AMC Arizona Center, February 9th-11th, 2001

At the risk of sounding like a mini-megalomaniac – which, the nurses say, is way down my list of disorders – there are occasionally times when, just for a moment, it seems as if the universe truly does revolve around me. I mean, within three months of my arrival in Phoenix, they’ve organised a film-festival. And not just any film-festival, but one dedicated to low-budget and independent movies, with nothing costing more than a million allowed on the premises. Does life get any better than that? Not when we get two all-access press passes to the event, no.

For given the choice between seeing a film with a million-dollar budget, and one costing a hundred million-dollars, I know which one will get my popcorn. The more money that is ploughed into a project, the more people have a finger vested in the pie, and inevitably, you end up with movies written by committees of accountants. Any risks, originality, or spark of life have to run the gauntlet of rewrites, test screenings and studio executives, and the results are…Gone in 60 Seconds…Battlefield Earth…Jim Carrey. Given the choice between hiring Mr. One-Expression, or making twenty feature films, which is better value for viewers, film-makers and the world of cinema in general?

In addition to the independence of vision, low-budget movies offer another advantage: they’re short. Of the seventeen films in the festival, the longest ran for just 101 minutes, because when you’ve got no money, every frame has to count. These are like blow-darts, make the point and stop, unlike the overblown epics coming out of Hollywood. There, you might as well smash the rock over the viewers’ heads a few more times because it’s someone else’s money anyway.

This helps explain why, of the eight films seen over the weekend, all were worthy of respect; they might not have been perfect (unsurprising, when you can often afford no more than three takes), they might not always have succeeded in their goals, but you can only applaud all the makers for their efforts, especially in the face of shooting schedules as low as ten days. These people are the future of cinema, and deserve support and recognition every bit as much as Hannibal – which I saw on Sunday night after leaving the festival, and can honestly say was less enjoyable than every movie in it. Two films, Vice and Boys From Madrid, are already contenders for my ten best of 2001, and Green would have followed them, if it hadn’t been made in 1997. My only gripe was an excessively parochial feel: all the features were English language, and only one came from outside North America. That, I suspect, comes down to submissions rather than any conscious decision, and next time, as an “established” event, I hope for a more global selection. On the other hand, it was an additional pleasure to see shorts, not only in their own programs, but alongside the main features.

The event took place in a far-off corner of the 24-screen AMC megaplex in downtown Phoenix; if this smacked of sell-out to The Man, at least we got comfortable stadium seating with lots of leg-room for our souls, and it was a salutory experience to walk past the likes of Saving Silverman on the way to the festival zone. Once there, it was like entering another country because, as well as the content, the atmosphere was great. Most entries had directors, producers and actors in attendance, who were delighted to talk about their work afterwards, in sessions of excellent informality. Everyone was approachable and friendly, and additionally, a lot of guests hung around to see other people’s movies, a major plus compared to other festivals I’ve attended.

On the down side, an unfortunate number of screenings were plagued with technical problems: the video projection was particularly awful, with bad colour and shortcomings on sound – where there was any at all – but even some of the film projection was not up to an acceptable standard. These gremlins led to films starting anywhere up to half-an-hour late, and this had a knock-on effect, delaying both later movies in that screen, and in other screens since people might have tickets to them as well. At $10/film, it was pricey, especially for the video-projected films (a fact not mentioned in the program!) and the ticketing system itself seemed strange. If you bought a ticket to a specific movie, you (theoretically) might or might not get in, since priority was given to those who’d bought one-day passes.

I say “theoretically”, since none of the screenings we went to were sold out, with the majority less than half-full. While this is perhaps fortunate in the light of the above, it’s otherwise a shame, and I think the festival could have done with broader publicity – on several occasions before the weekend, we mentioned it to people and their reaction can be summarised as “Huh?” However, everyone we spoke too at the event had a thoroughly good time, so there should be plenty of positive word-of-mouth for next year. It’s a festival that certainly deserves to be a success, and I’m already looking forward enormously, to bigger and better things next year.

[Thanks to Golan Ramras for the press passes, and Chris Fata for editorial assistance, festival liaison, her comfy shoulder and enough Diet Coke to float a battleship…]

For more information on this year’s festival, and to keep up to date on the plans for next year’s, visit the Phoenix Film Festival website.

