Transcript
Speaker: I'm almost broken.
Speaker: Welcome, welcome, welcome back to Death is a Photograph Culture at the End of History. You listeners can't hear it, but right now there's a tree being cut down right outside, which is against my wishes, personally. I would love for that tree to remain, but unfortunately the forces of suburban um sort of bullyship have succeeded.
Speaker: Sam, before we get into this movie, which is a very, very, very, very English movie, a very London movie... I think we do need, if we could get Chopin's funeral march, just a moment to recognize that the forces of reaction have won out once again.
Speaker: and comrade Keir Starmer has been routed. Reports are saying he's fled to the perhaps the Isle of Wight. It's not clear what's happening at this time. But unfortunately, this is a fallen world where people, they think in minutes, they think in weeks, they think in months.
Speaker: They don't think in centuries. And um that's just unfortunate. I'm very upset. So... Yeah, it's it's it's the end of an era. that's ah It's the end of a two-year epoch. the great you know it's I have yet to digest this great historical moment. um To me, it's like, what if they'd overthrown Mao after two years? like China wouldn't be what it is today. To me, it's like you know Lake Geneva to the Finland Station, you know?
Speaker: yeah I'm sure by the time this comes out, this will be sort of old hat. But yeah, the videos of Burnham's train, you know, leaving ah Manchester and making its way down to London. am like intimately familiar with that train line as well. It's the Avanti West Coast, which I actually took. I was on it two days ago, three days ago. So and I've probably taken it a grand total of 100, 200 times the last two, three years. So I know every stop on that route.
Speaker: Well, then you should be reporting this. I don't know why you're here when you could be disguised as a waiter in a dining car, you know, sending live updates. ah Yeah, it's, it's this yeah. I, for one, welcome the Burnham Rush. Yeah.
Speaker: Listen, if this is a Gang of Four situation and it turns out he's actually the more left-wing, I greet it. I hope it's good, but it's hard for me to imagine a more left-wing candidate than Starmer. This is all on topic as are because he's a Gen Xer, you know?
Speaker: So, he he classically, he stands for nothing. So, did exactly the man for the UK at this juncture Yeah, he's born in 1970. I would say Burnham is like the spirit of this podcast in the sense that he is very much like Manchester, the Stone Roses. you remember the Stone Roses?
Speaker: I remember the Stone Roses. So yeah, he he is very much like that guy incarnate. He's having some time in Britain, Chase, but like, he's definitely a kind of guy you meet. He's like, I remember the Hacienda. Hacienda was fucking brilliant.
Speaker: um like Andy Burnham is that guy. it's also like the same guy who's like, it's such a shame that Hacienda closed down. But also like, I do own a flat in the like private redevelopment that replaced it. Like that is, that is Andy Burnham like all over. So like, he is also like simultaneously like a Blairite, a Corbynite, a soft left.
Speaker: ah He's like, yeah, every ideological position simultaneously. Like St. Paul, he is all things to all men. Yeah. You know, like I can do some sort of live reporting here on the AF day in Germany. So I was another Gen X phenomenon. In fact, the the alternative for Deutschland. I was working at the Deutsche Club, ah New Jersey's premier German organization this past, which they will tell you very clearly, no Nazi affiliation during World War two They have the letter from the FBI to prove it. Make of that what you will.
Speaker: ah But I do love the club because I get to practice my German and participate in German culture. And um I was talking to a couple of German emigres who sounded very much like, I don't know, ah Vox voters from Spain when discussing and Merkel's immigration policies. So I can tell you I experienced a little bit of soft AFD sort of sentiment. And it was interesting, I guess is the right word, only because it was sort of the unfiltered version of a lot of this kind of European reaction. Like, I didn't get the feeling that these people were like,
Speaker: you know these weren't like religious, hyper-religious conservatives or even probably conservative in any like identifiable sort of mid-century way. They just believed that like truckloads of Syrians are being put up at like five-star hotels while like German families are being like gassed in their rent-frozen apartments so that you know um Iraqi sort of like laborers can move in. so i you know Do I think that's true? No.
Speaker: but it was sort of interesting to get it from the horse's mouth to kind of, because we we have that in America, but we don't because so much of the American version of that is caught up in crazy other Trump stuff that like, you don't get that more, you know,
Speaker: I would also say it's it's it's just like proportionally different. right i was it like I always wonder ah why Americans whinge so much about immigration because it's like immigration rates equal 0.2% of America's like outstanding population rate, something like that. Whereas like in the UK and Germany, it's more like 3%, 4%, 5%. So it's it's just like, yeah, I think well it's it's it's less like laughing in that sense as a grieved and might more just like, yeah.
Speaker: in the In the words of Malcolm X, the chickens are coming home to roost. And unfortunately, I don't think the folks at the Deutsche Club are prepared for that. i'm just I'm just trying to figure out how to land this plane in terms of Andy Burnham AFD into the film we're discussing today. I got it. This is a movie in which everyone would be a reform voter. Every single character who appears in this would either not vote or be a reform voter.
Speaker: Yes. what Yes. Although I could see the three main lads being Gen X enough to be sort of like, and like potentially becoming wealthy enough to become sort of like post-Cockney, like feel good laborites in a way. if they If they sell the sword at the end of the film, or the sword, sorry, the the antique gun, and all buy nice houses in Islington, I've met that kind of guy, actually. Question mark over the younger guys. but Well, and we should say then that this is Guy Ritchie, noted ex-husband of Madonna's ah first feature film, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, a movie from my perspective about how the East End English are genetically predisposed to thievery crime and killing each other. Yeah.
Speaker: Oh no. well Oh yes, depending on you. Well, it's it's a movie about why you actually need all of those immigrants because they'll come in and set up like nice grocery stores and like kebab shops that like feed the community that like Gary Eats will go to and like praise on his YouTube channel. So Gary Eats is is my example of like a post-Cockney guy who's like done kind of well in voice labor.
