Talking Têtes

This week, our film correspondent, Terence Gunboat, follows up the last instalment of Talking Têtes with an exclusive interview with renegade actor and dramaturge, Art Hurr. Together, they discuss method acting, the enigmatic work of Terry Bumfist and Art Hurr's own upcoming one-man show, Chet the Inseminator, due to debut at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester, this August.

In this, the second of a two-part series, I had the great privilege of interviewing the other half of cinema's most dynamic—and controversial—duo, Art Hurr. A match made in heaven, it is no understatement to say Art and his long-time creative collaborator, Langzaam Vervagen, have torn up the rulebook of cinematic convention, set fire to it and urinated on the ashes.

Incendiary—bordering on libellous—obscene—bordering on pornographic—and never boring, the darlings of the new cinematic avant-garde have found themselves in the enviable position—coveted by all true creatives—of being able to make whatever they want, whenever they want. Unburdened by notions of intellectuality and good taste, we can only guess at what they will come up with next.

I caught up with Art at Basement Sate in Soho to find out just what makes him tick and to discuss the imminent release of his and Langzaam's latest cinematic tour de force, Mail My Pussy to Jesus.

Terence Gunboat: So, who am I talking to right now?

Art Hurr: Right now, I'm Chet Mannfondell, fluffer to the stars and secret breeding fetishist.

TG: Right, well I suppose we can get this out of the way first. Tell me a little about yourself, Chet?

AH: I am Chet Jerusalem Mannfondell, fluffer extraordinaire. Amongst my peers I am known to be the best there has ever been—I am no mere wanker-offer of meat puppets, you see. My clients are many, but they are of an exclusive order—a breed above mere mortals—for they are each of them stars in their own right. Yes, I am a milker of the rich and infamous, and the seed I squeeze from their meaty giblets is of the highest quality. I am renowned the world over for my work and I have grown exceedingly wealthy from it, but I have a great and terrible secret—the man-jelly I extract is not destined for landfill, or the watery grave of a toilet pan, but the moist vaginas and fertile uteri of the sad, the desperate and the lonely. For the right price, I will provide a woman with the fruits of my labour, straight from the red hot loins of my clientele, so that they might live out the fantasy of bearing a celebrity's child. I am Chet the Inseminator!

TG: Thank you Chet, that was very enlightening—you can sit down now.

AH: My pleasure.

TG: So, the show begins on the 15th of August, is that correct?

AH: What show?

TG: Ah, right, I thought this might be a problem. Is there any way I can speak with Art for a minute, Chet?

AH: Mmmm... He won't be happy about it, but since it's you, I'll give it a try.

TG: Er... What are you doing?

AH: What does it look like I'm doing?

TG: It looks like you're masturbating under the table.

AH: Well then, that's what I'm doing, isn't it?

TG: There is a toilet here, you know?

AH: Ugh... Fine, your lordship—I'll be back in a moment.

...

TG: Art?

AH: Terence, mate, good to see you again.

TG: What was all that about?

AH: It's a new method I'm working on—Goonic Resonance Uterine Modelling. It lets me slip in and out of character with nothing more than the shake of a wrist.

TG: Impressive. I was just asking Chet when the show begins—the date I have is the 15th of August?

AH: Chet wouldn't know that—you should have just asked me.

TG: Evidently. So, the 15th?

AH: Right, yeah, the show starts on the 15th and runs to the 20th. After that, we'll be looking to bring it to London's West End.

TG: That's a far cry from the early days isn't it? When I interviewed Langzaam last week, we got onto the topic of the first project you worked on together—The Silmarillion. From what I gather, it was never officially staged at a theatre, was it?

AH: Nah, it was staged in Epping Forest.

TG: That must have been quite the experience. Was that a creative decision by Langzaam, or were there other factors? I know the project didn't have the blessing of the Tolkien estate, for example.

AH: Nah, it was nothing like that. I mean, sure, no one wanted to stage it, but that wasn't the issue—we planned to break into the Arcola in Dalston and perform it to whoever turned up. No, the issue was that I was stuck in Epping Forest. See, I was playing Fringtomer the Ent and I'd buried myself up to the waist to get into character. Anyway, we had a few days of rain right near the end of my preparations and the ground underneath me softened up a bit—I ended up sinking up to my armpits and couldn’t get out again.

TG: Tell me, is the story told by Terry Bumfist true? Did a squirrel really climb into your arse?

AH: Not just one—a whole fucking family. I think they mistook my arsehole for a knothole, which was fine by me because it felt like the kind of thing that might happen to a tree-person from time to time. So, you were talking about Terry, were you?

TG: His name came up. To tell the truth, I'm still not entirely sure what his role in the project was.

AH: Let me tell you, that guy can squeeze better than anyone I know. He once squeezed a marmoset into orbit. Now that's a story. I haven't got time to tell it, but you can imagine. Have you seen his hands? So small, but they have a gravity—they draw you in. I can feel my eyes being squeezed just looking at them. It's a pleasant sensation, like being smothered in palm oil and paying a fat woman to roll over you.

TG: I can't say I've ever experienced that.

AH: It's a common sensation.

TG: I'd like to move on—

AH: Are you judging me?

TG: I'm not sure—

AH: I can pay whoever I want to do whatever I want. It's called the fucking economy, you judgmental prick.

