This week Chris Deacy is joined in the studio by Kevin Short to discuss the films; Once Upon a Time in the West, Sorcerer, The Terminator, and The Miner's Son.
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00:00Hello and welcome to Kent Film Club. I'm Chris Deesey and each week I'll be joined by a guest
00:17to dive deep into the impact certain films have had on their life. Each guest will reflect on
00:22the films which have meant the most to them over the years and every week there will be a Kent
00:26Film Trivia where we quiz you at home about a film that has a connection to the county. And now let
00:32me introduce you to my guest for this week. He is an actor, screenwriter, producer and musician,
00:38a creative jack-of-all-trades, Kevin Short. Hi there Chris. Great to have you on the programme Kevin.
00:44Thank you, you're welcome. And you have gone for, well this is a classic, Sergio Leone's Once Upon
00:50Time in the West. Indeed. What made you do this? Well it was a toss-up between two westerns, one of
00:56which was Sergio Leone's other masterpiece, who probably greater known, which was The Good,
01:02The Bad and The Ugly. However, I chose this one because, mainly because of that bad antagonist
01:10there on the left-hand corner, Frank who's played by Henry Fonda. But it's the score to the film,
01:22which I think is very important to highlight, you know, how that can affect movies, you know,
01:27affect the feel, the, you know, the, just the whole kind of like intrigue of scenes, how a score is very
01:38important. And this has got a particularly good one, obviously. Morricone, Mario Morricone.
01:44Yeah. Yeah. The start of this has just got this very haunting harmonica tune, if you've ever seen
01:52this, you remember. And unlike a lot of other films, there is hardly any dialogue. At the start,
01:59it's all kind of subtext, which is basically, it's just actions, facial, facial kind of, you know,
02:11expressions and stuff like that. Where the three guys are standing there in their stetsons and their,
02:17their duster coats are waiting for the harmonica man, who he's known as in the film, which is played
02:24by one only than Charles Bronson. And for at least 10 minutes, it's just these close-up scenes,
02:31which I really love about Sergio Leone. It's really, really close-up, which is the eyes,
02:36the sweat, even the skin pigment and everything is just great. And it just says so much. So that's,
02:43it's a great opener to a movie. I remember seeing it, and it might have been for the first time,
02:48or certainly the first time since I was really young. I saw the, some of the trilogy anyway,
02:53in Ashford, probably around, probably like 2009, there it was. And, and I was really struck,
02:58you know, huge widescreen, wonderful canvas. Yeah. So little dialogue. Yeah. I think there
03:03were subtitles for some of it. It was quite funny because there was just so little dialogue.
03:07Yeah. But it's great. It works. I just think a lot of movies now are just overwritten. There's
03:12just too much dialogue. And I just think subtext is just so important. And this is just a perfect
03:18example of that. This is why I picked this one over, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. And I'm just
03:21interested because the whole phrase like spaghetti westerns, do you know about the origin of that
03:25term? Because I, yeah, because a lot of them are filmed in Italy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because
03:30some parts of remote parts of Italy, I can't pick out an exact region of such, but they're,
03:36they have similarities to like Arizona, for instance, which is, you know, this one was supposed
03:41to have been set. It tells of a railroad company just land grabbing to build the railroad through
03:48Arizona to try and get to the other side of the coast of America. Of course, the hired
03:52hand, Frank, who's played by Henry Flander, is like the thug that goes out to basically
03:59buy the land for the prospectors and stuff. And if they don't agree to sell, then he basically
04:05wipes them out and kills them.
