I Dream of Mushroom Clouds


I Dream of Mushroom Clouds
In this on-going saga, I begin to feel like that dude Happy Gilmore, the aspiring hockey player finding unlikely success as a golfer, going as far now as to review a b**k. I know it's insane but this is where we are now. Dan Franklin's Come My Fanatics book sums up everything we are about at Funeralopolis, call it a manifesto and we feel regardless of medium, it carries our message and therefore must be reviewed.
Porn makes its triumphant return back in to the zine. We thought we'd give this one a break for a few issues after getting lost in some pretty dark corners. Call it a sabbatical for the sake of sanity. However, we're back now to seeing the funny side of it all again and will continue our journey through the history of cinemas ugly sister. Block out the skies, lock the doors, grab some tinned tuna and take a seat in Lance Wormstrong's basement bunker. Tonight there will be a sexually charged double bill. Yes, two Lasse Braun movies. Celebrate like its Christmas. Porn is back.
Paul Schrader has already come out and said that Oppenheimer is one of the best movies of this century. We want to add to that and say it's one of the best films of all time. Fully aware this puts us in with the Nolan fan boys but sometimes you've got to admit defeat. What's good is good. This piece seeks to explore just how a pop stylist with boring politics, who regularly faces criticisms for creating empty movies could move away from fiction to fact and carve one of the finest character studies there has ever been in cinema. Kelly tries to enjoy his first few nights in a new city whilst mushroom clouds and visions of the apocalypse invade his dreams. A journey that will take you beneath the sheets and beneath the planet of the apes.
Reviewing Dan Franklin's Come My Fanatics has got us thinking this is a decent time to take a minute and reflect on current events and the future of Funeralopolis. What is it we're trying to say with this zine? What do we stand for? What do we want to achieve? Since, this zine is to continue for the foreseeable future, I thought it best to dedicate as much time as possible to the written word if that is to be the path taken. Over the course of reviewing so regularly and reading other reviews too, I have noticed what I would like to call, 'limitations' in the form that irritate me beyond belief. A shame because this whole thing should be freeing, especially for independents. That's my favourite thing about it right now, you don't need them million dollar budgets to pick up the pen.
Firstly, the majority of them out there serve to recommend or not recommend the most recent movies playing in theatres. I have next to no interest in promoting or not promoting a set of films currently released at the cinema. Such a process is only commercial -the antithesis of what this zine seeks to be. So, what you're talking about is not reviewing but analysing? Technically yes, but why can't it be both? Merely serving the purpose of recommending causes a review to play second fiddle to the movie in question, holding back the potential of what a review could do. A review should stand on its own and it should be possible to write a review that is better than the film included. The quality of the film should come second to the quality of the writing. To the point you trust a writer, so you read their work regardless of whether you're interested in the film. Ideally, the reader doesn't even look at the movies involved.
Second, in doing so there should be a sense of recurring themes in a writers work similar to auteur theory. They need to be hammering out a style every week and that is what the readers come for over the movies in question. If this could be done on Letterboxd, then I'd have stuck with that but the form here allows one to be more self-referential across multiple works. A zine is more contained. Whilst in this area, the writer should bring in styles and techniques from other mediums, be it poetry, painting, literature, comics or music. Whatever his interests be. I see no reason why the review can't develop in to its own proper art form and in time we can't eradicate this idea that critics are those that can't do. It needs to do what all art forms still arguably in their infancy do and borrow from other mediums until it cements itself fully. The possibilities are endless. Sure, we've had film criticism for a while now but we've not really had criticism of film criticism. In my eyes, there's still a lot more to come. Psychoanalysis in particular is still very underexplored as Bordwell has often pointed out and it should be our aim as critics to tap in to this.
Third, where I've found most critics slip up and let reviews down is in the application of their understanding of the text. They reveal this when they say throwaway meaningless comments like, "it has good cinematography". So no more of that, please. I'm not for one second saying you can no longer talk about cinematography but you cannot simply leave it there. Stating that something is aesthetically pleasing is not an argument in itself. You can't apply the same standards of measure to every single movie. Cause that's all these guys have is like a boring tick list without ever really engaging with a movie. I want to know why that works in the context of the film and its genre/style. Cause sometimes the uglier a movie the better. How else would you explain the brilliance of Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper?
Personally, I have focused on an individual style I'd like to develop further to address this side of criticism. My inspiration comes in a few layers and combinations. It should be of no surprise that the first layer begins with a love that actually lies outside of film with Hunter S. Thompson, Gonzo and new journalism. Perspective and immediacy being my fascination here. I'm not the first to bring Gonzo writing in to film criticism. Both Joe Bob Briggs and Bill Landis have already explored these avenues. The very reason they the greatest film critics of all time and transcend in to being artists. Other big names like Kermode, Kael, Ebert and Bazin I would classify as historians and essayists. Phenomenal writers as they are, they lack a distinctive style. Studying Briggs and Landis is the second layer. Where these guys reach the end of the road is in that their personalised accounts generally focus on the spectacle of film watching and deviations from that only turn to general lawlessness, anti-authority and sleaze like the themes present in the genres of the movies they review and the attitudes of those who watch the movies too. Whereas, I think we need to tackle every film reviewed at an individual level.
Having studied the previous generations of journalists and critics then, my own contribution on top of that is inspired by the way I was brought up hearing my grandfather, a keen western appreciator, discussing movies. He will take the basic themes of a movie and then proceed to give a personal story based on those provided. Like all older folk who have spent countless hours in the boozer, the guys a master storyteller. Sadly, this is a dying art.
I think what the next step of film criticism should be is testing out our own understanding of the text, dislodging it and stripping it to the key themes and then repacking it up in our own personal style. That way we can show three things, how much we actually understood it, how much it affected us (the process of unlocking art and a works place in society interests me just as much as the making of it) and lastly, how we could improve it. Only after following this process, can a review become a work of art in itself.
So, if you have something to say about film, and just as importantly, a way to say it. Let me know. I am here to learn how we can expand on these areas and push it in the right direction. If you want a platform to write then hit me up, being the one man band is knackering and I'm open to outside input. If you've already got a platform to write let's exchange ideas and help each other out. If you're too shy to put your thoughts on a platform, let's talk anyway. In essence, let's talk. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about, talk about. Talk about MOOOOOOOOOVIES. Yes that was a Lipps Inc. reference. Take me to MovieTown, baby!
It's mad to think that people still make music after the year 2000, as though it didn't peak as an art form with Electric Wizard's magnum opus Dopethrone. It's mad to think that Electric Wizard even still make music after 2000 for that matter. Yet, on they go and so our witchcult grows. Had they packed it in we'd never have got the Lovecraftian Witchcult Today or the colossally heavy Black Mass. They are simply laughing at us at this point, as if to say we came, we saw, we conquered and no one's come anywhere near close to reaching those heavy heights again but us and only when we feel like it. Living proof that unlike The Beatles or Spinal Tap that you can bring your wife in, let her kindly set on an amp, lose all the original members and still advance your sound. They are indisputably the greatest and by far the heaviest sound to emerge from our pathetic planet.
You heard it, they're the best and they always will be. Not just the kings of doom or stoner, no that would be thinking too small, but of everything in this universe. You'll find pieces of every genre and medium currently existing smoothly in their work and that's what makes it so damn good. The genius is the way they bend all that lies before them in to their own particular sound time and time again without fail. The dubbed up dance of Ivixor B/Phase Inducer. The punky grunge of Weird Tales. The creepy Carpenteresque church organs of Night of the Shape. All twisted to this cosmic narrative of a dying planet brought about by our own despicable behaviours. It's hard to put in to words what the band mean to me, they are the beating heart and soul of this critical cesspit that lies before you. Exactly why when it came to choosing the name of this monthly magazine opting for Funeralopolis was the easiest choice ever made. Sounding both journalistic and apocalyptic. Everything this magazine is unapologetically about.
So rare is it to see and hear that which expresses everything you want to express. To the point you wouldn't even think to ever make music because they make it exactly the way you want it. As the overly quoted face of edgy nihilism Tyler Durden once said, "I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable and most importantly I'm free in all the ways that you are not". What could Jacob Kelly possibly ever add to the playing field that the Wizard already haven't? Well knowing me there'd be a few more sections incorporating electronics and leaning in to Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk. But I'm an idiot and would only fuck it up so no chance I'd be picking up a guitar and synth any time soon. No interest at all. I'm a fucking film guy anyway. However, I bow to my musical kings who occupy the Dopethrone
Being a man of cinema, I've always been attracted to music that I can see. If it doesn't have a visual appeal it isn't for me. About a casual head bop and sneaky toe tap is the most you will get from me. It's a story that lulls me in to the music. This is where most local bands bore me. They make the mistake of thinking I came to be wowed by their incredible musicianship. I didn't rock up to the boozer for technical virtuosity. Who cares if you strum your strings like it's a vagina? There's plenty of people who can play out there. If that's where your heads at, be a fucking session guitarist or something for it’s the best you'll ever reach. I came for the vision. Everything else is secondary. It doesn't matter if you can hit notes or play complex chords. As Joe Strummer said, "I don't like music, at all. Music isn't the point". He's right music isn't the point, music is the means. I want to see the album cover, hear the music and be transported. Location, location, location. There has to be a location. If I don't come out thinking I need I need to up the old reading list and see about a million more movies then it has failed. Everything else is background noise. 3
In my life, I'm lucky to say I have encountered 3 groups that I really gave a shit about at every level from the manufacture to release. Namely, The WuTang Clan, The Nine Inch Nails and The Wizard. Going back to the beginning, my first love was the Wu. As a young boy, I was raised on a steady diet of Bruce Lee movies. Cheesy sound effects and endless fist fights made up my world. Therefore to see RZA applying that to his own working class world was wonderful to me. New York transforming itself in to Shaolin Island and getting lost in this man's vision running counter to Nas's strict cinema verité realism (which has it's place too). Above all RZA's a man with vision. Goes down as a legend for bringing 9 gangsters in a studio to record his silly kung fu nonsense. How he did it, we'll never know but we shall be forever grateful.