Speaker: He's like the who the the main young guys in this could turn into, potentially. I don't know if we've ever explicitly said this, but if you're out there, check out Gary Eats on YouTube. He is maybe the last remaining man of virtue in the United Kingdom. He should be prime minister. um He recently did one where he went to a place where a guy was doing a $1 shawarma deal.
Speaker: And the whole video was just like, This is, i don't know why i'm giving him that accent. That is not the accent he has. But like if you imagine he talks like this, this is what it's all about. This is, you're feeding the community. You're making sure people have something to eat in these tough times. And I just think that's wonderful.
Speaker: um That is not what he sounds like at all, listeners. If you were a Guy Ritchie character, that's what he would sound like, but. So I had to do some research into Guy Ritchie because obviously i I've watched a lot of his films um over the years. Like ah Snatch, I enjoyed a lot.
Speaker: I saw the Sherlock Holmes series when I was a sort of impressionable 13 year old, whatever. I thought he was sick at the time. yeah Although retrospectively, maybe not so much. I always assumed he was like some hard man, cockney geezer, like boy done good.
Speaker: To my surprise, not at all. He's really posh. His dad was Captain John Vivian Ritchie, a former Seaforth Highlanders officer and advertising executive. Both of Ritchie's parents remarried. His father's second marriage was to Shireen Ritchie, Baroness Ritchie of Brompton, a former model and later conservative politician and life peer.
Speaker: And then between 1973 and 1980, Ritchie's mother remarried to Sir Michael Layton, Baroness of Lofton Park. He attended Windlesham House School in West Sussex, which is just down the road from where I grew up.
Speaker: It a very nice school. I think the local Earl in West Sussex sent his kids there, there you go. And Stanbridge Earl School in Hampshire, which I'm not so familiar with. um So yeah, he's, and but this is actually a classic type. This is very Gen X of him to be like, sort of inarguably posh and like have his entire persona be like a Cockney Hardman.
Speaker: Well, and he was expelled from school for drug use and according to his father, cutting class and entertaining girls in his room. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, this is the classic rebellious Gen X teenager. This is a, yeah, yeah, but like specifically a kind of posh, like there was a lot of, I think among this generation, a lot of It was almost like aspirational at a certain point to be a bit cockney or to be mockney. um I know famously that, I think you know about this, that David Cameron during his time at Oxford, like got really into like drinking real ale, playing darts and like going to this Afro-Caribbean Jamaican restaurant in in Jericho.
Speaker: I've met the guy. I've been to that restaurant. I met the guy. of course. I know. i Who later threatened a man with a machete, I think. Allegedly, allegedly. Well, according to the news article that I read, let's put it that way. I have no knowledge of if that happened. we We're not making any statements on whether he was acquitted or charged or what? Yes, I have no idea. was simply reported in a newspaper. yeah So yeah, I think this is definitely a Gen X type of guy. There was another guy, Guy Ritchie almost seems like a kind of like film analog of...
Speaker: he He was like this like dropout public school boy, and he adopted like a Cockney accent, and did loads of cocaine, wore like massive double-breasted suits, and threw these like massive balls in West London in the late 80s, early 90s, where like teenagers would go to like do drugs and like get off with each other. And he like I think he got like prosecuted for like embezzling and tax and fraudance and stuff.
Speaker: So yeah, Guy Ritchie is a type, definitely. Yes, and it's funny because in this movie, you know for those who haven't seen it, you can see why Sam would assume this about him because it is basically, there's what I can only describe as what in America we call the Latin America or Mexico sheen over virtually the entire movie, although my wife... commented it's not quite as orange as the one that we put over our movie Sit on the Border.
Speaker: It is intended to almost look as if we were in like late 19th century Cockney, London, even though it's clearly like the year 2000, which is interesting. like And I want your opinion on this, Sam.
Speaker: Is this... just Richie himself or is this pitched to a certain group? Because my understanding is the movie is sort of like reinvigorated British action cinema. Like it was very, very, very successful.
Speaker: Were the masses simply waiting for that Cockney element of the sort of English identity to be re-unlocked by a film such as this or or what? I mean i think like you've got long-running series that are incredibly popular, like EastEnders is the the obvious soap, which is set in the East End of London. yeah and ah yeah sort of It's just like historically and consistently very, very popular.
Speaker: But yeah, I suppose it's some sort of revival in the sense that previous... I'm skipping over the 70s and 80s, but my knowledge of like the last time sort of Cockney Cool was really predominant is Michael Caine, so in the 60s. So obviously...
Speaker: Like Get Carter or something like this? Yeah, Get Carter, the Ip Press file, um where he plays. It's Len Dayton, the author. Who does he play? It's Harry Palmer, who's this kind of cockney antidote to James Bond. He's like a military intelligence sergeant who is forced. He like gets caught stealing at the end of the Second World War is and and and is forced into being a spy by these old Etonian officers. and he's But he's like very cool. He's cockney, but he what he's into modernist furniture and reads the New Statesman and cooks Italian food.
Speaker: And he's like, yeah, so it's like new generation. And it's like Cockney Cool, I suppose. And I do think that um Lockstock has got some of that. I think at around the same time, you also have Jamie Oliver. I'm not sure if you're aware of Jamie Oliver. Oh, of course I'm aware of Jamie Oliver. He's kind of like ah sort of synchronous with Lockstock, I suppose. ah The Naked Chef. When does The Naked Chef come out?
Speaker: It must be around the same time. But yeah. And then you obviously have The Libertines slightly later, I suppose. The Naked Chef came out in 1999, so a year later. And when were The Libertines? 97 is the year before Lockstock and Two-Sirking Barrels. So this is part of ah a vortex that's happening. I think so, yeah.
