A Life on the Farm (2022) Movie Script
1
[eerie music playing]
[Charles Carson]
"Carson's Colour Schemer"
"Tomorrow's world
of colour, today."
[cows mooing]
[mooing continues]
Welcome to Coombe End Farm!
Follow me down.
I've got something to show you.
[VCR clicks]
I don't know where
to even begin with this story.
We've been collecting
weird VHS tapes since 1991,
and by far this is
the weirdest one we've seen.
[man] This is dark,
but it's, like, "friendly" dark.
You would never
think it's dead, look!
[man] We've unearthed something
and nobody's
quite sure what it is.
[man] I came across
something that's so...
obscure and hidden away...
[man] It's been... an experience
watching all of this.
It looks
like a fucking horror movie!
There's all manner
of craziness. [laughs]
I think, is the easiest
way to describe it!
[man]
The more I found out about it,
the more I realized that
this had to have an audience.
[man] I think he wanted
the whole world to see this.
[ID] And nothing's stayed
with me quite like,
quite like
"Life On The Farm", no.
That is a truly special
work of art.
I owed it to the man
and I owed it to his work.
[man] He was ahead of his time.
- [man] Absolutely unique.
- [man] Highly absurd.
[man] He was a great character,
he was an individual.
-He was a showman.
[man] Terrifying!
You don't meet
many people like Charles.
Hi there!
It is a little bit reminiscent
of the serial killer Ed Gein.
I can't tell if this guy
is a genius or a psychopath!
Come on, pussy,
let's go. [laughs].
This is the story of Charles
Carson and "A Life on the Farm."
[laughs] Ah well, here we go!
[cow mooing]
It's probably best to start
when my family comes in.
Particularly my grandfather,
John Harding.
He did play a part
in my love of film and writing.
He was a bit of a poet
and all that kind of thing.
And, of course, you know,
a staunch supporter of
all that went on
in Huish Champflower.
[Oscar] Huish Champflower
is a pretty remote place.
It's nearby a village
called Wiveliscombe,
but it's sort of spaced out
so that your neighbors
aren't really neighbors.
Some of them are maybe
five, ten minutes' drive away,
and that's
your closest neighbor.
I do know it was my mom's wish
to move into the country.
She seemed
very keen to move away.
They really got into being
part of the local town and area.
The sort of communities like
the communities around
here are quite unique in a way,
and how much longer
will they stay like this?
[Oscar] One of John
and Trisha's neighbors
was a farmer
called Charles Carson.
Come on, my dears.
Beef is beautiful!
Come on, my dear! Up you get!
[Oscar] Charles had, at some
point, given my grandpa
a copy of "Life on the Farm,"
a feature-length
home movie he had made.
Well, there you are, everybody.
If you want to get
up in the morning,
come and see us
at Coombe End Farm.
[Oscar] When John died in 2006,
the family went
down to his house
and started clearing
out his possessions,
and one of my aunts
found a videotape.
[harmonica playing]
[Charles]
Charles Carson, Coombe End Farm.
So it's me and my kid sister,
she's 5 or 6 at the time.
I'm about 10 years old, and it's
our first time ever watching
"Life On The Farm."
Let's put a little bit
of grass on the top of you.
That's lovely.
Yeah.
You'll have
a lovely time in there.
[VCR clicks]
[Oscar] Halfway through, Dad
just shuts off the tape.
And that was the last time I saw
that film for around a decade.
We moved house, lost the tape,
and then one day I bring it up
in conversation with my aunt
and she says,
"Oh, that old tape! Yeah, yeah!
I've got that buried
away somewhere!
Give me a couple
of days to find it."
So I'm waiting,
and I'm hoping that
it's every bit as amazing and
weird as I remember it being.
So, she gives me the tape
and I sit down by myself,
lights off, and for the first
time in around 10 years,
I see "Life On The Farm."
["Old Macdonald
Had a Farm" playing]
[Charles]
Here I am, Charles Carson.
I'm taking some more pictures.
Keep your eyes open,
everybody! [laughs]
This is a lovely, lovely video.
All these memories
start flooding back
and the images are exactly
how I remember them.
Oh, it's marvelous, isn't it?
[Charles] Have you got
your, uh, video set up?
I'm ready to play you
some lovely pictures.
[cows mooing]
[mooing continues]
[Oscar]
The video starts off and it
all feels a little bit amateur.
And then Charles Carson
introduces himself.
Hi there, I'm Charles Carson.
[Oscar] Then he introduces
himself again...
Charles Carson. Coombe End Farm.
[Oscar] And then he introduces
himself for a third time...
Charles Carson. Coombe End Farm.
Because he mentions
Coombe End Farm so, so often,
"Charles Carson,
Coombe End Farm!
Charles Carson,
Coombe End Farm!"
[multiple Carsons speaking]
Charles Carson! Coombe
End Farm! Coombe End Farm!
He did do this, and there
was a lot of thumb involved.
And there was
lots of "ha! ha! ha!".
[Charles laughing repeatedly]
Ha-ha-ha ... ha-ha-ha.
[all laughing together]
When he thinks he's being
funny, he says, "ha! ha! ha!"
Keep your eyes open, everybody!
[laughs]
And when he is saying something
a bit more matter-of-fact,
it's a "Ha! ha!"
See you sometime. [laughs]
And I think when he's getting
a little bit existential,
it's "Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"
Wonderful, isn't it?
Charles Carson, Coombe End Farm.
[laughs]
[laughs] Beautiful!
In the opening scene,
he does a piece to camera
and then he turns away
and walks towards the house,
and then he sort
of stops and remembers
that he's got to come back
and turn the camera off.
And to this day,
I'm still not entirely sure
if it was deliberate.
[rooster crowing]
[rooster crowing continues]
We've been
collecting weird footage
just for our own
entertainment for years,
and then over the last 15 years,
though, we've
been touring with it
all around the world,
and we realized not only
is there an audience
for this stuff,
but there's also
other people doing
similar things like
Everything Is Terrible!,
TV Carnage, Derrick Beckles...
all sorts
of weirdos, just like us.
["Old Macdonald
Had a Farm" playing]
Oh, they love hats! [laughs]
He really gets a kick out
of horses taking his hats,
-and people's hats, that's, uh,
-Who doesn't?
that is an endless
source of entertainment,
-and who can blame him?
-That's "Life on the Farm"!
She's lovely, this one.
Oh, he's got my hat as well!
Come on, give me my hat back.
What are you doing, my dear?
Oh, he's got my hat!
Oh, he's got my hat!
Oh, this cow is 26 years old.
She's never going to calve.
I'll have to pull the calf away.
There is a lot
of footage of cow births,
uh, in excruciating detail.
[Charles] Come on my dear.
Come on, my dear.
Come on, he's nearly there.
Come on, my dear.
Come on. Here he comes.
Come on, my dear. Whoo!
There we are.
Oh, what a lovely calf.
Well done, my dear,
there we are.
-There we are.
-[liquid gushing]
Come on. There we are, my dear.
Another one coming, come on!
Come on! Another calf coming.
It's painful
and difficult and needs
a helping hand if one's around.
Come on, out we come.
Come on, out we come.
Here we go.
[cow mooing]
Out we come! Here we are!
Here we are.
Fancy you having twins.
Good Lord! I didn't know
you were going to have twins!
Hi there!
Sooty, as you know,
has just given birth
to a pair of twins.
And now luckily, she's managed
to discharge the afterbirth.
This is technically
known as the placenta.
I'm not sure if you've
seen a close up
of this, but let me bring it in
a bit closer to you.
And you'll have
a jolly good look at a placenta.
Isn't that wonderful?
Look at that.
Enormous, isn't it?
My father and mother lived
on this farm for many years,
and my father lived
to be 89 years old
and my mother lived
to be 95 years old.
And they had beef
nearly every day!
Come on, my dear, come on!
They had beef nearly every day.
Well, there you are!
So all I can say is,
go away to the shops
and buy yourself some beef.
It's all quite sweet,
and innocent enough,
until we get
to the point where Charles
is sat down
in front of the fireplace
and he's talking
about one of his cats.
Hi there, the pussycats on
this farm are absolutely lovely.
We've got several pussycats.
Beautiful, aren't they?
[laughs] Absolutely lovely!
Today, one of our famous
little pussycats has died.
We filmed it a couple of years
ago on Remembrance Day
with a poppy around its neck,
celebrating Poppy Day.
Well, there you are,
that's life on a farm.
Little Pandy used to be a little
piano player, come on, Pandy!
Come on, let me put
a poppy around your neck,
and we'll take you
down the orchard...
Take you down
the orchard, Pandy,
come on, my dear.
Little poppy around your neck,
my dear, there you are.
Well, there's,
there's, little Pandy.
You would never
think it's dead, look!
Beautiful little pussycat,
six years old.
We've got three more.
So there we are,
that's life on the farm.
We'll take him down the orchard.
Right, Pandy, come back here
while I get a little,
little box for you
and take you down the orchard,
and bury you
in the orchard, my dear.
Well, there we are,
that's life on the farm.
He was almost, kind of, like a
a morning show
presenter with everything,
where it was just
a kind of, very "up" attitude.
Very, very pleasant,
very positive.
Even holding his own dead cat.
It's Remembrance Day today.
And your little friend
died today, Little Pandy.
Right, we'll dig this hole.
That's deep enough, I think.
That should be deep enough.
Right, there we are.
Come on, my dear.
Let's have a last look at you,
you beautiful little pussy.
He used to go to sleep
in this English apple box
in the kitchen.
He used to make
a little bed in there.
There you are, my dear.
Let's put you in a little grave,
down in the orchard
on Coombe End Farm,
there you are.
[Karen]
He's about to bury this cat.
And this is the last time
we're all going to see it,
and he wants
to memorialize his pet,
which is actually very
sweet and kind of sad.
[Charles] Now, put a little
bit of soil on the top.
There we go.
[shovel scraping]
Yeah, that's lovely.
That's beautiful.
Well, there you are, Pandy.
Come on, pussycats,
come down and see
your little friend
and say goodbye.
Come on. Oh, pussy!
Don't break my back, my dear!
[Lehr] I really liked the moment
when he was burying the cat
and he was doing
that freeze-frame
when the cat jumped on his back.
And it's just like those
little VFX moments in VCRs
that I just I love so much.
Yeah, I laughed
out loud when I first saw that.
And it's, like,
"Oh, don't jump on my back!
Oh, you'll break my back!"
I was like, "Mmm!"
He just had to show that
cat jumping on his back,
even though it was going to
give away that he was putting
cat food down on this grave,
so that the cats could
give their respects
to their fallen comrade. Yeah.
Then we have a photo montage
of Charles and his mother.
["There's No One
Quite Like Grandma" playing]
[Charles]
Mother's registered blind,
she's got to go to hospital.
Here she is in hospital,
getting her eyes seen to.
And here she is, she's coming
back home to feed the livestock.
["There's No One
Quite Like Grandma" playing]
[Charles]
Musgrove Park Hospital.
Here she is, she's home again.
She's getting a lot better.
There she is, playing
with the chicken again.
["There's No One
Quite Like Grandma" playing]
[Charles] Well, there we are,
there's Millie Carson.
She's passed away,
having had a lovely
time on the farm.
Well, there you are.
My mother passed
away in front of the fire.
And this was the point
that Dad had originally turned
off the tape when I was a kid.
[Charles] And this is
the Reverend Chris Marshall.
I got him to come along
to give her a blessing.
Thank you, Christopher.
[Chris] I do remember quite
clearly going to the,
to the farmhouse
when the old lady died
and she was still
sitting in the chair there.
And I think probably I gave her
a blessing
or something or other.
Normally, I would
just put my hand
on them and give them a blessing
and command them to God's
loving mercy and care, you know?
Then the rest is up to Him.
And I can remember
thinking that the house was,
I wasn't quite sure
where the house began
and where the farmyard began,
because they seemed
to run into each other.
The chickens
and things seemed to have,
you know, free access
everywhere, really.
[Charles]
Chirpy! Granny Carson's
given you a lovely breakfast.
I think he then wheeled
his mother out into the yard
to sort
of say farewell to the cow
and the chickens
and the rest of it!
[Charles]
And this is Millie's cows.
And the, the cow's
having a look at her
and I wonder
what the cow's saying?
"Thank you, Millie, my dear."
["There's No One
Quite Like Grandma" playing]
This is a genuine
picture taken on the farm.
Well, there you are.
This is Millie, passed away.
[Joe] And then that
"Grandma" song comes on,
which I've never
heard that song before,
but it's the scariest, creepiest
song to put under anything.
-[Nick] Yeah!
-[Joe] It's like a horror movie.
[Nick] It's like in Casino,
you know, it's like
a Scorsese touch,
where it's a song
that sort of plays
against what's
happening on the screen.
It's exactly like
Scorsese. No different.
[Charles] There you are,
you can hardly believe it.
I brought my mother in to see
her cows after she passed away.
I did used to see the mother out
in the field, you know, and,
I found out afterwards
that she'd died
and he'd put her out
in the field, as he told me,
"So the cows could
pay their last respects."
You know, I hadn't, kind of,
twigged that I was going past,
and she was over
the other side of the fence,
but she was actually
no longer with us.
She just looked like she
always looked, sort of asleep.
Slightly bizarre, I suppose.
But, um, there, I suppose
when you think about it,
it was helpful to the family.
