THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.105 - CHRIS MORRIS 2

Episode Date: October 18, 2019

Adam talks with British comedian, writer and director Chris Morris about colonoscopies, mobile phone radiation, Chernobyl, David Bowie's last album Blackstar, The Pixies, the value of research before making a film and whether Quentin Tarantino is a genius, boring or a boring genius. Recorded in London in September 2019.LE PETOMANE DU MOULIN ROUGE (YOUTUBE)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rIXipAV6FsTHE INCONVENIENT TRUTH ABOUT CANCER AND MOBILE PHONES (GUARDIAN, 2018)https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/14/mobile-phones-cancer-inconvenient-truthsTHE TRUTH ABOUT CELL PHONE RADIATION (FORBES, 2018)https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/02/02/the-truth-about-cell-phone-radiation/#14e40e4192a3MANUAL FOR SURVIVAL - A CHERNOBYL GUIDE TO THE FUTURE by KATE BROWN (2019)https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/309/309235/manual-for-survival/9780241352069.htmlGEORGE MONBIOT - WHY FUKUSHSIMA MADE ME STOP WORRYING AND LOVE NUCLEAR POWER (GUARDIAN, 2011)https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushimaMONBIOT VS PORRIT RE. NUCLEAR (CLIMATEAND CAPITALISM BLOG, 2011)https://climateandcapitalism.com/2011/08/10/jonathon-porrit-vs-george-monbiot-on-nuclear-power/IS NUCLEAR POWER WORTH THE RISK? (GRIST WEBSITE, 2019)https://grist.org/article/these-5-people-changed-their-minds-about-nuclear-power-are-you-next/DAVID BOWIE - NO PLAN (2017, YOUTUBE)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIgdid8dsC8PIXIES - VAMOS (LIVE, SNUB TV)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF0NJaKFbSIPIXIES - TAME, I BLEED, (SNUB TV SESSION, 1989)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0bxPbWicgc2 NORTHDOWN - COMEDY VENUE AND SPACE FOR HIREhttps://www.2northdown.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how you doing, podcats? Adam Buxton here. Welcome to podcast number 105, which features the second of two conversations I had last month with British comedian, writer and director Chris Morris. I'm assuming that if you're listening to this, you will have heard the first part that contains a brief overview of Chris's career thus far.

So I'm not going to go over all that again. Instead, I'll tell you what you can expect from part two. This conversation was recorded before the conversation that went out in part one. But as you'll know, if you listen to that podcast, I screwed up the main recording on this one. I'm sorry. So what you'll be hearing today is what I salvaged from my backup recorder, my little dictaphone, which was placed on the table between me and Chris. And I didn't even remember to set the backup running until about 10 minutes into the conversation. Listen, I'm a terrible person and I deserve to be put in prison. But this is the situation. We were at the King's Cross comedy venue, Two North Down, where I've recorded a couple of podcasts in the past.

Thanks very much to the Two North Down crew for letting us record there. And we talked about, what did we talk about? Mobile phone radiation, Chernobyl, David Bowie's last album, Black Star. You can pick a path through these. It was a proper ramble. The Pixies, Quentin Tarantino we ended up with. We also talked a bit about why Chris finds it so important to spend a lot of time, years in fact, doing research not only on his latest film, The Day Shall Come, in cinemas now. Go and see it, support your local satirist. But also his first feature, Four Lions.

But, both being men in our 50s, we began by talking about colonoscopies. Not for the first time on this podcast. And at the point when I switched on my backup recorder I just asked Chris whether he enjoyed his as much as I enjoyed mine. Hence his reference to a petamen or theatrical farter. Surprisingly not a word I was familiar with before Chris used it. I thought I'd explain just in case you were similarly in the dark about petamens. It's a French word, I think. Roughly translating as fart-o-maniac. Back at the end for more waffle, but right now with reverb-heavy Morris. Here we go.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's fun if the medical staff are nice up to a point, and then it's strangely uncomfortable, because if you ever have been in a situation where you've made yourself belch for a laugh, perhaps, when you were seven, it's sort of like being an accidental Petterman, in that I think true Petterens in musicals would inhale anally and then produce entertaining trumpet sounds from their rear. And this, you don't have to work out how to inhale anally. For the camera to work, they just put a pipe in and pump up

your intestine like a balloon so the camera can look around at all the surfaces right so you feel like you have basically eaten a vast amount of gas generating vegetable but that's being produced by the pipe i feel like that all the time yeah but this is new this is you click have you i mean maybe, but did you say you'd done this? I did the, I did the MRI colonoscopy. And so they pump you with fluid that has barium or whatever in it. Oh, and then, and then shoot from the outside. There's not a camera.

No. No, magnetic resonance imaging. Yes. So I think what they do is excite the carbon atoms and then watch as they give off energy, and that creates the image. Because I had an MRI scan for something else, and in order to ease the panic of going, I think I had to go into a kind of sealed tube.

And in order to stop my brain going, you won't be able to sit up or move for 45 minutes, I did a lot of chat about what mri what magnetic resonance imaging was talking to the doctors yeah very fast well the practitioners yeah they're not even the doctors are they they're the sort of the radiographers right i had radio four so i was just listening to radio four very intently with my finger on the chicken switch thinking i can't take it i can't take it i can't take it i can't take it I can't take it, I can't take it, I can't take it, I can't take it, I can't take it. I was just... What aspect of Radio 4 were you listening to?

Because a lot of that could send you... It wasn't Radio 4 that I couldn't take so much as the feeling that I was just about to shit myself. Oh. And, you know, you're inflated, as you described, but for me it was inflated with liquid. And it was so uncomfortable and painful. I mean, it's not sharply painful, but it's just the level of discomfort is off the charts.

Yeah. And 45 minutes you had? I'm thinking it was 45 minutes. Yeah, I think so. I can't even remember what they were scanning for. Yeah, they'd scan for something abdominal but higher up. Right. It was all fine.

