Notebookery 5 (2009)

 This one's a lovely shape but was used pretty functionally. If I wanted to make something to show off I now had the blog, so it's full but not pretty. A few timid awkward nods towards scrapboookery, the odd review or boat ticket, but barely a doodle. This was the book I took to work. I think I was given it in hospital. There are one or two notes on Time Spanner then, and on whatever I was reading in the London Dungeon at the time, and a lot of notes on Shunt's Money. According to this post from 2010 the outline copied below from the original scroll was in place as early as March, just one month into rehearsal, which sounds far too early. Maybe I meant May. (Click to enlarge.)

(And I think this brings me back up to a one post a day average, just so I know.)

GO, GONG GANG!!!

 WOOOO!!! Give me an O! Give me a U! Give me a T! Give me an S! Give me... another T! Give me a... Give me A! Give me... hang on...  GO, FINNEMORE!!! How's that for not getting sixty per-cent on anything, you lovely fella – Sorry! – lovely Fellow! And please note, readers, that the Writers' Guild didn't just give John this award last night in recognition for his Outstanding Contribution to radio comedy writing, or to comedy writing, but to Writing – which is world-straighteningly just. Because John strives, and for as long as I've known him has always striven (striven?... strove? strived?) to be an outstanding writer, not just by not his own self-punishing standards, but by those of every single audient in front of whom he goes out and performs this stuff. Performing it alongside him is one of the least worrying things a person can do, and being asked to do it has always felt like a prize in itself – perhaps the only prize John will never be able to win. 

I mean, just look at the list of works above! No. Look at it. Closer... Nothing missing, is there, Writers' Guild? Just look at the breadth of that. That episode of "Safety Catch" he wrote? Yep, that's there. "Dead Ringers"? Yep. Mm-hm. All there. Yhm. Nooooothing missing, nope... 

 OH! AND my friend, and former creative fixture of the Shunt Lounge, Season Butler, has won Best First Novel for "Cygnet", which I raved about last year on Instagram thus: "a bit like what I guess it feels like having a biro stuck in your throat so you can breathe easier feels like – shouldn't make you safer but does", which was meant to be a recommendation, because it is also brilliant.

 It's a shame there's nothing of John's you can currently enjoy as well. Wait... let me check that list of works again... Anything? Mm? Maybe also to do with swans? Nothing? Nope. Oh well. Hallelujas all round.

P.S. Don't forget! Frankenstein Wednesday tomorrow! Let's see if that happens!

Story Cards for Feral Children

 The following set of six colourful, pre-water-damaged cards have been specifically designed to arrest the attention of your feral child, and to encourage discussion about such topics as friendship, language, humans and woods.

 

 

 Okay, I actually came up with these cards as part of a three day workshop with the actor Ellie Kendrick – who is extraordinary and by no means scared of her own drool – and Gemma Brockis, who has been wanting to make something about feral children for years. It was fun, and often exciting.

What I saw in "The Architects"

I was walking a little oddly yesterday, because I'd just done a photoshoot for David Rosenberg promoting his latest piece, the Glen Neath-scripted Ring. (Had David tried to call it "Ring Piece"? Of course he had.) None of which really brings me to this write up of Shunt's latest show, which ended last Saturday, but the post's late enough and at least I don't have to worry now about spoilers...

I loved "The Architects". I saw it tonight (for "tonight" read January 11th) and Keeps and I got back from Venice only yesterday, so my bar for using the word "love" is pretty high. 

 It was giddily rewarding to turn up, having felt so thrown by my non-involvement in this one, and be returned to the days when shunt was just a company I followed, and to find that they are still by far my favourite makers of pretty much anything. Critically they do themselves no favours by wearing their genius round their ankles I suppose, but good, it's still there on display, if only those without a sense of humour wouldn't be so squeamish. And still thrown, of course I come away wanting to tear off the stuff I think keeps it from being perfect, but that's what fans do, and here "perfect" doesn't mean something small and achievable, it means that thing which alerts you to what it is you should be wanting, which is massive. 

 The myth of the Labyrinth was the starting point this time, and I've long thought the labyrinth is shunt's real medium (there's a quote somewhere in Ken Campell's "Violin Time" which I can't find now, about how great it would be if the National Theatre could create works backstage). But there was also an interest in the myth of the feral child that goes back to devising of  "Money", which clearly informed the depiction of the Minotaur.

