I’ve surfed home this evening on a massive wave of 80s nostalgia having seen Son of Rambow – I can’t recommend it highly enough. I took me right back I can tell you… Corona bottles… kids saying “Skill!”… and don’t get me started on my years in the Plymouth Brethren. Happy days.
It also reminded me of my own early forays into moviemaking in the 80s. I was merely a humble actor while the auteur with the vision to make it happen was my friend Letty. Our first film was a homage to the classic ZZ Top videos of the Eliminator era (sorry Dave). These tended to follow a standard format: the bearded band playing by the roadside, a bright red muscle car and a bevy of glamorous women. Frankly beards we were never going to manage but we bought some comedy ones from a joke shop and with two tennis rackets and a dustbin we had a band. Once we’d persuaded the fragrant Tracey Allinson and Jo Bolitho to be in the film we had legit glamorous dames so all we needed was the car. That’s where Letty’s red 2CV (aka Hercules) came in, probably the closest teenagers in Oxfordshire were going to get to a muscle car. With a disused airfield near Culham filling in for the Texas badlands we were ready to shoot.
I don’t remember too much of plot to be honest. I know I played a humble mechanic and there was something to do with the car breaking down, Tracey looking all come-hither, me fixing the car and being, erm, suitably compensated. I can promise you it was all done in the best possible taste.
With that experience under his belt Letty’s next directorial project was more ambitious. It was a homage to the golden era of film noir featuring a hard-bitten detective called Dick Spanner (that would be me), a femme fatale called Prudence Pays (Tracey again), snappy dialogue, stunts (Tom Gosling falling into the Cherwell!) and multiple locations. I think more of us had learned to drive by that point so we could manage a more elaborate production. The chase scene which ended with Tom’s dive into the river was filmed in the University Parks, the scene with vicar (very Raymond Chandler) in Long Hanborough I think and the interior shots were in St Edmund Hall college, Oxford. It was proper Hollywood – Letty had storyboarded the whole thing and I believe there was even a hillarious bloopers reel as well. I would love to see the tape of that again – moving pictures of me with hair!
