MUSICAL INTERLUDE 1

Along with Blind, Clown was the my first encounter with the dulcet tones of Korn.  Even though their eponymous début was released in 1994, it was 1997 before I really gave Korn a chance.  Up until then, I had heard random morsels (culinary references will abound; I'll count, so you don't have to - this is number 1), but their sound just did not appeal to my palate (2).  What further put me off was that most of the people who harped on about Korn as though they were the greatest thing since sliced bread (3), were not really metal fans.  They were trend junkies who jumped on any passing fad; cultural nackers if you will.  They were the same people who never listened to Nirvana when Kurt Cobain was alive, though they wore the t-shirt with pride after his death.  What really took the biscuit though (4), was that these also appeared to be the same people who wore Pearl Jam (5) t-shirts.  As I never saw the big deal with that particular band, I didn't see why I should feel any different about Korn.  Much of my life choices are actually based on t-shirts worn by dooshbags.

  1997 was a different world.  MTV still played music videos, Bill Clinton's cigar was still damp, and no one had yet realised that Korn only came in one flavour (6).  Admittedly, at that time, Korn's was a new and interesting flavour (6.5), but I was a traditional rocker, and didn't much care for the hip-hop influence they bought to the table (7).  Even when I did start to develop a taste (8) for their particular style of sonic a-salt (9), my interest in Korn never went beyond their easy singles (10 - I'm really pushing it with that one).  I found their albums tiresome.  There just isn't enough variation in their sound to keep me interested beyond a couple of tracks.  I like my Korn in rashers (11), not in joints (12).  This is my big problem with nu-metal in general.  My favourite bands in this genre are the ones that swiftly left it behind, specifically System of A Down and Deftones.

  But credit where credit is due, Korn did cook up (13) something fresh and original and, for better or worse, they did leave a lasting taste (14) in the mouth of the music industry.  Though they are far from the best metal band in the world, they did create a new sound, and that is worth some kudos.

  If a Korn song was a pizza (15), the heavy bass grooves would be, well, the base (16), their trademark pull-off/hammer-on riffs, the tomato sauce (17), Jonathan Davis's vocals, the cheese (18), and their guitar screech punctuations, the pepperoni (19).  As pizzas go (20), the song Clown is a brilliantly "spicy-a meatball" (21)!  The warbling tomato sauce (22) lends the verses a surreal menace, which perfectly complements the whispered cheese (23).  The song is about people trying to be something they are not in order to fit in, and was more specifically inspired by a belligerent fan who threatened Jonathan Davis during a gig.  As has been well-documented, Davis had a traumatic childhood, and while Clown doesn't directly confront those issues (these have been covered more than enough elsewhere, like on their album: Issues) this trauma is starkly personified in the image of a clown, and it breathes through every beat of the song.  The video further enhances this idea of childhood distress, by having Davis the victim of high school bullying.

  Said video was directed by McG, who went on to give the world the awful Charlie's Angels movies, and the disappointing Terminator: Salvation.  This video was my first proper taste of Korn (20).  I saw it on a borrowed VHS of SuperRock, which I watched on repeat for about six months.  It was actually quite an amazing episode.  It had videos for The Beautiful People by Marilyn Manson, Shove It (My Own Summer) by Deftones, Say Just Words by Paradise Lose, Stinkfist by Tool (21), and Replica by Fear Factory.  1997-David (who only had the basic channels at home) was as happy as a pig (22) in shit (23) with that menu (24)!

 

For dessert (25), here is a serving (26) of Korn from when they guest stared in South Park.  I hope this is enough to satisfy your appetites (27).

No wonder it's so hard to decipher Korn lyrics; they're in Spanish.

Next up, I'm going to migrate into the world of television, and the story of a load of insecure spotty creature who are trying to find their place in the cosmos.

CLOWNING THROUGH, Written by: Frank Foster [in collaboration with Willian G. Bosworth]

EDIT:  I am returning to this entry to make a slight edit.  I have made copious notes on the various circus books I have read over the past few months.  When I first posted this, I was eager to get a book review out, so before I had a chance to type up my notes, I went ahead and published the review.  Unfortunately, this resulted in a slight error on my part.  I mentioned how at times I felt the circus tent sounded like a ship at sea.  I thought this was my own impression, but it had slipped by me that this is in fact Foster's image.  I have edited the text below to reflect this.  In the immortal words of Madeleine McCann's parents; Oops.

Bizarre.  It was April 16th and I had just finished my first book on clowning.  I closed the cover, turned on my laptop, and clicked into the Google homepage, only to be greeted by the following video:

It was embedded above the search bar on the Google main page.  It seems April 16th is the birth date of Charlie Chaplin, and that 2011 is his 122nd birthday.  Why is this bizarre?  Well, perhaps that is too strong a word, but at the very least it was a highly unlikely coincidence.  Read on...

Apparently the beginning is a really good place to start, so I'll do that now, with the second paragraph.  When I got my hands on the first batch of clown and circus books I had ordered, I was faced with the difficult choice of where to begin.  Did I start with one of the pristine new editions, or did I go for the dusty old hardback?  Well, I am a romantic, so there really was no choice. 

