The Brag #742

COURTNEY BARNETT

Evolving with you.

With a sleek new user interface, a generously expanded switching bandwidth and higher RF output power for the 500 Series, and new multi-channel functionality for the 100 Series, G4 delivers high-quality, reliable audio for musical performances, houses of worship, and theaters. www.sennheiser.com/g4

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 3

4 :: BRAG :: 741 :: 03:10:18

thebrag.com

2018 AUSTRALIAN MUSIC WEEK

Cronulla Beach November 7-11

MUSICCONFERENCE | NOV 7-9

Listen and Learn from music industry leaders.

Interact and participate in relevant panel discussions.

Meet like-minded people and build your network.

LIVESHOWS | NOV 7-10

150+PERFORMANCES 10VENUES 5DAYS

Australian and International artists playing multiple venues over 4 nights, buy a ticket and venue hop to see as many great shows as possible.

FILMFESTIVAL | NOV 10-11

Tickets on sale 2nd August

More information and applications at australianmusicweek.com

australianmusicweek.com SUPPORTED BY

GOLD COAST

MUSIC AWARDS

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 7

this month what you’ll find inside…

ISSUE 742: Wednesday October, 2018

12

EDITOR: Joseph Earp joseph.earp@seventhstreet.media NEWS: Nathan Jolly, Tyler Jenke, Bianca Davino, Lars Brandle ART DIRECTOR: Sarah Bryant PHOTOGRAPHER: Ashley Mar COVER PHOTO: Ben Sullivan

“While my partner was pregnant, the world was a really ugly place for queer people in Australia; uglier than it normally is.”

ADVERTISING: Josh Burrows - 0411 025 674 josh.burrows@seventhstreet.media PUBLISHER: Seventh Street Media CEO, SEVENTH STREET MEDIA: Luke Girgis - luke.girgis@ seventhstreet.media MANAGING EDITOR: Poppy Reid poppy.reid@seventhstreet.media THE GODFATHER: BnJ GIG GUIDE COORDINATOR: Belinda Quinn - gigguide@seventhstreet. media REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS: Arca Bayburt, Lars Brandle, Tanja Brinks Toubro, Alex Chetverikov, Max Jacobson, Emily Gibb, Emily Meller, Adam Norris, Holly Pereira, Daniel Prior, Natalie Rogers, Erin Rooney, Anna Rose, Spencer Scott, Natalie Salvo, Aaron Streatfeild, Augustus Welby, Zanda Wilson, David James Young Please send mail NOT ACCOUNTS direct to this NEW address Level 2, 9-13 Bibby St, Chiswick NSW 2046 ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE: Carrie Huang accountsseventhstreet.vc (02) 9713 92692, 9-13 Bibby St, Chiswick NSW 2046 DEADLINES: Editorial: Thursday 5pm (no extensions) Ad bookings: Last Wednesday of the month 12pm (no extensions) Finished art: Last Thursday of the month 5pm (no extensions) Ad cancellations: Last Wednesday of the month 12pm Deadlines are strictly adhered to.

Published by Seventh Street Media Pty Ltd All content copyrighted to Seventh Street Media 2017 DISTRIBUTION: Wanna get the BRAG? Email jessica.milinovic@seventhstreet.media PRINTED BY SPOTPRESS: spotpress.com.au 24 – 26 Lilian Fowler Place, Marrickville NSW 2204

EDITORIAL POLICY: The views and opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the publisher, editors or staff of the BRAG.

10 65 66 68-69 69 72-73

24

The Frontline The Watcher Game On Sounds Like The Defender Gig picks

“I’ve definitely grown to hate music at times.”

8 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

Cash Savage And The Last Drinks

42-43

Just For Laughs: The Story Of British Comedy

17-18

Nakhane

44

Convict Games

21-22

Paul Kelly

45-46

Life In Hell, Perfect Blue

24-25

Peter Bibby

48-50

26-27

The The

Apes, Bombs, And The End of The World

28-29

Winterbourne

52-53

Mandy

30-31

Jen Cloher

54-44

The Best Horror Movie Scores

32-33

The Worst Gig I’ve Ever Played

56-61

34

How To Up Your Netflix Game Without Breaking The Bank

The 50 Best Horror Films Of The 21st Century

62

Roger Watkins Retrospective

36-37

The Music of Star Wars, The Most Incredible Star Wars Props In History

63

How John Carpenter Changed Indie Forever

64

Jack Ryan

Star Wars teaches us how to be good

68-69

Killing Your Wife

40-41

like us:

THE BRAG

48 “There has never been a film like Apes.”

Cash Savage And The Last Drinks photo by photo by Naomi Lee Beveridge

regulars

12-15

follow us:

@TheBrag

thebrag.com

S Summer Inntensives

Film, TV, Radio & Digital Short Courses for Industry & Beginners

BOOK NOW aftrs.edu.au/summer thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 9

the frontline

With Patrick Campbell, Geordie Gray and Georgia Moloney

BATTLING AGAINST THE BAD Uber have introduced new guidelines that allow the company to temporarily ban users from using their service if a passenger or driver have a rating lower than four stars. The new system is being introduced to improve the safety and overall experience of passengers and drivers.

Passenger and driver ratings are calculated by averaging all ratings (from 1-5 stars) that a user has received, with the total number of trips taken. Drivers must rate passengers after every trip, but for passengers rating their driver is optional. Low ratings are generally caused by bad behaviour: giving incorrect pickup locations, slamming car doors, rudeness, and leaving rubbish behind are all common reasons for poor ratings at the conclusion of a trip. Vomiting in the vehicle after a loose night out is also not advised, and will earn you a $50 cleaning fee.

Users will receive up to three emails about their impending ban, which then kicks in if their score dips below four stars. The account deactivation also affects UberEats.

GO GO GHIBLI Saturday November 3 will see the release of vinyl pressings for three much loved Studio Ghibli film soundtracks: My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Castle In The Sky (2003), and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984). All three films were scored by renowned Japanese composer and longtime Studio Ghibli contributor Joe Hisaishi. The vinyls will be released through Tokuma, a publisher based in Tokyo, just in time for Japanese Record Store Day. The animation house is known worldwide for its loveable characters and incredible illustration style, which changed the way the West viewed Japanese filmmaking. For longtime fans, these latest vinyl pressings are just another way to keep the magic of their favourite films alive.

OH HAI YOUTUBE!

Cancel your Saturday night plans, something far more important has come up; cult-classic and best-worst movie ever made The Room is now available to watch in its entirety on YouTube for free. The film’s director Tommy Wiseau has uploaded the film to his YouTube channel in crisp 1080p HD quality for the world’s enjoyment. The film was recently made available for a limited time on SBS On Demand, but that’s now over, so this upload came just in time. Focussing on a banker called Johnny (played by Wiseau), his wife Lisa, and their friend Mark, the film makes minimal sense and boasts some of the worst lines and acting in cinematic history.

REALLY WEIRD STUFF David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti have been collaborating on art for decades. Their first ever joint project was 1986 cult-classic mystery Blue Velvet and they’ve joined forces on the majority of Lynch’s film projects since. Now the pair have announced the release of a jazz album. The project, entitled Thought Gang, was reportedly worked on between 1992 and 1993. Cuts of the release appeared on the soundtrack to the 1992 film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Though the collaborative record was never released, until now.

Thought Gang is twelve tracks long and features instrumentation by bassist Reggie Hamilton.

Hamilton recalled the experience that was working with David Lynch in a report via Pitchfork “[Lynch] said imagine you’re a chicken with your head cut off running around with a thousand bennies shoved down your throat.”

10 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

TAKE THE JOKE Sacha Baron Cohen could be in a bit of hot water, with US congressman Roy Moore filing a $95 million lawsuit against the British entertainer. The US Senate has accused Cohen of defamation. As the BBC reports, Moore is suing Sacha Baron Cohen for falsely painting him as a sex offender in a recent episode of the program. Back in late July, Who Is America? aired its third episode, which featured Cohen disguised as an Israeli anti-terrorism expert.

The episode shows Cohen showing off a device which supposedly detects pedophiles, which Cohen demonstrates by waving it in front of Moore, which causes it to beep. “I support Israel. I don’t support this kind of stuff,” explained Moore before walking out of the interview. According to the lawsuit, Moore claims that he was tricked into appearing on what was ostensibly an Israeli TV show in order to receive an award for his pro-Israel stance.

Margot Robbie

thebrag.com

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 11

Belinda Quinn chats to Cash Savage about the end of the world as we know it

COVER STORY

Cash Savage And The Last Drinks photo by Naomi Lee Beveridge

“While my partner was pregnant, the world was a really ugly place for queer people in Australia;

uglier than it normally is.�

12 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03 0 03:10:18 :10:18 1

thebrag.com thebrag the g.com g.c m

the new album - out now touring: 1 2 3 5 9 10

NOV NOV NOV NOV NOV NOV

Brisbane The Tivoli Sydney The Enmore Theatre Melbourne The Forum Melbourne Prince Bandroom Adelaide Thebarton Theatre Perth-freo The Metropolis

thelivingend.com.au thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 13

Cash Savage And The Last Drinks photo by Naomi Lee Beveridge

COVER STORY

“We act like

we’re above the rest of the animals, That violence is just sitting there underneath the

T

he fourth record by Melbourne’s raucous country-blues aficionados, Cash Savage and The Last Drinks, wasn’t necessarily a product of choice. “I feel like my hand was forced,” says Savage of Good Citizen’s fed up, political lyricisms over lunch at Rising Sun Workshop café in Newtown. The smell of diesel rises from the floor below us where mechanics work away on motorbikes – it’s a familiar setting for Savage, having worked as a mechanic’s apprentice in her early twenties.

During last year’s marriage equality plebiscite, she discovered her identity was suddenly a topic for dinner table conversation. “I never thought I would be political at all. I was pretty happy writing love songs,” she explains. “But, you know, last year was fucked with the plebiscite. People would ask me my opinion on politics all of a sudden and I felt like my hand was forced to give an answer – and I guess this album is that.”

Earlier this year, Savage’s wife Amy Middleton (founder of Archer, a magazine that bolsters LGBT+ activism as its backbone) gave birth to their first child. “Probably why I squirreled away all those songs [was] because, really, I was writing them for the child,” she says. “Just as a little bit of like, ‘This is exactly how I feel’. I feel terrified about the future of our current

“We’ve got one of the 14 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

civilisation. I am deeply in love with her mother. And I’m angry. So I guess I hoped that if she listened to it, she would get that vibe – she would know.”

In ‘Pack Animals’ she confronts the men who consistently give her unsolicited advice, a not uncommon experience for women working in the music industry.

“One person actually said, ‘I really like that song ‘Pack Animals’, but can I tell you one thing?’ And I was like, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she says, breaking into laughter.

“I think that people take whatever they want away from a song, to the point where someone said, ‘You’re right, people are being too sensitive.’ I was like, nope, that’s not the point. You have missed it,” she laughs. According to Savage, it’s all in the ear of the beholder. “Which is great, but it’s also hilarious.”

She notes how the songs seemed to fall from her mind, as opposed to previous records, which required more lamenting. Due to the anger in their lyrics, Savage let the songs sit and breathe before recording with the band and shipping 'em off to their label, Mistletone Records.

richest men in Australia leading thebrag.com

COVER STORY

sand paper in their pants

“Two white guys had a bit of and that’s fucking news for five days.” suffering of those around us. During our 40 minutes together, we touch on those detained on Nauru and Manus; the women who die at the hands of male partners week-by-week, and police brutality against Aboriginal folk, people of colour and queer people.

“I don’t have any violence in my life. And that’s great,” she says. “But there are heaps of people that do and we just turn blind eyes to them.

And then when there is times of social upheaval or when they make laws about protests,” – in this case, the Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s recent call for martial law and therefore the potential suppression of future democratic protests – “they say, ‘we can be more civilised than that’, but the reality is that we’re not civilised.”

In ‘Collapse’, Savage sings the refrain, “I’m thinking violence is the answer / don’t be afraid of the violence.” When queried on the lyric, she says, “I think to lead a non-violent life is to lead a privileged life. And I think that there are a lot of people who live violent lives, not because they want to, but because that’s how it is for them. And there’s violence imposed on them. So when I say, ‘Don’t be afraid of the violence’, I’m really saying that, you know, be aware of it’.”

While she doesn’t expect Good Citizens to change anything, what she does seem to be asking is that Australians take some responsibility for the harms we collectively contribute to, in particular for those detained on Nauru.

“I think to lead a nonviolent life is to lead

a privileged life.” but we’re worse. surface of what we call civilised.”

“I think going into parenthood was probably a big reason why the album was so quick to write, because it’s a really good time to reflect on who you are and the world that we live in,” she explains. “While my partner was pregnant, the world was a really ugly place for queer people in Australia, uglier than it normally is.”

On bringing up folks who responded to the plebiscite’s results with the casual remark ‘at least you won the fight’, she’s quick to reply: “Fuck that man. That fight should have never have happened … All the polls said that’s what Australia wanted. It didn’t need to go to a vote. I had a bad time during the plebiscite. It hit some of my loved ones harder than it hit me.”

While the Last Drink’s third record One Of Us was predominately a result of grief and loss, she says that “[Good Citizens] is a bit more observational.” In a way, Savage is tackling what it means to be an Australian today. And to be perfectly honest, right now, it’s not looking good.

Perhaps the most noteworthy track the record is ‘Collapse’, which sees Savage take on the paradoxical values that Australian’s have towards violence – values that enable our collective complacency towards the

the country and that’s fucked up.” thebrag.com

“Those people didn’t want to have violent lives! And we have created that. We have to own that that’s Australia doing that: that our violence has done that,” she says. “We act like we’re above the rest of the animals, but we’re worse. That violence is just sitting there underneath the surface of what we call civilised.”

In ‘Kings’, a co-write between herself and Nick Finch, the record’s producer and bassist, Kat Mear’s violin swirls and withholds a sense of sorrow while Savage sings, “So let’s take it out on each other.” “[Nick and I] were both reading books about the collapse of society,” she says of ‘Kings’ inspiration.

“We make comments about how’s there’s gonna be a collapse of the housing market or that the capitalist system itself has inherent issues and then surely there must be a time where that’s gonna fall apart, but at the same time we all just have these petty quarrels with each other, you know? We’re arguing about fucking cricketers.”

I interrupt to say how huge the ball tampering debate was. “It was huge! It was massive! It’s two dudes with a bit of sand paper on another continent, and I fucking love cricket,” she says, exasperated and slightly joking. “I kind of feel like we enjoy losing sight on the bigger picture. Maybe the bigger picture’s too grim … But two white guys had a bit of sand paper in their pants and that’s fucking news for five days.”

She pauses to catch her breath. “It’s just about my general despair towards the end of the world,” says Savage, before resigning to laughter.

“I have this theory that we used to have kings and if everything got out of whack, we’d just go kill the king and take all his money and give it to the rest of the people, and now who the fuck are the kings? We’ve got one of the richest men in Australia leading the country and that’s fucked up. I just feel like at what point do we say that’s not good enough? Not yet.”

Where: Oxford Art Factory When: Friday November 30 And: Good Citizens is out through Mistletone Records now

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 15

16 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

thebrag.com

FEATURE

Belinda Quinn talks to multi-hyphenate creative powerhouse Nakhane about blending the worlds of cinema and music

“They say it takes 30 days for habits to form, so if you’ve been in the habit of being someone else for about 30 days it’s gotta stick.”

The

Hurt Lingers

T

he rising South African actor, novelist, and songwriter Nakhane Touré is in a state of welcomed fatigue. “It’s all been work,” he says of his time in Sydney to debut Inxeba (The Wound), a tense South African love story that saw the gay actor receive numerous death threats from members of the Xhosa tribe for its depiction of a private initiation into manhood. “I might actually skip the sights and just sleep. That’s all I want right now, but there’s work to be done.”

thebrag.com

“Our customs and traditions have stopped being secret because it has turned into a hostile environment, an environment where people need to survive,” the film’s co-writer and Xhosa man Malusi Bengu told African news channel, ENCA. According to ulwaluko.co.za, an outlet dedicated to documenting the loss of life caused by the tradition, approximately 1077 young men have died from partaking in the rite of passage since 1995.

Touré’s Xolani is a factory worker who visits his married lover, Vija, in the mountains each year while he acts as

▲

As we speak, Touré is tearing through paperwork for his label, BMG, in a Sydney café. “I’m not complaining, I really love being busy – it’s when I’m not busy that the troubles start.” Directed by South African John Trengove, the story at the heart of Inexba is one that hits close to home for Touré.

In it, three men of the Xhosa tribe are forced to hide their sexuality while performing Ulwaluko, a traditional circumcision ritual that resurfaced in the ’80s: it had been prohibited in 1820 when the tribe’s king lost multiple children to the procedure.

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 17

FEATURE

“A LOT OF THE CHARACTER’S SURROUNDINGS ARE

PLACES THAT I THOUGHT THAT I’D LEFT BEHIND.” a mentor to the initiates. For Touré, the most challenging aspect of playing the lead had more to do with location of the film. “A lot of the character’s surroundings are places that I thought that I’d left behind. And for various reasons, traumatic or not, I thought that I wouldn’t be in those surroundings ever again.

“So there was a level of triggering in there, and being surrounded by actively and performativity masculine men who I don’t spend a lot of time with because I find them exhausting. That performance of masculinity can be really tiring,” he says.

The wound in question isn’t simply a reference to the cutting performed during ulwaluko; it is also symbolic for the limiting, self-degrading scripts that deny men access to their femininity, and to their attraction of other men – scripts that similarly exist in the West.

“The film is a confrontation of what it means to be a man, specifically a Xhosa man,” wrote Niza Jay in Mail and Guardian, the actor who plays Kwanda, a Xhosa boy who was sent to rural mountains after his father felt he’d become too arrogant.

“QUEER PEOPLE

Touré continues to divulge the challenges of working on the film. “Being someone else for five to six weeks is a challenge to the point where I’m not a half measure kind of person, you know. I came back home and my partner said that I walked differently. It can be a very dangerous thing.”

When questioned on the reasons for this danger, he explains, “Because when do you disengage?

The people who are working behind the camera disengage as soon as the wrap party happens.

The actors, if they are fully committed, take much longer to disengage because they’ve been those people for so long.

“They say it takes 30 days for habits to form. So if you’ve been in the habit of being someone else for about 30 days, it’s gotta stick.” That’s not to say he’s still performing Xolani’s habits. “Oh, God no. I’ve done a lot of work to make sure that guy’s behind me.”

Asked how Western media can do better when it comes to representing South Africa, he says, matter of fact, “Stop pretending you’re better! It’s as simple as that! I remember doing a lot of interviews when my album [You Will Not Die] came out earlier

ARE AFRAID EVERYWHERE.”

18 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

on this year, and there was a question like, ‘Do you feel safer now that you live in London?’ and I was like, ‘Fuck no!’ Queer people are afraid everywhere.’

“And why do you see South Africa as such a fearsome space? Yeah sure, we have violence, but we also have spaces that are extremely safe.

And our institution is much more forward thinking than your constitution, actually. So yeah, there’s just this level of condescension,” he says.

Inexba’s co-writers and cast all originated from the Xhosa tribe, meaning the story has authenticity, as opposed to white directors and writers who aren’t connected to its history and heritage. “Even if they are interested in the culture they’re not really interested in understanding it or how complex it is, right? They only take what they fi nd attractive or unattractive, and then exclude the people who create the culture.”

Touré’s second record You Will Not Die is a soaring, soulful take on devotion, sexuality, and self-acceptance. He divulges on the writers who’ve inspired him – James Baldwin is his favourite – and stops mid-conversation to write off the word ‘creative’ as a title. “I know that artist may sound a little bit highfalutin. But my point is that being an artist means that have you committed to being an artist. It is as important a vocation as a priest or priestess or a doctor.”

thebrag.com

Music by Bryce Dessner (The National) Julian Hamilton (The Presets)

‘Electric’ —Daily Review* —The Age*

16 – 27 October

Double Bill by Rafael Bonachela & Antony Hamilton

Location Roslyn Packer Theatre, Walsh Bay

2 weeks only

With Australian String Quartet live on stage

Book now sydneydancecompany.com #SDCForever

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 19

Blooming

Paul Kelly photos by Cybele Malinowski

Belinda Quinn talks to Paul Kelly about his affinity for nature, and the difficulty of writing music about good love

thebrag.com

“MAYBE I’M JUST COMING TO A TIME WHEN I’M GETTING SICK OF MYSELF;

I’M GETTING SICK OF MY OWN WORDS.”

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 21

20 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

thebrag.com

FEATURE

“I DON’T FEEL UNDER PRESSURE TO WRITE ABOUT

THE AUSTRALIAN CONDITION.”

I

t’s not easy to capture the essence of a person’s personality by way of a 20-minute phone call. And yet, as interviewers we try – sometimes futilely – to unearth some slither of truth that has been lying dormant, undiscussed, or cloaked within the depths of one’s character.

One of the most documented songwriters in Australia’s colonial history, Paul Kelly is a challenge to intefview. Asked how the 63-year-old Australiana icon has changed since his twenties, all Kelly notes is that he’s feeling wearier. Although, he always seemed guarded in his interviews whenever talking about himself.

Thankfully, one doesn’t need to tediously pull teeth in order to unveil insights his craft. “Music hits your body and your mind,” says Kelly. “It’s always had this power over me, so I guess I wanted to try and take hold of some of that power myself.”

His new record Nature goes hand-in-hand with its predecessor, 2017’s Life Is Fine, in that it shares an affinity for the environments that surround him. “I love the water. I liked living by the sea. Rain, water, oceans, rivers, seem to crop up in my songs a lot,” says Kelly.

Five of Nature’s songs are home to Kelly’s favoured poems; his practice of merging poetry saw his song-writing approach shift in 2012 while working on a classical collaboration. “The poems speak to me, and the poems I choose, that’s an expression of myself as well.”

The lyrics from his dreamlike ‘Mushrooms’ are lifted from Sylvia Plath’s poem of the same name, originally published in The Colossus three years before her suicide in 1963.

“I love her poetry. She’s really sharp,” explains Kelly. “There are a lot of contained emotions in her poems; there’s a coolness to her poetry. But it’s got this fire beneath. She’s obviously someone that pays attention to the world.”

“I’M INTERESTED IN TRYING

TO WRITE ABOUT GOOD LOVE,

When asked about artists that he currently likes and feels goes under-acknowledged, he says, “I don’t really keep track of whether people are getting acknowledged or not.

But I really like Laura Jean, Sampa The Great... I really like a woman called Ainslie Wills. The women seem to be taking over.”

YOU KNOW. I THINK IT’S MUCH HARDER TO DO THAT WITHOUT BEING SOPPY, OR SORT OF ARROGANT.”

He divulges a crackling list: “Angie McMahon, Stella Donnelly, Alex Lahey, Julia Jacklin, Mojo Juju,” – the latter of which plays a stern judge in his film clip for ‘With The One I Love,’ – “I mean, the list goes on and on. It’s just a great time.”

When queried whether there is something within him that drives him to etch the natural world into songs, Kelly takes a moment to think. “Maybe it’s just that I’m becoming more aware of nature. And having feelings that the world is very precious, and the natural world is becoming endangered by humans.”

