THE DUKE ON
INVASION OF THE BODY
SNATCHERS 1978
INVASION OF THE BODY
SNATCHERS 1978
Sat in the kitchen with a cigarette a fella can’t be bothered
smoking, with the new day creepin’ cross the floor-tiles, with the
tins of caffeinated beverages stacked alongside a half-dozen Bill
Hicks CD’s and a paperback copy of that Dan Brown book about the
Mona Lisa was Jesus’ daughter or whatever the fuck, and the head
reeling with thoughts of moustaches and society and conformity and
individuality and a girl with the kinda smile a man would give half
his guts for to see for a second.
Sweet fuck, a fella gets to thinking, how in hell’s molten acres
did I end up in this kinda condition?
The lass from a couple lines back, the one with the smile and the
eyes like kerosene whispers, she knows exactly what led to said
state of the mentals, and for sure, if she hadn’t fallen asleep six
hours ago she’d be fit to point it out in the kinda detail that
gets the laugh-glands giddy as all crack-doused delirium.
What it all boils down to, she’d happily reveal, is that earlier on
the eve in question The Duke got to sitting down with Philip
Kaufman’s 1978 Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.
What it is, see, is that Invasion Of The Body Snatchers 1978 plays
on the kinda fear been swelling in The Duke’s innards for however
long, that terrifying idea about how you might wake up one morning
and suddenly you’re a totally different person, suddenly not only
do you not recognise the lad you used to be, but worse, you hold
the fucker in harshest contempt.
Yesterday you were Sorted For E’s & Wizz, maybe you were bopping
along to The Others and writing songs about blowing things up. “Got
my friend called Will-iiii-uuuummm” you been hollering. Now, holy
shit, it’s a seat someplace where no-one can catch a glimpse of a
fella, suddenly it’s misery and songs about “My baby done me bad
and also The Youth scare me somethin’ horrid.” One day he’s
scrawling “SOCIALIST” all over the ballot, the next he’s voting
conservative on account of he’s thinking bout getting on the
property ladder.
(The lass looks shocked. Hypothetical, I say. It’d take more than a
space-plant for to get my name beside a motherfucking Tory vote.)
A space-pod pulsing in the garden, a mucus-drenched Duke Clone spat
out its twitching orifice, a fella who looks like me and talks like
me but the words are all fucked, the bastard’s drenched in bitter
sticky pessimistic nut-sauce.
Or worse, a fella finds he wakes up one morning and there in the
bed next to him, someone who looks like his high school sweetheart,
but ten minutes later he realises no, this thing has the same
glasses and the same bald-spot, but it’s no more Mr Greene than I
am. I doubt this fucker gave a chemistry seminar in his life, let
alone devoted twenty-seven years to such.
Things that used to be quirky and amusing to this character,
suddenly they’re annoying. Suddenly flicks made before 1997 are no
use to this person no more. Suddenly only the most moronic of music
is anywhere near acceptable.
Who is this person? Is this really my life-partner, here, all
scowling and tutting about I said too much about Miike this
morning? Or is it some kind of alien pod-beast?
Did Philip Kaufman know his Sci-Fi thriller about space-plants
taking over the minds and bodies of human beings would shake The
Duke with such violent abandon? I was hoping he might reveal as
much in the commentary track, but no, he doesn’t mention me for
even a second, although he does make an obscure reference to an
unpublished article I wrote one time about how, in a certain light,
Kirsten Dunst’s smile bears striking similarity to a tiny crevice
near the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
And let’s be honest, why would he need to say any more? He’s got
plenty to talk about, most of which involves Invasion Of The Body
Snatchers 1978, most of which involves how yes, it’s up there with
The Conversation, as far as The Duke is concerned, with regards
Best Ever Paranoid Thrillers Concerning Men With Moustaches From
Out The Seventies.
It shares a lot with The Conversation, in fact, is the truth of the
matter.
Just like the flick about Gene Hackman heard something, or did he,
who knows?, the crux of the enterprise is something along the lines
of this right here;
Trust no one.
Not your partner, not your family, not your government, not the
fella who walks around the town with a bin-liner fulla torn sheets,
not the woman who looks a bit like a fat Jerry Springer.
For sure, those folks walking past all look reasonable enough, but
who knows? How many of them are gonna be pointing and screeching
once they realise that a fella ain’t one of em? How many of those
young lads are really hairy space-pod alien fucks out to cause no
end of ruckus?
