Firstly the Brighton SEE Festival at the end of March will feature a screening followed by a Q&A and live performance from Mark Gardener.

Secondly, OXDOX in Oxford at the end of April – the organisers have asked me to actually curate the music strand in this festival. ACPG will be front-and-centre with a screening and a special event to be announced soon.

Loads more stuff coming soon. Stay tuned!

Also, Abingonians can now buy (signed – woo!) copies of the DVD from Remade Guitars on Stratton Way.

Jon

My film has been ripped and uploaded to the internet.

Obviously, there’s nothing I can do about that, once it’s happened, it’s irretrievable – just writing about it will probably inspire some people reading this to go out and hunt and torrent it, which would make them massive cunts but I’ll choose to take as a compliment. I just wanted to unequivocally state my position on the matter.

It’s taken me five years to make that film and I made it for no money at all. I got myself into a lot of personal debt doing so which I’ll never regret because making this film has been my passion. Sharing the bands I grew up with whose music deserved to be heard.

I got into a lot of debt making this film and for the last 3 months, I’ve had to work on it, unpaid, full time. My usual job is as a freelance film-maker, last year I paid my bills by making Facebook virals for Pringles and a corporate film about shipping containers.  This is patchy work at the best of times and it’s hard to scrape a living from. I have no money, no assets, and I make less money now than I did working in a video shop – which was my old job. Anyone Can Play Guitar really is the only thing I have that I would consider an asset as I worked very hard to retain ownership of it. I self-funded the film so that I could make the film I wanted to, when you accept funding, you have to accept an amount of control and interference and you often lose control of the film’s destiny – I have friends whose funded films were buried – barely released, badly marketed, dead in the water.

There’s a lot of justification around piracy these days;

“I wouldn’t have paid to see it anyway, so you’re not losing anything”

“It actually raises the profile of the film and spreads the word”

“If I like it, I’ll then buy it”

“There are other ways for film and music to generate income”

“It’s a victimless crime”

Piracy these days is considered a far lesser crime than it used to be. Because we all have the means to download anything for free and there have been no successful prosecutions for the act, it feels less like a crime, more like a cheeky indulgence. On a moral scale, crime is also defined more by who the victim is than the law it infringes. I understand this completely. I don’t care that people shoplift from Sainsburys or Tesco. They’re big evil monolithic corporations to me, whose existence and dominance is detrimental to society – if someone manages to nick a tin of dog food or a frozen chicken, well, more power to that person. Stick it to the man.  I can even see how that could translate to piracy – these huge glamorous film studios, all owned by Japanese corporations, paying their stars squillions of dollars – who cares if you download the latest blockbuster? Not me. Genuinely. I choose not to torrent films because I made a moral call on that long ago but I don’t care if other people do.

If a friend told me they’d nicked a tin of dog food from Tesco, I’d be fine with that. If they told me they’d nicked a can from the corner shop, I’d swiftly call them a ‘total dick’ and tell them to take it back. Because the bloke who owns the corner shop is a struggling local businessman who is in no danger of making billions of profit. Most independent retailers are in no danger of breaking even on their annual accounts. They’re not trying to rip you off and control the world, they’re trying to make an honest living and provide a service to the community.

In those anti-piracy adverts, they always use the phrase now ‘piracy jeopardises future film production’ – I think, in terms of the big boys, that’s bollocks. There will always be big studios making big films and pulling down big profits.

I didn’t put that phrase on my DVD, but in my case it’s 100% true.

I’m ready to make my next documentary. It’s researched and planned. I can’t make it until ACPG breaks even. I can’t afford to go deeper into debt. If everyone who wants to see ACPG now watches it for free, I won’t make another film. It’s just an economic reality.

Someone recently told me I laid myself open to this by not offering the film for download. I wanted to have it on itunes at the same time as the DVD release but I signed a contract a couple of years ago which has locked up the download rights until I can afford to pay the worldwide music/footage licenses. My producer Hank has been working round the clock this last month to try to raise some kind of sponsorship to do just that. It’s fucking difficult.

I’ve never been looking to profit from this film but why should I be so out of pocket to provide a couple of hours entertainment and distraction to a complete stranger?

Stealing indie films (and music) is SO different to stealing the mainstream stuff. You’re not skimming off a huge profit, you’re preventing them from paying for the production and you’re making them realise that it’s not viable to create something unique in the future. If ACPG paid itself off, I would do it all over again – I’d throw myself straight into my next indie documentary the very second I broke even. But today, surrounded my the reality of my financial position and the huge impact the upload will inevitably have on future sales, I’m just looking for a job, any job, that’ll pay my mortgage next month.

To whoever ripped the DVD – I’d love to know why you did it. If it was to be evangelical, I wish you’d just facebooked/tweeted about the film and sent people to this website. If it was some kind of strike against the concept of ‘ownership’, I wish you’d just gone and stolen a rich man’s car. If it were for the thrill of being the first person to upload it, well, you’re just a total dick.

I’d like to thank all of the people who have bought the film through the website or donated via Indiegogo – it’s people like you who advance art and culture and ensure that non-commercial voices get heard. You’re the best people. You could just consume for free but you choose to encourage and support – in this day and age, that’s admirable and wonderful. Thank you.

If you have downloaded the film and enjoyed it (which I genuinely hope you did), I think it’d be pretty cool of you to tell people you enjoyed it and to donate whatever you felt the experience was worth to the production fund’s paypal account at jon@acpgthemovie.com

thanks.

Welcome to ACPG!

Since Radiohead posted the link to this site on Facebook this morning, I’ve had a load of emails asking for details about the film in relation to Radiohead, so here are the basics:

- Ed, Colin and R’head manager Chris Hufford were all interviewed and appear in the film throughout. All three of them commented that they’ve never really spoken about any of this stuff before. Also relevant is the interview with their schoolfriend/demo producer/tour lighting tech Nigel Powell.

- We have very rare archival footage – a completely unseen early performance of Creep at The Oxford Venue, you can see a clip of it in the trailer. We also have what we think are the earliest photos of them as a band taken by Nigel Powell as they recorded their first demo, also featuring what we believe is the earliest ever posed band shot. There are also photos of Johnny’s first band Illiterate Hands. All of this stuff is from Nigel’s archive and has never been seen before. There’s also one of their first demo tracks in there.

- The film covers Radiohead’s story within the oxford music scene, the bands who inspired them and played with them and most significantly their relationship with The Candyskins. It also covers their huge gig in South Park. It also looks at the impact they had on the music scene.