For Kelly, the most trying aspect of making music often comes down to writing lyrics. “I write a lot more music than I write words,” he says.

“Melodies always bubble up.

“I don’t feel I have to keep writing words. I mean, I think all writers end up writing about the same kind of things over and over again so… so maybe it’s time to slow it down.”

As Life Is Fine ended on a song about death, Nature begins with thoughts on loss. ‘Death Shall Have No Dominion’ is plucked from the writings of Welshman, Dylan Thomas; it’s a poem that’s stuck with Kelly since his twenties. “I just always thought that poem, even though I don’t fully understand it, it’s just rich in imagery – it’s always stayed with me,” says Kelly.

In his 2012 documentary Stories Of Me, Kelly shared a quote that he identified with, by the Irish poet and playwright, William Butler Yeats:

22 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

“There are only two things that any intelligent man should be concerned with: sex and death.” And it’s an idea he believes to this day. “You could add to it I guess that I’m interested in time, but death covers that: memory, friendship, love.”

Kelly’s often considered our leading songwriter when it comes to capturing what it means to be an Australian today; I feel as if that credit could become overwhelming, but for him, it’s quite simple. “Well, it’s a form of praise and when you put yourself out as a performer or a writer, I’ll take the praise over the criticism,” he laughs. “I don’t feel under pressure to write about the Australian condition.”

Asked what advice on loving and living he’d give to a 20-year-old Kelly, before he’d put out 37 albums, he says, “I can’t really. I don’t think you can give advice on the future. There’s only one way to learn: it’s to just make mistakes. So, I wouldn’t know how to direct him another way.”

Love has always been one of Kelly’s favoured subjects to ruminate on. “I think I just think it’s an endless subject, love. Romantic love, love between friends, love between families, love between children, brothers and sisters, love when it’s good, love when it’s not working.

“I’m interested in trying to write about good love, you know. I think it’s much harder to do that without being soppy, or sort of arrogant. I think it’s always easier to write about love gone wrong or love unrequited, because there’s more drama in it. But um, ah… love, good love, I’d like to write more songs about love gone right, not love gone wrong. Maybe that’s my next challenge.”

What: Nature is out through Universal on Friday October 12

thebrag.com

BOBEVANS.COM.AU FOR DETAILS thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 23

FEATURE

He Won’t Work For Arseholes T Belinda Quinn talks the setbacks and frustrations of the music industry with Australia’s maverick of alcohol-soaked, anxiety-ridden lyricisms

he making of Peter Bibby’s second record, Grand Champion, has certainly come with its fair share of trials and tribulations. Completed in his home city of Perth in late 2015, a split between his label Spinning Top Records and Warner caused the LP to slip under the rug for a few years. “By the time they were ready to release it, I didn’t actually have any artwork for them so that took another two months,” explains Bibby over the phone.

After moving back to Perth, Bibby decided to help his girlfriend-at-the-time join him, a journey that was initially meant to take two weeks. “Due to my car being fucked it took two months,” he says. “Basically we’d drive a little bit and then the car would mess up some other way, and we’d have to stay somewhere till it was fixed.”

They ended up camping along the Nullarbor, visiting the sights and playing a few gigs along the way. “I learnt a lot more about fixing my car,” he says. He’s nonchalant and matter of fact.

“It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster,” he adds.

“Like, I’ve definitely grown to hate it at times, but I guess I’ve found a new love for it again.”

He defers to Grand Champion affectionately, calling it his “little baby.”

The album’s title then is, perhaps quite obviously, a little tongue-in-cheek. “Most of the songs were written during a deeply troubled time in my life; recorded during an even more troubled time; postponed by a disaster of a trip; completed during one of the worst times of my life, and the fact that it was ever completed at all felt like a feat only achievable by a grand champion – while I felt like anything but. I suppose it’s a somewhat facetious title,” he says.

Bibby often merges the punk chaos of acts like Swedish noise freaks Brainbombs with the poetic folk-storytelling of his early inspirers, Paul Kelly and Bob Dylan – but at its core, his artistry stands out for its unwavering sincerity, albeit one that’s tucked in alongside a sense of absurdity and playful silliness.

“I’VE DEFINITELY GROWN TO HATE [MUSIC] AT TIMES, BUT I GUESS

I’VE FOUND A NEW LOVE FOR IT AGAIN.”

24 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

He’s had a pretty slow morning in Sydney: sleeping in late, doing a bit of yoga, and shooting off a few emails. The night before our call, he’d gone on the Tonightly Show With Tom Ballard to play with his band. “Yeah, it was fun, but they found out they were getting axed the day we went in to play. It was kind of fitting to play ‘Work For Arseholes’,” he says, followed by a laugh.

For work now, he’s doing a bit of handymanning, furniture making and the odd job as a builder – “your labour-y sort of stuff,” he says. But after high school Bibby was making bank, working as a plasterer for over seven years. “The money was not good enough for how shit the people were,” he explains. “You can ask most people who know plasterers; there’s not many good plasters out there in

terms of character. Pretty rough around the edges, the old plasterers. And we’re talking about solid plastering as well, not chip-rock – they’re very different.”

His songs often speak for themselves and don’t need too much unpacking: when it comes to Bibby, you get what you’re given.

‘Medicine’, the debut single pulled from the record, was written eight years ago. “The doctor just told me to be better. So it’s a song of frustration,” he laughs. The fact that an eight-year-old track translates so well today is a testament to the idiosyncratic craftsmanship of his songwriting; Bibby doesn’t bite into trends.

His track ‘Fuck Me’ features striking vocals eminent of the B-52s, brought to life by Cosima of Melbourne band Jaala while the two lived together in Melbourne. “When I was writing that song she was sitting around next to me doing that little vocal line,” he says. And another roommate from the same house inspired the irritable track, ‘Hippies’.

“There was just a hippy guy there who was just a bit ridiculous, and delusional, and annoying. Sometimes you’ve just got to get it all out,” he explains.

But ‘Big Chook’ is Grand Champion’s stand out. “The song is inspired by the music industry. As I got more and more deeply involved in it, [I] began comparing the disgusting elements of it to those of foul politics and cults of the past,” he says. “[And] all the mental health issues that can come as a result of regular touring which are ignored, and all the fashion trends that have more importance placed upon them than the actual happiness of the artists themselves. In short, it’s a song about me being fed up with [the industry].”

While it certainly doesn’t go without a mention, alcohol’s presence seems to have dimmed a teeny tiny bit in this record in comparison to 2014’s Butcher/Hairstylist/ Beautician. “I feel like I’ve rained it in a little bit; I still love a bevvy,” he says.

His favourite track to play off of Grand Champion is ‘Wangaratta Gazza’ for its “longwinded story” and “nice meaty jam at the end.” He adds, “I also love the opportunity to rhyme ‘fucker’ with ‘fucker’ multiple times in a row.” Asked what drives him to make music, he says, “I guess just a burning desire to speak my mind and also, I just love tunes.”

What: Grand Champion is out through Spinning Top Records now

thebrag.com

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 25

FEATURE

We Disappear Here Doug Wallen goes deep with Matt Johnson of The The, a band with a titanic impact on pop music

A

s disappearing acts go, Matt Johnson’s ranks with the best.

The frontman and sole fixture of The The walked away from touring for more than 15 years, and hasn’t released a nonsoundtrack album in 18 years. But when he steps on stage at Sydney Opera House after sold-out live runs in London and the U.S., he’ll be in the full swing of a return that’s as unexpected as his departure.

“It’s a toe in the water for me,” says Johnson via Skype from a tour stop on Detroit. “Having not performed in [so many] years, I had to see how I felt about it. There’s no record to support, so it’s really doing it for the love of it.”

Joined by past members Barrie Cadogan (guitar), DC Collard (keyboards), James Eller (bass) and Earl Harvin (drums), Johnson is treating each setlist as a career overview, cutting across all his albums. Those range from the 1983 classic Soul Mining, featuring the enduring cult hit ‘This Is The Day’ and the equally lovely ‘Uncertain Smile’ (complete with scene-stealing piano solo from Jools Holland) to 2000’s brooding, mostly acoustic NakedSelf.

It’ll be only The The’s second time playing in Australia, following a 1989 tour. “I’m sure a lot of things have changed in Australia in the last 30 years,” he deadpans.

Things have changed for Johnson too, to say the least. After exiting a music career that he told The Guardian “felt shallow and irrelevant,” he devoted more time to his family and eventually turned to soundtracks and art installations.

He also launched a shortwave radio broadcast called Radio Cineola, which has since spawned the documentary The Inertia Variations (for which he composed the electronic score) and a box set that spans Johnson reciting poetry, other artists reinterpreting the band’s material, and the 2017 comeback single ‘We Can’t Stop What’s Coming’, featuring friend and past band member Johnny Marr.

says without hesitation. “I think life experience changes our mode of expression, particularly the voice. It’s stronger and more expressive than it was 20 years ago.”

He works hard on that voice, committing to an intense pre-show regiment that includes meditating twice, doing 200 push-ups, practising yoga, singing scales and, fi nally, taking a hot bath followed by a cold shower. “Then I’m psyched up and ready to go,” he explains. “Because I’m very relaxed on stage. Walking on stage is like walking into the living room for me, so I have to amp myself up.”

“I FEEL VERY INSPIRED

TO GET INTO SOME NEW RECORDING NEXT YEAR.”

“I’M VERY RELAXED ON STAGE.

WALKING ON STAGE IS LIKE WALKING INTO THE LIVING ROOM FOR ME.”

It’s a touch ironic that someone with such a powerful, sonorous voice should have turned to instrumental soundtrack work, but that was part of the appeal for Johnson – stepping away from words altogether. “I fi nd music easy to do,” he reasons. “It’s the lyrics that take time. I walked away from the music industry for various reasons, and an easy way back was through fi lm soundtracks, because I’ve always loved [them].

It was a nice way to rediscover a passion for music.”

If pressed for tidy genre classifi cation for The The, most people would probably settle on post-punk. But because their early records came out in the ’80s, some still think of them as an “’80s band,” which is just about the worst descriptor you could choose, from Johnson’s perspective. “I hated the ’80s,” he says. “I never felt part of it. I never really associated with that decade, and I can’t stand all the ’80s revival. We receive big offers to be part of those things, which we turn down fl at. Electronic music I always loved, but it was more the experimental early stuff from the ’60s and ’70s, rather than synthpop.”

“I HATED THE ’80S.

He also observes that while Soul Mining was his most electronic album with The The, it was swamped in acoustic instruments like piano, marimba, accordion, strings, fi ddle and cello. And one of the key features of the band’s comeback tour is the purposeful lack of any synthesisers, sequencers or samplers. “It’s very stripped down,” he observes. “It’s a good test for me of how strong the songs are. I was a teenager when I wrote ‘This Is The Day’, so obviously to keep me singing it with any conviction, I have to make it interesting for me as well.”

I NEVER FELT PART OF IT.”

The Smiths legend and Holland aren’t the only famous names to have played in or collaborated with The The: others include Neneh Cherry, Sinead O’Connor and Lloyd Cole.

But for The The fans, Johnson himself is the biggest star, thanks to his distinctive deep voice, his humane and often politically aware lyrics, and his knack for slippery arrangements that defy genre.

So of course, the big question now is when more new material might emerge from him. “I’ve been incredibly busy,” he answers, citing the death of his father a few months ago and his brother two years ago, not to mention the current tour. “But I’ve certainly made a start on new songs.

And I’m very keen to keep this lineup together, because I think it’s the best band I’ve had. They’re great players, great guys. So I feel very inspired to get into some new recording next year.”

Part of keeping it interesting for him is turning off other music. Johnson may have found his way back to The The, but he still values his own space and time. “We’re surrounded by music – [in] the local chemist, the pub, cars, the supermarket,” he says. “When I’m at home, I want silence. I want to sit with my own company rather than be distracted. So I switched off from a lot of that stuff.”

Having started the band back in 1979, how has his famous voice changed over the years? “It’s better now than it’s ever been,” he

Where: Sydney Opera House When: Wednesday October 3

26 :: BRAG :: 741 :: 05:09:18

thebrag.com

FEATURE

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 27

FEATURE 28 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

thebrag.com

FEATURE

“IN OUR PARALLEL EXISTENCE WE WOULD STILL BE WITH EACH OTHER.”

Splitting It Sarah McManus learns what makes James Draper and Jordan Brady, better known as two halves of indie poppers Winterbourne, keep making music after so many years

“WE USED TO DO A COUPLE OF

TUNES ABOUT MARS BARS.”

The BRAG: Were you nervous about releasing your first single since 2016?

James Draper: It was a good nervous. I’ve never been this proud and happy about the sound and the songs themselves.

Jordan Brady: I did that thing where I forgot we were releasing a single. I just went, ‘It’s the day that we release ‘Better’, that’s mad’. But then it got to the day before and I went, ‘Oh yeah people listen to it on iTunes and Spotify. People will go get it, and you have to do well. Then I went, ‘I don’t want to think about it’.

Over the nipple!?

JB: Mmhmm!

But I put it on when it came out and I was pretty happy because I went, ‘Yeah, we did a good song.’

JD: So there is a gentleman out there with our signatures tattooed onto his chest. Do we own him?

What do you want people to take out of ‘Better’?

JD: Hopefully excitement for what’s to come. It’s got everything that we wanted to do with music in it. Lyrically, it’s kind of relatable: it’s that feeling of trying to prove yourself all the time. I think everyone does that at some point.

JB: Do we go thirds in this man?

I think the words, ‘am I no better than that?’ can be whatever you want them to be. In any situation I feel like everyone asks themselves that all the time. It’s kind of like, ‘Am I no better than wanting to be better?’

JB: Oh how good would ABBA be! So The Beatles, ABBA, Stereophonics, Laura Marling, Fleetwood Mac, Hey Rosetta.

Do you prefer recording or performing?

JB: On the whole performing. Wait no…

I

What’s the strangest thing a fan has ever given/said/ messaged to you?

JD: We had a guy come up to us at a show in Melbourne, and it was his birthday… and he came up to us and gave us a permanent marker and said, ‘Can you sign my chest’? and we signed his chest and I went over his nipple, and he sent us a message the next day and he had had it tattooed over his chest.

What six artists would headline your dream festival?

JD: The Beatles. Oh, and ABBA. You have to have ABBA on your festival.

If you weren’t pursuing music what would you be doing?

JD: I think we would be doing something together.

JB: Probably. Let’s lock that in now: in our parallel existence we would still be with each other.

JD: We perform on a stage.

t’s easy to make cynical music in this day and age. The world is depressing; international politics is a total sham; and global warming is going to leave us all homeless and starving within a generation. Who can blame musicians for leaning into all that doom and gloom?

That said, one duo unafraid to take the brighter, rarer route are Winterbourne.

The Sydney-based duo make music that bursts with unfettered joy; music awash with beauty, and with life. Sure, there is a certain amount of melancholy in their work, but it is always balanced out by a sheer, longing sense of hope.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity

JD: I think we would get more into like – JB: Not on a hole! [Laughs]. Out of an awesome show and an awesome day recording, an awesome show is always better. But if I’m going into a block of recording, I feel better than if I’m going in to a tour. It can be pretty exhausting, while recording always feels good. It depends!

JB: Business?

JD: No, no, no…

JD: Canoeing!

How has your songwriting process changed over the last 10 years. Do you still find inspiration from similar places?

JD: Still the brain!

JB: Don’t be a smartass. [Laughs.]

JB: Canoeing! We’d be world champion canoers.

What is something you’ve never told an interviewer before?

JB: I want to be a world champion canoer! Jokes…

JD: I guess, lyrically, it’s very different because we’re 24, not 15, and are singing less about snacks. We used to do a couple of tunes about Mars Bars. I guess the music has grown up the same way we have.

JD: I want it to be a good one, so: sometimes I eat cucumber with tomato sauce.

But also it has kind of come full circle. When we first started writing we were a rock duo and we just used to write guitar riffs, and everything we know about music came from learning to play the guitar. Then we kind of went more singer-songwriter and then rock again, and now it’s like… everything we’ve learnt since we started is what it is now.

JD: I’ve got one [for Jordan]: his nickname is ‘Bucket Brady’, because he once passed out cuddling a bucket.

JB: Don’t say that! Don’t say that on record! It freaks people out.

JB: …and my last name is Brady. That’s the only reason that story has stuck around that long: because it’s an alliteration.

JD: ‘Bucket Draper’ sounds crap!

But the inspiration for songs is always the same. It’s just the lyrics are different and relevant to a couple of 24 year olds rather than a couple of 15 year olds. Not that they are any better or significant. Mars Bars and rock stars will always be a good line.

JB: James had four buckets.

JD: ‘Four Bucket Draper’ lasted like a night. [Laughs.]

“THERE IS A GENTLEMAN OUT THERE WITH OUR SIGNATURES TATTOOED ONTO HIS CHEST.

DO WE OWN HIM?”

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 29

Augustus Welby chats with Jen Cloher on the anniversary of her extraordinary self-titled record’s release

“I THINK ALL SONGWRITERS

ARE MUSIC FANS FIRST AND FOREMOST.”

We Are What We

LOVE “And to lose who you are Just means to discover That we are what we love” - Jen Cloher, ‘Hold My Hand’

T

here are plenty of artists whose songs make us feel like we know them. Jen Cloher is one of them. Her songwriting voice, particularly on last year’s magnificent self-titled LP, is wide open. Never too cool, Cloher’s songs reveal her loves and her grievances, underlining her principles and duly celebrating beauty.

Cloher’s lyrics regularly portray her as a devoted music fan. Allusions to other artists and quotations of existing lyrics are spread throughout the Melbournebased songwriter’s four-album catalogue. This

30 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

tendency towards intertextuality serves to deepen the uniquely affecting quality of Cloher’s songwriting.

the pair’s close involvement with music, Cloher looks to music culture to help her navigate the situation.

“I think all songwriters are music fans first and foremost,” says Cloher. “I also feel that if a line is good it should be used again. I suppose it’s more like quoting a line from a poem or song that you love in a conversation, except that it’s turning up in one of my songs.”

‘Sensory Memory’ includes a nod to Joy McKean, the wife of Australian country musician Slim Dusty: “Guess I’m never gonna be / the Joy to your Slim Dusty.”

Cloher’s latest record focuses prominently on the difficulties posed by her partner, musician Courtney Barnett, spending a lot of time away from home. Given

“I was trying to find other musicians who had gone before us. How did they do it and stay connected and sane?” Cloher says. McKean played an indispensible role throughout Dusty’s career, working as his manager for over 50 years and writing a number of his hit songs.

Cloher, by contrast, didn’t want to get completely

thebrag.com

REVIEW

three members, while the chorus testifies to the transcendent quality of ‘Sue’s Last Ride’ (from the band’s 1996 LP, Horse Stories).

“Nothing in the world, no, nothing could ever feel / Like the fi rst time ‘Sue’s Last Ride’ messed you up for real.”

“DO WE REMEMBER

CAROLE KING’S ‘NATURAL WOMAN’ OR ARETHA FRANKLIN’S?”

Elsewhere, Cloher quotes directly from other songs.

‘Name In Lights’, from 2013’s In Blood Memory, gives kudos to her contemporary, Darren Hanlon: “‘Happiness is a Chemical’ / Darren Hanlon said that.”

‘Kamikaze Origami’, from the same album, manages to reference Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and Blondie all in the space of three lines: “But love is not a victory march / Not every love is built to last / Heart of gold or heart of glass.”

This sort of lyrical appropriation is common in the folk music tradition, where authorship is subordinate to capturing and reinterpreting stories of communal significance.

“I love how Gillian Welch and David Rawlings make traditionals their own,” says Cloher. “There’s a sense in folk music of not needing to own songs, of constantly re-interpreting. And in soul music too.

“I mean do we remember Carole King’s ‘Natural Woman’ or Aretha Franklin’s? Both are great but Aretha took Carole’s song and defined it. The arrangement, the emotion, the life experience all infused in her version.”

One interpolation of especial note is the use of the chorus lyrics from Sonic Youth’s ‘Kool Thing’ – “I don’t wanna / I don’t think so” – in Cloher’s ‘Kinda Biblical’.

It’s gutsy to borrow so conspicuously from an iconic song, but Cloher says nothing else would do the job.

“For some reason when I played those chords I heard Kim Gordon. Then when I started writing the lyrics to ‘Kinda Biblical’, weirdly the lyrics of ‘Kool Thing’ were aligned.”

‘Kinda Biblical’ is Cloher’s bleak take on Trump’s reactionary, post-truth America. ‘Kool Thing’, correspondingly, finds Kim Gordon asking, “Are you gonna liberate us girls from male white corporate oppression?”

“30 years later and we’re still asking the same question,” says Cloher. “Kind of sad really!”

David Bowie, Patti Smith, the Pixies and The Drones are just some of the other artists who appear in Cloher’s lyrics. The assorted references aren’t just fun for fans to keep track of; they allow us to gain a better understanding of Cloher’s artistic perspective. And in each instance, Cloher labours to produce songs that’ll withstand the march of time.

“For me [lyrics are] the most important thing. Mainly because I’ll have to sing the song for years to come and I want to stay interested in what I’m singing or at the very least know that I’m singing the best lyric I could write.

“At the moment I’m learning old songs again before I head out on a couple months of solo touring in Australia and Europe. I’m happy to say that the really good songs stand up. They’re the ones you go back to again and again.”

Rabbit Island photo by Matthew Saville

engulfed in her partner’s career.

“I don’t think I could live that life and stay grounded, but she went all in. She made her own solo album too.

What a legend.”

A couple of Jen Cloher tracks pay homage to the Aussie musicians that paved the way for the likes of Cloher and Barnett. ‘Great Australian Bite’ applauds the hard work of The Saints, the Go-Betweens and The Triffids, artists who toiled in the pre-streaming era when getting heard internationally demanded major lifestyle and financial sacrifices.

thebrag.com

“Well The Saints were stranded / Lindy, Grant and Robert had to go-between just to be heard / Australians in London making do with nothing / Oh yeah, the Wide Open Road,” go the lines.

“I feel like referencing music culture and those who have blazed a trail before me keeps those artists and bands alive for me,” Cloher says.

‘Loose Magic’ is a love song dedicated to the instrumental rock band Dirty Three. The verses provide figurative biographies of the band’s

“I’M HAPPY TO SAY THAT THE REALLY GOOD SONGS STAND UP. THEY’RE THE ONES

YOU GO BACK TO AGAIN AND AGAIN.”

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 31

FEATURE

Bully Our greatest disaster show happened in the summer of 2014. We were headed to Memphis by way of Arkansas at the end of a three-day run. We spent half the drive gritting our teeth through a tornadoproducing storm, arriving in Memphis to flooded, empty streets. The storm had knocked out the power to the venue so we left our gear onstage unable to soundcheck. Pools of standing water in the back of the room grew until the rain let up just before doors.

Hospitality consisted of some PBRs [Pabst Blue Ribbons] and a separate room with a fan and one chair.

After someone figured out how to fix the main breaker, we played our set to a solid 12 people, most of whom drove from other towns. Hurrying to leave, we discovered Reece’s pedals had gone missing off the side of the stage. We would have liked to spend the night hanging out with our tour mates and new buddies, but their hotel was openly being used for prostitution. We decided to get a few more miles towards home that night.

