Chris Morris Gets Back to Work

[Huzzie]

I've not yet seen this mentioned, which surprises me but no doubt it has been and I haven't been able to find it.

I think everyone here has been expecting Morris to do something satirical about terrorists and we have been quite surprised that he seemed to miss the boat. I think some of us were actually quite glad that he avoided such an easy target, although, it is surely a goldmine of comedy, which has only been picked at so far.

Let me try and find a link to The Times article, if I can't I'll type it up.

Giz 5 mins.

EDIT: Whoops. That's a very pointless post if I don't explain why I just said all that. Well, it appears that he is making a satirical film about terrorism.

EDIT2: OK. Here is the article. It's source is The Times website http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article3177654.ece *Also in the todays Sunday Times...

Satirist turns terrorists into Dad's Army
Richard Brooks, Arts Editor

CHRIS MORRIS, the satirist whose television act features jokes about paedophilia, drugs, incest and rape, is to make a movie intended to show the funny side of terrorism.

He says the film will seek to do for Islamic terrorism what Dad's Army, the classic BBC comedy, did for the Nazis by showing them as "scary but also ridiculous".

Morris said: "Most of us would dearly love to laugh in the face of our worst fears. Why aren't we laughing at terrorists? Because we don't know how to, until now."

Though the film is a work of fiction, Morris has researched it over the past two years by visiting places in Britain associated with terrorist plots, including Leeds, Bradford and Luton.

"I don't plan for this film to be offensive, but I do want it to be very funny," Morris said. "I accept, though, that some may find poking fun at terrorists is offensive.

"There is this Dad's Army side of terrorism and that's what this film is exploring," said Morris, who once, while hosting a Radio 1 show, made a hoax announcement about the death of Michael Heseltine, the former Conservative deputy prime minister.

The film, to be shot in the spring, takes as its premise that terrorists are "scary but also ridiculous", according to the synopsis.

It will use some real absurdities around Islamist terrorism as its basis. It cites Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the ringleaders of the September 11 attacks, who, after inviting a journalist to a secret location in Pakistan to record a tell-all interview about 9/11, spent two hours trying to select clothes that would avoid making him looking fat.

At terror training camps, young jihadists argue about honey, accidentally shoot off one another's feet or get thrown out for smoking. Back in Britain, they spend evenings having rows over whose turn it is to do the washing-up.

In Hamburg the 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta ran discussion groups that were so strict that everybody left them. "Terrorism isn't about religion, it is about berks," says the summary of the film.

The leader of a British terrorist cell mistakes a gram of triace-tone triperoxide (TATP), used in the 2005 London bombings, for a line of cocaine, and snorts it.

According to Morris, terrorists have all-too human foibles and weaknesses, and for much of the time live what passes for normal life. "This film will hopefully get over that terrorists do what we all do," said Morris, whose Brass Eye show, broadcast in 2001 on Channel 4, made jokes about paedophilia and lampooned celebrities who want to help child abuse victims.

"They discuss the mundane, and plan things that sometimes then go wrong. People, that is viewers, are longing to laugh at terrorism."

Few British comedians have dared to poke fun at Islamic terrorism, and if it backfires, Morris faces greater risk than when he attacked show business stars and politicians. However, in a recent article he likened Martin Amis, the novelist, to Abu Hamza, the hook-handed Muslim cleric, for "forging an incoherent creed of hate" against Muslims.

It will be Morris's first feature film, and the £4m budget will be met partly by Channel 4 as well as by Warp Films, which last year released the acclaimed film This Is England.

Morris, whose early career included a stint as a pompous anchor on a BBC news spoof, got the idea for the film after reading details of Operation Crevice. This was the name given to the raids launched by the police in 2004 on terrorist suspects in the south of England.

The police found a biscuit tin filled with aluminium powder, ammonium nitrate in bags of dried fruit and other bomb ingredients behind a garden shed. "It was almost unbelievable," said Morris. "But it all happened. Terrorists will also discuss the most ordinary of things. I found out, for example, that jihadists like reading the views of Jeremy Clarkson but not those of Richard Littlejohn [a tabloid newspaper columnist]."

Morris used two scriptwriters from the BBC television satire, The Thick of It, to help write the movie. Morris himself will direct it, though he will not act in it.

Hope I am not going over something that has already been mentioned. I apologise if I am.