Rodeo Nights, Phoenix AZ: 6th December 2000

“Well, I’ve thinked we’ve cleaned most of the blood out of the cage…”

The first rule of Fight Club is: you don’t talk about Fight Club. However, this didn’t quite apply to Rage in the Cage, which is how we came to hear about it, since it was promoted on a local radio station, on the Internet and in the press. The venue was a night-club on the West Side of Phoenix, and the audience were largely white, blue-collar and overwhelmingly male, but trouble-free – perhaps in part due to the promoter threatening to throw anyone who caused bother, into the cage. This loomed large in the middle of proceedings, a chain-link octagon, some ten feet tall, raised above the ground. A couple more feet would have been welcome – even our ‘ringside’ seats (six or seven rows back in actuality) had problems following the fight once the combatants went to the deck; next time, we’ll probably just go for the regular seating.

Before the first fight, promoter Roland Sarria introduced the event, and thanked his supporters, such as Dr. Haggard, the “official chiropractor of Rage in the Cage“. This seemed a potential conflict of interests (I wondered if we would see him shouting “twist his neck some more!” at the fighters), but I have to say that the medical aspects were taken very seriously and covered every bit as well as at any boxing event I’ve attended. As a novice here, an explanation of the rules would have been welcome: there obviously were some, as the referee more than once stepped in to warn one or other fighter about an illegal tactic, but we were left to work out for ourselves what was and was not permitted. I was also curious as to whether the contestants were paid for their efforts, or if this was purely an amateur sport; hard to work out which was more likely, but I imagine any rewards would probably be of the token variety.

Following a rendition of the National Anthem (a concept which this Limey still finds a little strange, but then, the British National Anthem tends only to be heard after the odd Grand Prix), we got into the first of the evening’s seventeen bouts. That might seem like a lot to get through, but most were over quickly — even with two-minute rounds, only one match got beyond the first, and that one was so dull that the round girl probably put in more effort than either fighter. Happily, that was an exception; most of the rest were fast, furious and over in anything from 24 seconds. To the untrained eye (which includes mine), it might seem like no more than brawling, but over the course of the evening, the skill factor became more apparent. Submission holds, in particular arm-bars in which the arm gets levered back against itself at the elbow, proved most popular, and often it was the person who appeared to be being pinned, who managed to put the lock on and force his opponent to tap-out.

Match-ups seemed to be done largely on the basis of weight, which meant there were some uneven bouts, where a veteran who’d won eight of his nine bouts, was pitted against a debutant; unsurprisingly, it soon became nine out of ten. Most of the fighters had picked a nickname befitting their style, such as Ragin’ Rhino or The Crippler – though one poor guy had gone for the somewhat lame The Bastard, which provoked the MC into commenting laconically, “Hey, they write ’em, I just read ’em”. This provoked some thought about the name I’d choose: I quite like the idea of being Jim The Flying Scotsman McLennan. And, indeed, I could, quite literally, have been a contender. At the middle of the event, Sarria issued an open invitation to anyone who fancied trying their arm at a future event to come and sign up. For a brief second, I almost contemplated it (we were a couple of beers down the line by now – I imagine the response generally might have been somewhat fuelled by alcohol), but I suspect it would have been one of those things that didn’t seem such a good idea the next morning. Reality delivered a sharp tap on the shoulder in this regard, with one bout during which they stopped to mop the blood out of the ring with towels. Okay…I think some training is in order before The Flying Scotsman makes his debut.

I generally prefer my violence well-choreographed and fictional, rather than in-my-face and real, but have to confess that by the end of the evening, I was beginning to get into the swing of things. What looked initially like two guys rolling around on the floor is certainly more complex, and my fears of a mindless punch-fest turned out to be totally unfounded. I left with a great deal of respect for all those who took part, and while I don’t think I’m going to become a regular – either as a spectator or a participant – but I think that the occasional visit to future events is certainly not out of the question.

Spectacular Bodies
The Hayward Gallery
19 October 2000 – 14 January 2001

Art and science are usually regarded as being separate, and often contradictory disciplines, emotion and logic in opposition without much apparent common ground. But such ground certainly exists, and the Spectacular Bodies exhibition covers some of it, with particular regard to human anatomy.

