Last weekend I went to the BAFTA (that's the British Academy of Film and Television Arts) on Piccadilly to see the UK premier of Hula Girls, a Japanese Full Monty (except it's girls instead of boys, and it's hula-dancing rather than stripping). Beyond the intriguing premise of building a Hawaian Centre in a bleak mining town (which happens to be the true part of the story), the film is fairly straightforward and at times labours the clichés a bit — it but it was an enjoyable evening, with an entertaining question-and-answer session with the director at the end.
Afterwards, I was standing by the entrance to the bar, waiting for my friends (girls, as ever, going to the toilet en masse), when the director and his party came through from the theatre. To set the scene, I should mention that I am over six foot even when I'm not wearing my black ex-British Army Boots. With shaved head, black combat adventure trousers, and black hoodie, standing by the entrance on my own (alert, no slouching), I unwittingly looked like the security hired for the evening. The party stopped at the door, and one of them leaned towards me (actually, my chest) and peered intently at the logo on my black hoodie — it's an embroidered Fudebakudo logo, in scarlet thread. She then asked me if the bar was open. Well, it clearly was open, but she asked me as if I knew.
BAFTA logo vs. FBD logo
Only after I had said that it was did I realise that she had thought I was "working the door." And then I understood what had happened — the Fudebakudo logo, with its samurai helmet face-mask, looks a bit like, well, a mask, which is also the logo of the BAFTA.
Perhaps I will be able to blag entry to the next BAFTA awards ceremony based on this useful deception.
Of course I now regret not having stopped the director from getting to the bar — if your name's not on the list, mate, you're not coming in. But I didn't realise I could pass off the Fudebakudo logo as a BAFTA badge until it was too late.
Incidentally, if you watch the eyeball-strainingly tiny trailer on that Hula Girls website, see if you don't read the line "The Girls Dance for the Sake" the way I did. It's, um, sake not sake. Whoops . . . changes the tone of the whole film a bit, heh.