*How do you end a sentance with a URL, or maybe use a comma after it? Because, of course, a full stop or comma directly after a URL ruins the link, so I normally just stick it an extra space after, eg "and number 3 on our infamous list is www.cookdandbombd.co.uk . blah blah blah....". Instead of "and number 3 on our infamous list is www.cookdandbombd.co.uk. blah blah blah....", which, as you should see, has made the link unclickable. Can someone please teach me the correct way to fo this? Thankyou.

[Ambient Sheep]

Will you tell Huzzie or shall I?

I guess I will, then.  Sorry, Huzz, it's already being covered over in this thread here.  (And also been posted over here too.)

Hopefully that might have saved you from typing it all up, anyway, but I fear the worst... EDIT: ...and I was right.  :-(

Thanks anyway.

*How do you end a sentance with a URL, or maybe use a comma after it? Because, of course, a full stop or comma directly after a URL ruins the link, so I normally just stick it an extra space after, eg "and number 3 on our infamous list is www.cookdandbombd.co.uk . blah blah blah....". Instead of "and number 3 on our infamous list is www.cookdandbombd.co.uk. blah blah blah....", which, as you should see, has made the link unclickable. Can someone please teach me the correct way to fo this? Thankyou.

You explicitly state it as a URL using the URL tag, rather than letting the software automagically do it for you.  Like this (only with square brackets not curly ones, obviously): "This sentence ends with the link {url=http://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk}www.cookdandbombd.co.uk{/url}."

[Huzzie]

D'oh!

Oh well. It was kind of you to try and get there before I began banging away on my keyboard. Luckily I found a link anyway.

Cheers AS.

Neil, sorry mate but can you rid us of this abortion, please?

Actually, Sheepy (or anyone else if anyone is here), do you mind me asking you the question I posed in my OP?...

How do you end a sentence with a URL, or maybe use a comma after it? Because, of course, a full stop or comma directly after a URL ruins the link, so I normally just stick it an extra space after, eg "and number 3 on our infamous list is www.cookdandbombd.co.uk . blah blah blah....". Instead of "and number 3 on our infamous list is www.cookdandbombd.co.uk. blah blah blah....", which, as you should see, has made the link unclickable. Can someone please teach me the correct way to fo this? Thankyou.

EDIT: OK, the internet wants to make me a laughing stock! So, it didn't ruin the link there but it definitely has before. Maybe in Word or somewhere.

[Ambient Sheep]

Hahaha, post-crossage to eye-bleeding levels!...I already answered your other question Huzzie in an edit to my last post, as you'll now have seen, and I nearly added onto the end of it: "But I thought this forum software didn't have that problem anyway", and it seems I was right!

The older software we used here did indeed used to take trailing full-stops as part of the URL, and bloody annoying it was too, which is why you used to have to do it the way I described.  But this forum software is clever enough that you don't have to, as you've now proved.

[Huzzie]

Ahhh. Of course, so obvious. And I believe Word has such a tag too.

OK, nice one. Thanks AS, you have just made my essays 4% more presentable and more importantly, prettier.

Thanks a lot!

OK Neil, whenever you're ready with the wrecking ball...

[rudi]

This thread has made me dizzy.....

[weekender]

To be fair, those other two threads that AS mentioned aren't exactly the height of popularity.  It's probably best to have a new thread about a new Morris project, especially if it starts off as brilliantly as this one.  Anyway:

I found out, for example, that jihadists like reading the views of Jeremy Clarkson but not those of Richard Littlejohn

A little sentence like this makes me wonder a few things:

1. How did he find this out?  Is it easy to interview jihadists about this sort of thing?
2. Why do jihadists prefer Clarkson to Littlejohn?
3. How does a jihadist work then?  Do they sit down and read The Sun or whatever, and just go "Well that's a bit extreme, let's teach them a lesson"?

_{Sorry for not trying to complicate the thread further with many circular references.}

[Garfield And Friends]

So how does CM put food on his family for the years without a public media project? Is he wealthy? Regional manager of a McDonalds branch?