04:08And the sort of tropes, I'm just thinking even things like Pale Rider, which came out in
04:11the 80s. Yeah. Clint Eastwood, yeah. Very much the same kind of thing. You know, you've
04:15got this sense of retribution. Yeah. Something is wrong. Yes. Between the, often like the mining
04:20barons. That's right. Or the people who need to be represented. Yeah. And the saviour figure
04:24who comes in. The small prospectors and stuff mined for the gold. And there's something
04:27Ilya G out. There's some very epic about this. Yeah. Almost biblical. I think that's quite
04:31deliberate, really. Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. It's just got that feel because it's set in
04:351968. You know, them films seem to capture that. Obviously, the very old Panavision cameras,
04:40not like the ones that are made now. They're totally different. They're very clinical and
04:43easier to use, but very, very different. Now, the way films are shot and you can see that
04:49there's a vast difference, you know, and I just love the way they come across. Like I
04:52say, they've got that biblical feel to them, you know, real, real epics, you know, which
04:56you rarely see. Yeah. Have you seen this in multiple formats? Because I mentioned that I
05:01saw it on, you know, big widescreen at the cinema, but were you introduced this on
05:05TV? TV, initially, a long, long time ago. Well, myself and my dad used to sit and watch
05:12a lot of Westerns. You know, I'm going back now probably to, yeah, the 70s or mid to late
05:1570s, probably the first time I saw this and it would have been on old TV. So I really didn't
05:20get the widescreen cinematic feel of this in those days, not until the later years, especially
05:26since we started filmmaking. Obviously, films now, we look at them in a completely different
05:32way and appreciate them now for different things. Obviously, once you get involved in
05:36filmmaking, you know what's involved and you can really appreciate what's been done, especially
05:40when it comes to cast and the bigger scenes where there's lots of essays, which are supporting
05:47artists, extras, basically. And there's hundreds, you know, there's no CGI in them days, you know,
05:51all those people are real. And that was quite an undertaking, you know, amazing stuff to see.
05:57Because I was always struck how we'd watch things on the TV that should have been made
06:02and were made for a widescreen audience and they're pan and scanned. And I think that's
06:06an abomination. It's like you wouldn't say in a book, well, here's the page, but you
06:10can't read the first three words on the left hand or the right hand. But that's where we're
06:13going with this. When was the last time you watched Once Upon a Time in the West?
06:17I have it on a DVD. That's something else that people don't seem to bother much with much
06:21anymore. In fact, I've got to play it through an Xbox. I think I don't even have a DVD
06:25player, but if you've got an Xbox, I don't play the Xbox. I just use it for playing DVDs.
06:30But, yeah, we've got a big widescreen TV now, so I can really get that kind of wide cinematic
06:36effect now, you know, thankfully. So, yeah, it's a film I can watch over and over again.
06:41It's definitely one of them.
06:43Perfect. Well, it's time now to move on to your second chosen film.
06:47Oh, and you've got The Sorcerer.
06:50Sorcerer. Tell me about this.
06:51Well, this is 1977. It's a William Friedkin film. Not one he's better known for. He's
06:59probably better known for, obviously, The French Connection and, of course, The Exorcist, which
07:03were big successes for them. Unfortunately for Friedkin, this film was released the same
07:10weekend in 1977 as Star Wars. And we all know what happened with Star Wars. It was a phenomenon,
07:16wasn't it? And, of course, The Sorcerer, unfortunately, got a bit overlooked and ended up being a box
07:22off his flop. However, I really think it's one of his masterpieces. This is an incredible film
07:28starring Roy Scheider from Jaws fame. And it tells of guys have done misdemeanors in their life and
07:37they just disappear to South America to, like, basically hide from their past lives. You know,
07:44Roy Scheider was part of a gang. In the middle of a heist, it goes wrong, so he disappears. So
07:51these four men from different parts of the world and they meet up in this kind of camp, if you want
07:57to call it that, squalid camp, where they're trying to just hide from, you know, their past lives. And
08:02they undertake this mission to transport nitroglycerine to an oil rig and then embark site what becomes
08:11very, very dangerous, but a fantastic grip in film. Fantastic. As you're describing that, it sounds
08:17like it has elements of your first choice once upon a time in America in the sense of there being this
08:23sense of a mission and it's trying to overtake something or do something that ensures that
08:30somebody who was wronged can be righted and so on. So it's a good, I mean, I don't think I've seen
08:36this, but I'm very familiar with The French Connection and of course The Exorcist. I think I saw
08:39one of his last films, well, back in 2000, Rules of Engagement. I mean, he was a really gritty
08:45filmmaker, wasn't he? Yes, he was. He was a stickler for locations, which when you see this, that
08:50particular scene there on the still is just a remarkable bit of footage. Now they're getting that
08:56truck across what seems to be a little suspension bridge made with logs and they're driving a truck
09:02across it in the middle of an Amazonian storm, if you like. So it's literally swaying from left to
09:11right and of course it's breaking apart. It's a very, very tense film. It's incredible because it
09:18looks so real and I know Friedkin really did bust his budget. In fact, it cost an eye-watering
09:26$22 million, I think. There was just a lot of money in 1977 for a movie. He went over budget
09:34because he was a stickler for the locations. He wanted that right location, whether it had been
09:38the depths of the Amazon or wherever he, you know, he just went all out at all cost just to get, you
09:46know, and I can relate to that. The location is very, very important, but it backfired on him a bit.
