REVIEW: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (dir. Werner Herzog)

Cast: Nicholas Cage, Val Kilmer, Eva Mendez, Xzibit

Abel Ferrera may be a film legend due to cult classics like ‘Driller Killer’ and ‘King of New York’, but it is unlikely his films will ever be entered into the canons of cinema. He has a unique vision and creates entertaining, moody thrillers and gangster flicks; but he has always been on the ‘exploitation’ side of auteur filmmaking. Werner Herzog, on the other hand, has already taken his place amongst the legends of cinema. He is one of the most playful, unrestricted, but undeniably thoughtful and disciplined filmmakers of all time. The idea of Herzog ‘re-imagining’ one of Ferrera’s most engaging and gritty films is therefore an enticing idea.

Ferrera’s ‘Bad Lieutenant’ (1992) starred Harvey Keitel as a corrupt New York City cop who spends more time gambling, taking Class A drugs, and abusing young women than he does investigating homicides. But he finds himself questioning his own actions and choices while investigating the rape of a young nun. The film therefore dealt with typical New York themes like sleaze, urban decay, and Catholicism.

Herzog’s ‘Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans’ (from now on referred to as ‘Port of Call’) transports the action from the Big Apple to the Big Easy, as Nicholas Cage’s ‘Lieutenant’, Terence, investigates a gangland killing in the wake of hurricane Katrina. Cage is promoted to Lieutenant largely because so many people left New Orleans after the hurricane; and his drug addiction is explained by an agonizing and chronic pain in his back caused by jumping into a flooded prison to save a prisoner.

These may seem like cosmetic amendments to Ferrera’s idea, but the perspective and direction of the film are shifted massively due to these changes: Terence is not in a position to analyse his own destructive behaviour, and continues to dig himself further and further into trouble as the film plays out. Herzog’s lieutenant is like a malicious and self-destructive version of the Philip Marlowe in Altman’s ‘The Long Goodbye’: he constantly bumbles from one terrible and seemingly inescapable situation to the next. He jumps from the frying pan, to the fire, and back again for the entire duration of the film: upsetting loan sharks, mafia bosses, drug dealers, police chiefs, district attorneys… the list goes on.

A newly promoted Terence is supposed to be investigating the murder of a Senegalese family in the middle of Big Fate’s (Xzibit) territory. Terence is far too busy scoring drugs and ‘protecting’ Frankie (Mendez) to concentrate on the case; and things really start to unravel when Terence rushes to a casino to save Frankie from a gangster ‘client’. He loses the key witness that he has been looking after (thereby destroying the case against Fate) and also makes enemies of the mafia (who demand $50,000 from him after roughing up Frankie’s client) and the chief of police (after beating up a politician’s elderly mother in a care home). To make matters worse he owes a shady bookie $15,000 after a string of bad bets. Terence is at his wits end; he is strung out on drugs, his life is in danger, he has had his badge and gun taken away, and he owes a lot of money… but Terence isn’t the sort of guy who lets things get on top of him. I won’t explain how Terence attempts to fix all these problems, because that is where the real satisfaction of the film lies, but I will tell you that it is a fantastically entertaining and original piece of filmmaking that will have you laughing and twisting in your seat with glee and anticipation.

The cast list is quite breathtaking for such an under-publicised film: Cage is joined by Val Kilmer (his police partner), Eva Mendez (his prostitute girlfriend), Xzibit (the kingpin gang leader) and a few other recognisable faces from Herzog’s extensive filmography. It is Cage that really makes this film though. Herzog mentioned in a recent interview that he has never been a prolific drug user, and so he relied heavily on Cage’s wealth of experience on the subject to help instil Terence with that level of believability. Cage is truly electrifying in this role: he combines the snarling, venomous evil of ‘Face/Off’ with the nihilistic apathy of ‘Leaving Las Vegas’, and somehow still finds room for some of the charming anti-hero honesty of ‘Raising Arizona’. This all combines to create a nasty and uncontrollable anti-hero that you just cant help caring about and rooting for.

This film is also ‘Herzog’ to the very end. He is probably the only filmmaker who could have created such a complex, sporadic, and thoughtful take on Ferrera’s film, while also making it the funniest entry at this year’s festival! Herzog’s relaxed attitude to filmmaking, and his willingness to do away with the rulebook and the concepts of classical Hollywood cinema, allows the story to stray wildly outside the lines. It is not neat, it is often unrealistic, and it might be the least responsible film since ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’; but it is also frenetic and absolutely hysterical.