[hands cold, liver warm]

So how does CM put food on his family

he probably balances a bucket of food above a door, then lets his family open it

[Garfield And Friends]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7OTtRdS79Vc

[Mister Six]

Cheers, Huzz, but lordy - what a dreadful piece. I like the way that they have to demonise Morris every three or four paragraphs, just in case we can't remember how we should feel about him:

CHRIS MORRIS, the satirist whose television act features jokes about paedophilia, drugs, incest and rape, is to make a movie intended to show the funny side of terrorism.

...

"There is this Dad's Army side of terrorism and that's what this film is exploring," said Morris, who once, while hosting a Radio 1 show, made a hoax announcement about the death of Michael Heseltine, the former Conservative deputy prime minister.

...

According to Morris, terrorists have all-too human foibles and weaknesses, and for much of the time live what passes for normal life. "This film will hopefully get over that terrorists do what we all do," said Morris, whose Brass Eye show, broadcast in 2001 on Channel 4, made jokes about paedophilia and lampooned celebrities who want to help child abuse victims.

That last one is the worst, of course, because it wilfully misrepresents the point of the programme. Richard Brooks, thou art a cunt.

[Baxter]

So how does CM put food on his family for the years without a public media project? Is he wealthy? Regional manager of a McDonalds branch?

I know we have one poster that lives next door to him perhaps they could pop 'round and ask him and Jo how they support themselves.

[Huzzie]

So how does CM put food on his family for the years without a public media project? Is he wealthy? Regional manager of a McDonalds branch?

His Missus does a lot of work. There is a good chance she was narrating something you watched this weekend. She is called Jo something but typically, I can't remember the maiden name she uses professionally.

EDIT: I AMEMBERED! I AMEMBERED!! She is called Jo Unwin.

EDIT The Revenge!: Here is here IMDB record... http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0881388/. It seems that she hasn't narrated as much as I thought she had. I seem to see her name on a hellfa lot of credits.

[chocky909]

Unwin I think.

EDIT: You amembered.

[Marvin]

She even wrote a couple of episodes of Byker Grove.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

I would imagine that DVD and CD sales of Morris' work are consistent enough to support a reasonable living. But then I know nothing of these things: I tend to assume that everyone in the performing industry is at least 200 times richer than I am. Which is why I'm always amazed whenever a celebrity - Barry Chuckle, say - reveals that they are "broke" in the press. I mean, as long as you invest wisely, isn't it possible to retire once you've made a few hundred grand? Or is Duncan Bannatyne talking out of his arse? 

[Huzzie]

It would be very interesting to know if that is true BBB. Personally, I doubt that his work will be bringing in a good living but presumably with his wige's work, there is enough for them to be able to live in central London.

Though, saying that, er IMDB seems to be a bit sparse of work of late, except the odd narration work and she didn't seem to do anything last year.
I am hoping IMDB are wrong (I am sure I have seen her name as narrator on loads of things recently) because if not, I think they will be struggling.

It's a very interesting query anyway.

I really should say that the tag below was from me, it was supposed to be funny but shortly after I realised that it could cause trouble. So sorry about that, I shouldn't have added it but just so you know, it was definitely me.

[Mister Six]

Though, saying that, er IMDB seems to be a bit sparse of work of late, except the odd narration work and she didn't seem to do anything last year.

Mind you, that doesn't include stuff like radio work, or radio/TV ads. She may well have a few of these, and apparently the residuals off them can be pretty nifty if you have a good agent.

EDIT: "agood" is not a word.

[Huzzie]

Of course.

Good thinking Mr Mister Six.

[Backstage With Slowdive]

Chris lives very well off that retainer paid by Michael Heseltine.

[Clint Hollow]

Ay oop chucks. Don't think anyones mentioned this - interview with Brooker avec Morris chatting with some (American?) magazine about Barley 2 and some other stuff. Looks like its from early this month.

                                                     

The Creators of Nathan Barley

Finally: We have the first sustained critique of youth culture's devolution into Kevlar post-irony, and (bonus!) we get it as hilarious British sitcom.

Nathan Barley follows its titular character — a twenty-something DJ, guerilla filmmaker and doltishly exuberant clothes pony — as he ruins the life of his involuntary mentor, Dan Ashcroft. Ashcroft has just published a screaming jeremiad in an urban lifestyle magazine eviscerating exactly the kind of dense narcissists — like Barley —who almost immediately begin lauding him as a genius.

