Tommy Morghen

Housing Benefit - Condems announce job-creation scheme for bailiffs

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 12:17:04 GMT

Oh yes, and while we're about it, maybe this bunch of expenses fiddling MPs shouldn't get more than Housing Benefit for their 'second homes' allowance. Let's see if any of them can find a two-bedroom flat in central London for less than £250 a week....

3 Days Access to Diary of a Bad Lad for $3.95

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 15:56:08 GMT

That's right, get three days access to Diary of a Bad Lad for $3.95 and you can also watch one that I've specially selected from the archives just for you.

Nik Powell, producer of The Crying Game, Mona Lisa and Little Voice (and no less than forty-eight other movies) desicribes Diary of a Bad Lad as "A Really Cool film".

And who's just about the coolest person in the history of the movies? No question: Steve McQueen.

So I've tracked down and done the deal to bring you Steve's 1959 classic, "The St. Louis Bank Robbery".

There you are, my fine and dandy friends, two really cool films - and they're both based on true stories too.

Enjoy

The One Suitcase Scam

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 08:33:48 GMT

A good friend of mine, June H, was renting a flat which, although she didn’t know it at the time, happened to be owned by the IRA. June was always a bit of a bohemian type who made a living doing anything from bingo-calling in Blackpool, to selling dodgy perfume, to telling fortunes – which meant she was pretty much always broke, and in arrears with the rent.

Still, June thought her landlord was ace, never hassling her, and so her arrears just kept going up and up – until one day she came home to find a group of masked men with baseball bats in the living room.

What they wanted was a little favour which would not only clear her debts, but pay for her to have a free holiday as well. All she had to do was fly to India for a couple of weeks. The night before her return a locked suitcase would be delivered to her hotel along with a set of keys.

The thing is, though, the keys wouldn’t fit the locks, so if she was stopped and asked to open it by the customs at Manchester airport, she wouldn’t be able to. Somehow she’d have made a mistake, that’s all – and she’d just have to ham it up and act a bit distraught.

But what happened was, as she was heading towards the green channel and Indian man started chasing after her shouting that she’d just walked off with his suitcase. So there she is, quite literally fighting with this bloke in the customs hall over it in front of several customs officers. And what do they do? They pile in on June’s behalf, wrestle the Indian guy to the floor, drag him away and wave her through.

“Clever,” thought June as she took a taxi back to her flat, “Those IRA guys think of everything, right down to arranging for an Indian man to make a scene at the airport, knowing full well that the racist customs officers would step in and play St George rescuing an English damsel in distress.”

But when she got home the IRA guys keys didn’t fit the locks either. Turns out she had picked up the wrong case by mistake. What’s more, when they forced it open they discovered that the owner was, I kid you not, a transvestite. No wonder he’d been making such a fuss.

Arrrrgh Jim Lad

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 09:13:21 GMT

So what had happened? We’d finally arrived and been pirated.

Now Hollywood hates pirates and it wants to see everyone who ever rips or downloads one of their movies behind bars.

But it set me thinking. Outside of the blockbusters, people tend to buy DVDs of movies they’ve already seen – or have been strongly recommended by their mates. Hollywood controls virtually everything that’s on at your local cinema. Indie films like Bad Lad don’t get a look in anywhere other than a few screens in London, which will only book your film if you’re prepared to spend a fortune on marketing, and you’ll end up making a really big loss.

But the pirates? They’re doing the no-budget indie filmmaker a service. Overnight you become ten times more visible. Suddenly people are rating your film on imdb, watching it in Bangkok, and even, and I mean this is priceless, tweeting about it in Iran! Think about it: how much would you have to spend on PR to get any of that?

So, all my new fine and dandy friends, I going to have to start thinking about some ways of saying thank you. Maybe it’s time I started making some Bad Lad T-shirts – what’s your favourite line from the film?

Hey, it gets even better – someone’s just started promoting downloading Bad Lad to their mates in Saudi Arabia!

Come on guys, join me on my Facebook page and let’s start at dialogue…

Government Plans to Abolish UK Film Council

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:56:21 GMT

I was even planning on shooting it on that high rise council estate in London where they shot all their films about excluded minorities.