- Here is a clip from the Q&A at the BFI after the premiere on 5th November – featuring Ed, Gaz from Supergrass, Mark from Ride, Nick from The Candyskins and Me. Hosted by Adam Buxton.

BFI Q&A

- You can buy the double-disc DVD on the website NOW. It is Region 0, so will play on any DVD player worldwide and we happily ship internationally.

There’s a lot in this film for Radiohead fans – I hope you all dig it!

Jon

bor-der-ville bor-der-ville

borderville

bor-der-ville bor-der-ville

borderville

bor-der-ville bor-der-ville

borderville

BOR-DER-VILLE BOR-DER-VILLE

BORDERVILLLLLLLE.

Lyrically, it wasn’t the greatest start to gig I ever saw. Written down like that, it looks a bit like a football chant, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Staccato bass and drums, whirling keyboards and wailing guitar, I suddenly realised this wasn’t the opening song to a gig, it was the overture. Which is something I’d never seen before on that stage.

Last night, I went for dinner with friends and one of them said something I’ve heard a lot – probably the most commonheld opinion throughout music lovers the world over – ‘I don’t like musicals’. I’ve personally never said that, because I’d be lying, but I absolutely understand the sentiment. I’m always a little surprised how many people hold that feeling as a blanket rule because there are so many different musicals. And what is a musical? Theatre punctuated by song. I guess that’s too much of a live display of emotion for most people. I must admit that despite my not-too-begrudging admiration of the form, I don’t think I’ve been to see a live musical in a long time. I saw that dreadful Queen one about 6 years ago. That was enough for a decade, probably. But I have fond memories of musicals from childhood. I loved Little Shop of Horrors and Grease, my first trip to London’s West End was to see Return to the Forbidden Planet, which was ace and then, on my 15th birthday, my sister bought me the video of the Rocky Horror Picture Show – which blew my mind – but thankfully not enough to turn into a more formal version of fan.

But what do you do with musicals after that? It’s almost a lifestyle choice. I didn’t want to be a person who goes to musicals – those gushing, lovey, doe-eyed…. bleurgh. There’s an inherent naffness to musical theatre which has never surmounted the brilliance of it’s own form. So I stayed away.

When I moved back to Oxford in the early 00′s, I quickly got back into the music scene I’d loved as a teenager. I was always impressed by pretty much every band I saw. I actually relished finding a band I could dislike. One of the bands that I really didn’t like was Sexy Breakfast. They were so bad, I’ve mentally blocked any recollection of what they actually sounded like, but it was bad, I have confidence in that memory. Also, it was a stupid fucking name for a band. And… they were stupid. I first met them because they wanted me to direct a video for them. I found Joe, the lead singer, very creepy. He had a strange giggle that punctuated most of his sentences and seemed to have an undeserved swagger. He might have been alright were it not for his cohort Phil. I shook hands with Phil and immediately regretted it. I’ve never wanted to stick my hand into a boiling pot of caustic soda before or since but it was the worst handshake of my life. The warm, sticky hand that probably hadn’t been washed in 6 weeks. Through each pore oozed a treacly alcohol and drug sweat that had no doubt passed through a film of urine, semen and general cock-touching hand funk. I found him the most disgusting human I’d pretty much ever met. They both appeared to be coming down of some kind of binge, they were younger than me by half a decade but the bags under their eyes told a different story. Their idea for a video was ridiculous, self-indulgent and unachievable on no-budget. I couldn’t get out of there quick enough. I heard a few weeks later that they were splitting up. I was glad.

Somehow over the course of the next year, I made good friends with Phil. An endearing car-crash of a human being at the time, I learned how to deal with him, not to let him touch me, and grew very fond of him. He spent a while living in a boat with no windows eating a diet consisting entirely of slow-cooked onions. When you get past the shabby, bumbling exterior, there’s a lot going on. He didn’t express himself well but his thoughts were amazing and musically, he’s one of the more interesting people I’ve ever met. He’s always aiming for some kind of art or experimentation. He seems to have no desire for success or riches, even for a fanbase or a body of work. He just likes being around musicians and making music. He’s been involved with more bands and projects than anyone I’ve ever met. Walking away once he’s achieved what he wanted, usually before even a demo has been recorded.

He once tried to explain Borderville to me, before they played any gigs. It sounded like the ramblings of a drunkard (in my defence, it was…) I couldn’t work out if he was talking about a band or a book or a play. He kept talking not about the band but about the story. Borderville was a mythical place existing between Oxford and Cambridge… people were trapped there… It made no sense but the passion he had for it meant that there was no way I was going to be missing that gig.

They came on stage dressed like street urchins, students, gypsies and boat-people of pre-world war 1 Britain. Waistcoats and britches. Tweeds and silks. It made no sense but it was fantastic. And they launched into their overture.  Two keyboards flanked the stage – the urgent pounding of Arthur House on stage right and the twisting virtuosity of Woody Woodhouse on the left. Thunderous drums at the back, Phil vacant-faced bobbing around on bass and at the front, flouncing, petulant, stomping and fucking rocking was Joe Swarbrick. A man transformed.

BOR-DER-VILLE BOR-DER-VILLE BORDERVILLE!

What band has the balls to open with a song whose lyrics consist entirely and only of the bands’ name? Uh… BORDERVILLE.

I watched transfixed through the whole set. Borderville weren’t a band but a musical too literary for the West End without a theatre to house it so frantically, magnificently, squashed into a band form for a gig setting. Musically, Rocky Horror is a good enough starting point but not in terms of subject matter. There’s a heavy glam content but it always avoids being kitsch. Joe wears his love of Bowie on his sleeve and there’s a Ziggy Stardust attitude lacing the whole thing. He’s not just a singer, he’s playing a part, maybe a few. Last year, when Borderville played at the church on Cornmarket Street, Joe performed ‘Lover I’m Finally Through’ as a drunk draped over Woody’s grand piano and it was genuinely funny and touching. A theatrical performance. But I’m skipping ahead of myself.

The problem with compressing a musical into a gig is that you lose the story. I’ve never understood what the Borderville story was meant to be, so was incredibly excited to hear that they would be performing their entire as-yet-unreleased album, in the correct order in a special gig on a boat. Phil organised gigs on boats. He also organised lunchtime gigs with free soup. That gig was easily in my top 5 gigs of all time. The setting of the steam boat chugging through Oxford’s waterways on a lazy summer Sunday afternoon. The music was amazing, the sequencing of the songs perfect. Great soundman, great sound, man. I’ve never been more excited for an album to be released. I wanted to own that set. I wanted to read the liner notes and understand. But it never happened.