  As Clowning Through is out of print, I had to secure a second-hand copy.  Though the yellow felt binding barely holds it together, and loads of the pages are printed crooked, it is quite a beautiful little volume.  There is something romantic about reading an old book: the smell and feel of the yellowed paper, the delicate touch required to turn the pages.  You feel like you are reaching into the past and grabbing it straight out of someones hands.  Imagine the look on that person's face, when the book they were enjoying is plucked from their grasp as if by nothing.  The thought of that was all I needed to make me begin my studies here!

  So, four paragraphs in, what of the text?  Clowning Through is a slender volume at 162 pages, and it makes for a very quick and easy read.  It is written in an unadorned and straightforward manner, and one could easily complete it in a day.  While you might be quick to laugh at the idea of a book about clowning, this is no comedy.  Clowning Through isn't about clowns, but rather the people beneath the make-up.  It's about the struggle to follow fragile dreams amid the harsh realities of life.

  Clowning Through isn't a single narrative, but rather is composed of a series of mini-biographies, each detailing the life of a different clown that the authors have worked with over the years.  Each biography is told in just a few short pages, and is packed with the details of their varied and unique lives.  No sooner have you learned about Joe Craston, and his disastrous attempt to direct a circus in Argentina, than you are introduced to Coco, the Russian son of a cobbler who ran away to join the circus, later served in the Russian Army in the fight against the Bolsheviks only to be captured, escape, join a band of Mongolian gypsies, and eventually manage to return home by disguising himself as a woman and sneaking over the boarder.  Coco has barely left the stage when McGeachie the Scottish dwarf steps forth, and you learn his tale of woe, about how he was so badly bullied as a child that it left him with irreversible spine injuries, which ended his clowning career before it could properly take flight.  Each story is short, well composed, and riveting, and though we only skip through these lives, they are never treated as trivial.  Not all of the accounts are as striking as the ones I have mentioned, but none of them bore.

  As these personal trials unfold, the authors paint the backdrop of the larger world of the circus.  Though all of these performers come from radically different backgrounds, the text conveys a real sense of community.  Despite their disparate lives, they were all united by the circus.  Frank Foster himself lived in this world, and while it is alien to me, the down to Earth homeliness of his prose made it feel warm and appealing.  It is not an easy existence he describes, but these people willingly 'clowned through' their struggles because this was the only life that made them happy.  I personally have great admiration for anyone who follows and achieves their dreams.  I found plenty to admire here.

  There is a certain romanticism here as well: the outlandish world of the circus, the life of the performer, living on the road, or more accurately, living in the ring.  For these people the road was just the mundane reality in between shows.  Foster opens up with a small piece of verse:

Sturdy "King-Poles" unpatched canvas,

Like a ship with expert crew

Where "Tenting" people live like humans,

And "Tober Homeys°" get their due.

  This image is further realised in the story of Beasy.  One night, while in the audience at a show in France, a great gale sprung up.  Everybody lost their heads as the wind whipped and tore the tent.  Beasy stepped in, took charge, and got everything under control as he roared, "Lower the necks!"  How could one not imagine a ship struggling against a storm?

  Each story in Clowning Through is preceded by a sketch by Clifford Hall, who spent time with all of the clowns involved before finally capturing their essence on the page.  This is a really nice touch.  I liked to flip back to this picture once I had read the story, and see how much of their tale I could detect in their faces. 

  If I was to level any criticism against Clowning Through  It wasn't written by novelists, but by circus men who wanted to capture something of the world they knew before it faded away.  While the writing is rather basic, it is frank, to the point, and most important, heartfelt.  It does not require reams of text to achieve its goal.  Much like the artwork, these stories are sketches.  Part of the magic is in letting your imagination colour them in.

  In conclusion (or should that be clown-clusion - holy shit; I'm hilarious; where's the nearest circus?!), Clowning Through provided me with several hours of worthwhile entertainment that I wouldn't take back.  I learned some things I wouldn't have otherwise, and I met a host of characters whose stories are worth hearing.  Many books deliver much less.

The last thing to discuss here is all of that malarkey I opened with, with regards to Charlie Chaplin. Halfway through Clowning Through there is mention of a style of acrobatics known as Risley.  Named for John Risley, it involves juggling things with your feet, you know, like balls, clubs, children.  Yes, children.  I'm not kidding.  They were known as Risley Kids.  This particular aspect of the routine has, unsurprisingly, fallen out of practice, due to the fact that it essentially involved kicking the shit out of a child in order to make people laugh (it's political correctness gone mad, I know).  It even inspired a rhyme:

Risley kids and slanging duffer*,

Lord only knows how much they suffer!

