THE BOOTH - 1.5. - Christmas Special

THE BOOTH - 1.5

THEME: Christmas Special.

WHO'S IN?: It's my old Film Show colleagues, Chris and James. Consequently, there's just a little bit of chat about movies. We only mention Star Wars. And Back to the Future. Jaws. The Bond films. Lion King...

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE BOOTH?: The room temperature is apparently eighty degrees. To imagine it was Christmas, we had to use our imaginations really hard.

FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING: In a display of seasonal (well, I say 'seasonal' - we recorded this in November) goodwill, I, for the first time, release both guests at the end. I can't promise I'll be that generous in every show. After all, if I did, we'd have no format!

SIX DEGREES OF THE BOOTH: Chris recalls the time he wound up talking about robotic emus. Plus remember when Dan mentioned his appearance in a piece by a probably inebriated playwright? Yeah, that was James...

NEXT WEEK: We go back to class for Series Two. This time round it's Secondary School that is put under my comedy microscope (which I of course store next to my joke petri dish and my funny-looking lab coat). Like this episode, it was topical when it was recorded...

This episode can be found here.

Let the Cry Fall... (AKA an intro to - what would have been - Episode Seven of 'The Film Show'.)

In a previous post, I imagined what would have happened in a further episode of my podcast, The Film Show, had I brought the old team back together again for one last glorious mission show.

On 13th November 2012, I no longer had to imagine.

In early 2013, I still no longer had to imagine, but was left without any evidence of said reunion because, just days before I received a belated Christmas present of an external hard drive, my computer crashed. Sod's law/That's always the way/etc etc.

Episode 7 was a beauty and words cannot express how I feel about its loss - well, there are certain words I could use, but they're not exactly suitable for what usually is a blog that warrants, at most, a 12A certificate and a cautious parent reading over your shoulder. Heck, even my attempt at erotica would only be deemed to have "mild sexual references".

I digress.

If there's anything that can be learnt from this, it's that history repeats itself. The opening ten minutes of Episode One were lost due to technical difficulties, the whole first half of Episode 6 was lost due to technical difficulties, and now the whole of Episode 7 has been lost to technical difficulties. Goodness knows what would happen if we ever attempted an Episode 8 - perhaps we would end up erased from existence.

Regardless, luckily I, unlike my repaired laptop, have my memory intact so can recall some of the highlights of Episode 007, our show on Skyfall, and our James Bond Special.

For all those unsure, yes, each of those are the same thing.

Anyway, the memories...


*James admits he tried out MI5's online test to determine whether he'd be a decent agent. He then jokes he doesn't trust himself with his own personal information

*Chris recalls watching a man describing his age via the phrase 'in Batmans, I'm 7'

*We count Blofelds

*James says he watched the whole of Skyfall looking out for Albert Finney. When the cast list comes up at the end, he realises that Albert Finney, funnily enough, was the one that looked like Albert Finney

*With the panelists currently drawing at Taglines 3-3, it's all to play for in this deciding game. James sweeps the board and is rewarded with an ultra-special once-in-a-lifetime(so-it'll-be-a-pity-that-it's-lost) prize - he'll get to read the final credits in the style of an Oscar acceptance speech

*Following the (then)recent acquisition of Lucasfilms by Disney, we debate which other franchises should be snapped up. The gist is nobody should touch Ghostbusters (if someone did, who would you call?)

*It comes as a surprise to no one that Skyfall is top of the box office that week. Well, it's never a surprise to me - I write the flipping show

*James serenades us with a near-unrecognisable rendition of Ode to Joy during our segment on Die Hard 5 thus ensuring we don't have to pay royalties

*James criticises the credits whilst he's reading them. The final people thanked are Bruce Willis ("because he's awesome") and, of course, "your mom" (which James misinterprets as an immature 'yo mamma'-type comment)


And that's it. The recording ran for well over an hour and a half. Editing would have reduced it to a manageable hour. Unfortunately, the laptop seemed to think its runtime should be zero minutes and no seconds. Brilliant.

