Matt Tuckey is a writer from Oldham, England. He covers celebrities, night life, Manchester, fitness, creative writing, social media, psychology and events. Some of this may, in some way, help others. Or maybe it'll just entertain you for a while.
Well, here it is. The week of the Saddleworth Santa Dash.
I’ve been training and dieting for this race for 2 months now. I’ve found, doing local runs of a similar 5km distance, that I’m a little fitter than I have been, but I’m stuck at a certain level, unable to beat an old PB from over a year ago. That said, I almost matched an old gym record this week, running for 10 mins at 14kmph. By the time of the race, I might have a new PB on that. I’ve not weighed myself recently but I expect I’m substantially heavier than 72kg.
Santa Dash is the Saturday.
Manchester movie convention For the Love of Sci Fi is back this weekend – I’m doing the Sunday. Can’t wait to meet Captain Dallas off Alien! Tom Skerritt is one of a number of science fiction guests due to attend.
Unfortunately, it looks like this years FTLOSF may be the last as Monopoly Events want to wind down the year a little earlier.
I went to a Meetup on Friday for the first time since before the pandemic. Caught up with a mate of mine and dropped into Northern Quarter bar On the Hush. Meetup group New in Town: Manchester Socials were having a few drinks.
I met with them, then we shot off to Guilty and Terrace for a little bit. Decent night out. I might meet with the group again. As with many meetups, some people are cool, some are weird and socially inept. It’s life.
Labelled ‘The godfather of Psychoanalysis’ by many historians, Sigmund Freud was ‘a physiologist, medical doctor, psychologist and influential thinker of the early twentieth century.’ The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy claims ‘Freud’s most important and frequently re-iterated claim, that with psychoanalysis he had invented a successful science of the mind, remains the subject of much critical debate and controversy.'
I was first introduced to Freud by a counsellor back in 2011. I was discussing having the full on piss taken out of me by girls in school, and he was describing how, in adulthood, I had a tendency to (unwittingly, I might add) go for similarly harsh women in adulthood – frequently streetfighters and racist thugs. (Not exclusively, some of them were good girls, before you come for me.)
Working in Walkabout bar in Oldham was a factor, though. I was working there in 2004-2005, and found the place inescapable. By that time, everyone I knew went there. The worldwide bar franchise has always struck me as a watering hole for chavs and bellends.
Point being, I don’t think every scenario we might get into in life – like repeatedly dating women who show off their knuckle scars as a talking point – can be psychoanalytically explained away.
Anyway, fast forward to 2011, and this counsellor guy pointed out that girls in my childhood, who pretty much hated me, weren’t that dissimilar to the girls I frequently ended up dating as an adult.
This, he claimed, was me exhibiting Freud’s Theory of Repetition, or Repetition Compulsion, as SimplyPsychology puts it: the idea that we are attracted to certain people based on our experiences growing up – usually what our parents were like. We seek comfort in the familiarity of certain behaviours. That’s why, when a woman, for example, goes from one physically abusive boyfriend to the next, a good counsellor will probably uncover through treatment that she grew up with a similarly abusive father.
Better the devil you know, than the devil you don’t, you might say.
Anyway, whether girls repeatedly calling me ugly – or in some cases, straight up caving my head in on the street – has anything to do with the idiots I’ve dated in adulthood I still don’t know. But Freud and his theories I found fascinating, or what little I read about them.
This month, Netflix drama Freud dropped, which I assumed to be a biopic. I had high hopes. Unfortunately, instead of being an investigative psychological biopic, this Austro-German drama throws the baby out with the bathwater and reimagines Freud as an assistant to the police, using hypnosis to solve crimes, all the while painting him as a fraudster who cons an elderly woman into pretending to be grieving her non-existent infant child, so he can demonstrate his techniques to his superiors. In turn, the woman starts to believe that she actually had said child in her past.
Things get weirder when a count (whom I might add looks like the dude off rock group Greenday) and countess plan to murder the Royal Family, and… well, a shit ton of other stuff happens involving flashbacks, firing squads, sewers and mental hospitals, the latter of which accommodate a good number of the show’s characters. I’ll be honest, I didn’t understand it but I watched the whole thing.
It was not, as Al Pacino says in Godfather Part III, what I wanted. A brilliant opportunity, squandered.
