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).
Madeleine O’Reilly asked me if she could be Merida from the blockbusting animation Brave for Hullywood Icons. We met by the humber bridge to create this image..
Set in the Scottish Highlands, the film tells the story of a princess named Merida who defies an age-old custom, causing chaos in the kingdom by expressing the desire to not be betrothed.
Freddie Garland who you may remember did the Breakfast at Tiffany’s shoot mentioned that her daughter Erin Garland would make a fantastic Cosette played by Amanda Seyfried from Les Miserables. Here she is photographed under the oldest archway in Hull just off Trinity Square.
Les Misérables is a 2012 British-American musical drama film directed by Tom Hooper and scripted by William Nicholson, Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg, and Herbert Kretzmer, based on the musical of the same name by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg which is in turn based on the 1862 French novel by Victor Hugo. The film is a British and American venture produced by Relativity Media, Working Title Films and Cameron Mackintosh Ltd. and distributed by Universal Pictures. The film stars an ensemble cast led by Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, and Amanda Seyfried.
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:
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.
When the following message arrived in my inbox from Kerry Davieson 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.
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”.
Hullywood Icons 