Nigel Terry: Morte D'Arthur

One of my online roles seems to be as an unofficial Keeper of the Flame for John Boorman's film Excalibur, which I've written about here, and here, and here. So I was saddened to learn this week of the death of its star, Nigel Terry. A west country lad and a superb actor, he made a magnificent Arthur, convincing and passionate all the way from callow youth to sorrowful old age.

When I first saw the film I imagined he would go on to star in dozens of other big movies, but although he was a fine Caravaggio a few years later in the Derek Jarman film, I lost track of him for many years after that, until the 1990s, when he began turning up from time to time on TV. He was Svidrigailov in a BBC adaptation of Crime and Punishment and Mr Boldwood in ITV's Far From The Madding Crowd, where he appeared alongside actor-turned-excellent-YA-author Andy Robb (who wrote on Facebook yesterday that he was 'one of the funniest men I've ever met - and possibly the most miserable bastard to walk the earth'. (He also turned up in a Dr Who episode - I must have missed that one.) And, although he seems to have been quite a private and reclusive man, he appeared along with the rest of the Excalibur cast in the Behind the Sword in the Stone documentary (which I wish I could link to, but it's still in search of a distribution deal).

Anyway, he was a fine actor, and he will always be King Arthur to me.

Here is a link to the Guardian's obituary.

Black Angel

Anyone who has been reading this blog for a year or two will know that I like to bang on about Excalibur from time to time, John Boorman’s 1981 King Arthur movie having been a bit of a seminal moment for me.  The first time I saw it - 5th July 1981, a day to mark with a white stone - I remember that it reminded me of a strange little movie called Black Angel, which had played as a supporting feature with The Empire Strikes Back the previous year. But Black Angel was long gone by then, and never released on video or shown on TV, so I was never able to compare and contrast the two.

A few years ago I came across a reference to this lost movie on the internet, and wrote a piece about my memories of it. It turned out to be the work of Roger Christian, better known as art director on Star Wars and Alien, who sent me a very nice e-mail after I posted my piece, in which he mentioned that he was hoping to get it restored and re-released somehow.

Well, thirty four years later, I have finally been able to watch it again. It’s a fascinating little fragment of cinema history, whose influence can be traced through '80s fantasy films like Excalibur and Dragonslayer all the way to Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies and HBO's Games of Thrones.

The story is a fractured, elusive affair. A knight (Tony Vogel) returns to his homeland to find it ravaged by war and sickness. Falling into a river, he almost drowns, but his life is saved by a mysterious girl. She claims to be bound as a servant to the Black Angel - who, when he finally appears, turns out to be a sort of personification of Death, all black armour and fraying cobwebs. The knight does battle with him… 

I remember being entranced by it as a teenager (it was the first time I’d seen on screen the sort of imagery I loved in the work of artists like Brian Froud and Alan Lee), but the story never quite came into focus enough to be satisfying. I feel rather the same way about it now. It feels like a haunting fragment.

It’s really a mood piece, like many short films. The budget looks miniscule, but the photography, by Roger Pratt, is remarkably beautiful. It unfolds like a series of paintings. There are lingering shots of wintry upland landscapes, through which the knight rides on his white horse. There is a great sense of the physicality of the landscape, the mud and wind (Christian claims Kurosawa as an influence; I wonder if there's also an echo of Terry Gilliam's mediaeval landscapes from Jabberwocky and Monty Python and the Holy Grail?). But it's a world of magic too; the scenes shift in a dreamlike way - the knight falls into a river, but emerges from a broad lake; figures appear and disappear; smoke drifts through the forests.  

To an Excalibur fan it’s all eerily familiar, because it’s made from the exact same elements as the 'quest for the grail' sequences in the later movie. In interviews, Roger Christian has mentioned that John Boorman loved his film and said it had the look that he was after for Excalibur, but the parallels go beyond the visuals. The increasingly hallucinatory nature of the knight’s quest seems like a direct forerunner of Sir Perceval’s adventures in Excalibur. The music is by the same composer, Trevor Jones, and features some of the same elements - ethereal singing, odd twanging electronic sounds, and a descending synthesiser scale which is repeated almost exactly on the Excalibur soundtrack. There is some underwater footage where the floundering knight errant tears at his armour as he sinks. Even the sparse, looped-sounding dialogue is similar (‘Follow me!’ cackles the raggedy old man whom the knight meets at the waterfall, vanishing into the trees, just like the child Mordred in Excalibur.) 