And then later on in the video,
you also see a photo of
Charles posing with his father.
[Charles] Well, there he is.
He's in bed
and he's not very well.
And he says "A whiskey
a day keeps the doctor away."
But he never took too much.
He's never been
drunk in his whole life.
He had a lovely time
on the farm, but here he is.
He says, "I'm 89 and
I'm not very well today."
Well, he wasn't very well,
because he passed away.
Well, there he is.
[Chris] I mean, I think I just
took it in my stride, really.
In fact, in this
line of business,
you quite often
just have to sort of
go with the flow, really,
take it in your stride.
This is what people are like,
this is what families are like.
And you're there to help
in any way
that you can, I guess.
The done thing
becomes what humans do
when one of their own kind dies,
and except for the
accessories, it doesn't change.
The essentials
are pretty much the same.
We get the dead guy
where they need to go.
And by doing so, the living
get where they need to be.
That's the formula.
That's why we do it.
[Nick] It's almost like
a frog in boiling water,
where you don't
realize how weird it is
because it's
happening so slowly.
But then when you stop and think
about it, you're like, "Oh God!"
You can kind of, like,
put people into a state
of it being normalized
and then you kind of, like,
wake up halfway
through and you're like,
"Whoa! Whoa!
Wait a second!" [laughs]
You can't just
"Please and excuse me"
yourself through this.
Uh, this is insane!
The film finishes and...
I just kind of sit
there in shock.
And your first thoughts are,
"What have I just watched?
Who the hell is this guy?
I need to know everything."
[Charles]
[laughs] Charles Carson.
Oh, look at that. That's me!
Well, there we are, there's
Stan Carson, my father.
This is Stan Carson's wife,
Millie Carson,
which is my mother.
She had two babies.
Frank Carson
and myself, Charles Carson.
And we were on Higher
Stolford Farm for several years,
and had a lovely time.
Anyway, um, mother
decided in the end
that she would sell
the farm and buy another one.
Yes, well, there we are.
There's Coombe End Farm.
My mother, Millie Carson,
bought this, this farm
and she went
to Wiveliscombe auction
and bid for it in 1943 and
bought it very, very cheap.
My family bought the farm
Higher Schute farm,
which is right opposite
Coombe End Farm,
where Charles
and his family were.
So that's how, you know,
we got, I got to know him.
I was only seven at the time
and I was being a little tacker,
I suppose, I soon picked up that
I could go over there
and follow Charles.
And he was doing various
things that interested me,
and he used to deliver
steaks around Exmoor.
And I can remember us taking
some steaks to different farms.
He used to say, you know,
"Tomorrow I'm going
to deliver some steaks, Reg,
if you want to come."
And I'd pop over
and we'd go out.
He used to bale our hay,
you know, father's hay.
At the time, Kirkley Hall was
part of the local
county council.
It was a government-run
organization, and it was their,
I suppose,
their agricultural college.
[man] We were amazed,
like I said,
in '55 when he suddenly
went off the scene
and we heard that he'd gone
and got this job in a college.
[dramatic music]
He would be involved
in training the students
how to repair the machines,
how to service them,
but also how to operate them
when they use them in the field.
I did take that he was a
bit of a character. He was,
he was very knowledgeable.
He knew what he
was talking about,
but he also had his own
particular way
of doing things as well.
This is my latest invention.
I've converted a push
lawnmower into a ride-on.
It's absolutely marvelous.
All you've got
to do is to start it up,
squeeze the lever,
and away you go.
Even a child can use it,
it's so simple.
Let me give you a demonstration.
You know, he'd had
enough of teaching
and he wanted to pursue
some other interests, I think,
outside the college.
I've worked with many
farmers over the years,
and I have a research interest
into the mental
health difficulties
that farmers run into.
As those around you grow
older, then you may have to care
for people around you, your
parents or aunts or uncles.
So if you're already isolated,
already working very hard,
already under a lot of pressure,
little in the way
of social support
and caring
for an elderly relative,
you can only imagine the
stresses that that must entail.
And it clearly seemed
to be the case with Charles.
It does appear that perhaps
Charles was there on his own
without his wife,
without his children,
caring for elderly parents.
It must have
been very difficult.
[Denise Broom]
It's like a step back in time,
and it's really,
when I picture it,
it's rather like
a scene from a fairy story,
where you go to the unusual
house with the unusual people...
not in a wood exactly,
but you had that
feeling of anticipation,
when you went down the very
long drive to the house,
that what would
you find this time?
Indoors, we would
go in to be surrounded
by all sorts of brass
and copper pans
hanging from the walls,
and no area seemed free...
there was stuff everywhere.
And, again, the chickens
were on the floor, on the table.
The cats were also
present, a number of them.
So it was, like, otherworldly.
I would describe it
as slightly eccentric,
as a family, you know?
They were certainly "one-off,"
but intelligent with it,
I think.
[Charles] Well, there we are.
There's Stan Carson, my father,
Millie Carson's husband.
Very nice gentleman.
Well, there you are.
[Denise] Because his father had
served on HMS Hood,
he had photographs of his dad
and the ship itself,
which we then
displayed in the church,
much to his absolute delight,
thrilled to bits to be involved,
and was a regular visitor
over the three to four
days that we ran it.
He was up every day.
[Charles]
Yes, well, there we are.
There's my brother,
Frank Carson,
and he says, "I buy livestock."
Well, let's have
a look at these livestock.
Well, there's
my brother, Frank Carson.
What are you doing there, Frank?
Oh, you're feeding the,
um, the chicken.
Oh, very good. Oh, and you've
got a goose there? Very good.
See you, then.
Frank was a character
in his own right,
I think it's fair to say,
and in my experience,
he was a man of very few words.
He said very little.
But was this very
strong, heavy presence.
Whenever we went to see the
family, he was sat at the table.
[chuckling]
[chuckling]
["There's No One
Quite Like Grandma" playing]
[Charles]
This is Mother and myself.
We're playing some lovely music.
Here we are! Mother says,
"A glass a day keeps
the doctor away."
There you are!
His mother was
highly intelligent.
I mean, she played the piano,
apparently, spoke languages,
taught in the local school,
well, she was extraordinary.
So the brains are there
all the way through.
I mean, he was obviously
well taught as a child.
And she was much admired.
She played 12 instruments.
And I often wonder
if that's where Charles
got the musical
talent that he had,
because he also played
musical instruments as well,
amongst all the other
things that he did.
[harmonica playing]
His dear old mother,
who, I don't know what
age she was then, but she...
every time I saw her,
she was in this sort of chair,
like a wheelchair,
but it was like something
that he made himself.
So, it was kind of, like, a
big, sort of,
throne kind of, like,
chair with these
quite small wheels on.
And she was kind of,
like, asleep in this chair,
and he's, sort of,
"Mother!", you know,
"Mother! Mother! Wake
up! We've got a guest!
We've got a guest!"
And she was sort of, like,
and he said, he said, "She can't
hear you and she can't see you,
she's deaf and blind. Mother!
Wake up, we've got a guest!"
And he gave her a harmonica,
and he said,
"Mother, play us a song.
You've got a guest,
play our guest a song."
And she, sort of,
blew a few notes out
of this harmonica, bless her,
and then sort of,
kind of, fell back to sleep.
If your parent
passes away, like,
in front of you and you've been
caring for them
day in and day out,
you know, trying
to help them through
these hardest moments
at the end of life...
like, what do you do when
they're suddenly gone?
You've been working so hard
day in and day out to keep
them going, to keep them happy.
And when they're gone,
it's just, it's shocking.
These are the flowers
that Millie Carson
planted on this farm
about 50 years ago.
She's farmed
on this farm for 50 years,
and prior to that, she
farmed on the Brendon Hills
at Higher Stolford Farm.
She's had a remarkable
time on the farm.
She enjoyed growing flowers,
she enjoyed
all the farm animals.
She had a lovely
time on the farm.
She died at the age of 94.
Most definitely,
Frank's funeral, I find
most memorable, indeed!
Charles was clearly upset
and agitated, but not so much so
that he could set
up his own tripod
and his camera to film all that
went on out in the churchyard.
[bells ringing]
When they came to putting
the coffin into the ground,
Charlie was there with
his camera, running around
and he'd say to the pallbearers,
"No! No! Hold it there!
Hold it there!
I'll just get this shot!"
And then he'd run around
the other side and get another.
"All right. You can lower a
bit lower, now hold it again!"
[laughing]
It's much easier
to turn a funeral
into a film shoot
than to turn it into what it is.
And I wouldn't fault
Charles for that.
That is the kind of
"whistling past the graveyard"
we humans like to do, as if
death doesn't matter,
but it does.
You know, he'd been filming
them while they were alive.
He was going to keep the camera
running even after they died.
On reflection,
I guess now, you think,
maybe that the first
signs of his illness
were beginning
to display themselves.
He was clearly not himself,
and he did stride
across the open grave
after the coffin was lowered
to sit on the pile of earth
that had been exhumed
to produce the grave.
And, you know, he, he sat
there with his mouth organ
and played "All Things
Bright and Beautiful"
[harmonica music playing]
It was very touching
and yet, a little disturbing.
All things
Bright and beautiful
All creatures
Great and small
All things
Wise and wonderful
The Carsons made them all
[Thomas] I think Charles'
reaction when his brother died
is that he wanted to do whatever
he could do for himself.
So rather than choosing
a typical liturgical hymn,
or a set of prayers, better that
he played his harmonica.
Well, there you are, you
can believe that if you like!
That, I think, goes beyond
the bounds of eccentricity.
I think something
was wrong there.
It might be explained
by the early onset of dementia.
One person who's
pretty absent from the film
is Charles' wife, Helen.
[Charles]
Oh, there's my wife, Helen.
What are you doing, Helen?
Oh, you're smoothing the horse
down. Watch your hat, my dear!
She's enjoying herself
on Coombe End Farm.
Right, I'm going to see
Helen Carson, my wife.
Helen! Helen, you're doing
a lovely job there, aren't you?
Lovely, my dear.
[Charles]
There's my wife, Helen.
She's making Christmas
cakes, there's one.
This is the Christmas cake.
Absolutely lovely. Isn't it?
[Charles] That be all?
Yes, it's just
about finished, yes.
[Charles] Well done.
Hello there.
Have you finished
the Christmas cake?
Yes, I've just about finished
it. Looks pretty, doesn't it?
Oh, that's beautiful!
-Yes... Well,
it's all good ingredients.
-All homemade?
-Everything homemade.
-Lovely.
Plenty of alcohol in it.
Soaked the fruit
the night before in port...
Oh, yes?
...so that the alcohol stays
in the fruit and not
burnt off in the oven.
-You've got alcohol in there?
-Yes.
Well, I've got
some here as well.
-Have you? Oh, right.
-Yeah.
-There you are!
-Thank you!
[glass clinks]
Oh, this is lovely! Mmm!
Here we are!
Well, there we are!
Merry Christmas,
my dear! Cheers!
Happy Christmas!
Happy Christmas!
Cheers!
Oh, that's good, what's that?
Ah! That is...
Old England sherry!
-Oh, right.
-That's marvelous!
Yes... well I hope that you
have a very happy Christmas!
Yes. Now then, what
about these cattle outside?
I'll just finish off here,
and put this away,
and then I'll be out with you.
Right. Well, you just
enjoy your sherry,
-I'll see you later.
-Yes.
All right.
Well, Helen, I'm going
to feed the cows outside.
I believe it's snowing.
[Charles] Yes, well, here we
are. This is my wife, Helen.
Um, at the time, just
before Christmas 1995,
she was in Northumberland
looking after her auntie,
and she woke up one morning
and she had a pain in the head.
So she rang, rang up the
hospital, rang up the doctor,
and she was rushed to hospital
and she never recovered.
There you are. Very unfortunate.
I was down
in Somerset at the time,
and my son rang me up,
and I rushed up to hospital...
and there we are.
Very, very unfortunate.
She passed away.
Yes, I took pictures
of her in hospital, of course.
Yes, and many
pictures in the past.
This is Coombe End Farm.
This is me in hospital,
wishing she's going to recover,
but unfortunately, she didn't.
And here we are.
This is me
at the church, with the coffin.
And I made all these flowers
down at Coombe End Farm.
She died the age of 57
years old in Northumberland,
and buried in Northumberland
at Saint Andrew's Church
on the 20th of December.
[Robert]
I think life on a, on a farm
it, sort of, takes up
so much of your time.
My expectation
of what it would be like
is early starts
and late finishes
and lots of, uh,
manual things to do
and a never-ending
cycle of things to do.
See you.
Come on, Jimmy, let's get
some di- uh, chicken for dinner.
And it is difficult to be
brought up in agriculture to,
you know, to move to a different
type of activity sometimes,
especially if there's
family commitments
and that sort of thing.
It can be difficult
to pull away from it.
So maybe it was his way of
escaping and getting out of that
a little bit, possibly.
Filmmaking is a creative outlet.
And this guy is on a farm,
he's probably
bored out of his skull.
And so thank God
he picked up a camera.
He really had to work
at it over a long period,
and he was dedicated to it,
but I think, yeah,
I think it's very
true to say that
perhaps it was the counterpoint
to the, let's face it,
quite lonely, rural,
isolated existence that
most farmers, particularly
small farmers, have.
Growing up on a farm,
you work really hard,
but you also have a lot
of time on your hands.
