Hey, look mum! We’re on TV!
Last week, UWE student James Furnish interviewed us for a project and asked us about The Bristol Bad Film Club, what makes a bad film and how we go about choosing the films for our screenings.
Find out what we said below. (NB: We can been drinking for a while hence the slurring…)
Look there! Up in the sky! It’s our awesome poster for our Supergirl screening with What The Frock!
If you haven’t yet got your tickets for our night of stand-up comedy and super heroine hi-jinks, then get them below.
As well as being a tyrannical dictator, Kim Jong-Il also tried his hand at movie producing… with unique results. Continue reading PULGASARI (1985) – 22nd May 2014, The Cuban, Harbourside
Bristol Bad Film Club is teaming up with What The Frock! to show Supergirl… the reason Wonder Woman is still waiting to have her own film. Continue reading SUPERGIRL (1984) – 24th April 2014, The Cuban, Harbourside
Behold our awesome poster for our For Y’ur Height Only screening. If you’ve never seen a Bond film starring a 3ft tall martial artist… then now is your chance!
If you’ve seen the trailer to our next screening, For Y’ur Height Only, you may be wondering just who the hell Weng Weng is and why is this the first time you’re hearing about him? Well, let us hit you in the nut-sack with some knowledge…
At the peak of his fame, Weng Weng, was the most famous Filipino celebrity of his generation, however 30 years on, he is barely remembered. As a result, a number of urban legends have sprung up around him. Some say he married a porn actress, others believe he was actually a real-life secret agent, while others have stated he went on to become a professional karaoke singer.
Intrigued to find out what happened to the diminutive superstar and why he has been forgotten by the Filipino film industry, Australian film-maker Andrew Leavold spent 20 years trying to find him and the last seven making the documentary The Search For Weng Weng to get some answers.
Born in Balacaran in 1957, Weng Weng (birth name Ernesto de la Cruz) was the youngest of five brothers. He was born with a condition known as primordial dwarfism and in the words of his brother Celing,was “no bigger than a coke bottle”. This meant that young Ernesto spent the first 12 months of his life in an incubator.
“He was not expected to live,” said Andrew. “But when he did, it was declared a miracle and Weng Weng was dressed as the Christ-child figure at the head of Baclaran’s yearly Santo Nino parade.”
Weng Weng grew up to become obsessed with martial arts and trained almost daily. He was cast by film producer Peter Caballes in a bunch of novelty kid films and was almost cast in a film as a midget Superman, but the idea was scrapped. Peter Caballes then introduced Weng Weng to the King of Philippines Comedy, Dolphy, who cast him as his kung-fu kicking sidekick in his spy caper The Quick Brown Fox (1980) and western parody Da Best In Da West (1981).
Weng Weng’s fame grew and he was made an honorary Secret Agent by future President General Ramos, and was presented with a badge and a 25-callibre pistol. This event was the direct inspiration for the film ‘Agent 00’ which, along with For Y’ur Height Only, would make him a global superstar.
The “absurdist masterpiece of gloriously bad cinema” became one of the Philippines’ most successful exports, and Weng Weng was soon The Philippine’s ‘biggest’ cinematic export. A sequel was quickly churned out (The Impossible Kid (1982), but as the box office failed to match that of its predecessor, Weng Weng’s time in the spotlight soon came to an end.
Speaking to Leavold, Weng Weng’s brother said “the family was poor before he became famous, and afterwards remained as poor as ever.”
Weirdly General Ramos decided that Weng Weng could still be an asset to the country and put him through paratrooper training in order to “send him on infiltration missions where his size would be used to its maximum advantage.” While this meant that Weng Weng was actually sent on some undisclosed missions, he also meant he was frequently seen walking around the Arrivals Lounge in Manila Airport, acting as a human “Welcome To Manila” banner.
While Weng Weng died of heart failure on 29th August 1992, Andrew Leavold is still trying to find rumoured lost films that have yet to see the light of day to ensure Weng Weng’s unique legacy to cinema is never forgotten.
For more information on Weng Weng and Andrew Leavold’s documentary, go to www.searchforwengweng.com
After six months of requests, the Bristol Bad Club finally screened The Room.
My life is separated into two time periods. My life before I saw The Room and my life after I saw The Room.
The first time I watched Tommy Wiseau’s magnus opus, I was changed forever.
I no longer looked at cinema the same way again and sought out every book, article and review about how it was made, in order to make some sense of what I had witnessed.
Behold our awesome poster for our The Room screening, packed full of references from the film. Can you spot them all? Cheep cheep cheep…
Get your tickets here.
How Tim and I met the stars of ‘the Citizen Kane of bad movies’ – The Room.
It all started with an email in early November.
For months, we had known that at some point we would have to show The Room, so I was deep into researching how we would go about getting permission. Full screening rights for The Room lie with Tommy Wiseau and if he doesn’t want you to show it, you can’t show it. He’s also notoriously hard to get hold of.
I contacted the Prince Charles Cinema in London, who famously do regular screenings of the cult classic, in order to pick their brains and it was then I read the most awesome sentence ever.
“Well, Tommy and Greg are coming to London in February to present some screenings here, so if you want to ask him face-to-face, there’s your opportunity.”
TOMMY WISEAU AND GREG SESTERO ARE COMING TO LONDON?!
That was all I needed to hear. Quickly, an email was sent out to the Bristol Bad Film Brain Trust (the group of people who are regularly forced to endure the latest monstrosity that I have uncovered) informing them of this amazing news.
Their response was equally ecstatic, with one even putting forward an elaborate plan to kidnap both Tommy and Greg in order to have them at our future screening.
Tickets were promptly purchased and over the intervening months, I finally managed to get a screening licence for The Room (although that was an epic feat in its own right).
Finally the day came and eight of us made the trip to London (complete with Tube strikes) in order to see if meeting Tommy and Greg would be as awesome as we had always imagined.
They did not let us down.
In front of a crowd, Tommy is everything you’d expect him to be. Confident, funny and with one eye on the pretty girls. Greg is, understandably, fully aware that this is Tommy’s World and he’s just living in it, but seems to enjoy meeting the fans of his most infamous role.
There was also a Q&A. Sure that they must have been asked the same questions ad nauseum regarding spoons, footballs and ‘Why is it called The Room?’, I decided to try something a little different…
Keen to get Tommy and Greg to film an intro for our screening, Tim and I slipped out as the film got underway. We’d been told that Tommy and Greg hang around the bar for the film’s duration.
Not only did they sign our merchandise and pose for photos, but they both seemed genuinely interested in our screening. Tommy even mentioned that he had never been “to the country of Bristol” and would love to go, therefore we should show the film every month. Once he heard it was a charity screening, he furnished us with a bunch of free bags, and was keen to point out he also designed them himself.
As for the intro? Well, he essentially directed us on how it should be done, but then he was the only ‘qualified’ director out of us.
He also blessed Tim, who had decided that the one thing missing in his life was Tommy Wiseau underwear.
As we left the screening, happy that we’d met them both and that they were both as nice as we’d hoped, we noticed Tommy was out front playing football with the crowd who were waiting for the next screening.
Well aware of the devotion of his fans, Tommy was not going to let them down and whether you like The Room or not, you have to admire his boundless enthusiasm.
Meet Agent 00: He’s lethal, charming and only three feet tall… Continue reading FOR Y’UR HEIGHT ONLY (1981) – 20th March 2014, The Cuban, Harbourside
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