Currently available from UK-based web-vendors on a universally compliant Region 0 DVD, it's already been on DVD in Britain for years. It also evidently wasn't considered that hilarious in Britain, where the show garnered only 5 percent of the available viewers for Channel 4's Friday night time slot. However, as the Sunday Times noted, Barley "more than made up for disappointing ratings with its disproportionate social impact," having by series' end "garnered more column inches than the return of Doctor Who." Why, you may ask, would Channel 4 consciously choose to broadcast this show at an hour when its target audience was getting dressed to go out? How could this have happened to a series that lists co-creator of The Office Stephen Merchant and Borat writer Peter Baynham as script consultants?

The short, paranoid answer is that the style mags tried to kill it. The series was panned by a former Sleazenation editor in the Times of London and Vice magazine's ur-ambiguous capsule review reads like it was written by a scared high school bully. (In two sentences it goes from calling the show "fucking funny," to saying a writer for the show "never gets laid.")

And frankly, they have cause for concern. Series creators Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris — respectively a media critic for the Guardian and a comedy writer routinely described in the British press as "sick" and "a genius" — have together set the new standard for satires of the art-damaged, radical chic set. Where Gawker's "Blue States Lose" and Robert Lanham's The Hipster Handbook have provided merely a derisive taxonomy, Nathan Barley models ecosystems, entire lifecycles of viral aesthetic trends. (Sample: Nathan's degrading prank videos are described as "Swift meets Jackass" by a young television executive who thinks Nathan is kidding when he replies, "Yeah! Only even faster.")

First covered in Flak by Scott Martinez, Nathan Barely is now likely to have a much belated second season. Below is the complete transcript of independent email interviews with series creators Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker about all of that. Originally conducted for a feature piece in Anthem (a "progressive culture" magazine completely not comparable to those parodied in Barley), the majority of the interview is improbably wonky and not intended for British comedy novices — which is probably why it's appearing here and not in a glossy bimonthly with Cillian Murphy and Daft Punk gracing its limited-edition alternate covers. You're welcome, Internet!

Flak Magazine: The two of you had spent several years trying to get Nathan Barley made into a series. What were some of the contributing factors that made it difficult to get the show broadcast?

Chris Morris: Making it was the main obstacle. You can't drive a car made out of drawings.

Flak: How did you approach Office co-creator Stephen Merchant to be a script consultant for the show? Can you recall any specific contributions he made to either the plot or dialogue in Nathan Barley?

CM: From ground level Steve's head looks very small, but actually it's the size of a shoe or television. He uses most of it to process data, which he does. He interrogated the scripts with enthusiasm and forensic scrutiny, made many useful suggestions, at least one of which was that episode 1 was too full (it originally contained the Preacher Man plotline), and that we should consider writing an episode 0. He was sometimes appalled at the stage directions.

Flak: These questions could also be repeated for Peter Baynham, who — as I understand it — just recently did some writing for that Borat movie.

CM: Peter Baynham provided insights which were as much a product of his mind as his brain. He wanted to know if Dan was an idiot and this prompted us to write the Dan/Weekend on Sunday interview scene (begins 0:38 of 6:54). Baynham is always funny, often brilliant and talks as if sticking to the point is pure evil. He received an Oscar nomination for totally writing Borat so your understanding is good.

Flak: Both of you pointed out in an interview that a key to the humor in the original TV Go Home capsule reviews was the exaggerated (and perhaps occasionally even unconsciously jealous) fury leveled at Nathan Barley. To what degree was the creation of Dan Ashcroft as a character born out of trying to preserve that aspect of the humor? Did personifying that rage lead the show into darker territory than expected?

CM: You can't really translate that aspect of the original columns so, brilliant as they are, we had to do without them.

Charlie Brooker: In some ways, Dan is Nathan in about seven years time. I think he did originally pop up as an idea during conversations about who the "angry observer" in the TVGH listings might be (as did Claire) — the angry narrator in the listings is clearly a hugely frustrated and confused sod, which I think was roughly the origin there. But the principal characters weren't cast in stone prior to casting — there was a long period of working with the cast and tweaking and bending the characters around their individual strengths and quirks. They changed quite a lot from the original basic starting points.

Flak: How much enthusiasm was there on set over the fact that this series was poking fun at a segment of the population whose sardonic self-posturing has traditionally served to elevate them from criticism? Was there much heady excitement over the concept of satirizing a group of people that consider themselves the world's premier arch-ironists?