I would imagine many farmers try
and express their individuality
and their creativity
in a multitude of ways.
You can imagine different
ways in which they might do it.
But I haven't come across
this particular outlet, this
is new to me. It's unique.
Chirpy's wife is sitting
on nine eggs in there.
We're going to breed
some alarm clocks.
Well done, Chirpy.
Occasionally you'd see these
little bantams with little...
sort of... little, sort of,
velvet waistcoats on!
And again, it took
a while to realize
this was part of something that
he'd set up, he was filming.
I know that he did
take sort of quite bizarre
photographs of things...
rather sort of, I don't know.
bit like Monty Python,
really, when you think about it!
[Charles] Well there we are,
these are our lovely
cows on the farm.
I took these pictures myself.
Absolutely wonderful.
And this is a cow being served.
We have a lot of twin
calves on this farm.
Well, there you are! This seems
to be a magic way of doing it.
Yes, there is, of course,
another way of getting
triplets on a farm.
Look at this.
You can hardly believe it!
I took this photo myself.
It's so fun to watch
a man that's that old
be having
such a good time on camera.
[Davy] I see somebody
with creative instincts
who's not in a creative field,
and art should not be
the province only of people
who are professional artists.
[Ciaran] Much of his approach,
it's a surrealist approach.
The juxtaposition of images...
the timeline's completely
lost... the photo montage...
and then the unusual things he
does, the way labels everything.
And he uses images,
he uses cartoons, in effect,
you know, all of
that's very interesting.
You know, the hens
sitting on people's heads,
all, all of that, him sitting
on the back of a cow!
And that could be
explained as an accident,
it could be explained
by somebody
who's consciously adopting the
techniques of the surrealists,
it could also be
explained as an outward
manifestation of what's
going on in Charles' head.
That his own thoughts were
disconnected in some sense.
He would just appear,
certainly at our door,
or at the front gate
and present yet
another tape, which
he would assure you
that he would come and collect
in about a week
or fortnight's time,
expecting you to have
watched all three hours of it,
I have to say! And this
would happen quite regularly.
The cards would appear
at Christmas and Easter.
And if there had been some other
significant event
which he sort of
produced a card for,
you'd also get one.
I can remember on one
embarrassing occasion,
he lent us a video, and I
have to confess I hadn't
watched it,
or possibly not at all,
but certainly
not all the way through.
And I clearly failed very badly
when he asked me questions,
to be confronted by him saying,
"You haven't
watched it, have you?
I'll leave it
with you until you have!"
So I very dutifully
then carried on,
took it and watched
all the three hours,
and I was asked the same
questions when he came back
to pick it up the next time.
But I had the answers!
Charles made unique
cuts of his home movie
for different
people in the village,
and the tape that I have was one
he made especially
for my grandparents.
[Charles] Frank, we've got Nurse
Harding coming to see you.
Patricia is going
to do your legs today
and she's got some
lovely pussycats at home.
And she's, she's
going to retire this week.
So I'm going to take a video.
The footage that
Charles has shot of her is
the only document and the only
memory I have of my grandmother.
So I kind of owe
Charles a debt for that.
And I wonder if
one of the reasons
my grandfather kept the tape
was because it was a way
to see his wife, Trish, again.
[Charles] This is Nurse Harding,
the district nurse
of Huish Champflower.
She's come to do
Frank Carson's leg.
A very, very good nurse,
she's going to retire next week,
so I'm going to take a video.
Come on then, Trish, let me take
a video of you, my dear.
I'm going to put a dry dressing
on this, it's shallower.
-You're like an Iron lady!
-An Iron what?!
Iron Lady. You're not
a Mrs. Thatcher, but...
No, I'm no politician!
I reckon you're tough
as old boots, Trish.
-You reckon?
-I reckon.
-I am fairly tough, yeah.
-Yeah.
Right, now, here we go.
The weekly decision,
which sock would we like?
Brown.
-On both of them?
-No, I want the blue one on top.
-Blue one on top...
-Put a rope around his -
I'll be buggered if I
didn't burn the other blue one
trying to dry it on
the fire, and it singed up.
Put a rope around his neck,
Trish, and pull it up tight!
A hole came in the dam...
a great hole came in...
[Karen] It felt to me
like he was presenting
to the world, you know?
He wasn't
just talking to the people
I think that he ended
up giving those videos to.
It felt like he was talking
to me, to everybody!
Although he does some
very unusual things,
and as we've probably
seen the film footage,
and certainly we have the cards,
where he's taken the photographs
after his mother's death...
So, he does have
an unusual attitude to death,
but it's not a spooky attitude.
There is something quite loving,
and caring, and genuine about
trying to get the very last
I's dotted and T's crossed
before she leaves
the farm. Yeah.
One of the first
things that struck me
when I watched
Charles's own footage
was his preoccupation not just
with death, but with life.
So he's preoccupied
with the life cycle.
So we see images
of dead cats, a dead fox,
of his dead father, of his
dead mother, of funerals...
so, his preoccupation with
death, that's very prominent.
But I think equally prominent
is his preoccupation with life.
So, we see calves
being born, for example.
He repeatedly comes back
to the flowers, the wildflowers
growing in his mother's garden
that were planted
50 years earlier.
He talks about those repeatedly.
He gathers bunches and brings
them to his mother's funeral.
So, it's about
the cycle of life.
He wanted to capture
them for posterity.
He wanted everyone to know.
And if he's looking
into this camera
and in his mind, he's
kind of talking to the world,
then he's saying,
"Here's my mother.
Here's my mother as she's aging.
Here's my mother
as she gets sick.
And now here's
my mother dead in the chair."
You know, "Here's my
mother getting the blessing."
I mean, all of that,
it's his experience.
And he's basically saying,
"Here's what I'm seeing, and
here's what I'm going through."
Charles is, is kind of
showing all of us, like,
you can respond
to that moment...
It's one of the biggest moments
in your life, to lose a parent.
You can respond
to it any way you feel.
You can do anything you
choose to do, and it's OK.
That, that is a
powerful message.
And that is a powerful legacy
to leave behind.
What Charles was doing with
his parents, and with his pets,
is no different
from what human beings
have been doing
through most of history.
It's only been the last, maybe,
century-and-a-half that
we've farmed out the notion
of taking care of our own dead.
So when, when Charles poses
with his father's corpse,
that would be
the norm, not the exception.
Nowadays, people talk
about dying a good death,
and it seems to be
very sort of fashionable,
if such a thing can be.
But for him, that
was very important.
And I think that he seemed to
consider that that was very...
a matter of importance,
not for himself,
but also
for the person concerned.
So, in a way, he had had... he
had a great deal of foresight,
because a lot of the
things that we now do now,
and we talk about now,
he was up for talking
about 20, 30 years ago.
So he was a man
before his time, really.
So, what I admire
about Charles is that
his forthright sense that,
"This is life on the farm,
there it is!"
What he means to say
is this is life for humans,
and other created things
that breed, they die.
And you'll notice this
at the farm, it's pretty clear.
Crops fail. Animals die.
And a farmer has
to deal with those things.
It's, like, way more progressive
than you think, like,
a man like that would
be, like, I would think.
Toward the end of your life,
say, your 60s and your 70s,
you think about life, you
think about what you've done
and what you haven't done.
In effect, you count up
everything that was good
and you're proud of.
But you also think the things
that you wish you had done,
or things you did do that
you now feel guilty about.
And you have to come
to terms with all of that.
You have to, have to
weigh it up in the balance.
I think it's clear that Charles
spent his life trying to find
any kind
of audience for his work,
and towards the end of his life,
I don't think he thought
he would ever find one.
Whether he was doing
it consciously or not,
so many people in his
life are retiring, dying...
Farmers are very isolated.
Often it's older men,
sometimes they
live on their own,
and sometimes it's just
the older man and his wife.
So an isolated couple...
Children tend
to move away from home.
In the past, there have
been more farm laborers,
and a sense of farm
community working together.
But now, because
of modern machinery,
there's less of that.
So it can be a very
long, isolated day,
followed by another
long, isolated day.
Later on in life, when
Charles was down on the farm
and looking after his family,
he started to go senile.
You'd very often,
you'd see him walking
around and his trousers
would be wide open,
-with everything hanging out...
-He'd walk around without his
trousers on towards the end!
He could be sort of volatile...
or his mood could
change, you know?
and like I say, I could
see him in Wiveliscombe,
he'd come up to me and,
sort of pat me
on the shoulder and
he wouldn't let me go, you know?
And yet, I could see him here
and he would, sort of, walk
past me and not ignore me,
but, you know, he
was somewhere else.
I was getting on with my job
and he was getting on with his,
and that was sort
of understood, so...
I couldn't really tell.
I just put it down
to a mild eccentricity,
as I think did everybody
else around here,
they just, "That's
the way Charles is."
I think the main
thing that changed
was that we saw less of him.
And very often when, perhaps,
somebody suffers as he did,
you might see more of him.
But we didn't,
we saw less of him,
and I often wondered whether
he had become rather reclusive.
And also his main
occupation, if you want
to call it that, of caring for,
well, possibly his father,
certainly his mother, and Frank,
that had gone.
And this must have
left a huge gap in his life.
[Karen]
It's just you and your mind.
So when your mind
begins to change,
and maybe things
become confusing,
there would be no one
there to counter that with.
There would, there
would be no one there
that would make him realize
that things were changing.
It would, he would be...
experiencing all of that
alone, which is horrible.
It's a horrible thought.
That, unless he didn't realize
it, and then if he was just out
talking to those cows,
and spending his days
in very familiar territory,
maybe it made it
a little bit easier for him.
[Derrick] I feel like he's maybe
lost control of things?
Like, I think his world is
disintegrating around him and...
documenting everything
is like a coping mechanism
to, like, make it feel
like he's in control.
By the time we arrived,
he'd got so eccentric
that people were
tending to avoid him,
to be absolutely
honest with you.
The production of the cards,
and the filming,
all seemed to cease.
If it hadn't, we certainly
weren't given any.
So it just seems that
he stopped... trying?
So, he was an intelligent
guy, no question about it.
But we didn't see that.
We saw the end, end
product of, you know,
when he was becoming
increasingly eccentric.
[Denise]
What was, I guess, a shock,
we'll call it a surprise,
was that he had gone
and we hadn't realized
that he had, he had moved on
and... we didn't know he'd gone.
So, it was only until rumor
informed us, if you like,
and I don't know who did that,
that he had attempted
to come home
and had, had tried to come
back to Huish Champflower.
And when I was told this, I
can remember remarking,
"I didn't even know he'd gone."
Come on, my dear, there we are.
She had two babies,
Frank Carson, and myself.
-Well done, girl. Well done.
-[cow mooing]
Here we are, let's have a look
and see where we went.
Coombe End Farm is just
a little way up the road here.
[cuts of Charles speaking] -Stan
-Millie
-Passed away
You would never
think it's dead, look.
Helen died... that was a shock.
There you are. I'm going home.
Now, I'm on my own.
Let's have a last look at you.
That's deep enough, I think.
[roosters crowing]
Um... Umm... Uh...
One of them died actually.
You'd never think it's dead.
[Charles laughing]
On my own.
That's deep enough, I think.
Umm... Uh...
You swine, Charles!
Oh, aren't they beautiful?
Goodbye.
All the flowers,
grown here on the farm.
Oh, aren't they beautiful?
-On my own...
-Beautiful wildflowers...
Beautiful, beautiful
wildflowers.
You'd never think it's dead.
-Stan
-Millie
-Passed away
[choir singing "All Things
Bright and Beautiful]
[Charles] Nearly come
to the end of this video.
[electronic jingle music]
We do a lot
of pictures on this farm.
And let me show appreciation
to Helen Carson, my wife.
For all the things
she did in the past...
Well there you are, Helen.
[electronic jingle music]
And now, what you've
all been waiting for.
[trumpet music]
You get towards the end of the
tape and Charles's film is over,
and all of a sudden another
program shows up, that
I assumed he had taped over,
just some random TV program.
And I kept watching...
and I couldn't quite
believe what I was seeing.
Yes, the announcement
of the winner
of the "Family Affairs" United
Nations photo competition!
We've literally had
hundreds of entries
on the theme of family life.
But who's going
to win our grand prize?
"Family Affairs" recruited
a famous photographer
to do the judging.
And the winner is this
series by Charles Carson.
And I chose this
as the winner because
it's just funny, it's humorous,
it's well put-together, and
it depicts their family life,
which looks like
it was rather fun!
Yes, a big congratulations
to our winner,
Charles Carson from
Somerset, whose prize,
a Philips Interactive
CD player, will
be winging its
way to him shortly.
And as a special bonus, his
photos, alongside the Runners-Up
and the best of the
rest, will be on show
at the Barbican art gallery
during the summer.
[Denise]
I think his proudest moment
has to be the winning of the
competition judged by Koo Stark.
And, you know,
we were very fortunate
that he decided to give
us a copy of the letter,
which was actually
informing him that he'd won.
And he was
extremely proud of that.
That, I think, was one
of his proudest moments.
When I saw his work again, when
you showed me his work again,
I like it!
And I understand now
why I did like it so much.
It's cheerful, actually.
I find it almost comic-book.
I felt like he was inviting me
to come and play with him.
"Here's my life.
Here's my farm.
Here's my cat.
