Interviews

Video Interview with Noel Fielding

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91DcyrLnXyL._SY550_Noel Fielding has embarked on the second UK leg of his massive stand up comedy tour, An Evening With Noel Fielding, this week and he is celebrating with the release of his tour DVD, which was recorded live in Melbourne.

MoodyComedy was invited by the British Comedy Guide to send a few questions for Noel to answer, and the following BCG article includes the resultant videos of his answers, where he discusses why he enjoys working so much and what he plans to do in the future.

Noel tries to explain his show…

An Evening With Noel Fielding is hard to describe. It’s a tough ask, but we asked him to try and explain what people can expect:

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Ask The Expert: Matt Crockett (Photographer)

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Morgana Robinson

Morgana Robinson

Matt Crockett is a photographer with an impressive back-catalogue of work, having photographed artists and performers from Daniel Radcliffe to Keith Lemon. Crockett’s recent work has included compiling 50 of his portraits for an innovative photography project; a book containing many of international comedy’s biggest names, entitled ’50 Comics’. This collection features the likes of Stephen Fry, Vic Reeves, Morgana Robinson, Harry Hill and YouTube sensation Miranda Sings. Matt is currently working on a new exhibition of his work for next Spring which will feature 30 new portraits.
To learn more about the life of a photographer working with comedians, I asked Matt a few questions…

1) What is a typical week’s work for you?

I usually have about 4 or 5 shoots planned each week – whether that’s comedy commission, theatre marketing or magazine editorial. The rest of my week is editing, retouching and setting up new work… the business side of things!

2) How did you begin your career in photography?

Photography was a big part of my degree (Communication Design BA) and my final major project was a short run of a book that shadowed performers backstage at 8 West End shows. My first professional commission was a campaign for a musical called Avenue Q in London. The shoot was so much fun, and I was totally hooked and knew that photography was the right career route for me! Comedy has always been a love of mine, so the minute I owned a camera, it was a no-brainer that I would endeavour to shoot my heroes of comedy.

3) What is the most challenging part of the whole process?

I’m not sure there are particularly challenging parts of the process – building a strong, trusting relationship with the subject (often in a short amount of time) is the most important and potentially challenging part, because I think portraits are only ever successful when that relationship is in place. I used to hate it when people talked about ‘energy levels’, but now I TOTALLY get it…!

Reece Shearsmith

Reece Shearsmith

4) Do you feel a pressure to do your subjects justice in your work?

A lot of my work is in marketing, so the aim is always to do the subject justice. That has probably translated into my other work too, such as my ’50 Comics’ project. However weird and idiotic the setup of the shot looks, I still like the subject to look and feel their best. Nowadays, social media is the most important tool for exposure and getting your work ‘seen’, so it’s really key that the subject of the portrait is happy and proud to share the work with their fans and peers.

5) What makes someone fun to photograph?

People willing to take risks and try things on the outer cusps of their comfort zone… My favourite part of the process (particularly with comedians) is the collaborative element – grabbing a coffee beforehand, chatting over ideas, and playing around on the day to see what’s exciting and unexpected. I love editorial magazine shoots that are entirely pre-planned with makeup, stylists, moodboards etc, but equally there’s something refreshing about somebody running off stage (or running into a studio space between gigs) and creating interesting photographs from nothing. My project with comedians is a mix of those 2 things – it’s interesting to ask my mates which shots they think have been pre-planned with a ‘creative team’ and which ones were in a rehearsal room cupboard with 3 minutes from start to finish!

KEEP UPDATED WITH MATT CROCKETT’S WORK AND PURCHASE YOUR COPY OF ’50 COMICS’ BY VISITING HIS WEBSITE AND FOLLOWING HIM ON TWITTER.

Ask The Expert: Carl Chapple (Artist)

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Carl Chapple is an artist based in South Wales, particularly renowned for his portraiture work with subjects including actors, dancers, poets and musicians as well as comedians. He can often be found at events such as the Edinburgh Fringe and Machynlleth Comedy Festival, painting subjects in their own environments.
To learn more about the job of an artist working with comedians, I asked Carl a few questions…

1) When did comedy and art meet?

I started painting my comedians series in early 2013, though it was only after a few months, when I painted Lloyd Langford, that a joke made it into a picture.

Lloyd sat (horizontally) wearing the banana suit from his recent Edinburgh show, and somehow went straight into a Classical pose associated with the goddess Venus. I’d been about to start a small monochrome painting on panel, but happily had a large canvas to hand, so changed my plans. The combination of the Classical reference, the daft costume and Lloyd’s deadpan expression made me laugh out loud several times as I worked.

david trentSimilarly, David Trent had some suggestions (demands) for his sitting – namely that I provide him with a lawnmower and he pose wearing only Speedos. As it turned out, David wasn’t happy with the mower I’d got for him (a Flymo), but he gallantly went ahead with the session with hardly any complaints. I painted this picture in quite a dark and dramatic style, as befitting a portrait of such a serious fellow.