My second love was the Nin. There's a point when everyone comes to realise and accepts there's some really pathetic teenage angsty lyricism there. Even Trent would agree, which is probably why he seems to be distancing himself from the band as much as possible these days. I'll be a fan of the Nin 'til I die because in truth I never really cared for the lyrics anyway, I was more enamoured by their cinematic soundscapes. Hence, why Trent and Atticus are killing it in the film industry now and have Oscars to their name. 2 things here though as to why my interest has slightly dipped over the years. Fincher has fully realised their sound as the score to the digital age. It had to be done and he was the one to do it. It's done. Be arsed copying? Also, they've expanded their musical knowledge now to include all sorts of belting stuff like jazz making them serious guns for hire. Even Disney are ramming Pinocchio's lying wooden nose up their arses. There'd be nothing interesting about using Nine Inch Nails music for cinema these days, as it has already become music for cinema. Their marriage to kino is so established that all your getting is sloppy seconds.
Ladies and gentlemen, the future is The Wizard. I present my third and current musical obsession that has only grown over the last decade. Initially, I came across these guys in university around the time the underrated Wizard Bloody Wizard was flooding on to the unapproving streets back in 2017. In a bizarre coincidence, I was formerly well acquainted with someone who's lecturer was Simon Poole down at Falmouth University. How he matches up with the usual demand for a drummer in Electric Wizard I'll never know. By all accounts, he was pretty chilled rather than the usual manic bastard who could barely crash his kit in time. On multiple occasions, I asked this former acquaintance of mine to hook me up so I could meet my hero and fellow Jess Franco fan, the bands mainstay, Jus Oborn, but she never would.
Anyway, putting that utter disappointment to one side, university is a place where even more so than attending 9am lectures and handing in assignments, you first start meeting people from all different backgrounds. Meaning you're exposed to all different kinds of music. Regular go-to's synthpop and post-punk had been worn to death. Instead of goths, the metal heads begun slipping in, affecting my tastes, forcing me to listen to that stuff and bending me in all new directions. They came armed with their best. The thrash big 4 and all that 80s yer da metal like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden that was fucking silly. Alright riffs being violated by theatrical singing nutcases like Rob Halford. I didn't understand it. The only way I could enjoy it was ironically and laugh at it but it meant nothing to me, however much I tried to embrace it. Eventually, I'd come around and appreciate it (especially Metallica) but it still doesn't mean much in truth other than mild historical recognition. Humorously primitive perhaps today but worthy of their place like Grandmaster Flash or Sugar Hill Gang are to Hip Hop.
One metal band would eventually change all that. It wasn't long until Black Sabbath got recommended. Considering I'd only really heard Paranoid as a kid, I was intrigued by what these Brummie fellas had to offer. Of course, Black Sabbath are just objectively the greatest so I was like yeah, whatever this is, I want more of this. Wait you can actually play this slow? You're allowed to do that? You can keep that fast playing show offy shit, serve them slow and thick please, bar tender. And for a long time that was the motto. At least until I heard black and death metal. So I delve around doom alleys and funeral playgrounds, taking a liking to Sleep, Fu Manchu and Boris. Great bands by the way. But Electric Wizard? Those guys hit me like a freight train.
They were everything I wanted The Cramps to be in my earlier gothic departures. Around the same time, randomly I had a course on my film degree that was covering soft porn trashy auteurs like Russ Meyer and Radley Metzger. I exploded on that and just became a full time porn head. Godard's all well good and but I'd done all that shit back in school. I didn't need to know any more. Auteur theory flowed through my veins. This drug addled student of cinema needed the rough lo-fi like the isolated need shoegaze and these exploitationers knew how to deal it out. Ended up doing my dissertation on exploitation, which looking back was more an excuse to investigate the subject further and unravel its true meaning. So, to hear Electric Wizard talking about the same directors was a total blessing. The two jus' went hand in hand. Perfect timing. Opportune. I went on the psychedelic trip through them both and this journey knows no ends. Extremity gives way to further extremity. I am not satisfied 'til I've seen, heard and felt it all. We've seen the other world and now we cannot stop. Not even Dom Cobb and his nifty Inception tricks can bring us back to reality. On we go until breaking point. Beyond the safety blanket of sanity. Unable to stop for the only fear greater than continuing through this filth is stopping. Anything less than everything is simply nothing.
Biker gangs. Give them to me. Sadomasochist freaks. Give them to me. Devil worshippers. Give them to me. Barbarian warriors. Give them to me. I want them all. All the thrills and I want them now. Unlike the majority of people, I found a real home in exploitation cinema. Guaranteed, it's not for everyone but given a particular upbringing you might just find there's nothing that satisfies quite like it. Where others grimace, you run to it. It provides truth when all else fails. At some point, it began to occur to me that all the Bruce Lee movies and Mad Max mayhem I found lying around the house on dodgy DVDs my father brought home from his time working in the Philippines (let's not forget how many good movies were shot out there by New World Pictures) were all the same. Whether it be kung fu, apocalyptic action or sadistic torture it all falls under the same roof of grindhouse, baby! All those Friday night thrills. That's why it appealed to me. It's what I remember and where I feel most comfortable to work within. Where I can simultaneously entertain and hide pieces of my mind. And here was Electric Wizard fusing all that together. Taking inspiration from film, sampling as freely as the Wu and creating something new in the process. Not quite music and not quite film but Electric Wizard.
Certainly helped too that (as this book made even clearer) Jus reads all the same sci-fi nonsense I grew up with.
Pierre Boulle, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Dan O'Bannon, Robert E. Howard, HR Giger, HP Lovecraft and William Gibson. It's so hard to get over when they first started exploring these writers through cinema, making you wonder what happened to that wave of science fiction movies in the late '70s when matte paintings and set design were way better than the CGI today. When the design was used as an extension of story rather than in the purely bare bones functional and bland way it is today. Mixing high concept sci-fi with cartoony pulpy trash, this has always been the agenda for me.
Somehow Dan Franklin's book had me liking their Come My Fanatics album even more through cementing that imagery present in the album and revealing it from his perspective. Rather fittingly as I read that section, there was a lightning storm happening outside my window and I had the album blasting right in to my recently damaged ear drum (it's gotten worse since the Weedeater gig). As Jus says, there is no better way to fix a busted ear drum than with more doom. This seems like sound advice. Can he pay for my treatment?
When I mentioned the way the writer tells the story from his perspective, what I mean to say is chronologically. Personally, having gotten in to the band well past them forging their legacy, I'd never really thought of the narrative of their album progression before. It only makes the band more impressive. Like imagine you create the heaviest album the universe has ever witnessed, as in its too heavy for public consumption and then literally you fucking top it in every way only a few years later. As a younger fan in his late twenties, born only days before Come My Fanatics was released (there must be a connection there), reexperiencing it this way is mind blowing. I'm lucky I live in a world where it's just accepted at this point. Otherwise my brain might not have been able to comprehend how the heaviest can get heavier.
Must also thank this writer for making me return to Supercovern after sort of dismissing it because it didn't lie within the albums narratives and allowing me to respect it for what it is, a singular masterpiece. It's a real tragic point that as a music fan today, anything not on Spotify and not following the typical album format doesn't seem to really exist within a band's catalogue, causing me to never give it its fair full chance, devoting perhaps only a couple of listens on YouTube. Easy to say we need to battle the laziness and reject digital libraries but it doesn't change what happened. My behaviour has been, as Delbert Grady would say, "corrected" Consider me converted.
Another way this spectacular book has managed to make me somehow an even bigger fan of this band is through the location. Hearing all these tales of wicked Wimborne. A quiet town in Dorset, where you spend your time playing Psychomania through your local shop, tripping and when the tabs hits you, you suddenly start destroying the miniature model of the town like you're Godzilla. That shit had me in hysterics. The whole book did. There were times I was genuinely fuming with it like for fuck sake this is annoying me now, I'm try to read this book and I'm getting fucking nowhere cause every time I try to get a solid flow going another anecdote puts me in a fit of laughter and I have to take 5 minutes out to recover. Damn you all to hell Electric Wizard for committing the very serious crime of being funny when I'm trying to get my literature cock on.