Damn! That’s me down a few quid. Still, at least they didn’t have anything to do with Bad Lad, which was made on no money and spent four weeks in the ASDA top 30. So, go on, by lucky, make my day, click on the link and buy a copy!

Support ‘Our Boys’ – Get Stoned!

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:00:28 GMT

I remember sitting out once on a headland with J-P and H, a couple of French guys who’d just done their national service in the French navy. Their last tour of duty had taken them to Pakistan, and they had with them several kilos of the finest black hash known to man.

What a fine and dandy time we were having. And not just us, the whole village as well, because, that very week, one of the fishing boats had trawled up 500 kilos of Moroccan ‘zero-zero’ and the local policia had been bought off with 20%.

Those were the days. It’s just such a shame that the Spanish took to turning good Moroccan shit into, well, shit, and then shipping it on to the UK. So for once ‘Mad Tony’ really does know what he’s talking about.

Fortunately, after maybe thirty years or so, courtesy of our brave boys, blocks of best quality gold-seal black Afghan hash have been turning up on the streets. But already this has been causing some people, who should know better, to spread rumours that our squaddies have been scoring it off the enemy. Slander! Take my word for it, this is a blatant lie. Gold-seal hash comes from Mazza in the north which is controlled by warlords violently opposed to the smack-dealing Taliban. So, if you get the chance, enjoy with no fear of guilt.

A recent shipment of Afghani gold-seal, courtesy of our boys.

The film “Guy Richie wishes he could make”

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 09:53:57 GMT

But they also went on to say it’s the sort film “Guy Richie wishes he could make”. And there can be no finer compliment than that.

Diary of a Bad Lad – Extras! Extras! Read all about it!

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 10:10:59 GMT

My webmaster calls all this - “free shit”, but I’d prefer “free stuff”. But you know me, always fair. So before I send Big Billy round to pay him a visit, I need you to tell me which one of us is right. So, is it ‘shit’ or is it ‘stuff’.

Am I one for gratuitous bad language? Am I f*ck!

Meantime, if you want to see Roxi taking more of her kit off, you’ll have to buy the film…

World Cup? Exit through the gift shop…

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 22:56:50 GMT

And then I thought, hang on a sec, when they’re not being rested or sitting on the substitutes’ bench, these guys play a couple of 90 minute games of footie a week, plus the odd European competition game or exhibition match. Besides that they turn up for the odd training session – when they haven’t got a letter from their mum excusing them, that is.

Tired? I know quite a few people with regular jobs who play more football than that each week just for the fun of it. And they only get about four weeks holiday a year.

So, what is it that’s making ‘our boys’ so tired then? Carrying bags of shopping? Going out clubbing? Buying your own night club so you won’t have to teach another DJ a lesson for not letting you plug your iPod into the PA? Or maybe it’s all that hard work travelling the world (on the money we give you) looking for another palatial property to use as a suitable backdrop for the WAG’s day-job; you know, getting paid shed-loads to pose for Hello magazine whilst you’re copping a half-time shag with some groupie behind her back?

And of course there’s all that time you have to spend posing for underwear adverts, magazine covers, acting in TV commercials, talking to the ghost-writer who’s doing your story (or demanding to know why you’re agent hasn’t got you as many contracts as some of the other knob-heads). I mean, don’t people have any idea how tiring it is doing all that and then having to go out and play football?

All I can say is, what a bunch of Jordans.

Keep up with the others!

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 09:56:54 GMT

Poor old Danny Dyer’s less than two star latest, ‘Pimp’ is labouring at Number 52.

And I’ve just been talking to this criminal-law barrister who said, “You know, Tommy, it’s amazing. Unlike anything by Guy Ritchie, Bad Lad’s the first British crime film I’ve ever seen that has characters in it who are just like the people I represent in court.”

Now I wasn’t exactly going to take offence at that, was I? But I did have to put him straight. “No they’re not,” I said. “The people you represent get caught….”

