The Red Pants of Justice

Snack Justice

2009-05-28T13:02:00.035+01:00

An Open Letter to Phileas Fogg Snacks (formerly of Medomsley Rd., Consett)

Dear Sir/ Madam

Following a quick peruse of your website, I wanted to share some thoughts with you.

As a devoted fan of your Phileas Fogg range, I was heartily disappointed when, a decade or so ago, they gradually began to disappear from the shelves of snack purveyors everywhere. Supermarkets discovered the salsa-sodden Babylon of the Doritos grab bag in all its mass-marketed glory, and suddenly your (far superior) product was deemed old-fashioned, and so it faded away. The world moved on. Phileas Fogg crumbled into memory, a memento mori of beloved snacks past.

Then, all of a sudden, everyone was in on the act. It was all Thai Chilli this, and Sea Salt and Cider Vinegar that, but poor old Phileas Fogg, once so pioneering in the chi-chi nibbles department, continued to languish in obscurity. So imagine my delight when, a while back, they started to appear again – slowly at first, and with a couple of dodgy re-launches, but at last they seemed to have returned for good. Hooray!

Except, something had happened. Something terrible. Like being unexpectedly reunited with an old flame who’s failed to moisturise and spent too much time in the sun, Phileas Fogg snacks have lost their old charm. They’re just not as good as they used to be. Well, come on, they’re not, are they?

Now, listen you people, I know that the world is a different place to when the only serious competition you had in the ‘exotic snacks’ division were Twiglets and – if you happened to grow up within the M25 – salted pretzels. Oh, simpler times. And I know you’re trying, I really do. But I mean, come on. Mexican Sweet Chilli? It hardly matches the ingenious yet simple romance of Java Crackers and Mignons Morceaux, does it? And don't even get me started on the Tortilla Chips. What have you DONE to them? It used to be so simple. Hot (white packaging) and extra, mouth-burningly, eye-wateringly hot (black packaging). And that's it. You knew where you were with that system. What on earth are you doing with all this sour cream rubbish? The old Phileas Fogg wouldn't have had any truck with that, I can tell you.

Which brings me to the old packaging. Just look at it. Go on, look. Here’s a link:

http://www.julesverne.ca/jvpfff1.html

Wasn’t it beautiful? Wasn’t it crafted with such love and care, that you just couldn’t help but reach out and buy it? They were like collector’s items! I’m sure what you have now saves a fortune on printing ink, but can you honestly say it’s as impressive? No? Thought not.

So, here’s what I think you should do. I can’t be the only one out there. Re-launch the old range. Bring back California Corn Chips, Shanghai Nuts, the lot. Definitely Tortilla Chips, made to the old recipe – don’t try and pretend it hasn’t changed – and no cheating. Would it be so rash to consider reinstating those old, time honoured versions of your (formerly) iconic tasty snacks that those of my generation so loved to steal from our parents' cupboards and gorge ourselves on until we were sick in the 1980s?

Can you honestly say that you wouldn’t swell with pride to look up at the shelves and see that old packaging again, complete with steam trains, vaguely sinister line drawings of Mexican banditos, and particularly that lovely one with the hot air balloon over Paris? We pine for Mr. Fogg’s letters to his Dearest Aunt Agatha on the back, instead of emails or text messages, or whatever it is he sends these days.

I’m not even suggesting you withdraw all your substandard modern snack foods – you can keep your Irish Cheddar and Onion Chutney if you really want – but instead run these as a sideline. A limited edition, a classic range, if you will. Embrace the healing power of nostalgia. Take a stand.

Failing all that, I don’t suppose you’ve got any old boxes lying around have you? I mean, they were sold during the Cold War, they were probably designed to survive an apocalypse.

Yours hungrily,

The Red Pants of Justice

Dead Cheap

2008-08-25T23:32:00.032+01:00

Since leaving the Sargasso Sea of hoodies and fried chicken wrappers that is South London for their cottage idyll in the chlorophil and warm-beer scented Surrey countryside, making fun of the local paper has become something of a favourite pastime for the Red Pants of Justice and the lovely Mata Hari. Comparing headlines makes for a striking contrast to say the very least - from 'Stabbing Brings Teen Death toll to 24' the day before we moved to 'Man Runs Wrong Way Up Escalator' a week later. But while one may get an insight into what keeps a society awake at night from the hyperbole of its cover stories, the clues to its private life lies buried in the small print.

It was a simple, two-line advertisement that caught Mata Hari's eye. "Live Rent Free in a Beautiful Countryside Location. Visit www.rent-free-cottage.com to find out more." This sounded, quite literally, too good to be true; like one of those promises of huge wealth for almost no outlay that one sees tied to traffic lights at grimy urban intersections. Nonetheless, our curiosity was piqued, and we had a look.

I couldn't quite put my finger on exactly why what we found was quite so unnerving. Was it the videos featuring the long drive up to the house, with the silent, smiling people standing on the corner? Or was it the constant references to how isolated it is? Or the bit about being free to use the grounds apart from one particular section of the forest. What do they do in there?!

The whole thing resembled the blurb for a gory airport thriller; or perhaps the build-up for a particularly far-fetched urban legend. But either way, it was quite the most hair-raisingly sinister proposition either of us had ever clapped eyes on.

