This week Chris Deacy is joined in the studio by Lawrence Jackson to discuss the films; Picnic at Hanging Rock, Big Wednesday, Greenberg, and Queen and Slim.
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00:00Hello and welcome to Kent Film Club, I'm Chris DC and each week I'll be joined by
00:17a guest from Kent to dive deep into the impact certain films have had on their life.
00:22Each guest will reflect on the films which have meant the most to them over the years.
00:27And every week there will be a Kent Film Trivia where we quiz you at home about a film that
00:31has a connection to the county.
00:33And now let me introduce you to my guest for this week.
00:37He teaches film practice at the School of Arts at the University of Kent and specialises
00:41in directing actors, fiction filmmaking and screenwriting.
00:46He is Lawrence Jackson.
00:49Great to have you on the programme Lawrence.
00:51Thanks Chris, thanks for having me.
00:52An absolute pleasure.
00:53Now I can see that you've gone for, oh this is Peter Weir isn't it, Picnic at Hanging
00:57Rock?
00:58That's it, yep.
00:59So, I mean first as a preface I should say the films I've chosen I think are gems that
01:05mean something to me personally, all four of them, they're not necessarily the greatest
01:10films of all time like a film by John Ford or Pauline Pressburger.
01:14So Picnic at Hanging Rock which came out in 75, the reason I chose it is it was what really
01:20got me to fall in love with film.
01:22When I was 13 and I've thought about this and is a possible reason I love this film
01:27that it has a lot of teenage girls in white dresses prancing around and was it my adolescent
01:33self interested in that and it wasn't, honestly.
01:37It was actually because the combination of this film of landscape, kind of violence underlying
01:42the landscape and the atmosphere with the panpipe music and mystery of what happened
01:46to the girls that disappear in the narrative, I'd never seen anything like it.
01:50And before that films for me were moments from films, so let's say Steve McQueen in
01:56The Great Escape on his motorbike escaping Nazis or Julie Andrews on the hillside in
02:03The Sound of Music and this was the first film where I really thought I've not seen
02:08anything like this, I don't know what this is.
02:11Yeah, it's the eeriness of it because it settles, is it Valentine's Day or it's set in 1900
02:16and it's one of those sort of episodes where they go and they disappear and what's really
02:21good about this film, well depending on how you look at it, is that we don't know that
02:25the mystery sustains itself and it works because of that enigma that travels all the way through
02:30it and it leaves you feeling really quite discombobulated.
02:34Exactly so I think when one's a teenager, certainly when you're 13 you're already discombobulated
02:39enough without seeing a film like Picnic at Hanging Rock and it was so haunting, I completely
02:43agree with what you just said.
02:44The mystery isn't resolved, it's based on a novel by Joan Lindsay and your everyday
02:49story of three schoolgirls go missing on this trip to Hanging Rock.
02:54One theory is, did the goddess of love, did Venus abduct them to be her handmaidens?
03:00So it's really fantastical and atmospheric, eerie and also I just, I think Peter Weir
03:06went on to make all kinds of wonderful films like Gallipoli and Witness and The Truman
03:12Show, which links well with this actually in terms of the claustrophobia of an institution.
03:23But really I'm still passionately interested in films using landscape in an interesting
03:30way and this absolutely does this and was the kind of, I think was the, really left
03:35its mark as new Australian cinema, Australian new wave cinema in the 70s and this was the
03:40one.
03:41I didn't know that at the time when I saw it, it just made its mark on me.
03:44Because it feels like landscape is one of the characters, I mean it's defined by that
03:48and as I recall I don't think there's necessarily a lot of dialogue in the film, that's my recollection
03:53anyway, maybe I'm wrong on that but it feels like there are lots of moments there of stillness
03:58as we're sort of lapping up the fact that there's a sense of foreboding, is that right?
04:01Yeah absolutely and actually the soundtrack mixes the panpipes sort of with electronic
04:08sounds, so the idea that there's something that the landscape is alive and is ominous,
04:13is menacing, sounds as they climb the rock, it's artificial, it's beautifully crafted
04:18I think and also the characters of the different girls, everyone who's been to school relates
04:24to that, sort of people who feel left out, who the popular kids are, all of that, it
04:32ticks those boxes and I think I was too young to realise it's erotic, it's about the erotic
04:37in landscape because there's another character who sees the girls pass by, a kind of farm
04:42worker guy who comments on them and I was too young really to understand it at that
04:47level but I think it's influenced people like Carol Morley made a film called The Falling
04:52that came out recently with Florence Pugh in it and I really see its influence on quite
04:57a few filmmakers recently.
