Oh you is Boots.
It's show Die.
People pay good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater.
They want cold sodas, plot, popcorn, and no monsters.
In the Projection booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring?
A what are you looking at? Hik We gotta do around here? Nothing will want you on speak postmaster an ascid.
Please do la No, I don't want drugs?
Yeah?
What about gilkay step one?
Funny girl you love?
How about? Uh?
Somebody gets some music?
Do conty speech?
Didn't he chose?
Now?
Dope too?
A month gets finish? Ain't a shawn sir?
The curt mess of Donna?
There?
Uh?
Yes, I I have a Yeah, I know god.
SuDS the sun time.
The formula is really very simple. Just follow the rules and you will see.
And as life travels on and things do go wrong, just follow steps one, two, and three.
Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White. Joined me is mister Ben Slater.
Hello, Hello, hello, hello again.
Also back in the booth is mister Mark Begley.
Hello, and thanks for having me back.
We continue Art House August with a look at Christopher Pettitt's Radio On, released in nineteen seventy nine. In the film is a road movie about a London man investigating the death of his brother in Bristol. A deliberately paced black and white film, it became famous for its use of modern music on its soundtrack. We'll be talking about that and spoiling the movie as much as we can as we go ahead and discuss this. So if you don't want anything ruined, please go ahead and track down
the wonderful blu ray from Fun City Editions. We will still be here when you get back. So Ben, I know you've got a history with this one. When was the first time you saw Radio On?
And what did you think?
Sir?
We'll stop in Guys, it's a long story and I'll try to make it.
I'm really sure you don't have there's no time litbit on this, bad guest.
Long stories are good.
I'm it's late and night here. I would love to spend ages on it, but I won't. I'll give you the broad Stokes, which is basically I went to Bristol University. So that's the first connection because in Radio one they end up in Bristol, or he ends up in Bristol. After I graduated. Me and a really good friend called Gareth Evans, who is a wonderful producer and curator based in London. Now we started a magazine which was called Entropy, which was a fanzine basically a kind of well produced fanzine.
This is about nineteen ninety six nineteen ninety seven, and we were interested in looking at experimental culture and we were feeling a kind of end of the millennium vibe and trying to put that into our magazine. And Gareth was really the one who identified Chris Pettitt is somebody
that was interesting to talk to. And it really came about because Chris Pettitt was doing this collaborate with this other British writer called Ian Sinclair, and they made a film called The Falconer, which is about a very interesting guy called Peter Whitehead and Peter Whitehead maybe proposal for a future podcast, all right, And we interviewed Peter Whitehead for the first issue of our magazine and then Garrett said, we've got to talk to Ian and Chris because they're
making this film about Peter. So we went ahead and our second big interview was a double heather with Ian and Chris. I knew about Radio On because my bible as a young film fan was the Timeout Film Guide, which was the London listings magazine Time Out, which Chris worked for as he was the film editor for a number of years, and they had these really good, sharp capsule reviews, and the capsule review of Radio On was very intriguing, this idea of a British road movie, black
and white, cool music. Vin Vendors was involved, and I was always very intrigued by that. And then I had this opportunity to actually meet Chris and interview him. But I hadn't seen Radio On, and it was a really difficult film to track down at that time. It wasn't on VHS, it was never played on television, and I didn't live anywhere where there was a cinema playing it. So in the end we did get Keith Griffith, who was the producer of Radio On and was still working
with Chris. He got someone in the office to make copies of Radio One for us to watch, along with a couple of other Chris's films Chinese Boxes, i think, and so we got this second generation VHS copy of Radio One and we watched it in a little flat in Bristol, which is appropriate on a small television, not unlike the TVs in Radio On, and really had this very high expectation for it, and actually it did more or less live up to our expectation, more or less
even in this sort of very low grade format. And then of course we went to meet Chris and interview him, and then we got the opportunity to invite him to Bristol where of course he'd been to university and show a thirty five mel print of Radio On. So in a sense, that was really when I got a chance to see it on a cinema screen. And I've actually seen it on a cinema screen three times over the years, which is quite rare to get to see the same film that many times in the cinema, and it grows
in my mind each time. So that's the beginning of my connection with Radio One.
Yeah, I definitely want to explore more of your connection, especially Radio On remix and what you've done with the film since then. Mark, I know that your story is as equally intriguing, So please the four hours.
It's not even close.
Now.
This is one of those I've never heard of, this movie that Fun City has put Out, and you and I have talked about this off podcast, and it seemed like for a while there just about everything they were releasing was something I had no knowledge of and be sounded really interesting, and they just had this streak. And now they're releasing more things that I'm familiar with, not that their streak is any less interesting, but it was like, why have I not heard of this film Road Movie,
Love Road Movies nineteen seventy nine. The pictures that I had seen made me think of new wave and the mod culture at the time, in the late seventies, and I thought.
Why not.
I wonder if I had a chance to see this at some point. I took a semester of school in London in nineteen ninety and discover the repertory cinemas there, one of which mister Pettitt mentioned in his interview with you, the Electric Cinema, and I thought, I still have all my old programs. Maybe this is something that I did see in those or in time Out, which was my bible while I was there. I don't think it is
audition in America. There might be a time out in New York, there might be a time out LA or it used to be. But yeah, when we got there, I discovered that and saw those repertory cinema listings, it became a big deal. But so I looked through my programs and Nope, it never played. I was only there for three or four months. They showed so many wonderful movies, and I thought it must have been one of those that slipped through the cracks and just wasn't put out
there a lot. I wasn't intrigued enough to buy the Blu ray. But when I saw it, because I'm a cheapskate, which everybody listens to my show knows. But when I saw that on your list and that there was an opening, I thought, this is a perfect chance to finally see it and hopefully enjoy it and then get to talk about it. So yeah, first time watch for me.
Ben has brought a lot of great titles to the show, a lot of stuff I've never seen. If I may not have even heard of. I'd heard of Radio On. I hadn't heard of Saint Jack at the time when we talked about it. Obviously I had at least a few weeks prior to us talking about it, but yeah, I hadn't heard of that one. This one I know I've read about it. It's one of those that just pervaded my brain. I knew it was there, but I
don't think i'd ever seen it. And then I think you mentioned last year or maybe in a year before, Hey, let's do this episode, and I'm like, all right, good, Ben hasn't led me astray yet, and the record still holts. I really enjoyed this one, had a great time with it. Like you, Mark, I was very intrigued because it was
a British road movie. It's funny because when I was watching it again the other night and I was like, oh, there's really a lot of Get Carter in this, as far as this mysterious death and the guy who has to travel from London, but this time he's traveling west instead of going north. A little bit shorter of a
road trip, I believe. But back in the late seventies, I don't know how we were with your Guys's Rose or whatever, but it's going to take i'm a little bit to get over to Bristol, and then it's all of the adventures along the way and on the way back. So I was really happy with this one. And I feel a little bad because We haven't talked about early Vendors very much on the show at all. We've mostly,
I think we did Wings of Desire. We've talked about that period of VIM Vendors' career, but we haven't talked about those early days. Because this does really fit into that you associate produced this one, and it really has a lot of feel of those earlier Vendors movies, especially Alison Cities and the penalties.
The goal keep is fear of the penalty. It can be translated in.
Even reminded me a little bit of loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, just that kind of it's a little kitchen sinky, angry young man, but our character is such a cipher that it's tough to get into him. We're more of an observer than I would say, like really in his shoes. At least that's the way that I felt about it. What did you think, Ben?
I was just thinking about the influencers as you were talking there, and I think probably Chris will talk about those in the interview. American Road Movies obviously is a big one. It's funny because when we read that little review in Time Out about Radio one, the idea of a British Road movie is an oxymoron really in the sense that we know that the longest journey you can do in the UK is from the South coast up to Scotland, and that's about seven or eight hours in
the car. These aren't epic journeys across the desert, so there's already a slight absurdity in it. But then in terms of other influences, there would have been things like two Lane Blacktop? Have you done that on the podcast?
Yes?
Of course.
Fortunately mister Helmer was still with us at the time, so we were able to do that. I wish that book Bumpy Roads. I believe it's called the really definitive right up of two Lane blacktapp that hadn't that yet come out? I would love to read that and speak with the Arthur one.
At least.
There is a very clear reference to two Lane Blacktop in Ready On, which is the bit when because.
Way to the projector no, not quite.
It's the bit when he goes into the pub quite early on in the journey and the guy sitting in the corner, and then when he goes back to the car, he's already got into his car, which is really similar to the bit in the diner in two Lane Blacktop where James Taylor and Dennis Wilson are in the diner and then the girl gets out of one car and she gets into their car, so when they get in it,
she's already there. And I think that's pretty much a straight lift from two Lane Blacktop and in the way that scene, this may be jumping into the film a bit quickly, that scene with the squaddy is a little it's very two Lane Blacktop in combining some of those unwonted hitchhikers that Warren Oates keeps picking up, plus the girl who gets in the car early. But yes, the
characters are that. I think Chris really didn't want to take on the sort of psychological reality of the Kitchen Sink films, it feels to me, and he's talked about this quite a bit the radio. One's reacting against various traditions in British theater and British cinema, and he really was quite radical in the idea that he said, Okay, I'm going to make a film. I'm not really interested
in characters in this traditional sense. They're going to be almost like avatars or figures on a landscape, and I'm much more interested in the landscape, but I'm also interested in what Mark thought. Did you enjoy the film?
Yes, I did, And Mike, you brought up a really interesting point that I hadn't thought of that sort of broadens it for me. Is and same point that you're making him just being a cipher or an avatar, and I felt that disconnect from I don't really know what this guy's deal is other than he's not portrayed necessarily as a loser, but he's disconnected as well from his surroundings. From his girlfriend. I'm assuming that takes Off is watching the three TVs and he's not really connecting with her.
His chop, his DJ job, And I loved reading this bit of trivia because I'm like, what is this all about? And this may be a British thing that just you know, but apparently there's the United Biscuit Network and so a DJ for a radio station that only plays in factories that make biscuits. What he's not even a DJ for like Radio Free Europe or something like that. He's a DJ for a biscuit factory, but anyway, and he doesn't seem very involved in that obviously, he appreciates music.
You get that idea, but it's just a job.
And he never really connects with anybody in the film, even the German gal later on. There's a distance there, or there's something there that's keeping them from any romance. And I'm glad there's no force romance in this with her, but that disconnect was bothering me throughout the film. And realize whether it's on purpose or not, maybe doesn't really matter, but I can appreciate it now looking back and saying, oh,
that makes sense. We're not sitting in the passenger seat with him, really watching the home movies of this as an audience, which I don't mind because I love road movies. And part of the reason I love road movies is the traveling is the moving camera attached to a car. It really boils down to that mechanical aspect of the movie. I don't really care where the people are going. They're going to encounter strange people on their trip. Usually that's
what makes it interesting. Their journey is either going to have some kind of fulfilling ending or nothing at all, and I'm fine with either way. On that it's really part of the journey. There's nothing better than driving in a car by yourself listening to the radio. I love being able to take trips myself, even if it's a couple hours, and play whatever music I want to play. And a lot of times when I'm in the car, I imagine I'm in a movie. It's the way to
pass the time. So I felt that way while watching this.