As will happen with Phil, he drifted away to new pastures and Borderville went a bit odd. I would still kill for a copy of that album. I know they recorded it. It morphed into something else – as did the band. Arthur left too and it turned into a four-piece with the excellent, although apparently incongruous stylistically, Matt Halliday on bass. Be-suited and Be-quiffed, he ushered in an edgier dawn. When the album – Joy Through Work – finally surfaced, I didn’t like it. It’s an amazing album. It’s quite excellent. But it isn’t that album. It isn’t the set they played that day on the boat and I’ll never forgive them for that.

It’s amazing, though. Oh man, some of those songs – Blood on The Kitchen Floor, Flights, Short Sharp Shock… I mean, really it’s the sleeveless original cast recording record from the 70′s you find in a second hand vinyl shop and fall in love with but can find no information as to what the original production was. It’s Cabaret and Hedwig and A Chorus Line and student revues and burlesque and cabarets that you see and half-remember from old Edinburgh Festivals. A dusty memory of a musical you didn’t understand but enjoyed.

Borderville are now a different band to the canal-urchins of past. They’re the intergalactic, time-traveling house band of some eastern-European glam rock orgy who, having backed a procession of sleazy drag acts through a whole night of entertainment are allowed to perform their own material at 3am. They don’t belong to any venue, era or fanbase. A band out of time and space. But if you catch their show, it’ll be one of the fondest half-memories of your gig-going life.

They’ve just released their second album – a concept album based on Metamorphosis by Kafka. The final song on the album – Afterlife – is gorgeous. A beautiful ending to a beautiful unstaged musical. Part of me wants to grab Joe by the scruff of the neck and frog-march him to Cameron Mackintosh’s house and knock their heads together. Another part of me is rather happy that I don’t have to trek to a theatre and sit through some tedious drama waiting for these kick-ass moments of glam glory.

They’re quite simply one of the most exciting, intelligent and genre-defying bands ever to have come from Oxford. They’re completely unique, completely absorbing and fascinating and they’re real showmen. it’s such an unexpected blend of influences, combined so deftly and defiantly. I just fucking love this band.

You can stream both albums in full at www.borderville.com but don’t be a dick about it, if you like them buy them – Metamorphosis comes in some mad special packaging. It took me 20 minutes to put the CD back in.

I’m starting to do a bunch of press and interviews about the film now – it’s only a week away from release, which is really weird. As with all press, I suppose, you generally get asked the same questions by everyone, which is fine, but the question that I get asked the most is the one I’m least equipped to actually answer: Why didn’t you interview Mac?

For those who haven’t seen the film, Mac is an important figure within it – the charismatic promoter at The Jericho Tavern who, everyone generally agrees, was the very heart that pumped the blood of the Oxford Music Scene from the 80′s right to now, where he is still a formidable figure in the current scene. I met with Mac, and we’ve emailed back and forth and, essentially, he just doesn’t want to be in the film. I think that’s a shame, as apparently do most people who see the film, but I respect his choice and I think I just about manage to pull his absence off with the edit. The reason I consider his absence in the film a REAL shame is because it meant that I couldn’t really cover his band – Arthur Turner’s Lovechild?

In my early dreams about the film, I’d always hoped to uncover some live footage of ATL? because the gigs I saw have attained an almost legendary status in my memories and I’d love to see how much of that is teenage nostalgia. I expect… very little, because in the course of making the film one of the few issues that remained uncontested was that ATL? were a fucking amazing band.

They seemed to have an ever-changing line-up, featuring exotically named characters such as Hamish Tesco, Cheeky The Mango Boy, Loretta the Go-Go Dancer and Billy Two-Jackets. The one constant was Mac, bold and bald, centre stage, power-rock pose chucking out power chords. Describing the music isn’t always easy. I remember at the time someone told me it was a genre entirely of Mac’s making called ‘Kettle music – country/metal’. I’m not sure how much country or metal I ever detected in there. It always sounded a bit Superchunk to me, a bit Pixies, but it didn’t have that American indie vibe, if anything, it was kind of pub rock. The songs were either anthems or ballads – and it’s a rare band that can deftly handle both in a pub rock milieu.

The thing is, that band would be legendary within Oxford based on their live performances alone. You oculdn’t keep your eyes off Mac, he was such a compelling performer. Dribbling, rocking, spitting, laughing, I saw one gig where he came onstage wearing an Elvis wig he made by wrapping gaffer tape round his bald head and building it up to a quiff shape. It was hilarious and must have hurt like a bastard to remove. Their live performances were enough to cement them as a legend. But the songs were AMAZING. The songwriting still stands up as just brilliant. It’s drunken poetry, dripping with regret and cynicism, optimism and confusion. It’s ballsy and vulnerable. It’s a great big pile of contradiction. Which is no big surprise if you have any experience of Mac.

One thing that has always stood out to me about ATL? Is that they’re probably the definitive OXFORD band in so much as nobody else really wrote songs about Oxford or life in Oxford. My favourite ATL? song didn’t make it onto their only album. It was called Buy Bye and was like a manifesto song or something. The chorus went ‘Corporate rock has never seduced me and Steve Albini has never produced me, ain’t nothing stopping the rocking ATL’ Earlier in the song the line ‘Kurt, Kurt, won’t you wear my shirt? I’m down and I’m deeply hurt cos the NME and the Melody want me’ – the whole song was an indictment of indie bands getting succesful and one thing you have to give ATL? is that they absolutely, positively never sold out. They kow towed to nobody, did their own thing and that’s probably why you’ve never heard of them. But for those of us who have, and especially those lucky enough to have seen them, it really means a lot, actually.

You wouldn’t ever have expected them to get it together enough to actually make an album, but they did and it’s fucking great. ‘David’s Soul, Or How I Became So Stupid’ is one of the greatest Oxford albums that even most people in Oxford have never heard.

