“We didn’t know any better,” laughs Director and stop-motion maestro Henry Selick, reflecting on the painstaking task of bringing his festive classic The Nightmare Before Christmas to life. Back in 1993, the idea of hand animating a feature film frame-by-frame was as unheard of as a skeleton stealing Christmas. However, as the film celebrates its 25th birthday, it’s clear that this recklessly-optimistic approach adopted by Selick and his team while adapting Tim Burton’s seasonal switch-up paid off in sled-loads. “We just weren’t afraid,” he tells Total Film. “We were ignorant and blissful.”

To get to the origin of Jack Skellington’s quest to discover the true meaning of Christmas you have to travel back to the late 1980s. It was here where a too-dark-for-Disney animator-turned-director first penned A Nightmare Before Christmas, then nothing more than a few lines of prose. “It was the famous poem The Night Before Christmas,” recalls Selick of Burton’s inspirations. “Tim had re-written it and turned it into this other idea with a character who runs Halloweentown and decides to take over Christmas. I was struck by how original and wonderfully creative it was.”

Once the shock of getting the go-ahead had passed, then came the tricky task of actually realising Burton’s vision. Selick’s first stop? Leading man Jack Skellington.

“Tim did a couple of sketches of Jack in the '80s inspired by Charles Addams, creator of The Addams’ Family” says the director. “Production Designer Rick Heinrichs did the first sculpture of Jack and captured Tim’s drawings beautifully. Then it was all about how to animate him,” continues Selick. “He was impossibly thin so making him into a stop-motion character was hard. We used metal armatures like skeletons underneath his clothing. He was all in black and that didn’t read - since so much of Halloweentown is dark, he disappeared. So I added vertical stripes.”

Next, it was time to get emotive. “As the main character he needed a huge range of expressions. We drew these first then hand sculpted each and every one. He had a basic range and also specials like when he pulls the corners of his mouth way out to scare Lock, Shock and Barrel. It was a gradual evolution to flesh out his personality,” says Selick.

Speaking of evolution, his team were forced to break new ground in order to make Burton’s stop-motion dream a reality. “We wanted the world to feel lifesize so we brought in liberated cameras that could move all over a set or with a character. We wanted it to be like live action,” says Selick. “We were also able to purchase digital frame grabbers. How many frames could they hold? Two!” he laughs, “but it was a huge relief because you could see where you’ve been and where you have to go - but the most important thing was if a puppet’s ankle broke you could send it to the hospital, get it repaired and keep going,” he explains. “It may sound like small potatoes but it was huge. You’d never been able to do that before.

With Spielberg’s most personal film chronicling his journey to becoming a filmmaker, we look at an undersung ’​90’s classic that lovingly celebrated the humble art of movie appreciation…

There’s a bit in Matinee, Joe Dante’s love letter to cinema, where John Goodman’s suspenders-wearing, cigar-chomping filmmaker Lawrence Woolsey explains why the cinema experience is so special. Likening it to the cave painting that marked man’s first foray into storytelling, he starts: “People come into your cave with the 200-year-old carpet. The guy tears your ticket in half. Too late to turn back now!” Meanwhile, Dante lovingly sweeps up through the halls of an old-school picture house in its prime, illustrating Woolsey’s speech. You can almost smell the hot popcorn. “The stuff’s laid out on the candy counter. Then you come over here to where it’s dark. Could be anything in there…” Woodsley sweeps open auditorium doors. “And you say… ‘Here I am!’ What have you got for me!’”

It’s an evocative moment in a movie that’s full of scenes reminding us of the unparalleled and transformative power of going to the cinema. Celebrating its 30th birthday this week, Matinee is far from Dante’s most well-known movie thanks to previous hits like The Howling and Gremlins. However, it’s definitely his most personal -- and as our own relationship with going to the movies has changed over the years in the wake of sofa streaming, it’s emerged as a celebration of not only filmmaking itself but the very act of going to the movies and the people who still show up to fill the seats for a big-screen experience. 

The story of a monster movie-loving kid who meets a big-time movie director, at the heart of Matinee is a deep love of movie-going. Much like its young hero Simon (Gene Fenton) and his military man father, Dante’s professional golfer dad had a job that led to lots of moving around, with cinema becoming one of the only consistencies in his life. As such, movies devoured his attention; much of the film posters and magazines glimpsed in Simon’s teenage bedroom all came from Dante’s own personal collection, with monsters quickly emerging as a stand-out favourite. When a new feature came to town, it was an event -- and in a pre-streaming age, something to be savoured whilst still available. This romanticism bleeds its way into Matinee’s nostalgic frames, with cinematographer John Hora frequently providing a golden hue to the film’s scenes, matching Dante’s clear love of that time period.

​It’s also a movie that frames cinema as a necessary form of escape. Dante’s movie plays out in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis and an impending nuclear war that could start at any given minute. Despite thirty years passing since Matinee’s release — and even more since America’s close call with apocalypse in 1962 — this theme still feels eerily prescient. After all, it was only recently that we learned that the Doomsday clock had ticked even closer to midnight, placing us just 90 seconds from fiery catastrophe. With the ongoing war in Ukraine and Russian aggression, continual gun issues in America and a growing distrust of authority here in the UK, there truly couldn’t be a better time to elope into a dark, quiet room and escape into fiction.

Like a flipped take on Spielberg’s semi-autobiographic new one The Fabelmans, Matinee doesn’t so much chronicle the events that lead someone to become a visionary filmmaker but instead tackles the key coming-of-age moments that create a die-hard movie fan. It’s a film pairing that’s unlikely yet weirdly apt. After all, it was Spielberg who gave Dante his big break, selecting him to helm Gremlins, the first movie released under his Amblin production banner. Three decades later and while Spielberg’s still doing what he does best, Dante’s love for the world of movie making is stronger than ever, both in the films he creates and his extracurricular activities like his cinema celebrating Trailers From Hell podcast. Both individuals continue to showcase the romanticism and importance of the big screen experience — something that couldn’t be more important for the times we currently find ourselves in.