Yeah, Chris talks quite a bit about how being inside the car and looking through the window it's a widescreen basically, right, there is something profoundly cinematic about being in a car, and then the invention of having a radio or a tape recorder and now of course a CD or it'll connect to your Spotify, of being able to actually curate your own soundtrack and play your own music. And in a sense, if rady On does nothing else, it does evoke that experience of just being on a journey and
time passing as music plays. And it's all about the contrasts, the contrast between what's going on outside, what's going on inside, and the music and the way the music relates to the landscape. I'm sure we're going to talk about the music in a little bit more detail later, but it is one of the things that makes Radio on such a striking film is the contrast between the different kinds of music, particularly the craft work and everything else that
he listens to. And then yeah, the contrast between him and the biscuit factory is also another amazing thing. And by the way, that's not a common thing. The jaying in factories is not a common thing in the UK, and I think it was unique to that one company. I don't know how long it lasted for. The only equivalent I can think of is hospital radio. I don't know whether you have that in the US, where you get poor volunteers djaying in hospitals and hoping somebody's listening.
Yeah, it's usually just music pipeing end of arfice buildings and stuff. So I thought this is does each factory have their own network? That's amazing.
Well, I love that he gets a request but decides no, I'm not going to play that, I'm going to play this other thing for you. And you think that he's this hot shot DJ coming in for his midnight shift or something. He's Jack Nicholson and the King of Marvin Gardens. But no he's not. He's just he puts on this record and then you get to see the audience and
it's just these poor guys making these biscuits. And I love this idea of the closed circuit versus open circuit kind of idea, this whole thing of him in the car with the music and you get that play of when we cut outside of the car and you don't hear the music that we cut back in. It's that scene. I think it's with Devo doing their version of Satisfaction earlier than the Are We Not Men We Are Devo album. You probably know very well about that, Mark, because I know you're big.
Yeah, the Stiff Records version that's mentioned in the interview, I believe your interview with him where they got the rights to a lot of the music that ended up and there was via Stiff Records, and Stiff Records approached Divo early on before that album came out and put out a couple singles of their music, and I'm I'm pretty sure that's the version that's in the film. It's definitely not the version on the album, like you mentioned.
So, I heard an interesting story about Divo once, which is that if you can get a hold of them, or at least Mark, I don't know about Jerry, but for sure with Mark, if you get a hold of them and you say I want to use your music in my movie. Apparently they really dislike Warner Brothers, so they'll be like, yeah, no problem, go ahead, use it writes free. Just if somebody questions, you say it's a live version of the song, that's great. So he's got Devo,
He's got a version of Mongoloid in this movie. I was like, yeah, okay, interesting.
They hate Warner Brothers.
That is true in a way that what Chris did with all of the music, and with Keith Griffins as well, helping with the David Bowie. They knew they could never afford any of this music if they went to big record companies, so they did the deal with Stiff because
Chris really wanted the Reckless Eric track. But then that opened up the possibility of using other songs in the Stiff Back catalog, which of course includes the Devo track, because obviously they saw an opportunity to potentially promote their records through the film. And then you've got the David boeing,
which would have been difficult things to get. These were big groups at that time, but it was all personal favors, and Chris talks about how he went to interviewed and created an assignment with Melody Maker in the UK just so that he could give them the script and try to get them on board. So it was all about reading the script or getting to know Chris, so there
wasn't really a financial aspect of it. It was more about, Okay, I think this is going to be a really cool project, so we'll let you have our music for a song effectively,
and that really worked really well. But that may have been the reason why the film was difficult to see for a long time, because it was the theatrical that they had given permission for and signed off on, but nothing to do with television, nothing to do with home video, and so that all of those deals had to be renegotiated much later, and of course I'm sure a lot
more money was involved much later too. But just going back to that point, you were talking about close circuit, open circuit, like there is a real rigor in the film that Chris seems to be deploying, which is about the diegetic use of music that we really strictly, although he fudges it at various points towards the the beginning and at the end that we're only really hearing the music that's in the space that the characters are hearing, and so that means that when you cut outside the car,
you can't have the music that's in the car, which really is a pu verse way of going against the tradition of road movies of scenes in cars where the music would then rise up at that point and it would be like this really cool epiphany moment as the cars driving through the landscape. He said, it's like silence.
There's that element of deliberately going against the pleasure. There is pleasure in the music, but then it stops, and were reminded, actually, we're in a reality, a very strange, dislocated reality, but we are in a reality.
There's no way that Dennis Happer and Peter Finder heard Steppenwolf, especially there around those motorcycles. It's not like they had some sort of Wi Fi speakers blaring that at him or something. So that was amazing to me. Now, when I see people on motorcycles just blaring their music so much, I'm like, Okay, I guess you really can't hear that otherwise, but I wish that just pumped into your helmet instead, but it seems a little dangerous to me even that way.
Yeah.
Also, he breaks the circuit in a way with the very end to the movie when he leaves the car doors open and leaves everything open and you hear the music bouncing around this quarry that he's at. I just really love that he that's one of the later, if not one of the last, scenes in the film, and
that he breaks that circuit with that. This whole idea too of his brother as far as I know, and please correct me if I'm wrong, if I get any of the details of the movie wrong, but it feels like his brother is the one that sends him the package at the beginning, with the cassette tape, So it's almost like his brother is the one programming the playlist. Here's this music and it's going to put you in the headspace of me and something has happened to me.
It is interesting to think of that. Get carterists because it's like, yeah, he's going to investigate and quotes his brother's death, but he really doesn't. He just goes there, it's not what happened to my brother, And just like questioning people and getting on this tale of revenge. No, it just goes and sees what's going on. And yeah, it's very laid back with all of this and just all the people that he meets, and yeah, he goes into a bar. You hear the music in the bar,
he meets things playing the guitar. Every single stop seems to have music playing in a different way, and I really like what he's doing with that. And yet it's so important this music and just such great music as well, Like it is a really I don't know if there was ever a soundtrack album put out, but this is a solid soundtrack of music. Every single song seems to add to the ambiance of the film, and especially that kraft work is just so good and just it plays
with being on the road. Listening to craft Work in a car is a real treat if people haven't done that. The other one I would recommend, and it's related to Bowie, is listening to Brian Eno in the car. Especially Third Uncle, I feel is like one of the best driving songs that has ever been put out. There really a great moment. If you can get that Third Uncle going and get on a lonely highway, please do it.
I've got a new task to put on my check first.
Here he does actually solve the mystery, though, doesn't he because he goes through the slides and he does basically put that together with the radio news about the pornography ring in the West Country in Bristol. We basically do understand that his brother was in trouble because he was somehow connected to this porn ring, because we do see that really pretty graphically unpleasant hardcore porn at.
The end, probably another reason it didn't play on TV.
Yeah, I was as surprised that, and that's why it's an eighteen sert. Yeah, yes, exactly. It would have had real problems being played on the UK TV at that time for sure, And so we have to assume that the suicide is probably related to being caught as a pornographer in some way. But yes, he's not exactly missed a detective. Although another trivia note is watching the Detectives was on Stiff Records and Elvis Costello did not give permission to use it in radio one.
Yeah, one of the two songs I think that he was trying to get that he wasn't able to and I can't remember what the other one was. That reckless Eric song. I was very unfamiliar with that, but that was great.
It was by Nick Lowe, who produced Reckless Eric. I think, yeah, that.
Was one of my favorites from the film and I was like, who is that? I had to shazam it as I was watching the movie. I didn't want to stop, and I was like, oh, this is great, So now I know who it is and I can load it up on my phone. I totally missed the connection. I'm going to admit here the plumb Ring and I just kept I was listening to the news bites and the sound bites and hearing there. It just seemed like we're
getting this image of Britain at the time. There was something about a bank hostage scenario and of course the fighting in Northern Ireland and all, and I'm like, again, though he's still so disaffected.
It's just news that you're hearing.
And I get that, especially these days in our country, it's just a NonStop barrage of bad news and it's what.
Do you do?
You keep going on?
And yeah, so the porn ring and the slide show, I completely miss that. But we haven't even mentioned We're talking about the music, but we haven't mentioned that great title sequence at the beginning the opening titles, and how I believe I again, correct me if I'm wrong. That's the first thing that comes up in the titles is the music and spelt typed out by song, by artists and by song. And I had never seen that in a movie before from the get go, that the music is very important to this film.
Yeah, that was a very bitter choice.
Yeah, because music is almost always the last thing you might see music in some teen eighties movies because they want to sell it to the kids with music by Duran Duran or whatever. But you're right, Mike, it's the last thing in the credits, and then you finally get to see who the artists and song titles are here. It's right up front. And then in the same vein the title of the film, on the Marquee going by. I loved that little touch.
That's Bristol by the way. Yeah, so of course the opening sequence takes place in Bristol, so that's where we're going to go. And then it cuts to the Hippodrome, which is a big theater in Bristol, and they obviously managed to persuade them to put radio on there instead of Godspell, which is actually you can see downstairs below. Godspell is the musical that happened to be on at the Hippodrome. I saw Annie there in the early eighties
because I was brought up quite near there. I lived quite near Bristol as a little kid, so in a way that prem all the Bristol of it all. But then yes, you get that incredible steady cam shot through the very very cramped Bristol house that then reveals the body in the bathtub. But the body, as many people have commented, it's almost like the body in the other there, but it's not that big a deal. And then it
goes past it, and then it comes back. And then of course the music is supposed to be playing on the radio, and it is this version of Heroes by Bowie recorded in Berlin, as Heroes was. But then it's this bilingual version of Heroes, which is quite a rare track and anyhow, which I had never heard. And it's almost like you start with the Bang. You start with the most well known song of all, the greatest hit in a way, the song that normally would be saved
for the end of the film. Again, it's a bit like the reversal of putting the music at the beginning rather than at the end. There's this kind of flipping of expectations. You begin with the most incredible pop song and the one that most people would save, but you just get it out of the way. And actually, if you follow those musical credits, you'll realize, oh, they're in order. Actually, so we've got Bowie, he's got two tracks, he's got Heroes and always Crushing in the same car, a much
more obscure album track. And then you, oh, we're not that's it. We've heard Heroes, we're not coming back to it. And now we've got these other songs that you may or may not have heard of that are all to come. And of course, if you do keep your eyes open during that opening sequence, you'll know what's coming. You'll know what tracks are coming up, and you'll also know which ones haven't played yet.
Yeah, that use of heroes as the end theme, that's something I've seen. I want to say, Perks of Being a Wallflower might have that at the end, and almost positive that Jojo Rabbit has that at the end, including that same German version. So yeah, it's like the thing that you play at the end, We are done with this. We are heroes forever and ever, and just yeah, it's like such a big clib, but no, it's the beginning.
And it's this very I don't want to say non descript shot, because we all talk about it and it's definitely something that's written about quite a bit, but this very that's a low key shot going into the apartment and going around coming across that. We are the children of Vernon from Britz lanynd Or von Brown and Fritz Lang.
