To the offices of Tartan Films in Dean Street, where I interview Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe, the directors of the new film Brothers Of The Head. It’s on behalf of Plan B magazine, so I give them a sample copy, eager to get this interview thing right. In the interests of proper research, I not only see the film beforehand and take notes, but I also rent out their previous work Lost In La Mancha, the documentary about Terry Gilliam’s failed Don Quixote project. On top of that I go to the British Library and read the out-of-print Brian Aldiss novel that inspired their film. The original edition with Ian Pollock’s typically grotesque illustrations. And I go online and read every previous interview I can find with them.
Problem is, although I arrive at the Tartan offices with a notebook full of well-researched details and topics to talk about, I forget one important aspect of an interviewer’s technique: I forget to shut the hell up. Typically, I confuse a conversation with my need to show off if a clever phrase or theory about the subject pops into my head. Like those audience members at arts event Q&As who waste everyone’s time with a question that begins “Don’t you agree that…” and then rail off their entire idiotic thesis for five minutes.
I even interrupt them a few times – the one thing you should never do. Well, unless you’re Mr Paxman. And I don’t notice the dictaphone switching itself off halfway through. A common problem for the inexperienced interviewer, but even so. Yet another job I’m just not cut out to do, I suppose, though I do appear to be a slightly talented researcher. At least, they tell me I’m the first hack to ask them about their aborted late 90s Clive Barker film, “From Oz To 42nd Street”. Even their publicist hasn’t heard of it.
If I’m honest, I don’t feel any desire to interview anyone at all. About anything. I prefer imagining the subject is like most of my favourite authors and artists – dead for at least a century. And therefore is unavailable for comment. I’m happier reading press statements, books, other people’s interviews with the subject, and then putting my own interpretation on it, with a little obscure research thrown in.
Still, they called me the best-dressed interviewer they’ve had. Clearly they’ve yet to meet Kim Newman.
The more I think about it, the more I realise Brothers In The Head is something very special indeed, at least aesthetically and intellectually. “The Elephant Man meets Velvet Goldmine” would be a fool’s phrase for the poster (which annoyingly apes the Trainspotting design of ten years ago), but at least that’s a start when trying to describe what is essentially one of the strangest, most genre-defying films of the year.