2) Have you found painting comedians to be any different to painting people who are not comedians?

Performers in general – or at least those I’ve worked with – may be a bit more physically self-aware and comfortable being looked at than some other portrait sitters (I’ve never had a performer overcome by a fit of the giggles at the start of a sitting, for example), but that’s about it. It’s been a lovely mix – some people arriving with clear ideas about how they’d like to present themselves, and others who work it out on the day, sometimes going for quite traditional, formal poses.

In a lot of cases sitters came to my studio as they were passing through Cardiff on tours. This was great, in that I was able to work with people I might not otherwise have been able to, though a few times it was quite challenging in that they could only spare a couple of hours. This brought an urgency to the work, which was always fun, though the results may have been a little hit and miss.

3) Where is the strangest place you have had to work?

I recently painted a portrait on bus for the Wales Millennium Centre’s Ar Waith Ar Daith project (commemorating ten years of the WMC), though so far all but five of my comedians paintings were made in my studio in Barry.

Of the others, four were made in a theatre space in Edinburgh (thanks to Sweet Venues) and one in Rhod Gilbert’s front room in London, so nothing particularly strange there – just unfamiliar light and the need to take everything I might need with me, which was harder than I expected (in the case of going to paint Rhod, I forgot to take a palette, which was a bit ridiculous).

Top tip for portrait painting during the Edinburgh Festival: don’t make it the final week. People are tired. Heroic Nat Luurtsema battled exhaustion throughout her sitting, nodding off a couple of times.

lloyd langford-cc

4) Which comic would you most like to work with?

Too many to list, though Bec Hill and Marcel Lucont both modelled for a portraiture workshop I ran at this year’s Machynlleth Comedy Festival, and were brilliant. I envied everyone else, with their easels and charcoal, and wanted to join in. Also the excellent Jordan Brookes – “He has a beautiful face”, as my mum rightly observed recently.

5) What would you like these paintings to convey?

If I can convey just a little of the warmth, kindness and exquisite good looks of comedians everywhere, then it’s all been worth it.

CARL CHAPPLE’S PAINTINGS ARE AVAILABLE TO VIEW AND PURCHASE FROM HIS WEBSITE

Ask The Expert: Sian Harries (Writer)

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Sian Harries is a comedy writer and performer who has recently worked on television shows such as Man Down and Never Mind The Buzzcocks as well as writing and performing in the radio sketch show Here Be Dragons. Sian is currently working on a new sitcom project with her husband, comedian Rhod Gilbert, and has recently announced that a third series of Man Down is also currently in the works.
To gain insight into the career of a comedy writer, I asked Sian a few questions about her work…

1) What is the biggest perk of being a comedy writer?

Getting to laugh a lot every day with some of my favourite people. My husband Rhod and I are writing a sitcom together and last Friday we were in a meeting discussing it with Henry Normal when he said “isn’t it wonderful that it’s Friday afternoon and we’re laughing about dirty underwear and this is our job?”

It also means I am never bored as I can find the funny in anything. I think it was all those years spent going to church as a child and being forced to sit and do nothing but be in my brain for an hour. I’d make up relationships between the vicar and the old ladies in the choir stalls; affairs, scandals, you name it. By the time it was over it was like I was watching an episode of Dynasty.

2) How was your experience writing for Man Down?

Writing a sitcom is hard. I think Greg once described it as “trying to do a jigsaw designed by Satan” and I’d take it one step further and say it’s like “trying to do a jigsaw designed by Satan, that you’re trying to finish in record time as your mother hoovers around you.” There were days where I thought I’d be sick with laughter making up hosts of funny characters and acting them out with Greg and Steve; other days where all we’d done was drink far too much coffee and written down the phrase “oh Bobby!”

Rik Mayall dying was such a shock. We’d written for him on the first series and he was our childhood hero. The day of his funeral we all abandoned our work and drove to Brighton, in a car with no roof, playing The Smiths very loudly, got smashed and went on a log flume. I don’t know why but it seemed rebellious and a bit Rik-like I suppose. It was extra difficult because a few weeks later Greg’s real life dad died as well. So that Christmas Special episode was incredibly poignant for us and we knew we had to address Rik dying. You can’t not mention the king is dead. To us he was irreplaceable.

Here Be Dragons

The cast of Here Be Dragons, with Sian Harries (3rd from right)

3) Are there any unexpected differences you have found between writing for TV and writing for radio?

