Show Pieces was successfully crowd-funded back in 2013 with the beautiful finished product coming to fruition in August 2015. Mitch Jenkins‘ boredom and a shoot called ‘Dodging Molly’ formed a desire to create a film, but not just any film. Within 5 years came a finished screen play from the wonderful mind of Alan Moore. It has been described as ‘a cult horror noir’ and ‘If Alice had fallen down a David Lynch rabbit hole’.
While all of these descriptions are apt, I think Alan Moore sums-up Show Pieces eloquently, as an example of fiction bleeding into our reality.
The initial idea took the form of a short film with a twist ending set in Northampton. Slowly but surely one became many and a series of sequential short films were created. To spicy things up (not that Northampton needs spicing up!), elements were taken from various versions of the Egyptian ‘Book of the Dead’ for good measure.
Show Pieces also sets out with the goal of producing a narrative that ‘makes sense’ and comes to a full resolution. Unlike some of the narratives provided by big budget movies, says Moore, Show Pieces will provide that satisfying conclusion, with a beginning, middle and end. These goals are achieved by the final curtain close with the shorts weaving narrative and clue alike, which set up the morbid conclusion.
Show Pieces follows two main lead: the privately exotic Faith Harrington (Siobhan Hewlett) and the blissfully bemused, James Mitchum (Darrell D’Silva). Through a series of events these characters find themselves in a pub in Northampton on a suitably miserable night. Even Mr. Moore has a part to play in all of this but I will save that magnificence for the film reveal itself.
The following introductions to these shorts are as follows:
Act of Faith: “Faith Harrington, a young female reporter on a local newspaper who has an exotic private life, prepares for a stimulating evening at home that doesn’t go according to plan.”
Upon Reflection: “Details Faith Harrington’s first bewildered arrival at the peculiar working men’s club immediately after the event that concludes Act of Faith, all captured in a fixed security mirror above a club’s oddly anachronistic lounge bar.”
Jimmy’s End: “Louche and hard-drinking womaniser James Mitchum finds himself wandering into one strange bar too many.”
A Professional Relationship: “Explores the peculiar relationship between the club’s two managers.”
His Heavy Heart: “Picks up the narrative of the hapless James Mitchum from a point following his dreadful realisation at the conclusion of Jimmy’s End. In a grotesque parody of Egyptian funerary rites, James is shepherded less than gently into his unenviable afterlife”.
Interested? I was too! And for those of you who helped Kickstart the project way back when, a little treat was sent your way in September of this year for a link to a short titled, ‘Frank & Nick Make you Sick’: “The long lost tape of that fated improve, filed in Metterton’s living room one grim evening in 1970’s Northampton. Watch in horror as Metterton pushes Matchbright to breaking point with his bottomless obscenity”. It’s as gloriously grim as it sounds!
Those who missed the kickstarter, do not despair! The Show Pieces box set can be purchased through the lexrecords shop and Amazon, or for those who simply wish to enjoy the short films, they can be purchased for viewing through youtube and google play respectively.