The authors imply, though do not explicitly state, that one notable Risley Kid was none other than Charlie Chaplin.  The veracity of this claim is unclear.  Chaplin was certainly born into a family of entertainers, but it is unclear as to whether or not he was involved in the circus.  However, (and again, coincidentally) earlier this year, a letter emerged which claimed that Chaplin was born in a gypsy caravan, which would lead credence to the authors assertions. 
  Regardless of his origins, Chaplin was essentially a clown, and this is true of many other classic performers and characters from early cinema such as Laurel and Hardy, and the Three Stooges.  The Marx Brothers began as a vaudeville act, a genre of theatre whose roots are firmly in the circus.  There is a strong argument to be made that this clowning tradition is carried on in modern times by characters such as Mr. Bean, Ace Ventura, and Enda Kenny.

  So that's what constitutes 'bizarre' in my world.  To close, here's a picture of a fantastic looking evil clown:

Next up, some korny music.

* A slanging duffer is a reference to the general Auguste or utility clown, and the rough usage he habitually received.
°  A tober homey is slang for the toll collector.

CLOWNHOUSE [1989]

So far, I've stuck to safe and familiar territory with the movies I've watched.  It's time to take the bit in my teeth and plough into the unknown.  What horrors (or comedies!) await...

I had never heard of Clownhouse.  It is one of the many movies I discovered when I started to poke around online for the best killer clown movies ever made (a fool's game, if ever there was one).  As you can imagine, it is a fairly limited field, and much of the cream of the crop is rather curdled.  However, Victor Salva's 1989 effort, Clownhouse, had received some okay reviews, so I figured it was a good place to start.  A quick check on IMDB revealed that Victor Salva also directed Powder and the Jeepers Creepers series, and while I haven't seen either, I know that both are flawed, but decent movies.

  My initial reaction to Clownhouse was slight confusion.  The DVD cover is printed entirely in German.  That, along with the directors name, led me to believe that this was going to be a foreign language film; some B-movie Euro-trash that Victor Salva directed before making a name for himself in Hollywood.  However the opening titles revealed that the cast and crew all had very English/American sounding names, none more so than the third credit to come on-screen; Sam Rockwell!  I hit pause, and had another quick root around online.  This time I discovered that Clownhouse was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 1989 Sundance Film Festival!  What the hell was this movie?

  I hit play, and watched on, intrigued.  I don't know who was on that Sundance jury - Clownhouse isn't a bad movie, but it sure ain't award worthy.

  The story follows a young boy, Casey (Nathan Forrest Winters, in his first and last feature film performance), who has an intense fear of clowns (coulrophobia, for all you pedants out there).  With his mother away for the weekend, he is left in the care of his two older brothers, Geoffrey (Brian McHugh) and Randy (Sam Rockwell, in his feature film debut).  They want to go to the circus, and thinking that Casey's fear is just a bit childish, they drag him along.  Casey, of course, has the shit scared out of him, but he gets through it unscathed.  However, what they don't know is that after the show, three escaped inmates from the local mental institution kill the clowns, dress up in their costumes, and because their mental, follow the boys home to kill them (obviously).

  What follows is, despite its R-Rating, essentially a horror movie for kids.  If you are looking for gore, turn your blood-lusting eyes elsewhere.  There is barely a drop of blood split here.  Clownhouse should not be any more than PG-13.  Gremlins is far scarier. 

  While there is little on-screen gore, there is also little on-screen death.  Clownhouse is considered to be a slasher movie, but very few of the swipes draw blood.  The body count is low, though there is one particular fatality that is fantastically daft, and worth the price of admission alone!  But the intention here isn't to make you cringe, it is to provide some fun frights, and this it does quite effectively.  There are some neat visual gags, one in particular which involves a reflection, where it takes you couple of seconds to realise what you've just seen.  On more than one occasion, I couldn't contain a guffaw of appreciation!

  What works best about this movie is the interaction between the brothers.  The dynamic is brilliantly captured, and even the patchy performances don't hamper its authenticity.  You really believe that these guys grew up together.  Each character is well defined, both in their personality, and their role in the brotherly hierarchy.  They are well written, and had this material been performed by better talent, Clownhouse would have been a far superior movie.  As it stands, the only one to deliver a solid performance is, unsurprisingly, Sam Rockwell.  It's the little nuances that distinguish him.  Bad actors just stand there and deliver their dialogue as best they can remember it (which is what the other two leads do).  You can see them running the lines through their head as they wait to deliver their next one.  Good actors keep the performance up, even when the camera isn't on them.  They let the character shine through in everything they do.  Anyone can walk down a hallway, but a good actor walks down the hallway in character.  You can always tell the difference, and it is this that separates Sam Rockwell and his co-stars.

  But in a movie called Clownhouse, the main thing we wish to know is; how are the clowns?  The clowns are good, but not great.  They are mute throughout, so there is no real sense of character.  They are just guys in clown costumes who terrorise the boys, and that is that.  What makes them work isn't the acting, but the way the clowns are presented.  The most effective moments come about by how the camera is framed to captures their actions, rather than through any actual performance.  Basically, they look good, and on the day, the director told them where to stand, and this worked nicely.  Beyond that, there is nothing memorable about them.  Pennywise can float away contently knowing that he is still the boss clown.

