Mark Kermode - It's Only a Movie

Mark Kermode. You may well know him as that guy you’ve seen on TV, with a quiff and a seemingly endless supply of black suits, who loves horror films and hates Pirates of the Caribbean. Or maybe you saw his massive hands being referenced on The Thick of It. Or maybe, just maybe, if you’re a person of great taste and intellect, you know him as the world’s greatest film critic. Every Friday, he dazzles for two hours on Radio 5Live by bickering with Simon Mayo, going off on ‘Kermodian rants’ and being unbelievably passionate about films.

As a huge fan, I was thrilled to hear that he was releasing a book, but that was nothing compared to my excitement at realising he was doing a book tour, and so I could be in the same room as him. And he really didn’t disappoint. This was a typically Kermode evening – he began by extracts from the cuts made by the BBFC to The Evil Dead (hilariously po-faced descriptions of horrific violence) and the laughs kept coming. Particular highlights were his attempts to convince us all that 3D is not the future of cinema, and his retelling of the time Helen Mirren cornered him at the BAFTAs and told him off for saying that The Queen wasn’t a real film. But it wasn’t just that it was funny – Kermode is an appealing and interesting speaker, with a passion for good cinema that just pours out of him. I was enthralled for the whole time he was speaking, and would happily recommend seeing him to any fans of film.

Of course, the main point of the evening was to promote his book, It’s Only a Movie (which, being a massive nerd, I queued up to get signed). The book is subtitled ‘Reel Life Adventures of a Movie Obsessive’, and is essentially Kermode’s life through films. It tells of his earliest experiences of films, the development of his love for horror cinema, and his growing career as a film critic. I’ve heard many of the stories before (as, even when reviewing films, Kermode loves to talk about himself, something he freely admits to) but they felt fresh. Films have clearly had a profound effect on him – a lot of the book is spent discussing the fact that he may well be misremembering things, struggling to distinguish between what has really happened to him and what he saw in the cinema. His ability to punctuate a story with a random rant seems to be effortless, with stories quite naturally picking up where they left off. Kermode writes in exactly the same way that he talks on the radio – he’s engaging but also very funny, with an uncanny ability to both ramble entertainingly and yet also convey so much in one pithy sentence.

Particular highlights of the book for me were the more personal moments – fellow film critic Nigel Floyd pops up again and again, and Kermode’s respect and affection for him are obvious. He devotes a whole chapter to his relationship with his radio partner Simon Mayo, a man he describes as ‘clearly the best broadcaster in the country’. Despite their obvious differences as people, they clearly get on very well, and Kermode seems genuinely baffled that people think that they don’t. I also particularly enjoyed the chapter on his experiences when Werner Herzog was shot while Kermode was interviewing him. The whole book is filled with strange and wonderful characters, and Herzog has to be one of the strangest and most wonderful of them all. Kermode’s voice and personality are never lost throughout the book, and you come away realising that the term ‘movie obsessive’ is, in fact, the understatement of the century.

If you’ve never listened to Kermode on the radio, I would seriously recommend tuning in to Radio 5Live most Fridays between 2 and 4. It’s Only a Movie is like a 300 page version of his Friday afternoon ramblings – and I absolutely loved it.

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