Matinee is currently available to buy on Amazon. Read more of my work by visiting my TikTok or following me on Medium and Twitter. 

​“Yer a wizard, Harry…” It’s these words (from the movie, not the stupid internet meme) that helped welcome us into the wizarding world of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. The arrival of 2001’s franchise starter not only marked the start of Daniel Radcliffe’s big-screen career and bulging bank balance but also a key moment where audiences across the globe were transported into a vibrant and whimsical new realm. Here, magic was real; witches and wizards secretly brushed shoulders with mere non-magic Muggles, broomsticks really could fly and adults with magic wands existed beyond Comic-Cons, kids’ birthday parties and your weird mate’s magic show that you were guilt-tripped into attending.

Most notably though, the universe that author JK. Rowling created was distinctly British. From the dreary grey weather to Ron Weasley’s (Rupert Grint) near-constant use of the phrase ‘bloody ‘ell’, Potter and his pals Ron and Hermione (Emma Watson) may have had more than their fair share of fantasy adventures but they were always back in time for a cup of tea and chocolate frog. They even had their own bumbling government with the Ministry of Magic, an authority that’s arguably preferable to the less-than-capable posh folks we have running the show in real life. It was this dedication to the mightily mundane nature of Blighty life that provided much of Harry Potter’s relatable, everyday charm - and yet this key feature very nearly never made it to the big screen at all.

Shortly after Rowling sold the rights to her as-yet-incomplete Potter franchise (pocketing a cool £1m for film adaptations of the first four books), producer David Heyman started searching for a visionary director to bring her world to life. Before the project landed in the capable hands of Home Alone helmer Chris Columbus, a script for Harry Potter’s first adventure found its way onto the desk of bearded mega-director Steven Spielberg. However before the Hogwarts Express-sized project had time to gather any steam, creative differences caused progress to swiftly grind to a halt. 

​Spielberg envisioned Potter’s world as animated and was even eyeing up The Sixth Sense’s watery-eyed ghost spotter Haley Joel Osment to voice of ‘The Boy Who Lived’. This suggestion immediately got Rowling’s Death Eaters in a tizzy, particularly due to her primary proviso of ensuring that the cast of any Harry Potter adaptation stay strictly British or Irish. While Spielberg could clearly see the raw potential in all-things Potter (he reportedly thought it was a guaranteed slam-dunk, saying bringing the books to screens would be “like withdrawing a billion dollars and putting it into your personal bank accounts”), Rowling’s red-tape ultimately saw him exit the project. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his next movie was the Osment-starring robot drama AI: Artificial Intelligence. 

While a Spielberg-steered cartoon Potter with Osment’s vocal talents would have severely Americanised this distinctly British story, it’s not the only time Hollywood tried to sneak into Hogwarts. As Columbus began fleshing out the film with his long-time casting director Janet Hirshenson, he was reportedly approached by his former Mrs Doubtfire star Robin Williams who was keen to take up the mantle of Hogwarts’ resident gamekeeper Rubeus Hagrid. Unfortunately, Columbus was loyal to Rowling’s ‘Brits-only’ rule. “Robin [Williams] had called because he really wanted to be in the movie, but it was a British-only edict,” Hershenson told the Independent in 2016. “Once he said 'no' to Robin, he wasn't going to say 'yes' to anybody else, that's for sure.” 

As any die-hard Potter fan will know, the role of Hagrid ultimately went to Rowling’s first choice, Robbie Coltrane, however this initial knockback didn’t stop Williams from trying to make his way into this magical world. A few years later, he petitioned to star as Remus Lupin, the werewolf pal of Potter’s late-father James who first appears in the franchise's third outing, Prisoner of Askaban - but he was overlooked for the same reason. If Williams couldn’t break in, no one could - which was confirmed when conversations between actor and The View regular Rosie O’Donnell about tackling the role of magical matriarch Molly Weasley went nowhere. The now-iconic role of Ron’s fiery mum eventually went to Brit screen icon Julie Walters. 

With that, Hollywood appeared to get the hint about Harry Potter’s uniquely English aesthetic and its cast (and many of its crew) remained primarily British throughout all eight of its cinematic outings. It’s an interesting look into what could’ve been, though - and surely only a matter of time before Hollywood finally gets its teeth into what has become perhaps the largest and most successful movie franchise ever. Imagine the scene: we swoop through the impressive and ornate halls of Hogwarts, push in through the candle-lit great hall and finally land on our newly recast and rebooted hero - played by none other than Chris Pratt because of course it’s going to be him.

“It’s funny,” says Screenwriter Chris Matheson, taking us back to 1984 - a time where bagging gig tickets required actually leaving your house and dude-duo Bill and Ted were nothing more than an in-joke shared with his friend and co-writer Ed Solomon. “Back when Ed and I first wrote Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, we were waiting in line for Springsteen tickets and even though we hadn’t really finished the first one, I remember talking about the second one. We just liked the characters so much we started to plan what a second movie would be,” he smiles, fondly recalling early ideas for 1991’s bigger, darker sequel Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. “They’ve been our alter-egos for a long time. We know these guys.”

He’s not wrong. To fully understand the inner-workings of time-traveling chosen ones Bill S. Preston Esq (Alex Winter) and his Wyld Stallyns bandmate Ted Theodore Logan (Keanu Reeves), you first have to understand the deeply ingrained relationship they share with their creators Matheson and Solomon. Having met in their early 20s, the pair’s sympatico humour made them fast friends, with Bill and Ted emerging somewhere between improv class and chuckle-filled downtime. Their fascination with the idea of two airhead teens with hot takes on big issues (usually ‘excellent’ or ‘bogus’) birthed a boundary-blurring relationship that spanned stand-up stages, in-character letter writing and long-distance phone calls, and eventually two feature films, starting with Director Stephen Herek’s Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. 

