THE TIME KEN RUSSELL KICKED ME OUT OF FILM SCHOOL

Last week I saw The Boy Friend (1971) at the Prince Charles Cinema in Soho, I walked out onto the streets feeling exhilarated, overwhelmed even, by the sheer visual spectacle of it all. The film—a kaleidoscopic, hyper-stylised musical by the British director Ken Russell—was packed with dazzling moments, each more elaborate than the last. As my friend Jaya and I made our way to the bus stop, I found myself recounting a memory that had been tucked away for years, a story I had told only in bits and pieces. Ken Russell kicked me out of film school and tried to destroy my movie.

I studied film at Southampton Institute, where Russell was a patron of the university. At the time, I was a film student of a particular kind— I was deeply, embarrassingly serious about cinema. At the time I was watching atleast three movie a day. I was obsessed with Jackass, Harmony Korine, Evil Dead II (1987), Requiem for a Dream (2000), and Chris Cunningham’s music videos.

In our second year, we were tasked with writing, directing, and shooting a ten-minute film on 16mm. My film was called No Highs, a pitch-black comedy about a serial killer whose attempts to dispose of bodies in his apartment but is a constantly interrupted by the mundane inconveniences of life—unexpected visitors, phone calls, door-to-door charity workers. The humour, I imagined, lay in the juxtaposition: a man dragging a corpse up the stairs, only to be forced into an awkward conversation about his five-year plan. In the film’s final moments, his girlfriend arrives, revealing herself as a willing accomplice. The two of them share a tender moment over a mutilated body.It was, I thought, funny.

When it came time to pitch our films, we were led into a production room where the head of the department was seated alongside a disheveled-looking man in his mid-seventies. Ken Russell.

He turned to me. “What’s your film called?”

I swallowed. “No Highs.”

He nodded. “Alright. Tell me about it.”

I launched into my pitch, speaking quickly, explaining the comedic absurdity of the interruptions, the contrast between horror and farce. When I finished, there was a beat of silence.

Then Russell sat back and said, flatly, “Well, that’s just pornography.”

I was stunned. “No,” I stammered, “it’s a comedy—”

Ken responded with a line that would haunt me and be endlessly quoted back to me “It’s just a wank”

I had no idea what he meant. “Huh?”

His face darkened. “All of you—get the fuck out! Now!”

We hesitated. “Out!”

We shuffled out of the room in stunned silence. As the door closed behind us, I heard him mutter to our lecturer, “What the fuck is this? Get me a drink from the bar.”

The story spread through the film class immediately. Ken Russell had found my film so offensive that he’d thrown me out of the room. My classmates were fascinated. What type of movie were they making?

At first, I found the attention amusing and briefly loved the notoriety. Everyone was fascinated with my movie. But things took a stranger turn when I was summoned by a series of lecturers and administrators, each requesting to see my script.

One by one, they asked variations of the same question:

“Do you intend these scenes to be hardcore explicit?”

“No,” I insisted. “The final scene there’s a guys ass and two people in underwear. I sounded insane.

A week past and then the head of department sat me down and said, carefully, “Ken keeps calling about you.”

I frowned. “What?”

“He says that if you make this film, he’s going to the police.”

I stared at him. “You’re joking.”

He was not.