That's a great quote. And then yeah, like moving away from the body, like you said, then coming back to the body, Oh, there's this thing over here, but I'm more interested in this to the right, and I'll come back to the left eventually and find this body in the bathtub. Yeah. I think that's just brilliant the way
that they do that. And again it's okay, I guess this is the radio and again more of a broadcast medium and the whole thing that you're talking about with all of the news stories definitely being broadcast across there, and yeah, really setting the tone of what England was like in nineteen seventy nine. And we haven't talked about shooting this in black and white was a great idea, yeah, and just making everything even more stark than it normally would.
But those shots of the apartment blocks, just going across those they seem like silent giants looking down on the freeway or something.
They are just.
Filled with life, but it doesn't look like it. It almost looks post apocalyptic at times going through this landscape, and just to see those blocks, that reminds me of High Rise by Ballard, and there's definitely a Ballard feel to this. It reminds me a little bit of dread with the Peachtree apartments and those mega blocks that they have as these tall apartment buildings. Then it even takes me to that horrific fire that happened in one of
those a few years ago. Grenfolds, Yeah, yeah, and it was just like, oh, this is a horrible situation, but we're really not going to change anything, so fuck you guys, good luck. And yeah, with this being nineteen seventy nine, Maggie's in charge, and well she will be soon just about to have this. Oh that's right, she comes in right around the time Reagan comes in for us.
The interesting thing is when they were filming and I had to check this, because of course I was just a small boy when they were making Radio On. It was during March, so I think they were filming January to March seventy nine. So the film was made very quickly. It was released by the end of the year. So when it began filming, it was still a Labor government.
By the time the film came out, Actua had become Prime Minister, and it was during March that there was the vote of no confidence in the Labor government, where the Prime Minister at that time with James Callahan, and they'd been all of these strikes and the unions had been causing the Labor government a lot of trouble and the country was really being felt to be falling apart, not dissimilar to how it is now, but this time it was the other way around. It was the Tories
coming in against Labor. And then of course so many things changed after that. And that is really a key point about Radio On for US Brits, which is that it is a film that occurs in this thisliminal moment at the end of the Labor government and the beginning of a really monumental time the Conservatives would be in power for eighteen years and the country would change phenomenally during that time, and there's a sense in radio on almost looking to the future and thinking, I'm not sure
about this. Robert, the character by David Beams, he says that at one point we're all afraid, don't really know what of But there is a sense of fear, a sense of we don't know what the future is. And the future is represented by things like technology, it's represented by architecture, but there's an ambiguity about that. Clearly the film is in love with architecture, in love with technology, but it's also slightly afraid of it as well, and it's always looking back. There's a feeling of kind of
retro futurism about the film, even in the music. The music might seem futuristic, but there's a looking back at the past element. Even craftwork has a very sort of human feel to it with the vocals. It's not purely about the future. It's also about trying to find out where is the humanity in this which is quite strange
because it is a very alienated film. But there is a feeling of looking trying to search for some kind of humanity, even though everybody seems very alienated and dislocated from where they're supposed to be or where they're going.
But yeah, it's about capturing that particular moment, and I think that's why the film has a lot of potency for Us Brits, because it does seem to speak to this moment but at the end of the seventies and into the eighties, which reflects something that you guys experienced too, as Reagan took over around the same time.
Yeah, which you don't really feel until much later. If you're like Mike, it looks like we're roughly on around the same age. So I was eleven and nineteen eighty and Reagan becoming president had no real meaning and it didn't really affect me until years later.
It's still affecting us.
And so now at fifty five, it's okay, now I get what was going on, and all the punk music that was coming out, and these movies that were speaking to this and repo man.
And this, that and the other thing, and.
Man made by Britt of course maybe Brett, Yeah, you're not thinking of that when you're in the midst of it as a kid. I have to admit to missing another key important thing about the movie. I thought that was him and his bathtub at the opening.
I the first time I watched it, I thought, okay, yeah.
I missed it both times apparently, and I part of that, I think was their apartments were very similar, small little cramped procass and one was a bit had a bit more space.
In it as a lot of maybe brother's girlfriend. Right, there is a difference in the art direction.
You know, now that I'm thinking of it. His appointment was more open, but it seemed like it was set up the same way that their bathtubs look exactly the same. Because he is in the bath at some point.
I believe that when he gets the phone call and we don't really know who calls him, we assume it could be his mother, he says something like in the bath, which is a sort of key bit of exposition, and that phone call is one of the most conventional moments in the film in terms of here is some information
that is now going to push the storyline forward. Chris actually has talked in interviews about how that relates to the scene in Performance, which was the last film I talked about on the Projection Book with Mike where James Fox overhears the address of the house when he's in the train station, which is a very kind of clunky scene but almost played up for maximum clunkiness by Nick
Rogan Donald Cammell. It's a bit like that here where here is the bit of info, and I think it keys us into the bath idea because then he goes in a bath. After that, he takes a bath after he finds out that his brother committed suicide in a bath. Later on, when he's in Bristol, he touches the bath and he looks at the bath. I realized as I was thinking about the film recently that actually they didn't need to film that scene in Bristol, the bath tub
and all the stuff in the apartment. They could have easily filmed that in London. So again there's being true to the journey. They really went for it. They're like, Okay, this takes place in Bristol, so we're going to film it in Bristol. But we never see the exterior of
that apartment, so we never really can locate it. And it's actually part of a really beautiful row of Georgian terraced houses in Clifton and Bristol, which are stunningly beautiful, but obviously Pettit didn't want anything that looked that beautiful. I think he just wanted to films it from the inside.
And the way that Robert b and I love. Somebody pointed out, like Robert is very similar to Joseph KA and I was trying to count the letters. It's not exactly the exact same number like IBM and hol like you go up one down one up one kind of thing. It's that like you go up eight for Robert and down four for Joseph or whatever.
I wanted to ask you, guys, what's your sense of Bristol? Do you know anything about Bristol? What context do you have for Bristol? Oh?
Boy, that's not where part of Quadrophenia takes place, is it.
No, that's brighton right nothing.
There is.
The link with Quadrophenia is through Sting. Of course. Actually Sting is in Quadraphenia playing like the really cool mode and it was the beginning of his career in a sense, because police hadn't really made it through and that comes out. Quadrophenia comes out around the same time as Radio One, which would be towards the end of seventy nine, and then message in a bottle comes out, and so that really blasts sting into the stratosphere at that. But Bristol
is not Brighton. Bristol is kind of an interesting city in terms of culture. It's famous for music, and that would be mostly a little bit later, things like Massive Attack and Porter's Head, so the whole nineties trip hop sound comes out of Bristol. It's a really great city, it's all there's a lot of hills in Bristol. There's a lot of diversity, it's very laid back. It's a
kind of city where people go to chill. So there are really creative people there, but they're not necessarily massively productive. So anyone who really wants to have a career usually leaves Bristol and goes to London, which is basically what Chris did. He went to university there, he got out, So going back to Bristol might be seen as a bit of a retro step, but it does also have
a kind of long history of protests and dissent. There's also a new age equality around Bristol too, because it's near Glastonbury, where the Glastonbury Festival is near there too, so there's a countercultural thing going on in Bristol. That's really the key point for BRIT's watching Radio On. It is a big contrast to London. But the other thing is that Bristol is not often represented in film. Somehow.
There aren't that many classic films made in Bristol. There's been quite a bit of television shot in Bristol, but very few movies. So that's another reason why Radio On has a bit of a cult around it, because it is one of the few really cinematic films to depict Bristol. In the second half, and then it goes off into this town called Western super Mare, which is on the coast, about half an hour from Bristol, which again is usually seen as not a very cool place, but somehow Chris
makes the best of it. And in fact the house that they visit where the German lady lives, isn't in Western that's back in Bristol, So there is a bit of fudging of the geography. Even the way he drives into Bristol is not correct because he goes over that bridge past the hotel, which is very important because later on there'll be in the hotel and the camera will be in a car driving across the bridge the other way, seeing them through the windows, which is one of the
most iconic shots in the film. It's an amazing shot, isn't it. But actually, if you were coming from London, you wouldn't go over that bridge. There is a bit of fudging of geography in it, but it's still wonderful for us Brits, especially those of us who've lived in Bristol, to get to see Bristol being depicted in that way.
And we should mention the name of the cinematographer, which is Martin Schaefer, who died tragically young, and he had been Robbie Muller's assistant cameraman on a number of those Vin Vendor's films, but by the time they made Ready On he'd already started to venture off and become a fully fledged cinematographer of his own. And I know that because it connects with Saint Jack, which is the film I've written about, because Robbi Muller did the cinematography for
Saint Jack with his team. He had a very close knit team and Martin had been part of that team, but he had gone his own way and become his own cinematographer and part of that was going to work with Chris on radio on and that was the beginning of that and they actually worked together a number of times. But the cinematography is really extraordinary. It is amazing seeing it. I've seen in the cinema a couple of times watching
the Blu Ray. I'm watching a different Blu Ray to you guys, but I'm sure it's basically the same file. I'm watching the British Blue Ray. It just is unbelievable that black and white photography.
With Robert b his apartment, that those TV sets. I don't know if this was a reference or that, but still reminded me that at a much smaller scale. It reminded me of The Man who Fell to Earth when David Bowie is there and he's got all those TVs that he's watching, but she's got what three.
Oh, it's a steal. It's totally a steal from the matter of Feldwe Yeah, okay, I'm sure.
It is good. I'm glad it wasn't just me, all right.
I love that though.
I always love to see it.
That kind of stuff tickles me when I see it pop up in movies, those odd things that it's like, why do they do this every once in a while you catch something like that. Who has three or four TVs in their house?
Usually conspiracy theorists.
Yeah, the vendors connection, which I didn't really know about it prior to watching it, but when you sent over the material, I was like, oh, okay, this kind of makes sense. And then I as it's playing with the music being so important black and white vendors connection, I immediately thought of Stranger than Paradise, one of my all time favorite road movies, where not a lot happens, it's
inconsequential the things that do happen. They go on a trip for really no good reason and it doesn't necessarily pan out the way they want it to. So that came to mind immediately. When he encounters the German ladies and she starts talking about her daughter, and then she says the name Alice, and I was like, if that's not a reference to Alice in the Cities, I don't know what. And then I looked her up and I'm like, shit, she's in Alice.
In the City.
She's Alice's mom, And I'm like okay, And I don't even think I really grasped the full connection with having Vendors Dop or assistant Dop and the sound guy. I got that from your inaul to. I was like, okay, it's all over the film. Then I'm not crazy. But the Alice in the Cities thing I thought was interesting.
It's obviously not a direct reference to the film because the story is a little bit different in the Cities, but I found it interesting that it was the same actress and her characters in both films have a daughter named Alice.
Yeah.
I can't help but think Chris plugged into that he needed supposedly, and he probably talks about this in the interview with you, Mike. He needed to include a German element and he needed German actors. Partly it came from the cinematography and Martin Miller doing sound, but he also needed an actor as well, so he got Lisa Kreutzer, who had been married to Vin Vendors. I think they'd recently split up when they made Radio On, and she had been in those films, including The American Friend as well.