Also;
Like Coppola, Kaufman is obsessed with the sounds of the everyday,
and how intimidating they can sometimes appear. Those sounds were
sinister in The Conversation, here even more so. Dialogue is
fragmented, sentences don’t get finished, jokes never reach the
punchline. The ambiance is shoved hella high in the mix, sounds
everyone recognises; traffic, chittering in café’s, squelchy mud
bath bubbles; here they sound unsettling, intrusive… alien.
Long before we’ve spied a space-pod in the greenhouse, Kaufman
makes sure we know things are all sortsa fucked. The world looks
and sounds and smells the same, but yet it isn’t, not for a second.
And look here, Kevin McCarthy from out Don Siegel’s 1956 original,
he’s escaped the small-town from back in the day, made his way to
the city, and here he is, cropping up in a cameo as “Running Man”.
He doesn’t look a bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger, he’s not even
wearing a yellow track-suit, but there he is regardless, racing
along the streets. “They’re here! They’re here!”
We turn the corner with Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams, and
there’s McCarthy, dead on the street. Even Kevin fucking McCarthy,
star of the finest sci-fi flick of 1956, even he ends up face-down
on the pavement, no-one paying a damn bit of heed to anything he
has to say about somebody or other is here or there. Some space-
plants from some damn place. Possibly space.
Who’s paying attention, what with all these ambient noises, what
with all these mud-bath carry-on’s, what with Leonard Nimoy as a
psychiatrist and a young Jeff Goldblum as a frustrated poet?
“They’re here!”
Who’s here? Back in the day it was The Communists, now I’m not so
sure.
Now, in the heady moustachioed enclaves of the nineteen and
seventies, those space-plant fuckers don’t seem all that red alla
sudden. Suddenly they look a bit more, dare we say, Western. They
don’t look like the kindsa extraterrestrial vegetation might be
looking to overthrow anything, they look like the kindsa
extraterrestrial vegetation might be looking for to sit back, maybe
enjoy a wank of an evening, sip a lemonade laced with PCP and
ignore every damn thing that doesn’t immediately concern them.
Those space-plants reek of apathy, not revolution.
Being something of a renowned horticulturist, you’ll take my word
for it when I tell you that if these plants could grunt, what
they'd grunt would be something along the lines of “Fuck it, who
cares?”
“So they stole a buncha shit? Fuck it, who cares?”
“So there turned out to be nothing there after all? So they lied?
Fuck it, who cares?”
“So they’re starving on account of some injustice or other? Fuck
it, who cares?”
A hand on my shoulder, and when my heart gets to beating again,
when the circulation’s in order, when the skull-blob is
sufficiently energized, I hear her say “That’s the warning, right
there. It’s a cautionary tale. This is the end result of apathy, of
going along with whatever the hell just because look, everyone else
is. When a personality is devoured by the gargantuan fangs of
indifference, what happens is a man ends up screeching and pointing
and it’s a freeze-frame and a terrifying uncertainty.”
I got lost in her accent for five or eleven minutes, and she's gone
by the time I nod in agreement.
What needed to happen, if Philip Kaufman had been harboring any
secret desire for a happy ending, is that the space-pod beasts from
the 1956 version should’ve followed Kevin McCarthy to the Big City
and overthrew these new smack-eyed variants.
Those old 1956 Body Snatchers; part-alien, part-radical political
retort; they’ve been replaced by a horrific lobotomized offshoot.
These later space-pods have no discernible motive, no discernible
intent, no discernible desire beyond self-preservation.
So shit’s going down? Fuck it, who cares? Let’s just keep loading
up these trucks here, let’s get these pods exported, let’s keep on
keeping on, and whatever doesn’t concern us, fuck it. Who cares?
Bleak, that’s what it boils down to. But there’s a hope there.
The hope is to be found somewhere to the left of all those thoughts
about how truly depressing and unendurable such an existence would
be.
A fella only needs to be worried about such a thing when he finds
he can’t remember what he was worried about.
“By fuck’s balls!” hollers The Priest, “What’s this I see?”
I make like I’m thinking all about Ben Stiller, but he knows, he
knows all too well.
“If I’m not mistaken, tosser”, he says, “You’ve already far-
exceeded this week’s melancholy allowance, and what’s this I find,
up to the left nut in worry and The Blue.”
He flings a pint of tar at the hi-fi. “Fucking Bright Eyes, no
less!”
What can a fella do? I was caught in the act, caught with the
tweeds at the knees, worrying like a fella just two minutes ago
discovered it was possible.
I hang my head for a time, and next thing I know it’s 8 in the AM
and a fella’s wondering if the DVD emporium is open yet. Abel
Ferrara’s 1993 Body Snatchers would go down like a rent-boy on Rent
Day right about now.
