Jason Cook: grit, determination, a cracker of a story and a new movie…

Jason Cook on his phone in Borehamwood

Jason Cook has turned up occasionally in this blog.

The last time was in December 2021 when my opening sentence was “You need grit and determination – and nowadays, ideally, the potential for sequels – to get movies made…”

Jason Cook has grit and determination, is indefatigable, has a staggeringly fertile creative mind and he has sequels and now a prequel. 

He also has dyslexia but has so far published four linked semi-autobiographical gangster novels, a children’s book called Rats in Space (the title explains it all) and a novel about the Rave scene, set in the 1980s and 1990s – Euphoria – Pirates of the South.

He has long had plans to film the first of his four semi-autobiographical gangster books There’s No Room For Jugglers in My Circus.

But now his first film is being released and it is a prequel to that, a set-up, for the planned four main semi-autobiographical gangster movies based on his novels.

Cookster: The Darkest Days is being screened this Saturday at the adventurous Genesis Cinema in Mile End Road as part of the London Independent Film Festival.

The plotline? 

“A dyslexic teen misunderstood by his family, abandoned by the system and desperate for respect, becomes a drug dealer struggling to balance his addiction and debt to a local gangster while a rival threatens to destroy his world, driving him apart from the woman he loves and a daughter he’s never known.”

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JASON: So, after 20 years, we managed to get the budget together from various investors and a film production company called Silent D Pictures.

Indefatigable Djonny Chen of Silent D Pictures

JOHN: That’s Djonny Chen’s company.

He is almost as indefatigable as you…

JASON: Yes. Djonny has made 27 films since Covid – directed and/or produced/executive produced.

And he’s lined up to do another two films with me – Pirates of the South and Rats in Space. as well as Cookster: There’s No Room For Jugglers in My Circus, the follow-up to Cookster: The Darkest Days.

JOHN: And now you’ve written a fifth Cookster book to go with the film.

JASON: Yes. That’ll come out this year.

JOHN: So Cookster: The Darkest Days is about you growing up in Borehamwood, where we both live.

JASON: Yes. We shot it over 18 days in Borehamwood and Radlett – all on location.

Craige Middleburg plays the slightly older, dodgy Jason

In this film, I’m played from ages 12 to 18. Two actors play me: one younger, one older. Samuel Staite plays young Jason. Craige Middleburg is the older me.

Then there’s Nick Moran from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels who plays my dad and Tracy Shaw from Coronation Street plays my mum.

JOHN: You shot part of the film at the school you actually attended as a kid.

JASON: Yes. Parkside School in Borehamwood. It doesn’t have the same head as when I was there.

JOHN: Had they heard of you by repute at the school?

JASON: Yes. They’d heard I had been a naughty young lad and that I suffered from ADHD and dyslexia. Back then, they thought I was no use: I lacked confidence and lacked focus and they reckoned I would never amount to anything and I would end up in prison.

JOHN: Well, you did end up in prison, but now you’ve written all these books and co-produced this film.

JASON: I couldn’t read or write at the time when they reckoned I would never amount to anything. I spent most of my younger years standing outside the headmaster’s office: well, it was a headmistress back then.

JOHN: Did she ever amount to anything?

JASON: No. Not that I know of.

JOHN: Did the school welcome you back with open arms?

JASON: They were very helpful. We got the design team to come in and put the classrooms back to the early 1980s. We had the school uniforms, the chalkboards instead of the digital whiteboards they’ve got on the wall now. 

Cookster – The Darkest Days is coming

All the locations had to be re-dressed for the era. We’re talking about me from 12 to 18. So 1975 to early 1980s. We re-dressed my mum’s house.

JOHN: Do you appear in the film?

JASON: You’ll miss me if you blink.

JOHN: Djonny has links to Indonesia.

JASON: Yes, he has links to distribution over there.

JOHN: Any changes to appeal to the Indonesian market?

JASON: We changed one character in the script from British to Indonesian and it worked really well. The actress playing her is Elvira Devinamira. She’s Indonesian.

We leave the film on a cliffhanger, ready to go into the next film Cookster: There’s No Room for Jugglers in My Circus. The government has now given us more tax credits, so we can now claim up to about 70% on the production. 

JOHN: And other film projects?

JASON: I’m working on Rats in Space. We’ve got American producers involved now. It’s an animation, based on a true-life story that I wrote.

Jason has plans for Rats In Space – based on a true story ??

JOHN: Yer what? A true life story??

JASON: A French rat was put in a rocket and shot to the Moon. He never made it to the Moon, but he managed to get back alive. So I wrote a story about how he became an astronaut.

JOHN: Will the rat do any promotional interviews to publicise the movie when it comes out?

JASON: That’s difficult to say.

Hirsute Jason is a man of many hats and movie ideas but he has no dandruff…

“Late Night With The Devil”. Not really a movie movie, but the eyes have it…

Late Night With The Devil poster

I don’t normally post reviews on here, but I saw a preview of Late Night With The Devil earlier this week. It opens in UK and US cinemas today and it opens up a whole can of interesting worms. 

I guess the elevator pitch was something along the lines of The Exorcist meets The Blair Witch Project on a late-night US chat show – although ads are plugging it as Rosemary’s Baby meets Network.

The plotline is: In 1977 a live television broadcast goes horribly wrong, unleashing evil into living rooms across the United States.

The title Late Night With The Devil explains the plot.

The idea is that you are watching a real videotape of a real late night TV chat show – Night Owls – which was broadcast live on Halloween Night, 31st October 1977. The transmitted sequences are in colour and the duration of the ad-breaks are filled with black & white documentary-like footage of what ‘actually’ went on off-screen (again in real time).

The Night Owls TV show you are watching throughout the film was supposedly in ‘also-ran’ competition with the Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show.

It is a good idea but I’m not really sure it is a movie movie, by which I mean it is not opened-up… 

Apart from an introductory set-up putting it into the context of the 1970s – and the ending – it is set entirely within a TV studio and takes place in real time.

So wide-screen spectacular vistas and big-scale it ain’t got: it’s more suited to be a TV movie than a movie movie. In theory that is bad. But this is more than counter balanced by the fact everything happens in real time (except for the intro and the ending).

What you see is “actually happening” and “actually unfolding” as you watch it. A real time plotline is almost always going to be more involving. The ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ which you need to watch the artificiality of normal screen plots and performances is less difficult because you appear to be watching reality unfold second-by-second as it happens.

Ironically, this – in my humble opinion – buggers up the end because, as I mentioned, the movie happens in real time EXCEPT for the introductory set-up and the ending. 

And we can’t, of course, talk about the ending.

