Legacy of the Cool Kids
Hinton was an integral instigator of the creatives who were known as the New Romantics, the ‘inverts, subverts, perverts’ and counter-culture originators who spawned and spewed their art while living in squats in 1980s London, dancing and drugging and dressing up at parties, cafés, and clubs in King’s Road, Soho, and the West End, taking full advantage of their dole money and state-sponsored art schools, seeking the escapism they craved from Thatcher’s conservative, factory-fodder England, and revelling in the cross-pollination across mediums they inspired.
Tramps!, which zooms in on this movement, is no nostalgia piece. Instead, it is a deep-dive into the lives of these artists who were known for their surface-level flamboyance but who interwove and evolved genres as diverse as dance, film, fashion, art, and music. In doing so, they transmuted our visual reference points, resulting in reverberations that are glaringly evident in our culture today.
For Kevin, the question he wanted answered by the stalwarts of the scene was how they survived those times, and these, as artists togeth- er, and how they continue(d) to be provoked to provoke while remaining so achingly, energetically cool. With a heady contemporary soundtrack backed by dug-up archival footage and interviews with Princess Julia, Judy Blame, John Maybury, Les Child, Scarlett Cannon, and Jeffrey Hinton, it’s a wild, fun, relentless romp of a film that not only answers Hegge’s question but also lovingly fulfils his wish: ‘I hope this movie makes people want to go out and party.’
Tramps! explores the creative community that was coined as the New Romantics, which coalesced around the late 1970s in London. Tell me what led to your interest in them and your making of a documentary feature on this movement?
It’s funny because in getting that question, I don’t really know. I made a film in 2013 that was meant to reinvigorate my interest in the city I live in, Toronto, because I’ve always wanted to live somewhere like London. And I had a pre-existing fascination with all things subcultural in Britain; all my favourite bands, movies, and artists came from there. I was a huge fan of this choreographer, Michael Clark, and obviously Leigh Bowery had become this iconic figure. In that time, Leigh Bowery hadn’t become embraced as a household name with queers and fashion people, really, so learning about him, he became this mystical deity for the freaks that I hung out with and the freaks that inspired my nightlife and cultural perspective in Toronto.
That movie was about a Canadian band called Fifth Column, but really it was about how they made zines and films too. So it had similar themes to Tramps! in that everyone was creating their own DIY art, which then morphs into a movement. When The Story of Fifth Column went to London, people I’d heard about through the margins of my own personal interest in British subculture were around at the British Film Institute’s Flare Festival in 2013, where the film featured. I met Jeffrey Hinton, and a friend of mine mentioned that he was friends with Leigh and the people of the Warren Street Squat, and I started learning about that. He’s a well of kindness and information, and he’s just a beautiful person.
There was a series of social media coincidences when I came back to Toronto, where I was asking him about Michael Clark’s early work and why you couldn’t see it, and Jeffrey said, ‘Why are you asking about that?’ But [then] he said, ‘The reason why you haven’t seen it is because I shot all those videos of those early shows.’ It was a crazy coincidence. While I was in London, the tangibility of Princess Julia and Jeffrey being there, and their links to the people that I did know [of], like Leigh Bowery, meant I just knew that I wanted to make a movie there, and I wanted to expand what I’d done with Fifth Column into more of an international thing.
London was always so inspiring and so tangible and so beautiful to me. All British people say (puts on British accent), ‘We hate it here: the weather, the government,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh God, the government’s bad everywhere.’ Basically, I just needed inspiration, and I really felt it in London. I was questioning myself a lot, thinking it was so fruitless making documentaries, especially when it wreaks havoc on your mental health.
Tell me about the Warren Street Squat.
There were all these squats in central London in the late 1970s, and one would have running water and one would have a phone line. Jeffrey had just started sharing his photos and videos of that time, because he was an obsessive documenter, but because of the horror of AIDS, he really didn’t revisit that work for a long time. So he only just started exhibiting these photographs. At the National Portrait Gallery in London, he had a show where he talked about Warren Street specifically, and Boy George was there. Somebody had mentioned that in one of their squats they had a phone line, and Boy George was like, ‘What the fuck! I lived there for two years. I didn’t know we had a phone line! I had to go down the street [to make calls]!’ So there were all these funny stories.
My original idea was to have a geographical map of who lived where, and through that to start talking about their art practices and what a special time that was: that everyone could live for free, they had grants to go to school, and it was pre-AIDS so there wasn’t any sense of consequence. I loved the opportunities that were there.