It opens with celebratory aplomb by divebombing straight into sing-a-long fist-pumper ‘Son of the Human Cannonball’ It’s all nonsense lyrics which somehow make sense, especially the triumphant chorus of ‘Oh, puberty pass me by! I was born to rule the sky!’. it squelches pleasantly into Ninestone Cowboy which seems to be a story song but I’m sure only Mac knows what it’s about. Black Heart = Blue Morning is one of the songs that Ronan Munro has frequently extolled as being amongst the best songwriting he’s heard. It’s a heartfelt, dark song about life kicking you down but carrying on regardless, the repeated phrase ‘Gonna swim against the tide today” is kind of sad and defiant. And then we hit the big anthem. Every band has that one song that defines and represents them. ATL?’s was Put Your Hands Up If Your First Word’s Fuck In The Morning. I should have saved the word ‘fistpumping’ for this point in the post because, christ almighty, I’ve never punched the air since like I did as a young man when that song was blasted from the stage of The Point. The chorus, predictably being ‘Put your hands up if your first word’s fuck, if your first word’s fuck, in the morning!’ It’s a happy song, a triumphant song which leads into the final chorus with the repeated words ‘the stars are out and we are stars tonight’ I get excited just thinking about that song. Fuck, it’s amazing. And Mac would get the whole crowd singing along and then just stop playing and walk away, making an entire room of people get that feeling you get when you’re confidently singing a song loudly and suddenly realise you’re singing the wrong bit. Genius. The album plods on sardonically, sarcastically, beautifully, one of my favourite tracks is Overflow which is kind of lush and punky and laid back and kickin’. It leads into Bad Samaritan, which I kind of find hard to listen to. It’s miserable and wretched and any song that opens with the line ‘Kill yourself. Do us all a favour’ sung sincerely isn’t going to be the easiest listen. The album ends with a song which was specifically mentioned in my interviews with some of the biggest stars to rise from the scene – Andy Bell, Colin Greenwood and Ed O’Brien all made a point of singling it out. And it deserves it. A really heartfelt ballad called (I’ve Got A) Telescope sang by Mac with disarming vulnerability and sincerity. It contains one of my favourite verses of any song anywhere:

‘Pretend you’re a spaceman. Pretend you’re not a drunk. Pretend you’ve got your own telescope. Pretend you’re a music journalist just discovering punk’

That might be the most honest thing Mac’s ever written. It might equally not be at all. The thing about Mac is that his defiance crosses beyond the borders of behaviour AND the borders of interpretation. He defies categorisation, criticism, he defies everything. Even just writing this, I feel like a fucking idiot because anything I might read into his music, his band or him, is entirely more about me than the man himself. He’s beyond enigmatic. You never know if he’s angry with you or thinks well of you. He’s like this force of opinion and power which just hovers over Oxford.

Every Oxford band looks to him for approval. From Radiohead down, every musician has told me that when Mac says he likes your band, it means more than any other form of compliment and when he treats you with disdain, you just feel like shit. With that kind of influence, it’s kind of amazing that he ever put any of his own music into the world at all, but I can’t imagine there being many detractors. It’s such a great album.

You can buy David’s Soul on amazon marketplace for 44p and if you’ve read this far, frankly, you’d be a fucking idiot not to. You can also download the whole album from amazon.co.uk

Mac’s new band Hot Hooves (featuring Pete Momtchiloff from Talulah Gosh) release their debut album ‘Avoid Being Filmed’ very soon.

Back in the Smart and Simple Hotel (they charmingly shorten their name to ‘Ssh’ which they put on signs everywhere to passive-aggressively tell you to shut the fuck up whilst you’re anywhere in the building) with it’s framed caricatures and continental breakfasts and staff who ask you ‘what kind‘ of a day you’ve had, which has wrong-footed my exhausted brain twice now – the first time, confused by the phrasing of the question into thinking they definitely weren’t asking if I’d had a good day, I replied ‘Wednesday’. Excellent.

I’m here because Editor Ben lives here (TW, not Ssh). We thought we’d finished the film on Wednesday but we hadn’t, it turns out. In fact, essentially, I fucked the film right up and kind of wanted to tell you about that (since I literally have nothing else to do in this hotel room which wouldn’t involve creating a depressing surprise for one of the cleaning staff).

They say a film is made three times (they’re very wise) – once in the writing, once in the directing and once in the editing. They’re right about that, too. The pre-production phase of making a film is all about preparation. Many times, I’ve heard film-making compared to war and it’s a good analogy which will, doubtless, one day get me beaten up by a bunch of squaddies. Once the shoot (apt word of dual meanings ahoy!) begins, it’s frantic and you make the best of what you’ve got and get the job done, so pre-production is about arming yourself well. There has never been a good film made from a bad script, it should be laboured over. In terms of documentary, this means being well-researched and ensuring you have a good list of pertinent questions and notes in front of you when the camera starts rolling. It also means being sure you have the right camera and lighting equipment – enough tapes to cover the eventuality of a five hour shoot, that you’ve actually arranged the interview properly (I interviewed Loz from Ride right at the beginning of the process, I thought he’d been booked for 3 hours, he thought he’d been booked for half an hour, so after setting up and asking him a couple of warm-up questions, he had to leave… so I couldn’t get him into the final film as we neglected to discuss Ride at all) . So that’s the first time the film is made.

The second time is in the directing – the shoot. Despite best preparation, this is about making the best of what you have. The factors that can ruin or help a film are often way out of the film-maker’s control. Legendarily, Jaws became a great film because the tension in the first act of only ever seeing the shark’s fin happened purely because the mechanical shark was a bit shit and they couldn’t get it to do anything. The fin was the only bit which really worked (for amazing insight into how bad a film shoot can go, check out The Jaws Log by Carl Gottlieb – one of the greatest books ever written on the subject, oh, also, watch the film Lost in La Mancha). For me, the shooting of the film was all about adapting interview techniques to the person sat in front of me. Sometimes it was about shepherding them to waffle less, sometimes it was about tempting them to open up more. Some people liked to be asked direct questions and give direct answers, others needed me to actually have a conversation with them. Every interview was a completely different experience and I enjoyed each of them immensely.

The third time a film is made is in the editing. And, to be honest, this is really the only time the film is MADE. Because you start from scratch. The script at this point is often irrelevant, the pre-production a distant, useless memory. You start an edit by simply looking at what you’ve got. You review all of the raw footage from the shoot and work out how best to make a film from it. There are an awful lot of analogies and metaphors for the editing process, but in my head, it’s always sculpting. The raw material you start with is a big block of marble and inside there is a beautiful statue of a man with a small penis and the only way you will turn one into the other is through a process of constant refinement. firstly cutting out the basic shape, then working the curves and angles, then as you refine and refine, you get to the detailing  and get it perfect. No great sculptor stood before a block of marble and announced ‘I’ll start with the nostrils, I think!’

