Boyhood is a dream Boy George was not!

“I can honestly say I’ve never seen a movie like Boyhood.”

Doing the job I do (What do you mean, I don’t have a real job?) I see a lot of films. Some are good, some are bad and lots are somewhere in-between.

I can honestly say I’ve never seen a movie like Boyhood. And it’s all the better for it.

Filmed in sequence over 12 years, the story starts with six-year-old Mason and tracks his life until he’s 18. His parents split up, life moves on and Mason grows up.

His mum and dad, played by Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke, change over the years, too. They mess things up, they get things wrong, they sort things out.

It really is that simple. But it’s so different to anything I’ve ever seen. When I spoke to Ethan Hawke about it, he said he was amazed it had never been done before. It’s such a simple, brilliant idea.

It also makes you look back to your own childhood and family and the way we all change over the years. Mind you, YouTube does that for me, too! I’m always getting sent links showing me things I’ve forgotten about.

The latest one was from a Boy George fan. He’d found a clip of me interviewing his hero that’s Boy George, not me on The 8.15 From Manchester. Remember that? It was a kids’ show I used to present in the early ’90s.

I had a hoot watching it. Another one recently was me interviewing someone in a flash car while Victor and Barry hid in the boot and made funny comments. I know I have made my living in some weird ways!

When you’re reminded of your past like that, you do look back on yourself and realise how much you’ve changed as a person, even if you feel pretty much the same inside.

Come on, we’ve all had one of those moments when you look in the mirror and think: ‘Who’s that bloke?’ And you realise, it’s you and you’re no longer 18. That’s only 10 years ago for me but sometimes it feels like a lifetime…

Anyway, back to Boyhood. Another thing I loved about it was the way you get to see Patricia Arquette age over the dozen years the movie was filmed. Yes Hollywood actress in ageing shock!

We know that can be a pretty rare thing these days in the crazy world of showbusiness. But you do see subtle changes in her and the film is all the more convincing for it.

Actually, Patricia is that rare thing in Hollywood an actress who is quite comfortable with the idea of a wrinkle here and there. She insists she wouldn’t go back to her 20s or 30s and actually enjoys getting older.

Wrinkles or not, Patricia told me she had an absolute ball doing this movie. According to her, the only bad part was the last little while when she knew it was ending.

She told me she thought of it as “their thing”, the cast and crew had become a gang and she didn’t want anyone else getting involved, maybe not liking it or criticising it!

Do you think we need to explain to her the whole idea of why films are made in the first place? As I always say, Hollywood is a business if something will make money, it’s a go-er. That’s why this film is so unusual.

No one was going to see serious money from it for about 15 years and it was impossible to tie people down to a contract for more than a decade.

But they all wanted to do it so much and became such a gang they didn’t want to let each other down by not seeing it through.

Patricia is a thoughtful character and told me the theatre it was held in was where she became engaged and where her dad’s wake was held. As Boyhood is all about family that seemed fitting somehow.

I can’t not mention the young actor at the heart of the film, Ellar Coltrane. We literally see him grow up on screen, from adorable six-year-old through to bratty, opinionated teen who thinks he knows the world, to a more mature young adult.

He’s just fantastic. There’s such a buzz about this film, I haven’t read a single bad review or heard one bitchy comment and that’s unusual.

So do yourself a favour, grab a friend, a bucket of popcorn and sit back and enjoy it when Boyhood comes out in July.