The element of it which has received most publicity are the wax models used to teach anatomy, back in the days before every medical student got their own corpse to cut up. Then, the only available bodies were those of condemned criminals, making dissections a rarity, and something of a theatrical event as a result. In lieu of real flesh, elaborately detailed facsimiles were constructed out of coloured wax and other materials, and these form the centerpiece here.

Looking at them, a whole range of emotions ran across my mind. They seemed unerringly lifelike, the wax glistening moistly, but there is also something deeply disturbing about seeing human bodies cut up and displayed like slabs of meat in a butcher’s shop. Others seemed like alien flowers, petals opening to reveal strange organs of unknown purpose – for how many of us know what a pancreas looks like, anyway? Yet the more moderately discreet were barely distinguishable from regular statues. Take someone’s skin off, pose them appropriately, and they don’t look all that much different from a body-builder or well-toned athlete, though it was clear where Clive Barker got many of his ideas for Hellraiser!

Even now, the form is carried on, albeit less for instructional purposes, and merely for the artistic content. Shown on the right, is John Isaacs’ A Necessary Change of Heart, which sat in the corner of the gallery, as if its subject had fallen from some great celestial slaughterhouse. While almost all the rest of the exhibits were behind glass, this one was out in the open (albeit with a museum guard hovering nearby), adding to its queasy appeal. If Isaacs ever wants a career in the movie industry, I’m sure he has a great future ahead of him, making highly-convincing special effects.

Less interesting were the more regular works of art, although they did show how many artists have taken a specific interest in anatomy: Stubbs (when he wasn’t drawing horses), Rembrandt, Durer, Turner and Da Vinci among them. Some of the last-named’s notebook pages were on display – borrowed from the Queen – and, as an aside, it was interesting to see them written in “reverse”, from right to left. There were also some “installations” from modern artists, which were without exception, crap: what exactly is a video of open-heart surgery playing above a neatly-made bed supposed to signify? I did have to laugh at the jar of bulls’ testicles which had a mouth projected onto it, if only for the look on people’s faces when they read the label, and realised exactly what they’d been staring at for the past few minutes.

Fortunately, the non-art exhibits had a fascinating range, from medieval textbooks which sought to explain how the four humours affected personality, through to a jar containing a pickled foetus, with beads on its wrist for no readily apparent reason – eat your heart out, Damien Hirst. Ironically, there were also masks cast from the faces of Burke and Hare, the notorious “resurrectionists” from Edinburgh, whose trade was in supplementing the officially-available corpses, with ones they ended up creating themselves. What goes around, comes around, and they now find themselves the objects of public attention.

Another important area covered by the exhibition, was the way scientists have attempted to link mood and character to physical attributes. The ‘science’ of reading faces, physiognomics, has been around at least since the time of Da Vinci, and was strongly supported by the likes of Francis Galton – who also was one of the discoverers of fingerprinting. Phrenology, the reading of the bumps on the head as an indicator of mental disturbance or criminal tendencies, lead to the gathering of enormous amounts of data, though it seems that their interpretation tended strongly to pander to the preconceptions and prejudices of the time.

There is a lot to see in this exhibition – perhaps too much – and by the end, I was feeling distinctly body-weary. There’s no doubt that we are all examples of remarkable natural engineering, but as with cars and computers, my interest in the internal workings is limited, when things are otherwise going well. However, the images of the anatomical models will stay with me for a long time, and the names of Pinson, Zumbo, Susini and Towne undeniably deserve a higher place in art history than they have received. Definitely, their wax works…

I have a certain warmth of feeling for the Millennium Dome: anything which causes Tony Blair so much embarrassment and grief can’t be all bad. But, having said that, I probably wouldn’t have bothered going if it hadn’t been at the suggestion of my parents who were visiting London, on their way to holiday somewhere less wet. Which could pretty much mean anywhere on the planet, outside than the South-East of England over the past couple of weeks. Indeed, my touristing tolerance had already been hammered by a ‘Ghost Walk’ round the Tower of London that would have benefited from scuba equipment, and a failed, but equally moist, attempt to see some 5th of November fireworks. At least the Dome was inside…

And make no mistake, there is an extraordinary amount of stuff to see there: after a full day, some eight hours of gawping, we still hadn’t seen six of the fifteen zones, nor any of the stuff outside the central arena, save for the Blackadder Back and Forth show. which is shown in a nearby pavillion. However, while the sheer scale of the edifice, and its contents, cannot be denied, the quality of the exhibits leave a good bit to be desired in that, while the day passed by with surprising swiftness, there is very little in there that I have the slightest interest in seeing again. Case in point: the Play Zone contained a number of futuristic activities and leisure pursuits…none of which kept my interest for more than a few moments. If this is truly what we have to look forward to, I foresee hard drugs becoming the pastime of choice.