I learned to edit when I was 12 or 13 at Oxford Film and Video Makers, a non-profit workshop in… well, you can work that out. They’re still going, I teach there now, but when I learned, I learned on film. Real celluloid, wrapping around the cogs and whatsits of a huge 6 plate Steenbeck editing table. You physically cut the film with a knife and sellotaped it back together to make an edit. You drew all over the film with a white Chynograph pencil to tell the boys at the lab and the neg cutters what you wanted it to end up like. It was very magical and film-makers still talk about it in a fetishy way. I also learned to cut on video which was, frankly, shit. And unmagical. With film, once you’d made a decision, it was hard to reverse it – there’s only so many times you can physically cut something. With tape, there was NO way of changing it once an edit had been made. You’d just have to start the whole edit from the beginning again. Although this sounds kind of restrictive now, it was actually rather good because it forced you to really think about the choices you were making and understand that you were committing to them. Now editing is all done digitally, you have nothing but choice. This brings with it an anxiety, because (in your fevered brain) you potentially can make it PERFECT, you never know when to stop refining. There’s always something that could be improved. This brings with it a whole raft of problems. These problems are never more evident than in the final rush to get a film completed.

The editing this week was entirely to do with legal stuff. I’ve been very happy with the final cut of the film. I’m aware of it’s problems but I’m also aware that they are intrinsic, attempting to solve them would create bigger problems and would compromise both the story and the theme of the film, so I have to hope that I’ve done a good enough job with the rest of the film that the audience is interested enough in the story that they don’t get bored at the two points in the film which have to be a bit slower to get across the information so the film makes sense. I was happy with the edit, anyway. The changes we had to make were not to improve the film at all – and that is annoying to me, risky too.

Basically, we had to do the following things:

- remove music we couldn’t afford

- remove footage we couldn’t afford

- replace images we couldn’t afford.

The music removals were a shame. The process is so odd. Basically, to use a track, you have to have permission from the person or company who owns the recording (usually the record company) and the person or company who owns the publishing (usually the publishing company). A lot of the bands in the film, not being signed or with lapsed deals, owned both rights themselves and very generously allowed us to use both for free. This has it’s own form of compensation as (hopefully) the film will reach a fairly wide audience and the music is used not as anonymous incidental background music, but in the context of the band itself. So it could be seen as a nice bit of publicity for the bands, and I truly hope they’ll all make some money off the back of it. Obviously, your Radioheads and Supergrasses have no control over this stuff and their music is hugely popular so rather pricey and since the film, if it gets any success, will be off the back of their involvement, this seems fair enough. It gets tricky with the bands in the middle. The bands who aren’t famous but don’t control their own music. Their record and publishing companies tend to want a bunch of money for their music and we don’t have much. You’d hope these companies might say ‘well, since the band is being big-upped in a film alongside Radiohead and Foals, use as much of it as you like for free and hopefully we’ll end up doing well out of it as it advertises these long-dead bands whose work we own. Even if we don’t, we haven’t lost anything by you using it’ But many don’t see it that way. They genuinely don’t care if we cut the band out of the film entirely, they’re not budging on their position. Money or nothing. It seems stupid to me, but whatever. So we had to cut some music out and replace it with other stuff. Even if you’ve seen the film already, I defy you to notice the changes, we’ve done well with it.

The footage came with weird conditions attached. Although we could use the great footage we wanted of the bigger UK TV shows like Top of the Pops, we could only use 45 seconds at a time or it suddenly cost way more. This has actually forced us to be more creative, so no bad thing, just a bit of a hassle.

The images were a nightmare and mainly producer Hank’s nightmare at that. Even in the last few hours of editing, he was phoning up telling us ‘remove this’ and emailing us photos to replace them with. It’s been interesting dealing with the photographers. Some of them have been complete wankers, others, amazingly lovely. When we found out a series of photos we adored of one of the less-famous bands in the film had been taken by famous photographer Rankin, we resigned ourselves to having to cut them but he turned out to be a really amazingly nice and supportive guy. Conversely, when we sought permission to use the cover of a book which had a photo by one very famous American photographer on it, her agent tried to charge us $2500. We cut that picture out. You can have the book if you want it, I’m never going to read it and regret the £8 it cost me just to find out the photo credit. Another famous British rock photographer took the time to email us to tell us it wasn’t worth his time to give us permission to use his photos for the money we offered him. I’d love to get to the point in my life where I was wealthy enough to not be bothered to earn hundreds of pounds by doing nothing more than signing my name on a one paragraph contract.

Anyway. That was the nature of the edit we were doing. And we were exhausted.

What happens when you’re exhausted? You make mistakes. In fact, sometimes it’s not even the making of mistakes, it’s the not noticing of them. I was making rash decisions to get the job done and when I watched the film back, I hated it, I’d been too brutal. So, back to TW to put it right. To make further impositions on Ben’s family and to reach new depths of boredom. There is genuinely nothing I know more boring than sitting in on an edit which is more about technical stuff than storytelling or creativity. Imagine being sat on a transatlantic flight and the only in-flight entertainment was a constantly replaying loop of 2 seconds of dialogue from a film you’d already seen a thousand times. The ever-present temptation is to just let the editor get on with it alone. To trust them. And they are trustworthy, but they aren’t you. Ben makes great editing decisions, but they’re not always the choices I would have made. The main struggle he and I have is over a very specific area of taste. Ben is a pro editor and wants his work to look professional. I feel that the film is handmade and although it should be technically professional, to try to hide the raggedy way it was made would be kind of dishonest. I like it scrappy around the edges visually. I’ve always seen the film as a kind of ‘video fanzine’ style. I want it to be the best ever amateur film rather than the worst ever professional film, if that makes sense. The compromises each of us make to the other is what makes the film good. Anyway, it means that I prefer to be present and make sure I agree with all of the changes. And the reason I do that is I’m going to have to watch it a lot and if I’m not happy, or at least satisfied, with every frame, it’ll bug me for the rest of my life and into the afterlife since this film will obviously outlive my time on this mortal coil, even if just as a Spira family heirloom of sorts.

And it’s that fight for satisfaction that finds me, for the third time in a week, in a hotel room in Tunbridge Wells trying to work out what kind of a day I’m having.

So, on the drive back to Oxford from Tunbridge Wells today, I was trying to think about what I would talk about in an interview. What was safe. And then I remembered that the most legendarily ubiquitous question asked of anyone creative is ‘Where do you get your inspiration’. There’s a lot of answers to that in regards to this film but I thought it’d be fun to write a blog about the genre itself – Music documentary. I love music docs so much, that I’d always hoped to make one. So, I thought I’d write a blog about my favourites and what inspiration I might have taken from them…

In no particular order….

