I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.
In this episode, I have another chat with writer/comedian/documentarian/presenter Dom Joly about monsters, Tintin, going upriver, Fool Britannia, and the dullest place on Earth.
I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.
In this episode, I chat with writer/comedian/documentarian/presenter Dom Joly, creator and provocateur of TRIGGER HAPPY TV, about Dark Tourism, celebrities trapped in the jungle, and much more…
This has been a wild couple of weeks with the number of documentaries I’ve been watching about musicians as of late.
From a couple of Blu-ray releases of live concerts, a movie about the Doors, and now this, it has been a whirlwind of performances that showcase music of all kinds. The thing about YOUSSOU N’DOUR: I BRING WHAT I LOVE is that I was not expecting to like it as much as I did. Ballasted by the fact that this movie has come out under the Oscilloscope Laboratory banner, becoming required viewing simply because it has so far had an unbeaten track record of films that have a unique way of telling a story, I quite didn’t know what to expect other than this was going to be a movie about music. It’s much more that, however, as I found out.
Youssou is a musician that many know but probably didn’t realize. Heck, I didn’t realize. He’s the chanting voice you hear in the song In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel. A man who embraced music from all over the world, Gabriel help push Youssou into greater prominence among those within the industry. It was shocking to see that as a Senegalese pop star he received worldwide acclaim for his music and recognition for it as well all the while I was blissfully unaware of this man for decades.
This movie goes beyond just capturing Youssou’s time on the road, and we get many live performances in venues all over the globe, but it charts the time when he had to deal with an album he made called Egypt, a record that was deemed incendiary because of its content. Not that it had blasphemous, dirty language but it contained his own thoughts and feelings about a religion and faith not many were too keen on learning more about in 2004: Islam. This movie captures his feelings on the matter and it’s rather gripping and forces you to reflect about what it would be like for anyone to believe something so fervently and want to share that joy with the world only to have your native land, here Senegal, turn away. Heartbreaking and sad, Youssou’s determination and love comes though in one the films that I have been able to watch about musicians which doesn’t make me think that all the world’s musicians are in it for themselves. Youssou genuinely seems passionate about the things he’s been allowed to do and to share with the rest of the world and you simply do not see that in today’s crop of entertainers.
Wholly refreshing, wonderful to look at, director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s film captures the essence of Youssou’s music that you can feel come through the screen. I had never heard of the man before seeing this film but I was a fan by the end and I think that’s the point of any good movie like this. You don’t necessarily have to be enthralled by the music but you cannot help but to be in awe of one man’s perseverance to be the best man he can be in the face of so many who would try and change that course.
If you have a chance to rent it or buy it you could not do yourself a better favor than picking this title up and seeing some music come alive.
Synopsis
YOUSSOU N’DOUR: I BRING WHAT I LOVE is a gorgeously photographed, music infused cinematic portrait of world famous Senegalese pop sensation Youssou N’Dour. Best known in the West for his collaborations with Bono and Peter Gabriel, N’Dour is one of the most beloved musicians in pop music and his legendary career has spanned decades.
In 2004, responding to negative perceptions about his Muslim faith, N’Dour recorded EGYPT, a deeply spiritual album dedicated to a more tolerant view of Islam. In a critical and career-defining moment, the album was awarded the 2004 Grammy® for BEST WORLD MUSIC ALBUM. While Western audiences embraced N’Dour’s brave musical message, it encountered a serious religious backlash in his native country of Senegal where N’Dour is considered a national hero. Local critics and the media accused him of insulting Islam, arguing that pop and religious music should not mix.
Combining unprecedented images of Senegal’s most sacred Muslim rituals, vibrant concert performances filmed around the world, and intimate access to N’Dour and his family, I BRING WHAT I LOVE chronicles the difficult path this remarkable artist must take. It is a stirring journey of faith, redemption, and the power of music to overcome intolerance.
Tom DiCillo – Interview
The documentary is endlessly fascinating, let’s get that right out of the way.
Using footage from Jim Morrison’s own film HWY: An American Pastoral from 1969 the new Doors documentary When You’re Strange also uses footage never before seen of the band that ignited a generation. For any fan who thinks that Oliver Stone made the definitive Doors movie this doc sheds some light on the figure that is Jim Morrison the legend and dispels the ideas that he walked around in a constant drug-fueled stupor. In fact, this film shows Morrison as a rather humorous individual capable of so much more than just being a part of a cliche.
Using footage never before seen and utilizing Johnny Depp’s silken vocals to narrate the story of how the band came together to take over a nation, then the world, you get a new perspective on a band that most feel like they already figured out. It’s endlessly fascinating from a documentary perspective, like reading years of biographies on one person only to find their autobiography and putting the two together. Comparative literature it is not but there is a story here that you have to open yourself to in order to wade beyond all that you already think you know. When You’re Strange is a brisk foray into a brief period of time when music could rattle a population of listeners and a glimpse into a band that never sold their rights to have their music played in a car commercial. And they never will.
WHEN YOU’RE STRANGE opens today
CHRISTOPHER STIPP: Hey, Tom. How are you doing?
TOM DICILLO: I’m good man. How are you?
CS: Doing fine. Hopefully this hasn’t been a long press day for you.
DICILLO: Well, it has been but it’s been really enjoyable because people are really digging this film and that’s just exciting to see.
CS: I really dug it.
DICILLO: Good.
CS: I did a search for Doors films or documentaries and I was floor by the lack of them out there. Did you immediately look at this project and immediately jump on it?
DICILLO: Well, the project was presented to me as a possibility and then I was asked if I wanted to direct it. And I said yes immediately without question. I didn’t know what I was getting into. In fact, I hadn’t seen any of the footage. After I said yes, then they began the process of them showing me stuff and asking me to come up with the concept. I just think it was the right timing. They had been trying to make something with this footage for sometime and I don’t know, I think perhaps they just didn’t have the right combination of people. And, something about my idea about only using this original footage just freaks them out and just freaked The Doors out too. They said, “How can you make a film about the Doors in which we don’t have The Doors talking?” I said, “Because I think if you look at this footage it’s so astonishing that it will ultimately be better.” When they saw the first half hour I put together, they were floored. Let’s just thank the Lord”¦not the Lord, because there is no Lord”¦
(Laughs)
Thanks to whoever that it worked out and all came together.
CS: I’m interested to get your take ““ as a filmmaker ““ you’ve done feature film, you’ve done television, was there a learning curve as a documentarian when you had to sift through this info and try to create a narrative?
DICILLO: Oh, absolutely. Are you kidding? Very good question, man. My experience is with writing and directing and working that way. Creating every image and then choosing the best image and then editing it. This one ““ I had to go, “OK, here’s the footage, here are the dailies from the film”¦What can I do with it?”
Certain things hit me immediately.
I didn’t know that this footage of Morrison walking through the desert was from his own film HWY. I just thought they were random shots of Jim walking through the desert. So I felt free to use them. I knew that they were going to go in the film and I knew they were going to be kind of a framing device immediately. Almost like, there’s a shot of him getting out of a car stuck in the sand. I said, “That’s going to be Morrison.”
It’s the spirit of Morrison ““ re-emerging, so to speak.
But then I had a whole story to tell and your probably could make six stories about The Doors, they did so much in that short period of time. In some cases, the footage helps me. It was easy to do it because I had great images. In other cases, I had to do a little bit of explaining or somehow bridging gaps in things. And the narration became critical and I realized immediately that the narration was going to have to sustain this film. It was going to have to pull it together and I think Johnny Depp brings such an amazing intimacy and sense of belief in things he’s saying that he becomes almost as a fifth character in the film.
CS: Right. And he does. I was read in a previous interview with Ray [Manzarek] who said that Oliver Stone got it wrong when he made The Doors. That he wasn’t that drunken, wacked out of his skull 24/7 kind of guy people saw in that film. Do you think you saw a picture of the real Morrison as you went through this footage?
DICILLO: I saw several pictures of the real Morrison. That’s what I wanted to do, was to not limit the ones that I saw. I think that Stone’s movie limited severely the dimension of what Morrison was. I really do. And I’m not disrespecting Oliver Stone but saying he probably gave a thumbnail, a fingernail of what this guy really was. He was an immensely complicated guy. Immensely complicated. At times he was, yes, the drunken ass that was just pissing in his pants in the middle of a recording session. And then I had this footage of him dancing in the sand in the middle of the desert with complete strangers, these kids and the look on his face, it’s absolutely convincing that he’s enjoying the hell out of himself and that he’s really there, dancing with those kids. That’s as much a part of his character as the other stuff, and I wanted to try and show that.
You know what? I just feel there was something deeply compelling about him and that, for me, it wasn’t just the drinking, it wasn’t the excesses, it was the more personal things. Because if you talk to any of these guys, they’ll tell you the same thing. He was immensely articulate. He enjoyed life. I don’t think he had a death-wish. I don’t think so at all. I think he just got caught up in something and could not get out of it.
CS: And I think he comes off ““ I was surprised to see he was quite erudite and scholarly as a young man ““ completely different than public perception of what people “thought” he was.
DICILLO: Yeah. It’s pretty phenomenal that at 16 he was reading Nietzsche and Kerouac and this was before he even took acid. He was an intensely intelligent man and I think to only show one aspect of his character does him a huge disservice. And also, the same for the rest of the band members. They were hugely involved in the creation and development of the band. All of them. And each one was critical to the band and all of them amazing musicians. That’s what I wanted to show. I wanted to go from the more basic sort of misunderstanding that a lot of people wrote Light My Fire. Well, I wanted to clear that up and say well, “No, he didn’t.” Actually, it was Robby Krieger.
CS: I was shocked to see that was the first one out of the box as a writer and it gets the guy a number one slot on the charts.
DICILLO: Isn’t that amazing? It’s just astonishing. And then he had a number of other number ones.
There’s a lot there that you can appreciate that you don’t have to build up a myth about, do you know what I mean? And I wanted to try to create a new myth but one based on reality.
CS: Do you think it was important to know the band deeply before working on this? Did you pour yourself into the mythos, what people had to say, or did you intentionally go in there blind and create something from what you had?
DICILLO: I went in blind but I did a lot of research. I had to be careful though to avoid simply paraphrasing what other people had said. I didn’t want to do that. A lot has been written about this band, some of it really amazing, intuitive. Some of it is conjecture and some of it bullshit. I just said, “Listen, I’ve got to try to find something new for myself, something new for myself to drive me through this entire process.”
That’s all you can do as a filmmaker is to have such a belief in the subject that it pulls you through every single agonizing moment of nightmare and terror when you feel like it’s all meaningless. And for me that was showing them as they were. Just letting the material speak and allowing the audience to experience the band as if they were alive in 1966 and they happen to walk in and here’s a new band called The Doors.
That was the thing that kept me going.
And I talked to the band members and I read the books of Ray and Don and I talked to a lot of people and essentially decided I would only try to use stuff that had been collaborated ““ stuff that would be true ““ as far as people knew.
Ray Manzarek – Interview
I don’t own any Doors albums.
CHRISTOPHER STIPP: Ray, I don’t know if I should start out with Your Highness, Your Holiness, I don’t know which one you would prefer”¦
MANZAREK: Your Obsequiousness. That’s what you should call me.
(Laughs)
CHRISTOPHER STIPP: Well, I’ve got so many questions and only a few minutes.
MANZAREK: You don’t have that much time so you can’t have sooo many!
(Laughs)
“I’ve got quite a few questions for you””¦OK, go ahead, dude!
(Laughs)
CS: I want to start kind of lighthearted but getting ready to talk to you I was reminded about William Shatner’s Saturday Night Live sketch where he tells people to grow up or get a life and find something else to talk about with regard to fanatical nature of the fans who obsessed over Star Trek. Are The Doors like that for you in that, yes, it was a part of your life but you’ve gone on and accomplished other artistic things. Is this something you really love talking about again, and again, and again?
MANZAREK: Absolutely, because it was The Doors. You know what, if I don’t talk about The Doors how can I thankfully work in the word psychedelic into our conversation?
(Laughs)
And I can if I talk about The Doors and I can talk about The Doors, I can talk about opening the doors of perception and if I talk about opening the doors of perception I can talk about psychedelic substances to wit, LSD.
CS: Exactly
MANZAREK: So, it’s a great opportunity to bring the message of psychedelics to the 21st century.
CS: Please. School me on something. I was reading previous interviews with you and I was absolutely amazed, as you just mentioned, the psychedelic, the opening of one’s mind. And how the current crop of what we call musicians that flail themselves around on purpose, have no real similarity to what Jim was. I was at fault when I thought it was just Jim flopping around when it was really him internalizing the music. Can you talk a little bit about the misconception about Jim vs. what other people are aping?
MANZAREK: It’s hard for me to talk about yours or the people’s misconceptions because I don’t know what the hell they’re thinking about. I know what I’m thinking when I’m making music with Jim Morrison is entering the ineffable oneness, the zen, peace and time. That’s what you do as a musician. You surrender yourself to all that goes into creating a song and you give up your ego and you become one with the music, the chord changes, the rhythm, the lyrics, the beat, all that stuff.
That’s what you are. You are nothing else in time. People are watching with their eyeballs, Jim Morrison but Dionysus, the spirit of Dionysus, the spirit of madness and chaos and wildness that enters through the ears. As far as what Morrison did on stage, I’m hardly even aware of him. I know the singer on stage, the performer but I don’t know the mad character people are watching on stage. So, it’s virtually impossible for me to answer that idea.
CS: Understood. Absolutely understood.
MANZAREK: I’m on the inside looking out. I’m not looking in. I’m looking out.
CS: Jim, when he started, humble beginnings, you and him, he had no form of musical training. What did you see in each other that you said, “You know what, we need to express ourselves.” What was that moment that you two shared that really started the genesis of the band?
MANZAREK: Well, that moment was Moonlight Drive. He sang Moonlight Drive to me. I heard the lyrics, and I heard his rephrasing and his singing and he was right on pitch and he had a good sense of timing and a good sense of space and I said “You know what, I can play all kinds of funky Ray Charles kind of stuff and Jimmy Smith organ behind that” and Jim said, “That’s cool man, that’s what I hear too. If you can do that that would be fabulous.”
And then he did My Eyes Have Seen You and Summer’s Almost Gone and those were great songs, I could play Bach behind Summer’s Almost Gone. My Eyes Have Seen You I could play all kinds of Latino jazz, southern California Latin style stuff. And Jim says “Sounds great to me, I love that” and that’s what we shared. We shared those ideas ““ those complimentary ideas.
CS: Was there a theology with the band? Was there ever an overarching theme to what the band should be about?
MANZAREK: The band should be about entering a state of transcendental consciousness. Yes. The band should be about LSD. The band should be about rising up out of the mundane, ordinary state of consciousness into a higher state of consciousness, that virtually the entire generation of the 60’s was into and that’s what we tried to do.
CS: I was reading previous articles about how I think people ““ I don’t think in our current time people ““ there is not a rising up of the youth against the oppressive nature of government and what have you that we’ve become a little soft. Do you see yourself, or at least your place in musical history, as something more powerful than just music but you were a force of social and political change?
MANZAREK: Just being in The Doors. A lot of people said “You guys didn’t participate in the marches” and whatnot but I always thought The Doors were political just by their nature. Morrison was the son of an Admiral, for God’s sake. For him to be a rock and roll guy and the son of an Admiral at the same time was virtually unheard of. Everything we did was political. Everything everyone was doing was political. We were in Vietnam just like we’re in Iraq and Afghanistan. The only difference between now and then was there was a draft and anybody could go at any moment. Just pick you up and you’re gone ““ you’re gone off to Vietnam. Now it’s a volunteer army so I suppose that people who haven’t volunteered for the army are, “Cool, I’m not going.”
I didn’t volunteer.
If you want to volunteer to go fight ““ go ahead ““ go fight. It’s like, man ““ we got to make love here not war. I’m getting a little tired of waiting. It’s the 21st century. When do we make love and not war? I don’t think that we’re going to. We like war. We love killing. We think death is great. Kill the bad guys. Aren’t we the good guys by the way? I hope we’re not the bad guys.
CS: I think it gets blurred and I’ve seen it in the idea of capitalism. I think that wraps that up really tightly ““ killing and capitalism. I think the two have gone hand in hand and I think the youth have gravitated to greed and their ideas are in things ““ not ideas of ideas.
MANZAREK: Well, Jesus was a capitalist I think. So, it’s OK to be capitalist. I always thought Jesus was a lover. He loved humanity. He said love the Lord thy God, etc. and love thy neighbor as thyself. Somehow I think we’ve abandoned that idea of love but maybe we’ll get back to it. Who knows?
CS: I don’t know if he ever said anything about being untruthful but in an interview with you I read that your feeling about Oliver Stone’s film was his take of Jim was completely, off, false, not right.
MANZAREK: Yes. Oliver Stone movie”¦.no good. It makes Jim Morrison an alcoholic and a wino, a drunkard, a crazy man. He was actually very intelligent, very sophisticated, very funny. He was a funny guy. It’s entirely the wrong portrait. That’s what so much fun doing When You’re Strange. You are going to get the real Jim Morrison being Jim Morrison and you will see the real Doors. It’s nothing but Jim Morrison as Jim Morrison and that’s what’s so great about When You’re Strange.
CS: Great film.
MANZAREK: That’s cool. Thank you, man.
CS: I was blown away ““ and I’ll tell you straight up that I am just a casual fan, not just a guy who says, “I love The Doors!”, but I got a deep appreciation for the real thing. It wasn’t a fictionalized representation. I was, however, curious about a couple things: One, your involvement was limited. I was expecting to have you and the other band members talking every so often, that didn’t happen, and, two, I was also really floored that Jim’s movie was incorporated into this documentary.
MANZAREK: See that. He was brilliant. He was a brilliant filmmaker. He was a filmmaker, and a writer, and he was Dionysian and wore leather and he was a poet. So there you are.
CS: Was there any part of you that wanted to ““ was it Tom [DiCillo’s] idea not to have you talk on screen or have anybody else talk on screen?
MANZAREK: No, the idea was we don’t have to talk. Just watch the footage. We’ve got plenty of footage. What do you want to see me talk for?
(Laughs)
I want to watch Jim Morrison and if I see Ray Manzarek”¦.I want to see The Doors. So why should we see old guys saying, “When I was a youngster”¦” I don’t want to see that. The only time that was interesting was in Warren Beatty’s movie, Reds.
CS: Good movie.
MANZAREK: It is a good movie. You see the actual people who are being portrayed. But I mean, we got The Doors. Let’s just watch The Doors. To hell with watching the guys comment.
CS: And one of the special things about the band and you might agree or disagree is that The Doors feel like band that was never corrupted by a money man, a corporation. Do you feel it was always true to its own self?
MANZAREK: Incorruptible. The Doors were pure. The Doors were rock and roll. The Doors were artists. They would not sell their souls to the man. No way.
CS: Is that a point of pride for you? That you get to say, “We were what we were and we never compromised?”
MANZAREK: Never compromised. Absolutely it’s a point of pride. Absolutely man. You bet it is.
TACOMA – Who could imagine making a documentary about dolphins could lead to so much trouble. When director Louie Psihoyos exposed what the Japanese locals were doing to dolphins in Taiji, Japan in The Cove, he found himself a wanted man. This sea-side community celebrates their relationship with the dolphin. But there’s a darkside when they herd dolphins into a cove, sell the prized ones to aquariums for $150,000 each. The remaining dolphins are slaughtered and given to school kids as whale meat. He found himself wanted by the Japanese law for various charges including videotaping undercover police officers.
Certain folks have defended this slaughter as cultural dining. How dare Americans protest what the Japanese eat. The falsely labeled dolphin meat has toxic levels of mercury. Remember that this is the same Japan that will shut off imports of American agriculture and livestock with the rumor of something being amiss. Yet they had no problem giving their children mercury poisoning.
The Cove isn’t merely a talking heads with archival footage documentary. Psihoyos is a cameraman for National Geographic and part of Oceanic Preservation Society. He joins other activists in a clandestine effort to film the hidden slaughter. The film is an espionage thriller with hidden cameras, stealth operations and undercover cops. There’s also a supporting role from Heroes‘ Hayden Panettiere. The film recently won best documentary from the National Board of Review and is on the Academy Award shortlist for nomination eligibility.
