an urge to read Greene or read about Greene such was his extraordinary life so for now I'm reaching towards The Heart of the Matter or The Quiet American for their biographical aspects.

Regarding Susan Sontag

Just watched the 2014 HBO documentary Regarding Susan Sontag, a fine introduction to the life and work of the great American writer, thinker, essayist, philosopher and occasional film maker. With contributions from family, friends, former lovers and contemporary writers, as well as a fine selection of archive interviews of Sontag in conversation (or posing for Andy Warhol), what emerges from the film is a woman of immense complexity and contradiction, a cultural commentator with a laser-guided intellect who wrote in grandiose stokes about B-movies and the aesthetics of camp; a determined non-conformist who was guarded about her homosexuality, a romantic who left behind a string of intense but messy love affairs. Sontag's appetite for life was voracious, the documentary explores her time in Paris, hanging out with ex-pat Beat writers and cameoing in an early French new wave film. She had a huge ego could be fearless - once challenging Norman Mailer at a roundtable discussion on Women’s Liberation in 1971 (immortalized in DA Pennebaker's film Town Bloody Hall), she staged a production of Waiting For Godot in Sarajevo as bullets and bombs rained down on the beleaguered city and successfully faced down cancer on two occasions, never once considering she might die. My own experience of Susan Sontag up to now rests solely on her 1977 book On Photography but thanks to this excellent documentary, I now have much more to explore...

Je t'aime: The Story of French Song

Just watched the latest of BBC4's Friday night music documentaries, one that was slightly outside my comfort zone but was no less interesting for it - Je t'aime: The Story of French Song, a very good 60min primer on the Chanson Française, the uniquely French style of popular song made famous by Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel and Serge Gainsbourg. What's interesting about the classic chanson française, what differentiates it from the Anglo-American tradition of song, is the emphasis on lyrics, which in many cases was introspective and confessional, sometimes scatological funny, and occasionally transgressive, like Serge Gainsbourg's orgasmic duet with Jane Birkin, "Je t'aime… moi non plus". The best stuff in the documentary are the years covering what one might call the Belle Époque of the Chanson Française, with fantastic archive footage of the aforementioned singers and musicians as well as Juliette Greco, Anna Karina, and Jane Birkin (all of whom are interviewed specifically for the film), although I wished there was more on Françoise Hardy (who receives only a fleeting mention) and the mysterious Barbara, whose harrowing 1968 song "L'Aigle Noir" ("The Black Eagle") was written about her memories of sexual abuse she suffered in her pre-teens by her father ("De son bec, il a touché ma joue" / "With his beak, he touched my cheek"). If you missed the initial screening last night, check the listings over the next few days for a rerun, or if you're in the UK, the documentary is available for a limited time on the BBC iplayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05vnhz1 (or here)

Long Live the New Flesh: The Films of David Cronenberg

Just watched the excellent 1986 documentary Long Live the New Flesh: The Films of David Cronenberg… I was hoping this would turn up Arrow’s forthcoming BR of Videodrome, but not so (far), perhaps due to the presence of clips of Scanners, The Dead Zone and The Fly (and at one point Peeping Tom). Fortunately, this 50min documentary is still available on youtube (in 7 parts) and is well worth catching to see a relatively fresh-faced Cronenberg discuss his work in his usual erudite and thought-provoking style (“Most diseases would be very shocked to be considered diseases at all...it's a very negative connotation. For them it’s very positive. When they take over your body and destroy you, it’s a triumph"). Also contributing to the documentary are Martin Scorsese and Stephen King (both admirers) and there’s some dissenting opinion of Cronenberg’s work by critic Robin Wood and reactionary commentary by the British and Canadian censor on the kind of Cinema Cronenberg works in. James Ferman seems particularly pleased with himself when he claims what follows in Videodrome is exactly what his office protects against. Part 1 of Long Live the New Flesh is available here with the remaining 6 parts following on from this page.