CM: None. It's the only way to work.

Flak: Was there difficulty in getting Channel Four to agree to Region 0 encoding for the DVD? Did they have piracy concerns or was there a general understanding that this series would benefit from some kind of (ugh) global, interweb word-of-mouth?

CM: There may have been a stifled bleat.

Flak: Signing on Julian Barratt as Dan Ashcroft and Noel Fielding as his roommate, Jones, seemed like an impeccable bit of stunt casting given their comedic aesthetic.

How aware of their work were you prior to writing the series? Were the parts written with them in mind?

CM: Dan Ashcroft was written before we cast Julian but once he was in, he was all over it — for example, literally asking questions. Julian can produce a laugh with miniscule shifts in his trigonometry. Once someone is cast, you write towards their abilities, not away from them. Noel did a brilliant audition in which he claimed he'd been discovered in Borneo looking "like a frog in a puffer jacket."

Flak: In any event, are either of you weirded out by the fact that Ophelia Lovibond, the actress who played Mandy (go to minute 1:00 of 8:08), appeared in Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist almost immediately after working on Nathan Barley?

CM: No. But I was totally weirded out that Polanski raped her.

Questions For Charlie Brooker

Flak: Can you take me through the logic of doing the first Cunt synopsis at TV Go Home, then deciding to make it a regular feature, then deciding to make Nathan Barley a TV series? Does anyone own the rights to Condorman Fucks Up?

CB: The first listings were really just me yelping about a certain type of bell-end I suddenly found myself trying to avoid on a regular basis. At the time I lived in an area of London that was becoming increasingly gentrified — the local pubs (which had been grotty and uninviting and which I never dared venture into anyway) were being transformed into rather po-faced wooden-floored gastrobars permanently surrounded by a throng of bellowing duffers, who'd stand outside blocking the pavement, drinking and guffawing and talking at maximum volume about screenplays they weren't working on. If I'm honest, I think it was general resentment tinged with class envy on my part: I thought I had to work for a living and they didn't. Their lives seemed more fun than mine. And everything they said was loud and stupid. Wahhh, it wasn't fair. Re-reading the very first Barley listings, it's really just me getting annoyed at the very notion of upper-middle-class kids slumming it.

Anyway, when I wrote the first one, I figured no-one would know or likely care what I was banging on about. Turned out they did, or felt they did. Later, Cunt expanded to cover virtually any stripe of modern poseur I could think of. But really, the main joke was always the insane degree of anger blasted in Barley's direction. It'd still be quite funny if it was being hurled at a blameless postman or a friendly baker — although lobbing it at an imaginary cocksure twat WAS satisfying.

For the TV series, we effectively had to create a new Nathan from scratch — I mean, we knew he'd wear fashionable shoes, but he wasn't much of a character in the listings, rather a sort of identikit berk, put in the stocks and spat at. There were lots of different ways you could "do" the listings Nathan — you could easily turn him into a detached Patrick Bateman type for instance — but the wide-eyed, barging, try-too-hard, insecure-but-over-pleased arsehead was the funniest way to go.

Condorman Fucks Up would make a good film. So would Drunk Batman.

Flak: Unsurprisingly, I'm extremely perplexed by Vice magazine's review of Nathan Barley, which I've included below for your edification:

Nathan Barley

Channel 4

Anybody who's a target of this show either pretends they haven't seen it or they think it's boring. Truth is, it's fucking funny. There's even a nod to Vice on here, which is not surprising because we're Charlie Booker's [sic] favourite magazine. When he's not propping his half-formed "extreme VIZ" shtick up with Chris Morris' genius he sits on the bog crying and wanking off at how much funnier/popular we are than him, the fucking miserable cunt who never gets laid.

DAN ASHCROFT

CB: That "extreme Viz" line is probably quite accurate, in that the TVGH site as a whole was definitely heavily influenced by the early tabloid spoofs in Viz comic. As for Vice, we looked at some copies of Vice when developing Nathan and co, and despite expecting to hate it, I found bits of it hilarious. (Intentionally, I mean: some of the writing had a gleefully obnoxious, Jackassy quality to it). Incidentally, the SugarApe "Vice" issue from Ep5 wasn't an assault on Vice magazine — I think it just (understandably) ended up looking that way. As for their review — I can't tell — it's a sort of handshake-and-headbutt — but I'll assume it's positive, just for the hell of it.