Still, it's not all bad. If I thought the Episode 7 reunion was amazing, imagine how good an Episode 8 could be...

Maybe Skynet has something against Pixar? (AKA an intro to Episode Six of 'The Film Show'.)

Once again, the movie billed for Film Club fails to feature majorly in the feature. This time however, it is not due to our tangents, but because of technical difficulties. Yes, Episode Six is supposed to be about Toy Story, but, thanks to the machines, the trilogy barely gets a mention in the material that remains. Consequently,  like bakers used to mix bread with sawdust to compensate for the lack of quality ingredients, it is filled out with a longer opening.

Incidentally, we only ever intended to produce introductions for Episodes One and Six to explain why we jump in without proper openings. We were then going to record a brand new edition. As it happened, Chris didn’t show, so James and I went ahead with the planned preludes before deciding that they were so much fun that we’d do a full set.

As of yet, there are no plans to produce this final show.

With James heading off to learn how to teach English, and Chris and I set for multiple projects outside of our third year workload, it is unlikely that we will manage to get together for a recording any time soon. Who knows, we might reunite in a decade or so, but, for now, we can only imagine what that seventh edition would have been like. I have. Here’s my version.

-Chris moans when I mention Daniel Radcliffe has expressed an interest in playing Marty McFly if there’s ever a reboot.

-Panel devise the most unsuitable cast for a modern remake of the film.

-I reveal the time travel device in an early draft was a fridge.

- Panel slag off Indiana Jones 4.  

-In Taglines, James gets them all because he’s a massive fan of the eighties.

-Our debate on sequels to long-dead franchises consists of despairing about Ghostbusters 3 and pondering how desperate Eddie Murphy must be if he signs on to Twins 2.

-In Box Office, Chris rejoices that Avengers is finally out. Massive geeky conversation entails, most of which is cut.

-Panel use the inclusion of Safe in the top ten as an excuse to do Jason Statham impressions.

-James spends the majority of Trailer Trash’s coverage of Men in Black III reciting the Fresh Prince theme.

-We wrap up with a list of people to thank in the style of an Oscar speech…

Yes, to conclude the show (and, potentially, the series), I was going to have the Taglines winner wrap up by reciting a list of people who contributed to the show in the style of an acceptance speech. It’s essentially a technique to make credits interesting that I nicked from Whose Line Is It Anyway. Casual plagiarism aside, as we never did produce that show, I can think of no better place to incorporate this list than here…

“Oh my god, I can’t believe this. This has been such an amazing journey. I have worked with so many amazing people and I owe this all to them. They are, in no particular order, you for listening or reading, Sonney for commissioning the show (I LOVE YOU, MAN), Chris and James for taking part, Alex and Tom for producing it (God, they do great work…), the M.M.C., Kermode and Mayo, anyone who sent in a review or comment, Bruce Willis (for just being awesome), and, of course, my mom…”

CORRECTIONS

James did not, as promised, spend the entire show trying to remember the name of Christoph Waltz’s next film.  He quickly reverted to thinking about Die Hard.

I am wrong when I suggest no one wants to sleep alone. Ebenezer Scrooge famously stayed away from company because he was a sucker for his single bed.

“We never said the spoiler” for Sixth Sense. I’m pretty sure there’s evidence we did…

The ninth rule of Fight Club - you do not talk about Colin Firth (AKA an intro to episode five of ‘The Film Show’)

There’s no way around it – this fifth edition is unequivocally The Liam Neeson Show. Every topic or segment seems to come back to him like a massive game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon in which the mentor-turned-kickass-butt kicker takes the place of the Footloose star. By now, our ability to go on tangents has become so refined that we’re even able to unintentionally cover related projects – the Narnia link was completely not planned. As James points out, it’s as if the universe wants us to talk about him.