Francis Bacon

It was a rather slow day at work yesterday so I managed to steal an hour to watch a South Bank Show documentary from 1985 devoted to painter Francis Bacon. Sky Arts showed an abbreviated 25min version of this some months ago, but fortunately the entire 55min programme has been preserved at the ever essential Ubu Web film archive. The documentary finds Bacon in fine form - interviewed by Melvyn Bragg, Bacon is chatty, lucid, articulate (even after too much wine), and open and frank about his life, his homosexuality, his fondness for the drink (at one point the programme relocates to a boisterous Soho drinking den) and his great love of gambling. Bacon’s honesty when it comes to his work - his successes and failures - extends to other painters work, and in one amusing moment he gives his impressions of Jackson Pollack (“To me they look like bits of old laces”) and Mark Rothko (“They’re the most dreary paintings that have ever been made”). Better still, the programme serves as an excellent primer on Bacon's work, his theme of the mutability of flesh and his desire to remake/remodel the human form which renders the figures in his paintings unmade, unfinished, de-evolved, nightmarish. This excellent documentary can be viewed here

The Road To God Knows Where

Watched Uli M Schüppel's 1990 documentary The Road To God Knows Where, a grainy, dimly-lit b/w record of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' month long tour of North America in 1989. "This is the last song, of the last show of our American tour. Thank God" announces Cave at a gig in LA, and you can't help but sympathize, the band having to contend with dingy venues, bad sound, and the deadening boredom of life on the road. For Cave, the process seems especially tortuous, he's clearly uncomfortable among the strangers at backstage parties, or dealing with journalists and their inane questions. One suspects the band poured all that boredom and frustration into their music and the film includes a number of full-blooded, volcanic performances, the highlight, an incredible impromptu rendition of a stripped-back Mercy Seat at a radio station. Essential viewing.

Let It Be

Watched Let It Be, the Beatles film from 1970… It wasn't quite the scenes-from-a-marriage I was expecting, no doubt the four Beatles had cherry-picked the most appealing footage of their stint at Twickenham Studios rehearsing for the aborted Get Back album. And yet there are painful hints that the band was working towards an inexorable dissolution – one imagines Ringo was wishing he was away on a film set, or George working instead on the songs he had been quietly squirreling away. John simply goes thru the motions (accompanied everywhere by Yoko Ono, wearing a rigid Noh expression throughout her scenes), whilst Paul shows the strain of keeping the fragmenting band together – a shot in the film of a partially devoured green apple on top of McCartney’s piano can help but raise a wry smile. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the film is how ragged The Beatles were sounding - a lot of the music they make in the film dissolves into loose jams, old rock n’ roll standards and comedy routines, but as if by magic, the lethargy is swept away when they convene on the rooftop of Apple HQ on a cold January morning for one last concert, to the delight of lunch-hour shop girls and a few disapproving bobbies who eventually break the whole thing up...

It's a shame that Let It Be can only be seen through unofficial channels, McCartney and Starr have apparently scotched proposed re-issues of the film which is dofficult to fathom considering the final days of The Beatles are well documented. In fact the film is nowhere near as bruising as Peter Doggett's book You Never Give Me Your Money: The Battle For The Soul Of The Beatles but it remains an important, perhaps even essential closing chapter the Fab Four's story.

