It may not have escaped your attention that this year, Dirty Feed is taking a slightly different tack to normal. Yes, I’m currently on a Mary Tyler Moore kick. And if you think writing about programmes which were never that successful in the UK is a bad idea, just wait until I get onto Mary’s variety shows, which as far as I can tell were never even broadcast in the UK.
I’m doing this for a few reasons. Firstly, yes, I’ve completely fallen in love with Mary’s work. (Seriously, get a Region 1 player, the complete boxset of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and knock yourself out.) Secondly, I’ve been getting a bit itchy about writing about the same things over and over again. Fawlty Towers and The Young Ones are amazing, but there is a limit to how much I can write about those shows without them becoming tedious. I’ve already ruined Red Dwarf for myself. I don’t want to ruin any of my other favourite things.
Oh, and thirdly, I need to make sure this site isn’t purely writing about BBC shows. I got a new job in December last year which makes this a really good idea. You can join the dots there for yourself.
Anyway, while I fool around with things like this, there’s something else I’ve started recently which I’ve found thoroughly enjoyable. I’ve finally got myself a Letterboxd account, and have been logging – and mostly reviewing – every film I’ve watched so far this year. That’s a total of eighteen films in January, and represents a side of my viewing habits which I don’t really talk about very much on here.
I have to say – years late – I really have fallen in love with Letterboxd. As someone who has mainly grown to despise social media, I’m having a ludicrous amount of fun with it. Most social media is filled with people who will punish you for not covering every single possible thing in any given post. And while I love writing Dirty Feed, my pieces on here these days have grown so complex, that it really can feel like work.
Letterboxd allows me to write random thoughts on what I’ve just watched, without feeling like any given review of a film has to be “complete”. The result is something where I can just take five minutes to write up some vague ideas, without it being in any way stressful. It’s the kind of thing which makes you fall in love with writing all over again.
Perhaps my favourite little piece I’ve written over there so far this year has been on Frank Tashlin’s brilliant The Girl Can’t Help It:
“Of COURSE the thing everyone talks about with Tashlin is how is animation background is obvious in his live action films. This is true. But it goes well beyond sight gags like melting ice, cracked glasses, and overflowing milk bottles. Note how the actors here not only strike very obvious, fixed poses, reminiscent of Warners animation, but how *quickly* those actors move from one pose to another. Jayne Mansfield putting her head in her hands is this film at its most animated.
The lesson everyone should learn from films like this is that to make great comedy doesn’t mean dialling everything down to nothing. You can do your big gestures, your stupid jokes, your heightened acting. You just need to make sure all of those things are hanging off real people in situations which mean something. It’s a lesson which is obvious with every frame of The Girl Can’t Help It, and yet so many simply don’t get it. It’s just a shame that too many of those people keep making comedies.”
And yes, I’m currently on a Jayne Mansfield binge. Which is a difficult thing to do these days, with most of her films being slightly less available than you’d think, especially in the UK. It’s things like this which make me fantasise about setting up a boutique Blu-ray label. And losing hundreds of thousands of pounds doing so.
So there we have it. Less nonsense about The Young Ones, more nonsense on The Mary Tyler Moore Hour and The Las Vegas Hillbillys. That may not feel like a win to many of you. But it will probably stop me going slightly mad, at least.
