Rare Elliott Smith Footage

Elliott Smith died 5 years ago on Tuesday. His friend Mary Lou Lord has posted a lot of previously unseen footage of him playing live in 1995. You can see it all here.

I Just Love Will Arnett

See more Will Arnett videos at Funny or Die

No Explainations

Originally uploaded by jules3000

That Sinking Feeling

On Sunday afternoon I went to see Righteous Kill. I had written a long post about how it’s an awful film, how director Jon Avnet should go get a job in a call-centre, how Pacino has fucking lost it (his ability to pick a decent script anyway) and how the filmmakers attempted to cheapen a great film like Heat by aping the climax. But I won’t post it. Instead I’ll focus on a much more positive cinematic experience on Sunday.

In the evening I went along to GFT’s Monorail Film Club screening of That Sinking Feeling. The 1980 film is the little seen forerunner to the much more popular Gregory’s Girl.

A comedy about unemployment and disillusionment in Glasgow it was much funnier than I remember it. There are a couple of scenes that displayed some misdirection worthy of The Simpsons at its best.

Sharp, witty and fun it shows Glasgow and its humour in a great light. It’s a film that they really don’t make anymore. Which is a great shame.

One of the film’s stars, Robert Buchanan, who was also in Gregory’s Girl, came along for a Q & A with Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch afterwards. There was a great moment, when asked if he still kept in touch with any of the rest of the cast, two of them shouted from the back of the cinema. Eight minutes of the discussion are below.

Wasted is Oot!

I was through at Forbidden Planet in Edinburgh last weekend for the launch of Wasted, a new comic where pal of 'pish Iain Laurie and I have found a home for our strip Blackcape.

We had a great day. It was nice to see people giving a toss about something we had been involved in and it was nice to see all the different folk who had contributed to the comic, including head honcho Alan Grant and big names like Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant, thrusting aside their gazillions of awards to hang out with us little guys. Many fun hours were spent in the pub but my favourite bit was sharing a fish tea with Jamie Grant, Frank Quitely, Alan Kerr and Iain in the City Cafe. It's the first time I've seen the house red ordered in a greasy spoon style chip shop.

The comic itself looks great and reads well for an anthology which tend usually to be editorially fuzzy and massively variable in terms of the quality of strips inside. Its not a loftily ambitious collection of course, its purely looking for laughs but I think it hits the mark more often than not.

It's available now for £3.25 and you should be able to get it from Forbidden Planet (certainly the Edinburgh store had loads and on checking, the Glasgow FP has copies as well) or direct from our distributor here. You can also get it here.

I notice that you can order it from Amazon as well now.

If you can't find it, gimme a shout and I'll get a copy to you. It may also be worth mentioning that if you subscribe (4 quarterly issues for £17.50 - print off the slip, fill it out and just sent it in - your money covers your comics and your P&P) you'll get an exclusive t-shirt by Simon Bisley, who's also been signed up for the cover for #3.

Here's a nice review we got from The List.

David Simon at the GFT

I had intended to blog this a couple of weeks ago, but I waited until the GFT had it online. Fraser and I went to see David Simon, creator of The Wire at the GFT a few weeks ago.

The sold out evening began with a screening of episode two of the fifth and final season. This caused a few murmurs of complaints from people in the crowd who a) Didn't expect an episode they hadn't seen and b) Didn't like the fact it was episode two and not episode one. It was a great episode though and has a brilliantly dramatic ending.

The talk itself was alternatively amazing and annoying. The Sunday Herald sponsored the event and their journalist Alan Taylor was the man in the chair to interview Simon. He gave off the air of a guy who had speed-watched a couple of seasons on DVD. He wasn't quite sure what character was who and wasted Mr. Simon's time and ours with inane chatter like asking if Avon Barksdale was named after 'Avon calling.' He also made jokey references to Taggart. All of this going straight over David Simon's head as he had no frame of reference.

The questions were the usual mix of quite good and timewasting clowns mistaking a public Q & A for a chance meeting at a party. When the man was allowed to talk he was very entertaining. An interesting and intelligent guy who gave us a lot of the background as to how the show came about, the writing process and of the real life people the characters on the show are based on.