The Hardest Working Man in Show Business

I caught just one film over the w/end, but it was a good one - the 2014 Mick Jagger produced documentary Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown. Running a brisk 90mins, the film offered a potted history of the hardest working man in show business - from his early days singing for dimes in his aunt's whorehouse in Georgia thru to the formation of the J.Bs in the early 70's. Incomplete as it was, the documentary still took care of business, with a wealth of fantastic live footage and a near definitive roster of central players in Brown's musical life - members of The Famous Flames and the J.B.'s (including Bootsy Collins and Danny Ray, James' "capeman") who all bring along some priceless anecdotes, as well as the aforementioned Rolling Stone who fondly recalls smoothing a few of James' ruffled feathers when he was displeased with the filming arrangements of the T.A.M.I. Show. And while the film sidesteps the thorny issue of Brown's mistreatment of his women, the interviewees are given free reign to air their grievances about their boss' thriftiness, and his near-tyrannical control over how they played and looked; and I was genuinely surprised to discover James was an unapologetic Nixonite, publicly supporting Nixon's administration (which was only begrudgingly reciprocated by the President). A shame the film wasn't longer, although if you have a copy of the fabulous Soul Power, it pretty much picks up from where Mr. Dynamite bows out.

It Came from Connemara!!

“I was the biggest producer in Ireland at that time”, chuckles Roger Corman in the affectionate hour long documentary It Came from Connemara!! which I caught yesterday. This film tells the unlikely but fascinating story of Roger Corman setting up a film studio in Connemara in the mid-90’s, a largely rural, Gaelic-speaking region of the West of Ireland. Ever the shrewd business man, Corman was attracted to Ireland for the cheap production costs and generous grants the government of the day were offering to promote film-making. In the five years or so of activity, Corman's factory churned out a considerable stream of low-budget horror, sci-fi and action pics before the market for cheap video fodder began to dry up and Corman upped sticks and moved on. The documentary gathers together a number of cast and crew members that worked at the studio (incl Corbin Bernsen who starred in Spacejacked, and James Brolin who directed Flashpoint, both films from 1997) and despite the long hours and low wages, what emerges from the film is how much fun the experience was and what an invaluable training ground it proved to be. And happily, the studio is today now home to another film production company.

South Bank Show Originals

Very much enjoying Sky Arts' South Bank Show Originals series, a fantastic archive of early 80's-era interviews conducted by Melvyn Bragg, in conversation with some of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Some of my highlights of the series have been a cheerful Ingmar Bergman, a tipsy unpredictable Francis Bacon, Iggy Pop fondly recalling the incendiary performances of The Stooges, and one of my personal favorites, Norman Mailer discussing his writing habits, including the ritual of crossing a precariously hanging raised wooden platform to get to his writing room, because writing he feels should be infused with danger. My only complaint is that the interviews have been whittled down to 25mins or so from the 50-odd minute original airings. Still, in an age of TV dominated by cookery programs and talent shows, the South Bank Show Originals are my favourite thing on TV right now.



The Kate Bush Story: Running up That Hill (2014, BBC4)

Very much enjoyed this 1 hour primer on the music and art of one of the great mavericks, Kate Bush, from her prodigious teenage days (writing and demoing close to 200 songs including Man With the Child in His Eyes) right thru to her 2011 record 50 Words For Snow. Very few revelations here for seasoned fans but there was plenty of great footage of Kate, performing (sometimes reminding me of another great sensual beauty Anna Karina) and in conversation (culled from archive interviews) and among the celebrity testimonials (Elton John, Tori Amos and some young pop whipper snappers I didn't recognize), I particularly enjoyed contributions from Dave Gilmour, Brett Anderson and in particular Lindsey Kemp... I love this pic of Kate as Eisenstein...

Jodorowsky's Dune (2013)

There's a heart-stopping moment near the beginning of Frank Pavich's 2013 documentary, courtesy of Nicolas Winding Refn, who is recalling a memorable dinner he attended at the home of Alejandro Jodorowsky in Paris. Very late in the night, Jodorowsky asked the Danish director if he would be interested in seeing his film of Dune, which left Winding Refn momentarily stunned and bewildered. Had Jodorowsky somehow filmed Dune, the film famously abandoned in the late 70's ? What Winding Refn was actually invited to look at was the so-called Dune Book, a huge weighty tome produced for potential financiers, containing the mass of pre-production ideas, sketches, designs, storyboards, and shooting plans for Jodorowsky's projected film. Despite the fact that not a single frame of footage was shot for the film, Winding Ref was clearly awestruck: "Sitting there, 2am, at his house, seeing the book, looking at the images, and hearing Jodorowsky telling me what was gonna happen in every scene....I'm gonna tell you something - it's awesome". Watching Pavich's wonderful account of this legendary lost classic of Cinema, you might well agree.