I suppose I’m to partially blame for this Liam love-in though. After all, I was the first to bring him up when I compared the changing stock roles filled by Firth to those Taken by Neeson, and I only did that because, like with Fight Club, we can’t really talk much about The King’s Speech (Not that it’s an official rule – it’s just that there’s little that we can make light of). Hence, we spend most of the Film Club discussing everything but the film. As with the Fight Club show, we don’t even get around to talking about Helena Bonham-Carter, so if she’s reading this (I doubt it) or has heard the shows (see content of last brackets), I can only apologise – not for the shows in general, but for not acknowledging her contribution to those movies.

Another aspect of the Bonham Carter canon that we did not say much about, this time deliberately, is the Harry Potter series. It transpires, during the King’s Speech Box Office rundown, that Producer Alex has not seen the recent films because his flatmates have insisted he read the books first as he “forgot” to tackle them earlier. Ah, yes, an interesting interpretation of the word “forget” there. I was under the belief that it meant you had neglected to do or remember something important. In this case, it appears to refer to not doing something that was forced upon you, as in ‘Mum told me I’d "forgot" to paint the house”. Well, you can’t say The Film Show isn’t educational…

What you can say is that occasionally we make mistakes – no, this isn’t a segway into the Corrections segment (although, in retrospect, it very much should have been), and even the presenters’ names aren’t immune to slips of the tongue. Not only do I start the show by making Chris sound like two people, I end this edition by calling Alex ‘James’ (which, if this was indeed his name, would certainly make asking his verdict on Taglines scores very confusing). Ah well, nobody’s perfect.

Except Liam Neeson.

 CORRECTIONS

‘We’re discussing The King’s Speech’. We’re clearly not.

Chris misspeaks – we don’t like Sex and The City. As for sex in the city...

James definitely does not think Crossroads needs a sequel. Not even Britney Spears wants that.

Similarly, I tend to mix up 'presents' and 'porcupines'. Christmas is always interesting. (AKA an intro to episode four of ‘The Film Show’)

Rather appropriately, in this, our fourth edition, we break the fourth wall by bringing in views outside of our own. Whereas previously we tended to chat amongst ourselves without really acknowledging listeners, from this edition onwards, we incorporate their reviews of the Film Club film that I asked for via Facebook. However, it transpires that most people confuse the words ‘review’ and ‘description’, hence the majority of the offerings we got were merely concise synopsises which, although well done, were not particularly useful in aiding discussion. It would almost have been better of them to send us pictures of Spiderman, because then at least we’d have something cool to put on our bedroom walls.

Also introduced in this episode is Producer Alex. Well, technically he’d appeared or been referenced in all the previous shows albeit briefly, but here he is a major contributor. Unfortunately, most of his airtime in this edition seems to involve him being distracted, abused, or, shall we say, touched, in some way or another.  Not only that, but Chris and James, for probably no reason other than boredom, repeatedly off-air tweet him spoilers (but not, presumably, BRUCE WILLIS IS A GHOST, because that’s long since been established). Despite their encouragements for others to do the same, I have ensured that this does not happen, thus saving Alex from a lifetime of random twists being revealed, by removing his Twitter handle from the edited podcast.

One moniker of his that I have kept in however is his alleged middle name, Danger. The origins of this aren’t needlessly complicated (I can confirm there will be no films released detailing its backstory); it was simply how he’d identified himself on a social network profile, and I kept referring to him as such long after he’d since dropped it. Why? Well, partly because I thought it had a nice ring to it, and partly because I wanted him to hear how silly it sounded. Honestly, it would be like me identifying myself as Brendan Maverick Way (Incidentally, M is my middle initial, thus allowing me to legitimately call myself BMW, but that’s not what it stands for).

Speaking of mavericks, it seems that James’ suggestion that our next Film Club film be Executive Decision is not actually that mad. Having looked it up out of curiosity, it turns out to be a genuine 1996 action film starring Kurt Russell. This discovery in fact directly inspired a round in the pilot of my other podcast, and indeed, the title is in one of the questions.