Speaker: And obviously Blur, slightly earlier, is kind of like playing with that Cockney cool thing, and then they're slightly less. Yeah, that's what was going to bring up, because this is obviously, you know, prime time for Tony Blair and for the emergence of Cool Britannia, which, like, my associations with it are not so geographically specific. So you've got, like, the Northerners, obviously, in Oasis. You have Blur, which is, like,
Speaker: you know i mean think David Albern is like from ah a very wealthy sort of artistic family, but like in a a kind of boho sort of way, i think. Yeah, he went to gold I think he went to Goldsmiths. So he's kind of art school South London Yeah. And then you've got Spice Girls, which is like, what if we, you know, we're going to have a posh one. We're going to have a sporty, we're going kind of like try and... Multicultural, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. You know, so, but there's not like, there's not, they didn't put like Bob Hoskins in like a Union Jack. I mean, all, i think if you put him in a Union Jack t-shirt, he would kill you. But, um you know. Because there's that great video of him in probably the ninety s like waxing really sort of poetic and melancholic about the redevelopment of the East End. It's on YouTube for those who want to find it where he's like, the the landlords have taken everything, but building it up. this This wharf has been here since 1813. And he's just really pissed off about everything. And I love that video so much. Like I associate that period of the East End almost with like an anti-Blair sort of like, you know, not NIMBY because that's associated with a kind of more upper crust group, but like a, we would like to continue to eat our jelly deals in peace.
Speaker: you know, out of like a cart in the back of an alleyway where like the same family has been selling it since like 1695, you know? Yeah. Like not a, not like a cultural phenomenon that's part of the Blair moment, but kind of like sedimented layer of resistance or something like this. Yeah, well, shout out Mans and Sons, which I'll, Chase, when you come to London, I'll have to take you to. Mans and Sons is the, There's two locations, one's in Peckham, one's Lewisham, I want to say. They're sort of still-standing Cockney, Pai places.
Speaker: I would try youll I mean, I would probably hate it, but I would try it. Don't try the eel. Just have the pies and ice. Just get the pies. But yeah, they are great places. Gary, it's recently went to one of those. He recently got some nice pies. They've got Victorian tiling. They've like women in little smocks who call you lav and petals. Oh, yeah, I love what you want. But no, I think to your point, like um the white working class are in an interesting position in the 90s in the sense that Yeah, obviously, like, the associations through the so late 70s and 80s were, like, bifurcated into either, like, sort of industrial unionism, which I suppose was more associated with the North. But you also had, like, strikes in, like, Deptford and, like, um bits of Kent around, like, car factories, which is more Southern.
Speaker: So, like, yeah, industrial unionism and, like, left-wing activism, but then also, right, the National Front, like, fascism, basically. But by the time you get to the late 90s, I think... there has been a lot of work to sort of try and recuperate white working class, especially Cockney identity, into the establishment or into the mainstream or into the Labour sort of coalition again. And I think in 97, so a year before this film came out, Blair won a lot of like Essex and the East End.
Speaker: I'm like fairly certain. but He did fairly well in like the kind of old Cockney white working class areas. um So I think there is some material fact to this beyond just vibes. Quickly, I'll keep the map. Yeah, he took all of Essex and East End.
Speaker: Okay, interesting. So this movie is produced by a company called Ska Films, which is already you know pointing us in a certain direction. Now, Ska Films was founded by Matthew Vaughn, ah perhaps better known as Sir Matthew Allard de Vere Drummond.
Speaker: um who is a very, very Gen X man. I invite you to look at his Wikipedia page in which he's wearing a sort of cabby cap and big black glasses and has a sort of graying beard.
Speaker: But Vaughn is, i think, a perfect kind of um way of understanding what might be going on here because he's born to a woman who is the daughter of a property tycoon, and a former wife of a Pakistani millionaire.
Speaker: He believed his father was an American actor named Robert Vaughn, but a paternity investigation later led him to understand that his father was, in fact, George Albert Harley DeVere Drummond, an English banker, aristocrat, and son of George Henry DeVere Drummond. And of course, you'll recognize that DeVere name from you know Centuries earlier. South Africa, and yeah, yeah. Yeah, but you can see that he seems to be a Guy Ritchie kind of guy, right? He comes from this incredibly sort of privileged background, both biologically and non-biologically, or or sort of where he's raised.
Speaker: But he puts together this company that produces his friend, Guy Ritchie's very, very, very popular movie, that made, it says here, nine million pounds for each of them. So you've got this kind of nexus of privileged Gen X guys who are obviously interested in playing with a kind of almost like multiracial Cockney thing because the movie has a lot of reggae songs. The name of the production company is Ska Films, but it's fundamentally rooted in like a, well, we can't afford Bob Hoskins, so what if we made a movie that was sort of about like the next generation of Bob Hoskins characters? Yeah, I definitely like know this type of guy. I'm not going to name names, but there's a particular person who I'm, someone I'm like vaguely kind of related to, but not, whose dad was a high court judge and a member of the Privy Council, who dropped out of his boarding school in like the early and like joined a ska band in Notting Hill.
Speaker: That's it! This is a type, and he's like Gen X, yeah, this is is definitely a type of Gen X. And he like speaks in like a kind of mockney twang, even like now. So, yeah, this is a guy, this type of guy. um But I also think, just quickly, it puts a bit of perspective on the complaint that you see. There's a sort of presentism around cultural criticism in the UK,
Speaker: maybe starting in the 2010s, that like art has somehow, once you get into the era of austerity, starting around 2010 and the end of Blairism and the start of like the Conservative rule, that you get a kind of exodus of working class and lower middle class art in the UK, and it becomes dominated by posh people, because like there's no funding for art, state funding for art anymore.
Speaker: Which is is true, that there's an element of truth to that. But like clearly... Guy Ritchie and like Scar Films like puts pay to the fact that this is like a new phenomenon in some ways, right? Yes. And like, obviously there's like ah a very common refrain you get in like artistic and kind of cultural circles in the UK where like people like hunt for the sort of aristocratic or like plutocratic connections of like artists in the UK, you know, who sort of present themselves humbly or somehow as being sort of visceral and real.