These days Herek’s franchise-starter may be considered a cult classic but back in 1989, critics weren’t so kind. Thankfully, audiences were - so much so that a sequel was fast-tracked just months after Excellent Adventure’s debut. For Matheson and Solomon, this was great news. Overjoyed their characters had resonated with viewers, the duo now had the chance to extend their universe with another big-screen journey through time. Little did they know, the powers-that-be had their own ideas for the future of their treasured alter-egos. “When Excellent Adventure came out, nobody took it seriously on a critical level,” remembers Solomon. “Critics just pounded us like we were glorifying stupidity - or we ourselves were idiots - which, by the way, we are idiots but there was no way of knowing that from the movie,” he says with a smile, “but then audiences took to it and that was incredibly reaffirming and rewarding.” 

​“I’d say within a month of the first movie coming out, there was talk of a sequel,” Matheson tells SFX. “It was obvious they wanted us to do a continuation of the first movie. That is, let’s make it an English report and send them into Huckleberry Finn, Romeo and Juliet or Crime and Punishment and watch what happens. It just felt too familiar and we wanted to do something that excited us. When it comes to comedy, if it feels familiar, it’s just not going to be funny.” Solomon agreed: “We were like ‘please God no,’” he laughs. “It was the same movie done again and we didn’t want to do that. That’s when we had the idea: why don’t we just kill them and send them to hell? Nobody ever does that.”

“That seemed really funny to us,” laughs Matheson. “To have them go to heaven and deal with God and play games with Death and have Ted possess his dad - suddenly a bunch of scenes started occurring but there was resistance on the part of the studio. They were much more favourable towards the English report.” This wasn’t surprising. After all, why mess with a winning formula? Throw in the film’s working title Bill and Ted Go To Hell and Nelson Entertainment’s foolproof follow-up was quickly becoming much darker than they anticipated. Thankfully, Matheson and Solomon had the film’s stars in their corner. “Alex and Keanu got behind us. They wanted to do our version where they die and play their dark selves,” reveals Solomon. “They really liked the idea of hell and death,” adds Matheson. “The guys wanted to do this version, so we got to do it.”

True to their word, Matheson and Solomon doubled-down on the weirdness. Directed by Peter Hewitt, Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey saw the duo swiftly off-ed by a pair of evil robot Bill and Teds created by their nemesis and disgruntled ex-gym teacher Chuck DeNomolos (Joss Ackland). From there they faced their greatest fears in Hell, met their maker in Heaven and worked with Death (William Sadler) and a super-smart martian named Station to fix future history, realise their world-saving destiny and ride Kiss anthem God Gave Rock And Roll To You right into the credits. Weird? Undoubtedly.

“We had the opportunity  to write something which was a little bit radical for people to accept,” reflects Matheson. “To have evil robots who kill Bill and Ted, spit on their dead bodies and go out of their way to run over cats? It’s pretty dark,” he laughs. However according to Matheson, this darkness was a key factor for the film’s leading men. “Alex and Keanu are delightful guys and both have a lightness of spirit to them but they also have a dark, heavier side to them too. That’s what makes them interesting and why they’re so good as Bill and Ted. They’re not trivial,” he reasons. “I think they loved playing evil guys.”

As for Station? “That originated as a typo,” reveals Solomon. “It was about two in the morning and we’d deleted a whole chunk of scenes set in a police station. For some reason we deleted everything except the word ‘station’ which was just floating on the screen. We were so punch-drunk we started saying ‘Station’ in a martian voice, then we started doing entire sentences with just the word ‘station’,” he laughs. “We just dug our heels in and said no matter what, we’re going to have a martian named Station in this movie.” For Matheson, that night still brings back fond memories: “We only communicated with the word ‘station’ for about ten minutes. We were really tired and thought it was hilarious. We were howling with laughter because it seemed like such an unfunny word but super funny to us. We thought: that’s got to be the name of the martian.”

Jokes aside, the process of creating Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey remains a bittersweet experience for Matheson and Solomon, marking a crucial moment in their friendship. “I think the push and pull on Bogus Journey led to an imperfect script,” admits Solomon. “In particular we never solved the third act. We didn’t put Bill and Ted at the centre, we just threw in all these other elements and didn’t quite get it to congeal. Part of it too was the fact that it was a giant rush,” he continues. “We started filming in January and it was released in June so we didn’t have time to hone and refine it.” Matheson has similar thoughts: “I’d say it gets pretty slipshot from the time they get back into their own bodies. Pete Hewitt really nailed it with that Kiss song but that final chunk... Ed and I are still a little uneasy with it. We stumbled there for a while.

“It’s an interesting one for Ed and myself, because we wrote the first one at a very peak moment of our friendship,” continues Matheson. “Pretty quickly we found we were comically-speaking kindred spirits and there was a lot of joy in the creation of Excellent Adventure. We’d been best friends who just laughed together and then we became ‘professional writing partners’ and that’s a very difficult transition. Bogus Journey is much darker, partly because mine and Ed’s friendship was in a different place. We could still write our weird alter-egos but with a darker colour to them,” he reasons. “It’s always fun inhabiting these characters,” says Solomon. “It was harder having studios give us marching orders and people who we didn’t feel understood the internal human element of Bill and Ted tell us how to do it - but being inside the characters is always really fun.”