Originally, Warren Street Squat was a central point, and the reason why that squat in particular was an outstanding place is because David Holah, one of the designers from BodyMap, lived there. John Maybury the filmmaker lived there. Boy George the popstar lived there. Princess Julia lived in the basement on the dirt floor. So there were a lot of iconic people that hung out there. It was just an artsy-hipster place, and that was really the starting point [for the movie]. I didn’t really intend to talk about bars, but those clubs and many others were central to the performance [of these artists]—their per- formance being a look or an attitude.
It’s so interesting, that whole squat scene, especially in London. They’ve always been there, and it’s been so integral to so many young artists and movements lurching forward.
I think now it’s become very politicised. In the North London area near Finsbury Park/Manor House, where I was first staying, there’s a lot of warehouses and artsy squats there. I also met some people through Jeffrey who lived in the farthest reaches of the city, and they were more activists. I didn’t engage that much with what’s happening now. A lot of people said to me, ‘You have to make the movie relevant and show what’s happening today,’ and I kept thinking, Why? It’s a fantasy film; it’s fantasy.
But the squats were absolutely integral to this movement’s cross-pollination. We talk about that in the movie. John Maybury would be making films, then David Holah’s outfits would be in them, then Jeffrey and Julia would star in them—and squat or not, it’s the same thing that happened to me when I was in college. It’s just the nature of being young and living with so many people and being an artist.
What I love about the movie is that sometimes we get so close-minded about one kind of genre or scene, but the film really shows how this movement evolved, and to me, that was really interesting, how it changed through a political, cultural context.
I wanted to debunk the whole punk thing. My intention was to talk more about the industrial scene, but it didn’t work out that way because punk was actually very meaningful to people. It was a very tender community. I wanted to skip it because I was so sick of hearing about the p-word, and it was also a similar timeline in my first movie, so I didn’t want to talk about punk anymore. The film made me really re-evaluate what that community was, though, and what it looked like. The fact that they were all listening to Donna Summer—I love that because that’s what we see in life now. Now pop music is all melded because of the internet. All the punks listen to Beyoncé, everyone loves Rihanna.
People are always saying to me that my documentaries are about niche things, but to me Tramps! is a pop movie. It’s always very important to me to make it fun. Just because it’s fun doesn’t mean that it’s not smart or important. Some people who reviewed it, who were giving us feedback before we finished it, said all these things, but I asked, ‘But is it cool?’ Because I want it to look fun, I want it to sound cool.
People really respond to the energy of the film, which is so, so great because the soundtrack is a huge part of [the movie for me]. It’s incessant and it never stops. I think it’s important because the movie is an hour and forty-five minutes, but nobody ever feels like it is.
It makes so much sense that you would want to relay that kind of energy, because that’s the energy they had, that they still have, and that’s the whole point of the movie.
The soundtrack is by Verity Susman, from Electrelane, and Matt Simms, who plays in a million bands. I knew that we couldn’t afford all this licensed music from that era, but I also didn’t want it to be literal. With the archival footage and the music, I didn’t want someone to talk about how grey London was and then you see a shot of grey London. I wanted to use the art that was produced at the time as a more abstracted visual and [have] the music do the same. I thought the music would bring it into a contemporary world.
So [at] first I was sending them songs from the era—gay campy stuff, like Jean Paul Gaultier’s song—but it felt really wrong. Once we started placing music, I started placing music like Coil, Throbbing Gristle, and Klaus Nomi, more industrial music, and then Verity and Matt were like, ‘Now we’re talking.’ I’m a huge fan of both of them, so I just said, ‘Do anything you want.’ My only instruction was ‘Don’t have any chill. Have no chill and go to town, and let’s see what happens.’ And they did. There’s a scene where everyone’s pogo-ing at a punk show, and I said, ‘Make them sound like popcorn.’ They did; they made this weird, bubbling sound.
A lot of people have thankfully responded to the music because I think of it as just as important as the picture. You could just talk about the music alone. Having that original score is way cooler. It does reflect more of the energy at a conceptual level, so I didn’t want to have those licensed songs, even when the opportunity provided itself. The music is the language of the film.
There’s a quote you’ve said that this film is about the ‘passing of the baton.’ I feel like the music has an element of that—the energy that this collective imbued is then passed onto the sound artists.
I didn’t want it to sound ’80s because there’s three generations that feature within the movie. There’s the ’60s and ’70s with the elders like Andrew Logan, and then you get into the punk people in the ’80s, and then there’s the now. We don’t look at the now, but we talk about being alive now. I think the tale also isn’t about the Blitz Kids [who hung out at the Blitz club on Tueday nights]. It’s really about trying to stay alive and creating something meaningful, and how many sacrifices you have to make in order to do that, and how terrifying that is. So, really, I think that it’s a universal message, and the music does encapsulate that and the modernity that I think is always ignored [around] the word “punk” or “art movement.” When you talk about “movement,” it’s about moving, it’s about change. When you talk about fashion, you’re talking about the future, about what’s next.