Overall, Clownhouse is a perfectly good watch.  As a horror movie, it is benign, but what jumps it does deliver are fun.  It's the sort of thing that, had you discovered it on TV one night when you were fourteen, you would have had a ball with it.  As it stands, I could only reccommend it if you have a particular interest in the that limited genre that is killer clown movies.

For those who are paying attention, at the end of my previous blog, I said that I would next write about a movie director who abused his lead actor.  You're probably thinking that, once again, I have teased you with the prospect on one movie, only to sucker punch you with another.  While you were busy entertaining that thought, here comes the real blow from way out of left field.  The review I promised is no movie, I'm afraid.

  As I mentioned earlier, this was Nathan Forrest Winters first and last feature film.  The reason for his brief career is more disturbing than any horror movie.  In 1988 Victor Salva was charged with having (and filming) oral sex with Nathan Forrest Winters.  Salva was 29 at the time; Winters was 12.  Salva pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 3 years in prison, of which he serve 15 months.

  Upon his release, he found it understandably difficult to get work, but he had a very powerful benefactor; none other than Francis Ford Coppola.  It was Coppola who had given Salva his big break.  He was instrumental (though uncredited) in Salva getting the funding for Clownhouse.  As Salva stove to break back into the film industry after his release from prison, Coppola stood by him.  Looking back on his defence of Salva, Coppola said, 'I was criticized for it, but my attitude is, he has a talent, and that talent in itself is good.'

  Salva eventually returned to directing in 1995, and has been working steadily ever since.  This LA times article, conducted in 2006, gives a full account of these events:

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jun/11/entertainment/ca-salva11

It does seem that Salva has acknowledged his crime, and has worked hard to atone for his sins.  It's easy to judge, but if the victim's mother is able to forgive the man, and not resent his continuing to work in the industry, then who are we to condemn him?  While I don't for a second believe that any level of talent should mean horrific acts be overlooked, if someone dedicates themselves to making reparations for their crimes, that person deserves a second chance.  We all make mistakes, and while Salva's was particularly vile, I would prefer to live in a world where a person can change, than one where only the alternative holds true.  But that's an idealistic view.  Given the crime here, it is hard not to be appalled.  If this was my child, I don't think I could ever forgive him.  I'm not like Hollywood, which appears to have a very ambivalent attitude towards sex offenders (and plenty of other socially unacceptable behaviour), as long as the perpetrator is talented.

  I did not know any of this when I watched the movie, though it does go some way towards explaining why an American made movie I purchased on Amazon is not readily available in the English language.  I'm not claiming that people who don't speak English are more lenient towards this subject than the rest of us (though they totally are), but I think this film might have been somewhat blacklisted in the States, and shipped off into foreign markets where it might stand a chance of escaping it's stigma.

Next up, I'm going to take a break from the movies.  I'm tired of staring at screens, so I'm going to stare at a page instead, and clown through my first book review.

BRAINDEAD [1992] (or DEAD ALIVE if you're a Yank)

The second movie to go under the microscope is yet another blast from my past.

It was late on Friday April 1st when I last made the long drive home to Mayo.  I entered my room to find a mountain of packages from Amazon, which contained the first batch of movies and books I will be sharing my thoughts on over the next few weeks.  I was in the mood to watch something, it was late, and my youngest brother, Eamon, and his friend Alan were there.  What could I chose that was short and was guaranteed to entertain?  There was only one choice in what I had, Peter Jackson's 1992 splatsterpiece, Braindead.

  I first experienced this movie back in 1999.  When I saw it back then, I had a agenda; I wanted to know who the hell this Peter Jackson guy was.  The Lord of The Ring films had just been announced, and like most judgemental assholes, I was standing with my arms crossed as I shook my head in disapproval.  Who the hell did this guy think he was?  Still, I was willing to investigate a little before I completely wrote him off.  I worked in a record store at the time, and we had two of his movies in stock; Bad Taste and Braindead.  I proceeded to get my research on.

  I came away from them sure of one thing; this guy wasn't fit to read The Lord of The Rings, let alone bring it to the big screen.  Sure, both Bad Taste and Braindead were fun, but that was not the sensibility required to bring a story with the depth and breadth of Tolkien's Middle Earth to the big screen.

  When I said I did a little research, I wasn't lying - that was as far as I went.  This was in the days before the Internet had truly taken off.  I did not know or understand how to use it.  There was no Wikipedia, and I had never heard of a thing called IMDB.  A little more research would have revealed that Peter Jackson had also been nominated for an Oscar for the screenplay to Heavenly Creatures, and that he was also the man behind The Frighteners, which I had thoroughly enjoyed.  Looking back, I hold my hand up and freely admit that on that one occasion, I was almost kind of slightly wrong about something.  At least now that we have identified the exception, we can accept the rule...