Still, the rest of the ride is vivid and mind-grabbing.

The central talk show host is played by David Dastmalchian, who is very charismatic in a slightly creepy way.

David Dastmalchian in The Dark Knight

I mainly know his face as a bit-part policemen with piercing, haunted eyes in The Dark Knight Batman movie.

His face and eyes are once seen never forgotten.

He was also in The Suicide Squad, Bladerunner 2049 and the first Dune movie. 

Oh and Oppenheimer, but let’s only concentrate on watchable films.

David Dastmalchian’s performance in Late Night With The Devil is easily underestimated. It’s subtle, not showy, so it ain’t gonna get an Oscar. But it could lead on to much bigger parts for him. He pretty-much carries the film, although the central ‘devil child’ (Ingrid Torelli) has mesmerisingly staring eyes to rival his.

Ingrid Torelli and David Dastmalchian both have it…

The eyes have it.

Should you see it? Yes.

Should you see it on TV? Yes.

Should you see it in the cinema? Strangely, yes. 

I’m glad I saw it on the big screen.

Is The Iceman’s upcoming movie MELT IT! a documentary or a piece of Art…?

Anthony Irvine aka The Iceman recently had a book Melt It! published about him – crafted by multi-tasker Robert Wringham. I posted a blog about it.

Now the book has inspired a forthcoming movie Melt It! The Film of The Iceman.

The selling line is: “In the 1980s and 1990s, Anthony Irvine was a comedian and cabaret performer. His act was a little unusual. As the Iceman, he went on stage – to melt ice. But what happened next and where did he go?”

The documentary is co-produced by Robert Wringham and director Mark Cartwright.

I talked to Robert and Anthony via Zoom… Mark was elsewhere, possibly in Wolverhampton.

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JOHN (TO ROBERT): Did you approach Mark or he you?

ROBERT: I was trying to promote the book and Mark has a YouTube channel where he interviews comedians and musicians. His interviews are very intelligent.

JOHN: Oh dear.

ROBERT: He likes fringe comedy so I thought maybe he’d like to interview the Iceman. And it turned out he had been looking for appropriate subject matter to direct a documentary. Someone from the fringe pockets of comedy. The book made him realise there could be a film in the Iceman.

JOHN: So what’s next? A Disney animation? You’re already doing a film of the book of the act. Disney could do an animation of the film of the book of the act, then do a live-action version of the animation of the film of the book of the act.

ROBERT: We do have dreams of getting our film in cinemas. We’ve just signed up Michael Cumming to be the executive producer. He directed Brass Eye, Snuff Box, the Toast projects – Toast of London, Toast of Tinseltown etc. His current project is Oxide Ghosts, where he shows cutting room floor material from Brass Eye and does Q&As. He’s very familiar with the whole indie cinema circuit.

JOHN: In the film’s Kickstarter appeal for funds, the selling line is: “How much permanence and success can we assure for this man whose entire act was about impermanence and failure? Back the film and be among the first to find out”… Isn’t there an irony about trying to be successful with a film about failure?

ROBERT: (LAUGHS) I’m aware of that and I’m actually concerned it will spoil the true legacy of the Iceman!

JOHN (to the ICEMAN): Is that a real moustache you have on there?

ICEMAN: Yes. Traditionally, I put on a moustache for all Zoom meetings.

JOHN: I hate Zoom. What is that thing you have?

The Iceman (bottom) with rubber duck, Tapwater Award and irrelevant pot…

ICEMAN: It’s a Tapwater Award which I won at the Edinburgh Fringe.

JOHN: The alternative to the Perrier Award…

ICEMAN: It has been touched by Malcolm Hardee and Charlie Chuck. 

JOHN: Without mentioning ice once, why are you doing this film?

ICEMAN: It’s going to be a sophiceticated film. In the production team, there is quality and creativity and a seri-iceness of purpice. I think it’s an adventure that will give coherence and professionaliceism to the Iceman concept. So, late in the day, The Iceman is going to be distanced from the incoherence and chaos of the original act…

JOHN: (SILENCE) 

ICEMAN: The core of it is based on the Melt It! book. So a lot of it is talking. But there will be an element of Battleship Potemkin, Luis Buñuel, Stanley Kubrick. There will be a lot of art involved and interviews with people saying they remember the so-called legend that was the Iceman. And the whole concept of the ice blocks living on will be part of it.

The question is: Will The Iceman outlive the blocks or will the blocks outlive The Iceman?.. Having a film might suggest the blocks will outlive The Iceman.

There will be touches of Federico Fellini and…

JOHN: Sam Peckinpah? It needs conflict.

ICEMAN: There’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Have you seen that? It’s about a painter painting a portrait of a model who didn’t want to be painted.

JOHN: Is there a car chase in it? You have to have a chase sequence. You could chase someone round the block. The ice block.

ICEMAN: (SILENCE)

The Iceman with duck, block of ice and a Melt It! movie poster

JOHN: When is it going to be finished?

ICEMAN: Well, due to public demand, I have been invited back to the famous art gallery in Stalbridge, Dorset – Guggleton Farm Arts – for an exhibition of my paintings – from 15th July to 14th August this year. I think the idea is we have a finale there where we film the public filing in to look at my pictures… and buying them… in cash.

ROBERT: There are strands. Old footage of Anthony doing the Iceman stuff. Interviews hopefully with comedians and artists. And it’s all going to come together with where Anthony is today, which is that he has been accepted into the Art world. The Guggleton Arts event will be a kind of a denouement.

ICEMAN: Because, as we all know, The Iceman is now a contemporary visual artist known as AIM. Hopefully we can get famous comedians to say: “Yes.. He was a legend.”

JOHN: “Was?” In the past tense. In order for that to work, you would have to die. 

(LONG SILENCE)

ICEMAN: I’m painting a picture at the moment called Riced in Pice.

JOHN: Riced in Pice?… Ah!… Rest in Peace? Why?

ICEMAN: Because I’m thinking very much about mortality and Will the melting blocks outlive me? So I’m confronting death in this picture. It’s basically me at my own funeral. I’m not being morbid. I’m just toying with the idea of…a church made of ice blocks and… that sort of thing. Do the blocks live on in some form? They must.

The Melt It! Iceman movie poster

This is a serious film. I notice when you write these blogs with me, it’s always completely confusing conversations. I am going to answer every question seriously from now on.

JOHN: Why do boxers not have hair on their chests?

(SILENCE)

JOHN: You have developed from performance art into Art art. Are you now going to get more into movie making?

ICEMAN: I am going to stick to oil painting. But film is a visual medium and it’s quite exciting to see me slightly objectified. The film will include reference to the painting. I’m quite happy to have this parallel artistic life.

