Showing posts with label Billy Boyd. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Billy Boyd. Show all posts

Saturday 19 December 2015

They weren’t clapping for me – they were clapping for a ghost

This is a review of Orion : The Man Who Would Be King (2015)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

19 December
This is a review of Orion : The Man Who Would Be King (2015)
(but with reference to Let’s Get Lost (1988))

 On the face of it, the documentaries Let’s Get Lost (1988) and Orion : The Man Who Would Be King (2015) about, respectively, jazz trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker, and Jimmy Ellis (known, in his time, because his singing voice closely resembled that of Elvis Presley), would appear to have a lot in common : both subjects, to follow a career in music, ended up doing so despite family ties, did not see all the money that their performing and recording should have earnt them, and were confronted by problems that arise from living in the public gaze.

The earlier film, directed by Bruce Weber, was seemingly not shown in the UK until 6 June 2008 (at Cambridge Film Festival (@camfilmfest) ?), turned out to be of older origin than it seemed, and posed questions to the viewer that Jeanie Finlay’s (@JeanieFinlay’s) Orion never does : what it was for, and can we see it as a documentary (rather than barely a musing about the overlap between memory and myth - please see below) ?

What might disguise such questions is that visually, that is from scene to scene, Angelo Corrao’s cinematography in Let’s Get Lost looks good. However, what works less well is, a little unnecessarily, giving us arty shots and angles, as if to give a stylistic complement – although it may just be that it only now seems stale – to having us believe that we witness ‘the chaotic, crazy world of jazz’. (Perhaps appearing rather dull, in not being so expressionistic, Bertrand Tavernier’s ’Round Midnight (1986) gives us many of the same perceptions*.)


Jeanie Finlay’s film makes visual connections that are more organic, and whose operation at the subconscious level is therefore more effective, because they do not explicitly bother us with what we are seeing, but their ‘rightness’, in alluding to relations between things, affects us – as, for example, when Jimmy Ellis feels obliged to move back to his childhood home of Orrville, Alabama :


As a whole that wonderfully coheres, Orion : The Man Who Would Be King is story-telling by the carefully edited use of images, sparing captions / graphic-devices, and interview footage (some of it, mainly in the case of Ellis, just audio), and, where accounts diverge of what happened, intelligently presenting the juxtaposition, and letting the viewer decide what to believe. So, for example, Orion employs [the link, to give the look of the film, is to its trailer from DOXA 2015] :

* In an effect suited to the period (and to evoking, ahead of time, the atmosphere of Nashville), dates of the relevant year, coming up into view, and popping like clusters in the air

 * In Alabama, tracking shots of fields and trees, and the imagery of fronds of vegetation, contrast and conflict with closing in on the rotating sky, and the dreamy effects of slow-motion and blurred, out-of-focus lights

 * When coming into Nashville proper, and, as we casually run a few blocks, being exposed to the unreality of this real place, with more lights superposed on the lights

 * What must have been publicity stills, with their fantasy temptation to the public : teasing back-shots of Orion, as if just he has taken off the mask that is extended in his hand

* Linked to Ellis returning to Orrville, and the tracking shots, moody guitar, with long reverberation and slight distortion

* Very compelling choices of recorded material of Jimmy singing, or talking about himself, and amongst the stills and other promotional material ~ NB most of Jeanie Finlay's Tweets in this review, as with the following one, were on the night when Orion showed live on Storyville (@bbcstoryville) on BBC Four (@BBCFOUR)





The film fits in clearly with Finlay’s interests in previous work of hers, such as The Great Hip-Hop Hoax (2013) (@hiphophoax) and Panto ! (2014) (@PantoFilm), and it may well be that she covertly identifies an incurable part of our nature, that we are drawn to fantasy** : she lets us look at that twilight world where people end up 'living a lie', whether more of their choice (as with Hoax’s Billy Boyd and Gavin Bain), or, as Jimmy Ellis does, hoping to launch a career by initially going along with a firm requirement (of promoter Shelby Singleton). (Even so, it is not as cut and dried as that, since, in Hoax, Boyd and Bain argue that experience showed that the music business would not take them seriously as Scots, and Ellis did have some earlier success, but in a way that kept having him explicitly distance himself from Presley (and, ironically, from being taken for him).)




 A very candid piece of audio that Finlay uses, of Jimmy Ellis saying what he did to try to have a career (and why), transcribes as :

 It was basically the only direction I could go. When you’re trying to get into the music business, I kind of look at it like a fella trying to get on a fast train : there’s no easy way to get on that booger. You just gotta jump up there and grab and hold onto something, and hope that you don’t fall.