  Revisiting Braindead in 2011 was a very different experience.  I wasn't watching this with critical eyes; I just wanted to be entertained, and entertainment is what this film delivers in barrels, waves, and floods - of blood!  Braindead is fantastic and demented in equal measures.  It is one of the most amped up movies you are ever likely to see.  It starts at a level of maniacal energy that most movies barely manage to climax with, and turns the intensity up from there.

  From the opening frame, this film is bonkers.  All of the characters are played in a hyper-real, exaggerated fashion, and the kinetic camera moves only enhance the mania.  This was a brilliant and vital approach.  Jackson and his crew wisely realised that they couldn't start off in the 'real world' if they wanted to bring this story to the places it goes.  It starts off pitched at about seven, and then goes all the way up to eleven, before it blows out the speakers, while still somehow managing to blare forth with ever increasing intensity.  Like a Weird Al Yankovic album.

  Immeasurable amounts of joy and effort went into realising the most over the top ways in which a human can be pulped.  There is no room for subtlety here.  Characters don't gets slashed, they are shredded.  This movie is the definition of splatstick.  People are are taken out in an ever escalating series of truly inspired fatalities.  I'm not going to describe any, because a major part of the fun of this film is the shocked laugh you can't contain as you say to yourself, 'They didn't just [insert over the top death here], did they...?'

  But none of this would have any impact if we weren't involved with the characters, and there is just as much fun to be had here.  The leads, Lionel (Timothy Balme) and Paquita (Diana Peñalver) are the most ordinary, as they need to be if we are to identify with them, but their relative normality is more than made up for by Mum (Elizabeth Moody), Uncle Les (Ian Watkin), 'Void' (Jed Brophy), the baby, and of course, the man with the best line in the movie, Father John McGruder (Stuart Devenie), who comes off like Father Ted channelling Ash from the Evil Dead, with a side order of Bruce Lee kicking you in the face!

  Believe it or not, there is more going on here than cascades of viscera.  With Jackson's earlier work, he had certainly proved himself a craftsman of mayhem, but he had tended to overlook story in the pursuit of shock.  With this, he really started to grow as a storyteller, without for a second compromising on the outrageous.  When you wipe away the blood, there is a simple but solid story at play here.  It keeps you engaged beyond the gore, and what really makes this film resonate beyond other blood drenched fare, is the subtext.  There is a Freudian undercurrent that, come the final encounter, makes you cringe on many levels.  I'm not going to claim that it's particularly deep - it's certainly not trying to be - but when you walk away from this, you have been as much mentally as viscerally violated!

Braindead has lost nothing with age (I don't want to hear any comments like, 'And much like Braindead you have unconvincing miniatures.'  You're so bloody immature.).

  My father came in from the pub during the penultimate sequence, just as Lionel brings his lawn mowing skills into play.  A keen mower of lawns himself, I'm sure he was looking for some pointers.  It doesn't matter what age you are, you always get a little uncomfortable when your parents catch you watching something you know they won't approve of.  However, even he couldn’t help but laugh, before he grimaced and turned away from the screen.
  Braindead is so ridiculous you can't really take offence at it.  It probably contains more gore than all of the other horror movies ever made combined, but it never feels gratuitous because the intention is to entertain.  This isn't mean-spirited torture porn; it's a live action cartoon.

Braindead was the last of Peter Jackson gory splatter work.  After this, he leaped forward as a narrative filmmaker, making the brilliant Heavenly Creatures and the fun, if uneven, The Frighteners, before he blew us all away with his Middle Earth trilogy.  Unfortunately, his movies have declined in quality since then.  King Kong had moments of brilliance, but was an overlong and self indulgent mess, and I haven't even seen The Lovely Bones, as everyone I know has advised me not to.  Fingers crossed he is back on form for The Hobbit, and whatever else he chooses to do.  However, nothing can change that the fact that with Braindead, not only did he deliver a wonderful swansong to his roots as a horror filmmaker, he also gave the world one of the pinnacles of the genre.
  You may wonder what this movie has to do with clowns.  Here's what:

I bet he has a cutting wit...  Thanks for the image, Johnny!

On a geeky side note, the opening scene is like a future flash of where Peter Jackson's career would go.  The physical location is the same used for The Path of The Dead in The Return of The King, but even more telling, the place where they find the Sumatran Rat-Monkey is Skull Island, which is home to none other than King Kong!

Next up is a charming tale about a filmmaker who sexually abuses the youngest lead in his movie.  Cue the canned laughter!

BUT, BUT, YOU SAID…

I know what I said; I said I'd give you a movie review about lawnmower safety.  I changed my mind.  In the words of Mother Teresa; 'Deal with it'.  I wanted to mix things up a bit, so this time I'm going to give an account of my experiences at the 2011 Dublin Circus Skills Convention.  This is hands on research people.  I should probably get a Nobel Prize for this shit.