I’m quite interested in filming a block of ice melt for the entire duration of the film. Like Andy Warhol’s film of the Empire State Building. It maybe sound a bit naive, but I think there could be quite a lot of interest. It obviously couldn’t be TOO big a block or it might take 400 days. But, if you had maybe a day’s melt, I think there’s a film there.

JOHN: Surely, to become successful, all artists have to become bullshit artists? You have to say: “This is a representation of global warming. It is Art”, Then Tate Modern and the Museum of Modern Art in America will beat a path to your door and you’ll make a fortune.

ICEMAN: Well, I WAS the first green artist.

JOHN: Eh?

ROBERT: The idea that the ice is melting anyway. Once Man is involved, it accelerates.

ICEMAN: Ah!

JOHN: Ah! 

ROBERT: Ah!

Anthony demonstrates the effect of Man on a melting ice cap

JOHN: Have you seen the movie The Iceman about a real-life killer who had that nickname?

ICEMAN: Yes, that’s rather unfortunate. I’m a bit worried that, when you Google “Iceman” this murderer comes up. I want my film to overtake his film.

ROBERT: Is he still alive? Maybe we could interview him in prison.

JOHN: It’s all coming together now. The ideal way to promote your film is for you to be dead. The Iceman kills The Iceman to promote The Iceman movie.

ICEMAN: I ‘received’ the title Iceman. I didn’t make it up: it was given to me.

JOHN: By whom?

ICEMAN: By all the other comedians of the time.

JOHN: What were you billed as before? Just Anthony Irvine?

ICEMAN: Yes. The film, in a way, is a tribute to the performance artist who disappeared and then returned as an artist. I think it’s going to be professional, which is in contradiction to my actual live performances. But, as you know, I’ve always had a very serious side. I have a feeling the film is going to highlight my metaphysical thoughts.

Have you heard the pop song Melt It?

JOHN: No, I’ve not heard it. But you should record some songs to promote the movie when it comes out.

ICEMAN: I’m quite a heartfelt singer but I can only sing if I’m trying to be funny.

JOHN: As a defence mechanism in case people think you can’t sing properly?

ICEMAN: Possibly. I don’t know what the psychological reasons are. I can only sing to satirise the song I’m singing. That way it becomes quite moving and funny at the same time. Which is what a German woman picked-up on in Edinburgh. She stayed behind to say: “I loft yor singeen” and I knew she meant it, because I looked in her eyes.

I think what we’re hoping for from you is a serious blog. Is it an art film or a documentary film? I suppose it’s both.

ROBERT: I agree.

ICEMAN: I think the whole concept of the blocks disappearing and changing is quite deep. And that’s why some audiences follow me round going: “Deep!… Deep!”

I might even say something like: “Well, I have to go now,” and people will go: “Deep! Deep!”

JOHN: Anthony, why have you actually got a block of ice with you on this Zoom call? You are not about to do a performance. Why have you a block of ice?

ICEMAN: Well, this is a…

(AT THIS POINT, THE ZOOM CALL CUT OFF…)

The late comedy godfather Tony Allen: anarchy, creativity and a “Plan B” film

Tony Allen with the cast of the film Plan B, including Becky Fury and Tony Green…

Following on from the last blog – a tribute to the late performer Tony Allen by his friend Becky Fury – performer Tony Green was sharing some memories of Tony Allen with me…

At the end, he said: “Oh, I didn’t mention the film we did… Plan B by Jerri Hart, one of Tony’s workshop pupils. Tony’s impatience regarding continued re-takes – “Fuck! Another car’s just come round the corner! We’ll have to go again!” – made his performance one to cherish.”

But before we got to that, Tony Green said of Tony Allen…

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Tony Green (right) with Tony Allen in the film Plan B

Many people referred to Tony Allen as ‘Lofty Tone’ – he was 6’4″ and a half. 

I first met him back in 1981 and, like many others, could hardly fail to be impressed. 

This was at London’s first Comedy Store in Meard Street, Soho. Pete Supply (one of the ‘Demolition Decorators’) told John Hegley and myself about the place. All it said in Time Out was “…with Alexei Sayle and the Gong”. 

John and I were gonged off like most on our first night. Tony Allen was then one of the regular performers and always, as far as I can recollect, survived the dreaded gong with comparative ease – his was a finely honed act. 

By that time, he and Alexei Sayle had started ‘Alternative Cabaret’ and the next week I saw Tony at The Green Man (in the cellar) in Great Portland Street. 

This was in many respects a revelation for me especially in view of what we had passing for comedy on our TV sets at that time, which I found incredibly boring, tedious and offensive – on the whole. Even now we never get ‘Alternative’ Comedy on TV – just some severely watered-down version with little bite or content.

Alexei Sayle (left) and Tony Allen with ‘Alternative Cabaret’ in 1979

Somehow, I seemed to bond with Tony. Not that we were ever really great friends – It was an ego thing and Tony could be difficult (he may have said the same about me).

What Tony was saying was relevant. 

Any aspiring comic could learn a great deal from watching Tony and I am sure many did. It was an experience in itself witnessing him at his best which probably would have been between 1980-1995. 

He had a great friend in the sharp and talented Max Handley, who sadly died in a hang-gliding accident in 199o. I always felt that, like Sherlock Holmes going over Reichenbach Falls, Tony’s act was never quite the same afterwards. 

Max would work with Tony on his act almost as a conductor and I believe another person was involved – possibly Paul Durden; at best it was a finely orchestrated piece.

Tony Allen arrested at Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park, 1979. (Photo: Philip Wolmuth)

Tony had read Heathcote Williams’ (who was also a good friend, fellow Notting Hill squatter and writing partner) seminal The Speakers, published in 1964 when he was a mere 22. 

The book is four biographies of stand-out Speakers’ Corner orators. Tony was to become, himself, one of the leading lights at that particular venue for many years. Oration was a natural thing for him and I enjoyed many an afternoon watching Tone at Speaker’s Corner taking part in a heated debate. 

Tony Allen’s advice on comedy, Attitude

Of course, there was much more to Tone than just this. He was also a gifted writer himself (submitting work for TV and radio shows) and I can without hesitation recommend his books Attitude – Wanna Make Something of It? (him on stand-up) and A Summer in the Park (him on Speakers’ Corner). 

I was very happy to have been part of Tony’s ‘Performance Club’ which he had started back in the late 1990s at Smiffy’s Wine Bar in King’s Cross. Although he didn’t do to much stand up in the later years he continued to do comedy workshops which I sometimes went along to and, of course, he was doing a first rate job of imparting valuable knowledge and technique to the would be stand-up. 