Similarly, the main Millennium Show had a good fifteen minutes of material in it – so it’s a shame it lasted three-quarters of an hour. Some of the aerial ballet was genuinely breath-taking, but there were so many dead spots that the overall effect was of a school Christmas pantomime, directed by a severely over-ambitious drama teacher. The Peter Gabriel soundtrack was kinda cool though. It all has something to do with a conflict between Earth People and Sky People, but even after reading the programme notes, I’m not entirely sure why one side appeared to be clad in matching pyjamas, who the good guys were, and what the overall message was.

Probably something about living in peace, harmony and balance with nature, for there was also an underlying preachiness about many of the exhibits which could become immensely irritating. The very first zone was Money, and consisted largely of the City of London telling us not to spend too much or too little, because it would cause financial chaos. Excuse me, whose money is it again? Oh, yes, mine… Worst of all was Living Island, which took ecological sensitivity to neo-Fascist levels: no matter what the activity, it was Bad For The Environment And Should Stop Immediately. I did like the display of flotsam (or is it jetsam? Never can remember…) picked up off the beaches of Britain. Egyptian packaging, Norwegian beer-cans – the world has truly become a global village. Albeit not quite in the way intended by the Home Planet zone, an extraordinarily sappy tour of Earth, hosted by two aliens (“No, we can’t stay – but they can!”) which says that we are the most amazing thing on it, and thus presumably implies it’s okay for us to rape the rest of the planet. Cool.

I liked Travel, which traced the progress of transportation from our own two legs through space travel, and beyond on into the future. It managed both to be informative, and provide an emotional content which was all too often missing. On the other hand, the Body zone was a severe disappointment. A pumping heart and a brain telling Tommy Cooper jokes was about the limit of it, as well as an exhibit designed to identify you by the patterns of veins in your hand, which didn’t work. This was a definite problem; I suspect the lack of money, and the approaching end of its life, means that as things break down, they weren’t getting repaired, and so a significant percentage of things were out of order for one reason or another. Sometimes, I accept, it wasn’t the Dome’s fault — the previous day, someone had used a bulldozer and tried to steal the 350 million pound diamond exhibit, so that was shut. Instead, we took a photo of ourselves, standing next to the closure sign, looking mournful.

Oddly, the lack of attendance worked in the Dome’s favour: the first estimates required a daily attendance of 35,000, but I suspect that if such a volume was ever reached, the facilities would be creaking at the seams, and you would certainly lose the airy sense of space which was one of the most memorable features. You could wander into any zone almost at will, without queueing; we didn’t bother with the couple of exhibits that did have a line, partly because I suspect they wouldn’t have been worth the wait. Food and drink were equally easily accessible, in a broad range of forms, though irritatingly, you weren’t allowed to take these into the zones: we were barred from the BT-sponsored Talk zone, for unlawful possession of candy floss. It’s good to talk, providing you don’t eat at the same time.

Nowhere was the Dome’s spectacular failure as a commercial attraction more evident than in the gift shop. With almost two months to go, they had already embarked on an Everything Must Go! clearance sale, which had some spectacular reductions. Shirts which had been twenty quid at the start of the year, were now 4.99 and you got two for the price of one. If you could get to the shop without having to pay for admission to the whole facility, that would be your entire Christmas shopping sorted. However, such is the low status of the Dome, that you might as well go round with “I AM A PLONKER” on your chest, and none of the designs appealed, even at that low, low price. However, I do wonder if some of the limited edition stuff – first day covers and the like – might be worth picking up, on the grounds that no-one will bother, and so they might well end up being worth more than you’d expect…

