Still throwing out most of my old audio cassettes. Many are the demos of friends and correspondents over the years, but I assume they keep their own copies and so don’t think twice about disposing of them.
On the train the other day, David Barnett asks me if I’ve jettisoned his own ancient demo, which he gave me a decade ago when we were musing about making music together. I tell him no, it’s gone the way of all the others. And after ten years, surely a kind of statute of limitations comes into place?
But of course, he then says it was the last copy in the world. I am absolutely mortified, even though any brutal reduction of possessions comes with a price. What was it the USA leaders say about casualties? ‘Stuff happens.’
If it’s any consolation, I add feebly, begging his forgiveness, I’ve also thrown out rare tapes by people who’ve gone on to proper success and Mercury Music Prize nominations. He thinks I’m mad not to put Isobel Campbell’s tape on Ebay, with its demos of her songs for Belle & Sebastian and her first solo album. But even though I’ve not been in contact with Ms C for (again) a decade, it would still feel tacky, even a betrayal, to put such tapes into others’ hands. Money or no. I still have the letter she wrote to me at the time. When I get onto clearing out old letters, it’ll be a different matter entirely.
It’s odd. For someone who loves museums and libraries, I hate the thought of becoming an archivist myself; whether of my own work or others. I like collections, but would hate to be considered a collector. I like being a guest at parties, but rarely the host.
But all this is secondary to the main reason for clearing such dusty items out: I simply don’t have the room to be a collector of anything more than what I need to use right now.
Many of my own demos are the musical equivalent of baby photos: cute to others for five seconds, embarrassing to me for longer.
Baby photos are overrated. I don’t see the point of baby photos in documentaries or in the photo section of biographies. A cheap curiosity. What did the subject look like when they were a baby? Well, guess what! They looked like a baby. They had no choice in the matter.
Life is more interesting when there’s bits missing.
***
Have seen the latest Quentin Tarantino film, Death Proof. Makes one scream at the screen, ‘Hurry up and cut to the chase. Literally.’
Plot: a group of jolly ladies chatter for too long, then are terrorised by an unkind gentleman who uses his stunt car as a murder weapon. Then it happens all over again in a different part of America, with a twist. Then lots of film buffs stroke their beards and point out all the clever references to cult trashy films which only they have seen.
The movie is meant to be viewed in a three-hour double bill, one massive homage to the late night b-movies of yore, called Grindhouse. The other film is Planet Terror by Mr Sin City, about a bottom-kicking pretty woman with one leg, who takes on legions of enemies out to get her. Cue Heather Mills jokes.
Grindhouse also includes a few fake trailers for ‘Coming Attractions’ by other directors, for similarly garish films that don’t exist. There’s one by Edgar Wright, a horror nasty called Don’t. It’s extremely funny and beautifully realised.
Despite the cooler-than-thou appeal, the full Grindhouse package was something of a flop on its US release. So much so that the UK distributors have opted to release the two main movies separately. Britain gets the Tarantino in a few week’s time, followed by the one-legged lady thing a month later. I presume the spoof trailers will be on the inevitable DVD, the afterlife format where all wrongs are righted.
Death Proof, then. It’s very nearly a great film. But the extended dialogue scenes really bore the 70s hot pants off me. They’re meant to build up a sense of tension, but they just drag on and on.
All the girls have 70s flick hairdos and vintage diner clothes, listen to groovy music from the 60s and 70s, show off their long legs and perfect feet to the camera, but have iPods and text messaging, and talk about the use of CGI in movies. All very well, but when the killing comes into it, you no longer care about such creatures of pure fantasy. If anything, I find myself rooting for Kurt Russell’s Morrissey-faced killer to hurry up and dispatch these chattering damsels of dream.
Misogyny on the director’s part? No, more Pygmalionism. I do think he wants women to be more like the ones in his head. Which is either shaking their legs and feet and bottoms, or kicking the bottoms of men, or have them twittering on about the trivia of 60s bands, cult movies, cars, magazines. It’s a world he wishes existed, so he makes it exist. Which is something I completely agree with, after all.
And it’s not unflattering to the women. Who doesn’t want to be sexy and hip and bottom-kicking? I know I do.
Sadly, the lengthy dialogue scenes between the girls are not a patch on the conversations in Reservoir Dogs. Or Amanda Plummer’s ‘Honey Bunny’ character in Pulp Fiction. And that’s my main problem with Death Proof: he doesn’t let the girls be funny. Or indeed, funny and tired and capricious and careful and worried and wise, like the girls I know. His girls are too busy being sexy, hip and tough, and ONLY those things.
It’s no good thinking female characters are well-written just because they’re tough, fight with weapons, and talk about cars and obscure movies. Maybe that’s enough for Mr T’s fans, but it leaves me missing Mr Pink arguing about the ethics of tipping, and Honey Bunny switching from timid girl to foul-mouthed gangster and back again, to comic effect.
Still, when the action sequences finally come along, they’re worth the wait. And Zoe Bell, a strapping New Zealand stunt lady, is something of a star. She was the action double for Miss Thurman in Kill Bill, and here is promoted to proper actor. Hearing her Kiwi accent pricking the bubble of Tarantino’s world of Americana is like hearing Tim Roth’s ordinary English one in Pulp Fiction: it shakes the aesthetic up. Just a shame she doesn’t appear till about an hour in.
Tarantino’s choice of soundtrack, however, is as impeccable as ever. For a director, he’s a brilliant DJ. In Death Proof, the main musical showpiece – ie, the bit where Mr Tarantino is purely making a film to illustrate his favourite music – is a superbly groovy version of ‘Baby It’s You’, not by The Shirelles or The Beatles, but by a late 60s band called Smith.
Slightly less of a revelation is the appearance of ‘Chick Habit’ by April March on the closing credits. One could argue this is QT personified: a 1990s cover of a 60s Serge Gainsbourg song. It sounds forty years old, but its hip lyrics meld slang across the decades.
Thing is, it’s already been used on the credits to another film a few years ago. But I’m A Cheerleader got there first, a funny indie romp about gay and lesbian teenagers sent to a hetero-converting summer camp, starring RuPaul. Which, as you can probably guess, is more my cup of alcohol-free absinthe.