Like the light from a dead star, Jodorowsky's Dune still shines brightly long after its collapse. Paul Sammon wrote about Jodorowsky's proposed film as early as 1984 in a Cinefantastique article entitled Versions of Arrakis You'll Never See. HR Giger's account of the film has appeared in several of his art books in conjunction with his paintings for the film, as have Chris Foss' conceptual art and Jean "Moebius" Giraud's storyboards and character sketches, which have been published or made available online.  Pavich's film brings all these strands together for what is the most fully rounded account of Dune to date, inching the viewer ever closer to what the film might have been. The heart of the documentary is Jodorowsky himself, at 84 years old discussing in Spanish and his own idiosyncratic take on English, the plans he had for Dune with an enthusiasm and energy of a man half his age. Jodorowsky is one of the great poet-philosophers of Cinema - when El Topo emerged in the early 70's, Jodorowsky declared: "I ask of film what most North Americans ask of psychedelic drugs". Speaking about Dune in 2013 Jodorowsky recalled an even greater ambition, referring to his film in hallowed terms as "an artistical, cinematographical God"

Alejandro Jodorowsky: "I wanted to make something sacred"

Jodorowsky has spoken on camera about Dune before, in the 1995 documentary La Constellation Jodorowsky, and the 2007 biography Moebius Redux: A Life In Pictures. What's significant about his turn here is the passion with which he recalls the doomed project, the sense of awe he had for the team of collaborators he gathered around him - Moebius, Dan O'Bannon, Chris Foss and HR Giger, his spiritual warriors whom he intrinsically trusted to bring his dream of Dune to life. There's a wonderful moment in the film when Jodorowsky appears upset yet composed when talk turns to the demise of the film, only to have his mood re-invigorated at the failure of David Lynch's Dune, a film maker Jodorowsky evidently has huge respect for, but cheerfully admits his relief that Lynch's film did not scale his own grand ambitions. Listening to Jodorowsky, there's a sense that the Chilean director is taking the opportunity afforded by Pavich's film to settle his affairs - at least in terms of Dune and at the finale of the documentary he sounds a clarion call for film makers to take all the material created for Dune and make their own film of it.

The colossal Dune Book, and a page of Moebius' storyboards inside

Elsewhere Jodorowsky spins marvelous yarns and delights in the serendipitous way the film came together. No sooner had Jodorowsky decided to seek out Moebius as his major collaborator on the film ("my camera" as he describes the French illustrator), both men soon met by pure chance. After an ill-fated meeting with Douglas Trumbull who was first considered to create Dune's special effects, Jodorowsky attended a screening of Dark Star in a nearby theater, and impressed by what he saw, contacted Dan O'Bannon to offer him the job instead. Ever inventive, Jodorowsky explains how he persuaded to Orson Welles to appear as the grotesquely bloated Baron Harkonnen, and his rather ingenious solution for dealing with Salvador Dali's preposterous salary demand for playing the Emperor of the Universe ($100,000 per minute of screen time!). Jodorowsky also recalls with some amusement his first meeting with Pink Floyd (chosen to write part of the score, along with the volcanic free-rock outfit Magma), and his outrage when the band turned up at the meeting in jocular form - "How you don't understand I am to offer you, the most important picture in the history of humanity. We will change the world. And you are eating...big macs!" - the director's fury quickly focusing the Floyd on the matter at hand.

