Kent Film Club (Season 2023 Episode 8)
This week Chris Deacy is joined by Malcolm Dixon to discuss the films; Harold and Maude, Taxi Driver, Apocalypse Now, and Toy Story.
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00:00 (dramatic music)
00:02 - Hello and welcome to Kent Film Club.
00:14 I'm Chris Deasy, and each week I'll be joined
00:17 by a guest from Kent to dive deep into the impact
00:20 certain films have had on their life.
00:22 Each guest will reflect on the films
00:24 which have meant the most to them over the years.
00:27 And every week there will be a Kent film trivia
00:29 where we quiz you at home about a film
00:32 that has a connection to the county.
00:34 And now let me introduce you to my guest for this week.
00:37 He is a Kent-based author who has written
00:39 a time travel adventure called
00:41 "The Little House on Everywhere Street"
00:44 which was awarded the Achieve and Book Prize
00:46 for Young Adult Fiction
00:48 and the Right Blend Young Adult Book Award.
00:50 He is Malcolm Dixon.
00:52 - Thank you, Chris.
00:53 - Great to have you on the show.
00:54 - Great to be here.
00:55 - And you're not the first guest
00:57 to have chosen "Harold and Maud" as your first film.
01:00 - I'm surprised by that, you know.
01:02 It's quite an, well, it's reasonably obscure.
01:04 - Why did you choose it?
01:05 Because you saw, did you see it when it came out?
01:07 - No, it came out in '71.
01:09 I saw it on TV and I was, so on BBC Two,
01:14 some day and I used to have these late night odd films.
01:18 And so I remember seeing, I was about 16 or so
01:22 when I saw that.
01:23 And so, the common thread between all these films
01:27 and each one that I picked today, when I've seen it,
01:31 has been unlike anything else I've seen before.
01:35 - Because I always associate it
01:36 with the Cat Stevens soundtrack,
01:38 something very off-kilter about the film,
01:40 particularly the relationship between Ruth Gordon
01:42 and the young man who's finding his way in life.
01:46 - Yeah, I mean, it is, it's a story of contrasts.
01:50 It's, I mean, when I saw it, what struck me most of all
01:53 to begin with is so strange.
01:55 Such a strange story, such strange humour,
01:58 such a great script, so funny.
02:01 It was, as I say, it was unlike any other film
02:04 or TV show that I'd seen.
02:06 And so it had a big impact.
02:09 - And very black comedy, isn't it?
02:11 - Yeah, it is. - In its presentation.
02:12 He has this morbid obsession with death.
02:15 - Yeah, I mean, and the film explains why.
02:17 The film explains how, I mean,
02:19 his obsession with death is this kind of performative
02:23 acting out, all designed to get the attention
02:26 of his colder-than-a-fish mother.
02:30 And, I won't talk about spoilers,
02:34 but there is a point in the film where it explains
02:35 how he'd been reported dead and witnessed
02:38 the reaction of his mother,
02:41 which was quite dramatic and cold, but not really sincere.
02:46 And that drove him to the extreme lengths
02:48 to try and garner some of her attention.
02:51 - And there's a particular scene that we were
02:53 in conversation about before filming
02:56 where there's a particular look,
02:58 and I think you said that it's like
02:59 the greatest look in movies.
03:01 - It is for me, yeah.
03:02 I mean, I've retained that since 1976.
03:07 So these fake suicides that he stages
03:12 become more and more complex, more and more violent.
03:18 And there is a point where his mother's trying
03:21 to set him up with a date,
03:23 and so he stages this fake immolation in his garden,
03:27 which is perfectly executed.
03:28 And the would-be date runs out of the house screaming,
03:32 and he comes in, his mother looks at him,
03:34 and he turns the camera and kind of breaks the fourth wall
03:38 and has a super grin for a second
03:43 that kind of makes you complicit, draws you in.