And then Chris basically just took the storyline from Alison Alis in the Cities because I don't get the feeling Chris was too worried about story. It wasn't a big preoccupation for him, so he more or less just plugged in this sort of off stage drama about a father taking a daughter away. And again it adds to the dislocation because we never see the kid, we never see the guy. Instead we see this aunt character, and so
we never really we're a bit like Robert. We're about as unengaged in that storyline as Robert is, and yet we have to be engaged because we want to see where things go with this woman. And I really love Lisa Kreutz's performance. She is so soulful and there's such a real sense of a real person in her performance. And she's almost, in a way, almost on a different level to the British actors in terms of being able
to act within this sort of art movie sensibility. I feel like some of the British actors struggle with it, particularly the two girlfriends, the one at the beginning in
the flat and Sandy Ratcliffe in the Bristol Flat. They don't quite hit the right tone, and also they don't have much to do, to be honest, Lisa Kreutz has a much better role because she's doing the stuff with the two languages, and she gets to deliver that really brilliant bit where she says, last night, I thought I was going to sleep with you, but now I know I won't, which is one of the most devastating lines in all of cinema.
It makes a lot of sense, though, and you get that. I think she gets that dislocation that everybody else is feeling about Robert, And yeah, she's definitely the most human character that he encounters, including himself.
Really yeah, and I believe Ben you mentioned earlier the whole idea of being on the outside too, when it comes to them speaking German and there's no subtitles, which is nice. We're supposed to be more and Robert shoes and not understand what they're saying and just being that dislocated they speak their own thing and I'm on the outside.
I do have to say too, there's a little irony here of us talking about this whole idea of broadcast narrow cast all this as we're on a podcast, and it's just this does not go out to the world. This goes to you, the listener. One person who gets this file and then listens to it, probably in the car, maybe you're on a job right now, who knows what.
Maybe you're in a biscuit factory.
You could be in a biscuit factory. There could be some mad podcast DJA working in a biscuit factory right now, subjecting all of those poor employees to us talking about radio on But just that idea of how broadcast and narrowcast changes over the years, yeah to be especially for England, I think you guys had what two channels, three channels
or something. We had a few channels over here as far as video goes, as far as television, but you were limited very much by a few channels on FM, and then each one of those had their specialty to it, so you probably didn't flip around the channels too many times. Maybe there's four or five channels that you would maybe want to listen to, and the rest of its garbage.
So being able to control what you listen to, being able to have that cassette player in your car suddenly gives you that power of being able to control the medium and just I want to listen to this. I don't want to listen to what's being fit to me. I want to hear this other thing. And I think also that speaks to the punk rockness of this type of movie, where it's I don't want to listen to the local bands. I don't want to listen to the corporate rock that's coming out on BBC one or whatever.
I want to listen to this German band. I want to listen to these punk bands. I don't want to engage with what everybody else is doing and I just want to live my own life and just have my own music.
Yeah, which speaks to this notion of the individual versus the community or the larger society, because this really is a film about individuals who are strange from each other bumping into each other. I realized there's so much in the film where characters run out on each other, they abandoned, They're always abandoning each other. At the beginning, his girlfriend basically leaves him, and he was going to leave her anyway.
He was obviously going to jump in the car and go to Bristol, and then of course he abandons the squadye who's gone for a piss and that is a really I think that sequence from the pub onwards to him driving away at that really striking hill which is called Silbury Hill, which is a prehistoric man made hill. Is really quite a brilliant sequence, and actually it's the first time anyone's really spoken in the film properly, because up to now there's been that very stilted dialogue in
the phone call. But that squady, when he does that monologue, it brings everything to life there. And then later when it's battery runs out, he tries to get help from that guy, and that guy doesn't want to help him. He drives off, and then there's more kind of abandoning and people walking out on each other when we get to Bristol as well. So it becomes a real motif. And it's funny because the film seems very loosely assembled, you know, it seems like one damn thing after another.
But as you realize there's all kinds of mirroring and doubling going on. Back to the televisions, watching the three TVs with the sound off. Later on in Bristol, the girlfriend of the brother will start watching TV with the sound off as well. It's almost like it's a virus, and you cut back to her. In a month she'll have three televisions going as well. So there's this kind of constant rhyming of different elements and different motifs that
goes on throughout. Even though it does appear to be thrown together in a way and very episodic, but there is a real design to it. And I think one of the reasons why the film really holds up and doesn't just fall apart is because there is a sense even from the very beginning of that design of confidence.
That opening shot of course with the steady cam, and then that sequence from then on when he's in the car with the cassettes, Like how confident that is just to hold that shot and just have him being in the car for that long. There's a real sense of
Chris's confidence as a filmmaker. He's nearly thirty, he's never made a film before, he's never been on a film set before, and yet he really knows what he's doing, or at least knows what he wants to communicate through the film, and that I think that does transmit to the viewer as well. This filmmaker has an intention that they're not just slapping this thing together.
I'm so curious about the Eddie Cochran connection with this movie. I'm not that familiar with Eddie Cochrane. But oddly I didn't say it was nineteen eighty. The Great rock and Roll Swindle comes out and there's a cover of something else on the soundtrack for that, so it's like right around the same time, same country. He died in England, right there. Yeah, like they talk about his death.
So he did a gig at the Hippodrome, which is what we see at the beginning of the film with the radio on thing coming round, and then he died in a car accident on the way out of Bristol.
Oh is that it's a car It's even more interesting. Okay, for some reason I thought it was a plane. I might be getting him and Buddy Holly and that whole death of rock and roll thing because he was from that same era.
Right now, it was a car accident. Yeah, So that story is told by Sting, right, he relates that story.
Yeah, and then Sting there playing that song just constantly, and then even having that reprise after Robert leaves the movie at that point, abandons the movie to your point from earlier, and we're just left with Sting by those gas pumps doing a reprise of that Eddie Cachran song, which is an interesting choice, and I don't know how Chris feels about that today. It sounds like Singer's difficult to work with.
The story about the song being reprised at the end. I think was that Martin Shaeffer really liked that idea. So Martin Schaeffer essentially pitched that to Chris and said, let's set up a tracking shot where the camera pulls back and Sting is playing, and will have him do the song again. And Chris said, no, that sounds terrible because Chris's instincts would of course be I don't want anything fun and nice in this film at all. And then so they shot it, with Chris going, this is
just to please the crew. I've got no intention of putting it in the film. This is according to Chris. And then he saw and thought, actually, yeah, this could work, and it becomes a kind of pivot because actually that is the end of the first half of the film, and it very much the Game of two are of that film. Once they get to Bristol, everything sort of changes and it becomes a bit less of a road
movie even though they are driving around. And he felt like that Sting song gives the audience a bit of pleasure that will propel them through the misery to come in prison.
I'd like to that at least. In one of the interviews, Chris mentions Bitter Tears of Petro varon Khant and this whole idea of the way that Fastpender plays an entire song through the movie just using the Walker Brothers. Just movie stops almost and we just played the song and then we are there with it. It's almost like proto music videotype of stuff that was seventy two when Fastbender
made that one. And again, nice German influence on this movie, because we cannot stress the germanness of this film.
And Fastbender also was the first person to use craftwork in a film. Yeah, Chinese Roulette as a sequence were and it's also digetic. It's on a radio or a tape machine. There's a woman on crutches who dances to craftwork and it's radioactivity. It's the same track. Actually, I
was thinking craft work. Their relationship with cinema is interesting because you'd think in a parallel universe they would have done loads of film scores, and they must have been offered film scores like Tangerine Dream did that whole run of scores, right, but they never did. And actually their music has not been used that often in film to
this day. And I don't know whether that's by design or simply because they're very sensitive about who gets to use their music or not, because Ralph Fuoteur is obviously very protective over the legacy of craft work. But this is one of the rare films that has multiple craft work tracks in it.
Yeah, and they all work so well. Just the idea of the radioactivity. Hearing that song as we're going across these empty Ish landscapes, it's really, like I said, post apocalyptic. It feels like we are going through the wreckage.
Yeah, there is a sci fi quality to it, and I think one of the influences again is Alphaville, god Os Alphaville, where you film what's there, You film the kind of hide of modernity in the city in Paris or in London or moving outside of London, and you almost treat it as the future, especially when you start putting the music on like that.
Yeah, you find a good piece of brutalist architecture, I should say, And that's half the job right there. That's so much of a total recall when Quetas on Earth and seeing those oppressive buildings, or even Gadica with the way that the office building that Ethan Hark works at, how that's very oppressive. And these apartment blocks just look like these sentinels just looking over everything, and they're just like, I want to get out of here. I'm not comfortable with these buildings.
A lot of people have talked about the film in relation to JG. Ballard because of that post apocalyptic feel the architecture, and of course they're driving, and that relates back to the an Akran story because Ballard was obsessed with celebrity car crashes and that fed into the sort of whole eroticism of crashes in Crash. But Chris says he hadn't read Crash when he came up with rady Ones.
It really was like osmosis that the sort of Balladian atmosphere was so powerful it leaked into Radio On without him necessarily having gone out and researched it and brought it in. Although, of course later on he becomes like a massive Ballard fan.
I mean even more than High Rise or Crash. I always love Concrete Island, just this whole idea, this guy being stuck the freeway going all around this little area that he crashes in and he just basically forms his own civilization and this traffic.
Robert, the character of Robert, basically drives through that landscape. That the landscape that Ballard set Concrete Island in is pretty much featured in the film more or less. Yeah, the other thing I was going to say is like where this lies in terms of the history British cinema as well, because that's another reason why the film slipped down the back of the sofa, because it's more or
less unclassifiable in terms of British cinema. We've talked about it in relation to European cinema and a little bit with American road movies, particularly Monty Hellman, and that we should mention Rudy Wurlitzer, who wrote the script for Two Lane Blacktop as well, who I think Chris had an affinity with particularly. But this film doesn't really fit into any particular British tradition either, and it does come out again. I talked about the politics of the late seventies, but
also the filmmaking of the late seventies. This was really, frankly a dismal time for British cinema the late seventies. If you look at what was being released in seventy eight seventy nine, it's pretty dreadful. Hammer movies are over. There's not that much interesting horror being made. The most burgeoning genre is the British sex comedy. That was like
the backdrop of where Radio On was coming from. But within a few years that would change, and by the early eighties you would get like the rise of merchant Ivory and that kind of heritage cinema, and then you'd get the rise of like really interesting auteurs who were being funded by Channel four, which was the fourth channel that finally showed up after years of only three channels and the whole narrow casting thing, and you get people
like Stephen Frears, and you get Derek Jarman, Peter green Away, Alan Clark, varying different degrees of like high stylization and realism. And Radio one kind of gets lost. And Chris did make more films, although they weren't really that successful, kind of gets lost because he doesn't really stay in the game in the same way that those other filmmakers did, and so Radio One did get forgotten. As well as the other issue about the fact that it was really
hard to see partly because of the music. So it was cursed by its own success in terms of you got the music, but then that created this limit to the availability of the film.