GIMME SHELTER:

Trailer

Gimme Shelter is one of those films that comes with an awful lot of hyperbole and can’t really live up to it’s reputation. Does it deserve to be so exalted? I don’t know. It’s a music doc made by, I feel, people who don’t approach it as such. The Maysles Brothers really invigorated documentary through the 60′s and 70′s. They probably didn’t invent fly-on-the-wall, but they refined it, they were amazing at it. Salesmen (which I only recently managed to see) and Grey Gardens are two epic pieces of work. Character studies of people on the fringes of high and low society. Gimme Shelter is a plodding piece of work and not exactly as enjoyable to watch as it is to reflect upon. And it’s reflection is glorious. The Maysle, unlike most music doc makers, had no interest in deifying their subjects. The Rolling Stones were probably the biggest band in the world but the camera sees them merely as people. Musicians, maybe. The Stones would never be portrayed so honestly again (especially not in Scorsese’s recent lamentable offering) The camera just observes and leaves the audience to judge. In my favourite scene, where the band listen to a playback of their recording of Wild Horses – which you can see here – you get to see, in lingering close ups, who these personalities really are. Jagger’s confidence seems to be a nervy front, whereas Keith’s well runs deep, when the camera moves to Charlie, you see someone so defiantly guarded, he actually challenges the camera to break him before begrudgingly allowing access to his clear (no pun) satisfaction with the track. The film ends in spectacular style where the film-makers capture a man being stabbed to death right in front of the stage, the audience begging the band to stop as Mick ignores their pleas and minces about, but the real pay-off is the final shot – the look on Jagger’s face as the film-makers show him that footage months later in the edit suite. You see the rock god reduced to silly boy. I think what I took from this film was the importance of the close-up. I instructed all of my cameramen to never go wider than a tight mid-shot on interviews and to push in as close as they could when it got in any way emotional. The camera can find emotion where the naked human eye often can’t. It’s in the pauses, the furrowing of the eyebrows, the awareness of the camera and the subject’s role before it.

THE LAST WALTZ:

Trailer

Well, here’s the biggie. This is my favourite film ever. Certainly the film I’ve watched the most. It’s a loose documentary, really it’s little more than a concert film but – you know – it’s the best band in the world ever The Band, playing their last ever show with some of the most amazing guest musicians ever and it’s filmed by one of the greatest film director’s ever (before he started working with Leonardo DifuckinfCrapio and churned out a decade of swill) and filmed by a selection of the world’s greatest cinematographers ever. It’s where my two passions collide – music and film – they collide head on, my favourite band filmed by one of my favourite directors and it’s epic. I don’t know how much inspiration I’ve taken from it, though. It certainly heavily influenced how I film gigs but there’s none of my gig footage in the final film. I guess I just hope I’ve made a film where, like this, the enthusiasm and passion the film-maker has for the subject just transcends every frame.

DIG!

Trailer

I loved, loved, loved this film when I first saw it. The first few times I saw it, in fact. It’s a high-octane, dramatic and funny film about the friendship and animosity between the bands The Dany Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Ondi Timoner, the film-maker, followed both bands for 7 years and built up an arsenal of the most rock-n-roll footage ever. Sex, drugs and rocknroll. I rewatched it a couple of months into production on ACPG and immediately fell out of love with it. This film was everything I didn’t want my film to be. I suddenly didn’t see it as a kick-ass rush of crazy rock madness, I now understood the responsibility a film-maker has to their subjects. If someone trusts you with the representing of their lives, you have to take it seriously. This isn’t to say you owe them anything over basic human decency and respect, but you have to think about how and why you are portraying them as you have. Obviously, everything that happened in Dig! happened. It’s right there on the screen to see. But if you film a group of people for 7 years, you have enough footage to paint any portrait you choose. She chose to show Anton Newcombe as a nutjob and the Dandy Warhols as duplicitous. I find it to be a self-serving film. The trailer itself is a showy ‘come see the depravity’ sideshow barker. It’s everything I didn’t want to do with ACPG. To the point that, only after the film was finished, did I realise that I’d managed to make a music doc which was absolutely free of sex and drugs. Not to say there wasn’t any of that going on but I would have found it boring and cliched to focus on.

NEW YORK DOLL:

Trailer

One of the few films to dare to look honestly at the music machine. I mean, you’ll have tons of glamorously chic films about rock stars strung out on drugs and being all cool and stuff but it’s rare that the curtain behind them is dropped to show rock n roll for what it actually is – a business. More often than not, when these stars fade away, it’s because of business issues and the businessmen are pretty good at making their money and moving on. The New York Dolls are still cited as one of the founding bands of punk. They still sell a lot of albums and merch but their bass player Arthur ‘Killer’ Kane got the thin end of the wedge. When the band split up, he realised that everyone had made a fortune apart from him. His contemporaries, management, the bands he influenced, all coined it in. But he had nothing except a taste for substance and spousal abuse. Director Greg Whitely finds him 30 years later, a broken, muttering, devout Christian working for a Christian library. A self proclaimed ‘schlub on the bus’ and gives him a platform to discuss what happened. It’s incredibly moving and shows the downward trajectory usually avoided by rock docs.

AMERICAN HARDCORE:

Trailer

This is probably the film technically closest to my own, and that makes me damn happy because I love this film so damn much. I think retrospective docs can become boring quickly, people in dark rooms talking about things they did 30 years ago – it’s surprisingly hard to get that stuff right but AH does it through sheer infectious enthusiasm. The interviewees give a shit about what they’re discussing – they’re not trotting out the same old anecdotes, they’re finally getting the chance to put the record straight ad they talk animatedly with great passion. Likewise, the director Paul Rachman is clearly giddy with the joy of making this film and it just bursts through the screen. The kinetic mixture of dynamic interviews with stunning archival footage is just joyous. You don’t need to know who these bands are or anything about them to get caught up in this film. it really showed me that it’s OK to not focus purely on the famous bands, that an audience just wants a good story and some real passion and to discover something new to get excited about. Great film!