CORRECTIONS

‘Batman is Batman’ is not what ‘all you need to know about Batman’. You also need to know that he gets quite testy if you mention parents...

You can’t exhaust Spiderman – that’s another of his lesser-known powers.

“We” did not give Colin Firth an honorary degree – obviously here we’re referring to our university. We only award fake Oscars.

Spoiler Alert (AKA an intro to episode three of ‘The Film Show’)

First off, we’re sorry. We’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry.

Yes, Episode Three is very much an apology special which sees us saying sorry for, amongst other things, seemingly unintentionally endorsing Mel Gibson’s alleged assault, making light of sex trafficking, and, worst of all, claiming that Robert Pattinson is an actor. If that's not enough apologies for you, then we’re sorry about that too.

One thing it appears we’re not remorseful about is repeatedly ruining the infamous twist ending of The Sixth Sense. In pretty much every other episode, including this one, we mention that Bruce Willis is, say, not of this world. Actually, that makes him sound like an alien, which is not the revelation at all (although it would be an apt start to Shyamalan’s increasingly ludicrous output). I’ve no idea why we kept coming back to that particular spoiler (generally we were quite good at not mentioning anything key from the latter half of movies), but then again, I don’t know why the mind-blowing climax to a thirteen year old film is so in the public domain. Saying that though, viewing The Sixth Sense whilst being aware of the big reveal has saved me from having to see it twice to spot the hints towards its surprise, thus giving me more time to, say, rewatch The Room.

Ah, The Room. After James’ mind-boggling description, I knew it was the sort of so-bad-it’s-good film that I would enjoy, so, as soon as it was screened at a local B-Movie double bill night that I frequented, I went along to see it. I was not disappointed (well, that is to say I was – it’s an atrocious bit of movie making – but, it is a must-see if you love car-crash cinema). Like The Rocky Horror Show, it has an established set of routines and rituals you do when watching this cult classic. Hence, when any of the picture frames with their sample photo of cutlery come into shot, you throw, and shout, “spoons!”. Honestly, it’s like being in a very disciplined angry mob, just waiting for their cue to hurl the flaming torches. Eventually, it becomes natural, something you do instinctively without thinking, like breaking into the lyrics of Duran Duran’s Rio.

I’m happy to say that Episode Three is not the only time you will hear that routine. It crops up again, and becomes somewhat of a recurring joke, because it just so happened that Rio repeatedly was in the Box Office top ten when we recorded shows, and we had yet to see it. I still have yet to see it. Why? Because BRUCE WILLIS IS A GHOST!

I’m so sorry.

CORRECTIONS

I did in fact watch Fight Club knowing the twist. I learnt it from a condensed two part parody on The Lee Mack Show in which Tyler Durden is Welsh, Marla joins the pair at the club, and there’s no real mention of Project Mayhem.  No prizes for guessing which version is closer to the novel.

Chris did not actually write the ‘punch you in the face’ line. He stayed up the previous night with several gag writers and that was their best effort.

Contrary to James’ assertion otherwise, Andie MacDowell is “worth it” - if by “worth it”, you mean “just as entitled to have clean silky smooth manageable hair as anyone else on this planet providing they can afford the pricey shampoo and conditioner combo.”.

Everyone's A Little Bit Racist (AKA an intro to episode two of 'The Film Show')

Onto Episode Two, and some more recurring themes and features have started to creep in. There’s the introduction of a topical debate, a hint of the customised introductions to come, and the first mention of a Delilah-load of Tom Jones tracks on the database. One thing that hopefully won’t be back though is that impression.

Yes, in a segway on how to improve Indiana Jones (which, come to think of it, should actually include him using a Segway), Chris does a somewhat dodgy Asian accent just after James tactfully avoided doing the same. Thankfully, as of yet, there have been no complaints so either people haven’t taken offence or don’t particularly care. Either way, it could have been much worse – people could have learnt we do the show in Blackface.

