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To the attention of anyone who likes fish and/or family stories, I commend Charlie Shackleton's Fish Story (2017), a 14-minute, utterly delightful documentary investigating the intersection of the two.
The structure is as straightforward and loose as a conversation between two friends, one of whom is slightly embarrassed about retelling once again his party piece about his "stupid name." According to the family tradition of Caspar Salmon, sometime around 1986 his grandmother was invited to attend the opening of a marina in Anglesey where she along with other piscinely named locals was presented with a catch of her namesake fish by no less a master of ceremonies than Michael Fish of BBC Weather. "Wonderfully, he fit the theme perfectly because he was famous and his name is Fish and the theme was fish." Shackleton adores this story as much as he doubts its veracity, so with no other leads on the historicity of this bemusing, perhaps dangerously twee PR stunt, he sets about running it down by cold-calling every fishy surname—Bass, Pike, Plaice, Whiting—he can find in North Wales. "Oh, God, this is a nightmare," Salmon moans as query after query about a fish-themed event at a marina in the '80's dead-ends in answering machines, immediate hang-ups, or what the filmmaker reports back as "amused bafflement." Optimistically forging past the even flatter denial returned by the office of Michael Fish, his friend reassures him, "There are a lot of fish people in this phone book." We are prepared for a debunking, however affectionate and regretful. A fish story by definition is the one that got away. We end up instead with something like a paean to the power of oral tradition and the Anglesey Sea Zoo. It's playfully done. We never meet Shackleton or Salmon except as informal, almost eavesdropped voices, although both come off engagingly, especially the latter absolutely crumbling when it looks as though his family's brush with fame is going to turn out to be fakelore or taking back all the travel advice he just gave his friend: "Actually, I've been an arsehole. Anglesey is lovely. I'm thinking of Colwyn Bay." Only when it discovers the people who know the truth does the film shift into a more traditionally documentary mode of establishing shots and talking heads, until then illustrating its unproven quest with a three-dimensional, quirkily tongue-in-cheek collage of maps and maritime watercolors, reference books and brochures, a dresser-top of pictures interspersed with nautical memorabilia and such punch-line props as a TV clip, a tin of anchovy relish, a salmon enticingly plated on newsprint with ice. The photograph it wraps up its tall tale with is as funny and touching as the entire project, but it saves its most mischievous surprise for the credits. The featured cast includes "The fish-surnamed people of North Wales."
Really the story is all there is to this short film, but it's a good story and its unfolding combines the best of investigative journalism with the fun of a family legend and several things I didn't know about Anglesey. It isn't one of the sea-movies I dreamed about watching last week, but I am very pleased to have stumbled across it. I appreciate Salmon letting Shackleton talk him into telling his grandmother's story one more time. This trawl brought to you by my lovely backers at Patreon.
The structure is as straightforward and loose as a conversation between two friends, one of whom is slightly embarrassed about retelling once again his party piece about his "stupid name." According to the family tradition of Caspar Salmon, sometime around 1986 his grandmother was invited to attend the opening of a marina in Anglesey where she along with other piscinely named locals was presented with a catch of her namesake fish by no less a master of ceremonies than Michael Fish of BBC Weather. "Wonderfully, he fit the theme perfectly because he was famous and his name is Fish and the theme was fish." Shackleton adores this story as much as he doubts its veracity, so with no other leads on the historicity of this bemusing, perhaps dangerously twee PR stunt, he sets about running it down by cold-calling every fishy surname—Bass, Pike, Plaice, Whiting—he can find in North Wales. "Oh, God, this is a nightmare," Salmon moans as query after query about a fish-themed event at a marina in the '80's dead-ends in answering machines, immediate hang-ups, or what the filmmaker reports back as "amused bafflement." Optimistically forging past the even flatter denial returned by the office of Michael Fish, his friend reassures him, "There are a lot of fish people in this phone book." We are prepared for a debunking, however affectionate and regretful. A fish story by definition is the one that got away. We end up instead with something like a paean to the power of oral tradition and the Anglesey Sea Zoo. It's playfully done. We never meet Shackleton or Salmon except as informal, almost eavesdropped voices, although both come off engagingly, especially the latter absolutely crumbling when it looks as though his family's brush with fame is going to turn out to be fakelore or taking back all the travel advice he just gave his friend: "Actually, I've been an arsehole. Anglesey is lovely. I'm thinking of Colwyn Bay." Only when it discovers the people who know the truth does the film shift into a more traditionally documentary mode of establishing shots and talking heads, until then illustrating its unproven quest with a three-dimensional, quirkily tongue-in-cheek collage of maps and maritime watercolors, reference books and brochures, a dresser-top of pictures interspersed with nautical memorabilia and such punch-line props as a TV clip, a tin of anchovy relish, a salmon enticingly plated on newsprint with ice. The photograph it wraps up its tall tale with is as funny and touching as the entire project, but it saves its most mischievous surprise for the credits. The featured cast includes "The fish-surnamed people of North Wales."
Really the story is all there is to this short film, but it's a good story and its unfolding combines the best of investigative journalism with the fun of a family legend and several things I didn't know about Anglesey. It isn't one of the sea-movies I dreamed about watching last week, but I am very pleased to have stumbled across it. I appreciate Salmon letting Shackleton talk him into telling his grandmother's story one more time. This trawl brought to you by my lovely backers at Patreon.
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. . . I just assumed Gran was no longer around to ask, otherwise there wouldn't have been a documentary.
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However -- and I think this is an important point -- if you are the sort of family with anecdotes about your grandparents being invited to marina openings then not merely are you the sort of family who sail seriously, you're the sort of person whose audience for that sort of anecdote also sails (seriously.) So while there's an acceptable (and massive) amount of latitude of verisimiltude for nautical yarns there's a sniff test that the anecdote has to pass (and doubly so if it's true, if you see what I mean.) Luring the chart surveyors to the pub in Carnmore and treating them to drinks all night in a lock-in while their boat and notes get blown up by the local IRA chapter - no problem. A marina opening on Anglesey in the mid 80s - "I came to Casablanca to take the waters." It's a story which fails the sniff test so spectacularly that why it's being told becomes the story. As evidently here - I'm not put off the film, because I want to know why.