Questions For Chris Morris

Flak: Nicholas Burns said in an interview that you dispatched him to parties and events specifically to meet people that you considered to be "a bit of a Nathan Barley." He also stated that some of these appeared later in the show. Do any come to mind?

CM: What we ended up using was Nick's Nathan-filtered versions of types of behavior. At a particularly cooooool event, someone dressed as a cowboy asked him for a light. When Nick offered him his lighter, the cowboy held up his already lit cigarette and noted triumphantly "I've already got one" as if that was about the coolest thing since Elvis.... and that smirk of idiotic self satisfaction is what you see on Nick's face when he says "I dunno" at the end of program one, part one.

Flak: In 2002, you were widely rumored to be behind a cleverly edited video of President Bush's War on Afghanistan speech and the now-defunct website, Smokehammer.com, on which it appeared. Considering that this is close enough to the kind of activity lampooned on Nathan Barley, how conscious were you that the show would be perceived as a dig at (admittedly) a dimwitted radical-chic portion of your fan base? How does it feel that both you and someone like Bansky have been described as "media terrorists" in the press? Did you actively pursue this project as a means of disassociating yourself from these specific satirical techniques?

CM: No no no no no.

Flak: News from your talk at Bournemouth University has been that Nathan Barley 2 will feature "a different set of characters," and explore "different situations than before." Will there be any continuity between the two series?

CM: Yup.

Flak: Can you provide even the slightest hint as to what fans might expect to see?

CM: Nathan's brother, Jason.

Flak: Can you disclose the projected airdate? Is shooting going on right now?

CM: No projected airdate yet, but it won't be before 2008. Shooting won't happen 'til we've completed the scripts — and we're working on those around more immediate projects.

Flak: Off the record: Is their any truth to the rumors about Channel 4's head of entertainment Andrew Newman feeling that the "Ivan Plapp" character hit a little too close to home? Did it affect the green-lighting of the second season at all? I promise I will not mention either of you as the source — not even obliquely.

CM: These are excellent rumors, but Andrew Newman is a closet masochist.

http://www.flakmag.com/features/nathanbarley.html

Nothing that new in there but thought it were worth bringing up, like.

[its not cool to be weird]

My important opinion of this -

CHRIS MORRIS, the satirist whose television act features jokes about paedophilia, drugs, incest and rape, is to make a movie intended to show the funny side of terrorism.

Yeah he definately doesn't like him. Morris' 'dark' humour is usually satirical, and where it isn't he can escape the sensationalism charge by its absurd brilliance. Generally.

Just read the first few posts of that 'Morris and the new right' thread and its really very over the top. That said, whilst there is certainly a tendancy toward wilfilly offensive comedy (I think its a stretch to call it right-wing, whatever that means) these days, I don't think its fans are those people who, say, listen to Blue Jam. Sure everyone knows Brass Eye, but its honest and savage satire. The controversial stuff isn't likely to be known by the people who like the 'new right' stuff listen in that thread. Sorry, relevance now -

Though the film is a work of fiction, Morris has researched it over the past two years by visiting places in Britain associated with terrorist plots, including Leeds, Bradford and Luton.

Im going to have to doubt the level of Morris' research. If he can talk to potential terrorists why can't MI5 shut them down. And otherwise he isn't talking with terror cells, just (perhaps disgruntled) Muslims, who are clearly very different.

Morris, whose Brass Eye show, broadcast in 2001 on Channel 4, made jokes about paedophilia and lampooned celebrities who want to help child abuse victims.

Thats a pathetic comment from someone writing in the Times, utterly pathetic.

Morris, whose early career included a stint as a pompous anchor on a BBC news spoof,

A 'stint'! One of the most brilliant and inspired comic performances ever and the defining image of Chris Morris.

I found out, for example, that jihadists like reading the views of Jeremy Clarkson but not those of Richard Littlejohn [a tabloid newspaper columnist].

Well good on them, but this sounds a lot like bollocks to me. I might credit him more were it not for the fact his Amis article was so poorly written and ill-informed.

Morris used two scriptwriters from the BBC television satire, The Thick of It, to help write the movie. Morris himself will direct it, though he will not act in it.