03:45 And of course, you support him
03:47 because he's very sympathetic,
03:48 and obviously he's not getting the sort of attention
03:50 that he needs to get.
03:52 And then he looks back, his mother closed him down
03:54 with just a glance as well.
03:56 It's that exchange that captures the essence
04:00 of their mother-son relationship, all in that few seconds.
04:04 - And what I recall from that scene
04:07 is that we see it, not the immolation taking place,
04:12 but we see it all through their eyes,
04:14 him looking at the camera, the mother looking at him,
04:16 and this sort of realisation
04:18 that something is really skew-iff.
04:20 Probably a good word to refer to the film.
04:23 Something's very off-kilter.
04:24 - Yeah, I mean, he comes in
04:27 just as we see the blazing figure in the back garden,
04:30 and the hysterical would-be date runs past him.
04:35 We can see that he's fine, he's safe.
04:38 This is one of his oddball pranks,
04:42 but it's just such a strange scene.
04:45 And then we go into that moment.
04:48 - So this is a film that has lasted for you.
04:52 This is something that you've watched
04:54 many times over the years, but it really has stood out.
04:57 So is there a particular thing about this film
04:59 that is so persuasive, so impressive,
05:02 that's lasted so many decades?
05:03 - I mean, it's a great script, and it's very sharp.
05:07 I think the humour was something, the black humour,
05:12 was really something that I hadn't really come across
05:14 before as well, and that's been a big influence.
05:17 It's kind of a worldview, in fact,
05:21 to kind of have that sort of perspective.
05:24 How I see the world has probably been influenced
05:27 to some extent by the kind of humour in this film.
05:32 - Well, no doubt we'll talk about the influence
05:34 of some of these films on your own writing very shortly,
05:37 but I think it's time now to move
05:39 to your second chosen film,
05:42 and it's "Taxi Driver," isn't it?
05:44 - "Taxi Driver." - A very seminal film
05:45 from the 1970s. - Yeah, I mean, I was,
05:48 when "Taxi Driver" came out, I was 17,
05:52 and it's hard to imagine today where you can,
05:56 I mean, I've actually watched it yesterday
05:57 'cause I've just streamed it,
05:59 but I've also owned the DVD and the video.
06:02 But when "Taxi Driver" came out in the '70s,
06:05 there was no internet, of course.
06:06 There was no video, and so when a film came to town,
06:10 you had to go and see it while it was in the cinema
06:13 'cause then it was gone, and so you had to catch it.
06:18 But it wouldn't be on TV for five years,
06:20 and so I saw it three nights consecutively,
06:23 and so it made a huge impact, again,
06:28 unlike anything I'd ever seen before.
06:31 - And I remember that it was a really big deal
06:33 that in 1995, it was the August Bank Holiday Weekend,
06:35 it was shown for the first time
06:37 on terrestrial television in the UK on BBC Two.
06:40 I'd seen it once before when I first went to university,
06:45 and it was shown as part of a new entrance conference,
06:47 and I was so blown away by this film
06:49 that many years later, I did some work on it,
06:51 some research on Scorsese and "Taxi Driver"
06:54 for the doctorate that I was doing at the time.
06:56 But you saw it when it came out.
06:58 - Yeah, I mean, it was a staggering experience.
07:02 Again, such a great script.
07:09 I mean, watching it again yesterday,
07:11 it's kind of like the apotheosis of filmmaking.
07:14 It's got everything.
07:15 It's got the story, the script, the soundtrack,
07:20 that soaring and swooping Bernard Herrmann soundtrack,
07:25 and the performances, the performance from De Niro.
07:31 He inhabits that character.
07:34 And watching the scene yesterday
07:35 between him and Jodie Foster in the coffee shop,
07:38 I mean, it's just acting masterclass,
07:42 the pair of them together.
07:44 Incredible performances.
