Read an exclu­sive extract from Richard Ayoade’s new book, ​‘The Grip of Film’

For his lat­est for­ay into the world of pub­lish­ing, cel­e­brat­ed British actor and film­mak­er Richard Ayoade presents a guide to the movies as viewed through the unique lens of Gordy LaSure, a man who knows the indus­try inside and out and isn’t afraid to speak his mind. The book is an A‑W explo­ration of the cin­e­mat­ic medi­um which seeks an answer to such search­ing ques­tions as: why are some films bad, and some films ter­ri­ble? And how come just a hand­ful of film (Titan­ic, Porky’s, Dirty Har­ry) are any good at all? Here’s a lit­tle taste of what Gordy has to say…

Will there ever be a Hol­ly­wood film star­ring more than one Asian per­son?
Maybe if every non-Asian actor dies. And if the cost of reviv­i­fy­ing those dead non-Asian actors is pro­hib­i­tive.
Some peo­ple are gonna cry ​‘racism’. Well, cry me a riv­er and meet me down the delta of Dont­GiveA­Fuck.
Not hir­ing peo­ple because of their race is a con­sti­tu­tion­al right.
That’s one of the rea­sons I came to this coun­try.
Should I go to jail because I don’t trust Cau­casians to do valet park­ing? Appar­ent­ly, yes. And I have.
The fact that Hol­ly­wood won’t hire Asian peo­ple except as back­ground play­ers clus­tered round a com­put­er has pre­cise­ly jack shit to do with typ­ing, let alone stere­os.
Fact is, the only stereo type I’ll even think about buy­ing is a Yama­ha.
And I’m the racist?
Please.

In the open­ing shot of Row­dy Herrington’s 1989 mag­num opus about the secret world of secu­ri­ty guards, the cam­era frames a pair of high heels piv­ot­ing out of a recent­ly opened car door, before pan­ning up to a HOT GIRL walk­ing toward a club in a CLINGY DRESS. The title comes up, salmon pink: Road House.
Straight off the bat we know this film has style.
The title of this chap­ter is a fan­cy word for it.
Movies need an AES­THET­IC. Why do you think James Bond is so pop­u­lar? I dis­trust For­eign Nation­als and women as much as the next inti­ma­cy-shy sociopath, but these films have much more to offer than the admit­ted­ly sooth­ing balm of xeno­pho­bia and casu­al misog­y­ny.
The rea­son Bond movies give every­one a BON­ER THAT WON’T SQUASH BACK is sim­ple: they shit style.
Din­ner jack­ets, cuf­flinks, crisp white shirts, slinky dress­es, orches­tral swells, après-ski, thin guns, chalets, cars that only seat one pas­sen­ger – Jesus, it’s so sophis­ti­cat­ed I’m get­ting a semi.
Is your movie giv­ing the audi­ence a semi?

Dan­ny DeVi­to on his own is god­dam mag­nif­i­cent. Schwarzeneg­ger solo ain’t too shab­by. But put them togeth­er and what you got?
The film­mak­ers called it Twins.
I call it ALCHE­MY.
Because although base mate­ri­als can’t turn into gold, high con­cepts
can.

High-end philoso­pher Pla­to (dead, Greek) thought that every­thing on earth was an imper­fect copy of its ​‘ide­al form’.
​‘What is a bicy­cle pump?’ Pla­to would have said. ​‘Not the imper­fect one I’m point­less­ly pum­mel­ing – this is but a shad­ow.
Nay, in some oth­er dimen­sion there exists an absolute bicy­cle pump, where its pumpi­ness is at its most bicy­cley. And when we pic­ture a bicy­cle pump, it’s this per­fect pump of mem­o­ry that we do behold.’
But a phi­los­o­phy of pumps won’t get us any fur­ther down the free­way than a piece-of-shit bicy­cle.
So what about Man? What is our Pla­ton­ic form? What is our essen­tial nature? Where might we find our soul?
The Movies, more than 200 years lat­er, have an answer:
In our ASS.
Dur­ing the cli­mac­tic show­down of Row­dy Herrington’s tran­scen­dent 1989 door­man dram­e­dy Road House, local busi­ness mag­nate Brad Wes­ley (Ben Gaz­zara) taunts Dal­ton (Patrick Swayze): ​‘I see you’ve found my tro­phy room, Dal­ton. The only thing miss­ing is your ass.’ Why does Wes­ley want Dalton’s ass so bad?
We instinc­tive­ly under­stand Dalton’s ass to be some­thing impor­tant, and yet we know that this par­tic­u­lar ass – like all ass – does not exist in its own right. Dalton’s ass is not some­thing sep­a­rate from the rest of Dal­ton; it is not a sev­er­able com­po­nent.
Dal­ton can­not hand over his ass. Dal­ton hand­ing his ass to Wes­ley would be the same as giv­ing Wes­ley his essence.
Dalton’s ass is Dal­ton at his most dis­tilled. To take Dalton’s ass is to take Dal­ton him­self.
Because Dal­ton is ass.
And this kind of ass is some­thing far big­ger than the ​‘ars­es’ I grew up with in Glas­gow (and that’s say­ing some­thing). Cos an ​‘arse’ is just a cou­pla cheeks and a syphon sys­tem.
So while it’s pos­si­ble to act like an ​‘arse’, to be an ​‘arse’ or even to select a gear for your ​‘arse’ to be in, there’s some­thing shrunk­en about the term, which cor­re­sponds to the provin­cial nature of UK cin­e­ma in gen­er­al.
British Arse lacks the life-affirm­ing expan­sive­ness of Amer­i­can Ass.
That kind of ass – Amer­i­can Movie Ass – is made of groin, guts and anus. It’s so much big­ger than an ​‘arse’. It’s the site of our true selves.

‘Richard Ayoade presents The Grip of Film by Gordy LaSure’ is pub­lished by Faber & Faber on 5 October.