As Matheson and Solomon prepare to embark on trilogy closer Bill and Ted Face The Music (rumoured to shoot in early ‘19), their air-guitar-loving alter-egos continue to be a force for good for these long-standing best friends. “We never expected that thirty years later they would’ve grown in cultural fondness,” smiles Solomon. “Wherever I go, Bill and Ted is the one thing people care about on the deepest level. It’s the one that has the most meaning for people and to be honest, it’s the one that has the most meaning for Chris and me. I feel so grateful people have embraced these characters because they were such a joy to embody.” For Matheson, the feeling’s mutual: “Bill and Ted has been a wonderful thing to experience and share with Ed,” he says candidly. “We built them from the inside out. We know them and we feel them and we have always felt these guys. That’s been very meaningful.”

This feature originally appeared in the May 2019 issue of SFX Magazine.

After more than a year stuck indoors, this never-ending bastard lockdown is (hopefully) showing signs of fucking right off. While we all look forward to pints, cinema trips and eating meals somewhere other than the bum-grooves in our sofa, I wanted to take a moment to celebrate some of the movies, TV shows and cool pop-culture bits that literally helped me stay sane during the darkest hours of the pandemic. While the past twelve months have shown us some dark stuff, they've also showcased how healing, therapeutic and necessary a steady hit of escapism can be. Without it, all we’d be left with is reality - and right now, reality is shit. So with that in mind, here’s a few (but not all) of the lockdown lifesavers that have kept me going through this viral nightmare...

Binged before but always worth a revisit, Walter White and Jesse Pinkman’s tale of blue ruin was one of the first things I ducked into when the shit hit the fan. It’s a show that’s become so big, a mere mention of how good it actually is has, in turn, become a bit of a worn out cliche. I don’t care though. It is good - fucking well good - and that bears repeating. Watching Walter White transform from doormat dad to crack kingpin is one hell of a nail biting and joyous high that struggles getting old. Despite knowing exactly what dangers lurk around each of its corners, it amazed me just how fresh and tense the show remained throughout my second run through. Essential viewing.

Like all good shows, Succession’s elevator pitch sounds boring as fuck: Super-rich 1%-er family desperately struggles to hold on to their super-rich 1%-er lifestyle. However like all good shows, the real joy lies in its subtle character interactions and rapid-fire dialogue. Produced by smart silly man Adam McKay and created by Peep Show hero Jesse Armstrong, Succession was, simply put, one of the most enjoyable twenty hours of lockdown. Brian Cox’s prick patriarch Logan Roy gives Rupert Murdock a run for his money; his scorned successor Kendall is played to painful perfection by Jeremy Strong; Matthew MacFadyen’s executive idiot Tom left me giggling for ages at a stupid egg-based name-pun and Kieran Culkin’s irresistibly weird Roman Roy beat them all while still only giving a tiny amount of fucks. Stop reading, go watch.

It’s the TV show that changed TV shows. At its core, The Sopranos is James Gandolfini's finest hour. His three-dimensional performance as mopey mob boss Tony Soprano is staggering; making us love, hate, emphasise, sympathise and root for someone who's essentially a brutal killer. However beyond Tony, the experience of losing yourself in The Sopranos really is like joining a family. From the inevitable tragedy of cousin Christopher and the wing-tipped eccentricities of Paulie Walnuts, to the tight-lipped excellence of Silvio Dante and constantly conflicted conscience of Carmela. By the end of its six season arc, you’ll be questioning your own moral compass when it comes to just how much you care for these terrible people. Truly the Godfather of lockdown entertainment. 

​Some unfiltered stupidity was exactly what 2020 needed and Stath Lets Flats delivered it in droves. The mark of a good comedy surely comes in its ability to create quotes that unconsciously worm their way into your every-day vocabulary, and writer/creator Jamie Demetriou - together with comedy king Robert Popper - created some gems that became instant convo classics. Essentially, it’s a show about the world’s worst letting agent, his wannabe singer sister Sophie (Jamie’s real-life sibling Natasia) and their painfully polite pal Al (Alastair Roberts). However much of its funny comes from the broken phraseology of Greek-born-London-lad Stath and his hopeless family, alongside a peek inside the bizarre world of small-time residential lettings. Lockdown delivered the standard Zoom-reunion - but a third series can’t come quick enough.  

​When I’m not stuffing colourful content stuff into my eyes, I’m ramming music into my ears - and recently, we’ve needed an abundance of both to drown out the sorrow. I sort of feel like BBC 6 Music should get some kind of post-pandemic award for their unrelenting dedication to distracting us from the flaming poo-heap that took control of early 2020 and refused to let go. Their DJs have clearly been under strict instructions never to mention the terrible reality of the outside world under any circumstances and if it wasn’t for the depressing dirge of their a-bit-too-regular news updates (this just in: everything’s still shit), you’d likely never know that the world had ground to a halt. Who knew hearing Shaun Keaveny share details of listeners' lunch options could be so important for my mental health?

​I was late to Taskmaster. Admittedly, I was initially put off by the mainstream, panel show look of it. Then, all ten seasons hit 4OD (and I ran out of things to watch), and I realised just how wrong I had been to judge it so prematurely. The secret to Taskmaster’s genius is its stupid simplicity. Each season pits a new (and varied) group of comics against an increasingly ridiculous set of tasks - some easy, some sneaky, some near impossible - and all of which can be tackled in an infinite number of ingenious ways, as long as they stay within the predetermined rules set by series creator and task-thinker-upper, Alex Horne. Once complete, they’re judged by the Taskmaster himself, Greg Davies - who’s clearly having loads of fun lording it up as the high and mighty point-giver. Ingenious and frequently hilarious, it’s like lockdown medicine.

​One of the most enjoyable things about living through a time where entertainment is key to survival is sticking something on that genuinely blows your socks off. I’m talking about the things you had little-to-no expectation for going into them that literally emerge as one of your new favourite things by the time you're on the way out of them. Bong Joon-Ho’s barrier-shattering award winner Parasite was that movie for me during the early days of lockdown. When you start out watching this family of highly-skilled con-artists slowly worm their way into a wealthy home, you stupidly assume you know where it’s headed - only for it to pull the rug out from under you time and time again. Most people will have seen this already - so I’m not saying anything new - but if you’re among the few that haven’t, hit play blind. 

