Fast food, slow acting and music as emotion: a remix blog on Petit's Radio On
A bit like the way Radio On (Remix) (1998) is the director Chris Petit revisiting his Radio On film from 1979, this little blog also returns to the scene of the crime, revisiting my Radio On blog from last year. Yeah man, it's Hiss In The Signal (Remix). Because, having just hit the road again and rewatched Radio On and then also watched Petit and producer Keith Griffiths in long sit-down interviews from 2008 (part of the extras bundled with the BFI DVD), there were a few interesting bits and pieces about the amazing Radio On that lodged in my music- and film-addled brain. Yes, I'm afraid they did. Namely, these things: *From the outset with making Radio On, Petit says he wasn't ever interested in either the characters or the plot, which, you have to say, is pretty clearly borne out by the end product. The film's central figure Robert (David Beames) is a character dialled down to almost zero. Super-low-energy and nearly always totally passive, his main mode seems to b...