I love writing for both TV and Radio. With TV I love how you can have a small visual gag happen in the background to undercut something a character is saying e.g. in the first series of Man Down I wrote a scene where Dom the guru is giving a motivational speech whilst in the background several ornaments are being knocked over by his enormous bottom.

Radio however, is far more freeing, you aren’t limited to what can happen within that little space. The audience have to use their imaginations so you can set radio comedy pretty much anywhere you want without spending any money. Furthermore, because less money is being spent, it also means there are fewer people in nice jackets telling you what you can and can’t do.

4) Would you rather be performing or working behind the scenes?

I think the dream for me is to write something I think is hilarious and then to perform it the exact way I imagined it being done. Although there are plenty of times I’ll write for someone else and I’m blown away with how funny they make it themselves. I have no interest in doing stand up. I far prefer it when I’ve learnt a scene off by heart and I’m working with people I find funny and I can mess around with. I would hate to be recognised in the street like Rhod is, it’s not for me. I enjoy leaving the house looking like shit too much to go back to having to think about my outfits. It’d be like being a self-conscious fifteen year old again. I also love eavesdropping too much, listening out for funny bits of dialogue or exchanges, and you can’t do that if you’re recognised.

5) Who would you most like to write a role for?

The ideal person I would write for would be Judy Dench as I think her comic timing is impeccable. I saw her in a brilliant  play called The Vote and I think she said the F-word and it brought the whole house down. She reminds me so much of my wonderful late grandmother and it’d be a dream to have her play a character I’d based on her. There are so many women I’d love to write for though; Julia Davis, Jennifer Saunders, Emma Thompson, Celia Imrie, Alison Steadman, Sharon Horgan… far too many to list.

ASK THE EXPERT…

Noel Fielding Interview, Part Two: Luxury Comedy

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In the first part of my interview with Noel Fielding, we talked about how he has found performing the first few dates of his tour, An Evening With Noel Fielding. But that’s not all we talked about… During our chat, Noel gave me great insight into the workings behind the second series of Luxury Comedy and how he feels about how people reacted to the show.
© Dave Brown / Channel 4

© Dave Brown / Channel 4

Were you pleased with how the second series of Luxury Comedy was received?

It’s difficult because you want to be free and experiment but a part of you still wants to be accepted. The response to the first series was shocking: people either loved it or hated it and the people that didn’t like it were really hostile. But when you think about it, the Internet didn’t really exist when I did the Boosh and me and Julian weren’t really into that sort of stuff, so we didn’t really get involved in it. But now, the Internet is difficult to ignore and I like to be a bit more involved, a bit more a part of society…

Someone called Luxury Comedy ‘the second 9/11’ which I thought was amazing; I wanted to put that on the DVD cover. But we were never really coming at it from anything other than just an experiment and trying some stuff out.

Some elements I thought were really good, like Serge, from Kasabian, doing the music with me, and we had characters, a story and I thought the animation was amazing. We had loads of people working on the show who were doing an amazing job and I just felt it had potential, so had it set in one place, made the main four characters a family and made it a bit more like a sitcom.

For Series 2, I just used the most successful characters: Fantasy Man, New York Cop, Joey Ramone and we just worked very hard to make the second one more accessible and people seemed to like it.

Fantasy Man

© Dave Brown / Channel 4

We loved all the characters in different ways, but it’s just that there was too many for that first series, it was like a bombardment of characters. Those shows are quite concentrated, even I can only watch about two of them and I have to go “alright, I’ve had enough now”. They’re like undiluted orange juice.

We wanted to make something very different and to try and do something that no one had done before. I think we managed that, but people just want to get the idea and move on; they don’t want to have to watch it two or three times. I think that first series was a bit like a difficult album. You have to watch it two or three times to get into it as it’s quite layered. And television’s quite a disposable medium so it doesn’t get repeated very much so it’s tricky to make television like that. But we did it and I’m proud of it.

Is there still space for the show to change again?

Yeah, but I don’t know, I’d like to do another series. I could just do another one of those, or I could do something different. I’d quite like to do a Fantasy Man series. That could work really well with the juxtaposition between real life, somewhere urban and gritty like Hackney or something, and then this pink fantasy world.

I always talk of a Boosh film too but I sort of got to a point where I really wanted to do something live again and connect with an audience. I’m really enjoying this and I just want to take this as far as I can now.

© Dave Brown / Channel 4

© Dave Brown / Channel 4

Important question here, is Daddy Push ever coming back?