There is really no way to describe the playfulness and exquisite timing of the comedy in this film. It is partially Herzog’s zany artistry, and partly Cage’s masterful control of facial expressions and comic timing. I have tried to write out a few anecdotes from the film to give you a taste, but they just aren’t funny on paper because you need to see it to believe it, and it is only funny in the context of the moment in which it is occurring and the wider context of the story world. So you will just have to trust me, along with the hundred-or-so journalists who were rolling in the aisles and giving the film the first ovation of the 2009 LFF press screenings.

REVIEW: American: The Bill Hicks Story (dir. Matt Harlock & Paul Thomas)

This fine documentary opens with a simple but salient point: who do we pay to talk to us? Politicians? Perhaps. Pastors? Maybe sometimes… The answer is comics. Comedians are the only people to whom we offer our money and say, “please talk to me… make me laugh at myself and the things around me.” In an age of global hostility, fear, and repression of thought and individuality, the voice of the comic is more essential than ever. We need comedians to remind us how farcical life is; and to poke fun at the institutions and zeitgeists that too easily become writ.

Bill Hicks understood the importance of this role from an early age. As a restless teenager – trapped in his Southern Baptist Texan townhouse with his all-American, college-graduate family – Hicks would sneak out and head for the only comedy club within a million miles of his home… the Houston Comix Annex. Hicks quickly became renowned for his clean, ‘high-school-kid’ brand of comedy and was taken under the wing of Steve Epstein’s fast-talking, hard-drinking comedy troupe, ‘The Texas Outlaw Comics’.

By his early twenties Hicks was already a legend on the Texan comedy scene, but he knew that his comedy could reach greater heights and deal with much wider issues than growing up in a Texan Baptist household. He began experimenting with hallucinogenic mushrooms, and would sit by a remote lake with a few trusted friends and explore the infinite possibilities of philosophy, consciousness, and existence.

This might all sound a bit heavy for comedy, and it certainly took Hicks a long time (and an almost fatal battle with alcoholism) before he really learnt how to incorporate his esotericism and staunch criticism of American society into his comedy routines. These routines – which began around 1989 with ‘Sane Man’, when Hicks was at the ripe old age of 28 – should be immortalised and filed away in the library of Congress with the works of Whitman and Hemingway. The raw simplicity, the fervent passion, the searing love for his common man that forced him to criticise society with all the spit and power he could muster, make Bill Hicks one of the most important spokespersons for Reagan’s America.

Hicks was a product of a forgotten generation of Americans, growing up in the 1970s, who couldn’t understand what had happened to the gusto of Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ or the purity of spirit and love that inspired the cultural revolutions of the 1960s. Vietnam had killed the American spirit, and everything that came after it further distorted and twisted the American Dream into a dogmatic society of thoughtless and unquestioning pawns who were free to do whatever they wanted… just so long as they wanted to do what they were told.

But no matter how much energy Hicks threw at his performances, mainstream America was not ready to hear his message. He achieved international fame and was cherished and idolised in Canada and his spiritual home, the UK; but he was criminally unappreciated in his beloved homeland, and was left to perform in the same old clubs on the same old comedy routes that he had been peddling since his teen years.

In 1993, just as he was beginning to achieve the mainstream platform he so desperately desired (not because he wanted fame, but because he wanted people to hear him) Hicks was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and passed away within a year. He spent his final months touring, creating what many consider to be the finest and most passionate stand-up performances in the history of stand-up comedy. His friends could not understand why he had become such an unstoppable force; they didn’t realise it was simply the desperation of a great man to immortalise his message before he was dragged away from this earth.

Hicks’ last performance was, in his own opinion, the finest of his career. He was invited onto the David Letterman show (the only mainstream show to have shown him any support in his career) and delivered an extraordinary rebuke to America, largely based around the recent Waco massacre. The performance was cut from the final broadcast, and the network claimed that Hicks’ views were to ‘dangerous’ for mainstream broadcast.