He had a plethora of first rate one liners. In particular I remember: “Life should be more than a scented aerosol in the shithouse of existence”. Indeed Tony…indeed. 

Tony was something special and I feel privileged to have witnessed a talent like his at his best. If there is such a thing as an afterlife I would like to think that he is now playing snooker with his idol Joseph Grimaldi and perhaps Lenny Bruce is around there somewhere as well – along with Max and Heathcote. 

Tony Allen looking slightly impatient in Plan B

Oh, I didn’t mention the film we did – Plan B by Jerri Hart, one of Tony’s workshop pupils. Plan B included virtually all the Performance Club members at the time. Jerry was a well-known Exeter trumpet-playing busker. Tony’s impatience regarding continued re-takes – “Fuck! Another car’s just come round the corner!- We’ll have to go again!” – made his performance one to cherish.

The scene where I smash the derelict car window (this HAD to be one take) went for quite a lot of takes – ‘hair in the gate’, I think, was a term that Tony was getting increasingly annoyed with.

As you know, with filming, patience is a great virtue. You may think you’ve delivered your lines really well but then….  And you have to do it all over again. This was an area Tony wasn’t totally familiar with – although he’d done guest spots with The Comic Strip gang.  

The thing is it worked, I felt, beautifully – almost by default… as the more annoyed Tony got – “’Oh Christ, not again!” – the better he came over.  Quite clever, perhaps, on Jerri’s part. 

On the whole it was quite an enjoyable experience.

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Becky Fury also appeared in Plan B, so I asked her what she remembered of the filming…

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Becky Fury in character in Plan B

We shot it – a low budget film – in Devon 

It was a fairly unremarkable experience, except for one incident of high drama right at the beginning of shooting…

One of the cast members was in the process of getting sent home in disgrace for getting far too drunk on the night we arrived – thankfully before filming started. 

Being sent home for having too much to drink was quite a feat considering the amount of big drinkers involved in that particular production. Myself, at that time, included. 

I remember standing next to Tony (Allen), who was shaming the actor who will remain un-named and un-shamed, for several reasons… the main one being that Tony shamed him quite enough. 

Anyway, this all took place outside and Tony was just at the end of dressing the guy down when a goose came over out of nowhere and pecked the guy in the balls. 

It was im-peck-able timing. 

The actor was then banned from the set.

As if being told off by Tony and then goosed by a goose wasn’t punishment enough…

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THERE IS A 40” TRAILER FOR PLAN B ON VIMEO…

…AND AN 8-minute BEHIND-THE-SCENES SORT-OF DOCUMENTARY featuring Tony Allen, Tony Green and, in brief snippets, Becky Fury. 

THE FULL 15-MINUTE FILM IS HERE, THOUGH WITH SOME BUFFERING PROBLEMS…

Napoleon torn apart – Ridley Scott’s latest film is a bit like Oppenheimer

This not so much a real review; more a superficial and admittedly simplistic personal reaction. A bit of a chat.

A couple of days ago, I saw Ridley Scott’s new movie Napoleon with a friend.

She hated it from start to finish.

I thought it was very well directed but I was totally emotionally uninvolved all the way through.

Joaquin Phoenix (Napoleon) got lots of lines; Vanessa Kirby (Josephine) did all the acting without having too much to say. He was passable but faintly uninteresting. I thought she was good – she’s been good in the last two Mission Impossible films and she apparently played the difficult part of Princess Margaret in TV’s The Crown and succeeded rather well.

My friend thought Joaquin Phoenix was just playing the Joker in a different costume. I don’t agree though (as she did) I liked him very much in Joker. My friend didn’t like Vanessa Kirby as Josephine at all; I disagree.

She thought the battle scenes were badly done; I disagree, but I remained emotionally uninvolved in them. 

I was perfectly happy watching the direction and the visual set-ups and lighting. Young Ridley was quite big on candles in this one! The storyline was OK but I wasn’t emotionally involved in the character of Napoleon at all; I did wonder if a lot of what he said was taken straight from his letters and his speeches as there was a bit of starchiness and ‘not-quite right’ in the sentences.

I thought it was a good IDEA to alternate big epic action scenes with the Napoleon/Josephine relationship; but it didn’t work.

The last film I saw with my friend was Oppenheimer which she liked and I disliked. I wrote another non-review blog about it. Again, with Oppenheimer, I felt uninvolved throughout.

Two good directors not quite being as good as they can be.

Both films were too long – Oppenheimer is one minute over 3 hours and Napoleon is two hours 37 – it feels longer  – and I think the problem in both cases was they told (sort of) the whole story from beginning to end and it would have been better to have zeroed-in on a part of the story.

With Napoleon, it goes from him being a nonentity during the French Revolution… to his end in St Helena.

There were some strangely graphic sex scenes (though I think Vanessa Kirby must have wisely had a no-nudity clause in her contract). I guess they were necessary but they jarred a bit… though not as badly as the appallingly unnecessary sex scene in Oppenheimer. (Note to director Christopher Nolan: You can’t do sex scenes.)

I would sit through Napoleon again, but then I would sit through most movies again except Visconti’s The Damned (Götterdämmerung indeed) and an awful German documentary about George Best called Football as Never Before.

The utter tedium of The Damned (1969) still haunts me in a bad way.

Napoleon won’t haunt me; it is a perfectly OK way to spend 157 minutes in the company of well-composed and photographed images. 

But I don’t think that was the sum total of what anyone intended for $200 million. 

Yes, yes, I know… Criticism is easy; creating art is not.

And, yes, the difference between me and Ridley Scott is that, if you gave me $200 million to make a movie, it would be an absolute financial and artistic catastrophe. 

With Ridley Scott, you are guaranteed a watchable film and probably a very tidy profit for Apple, who financed it. 

But, then, as someone wisely said, Apple doesn’t necessarily care about any financial profit on Napoleon. For them, it is more about PR and image… $200 million is an almost throwaway sum for them – Put it down as a bit of advertising cost to generate and solidify good PR and continued image-building for Apple TV+

Me? I have to stop writing now and go out to buy some food from Poundland, the cheap supermarket.

Julie Samuel, Saint Etienne, Bond, Kubrick, witches and Foyles Bookshop

Julie was the female lead in Ferry Cross The Mersey in 1965…

Yesterday’s blog was a chat with actress/producer/manager Julie Samuel who has just published her autobiography What Are We Going To Do About Julie?

It continues below…

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Derek Cracknell: from Kubrick to Bond…

JOHN: You married a movie person.

JULIE: Derek Cracknell. He was a First Assistant Director in films. He worked on films like Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey, Aliens, three James Bond films. Lots. He was really, really good at his job.