I used to do Thursday nights in Ashton in Tameside back in 2000 to 2003 maybe. There were a handful of places that would do the occasional house music set but Chute bar became the place if that was your taste. It’s been closed for a few years, but Monopoly Events’ Andy Kleek has managed to revive the bar to its former days.
Last night a crowd of us made it down to Chute for house music.
Lots of familiar friendly faces from days gone by and some new ones too, despite the rest of the town looking as desolate as the start of 28 Days Later. Smart interior, good sound system. Of course, brilllinat classic house music too. Worth keeping an eye out.
Can’t believe William was right around the corner from where I bought a second hand copy of his movie Things to do in Denver when You’re Dead. I bought that on Ashton Market when I was in college, in about 1999. I wonder what he’d make of that.
As with last week's post, if you don’t have a disability or you don’t work with people who do, you’ll be largely unfamiliar with the content of this post, in which I'm mostly covering the disability benefits system.
It’s already a mess, with people on Disability Living Allowance having been forced to move over to Personal Independence Payment, with half of claimants seeing their money reduced or withdrawn altogether.
Tories at the time claimed this was to make the benefits more accessible. Of course, the opposite was the reality. The Telegraph now report that ‘it will become harder for people to claim disability benefits and more new claimants will be required to show they are trying to find a job.’
Of course, the Telegraph fail to mention that many disabled people are already in work, and can claim certain benefits at the same time. And believe me, disabled people want to work. We just want to be given jobs that match our ability level, and an employer and support system in which the staff have a decent comprehension of the disability, our strengths, and our weaknesses.
Not a big ask, you would think. But not only have the Tories removed a lot of the schemes that would support disabled people to do so, The Big Issue reports the government are now attempting to push 2.5m sick and disabled people into work. This is despite the fact they’ve been declared unfit for work.
Their plan is also to snoop on disabled people’s bank accounts. Not on the offshore tax havens or COVID fraud, but the most vulnerable people in society.
This is sick. Good, moral people do not vote for a party that does this to its own citizens.
Furthermore, Daily Echo reports that Universal Credit claimants who use social media have been issued a warning by the Department of Work and Pensions. (I haven’t personally received this. Are they just informing us by the press now, and hope that we read it?) ‘The 'Fighting Fraud in the Welfare System' plan is being put in place by the government department in the hope of stopping approximately £2 billion in losses over the next five years.’
In contrast, COVID Business fraud cost £21 billion.
Some good news: cross-party MPs say cost-of-living payments to disabled people should have been higher.
Of course, if the Tories would just tax their oil buddies and the ultra-rich, then publicly funded services could bring down essential costs meaning these one-off dole-outs wouldn’t be so necessary.
For the Love of Horror is ran by Manchester based events company Monopoly Events, and today we have a Monopoly first: a father/daughter duo panel. Brad Dourif, star of such hit movies One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Dune, Mississippi Burning and Alien Resurrection takes the stage with his daughter Fiona Dourif, Nina Pierce in Curse of Chucky, Cult of Chucky and the Chucky TV series.
I’ve only seen Bride of Chucky myself, so a lot of it was lost on me, but my ears perked up when Brad discussed kissing Jennifer Tilly “through the glass,” before his won daughter took it to the next level:
Fiona goes on to describe Jennifer as ‘kind, generous and humble, really cool.”
Brad agrees. “She’s great at improv. She’ll come up to me and say, Hey, Chucky, do you have a rubber?”
The mic goes out to the audience, where the first question is about the actor Christopher Lee, who Brad says “talks a lot.” (He died in 2015. The two had worked on the Lord of the Rings franchise, Brad as Grimwald, Christopher as Sauramon.) “Lee’s a great swordsman. A friend of mine was working with him, trying to learn to throw a knife. Chris, who of course had been in the SAS, told us, ‘I can hit anything.’ He got a knife and threw it into the bullseye of a dartboard. When he was being interviewed, Chris would introduce himself in the interviewer’s language.”
AQ: Who would you see Chucky go up against?
BD: Chucky vs Freddy. But Chucky’s plastic! I’d watch Chucky vs Leprechaun. Chucky is crazy but very sly.
FD: What advice would you give for people starting?
BD: Don’t. It’s not glamorous.
A child in the audience asks Brad, what was your favourite killing as Chucky?
BD: You might not have seen it here.
FD: Don’t, not in the UK. Don’t do it, Dad!
BD: I’m not gonna tell you as it’ll ruin it.
