DEAN CAVANAGH

The industry. Anyone with an ounce of smarts will pretty quickly sense the delusion from those in control. You feel it, it surrounds you. The walls you hit, the absolute tossers you meet in a nepotistic room of mediocre. A back woods of stale ideas, non risk takers with no chance of letting any outsiders adding to the creative gene pool. Top heavy management more concerned with the idea of being part of it. A structure that stifles. Money wasted on just keeping those in power and all their cronies in a job. If you are not contributing, it’s time to take the long snow walk, I say. Anyway, it’s just too many games and a waste of time for those who see through the bullshit. This is how it will always be.

As consumers, us discerning ones, we begin the search. We tell the spoon feeders to piss off, we turn them off. Easy solution. There will always be lazy mouth breathers holding their remotes, nob twisters whose tastes are imprisoned by mainstream manipulators perpetuating low expectations for advertisers to slot into. “It’s up to the individual how much you want to play the game” Screenwriter Dean Cavanagh’s brilliant insight into the film industry should be part of life’s curriculum, not just film school. His passionate wisdom and ‘suffer no fools’ approach is yet another refreshing individual to cross my path. Sound and vision, his creative is non stop. A synchronistic barrage that melds into his followers. Firing wires, thoughts and ideas. The secret collaborative, inspiration experienced just by viewing his work.

It is too difficult to encapsulate on a page such an amazing artist. Dean is extraordinary. He doesn’t bombard with work. Taking his time between passions. Though what I have found so far definitely excites. So I thought I would start with his directorial debut. 2012 movie release, Kubricks. He and son Josh Cavanagh are given the reigns to see what they can conjure. Hence my spleen vent. It’s movies like these, small budget beauties that brighten me more than any heart string pulling, bulging blockbuster could ever do. Filmed over five days, this is pure heart and humour.

It is a vision of psychological games centreing around the power trips of Kubrick fan, Donald (Roger Evans). A complete egoist, directing his own imagination. His life an insane play filled with Kubrickian symbolism. It has plenty. The story moves through a neurolinguistics therapy session with real life neurolinguistic therapist and Chinwag host Chris Madden. These intimate barefoot sessions tell all and nothing. There is no way to get through to him. Between giggles, the real story of Donald comes out. He is more in love with the ‘idea of things’ than having any real skill to fulfil them. His motivational tactics are insane. When the demands of a psychotic get screamed at you from a megaphone and in the confines of a yurt, it is not long before you see the cracks appear. An ongoing prop that had me and the cast in stitches. I loved the reality of that. What made this story move for me was its look at the creative experience, the ‘process of not having a process’. A dogma of having fun, making it so exciting to witness. You watch the bewildered cast within the cast weathering his onslaught. Is he “a madman genius” or “somebody from the mental institution who has just been for a walk“. Have they been duped by some maniac taking the piss. The acting is adorable throughout. It seems to have no script, an ad-lib magic that rumbles along with an absurd laughter that is infectious.

Actors Joanna Pickering & Gavin Bain are flimflammed into a chance to fresh air it and quickly get sucked into the trauma. The scenario experiencing its own certain ‘heart of darkness’ inside an ‘apocalypse now’ feel, in a field, on Hay On Wye. Joanna is sceptical, Gavin’s eyes are wide shut. Big cheers must go to producer Alan McGee doing his best to placate the madman on his property and believing in the whole project. He plays ‘down to earth landowner’ so perfectly, so patient and bewildered. Donald’s catalyst to reality. Tom Mitchell’s photography has moments of stunning but also that perfect fly on the wall personal moments. Its pace within the soundtrack, written by Dean Cavanagh enhanced everything, delivering that madness that was so prevalent. A hyperreal homage to the mood that A Clockwork Orange soundtrack conjured when I was a kid. A reminiscence that exceeded my ears. Loads of slow mo and white, countryside and masks, love the salted egg scene. Its documentary bones scraped close to real life.