IT COULDN'T HAPPEN HERE (1987)
A film by Jack Bond
This was Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe's first appearance in a film, which includes most of their early hits in the soundtrack. I've been a fan of the Pet Shop Boys since they arrived on the scene in the mid-eighties. These two eccentric Englishmen have always been a distinctively artistic pair in their dress sense and music, and are really 'out there'. They were friendly with avant-garde director Derek Jarman, and have a surreal visual flair in their music videos, as seen in the videos for Single and DJ Culture, amongst other ones.
In this film they take a surreal journey across southern England and encounter some strange folks and situations along the way, with their music woven into them. Joss Ackland (who played Van Hoyten in A Zed & Two Noughts)appears in a few different roles. There are some striking scenes, including a man walking down the street on fire, a car on fire travelling down a wet road, cows on railway station platforms, men who look like zebras, and arcane men who all dress the same.
'Cockney Pride'
Comic postcards. The comic and the hostile seem to go hand-in-hand.
Eyecatching.
A look through the binoculars.
Chris packing the bottomless suitcase. He puts 18 items into the suitcase, including dinghys, skateboards, a deckchair and a kite.
Dredge, the irritating prankster.
Allow me. HAHA! It's only a laugh, no harm done.
"What have I done to deserve this?"
Chris evading the bikers.
A blind priest walking out of the sea.
Leading the schoolboys.
Nuns with revealing garments.
Nuns and a dog.
Neil in a gold suit.
It's a Sin.
Mud wrestling on a fairground ride.
These guys all look alike.
How much for this car? It's £3000. I'll give you £500. It's a deal.
[On the car radio]: Here is an urgent news flash: Drivers in the region of the M40 should beware a stranger wearing dark glasses, a fawn raincoat, and carrying a battered suitcase. A killer who has savagely hacked to death three people, who each in turn stopped to give him a lift. They were a chief accountant, a morris dancer, and a nun from a convent. The stranger has been known to masquerade as a priest wearing high-heeled shoes. Drivers are warned not to stop under any circumstances.
Let's pick up that stranger wearing dark glasses, a fawn raincoat, and carrying a battered suitcase.
Stranger: "I smell youth, vintage youth."
Neil: "You don't have have any weapons in there, do you?"
Stranger: "Why? What do you need?"
Chris: "Where are you from?"
Neil: "Yes, where are you from?"
Stranger: "I'm glad you asked me twice. You see I'm a bilingual. I'm a bilingual illiterate. I can't read in two languages. I've just been fishing with Salvador Dali. He used a dotted line... caught every other fish. Then we played poker with tarot cards. I got a full house. Four people died; one of them was a nun."
Neil: "You're very full of yourself, aren't you?"
Stranger: "Yes, some people do call me conceited, I can't think why. I'm just tired. I've been up all night trying to round off the infinite. And Lucifer before the day doth go."
Chris: "Don't we know you?"
Stranger: "I don't know. I used to be blind. But then I started eating carrots. I still can't see during the day."
Neil: "Do you want a drink?"
Stranger: "No thank you, that's very nice. I'll get the waiter. [TURNS ON RADIO] Oh, I love the radio. I had a girlfriend once who used to sing on the radio. Every time she walked under the bridge you couldn't hear her sing. Oh she was a beautiful girl, very beautiful. When I first met her she'd just been to a psychoanalyst. It didn't do her any good, she said. I asked her why. She said I'm a nymphomaniac, you see, and I only get turned on by Jewish Cowboys. I'm so sorry I said, let me introduce myself, my name is Bucky Goldstein.
The insane Stranger
Stranger: "I didn't know you played the violin. I wrote a song myself once you know, but I can't read music, so I don't know what it is. I wonder... do you think it's this?"
Chris: "Where are you going?"
Stranger: "I'm going there. But I like it here wherever it is. Stop the car. I'm getting out. You are no longer here."
Neil and Chris in a transport cafe. They order Oysters and Fillet of Soul Belgique. To drink it's the Chateaux le Tour 1942. Nice year.
The ventriloquist orders Egg, Beans and Chips. Two Sausages, one large, one small. Tomatoes, Bacon, a Fried Slice, and extra Beans. A cup of Tea to drink.
Divided by Zero
The existentialist Dummy
Dummy: "Time, funny thing time. There are two ingredients to time. One is the notion of time as a logical space. The other is the notion of it being a logical space used by us to represent relations between events, and conceptual connections between concepts. But this just does not reflect the content of our concept of time. Arguably, an object is a teacup only if has been produced by a conscience agent with some general intention about its use, or possible use, and, consequently in a world devoid of conscience intending agents, or there might be things like teacups, there would be no teacups. However, this just does not seem to apply the case of time. Our conception of time is not such that we would say of a possible world devoid of conscience agents, that while there is something like time, there is literally no time, on the grounds that no-one was doing any representing in that world. One might wish to hold that a full grasp of our concept of time involves grasping the possibility of using certain mathematical structures in representing the temporal aspect of things. Someone who fails to see this has failed to grasp something about the full concept of time."