FD: Cuckoo’s Nest is my favourite film of Dad’s. It’s the hardest to watch.
(His character Billy attempts suicide at the end. Spoiler.)
BD: On Exorcist 3 I shot the thing, then got a call saying they were gonna cut me out of the movie and get Jason Miller to do it. But he was an alcoholic. They went, ‘well, we’d better go back to Brad.’ I had 24 hours to get ready. I did the best I could. It’s a many-layered story. I fucked up. They made me watch myself, and it was horrible. We had to throw a lot away.
After the first Child’s Play movie came out, things got a little hectic in the Dourif household. “He’d keep the voice,” Fiona tells. “People calling would be like, ‘What the fuck is is going on with your dad?’ It was like a horrible metal family!”
Later, for the last Q&A of the day, William Forsythe takes to the stage, and invites Costas Mandaylor to do a double panel with him. The two had actually worked on Virtuosity, a 1995 sci fi film that just about broke even at the box office.
Here they are discussing their acting processes.
The Q+A weaves on to The Devil’s Rejects set, (“really, really dirty,” tells William) and onto the Hammer Horror legend Christopher Lee, whom he describes as “one of the sweetest guys in the world,” and ”so intense. He stood close to me and said, ‘Always do better.’”
WF: I don’t think (directors Joel and Ethan Coen) liked me as I didn’t work with them again. I loved the time on that set. Ethan would circle Joel, then they would say the same thing. I could see the kid in them. John Goodman and I were trying outdo each other.
Costas described working with the team that made TV war comedy MASH. “We’d talk about life. Share life stories. Working with legendary people makes you care a bit more, gives you longevity. Here we are talking to you.”
“I was a big Sean Connery fan,” tells William. “I got to work with him on The Rock. I tapped him on the head. He could have kicked off. Instead, he went with it. He looked at me with these dead eyes.”
WF: I had a lot of great lines in Devil’s Rejects. I liked the diving scene with the Film critic. I can’t let this guy knock Elvis. I had no idea what I was going to do. The best acting is freedom. When a director gives you freedom, it’s the best thing you can do. Director Rob Zombie was saying, “More, mess with him, be dirty!” And I did.
I think I need to see this film.
Just before the panel ends, I manage to get my question in. I don’t seem to have any notes on this as I was a bit preoccupied, but I asked William about Once Upon a Time in America, my favourite film, and the scene in which they do a favour for Joe, played by Burt Young, who died recently. Also in the scene was Robert DeNiro, James Woods, Joe Pesci and James Hayden. The scene was directed by Sergio Leone. What stands out in William’s memory of filming this scene?
I seem not to have written down his answer, and the entire show basically ended after this so I must have got distracted by people leaving. I seem to recall him saying that they all knew they were making something really good, and that he wanted to make the scene memorable, so he was looking for something to make it unique. He found the toothpick and started to flip it around in his mouth, and Leone liked it, so they kept it in.
The footage of these panels should be steadily uploaded to the Monopoly Events Youtube channel; at the time of writing there are a few backstage interviews and a couple of panels live. They’re well worth watching.
This was my third For the Love of Horror, and the best I’ve been to of this brand.
“What makes Michael Myers so iconic is the Mask. You can project anything onto it.” James Jude Courtney would know. He’s played the fictional (and seemingly immortal) serial killer 3 times in Halloween (2018), Halloween Kills (2021) and Halloween Ends (2022).
Today he’s on stage with the other Michael Myers, Nick Castle, who portrayed the slasher icon in the original 1978 movie.
“It’s a gift of a lifetime to play the character,” tells Castle.
The duo make up the first panel on the second day of For the Love of Horror, a movie convention now in its 6th year (5 conventions as 2020 didn’t go ahead). Think movie set builds, props, cosplayers, and a huge roster of horror actors all under the one roof of Bowlers Exhibition Centre in Manchester.
It transpires, during this discussion, that Courtney went to film school with original Halloween director John Carpenter, and later directed cartoon-to-cinema adaptation Dennis, starring Walter Matthau as incorrigible grump Mr Wilson!
Panels break for a moment to allow for a cosplay competition, which of course includes a round of arbitrary air guitar.
Next to stage is Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland, Aslaug in TV show Vikings and Ellie in Evil Dead Rise, the latter of which was recently added to Netflix.