Speaker: I think people enjoy doing that, but clearly it's it's been a problem. Yeah. I mean, Fred again fred again is the, I'm not sure if you're aware of Fred again, the the DJ. I'm not. Oh, you don't want to be, but he he is probably the um case in point, I think, for for that complaint.
Speaker: I will just briefly, and then I have a quick complaint, and then we'll talk about the movie itself. But Ska Films, now known as Marv Studios, which just seems to me to be a certain kind of like cultural shift in the naming conventions of the studio, um went on to produce Kick-Ass, Kick-Ass 2, the Tetris movie, um the Fantastic Four film from 2015. So there is something interesting. like They became one of the major like soy superhero. Yeah. ah production studios. I will get them though. They did Kingsman, which I did enjoy.
Speaker: I mean it with no negativity, simply to say that it is interesting that this kind of posh-ish um faux Cockney studio goes on, this very Gen X studio, goes on to produce films I associate very strongly with kind of like the millennial snark that is an outgrowth of Gen X. If we think of these things as sort of feeding into one another, either in terms of reaction or direct or indirect influence.
Speaker: We talked in like The Princess Bride and certain movies earlier in the season about like the emergence of this set of narrative conventions that go on to give us like, I'm the... I bet you're wondering how I became kick-ass. And like there are even elements of that in this film where for like no good reason, there are voiceover narrations that only seem to exist at the beginning of the films. to inform you about what's going on with the characters and then totally drop out. There's this preference in a lot of like this period, Gen X and millennial film for this... not It's not a yet the fourth wall break, but it's this kind of omniscient narrator who comes in. and We get this in Trainspotting.
Speaker: ah You get it in a bunch of different places. Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels really is a classic sort of heist movie set up where you've got a series of people who are basically doing crimes to each other and most of the movie is about which one of these groups is going to successfully pull off the crime because they're so deeply interpenetrated that not all of them can succeed. And our main groups are the sort of four guys who make up, I guess you could say, the the main grouping, the one that we start with. And this is Eddie, Tom, Soap, and Bacon. Bacon, of course, played by Jason Statham in an early role who opens basically doing three-card Monty with a bunch of, like, gormless citizens of the of London.
Speaker: Soap is a chef who is given that name because he wants to remain sort of um clean despite ah the fact that he's involved in very minor criminal enterprises. You know, these are guys who are like,
Speaker: doing like small scams on the street. They're not big-time criminals. They are, however, friends with a guy named Nick the Greek, played, of course, by Stephen Marcus, not a Greek man, just a large man, um who is a much bigger-time criminal who they kind of fence stolen goods to and things like this. So that's one grouping.
Speaker: Then we have... Hatchet, Harry Lonsdale, and Barry the Baptist. Harry is the head of a very successful sex shop and sort of gambling ring. and Barry the Baptist is so-called because he drowns guys in like random tubs of water that are on the streets because I guess it's the 19th century for some reason. ah so he's just killing guys in like in like medieval bathtubs for Harry um and You've got ah Vinnie Jones as Big Chris. He's a kind of contractor mercenary enforcer for debts.
Speaker: For Harry. But he's kind of his own man. Yeah, he also seems to have like... in a sort of brat brother sort of way, the closest thing to like a moral code of anyone involved in this, he takes his son, little Chris with him everywhere and like yells at him for cursing. Like they're beating a guy with a tanning bed who owes money. And the guy curses in front of his son. He's like, if you do that again, like I'm going to do worse than just banging with this tanning And then his son calls him like an asshole or something. He's like, Little Chris, like, what are you doing? Shut up. um So he's like our classic kind of like not moral gangster because he does a lot of awful things, but the kind of code-based gangster of the movie.
Speaker: And then there's another group of guys who have names, I would imagine, but nobody cares what they are, who are the neighbors of the original gang we spoke about, who are a much more serious kind of criminal outlet.
Speaker: Then we have a group of weed dealers yeah who um are sort of incompetent. and very There's one competent guy and then a series of like his stoner underlings who are deeply incompetent. yeah And finally, and this is the most important one to me, um Gary and Dean, who are, again, two sort of like brainless gangsters subcontracted by Hatchet Harry and Barry the Baptist to steal a pair of antique guns. He was sort of like ambiguously Liverpudlian slash Mancunian.
Speaker: And this is important because one of my favorite things to do on this podcast and watching Gen X content in general is, and again, I apologize to our listeners for this, but I know South Park like the back of my hand, unfortunately for me and for all of you.
Speaker: And I will say, it turns out a lot of teens also watch South Park, which sort of surprised me, but it remains kind of popular. But anyway, because they are a postmodern pastiche factory, many of their characters are just reimaginations of movie characters popular with Gen X guys from the 80s and 90s.
Speaker: And so a good example of this is the goth kids in that show. They're from an 80s movie. I can't remember off top my head what it is, but my wife and I were watching it like, oh my God, those are just the goth characters from South Park.
Speaker: And in this, Gary and Dean are repurposed vocally as, and I apologize for saying this, they are ah Oprah's vagina and asshole in an episode where They are just personified. There's characters in it. I don't know why. i don't remember the episode well enough, but I immediately identified them because literally there's a point in that where Gary is sniped um by the police and the other character goes, Gary, Gary. And he's like, oh, just look towards the light.
Speaker: Okay. I can't see it anymore, Minji. Because the other character named Minji, of course. And it's just like, I was like, oh my God, they've done it again. They've taken a little remembered film that was popular at a certain moment in history and recycled it for future generations. Good on them. So I just wanted to get that out there. And it has also got the Infos. They've got the Infos line. What's it? ah Northern Monkeys, so Southern Pussies.
