IT SHOULDN’T HAPPEN TO A FILM JOURNALIST
Editor-at-Large JAMIE GRAHAM lifts the lid on film journalism.
Our Jamie on how lockdown has changed his viewing habits.
As a third, and hopefully final, lockdown nears its end, one question haunts my mind: “What the hell has happened to me?”
As long-time readers of Total Film will know, my tastes in film run to all genres, eras and corners of the globe, but I’ve always reserved a special place in my heart – a dark corner, if you will – for horror. Back at school, my English teachers used to fret at the rate I consumed the novels of James Herbert, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Dean R. Koontz, Ramsey Campbell, Peter Straub, Robert R. McCammon and more, and they tried to encourage me to write fiction that didn’t involve stalking, torturing and eviscerating. I responded by scrawling a series of stories inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, in which people spectacularly lost their minds.
Horror movies were my lifeblood. The more ‘challenging’ the material, the more I considered it a test of my mettle. I spent a chunk of my twenties tracking down all 72 listed Video Nasties (39 of which were banned), and when I became a film journalist in the late-’90s, I was one of only four who made it all the way though the press screening of Audition, which I adored.
TEARS FOR FEARS
With this history, imagine my shock last month when I opted to turn off the latest episode of the Chloë Sevigny TV show Those Who Kill because it was too upsetting. OK, so it was an especially nasty concept – a serial killer-rapist who kidnapped couples and forced the man to watch while he violated the woman – and I was eating my tea at the time, but even so… Younger Jamie would have slathered on more ketchup and carried on.
Something’s been happening for a year now. Something that goes beyond my shrinking away from films that squat at the more violent and debasing end of the horror spectrum – truth be told, I’ve had my fill of torture-porn movies for more than a decade now – and indicates a shift that is wider, more all-encompassing. My empathy for characters in films has deepened. Tears spring more readily to my eyes. And it doesn’t need to be a couple subjected to unspeakable horrors by a depraved sicko; it can be a child sent off to boarding school (Au Revoir Les Enfants) or a doc about abuse (Domestic Violence) or a CG dog kidnapped from its home (Call Of The Wild)… all have cut me deeply in recent weeks.
KIDS’ STUFF
Yep, shielding for 14 months has stripped me of my armour. Whereas before I watched stomach-churning movies like Martyrs, Irreversible and Cannibal Holocaust as happily as I watched a comedy or a musical or a work of deep humanism by Yasujirô Ozu, now I return to the ’80s and ’90s action movies of my youth for a hit of nostalgia.
I’ve started watching Googlebox and Bake Off after avoiding such programmes my entire life. Partly I refused to go near them for fear of turning into my parents, partly because I could be watching another movie. Now they’re among the highlights of my week. And that’s just the start: a couple of weeks ago I found
Mr. Benn on Amazon Prime and watched an episode a night, before bed, to transport me back to my childhood as surely as the titular hero is magicked off on his adventures. And to think, I used to finish The Human Centipede and toddle straight off to bed.
Will I return to my old ways if and when the world gets back to normal? Maybe. But for now I’m just grateful that I have a double bill of Under Siege 2 and Over The Top lined up for tonight. And while I last night finished the 14th and final episode of Mr. Benn, I have Bagpuss on my watchlist, ready to go.
Jamie will return next issue… For more misadventures, follow: @jamie_graham9 on Twitter.
‘I SPENT A CHUNK OF MY TWENTIES TRACKING DOWN ALL 72 LISTED VIDEO NASTIES’