Released during the dark days of the second wave but only just making its UK debut in April 2021, Palm Springs is a time-loop comedy that flips the format on its head. You may not think that a movie set in a world where every day is literally the same as the one that came before it is the ideal viewing experience to help you through our own personal Groundhog Day - but you’d be wrong. Starring Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti and JK Simmons, the cast's positive vibes and the bright and peppy aesthetics of Palm Springs are more than enough to lift your mood. Throw in some great gags, touching unexpectedly performances and an overall ethos that re-enforces the importance of appreciating what you have - and suddenly being stuck in the same situation day in, day out doesn’t seem so bad.

​If ever there was a time where we could ALL use a Jeff Winger motivational speech, it’s been during the past twelve months. Throughout Community's troubled six season (and hopefully a movie, yeah?), it was these uplifting monologues, delivered by star Joel McHale, that helped Greendale’s weirdo study group find order in the chaos - no matter how dark (or meta) their situation. Unfortunately, while we haven’t had the same calming quotes to help us through COVID, we have had all episodes of Dan Harmon’s much-loved cult-hit. Packed with throwaway gags that are funnier than the A-game material from most mainstream shows, Community's reliable humour certainly helped keep spirits high - but it’s the show’s heart and warmth that assured us that things ultimately can, and will, get better. 

Have a movie or a TV show that you treat like comfort food? Something you stick on in the background purely because you just enjoy its rhythms and familiar sounds? For me, 30 Rock is that show. Set behind the scenes of a Saturday Night Live-esque late night variety show in New York City, 30 Rock is literally bursting at the seams with one liners that are not just brilliant - but smart, multi-layered and packed with a level of hilarity that seems to improve with age. These aren’t just ordinary jokes -  they’re Airplane level rib-ticklers. The type that force a unfiltered belly laugh out of your face before you’ve even had chance to comprehend exactly what it is you’ve heard. No matter how shit things get, 30 Rock is guaranteed to lift my mood. 

​One of the best bits of early lockdown was getting to binge Broad City in its entirety. I have to admit, I hadn’t heard of this show much before my amazing fiancée recommended we watch it. As a huge fan of wandering around New York City, its urban, street-worn look was enough to lure me in but it was creator/star duo Ilana Glazer and Abbie Jacobson that kept me glued to its five season journey. Their brand of outlandish yet painfully relatable comedy made the show more than just one of the best comedies I’d seen in the past few years. Instead, it transcended into a kind of coming of age ode to leaving your wild twenties and facing up to the (sometimes harsh) realities of adult life. 

​If - like me - you enjoy feeling smarter than the people around you whilst knowing deep down that you’re really a complete moron that doesn’t even know words good - then listening to science podcasts is a great way of maintaining the lie. Of all the brainy conversations currently out there in the pod-verse, I found myself drawn to the BBC’s Infinite Monkey Cage Podcast mainly thanks to its mix of intellectual brains and low brow humour. Led by razor sharp comic Robin Ince and Professor Brian Cox - it’s one that I’d listened to quite a bit before the pandemic hit. However when things really started to look bleak, being reminded how pointless and insignificant everything really is suddenly took on a new level of importance.

​You can’t stop Saturday Night Live. The weekly variety show that has helped forge the foundations and future of modern alternative comedy has survived almost five decades and when the pandemic hit, they were among the first to push forward in whatever way they could. Thankfully, those live-streamed audiences didn’t last long - and when they’d finally worked out the kinks and repurposed the show to safely resemble a familiar shape, its ability to puncture the ever-constant stream of stress bubbles caused by COVID and politics was hugely therapeutic. Combating the unpredictable craziness of an out-of-control year with a hit of irreverent humour is a much needed reminder that sometimes, you’ve just got to laugh. 

​Making the transition to live streamed living may have been an awkward for most - but for Scottish comedian Limmy, it’d long been his bread and butter. After earning his place in the all-time alternative comedy Hall of Fame a few years back with his slightly psychotic Vines and viral videos and three series of the weird and wonderful Limmy’s Show for the BBC, Limmy had since turned his attention to Twitch and was making a healthy living live-streaming games, telling jokes and dreaming up improvised stories based on fan-suggested titles. Limmy’s humour has always edged on the dry and dark side of life - which is something I personally love - so listening to his meandering and strangely specific improv stories quickly became a nice end-of-the-day decompressor. The guy’s a constant content generator too - so this is one piece of escapism that’ll hang around long after COVID stops trending.

Every time I interview someone I still get really nervous. You’d think it’d get better the more you do but it never seems to go away, for me at least. When discussing encounters with famous folk, some say: ‘Well, they’re just people, right?’ Like regular social encounters aren’t also tricky to navigate situations peppered with the potential for world-ending embarrassment. When it comes to talking to someone who you know full well has absolutely no good reason to be talking to you, that acute anxiety is amped up to the max. Before my phone rings or I punch in someone’s number, I take steps to give my energy levels the necessary caffeine-boost or chamomile-calm required to let me sit somewhere between peppy and personable, and twitchy and indecipherable. It’s a weird science.

​Then there’s the wees. On average, the pre-chat jitters result in anywhere between one to five bathroom breaks as anxiety manifests itself in urine-form. The bigger the name, the more wees I can usually expect. They don’t teach you that in journalism school. All this nonsense and we haven’t even touched upon the chat itself. Basic stuff like making sure you’re clued up, don’t say anything stupid or accidentally come over disinterested during a particularly rambly anecdote. Can they tell that was a fake laugh? Sure hope not. With that in mind, here’s a few interview tips that I’ve learned the hard way so you don’t have to…

​It should go without saying — but do your research. There’s nothing worse than speaking to someone and knowing absolutely nothing about what you’re supposed to be talking to them about. You can’t hide it. It will become clear and you’ll both feel awkward. If someone with some clout has taken time out of their schedule to speak to you, the least you can do is watch their movie, binge their series or read up as much as you can on the project they’re trying to promote. Stars will usually roll out the same old anecdotes when prompted — but they still need prompting. Doing your research will help ensure you get the best out of your interviewee.