Seven minutes of the talk are down below.

“There’s always something for him to fucking whine about.”

This is a great profile of Alec Baldwin in The New Yorker.

Paul Newman 1925-2008

This is the way I found out Paul Newman had died.

I'm at a party. We're playing a game where you pick out a name that's been written on a piece of paper, then you describe who the person is so your team-mates can guess their name.

Party Goer 1: Actor. Dead Actor.

Party Goer 2: Paul Newman!

Party Goer 1: Right!

Party Goer 3: Paul Newman's not dead.

Party Goer 4: He is. He died yesterday.

The Room: What? Aaaaaaaaw.

Paul Newman was always one of my favourite actors. In my room at my mum's I've had a framed picture of him at the Actors' Studio on the wall for the last 15 years.

He's been great in so many great pictures. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Hud, The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting and his Oscar winning turn in The Color of Money.

Two of his later films stand up alongside the greats in my opinion. Nobody's Fool, which landed him another Oscar nomination in 1994 is Newman at his best. Twilight (directed like Nobody's Fool by Robert Benton) made four years later is a completely underrated picture that sees Newman play a private detctive dying from cancer opposite Gene Hackman and Susan Sarandon.

Here's a tribute to him from The Independent, which coincidentially agrees with me over those last two films. The Stamford Advocate runs down his best work on film.

Down below is the first part of his appearance on Inside the Actors' Studio.

Keegan's Departure

Kevin Keegan's departure from Newcastle has got some of the fans in a right state.

Stanley Kubrick's Boxes

I missed this when it was on TV a few months ago, but I read about it in Jon Ronson's book 'Out of the Ordinary'.

Face to Face with Billy Connolly

More from YouTube. This in several parts an interview with Billy Connolly from 1994.

Brando Auditioning For Rebel Without A Cause

On Sunday The Observer printed 50 great entertainment clips to be found on YouTube. I thought I would post some of them here over the next week or so, along with some of my own faves. I might include some sport too.

The first one up is the 23-year-old Marlon Brando auditioning for Rebel Without A Cause.

Demetri Martin's Flipcharts

Magic Glue Photos

Below are some photographs from The Magic Glue's rehearsals and the show at The Stand in July. All of them were taken by Heidi Kuisma. Go hire her for all your photographic needs.

End of the Festival

With the Edinburgh Festival having come to a close I thought I'd briefly riound up the shows I've been to see in the last couple of weeks.

Angry Puppy was a solid all-female sketch show. The cast and sketches were all of a high quality.

Limmy's Show didn't have the atmosphere of his Oran Mor shows in March, but it was still top drawer stuff. Any show featuring me trying to climb a fence must be funny.

Scott Cappuro had a lot of 5 star reviews and according to each one a lot of walk outs. On the night I saw him no one walked out, but that's not to say he toned it down that night. The vast number of comedians who think that they're edgy really ought to go see Cappuro to see how it's really done. This was boundary-pushing stand-up at its best. He even managed to squeeze in some mild masturbation during the hour.

Easily the worst show I saw at the festival was Paul Foot's. Quite how this guy has a career is a mystery to me. He stretched about 6 minutes of material into an hour. When one of your audience says "You're actually humping me now," your show's taking a wrong turning somewhere.

The sketch show Two Episodes of MASH had some mixed reviews over the three weeks. I enjoyed it for the most part. There were some good, quirky ideas, like the super-hero who had given it all up to teach road safety (Road Safety - It's Not Just For Arseholes) and the human cannonball who had overshot, meaning he couldn't get his timesheets signed. There was a good running gag about their sponsorship deal with a scaffolding firm. The whole thing though was only 45 minutes long.

Wisecrackin' Mindsqueezin' Behemoth was another sketch show written and performed by JL Roberts and Nadia Kamil. They had done a show called Staggered Spaces that I saw a couple of years ago. They are both likable and engaging performers. The show was a bit shambolic but all the more fun for it.

Global Warming is Gay featured Glue's very own Dazza. Despite a few really awful lines it wasn't a bad show. However for my mind you may as well have written a show replacing global warming with collecting football programmes, such as I didn't really buy that these folk were spending £30,000 to combat global warming.