The Cove arrives on Blu-ray and DVD this December 8. Director Psihoyos called up the Party Favors hotline. Listen in as we discuss mercury poisoning, the impact the film has had on the dolphin slaughter and the Japanese legal system.
The Cove has already had an impact in popular culture with a South Park episode based on it.
HUMPDAY EVERYDAY
Always be careful when drinking with old college buddies because you never know what you’ll talk each other into doing to prove you’re not elderly sell outs. Such was the message of Humpday. The Sundance darling is one of my favorite comedies of the year. The Blu-ray and DVD have just been released. Stars Joshua Leonard and Mark Duplass called up the Party Favors hotline to discuss their buddy comedy.
Humpday got its start with a chance meeting in the land of Starbucks and drizzle.
“I met Lynn on the set of this movie called True Adolescents that I was acting in up in Seattle,” Duplass said. “She was doing stills. We knew of each other. We hit it off as filmmakers in what we believe in when in making movies: improvisation, naturalism and a strong plot. She said, ‘I want to build a movie around you.’ I said, Great, sounds like fun. She called me about a month later and said, ‘I have this idea for a movie about two straight guys who get obsessed with a porn film festival called Hump.’ It’s a real festival in Seattle. I immediately loved it. I said we should do it as two guys try to have sex with each other over the course of a weekend.”
While Duplass was the first actor involved in the project, Shelton had him lined up for the vagabond pal.
“She initially approached me about playing Andrew, the character that Josh plays. I had just played a similar character in a movie. Let me play the married guy. I’m married now so I know what its about. I’ll get a haircut and clean up. And at that point we brought Josh onboard.
“I had not worked with Josh. Lynn said, ‘I don’t know anybody that could play this role.’ My brother Jay had just met Josh at a film independent lab that Jay was mentoring. Josh was a big fan of my brother and I’s first feature, The Puffy Chair. We were huge fans of what he’d done in The Blair Witch Project. More importantly, I didn’t know him that well, but I knew enough to know that we had a very special dynamic. Josh and I became friends very quickly and got very close very quickly. I think it had something to do that we are both very headstrong, very type A and have a ton of respect for each other. I really love him. We also have a side to our personalities that in this life it works great for us. In another life, if we’d been born on different sides of a battlefield, we could tear each other’s faces off. It something about that special love-hate bond that made it right for the role.”
Leonard has a different memory of how he became part of the Humpday duo.
“I got tricked into it,” Leonard declared. “I was dear friends with Mark Duplass. I knew of Lynn, but didn’t necessarily know her work. I was in New York doing a play when I got an email from Mark, who I adore as my friend and think the world of as a filmmaker. He said, ‘You want to play my best friend in this movie?’ I said absolutely, man. I’d love to as long as we can work the schedule out. He sent me an email back saying, ‘Great. Remember that you’ve already committed to it. It’s a film about two straight guys who try to make a gay porn.’ To which I responded, ‘OK. I trust your taste, but please, as my friend, never let me commit to anything without asking what it’s about first.’”
Since the movie was improvised, the principles had to focus on the characters’ history.
“We worked with some backstory, Josh, Lynn and I had these little summits in the backroom of my house in L.A. We had one particular long weekend were we stayed up and talked about the history of the guys. What we quickly came up with was they were best friends in college, but more importantly best friends at that time in life when the world seems open. You’re cocky, young and brash and feel like you can do anything. That reminds them, now in their early 30s, that they’ve lost that spark and they’ve lost that way. They want it back. And they are constantly colliding into each other trying to figure out how to get that back. They come up with a ridiculous way of doing it.”
The idea of the duo making the gay porn comes up during a small party. While the characters are seen drinking, Were other libations supposed to be ingested during the scene?
“There was a little bit of pot smoking going on if you can catch it,” Duplass said. “It was the pot and alcohol. We talked about the idea of taking it deeper into drugs. But we didn’t want to cheapen it and make it seem like it was just the drugs speaking. We wanted to get them tipsy enough that they could do it, but not so tipsy that it wasn’t rooted in their desires.”
During this talk of gay sex at the party, Leonard’s character gets frisky with Monica played by Lynn Shelton. Was that a perk for the part?
“I do wind up making out with Lynn” said Leonard. “That was my one contractual stipulation. I had to make out with the director. I try to put that in all my contracts. This is the first time it worked out.”
Duplass also had his time making out with a woman before heading off to the hotel room with Leonard. Alycia Delmore played his wife. They built up their relationship using 21st century help.
“We talked on the phone and did some iChats ahead of time,” Duplass said. “We both had a pretty good understanding of our characters so we didn’t really talk to much about backstories between them. Alycia had such a good grasp of her character and it’s such a tough character to play. It can so easily become the cuckold who doesn’t know what’s going on and is not intelligent or the person that knows everything that’s going on and is a shrew. She rode that fine line so well, I followed a lot of her leads on these things. It was my job to bring her all the terrible news and feel her reaction.”
The interaction between the cast and crew helped the improv story take shape. “It was a team effort completely,” Leonard said. “It was one of those rare scenarios where the best idea always won and it didn’t matter whose it was. Nobody cared where it came from.”
And it seemed that nobody in the crew knew how the film was going to end.
“We shot the whole film in sequence and that was the last scene we shot,” Duplass said. “While each scene was improvised, they were very plotted out where the characters wanted to go. The final scene we didn’t do any plotting or what should or could or would happen. We were checking into a motel at 7 o’clock tonight and checking out tomorrow morning at seven a.m. We’ll see what we get. We were shooting 50 minute takes. Just going and going and going. Interestingly enough, on the first take we did, about 80 percent of what we did in that first take is in the movie. At that point you know your characters so well, you’re living them, you just follow your instincts.”
The one buggy thing about the motel scene was there wasn’t a tripod on the videocamera. Why didn’t they have the essential tool for the aspiring home porn stars who want to be able to use all hands in the action?
“We didn’t want to get too involved in the semantics of it,” Duplass said. “Ben is trying to decide at the last minute if he’s going to go or not based on the conversation with his wife. Because it’s so last minute he’s only able to come up with this home videocamera approach. There’s a purity to that being less about anything technical and more about saying, it doesn’t matter what equipment we have. It’s all about capturing the moment.”
In the hotel room for those twelve hours was Mark, Josh, the cameraman, the soundguy and director Lynn Shelton running a camera. How did the duo keep up the awkward feeling through out the night?
“It wasn’t that difficult,” Leonard said. “I was standing with my buddy in my not particularly toned body in my boxer shorts trying to figure out a way to make sweet love to him.”
Neither actor felt the pressure to spend months in the gym to achieve Mario Lopez six packs. “Fortunately for press purposes we can tell everyone that we both gained weight for the roles,” Leonard said. “Raging Bull ain’t got nothing on us.”
Both men have been busy over the last year. Leonard played Jane Adam’s boyfriend on HBO’s Hung. He’s unsure if he’ll be in the upcoming season. “I haven’t even talked to those guys about that,” he said.
Most of his attention is focused on a bigger project. “I just directed a feature based on a T. Coraghessan Boyle story called The Lie. It’s about a guy who doesn’t want to go to work so he lies to his boss that his newborn baby has just died. The movie takes place in the ensuing five days between the time that the guy throws a grenade on his life and when it blows up in his face. It was done the same way. We arced out the treatment and improvised the dialogue. Ben Kasulke who shot Humpday shot this one.
“It was the coolest group of people. It was literally one of those experiences where I called all my favorite actor friends and had them come out for a couple days. We had a five month old baby as the third lead. It was not an easy shoot.” The film stars Jane Adams, Kelli Garner, Allison Anders and Holly Woodlawn.
Duplass’ upcoming film with his brother Jay Duplass will be screened at the upcoming Sundance. You might have caught him on FX’s The League. He’s the stud of a fantasy football league.
“We had a series of meeting with the creators of The League that went on for about six months,” he said. “I was concerned about my schedule doing a TV show since my brother and I have a pretty hefty writing-directing career. We work a lot. They said, we really want you. They guaranteed me a small amount of time that I have to work on the show.”
Coincidentally in the first episode, there’s a moment that deals with him and anal penetration. Does he fear being typecast as the heterosexual guy with the tempting backdoor?
“I’m hopeful, really,” Duplass said. “Jack Black plays musicians. I play the butthole guy. We’ve both got our niche.”
DIDN’T YOU DIE
Joshua Leonard might look somewhat familiar since he was in The Blair Witch Project. I inform Leonard that I spent a year worried about him after being shown the original teaser almost a year before the release when it was still supposedly real. I kept calling a pal to find out what was on the discovered film. Had the filmmaking trio been located?
“You weren’t the one who called my parents to offer your condolences?” Leonard asked. “Right when stuff first started coming out, they got a lot of condolence calls. They took that reality marketing to the nth degree.”
FESTIVUS SPECIAL
Happy Festivus. Now prepare to wrestle me for the last slice of meatloaf!
TIGER TRAPPED
Tiger Woods has let his fans down not because he had an affair, but because he screwed a skank from VH1’s Tool Academy. He’s the greatest golfer in the universe worth billions and he dumpster dives for a mistress. How exactly did he expect discretion from a celebutard?
It’s a miracle he can stand steady and focus on a putt since VH1 ought to be VD1 with their toxic dating pool. I often visit a health clinic for testing after accidentally exposing myself to For the Love of Ray J. Can you catch crabs from sitting too close to the TV?
No wonder his wife went after him with a golf club. Tiger was on the slippery slope of scooping up Brett Michael’s Rock of Love rejects as they fall from the bus. Tiger Woods might have ended up in a Devil’s threeway with Flavor Flav if Mrs. Woods didn’t break out the pitching wedge. That’s the rehab Dr. Drew needs to dish out.
INVEST NOW
Too many people have been caught up in Fox News’ conspiracy to inflate gold prices on the rumor of an upcoming robot holocaust religious war. Why in the middle of a Road Warrior future is gold really a good investment?
I watch enough warriors of the apocalypse films. It is my supremely educated opinion that in such a bleak scenario, there’s only two investments for the smart survivalists: water and hot young women. Which means you can get rich in the ground floor of a hot market. Party Favors wants your unwanted water and hot young women with Cash4H20andHOS. Just call our hotline number and we’ll send you an insured envelope. Fill the envelope with water and women and mail it back. Our professional experts will grade the contents and we’ll send you a check. Remember to not send us your crazy girlfriend. Even radioactive mutant freaks don’t want them or crazy cat ladies. They might want the cats for appetizers. You can send them to Cash4Cats.
Don’t delay and quit listening to Glenn Beck with his gold lies. Call 1-800-Cash4H20andHOS before the FBI shuts us down again.
MR DVD
Did anyone expect Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox to completely implode upon wide release? How can you go wrong with distributing a kid’s film during the Christmas season? Earlier in the fall Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are earned over $75 million. How did Anderson’s version Roald Dahl’s Fox barely adaptation of Fox not even clear a third of Wild Things opening week and fall off the Top 10 chart by the second weekend? Was it too adult for kids and too childish for adults? Was nobody interested in a Paddington Bear-esque stop-motion animation flick? Or was it that Anderson’s cinema aesthetic has cooled off the folks that might have been curious in seeing Fox? Who became the target of producer Scott Rudin’s Monday morning bagel missile?
Seeing how this is Anderson’s third consecutive theatrical thud, is it time he gets his name moved down below the title since it’s obviously not a great selling point? Forget judging the ticket sales against the rumored budgets. Five of his six theatrical releases didn’t earn enough money at the box office to cover the cost of advertising, promotions and striking 35mm prints. His core audience seems to be people who eager to collect the Criterion Collection discs of his movies. He’s a home video superstar star like a 21st Century Andrew Stevens except he’s got Bill Murray instead of Shannon Tweed.
SEASONAL WISHES
If I have one Christmas wish, it’s the return of saxophonists in the world of Rock music. Don’t let Kenny G. make the sax an instrument of wussdom.
If I can get a second one: Joel McHale and Patrick Warburton each need to host Saturday Night Live this season. Enough with the barely talented tweens stretching on the show.
Final wish would be simple – scratch and win on a Ric Flair lottery ticket.
CHRISTMAS GIFTS
This year’s annual Christmas gifts to grab have been mixed up. First off is Warners deciding to not come out with Looney Tunes – Golden Collection, Volume 7. They also held back on putting out anymore Popeye cartoons. So much for real vintage cartoons this year. However there are the megasets of Transformers: 25th Anniversary Matrix of Leadership Edition and G.I. Joe A Real American Hero: Complete Collector’s Set that gives all their ’80s animated goodness.
Normally I’d list Saturday Night Live: The Complete Fifth Season as a must grab. This was the season with the last of the Not Ready for Prime Time Players after Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi left. This was the end of the Buck Henry hosted episodes. Ultimately this is the last season of SNL that I’d willing pick up as boxset. Recently the first four seasons have been going at various stores for $15 instead of $70. I can wait till the price drop hits.
There is one thing on my must get list: The Complete Peanuts 1971-1974 contains volume 11 & 12 in the series. This is the time when Lucy and Linus get their brother Rerun. Also the birth of Joe Cool takes center stage. There’s still 25 years to go before Charles Schulz ended the strip. This should be a constant gift under the tree until 2016. Hope the world doesn’t end in 2012 cause I do want to see what I missed in the ’90s.
BLU-RAY HEAVEN
G-Force seemed like a joke movie poster in Tracy Morgan’s 30 Rock dressing room. Turns out they did make a film about a pack of guinea pigs that are high tech secret agents with beyond Bond gadgets. The CGI pets are voiced by major stars like Morgan, Steve Buscemi, Penelope Cruz, Jon Favreau and investment guru Nic Cage. Their unit become victims of government cutbacks. They’re returned to the pet store, but you know their fate won’t be stuck in a kindergarten. They must save the world. Kelli Garner of The Lie also shows up in human form. The Blu-ray looks good with the furry fury of the G-Force. The boxset also includes the DVD and a digital copy so you want watch it on an iPod. There’s plenty of bonus features with Jerry Bruckheimer showing us how he made Nic Cage finally have believable hair in a film. G-Force is the perfect mindless film to watch while enjoying the egg nog this Christmas.
Star Trek: The Original Series – Season 3 Blu-ray completes the Kirk and Spock TV years in 1080p. Like the previous editions, viewers can choose between the original effects and the enhanced HD CGI effects. The reason to get this set is “The Way to Eden” with the invasion of the Space Hippies! Charles Napier (Russ Meyer superstar and Squidbillies sheriff) riffs galactic groovy tunes on his futuristic guitar. Napier’s jaw was made for HiDef. Amongst the large amounts of bonus features is an early cut of “Where No Man Has Gone Before” that’s never been released. This was the second pilot with Kirk finally in the captain’s chair. They didn’t get to the end of their five year mission.
World’s Greatest Dad ruined my belief that Robin Williams is a complete sell out whore. How much hope could there be for him after crapping out Man of the Year and RV. Thankfully Bobcat Goldthwait brought him back to the delicious dark side of comic genius. Williams is a failed writer who is about to get fired from his high school for an unpopular poetry writing course. His son (Spy Kids‘s Daryl Sabara) is a gross teen who likes scat sex videos. Robin lives to flirt with the art teacher (Alexi Gilmore). Things go extremely bad when his son dies in hangs himself while jacking off. Robin does what any parent does in such a case – zips up his son’s pants and makes it look like a normal suicide. He writes a suicide note on the kid’s computer to explain this sad end. The letter becomes a hit. Robin exploits his son’s ghost to rejuvenate his own writing career. How far will he go to achieve success? It just gets extremely uncomfortable as Williams finally gives a performance that just won’t play for the braindead that loved Bicentennial Man. It’s such a relief that Bobcat was able to remind us that Robin Williams isn’t just a schmaltz fiend.
Taxi: The Final Season wraps up a prime sitcom in its fifth season. NBC picked up the show for what wasn’t the great ratings comeback. The big focus for a lot of the episodes were Latka (Andy Kaufman) and Simka (Carol Kane). “The Shloogel Show” is their little party for the rest of the gang. Rev. Jim also dominates the action. “Jim’s Inheritance” has him up for his dad’s fortune. His blood thirsty siblings want him ruled incompetent so they’d control the inheritance. It’s up to Alex (Judd Hirsch) and Louie (Danny DeVito) to back up his semi-sanity. “Scenskees from a Marriage” discloses Latka having a fling with a female cabbie. As punishment, they throw a party. The last male guest will sleep with Simka. “Crime and Punishment” gives the usually quiet Jeff (J. Alan Thomas) an episode. He gets framed for Louie skimming money. He finds himself being arrested. Will Louie confess or let his assistant take the rap? The big finale isn’t really a farewell episode with “Simka’s Monthlies.” She’s going to be deported. Judging how lame other sitcom farewells have been, it’s appreciated that Taxi didn’t wrap it up. We can still dream that Elaine Nardo (Marilu Henner) is hacking around Manhattan.
The Fugitive – Season Three, Volume Two contains the final 15 black and white episodes of this four year chase. No longer would Dr. Richard Kimble (David Janssen) hide in the shadows. “Wife Killer” pours on the pressure when Kimble kidnaps the Man with One Arm. Can he coax a confession and finally gain his freedom? Not to spoil the ending, but there are more episodes. “This’ll Kill You” puts Kimble in the employment of Mickey Rooney at a laundry. “Stroke of Genius” makes Telly Savalas play Beau Bridges’ son. Did Lloyd sign off on this? Telly’s brother George has a bit part. “With Strings Attached” presents Donald Pleasence an almost young. “The White Knight” lets future Mission: Impossible star Steven Hill and Arrested Development‘s Jessica Walter have a forbidden affair with Ted Knight (Too Close For Comfort) investigating. “In a Plain Paper Wrapper” unleashes a mean Kurt Russell under the direction of Richard Donner. Only one more year and Kimble’s entire flight from justice will be captured on DVD.
Perry Mason – Season 4, Volume 2 gives a dozen cases that twist like pretzel justice. “The Case of the Wintry Wife” goes boom when an inventor’s lab explodes. Michael Fox plays the autopsy surgeon. He’s the reason why there’s a Michael J. Fox. “The Case of the Angry Dead Man” has a rich guy gets declared dead even though he survived a near drowning. After a few days of being a ghost, he really does turn up dead. “The Case of the Barefaced Witness” presents Adam West. Always fun to see Batman tangle with Perry Mason (Raymond Burr). “The Case of the Grumbling Grandfather” creaks with Gavin MacLeod (The Love Boat). This is still my favorite legal series with it’s black and white certainty. There’s five more seasons to go.
Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie – Extended Edition should be your go to holiday gift if you’ve got an elementary school niece. While doing an informal chat with 8 year old girls, I discovered that Selena Gomez has stolen all of Miley Cyrus’ heat. Gomez is part of a family of wizards-in-training. Her dad is played by David DeLuise, Dom’s son. The family goes on vacation and Gomez casts as spell that might wipe the family off the map. The only thing that can reverse her screwed up spell is the “Stone of Dreams.” Imagine the hours of silence as the kids leave you around during post Christmas cool down.
The Tudors The Complete Third Season gives us even more of Henry VIII’s wives. Anne Boleyn met the axe so now Henry (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is on the prowl for a third wife. He’s also dealing with an insurrection upset at the ousting of the Catholic Church from England. Mostly they hate Thomas Cromwell (James Frain). Jane Seymour is next on base. She knows it’s all about popping out a boy to maintain her head. I don’t want to spoil this for those who skipped English history class, but Jane didn’t live for centuries to create the Open Hearts design. Henry remarries Anna of Cleeve (singer Joss Stone). This is a gutsy role since Stone is savaged as trollish. He moves onto Katherine Howard. She’s quite the minx. There’s only 8 episodes for this season even with three fresh wives in the mix. The next season on Showtime will wrap up Henry’s serial marrying ways along with his life. This is truly a classy production that properly relates history by mixing education with Cinemax After Dark moments.
The Girl From Monaco tangles legal work with a romantic playground. Fabrice Luchini is a major lawyer with strange ticks. He heads to Monaco to defend a notorious character. However the lawyer has plans to drop his legal briefs for Louse Bourgoin. She’s messing with his mind as you’d expect from a vixen of her calibre. When she’s in pure seduction mode, you’ll forget there’s a film going on. He forgets he has a paying client as he goes native. Always nice to have a Riviera tale on the TV screen while it’s getting nippy outside.
