Beyond Our Ken

Very sad news — the great Ken Campbell has died, aged 66. Ken was an inspiration to me in many ways. As a Fortean and Dickhead (adherent of sci-fi scribe Philip K. Dick) he wrote (and performed) mind-expanding, crazy, yet beautifully structured monologues (“the structure of this one is based on the toilet plunger”) which I’ve quoted here at least once. His tendency to be funny about stuff that most people either ignored or discussed with the hushed, intense tones of the paranoiac (UFOs, the Little People, Cathar and Albigensian heretic cults, ventriloquism, cannibalism, the making of THE EXORCIST, transvestism, Ken Dodd, nasal sex, improvisation in iambic pentameter, visualisation, invisibility, Ambrose Bierce, mysterious disappearances, and furtive nudity, to name but a few) deeply influenced my own tendency to be passionate about cinema without always taking it too seriously. I mean, I’m IN earnest, but I shouldn’t BE earnest.

“You shouldn’t believe anything. Anybody who starts a sentence with ‘I believe’ is usually a right berk. So you shouldn’t believe anything. But you should be prepared to SUPPOSE *ANYTHING*.”

I persuaded (he was quite happy, not much persuasion required) Ken to contribute a vocal performance to my film CLARIMONDE, a no-budget Gothic comedy. Ken plays Inspector Childers, heard at the start and end of the movie. His role was recorded in the green room of the Traverse Theatre, where he was performing his entire Bald Trilogy, about five hours of stand-up insanity. It was pretty good of him to give me his time (and voice).

In the spirit of neatness, I can connect this post to Jekyll Week — Campbell created the Enantiodromic Approach to theatre, detailed here, which certainly ties in with old two-face Jekyll.

And here’s Ken’s physical apparition, speaking to you from beyond the grave, about Laurence Olivier speaking to you from beyond the grave:

Ken’s film credits as actor include playing a happy flagellant in JABBERWOCKY and a drunken clown in Derek Jarman’s THE TEMPEST. His obituaries are among the funniest I’ve ever read:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2663891/Ken-Campbell.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2008/sep/01/obituary.ken.campbell

The Face Stealer

Yes! *I* am the man whose face appears as she meditates! A page from my friend Simon Fraser’s comic strip Lux and Alby Sign On and Save the Universe, written by Martin Millar. Simon borrowed my face, John Woo style, to decorate his strip. Of course, back then I was thin and had long hair and round glasses. My replacement face is fatter, has shorter hair and glasses that are more… ovular.

“Don’t put that! Ovular. That’s not even a word.”

Simon, my best friend from art school, was in town on Thursday (he lives in New York these days) and we met up at the Gladstone Gallery, part of a meticulously preserved seventeenth-century house on the High Street, where his old studio-mate Andy MacIntosh has a show on (imaginary landscapes made from distressed metal) which I recommend to Edinburghers.

It is, of course, the time of the Edinburgh Festival. The Film Fest having moved to June, we were looking forward to being able to devote a little time to the other arts, but so far it’s hardly happening. But yesterday we at least took in Mr MacIntosh’s show, and the work of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller at the nearby Fruitmarket Gallery, where Fiona and I once planned to shoot part of this film:

Illustration by Simon.

Subjects under discussion were TV’s Lost, which Fiona and I just finished watching, The Wire, which everybody is watching except us (we will, we will!), MAMMA MIA!, HELLBOY II, and whether Sarah Jessica Parker looks like a foot. Also, plastic surgery: rumour suggests that Joe Pesci had to have electrolysis behind the ears, having had his face tightened so much that bits of ex-chin were sprouting stubble behind his lobes.

Cheerio!

Oops

I’m watching the Shirley Clarke early works programme here at Edinburgh Film Festival. The first film is shown without sound. Halfway through a woman on the end of my aisle says to her husband, “I fell asleep.”

“”What?” he asks.

“I fell asleep.”

“I can’t hear you.”

Now, mind you, this is happening in a tiny cinema in front of a totally silent film. He might not be able to hear but everybody else can. I let it pass.

But when they start talking again later, I go “Shhhh!” at them, quite sharply.

Then the row behind start up. I go “Shhh!” at them, too. They ignore me. I do it again. Finally, I tear a page from my note book, ball it up, and hurl it at them, hissing “SHUT UP!” My theory is that a small, soft object hurled not with force but with sheer hatred can have a powerful effect.

Bear in mind, it’s uncertain any of us will ever get a chance to see these films again! Several of them appear to be disintegrating AS THEY ARE PROJECTED.

Anyhow, it’s only afterwards that I learn that the first chap I shushed was film festival patron SEAN CONNERY.

The highlight of my career!