SEX PISTOLS: THERE’LL ALWAYS BE AN ENGLAND:

Trailer

I’ve got a love/hate thing going on with Julien Temple. His little trilogy of films The Filth & The Fury, The Future is Unwritten and Imaginary Man are all kind of guilty pleasures for me. I can watch Sex Pistols, Strummer and Ray Davies stuff endlessly. But I don’t really rate them as docs. I don’t like his ‘punky’ use of old library footage or his decision to present interviews in ‘whacky’ ways (the Sex Pistols were shot in silhouette for Filth & Fury, all the interviewees went without names in the Strummer film) but I find his films really watchable, if a bit pedestrian. I do like him. For me, his best work is on this DVD. A recent live DVD of the Pistols residency at the Brixton Academy. The gig footage is great but the DVD comes alive in the bonus features. Having already made a Pistols doc and clearly just looking to bulk out and add value to the disc, Temple lazily just follows the band’s members around London. It’s precisely his lack of involvement and apparent insouciance that makes it so damned delightful. The frustrating truth to any film-maker is that if you turn your camera on someone intrinsically charismatic and interesting, that’s kind of your job done. You get to see the real Pistols – the men they’ve become. Lydon commandeers an open-top bus around the capital, at times reflective, at times playful. He relishes the opportunity to shout ‘helllooooo poor people’ but is often stopped in his tracks by monstrous modern architecture and his own stroppiness. We follow him into a pub where he bemoans the death of friendliness and end up at the new Arsenal ground where he befriends a couple of bemused teenagers. Meanwhile Steve Jones and Paul Cook take to their old stomping ground and find a very different Soho. Glen Matlock checks out the old gig venues and, quite touchingly, they all reflect on his mistreatment. The brilliance of the DVD is that if this stuff were a film in itself, it’d be self-indulgent and mawkish but as it is in it’s take-it-or-leave-it sloppy form, it’s really incredibly watchable and shows a side of the band not usually presented.

DIXIE CHICKS: SHUT UP AND SING:

Trailer

Yeah, I know. You weren’t expecting me to mention the bloody Dixie Chicks, were you? Well, watch the trailer. Nobody I have ever spoken to has watched this film because nobody of taste has any time for the Dixie Chicks. Which is fine. But this is one of the films which taught me that a great music doc doesn’t mistake it’s subject matter for it’s theme. This is a documentary about Bush’s America and it is simply staggering. You get to watch the drama unfold in front of you when the lead singer of this band -  America’s sweethearts, its most loved and successful all-female band says, from the stage at a London gig, that they’re embarrassed GWB was from Texas. Then just watch them fall, it’s breathtaking seeing how fast their country turns on them and then, no matter what you think of their music, you can’t fail to be stunned by the bravery of the band for not apologising and not hiding. By the time it comes to their big gig, they’ve received tangible death threats against the lead singer for that night. She’s braver than I’d ever be. Film-makers Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck capture both the dignified intimacy of the band and the enormity of the backlash expertly. It’s a brilliant film and you should watch it.

Well, that’s all for now. I have stuff to do. The London press screening of ACPG takes place TOMORROW NIGHT – ack – wish me luck. Oh, and I just did that phone interview and it was really good fun.

Laterz.

To my eternal shame, I don’t actually remember the first time I saw The Family Machine live. Which is strange, because they would have made a huge impression on me, seeing as they’re one of my favourite bands not just in Oxford but, honestly, ever.

The lead singer is Jamie Hyatt, who I only made friends with after interviewing him for the film a few years ago, but it feels like he’s a really old friend. Partially because he is one of the best people you’ll ever meet – he’s funny and warm and witty and can make a room full of strangers feel comfortable with one another, partially because he’s kind of been in my life a lot longer than our friendship. In the early-mid nineties, Jamie fronted The Daisies. They make a very fleeting appearance in ACPG but are one of the legendary Oxford bands who didn’t really make the final cut not because of any lack of significance but because they didn’t move along the story of the film. Although I’ll stand by the assertion that Oxford’s favourite band was The Candyskins, I’d imagine that most of us who were about would swiftly follow that up with an ‘…AND THE DAISIES!’ I’m bound to write about The Daisies in the future here, but for now I just want to make the point that Jamie was on my radar. And in an odd way. Kind of like when you’re in the first year at school and there’s this one really cool sixth former who you just think is awesome but would never just go and talk to. I’d see him at gigs and think ‘Wowwww. That’s Jamie from The Daisies. Cooooooool!’ And Jamie is cool, not in a rock-starry way. He’s just.. ace.

But there are a lot of cool people in bands, right? That doesn’t mean their band is any good. But The Family Machine are good. They’re so so so fucking good. And not in a crazy-guitar-scissor-kick-eardrum-bleeding way. They’re good like toast and honey, they’re good like a really thick pair of socks on a cold day, like your favourite hat or a sunday afternoon in a really nice pub. They’re that kind of good. They’re good for your soul.

As people, you genuinely couldn’t meet a nicer band. They’re the nicest group of people I know. And nice might sound a bit fey, but I don’t mean it like that. You smile when you’re around them. They’re a group of friends first and a band second, the band is an offshoot of their friendship and it’s a friendship which is completely open and welcoming to others. This makes it sound like a cult but nothing could be further from the truth. Sam from Beaker described them as ‘just a lovely bunch of boys’ and that’s essentially it. Backing Jamie up, you have Feeler on Bass, a huggy, smiley, wry-witted conversationalist. One of the most enthusiastic and friendly guys you could hope to meet. Neil is the quiet one, but he’s not so quiet really. He’s funny and happy and interesting and the multi-instrumentalist. Mainly guitar but he’s on the keyboards and xylophones. I guess he’s the Jonny Greenwood of the band, but without any ‘ch-chnk’s. Jay is the drummer and lives a double life as a throat singer, some kind of exotic art which allows him to sing two octaves at once… yeah! He’s as lovely as the others but I’m starting too feel weird about the amount of times I’m using the words smiley/friendly/lovely etc… I think you get the point…

Jamie used to promote gigs under the moniker ‘The Beard Museum’ – the gigs were on a Sunday night in an underground venue, he invited established local bands to play acoustic shows in a room full of candles, the audience were all seated around tables and it was the perfect way to ease out of the weekend and into the work week. You also got in free if you had a beard, so I did well out of that.

Reading what I’ve written so far back, you’re probably imagining the music to be happy-clappy fawning claptrap. But you’re wrong. Not that it’s heavy metal, either. Or even anywhere in-between. The music is probably best described as upbeat melancholic indie-power-pop-folk. The Jayhawks covering The Raspberries (if you haven’t heard of either of those bands, they should be the next two bands you check out AFTER The Family Machine) with a non-annoying dash of the Bonzo Dogs.

I make the effort to see them live whenever they play (increasingly infrequently these days) because you’re guaranteed a room full of (I’m just going to say it) lovely people, a great atmosphere and an amazing show. I was dead excited that they were releasing an album. I knew a lot of their tracks and was keen to have them to listen to whenever I pleased but nothing really prepared me for quite how devastatingly good their album would actually be. It’s genuinely one of my favourite albums of the last 4 years – in fact, it might even actually be my favourite. It’s never far from the CD player in my kitchen.

