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Chris Morris-God or (Made a rather mundane film about a) Dog?

Started by VorpalSword, February 09, 2004, 10:32:53 PM

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kakamuffin

Quote from: "Darrell"
Quote from: "kakamuffin"This man clearly needs a hug.

Stop picking on me just because I'm black.

I'm black too, fancy headin down the pub?

Darrell

Quote from: "kakamuffin"I'm black too, fancy headin down the pub?

I've forgotten who I am.

kakamuffin

Quote from: "Darrell"
Quote from: "kakamuffin"I'm black too, fancy headin down the pub?

I've forgotten who I am.

I remember something about Danny Baker.......

maybe Danny Baker is to blame for all this and we are just mindless pawns in his synthetic game of  "Memory shock"

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

Main problem with My Wrongs:

It's no better or funnier that the Goodies' 'Anything you can do, I can do better' stop-frame animation of dogs singing made in 1972.

I mean, *technically* it's better, but who gives a shit about that?

Discuss.

VorpalSword

ok, sorry for commenting on other opinions about the unlimited evil of BOLD type. Obviously I was out of order to even criticise for just a second the fact that someone posting in a forum that that celebrated a man who rebelled against "the norm" would want others to conform to his (verging on bigot-like)  "regular" type preferences.

Lets just forget the whole incident, and focus on destroying anyone's good views about "My Wrongs". After all, isn't that what life is about?




(PS: I know, I'm a prick)

VorpalSword

Just bought  "Blue Jam" on CD (i have heard only bad things eg. not enough sketches, blah blah blah, but it was only a fiver) and i must say  it made me realise just how crap and un-inspired and "blue Jam" recycled "Jam" is. I mean, no disrespect to the Morris-God, but COME ON, think of some new ideas. I also realised how much better the sketches were on radio, and I think the only sketch that wouldn't work on radio was the one with the *crazy* mark heap and kevin eldon putting guns up each others arses then pulling the trigger(which, incidently, was one of only three sketches on "jam" that made me laugh out loud).

I just think that Morris could have tried a bit harder and come up with some new material for "jam"

[/b]

Darrell

Quote from: "VorpalSword"no disrespect to the Morris-God

Gag Halfrunt: Chris is just this guy, you know?

Sexton Brackets Drugbust

I found My Wrongs fairly entertaining for what it was, however I would compare watching it to the sensation you get when you tuck into a tasty pie, only to find it devoid of filling.  I really enjoyed the Blue Jam Monologues, they were possibly my favourite parts of the show, and after I'd bigged it up to my friends, it was rather an anticlimax.  You know when you get a reaction like: "Yeah, good... it was interesting." that you've let the side down...

NobodyGetsOutAlive



Darrell


butnut


Darrell

I'm not telling.

Nothing like a bit of pointless whimsy, eh?

NobodyGetsOutAlive


butnut

Quote from: "Darrell"
Nothing like a bit of pointless whimsy, eh?

Yes, we'd better get round to talking about some serious comedy soon, or there'll be trouble...

VorpalSword

Quote from: "Darrell"
Quote from: "VorpalSword"no disrespect to the Morris-God

Gag Halfrunt: Chris is just this guy, you know?

Don't worry, scientists are at this very moment developing software that will let your computer be able to tell you when someone is using sarcasm, so there is some hope for people like you.


Goldentony

i actually quite liked my wrongs, most people were dissapointed tho i rekcon because it aint exactly what's expected of mr morris

i mean he's been pretending to be a fact obsessed newscaster for over a decade, he was bound to change route some time

Neil

Terrible thread.

Quotei actually quite liked my wrongs, most people were dissapointed tho i rekcon because it aint exactly what's expected of mr morris

Eh? Couldn't it be that lots of us were disappointed simply because it was a disappointing effort from Morris?

Quotei mean he's been pretending to be a fact obsessed newscaster for over a decade, he was bound to change route some time

You seem to be suggesting that all he's done over the last decade is be a "fact obsessed newscaster" when in actual fact he's probably spent as much time on the Blue Jam stuff, if not more, and one of the problem people like myself have with My Wrongs is that he DIDN'T "change route." He was just banging out yet more Blue Jam stuff, smearing it across yet another bloody medium, whereas he used to leave previous work alone well before he'd ripped the arse out of it.  We've had:

The radio shows (three series of)
The telly show (two versions of)
The album
The DVD of the telly show
The short film

He wasn't changing route, he was steamrolling ahead, seemingly oblivious to the notion that he'd completely ripped the arse out of the idea and needed to get to work on something genuinely new and original.