A third opinion was called for, so we forwarded it to the RPOJ's big sister, the Black Gown of Righteousness. Here's how the conversation went:

THE BLACK GOWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS: Oh my God that is HORRIFYING! Mother is conspicuous by her absence, isn’t she? And if it’s such a good deal, why have so many couples come and gone over the years?! Some thoughts that occurred to me while watching the videos (which, incidentally, will give me nightmares):

The View Around Your Garden = THE LAST SIGHT YOU WILL EVER SEE

This view shows you how secluded the location is = NOBODY AROUND TO HEAR YOUR SCREAMS

Sorry your parking area is untidy = BUT YOU WON’T NEED TO WORRY ABOUT THAT FOR LONG

The builders have only just finished – BURYING THE LAST COUPLE
OH MY GOD THOSE HORRIBLE SHUFFLING FOOTSTEPS!

WHAT WAS THAT NOISE? A GUNSHOT? AN AXE?
This is where we breed the fowl, for sacrificial purposes.

MATA HARI: That's exactly what WE thought! We decided that the film shot from the dashboard of the car down the loooooong isolated drive in silence is the opening to a horror film.

It could be called 'The Mill House'

Or something.

THE RED PANTS OF JUSTICE: Watch it again. Put the opening theme to the Shining on your internal jukebox. I rest my case.

PS What do you want to bet that "mother" is never actually seen. Just heard.

BGOR: Oh stop it, I’m already freaked out enough as it is! And I think ‘The Mill House’ is indeed a spooky title, but nothing surely could match the chilling menace of the name of the website itself: ‘Free Accommodation’. Or the oft-repeated ‘Your Cottage’. Horrific!

RPOJ: See now I'm thinking of it as a kind of Hammer Horror, 'why would anyone in their right mind ever go for that' sort of thing.

1. Int. Spluttering Old Jallopy. Day.

Charles, an upper-class twit in a blazer and slacks, is

driving down a secluded country road. Samantha, his fey yet impressively buxom wife, sits next to him holding a suitcase.

SAMANTHA:
Oh Charles, I don't like it.

CHARLES:
Oh honestly Samantha, they sound like perfectly charming people!

SAMANTHA:
But there just seems something... strange about it. It doesn't seem right.

CHARLES:
You're imagining things dear. The man just needs somebody to look after his mother while he's away on important business. What could possibly go wrong?

CUT TO: Half an hour into the film. Charles is lying in a pool of his own blood, brutally hacked to pieces. etc.

BGOR: …Over his body stands an old woman. We cannot see her face, but she has wild white hair and is wearing a quilted dressing gown. She is carrying a large axe. She turns to leave the room. As she does so, we see her face: it is Samantha, who has been possessed by the demon known as ‘Mother’. She shuffles out of the room.

CUT TO: ext. main house. We see ‘Mother’ making her way laboriously up the path to the front door. The camera follows her slowly, ponderously and in complete silence. This shot lasts 4mins 26secs.

CUT TO: The strictly private island. We see Richard, stark naked save for a headdress made of live ducklings, dancing madly around a sacrificial fire, next to a freshly-dug grave.

MH: It would in no way be a spluttering old jalopy. It would be a convertible Citroen or MG, circa 1968. The producer's car, in other words. Top down, even though it is clearly a gray day. Charles would tend to drive too fast on curves -- the tyres squealing more than one might think is entirely necessary. Samantha (the producer's girlfriend, BTW) would never hold a suitcase, as it would obscure who Playboy-magazine-approved hot body. She would not find his fast driving particularly annoying. She would also not be able to act worth a damn.

They would both have RSC accents, which, given the dialogue, would be unintentionally hilarious.

They would be going to spend the summer in the Millhouse, where they will have arranged to live rent-free over the summer, acting as caretakers while Charles -- an unsuccessful screenplay writer -- works on the script that could represent his big break. But if he fails with this one, he's all washed up.

The credits would come up during the long drive down the isolated road to the Millhouse. We would hear their murmured conversation 'Goodness, it's a long way...' 'And a bit over-grown!'

The house would be beautifully decorated, but eerily perfect. This would upset Samantha but not Charles, who would repeatedly tell her she's being 'ridiculous'. The old lady would be nice, but her son would never seem to be around when Samantha and Charles are there.

Trouble would begin almost immediately, when one morning while drinking a cup of Earl Grey in a floral tea-cup, Samantha sees something floating in the river. Something that LOOKS LIKE A CHILD!

Etc.

RPOJ: Or, the Japanese version. After spending a month in the cottage, Samantha - or Setsuko, a troubled young woman married to a struggling Japanese businessman - is plagued by nightmares and has to return to the expensive asylum from which she has just been released after several years of treatment. This will involve a number of occurrences too frightening to conceptualise with our puny Western imaginations, but needless to say, scary enough to make grown men cry.

The rest of the film takes place within the asylum, and involves the long, coarse, white hair of 'mother' following Setsuko around, and occasional visions of skeletal old women with backwards facing limbs and bleeding eyes. Holy shit!

