SOUND AND VISION
FILM-MAKER’S FAVOURITE THINGS
The book that stays with me
The Accursed Share by French writer George Bataille. It says that beyond the practical things in our everyday lives – earning money, building bridges, looking after the needy – there are pleasures, extravagances and excess things. He means our need to dance, go wild, indulge, escape. He calls these extra bits the accursed share. I try to be a good citizen – responsible, hard-working, etc. But I am also aware of my accursed share!
My fastest boxset binge
I don’t really do box sets. I love movies on the big screen so much that it’s in the cinema rather than on TV where I get my fiction fix. It is there that I escape. I watch lots of TV, but not a lot of fiction.
My comfort watch
I love DIY SOS, the show in which local tradespeople do up the house of someone in their community who needs help. I cry every time. I also love Strictly. I’m glad there’s so much dance on TV. The medium is
great at it.
The comedian who makes me laugh the most
Janey Godley. She takes news footage and celebrity interviews and adds a new, working class, gallus voice. In one of Irvine Welsh’s novels, the pop star Madonna speaks in a very Scottish voice. It was a great comic idea, and Janey is a master at it.
The best scene from any film
In Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, which stars Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, she finally realises that he loves her. We cut to her running down the street at night, the wind in her hair, the music soaring. It’s gorgeous, full of the rush of love. I was lucky enough to know Jack Lemmon a bit, so that film is extra special for me.
The best living actor
I have just worked with Jane Fonda. She did part of the voice-over for my new film Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema.
We sat in her house (she even made me lunch) and I watched her right hand swirl in the air as she held the script in her left and read the lines. I was a bit hypnotised. Her voice has such an energy, but it is gentle, too. A great
combination.
The first record I bought
The Darts, It’s Raining!
My favourite band
When I was a teenager, The Jam seemed to sing about everything I felt. They had roaring energy, railed against people who took life or status for granted and wanted to upend the world.
The album I play most
Probably Dusty in Memphis, Dusty Springfield’s 1969 album about love, sex, misbehaviour and the Accursed Share! Her version of The Windmills Of Your Mind starts gentle but eventually gives it welly. She built her songs, their levels and tones. Wow.
My best gig
It’s a gig I was slightly involved in. I made a film, Atomic, about the nuclear age, with the great Scottish band Mogwai. They played it live around the world, including in Coventry Cathedral. I’ve always loved that building. Hours before the doors opened, queues were forming. The local radio station said traffic was extra heavy because the numbers were so large. And then the band played.
The sonic energy, the blast, the beauty of their songs...I’ll never forget it.
My guilty pop pleasure
I don’t feel guilty about my pleasures, to be honest! If I’m on a dance floor and Kelly Marie’s Feels Like I’m In Love comes on, I’ll give it laldy. And as for Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off...
My music hero
David Bowie. As he did for many people, I felt he was a pathfinder for me. His interest in surrealism, role-playing, gender-blurring, play and shape-shifting seemed to open up worlds and possibilities.
If I could bring one artist back from the dead it would be
I’d love to meet the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, or just watch how she spent her days. Or the Venetian painter Tintoretto, who lived in the 1500s. Or the brilliant German artist Albrecht Durer, who thought that the world would end on the last night of 1499. I’d like to go for a beer with him on the first day of 1500.
The play that moved me most
As a kid, I was only taken to the theatre once, by our school, to see the JM Synge play Riders To The Sea. Forty years later, I could still describe the stage set – a single stylised tree, bent in the wind. It was visually exciting for me.
The museum I enjoy most
I’d like to choose an art garden. Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Little Sparta near Biggar. I went there when I was 20, and had never felt anything like it.
I’d like to have a beer with
Greta Garbo, David Bowie, Piero Della Francesca and...
Homer.
My fantasy dinner party guests
Just one - Cleopatra.