09:52But I think definitely, yeah, it's one of those things that just didn't get the recognition it
09:59deserved. Because there are some films, aren't there, where when you watch them and you might sort of see
10:03them sometimes accidentally or, I don't know if you ever saw this on the big screen, but this is,
10:07it's the sort of film that you feel so privileged to have seen it that it feels always odd sometimes
10:12that a film that was made this big was released at the same time as Star Wars, but it's, I think
10:17it was the same in 82. I think Blade Runner and E.T. were released possibly at the same time.
10:22And obviously both of them in their own ways, you know, found an audience. But this one just
10:27slipped through the net. I mean, it certainly did. I don't even remember being at the cinema
10:30because I did go and see Star Wars at the cinema when it came out in my local cinema. We had one
10:35in Deal, where we lived. Well, we had two in those days. But I don't remember this coming out. I didn't
10:40see it years later, again on the TV. And then it wasn't until we were making a first, well, our first
10:47short was actually about rogue truck drivers actually on them. And this is what was an inspiration for
10:53that, which we made back in 2020. And so I searched for it. And I couldn't, I was getting it mixed up
10:59with another film that was before this in the 50s called Wages of Fear, which is this kind of like a
11:04homage to it. It's not a remake of it, but it's, you know, it's kind of like made along the same
11:10lines, these guys transporting explosive goods and stuff like that. So I came across it. I just
11:15searched in the net and I found something on YouTube. And then I think it was one of the major
11:21VOD channels at a short run last year. But it's great. Such a gripping film.
11:29Well, that's about all the time we have for this first half of the show. However, before we go to
11:33the break, we have a Kent Film Trivia question for you at home. Which war film featured the local
11:41Denton pub, The Jackdaw Inn? Was it A, Battle of Britain, B, The Longest Day, or C, Zulu?
11:48We'll reveal the answer right after this break. Don't go away.
12:05Hello and welcome back to Kent Film Club. Just before that break, we asked you at home a Kent
12:10Film Trivia question.
12:11Which war film featured the local Denton pub, The Jackdaw Inn? Was it A, Battle of Britain,
12:17B, The Longest Day, or C, Zulu? And now I can reveal to you that the answer was in fact
12:24A, Battle of Britain. The pub had a cameo as the scene for Christopher Plummer and his on-screen
12:30wife, giving the audience an insight into the personal effects of war. Did you get the answer
12:36right? Well, it is time now, Kevin, to move on to your next chosen film, and you've gone
12:42for The Terminator.
12:44The Terminator. Yes. Absolutely blown.
12:49If I'd known, I could have said we'll be back after the break.
12:51Chris, don't encourage me to do Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonations, because that's something I do
12:55all the time to, yeah, get on my friend's nerves, especially a few pints in the pub, obviously.
13:00But, yeah, very funny. But, yeah, absolutely blown away by this film when it came out back
13:06in 1984, and a part absolutely made for that man there. However, given some of his acting
13:14performances are probably a bit questionable, but this one, oh, yeah, you could name a lot
13:22of them, but however, loving to bits. This film was just, you know, he was made for this.
13:27Absolutely brilliant. Obviously, he plays the cyborg sent back from the future, which was
13:35supposed to be 2029, so not long, coming back in time to kill the mother of the would-be
13:43freedom fighter leader, John Connor. Yeah.
13:47John Connor. Yeah, but he's in hot pursuit by another freedom fighter from the militia or
13:55whatever in 2029, and to protect Sarah Connor as a screen character, obviously played by
14:01Linda Hamilton. But a mind-blowing film, way ahead of its time, and just great. Another
14:09film I can just watch over and over and over.
14:11Now, we've actually had Terminator 2 come up a couple of times on the programme.