Throughout his life Hicks was ignored and chastised as anti-American; but in fact, as with so many great insubordinates, it was his deep love for his country that inspired him to fight back against the forces of corruption and lethargy. It was too great a struggle in the 1980s, but in the 15 years since his death, the rise of the internet and a stuttering revival of American liberalism has allowed Hicks’ stock to rise. His fanbase is growing at an unprecedented rate, and DVD and CD sales have mushroomed inline with the growth of youtube and the revelation of previously unseen clips. The culmination of all this groundwork, and arguably the culmination of Hicks’ entire career, is this documentary.

In Hicks’ final days he returned to his family home and forced his mother to sit with him while he took her through his entire collection of photos and VHS recordings. When she asked him why he was doing this, he explained that someday, somebody might want to make a documentary about him.

15 years later, British TV producers Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas have graciously and expertly taken up the mantle. They have created an honest and simple documentary relying solely on the lucid and evocative memories of Hicks’ friends and family, and Hicks mountain of personal photos and video recordings. The Hicks estate have made it clear that this is the only time they will open up their lives to such a far-reaching project, and so this really is the final word on one of the most important men in the history of the American entertainment industry.

The film employs a revolutionary animation technique that allowed the filmmakers to animate old photographs, adding dimensions and colour and movement to them so that the viewer is transported into Bill’s world not just by the absorbing commentary, but also by the visceral images.

The live footage is also expertly blended into the narrative, so that Bill seems to jump out of the film and onto the stage to perform some of the material that has just been explored. This allows viewers to take a completely new perspective on material that may or may not be familiar to them. Hicks’ fans will surely relish becoming entangled in the trials and tribulations of his life while watching him rage against the dying of the American Dream, and they will feel so much closer to this complex and inspiring idol by the end of the film.
It is difficult to tell how this film will perform theatrically, but this critic certainly hopes that it will achieve the success that these filmmakers, and Bill Hicks, deserve. This wonderful film has recorded a life and immortalised a great man, and that is all one can ask of the cinema.

REVIEW: Robin Hood (dir. Ridley Scott)

Cast: Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Max Von Sydow, Mark Strong, William Hurt

When Richard the Lionheart is killed in battle, Robin Longstride and his band of weary men break away from the army and head straight for the coast. On route they witness the King’s second-in-command, Robert Loxley, being ambushed by a gang of French troops lead by a treacherous British courtier, Godfrey. After rescuing the crown and sneaking back to England to break the bad news, Robin decides to fulfil Loxley’s dying wish by returning his father’s sword to their family seat in Nottingham.

Loxley’s father begs Robin to stay, explaining that if anybody finds out his son has died, they will lose their land and find themselves at the mercy of the Sheriff. Robin agrees to masquerade as Loxley, an idea that Loxley’s wife, Marion, is not immediately attracted to. Gradually, as Robin helps to rebuild their shattered community, Marion comes to appreciate him; but trouble is stirring in London, as Godfrey worms his way into a position of power in King John’s court. Godfrey intentionally stirs up a civil war with the Northern Barons so that the English army will be distracted while his friend, Prince Phillip of France, invades from the South. And so the stage is set for Robin Hood to fulfil his heroic destiny; saving the woman he loves, and rescuing his noble countrymen from the greedy hands of tyranny.

If this all sounds slightly formulaic and emotionless… then I have pitched the story perfectly! Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe must have known, when they teamed up to make another historical epic about an outlawed warrior, that there would be an avalanche of comparisons to their genre-defining millennial smash hit Gladiator. All the masterful conveyance of tone and the eye-watering ferocity of the action sequences are recreated here in the forests and beaches of 12th Century England (although not much has matured or developed over the past decade); but there is simply no emotional heart here, and the absence is made all the more disappointing when compared to the guttural tragedy at the heart of Gladiator.

As the global film community stumbles helplessly into the vortex of 3-D and all the other gluttonous vices that technology offers, there is something admirable about a summer ‘blockbuster’ that values small-scale fight sequences and realistic locations. Scott’s film is certainly a timely reminder that mere humans – without the shortcuts of CGI – can still make visceral and epic films that astound the senses.

Anyone hoping for an Errol Flynn throwback will be shocked and even terrified by this gruelling, bloody film. The feathered caps and bright tights of old are replaced by muddy, sweaty chainmail; and the gay old ‘Merry Men’ have given way to a band of outlawed, highly-skilled warriors returning home from war to a country they barely recognise. There is no denying that the ‘look’ of the film is masterful; but we have moved on from Gladiator, and all the integrity in the world cannot make up for the fact that this film is as damp and calcified as the cliffs that overlook the films fast-paced climax.

