Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts video

It was almost thirty years ago that I linked up two VHS recorders and created Blood and Rain, a montage of film clips and footage I'd shot of rain, to the soundtrack of Bob Dylan's A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall*. For better or worse, that video (along with the now-classic Red Lipstick) got me into film school.

Well, all these years later, I'm still editing film clips to the tune of Bob Dylan, now with help from YouTube and an Apple Mac. Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts is a song from Dylan's classic Blood on the Tracks album. The song has spurned two screenplays, neither of which got made into films. It seems now that Luca Guadagnino, director of Call Me By Your Name, intends to make a film out of the entire album.

Dylan has apparently only sang the song once live and I don't recall hearing any cover versions, so it's great to hear folk singer Naomi Bedford's wonderful version, for which I have created the video for. The song contains vocals from Naomi as well as twenty other singers and musicians, including her partner and Dylan fan Paul Simmonds (of The Men They Couldn't Hang fame) on guitar, and her son Noah in charge of mixing. The poster image is by Chris Riddell, illustrator and political cartoonist for the Observer.

All proceeds from the recording will go to community causes chosen by We Shall Overcome. 

Bob Dylan's new album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, his first LP of original songs since 2012's Tempest, has also just been released. It's been getting rave reviews, with The Guardian calling it "a testament to his eternal greatness". Three of the songs, including the 17-minute epic Murder Most Foul, were released during lockdown to critical acclaim.

Previously on Barnflakes
The Rebel Soldier
Seven Days of Nothing
Without Joy

Elsewhere on Barnflakes
YouTube Channel

*Unfortunately, the YouTube version prohibits using the actual song A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall so I uploaded a silent version. You'll need my DVD Homeless Movies to get the full version.

The Rebel Soldier

Based on an American Civil War ballad, The Rebel Soldier is on folk singer Naomi Bedford’s forthcoming LP, Singing It All Back Home. I created the video for it, above.

naomibedford.com

Previously on Barnflakes:
Seven days of nothing
Without Joy

Revenge of the VHS tape

Like everything else retro from vinyl to the Nokia 3310, VHS tapes have been making a comeback for some time. If half the internet consists of cats, the other half consists of 1980s VHS horror film covers. Until recently VHS tapes were given to charity shops or chucked in the bin; eBay is now awash with rare 1980s horror titles and select Disney films worth hundreds of pounds (according to The Sun and BuzzFuze, anyway).

As featured on Eye on Design recently, Vault of VHS goes one step further (or back) and showcases the cases of blank VHS tapes. The cases usually contained bold graphics and gradients. For quality, my preference was always the TDK EHG (Extra High Grade) tape (which came in a plastic rather than card case), reserved for recording the likes of Godard, Truffaut and Bunuel from Channel 4 seasons of films.

Vault of VHS features American cases but the ones above are a few of my old UK case spines. I still own a fair variety of video tapes, including VHS, VHS- C, U-Matic, Video8, Hi8, Betacam and MiniDV, none of which I can actually play any more. Which I'm not at all sorry about – editing with two video machines was a painful experience; editing with 16mm film was more fun. And when iMovie, Premiere and Final Cut Pro came along, it was like a dream come true.

Previously on Barnflakes:
The top ten most valuable CDs
Homeless Movies DVD out now!

Elsewhere on Barnflakes:
YouTube Channel

Seven days of nothing

Here's the second video I've made for Naomi Bedford and Paul Simmonds, whose new album, Songs My Ruiner Gave To Me, was released last week. I went to the launch gig at the famous Troubadour cafe in London last Thursday, and had a jolly good time. The album is my favourite of Naomi's yet, and it's already high up in the Amazon folk music chart. 

Previously on Barnflakes:
Without Joy

Without Joy

I was flattered to be asked by folk singer and old family friend Naomi Bedford to edit old home movie footage of Naomi's mum, Joy (who passed away almost six years ago), for her lovely and moving song about her, Without Joy. I'm very pleased with the resulting video, above.

Naomi's last album, A History of Insolence (2014), was recorded with her partner and member of The Men They Couldn't Hang, Paul Simmonds. It contains a heady mixture of traditional songs and new ones, penned by Simmonds and one by Justin Currie (of Del Amitri fame). The album received great reviews in the press, including The Guardian and Independent. Naomi's vocal style has been compared to Joni Mitchell and Shirley Collins; she's worked with people from Orbital to Ron Sexsmith, and she's received plaudits from REM's Peter Buck and folk legend Shirley Collins. I'm looking forward to her new album this November.

See Naomi's website here. 