​Contrary to what I’ve just said, it’s also worth remembering that, as a journalist, it’s your job to find the story — and by definition that requires you to not know everything. Don’t confuse this with not doing your homework — do your homework — but realise that you’re not as involved in a project as the person you’re talking to and as such, it’s impossible for you to know everything about it. In fact, you shouldn’t know everything about it. It’s your job to translate their product into a story that’s accessible to the average person on the street who knows zilch about the topic at hand. Being a little unaware helps you see things from a different angle and if, during your interview, you find something odd that’s worth pursuing — pursue it. Your finished article will thank you for it.

​Just like public speaking, a surge of adrenaline can make it all too easy to speed through your interview questions and make a twenty minute chat last a whirlwind five minutes. Don’t let this happen. Remember to breathe and take your time. There’s plenty of additional factors that can heighten the situation: a publicist listening into your call, the need to get a specific set of quotes from an interviewee within a limited time frame — try not to focus on these and go with the flow instead. Take time to get comfortable. Ask your interviewee how their day has been. Thank them for taking the time to talk to you. Go slightly off-piste. When time is running out, odds are those small niceties you dished out earlier will encourage your interviewee to to stick around a little longer.

​While you often can’t predict how your interviews will go, you can certainly try to add some structure to ensure they hit all the beats you’d like them to hit. Planning and pacing your interview questions will do wonders in keeping things on track and ensuring you don’t accidentally gloss over avenues that may lead to meaty stories full of flair, humour and snappy quotes. Try to structure your conversation as you would your finished piece. Settle into the introduction and let your interviewee set the scene. Spend some time digging into one or two interesting subtopics related to your subject’s career or project. Then, when your time is running low, try to find a natural closer that’ll end your conversation on a well-balanced, natural high-note. If you’ve done your research, this should be quite easy to implement — and should hopefully lead to a more fruitful chat.

​It sounds obvious but manners go a long way — use them. If you’re speaking to someone who’s half-way through a day-long junket and you’re nestled right in the middle of their back-to-back interview schedule, then they might — understandably — be a little low energy. The last thing they need is to come face-to-face with someone who’s prickly or a little short. Be polite and peppy. In an industry that’s (for better or worse) based around connections, recommendations and contacts that can help you secure a commission in a spot, a smile and a little levity go a long way to ensuring you can continue doing what you love for the foreseeable future.

“The approach was to try and make a picture about why there shouldn’t be a sequel to Gremlins,” laughs Director Joe Dante, recalling the thought process behind 1990’s gloriously meta sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch. It took Dante and his Producing Partner Mike Finnell six years to start work on a follow-up to 1984’s original, itself an unexpected sleeper hit and the first movie released through Steven Spielberg’s burgeoning production company Amblin Entertainment. As Executive Producer, Spielberg entrusted Dante to bring Screenwriter Chis Columbus’s ambitious small-town monster movie to life - and when audiences went wild for the result, sequel talk quickly began. But with Dante drained from the mammoth task of creating a feature-length puppet movie, he wasn’t exactly keen to return to the world of Mogwais, mysterious rules and creature chaos. 

“Gremlins was an extremely difficult movie to make,” he tells SciFiNow. “It started in Spielberg’s mind as a low budget horror but it quickly became apparent that it couldn’t be done convincingly on a low budget. We were inventing technology as we were going along - nobody had ever done a puppet film on that scale before so we were constantly experimenting. We even shut down production for a while just so we could do pure puppet footage, which was exhausting. I was pretty burned out,” he admits. “Once it was done the studio said ‘let’s do another one’ and I just couldn’t face it.” Undeterred, Warner Brothers soldiered on, determined to extend the franchise yet unable to crack the code. “They diligently applied themselves to trying to figure out a way to make a sequel but because they never really had any faith in the film in the first place, they didn’t understand why it was a big hit - so they couldn’t replicate it.”

​It wasn’t until Dante received an offer too good to pass up that he eventually considered returning. “After a number of efforts that didn’t pan out, they came back to me and said ‘If you give us one of those Gremlins movies next summer, we’ll let you do whatever you want - you can make any kind of movie as long as it’s got Gremlins in it.’ That’s a very rare opportunity.” Like any sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch was bigger in scope and scale - transporting the action from the sleepy Kingston Falls to the Big Apple. It’s here where we find our hero Billy (Zach Galligan) working as a struggling concept artist for the synergy-focused businessman Daniel Clamp (John Glover). When one of the Clamp Building’s unlikely tennents - a genetics lab operated by the gleefully over-the-top Dr Catheter (Christopher Lee) - stumbles upon Billy’s Mogwai BFF Gizmo, it’s only a matter of time before a new gaggle of Gremlins have taken control of this gadget-filled building-of-tomorrow.

​And yet, Gremlins 2: The New Batch became so much more; a film crammed with deliriously wreckless in-jokes and self referential humour that tested the limits of what audiences would accept from a studio sequel. “We wanted to raise the stakes,” says Producer Mike Finnell, recalling the brief he and Dante set screenwriter Charles S. Haas. “I don’t even know if the word ‘meta’ was in use back then, but that was the idea - to do a lot of self-referencial stuff, like the scene where they make fun of the rules and what happens if you’re crossing a time-zone and there’s something caught in your teeth. Charlie just ran with it.” According to Dante, nothing and no one was safe: “The 90s were going to be upon us and there were a lot of interesting things going on in the world. My concept was: this was like a giant Mad Magazine parody of the first picture, which means not just making fun of movie tropes but also making fun of society.” 