07:46 - Yes, and what really stood out for me
07:48 the first time I watched it is this notion
07:50 that he's both applauded as a hero
07:54 by Jodie Foster's characters, Iris' parents,
07:58 but also we know that in order to do his saving,
08:02 he has to go down a very dark path.
08:05 And so this whole notion of whether he's a hero
08:08 and anti-hero, whether he knows,
08:10 whether there's any sort of change or conversion
08:13 at the end when you see him in the cab
08:14 talking to Cybil Shepherd.
08:16 - Yeah, I mean, I've kind of moved along
08:19 in my thinking a little bit about those end scenes.
08:23 I mean, there is a school of thought.
08:25 I mean, the ending is ambiguous.
08:27 And there's a school of thought that what we're seeing
08:30 is a dying man's fantasy.
08:33 'Cause the whole Cybil Shepherd thing,
08:35 how you see that he's portrayed as a hero
08:38 and him going to his cab,
08:42 it just seems like wish fulfillment to a large extent.
08:46 So I'm kind of swayed, I haven't seen it again yesterday,
08:51 I'm kind of swayed by the idea that those scenes,
08:53 much like the end of "The King of Comedy" may be delusional.
08:58 - Yes, there's a very common theme,
08:59 I think in "Mean Streets" as well,
09:00 there's a similar thing about characters dying
09:02 or nearly dying at the end.
09:04 And maybe it's only through death
09:06 that they're able to achieve
09:07 what they're not able to do in life.
09:09 But that very last scene, of course,
09:10 with all the mirrors in the car,
09:12 and he catches himself looking in the back mirror
09:14 and he catches a sight of himself and then flinches away.
09:18 And there is that sense of something very delusional
09:20 or distorted taking place.
09:22 - Yeah, yeah.
09:23 I mean, he is a character cut out from the world.
09:28 A friend of mine was doing a film course.
09:32 It was long after I'd seen "Three Nights on the Trot".
09:35 Years later, a film on a friend of mine.
09:37 And in the era of video, we watched it compulsively.
09:42 He was trying to write a piece of work about it,
09:46 about that and "Psycho".
09:48 And we played both films back to back.
09:51 There's a lot of similarities
09:53 in the way the characters are shot,
09:57 the lead characters from those two films.
10:01 But we pondered for a long time that odd scene
10:06 where he's watching TV in his apartment
10:09 and there's a dance scene that's happening
10:11 and Jackson Brown's playing in the background.
10:14 There's a pair of shoes that are empty.
10:17 And the film focuses on the shoes twice
10:22 and pulls out again.
10:24 And we came up with this line
10:25 that was the shoes that Travis couldn't fill.
10:27 There's all these couples together having a normal life.
10:31 And also that reminds me about the letter, supposedly,
10:36 from the parents of Iris.
10:39 And they welcome him into the family.
10:41 He's never been really, he went to his own parents.
10:44 He's quite distant from that,
10:45 but here he is with this make-believe family
10:48 because he's a hero, he's fulfilled his role.
10:51 Just seems to me to confirm the elements of fantasy.
10:54 - Yes, this notion as well of being sort of articulate
10:56 when he's writing that letter
10:58 and maybe through the guise of somebody else.
11:01 But in himself, he's somebody very inward.
11:03 And when he impresses Sybil Shepard,
11:07 and of course he takes her to, on the date from hell,
11:11 but there is something going on there
11:12 where you kind of feel that she suddenly realises
11:15 that take away the surface
11:17 and something really quite difficult
11:20 and disturbing is taking place.
11:21 But a very seminal film from 1976.
11:23 - Well, that's about all the time we have
11:26 for this first half of the show.
11:28 However, before we go to the break,
11:29 we have a Kent Film Trivia question for you at home.
11:32 Which of these films includes a chase scene
11:36 that caused the M25 Dartford Crossing
11:39 to be blocked off for filming?
11:42 Was it A, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One,"
11:46 B, "The Sweeney," or C, "The Beekeeper?"
