Ian Read is Head of Learning and Participation at Hull City of Culture. He approached me about recreating a scene with one of his favourite characters Groucho Marx in Duck Soup. We meet outside his office and head across the way to a solicitors office where we are given access to a rather splendid room. We both spot the pile of papers on the table in the corner and make this image.
This weeks Hullywood photo shoot days are as follows:
Thursday 19th January 8am – 5pm
Saturday 21st January: 8am – 5pm
Shoots take about 20 minutes.
Here are the guidelines:
To book a shoot
Email address quentinbudworth@yahoo.com
I’m parked up outside the gates of Fort Paull catching up with myself, the article Hullywood Twitter genius Emma Palmer set up yesterday with inews has been published. It’s lovely and all about the Hullywood Icons.
I’m fielding texts and FB messages from 10 potential Hullywood Icons and trying to help out on an emergency shoot at 4pm in Hull for soon to be Hullywood Icon and Soul Diva Ruth Toynton.
I get out of the car and check the gates, they are locked, I turnaround and a joinery van pulls up Kristian Stephenson gets out and makes a call. ‘They’re coming to open up’ he says. I ask him why Kelly’s Heroes and he says it’s ‘one of his favourite films’, it’s also one of mine.
Gareth one of the maintenance guys from Fort Paull appears and we ask about the American World War two tank. ‘It’s gone, someones nicked it’. This raises a number of questions for me but I’m here to shoot Kristian as Telly Savalas, so I put them aside.
‘Why Telly Savalas?’ I ask, ‘it’s my hair or lack of it’, he replies. I take my woolly hat off and look him straight in the eye saying ‘hair is overrated’ we both laugh and find a place to do the shoot.
It’s 4-30pm on the last day of the Made in Hull Event in Hull the launch for Hull 2017 – UK City of Culture , I’m running late something to do with a mix up over cemeteries with Jack the Pumpkin King, and slow moving traffic this is Hullywood and life is frantic. I’m meeting Marty Hogg and her friend Jenny Lazenby who are recreating a scene from one of my favourite films ‘Some Like it Hot’ . They are women playing men playing women. I arrive on the station platform looking around franticly. Where are they? I’ve got to shoot Titanic next then Darth Maul and then Catwoman. It’s a 12 shoot day and I’m tired. I spot Marty sitting on hers case we head up to the far platform the light has gone and the battery in the flash (which I hate using is dead).
We make the photo interrupted by the station manager (god love her) who says Mr Budworth I know what your doing, I love your work I’m a big fan but you need to ask permission’ I smile explaining that I’m sorry and rushing and will ask for permission next time. She says no flash photography – I’m with her on that- she smiles and says carry on. We hug, I kiss her on the cheek and we get the shot.
I’ve just started work on the Hullywood Shorts the work features pupils from Priory Primary School and students from Five Senses and Psypher. Here is the first one from Priory Primary School Super Man.
Mark Westwood and Ian Bond got in touch with me about recreating a scene from 80’s cult sci-fi film back to the future we met in a car park near Kingswood late one evening to create this Hullywood moment, Ian very kindly volunteered to put the flames in the shot. I love it when that happens…
Back to the Future is a 1985 American science fiction adventure comedy film[5] directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale. It stars Michael J. Fox as teenager Marty McFly, who is sent back in time to 1955, where he meets his future parents in high school and accidentally becomes his mother’s romantic interest. Christopher Lloyd portrays the eccentric scientist Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown, Marty’s friend who helps him repair the damage to history by advising Marty how to cause his parents to fall in love. Marty and Doc must also find a way to return Marty to 1985.
This was fun I’d had a Rhett Butler (Gareth Alexander) almost from the beginning of the Hullywood Icons project and I had been waiting for a Scarlett O’Hara and with only a week to go Amy Jennison got in touch a match made in heaven for Hullywood. Many thanks to Wilberforce House Museum:Hull Museums for providing the perfect location for this shot.
Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American epic historical romance film adapted from Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel Gone with the Wind. It was produced by David O. Selznick of Selznick International Pictures and directed by Victor Fleming. Set in the American South against the backdrop of the American Civil War and Reconstruction era, the film tells the story of Scarlett O’Hara, the strong-willed daughter of a Georgia plantation owner, from her romantic pursuit of Ashley Wilkes, who is married to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton, to her marriage to Rhett Butler. The leading roles are portrayed by Vivien Leigh (Scarlett), Clark Gable (Rhett), Leslie Howard (Ashley), and Olivia de Havilland (Melanie).
When Keith Britton got in touch and said he would like to be Charlie Chaplin playing Hitler in The Great Dictator I had some reservations but when he told me that it was the film that people were watching when the bomb dropped on the The National Picture thankfully all 150 people escaped and there were no casualties. The interior of the building was completely destroyed but remarkably the facade survived and still survives to this day, including fragments of the Foyer and vestibule behind it. 
The Great Dictator is a 1940 American political satire comedy-drama film written, directed, produced, scored by and starring Charlie Chaplin, following the tradition of many of his other films. Having been the only Hollywood film-maker to continue to make silent films well into the period of sound films, this was Chaplin’s first true sound film.
Chaplin’s film advanced a stirring, controversial condemnation of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, fascism, antisemitism, and the Nazis. At the time of its first release, the United States was still formally at peace with Nazi Germany. Chaplin plays both leading roles: a ruthless fascist dictator, and a persecuted Jewish barber.
The Great Dictator was popular with audiences, becoming Chaplin’s most commercially successful film.[4] Modern critics have also praised it as a historically significant film and an important work of satire. The Great Dictator was nominated for five Academy Awards – Outstanding Production, Best Actor, Best Writing (Original Screenplay), Best Supporting Actor for Jack Oakie, and Best Music (Original Score).
In his 1964 autobiography, Chaplin stated that he could not have made the film if he had known about the true extent of the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps at the time.
Ypu can see the closing speech from the film here:
Hullywood Icons 