For me, watching Black Angel again felt like tracing something back to its source. It’s always worth remembering that works of art don’t exist in isolation; everyone has their influences; creators see stuff they like in other people’s work and import something of it into their own. As Picasso is supposed to have said, ‘good artists borrow, great artists steal’. And one of the pleasures of getting to know a work of art is working out its ancestry, and tracking all the tributaries which fed into it.

In the interview I linked to above, Roger Christian mentions vague plans of returning to the world of Black Angel and expanding it into a longer film. I have no idea where those plans stand, or whether the tenebrous atmosphere of the original could survive the process, but it would be great to see him do something of the same sort again.

I bought Black Angel on i-tunes for £1.49. It may be available in other places too - I'm still a bit vague about how you buy movies online).

There is a great interview with John Boorman here, in advance of his new film, Queen and Country.

Behind the Sword in the Stone - the Premiere

In the ancient oak woods on the Glendalough Estate in County Wicklow stands this mysterious mossy pillar. At first glance it might be mistaken for an old gate-post, but in fact it's a bit of movie archaeology. For these are the woods where, back in 1980, John Boorman shot his movie Excalibur, and this relic is the concrete stabiliser from inside the artificial boulder in which Excalibur itself was stuck. There's a slot in the top into which the sword would have fitted, and the two bolts on the side would have been tightened up to make sure that no one but King Arthur (Nigel Terry) could draw it from the stone... a trick that would appeal to my own Myrddin, in Here Lies Arthur.

I was in Ireland last week for the premiere of Behind the Sword in the Stone, a documentary film about the making of Excalibur by Mossy Hare Productions. You might remember that, this time last year, I was auctioning off signed books and drawings to help raise money for their Indiegogo fund-raising drive.  I also made a donation of my own, which qualifies me as an executive producer - so I could hardly miss the first screening. And when I told director Mark Wright that I was coming, he very kindly invited me to stay with him and his partner Kathleen. So I flew over to Dublin on Thursday night, and on Friday I helped gather wine and glasses for the reception after the screening, and watched in amazement as Kathleen cooked more vol-au-vents and mini quiches than I think I've ever seen in one place. Then, in a howling storm, Mark drove us down to Bray, and the Mermaid Arts Centre, where the film was to be shown. Despite the foul weather, a good crowd turned up to watch, including Terry English (who made the armour for Excalibur) and John Lawlor, one of the assistant directors. And it was great to meet one of the other executive producers, Leah Krevit, who runs the Byrneholics website dedicated to all things Gabriel Byrne. She'd flown in all the way from Texas, where she's building a house in the mountains near Alpine.

Obviously I'm far too partial an observer to review the new film, but it more than lived up to my expectations, and seemed to go down well with the whole audience, including those who have never actually seen Excalibur. One of the things which makes Excalibur so important, and makes Behind the Sword in the Stone such a worthwhile project, is that it gave a start in movies to a lot of people who have since become household names; Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne, Patrick Stewart, and composer Trevor Jones. It was also a major early role for Helen Mirren, while Neil Jordan, credited as Creative Consultant, shot a behind-the-scenes documentary which Mossy Hare have drawn on for their film. Mark and his co-director Alec Moore have secured interviews with all of them, and also with Nigel Terry, Cherie Lunghi, Clive Swift and Paul Geoffrey, with John Boorman himself, with his son Charley and daughter Katrine (who both appear in Excalibur), with Terry English, and with important behind-the-scenes figures such as John Lawlor, and Kevin Moriarty of Ardmore Studios.

'Behind the Sword in the Stone' Excerpt from Alec Moore on Vimeo.

