Alcopop! Records have always enjoyed an extra-curricular challenge. From hijacking UKIP’s website to releasing records on frisbees, podcasts on vinyl and other hi-jinks, it may not always be lucrative but, hey, why look at the bottom line when you could be gazing at the stars?
So it’s perhaps no great surprise that we’re now welcoming the first movie from Studio Alcopop, although the subject is perhaps unlikely. Directed by Jon Spira and narrated by Ray Winstone, Hollywood Bulldogs is the story of Britain’s finest stuntpeople, who’ve graced the greatest movies but are curiously unsung when it comes to BAFTA awards and the like: the film’s release has already spawned a few headlines, in that regard.
Alcopop’s own risk-taker, Jack Clothier, told us how it all happened.
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What’s the origin story of Studio Alcopop?
If I was a wanky marketing executive I'd be talking about ‘expanding the Alcopop universe,’ but it’s really, how do we move along with things? We're technically a record label so we should release music, but you start on one thing and then you want to go and kind of explore. We work with such a smorgasbord of artists…
Making videos, record covers, merch – I suppose labels do work with lots of different creatives, not just musicians.
Exactly that, and the beauty of indie music is you follow your heart a little bit, because fuck it, we can. There’s nobody above us saying, ‘look at the bottom line, that's not a sensible move.’
I was thinking about film for quite a while. And serendipitously, I have a friend called Jon [Spira], we knew each other from the old Oxford video store Videosyncratic. He was always very inspiring, and he basically came to us with this film, Hollywood Bulldogs.
He released a film before called Elstree 1976 which did incredibly well – and got a lot of shit from Star Wars fans.
Easily done!
He got an advance to make another film about that kind of stuff, they went off, did a lot of the pre-work, and basically the day the film was supposed to start shooting the company went bankrupt.
So essentially, Jon came to us: ‘We're looking for a UK distributor and I thought of you guys, because of the way you put out records.’ And I thought, ‘this fits exactly with the way we're taking things forward.’ And there began our journey into Studio Alcopop.
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You’re a label with a pretty loyal fanbase already, which I imagine is a nice head start for a new film company?
It's a sort of inclusive, positive community, and it's been a really nice reaction – ‘Great! Interesting to see what you're putting your name to.’
I think film and music, they cross over anyway. Clean Cut Kid are a great example, their videos are works of art in their own right. They’re making a film for the recording of their next record, which has been quite emotional over a long period of time: this gives us scope to put it out properly, do screenings.
So suddenly, it opens things up for us. When musicians create something that's a bit more than just a pop video, we kind of lacked a place to put it.
How much Alcopop music is in Hollywood Bulldogs then?
It’s not Alcopop music per se, but bizarrely the guy who did the soundtrack was one of the first artists we ever released, Jamie Hyatt. Family Machine we released him as, but before that he was in Medal, who in Oxford were sort of contenders for the Radiohead throne.
It’s really, really lovely, and works super well with the film, and it’s a super nice connection. But the film came to us finished, it's not like we were involved in the making process. It’s like an album, the bands will bring it and go ‘right, where do we go from here?’
So you weren’t going ‘I've got this new Subways single that'd be brilliant for the end credits…’
There's a potentially wonderful synergy, yeah! But this was a first step for us, a big process, learning the film industry, picking up our new distributor. The things you have to deal with, with a film, these monstrously large files – you never get sent a 200-gigabyte record. – And the BluRay, it's just something I've never even considered.
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With smaller films, documentaries, it was always about the festival circuit, getting noticed – or is it increasingly online now?
With film, it’s a bit more of a process to get it up. When you submit the film, it has to be quality assurance checked, the companies decide whether they want to take it on or not. So you pitch it to Sky, to Virgin, then you have to get artwork done for every platform, 700 different artwork files. Then of course you've got the difficulty of actually just screening the thing – you can’t just stick it up on SoundCloud.
It’s an interesting time to start, as the cinema landscape has changed a lot over the last two years.
There's a lot of pressure, particularly on independent cinemas, to make sure they're getting people through the doors; less opportunity to take risks, I guess. We were originally thinking of releasing this when the Bond movie came out, but there was no joy anywhere: ‘We’ve just got Bond on!’
So it's been fascinating to jump into that, the machinations of it. It has been tricky, but fun. As soon as Jon told me Ray Winstone was involved, we were kind of excited.
How did they get him on board?
He just liked the idea of the film. I think it’s something that’s quite important to him, the lack of representation for some people in the BAFTAs. And that’s been at the heart of why the film needs to be made really, to showcase how incredible these people are. The fact that they're putting their body on the line to create these films.
Actors are always saying that they do loads of their own stunts – perhaps they’d rather we forgot that stunt-people exist.
I wonder if it's something to do with that. I think different actors have different relationships with their stuntpeople. Some of them are quite celebratory of them, others not so.
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Back to music, had you licensed much Alcopop stuff to film before?
We've done bits and bobs. we've had TV, films, which is always lovely, Netflix series. We had a wonderful Australian dogfood commercial, they kept playing it over and over again, seven seconds of My First Tooth for about six years. None of us ever even saw the advert, this dog bouncing across the beach.
This possibility of synergy between film and music, we're only getting started. This is our first release, and we have an advantage over a lot of others in that we have a catalogue of music with respected artists, waiting to be used. I do wonder if there's a real interesting potential of us getting involved earlier with the soundtrack. I'm really keen to see how we can sync these worlds together.
Give it a few years, you’ll be one of these guys with the big chair, big cigar, on six different phones.
All I wanted to do was call my mum and tell her I'm going to Hollywood, you know what I mean?
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Hollywood Bulldogs is out now, click here for more information.
Words: Si Hawkins // @SiHawkins
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