Legalise Drugs and Murder being inspired by a hate for Tony Blair is an all timer. Always thought that business was a little silly and cringey from The Wizard unless you're not taking it too seriously. However, seeing it in this new light and knowing it comes from that bloody war criminal, I might have to get fully behind it. You know what. Bring it back. Up Jus Oborn too for getting kicked out of his home town of Wimborne for blowing up cop cars and antagonising with the local law enforcement. This town ain't big enough for the two of us. Cheers cops, now he just terrorises us all. He's everyone's problem now.
My favourite part comes even later in the book, when you hear about how the chaotic original line up met its demise. Eventually, after so much vent up frustration, they all start trying to stab each other. At least Tim and Mark were anyway. Jus gives up caring, leaves them to it, starts boning his future wife Liz and watching Werewolves on Wheels excessively. God, I want to embrace my let everyone fight amongst themselves whilst my future wife bone incessantly and get heavily in to trashy horror phase. Me and WHO?
By the end of this book, (saying that, it's not exactly a book to me but more of a manifesto for this magazine), it takes you on a journey comparable to The Great Rock'n'roll Swindle, which could well be Jus's unapproved guide to the music industry. His template for all those who dare to take it on.
Originally, there's this sense of punk purism and by the end its total understanding of how the game works. He becomes The Mack like Max Julien. The sheer impossibility of making a career of Dopethrones is illustrated. Learning along the way that in order to sustain your position you have to exploit that which seeks to exploit you. If anything that's the biggest fuck you, isn't it? Make a pop hit, make a million and do as you please. Maybe burn it if you're The KLF but that's a different story for a different day.
Dopethrone and Come My Fanatics were made by angry kids hammering it out on whatever equipment available to them, thinking they may die tomorrow and maybe they did. It's lightning in a bottle and its conditions are impossible to replicate as a career progresses. Other influences come in and the anger isn't so direct and channelled. You can improve but you can never better. As this band and their trashy horrors teach us, quality isn't everything. If they'd have carried on like that and survived, that would have been the lie. The horror of those early efforts is feeling that the world is going to blow, if that was the vibe across multiple albums somewhere along the line you'd feel bullshitted with the bang that never came.
Alternatively, The Wizard have opted to explore the notion of being heavy in all kinds of inconceivable ways, each time giving new meaning to the word. Now we're in a whole different era. We’ve had the overly experimental Let us Prey, the image re-defining Witchcult Today (with the undeniable help of Liz), the self-sampling nostalgic Time to Die and now it seems the only step after that has been the self-parodying late career Wizard Bloody Wizard. An effort deemed by some to be a step too far but what lies next for The Wizard?
Going back to the whole location thing, it recalls my OG love for RZA. The pleasure of this book is seeing Jus make this personal connection between his own environment and the texts/films/music that he was engorging on. Seeing how it related to his experiences and re-interpreting their narrative around that. Real or imagined. Forming this strange meeting point between two worlds of art and mind. Location isn't talked about enough in art, it really interests me and I believe it should make for more of a driving force than it does. As the abstract and reality face each other off in the mirror, dancing together until they both cross each other's lines to form the unique and in this case can only be described as Electric Wizard.
We need more of what I have previously termed PsychoCondo (see Vol. 1 Issue #7). An expansion of mise en scene in cinema and psychogeography that deals with shared living space chosen by the director (or dreamer) to explore the avenues of their mind and where themes can really wrestle. Think The Shining and Shock Corridor as basic examples. The articulation of abstract inner space, it's meeting with the outside space and the war of the writers ideas is the basis for PyshchoCondo. The world of Wimborne, the world of Oborn and the resulting Funeralopolis. That relationship between them all is what hooks me like a drug. This book will dissect them for you.
With the heavily atmospheric and evocative Electric Wizard, I see the perfect place to explore my theories of PsychoCondo. They are the sound to the images I wish to create, my constant source of inspiration. An endless loop of destruction and creation caught in a whirl of mania walking between worlds. The gateway to creative freedom. Exactly the reason why they've had me obsessed for so long. The more cohesive a vision the more I'm drawn in and this one is strong.
Franklin is very much on the same wavelength about the visualisation projected back on to cinema as being the future of The Wizard. Proof being in the title of his other book he's written prior to this called Heavy: How Metal Changes the Way we See the World Felt a sort of kinship with him when he mentions that he lost his shoe at an Oddfuture gig. I'd like to add, I lost a shoe at a Death Grips gig once, except somehow I managed to find it again. Moved in unison with the crowd around the room full circle, put my foot down and in a near fatalistic motion it landed right back in the shoe about 500 steps and 22 minutes later.
Electric Wizards admiration for films and the way certain disregarded ones stand out to them is an area underwritten about in film criticism. They see textures and atmosphere as a primary form of storytelling even taking prevalence over plot. They can smell sweat and feel crumbling castle walls. These guys were influenced by films and I think it's now time films were influenced by them. We've come full circle. This is where we are in the grand plan. The Wizard entered through one door, came out the other side and are now ready for the Return Trip. No more singles. No more Day Trippers. In my head now, watching those older films back from the early '70s I can hear their music playing over it. Joe Begos has shown some potential with how their music could sound when mixed with film and there's that incredible version of Werewolves on Wheels set to just Electric Wizard but I think I can do better.
To set expectations from the outset, we're not going to win any Oscars like that Hollywood hound Trent Reznor but we will be the greatest. By the time I depart this mortal coil and this fucking world fucking burns away, mark my words, I intend to show the true cinematic potential of Electric Wizard (you've seen nothing yet) and to converge their horrible sound with everything I have to offer using whatever means available. Pen or camera, whatever sticks like blood. Will we ever reach our journey's end, find a new world and start again?
Author: Dan Franklin
Publisher: White Rabbit
Country: UK
Pages: 343
Book Description: Finally, a book on the world's heaviest band. Follow them from their Dorset to origins, through each album and for the final return trip. Writer Franklin, Quietus critic and author of Heavy: How Metal Changes the Way We See the World offers a psychedelic exploration that combines landscapes and soundscapes to get to the heart of The Wizard.
-Jus's da calling highly talented nerd Robert Fripp "Fripper" back in the day
-Jus and his mates pretending to be Godzilla when the acid hit back in the day and knocking over miniature models of the town
-Jus sticking to his guns and refusing to add nu metal elements by copying popular acts like Linkin Park and Slipknot
-The block of blue cheese found in Shaun's duffle bag, which reminded me of a similar incident on a 12 hour bus to Falmouth where I got heavily drunk and forgot about a cheese burger in my pocket and it stank out the whole bus. Danger Mouse still hasn't forgiven me for that one
-All the original line up trying to stab each other whilst Jus and his future wife start boning and watching Werewolf on Wheels excessively
Dawn, crawling down the back streets of Liverpool, vision all blurred, unable to stand up without leaning on brick walls and a menacing man finds me mid throwing up by some back alley bins. He asks me if I want to view some old porn loops and do lemo in his basement. Slightly dangerous? Slightly stupid? How could I say no? So long as he doesn't butt fuck me. I make this my one request. He gives me 3 shots of vodka and lines up the lemo to smooth the senses and then takes me down to hell where the porn collection is strong and ever growing. The devils in desire and he's been let out of his cage for one night only. Next to the porn is stacks and stacks of tins. A smut film enthusiast and a prepper. Who was this guy? Come Armageddon, I know where I'm going.
His name is Lance Wormstrong and he loves porn. Moustache lovers will be glad to know he's still rocking one. Keeping it alive for team sleaze. Tank tops fill his wardrobes. Dumbbells are glued to his arms. Whether mullets are back on the menu doesn't bother him because he'll always be sporting one in ode to his hero Kurt Russell. In fashion? Out of Fashion? Who cares? Such an issue never occupies his mind because as has been revealed, this is no phase for him. He lives his look. Posers and part timers get out of his way. We got a Zealot. Perhaps, he doesn't see the outside world much but he's seen every pussy from the '70s. A scientist and a historian, Lance claims to have seen the pussy hairs gradually die back to baldness and fade from the human race. A fair trade. Except there's no substituting for the real thing now, is there? Gazing upon my host for the evening, I come to the conclusion, the line between loser and legend isn't always so clear.
Scrolling through the selection, I ask if he has, "Any Lasse Braun?". A hairy bandana donning sex freak who became King of the peep show back in the good old days when those little spaces were still around for viewing endless 8mms and people weren't so private about these things.
Lasse Braun was an Italian born in France, making him the ultimate horny doggy. I watched one of his films a while back titled Body Love, a little banger with orgies scored by headmaster of Berlin School, Klaus Schulze. One could consider it proto-Gaspar Noe with the soundscapes being somewhere between Climax and Enter the Void. Lasse's own son is now a famous porn director in his own right, going by the name Axel Braun. You may know him from all his parodies from Batman to She-Hulk. Don't worry he's got all your favourite tight bearing cape crusaders covered. If the hell that is Hollywood gave us an abundance of superhero flicks, then what abomination gave us those superhero porn parodies? Is it an insane reaction to an insane world or the sane reaction to an insane world? Who can say?