NobodyGetsOutAlive

I know he's typically media-shy, and all that legend-inspiring horse-shit, but has he ever explained the reason behind My Wrongs or did its release go completely without any justification or elaboration? Just wondering, as it's bloody interesting if he has never said a public word about it.

butnut

Well, there is this interview he did plugging it:

http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,6737,899690,00.html

QuoteChris Morris: the movie    
                   
                                                   The last time he was in the news, it was for the 'paedophile special' of his TV series Brass Eye. Now he's made a film - just 15 minutes long - which is tipped to win a Bafta on Sunday. In a rare interview, Britain's greatest contemporary satirist talks to  Xan Brooks  about making the film, celebrities and why he won't be tackling the war on terror                
               
                                 Friday    February  21, 2003
The Guardian                


  This time last year, Morris was sticking to his general policy of not talking to the press. Today, he has agreed to be interviewed.  

All of which suggests a change of attitude - not just for Morris, but for a British media grown used to regarding him as some shadowy hit-and-run monster, a hoaxer of innocent celebrities and "the most loathed man on TV" (the Daily Mail). In shifting into legitimate film drama (albeit of a dark and twisted kind), Morris has effectively steered away from the satire that made his name. In breaking his customary silence, he becomes just another writer-director with a product to plug. In doing so, he risks blowing the whole Chris Morris enigma right out of the water.  

Except that the man himself doesn't see it like that. Speaking from his Soho office, Morris is brusque and breezy. Wary of journalistic angles, he moves swiftly to head them off. On the subject of the interview itself, he insists that he finds it no more exposing than hiding out behind his myriad screen personas (be it his combative Paxman-esque alter-ego, his roster of ghoulish reporters or his paedophile rap star JLB8).  

"It depends on what you consider to be exposing," Morris says. "I remember that the first time I did a live radio broadcast I felt outrageously exposed, even though there were probably only three people listening and one of those was a pensioner. But I know what you mean. There is a mask on Brass Eye or The Day Today that doesn't apply here. And yet if I were worried about being exposed, I'd probably have become paranoid about what each of those masks said about me. Because whatever you do reveals something about you as a person, you can't help it." With regards to his first film, then: "I only feel exposed in that I don't want to arse it up."  

If so, he needn't worry. The first production from the fledgling Warp Films (the short-film offshoot of Warp Records), My Wrongs revisits a monologue from his late, lamented Blue Jam radio series and conjures it into a vivid, haunting little nightmare. Buttressed by a £100,000 budget, Morris ploughed the cash into a burst of startling digital trickery, cast Last Resort actor Paddy Considine in the lead role and turned his own inimitable public-school bark to the role of the talking dog. "Actually we shot the film with a pair of dogs and oscillated between the two," he explains. "One dog was older than the other. One dog was slightly more trainable, and the other was an idiot."  

Considine would not dispute that. "The dogs were real divas," he tells me. "They were both bitches and I'm never working with them again. The only commands they knew were 'Sit' and 'Fetch'. They couldn't do anything." Move him on to the subject of his director, however, and the star turns glowingly enthusiastic. Morris,   he says, was a brilliant, hands-on director, the equal of anyone he has worked with. Yet Considine admits that when he stepped into the project, he did not know what to expect. "I think I was very on edge before I met Chris. I had absolutely no idea what he'd be like as a person."  

Considine's concern is understandable. Few performers throw up so thick a smokescreen as Chris Morris. Few trail so fearsome a reputation. Debuting on BBC2 as the imperious anchor of The Day Today in 1994, he mercilessly demolished the whole lexicon of TV news-speak (meaningless slogans, tortuous links and all). On Channel 4, his Brass Eye series spotlighted a celebrity culture sleepwalking towards oblivion. Its rent-a-quote personalities would seemingly champion any cause, be it a ban on a "made-up drug" called Cake, a nonsensical guide to prison slang ("woggy coconut means air-bricks") or an impassioned warning on the dangers of "heavy electricity". Lured in by a campaign of phony letterheads and makeshift offices, Morris's dupes (Noel Edmonds, Richard Briers and Tory MP David Amess among them) signed up in haste and repented at leisure.  

On his 2001 Brass Eye special, the satirist reprised the scam. The programme found Phil Collins talking "Nonce Sense" (and subsequently threatening to sue), while presenter Richard Blackwood claimed that you could tell if your children had been abused because they "smelt like hammers". Most memorable of all was the spectacle of DJ Dr Fox insisting that "paedophiles have more genes in common with crabs than they do with you or me. Now that is scientific fact. There's no actual evidence for it, but it is a fact."  

The irony, though, is that Brass Eye may prove to have been just too successful. With each new project, its creator finds himself the focus for renewed press outrage; his methods scrutinised, his face plastered across the tabloids. No doubt this has made it increasingly tough for Morris to slip undetected past a celebrity's radar. This may explain why he has recently limited his satirical output to doctored George Bush speeches on his website (thesmokehammer.com), while devoting the bulk of his energies to getting My Wrongs off the ground.  