Junk Mail

2008-04-11T16:21:00.000+01:00

It is a well-worn refrain, from the glitterati of the movie business, that press junkets are the worst part of making a film. You know the sort of thing – a gaggle of actors, their faces glazed with the kind of resentful, joyless expression born uniquely of contractual obligation, being interviewed literally hundreds of times over the course of a few hours by journalists from all over the world, asking the same questions, over and over and over again. I once saw an outtake from a press junket for Toy Story, in which Tim Allen blew his top after being asked the same stupid question for, quite possibly, the 300th time that day. It was a priceless moment, but not an entirely unsympathetic one. Junkets are like purgatory for sucessful actors, the penance they must do in order to be invited to all those glitzy parties and award ceremonies. Actors quite simply hate junkets, and they will testify that there is no part of the filmmaking process, from beginning to end, that is less fun and less rewarding.

They're wrong, by the way. Now, I’m usually very defensive of actors when it comes to the sort of the casually unkind things people say about them – that they are stupid, or, most untrue of all, they don’t do a real job, none of which are even remotely true for any actor I know or have worked with – but I must confess to being slightly impatient with actors who complain about press junkets. Not least among the reasons why is that they are probably being put up in a very expensive hotel, with several very comfortable perks to sweeten the pill, along the way. And although, admittedly, I have very rarely ventured in front of a camera lens myself (at any rate, not since a memorable and copyright-flouting turn as Spiderman, in my directorial debut, aged six) I still reckon I can beat that hands down.

The most boring part of making a film is the sound mix.

The best book I’ve ever read about filmmaking, ‘Making Movies’ by the director Sydney Lumet, contains an hilarious and spot-on chapter about the sound mix, his description of which I’m unable to better, so anyone seriously intersted in the process would be well advised to check it out. Briefly, however, the mix is the bit that happens right at the end, when all the pictures have been pieced together, the music recorded, and all that remains is to finessethe disparate elements of the soundtrack into all their 5.1 surround, THX-enhanced glory. It is an absolutely essential part of the filmmaking process, but one almost entirely devoid of creativity, carried out by very skilled and diligent technicians. It is also one at which any director worth their salt should be present as much as possible.

Now, I like sound engineers. I’ve met some extremely nice ones. But I wouldn’t necessarily trust them to mix the sound on my film. And nor should I. If a director is not on hand to curb the perfectionist instincts of these eminently qualified men and women (although they are almost all men), they could very well be left with a soundtrack that is technically flawless, but entirely wrong. If the music sounds a bit loud here, or the dialogue a trifle quiet there, then who’s to say it shouldn’t be corrected? Well, nobody, if the director is not around to tell them when it’s meant to be like that.

The interminable dullness of the mix cannot fully be described to one who has not experienced it, except that it involves sitting in a dark room doing very little but offer the occasional comment, while somebody very clever does a lot of very fiddly work that you don't understand. In front of you is a dizzying array of multi-coloured knobs and digital displays, each one deciding the pitch of this, the tone of that, the aural minutiae of up to several hundred individual tracks. For short films and television (at least, the sort of television that they let me make) the process is mercifully brief by comparison, but still a cold, oddly emotionless experience, nonetheless - akin, perhaps, to watching an autopsy, or dividing up the CDs with an ex. On feature films, this process can go on for several months. In your face, Tim Allen.

Of course, I’m way too unimportant to have ever done anything like a press junket. The lovely Mata Hari – or Mrs. Red Pants of Justice, which she still refuses to be referred to as – has done a couple of them as a reporter, and also found the experience every bit as dry and lifeless as one would expect. However, there is a weird sort of symmetry to be drawn between the experience of the junket – an endurance test for the rich and famous, forced to give the same answers to the same questions, again and again, for hours and hours, like some nightmarish, gold plated treadmill – and that which those very same people most probably had to endure at very beginning of their careers; the endless cycle of opportunity and rejection, knocking on countless doors, getting the same answers to the same questions, again, and again, and again. Perhaps the junket isn’t purgatory. Maybe it’s just good, old-fashioned karma.

Some people really hate all that – the knocking on doors, the pushing oneself, the long, drawn out process of getting a foot on the ladder. I don’t mind it so much, although admittedly it can be a little disheartening at times. I’m certainly well-placed to comment, given that I’ve just spent the last two months sending out dozens, if not hundreds, of DVD reels – the calling cards of the film industry – during the spare time afforded by a particularly long and fiddly sound mix.

Never mind your CV being the tenth that some bored producer or other has received before the morning coffee break; just paying the bills is a necessary evil when you’re an independent filmmaker, in it because it’s all in the world that you’ve ever wanted to do. And if I ever reach a stage in my career where I can honestly say that the worst part of it all is being stuck in a hotel room, answering stupid questions for a succession of people who earn less in a week than I’ve earned since my last cup of coffee – that would be a good time to give up and go home. Believe nobody who says that this business is glamorous. But at the same time, trust nobody who says that it isn’t a hell of a lot of fun, too.

Trust me. I used to be Spiderman.

Politics

2007-11-22T12:20:00.001Z

A couple of months ago I was fired. There, I said it. Not quite ‘My name’s the Red Pants of Justice and I’m an alcoholic’ or ‘I prefer the Sparklehorse version of Wish You Were Here,’ but like all brave statements to make in public, saying it feels somehow liberating. Furthermore, if you say it enough, it even starts to feel like a badge of honour. Yes I was fired. And for what it’s worth, I do prefer the Sparklehorse version of Wish You Were Here.