N

The Worst Gig I’ve Ever Played

obody gets it right all the time. Our lives are punctuated by defeat: losing isn’t so much the endgame as it is part of the game itself, and every single hard-won victory comes riding on a wave of a thousand fuck-ups.

The same applies for musos. Though we like to imagine our sonic heroes as crowdsurfin’, guitar-shreddin’ gods, forever forming one cool pose after the next, in actuality every rock dog on the planet has had their fair share of calamaties. After all, you can’t make an omelette without cracking a few eggs, and when the hard times come, they come… well, hard.

In that vein, we reached out to some of our favourite failureembracin’ bands and asked them to offer up their very worst gig story. Though we did so in partto prove that the flaws make the masterpiece, and that disappointment and disaster are human, we also did it for less highbrow reasons: namely, to indulge in that sick shot of vicarious pleasure that fills us whenever we see people walking into stuff. Read on, and prepare to cringe.

Musicians Share Their Cringeworthy Stories From The Stage Gooch Palms The worst show would have to be our very first show we ever played in Sydney. It was our third ever show. We had friends catch the train down from Newcastle – which is a big effort – and we were so excited to be playing a proper venue in Sydney. The sound guy was so angry and hated us as soon as we turned up. We had backing tracks that he was in full control of making sound good through the PA and he didn’t care enough to make them sound good – so it just sounded like really loud static noise.

“I STOOD THERE ALONE ON THE STAGE TRYING TO TUNE, MIND IMPLODING, FOR WHAT FELT LIKE AN HOUR.”

We tried to make up for the heinous sounds coming out of the speakers by putting on a good show but it was just so bad and embarrassing and it was really hard to pick ourselves up and keep going after that moment. Our friends said ‘Um, that was good?’ as politely as they could but we knew it was the worst.

Georgia Mulligan It was pretty bad when my guitar kind of cut out in the middle of a set. I hadn’t set it up properly yet and the tuning pegs were ancient, so between songs it just started refusing to tune. I stood there alone on the stage trying to tune, mind imploding, for what felt like an hour, but it was probably only five minutes. Eventually, Julia Jacklin, who was headlining, called out from the crowd, ‘Hey, you wanna use my guitar?’ and rescued me. I rushed through the last songs on her Tele and couldn’t wait to get offstage to vomit from stress. Everyone there said it was fine but it felt pretty pathetic.

Finally got my guitar fixed though.

Bleached A couple years ago we flew to NY to play a show on the pier in Manhattan. It was sponsored by Sailor Jerry’s new liquor so people were getting pretty annihilated – including us. Anyways, as we were playing a vending machine on the pier sitting right behind us caught on fire. We had no idea there was a fire happening so we just kept playing. They finally stopped the show and afterwards everyone was saying they thought we purposely lit it on fire. To make matters worse we all ended up getting kicked out of the after party.

It’s funny to remember now and I defi nitely remember Leroy smashing a glass and screaming at the sound guy onstage then running around the whole venue like a chook without a head midset. But I guess that was the beginning of the idea of us putting on show rather than just standing there. So maybe it wasn’t so bad in the long run.

Torres Last year I played Primavera festival in Barcelona alone, sans band. I hadn’t begun using in-ear monitors yet, and the stage was so massive that my guitarpicking ended up getting mushy and extremely reverbed out. It ended up being ok until the end of my set when I actually lost the key I was singing in because I couldn’t hear the guitar.

Embarrassing!

32 :: BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18

thebrag.com

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 33

How To Step Up Your Netflix Game

FEATURE

arts in focus

By Joseph Earp

R

emember a decade or so ago, when home cinemas were the kind of lavish treats you only encountered when hanging out at the home of your very rich mates? Well, the times, as they say, are changing.

These days, the home cinema game has – thankfully and finally – been democratized. Power now rests firmly in the hands of the people.

No longer only the domain of the rich and powerful, huge technological breakthroughs have rendered the home cinema a stunningly achievable treat for almost all of us. You don’t need to mortgage your house or build an extra storey to forever alter your Netflix game; you just need to spend a couple hundred wellearned dollars in the right places and bam, before you know it, you’ll have a set-up that’ll make your mates drool.

Now, I know what some of you might be saying. “Hold up!” you’re murmuring, brow furrowed. “What’s the point of home cinemas at all?”

And trust me, I get the concern.

After all, one of the allures of Netflix is how casual it is to access.

Everything about our modern content-consuming experience has become about accessing entertainment without fanfare.

“One of the allures of Netflix is how easy it is to access.”

The way we read the news; consume information; watch movies… These days the prerogative is always doing it on the go, snappily, as quickly as possible. And trust me, there’s no hidden judgement in that assessment from me – we all live tough lives, so what’s the point of making relaxation tough too? You go to the movies for the widescreen experience; you chill in bed with yer significant other for the Netflix one.

What’s the point of trying to turn one into the other?

Good question. Lemme tackle it.

So what’s the point of home cinemas anyway?

There’s no use trying to hide it: there are advantages to watching Netflix on your phone, or curled up in bed on the laptop, fighting the Winter blues with your hundredth re-watch of The Office. But that’s exactly the point; casual viewings on a laptop pair with a certain kind of content.

We’ve all been there; it’s noon on a Saturday, and the refreshments from Friday night are still violently leaving your system, rendering you utterly incapable of human thought, let alone able to properly engage your brain with something you haven’t seen before. And so there’s content for that kind of mood; shows you’ve watched over and over again and know by heart; dumb Adam

Okay, I’m sold; tell me how to upgrade Right, now that I’ve hopefully convinced you that proper, decked-out home cinemas are the way to go, the question still remains: where should a first-time home cinema-investor plonk down their cash?

The answer is simple. First off, sort yourself a screen. You don’t need to go the full hog, though the salespeople trying to offload their hugely expensive TVs will try to convince you that you will. All you need is something thin, lightweight, and preferably wallmounted; there’s nothing like watching a film unfurl across one of your living room walls.

Then – and this is the biggie – make sure you splash out your cash on a sound bar. Our highly recommended

Sandler comedies (of which Netflix has a frighteningly large amount); and those British cooking shows that are as weirdly addictive as crack.

But what about the rest of the time? What about Netflix’s highly prized original films; widescreen affairs helmed by some of our most accomplished filmmakers? Those aren’t rarities either; these days, more and more all-time great filmmakers are reaping the rewards of Netflix’s generous content budget. The excellent sci-fi horror flicks Extinction and Annihilation; Okja, Bong JoonHo’s latest subversive slice of art; horror masterpiece The Ritual… These are all films designed with a proper screen and sound system in mind. Watching a film like Annihilation for example, what with its warbly, extraordinary soundtrack, on less than adequate laptop speakers is a crime against humanity, and should be widely regarded as such.

preference is the Yamaha YAS-108. One of the most compact, affordable and powerful soundbars in the market, it boasts an impressive range. Even strange, atonal soundtracks like Annihilation’s come out sounding pristine and clean, rather than the crackly, warped sound you’ll get out of a laptop.

And, even better than that, the YAS can emulate the most impressive audio boon cinemas boast; surround sound. Your YAS can direct sound around the room, making you feel as though you are right in the thick of a disconcerting alien landscape with Natalie Portman.

Trust us; spending your money wisely and utilising the best of what a truly exciting market has to offer, will alter and enhance your home viewing experience forever.

Just don’t be the one left out.

“These days, more and more all-time great filmmakers are reaping the rewards of Netflix’s generous content budget.”

34 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

Netflix photo courtesy of Unsplash

This article was written in conjunction with Yamaha, one of the world’s oldest and most respected audio companies

“No longer only the domain of the rich and powerful, huge technological breakthroughs have rendered the home cinema a stunningly achievable treat for almost all of us.”

thebrag.com

TAKE YOUR BUSINESS PLACES Win a $15,000 Travel Grant from Flight Centre Business Travel *

Poppy Reid, Managing Editor, Seventh Street Media

Flight Centre Business Travel understands and is focused on supporting small & medium businesses through travel management.

Enter our Travel Grant competition and lets us help you achieve your business goals sooner.

For Seventh Street Media, this travel grant would help reduce client costs, enabling them to focus on creating the best content possible.

Entry is simple! Upload a 1-2 min video and tell us what travel means to you and how a travel grant could help your business.

PRIZE PACKAGE CONSISTS OF: $10k Virgin Australia Travel Grant $2k IHG Accommodation Credit $500 Get Picked Up Transfers 2 x Virgin Australia Gold Memberships Premium LinkedIn Membership

*

The winner will receive a prize package worth over $15,000 !

For details on how to enter visit flightcentre.com.au/business-travelgrant

Annual Covermore Business Policy Samsonite Luggage

In proud partnership with thebrag.com *Terms and conditions apply. Visit website for details. Entries close 31 Oct 18 Flight Centre Travel Group Limited (ABN 25 003 377 188) trading as Flight Centre. ATAS Accreditation No. A10412.

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 35 tbm_5oct_fp_fcbt

FEATURE

T

he Star Wars franchise is the ultimate space opera series. It’s a huge, sprawling series of interconnected films that take simple stories – clashes of families, with good coming up against evil – and throw them on impossibly big, fleshed-out canvases. That, after all, is the first thing that hits you after you stumble out of a Star Wars film – the sheer, unrelenting size of the thing.

The 6 Best Musical Star Wars Moments

By Joseph Earp

1.

3.

2.

3.

4.

‘Main Title’

‘Duel Of The Fates’

A New Hope

The Phantom Menace

‘The Imperial March’

Moving away from the obvious picks, this Return Of The Jedi deep cut is so excessive and over-the-top it almost shouldn’t work.

It’s got it all, from ghostly, baritone moaning, to an overworked brass section, to sudden changes in pace and tone. But that’s exactly what makes it so brilliant. It’s cut from a particularly epic cloth, conveying a sense of both The Empire’s great might, and its terrible capacity for cruelty. It also does a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to mythologising the antagonist from which it takes its name.

Without a fittingly foreboding score, The Emperor would be nothing but an old man in a hooded cloak. With it, he’s one of the most repulsive, memorable villains of the contemporary canon.

2.

36 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

Sure, The Phantom Menace might not be a particularly well-remembered film – it’s that cinematic mess that fans love to hate; a prickly, strange work of revisionism that seems to outright miss what made the original series quite so special.

But that doesn’t mean that Williams phoned his score in. Quite the opposite, in fact: just consider ‘Duel Of The Fates’, the antic background to a three-way lightsaber fi ght between Darth Maul, Qui-Gonn Jinn, and Obi-Wan Kenobi. The track set a new high bar not just for the series, but for Hollywood scores in general.

Just listen to that choral work and try and tell me you don’t feel even a little moved.

The Empire Strikes Back Another no-brainer, this brass-heavy march has become a new shorthand for evil onscreen. It’s a testament to Williams’ great genius that he managed to compose a track that communicates great militaristic menace in a way that’s also catchy and supremely memorable.

Indulging in your dark side shouldn’t feel quite this good.

4.

To that end, and to honour Williams, here’s a rundown of the six best musical moments from across the Star Wars canon.

5.

1.

Listen, were we ever going to start anywhere but here?

A New Hope’s ‘Main Title’ is one of the most iconic tracks in cinematic history – a serve of pure brassy bombast with the power to send shivers down spines.

But it’s so much more than that too. Indeed, we sometimes lose sight of just how innovative the track is, given how much of a pop culture staple it has become.

It’s not just a rousing call to action – it’s a way of immediately setting the scene for all the excess, and madness, and heightened emotion that is about to come. Star Wars wouldn’t make sense without it.

But none of that abundance would make sense without the work of one man. Star Wars might be the brainchild of George Lucas, a figure of both derision and great acclaim in the franchise’s fan circles, but the series simply wouldn’t work without the musical genius of John Williams. It is Williams who makes A New Hope land emotionally; Williams who successfully grounded Finn and Rey’s journey in the past without merely rehashing the original trilogy; Williams who gives Star Wars its sense of rousing adventure.

5.

6.

‘The Emperor’

‘The Duel’

‘Revisiting Snoke’

Return Of The Jedi

The Empire Strikes Back

The Last Jedi

Williams is often seen as a bit of a sentimentalist, no doubt thanks to his association with cinema’s arch disposer of the saccharine, Steven Spielberg.

But to reduce Williams to the status of an overly sunny composer is to ignore the darkness that so often lurks at the heart of his work – this is the man who composed the score for The Fury, one of the most thrilling horror films of the last 50 years, for God’s sake. Those looking for further proof would do well to give ‘The Duel’ from The Empire Strikes back another spin. Incorporating elements of The Imperial March, it’s black as tar and twice as slick – a haunting, unsettling work from a master operating at the very highest imaginable level. Let this one seep into your skin.

Kylo Ren is one of the most fascinating characters the Star Wars franchise has ever spawned: he’s a truly conflicted villain, one desperate to rid himself of a past that holds so much sway over him. Perhaps then it’s unsurprising that the work Williams has done for Ren is so bloody brilliant. All of Williams’ dark side-indebted tunes from the two new films deserve praise, but perhaps the high point of this part of his oeuvre is ‘Revisiting Snoke’ from The Last Jedi.

It’s a controlled walk through everything that makes Ren and his shadow-soaked buddies so compelling: it’s mournful, it’s angry, and it has a strange energy entirely of its own.

6.

thebrag.com

COVER FEATURE

arts in focus

Here Are The 4 Most Insane

Star Wars Props To Ever Go On Sale

By Joseph Earp

T

he Star Wars universe is one littered with things. Seems like denizens of the Jedi order never learnt the art of decluttering. They are walking collections of assorted futuristic bits and bobs; jangling collections of lightsabers, and blasters, and special boots and robes, and knick knacks so varied and extensive that you have to wonder whether Finn was wrong. Maybe war isn’t the only thing in the galaxy that makes you rich – maybe it’s selling sundries to interstellar travellers.

“Remember the Snowtroopers, those Empire lackeys who got thoroughly shot to bits in the Battle for Hoth?”

Of course, there’s two main reasons for that. One: George Lucas is a bloody genius when it comes to world building. The Star Wars films are nothing if not extensive, and there’s a reason that there exists an entire library of convoluted backstories: Lucas’ original vision, like that of fellow speculative fiction hero J.K. Rowling, is one that fans can utterly immerse themselves in. Just head over to sites like Wookiepedia to understand the breadth and depth of the Star Wars world. Every single item that ever flashed up onscreen; every character to burble or gurgle their way through a background shot – they all have a story.

Not, mind you, to ignore the ramifications of reason two, namely, George Lucas is a bloody genius when it comes to marketing.

Hell, the guy isn’t even shy about it – he’s long admitted that Jar Jar Binks and the Ewoks, some of the franchise’s less popular citizens, were designed specifically to lure in children and rack up marketing opportunities.

But as cynical as that reason might sound, it’s not necessarily designed to be a dig. There’s something beautiful about merchandising; about filling your films with props. It gives your audiences an opportunity to own part of a world that they have become utterly infatuated by, a rare moment in which the fictional world can collide beautifully with our real one.

To that end, here are four of the most insane Star Wars merchandise items ever made – trinkets from a galaxy far, far away.

1.

2.

3.

4.

Snowtrooper Helmet

Princess Leia’s Slave Costume

George Lucas’ Panavision Camera

Remember the Snowtroopers, those Empire lackeys who got thoroughly shot to bits in the Battle for Hoth? Maybe you don’t, in which case you’d be forgiven – their costume design never really took off in the way that the Stormtrooper suit did, and they’re hardly the most iconic antagonists in the original three films. Not, mind you, that means people didn’t absolutely lose their mind when an original Snowtrooper Helmet prop went on the auction market in mid-2012.

I’m going to be totally real with you – I’ve always found the fandom’s obsession with Princess Leia’s slave costume, the glorified bikini that she wore while strapped to the universe’s most unappealing worm-like mob boss to be pretty disgusting. So trust me, my toes are curling a little as I write the following: one of the original costumes used in the shoot went to auction in October 2015 for a little under a hundred thousand US dollars. I can only hope that costume is being treated… respectfully.

Darth Vader’s Helmet And Breastplate

After an intensive bidding war, the item finally went for an eyewatering quarter of a million dollars, US. That’s one helluva price to pay for what’s basically a ski mask outfitted with evil looking eyes. But hey, that’s what Star Wars fans are: nothing if not committed.

For an asthmatic bad dad with a temper tantrum, Darth Vader sure does have his fans, doesn’t he? That probably explains why original versions of his iconic helmet have been as hard to track down as a nudist camp on Hoth – the props cost a bundle and get snapped up before you can say, “Luke, I am your father.”

So it was a genuine shock when an OG Vader helmet and breastplate popped back up in the year of our lord 2012.

The long-lost item, which had spent almost two decades attracting dust in a company store-room, had been sent to a replica company in order to produce a series of costumes that could be worn at the red carpet premiere of The Empire Strikes Back. The company forgot to send the item back, and a staff member – probably some intern who could have made a tiny sum had they been switched on enough to pocket the thing – threw it away in storage, where it sat until its sudden and remarkable rediscovery.

What’s more iconic than a prop from Star Wars? How about the camera actually used to film the movie? Yup, that’s right: Lucas’ own trusty Panavision Camera, used to shoot the only film in the original trilogy Lucas himself directed, A New Hope, went on sale at a Beverly Hills auction in 2011. Even more excitingly, the item was once owned by Debbie Reynolds: it was part of her wide-ranging and exhaustive film memorabilia collection.

How’s that for a movie star double whammy?

Oh, and here’s some news that will make you hate your minimum-wage paying job that little bit more: the camera went to a Star Wars obsessive who forked over US$625,000 for the privilege. Some people have just a little bit too much money, hey?

What: Star Wars Identities runs at the Powerhouse Museum from Friday November 16 to Sunday June 10

“George Lucas is a bloody genius when it comes to world building.” thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 37

ONLY AT THE POWERHOUSE MUSEUM, SYDNEY

OPENS 16 NOVEMBER 2018 • BOOK NOW

arts in focus

Star Wars teaches us how to be good.

We need that now more than ever

By Joseph Earp

1977

was a dark year. The optimism of the ‘60s had well and truly faded away – revolutionary movements in the United States felt largely like a thing of the past, and the general public found themselves stricken by a great political ennui. Even the President himself, Jimmy Carter, proved strikingly average, both as a politician as a man. JFK had been dead for some 14 years, and it seemed like the dream of an engaged and informed electorate gone with him.

Every day the newspaper brought more bad news.

Televisions feverishly covered the exploits of David Berkowitz, AKA Son of Sam, an infamous spree killer who made Yonkers, New York his hunting ground. Elvis Presley, the one-time king of rock and roll, died on his toilet, obese and burnt out. The government shut down, restarted, then shut down again. An American man, Roy Sullivan, got hit by lightning for the seventh time in his life, in the process breaking a world record one would imagine he might have preferred had gone unbroken. Perhaps the American public knew how he felt.

American filmmakers responded to the malaise of their times in different ways. Wes Craven, the visionary who

would later go on to make A Nightmare On Elm Street, dropped The Hills Have Eyes, a howl against post-‘Nam suffocation and middle-class boredom. David Lynch finally released his debut feature Eraserhead, a lopsided horror set in a run-down, dreamlike but distinctly American city.

And a young filmmaker named George Lucas unleashed a little sci-fi picture starring a cast of relative newcomers called Star Wars.

In many ways, Star Wars is curiously out of step with its times. It’s a fairy tale made for an audience who had largely turned their backs on such stories, happy to gorge themselves instead on the brutal, cathartic entertainment provided by television, both narrative and non-fiction. It is a far cry from the other artistic successes of the year – it operates in a different universe entirely from John Boorman’s The Exorcist II: The Heretic, for example, a film that soured the moral story of the original, and traded it for darkness, and for despair.

But more than anything, what made Star Wars a different beast is its unrelentingly, odd hopefulness. Luke Skywalker is a hero in the classic mode, torn straight out of the pages of Joseph Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces. His journey is stock standard: he’s an orphan, like so many protagonists before him, raised without knowledge of the

“In many ways, Star Wars is curiously out of step with its times.”

40 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

thebrag.com

REVIEW

“Star Wars clicked with the moviegoing public because of its simplicity, not despite it.”

“At its heart, the message of Star Wars is as simple as it can be: true goodness is possible.”

great, latent power inside him, unshackled from the bonds of normalcy by an older mentor who arrives in his life and tells him that he’s different.

Leia – have their faith rewarded, and then some. They get by not on might, or savagery, but on simple, unfettered optimism.

Nor is the arc of his enemy, Darth Vader, particularly unique either. In that first film, Vader is a mythic figure of pure evil: a Golem of legend, animated by nothing but the urge to destroy, and to kill. He is a far cry from the real villains of the time – a thousand light years away from say, Berkowitz, a conflicted, mentally unwell man who, when he was caught in August of that year, proved disturbingly ordinary.

This is the guiding principle of Star Wars to this day. It is the reason that the franchise has returned to us, twice now, during dark times. And it is the underlying machine powering Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi, a film that goes some distance to truly define goodness – to understand it as more than the equal and opposite reaction to darkness. To define it as something complicated, and ever-evolving, and truly desirable.

And yet Star Wars clicked with the moviegoing public because of its simplicity, not despite it. Like an ancient morality play, it reminded its audience of a valuable lesson they had all let themselves forget: that good things are possible. That kindness is real. That forgiveness has a power all of its own.

When the first trailer for Rogue One dropped, the hive of scum and villainy that is the internet comment section derided the film for being overtly political, drawing lines between the film’s horde of space Nazis, and, y’know, the actual Nazis that are amassing themselves in sad piles around the globe. They howled that Star Wars had suddenly gone political. And in the process, they misunderstood the entire franchise; the force that has driven the films from the beginning.

The moral arc of Star Wars bends forever towards justice.

The first act of A New Hope might be filled with the galaxy’s filthiest denizens – pockmarked by “hives of scum and villainy”, bursting with fascist Stormtroopers and cloaked villains willing to wipe out entire planets – but, like Dante’s Divine Comedy, it is a film that moves forever upwards, emerging eventually to drink in a view of the stars, and the light. The film’s heroes – Luke, Han Solo, thebrag.com

At its heart, the message of Star Wars is as simple as it can be: true goodness is possible. Such a message only feels political now because goodness is somehow in dispute. But it shouldn’t be. And Star Wars is here, as ever, faithfully, to remind us why.

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 41

FEATURE

JUST FOR LAUGHS:

HOW THE CAREERS OF FOUR PERFORMERS CAN TELL THE STORY OF BRITISH COMEDY

By Joseph Earp

“Acid-tongued raconteur Kenneth Williams has never really gotten his proper dues as a performer.”

B

ritish comedy is so wide-ranging – so in flux; so constantly evolving – that it feels redundant to even talk about the idea of an archetypal British comedy star. After all, what metric are you meant to use to measure such success?

Commercial appeal doesn’t seem like a bona fide route – after all, some of the most exciting comedians in the world right now are yet to receive their fair dues in the court of public opinion (Stewart Lee, a masterful performer who deserves to be selling out the O2 Arena, comes to mind as an example).

And anyway, commercial tides come and go so fast that following economic trends in comedy is rather like trying to set up your grandma’s fine china collection in the middle of an earthquake.

No, it’s instead easier to track British comedy’s evolution; to chart how its influences amassed and altered, creating something entirely distinct from the comedy style of those across the pond in the States.