Edinburgh was rounded off this year for me with Doug Stanhope last night. Shambling through the crowd in the small bar he looked as ridiculous as I've ever seen him. A skip cap perched on his mulleted head, his jacket looked like something he'd stolen off a drunken sailor and his baggy shorts looked like he'd slept in them the last couple of nights. Oh aye that's right, he had.

He began by riffing with the crowd, by the time he'd had his third beer he was really on form. He did have to deal with idiotic attention seeking hecklers, but all in all he delivered a first class show.

Here's an interview with him about Edinburgh from last week's Metro.

So that's it for Edinburgh for me as a punter this year. Saw some decent shows and ate some good pies out of Piemaker. Spent too much money that's for sure.

Woody Allen Interviewed

Here's a hilarious interview with Woody Allen from 1971. He's taking the piss all the way. It's played completely deadpan, but the interviewer tittering at several points gives it away. It comes in four parts.

Interviewer: "I rather enjoyed it."
Woody Allen: "Yes, but you're mistaken."

More From Edinburgh

I saw a couple of shows from the Free Fringe/Festival in the middle of last week. Scott Agnew is there with his show Big Boy. He's on a bit of a tour with it, as it's playing in various venues throughout the run. I also went along to see Tartan Special in Meridan at the bottom of Leith Walk.

On Friday I saw Morgan Murphy at The GRV. Murphy is a well known and respected comic in the US, appearing on the Comedians of Comedy tour as well as late night chat shows. Here though she drew an audience of six. She turned in an excellent performance, but I couldn't help but feel it would have been more enjoyable with a bigger crowd in the room. I guess it says something about Edinburgh, she could be playing clubs in the US to decent crowds and earning cash, but instead she's in Scotland playing to a handful of folk each night. Well worth going to see though.

Later on I went to see Glenn Wool in the Underbelly. As I've said here before Wool is easily one of the best comics working in Britain. His delivery is just first class. His show deals with his divorce and it was interesting to see how much of it had changed since he performed part of it in Glasgow in March.

I should also maybe mention that John Gordillo, who struggled when I saw him on the first preview night, received a five star review from Chortle.

Down below there's some Morgan Murphy.

Pish Talk

As a companion to Talking Pish, I've set up Pish Talk on Tumblr. Here you'll find quick links and videos.

Limmy's Show

Here's a trailer for Limmy's Show at the Edinburgh Festival. Worth watching just to see me running. And here he is being interviewed by the BBC.

Edinburgh Festival 2008

It's Edinburgh Festival time again and I've been through the last couple of days to see some shows. They're still in previews at the moment so not fair really to give them the famous Tom ratings ;o).

The first show I saw was Ivan Brackenbury's Hospital Christmas Roadshow. This was pretty solid character comedy built round an incompetent hospital radio DJ. There was the odd cock-up, but that just made it funnier. The show revolves around the inappropriate songs Brackenbury plays for the afflicted patients in the hospital.

Next up was Pappy's Fun Club. A well regarded sketch troupe they were on at the Pleasance Cabaret Bar. It was gag packed, somewhat chaotic and an enjoyable hour.

Now it's fair to say that over at the Pleasance Dome John Gordillo didn't have his best night. John compered a night I was on at The Stand about two years ago and to my surprise he recognised me. This led to the first instance of a performer personally offering me a refund from the stage. It turned out that I was the only one of the small audience who had actually paid in. When his show hit its mark it was pretty funny, it was just a wee bit off being ready.

Richard Herring's new show The Headmaster's Son is up to his usual standards. Full of self-deprecating humour and plenty of off-colour jokes. There is a fair wee bit of heart in it as well.

The best show I've seen so far though is John Pinette - I Say Nay Nay. Fans of Seinfeld will know who John Pinette is as he played the fat guy who caused the gang to be arrested in the final episode. His first time at the Festival he hammered out an hour of solid polished stand-up. Mainly revolving round food and the various embarrassments his size and appetite has called him he was received warmly by the audience. It was obvious that he was enjoying himself onstage and appreciated the response. He also turned in an excellent Elvis impression.

I'll be back through next week to see more. Enjoy some John Pinette complaining about queues down below.