11:52 We'll reveal the answer right after this break.
11:54 Don't go away.
11:55 Hello, and welcome back to Kent Film Club.
12:08 Now, just before that ad break,
12:10 we asked you at home a Kent Film Trivia question.
12:14 Which of these films includes a chase scene
12:17 that caused the M25 Dartford Crossing
12:20 to be blocked off for filming?
12:22 I asked, was it A, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
12:26 Part One," B, "The Sweeney," or C, "The Beekeeper?"
12:31 And now I can reveal to you that the answer was in fact,
12:35 A, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One."
12:39 The tunnel was the site of a dramatic chase
12:42 between the young Hogwarts wizard,
12:43 played by Daniel Radcliffe,
12:45 and school caretaker, Hagrid, played by Robbie Coltrane,
12:48 weaving between traffic on a flying sidecar.
12:52 Did you get the answer right?
12:54 Well, it's time now to move on
12:56 to your next chosen film, Malcolm,
12:58 and you've chosen, "Apocalypse Now."
13:01 - "Apocalypse Now," yeah, wow.
13:03 Again, much like "Taxi Driver,"
13:04 was a film I saw on three consecutive nights.
13:08 And I saw it in a real old school Liverpool theater
13:13 called "The Futurist."
13:16 "The Futurist" was huge, but it seated 1,000 people.
13:21 And it was kitted out with this centurion sound.
13:25 It was a bit of a gimmick, but in "Apocalypse Now,"
13:28 when the choppers were flying, they were flying overhead.
13:31 You could feel them above you.
13:33 It was a great experience.
13:35 But yeah, again, this is a film
13:37 that really influenced my teenage years.
13:40 In fact, me and several of my friends
13:42 spoke more or less in dialogue
13:44 from the film for several years.
13:46 So we'd seen it so many times.
13:49 And it was one of those films that was unlike anything
13:51 that I'd ever seen before.
13:52 And so, yeah, it was a very immersive experience.
13:57 - And that famous line,
14:01 "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."
14:03 I don't know if that's the line that you're referring to.
14:05 - No, no, no, but we actually knew the whole script.
14:09 I could probably say it off by heart now
14:11 from the very start.
14:14 But yeah, it is a film that has lots of great lines,
14:17 such as that one.
14:18 But it was in an era of lots of films about Vietnam,
14:23 "Coming Home," "The Deer," "The Hunter,"
14:26 lots of that sort of stuff.
14:29 But it still stands out to me as by far the best film
14:33 of all of those types of movie.
14:36 - And of course, really well known
14:37 for Marlon Brando's performance,
14:39 where there seems to be a very thin line
14:42 between the actor and where he was
14:44 with all those cameos he did
14:45 the "Cinema Land" film around that period
14:47 and the character that he's playing.
14:48 - Yeah, well, he famously turned up unprepared and overweight
14:53 and was filmed largely dressed in black in darkness.
14:59 But I still think it's a very effective performance.
15:01 I mean, he plays Kurt, the rogue colonel,
15:06 based on a character out of
15:08 Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness."
15:10 And what he really conveys is the menace,
15:14 the purpose of that character.
15:16 And as character played by Martin Sheen says,
15:20 no, he was like, drew him through the jungle
15:24 to this confrontation at the end.
15:27 - And there's something about Martin Sheen as well.
15:29 In fact, everything about the film,
15:31 which of course was shown many years later
15:33 in that sort of famous documentary
15:35 about how what was happening on screen
15:37 and what was happening behind the cameras
15:40 was very much of a twin
15:42 because he famously had a heart attack on set.
15:46 And it's as though everything that could have gone wrong
15:48 did go wrong.
15:49 - And even more, I'm sure.
15:51 I mean, Coppola took a huge risk
15:56 and put lots of his own money in
15:57 to start to fit the film to actually be finally produced.
16:02 But he just believed in the project.