“I sure like a villain,” she says in her authentic Brisbane twang, contrasting her American or Scandinavian TV accents. She tells of playing a murderous zombie, terrorising young Lily Sullivan, Beth in Evil Dead Rise. “I liken it to my own rage room. We had a great time being from the same town. Lee (Cronin, writer director) made us do family boot camp as part of pre production.”
The mic goes out to the audience. The first question: did you ever feel awful to the kids (that Ellie terrorises in Evil Dead Rise)?
“No. You’ve already gone through the script. To support them the best, scaring them genuinely was for the best. It’s not an easy job. If you legit get to them you felt good. I’m fully the opposite direction to Ellie. It’s liberating to be a total arsehole. I’m not a horror fan, you guys. You have to have realistic grounded performances to make the supernatural believable.”
Another question is about downtime on set.
“I listen to music to calm down. It was usually a musician I won’t name because it’s been found out he’s... not a decent human being.” (This could of course be several people. Maybe British. Maybe American. Maybe Australian. Make your own guesses.)
Filming, of course, is never without it's unpredictable challenges. “I couldn’t get through the line of ‘you titty-sucking parasite’ without the fake teeth flying out of my mouth. ‘Dead by Dawn?’ Mate, I’ll be dead by 6pm.”
Alyssa Sutherland
William Forsyth. Sheriff
John Quincy Wydell in Devil's rejects, Cockeye in Once Upon a Time in
America, Franchise in Things to do in Denver when You're Dead.
Great 5 seconds each with these people. Photo ops ran in the right order according to the programme, although the staff could have done with bullhorns to save them yelling into the crowd, or even a PA system to the whole building.Part 2 to come.
The Manchester Christmas Markets opened on Friday. I’ve not been yet but considering I got a free strudel last year just for chatting to the vendors, I might have another go.
For the Love of Horror took place Saturday and yesterday, a convention featuring some great movie and TV stars. Full blog post to come.
Next convention on the horizon: For the Love of Sci Fi, featuring TV and movie Sci Fi stars both contemporary and from yesteryear. I’ll be meeting Captain Dallas of the Nostromo (Alien’s Tom Skerritt) if all goes to plan. Another guest is announced at 7pm, so keep your eye on their socials.
Great club night at Hype Drive last night. Obscure house music, nothing too overplayed, and a no-camera policy brought pre-2007 vibes. Psychedelic projected images danced on bare brick walls, familiar faces dropped in from past Manchester house music nights.
Off the Square is an ideal venue for the genre, as there are other bars blasting house music nearby, particularly in Stevenson Square. See Eastern Bloc, Flok, Soup and Pen and Pencil for others.
The next Hype Drive should be in spring time, with the intention to run 4 events a year.
If you’re not exposed to these things, they’ll probably pass you by.
Work Capability Assessments are administered when an individual cannot work because of their physical, learning or mental conditions. These are, much like PIP assessments, I gather a largely humiliating affair.
Disabled activist Ellen Clifford has launched a legal attempt to force the government to carry out a fresh consultation on its plans to tighten the work capability assessment, which she believes will force many disabled people into poverty, or even destitution. More on Disability News Service. I’ve never sat one of these, but I have sat a PIP assessment by ATOS, which was far from a pleasant experience.
New WCA proposals suggest ‘removing the absence of bowel or bladder control, the inability to cope with social interaction, and the inability to access a location outside the claimant’s home, from the list of activities and “descriptors” used in the WCA.’ So basically, if you can’t work because you might shit yourself on the job… you might still have to work.
I’m sure people with these conditions will be as determined as I am to annex any Tory voters from their social circles.
Some good news, though: Assessment service Atos, who have assessed hundreds of thousands of disabled claimants (and treated the majority of them as layabouts and liars) have been stripped of the PIP contract. Don’t get your hopes up that things will be much better, though: the government have handed it over to Serco. Yes, that’s Serco of ‘expensive track and trace that didn’t work’ fame. So, I’m sure everything will work out in the end.
Cough.
That said, the government, it has been revealed, has forked out over £350 million (of your money) fighting disabled and ill people who are appealing a benefits decision – only to have the majority of those overturned in favour of the claimant. Big Issue details how utterly pointless the whole charade is.
I still have it in mind to blog about my Atos experience, but it would require my mum to find the notes she made when she came to the assessment with me. I have no idea whether that still exists. She doesn’t either.
Scary time for people with disabilities. Remember, this is voted for. We knew it would happen.