04:58Yeah and as you were saying that it made me think of the first time I saw Hitchcock's
05:02The Birds where again it's the inexplicability of some act of nature, something that if you're
05:09looking for a resolution you're not going to get it and you think is it to do with sin,
05:12is it the fact that some tumultuous thing has happened in somebody's life that they're
05:16being punished for it, with Picnic at Hanging Rock they're all adolescent, there's that
05:19sense that there's transgression, there's taboo or the thought of it, is that something
05:24that came out?
05:25I mean it's the sort of film that if you watch it as you say as a teenager it's actually
05:28really quite an overwhelming experience.
05:30I completely agree with that, it's transgressive and that's the promise it holds for the viewer
05:36especially if you're 13 as I was which is this is different, it's liberating and it
05:42is the forbidden so all of that and also because it's one of the explanations possibly it's
05:47mystical, we don't know what happened and that is very appealing to a young mind I think
05:51because it's cosmic and so I really fell for it and from then on there were other films
05:57around that time.
05:58People tend to say oh the film that influenced me was Scorsese's Raging Bull or something
06:02and the truth is that's kind of a cool choice and for me it wasn't, it was seeing this.
06:07Well let's see if there's any more left field choices.
06:10So you've gone for Big Wednesday for your second film which if I'm honest I don't think
06:18I've seen this but I kind of feel I should have seen Big Wednesday, it's got Gary Busey
06:21in it.
06:23So I unreservedly love this film and I think you need to enjoy this film, park your irony,
06:30you know it's pre-irony, it's a film that is about as you can see three friends who
06:36go surfing together in their youth in 1960s California, they're called Matt, Jack and
06:42Leroy and what, so John Milius, just sort of a tiny bit of context, he's not fashionable
06:48now, he's kind of forgotten I fear as one of the movie brat generations.
06:52So he came out of USC with George Lucas and was a formidable writer and then a director
06:57and he made these three wonderful films in the 70s, Dillinger and The Wind and the Lion
07:02and then Big Wednesday.
07:03His shtick if you want to call it that was mythologising characters, so making life mythic,
07:12giving it a kind of Homeric quality and this is a really nostalgic film about these guys
07:21in their youth and it's beautifully structured so it follows four different swells, so four
07:27different north, south, west swells that the boys surf and of course they get older so
07:34it's a coming of age film.
07:35I think people from that generation like John Carpenter and John Milius, their big influence
07:40was the western, one of, it was those studio pictures and Milius films it like a western
07:46so at the end you fear they're not going to reunite, one of them's gone to Vietnam, you
07:50don't know if he makes it or not, will they reunite for one last surf of the wave, so
07:55it sounds really cheesy as I'm describing it I realise and then when they do reunite
07:59with their surfboards the camera tracks back and they walk towards and it's like filming
08:04a shootout in a western and so they walk slowly towards the sea so instead of a bad guy there's
08:10the ocean waiting for them to surf and it's incredibly moving because it's about people
08:18perceived as heroes in this community who of course it's their golden youth and then
08:24the time has passed so Matt Johnson for example, that character, he's an alcoholic, he becomes
08:29drunk, that's not spoiling it because you know pretty early on.
08:33So I have a lot of love for this and I saw it at the Prince Charles cinema in Leicester
08:36Square in my early 20s so moving on through my biography and again I just liked its lack
08:44of cynicism.
08:45I mean surfing is a metaphor in so many ways because of course the film that came to mind
08:49not least when I saw the image on the screen was Point Break which also fused genres but
08:55there's something about surfing and the mystic and in this case a coming of age adventure
08:59because there was that early film Peter Yates made around that sort of period in the late
09:041970s as well.
09:06Breaking Away was a cycling film.
09:07And I don't know if that was similar, as you were describing the film it made me think
09:10of that.