For Dante, the decision to play fast and loose was not only fun - it was creatively necessary: “The studio would have been happy with a repeat of the first picture but that didn’t interest me and I don’t think it would have satisfied the audience,” he reasons. “We decided to make fun of the whole concept of Gremlins - and that we’d asked the audience to suspend their disbelief long enough to buy the idea that there were certain rules you had to follow. I thought: ‘Let’s throw caution to the wind and do crazy stuff to remind people it’s a movie. Let’s let them know it’s a sequel and that we know it’s a sequel. We were going to make fun of the movie and the fact you came to see it,” he chuckles. “The original drafts were way too ambitious because they had Gremlins running around New York City - and these were the days before CGI effects,” adds Finnell. “Charlie came up with the idea of keeping it all inside this high-tech building - which allowed us to still do lots of New York City jokes. It was the perfect solution.”

With their location set, Dante and Finnell set the gears in motion for a new array of Gremlins to wreak havoc, with practical effects pro Rick Baker inheriting VFX duties from part one’s Chris Walas. “Chris wanted a Directing career and Rick didn’t want to use Chris’s designs,” explains Dante. “So we came up with the idea of the gene splicing lab to create different kinds of Gremlins that Rick could design. That was what got him on board,” he reveals. “Rick did a fantastic job,” says Finnell. “He did the Vegetable Gremlin, Brain Gremlin and the Bat-Gremlin - and of course we did the Batman joke because Batman had just came out,” he smiles, referencing the Bat-Gremlin’s flawless bat-symbol window escape. “Rick actually did designs for Gremlins that we didn’t even use because there was only so much space in the movie. There was an Elephant Gremlin and a Gremlin that turned into Albert Einstein,” teases Dante. “I’m surprised we were able to cram in as many as we were.” 

Technological advances also opened up a new world of opportunity for Dante and Baker. “I was very glad I didn’t take them up on doing another Gremlins right away,” admits the Director. “In the intervening years, the tech changed drastically to a point where things we could never get the Gremlins to do in the first movie were now easily accomplished. We could make Gizmo walk, dance and see his whole body - and we were actually able to make the Gremlins talk with a device called the Gilderfluke, which allowed us to play back a pre-recorded voice,” he adds, referencing the tech responsible for bringing the Brain Gremlin to life. “It was my idea to cast Tony Randall,” smiles Finnell on finding the right Gremlin voice. “I thought he had the perfect slightly upper-crust diction.”

Gremlins aside, there are aspects of Dante’s sequel that remain oddly resonant: “At the time we had then billionaire - or at least he said he was - Donald Trump, who was in the news in New York. There was also another mogul called Ted Turner who had just bought the news station CNN,” explains Dante. “Daniel Clamp was a combination of Trump and Turner,” confirms Finnell of Glover's character. “He has a TV station with all these different channels - some of which were parodies and now they really exist. Trump’s The Art of the Deal had just come out and we parodied that with Clamp’s book I’ll Take Manhattan,” he smiles. “He’s one of the funniest things in the movie,” admits Dante. “There was also a character played by Haviland Morris named Marla and it turned out Trump’s mistress was also named Marla - which we didn’t realise when we were making the movie. When the picture came out everyone said ‘this is so pressient!’” he grins. “It was just an accident!”

It wasn’t just the Clamp Building that fell victim to the Gremlins’ reign of chaos - the fourth wall took a thrashing too. “The scene where the film seems to break and the Gremlins take over the projection booth was very controversial with the studio because they thought if people think the film is broken, they’ll leave,” remembers Dante. “They let me go to the preview with it and of course it worked great - but when it came to doing it on home video, that joke didn’t work anymore. They let us shoot a separate version for the VHS with the Gremlins messing up your VCR and changing channels on the TV - and instead of Hulk Hogan chasing the Gremlins away, it was John Wayne. That was very nice of them to do.” Finnell adds: “The studio’s reaction was not tremendous enthusiasm because anything that was too far out there, they weren’t crazy about - but I don’t remember any big arguments.”

A frequent fixture in countless ‘Best Sequel’ lists, time has been unexpectedly kind to Gremlins 2: The New Batch - unlike 1990 audiences. “I don’t think people were ready for it. I think it was a little ahead of its time,” reflects Finnell. “We hoped it would be something that, if people didn’t get it then, they would eventually get it. It’s become a touchstone for the kind of movie a studio would probably never allow to happen nowadays.” Dante shares his thoughts: “We didn’t make as much money as we could have and it put the kibosh on plans for an animated Gremlins series which they already had in the works,” he says. “They basically didn’t do anything with the property after that and I think the same issue may apply: they really don’t understand these pictures.” That said, the movie still holds a fond place in Dante’s heart: “Gremlins 2 is special to me because it’s so personal,” he smiles. “It’s a movie where my ID was unleashed and I got to do whatever I wanted and it wasn’t second guessed. There was nobody to say no,” adds the Director. “They were true to their word: they let me do the movie the way I wanted and I’ll always be grateful for having that opportunity.” 

​This piece was originally published in SciFiNow Magazine.

​Earlier this week movie history was made as Director Bong Joon-ho’s dark comedy Parasite became the first foreign language film to take home the Best Picture Oscar. It’s a moment that marks a long overdue transition - especially when contrasted against Green Book’s win for the very same accolade just a year ago. It also signals a key wind change when it comes to how the Academy is starting to consider these innovative international gems whose subtitles so often hold them back from achieving mainstream success. As the ceremony’s biggest award, the ripple effect of this big win is sure to be felt for years to come - however amid all the celebration, back slapping and fizz it appeared to be business as usual when it came to the Oscar’s other awards - especially the stale and repetitive way it rewards animation.