So let's go ahead and we're going to take a break and we're going to play an interview with the director of Radio On, Christopher Pettitt right after these brief messages.
Classically is a film Journey to the East, a curated streaming service offering the best of contemporary and classic cinema from Eastern Europe and Asia. Using coupon code Mike fifty, you can get classicke membership for just five dollars fifty cents a month, giving you the opportunity to sample award winning films, documentaries, silent masterpieces, classic comedies and more. You could also get access to the Classical Journal, exclusive cast
and director interviews, video essays, and watch lists. Visit Klassiki dot online and sign up now to start your adventure in film.
I would love to know more about you and your career, in especially how you got into writing about film and filmmaking.
The short answer is, I think I used up most of my professional luck when I was in my twenties. I managed to get into the Timeout film department through the back door because the first job I had in London was selling advertising space over the telephone for Josephine Hart, who went on to write Damage and various other books.
And she was a strange woman who wore purple tracksuits in those days, although laters she dressed entirely in black, and she recruited a completely unsuitable bunch of people to sell advertising space over the telephone. We were all quite artistic, and through that I managed to get a job in time Out selling advertising, which was not a job that was particularly sought after. And in those days Time Out, which was a kind of eight a Z guide of what to do in London.
It was a good magazine.
I mean it was really good, and the film department was very good and I managed to get the job when Verena, who was the first editor, left, and so I was very lucky. Then about four years later, towards the end of the seventies, I decided that I was not a vocational film critic, although I enjoyed the job in a way taught me how to write because Timeout was always very tight for space. Someone very smart invented something called the caption review, which is basically a review
of the film under a photograph of the film. You were limited to one hundred and fifty words, so you had to learn to organize your material pretty quickly, and I always try to do it without giving away. Most film criticism they tell the story that the story of a man or a woman who dardi dar and they still do it. And I thought, especially after reading Manny Farber, I thought, there are more interesting ways of doing this.
I learned quite a lot from that. And then at the end of the seventies, as I said, I wasn't really a vocational film critic. There weren't many opportunities to carry on unless you joined something like the British Film Institute or got a job in Fleet Street, which was unlikely. So I turned my attention to thinking is it possible to make movies not necessarily direct them? So I wrote Radio On as a script, which I hoped would lead
to more work as a screenwriter. But talking about luck in one's twenties, I fell into the position where the film was taken seriously.
The project was.
Taken seriously by the British Film Institute Production Board, which existed to fund novice filmmakers for small amounts of money, but they were looking for co productions and I thought, if I can bring something to the table, then they're going to take it more seriously.
Away.
Vin Vendors was the obvious choice because he made these early films I thought were very interesting as almost documentary itineries of locations and landscape. I was interviewing him for time Out and got to the point where I could say, oh, look, I've written this script Dardi dar. He said do you have a title? And I said we're like, yes, radio on and he said, oh, that's a good title.
So I thought, here we go.
And then much later there was a conversation between Peter Sainsbury and about who should direct the film. Because I was not putting myself forward in the end, they came to me and said we think you should direct it, and I said, I don't know.
I'm not sure about that.
But then I thought, or it'll probably be a huge mess, but one's got to put one's head on the block sometimes, So.
That was that.
That's how it happened.
Before you got the jab a time out, you hadn't written about film at all.
A little bit there there was a Bristol magazine called Event, which is a little bit like Time Out, and I'd done a few reviews for them.
I'd grown up with films, but.
When I left university I had no idea what I would do. There was no plan, no conventional ambition, and I thought, it's a matter of drifting through life up to a point where you can see whether or not there are various options, and I think drift has been a kind of characteristic feature ever since. It's not a career that makes any sense.
I look back at films of the late sixties and seventies with great admiration. How was it for you to be looking at and writing about all these films?
We took it for granted.
They were there, and London was a very good city for watching movies. There were conventional art houses like the Academy, which showed mainly East European films of a certain kind. And then David and Barbara Stone, two Americans, turned up and opened the Gates Cinema, and their first programming was basically a job lot of new German cinema which arrived in London Inner Lump. So we got Fastender hertzeb vendors
and all the rest. Within a very sort of concentrated period of time, there were good B movies being shown, exploitation picks, and then there was the electric cinema, which was a very good repertory cinema. We were spoiled for choice, and as you say, it was a period of new Hollywood as well, so you had what a conventionally called the movie brats coming through. And so, for instance, Scorsese, when he was first in London, burned us up because Verena had given him the first good review he'd.
Ever had for Boxcar Bertha.
And in fact, then later on showed us Mean Streets, which was an obscure film in those days, it had no following at all, and he said, he asked me what I thought of it after that, Yeah, it's pretty good. It's not as good as Boxcar Bertha.
So he had the grace to laugh.
And Mean Streets there was a guy called Mike Kaplan who was an American who had the rights to it, and he was always showing it and we were always plugging it. But it didn't It barely registered on any kind of cult level. And in fact, the last time I saw Scorsese he very briefly. I was able to say to him, did he know that the then British Prime Minister David Cameron had apparently proposed to his wife while mean streets? And Marty and I laughed and we said, yeah,
but which scene. It's not an obvious film to choose to propose marriage during anyway, So yes it was. And the other thing about reviewing films is that I was running a section with a team of reviewers, so I could pick and choose. I didn't have to cover the whole waterfront as they do today, and we did it on the principle of we were quite generous in that on the whole the person who liked the film most got to review it.
So there was a sense of enthusiasm.
And I do remember struggling at one point to try and find somebody to review an Alan Rudolph film.
But so, where did the idea of paraibioan come from?
The question?
I think I was starting to think about what you could do and how you could make a film, especially if you hadn't written one and didn't have any real interest in a conventional script. I wasn't interested in relationships, I wasn't interested in the British tradition of realism. I think I took quite a lot of inspiration from vendors
and the idea of the journey. I was impressed by get Carter, which went from London to Newcastle, so I started thinking of a line A to B. And I'd also worked out, because I used to drive around a lot and play music in the car, that the cinema windscreen was a form of forward projection in the way
that cinema is. So I thought, you've got a self contained space, you don't have that many options in terms of how you can film it, and you're not sitting filming a dinner party for eighteen with eye line going in. I thought it's technically not difficult. So I worked out what my parameters were. And the other thing was I thought, no one really does music contemporary music well in films.
I like Fassbender.
I think it was The Bitter Tears of petrovon Kant where he plays the Walker Brothers singing in my room and he's got a secretary in the background chattering away on a typewriter and people talking, and the record is actually on a record player being played, And I thought, that's how it should be done, and then Vendors was certainly he would stop the movie to play something on a jukebox, which I think he did in Goalkeeper fear of the Penalty. But I thought the music ought to
be always traced a source rather than laid over. And in those days, as I said, there was very little use of the kind of music that we were listening to turning up in films, partly because the reproduction are incredibly expensive and you had to deal with something called the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society and you ended up paying through the nose. So I eventually I got an idea for a soundtrack. It was the Bowie version of Heroes, where he sings part of it in this rather strange
German accent. I thought that's obvious given that the film was by then an Anglo.
German co production.
Craftwork was obvious because I thought their music was incredibly cinematic. And for the rest, we did a deal with Stiff Records because I wanted Reckless Eric's Whole Wide World, and we went and saw I think it was Dave Robinson, and he said, do you want to look through the catalog? Because it was obviously a good promotion for him, and he said, I quite like it if you took Lena Lovitch, because I think she was breaking at the time. So the soundtrack really assemble itself, and there was only the
problem of not having the money to buy it. It's an old story, but I I had left time out by then, and I became the world's worst music journalist writing for Melody Maker simply in order to meet craft Work.
So I met craft Work.
I interviewed them, and then at the end I said, oh, by the way, and I had the script by then in a Manila folder. Ralph Hutter took the folder and said, oh, is it called the Digby Wallet, which was the name of the actual folder, So thereafter it was always referred to as the Digby Wallet. They were approachable and you could more or less say to them, can you give us each track for fifty quid?
And they did and Bowie. It turned out that the.
Producer of Radio and Keith Griffiths, had started off doing light shows for Hendrix and even for a while managed one of Bowie's groups when he was still David Jones. We were able to contact these people if you go back twelve years when we were making a film called Content. I tried to get in touch with Craftwork again, thinking perhaps we can do a similar deal. You can't even get close, ring fenced by lawyers and you just give up.
And the same now with the film that we're doing. Now, we wanted to use Dylan's Titanic.
And in the past, what you.
Did was you went to Anthony Wall, who ran BBC Arena for years and years, and Anthony knows that Jeff Rosen anyway, he knows Dylan's manager. And what you did was you went via him and then word would come back or not come back. Several months later, Bob says it's okay. Now, unfortunately Bob can't say it's okay anymore.
Because he sold his music rights to I think it's Sony.
You're dealing with Sony, and Sony come back. He said, it's going to cost you twenty.
Five brand at least, and you think can't do it anyway, that's the music.
Then once you're on the hook for directing radio or an how do you put together your crew?
Well, Radion was dead easy because sayings at the BFI and VIM decided I needed decent support and so originally Robbie Muller was Vendor's main dop. I wanted him to do it, but he couldn't. I said to Vim, who's Robby's assistant, not necessarily knowing that assistants didn't always make great dops. Vendor said, it's Martin Schaeffer, and he also threw in Martin Muller, who was the sound recorders.
So I was pretty well set up.
And because Radio On was exempt from union regulations, it was a crew of twelve. You didn't need walkie talkie, so you knew everyone, and I thought it was always going to be like that, But then when I got too unsuitable job for a woman, I turned up a one location and there were seventy cars, and then you thought,
what are half these people doing. It was a film with a complicated pre production, so it ended up with five producers, and we all know there are only four corners in the room, and there'd be one producer standing in each corner, and then there'd be another one left in the middle. And was a shock after the simplicity of Radioil and Radio was one of those films which had its own momentum.
Some people say it was ignored.
At the time.
It wasn't really you could argue that it was not a big enough hit, but it traveled very well to film festivals around the world.
It showed a can and there was.
A certain amount of heat around it, but in the context the climate in the UK cinema at the time, it didn't really open any doors. Nobody was showing much interest In the second I went back to the BFI to do another road movie, which in fact would have been in color and about two women making a journey from London to Scotland, and I didn't get anywhere with them. They more or less said that you've had your chance,
so there wasn't really anywhere else to go. At the time, I wouldn't have minded, but it was slightly past the.
Cell by date.
I would have been quite happy with a career directing hommer horror films, but they weren't available. So in the end I managed, through Don Boyd, a producer who is running about the only setup that would contemplate people like me and Derek Jarman, we managed to get unsuitable job eventually off the ground.
How do you balance writing novels and making films?
I see them as part of the same process.
I wrote My first one, Robinson, was published in nineteen ninety three, and I wrote it simply because I wasn't in a position where anyone would finance any of my film projects.
I've never written a novel before.
I don't know how to do this.
