Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are

It’s a Sunday and I want to interrupt your routine to ask you to come and see a film tonight. The bad news is that it’s at The Barn in Cirencester. It’s about half an hour by car, an hour-and-a-half on a bike, or seven-and-a-half hours on foot. There is a bus, the Number 51. It will get you there, but not back. Sorry. There used to be a railway station, and there easily could again, but it was removed for reasons of efficiency.

If you really can’t get there, I have three spare seats in my car. I’ll even give them a wipe. Email me or give me a ring. I mean it.

The film is actually a bit of an event. Sorry Baby is a debut feature, written by and starring Eva Victor, an internet comedy sensation. It has not really been seen in Britain. It is not yet available for streaming. It has won various awards and been nominated for more. Eva was discovered and championed by Barry Jenkins, who made Moonlight, which won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2017. That was the years Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty somehow gave the gong to the wrong film: La La Land. Which truly was horrible. IMHO. (Who else’s HO would it be?)

It’s on at the Barn at 19:00 tonight and here’s where you book. It’s £10.

One of the joys of modern technology is that everyone can see exactly how well, or how sub-optimally, a film is doing. As of yesterday, the Barn had sold three tickets for this one. Hence the frantic plea. I’ve promised Nick, who runs the film programme there, that I will definitely increase his audience by 33 per cent.

Eva and her film

Normally, I’d be deeply prejudiced against someone called ‘Victor’. Nominative determinism is a real thing, and she’s had a lot of spoils, whether or not they belong to her. She is not, on the face of it, one of the masses struggling to be free (or even heard). Her American parents brought her up in France before taking her back to San Francisco and putting her in a private French-speaking school. On the whole, I’d be more inclined to support a film by Deirdre Loser. Eva also one of those people who bangs on about pronouns, and calls herself ‘they’. That gets my grammarian goat. But let’s leave that for the Daily Mail to moan about.

Eva is also, determinedly, a gay comedian and filmmaker. Her fame and her critical acclaim are largely in that world. She worked on feminist websites and theatre and made her name in 2019 by going viral with a thing in which her a woman explains to her boyfriend that they should go to an event called ‘Straight Pride’. Here’s a piece by the home team talking about it. Apparently, Straight Pride is an actual thing, with marches and all, started by a ‘Conservative’ group called ‘Super Happy Fun America’. But as Terry Gilliam and I agreed this week, it is no longer possible to determine which movements are, er, straight — ie, sincere — and which things are satirical parodies. That certainly applies to Mail Online, which naturally had view.

Sadly, the clip that made her famous has now disappeared, even from the Mail’s page. But here’s a clip of her doing something similar: A skit in which a straight woman learns that her friend is gay. It’s kinda funny. It’s kinda annoying. But I like it. She’s kinda young.

Let’s leave the culture wars aside. The film is an actual feature. It looks beautiful, in the usual indie way, and has some lovely performances. It’s about a woman who goes to university, is sexually compromised by an older academic, regrets it, obsesses and eventually decides to do something about it. It’s not getting a cat, but she does that as well. From the trailer it has a lot of slyly funny moments and I really do think it will be worth seeing.

See you there? Don’t make me beg. Please? Pretty please? I’ll give you my last Rolo.

Meanwhile

We have achieved great things, actually, in impossible circumstances. Our Neil Brand show was wonderful, and although Terry Gilliam didn’t appear, I enjoyed doing my ‘Zoom’ interview with him (actually Google Meet). I was the only member of our three/four-person team at the Bacon Theatre, but I think people loved seeing Monty Python and the Holy Grail again. I did too.

Seeing myself on the big Bacon screen was alarming. As I wrote to Terry afterwards (paraphrase): ‘You were brilliant. It’s a pity about the garrulous West Country oaf laughing too loud at your jokes’.

But, like Popeye, I yam what I yam. I’m waiting for Terry to give me his approval and then I will post the interview here.

We have a few more treats coming up and are working hard to make them happen. But it’s a Sunday, and now I’m going to lunch.

More later.