Did he have any Lasse Braun then? From Tropical to VIP. Lance was armed with his entire filmography in his basement. From '69 to '75. Every big series Braun did until he hung up his boots bringing a tear to every porn fans eye. You couldn't even find some of these titles online. Any real film lovers fear is the stamp declaring the art which they seek to be "lost". Truth is these films aren't lost, there's just people like Lance jacking off 'til the end of days without a single thought for the rest of us. We've been doomed ever since they shut the porn houses down and sent everyone underground, losing their minds in bunkers and wanking themselves in to oblivion. Come the end of days, when your city lies in dust, a new civilisation will form and thousands of years later, they'll dig up the plastercast body of Lance Wormstrong and he'll be immortalised in the act of lone rangering like the masturbating man of Pompeii.
Naturally, Depraved, Bondage, Perversion and Shocking caught my attention but I went through all of his seminal works for strictly educational purposes. In particular, there were 2 titles that stood out. The Maniac (from the Depraved series) and Cake Orgy (from the Shocking series). These were most definitely stuff to write home about.
2 Classics of the underworld of hardcore pornography viewed live from Lance Wormstrong's basement. We'll start with The Maniac. Not to be confused with Bill Lustig's grimy mannequin freak out. This is easily Braun's 15 minute loop masterpiece and should be sought out immediately if you have not seen it. Those accustomed to the digital age looking for it online, there's 2 copies out there doing the rounds. One's a really bad copy where you can't see anything and the others a really bad copy where everything looks brown. You want the one where everything looks brown.
We open ominously with a high priced vehicle being driven through the quiet streets. Inside this car is a rich masochist who must keep his appointment with 2 stunning sadists, a couple of mean brunettes. Upon arrival, mere seconds after the chauffer opens his door, he is greeted by a series of spitting. The kind that had been well prepared beforehand. Brewing in the throat and mixing with nearby phlegm ready to be hurled out at our wealthy guest. They unload on him before he can do it to them. These girls know how this story usually ends and they're reversing it from the start piece by piece, load by load.
Next, the affluent gentlemen is forced to strip to the skin, exposing his bare body. He is made to masturbate before them. Whilst he's left to his own devices for a moment, the girls decide now is the time for a change of clothes. Out comes the latex suits. In a wellrehearsed routine, they slip in to their torture costumes. They've done this before. Their outfits only make them meaner. Down goes the money man as they ride him round the room like a donkey. Decency disregarded. Degraded to the point of no return. Watch him writhe. Watch him scream. The girls are in control now. They slice open their outfits, exposing nipples and anuses to suck. More he demands. More. More. More. He gets more than he bargained for when one of them urinates straight in to his mouth taking us right in to piss play. But he loves it. How he loves it.
And what is his chauffer doing through all of this? Innocently standing in the corner waiting to take his client home? There's only so long a man can take watching events such as this before he says enough is enough and can no longer be a passive spectator. He wants to involve himself. One of the females happily obliges him, dragging him in to the scene as they go straight to anal. The chauffer is treated with a little more respect as he is allowed to gracefully ejaculate all over his female companion. The wealthy man is not given the same treatment, he has to finish himself off. The end. I clap like the plane has landed. It's cinema. It's breathtaking cinema and it needs to be seen on the big screen in front of the largest audience possible. Dudu-dddu-ddu-dddddd. Pearl and Dean.
By the way, if you've never come across an 8mm porn loop, I'd recommend you treat them like silent films. They're similar in that they don't usually have synchronised sounds but they're not completely silent. They occasionally come with a soundtrack and little sound effects but fuck all that you don't need it. It's artificial anyway and usually sounds crap. What you want to do is mute the fucker and play your own music. Personally, I find Electric Wizard tends to work best. When she was doing the rodeo on the rich man's back to the Wizard was an absolute treat. Anything lo-fi and horrible does the job but you may be different. Couple of sleazy synths here and there may also do the trick.
After an 8 minute standing ovation, I turn my attention to Cake Orgy. Described as "pornography in a new style by Lasse Braun". Perhaps in every sense of the word, this is pornographic. This time there's more than just genitals as pieces of cake cover the bodies becoming indistinguishable. They are placed in little crevasses, slid along thighs and every last crumb is eaten putting a new spin on intercoursing. Cake meets flesh. Flesh meets cake. They become one in an act of utter grotesquery. It could well be a John Waters movie. There isn't much to this one but it sure is a likably horrifying and filthy feast for the eyes.
It takes me back to my own ventures in to risqué food play. Let me take you to 2017 or maybe even 2016. It's second year of university. Me and this girl hook up, for anonymity purposes let's call her, "Sandra Lee Fern". Sorry, that was just the first name that came to mind that sounded exotic and exciting. After a night of drinking, we get back to mine and go straight at it. Now, the place I had back then wasn't very big at all. It was sold as a studio, putting me off the entire concept of studios for years. This was no studio. We're talking storage cupboard at best. Harry Potter had more fucking space than me. That didn't stop me having gaffs and cramming over 30 people in to that tight space at one time. I will not be defeated by space. I refuse. I dubbed that place Souvlaki Space Station. I'm not sure if this was an ironic gesture because of the lack of space or to do with the shoegazey mood lights. Maybe both.
Anyway, back to the story. I'm going at it, Black Little No.1 by Type O Negative is in full swing on the nearby TV, I've got my groove on and every time I'm thrusting my hips are hitting knob. How's that possible, you ask? I am not referring to my Rodney. I'm referring to the kitchen oven. Yes that's how tight things were back then. There was a thin slither between bed and kitchen appliances. Suddenly, I get this great idea. Why don't I put some garlic bread in the oven? If perfectly timed, this could be ready for when I've unloaded and put my Smith and Wesson back in its holster. Get that fookin' cooker on, Kelly! Careful not to draw attention to myself, I slowly slide open the freezer, unpackage the garlic bread and wack it in the oven. So far so good, Sandra Lee Fern is none the wiser.
For the next 20 minutes, I have to play Gordon Ramsey and Johnny Wadd but here's the catch: i have to play them at the same time. A tough balancing act. Not even Edward Norton could do this. This is acting of the highest calibre. True funny business. Quick checks on the burning bread whilst keeping this vagina under close watch on its path to planet satisfaction. Putting a bun in one oven and hoping to God I don't put a bun in the other oven.
A delicate operation. The type they only give to Ethan Hunt, should he choose to accept it. The smell of the garlic hits my nostrils. It's almost ready. How am I going to explain to miss Fern how a garlic bread just happened to make itself and appear cooked straight after fucking? We'll get to that when we get to that. Oh no, she almost spotted me peering at the garlic. I flip her over and re-enter from behind. Perfect, now I can continue cooking and fucking. This is how the pros be doing it.
I grow sloppy and carless in my work, lost in the bread, she turns her head over and catches me hand on the handle, peeping at the garlic. She stops all sexual activity and shouts, "Jacob are you making garlic bread while we're fucking?". Jesus, she got me feeling like that blue cunt in Watchmen. Can't a man multi-task in the sack no more? She caught me red handed. I was cooking and fucking. I solemnly swear that I was up to no good. What could I say? There's no point denying the situation. She got me fair and square. Only Shaggy could deny this one. How ever much I wanted to be, I was not Mr Boombastic Unsure as what to say to alleviate the situation, I simply say, "Want a slice?". Struggling to stay angry at her certified chef and pussy pleaser, she throws out a, "why not?". I grab two slices off the tray and resume squat thrusts in the cucumber patch.
The Maniac
Director: Lasse Braun
Starring: 2 sexy sadists, 1 rich aristocrat and Alfred Pennyworth
Country: Unknown, possibly US or Denmark
Run Time: 11 Mins
Plot synopsis: A rich aristocrat has a meeting with a couple of sexy sadists. When lines become crossed, can his chauffer intervene and put a stop to this madness?
Cake Orgy
Director: Lasse Braun
Starring: Claudine Beccarie, Sylvia Bourdon and Bent Rohweder
Country: Filmed on the Dutch island of Terschelling
Run Time: 7 Mins
Plot Synopsis: 3 female and 2 male food and sex enthusiasts meet up on the sand dunes of Terschelling beach. United by their love of cakes and orgies, they engage in both at the same time and a 5some commences
The Maniac Bonus Points:
-Those girls going to town on the rich masochist
-Bringing out the latex
-Riding the rich guy round the room
-The chauffer getting in on the action
-Leaving the masochist to finish himself off
Overall Score: 4/5
Cake Orgy Bonus Points:
-The idyllic location on the sand dunes
-One for the 'foodies'
-Being a John Waters style gross out
Overall Score: 4/5
"Sweet dreams of you. Every night I go through. Why can't I forget you and start my life anew? Instead of having sweet dreams about you", sings Patsy Cline as the 7 inch spins on late in to the night. Every night I dream of the bomb. Same thing quarter to 3. The man who's seen a million mushroom clouds. I get high off it. I order them in myself now just to feel the rush of the high pressure wave against my cold cranium. Hand shaking the iron fence. Vapourised to the bone. Terminator 2 shit. Judgement Day. I think it's got something to do with Oppenheimer. Why can't I dream of Barbie dolls instead? Or on second thought, would that be more disturbing?