09:11So I think that film Breaking Away but also skateboard movies, there's a documentary called
09:17Dogtown and Z-Boys that became a movie, a feature film and surf movies I think it is
09:23very filmic, it's cinematic as well as mystical.
09:28I'm what I call an armchair surfer so I've never surfed but I'll read books and watch
09:33movies about surfing, I find it and Point Break I love, I use it in teaching actually
09:37which was I think 15 years after this and of course Gary Busey's in Point Break playing
09:43Keanu Reeves' partner which is a nod to this film.
09:46But the music in this film is really stirring, it's by Basil Polidouris who did Conan the
09:50Barbarian and Total Recall and it's really, I think it's me feeling nostalgic for California
09:57not that I ever grew up there, I grew up in the west of England so it's an idealised version
10:04of what I didn't know and also I wasn't part of a gang, a male gang growing up like these
10:10guys on the beach so I think a sort of vicarious joy I get from it.
10:17There is something isn't there about experiencing if you like somebody else's nostalgia or being
10:23nostalgic about something that you didn't experience but which taps into something that
10:27you could have done. So whether you're an armchair surfer and yet this film about the
10:31actual surfers, it's that ideal maybe that you perhaps have always connected to.
10:36For example, I have sisters not brothers and it's very much about a kind of brotherhood
10:42between boys, a fraternity and it's also as you can see homoerotic, so sort of bronzed
10:47young bodies which is taken further by Point Break, those movies.
10:54It's not, there's no irony in it, there's an older character called Bear who's a sort
10:59of grizzled veteran who makes the surfboards and really he's a sort of avatar for I would
11:04say John Wayne in Westerns. So it's very much about handing the torch down to a new generation
11:10and so actually it's themes are quite, it's reaching for something quite big and ambitious.
11:15I don't know if it achieves that but I like that, I like it and it's dreamlike, that's
11:21the one thing it connects, connects it with Picnic at Hanging Rock is it's very much
11:26escapist in a different way.
11:27Brilliant, well that's about all the time we have for this first half of the show. However
11:32before we go to the break we have a Kent film trivia question for you at home. Which film
11:38from the Marvel Cinematic Universe shot an elaborate stunt sequence in Northfleet, Kent?
11:44Is it A. Captain Marvel, B. Black Panther or C. Doctor Strange? We'll reveal the answer
11:52right after this break, don't go away.
12:06Hello and welcome back to Kent Film Club. Just before the ad break we asked you at home
12:11a Kent film trivia question. Which film from the Marvel Cinematic Universe shot an elaborate
12:16stunt sequence in Northfleet, Kent? Was it Captain Marvel, Black Panther or Doctor Strange?
12:23And now I can reveal to you that the answer was in fact C. Doctor Strange. The car accident
12:29which prompts the main character's transformation was filmed in Northfleet with the industrial
12:34shoreline used to stage an elaborate stunt sequence at the beginning of the film. Did
12:40you get the answer right? Well it is time now Lawrence to move on to your next chosen
12:45film and you've gone for Greenberg. Yeah. Which I have seen. Great, well so this means
12:53a lot to me as well. It came out I think 2010 and it was a turning point in my life where
13:00I was moving into a different time in my life and the film really spoke to me. Basically
13:03it's a film about male failure and inadequacy and fear and the Greenberg character played
13:10by Ben Stiller, he's feeling lost, he's house sitting for his brother or sister in Los Angeles,
13:15he's come from the East Coast and it hasn't worked out the way he thought in his career.
13:21He was in a band and he's left a bit of a trail of destruction behind him in his relationships
13:25and basically he's behaving like an idiot and I related very strongly to it and I think
13:29most people, whatever gender, can. And it's a film I think about your life not turning
13:34out the way you had planned basically and Noah Baumbach who wrote it and directed it,
13:39he along with I'd say Alexander Payne and the Coens, they're the poets of male inadequacy.
13:46The Coens obviously make other kinds of films, a film like Inside Llewyn Davis for example.