Good for the first bit, Morris' directing is good but nothing special. Question is, why isn't he in it. For me, its his voice and the way he speaks that transforms what he says and makes jokes all the more funny.

Anyway overall, sounds more promising than it did before I read that, I thought he might be doing something serious (disaster, Amis article again), but Im not that hopeful. Maybe it would be better if he went back to his old ways and didn't try to whip up publicity for his stuff in advance.

[Backstage With Slowdive]

Andrew Newman is a closet masochist.

*nodding* yes, he appeared as himself in Noble&Silver, openly admitting he'd commissioned the show.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Flak: How did you approach Office co-creator Stephen Merchant to be a script consultant for the show? Can you recall any specific contributions he made to either the plot or dialogue in Nathan Barley?

CM: From ground level Steve's head looks very small, but actually it's the size of a shoe or television. He uses most of it to process data, which he does. He interrogated the scripts with enthusiasm and forensic scrutiny, made many useful suggestions, at least one of which was that episode 1 was too full (it originally contained the Preacher Man plotline), and that we should consider writing an episode 0. He was sometimes appalled at the stage directions.

God, Morris is such an utter wanker these days. 'Ha ha, the interviewer's interested in how TV shows are made - what a loser...'

[niat]

But Morris does actually answer the second part of the question, about Merchant's contributions to Barley.

[Ambient Sheep]

God, Morris is such an utter wanker these days. 'Ha ha, the interviewer's interested in how TV shows are made - what a loser...'

Don't be such an arse...he answered the question, and stuck some humour in as well.  Or is that not allowed?  Pre-Submit EDIT: actually, as niat said, he only answered the second part.  I suppose the answer to the first part was considered too obvious: "I picked up the phone and asked him".  Still, at least he didn't answer it by saying "I sent a request over stapled to the left arsecheek of a baboon", eh?


Anyway, interesting interview, thanks Clint.  A few snippets that I thought worth commenting on:

Flak: The short, paranoid answer is that the style mags tried to kill it.

No, the short, unparanoid answer is that it wasn't funny and the direction killed it.  I don't think a couple of million people (the viewing figures it was short of / leaked over its run) all read style mags and said "Oooh, I won't watch that then".

Flak: Was there difficulty in getting Channel Four to agree to Region 0 encoding for the DVD?

CM: There may have been a stifled bleat.

This amused me, irrespective of my username.

CB: For the TV series, we effectively had to create a new Nathan from scratch...There were lots of different ways you could "do" the listings Nathan — you could easily turn him into a detached Patrick Bateman type for instance...

Which is what I thought they'd do, as that's more how the listings Nathan came across to me than "the wide-eyed, barging, try-too-hard, insecure-but-over-pleased arsehead" did.  Maybe the latter was a funnier way to go, but it certainly wasn't the funniest, it seems.

Flak: Nicholas Burns said in an interview that you dispatched him to parties and events specifically to meet people that you considered to be "a bit of a Nathan Barley." He also stated that some of these appeared later in the show.

Anybody know where this interview is, save me doing a lot of Googling?  I don't believe I've ever read a Nick Burns interview about Barley (or indeed, any interview with anyone about NB apart from that cringey one that Brooker & Morris did shortly after it aired).


I think I'm going to have to watch Nathan Barley again sometime to remind myself why I disliked it so very much.  After all, I love Morris, I like Brooker, I've warmed to some of the other players in other things they've been in...so I just want to work out how they fucked it up so badly.  I suspect it was the direction as much as anything else (sorry Chris).

MissInformed hasn't seen it, and I have a still-sealed copy of the DVD here, so I suppose sooner or later I'll have to subject myself to it again...and it'll be interesting to see what she makes of it.  Also what we both make of the pilot, which is supposed to be much better than anything in the series itself.

[Viero_Berlotti]

I have a still-sealed copy of the DVD here, so I suppose sooner or later I'll have to subject myself to it again...

I'm not the only one then. I wonder how many other people on here have been bought this as a gift from someone, but it's then been sat on a shelf for 12 months+ because they've not actually had the guts to sit through it all again?

[jaydee81]

Warning Steven! You may not make it past episode 3!

[Glebe]

Wow, didn't know Merchant had anything to do with Barley. Looks like the Times stuff was taken from this.

[jaydee81]

Script Editor right? What does a script editor actually do? Surely less than an executive producer.