Chai Lai Angels: Dangerous Flowers is a Thai flavored take on Charlie’s Angels. This isn’t a carbon copy since you get five female undercover agents. The quintet are brought onto a case to protect the daughter of a professor and martial arts master. Gangsters swear she knows where to find the Andaman Pearl. She needs help from the Angels. There’s plenty of over the top action with plenty of the ladies kicking mobster ass. There’s a sweet car explosion that doesn’t look CGI enhanced. This is so much better than those Drew Barrymore Charlie’s Angels movies. The bonus features include music videos that introduce the five undercover agents.
And now, you can follow me on TWITTER under the name: Stipp
Item #1
I would remiss if I didn’t mention the untimely passing of John Hughes.
You will obviously seeing a lot of short articles about the ma’s impact on many of the thirty-somethings in Internet movie journalism and I would have to be included in that bunch.
FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF was an anthem, really, to suburbanite kids like me who understood Hughes’ aesthetic on the adolescent desire to just take some time out for yourself. SIXTEEN CANDLES was a movie that I am thankful for seeing in the theater as a young kid. I knew it was a funny then and I know it’s a funny movie now. I even remember having my father taking my brother and I to see PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES. All three of these cinematic experiences were a delight and stood in stark contrast to the critical reception his films received at the hands of critics who would eat their words so many years after they realized what John Hughes was doing with his movies.
I know it sounds like a plug, and if it was online to read to free I would share it here, but if you happen to see Geek Monthly’s August issue with Seth Green on the cover I delve in deeper to John’s movies as I chart the course of some documentary filmmakers who made their own film, DON’T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME, which uses new interviews with the film’s cast and creators to tell how they were inspired by John’s work.
He may have been gone for decades but that hasn’t made his passing any less easy to those of us who could quote endlessly from his films. There’s a reason why we’re able to do that and it doesn’t have anything to do with their accessibility; he was a gifted writer and filmmaker who was able to distill the experiences of teenage life and, eventually, older age.
He will be missed.
Item #2
Bernie Madoff.
There is a moment on the DVD of Ripped Off: Madoff and the Scamming of America where Bernie is talking to a class full of business hopefuls how he feels about governmental regulation and, essentially, how he feels about finance in general. Not only is it hilarious but it’s a fascinating snapshot into the mind of a man who no doubt knew what he was doing at the time he was guiding the minds of those eager to plunder the riches found in high paying financial jobs. The man, who would get convicted of stealing billions upon billions of dollars, is the perfect model upon which this documentary is set against and thankfully so.
The world of economics, especially to people like me who are allergic to the point needing an EpiPen when opening the Business section of my local newspaper, is one shrouded in highfalutin linguistics that purposely confuse rubes like me who have to surrender to the “expert” guidance of those who are entrusted with doing the right thing. Regulation couldn’t help those who Bernie Madoff swindled and honestly this documentary puts everything into a perspective that helps to show how even those who are already smarter than a lot of us got taken as well.
Ripped Off should be one that everyone who wants to understand this economic crisis from an angle divested from the talking heads who want to blame one party or the other. I didn’t get robbed of any money and this program spoke to me in a language that even I could grasp. I’m not afraid to admit that I need my information served to me in ways that helped me understand credit issues in MAXED OUT or the obesity problem in SUPER SIZE ME.
There is something delicious to Madoff being sentenced to 150 years in prison after you see the wide swath of destruction left in his paper trail. Ripped Off proves why 150 years isn’t punishment enough for this confidence man.
PAPER HEART – Interview Those looking for love won’t ever find it and those who don’t believe it exists never had a child who dotes on them. It’s a slippery thing, love, when you think about the way it finds some and the way it ignores others. Growing up, I was enchanted by films like ONE CRAZY SUMMER and BETTER OFF DEAD by director Savage Steve Holland or the suite of films from John Hughes where characters were placed into every embarrassing situation as it pertains to the courting rituals of the modern American teen. As you head into older age, it would follow, should “love” be as elusive as it was during the awkward years of prepubescence you would start developing the jagged edges of those burnt-out on bad relationships while developing an acute distaste for all things sweet and lovey-dovey.
In steps Charlyne Yi and Nick Jasenovec.
Their film, PAPER HEART, looks to take the stance that love needs some defining in an age where over 50% of marriages end in divorce and where hearts are broken at breakneck speed every minute of the day across this land of ours. The documentary blurs the lines of fiction and truth but with an emotion that is as bizarre and weirdly nebulous as love the structure of the film is wonderfully suited to best strip down this most basic of emotions.
Charlyne Yi and Nick Jasenovec stopped in Phoenix to talk about their film and to discuss the construction of the best docu-fiction motion picture you’ll see all year.
CHRISTOPHER STIPP: Looking at the film’s promotional poster and reading previous interviews where the idea of the movie crew being in the movie wasn’t always factored in…was it a conscious choice to blur the line between documentary and fiction?
NICK JASENOVEC: Well we did know. We were shooting with two cameras and shooting spontaneously and shooting in that manner you knew that occasionally you were going to capture a crew on camera and people that weren’t necessarily part of the scene. So we knew that we would have it but we didn’t want to make them an integral part of the story line. We didn’t want to rely on that. We had scenes in the outline where the camera crew kind of gets in the way of things and sort of effects the relationship but we didn’t want it to be a main focus but then when we got to the editing room and saw the footage, it was the most clear conflict in the movie. Because we didn’t make a traditional film so there’s not a – Charlene cheats on Mike and Mike find out and they break up but then she comes back to him. So there was no sort of fake plot points, so it was really kind of an easy going film from start to finish so when we found conflict in the editing room we decided to jump on that and make that the focus.
CS: How did you come up with the treatment?
NICK JASENOVEC: It started with Charlene.
CHARLYNE YI: Originally I wanted to make a traditional ““ I keep wanting to say “straight” documentary but that seems sexual.
(Laughs)
I wanted to make a traditional documentary about love inspired by people I’ve met in my life that opened up to me about their love stories. Most movies to have a sort of love relationship in the film and why not make one about real stories and there’s so much more meaning to them because they are real. So I came to Nick with that idea and Allison was kind of skeptical about love at the time and from there he said, “You should go on camera.” I didn’t know about that.
JASENOVEC: It made sense because she performs all around Los Angeles and is comfortable on stage and everything. She’s really funny and charming and she has a unique comedic voice so it just made sense. A lot of our favorite documentaries always feature the document writer on camera in the primary role and once I found out how she felt about love I thought the audience should really experience the journey through her eyes. Because she had these specific feelings and that’s what drives the film. So once we decided that we started working on the idea and came up with the sort of scripted story line to tie everything together and give the story some sort of arch for Charlene and just for story line.
CS: Exactly…and that leads into the question about how it started with just a few pages. I read that an hour before shooting you would huddle together and started hammering things out. Did you notice an evolution of what was happening as each shoot ““ an hour before shooting ““ any trends? Or was it literally as random as it appears?
JASENOVEC: It was. Sometimes we’d beat it out and start shooting and someone would say, it’s not working.
YI: Yea, and then we’d have to have another meeting.
(Laughs)
JASENOVEC: But then other times you would have no idea and have to wing it and then it would turn out great.
YI: And you find that through improvising it worked.
JASENOVEC: The movie itself has to feel ““ both halves of the movie have to feel equal. The have to feel of the same cloth. So like all the scenes where Charlene or Michael or Jake are acting have to feel they were captured just like the documentary. So, improve was just the obvious choice just to keep things fresh.
YI: And organic.
JASENOVEC: Unscripted. Doesn’t feel like they were reading lines from something. It was always different. I don’t remember patterns really but there were times where ““ I remember a scene in the film where they were driving out to Joshua Tree on the drive out to Palm Springs. That was just supposed to be one of the many dates. But instead it just naturally came out, Michael had the idea that I don’t think my character would be very excited about bring the cooler along. So that became the focus of the scene. So there were tons of surprises.
YI: And then in the editing room it became the focus of the movie how ““ a relevant scene that would help the arch.
JASENOVEC: I can’t remember what interview we talked about what.
CS: Everyone is trying to be different.
JASENOVEC: These are different questions.
YI: The questions are relevant.
JASENOVEC: Yeah, but I’m just trying to remember what we said in which one. Like, oh shoot, did we cover that in this one.
CS: “What lie did we tell?”
(Laughs)
JASENOVEC: Yeah, we have to keep all our lies straight.
(Laugh)
CS: Now that begs the question, when you had about 300 hours footage and you said, “OK, we have 300 hours and we need to make a movie that’s 90 minutes and change.” Where do you start? Obviously you start with your story.
JASENOVEC: The first thing we put together was no documentary stuff just Charlene setting out to make the movie, meeting Michael, starting the relationship, whatever happens happens. The relationship story line. That’s an easier way to put it. And that alone without any documentary stuff I think was over 2 hours. So we knew that that wasn’t going to work.
(Laughs)
We knew it had to be half and half and then had to get it down to about 45 minutes. So think from there, we definitely had a lot of stuff, but that was where the conflict of the cameras impeding the relationship really stood out, so we made that the focus. We restructured and got it down to about an hour and then started cutting the documentaries interviews together and started putting them in place and looking at which interviews would fit in which parts of the movie and it was just all different too. Because you would think that you would want to put an interview in a scene to comment on that scene, but when we showed it to people, not only did they not catch it but it felt like everything was in the wrong place. So a lot of the scenes, to me, the documentary interviews feel like some of them should more obviously be closer to the scenes but they aren’t. Oh like the puppet stuff, the recreations. Remember we took the themes of the four and this was the first meeting, the early part of the relationship and it didn’t work at all.
YI: Yes. It’s hard to pinpoint why it didn’t work. It’s like the energy of the scene and then”¦
JASENOVEC: There’s probably 100 different versions of this movie. It’s just like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Especially with the documentary stuff. The story line, once you figure that out, that’s going to stay the same but where do you put the documentary stuff. What interviews go where? It was interesting.
CS: Who decided to make the cut and who didn’t, especially when you are trying to select the best pieces?
JASENOVEC: Almost everyone made the cut. Some were shorter than others just based on what the relevant information was or maybe how interesting the information was. We definitely had favorites and least favorites. Not to say that it’s a personal film but just in terms of how it works in the movie. There’s a couple that didn’t make it in. And then the ones that did, yea. Each interview is probably an hour, an hour and a half long so we had to boil that down to what was the core idea of each interview and tie it into the story line.
YI: We had a set of general and specific questions applying to the scientist.
JASENOVEC: And also certain interviews were approached based on where ““ different interviews were approached in different ways. For this interview, let’s do this one where Charlene and Michael have been together for a little while so there’s a comfort there and can talk about that relationship in this interview.
YI: And hopefully give advice.
JASENOVEC: Yeah, and then another interview she would just be approaching it from where she is at the beginning of the film so that also dictated some of the order. If we chose to use anything that was specific.
YI: Yeah.
JASENOVEC: Just thinking back on it”¦
YI: Gives me a headache
(Laughs)
JASENOVEC: It was a pretty miserable time. I remember the first time we lost our first cut we were like, what have we made? This is never going to make it.
YI: We were so depressed. We were just sad eating.
(Laughs)
CS: Does it help that you guys did this independently?
YI: Most definitely. I think if people saw the 300 hours of footage people wouldn’t understand what we made.
JASENOVEC: Because we would just keep the cameras rolling. We would try things that didn’t work a lot of the times. We didn’t have to show footage to anybody. No one was looking over our shoulders. We did have a weekly budget and we had a bond company. So as long as we stayed in budget and were getting the footage that we thought we needed, we were OK. No one from the financiers saw the movie until we were finished with it.
YI: I can’t imagine if we did get input. That would have destroyed the film.
JASENOVEC: It was confusing enough trying to figure it out on your own but if you have other outside people telling you what to do, I don’t think we would have discovered anything we discovered.
YI: And there’s already so much pressure. Like us being on the road running constantly trying to nail shots, getting kicked out of places because we don’t have permits”¦so it was difficult.
JASENOVEC: We were really lucky.
CS: Your and Michael’s chemistry on the screen was really great. Did you find that your two comedy styles. Well, I shouldn’t say styles but Michael came into this and you guys had to make it work. I don’t want to ask a stupid question like, “Was it easy to do?”
(Laughs)
But did you find that you two complement each other?
YI: I think we all have the same sense of humor. You [Nick], me, Jake and Michael.
JASENOVEC: We are all friends so we’re all comfortable around each other so that helps. So there was no bad idea.
YI: There was no, “Let’s do it my way.” We were, “Yeah, let’s do that. Let’s try it.”
JASENOVEC: And I think that Charlene and Michel both love twisting realities and playing with the audience’s perceptions and stuff. When we came up with the idea of the movie we knew that Mike was perfect. He loves doing stuff like this. And knew that we would all be on the same page. There were very few disagreements.
YI: The only disagreement was when he was complaining that he didn’t have enough raisins.
DURHAM – Realism and connecting with your audience were the themes of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.
The days that numerous documentaries inspired major bidding wars, received massive publicity campaigns and pulled in healthy theatrical revenue are over. Many of the key dependable distributors have been slashed by the major studio parents. During the “State of the Doc” panel, there was no bragging about massive returns that were common during the era of March of the Penguins ($77 million) and Super-Size Me ($11 million). Magnolia was happy with the returns on Oscar winner Man on Wire from theatrical and DVD. But nobody was pricing a Porsche and a house in Malibu from their Wire share. The recession has hit the documentary world.
Matt Cowal, the VP of publicity and marketing at Magnolia said the company was more comfortable sinking a million dollars to advertise a film that makes $3 million than burn through $9 million in hopes of having the documentary crack $10 million. The tightening of promotional dollars has made marketing more strategic in an industry that loves to carpetbomb. What is the new model?
Gary Hustwit took over the discussion when it came to coming up with a new business model. The director of Helvetica and the upcoming Objectified said a good documentary film director must go straight to his audience via the internet. Helvetica became a sensation last year when the rep from Red Envelope/Netflix talked about how it was doing great numbers on the website’s WatchNow function. Why? Because graphic designers were geeking out to the documentary about the font. This wasn’t merely word of mouth. Hustwit spent his time working blogs and websites frequented by graphic designers. He made them part of the discussion of the film. It became a chapter in any good student’s textbook. He’s currently doing the same thing for Objectified which deals with designers of devices such as the iPod. No matter the subject of your documentary, there’s bound to be dozens of blogs receptive to knowing there’s a film coming out.
Hustwit also believes the documentary director needs to create a sensation when his film arrives in a town by appearing at a screening. He’s doing a cross-country journey when it opens later this spring. This is not a business for the shy. It should be noted that Hustwit worked at legendary indie label SST (Black Flag, fIREHOSE and Husker Du). He has the get in the van bravado when it comes to bring a movie to the people. He was not happy at the thought of letting the distributor take care of the “heavy work.” He likes to meet the people and share a beer with them after the screening. Plus he doesn’t want to lose control of his film.
Ira Deutchman of Emerging Pictures mentioned that digital projection should help movie theaters be able to grow an audience since they don’t have to deal with prints and storage. A film can only play once a week without it being a burden in the booth. He predicts a Midnight Movies effect can be possible. Plus it won’t require a distributor to spend $5,000 a print. But you still have to put butts in the seats.
Rick Allen of Snag Films wasn’t about the theatrical. Their company distributes documentaries over the internet using ad breaks to generate revenue. Their big boost is a connection to AOL. They place their nearly 1,000 titles into news articles related to the film. He mentioned that more people saw The Life And Times of Harvey Milk from their streams than watched it when it made it’s Oscar winning run two decades ago. There’s still not enough cash flow from online streaming to cover the nut on a quality documentary.
Molly Thompson of A&E’s IndieFilms discussed how a low budget reality series like Intervention get high ratings than when Jesus Camp ran on the channel. I asked if a filmmaker would be better off pitching an idea to A&E in which the documentary was a pilot movie for a reality series. She didn’t quite see that working. Although in a way this is how Cathouse and King of Cars went from one shot deals to shows. Although I can’t imagine weekly episodes of Burma VJ..
While some might view this panel as depressing, the words spoken by these players should be inspirational. If you’re going to make a documentary: Do it because you are passionate about the subject. If you are going to invest in a documentary: Do it because you want to spread the word about the subject. Be extremely sensible in your expenses and expectations. This isn’t a great way to get rich.
THE SCOOP
Saint Misbehavin’: The Wavy Gravy Movie proved to be a smash success. The film takes us into the life of the Woodstock icon who became an ice cream flavor. He’s the guy who served breakfast in bed to the concertgoers. He was also part of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters as covered in Tom Wolfe’s Electric Acid Kool-Aid Test. His story doesn’t end as merely a relic of the ’60s. Director Michelle Esrick enlightens us to his two main passions: Camp Winnarainbow and the Seva Foundation. The Camp is for kids to learn circus skills. Seva goes around the world performing eye surgery on people who need it. Wavy has hosted numerous benefit concerts for Seva. This is a much happier and inspirational film than Rainbow Man.
After the screening, I had a chance to interview Wavy Gravy and Esrick. She had worked on this documentary for nearly a decade. His 72 years have been packed with a lot of major experience from the Beats to the psychedelic San Francisco scene. This connection made me ask a question that accidentally combine Neal Cassidy, the inspiration for Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Jack Casady, the bassist for the Jefferson Airplane. This first segment deals with Wavy’s relationship with Neal and Jack and Jack. Plus he talks about his time with the Merry Pranksters.
Wavy now discusses the process of how he became an ice cream flavor. We also get the inside scoop on why the corporate beancounters killed his popular flavor. He reveals his plan as a frozen treat comeback as a sorbet. Finally he issues a challenge to Stephen Colbert and his Americone Dream.
Wavy gives you his surefire tip on how to come down from a bad LSD trip. The Party Favors would like you to either walk or get a sober friend to drive you to the grocery store. We do not condone people tripping behind the wheel. Wavy remembers his time at the first Woodstock. He has choice words for Fred Durst. Finally we get the answer to the question: Has Wavy Gravy met Meatloaf?
AFTER SHOW
Legendary documentarian D. A. Pennebaker was an executive producer on Saint Misbehavin’. He directed Don’t Look Back, Monterery Pop and The War Room (with his wife Chris Hegedus). We had a short unfilmed chat after the film. Turns out that contrary to rumor, he is not making a sequel to Al Franken: God Spoke. Al didn’t think it would be a good move to have a film crew following him around on his campaign to be Minnesota’s senator. Hopefully someone will construct a documentary on the insanity that is the recount that’s gone nearly half a year. Also no luck on Pennebaker making a director’s cut of Bob Dylan’s Eat the Document anytime soon.
THE FILMS
What I appreciate the most about Full Frame is that it is only about documentaries instead of mixing it up with the latest Indie drama sensations like Sundance. You’re getting an eyeful of reality instead of watching Hollywood stars slum it for a shot at Oscar gold. These are real people in jeopardy on the big screen.
The big winner of the festival was Burma VJ. Remember a few years back when we’d occasionally get reports on the news about riots in Rangoon? There wasn’t too much to show us since the military generals running the country had completely blocked all outside media from their borders. Burma VJ exposed a group of daring individuals who used small videocameras and cellphones to get the truth out to the world. Their footage is inspirational and horrifying. Ever seen a Japanese tourist with a videocamera get shot down in the street? There’s footage of a group of protesters trapped in a stairwell as the armed troops advance. These are people who are as good as dead. This is not a tourism board approved vision of the country. Burma VJ takes us to the heart of the battle for a struggle that we reduce to a blurb on a news network crawl while we get another update on the Octomom.
Unmistaken Child is a real life version of Little Buddha. A monk goes out in search of the reincarnated soul of his master. When he finds the kid, he has to talk the parents in giving up control of the child. The film also won several of the major awards. Supermen of Malegaon takes us to the indie world of Bollywood. It’s the creation of a fake Superman film minus paying any rights to use a version of the character. It’s hilarious to see the barely legal production.
