King Kong

| Quentin Budworth

Hull Daily Mail Journalist Ian Midgley jokingly said he’d play King Kong for Hullywood Icons at the beginning of the project – he put a call out in the Hull Daily Mail to borrow a Gorilla suit – to no avail. Then my good friend Helen Baldwin said she had one – all we needed was a  ‘wriggler’ to bring King Kong to Hullywood so here we have Ian Midgley as Kong and Lucy Joy as Ann Darrow (Fay Wray). Many thanks to Lucy Joy for being available to do the shoot at incredibly short notice. Hair by Sarah Clayton at Hair Majesty.

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King Kong is a 1933 American pre-Code monster film directed and produced by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. The screenplay by James Ashmore Creelman and Ruth Rose was from an idea conceived by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. It stars Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot and Robert Armstrong, and opened in New York City on March 2, 1933, to rave reviews. It has been ranked by Rotten Tomatoes as the greatest horror film of all time and the twentieth greatest film of all time.

The film tells of a gigantic, prehistoric, island-dwelling ape called Kong who dies in an attempt to possess a beautiful young woman. King Kong is especially noted for its stop-motion animation by Willis O’Brien and a groundbreaking musical score by Max Steiner.

Zen Elder to write ‘Score of Scores’ for Hullywood Icons

| Quentin Budworth

Zen Elder is to to write the Hullywood theme music desribed as a ‘Score of Scores’ his brief is as follows:

‘It needs to be cinematic, quirky, references but don’t replicate themes – homage – a score of scores – Hullish- humorous – fun – serious dramatic – both tongue in cheek and very earnest – strings – orchestral – piano – that kind of thing – all things Hullywood – a northern british version of Hollywood. No woolly jumpers or granola – showbiz and sparkles please… apart from that it’s up to you’.

Zen Elder is the pseudonym of Zebedee Budworth. He studied Music Technology and Popular Music Performance at University of West London graduating with a first in 2013. He engineered the debut album (and associated singles) by Best Friends and Logs, plays the drums in Night Flowers, and everything apart from the drums in The Silver Reserve. Occasional Medieval Entertainer, Brewer of Beer and Rider of Bikes.

Hairspray

| Quentin Budworth

When Sarah Clayton proprietress of the remarkable Hair Majesty, an amazing vintage themed hair dressing salon, on Ings Road was nominated to play the character Tracy Turnblad, an optimistic, overweight teenage girl who loves dancing in the film Hairspray she took up the challenge with a little help from her friends  Peter Roach, Jessica Ockelton, Kirsten Goodleid and Ken Woodall to join in the fun.

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Hairspray is a 2007 musical romantic comedy film based on the 2002 Broadway musical of the same name, which in turn was based on John Waters’ 1988 comedy film of the same name. Adapted from both Waters’ 1988 script and Thomas Meehan and Mark O’Donnell’s book for the stage musical by screenwriter Leslie Dixon, the 2007 film version of Hairspray was directed and choreographed by Adam Shankman and has an ensemble cast including John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, Amanda Bynes, James Marsden, Queen Latifah, Brittany Snow, Zac Efron, Elijah Kelley, Allison Janney and Nikki Blonsky. Set in 1962 Baltimore, Maryland, the film follows the “pleasantly plump” teenager Tracy Turnblad as she pursues stardom as a dancer on a local TV show and rallies against racial segregation.

Sarah styled Freddie Garland’s Hair in the Breakfast at Tiffany’s shoot you can read about it here.

Kes

| Quentin Budworth

At the same time as shooting Misery with Sean and Camilla I managed to grab a quick shot of Luke McAllister as Billy Casper from Kes a 1969 drama film directed by Ken Loach and produced by Tony Garnett. The film is based on the 1968 novel A Kestrel for a Knave, written by the Barnsley-born author Barry Hines. The film is ranked seventh in the British Film Institute’s Top Ten (British) Films and among the top ten in its list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14.
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Scrooge

| Quentin Budworth

When Mike Covell got in touch with me about play Alastair Sim in Scrooge  a 1951 film adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol I decided an Old town location in Hull would be great. Mike showed me places around the old town that I didn’t know existed.
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Brokeback Mountain

| Quentin Budworth

When Graham Jenkinson and Colin Wilson got in touch about recreating a scene from Brokeback Mountain with a Hull backdrop I couldn’t say no. Brokeback Mountain is a 2005 American romantic drama film directed by Ang Lee and produced by Diana Ossana and James Schamus. Adapted from the 1997 short story of the same name by Annie Proulx, the screenplay was written by Ossana and Larry McMurtry. The film stars Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, and Michelle Williams, and depicts the complex emotional and sexual relationship between Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist in the American West from 1963 to 1983.

 

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Safety Last

| Quentin Budworth

Julie Gould got in touch with me about recreating a shot from Harold Lloyd’s 1923 romantic comedy Safety Last. 

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It includes one of the most famous images from the silent film era: Lloyd clutching the hands of a large clock as he dangles from the outside of a skyscraper above moving traffic. The film was highly successful and critically hailed, and it cemented Lloyd’s status as a major figure in early motion pictures. It is still popular at revivals, and it is viewed today as one of the great film comedies.

The film’s title is a play on the common expression, “safety first”, which places safety as the priority to avoid accidents, especially at workplaces. Lloyd performed some of the climbing stunts himself, despite having lost a thumb and forefinger four years earlier in a film accident.

 

Misery

| Quentin Budworth

Camilla McAllister got in touch with me about recreating a scene from Misery with her brother Sean who is creative director of the opening event of Hull’s City of Culture Year ‘Made in Hull’.

Misery is a 1990 American psychological thriller film based on Stephen King’s 1987 novel of the same name and starring James Caan, Kathy Bates, Lauren Bacall, Richard Farnsworth, and Frances Sternhagen about a psychotic fan who holds an author captive and forces him to write her stories.

Directed by Rob Reiner, the film received critical acclaim for Bates’s performance as the psychopathic Annie Wilkes, and Bates won the 1990 Academy Award for Best Actress for her role, making Misery, as of 2016, the only Stephen King adaptation to be an Oscar-winning film.
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