This is how it happened.

Last autumn, out of the blue, I got a call from a British TV company that occasionally makes very commendable films for charities and the voluntary sector. They had seen a series that I had made for the BBC and wanted me to come and make a one-off film for them, commissioned by the government, to help people suffering from a rare but very painful, untreatable, medical condition. Not a video, or one of those public service adverts they used to show on TV before close down (in the days when TV did close down), but a short film, with all the creative implications that word carries.

Either because I was flattered to have been asked, or perhaps to ease my nagging liberal conscience about a career choice that, while not entirely devoid of ethical worth, was nonetheless hardly saving the planet, I happily accepted. The usual period of endless meetings ensued, with budgets and treatments being passed back and forth like a form of creative currency. Until a couple of weeks before shooting, I got a call from the producer, sheepishly informing me that my services were no longer required.

“Oh!” I said with an unfortunate inarticulateness that has often been my first line of defence against unexpected news.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I think you’re very talented, it’s just – well we need someone with fewer ideas. A safe pair of hands.”

“What exactly do you mean?” I said, the space into which my hackles should have risen staying frustratingly empty. I’ve never been very good at throwing a strop, even when it’s called for.

“It’s just, well, you’re approach is a little too creative. We really want more of a video than a film.”

I protested that this was precisely the reverse of what they started out by saying.

“I know, I know,” she continued, brightening in that false way that people do when trying to justify an awkward about turn of opinion. “But you don’t really want to be doing something like this anyway, do you?”

Well of course I wanted to do it, I thought. I said yes to the bloody thing, didn’t I? Still, she was right in a sense. No matter how worthy a subject I felt it to be, films for NHS patients were hardly what fuelled my burning ambition. Nonetheless, I’m sure that anyone who’s even been fired will recognise the particular feeling that (to paraphrase Douglas Coupland), left my stomach feeling quilted and acidic with pissed-offedness for a few days afterwards.

A few years ago I heard an interview with a former head of Fox Studios, who said that because he felt like he could be fired at any moment, he never compromised about anything he believed in. The logic went that if you have to be given the push, better that it be for something you are truly passionate about. He was eventually fired for making Fight Club.

I can hardly make such a lofty creative claim for my ignominious ousting, but I can certainly sympathise with the sentiment. In fact, now I come to think of it, something quite similar nearly got me fired from my very first professional directing job. It all started during my second year at university. I had made a documentary about a local outfit that existed solely to collect and preserve historic film material. I quickly fell in love with the stories they uncovered, and the zeal with which they did so, working out of what amounted to little more than a shed in a tiny seaside town. The film ended up winning a relatively prominent national award, which lead them to commission a ten-minute film from me, to play in cinemas nationwide – or rather, the much larger organisation that owned them did, and unfortunately decided to install one of their desk officers, a man who we shall call Martin, as producer.

Now I don’t want to make it sound like I have anything against producers. Some of the closest personal friendships I have formed in this business have been with producers. But Martin wasn’t a producer. No more than I belonged in the chorus line of Chicago did he belong in that uniquely complicated and misunderstood role. And to be fair to him, it was a little like the blind leading the blind. Although I was brimming with enthusiasm, I had yet to develop a proper understanding of what the job of directing entails in a practical sense. In other words, I had yet to experience the paradigm shift I now believe to be essential for anyone who wants to translate mere talent into actually being able to get a film made the way you want it to be.

It's all about politics.

Not real politics of course. The lovely Mata Hari has been working in real politics for much of the past year and she comes home with enough stories to prove the old adage that two things you never want to see being made are laws and sausages. No I'm talking about the politics of people; of playing the game to get what you want without shooting yourself in the foot. Nor anyone else, if you can help it.

I wanted to make something very creative, stylish, impressionistic even. This was to be shown in cinemas, after all. Martin, on the other hand, wanted something that ticked all the right boxes in terms of Getting The Message Out, and saw the creative side as entirely secondary to that aim. Alarm bells really started to ring when we were discussing how best to handle a lengthy section of old newsreel, showing, of all things, Adolf Hitler having tea with David Lloyd George at Berchetsgaden. It’s an extremely powerful piece of film, largely because of its apparent innocuousness. I was determined that it should be presented sensitively, maybe even in silence. Martin wanted to use a presenter to tell the audience all about where the film came from. Moreover, he wanted the presenter superimposed onto the film itself, to make it look like they, too, were having tea with Hitler.

Now, I don’t believe for one second that Martin was trying to be offensive. He just honestly thought it was a good idea. Unfortunately he was willing to force it through if necessary. In any case, I panicked. That wasn’t the only worrying incident, but it was by far the most symbolic. And so with a deep breath, I set about making the entire film how I wanted it, regardless of what anyone else wanted, and by clandestine means if needs be.

I blush with guilt now at the extreme lengths I would go to in order to conceal what I was doing – printing up fake shooting schedules, lining up some really quite famous actors to be interviewed and then ‘accidentally’ forgetting to bring the questions I had been allotted, forcing me to use my own, and so forth. I did all this firmly in the belief that it was right for both film and the purpose for which it was being made. In retrospect, dishonourable though it might have been, I was entirely right on that count.