Art & Copy is perfect viewing for fans of Mad Men. This is a historical appreciation of the advertising minds that brought us campaigns that have been seared into our collective minds. Did you know the same guy who created those sweet Perrier ads about the quaint village also brought us Ronald Reagan’s “It’s Morning Again in America” commercials? The troubling disclosure is that Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign was inspired by Gary Gilmore’s last words to the firing squad when he was execute in Utah. I spoke with the director and producers afterward. The big problem they had was clearing the commercials for inclusion. They had to take off the Beatles’ “Revolution” from the Nike ad since there was no way they could license the song. After seeing the film, you’ll have to hop onto youtube to see bootleg copies of the ads that couldn’t make the cut. Mechanical Love wasn’t quite Lars and the Real Girl Come Alive. The film focuses on a more platonic robot-human relationship. A woman at a retirement home gets happiness from taking care of her cyber-seal pup. The interaction keeps her active versus the other elderly ladies. The bizarre part is a Japanese scientist making an android version of himself. His goal is to see how his wife and child react to the replacement dad. He thinks the wife will like the robo-hubby since the guy will pay attention to her. It’s a creepy film that can be a precursor to The Terminator.
Wounded Knee breaks down the time in 1973 when the American Indian Movement took over a small town in South Dakota to protest the injustices at a nearby reservation. The filmmakers got their hands on plenty of original footage to let us get a sense of the stand off. All sides get their say in the recent interviews. Like Burma VJ, we get to see the heart of the battle as it happened. This is scheduled to play on PBS soon. Bitch Academy takes us inside a class that teaches Russian women how to seduce and marry rich Western men. It’s almost a stripper education for these ladies.
The film that made me a raving cheerleader was Smile Til It Hurts: The Up With People Story. Because the movie is under a review embargo, I’m not allowed to say too much. If you every wondered if those lame kids who used to sing at halftime of the Super Bowl were part of a freakish cult, this movie answers the question. It’s a “family friendly” creepfest. What makes this documentary really work is that director Lee Story and crew were able to interview every side from the disenchanted ex-members to the guy who ran it. Did you know they paid to be a part of the show? Your impression of these kids will change by the end of the film. They also have tons of vintage footage including their squeaky clean Super Bowl performances. When “Smile Til It Hurts comes to your town, run down to the cinema or festival.
Once more Full Frame proved to be a top tier film festival with it’s line up. It’s impossible to see all the films they show, but I never felt completely cheated by the ones I chose. They wrapped it up with an Awards lunch featuring BBQ. Mmmmmm. Nothing tastes like victory than a plate of BBQ and a sweet tea. If you have a free week in April, come on down for next year’s festival. I’ll save a hush puppy for you.
DVD SHELF
American Swing gets inside the world of Plato’s Retreat. The legendary Manhattan swingers club rose to fame in the late ’70s with its message of sexual liberation for married couples. The club was a great place to bring the wife, meet interesting people and catch their crabs. Larry Levinson was the owner of Plato’s. He became the spokesperson for the swinging lifestyle. We get to see him on various talkshows including Phil Donahue old chatter. The movie is hilarious with Buck Henry and others talking about the buffet they served at the sex club. They didn’t have a sneeze guard. Who knew what dripped on the meatloaf. The most disturbing part of the film is realizing that the proclaimed King of Swing wasn’t really a swinger. He had a girlfriend that was the semi-Queen of the club, but she was a figurehead in his life. They weren’t a couple. Larry was guy who liked to screw and built a kingdom to get him more ladies than a fleet of Corvettes. There’s the hint that mobsters controlled this den of sin. What makes this documentary better than any talking head effort on VH1 is that there’s tons of X-rated footage from inside Plato’s Retreat. For folks with a fetish for ’70s Bridge and Tunnel grooming, you’ll be chicken choking heaven. I dare you to watch this with grandma and ask if she had the double fro in ’77.
Ron White: Behavioral Problems brings more insight from the boozing member of The Blue Collar Comedy Tour. He’s my favorite of the quartet. Ron’s the only one I can imagine paying to see. This performance from Seattle allows him to breakdown his recent bust for marijuana possession when the cops cornered his private jet. He talks about how the pleasure of a bidet has made him understand the allure of gay sex. The talk about anal sex with his wife is right on the mark. The DVD gives 40 more minutes to his routine than what you’ll catch on the Comedy Central version of the special. It’s worth it for his talk about Brokeback Mountain. You’ll never spit in your hand again without thinking of Ron’s take.
Splinter is the perfect excuse to not take your significant other on a camping trip. A happy couple (Paulo Costanzo and Jill Wagner) go on a romantic outdoor vacation. She’s lured him into the wilderness with the promise of anniversary sex under the stars. However things go wrong when they’re taken hostage by an escaped convict (Shea Whigham) and his girlfriend (Rachel Kerbs). Normally that’s enough for a film, but this one takes a monster twist. A weird virus is spreading that turns creatures into killer porcupines. The couples are trapped inside a country service station while the monsters attack wanting to make them monsters. This is good spooky fun with the vicious, spiny creatures tearing up the screen. Splinter is the Party Favors’ scare-fest of the week.
Hawaii Five-O: The Sixth Season brings another dose of island justice to the mainland. You can’t top Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord) as the ultimate lawman since he answers to nobody when he’s on a case. “Hookman” has a sniper going around killing cops. He’s got a bullet for McGarrett. The twist is the killer has hooks for hands thus he leaves no fingerprints at the crime scenes. “Charter for Death” has Bert Convy playing a mobster’s son-in-law. They’re smuggling themselves back into America except they caught bubonic plague. The Five-O crew have to track him down before he infects the town. “One Big Happy Family” is a stunner since it has Slim Pickens (Blazing Saddles) being the father of a murderous family. Have you ever seen Slim knife a man to death? His equally cold blooded son is Bo Hopkins. He’s the guy who looked like Jerry Reed in those Burt Reynolds’ films. Hawaii Five-O: The Sixth Season has the show being more grounded in the cop work than the freaky sci-fi angles. There’s no Wo Fat this season.
Mission: Impossible: The Sixth TV Season is the penultimate outing for the espionage series. Lynda Day George has replaced Lesley Ann Warren as the female member of the task force. Leonard Nimoy is gone after two seasons. But they didn’t replace him with a new man of a 1,000 faces mimic. We’re left with Peter Graves, Peter Lupus and Greg Morris as the key team members. The show in 1971-72 season focuses on them fighting mobsters. There’s not too many missions involving Latin America or Eastern Bloc countries. “Blind” has Peter Graves using a special pair of contact lens to fake being blind. Can he fool a mobster into letting him take over the inner sanctum. Tom Bosley (Happy Days) is part of the mob. “Encore” has the team make William Shatner (Star Trek) fooled into thinking it’s three decades earlier. They want to know where he hid a body. Can they fool him into a flashback confession? “The Miracle” brings us the magic of Joe Don Baker. They have to locate a heroin shipment. Russ Meyer’s mega-star and Squidbilly voice Charles Napier is a thug on “Run for the Money.” Geoffrey Lewis (the man who isn’t Robert Pine) is part of a devious plot to put a murder witness into mental hospital in “The Committed.” Following up his Hawaii Five-O guest shot, Bert Convy is back in “Trapped.” The shift to domestic missions helps the show since they no longer have to redress the Desliu studios as an alleged foreign country. Rumor has it the final season will be out this fall.
Jake and the Fatman: Season Two was a major game changer for the series since they decided to send William Conrad and Joe Penny to Hawaii. Why the location shift? To fill the production gap left by Magnum P.I. Because of a writer’s strike, season two only had the two-hour movie and 9 episodes. “Wish You Were Here” has Jake fly to Hawaii to visit an old buddy. Things go bad when the guy is killed by a sniper. There’s a few Hawaii Five-O alumni on this episode including Al Harrington (Det. Ben Kokua) and Khigh Dhiegh (Wo Fat) still on their same side of the law. The new location does pretty up the gruff Fatman. He’s an unshaven Buddha in a tropical paradise. Can the Fatman clean up the islands like Jack Lord?
A Song Is Born brings together Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder in a world of jazz legends. A gangster’s moll (Virginia Mayo) hides from the cops at a musical research institute. She attacks the eye of the head professor (Danny Kaye). Can he impress a woman who has a thing for extremely bad boys? The highlight of the film is getting to see Tommy Dorsey, Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton and Benny Goodman perform in Technicolor.
It’s a Pleasure will answer the question for fans of Car Talk that wonder what they mean by “Sonja Henie’s tutu.” The ice skating sensation stars in this Technicolor romance on ice. This is an early version of The Cutting Edge. Michael O’Shea is hockey player that’s banned from the sport after he beats up a ref. His only chance at redemption is to become Sonja Henie’s figure skating partner. Can he clean up his act? He gets tempted to party up with Marie McDonald skates onto the ice. There’s plenty of great skating action that should appeal to the fans of the sport.
The Goldwyn Follies is a Technicolor musical featuring the music of George and Ira Gershwin. Adolphe Menjou is the producer of box office hits who hits a cold streak. In order to connect to the little people, he hires Andrea Leeds to connect to the common man. However his wants to connect with her on a carnal basis. Things get complicated when singer Kenny Baker also wants Andrea. Producer versus crooner is never a fair fight since a producer really knows how to thrill a woman with a production. The songs include “Love Walked In” and “Love Is Here to Stay.” It’s a fun nostalgic view of an innocent love triangle that glows like its hues.
GIVEAWAY
CBS DVD is letting us send 5 lucky Party Favors readers a copy of Mission: Impossible: The Sixth TV Season. If you chose to accept this giveaway, all you need to do is answer this question: What hosts of Tattle Tales and Raw Nerve are guest villains on this boxset. Send the answers along with your name and address to mokaha@aol.com. Put “Mission: Impossible 6” in the subject line. Contest ends on April 29, 2009. Good luck. This column won’t go up in smoke.
To most of the American audience, the name Dom Joly will most likely spark no response.
Well, let’s change that.
To audiences in the UK (and some of the hipper viewers in the US), Dom Joly is best known as the creator and principal dada anarchist behind the Channel 4 hidden camera show Trigger Happy TV – which is best described as guerilla improv.
He followed it up with a move to the BBC and the meta chat show This Is Dom Joly, in which he interviewed guests through a concussed haze. He then returned to Trigger Happy territory with the globe-spanning World Shut Your Mouth.
He’s also morphed himself into a globe-trotting host of travel documentaries (nipping on the heels of Michael Palin), beginning with the one-off special Dom Joly’s Excellent Adventure, which saw him traveling back to the country of his birth, Lebanon, before heading into Syria (with best mate Pete at his side) to try and find a Syrian cave upon whose wall he carved his name into during a childhood vacation. What other documentarian would drive through Syria while blasting “Don’tcha” over the car stereo?
In Dom Joly’s Happy Hour, he and Pete hit the road again, circumnavigating the world while documenting the drinking habits of cultures from Europe to America to India. (Okay, honestly, it was really just an excuse to get a network to pay for an elaborate drinking holiday, but the end product totally excuses his base, self-admitted motives).
He recently fronted a series called The Complainers, which sought to examine the British reluctance to declare “enough is enough”, and is a frequent guest on panel shows, including Have I Got News For You, Would I Lie To You, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, and more. He’s also regularly on radio, podcasts, and writes a column for The Independent.
He’s just a busy guy.
And an interesting one.
Here’s a little look at the show that started it all, Trigger Happy TV…
And now here’s our chat…
KEN PLUME: First of all, I heard you did an episode of QI…
DOM JOLY: Yeah, I did a QI, yes.
KP: I believe the Christmas episode, right?
JOLY: I think it was the Christmas one. It was very weird. There was lots of hats and log fires going on…
KP: Well, I hope it was the Christmas episode, then…
JOLY: (laughing) Yeah…
KP: It would be rather awkward otherwise. I’ve noticed that, in the past couple years, you’ve definitely increased your appearances on the panel shows…
JOLY: Yeah. I’m not really a panel show sort of person. I never really enjoyed them. But actually, I’ve got a bit more… comfortable with them, I suppose is the word. Because I’m not a stand-up comedian. I’ve never done stand-up or anything like that. I never really enjoy doing that sort of thing. But actually, recently, I have enjoyed them a little bit more. Especially QI, actually. It’s the best one I’ve done, just because it’s one of the few shows I’ve done where you sort of completely forget there’s an audience and you actually are just enjoying the conversation. I mean, being with Stephen Fry is always quite exceptional.
KP: Is it something you definitely would like to repeat on the future series?
JOLY: What, on QI?
KP: Yes…
JOLY: Oh, definitely QI. I mean, it’s just right up my street – just sort of talking nonsense about weird things is perfect.
KP: Now, what was the first panel show that you had done?
JOLY: The very first one I did was Have I Got News for You, which is when I was doing Trigger Happy, and they asked me, and it was a kind of… it felt like a kind of acceptance, you know? You’ve made it to a certain level to be asked on Have I Got News For You, because that was always the big show for me. So I was so excited to go on it, and I’d always watched it – and I’m a bit of a politics junkie, anyway, because I used to be a journalist, so I kind of quite cockily thought, “Oh, this’ll be easy.” I’m just sitting there going, “This is gonna be great.” And I turned up and I didn’t really know what a panel show involved, and I just sort of sat down for the warm-up and it was fine and everything was good. Then I remember them introducing everyone, and I was just backstage not at all nervous, and I sat down, and I remember the theme tune starting and literally disappearing into a black hole and just sort of suddenly realizing where I was. I don’t think I said anything for the first 20 minutes and in the end, Ian Hislop passed me a note saying, “You’re really going to have to say something.” And I was just fiddling with this pencil, just like moving it back and forward. But they were very kind, actually. They edited me in the end so that I managed to say a couple of things by the end. So it wasn’t quite as bad as it could have been.
KP: You know it’s rather awkward when Ian has to prompt you to say something.
JOLY: Yeah, I know…
KP: This was back towards the end of the Angus (Deayton, HIGNFY‘s first host) period…
JOLY: Yeah. Angus was still there, that’s right. I think it was 2001.
KP: So, would you say that – at that point, anyway, when you were doing panel shows – it was sort of almost an autopilot you would go on?
JOLY: Well, the thing is, it kind of depends what panel shows you go on, because some panel shows are very political. I mean, Have I Got News For You is quite political in the sense of the people that are on it every week, and I think they kind of have to be edited equally so that they all look funny. So, as a guest, you’re kind of there as fodder. Whereas other ones, like QI, it’s up to you what you do on it, really. If you’re good or you chat away, then you kind of get given more time. But yeah, mostly I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Everything I did on Trigger Happy, most of the time it’s kind of made up on the spot and I’m in control of it. So I always find it very odd being on something that… well, it’s just a bit show bizzy. I’m just not very show bizzy. I’m kind of… I hate to use that word “guerilla”, but I kinda always feel a bit guerilla and not really fitting into comedy because I’m not a standup, I’ve never been to Edinburgh, never done anything like that. So I always feel slightly odd when I go on those shows with proper stand-ups and… I don’t know, I just don’t feel like I fit there, basically.
KP: Well, obviously you’re a quick thinker on your feet. You’ve certainly survived well within that environment…
JOLY: Yeah…
KP: I’ve noticed a couple of times that you’ve mentioned “standup comedian” being obviously, in your mind, a definition of something. How do you define that sort of performer, in your view?
JOLY: Well, it’s not that… It’s just that, because I’ve never done standup, I’ve always felt… I mean, I don’t know if it was rightly or wrongly, but I felt when Trigger Happy first came out, normally people who do a show on television have kind of established a bit of a pedigree, and they’ve been doing a bit of standup or they’ve done Edinburgh or… you know, and they build and then suddenly they go on television. I was really lucky. Trigger Happy literally was the first thing I ever did, you know, having been a journalist, and it just appeared. And I remember at the time stand-ups going, “Who the hell is this guy?” Like, “Where does he come from?” So I’ve always felt a bit like I haven’t paid my dues, you know? But on the other hand, when you put stand-ups on television, it doesn’t really work that well. It’s the same thing. It’s a completely different job. I couldn’t go in front of a crowd. So I feel awkward in the standup sense – in that when you go on a panel show, I think – as a standup – you’re kind of used to talking to crowds. You feel comfortable in front of an audience. You’ve got set lines that, if you have to go back to them, you know are gonna be funny. And I don’t have any of those. I suppose I’m always astonished on panel shows, actually, how much people do prepare – whereas I always just assumed you went on and winged it. Which is what I always do with everything. And I think recently, if I go on one, I do try and get as much preparation as possible. But I’m just too lazy, really. I don’t really prepare very well. I just like trying to spin off people.
KP: You went back a few years later and did another Have I Got News For You after you had a lot more experience doing that sort of thing. How different was the experience?
JOLY: I didn’t have that much more experience. I think it was still only about my fourth panel show, the second one, but I think I was a lot less cocky, and I was a lot more nervous. And I think, because I was nervous, it made me really think about the news… I mean, you know, I read newspapers and watch TV anyway, the news, so I’m kind of aware of what’s going on, but with that week I kinda tried to guess what they were gonna talk about and, I suppose, I also had slightly more stories. When I first went on… you know, they do a lot of, “So this interesting happened to you.” In 2000, I’d just started – whereas since then, I’ve had quite a few odd things happen to me. So I think I had more to talk about. And because it was a guest presenter, it was kind of… Angus was kind of untouchable. He was very good at what he did, and you sort of felt you couldn’t really have a stab at him. Whereas the guest presenter is much easier, and you just… you know, you kind of joshed with them. So that was easier.
KP: Going back to Trigger Happy, when you talk about that sort of coming out of the blue, there were a few things you did prior. You did a Paramount Comedy Lab prior to that, right?
JOLY: Well, I did a year of doing sort of what was called “interstitial”, where they basically just paid me to go out and film weird stuff, all sorts of weird stuff, and then they put it in between, you know, Friends and Frasier, or whatever, just to kind of put bits in between the actual shows. And that was invaluable to me, because normally in television, you know, you kind of… you might do something on radio or you might do something on stage, but the first thing you put out on television is normally your practice, really. But I’d had like a year with a camera just doing loads and loads and loads and loads of stuff – a lot of it complete rubbish – and just occasionally thinking, “Well, that works.” So by the time Trigger Happy came round and Channel 4 saw lots of little things we were doing, I kind of was quite honed. I was good at being self-critical. It wasn’t just, “Oh my god I filmed something; it’s got to go on television.” It was kinda like, “That’s rubbish. That’s good.” So I think I was a bit tighter than I would have been.
KP: So you’ve got a camera, and you’re out there doing this guerilla material. What’s the learning curve, going out there? Because what you were doing at that time, during the Trigger Happy period, was rather fearless material…
JOLY: I think… my main thing was I couldn’t understand, because I didn’t have any background in it. I used to seek various people I like – like, Dennis Pennis was a big influence. I don’t know if you know him…
KP: Yes…
JOLY: And I remember watching that, and I think the first thing was that we literally arrived just at the time when cameras changed. So you didn’t need to hire a film crew to go out and film silly pranks – you used to have a limited amount of time because you’ve got to pay the film crew. The year I started it was literally about the first year where you could go into a shop and, for a grand, buy a camera that was easy to use and good enough to put stuff on television straight away. And so that allowed us just to… you know, I did it with a guy called Sam Cadman. It just allowed us to literally just go and film and film and film. We didn’t have to worry that we had to pay a crew, so we could do lots of stuff ourselves. And then I think the thing I really learned after a bit was that there is no right and wrong in comedy. I don’t believe anything’s unfunny. If you find something funny, then that’s funny. It’s just you’ve got to hope that what you find funny other people find funny. And I think I was really lucky because when I met Sam – who I made it with – we just both had exactly the same sense of humor. And so we just were doing stuff… I learned to do things to amuse us. So even the style of Trigger Happy that people used to talk about… There was the slightly shaky camera. That was only because Sam was laughing. And that was really good. We were just trying to… I was trying to show off to Sam and make him laugh. And I suppose what I learned was you’ve just got to trust that. The moment you try and think, “What will people find funny?”, then I think you fail. You’ve got to just do what you find funny and hope that other people find it funny. So I think it was confidence, a little bit, is probably what you learn.
KP: Are there any particular bits from that period that you can look back on and think, “I over thought that…”?