The acting is average; but when the acting is ‘average’ in a film with a cast like this, you know something is wrong. Poor performances have become a Ridley Scott trope as he tumbles into his autumn years. He seems to have grown tired – or scared – of the questioning glances of his desperately confused actors; preferring instead to fawn over the stuntmen and choreographers that will garner him praise for his mastery of ‘action sequences’. The cast is enviable, and every one of them wasted.

The accents forced out by these A-list actors are cringe-worthy if you aren’t taking the film seriously, and downright distracting if you are. Crowe’s ear for dialects is usually impeccable, but here he sways maniacally between a leering Liverpudlian longshoreman (I hate alliteration, but I like that image), a timid Mancunian farmhand, and a gruff Berkshire nobleman. And yet, despite this inconsistent mash of identities, you spend the entire film constantly reminding yourself that this isn’t Maximus Decimus Meridius and he isn’t father to a murdered son or husband to a murdered wife. Cate Blanchett, Max Von Sydow, and William Hurt follow suit, so that the question that begs to be asked is surely, “couldn’t you have cast ONE English actor in a leading role?”

All things considered, there will be much worse films than this released throughout the summer. Ridley Scott is still a master of tightly edited action sequences; his attention to detail is enviable, and his confidence in his own ability means that we are treated to climactic battle scene with 1,000 real human beings (which is surely more evocative than 5,000,000 computer generated ones). But none of this makes up for the fact that this film lacks the powerful emotional underpinnings of it’s Roman older brother; and without a real story, no amount of colour grading can make up for the fact that this is still just the story of some men in tights.

INTERVIEW: Matt Harlock & Paul Thomas on American: The Bill Hicks Story

Bill Hicks is one of the most renowned cult figures in the world of comedy, adored across the world for his unique brand of astoundingly filthy yet spell-bindingly poetic satire. But relatively little is known about his personal life, and in the fifteen years since his untimely death, only a smattering of short documentaries and live recordings has kept his memory alive. Well Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas have put this glaring injustice to rights with their passionately detailed and evocative feature documentary, American: The Bill Hicks Story. They were granted unprecedented access to the Hicks’ estates mountainous archive of unseen footage and photographs collected by the wild man himself throughout his career. They have been given what may well be the last say on one of America’s most important spokespersons, and they have proved more than worthy of this huge responsibility.

FtF: How did a project like this leapfrog LA, New York, Chicago, etc and end up at your door in London?

MH: Bill is always someone that was thought of as culturally significant in the UK, and for some reason there had never been a full length telling of his story. There was a short documentary made shortly after he died which was just over 35 minute film. But it struck us that Bill had this amazing life which has this wonderful, almost Hollywood, arc to it in terms of his overcoming the drink and drugs and becoming very successful and then getting terminal cancer at the age of 32. It seemed that that story was something that people needed to know about because Bill lead this real life of meaning, and he was also a groundbreaking comedian who changed the way a lot of people saw what comedy could do. So I think that it was something we both believed that, as a story, had a wonderful aspect to it, over and above any personal interest that we have in Bill

PT: And it was one of the great, unmade bio-pics as well so we were fortunate that it came along for us to pitch at channels. Then it’s a case of making something that stands out. This began as part of a series for Channel 4. There had been a few documentaries in previous years, such as The Kid Stays in the Picture, that had used a more basic version of the animation technique; and Touching the Void was also this hugely cinematic documentary that didn’t feel like a generic documentary, so already we knew that the documentary form was evolving at that stage. And it was becoming more cost-effective to do it on computers, you didn’t need to employ Hollywood Studio or the more expensive Post-Production houses here [in Soho], regular animators can now do this. So lots of things all came together at that time to make this possible.

MH: And also, the Hicks family hadn’t spoken for 12 years. They had had offers but I think that they were very wary of going with people whose motives weren’t quite clear, and wanted to make lots of money. So they were quite cautious but I think they also felt that now is the time to put this story down as a historical record. They knew Bill’s story was important and they needed to tell it. So all of these things were coming together at the same time and we were lucky enough to be in the middle of that.

FtF: And you had organised Bill Hicks tribute evenings in London before hadn’t you?

