Truth isn’t always stranger than fiction. In fact, sometimes it can be downright boring. Take Ebony & Ivory, Jim Hosking’s wild, weird, wordplay-filled comedy, that has two musical legends come together on the windswept Mull Of Kintyre in southwest Scotland. You could be forgiven for thinking this was a tribute to that cheesy 1982 hymn about racial harmony, cooked up by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder. That is, if you can even remember the track.
“I think there’s a good chance that many people under the age of 50 don’t know it at all,” reasons Hosking, speaking to NME over Zoom. “But I also think it just doesn’t matter. I don’t think the film’s actually about ‘Ebony And Ivory’ in any way… I mean, who really wants to know the full story behind that song anyway? Maybe someone does but they’re not the type of person that I’d want to be holed up in a pub with for five hours.” Fair point.
Indeed, the reality behind ‘Ebony And Ivory’ is utterly mundane. McCartney wrote it for his 1982 album ‘Tug Of War’. For his first major duet with another artist, the former Beatle recorded it with Wonder in Montserrat and then, due to conflicting schedules, filmed the video separately. End of (dull) story. Not that Hosking is bothered. “I wasn’t interested in finding out the truth and then going somewhere else,” he says. “Really, the song is just a springboard for exploring two characters and what happens between them.”
If you’ve caught his earlier off-kilter movies, The Greasy Strangler (2016) and An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn (2018), you’ll probably have some sense of what you’re in for. As the two men hang out on Mull, where McCartney has famously owned High Park Farm since 1966, they indulge in unappetising vegetarian food, foot rubs, nudism and a lot of “doobie woobies”, to use the film’s quaint euphemism for marijuana. Forget any romantic idea of Macca and Stevie concocting a ditty side by side.
“He loves pulling the rug from under people,” chuckles Andrew Hung, Hosking’s composer. “I mean, this whole film is about that, isn’t it?” The British-born writer-director calls it “playing around with people who are seen as icons and taken quite seriously”, although there is a world where younger viewers, unaware of the song, are plunged into this hazy back-and-forth, uncertain who these men even are. While actors Sky Elobar and Gil Gex are credited as “Paul” and “Stevie”, their character names are never mentioned.
“It’s a creative choice,” says Hosking. “I just felt quite early on that I didn’t want to have them call each other by name or even reference anyone famous. Then it becomes a joke about biopics. It’s playing with the truth too much.” A couple of different producers suggested he make up some funny anecdotes about John Lennon. “But that just didn’t interest me very much. I didn’t want the film to be a joke about Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder.”
Not that Ebony & Ivory entirely resists this. “Of course, Paul keeps giving the thumbs-up and there are a few [playful nods] to actual history, like McCartney’s wife having a range of vegetarian food,” Hosking concedes. “I just didn’t want to make any funny little jokes about The Beatles. That felt boring to me.” From a legal standpoint, diverting from reality was always a sensible move. “If you’re far enough away from whatever the truth might be, I think that you’re okay,” he says, joking that he might be carted off to prison “in a yellow submarine” any minute.
Did he want his actors to try and impersonate the two musicians? “Sky was really trying to ape Paul McCartney but he was a million miles off.” Wanting to really sell the difference, Hosking then started toying with Elobar to “erode any confidence” he had that he might actually sound like the legend. “I’d say ‘Okay, could you do that again, but now in a Liverpool accent?’ He was getting a bit rattled from the get-go. Gil’s never going to be anything like Stevie Wonder anyway. Gil’s living on another dimension altogether.”
Are the real-life icons aware of the movie? Have they commented? “I have no idea if they’re aware of it and I don’t know what they might say,” Hosking says. Perhaps they’d find it funny? “I think Paul McCartney would probably enjoy it.” Hung agrees. “I get the impression he’s probably the one who’s least likely to take himself too seriously.”
Early reviews dubbed the film a stoner comedy, a label Hosking isn’t particularly fond of. “Would it help if you’re stoned watching it? I don’t know. Whenever I’ve got stoned, I just want to go to bed.” So where did the pot-smoking parts come from? “Paul McCartney… everybody knows that he enjoyed having a smoke. Maybe he still does,” he shrugs. Still, the ultra-trippy scene where they spark up and yak incessantly about “doobie woobies” should come with a government health warning. “It might be too much,” admits Hosking, “and you start having a mild panic attack, have to turn it off and watch Fleabag instead.”
Hung’s electronic score, composed without any live instrumentation, comes into its own here, cranking up the hysteria. “I wanted it to feel like a big, relentless club track,” says Hosking, who obviously wanted to get as far away as possible from the simplistic melodies of McCartney/Wonder’s ivory tinkling. They sat together in Hung’s living room making the music as intense as possible. “He was interested in impact,” says the composer. “He was interested in it being strong, sincere.”
Oddly, while the film has nothing to do with composing ‘Ebony And Ivory’, the constant verbal back-and-forth between Paul and Stevie, echoing Hosking and Hung’s hang-outs, is “in keeping with” the creative process. “Making stuff is messy,” says Hung. “Film is messy. [Ebony & Ivory] is kind of incoherent but I think that’s an accurate portrayal of what it’s like to make something… constantly circling around ideas but never actually landing on it.” Together in (im)perfect harmony, you might say.
Just when you think Ebony & Ivory has reached peak weirdness, Hosking has the two musical legends cavort around the island naked. While there’s no reason to be squeamish about a bit of full frontal male nudity, even in the prudish times we live in, Hosking gave his actors prosthetic penises that’d make Boogie Nights’ Dirk Diggler green with envy. So what’s the gag here? Is he suggesting McCartney and Wonder are particularly well-endowed?
“Well, I think that they’re averagely endowed, if you look at the film,” smirks Hosking. “I was told by the prosthetics manufacturer to go one inch smaller. But when he was talking to me about the size of the penises, they sounded quite small to me, so I went one inch bigger. I was sent a rather large catalogue as a PDF with every imaginable shade and permutation of penis. I can forward it to you if you like.” Thanks, Jim, but we’ll pass…
‘Ebony & Ivory’ is in cinemas from September 19. Head here for details about Q&A screenings with director Jim Hosking