JOLY: Loads. Terrible, big, cartoon jokes. I had a long series where I was trying to do a cat chasing a mouse around London. And it was kinda funny, but we’d build big props like a big one ton weight that was hollow and drop it off a roof and land on the mouse. And it was all just… I don’t know. Also, I learned… we had someone in charge, though, who kept insisting we put cartoon music on the dog, on the sort of costume jokes, and it was just so wrong. And in the end, I put on my own music. Which unfortunately was never shown in the States because it was library music. But the one we used here was proper good music. And that’s why I really knew that great music was gonna work with really silly stunts and stuff. But I just think a lot of it was down to keeping it short, really. You know, we used to put everything we filmed on telly, and then you just think, “No no no – it’s all about minimum amount of stuff. Minimum amount of stuff.” So we didn’t want anything more than a minute.
KP: Now would you generally cycle through things quickly, or would there be particular ideas that you thought, “You know, I’m gonna get this to work somehow…”?
JOLY: No. Really quick and bored, really. It was very low attention span. The reason it really worked was Sam, who was the camera guy with me, he’s basically a sort of obsessive compulsive and attention deficit disorder, and basically he’s just very, very… everything has to be perfect. Whereas I’m very much like, “Right, let’s do this,” and then I’m bored ’cause it’s not working. So we work quite well together, because I’d rush things on and he’d try and say, “No, let’s do it again.” But it was very organic the way we’d come up with stuff. So we’d drive around and we wouldn’t really know what we were doing, and then we’d see a milkman and we’d think, “Oh. Milkman. We haven’t done a milkman.” So we’d go off to a costume shop and find a milkman costume and then go and just start doing milk stuff, and normally something funny would happen. And then we’d think, “Oh, that’s good…” and then we’d do that until we were bored of it. But we were also quite curious, which meant it was very difficult… I think a lot of shows just fake a lot of stuff, and we were determined that everything had to be bang on and had to be the first time, and if it was the third time it wasn’t as funny. And I think we kind of stopped ourselves doing stuff much quicker, in some ways.
KP: It’s a very intense thing to try and do these sort of pieces where you’re maintaining whatever the character and situation is within a public that doesn’t know what you’re doing…
JOLY: Yeah, it’s a nightmare.
KP: How difficult was it for you not to break during this?
JOLY: Not to what?
KP: Not to break during those scenes…
JOLY: What do you mean, not to crack up?
KP: Not to crack up, right…
JOLY: Oh, god, it was easy, actually. It’s the one thing that everyone always says, and it’s really funny – I never, ever crack up during a scene, because it’s kind of so embarrassing doing what you’re doing, and you’re it in a weird costume and you’re doing everything that, in a normal world, you just wouldn’t do, and approach people and make an idiot of yourself, and the only thing that’s saving you is, in your head, you know that you’re doing this for a reason and that it’ll be funny because you know. And if I suddenly cracked up halfway through a scene, I’d kind of suddenly become me, and then I’d suddenly become incredibly embarrassed. It would just be like suddenly waking up from a dream and you’re naked in a sitting room with a whole lot of people. So I’d never, ever do it. The only time I’ve ever cracked up was in the very first Trigger Happy. I was dressed as an old sea captain and I’m in some port down in Somerset and I’m talking to these two old ladies about how my dog and my wife and everyone’s been lost at sea. And I couldn’t believe… they were the first people we met. And literally we dressed up as this sea captain and I thought I’ll just wander into the village, start chatting, and we’ll kind of develop what the character is. And the first two people we met were these old women, and all they said was “Oh yeah, oh yeah,” to whatever you said. Because I literally said, “I’ve just murdered a man.” “Oh yes.” And there was just one second where I couldn’t believe it and I cracked up. So I turned it into me crying. So there’s a little bit where it looks like I’m weeping slightly. So that was my only way of getting out of it. If I giggled I’d pretend to start weeping. So it’s very rare for me.
KP: And how often would you say that a situation got dangerous?
JOLY: Never really very dangerous. Actually, weirdly, the States was a lot more dangerous than here. Just because, always at the back of my mind in the States – I just thought the worst that could happen in England is someone would give you a slap, but always in the States you’re just thinking, “Is this guy carrying a gun? Has he just been released from somewhere?” And I just always have this horror of some headline – “Minor English comedian gunned down in Arkansas dressed as a squirrel.” So I don’t know – you’re never quite sure there. And also, I can kinda read people in England really well. You get to read people really well. You just kinda know what they are. The moment you go out and talk to them, you just have no idea what people can be like. But the moment you look in their eyes, you can tell whether they’ve killed, basically. And just occasionally you’d go and there’d just be those dead eyes looking at you. And you just go, “Oops, sorry, I’ve got the wrong person…” and wander off. So I was pretty good at avoiding complete lunatics, basically. I’d just walk away normally. Just occasionally you’d get quite aggressive people but I think it’s quite easy to calm down aggressive people in England. For some reason. Especially if you’re in a costume.
KP: Well, I’m curious… and I’ve talked with quite a few other comedians in the UK about this, but I’m curious as to, when you come over to the States – either to work or just for leisure – what is your perception of going and working in the US? You mentioned a little bit about how you could read people more in the UK than the US. What is your perception of the US, as a place to work and a place to visit?
JOLY: God, this is a huge one. I mean, I love the US. It’s always been… I think it’s still… I’ve been to over 100 countries now, and I think it’s the most exciting place I’d ever go to, just because everything about it is kind of different in the sense that within one country, there’s so much diversity. And there’s something exciting about going there. When I went there to work, that was like, I couldn’t believe I was actually being paid to go and do something in America. I do have a flip side to that, is that because I was born in Beirut – although I’m not Lebanese, I’m now on some list of potential terrorists. So every time I come to America, a red light goes above the passport guy and I get taken to a room and I’m held for about three hours and interviewed and asked questions like why do I speak French. And then someone always gives me an anal frisk for no reason whatsoever. I’m not joking.
KP: Maybe they just saw the US version of Trigger Happy.
JOLY: Yeah, possibly. I don’t know. Well yeah, I agree, I should have been imprisoned for that, but that was not my fault. But that’s another story. But yeah, so I kind of… I tend to avoid going to the states if I can, because I just hate the hassle I get at the airport. But once I’m there, I absolutely love it. And I think the problem… I’m kind of… we’re just thinking at the moment – Sam, who I made Trigger Happy with, now lives in LA, and he’s a director in LA, and there’s been a lot of people talking about how they love Trigger Happy to him, and we’re actually putting together a Trigger Happy movie at the moment which we’re about to pitch in LA. And my worry is whether we were gonna film it in the States or in England, because why it works in Britain is kind of because the reaction of people in Britain is different. We kind of have this thing of… a fear of embarrassment, and a terrible… If you approach someone in England, they don’t react – they kind of back away. That means you can do anything, really. They’re just like, “As long as you don’t stab me, I’m fine.” Whereas in the States, when we did things like the big mobile in New York, they’d just turn around and go, “Hey, shut the fuck up.” And there’s a much more direct thing, so it’s kind of more difficult. But also there’s just things that I can read in England, and we can sort of subtly satirize – you’re not even trying to satirize anything, but it’s just part of you which I think it’s very difficult to do if you haven’t grown up in a country. So I think it might be different in America.
KP: Well, what I find curious is that there’s a set amount of locales that UK comedians or UK performers coming to the US – who want the “US experience” – go to…
JOLY: Well, actually, that’s very very interesting you say that, because one of the main things Sam and I have been talking about is that obviously when you come and film, you go to New York, you go to Miami, you go to San Francisco and LA, you basically do… to me, America’s two countries. When I first arrived, I couldn’t see who voted for Bush, because you go New York, Miami, San Francisco, and you’re like, “Well, everyone’s normal here. They’re great. Who votes for Bush?” And then I did a drive through Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana, and you’re like, “Ah, I get it.” So to me, America’s two countries. It’s like a big circle with all the coasts, and then there’s a kind of inner circle – which is where the crazies are, in my view. So our idea is that if we film a kind of American Trigger Happy, I wanted to do it in real America – like, places that we don’t always see. So we wanted to go to Alabama and Charleston and just kind of weird inland Texas, and do stuff in the center of America that no one ever sees… Well, they do see, but it’s not the kind of flying to LA stuff.
KP: The other location I was going to mention is that people always go to the south. And you never see anyone go to…
JOLY: Minneapolis.
KP: Right. Minneapolis or Wisconsin or Idaho or Iowa or Illinois…
JOLY: Yeah, well, we’re going to Montana, if that’s any good.
KP: You’ll have difficulty finding people.
JOLY: Yeah, I know. And the other place I’ve always wanted to go to, so we’re going to, is Maine. Just because I have a lot of lobster jokes.
KP: Well, in Maine you also get that sort of cultural mix. They’re almost our Canadians.
JOLY: But that’s exactly it, and that’s what we’re trying to do with locations, is to get one of each kind of American stereotype – even though each state is kind of its own country. But to do it in places that you don’t normally see – and also aren’t that TV savvy because, again, you go to LA or New York and everyone’s just like, they’ve got a lawyer when you’re trying to get a release form off them.
KP: Well, I would recommend you try Appalachia in the western half of North Carolina.
JOLY: I’ve been there. I filmed a thing there. I went to about 10 miles from where they filmed Deliverance…
KP: Well, that was the moonshine episode of Happy Hour…
JOLY: Yeah. A very, very scary place, but I loved it.
KP: You should hit Dollywood while you’re out there.
JOLY: I really wanted to go to Dollywood, yeah. Is that near there? I didn’t realize it was near there.
KP: Yes. It’s sort of right on the border of Tennessee and North Carolina.
JOLY: Well, I have a friend who’s American who’s from West Virginia, and her mother is a born again who speaks in tongues and she keeps inviting me over, but I don’t know if it’s my bag
KP: If you do, one of the most fascinating and terrifying journeys that I’ve ever taken is on a road that goes down the Appalachian mountains, called the Blue Ridge Parkway.
JOLY: Right.
KP: And basically has all of these odd stop offs like the coal mines of West Virginia, the sort of Cherokee gambling reservation in North Carolina, Dollywood, the Smoky Mountains…
JOLY: It’s got everything.
KP: And they have you know massive aqueducts that run through it to service this rural America, to bring some kind of civilization. But it’s one of the oddest drives you could ever take.
JOLY: I’d just like to drive all over the states constantly, but unfortunately my wife wouldn’t let me. She’s Canadian and wants me here.
KP: What’s the longest time you’ve ever spent in the US?
JOLY: Well, for filming it was about two months, when I was doing the American Trigger Happy – which is just such a long story and such a disaster I’ll not go into it – but that’s when I kind of first got flown around lots of different places. Seattle and Miami and stuff.
KP: But that was flown around and not driving around, right?
JOLY: That was flying, yeah. My best drive time was basically when I was making World Shut Your Mouth for BBC1, and we kind of went Miami all the way to New Orleans and then across to Vegas up to Reno and then through the Joshua Trees and the Mojave desert into LA. That was the best road trip thing I’d done. And then in my year off between school and university I lived in Washington, DC for six months, so I kind of did a lot of traveling around there as well.
KP: Is this when you still thought you were going to pursue a political career?
JOLY: Yeah, that’s when my first career started. I started well. I was going off to work for some congressman – you know, the usual sort of political internship. And I ended up working in the women’s department of Banana Republic on M Street.
KP: So can you still fold a pair of Chinos?
JOLY: I can fold a pair of Chinos really well. That’s one thing America taught me. Actually, Banana Republic is one of my favorite reasons for visiting America. We just got one here. I love Banana Republic. It’s sort of posh Gap, so when you’re approaching 40, I can really start shopping there with pride.
KP: Have you bought your first Panama hat?
JOLY: No. Well, I’ve got a Panama hat because I’ve just been in Nicaragua and I thought it would be quite fun to do a sort of Graham Greene type thing. So I bought a Panama hat and went out there with it but I lost it after the first day. It was a bit rubbish. I don’t really like hats.
KP: Well, next time will be the pith helmet.
JOLY: Yeah, a pith helmet would be great. That’s actually become very fashionable in Africa at the moment. And it’s a sort of ironic, you know, anti-colonial thing. Sort of young hip Africans in Nigeria and Kenya, they all go nightclubbing in pith helmets, which I long to see.
KP: What is on your current hit list? Obviously you’ve been trying to hit just about everything…
JOLY: Yeah.
KP: What’s still on the to do list?
JOLY: Well, I kind of want to be Michael Palin, is what I’m aiming for at the moment. I mean, obviously, I haven’t managed Monty Python, but I saw him in the street the other day… because I’m doing a little travel journalism, and I think I’m about to drive from London to Sydney in a bus in September, which is kind of like a huge trip. So I’m really looking forward to it.
KP: There’s some watery bits that might be difficult.
JOLY: Not too many actually. You can do it all the way to… well, obviously the English channel is one, but we’ve got a tunnel. And then it’s over land all the way to East Timor, and then it’s just a ferry ride from East Timor to Australia. But otherwise, it’s all overland. Through Iran. Used to go through Iraq, but that’s kind of not an option right now.
KP: Well, it is if you want to be a little adventurous.
JOLY: Iran’s good enough, I think. Because you guys are about to nuke it anyway, so I’m just hoping that I can slip in before it goes.
KP: Well, we have a couple of months, hopefully.
JOLY: No, I think Bush will do it as a sort of farewell address. As he’s actually saying goodbye…
KP: What do you think; he’s going to bring the button out with him to the podium?
JOLY: Yeah, he’ll just say goodbye. But no, I saw Michael Palin in London about three weeks ago, and I was in a car and I saw him and it was quite a tight street, and the temptation to just pretend to sneeze and turn the car and smash into him and just think, “Right, that’s it, I’m ready now. I can take over.” But that’s kind of what I want to do. There are three things – I’m trying to do this, the travel journal, but try and do it in a kind of spoofy way, because there’s a big debate at the moment about how TV is all faked, and there’s been a lot of problems here in England.
KP: Oh yes, I’ve seen the columns…
JOLY: It’s insane. All TV is fake. Otherwise you’d watch cooking shows and you’d have to watch for 40 minutes while something cooks in the oven. It’s ridiculous. But the one area of TV they never talk about is travel journalism, which is just the most fake of all. You know, you only ever arrive at Sunset, and Michael Palin always does this thing where he’s kind of rushing and he has to get a train at 1:00 to take him to Egypt, otherwise he misses it. And he gets to the train just on time and then there’s a beautiful shot of the train leaving and you’re like, “Well, who’s filming that?” I just love all that sort of stuff, and it’s slightly this feeling that when you go abroad, everything is just amazing and like totally holy, and you can’t say, “This place stinks.” It’s really weird, but it’s not very real. So that’s kinda what I’m interested in.
KP: I always just assumed that they had really bad producers planning that timing out.
JOLY: I don’t know. I don’t know what they do. I’ve just been in Nicaragua where they said to me, “We found a volcano where everyone snowboards down. Would you be up for that?” And I’m like, “Well, I’m more of a skier really,” and they said, “Oh, don’t worry, we’ll ship some skis out.” I personally spent five hours trying to get the only pair of skis ever to be imported into Nicaragua, because they think it’s some cocaine, gringo smuggling thing. So I get the skis, we get all the way to this volcano, climb up it, and it turns out they don’t snowboard down it. It’s just, like, a couple of local idiots tobogganing, and they’re still cutting themselves up. And I’m standing at the top of this volcano in skis. So I tried it, and I went about three meters and then rolled down the whole thing. It was just unbelievable.
KP: You’re standing at the top of this volcano. You’re in skis. There’s no point where you can just say, “You know what? No.”…?
JOLY: Very weirdly, of all he things I’ve done, that was the one moment where I literally am standing on the edge and this camera’s there, and I just have a moment where… normally I’m just, like, I’m totally up for this. I just thought, “This is absolutely insane.” There’s been no health and safety, and I’ve seen this somewhere on telly before, in kind of “When TV Idiots Go Bad”, you know? And that was nearly the moment where I went, “You know what? Let’s forget this.” But I just… I don’t know. You just have to do it, really. I was pretty sure I wasn’t gonna die. And I thought, worst case scenario, if I break stuff it’ll be a good news story. So that was the only one where I really thought, “Hmm, maybe not.”
KP: But it’s got to be an awkward moment when you think, “You know what? I could be part of a clip show for years to come…”
JOLY: (laughing) I’m constantly part of a clip show. But yeah. Well, the worst thing was, just as we were climbing up this volcano, my guide – who, you know, assumes I’m an experienced volcano skier – is going, “Yeah, you know, you have seen this before on the television.” I go, “No, I haven’t.” They go, “There’s this really famous clip where this guy is on a mountain bike and tries to break the world’s bicycle record going down this particular slope. And he gets to 180 miles an hour in his mountain bike and the bike snaps and he’s in hospital for nine months,” and I’m like, “Oh really? That was here?” And he goes, “Yeah yeah yeah. Very funny. I was here.” And I go, “Oh good, good. Looking forward to that.”
KP: Well, I’m sure he had the tape to show you later.
JOLY: Yeah. (laughing)
KP: So, what’s your thought halfway down the mountain, as you’re careening?
JOLY: I’m thinking, “This is not what I was hoping, but it’s gonna make great television,” because it was so bad that I know it’s gonna be funny. But on the other hand, in my mind, I was hoping for a sort of heroic, beautiful ski down where everyone will be like, “Jesus Christ, he can really ski.” So, you know, it was good in the end because it’s kind of… the director came down and he was just thrilled, you know?
KP: Do you feel it’s sort of a bizarre thing when, in those kind of moments, you start thinking, “I hope this is good TV…”?
JOLY: Well, that’s all you’ve got left, really. That’s pretty much what goes through my mind almost all the time at work, is that I’m not really enjoying myself but I’m just thinking, “As long as it’s good TV, it’s good.” And you kinda know it is, so that’s alright. It’s when you’re doing something you hate, and you know it’s gonna be shit TV and it’s not even gonna make the final cut, that’s when it’s really depressing because you think, “There’s no need for me to be doing this.”
KP: Now is there any… not just a segment, but a project that you can describe as such that you just knew going in, “This is gonna be shit…”?
JOLY: I don’t know. No, I haven’t really taken… I mean, it’s funny; I did a chat show when I moved to the BBC after Trigger Happy. To me, it was really obvious that if someone had a hit show, what they tended to do was move to the BBC and then make a chat show with their name on it. A kind of Letterman thing. And just go on a huge ego trip. So, to me, it was really obvious when I moved to the BBC that I was gonna make a chat show called This Is Dom Joly, and it was kind of gonna be someone called Dom Joly – but it wasn’t me, because I was wearing glasses. And it thought that was a really obvious disguise, so everyone would know I was being ironic. And the idea was just have this terrible show where he just stumbles on and talks to bands in really crass questions, and asks shit questions. And I remember, as we were making it, I was talking to Sam and just saying, “You know, some people are really good and then they just make really shit shows. And I wonder whether they’re aware while they’re making it that it’s a turkey.” And Sam is like, “No, you’d definitely be aware.” And then we just got slated for this show – like slammed – saying, “Is this the worst chat show ever?” And part of me was thinking, “Well, that’s kind of what we wanted.” I wanted people to watch it and think, “I can’t believe how bad this is,” not realizing it’s real – because no one realized it wasn’t real and they just thought it was the worst show ever. So that was probably the worst thought through show ever. But I really enjoyed making it. It was kind of… I mean, I’m not going to say it’s in anywhere the same league, but the idea was a kind of – before Curb Your Enthusiasm – it was like it had video diaries of my life, and following me around demanding that, you know, when I’m selling my house that there was a celebrity premium on it and… I mean, all sorts of weird stuff and cameos, but it wasn’t nearly as well thought through as Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is total genius, but it was kind of in that vein.
KP: So what’s the current status of that? That hasn’t seen a DVD release, has it?
JOLY: No, that was never a DVD. That was on BBC3. It launched BBC3, and pretty much buried BBC3. There were two series of it. And I think it had moments of… probably some of my favorite moments, actually, but it was all about anti-television. I wanted to call it Dead Air, but they wouldn’t let me. And I should have called it Dead Air, because then they’d have understood it. Dead Air with Dom Joly. And the whole joke was gonna be that I start the whole series with me coming on and saying, “I’m at the BBC, I’ve made it,” and starting to sing a song called “Sympathy” from the 70s – that I loved – and then a light hits me on the head, and for the rest of the series I’m in concussion. That’s how it was gonna start, but they wouldn’t let me do that, so the whole show went on without the start so people didn’t realize I was supposed to concussed – they just thought, “Jesus, he’s an asshole.”
KP: Have there been discussions about a DVD release for it?