There's a lot of no I didn't feel any kind of connection to English literature. I'd read a lot of thrillers when I was growing up from a very early age, and I like genre. And I thought with Robinson, I don't know enough about writing novels, but if I can write it as a prose film, then I don't have to pretend to myself that I'm being a novelist.
So I did that, and as things went on, the books changed.
Robinson wasn't enough of the success, rather like Radio On to encourage Radio On two or Robinson too, so I was left in the same kind of position, thinking what are my options? And I thought with the second book, I have to be more commercial. So I wrote The Psalm Killer, which was about serial murder in Northern Ireland, and looking back, I'm amazed at the breadth and quality of research, given that there was no Internet, so you know, where on earth did I get it from?
But I did.
The book surprised me because I didn't think I had it in me. And it is a complex sort of beyond noir, which has been praised by the likes of David Peace and Alan Moore, so its reputation is quite good. But I think when it came to novels, apart from Robinson and another one called The Hard Shoulder which was from a London film script, which are both very simple stories, the novels tend to be attracted to the other half of me, which is the kind of the conspiratorial world.
In the last novels I've written, I've normally been trying to solve a problem that interests me, and I think it's worth researching for the human pool. I think I was staying at a hotel in Switzerland and I looked out of the window and I thought money in World War two in Switzerland, and I thought, okay, that whole the ambiguity of neutrality, that whole kind of Eric Hambler geopolitical world.
So that was how that came about.
And I've had to write books really now for the last ten twelve twelve years because the films are pretty much dried up and I'm lucky in that I'm still published because no one reads the books.
They're hardly reviewed. I think, why do they carry on paying me? But they do modestly.
But I don't know why.
Apart from going back to right at the beginning, I think any career is conditioned by a huge amount of luck. My position in terms of my publishing hasn't had much luck, whereas if you look at I don't know, with Human America, somebody like Mick Heron.
Who wrote Slow Horses.
When that book was first published, it did nothing. And it wasn't until somebody who made a habit of picking up books that hadn't done anything which he thought he could make something of and republish, that he started to take off. And now, of course you can't move for Mick Heron.
What was it like for you the first time we had to interact with actors and director people.
I was always very embarrassed by things like rehearsal or actors saying lines or yellow I was never particularly comfortable around actor until I got to Will Patten in Chinese Boxes, who is quite methodic, quite method like, and very physical, and I got him and I thought actually know how to direct him and Gottfried Yan, who'd been in Fastment of films.
I was also in Chinese Boxes and he.
I enjoyed working with him, partly because he got the job without really speaking English. And when I went to interview him, because my first choice for his part was actually Klaus Leovich, who had been in Fastment of films and that Boguard Nabokov film in which he played Bogard's double. Anyway, Lewitch turned it down after having accepted it, and then my producer said that as Gottfried. I wasn't sure, but I went to meet him and very nice, very good face,
but he doesn't say much. His wife did all the talking, I discovered afterwards, because it was because he didn't speak English, so he learned his which I thought was heroic. He learned his role phonetically. I kind of didn't really know what I wanted for the leading man. I wanted a blankness and also Beams is very funny, and I met
him and I thought it's too funny for this. I did it, and Dad and eventually casting directors said, I do think it's very good, and I think I showed him a Robert Mitchell film and I said, just do that, and I said, the thing he noticed about Mitcham as he listens the acting is less to do with recital and more to do with listening.
And Beams watched it and he did it.
And it wasn't really until years later when I looked at the film again that I thought his performance was really good, almost heroic in terms of being asked as an actor to kind of reduce. You know, there are other actors I could think of who were noted for doing nothing. But there's a lot of signaling going on nevertheless, and you have an interesting example when you get to Jack Nicholson in when he's working for Kubrick or ANTONIONI.
He's like a man in a street jacket. You can feel that he can't. But I thought Beams was very good.
But on the whole, my Forte was never really working with actors, which is why I think after making all feature films, yeah, I then drifted off into documentary and then I fell in with the English writer Ian Sinclair of Welsh Wid and we knocked off four or five films together which were far more experimental and had no There was no script, no actors, no call sheets, nothing.
They were all DIY and we did it ourselves. But I don't know whether these films have ever even surfaced in the United States, rather in the way that Radio On is good. And you know, I never gave it any shelf life, but if you look at it now, I think, yeah, it's got its false but no one else was doing it, so it stands as it stands as a record, almost a documentary record at a particular time, what people look like, how they dressed, and what music they played, and the fact that England at the end
of the nineteen seventies did look like that. It looked like something from the nineteen fifties. If you go back to those black and white movies from the early fifties, you think nothing had changed. And rather the same with the synclet films. They were quite wild and stylistically completely unlike the feature films, very well experimental in that we could be because we decided to abandon cruise, partly because we didn't have any money, and these sort of almost
toy like cameras had come on the market. There was one called a Sharp High eight, which had a flat screen and a sort of periscope thing and you could press button. You've got a very nice, liquid, paintily image with it, and even during the shot you could fiddle around with the exposure by hitting a button so the
picture would bleach out. And the fact that it had a screen rather than an eyepiece meant that I was much more comfortable shooting it because I didn't have to think of myself as a kind of dop and bother about framing and all the rest of it.
And I again, I think if you go back and look at these.
Films which are twenty five years old, again, no one.
Was doing it.
With having the Germans on your crew with Radio one. Did you have to speak German? Do you know how to speak German?
Yeah?
Enough to get in and out of a hotel.
You know, most Germans of that kind of slightly bohemian generation spoke quite good English because they'd spend their childhoods listening to AFN and American jazz and spent all their times watching American movies. So Martin Muller had very good English and Schaeffer not so much. But we could communicate quite easily, So no, that's not a problem. And similarly here where I am now, which is Rotterdam, Dutch is
a really hard language. But they all speak English, they all really and they're not resentful of you not speaking Dutch. In fact, they seem quite glad to be able to practice their English. So there's even kids in the supermarket. Are you going to saying really bad Dutch? Whereas which isle is the rice in? And they just answer in English rather Aisle six. So anyway, I digress.
Did you have all the locations picked up before you started to shoot or did you find them as you're going along? I was curious how dihy this production was.
No, we had the locations.
I had spent quite a lot of time driving the route and looking around in Bristol, and I don't know what point I discovered the quarry, but it was certainly before we shot, and so when it came to pre production we knew pretty.
Much where we were going to shoot.
I think there's one hub where Beams picks up the soldier where they play reckless Eric, that is not on the road. I don't know why it wasn't, but we ended up somewhere in Essex filming that, but otherwise it was pretty much a straight line. The apartment in London belonged to the film distributor Andy Engel and it was above his cinema in Camden, so it was all very easy. I mean the first night of shooting I was in the car at night outside the launderette, and it was
my local launderette. In fact, don't think it was my washing that was in the machine. At the time, I knew you might as well do two things at once.
Making filming, get your laundry done at the same time, and.
Which was the more important?
Can you tell me about radio or remix? How did that come about?
That was very strange.
I was approached by Ben Slater and Gareth Evans, who were studying I think at the time in Bristol, and Gareth has gone on to become a fairly kind of senior figure in there on the London cultural scene. They came to us and said were we interested in making a film where they thought they could get some money from Harleck Television because it was about the dismantling of the flyover that appears in radio on Going Past the
Hotel where David Beams and Lisa Kreutzer are. Hewah, okay, let's see the color of your money.
And they did that.
They got a deal out of Harlic Television for us to produce twenty five minutes. And I think I was moaning, as usual, as saying to em, and I don't know what to do really, that I don't want to just
film the flyover being taken down. And she said, you get in the car and you drive, you go back to the locations and it a and we did, and I think we were still using the High eight rather than MiniDV, and so she and I just took to the road and we found I think nearly all the locations, including the garage a Chippenham where Ding appears, and we really struggled to find it, and I thought I knew the location, and we turned up and it was a housing estate and I thought we must have gone.
And then we did, by.
By chance, find it and the guy, I can't remember whether it was him or his son, was turning into a chandler's yard for boats, but the old petrol pumps were still there around the corner, and it was I don't know, I don't know what's there now, but so we found that, and I think he or his father was still complaining about the fact that we'd never sent him a DVD of the film, and after that the apartment was still there in Bristol.
I was expecting.
I thought, you know, it's going to be really shy now, and yup it up. But it was exactly the same, with the accept the tiles in the bathroom having been changed. The big shot was this twenty years later. The big shot was how much still existed unchanged, And the changes were all kind of natural ones in that there's a scene at the end in Bristol where a train passes by in the background and David Beams walks over some wasteland.
When we went back, that's now a kind of planted park, quite different, and the quarry had become a security item. You couldn't get into it. In nineteen seventy nine you could just drive in, which I think what I did, But now it was all protected and we had to get permission to get in Silbury Hill, which was just
a kind of big hummock when we were filming. That was all overgrown with trees when we went back, So that was the big difference, seeing sort of twenty years of undergrowth and trees, and the rest was surprisingly preserved. I don't know about now. The hotel I think is still the Bristol One very run down. I'm surprised it hasn't been demolished and the flyovers gone. But no, if Garret can get some more money out of Harleck Television, I'm quite happy to.
Revisit the revisit.
Did you say you're working on a new film, Yeah, sort of.
Twelve years ago we made a film called Discontent, which was an essay film really about the kind of state of things in two thousand and nine. I think it was I suppose in a way it connects to radio on and radio on remix because it is a road movie ambient and it played in Europe on German and French TV, and it got shown in the UK on More four and it had a very nice review from Mark Fisher in Sight and Sound. So there was a
satisfactory piece of work. But after that there was no as part of a more general problem which had been going on since the turn of the century. Before that, when Ian and I were doing films, there was still quite a wide margin that you could get money for experimental films, and you could get them I wouldn't say easily, but you'd turn up and they would give you the money if they wanted to do the project, and with that money you could make the film. By twenty twelve,
you were having to look at different funding sources. You could get a bit out of Serence, so you get a bit out of Serence. It also meant that the whole funding process became much more lengthy, and you'd think, do I really want to spend six months financing this film? By when you've forgotten what it's about. And I think it explains why more and more I went back to writing books because you don't have to have any meetings. You just get Itit's a job.
You get on with it.
In twenty and fourteen, at the Oberhausant Film Festival, I was asked by finished filmmaker called Mika Tanila, who is doing a project which was really about post cinema, and he was asking for contributions where you could do anything, but you couldn't shore a film. And we met and we got along and we've talked about doing various projects.
And one project I've had in the bottom drawer for years was a film script I wrote in two thy and twelve called The James Jesus Angleton Tapes, which was based on the career of James Jesus Angleton, who was head of CIA Country Intelligence between fifty four and nineteen seventy four. And it was a kind of jazz riff on this kind of Beckett perhaps last tape, kind of final confession. And I wrote it for Christopher Walken and I got the meeting. I got the phone meeting with Christopher Walken.
After he read the script, he was up for it.
And I thought of Walkom because although he's not like Angleton physically, there's always a sense when he's acting that he's talking to himself. It's not that he doesn't interact with other actors, but there's something about him which is a variation on film acting. And he was keen to do it. But as is the way of these things, nothing ever happened. And at a certain point I rewrote it as an audio play for taping a single actor, and Mika was saying, did I want to do anything?