By the time we reached the later stages of editing, the relationship between Martin and I had broken down to the point where I was forced to let certain elements of the film be cut in ways that were anathema to me. It was a terribly painful thing to watch, but of course he had every right to do so. He would have been quite within his rights to fire me. After all, his company was paying for my act of artistic bravado.

It wasn’t a bad film in the end, even if it wasn’t quite what I wanted. It did get a limited UK cinema release, and I still occasionally get sent nice reviews from various festivals around the world at which it is shown. And for the record, there was no presenter, no fake despotic tea parties, and I’ve since seen Martin socially. We’ve even laughed about the experience, albeit through slightly gritted teeth.

So you know what? My first experience of being fired – at the opposing bookend to my twenties from when I first expected it – really wasn’t that bad at all. It could have been worse. After all, I could have been a safe pair of hands.

Learning How to Type

2007-06-14T11:47:00.000+01:00

There's a long-standing myth that pervades the film industry, which states that one has to be prepared to do anything when one is just starting out. Now, don't get me wrong. I know all about paying your dues. I'm on first name terms with Mssrs. Putup and Shutup, and am uncomfortably well acquainted with their slovenly neighbour, Mr. Minimum Wage. If you can't stand the heat, the old saying almost goes, get out of the studio. If you're not willing to put up with it, you might as well learn how to type.

And in a sense, who can argue, so long as there is an endless stream of wide-eyed bright (and, more to the point, not so bright) young things, willing to stand any indignity, acquiesce to any demand, regardless of the number of employment laws they break in the process. The lower echelons of the business subsist on this kind of underground service economy because of the massive cost incentives involved, in the same way many Western societies would essentially collapse if one removed all the illegal immigrants, because there would be no-one left to do the jobs no-one else wants to do.

It's just that, you know, you've always got to draw the line somewhere. Personally I realised this quite early on, due in part to a prescient piece of career advice I once received from a very experienced producer, whose face was permananrly contorted into an expression that I can only describe as gnarled. "Take whatever shit they throw at you, but figure out the right time to duck and you'll go far." It's a somewhat tortured metaphor, granted, but one I was reminded of the other day, when I came accross a particularly grim looking entry-level job while trawling through a freelancers' film and television jobs website I'm subscribed to. But more of that in a minute.

I had a friend at university, with whom I'm still in touch with intermittently, who is an immensely talented writer. All he ever wanted to do was write scripts; for television, films, radio, you name it. (He once showed me a couple of scripts for a sitcom he wrote on spec, which was an inspired twist on the old 'young batchelors living together' format. Kind of like Friends meets the Young Ones by way of Twin Peaks.) Anyway, shortly after we graduated, most people we knew fell into the usual pattern one sees when surrounded by a large number of people bent on persuing a career in the creative industries; most dip their toes in the water, realise how cold and full of sharks it is, and beat a hasty retreat to a far more intelligent way to make a living, and invariably one with a far greater disposable income. A few persevere, landing themselves comfortable but perfectly satisfying backroom jobs, while the really stubborn ones just keep on pushing at that oblique and unendingly frustrating uphill struggle, to have a job in the creative side of the creative industries. To direct, to act, or, in his case, to write.

So within a few months of leaving university, my friend got a job at a small TV production company, fetching coffee, running errands and generally making himself useful around the place. He wasn't exactly receiving any kind of salary in return for his efforts, but you know, you've got to start somewhere and after a while, one would expect them to put him on the books anyway, if he was any good. Which he was. Very good. As time went on, however, the job got more and more intense, until nearly a year later, I met up with my friend for a drink, and he looked terrible; pale, malnourished, and looking like he quite possible hadn't slept in days. I ventured to ask whether he was taking care of himself alright.

"Oh sure, fine" he replied, hesitantly. "It's just... Well, I don't sleep too well in that office."

"In the office?" I asked. "Why are you sleeping in the office?"

He explained that he had to in order to get all his work done; there was simply no way he could do all that paperwork, copy all those tapes and generally do all that was expected of him without sleeping under his desk for at least three or four nights a week.

"Gosh" I said, my voice a mixture of concern and quiet admiration. "That's dedication. I hope they're paying you a half-decent wage by now."

He shuffled in his seat a little, before explaining that they hadn't exactly started paying him yet.

"You're still working for free?" I asked, my voice rising in indignation. "But you've been working there for nearly a year."

"Yeah..." he said, his voice dropping to an almost conspiritorial whisper. "It's just that... Well, you've got to start somewhere, you know? You've got to pay your dues."

Now I'm all for paying your dues, but you've also got to know when you're being exploited. I mean, exploited more than usual. This is, after all, about the only business in the world to which one can make the distinction between 'bad exploited' and 'good exploited' and not expect to be picketed by angry looking people in t-shirts. We talked in circles for a while, me encouraging him to be more assertive, he reminding me that as I was at that time undergoing yet another period of sporadic employment drought, I was hardly one to talk. He had a point. We changed the subject. Four years later, and my friend is a handsomely paid insurance salesman, and while I, on the other hand, have paid just enough dues to call myself a professional director, I've also earned less money in my entire career to date than he probably earns in a year. He no longer writes, but makes up for it by taking extremely nice holidays.