But it was one of those things where they go, oh, you're over 50. Well, we better just check on this I did discover actually that I had these they call them kidney cysts which apparently more people have than not but you don't discover them until you get some sort of discomfort and then you find out that you've got these kind of

tennis ball sized things just ballooning off your kidney, it's essentially a sort of anomaly in the membrane, utterly harmless full of basically very boring you know if hummus what would you call it it's not even saline it's kind of um phloem but um but i actually listen to the sounds of the machine because it's basically like a sort of apex sound check yes it's like square pusher yeah okay so those two are head to head now but it's yeah and i was thinking what, okay. So those two are head-to-head now. But it's, yeah, and I was thinking, what kind of noise is going to come through next?

Because there's a very high frequency range, and the little kind of chirps and bleeps are quite, I was trying to go, is there a pattern here? What's the BPM? What's the sort of fundamental defining logic for this? And I really, I tapped into that and sort of forgot about everything else surely those two um tom jenkins and richard james have been in mris don't you think and come out side by side you could have a scan off and see maybe has anyone

done one on stage i mean that would be that would be the thing last night he got into a he got himself scanned i mean he was scanning himself for hours. I mean, you could imagine. I did meet a musician who'd put his head in a giant magnet for an hour as an experiment. Generous offer. A friend of his was a sort of scientist or maybe a pseudoscientist and said, I think magnets, giant electromagnets. Will you put your head in one for an hour?

And I'm not sure he's quite the same since. Yeah, that's like 20 years of intense mobile phone use in an hour. Yeah, why would you? Do you put your phone on airplane mode at night? You have a smartphone, do you? Not very. I mean, it's a smashed phone with old software. Yeah, that looks...

4S, an iPhone 4S. Okay. Airplane mode at night. I'd sort of leave it in careless places. In fact, I'm in transition. I have the iPhone and I have the Nokia, which is still in my bike bag over there, which is my real phone,

only I've only transferred about five numbers to it. But the Nokia, the 2G, the data-free option. Right. Which has to run on a 3g contract because you can't get a 2g contract anymore that's my real phone unfortunately i haven't i haven't managed to wean off yeah so on the iphone you don't have too many apps on there i'm guessing no apps no apps i think the apps are the route to the knowledge about yourself that you don't want to share yeah facebook being the

prime sure but why do you put it on on airplane mode oh just for um the microwaves the brain fry yeah because i think if it's you know you're carrying it around in your pocket the rest of the day so i don't see what kind of difference it genuinely makes but a friend of mine said oh no you should always put it on airplane mode at night otherwise it's getting updates and doing data I mean your phone probably wouldn't be doing that much if it hasn't got any apps on I refuse software updates

it's in the state of distress I just go no because iTunes got worse on their software updates that was a sad time it was a sad time but I managed you I It was a sad time, but I managed... You, I think, warned me, so I never updated. So I'm running some antique version of iTunes. Yeah.

Well, I think we have a slightly auto-suggestible sense about the radiation coming off a phone. I mean, it just feels bad, doesn't it? People used to talk about radiation masks and, I mean, phone masks. I live near a phone mask and I can feel... Now, maybe some people have an internal system like bees where they can actually pick up magnetic polarity shifts you know i've got friends who say they can feel vibrations but i can't feel so it's possible that i'm just detuned

but also when we were working on the film we had had a great guy who works for an American law agency who was our advisor on set. And he's used these things called stingrays, where basically it's a fake phone mast. So if there's an incident, the law agencies put one up very quickly. All mobile phones in the area think it's a real mast. So they all glom onto that and then they're all instantly readable and it looks like a bit of broadcasting equipment you know it's a van with a mast on top yeah and he said that using that for four hours you feel your brain cooking he told me he felt his brain was going from a sort of translucent gloop to a kind of opaque white gloop like an egg in a saucepan and he said that it it took three days

to wear off now i don't know you know that could be psychosomatic because i think it is probably quite mind-blowing to sit there knowing that you've got this very powerful mast essentially coming out of the top of your head and you're reading everybody's phones. Um, so I didn't, you know, I don't turn off my phone. I mean, we know that obviously we know it's good. It's got authority. We know it is known that invisible rays are in some cases very bad. If you've seen Chernobyl, then you will know that even though you can't see it, it's going to melt your fucking face off.

Yeah. How did you get on with Chernobyl? I really liked it. It's good. Do you think George Monbiot was worried about it as anti-nuclear propaganda? Because Monbiot's pro-nuclear now isn't he well he had a Fukushima moment didn't he he did just went actually despite all this it's fine well maybe not it's fine but like well it's the best option yeah I don't know I mean I went to a talk of a sort of a future talk recently where all the graphs were gloomy population climate

change the rest the only optimistic one was energy generation and there's a certain point just far enough away for the futurologists to be able to say this is our best guess we can't you can't hold us to this where renewable energy actually just becomes the cheap option and fossil fuels disappear forever. So it may not be right. I mean, nuclear, you can see the argument, but it's very, if you talk to anyone about Sellafield, I remember going round Sellafield at school,

which were, I think, was it even, was it called Windscale then? It was just about the time that they disappeared the name Winscale. And rebranded. Yeah, I mean. They rebranded a few times, didn't they? Well, no, it seems that way because the incident that gave rise to that decision happened in the 50s.

And it took that long for the inquiry to come out, the result of the inquiry to say, yes, this was a bad thing, it was a bad leak. So that scandal came out in the 70s and then followed quite quickly the decision to, well, if we change the name, people won't know. And actually the scary thing is if you talk to a 23-year-old about Sellafield, they have no idea, there is no geological record that includes wind scale. But people I know who have been to

sellafield and are concerned scientists say that there is you know there is deep storage problem there is a deep storage problem there because there are sort of containers at the moment safe their integrity is not busted but they don't quite know what's in there it's just because there's a lot of stuff has been it's a there it's just because there's a lot of stuff has been it's a reprocessing plant so there's a lot of deep storage that doesn't feel good it feels like if you're saying the future depends on that then one crack one split you're not going to get a meltdown like chernobyl but interestingly and i don't know anything about the inside of George Monbiot's head. But after Chernobyl, we in the West sort of colluded in the closing down of the idea as a problem. Once we'd gone, Russians very bad, terrible liars, bad practice at that power station.

at that power station, we then didn't really have much appetite for continuing an investigation into what might be wrong with this idea of nuclear power because we were dependent, you know, ourselves. And there's a great book by, I can't remember her name, but she's gone through the Russian records and looked at the real casualty list by visiting all the towns and villages and looking at the records of people who died. And far from it being whatever the official number was, was it 37?