Everyone always talks about punk like it’s this concrete tomb, which it is. There’s a great line by Princess Julia where she says, ‘By the time everyone was dressed as punk, we were dressed like robots’ because Gary Numan was popular and they were listening to synthesisers and Kraftwerk and musicians like that. So that was more appealing to me. Talking about the scene at this time, it was more about movement and how Derek Jarman took John Maybury under his wing, and then John Maybury took so-and-so under his wing, and then so-and-so took me under his wing. These were all lessons that I was learning when I was making this movie—the gratitude of their knowledge and their time. I wanted to put that back into the movie.
So when you see Derek Jarman, when you see Andrew Logan, even Boy George, it’s a level playing field, and it’s all about how artistic communities survive because you keep on nurturing the next generation. And a lot of the time, the people younger than you end up nurturing you because you don’t know what the fuck is going on out there. I love that conversation between young and old. The worst thing I hate is when people talk about ‘kids these days.’ That’s what’s cool about today, is the kids. I really think that although everyone in this movie is older, it’s still a film about youth culture.
It’s that thing about being boxed in by your age.
I think the older you get, the less fucks you should give, and you should just get crazier and crazier. I know that I am. I love the fact that I [feel] inspired to keep moving. Youth culture is about movement, change, evolution, and I think people like Princess Julia really embody that. Because by nature, she’s not struggling to remain relevant. She’s legitimately youthful because she’s interested. That’s something that is important to me too. After the pan demic, all my friends wanted to go out dancing again, and I didn’t feel like it, but I fear that if I’m not interested in something then I’m not interesting. I think being jaded and thinking that you’ve done your time is depressing and the quickest way to become old.
I love that you were looking to the people you feature in the film to give you lessons and guidance on how to keep on moving and how to be inspired. I was wondering what else you learnt from their answers to those questions?
That’s the funny thing, isn’t it? Nobody ever knows the answer. They said they didn’t really have a choice. I was always asking them and talking about the precariat generation, where you don’t necessarily have one professional job, you do a lot of things, and fear is central to that experience. I was using them to help me answer ‘What should I do? Should I go back to school, should I get a job in a bank?’ I was really scared, and that’s the end of the movie.
The movie ends on a very “shit happens” note. We get into a lot of dark stuff, and when I ask them to reflect on why they didn’t give up, it just never even occurred to them. So, the precariat situation we see now is how they chose to live. Julia chose to be a DJ, a writer, and that’s how I live. And she admits, ‘Yeah, it’s hard.’ Sometimes you do have less money than other times. Les Child the dancer mentions, ‘It’s feast and famine, peaks and troughs,’ and that’s the life of an artist. And the answer is just the community of it all; that’s the shared experience that some people are drawn to. It’s a tepid answer but still uplifting and honest.
It’s important to me that people who watch this movie normalise feeling terrified all the time and that it’s not not normal. That everybody isn’t more successful than you. I’m learning that now. It was myopic of me, thinking everyone else was making movies and it was so easy for them and so hard for me. It’s very reassuring to go to documentary film festivals and talk to other directors who are still trying to pay for things too. Success is really measured by your ability to survive it. That’s the answer that I attempt to portray.
I was definitely humbled by how little they all complained. Although the ending is neutral, that was a really powerful lesson. Judy Blame was like ‘Fuck this town’ but was still ‘Be hopeful.’ And it’s funny because I’m a very, very pessimistic person, but when we were making this movie, I think I needed something to be hopeful. When we were editing it and suddenly the ending started becoming lighter and lighter, I thought, What’s happening to me? When Judy Blame was saying words like ‘hope,’ I thought, I have to edit that out. But at the end of the day, it was totally humbling to see how rooted they were and not whining about everything all the time.
How did filming this movie change your creative process?
My creative process in this film has been destroying any element of character that I had outside of this movie and becoming completely one-dimensionally hostaged (laughs). I think that part’s going to happen now. Now that I’m showing people, I’m thinking, What did I learn? How can I change what I put myself through for the next movie? How do I embrace that spirit moving forward and knowing what I’ve learnt out of this place of total fear?