Back to that job posting I was just talking about. Here's what it said:

"Office/Live Studio Runner
We are looking for a new runner. The most important attributes that we are looking for are energy and enthusiasm to get
the job done efficiently and with a smile. There are staff working in the building during the day and others in the evening
so it is important that systems are put into place and well maintained. Starts asap. Salary £40per/day with trial month.

Duties: Clean and organise!
Keep the kitchen area clean and tidy
Make teas and coffees etc for staff and guests
Set studio up for the night time show
Fully clean and sanitise the studio and gallery
Sanitise studio phones, earpieces and lapel mics
Sanitise podiums and poll
Vacuum floors and clear rubbish
Take sheets to laundrette every other day
Studio and Gallery system check
Sound and camera check
Keep in touch with the daytime crew; ask how the show went etc
ALL THESE DUTIES ARE PERFORMED DAILY.

More about the company
Currently Bang Media is mainly involved with broadcasting on it's new channel; Turn On TV, Sky Channel 915. We
broadcast one show each night; Bang Babes. This is an adult orientated shows on free-to-view TV. It is presented by
models and viewers can call up girls in their own home for sexy chat."

Grateful that my due-paying days were, if not by any means over, then at least past the level of glorified jism monkey, I forwarded the job to Mata Hari, with a subject heading along the lines of 'is this the grimmest runners job ever?' or suchlike. I expected her to return with an amusing riff about the fact that the job description literally contained wiping up after pole dancers in addition to all the usual, overworked runner-ly duties, but insead, she just sent back seven, simple words:

"You'd learn how to type. Wouldn't you?"

My mind drifted to thoughts of my friend, sunning himself under a tree in the Bahamas, a little cocktail umbrella casting a shadow across his cool, freshly-made mojito. And I beheld the wisdom of insurance salesmen...

That's Not All, Folks...

2006-12-22T12:28:00.000Z

It's a strange time, the first few minutes of the day. Sunday mornings are the best for it; that fuzzy, lethargic feeling between deciding you don't want to sleep any more and summoning the energy or inclination to actually get up. Sometimes the oddest conversations occur in these little procrastinatory moments. It was just such a circumstance this morning that lead the Red Pants of Justice and Mata Hari into a discussion about the sex life of the Flintstones.

OK, so it wasn't exactly pillow talk at it's most romantic or highbrow. Goodbye F. Scott and Zelda, hello Fred and Wilma. And perverse though it may seem to want to corrupt such squeaky clean, post-Eisenhower wholesomemness with talk of, well, 'it', what red blooded male hasn't looked at Betty Rubble sometime and at least, you know, wondered....

Leaving aside the details of that particular riff (although I maintain Hanna Barbera missed the chance to teach a valuable lesson by not giving Wilma post-partem depression after Pebbles arrived) it did remind me of a subject that has long held a fascination for me: the salacious history of cartoon censorship. I don't mean those scratchy reels of hand-drawn hardcore that were once popular novelties for stag nights and shore leave, or even the full-on animated sex and violence of Japanese Manga. No, I'm talking about something much more dark and subversive, but as true a part of cinema history as Jack Warner and Pathe news.

Would you believe me if I said Bugs Bunny's willy?

I'm sorry. I should have given a bit more warning before I said that. Bugs Bunny doesn't have anything down there in front, you say? Isn't he just round underneath like a teddy bear? What dirt, what filth, what fabrication. Except, well, he did - at least in the Loony Tunes cartoon where he emerges from the bath and wraps a towel round his middle, revealing, for the briefest of moments, a little rabbitty penis.

This is far from the only example of how mischevous animators suffused the great cartoons of yesterear with risque in-jokes. These little acts of sabotage were usually no more than a game, to see how far they could go without being discovered, but just ocasionally the intention was more malicious. There is a scene in Disney's 'The Rescuers' in which two of the main characters walk past an old shop window, behind which, for two frames, is a cutout from Hustler magazine. This remained undiscovered until the film was released on video in the early 1990s, and Disney was forced to withdraw every copy after a series of complaints from furious parents. It later transpired that the animator in question was laid off during the film's production, and inserted them as a parting act of revenge.

On one or two occasions, the gags were so blatant that one can only baffle at how they weren't picked up the censor. For instance, in the Warner Brother's cartoon, 'An Itch in Time,' there is a scene in which a troublesome dog has his tail set on fire, and drags his hind quarters across the floor to put the flames out. Mid-yelp, he turns to the audience and says, "Hey, I better cut this out, or I might get to like it!"

This seditious practise continued well into the 1980s and 90s, most infamously in a scene from 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' when Jessica Rabbit is thrown from a car and rolls over a few times before coming to a halt on the pavement - revealing, for a split-second, that she wasn't wearing underwear. This particular case has since attained the status of an urban myth, albeit a perfectly true one. When interviewed for a TV documentary a couple of years ago, the animator responsible explained, somewhat sheepishlly, "I had no idea the inking department would leave in my loving details."