MH: Yes, we had done some live events which involved comedians and then footage of Bill which I had sourced on the internet, but this was back when you bought VHS tapes. The idea of that was just a tribute night, ten years after he died, and that was when we first got in touch with Bill’s family so we had been in touch with them before taking a film idea to them. We just wanted them to know what was going on in the UK, and how their son was still being thought of. And that was our first contact with Bill’s family.

FtF: What was it like sifting through Bill’s enormous archives of footage and photographs? Did you already know what you were about to find or was that a voyage of discovery for you?

PT: We didn’t know at all. The animation side of things developed as we went along, so we just had to start at the beginning and build on it as the story developed. We knew it was going to work as an approach but we didn’t know, scene by scene, what it was going to involve. We didn’t know how much or how little the photographs would relate to the story we were telling; and as the story develops there are more and more constructed scenes that have to be put together to tell the story. All the interviews were conducted right at the beginning, but then you job is to uncover the real story. So you cant go in with preconceptions of what people have said and what you have read. Especially with Bill’s family where there is a very polarised view that has been presented before. The job is to put all of that out of your mind and really find out what the truth is.

MH: In terms of the archive, there was some amazing stuff that we found. We were aware that there would be some unseen footage, and a lot of the material is either Bill’s personal tapes that he had got out of the back of VHS camcorders, some of which were over 30 years old, or stuff that his brother Steve shot, and that’s the sort of shaky Handicam stuff towards the end. But I think the most affecting stuff was some of the voice-recorded tapes that Bill made for himself. He was alone quite a lot, and when he had no one to talk to he quite often spoke to a tape-recorded. And just the idea of that 18-year-old kid in LA scared about whether he is any good at comedy is very touching; and also, in a weird way, we felt that Bill hadn’t made that tape with any specific use in mind, and we were the ones that ended up using it so that was very strange. It actually felt, on some level, like he had actually made that tape for us; and it felt very personal. Obviously are job is to make sure everybody else gets to hear it as well because it gives a lot of insight into who he was as a performer and a person. But that was certainly one of the most interesting bits of archive, that these real little personal messages that Bill had left on little tape recorders, which were lying in boxes in his mum’s spare bedroom.

FtF: What was your experience of working with the Hicks family? Did you get a sense that they were trying to guide your depiction of Bill? Or were they as open as memory would permit?

PT: Well that’s kind of our job as filmmakers… to make sure that nobody ‘guides’ you. We had several days with each person and they were deep and emotional interviews. The family were very open about everything really. They were aware that there had been earlier depictions of Bill’s childhood, and obviously what you have is the mists of time, so you are asking people to remember things from a long time ago. But there was never any sense that they were really trying to portray him differently. But how did that seem to you?

FtF: I got the impression that they were entirely honest in their recollections of Bill; he has a public persona of being quite volatile and corrosive, and so I thought perhaps his friends and family might be overly defensive of his character, but they clearly see no reason to hide elements of his character or try to portray them in an insincere way. He was who he was, and the people who knew him loved him for it and clearly still do.

PT: Well yes, and you also have to remember that they have been portrayed by other people in the past. There certainly were words had in that household and Bill was certainly a fiery teenager, but with only that side of the story being told by friends who saw him shouting with his parents… I mean all teenagers shout with their parents! And this is certainly something that I have been aware of throughout my career, is that there is often a lot of pressure from broadcasters to go for the sensational. I mean everybody cried during these interviews, but we haven’t just pasted that across the screen. Now I know full well that if we had done that in a Sky doc and Sky had seen that footage, they would have insisted that I have everybody crying on screen. So obviously, if you’ve got a few lines about a kid shouting at his parents, that’s what you’re going to put in. But then all you end up doing is distorting the real picture, and your job as a filmmaker is to present an accurate and rounded overall picture, and that’s what we did.

FtF: Was it difficult to track down any of the people from Bill’s past that hadn’t been involved with his family and friends for a long time?

PT: Yes that was certainly an issue at first because we were just two unknown British guys. I suppose a lot of the early work happened with the family. It was a case of winning trust because I think they had a fairly strong idea of who we were and so they were willing to talk. Then it was a case of us building the project and getting broadcasters involved, because the family are approached by people all the time so they want to know that a project is realistic. Mary really helped by letting other people know that the family were getting involved with this project, but it still wasn’t until the last minute that everything really came together; literally the day before we flew a couple of people weren’t decided and it was only when we were on our way that they agreed. But of course what happens then is they meet you and you start doing interviews and you build up a proper bond, and trust gets established when they find out who you really are.