16:06 I mean, one of the things for me
16:07 that distinguishes it from those other films,
16:09 it's a very literary film as well.
16:10 It's underpinned by Michael Herr's "Dispatches",
16:15 by Conrad's "Heart of Darkness".
16:16 There's lots of references to TS,
16:18 the poems of TS Eliot in there.
16:24 But the "Heart of Darkness" thread
16:26 adds a whole different dimension to it.
16:27 It makes it more than a war film,
16:29 more about the nature of humanity.
16:31 - And in that sense, very much of a twin with "Taxi Driver".
16:36 In that sense, there you've got the Vietnam veteran
16:38 who's out on the streets and clearly hasn't acclimatized
16:42 and is clearly affected by all that he witnessed.
16:45 And here in "The Heart of Darkness",
16:47 well, in "Apocalypse Now",
16:48 you have a very similar sort of dynamic taking place.
16:52 - I mean, the people who thrive in the war are Kilgore,
16:55 the psychopathic general who brings down
17:00 these insane raids on villages
17:04 so his men can surf.
17:06 It says somewhere in the film,
17:09 you just knew that he wasn't gonna get a scratch.
17:12 That was his environment, being in that war.
17:17 - And I always find it so ironic, perhaps, really,
17:19 considering the scale of this film,
17:21 that at the Academy Awards,
17:22 it lost to "Kramer vs. Kramer",
17:24 which couldn't be a more different sort of film.
17:26 But do you think that maybe
17:27 Hollywood wasn't quite ready for this?
17:29 - I'm sure it wasn't.
17:30 I mean, it's often voted now
17:31 as one of the best films of the last century.
17:34 It takes some perspective and some time
17:37 to see for what it actually is.
17:39 - Well, thank you, Malcolm.
17:40 I think it's time now to move on
17:41 to your final chosen film,
17:44 and you've chosen "Toy Story".
17:47 And as an author, I'm wondering,
17:49 and somebody who writes, obviously, for all ages,
17:52 but is "Toy Story" something that has influenced you at all?
17:56 - I don't know if it's influenced me.
17:57 I mean, it's different to the other three films,
18:01 but again, the common thing it has
18:03 is that it was completely different
18:04 to anything that we'd seen before.
18:07 I didn't see it when it first came out,
18:09 but the quality of the animation was just so different.
18:14 So when we did watch it,
18:16 we watched it probably because my younger daughter
18:18 was two or three,
18:20 and it just then, for a long time,
18:22 became central to our lives.
18:24 We had a Woody figure and a Buzz figure,
18:27 and we used to play with those all the time.
18:29 It became a real family film.
18:32 But such a sharp film as well.
18:35 Again, the script is so funny.
18:39 It's a great story.
18:40 It takes in some kind of existential doubt as well.
18:43 So it has layers.
18:46 It has layers, especially by children
18:48 and by the parents, too.
18:51 - And something so generational about it,
18:53 because I remember watching it,
18:55 I was in my early 20s when I saw it on the big screen,
18:58 in 1996.
19:01 And then, of course,
19:02 there have been other Toy Story films since.
19:05 But of course, there are people who would have gone
19:07 to see the more recent Toy Story, Iterations,
19:10 who would have been children themselves
19:11 when it first came out.
19:13 So I think that's something that you're suggesting.
19:16 It very much taps into something,
19:18 which is the universal childhood experience
19:20 and the way that we forsake our childhood toys.
19:24 - Yeah.
19:24 And I mean, it's quite a common thought now,
19:28 but it's also a film about parents.
19:31 Parents, as those films progress,
19:35 and the kid in the film, Andy, grows up and goes to college,
19:40 the toys are at a bit of a loose end.
19:42 And it's a bit like parents, really.
19:43 Once your kids do grow up,
19:46 I think in Toy Story 4, there's a line from Woody about how,
19:50 and that's good, too.
19:51 They're out there doing their own things, and that's good.
19:54 But there is an element of loss.
