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starring Robyn Hitchcock dir. Jonathan Demme (1997) (review © Jon Horne) "Anyway," Hitchcock sings, "that's enough about me." After the being miscast as a New Waver and then rejected as an undergraduate poseur, Robyn Hitchcock has spent the best part of two decades pounding the second-division gig circuit, armed with a set of songs which range from odd-but-heartfelt to plain-silly. In doing so, he has picked up a small but obsessive fan-base who shout requests for B-sides and who understand why he no longer sings Brenda's Iron Sledge in concert. One such fan is Jonathan Demme, director of Silence of the Lambs , Philadelphia and (more to the point), Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense . Sticking to Demme's usual cut-the-crap approach to film-making (learned during an apprenticeship as Roger Corman's dogsbody), Storefront Hitchcock is a simple and effective record of what it is like to hear Robyn Hitchcock sing. Shot in a disused shop in New York with a small, unseen audience, the camera's eye never leaves the stage. For most of the set, Hitchcock is alone with his guitars and a couple of traffic cones for (allegedly) surreal effect. Behind him is the shop window, sometimes with a curtain drawn, but mostly open so that an everyday street scene plays in the background. Hitchcock's lyrics and between-song monologues are based on random associations and twisted internal logic, delivered in a well-spoken whine reminiscent of a sixth-former whose thoughts are moving too fast for his mouth to keep up. Listening to him on record, it is almost impossible to picture him without acne; on film, he resembles a deputy headmaster who plays amateur folk nights on the weekend. Turn the sound down and he could be earnestly discussing a new exam schedule, rather than singing about ghosts who levitate a hundred feet above a beach on the Isle of Wight because the cliffs they are supposed to be haunting have crumbled into the sea. Hitchcock's stage persona is hugely entertaining for an hour, after which it starts to become annoying. Fifteen medium-paced songs over ninety minutes made this reviewer crave some variety. There are (for example) three guitar solos; the first is startlingly inventive - but then the next two sound the same as the first one. Deni Bonet's blues violin helps things along towards the end, but it comes too late. Part of the problem was that the film was introduced at the Broadway by Hitchcock himself. His weirdness is clearly a defence mechanism, and his distance from the audience is just as profound in person as it is on film - so by appearing beforehand he effectively added another ten minutes to an already long performance. That said, in ten years' time (or whenever Hitchcock retires or dies), I for one will be thankful that Jonathan Demme made this film. If only he had been around thirty years ago to make one about the real Syd Barrett. - - - NB: I can't remember who I wrote this review for. If it was for your magazine, thank you. - - - read more rants and raves |