We did the interviews in quite an unusual way because we didn’t take any crew in, it was just the two of us. Because these people aren’t celebrities, and it’s very easy to put people off when you turn up with crew and lights, so instead we went for a very naturalistic set-up, with people sitting at home in their own environments. And we even started recording without the camera, so it’s just pointed at the floor, just to get people talking, and then we introduced the camera more slowly, which is why it comes across so naturalistically, but it is very easy to blow that.

FtF: How much did Bill inform your opinion? Did you look back at his famous routines and find you had a new perspective on them after interviewing his relatives and sifting through his archives of personal footage and pictures?

PT: Well, everything in the film started with the material on stage, and I think it is fairly natural that that informs everything that is happening. One thing we had the benefit of was watching scores more performances than other people have seen. And often it’s the bits between the well-known routines where you really feel Bill, and a lot of those moments have ended up in the film. The essential job is to be true to that person; we obviously had these ten people telling the story, but the job is to convey who this enigmatic character is, and that counts for both the onstage material and the interviews. There is a subtle job being done by everything and so when you leave the theatre you can come out with a very strong idea of who a person is. Showing what Bill’s comedy was about, and who he was as a person, informs most of the storytelling. You start with a much longer version of the story that isn’t as coherent, and as you edit the thing down you cut the bits where Bill’s character isn’t coming across as strongly or the story is wandering of the track of his comedy developing; and the more you cut it down the more distilled a picture you get of this guy.

FtF: Did you ever worry about making a film that would appeal much more to Bill Hicks’ fans than the wider public?

PT: Well that is the advantage of being independent, in that you are free from that sort of pressure. I suppose there was pressure early on to include celebrities, but we knew that wasn’t the right approach because we were going for the people that really knew Bill. But one thing we were aware of from the start is that this film had to work for fans who already love Bill and for the people who have no idea who he is. But that is quite an unconscious thing that happens when you are forming every scene. You are just automatically aware of an audience and you are crafting it for that wider audience. There are things that particularly play to fans or play to the uninitiated; but it’s really just a great archetypal story, and our job is just to tell the story properly so that it will work for both camps.

FtF: Have there been any big surprises in terms of people’s reactions to the film at the North American festivals you have been to?

PT: Well one interesting thing is that we took a pole at the beginning of a screening and about a quarter of the people said they knew Bill quite well, so that means three quarters of the viewers had come along either to find out more or because they had heard it was a good film. And that’s great because our job here is to get Bill known on a much wider map, and the festivals certainly seem to suggest that that is working. I was actually kind of expecting some kind of backlash, because the film received so many good reviews up front I was just expecting there to be a journalistic camp that reacted against that. I mean some people haven’t liked the animation and some people have thought it was too long, but overall it was a great reaction and people have told us they have never seen reviews like that for a documentary… ever!

MH: We have always been quite keen to find out what the audience make up was in each of the screenings and so quite often we’d do a poll and just ask how many people in the audience would consider themselves to be either a fan of Bill’s or someone that knew him quite well. That number has been fairly consistent, between 25 and 35% in the US (at the London Film Festival it was considerably higher), and that is very encouraging because that means people have either seen the reviews or the description of the film and decided it was something they wanted to see, or they have been dragged along by somebody who already knew Bill. And that is one of the stated aims or goals for the film is to try and get his word more popularised, and so that has been very encouraging for us to see the diversity of the audience make up. It’s not just for Bill fans, there is a very wide range of people coming to see the film.

FtF: Everybody talks about Bill’s performance at Just For Laughs in Montreal in 1991 as being a watershed moment for stand-up comedy. What are your memories of that event?

MH: Well I personally was just someone who had seen bits of this guy on TV, and then this full length performance, which really blew everyone away, and I think that it wasn’t just the material he was talking about – specifically the Gulf War, which at the time really made people, and especially English comedians, sit back in amazement – it was also the performance skill was so crafted and so adept. He was able to move between really filthy material and really quite sophisticated political ideas, and he could just seamlessly take you on these wonderful flights of fancy. I don’t think people were really ready for him; it wasn’t as if he had developed and grown in the UK comedy scene. People had no idea who he was when he first came over and he suddenly lit everybody up like a Christmas tree. It really was something that people were talking about. I remember people coming up to me asking if I has seen this guy, and that isn’t something that happens much anymore. People used to always talk about The Play for Today and Cathy Come Home and people would say “don’t you remember when…” about specific moments in television history, and everybody had seen them. And that Montreal performance was certainly one of those moments.