And what better way to do that then analyse the career of four of British comedy’s brightest stars?

Kenneth Williams Acid-tongued raconteur Kenneth Williams has never really gotten his proper dues as a performer.

Sure, he’s best known for his roles in the Carry On films – those defiantly buxom, bawdy mini-epics that took the flimsiest of premises and strung them out into 80-minute long punchline-fests that still to this day feel genuinely groundbreaking. But even in that context he’s still too often derided as nothing but an over-actor with a funny voice; a performer lacking in nuance.

To which I say: poppycock. Williams is one of the first comedians to properly harness the British capacity for politeness and fuse it with something distinctly grottier. Mixing civility with great, unmitigated rudeness, he set the scene for everyone from the Monty Python gang to more contemporary peddlers of distinctly subdued smut like Michael McIntyre. Any good comedian worth their salt has studied Williams more carefully than they’d maybe ever let on.

Tommy Cooper The great Tommy Cooper, a magician and prop-based stand-up, was some unholy cross between a nightclub emcee and Salvador Dali. With his distinctive red fez and penchant for cigars, he created his own pitch-perfect comedic persona; a wry, winking caricature that never made the mistake of overstepping the mark and becoming dull and derivative.

No, Cooper was, for all of his artifice, a disarmingly sincere performer. His aim, always, was to get you laughing with him – to have you chortling as you would at a favourite uncle around a Christmas dinner table, or with an old mate at afterwork drinks.

Compare that to the style of American prop-based comic Carrot Top, a man whose set is so slathered in irony that it’s hard to tell what you’re even meant to be laughing at, and the difference between British and American comedic styles make themselves immediately clear.

42 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

thebrag.com

arts in focus David Baddiel David Baddiel is a British performer in the classical mode. But that’s not to imply that he’s somehow staid or stuffy – far from it. Rather like Mortimer, a comedian with whom he shares a similarly tireless work ethic, Baddiel loves slyly subverting the set-ups and punchlines of traditional British humour.

Baddiel’s an expert at handling rhythm, making the audience feel as though they are privy to a private, relaxed conversation between friends, before dropping a perfectly timed tonal bomb. And his comedy sets are known for sudden detours into gnarled, unexpected paths; sudden jaunts into deeply unexpected territory.

“Baddiel’s an expert at handling rhythm, making the audience feel as though they are privy to a private, relaxed conversation between friends, before dropping a perfectly timed tonal bomb.”

Bob Mortimer Bob Mortimer is the funniest man in the world. That’s not hyperbole, mind you; not for a second. An arch surrealist with a penchant for deconstruction, Mortimer – along with his comedic partner Vic Reeves – has spent decades subverting the British television comedy formula.

The pair pulled apart the panel show with Shooting Stars; injected a heavy dose of anti-comedy into the mainstream with Bang Bang It’s Reeves And Mortimer; and have spent the last few years earning a collective reputation as some of the funniest people to have appear as a guest on your show. Who, after all, could forget Mortimer’s story, told between bursts of giggles on Would I Lie To You?, about how he almost burnt down his family house with a box of fireworks?

Importantly, Mortimer isn’t careless about tearing the status quo apart. Sure, he might be a master at carefully unpicking what punters think they want from a comedy show, but he makes sure to never isolate or alienate them. At times, his funniest jokes can be based on astonishingly familiar setups – it’s the punchline that warps, starting off his audience somewhere they can understand, before rapidly pulling the rug from under their feet. Oh, and what’s not to love about a man who performs his own dentistry?

“Bob Mortimer is the funniest man in the world.” thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 43

FEATURE

HOW TO MAKE AN INDIE VIDEO GAME IN AUSTRALIA

– OR DIE TRYING

By Adam Guetti

M

aking a game is hard, but making a game in Australia – that’s a whole other ball game. Most local developers gravitate towards smaller mobile titles or simple Steam titles; projects where development time is shorter and requires significant less investment. On the other end of the spectrum sits Convict Games – an Aussie-lead company with a global team. The talent

pool ranges from filmmakers to musicians to artists based anywhere from Sydney to Helsinki.

It’s not an entirely conventional setup, but then neither is the team’s first project – STONE. Telling a tale of a baked, hungover koala detective trying to put the pieces from a wild night he no longer remembers together, while simultaneously tracking down his lorikeet lover, STONE initially reads like a bit of a whirlwind cheese dream. Speaking with Greg Louden, writer-director and

Chief Convict at Convict Games, however, paints the project in a whole new light.

“I’m a huge fan of Tarantino, Bukowksi, Kanye, Chandler, Godard, techno, PTA, Hunter S Thompson, Hemingway and Pynchon,” declares Louden. “I also love The Big Lebowski, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas and Inherent Vice. So with this cocktail I had to make a stoner noir. The whole koala, anthropomorphic concept came from the fact it’s a great

metaphor, and in games we need to build everything. So why recreate the real world when we can create something new and something only games or CGI can do?”

All these elements appear to link back to one of Convict Game’s big mantras – to tell high impact and alternate stories. When the studio was founded in July last year by Louden and his co-director/sister, Sarah Louden, the duo set out with a goal to do something fresh that didn’t simply follow the popular

trends. A binge-drinking, foulmouthed koala felt like the perfect choice.

But while inspiration is great, a quick viewing of STONE’s early footage begs a few questions.

Chief among these is what gameplay systems are being utilised to keep gamers invested in tracking down your “chookie” Alex amidst a fictionalised version of Newtown. The footage hints at replicating some of the magic of classic adventure games, but

FEATURE

LIFE IN HELL: GROENING BEFORE THE SIMPSONS an outlet for Groening to scream at the chaos of modern life, a place for him to express his angst, self-loathing and cynicism about relationships, work, life and death. It was appropriately titled Life In Hell.

He’d send photocopied copies of Life In Hell back to friends in Portland and sell them for $2 at the record store he worked in.

Before long the comic was picked up and published in WET, the “Magazine of Gourmet Bathing.”

Groening also got a job delivering newspapers for the Los Angeles Reader, working there for six years and cycling his way through the paper’s ranks: typesetter, paste-up artist, critic and editor. Eventually they offered to run Life In Hell, which ran for six years. The Reader replaced it after Groening wrote an angry letter to the editor after a writer was sacked.

By Chris Neill

M

att Groening will be forever known as the guy who created The Simpsons. Maybe if you want to be a cool contrarian, you’ll say he’s the guy who created Futurama. But did you know that before he created his animated empire, he was a cartoonist? Not only that, but he consistently worked on a comic series for over three decades?

Flashback to 1977: Matt Groening had recently moved from his home in Portland to Los Angeles in the hopes of becoming a writer. While working a bunch of dead-end jobs and living in a crappy apartment, he began drawing a comic-book. It had a simple art-style in the vein of newspaper cartoons. Some pages were a single panel strip. Some had 16 panels jammed into the same amount of space – sometimes even more. It was

44 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

In a fittingly Life In Hell way, Groening only found out when he read the paper and saw his comic was missing. It was also running in a few alternative weeklies, and was later picked up by the L.A. Weekly. At its peak, Life in Hell ran in over 250 newspapers, most of them alt-weeklies. (38 by the time Groening turned in his final strip.)

Life In Hell was a pitch-black version of The Simpsons’ satire and humour. It usually focused on Blinky, a cartoon rabbit who served as a mouthpiece for Groening’s neuroses, appearing in comics like, “The 9-Types of Relationships”, “How To Be An Artist In Torment” and “Your Working-Day Emotion Checklist.” (10:04AM, Momentary Panic Attack.) Other regulars include Akbar and Jeff, an identical fez wearing couple, who are constantly arguing with one another, usually about their relationship.

Bongo, Blinky’s illegitimate one-eared son, was usually seen locked in an empty room. In one comic, a hand puppet juts through a slightly ajar door and tells Bongo, “I may just be a little puppet, but I were you, I’d cooperate with the authorities.”

In another, a pair of eyes pokes through the door’s viewing slip.

“How can we have a unified country if you don’t believe what we tell you?” they ask the restrained rabbit.

Groening’s comics were at his most critical and caustic when it came to politics. “Street Smarts for Republicans” reminds you to step over the homeless, not on them. A strip published after Operation Desert Storm, shows rows and rows of tombstones, while Akbar and Jeff stand in front of them, celebrating; “We won! We won!” Bongo questions a politician about why they aren’t planning for the future generations, to which he responds: “Don’t worry. By the time you and your little buddies drop out of high school, we’ll have your prison cells built and ready to go!”

Life In Hell is also directly responsible for Groening creating The Simpsons. A copy of his strip, “The Los Angeles Way of Death” – a list of nine ways LA will kill you (gun, car, drug, cop, failure, success) – was given to producer James L. Brooks. He liked what he saw and asked Groening to pitch some animated shorts for The Tracey Ullman Show. Not wanting to lose the ownership rights to his Life In Hell character, Groening pitched something new. In 1987, he debuted a four-fingered, yellowskinned family. You know the rest of the story.

Even with his growing animation empire and mounting responsibilities, Groening never stopped making Life In Hell.

“The Simpsons came along to preoccupy me, and I decided to see how long I could keep the comic strip going.” Groening explained in an interview with Rolling Stone after announcing the strip’s end, in 2012 “I also liked the idea of having one slice of my creative output being completely solo, unlike TV animation. It’s very satisfying to sit down at a drawing table by yourself and solve a puzzle with a deadline.”

Bizarrely, the collected editions of Life In Hell are out of print, but you can find second-hand copies floating around and a few poor quality scans. (I am willing to throw an indefinite amount

thebrag.com

arts in focus

then interestingly swaps out the genre’s usual point-andclick mechanics and puzzles with music, side games and interrogating fellow animals.

Choosing whether to adopt a “Hard Ass” or “Soft Touch” approach will lead to varying results during your encounters with the citizens of Oldtown. If you are particularly surly to a Smoky Possum bartender, for example, you should expect an equally surly response. Each of these encounters ultimately will help shape your journey – though it is worth noting that Convict Games is only planning one finite ending no matter your chose to approach each encounter.

That’s largely because while dancing, smoking and drinking appear to be a recurring trifecta, according to Louden, it’s all about story, story, story.

“STONE is an interactive story, so it’s super, super story driven.

While playing there’s constantly reference-filled and witty dialogue, like a great hip hop track. So mechanically in the game you walk, talk, interact, dance, smoke and drink.

However, the dialogue will keep you hooked: you can choose what you say on occasions and the licensed music will blow you away.”

Music actually plays quite a large role in STONE, with the

team placing a great deal of focus on its hip hop-centric line-up. According to Louden, it was a critical inclusion. “To bring noir to 2018, it had to be hip hop,” he explained. “Hip hop to me also is about wordplay and STONE is filled with references and throwbacks. It’s also a genre with a set use in games. However, I wanted to present it in a different way and bring my passion for the genre to storytelling in interactive stories.

“STONE also has lots of other genres ranging from techno, to stoner rock and even experimental pop. So hip hop to me is a philosophy, wit and

attitude.” As a result, expect to hear tracks ranging from Finnish experimental pop artist Real Love and Aussie rockers, Grand Oyster Palace, Joseph Banks and Golden Grove as you work your way through this attitude-packed adventure.

The local development scene might not be as lucrative as it once was, but that’s exactly why studios like Convict Games deserve our support. STONE might not be a game you’d been secretly wishing for, or could have even imagined, but its ambition and individuality are incredibly admirable. One thing’s for sure – we’ll never look at koalas the same way.

“WHY RECREATE THE REAL WORLD WHEN WE CAN CREATE SOMETHING NEW AND SOMETHING ONLY GAMES OR CGI CAN DO?”

of money at the first publisher to announce a complete series collection).

It’s unfortunate that it’s hard to come by, because its punk attitude of not accepting the mundane complacency of modern life is still meaningful today.

(It’s a shame Groening has seemingly grown out of that attitude recently.) There’s a sense of solidarity that comes from reading Life In Hell; a strange kind of comfort that you aren’t the only one who thinks everything sucks. Life might be hell, but at least there are other people in hell with you.

“LIFE IN HELL WAS A PITCHBLACK VERSION OF THE SIMPSONS’ SATIRE AND HUMOUR.” thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 45

arts in focus FEATURE

YOUR FANDOM

“PERFECT BLUE FOCUSES ON MIMA KIRIGOE, A PERFORMER IN THE J-POP GROUP CHAM!, WHO DECIDES TO LEAVE THE BAND SO SHE CAN FOCUS ON A CAREER AS AN ACTRESS.”

IS KILLING ME

By Chris Neill

T

here’s an old internet saying you see pop up every now and then: Fandom was a mistake. It’s been used to mock the cartoonishly entitled or to chastise the overwhelmingly toxic. Director Satoshi Kon understood just how rotten obsessive fandom can become, which is why his 1997 film, Perfect Blue, depicts fandom at its worst.

Perfect Blue focuses on Mima Kirigoe, a performer in the J-pop group CHAM!, who decides to leave the band so she can focus on a career as an actress. Her life and sanity begins to unravel as an obsessive fan, Me-Mania, begins to stalk her, while a blog called “Mima’s Room” pretends to be her. It’s an examination of the broken nature of fandom, where the line between adoration and obsession is thin, and how easy it is to dip from the former into the latter.

CHAM! is a part of Japanese pop music sub-culture known as “Idols.” As much as Western pop music is seen to be artificial, created by a committee and sold as a plastic product, the Japanese Idol model is that ethos pushed to the extreme. They’re products designed to fulfil a fantasy, with fans latching onto a specific member of these groups, rabidly consuming and obsessing over their every move.

Part of this cultivated image is that these Idols need to maintain a constant state of availability and virginal innocence. Breaking this fantasy usually results in the performer taking a massive hit to their popularity.

In 2012, Masuda Yuka of AKB48 left the band after it was revealed she has stayed overnight at the home of another J-Pop group, Da Pump. A similar event occurred in 2013 with Minami Minegishi. She was demoted to one of the AKB48’s much less popular branches after it was revealed she had a similar overnight stay. In response, she shaved her head and filmed a long, uncomfortable apology video.

Mima and CHAM! are very much within this framework. Me-Mania considers the Mima performing on-stage as a part of CHAM! to be the “real” Mima, while the Mima acting in the television show Double Bind is the fake. When Mima appears in an erotic photo-shoot, Me-Mania goes out of his way to purchase literally every copy he can get his hands on, sobbing that his pure vision of her has now been defiled. He’s unable to separate the real from the unreal – that the Idol and the person are different entities.

Her basic human wants and needs mean nothing to him – he’s unhappy that she’s no longer maintaining his fantasy.

That fantasy haunts Mima in the form of her Other Self – a ghostly image of Mima in her old CHAM! Costume – who represents this idea that she isn’t actually human but a

“PERFECT BLUE IS A REFLECTION OF REALITY; A WORSTCASE SCENARIO OF WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE OBSESSIVE AND POSSESSIVE NATURE OF FANDOM GOES TOO FAR.”

“WHEN MIMA APPEARS IN AN EROTIC PHOTO-SHOOT, ME-MANIA GOES OUT OF HIS WAY TO PURCHASE LITERALLY EVERY COPY HE CAN GET HIS HANDS ON, SOBBING THAT HIS PURE VISION OF HER HAS NOW BEEN DEFILED.”

product to be consumed. It’s that Other Self that ensnares fans like Me-Mania, with its promise to fulfil his fantasies and desires.

Through Mima’s Room, the fake Mima goads Me-Mania into protecting her from the imposter Mima (the real one). We see a scene in which a wall covered with Mima posters speak to him, while an apparition of Mima in her CHAM! outfit embraces him.

This betrayal is what pushes him over the edge, leading to Me-Mania’s attempt on her life – something that has an uncanny parallel to real-life events.

In 1996 Ricardo López’s mailed a bomb to Björk. He’d spent the better part of three years obsessed with her, and had felt betrayed after learning she was in a relationship. He felt he had wasted so much time on her without getting anything in return, so he hoped the bomb would at least permanently scar her (to forever be a part of her life in the same way she was a part of his) but mainly aiming to kill her so the two could be united the death. López took his own life shortly after mailing the package – his last words were: “This is for you.”

When we’re first introduced to Me-Mania, he’s holding his hand out in such a way that the perspective makes it looks like Mima is dancing in his palm. He’s drawn to look considerably more ugly than another other characters, almost monstrous with his grey

46 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

skin, jagged teeth and reptilian looking eyes. His apartment is a dank, uninviting place that’s plastered with posters of Mima.

You quickly get the impression that the J-pop Idol is the only thing staving off his extreme loneliness. López himself struggled with his body image and loneliness, and these issues were regularly documented in his journal. The two are kindred spirits; while the rest of the world may not accept Me-Mania and López, at least the objects of their obsession will always be there for them.

Fandom isn’t inherently bad. It’s always nice to know that you’re able to bond with someone over a shared pop cultural experience. But it’s very easy to become overwhelmed by the more negative side of fandom: entitlement, competiveness and an uncomfortable over-familiarity. After quitting CHAM!, Mima is bombarded with death threats and constant hate via email, a frighteningly accurate foresight of being online in 2018.

Perfect Blue is a reflection of reality; a worst-case scenario of what happens when the obsessive and possessive nature of fandom goes too far. It places unhealthy fan obsession under a microscope and dissects it, showing us what it truly is: a toxic entitlement that when fed can grow into a monster, like a cancerous tumour. ■ thebrag.com

LEARN WHY

EVERY ARTIST IN THE COUNTRY NEEDS THIS APP

Pitches your music monthly Builds your network Saves you money every month Opens career doors Hit producer beat catalogues Online 'Artists Strategy' Education Song Writing Holidays Subscribers recieve a free ticket to 2-Day Seminar (RRP: $1497)

WWW.GROWMYMUSIC.COM

FEATURE

Apes, Bombs, And The End Of The World: The Legacy Of the Planet Of The Apes

By Joseph Earp “Seen from out here everything seems different. Time bends. Space is boundless. It squashes a man’s ego. I feel lonely. That’s about it. Tell me, though. Does man, that marvel of the universe, that glorious paradox who sent me to the stars, still make war against his brother? Does he still keep his neighbor’s children starving?”

– Taylor, Planet Of The Apes.

1968

was a bad year, a 12-month long slog marked by murder, political upheaval and war. Horrors came and went, and soon people became numbed by them, hardened against tragedy and no longer willing to weep about the things they might have once wept over.

The Americans felt it worst. They, after all, had seen their heroes murdered – had sat back and watched as a host of their best and brightest were gunned down, their legacies reduced to a slowly expanding pool of blood on a stranger’s floor.

The losses were too many to name, but there were some that hurt more than others. For many left-leaning Americans, the hardest came on the fifth of June, 1968, when Bobby Kennedy, the future of the Democratic party and a beloved heir to the Kennedy political legacy, addressed an elated crowd at the Ambassador hotel, only to be shot on his way out to his car. He took three bullets and died the next day.

Worse still, his passing came only two months after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, murdered while standing on a motel balcony by an extremist named James Earl Ray. In the last speech he had ever delivered, King had acknowledged that the road ahead

48 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

was hard – that there were some “difficult days” waiting for the African-American community. But he believed that before long, absolution would wash over the country he so loved. “I’m happy tonight,” he intoned. “I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

“The war in Vietnam was far from over, and the spread of affordable TV sets meant suddenly the bloodshed had reached the American home.”

But it was a message that some people were finding increasingly hard to swallow. The war in Vietnam was far from over, and the spread of affordable TV sets meant suddenly the bloodshed had reached the American home. People were eating dinner while watching the news, and their brand new sets were babbling to them about the murder of young men, and the horrors of napalm, and the ever-rising death toll, all while home owners sat there, stunned, trying to swallow their meatloaf.

All the jingoism and anti-Communist propaganda that had circulated before the Americans had found themselves tangled up in the bloodbath of Vietnam had soured somewhat.

Nobody felt good about fighting overseas anymore; nobody felt comfortable, or safe. The daily struggle of life was being conducted in the shadow of this great atrocity – in the shadow of a war unfurling in a country most people hadn’t visited, against a force that few people understood.

So perhaps it was unsurprising that on Tuesday November 5,

thebrag.com

COVER FEATURE

arts in focus

“It was in this new, blood-soaked era that a little film called Planet Of The Apes was released, and the shape of American cinema was changed forever.”

“No-one involved with the film really knew what they had on their hands by the time that Apes was done.”

P

ierre Boule’s Planet Of The Apes was a strange little novel, released to some fanfare and middling sales in 1963. Boule had been a special agent during the war, and had used his experiences as a political prisoner to write The Bridge On The River Kwai, a harrowing epic that was later turned into a celebrated film by British director David Lean.

when it came time for the American people to show up and vote, they cast their ballot for a slick-haired, long nosed Republican named Richard Nixon. Nixon, after all, had promised them that the Vietnam war could be won; that the Cong could be vanquished and Americans could finally get back to talking about something else.

Nixon’s platform was one of deep cynicism, and the picture he painted was of a world hanging over a precipice. He took the horrors Americans had seen and he doubled down on them, building up anxieties till they were the size of dark, ivory towers. The political world, he assured voters, was a cesspit of murderers, thieves and criminals, and only Nixon amongst them had the strength to stand up to the swamp. The world beyond America’s front door was one gripped by chaos and uncertainty, but America was too – decimated, Nixon said, by drug addicts and thieves.

In the face of that nihilism, Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey barely stood a chance.

His message was one of peace and love, and he assured Americans that the world was not as ravaged as Nixon wanted them to believe. But Americans didn’t trust him for a moment. How dare he speak of potential and hope and growth when the world was so evidently fucked?

How did he have the gall to get up on a stage and tell Americans that they were prosperous and well-fed when they were so damn scared all the time; when they were so convinced that the apocalypse lay in hiding around the next corner?

When defeat came for Humphrey, it came hard. Nixon didn’t just win – Nixon won easily, picking up 301 votes in the electoral college against Humphrey’s 191. It was fitting, really. The year had been a non-stop bloodbath; it made sense that the career of the only man in politics ready to say things weren’t as bad as they seemed should go down in tatters.

Of course, before long Nixon would reveal himself. He had no plan to end the war. His only goal was to eke it out, slowly grinding the Cong down in the hope that the ever-accumulating causalities might force them into surrender. America was not emerging into a new era of peace by electing Nixon. The horror had only just begun.

Then there was the looming threat of international war. The Russians were armed with nukes and making themselves ever more known; ever more threatening. It would be another year before Americans would put Neil Armstrong on the moon, and they lived in the collective fear that the Russkies might get there before them. After all, for many, space was not the final frontier but a brand new arena of war; a dark, vast battlefield that could be filled with missiles and the chrome, radioactive harbingers they feared the battles of the future would be fought with.

But above all else, Americans were tired. They were burnt out. All that bad news had gotten under their skin, and the great waft of US promise and ingenuity that had washed over them from the end of the fifties to the mid sixties was beginning to stink. They were sick with sadness; collectively ill, no longer certain that they could rule the world, or even that the world had much of a future left. And it was in this new, blood-soaked era that a little film called Planet Of The Apes was released, and the shape of American cinema was changed forever.