13:51So anyway I saw this film with my wife, who's still my wife, and she turned to me at the
13:57end and said, you are Greenberg. And then cut to ten years later and we watched it again
14:04and she said, you're still Greenberg. So I don't know what that says but it's basically,
14:11it's fascinating about making mistakes and moving on and of course he meets Greta Gerwig,
14:16her character in the film and in real life Noah Baumbach got together with Greta Gerwig
14:24on this film and they've gone on since. They wrote Barbie together for example, that she
14:28directed and so just as a kind of meta experience it's very interesting. But for example there's
14:33a famous scene in Greenberg where he goes to a party full of people half his age. He's
14:37around 40 or a bit younger and they're about 20 and he's just, he says all the embarrassing
14:42things that you hope you would never say in that situation. So it's a film about alienation
14:46and it has a very beautiful structure at the end. So music is always important in Noah
14:51Baumbach's films, so films trying to go like in a different way, marriage story. And there's
14:55a playlist that he's putting together for Greta Gerwig who is obviously the woman he
15:00should be with and who offers redemption. And at the end she's listening to his playlist
15:07and she listens and she just looks at him and says this is you and that's the end of
15:11the film. So it has a lot of weight. It's sort of like this is the real you, you need
15:17to be yourself. So I took a lot from it personally but I think it's a really underrated film.
15:24I think it's by far his best film.
15:25Because often when you're watching a film and I always think of the Back to the Future
15:28scene when it's always impressing on the first date because then it's cosmically important.
15:32Because otherwise if he doesn't he'll be written out of existence. But that sort of sense here
15:36where authenticity. He comes from a more nerdy sort of background. He's somebody who wants
15:42to woo the woman. I saw it many years ago. But as you were describing it, there is something
15:48in there about the universality of somebody trying to make a connection with somebody
15:53but aware that if they be themselves they're both damned and also you mentioned the word
15:59redemption. It's that twin thing. They want to be with somebody but they're also rather
16:05more mindful of what can go wrong. But if they're not themselves then it's not going
16:09to last anyway.
16:12Totally and it's in a line, you could say it's in a line from other films like Gregory's
16:17Girl in the 80s. The idea of it doesn't go the way you planned. It's a love story. It's
16:23sort of a romantic comedy with a very strange meet cute because I think they meet through
16:27their dog, you know, walking a dog. I can't remember. And it's very gentle and dry sense
16:33of humour. But yeah, that feeling of redemption and I think in a way watching it, it gave
16:38me hope and it wasn't I really. I did identify with the Greenberg character. I think most
16:43people, certainly men of a certain age ought to identify, have been in his shoes at some
16:47stage. They may deny it and I felt that and it was kind of a triumph.
16:52And I'm drawn to those films. You mentioned Gregory's Girl because we've all been there.
16:55That sort of thing of the way we hold people up on a pedestal, certainly in a school environment
17:00and you just know that there's no way you're going to get that woman. But then sometimes
17:03things flip and Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion is a film I really like because it
17:08then plays on the thing of what happens ten years later when actually those people who
17:12were once the centrepiece are now actually perhaps more on the periphery and those quirky
17:17individuals are the ones who are perhaps now in the mainstream, who are able to flourish.
17:22That seems to come out in Greenberg.
17:24Very much so and it's about time as well. So in a different way relating it to Big Wednesday,
17:33the passage of time and how we change. And the Greenberg character was in a band with
17:39Reece E. Farnes' character. Reece E. Farnes is great in this film, playing a long-suffering
17:43friend of his who he treated very badly. Greenberg has treated so many people badly, burnt his
17:48boats in his career, in his personal life. And yet there's forgiveness on the side of
17:53Reece E. Farnes. So I guess there is a morality, there is a message in the film and I normally
18:00resist any kind of quote-unquote message. But I think it's, and it's very funny, great
18:05film.
18:05Fantastic. Well it's time now Lawrence to move on to your final chosen film and you've
18:10gone for Queen and Slim.