Here are my parents."
You know, "Come and,
come and see what it's like."
He literally said it!
"Come and spend
a day on the farm," you know?
"Come and see what it's like,
come and join me."
He was so inviting,
and really sweet.
It made me feel good.
I like feeling good,
that's why he won!
[Dimitri]
We're watching it... and, oh
my God! First prize, Charles!
Oh, you fucking did it!
And so that was a...
[Lehr] We were so, I mean,
I was proud of him.
I was, like, so excited for him!
[Dimitri]
So proud of him, exactly!
[Lehr] Like, not only did he,
like, get the recognition
that I think he was
seeking, but, like,
on this huge,
like, national scale.
I think he was using photography
to express himself
and to entertain.
It was very entertaining.
Entertain, educate
and express his own life.
[Charles]
That's the picture that won
the prize on the television.
"Anyone seen My Valentine?"
And my Valentine,
of course, is...
Helen, Helen Carson.
Well, there she is.
Oh, they're beautiful
pictures, these, aren't they?
Yes.
I wake up one morning to a text
from my dad, and there's a clip
to a YouTube video,
and the title says,
"Charles Carson -
Life on the Farm".
and I have absolutely
no idea what this is,
has someone else
found the tape before me?
Who's put the tape online?
The footage is
probably better than
most of what is on
my copy of the tape.
[Charles] Oh, my goodness!
[Charles] You're going to
break your neck, lad!
I just can't believe this!
I can't remember
the exact sequence,
but I think I started
becoming aware of...
these skeletons, these
cardboard skeletons.
I think that was the first thing
I became aware of, seeing one
sat in the seat of the
tractor, of the old tractor,
and it was there for some
period of time during the day.
I told ya.
Damn good driver, this chap!
He's as fit as a flea!
He only weighs 2 stone...
I can recommend him to anybody.
Real first class tractor driver.
[John] And I think then
it was joined by another one
on the little mower
that he had built a kind of a
drive, ride-on trolley behind.
And they sat there,
and they'd come and go.
The old tractor that he had,
the Massey or something,
he'd just sort of put it on
tick over and put it into gear
and just put it on forelock,
and it would just chug-
"pop! pop! pop! pop! pop!"
Just go around in a circle
with this skeleton,
sort of, taped his hands,
taped to the steering wheel.
And, and then become
aware that he was filming it!
[mower rumbling]
Hey! What are you doing there?!
Charles then goes
on to make a short film
and it has a plot to it,
it has special effects to it,
and you see
a new level to his artistry.
Yeah, and I always wonder, like,
did he make this up
as he was going along?
Or did he like actually
write a script to this?
Hey! What are we going to do?
This is the chap that had
the accident last week
on the lawnmower.
This must be reincarnation,
he's made a comeback!
What are we going to do?
And his props, you know,
his little policeman's hat,
helmet, you know, these things.
God knows where
he got them from,
probably from the local jumble
sale or something! [laughs]
[Charles as skeleton]
I've been up in Heaven.
But I couldn't find
nothing to do up there!
And I said to the vicar,
he said "Aye, that's alright,
go down on the farm and
cut some more grass," he said.
[John]
The little ride-on, the little
mower that he'd built a trolley,
and used to sit one in that.
And again, it just,
he'd put it on forward,
and he'd just let it go until it
hit something and turned over.
I mean, you know,
he did that endlessly.
The work and expertise that it
took to do all that voice-over,
and to line all that up,
and then edit it
in-camera or in two VCRs,
I mean, it's, like...
It's not easy
in 1996 or whatever, like,
that's remarkable.
-Yeah.
-I mean...
a lot of people use their
time to sit and watch TV,
but he was, like, making it,
-which is amazing.
-[Dimitri] Right.
[Charles]
Come here! Oh, dear me...
Oh, you're a clever lad!
So at this point, we've
got another mystery.
Who put this online?
What does this person
know about Charles?
I'm Jake Day-Williams... uh...
I was deputy editor of
Camcorder User magazine...
1998 'til 2000, maybe?
Can't honestly remember, but
it's around that sort of time.
My name's Robert Hull,
and at the time, I was a staff
writer on Video Camera magazine,
and then later, a deputy editor
on Camcorder User magazine.
Camcorder User magazine
was a buying guide
for people who were
interested in camcorders.
We provided tips
and tricks and techniques
for how to make
better home videos.
The British Amateur Video Awards
was just a competition that
was run by the magazine.
People would make their videos
and send them
into us at the magazine.
And then, as I remember,
we had a judging day.
You know, we'd have
maybe have like 20 videos
and from that we'd whittle
it down to the finalists
and the eventual winners.
[Charles]
Yes, I hope this one works
out very well for BAVA '98.
One day, there was this video
and a, sort of, crowd was
gathering around this guy's desk
and everyone was like,
"You've gotta come see this!
You've gotta come see this!"
And it was Charles's video,
which was just funny
and entertaining.
[Robert] I do remember watching
it for the first time.
Somebody came in and
said, "I've had this to judge.
You guys are going to
have to see it!", right?
I remember, sort of, like,
watching... rather... sort of
transfixed right from the start.
["Scotland the Brave" playing]
You know, even at the end, to
see a man in a kilt,
sort of... performing
"The Gay Gordons"
or this Scottish thing,
but playing it on a strimmer
and then dubbing
the music on afterwards,
you could kind
of see the funniness.
You could see how, you know,
how clever the joke was,
and... okay, it wasn't
pulled off particularly well,
but, but it was still funny!
Merry Christmas and
a happy New Year!
Now, we've all had a
lovely time on the farm.
But as you know,
with Christmas cake and alcohol,
it brings a little problem.
And that is we all put
a little bit of weight on.
Now, it's no
problem on the farm.
Let me show you
how to get rid of it.
Very, very simple.
The faster you work it,
the more you lose!
Well, there you are!
So there you are, there's
the scientific evidence!
There's the proof
that you can lose
2 stone, 3 stone
a day by this method.
It's the most memorable, I mean,
I can't tell
you which films won!
[Charles] Chirpy! Chirpy, come
down beside your wife.
Come on!
The owl will look
after the foxes.
The owl will watch
the foxes, come down here!
Now then, get in there, Chirpy,
and keep an eye on your wife!
[Robert] And it made us laugh,
and I also remember that...
it was very much of a
thing for me at the time,
was I thought it brought
a group of people
who worked together, together!
Little things,
little mannerisms,
little things he said, started
becoming catchphrases
to the point where
we still, kind of,
say things now, 20 years later.
And as new people
joined the company,
if they were like part of
our "in" crowd or whatever,
they'd get shown the video
and then they'd start,
you know, they'd pick up
on different things, as well,
which sort of then brought
new life into it all again.
And it just sort of kept going.
Oh, there we are.
Coombe End Farm!
We've got eleven
horses on this farm,
they're absolutely lovely.
Here you are,
my dear, little bit
of hay here. Oi!
That's my watch.
Beautiful!
[Davy] Yes, he hoped perhaps
that it would reach a
broader audience one day,
but it also seemed like...
even if it didn't,
he just enjoyed
making these films.
Let's have a drop of brandy.
Cheers!
Happy New Year!
[Oscar] Whatever you might think
about them as pieces of art,
they capture a time,
and a place, and a way of
life that's changed completely.
People who were
working on the farms,
maybe weren't that interested
in following in the family
footsteps, you know?
It was very much
expected at one time.
I mean, same with
Charles, really, you know?
He went back home
to look after the family farm.
You know, a lot of
youngsters now, you know,
don't really want to do that.
They want to follow
a different path.
It's a way of showing what
life was like at the time.
It was a hard life,
it was difficult.
Over the years,
farming has changed enormously!
I believe now that
there isn't a single
milking herd in the
parish of Wiveliscombe.
So he was telling a
story all the time, really,
which is probably quite sad,
that he wasn't able
to get more involved.
He probably knew, you saw,
I didn't realize how technical
he was, and how advanced he was.
I mean, he probably
was pretty clever...
if only someone had realized it!
A Somerset farmer
could be about to become
a worldwide sensation.
This is the bombshell I
was telling you about earlier.
You're about to see the greatest
video, probably, from this year.
Mister Carson has become
a big hit on the Internet.
This is the next "Grey
Gardens", I think.
People across
the world and online
want to see Charles's stuff.
This one actually
comes from England,
and we don't have any
videos from the U.K. at all!
We were shown this footage
at a show in Milwaukee
with very little context,
and we got hooked immediately,
like, we got obsessed with it,
we were watching it
constantly...
And we do a weekly web show,
where we watch VHS tapes.
Weird, disturbing,
hilarious stuff.
-Come on, my dear, there we are!
-Listen to the sound!
-Listen to the sound!
-[liquids gushing]
-There we are!
-[Joe laughs]
Come on,
there we are, my dear!
You're going to make
that your ringtone...
We should,
I'm going to rewind that...
I don't know how I can top a
cow's afterbirth being held up.
This was the 2019 Found Footage
Festival clip of the year!
He clearly had a real,
a kind of artistic drive
to bring people into his world,
and to introduce them
into that world.
One of his captions,
it said something like
"self-taken photograph"
or something.
He's invented the idea
of the selfie, unwittingly.
God knows what he would make
of... with the internet,
I mean, he probably would
have really embraced that.
He'd be pinging stuff all
over the place, you know?
You like a person who
wants to connect like that.
He's clearly reaching out.
It's really charming.
I think he had his version
of what he probably
thought a following would be,
if he, if he garnered one.
It felt like I was watching a
home movie that I grew up with,
with the exception
of the accents.
I mean, and the
multiple corpses.
I don't think my family
would really show that.
I think it says something
about Charles's filmmaking -
I mean, these movies
are 30 years old,
they're British, and now they're
actually finding an audience
in the United States.
It proves that there's
something universal to these.
That left me rather speechless.
Oh, well, my dears,
I've got to go now.
[Jake] When I first saw the
footage, I was, you know,
selfish and young, and
didn't have a care in the world.
And now, I look back on it
as a father, and as a husband,
and as someone
who's got relatives
who are old and who have died
and it... it becomes so much
more heartbreaking and powerful,
some of the footage.
Because, in my mind then,
he was like a caricature
that you could almost laugh at.
But now, there's a humanity
and there's a sense of emotion
that's really raw and
really quite powerful and...
I don't know, I have a
new perspective on it,
and a new perspective on him.
Come around and have a look.
I've got something to show you.
[Davy]
I think if he knew now that
people all over the world
are watching this film,
people are obsessed
with this film,
they're talking about
it with their friends,
they're, they're moved by it
in the ways that
he may have hoped
that it might move people, like,
I think he would
just be honored.
I think he would be...
I think he would feel satisfied.
And I think, you know, that
that artist's urge
to kind of communicate
your deepest self
to another person,
he would feel like he'd
actually accomplished that
against all odds.
[Nick] I think he would be
absolutely pleased
to know that, posthumously,
people are appreciating
his work, you know?
It's like a... I don't know,
like a Van Gogh, who maybe,
you know, wasn't
appreciated in his time,
but is now finding
a new audience.
[laughs]
I don't know, I think...
I don't know,
how would somebody like...
how would somebody,
like what he's doing,
react to popularity?
I don't think like
the trappings of success
are necessarily
the same in everyone's minds.
I presume his were
a bit more humble.
This is how it plays
the music, innit lovely?
There we are. Fantastic machine,
plays all the lovely
farm music! See you!
Charles's films make us feel
more alive, and more human,
and more in touch
with our species,
because we see how it works.
Bits of it make me really
kind of sad about him,
and bits of it, sort
of, make me feel...
fill me with joy.
-He leaves you wanting more!
-He leaves you wanting more,
-which is really what
a filmmaker should...
-Always a success!
All filmmakers
should aspire to that.
These two skeletons are
going to have a race
on these lawnmowers,
cutting grass.
Should be very, very good!
I'm grateful to Charles
for recording his life
and the elements of his life
that he wanted to share with us,
and I think that we
can learn from that.
I think that there's more
to this video than just...
Charles being funny on the farm.
His view of death is
the big takeaway here.
And I think that
if everybody else,
like, kind of, had
that view of death,
the world would
be a better place.
I think he would be very proud
to, to feel that people
were recognizing
that he was doing something that
wasn't just a mad aberration
of some bonkers farmer
in the middle of nowhere,
that he was making
something creative
and that there were people
all over the world,
from all sorts of walks of life,
seeing what he's doing and
being really astonished by it,
on lots of different levels!
Absolutely life-affirming.
-Yeah.
-And death-affirming.
[all] Yeah!
There you are!
[John] I think it's really
important, really important,
that people like
Charles are celebrated.
Because it brings color
and flavor to our life.
He'll go down in history.
[Charles]
Yes, well, there we are.
I hope you've
enjoyed this video,
"Life On The Farm".
I take hundreds
of pictures on this farm
and lots of videos.
Well, there we are.
Now then, if you smile at me,
I'll take your picture as well.
-Here we go then.
-[camera clicks]
That's one. Smile again, and let
the chicken have a look at you.
-Here we go then.
-[camera clicks]
There you are,
that's another one.
There you are, that's
my camera on a tripod.
That's how I take the pictures.
Anyway, there we are.
All the best
from Coombe End Farm.
See you sometime.
