Jim Hosking’s debut film, 2016’s cult classic The Greasy Strangler, is the most polarising film I’ve ever come across. People either absolutely love it, or they utterly loathe it (and loathe anyone who likes it into the bargain). With its juvenile humour, prosthetic penises, lashings of hot dog grease, and scenes that take drawn-out repetition to new levels of either hilarity or rage, it’s most definitely an acquired taste.
Hosking himself, rather disingenuously in my opinion, claimed to be nonplussed by the often negative response to the film (“I thought it was a typo, like they’d forgot to fill in one star. Because I’d seen one-star reviews before, but I’d never seen zero stars”, he said about the Observer’s review), but, possibly in response to those critics, he’s taken those aspects of Strangler that people hated the most (minus the hot dog grease – all the food in Ebony & Ivory is vegetarian), dialled them up to eleven, and delivered a huge middle finger to the haters.
So whilst the film is unlikely to convert those who don’t get Hosking’s work (samples from reviews so far – “singularly annoying”, “scripted by someone with a traumatic brain injury”, “Artistically irredeemable and impossible to recommend on any basis whatsoever” and so on), it is a genuinely original, bizarre, affectionate, and utterly hilarious “tribute” to one of the worst songs of the 1980s. Think the experimental music scenes from Vic & Bob’s Mulligan & O’Hare sketches, stretched out to almost 90 minutes, and you get the idea.
Anyone coming to Ebony & Ivory expecting a straight-up music biopic a la Bohemian Rhapsody or Walk the Line is in for a shock, as Hosking isn’t here to tell the story of the eponymous song’s origins. The film begins on a windswept beach as ‘Stevie’ (Hosking regular Gil Gex) arrives on the Mull of Kintyre by rowing boat, to be welcomed by ‘Paul’ (another Hosking regular, Greasy Strangler star Sky Elobar) with lapsang souchong tea. Straight away they begin bickering, with Stevie claiming the tea “tastes like pee-pee”. “Take that back!” says an angry Paul. “I never take anything back!” replies Stevie. The tone is thus set – Paul being his usual amiable self, complete with occasional Scouse accent and thumbs-aloft gesture, Stevie (being played as Richard Pryor by Gex) growling, swearing (“Shit and fuck! SHITANDFUCK!!!”), and insulting Paul’s musical prowess at every opportunity.
They smoke copious amounts of weed (the “Doobie Woobie” scene in particular will either have you doubled up in pain or muttering “oh for fuck’s sake”); skinny-dip in the frozen sea, complete with dangling prosthetic penises; eat Paul’s wife’s Linda’s range of vegetarian ready meals; and have a psychedelic encounter with a talking frog (undoubtedly a reference to one of Macca’s other career low points).
At no point do they actually make any music, other than Paul’s song about his wife’s vegetarian food range (“Let me guide you through the world of vegetarian ready meals, babygirl”). The titular song is actually performed by (small spoiler alert), the two characters being turned into sheep (Paul with white wool, Stevie black) and bleating “EBONY! IVORY!” at each other whilst spectacularly evacuating their bowels. It may just be the longest negative review of a single in history. It’s certainly the funniest.