Official Release: Diary of A Bad Lad

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:13:46 GMT

Don't take my word for it. Check out the reviews:

www.pulpmovies.com
www.tcwreviews.com
www.brutalashell.com
fictionmaker.blogspot.com
moviegrrlreviews.wordpress.com

Diary of a Bad Lad Premier at The Plaza Stockport

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 09:14:27 GMT

It's only £5 a ticket and you get a Q&A session with cast and crew thrown in for free. That's gotta be good value. You might even catch a glipse of me down there. Keeping a low profile. Enjoy.

Plaza Box Office - 0161 4777779

Online booking - http://www.quaytickets.com/?Venue=44

Just what is Danny Dyer doing?

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:27:34 GMT

He claims he’s being a bad lad spending weekends with the likes of some of “Britain’s hardest gangsters”. He isn’t, he’s spending them with a crew filming him while he does some “interviews”. I was not impressed.

If he really wants to be someone’s “bitch-for-the-weekend” he should pack plenty of mouthwash, go alone, and be very careful not to drop the soap in the shower.

What do you rate as the best no-budget movies?

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 11:02:34 GMT

“Diary of a Bad Lad is overall a shining example of how good no-budget indie filmmaking can be when the requisite work is put into it…Up and coming no-budget filmmakers, take note: this is the kind of standard you should be aspiring to.”

- which is pretty much what we set out to achieve.

But it set me thinking: which other no-budget movies ‘set the standard’, and how would you rate them? Here’s a few for starters:

“The Blair Witch Project”. I thought it was a brilliant package: they created mountains of hype, a great website, and then Hollywood decided to spend millions marketing it. The trouble was, I thought the film was a terrible let down. I know it worked for a lot of those teenagers who like playing with Ouija boards and get scared if they get lost in the woods. But everyone else thought it was a total let down.

“Paranormal Activity”. Just like TBWP it completely divided audiences. People who identified with it thought it was really scary – but out of the 946 people who’ve posted reviews on imdb.com, they’re the minority. So, does it merit its success, or is it all down to Hollywood hype once again? What do you think?

“Man Bites Dog”. This was one of the films which inspired Barry Lick to set out to make “Diary of a Bad Lad”. But I knew that, if it was going to raise the bar, he needed someone like me on board. But which one’s best? You decide.

Oh Dear Danny

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:15:24 GMT

Then he ends up saying in his column in Zoo magazine that it’s OK to go and slash your girlfriend’s face if she dumps you. “But I didn’t write it!” he bleated, “Someone else ghost writes it for me”. Come on Danny, you’re an actor. All you do is say other people’s lines. So stop being such a Jordan!

Oh yes, and when it comes to the acting, I’m glad to read that your latest epic, “Pimp”, took £205 over its opening weekend, which apparently means that it was twenty-four people who went to see it.

Not that this is sour grapes, mind, but when I saw it was billed as being a ‘docu-drama about someone involved in the sex and drugs business’, I couldn’t help thinking it was a rip-off of something original.

What was its name, Danny? Can’t remember? Oh you are a very bad little lad.

The Crossbow Cannibal

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:18:32 GMT

The law is now completely mad. I mean, it’s perfectly legal to pay people to have sex if it’s in front of a camera and they’re acting in a porn film. But if it’s not in front of a camera then it’s prostitution and it’s illegal…Except, of course, if it takes place in somewhere that’s called a ‘sauna and massage parlour’ somewhere where the police turn a blind eye, that is.

So what the law actually means is that it’s desperate women who are condemned to go out on the streets and face all the dangers.

And why are they desperate? Because they’re so ill they can’t survive without heroin.

OK, so they ended up that way because they made some wrong life-style choices. But we don’t say to people with type-2 diabetes, “You brought this on yourself by eating nothing but junk food, drinking drinks full of sugar, and not getting any exercise. So you’ll just have to score the insulin you now need (that’s been cut with who-knows-what) from scumbags on the streets. And pay for it by going on the game”.

What exactly is banking?

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:38:02 GMT

The banker then takes all this money and lends it at higher rates of interest to people who need it. And the more they need it, the higher the interest. The banker then trousers the difference. He calls this ‘doing a job’.