The 2011 Dublin Circus Skills Convention was held in Larkin Hall on Cathal Brugha Street from March 25th to the 27th.  From a scriptwriting point of view, I really wasn't sure what benefit this event would be to me, but it was only five minutes walk from my apartment, so I had no excuse not to pop in.  I promised myself I would keep an open mind, and just see where the day might take me.
  I didn't know what to expect, so it was strange to enter the hall and find that it was exactly what I expected.  You can imagine my confusion.  I found myself in a large gym filled with people juggling, wobbling around on unicycles, swinging poi, lobbing Diablos, and generally being hippies without a war to protest.  My feeling on first entering was that I really was in the wrong place.  I mean, yes, it was the right place for circus skills, but what the hell was I doing there?!

  The Circus Skills Convention evolved out of the Dublin Juggling Festival, which I had actually attended several years before with a friend of mine from college in Galway.  Joe (my friend from college; do try to keep up) has developed a real love for circus skills over the years.  During my one and only year studying at NUIG, myself, Joe, and several others spent many a sunny afternoons out on the lawn being really bad at Diablo.  Well, I was really bad.  Joe was actually quite good, but where his skills really came to the fore were as a juggler and unicyclist.  He is a computer programmer, and he used to ride to work in Limerick on his unicycle, an image I always loved!  We've lost touch over the years, but I intended to keep an eye out for him on this day.

  I took my first tentative steps inside and got chatting with the guy collecting money on the door.  He gave me the lowdown on the various workshops that were taking place over the course of the day.  After that, I stood around and waited until it looked like something might happen.

  I was feeling very lonely until I saw that Conor, my co-writer and director, was over doing some meditation with a load of bendy people.  We joined forces, and took part in one of the workshops, which was imaginatively titled Imagination.  This basically consisted of word association, followed by a game where you put people in a pose and they had to describe what they thought the pose meant.  We were then given various objects, and in a Whose Line Is It Anyway? style, had to come up with a use for them, before passing it on.  All of this stuff was fun, and there were some very clever ideas, even if I wasn't learning a damn thing.  The last routine we did, however, was not fun.  Not fun at all.

  We all had to line up, and then two people were selected from the group.  They had to invent an animal, and perform it.  They weren't aloud to use any words; they simply had to parade in front of us, and show off their animal.  The guy hosting the workshop then came up to us one by one, and told us to take on the characteristics of one or the other of these fictional animals.
  Good.
  God.
  No.
  This was so not for me!
  To make matters worse, when he came to me, he said I had to invent a whole new animal!  I had made a promise to myself when I started that I would try, so I stepped out and paraded around, doing something like a cross between a velociraptor and a mortified human being.  I can only imagine what we all looked like, as we pranced around like a menagerie of muppets.

  However, and I want to be very clear about this; I don't discount the value of this exercise.  Circus skills are about performance, and imagination exercises of this sort are no doubt of great benefit to someone interested in standing before a crowd and physically entertaining them.  If you are a public entertainer, you shouldn't feel self-conscious about doing this sort of thing.  But that is not my area whatsoever.  I like to work away quietly in the background, hand over my finished piece, be given a quite nod of appreciation, and then seethe in self-loathing because people didn't make a bigger deal when I presented my work.  I do not like the limelight at all.
  Imagination is not a catch all term.  It doesn't take one simple form that can be defined by a word.  It has a million different faces.  It is a unique process for everyone who chooses to express it. To design a building, write a novel, paint a picture, compose a song, cook a delicious meal, tell a joke, feign interest while some asshole prattles on and on and on; all of these require imagination, but no two are the same.  The particular strain we dealt with in this workshop just wasn't for me.  Still, it was an interesting window into that world, and I will take at least that much from it.

  At this point, Conor had to go, as his car had broken down on the way over and he had to get it towed to a garage.  I was alone again with the circus people…

  There was a lot of waiting around at this point.  While there were numerous workshops underway, there was very little for beginners.  It was pretty much assumed that if you were there, you already knew the basics, so I was very much on the outside.  That's just the nature of hobbies, especially niche ones.  It would be no different than if one of those people were to sit down and talk about movies with my friends and I; they would most likely be lost in the morass of in-jokes and side references, and they probably wouldn't understand our rage-filled tears over the Prequel trilogy.

  Since I was unable to partake in workshops, I wandered and watched.  There was certainly a lot of talent on display, but people were learning new skills, not performing, so there was little real entertainment value, and in terms of the reason I was there; research, none of it was very useful.  I really needed to start achieving something, so I sought out Richard Kane.

  Richard Kane is a professional clown whom Lorraine in the office had contacted during the week.  It turned out that he was running a stall at the convention, and he was happy to meet with us and answer our questions.  He told me the story about how he came to be a clown after years of working in the construction industry, and he gave me plenty of details on clown history.  These proved extremely interesting, and I will detail them in future postings.

