Hwarder

Deliciously, this is what the actual Daniel Day-Lewis was up to when "Tash" first aired.

 Listening to Robert Webb talk on "Rule Of Three" about Gareth Edwards' writers' room meetings, I was pleased as pencil-cases to hear how vain he feels watching "There Will Be Tash", because I love everything everyone does in that sketch, and have seldom felt more useful as a writer. Just to elaborate a bit on what Jason, Joel and he were saying: I did indeed come in with an idea that Daniel Day-Lewis might be secretly scared of his own moustache, and that there might be out-takes proving this, but it was crucially Robert who suggested, already stroking his upper lip, that the real focus should be an interview with the actor in which the interviewer refuses to discuss anything else. What I wrote then was what Robert described, and while I think I did a cracking job, it was by then not a hard job.

 

 I didn't even write my favourite line in it. Similarly, in another meeting at which I suggested a Victorian picnicker ask if anyone else could smell "come", it was Jesse Armstrong first who observed that this was actually the smell of linden trees (although I've since heard others say it's horse chestnuts) and, crucially, it was David who suggested that the focus of this sketch should be the assertion that specifically never asking this question was the whole point of the society these people inhabit. So, again, while I'm happy to go along with saying that that sketch is one of mine, it could never have been written outside of what was always, wall-to-wall, Robert-and-David's show. ("Prayer and a Pint" on the other hand...)

"MORE MEN ARE USING MUMBLING AS A STEPPING-STONE TO HONEST COMMUNICATION"

"orthographical banter" 

 Last year - I can't remember when but it was clearly hot - the writer Chris Power and I were invited onto the excellent podcast of Postcards from the Past curator Tom Jackson. You can hear it here, and can see which postcards we brought along here. According to Tom "this is a lively one", and I do appear to have a lot on my mind, but I had a lot of fun unloading it (and got a great introduction) so thank you, Tom and Chris. (I wonder if Chris has worked out by now who either Wayne or Wendy were.)

Frankenstein Wednesdays: "Ghost of Frankenstein" (1942) – Not Exactly Brain Surgery

 Because it's Wednesday somewhere, continuing my weekly "But What Do I Know!" through Universal's first 8 Frankensteins...

 What is happening in this picture? I DO NOT KNOW. Is one of them trying to close the door, one of them trying to keep it open? Who? Which? 

 

 I've seen this film three times now, and I still can't really tell you what happens in it. Although Erle C. Kenton is credited as director, "The Ghost of Frankenstein" is, even on its own terms – in fact, especially on its own terms – a directionless disappointment leaving one potentially powerful storyline after another spitting sulphurous dust in its wake. Either this is going to be a really short piece then, or a really, really long one. I'm going to have to stand up to type it either way, or I'll just become insensible. 

 Let's start with a bit of background – Ideally, I'd simply write about these films on their own merits, but I have to state something definitively –

Lionel Atwell IS Sir Cedric Hardwicke! 

 

  The "Lon Chaney" credited here is actually Lon Chaney's son, Creighton Tull Chaney, forced to adopt (and then lose) the stage name "Junior" in order to get work. Chaney Senior, of course, was "the man of a thousand faces", an outstanding silent actor particularly celebrated for his Horror work: Quasimodo...

 The Phantom of the Opera...

And a vampire in "London after Midnight" so iconic, it remains one of the most famous make-up jobs in cinema, despite the film itself not surviving...

  Junior was no slouch either. Or rather, he was a consummate slouch. Before this gig, he had already appeared on screen slouching as Lenny in "Of Mice and Men" (a performance repeatedly spoofed later on by cartoon voice artist Mel Blanc over at Warner Brothers)...

 And, more pertinently, he proved a huge hit the year before "Ghost" as Larry Talbot "The Wolfman"...

  He'd shown his chops therefore, in two tragic and entirely contrasting portraits of pained, bewildered killers, and while Boris Karloff may have grown tired of playing the monster, there's no evidence the now fifty-five-year-old veteran was ever considered for a fourth outing anyway. Universal seemed keener on their new "Lon Chaney". So let's see what new depths he brought to the role...

  Let's see...

  Let's see...

  Huh...

I guess my point is that the horrifically nothing nature of Chaney's interpretation of the Monster in this film was not necessarily inevitable. There's no ignoring some terrible, terrible decisions were made, those eyelids for a start. I'm tempted to blame director Kenton for those. Lional Atwill doesn't seem to be helping either. Wait. Not Lionel Atwill. Sir Cedric Hardwicke. Sorry, I always get those two confused (even though Atwill was so great in "Son" last week). Thank God the two stalwarts appear together in this film shoulder to shoulder, dressed identically as surgeons... I miss Dwight Fye.

 

 Oh hey! Aw, that's better! Look at the acting on that! How I love Dwight Frye. "Destroy the castle! Wipe the last traces of these accursed Frankensteins from our land!" That's his only line in the film though. And look, Lionel "Burgomaster" Bellman's back from the dead too! "The people are right, your honour." And Michael "Maria's Father" Mark: "I agree, your honour." There's the fan service out of the way, then, in scene one, but as a fan, still, I thank it. I could stop writing now. 