JOLY: Oh no, god, this was years ago. This is four years ago. I don’t think there’ll be a DVD of that. BBC was deeply embarrassed of it…
KP: Everything makes it to DVD eventually…
JOLY: Well, I hope it’ll make a DVD, because I think there are some really good bits. But I don’t know. The BBC hid it very well.
KP: I’m interested in the idea that – because obviously Trigger Happy started on Channel 4…
JOLY: Yeah…
KP: What did a move to the BBC represent? Because it seems odd to me – you would think there’d be more money outside the BBC, but all the big contracts and the big money seems to be at the BBC…
JOLY: Well, it was… there were two things. The reason I moved to the BBC was because I’d done a second series. I didn’t want to make any more. I wanted to kinda stop Trigger Happy when it was good. And Channel 4 said, “Oh, we really want you to do a Christmas special,” and I kind of said yes to that, but I still didn’t really want to make them. And then we did that and then I said, “Right, now I want to kinda do some other stuff.” And in hindsight I should have been smart and just said, “Look, I’ll do you a Trigger Happy every three years, but meanwhile let me do some other stuff.” But I was just like, “I don’t want to do another Trigger Happy,” and they were like, “We want you to do Trigger Happy,” and so I just was thinking, “Well, I don’t want to do Trigger Happy,” and suddenly someone from the Beeb turned up and took me out for lunch and said, “We’ll give you a three series deal and you can do what you like and we think you’re brilliant,” you know? Just total schmooze. And I was like, “Cool.” I mean, because I didn’t want to do Trigger Happy, but also there’s just something when you’re British about the BBC. It’s kind of… my mum doesn’t really understand what Channel 4 is, but BBC she’d understand. She’d be able to tell her friends, you know, “Yeah, he’s on the BBC.” It just sounds a bit more official. So it was kind of that, really, and I just thought, “Great, we’ll go to the BBC. It all sounds very exciting.” And then I got there and it’s just… it was like moving into the movie Brazil. It’s just this huge, huge bureaucratic organization where – when you arrive and you’re hot – everyone’s talking to you and everyone’s responsible for you, and then the moment things start to look bad, you just can’t speak to anyone. When I finally left the BBC I was there two years. My third series ended, and there was nothing. I just sat there in my office – which I’d had painted red – for two weeks, and nothing. No one heard, and I rang my agent and I said, “What’s going on? Are we meeting something?” He said, “I have no idea.” And in the end, I literally just… I had to just pack my stuff and… I mean, no one said anything. I could still be living there, I think. So I just went downstairs and I just thought, “This is a great paparazzi shot, with me just putting all my posters and occasional awards into the back of my car,” and I just slammed the boot and literally I just looked around and then I drove off. And then I’d forgotten something, and I came back the next day and I put my pass in the door and it didn’t work. It wouldn’t let me in. It was just extraordinary.
KP: Well, that’s good. At least they’re quite quick and responsive when you decide to leave.
JOLY: But that’s the point. I think they didn’t want to tell me to leave, but obviously someone said, “He’s gone, he’s gone,” and they switched it all off.
KP: It’d be great if the Joly Alert went up through the building.
JOLY: Yeah. It was a huge conga going around the building.
KP: So the last series for the BBC then was what, World Shut Your Mouth?
JOLY: That was World Shut Your Mouth – which again, I’d loved the chat show and I’d done two series of it, but I realized that no one had understood it and, you know, it probably was crap. I don’t know. I mean, I liked it, but so I thought, “Well, I’d better give them a banker, you know? So I said, “I’ll make basically a Trigger Happy type show, but I want to call it World Shut Your Mouth because I want it to be more global – because, basically, I just want to travel.” So it started the best joke, I think, in the history of television, as far as I’m concerned, for its sheer pointlessness. I wanted to start each show with me in front of one of the wonders of the world, and so I’m at the Taj Mahal and I’m standing there at dawn and it’s just beautiful and there’s just one other person, a real person there, and I’ll just walk up next to them and stand and we’ll both look at the Taj Mahal for a bit, and then I’ll go, “Ah, Taj Mahal.” And they would say, which they did, “Yeah, it’s just amazing, isn’t it?” And there’s a long pause and I just go, “That is shit.” And basically I managed to get the BBC to pay me – in one trip – to go to the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids, the Grand Canyon, the Guggenheim, and the Coliseum. Two days in each place just so we could go and film me saying, “That’s shit.” And that was on the BBC license payer’s money. That was my greatest achievement in television. So I just thought, “You can’t fail with that.” It’s such a great beginning. And I thought World Shut Your Mouth, in a lot of ways, was stronger than Trigger Happy, actually. But it was BBC1, 10:30, prime time, and it got three and a half million every time, but it just – they didn’t want another series, and I don’t know why, actually. And it’s never been shown again. I still think that’s my favorite show.
KP: It also seemed that World Shut Your Mouth was subtler…
JOLY: It was more about… it was kinda the darker side of Trigger Happy. In hindsight, actually, World Shut Your Mouth should have been run on Channel 4, because it was more… slightly weirder. And Trigger Happy, which was much more kind of just big fluffy costumes and stuff, should have been the 6:00 in the evening, Saturday BBC1 show. But I’ve constantly done shows for the wrong channel – like Happy Hour, which I loved. But it was a kind of spoofy, weird travel show. It was definitely not Sky 1. They just thought, “Great, he’s doing something about alcohol.” But I did alcohol because Sky said, “We need you to do something that will interest the channel.” So I’m like, “Well, that’s tits or alcohol for you guys, so…” But anyway, one day I’ll get it right.
KP: You’re talking about moving Trigger Happy to film…
JOLY: Well, just we’re thinking of doing a Trigger Happy type project. I wouldn’t call it Trigger Happy. We’re going to call it War of the Flea. Which I just think is a great name. It’s the name of a book in the 50s, to describe guerilla insurgency and the fact that one flea scratching a dog does nothing, but if you have a thousand fleas scratching the dog it’s worse than the bite of a tiger. So it’s kind of the idea of this kind of irritant basically just popping up everywhere and annoying people.
KP: And the title will sell tickets in America…
JOLY: Do you think?
KP: (laughing)
JOLY: (laughing)
KP: You know what, you should put a 2 after it.
JOLY: Yeah, well, it had… That’s right. War of the Flea: It’s Back.
KP: Do you view TV as something that holds less interest for you at this point?
JOLY: No. I love TV. I have no interest in doing films. I mean, obviously if someone offered me a film I’d do it, but I’m not an actor or anything, so the only reason I’m thinking of doing a movie for Trigger Happy is that I’m very happy to do another Trigger Happy here but no one wants to do one. Channel 4 feels that they don’t ever go back to something. And because they own the name Trigger Happy, I can’t do that anywhere else. So I suddenly thought, “Well, actually, I’ve got loads of big ideas and stuff,” and so did Sam, so we thought, “Well, before we get too, old let’s make a big movie.” Because at the time when Trigger Happy happened, we were offered a huge movie deal and we said no because, to us, what happens when you make movies from TV stuff is kind of like that first Ali G film. It just was really watered down shit, and I just had this idea of sort of the big mobile guy would have a love interest. It would just be crap. So we were like, “No, no, no – we can’t do that.” And then, of course, the Jackass movie came out and it was just one huge Jackass episode. And we were like, “Fuck, we could have just done that.” Just a big Trigger Happy, you know? So that’s kind of what we’re doing with the idea we’re doing now, is we want to do a film which, you know, most movies normally have sort of two big set pieces, and our idea is this is just a movie with 100 big set pieces. That’s it. No story.
KP: Yeah, but I think that’s what movies are moving towards anyway. You might as well just push it over the edge…
JOLY: I just think movies are something that should be an hour and a half long and you go in and love it. And that’s it. The only reason these are movies rather than TV stuff is because they’re kind of bigger setups. They’re all kinda big crowd setups, so we want two-three hundred people in each scene. But you know, there’s no reason… I love television. I think television’s far more interesting to me than movies. I hardly ever go to the movies.
KP: Well, after you skirted around the disaster of the US Trigger Happy…
JOLY: Well, I haven’t skirted around it – I’m just too angry to ever think about it.
KP: I’ve read your statements in the past about it. You made the decision based on certain factors and you would have made it differently, but your decision was right at the time…
JOLY: Well, it’s basically that I’d finished doing Trigger Happy, and for that reason I’d gone to the BBC – and suddenly we get this offer from the States. And, in hindsight, I should have just said, “Great, I’ll go out there and we’ll make a show…” You know, as everyone else has. What Little Britain seems to be doing, and everyone did. But, you know, I just had a kid and I had a family and I didn’t want to go to the States, and also I just didn’t want to make more Trigger Happy at the time. I thought, “There’s loads of other things I’m going to be doing.” But then they came back and said, “Well, we’ll only make it if you’re in it, and you can sort of do a little bit of producing on it.” And I thought, “Well, that’ll be alright. I’ll go out and have a look at it,” and the guy I talked to from the production company at Comedy Central who had decided they were gonna make it seemed okay. And then the moment I got out there it was just like… I remember watching the first rushes of the stuff they’d made and it was like someone had made Trigger Happy on acid, really. I mean, it was just random music, and I met this asshole from Comedy Central who’d been brought in. And what I didn’t realize is while we were actually filming, they were literally sending the rushes to LA. They were assembling them and it was going out as we were speaking – whereas the understanding I’d had was we’d film it all and then I’d sit in the edit, which is where I’m good. The whole thing was unbelievable. And I remember them showing me the first episode they’d cut together, and it was… I mean, it was just… I just wanted to weep. It was in some studio in New York and there was just this long silence at the end and they go, “What do you think?” and I’m like, “That’s just awful.” I mean, it was kind of like… it was a joke. It was almost like someone had spoofed it. It was like, “Let’s get some shit fluffy costumes and random indie music and…” It was just awful. There were a couple of good ideas in it, but it was just terrible.
KP: Well, I remember watching it at the time going, “I can’t stand this.” And the sad thing was it turned me off ever investigating, until a year or two ago, the original Trigger Happy.
JOLY: Have you seen the original one with the original music?
KP: Yes. In fact the DVDs are sitting right over there.
JOLY: Good.
KP: And that’s another thing that I find quite remarkable, is sort of the care and attention you paid to choosing the music for the series.
JOLY: But Trigger Happy is quite funny if you strip it… I mean, it’s all about the edit. There’s a lot of stuff in there that’s pretty average. It’s kind of just filler stuff or visual stuff, but if you put the right music on, I mean, everything. We did it from the first idea to the delivery at Channel 4 – no one touched it. We just did it totally on our own, and that’s where comedy’s great, you know? If you really love what you’re doing. The moment you kind of get lazy or you hand it over to a committee, it’s fucked.
KP: The great thing about… you know, you can sit down with Trigger Happy and you can watch it, and it feels like a whole piece.
JOLY: Yeah.
KP: It doesn’t feel like somebody threw a bunch of clips together.
JOLY: Oh no, it’s not. But even the video is annoying, because actually the real works are the half hour shows. And we had to make a best of because we couldn’t afford to use all the music in the shows.
KP: Well, luckily the half hour shows are available on the internet.
JOLY: Oh, are they? Good. Yeah, the shows are the real ones that we spent time doing so everything’s paced and… you know.
KP: Now has that ever been a movement to readdress with Channel 4, in this age of “everything’s gotta be on DVD.” to actually do full releases of the episodes?
JOLY: Well no, not really. They’ve now got this thing – Channel 4 On Demand – so you can buy them all online. I think Channel 4 are more interested in selling them there than putting them on a DVD.
KP: Maybe you could do some kind of podcast commentaries that people can synch up with the copies of the half hour episodes.
JOLY: Yeah, I can’t remember. I think we did commentaries for the DVDs. We didn’t for the half hour shows. But the problem still is the music. To clear music is just so expensive, but it just doesn’t make it worthwhile for anyone financially, which is just so annoying.
KP: If someone were to present it to you, would you even think about doing another American show?
JOLY: I think I’d kind of do a… I think I’d do a sort of cross between a char… I think I’d have a couple of characters kind of arriving in the States. So I’d do a cross… it’d be like a sort of Trigger Happy, in the sense that it was meeting real people, but dressed as characters. And just kind of do a travel across the States, or some sort of road trip across the States. I don’t know, really. I still think I’d love to make a great hidden camera show in the States. It’s just there’s so much more that you can do out there than there is here. There’s just more variety of stuff from beach to snow to… just geography-wise, gives you ideas for jokes and stuff.
KP: I’ve also seen the Excellent Adventure documentary you did with your friend, Pete…
JOLY: Oh, I love that.
KP: It takes a certain person, a certain performer, to have a knack for doing a travel show and making travel interesting beyond just looking at the video…
JOLY: Well, that one we were particularly lucky though because it was quite… you know, the alcohol ones were just piss ups, but that one was quite moving for me. (laughing) Because that was going back to my roots, and also it’s just a place where people don’t think you go on holiday, Lebanon, so…
KP: Well, you know, when you talk about, you’re almost sounding dismissive of Happy Hour. Which I think is unfortunate, because travel shows… say the Michael Palin shows, Michael Palin shows are all about the grandeur of certain places…
JOLY: Yeah…
KP: Or the eccentricity of a place. In an almost caricatured form. I thought what was nice about what you did with Happy Hour was that you took it for what it was. You didn’t try and dumb it down and you didn’t try and gussy it up.
JOLY: Yeah, because when you travel – I mean, most of the time it’s shit and it’s uncomfortable, and you kind of remember the glossy bits when you come back. And that’s what I think people never do on travel shows. And, also, I love traveling, and I love being abroad, but I think people are kind of scared that if they say they don’t like somewhere that they’re being racist or something, and it’s just crazy. And, you know, why you can take the piss out of a Frenchman but you can’t out of an Indian is ridiculous.
KP: Or what you so wonderfully did with your handlers in various countries…
JOLY: Well, they were the… that was the real Happy Hour. That really taught me…well, this might be completely unethical… but it was, if you have anyone that can help you in a foreign language, it’s fantastic because you can give them any joke you want in the subtitle. It was just great.
KP: You’re also self-aware enough to play with the form…
JOLY: Yeah, but I’m a bit too much, sometimes. I kind of think, “Chill out, it’s all a bit too in-jokey.” But I just love that. I just love all the things like that.
KP: I mean, that’s why I would love to see you do sort of your tour of the US…
JOLY: Well, so would I, but I don’t know how I’d do it yet.
KP: How long have you been friends with Pete?
JOLY: Pete and I have been friends since we were… it’s so funny, actually, because everyone thought Pete was an actor, and he was a plant. The idea came… I don’t know if you’ve seen The Long Way Round, with Ewan McGregor and Charlie Borman…
KP: Yes.
JOLY: Sky kind of commissioned that show, our show, on the back of that, thinking, “Oh, we like celebrities traveling with their friends.” I would have chosen Pete anyway because, unfortunately, what we never got into… one of the series we were gonna start… because Pete actually lives in Newfoundland, of all things – because he married a Newfoundlander who’d been in Europe for only three weeks. He got her pregnant and then she basically just took him back to Newfoundland, and he’s been stuck there ever since. Which is the asshole of North America, although it’s quite a weird place to visit. So we were gonna kind of explain that Pete lived out there and is an artist. And because he’s English he’s about the only person that’s ever moved to Newfoundland rather than leaving. He’s kind of a local celebrity, and he’s now just won some art prize. But when they said, “Have you got a friend?” I just thought, “Well, actually Pete is exactly like Charlie Borman.” He’s a bit sort of dim and curly haired. But, of course, he turned out to be absolutely brilliant because we literally didn’t argue once all the way through. Because we are proper, proper close friends. So it was quite nice. I finally got a new catchphrase. People would just come up to me and say, “Up yours, tiger…” – which was really nice. Because we had a long discussion before the show that, for reasons I can’t even remember, we’d call each other “tiger”, and it all just sounded a bit gay, and I just said, “Look, we can’t honestly call each other ‘tiger’ on telly. It’s just gonna look really bad.” And he said, “Yeah, you’re quite right, tiger.” So I’m like, “Really, we can’t.” But after about two days, we just gave up. So I don’t know, it was a bit weird.
KP: What I love about Pete on Excellent Adventure is that – as that sort of perfect traveling companion – he wouldn’t question your decisions for long…
JOLY: Yeah… (laughing)
KP: After a certain point, it was just, “Oh, we may get shot? But you know what? Let’s do it.”
JOLY: Yeah yeah yeah. No, Pete’s wife was terrified. She was… because we were gonna do a Happy Hour… The only thing that’s ever been vetoed is we were gonna do a Happy Hour in Iran, because I just thought it’d be really funny to do a show about alcohol where you never, ever saw a drop of the stuff. But she absolutely refused to let them go to Iran, so we couldn’t do it. But, actually, I then went to Iran recently – skiing for a piece for the Observer – and I’ve never been more drunk in my life. Because they all make their own booze, basically, and they call it “pizza”. And they have a “pizza” guy who they ring up who comes along and delivers plastic bottles of moonshine, basically. I mean, Tehran is a… You know, it’s an alcoholic state.
KP: See, if only we’d send a copy of that piece to Bush…
JOLY: I know. He’d love it. Well, he’s given it up now. He’d probably bomb them anyway.
KP: Going back to Lebanon in Excellent Adventure, how would you describe the differences between now and what it was like when you were growing up in the early 70s?
JOLY: Not many, actually. I mean, the difference was that the center of Beirut has been rebuilt in this kind of mod colonial way. There’s a bit where we’re smoking hubbly bubblies and stuff in the middle of Beirut. That’s kind of the shopping center which has actually been built quite tastefully in what used to be the front line. And when I grew up – from 1935, onwards, I was on the Christian side. I wouldn’t have been able to go there because you couldn’t cross over the green line, which was the kind of demarcation zone. But really, it hasn’t changed that much at all. The Lebanese still refuse to accept they’re Lebanese. They all think they’re French and they all drive round in BMWs and they’re incredibly rich and there’s always… amongst all this rich stuff going on, there are kind of little pockets of incredible poverty, and it’s why Lebanon’s always screwed up is that it’s just this real divergence between the really rich and the really poor. There’s no medium ground. And occasionally people just get pissed off. And also, there’s a whole generation of people who have grown up sort of having power by having guns, and it’s very difficult to just have peace and suddenly say, “Right – you guys, piss off.” And they can’t. But it hasn’t changed that much. Apart from it’s been maybe a lot more overgrown and a bit more polluted, but it’s still one of the most beautiful countries in the world.
KP: You’ve been around Africa, as well…
JOLY: Yeah…
KP: How would you describe the feeling in countries where there’s still the lingering feeling of their colonial periods?
JOLY: I don’t know about the colonial period. I have this thing about totalitarian countries. One of my favorite books ever is by PJ O’Roarke, Holidays in Hell, and I kind of love the idea of going to places that are supposedly dangerous – or not a place to visit because, firstly, they’re about the last places in the world that you can visit that still are proper travel, in that there probably isn’t a Starbucks around the corner and things are actually… you’re actually experiencing things rather than just sort of following a whole lot of backpackers around. But I don’t know… I just think there are less and less places to go in the world that you can properly go to that are unspoiled, and that’s why I like going to those sort of places.
KP: Is there any place at this point that you wouldn’t go?
JOLY: That I wouldn’t go?
KP: Yes.
JOLY: Well… no. I mean, Iraq I wouldn’t go because I’d kind of be depressed to go, I think, but I wouldn’t have a problem going to Iraq. I really want to go to North Korea. That’s kind of my… top of my list. I’m off to Libya in a month.
KP: Well, you saw the speech. North Korea’s now a happy place.
JOLY: Yeah, and Bush just let some stuff over as well.
KP: We officially love North Korea now.
JOLY: Yeah, you’re now close friends. That’s good.
KP: We’re going to be sending over some video games…
JOLY: Excellent. That’ll help them.
KP: And a few packages of DVDs…
JOLY: And invade Cuba.
KP: Well, slowly but surely. I guess it looks like Cuba’s opening up now.
