A Vampire Laff-Riot?

In about 10 minutes, Comedy Central in the UK is about to show The Lost Boys.

Erm.

Look, I know the 80s hair is very funny - Jason Patric's do is a far greater threat to his future than the bloodsucking thing - and no-one's ever quite sure why the deceased Corey had that barechested Rob Lowe poster snuck into his room design, but surely it's not that much of a comedy. I could be watching some classic Ackroyd here, or Martin, or (pushing it) Murphy. Hell, I'd take one of the first two Beverly Hills Cops and happily argue for the comedy more than the action.

(Incidentally, my dad can't stand Eddie Murphy films - the rapidfire patter always sounds too improvised for him and that annoys him, but the one thing I remember him laughing at was when Axel Foley crashes the Playboy mansion in Part II and makes things difficult for Jurgen "Puhrgen-Schurgem-Meurgen" Prochnow, eventually announcing that the party is over and "Max fucked it up for everybody". For some reason that one line had him laughing for minutes. But I digress, as I often will if you read this regularly.)

I never quite got The Lost Boys. Though it was one of those first really major film rental titles I remember being around when VHS went mental, I never saw it until about six years ago. So I was certainly far too old to connect with it in a "I'm-a-disaffected-teen-and-you-don't-listen-to-me-world!" way. Also, I just find punks in films laughable, really, so I'd never have connected to them anyway, I feel.

As I type, the film is just starting now, with the The Don's producing credit having just faded. One thing you can't fault with the film is the often effective soundtrack - I'm a big, big fan of Tim Capello's awesome saxfest "I Still Believe" - and though the album crucially lacks the film mix of "Cry Little Sister", it's still a great listen.

Some of the performances are good. Edward Herrmann is stylish, Jami Gertz interesting, Dianne Weist sweet and Kiefer Sutherland's early intensity reminds you of how good he is, and how much time he wasted in the 90s. I'm also getting a hankering to see Flatliners, which I can't have done in more than 15 years. And of course the original founder of ENCOM, Barnard Hughes, plays a crucial part.

But man is so much else annoying. Haim and Patric are whiny and irritating throughout, the Frog Brothers are implausible - I buy vampires, I DO NOT buy them - and the style over substance becomes apparent in one of the flying POV shots halfway through the film, when the vampires are presumably flying from their cave and THE FUCKING SUN IS STILL OUT.

I'm not going to rag on the hair and clothing too much as it was what it was then, but they do increase the ridiculousness of watching it now tenfold. Right now Corey Haim is wearing something that would hang loose on Dolph Lundgren's frame. But there's also some really obvious reversed footage of the ocean in one scene, and the welter of gore flying around in the final scene is totally overdone. I also thought Jami Gertz's "child" was a girl for most of the movie until dialogue made clear my mistake - but I maintain it's needlessly ambiguous.

The end really tears it though - the famous final line, delivered by an actor doing his best. I think we're supposed to be all "Whoah, he knew the whole time". Uh-huh. SO WHY WAIT UNTIL NOW TO DO SOMETHING? How many people are dying while he bides his time? Did he never talk to anyone else about this? More to the point (heh) he waits until the moment he will have to hit a moving target with a weapon that will at best be a bugger to control with accuracy. No, sir, I say no.

Still, here's Tim Capello's saxtacular - enjoy that at least.

Greetings, Professor

Jennifer: He wasn't very old.
David Lightman: No, he was pretty old. He was 41.
Jennifer: Oh yeah? Oh, that's old.

from WARGAMES, written by Lawrence Lasker & Walter F. Parkes.

Actor John Wood has passed away peacefully in his sleep, aged 81. To me, and anyone approximately in my generation, this means that the wonderful Professor Stephen Falken is no longer with us.

Wood was always an impeccable presence in films, on the stage and TV, and was acting up until the last couple of years. His gracious manner, and incredible voice (which will forever exclaim "Mmmmmmm-yesssssss, number of players zero" in my head) blessed many productions.

His first screen appearance is in the rather obscure 1952 Hammer plastic surgery melodrama Stolen Face. His was the Doctorly type even then, and his 1963 gig as a solemn explaining-why-any-pre-marital-sex-leads-to-VD GP in That Kind of Girl has recently surfaced on BFI blu-ray.

Because Hollywood loves an upper-class English bad guy (even when they're supposed to be French or Russian), he can be seen menacing the true love of part-time animals in Richard Donner's well-intentioned Ladyhawke and Whoopi Goldberg in Jumpin' Jack Flash - which I haven't seen since it was on ITV in the early 1990s. He graced high-profile, serious dramas too, like Shadowlands, The Madness of King George and Richard Loncraine's underrated McKellen action flick version of Richard III.

But it's for WarGames that I suspect he'll most fondly be remembered. Even when sunk in melancholia, his character always reassured me, and it's nice to remember a film in which the world is saved by really smart people (and a sarcastic General who actually IS right all along and isn't an unreasonable dick). And Wood actually played the film's antagonistic computer too - recording each word separately and in reverse order to give the WOPR its clinical yet searching voice.

I don't watch a lot of TV, so the last time I saw John Wood was a brief appearance as Trubshaw, tailor to Ralph Fiennes' equally impeccable John Steed in The Avengers, which everyone else in the world hates, but I'm quite fond of, not in the least because of Wood's brief scenes.

John Wood will always have a place in film history for many people, and thankfully, lived to many more years than he was supposed to have in the quote that opened this piece.

How about a nice game of chess?

Ahem.

Well, apparently the one thing I won't be talking about on here is shooting the last few scenes of my movie anytime soon. The cast members I need to round up for the last scenes (Six, plus one actor to replace one who dropped out too late to be recast in the original schedule) categorically will NOT be free in the next few weeks to finish. Oh.

To clarify, virtually my whole cast is of university-going age, so summer time is when they have the most free space. That's when we shot last year. For various work and personal reasons, I've had no time since we wrapped the majority of the film last September to work on it all. Life got in the way. Now it's moving aside again, but everyone else's life is getting in the way.

This as least gives me time to go through the movie as is with the finest of tooth combs (You know, like the one in Spaceballs) and see what state it's really in. And also more time to talk movies. I'm also going to get this blog looking nicer, and finally figure out jpegs in posts, which I never quite did on my last blog. I know, I is simpleton.

Hear Me Roar!

Hello there, I'm Simon.
(pause for response)
Well, hello to you, [Insert name here]

Welcome to my new blog. You won't find the old ones I had because they were full of useless musings and I deleted them ages ago. So here is a new one.

Some years ago, I set out to write and produce an ultra low-budget, but ultra good, film, probably to put up in parts on the internet for free. Things took a while. I had a script in 2007, and revised again in 2008. But no cast. Cast in this case being people good enough and right enough for the parts, but also with incredible levels of kindness and patience to do everything I needed for free, whenever it could be done.

Did I mention I was doing everything else on the film myself and I have almost no money to put into it? Equipment, yes, money, nada.

Anyway, I had to wait a while, but in the summer of 2010, the film was shot. Mostly. Another few days of shooting, and a small amount of reshooting - perhaps four days at most - were needed. And still are. I hope to get them done in the next two months. I'll be using this blog to talk about the process of writing, waiting, rewriting, waiting, casting, shooting, waiting and (hopefully) concluding shooting, and then taking you - yes, YOU - through the post-production of the film until it's ready to stream to whoever's interested in it.

And because that will probably be quite dry, I'll be talking about other films, old and new (but probably old for a while as life circumstances have meant I'm a bit behind on new films at the moment) in between the making-of bits.

I hope some of you out there will be along for the ride.