After seeing this lovely Channel Four special directed by Paul Oremland, Andy Marshall aka the Furniture Maker will still remain a mystery to me despite
what's presented in the doc - since the information available on the internet is little, plenty of rumours, few sure things and they all make
him a quite mythical figure. What's behind this cute, cheeky and highly extrovert bloke who also was very talented with his hands while creating
wood furnitures and artistic pieces from recycled materials?
On a social media channel of the director, we're told that this short was part of a TV special concerning people from UK's LGBT community, of
which Andy was part of as a bisexual man. Here, the film is told by the man himself sharing stories about his work, his love for bikes and also anedoctes of his
troubled days as a rent boy, getting in trouble with the police and other things; and there's also bits from people who knew him such as director
Derek Jarman and his art-director Christopher Hobbs, both with peculiar stories of how they met him - Jarman's retelling of trying to pick him
on a date, then being brushed off but not forgotten when Andy was in jail and needed someone to bail him out, a funny story.
Yet it also comes with some sad and dark perspectives that aren't shared with great detail, which makes everything more mysterious. Stories of
Andy being moody or depressive, as if either suffering of some traumatic past or a bipolar disorder, and if combined with his constant happy nature
as shown in the film makes it a very compelling character who lived his life to the fullest, through his works and his fun nights dancing in clubs,
but also with some dark corners of his own.
Truth be told, some of us are exactly like that with the in's and out's of life, always struggling.
It's hard to give a proper defintion of what's shown to us and what we are supposed to see in this observation of a skilled artist and a loving
human being with qualities and defects. The general feeling is of seeing a nice guy, the kind you'd like to party with or buy his work - there's a
creepy giant chair that one man sits down and becomes a tiny figure on top of it that it's amazingly well made.
As for the only answer about what happened to him and it's the most frequently shared everywhere was that he died on a motorcycle accident in the
late 80's. And I wonder if director Omerland predicted it such tragic event or was it already know by him but he forgot to disclose on the credits, as there is a shot
early on that shows a motorcycle crash (a re-enactment as there are several ones shown in the film). Without that dark thought, just go see it for
Andy's presence, great sense of humor and the works conceived by him. 7/10.