Moving on, this episode is not only noteworthy for, as aforementioned, additions to the format, but also questioning aspects of the old one. The penultimate spot, Trailer Trash, sees us debate both the name of the flick we’re meant to be reviewing and the title of the very feature itself. On reflection, perhaps it is not the greatest of titles, being as it is, a very American phrase (Then again, Caravan Crash, the British equivalent, wouldn’t have been particularly apt either). If anything, the greater criticism should be that it’s not a particularly original one as the Guardian runs a feature of the same name. Similarly, there are plenty of podcasts and programmes that run with the title, The Film Show, but then not all of them can claim to reveal the Sixth Sense spoiler as frequently we do.

BRUCE WILLIS IS A GHOST.

My work here is done.

CORRECTIONS:

*Justin Timberlake does in fact expose Janet Jackson’s nipple during The Social Network – it’s just in the deleted scenes, that’s all.

*Chris had no need to correct himself - Jeff Brudges is actually in True Grit. He plays Drunk number three.

*The Star Wars Christmas Special is not the funniest thing James has ever seen . That honour of course goes to a skateboarding kitten on Youtube.

As for official cannons, we don't have any - we only like artillery in movies. (AKA an intro to episode one of 'The Film Show')

In most cases, panel show pilots are a chance to try out a new format or test the chemistry of the contestants without ever showing the usually sketchy results to an audience. However, in the case of The Film Show, ours also serves as the beginning of the series. This might seem, like dancing to distract your opponent in a chess game, a strange move, but most of the elements present in later episodes, such as our tendency to stray into tangents, crop up here, so it is definitely worth including as part of the official canon. Indeed, the inaugural Film Club film is one that, due to his mild obsession with that particular motion picture, James mentions on a regular basis throughout the series. Indeed, not an episode goes by without him bringing it up or finding a tenuous link so he can crowbar it into the current discussion. It was because of this very fanaticism that I selected Die Hard as the focus of our first show.

Despite having only known James for a few months (we met when he responded to my advertisement for writers and performers to help create a regular sketch show), I already knew that the 1988 action film was a particular favourite of his. How? Well, how do we ever deduce these things? In some cases, it’s the frequency with which certain topics are mentioned. In others, it’s a shrine in their wardrobe. As for James however, it was particularly obviously – because he had written an entire article about it. This piece alone convinced me to devote the opening show to it. After all, in the extreme off chance that conversation would dry up, he could simply paraphrase his paragraphs. On reflection, it’s highly likely that a significant amount of the discussion missing from the show was just that. Thank heavens for technical difficulties then.

Ah, yes, the technical difficulties. What with the system crashing, tracks refusing to play, and broken mics forcing James and Chris to cosy up to each other and share, it certainly is a chaotic episode. However, every cloud has a silver lining (whoever coined this idiom clearly wasn’t a weather forecaster – they disappointingly never drop it into their reports). Ours, however, was only evident a year later when I decided to embark on a one-month editing marathon to whip the old shows into shape (and by ‘shape’, I of course mean ‘podcasts’). If episodes 1 and 6 had remained intact, I might never have thought to reunite with my comical colleagues to record a couple of all-new retrospective conversations to kickoff each show.

Well, I use the plural ‘colleagues’. In the event, although both were invited, only James turned up. Despite this setback, we decided to press ahead anyway – after all, those partial shows needed some sort of explanation to what the hell people were listening to. If it weren’t for us ignoring the heat of a small stuffy studio and getting out some vaguely coherent thoughts, the first words of the pilot would be ‘and looks very very camp’ – and if that’s not an inauspicious start, I don’t know what is.

Anyway, as it happens, producing the initial necessary introductions proved just too darn enjoyable (I’m not sure if using the phrase ‘recreating the magic’ here would set off my cliché overload alarm, so I’ll simply say that doing them reminded me of how much fun we used to have). As a result, we went on, and completed the series of six by recording a further four. Incidentally, our time spent trying to be funny in an immensely hot room provided me with an idea for another podcast, but that’s a blog for another time...