Yeah. She thinks it's somewhere between 50 and 250,000 people. Yeah, which is more what the TV show was saying, wasn't it? Yeah, there was an after... But it's sort of... That TV show is very strange as well people yeah which is more what the tv show was saying wasn't yeah there's an after yeah yeah but it's it's sort of that tv show is very strange as well because there was almost a nostalgia element to it uh-huh nostalgic awfulness because if you grew up in the 80s with that clamp of mutual destruction in front of you and in most strands of culture whether it was raymond briggs or

frankie goes to hollywood or whatever the yeah all those suddenly it's like ah we're back to the bad times great but it was very well done i thought and very you know yeah i was johan rank that was who did bowie's last two videos really? he directed Chernobyl and he directed yes the videos for Black Star and Lazarus with the little button eyes and the silly dancing in the attic

pretty good though it was pretty good that really makes me cry that bit in the attic when that's the best bit of the song as well. Something happened when... What was it? On the day he died.

On the day he died. Yeah. Spirit lifted. But then he does some comedy bit, doesn't he? He does a sort of... Yeah, he does a wacky... Laughing and jittering. A weird sort of wonky dance, yeah.

I mean, when I first saw that, I mean, when I first saw that video, I thought, oh, gothic bollocks of the most enormous magnitude you know but that's the thing it was like my just weeks before I was looking at it thinking what are you doing and then when Black Star came out after he had died but it came out before I listened to it for two days before he died oh did you right and I was going there's something good about this. There's something actually good about this. But I mean, good, properly good.

Like the whole album is defined by a thing, like the best albums. There's a sort of, it's not just a collection of songs. Some of his later albums were like a collection of singles. Yes. This has a great defining feeling about it. And it sort of enriches itself with each listening it's it's like a proper piece of work it's the it's you know in a long canon there's a bit of a gap it's his best since scary monster it's great it's great to go out on a proper piece of work yeah oh god

yeah yeah and that final single no plan i think that's one of the best things he ever did. Yeah, I know. And you see Tony Visconti sort of saying, you sort of think, well, you could excuse him for being lacrimose and saying, well, you know, here's the the that's the definition of anything really that needs to be kept or thrown away there's just a vital element in it you may not even like it that much but you if there's a vital element you can't deny it's for keeps well he had the mother of all themes to deal with. Yeah, but actually, I mean, how hard would that... I'm not sure I could have any idea how to deal with that. It almost takes a kind of supreme act of arrogance and almost weird distancing from yourself

in order to produce a work like that about your own death. I mean, it's quite an odd thing to be able to do. Yeah, and in fact, when I saw the Black Star video first, I thought that there was a sort of element of self-regard and self-mythologising that was a bit weird. But then afterwards, of course, it was just incredibly... It felt very poignant and very sort of prescient and clever that he was trying to deal with everything not just his experience of nearing the end of his life but also what he

imagined people's reaction to it might be and his place and do you mean that stuff about signing off and sort of keeping you all guessing and um little references to major torment. Yeah, I can't give everything away and all that kind of sentiment. And that line in Black Star as well, something happened on the day he died. That feels to me like sort of supreme camp in a way. That sort of seems to be like he's some distance away from the subject.

But when he's talking about, yeah, I can't give everything away, it's almost like an admission of a kind of weakness he's not being playfully going haha you can't catch me i'm never going to give it all away it's more like it seems to me he's saying that you mustn't otherwise you'll destroy this fragile mystery and it's only a fragile mystery and that's why you can't and and i don't think i'm thinking that just after just because he died you know you know this death is a great punch line to the album sort of but i don't think

that's the case it feels like there's a kind of um he's sort of flirting with the idea of kind of just not bothering to pretend anything when confronted with this looming enormity. It's good, but it's an old, it's a sort of dinosaur genre as well, isn't it? It's quite hard to imagine. You mean the musical tone of it? Yeah, there's the idea that you even get a statement in the form of an album from an artist. Oh, I see. In that way, it has to have lived that archive journey, if you like,

that was his life, that's all of our lives. Yeah, I wonder if young people had a similar experience with it or if it was only people of a certain age that were listening to that album right the way through and going on that journey. I mean, we're talking about itunes you're still itunes albeit ancient version thereof you're not streaming music no i'm i'm pretty averse to being read right just on principle so i was introduced to you know we were at a screening last night and um a friend, oh, meet my friend.

He works for Spotify. And I immediately went, whoa, data extractor. So I'm not in a very good mental state to deal with those kind of things. I mean, I just don't know. I actually, I do just quite like sort of getting a CD and loading it on, you know, a lossless or, you know, some other high spec. I like it too, and I have that acquisitive, whatever you want to call it, hoarder's instinct.

Yeah, but they're pretty crummy things to hoard, aren't they, really? I mean, they're... They are, especially when the fucking... You update the thing, which I do, and then oh, your whole library's gone, and all that, all those hours of organizing things into playlists, which I have spent so much time on over the years. Yeah.

It's fine. It's a tool. Yeah. It's quite a good tool. Yeah. I'm just going to... To the loo. Do you do this?

Yeah. Anything goes. Okay. It's cool. Have a big spliff. It's fucking... There was one on the pavement just outside. Was there?

It's a podcast, mate. It's the. Have a big spliff. It's fucking... There was one on the pavement just outside. Was there? It's podcast, mate. It's the Wild West. You can fill. Is there a coffee machine? Oh, yes. I will get you a coffee. How would you like... But go to the loo first.

I've just a black coffee. I can make it. Are you still running? No, I'll do it upstairs. So, yeah. Are you still running? I'm still running. Okay.

Keep it very... Fine. All right. This will probably be the... Yeah. You're relying on me. So, yeah. You still running? I'm still running. Okay. Keep it running. Fine. All right. This will probably be the... Yeah. You're relying on me for something, man. Thank you. I think after the Fr much everyone who's... No, I think after the fringe, everyone who's discussed their show. Did you ever do stand-up?