My subconscious is getting so sick of being the guinea pigs in my nuclear weapon testing that they've started fighting back like those little people in Jesse Plemmons's Star Trekkian world. You know the Black Mirror episode? First they got me with a watch. Presenting me with a complex problem I couldn't resolve. They told me they would give me the greatest watch in the history of man. I told them, "nice try dickheads but I hate watches and have considered them obsolete after the invention of mobile phones". They already knew that. That's why they're going to build me a watch so good even I would like it. Told them, "fine, if you think you could succeed in such a task" Next thing I know, there are watches everywhere. Time, time, see what's become of me. Firstly, in quiet places, like the underside of a bridge and then at night when I put my hand under the pillow and out comes a solid gold watch. A note attached to the side reading, "This is your Watch". Time don't fool me no more. I throw my watch to the floor. Suddenly, millions of them hanging from trees and occupying skyscraper lobbies. Everywhere I go, I hear the tick, tick, tick. Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day. Even when they're not in my line of vision as though the sound has been engrained in my brain. Nobody has ever been this scared of clocks. I go to a meeting. Clockophobia Apparently, it's real. I look over to my left and my right. Who is sat next to me but Captain Hook and Doc Brown. This is fucking embarrassing. I call in the bomb. Wipe everything to a crisp and start agaaaaaaain
It's easier to destroy than to create. Doctor Frankenstein's success in creating life fills the pages of a book but when we think about it, all we really have is Oppenheimer's bomb. The sad truth that we never found a way to create life from scratch but we did find a way to destroy ourselves. A painful realisation we must all come to terms with. This is the future we chose. The minute Oppenheimer began working on that bomb, we were all doomed. It's very existence marks the timer on our own destruction. We don't know how long we have but there is a countdown in motion. He knew this from the outset, begging the question of why would one take on such a mission and the consequences that would have on your own mental stability. Christopher Nolan's latest film seeks to answer this.
Well, I hold my hands up, I honestly didn't think Nolan was capable. He's always been that Hitchcock type that's on the edge of auteur and popular entertainer. Criticised for being a stylist with expert technical knowledge (especially in the field of noir) and his films embodying little meaning or substance. Perhaps, he needed someone or even a particular film to endorse him and make him seen in a different light and change public opinion. Truffaut drew our attention to Hitchcock's perversions and a similar argument could be made for Nolan's continuous fascination with time. Whilst, many have discarded Nolan and consider his occasional observations of time contentious in allowing him auteur status (something he constantly battles for like Oppenheimer's security clearance court cases, probably the reason for their massive part of the story and making for a meta movie), I have always been fine with it because generally he picks projects where he can get away with it. In going to silly pop entertainment, I'm personally able to cut him a bit of slack and admire the craft over the content. I've never lied about considering The Dark Knight the peak of popcorn cinema. It's the Prince or Michael Jackson of cinema. Only elitists would deny this, let them fight amongst each other, I'll be forever cheering on the bat as he battles it out with The Joker for control of Gotham.
Oppenheimer is by far Nolan's biggest challenge to date, departing from fiction to fact. No more dreams. No more comic book worlds. Nothing but the word on the page, as it is, as it was and forever will be. Without a doubt, one of the biggest stories of the 20th century along with my other favourite JFK's assassination. It's the story of the building of the off button, the fucking doomsday machine. Such a monumental moment in this planets history and is it Nolan's story to tell? Had I known the full story before the trailer came out, I'd have said he couldn't be more ill-fitted to such a project. Why is the cold and practical technician dealing with the most harrowing event there has ever been since humans walked the earth? His work lacks the humanity required. This surely could not be a match made in heaven.
Before going in to the screening, I'll lay my cards on to the table, here was my main issue: how could a guy with such (not necessarily unagreeable but undeniably) boring politics and a pop filmmaker deal with such a controversial matter? The beauty of a film like JFK, which it has been compared to, is that it's directed by a coke addled conspiracy theorist war vet still fuming with his government from Vietnam and willing to piss people off. How could Nolan possibly do this? He's far too level headed to get pissed off. How could he tap in to the horror of what this single incident would trigger? Would he have to radically change his approach and re-think his entire strategy?
As it turns out, no, not at all. He plays this beast to his strength by telling the story through style, reaching all its important points via sheer method in a manner reminiscent to arthouse classic The Turin Horse Manipulating images and sound until they lead the narrative, taking from conventional dialogue. It even borrows The Turin Horse's themes of demise and decay. He's bypassed the conventional intellectual route in favour of the epic emotional (his strong suit). Capturing pretty much everything that could be asked of him through pure mood. Oppenheimer is a talky film no doubt but that's just the outer body, it's most revealing in its style. All the answers to unlock the film can be found in its technique.
Look, this is a film of formulas, so think of it like this, how does a noncharacter oriented director achieve one of cinemas greatest character studies in the whole of cinema? Oppenheimer's success can be broken down in to a few simple moves. My Psycho-Schradists will like this one. Paul Schrader's appreciation of Oppenheimer as one of the greatest films of this century is no accident, it heavily borrows from his transcendental style theory. Then it combines this with Sidney Luhmet's themes of Fail Safe and his structure and editing of 12 Angry Men. Once these all meet, all you can do is accept Nolan has somehow against all expectations sidestepped his way into carving a character study every bit as gripping as Citizen Kane, Michael Corleone and Daniel Plainview but in a very different style which is basically a hybrid of horror and documentary.
We'll start with Schrader, I believe I have previously discussed transcendental style to some degree back in Vol. 2 Issue #2, regardless though I will try to define it for those unfamiliar with it. Those who believe that style is inferior to substance should listen closely. I've always hated those people who say that something is "style over substance" in a derogative way without understanding the true nature of what can be achieved through style. Yes, there are some empty stylists out there with no weight behind their brand. Not for one second denying this. Nolan may have been arguably one himself. However, transcendental style and slow cinema definitely represent an area in film where style not only becomes equal to substance but can even surpass it. In some cases style takes on meaning making it work on the same level as substance but also better because there's more of a unique artist's spin on the work. This is what happens with transcendental style.
Schrader's definition of transcendent applies to the use of the word in the sense of evoking something beyond human experience and it can only be achieved through style. Although, Schrader means it in a religious sense, Nolan has always been a keen enthusiast in investigating the mystery of existence (take Interstellar and Inception).
Schrader would even admit that expressing the transcendent is not limited to a specific culture and that any artist can aspire to search the beyond. That was the whole point of his book on the matter, in linking these artists from across the world that use the particular style. It then becomes our job as the viewer to break down how the artist achieves that style and how they express this sense of the beyond. In doing so, the form surpasses the content because the style is both universally recognisable and personally adaptable.
You still with me? Cause this is when it gets super complicated, right at the point it gets easiest. As with any style, it often works best simplified. Smaller is bigger. Repetition of the same works better than highly varied. Less is more. It's easier to say the style you want to have but even harder to use it best then to come transcendent. As Eames says in Inception, "No. It's perfectly possible. It's just bloody difficult", the worst thing you can do is overcomplicate as would be the tendency.
This is where a lot of the limitations and simpleness of Nolan's approach actually work in his advantage. Couldn't we have had more on the horror angle? The repercussions of his actions? I'm afraid it's all communicated through the style. I believe we can now discuss Nolan's incredible compositions, which I'm going to be studying for years to come. The walls shaking. The quick cuts to skin peeling off people. The feet slamming against the floor. Cries of "Oppy! Oppy! Oppy!". The life cycle of stars. Alternative universes. Bombs flooding the skies. Balls of fire. All of these images (and even sounds) are repeated throughout. It's in their repetition that the transcendental is expressed. To show any more than what is presented on screen would be to ruin the effect. Making Oppenheimer a masterpiece in symphonic construction.
There's a genuine sense of rhythm at play here and masterful control of the material to the level that one image held a second too long or too less would fail to deliver the sustained sense of impending doom. It's musical in a sense. It's Wagner. It's the apocalypse! You could go crazy here working out how Nolan's achieved this feat.
Maybe Nolan was actually best fit to the project after all in finding the humanity in the picture through (given all this obsessive attention to technique) what you could call science. A rather fitting form of storytelling given the subject involved. This is the biopic operating at its very best. Too often it is used as easy Oscar bait material as your story is already laid out and your audience is aware of it but when the director merges their style with the subject, that's when you get a new form of filmmaking.
It would be unfair not to reference his use of Luhmet's 12 Angry men and Fail Safe as inspiration. He's combined the two movies to create the best of both worlds. 12 Angry men is best remembered for being a court case thriller, which over the course of the movie proves that a man is innocent, basically The Thin Blue Line but as a work of fiction. For directors, it's essentially a manual for shooting exciting court room scenes within one singular room. Learning how long to hold a shot and when to cut in order to prove the films central argument, that is the opportunity 12 Angry Men presents. It's so visually impressive that the film could still reach its logical conclusion without the aid of dialogue. The shots operate as a blueprint revealing the process or a step by step guide towards the denouement. My criticism of the film has always been the same though. The technique can't be faulted but the case itself not as relevant or impactful as it could be. Nolan has borrowed that technical side and combined it with the far more, let's say, explosive Fail Safe. Improving the material and maintaining the skill. Or in other words, using the form to explore the existential in line with transcendental style.
Only a fool would say Oppenheimer is a perfect exercise in transcendental style. It isn't. It only shares similarities. Let's not forget though, Paul Schrader, who coined the term, has never managed to fully create a film in its true style. As with any theory, it should be something to work towards. Purist views are pointless and eventually restrict creativity.