  When Richard finally tired of my bullshit, I left to attend the only other workshop that I would be capable of doing.  I was on my way over when, lo and behold, there was Joe from NUIG!  I wasn't  particularly surprised to see him (so I probably shouldn't have used an exclamation mark there), but he certainly was to see me! (correct usage).  We hadn't seen each other in many years.  We embraced in a manly and completely heterosexual fashion, and exchanged pleasantries.  I was half expecting that it might be weird to see each other, but my optimistic half said, 'Stop being so goddamn negative all the time.'  About thirty seconds later, my pessimistic half was, sadly I must say, vindicated.  It was weird.  We really had nothing to say to one another.  My pessimistic half said, 'I told you so,' but my optimistic half, ever the optimist, said, 'Hey guy; wanna maybe catch this workshop?'  Both halves agreed, and in solidarity with myself, I made my goodbyes.

  I was quite looking forward to this particular workshop.  If I live my life by one rule (and I don't), it is this; if a guy who goes by the name of Mr. Ballonatic ever runs a workshop, you'd damn well better participate!  In case you didn't get it from the name,  Mr. Ballonatic, or Mike, makes balloon animals, and boy can this guy work a balloon.  I had a look though his work after the class, and some of the pieces he has created are just stunning.  Check it out:

http://www.balloonatic.eu/

  As for my own work, check this shit:

Okay, maybe I've, hehe, overblown my talents somewhat.  Basically, unless you're massively impressed with deformed dogs, then my stuff is probably a bit too 'real' for you.  Still I got the basics, and by the end, I could make a sausage dog/poodle/donkey/giraffe, and a flower.
  After the workshop, I hung around and chatted with Mike for a bit.  He's been doing this since he was about six, and it shows; his work is really amazing.  He does loads of corporate events and festivals, and he told me that people often come to him with specific ideas of stuff they want made as gifts for people.  He saw them as little works of art, and there is nothing pretentious in this; Mike is anything but pretentious.  Some of them simply are.   He also recommended some things for me to watch in my research, which again, I will blog about soon.

  At this point in the day, I was all circused out.  I used what air was left in my lungs to fashion a way home for myself:

 

...then I sped off into the sunset to the sound of a comedy bicycle bell ring.

So that was my day at the Circus Skills Convention.  I entered a fool, and left a very slightly wiser fool.  At least now I have a party trick that I can do really badly, which is leaps and bounds ahead of what I had before, which was absolutely nothing.
  Next up is a non-clown related horror film, which teaches a valuable lesson in lawnmower blah blah blah.  Who knows, maybe I'll actually deliver it this time.

IT [1990]

My first foray into the world of clown horror was to revisit a movie from my youth; the 1990 adaptation of Stephen King's It.  I was eleven or twelve at the time it was released.  I can't recall if I read the book or saw the movie first, but regardless, I remember it was a pretty big deal when this was broadcast.  To call this a movie is something of a misnomer; It is in fact a TV mini-series, which was broadcast in two one and a half hour instalments.  For those of you who don't want spoilers, stop reading now.  For those who have seen it, or don't care about such things: Here.  We.  Go!

  So where were we?  I was eleven.  Jumpers for goalposts.  It was on TV.
  Part 1 proved to be a great watch.  Tim Curry's Pennywise was an instant hit, and the next day, 'Hello, Georgie!' and 'We all float down here!' entered the vocabulary of my friends and I (I can pretend I had friends as a child if I want; this is my review).  It really did affect us.  We all connected and identified with the children, and while none of us were afraid of clowns, there was no denying the effectiveness of the central villain.

  The next night we eagerly sat down, noses two inches from the screen, and anticipated the delights and horrors of the concluding part.  And what horrors we got!  My memories of Part 2 amount to one thing; it was a tremendous let down.  It was all going so well until they served up that ending.  Through the intervening years, all that has stuck with me from Part 2 was that the giant spider looked shit, and that ultimately the whole thing was a crushing disappointment.

  On my return to It in 2011, I was carrying a lot of baggage.  I still had fond memories of what I liked in It, and I was genuinely looking forward to reacquainting myself with pretty much everything bar the climax.  We tend to have rose tinted memories of movies we loved from back in the day.  Oftentimes we revisit a movie we feel defined a period of our childhood, only to regret picking at the scab of memory.  Sometimes a scab comes away clean, and we are satisfied, but sometimes it clings on, stings and bleeds, and generally cause us a great deal of discomfort.  What is filled with magic through the eyes of a child, can be vomit inducing when looked on with adult eyes.

  Even when it first came out, part of me was aware that It was something born of television, and not of the movies.  The fact that Richard Thomas (John Boy from The Waltons) and John Ritter (who I was most familiar with from the awful Problem Child movies) seemed to automatically demote it for me on some level.
  Yet when I popped this in my DVD player two weeks ago, I was sucked in just as much as I had been in the past.

  The basic story of Part 1 is that a group of successful adults, who had been best friends as children thirty years before, receive a phone call out of the blue; It's back…  As each of them hang up the phone and the true horror of what this means dawns on them, we are presented with a flashback to them as children.  With each phone call, we get a glimpse of that summer they spent together, when friendships were formed, and lifelong bonds forged. 

