2019 – Page 3 – Dirty Feed

Discussion For ‘Em

Published 31st March 2019

Jingles / Radio / TV Comedy / TV Presentation

A fairly large percentage of my time online is still spent hanging around forums. Admittedly, not as much as I did in 2002, where my time on a Knightmare forum directly contributed to me failing to get a degree. But still enough to notice a rather unfortunate pattern from some posters, across many different topics of conversation.

Let’s take an example, from a TV presentation forum I frequent, perhaps despite my better judgement.¹

“Anyone else often wonder what planet certain posters are living on? Very few people care about TV presentation outside this forum.”

And I get it, I really do. Some posters are utterly tiresome with their statements that the entire general public cares deeply about the current set of BBC One idents. Sometimes, you just want to let everyone know that at least you’re aware that there’s a wider world out there. One where people don’t tut or cheer depending on what’s bunged in front of EastEnders.

But.

* * *

There I was, sitting in the TX suite of a popular television channel a few years back. Let’s take a look at the programmes on in the afternoon. Ooh, hang on, that show was made in back in the 80s, was it? I’m sure we have an era-appropriate ident we can stick in front of that.

So I make the change in the schedule – checking with all the right people before doing so, in case anybody relevant is reading this – and then did the junction, live announcer and all. Everything went fine, and I sat back, pleased I’d added something fun to the nation’s viewing that afternoon.

A few weeks later, the announcer collared me, and said her mum had been watching, and she loved the ident. It brought back so many memories for her from decades ago, and got all excited when it appeared. And not just because her daughter was talking over it.

* * *

If TV presentation fans are near the bottom of the fandom pile², then there’s one kind of fan even they are allowed to look down on: jingle anoraks.³ It seems that in real life, most people just aren’t interested in discussing the intricacies of WPLJ jingle packages.⁴ Which is frankly outrageous.

Still, when Radio 1 Vintage aired in 2017, celebrating 50 years of Radio 1, a curious thing happened in my Twitter feed. “Oh yeah, I remember that jingle…” People who I’d never managed to get into a conversation about jingles were suddenly enthusing about all those silly six second songs.

It was great.

* * *

Red Dwarf fandom was in quite a miserable state in 2008. It’s no secret that morale was on the floor. We’d lost all trace of Red Dwarf, tempers were strained, and supplies were… wait, sorry, this isn’t Ganymede & Titan, I’ve really got to stop throwing in these stupid quotes.

Anyway, the site was quieter than it had been in years. Certainly, we had less reader engagement than ever before. Then, suddenly, new episodes were announced.

And achieved record ratings.

* * *

My point, of course: this stuff isn’t binary. People aren’t either interested enough in TV presentation to post on forums, or not interested whatsoever. Same goes for jingles, same goes for Red Dwarf, same goes for anything.

Sure, a general audience doesn’t tend to spend every evening pondering unused BBC Two idents, listening to some of the worst radio jingles ever made, or comparing episodes of Red Dwarf and Hancock’s Half Hour. But to presume that somebody doesn’t have an interest in a subject just because they don’t hang around on a forum risks being hugely patronising. Where did all those people interested in Red Dwarf magically appear from and give Dave those record ratings?

Answer: they were always there. They just didn’t spend much time reading a website about it, that’s all. But it doesn’t mean they didn’t care.

* * *

And yes, I used the “For ‘Em” joke back on Ganymede & Titan in 2004, on Noise to Signal in 2006, and here on Dirty Feed in 2010.

I am a complete twat.

Rule: don’t read about comedy on a TV presentation forum. And don’t read about TV presentation on a comedy forum. ↩
I’m allowed to say that, I’m one myself. ↩
I’m allowed to say that, I’m one myself. ↩
If you are interested in this, I highly recommend Jon Wolfert’s Sunday Jingle Show. ↩

Boy, D’ya Miss Me Like a Nail in the Head?

Published 24th March 2019

Film

The story of the film Nailed is a complicated one.

Not the story we see on-screen, mind you, which is straightforward if quirky: Alice, a waitress (Jessica Biel) gets a nail lodged in her head during a marriage proposal, goes a bit weird, and ends up fighting for better health insurance. No, the complicated part is the story of how the film got made. Or more specifically, one particular scene.