No, no. I mean, not proper. I've done things on stage occasionally, but not stand-up. Right. You never got on stage and... Just what? Did an hour. Yeah.

What is it with these films? No. No. I've stood up in front of people and done impressions that's about it have you really only but i mean just like you know at university yeah not nothing that you really even want to shine a dim light on yeah frank spencer uh actually no it was impressions of this staff it was you know i wove them into a sort of neil young song oh yeah you know, I wove them into a sort of Neil Young song. Oh, yeah. You know, constructions.

You've played music on stage, though, right? Yeah, I mean, I, you know, there's a time when I used to say, yeah, I'm going to leave university, I'm going to be in a band.

But, I mean, it was sort of nonsense. I could play bass and a bit of guitar. And the key measure for me was whether you can play when you've had a drink and i would lose lock if i ever had lock with the drunk it or the drummer i would lose lock maybe after less than a pint and i've seen people play when they have forgotten their name and play

brilliantly you know some musician who just is a professional. Yes. This guy couldn't remember who he was, but he got up on stage and he played like a dream. And that sort of neurological bulletproofing to the sedatives, I think, distinguishes proper musicians from what I am. Yeah. Jack White was pretty hammered at Glastonbury a couple of years ago,

drinking champagne from a bottle in a very vulgar fashion. I was quite sophisticatedly debauched. Old school rock and roll, yeah. But was he any good? He was pretty good. It was sloppy. It was definitely sloppy. You see, when the White Stripes first came out,

I saw them twice and three times in rapid succession and they played brilliantly every time the third time was that golden moment where a band suddenly realizes that the world is theirs for the taking and so it went kind of small venue good gig small venue good gig bigger venue we're going all the way and it's that kind of go i saw the strokes at that same point and it's like it drives your high for three days on that but every time in his guitar playing i'm pretty sure he wouldn't have been drunk it's like he's going to fall over but i don't think you can play like that unless you're wired you know there was nothing softened the whole thing it's kind of like bristling with a sort of

almost disastrous nervous energy yeah did you see the pixies in their pump yeah but i was already hardline disappointed because uh boss and over had just come out and as a hardline fan you were sort of steve albini i was right there sir for rosie i Surfer Rosie. And I sort of felt Doolittle had some signs that maybe things might not go well, but there was some just thumping greatness in there. And then Bossa Nova. It wasn't that it was bad. It's just that there was something so fairly strange. It was sort of thin and tinny, wasn't it?

Yeah, but also... You know, in a... I mean, just the room acoustic on Surferosa. But yeah, I saw them. I mean, they were in their pompe. Retrospectively, in 1990, I mean, it was great. I was just being hyper picky.

That was Brixton Academy, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. I was there too. When they played those long encores of vamos yeah and joey was smashing up his guitar so good but also they did seem to play every song they'd ever written yeah and so some of the similarities were sort of unignorable not that's a bad thing but again at the time I sort of thought yeah but you've done that and it's it's a really savage thing that you do isn't it when somebody comes in so brilliantly you hold them to that high account yeah it's the same with Prince I mean Prince in the mid-80s was

just he made three or four albums that you just couldn't believe when you heard them and then after that it was like well sorry mate yeah you're only brilliant and then if you ever saw him live you know he was so talented that it was it made every other musician you'd seen look like they were being a bit ridiculous because with prince there was like it made you realize that almost every band you see there's a sense that maybe there's going to be a mistake or maybe it Might fall to bits at some point. He just seemed to be like flying above everything

Astonishing mmm Really? This is old. This is old geezer stuff isn't it? I like it though. It's comforting now Is it it's a compulsion that leads you to explore that leading edge of all of that? Yeah. I'm still a curiosity seeker. I'm looking at the idiosyncrasies of things.

A mountain or a tree is the manifestation of forces that we are not capable of dealing with. I'm very drunk in this. You're in promotional mode. Well, it's not really a mode, and it's not... It's fine. It's fine. Because you've done all of this work, you might as well prattle on about it.

Right. And there's a lot of footnotes. So it's basically divesting your brain of surplus garbage that you build the film on. Right. Screening... Right. Thanks thanks very much let's move on screening last night at the ritzy in brixton and that was fun that was good do you sit in the screenings i've stopped that now right i reached the point where i mean because obviously you know

that you see it so many times and you have to telescope up and down the line of sort of familiarity so that you're up at the coalface working sort of beat by beat moment by moment fragments of time tweaking to make things better and then you go to the other end of the telescope and try and pretend you've never seen any of this before and this is during the edit process and then when you see it in a viewing theater well it's quite sterile and maybe you're doing the grade, and you can often turn the sound down, so I'm just looking at the pictures, so I'm not experiencing the film. But once you've seen it in...

I mean, this will sound ridiculous and sort of very basic, but it seems to me that the bigger the audience, the better, and that's not a sort of megalomaniacal thought. It's simply that the film rides a different way. I mean, we played it with 1,200 people in South by Southwest, and it suddenly feels like you're sort of on an ocean of response. And then I think I watched it sometime after that, possibly for a technical reason,

and it literally fell to pieces in front of me. I kept thinking, this doesn't make any sense at all. Not that it doesn't. I mean, it makes quite careful sense. But my brain had given up and had started looking at it as fractals from different universes that had accidentally been piled into a jug. Do you panic in those moments? No, no. I knew it was fine, but I just knew that I couldn't watch it again.

