Re: the nudist rumours… see comment #10!

Cheers,
Simon

have just heard ‘The good news is that Ballard has written an autobiography, Miracles of Life, and it’s a good one. The bad news is that he has prostate cancer that has spread to his bones, and he’s not likely to survive.’ ;¬(

As for you being a bit shocked about what Shepperton was like in reality, I always thought it would be like a Stanley Spencer painting, who lived and painted in Cookham. Spencer was quite similar to JGB (JGB’s a great admirer of his work), in that he lived in a small London village and painted obsessively the streets surrounding his house. In fact, I’ve always wondered if The Unlimited Dream Company might have been inspired by Stanley Spencer and William Blake – both were visionary Christians, and Spencer painted Christian scenes, such as the crucifiction, as taking place in contemporary Cookham. Of course William Blake wrote of building Jurusalem in England’s green and pleasant land, as it might be argued JGB’s Blake attempts to do in Shepperton (isn’t Blake a messiah? [I can't stop myself from writing no he isn't a messiah, he's a very naughty boy!])

Not that I’m trying to give a Christian interpretation to The Unlimited Dream Company. I know that JGB is an atheist – as am I.

BEA BALLARD: I remember him doing the odd strange thing, like I remember he sprayed his shoes with silver paint one day, and then strolled around Shepperton, and Shepperton being a very kind of bourgeois, boring town, you know, all the local residents, you can imagine, were looking and thinking, ‘how weird’.

FAY BALLARD: When it was hot, I remember Daddy once stripping off and walking around the garden naked, which he thought was quite normal, but of course the neighbours all started looking and thinking, ‘Gosh, who’s that crazy guy next door?’

(taken from http://www.ballardian.com/shanghai-jim-voiceover-transcription)

You should also check out Thomas Cazals’ film The Oracle of Shepperton: http://www.ballardian.com/jg-ballard-the-oracle-of-shepperton. It’s taken me a year to finally process this journey, but it was Thomas’s semi-fictionalised documentary of Ballard and Shepperton that was at the back of my mind when I eventually put some thoughts down.

Matt, I guess that polished middle-class sheen is as sterile as any concrete monstrosity…

As for the Withnail sequence I only know it’s filmed on that stretch of road because of Richard E. Grant’s autobiography, With Nails. Bruce Robinson got Grant horribly drunk and forced him and McGann to drive up and down the road until he felt Grant looked dreadful enough and acted pained enough. Great stuff.

Cheers

Matt

Would you say that Shepperton is far from Britain’s endzone? Or is it just me?

That shot of the road leading to the studios is double layered for me too as that’s where they filmed the scene in Withnail and I in which Marwood is trying to navigate through a storm and Withnail wakes and utters the immortal ‘ I feel like a pig shat in my head’ line.

Cheers

Matt