More importantly, what's interesting with Oppenheimer is that it fails to achieve slow cinema or transcendental style status for the exact same reason as Paul normally does. The protagonist is far too fiery and burning with their own inner conflicts that it sabotages the ice cold pacing and threatens to derail the outer movie world at any point. A common trick with slow cinema is that you hold the shot on something in particular and the idea is that it supposedly makes the viewer more receptive to that object in focus as they wonder why does the filmmaker want me to think about that? It's near impossible to do that when your protagonist is constantly threatening to blow the bloody doors off. However, it's that contrast for me that makes Schrader so intriguing. The world moves at a snail's pace but the protagonist is ready to detonate. They are the bomb.
So then, should we see Oppenheimer as a big budget Paul Schrader movie? Absolutely and cherish it because it's not like they're ever going to give Paul Schrader 100 million. This is as epic as its ever going to get. The connections with Schrader are endless. Oppenheimer is 100% a Schrader character. Whiteboards are his diaries as he scribbles formulas over and over in his descent in to madness as a result of battling with his own soul. As with all Schrader films, you just know it's going nowhere pleasant, it's hurtling towards violence and there's nothing you can do about it. The clock sprig cannot be wound continually tighter. As the Earth moves toward the sun, Oppy moves toward violence.
Even the score and its modern classical influences echoes Philip Glass's work on Mishima. My favourite here being 'Fusion'. As I am amazed by how well Nolan has done here, I am amazed with Ludwig Goransson. Do I believe Hans Zimmer could have done this? Yes, he gave us the Interstellar score with the beyond great Max Richter sounding S.T.A.Y. A score in its own right just an absolutely incredible piece of modern classical with every track working on their own separate to the image. Rare for a score. It's miles better than the film.
Nolan must have the right ways of working with his composers because he's created two of the best scores in recent years. Unsure on whether it was the same with this one but with Interstellar, I believe Zimmer was ordered to make the music before seeing the footage. Hence, why the tracks work isolated to the image because they stick to a theme independent of image. They convey what the image does on its own terms rather than emphasising the image. They don't have to aid the visuals because they are the visuals in musical form. I'm imagining that recording of Lynch and Badalamenti sat at the piano but its Nolan and Zimmer. Anyway, back to the original point, I did not believe Goransson capable of making such wonderful music but it's happened.
This leads me in to the sound design, which is near indistinguishable from the score. I'm sure it would piss Kurosawa off, who famously lobbied against Americans using too much music in their films. Oppenheimer seems like it constantly has music or sound effects in the background or driving the scene. If anything it adds to the whole transcendental style thing because never once in that book of Schrader's do I recall him discussing how music could be used. This is a whole new element that might not have been conceivable back then. Going back to how Oppenheimer feels like the very embodiment of cinema as the music of light, it gave me the same feelings I get from a decent Steve Roach space ambient album casting me off in to the far reaches of the cosmos.
As I said, sound is a huge driving force for the movie, just look at the set piece when they first test the bomb. This is to date one of the wildest scenes I've ever seen in the cinema. I felt like Nolan was single handedly bringing the end of the world. Roll the credits on planet Earth, it's time is done. A whirlwind of emotions rushed over me. The countdown commences. The mirroring of clock and bomb. Fritz Lang's contribution to cinema back in 1929. My brain knows it's witnessing a great evil and desperately wants them to fail. My lizard brain wants to see a fucking bomb go off in the IMAX. This is what happens when Nolan directs the apocalypse.
Like myself, when the bomb goes off he gives in to pure lizard brain but after the smoke clears that's when you see the confusion and contradictions. Everyone's celebrating whilst he's left to think about his creation as it slowly drives away from him. The baby has been put up for adoption and is off to its new home. A sad moment for its father. Typical Yanks celebrating the invention of a bomb. Surely, you couldn't do that even if you believed in this whole justification of its existence as a 'deterrent'? On a smaller level, it be like voting Keir Starmer and coming out the polling station like you just fucked Marilyn Monroe. I imagine it be more of a look of teeth clenched grimace having abandoned all your principles just to pick the lesser of two evils. But not the US, they love their weapons of death. They're built differently.
Naturally, the US government goes off and uses it first chance they get to show off their new toy like a kid in the playground. It stopped the war they say! I'm pretty sure the war would have been over in a few days anyway and the Japanese would have surrendered regardless. You were just looking for any opportunity to use it weren't you, war pigs? The US government packaging it up and putting it in the Indiana Jones store room with the ark and aliens was just never going to happen, was it? It couldn't just exist in a room like that quietly with people knowing about it and so being 'deterred'. Such an act wouldn't be in keeping with their culture. It would not be America's style. In true US fashion, they had to use that bomb. They had to show the world they were and always will be the big bully on the block. This world is theirs and we are at their mercy.
As the truck drives off with his bomb or his baby, this image is cast in your minds. A very bizarre scene. It's as though you can feel the soul of Oppenheimer visibly leaving his body with the truck. A pandoras box being opened. A piece of himself lost forever that he will never get back. The devil has come to collect what he is owed.
I see Oppenheimer as this Jack Torrance figure. From the moment he first agrees to make the tool of our own extinction, he has confined and confirmed his place as earth's caretaker leading it to its own demise. Yet, he has rendered himself completely ineffectual, despite being the face of operations, roaming the halls of the Overlook night after night as his prison sentence, a victim of a bigger evil at large.
In a hilarious scene, he confronts evil President Truman (played with real menace by Gary Oldman) about the blood on his hands and he's immediately kicked out of the oval office for being a "Cry-baby". If Oppenheimer, didn't know it before, he knew it then, he was a pawn drawn in to the conflicts of the world and it would carry on with or without him. They've abducted his baby and will do with it what they please. Thank you for service, we shall take it from here. That final image of him staring at the rain drops falling on the water, closing his eyes to disconnect from it all and envisioning the end of the world is the equivalent of The Shining's final photo of Jack anachronistically at the 1921 ball. Committing an act so horrible that your name escapes the bounds of time and can be linked with all the worst atrocities committed by the dark forces in this world.
We're dealing with a man who has created this Donnie Darko like alternative course of history, an unstable tangent universe, that he can only sit back and watch it eat itself. The tragedy lies in that there is no ensurance trap and our living receiver cannot bring the artifact back through time, consequently in this case both tangent and primary universe will be erased. It's a world filled with paradoxes, as though condemned to walking the Penrose steps for all eternity. Climbing and climbing forever never getting any higher. I'm surprised there isn't a scene where Oppenheimer looks in the mirror and repeats the famous solipsistic Robert A. Henlein line, "I know where I came from but where did all you zombies come from" He is the snake that eats its own tail.
Oppenheimer has the perfect ending for this loop loving maniac. You realise he knew what he was getting in to all along and here's the proof. Hiding those words with Einstein was an incredible hook, you needed to know what was said there. The two great minds who know all along. Oppenheimer didn’t make his deal with the devil in New Mexico that was just the place where the devil collected. There was never any ignorance on his part, making Strauss's comments on Oppenheimer even more interesting when he mentions that Oppenheimer was always going to build the bomb as he wanted to put his name out there above everything.
Strauss says some real funny things in this film, like when he goes full Limmy and says, "he's turning the scientists against me!". But when he judged Oppenheimer's character that one could have been right. Was that Nolan's hook for making Oppenheimer? Coming at this like Andrei Rublev with artist as world historic figure but in this case, the scientist as artist. The idea of how far an artist would go to prove their brilliance? Challenging the very notion of putting art out in to the world being an unselfish act.
When it comes to the question of how far an artist can go this was always going to be a potential problem for Mr Nolan, since he's always been a traditionally safe pair of hands. The ideal blockbuster maker trusted with the mega budgets. There will be questions asked of him in his 'downplaying' of certain areas of the story. He suggests that Oppenheimer is driven by some kind of revenge mission for Hitler's antisemitism. However, this is only hinted at and some will say it's because he doesn't want to bring 'Jewishness' too much in to it. As though he was scared of doing so. This may have been true but it didn't bother me so much that in a film with such a beautiful mystery as this the motives should be hidden slightly. To be too revealing would be to kill it as an existential triumph.
Another area that will be scrutinised will be Hiroshima. A more insane and risky director would have put more of the devastation on screen, leading people to argue whether such material was necessary and a step too far. Are they exploiting tragedy and using it as misery porn or are they genuinely wanting to depict the horror of what happened?
My King Thomas Pynchon wrote potentially the best novel of all time with his bomb book Gravity's Rainbow and what did he get? It was selected for the Pulitzer prize in 1974 but the board was too offended by its obscenity to give Pynchon the award. Since there was clearly nothing better to give the award to they just didn't give one that year. Sometimes when the material calls for it, not winning an award is more prestigious. At least in my eyes anyway.
If it were in my hands, I'd decide midway through that I was actually making the Godzilla prequel and would probably be cancelled. These are questions you wouldn't ask with Nolan at the helm. About his most questionable thing is turning the building of the bomb in to an IMAX spectacle but even that's like the lightest crime in the book. Therefore, some viewers may switch off because the film doesn't contain this conflict. I thought this would bother me more than it did but I couldn't avoid the fact that even though the film doesn't often verbally express guilt you can't deny feeling it in mood. Only an idiot would say the atmosphere isn't that of reflection and regret. Once again coming back to my point about this being an unconventional masterpiece in achieving all this through style and technique. It's the delicate assortment of images and sound design that gets the point across over dialogue. So rare these days for a director to be thinking visually and aurally how to tell the story.