[upbeat symphony music]
[upbeat music continues]
[dramatic music playing]
[dramatic music playing]
[dramatic music playing]
[eerie music playing]
[Charles Carson]
"Carson's Colour Schemer"
"Tomorrow's world
of colour, today."
[cows mooing]
[mooing continues]
Welcome to Coombe End Farm!
Follow me down.
I've got something to show you.
[VCR clicks]
I don't know where
to even begin with this story.
We've been collecting
weird VHS tapes since 1991,
and by far this is
the weirdest one we've seen.
[man] This is dark,
but it's, like, "friendly" dark.
You would never
think it's dead, look!
[man] We've unearthed something
and nobody's
quite sure what it is.
[man] I came across
something that's so...
obscure and hidden away...
[man] It's been... an experience
watching all of this.
It looks
like a fucking horror movie!
There's all manner
of craziness. [laughs]
I think, is the easiest
way to describe it!
[man]
The more I found out about it,
the more I realized that
this had to have an audience.
[man] I think he wanted
the whole world to see this.
[ID] And nothing's stayed
with me quite like,
quite like
"Life On The Farm", no.
That is a truly special
work of art.
I owed it to the man
and I owed it to his work.
[man] He was ahead of his time.
- [man] Absolutely unique.
- [man] Highly absurd.
[man] He was a great character,
he was an individual.
-He was a showman.
[man] Terrifying!
You don't meet
many people like Charles.
Hi there!
It is a little bit reminiscent
of the serial killer Ed Gein.
I can't tell if this guy
is a genius or a psychopath!
Come on, pussy,
let's go. [laughs].
This is the story of Charles
Carson and "A Life on the Farm."
[laughs] Ah well, here we go!
[cow mooing]
It's probably best to start
when my family comes in.
Particularly my grandfather,
John Harding.
He did play a part
in my love of film and writing.
He was a bit of a poet
and all that kind of thing.
And, of course, you know,
a staunch supporter of
all that went on
in Huish Champflower.
[Oscar] Huish Champflower
is a pretty remote place.
It's nearby a village
called Wiveliscombe,
but it's sort of spaced out
so that your neighbors
aren't really neighbors.
Some of them are maybe
five, ten minutes' drive away,
and that's
your closest neighbor.
I do know it was my mom's wish
to move into the country.
She seemed
very keen to move away.
They really got into being
part of the local town and area.
The sort of communities like
the communities around
here are quite unique in a way,
and how much longer
will they stay like this?
[Oscar] One of John
and Trisha's neighbors
was a farmer
called Charles Carson.
Come on, my dears.
Beef is beautiful!
Come on, my dear! Up you get!
[Oscar] Charles had, at some
point, given my grandpa
a copy of "Life on the Farm,"
a feature-length
home movie he had made.
Well, there you are, everybody.
If you want to get
up in the morning,
come and see us
at Coombe End Farm.
[Oscar] When John died in 2006,
the family went
down to his house
and started clearing
out his possessions,
and one of my aunts
found a videotape.
[harmonica playing]
[Charles]
Charles Carson, Coombe End Farm.
So it's me and my kid sister,
she's 5 or 6 at the time.
I'm about 10 years old, and it's
our first time ever watching
"Life On The Farm."
Let's put a little bit
of grass on the top of you.
That's lovely.
Yeah.
You'll have
a lovely time in there.
[VCR clicks]
[Oscar] Halfway through, Dad
just shuts off the tape.
And that was the last time I saw
that film for around a decade.
We moved house, lost the tape,
and then one day I bring it up
in conversation with my aunt
and she says,
"Oh, that old tape! Yeah, yeah!
I've got that buried
away somewhere!
Give me a couple
of days to find it."
So I'm waiting,
and I'm hoping that
it's every bit as amazing and
weird as I remember it being.
So, she gives me the tape
and I sit down by myself,
lights off, and for the first
time in around 10 years,
I see "Life On The Farm."
["Old Macdonald
Had a Farm" playing]
[Charles]
Here I am, Charles Carson.
I'm taking some more pictures.
Keep your eyes open,
everybody! [laughs]
This is a lovely, lovely video.
All these memories
start flooding back
and the images are exactly
how I remember them.
Oh, it's marvelous, isn't it?
[Charles] Have you got
your, uh, video set up?
I'm ready to play you
some lovely pictures.
[cows mooing]
[mooing continues]
[Oscar]
The video starts off and it
all feels a little bit amateur.
And then Charles Carson
introduces himself.
Hi there, I'm Charles Carson.
[Oscar] Then he introduces
himself again...
Charles Carson. Coombe End Farm.
[Oscar] And then he introduces
himself for a third time...
Charles Carson. Coombe End Farm.
Because he mentions
Coombe End Farm so, so often,
"Charles Carson,
Coombe End Farm!
Charles Carson,
Coombe End Farm!"
[multiple Carsons speaking]
Charles Carson! Coombe
End Farm! Coombe End Farm!
He did do this, and there
was a lot of thumb involved.
And there was
lots of "ha! ha! ha!".
[Charles laughing repeatedly]
Ha-ha-ha ... ha-ha-ha.
[all laughing together]
When he thinks he's being
funny, he says, "ha! ha! ha!"
Keep your eyes open, everybody!
[laughs]
And when he is saying something
a bit more matter-of-fact,
it's a "Ha! ha!"
See you sometime. [laughs]
And I think when he's getting
a little bit existential,
it's "Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"
Wonderful, isn't it?
Charles Carson, Coombe End Farm.
[laughs]
[laughs] Beautiful!
In the opening scene,
he does a piece to camera
and then he turns away
and walks towards the house,
and then he sort
of stops and remembers
that he's got to come back
and turn the camera off.
And to this day,
I'm still not entirely sure
if it was deliberate.
[rooster crowing]
[rooster crowing continues]
We've been
collecting weird footage
just for our own
entertainment for years,
and then over the last 15 years,
though, we've
been touring with it
all around the world,
and we realized not only
is there an audience
for this stuff,
but there's also
other people doing
similar things like
Everything Is Terrible!,
TV Carnage, Derrick Beckles...
all sorts
of weirdos, just like us.
["Old Macdonald
Had a Farm" playing]
Oh, they love hats! [laughs]
He really gets a kick out
of horses taking his hats,
-and people's hats, that's, uh,
-Who doesn't?
that is an endless
source of entertainment,
-and who can blame him?
-That's "Life on the Farm"!
She's lovely, this one.
Oh, he's got my hat as well!
Come on, give me my hat back.
What are you doing, my dear?
Oh, he's got my hat!
Oh, he's got my hat!
Oh, this cow is 26 years old.
She's never going to calve.
I'll have to pull the calf away.
There is a lot
of footage of cow births,
uh, in excruciating detail.
[Charles] Come on my dear.
Come on, my dear.
Come on, he's nearly there.
Come on, my dear.
Come on. Here he comes.
Come on, my dear. Whoo!
There we are.
Oh, what a lovely calf.
Well done, my dear,
there we are.
-There we are.
-[liquid gushing]
Come on. There we are, my dear.
Another one coming, come on!
Come on! Another calf coming.
It's painful
and difficult and needs
a helping hand if one's around.
Come on, out we come.
Come on, out we come.
Here we go.
[cow mooing]
Out we come! Here we are!
Here we are.
Fancy you having twins.
Good Lord! I didn't know
you were going to have twins!
Hi there!
Sooty, as you know,
has just given birth
to a pair of twins.
And now luckily, she's managed
to discharge the afterbirth.
This is technically
known as the placenta.
I'm not sure if you've
seen a close up
of this, but let me bring it in
a bit closer to you.
And you'll have
a jolly good look at a placenta.
Isn't that wonderful?
Look at that.
Enormous, isn't it?
My father and mother lived
on this farm for many years,
and my father lived
to be 89 years old
and my mother lived
to be 95 years old.
And they had beef
nearly every day!
Come on, my dear, come on!
They had beef nearly every day.
Well, there you are!
So all I can say is,
go away to the shops
and buy yourself some beef.
It's all quite sweet,
and innocent enough,
until we get
to the point where Charles
is sat down
in front of the fireplace
and he's talking
about one of his cats.
Hi there, the pussycats on
this farm are absolutely lovely.
We've got several pussycats.
Beautiful, aren't they?
[laughs] Absolutely lovely!
Today, one of our famous
little pussycats has died.
We filmed it a couple of years
ago on Remembrance Day
with a poppy around its neck,
celebrating Poppy Day.
Well, there you are,
that's life on a farm.
Little Pandy used to be a little
piano player, come on, Pandy!
Come on, let me put
a poppy around your neck,
and we'll take you
down the orchard...
Take you down
the orchard, Pandy,
come on, my dear.
Little poppy around your neck,
my dear, there you are.
Well, there's,
there's, little Pandy.
You would never
think it's dead, look!
Beautiful little pussycat,
six years old.
We've got three more.
So there we are,
that's life on the farm.
We'll take him down the orchard.
Right, Pandy, come back here
while I get a little,
little box for you
and take you down the orchard,
and bury you
in the orchard, my dear.
Well, there we are,
that's life on the farm.
He was almost, kind of, like a
a morning show
presenter with everything,
where it was just
a kind of, very "up" attitude.
Very, very pleasant,
very positive.
Even holding his own dead cat.
It's Remembrance Day today.
And your little friend
died today, Little Pandy.
Right, we'll dig this hole.
That's deep enough, I think.
That should be deep enough.
Right, there we are.
Come on, my dear.
Let's have a last look at you,
you beautiful little pussy.
He used to go to sleep
in this English apple box
in the kitchen.
He used to make
a little bed in there.
There you are, my dear.
Let's put you in a little grave,
down in the orchard
on Coombe End Farm,
there you are.
[Karen]
He's about to bury this cat.
And this is the last time
we're all going to see it,
and he wants
to memorialize his pet,
which is actually very
sweet and kind of sad.
[Charles] Now, put a little
bit of soil on the top.
There we go.
[shovel scraping]
Yeah, that's lovely.
That's beautiful.
Well, there you are, Pandy.
Come on, pussycats,
come down and see
your little friend
and say goodbye.
Come on. Oh, pussy!
Don't break my back, my dear!
[Lehr] I really liked the moment
when he was burying the cat
and he was doing
that freeze-frame
when the cat jumped on his back.
And it's just like those
little VFX moments in VCRs
that I just I love so much.
Yeah, I laughed
out loud when I first saw that.
And it's, like,
"Oh, don't jump on my back!
Oh, you'll break my back!"
I was like, "Mmm!"
He just had to show that
cat jumping on his back,
even though it was going to
give away that he was putting
cat food down on this grave,
so that the cats could
give their respects
to their fallen comrade. Yeah.
Then we have a photo montage
of Charles and his mother.
["There's No One
Quite Like Grandma" playing]
[Charles]
Mother's registered blind,
she's got to go to hospital.
Here she is in hospital,
getting her eyes seen to.
And here she is, she's coming
back home to feed the livestock.
["There's No One
Quite Like Grandma" playing]
[Charles]
Musgrove Park Hospital.
Here she is, she's home again.
She's getting a lot better.
There she is, playing
with the chicken again.
["There's No One
Quite Like Grandma" playing]
[Charles] Well, there we are,
there's Millie Carson.
She's passed away,
having had a lovely
time on the farm.
Well, there you are.
My mother passed
away in front of the fire.
And this was the point
that Dad had originally turned
off the tape when I was a kid.
[Charles] And this is
the Reverend Chris Marshall.
I got him to come along
to give her a blessing.
Thank you, Christopher.
[Chris] I do remember quite
clearly going to the,
to the farmhouse
when the old lady died
and she was still
sitting in the chair there.
And I think probably I gave her
a blessing
or something or other.
Normally, I would
just put my hand
on them and give them a blessing
and command them to God's
loving mercy and care, you know?
Then the rest is up to Him.
And I can remember
thinking that the house was,
I wasn't quite sure
where the house began
and where the farmyard began,
because they seemed
to run into each other.
The chickens
and things seemed to have,
you know, free access
everywhere, really.
[Charles]
Chirpy! Granny Carson's
given you a lovely breakfast.
I think he then wheeled
his mother out into the yard
to sort
of say farewell to the cow
and the chickens
and the rest of it!
[Charles]
And this is Millie's cows.
And the, the cow's
having a look at her
and I wonder
what the cow's saying?
"Thank you, Millie, my dear."
["There's No One
Quite Like Grandma" playing]
This is a genuine
picture taken on the farm.
Well, there you are.
This is Millie, passed away.
[Joe] And then that
"Grandma" song comes on,
which I've never
heard that song before,
but it's the scariest, creepiest
song to put under anything.
-[Nick] Yeah!
-[Joe] It's like a horror movie.
[Nick] It's like in Casino,
you know, it's like
a Scorsese touch,
where it's a song
that sort of plays
against what's
happening on the screen.
It's exactly like
Scorsese. No different.
[Charles] There you are,
you can hardly believe it.
I brought my mother in to see
her cows after she passed away.
I did used to see the mother out
in the field, you know, and,
I found out afterwards
that she'd died
and he'd put her out
in the field, as he told me,
"So the cows could
pay their last respects."
You know, I hadn't, kind of,
twigged that I was going past,
and she was over
the other side of the fence,
but she was actually
no longer with us.
She just looked like she
always looked, sort of asleep.
Slightly bizarre, I suppose.
But, um, there, I suppose
when you think about it,
it was helpful to the family.