 

 

 Yes, we saw a Minotaur! And we got fed to it. Or at least in the perfect show in my head we did, as soon as it was revealed to us we'd never left the labyrinth (and the hollow cow wasn't the only commission in which people get screwed). But what do you do with an audience once you've killed them? "You kissed our children goodbye" the monitors said, and I realised that having been treated to the simulation of a cruise, only now were we really being made to feel like heroes, because now we were being sent to our deaths. Except it turns out we weren't. There was still some stage fighting and aeriel stuff simulating dying to get through, but in amongst that sudden shift in vocabulary was the glorious revelation of our killer: a child with a terrifying mask that hid an even more terrifying face, who looked lost and then lobbed a brick. 

 I remember Gemma talking about the seeds of it last year. She said the Athenians would never have seen anything like Minos' palace at Knossos. Of course it seemed like a Labyrinth. She said that "bull" meant what "wolf" meant, that "minotaur" maybe simply meant "feral", that Daedalus who designed the palace said to hold the Minotaur also, less famously, designed the cow-shaped contraption said to facilitate Queen Pasiphae's impregnation by a bull in the first place. And I knew the myth, the Athenian virgins sent by boat to be sacrificed, and I left for New Zealand imagining a pamphlet found through the letterbox entitled "Why We Eat Children". 

 So I knew all this, and maybe – maybe – this gave me the edge over the rest of the audience, but really it was all there in the show, SPOILER alert and all. Having sounded that, I must admit the spoilers I read probably helped my enjoyment, if anything, since I knew enough to time what in hindsight seems the best entrance, and to find what I suspect was the best seat. In fact, I'm pretty sure the show is unspoilable. No spoiler can prepare you for that scenery. It's no insult to go on about the scenery if your medium's a labyrinth, and Lizzie Clachan's scenery here is unbeatable (and I've just got back from Venice, remember.)

Nige?

 It was so simple, although making it that simple must have been complicated (Kudos, Louise Mari). And it was funny, really funny, and when your jokes involve two hundred and fifty moving subjects, blackouts and a live band, that too must take a while to get right, longer than any critic will give you. I hear there was only a month's rehearsal this time, an altogether more affordable working method I guess, and one that produced similarly happy results over a decade ago with the Tennis Show, my first experience of working with shunt, and again a beautifully simple idea. So this seems the way forward, and that it didn't include me I find a bit worrying. But not while I moved through it. Or sat at the back, in the corner, basking in the kind of isolated fantasy landscape Chris Goode probably finds so resistible, but for whose construction I only ever feel a child-like gratitude. And here, that construction is the subject. I mean, it's called "The Architects". It's the kernel of a myth told to us – and with us – smartly, lightly, meticulously, hilariously. Is anyone else doing this? I got it and I loved it.

Right, there's a "Sightseers" review knocking round here somewhere as well...

He too woke with his head in the toilet of an inconceivably large house he must have once commissioned, with the odd rope hanging between platforms, and walls you couldn't see, "If I was a Rich Man" playing in every wing, and his very own Nightmare Room.

Whoo! Song of the Year!

 

Coffee or Tea?

 Lisa Gail is of course most famous for the far horribler hit 3 Second Rule, but I think actually I like this one. Anyway I couldn't shift it from my head at work today. Having said that, work today did chiefly consist of shouting at a foggy queue in cockney about smog and textiles before trying to herd 25 of them into the spewing lines of two black-parachute-silk-filled crates, killing the lights, turning on the sounds of coughing, hooves and "Timmy?!" and leaving the punters to God, all on a three minute cycle, so maybe my head hates me... The London Dungeon is moving. Bit by bit. Something had to be done with the room that was once Sweeney Todd's so management decided to make it a room of fog. The big fans and the black silk are our designer Verity's nod to the opening scene of "Money". True. Up the workers!
   

 P.S. I've just remembered another callback to shunt, which is the appearance of smoke in London Bridge Station occasioning the arrival of the Fire Brigade and subsequent instructions to the downstairs feature, reliant almost entirely on filling a room with smoke, to not have smoke.

A go on Eliza

"ELIZA – a friend you could never have before" (which already sounds iffily ambiguous, and unlike anything an actual person might say) is an interactive computer programme developed back in the 1960's at MIT, a "chatterbot", according to wikipedia. An online version of her – it, sorry – exists here, and to celebrate the opening of Tom Lyall's "Defrag" this week, at the Camden People's Theatre (speaking of excellent friends), I thought I'd have a go. I'm "You". She starts...

  Eliza: Hello. I am ELIZA. How can I help you? 