18:14I have, yeah. So this came out I think 2019 and I think it's still not as highly regarded
18:23as it should be. And it's a road movie and a love story made by Melina Matsoukas who
18:32I believe made pop promos for Jay-Z and Beyonce. It happens to be a woman and a person of colour
18:39and it's, in the film they're described as a black Bonnie and Clyde, these characters
18:44who become fugitives from the law and they go from I think it's Cleveland, Ohio to Miami
18:49trying to get to Cuba. And it really affected me. It's a devastating film. I can only imagine
18:55as a white English person what it's like to be an American person of colour or any person
19:01of colour watching this because it gets more incendiary politically as it goes on because
19:08you get a sense halfway through as they're moving south, these two, that it's maybe not
19:13going to end well without spoiling what happens at the end. And the end is shocking but it
19:19has to end that way which is about they become a legend like Bonnie and Clyde in a different
19:25way, Queen and Slim. But they start out as a mistake and a cop is shot in error and they
19:32become fugitives. Also I think it's a very sort of delicate romantic film. In places
19:37it's very slow and I admire that and of course it's not only a road movie, it's a kind of
19:42sub-genre of that which is the doomed lovers on the run. And I just think it's unexpectedly
19:48powerful and a great piece of filmmaking and screen storytelling I thought.
19:53I saw it at Cineworld in Ashford not long before lockdown so it's that sort of golden
19:58age almost when we didn't know that the cinemas would be closing for a few months and I watched
20:02this one, I think it was like a Sunday evening, maybe at the beginning of 2020. But I remember
20:08at the time thinking of the Bonnie and Clyde resonance and do you feel that this film is
20:15in a similar way to a film like Get Out is very good at sort of revisiting the tropes
20:21from older movies. Is this one that sort of works for now? Hollywood in the last few years
20:27has been very good at trying to rework some of those tropes that were maybe more fitting
20:32for a different generation. Driving Miss Daisy was redone in a way that won an Oscar a few
20:37years later. But tell me about Queen and Slim, what is so iconic for you about this film?
20:42So it sets out to be iconic, it's looking at these people becoming icons and it achieves
20:48it, it earns it which is amazing. So yes, what you say it is rebooting. I think it's
20:52the most successful reboot of a road movie since for example Itamama Tambien, a Cuaron
20:58film.
20:59A recent choice on this programme.
21:00Great, well amazing film. And this is less bittersweet this film. This is more, as it
21:05goes on, more politically angry. And she said that it's explicitly Cleveland at the start
21:10because that's, there's still the death sentence there. And so it's trying to hit a lot of
21:14targets politically about racism, about the law, death penalty and that's pretty ambitious
21:20and I think it hits most of them. But what I like was, going back to what you said, that
21:25it was a descendant of a film like The Asphalt Jungle, John Huston film from the 50s, where
21:32there's a feeling that these main characters are losers. They're not, I mean, Queen and
21:39Slim aren't, especially not her character, I would say. He's, but they become, it's like
21:47a song, it's got a lyrical quality as it goes on. Also I think you may know the recent documentary
21:53called Brainwashed, which is about the male gaze in cinema over the decades versus the
21:58female gaze and it's about women filmmakers and watching this, so it happens to be directed
22:03by a woman and how the characters dancing or in bed together is shot and framed. It's
22:09absolutely fascinating. It's very fresh and I think, going back to the politics, because
22:13it came out in between Spike Lee's Black Klansman and then the year of lockdown, you know, the
22:19death of George Floyd. So, and this came out right in the middle of those and I think
22:25it's part of that kind of arc of recent, speaking, you know, with my lack of authority on the
22:33subject, but I think it's part of that arc, historically and politically.
22:36But also made before it, but that's the curious thing, that this film was made before it but
22:40in a way it's a commentary on it.
22:42Yeah, well it anticipates it and so I think you can't sort of forget all that when you're
22:48watching this film. I also think, going back to Get Out, so Daniel Kaluuya is a real movie
22:54star, I think, so he's a fine actor but he's, and so he's wonderful in this as well, they
22:59both are, and also other supporting actors, so it's got, going back to what you were saying
23:05about rebooting a genre, it's got an old-fashioned quality to it in the best sense and it, you
23:10know, looks beautiful as well but, you know, in places it's slow and I admire that and
23:15another filmmaker I think in descent from might be Nicholas Wray in the 50s, those films
23:20like Rebel Without a Cause, but where you feel that society is against the main characters
23:25and that's obviously very powerful but, you know, probably it was the whole package that
23:30really affected me.
23:31Well, thank you Lawrence and that's unfortunately all the time we have for today. Many thanks
23:35to Lawrence Jackson for joining us and being such a brilliant guest and many thanks to
23:40you all for tuning in. Be sure to come back and join us again at the same time next week.
23:44Until then, that's all from us. Goodbye.