Yeah, boyeeee (and shit)
Touchdown in Edinburgh and I hit the ground running, almost literally.
No sooner have I finished watching the Manchester derby and City’s triumphant trouncing of the Stretford Lepers to go top of the Premiership table, than I’m on a plane, grinning like a loon, and then dumping my bags in Shooters’ Forrest Road flat and straight back out again pounding the Auld Reekie streets with Mullighan, missioning our way across town to see a film… any film, like a couple of junkies looking for a celluloid fix.
After what seems an hour of walking (I’m going to lose a stone this week, no doubt about it), we reach the Cineworld and James heads off to see Teeth (it’s about a girl… who has teeth… in the one place a man wouldn’t want her to have teeth - James says the women enjoyed the film way too much) and I join a queue for Control (Anton Corbijn’s biopic about Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, which is on my absolutely must see list), even though I know it’s already started.
The queue takes bloody ages and when I finally get to the front, they tell me there are no tickets left for it and it started 45 minutes ago. So I end up watching a documentary, of all things. I’m not against docos, but I’m a screenwriter here to write about screenwriting! However, I am also a celluloid junkie, so I give in to The Man, hand over my money and take what’s on offer.
Planet B-Boy turns out to be a documentary about breakdancing crews from around the world competing in the ‘Dance of the Year’, the annual b-boy World Cup. Benson Lee, the director, introduces it and says how proud he is to be in Edinburgh and what a great time he’s having and then he takes a photo of the audience (because he does that at every screening) and we all have to make a peace sign and shout ‘Peace!’ I like this. The crowd is buzzing. This is what screenings should be like.
The film is great and punctuates its breakdance pyrotechnics with genuinely moving interviews that delve into the lives of the kids for whom b-boying is almost a religion. The Japanese and Korean crews, in particular, involved poignant father-son moments that had you cringing at all the things that remain unsaid between uptight fathers and respectfully rebellious sons.