  In my opinion, there are few writers who can capture adolescence with the verisimilitude of Stephen King, and, much like Stand By Me, It creates a wonderful sense of this time in our lives.  As a country boy myself, those early years before I discovered computer games were spent playing outdoors.  We would build hideouts, climb trees, explore abandoned houses (and smash all of their windows!), go for long cycles with nothing to eat but berries from roadside bushes and crab apples, or we would just hang out in sheds doing somersaults onto bales of hay and playing dead ducks.  The feel of this is captured wonderfully here, and in many ways I appreciate it more now than I did almost twenty years ago.  Holy shit, I just made myself feel very old!

  But nostalgia only goes so far, and at the end of the day, this also needs to be judged as a craft.  So how does It hold up as a viewing experience?  Remarkably well!  Sure, some of the staging is a little 'TV,' and the performances are uneven in places, but overall, this is a well made programme, and still stands up after all of these years.

  Pennywise is just as brilliant now as he was then.  In all of the killer clown movies I am about to watch, I can't imagine that any of them will top what Tim Curry achieves here.  He perfectly balances the sense of playfulness and menace that the role requires.  Even when he's trying to be your friend, you can sense his lurking malevolence.  Pennywise is a truly iconic creation, and rightly has his place with the best movie monsters.

  So far so good.  On to Part 2.  Much like the adults returning to confront their old fears, my own It awaited - that ending.  Even as a child, I hadn't been able to overlook (Shining reference, anyone?  No?  Fine.  Be like that.) how bad it was.  Now as we all know, kids are pretty stupid.  How much worse would the ending appear now that I'm a super intelligent (and modestly handsome) adult? 

  But overall, it is the lesser of the two halves.  Apart from Pennywise, what made Part 1 so enjoyable were the scenes with the children, and while there are some really nice moments in Part 2 - in particular when Bill and Mike fix up the bike and cycle around - a lot of the charm is lost.  The children were just better drawn as characters than their adult counterparts.

  It is in the final act that It really falls apart.  That giant fucking spider still ruins everything!  It isn't just that the spider looks terrible - it's like a rejected creature effect from The Fly II - it's that they make a massive error in judgement with the storytelling.

  In the book, it's true, they do fight a giant spider, but there is a load of messed up weirdness that leads up to it: The Ritual of Chüd, which, if I remember correctly, is something about biting a demons tongue and telling it riddles.  This would obviously be impossible to re-create on film.  It works in the novel because the book delves more into the characters' primal fears.  The fact that It is no longer in the guise of a clown doesn't matter.  Even though the shape has changed, we still identify with this new form as the same villain.  The face might be different, but the dread remains the same.

  But in a movie, once we've identified with a antagonist, we want to see a showdown with them.  When Pennywise is replaced with a giant spider, all of the sense of dread and excitement that has been building up for two and a half hours is deflated.  Where is the big confrontation with the evil clown?  We want to see Pennywise defeated, not some giant spider, that has nothing to do with anything.  Sure spiders are scary, but that is a generic, diffused fear, and not the focus here.  Our amazing clown villain is written off-screen and replaced with a soulless animatronic.  They don't even give it Tim Curry's voice!  There is nothing to connect this new monster with anything we have seen before.
  To do this in any film would ruin it.  Take any iconic villain - The Terminator, Freddie Krueger, Jason, Michael Myers, hummus -  and replace them with a giant spider in the final act, and you've got yourself a dud.  In being slavish to the source material, the filmmakers took what could have been a true classic, and made it a guilty pleasure.  It's a real shame.  You come away from It yearning for the movie that was within the grasp of the filmmakers, but unfortunately, it was beyond their reach.

And that's where we must leave It (oh come on; I had to use that gag at least once!).  I'm really glad to have rediscovered this movie, and it can take a proud place in my collection.  I love it despite it's flaws.  It really is a very entertaining watch, albeit one with caveats.  One last thing to note, eagle-eyed viewers, i.e. anyone watching with their eyes open, will notice that the young Richie is played by a prepubescent and very geeky looking Seth Green!

Next up is a non-clown related horror, which teaches a valuable lesson in lawnmower safety.

Step right up!

I was going to write a big intro like a circus ringmaster might say, but I couldn't be arsed.  A simple 'Hello' will suffice.  Just to expand a little on the blog header, at the end of last year I began work with Conor McMahon on re-writing a screenplay he had written about a killer clown.  After many late nights (and early mornings), we submitted, stepped back, and waited for nothing to happen.

  And we weren't disappointed on that front; nothing did.  That is, until mid-February of this year, when we got the call to tell us that we were making a movie.  Holy shit!

  Because I came on board this at the last minute, I didn't get to do any of the type of research I would like to do, so now, as we prepare to write our final draft, I am going to cram as much in during the next few weeks as I can.  I feel like I'm studying for the big test!

  Firstly, I must say hello to Gary Gill - Hello, Gary! - and thank him for painting the clown image I am using.  I love it, dude!

  Secondly, I am almost finished my first review.  It's really long, and for that I apologise in advance.  I promise the rest will be much, much shorter!  They have to be; I really don't have the time to spend too long on these!  There was just a lot to say in this particular one...

  I'll hopefully post It up tomorrow....