Breakfast at Tiffany's

5am, October 2^nd 1960 and director Blake Edwards is granted an extremely rare and fortuitous moment of calmness, undisturbed by traffic, on New York’s Fifth Avenue. It is the first hour of the first day of filming what will become one of the most iconic romantic comedies of all time. A young woman in black evening attire gets out of a cab and drifts to the windows of Tiffany’s, coffee and pastry in hand; black sunglasses hiding any trace of the night gone by.

Inspired by Truman Capote’s novella, Breakfast at Tiffany’s – on which the film is based – the scene will become both the opening and most memorable one of the movie. It is a scene any modern woman can relate to – the walk of shame. Except there is nothing shameful or morning-after-the-night-before about Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in that New York dawn.

Holly Golightly is a single, girl-about-town, who – like many a girl today – enjoys the young, free and single life and uses her evident beauty to her advantage: dinners, parties and gifts paid for by the men who take her (and her friends) out. Not to mention the $50 they give her for the powder room. And then there is the $100 earned from her weekly visits to an imprisoned mafia boss. Her life changes when struggling writer Paul Varjak (played by George Peppard, the A-Team’s John ‘Hannibal’ Smith) moves into her apartment block, and the two develop a friendship and eventually fall in love. But the smooth progression of their love story is blown off course by Holly’s wild lifestyle, her plan of finding a rich husband, her own troubled past and kept-man Paul’s entanglement with his sugar-mamma, 2E.

The ambiguity surrounding Holly’s profession still remains. Is she a high-class call girl or simply a gold-digger? Opinion is very divided over what is implied about her profession in both the novella and in the film. Are the $50 for the powder room, referred to on several occasions on screen, in exchange for services rendered or simply a very generous tip for the powder room attendant? Any allusions made to Holly being a prostitute in the book (which is set in the New York of the Forties) were most definitely played down in the movie so as not to shock the public in 1961 when the film was released. The role of Miss Golightly was Hepburn’s most saucy character to date. At the prime of her career, she had previously only played the pure and pious. Breakfast at Tiffany’s would give her somewhat of a sexual awakening as an actress, and just in time for society’s own awakening that decade.

It is no secret that Truman Capote was vehemently opposed to Edwards casting Hepburn as his heroine. Capote had considered Elizabeth Taylor, among others, but his first choice was Marilyn Monroe. She had that tough and unfinished quality to her, which he thought Hepburn lacked. Indeed, it would not be the only time her talent as an actress would be called into question. (Emma Thompson recently declared that My Fair Lady’s Eliza Doolittle could neither act nor sing.)

But Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a romantic comedy. We are not in it for the acting. We are in it for the style and the Givenchy dresses, the beauty of New York, the beauty of Audrey Hepburn. And then there is the nostalgic style of direction: scenes shot in a moving car where the driver is quite clearly not driving, the closed-lip Hollywood kiss and make up that makes Hepburn look like an oil painting.

The storyline follows the usual rom-com formula (boy and girl meet, fall in love, fall out, reconcile) but peppered with some genuinely interesting twists. The film is pure Hollywood but we would be disappointed if it were anything else. Today, Breakfast at Tiffany’s gives us old school glamour and has whet our appetite for modern offerings such as the delectable Mad Men series. It makes love and life seem simple. It invented the Little Black Dress and over-sized sunglasses.

Watching it now, it is quite clearly the precursor to the much-loved and equally lite Sex and the City: single girls, love and sex, fairy tale New York City, enviable fashion and an East side apartment. (Holly’s is East 71st Street, Carrie Bradshaw’s East 72^nd street.) One of the scenes from a later season of SATC even features Carrie and her on-off boyfriend, Mr Big, sharing a slow dance to Moon River, Henry Mancini’s theme tune that won the film an Oscar.

The only marr on the film is Mickey Rooney’s Mr Yunioshi, the neighbour who is perpetually disturbed and angered by Holly’s erratic lifestyle. The character is a Japanese man played by an America in heavy make up, with buckteeth and portrayed in a ludicrous slap stick fashion: funny at the time of release, it is not so comfortable now. Fortunately, his on screen appearance is limited to a few minutes.