And I was struggling to come up with anything.
So in the and I said, maybe what if Angleton, in the last years of his life, because he was a world class fly fisherman, actually went to a kind of hut in the remote north of Finland for the fishing and the White Knights, and during that period recorded these tapes and we never really got in here with that idea. But the other thing that happened over the last ten years is that my son Louis, who appears in the film content as the kind of boy in the back of the car, simply because we went on
a trip to America for a holiday. He was in the back of the car and we actually used a lot of the film footage of that trip for content. We thought a bit about putting him in the film. I thought, are we exploiting him? And I thought, no, no, he's actually very good. And in twenty sixteen, at the age of twelve, out of the blue, he developed some
complex epilepsy which he had for four years. And it's an horrendous story of pharmaceutical drugs and what they do to you and you know what you should and should not be prescribed, and he had over a thousand sieges and in the end his mother took him here to Rotterdam the cannabis medication and it took another two years to wean him off all the pharmaceuticals he was on. But against all the odds, in twenty twenty he stopped having seizures, and he went on. These caesars were weird
trips in a way. A lot of them, a lot of a lot of the medical withdrawal involved terrifying hallucinations like something out of Bosh really, which he turned into art. And although he's always very talented at drawing, in an odd way, this this terrible thing that happened to him, gave him this kind of vision. So he's now, you know, he's now a painter at artsicle and a very good
one too. And I talked to Meeker and I thought, you know, is there a way of combining that material because Lewis had appeared in con tent, so there's a sense of And I said, I don't really want to make another road movie because even twelve years ago, getting in a car and driving thousands of miles, you never questioned, no, you have to think. So I said, we'll get the train and boat and we'll go to Finland and we will we will find this location where Angleton stayed.
So there's the kind of reason for the trip.
And also it's an exploration of lewis case history and how in a way his seizures are like a metaphor for the world, which is it's in a state of convulsion. So we have a bit of finished money. We're waiting for more. They're taking their time, but in the spirit of the project, which is very kind of Diy, we just have to be patient. But we have Arte and Zida, the German and French television channels have taken it. It's not an entirely obscure project. But so that's what we've been up to.
Sounds like a lot, especially the way they has got to be difficult.
Oh, the jobs.
The whole of the last eight years has been about waiting because in dealing with you this case, you're waiting for the National Health Service, you're waiting for doctor's appointments, you're waiting for the next seeson. And I did a film years and years ago with Rudy Wurlitzer, who wrote two Lame Blacktop and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and he was talking about waiting in Hollywood, who said,
it's always about waiting. You know, you're waiting for this, you're waiting for that, And I thought, yeah, it's still the same.
Mister Pettett, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate this.
That's fine. I hope you even make something of it, and I wasn't too delirious.
All right, we are back and we were talking about Radio On and I mentioned this earlier, Ben, but I want to know more about Radio on Remix. How did that project come together? And can you told the audience a little bit more about it?
Well?
Radio on Remix, which is I think twenty four minute video essay that you will find, whether you want to or not, on any Blu ray that you can get hold of. Radio On and it was in the DVD editions as well, is a piece that Chris created in nineteen ninety eight, so almost twenty years after Radio On.
And this came directly out of what I was saying earlier about how we met Chris and we interviewed him and then we got him to come and screen Radio On off a thirty five mel print in Bristol, and then I don't know about six months later it occurred to me, and I will turn full credit for the idea.
It occurred to me that it would be a great idea since it was coming up to twenty years and also we'd heard that fly over, the one where they get the very iconic shot of the hotel was being taken down, and it occurred to me, Okay, this is a good time for Chris to come back and make it. What I thought would be relatively conventional documentary about the time passing and coming back and retracing the steps of the film and telling stories about the making of the film.
Possibly I had a very different idea about what it would be, and I told Gareth Evans, who was my partner in crime at the time, and Gareth was like, yes, that's great, we should definitely do that. So Gareth managed to get us to pitch this to the local broadcaster in the West Country, which was called HTV. It was like a regional station, and there was a really lovely lady there called Abigail Davis who was a commissioner, and I can't believe, to be honest, she let me and
Gareth into her office. We showed up. We weren't students, we graduated a few years before, but we looked like students. We were just second and clothes hungover I'm sure hadn't shaved, pretty much like how I am now. And we go in and we say, okay, we know this filmmaker Chris Pettitt and he's going to come back and he's going to film things and it's going to be a documentary
and will you commission it? And she said okay. At that point we pretty much handed it over to Chris and Keith Griffiths's producer, and then they put together Ready On Remix, although Gareth I have to give Gareth credit because he did quite a lot of the work finding the locations. So we'd actually bumped into a guy at a party who said, I'm staying in the Paragon and that was the row of houses where they filmed Radio
on and we said, okay, what number. Somehow we had figured out what the flat was, maybe Chris had told us and he was like, yeah, it's that one, and we were like, oh, yeah, it's the Radio On Flat. So we found that Gareth managed to get access to the quarry, which is at the end of the film, which was incredible because it was a very high security area by that point with guards and all that stuff.
And we tracked down the pub and the train station and a bunch of other places, and we did actually have a couple of days with Chris when he was filming, and actually you can see me in Radio Remix. There's a shot where he shows the pub from nineteen seventy nine with someone playing Paul, and then the pub now and now being nineteen ninety eight, and you can see me about to take a shot on the pull table. That's my claim to fame, guys, I mean a shot
within a shot. And then Chris went ahead and he had this kind of prosumer camera I think it might have been a sony and he was shooting everything and now it seems like very low grade video. And Chris was very interested in the technology. He was interested in seeing what video can do and layering different images, and it became more almost like an installation video, less like a conventional documentary, and much more like a kind of gallery piece in a sense. So it's quite a challenging
film to watch, but you do get within it. If you focus and look carefully, you can see he does do the old locations and the new locations, and he does put them together. But the high point of remix is the soundtrack because he got Bruce Gilbert from Wire proper post punk band who could have been in the soundtrack for.
The original Radio but aren't.
Bruce Gilbert does this remix and it's almost just like with Radio On, the soundtrack is leading the film, and I really love what he does with the sound and the way that he fuses together loops of David Bow, the bits of the video game, samples of dialogue from the film, like particular lines pullover and refugee, and then highlights them and mixes them and creates this kind of ambient flow of the entire thing. So it's quite a strange piece, but if you're a fan of Radio On, it's pretty essential.
I ran into where was it? Was it a band camp? It was a Radio one remix and it was some sort of special It was Bruce Gilbert. I'm pulling it up right now. Bruce Gilbert Radio one Remix, Limited edition cassette, made to order in maximum edition of fifty copies, available for six hundred and sixty six pounds.
Yes, this is a very interesting company in London that does these kind of limited edition art projects. And actually I wrote the liner notes, I think for that cassette.
I think that's how I found it was. I was googling you in then this one came up and I was like, oh, okay.
Yeah, that was a couple of years ago, and it was a brilliant idea to put out the radio remix as a soundtrack, although it was done in a way that makes it almost equally as difficult to get hold of.
Yeah, I'm sorry, but I won't be spending the six hundred and sixty six pounds for your essay. I'm sorry about that, Ben.
I'll send you the word document. But while we're on the subject of plugging things, I do want to plug this book, which is free. You don't have to spend six hundred and sixty six pounds on. There is a book about radio on written by this guy that I've been in contact with called Nick Gilbert, and the book is called road Runner. I think the subtitle is a book about radio on. And you can get it at smash words, which is a sort of self publishing online
publishing website. If you just register there and give them your email address, you can download Roadrunner for free as a PDR for however you want to read it. And that is one of those books in the style of Jeff dya Zoner or Jonathan Leatham's They Live, or Walter Chows's book about Miracle Marley where he watches the film, describes the film and then goes off on all sorts of digressions, some of which touches on pon things we've discussed, but also goes off on many other digressions as well.
And so if you're interested in radio on listeners at whatever biscuit factory you're in right now, it's really worth a download. And Nick OnEarth some quite interesting things along the way and also interviewed Chris.
I love that it's called road Runner because every time I would read the title, I would just keep thinking of the Who's Jonathan Donathan Richmond of the Modern Lovers Jonathan Richmond, Yeah, and just that whle and the radio on, and I just kept thinking of that, and then going back to the Sex Pistols. There was a version of that. They recorded a version of Roadrunner, and John Lyyden could not remember any of the lyrics except for the radio
on part of it. Very rough, one of those like back in the early nineties, no more like late eighties, they were putting out all of these like bits and bobs of sessions that they had with the Sex Pistols, and it was all one producer, I can't remember who it was, but they were the rough quality a lot of it, but they did have some interesting outtakes like that, and of course I think when they did Stepping Stone
that was like a potentially legit release. But yeah, that version of Roadrunner was very rough.
I think Chris at one point wanted to use Roadrunner on the soundtrack but wasn't able to or chose not to in the end.
Yeah.
The funny thing is in the UK, the title might be connected to Radio One, which was the big BBC pop station, which would have been the antithesis, apart from John Peel of pretty much everything that Robert's character would be listening to. Very little of that stuff would get played on Radio One. So actually, when I first encountered the film, I thought it was a sort of play on Radio One. It was like Radio On instead of
Radio One, and I knew the Jonathan Richmond song. And it was only much much later, I think, after I'd seen Radio On that I was listening to it and I was like, oh, yes, this must be why Chris gave it that name, because it's so brilliant. I mean, it's just a fantastic track, and of course it's a classic driving track.
Yeah.
The name of the Nick Gilbert book, just for completion's sake is Roadrunner, Radio one, Road Movies and the A four and I will definitely put a link to where you can get it on smash Words in the show notes for this episode because it is really good and there's a few good essays written about this movie. I know that I found the was it Satan sound? I can't remember which review was. Film comment was just in valuable to see more of the plot, because, like you, Mark,
I was finding this a little obscure at times. I'm sure Ben, you've seen this many more times than I have, and probably get a lot of this more than us Americans, especially even when it comes to the landscape, because all looks the same a lot of times for me, especially being in black and white.
That was a difficult part, Like I didn't really get when he was in London, in Bristol, back in London, and I think a lot of it was the black and white actually, but it didn't really matter again because it's circular in a way anyway. But I don't really care what the destination is in road movies for the most part, it's the trip. And I know we're way past this, but I just had to mention that shot again.
The iconic shot going on the well I'm going to say freeway here, which is the incorrect term, but past when both Robert and I forget what her name in the separate windows. Loved that shot, but it just made me think of since we're talking about road movies and I'm looking at a road movie, is it's obviously someone in a car and they're very possibly on their own road movie trip right now. They're traveling somewhere, maybe they're
headed back to London or some other point. And I thought it just struck me as odd because I oftentimes when I am driving by myself, look at the people in the other cars and wonder what are they doing, what is their destination? And even sometimes think what are they thinking right now as we're passing this same scenery and stuff?
What the music is on in their car?
