REMEMBER A DAY...a review by
Phil Strongman
Creation magazine, London
Ask almost anyone under 25 about a rock star with the name Syd and, the chances are, the monicker of the late Sex Pistol Sid Vicious will be thrown at you. There's a certain irony in this for Darryl Read for - although Read started the world's very first punk band, Crushed Butler, way back in 1969 - one of his musical heroes as a teenager was one Syd Barrett, guitarist, avant garde sound pioneer and co-founder of Pink Floyd. Mister Barrett also happens to be one of the Western world's most legendary acid casualties, a man who met Malcolm McLaren in the Summer of 1976 - supposedly to discuss producing the Sex Pistols debut album - and who then spent an hour ranting about the political crisis in Angola before running off to hide in the Gents for the night... Although Read went his own way after the Seventies - drumming for bands such as the Third World War and the Hammersmith Gorillas before acting in Minder, Bunch of Fives and Eastenders - the increasingly reclusive Syd remained an object of fascination both for him and for his friend Bernard White, the designer who started Terrapin magazine with punk artist Jamie Reid. So when White came up with a screenplay about one Roger Bannerman, a hermit-like rock star, and the fan who pursues and eventually kidnaps him, Read was instantly interested although he was unsure if the role of Bannerman was right for him. It took White some two years to talk Read into playing the part and he only agreed after visiting, unannounced, Syd Barrett himself, the man who's spaced-out lifestyle was the story's indirect inspiration. Syd and I chatted away for about ten or fifteen minutes on his doorstep, which I'm told is a very rare thing for Syd to do. Apparently heıs paid people to move away from his village before or even moved himself, I mean he is now a total recluse and has been for quite some time. But I got enough from that meeting to know I wanted to play someone like that, someone who'd been through the fame wringer and who hadn't quite come out the other side. As an actor, well it was just such a challenge to me - so much so that I eventually became the producer too, this film had to be started and it had to be finished. It struck me, as well, that a story about fan fanaticism is kind of eternal and the events of the last few months have confirmed that to my mind - what with Germaine Greer being held hostage by one fan and George Harrison being stabbed by another while the trial of Jill Dando's alleged killer is still going on. They'll always be fame and those who are obsessed with it. Timeless. But then, of course, came that other timeless British film problem - getting funded. I'd taken something similar - another rock drama, if you like - to the BFI some 18 months ago but the girl there had told me it would take two years, hundreds of meetings and would cost well over £2 million, to which the BFI could contribute virtually nothing except some more meetings. I didnıt wanna spend months and months in boardrooms stroking various egos. And, besides, I just knew it would never ever happen that way... so with this one I just thought, it's only a forty minute short film number, letıs just do it. We had a couple of TV producers lined-up but when they dropped out I stepped in. We knew we couldnıt afford 70 mm widescreen or anything. But the quality of Digi-Beta video is fine, even when projected fairly large. And thereıs sections of the production that were actually shot on Mini-DV and they work well too. So, after raising £13,000 from hard-nosed record dealers, Read and White teamed up with director Nigel Lesmoir-Gordon - a documentary film-maker who was the first man to film Barrett 1966 - and, on the basis of shares, expenses and minimal payments, the whole thing began to snowball. The original manager of Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd and Ian Dury - one Peter Jenner - agreed to play himself, Syd's close friend Jenny Fabian, author of the best-selling Groupie book, was perfect as Bannerman's PR while Sex Pistols producer Dave Goodman, UK Sub Charlie Harper, Boy George's Culture Club drummer Jon Moss and Sixties' crooner Ronnie Carroll added some music industry authenticity to proceedings. Former mod keyboard king Zoot Money was cast as the fan - allegedly after coming up with the greatest Ian Dury anecdote after the great man's demise (when Dury first hit the charts he beat some spending money out of his record label - never had he had so much cash, never had he been so drunk - and after being kicked out of the Music Machine for dropping brimming pint glasses from the balcony he pitched up at Annabel's where he abused Zoot Money and Omar Sharif before insulting Sharif's model girlfriend whereupon the backgammon king told Mister Sex,n,drugs, rock'n'roll that You, sir, are no gentleman before laying him out with a single punch). Up-and-coming bright young things from the world of acting, such as Talitha Tallett, Alison Thompson, Christine Pilgard and Jamie Foreman of Nil By Mouth fame, then gave Remember A Day an acting core to match it's soundtrack - which features everything from Pink Floyd to the Sex Pistols and Captain Beefheart. There was only ten solid days of shooting - the rest of the film being snatched at weekends over a couple of months - and the action leaps between Roger Bannerman's archive footage, gigs, crumbling studio dates, one night stands with groupies and photo sessions. Chronologically Remember A Day also jumps around between the late Sixties, the early Seventies and the mid-Seventies and many of the cast, while music biz professionals, were entirely new to the acting game. All of which occasionally made things difficult for editor Jason Krasucki - whose past credits include World TV's Ultra Violet series as well as Gerry Anderson's Space Precinct - but, as a fan of the music involved, he found the experience to be a fun one, it really wasnıt hard work even though it's strange to be editing with the producer-stroke-leading actor sitting right next to you most of the time. That doesnıt often happen. But on Space Precinct I had effects, and last minute changes, flying in from all over and there was also the fact that I was working with directors like John Glen, who's done five James Bond movies, and while John's great he can also be a little bit demanding so... well, after that little lot, Remember A Day was almost always fun. And the innovations Darryl suggested, like working with both the 16:9 and 4:3 formats within the same film or making digital images look like Standard 8mm black and white film, were the kind of challenges I could handle without too much bother. When they've film-treated the finished master of Remember A Day it is going to look pretty damn good, all things considered, and I think that, if they later have to bounce it to 35mm widescreen, it'll stand up to that process too without a vast amount of picture degradation. I happen to think myself that the digital way of shooting is going to be the future - I saw Toy Story II the other week in Leicester Square and it was all completely digital, a High Def video image taken from CG and projected onto a big, big screen without any film stock being involved at all. And it did look good and that's when I thought, that's it, game over - celluloid is going to be history in five or so years. Celluloid film is still beautiful, of course, and I'll always love those visuals like most other pro's in this industry, but it's just too expensive and too slow and you can't even ISDN it. It's become a bit of a dinosaur, technically speaking. While on the subject of dinosaurs, Read and co. were soon to discover that many of the larger companies who were approached were simply not interested in helping out in any way, shape or form - EMI still haven't, even now, returned our phone calls about filming at Abbey Road, says Read, so, in the end, we just turned up and filmed outside there, guerilla style, and intercut the footage with the interiors of other recording studios we'd shot in that week. Luckily Richard Boote at the Strongroom studios in Shoreditch came through for us. But extensive support from Frontline TV's Charlie Sayle allowed plenty of tinkering in the editing suite and the latter became more and more crucial as Read discovered that the rough cut alone was running to well over 118 minutes. We now think the actual finished running length is going to come in at about 50 minutes which, as I thought it might be less than half of that, is a pleasant surprise, says Read, especially as it was a real laugh making it - when people are seen drinking then theyıre really drinking, when they're smoking dope they're really smoking dope. The scenes I had with Jenny Fabian were ridiculous because we were both completely off our heads but... I think those scenes really work and I think Syd would appreciate touches like that - we're trying to arrange for him to see it, which'll probably turn out to be a lot harder than actually making the film! NB Talks are currently being distributed by Indigo Films and Television. Remember A Day has already been entered in the Made In Camden film and video festival at the end of September - it should be premiered at the Hampstead Everyman cinema during the same month. Phil Strongman
Creation magazine, London
August
