James Hunter, an English singer with an abiding passion for American soul music of the late fifties and early sixties, was born in 1962, and he grew up in a working-class family in Colchester, Essex. In the pursuit of the music he loves, he’s worked odd jobs—on the railroad, as a laborer, and backing Van Morrison—and by the time he was forty-one, he found himself without a record deal or any gigs. He turned to busking, was rediscovered by record-business insiders, and, in 2006, he released an album of burning soul songs, “People Gonna Talk,” that picked up Grammy nominations and loads of press coverage. He followed that with another release “The Hard Way,” which was met with similar success. He’s back this week, with “Minute By Minute,” his first album in five years.
Hunter is more than a singer and songwriter though. He also loves films—watching them and making them. He recently shot, animated, and directed a video for the title track from his new album. We’re proud to present it here, and Hunter has given us a bit of insight into how the video came to be.
Can you tell me about your interest in film, film cameras, and how this passion developed for you?
I first started messing about with cine film in 1995, just after the broadcast of a BBC Arena documentary about Peter Sellers and his obsession with filming his own life. They had unearthed footage from the time of his earliest flush of success as a radio mimic, before he was a household name. Therefore, he was able to afford state-of-the-art movie cameras but was still able to mess about undisturbed in public. The pre-fame footage of him gambolling around in postwar London with his friend Spike Milligan is far more fascinating than the sixties shots of him skiing in St. Moritz.
The sheer beauty of the film stock and his playful experiments with trick photography captivated me enough to make me get hold of a Super 8 camera and have a bash at it.
Once I started making a regular wage out of music, I graduated to 16 mm., and was relieved to find that it wasn’t quite as prohibitively priced as I had previously thought.
Have you made other films?
I made one in 1995, with my friend the actor Ian Barnes (he edited the video, by the way). It was called “Bob and Dusty Present,” and was about two minutes long, silent, black and white, and is a series of pointless vignettes featuring two northeast Essex Carrot Crunchers (non-urban folk) in search of the meaninglessness of life and a missing tin mug.
I appeared with the lads in a proper film in 1996 (came out in 1998) called “Mojo,” directed by Jez Butterworth. It was a great laugh. Harold Pinter was in it and we were terrified of him.
What kind of equipment do you have?
I’ve got a 16 mm. Bolex (Swiss, they are) and a 16 mm. Bell and Howell filmo D7, an American camera that is the exact same model used by Karl Boehm in Michael Powell’s “Peeping Tom” (1960). This one only cost me thirty pounds from a lady in Brighton, so I wasn’t bothered that it didn’t come with the lethal spiked tripod.
I got stopped at Heathrow once coming through security with the Bolex, when the official rather sheepishly told me that it had tested positive for explosives. I said to him, “You’re joking, this bastard couldn’t blow up to 35 mm.”. Fortunately, he laughed instead of arresting me.
What are your favorite films and directors? Does your taste in movies skew to the same period as your taste in music, which is you once defined as being from 1959 to 1962?
Got to be Hitchcock. When you see a Hitchcock you know you’ve been to the pictures. Also, a lot of film noir, but it’s at it’s best from the late forties to the early fifties. The best three actors for that genre (which isn’t purely American) are Jean Gabin (France) Robert Ryan (U.S.A.), and John Mills (U.K.).
There are a fair number of scenes with railway equipment (including some Time Square subway shots) in the video. How does this relate to your time working on railroads yourself?
I was well pleased with that shot of the jazz group at Forty-second Street subway. Because of the low light, I had to open the aperture of the camera way out and film at the slowest speed (which lets more light in). Because of that, the resulting footage came out like the Keystone Cops, so Ian slowed it down digitally for the video.
There is lots of wonderful industrial scenery in the states, notably in Vermont, where there are a couple of privately owned railroads.
Now you mention it, perhaps it does give me a nostalgic twinge for my old job.
What did you actually do on the railroads before your first stint as a recording artist?
The exact term is locking fitter. When I was on the railway, there were only two in the whole Eastern Region. Charlie Beeson, in Colchester, Essex, to whom I was assistant, (if I may use the term so loosely), and a bloke called Alan, in Norwich (Norfolk).
The interlocking system was a safety feature in mechanical signal boxes. You’ve got your signalman up in the box, and he pulls one of those big levers to operate a signal. Underneath the floor of the signal box, the lever moves a few mechanical components across to block another signal lever and prevent conflicting signals from being pulled off. It was full of wonderfully arcane terms like “tappet” “die” and “run-iron” and was beautiful Industrial Revolution technology.
It was also hopelessly complicated, and the one time I attempted to make an adjustment without Charlie’s guidance I made a right dog’s breakfast of it, and was sent home with a flea in my ear.
In the video, the camera is almost always moving. Why is that?
Excessive camera movement is often thought to be a self-indulgent weakness in a film director. For years after “Reservoir Dogs” came out, you never saw a scene at a dinner table that wasn’t filmed by a cameraman propelled around the characters on roller skates. Although it has become an annoying cinematic tic, a moving shot is one of my favorite effects, perhaps because it emphasizes the difference between stills and motion-picture photography. It was just luck that the theme of the song—i.e., getting home—happened to match my weakness for tracking shots.
When did you shoot the images/stock?
The footage on the video was shot everywhere from Hanwell, West London, to New York, between 2007 and 2011.
The first bit, of me swinging under the bridge and then appearing over it was on the Hanwell flight of the Grand Union Canal, which ran by the bottom of the road Jackie and I lived in. She filmed that trick shot under my direction, probably better than I would have.
Jason Wilson, our bass player, is then shown skulking in an alleyway behind Denmark Street, London. That alley won’t be there much longer. It’s going to be sacrificed to the new Rail Link, so more tourists can see how little of London is still standing.
Then there’s Brick Lane market, shot in thirty-year-old Kodachrome.
The color shot of me and Jackie was taken at Penns Landing, Philadelphia. That was our favorite hangout. We used to sit there until the Campbell’s Soup sign lit up across the river in Camden, then go home.
The fellow reading his paper was taken by the Port Authority, in New York, and the bulldog in the pushchair was being wheeled towards the New York Public Library, possibly as a temporary replacement for one of the lions.
Where did you get the clips of the dancing girls who feature in the video?
They are girls from the neighborhoods, picking up what was probably a much needed few bob in those days (nineteen-thirties) by agreeing to star in a nudie flick. I bought it on eBay, from a seller who had only seen the first few frames (of a gentleman in a pith helmet reading a map) because he didn’t have a projector. I have since contacted the seller, told him what treasures were on the film, and offered to lend it back to him when he finally gets a projector. Fair’s fair!
Hunter’s new album comes out today, and he has a show on February 27th at the Bell House, in Brooklyn, to celebrate.