We met on a blockbuster-type film called The Long Ships (1964). It was made in Yugoslavia and I was sent over there to play any speaking part.

They sent three of us over, girls, in case there was any English dialogue needed. So I ended up playing three parts: a Viking wench, a Harem girl and I doubled for the leading lady strapped to a horse with my hands strapped behind my back.

JOHN: You wore a different wig each time?

JULIE: Yes! The first was a kind of blonde wig and a rough sackcloth frock and they made all our bodies look tanned and a bit dirty. For the second one, the Harem girl, I had a turban, a long black wig and a beautiful floating costume with Haremy-type pants designed by Paco Rabanne. We were there for three months. I met Derek there and fell madly in love with him.

But, very sadly, he died quite young. He died at 55 from pancreatic cancer. Something you never expect at that age, do you?

JOHN: Now your daughter (Sarah Cracknell) is a performer too.

JULIE: Yes, she’s still singing. Saint Etienne. They started in the early 1990s. They played Glastonbury last year; they’ve played it about eight times; been on Top of the Pops several times. They grew up together as university students.

JOHN: So your father was a singer and she’s a singer, so you must be a singer as well.

JULIE: I can sing a bit, yes, and my 18-year-old grandson’s a singer. He’s got a band together – The Parallels – and they’re playing gigs and he’s good: writing all his own songs. 

JOHN: You moved from on-stage and front-of-camera to the production side around the turn of the century..

JULIE: Around 1999, the music business was being very tough. CDs were not being bought and people were downloading everything. 

Julie – Great Expectations and a Wild Thyme

My cousin, Joan Lane, who has her own company called Wild Thyme Productions, was doing a musical about Moses. She asked me if I would like to become involved and I thought: This is really quite nice. These are grown-ups I’m dealing with now. (LAUGHS) They turn up on time; they know their lines; they’re disciplined.

I did Moses and five or six Shakespeare plays with my cousin… and Great Expectations as a musical. 

JOHN: Where did all this happen?

JULIE: In London, in Germany; we used to go to the Shakespeare Festival every year. 

We also organised the Queen Mother’s 100th Birthday Parade. We did all sorts of things on the side.

Then we met this fellah called David Martin who was a singer turned very successful songwriter. He wrote Can’t Smile Without You for Barry Manilow (Manilow’s was a cover version of the David Martin original) and quite a few other hits. He had written all these songs for Great Expectations. A bit like Oliver! – pop songs within this classic story.

We tried desperately to get it off the ground; we did a showcase; we had some people putting money in but not enough; not enough to get it off the ground.

Joan went off doing other things and I asked David: “What other songs have you got that have never been released? Why don’t we but on a revue? A little sketch, then a song; another sketch, another song.”

A Bowl of Cherries starred Clare Buckfield and Gary Wilmot

We decided to make it about birth-to-death. Children at school… song… teenagers… song… middle age… song… and so on. It really gelled very well together and we found a writer, Carolyn Pertwee, to write the stories in between.

The Charing Cross Theatre said they would like to put it on – A Bowl of Cherries. It was there for a month and we had some really good reviews and got nominated for an award. I thought it would be a nice UK tour and desperately tried to get money to move it on. We got pledges – £20 grand here, £20 grand there – but, to put a musical tour on, you need hundreds of thousands of pounds. So it was a little masterpiece, but it never went any further.

JOHN: Where did you get your organisational skills from? Performers are notoriously often all-over-the-place.

JULIE: I don’t know. As a kid I used to love things like pamphlets. And filing! (LAUGHS) Filing! I like filing! My daughter and I also have a property company now. I do the admin side – the tax and stuff like that – and I quite enjoy it.

JOHN: You’ve been very successful in all sorts of different areas.

JULIE: I think you make your own luck. As I say in my book, “Say Yes, I’ll give it a go, not No, I won’t even try”. You’re going to make mistakes. Everybody does. But you learn from your mistakes. You’ve got to grab life while you can, otherwise what’s the point?

JOHN: Something in the family genes?

JULIE: Many years ago, when my mother died, my friend Dee, who writes, wrote a story called The Bookseller’s Daughters and it’s basically about how my grandfather’s ancestors came to the East End of London from Russia during the pogroms. My grandfather’s mother was Jewish; his father was not..

William & Christina Foyle (Picture source: www.christies.com)

So my grandfather – my mother’s father William Foyle – was half Jewish. My grandmother, who married William Foyle, was strict Presbyterian Scottish.

So we were all brought up very strictly. Religious backgrounds.

When we went to research her ancestors in the Shetland Islands, we found out our ancestors were witches.

Barbara Tulloch and her daughter Ellen King – the last witches to be burned in Shetland, around 1680/1700. Their ashes are in the museum in Shetland.

So my friend wrote this story. All the first bit’s fictitious, because we have no idea where his parents came from.

Foyles Bookshop in London (Photo by Tarquin Binary)

But then it starts and this guy has a barrow and he’s selling books and finally he gets a basement to sell books, then he’s got this whole area in Charing Cross Road and he has these three children – my mother, my aunt Christina Foyle and my uncle Richard Foyle.

My aunt Christina was quite a wicked lady but then she did have something that happened to her as a child. She was put into a sanatorium for tuberculosis and was allegedly abused by a soldier from the First World War. She manipulated my grandfather into getting everything. She got everything. My uncle died, so it was just left with my mum and my aunt Christina. 

At the moment, I’m editing that book: putting it into the right time frame.

I’d never written prose before my autobiography: just a few scripts and sketches.

JOHN: You seem to be able to do anything…

JULIE: I can’t really do nothing…

What are we going to do about Julie Samuel, actress and much much more?

Julie starred in the movie Ferry Cross The Mersey with Gerry and The Pacemakers. (Photograph by George Elam/ANL/Shutterstock -1355671a)

Julie Samuel has been around a bit, done most everything in showbiz.

She was an actress in well over 100 British TV shows – The Avengers, Coronation Street, Dixon of Dock Green, Z Cars et al… in movies including The Day The Earth Caught Fire, The Long Ships and Ferry Cross The Mersey. She has  produced stage musicals and Shakespeare plays, arranged events at Eton College and Windsor Castle and produced the parade for the Queen Mother’s 100th birthday procession at Horse Guards Parade. And she has managed/promoted her daughter’s band Saint Etienne.

Now she has written her autobiography What Are We Going To Do About Julie?

So we had a chat…

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JULIE: I’ve been writing this book for five years – a lot during lockdown. The reason I did it was because my parents didn’t write their autobiographies and they should have because they had such fascinating lives.