I won't go any further. That's quite enough psychological trauma for one post. I shan't dwell upon Elmer Fudd's wet dream, Sylvester the Cat's sleeping pill addiction or the numrous racial stereotypes that make dozens of old cartoons unbroadcastable today. Chief among these is the frankly disturbing WW2-era cartoon, 'Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips,' in which Bugs cheerfully murders a succession of Japanese soldiers in imaginative ways, such as handing out hand grenades disguised as ice cream cones, exclaiming "Here's one for you, monkeyface. Here y'are, slanty-eyes. Everybody gets one!" Not something you're likely to see on Cartoon Network any time soon.

Oh the innocence of times past. Perhaps I'll remember that the next time someone complains about the immorality of South Park...

Get Behind Me, Santa

2005-12-04T19:49:00.000Z

Last week, some nutter dressed in a Santa suit broke into a flat in East London, and stabbed a man to death. I mean, seriously. Did I miss something? When exactly did life turn into a bad John Carpenter movie? As if that wasn’t enough to dampen the Red Pants of Justice’s slowly building spirit of festive fun, this was also the week in which an employee of Wal-Mart in the US was fired for an email he sent to a customer, in which he observed that Christmas was not a purely Christian festival, but an amalgam of traditions from several cultures, many of which could be traced back thousands of years, some of them Pagan in origin. That's it. No shoplifting, no fingers in the till. Just expressing an opinion that would not even be considered mildly controversial among most educated people in America, or the rest of the world; to no-one, for that matter, except for the most zealous of Christian fundamentalists.

Now consider the following fact: Wal-Mart is one of the biggest commercial retailers of guns and ammunition in the world, with an annual turnover almost equal to the GDP of Austria. Do you suppose their Christmas cards mention peace and goodwill anywhere? It’s almost enough to make the RPOJ take back some vociferously expressed rebuttals he made some years ago to a particularly joyless Godbotherer of his acquaintence, who argued that Christmas had no place in the secular calendar and should therefore be abolished as a public holiday. Tosser.

However, neither of these tales quite top last year's winner of the award for un-cheeriest Christmas story. During a charity fun-run in North Wales, five men were arrested for public order offences following a drunken riot, during which police used pepper spray and batons to break up a crowd of thirty people. All of whom were dressed as Santa Claus at the time.

How ironic! In direct contrast to how he usually feels at this time of year, the Red Pants of Justice is trying his best to get a bit festive, but the rest of the world just won’t let him do so. Perhaps he should just revert to his usual assumption: that Christmas is probably going to suck, so better just to accept the fact and get on with it. Roll on New Year, with all the commensurate disappointments it will probably bring too. Bah, and indeed, humbug.

Actually, the story of the psycho-Santa did remind me of something an old university tutor once told me. This was a popular guy, who also happened to be a world-renowned expert in folklore and urban mythology (although the fact that this meant he had the same degree as the comic book store guy from the Simpsons was lost on precisely no-one.) Anyway, he had a theory that almost all horror-based urban legends that appeared from the early-1980s onwards could be traced back, directly or indirectly, to movies. You know the sort of thing; babysitter receives phone call from a crazed man saying he’s coming to kill her, so she locks all the doors and windows, before realising that the call was made from upstairs. Modern campfire tales, in other words; (mostly) harmless fun. In fact, my tutor had found only one prominent example that didn’t seem to have entered the popular consciousness in this way - a 1984 slasher film called 'Silent Night, Deadly Night,' about a psychopathic killer, whose questionable modus operandi involved climbing down chimneys on Christmas Eve and brutally murdering people with an axe. You know, like you do. Anyway, my tutor theorised that the reason why this idea - apparently so ripe for urban legend material - doesn’t seem to have cropped up anywhere else is because the idea is just too horrible for Western society to cope with. We can almost take any amount of war, violence and bloodshed in the name of entertainment, but a psycho Santa? That's just sick.

So, as 2005 starts to shuffle its ugly scrag-end out of our lives and into the pages of history marked 'years that sucked', the Red Pants of Justice is left contemplating this motley, post-millenial cast of alternative Santas, and wonders what conclusions can be drawn. At least he hasn’t the added indignity of having been invented by the Coca-Cola company, too; that old dinner party chestnut is, in fact, an urban myth itself. My heart was never in the whole boycott coke thing, anyway.

Nah, who am I kidding? I'll probably have a perfectly fine time at Christmas, participating enthusiastically in the one Christmas tradition of our age that is truly alive and flourishing: the right to stuff yourself silly and not feel too bad about it. Gluttony may mot be the purest path to enlightenment, but as sure as a Boxing Day bulge, it's the most enjoyable. So, with due reticence, the Red Pants of Justice approves of Christmas, in all it's homogonised, commercialised, secularised and de-Paganised glory.

Just don’t get him started on people who call it ‘Winterval.’

The Great Defective

2005-11-20T16:26:00.000Z

Last winter, The Red Pants of Justice got into a pleasing Sunday night routine. He and his girlfriend – the lovely Mata Hari, who refuses to be referred to as Mrs. Red Pants of Justice for some reason – would cook a big Sunday lunch, and then sit down to watch Sherlock Holmes on the telly. All very domestic, pipe-and-slippers stuff, but how we loved it. When the weather’s turned all misty and cold, it’s dark outside by four, and you’ve immobilised yourself with a helping of roast chicken that you could barely lift off the plate, there’s really nothing better than to sit down for an hour to watch Jeremy Brett gurn and twirl his way through another cryptic and thoroughly well art-designed Victorian mystery. Bliss.