Speaker: I can't remember it's... ah That I don't recall, but... There's a bit where they're doing... Dean and Gary are doing business with the porn dealer. Harry? Yeah, and they sort of both mutually insult each other, Southerners and Northerners, which was ah a very sort of um beloved quote. Oh, I see. By a lot of my friends as a teenager.
Speaker: This had a kind of Tarantino like effect on teens in Britain, apparently. Yes, I had a friend who would always go, Northern monkeys, Southern pussies. So there go. And that is Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham in a nutshell. It's an eternal dialectic, isn't it? Between the two. ah we we We're also forgetting Rory Breaker, played by Vas Blackwood. he sort of represent He's the kind of mob boss of the Jamaican crew. Yes, yes. true who also involved So the movie is very... It does make a kind of conscious effort to... i mean, it's not like a terribly diverse film or anything, but it does build into itself the kind of...
Speaker: reality of of changing East End London, you know, from a demographic and kind of ethnic perspective. Well, it's interesting that the growers are kind of like played as these kind of like upper middle class fops as well. Yes, very much. so you get some like class diversity in it as well. Like I think they're referred to as Little Lord Falteroy and like public school boys throughout it. Yeah, because they're there're kind of obviously involved in an industry. They're not, you know, classic character.
Speaker: Like rich boys who get involved in crime, but aren't actually aware of the kind of dangers that lurk becoming involved in like an actual life of crime. And they're actually quite a fun proxy. And and maybe we should give guy Ritchie and this other guy, Matthew Vaughan, some credit or some like credit for being more self-reflective than they might initially appear in the sense that these characters might be sort of proxies for them.
Speaker: yeah Because at the beginning of the film, there's sort of a big cage right behind the door where you enter this like you know urban like hydroponic weed farm that these guys have set up in like an abandoned warehouse in in London.
Speaker: And um you know new industry, Rural Britannia, here we are, it's cool. um we're We're doing urban farming with weed. you know that Thank you, Tony Blair. But anyway, the this cage is meant...
Speaker: The serious one, the boss, is like, no, we have to keep it locked because we're growing weed. This is not safe. um And a guy who's coming home with like a passed out woman who's one of their hangarounds, and then also a bag of fertilizer. like They constantly forget to lock the door when they're du doing business, this this cage door. And he's like,
Speaker: well why do I need to be more careful? He's like, are you an idiot? you You work at a weed farm and you're running back with nothing but a bag of fertilizer and a woman who's stoned out of her mind. like If anyone stops you, they're going to know exactly what you're doing. So it's like,
Speaker: there They don't understand the ramifications. Only the one guy really does. And this is really brought to a head when they are robbed by the gang who lives next door to our sort of main group. This kind of serious gang who's not associated with Hatchet Harry.
Speaker: And um they only have a BB gun. Like that is the only defense thing. It's an air rifle, which is like has particular connotations because that is quite like a farming slash rural slash posh boy gun to have.
Speaker: Is this what we in America call an airsoft gun? Possibly. I mean, it does have actual metal bullets in. Oh, I see. But it doesn't fire hard enough to let them go into your skin? No, they would go into you They're just so small that they wouldn't like rupture an artery or anything. Oh, I see. yeah. so this For like context, it's the only gun I've ever fired. i No, okay, so that makes a lot of sense. that's it but So that's even better. Like it could, like if you got like got one in the neck or something or in the eye, it probably could kill you. Well, that happens though. The the one guy, the the sort of bearded... ah Who has the most horrific voice. He has like the most horrific voice. It's a thousand cigarettes a day. sort of it's So annoying. I love it so much. And he does get shot in the neck.
Speaker: So fuck it up and show you the neck. And he does get shot in the neck. And he kind of is just like in pain for the rest of the movie. Like he's not like really injured in like a meaningful way. But when they have to carry all of the like ill-gotten gains, the money and shit out of that place. He's like, I can only take one bag because I can't use my other hand because my my ah neck is screwed up. like It sort of does the equivalent of if you got like you know sort of like injured lifting something too heavy. you know like That's sort of what the the bullet does to him.
Speaker: But yeah, so you know without needing to rehearse every single plot point, basically all of them get entangled together. But we should say what the central mechanism is that launches the whole sort of spiraling plot, right, is that I think it's Eddie loses a game of cards, like a very high-stakes game of cards. And he's one of our four main guys, clarify that. Yeah, one of our main Gen sort young Cockney-East end guys. They're all very cool. They're all sort of mod-ish, like mod revival, kind of like they could be part of the jam or something. But he loses a stake. I think he's got his friends to put together 200 grand.
Speaker: They lose the stake to Harry, don't they? Yes, absolutely. He basically says, you've got a week to pay, and then I'm going to start chopping fingers off. or And I'm going to take your dad's bar because his dad, who's played by Sting, of all people. Yes. Yeah. And if that doesn't work, they're going to take this guy's bar. Eddie's dad's, just yeah, JD, who's played by Sting's bar. So they've only got a week to find, is it 200 grand plus? It's more than 200 grand. It's 500 in total. It's 500 in total. Yeah. Because what happens is, and again, this shows the lack of seriousness of these kind of small-time gangsters.
Speaker: so they're different than the weed guys. The weed guys like really just genuinely seem to have no idea what they're getting themselves into. These guys are like aware of kind of the stakes to a certain extent because they are involved in relatively minor crime that isn't just growing marijuana.
Speaker: But they clearly don't... they They believe their guy will win because he's really good at cards, which he is. The problem is they don't realize that Hatchet Harry is an actual criminal and so is going to have someone spying on the other members of the game to ensure that he does not lose. right like it's They don't understand that it's not an actual even playing field. And so this is what leads him to lose. And then they need to come up with this money.
Speaker: And their way of doing this is the neighbors are so close by that they realize the neighbors are and going to be engaged in a kind of heist. So when those neighbors go to rob the weed guys, they then rob their neighbors of that money.
Speaker: The complicating factor is that Hatchet Harry is also after these two antique guns that Gary and Dean, who go and rob this aristocrat and actually get shot at with this like antique rifle.