Dune's spiritual warriors:
top: Alejandro Jodorowsky and Moebius (accompanied by a Sardaukar soldier)
middle: futurist designer Chris Foss, bottom: the late HR Giger

Despite the scope of Pavich's film there are some omissions although understandably not the fault of the film makers. Dan O'Bannon passed away in 2009, and Moebius followed in 2012. O'Bannon does make a posthumous appearance in the documentary by way of a voice recording, describing his incredible hallucinatory first meeting with Jodorowsky (who supplied the hallucinogen). O'Bannon's wife Diane is on hand and discusses her husband's happy time working on the film and the emotional turmoil he suffered after the film was abandoned. A key theme in the documentary is Dune's sense of collaboration, with Chris Foss and the late HR Giger remembering the atmosphere of creativity Jodorowsky created for his artists, both men turning in some of the best work of their careers; from Foss' spaceships which look like cosmic tropical fish, to Giger's dark, occult landscapes and citadels of the evil Harkonnen planet.

Chris Foss' design of the stricken Pirate spaceship, with the cargo of spice leaking out of the ruptured hull

For all its lofty ambition there is the inevitable question of whether Jodorowsky could have pulled it off. Pavich's film admirably attempts to answer the unanswerable by using some very tasteful 3D animation to bring to life Moebius' storyboards - the opening sequence alone was conceived as an immense long shot which would travel across the luminous wastes of the galaxy, eventually zeroing in on a pirate spaceship engaged in battle with a convoy of transports carrying the precious Dune spice. Jodorowsky later switches from outer space to inner space in a pivotal scene where Dune's hero Paul Atreides is conceived when a drop of his father's blood is seen travelling through his mother's uterus, the blood then fusing with the ovum in a spectacular explosion of fertilization. Considering Jodorowsky reenacted the conquest of Mexico in an extraordinary sequence in Holy Mountain using costumed frogs, one suspects his Dune could have been very special indeed. Despite the providence the film enjoyed as it took shape, Dune's collapse was swift and brutal. The production was financially secure with enough French money, but the film needed a large American distribution deal to recoup its budget. When producer Michel Seydoux shopped the film around to the major studios there was little appetite to deal with a maverick director and a film which might have ran anywhere between 12 and 20 hours. Speaking about the film's reception in Hollywood, Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz recalled "The worry was it would go way over budget...and it wouldn't have an audience because no one would want to sit through that long a film".

Jodorowsky’s Dune may have ended in failure but Pavich steers his own film towards a positive ending of sorts by celebrating the legacy of the film. With Dune Books deposited at all the various studios, the bones of the film were picked clean in the years that followed. Pavich borrows judicious clips from such disparate sci-fare as Star Wars, Flash Gordon, Masters of the Universe, Contact, Prometheus to illustrate the influence of Dune. Dan O’Bannon in the fallout from the film poured his energies into a screenplay entitled Star Beast which incorporated ideas from Dune, and later became Alien. Jodorowsky himself was still working out elements of Dune with his next film, the underappreciated Tusk, which he opened with a spectacular long shot. More significantly Jodorowsky and Moebius went on to collaborate on a series of graphic novels which were steeped in Dune mythology. The final word goes to Richard Stanley who makes a welcome appearance here, best sums up the film’s enigma: “Dune is probably the great movie never made. It continues to influence us and will go on influencing generations to come, despite the fact that it doesn’t exist, we cannot rent it, we cannot watch it…”

Fear of the Flesh: The Making Of The Fly

When the book is written about DVD there should be a chapter devoted to "false starts", and in it perhaps a note on David Cronenberg's masterpiece The Fly which Fox dumped on DVD in 2000 devoid of extras and perhaps most disingenuously paired with Chris Walas' utterly dismal sequel. Cronenberg fans had to wait five years for The Fly to be released in a stand-alone special edition but their patience was rewarded with a fine, nuanced transfer, a typically erudite director's commentary, plus a second disc of worthwhile extras. The centerpiece of the supplements is the 2005 documentary Fear of the Flesh, a superb 2 hour 41 minute making-of documentary which rounds up most of the major cast and crew members to share their memories of making the film.