Thanks folks.
Fling The Duke An Email or Sign The Mondo Guestbook
smoking, with the new day creepin’ cross the floor-tiles, with the
tins of caffeinated beverages stacked alongside a half-dozen Bill
Hicks CD’s and a paperback copy of that Dan Brown book about the
Mona Lisa was Jesus’ daughter or whatever the fuck, and the head
reeling with thoughts of moustaches and society and conformity and
individuality and a girl with the kinda smile a man would give half
his guts for to see for a second.
Sweet fuck, a fella gets to thinking, how in hell’s molten acres
did I end up in this kinda condition?
The lass from a couple lines back, the one with the smile and the
eyes like kerosene whispers, she knows exactly what led to said
state of the mentals, and for sure, if she hadn’t fallen asleep six
hours ago she’d be fit to point it out in the kinda detail that
gets the laugh-glands giddy as all crack-doused delirium.
What it all boils down to, she’d happily reveal, is that earlier on
the eve in question The Duke got to sitting down with Philip
Kaufman’s 1978 Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.
What it is, see, is that Invasion Of The Body Snatchers 1978 plays
on the kinda fear been swelling in The Duke’s innards for however
long, that terrifying idea about how you might wake up one morning
and suddenly you’re a totally different person, suddenly not only
do you not recognise the lad you used to be, but worse, you hold
the fucker in harshest contempt.
Yesterday you were Sorted For E’s & Wizz, maybe you were bopping
along to The Others and writing songs about blowing things up. “Got
my friend called Will-iiii-uuuummm” you been hollering. Now, holy
shit, it’s a seat someplace where no-one can catch a glimpse of a
fella, suddenly it’s misery and songs about “My baby done me bad
and also The Youth scare me somethin’ horrid.” One day he’s
scrawling “SOCIALIST” all over the ballot, the next he’s voting
conservative on account of he’s thinking bout getting on the
property ladder.
(The lass looks shocked. Hypothetical, I say. It’d take more than a
space-plant for to get my name beside a motherfucking Tory vote.)
A space-pod pulsing in the garden, a mucus-drenched Duke Clone spat
out its twitching orifice, a fella who looks like me and talks like
me but the words are all fucked, the bastard’s drenched in bitter
sticky pessimistic nut-sauce.
Or worse, a fella finds he wakes up one morning and there in the
bed next to him, someone who looks like his high school sweetheart,
but ten minutes later he realises no, this thing has the same
glasses and the same bald-spot, but it’s no more Mr Greene than I
am. I doubt this fucker gave a chemistry seminar in his life, let
alone devoted twenty-seven years to such.
Things that used to be quirky and amusing to this character,
suddenly they’re annoying. Suddenly flicks made before 1997 are no
use to this person no more. Suddenly only the most moronic of music
is anywhere near acceptable.
Who is this person? Is this really my life-partner, here, all
scowling and tutting about I said too much about Miike this
morning? Or is it some kind of alien pod-beast?
Did Philip Kaufman know his Sci-Fi thriller about space-plants
taking over the minds and bodies of human beings would shake The
Duke with such violent abandon? I was hoping he might reveal as
much in the commentary track, but no, he doesn’t mention me for
even a second, although he does make an obscure reference to an
unpublished article I wrote one time about how, in a certain light,
Kirsten Dunst’s smile bears striking similarity to a tiny crevice
near the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
And let’s be honest, why would he need to say any more? He’s got
plenty to talk about, most of which involves Invasion Of The Body
Snatchers 1978, most of which involves how yes, it’s up there with
The Conversation, as far as The Duke is concerned, with regards
Best Ever Paranoid Thrillers Concerning Men With Moustaches From
Out The Seventies.
It shares a lot with The Conversation, in fact, is the truth of the
matter.
Just like the flick about Gene Hackman heard something, or did he,
who knows?, the crux of the enterprise is something along the lines
of this right here;
Trust no one.
Not your partner, not your family, not your government, not the
fella who walks around the town with a bin-liner fulla torn sheets,
not the woman who looks a bit like a fat Jerry Springer.
For sure, those folks walking past all look reasonable enough, but
who knows? How many of them are gonna be pointing and screeching
once they realise that a fella ain’t one of em? How many of those
young lads are really hairy space-pod alien fucks out to cause no
end of ruckus?
Also;
Like Coppola, Kaufman is obsessed with the sounds of the everyday,
and how intimidating they can sometimes appear. Those sounds were
sinister in The Conversation, here even more so. Dialogue is
fragmented, sentences don’t get finished, jokes never reach the
punchline. The ambiance is shoved hella high in the mix, sounds
everyone recognises; traffic, chittering in café’s, squelchy mud
bath bubbles; here they sound unsettling, intrusive… alien.
