20th March 2009

Do you live right next door to a famous movie location? I don’t mean London’s Tower Bridge, the Houses of Parliament or anything too iconic used by lazy directors as movie shorthand. Although those, and similar, obvious landmarks often cause wholesale confusion in anyone who actually lives in the capital. Excuse me, but how did John Wayne in BRANNIGAN get from the Royal Albert Hall to the Post Office Tower in just three streets. You know what I mean.

Well I actually do live next to one of the most over-used church buildings in London film history. From SECRET CEREMONY to DOCTOR SLEEP and beyond, and many TV programmes in between, I have had more star trailers parked near me than you could possible imagine. In fact when BRONSON director Nicolas Winding Refn shot his ‘Marple’ TV episode in the place (‘Nemesis’ for those Agatha Christie fans who care), I had free lunches for days because I just drifted over to the catering truck when Nicolas called to say they had just wrapped.

And if I had a pound for every time I’ve seen my own street captured on film… THE BLUE LAMP in 1950 marks the first celluloid glimpses of my picturesque road as it still looks like now. Villain Dirk Bogarde runs down it and scarpers over a canal bridge (now rebuilt from the mugger trap it once was) to the aforementioned church. GEORGY GIRL, A FISH CALLED WANDA and more recently MAMMA MIA! (the deleted scene on the DVD extras showing where Colin Firth lives) have continued my fascination for collecting movies featuring my address. Naturally, the best example ever comes in the worst movie. Director Lindsay (CURSE OF THE VOODOO) Shonteff’s 1979 poverty row LICENSED TO LOVE AND KILL has lead actor Gareth Hunt (playing 007 knock-off Charles Bind) zooming up and down my road in a flash sports car and continually zipping past my front door.

Just around the corner from my place Alfred Hitchcock filmed the DIAL M FOR MURDER exteriors, actor Michael York’s barge resided in SMASHING TIME, director Russell Mulcahy placed BLUE ICE, the HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM pub pick-up of soon-to-be-decapitated blonde and James Watkins shot the school opening for EDEN LAKE. I must think about conducting location tours around the area, similar to those Jack the Ripper ones in the East End. I mean I have offered a similar service in Rome. Friends always begged me to show them where Dario Argento filmed TENEBRAE/INFERNO/THE CARD PLAYER/OPERA/THE STENDHAL SYNDROME so I would trail them around the Eternal City pointing out his murder sites. If interested I do offer two versions: the Sophia Loren Luxury Tour or the Ursula Andress Economy.

I’ve always been location obsessed and know exactly where this passion began. When I first moved to London in 1969 I stayed in a top floor flat in Powis Square in Notting Hill Gate, just opposite where Mick Jagger’s pop star recluse lived in the cult classic PERFORMANCE. One night I was watching an old B/W movie on TV, Michael Winner’s WEST 11, a sleazy murder mystery from 1963 set in Soho jazz clubs and seedy hovels. Imagine my total shock when landlady Diana Dors walks her latest tenant into her strangely recognizable house, up some familiar stairs and into the ‘Room to Let’. For it was exactly the same room I was watching the movie in! What were the chances of that ever happening? So not many people can say Michael Winner began a trivial pursuit that still amuses me to this very day.

Until next time.

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