So on Friday, Jo and I went to the
Cambridge Folk Festival with Vicky and her chum (also Jo). Divine Comedy went down very well, with much amusing middle-class dancing. Loudon Wainwright III did a reasonable ditty about Primrose Hill, a naff (if right-thinking) anti-Bush one, and told an anecdote about hanging out with Steve Buscemi while they were making Big Fish. It was hot and sunny, and I'm so simultaneously decrepit and gadget obsessed that I bought a chair that folds up into a drinking straw. It was all broadcast on BBC Radio 2 (and some on BBC 4), so people like Johnny Walker and Mark Radcliffe were introducing the acts, which was entertaining. Click thumbnail for
photos.
At one stage in the afternoon, I'm reliably informed, Vicky's friend and parents were distressed to see me being led away by one of the police on site. There was charitably optimistic talk of my possibly having helped to detect a crime. We know what they were really thinking. Anyway, it transpires that Steve Kerridge (aka Steve Poloni, inventor of an innovative shoe to be found on our Shelf of Tat in the front room, bass teacher at the music courses I used to teach guitar at, and best actor in
Schwas Attack) has overcome his anti-establishment tendencies and left-wing politics sufficiently to have been the Sergeant in charge of festival security. So when I spotted him, I had to give chase and call him a rozzer. And he seemed in fine fooling, which is to say that if the coppers I've met were less pompous and more like Steve, it would be possible to understand a word they said (cf. our local "e-cops" newsletter, which I'm convinced is written by Tom Stoppard, so full is it of malapropisms, impenetrable mixed metaphors, orphaned clauses and so on).
After getting the next morning's call sheets in my e-mail and printing them out at half midnight after the Folk Festival, I then had to get up at 5.30am to help out on the short film
Robe Rage. I'd seen the ad in
Shooting People, and volunteered to be a runner, but ended up being a camera assistant (i.e. writing down each take in a log - tape timecode, whether it was any cop or out of focus etc, so that the editor knows what raw material there is to assemble). This meant less standing in the road in a reflective waistcoat attempting to stop the camera being knocked down by cars, compared to the runners/PAs, which was ideal. It was all nicely organised so that we finished on time and I could spend half the afternoon passed out on the sofa.
Same thing next day (albeit 6.30am on the alarm clock). Lots of fun; charming, keen, enthusiastic young people, and I'll be interested to see the finished short. Apparently their local film-makers' network got Stephen Fry to come in and talk about
Bright Young Things recently. Bugger. Anyway, click the thumbnail for
pics of the shoot. I've password-protected the collection so that my naff shots don't turn up if someone did a web search for the film, so let me know if you want a look, and I'll tell you the p/w.
# posted by Carl - 4:14 PM
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