 But then we'd miss Bela Lugosi's grinning Ygor, nudging battlements down onto the heads of the torch-wielding, Frankensteinian mob – I suppose the torch-wielding mob is fan service too – and we'd miss explosion after glorious explosion as Castle Fankenstein is raised to the ground, and we'd miss the poetic irony of the Monster being set free by the violence intended for his destruction...

 We'd miss, in other words, one of the strongest beginnings any Frankenstein sequel could hope for. 

 But what follows...

 Well that actually looks quite fun, doesn't it! And Bela Lugosi is always great as Ygor. So what's going to happen now? Some twisted variant on "Of Mice and Men"? That would be brilliant! This film could go anywhere!

 Sure, Chaney's monster seems a little one-note, and we can't see his eyes, but he's still covered in sulphur.  So let's see...

  Let's see...

I've realised what makes this interpretation particularly upsetting – and this is no fault of Chaney's – is that, for all my protestations a month ago that it was Whale's 1931 original which gave us the Monster we know to this day, it's THIS – not Karloff's tortured, nuanced, sinewy wretch – THIS, clumping, expressionless thicko that people think of when they hear the word "Frankenstein".

 Here's Janet Ann Gallow as Cloestine Sussman. 

 There's a superb and moving interview with her here, but I won't quote from it because it would lend a poignancy to this scene that I don't think the film itself earns, although it's not uninteresting that it at least tried. The Monster will later want to replace his brain with Cloestine's, which is sort of touching, but involves scooping out the contents of a four-year-old's head, and anyway he abandons the idea pretty quickly when she asks to be taken home. That might be what's happening in that picture at the top! Ygor is presumably protesting because he wants the Monster to take his brain, which again is sort of touching until you think about the scooping.

  Meanwhile! Ludwig Frankenstein (Sir Cedric Hardwicke, left – not to be confused with Lionel Atwill's Dr. Bohmer, right, although who could POSSIBLY confuse these two completely different brain surgeons?) being the younger son of Henry Frankenstein (or "Heinrich" as the franchise Germanically retcons him) and brother to Wolf (whose absence from this sequel might be the film's biggest flaw) wants neither Ygor's brain for the Monster, nor Cloestine's (nor the inflated clown's head Cloestine carries everywhere, which might explain why she was so unfazed by Chaney), but the brain of his own murdered assistant Kettering because the ghost of Ludwig's father, Heinrich (also played by Cedric Hardwicke, Colin Clive presumably having been banished to another universe) explains to him that everything will be fine if only the Monster is given a non-Abnormal brain. So, yes, a ghost told him, that's his motivation. Earlier, Ygor blackmailed him to take the Monster in – appearing from either behind a curtain or one of those secret passages I like to think just materialise now around the buck-toothed scamp – but this couldn't remain Ludwig's motivation because then we wouldn't have a titular ghost. Not that we need a titular ghost; the original title of this film was apparently "There's Always Tomorrow" (David Cairns explains why here).

  Meanwhile! Ludwig's former teacher, Dr. Bohmer, wants to use Ygor's brain, motivated by the promise of Unlimited Power when Ygor somehow eventually takes over the world as a result of the op. So many brains! But I can keep track of them; that's not why I can't really tell you what's going on. No. The reason I can't tell you is that the film itself doesn't know. Does Ygor actually want to take over the world, for example, or does he just want Bohmer to grant him immortality, as he movingly mutters before the operation which might kill him? Why does the Monster want the brain of a four-year-old anyway? To start afresh? If so, why does he murder Kettering? And why is he menacing Ludwig's daughter, Elsa? And why is Elsa's love interest, local Prosecutor Erik – the superb Ralph Bellamy – so slack in investigating Kettering's murder when he seems so keen to prevent the village descending into Frankensteinian riot otherwise? And how have Ludwig and Elsa been keeping hold of Cloestine for two weeks, as the girl's father claims, if the Monster only abducted her the night of his surgery, and the village are storming Ludwig's hospital the moment the he came over? Why did they keep hold of her for two weeks, given she asked to be taken home? My theory is that they didn't. My theory is someone somewhere made a mistake. My theory is, ultimately, we're not meant to be paying this much attention. I'm making this film sound far too fun. Why does everything explode? Because the end.

  If you haven't guessed whose brain ended up in the Monster, next week Lon Chaney returns as the Wolf Man, and Bela Lugosi will be playing the Monster. That's the better-than-this-film "Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man" next week... Elsa Frankenstein, that is!

Further reading: 
imdb, where most of these images come from.
The Dwayger Dungeon.
Dracula, Frankenstein and Friends.
The Titus Andronicus Project's youtube commentary.

"Must come down for interview"

"Be strong and silent.. Now be a girl... Mike, they're the same thing."
 "Well, I mean that's your hang up, man."

 It's fascinating watching the power dynamic at work in this call for "4 insane boys" to leave their mod hang-out "Ben Frank's" and screen test to be a Monkee on the set of a TV show apparently called "The Farmers Daughter". When is it not interesting watching a power dynamic at work though? This is magic.