14:16I think, I could be wrong, but this might be the first time that the original Terminator
14:19has come up. So obviously we started the programme with one of the films in a trilogy, and obviously
14:26there's been more than three Terminator films, but how do you write this in comparison with
14:29the ones that followed it? Well, obviously the second one, as good as it is, for box office
14:35success, it did a lot better than this one. However, I just think this one just captures
14:40the era so well. Again, it's down to the soundtrack and the score, which I've said before, a very
14:47important part to play, especially the Brad Freed, is it Brad? Brad Freed did the soundtrack,
14:55the score to this, that very low resonating thump at the start of the film, which sounds like a mix
15:03between like hammers, whacking on anvils, you know, it's a fantastic piece of music. But yeah, I just
15:11think, yeah, it's always the original to me is just great. And it's James Cameron's, I think one of
15:16his first. And I kind of, yeah, God, James Cameron, his first film, I can't understand the struggles
15:27that he had. It's nice to hear because he had trouble selling this script, you know, he's putting
15:31around Hollywood and trying to get, you know, funding for it, which he obviously, I found out
15:36he really struggled with at first, you know, it was a pretty radical idea about, you know, cyborg playing
15:42back from the future, as far as sci-fis go. But a yawn fact for you is that he ended up selling that
15:51screenplay for a dollar to get it made. A lady from Western Pacific Production, I think, Ann Hurd,
15:59I think her name was, actually took it on and said, look, I'll have your film, I'll have your
16:03screenplay for a dollar, but you've got to direct it. So that's how he ended up directing
16:07it. And the rest of the story is history. He went on to do the next one. I think after
16:11the third one, the franchise had moved on. But yeah, beautifully filmed and directed.
16:16There's not a dull moment in this film. It is just absolutely fantastic.
16:21And I mean, the 80s were good at that, you know, with Back to the Future, but that sort of
16:25sense of the future, but also crucial here, the dystopian future.
16:29Yeah, part dystopian, where it jumps forward all the time and tells you a little bit of
16:33the backstory about the freedom fighters and the stuff like that that are left, the only
16:40few human pockets of human life that are actually left in a world full of, like, cyborgs and
16:47machines and stuff like that, you know.
16:48So it's, yeah.
16:49But I mean, two things that come to mind, because first of all, this is groundbreaking
16:53technology, and we can admire it from that accomplishment perspective.
17:00Yeah.
17:00But also having such a strong female lead.
17:03Yes.
17:03Because obviously you had Sigourney Weaver, obviously directing it, Aliens by James Cameron.
17:08Yeah.
17:09But this was something that I think made this franchise really distinctive, because we think
17:15of Arnold Schwarzenegger, but the film doesn't work without Sarah Connor, who's not incidental.
17:20She's not a damsel in distress.
17:21Oh, no, she plays a great part.
17:23And as you say, in the second one, she becomes this, like, all-action hero type, you know,
17:27brilliant.
17:27She toned up for it, and she played a fantastic part, a really hard character in that totally
17:32transformed from the bushy-haired waitress from the first Terminator, but equally she steps
17:39up, and yeah, she played a very important part, one of the best roles I think she's played.
17:43And it's one of those films, isn't it, that because of the future setting, and I suppose
17:47this relates to what we were saying about the previous film, is that you're able to
17:50sort of watch this now, and see this is how the future was envisaged in the 1980s, and
17:56yet some bits, perhaps unaccountably, perhaps seem to have sort of hit the mark.
18:00Yeah, the way technology's going, you kind of think, well, anything's possible.
18:04You know, it's funny how they saw it, like, 40 years ago, or 41 years ago, and it's kind
18:09of like, well, these things are starting to happen, you know, with, yeah, robotic things
18:13and what have you, and, yeah.
18:15AI.
18:16Yeah, AI.
18:17Yeah.
18:17Yeah, I wasn't going to mention that, but, yeah, love it or hate it, it's got, yeah, it's
18:22since infancy yet, but, yeah, it's a great film to look back on, yeah, fantastic.
18:27Well, it is time now to move on to your final chosen film.
18:31Oh, I'm looking for, this is yours, isn't it?
18:33The Miner Son.
18:33The Miner Son, tell me about this.
18:34This is our own film, yeah, this is our film, obviously, written, produced and directed
18:40by myself and my wife, Juliet.
18:42Four-year project from, since it was conceived, you know, we never thought we'd get that far
18:49and do it, but once we decided to go all in, yeah, we, again, this is set in 1984, it tells
18:55of a rock band in a mining community, like, struggling for success to get on and make it
18:59famous or whatever, well, obviously, amidst the troubles of the miners' strike, which is
19:04obviously based on my experiences of being in rock bands in those days and from a mining
19:11family as well.
19:11Yeah, I was going to ask you that question because, obviously, I got the, this is obviously
19:14personal, personal project for you.
