Why Brum needs a Woody Allen
All but his most hardened fans may have given up waiting for a return to his "funny ones", but no-one mythologises a city like Woody. If you take a trip to New York there's a scene from a film at every intersection, but it's Woody's Manhattan that uses the city as a character, the narration making it okay to be "too romantic" about what's really just some bricks and some people.
London is casually used as a backdrop and there now seems to be a whole industry in making films about late seventies Manchester, but not it seems Birmingham.
Supposed worst film ever The Sex Lives of the Potato Men was set, but not filmed, in Brum, Cliff Richard sang and bargee-d around the canals in Take Me High, but these are not the stuff myths are made of. The closest we come to a classic is The Italian Job, the drain the Minis race down is actually the Birmingham-Coventry Tithebarn main sewer and even that was up the Coventry end.
I Bought A Vampire Motorcycle is nearer the mark, even the première at the New St Odeon did it's best to create something special. If only there wasn't the suspicion that the whole film was made to give the cast something to do between series of Boon.
Slade in Flame is almost there too (and one of the great film rock and roll films) but, not only are Noddy and the lads not Brummies really, the fantastic industrial wasteland was up north. A wasted opportunity if there ever was one.
I wait for someone to be "too romantic" about this city, but it's not going to come from the major studios, or even the British Film Industry. I can't see Dreamworks giving our young Small Heath Peter Jackson $300 million to have King Kong return to trash the Bull Ring that spurned him. Kong'd have the something to be mad about too having been painted pink.
It's maybe not inevitable, but You Tube could eventually do for filmmakers what the web has done for musicians. And if it's no-budget web-films, why can't it be here as much as anywhere? We might not get Woody Allen's New York, but we could manage Kevin Smith's New Jersey or Shane Meadows' East Midlands.
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The problem with outsiders doing stuff on Birmingham is that they always go for the most extreme version of the Brummie accent, reinforcing the ridiculous gormless stereotype.
I did like the television mini-series adaptation of The Rotters Club, though
Yes the Rotters Club did work well, although it was a comedy it wasn't 'comedy Brum' at all.
Until they make the Ozzy Osbourne story, i can't see hollywood calling. Still you have council film department just in case.
http://www.filmbirmingham.co.uk/
What a waste of cash.
'Paranoid: The Ozzy Osbourne story' is sort of inevitable – who should play Ozzy?
The Ozzy story would no doubt feature the Barton's Arms which has already starred in a Brum-based movie - Felitia's Journey (Canadian-directed art house thriller movie from late-90's). In fact Brum looked epic and magnificent in that movie; dreary and industrial yes, but satisfyingly unglossy.
For reference the Rotter's Club TV version was filmed in the Isle of Man (for tax reasons presumably) - most dissapointing.
Birmingham's own Trevor Eve as Ozzy? Julie Walters as Sharon?
Dave
PS: thanks for linking to my Manhattan/Brum remake.
There's always the full length "Gormlessghast"