Above the sheer quality of the songwriting and musicality of the band, it features something rarely heard on albums these days. It’s a well sequenced album. In fact.. It’s an album! Most albums these days are just a CD of songs, to be ripped and shuffled. This is a coherent and thoughtful piece of work. The tracks are in the right order and are at times even blended into one another. It feels like an album. Like it should be on vinyl and turned over halfway through. It’s a journey through happiness and sadness and real emotion and humour. It’s deeply unpretentious and unpretentiously deep.

The album starts with studio noise, some tuning up, some unintelligible chatter as the band ease into the first song Ko Tao, a bouncy acoustic campfire singalong which leads to Did You Leave, a gentle yet cautiously dark song with a fairy tale feel which infects the whole album. The Do Song is sunshine in a bag of sweets, the lyrics being restricted to ‘do do do’ it’s uplifting and.. I guess jaunty. Flowers By the Roadside is ‘the single’ – the standout track that you’ll fall in love with. A darkly-breezy folk-pop number about the futility of roadside memorials to those killed in traffic accidents. And so the album strolls through light and dark, childhood fears and adult yearnings.

My favourite track is near the end, Reminds Me of You. Nostalgia flecked with melancholy and optimism. It was the only song I ever even considered from Oxford’s 30 year musical heritage as the end title music to ACPG. It sums up my film, it encapsulates everything I wanted it to be, human, a little bit sad, but hopeful.

And The Family Machine in many ways represent the very best of what Oxford has done. They’re a group who’d probably love to give up their day-jobs and make music full-time but that’s not why they do it. I feel that they do it for all the reasons anybody should do anything artistic – to express themselves, to enjoy the process of working together and playing together and to give people pleasure.

I truly love The Family Machine.

Their album is available on itunes and on CD from www.ilovealcopop.co.uk (great record label, by the way!)

This is a music video I made with them…

Flowers By The Roadside

But I didn’t.

I didn’t really think to. Mainly because.. I didn’t want to. I’ve loved every minute of the process. Which isn’t to say every minute has been easy or fun – far from it. This film has been a slog from day one. From the days I had to schelp cars of equipment round the country to film alone (when I started the film, I was barely confident enough in my ability to camera operate, by the end, I could camera operate, light, record sound and conduct the interview simultaneously and often had no crew at all – check me out!), to the months, actually years,  spent trying to form the footage into anything but an amorphous 7-hour-long blob, to getting to the point where the film was even approaching being legally able to be publicly screened.

It’s been the greatest pleasure of my life. But it’s really been a fucking slog. The greatest, most pleasurable fucking slog of my life.

So, I didn’t keep a blog because there’s yet to be a day on this project which, by the end of it, I’ve particularly wanted to relive and record. Except for today which is, you might say, the last day of making the film.

Here’s a day I remember. It was a summer lunchtime in, I guess 2006. I’d made a music video with my friends Ben (a great editor/cameraman) and Hank (a great producer) we had decided to form a production company together and were meeting at a pub called The Trout in Oxfordshire. On the river. With peacocks. We were all excited about it but I had a surprise. I already knew what our first project was going to be. A feature documentary on the Oxford Music Scene. They were certainly surprised. Not exactly enthused. And when I explained to Hank that I didn’t want to apply for funding, just grab some equipment and make it… he quit. I don’t blame him. I was a fucking idiot. We never did form that company. But we made the film. Ben was a rock from beginning to end. Despite his busy career and family life, he always made time, was always patient and always supportive. Hank came back and quit a couple of times and was also always supportive and eventually learned to be patient with me as I learned to not be quite such a nightmare for him. When Hank rejoined the project properly this year, he blitzed it. He did the dirty work I could never have done. The paperwork, the negotiating, the organising.

If the film does well, I’ll probably get the credit for it but the truth is without Ben and Hank, the two people who were first in and still sweating over it with me, it just wouldn’t have happened at all.

I’m in Tunbridge Wells.

Over the last couple of years, this film has been cut in a whole lot of different places. It started on my dining room table and then moved to behind the counter in my video shop (R.I.P.) where it languished for a long time, then it moved back to my living room where Ben and I tested our friendship to the extreme over a 10 day editing session which ended horribly, with us not really talking and Hank quitting as producer (second time). The film sat for a while, a half-baked turd. Then it moved to the granny-flat in my friend John’s back garden where he kicked it into shape over the course of a month. Then it went back to Ben in Stoke Newington a bit. Then it moved around various edit suites in Soho before landing in Berwick Street for it’s final sound mix. We thought it was done, but it wasn’t, back to Ben, who’d now moved to Tunbridge Wells, then to Tin-Pan-Alley to finally knock out the Director’s Cut. My final cut. The one I was happiest with. But then we found we couldn’t afford all of the music and footage in it, so, here we are. Back in Tunbridge Wells for the final, final, final cut (or as it will undoubtedly be saved on one of the twelve hard drives stacked precariously in my spare bedroom acpgfinalfinalfinalfinalcut7.mov) and this will be it. This is the cut you’ll see. On Thursday it goes off to the DVD manufacturers, on Friday it gets it’s London press screening and two weeks to the day later, it gets it’s premiere at the BFI in London.

This week is a tough week. The creative core of this project is a mess. I’ve barely left the computer for a couple of weeks, dealing with volumes of email along with authoring the DVD and shepherding along the design, website, and PR. Hank has been chasing and negotiating the final clearances and organising the cinema tour, Ben is finishing the cut of the film on no sleep having moved house only days ago after finishing editing a TV documentary for the last couple of months. We’re all so tired we can barely form coherent sentences. I’m doing it because I want people to see this film. I want them to understand the points I’m making in it. Why Hank and Ben are doing it… I haven’t got a bloody clue. They’re either insane or just amazing friends. Maybe both. I get the feeling they’re trying to prove something too. And I really dig that.

I’m scared shitless about the BFI screening. This is a doc which was filmed in the living rooms of East Oxford, edited in the houses of my friends, tweaked in shady little suites in Soho and mastered in Tunbridge Wells. It hardly seems like BFI material. But that’s the beauty of this project. And that’s what I’m most proud of. It’s the product of friendship and defiance. If you asked any one of us why we’re doing it, at this point, you’d get a cold hollow-eyed stare and a simple ‘because fuck you, I’m doing it’ (but not from Ben, he wouldn’t swear)

I might be rambling.

Anyway, tomorrow morning, we’ll have a finished finished finished film.

My friends rock.

And that’s all I have to say for now.

Except… this is Ben today…