19:16Yes, yeah, it is, for both of us, it's just kind of like, it's just from memories and people
19:21and just stuff that happened in them days, you know what I mean, it is very personal, kind
19:25of nostalgic look back to that period.
19:27And yes, my family, I came from a long line of miners, my dad worked at a local quarry,
19:35which was Snowdon Colliery in those days.
19:38So we touch on how that affected the community and how it divided communities and what it was
19:46like to, yeah, grow up and live in a mining area, which South East Kent was predominantly
19:52South East Kent, a deal sandwich canterry than that area, all the collieries were in
19:56that area.
19:57But a great time to look back on, you know, it was a wonderful trouble-free era and we
20:02try and touch on that as well.
20:03It wasn't all bad, you know, before we had the internet or mobile phones and stuff.
20:07Because, I mean, that's the question about whether you can be nostalgic about this because
20:10you mentioned it was a great time, but obviously, as I was about 11 at the time of the miners' strike.
20:15It had its trouble.
20:16And I remember, obviously, I was too young to vote, but it just felt that the country
20:20was really torn and, you know, grassed off, which I remember seeing, I think it was shown
20:24on TV before the 97 election, but that also crystallised a lot of those issues, also bringing
20:30in the music element.
20:31So can you be nostalgic for that kind of age?
20:33Yeah, because it's a bygone era, isn't it?
20:35The industry we used to have, we don't want it swept under the carpet or forgotten about,
20:39you know, it's just, you know, we had a sense of greatness in our country and that
20:42was because the industry we had, that was no longer there, really, whether it's mines,
20:47whether it's shipbuilding, you know, just, we're here today in Chatham, I can't remember
20:51how, you know, how busy the Chatham doctor used to be, and how great what used to happen,
20:57and now it's all but gone, you know, so.
21:01And so, obviously, a personal project, but how easy or difficult was it to actually get
21:06this film off the ground?
21:08Pretty difficult.
21:10When you're an independent level like us, we weren't that connected at the time we made
21:15this film, and of course it's down to funds, anything, period, future films are difficult
21:19anyway, but to make a period one, you know, there's so much to consider because everything's
21:24changing, locations, you have to keep things quite close because you've got to, you know,
21:28there's just so much modern stuff you've got to keep out of the way, so you've always
21:31got one eye on what's behind you or what's coming up the road, and there was a lot of
21:36elements, so it's, we filmed it between June 20, 2022 and the start of 2023 with a few pickups
21:44later in that year, but as the post-production side of it was painstakingly slow, it was difficult
21:49as well, actually, it was quite difficult all the way through.
21:52We thought shooting it was challenging enough, because we shot it here, obviously, in South
21:58East Kent and in Blenarven, Wales, we were lucky enough to use a fully functioning mine,
22:06not an operational mine, of course, that's all finished.
22:09Because the Big Pit is there, isn't it?
22:10The Big Pit, the Big Pit, and the Big Pit heritage site, beautifully preserved colliery,
22:16everything works, and we were very lucky to let, for them to ask permission to actually
22:21film, not on the surface, but actually down the mine as well, which is a great bonus.
22:26So, yeah, we were very lucky in that aspect, and we had a great cast.
22:31We had something like 32 speaking cast in this film.
22:35The main cast was about nine, but we had, all in all, 32 speaking roles, which was pretty
22:41ambitious, really, but we'd had a script that we, after many, many drafts, that we're really
22:49happy with, and we thought, well, we're sticking to that, that we're going to do that, and we
22:53knew at the start, we just didn't have anywhere near the finance to get it through.
22:58We were just, like, living on a prayer and just hoping that when we got to that point that
23:03we'd get bailed out or helped out, and we did.
23:05A few people came on board during different stages, like I say, it was spread out.
23:08A film was spread out over a nine-month period, so, because we run out of money two or three
23:12times, but we got to the end, and you've just got to be so positive about what you're doing.
23:19You've got to absolutely, really and truly believe in what you're doing is good, and
23:25you are going to make it no matter, to a point of arrogance.
23:27Well, I'm afraid that's all the time we have for today, but before we go, if you live in
23:32Kent and want the chance to share four films of your choice, reach out to us at KMTV,
23:36and you might be invited in to be my next guest.
23:40But for now, many thanks to Kevin Short for joining us and being such a brilliant guest,
23:44and many thanks to you all for tuning in.
23:46Until then, that's all from us.
23:48Goodbye.
23:48Bye.