For a bit, anyway. But it is great to see it with an audience i'm glad that they i think the audience thing disables what you were talking about when we were talking about the uh pixies and being harsh on your favorite bands that hyper critical mindset that i think is heightened when you're on your own and you are sat watching something on a computer or whatever in your room at the end of the night I don't know and I think the net age has birthed that specific type of critical mindset that you see within all the videos on YouTube of people saying here's 10 things that's that we're wrong with the last star wars movie and all that kind of thing i well except that you know i was in an audience of

whatever it is 2000 at that pixies gig being hyper analytical but then i've always had a sort of right strange sort of you know peter baynham's uh impression of me going to a gig is that standing there arms folded frowning scowling for two hours and then going, that was brilliant. We went to see Beck in 1997 when he just sort of invented the mucking about version of Beck. So I saw him in 94 where he was in this bar in Barcelona running around the stage trying to play every instrument, sort of almost falling over, shambolic,

obviously talented, but not quite crystallised. And then he sort of invented this kind of ridiculous version of presentation and they'd sort of smashed up their guitars after the first song. It was great, it was a great show. But yeah, I just scowled throughout and then said, brilliant, absolutely brilliant. So, you know, I'm not a good person to go to things with. Same in the cinema.

I was banned by my family from going to watch films with them. Because, so I do, I'm not sure. Sometimes an audience response can switch me the other way. Like, these people are all mad. They're all mad. Yeah. What is wrong with everyone? And then I go into a sort of, what is wrong with,

people's brains have been cooked by trivia and nonsense. You know, it throws you into that. So I'm not always born it's the crowd can be a perilous thing it's like i tell you what it's like when that old argument about canned laughter you know when people sort of go well it's a real shame that they use the dated technique of uh canned laughter on certain things and what they're normally referring to is in fact that the program they've watched is not funny but the audio texture is insisting that it is yeah because if in something like father ted where you've got laughter it is

very funny and the audience it just seems to be doing exactly the right thing so it's only when there's a sort of dissonance between the two that people suddenly say it's about time we got rid of audience tracks on comedies. It's the same with an audience in a cinema. You can either be with them or against them depending on the quality of, I think anyway. Yeah. The quality of your mood. Yes, exactly.

Is that a fan? There's a thing over there, that whole machinery over there makes, it's got a little medley setting. A while ago it was rattling and clicking, but now it's whirring. Maybe it's a dishwasher. Oh, it's an ice machine.

Oh. Yes, they killed the ice machine. So tonight's gig here, warm drinks only. So the thing that people seem to preface conversations or articles about you with, that's not a good sentence, is, oh, it's taken you so long. Why does it take so long?

It's getting longer, isn't it? And I could only hazard... I mean, you know, I used to do radio shows daily and then weekly or bi-weekly or tri-weekly or whatever. It's getting longer. It could be mental decay. I mean, you do do other things in between, don't you? So like you script edit Stuart Lee's TV show,

or at least you have done on occasion. Yeah, I couldn't pretend, though, that they take up chunks of time. I mean, there are commitments to a month or two. And, you know, script editing, Stu, is not really like script editing a narrative script. It's sort of a suggestion here or there, bouncing ideas around,

because obviously he knows how to make his own stuff anyway, and it really generates itself off an audience. So you're just there as a kind of friend or a critical friend and that's just lucky to be able to do that but it's not the thing that got in the way of this you know i think it's just this is a bit of an undertaking and the question might be come on mate what are you doing why don't you just do something closer to home but it seems that i've got some curiosity about things aren't necessarily close to home you have to be interested and i have lots

of ideas that i'm not really that interested in so i just don't do them and i can't imagine doing something that you're not interested in yeah and then if the interest takes you a long way you have to make a lot of discoveries about the american government and about people who live in the poorest parts of american cities and all of the elements in between that are reflected in the film well it's just what you've got to do and i think it's i mean i'm looking over at a picture on the wall of the two north down venue of guz khan you've met guz. Yes, yes. Yeah. I was talking to him and he was saying that he was a big fan of Four Lions and that actually that was a sort of pivotal moment for him as far as getting into a certain type of comedy that he hadn't really been exposed to very much. Like

he grew up as an Eddie Murphy aficionado and your sort of stuff wasn't really so much on his radar. and your sort of stuff wasn't really so much on his radar but four lines he was really knocked out by and particularly impressed by the sort of level of knowledge that seemed to run through it yeah i guess it's a result of a trajectory of inquiry and being welcomed at the other end so that you're hanging around with families right and just seeing who says what when they come in the room. I mean, I made a lot of good friends on that sort of season of research, and it really went in quite deep. I felt I was meeting, in some ways, old England. You know, you go to Keithley and you sit down in a Pakistani man's house.

He's about 30, but he sounds like a Hovis advert voiceover and the sort of family values and all those things are strong and hospitality to strangers is strong and you know so you just pick that up and then of course and all of the jocularity and all the ways people tease each other for you you're more religious than I am, it sort of goes in. We did a screening in Manchester just last week, and Afi, who was one of the people who became a very good friend, his whole family came along. His mum always makes me a curry,

because home-cooking curry is way better than anything you get in a curry house. She thinks I don't eat enough. So this 75-year year old lady comes with a kind of um big bag of delicious goodies and but that's just a sort of naturally that's just it's a fantastic thing really i mean we don't do enough of that i think yeah in in you know it was just kind of like everything's so convenient or off the shelf but it really means something you know i treasured this. I carried this curry around for two days,

and then we had it when I got home. Really good. Yeah, it is nice, isn't it? Someone came to a gig of mine, and she runs an empanada stall in Norwich Market, and she brought along some of her wares. And it was really touching, and it tasted great. I don't know, maybe that's just sentimental.

But that's nice Gus said that. Yeah, I suppose it's possible that you could spend a couple of days on Wikipedia and make the same film. No, no, no, I couldn't. I mean, I'd really, I'd tempt the lazy side of myself and say, oh yeah. I said to a friend of mine three years ago i'm making a film about the fbi about sting operations and he went we kind of know that the fbi do that but we know in a wikipedia i've read it on wikipedia or i've read it in a book kind of way once you're there in an fbi office and you feel the way it works you're in

a totally different zone once you're there with a family who's two members of whom have just been set up in this kind of weird truman show world that the fbi generate to sort of perpetrate these stings and you've seen that how the family's been decimated and how confused they still are about what the hell happened the meaning of what you've read completely changes it becomes physical and the words mean nothing it's almost like the youthful sophistication of like yeah we know the fbi do that the cops but the cops they're always gonna fuck you up man you know it does it's nothing like that and until you've actually gone there hung around it you aren't really in a position to write it because your writing is driven by this kind of

