TV: QUENTIN CRISP – DOCUMENTARY

I draw your attention to this documentary, but really only to encourage you to purchase the audio of An Audience with Quentin Crisp recorded in New York in 1979 and available to download from Cherry Red Records for a small fee. Well worth the price in my opinion. I heard this back around maybe 1980 and remembered it great chunks of it almost word for word up until I purchased this recording myself just last year. If you don’t know who Quentin Crisp is … well, you jolly well ought to Ducky!

TV: GEORGE MELLY – DOCUMENTARY

I’m not sure you’ll learn that much from this documentry on Surrealism, but I’m only posting it so I can see the late George Melly strutting his dandy around London. I’m not a fan of Jazz or Surrealism, but for some reason I do like George. It may be his attitude. If only I could carry off my selfishness with equal style!

24fps: LIFE AND DEBT (IN JAMAICA)

Life and Debt (2001) could be one of those ‘worthy’ films you don’t really want to watch for entertainment. And in some sense and for a lot of people no doubt this will be the case. It’s not exactly a barrel of laughs. For me though it’s a bit more real, a bit more important. It’s not something I can look away from – and i do look away rather a lot already! The mean streets of Jamaica will always be close to my heart – for better or worse – and I have an interest in the financial well-being of the island and its inhabitants. If they are well off, I’m well off. If they are poor, I’m poor too. There is a goodly segement of this film that deals with the ‘Free Trade Zones’ and unless you know someone who actually worked for ‘Uncle Sam’ under those conditions then you might have a rather more blasé view of the damage rampant capitalism can cause. I do know someone, so I can’t forgive and forget so easily.

All that said this is not as preachy as it might be. I’s a documentary. It’s anti-globalisation naturally, but it does serve to give you a true picture of some of the terrible things happening under your noses day by day, or worse while you are on holiday, a scenario which serves as bookends to the meat in the middle.

It is not just the US that suffers, but Europe and the IMF so I wouldn’t be scared off by any natural aversion to US-bashing. It is what it is. If global politics is your bag and you’re not going to balk at seeing the US as primarily ‘the bad man’ then check it out. For me, I couldn’t live without it, but that’s because it’s up close and personal. Your milage, as they say, may vary. Here’s a link to the Life and Debt home page if you want to know more.

TV: KILLER COPS

Killer Cops links to a 20 minute documentary on Youtube. I’m negotiating a slightly more optomistic view of this island to which might soon belong my second national allegiance. One man, two islands – I’ve really got to get my passport sorted!

In the meantime and since I can’t still can’t find a video performance of Reggae Fi Dada by Linton Kwesi Johnson here’s the poem itself (though who can guarantee the accurate spelling of a spoken language).

Read the poem and listen via a link.

24fps: CRUMB

Jessie, Max and Robert - Crumbs all!

Crumb! Well, as well as being my favourite cartoonist, R.Crumb has also, through no fault of his own, brought to our attention the talents of one Terry Zwigoff the director of this film. Zwigoff also directed the excellent Ghost World but that’s a different story. Zwigoff blows hot and cold for me, but this is a documentary that has a strong narrative thread which carries me through a story not unlike one of Crumb’s own bizarre semi-autobiographical cartoon strips.

I’m totally biased about this movie since it’s about one of my heroes but the really great thing about it is that R.Crumb is not presented to us in that way. If anything he comes off as a bit of a jerk. Especially when seen in context with members of his bemused and disfunctional family, in particular his brothers Charles and Maxon, but also their mother. The ghost of their father also looms large in the background.

Robert seems to have comes to terms with the family he has created for himself with Aline, Sophie and Jessie, but in this movie it is Charles his older brother who makes the biggest impact. Charles and Max, with Robert in the middle, show how close the line really is between insanity and genius. It seems to me that Robert would hardly be who he is without the ’sacrifice’ of Charles who provides the emotional ‘end’ of the film.

R.Crumb himself seems unmoved throughout. “Aw so what!” I can imagine him saying. Now I can’t even think of Robert’s comics and cartoons with thinking about his family. I sincerely hope that Sophie and Jessie are not crushed by their father’s reputation. Find out in part here with a great interview that reveals Sophie Kominsky-Crumb at least is doing her own thing.

Crumb is one of my all-time favourites movies about one of my all-time favourite cartoonist’s, one that I can watch again and again, so I hope you get as much out of this as I have.