Fact #158128
When:
Short story:
Echo And The Bunnymen play a 'secret' gig in The Pavilion Gardens, Buxton, Derbyshire, England, UK, Europe, which is filmed for posterity under the title Shine So Hard.
Full article:
Bill Drummond (manager, Echo And The Bunnymen) : We plan on having an adventure every two years, each time on a separate continent.
John Smith (director, Shine So Hard) : The coaches came from all over to Buxton, chosen because it was the highest town in England. But it was in the middle of winter and there was really, really heavy snow, which meant that the coaches took a lifetime getting there. A lot of people got annoyed because they’d spent all day on a coach and suddenly they were coming into a hall where, because of the filming, certain parts of the venue were cordoned off and the fans couldn’t get close. Some were very angry and felt they’d been exploited.
It was one of the worst moments of my life when I had to get on-stage and try to pacify this enormous number of people. I was asking them to move back and they were shouting, ‘Fuck off!’ That said, because The Bunnymen had real fans, the concert did have a hell of a lot of energy.
The first half of the 30-minute film had hardly any music. I’d never met the band before we did the shoot. I’d just been given information about their characters. ‘Les is kinda into technology; Mac is fussy about his hotel room and checks to see if the sheets are clean’ et cetera. So we shot Ian McCulloch in a hotel room, Pete De Freitas in a restaurant and Les in a park. Will was actually in a greenhouse but we made it look as if he was in a jungle.
The shots were of the locations with just glimpses of the band members, no faces. And, of the first of the four songs in the concert part of the film, I didn’t show any more than their knees. If you were really lucky you might see a hand. It was all about not revealing and something to do with misleading people.
I remember going to a meeting with Warner Brothers afterwards and seeing the look of horror on the face of this executive. When we got to the concert bit, he suddenly cried, ‘At last!’ The budget they awarded was originally meant for a promo of one song, so they did get their money’s worth and were obviously surprised to get half an hour, though it wasn’t the half an hour they would have liked.
(Source : interview with Fred Dellar in Mojo, January 2008)
Tweet this Fact
John Smith (director, Shine So Hard) : The coaches came from all over to Buxton, chosen because it was the highest town in England. But it was in the middle of winter and there was really, really heavy snow, which meant that the coaches took a lifetime getting there. A lot of people got annoyed because they’d spent all day on a coach and suddenly they were coming into a hall where, because of the filming, certain parts of the venue were cordoned off and the fans couldn’t get close. Some were very angry and felt they’d been exploited.
It was one of the worst moments of my life when I had to get on-stage and try to pacify this enormous number of people. I was asking them to move back and they were shouting, ‘Fuck off!’ That said, because The Bunnymen had real fans, the concert did have a hell of a lot of energy.
The first half of the 30-minute film had hardly any music. I’d never met the band before we did the shoot. I’d just been given information about their characters. ‘Les is kinda into technology; Mac is fussy about his hotel room and checks to see if the sheets are clean’ et cetera. So we shot Ian McCulloch in a hotel room, Pete De Freitas in a restaurant and Les in a park. Will was actually in a greenhouse but we made it look as if he was in a jungle.
The shots were of the locations with just glimpses of the band members, no faces. And, of the first of the four songs in the concert part of the film, I didn’t show any more than their knees. If you were really lucky you might see a hand. It was all about not revealing and something to do with misleading people.
I remember going to a meeting with Warner Brothers afterwards and seeing the look of horror on the face of this executive. When we got to the concert bit, he suddenly cried, ‘At last!’ The budget they awarded was originally meant for a promo of one song, so they did get their money’s worth and were obviously surprised to get half an hour, though it wasn’t the half an hour they would have liked.
(Source : interview with Fred Dellar in Mojo, January 2008)