Still, Apes sold enough copies to attract the attention of Hollywood, and before long the job of adapting the novel to the big screen fell in the capable hands of Mr Rod Serling. The smooth-voiced, relentlessly ingenious creative force behind the lauded television series The Twilight Zone, Serling knew he had a difficult task ahead of him. Even Boule considered the novel “unfilmable” – the author couldn’t see how one could adapt the novel’s odd structure, or communicate the nuances of its tabootesting plot.

And yet, in the manner of all good screenplay writers who find themselves faced with adapting impossible material, Serling triumphed not by straying slavishly close to the original novel, but by gutting it. He abandoned the book’s quaint beginning: rather than opening with two astronauts discovering an audio log that describes the discovery of a planet of apes, Serling cut straight to the quick, and began the film with a dark monologue delivered to the abyss of space by the film’s hero Taylor. And in the place of the book’s so-so ending, Serling wrote in one of the all-time great cinematic twists, ironically certifying the novel’s place in history by blessing it with an ending that the original text didn’t even feature.

But the studio was not entirely happy with the script Serling turned in. If nothing else, it was too lavish, and would require considerably more capital than the film’s producer Arthur P. Jacobs was willing to put up. Jacobs knew he couldn’t shoot a sci-fi film starring a clan of apes on the cheap, but he was still unwilling to take the risk represented by Serling’s script.

So, to cut down on costs he hired Michael Wilson, a disgraced screenwriter who had been smeared by the anti-Communist Hollywood blacklist, and together he and Wilson worked to trim down Serling’s most extravagant ideas.

Meanwhile, Jacobs began searching for his cast and crew. He tapped Franklin J. Schaffner as the director early on, impressed by the way Schaffner had handled the legendarily difficult Yul

▲

thebrag.com

It was that on the basis of that novel that Boule’s reputation had been forged, and when Apes was first released, it seemed unlikely that he was suddenly going to be heralded as a new voice in science fiction – for the public at large, Kwai was still his main contribution to popular culture. After all, Apes was too odd, a story within a story that drew as much on antiquated work like The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner as it did on the concerns of contemporary science fiction writers. And it was too stridently political, a dark, disturbing work about the shaky hold man had on the planet, not to mention the threats we collectively faced from a natural world in revolt.

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 49

arts in focus

Brynner on the set of his previous film, The Double Man. Of course, Jacobs had more practical reasons for selecting Schaffer too – the director was no lauded Academy Award winner, and so could be placated by a middling salary.

The same could not be said of the actor Jacobs pegged for the lead.

By 1967 when Planet Of The Apes entered production, Charlton Heston was a bona fide cinematic star. He had already picked up a number of acting awards for his turn in Ben-Hur, and had won considerable acclaim for his oddly terrifying portrayal of Moses in The Ten Commandments. He was at his creative and commercial peak as a performer, and Jacobs hoped Heston’s star power would help convince audiences to see a strange sci-fi film based on a novel few members of the general public had ever encountered.

Of course, to reap those benefits, Jacobs had to put up with the difficulties of having Heston around on set. By the time the shoot began, the actor was already fiddling around with the script, demanding line changes and generally making life hell for Schaffner.

Not that the director was too bothered. He had eaten the likes of Heston for breakfast, and was stridently old school in his filmmaking style. The actors, as far as he was concerned, had to stand at their marks and bark out their lines – nothing more, nothing less – and he had little time for the patience-testing behaviour of prima donnas.

Anyway, he had the hostility of the landscape to deal with. Although much of the primate community featured in the film was shot on a lot, the early scenes were filmed on location, in the harsh locale of northern Arizona. The days was long, the sun was unbearably hot, and, working on a budget of a mere $5.8 million, the cast and crew were forced to move fast.

Never mind that most of the principal cast were coated in layers of PVC, make-up and rubber – they had to shoot scenes as though their lives depended upon it, and the film wrapped in a mere four months.

No-one involved with the film really knew what they had on their hands by the time that Apes was done. It certainly didn’t seem like a guaranteed bona fide box office success. For his part, Schaffner was sure that the make-up would impress – John Chambers, the man behind Ape’s prosthetic effects was an industry legend, and the work he had done for the film would eventually get him nominated for an Oscar. But otherwise, Schaffner had no idea how the public would receive his work: he had made sure-fire hits before, and he was convinced Apes was not one of those.

So it was with trepidation that Fox prepared to release Apes. They had no idea what they had on their hands – no clue the impact the film would make, or the money it would soon reap for them. And on the night before the film’s release, Schaffner and Jacobs both went to bed nervous men.

W

hat Jacobs and Schaffner failed to consider, of course, was the feeling of discontent in the air. Americans no more wanted to see another airy, bright cinematic fantasy than they wanted to listen to Humphrey tell them that it was all going to work out in the end, and they went to Apes not to be reassured, but to be terrified.

After all, Apes is at its heart a genuinely disturbing film, and not only because it drops human beings right at the bottom of the evolutionary ladder. What Apes suggests is not only that we are violent, dangerous and hideous creatures, but that, much more eerily, we are not unique. There is nothing special about us as a race, Apes posits – nothing that makes us different, or separates us from the animals that we so aggressively spurn and mistreat.

After all, Heston’s Taylor is one of the most determinedly cynical heroes of modern times. He spends the film’s first third chiding and berating his other astronauts, teasing their faith in the human spirit, and he seems to put little stead even in the science that has catapulted them through time. When one of his colleagues plants a miniature flag on the rocky surface of what they assume to be an alien planet, Taylor just laughs, the camera zooming in on his maniacal, sun-blasted face. And he sees no beauty in the expedition that has brought them to the film’s titular planet, cruelly mocking his colleagues when they do.

For that reason, Taylor is exactly the kind of hero 1968 needed; exactly the central character audiences wanted to see. Taylor is not here to save the day, largely because there is no day to be saved. He has no hope, no optimism and no faith, but that doesn’t put him at a disadvantage – it only makes him smart. While those around him fall over themselves to murmur valiant but hollow lullabies concerning the great depth of humanity’s spirit, Taylor rolls his eyes.

In that way, he is an onscreen cipher for Nixon – or at least, the living, breathing embodiment of Nixon’s views about the world. Like Nixon, he is reassuring not because he convinces us that our fears are unfounded, but because he does the opposite. Like Nixon, he repeats back to us all the terrible things that we suspect about the world, and solidifies our secret, unspoken fear that we are just mounds of flesh batting around a rock that will one day be swallowed by a sun; that there is no point to our most valiant actions and no repercussions for our darkest ones.

So although it might be a cliché to suggest that some films are released at exactly the point that the world needs them most, it’s hard to otherwise explain the Apes phenomenon. The American public, swollen with news of bloodshed and devastation, couldn’t get enough of the film. They saw it, and then they saw it again. They told their friends about it. They let it haunt them; let it keep them up at night. And they helped it become one of the biggest commercial successes of the year, launching a string of sequels and a number of imitators.

There has never been a film like Apes. It wasn’t just another special effects laden Hollywood blockbuster about man’s insecure place in the universe, nor was it a cautionary tale designed to load us up with guilt, and with fear. There is nothing to feel guilty about, Apes said, because there is nothing about the essential indignity of humanity that can be changed. We are doomed to be this way for all times, Apes said. And in this way, it is more collective nightmare than film; an ever-shifting, uncompromising worry, a work of art that spreads like a tumour blossoming in a chest. ■

“There has never been a film like Apes.”

50 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

thebrag.com

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 51

FEATURE

Belinda Quinn talks to Panos Cosmatos about his blood-soaked mythological beast of a film, Mandy

The BRAG: How are you feeling about Mandy’s release?

Panos Cosmatos: Relief – I feel good. I’ve worked on this one for a very, very long time.

I started around the same time I was writing Black Rainbow.

Why did you decide to pick 1983 as the period for Black Rainbow and Mandy?

Panos Cosmatos: Well, when I was writing Black Rainbow I started to have this idea of a mythological 1983, which isn’t the real world. It’s a rendering of my own imagination as a child. [It looks] back on the past and the melancholy of what used to be [before] my parents passed away.

Was reading fantasy as a child a means of escapism for you?

Panos Cosmatos: I think it was, definitely. I was a very inwardly focused child; very quiet, shy. I felt a lot more comfortable alone in my imaginary world, for sure.

CENOBITES, MOTORBIKES, AND A COKED-UP NICOLAS CAGE W

hat with its ferociously turbulent and oft-unnerving narrative – not to mention hazy, LED-soaked scenes that prompt pained memories of hellish acid trips – Panos Cosmatos’s mythological horror Mandy has re-envisioned the tropes of the revenge thriller. Nicholas Cage plays the gentle lover turned blood-soaked avenger Red Miller, a surprisingly redemptive role for the actor.

While the Italian-Canadian director and writer’s first film Beyond The Black Rainbow dealt with the repression of his emotions after his parent’s deaths, Mandy is essentially a detonating emotive nightmare.

“I wanted to keep the trope of the revenge film, but [I wanted it] to feel more driven by the person that was absent,” Cosmatos tells the BRAG. In doing so, he reveals to audiences the depths of love, and the sheer intensity of despair one experiences after losing someone close.

Not that this is some ordinary, docile dose of melancholia, mind you. The lines of the mythological and the real are so unconventionally, cleverly blurred in Mandy that at times it’s hard to tell whether the proceedings are unfurling in the real world, or some distant, determinedly strange alternative one. That’s the film’s power.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

I read that both of those films function as a yin-and-yang examination of your own grief. Do you think these movies helped you process loss?

Panos Cosmatos: I think so. Looking back on it now I realise that Black Rainbow was dealing with repressing my feelings with my mother having died, and going to therapy I realised that I needed an antidote for that – and that’s how Mandy became that antidote.

[That need led] to creating a more outward expression of these feelings, of purging and releasing these emotions rather than bottling them up, you know?

The scene where Nicholas Cage is screaming in the bathroom feels like a refreshing portrayal of grief.

Panos Cosmatos: I’m a little bit of a film reactionary, and at the time there were a lot of films coming out that were very, uh, I don’t know how I would describe them…

The way that they dealt with the aspect of loss was very generic and corny. These films had someone in the shower crying with like, singer-songwriter music playing over the top of it.

There’s just one single tear falling down their cheek.

Panos Cosmatos: Yeah, exactly. [Laughs].

I read that you became really obsessed with revenge films. Were there any specific films that really moved you?

Panos Cosmatos: I mean, it was a very obsessive, a strange fixation, which brought on the idea to actually create a revenge film. For whatever reason I sat down and I watched every one of the Death Wish films in a row, and when you watch every movie of a particular genre in a row it allows a certain level of mediation on the mechanics of genre, and the essence of it.

And I became interested in this idea of making a revenge film that revolves around the spirit – not the religious spirit, but the essence of the person that’s being avenged – and how they inform the psyche and reality of a person that’s been left behind.

I was wondering, do you think Mandy would still love the man that Red Miller becomes at the end having participated in all that revenge?

Panos Cosmatos: Absolutely. I think she loves all of him, so this part is definitely a true part of them. And her too: I think she would have done the same for him.

52 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

thebrag.com

I wanted to work with my friend Aaron [Stewart-Ahn] was so it could be a bit of a more joyful process and less of a solitary nightmare.

I read that the film is meant to be exploring the male ego. What do you think lead you to explore that aspect of humanity?

Panos Cosmatos: Around [writing] Black Rainbow I started to become interested in this idea of the grotesqueness of the male ego and how fragile and dangerous it is when they feel threatened.

Or when somebody has built up an imaginary bubble around themselves, around their own self-image, and how shattering that bubble can create a real monster, you know? I think it started when I was becoming real interested in the villains in Stuart Gordon’s films.

They’d always be very perverted, controlling, delusional men, and that was Barry Nyle in Black Rainbow. I just got very intrigued and wanted to continue exploring it with Jeremiah.

It’s timely to explore that, especially after this year’s massacre in Toronto by a man who called himself an involuntary celibate.

There are definitely a lot of young men who need to get that message about the delusions of entitlement.

Panos Cosmatos: I never in my worst nightmares imagined that it was going to match up so regularly that men would feel so entitled that they would go out and you know, start killing people. But I guess realistically it’s been happening forever in the form of relationships and men acting out violently in relationships, and when their wives leave them.

Yeah, you’re trapped in your head. And writing a script like Mandy’s, that’d be next level.

Panos Cosmatos: There’s always this theme where you dread to write, because for some reason I feel that it’s going to be very emotionally taxing – there’s a scene in Black Rainbow where Barry essentially murders his father figure, and I dreaded writing that. I felt that it was going to crush me emotionally.

I think the most daunting thing to write in Mandy was the scene where Jeremiah’s in their home and Mandy starts laughing at him.

It seemed like an incredibly daunting thing to write.

When you hit a roadblock in the writing process, do you have something you do to help move past that?

Panos Cosmatos: I wish. I generally just wait and I hope. [Laughs]. I don’t generally listen to music while I’m writing, but I’ve found that a lot of ideas will come while I’m listening to music, and that’ll put me in a very energised state of creativity.

What music do you listen to?

Panos Cosmatos: Oh, anything. I love all kinds of music.

What do you think was the most difficult shot to capture while you were filming?

Panos Cosmatos: Well, they all had their challenges. The density and the amount of stuff we had to [capture] was a huge amount in such a short period. Shooting the chainsaw scene

was probably the most gruelling and arduous thing I’ve ever done.

Something that I wasn’t willing to compromise on in that scene was that I felt there needed to be an elemental aspect to the scene, of just smoke and wind blowing through the area. And when you have that little time, every element you add to that is just going to compound on top of you. The smoke machine kept breaking, the fan kept on breaking down. It was the most emotionally taxing, physically taxing night that I’ve ever had.

How long did you actually have to film Mandy?

Panos Cosmatos: The shooting schedule was about 26 days, I think.

Oh my god, that seems so tight?

Panos Cosmatos: Yeah, if I’d known how tight that was going to be, I probably would have run away screaming. [Laughs].

What do you think drives you to make films?

Panos Cosmatos: Well, I’ve always loved them and when I went to therapy after my dad died I had this moment of clarity where I pictured myself in my room ten years later still having not made a film, and it really shook me.

Because all I ever wanted to do was just make films and I was nowhere near achieving that goal.

That desire to just make one thing before I die is what really drove me to make Black Rainbow. The fact that Mandy [came about] is just icing on the cake – I never thought I’d make one, let alone two movies. I really thought Black Rainbow would be the first and last thing I ever did. But at the end of the day, what drives me is the love of creating, you know?

What were some of the biggest challenges you faced while writing the script for this film?

Panos Cosmatos: The biggest challenge with writing is always just sitting in front of the typewriter. I don’t love the act of actually writing down a script in screenplay format, and after Black Rainbow when I basically spent years in a room going insane, one of the reasons why

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 53

9

6

8

THE MOST UNDERRATED

HORROR MOVIE SCORES OF ALL TIME

By Joseph Earp

Halloween is objectively the greatest holiday of them all. Fight me.

I mean, seriously, Halloween provides an opportunity to binge on horror movies, objectively the greatest art form of them all (fight me, again) and to gorge on lollies. What more could you possibly want out of a holiday? Christmas and yer birthday can get stuffed.

That said, every perfect Halloween night needs a score.

To that end, here are the ten most underrated servings of horror soundtrack kitsch – oversaturated delights which, played loud enough, will keep the trick-or-treaters miles away and have your neighbours pounding on the walls.

10.

Howard Shore – The Brood

Of all the great director/ composer partnerships, there are perhaps none as spinetinglingly brilliant as the meeting of minds represented by David Cronenberg and Howard Shore.

Indeed, though Shore is best known for his work with Peter Jackson and his role as the composer for the Lord Of The Rings films, his finest work has always been done with the support of Cronenberg.

Any number of Shore’s Cronenberg-era soundtracks could sit comfortably on this list, but perhaps his most deranged work is the screechy, uneasy score he turned in for The Brood, a blood-drenched, pitch-perfect film that explores maternity, divorce and mental health.

Oh, and for the record, it also contains a scene in which a mother licks an evil serial killer foetus. Yum!

9.

John Williams – The Fury

The Fury isn’t a particularly great film. Despite being helmed by dark master Brian De Palma and featuring a fantastically creepy turn from renowned indie actor and director John Cassavetes, it’s all a bit hamfisted and stiff, with a plot that too often gets bogged down in mundanity. Nonetheless, it does have something going for it: an incredible, oversaturated score from John Williams, he of Star Wars fame.

Actually, considering it contains an incredibly grotty human explosion scene, make that two things going for it.

“Any number of Howard Shore’s Cronenberg-era soundtracks could sit comfortably on this list, but perhaps his most deranged work is the screechy, uneasy score he turned in for The Brood.”

10

54 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

8.

John Carpenter – Prince Of Darkness

Given John Carpenter has pretty much packed up on being a film director and has now totally dedicated himself to music, it was perhaps unsurprising he was going to end up on this list (speaking of which, his latest album, Lost Themes II, is well worth your time).

Though he is of course most famous for the eerie, oftimitated Halloween theme, his best work was written for the underrated fl ick Prince Of Darkness, a piece that infuses the horror genre with a surprisingly fi tting jolt of science and quantum physics.

Refl ecting the fi lm’s diverse range of influences, the soundtrack mashes up horror tropes with synth-heavy sci-fi work, creating a strange blend of styles that truly gels.

7.

Riz Ortolani – Cannibal Holocaust

Cannibal Holocaust is one of the most controversial films ever made. The progenitor for The Blair Witch Project, it’s a found footage film that contains actual, real-life animal dismemberment, screened alongside staged scenes of humans being tortured. Given the blend of the real and fake, it was perhaps unsurprising that some poor cinemagoers actually believed the director, Ruggero Deodato, had murdered his cast and crew on camera, and he was forced to testify in front of a court that he hadn’t actually, you know, killed people.

That said, you’d never be able to guess at all that controversy simply by listening to the score, given Riz Ortolani’s soundtrack work is surprisingly beautiful and subdued. Blot out all thoughts of murder, and it’s actually pretty chill.

“Given John Carpenter has pretty much packed up on being a film director and has now totally dedicated himself to music, it was perhaps unsurprising he was going to end up on this list.”

6.

Seppuku Paradigm – Martyrs

There’s a nice segue between Cannibal Holocaust and Martyrs, actually: despite the fact the former is an Italian production and the latter is French, and that the projects were made decades apart, both are unremittingly dark, violent films accompanied by beautiful scores.

Actually, Martyrs might be perhaps the most gruelling film of recent years, a nonstop barrage of bloodshed that ends up offering some very deep (yet extraordinarily nihilistic) things to say about the human condition. But again, you’d never be able to tell that if you skipped watching the film and merely checked out the soundtrack, a powerful collection of tunes anchored by the striking ‘Your Witness’.

7

thebrag.com

5

2

4

2.

5.

Paul Williams – Phantom Of The Paradise

Brian De Palma, director of the aforementioned The Fury, sure does know how to pick musical collaborators. That said, though the Hitchcock-devotee loves pairing up with a varied selection of maestros, none of his partners in crime have proven to be more talented than singer-songwriter Paul Williams, the man De Palma selected to score his satire of the music industry, Phantom Of The Paradise.

Williams is a musical chameleon, a man who can adopt and discard styles at the drop of a hat, making him a perfect choice for the film.

His musical score combines elements of country, glam rock, opera and kitsch, an ideal accompaniment to a movie this batshit crazy.

4.

Richard Band – Re-Animator

Richard Band’s score for horror classic Re-Animator has never really been given its dues, thanks in no small part to the plagiarism claims that have always dogged it. Band wrote the soundtrack as a deliberate nod to Bernard Herrmann’s work on Psycho, keen to make sure that Re-Animator’s OST played around with horror tropes in the same cheeky, provocative manner that the film itself did.

Sean Spillane – The Woman

Of all the soundtrack work on this list, Sean Spillane’s impeccable score for The Woman is perhaps the most unconventional. In fact, it’s not really a soundtrack at all: it’s more of a straight-up-anddown rock’n’roll record, one that happens to perfectly fit with The Woman‘s themes of imprisoment, the fragility of masculinity and the ugly side of the American suburbs.

Almost every track on the piece is a delight, each song drawing from sludge and punk rock influences like The Ramones and Nirvana without ever seeming overly retro or fixed in the past. In fact, the forwardthinking nature of the music is what means the album still feels so cutting-edge today: it hasn’t dated one iota. Rather, every single year seems to add something more to the piece.

It demands your attention. Get on it.

“Creepshow is a fucken’ perfect film.”

Harrison 1. John – Creepshow

And yet few critics picked up on that joke, instead somehow believing that Band was trying to rip off one of the most famous scores of all time and hoping that no one would notice.

Irregardless, Band’s work represents the very highest tier of horror soundtracks: it’s ridiculous, gauche and absolutely unpredictable.

“Richard Band’s score for horror classic Re-Animator has never really been given its dues, thanks in no small part to the plagiarism claims that have always dogged it.”

3.

Goblin – Tenebre

There’s not much to say about a film score as brilliant as Goblin’s work on Tenebre, really. It’s the kind of unapologetically mental work of art that words only detract from. So let’s leave it at this: if you haven’t seen that movie, you need to. Now.

3

Creepshow is a fucken’ perfect film. I mean, I know this column is meant to be about the soundtracks rather than the movies themselves, but let me quickly take the time to encourage you to watch this flick come Halloween. It was written by Stephen King, directed by Dawn Of The Dead‘s George A. Romero and features cameos from Leslie Neilsen and Ted Danson. Oh, and there’s a scene in which King, in a rare turn in front of the camera as the doomed Jordy Verrill, mugs like his life depends on it.

It also features one of the greatest soundtracks of all time, an oversaturated delight penned by the film’s first assistant director, John Harrison. Not a single second of the thing goes for a subdued approach: it is magnificent, unhinged brilliance every step of the way.

Every time you think it can’t get sillier, or that the pounding electronic keys can’t get any more debauched, the work surprises you, overreaching itself and tumbling down into sheer insanity. Forget Bob fucken’ Dylan winning the Nobel Prize: if they were going to give it to a musician, they should have given it to Harrison.

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 55

arts in focus

50

49

48

47

FEATURE

THE BEST

HORROR MOVIES OF THE 21ST CENTURY

By Joseph Earp

50.

The Babadook

Jennier Kent’s portrait of grief and pain has a cathartic power all of its own.

The script is watertight; the performances are uniformly excellent; and The Babadook itself is a bold new horror icon.

What more could you want?

49.

Beneath

Larry Fessenden’s bonkers, microbudget raft movie has it all, from a killer fish, to scorned lovers, to sacrifice. It’s all held together by the sheer strength of Fessenden’s vision, and, as ever, bursts with his trademark heart, humour, and horror. We don’t appreciate the man enough.

48.

Slither

Before he made his name as a director of billiondollar blockbusters, James Gunn used to play around the muck with the rest of us, making deliciously gooey serves of body horror like Slither. Unfairly maligned on its release, the film is a horror fan’s dream, packed as it is with hat-tips and horrors out of space in equal measure.

47.

We Are The Flesh

Thank God We Are The Flesh only runs a lean 79 minutes – any longer and it might have proven genuinely un-releasable, not to mention unwatchable. A postapocalyptic drama that sets

two siblings against a perverse mastermind named Mariano, this is the definition of a tough watch – incest is only the tip of the iceberg here. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

46.