And then later on in the video,
you also see a photo of
Charles posing with his father.
[Charles] Well, there he is.
He's in bed
and he's not very well.
And he says "A whiskey
a day keeps the doctor away."
But he never took too much.
He's never been
drunk in his whole life.
He had a lovely time
on the farm, but here he is.
He says, "I'm 89 and
I'm not very well today."
Well, he wasn't very well,
because he passed away.
Well, there he is.
[Chris] I mean, I think I just
took it in my stride, really.
In fact, in this
line of business,
you quite often
just have to sort of
go with the flow, really,
take it in your stride.
This is what people are like,
this is what families are like.
And you're there to help
in any way
that you can, I guess.
The done thing
becomes what humans do
when one of their own kind dies,
and except for the
accessories, it doesn't change.
The essentials
are pretty much the same.
We get the dead guy
where they need to go.
And by doing so, the living
get where they need to be.
That's the formula.
That's why we do it.
[Nick] It's almost like
a frog in boiling water,
where you don't
realize how weird it is
because it's
happening so slowly.
But then when you stop and think
about it, you're like, "Oh God!"
You can kind of, like,
put people into a state
of it being normalized
and then you kind of, like,
wake up halfway
through and you're like,
"Whoa! Whoa!
Wait a second!" [laughs]
You can't just
"Please and excuse me"
yourself through this.
Uh, this is insane!
The film finishes and...
I just kind of sit
there in shock.
And your first thoughts are,
"What have I just watched?
Who the hell is this guy?
I need to know everything."
[Charles]
[laughs] Charles Carson.
Oh, look at that. That's me!
Well, there we are, there's
Stan Carson, my father.
This is Stan Carson's wife,
Millie Carson,
which is my mother.
She had two babies.
Frank Carson
and myself, Charles Carson.
And we were on Higher
Stolford Farm for several years,
and had a lovely time.
Anyway, um, mother
decided in the end
that she would sell
the farm and buy another one.
Yes, well, there we are.
There's Coombe End Farm.
My mother, Millie Carson,
bought this, this farm
and she went
to Wiveliscombe auction
and bid for it in 1943 and
bought it very, very cheap.
My family bought the farm
Higher Schute farm,
which is right opposite
Coombe End Farm,
where Charles
and his family were.
So that's how, you know,
we got, I got to know him.
I was only seven at the time
and I was being a little tacker,
I suppose, I soon picked up that
I could go over there
and follow Charles.
And he was doing various
things that interested me,
and he used to deliver
steaks around Exmoor.
And I can remember us taking
some steaks to different farms.
He used to say, you know,
"Tomorrow I'm going
to deliver some steaks, Reg,
if you want to come."
And I'd pop over
and we'd go out.
He used to bale our hay,
you know, father's hay.
At the time, Kirkley Hall was
part of the local
county council.
It was a government-run
organization, and it was their,
I suppose,
their agricultural college.
[man] We were amazed,
like I said,
in '55 when he suddenly
went off the scene
and we heard that he'd gone
and got this job in a college.
[dramatic music]
He would be involved
in training the students
how to repair the machines,
how to service them,
but also how to operate them
when they use them in the field.
I did take that he was a
bit of a character. He was,
he was very knowledgeable.
He knew what he
was talking about,
but he also had his own
particular way
of doing things as well.
This is my latest invention.
I've converted a push
lawnmower into a ride-on.
It's absolutely marvelous.
All you've got
to do is to start it up,
squeeze the lever,
and away you go.
Even a child can use it,
it's so simple.
Let me give you a demonstration.
You know, he'd had
enough of teaching
and he wanted to pursue
some other interests, I think,
outside the college.
I've worked with many
farmers over the years,
and I have a research interest
into the mental
health difficulties
that farmers run into.
As those around you grow
older, then you may have to care
for people around you, your
parents or aunts or uncles.
So if you're already isolated,
already working very hard,
already under a lot of pressure,
little in the way
of social support
and caring
for an elderly relative,
you can only imagine the
stresses that that must entail.
And it clearly seemed
to be the case with Charles.
It does appear that perhaps
Charles was there on his own
without his wife,
without his children,
caring for elderly parents.
It must have
been very difficult.
[Denise Broom]
It's like a step back in time,
and it's really,
when I picture it,
it's rather like
a scene from a fairy story,
where you go to the unusual
house with the unusual people...
not in a wood exactly,
but you had that
feeling of anticipation,
when you went down the very
long drive to the house,
that what would
you find this time?
Indoors, we would
go in to be surrounded
by all sorts of brass
and copper pans
hanging from the walls,
and no area seemed free...
there was stuff everywhere.
And, again, the chickens
were on the floor, on the table.
The cats were also
present, a number of them.
So it was, like, otherworldly.
I would describe it
as slightly eccentric,
as a family, you know?
They were certainly "one-off,"
but intelligent with it,
I think.
[Charles] Well, there we are.
There's Stan Carson, my father,
Millie Carson's husband.
Very nice gentleman.
Well, there you are.
[Denise] Because his father had
served on HMS Hood,
he had photographs of his dad
and the ship itself,
which we then
displayed in the church,
much to his absolute delight,
thrilled to bits to be involved,
and was a regular visitor
over the three to four
days that we ran it.
He was up every day.
[Charles]
Yes, well, there we are.
There's my brother,
Frank Carson,
and he says, "I buy livestock."
Well, let's have
a look at these livestock.
Well, there's
my brother, Frank Carson.
What are you doing there, Frank?
Oh, you're feeding the,
um, the chicken.
Oh, very good. Oh, and you've
got a goose there? Very good.
See you, then.
Frank was a character
in his own right,
I think it's fair to say,
and in my experience,
he was a man of very few words.
He said very little.
But was this very
strong, heavy presence.
Whenever we went to see the
family, he was sat at the table.
[chuckling]
[chuckling]
["There's No One
Quite Like Grandma" playing]
[Charles]
This is Mother and myself.
We're playing some lovely music.
Here we are! Mother says,
"A glass a day keeps
the doctor away."
There you are!
His mother was
highly intelligent.
I mean, she played the piano,
apparently, spoke languages,
taught in the local school,
well, she was extraordinary.
So the brains are there
all the way through.
I mean, he was obviously
well taught as a child.
And she was much admired.
She played 12 instruments.
And I often wonder
if that's where Charles
got the musical
talent that he had,
because he also played
musical instruments as well,
amongst all the other
things that he did.
[harmonica playing]
His dear old mother,
who, I don't know what
age she was then, but she...
every time I saw her,
she was in this sort of chair,
like a wheelchair,
but it was like something
that he made himself.
So, it was kind of, like, a
big, sort of,
throne kind of, like,
chair with these
quite small wheels on.
And she was kind of,
like, asleep in this chair,
and he's, sort of,
"Mother!", you know,
"Mother! Mother! Wake
up! We've got a guest!
We've got a guest!"
And she was sort of, like,
and he said, he said, "She can't
hear you and she can't see you,
she's deaf and blind. Mother!
Wake up, we've got a guest!"
And he gave her a harmonica,
and he said,
"Mother, play us a song.
You've got a guest,
play our guest a song."
And she, sort of,
blew a few notes out
of this harmonica, bless her,
and then sort of,
kind of, fell back to sleep.
If your parent
passes away, like,
in front of you and you've been
caring for them
day in and day out,
you know, trying
to help them through
these hardest moments
at the end of life...
like, what do you do when
they're suddenly gone?
You've been working so hard
day in and day out to keep
them going, to keep them happy.
And when they're gone,
it's just, it's shocking.
These are the flowers
that Millie Carson
planted on this farm
about 50 years ago.
She's farmed
on this farm for 50 years,
and prior to that, she
farmed on the Brendon Hills
at Higher Stolford Farm.
She's had a remarkable
time on the farm.
She enjoyed growing flowers,
she enjoyed
all the farm animals.
She had a lovely
time on the farm.
She died at the age of 94.
Most definitely,
Frank's funeral, I find
most memorable, indeed!
Charles was clearly upset
and agitated, but not so much so
that he could set
up his own tripod
and his camera to film all that
went on out in the churchyard.
[bells ringing]
When they came to putting
the coffin into the ground,
Charlie was there with
his camera, running around
and he'd say to the pallbearers,
"No! No! Hold it there!
Hold it there!
I'll just get this shot!"
And then he'd run around
the other side and get another.
"All right. You can lower a
bit lower, now hold it again!"
[laughing]
It's much easier
to turn a funeral
into a film shoot
than to turn it into what it is.
And I wouldn't fault
Charles for that.
That is the kind of
"whistling past the graveyard"
we humans like to do, as if
death doesn't matter,
but it does.
You know, he'd been filming
them while they were alive.
He was going to keep the camera
running even after they died.
On reflection,
I guess now, you think,
maybe that the first
signs of his illness
were beginning
to display themselves.
He was clearly not himself,
and he did stride
across the open grave
after the coffin was lowered
to sit on the pile of earth
that had been exhumed
to produce the grave.
And, you know, he, he sat
there with his mouth organ
and played "All Things
Bright and Beautiful"
[harmonica music playing]
It was very touching
and yet, a little disturbing.
All things
Bright and beautiful
All creatures
Great and small
All things
Wise and wonderful
The Carsons made them all
[Thomas] I think Charles'
reaction when his brother died
is that he wanted to do whatever
he could do for himself.
So rather than choosing
a typical liturgical hymn,
or a set of prayers, better that
he played his harmonica.
Well, there you are, you
can believe that if you like!
That, I think, goes beyond
the bounds of eccentricity.
I think something
was wrong there.
It might be explained
by the early onset of dementia.
One person who's
pretty absent from the film
is Charles' wife, Helen.
[Charles]
Oh, there's my wife, Helen.
What are you doing, Helen?
Oh, you're smoothing the horse
down. Watch your hat, my dear!
She's enjoying herself
on Coombe End Farm.
Right, I'm going to see
Helen Carson, my wife.
Helen! Helen, you're doing
a lovely job there, aren't you?
Lovely, my dear.
[Charles]
There's my wife, Helen.
She's making Christmas
cakes, there's one.
This is the Christmas cake.
Absolutely lovely. Isn't it?
[Charles] That be all?
Yes, it's just
about finished, yes.
[Charles] Well done.
Hello there.
Have you finished
the Christmas cake?
Yes, I've just about finished
it. Looks pretty, doesn't it?
Oh, that's beautiful!
-Yes... Well,
it's all good ingredients.
-All homemade?
-Everything homemade.
-Lovely.
Plenty of alcohol in it.
Soaked the fruit
the night before in port...
Oh, yes?
...so that the alcohol stays
in the fruit and not
burnt off in the oven.
-You've got alcohol in there?
-Yes.
Well, I've got
some here as well.
-Have you? Oh, right.
-Yeah.
-There you are!
-Thank you!
[glass clinks]
Oh, this is lovely! Mmm!
Here we are!
Well, there we are!
Merry Christmas,
my dear! Cheers!
Happy Christmas!
Happy Christmas!
Cheers!
Oh, that's good, what's that?
Ah! That is...
Old England sherry!
-Oh, right.
-That's marvelous!
Yes... well I hope that you
have a very happy Christmas!
Yes. Now then, what
about these cattle outside?
I'll just finish off here,
and put this away,
and then I'll be out with you.
Right. Well, you just
enjoy your sherry,
-I'll see you later.
-Yes.
All right.
Well, Helen, I'm going
to feed the cows outside.
I believe it's snowing.
[Charles] Yes, well, here we
are. This is my wife, Helen.
Um, at the time, just
before Christmas 1995,
she was in Northumberland
looking after her auntie,
and she woke up one morning
and she had a pain in the head.
So she rang, rang up the
hospital, rang up the doctor,
and she was rushed to hospital
and she never recovered.
There you are. Very unfortunate.
I was down
in Somerset at the time,
and my son rang me up,
and I rushed up to hospital...
and there we are.
Very, very unfortunate.
She passed away.
Yes, I took pictures
of her in hospital, of course.
Yes, and many
pictures in the past.
This is Coombe End Farm.
This is me in hospital,
wishing she's going to recover,
but unfortunately, she didn't.
And here we are.
This is me
at the church, with the coffin.
And I made all these flowers
down at Coombe End Farm.
She died the age of 57
years old in Northumberland,
and buried in Northumberland
at Saint Andrew's Church
on the 20th of December.
[Robert]
I think life on a, on a farm
it, sort of, takes up
so much of your time.
My expectation
of what it would be like
is early starts
and late finishes
and lots of, uh,
manual things to do
and a never-ending
cycle of things to do.
See you.
Come on, Jimmy, let's get
some di- uh, chicken for dinner.
And it is difficult to be
brought up in agriculture to,
you know, to move to a different
type of activity sometimes,
especially if there's
family commitments
and that sort of thing.
It can be difficult
to pull away from it.
So maybe it was his way of
escaping and getting out of that
a little bit, possibly.
Filmmaking is a creative outlet.
And this guy is on a farm,
he's probably
bored out of his skull.
And so thank God
he picked up a camera.
He really had to work
at it over a long period,
and he was dedicated to it,
but I think, yeah,
I think it's very
true to say that
perhaps it was the counterpoint
to the, let's face it,
quite lonely, rural,
isolated existence that
most farmers, particularly
small farmers, have.
Growing up on a farm,
you work really hard,
but you also have a lot
of time on your hands.