Speaker: um I think the pair is worth $250 think. those guns, they're told, oh, just take whatever's in the gun case and you can have whatever else for yourself. And they're sort of like, I don't know how much antiques are worth. like you know Like, I want actual money. But they take ah the guns, but they sell the antique guns because they're not in the gun case and they don't understand that they're actually worth a ton of money.
Speaker: And who ends up getting those antique guns but are our original four guys who can't afford real guns but can afford these sort of like... you know, to like these like hunting rifles from the era of George the fourth, you know, like these, like, you know, these just bizarre, ah you know, things. So they then use them to hold up the guys who robbed the weed place. And then the ah sort of Jamaican gang gets involved because they're,
Speaker: the weed is supposed to be sold to them as is, you know. Well, I think they have an investment in the weed farm, don't they, effectively? Oh, yeah, yeah, That's what it is. I think they're taking a share of the profits, so they effectively feel that they have been robbed.
Speaker: Yes, because they they sort of have been in a in a way, right? So, that the you know, as I said at beginning, it shows that the Cockney folks are genetically predisposed to murder and thievery. that This is a movie about how actually the Great Replacement is real and should be happening. Yeah. That's Guy Ritchie's position. Well, I'm actually saying now that I know posh Guy Ritchie is, actually does make more sense that there are these, like, you know, just the aristocratic interlude in the country house and then obviously the um yeah boarding school kids selling weed.
Speaker: It starts to make a bit more sense that there is that kind of diversity in the film. It's actually a running sort of topic for him, isn't it? I mean, The Kingsman is obviously about a Cockney kid from like an East London estate ending up in the equivalent of MI6. You've got The Gentleman, which is about Cockney gangsters using like bankrupt aristocrats land to grow weed secretly. um so this is probably like a running sort of motif for Ritchie.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, i think it does speak to that kind of, I guess the millennial equivalent would be sort of like a hipster who, you know, starts slumming it in Brooklyn in like 2005. You know what I mean? Yeah. um Whereas for Gen X Brits, it does seem to be more about like a kind of authentic Englishness you can locate in the East End that is demographically changing, but because you're, know, you're probably like totally fine with immigration because it has no effect on you in in any way. Yeah. Not that, i listen, I'm pro-emigrant. I don't mean that. I just mean if you're an actual East End working class white guy, I could see you becoming a more resentful sort of person.
Speaker: I mean, it's an interesting film in the sense that it doesn't, in terms of demographics, it's still very much stuck in the 60s, 70s. Yeah. In the sense that the East End by this period in time is like much more Polish, ah more Bangladeshi, more Pakistani.
Speaker: And those like don't really feature. I mean, it is very much, it's idea of like, Britain's demographics are very much frozen in the 60s, i.e. there are like white working class people, there are posh people, and there are Jamaicans.
Speaker: Yeah, I also want to say that I think, I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but there's a way in which for all the distinctness of this movie, it is kind of an updating for a new era.
Speaker: So I think of a movie like Fish Called Wanda. i think of, I don't know, like something like The Long Good Friday, which I think is, what, nineteen eighty So it there is this kind of history of the British heist film that is being made more specifically Gen X through this particular portrait, where it's kind of like hapless, slumming Gen X guys, actual kind of Gen X cockney gangsters, older sort of like porn kingpins who've obviously been operating like since the days of Get Carter, like out of their you know porn shops. There's a point in the movie where Hatchet Harry... um I forget the exact context, but he's basically, he talks about beating a guy with a dildo, more or less.
Speaker: ah You know, like these sort of like, obviously these like really rough and tumble ah folks. And so there is this simultaneous like connection to an idea of existing Britishness, but also an updating of that formula for a new era.
Speaker: I was also going to say that one of the things that think Guy Ritchie is perhaps an unfortunate sort of originator of is this kind of like overwrought dialogue that's very Gen X and very Reddit. Like, I enjoyed Locked Up and Two Spoken Barrels. It's a fun film. But like, some of the dialogue, it just feels it's like ah it's trying too hard.
Speaker: Like, it's very like dense. It's quite like, um it's quite sophomoric and it's kind of like pretension to like complexity or like erudition. um And I think you see that in most of British films to a certain extent. And you also see it in later things that annoy me to no end. Like, i don't know if you do you know Stephen Knight?
Speaker: No. ah He's a huge British director um and he's ah he's really guilty of this. Stephen Knight, I'm just making sure he's a Gen Xer, I think about the same age as... No, he's a boomer, 59. He's a boomer, but he has this, he picked up this Gen X affectation with like Peaky Blinders.
Speaker: His first movie 2001. So to be clear, he's like, only he's working. His first actual written films are like in this period. They're the same period, yeah. I mean, he's he's from a much poorer background, so that's probably why it took him longer to to get going. um But yeah, um what's the other one? He did a fun series called where Rogue Heroes. Is it Rogue Heroes? It's about the SAS. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: and the foundation of SAS. SAS Raugueros, which again is really fun, but like the dialogue is so overwrought and sort of like sardonic in a kind of, you know, like, ha ha, ha ha, of way.
Speaker: And yeah, I do think that Guy Ritchie perhaps is the sort of originator of some of that kind of hyper-modernistic, hyper-aware, but kind of cringe. Well, it's it's something we spoke about a while ago. i mentioned... um Princess Bride specifically, which is a wonderful movie. I don't mean to disparage it by saying this, but there's this strain that runs through Gen X and then kind of transmogrifies a little bit in the millennial era of this occasionally too smart by half kind of dialogue that will eventually become like the kick-ass style, like at this point, super played out.
Speaker: Yeah, like right like, did you not notice in Lotsoc, like, there's all these monologues, right? or its done Where it's kind of staccato style of speech, where you, like, clipped. Yeah.
Speaker: And it just feels a bit, like, non-naturalistic, I suppose, which there's nothing in it innately wrong with being non-naturalistic, but I don't think it knows it's non-naturalistic. Yeah.