My father was the son of a couple of Music Hall artists called Lawson & Odell. They were in the Charlie Chaplin troupe. 

JOHN: The Fred Karno troupe?

JULIE: They travelled all over Europe.

My father could sing and do comedy and recitations. He had to give it up because he got tuberculosis when he was 40, then he worked part-time in a stables training race horses, then went to work in Foyles Bookshop, My mother was the daughter of William Foyle. 

He worked in the theatrical book department. My mother married him, despite all the advice of my grandfather, because my father was a bit of a rogue. He was a womaniser, a gambler. You name it, he did it. Smoked, drank. But he was a very funny guy and he got away with terrible things by just being charming and funny.

My mother was the opposite: straight, honest, kind. 

Opposites sometimes attract and she forgave him everything he ever did. He was really like a fifth child.

JOHN: Did you learn how to behave from your father or your mother?

JULIE: I was the youngest of four. I learned from all the mistakes my siblings made. So I learned to be very diplomatic. I knew exactly how to get round my parents. My middle sister would demand things. I learned how to get the best out of life by being diplomatic.

JOHN: You went to a Protestant Convent school, didn’t you?

JULIE: Well, I ran away from my first boarding school which was 13 or 14 miles away when I was 7 and I did it really because I was just fed up of being away from home. I took my best friend and the school dog with me. Well, the dog just followed me out. He made his own flight for freedom.

We got home and the headmaster came looking for me and the school dog ran out of the house and gave us away.

I stayed at that school for the rest of the term and then my mother took me to a very strict high church girls’ boarding school.

But, if you do something drastic like run away from school and you get away with it… what else can they do to you? From the moment I arrived at the church school, it was a horrible place. It was cold. It was miserable. It was a terrible place, but parents paid a fortune to send their girls there. The education side was OK, but I was dyslexic so the education side was actually not suiting me at all. 

And they wanted to get rid of me from the very start because they said I was inciting rebellion among the other girls.

Then I… There was a new laundry building being built just outside our school. And there was this young boy there – one of the builders – who looked a bit like Elvis and he waved at me. So I waved back. And then (LAUGHS) I met him by the fence and he pushed a letter through the bushes to me saying he really liked me. So I thought I’d better write back. I wrote a letter but then thought: That’s not my best handwriting. So I screwed it up and threw it in the bin and wrote another one on pink notepaper… No, that’s not good enough either! So I threw it in the bin.

Julie knew who Pyramus and Thisbe were…

I finally got the one I thought was OK and I gave it through the fence to him like Pyramus and Thisbe… but the school found all the thrown-away copies in the bin and that was their excuse to expel me, because I was ‘having a relationship’ with a builder,. Which was rubbish. I wasn’t at all.

It was half term when they did it and I was staying with a friend whose mother was a very strict Catholic lady and they were going to expel both of us because they felt we were too friendly. But her mother remonstrated with Sister Mildred, who was the Head, and said: “I’m going to report you to the Pope.” So they let her stay. But that was it for me.

JOHN: What happened to the builder?

JULIE: God knows! (LAUGHS) All I can remember was that his name was Stanley.

JOHN: After that, you went to the Italia Conti Stage School. Was that because you were desperate to be in showbiz?

JULIE: Well, having run away from one boarding school and been expelled from my second one, there weren’t that many schools that would actually take me. One of the teachers I had at the second boarding school told my mother I should be at stage school and, of course, my father knew all about stage schools. 

My parents asked me: “Would you like to go to stage school?” And I said: “Of course I would!” 

Who wouldn’t? Get away from all that Arithmetic and History and everything and just go and have a lot of fun. So I auditioned and got in and they were some of the best years of my life.

Julie as the cover star on TV Times magazine

(IF YOU WANT TO KNOW ALL THE GOSSIP AND JUICY SHOWBIZ, TV AND MOVIE TALES, YOU”LL HAVE TO READ JULIE’S BOOK!)

JOHN: You moved from being an actress to being a band and theatre manager.

JULIE: Possibly because of my daughter. I also started a company called Problems Unlimited and had a little shop boutique. I’ve always worked.

When my daughter was 15, she joined a local band and started singing. They got a bit of interest from a man who managed Emerson, Lake & Palmer and other quite big bands. So someone had to look after them and, I was the only person who had any idea what show business was about, so  I became their manager/driver/roadie and financer.

JOHN: Financer?

JULIE: Well, somebody had to pay for the rehearsal rooms, pay for the van, drive it.

That’s how I got into it and then I got quite interested in the business side. Very different to what I was used to. All the kind of deals that went on. I had always been in front of the camera and on stage. I never understood at first why you had to have a lawyer involved in everything, but I do understand that now!

It just grew from there and I took on other people like Janey Lee Grace, who’s now a radio presenter and author. She was in a band called Cola Boy who got into the charts on their first release.

Then there was a rock band who had great potential – Mexico 70 – but – I dunno – they weren’t quite ‘together enough’. The lead singer was wonderful: a really good-looking young man, a bit Bowie-ish, a great songwriter, a great performer. But you need much more than that if you’re going to be a rock star. You need to be really tough and really determined and, to be honest, you really need to be a bit of an arsehole. You need to be me-me-me – everything has to be about me-me-me. And he never really had that determination.

They had a record out here, but it was on a very minor, indie label called Cherry Red. And then they had records out in America because somebody from Philadelphia who had his own record label ‘discovered’ them. So we signed a deal and he ‘pushed’ them in America and we did two tours there and they were beginning to do really, really well and then everything went wrong. There was a lot of drink and drugs involved, as there often is. Some survive it; some don’t. And they didn’t.

JOHN: Did the lead singer get success elsewhere?

JULIE: No. He sadly died not very long ago of an overdose. The usual sort of thing. They had potential, but never realised what potential they had and never… I don’t know… You’ve got to be so dedicated. Somebody in the band has got to be so dedicated that they’ll just survive anything. And they didn’t have that. I did my best, but they… just… disintegrated after a while. It’s all in the book.

(…CONTINUED HERE with SAINT ETIENNE, THE SCOTTISH WITCHES AND THE FOYLES BOOKSHOP CONNECTION…)

Yesterday, I was attacked in the street by a 12-year-old… Watching violence.

Yesterday, I was attacked in the street by a 12-year-old.

Writer Ariane Sherine’s highly-intelligent daughter was telling me how, in drama classes at school, she had been taught to (stage) fight. 

She demonstrated this by repeatedly punching me in the face (but stopping short of physical contact) and delivering flying kicks to my body (but stopping short of physical contact).