I would imagine many farmers try
and express their individuality
and their creativity
in a multitude of ways.
You can imagine different
ways in which they might do it.
But I haven't come across
this particular outlet, this
is new to me. It's unique.
Chirpy's wife is sitting
on nine eggs in there.
We're going to breed
some alarm clocks.
Well done, Chirpy.
Occasionally you'd see these
little bantams with little...
sort of... little, sort of,
velvet waistcoats on!
And again, it took
a while to realize
this was part of something that
he'd set up, he was filming.
I know that he did
take sort of quite bizarre
photographs of things...
rather sort of, I don't know.
bit like Monty Python,
really, when you think about it!
[Charles] Well there we are,
these are our lovely
cows on the farm.
I took these pictures myself.
Absolutely wonderful.
And this is a cow being served.
We have a lot of twin
calves on this farm.
Well, there you are! This seems
to be a magic way of doing it.
Yes, there is, of course,
another way of getting
triplets on a farm.
Look at this.
You can hardly believe it!
I took this photo myself.
It's so fun to watch
a man that's that old
be having
such a good time on camera.
[Davy] I see somebody
with creative instincts
who's not in a creative field,
and art should not be
the province only of people
who are professional artists.
[Ciaran] Much of his approach,
it's a surrealist approach.
The juxtaposition of images...
the timeline's completely
lost... the photo montage...
and then the unusual things he
does, the way labels everything.
And he uses images,
he uses cartoons, in effect,
you know, all of
that's very interesting.
You know, the hens
sitting on people's heads,
all, all of that, him sitting
on the back of a cow!
And that could be
explained as an accident,
it could be explained
by somebody
who's consciously adopting the
techniques of the surrealists,
it could also be
explained as an outward
manifestation of what's
going on in Charles' head.
That his own thoughts were
disconnected in some sense.
He would just appear,
certainly at our door,
or at the front gate
and present yet
another tape, which
he would assure you
that he would come and collect
in about a week
or fortnight's time,
expecting you to have
watched all three hours of it,
I have to say! And this
would happen quite regularly.
The cards would appear
at Christmas and Easter.
And if there had been some other
significant event
which he sort of
produced a card for,
you'd also get one.
I can remember on one
embarrassing occasion,
he lent us a video, and I
have to confess I hadn't
watched it,
or possibly not at all,
but certainly
not all the way through.
And I clearly failed very badly
when he asked me questions,
to be confronted by him saying,
"You haven't
watched it, have you?
I'll leave it
with you until you have!"
So I very dutifully
then carried on,
took it and watched
all the three hours,
and I was asked the same
questions when he came back
to pick it up the next time.
But I had the answers!
Charles made unique
cuts of his home movie
for different
people in the village,
and the tape that I have was one
he made especially
for my grandparents.
[Charles] Frank, we've got Nurse
Harding coming to see you.
Patricia is going
to do your legs today
and she's got some
lovely pussycats at home.
And she's, she's
going to retire this week.
So I'm going to take a video.
The footage that
Charles has shot of her is
the only document and the only
memory I have of my grandmother.
So I kind of owe
Charles a debt for that.
And I wonder if
one of the reasons
my grandfather kept the tape
was because it was a way
to see his wife, Trish, again.
[Charles] This is Nurse Harding,
the district nurse
of Huish Champflower.
She's come to do
Frank Carson's leg.
A very, very good nurse,
she's going to retire next week,
so I'm going to take a video.
Come on then, Trish, let me take
a video of you, my dear.
I'm going to put a dry dressing
on this, it's shallower.
-You're like an Iron lady!
-An Iron what?!
Iron Lady. You're not
a Mrs. Thatcher, but...
No, I'm no politician!
I reckon you're tough
as old boots, Trish.
-You reckon?
-I reckon.
-I am fairly tough, yeah.
-Yeah.
Right, now, here we go.
The weekly decision,
which sock would we like?
Brown.
-On both of them?
-No, I want the blue one on top.
-Blue one on top...
-Put a rope around his -
I'll be buggered if I
didn't burn the other blue one
trying to dry it on
the fire, and it singed up.
Put a rope around his neck,
Trish, and pull it up tight!
A hole came in the dam...
a great hole came in...
[Karen] It felt to me
like he was presenting
to the world, you know?
He wasn't
just talking to the people
I think that he ended
up giving those videos to.
It felt like he was talking
to me, to everybody!
Although he does some
very unusual things,
and as we've probably
seen the film footage,
and certainly we have the cards,
where he's taken the photographs
after his mother's death...
So, he does have
an unusual attitude to death,
but it's not a spooky attitude.
There is something quite loving,
and caring, and genuine about
trying to get the very last
I's dotted and T's crossed
before she leaves
the farm. Yeah.
One of the first
things that struck me
when I watched
Charles's own footage
was his preoccupation not just
with death, but with life.
So he's preoccupied
with the life cycle.
So we see images
of dead cats, a dead fox,
of his dead father, of his
dead mother, of funerals...
so, his preoccupation with
death, that's very prominent.
But I think equally prominent
is his preoccupation with life.
So, we see calves
being born, for example.
He repeatedly comes back
to the flowers, the wildflowers
growing in his mother's garden
that were planted
50 years earlier.
He talks about those repeatedly.
He gathers bunches and brings
them to his mother's funeral.
So, it's about
the cycle of life.
He wanted to capture
them for posterity.
He wanted everyone to know.
And if he's looking
into this camera
and in his mind, he's
kind of talking to the world,
then he's saying,
"Here's my mother.
Here's my mother as she's aging.
Here's my mother
as she gets sick.
And now here's
my mother dead in the chair."
You know, "Here's my
mother getting the blessing."
I mean, all of that,
it's his experience.
And he's basically saying,
"Here's what I'm seeing, and
here's what I'm going through."
Charles is, is kind of
showing all of us, like,
you can respond
to that moment...
It's one of the biggest moments
in your life, to lose a parent.
You can respond
to it any way you feel.
You can do anything you
choose to do, and it's OK.
That, that is a
powerful message.
And that is a powerful legacy
to leave behind.
What Charles was doing with
his parents, and with his pets,
is no different
from what human beings
have been doing
through most of history.
It's only been the last, maybe,
century-and-a-half that
we've farmed out the notion
of taking care of our own dead.
So when, when Charles poses
with his father's corpse,
that would be
the norm, not the exception.
Nowadays, people talk
about dying a good death,
and it seems to be
very sort of fashionable,
if such a thing can be.
But for him, that
was very important.
And I think that he seemed to
consider that that was very...
a matter of importance,
not for himself,
but also
for the person concerned.
So, in a way, he had had... he
had a great deal of foresight,
because a lot of the
things that we now do now,
and we talk about now,
he was up for talking
about 20, 30 years ago.
So he was a man
before his time, really.
So, what I admire
about Charles is that
his forthright sense that,
"This is life on the farm,
there it is!"
What he means to say
is this is life for humans,
and other created things
that breed, they die.
And you'll notice this
at the farm, it's pretty clear.
Crops fail. Animals die.
And a farmer has
to deal with those things.
It's, like, way more progressive
than you think, like,
a man like that would
be, like, I would think.
Toward the end of your life,
say, your 60s and your 70s,
you think about life, you
think about what you've done
and what you haven't done.
In effect, you count up
everything that was good
and you're proud of.
But you also think the things
that you wish you had done,
or things you did do that
you now feel guilty about.
And you have to come
to terms with all of that.
You have to, have to
weigh it up in the balance.
I think it's clear that Charles
spent his life trying to find
any kind
of audience for his work,
and towards the end of his life,
I don't think he thought
he would ever find one.
Whether he was doing
it consciously or not,
so many people in his
life are retiring, dying...
Farmers are very isolated.
Often it's older men,
sometimes they
live on their own,
and sometimes it's just
the older man and his wife.
So an isolated couple...
Children tend
to move away from home.
In the past, there have
been more farm laborers,
and a sense of farm
community working together.
But now, because
of modern machinery,
there's less of that.
So it can be a very
long, isolated day,
followed by another
long, isolated day.
Later on in life, when
Charles was down on the farm
and looking after his family,
he started to go senile.
You'd very often,
you'd see him walking
around and his trousers
would be wide open,
-with everything hanging out...
-He'd walk around without his
trousers on towards the end!
He could be sort of volatile...
or his mood could
change, you know?
and like I say, I could
see him in Wiveliscombe,
he'd come up to me and,
sort of pat me
on the shoulder and
he wouldn't let me go, you know?
And yet, I could see him here
and he would, sort of, walk
past me and not ignore me,
but, you know, he
was somewhere else.
I was getting on with my job
and he was getting on with his,
and that was sort
of understood, so...
I couldn't really tell.
I just put it down
to a mild eccentricity,
as I think did everybody
else around here,
they just, "That's
the way Charles is."
I think the main
thing that changed
was that we saw less of him.
And very often when, perhaps,
somebody suffers as he did,
you might see more of him.
But we didn't,
we saw less of him,
and I often wondered whether
he had become rather reclusive.
And also his main
occupation, if you want
to call it that, of caring for,
well, possibly his father,
certainly his mother, and Frank,
that had gone.
And this must have
left a huge gap in his life.
[Karen]
It's just you and your mind.
So when your mind
begins to change,
and maybe things
become confusing,
there would be no one
there to counter that with.
There would, there
would be no one there
that would make him realize
that things were changing.
It would, he would be...
experiencing all of that
alone, which is horrible.
It's a horrible thought.
That, unless he didn't realize
it, and then if he was just out
talking to those cows,
and spending his days
in very familiar territory,
maybe it made it
a little bit easier for him.
[Derrick] I feel like he's maybe
lost control of things?
Like, I think his world is
disintegrating around him and...
documenting everything
is like a coping mechanism
to, like, make it feel
like he's in control.
By the time we arrived,
he'd got so eccentric
that people were
tending to avoid him,
to be absolutely
honest with you.
The production of the cards,
and the filming,
all seemed to cease.
If it hadn't, we certainly
weren't given any.
So it just seems that
he stopped... trying?
So, he was an intelligent
guy, no question about it.
But we didn't see that.
We saw the end, end
product of, you know,
when he was becoming
increasingly eccentric.
[Denise]
What was, I guess, a shock,
we'll call it a surprise,
was that he had gone
and we hadn't realized
that he had, he had moved on
and... we didn't know he'd gone.
So, it was only until rumor
informed us, if you like,
and I don't know who did that,
that he had attempted
to come home
and had, had tried to come
back to Huish Champflower.
And when I was told this, I
can remember remarking,
"I didn't even know he'd gone."
Come on, my dear, there we are.
She had two babies,
Frank Carson, and myself.
-Well done, girl. Well done.
-[cow mooing]
Here we are, let's have a look
and see where we went.
Coombe End Farm is just
a little way up the road here.
[cuts of Charles speaking] -Stan
-Millie
-Passed away
You would never
think it's dead, look.
Helen died... that was a shock.
There you are. I'm going home.
Now, I'm on my own.
Let's have a last look at you.
That's deep enough, I think.
[roosters crowing]
Um... Umm... Uh...
One of them died actually.
You'd never think it's dead.
[Charles laughing]
On my own.
That's deep enough, I think.
Umm... Uh...
You swine, Charles!
Oh, aren't they beautiful?
Goodbye.
All the flowers,
grown here on the farm.
Oh, aren't they beautiful?
-On my own...
-Beautiful wildflowers...
Beautiful, beautiful
wildflowers.
You'd never think it's dead.
-Stan
-Millie
-Passed away
[choir singing "All Things
Bright and Beautiful]
[Charles] Nearly come
to the end of this video.
[electronic jingle music]
We do a lot
of pictures on this farm.
And let me show appreciation
to Helen Carson, my wife.
For all the things
she did in the past...
Well there you are, Helen.
[electronic jingle music]
And now, what you've
all been waiting for.
[trumpet music]
You get towards the end of the
tape and Charles's film is over,
and all of a sudden another
program shows up, that
I assumed he had taped over,
just some random TV program.
And I kept watching...
and I couldn't quite
believe what I was seeing.
Yes, the announcement
of the winner
of the "Family Affairs" United
Nations photo competition!
We've literally had
hundreds of entries
on the theme of family life.
But who's going
to win our grand prize?
"Family Affairs" recruited
a famous photographer
to do the judging.
And the winner is this
series by Charles Carson.
And I chose this
as the winner because
it's just funny, it's humorous,
it's well put-together, and
it depicts their family life,
which looks like
it was rather fun!
Yes, a big congratulations
to our winner,
Charles Carson from
Somerset, whose prize,
a Philips Interactive
CD player, will
be winging its
way to him shortly.
And as a special bonus, his
photos, alongside the Runners-Up
and the best of the
rest, will be on show
at the Barbican art gallery
during the summer.
[Denise]
I think his proudest moment
has to be the winning of the
competition judged by Koo Stark.
And, you know,
we were very fortunate
that he decided to give
us a copy of the letter,
which was actually
informing him that he'd won.
And he was
extremely proud of that.
That, I think, was one
of his proudest moments.
When I saw his work again, when
you showed me his work again,
I like it!
And I understand now
why I did like it so much.
It's cheerful, actually.
I find it almost comic-book.
I felt like he was inviting me
to come and play with him.
"Here's my life.
Here's my farm.
Here's my cat.
Here are my parents."
