The Lost Hitchcock

The word 'rare' is overused. 'Rare' photographs, 'rare' outtakes'... whenever people talk about archive material, it seems they love it to be akin to a lightly bruised steak.

There can't surely be such a thing as a rare film by the single more famous film-maker ever, but even the silent ones are at least commercially available. Yet, there's one film that, currently, qualified as rare. Waltzes from Vienna was made by Hitchcock under some duress - it really wasn't his kind of picture at all and he later told Francois Truffaut that he made it during his 'lowest ebb'.

When I was commissioned to co-write a book about Hitch, I wanted to make sure that I'd actually seen the films. This might sound obvious, but I know of a couple of authors who've written extensively about material that they'd not bothered to watch, which is why certain errors get passed on from book to book. One film, The Mountain Eagle, is lost - the last remaining print of it disintegrated decades ago (Hitchcock pragmatically didn't seen too upset by this development, describing the film as 'awful').

A trip to the USA gave me the opportunity to pick up almost all of his silent films and a few early talkies, but after five months one film eluded me. Waltzes from Vienna has, to date, never been released commercially and as far as I'm aware has never been shown on television. The only way I could see it was to rent time with a stack of film reels and a moviola.

It's by no means a great Hitchcock film; there are few of the directorial flourishes we associate with him even in this early period. But it's entertaining enough, telling the story of how Strauss the younger finally won the respect and admiration of his father.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, and thanks to various differences in American copyright law, you can actually watch the film at Archive.Org. But if you've managed to collect all of his other works, you'll find a hole where Waltzes from Vienna should be.

Today, I made the first approach to someone who might be in a position to rectify this. Let's see how far this campaign goes.

Revisionism

So, after a conversation with an experienced blogger last night, I've just made a few deletions from this thing. Funnily enough, the entries where I was most open and revealing about my life are the ones that were badly written and completely lacking in any real insight.

So - bye bye bad story about getting drunk and boorish. Bye bye an entry about someone else's embarrassing goodbye email to people she'd worked with for two weeks (cruel to mock and it'd be relatively easy to piece back who I was writing about) and bye bye that one entry that, two years down the line I have no idea what I was on about.

Now... what should I write about today?

Waiting for the Inevitable

Just flicking through the TV channels and caught the episode of tonight's episode of The Bill - 'Suffer in Silence'.

I'm guessing we'll be seeing other episodes over the next few months called 'Prolonging the Agony', 'Treading Water' and 'Someone Remember to Cancel the Milk'.

In other news, my journey home was delayed tonight. The train driver announced: 'Sorry for he delays here this evening, but one of those new trains is further up the track. It's broken down and they're trying to get it into the sidings. Once again, the NEW TRAIN has broken down and we're waiting for it to get out of the way.'

Had the carriage been less congested, I'm sure his mintiness would have been accompanied by a mass raising of handbags. As it was, we all rolled our eyes, clutched the handrail and prayed it wouldn't last much longer.

Oh look - special guest star on The Bill this week is Lee Ross. Looks like his character is a child abuse victim who's suffered in silence for some ti- oh... that might be the meaning of the title.

Suddenly life's that tiny bit less ironic. Damn....

Pertwee Tardis

And a slight reworking of my Hartell Tardis control room sees the addition of a new console for Pertwee.

UNIT Lab!

I always wanted this - a set for my Doctor Who dollies - and what better set than the UNIT lab?

I'd originally wanted to do the lab as it appeared in season eight, but the spiral staircase put me off. That and pressure from my chums made me go for the later lab, as it appeared in season 11. I could have gone for the lab from 'The Three Doctors', but it had too many windows. So I adapted the printouts that my pal Phil had made for his ActionFigureTheatre site to make it look like it did for Pertwee's final year.

Also included in this set are my custom Sarah Jane, in her 'Monster of Peladon' outfit, and my custom Master, in his grey suit and gold tie. You might also be able to make out the welding device from 'Terror of the Autons'. Oh, and the Tardis is a customised moneybox, repainted. That'll be replaced once I get the forthcoming classic Tardis from Character.

More Monsters

I haven't done this for a while, but prompted by Paul Cornell's blog, here's a few more monsters I've made recently.

This one's a Blatherine from The Sarah Jane Adventures, which was a present for the author for the episode that they first appeared in. It's customised from a Slitheen figure, with shorter claws, a remolded face and a paint job.




Next up, a Mutt from the Doctor Who story 'The Mutants' (1972). It's pictured in the UNIT lab set that I made. Ooh, there's a thought - I haven't put any pics of that up. That'll be in the next entry then.




Inspired by the brilliant Babyjelly from OutpostWho / GallifreyBase fame, here's a muto from 'Genesis of the Daleks'.




I decided I wanted to make a Navarino from 'Delta and the Bannermen', and then realised it had to be a present for my pal Neil, who always wanted to write a story called 'The Guns of Navarino'. Next to it are two Haemovores from 'The Curse of Fenric'.





And finally, in my quest to make more and more figures that will probably never be made by Character Options for the official range, here's the Keller Machine from 'The Mind of Evil'. It lights up an' evreefink!

Mystic Pizza

I'm in sunny Pollokshields with my beloved and, after a stress-free journey there yesterday afternoon, I decided we should have pizza for tea, because we'd both been very good and deserved a treat. A new pizzaria called Pizzahub (see what they did there) has a sign on the front saying 'Opening Soon', but not soon enough for us, sadly. So, we went to a multi-cultural venue round the corner, which offers kebabs and pizzas along with its curry selection.

So, I asked what toppings they offered and the man behind the counter said they had a, um, chicken tikka pizza and, er, a minced lamb pizza, and, um, that's it.

'Don't you do anything like a Hawaiian? Y'know, ham and pineapple?'

The man shook his head and looked at me blankly.

Chowing down on the chicken tikka pizza back at the flat 15 minutes later, I asked my other half why they don't do any normal pizzas.

'Well, y'know - ham's not hallal.'

No wonder the man looked at me blankly. Epic cultural fail!