Bankers then realised they could actually get away with lending and charging interest on money that they didn’t even have in the first place.

And, of course, if anyone can’t make the payments, they send the bailiffs round, grab all their possessions and have them thrown out on the street.

The acid that went on a trip

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:29:44 GMT

International flights? You have to go through customs. Internal flights? No customs - it’s the same as catching the train. So all you have to do is bribe some baggage handlers.

It worked like this: “courier A” carries a suitcase full of drugs onto a plane at Amsterdam airport, flies to Manchester airport where the baggage handlers intercept it. “Courier A” leaves the airport without the case, so they’re clean.

Meanwhile “courier B” flies from Heathrow to Manchester, the baggage handlers add the case full of drugs to the rest of the luggage from the flight, the courier picks it up from the carousel and walks out of the airport cool as you like.

This went on for a long time until the law finally got wind of what was going on and staked out the airport whilst they waited for the Amsterdam flight. All of them were trying to get in on the act: police, customs and excise, drug squad, you name it – in fact so many it was obvious to the baggage handlers that something was going down.

So what did they do? They chucked the suitcase onto a flight bound for New York where it ended up going round and round and round on the carousel for hours until someone finally got suspicious and the bomb squad picked it up - only to discover that it actually contained four hundred thousand tabs of acid.

Diary of a Bad Lad one of the best films of 2009

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 11:01:05 GMT

As the executive producer this makes me very proud of everyone who put their heart and soul into the film. But how did it come to get such an accolade when it won’t be out in the UK until the end of June?

Well here’s a bit of inside gen: it’s actually easier to get your film ‘out there’ in the USA than it is in the UK. Most British distributors spend all their time ‘playing safe’, which is why they’re only interested in completely unoriginal romantic comedies (set in London), or remakes of old horror movies (set ‘out in the sticks’), or British films that have already done well somewhere else!

A very good example of this is “The Last Horror Movie” – which, BTW, is another movie which draws some of its inspiration from the Belgian classic, “Man Bites Dog”. No one in Britain would touch it, until it had spent two years selling shed loads of DVDs in North America, that is.

When it comes to Bad Lad, though, I’d only just started organising a bit of a US release when Safecracker Pictures came along with an offer I’d have been a fool to refuse…

Barry Lick

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:48:45 GMT

I had to explain to him that it’s not like that, at least not most of the time. I mean, the people who are good at it are the people who don’t get caught. And they don’t get caught because they don’t behave like characters from “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” or any other one of Guy Richie’s public-schoolboy fantasies. What is it about toffs that makes them get off on all of that?

No, all the real people are people you’d never suspect – like the guy who invested his cocaine money setting up what came to be one of the biggest chain of mobile phone shops in the Manchester area. Now he only got caught because the American DEA were tapping telephones in Colombia, and someone just happened to mention his name - and the DEA got the British authorities to check him out.

Mind you, once Barry agreed to me becoming the Executive Producer, I made sure he got just about everything he wanted.

Coked Up Bankers

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:16:00 GMT

I mean, how could anyone work long hours in a mad frenzy, then go spraying each other with Champagne at £300 a bottle in lap-dancing clubs, and then be back at work a few hours and a few codeines later, without having both nostrils full of coke?

And what were they doing? Working out the financial equivalent of selling poor suckers cars with faulty brakes, and then taking out life insurance on them behind their backs so you cleaned up when they killed themselves, that’s what.

Cocaine and the Credit Crunch

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:13:55 GMT

For sure the twenties were a bad time for most people. But if you were in finance it was a different matter altogether. The stock markets were nothing more than bent casinos where slickers made fortunes using loaded dice to play with other people’s money. And they spent it on very expensive ways of having a good time: grossly overpriced champagne, cocaine, and young women. I mean, just look at their dance crazes - how could anyone do the Charleston all night without being on stimulants? And the thing was, the more money they made the more they were coked out of their heads. And the more out of their heads they were, the more reckless and corrupt they became – until the bubble finally burst, that is.