I can't even remember the last film that gave me nightmares like this one. Nolan's vision is too gargantuan to ignore. His end of the world too operatic. Unexpectedly, what freaked me out was just how much this film had affected me without realising just from the trailer. I felt like more and more about it was revealing itself to me in dreams. My two favourite pieces for Funeralopolis have been the Chicago Mob Story and the B29 Crash site, both of which the more I think about it were trying to work out my feelings towards Oppenheimer and to engage with the material without having seen it. Possibly, like the titular scientist, I knew what I was doing all along. Regardless, the similarities remain striking. The Chicago Mob Story had the eye closing and The B29 Crash Site had the looping.
Focusing on the eye closing, Oppenheimer's ending reminded me of early Nolan banger, Memento. It's the same action in the two films but the context differs greatly. In Memento, he shuts his windows to the soul and in the narration, says, "I have to believe that when my eyes are closed the world is still there". Leonard was a man who came to believe his actions had little consequence in the world. That if he couldn't remember what he'd done, noone would. So the eye closing is his way of imagining the world continuing on without him but in his departure hoping his actions would have some influence and meaning. His ideas survive even if his body doesn't. 10 years have gone behind him. No-one told him when to run and he missed the starting gun.
At the end of Oppenheimer, our scientist does the very same thing with the eye closing but he pictures something very different. He didn't miss the starting gun, he was the one firing it. Instead of the world continuing, he sees the world ending. His assertion and actions having too big a consequence on the world. It's an inverse in every way but still using a stylistic trademark, I salute that. Don't think I didn't notice what Oppenheimer is doing during his conversation with Einstein. He watches the raindrops falling on the water. What does water do? It flows. It's a continuum. What a poetic way of showing the neat consequence of action. A chain reaction. To me then, the eye closing represents this desire for a man to escape his time and situation. To remove himself and the domino effect of his contributions from existence. Considering he's then plagued with visions of the end of the world, it's safe to say... he fails.
Ah the old Nolan obsession with time, as clear as day. Here he's made the ultimate Christopher Nolan movie. But where does a filmmaker concerned with time go after making this epic musing on the end of the world? I want to say back to the beginning but he's already made Memento. Where he goes next is anybody's guess. All I will say is I never had Nolan creating one of the best films of all time.
Did you know before Scorsese made The Aviator, a film about another controversial but talented American figure tasked with building the country's war machines, Nolan already had a script for it he was going to make? Well, I had Killers of the Flower Moon down as being the movie of the year. Scorsese's got some real fucking competition this time. He may be the best American director of all time but even I don't think he'll be able to beat Oppenheimer. Not a sentence I thought I'd ever say. Nolans getting his long awaited revenge.
You know, I've never understood the obsession with Interstellar. Always thought its scientific exploration is marred by sentimentalism. Nolan part way through decides he's Kubrick and spends like 20 minutes trying to get a ship to dock. I mean visually its fine but when Kubrick was doing it, wasn't it about different stages of human evolution and manipulating the limitations of film as a medium to show that? When Nolan did it, it was just a ship docking and some silly family melodrama. Hans Zimmer's score carries the movie. The only thing worth watching it for. Maybe I'm just fuming because instead of a planet of apes, there's just a planet of water. Yeah, it's time again I guess but it's not nearly as poetic as Oppenheimer's use of water. Put simply, when Nolan made his 2001? who fucking cares? When Nolan gave us his Dr Strangelove? Oh my fucking God, what a banger! What do you have up your sleeve next, Nolan? In the words of Vera Lynn, 'We'll Meet Again'. As I'm writing this, I hear Paul Schrader has been offered a JFK assassination film. Does this more big budget transcendental style? Catch me doing donuts around Albert Dock and singing to myself, "keep smiling through, just like you always do, 'til the blue skies chase those dark clouds far away!"
On that joyous note, time for this week's Kelly adventure. Nothing but storms all afternoon. Someone had upset the Gods. I see I have a message from Ricardo Carvalho, he's in the pub downstairs with Electric Six. Whoever decided to stack flats on top of a boozer, give them a medal, it's perfect. I tell him to order me a drink. I'll be down once Werewolves on Wheels and this last bottle of Peroni are finished.
That's the Werewolves on Wheels Electric Wizard re-edit on YouTube. Always makes for a good pre-drink entertainment to get in to the mood if you know what I mean. The credits roll and I abseil down to the boozer below to grab my next pint. We agree to pick up a few crates and head Electric Six's. I hear a few notes of Deftones My Own Summer and I instantly demand to be fed all and any Sonny Cheeba on the premises.
By 10pm, we are vibing hard. The Boy Harsher is on. Their latest catchy banger Autonomy. I'm giving it the old Kelly stomp like it's 2015. Once they get in motion these fuckers can't be stopped. High knees, side steps, cross overs you name it. They're in control now. Suddenly, I remember we're meant to be at some gig seeing our mates band. I slap my legs, have a serious word with them and demand they stop moving. Having regained control of my legs, we sprint over to the venue to see Van Royale. Some Radiohead meets Led Zeppelin project, if the two can meet. Mr Steely Dan is already there in the crowd and motions us over. In front of him is a smiling, dashing young female we encountered the other week when out on the town. No way, that means my man's successfully coerced her in to a date this evening. We live in a post-Magic Mike XXL world and we love when our boys are doing good. Although, noticing him engulfing her like a fucking enzyme from behind, you'd never have thought this was a first date. Only Leatherface himself pulls out the old hug from behind on the first date. It's outrageous. It's Mr Steely Dan.
There's a break in between the songs and the silence forces me to morph in to my gig persona of Tim Heckler, as I let out an unusual request of, "play me something I can fuck your Dad to!". Did I really just say that? The Sonny Cheeba must be getting to my melon. Put down the drink and go home immediately. No chance. Must go on. After Van Royale's final song, we head next door to The Jack. The Jack tends to play some alright stuff, mainly garage, punk and that woeful 2000s indie revival rubbish I wish they wouldn't. So really you've got like a 2 in 3 chance of hearing something tolerable, which by all means is not a bad odds.
A round of shots are handed out across the bar. Not my favourite way to consume a beverage but a definite senses sharpener that was fully needed under the current circumstances. I'm barely given time to get the taste of tequila out my mouth when I'm hurled down the stairs by Mr Steely Dan. I wasn't even aware The Jack had a basement, so this was new to me. We were off the map and dangerous things happen when you go off the map. It was my round and so it was time to pay the bar man a quick visit. Standing only a few feet away from me at the bar was a fine dame waiting to be served. Where did she come from? Where was she going? What was her story? Who knew. She glances over in my direction. "Alright?", I throw across casually. Bonkers by Dizzee Rascal begins pumping out the speakers. As though suddenly activated, this woman, who I shall refer to as Doctor Zira, grabs me and launches me in to the nearest wall. Luckily, my reactions are quick enough to get my fingers round the freshly poured point standing tall on top of the bar just in time.
I'm launched in to every wall of the Jack basement like we're auditioning for the next John Wick movie if you know what I mean and I think you do. She bites my head off like it's Jennifer's Body and I'm poor old Seyfried. I never stood a chance. Catching my breath, I hit her with the question. She nods and adds, "let's get out of here". On our way up the stairs, Doctor Zira informs she needs to go to the toilet for a quick one. I follow her on up to the women's and wait outside like an honourable gentlemen. That's when she realises I never came in with her. Her head pops round the door and she shouts, "come on!". I know exactly what that means. One look left, one look right. The coast is clear. "Fuck it", I mutter and let her lead me astray in to the first empty cubicle.
She locks the door behind her, points to the toilet and yells, "sit". You best believe that like your Mum's little Jack Russell, I went and sat on that toilet like a good little boy. Some things are just too rude to say no to. The Fraulein rides me silly and all the time I'm expecting security to burst through the door and expose me for the horny bastard I am. So horny, we couldn't even make it back to the flat around the corner. When you gotta go, you gotta go.
I finish up and we're in such postintercourse euphoria (or maybe it was the Sonny Cheeba) that we somehow get lost in The Jack and can't find the way out. We end up out the back entrance in to the alley. Locked doors line the way. Neither side has the exit route, no Link on the Nokia 8110 slider to get us out of this one, we are trapped. "Should we go back the way we came?", I ask, giving in. We take one more look at each other and the horniness over takes us again.
I splinter me hands twisting her in to all sorts of contortions on the disregarded wooden structures left in the back alley. All war wounds were worth it. Blood, sweat and tears when it comes to this shit. Eventually, I find the best position is to hit that from behind as she leans against the wall for support. Suddenly, the wall begins to move. That is no ordinary wall, I think to myself. Walls don't move. It isn't a wall, it's a door. Some unfortunate minimum wage Jack staff member given the sorry task of taking the bins out that night witnesses a horrifying sight. My reactions are too slow to catch Doctor Zira. She goes down screaming in a heap. The Jack staff member also lets out a scream in shock. I'm standing there caught red handed in the act. Since my rod is just fully exposed to the world, I pull up my pants and zip up in rapid motion. "You can't be doing that here", says the Jack worker. "Sorry", I say with a smile on my face. I was not.