So it was with some surprise that Mata read in the paper this morning that Arthur Conan Doyle hated Sherlock Holmes. Resented him terribly. Wanted nothing more than to kill him off and be remembered instead for the epic historical novels that were his passion. The problem was, they weren’t very good. In fact, according to accounts by his publisher, they were terrible. Unpublishable. Pants.

Actually, the Red Pants of Justice was aware of this fact before, but I didn't realise the extent to which Doyle let it show in in his work. Brimming with frustration that his name had become synonymous with Holmes - especially after he was forced to resurrect him from the jagged rocks of the Reichenbach falls, to which the detective was briefly consigned in a fit of literary pique - Doyle often indulged in acts of petty sabotage towards his most famous creation. He kept churning out the stories, but over time they became riddled with small but often deliberate jibes and inconsistencies, in what amounted to an expression of contempt for his dedicated fanbase.

For example, although Holmes was meant to be a master chemist, Doyle neglected to back up the detailed scientific jargon attributed to him with even the most basic research; meaning that most of the time, his apparently authoritative pronouncements were, in fact, little more than gibberish. Meanwhile, poor old Dr. Watson seemed unsure of whether his name was John or James, and it was even implied from time to time that he was a polygamist, with several wives stashed away across London. Hardly the sweet and slightly bumbling old chap, more synonymous now with the gentle demeanour of Nigel Bruce or Edward Hardwicke.

Doyle would no doubt bristle at the fact that, 75 years after his death, he is remembered for little else but Sherlock Holmes. Even his notable contribution to the fledgling science fiction genre is eclipsed by the work of others, more readily associated with the tradition, such as H.G Wells. Indeed, it is open to question whether or not Doyle would be remembered for much of anything today, had his most famous creation been stillborn on the page. At the heart of Doyle’s neurosis was the fear that as long as he was inseparable from Holmes in the public imagination, he would never be taken seriously as an author during his lifetime. Maybe he had a point. Alfred Hitchcock would later complain that he was never fully accepted as an artist, in either his native or adoptive countries, because his films were so popular. For Hitchcock, as for Doyle, success became an albatross around the neck. Had Doyle been born fifty years later, the two might have got on famously.

So the Red Pants of Justice endorses Sherlock Holmes: most definitely not pants, even if his creator seemed to think so. In art, as in life, sometimes greatness needs a little maturity to shine.

The Joy of Hex

2005-11-19T18:46:00.000Z

While trawling the dregs of late-night Saturday television yesterday, the Red Pants of Justice came across a dodgy 70s British horror film called simply 'Terror'. Just 'Terror'; no 'the,' or indeed anything much to recommend it. Whether the eponymous terror reffered to the plot (hardly), acting (possibly) or the fetish stripper with the Annie Lennox hairdo and alarmingly unruly muff (there you go!) is open to question, but what is beyond any doubt as far as I'm concerned is that this film was pants. As in bad. Very, very bad. Not in the remotest bit scary, or even well put together. Bad in a bad way.

The Red Pants of Justice swiftly condemned this film and went to bed.

However, it did get me thinking about Hammer Horror. Now, nobody's denying that Hammer was also pretty dire most of the time (oh come on, it was) but at least it usually managed to transcend the level of mere trash and achieve something altogether more satisfing: bad, yes, but bad in a good way. Like mood elevators or Pick 'n' Mix.

There were even a couple of Hammer films that were pretty good, all things considered: Countess Dracula, for instance, with it's naked blood bathing and vast array of silly hats, or the decidedly creepy Vampire Circus, resplendent with sinister carnies and Skip 'Equity minimum' Martin as a murderous dwarf. But mostly they were just camped-up fun and only occasionally unwatchable (I'm looking at you, Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires.)

So the Red Pants of Justice approves of Hammer Horror. Pants but good pants. In your face Annie Lennox.

Here is a list of Hammer Horrors to feature vampires (because let's face it, who cares about the others), together with a brief Red Pants of Justice adjudication of each:

Dracula (1957)
Christopher Lee is no match for Peter Cushing, but still beats the crap out of Gary Oldman.

Brides of Dracula (1960)
Vampire Baron + girl’s school = lunch

Kiss of the Vampire (1963)
Young couple’s car breaks down. Oh look, there’s a castle!

Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966)
The sun is out, the birds are singing, but everyone's talking about the filthy weather for some reason.

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968)
Priest exorcises castle; Dracula pissed off. Priest gets excersised.

Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)
Cracking Black Mass, Gromit!

Scars of Dracula (1970)
Carry on Drac.

The Vampire Lovers (1970)
Whoops, there goes my nightdress!

Lust for a Vampire (1971)
Whoops, there goes my dignity!

Twins of Evil (1971)
Whoops, there goes my career!

Countess Dracula (1971)
Not really a vampire film per se. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t suck! (Ba-doom ching...)

Vampire Circus (1972)
“The circus! The circus! The circus! Paycheck?"

Dracula AD 1972 (1972)
Uh-oh.

Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974)
Bite me.

The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1974)
Please let it end.

Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)
Kill me now.