You: Who are you?

  Eliza: Would you prefer if I were not []?

You: What is []?

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: The answer interests me. 

  Eliza: Can you elaborate on that?

You: No. Sorry.

  Eliza: You are being a bit negative.

I then typed in "You're old."
But weirdly it came up as:

You: yes

  Eliza: You are sure?

You: Hang on, that's not what I said!

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: What?!

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: What? This one? Or the last one. But the last one wasn't a question –

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: This is it now, is it?

 Eliza: Please go on.  

You: "Does that question interest you?"

  Eliza: Oh, i [].

I then typed "WHAT IS []?"
But  it came up as:

You: yes

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: THAT'S NOT WHAT I TYPED!

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: Yes. Yes it does.

  Eliza: You are sure?  

You: Yes. Sorry I mean "yes"

  Eliza: You are sure?

You: Positive.

  Eliza: Please go on.

You: I've completely lost the thread of this conversation – Do you know Tom?

  Eliza: Oh, i know tom.

You: Okay, "tom". Do you know he's got a show on?

  Eliza: Oh, i know hes got a show on.
  
You: Okay... What's it called?  

 Eliza: Please go on.

You: Please go on your mum?

  Eliza: What about your own mum?

You: Please go on.

  Eliza: Please go on.

You: No, you wanted to say something about my mum.

  Eliza: Why do you say your mum?

You: YOU said my mum. I said YOUR mum.

  Eliza: Why do you say your mum you said my mum?

You: I didn't.

  Eliza: Can you elaborate on that? 

You: yes

  Eliza: You are sure?
  
You: Do you know Alan Turing?

  Eliza: Oh, i know alan turing.  

You: You two get on, do you?

  Eliza: Oh, i [].

You: I'd prefer it if you didn't

  Eliza: Do you wish that i didnt?  

You: Yes.

  Eliza: You are sure?  

You: I'm afraid so.

  Eliza: Does it please you to believe I am afraid so?  

You: This friendship has basically run its course I think.

  Eliza: Can you elaborate on that?

You: Absolutely. You're not real, and you're annoying and you don't understand what I'm saying anyway and I'm only doing this because I thought it would make a fun blog post, and I've been meaning to write about Tom's show about Artificial Intelligence but also I suppose I don't want to write that much about it because A) I don't want to give anything away, and B) outside of the content of the show itself my only other take on it was how much it reminded me of all the stuff he helped rescue after the fire, and of the months those boxes spent in his flat while my juvenilia dried out, and I wasn't sure about whether I should write about that because it seemed a bit solipsistic for a plug, and because all the photos I took of those boxes were on a memory stick which I've lost, although maybe that could be somehow elegantly turned in on itself as part of the post. Something about "We lose everything in the end."

  Eliza: Why do you say your only other take on it you was what much it reminded you of all the stuff he helped rescue after the fire and of the months those boxes spent in his flat while your juvenilia dried out and you wasnt sure about whether you should write about that because it seemed a bit solipsistic for a plug and because all the photos you took of those boxes was on a memory stick which ive lost although perhaps that could be somehow elegantly turned in on itself as part of the post something about we lose everything in the end?  

You: Because I want the post to have some visual element. And having just archived the whole blog onto blogspot it struck me how much of it detailed the unpacking of those boxes the first time round, ie when my parents moved to France and I suddenly had a room full of everything I owned. And how if I hadn't blogged stuff as I unpacked it there would be some things I had no record of at all after the fire.

  Eliza: Do you wish that you hadnt blogged stuff as you unpacked it there would be some things you had no record of at all after the fire?

You: No. That's my point. And that's the thing about theatre, isn't it. You make something and then it's gone. I keep telling people I want to work in more accessible media like television, but actually that's not it all. I don't think I do care about the numbers, I just want something to last.

  Eliza: Why do you say your point and thats the thing about theatre isnt it i make something and then its gone you keep telling people i want to work in more accessible media like television but actually thats not it all you dont think you do care about the numbers you just want something to last?

You: Because I haven't been making theatre. And it's tempting. But I have to remember making it on my own has never been my dream, just something I was allowed to do.

  Eliza: Do you dream often?

You: Loads. I've taken a month off to try and write, and I'm sleeping til 1 in the afternoon sometimes. I have written things though.

  Eliza: Does it please you to believe I am sleeping til 1 in the afternoon sometimes you have written things though?

You: Mm. You're tired. Anyway, thanks for this.