At this point, yep, we were definitely kicked out The Jack. I don't think you're supposed to get your fuck on in the boozer so I fairly accept my dismissal and walk on out. On the way past Mr Steely Dan, I ask him nicely, "please take this woman off my hands, she's crazy". He just looks in to my eyes and taps me on the shoulder. A look as if to say, "you're in control of your actions, you know how to end this but you're not going to, are you?". Fuck, he was right. Doctor Zira and I make it back to the rendezvous point: Kelly's apartment. But before we make it there, this woman demands feeding so we visit the corner shop for some Doritos.
Something I thoroughly regret doing because I found half the packet under the sheets the next day and crumbs for the next week. Had her mouth stopped working? Or was it that I launched them across the room when she was still munching them when I was trying to sleep? Could be the latter. I get The Swamp Rats noisy cover of Louie Louie on and we move on to round three.
Mid-way through the fornicating, she reveals to me her Daddy issues. They all crack in the end. "Tell me more", I say and proceed to go town on her holiest of holiest like Junior Soprano in a cheap motel in Boca Raton. There's no point in fighting it. If this is where they want to go, let them. Use it. Use it like it's your year 9 drama piece. Jacob Kelly does not kink shame. We finish up our meetings of genitalia for the second to last time and I put on a movie not even bothering to inquire as to what she would like to watch. "What's this?", she asks. "Planet of the Apes 2. Beneath the Planet of the Apes", I answer. "There's more than 1 Planet of the Apes film?", she questions further. Such a question rattles me and I snap with, "Where the fuck have you been since 1968?". She apologises for not knowing the entire history of the Planet of the Apes.
I inform her that she has a lot of catching up to do, "I'd say about 9 movies and 2 TV shows". She shakes her head not having any of it. This does nothing to deter me as I state, "there's a whole fucking Marxist rebellion about 4 films in that you don't know about". This leaves her absolutely baffled and unable to say anything other than, "what?". "The apes get organised. The apes get fucking organised, alright? That's all I'm saying", I double down. Completely unsure as to whether she's listening at all here because she then asks, "so what is like the concept of the Planet of the Apes?". Opting not to give her a cheeky Tim Henman back hander across the face for her ignorance, as was my first instinct, I proceed to explain the concept of the Planet of the Apes.
I take her through it all, including the time I saw a copy Tim Burton's dreadful remake lying on a shelf at a house party and ended up getting so wound up by its presence that I vollied it about the gaff, elbow dropped it in just about every room and then tossed it in to the fire outside. Throughout my intricate retelling of the Planet of the Apes saga, she keeps interrupting me with more on the subject of her Daddy issues. By the end all I can say is, "it's a role reversal exercise, Zira. And something tells me a horny little freak like yourself might appreciate that".
In the early hours of the morning, I go to the toilet and when I return this lady is sprawled across the edge of the bed like a dog. "You can get under the sheets, you know?", I make her aware. Upon receiving this information she gets under as though she had to hear these words from me first. The go ahead. The all clear. Must be the Daddy issues. No point dwelling on it. We finally call it a night around 6am. At 7am, I am the first to stir and with a killer hangover all I can think is get the TV on and distract myself immediately. About 20 minutes later, Zira raises a head, closely inspects the television, laughs to herself and says, "why are you watching David Attenborough?". Barely able to speak and pointing at the lion spread out across an empty field enjoying his quiet time, I add, "because this is all my brain can compute right now!". Can't believe I was being bullied for watching David Attenborough.
The lion sees some prey in the distance, roars and goes hunting. This stirs something in me and we go on to round 4. Come to about 8am, we're slightly more sober and functioning. Zira realises she's lost almost all her belongings other than the clothes on my floor. Brilliant. I hand over all my devices and say, "log in to your social medias or whatever". None of this works in this day and age because of all the 2 step verification processes. Gotta love Google security. In the end, I have to walk her down to Central and get her train ticket to her destination. She's with God from there. She was fun though.
I dunno, might call her again. You're talking to a guy who thinks Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and Badlands are the two greatest rom-coms of all time. We hit the country, we fight a lot, we fuck a lot, the bodies pile up, we get in a high speed pursuit with the cops and then we go our separate ways cursing each other's name for eternity. This is Jacob Kelly's ideal romance. If this is your idea of a good time, you know where I am. My final words to the doctor are, "if you ever want to get crazy again and fuck around in the Jack toilets, call me". Au revoir, Zira.
Heading back up to Bold Street, the next thing I saw was this. A loose vagina blocked out the sky. It's sweaty lips parted revealing a black hole stretching far beyond this world. Four men on horse-back came riding out to meet me. The first horse was white as Shadowfax and its owner proudly showed off his shiny Gold crown. Nobody would dream of snatching at the booty on his head because in his arms he held a bow. A bow aimed right me. Such a primitive tool as this didn't have laser sights like in Predator but I felt it locked and loaded on me. My every move was being watched. I needed to think on my options carefully. Too late, the second rider closes in. His horse redder than the devil's dick, he waves his sword high above his head. I held my hands up in defence, a bright light blinds my eyes and when I open them I am somehow not sliced in half.
Barely able to see, I blink rapidly in some drastic attempt to regain my vision. A third horse, this time black, lunges towards me. His weapon? A scale. Not a clue how he plans on using that. He seems to know because he's not slowing down. Maybe he's going to throw it at me. I brace myself. Surely he's not a body shamer in 2023? Our fourth guest looks the hardest of the lot, ready to attack with a fucking scythe. I couldn't even tell you what colour his horse was because I was too busy looking at my man's scythe. You don't see too many of them nowadays. He meant business.
A roaring siren deafens me. In a heap, I collapse to the ground. Hand over ears, screaming, "Where's that sound coming from?". In comes a preacher as humanity's final representative. Here to decipher the end of the world as it comes. He's dressed in a shirt and tie, his scruffy hair blows in the wind. "And so it came to be the four angels were let loose!", cries the preacher. I begin to wonder whether he can hear the sirens thundering. My answer comes when he cups one hand round his ear and raises the other to the sky, pointing far above as he screams, "can you hear the music, children? His heavenly trumpet ringing for all to dance and welcome him. The one true God is on his way. On his way to rapture his faith and send this evil world straight to the fiery pits of hell".
Finding any strength within me, I defy my preacher, demanding he, "stop that. No more fire. No more torment. Turn the siren off now! Put an end to this while you still can". The preacher can only laugh as he mutters, "It's too late. Dark is the hour and death is the place. There's nothing you can do. It's coming". Still feeling the ear piercing hum, I look around for the source of the siren and ask, "what does that sound mean? What does it mean?". No answer comes my way. Only more laughter over and over from our uncaring preacher. I embrace the foetal position, closing my eyes bracing for impact as shown in all the '50s public information films. Through thin slithers between my fingers, I see a red cloud in the distance. Another dream perhaps? Or had I been preparing for the real thing? Seeing the end a little bit more every night? Is this to be the final mushroom cloud? One More Red Nightmare.
As the red cloud rises, my heart sinks. This is it. I memorise every detail, the blast will soon be upon me, vaporisation imminent. You know the words as they have been given to us. Prophesised in Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Say it with me now, "in one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet is now dead".
Dying sun fades in our sky. The time has come to say goodbye. It's happening. My angel has heard me. The prayer had been answered. A reprieve had been granted. The dream was now broken. Broken by a string. This was no mushroom cloud. This was some kids red birthday balloons. He'd set them free at the break of dawn. Til one by one they were all gone. "Hast du etwas zeit für mich?", asks the child. "Fuck off", I replied, getting a dirty look from his mother. When I came to my senses, I was sprawled across the bombed out church steps. Maybe lay off the Sonny Cheeba, yeah?
Director: Christopher Nolan
Screenplay: Christopher Nolan (based on American Prometheus by Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin)
Cinematography: Hoyte Van Hoytema
Music: Ludwig Göransson
Production Company: Syncopy Inc, Atlas
Entertainment
Distribution: Universal Pictures
Country: USA
Run Time: 180 mins
Budget: 100 mil
Plot Synopsis: The building of the bomb. The device with the power to terminate all life on earth. Oppenheimer is assigned such a task during WW2. Science and morality is all that stands in his way.
-One of the biggest movies since JFK
-Bringing cameo cinema back. We shall now rank my favourite cameos:
1 Benny Safdie for finding everything boring, getting a naughty handshake in there and putting a shift in on the accent
2 Gary Oldman as evil Truman calling Oppy a "Cry-baby"
3 Iron Man realising he can act again and going full Limmy as he kicks off that Oppy is turning the scientists against him
4 Florence Pugh for being an unhinged horny Marxist and getting her cleavage out for the first time, we salute it (didn't think Nolan had it in him to get this sleazy)
4 David Krumholtz making his big return since 10 Things I Hate About You and just being a sound guy who opposes the bomb
5 Jason Clarke for his intense interrogation methods
6 Josh Hartnett for losing the plot every time Oppy involves himself with the union
7 Matt Damon for his multiple shouting episodes and dry cleaning demands
8 Casey Affleck having like no scenes and still coming off as a slimy prick
9 Dane Deehan just being his usual horrible disgusting self
Overall Score: 5/5