your retention of the feeling and the feeling of the people and sort of how they joke with each other or how they interact or the things that they say that mean something to them. And is this sounding a bit method? I mean, I just couldn't imagine doing it any other way. It's not there. It's a bit like doing an essay off the internet, doing Wikipedia. Is that because you feel that to not do that would be disrespectful as well? No, I just think it's the only way to do

it you're right it's like it's like wikipedia is great as a sort of signpost but you don't know it do you if you've read it on wikipedia you don't know it because you haven't breathed it i mean i could go on wikipedia and look up liberty city in miami and i could read that it's a roosevelt project in the 30s i could read all the things that i say in a q a about it but when you actually go there yeah it's about let's pick a number 500 times more real even than watching moonlight which is shot around that part of miami when i saw moonlight i was like what you shot there and of course the author grew up there so it's kind of different for him but until you've actually set foot there and felt this very strange like you know these barrack houses these low-level bungalows or

two-story buildings surrounded by an ironic white picket fence which feels as much like a sort of prison fence as a perfect american home and felt the level of just the electricity to do with working in an environment which is governed by who owns which corner and what's this stranger doing there, are they relevant or not? You know, just that world. It's like the world of The Wire in a more tropical setting.

I really felt that. You can't really write about it, even if you're not writing about it directly, but you're writing about a fringe preacher whose way of getting by in that environment is to make up his own ideology and get a small following. Wikipedia wouldn't have told me that if you drive up one of the roads that borders Liberty Square, there are more missions than shops. The Church of Christ, the Whispering Listener, or, you know, the Holy Spirit and Mother Mary, I mean, just made up names, tells you of the need in an area for belief systems on your doorstep.

It also tells you what you can get a license for. You can basically get a license off the city for drink stores and missions. So it tells you something about money as well. But, you know, all of those things, and you talk to people who are there, and then you can start to, after all, writing a script, this all sounds very serious, but writing a script is essentially you're trying to bullshit with great authority.

And by that I mean that, you know, I have never served in the FBI, but I try and convey a reality that people who are in that situation would recognize. So that you're a good bullshitter rather than a bad one. Right. I've got to say you're looking great. I love what you've done with your nipples and your knees and your shiny bald pate. Is the process of putting a film together still enjoyable or is it just a total nightmare and you just have to kind of look forward to it finishing are you just sort of firefighting the whole time it's not a

nightmare is it in you know comparison sure i mean so first of all you have to elevate it from all jobs that are life and death and proper jobs because essentially you've it's this enormous confection and then once you take that confection seriously then you can start to call it a nightmare in your own little world but yes i mean it's a sort of you know it's a battle of a million decisions and problems it's just problem solving all the way and you have a whole team of experienced and brilliant people to see the problems coming. Is it a nightmare? I mean, the thing about a nightmare is the ultimate feeling that within that dreamscape, you can do nothing

and you're at the mercy of whatever terror is menacing you. So with filmmaking, I've not reached that point yet. There are points where you feel close, but then there's always some bit of your brain or somebody else's brain that kicks in. So it can be tough. It can be really tough. And the thing was, it was tough this time, and I kept thinking, you know,

we were out in the Dominican Republic. There were many, many things that were not ideal about the shoot. But I thought, the trouble is, there were many, many things that were not ideal about the shoot. But I thought the trouble is there's no glory in this. No matter how difficult it gets, this is not shooting Fitzcarraldo. So the only excuse really for complaining about it is if you have a hulk of a boat that capsizes or threatens to crush your crew or, you know, and your upper river miles from anywhere and a plane bringing supplies has crashed crew or you know and your upper river miles from anywhere and a plane bringing supplies has crashed or you know right so if you're feeling bad about it shut up

yes does it make you pine for a more manageable world in tv and there are some aspects there are some aspects definitely it's the way this is industry talk now but I think boldness is shrinking in line with the strange fact that sequels always did better than originals even if originals were much better than the sequels so you've got a sort of shrinking

environment, people watching films on different platforms cinema is threatened and it decreases boldness. So it is harder. You have to really hustle in an independent film to get money. And that's not always enjoyable either. It's just frustrating.

And I think television, on the other hand, seems to be just handing out, you know, there is a sort of paradigm which just goes, yeah, you want to do that? Do it. It just depends whether something's a one-off or whether it's a series and i'm not sure i have the right brain to write a series it'd be great if i did so what was the last thing like that you did nathan barley i guess yeah oh no that's what it's that's a little i mean like 10 one hours like you know jesse doing a session

yeah amazing undertaking i mean i i sort of just feel dizzy and upset even imagining trying to do that. Like 90 minutes is bad enough. But if something like that comes along and suddenly TV seems to be the right place, it's a harder place for a single item. It's not really rackable, is it, in the big shop of Netflix, a one off. You have to have a chain. You have to have a sort of a little world of your own. Now it seems as if three or four is an acceptable way to go yeah that's not too hard is it come on it must be possible that's what guz khan does quartet what is it series of four yes at what what length 25 minutes yes no i mean you can do all sorts of strange things but i think by the time you're looking for that sort of financial freedom, you need to be pitching to one of these big platforms a big thing.

What about the new platform just for mobiles? So it's mobile streaming and Spielberg's doing. And so it's lots of pitches for things that would be good to watch on a mobile phone and various types of environments where you might be looking at your phone so one of them is this idea of spielberg and he is making a horror series but it's designed to be watched with the lights off okay under the sheets kind of thing after you've to bed. It'll only play if the phone knows that there's no light in the room. That's already mildly upsetting, isn't it? I mean, it's quite an interesting idea.