2020’s gong for Best Animated Feature went to Toy Story 4, the colourful Pixar sequel that saw Tom Hanks and Tim Allen reprise their plastic counterparts Woody and Buzz for a largely formulaic fourth outing. The win gave Pixar its thirteenth Oscar, making them the most award-laden animation studio in the world, despite their increasing reliance on sequels and recent internal strife following allegations against its founder and CCO, John Lasseter. More noticeable however were the films that it beat out. Sure, there was the usual spattering of mainstream fare with Dreamworks lush threequel How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World - but 2020’s shortlist also included powerhouse works like Laika’s beautiful stop-motion adventure Missing Link, Spain’s rich 2D Christmas comedy Klaus and the heart-wrenchingly poignant French feature I Lost My Body. With the latter three in this category containing more depth, diversity and originality than anything in Pixar’s latest toybox, is it time the Academy looked at something other than mainstream success when it comes to celebrating feature animation?

“It’s all too predictable,” says Steve Henderson, Director of Manchester Animation Festival and Editor of Skwigly Animation Magazine. “Toy Story 4 was just one great film among some incredible works of art. Until the Academy takes animation seriously as an art form, it’s just going to continue handing out awards to Disney films that are already incredibly well publicised. We did a poll on my magazine Skwigly.com and just 2% of those voting there voted for Toy Story 4. There’s a massive gulf between Academy voters and the animation community. I Lost My Body is a masterpiece - a real work of art. Klaus was also an amazing achievement. In an ideal world, animated films wouldn't just be restricted to animation categories,” he reasons. “I Lost My Body could have contended with Best Picture.”

Pixar’s undisputed track record when it comes to the Oscars proves that this is nothing new. Last year’s win for Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse undoubtedly marked a step towards honouring fresh animation styles - but it still gave mainstream studios a win over independent features like Japanese fantasy Mirai. In 2018, Pixar’s Coco topped the social political message contained within Nora Twomey’s warmly animated The Breadwinner and the painstakingly created Loving Vincent, while in 2017 the star-studded Zootopia somehow emerged victorious against the tender French childhood drama My Life as a Courgette and Michaël Dudok de Wit’s stunningly crafted Studio Ghibli co-pro The Red Turtle. With so many animated features left in the wake of Disney, Sony and the like, it’s no wonder the animation community is paying less and less attention to the Academy’s praise. 

“If you look to BAFTA and the Golden Globes where Klaus and Missing Link won, you get the impression more care was placed in the voting system - but the Oscars don’t seem open to change,” says Henderson. “There have been some amazing animations this year that didn’t even get nominated - The Swallows of Kabul, Buñuel in the Labyrinth of Turtles, Weathering with You, Funan and This Magnificent Cake didn’t make the nominee list but we’re all incredible works of art. Maybe if they were only to give animators the opportunity to vote we would see a change. Viewers who want to open their horizons and see something unique should take a chance on some of the lesser-known animated films that you can find on home streaming platforms, animation festivals or in independent cinemas,” he adds. “Don’t rely on the Oscars to act as a barometer of quality when it comes to animation.”

Do you think Toy Story 4 deserved to win Best Animated Feature at the 2020 Oscars? Let me know in the comments section below!

Kevin Smith knows his brand. After all, he should. He’s spent the better part of three decades making films that are so singularly tailored to his own specific audience it makes you wonder how much head scratching the uninitiated must do while watching some of his later work. Smith was world-building and character-linking long before the spandex-clad Marvel made it commonplace and cool - and yet his latest work, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot - a return to the foul-mouthed, pop-culture obsessed View Askewniverse that he spent the majority of the 90s creating - feels very much the cumulative work that Avengers: Infinity War was for Iron Man and friends. Everyone from the Director’s back catalogue returns and we mean everyone - however oddly shoehorned or randomly placed - in a film that’s both chaotically messy yet somehow still enjoyable - if you’re in on the joke.

Plot-wise, Smith doesn’t stray far from the formula that framed his titular characters in their last headline outing, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back in 2001. In fact, he doesn’t change much at all. On discovering the movie studio that once owned the rights to the comic book that they’re the basis of has reclaimed its stake - taking ownership of the duo's names in the process -  New Jersey street rats and local weed dealers Jay and Silent Bob must head to Hollywood to stop stoner superhero movie Bluntman and Chronic from being made, taking their names back in the process. As they hit the road, a host of familiar faces emerge from the woodwork - alongside a wide array of new guests including Chris Hemsworth, Val Kilmer, Joe Manganiello and countless more. 

Smith’s latest undeniably has a swan-song vibe to it as the director calls upon all the famous friends he’s made over the years to help collectively lift Jay and Silent Bob Reboot from bargain bin fodder to something with a little more shine. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Smith has become a commodity unto himself - larger and more successful in many ways as a media personality than he ever was as a Director. His latest isn’t blind to this fact either, as the film treads deeper and deeper into meta-territory with nods to the Smith's ‘too fat to fly’ fiasco where he was wrongfully booted off a plane in 2010 and prods at his fascination with putting family members into his work. Ben Affleck’s Chasing Amy alter-ego Holden McNeil sees the cameo fan-service reach its peak in the film’s most touching sequence - but even that cumulative moment can’t resist the opportunity for a bit of fourth wall breaking fun. 

Overall, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is a bit of a conundrum. From both a technical and storytelling perspective, it’s far from a great film - enough so that it makes you wonder where the Director might go next now that he’s called his cameo favours all in one go. What’s more, a good 90% of its references, in-jokes and overall humour will zoom over the heads of newbie Smith fans like a fat Batman in a New Jersey mall. That said, is this issue really any more difficult to deal with than Marvel’s episodic movie strategy? They’re a company that plays to their fans and their fans alone - and so is Smith - and if you count yourself a True Believer in the worlds and characters that he’s spent decades creating, then you’ll likely find just as much to like in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot than in any Avengers outing. Snoogans.