Speaker: Well, that's actually a very good way of putting it because it's a movie that i' like for all of its comedic kind of... It has a lot of comedic beats. It's pretty action-packed. It is a movie that clearly seems to be about or want to be about a slightly heightened version of reality. like You know what I mean? It's not in any way a... It's a fantasy for the viewer who maybe is like, it could have been a criminal, you know, or something like this. I don't know. But it's meant to depict something, I think, that's supposed to feel real and very sort of like English in a particular way. I think it's refracting a certain national myth yeah to the people of 1998. Is it the blur lyrics? I think it's a ballad of a charmless man. Oh, my God. One of my favorite songs. Well, there's that line where he's like, he he thought he could be Ronnie Cray.
Speaker: Yes. And his, yeah, he educated the expensive way. He knows his Clara from his Beaujolais. Beaujolais. He thought he could be Ronnie or Reggie Cray. Yeah. Like this is like, I think Blur knew who this type of guy was and i had that number, right?
Speaker: Yeah. Which is a very, i got, I love, let me say this. Blur came to, I think it was South by Southwest a couple years ago and were like not a main attraction because for whatever reason, they like never took off in the U.S. in the way gorillas would later on and you are missing out you don't just want to hear girls and boys you don't just want to hear song too the stuff we play at athletic events here get in there listen to charmless man listen to beetle bum listen to tender listen to country house very big house in the country yes coffee and tv yeah um there are reading balls like a and knocking back prozac Even The Ballad of Darren is pretty good.
Speaker: You know, you got to get in on Blur, which, you know, if we do a music episode, honestly, a good Gen X band to think about because they represent a kind of different kind of Gen X Britishness in ah in a yeah you know at at a time that they're like they take off because of the whole Cool Britannia thing, even though I think da and Damon Albern probably like couldn't give two shits about all that stuff at all. He just kind of benefited from it.
Speaker: I would say it's, yeah, i mean, Lock, Stock and Two Pock Marils is, it's it's an interesting film as someone who's lived in London and found it nigh on, him I mean, maybe I'll go back, but when I did live in London, found it to be nigh on impossible, right? Like, um just in terms of expense and crowdedness and, you know, everything being slightly played out almost.
Speaker: London in this period, like 98, is like... It's funny, I could have been born two or three decades prior. Because I think this good time for London in the sense that like in the 50s, 60s, 70s, into the mid-80s, sort of post-war, London isn't exactly that desirable.
Speaker: And I think it actually shrinks in population size, right? um And it's, you know, that period, it was... kind of a trade-off, right? So you could live in London actually a fairly cheaply, but it was still quite grim in lot of ways. And you had the Cray Twins like beheading people or whatever. But you know like people like my grandparents who were from like pretty normal middle-class backgrounds could afford like four fucking townhouses and claper like aged thirty five and like ah ah meet like ah the flat in Chelsea. And that was like eminently doable.
Speaker: But the night by the time you get in the 90s, it's like quite a good era in the sense that some of that is still around. Like, it's still fairly cheap, fairly accessible. But you are sort of getting the first wave of gentrification, the first nice restaurants. You know people talk about the 90s as being kind of like Britain's gastronomic revolution happening then. Jamie Oliver. Wow. Yeah, in in in his populist guise, I suppose. Also mark mar Marco Pierre White. um Fergus Henderson as well, who runs St John's.
Speaker: Jonathan Mead is tro was trotting around London reviewing restaurants at that point in time. It's a period where i think London is still accessible. There's still like weird like and under railway underpassages where you can run criminal operations. But also, you know, like ah restaurants are getting nicer. You can get good coffee. Yeah.
Speaker: You see a little bit of this in the 1988 Mike Lee movie, High Hopes, which is about kind of like gentrification and King's Cross specifically, um which I know we watched off podcast. But there's one thing... And I was very annoyed by its inaccuracies. Yes. Yes.
Speaker: But I need to now just... The soundtrack for this movie, because I do think another mark of a lot of these Gen X films is... And you see it with Quentin Tarantino. And Scorsese sort of like pioneers this. It's not unique to them, but I do think it becomes important for a lot of these films and is now like totally dominant.
Speaker: the inclusion of pop music in all soundtracks and just the hyper abundance of music. So the soundtrack has 27 songs, including a great diversity of bands, like racially and all sorts of ways. So Ocean Color Scene, there are two james brown song st James Brown songs. I'm pretty sure I approached Ocean Color Scene for an interview a few months There you go.
Speaker: The Stone Roses show up. ah The Stooges show up. Robbie Williams shows up. Easy Roller shows up. ah Dusty Springfield. There's just an immense... A band called Skanga. I don't know what that is, but I can imagine what it is. ah It's probably a ska of... ah and ah you know that sort of thing Not ska in the British sense, but you know the...
Speaker: sort of influence of that kind of thing. um Like, it's this kind of multi-ethnic, multi-racial, like, pop Britain soundtrack that kind of, like, fits perfectly with the movie, but also is so aggressive in its overlay of music throughout the film. Yeah, I mean, you get the ah the last song that really plays before the credits while, um is it Soap? It's hanging off the bridge and the gun. So it ends on a cliffhanger where like he's yes gone to push this gun in the water because he's hiding the evidence of the crime. And obviously the the four main guys don't know that the guns are worth however much money until they get given ah sort of the a Christie's sort of ah pamphlet from Vinnie. It's a fake Sotheby's. It's called like Trutherby's or something. Trutherby's, yeah. um and they suddenly And they've sent off soap to get rid of the evidence. They suddenly realise what the guns are worth, and that's their payment, because they've been deprived of the heist. And they're sort desperately phoning him up as he's like dangling over the bridge, and he drops the guns, they fall on like an outcrop, and he's like reaching over to push them as his phone rings. yeah And that's where it cuts. And then you get the stone roses.
