Blackbird, bad movies and the appeal of… | Little White Lies

Black­bird, bad movies and the appeal of egos­ploita­tion cinema

30 Aug 2022

Words by Sean McGeady

Man in white shirt with red markings, looking stern.
Man in white shirt with red markings, looking stern.
Michael Flat­ley’s spy thriller is the lat­est in a grand tra­di­tion of van­i­ty projects which are mem­o­rable for all the wrong reasons.

Few movies arrive with a wind beneath their wings quite like Michael Flatley’s Black­bird, which was pro­duced in 2018 but will final­ly hit UK and Irish cin­e­ma screens Sep­tem­ber 2, 2022. The 64-year-old Lord of the Dance fan­cies him­self as the next James Bond. Bad-films fans fan­cy him as the next Lord of Egosploitation.

A term bestowed to sub-par movies born of irre­press­ible ego­tism, egos­ploita­tion’ flicks are typ­i­cal­ly writ­ten, financed and direct­ed by their star, who often casts him­self (it’s always a he) as an action hero or a mes­si­ah fig­ure, and whose sex­u­al con­quests are about 10 times out of his league (and at least 10 years younger than him).

Hol­ly­wood has always been awash with auteurs who have the clout, the cash and the courage to write, direct, pro­duce and star in their own fea­ture films: Char­lie Chap­lin did it with 1921’s The Kid; Orson Welles with Cit­i­zen Kane 20 years lat­er; and Bar­bra Streisand with Yentl in 1983. But these are Good™ films – self-impor­tant, per­haps, but also pol­ished and pro­fes­sion­al. In the hands of fan­ta­sist film­mak­ers with big ideas and lit­tle expe­ri­ence, these van­i­ty vehi­cles are much more like­ly to crash and burn. 

When Ben Affleck [co-pro­duced], starred in and direct­ed Argo and it won the Oscar, nobody called it egos­ploita­tion,” says Tim­on Singh, founder of the Bris­tol Bad Film Club and a day-one Black­bird obses­sive. It’s only egos­ploita­tion if it fails, and then it’s like, Look at the ego on this bastard!’.”

His­tor­i­cal­ly these bas­tards’ have been respon­si­ble for some of cinema’s most howl­ing­ly good bad movies. Made by a man from who-knows-where with a cheque­book as big as the chip on his shoul­der, The Room is con­sid­ered the Cit­i­zen Kane of egos­ploita­tion. Tom­my Wiseau cast him­self as a benev­o­lent banker who is betrayed by his best friend and his fiancée, and the film feels like Wiseau’s sad exposé of these real-life deceptions. 

You know this is based on some past expe­ri­ence with Tom­my,” says Singh, who has had mul­ti­ple real-world inter­ac­tions with Wiseau. When it’s infor­ma­tion about the lead char­ac­ter and they’ve writ­ten it, it’s like, Oh, come on, mate’.” He adds that Wiseau makes him­self out to be a god among men” in the movie – and that’s not relatable”.

Rob Hill, YouTu­ber and author of The Bad Movie Bible, likes his egos­ploita­tion direc­tors more down-to-earth. His favourite? Steve Bar­kett. It was his life’s pas­sion,” says Hill. He just want­ed to be a movie star. He devot­ed every­thing to it. His two films are rub­bish but they’re absolute­ly delight­ful, because you can feel the ener­gy and faith he put into them.”

Both films, 1982’s The After­math and 1990’s Empire of the Dark, fea­ture the US writer, pro­duc­er, direc­tor and edi­tor play­ing a father fig­ure to his real-life son Christo­pher. The movies are shod­dy but the love is evi­dent. Barkett’s movies feel more like real­i­sa­tions of long-held dreams than acts of social reprisal or pow­er-fan­ta­sy pos­tur­ing. The same can­not be said for Wiseau. Or Neil Breen. 

Breen exem­pli­fies egos­ploita­tion. His five films bor­der on art brut – naïve art typ­i­cal­ly pro­duced by pris­on­ers, chil­dren and the men­tal­ly ill, peo­ple whose pure cre­ative impuls­es are unsul­lied by social expec­ta­tion and for­mal edu­ca­tion. They’re so far removed from pop­u­lar wis­doms about the lan­guage of cin­e­ma that they unfold like alien approx­i­ma­tions of earth­ly art. 