The Descent

Despite the potent terror of being trapped in tight spaces, few filmmakers have nailed a true sense of claustrophobia in their films, making The Descent all the rarer a beast. A disturbing look at a group of people pushed to their very limits, it’s as mean-spirited and tense as contemporary horror flicks come.

45.

It Comes At Night

Blame the promotional materials for It Comes At Night’s muted audience response – they promised a blood-soaked, apocalyptic tale with a twist, which the film most certainly is not. Rather, it’s a stripped-down morality tale that tackles that most overwhelming of contemporary horrors: having roommates.

“Larry Fessenden’s bonkers, microbudget raft movie has it all, from a killer fish, to scorned lovers, to sacrifice.”

44.

Tigers Are Not Afraid

An astonishing blend of fantasy and real world horrors, Tigers Are Not Afraid has frequently been compared to the work of the film’s producer, Guillermo Del Toro. And while the comparisons make sense, they don’t do enough justice to the film’s writer and director, Issa López, a bold new genre voice who handles her film’s frequent left turns with genuine aplomb.

43.

The Cottage

42.

The Midnight Meat Train

The Cottage, a genre-bending slasher-cumdark comedy-cum crime thriller, is well overdue its critical reappraisal. Boasting a brilliant comic performance by Reese Shearsmith of League Of Gentlemen fame, not to mention a scene-chewing turn from Andy Serkis, it’s a perfect meld of tones, topped off by one of the most thrillingly nasty finales of recent memory.

Based on the bonkers Clive Barker short story of the same

name, The Midnight Meat Train was unfairly maligned on its initial release. Rather than the brain-dead gore fest it was painted as by critics, this is a startlingly surreal and expertly handled slasher – one that takes a turn towards the outright mad in its final act that will stay with you forever.

41.

Killing Ground

From our review: “Killing Ground, the debut film from writer/director Damien Power, is a horrific Rube Goldberg machine, a complicated series of chance encounters and violent clashes that builds up to a searing, blood-soaked finale. In that way, the destination won’t be much of a surprise – given the ‘perfect young couple head into the outback’ setup, it’s not a question of if things are going to go wrong but when – and yet the way Power spins his cogs into motion is sickly thrilling.”

40.

High Tension

Sure, Alexandre Aja’s High Tension might end on a bum note – its “twist” is so

46

45

44

43

42

41

40

39

56 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

thebrag.com

Beautiful Monsters:

FEATURE

In Praise Of Basil Gogos

By Joseph Earp The history of horror art can be divided into two distinct phases: before and after Gogos. Such was the impact of Basil Gogos, an Egyptianborn, USA-based illustrator whose colourful work decorated the cover of Famous Monsters Of Filmland magazine for one glorious decade, leaving a mark on the entire artform that is still visible to this day.

Not, mind you, that it was ever Gogos’ intention to get into such a line of work. Sure, he had always wanted to be an illustrator – he was scribbling away on loose paper even as a child – but his initial aims were slightly more prestigious. He spent time at The National School of Design, and New York’s prestigious School of Visual Arts, before eventually studying under Frank J. Reilly, a muralist whose work tipped its hat to French 19th century portraiture.

But at the time, New York rent was expensive, the fine art scene was hermetically sealed, and Gogos was determined to make a paycheque however he could. So when an opportunity came around to illustrate Pursuit, a pulpy Western novel from a virtually unknown author, Gogos took it.

“Thank God We Are The Flesh only runs a lean 79 minutes – any longer and it might have proven genuinely un-releasable, not to mention unwatchable.”

But even then, Gogos was moving against the grain. While his peers settled for strangely neutral, toothless work – the kind of illustrations that get parodied now as the least interesting examples of “boy’s own adventure” style art – Gogos let splashes

ludicrous as to genuinely beg belief. But everything before that is so strong – so memorably and expertly handled – that it still more than earns its place on this list.

39.

▲

So began one of the most productive phases of Gogos’ career. The New York periodical scene was booming, and Gogos carved himself a space as the premier illustrator for men’s magazines. It was during this time that his still nascent style began to develop. His work from the period shows a fascination with the human form, and he spent hours and hours painting scenes of brawny men at war, or fighting off exotic horrors.

“The history of horror art can be divided into two distinct phases: before and after Gogos.”

Cherry Tree Lane

▲

The house invasion sub-genre is given new life in this, a real-time thriller that barrels from one nasty set-up to another, as a young couple find themselves menaced by a pack of goons. The ending will suck the air out of you. The film’s director, Paul Andrew Williams, has spent the last few years making a comedy aimed squarely at pensioners, Song For Marion, and TV movies – it’s high time he returned to horror.

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 57

arts in focus

38

37

36

35

34

33

32

31

“The Witch is an evil film.”

38.

The Orphanage

Peter Pan shot through with ten gallons of loss, The Orphanage intellectualises its pantheon of childlike spirits without ever making them lose their edge – they remain genuinely horrifying throughout, even as you come to oddly empathise with them. The twist will wreck you.

37.

The Mist

Frank Darabont’s The Mist boasts that rare distinction: it somehow manages to top the ending of its source text, a short story by Stephen King.

But the film’s invigoratingly cruel – and genuinely unexpected – denouement isn’t all it has going for it; it’s a thrill ride throughout, as a gaggle of mismatched characters find themselves locked in a grocery store during some distinctly lethal goings-on.

36.

American Mary

This Soska Sistershelmed character study feels like something plucked out of another dimension. Yet for all of its unpredictable narrative twists and turns, not to mention its invigoratingly academic approach to its amoral main

characters, it’s also genuinely heartfelt: a horror film that mixes melancholia, gore, and humanity into one distinct package.

35.

The Witch

From our review: “The Witch is an evil film. It’s a haunted strip of celluloid, the kind of movie the conservative far-right is terrified will have teenagers trying to summon the devil in their garage – a sick, sadistic experience helmed by a director both disgusted by and fascinated with the human race and its frailty. It’s also a masterpiece.”

34.

We Are What We Are

A cannibal flick with a difference, Jorge Michel Grau’s We Are What We Are is a slow-burner, as much of a character drama as it is an all-out shocker. That’s not, mind you, to deny the impact of where the film ends up: by its finale, this transforms into a genuinely tragic bloodletter, as a Mexican family with – let’s call them unique – tastes run afoul of the law.

33.

Detention

Detention isn’t as much a film as it is a bullet train riding straight

through your skull. Like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off on methamphetamines, it zig zags between arch comedy, time-travelling lunacy, and slasher excess. By the end, it’s increasingly difficult to tell who anybody actually is, let alone whether they’re trying to kill or fuck each other – but that’s entirely the point. It’s an information overload aimed squarely for the information overloaded generation. No wonder the pantheon of baby boomer critics hated it.

32.

Dark Water

Already having proved himself a master of the genre with Ring, Hideo Nakata’s Dark Water doubles down on the director’s significant talents.

Less outright horrific than that earlier masterpiece, Dark Water is a slow-burner, seeping deep down into your bones the longer it goes on.

31.

Eden Lake

Like Deliverance on crack, Eden Lake drops two bougie middle-classers in a rural world that they dismiss at their own significant peril.

Featuring a stellar, blood-andguts soaked turn from a prefame Michael Fassbender, it’s a harrowing, bleak little watch with a finale as barbed as a fish hook.

30.

Prevenge

29.

Creep 2

Prevenge has one of those set-ups so strong you have to wonder why no-one ever thought of it before: a pregnant woman is guided to slaughter by the insidious, sing-song voice of her unborn child. Alice Lowe, the film’s star and director, handles both roles like a true titan, mixing horror and comedy with the skill of a true master.

While Creep was a straightforward – if inspired – found footage slasher that spent its brisk run-time building up and then deflating tension, Creep 2 is another beast altogether. A post-modern deconstruction of the horror film, it’s a whip smart twohander; like some Harold Pinter play on crack. Mark Duplass’s performance, which goes from goofy grins to eerie threats in a split second, is an all-timer.

28.

You’re Next

Director/writer team Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett excel at taking bare bones premises and spinning them into something unexpected and odd. Case in point? The pair’s magnum opus, You’re Next, a home invasion thriller that unpicks the genre while still treating it with the upmost respect.

“Director/writer team Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett excel at taking bare bones premises and spinning them into something unexpected and odd.”

27.

Upgrade

From our review: “This is one of the most thrilling, fucked-up films of the year, a cult masterpiece constructed out of scrap metal and human viscera. For the length of its running time, Upgrade is as immediate and uncomplicated as a switchblade pressed against the throat.”

26.

Suicide Club

25.

Crimson Peak

24.

May

Suicide Club, the work of genre maverick Sion Sono, is like something torn out of a fever-dream. Opening with one of the most striking horror setpieces of the century, it has the sweat-soaked magic realism of Junji Ito, and a lopsided sense of tone that belongs solely to Sono.

A gothic melodrama that calls to mind everything from The Changeling to The Innocents, this Guillermo del Toro-shocker is as heartfelt as it is haunted: the dilapidated, claysplattered Thomas and Lucille Sharpe are some of the most tragic characters the auteur has ever sketched. Add in a small army of blood red ghosts, a brutal ending, and a dozen shattered taboos, and you have a film that lives in a world entirely of its own.

Frankenstein for the early internet generation, May is Lucky McKee’s escapist fantasy, a restrained look at loneliness, hurt, and, oddly enough, redemption. There

30

29

28

27

26

25

24

23

58 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

thebrag.com

arts in focus

22.

21

20

16

15

14

The Ritual

Even if it didn’t boast one of the most inspired creature designs of the last 40 years, the sheer emotional intelligence of The Ritual, a Netflix-produced chiller, would earn it a place on this list.

Rafe Spall is a muted, spiky man who, with a bunch of his mates, goes on a terribly misguided holiday to honour a fallen friend. The ending is truly inspired.

21.

22

The Devil’s Backbone

Another Del Toro ghost story, The Devil’s Backbone uses the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War to tell a tale of innocence lost. It might be the man’s most melancholic film, filled as it is with an assortment of weepy-eyed, bleeding ghosts, trapped in a boarding school that time seems to have forgotten. It’s also one of his best.

20.

Don’t Breathe

Fede Alvarez’s bona fide masterpiece, Don’t Breathe takes an elegantly simple setup – a group of teenagers try to outwit a blind man, only to find the tables turned when he traps them in his house and shuts the lights off – and goes bonkers with it. You’ll never look at basters the same way.

19.

Imprint

The most impressive episode of the sadly missed Masters Of Horror anthology series, Imprint is a skin-crawling tale from Takashi Miike that sees the Japanese master return to his most beloved of torture devices – needles.

Loping from one horror to another, it’s as sudden and unexpected as a knife in the guts. Long live the master.

18.

Beyond The Black Rainbow

Panos Cosmatos’ artistic means of dealing with grief – he’s since described it as an inhale, following the death of his parents – Beyond The Black Rainbow is a multicoloured slow-burner that becomes one of the most effective slasher films of recent memory in its final act.

17.

Triangle

A slasher with a difference, Triangle has the guts to reveal its genre-busting twist early, as a young, apparently doting mother, finds herself haunted by a masked killer she soon learns is more familiar than she might initially think. It all builds up to one agonising conclusion, as the world writerdirector Christopher Smith has carefully drawn unpicks itself.

16.

We Are Still Here

We Are Still Here, Ted Geoghegan’s astonishing debut, starts as a brilliant example of one type of horror flick, before suddenly morphing into a brilliant example of another. Fulci is often considered the reference point, but in actuality, this one has an energy all of Geoghegan’s own.

Special credit must also go to genre superstar Elissa Dowling, who fully inhabits her role as a creaky, cracked ghost unwilling to relinquish their humanity.

“A vicious nightmare of a film, Antichrist is Lars Von Trier’s most accomplished work.”

15.

Antichrist

A vicious nightmare of a film, Antichrist is Lars Von Trier’s most accomplished work.

The death of a young child sets the whole plot in motion – and that’s not the only taboo Von Trier shatters, as the film rattles towards its disturbingly inevitable conclusion.

14.

The Evil Within

The Evil Within doesn’t feel as much like a film as it does a relic from some long forgotten, evil civilisation.

Filmed over several years and assembled only after the tragic death of its writer-director, it’s the kind of oddball work of anti-art that most filmmakers couldn’t replicate even if they tried.

13.

The Host

Just when ya thought you’d seen every pleasure the creature feature sub-genre has to offer, along came Bong Joon-Ho with The Host, a humanist, anti-colonial and distinctly toothy parable.

Setting a dunderhead and his family – both biological and adopted – against a vicious monster born of illegal chemical dumping, The Host ripples with the kind of pleasures only JoonHo can provide.

12.

The Autopsy Of Jane Doe

From our review: “There is so much to love here; so much colour, and humour, and horror, and stylishly captured sickness.

And of course, there’s Jane Doe herself: inspiration for a thousand future Halloween costumes and an icon in the making. She is, after

all, the film’s key: a unique, unforgettable horror lurking like a tumour at the centre of one of the most exciting American genre films to be released in years.”

11.

Goodnight Mommy

Perhaps the toughest watch on this list, Goodnight Mommy inexorably pivots from slowburning arthouse project to an all-out torture device, one pumped full of the kind of violence that will make even the most hardened horror fans curl their toes. Not, mind you, that all that horror is there simply for the sake of it. No, this is a smart, terrifying fairy tale – one that uses every single (admittedly awful) bout of suffering in the service of its relentless finale.

10.

Wolf Creek 2

Australia’s (selfappointed) cultural highbrow types got Wolf Creek 2 totally wrong, misreading it as a

“Pulse is perhaps the only film on this list that I would not recommend watching alone.”

sadistic overabundance of slasher tropes. They convinced themselves – and, apparently, anyone they could get to listen – that director Greg McLean enjoyed spilling blood as much as his Akubra-hat sporting antagonist Mick Taylor. How wrong they were. Wolf Creek 2 isn’t the gruelling genre outing it was painted as being: it’s a much smarter film than that, full of razor-sharp satire, and helmed with the skill of a true horror visionary.

9.

Kill List

Like horror classic The Wicker Man before it, Ben Wheatley’s Kill List resists easy interpretation. It starts simply enough, as a hitman finds himself tasked with working his way through the titular list, building up a small mountain of bodies along the way. But before long, the film is accumulating runes, paedophiles, and strange, vicious rituals, all designed to serve some deliberately murky cause. What you can glean is enough to warp your mind.

8.

Pulse

Pulse is terrifying.

That’s not up for debate. What is, however, is the question of what makes it so. Virtually bloodless, strange and weaving, it doesn’t work in the way other chillers do. It snakes its way inside you, lying hard and cold in your gut, and it doesn’t budge. Even when you can’t process what exactly you’re terrified of, you’re still terrified. It is perhaps the only film on this list that I would not recommend watching alone.

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

60 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

thebrag.com

“Long live monsters. Long live Gogos.”

FEATURE

▲

of surreality move into his work. His use of colour in particular proved inspired – even Gogos’ war zones were fetching messes of reds, yellows, and oranges, and his jungles were like wet, sopping, Cezanne-esque maws.

It was this style that would define Gogos’ work with Monsters Of Filmland, and indeed, the rest of his extraordinary career. He began working with Filmland in the early ’60s; his first illustration for them was of Vincent Price in his House Of Usher phase, his eyes burning and his face a chalky death mask, the background behind him a melange that looked more like a sunset than anything horror fans might have otherwise expected.

This, indeed, proved to be Gogos’ great unique talent: he understood that monsters have colour. They need not be dusty, black and white wraiths tucked away in the shadows; they can be these bright, oddly beautiful, utterly life-filled creations. It is in this way that Gogos’ legacy can be measured. After the artist’s incredible decade long-run at Filmland, the game was forever changed: not only did the man inspire an entire generation of illustrators, but his work became the high watermark for the entire artform. It’s hard to imagine, for example, that the nightmares plastered onto every copy of the Goosebumps franchise would exist without Gogos, and his singular creative vision.

“There aren’t many directors who would have the bravery to even tackle McKee’s ending, let alone nail it as well as he does.”

Gogos passed away last year at the age 88. But his work is continuing to pervade the culture; to inspire. His monster portraits appear on highly-desired trading cards; his work circulates like a wildfire online; and his imitators pay homage to his work with their own technicolour horrors. Long live monsters. Long live Gogos. ■

aren’t many directors who would have the bravery to even tackle McKee’s ending, let alone nail it as well as he does. Still waiting for the day Angela Bettiss, who delivers career-best work here, is appreciated as one of the most talented performers of her generation.

23.

Curse Of Chucky

▲

Don Mancini has spent the last 30 years doing whatever the fuck he wants with the Chucky franchise, God bless his heart, and never has his creative blank check being more clearly realised than in Curse Of Chucky. A bonkers slasher with more guts and verve than most, it was sadly sent straight to DVD by Universal Pictures, who clearly didn’t understand what a little gem they had on their hands. Their loss.

“Gogos’ work from the period shows a fascination with the human form, and he spent hours and hours painting scenes of brawny men at war, or fighting off exotic horrors.”

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 59

19

18

17

13

12

11

7.

Raw

From our review: “Raw all leads up to a tabooshattering conclusion, a punchline with a stench so bad it will make the unprepared gag. But even in its brutal finale, the film shows off its renegade sense of humour, and Ducournau’s empathy for her lead stops Raw from becoming a mere exercise in cruelty or bad taste.”

6.

Trick ‘r Treat

Most anthology films end up being considerably less than the sum of their parts – on the whole they’re lopsided affairs, uneven and messy portmanteaus that leave very little in their wake. But Trick R Treat isn’t like most anthology horror films. The strongest entry in the sub-genre since Creepshow, it’s a viciously funny grab bag of shocks, blood splurts, and sleights of hand, as the lives of a gaggle of murderers, beasties, and victims intersect one Halloween night.

5.

Spring

To say much of Spring’s plot is to ruin what makes it so special – indeed, given its carefully and intelligently drawn first act, even including it on this list should be considered a spoiler of some sort. Safe to say, director duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead pull off a tight-rope trick that most would consider utterly impossible, managing to craft a phenomenal body horror flick that owes equal debts to H.P. Lovecraft and a slew of meet-cute dramas. The real genius is they somehow manage to water down neither

– the love story is affectionately and authentically told, and the moments of garish violence are dropped with real aplomb.

4.

The Woman

3.

Green Room

Lucky McKee’s bona fide masterpiece, The Woman is an odd, blood-soaked character study of sorts, as a seemingly normal family find and “tame” the titular barbarian. But it’s also so much more than that, touching on everything from feminist parable to a distinctly Lynchian deconstruction of all the dirty secrets that lie beneath suburbia.

Oh, and by the way: Pollyanna McIntosh for President.

Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room spends its first act setting up the apparatus for one of the most brutal conclusions in recent horror film history, before stepping back and letting the pieces brutally put themselves together. It has all the tragic, inexorable pull of a Shakespearean revenge drama, or a bad dream: no matter how much its doomed heroes try, it seems they cannot outwit the resourceful neo-Nazis standing behind a locked door, holding all of the cards.

1.

2.

Drag Me To Hell

Drag Me To Hell is a hundred different things to a hundred different people. Some have called it a revisionist, nostalgic splatter-flick; an amusingly classic horror film that only the director of The Evil Dead could have made. Others still view it through the lens of social satire, marvelling at the way it inserts house foreclosures into an otherworldly tale of ancient curses. But whatever you want to call it, the bottom line is this: it is a horror masterpiece, from one of the very greatest filmmakers of all time – horror or not.

Come back to us horror fans, Sam. We miss you.

Martyrs

Beginning as a supernatural thriller, moving through revenge drama, and ending up, inexplicably, prodding at the very origins of the universe and life after death itself, Martyrs is the horror equivalent of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film that never lets good taste get in the way of its ambitions.

It is also, admittedly, a tough watch – long sections of its third act feel as gruelling for its audience as they do for the film’s doomed heroine – but the violence isn’t some distraction from the plot; it is the plot. This is a film obsessed with the legacy of hurt; with the strange ways that it can condemn and absolve. In its extremity, and intelligence, and terrible, tragic power, it is one of the most striking and original documents of the 21st century. ■

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 61

arts in focus

FEATURE

Roger Watkins in On Dead End Street

Stay Behind The Screen:

THE STRANGE & TRAGIC CAREER OF

ROGER WATKINS

By Kai Perrignon

I

n 1972, an angry film student in upstate New York spent US$2200 on methamphetamines. Not the smartest idea, given he only had $800 left in his budget to make his film. That film, shot without synced sound, mostly in a warehouse, is about an ex-con who decides to make snuff films to get revenge on the world that spurned him.

The original cut of this grimy picture ran three hours long and was called The Cuckoo Clocks Of Hell, in reference to Kurt Vonnegut’s book Mother Night.

Rumours still swirl that the original theatre at which the cut was shown burned down in an ensuing riot, so maddening was the movie.

What is known is that when the distributors saw the film – messy and indulgent, as disturbing as it is cheap – they freaked out. They cut the film down to less than 80 minutes, and in 1977, they quietly released it under the name The Last House On Dead End Street to capitalise on Wes Craven’s 1972 film The Last House on the Left.

For decades after its release, no one knew who made The

Last House On Dead End Street, because everyone involved in its production used pseudonyms. Partly due to those pseudonyms, partly due to its scarcity (it was available for years on a South American VHS copy known as “The Venezuelan Rip”), partly because it’s fun to believe in ghost stories, rumour spread that Dead End Street is a real snuff film.

It took until 2000 for all the mysteries to be dispelled. On an online message board, a man named Roger Watkins came forward as the writer, director, editor, and star of Dead End Street. Not only that, but he revealed he had also made a number of adult films under another pseudonym.

In niche circles, Watkins became a star, sought out by underground zines like Ultra Violent for interviews, welcomed to horror festivals, fans finally able to heap praise upon a barely-known horror maverick – the kind of filmmaker whose sub-basement obscurity only intensified the obsession of his fans. Watkins didn’t quite understand the praise, though: in interviews, Watkins showed a

On Dead End Street

“For decades after its release, no one knew who made The Last House On Dead End Street, because everyone involved in its production used pseudonyms.”

62 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

mild disdain for his chopped up debut, calling it “incompetent.”

Which is not an unfair descriptor. The Last House On Dead End Street is often just that. It’s also repulsive and cruel, pretentious and offensive.

It’s a movie where a woman dresses up in black-face at a party and is whipped, while her pornographer husband talks about how no one is satisfied by normal stag pictures these days; how they’re always looking for harder stuff. It’s a movie where the main character cackles as he and his entourage film the murder of a blind homeless man. It’s a truly reprehensible film.

But it’s also one of a strange power, of pure vile horror that gets deep into the brain and leaves one’s nightmare’s sticky for weeks. Beyond all the mess, there’s true talent at work, real intelligence behind the camera. Watkins’ compositions are purposefully discomfiting and even mythic in their broad strokes of colour and blinding lights. Negative space fills the frame, making every moment feel empty, like it’s happening at the heart of a black hole.

Even the dubbing, so poor that it’s often tough to tell exactly who is speaking, adds to the sense of disconnect, leaving the viewer floating without anchor; the only audio constant being the in-your-face sound mixing, all old organ music and heartbeats blasting over barely audible, murderous whisperings.

“In a memorable scene our ‘hero’, the director, screams at a meddling producer to ‘Stay behind the screen!’ but it’s no use; everything’s already lost.”