PT: We spoke to Bruce Hills, who runs Just for Laughs festival, and he recounted that at that time they were looking to do these one man shows in Montreal but they didn’t know who was going to do them. And Bruce Hills saw Bill in New York, doing over an hour of material on stage, and it just blew him away. And he made a phone call and said, “Right, I think I’ve got the guy.” And Bruce counts that as his proudest moment in terms of the world of comedy. And then Tiger Aspect were over there doing stuff for Channel 4 and saw Bill and got to know him there. And they then brought him back to the UK.

FtF: Web 2.0, and the rise of Youtube, has facilitated a huge increase in the number of people familiar with Bill’s work as snippets of his more famous shows receive millions of hits online. Was this a consideration for you as you started working on the project?

MH: Well I’m not sure that we thought about it in terms of now being a “good time”. I think this film is something that always needed to be made, because of who Bill was and because of the legacy and work that he left behind, and because of how important he is on a cultural timeline. Obviously it is gratifying for us that his most popular clips are getting 1.7 million hits because it means that more people get a chance to find out about him, but I don’t think we considered that as part of the reason for doing the film. It was something that sort of happened in tandem; the rise of Youtube was happening while the project was being made. But the great thing, as you say, is that it gives people a chance to delve into a bit of Bill in bite-sized chunks. I think that is something that Youtube does very well, if you are looking to try and find ten of fifteen new things and you’ve got an hour and you can watch two or three minutes of lots of different stuff. And I think we are hoping that people who have been intrigued enough to watch a four-minute long clip on marketing and advertising might now come along and find out a bit more about the man that came up with those routines and where he was in his life and what may have inspired him to go and do that.

INTERVIEW: Samuel Maoz on Lebanon

Samuel Maoz, like so many young men of his generation living in Israel in the early 1980s, had his life turned upside down by the 1982 Lebanon War. He stayed quiet on the subject for over two decades, but the advent of the Second Lebanon War in 2006 inspired him to take up a camera and document his feelings. The resulting film, Lebanon, is a startlingly visceral and torrid tale depicting the breakdown of morality and humanity on the battlefield, all filmed within the confines of one Israeli tank. The film has become a universal hit with critics and festivals, and picked up the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2009.

FtF: Ok, we don’t have long so I’ll jump straight in. Why did you feel you had to get this film made? Was it for a sense of personal catharsis or because you wanted to comment on Israeli society?

SM: Firstly, for me it was a kind of need. It was a need to unload and to expose the war as it was, without all the heroic stuff and the rest of the rubbish, but it was mainly a need – not necessarily to forgive myself – but to find some understanding. I had a responsibility, and in a way my responsibility was inevitable, a part of my destiny. You can see in the ‘banana grove’ sequence [where a timid gunman fails to kill a Lebanese suicide bomber who then proceeds to kill many Israeli troops] that if you pull or do not pull the trigger, it is the same; you are a kind of executor. But in the end there is a huge difference between knowing that you didn’t have a choice to the fact that you feel guilty. But still it wasn’t enough for me, and I can explain why, if I may?

Ftf: Absolutely.

SM: They used to call us, in Israel, the ‘Lebanon generation’. We were in a very weird situation: many of our parents and teachers came from Europe, from the German camps, and they were totally unstable. I can remember my schoolteacher, with a number on her arm, shouting hysterically at us that we needed to fight for our country and die for it if necessary because everybody wants to terminate us. Maybe she had her own reasons for feeling this way, but we were normal boys, born in Israel, and all that was in our heads was the Tel Aviv beach and girls. But we were brainwashed so, at the beginning of the 80s to come back from war with your two hands, two legs, ten fingers, without any burn marks on your face, and to start complaining that you “feel bad inside” was almost unforgivable. They told us, “say thank you that you are alive, we were in the camps!” In the end the turning point for me was during the 2006 Lebanon War, because suddenly I found myself sitting in front of the television watching the news reports and I realised that I hadn’t spoken for 25 years, and now our kids are dealing with the same Lebanon again. When it is just a concern for you, you can pass it; but when it is touching your children, that is something else entirely. That is the red line. I now had a totally different motivation: I am not complaining any more, the feeling is no longer about me and my problems and my needs and memories and pain. Suddenly I realised that if I can find a way to create an effective feeling, maybe I can actually save lives here and there.