The BFI Southbank is screening Breakfast at Tiffany’s from 21^st- 31^st January 2011 as part of its Audrey Hepburn season, which runs from 2^nd-31^st January. It is such a treat to savour this classic on the big screen that it must not be missed.

For the full list of Breakfast at Tiffany’s showings, visit the BFI.

The Art of the Album

The south bank’s OXO Tower is known for its vertiginous height, but resting at its base at river level is a small gem of a gallery, currently home to ‘The Art of the Album’ exhibition. The Hyper Gallery specialises in “rock n roll image making” - it is not often that one is welcomed to a gallery by the sounds of Led Zeppelin’s Tangerine.

The inspiration for this exhibition is the 30^th anniversary of Peter Gabriel’s career as a musician and songwriter. The son of an electrical engineer, Gabriel was the flautist in the Phil Collins-led Genesis, but later went on to release solo material, start the WOMAD movement (the festival of which takes place every August near Reading) and make a name for himself in humanitarian endeavours. The Labour party also listed him as one of their largest private donors back in 1998.

Around half the prints on display are from Peter Gabriel albums, but do not let any potential ignorance of his music put you off. Artists have created mesmerising artwork for albums such as Ovo (Nils-Udo), Passion (Julian Grater) and Scratch My Back (Stephen Gschmeissner and Marc Bessant), the latter depicting two red blood cells locked in a tender embrace.

Oasis, Bowie and the Beatles also feature, as well as numerous examples of Hipgnosis’ work. The design trio and friends of Pink Floyd formed in 1968 and have worked on many Pink Floyd covers as well as Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, AC/DC’s superbly named Dirty Deeds Done Dead Cheap and Black Sabbath’s Never Say Die!. It don’t come more rock n roll than that.

Probably Hipgnosis’ most iconic and well-known work is Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album cover, the unforgettable light-splitting prism, which is on show here. Also included is the suitably haunting image of Battersea Power Station with a giant inflatable pig hovering over it, album art for the bleak and nihilistic Pink Floyd album, Animals; the ingenious Back Catalogue, showing five Floyd albums painted onto the backs of five pretty women and York Tilyer’s head-spinning, eye-watering photograph from Peter Gabriel’s 2000 Millennium Dome Show.

Album art does not solely make a record’s plastic encasement prettier. The artwork may resonate with the music inside - a visual version of the sounds within. It may depict the particular place in life the artist is at. It may serve to shock, outrage or entice. Or it may be nothing more than the caprice of the artist who created it or the musician whose music it is.

Regardless of how the album cover came to be, album artwork draws us in. Back when the albums in this exhibition had just been released, album artwork would have been much more significant. People bought music not just for the aural pleasure but also as a collector’s item, the physical ownership of music. Nowadays, most people download music and transfer it to an mp3 player, cutting out the need for any album artwork, despite still being able to see it on an iPod screen.

Records in the 60s, 70s and 80s were in the LP (vinyl) format which made the album art all the more striking for its size, thus making it all the more necessary to have a real work of art on the cover. For some bands, especially Pink Floyd, the artwork on an album cover was part of the whole Floyd experience.

At that time, the main channel for promoting musicians’ new records would have been primarily through visual aids: billboards, magazine adverts, album covers. Today there are many more dimensions available to help promote musicians and their music such as MTV, Twitter and heat magazine. That is not to say that we have lost the ability to make great album covers. Biffy Clyro’s Only Revolutions and the Stereophonic’s Pull The Pin are great recent examples - both oddly reminiscent of Gschmeissner and Bessant’s Scratch My Back with its ying and yang quality.

The Art of the Album runs until mid January. All prints are available for purchase at the gallery or online (subject to availability!): www.hypergallery.com

For more examples of stunning stills from Storm Thorgerson (one third of Hipgnosis), log onto www.stormsight.co.uk

FREEDOM!

