The director of Deliverance made a film starring the Dave Clark Five? It happened! This week, We Are Cult’s Mark Cunliffe rejoins the podcast to talk about John Boorman’s very uncharacteristic debut Catch Us If You Can, starring Clark as a stuntman who goes on the run with Barbara Ferris’s frustrated advertising spokeswoman. Made in the shadow of A Hard Day’s Night, its unsettling satire on the PR industry and strikingly direct drug references make it a precursor to the more pessimistic counterculture cinema that would emerge later in the 1960s.
Aside from discussing this prescient, underseen gem, we also talk about the Dave Clark Five’s music, and how they went from being rivals to the Beatles to their current place in the popular memory. There’s also space to consider the great career of John Boorman and recommend his excellent autobiography (which contains the best Lew Grade anecdote you’ll ever hear). Other burning issues include the cross-generational appeal of Yootha Joyce, the problematic wigs of Boorman’s latest film Queen & Country, and whether or not Ronald Lacey ever looked young.
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