CORRECTIONS:

*My Batman costume does not have nipples on it. Those protrusions are simply my own poking through.

*Neither Back to the Future or Star Wars can rightly be hailed as the best trilogy of all time. No, that honour clearly goes to the Gingerdead Man series.

*Chris at one point claims that horses give birth to calves. This is obviously nonsense - everyone knows that baby horses are called ‘horselets’…

Not taken a traffic cone. Have walked into a lampost though (AKA an intro to 'The Film Show').

Having spent the hottest day of the year so far in a small studio with no air-conditioning to record introductions to some year-old radio footage, you would think that I would leap at the chance to go outside and enjoy the sunshine whilst it lasts, but no. It turns out I’m exactly the sort of recluse who can lock himself away for hours on end, only really going out for sustenance and socialising. However, it wasn’t really a case of suffering for my art (indeed, if intentionally being antisocial can be classified as suffering, we might want to redefine the word) as I enjoyed the work and it means that the world can finally hear the classic comic commentary of The Film Show. What is this show and why am I so keen to get it out in the public domain? Well, what follows is some sort of explanation…

University is, famously, an environment in which to experiment. For some, this means trying out substances, confirming their sexual preferences, or finding out exactly how many pints it takes before you steal a traffic cone. For me though, it’s been the perfect place to try out different things creatively. Consequently, in little over two years, I’ve performed stand-up, written several tiny plays and monologues, directed my own audio version of A Christmas Carol, acted in pieces at the local Theatre Royal, put on sketches for a Jubilee street party, become one of the founding members of a flash fiction group, and hosted my own radio show all about films.

The latter came about through my joining the radio society with the intention of collaborating on a regular sketch show. Almost immediately, this fell through, and I became part of a panel show that went through various incarnations until it too was, like beers in a six pack, canned.  It was only when I pitched the idea of a review feature on films that I ended up with a vehicle that would last for six glorious practise episodes until, regrettably, multiple other commitments (including several of those in my extensive list above) meant that we never had the time to broadcast live.

But what a fantastic set of six it was! From episode one, the basic format was more or less in place. Every episode, I would lead a series of discussions with comedy night M.C., James, and (soon-to-be) fellow Flashnificent, Chris*, around a set classic film, such as Die Hard or Spiderman**, before discussing more topical stuff such as interesting new trailers, the latest box office top ten, and whether there should officially only be three Indiana Jones films. Off this loose structure, we frequently span off into fantastical tangents which would continue until we realised we were straying too far from the original topic (episode five is notable in that a show provisionally about The King’s Speech somehow sees our discussions repeatedly lead to talk of Liam Neeson) and hastily cut to a song in order to refocus.

You will find no such songs in the podcast version of The Film Show however as very few people would rather hear the Foo Fighters instead of a  conversation about Batman (again, a topic that bizarrely cropped up with remarkable regularity in the King’s Speech show). Plus, with them included in the programme, some episodes would be up to two hours long, and nobody wants to listen to something as lengthy as eight editions of The Archers***.

Also notably absent from these edited audio treasures is any nuggets of information that would overtly identify either the university or the society radio station (the latter of which is, as of time of writing, still running****). This is not in any way to disassociate the podcasts from these institutions that provided a home for such a show; it’s just a way to ensure that their reputation isn’t muddied by a couple of blokes who are perfectly content to talk about Liam Neeson for an hour and a half.

Unless someone tries to sue us for libel.

In which case, it was -

*Incidentally, our team came together when Chris told me that he’d disliked the host of our society fundraiser. That host was James. I mentioned we were doing a show together.  Chris said he'd be up for joining in. The rest is history – well, very minor little-reported history, that is. It’s not exactly going to make the next series by David Starkey or anything.

**Okay, so maybe I’m slightly stretching the meaning of the word ‘classic’…

***Similarly, no one would want to listen to The Archers if it lasted for two hours.

****Not that the university isn't still going. I just mean that the station and society hasn't since ceased to be or been shut down because somebody said 'sodding' whilst the mic was live.