JOLY: I haven’t been to Cuba, and I really want to go to Cuba because the moment Castro actually dies, that’ll be it. It’ll be the invasion of the property developers. But, I mean, it’s already happening, but…
KP: Well, once you had the internet restrictions being dropped…
JOLY: Yeah. Actually, I’m quite interested in internet restrictions. Iran was very weird. When you go on… it was the first time I’d had proper internet restrictions. I went on Google and tried to find BBC News, and it’s just this really ominous sign comes up saying this access is denied to this website. And I’m off to Beijing for the Olympics. I’m writing for the Independent, and again they’ve had to… they’ve got a special area around the Olympic Village where, apparently, access to every site is fine. But if you go further away then you can’t get anything. It’s gonna be really fascinating.
KP: Theoretically, I would assume that they’re going to be using some kind of Wi-Fi within those areas…
JOLY: I think they have a special Wi-Fi. I don’t know. That’s why I’m fascinated. I have no idea how they’ll do it.
KP: So, I’m wondering if you’re gonna have people trying to steal that signal and boost it…
JOLY: That’s what I was thinking. I was thinking there’ll be a whole lot of kind of rebellious students coming nearer and nearer the Olympic Village and kind of sitting… piggy backing…
KP: Wearing those Wi-Fi boosting tee shirts.
JOLY: Yeah.
KP: When you were in Iran, did you encounter anyone who evaded the system? Because obviously there are ways to get around those internet blocks…
JOLY: Yeah.
KP: Through proxy sites and such.
JOLY: Yeah.
KP: Did you see that sort of information underground at work?
JOLY: Yeah… Yeah. Basically, how it works in Iran is that any sort of middle class intelligentsia or kind of students who are trying to rebel, they all hang around… it’s very kind of 1920s, because there aren’t any pubs or bars. They all hang out in coffee shops, so it’s very kind of coffee shop revolutionaries. And you kind of imagine coffee shops to be these beautiful old Oriental places, but actually they’re hideous little smoke filled chambers in shopping malls, and they all sit in there, and almost all the coffee shops have a secret Wi-Fi satellite dish that kind of gets stuff out of Iraq, weirdly, or Turkey. So yeah, people huddle in there and get it, and then if the religious police come round everyone kind of closes their laptops and smokes away. It’s totally surreal.
KP: So, do you think it’s just a game that’s being played with both sides knowing what’s going on?
JOLY: Oh, definitely. I mean, I went there skiing because, again, I’d seen a picture of a woman in full chador skiing, and I was like, “Where the hell’s that?” And it was Iran. So I went there, and until two years ago they segregated the whole mountain. It’s an hour from Tehran, and they put a big fence down the middle of the mountain, and the idea was that women skied on one side and men skied on the other side. But the problem was there were only male instructors. And so some of the women I’d met, who were very westernized, very bright Iranian girls about 30, they were all saying how they all had to change their name to male names and dress up as men, supposedly, to get ski lessons when they were kids. Everyone knew they were girls, but they kinda let it go. And even the segregation of the hill now they’ve given up because they said, “Mullahs can’t snowboard,” so all the religious police would just be at the bottom, and they can’t go up and check. It was just crazy. It is a kind of game, but it’s also… they all play the game and they know how to do it, but deep down, although it’s funny and probably quite fun, it’s deeply depressing that this kind of backward thing is running a country like that, because they’re amazing people.
KP: Do you feel sort of a tipping point in that attitude within the generation that you were encountering?
JOLY: Yeah. Well, the thing is now that travel is much… you know, in the old days, you couldn’t travel very much. And I think they were much more fighting it. But now if you really tip and you just get pissed off with it – Most of them go to university just outside LA or in Oslo, and so they kinda come back for the summer, these kind of middle class kids, and I think they can handle it for a couple of months because they see all their friends and they kinda live a different life. But I think for parents and people staying there it’s kinda just… they’re institutionalized.
KP: How would you compare that to… because obviously you’ve gone into some former war zones, like Nicaragua…
JOLY: Yeah…
KP: What was the feeling, then, going into those sort of locations where it’s not so much a cultural issue that’s kept the people at a certain level, but more the decades of conflict?
JOLY: Nicaragua was totally different in that it’s just a really unlucky country. It’s a huge earthquake zone. Managua was completely destroyed in 1972 by an earthquake and the dictator at the time, the US backed dictator Somoza, just didn’t bother to rebuild anything. So Managua is not really a city in a functioning sense. And then it’s got a line of active volcanoes which Nicaraguans seem to find it absolutely obligatory to build their cities on, and then they get wiped out, and then they build on it again, and you’re just like, “Why don’t you just *not* build it on volcanoes?” I don’t know if it’s to do with Latin machismo or whatever, but… and then, of course, they’ve had political unrest for about 60 years. But it seems to be coming out of that now, actually. They’ve been sort of peaceful for about 15 years and there’s really a feeling… I think Nicaragua’s going to be one of the kinda new places, because it’s pretty empty. It’s got some amazing cities. I went to their one beach resort called San Juan del Sur, and it’s where surfers have really discovered Nicaragua because it’s got an amazing surf. And the first night I was there I go to this little beachside restaurant and I go and sit down and I’m having a drink and there’s this American guy stumbling around on the beach completely drunk, and he’s got one shoe on and a sort of headlamp, and he’s like, “Where’s my shoe? Where’s my shoe?” We’re laughing at him, and after about ten minutes he comes in through the restaurant… and it was Matthew McConaughey. So that’s obviously where, you know – once he’s made a shit movie he thinks, “Great, I have two million. Let’s go and blow it in Nicaragua.” But he needs shoes.
KP: Well, once you’ve got Matthew McConaughey, that’s a sign that you’ve normalized as a country.
JOLY: That’s what I think. I think once McConaughey is surfing with you, things are looking up.
KP: Maybe we need to send him to Iran.
JOLY: I think he needs to go to Iraq first. And then quickly to Iran.
KP: We should just start a campaign to send Matthew in.
JOLY: With his goofy drawl.
KP: Shoe somewhere, just stumbling around…
JOLY: Yeah. Just sort of out in a good ol’ Texas way…
KP: Just so the people know they’ve got nothing to fear from Americans.
JOLY: (laughing) “Bush wouldn’t kill me!”
KP: “They sent McConaughey in and it’s all good.” So is there any place that you’ve actually felt for your safety?
JOLY: There’s a town near me in England called Swindon…
KP: (laughing)
JOLY: You joke, but actually it’s very weird. I’ve been to the most threatening places in the world, but I’ve never really felt threatened apart from an occasional roadblock where there’s a soldier with a jittery thing, but it’s kind of, you know, nothing’s really gonna happen. Whereas, honestly – I’m not joking – there’s just something unique about England. Any kind of small town, market town, after 10:00 in the evening… I’ve just been filming in a place called Weston-super-Mare, which is far from super, and it’s just one of those horrible, depressing English seaside towns that were probably quite cool in the Victorian times, but…
KP: The birthplace of John Cleese…
JOLY: In fact, you’re very right. That’s where he was born. But not his home. He left as soon as he could.
KP: Yes, like most people.
JOLY: And actually, he’s now in Santa Barbara, isn’t he? It was kind of like Santa Barbara, but just a lot worse. And so it was great. We were filming down there, and I’m filming a sort of golf DVD, and I’m dressed in old golf gear, and there’s like four of us and the crew – so it’s not a big production – and we’re in this kinda pedestrianized zone. No one around. And we’re just filming this little scene. The first guy just wanders into the take and he looks around and, in all seriousness, he goes, “Is this the new Indiana Jones movie?” But not as a joke. Like, he thinks this is the new Indiana Jones movie we’re filming. And then the sound man gets his boom taken by a cross-eyed man who’s going, “Is this a radioactive brush?” So we had to get out of town before the sun went down and it’s just… it’s a scary, scary place.
KP: On Swindon – is this the same Swindon you were taken to when you had your recent illness?
JOLY: Yeah, that’s right, actually. I had pneumonia.
KP: Rather bad case, it seems…
JOLY: Well. it wasn’t that bad. because bad cases you die.
KP: Well, when you have that as a demarcation for bad….
JOLY: It was weird, but they took me to hospital because they thought I had meningitis, so actually I was so relieved I didn’t have meningitis that pneumonia was kind of like a bonus. But it was great. I lost a stone and a half, so that was the plus side of it. And, actually, the people of Swindon didn’t kill me in their hospitals, which I thought they would. So it was all alright, actually. But no, that was a bit of a shock, actually.
KP: Well, after they read the article, then they realized that they should have killed you.
JOLY: Then they realized who they’d had, yeah.
KP: I hope you don’t get sick again.
JOLY: Yeah, so do I. Well, if I do I’m going to go Cheltenham. I’m always nice about Cheltenham.
KP: I’m sure you’ve already got a “Do Not Call Swindon” bracelet…
JOLY: Exactly, yeah. (laughing) I need that tattooed, like, with my blood group. “Do not resuscitate. Do not take to Swindon.”
KP: I was reading the comments you made last year in the lead up to the mayoral race in London…
JOLY: Yeah…
KP: And your thoughts on Ken Livingston and Boris Johnson. Do you still hold to those views on both of them?
JOLY: Well, the joy for me is I don’t live in London anymore. I’ve got a place there, but I don’t have to suffer all the stuff they do. I loathe Ken Livingston. I mean, I really do. Of all the people… I did him for Trigger. Weirdly, I did both him and Boris Johnson for Trigger Happy. Boris Johnson was just himself and kinda thought I was Ali G, and we couldn’t use it. But Ken Livingston was… actually, though, he behaved quite normally and said I should be arrested when I’d beaten up a gorilla behind him. He’s kind of held it ever since and he still gets angry occasionally on radio phone ins and calls me a cunt – which he did, which I was quite pleased with. But I just think he was… I really, really genuinely think he was very bad for London. I think he was very corrupt. I think there’s something about being a mayor where you’re kind of not really a politician and you just get very corrupt very quickly, and I’m very pleased he’s gone. I don’t know whether Boris Johnson will do anything good for London, but I think he’ll be entertaining, at least.
KP: You’ll have to check out the “Boris for President” website.
KP: Theoretically if he’s maintained a residence in New York, then yes.
JOLY: Unlike McCain, who was born in Panama, I think.
KP: Yes. So, you know, we could trade. We’ll send over John after November. Get him in as mayor of Swindon.
JOLY: I tell you what – Boris Johnson, president of the States, that would be fabulous. He wouldn’t even be able to find Iran to bomb it, but he’d find ancient Greece.
KP: Yes. “I’d like to tell you about the Romans…”
JOLY: Yeah…
KP: Are there any plans for a new series of The Complainers?
JOLY: I didn’t enjoy The Complainers. The problem with The Complainers – I know I grumble about every show I make – but with The Complainers, they came to me and it was a really good idea, because everyone’s grumbling in Britain at the moment, saying it’s shit. And it kind of is. And they were like, “It’s called The Complainers, and basically the idea is we just get all the things that annoy people and we go out and get a bit of revenge.” And I thought, “That’s brilliant.” So I said yes to it. And then when I got there, we just waited for two months because Channel 5 seems to change whoever’s in charge of it every three months, and so whoever had commissioned this had gone, and the new person came in, looked at it, and said, “No no no, we don’t want a comedy. We want a serious investigative show.” And so half of us were being pushed to do… literally trying to bring the government down, and the other half just wanted to go and hit traffic wardens. And it kinda ended up… the best thing someone said about it is it was like Michael Moore in Northamptonshire.
KP: It was like TV Nation in the UK…
JOLY: Yeah, well, I loved TV Nation. I thought it was amazing. But TV Nation – at times, Michael Moore really annoyed me, but at least it had a real focus. And the problem with this show was like, they did all the hidden camera stuff and didn’t even involve me. I’m like, “Hello? Isn’t that what I should be doing, more than these weird kinda long stories?” Everything we should have done should have been about things we were complaining about – and actually a lot of them, I just thought, “No one’s complaining about that.” So I think Tuesday I’m gonna get the new series commissioned, and I’m producing it this time. And basically it’s just gonna be really simple. It’s just we’re gonna take a kinda poll of the hundred things that annoy people the most, and then we’re either gonna try and deal with them or get revenge. And it’s gonna be that simple. And I think it’ll be really good. Because despite itself, it did really well. Because I think people just like the idea of complainers. I just thought it was a bit of a confused show, and it’s gonna be much more focused next time.
KP: I think people just like the idea of you doing work.
JOLY: Yeah, well, so does my wife. (laughing)
KP: How often do you get presented projects that you turn down flat?
JOLY: Every day. The Complainers is the very first thing that I was ever proposed that wasn’t mine that I did, and I was very pissed off for that – because I am a control freak to an extent, but because I genuinely care about what I make. I really don’t want to just make stuff for the money. So it did really annoy me, because it was so obvious how it should have been made, and it wasn’t. So that’s why I’m doing a second one, because it’s very rare you get the opportunity to look at something and think, “That was shit,” and then get given a second chance to repair it, which is what we’re doing on this. So I’m quite excited about it, actually, as it’s really clear. But I get offered all sorts of things. Mostly weight related. I just got one yesterday. I got offered the role of the young Pavarotti about a year ago. Offered the role of the young Harry Secombe. And what did I get yesterday? Some big BBC1 primetime show called 10 Things You Didn’t Know – and this was all about weight loss. So it’s like, “Look, fuck off. Go and ask Gervais.” (laughing) “I had pneumonia. That’s how I lose weight.”
KP: You’ll be playing Santa Claus before you know it.
JOLY: Yeah, I know! (laughing)
KP: Besides being overweight, what do you feel is the perception that people have of a “Dom Joly project”?
JOLY: What, of me?
KP: Yeah.
JOLY: I think loud and shouty is the main thing. Which actually is the one thing I’m really not. I mean, I am on camera, but I’m not really that loud and shouty. I used to be really loud and shouty, but there’s a weird thing about becoming successful or well known or whatever, is that I kinda felt I had less to prove. So when I go places I don’t… in the old days I’d kinda walk in and, “Hello, it’s me,” and just sort of try and impose myself, and now I don’t need to do that. So I find it very relaxing. So someone’s like, “Oh look, it’s Dom Joly.” They either hate me or like me, but there’s nothing much I can do about it. I don’t know what they think. Genuinely, I hope that the one thing… I think a lot of people think, “Oh, we thought he was going to be, like, really really huge after Trigger Happy,” and I wasn’t, and I think some people think, “Oh god, he fucked it up.” Whereas the majority of people I meet seem to get the fact that I’ve never yet done anything for the money, and I haven’t sold out. Whatever sold out means. Not that I’ve had some great artistic credibility, but I think I’ve done everything that I’m proud of, so far. I’ve never done anything for the wrong reasons. And that’s been a problem, really, because I think it stopped me from doing lots of stuff, but at least I’ve never done anything really bad yet.
KP: Is there anything that you can look back on and think, “Well, you know, I really should have done that…”?
JOLY: Well, there’s one thing I did fuck up on. I got called by… I mean, I’m not an actor, but I got called by Danny Boyle in the middle of Trigger Happy, and he was casting for 28 Days Later. And he said he was a huge fan, could I come in, and I said, “I’m just not an actor.” And he said, “Well, yeah, but I want you to play this part. It’s the baddie. I think you can do it.” And I said, “Well, I know I can do it. Look at Trigger Happy. You know I can do it. But if I have to come in and audition, I’m gonna be shit. I’ve never auditioned in my life.” He said, “No no, you don’t have to audition, but just come in and meet the producer and the writer.” So, of course, I went in and they made me read a piece out, and I was just awful. You can see Danny Boyle just, like, totally embarrassed, and then sent me a letter saying, “I know you could have done it, but they weren’t so sure.” So that was my big movie break that could have happened. So I’m not really interested in doing other people’s lines, that’s the point. What really I get off on is kind of having to think on the spot. That’s what I really, really get excited by. And that’s what Trigger Happy was all about. It’s just walking up to someone and just thinking, “Right, how can I make this into a funny, controlled situation,” and I get a real buzz out of that adrenaline. But I don’t think I would out of just reading someone else’s lines.
KP: So what would it take for you to do a scripted piece?
JOLY: For there not really to be a script. I mean, my dream piece would be Curb Your Enthusiasm, because I kind of think they worked a bit like I do – but obviously far more successfully, in that they probably have a page written out of what they need to get out of this scene and where it’s going, and you all kind of understand the characters, and then you riff and make it better and better and sound naturalistic. That’s what I’m really into. Or the kind of Spinal Tap type approach to stuff.
KP: Well, hopefully you’d do a better job at it than Jack Dee did…
JOLY: What, Lead Balloon?
KP: Yes.
JOLY: I’ve never seen Lead Balloon, actually.
KP: It’s…
JOLY: Is it terrible?
KP: The awkwardness of it is that it just such… it fails to capture what Curb is, but it’s so desperate to be Curb.
JOLY: Yeah, that’s what I felt. That’s why I didn’t really want to watch it. Because either it was gonna be so good I’d be bitter, or it was so bad I’d be upset. There was gonna be no medium ground.
KP: You can see the strain of them trying to get it right.
JOLY: The thing about Curb is that, what I’ve learned, is that it works because everyone’s having fun in it, I think, and it kinda just feels… you know it’s good. They’re making each other laugh. Whereas the sort of… I haven’t seen Lead Balloon, but the things that attempt to be Curb are… they’re almost like students of it, and it’s like, “Just forget the studies. Just try and have fun and make each other laugh.” That’s what it’s about.
KP: It sort of reminded me of the sort of vibe I got off of the show Nighty Night…
JOLY: (laughing)
KP: Which was just so relentless in its depressive nature that you get to a point where you go, “I’m tired.”
JOLY: Well, it was kinda like Chris Morris in The Last Jam. It was like, “Okay, any humor is pretty much gone now. This is deeply, deeply upsetting.”
KP: Now you’re just acting out…
JOLY: You’re just acting out in group therapy.
KP: How do you feel about the article writing that you’ve been doing over the past few years? How does that fit into how you view your career…
JOLY: Well, I’ve never written anything for television or radio or… you know, I’ve never written anything I’ve done on television. It’s all made up, literally, on the spot. And yet I love writing. It’s the one thing that Trigger Happy kind of did, was open doors for me and allowed me to… you know, someone offered me a column and I kinda thought, “I know I’ve got this column because I’m on telly, but they’re not gonna keep me unless I can write.” And I’ve been writing it for seven years now, for the Independent on Sunday. It’s kinda weird. It’s like this weekly diary. And it’s great. I find it totally liberating. I can write about anything I want. So I can write about, “I’ve been in Nicaragua,” or I can write about the man who breeds 50 foot chickens next to me. It’s kind of totally what I want it to be. And then I’ve done more and more travel writing, which I love doing. I just love writing, because it means I can do it from anywhere in the world. I can be at home, see my kids, and I really enjoy writing. I can really escape in it. And then I do a spoof column whose name I can’t reveal because no one’s guessed it yet, but I’ve been doing it for two years for the Independent. And that’s really good fun once a week, and that really winds people up. That’s my favorite column.
KP: Have there been any discussions to do a book collection of the travel pieces?
JOLY: I’m just about to sign a book deal, actually. I just got a new agent and we’re just talking about next week, and I’m going to do a book called Totalitarian Tourism, which is basically gonna be my attempt to do Holidays in Hell – which is still the greatest book ever. So I’m just gonna go to six or seven… I mean, my dream TV show’s already been made, which is Holidays in the Axis of Evil, but it was done by someone with no talent, sadly, so it was really dull. And I just think, “How can you fuck that up?” It would just be so much fun.
KP: Why do you feel you can’t do it now?
JOLY: Well, just because it was such a good name and Britain’s such a tiny place, so they kinda think, “Oh, that’s been done.” “But it was done really badly..” And they’re like, “No, it’s been done.”
KP: But why this sort of parochial feel that, you know, you’re only shooting for the UK? Why not look at a broader audience?
JOLY: Because I don’t know anyone anywhere else. (laughing) You know, I live in the Cotswolds. I don’t really take many meetings in LA. I’m longing to do something like that, but I’m genuinely… I’m just a bit… I’m not lazy, I’m just… I don’t know what the word is. I just need someone to ring me up and say, “Do it,” and if I love it it’s like, “Fantastic, let’s do it.”
KP: So that’s all it takes, right?
JOLY: Really, genuinely. I think the most common question to me is, like, “How can you do all this stuff when you’re so busy?” I’m on Facebook a lot. And, like, “How can he do this when he’s so busy?” Like, “Yeah, I’m real busy.” I mean, the whole reason I do my job is so I’m not that busy. Because I do it… you know, I wrote two columns this morning and that’s it. I’m going to watch Wimbledon this afternoon.
