Wag The Dogma
[30min, Channel 4/NFTS - 2000] Music & lyrics; Documentary about the ‘Dogme 95’ movement, director: Emily James
* Awarded Kodak/Celect Student film of the year, 2000
* Best Documentary – Atlanta Festival, 2001
This was the first film I worked with Emily James on, when we first met at the National Film & Television School. I’d played some of my songs at a film school party and she immediately asked me to be involved with her current project, Wag the Dogma. It was a playful documentary about the Dogme 95 film movement (Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg et al). This was big news at the time, especially at film school as you can imagine… suddenly films like Festen and The Idiots, that cost next to nothing to make were in cinemas and going down a storm.
Anyway, I ended up being a pretty big part of this film, as I’m used as a kind of musical narrator throughout. Martino and Emily discussed the idea with me and referenced the songs by Jonathan Richman in There’s Something About Mary; so I said, “Yes I know exactly what you mean”, neglecting to mention the fact that I’d never seen the film and, more embarassingly, had never heard any Jonathan Richman. Rather than researching this privately, I just thought I’d do my own thing, so I went away and quickly wrote a few songs for the film. “Perfect!”, they said, “Just what we asked for, like a posh English Jonathan Richman!”. Shit, I thought, I’d better find out about this guy, then. So I did… and he is great and I’ve since been to see him playing live. If you were feeling cruel you could say my songs are a bit Jackanory compared to his… but who’s being cruel?
Wag the Dogma was great fun to make. I wrote the songs – both music and lyrics – in a few days, recorded it with a little band in one evening (drums, bass, trombone & me on guitar and vocal). Then we were filmed playing the songs in the tiny patch of park outside the Ritzy in Brixton one bitter winter day. It was completely freezing, and we were getting some pretty weird looks!
The film did really well at festivals all round the world and then got picked up by Channel 4 who broadcast it in 2001. The whole mood of the film was really good, but I think the music really helps set the tone… it’s not often that my own songs make me smile, but these ones do!