Alas, the bungled release of his debut left him in the lurch. Needing to support his family, Watkins turned to the hardcore pornography scene to pay the bills. Over the next decade, Watkins made a series of bleak, deeply unerotic porn films, and, despite his vocal distaste for the genre, showed a clear artistic ambition that often overcame the disreputable mode of filmmaking.

His porn career began in 1980, with Her Name is Lisa, the slow, doomed journey of a young woman (Samantha Fox) being exploited by a ladder of those she grows to trust and then hate, including a protoTerry Richardson type. Even if the ultimate product is more a fascinating contradiction than successful fi lm, Watkins

manages some surprisingly poetic sequences in between the anatomical sex scenes.

Though he made a couple of lighter fl icks after Lisa, it wasn’t until 1983 that Watkins hit his stride. That’s when he released Corruption, a seedy, metaphysical critique of ’80s excess and pornography itself. Business deals in a brothel where men “renounce love”, a peep show that transports the viewer into their debased fantasies, a mime laying with a corpse on an altar; all these strange, scary, sometimes goofy images, presented with consideration of aesthetic and theme that refl ects Watkins’ debut, trying and failing to reconcile oneself with the exploitation they seek out on their theatre screens.

“Watkins didn’t quite understand the praise, though: in interviews, Watkins showed a mild disdain for his chopped up debut, calling it incompetent.”

There’s an anger beneath all the horror, the scream of a disillusioned young man trying to comprehend the corruption of a Post-Watergate, PostManson America. Here’s a creator asking, “What could be worse than what we see on the news every day?” and then trying to answer that question; trying to control the result. In a memorable scene our ‘hero’, the director, screams at a meddling producer to “Stay behind the screen!” but it’s no use; everything’s already lost.

Watching Dead End Street, it’s easy to imagine Watkins going on to have a distinctive career as a horror filmmaker.

Corruption thebrag.com

In 1985, Watkins made his last celluloid feature: American Babylon, a more honest version of American Beauty, where middle-aged suburban men fight their growing sense of impotence by watching industrial stag films together and having miserable affairs, eventually making their own, supposedly “honest” porno that will reflect their virility. Of course, it only highlights their irrelevance. Even as a comedy, American Babylon is as bleak as Watkins’ horror pictures, and it again showcases the scathing self-critique of a director who felt forced out of his dream profession into the back alleys of Hollywood.

The story of Roger Watkins feels oddly poignant in the age of Peak Content, when a million movies are released and immediately left to rot in the bowels of Netflix and Stan and VOD, with no marketing to speak of; it’s so easy for creators to slip through the cracks, to never get the recognition they deserve.

Roger Watkins slipped through the cracks, but he managed to make a bunch of movies in that dark hole, toiling unknown for decades. It’s lucky that some light was able to penetrate his grimy, beautiful abyss before his death in 2007; for a brief moment, he was finally able to get out from behind the screen. ■

How John Carpenter changed independent cinema forever

By Joseph Earp

FEATURE

“Roger Watkins slipped through the cracks, but he managed to make a bunch of movies in that dark hole, toiling unknown for decades.”

“Carpenter’s genius has always laid in his talent for crafting closed loops.”

T

he godparent of the American independent cinema movement is a title that has been messily bestowed on a whole heap of auteurs, with everyone from John Cassavetes to Robert Redford thrust up as figures deserving of the accolade. And yet although such filmmakers have had their own unique impact on the annals of indie cinema, perhaps none have left as distinct a mark as one John Carpenter, the horror master who has set the template for four decades of American cinema.

Carpenter’s genius has always laid in his talent for crafting closed loops. Carpenter’s films are often literally small – think Halloween, which goes down mostly over the space of a couple of suburban blocks, or Escape From New York, which makes the drawing of distinct spatial boundaries part of the plot – but massive in terms of ideas. It was a formula that he mastered early: his first film, Dark Star, is a miniature sci-fi dark comedy that’s also somehow about finding purpose in a hostile world lacking objective moral sense. And even his bigger works, masterful splotches of pain and paranoia like The Thing, have a sense of geographical control that brings to mind a stage play rather than a major American film.

Although Carpenter’s career has fluctuated between science fiction, horror, and action comedy, his modus operandi has largely stayed the same: he is a director singleminded in intent, a man who scrapes every last inch of fat off his scripts before jumping into filming. Such an approach was born out of a need to keep budgets down – Dark Star, Assault On Precinct 13, and Halloween cost $60,000, $100,000 and $300,000 respectively – but it has evolved into his director’s trademark; the skill that makes him so important as a filmmaker. Save his one slight glaring artistic disappointment, the uneven Ghosts Of Mars, a Carpenter film is as sharp as a needle. No line is wasted; no shot is expendable.

Halloween

“Although Carpenter’s career has fluctuated between science fiction, horror, and action comedy, his modus operandi has largely stayed the same.”

This then is Carpenter’s impact on American independent cinema, a rupturing of the norm that can be felt to this day. Carpenter’s ambition strained against the limit of his budgets in a way that was thrilling rather than frustrating. His films imply so much more than they show, hinting away at larger worlds; suggesting entire lifetimes and universes without ever having to depict them. They are films that burst beyond their own margins.

To glance through even the last few years of independent cinema is to see the longevity of Carpenter’s impact. Some homages to the man’s work are more obvious than others: Jeremy Saulnier’s excellent Green Room takes inspiration from both Carpenter’s closed loop set-ups, and his penchant for taboo-shattering bursts of violence, whereas Yann Demange’s lauded behind enemy lines thriller ’71 feels like a veritable Assault On Precinct 13 remake, shot through with the same sense of mournful anger and politicised hopelessness. But there are other, subtler ancestors of Carpenter’s legacy dotted about. Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire reeks of Carpentarian horror and slapstick; Good Time takes the grunge-splattered extremity of They Live and grounds it somewhere significantly more real; while Trey Edward Shults’ It Comes At Night is a film as sick and pale as The Thing.

The Thing

“To glance through even the last few years of independent cinema is to see the longevity of Carpenter’s impact.”

Escape From New York

“In France, I’m an auteur,” Carpenter once famously said. “In Germany, a filmmaker; in Britain; a genre film director; and, in the USA, a bum.” That might have been true once. But these days, in the USA, Carpenter is a formative figure; a director whose legacy can no longer be ignored. ■

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 63

arts in focus

REVIEW

■ TV

“Jack Ryan could go on forever.”

Jack Ryan is a new entry in the “Dad TV” sub-genre

By Cameron Williams

S

ince the dawn of television there have been shows created for dads. They do good work reading signs out loud and reminding kids they did not grow up in a tent; dads deserve to relax with television made for them. In the past, there have been exceptional dad shows like Friday Night Lights and Cheers; a few feature James Spader wearing a hat.

There are also shows that lean hard into their inner dad, like CSI (all of them), Criminal Minds, Suits,

Law And Order (all of them) and the greatest dad show of them all: NCIS. Well, the new Amazon Prime Video series, Jack Ryan, is a political thriller that joins the dad show ranks, and pairs well with a recliner and a Cascade Premium beer.

We last saw Jack Ryan, the character created by author, Tom Clancy, four years ago in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. Chris Pine became the fourth actor (but the only Chris; maybe Hemsworth or Pratt will be next) to play the fictional CIA analyst following Ben

“The dual life of its lead character is where Jack Ryan excels.”

Affleck (The Sum of All Fears), Harrison Ford (Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games) and Alec Baldwin (The Hunt for Red October).

In Jack Ryan, John Krasinski pulls on a well-fitted jumper to play the government agent who works a desk job by day while battling terrorists in extreme overtime. The plot focuses on Ryan tracking a series of suspicious bank transfers that lead to a shady organisation: following a hunch, Ryan’s boss (Wendell Pierce) tasks Ryan with leading a global manhunt to stop a sinister plan.

The major distraction in Jack Ryan is waiting for Krasinski to look into the camera. For those new to Krasinski it won’t be an issue. But if you’re coming at Jack Ryan with the persona of Jim from The Office still in mind – his definitive role to date – it’s a challenge adjusting to him as a man of action; although, the excellent film, A Quiet Place, may help ease you into this new phase of his career.

Krasinski has a natural charm that suits Jack Ryan, especially when he’s navigating intergovernmental politics to get what he wants by playing people against each other.

The always outstanding Pierce is terrific as Ryan’s chief/mentor, a man making up for past mistakes in a web of bureaucracy.

The dual life of its lead character is where Jack Ryan excels.

There’s a scene early in the series where Ryan’s exploits come up in conversation between his coworkers. Under the roof of the CIA everything is classified, so Ryan can only deny his involvement and a legend is born. Indeed, Krasinski was Marvel’s second choice to play Captain America in their films, so Ryan is a natural fit for the allAmerican hero he projects.

Jack Ryan

“In Jack Ryan, John Krasinski pulls on a well-fitted jumper to play the government agent who works a desk job by day while battling terrorists in extreme overtime.”

64 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

Ryan’s explosive encounters with terrorists is where Amazon’s budget detonates onscreen in spectacular action sequences. The blockbuster aesthetic is what separates Jack Ryan from other political thrillers on television. It has a similar vibe to Homeland but it sticks closer to Clancy’s vision of how American intelligence agencies operate with a slight tweak to Ryan’s backstory that provides a backdrop of posttraumatic stress disorder clichés.

The depiction of terrorists is where Jack Ryan goes backwards, and it’s reminiscent of films like True Lies and has shades of 24. Despite a vengeful plot, they come across as stereotypes, which amplifies the American jingoistic side of the show when anyone picks up a gun. Jack Ryan often plays like a straight version of Team America: World Police that undoes any of the brainpower put into developing Ryan as a character. Many of the posters used by Amazon to promote the show have Ryan walking away from explosions, which is symbolic of the show’s attitude toward America and the rest of the world.

Ryan and his team aren’t completely flawless and most of drama comes from when their plans get botched or they’re outsmarted. The ‘one step forward, two steps back’ formula works well, especially considering the series is a reboot for Clancy’s creation, so there are origin story elements the show has to plow through before the series can settle into a rhythm. Each episode is structured to end on an enticing cliffhanger to increase the binge factor, but it’s just enough to be motivated to see out the first season (Amazon have already commissioned a second ).

Ultimately, Jack Ryan is so bland it’s good, thanks to Krasinski’s charisma and its explosive action.

It’s the perfect show to fall asleep in front of, but wake to find you haven’t missed anything. And hey, Jack Ryan could go on forever. They could even do Jack Ryan: Miami.

Dad will be thrilled.

What: Jack Ryan is streaming via Amazon Prime now

thebrag.com

arts in focus “Worth special mention is Ted Geoghegan’s Mohawk.”

Mohawk

WITH JOSEPH EARP

What’s new to streaming?

“Terrifier, a gooey ’80s throwback, is also well worth the time of any contemporary horror hound looking for some old school kicks.”

Terrifi er

A

nd so we come again to that most wonderful time of the year: Halloween season! No matter that the human race’s inability to properly eliminate fossil fuels from our energy diet has doomed us all to bear witness to the total collapse of civilisation (expect opportunistic diseases, global outbreaks of war, and insecurity of food networks to ravage and eventually end the lives of you and your children).

No. Ignore that unpleasant, irreversible real world horror, and deep dive into the world of cinematic horror, the most successful and cathartic artform

us fucked-up denizens of a rapidly warming earth have ever managed to produce. After all, to paraphrase Wes Craven, horror films don’t create fear, they actualise it, so why not sit back, kick off your shoes, and use art to purge yourself of those apocalyptic thoughts that keep you up at night, won’tcha?

of tonal control with We Are Still Here, a particularly crunchy ghost story that sidles back and forth between slow-burning terror and all-out horror, Geoghegan leans into his unique skill set with his second feature, a survival horror nerve-shredder that has more heart and humanity than most recent flicks combined.

Before we run through the exciting horror originals Netflix are set to drop throughout October, let’s quickly glide through the classics the service already boast on the platform.

Worth special mention is Ted Geoghegan’s Mohawk. Having already proven himself a master

Terrifi er, a gooey ’80s throwback, is also well worth the time of any contemporary horror hound looking for some old school kicks. An arch riposte to the era of “elevated horror” in which we live, the film is gleefully nasty – it feels like something that could have poured from the pen of Bill

Lustig or Larry Cohen back in the day.

Following the exploits of Art the killer clown, a face-painted antagonist unsettling enough to give Pennywise a run for his money, the film has a sense of surreal, outlandish nastiness that is making a well-deserved comeback these days. Most mainstream critics hated it, because of course they did, but those looking for some blissfully cheap thrills need look no further.

Those not quite ready to stomach Terrifi er would do well to check out Hush. An elegant

little Netflix original directed by Mike Flanagan – the director of the equally harrowing Gerald’s Game – it’s a slasher film with a difference, as a deaf woman finds herself stalked by a masked killer. Flanagan’s original plan was to make the film totally silent, replicating for the audience the POV of his resourceful heroine. He might have abandoned that idea during the writing of the film, but that stripped-down approach to storytelling remains in other, surprising ways – this is a handsome little film with a narrative arc that bends thrillingly towards redemption.

Hunt it down.

Now, onto the newbies hitting Netflix throughout October.

Apostle Apostle, available October 12 Gareth Evans is back, baby!

Best known as the director of The Raid duology, some of the most thrillingly fucked up action films of recent memory, with Apostle Evans has returned to cult horror, a genre he stuck his flag back in with the bonkers (and brilliant) Safe Haven, a segment of 2013’s portmanteau film V/H/S/2. Like Safe Haven, Apostle focuses on a hero trying to infiltrate a

particularly bloodthirsty cult, as Dan Stevens’ Thomas Richardson must try to save his sister from an occult group led by the always charismatic Michael Sheen. Early reviews out of Texas’ Fantastic Fest have compared the film to Robin Hardy’s all-timer, The Wicker Man, a comparison sure to get any self-effacing horror fan drooling. Oh, and apparently the finale is utterly batshit. Colour me ready.

“No matter that the human race’s inability to properly eliminate fossil fuels from our energy diet has doomed us all to bear witness to the total collapse of civilisation.” thebrag.com

The Haunting Of Hill House, available October 12 Ole mate Mike Flanagan gets another peek in with The Haunting Of Hill House, a limited series based on Shirley Jackson’s novel of the same name, one of the ur-texts of the haunted house genre. Netflix are keeping mum on this one, but from the early trailers, it looks as though Flanagan is taking significant liberties with the text. After all, the book ends (SPOILERS!) on a note of uncertainty regarding the mental state of haunted heroine Eleanor – it’s never clear whether the ghostly apparitions of the book are a sign of her deteriorating mental state, or a genuine case of possession. By contrast, Flanagan’s adaptation looks to be heavily leaning into the supernatural side of things, with a trailer jam-packed with pale children reciting their dreams, foreboding shots of Hill House itself, and assorted bumps in the night.

It’s also being described as the “first season” of an ongoing project, so it’ll be interesting to see how Flanagan and co. spin quite a simple story into a streaming behemoth.

The Haunting Of Hill House

The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina

The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, available October 26 This new series is from the minds that brought you Riverdale, so one would be safe to expect that it’ll be a mess of high school horniness, ludicrous narrative turns, and a great deal of taboo-breaking. We’re keeping our expectations tampered

as a result – despite being early defenders of Riverdale, a lot of us at the BRAG offices have given up on that glut of madness. But the early trailers and promotional materials make this look like a genuinely interesting, visually inventive horror story, and a far cry from previous incarnations of the character. Let’s hope it’s a good ‘un.

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 65

game on Gaming news and reviews with Adam Guetti

OCT

2018

New Releases

With October finally upon us, welcome to the busiest period of the video game calendar. First up on Tuesday October 2 Forza Horizon 4 (XBO) hopes to race into your life with over 450 vehicles.

A few days later on Friday October 5 you can explore Ancient Greece in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (PS4, XBO, PC) as the series dives deeper

Review: Nanoleaf Light Panels and Remote

A

nybody who has tried to design the perfect gaming space can tell you it’s one hell of a challenge, which is why Nanoleaf hopes to alleviate at least some of those woes by offering up a lighting solution that isn’t just practical, but oozes style.

into RPG elements.

Also that day, Switch owners go head-tohead in Super Mario Party.

Things really kick into gear, however, from Friday October 12. That’s the day Call of Duty fans can get their hands on the latest in the blockbuster series, Black Ops 4 (PS4, XBO, PC) – now packing a battle royale mode.

Meanwhile, the little ones can get in on the action as well. On Tuesday October 16 Ubisoft enters the toys-to-life genre with Starlink: Battle for Atlas (PS4, XBO, Switch).

Then a day later on

Wednesday October 16 LEGO DC Super Villains (PS4, XBO, Switch, PC) grants the opportunity to create your very own scoundrel.

Wrapping up the month is Red Dead Redemption 2 – the long-awaited sequel to the 2010 classic western. There’s a lot of hype behind this one, so grab your copy quickly when it lands in stores on Friday October 26 for PS4, XBO and PC.

reviewroundup

By Adam Guetti

A pack of nine colour-changing triangular light panels, Nanoleaf’s base package is a breeze to get going. Simply create your own shape using sim-card-looking connectors to link panels together, hook it up to a power source and you’ll light your room up with truly stunning colours.

Even better is that you can utilise Apple HomeKit or the Nanoleaf app to change your scene between an absurd amount of options.

Adding the Rhythm - an additional module that helps the panels react to music in real time – to your panels is an obvious no-brainer. Watching the lights bounce around to the beat of your tracks is immensely satisfying to watch and perfect for parties, gaming sessions, or even a bit of mood lighting. The Rhythm even reacts to voice, which surprised and delighted sceptical bystanders who were quickly won over.

The Nanloleaf Remote, on the other hand, is a stylish dodecahedron-shaped Bluetooth device the size of a tennis ball. The new release product aims to reduce the amount of times you need to pick up your phone to switch colour patterns, but is also capable of controlling other devices linked to your smart home. It certainly succeeds in both goals, however remembering what you’ve

programmed into each of the twelve sides can get incredibly confusing incredibly fast.

Even if you don’t have an elaborate smart home set-up, Nanoleaf remains a worthwhile purchase.

The price tag might act as a barrier to entry for some (around $299.99 for the Starter Kit and $79.99 for the Remote), but once you have everything up and running, you’ll never be able to look at any room the same way.

Review: Spider-Man (PS4)

Review: NBA 2K19 (PS4, XBO, PC)

Good superhero games are a rare find nowadays, which is what makes SpiderMan so special – it’s not just great, it’s amazing. The game’s biggest win is the sheer joy that stems from swinging around Manhattan, which instantly feels satisfying and natural. The fact that Insomniac’s story is deeply engaging, and the abundance of collectibles are smartly doled out 5 further enriches the experience. All that’s left now is the painful wait for an inevitable sequel.

The NBA 2K series has been top dog for years now, and with 2K19 looking to score another slam dunk, it’s easy to see why. The continued refinement shows, with the core gameplay physics and defensive game both receiving welcomed tweaks. On the other hand, MyCAREER does become a tad grindy and its lengthy cutscenes remain a chore, but they’re minor niggles in what is 4 yet another polished entry.

Review: Shadow of the Tomb Raider (PS4, XBO, Windows)

Review: Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate (Switch, 3DS)

With a new developer behind the wheel, there was a lot of pressure for Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the final entry in Lara Croft’s rebooted trilogy, to deliver. As a result, you can expect a much larger, bombastic approach, but it does feel as though the overall narrative arc suffers 3.5 as a result, which is bound to disappoint fans seeking a well-earned conclusion.

Generations Ultimate is everything you need from a portable Monster Hunter game, and the fact that it’s actually a remaster of the 2016 3DS title makes it even more impressive. The improved real estate provides better visibility, while the graphics have received a much-needed 4 bump. The big drawback – newcomers are likely to sink before they swim.

66 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

Review: Shenmue I & II (PS4, XBO, Windows)

Avoice acting remains laughable, the story can drag, and you still have the ability to carry crates for hours. But there’s a quirky charm here that’ll keep you chugging along, making it a great history lesson for newcomers or 3.5 trip down memory lane for fans.

thebrag.com

N O K C SU IS

TH

y Happday! h Birt

ur o y k Checemail!!

Send a lemon to someone you love (hate)

Loveu yo

ou y y Wh ad? m

Deliver-A-Lemon is a service that allows you to send anyone a Lemon with a personalised message on it.

Thinking of sending a Birthday, Congrats, Get Well Soon card? This is a quirky and hilarious alternative to the traditional card!

deliveralemon.com.au thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 67

Sounds Like…

NEW ALBUM AND SINGLE RELE A SES WITH JOSEPH E ARP

Does anyone else get the feeling like the year is already wrapping up? I don’t know, maybe it has something to do with working on a monthly magazine, but for me, it feels like 2019 is sneaking around the corner. Which, don’t get me wrong, I reckon is broadly a good thing. I really thought 2017 was as shit as things could get, but 2018 has been one massive tidal wave of piss for me, personally.

As I have mentioned in this column already, my plan for the year was to watch a movie each day and get swole. So far I’ve watched 132 movies, which is fucking pitiful, and I am now so far behind my target I’m well aware I have no chance of catching up. The swole plan has also gone straight down the shitter, I must admit to you. I went to the gym five times a week for a period of six months, but all that did was empower me to eat shittier food (“I’ve been to the gym today, I can have sushi for every meal!”), so I think my general well-being has actually gotten worse.

“There are some who will be turned off by HM

Even more stressful than that, I’ve missed a lot of the releases that a lot of people are already calling the best of the year.

Uni has been a bugger for the last couple of months, and when that happens, I just retreat back into my auditory cocoon and listen to my comfort food. When I interviewed Henry Rollins a couple of years ago (#humblebrag), he told me that there were two ways to listen: carbohydrate listening, and protein listening.

Carbohydrate listening means falling back on your old favourites. Protein listening means pushing yourself, and widening your

“Negro Swan is a near flawless marriage of form and function.”

creative boundaries. Well, all I can tell you is, I’ve been doing a shit tonne of fucking carb listening recently.

So, to try and get myself out of this rut, and to trick myself into thinking that 2018 has been productive in at least some sense of the term, this last week I’ve gone back through the back catalogue and hoovered up some of the releases that I’ve missed.

First up, I got myself to speed with Blood Orange’s Negro Swan. What a fucken’ killer record that is. I’ve been on and off Blood Orange the last couple of years – sometimes the music feels too esoteric for me; too light, and too formless. But

68 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

this new record strikes a perfect balance between sweetness and grit. It’s a near flawless marriage of form and function – the sound of an effortlessly talented musician combining the auditory touchstones that they grow up with into a stew of layered harmonies and sharp critiques. You’ve probably all heard it already, but if you haven’t – get on this shit.

Similarly brilliant, though significantly more abrasive, is HMLTD’s Hate Music Last Time Delete EP. To my great shame, I must admit I had actively been steering clear of the thing – I couldn’t stand the band name, and the four-track collection of disco bangers and evil ballads reeked of dull avant-

thebrag.com

albums

“Gostelow manages to make music that feels like a glass of cold cider on a hot day, without ever sounding as twee and bullshit as that description suggests.”

The Defender

BY CHRIS NEILL Each month, a BRAG writer comes out swinging for a pop culture oddity they think deserves to be treated better. This time around, Chris Neill goes to the mat for John Carpenter’s extraordinary, underrated classic, Prince Of Darkness.