Each time I was saved from physical harm by about an inch or maybe two. But I was increasingly slightly worried she might miscalculate. I feared (slightly) for the potential physical impact. The odds, I felt, would shorten the longer she demonstrated.

Which reminded me of a blog I posted here twelve years ago about writing an autobiography.

My opinion was and is that people are interested in people not in facts.

People are primarily interested in people.

Which brings us back to Ariane’s daughter’s demonstration of her stage-fighting technique.

I read an analysis when I was at college of how people watch screen violence. The study was able to use cameras to see exactly at which point in the screen the subjects’s eyes were concentrating.

Their results were not what I would have thought in advance but made sense when I thought about it.

If, for example, on screen, someone shoots or punches a person in the stomach, the victim will double over as the bullet/fist hits. If they are punched on the chin, their head will jerk backwards or sideways with the force of the punch. 

So what does the audience look at?

The viewer does not look at the victim’s stomach as the bullet or punch hits. They look at the victim’s face. They do not watch the action; they watch the re-action.

When someone is punched on the chin, they do not look at the point of impact. They do not look at the chin. They look at the eyes and facial reaction of the victim. Of course they do. It seems obvious,

The point is that they watch the re-action not the action. 

They are not primarily concentrating on the act or the fact of the action. They concentrate on the emotional and physical reaction of the person. 

Because people are primarily interested in people’s emotions and emotional reactions, not isolated, cold facts.

That’s equally important in writing autobiographies (or thrillers) as it is in filming action or even comedy films.

‘Man (or woman or other) slips on a banana skin’ is only interesting in so far as it affects a person.

They are interested in re-actions more than actions.

People are interested in people not abstract facts, except insofar as they affect  people.

It’s all about people, people.

KISS KISS. Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer is not for movie lovers.

Christopher Nolan

As of yesterday, I have given up on Christopher Nolan movies. Seriously.

Yesterday I sat through his movie Oppenheimer – exactly three messy hours of my life I will never get back.

He is or was a good director. The Dark Knight, his second Batman film back in 2008, was wonderful… but…

His third Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises back in 2012, had Tom Hardy (a good actor) mumbling through a mask.

Then I saw Dunkirk in 2017 and – bugger me – there was Tom Hardy again mumbling through a mask as a wartime fighter pilot.

And – may the movie gods help us – then there was Tenet in 2020… with lots of mumbling going on all over the place – including, at points, star John David Washington mumbling through an oxygen mask – plus having to navigate a messy script and a largely incomprehensible plot.

With Tenet, it felt to me like Nolan should have gone back to Draft 2 or 3 of the script and tweaked it. The plot would have had more comprehensible momentum. It felt like there had been 23 or more drafts, all increasingly more complicated.

 ‘More complicated’ does not necessarily mean ‘better’.

I wrote a blog about Tenet when it was released.

One trouble with writing and re-writing and re-writing and re-writing, I think, is that you get so involved in the intricate world you have created – you know 100% of what is happening, you are so concentrated within your own creative mind – that you lose sight of the initial impact on the viewer encountering the thing for the first time.

It is slightly less of a problem with a book than a film because, as a reader of words on a page, you can adjust the speed of your comprehension and you can assimilate more information and intricacies. If you are watching a film in the cinema – if you miss something – it’s been and gone.

Yes, you can watch a film twice or three times and, yes, you can pause and rewind on a streamed or recorded movie. But, to get full viewer impact, a movie is still primarily a live, immediate, as-it-happens and superficial experience. You should not have to re-see it over and over again and analyse its intricacies as if you are on some up-your-own-arse masochistic academic media studies course.

I included the phrase ‘superficial experience’ there.

In a book, you can get inside someone’s thoughts and thought processes and abstract concepts. You can adjust the speed at which you assimilate the information while retaining total concentration and plot momentum. In a movie, you basically have to immediately process actual images and actual sounds which are transmitted instantly to your brain. In that sense, movies are, by the nature of the medium, more superficial than books.

Oppenheimer with… guess what… exactly three hours of a total overly-intricate mess of a script – is, at times, incomprehensible not because it is partly about atomic physics but because of the cutting back-and-forth in time and lack of a central plot hook… not helped by the actors’ occasionally indistinct words.

Fortunately, the muffled words were not quite as frequent as I feared.

Christopher Nolan, actor Cillian Murphy and IMAX camera.(Photograph: Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures)

The problem with the sound in Christopher Nolan’s movies, apparently, is partly because he likes using IMAX cameras which give a much better, crisper visual image but which are slightly noisier than normal movie cameras. They are not fully soundproof. So, by slightly filtering out the sound of the camera, the voices get slightly filtered/muffled too.

Added to this is the fact Nolan does not believe in doing ADR – automated/additional dialogue recording – which is film industry standard practice.

If the technical quality of the lines is not 100% perfectly distinct on the original recording, the actor goes into a soundproof booth in post production and re-records them more clearly.

A recent Insider interview with Christopher Nolan was headlined Christopher Nolan explains why you might have trouble hearing the dialogue in ‘Oppenheimer’…

It’s actually not as bad as some of his other recent movies, but…

He says: “I like to use the performance that was given in the moment rather than the actor revoice it later, which is an artistic choice.”

That’s all well and good in theory, but not if you can’t hear in the cinema the actor’s already muffled line under the music and sound effects added in post-production.

Art is all very well unless it becomes incomprehensible.

A book may be some great work of Art and admirably creative, but not if you can’t read parts of the text because they are fuzzy.

When his 2014 movie Interstellar got criticism for muffled dialogue, Christopher Nolan told the Hollywood Reporter: “We made carefully considered creative decisions. There are particular moments in this film where I decided to use dialogue as a sound effect, so sometimes it’s mixed slightly underneath the other sound effects or in the other sound effects to emphasize how loud the surrounding noise is.”

Well, OK, Sunshine, but I would rather know what is going on in the plot. If the dialogue doesn’t move the plot forward, cut the dialogue. There were lines in Tenet where (I think) important plot explanations were being made but which were incomprehensibly mumbled/muffled.

Fuck me with an armadillo, it is all very admirable being a ‘great movie artist’ and having perfect visuals but not to the detriment of the sound.

I want to know what the hell is happening in the plot.

By and large, that is communicated in the script – in the spoken words. If the script doesn’t advance the storyline, then cut the script.

And, if being arty is more important than hearing what the characters are saying, then go make silent movies, not ‘talkies’ where you can’t hear (sometimes vitally important) spoken lines.

Movies and books are different media.

If you want to write an intellectual book, write a deeply complex multi-plotted book.

If you want to write a movie that affects the viewer instantly and has visceral AND intellectual impact then (as has been wisely said by others before) KISS.