The issue of freedom of speech as a fundamental human right has been brought to the fore, once again, in light of Julian Assange's arrest, owing to his WikiLeaks 'leaking' uncomfortable information about that dark horse, the US government. Both recent events and my own vehement belief in the necessity of free speech has prompted me to publish below a piece I wrote back in December 2008 on the matter:

On August 9 2008, The Guardian reported that American publishing giant Random House dropped plans to publish ‘The Jewel of Medina’ by journalist Sylvia Jones, for fear of inciting violence from terrorist groups. The novel is a fictional account of the prophet Muhammad’s relationship with his child bride, Aisha and was accused of making fun of Muslims and their history by Denise Spellberg, professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas. The decision called into question the state of free speech in the U.S.A. Six weeks later and the safety of Martin Rynja, owner of small, independent publishing house Gibson Square (which also published ‘Blowing up Russia’ by the late Alexander Litvinenko), came into question when his house was firebombed following his decision to publish the novel. Rynja was unharmed and sticks firmly to his “imperative” decision to publish Jones’ book.

The critics of the novel need to remember that this book is fictitious and not an attempt to accurately portray history: Spellberg took issue with the book on these grounds that it “play[ed] with sacred history and turn[ed] it into softcore pornography”. Obviously Spellberg is not getting enough herself. Not only is the book devoid of sex scenes (rather, chartering the couples love story), but also seeks to honour the prophet and is anything but disrespectful. This aim, according to Jones, is even more potent when written by a white, non-Muslim woman. One has to wonder whether these fire-bombers had even read this, hitherto unpublished, novel or whether they were ignorantly going by hearsay in the media.

The politics aside, even if the novel contained some risqué scenes that could possibly offend people; one needs to remember that this is fiction. I do not think that any social, sexual, political or religious niche has ever emerged from the realms of fiction unscathed. If you are likely to be offended by something it is best to close your eyes and ears and develop a thicker skin. I can appreciate that if the “Jewel of Medina’ was, indeed, blasphemous against Islam then this could cause offense to certain parties. This would still not be a just cause for halting publication.

Phillip Pullman, author of the beloved Northern Lights trilogy, reinforces this point by claiming that religion is the WORST reason to ban something. He says that religion is a wonderful thing that can be the source of moral wisdom and solace but turns sour once its leaders start meddling in the “social and intellectual lives of their flock”. The bid to destroy intellectual freedom is unarguably evil; evil being a notion which religion usually seeks to quash.

Do the censors not realise that by banning something that it not only makes us more aware of the illicit text/film/image but it makes us yearn for it more. Oscar Wilde makes this point through the character Lord Henry Worron in ‘A Picture of Dorian Gray’, “when the soul gets sick the way to cure it is to deny the senses nothing”, implying that to deny ourselves is to make our souls desire that thing more. Nothing can be truer and anyone reading this will, I am sure, agree.

A few days before Random House chickened out, exam board AQA “ask[ed] schools to destroy book containing knife poem”. It is clear from the choice of words The Guardian shares my opinion on the matter. Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Education for Leisure’ begins with the line “Today I am going to kill something. Anything”. This sparked concerns that G.C.S.E children studying the poem would get the wrong idea, given the increase in knife crimes.

On hearing this, my anger surged: that the education authorities could be so damn patronising. Can 16-year-old young adults not be trusted to handle controversial and very relevant issues? The poem might go a long way in reinforcing just how fucked up it is to carry a knife. By re-hashing the issue over and over through study of the poem, might the allure of knife crime not be dampened a little? By removing a poem about knives from schools it is only glamourising the conduct even more. Taboo issues will be a catalyst for debates and intellectual discussions  - the point of and a means to learning. 

These children need teachers not nannies who obviously think their pupils are capable of nothing else but monkey see monkey do. Carol Ann Duffy made an excellent point in her responsive poem, ‘Mrs. Schofield’s GCSE’, by reminding us that literature is littered with knife crime (hello, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth…). Pat Schofield, who made the initial complaint about ‘Education for Leisure’ thought that the poem dedicated to her was “a bit weird”. It is a wonder these critics do not think of better ways of articulating their indignation to appear slightly more intelligent so as to carry their argument further.