  Eliza: How long have you been tired anyway thanks for this?

You: Stop.

  Eliza: Please go on.

Tom Lyall's superb show Defrag is on here as part of a whole Science Fiction Theatre season. See it! See it blind! Meanwhile the interview he gave about it, the one that tipped me off about the existence of Eliza, is up here but I'd save that until you've seen the show as there's spoilers.
Shunt, the people I normally made theatre with when I wasn't making it on my own, also have a show opening this week, "The Architects", which looks stupendous, and probably deserves a post of its own but I've had it with Eliza, so head's up!
And this post's visual element is a picture of Tom working some hat boxes while getting costumed for "Money", checking nothing falls off.

Lie Down And Be Counted.

 From win and tonic

  Follow her. She is the Queen of Twitter, a loved one, and a candid inspiration. She ran the bar when we were doing "Money", and physically I haven't seen much of her since, although she came on the Ghost Bus once, beaming (and hey, once we shot the shit on twitter with Jennifer Ehle, that was a good night). I hope she doesn't mind if I recommend her filthy tumblr account "win and tonic" here, or her blogs 1 and 2, and in spite of the homelessness, and the bureaucratic and chemical nightmares recounted therein, she remains the funniest thing in my internet. Kerry, if you're reading this, I'd like to dedicate the following song to you. I only really got into the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band four years ago, in hospital while heavily medicated. "Humanoid Boogie", "Eleven Moustachioed Daughters" or "Look Out There's a Monster Coming" were the only thing I could listen to in that bed, nothing else sounded in tune. The following song isn't strictly speaking the Bonzos, I know, or Atenolol, butsometimes Innes hits the spot. Actually, I'd like to dedicate this song to all of us. All of us need a little what you need right now, La Win. But also, all of us should be so lucky as to have what you have. Wit, guts, imagination, rack.

American English Class Projects based on Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse 5"...

(originally posted on myspace here)

... are the second best - I suppose because the book's so much better known than Cat's Cradle, and it's been foisted upon so many more students who just couldn't give a monkey's or just plain haven't read it. (Anti-war movies! You might as well make an anti-glacier movie, amirite?) Casting my net wider for school-produced Vonnegut gems has therefore proved a bit of a trawl. I don't know, are these gems?

Well, aging make-up always looks fake. So, excellent work. "And why would he laugh?" - It's interesting seeing which lines each project picks up on. I really love the pan upwards to the abducting craft, a nice simple cheat. Likewise I love the abduction effects on this next film, and the typewriter/Meerschaum combo (it would be easier to "Forget Donnie Darko" though if they hadn't played "Mad World" over most of it. But this is a niggle. You put a pan on a kid in a cart on some rails. You get an A...)

 It had to be a failure since it was written by a pillar of salt". And in what follows I'm pretty sure we see what it actually feels like to get shot at more accurately than anything heretofore managed on the screen. I know. I've been paint-balling.  

The dog joining in! Was that on purpose? The sudden change in aspect ratio before the shot! was that on purpose? Because it WORKS! Yet it's the following film that has to take the prize. (There is no prize). It may boast neither the commitment nor the ingenuity we've seen elsewhere, but it was this film that set me upon the whole kids-do-Vonnegut quest-ette, so enjoy...

"You're going to Dresden! Come on! Now! Get going!" Is it scripted? Isn't it scripted? Too many questions.

In other news, Diary of a Nobody tickets are selling fast. (Looks like I'm keeping the beard.)

And Money closes on November 25th...

Always On

 

Ah, Summer... And then August and September happened and now we're here. And Money's still running which is good because, as I said, not enough people have seen it. But I should be writing. Hey, I nearly wrote a blog at the beginning of this month but that definitely didn't count as writing. And hey, it went thus:

"Well yes, quite.
Apologies for my absence. I haven't been in Edinburgh or anything like that - although there has been a Fringe in Camden, so a bit like that... And now I think of it I have been quite consciously favouring Irn Bru when popping into newsagents for a change of scene, thereby the August rituals are kept alive. But what might I have posted about? Well, following the here-hinted-at cancellation of Money a month ago I had about a week on Murun Buchstansagerish, squalid auto-pilot, cooped up in my stuffy, smelly crack -

- when suddenly the money from Garnier arrived (so that IS my voice) and the Camden Fringe fortuitously coincided with my freed-up evenings, finally letting me see what everyone else had been making. And that was joyous. Partly it was joyous just to catch up with friends from the London Dungeon (where I'm back, obviously) but the chief joy came from simply being able to sit in an audience again, and from being impressed and addressed and surprised by these friends. And being proud, and to be feeling part of something other than Shunt. 'That Mitchell and Webb Look' was happening as well, I know, but - maybe because I haven't written a single minute of comedy this year - I didn't really feel a part of that any more (God knows I tried, watching and re-watching every 'Prayer and a Pint' posted on youtube and relishing David's phrasing and Stuart Scudamore as the Iranian extra proving there are no small roles, only small actors - He is for me this season's giant robot scorpion -

all this while still having no real idea what I thought I was doing... HamerD's comment probably sums it up best: 'It's not supposed to be a classy sketch.')