FtF: So this isn’t an overtly political film? You are trying to change things using an emotional, rather than a political, story?

SM: Well yes, I chose not to do a political film because to do a political film from Lebanon, or any anti-War film, is to do a politically correct film. If you want to change something – and when I made Lebanon I wasn’t thinking about Venice or the Golden Lion – if you want to change people’s opinions and try to do this by talking to their heads in a political way, usually you will achieve the opposite, their opinions will become more extreme, because nobody wants to hear that they are bad. So you try to talk to people in another way, through the stomach and the heart. If you are a mother you wont care if the soldier is Jewish or Arabic, right or wrong, but you will care if they are a child because it could be your child. I would prefer to change one mother’s opinion than satisfy one hundred intellectual journalists sitting around Europe. And in the end this is the real meaning of politics: to change something and not just say nice slogans.

FtF: Could you talk a bit about how the film was received in Israel?

SM: Well the reaction was very interesting. When the audience was younger, the reaction was more positive, and when the audience was older the reaction was less positive. Obviously this is preferable to the opposite, because the youth are the future and the older generations are the past. And I really can understand it: the older generation had their wars [1948 and 1967] because they felt they had no choice and they really believed that everybody wanted to terminate them so they had a lot of motivation and they won against all odds. When we had our war [the 1982 Lebanon War] it was ‘so so’, we were stuck in the middle. But when this young, global ‘iPhone’ generation had their war [the 2006 Lebanon War], with the best military equipment and technology, they lost, because they don’t have the motivation anymore. So you can understand why the older generations feel that this is not the time for a film like this because maybe mothers wont send their children to the army. And the younger generations want to search for a normal life. They have seen people like themselves in London and Paris, they are connected to the world, so they wonder why Western youngsters can have normality but not them? But certainly in the end the reaction was more positive than negative, and I suppose winning the Golden Lion at Venice helped it because it gave a certain respect to Israeli cinema and gave us an important prize so it helped the film to be accepted.

FtF: What are your feelings towards the likes of Ken Loach and Bridget Fonda trying to boycott Israeli films at the Toronto Festival?

SM: Well firstly, we arrived in Toronto one day after receiving the Golden Lion so that perhaps spoiled their party because suddenly an Israeli film came with such an important prize. If you want my opinion, it is silly because the first step if you want to change something is to talk about it; and if you shut my mouth, nothing will happen. In the end, Israeli directors are rarely from the ‘Right’ side of the political map so it is stupid I guess.

FtF: What inspired you to film entirely within the tank? Was it a purely aesthetic decision?

SM: Well I knew that the issue was not the plot, and even the events that really happened are just the symptoms. The real issue is the burning soul, what is going on inside the soldiers’ souls. And I remember asking myself, how can I show what is going on inside these soldiers’ souls? It felt almost like a student project. But then I realised that the only way to explain it or understand it is not with the head, but as I mentioned earlier, with the stomach and the heart, to ‘feel’ it. And in order to achieve such an emotional understanding you must create a very strong experience. So I told myself, I will put you inside the tank, in such a way that you totally identify with the characters. You see only what they see, you know only what they know. I tried to ensure that the viewer wouldn’t feel like an objective audience member watching the plot unfolding in front of them; I wanted them to feel it, to see the cross hairs in front of them and see the victims staring straight into their eyes, because this is the only way to understand it. It was a totally conceptual reason. And of course I wanted to stick to my truth, because if I put the truth in front of your eyes it must be the total truth. And my truth was inside the tank, if I showed anything outside the tank I would have had to create fiction.

FtF: If you had gone outside the tank you would immediately have had to make an editorial decision about which elements of war to show and which to leave out, whereas within the tank you could show everything?

SM: Well this is the beauty of cinema. By the end of the film you feel like you have really been inside the tank, but technically if you look at shot after shot, there is not even one shot where you see the whole interior of a tank. You see maybe five or six pieces of iron and a few liquids. So in the end there is no tank, I am giving you twenty percent of the tank and all the rest is imagination. In the cinema, 1 + 1 is much more than 2. It is more than the shots; it is the spirit.

Lebanon is released in UK cinemas on 14th May 2010.