Are you a talking head?

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Thu, 2006-06-08 15:20

Hello everyone,

As cheap filler on television, it's quite common to get programmes made up of archive clips, stitched together by a seemingly random selection of people remembering how they felt about them.

According to the illusion promoted by these programmes, everyone has a fully developed routine about anything that ever happened in their lifetime, ready to be deployed at the drop of a hat.

In reality, I imagine that these funny yet poignant rememberances are a result of the following equation:

money + need for exposure + just being shown a video = witty yet nostalgic thirty seconds of television

What I was wondering is: Do any of you prepare your own responses to this kind of programme, ready for the time that you too might become a talking head?

Do you have any witty, funny, poignant or nostalgic memories related to anything that has ever been on the telly, the radio, in the films or in the world in general?

I'll get the ball rolling:

*a clip of 1980s film Ghostbusters is shown*

MARK BROWN: This was one of the films that were extremely important in the playground. It was on all of the telly programmes, it was in your cereal box, it was everywhere. The peopel who were ahead of the game at school had either seen it at the pictures or on a pirate video. In line with my families general tardiness getting with the the times, it was years later before we saw it on video. So excited was I, and so filled with expectation I almost floated back from the videoshop come weigh your own shop on Adelaide Terrace in Benwell.

Watching the film, finally, after so much time pretending I had seen it, was the high point of my life up to that point. I was so excited, in a kind of pre sexual sexual excitement, that I lay awake all of the night afterward, body entirely rigid and drenched with sweat, eyes wide open, waiting in an agony of expectation for the sun to come up so I could watch it again.

As my little fists clenched at the sodden bedsheets, I knew that, should opportunity arise, I would join the Ghostbusters."

What's next on 'I love the TV's funniest 100 greatest favourite talking heads ever'?

Cheers,

mark

Thu, 2006-06-08 16:12

fergal

In keeping with the film theme although none of the below is particularlly witty, funny, poignant or nostalgic). A clip of STAR WARS, Return of the Jedi is shown. FERGAL: We used to act out scenes from Star Wars every lunch time. Either that or 'Killer Bees' which seemed a constant threat throughout primary school. Three tyres bolted to the playgroud were the Millenium Falcon. The wood chip climbing frame could be The Death Star, The Ewok Village or an Attat Walker. Everybody wanted to be Luke Skywalker. They may say now that they wanted to be Hans Solo, but that is a lie along the lines of people saying Sean Connery was always their favourite Bond, when secretly they loved the white slacks and lifted eyebrow of Roger Moore. I got to be Leia by default because a) I was the only girl not doing handstands against the wall and b) I fancied Andrew Hearn who was always Luke Skywalker and everyone knew that Luke and Leia were a couple. This meant -when intrinsic to plot development - we got to hold hands and kiss each other. The horror I felt at sitting in the Tyre Falcon the day after it had been discovered Luke and Leia were siblings was threefold. 1) Andrew Hearn said we couldn't kiss anymore because it was gross and wrong 2) Boy X (as not to offend his adult self) was Hans Solo and he smelt of wet Shreddies, his Mum's talc and verruca socks, and 3) Andrew said if I didn't like there was a vacancy for a Jabba the Hut. Stuart McSween got sent out of class for doodling a tie-fighter dog fight on his spelling book. Nobody realised the rip-off factor when they got the new figures in Endor camoflage gear. Once the jackets were lost, they were the same as the figures in The Empire Strikes Back gear. Nobody minded. The old figures were probably buried in an unmarked grave anyway.

Fri, 2006-06-09 16:21

maddan

*a clip of a naked Linnea Quigley dismembering a man with a chainsaw cuts swiftly to a man with an obvious fake moustache sitting in a leather armchair holding a pipe* DAN (for it is he): I was only twelve when Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers came out and it was rated eighteen, we had to see it though, we all did, the hype was enormouse, it was everywhere, this was the one film you had to have seen if you were going to be anyone in the playground. Eventually, as I recall, I stole a bottle of meths from the garage and used it to bribe a tramp into taking me and my friends to see it. *brings pipe to his lips, it blows bubbles* It was rubbish really, Gunner Hanson was hardly in it, Jay Richardson seemed to have sleepwalked through the lead role, and Linnea Quigley only took her top off twice. I don't know what the director was thinking. Of course when we went to school on Monday we said it was brilliant, the best thing ever, because nobody else had seen it. They made me king of the playground for a day I recall, but then they flushed my head down the toilet because I kept ordering the boys to kiss each other. Ah... happy days. *bites pipe in half, bleeds from bottom lip*

Fri, 2006-06-09 16:25

fergal

ha. Oh Dan.

Fri, 2006-06-09 16:52

maddan

Whilst you're in Wales Ferg, maybe you can answer a question that's been bothering me for nearly half an hour now. Do Welsh people pronounce the word 'llama' klahma?

Fri, 2006-06-09 18:34

fergal

I just did a poll... it's 50/50 on this. and it's more hhklama, if you see what I mean.

Fri, 2006-06-09 19:49

markbrown

*A clip of Crocodile Dundee II is shown* MARK BROWN: A film that will always hold a special place in my heart. Around at a friend's house, cooking hotdogs and slicing buns, I came across a video hidden behind the pots and pans at the back of the cupboard. The label read Crocodile Dundee II, the famous fish out of water sequel to fish out of water comedy Crocodile Dundee. I suggested to my friend that it was unlikely that his Dad would have chosen to hide the video due to explicit XXXX content *self indulgent titter from MARK* So I suggested that we put it on. Sat in his front room, the television in the bay window, cream carpet soft beneath us, we watch in slight disinterest as the opening sequences unfolded. Paul Hogan as Crocodile Dundee is dropping dynamite into the water. The fishes, stunned float to the surface to be scooped up like the fish out of *another self indulgent titter from MARK* Anyway the camera pulls back to reveal the New York skyline behind him. He's in New York, not Australia. So much, so predictable then there was a blizzard of screen snow followed by a closeup of an unhealthily purple looking male member. Our hotdogs lay unchewed in our open mouths for the next three hours. Hardcore unhealthy looking sex, in all of the orange/purple/green flicker glory of a nineteenth generation video copy, with that far away sound, groans issued as if with tennis socks in the mouth, slurps and gulps like the sounds of broken instruments. I'd never even seen anyone's underwear in a sexual situation, or even kissed, and there, in front of me, was friendly Aussie Paul Hogan introducing me to the blurry purple and tartrazine orange facts of life. *Another clip of Crocodile Dundee II is shown*

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