In Ellis’ case, it was what Jerry Hatfield, a friend from his home town, described in these terms (referring to Shelby Singleton, Ellis’ promoter (and President of Sun Records, Nashville), who is later heard saying The more lies we told, the more people believed them [one of the tag-lines of Hoax is 'Lies about lies']) :

 Timing is everything. People were very, very emotional, and receptive to anything Elvis. Shelby Singleton came along, at the right time, with nothing more than a gimmick***, a gimmick - a despicable gimmick !



As Finlay was to comment, in the interview about Panto !** (regarding why she had wanted to make a film that followed a cast of amateur actors in Nottingham, who were staging a production of Puss in Boots) :

 I am obsessed with uncovering ‘the glimmer’ of the person underneath a portrayed persona. With actors, the potential for uncovering this is heightened, as I can explore the gap between on and off stage. The film touches on similar themes I have previously explored in my films The Great Hip-Hop Hoax and new film Orion - the desire for fame and the transformative role of the spotlight.



As well as in passages of audio where he is interviewed, we probably hear most significantly (and mainly on camera) concerning Jimmy Ellis himself (rather than the origins and adoption of the Orion persona) from his son Jim Ellis Jr, his friend Jerry Hatfield (mentioned above), and the guitarist (and member of Orion’s band) Nick Scott Petta. There is also his former girlfriend Nancy Crowson, who had to give him up, because she was not reassured, or satisfied, by being told that she was head of the line when he was on tour. (There are others who say the same, about how he was drawn to have many women around him.) However, although the film does not avoid the difficult parts of his life, it does not, unlike Let’s Get Lost, dwell on them as revelations (albeit with Chet Baker, we will know of him beforehand), and seek ways to influence our opinion of him :

Whereas much – that is to say, too much – is made, say, of how it happened that Chet Baker ended up losing his teeth from a violent incident that occurred in Paris, and whether what he claims in his account on camera is correct (for, time after time, words are spoken, similar to those of one interviewee : You’ll never really know when Chet is being sincere).

By presenting dissenting voices in such cases, the documentary does not appear to be serving anyone’s interests, except challenging Baker’s credibility : the person who had not only lately died, but who had also recently been extensively filmed for the purposes of the film (some of the time in set-ups, but not acknowledged as staged for the film till late on in it). (Even if, and not as he says, Baker had been attacked because of his ‘manipulative’ ways (and as a deliberate act to punish him), nonetheless he was attacked, and, one still gathers (whether his teeth were extracted singly, or all at once), playing the trumpet was compromised for him, such that it was unclear whether he would [be able to] do so again, because he now had dentures.)


Although a documentary about a person that is over-adulatory (perhaps Iris (2014), or Mavis ! (2015) ?) might not be very informative, at the same time one might ask of what service the feature film Hilary and Jackie (1998) was to the memory of Jacqueline du Pré as a musician. Whereas, of course, the memory that many have – of du Pré and of Baker – is largely in their recorded music (and associated photographs, or video), what survives of that of Jimmy Ellis clearly left a place for Jeanie Finlay to remind us of him.


Towards the end of his life, Ellis told one interviewer what he thought about whether he was happy :



Contrary to modern expectations, or what some of those might say who offer themselves as guides to what life is, Ellis went on to conclude his utterance with You’re happy to-day and sad to-morrow.









End-notes

* In a fictional scenario, if one credited as originating in the experiences of Bud Powell and others, where the real sax-player Dexter Gordon plays the invented one of Dale Turner.

** Though benignly in Panto !, there is still the same sense that the very charismatic actor in the production whom we come to see closely is honest that he most finds himself when, and through being, on stage. (Not unusually, the film is difficult to find, by name, on IMDb (@IMDb) : by looking at a list of Finlay’s films, one sees that it calls it Pantomime (2014) (only listing as Panto ! another film with that title from 2012).)

An interview with Finlay can be found on the BBC web-page from when the documentary screened for Storyville (on 23 December 2014, on BBC Four (@BBCFOUR)), and likewise an interview with her for when Orion first showed (16 November 2015).


*** * Contains spoilers * In time, employing that gimmick leads to the excerpts from two television interviews asking about it that we see, in the first of which Orion claims that he is from Ribbonsville, Tennessee, and says, when pressed, It’s hard to find [presumably, although the film does not choose to go into this aspect of the matter, with presenters hosting Orion who know who he is] :

Television presenter 1 : Why do you wear the mask, Orion ?

 Orion (fiddling with the mask) : Good question !
Orion : I’m not hiding anything. It’s a trademark, it’s an idea that the promotional people in Nashville, Tennessee, came up with. Shelby Singleton, who is the President of Sun Records, is probably known in the music business as one of the most flamboyant promoters in the business. He will do most anything to promote a product…

 Television presenter 2 (With surprise) : And you’re a product ?




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Tuesday 3 December 2013

The great hip hop film

This is a Festival review of The Great Hip-Hop Hoax (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

3 December

This is a Festival review of The Great Hip-Hop Hoax (2013)

It is my approach, with films, to know as little as possible about them as is consistent with being able to make a choice whether to see them.