Natalie Roles struts her stuff to Rent.
"I'll give them bloody teacups!"
I'll show you what bloody day it is. Divided by Zero.
The 1952 Ford Zephyr is attacked.
Take that!
Oi! This is our phone!
The cartoon-like window.
Poor flower.
I'll take a flower, too.
Which is on fire.
I'm also on fire. Off to work now.
Walking (and burning) with my briefcase.
That brick poster paper looks much better.
Maybe that's his car.
What's in the trunk? A cadaver, perhaps?
How did they get there?
Wait for us.
We do look alike.
The cows' train is due in soon.
Is someone driving this train?
Nice snake, Neil.
Scunthorpe train derailed. Many Dead. Midget sought by police.
A trip through a tunnel.
The chauffeur speaks.
"Him the Almighty Power, Hurled headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion, down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms." (this passage is from the book Paradise Lost by John Milton 1608-1674)
"So farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear, farewell Remorse: all Good to me is lost; Evil be thou my Good." (from the same source as above)
The limo enters a battlefield.
Driving through the rubble.
Arrival.
The chauffeur speaks again.
"Their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel Pipes of wretched straw, The hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed, But swoln with wind, and rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spreads." (taken from the book Lycidas by John Milton 1638)
Odd dancers.
Two noughts.
Click here to read a transcript of the film.
Songs featured in the order they are played in the film:
It Couldn't Happen Here
Suburbia
Opportunities
It's a Sin
West End Girls
Hit Music
You Are Always On My Mind
Love Comes Quickly
Rent
Two Divided by Zero
Kings Cross
One More Chance
I Want to Wake Up
"The journey is obviously physically a journey across England, but which England? In a sense it's a dreamworld of England, almost a journey through the psyche of England, which is very varied and strange.
A particular thing I was thinking about was how in England you have this curious dichotomy. It's a country that is both adventurous and extraordinary and radical in its imagination in some ways - you only have to look at its success in music, literature and film - and yet on the other hand has this repressive, almost restrictive side. That's what I saw the Pet Shop Boys travelling through - the repressive side. It's like an orange pip. If you out an orange pip between your fingers, it shoots out. In our country there's this repressiveness and fascism and conservatism
(i.e. fingers) and they squeeze and out come these slices of imagination that no-one can stop
(i.e. things like the Pet Shop Boys). For me, the Pet Shop Boys represent a vulnerable creativity that got through, and that got through on a massively popular scale.
In the film they're almost always untouched and they almost never react - I think that's how they've succeeded. Non-reaction is the most powerful form of reaction. There is the opposite argument - that you get trodden on - and that's touched on at the end where it all blows up in a chaos and they just drive through it. If you succeed because of non-reaction you'd better watch out because all hell may break out around you; you may saunter through it but what about the rest?
In a sense it's not just non-reaction they have. If you look at James Bond, the fiction of him was that you couldn't touch him. No matter what the threat was, the cool was unblown. I think what Neil and Chris have is an immense cool.
At the end, when they have zeros on their back, is my tribute to their strength. They don't join in with the dancers because I don't think they're running round full of ego. It's me saying to them 'you guys have the bottle to live life reading "O", "O", but you win'."
As for the rest of the film...
The strong Catholic presence of the priest is derived quite directly from Neil's strong Catholic upbringing though it's obviously exaggerated. The priest comes back as a murderer and we know it's the same man - I suppose I do regard that kind of upbringing as dangerous; I think I see all authoritarian moves as dreadful and dangerous whether it be in education or government. Me and my film colleagues earn our living from being able to visually interpret a dream. Whatever was there in school that could possibly encouraged such a way of life?
The lines the priest says - 'and Lucifer before the day doth go' - are from a twelfth century text I half knew and looked up. It's the language of repression.
The dummy? Well, I think we've entered a moment in history when no words of warning can be uttered without sounding either precocious or sanctimonious. We've entered an age of complete expediency and so any words to the contrary are derided. I think the dummy is talking sense, but no-one takes any notice, which is why I reduced him to the cipher of a mechanical dummy. It's like, I've got friends in Greenpeace and when they're reported in the press the press reduces them to sounding like complete loonies.
The Pet Shop Boys are both in agreement with the dummy and annoyed with him. I wanted
him to speak sense in a way which drives everybody nuts.
The pilot? He's a fascist who takes the slenderest piece of misinformation and does the wrong thing based on it. I chose Neil Dickson to play him because Neil Dickson played Biggles, and now he plays the anti-Biggles, which to me is the real Biggles anyway. He sets out to kill them because he's murdering creativity. He only fails because of their ability to non-react.
It's quite complicated..." - Jack Bond
"The story is basically us playing our songs as we drive to London in this car and meet phantom-like figures. I always think it should be called Escape From Suburbia because we're really escaping - escaping from figures of authority; a priest, a mother figure, a con man and so on." - Neil Tennant