Sure, Todd. So you're pitching to a teenage. I guess. So this actually will have with it, somewhere in the package, the knowledge that teenagers are the most marketable to group. Yeah. teenagers are the most marketable to group yeah so somewhere within this will be a sort of a measuring teenager's mind metric you know like that sort of experiment facebook did where they realized that the more upset teenagers were the more likely they were to make comfort purchases

right so they fed certain people the worst of their friends reactions in order to make them more unhappy and then put a nice thing in their path that might be a comforting purchase now that was a little experiment that was kind of exposed in Australia they're sort of doing this kind of thing all the time because that's why they exist

but within this nice idea, it's quite imaginative isn't it that you make a little horror thing that's just going to terrify the fucking shit out of a teenager as they watch under the covers there will be somebody going and we can probably use the camera on the phone to look at their face

and listen to their responses and I don't know the rest of that stuff harvest terror data well you know it's all available isn't know, it's all available, isn't it? Yeah. It's all available. Why would they not? It just seems like, from a purely creative point of view,

it seems like an odd place to start. Well, yeah, it's imaginative to the extent, because when you were forming the question, I was thinking, when you said the ideal place to watch something on a mobile phone or the ideal film to watch on a mobile phone, I was thinking, is there such a thing, or is it just that the mobile phone gives you it first? So you sit there with a bit of your brain going,

I know this isn't ideal, but I'm seeing it now. I don't have to wait. But the idea that you would be going, this is better on this screen is a bit odd. Unless it's kind of sharing information about your friends. That stuff is obviously quick and instant. But watching Stranger Things or something on your phone surely isn't really. You know that, don't you?

And you just go, yeah, I'm going to take the hit though because I'm on a bus and I want to catch up. Also, I do think your brain recalibrates very quickly. It's like that, I'm always talking about that clip of David Lynch complaining about people watching films on their fucking phone. Yeah. You think you've seen a film

because you've watched it on your fucking phone? You haven't. And I always think, yeah. We'll all get there. But I do feel as if, I know what he means, but it's certainly a different experience. But you think you're brain attuned so that you could watch a Christopher Nolan widescreen film

on your phone and think, this is just as good as the big projection on that monstrous screen. I'm going to say yes, because I want to sound decisive. Good. And unequivocal. Yeah, and I'm not going to challenge it because how could I possibly... I've never done it.

Have you not? But I've never watched it on film. You've watched those on planes though, right? Yeah. But that actually is... Number one, it's an environment. You're escaping. Right.

The only time I didn't really escape was when I watched Creed on a plane and we had turbulence for an hour and a quarter. So watching boxing with acute turbulence on the plane somehow added to the experience. It's the only time I've been on a plane when it's added. Because, yeah, it was big. Each time a punch was thrown, you were kicked in the ass by a bump of air.

It's not entirely comfortable, but it did enhance the experience. Some things work better than others. Don't you think documentaries work better than... Spectacles. Yeah. Yes. The spectacles have diminished. Yeah.

I mean, the thing is that being in the cinema really does enhance your experience of it, no doubt. I went to see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood the other day with my eldest son, and I was not looking forward to it. Was he? Yes, because he loves Brad Pitt. He thinks Brad Pitt's some kind of acting genius. And maybe he is.

He certainly turned in a few good performances, but for me, i still have that praise i still have that prejudicial mindset that i first had you know that your first it's a bit like people who think kylie minogue is a sort of musical titan and i just find it hard to take them seriously because to me it's i should be so lucky and she was charlene and i don't think she is a musical titan i'm sure she's a wonderful person and and brilliant at what she does but I feel have to cover you you just didn't want that bit of twitter to be activated no but yes so leaving Brad Pitt and whatever you said he's phoned in

a couple of passable performances whatever it was that you said yeah you went and watched went and watched time in Hollywood on the big screen and the experience of sitting there and being enfolded by it is enjoyable in itself and I think Tarantino's aware of that and knows what kind of blanket

to weave to properly the textural sort of scale yeah of yes because people have complained have you seen it? yeah I've heard people complaining

about oh it's so boring and the boring long driving and, oh, boring. But personally, I've been way more bored in some of his other films. Like, have you seen Death Proof? No. That is like an intellectual exercise in extreme boredom that I actually assumed was a sort of art prank. It's like, how bored can we make an audience for an hour? Let's make them incredibly bored. But in the end, in the last quarter of an hour or whatever, everything just explodes and we crank the action and the excitement up to 11.

And what does that do to an audience? And for me, you know, I came out of it sort of vibrating because I'd been so bored and then suddenly so excited. I was like, wow, this is a new kind of excitement. I'm imagining sort of straight story with Transformers at the end or something. It's like a very strange graph. There's a sort of 25-minute scene in a cafe where people are just sat around having a chat. Not great dialogue.

And not great dialogue, no. Totally forgettable. Willfully dialogue, though. Yeah, it seemed that way. I was thinking, what's he doing? He's a clever guy. He's Kubricking around, isn't he? Yeah, he must know what he's doing.

But it's like Kubrick as well, you know, sort of lauded as he is, there's really great and there's really not great in the canon. So if you have somebody who's a master of technique or even very good with technique it's like i was talking to my son when we went to see once upon a time in hollywood and i was so bored by the film that um i actually laughed when the caption comes up six months later because it presumed that i was fucking interested and um you know my wife laughed a lot. And we all sat in a laughing line.

And I was talking to my son about this. And he said, well, the thing about it is, he said it's cinema, but it's not a film. And then there were these categories of like, so is it cinema? Is it a movie? Or is it a film? Okay.

You can go quite a long way on that one. Because, you know, and it was sort of, I think a film or is it a film okay you can go quite a long way on that one because you know and and it was sort of i think a film has to be a story but cinema is an experience like the texture you were talking about right and there's no doubt that and particularly that scene where they turn up at the manson ranch yep suddenly you go okay we're cooking this is exactly click you click and you know what you're doing and then it sort of doesn't quite deliver but you definitely get that whoa you get it's like a western or something isn't it you go right yeah scene set and we're off i don't know because it's hard to know what somebody's doing when they

make a film but you know we went back and looked at the trailer hadn't seen the trailer so looked at the trailer i thought well yeah this is kind of like as inconsequential as the film seemed to be whereas you look at django unchained and the trailer for that sets these balls up and then lets them run down it's linear almost slaves stopped in a wood confrontation bored looking guy boredly shoots the slave master goes off with Django conversation do you know what a bounty hunter is stack stack stack let's play so obviously you're making decisions if you're tarantino you know what you're doing it's kind of like can we decode what that is or are you going to laugh at the captions Wait, this is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website, I see success.