You know, "Come and,
come and see what it's like."
He literally said it!
"Come and spend
a day on the farm," you know?
"Come and see what it's like,
come and join me."
He was so inviting,
and really sweet.
It made me feel good.
I like feeling good,
that's why he won!
[Dimitri]
We're watching it... and, oh
my God! First prize, Charles!
Oh, you fucking did it!
And so that was a...
[Lehr] We were so, I mean,
I was proud of him.
I was, like, so excited for him!
[Dimitri]
So proud of him, exactly!
[Lehr] Like, not only did he,
like, get the recognition
that I think he was
seeking, but, like,
on this huge,
like, national scale.
I think he was using photography
to express himself
and to entertain.
It was very entertaining.
Entertain, educate
and express his own life.
[Charles]
That's the picture that won
the prize on the television.
"Anyone seen My Valentine?"
And my Valentine,
of course, is...
Helen, Helen Carson.
Well, there she is.
Oh, they're beautiful
pictures, these, aren't they?
Yes.
I wake up one morning to a text
from my dad, and there's a clip
to a YouTube video,
and the title says,
"Charles Carson -
Life on the Farm".
and I have absolutely
no idea what this is,
has someone else
found the tape before me?
Who's put the tape online?
The footage is
probably better than
most of what is on
my copy of the tape.
[Charles] Oh, my goodness!
[Charles] You're going to
break your neck, lad!
I just can't believe this!
I can't remember
the exact sequence,
but I think I started
becoming aware of...
these skeletons, these
cardboard skeletons.
I think that was the first thing
I became aware of, seeing one
sat in the seat of the
tractor, of the old tractor,
and it was there for some
period of time during the day.
I told ya.
Damn good driver, this chap!
He's as fit as a flea!
He only weighs 2 stone...
I can recommend him to anybody.
Real first class tractor driver.
[John] And I think then
it was joined by another one
on the little mower
that he had built a kind of a
drive, ride-on trolley behind.
And they sat there,
and they'd come and go.
The old tractor that he had,
the Massey or something,
he'd just sort of put it on
tick over and put it into gear
and just put it on forelock,
and it would just chug-
"pop! pop! pop! pop! pop!"
Just go around in a circle
with this skeleton,
sort of, taped his hands,
taped to the steering wheel.
And, and then become
aware that he was filming it!
[mower rumbling]
Hey! What are you doing there?!
Charles then goes
on to make a short film
and it has a plot to it,
it has special effects to it,
and you see
a new level to his artistry.
Yeah, and I always wonder, like,
did he make this up
as he was going along?
Or did he like actually
write a script to this?
Hey! What are we going to do?
This is the chap that had
the accident last week
on the lawnmower.
This must be reincarnation,
he's made a comeback!
What are we going to do?
And his props, you know,
his little policeman's hat,
helmet, you know, these things.
God knows where
he got them from,
probably from the local jumble
sale or something! [laughs]
[Charles as skeleton]
I've been up in Heaven.
But I couldn't find
nothing to do up there!
And I said to the vicar,
he said "Aye, that's alright,
go down on the farm and
cut some more grass," he said.
[John]
The little ride-on, the little
mower that he'd built a trolley,
and used to sit one in that.
And again, it just,
he'd put it on forward,
and he'd just let it go until it
hit something and turned over.
I mean, you know,
he did that endlessly.
The work and expertise that it
took to do all that voice-over,
and to line all that up,
and then edit it
in-camera or in two VCRs,
I mean, it's, like...
It's not easy
in 1996 or whatever, like,
that's remarkable.
-Yeah.
-I mean...
a lot of people use their
time to sit and watch TV,
but he was, like, making it,
-which is amazing.
-[Dimitri] Right.
[Charles]
Come here! Oh, dear me...
Oh, you're a clever lad!
So at this point, we've
got another mystery.
Who put this online?
What does this person
know about Charles?
I'm Jake Day-Williams... uh...
I was deputy editor of
Camcorder User magazine...
1998 'til 2000, maybe?
Can't honestly remember, but
it's around that sort of time.
My name's Robert Hull,
and at the time, I was a staff
writer on Video Camera magazine,
and then later, a deputy editor
on Camcorder User magazine.
Camcorder User magazine
was a buying guide
for people who were
interested in camcorders.
We provided tips
and tricks and techniques
for how to make
better home videos.
The British Amateur Video Awards
was just a competition that
was run by the magazine.
People would make their videos
and send them
into us at the magazine.
And then, as I remember,
we had a judging day.
You know, we'd have
maybe have like 20 videos
and from that we'd whittle
it down to the finalists
and the eventual winners.
[Charles]
Yes, I hope this one works
out very well for BAVA '98.
One day, there was this video
and a, sort of, crowd was
gathering around this guy's desk
and everyone was like,
"You've gotta come see this!
You've gotta come see this!"
And it was Charles's video,
which was just funny
and entertaining.
[Robert] I do remember watching
it for the first time.
Somebody came in and
said, "I've had this to judge.
You guys are going to
have to see it!", right?
I remember, sort of, like,
watching... rather... sort of
transfixed right from the start.
["Scotland the Brave" playing]
You know, even at the end, to
see a man in a kilt,
sort of... performing
"The Gay Gordons"
or this Scottish thing,
but playing it on a strimmer
and then dubbing
the music on afterwards,
you could kind
of see the funniness.
You could see how, you know,
how clever the joke was,
and... okay, it wasn't
pulled off particularly well,
but, but it was still funny!
Merry Christmas and
a happy New Year!
Now, we've all had a
lovely time on the farm.
But as you know,
with Christmas cake and alcohol,
it brings a little problem.
And that is we all put
a little bit of weight on.
Now, it's no
problem on the farm.
Let me show you
how to get rid of it.
Very, very simple.
The faster you work it,
the more you lose!
Well, there you are!
So there you are, there's
the scientific evidence!
There's the proof
that you can lose
2 stone, 3 stone
a day by this method.
It's the most memorable, I mean,
I can't tell
you which films won!
[Charles] Chirpy! Chirpy, come
down beside your wife.
Come on!
The owl will look
after the foxes.
The owl will watch
the foxes, come down here!
Now then, get in there, Chirpy,
and keep an eye on your wife!
[Robert] And it made us laugh,
and I also remember that...
it was very much of a
thing for me at the time,
was I thought it brought
a group of people
who worked together, together!
Little things,
little mannerisms,
little things he said, started
becoming catchphrases
to the point where
we still, kind of,
say things now, 20 years later.
And as new people
joined the company,
if they were like part of
our "in" crowd or whatever,
they'd get shown the video
and then they'd start,
you know, they'd pick up
on different things, as well,
which sort of then brought
new life into it all again.
And it just sort of kept going.
Oh, there we are.
Coombe End Farm!
We've got eleven
horses on this farm,
they're absolutely lovely.
Here you are,
my dear, little bit
of hay here. Oi!
That's my watch.
Beautiful!
[Davy] Yes, he hoped perhaps
that it would reach a
broader audience one day,
but it also seemed like...
even if it didn't,
he just enjoyed
making these films.
Let's have a drop of brandy.
Cheers!
Happy New Year!
[Oscar] Whatever you might think
about them as pieces of art,
they capture a time,
and a place, and a way of
life that's changed completely.
People who were
working on the farms,
maybe weren't that interested
in following in the family
footsteps, you know?
It was very much
expected at one time.
I mean, same with
Charles, really, you know?
He went back home
to look after the family farm.
You know, a lot of
youngsters now, you know,
don't really want to do that.
They want to follow
a different path.
It's a way of showing what
life was like at the time.
It was a hard life,
it was difficult.
Over the years,
farming has changed enormously!
I believe now that
there isn't a single
milking herd in the
parish of Wiveliscombe.
So he was telling a
story all the time, really,
which is probably quite sad,
that he wasn't able
to get more involved.
He probably knew, you saw,
I didn't realize how technical
he was, and how advanced he was.
I mean, he probably
was pretty clever...
if only someone had realized it!
A Somerset farmer
could be about to become
a worldwide sensation.
This is the bombshell I
was telling you about earlier.
You're about to see the greatest
video, probably, from this year.
Mister Carson has become
a big hit on the Internet.
This is the next "Grey
Gardens", I think.
People across
the world and online
want to see Charles's stuff.
This one actually
comes from England,
and we don't have any
videos from the U.K. at all!
We were shown this footage
at a show in Milwaukee
with very little context,
and we got hooked immediately,
like, we got obsessed with it,
we were watching it
constantly...
And we do a weekly web show,
where we watch VHS tapes.
Weird, disturbing,
hilarious stuff.
-Come on, my dear, there we are!
-Listen to the sound!
-Listen to the sound!
-[liquids gushing]
-There we are!
-[Joe laughs]
Come on,
there we are, my dear!
You're going to make
that your ringtone...
We should,
I'm going to rewind that...
I don't know how I can top a
cow's afterbirth being held up.
This was the 2019 Found Footage
Festival clip of the year!
He clearly had a real,
a kind of artistic drive
to bring people into his world,
and to introduce them
into that world.
One of his captions,
it said something like
"self-taken photograph"
or something.
He's invented the idea
of the selfie, unwittingly.
God knows what he would make
of... with the internet,
I mean, he probably would
have really embraced that.
He'd be pinging stuff all
over the place, you know?
You like a person who
wants to connect like that.
He's clearly reaching out.
It's really charming.
I think he had his version
of what he probably
thought a following would be,
if he, if he garnered one.
It felt like I was watching a
home movie that I grew up with,
with the exception
of the accents.
I mean, and the
multiple corpses.
I don't think my family
would really show that.
I think it says something
about Charles's filmmaking -
I mean, these movies
are 30 years old,
they're British, and now they're
actually finding an audience
in the United States.
It proves that there's
something universal to these.
That left me rather speechless.
Oh, well, my dears,
I've got to go now.
[Jake] When I first saw the
footage, I was, you know,
selfish and young, and
didn't have a care in the world.
And now, I look back on it
as a father, and as a husband,
and as someone
who's got relatives
who are old and who have died
and it... it becomes so much
more heartbreaking and powerful,
some of the footage.
Because, in my mind then,
he was like a caricature
that you could almost laugh at.
But now, there's a humanity
and there's a sense of emotion
that's really raw and
really quite powerful and...
I don't know, I have a
new perspective on it,
and a new perspective on him.
Come around and have a look.
I've got something to show you.
[Davy]
I think if he knew now that
people all over the world
are watching this film,
people are obsessed
with this film,
they're talking about
it with their friends,
they're, they're moved by it
in the ways that
he may have hoped
that it might move people, like,
I think he would
just be honored.
I think he would be...
I think he would feel satisfied.
And I think, you know, that
that artist's urge
to kind of communicate
your deepest self
to another person,
he would feel like he'd
actually accomplished that
against all odds.
[Nick] I think he would be
absolutely pleased
to know that, posthumously,
people are appreciating
his work, you know?
It's like a... I don't know,
like a Van Gogh, who maybe,
you know, wasn't
appreciated in his time,
but is now finding
a new audience.
[laughs]
I don't know, I think...
I don't know,
how would somebody like...
how would somebody,
like what he's doing,
react to popularity?
I don't think like
the trappings of success
are necessarily
the same in everyone's minds.
I presume his were
a bit more humble.
This is how it plays
the music, innit lovely?
There we are. Fantastic machine,
plays all the lovely
farm music! See you!
Charles's films make us feel
more alive, and more human,
and more in touch
with our species,
because we see how it works.
Bits of it make me really
kind of sad about him,
and bits of it, sort
of, make me feel...
fill me with joy.
-He leaves you wanting more!
-He leaves you wanting more,
-which is really what
a filmmaker should...
-Always a success!
All filmmakers
should aspire to that.
These two skeletons are
going to have a race
on these lawnmowers,
cutting grass.
Should be very, very good!
I'm grateful to Charles
for recording his life
and the elements of his life
that he wanted to share with us,
and I think that we
can learn from that.
I think that there's more
to this video than just...
Charles being funny on the farm.
His view of death is
the big takeaway here.
And I think that
if everybody else,
like, kind of, had
that view of death,
the world would
be a better place.
I think he would be very proud
to, to feel that people
were recognizing
that he was doing something that
wasn't just a mad aberration
of some bonkers farmer
in the middle of nowhere,
that he was making
something creative
and that there were people
all over the world,
from all sorts of walks of life,
seeing what he's doing and
being really astonished by it,
on lots of different levels!
Absolutely life-affirming.
-Yeah.
-And death-affirming.
[all] Yeah!
There you are!
[John] I think it's really
important, really important,
that people like
Charles are celebrated.
Because it brings color
and flavor to our life.
He'll go down in history.
[Charles]
Yes, well, there we are.
I hope you've
enjoyed this video,
"Life On The Farm".
I take hundreds
of pictures on this farm
and lots of videos.
Well, there we are.
Now then, if you smile at me,
I'll take your picture as well.
-Here we go then.
-[camera clicks]
That's one. Smile again, and let
the chicken have a look at you.
-Here we go then.
-[camera clicks]
There you are,
that's another one.
There you are, that's
my camera on a tripod.
That's how I take the pictures.
Anyway, there we are.
All the best
from Coombe End Farm.
See you sometime.
[upbeat symphony music]
[upbeat music continues]
[dramatic music playing]
[dramatic music playing]
[dramatic music playing]