Previously on Barnflakes:

Pulp Poetry posthumously published

Homeless movies DVD out now!
Rashisms: The book of Rash

Elsewhere on Barnflakes:
YouTube Channel

Homeless Movies hits 100,000 on YouTube

Homeless Movies, the moving image arm of Barnflakes on YouTube, now has over 100,000 hits. It also has 38 followers. I have no idea why. Here's the only video I've uploaded for the last couple of years, Flashing Cherubs, named after the soundtrack song by Arab Strap, a great Scottish band who never quite made it. Twelve people have watched it so far.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Homeless Movies Hits 10,000!
HOMELESS MOVIES DVD OUT NOW!

Elsewhere on Barnflakes:
Film and Video

My top 5 unrealised film projects

Over the years I've tried and failed to write some feature film screenplays. I've never done anything with them and probably never will. But they'd all make superb films.

1. The Hills Were Joyful Together
I recently met an old friend I hadn't seen for years and he reminded me of my ill-fated cinematic adaptation of The Hills Were Joyful Together, a book I had first studied for A Level English (ie 25 years ago). Written by Roger Mais, the novel is set in the 'yards' (sort of shanty towns) of Kingston, Jamaica in the 1950s. Even when studying it as a 16-year-old I could see it as a great film. It has all the ingredients: colourful characters with lashings of sex and violence as well as elements of spirituality, beauty and poetry. Part heist movie, part prison movie, part romance, part rich soap opera that is life, part social commentary – it has it all. I always loved the title too.
What would it be like? The Harder They Come meets The Shawshank Redemption meets City of God.

2. Pigeon's Luck: Tretchikoff
I mentioned this recently (and not so recently), that I'd love to make a film version from Tretchikoff's autobiography: it would be a glorious 1950s Technicolor/CinemaScope musical in the style of Vincente Minnelli. As the book cover says, 'It reads like a thriller' and indeed the film would be an arty, kitsch mix of thriller, war movie, rags to riches tale exploring notions of taste, art and celebrity, spanning Russia, China, Singapore, Indonesia and South Africa.
What would it be like? Lust for Life meets I'm Not There meets Performance meets Douglas Sirk meets Powell and Pressburger.

3. Grey Belt
An urban martial arts film set in London conceived of around the time of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix, I wrote some of this over a decade ago in a small town near Cannes with a woman who developed a limp (detailed here). It features a horseback chase scene through Brixton and Wimbledon and a fight scene on the tube. We never finished it.
What would it be like? Well, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon meets (say) Bullet Boy.

4. Trilogy of Westerns
Yes, there's another more famous trilogy of westerns in existence but these ones, set in New Orleans, Tijuana and Jakarta respectively, are decidedly modern in outlook (maybe even post-modern). I wrote a few pages of dialogue with a waiter in New Orleans almost twenty years ago; it hasn't really progressed that much since then. But they do all involve a stranger wandering into town...
What would it be like? Erm, it would be like the best trilogy of westerns EVER!

5. Found Object
This is the time travelling antiques roadshow movie mentioned recently. It'll be a novel first, to be followed swiftly by a blockbuster movie.
What would it be like? Indiana Jones meets the Antiques Roadshow.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Homeless Movies, my DVD six years in the making.

See also: Barnflakes on YouTube.

She Leaves Vs Ship to Shore

I first mentioned this way over a year ago and Bruce recently got in touch with me informing his version was ready. I won't repeat my earlier post about it but just mention that Bruce has remade a student film of mine, She Leaves (above, made in 1993). He's called it Ship to Shore and can be watched here using the password whatever but with the es replaced with 3s. It contains more nudity than mine but is essentially quite similar, minus the leaves.

She Leaves: The Remake!

I know I'm the first to bemoan European art house filmmakers who sell their films to Hollywood only to have them remade into bland, pointless, mainstream blockbusters, but it appears a similar fate has befallen one of my early student films, She Leaves (made at film school in 1993). Well, sort of. I worked with producer Bruce Webb in 1995 on a low-budget road movie shot in Nottingham and Morocco. Since then he's run a successful production company, Whatever Pictures, and recently directed his first feature film, The Be All and End All, about a youth with a heart condition not wanting to die a virgin, featuring, among others, Liza Tarbuck.

Anyway, what I'm getting to is that Bruce remembered me telling him about She Leaves in Morocco when it had for its soundtrack the Shipping Forecast (now it's just Boards of Canada). Something about it caught Bruce's imagination (presumably the naked woman in a bath). He asked my permission last year to re-make it. Bemused, I of course said yes and promptly forgot all about it. Now he tells me he's actually shot it, though it's a long way from being finished as he's going to spend a lot of time on the sound. The edge he has over my version – apart from skill, experience, budget, proper actors, technology, etc – is he knows the man who reads out the shipping news and is getting him to do the voice over.