Keep It Simple… Simple.

You will not be less of an Artist. You will just be a better movie maker.

My advice: If you want to see a film that treats serious subjects in a serious way, clearly go watch Barbie, not Oppenheimer.

Barbie has an understandable, clearly thought-out adult storyline and a clear soundtrack.

Leave Oppenheimer to media studies students who want to seem academically intellectual but who don’t want to watch ‘movie movies’.

I expect Oppenheimer to get Oscars from pseudo-intellectual Hollywood.

Juliette Burton, Barbie and the new Edinburgh Fringe from AH! to HA! HA!

This year’s Edinburgh Fringe, in effect, starts today and so does Juliette Burton’s new show there. 

I chatted with her before she went up to Scotland.

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JOHN: What did you do during the Covid pandemic?

JULIETTE: I lost my mind. The last couple of years have not been good. I was on my second UK tour when Covid started.

JOHN: You are going up to the Fringe with a new show.

JULIETTE: Yes. JULIETTE BURTON: NO BRAINER… My brain has broken so many times that, last time it broke, during the pandemic, I fixed it and I learned so much that I thought I would share what I learned with audiences. It’s a manual for the mind and it’s about rebuilding a life, a brain and a world. I should know how to rebuild after a breakdown, because I’ve done it enough times.

I’m just doing a short 10-day run. I love Edinburgh, but I haven’t been for four years, so I’m not sure what it’s going to be like anymore

JOHN: You’re very sensible. Normally I would say never go up for 10 days because you’d have no publicity momentum and you won’t get a review, but it’s re-dipping your feet in the water for next year, really.

JULIETTE: I’m not really going for the reviews. I’m going to see what the vibe is like post-Covid: if audiences are still there. It doesn’t really matter how the run goes or the reviews. I don’t feel the pressure; it’s all about feelings.

The show has been written for two years. It’s going on a UK tour after Edinburgh. It was written as tour length not Edinburgh Fringe length. Tour length is 1 hour 15 minutes. Fringe length is 55 minutes. Now it’s Fringe length.

JOHN: You could have done a Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part 1 this year; Part 2 next year.

JULIETTE: I’m already writing three other shows. There’s HOPEPUNK, GOING ROGUE and DADDY’S GIRL. The show I am taking up to Edinburgh this year was originally going to be JULIETTE BURTON: HOPEPUNK.

JOHN: Hope Punk?

JULIETTE: Hopepunk is actually a genre. When I got the funding from the Arts Council to do the show about Hopepunk, I had a breakdown instead because a guy left me… It wasn’t just about the guy. It was about the pandemic and my upbringing and childhood and stuff. I couldn’t find any hope and struggled to write about hope and the more I read about hope the more I thought I don’t understand it! I got angry about the concept of hope and angry at myself for being so screwed-up. If I HAD written it, it would have been perfect timing to catch this wave of zeitgeist…

JOHN: That’s Barbie at the moment…

JULIETTE: Oh, I love that movie so much! I thought it was life-changing. I wasn’t prepared for it. I went fully dressed-up in pink – I wear it on stage so much – and I was sitting there just crying my heart out. It reminded me of the endless optimism and relentless positivity and what lies beneath it.

I read an amazing article about how the Barbie tweenage fantasy and the Little Mermaid thing and all that is big at the moment because, as a society, we are a tweenage girl, really.

A tweenage girl knows who they were before; they don’t know who they’re going to be; things can’t ever be the same again; there’s a lot of grief beneath the bright hot pink and the glitter… and we are all trying to work through and process what’s happened in the last few years through this zeitgeist movement at the moment. 

Barbie: “Do you guys ever think about dying?”

I was going to get a T-shirt that has “Do you guys ever think about dying?” (a line from Barbie) with the Barbie logo and I wanted to wear it on stage but somebody suggested that maybe that message is too dark for my show. For MY show! I thought it was perfect for my show.

During the pandemic, I lived in a tiny studio that was cold and mouldy and damp-ridden. In the last couple of years, I had a breakdown, then worked as an usher for the National Theatre, then I worked as the manager of a vegan cafe and then started working in Borough Market.

JOHN: But now you have a new day job: copywriter.

JULIETTE: Yes, for a mental health research charity. It’s not just about raising awareness; it’s about focusing on the science behind, lobbying for governmental change, service provision change, prevention, intervention, diagnosis.

JOHN: The science behind the lobbying?

JULIETTE: Yes. That’s one of the main reasons I was so keen to work for them. A lot of the research papers they’re involved with inform the lobbying of Parliamentary groups. A recent one was about how we do need a 10-year mental health plan. I’m ambassador for another mental health charity and I love the fact that all mental health charities are working together – nobody’s competitive.

I didn’t know who I was before the pandemic and I’ve done a lot of deep work on myself. There are way more jokes in my shows now because of all the shit I’ve gone through in the last few years.

JOHN: Why would terrible experiences make you funnier?

JULIETTE: You know why.

JOHN: My reader in Guatemala may not know the subtleties.

JULIETTE: If you go through darkness, the only way to survive is to find some way of making it fun and light. So you have to keep finding the light again and again and again. The darker things got, the deeper the work I did on myself and if I have to carry on… and there’s a force within me that needs to carry on… then I’m going to have to find some ‘funny’ in it.

JOHN: Why does ‘funny’ help?

Juliette Burton, July 2023

JULIETTE: On one level it helps because it connects us to other people if we’re laughing as a sign of recognition: we understand what other people are going through. There’s also a reason physiologically speaking: it’s a massage of our nervous system and my nervous system has been in disregulation for the last few years and most of my life, to be fair – in a state of danger and perception and threat response. So being able to laugh is a way of tension-relieving from that sense of danger. You feel safe if you’re laughing.

JOHN: Isn’t the reason people laugh a shock reaction to something unexpected? If you punch someone in the face, they go AH and if you say something totally unexpected – a punchline – they go HA. Like you say: a relief of tension.

JULIETTE: The way it was explained to me in an amazing book The Naked Jape was that any joke – whether it’s a one-liner or whether it’s a story narrative – it’s the twist of the unexpected that releases tension, So early Cave Man might not have written jokes but might have laughed, being chased by a sabre-toothed tiger… tension, tension, tension building up… and then suddenly the sabre toothed tiger falls off a cliff. Early man might laugh… with relief.

It’s exactly the same, narratively speaking, whether it’s a one-liner or a longer joke. You build the tension, tension, tension… The audience thinks they know where it’s going… But then there’s the twist, the unexpected… And suddenly there’s the laugh of relief and surprise. It’s a bit of shock, but also a bit of the changing of someone’s perception.