Richard Ayoade

At last, the definitive book about perhaps the best cabin crew dramedy ever filmed: View From the Top starring Gwyneth Paltrow. In Ayoade on Top, Richard Ayoade, perhaps one of the most 'insubstantial' people of our age, takes us on a journey from Peckham to Paris by way of Nevada and other places we don't care about. It's a journey deep within, in a way that's respectful and non-invasive; a journey for which we will all pay a heavy price, even if you've waited for the smaller paperback edition. Ayoade argues for the canonisation of this brutal masterpiece, a film that celebrates capitalism in all its victimless glory; one we might imagine Donald Trump himself half-watching on his private jet's gold-plated flat screen while his other puffy eye scans the cabin for fresh, young prey."

Ayoade on Top

Richard Ayoade edits and annotates the meditations on film by that master of the medium, Gordy LaSure.

The Grip of Film

Tor Freeman

Book That No One Wanted to Read

Avi Korine

Inspired by Dostoyevsky's short story, The Double tells the story of Simon, a timid man, scratching out an isolated existence in an indifferent world. He is overlooked at work, scorned by his mother, and ignored by the woman of his dreams. He feels powerless to change any of these things. The arrival of a new co-worker, James, serves to upset the balance. James is both Simon's exact physical double and his opposite - confident, charismatic and good with women. To Simon's horror, James slowly starts taking over his life.

The Double

Richard Ayoade has set down his most enormous thoughts for the benefit of all those who dare read them. Thoughts like . . .

TV detectives need a gimmick. Mine would be not caring who did it.
If, when one door shuts, another door opens, there’s something wrong with your doors. They shouldn’t be doing that.
Where’s the box to tick if you ARE a robot?
My mother used to say Manners Maketh the Man, but I didn’t think it was very mannerly of her to make fun of my lisp.
Plato, Aristotle, Montaigne. Men who have searched for meaning with, let’s face it, mixed results. Whither the one who can solve it? Cometh the hour, cometh the Ayoade. He brings wisdom distilled from a life lived in relentless pursuit of Truth.
Afterthoughts goes beyond rumination, past pondering, probing further than ever before, drawing from a deeply private pool of questions: a reservoir so refreshing you may never need to think again.

Wisdom for the Unreflective

Afterthoughts: or Some Pistachios Won’t Open

Richard Ayoade's fictional quest to rescue Harauld Hughes - the almost mythical mid-century playwright - from obscurity.

The gifted filmmaker, corduroy activist and amateur dentist, Richard Ayoade, first chanced upon a copy of The Two-Hander Trilogy by Harauld Hughes in a second-hand bookshop. At first startled by his uncanny resemblance to the author's photo, he opened the volume and was electrified. Terse, aggressive, and elliptical, what was true of Ayoade was also true of Hughes's writing, which encompassed stage, screen, and some of the shortest poems ever published.
Ayoade embarked on a documentary, The Unfinished Harauld Hughes, to understand the unfathomable collapse of Hughes's final film O Bedlam! O Bedlam!, taking us deep inside the mind of the most furious British writer since the Boer War.
This is the story of the story of that quest.

Richard Ayoade's Hilarious Fictional Quest to Rescue a Mythical Mid-century Playwright from Obscurity

The Unfinished Harauld Hughes

What is it that makes YOU want to read a book? Richard Ayoade's children's debut gives you all the answers in a way that's silly, funny, and thoroughly beguiling. Have you ever thought about how it feels to be a book? To be left under a whiffy pant pile or shelved, forever collecting dust? To have your pages bent backwards or your spine BROKEN? What if you don't have a sparkly unicorn or dragon adorning your cover - who will pick you out of the bookshop then? This is the story of the sadly neglected Book That No One Wanted To Read - can its destiny change when it finally meets the right reader? Spoiler alert: yes.

The Book that No One Wanted to Read

Richard Ayoade is a writer and director.In addition to directing and co-writing Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, he has adapted and directed Joe Dunthorne's novel Submarine for the screen, and is the co-writer (with Avi Korine) and director of the film, The Double.As an actor he is best known for his roles as Dean Learner in Garth Marenghi's Darkplace and Maurice Moss in the Emmy Award-winning The IT Crowd, for which we was awarded a BAFTA as Best Performance in a Comedy.

Richard Ayoade

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