Neal Patrick said he would like to be Brian in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian we certainly stopped some rush hour traffic on Alfred Gelder Street with one passer by quipping ‘he’s not the Messiah just a very naughty boy‘ and another saying ‘you’ve spelt that wrong’. The film was originally banned in Hull.
Monty Python’s Life of Brian, also known as Life of Brian, is a 1979 British religious satire comedy film starring and written by the comedy group Monty Python (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin). It was also directed by Jones. The film tells the story of Brian Cohen (played by Chapman), a young Jewish man who is born on the same day as, and next door to, Jesus Christ, and is subsequently mistaken for the Messiah.
Westworld
When the following message arrived in my inbox from Kerry Davies on facebook I just had to make the dream a reality:
Hi, Quentin. I’m really enjoying following your Hullywood Icons photos. If possible, I’d like to try & pose for one of your Hullywood Icons. I’d like to be the gunslinger played by Yul Brynner in the original film version of Westworld. Westworld is also big on TV at the moment. It’s interesting because the Yul Brynner character in the Westworld film uses the same look that he had in The Magnificent Seven (another classic Western) – a twist from good cowboy to bad robot! I’ve attached a photo of the pose I’d like to do. I’ve got the black outfit and I think, if we could use it, Wm Hawkes Pub, Scale Lane, Hull, would be a brilliant location. The Westworld film tag is “Have we got a vacation for you!” – this ties in nicely with visitors coming on vacation to Hull City of Culture 2017.
We made the image at one of the Hull old town’s hidden gems The WM Hawkes Pub on Scale Lane is a really atmospheric old pub with great taxidermy in the back room well worth checking out! The pubis named after William Hawkes, the gun maker, who worked on the site of the pub in 1810.
Apocalypse Now
When Sean McAllister nominated his friend Phil Rhodes to play Kurtz in Apocalypse Now I thought that’s a bold choice. Phil nailed it!
Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American epic war film directed, produced and co-written by Francis Ford Coppola and co-written by John Milius with narration by Michael Herr. It stars Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Larry Fishburne and Dennis Hopper. The screenplay written by Milius updates the setting of Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness to that of the Vietnam War and draws from Herr’s Dispatches and Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972). The film revolves around Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Sheen) on a secret mission to assassinate Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, a renegade who is presumed insane.
The film has been noted for the problems encountered while making it, chronicled in the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991). These problems included Brando arriving on the set overweight and completely unprepared, expensive sets being destroyed by severe weather, and its lead actor (Sheen) having a breakdown and suffering a near-fatal heart attack while on location. Problems continued after production as the release was postponed several times while Coppola edited thousands of feet of footage.
Apocalypse Now was released to universal acclaim. It was honored with the Palme d’Or at Cannes and nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama. It is considered to be one of the greatest films ever made. The film was also ranked No. 14 in the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound greatest films poll in 2012. The film ranks #7 on Empire magazine’s 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time. In 2000, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”.
Trains, Planes and Automobiles
When Robert Jamieson and Adrian Martin got in touch with me about recreating a scene from Trains Planes and Automobiles in the St John’s Hotel on Queens road in Hull I couldn’t say no especially when they said they were going to recreate the cuddle… between John Candy and Steve Martin
Planes, Trains and Automobiles is a 1987 American comedy film written, produced and directed by John Hughes.
The film stars Steve Martin as Neal Page, a high-strung marketing executive, who meets Del Griffith, played by John Candy, an eternally optimistic, outgoing, overly talkative, and clumsy shower curtain ring salesman. They share a three-day odyssey of misadventures trying to get Neal home to Chicago from New York City in time for Thanksgiving with his family.
Walk The Line
Isabelle Tracy nominated her long time friend Dave Burnham to be Johnny Cash played by Joaquin Phoenix in Walk The Line as he is the lead singer in Hull Band Keep it Cash I managed to create this Hullywood Icon in a quick 20 minute shoot before he started sound checking in Fruit for a gig that night.
Walk the Line is a 2005 American musical-biographical drama film directed by James Mangold and based on the early life and career of country music artist Johnny Cash. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Ginnifer Goodwin, and Robert Patrick.
The film focuses on Cash’s early life, his romance with June Carter, and his ascent to the country music scene, as based on his autobiographies. The screenplay was written by Mangold and Gill Dennis. The film’s production budget is estimated to have been US$28 million.
Quentin Budworth on Hull Daily Mail’s Santa Naughty or Nice list
I was extremely flattered to be included in The Hull Daily Mail as number 18 on the Santa’s naughty or nice feature on saturday for my project Hullywood Icons. In fact I jumped up and down with excitement much to the amusement of two Star Wars Troopers I was photographing. Here is the link to the online version on the HDM website and some still images of the print piece
and here is my bit from the website…
Quentin Budworth Number 18
The Hull photographer’s Hullywood Icons project – using Hull folk to recreated their favourite movie moments – has put a smile on a lot of faces this year. For that reason alone he is very much on the nice list. We can’t wait to see the finished product projected onto the side of various Old Town buildings as part of the 2017 Made In Hull launch season.
The Thomas Crown Affair
When Juliet Johnson got in touch with me about playing Vicki Anderson (Faye Dunaway) in The Thomas Crown Affair with Andy Snowden – Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) I just had to say yes , we shot the romantic scene in an allley on the High Street in Hull’s Old Town.
The Thomas Crown Affair is a 1968 film directed and produced by Norman Jewison starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. This heist film was nominated for two Academy Awards, winning Best Original Song for Michel Legrand’s “Windmills of Your Mind”
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Carol Young asked if she could be Baby Jane Hudson played by Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? I thought oh that’s a bit dark but sounds like fun!
The 1962 American psychological thriller film produced and directed by Robert Aldrich, starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, about an aging actress who holds her paraplegic sister captive in an old Hollywood mansion. The screenplay by Lukas Heller is based on the 1960 novel of the same name by Henry Farrell. Upon the film’s release, it was met with widespread critical and box office acclaim and was later nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one for Best Costume Design, Black and White.
The intensely bitter Hollywood rivalry between the film’s two stars, Davis and Crawford, was heavily important to the film’s initial success. This in part led to the revitalization of the then-waning careers of the two stars. In the years after release, critics continued to acclaim the film for its psychologically driven black comedy, camp, and creation of the psycho-biddy subgenre. The film’s then unheard of and controversial plot, meant that it originally received an X rating in the UK,[1] Because of the appeal of the film’s stars, Dave Itzkoff in The New York Times has identified it as being a “cult classic”. In 2003, the character of Baby Jane Hudson was ranked #44 on the American Film Institute’s list of the 50 Best Villains of American Cinema.
Ghostbusters
When Chris Sharp asked if he could play Ray Stantz played by Dan Ackroyd one of the original Ghostbusters about six weeks ago, I thought it should be reasonably straight forward to organise the shoot however Chris has a really busy work schedule so it took longer to meet up than expected however the resulting image shot on Millennium Bridge in Hull was well worth the wait.
Ghostbusters is a 1984 American supernatural comedy film directed and produced by Ivan Reitman and written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. The film stars Bill Murray, Aykroyd and Ramis as three eccentric parapsychologists who start a ghost-catching business in New York City. Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis co-star as a client and her neighbor, and Ernie Hudson as the Ghostbusters’ first recruit.
Hullywood Icons 