So that I think that shot was poignant in a lot of ways for me, and it just really stuck out. I pause it and rewound it a couple of times just to watch over again, and I don't know, I can't really explain why, but it just it felt like an important moment in the film.
Yeah, Partly it's because there's again it's that alienation. They're both in separate windows, and actually it occurs to me that in order to get that shot, I actually think they're in separate rooms. So within the story they're meant to be in the same room. I think that hotel has got very small rooms and there's one window per room, and actually they must have positioned them into separate rooms. I might be wrong about that, but there is that
feeling of there together, but they're not together. And then we're in the point of view, this mysterious point of view of somebody in a car driving the route that they've previously taken, so there's the sort of ghosting of
their route at the same time. The other shot that I think is really iconic is the white when Robert's still in London, and you get that long of the landscape, the car goes through it, then you get the long shot of the landscape and I think it's Bowie on the soundtrack at that point, and then the train comes in from the side of the frame, and then it wipes and then we see the plane coming in towards he Throw airport and we're back on the road again.
And that is in the cinema. That is a breathtaking shot.
I'm trying to remember who it was. I was talking about the whole idea of Aerosynthanatos when it comes to this movie, and the idea that we start with the death of his brother, and it feels like that death drive no pun intended, the death drive in Robert Bee might be there as well, because it feels like he's going to commit suicide at the end of this movie, at least for me. When he pulls up to the edge of the quarry, he's so close to the edge and he's got the music blaring, and he just is
he just going to drive right off of here? Is he going to put And then when he gets out of the car, is he going to push the car over? But instead he just abandons the car and we don't get the journey home. We just get him waiting for a train. I don't necessarily see like him back in London. Hey, everything's great.
We're just checking in back at the biscuit Factory.
Yeah, exactly, I'm back boys, And here's a special request for you. Yeah, here's some more Ian durry in the blockheads. Yeah, I love. That's always the thing when it comes to road movies like how do we end? Do we end with them still on the road, Do they get to their destination? Doesn't matter if they get to their destination. Do they fail completely? Mark? You and I just talked about a classic road movie recently, Vacation, and just how that turns to absolute shit at the end with him
almost getting arrested. We end that kind of the same way with just them on the plane. We don't get them back in Chicago, and here he's waiting for that train, and he's going to take that train back, which might have been the smart way of traveling anyway. And you guys have such great public transportation in them, why would you really?
No?
No, is it all gone.
One of the things that would happen when that check came into power, of course, is the privatization of the rail network, and it's gone down ill ever since. But yes, no, it is significant that he chooses the change of mode of transport at that point.
Yeah. I've only been in England twice and at least one of those times there was a rail strike, so everything was delayed.
That happens frequently. Yes, Well another thing, Yeah, you were pointing out about the suicide and almost the sense that he's going to kill himself in the quarry, is going to get drunk. There's a lot of drink driving in the film. We should also mention it has a pine and then takes the hitchhiker, etc.
But I think he cracks open a beer in the car itself right.
In this one, he's throwing back the beers. Earlier in Western super Mare, he's drinking from a bottler spirits. At least he gets her to drive him back to Bristol. But yes, the narrative construction again, Chris is saying, Okay, I'm not that interesting story in narrative, but he really does set it up quite neatly, that notion of not being able to start the car, that once he's driven to the edge, he can't go round the front to crank it up with that tool anymore, and he even
tries to pull it back. He tries to release the brakes and pull it back and it goes forward even more, which weirdly reminds me now of the Italian Job. The end of the Italian Job with the bus on that when it keeps going forward, it keeps creeping forward. And so it's set up really smartly that this is the end of the road for him, and there's no way he can start that car anymore, so he has to abandon it. And again more construction. It refers back to the first time we see him. He's in the car.
He puts on the craft Work tape and he stops, thinks for a bit, puts it back on, and then leaves it playing as he goes out to the laundromat. Here he leaves it playing and abandons it forever, right, And then we get the music playing, and actually the music that craft Work track builds and builds. It gets faster and faster, and it's actually a hopeful song. There's a real feeling of joy and excitement at the end
of the film. Weirdly enough, even though nothing narratively seems to have been resolved, there is a sense of a weird sense of hope at the end of the film.
I did want to mention the radio on remix. I found quite enjoyable because I think the oh, we're back at this spot where Ben gets knocked off the stool in the bar and here we are at the GT gas station where Sting plays the guitar would have been
really boring. I enjoyed that, and it actually again reminded me of things that I watched when I was in London and saw pieces like that in art installations and other stuff that was on TV, and going to the wonderful repertory cinemas there and seeing all kinds of crazy movies. So I enjoyed it quite a bit. Oh, excellent, that's good to hear.
Yeah, I thought it was very well done, and yeah, it does feel very much like an installation piece. That's a perfect way to put it, just with the way that it's put together. There's one moment where it's just like, how was this shot? What was the actual means of
putting this together? There was one shot where I was reminded of do you remember the old Fisher Price pixel cams that were recorded on cassettes, which is an interesting going back to the cassette thing too, So I was like, oh, I know that things have been shot in that, and I was almost curious if that was being used, but of course it wasn't.
No, But there's a lot of refilming. There's a lot of playing things back on a TV and then refilming them on the sony camera and then refilming them again. So that they lose generations and they get more and more distorted.
It was hypnotic, the whole thing, with the music and the oh yeah, that was fun.
All right, guys, let's go ahead and take another break, and I want to play preview for next week's show right after these brief mess.
It was a sensation at the Cannes Film Festival, winning Best Actor and Best Director awards. At the Toronto Film Festival, it won the Critics Prize from acclaimed director Mike Lee, the creator of High Hopes and Life Is Sweet.
A different kind of movie.
That is a proper relationship.
Living with someone who talks to you after they've bunked you. Are they both the same size or as one bigger than the other?
You look like my mother?
Was you?
Or too payful?
It's good.
Naked a new film by Mike Lee.
That's right. We'll be back next week with another British film. We're talking about Mike Lee's Naked. Until then, I want to thank my co hosts Ben and Mark. So, Mark, what's been going on with you, sir?
Well?
I've got two monthly shows right now. My nostalgia show Cambrid Jim Mashawn comes out every first Tuesday of the month, and you Chris and I have our Chasing Chevy Chase podcast that comes out I believe the last Wednesday of earvery month, and Wake Up Heavy is on another hiatus currently until I figure out something to record. But you can find all of those shows over on where you Media dot com.
And Ben, how about you?
What if you're bending up to Well, I thought I had absolutely nothing to say as usual, apart from you could still probably try and buy my book about Saint Jack, which is called kind of Hot, and you can email me, although I am running low on copies, so if anyone
wants to republish it, please let me know. But I actually do have a plug, which is that since I last spoke to you, Mike, I wrote our co Wrote Rather a TV series that was put out in Singapore for Singapore Television and you can watch it on YouTube. This company, the local company that broadcasts it. They put it out on any platform they could put it out on, including YouTube. So if you are curious, it's a murder
mystery and it's called Come Closer. So if you go into YouTube and you look up Come Closer Singapore TV, you should find it. There's five episodes, they're all up on YouTube. Now here's the fun part. There is a reference to Radio One in one of the episodes. There's a piece of dialogue that refers to something that Chris has talked about many times in relation to Radio On. So anyone who knows Radio On, who's listened to this
podcast will pick up on the reference. So if anybody can find it, email me that you've spotted the Radio On reference in one episode of Come Closer. I will send you something. So it's a little competition. Oh and try to inspire people to watch it.
One more thing, Mike, I believe Radio On is also on the Criterion Channel currently, so people maybe can't afford the Blu ray or something, you have a way to watch it.
I believe it's there.
Ben, What are we talking about next year?
Oh?
Well, I think you haven't done anything to do with Peter Whitehead.
Have you mind that yet? Now?
Well, let's have a conversation about Peter Whitehead, because I think he would be an interesting subject for a Projection Booth episode.
I am pretty sure I know some of his work. I'm trying to remember what because he worked with Nicky Descent Fall, correct, didn't he have something to do with Daddy. He directed Daddy.
Although I don't think I want to spend it into my podcast on Daddy.
Oh that would be fun boy. Would we feel bad after that?
Wouldn't we?
There we'll email, We'll talk about some ideas.
Yeah, sounds good. Thank you so much guys for being on the show. Thanks everybody for listening. If you want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows that I work on. Just like Mark said, they're all available at weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helps the Projection Booth take over the world.
One girl in the wild boy, ye, but she probably lives since I hate it, I call the whole one well, I call the whole one man just a mine. Well, maybe she's in about homes where.
The carabeans is true.
We've been in a trumping.
To come on lady night because nobody's told about you.
I call the will I follow wild world.
I thought the whole world.
We thought the whole world was fine.
Not where they hide.
I thought the whole wild well, I thought, the whole world.
Well, it's a fine.
Am I in around in the rain.
Trying to fake up a gill fore my eyes swelling up with this horn tails with.
This girl w the world.
I should ian on a trumping the bit somewhel on the name.
The trumping the sun.
Finding a way in a hayway fan open.
But I woman a.
As youre been. I am on my sons, bitch when.
Dressing the whole brid scanda in a year holiday.
Even I'm quite will be sharing the same mist.
Fan, I'm gonna, oh, I don't know line well.
Well well.
Little yeah.
One churns right from five zer.
R d brother, go fast about an hour, go and try faster, stop and shop with the radio on droppings over with Massachusets have to be on what it's called outside.
That's the highway to late night. That the radio.
I'm like, all right, happen love with about a good line on what he ate when it's starting out time.
I'm in love with Massachusetts. I'm in love with the radio that helped me from.
Being alone late at night, helped me from being lonely lay night. I don't feel so bad now in the car. Don't feel so long that the radio like that spirit of Zee.
Just six picture the bushes, Nick, the fifty seven, your highways, your good for next week, go back way.
It's the burbon trees urban speed at it.
So that's like when I say road, blood, road, or twice.
I'm in love with.
Rock and roll, that I'll be out on that role.
That's why.
Oh well, now that's the boss it all.
Gotta dropt the stop shop with the radio on a die and be in love with mon.
Be in love with WoT a rock and roll bot nose a bott a rock and roll, no deels alone, Get.
The radio off the roller.
Okay, how you say botto loveday?
I got.
That's got cut the rock bart, I got the cop Massachusetts got up.
I got the powder, Massachusetts waters lay a.
Night of it.
I got what sounds about the Massachusetts I s I got the ball, got the chuck I got I got the ball, not the.
Little while roll and I look back to the other side, the cut on the town.
All right.
By why by spare nothing.
You take you nine.
Go fe Nte too.
Gets in Spain and shan sir.
Doctors he gun forever and us in that heaven.
Sure, I mean time.
I'm not better.
To do uh.
Do coding a side side out in time, I'm do you.
Sometimes nothing joying by to joy by Jemmy. Welcome back out so good, said Sid.
Why some day write something in old time, cos that's I be saved?
Dishes s O the coon s.
Sun, donci donc M. Dons have that doncent you gotta some time sometime, said they have done.
H