They all have great anecdotes to tell, many of which are very funny - there was a lot of laughter during the screening. They all seem to look back on Excalibur with immense affection. Gabriel Byrne is hilarious, and Patrick Stewart is particularly twinkly as he recounts his misadventures on horseback and in armour. But as the film progresses, the tone shifts subtly, remembering those members of the cast who have passed away in the thirty three years since it was made. They include Nicol Williamson, who dominated Excalibur as the wizard Merlin, and whose absence from Behind the Sword in the Stone could have seemed a major hole - but he's there in spirit, I think, with a long-ish chunk dedicated to the cast and crew's memories of him.

One of my favourite minor performances in Excalibur was that of Niall O'Brien as Arthur's brother Kay. Although he was a heroic figure in the early Celtic Arthurian tales, Kay is usually portrayed as a bully and a buffoon by later writers, but Niall O'Brien rehabilitates him; he's always there in the background, a dependable older brother who sticks by Arthur to the very end. Sadly,  Niall O'Brien died in 2009, but I was pleased to meet his wife at the screening, and also his son Ruairi, who directed his father in this short film, Teeth.

But most of all, and quite rightly, Behind the Sword in the Stone stands as a tribute to John Boorman's vision, and to the charm, skill and perseverance with which he managed to bring it to the screen.  Always an excellent interviewee, it was great to see him talking at such length about my favourite of his films; not just about the technical difficulties, but also things like his decision to dress the actors in mediaeval armour that is far too late for the dark ages setting - he wanted to make it mythic. And, of course, he succeeded; I can't think of a better evocation of myth in mainstream cinema.

We were hoping that he would attend the premiere, but sadly the weather on Friday night was so bad that he decided to stay at home. But on Sunday morning Mark drove me over to Glendalough (through a surprising snowstorm in the Wicklow Gap). We met Alec at the Glendalough Estate and they showed me around some of the Excalibur locations there, including the little hill in the woods where the sword in the stone stood...

Photo: Alec Moore

 and the avenue of conifers where Arthur and Guinevere were married.

Photo: Alec Moore

How very strange, having come to know these scenes so well from the movie, to walk around them in real life. And how very much stranger, shortly afterwards, to drive up to John Boorman's lovely old rectory and meet John himself, who gave us coffee and some (very good) cake.  We didn't stay long, and I was struggling to avoid having a FANBOY MELTDOWN, so I never got around to telling him that I think he's the best film director we have, and that his films helped to turn me into a writer. But I'm very happy to report that he is still hard at work; he had just returned from Roumania, where he's been shooting his latest project, a sequel to Hope and Glory called Queen and Country.

Photo: Alec Moore

It's been a pleasure to be involved with the Mossy Hares, and Behind the Sword in the Stone, which they shot at their own expense over the past two years, is a great achievement. Next year they will be arranging screenings in London and New York and, hopefully, some TV broadcasts. After that, Mark is planning more documentaries, while Alec has already shot a short film, In This Place, currently in post-production, and he is working on a feature.

Happy Christmas!

I'm off to Dublin shortly, to attend the first screening of Behind the Sword in the Stone, the Excalibur documentary for which I was helping to raise funding this time last year - I'll post a full report on here when I get back.  But since I may not have a chance to write it before Christmas, I thought I'd better wish you all a very merry one.  Here's a festive-looking picture of Dartmoor from a few winters back (it looks nothing like this at the moment, being mostly composed of mud and rain).

And if you keep an eye on Sarah McIntyre's blog (or follow her on Twitter) there should be some festive Reeve&McIntyre Seawiggery appearing over the next few days...

Happy Christmas!

Snow, Reddit, Mossy Hares

Our pond on Friday. Thanks to Frank Kelly for pointing out that the trees look like three frosty trolls ...

Winter finally reached us on Friday last week, with a heavy fall of snow overnight.  I gather it's mostly melted down in the lowlands, but here on Dartmoor it's not going anywhere.  It's very picturesque, but the lanes around our house are all quite bad, so I think we may be stuck here till it thaws. At least we've sorted out the pipe from the borehole, which used to freeze every winter and leave us without water at the coldest times of year.  And the new studio is toasty warm with the woodburner ticking over, so I have no excuse to slack off. I've completed three projects so far this year - the text for the second of my OUP books with Sarah McIntyre (keep watching her blog for updates on the first, Oliver and the Seawigs) and a couple of short stories which I'll tell you about when the anthologies they were written for are published. I suspect that rate of productivity will tail off pretty sharply now...