It is heartening though to see figures such as Rynja and poet laureate Michael Rosen rise to the defence of those who are simply exercising their right to free speech. I think, also, that in this climate of ever more stifling political correctness we all need to lighten up and not be so afraid of offending somebody somewhere.

 

"I disagree strongly with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

 ~ VOLTAIRE

Corporations with a conscience?

 N.B: This article is couched in terms of corporations’ POTENTIAL. I am not here to expound their CURRENT virtues and practices.

CSR: corporate social responsibility. You will not find any major company annual report or website without a section on CSR: what they are doing for the community, their employees and the environment. This section is often in the last pages of the financial report or tucked away in a corner online. Many regard the CSR section as nothing more than a bit of necessary PR. Now that giants such as Kelloggs, BP and Unilever have a sustainability report, everyone else needs one too or fall behind.

Many regard the content of the CSR section with cynicism. After all, how will we ever know whether CO2 emissions have fallen by 20%, short of going and performing the necessary tests. The draconian understanding of companies existing solely to make economic profit – and going to any lengths possible to achieve this aim – is expiring. Now that corporations are being forced to sit up and take account of their social and environmental impact, as well as their economic one, their potential to benefit society is massive.

Government is a blunt tool: often inefficient and ineffective, but necessary. This inefficiency arises because a very small group of people, with finite resources at their disposal, is trying to keep a population of millions (in the U.K. 62 million) happy. Go figure. The government is stretched too thin and recently even thinner owing to budget cuts and a growing population size. The purpose of such an institution is a noble one – to look after us and provide for free what have become life’s bare necessities (healthcare, education, income support).

However, to provide this support a ruling party is needed. To become ruling party a popularity contest needs to be won. Enter politics. By the very nature of elections, politics and politicians become tainted and corrupted with the desire to stop at nothing (within reason, of course, at least in this country) to get that power. And what human being wouldn’t become intoxicated with the allure of being top dog once the race has begun? While a politicians desire to positively impact society may be the inspiration for them to enter the profession, they eventually need to start playing a game. The sacking of Prof. Nutt is an example of prioritising popularity over plain common sense.

So what can the large corporations of our world do? Surely they are no better. After all, they are greedy, they just want to take our money and they pollute our air, rivers and oceans. Those things they may be, but as iterated in the introductory paragraph, companies are changing. Not only out of necessity (stricter environmental regulations) but because people are changing, too. We are becoming more self-aware and aware of our impact and the importance of these things, although there is still a considerable way to go. And people are not just the customers and consumers. They also make up the corporations.

The power of commercialism and branding, often seen nowadays as a foe of sustainability and the environment, can be harnessed to create the wealth to aid social progress. Corporations have never been stronger, more influential or well known (via their brands). The larger they become, the more they are accountable for in social, economic and environmental terms. Businesses have, possibly, even more responsibility than government and can have more of an effect than government on eliciting social change.

Not only are corporations less tainted with the power struggles apparent in government when forming policies, but each corporation’s ‘sphere of influence’ is substantially smaller than governments’ – meaning it is much more likely that all people in that sphere will benefit from any initiatives set out by that company: it is easier to provide health care for thousands than millions, for example.

Another huge advantage that companies have over government is that the consumer has chosen the company’s brand and product. Any money given to that company via the sale of those products is done so willingly. Not so with voting where the winning party may only have half the country’s support. Neither so with taxes where the products in question (public services) are often intangible.

Not only has the customer chosen Brand X, but also the core maxim of marketing – the customer is King – means that X will go to extreme lengths to make sure that their King is served. The fact that we can all changes brands and products on infinitesimal time scales when compared to how long it takes until we can change our choice of political party, gives corporations an even bigger incentive to make sure we are kept happy.

A system could arise where corporations provide us with products for which we pay – iPods/Pads/Phones, for instance. Part of the profit made is used in initiatives that benefit smaller chunks of society: in the provision of healthcare, educations, leisure centres. The end result is that we not only have the product we purchased but healthcare, too. Of course, this is a gross over simplification and I have not touched upon the difficulties and time it may take for this system to be considered, or even accepted. But there is no denying that something needs to be put in place to alleviate the colossal burden on government lest they fall victim to ever more protests and fury.