So, what to do with the Dome when it reaches the end of its useful lifespan in seven weeks. Tony Blair won’t let it stand as a memorial to the total incompetence of Cool Britannia, though it is entirely fitting – being an impressive shell whose actual contests, once you get inside, leave a lot to be desired. Maybe we can do as was done with London Bridge, and sell it off to the Americans, perhaps for use as a shopping mall – it’d help if we could stick a flag on it, and convince them it was actually Buckingham Palace. But I think we should engage in a grand but empty gesture to match the entire concept. According to one of the tumblers (now reduced to 4.99), it would take Niagara Falls ten minutes to fill up the Dome: I think it would be an interesting and worthwhile exercise to ship the entire unit across to upstate New York, turn it over and prove the validity or otherwise of that statistic…

“It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts…”
    — Mahatma Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War

Unwilling though we may be to admit it, violence is an integral part of human nature. Any civilised society needs to come to terms with it, and find an appropriate, sanctioned outlet through which its population can release those aggressive tendencies. In olden times, war was the release-valve of preference: ship you angry young men off to the front, and let them kill someone else’s angry young men. Not a problem – at least, unless you’re one of them. But what do you do when society is stable, and there are no convenient wars to hand?

Simple: you fake it. Nowadays, you can get your fix of cathartic violence on TV, through the carefully choreographed spectacle of the WWF or the latest Arnie movie. Two thousand years ago, however, the nearest you got to video was running past a frieze at 24 panels per second. So they had gladiatorial combat instead. Although this spectacle started off as a way of honouring dead warriors, it was clearly an idea to good to waste on corpses, so it eventually became an entertainment in its own right. The scale of some of these events was striking: in AD 107, the Emperor Trajan staged a victory celebration which included 10,000 combatants.

Even the fringes of the Empire got in on the act. London had an amphitheatre in what is now Guildhall Yard, capable of seating 7,000 people. This shows just how popular a spectacle it was: the total population of the city was only 20,000 at that time, and you didn’t tend to get many away supporters either – “Gaw’n, Christians!” Recently, the Museum of London staged a demonstration of gladiatorial combat on this very site, and I went along, keen as ever for my fix of cathartic violence, and clad appropriately enough in a Stone Cold Steve Austin jersey…

Despite the ambulance parked outside, there was no death and not even any mutilation – much to the chagrin of one passing small child who was heard to mutter “Those swords aren’t sharp…” with obvious disappointment. But as a spectacle, it was still impressive – what the weapons may have lacked in the edge department, they made up for in heft, and they weren’t holding back: you could see sparks flying. Any misplaced blow would have shattered your arm like a toothpick, and on one occasion, a sword broke mid-shaft, spinning down to the dirt. The feel of danger was enhanced by the not-exactly secure matting which was used on the courtyard in lieu of dirt – it wasn’t fixed down properly, making any movement fraught with danger.

I confess to having had a special cheer for the women gladiators, who were every bit as impressive as the men. Recent excavations in London turned up the remains of one such competitor, the first physical evidence to support written records. In a strange parallel with the likes of Chyna in the WWF, they were generally regarded as outsiders, even among the mix of low-lifes, prisoners of war and condemned criminals, that made up the bulk of the fighters. In AD 90, the Emperor Domitian presented combats between women and dwarves but a later successor, Septimus Severus, banned them in AD 200.

Indeed, the whole spectacle had more than a touch of professional wrestling about it; the crowd hollering for their heroes while booing the villains, the flashy costumes, combat as a public spectacle and (in this re-enactment at least!) the spectacular but choreographed violence. But, if anything, gladiators had more rules to follow: attacking an opponent from behind was forbidden and would get you a lot more than a stiff talking-to from the referee — you were killed by the stadia guards. No blind-side chair shots, by request.

Such historical sidelights meant that this event was probably a bit more educational than the usual edition of Nitro. As well as the fighters, there were other “citizens” taking roles, from the businessman sponsoring the games, up to the emperor who made the final decision as to whether losers got the thumbs-up or down (the coup de grace could also be applied if injuries were deemed too severe). And it was also nice to see some members of the audience thoroughly getting into it, judging by the objects being thrown into the ring after the final bout was won by the emperor’s champion, though one suspects plastic bottles might not have been historically-accurate ammunition…

But such qualms aside, it was an impressive event, that did a good job of recreating the general atmosphere, albeit without the gore-drenched slaughter. Probably for the best, since we’re not as barbaric these days, are we. Are we?