Edinburgh Film Festival: Day Seven

My last day at the festival and the second screening of 'Mum & Dad'. This time we were in the smaller cinema, Filmhouse 2, but had sold out before the day, so that when I went to try and get a spare ticket at 9 in the morning, there were none to be had. So, we had a packed crowd in a really hot cinema - I didn't stay in for the film this time, as I wanted to go and chat with Lizzie Francke, who was one of the execs on the film, and a massive self-confessed horror geek. I just came in at the end - it seemed to go well and we had a good turn-out for the Q and A. Olga was there, so she came up with me. I was expecting maybe a bit of an adverse reaction (I know it's not really for everyone...), but people seemed to really like it, although one person was a bit confused by the BBC logo - "They're never going to show it, are they...?". Well that was the initial deal, but we'll have to wait and see.

Earlier in the day, I'd been to see Ray Harryhausen give a talk about his work. It was good, loads of great clips and he was very charming. There was a slight feeling that he and his co-writer (who was interviewing him) had been through this whole thing before (especially when they told a joke about 'One Million Years BC' twice within five minutes), but everybody there had obviously been given so much enjoyment by his work over the years that they could forgive him anything. My friend Sally, who I went with, had her picture taken with him the other day and was thrilled to see him - although he did give her a bit of a shock when he revealed in the talk that the fur for 'Mighty Joe Young' was made out of 'unborn calf'. What with her being a vegan...

I dashed straight from there to see the documentary 'Dreams With Sharp Teeth' - about the SF writer Harlan Ellison. He's an irascible, unstoppable, ever-talking, frequently hilarious, often foul-mouthed force of nature - a total gift to a documentary maker. (He described Death as looming over him 'like a Star Trek fanboy salivating over your shoulder') With contributions from Neil Gaiman, Peter David and others (including a just-about-acceptable level of Robin Williams), it was a gallop through his life and opinions, interspersed with clips of him reading from his work. And slagging off everybody from Warner Bros to the man in the car in front of him.

From there it was onto 'Mum & Dad', and with that over and done with, I got stupidly (and very relievedly) drunk, talking with Alex 'Blood Car' Orr about The Best B-Movie Actor Whose Career Should Get Resurrected By Appearing For Not Much Money In A Crazed Exploitation Film. Treat Williams and Randy Quaid were both pretty popular choices. Although I was so pissed by the end, I could possibly also have put forward Gary Wilmot and That Bloke Who Played The Policeman In 'Allo 'Allo. Who knows.

Edinburgh Film Festival: Day Six

I spent half of yesterday with my other hat on - as co-director of the Mayhem Horror Film Festival - watching shorts in the Videotheque to see if there was anything that we might try and nab for the festival this year. It's quite a weird environment for watching films, the Videotheque - about 25 dvd players and flatscreen TVs lined around the walls of a dimly-lit and library-quiet room, with people sitting there with headphones on. I tried to select as many films as possible, just going by the description in the programme - which meant that occasionally I got a less horror film experience than I was expecting. (I've learnt that if anything says that it 'plays with horror film tropes and iconography' it usually means that it's not scary or disturbing, but slow and pretentious). I saw a good zombie film, which I'd already heard about and had been hoping to get a look of, as well as a very confusing Welsh serial killer film (there was a shot at the end that the music and camerawork was telling me was a reveal - but I couldn't figure out why, seeing as I aleady knew who it was) and a film I was really hoping was going to have a werewolf in it, but ended up being about the Dangerous Dogs Act.

In the afternoon, there was a real treat - a screening of 'Jason and the Argonauts', followed by a book signing by Ray Harryhausen. The screening was on at a beautiful old cinema called the Dominion, just a little way out from the city centre. The screen was great - really big, with two rows of leather sofas along the middle, each with a small table and a footstool. Ray Harryhausen did a brief intro and then we watched the film on a scratchy old print. I don't remember the film being in Academy ratio (which was the first surprise), because in my childhood memory it was just big and epic. I probably haven't watched the film for 25 years because there were whole bits I didn't remember - but certain sequences - Jason being carried to Olympus in the palm of a giant Hermes' hand, the bronze statue of Talos coming to life and of course the brilliant and still technically impressive skeleton fight - which are burned on my memory. Afterwards, my friend Sally got a book signed and I took a picture of her with Ray. (Maybe I should of taken a hundred, just getting them to move ever-so-slightly in between each one...)