I’m old enough now too that people are asking me for advice on things, and I’m really making myself available to them, trying to continue these themes that I was interested in in the movie, because I was interested in this passing of the baton and I just wanted to insert myself into that continuation of vocalising your experience. I hope that message will continue in the things that I want to make, because essentially, the movies I make are going to be very self-absorbed in the way that it’s what I want to know next. I’ll find something to be ‘How can I use it to learn what I want to know next?’ With my last film, the conversation started when the movie finished. Having this conversation is great for me because I was trapped inside of getting the movie done and making it good, so now that it’s done, at least the conversation is outside of the brain, and now I can talk to other people.
When I was researching the film, I kept on seeing it being labelled as a queer film, and I was surprised because I did see it as being a film about art and culture foremost.
I even told the PR people, ‘Don’t just write that it’s a “queer” film.’ Why does it have to be pigeonholed within this? Of course everyone’s gay. It’s fashion! And for me, the movie is important in that it’s more in the art and fashion realm because it is about art and fashion. It’s not about being queer or being gay. If you see the section on BodyMap, it’s longer than any other section because I couldn’t help looking at it. Their runway shows are so spectacular and joyous and revolutionary, and it reminds me of all the stuff that’s gone on with Hood by Air.
Now everyone’s remixing the runway experience, and BodyMap were doing that throughout their career, and that’s so important to me in the movie. We do talk about Leigh Bowery, and hopefully it shows a lot about shame, physical structure, and form and how you can transcend that, but that’s fashion. The art and fashion in the film are central to me, and then the art that surrounds that, because a lot of people think that fashion and art aren’t humane things, that they’re calculated and luxurious, but it’s about movement.
It’s an honour to have support from the queer community, and thankfully things are moving forward within that community too, where people of colour and queer people of colour are being pushed into the central vision of it, which is an amazing thing to see. As much as the support is good, I think that maybe there’s a wider audience for this message in this film. Queer should be about moving forward, about radical voices, talking about what we need to talk about now. I think that’s what the queer festivals should do, so the fact that they’re including me, I feel thankful.
I didn’t intentionally try to make the film about queerness. Online, there are reviews that say things like ‘He re-establishes the queer voices,’ whereas I didn’t mean to do that. It’s just that usually, historically speaking, it’s the gays that do the interesting things first. That’s the way it is in fashion, that’s the way it is in music, that’s the way it is in art. I didn’t intend to talk about queer people; it’s just the people who I was interested in were interesting. But if it helps put the movie in front of the queer community, I love that. But at the same time, it’s really frustrating that people respond to a synopsis they’ve read of the film as opposed to the actual film. I really think there is a soul to fashion and that it can effect change. And with the BodyMap section, it really is about this uncontainable optimism in their work that was happening in the bleakest of times.
It’s fascinating how you reference such mainstay publications like i-D and The Face that were just zines starting out then.
There can be whole documentaries about them. Judy Blame debunks the idea of what glamour is because it’s a DIY thing. It’s a totally punk thing. When I was at his house, he had all this jewellery that was laid out, and he was giving it to Rei Kawakubo [of Comme des Garçons]. I asked him if it bothered him that [with] Louis Vuitton and Chanel and CDG and Dior—all the people that he’s made work for—he’s just making all the rich people in the world look cool, but he’s like, ‘Fuck no, I don’t want to be like those people.’
That optimism and that resilience, do you think it came out of or was a result of the AIDS epidemic?
It’s so hard to know. When I asked people about [the AIDS epidemic, they said], it really decimated the community. I try and show that the creative community isn’t just the people that you see alive. There are stylists, hair- dressers, freaks, artists, singers who didn’t get famous, and all those people are contributors to the energy of that scene too; it’s not just the people you see in my movie.
When you ask people about it and you see that that devastation is right there, it’s right behind their eyes, it’s really terrifying. You immediately see them and see their dead friends and family like it was yesterday. That scene went really dark, especially with heroin too. I didn’t even realise—and I wish that I’d seen this before I made the movie—but I was in London looking through an old magazine at the store called Waste, and there were full-on ads about heroin in magazines. It was so rampant. There were these times when I was thinking, How am I going to find a soul about this movie that’s about clothes? But it wasn’t hard.
How did you manage to do that, do you think?
Just talking to people about themselves. These people have always been asked about the Blitz or Boy George. They’ve never been asked about themselves. There are so many people I sat down with that I asked ‘What about you? Where did you come from?’ to also show and ask about the diversity of the art practices, the diversity of the artists of that era.
The Blitz club was just one night, but on Thursday nights, Sade and all the Central Saint Martins people had a soul funk night in the same club, but people don’t go on about that night. That was at the same club, at the same week, at the same time. [I was] asking people about themselves, and because survival was the root of my interest, I just made the film about people. It wasn’t my job to fetishise this movement; it was my job to find out the answers to these other questions—and that puts the people, their experiences and emotional experiences front and centre.