KP: So, really, that’s all it would take – a phone call.
JOLY: Yeah.
KP: So let’s say if someone were to get off the phone doing an interview with you, make a few phone calls, get some people interested in talking to you about getting a project going, that’s all it would take for you.
JOLY: That’s all it would take.
KP: Let me write this down. So, are we making a gentleman’s bet on this?
JOLY: Honestly, it’s very weird because I get asked this quite a lot, and I sort of joke about it and I think, “I don’t know. I’ve always waited for someone just to ring me up and say it, but it just never happens. What would I do? Do I go to LA and I wander around with a sign saying, ‘I want to make TV?’” I’ve no idea how you do it. But the problem is no one’s ever known my work in the States because the American Trigger Happy had crap music and then, of course, the American Trigger Happy itself pretty much killed it all off.
KP: Well, I can tell you – I’ve never been to the UK, and I know your work…
JOLY: Well, that’s good. If you could just have another one, we could have a club. You’ve never been to the UK?
KP: I have never been to the UK.
JOLY: You’re slightly obsessed with English comedy. You know Nighty Night. It’s very impressive.
KP: I have a lot of friends in the UK. And it’s not terribly cost effective to travel to the UK at this point.
JOLY: No. Or much fun, actually.
KP: Well, I’m afraid I’d get knifed.
JOLY: Well, you would. Trust me.
KP: It seems like… what has it been, the past couple of years?… Where all of a sudden it seems that crime is taking this tremendous spiral upwards in the UK?
JOLY: It’s only going to spiral upwards, and I think knife culture has become much more prevalent. But, actually, it’s always been like that. I was just reading a paper… it’s not that I read old papers, but I was reading a paper from 1968, and there were huge problems with razor gangs in Glasgow. So it’s kind of a fad thing. But actually, Happy Hour nearly made a serious point – I stopped it quickly – but it is very odd that in of all the places in the world we went where people got drunk to the extent of death, in Russia and Germany and Mexico and everywhere, there was nowhere where I couldn’t just wander out at 11 at night in a city and I’d just feel completely fine. I mean, possibly – you walk into a dodgy area, you might be worried about a mugger. But, I mean, not really. Whereas England, genuinely – in the five towns within ten miles of where I am, I would feel really nervous at 10:00 at night, because someone would definitely come up to me… not just because I’m me on the telly, but to just say, “You looking at me?” and then just start a fight. There’s something very inherent… we like fighting in England. And I don’t. So that’s why I’d like to come to the States. I don’t want to fight.
KP: Do you think that fighting is alcohol created, or just a natural state that the alcohol brings out?
JOLY: I think there’s probably something a little bit natural within us. Is it because we’re an island? I don’t know… And feeling like, “Oh, no one’s ever beaten us…” although everyone actually has, but we just don’t realize it. And definitely alcohol fueled… we definitely drink… we just can’t handle our drink. We drink to get drunk, rather than drink to have fun.
KP: It was touched upon in The Complainers, the sort of British reserve…
JOLY: Yeah. But it’s definitely reserve. My theory behind being drunk is that we’re so kind of nervous and socially inadequate, that it’s about skin contact. If you get drunk, you either fight someone and you touch skin or you get a shag if you’re lucky. Either way, it’s the only way we can kinda make contact with people.
KP: So you’d say that, 11:00 at night, you feel safer on the street in New York City than a street of London?
JOLY: Oh, New York City? Piece of piss. I feel safer in the streets of Tehran or Managua or even Baghdad than 11:00… London’s actually really not too bad because it’s so big. But somewhere like Swindon or Oxford or any kind of small place – you know, kinda market town where there’s nothing for people to do, so they all just hang out round the kebab stand at midnight and then just all fight each other…
KP: Where are the smaller “safe haven” areas? You moved out of London. You’re obviously not living in Swindon…
JOLY: No, I’m in the Cotswolds, so I’m kind of in the middle of nowhere.
KP: So you’ve essentially moved out to the rural area.
JOLY: Yeah. I’ve done my sort of New England move. My Connecticut move – except without the huge house. And without the lovely flat in Manhattan.
KP: So if you were to choose a foreign location to live, lets say for a year, where would you live?
JOLY: San Francisco.
KP: On the hill?
JOLY: Yeah. Well, I’d have a little Vesper, but I love love love San Francisco. I love north California. I’d probably live in Oregon, actually, if I had a choice. I haven’t been there yet, so I can’t quite say that with conviction. But there’s something I find amazing about crossing the bridge in San Francisco and going up Highway 1. I just was absolutely… I’d be very happy there. Also I’m off to Canada, because I married a Canadian. I’d never have gone to Canada otherwise. And I’ve got a place on Lake Muskoka, which is three hours north or Toronto. It’s kind of the Canadian’s version of the Hamptons, but it’s a bit shit. But I love that. And there are no English at all, which is the best thing. Basically, I tend not to travel anywhere where there’s a direct flight from England. I know there’s one from Toronto, but…
KP: But you’re getting awfully close to the Quebecois…
JOLY: Well, actually, I love the Quebecois. I did a piece on Quebec City last year, and I think Quebec City is the most underrated city in North America. I mean, it’s absolutely beautiful. It’s very European. You don’t need to visit Disney if you don’t want to go to Europe – you can go there. And the food is just astonishing. It’s kind of like nice French.
KP: But you speak French…
JOLY: Yeah, but that’s nothing to do with Quebec, trust me.
KP: There’s still a bridge. If you speak no French…
JOLY: Honestly, most Quebecois you meet… I mean, I have better conversations with my dog. I mean really, it’s such extraordinary French. It sounds like a man’s being strangled. But yeah, it does help a bit.
KP: I spent some time in Montreal, and it was the most dismissive atmosphere towards anyone who did not live there and speak French.
JOLY: I like Montreal less, actually. Everyone seems to like Montreal. I find Montreal a bit too American, really. I mean, you know, you go there for something different, and it’s kind of wanting to be American. But no, I really like them – but I agree that speaking French does help. They kind of accept you a bit more.
KP: So, besides Swindon, what’s the one place that you would never want to spend time in?
JOLY: Well, I’ve just been there, weirdly, this weekend, and I’ve just written my column about it. Weston-super-Mare.
KP: So it is Weston-super-Mare.
JOLY: I think Weston-super-Mare is the single most depressing place I’ve visited. Weston-super-Mare or Coventry. But Coventry has the excuse that the Germans leveled it in the Second World War with the firebombs. So at least they have some sort of excuse – whereas Weston-super-Mare was completely untouched, and it’s just the land that time forgot.
KP: Is it the people? The atmosphere? What is it that…
JOLY: It’s just this… there’s something about what we do to seaside towns. Because we build big seaside towns, and then we forget that our weather’s rubbish – so no one’s ever gonna go to the sea. And so it just ends up sort of horrible penny arcades and it stinks of urine and there’s depressed donkeys. It’s kind of like Coney Island but times ten. And it’s just everything’s peeling and faded and it’s all empty, and the people are all cross-eyed. I mean, it’s really no joke. It’s just there’s something very very odd about it.
KP: So, never gonna go back?
JOLY: I will never go back to Weston-super-Mare, no. There are many other ugly places to visit.
KP: So are you ready for them to burn you in effigy?
JOLY: (laughing) Well, I wrote… I got in a lot of trouble over Swindon, and I’ve just written an even worse column which is coming out this Sunday about Weston-super-Mare, so I’m pretty sure there’ll be a huge wicker man of me burning by Sunday night.
KP: So at what point are you just gonna have to move? Because you’ve pretty much trashed every place in the UK…
JOLY: Well, I think that’s my plan, actually. I wrote a golf book last year because I realized I was starting to play golf, and I was so rude about everybody that they don’t really let me play anywhere now – so that’s kind of got me off golf, which is good. So I’m just hoping soon that the government will actually pay for me to leave, and then I can go and live somewhere nice and hot.
KP: So your preference is the Pacific rather than the Atlantic…
JOLY: Well, I’m really selfish. I’d live in four places. I’d probably have a little place in Morocco, San Francisco, and have a place in Muskoka – I absolutely love that. And then… I don’t know. Somewhere hot. But I don’t know where, really.
KP: Now, if things stabilized, would you spend any significant time back in Lebanon?
JOLY: No. My family’s there. And I hate them. My sister runs the family company that I was supposed to take over and… you know.
KP: We didn’t see much of that in your Excellent Adventure…
JOLY: Well, that was the… if only you knew the weirdness of that. My sister refused to be filmed, as did my father – as did my whole family, basically. So when I went out there, there was a fantastic bit where we’re filming at this seaside restaurant where I’m trying to give them my photograph, and I went there because that’s where we’d always go every Sunday. And suddenly my entire family turned out without knowing I’m there. There, sitting at the next door table to me, is my dad who I haven’t spoken to for about 10 years, my sister who’s taken my rightful job and who I don’t really get on with, and various other people. And the director’s going, “So these are your family?” I go, “Yeah.” They go, “So can we film them?” I go, “Unfortunately not.” So we’re having this totally weird conversation with me and Pete, with all my family listening in, and the one interesting thing in the whole country and we can’t film it – because it would have made incredibly awkward TV.
KP: I’m assuming there was a nice conversation after that bit of filming?
JOLY: No. It was pretty awkward. I mean, they don’t really understand what I do at all. They don’t really see TV as a career. They think it’s a sort of punishment. I think they have no clue. I don’t think they’ve ever seen a program I’ve made.
KP: On purpose?
JOLY: Probably. Well, they don’t watch TV. They kind of live in the 1950s, really.
KP: Are they big Mr. Bean fans?
JOLY: I think they probably are. I think they probably think that he’s the height of sophistication, actually.
KP: I think, at this point, you’re just going to have to work with Rowan Atkinson.
JOLY: (laughing)
KP: Just to get known outside the country.
JOLY: Yeah, I know. I’m gonna have to bite the bullet. It got worse last week when I was filming this golf DVD. Some woman came up to me and goes, “I don’t know who you are, but my daughter says you’re the new Benny Hill.” And I’m like, “Oh fuck that.” Then I looked at his DVD sales and I was alright.
KP: So what is the golf DVD that you’re doing?
JOLY: Oh please. It’s just another low in my career. It’s Dom Joly’s Golfing Goofs and Gaffes.
KP: Oh really.
JOLY: That’s the stage I’ve got to.
KP: Was this your idea?
JOLY: No, someone came to me. And actually, I did have lots of good ideas for golf. So I just thought, “All I have to do is do some stuff in between clips.” And I had a lot of hidden camera golf gags that I never used, so I just did those. They were great fun.
KP: So this is obviously a direct to DVD.
JOLY: Christmas special.
KP: Is this going to be the big sell at Tesco this year?
JOLY: Do you know what? It just might. Because I’d laugh at these things every year. And actually, I did a spoof documentary of what my life was going to be like, called Being Dom Joly, which was kind of eight years ago. And in it, one of the big jokes was that I was gonna end up on the celebrity charity golf circuit playing with Ronnie Corbett – and there I was making Dom Joly’s Golfing Goofs and Gaffes just thinking, “Fucking hell. What happened?”
KP: And no Ronnie Corbett.
JOLY: And no Ronnie Corbett. He couldn’t be bothered.(laughing)
KP: Well, maybe you need to be a little more discriminatory when these things come in.
JOLY: That’s one of the few things I’ve done because I needed to pay some school fees. But actually, I did it because I thought it was gonna be funny, and it was funny. So I’m not embarrassed by it, because it is funny. It is a sell through, but I’m very pleased with the stuff we filmed, so it’s alright. And I got to visit Weston-super-Mare. So, really…
KP: It’s kind of like an investigative recce…
JOLY: Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.
KP: Now you’re knocking it in print.
JOLY: Yeah.
KP: So you got a second series of The Complainers coming up…
JOLY: Yeah.
KP: You have the golf video…
JOLY: Yeah. DVD.
KP: DVD, sorry. Is that what the producer told you to keep saying?
JOLY: Yeah, he’s here right now he’s got his hand up my arse.
KP: So what else is on the agenda for this year? Obviously the columns are still ongoing…
JOLY: I’ve got my columns ongoing. I’ve got a possible show, which I’m just waiting to hear about, which is driving from London to Sydney. It’s going to take 92 days, which is gonna be kinda cool. And then I’m writing a book – written by my fictional character in the Independent – which is hopefully gonna be the next Bridget Jones, because he now takes Bridget Jones’s place there. And I don’t know… That’s about it, really.
KP: And you’re doing a podcast for Cobra beer?
JOLY: Yeah. You got me.
KP: It almost sounds like you’re trying to ignore the fact that you’re doing a podcast for Cobra beer.
JOLY: No no, I’m very proud of that.
KP: Is the travel challenge podcast over and done with now?
JOLY: Well, that was just a one-off thing for the Sunday Times. And again, it was just one of those very weird things where they said, “We’ll fly you around the world and do these exciting things.” But I just thought, “Really, how exciting is it listening to a man canoeing?” But they paid me and it meant travel and doing really weird things, but I always thought that was one thing that really didn’t lend itself to a podcast. But I thought, “Well, they must know better than me…” And they didn’t, actually. We’re supposed to do another lot this year, but they’re going to make them vodcasts now, where they video them as well. So you just think, “Well, in the end, doesn’t that just become a really cheap TV program?”
KP: And the answer is “Yes,” and you’re doing it rather cheaply.
JOLY: Yeah.
KP: They finally found a way to get you cheap.
JOLY: Yeah. And I’m not dumb. Basically, I’ll do anything if it’s something I want to do. Most of the things I do I just sit there thinking, “God, if only they knew I’d pay them to do this.”
KP: So what is the status of… I noticed your website hasn’t exactly been updated…
JOLY: Well, I never did a website. Someone set it up for me. I’m just too… I couldn’t work out how to upload anything or anything, so I’ve become obsessed with Facebook. So everything I do is on my Facebook page. All my photos are up there, all my columns go up, and I change my status every day. But unfortunately, I’ve just reached a huge problem – I’ve reached 5,000 friends, and that’s the limit on Facebook. So I don’t really know what to do now.
KP: I guess now you’re going to actually set up a website.
JOLY: Yeah. I can’t, though. Facebook’s so easy. I can just… if I’m on the train I can do it. I’m really good. I’m on it every day. I reply to stuff. I’m really accessible, and that and it works for me. I can put all my photos up, all this stuff. But I don’t know what I’m gonna do now. I’ve never been very good with that sort of thing.
KP: Do you have any plans to do your own personal podcast?
JOLY: I was thinking about it, because that’s one of the reasons I did this Cobra thing was because I know Danny Wallace really well and he does a radio show, and his podcast was doing really well, and he asked me to do it, and I thought, “Well, I’ve never done this before, so I might as well have a look at it.” And actually, it really doesn’t seem very complicated. So yeah, I am thinking about it.
KP: Well, you’ll have to let us know, so we can actually let people outside the UK know that you’re doing these things.
JOLY: Yeah, you know, I’m not very keen on that, though. (laughing) I don’t trust foreigners.
KP: I can tell. I’ve seen your programs.
JOLY: (laughing)
KP: It’s a healthy distrust, though.
JOLY: Yeah.
KP: So when is your next trip to the US?
JOLY: Next trip to the US? I don’t know. Well, I do. I’m going to Canada on July the 7th for a month, and then I’m going straight from Canada to Beijing for the Olympics, and then I come back here for a week, and then I’m going to LA for a week to have an extraordinarily huge amount of meetings with financiers for this Trigger Happy type film.
KP: What would you do if someone came to you with a scripted piece?
JOLY: I would look at it and get very excited and show it to my friends in the village and say, “Look – this is from America. They want me.” I don’t know. I honestly would love someone to suggest something that they thought I’d be good at, because I’m just a bit lazy. But very excited…
KP: Well, it’s certainly been a pleasure speaking with you. And I intend to win the bet. Did we actually make the bet yet?
JOLY: (laughing) Listen, anything that gets me out of the house and away from Swindon.
KP: Weston-super-Mare’s going to come after you.
JOLY: (laughing) Yeah, that’s what it will be called – The Dom Joly Weston-super-Mare Show! (laughing)
KP: I’m writing that down.
JOLY: Yeah! Where are you based?
KP: I’m in North Carolina.
JOLY: Ah, there we go, I knew it. I knew there was an edge to your “always going to the same places” type conversation.
KP: Well…
JOLY: I was nearly with you. I was in South Carolina.
KP: That was close, but it’s not quite the sort of void of North Carolina.
JOLY: Yeah, but it’s not bad. Come on. I made the effort. How many other comedians are doing that?
KP: It’s not Weston-super-Mare, I’ll grant you, but…
JOLY: (laughing)
KP: Now I’m going to have to do a sort of cultural exchange and experience Weston-super-Mare for myself.
JOLY: That would be fantastic. I’ll get my moonshine guys to do a house swap with people in Weston-super-Mare.
KP: That’s what you should do…
JOLY: That’s a great show, actually. There it is – Hillbilly House Swap.
I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.
This has been a wild couple of weeks with the number of documentaries I’ve been watching about musicians as of late.
CHRISTOPHER STIPP: Hey, Tom. How are you doing?
CS: And I think he comes off ““ I was surprised to see he was quite erudite and scholarly as a young man ““ completely different than public perception of what people “thought” he was.
CHRISTOPHER STIPP: Ray, I don’t know if I should start out with Your Highness, Your Holiness, I don’t know which one you would prefer”¦
MANZAREK: Well, that moment was Moonlight Drive. He sang Moonlight Drive to me. I heard the lyrics, and I heard his rephrasing and his singing and he was right on pitch and he had a good sense of timing and a good sense of space and I said “You know what, I can play all kinds of funky Ray Charles kind of stuff and Jimmy Smith organ behind that” and Jim said, “That’s cool man, that’s what I hear too. If you can do that that would be fabulous.”
MANZAREK: Yes. Oliver Stone movie”¦.no good. It makes Jim Morrison an alcoholic and a wino, a drunkard, a crazy man. He was actually very intelligent, very sophisticated, very funny. He was a funny guy. It’s entirely the wrong portrait. That’s what so much fun doing When You’re Strange. You are going to get the real Jim Morrison being Jim Morrison and you will see the real Doors. It’s nothing but Jim Morrison as Jim Morrison and that’s what’s so great about When You’re Strange.
I would remiss if I didn’t mention the untimely passing of John Hughes.
Bernie Madoff.
Those looking for love won’t ever find it and those who don’t believe it exists never had a child who dotes on them. It’s a slippery thing, love, when you think about the way it finds some and the way it ignores others. Growing up, I was enchanted by films like ONE CRAZY SUMMER and BETTER OFF DEAD by director Savage Steve Holland or the suite of films from John Hughes where characters were placed into every embarrassing situation as it pertains to the courting rituals of the modern American teen. As you head into older age, it would follow, should “love” be as elusive as it was during the awkward years of prepubescence you would start developing the jagged edges of those burnt-out on bad relationships while developing an acute distaste for all things sweet and lovey-dovey.
JASENOVEC: It made sense because she performs all around Los Angeles and is comfortable on stage and everything. She’s really funny and charming and she has a unique comedic voice so it just made sense. A lot of our favorite documentaries always feature the document writer on camera in the primary role and once I found out how she felt about love I thought the audience should really experience the journey through her eyes. Because she had these specific feelings and that’s what drives the film. So once we decided that we started working on the idea and came up with the sort of scripted story line to tie everything together and give the story some sort of arch for Charlene and just for story line.
CS: Now that begs the question, when you had about 300 hours footage and you said, “OK, we have 300 hours and we need to make a movie that’s 90 minutes and change.” Where do you start? Obviously you start with your story.
CS: Does it help that you guys did this independently?
To most of the American audience, the name Dom Joly will most likely spark no response.
KP: So you’ve got a camera, and you’re out there doing this guerilla material. What’s the learning curve, going out there? Because what you were doing at that time, during the Trigger Happy period, was rather fearless material…
KP: Well, you know, when you talk about, you’re almost sounding dismissive of Happy Hour. Which I think is unfortunate, because travel shows… say the Michael Palin shows, Michael Palin shows are all about the grandeur of certain places…
KP: But why this sort of parochial feel that, you know, you’re only shooting for the UK? Why not look at a broader audience?