Yes, success. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes. It looks very professional. I love browsing your videos and pics, and I don't want to stop. And I'd like to access your members area and spend in your shop. These are the kinds of comments people will say about your website if you build it with Squarespace. Just visit Squarespace. Just visit squarespace.com slash Buxton for a free trial.

And when you're ready to launch, because you will want to launch, use the offer code BUXTON to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So put the smile of success on your face with Squarespace. Yes. Continue. Hey! Hey, welcome back, podcats. Chris Morris there, talking to me last month, September 2019, at the King's Cross Comedy Venue 2 North Down, a great small venue.

I've posted a link to their site in the description of this podcast. posted a link to their site in the description of this podcast. And I'm pretty sure I switched the ice machine back on when we finished recording. But if not, apologies for the warm drinks at that night's show. Speaking of links, in the description of this podcast, what have you got there this time? Well, you've got a link to some footage that i found on youtube of le peto men do moulin rouge because as i said in the intro i wasn't previously familiar with the concept of a peto man p-e-t-o-m-a-n-e so there's a peto man who is a theatrical farter, and then there was Le Petomen,

which was the stage name of the most famous of the French flatulists. He was the entertainer Joseph Pujol, born in 1857, died in 1945. He was famous for his remarkable control of the abdominal muscles, which enabled him to seemingly fart at will. His stage name combines the French verb péter, to fart, with the men suffix meaning maniac, translating to fart-a-maniac. The profession is also referred to as flatulist, farter or fartist. I think I'm a fartist. It is a common misconception that Joseph Pujol actually passed intestinal gas as part of his stage performance. Rather, Pujol was able to inhale or move air into his rectum and then control the release of that air with his

anal sphincter muscles. Anyway, look, I posted a bit of film, a very early film of Le Petit Man at work at the Moulin Rouge. It's pretty good. And as I said, never heard of the guy before. I hadn't seen it before. And when you see it, a whole load of Monty Python suddenly makes a lot more sense. And you think, oh, right, that's where they got all of that stuff. What other links are there? Slightly more serious links. The book that Chris mentioned when we were talking about Chernobyl, slightly more serious links. The book that Chris mentioned when we were talking about Chernobyl, he couldn't remember the author, it was Kate Brown.

And the book is called Manual for Survival, A Chernobyl Guide to the Future. And we were talking about mobile phone radiation in a very general and unscientific fashion there. A few articles in the description of this podcast that certainly won't clear up any anxieties you have about whether mobile phone radiation is harmful or not, but, well, it's further reading. On a nuclear tip,

George Monbiot, that article that he wrote after Fukushima in 2011, linked to the video for No Plan by David Bowie, the last single. And a couple of bits of footage. I tried to find footage of the Pixies playing at the Brixton Academy in 1990. I think that's the show that we saw just after Bossa Nova was released in August of that year. But I couldn't find any any there's a show from the

following year but no nothing i couldn't find anything with the performance of vamos and joey smashing up his guitar but i did find these two great bits of snub tv an excellent music show that used to be on in the late 80s on I think BBC Two and they had a live session from the Pixies playing Tame and I Bleed and there's also a bit of live footage from around that time, 89 I think, of them playing Vamos which is very good. that time 89 i think of them playing vamos which is very good that's pretty much it though for this week's been a busy week two podcasts in one week i'm like joe rogan or something churning them out rosie how are you doing ah she's looking back at me she's doing a bit better recently she's been a little bit grumpy i think maybe she wasn't feeling very well this last week. We took her to the vet but the vet said she was okay. It was weird. She was

sort of wandering around just staring at us imploringly as if to say what are you going to do about it? And we were going what? What is it? Are you hungry? Do you want to go out? Do you want to scritch scratch? Do you want to play with a towel? And nothing seemed to be making her happy. You know, she didn't want to jump up and lay her head on my lap on the sofa while I was watching the news. It was weird. But anyway, she seems okay now.

It was weird. But anyway, she seems OK now. At one point I was thinking maybe there's ghosts in the house and she can see these ghosts sat with us on the sofa while we're North American correspondent, was talking about some of the things in that fucking letter. And, you know, he was quoting President Trump said this unbelievable thing in his letter and President Trump said this incredibly childish thing in his letter. And it was one of those moments where you're reminded, oh, it's President Trump. It's President Donald Trump. Donald Trump is the president. And then I started saying to my wife, Richard Madeley has been in talks all day with the Syrian president, who said that he and Richard Madeley could not come to an agreement. Judy Finnegan has offered to mediate. My wife said, yeah, that's not funny, though, because Richard Madeley would be a good president.

And we had an argument. I was saying, look, I like Richard Madeley. I like him way more than I ever liked Donald Trump. But I don't think that he would be a good president. She would say, yeah, no, he's clever. He'd be a good president. He'd be better than Trump. And I was saying, yeah, that's possibly true.

But I don't think that would be a good choice. Rosie, come on, let's head back. Are you joking? We've only just gone out. What do you think? Would Richard maybe be a good president? Maybe Rosie would be a good president. Dear Mr Buxton, it's time for some mutual scritch-scratch. You don't want to be responsible for chastising a nice dog that everyone loves

and looking like a dog racist. And I don't want to be responsible for doing poo-poo and wee-wee on your bed. And I will. I already gave you a little sample in the spare room last week. So please give me some more nice chicken in my bowl, as well as those little stupid crunchy biscuit things that smell like a human bum. Hey, look, thank you very much indeed, once again, to Two North Down for letting us record there. And thanks most of all to Chris Morris. Once again, I would urge you to go along and

support his film the day shall come in cinemas now sure you can go and see joker you've got to go and see joker so you can have those dinner party conversations but go and see the day shall come as well till next time be excellent to each other that's the wild stallions catchphrase i'm not claiming that it's my own but i think it's a good one and um you know for what it's worth i do i well i love you Bye. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a plant with a button. Hit the like button. Subscribe. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe.

Like and subscribe. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a plant with a button. Hit the like button. Hit the like button. Hit the like button. Thank you.