“CARPENTER HAD BECOME DISILLUSIONED WITH HOLLYWOOD AFTER BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA WAS A CRITICAL AND FINANCIAL FLOP.”

instantly enraptured by the thing. It’s more difficult than it seems to achieve what Gostelow does here: she manages to make music that feels like a glass of cold cider on a hot day, without ever sounding as twee and bullshit as that description suggests.

These are warm, elegant, mature songs, from a bold new talent.

LTD’s rough edges.” gardism for avant-gardism’s sake. I was embarassingly wrong. Sure, there are still some who will be turned off by HMLTD’s rough edges, and it’s true the EP will fill your head with images of disaffected teens smoking menthols and bopping along impassively in some mate’s basement, but for those who can look through the thin veneer of pretence, there’s actually a lot of talent on display here.

And now for something completely different: Tia Gostelow’s Thick Skin. I must admit to having heard nothing about Gostelow before popping her debut album on during a particularly arduous bus trip to The BRAG’s Chiswick office, but I was

Going back even further in the year, I have been listening to a lot of Nils Frahm’s All Melody. It’s a perfect record for hunching over your desk, desperately trying to figure out how de-tensed logics are meant to be translated into tensed logics, scribbling on scattered sheets of paper and beginning to feel like you are actually genuinely losing your mind this time. At least, that’s what I’ve found anyway. Frahm, an experimental composer best known for music in the Eno mould, here pushes his talents into new directions: All Melody is a swirling mess of voices, at once alienating and odd, and yet somehow warm and inviting too. It feels like a record beamed at us from a far distant planet, and I love it to absolute pieces.

Speak of music from another planet, I’ve also obsessively been spinning the score to Panos Cosmatos’ brilliant new film Mandy (check out our interview with Panos in this very magazine, won’tcha?)

It was the last composition by Johann Johannsson, a composer we sadly lost this year, and it’s a beautiful, shimmering thing; as obsidian black and surprising as the film that inspired it. It’s already been described as a black metal odyssey, but I think that sells some of its best elements short: it’s a strange, beautiful album that drips with life.

It will fill you up with joy. Do check it out.

J

ohn Carpenter’s body of work is full of some incredible films (Halloween, The Thing), but there are some definite duds (Ghosts of Mars). His 1987 film, Prince of Darkness, is no dud but it’s not exactly his best work either. It is, however, a good example of how a few really good moments can uplift an otherwise okay film.

Deep beneath an abandoned Los Angeles church lays a giant canister that houses a mysterious green liquid.

Father Loomis invites Professor Howard Birack and a group of graduate students to examine the canister, and it quickly turns out it’s the essence of the ultimate evil.

Even on an off day, Carpenter is still one of the masters of the horror genre.

One student on the verge of possession slits his own throat while singing ‘Amazing Grace’ and another falls apart when it’s revealed he’s a bunch of cockroaches wearing a skin suit.

“ONE STUDENT ON THE VERGE OF POSSESSION SLITS HIS OWN THROAT WHILE SINGING ‘AMAZING GRACE’.”

From there, the film plays out as a spiritual sister to The Thing. The group becomes trapped inside the church, while one by one they’re either possessed by Satan’s lime cordial or are killed. The uninfected need to stop the Devil Juice from possessing a Chosen One that will allow the ultimate evil to manifest and bring about the end of days.

Carpenter had become disillusioned with Hollywood after Big Trouble In Little China was a critical and financial flop.

He wanted to return to his independent roots, which explains why Prince of Darkness is so lean. It also explains why it’s not as strong as his other films (and somewhat derivative of his past works). There’s a sense that he just wanted to make something, anything, that’d let him move past Big Trouble.

That need to create explains why Prince of Darkness feels so fastand-loose; it’s full of moments that see Carpenter exerting his creative control to do whatever he wants, and flexing his filmmaking muscles in the process. He’d had become interested in quantum physics before making PoD, and he explores those ideas through a supernatural lens. Every particle has an anti-particle, so it stands to reason that if there’s a God, then there’s an AntiGod. Combine the two and you achieve total annihilation. There’s uniqueness about that concept – a marriage of science and religion where one rounds out the other.

When we finally get a shot of someone submerged in the AntiGod’s universe – which can only be entered through a mirror – we’re greeted with an infinite void of darkness where characters appear as if they’re drowning. The shot of someone sinking into that void is one of the best of Carpenter’s already impressive career.

While staying in the church, the characters all suffer from a shared, recurring dream – “neural transmission” from the year 1999. It’s a fever dream formed from VHS-static and disorientating camera moves; a deep, distorted voice warns them of the AntiGod’s apocalypse while a shadowy figure emerges from the church’s doors.

It feels like a genuine nightmare.

If you haven’t seen Prince of Darkness in awhile, you should revisit it. If you’ve never seen it, it’s worth a watch. The concept of quantum physics horror is interesting and Carpenter knows how to create a creepy atmosphere: the film is packed with dimly light hallways, people standing motionless in the distance, and throbbing synths. The last ten-minutes of Prince of Darkness feel like someone has dumped a bucket of ice water over your head while punching you in the stomach at the same time. Say what you want about the rest of the movie, but that ending makes it worth it.

Also, Alice Cooper plays a murderous vagrant who kills a guy by impaling him on a bicycle frame. Watch it for that.

“EVERY PARTICLE HAS AN ANTI-PARTICLE, SO IT STANDS TO REASON THAT IF THERE’S A GOD, THEN THERE’S AN ANTI-GOD.” thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 69

“

ST T GO

SHORT STORY

P Parker Henry is a writer based out of the U.K.

Killing Your W ife.

BY PA R K E R H E N R Y

O

n the morning of the first of April, 1992, Christian King received a letter in the mail. Written in shaky handwriting, on a page torn from an A4 notebook, the message read: were gunna fucking kill your wife.

Underneath there was a shaky, childish x.

Christian King did not have a wife. He had been unmarried throughout his entire life, and save for a few brief flings at university, was generally celibate. For some time he had considered the possibility he might be gay.

As a result, the note did not particularly trouble him. He screwed it up into a ball, but with no bins to throw it away in, he merely shoved it in his pocket, and walked to work.

On his way out the door, a skinny ginger tabby mewed at him, pathetically.

King stroked it with an open palm, drew his jacket around himself, and kept on walking.

The note barely entered into his mind that day. That night, at home, he put on a record, and settled into bed with a book in his lap. He was reading through an encyclopedia, the weight of a head, and the size of it made it very difficult for him to move. So far, he was up to the letter G, and was reading about the evolution of the giraffe, and the myths surrounding its elongated neck. He had been giving the encyclopedia by his mother, what felt like a lifetime ago.

Christian King was 45 years old, and for the last two years, had not had a single dream. Not even a nightmare.

King placed the encyclopedia next to him, on the bed, and rose to the kitchen.

He looked out the window, into the street. Two men, almost identical height, wearing the same suits, retreated down a dark alleyway. King watched them for a moment, and then reached up into his pantry and pulled out a bottle of whiskey and a glass.

He dropped three icecubes into the glass, and poured the remainder of the bottle in, listening with quiet satisfaction to the sound of the cubes hitting each other, and the sides of the glass. He had been drinking his whiskey this way for 21 years.

The next morning, the second of April, there was another note in King’s mailbox. It read; Were gunna rape her dirty little pussy and make her drink her own fucking blood.

King threw it to the ground where he stood and walked to work.

The weather was getting warmer. King already felt sticky in his jacket, the deep heat rising from the tarmac, and mingling into his pores. That night, on his way home, he saw a switchblade in a Pawn Shop window. The handle was made of bone. Into it was carved the image of a woman, naked, her face no more than a

“Christian King did not have a wife. He had been unmarried throughout his entire life, and save for a few brief flings at university, was generally celibate.”

70 :: BRAG :: 740 :: 01:08:18

“King was 45 years old, and for the last two years, had not had a single dream.

Not even a nightmare.” series of ridges, her hair falling over her shoulders.

“Regular antique,” the man behind the counter said, and sold him the switchblade for 20 dollars. By the time King reached home, he had already managed to convince himself that buying the knife had nothing to do with the letters he had been receiving.

As it was Wednesday, King went to the pub near his house. The place was almost empty, but a young, pretty couple were dominating the area near the jukebox. King watched them, sipping on his whiskey. They were putting on songs with lyrics he couldn’t understand and dancing, madly, with moves that he couldn’t understand either. Inbetween dances, just for a second, the girl looked over and caught King’s eye. She smiled at him. He raised his glass back.

King went home before last orders was called. That night he slept soundly, dreamlessly, eyes fixed shut.

On the third of April, King awoke to find two men standing in his house. They were dressed in suits and ties; matching jackets, matching black shoes, and over their faces, matching black balaclavas, that pushed their hidden features back into matching grimaces. The one on the right held a knife. The one on the left held the body of a disembowlled cat, a huge deep gash through its stomach, the remnants of what had once been inside pouring out over King’s clean carpet.

“Here’s your fucking cat,” the one on the left said, and threw the mess of fur and offal into King’s lap.

“Now you’ve properly been warned,” the one on the right said. And with that, the two turned and walked out the room. King heard his front door slam loudly.

He looked down at the dead cat; its mouth still half open, a tiny furry tongue hanging over two yellowed teeth.

King didn’t go to work that day. Instead, he cleaned the carpet, scrubbing it with a bowl of hot water, and picking up the tiny shards of glass from the front window the men had smashed to get in.

King wrapped the cat up in a black bin liner, and took it out into his garden. He didn’t have a shovel, or anything to dig a grave, so instead he collected a small pile of stones, placed the bag in the centre of the garden, then piled the stones back up on top.

He thought he should say a few words. He had never buried a living thing before. He thought for a long time, before finally saying; “I’m sorry you had to die because of me.”

That night, he went to the corner store, and bought himself a pack of cigarettes for the first time in 12 years. He smoked them all, one after another, while sitting in bed. He didn’t feel like reading. He just looked out of the window, smoked, clicked the lighter, then rolled over and went to sleep.

The next morning, King was awoken by a knock at his door. He rose slowly, carefully. He still had the switchblade in one of the drawers of his desk and he pocketed it.

thebrag.com

SHORT STORY

“King heard his front door slam loudly. He looked down at the dead cat; its mouth still half open, a tiny furry tongue hanging over two yellowed teeth.”

When he opened the door, a little girl was standing there. She had tears welling up in her eyes. Behind her stood a tall, vaguely attractive woman, whose pale hand was resting on the girl’s shoulder.

“Have you seen my kitty?” the girl said, quietly, her voice trembling.

King looked up at the older woman.

“Our cat went missing yesterday,” the older woman said. “We live just across the road, over there.” The woman pointed to a modest looking house. He had seen the family coming and going every now and then. A husband, tall, athletic – his wife, this woman who stood before him – the daughter, eyes brimming with tears.

windows had been smashed through, and the owner, a short, skinny Italian man, was on his hands and knees, cleaning it up.

“Trouble?” King said. The Italian man nodded, once, without looking up. Inside, he ate his sandwich in three bites. It was chilly with the window missing. The napkins kept being torn up from the table, dancing through the air, falling to rest on the floor.

After work, King caught the bus home. Poured a whiskey. Three icecubes. Before he sat in his bed, he walked over to his drawer and took out the switchblade. The woman on the handle looked prettier now than she ever had before. It was as though she had a real face now, and he stroked it, just once. After that, he sat in his bed. From his bed, he could see the house across the road. He smoked a few cigarettes. Then slept. And did not dream.

He was woken by two men standing in his room. Balaclavas drawn tight over their faces. Both had knives drawn. King was half expecting them. He held the switchblade in his sleeping hand.

“Look,” King said, “you’re not looking for me.”

“Shut the fuck up,” one of the men said.

“No, I’m serious. You’re looking for a house across the road. They’ve got a kid, and the guy’s got a wife. I live alone.”

“No,” King said slowly. “I’m afraid not.”

“That’s a dirty little bullshit lie, and you know it,” one of the men said.

The daughter turned and cuddled a little tighter into her mother.

“Stop being such a little faggot. Accept what you’ve fucking done.”

“He’s lying,” the daughter said, close to sobbing. “Ginger always came over here, I’ve seen him, I’ve seen him stroking her.”

“Shush now,” the mother said, and ran her hand through the young girl’s hair.

“I’m sorry about this. She’s just upset.”

King looked at the two men. He thought, for a moment. He thought about the man across the road; what he must have done to deserve this. Then King thought about three icecubes, a diner with the window smashed through, his colleague saying “like a wall going missing.”

“I’m not just upset,” the girl said.

King sat up a little in his bed.

“Well, give us a shout if you see anything,” the mother said. “We’re only across the road.”

“Sorry,” he said, softly. “I’m here.”

“Sure,” King said. The girl and her mother stumbled off down the pathway. King half followed them, walking to his mailbox. He knew what he was going to find.

When he opened it up, there was another note, same handwriting. This time it read; We’re gunna cut a straight line down your daughters chest and hang her by her own fucken intestines were gunna make you and your wife watch before we cut out her fucken tongue and make you fucken swallow it were gunna –

The two men might have been shocked, but their balaclavas didn’t give anything away. King threw the switchblade out of his hands, onto the floor. The two men jumped slightly.

“Come on then,” he said gently.

The two men approached. One put his hands over King’s mouth, but he needn’t have done – King wasn’t going to scream. The other pulled out his knife.

“We’re not going to make this quick,” he said. And they didn’t.

King crumpled up the note.

He went to work. The man in the office cubicle next to his came to say hello.

“We missed you yesterday.”

“I wasn’t well.”

“Jeez,” the man said, “we were chatting, and we couldn’t remember the last time you’d been off. Have to have been years now, yeah?”

“I suppose.”

“Must have been a horrible cold then. Was it a cold?”

They made deep cuts in King’s chest. They removed, with a gentle flick of the knife, King’s right nipple. They started making cuts around his genitalia.

Carefully, but with more force needed, they sliced off his nose. King never screamed, but instinctively his hands began to lash out. The men tied his hands behind him with a piece of curtain chord, and began to remove strips of skin from his buttocks.

King was conscious throughout most of this. His head was pressed into his pillow. He felt warm. He could see out of the corner of his eye, through his huge, pristine bay window, the house across the road. All of its lights were off.

They were probably dreaming, King thought.

Soon enough, King mercifully floated off. The two men tried to wake him up.

They boiled the kettle. One said to the other:

“A fever. I had a fever.”

“What did he do, anyway?”

“And you’re back today. I admire ya, man. I must admit, it was odd seeing your office empty. Like having one of the walls go missing, you know?”

On his lunch break, King went to a little Diner down the street. One of the

thebrag.com

The kettle clicked off. One of the figures took it, and poured the boiling water over King’s chest. But King was asleep; off somewhere else. They slit his throat.

Cleaned their knives in his kitchen sink. Raided his pantry for something to

BRAG :: 740 :: 01:08:18 :: 71

gig guide

Submit your gig and club listings, head to: thebrag.com/gig-guide.

PICK OF THE MONTH King Princess

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 6.

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 3

Bowling Club, Marrickville. 8pm. $45.

Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. 8pm. $46.20.

The The Sydney Opera House, Sydney.

8pm. $89.

SATURDAY OCTOBER 6

The Audreys Bowral Bowling Club, Bowral.

7pm. Free.

THURSDAY OCTOBER 4 Caiti Baker The Bank Hotel, Newtown. 8pm. $23.50.

Kenny Wayne Shepherd Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8pm. $132.45.

Last Dinosaurs Lansdowne Hotel, Newtown. 8pm. $21.59.

Metro Theatre, Sydney.

King Princess 8pm. $73.55.

Jordan Sweeto Metro Theatre, Sydney. 4:45pm. $23.

Panic! At The Disco Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney CBD. 8pm. $105.75.

These New South Whales + Party Dozen + Rebel Yell Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $23.50.

Sleepmakeswaves Manning Bar, Darlington. 8pm. $45.40.

SUNDAY OCTOBER 7

FRIDAY OCTOBER 5

Shin Dig Irish Music The Mercantile Hotel, The Rocks.

8pm. Free.

Shannon Noll Miranda Hotel, Miranda. 8pm. $40.

SUNDAY OCTOBER 14 Darryl Braithwaite Kingscliff Beach Hotel, Kingscliff.

7pm. $42.30.

Shin Dig Irish Music The Mercantile Hotel, The Rocks.

8pm. Free.

MONDAY OCTOBER 15 Anne-Marie Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. 7pm. $59.90.

THURSDAY OCTOBER 11

TUESDAY OCTOBER 16

The Distractions Brass Monkey, Cronulla. 8pm.

Free.

Kesha ICC Sydney Theatre, Sydney.

8pm. $102.21.

6lack + They Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8pm. $74.90.

Rose Tattoo Marrickville

The Superjesus Beer DeLuxe Albury, Albury.

8pm. Free.

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 17

These New South Whales

FRIDAY OCTOBER 12 Danielle Deckard Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. 8pm. $21.50.

Skegss + Twin Peaks Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. 8pm. $46.20.

The Models Miranda Hotel, Miranda. 7pm.

Free.

The Persuaders Brass Monkey, Cronulla. 6pm.

Free.

Trophy Eyes Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8pm. $53.

SATURDAY OCTOBER 13 These New South Whales + Party Dozen + Rebel Yell Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. Saturday October 6. 8pm. $23.50.

These New South Whales are Australia’s premier punk outfit, well-known for both their hilarious Comedy Central series and their anarchic live shows. Better yet, they’re playing with our mate Rebel Yell. Catch it!

72 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

The Superjesus Narrabeen RSL, North Narrabeen.

6pm. Free.

James Reyne Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8pm. $75.

Skegss + Twin Peaks

Cheap Trick Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8pm. $139.90.

THURSDAY OCTOBER 18 Cher Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney Olympic Park.

8pm. $112.15.

Kallidad The Basement, Sydney. 7pm.

Free.

FRIDAY OCTOBER 19 Boney M Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8pm. $79.90.

The Superjesus Manning Bar, Camperdown.

8pm. Free.

SATURDAY OCTOBER 20 Cher Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney Olympic Park.

thebrag.com

SHORT STORY 8pm. $112.15.

Newtown. 8pm. $108.55.

CBD. 8pm. $69.90.

Dragon The Cube, Campbelltown. 8pm.

Free.

MIC Righteous Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. 7pm. $45.

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 1

Parkway Drive Hordern Pavilion, Moore Park. 8pm. $255.55.

Safi a Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. 7pm. $45.40.

SATURDAY OCTOBER 27

Taylor Swift ANZ Stadium, Sydney Olympic Park. 7pm. $155.40.

Richard Clapton Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8pm. $99.

The Superjesus Tattersalls Hotel, Penrith. 7pm. Free.

SUNDAY OCTOBER 21

Nick Warren Cafe Del Mar Sydney, Sydney CBD. 8pm.

Free.

Dimmu Borgir Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. 8pm. $83.

No Fun At All Narrabeen RSL, North Narrabeen. 8pm. Free.

The Superjesus The Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle. 7pm. Free.

TUESDAY OCTOBER 23 Charli XCX Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. 8pm. $59.90

The Living End Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 7:45pm. $66.20.

K illing Your W ife.

CONTINUED…

eat, quickly, before they left, but all they could see was a bottle of whiskey. They took two quick swigs each, and then left, shutting the door gently behind them.

The police arrived 12 days later. King’s co-workers called them. The officers found him there, in his bed, eyes closed. More cops came.

The street filled with people, staring at the cars that surrounded the house of the lonely man at number 26, the one whose name they couldn’t quite remember. You know, that one. The quiet one.

SUNDAY OCTOBER 28

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 3

The girl from the house across from King’s watched the cars for a moment, and then ran back inside.

No Fun At All The Small Ballroom, Islington. 6pm. Free.

Polaris Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. 7pm. $44.

“Mummy! Mummy!” she was screaming. “That creepy man across the road, he’s dead!”

TUESDAY OCTOBER 30

Steel Assassins The Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt. 8pm. Free.

FRIDAY OCTOBER 26

Killswitch Engage Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. 8pm. $179.90.

Calum Scott Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. 8pm. $119.90.

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 31

Halid Beslic Enmore Theatre,

Dead Kennedys Metro Theatre, Sydney

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 6 King Princess Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. 8pm. $73.55.

“What?” the mother was boiling the kettle, reading the paper.

“He died! Someone killed him!”

Upstairs, the father paced his room. He had two knives in his chest of drawers and a pistol, underneath his bed. He knew they’d be coming for him soon. Word would have spread fast. He hadn’t been able to sleep for weeks. He’d done the wrong thing, the worst thing.

He had been making up excuses in his head. That he was drunk.

That he was away from home.

He was alerted from his thoughts by the ruckus outside. He pulled the curtain to, a little, and stared at the house across the road.

Policemen were crowding around the front door, and presently, a stretcher with a white sheet was pulled across the tarmac, into the back of an ambulance. The ambulance drove away, without a sound.

No sirens. The father wondered who had had it in that badly for the poor lonely man at number 26.

A moment later, there was a knock at the front door. From the window the father could see a policeman rapping loudly, holding something in his right hand.

He heard voices, then the scream of his daughter.

Presently, his daughter and his wife came running into the room.

His daughter was holding a cut open bin bag, sobbing. Inside was the remains of Ginger, their cat.

“I knew he did something to Ginger!” the girl said. “I just knew it!”

“What a sick bastard,” the mother said. “I guess his habits caught up with him and someone ended him.”

“Why would he kill my cat?” the little girl said.

“Some people just do evil things,” the mother said. She looked at her husband, eyes filling with tears.

The husband nodded his head. His daughter sobbed. The husband looked out the window at the empty house; deserted; policemen making their way home. M

“The father wondered who had had it in that badly for the poor lonely man at number 26.” thebrag.com

BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18 :: 73

gig guide

Submit your gig and club listings, head to: thebrag.com/gig-guide.

Have a gig or club listing to get in The BRAG?

Taylor Swift

You can now submit your gig and club listings, head to thebrag.com/gig-guide.

Cher

Cher

Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney Olympic Park. Thursday October 18. 8pm. $112.15.

Cher is enjoying something of a revival amongst millennials these days thanks in no small part to her work as an emoji-dropping Twitter icon, and her turn in Mamma Mia 2. Check out her second wind when she blows into the Qudos Bank Arena.

For our full gig and club listings, head to thebrag.com/gig-guide.

Taylor Swift

ANZ Stadium, Sydney Olympic Park. Friday November 2. 7pm. $155.40.

Taylor Swift’s last album was fantastic, and anyone who tells you any different is a goddamn liar. She’ll trot out all the hits when she blasts through our country this November.

Charli XCX

Charli XCX

Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. Tuesday October 23. 8pm. $59.90 Charli XCX is the future of pop music – those who once underestimated her should by now have thoroughly choked on their own stupid words. She’s returning to the Metro, the venue she blew the roof off four years ago, for a onestop Sydney show.

74 :: BRAG :: 742 :: 03:10:18

thebrag.com

Jim Jefferies FRONTIER COMEDY and COMEDY CENTRAL present

the NIGHT TALKER tour

OUT! SAT 15 DEC SOLD NEW SHOW ADDED SUN 16 DEC BY DEMAND SYDNEY ICC THEATRE ON SALE NOW! FRONTIERCOMEDY.COM jimjefferies

frontiertouring