First, a bit of background. Nailed was shot by David O. Russell in 2008, and had endless financial problems at the hands of production company Capitol Films.¹ Shooting was halted numerous times due to people not being paid, and eventually production ended with the film incomplete. In 2010, Russell finally walked from the project for good; the film was eventually sold on to a new company, finished without Russell’s involvement, and was released as Accidental Love in 2015 to piss-poor reviews. (With Russell’s name removed from the credits – the director was now the pseudonymous Stephen Greene.)

And here comes the bit I’m really interested in. Let’s take a look at the following Entertainment Weekly article: “The David O. Russell Film You Were Never Supposed to See” from February 2015, which details the original production of the film back in 2008:

“In the push and pull for control, producers held the film negatives hostage and postponed a crucial nail-gun scene – when the nail gets planted in Biel’s head – until the last day of shooting in an effort to maintain some leverage against Capitol’s perceived resolve to release an unpolished film. When one of the unions pulled the plug for good, the sequence had still not been shot. The film was left incomplete.”

This tale is backed up by producer Doug Wick, who is quoted as saying the following in this article in Collider, back in August 2012 – before the film was even finished and released:

“…oddly enough the last scene that we had scheduled – partly because we thought this way [the financier will] have to finish the movie – is the scene where Jessica Biel gets a nail in her head. That’s why it’s called Nailed, she doesn’t have insurance and she can’t get the nail out. So the last two days were getting the nail in her head, and we shut down so we didn’t have the final scene that was the scene that was the premise of the movie. There was no way to cut the movie together without that scene, so I don’t know what he was thinking by shutting us down then. At that point everybody was like, ‘We can’t cut the movie together, there isn’t a movie.’ And then he never came through with the rest of the money.”

All very interesting. So, you may be wondering, how did they actually manage to release the film without that crucial scene?

[Read more →]

Capitol Films was owned by David Bergstein, who as of 2019 is serving an eight year jail sentence for fraud on an unrelated matter. ↩

And Finally…

Published 21st February 2019

Other TV

So many of us have vivid TV memories than seemingly nobody else remembers.

Here’s mine.

* * *

Nottingham, in either the late 80s, or more probably the early 90s. The teatime edition of Central News East is on. I’m watching it, because not only am I fascinated by television, but I’m very specifically fascinated by television which is being transmitted live just up the road from where I live.

Anna Soubry is presenting, in the days when she was a journalist, long before she was an MP. I remember very little about the programme. I can’t even remember who she was presenting with. I just remember the very end of the programme. Anna and her co-presenter are sharing their usual banter. Her co-presenter said something. I can’t remember what. But as the lights dimmed and the closing credits appeared, I vividly remember Anna’s reply:

“You bastard.”

I actually remember that the sound was slightly dipped at the end of the word as we went to the wide… but it was very clear what she said. I also remember the general air of embarrassment in the studio on that final shot. It was bloody great.

* * *

I can’t imagine this particular gem ever being unearthed. Anna must have presented hundreds of editions of Central News East; I can’t even give you a year, or the name of her co-presenter, or any of the stories featured in that edition. My memory tells me I actually recorded it on VHS; my memory also tells me I recorded over it shortly afterwards, like a damn fool.

Nowadays, that clip would probably end up all over YouTube. Back then, unless it made it onto It’ll Be Alright on the Night – and I’m sure this didn’t, or else we’d all know the clip – it would often just disappear into the ether. I don’t think it even made it onto one of Central’s blooper-filled Christmas tapes. Unless someone who worked on the show remembers it and made a note of when it was, I can’t imagine it’ll ever be seen.

Which is a little unsatisfying. So instead, I can offer you the following Anna Soubry clip from Central’s 1985 Christmas tape¹. At 11:42, dealing with people who look old enough to know better:

“You shites!”