Geena Davis and David Cronenberg on the set of The Fly

It’s almost expected these days that films produced under trying circumstances result in the most compelling retrospectives, watching the film-making process come off the rails in Burden of Dream or Hearts of Darkness can make for utterly compulsive viewing. The production of The Fly by contrast was relatively harmonious, but Fear of the Flesh is no less fascinating for it. While the film wasn't beset by a megalomaniac director or an out-of-control budget, the documentary reveals how two unforeseen crises fundamentally shaped the film into what we know today – the exit from the project of the original director (following the tragic, sudden death of his daughter), and the collapse of Cronenberg’s Total Recall adaptation for which the director had invested 12 months of pre-production work only to find himself effectively in search of work. Cronenberg himself is absent among the talking heads, which is a shame (perhaps he was busy making A History of Violence), but a younger, bespectacled Cronenberg is present in the wealth of video footage that was shot on set, showing the director quiet and relaxed, discussing set-ups with his actors or cheerfully directing the special effects crew to pump more blood and gloop. Despite the lo-fi fuzzy quality of the video footage, much of it is remarkable – we see the Chris Walas’ crew skillfully working the animatronic puppets (which netted the film’s only Academy Award), or Cronenberg himself wearing some bug-eyed glasses and dime-store fly wings, trying out the rotating room set which allowed Jeff Goldblum to crawl seamlessly up the walls of his laboratory. In addition there are outtakes of shots where optical effects didn't quite come off, and there’s some wonderful test film of Goldblum wearing the Brundlefly costume accompanied by a beautiful, fresh-faced Geena Davis.

Beauty and the Beast - Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis pose for test footage of the Brundlefly suit

As for the cast and crew interviewees, all bring vivid, fascinating recollections to the documentary. Jeff Goldblum, who seems as nervy as the characters he plays, remembers some last minute dialogue he added to his adrenalized monologue in the cafe scene; art designer Carol Spier reveals her inspiration for the design of the telepods, while cameraman Mark Irwin tells a hilarious story about Typhoon the Baboon's scandalous behavior on set. One of the more interesting subjects covered in the documentary are the two legendary cut scenes from The Fly – the infamous Monkey-Cat sequence and the Butterfly Baby dream sequence. In the Monkey-Cat sequence Brundlefly splices the baboon with a cat creating a grotesque, agonized hybrid of the two which Brundlefly quickly batters to death. In the second half of the sequence Brundlefly goes to the roof of his warehouse to vent his rage when a piece of fly appendage bursts forth from his body – which Brundlefly appears to eat away in utter frustration. The sequence was of course cut from the final film, which producer Stuart Cornfield admits was done in fear of the audience losing sympathy with Goldblum’s character. I personally don’t lament the loss of this sequence in the film, the actual monkey-cat puppet looks less impressive than Chris Walas’ other designs, which Walas readily admits was quickly prepped and shot right at the end of a hectic shooting day. Less contentious perhaps is the animated Butterfly Baby sequence which was conceived as one possible coda to the film. In the scene Geena Davis is lying on a bed and dreams of her unborn baby hatching from a larvae and flying off into a celestial light. It’s quite a lovely sequence in itself but absolutely belongs in another film. Wisely the sequence was dropped with little regret. Incidentally, both sequences can be found elsewhere on the DVD’s extras disc, and have been cleaned up and complimented with Howard Shore’s music to present them as they might have played in the final film. A very nice touch.

You are what you eat - from the Monkey-Cat sequence

Butterfly Baby takes flight (to the cutting room floor)

All told, Fear of the Flesh: The Making Of The Fly is an essential, near exhaustive chronicle of one of the great classics of 80’s Cinema, and establishes a marker for how a long-form biography of a film should be done. If, like me, you have missed this documentary, it comes highly recommended in conjunction with David Cronenberg’s commentary track. Be very impressed indeed.