19:57 I think the whole arc we've seen so far
20:00 with what happens in the last film
20:02 is Woody discovering a role beyond his role
20:07 as a carer for children.
20:09 And so he has to then, he has to grow up himself
20:13 and become something else.
20:15 So I think it's aimed not just at children,
20:17 but also at the parents of children.
20:20 - As you're talking, I can hear all the nostalgia
20:23 that the film is evoking,
20:25 but also really quite clever to look at all of that
20:28 through the lens of the toys themselves.
20:30 Because of course, children will easily,
20:32 literally throw away a toy from the past.
20:35 But from the point of view of this film,
20:36 it's saying that there's a relationship
20:39 that works both ways.
20:41 And that, I think, is very well brought out
20:43 in the Toy Story films.
20:44 Sort of not seeing these as inanimate objects,
20:47 but actually giving them,
20:48 investing them in the personality
20:49 that children, of course, will always give,
20:51 as my children do, their toys.
20:53 - Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a magical thing.
20:57 And I mean, we used to play tricks.
20:59 We used to leave the toys in a strange position
21:04 that the children hadn't seen.
21:05 So when they came home from somewhere,
21:07 we'd like, we would have caught them
21:09 climbing on the furniture.
21:12 Just add to that fantasy of,
21:14 there's like a magical dimension to everyday life.
21:18 - And obviously, young adult fiction
21:20 is something that you're very much involved with.
21:22 So do you find that when you're writing,
21:26 that are you channeling anything
21:28 like the essence of Toy Story?
21:30 - I put the essence of Toy Story.
21:31 I mean, I have, I think there is an element
21:34 that magic element, that kind of mystery and enchantment.
21:39 I mean, my novel doesn't deal with magic,
21:44 but it has this time travel fantasy.
21:48 And it takes place in a house
21:50 that has these unusual properties.
21:52 And so, much like Hogwarts for the Potter novels,
21:57 it's invested with that extra dimension,
22:00 kind of brings the imagination to life,
22:04 I think, and allows you to invest in that.
22:07 It's not so much the Toy Story per se,
22:09 but that kind of magical element to it.
22:14 - And I have to ask you as well,
22:15 because the other films you saw,
22:18 in some cases on the big screen,
22:20 but is there a preferred way of watching a film?
22:24 Big screen, small screen, smartphone?
22:26 - I mean, I would love to, I mean, cinema.
22:31 Most cinemas we go to these days are quite small affairs.
22:37 But the kind of experience that we used to have
22:40 in the Futurist, with a huge theatre,
22:43 with a huge screen, and special effects sounds,
22:46 that would be the best way to watch a film.
22:50 - And how many times have you watched Toy Story
22:53 over the years?
22:54 It sounds like it's an annual ritual.
22:55 - Well, I've seen Toy Story when the kids were little,
22:58 countless times, or parts of it, sections of it.
23:01 Yeah.
23:03 Once, it becomes a film for them,
23:07 and I'm out doing things,
23:08 and I'll come in and I'll catch a part of it.
23:10 But I've seen it quite a bit.
23:12 Probably the film I've seen all the way through,
23:15 most I sat down to watch,
23:17 and I haven't watched it for maybe 15 years.
23:19 It's probably apocalypse now.
23:20 - Well, I'm sure that Toy Story, in particular,
23:24 will resonate with many watching this,
23:26 who may like, your own children have seen this
23:29 when it first came out.
23:31 Well, I'm afraid that that is all the time we have for today.
23:34 Many thanks to Malcolm Dixon for joining us,
23:36 and being such a brilliant guest.
23:38 And many thanks to you all for tuning in.
23:41 Be sure to come back and join us again
23:43 at the same time next week.
23:44 Until then, that's all from us.
23:46 Goodbye.
23:47 (upbeat music)
23:51 (upbeat music)
23:53 (upbeat music)
23:56 (dramatic music)