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Chicken Little's revenge

Chicken Little's revenge

Was it Skylab, a D.C.10 or the PSIS that was meant to fall on Kelburn? So far it has only been a few innocuous bird droppings that have plummeted from the heavens but it is getting increasingly difficult to know where the true enemy lies. Just in case anyone is wondering what might fall out of the skies next, Bottom of the Week brings you an exclusive interview with a man who claim: he has all of the answers. Mr Kanevil Nostros-Damned-Us. Kanevil, a local film director with a distinctly ethnic flavour, is just about to release his first feature film Chicken Little's Revenge.

Salient: That's a hell of a name you nave got Kanevil.

Kanevil: Well, I got it by deed poll for a couple of bucks when one day I decided I wanted to be an exciting person who made dare devil films with a monkish mystical touch.

Salient: Could you say something about your film.

Kanevil: Sure, my film is about the meaning of life and the ridiculously high prices of plots in cemeteries. It's a film that makes the Deer-Hunter look like a GI's picnic for underage kamikazis. I am confident that it is the ultimate hell-fire death and destruction movie that ever sold an ice cream for Kerridge-Odeon. Great family entertainment.

Salient: You will have to be more explicit.

Kanevil: It is a film about nuclear war seen through me Aunty Janet's eyes. Anyway it all starts when one day Aunty Janet [unclear: uttars a terribly] profane thing; namely that Chicken Little would never have said that "the sky was going to fall in." if he had known that President Carter trusted in god when he signed the Salt agreement in Vienna. The very next day she loses her life savings in the PSIS freeze and then is nearly hit by Skylab as she lay bewailing her fate in the Botanical Gardens. Against her better judgement she hastily flees her house in Kelburn to stay with her niece Rona who lives in Taihape.

No sooner had she settled in than a worldwide nuclear war breaks out which she and Rona watch on colour television. Alas one particularly spectacular shot on the TV1 news shows the Northern-Hemisphere in the image of an iradescent mushroom (give or take a bit of inter-continental drift) fall out of the sky onto her Kelburn house. Overcome she falls into a swoon only to wake for the TV film that night which just happens to be 'Heaven Can Wait'. Consumed with spleen at her fate Aunty Janet schemes to work her revenge on humanity; her task being somewhat simpler since Taihape is the only surviving community in the world. She and Rona's husband, a one-time funeral director, develop a fancy for each other and together plot to buy up the local cemetery and sell off plots at extortionate prices. The citizens of Taihape aghast at finding life has finally caught up with them determine to do away with themselves. In a frenzy and clad in sheets they flock to the nearest cemetery only to discover the gates locked and Aunty Janet and Rona's husband having it off on a tombstone within. And there, I must stop, for you must go to the film to find out what price the people of Taihape have to pay Aunty Janet for salvation and a christian burial.

Salient: Sounds exciting Kanevil but whats all this about sheets and cemeteries.

Kanevil: I once read a joke that went something like this. Question-What is the civil—defence procedure in case of nuclear-war. Answer-Cover yourself in a sheet and lie down in the nearest cemetery.

Salient: Are you aware of any specific influences on your art.

Kanevil: I stole it all from the Americans. After seeing the Deerhunter and Holocaust, I realised that a fusion of soap opera and death and destruction was the true dramatic form of our age. A good healthy nuclear war was all that was missing.

Salient: That's rather macabre isn't it.

Kanevil: Well love is not what is used to be As me namesake used to say "if you cannot beat them predict a world war."

Salient: Sometimes I think you speak a load of shit Kanevil.

Kanevil: I appreciate you gut reaction but interviewers are not allowed to say those sorts of things so please could you confine this conversation to nuclear war and Aunty Janet.

Salient: How politically irrelevant is this film?

Kanevil: Totally except for the fact that Aunty Janet switched from Social Credit to National after the PSIS crash and then to Values after the bombs and finally to Labour when she got sent down to hell.

Salient: Is there any point to this film?

Kanevil: You film critics are all the same. I told you this film was family entertainment. Vicarious violence is where it is all at these day, who needs wars when you can watch them at the movies.

Salient: So you think Chicken Little's Revenge is a postive film.

Kanevil: Very defintitely, a little while in a cemetery never did any one harm. Besides I intend to show this film in every country in Europe and ratings permitting they should all commit suicide after watching it thus eliminating the problem and earning me a lot of money.

Salient: You never said what happened to Aunty Janet.

Kanevil: Well at the end of the film the guardian angel Chicken Little has mercy on Aunty Janet, now the lone survivor on earch, and turns her into a ballistic missile orbiting around the earth just in case any one should ever take his name in vain again.

Salient: Thanks Kanevil, I will remember that and make sure my kids read Enid Blyton. Despite those nasty things they say about her I like her endings better [unclear: third] instalment of Tertiary Bursary [unclear: be] available on the Mezzanine Floor [unclear: ie] Lecture Block between 9.30am and [unclear: 0pm] and 1.30pm and 4.30pm on the [unclear: wing] days:

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