 Charles Manson was in prison at the time these tests were made in 1966, so his audition for the Monkees is just an urban myth. (But he did collaborate with the Beach Boys.) And according to Bob Rafaelson the "Must come down" in the ad was "a sly reference to being high". Here's Davey Jones and Toni Basil in an astonishing musical number from "Head" which wouldn't seem out of place in "Bojack Horseman". "Head", I've just learnt, was made in 1968. Two years after the screen tests. I don't think I realised their span was so short. That is insane.

"A song and dance? You must be joking"

"The Political Machine of Fat or Pee!" - Auto-generated Portuguese subtitles to French auto polo commentary, auto-translated into English

and charged that he trained the athletic
clash popular cinema clan clinic
on the fist
I sang from the top two km I support the goal
do chaco has the worst campaign of tam
the tablet is old and still doesn't know the
which is to see the animal must be easy to manage
the political machine of fat or pee or
selective poop of that and rib eye
steers by aciu hops un luge
Campinas and

had it by edison ibraham al-shaar
famous beautiful voice or

defines whether a Nepali maslu language that
Brazil chose a sequence and goes to the scene
economy in life cover

 To see this translation, simply click on the settings cog third from the right at the bottom of this clip, then click "Subtitles/CC", then "Portuguese (auto-generated)" twice, then "Auto-translate", and then "English". If you want to hear Auto Polo commentary already in English, then brace yourselves and click on the link:  "See? There's one smacking the other's sassy radiator!"

The Dynasphere! Your Questions Answered. A Legacy Appraised.

Welcome, Doctor John Archibald Purves, inventor of the Dynasph– Wait... 

Is that a three-foot-wide blind-spot directly in front of the driver?

 

 Define "spot".

How do you see where you're going? 

 Leaning out the side, certainly, is best on any terrain upon which one might encounter an obstacle.

So... all terrain?

 By no means.

On what terrain might one not encounter an obstacle?

 A race course.

What?

 Unless there's a race happening on it, obviously.

And what does the steering wheel do? 

  It tilts the vehicle. 

It doesn't steer the vehicle?

 Oh. Doesn't it?

...?

 I thought... Let me just... Oh. Okay. I thought it was the same thing.

So how do you actually steer it?

 I shan't lie, there currently exists no footage of the Dynasphere doing anything other than traveling in a... in a... Look, my wife's really a lot better at explaining all this:

What was that?

 
 What?

 
What did she mean, "gravity itself is our motive power"?

 
  Ah! Well, the actual design for Jumbo is based upon sketches by Leonardo Da Vinci for a perpetual motion machine?

 
Really?

 
 Yes. Look:

But doesn't the Dynasphere have a two-cylinder, air-cooled Douglas engine with three speed gear box? Doesn't that provide power?

 

  Oh is that what that noise was?

 
Goodbye.

 
 Goodbye. 

Epilogue: J. A. Purves may not have cracked perpetual motion, or steering, or seeing out of the front of a vehicle, but that hasn't stop others trying. And now, with the invention of 3D printers, Da Vinci's dream of eternally renewable energy can finally be realised. Behold! (Really, I know it's nearly ten minutes long, but I love this video so much. Apparently it's all about the neodyanium magnets...)

 The "link in description box" is here. There are lots of great Dynasphere images, real and imagined, including the Popular Science cover, here. Wikipedia obviously has an entry on it here. And I have no idea if that was actually his wife. Apologies.

Four Garçons Dans Le Vent!

 Something else I said over pints last night was that I thought "A Hard Day's Night" might be my favourite British film comedy. The tone of post-war "British Comedy" is characterised as defeated, lonely, annoyed, and either manic or morose - the tone of Hancock and Fawlty and Bottom and Peepshow - but the Beatles seemed every bit as comic and British to me despite their youth, success, wise-cracks and untrappability. Theirs was the tone of the Marx Brothers and the Ghostbsuters and Bugs Bunny and Eddie Murphy, and I wish more British Comedy remembered this was also an option, that for all the former's brilliant legacy you don't just have to moan. It was this kind of galvanising voice I wanted to give Gabbie Hayes when I was writing "Timespanner", and that's why London Hughes' appearance at the casting seemed such a Godsend. London is all of this, and it's depressingly unsurprising that she had to go all the way to America to finally get a show made. But wait, now I'm moaning.

Just a nice picture of London from her Instagram.

 Anyway, there's a superb documentary about the making of "A Hard Day's Night" called  "You Can't Do That" hosted by Phil Collins - Oh, you think you could do a better job? - in which every single mind on the film seemed to be working as one, including of course that of its celebrated director Richard Lester, but also its far less celebrated writer Alun Owen, whose dialogue appears pretty much verbatim, and was a huge influence not only upon me but on the English language in general; it gave us the word "grotty" for starters. I also learnt from the documentary of the existence of this hastily improvised European trailer, filmed by Lester round the back of Twickenham Studios with whatever the boys could get their hands on, like something out of "Taskmaster":

 Aww, imagine The Beatles on "Taskmaster"! You can watch the documentary in full here. You can see London Hughes preparing for her astronomically glorious show "To Catch A Dick" while being interviewed by Richard Herring here. And I found the photo of the Beatles here.