Last night, as mentioned here previously, I did an AMA session on the Mortal Engines sub-Reddit.  I was a bit worried that nobody would log on, but quite a few people did, and it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable interviews I've done: there were good questions about the books from all sorts of angles, and people could come back with further responses to my answers, so it was like half a dozen conversations going on at once. I hope I didn't miss any of the questions: I'll check in a moment in case I did.  You can read it all here, but because of the way Reddit operates, with people voting things up and down, it's all got cut up and rearranged in the manner popularised by William Burroughs, with some of my replies appearing long before the question to which they relate...  maybe that makes for a more interesting read, though.

Finally, thanks to everybody who shared or re-Tweeted my posts last year about Mossy Hare Productions, and all who contributed to their quest to fund their documentary about the making of John Boorman's Excalibur.  They raised very nearly two thirds of the $30,000 they were aiming for, which will enable them to at least start the post-production work.   I look forward to blogging my report from the star-studded Dublin premiere in due course.

Spot the Difference

Back in the eighties I bought a bunch of stills from Excalibur at some convention or other, and they came complete with a 'Distributor's Information Pack', containing various different sized press ads which cinema owners could run in their local newspaper - and this rather odd 'spot the difference' competition.  Yes kids, this is how violent AA (15) certificate films were publicised before the internet arrived.

There's one week left to contribute to the Excalibur 'making of' documentary Behind the Sword in the Stone, by Mossy Hare Productions.  They're about half way to their target, and all sorts of rewrds are still available on their Indiegogo page, which is here.

First editions & original artwork for sale - in a Good Cause!

If you saw my post about Excalibur a couple of weeks ago you'll already that I've been trying to help drum up some funding for Mossy Hare Productions and their documentary film Behind the Sword in the Stone.

Like many other people (but not enough yet) I've made a donation on their Indiegogo page. But while the rewards they're offering contributors all look highly desirable to a dyed-in-the-wool fan like me, I thought it might be worth adding some of my own. So if a signed photo of Clive Swift isn't enough to get you hitting the 'Contribute Now' button, you can claim signed editions of my books or a piece of my original artwork as well.

All you need to do is make a contribution via the aforementioned Indiegogo page, then forward a copy of your receipt to me at thesolitarybee@gmail.com.  I'll then get the item to you as quickly as possible by standard post (air mail if you're outside the UK).

I do realise that this a bad time of year to be running this - I can't guarantee posting anything in time for Christmas now, and if you're anything like me your credit card has just melted from prezzie-buying - but the Indiegogo campaign runs till the 15th January, so hopefully there will be some takers.

I have four items on offer, and they'll be dished out on a strictly first-come, first-served basis.

UPDATE: All these items have now been sold. Thanks very much to all the generous people who donated to Mossy Hare.  I'll be doodling, signing and mailing the books early in the New Year.

1. Sorry: SOLD!
 Goblins and Goblins vs Dwarves, signed and doodled in. 

You may have to wait a while for delivery, because my new book Goblins vs Dwarves is so new that it isn't actually out until next spring (I'd hope to have copies by March). I'll sign them, dedicate them if you like, and draw an original Reeve goblin (or dwarf) on the title pages.

It's yours for a donation of  $25 or more. 

 2. Sorry - SOLD!

The Mortal Engines Quartet (AKA Predator Cities), US editions, signed and doodled in.

Unfortunately the only spare copies I have of the UK edition are the new ones with the sub-X-Box covers which nobody likes. But the US paperbacks are lovely (though UK readers should be warned that the spellings have been Americanised, and they call Shrike 'Grike').

 These four are the only signed copies currently in existence, and if you like I'll do a quick doodle of a character of your choice in each book.

