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!

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.

TV: PENNIES FROM HEAVEN

Pennies From Heaven (1978) was a BBC series that literally rocked the world of all that saw it. I’ve never seen anything better. Film. TV. Books. Whatever. This is it for me. The pinnacle of artistic achievement, blending meaning, memory, meta tricks, production design, a mix of video and photography … acting, oh the acting. The script is sublime, intelligent, funny and, crucially, comic and terrifying at the same time. Just like reality.

The content also reflects my view of reality. There is a word, a state of being, that very few writers and artists can manipulate, work with, fashion. That word is pathetic. Our hero Arthur rarely climbs above being pathetic, a cowardly and selfish hero, ripped apart by his desires and weakness, his hopes and doubts. A real man. A real man like I know them. But never described before or since in a language I get so immediately, so personally.

I have the joyous advantage of having seen this as it went out back in 78. I remember the outrage of the media, the shock felt by audiences, the mortification I felt alongside my parents. This was strong stuff. Right to the precipice and off … well off! Bad things happen to good people. Justice is not served. Sex smells. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it and I can hardly believe it now thirty years later. If you haven’t seen it, it is at the very top of the list of my personal recommendations to you.

If you have had the misfortune to see the US movie remake first then I pity your immortal artistic soul. Your life has been ruined and you might as well kill yourself now and start again. Dennis Potter’s Pennies from Heaven is so far beyond criticism I am going to spontaneously combust now! Goodbye!

Hello again. Phew, that was hot. Bob Hoskins never made a better move than accepting this offer. I knew someone so scarily like him physically it still gives me the creeps. He went the same way – kinda!

HOLY CRAP – ED McMAHON

I’ll bet the stuff that went out wasn’t half as funny as this! RIP.

TV: MAHABHARATA

You’ll remember I was going to post a film review this Friday gone. I ran out of time to do it justice due to work commitments, but taking a short break and thinking further on the subject I realise that I was never going to be able to do that subject justice. I’ll have to approach this from a different angle completely. While I think about that, here below is a clip from the movie in question. Peter Brook’s Mahabharata (1989) is probably one of the best ways into an understanding of the philosophies and traditions that constitute ‘Hinduism’, a rather general, inadequate and Western word for things not easily appreciated or understood. Perhaps I ought to start using the correct term myself (it’s long overdue): Sanātana Dharma or Eternal Law.

Peter Brook’s genius here is in presenting a very ‘Indian’ story with an incredible multi-racial and international cast. It loses nothing for those who appreciate the story in it’s many translations. We can fill in the blanks.

Below is the same section of the same story but from the Indian TV series (1988). In fact this one 45 minute episode is not enough to contain the 6 minute version above. The entire series runs to 92 episodes (maybe more). It is very much the ‘Indian’ version, with ‘Indian’ trappings, but the meaning is the same.

Of course the Mahabharata or ‘Great story of Mankind’ is neither a film, a play or a TV series. It is the compiled text from an oral tradition. The scenes which comprise ‘The Gita’, roughly analogous to the Western Bible, Torah or Qur’an, the scenes above, were introduced into the narrative of the Mahabharata at a later date. I intend to explain all this further … to myself.

I may have said this before, but this blog is not about me explaining my view of the world to you. It is about me explaining my view of the world to myself. I’m not looking for passive acceptance of the things I say. I’m searching for meaning and understanding. You’ll only help me by questioning, challenging and providing arguments contrary to my stated position. Feel free, because once I set off on this subject I might just run out of time in a more final sense than usual!

EVERYONE SING HIS NAME (OR ELSE)

Sing along. Come on now, is it going to kill you? Sing it for me! PLLEEEEEAASSEE!