This one sounded as though it might share common ground with The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) - to which one member of the audience indirectly alluded in the Q&A with director Jeanie Finlay, by asking whether Billy Boyd and Gavin Bain are actually any good at hip hop - but it is far more interesting : in anything that has someone pretending to be something so long that it becomes questionable whether there is a way back, and, when there is a slide into the sort of existence that kept John Cooper Clarke out of circulation and composition so long, one is facing greater concerns than what The Pistols were in it for.

Mocked by A&R people when they travel down for 13 hours on the bus from Arbroath to London, because they are Scottish, but trying to get recognized for their skills in hip hop*, Boyd and Bain are only spurred on to make themselves be what is necessary to be taken seriously, and immerse themselves in sounding, in words and accent, as if they are from San Jacinto, California (under the name Silibil N' Brains). An initial gig gets them spotted by Chris Rock, who wishes to sign them and, as they need a manager first, sends them to Jonathan Shalit - who gets them a deal with Sony instead. Not, though, the end of their problems but, just before that deal, where they all begin...

Bringing the expectant original journey and disappointed return to life, where at least one of the young men is so hurt that he says that he did not speak all the way, Finlay uses shots of passing scenery to amplify the sense of what they had invested and how cheated and abused they felt. In between, waiting for and before the panel, we have the first use of John Burgerman's colourful and quirky animation, again with Boyd and Bain's comments in voiceover, and its character fits well the tone of the film. A third strand of material, other than recent interviews with Bain and Boyd, and withtheir friends, family and colleagues, is what was recorded on home video made at the time, along with gig and MTV footage and stills, all put together creatively and with flair.

As hinted already, the real focus of the film turns out to be what becomes of the relationship between the two men (although it is now seemingly healed, after they separately contributed to the film, on its being shown on the festival circuit) - it turns out delaying giving the go-ahead for the release of their first single, because Bain is not happy with it and wants to re-record it, means that, because Sony then enters a merger, it never happens, and Boyd essentially tires of waiting around, rather than getting on with life with the woman whom he had recently married.


It is clear from what Finlay says that, with the men giving or publishing accounts of what happened that differ from each other (or from verifiable fact, such as, as Finlay reported, contrary to one's claims to have crashed the BRIT awards and drunk with the stars), she had a difficult time trying to piece together a version of events for the film. She has a telling quotation from Boyd :

Lying is like a drug. Eventually you get carried away, and that’s where you’re out of control. Telling the first lie’s a bit like smoking weed, but after a while you need a stronger hit.


I also confess to having had trouble, which may be personal to me**, remembering which of Boyd and Bain I was seeing in the later interview footage, and in consistently relating that identification to the animation / period material - although, when they made it their business to behave madcap and provocatively to avoid serious questioning, they could act interchangeably (but, though no one realized why, even included the names of fellow hoaxsters Milli Vanilli in a lyric). For real deliberate grossness, for example, we see one openly urinating in public, whilst the other receives the urine on his palms and wipes it on his face ! At such times, it seemed to matter little which of them was playing which part.

This is a thoughtful and interesting piece of film-making, because, behind the antics, the two were so set on staying in character that they even kept in it with the sister of one of them, with whom they stayed when first in London, and also freaked out Boyd's bride not a little. The pressures that they put themselves under by living a lie may not be those weighing on a Raskolnikov, but, past the first steps, they had much to lose, if found out. Remarkably, Rock and Shalit are in the film, but, Finlay told me, the latter only agreed to be interviewed after three years, and she said that Sony had completely distanced themselves.

In the Q&A, someone tenaciously questioned why what he thought the standard of a t.v. documentary (indeed, the film commissioned by the BBC's Storyville series) was being called 'a film'.


I asked about Shalit's response to learning of the deception, describing it as 'philosophical, even amused', and wondering why he had not been more bitter - not appreciating that, as we were told, he was booed in the screening at Edinburgh Film Festival for denigrating Boyd and Bain's background as 'nothing'. It seems that Finlay believes that what Shalit chooses to express as what he thinks of it all now may be a convenient representation of his position...

Having seen Nick Fraser in interview at Aldeburgh Documentary Festival, I asked Finlay whether, as editor, he persuaded her to do or not do anything (having seen something of him in action). She said that he is a formidable figure, and explained that he had commissioned the film, but she had been working with others on the staff.

That said, he had had her pitch the project to him in the BBC canteen, with all sorts of famous faces around, and had banged the table, saying, for example, Make it better ! However, as the film and Finlay testify, he was duly satisfied that it would make a good documentary, which it does.


End-notes

* Apparently, the phrase rapping Proclaimers was derisively used.

** Since it is in the nature of a documentary only to give you the name in a caption on the first occasion (whereas a feature film will typically drop the name in where you cannot miss it and fail to make the association), and here we had two names for Bain.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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