"Permissive" (1970)

[Mark Steels Stockbroker]

Just seen the BFI Flipside edition. To be honest I found one of the extras, Bread (a sort of failed attempt at Confessions Of Some Randy Hippies) grimly fascinating, more so than the main feature.

[Bobby Treetops]

Permissive also has some truly awful barnets that 70s Prog musicians seemed to sport at the time and Alan Gorrie later of the Average White Band.

Somebody has put the first ten minutes on Youtube for anyone interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82yEsnOQF_M

If you haven't seen it already I can recommend Requiem for a Village an enchanting look at the death of a Suffolk's village's old traditions and the encroaching modern world burying the past in it's wake.

You can rent most of the BPI Flipside series on Lovefilm so I'm slowly going through them all at the moment.

[Epic Bisto]

I absolutely adore Permissive, it's one of the many nuggets that BFI's Flipside range have rescued from oblivion (see also Privilege, Bronco Bullfrog, Duffer and Nightbirds). The music's not bad too (Comus can't really do anything wrong, and even Forever More aren't that bad)

A friend of mine knows someone in the process of tracking down the Permissive cast and crew for interviews, who are quite reluctant to talk about it. It's nothing to do with the overall quality of the film, but it turns out that one of the cast (the one who plays Pogo, the homeless bloke) created the Exegesis therapy/cult in the 70s and tried to rope several cast members into it. It makes for quite weird reading.