Disregard what I said at the start – remakes? They're the ultimate compliment! I'm looking forward to seeing Bruce's interpretation. In the meantime, you'll probably want to revisit my original (above). And be reminded about my DVD. Which Bruce and his girlfriend love, by the way.

HOMELESS MOVIES DVD OUT NOW!

Six years in the making.*
46 Films and Videos.
On two DVDs.
Lasting over five hours.
The most arduous viewing experience since Warhol's Empire movie (or Dylan's Renaldo & Clara).
*with a four-year gap for financial, technical and purely apathetic reasons.

Definition:
Homeless Movies [hohm-lis moo-vees]
–noun
1. Films without a home; rootless; unwanted.
2. Less or worse quality than home movies.

Yes, the Homeless Movies DVD is finally out – just in time for the 20th anniversary of the early classics: Red Lipstick, Blood & Rain and Darker than Night. It's a double-disc set consisting of forty-six films and videos that I either made or worked on from 1991 to 2010. All the films and videos have been re-edited and digitally remastered with new titles, effects, sounds and music. But don't worry – they're still rubbish. You've probably already seen some of them on YouTube, but now you get to own them. And get a cool booklet. And postcards.

The films are handily divided into six self-explanatory chronological sections: Putney Movies, College Movies, Foreign Movies, Other Movies, Home Movies and Bonus Bits N Bobs – some never seen before!
The DVD has a very limited release, so grab a copy while you can! Available to buy on Etsy.

Featuring:
• All the classics including Red Lipstick, Darker Than Night, Blood & Rain, Face to Face, The Woman with the Hundred Hairless Heads, The Red Whine, Desire, Hope & Bourbon, Warminster Carnival… and many more!

• Music by Rumpelstiltskin, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Tortoise, Boards of Canada, Steve Reich, Broadcast and the Focus Group, Young Marble Giants, Brian Eno, Eric Satie, Van Morrison, Sun Ra, Jack Nitzsche, Michael Nyman, Neil Young, Beck, The Eurythmics… and many more!

• 12-page booklet, 'A Cinema of Disappointment'

• Five exclusive movie poster postcards

Getting the DVD:
If you worked on any of the films or videos in any capacity, you will get the DVD free of charge (if you want one), posted to you or given to you in person; if you know me (but didn't work on one), and buy me a beer or two, you'll probably get one free of charge (if you want one); if you don't know me at all and want one (highly improbable but you never know), you'll have to pay for it: email me at barnflakes@gmail.com for details. It'll probably be £15 including p&p, payable via PayPal (think that's expensive? Listen, it cost over £20 a copy just to get it produced).

For best results: watch the DVD on an old analogue 4:3 CTR TV
For worst results: watch the DVD on your brand new 40" widescreen digital TV or computer

The DVD goes really well with: Gullible Travels, the book I'm still plugging. You can match the faces (in the videos) to the names (in the book).

Got the book and the DVD? Congratulations: you know everything there is to know about me.

Special thanks to: JMS Attwell; Pink Pigeon for doing a great job on the authoring.

Buy it now on Etsy.

Homeless Movies Hits 10,000!

Whilst Justin Bieber battles it out with Lady Gaga for most YouTube visits (Bieber was the first to hit a billion apparently, and gains a million hits a day*), humble me is quite chuffed with 10,000 total YouTube hits. Isn't the internet amazing? Post anything up there and it takes on a life of its own. To be ignored or adored.

Those of you still holding your breath for the Homeless Movies DVD… you would have died about six years ago. But after many setbacks – financial, technological, emotional, physical – it will be produced in the next month or so. Maybe. Watch this space.

*Rumour has it he employs a whole factory of Chinese workers with PCs spending twelve hours a day clicking on his YouTube videos to up his numbers. (Only joking.)

youtube.com/user/barnflakes

Homeless Movies on YouTube

"All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl"*
– Jean-Luc Godard

* Godard: You need a camera too.

Most of my old films and videos are now up on YouTube, from Red Lipstick to Desire, Hope and Bourbon, and beyond. The DVD, as always, is coming soon. The Homeless Movies page of barnflakes.com has had a bit of a facelift, and you can watch some of the movies there too – the bonus being you can also look at the posters at the same time.

Desire, Hope & Bourbon

Here's an extract from Desire, Hope & Bourbon: On the Streets of New Orleans, a 35min. video documentary I made way back in 1996. It was made with a lot of help from Ivan, who I met up last weekend – the first time we've seen each other since 1996. That makes us old. Anyway, this fits in nicely with Gullible Travels as some of the best stories in the book are about the characters of the once fine city.

Find Barnflakes's Homeless Movies on YouTube here. I'll be adding lots more films and videos in the months to come.