TG: Can we move past—

AH: I mean, I may have money, power, the attention of world leaders and a dick the size of the iceberg that sunk the Titanic—allegedly. I mean the iceberg allegedly hit the Titanic, not my dick. I'm just saying, I may have it all and you may be insanely jealous of me and want to be me, which is to be expected, but sometimes, just sometimes, I feel so disconnected from humanity that I have to—for medical reasons—attach myself to a ketamine drip, bathe myself in palm oil and have several obese women dressed as the cast of Clarissa Explains It All roll all over me for an hour or two. It allows me to imagine what empathy feels like, which gives me the patience needed to go through tedious conversations with hack journalists just so I can sell my fucking genius to the world when, in reality, you should be paying me for the privilege of an insight into how the mind of the next evolutionary step works.

TG: Can I—

AH: I don't know, can you? Sorry, that was rude of me. Please continue.

TG: So, Mail My Pussy to Jesus opens on the 17th, are you excited for the premiere?

AH: Nah, not really—a premiere's just an excuse for people to dress up—totally pointless in my opinion. I mean, I dress up all the time, but you don't see me going round expecting people to roll out the red carpet whenever I go into a sodding Tesco—apart from that one time, I mean. No, in all honestly, I'd rather be preparing for my show—there's still a few creases than need ironing out.

TG: In the script?

AH: Nah, my scrotum—it's vitally important that I have a perfectly smooth ball-sack for the show.

TG: I see. And how did you enjoy working on the film? Langzaam and I discussed some of the tensions between yourselves and Edgar [Roseveare], but I was wondering if you could shed some light on the rumours surrounding some of the production crew—namely Jarvis Lautrec and Karpal Marik?

AH: It's always a pleasure working with Langzaam—the man's a bloody genius. I've said it before and I'll say it again—right now, in fact; the man's a bloody genius. That shite with Edgar was fucked up, but what can you do? When you get three intellectual powerhouses like us in a room together, there's bound to be a few sparks. I'm just annoyed about the dinosaur. I'd been eyeing that thing for months—I wanted to ride it into the wrap party, but he had to go and ruin it. Jarvis and Karpal, though? That’s another matter entirely—those two are fucking psychos.

TG: How did they end up on the project?

AH: They’re acquaintances of Eddie’s—he knows them from way back. I think he met them in Guam—or possibly Guatemala, I can’t remember. Somewhere beginning with “G”, anyway. Guava? Or is that just a fruit?

TG: This is Eddie Mercury, the producer?

AH: Right—producer, financier, fixer. Eddie was our first patron—really saw what we were doing, like, really fucking saw it. He was the only one that could control Jarvis and Karpal—apart from me, of course, since I’m such a fucking beast—but everyone else was scared shitless of them. There was this break-room at the studio where people could take a nap between takes. I remember this one time, Jeff [Goldblum] was having a snooze in there after a particularly gruelling scene—his character, Isaac Rudd, walks in on Jesus buggering his fiancé, Holly Cummerbund over the breakfast she’d prepared for him moments earlier. There’s this big fight and Isaac ends up bludgeoning Jesus half to death with a food-processor. Proper fucking cinema, that. Anyway, Jeff was getting some beauty sleep—and believe me, at his age, he fucking needs it—when Jarvis and Karpal snuck in and doused him in cheap tequila. Jeff wakes up and finds them standing over him with a lit zippo—it was completely insane.

TG: What happened?

AH: Jeff shat himself.

TG: Did they set him on fire?

AH: Nah, luckily Eddie and I arrived in time—I took care of Jarvis and Karpal, while Eddie had a word with Jeff. He threatened to quit the production and sue us, but Eddie managed to talk him down somehow—showed him something on his phone that seemed to shut him up.

TG: Impressive. So it’s fair to say the pair were a disruptive presence on set? How aware were you of their histories? Their role in certain paramilitary groups in the DRC, for example? Or the ICC warrant for their arrest, issued in relation to war crimes in Venezuela? Did you know, for instance, that Jarvis Lautrec is believed to be behind a sarin gas attack on the BG Voz Metro in Belgrade?

Waiter: Freshen your drinks, sirs?

TG: Er… No, thanks, we’re actually in the middle of an interview here.

Waiter: Not a problem, sir, not a problem. Oh, and Art Hurr?

AH: Yeah, that’s me?

Waiter: Jarvis and Karpal send their regards.

TG: Art, watch out!

And so ended my interview with Art Hurr. As the first shot rang out and the other patrons and I dived for cover, I could not help but wonder how this juggernaut of modern drama figured into the ever-mutating cannon of western literature. Undeniably unique, unflinching in his approach to acting, unashamed by the on-screen depravity of his characters, Art seems to represent a new breed of actor—one wholly unconcerned, if not in fact entirely detached, from the business of acting itself.

Yet again, there were questions that would have to wait, or perhaps go unanswered. I was yet to get to the bottom of the haunting performance given by the ghost of late great ice-hockey superstar, Wayne Gretzky, nor had I received a satisfactory response to my questions about Jarvis Lautrec and Karpal Marik—even now rumoured to be in hiding in Outer Mongolia. To these latter queries, I would receive no answer from their sinister agent for no sooner had Art taken a bullet to the thorax than he was up and throttling the would-be assassin like a brain-damaged Hercules wringing out his loincloth on the banks of the river Lethe. The man was dead in seconds.

Mail My Pussy to Jesus is scheduled for universal release on the 17th of June 2025.

The opening of Chet the Inseminator has been delayed while Art Hurr recovers from a bullet wound—he is expected to make a full recovery and a preliminary date for the premiere is scheduled for the 1st of September 2025.