Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 306

Ten Things You May Not Know About Me

Some while back an interviewer asked me to tell her something I had never mentioned to anyone before. It’s not particularly revealing, but here are my answers;

1. I have never been to Pizza Hut, and have only drunk Coke or visited a McDonald’smaybe twice in my life. Their burger was the most unbelievably horrible thing [...]

Peter Walker’s Weird London

Many films have used London for its sometimes eerie atmosphere (although with light pollution, that’s now getting hard to do). As much as I loved Hammer horror films, we all knew they were rather gentle studio-bound fairytales that couldn’t hurt you, and the rare times they used London (‘Dracula AD 72′ and ‘Taste TheBlood of [...]

London’s Seven (Excellent) Wonders

1. The Impromptu!

Walking into a theatre off the street at 7:20pm and getting a ticket for a so-called sold-out West End play. Gathering friends at short notice, wandering off to find a pub or a restaurant without having booked.

2. The Low Key!

Curling up with some Squeezable Marmite,McVities Chocolate Digestives, a nice cup of tea on [...]

Re:View – ‘Populaire’

In these bombastic times, can you make a movie in which the most exciting moment comes when the keys jam on a typewriter? ‘Populaire’ thinks so, and may be right. Set in 1959, when being a secretary was actually considered an empowering job for a young woman, it follows the rise of Rose, a girl [...]

London’s Seven (Worst) Wonders

There’s no point in counting the obvious things like rising child poverty, the increasing wealth divide or the actions of the imploding coalition government (to the more cynical, it appears that the coalition is being carefully dismantled prior to reappearing separately in time for the next elections). Here are some of the things even the [...]

‘Plastic’ Gets A New Look

‘Plastic’, my bleakly comic thriller due out in July, is abouta shopaholic suburban housewife trapped in a lousy marriage. After discovering her husband’s infidelity with the flight attendant next door, June loses her home, her husband and her credit rating. But there’s a solution: a friend needs a caretaker for a spectacular London high-rise apartment. [...]

Re:View – ‘The Audience’

There are those who think the Monarchy belongs in only in a country fearful of change, a Neverland of fox-hunts and cream teas, where a nostalgic idea of family values rules what is and is not acceptable. Well, that’s a reasonable description of hereditary peers, but HM The Queen is a different matter entirely.

The New [...]

Saville Row Tells T-Shirt Shop To Fitch Off

The vulgarian T-shirt shop Abercrombie + Fitch has been denied a another new store on London’s traditional tailoring street Saville Row – this time for children with rich, stupid parents – after professional tailors decided it lowered the tone of a street dedicated to craftsmanship.

The chain brand wanted to knock an iconic building to bits [...]

The Film Freak Podcast Is Here

The excellent Tim Haigh interviewed me for his podcast recently about my experiences in the wonderful/horrible world of British film in the 1970s and 1980s – he’s a really thorough researcher, and always manages to ask the questions other interviewers miss out. It’s a great way for a writer to remember the other stories he [...]

Re:View – ‘I’m So Excited’

As writers and directors grow up and move on, they leave behind their juvenilia and discover their real power – but not all of them, as Baz Luhrmann shows with ‘The Great Gatsby’, a blisteringly lurid farrago that wrecks a delicate, relatively low-key novel by turning it into a gigantic three-ring circus. Pedro Almodovar left [...]