Minimum donation of $50

3.   Sorry - SOLD!  Fever Crumb 1st Edition hardback, signed and doodled in.

As with the books above, I'll draw a character of your choice on the title page. Unlike the ones above it's a hardback, with a fantastic David Wyatt cover complete with peek-a-boo hole which opens to reveal a huge landscape on the endpapers. It's also a first edition. It's therefore quite collectable, and a bit more expensive.


Minimum donation $100

4. Sorry - SOLD! 
A pen-and-ink drawing of London

Last year Scholastic asked myself and Jeremy Levett to write a short guide to the world of Mortal Engines, which we called The Traction Codex.  I think you can find it attached as a sort of appendix to the ends of the current UK e-book editions, and I'm assured that it will eventually be available as a separate e-book (although it seems to be taking a bizarrely long time and there is still no firm publication date as yet).

Anyway, I did some illustrations for this project, and this is one of them: the only time I've managed to draw the Traction City of London and make it look even remotely like the thing that was in my mind's eye when I wrote the book.  It measures approximately 24.5 x 18.5 cm, and it took flippin' ages, so I don't part with it lightly.  I had planned to have it on my office wall, but I'd rather see Behind the Sword in the Stone finished, so I'll exchange it for a whoppingly generous donation of $800 (about 500 of your British Pounds).



LATE EXTRA: Sorry: SOLD
For $75 you can have Four Rusty Knights, a very old picture by me. Details here.

Please don't approach the Mossy Hare people with queries about these - this is my own initiative, and I'm sure they have enough on their minds already! All queries should be e-mailed to thesolitarybee@gmail.com. I try to check messages there at least once a day, and will reply as soon as possible.  

Excalibur Documentary

Long-time readers of this blog may remember me mentioning the 1981 John Boorman film Excalibur from time to time.  Here I am on a trip to Ireland a few years back, having a fanboy moment at Powerscourt waterfall, one of the iconic locations used in the film.

Excalibur was what opened my eyes to the richness of the Arthurian legends, so I would never have written Here Lies Arthur without it. But I might never have written anything at all, because it also opened my eyes to a lot of other things - it led me to seek out John Boorman's earlier films, like Point Blank and Deliverance, which in turn led to me to lots of other great film makers; it got me reading Malory and Tennyson and Wolfram von Eschenbach and T.S.Eliot and T.H.White: it introduced me to the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites, which in turn led to me back to the Romantics and on the Symbolists and thence to Picasso and the whole of Modern Art... In many ways, Excalibur was what I had instead of university.  Perhaps if it hadn't been made I would have seized on some other book or movie as inspiration at that age - but perhaps I wouldn't.  Anyway, my Life'n'Work would have been very different without it.

When I wrote my own version of the King Arthur story in Here Lies Arthur I knew I had to avoid the fantastical, mediaeval fantasy-world that the movie conjures up or I would just produce an Excalibur pastiche,  so that's how my Arthur ended up so resolutely un-magical and as 5th Century as I could make him.  But by way of a tribute I started and ended the book with the same images with which Excalibur begins and ends; riders in a burning wood, and the ship dwindling on a twilit sea.

I mention all this now (and will probably be mentioning it again in the coming weeks) because I've just found out about a project called Behind The Sword In The Stone, a documentary film about the making of Excalibur  by two Irish film makers working under the banner of Mossy Hare Productions.  They've managed to track down and interview most of the surviving members of the cast, as well as John Boorman himself.

Even if you don't share my love of the film (and there are many who don't) it should make a fascinating documentary. I'd kind of forgotten just how many careers it started: Patrick Stewart, Gabriel Byrne, Liam Neeson, Cherie Lunghi and (I think) Nigel Terry all made their screen debuts in Excalibur, and it was a fairly early screen role for Helen Mirren too.  Here's a sneak peek:



Anyway, having shot all this great stuff, these Mossy Hares are now seeking funds for post production work - editing, sound mixing, voice-over recording etc.  They have an Indiegogo campaign page where all donations will be gratefully received, and various perks in the form of signed photos, DVDs etc are available to people who donate.  I shall certainly be kicking in something, and I hope other Excalibur fans and lovers of cinema will too - I REALLY want to see this movie!

Thanks to Frank Kelly for telling me about this project.
Mossy Hare Productions also has a Facebook page.