Again, Morris resists this interpretation. "I'm not sure that it has got more difficult. To be honest, when we were planning the Brass Eye special, I thought that people would be so much more alert and on their guard. And I was staggered at how gullible they were. It's simply a case of identifying the right blind spot and exploiting it." If anything, then, the process has become too easy. "Once you can operate the levers with an 80% degree of efficiency, then there's no point in doing it. You should only do it if you think you're going to fail, otherwise the whole thing becomes depressingly routine."  

For the moment, he admits that there are no plans for more of the same. Even the satiric possibilities of the war on terror, with its attendant segue into Islam, haven't managed to fire his interest. "I'm not sure you can play with that," he explains. "The very specific nature of Brass Eye is in identifying a thoughtless, knee-jerk reaction to an issue. If you tackle drugs or paedophilia, then you're dealing with something where people's brains are nowhere near the point of debate. That's why you can get them to say that paedophiles are like crabs, because they have never given the subject any thought." By contrast, he says, "People are thinking quite seriously about the war on terror. Don't get me wrong, there are many eminently mock-able things about it. I'm just not sure what you could do with it all."  

More than anything, he worries that it wouldn't make good comedy. "Brass Eye is not overtly political," he stresses. "OK, maybe it is political in the widest possible sense, in that the public has a   herd response and is running in the same direction. But that's only a small part of it. Look at Dr Fox's speech about crabs. Regardless of what that is dissecting about the issue, it's also rather funny. And if you don't have that element, you end in the position of someone like Michael Moore, building lame gags around some central thesis."  

At least for today, Morris seems happy to outline the philosophy behind his work. But off-screen, the man remains a closed book. A self-confessed "loner", he surrounds himself with a small circle of colleagues, shuns celebrity functions and refuses to be photographed out of character. Unable to flush him out into the open, a Mirror profile decided that "Morris hates being photographed because of the strawberry-coloured birthmark on the left-hand side of his face". Moreover, his refusal to publicly defend his work confirmed him as "an arrogant, egotistical character, driven by an almost psychopathic need to shock but too cowardly to account for his actions".  

Alternatively, Morris's subterranean public profile could be viewed as his greatest strength, prompted by an utter disdain for celebrity and a determination to let the work speak for itself. Either way, he is notably reluctant to discuss his behind-the-scenes existence. When I ask if, since making Brass Eye, he has ever run into any of the celebrities he has hoaxed, his initial response is to deconstruct the question. To run into someone "would be foolish. Or possibly tactical". Certainly he has never done so "in a dark enough alley to make it interesting". Finally, he sighs. "Look," he says. "Do you really think I would spend my free time swanning around with the likes of Noel Edmonds, Phil Collins, Dr Fox or Barbara Follett? Do you honestly think I have nothing better to do with my life?"  

As it stands, Morris is even unsure whether or not to attend Sunday night's Bafta bash. He hasn't received his invitation yet, and doesn't know if he'll have to part with any money. Then there is the obvious fear of terrorist attack. "Just imagine if there was a similar situation to that siege in the Moscow theatre," he moans, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Just think of it. All those celebrities, held inside at gunpoint. The looks on their faces. Wouldn't that be terrible?" A moment later he has strolled off on a tangent. "It would be the perfect opportunity, though. I thought about this after the tragic death of Jill Dando, when they believed that she might have been killed by a Serbian agent. [I thought that] if a terrorist organisation wanted to knock out the moral compass of Britain, all they'd have to do is to kill 100 celebrities at random. The entire country would have an instant nervous breakdown."  

Interview complete, I ask if I might possibly ring Morris with a few follow-up questions later in the week. Rather dutifully, he says that this would be OK. Except that when I dial his number, I'm greeted by a recorded message. It invites me to call his mobile "by pressing your hash key 17 times". This, I suspect, is Morris's way of retreating back into his own warped woodwork, and of telling the world to "shit off". On the one hand, I'm not sorry to see him go. Ultimately, Chris Morris is at his most powerful when he's invisible, organising some ambush from wild left field as opposed to freely talking up his latest movie venture. That said, I was briefly tempted to start pressing that hash key - just on the off chance of finding him again.

My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117 is released on DVD on Monday, priced £6.99.

NobodyGetsOutAlive

Ah yes, I remember ths interview. Not much of an interview in all fairness, more of an article with a few soundbites but still, Morris says some interesting things.

QuoteI only feel exposed in that I don't want to arse it up.
This struck me as interesting in that he doesn't seem to think that it's something that is already "arsed up"from day one. It'd be interesting to think about how the Chris-Morris-presenting-a-GLR-show would have thought of this. (I hope people know what I mean)


QuotePeople are thinking quite seriously about the war on terror. Don't get me wrong, there are many eminently mock-able things about it. I'm just not sure what you could do with it all."

Doesn't have stopped him from getting a website, a pull-out piece in the Observer and an alleged The Day Today dvd extra out of it though.

Apologies if the points I am trying to make are a bit hazy..I'm too drunk to be articulate