Neil Breen has no self-aware­ness, almost to the point of it being a med­ical con­di­tion,” says Hill. He’s mak­ing what he sees as an art film, which is very much what Tom­my Wiseau did. Because they’ve got a screw loose, they can’t gauge how much of them­selves to give away, how obvi­ous to make the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal aspects, how vul­ner­a­ble to be, so they often go way over­board and reveal more of who they are than they ever imag­ined they would.”

Lit­tle is known about Breen, but his nar­ra­tives betray a score of deep-seat­ed inse­cu­ri­ties: iden­ti­ty anx­i­ety; dis­trust of author­i­ty; rela­tion­ship issues; an insa­tiable blood­lust… With egos­ploita­tion, you’re look­ing at someone’s deep­est and dark­est fan­tasies,” says Singh, and their ide­al ver­sions of them­selves”. Breen’s? A mes­sian­ic avenger-cum-com­put­er hack­er with super­hu­man abil­i­ties and a super-sexy love interest. 

Two middle-aged men wearing casual clothing standing in front of a brick wall.

So what of Flat­ley? Who does he want to be seen as? And why are we so con­vinced that Black­bird is going to crash-land in egos­ploita­tion ter­ri­to­ry anyway?

The spy thriller, which the fleet-foot­ed Irish-Amer­i­can wrote, fund­ed, pro­duced and direct­ed, sees him play­ing dress-up as for­mer MI6 oper­a­tive Vic­tor Black­ley, whose Bar­ba­dos retire­ment is upend­ed by the arrival of an old flame (who is, you guessed it, at least 10 years younger than him). Crit­ics have been belit­tling Black­bird since its emer­gence in 2018, but fol­low­ing its pre­mière at that year’s Rain­dance Film Fes­ti­val, the rumours real­ly began to fly. Why? Black­bird went AWOL. Was the film so bad that Flatley’s pub­li­cists clipped his wings to pro­tect his image? Did it get sent back to the edit­ing bay? Did Flat­ley fan­cy doing some more field research’ in the Caribbean?

We may nev­er know the rea­sons for the film’s four-year delay, but we can at least spec­u­late on Flatley’s motives for mak­ing it. I think a lot of these film-mak­ers have aspi­ra­tions of being super­heroes or some­thing,” says Singh of direc­tors like Breen and the insuf­fer­able Stephen Groo. Some­where along the way, these dreams were shat­tered. Their films are a way of fill­ing that emptiness.” 

Flat­ley has already lived this dream. He spent decades tour­ing his glob­al show Lord of the Dance, in which he played a god­like being who saves the world. Flat­ley retired from the stage in 2016, but hav­ing writ­ten, pro­duced and chore­o­graphed world-beat­ing stage shows, his skills are well suit­ed to cin­e­ma – and Black­bird affords him anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to play the saviour.

While ex-MI6 man Vic­tor Black­ley isn’t exact­ly a relat­able char­ac­ter, the will to por­tray him is. In giv­ing him­self a gun and a goal, Flat­ley is indulging the same ego-dri­ven toy­box action fan­tasies that the likes of John De Hart and Ron Mar­chi­ni did with their movies. But unlike these film­mak­ers, Flat­ley isn’t a nobody. He’s a cel­e­brat­ed artist with a big bud­get and a rep­u­ta­tion to uphold, which makes this act of pub­lic-fac­ing hubris all the more hazardous. 

Black­bird final­ly takes flight on 2 Sep­tem­ber, and with no pro­gram­mers plan­ning to show the film in the South West, Singh decid­ed to do it him­self. He’s screen­ing it on a 19×15 metre for­mer IMAX screen – almost cer­tain­ly the biggest that Flatley’s face (and feet) will ever appear on. I’m real­ly excit­ed,” says Singh. We’re just assum­ing it’s going to be ter­ri­ble. But what if it’s great? That’s what I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by. That’s the antic­i­pa­tion. I would not count Michael Flat­ley out.” 

So is this a win-win for bad-film fans? If Black­bird does crash-land, we get the egos­ploita­tion dis­as­ter many were qui­et­ly hop­ing for. But if Flat­ley soars beyond expec­ta­tions, we get pleas­ant­ly sur­prised with a per­fect­ly enter­tain­ing spy flick.

Either way, with Black­bird, Flat­ley joins a rar­efied list of film-mak­ers: Chap­lin, Welles and Streisand, sure, but also Tom­my Wiseau, Neil Breen, Steve Bar­kett, Stephen Groo, Ron Mar­chi­ni and John De Hart. Say what you want about their movies, they’re all auteurs.

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