Speaker: Fool's gold, right? I think, playing, which is obviously like Manchester. like i mean, I guess it's sort of ironic because Falls Gold, right? I mean, there's some metaphorical sort of cadence there. But yeah, it's it's just incredibly like Gen X as a last song to pick.
Speaker: Well, and it it also is, there's something interesting about, so at the end of the movie, because of all the killings that happened and everybody's crossed crossed out, so to speak, basically Big Chris and our four main guys are the only ones left left standing through all of this kind of carnage.
Speaker: And Big Chris ends up with the money and the guys end up with the guns. And Big Chris hands him a bag at the end because he realizes everything that's happened and is like, oh, here's the bag. The bag is empty.
Speaker: And the guys expect the money. The only thing in the bag is this Tretheby's, you know, auction thing. And this is when they realize that it's the guns that are worth something. And it is kind of interesting that these cockney criminals are left with what, that the only thing worth anything that will finally get them out of this hole and give them the money they need to, you know, buy the townhomes. You were talking about, Sam, and become labor voters, um you know, in the in the aughts.
Speaker: is this like artifact of old aristocratic Britishness. Like that is actually their guarantee of succeeding in the world. It's not the money itself, which now is big Chris's and he's bought like a coupe and has driven away with his son at the end. And he's, you know, obviously about to become just like a, don't geezer, if I can use that word without fully understanding what it means.
Speaker: But you know the the other guys, the only hope they have are these guns that Soap wanted to keep because he thought they were cool and antique and just kind of like liked them. But they commanded him to get rid of them because they were the last evidence linking them to these crimes.
Speaker: And that becomes the thing, that the the opposite of fool's gold in a way, the thing they don't recognize as being worth money that actually is, the the inverse of what fool's gold means. And it also has a lot of symbolic weight, right? In the sense that is there's there's almost a kind of implicit statement that the only way that this class of people, especially in Gen are going to make it is by recycling the sort of value that was ah created 200 years ago, right? Like it's it's the only real value that can be created by these people is kind of you know by extracting rent from like a previous sort of imperial epoch.
Speaker: Yes, exactly. That was robbed by two of the most incompetent guys imaginable, Gary and Dean, who just have no idea what they're doing. At one point, one of them says they're putting on their... I would say they're almost like an offensive ethnic stereotype of Scousers. Well, there's a point Like, they are, they border on, like, being kind slightly racially intensive. Well, there's a point where they're putting on their, like, pantyhose or whatever over their faces to disguise themselves, and one says to the other, you're not going to put your thing on, and he's like, I just got my hair done. Like, there's no way, because he's got, like, sort of a bouffant going on, and so he won't put the thing on to ruin his hair. they're sort of, like, vain and also incompetent, and it's very, very bizarre, yeah. Yeah, there was definitely, like, a periodic depiction of, like, Scousers, and to certain extent, Manx is, like,
Speaker: and Like, especially Irish Catholic ones, is these's kind of like yeah they're wearing these like big, heavy like raincoat things. that' sort of Yeah, it's definitely like a Southerner's depiction of a certain type of Northerner. i like the The dark, black, curly hair as well, it's edging on. like like You know those 19th century depictions of like the Englishman versus the Irishman?
Speaker: Well, you know, ah for for us, it was just like guys in Popat's like trying to take over the US as alligators. And then like, you know, good know-nothings like firing at the alligators as they came off the boats. Yeah, well, it's, it's, it's, it
Speaker: I wanted to close us by saying that there is, in fact, for those interested, a remake, an unofficial remake, a Hindi language film called Fear Hara Ferry, called Foul Play Once Again, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, directed by Neeraj Vora.
Speaker: And I'd say the cover of it makes it seem substantially more comedic since it's a guy dressed as a clown with a with a a gun, ah a bunch of guys dressed as cowboys with guns, and then guys sort of like with their fingers over their eyes looking sort of pained.
Speaker: Like it looks like it's a um a Judd Apatow comedy, which this very much is not. It's even got like the 2000s white background. Yeah, yeah, with the lay yeah the little like faces in the white background. So if you want to watch Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, you know maybe check out Fear, Hara, Ferry as well. It was one of the highest grossing films of 2006 in India and has cult status today. so What is like the Indian equivalent of Cockney? It's like guys in Mumbai or something, like Mumbai slums? We would have to watch to find out.
Speaker: Dear listeners, if you know what the sort of cultural analog is of an Eastern Cockney in India, please do tell us. Yes, we would love to know. And that is actually a great opportunity for me to remind you we've gotten a few more subscribers, paid subscribers included. We're very thankful.
Speaker: I am headed on a trip to Europe ah to and I will see Sam during that trip. This may in fact... might It might even be a Euro trip. In fact, it might even be Euro trash. i I'm going to be with my wife.
Speaker: I'm going to be with my wife. um But i I will take in some World Cup ah football. ah I will be hiking in the Black Forest. By the time this comes out, I may well be back. But I think as our paid subscriber base grows, we will work out our sort of promised ah rewards for that once I return in mid-July. So stay tuned for that, please.
Speaker: And please do keep Keir Starmer and the radical left of the Labor Party in your prayers during this moment of reaction. I think it's important that we're all behind him spiritually as well as physically. I hear the Haldane Society is running running a fundraiser. So if you want to go and donate for that. Yeah, and the the aristocrats with the guns from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels are the biggest donors. oh yeah. But I invite you, we invite you to like, rate, subscribe, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, share with your friends, let them know how good this is. And we hope you do find it good. We're very thankful for all of you.
Speaker: feel free to email us at deathphotopod at gmail.com. Comment, you know the drill. It's not complicated, but it is much appreciated. With that, we bid you adieu.
Speaker: We hope you'll watch this and the indian language the not the Hindi language Indian remake. the Indian language remake, Jesus Christ. And with that, i will say bye-bye.
Speaker: Goodbye.