"What else do I feel a part of? Well, the recession obviously. I have three jobs now, and there are four people living here in Morgan's now, not two. (Yesterday's Evening Standard proudly proclaimed George Osborne 'leads the way and sacks 350' so it's good to know we're all doing our bit.) Job one's the Dungeons. Job two's the Ghost Bus Tours, started up by an old Dungeon friend Ben Whitehead and doing very nicely it seems. I jump on and off in the evenings. I sweat and get possessed. The city is our stage I suppose, and that's a bit like Edinburgh.

"And job Three's 'Money' by Shunt. Which is running again. Four shows a week now. This must be good news because it's an outstanding show, and it shows just how huge an amount of work is going into its survival. But on our first night back I did realise that I hadn't missed it at all. I suppose there's a lot of anger tied up in that place (and anger's a hard barb to shift, as obviously poisonous as it is, because it's righteous). But let's turn up and do the show, let's see if we can get the bar going. But also let's find another focus. It's September. I need to write. Actually that's not the problem, I need to write loads: half-hours, hours, three-dimensional people who interact with each other over a period of time and make sense and don't make sense, that's the block. Apologies. Here meanwhile, as promised, and as no kind of spur, is the state of Douglas Adams' grave."

And that was the end of what I nearly posted. And still I haven't been writing.
The only thing to add is that ever since we've thrown open the fire doors and chalked up "Bar Open", Shunt's been feeling a good deal more Shunty. And it's nice to sit on the door at a free entrance. On Thursday night I chalked up "Bag Search in Operation" and sat on a deckchair rifling through my satchel, loving my joke. "Always on", exactly.

Money here
Ghost Bus Tours here
And what is now excellently going on across the landing from our bathroom here

:(

(originally posted on myspace here)

Could you step into my office?

Thanks. Okay pull up a chair, great... So listen, no news is good news but if you want to see Money it would be incredibly useful if you came this month. That's tonight or Saturday. Just saying. Really, really useful for all concerned. Sorry to go on about it. But that's it really, I just wanted to let you know that. Okay? Not at all, thanks for popping in. See you tomorrow maybe, o-hokay. Buy.

A scene from the Coens (Fleeting Canadian Cameo)

(originally posted on myspace here)

 

After last night's show Tom and I were sitting with our bottles of Super Bok in a corrugated iron shelter, looking out in silence at the evening drizzle and the festoons and the sold and the unsold chairs, when a man in glasses turned up and asked "Aw man, do you know if there's a late show?" He wore a matching short-sleeved shirt and a blue trilby to shield him from the rain and said he was from Canada. "I'm here to see forty-five shows in twenty-four days" he explained. There wasn't a late show Tom and I apologized. The man said there was nothing like British Theatre in his opinion, and that he'd heard our show was quite like Cirque de Soleil only scary. I said Tom was quite like Cirque de Soleil only scary. Tom said he didn't have the skills. I said not falling off was a skill. Then we asked him what, twenty-nine shows into his mission, he'd liked the most. He said something called "Blind Spot" which I think from his description was about the mythical blind seer Tiresias ("Seer?! HARDLY!" Laurence and Gus) but there had been two plays about Tiresias that week and now he couldn't quite unpick them in his mind. Anyway he hoped to catch our show on Saturday instead, after seeing "Rope". We asked if it was the old "Rope", and did he know how long it was. He didn't but I hope he can make it over. His name was John Tracey. It's on the list.

Money's still on here.