Long before we’ve spied a space-pod in the greenhouse, Kaufman
makes sure we know things are all sortsa fucked. The world looks
and sounds and smells the same, but yet it isn’t, not for a second.
And look here, Kevin McCarthy from out Don Siegel’s 1956 original,
he’s escaped the small-town from back in the day, made his way to
the city, and here he is, cropping up in a cameo as “Running Man”.
He doesn’t look a bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger, he’s not even
wearing a yellow track-suit, but there he is regardless, racing
along the streets. “They’re here! They’re here!”
We turn the corner with Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams, and
there’s McCarthy, dead on the street. Even Kevin fucking McCarthy,
star of the finest sci-fi flick of 1956, even he ends up face-down
on the pavement, no-one paying a damn bit of heed to anything he
has to say about somebody or other is here or there. Some space-
plants from some damn place. Possibly space.
Who’s paying attention, what with all these ambient noises, what
with all these mud-bath carry-on’s, what with Leonard Nimoy as a
psychiatrist and a young Jeff Goldblum as a frustrated poet?
“They’re here!”
Who’s here? Back in the day it was The Communists, now I’m not so
sure.
Now, in the heady moustachioed enclaves of the nineteen and
seventies, those space-plant fuckers don’t seem all that red alla
sudden. Suddenly they look a bit more, dare we say, Western. They
don’t look like the kindsa extraterrestrial vegetation might be
looking to overthrow anything, they look like the kindsa
extraterrestrial vegetation might be looking for to sit back, maybe
enjoy a wank of an evening, sip a lemonade laced with PCP and
ignore every damn thing that doesn’t immediately concern them.
Those space-plants reek of apathy, not revolution.
Being something of a renowned horticulturist, you’ll take my word
for it when I tell you that if these plants could grunt, what
they'd grunt would be something along the lines of “Fuck it, who
cares?”
“So they stole a buncha shit? Fuck it, who cares?”
“So there turned out to be nothing there after all? So they lied?
Fuck it, who cares?”
“So they’re starving on account of some injustice or other? Fuck
it, who cares?”
A hand on my shoulder, and when my heart gets to beating again,
when the circulation’s in order, when the skull-blob is
sufficiently energized, I hear her say “That’s the warning, right
there. It’s a cautionary tale. This is the end result of apathy, of
going along with whatever the hell just because look, everyone else
is. When a personality is devoured by the gargantuan fangs of
indifference, what happens is a man ends up screeching and pointing
and it’s a freeze-frame and a terrifying uncertainty.”
I got lost in her accent for five or eleven minutes, and she's gone
by the time I nod in agreement.
What needed to happen, if Philip Kaufman had been harboring any
secret desire for a happy ending, is that the space-pod beasts from
the 1956 version should’ve followed Kevin McCarthy to the Big City
and overthrew these new smack-eyed variants.
Those old 1956 Body Snatchers; part-alien, part-radical political
retort; they’ve been replaced by a horrific lobotomized offshoot.
These later space-pods have no discernible motive, no discernible
intent, no discernible desire beyond self-preservation.
So shit’s going down? Fuck it, who cares? Let’s just keep loading
up these trucks here, let’s get these pods exported, let’s keep on
keeping on, and whatever doesn’t concern us, fuck it. Who cares?
Bleak, that’s what it boils down to. But there’s a hope there.
The hope is to be found somewhere to the left of all those thoughts
about how truly depressing and unendurable such an existence would
be.
A fella only needs to be worried about such a thing when he finds
he can’t remember what he was worried about.
“By fuck’s balls!” hollers The Priest, “What’s this I see?”
I make like I’m thinking all about Ben Stiller, but he knows, he
knows all too well.
“If I’m not mistaken, tosser”, he says, “You’ve already far-
exceeded this week’s melancholy allowance, and what’s this I find,
up to the left nut in worry and The Blue.”
He flings a pint of tar at the hi-fi. “Fucking Bright Eyes, no
less!”
What can a fella do? I was caught in the act, caught with the
tweeds at the knees, worrying like a fella just two minutes ago
discovered it was possible.
I hang my head for a time, and next thing I know it’s 8 in the AM
and a fella’s wondering if the DVD emporium is open yet. Abel
Ferrara’s 1993 Body Snatchers would go down like a rent-boy on Rent
Day right about now.
Thanks folks.
Fling The Duke An Email or Sign The Mondo Guestbook