Found using this this detailed listing of various Christmas tapes. ↩

Something Good About Come Back Mrs. Noah

Published 25th January 2019

TV Comedy

It has to be admitted that nice comments about Come Back Mrs. Noah – Lloyd and Croft’s 70s sitcom about a spacebound housewife – are rather thin on the ground. Having just watched the pilot episode on YouTube, I honestly don’t think it’s quite as bad as its reputation, although doing a racist joke about Notting Hill six minutes into the episode does push your goodwill rather. And the less said about the tea maker gag the better.

But enough about that. I want to highlight something interesting about that pilot, which is an effects technique I’ve never seen before. It takes place in Mission Control, where the ground crew are trying to sort out the fault with the spacecraft. And we get these two consecutive shots of the monitoring equipment they’re using to troubleshoot the fault:

Clearly, there was only one source available for the yellow overlay oscilloscope effect, but they wanted to show it from two separate angles. The solution? They designed things so the same overlay effect would work for each shot, despite the two shots being entirely different!

You can see it in action here:

It may look a little odd to modern eyes, but it’s a really clever, thinking-outside-the-box solution. You can’t do two different effects? Then make sure your single effect works from two angles.

Brilliant.

It Ain’t Half A Missing Pilot Title Sequence Mum

Published 21st January 2019

TV Comedy

Today, I want to talk about It Ain’t Half Hot Mum. Not the sad death of Windsor Davies, or whether the programme is racist¹. This is Dirty Feed, and I have higher things in mind.

The show premiered in January 1974 on BBC1 with a first series of eight episodes.² The first episode, however, was a true pilot, recorded a full year before air, and separately from the other seven episodes. David Croft’s autobiography, You Have Been Watching…, p. 196:

“The first pilot programme in January 1973 went very well with the studio audience and featured probably the smallest riot ever experienced by the British in India. There was no room in the studio for a proper full-scale riot mob, and we couldn’t afford one anyway. I made do with about ten shadowy figures in the foreground, but the result didn’t bear examination.³ I was present at the odd riot in India and they are extremely frightening affairs. Police and troops are usually heavily outnumbered and very scared, so ghastly mistakes can easily happen. The remainder of the show was a good pilot and served to introduce the characters and the general thrust of the plots, as any pilot should.”

Despite being shot at a different time to the rest of the series, there really are very few differences between that pilot episode Meet the Gang, and the rest of Series 1. But there is one major change: the closing titles. In the pilot, the gang song is all shot on VT in the studio. For the rest of Series 1, it was completely remounted on film.

[Read more →]

That’s a 50,000 word article, which I am frankly disinclined to write. ↩
Attention boring people: no, not six episodes, despite your claims that every UK sitcom series contains six shows. ↩
Reading this, it is perhaps not surprising that when You Rang, M’Lord? allowed Croft to go to town on the battle sequence at the beginning, he really fucking did so. ↩

Reasons Shaun Keaveny is Boring #2847342

Published 10th January 2019

Radio / Videogames

The aforementioned Shaun Keaveny, 6 Music, 9th January 2019, on a listener talking about their kid playing Minecraft:

“If he’s playing it, I don’t mind that. It’s watching my children sometimes watching a kid playing Minecraft on YouTube which beggars belief for an analogue person. The other day, I saw a kid watching a kid playing Minecraft on YouTube, and a kid watching over his shoulder. It’s like Russian dolls, isn’t it? Absolutely insane.”

Let’s take a little trip back to my childhood. I remember watching and loving my sister play games on our BBC Master. I remember watching and loving my friend Joel play games on his Archimedes. And I remember being at a Scout activity weekend, where by far the best thing that happened all weekend was gathering around our leader’s Amiga and watching each other play games.¹

I totally get that Shaun Keaveny is not trying to be the voice of youth. But 6 Music hiring DJs which don’t even manage to keep up-to-date with what was happening in the early 90s – or, indeed, far earlier – is not a good look. People watching other people play videogames is not a new thing in any way whatsoever. It’s been going on for decades.

By the way, the fact I didn’t invent Twitch and make millions of pounds despite being well aware that people love watching other people playing games will haunt me to my deathbed.

The other amazing thing which happened that weekend was the sex scene in Problem Child 2 making me feel a bit funny. ↩

Later posts →