Ah Daddy Push, I love Daddy Push! Do you know what, he was really difficult to get into the series because he’s set in real life. We almost got him in though, we had a joke where we tried to leave the show for a bit because nobody watches this show anyway, and Andy Warhol was going to say ‘but what about the people watching at home?’ and I would say to him ‘what people?’ and then we were going to cut to a family watching our show and it was going be Daddy Push’s family…

Daddy Push and his wife, she was going to have a shell for a head, and the kids, and they had shells for heads, then the dog would have a shell for it’s head. So Daddy Push would be watching our show but it was just for that one moment, and it was too difficult. We’d have had to make a whole like a set; it would have been a nightmare so in the end we didn’t make it but we so wanted to do it.

Me and Nigel love him as well. He was a one off, he’s like Mr Bean, really frightening, horrifying. I’ll have to make a Daddy Push film with him just milling about. I love the fact that you like Daddy Push.

Information regarding Noel’s recently added tour dates for 2015 are here.

CLICK HERE TO READ PART ONE OF MY INTERVIEW WITH NOEL, WHERE WE TALKED ABOUT HIS 2014-15 TOUR.

Noel Fielding Interview, Part One: An Evening With Noel Fielding

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An Evening With Noel Fielding

Noel Fielding has recently embarked on his first live tour since the second Mighty Boosh tour over five years ago, and this time he’s got a whole new agenda. Noel is my comedy hero, and I was honoured to be invited to talk to him about his tour, An Evening With Noel Fielding.

How’s the tour going so far?

It’s going well. Well, it’s alright. It started off well and then I got a bug so I was really sick… but you can’t really stop, that’s the problem. You’ve got to keep going; got to keep doing the gigs! The tour won’t stop so you just have to sort of get on with it.

But it’s going well. The best one, so far, was Halifax.

You’ve added more dates recently as well.

Yeah, tonnes more, I think there may be another thirty or forty, and then twenty after Christmas. I think we’re going to Australia and maybe America, even some parts of Europe or New Zealand, we don’t know yet.

I’d love to do something in America at some point; something completely different. But this is going to be quite a big tour. We’re only at the beginning of it really.

Artistically speaking, what were your aims for this tour?

Well, I wanted to try and make something good, and have it be interactive and have animation so I could make a show that showed all aspects of what I do. But something you’d still be able to enjoy without you having to have seen the Boosh or Luxury Comedy or my stand-up.

I wanted it to be funny for people that hadn’t seen me before and have some audience interaction as well as stand-up, some music and a narrative. We’ve been working on it religiously all year. My brother’s in it, Mike, from The Mighty Boosh and Tom Meeten, who’s a really great comedian.

What kind of ages have your audience members been this time?

I think it was pretty broad even with the Boosh. There were lots of young screaming teenagers but that’s okay, and there were lots of older people in the audience as well. This tour has been quite mixed. There’s a bit where I go into the crowd as a character called New York Cop and I have to interrogate the audience and I chat to them. It’s much more mixed than I thought it would be, which really pleases me.

How have you found the process of writing for a tour compared to writing for television?

It’s a different thing really to writing a TV show; I wrote TV shows back to back so I was getting stir crazy.

I like working with an audience and I love the energy of live gigs so when you’re making TV shows, you don’t really get much feedback other than on the Internet and a few reviews. It’s a bit like working in the dark or in a tunnel so when you come out and do live stuff it’s great to get a reaction straight away.

I had a lot of ideas for the tour show already because I hadn’t toured for a while and I just sort of brought them all together to make one show and made sure it wasn’t too lumpy or too much like a collage of different ideas. I wanted to try and make it flow.

Are there any comedians that you’d like to work with in the future?

I love Tony Law, Paul Foot and James Acaster. Being on Buzzcocks means you get to work with them, but, yeah, I’d love to do stuff with Paul Foot. He’s brilliant and so underrated. He should be a household name.

Russell Brand’s just written a book and I’d quite like to do something with him as well; an improvised show, something unplanned. I like working with Russell. He’s very brave.

What else would you like to do?

I’ve fallen in love with stand-up again whilst doing this tour. There’s about forty minutes of stand-up in the show, and I was very scared because I hadn’t done stand-up for a while, but I managed to do it and I was really enjoying it much more than I thought I would be.

I would like to do a pure stand-up show now as well. And with the Loose Tapestries, Serge and I are always talking about going on tour so that would be fun. I’d like to write children’s books too, so maybe I could do that. I want to do everything!

Information regarding Noel’s recently added tour dates for 2015 are here.

COME BACK NEXT WEEK TO READ PART TWO OF MY INTERVIEW WITH NOEL, FOR EXCLUSIVE INSIGHT INTO THE WRITING AND RECEPTION OF LUXURY COMEDY SERIES TWO.