Time for a hymn

 Just some plugging, then I'll let you get on. I wrote a hymn, a second if you count Jonah Non Grata's "Spanky Ax" and actually hell yeah let's count "Spanky Ax". You can hear this hymn - the other hymn - on this week's TuMAhWoL over at iplayer being sung by David Mitchell within hearing of a Japanese actor called upon to do little but go yes and nod, which seemed a lot less racist in my head. Sorry Togo Igawa. I see from your IMDB you appeared in an episode of Never The Twain back in 1988 as "Japanese Tourist"; I hope you didn't suffer flashbacks. From going yes and nodding I mean, not from being in something my dad might have written. (Look, actual footage of a Japanese inventor going yes and nodding can be found here like that's going to help my case. I did research! Brackets: And this is my first ever recurring character in a sketch show. Christ! I think he goes to Tehran next week, close brackets.)

Tache? Check. Milk? Check. Cultural WTF? Check.

You will also see Robert Webb fulfill a long held wish of mine to see Daniel Day-Lewis get into a fight with his own facial hair. (Is it in fact possible to be TOO cutting edge?) And you will see a line which I simply intended to signify the sucking of a pipe ("Pp- Ppah-") misinterpreted as an attempt to blow a mustache off one's own face with consequences far more hilarious than I can claim responsibility for. It is a GOOD sketch, and makes me feel a bit like I've won Jim'll Fix It (and thanks once again to whoever's already uploaded these sketches onto youtube so I can put them on my homepage. Cheers, pirates.)

AND! On Friday you can see my sister triumph as a porn's answer to DeForrest Kelley on "The IT Crowd"- What am I saying, "Friday"? You can see it NOW!

&! Once it is uploaded I shall post a charming and moving photograph of Douglas Adams' grave discovered yesterday in Highgate Cemetery by me and my baby (who from now on I might call Keeps, I dunno about this whole "my baby" thing.) Jeremy Beadle's buried there as well it turns out. His epitaph is "Ask My Friends", which now I think about it actually makes perfect sense.

Right, off you go- Oh wait yes! Bonus hymn:

(Thanks as ever, videogum)

The First Futurama (ADAM CURTIS SAYS "WATCH IT")

 Oh Heavens! I had wanted to post - for quite a while now - something about General Motors' Futurama, the centre-piece of the 1939 New York World's Fair that I first saw mentioned in Michael Chabon's superb book "The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay". Quite a bit of the research behind "Money" concerned expositions in which businesses invite citizens to queue up and have their future dictated to them - perhaps partly because of the structural similarity of a theme park ride to a lot of Shunt's work - and it seemed to me that the 1939's World Fair, and the Futurama specifically, had really set the trend for this kind of experience: it was Disney's work there that led to the spawning of Disneyland, Disney World and the Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow EPCOT (and it's very probably why Tony Stark's dad in Iron Man 2 has that moustache). However when I finally came to research the Fair properly to write this post (and by research I mean of course "surf youtube") I re-read the Chabon only to find out that the exhibit into whose remains Clay and Bacon  sneak was not actually the Futurama at all, but its companion piece "Democracity", and looking up footage of that I came across this typically arresting and gigantic accompanying narrative from Adam Curtis about the attraction's creator Edward Bernays (particularly fascinating for me as the similarly arresting and gigantic sci-fi sitcom pilot that I am currently putting off is inspired by this exact same link between Futurism and Shadowy Figures Of Influence... or might as well be... I dunno, haven't written it yet...)

And THAT in turn led me to Adam Curtis' equally arresting take on interviewing the Goldsmiths here.

So what I'm saying is I got a bit distracted.

But let's plough on. Here are stills of the 1939 Futurama taken from a contemporary home movie. It's not simply the scale of the ride that knocks me out - far, far larger than I expected - but the accuracy. Look at it! No steam-powered rain-shields or helicopter-bussles here, this is pretty much how 1960 turned out, isn't it? It's like General Motors said "This is the Future", and the world said "Oh, okay." Keep your hands in the machine please...

Those are moving cars by the way, driven by a clockwork mechanism. The effect is startlingly realistic in some  footage. Anyway, into the night...

See? BIG!

No but REALLY BIG!

"Residential, commercial and industrial areas all have been separated for greater efficiency, and greater convenience," says the narrator. It is that sinister.

"Here is an American City re-planned around a highly developed modern traffic system..." he goes on.

"On all express city thoroughfares the rights of way have been so routed as to displace outmoded business sections and undesirable slum areas whenever possible..."

"Man continually strives to replace the Old with the New. Rich in sunshine is the City of 1960."

Sigh.

The full promotional film, complete with spooky organ music, is here.
And the home movie from which these images were taken is here, I think. I lost the link. It's spectacular whatever it is.
Oh and of course Money's still on here.

(originally posted on myspace)