Shaky Kane & The Call of the Kraken
Adventures on The Lizard Lighthouse
While I’m on the subject of Lighthouses… one week before Christmas in 2010, I stayed in a lighthouse called The Lizard, on the Cornish coast of England. This was partly inspired by Arthur the Lighthouse Keeper, (my previous post) who I’m pretty sure had been stationed there long before it became fully automated in 1998. As there were just two of us staying there for the week, Michelle and I decided to invite our comics artist friend Shaky Kane, his wife Jane, and their son Laurie to drive over from Devon. Despite the incredibly cold weather, they didn’t bring much in the way of warm clothing, but instead, a suitcase full of fancy dress costumes in anticipation of Michelle’s birthday that week. There’s only so much to do in a place like that as it’s pretty isolated, so to occupy ourselves, and for a bit of fun, we decided to make a documentary about Shaky, who’d recently garnered critical acclaim alongside his collaborator, David Hine for their co-created comic book series, Bulletproof Coffin.
Armed with just a very small recording device called a Sony HD Bloggie, we set about making this rather absurd film that we decided to call Shaky Kane Unravelled. There was no script, no lighting equipment other than a torch, and we made the whole thing up as we went along. A couple of items of fancy dress came in handy, especially the clown mask and hospital scrubs. We even had a perfectly timed guest appearance by a seagull, who peered in through the window just as Shaky explained how he hated anyone looking over his shoulder while he worked.
Anyway, word got around about this ‘documentary’ and a well known comic shop at the time called Orbital Comics, in London offered to hold a screening, with Shaky, Dave and myself in attendance. It was a pretty scary prospect to be sitting there amongst the audience, not knowing how it would go down, but they laughed and they clapped, and I gave a sigh of relief at the end. Shaky and Dave gave answers to questions about Bulletproof Coffin, and Image comics suggested printing a url link to the film on Vimeo, which was fine by us. As a result, I was even asked to photograph Shaky for a promotional ad for their comics, with a very apt quote from Shaky (below).
There’s something rather magical about staying on a lighthouse and hearing the foghorn when the weather gets particularly treacherous, plus the sweeping beam of light making its way across the ocean. I took some photos of the sunrise and sunset, which I’ll share here along with others taken by moonlight.
Getting back to the actual ‘documentary’ itself, if you have 20 minutes, and you’re stuck for something to do… here it is. It’s kind of bonkers, but we like it that way.
If the Vimeo video is not showing here, please click this link.
A classic documentary! It always makes me chuckle. The screening at Orbital was a great evening, one of many excellent social events that were hosted there. It's hard to believe that Orbital is gone.