The new Peter Sellers film that is 90% made but needs a bit of crowdfunding

I am a massive admirer of the Hungarian director Peter Medak’s movie The Ruling Class, starring Peter O’Toole – rarely seen because it got mired in distribution problems. Peter Medak also directed the 1990 film The Krays. And he directed the 1973 pirate comedy movie Ghost in the Noonday Sun, starring Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan.

No, I had not heard of it either until, back in February, I got an e-mail from Paul Iacovou, who was  producing a documentary called The Ghost of Peter Sellers about the making of the Noonday Sun movie.

The Chortle comedy website wrote a very good article about the project back in February.

“Our documentary The Ghost of Peter Sellers,” Paul Iacovou told me yesterday on Skype from Cyprus, “is called that to mirror the original title but also because the ghost of Peter Sellers is the ghost that haunted Peter Medak for 43 years because he blames this film for altering the trajectory of his career. He was THE hot director of the time and then there was Ghost in the Noonday Sun with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan and it was a pirate comedy and everybody was waiting for it and it never materialised. In the film world, you’re only as good as your last film. That’s a cliché, but it’s absolutely true.

“The Ghost of Peter Sellers is Peter Medak re-tracing what happened 43 years ago, by talking to a huge variety of people who haven’t really given interviews before. The original film’s producer John Hayman. John Goldstone who was the Monty Python producer. Actor Robert Wagner who was a great friend of Peter Sellers. Executives and people in the movie business of the 1970s. It gives an incredible insight into how movies were made in those days.

“One of the great things is that everybody is in their 70s, some early 80s. So they speak with such candour. They’re not trying to gain anything. They’re reflective, they look back and are totally honest in what they say, which is so refreshing on camera.”

Peter Medak (right) directing The Ghost of Peter Sellers

Paul Iacovou is producing The Ghost of Peter Sellers; Peter Medak is directing; there is an Indiegogo crowdfunding initiative. At the time of writing, there are nine days to go to reach their $40,000 target and the Indiegogo appeal has raised $22,485.

“We’ve managed to do quite well,” Paul told me. “It was quite a large amount we were going for. It’s been quite a bit of a struggle. The crowdfunding audience tends to be much younger. I contacted the strategist at Indiegogo and he told me he had had a meeting with his guys internally and not one of them knew who Peter Sellers was. Their average age is between 25 and early 30s. They are in New York, so I don’t know if that has anything to do with it.”

“The fleeting nature of fame,” I said.

“Tragic, really,” said Paul.

“What’s your link with Peter Sellers?” I asked.

“Well, I’m half Cypriot,” Paul told me. “I moved here eight years ago and just by chance I was in a friend’s office and his father had a photograph of Spike Milligan on the wall. I asked why. He told me: Oh, it’s from the Peter Sellers movie that they shot here in 1973. I had never heard of it. So I started research it and it just got so interesting – a disaster of a production that was never released.

Death Wish to movie nightmare

“I got in touch with the original director, Peter Medak, who lives in Hollywood now. We got on like a house on fire and it turned out he had been waiting 40-odd years to tell this story.

“Back then, United Artists had called him to New York and said: We want you to direct this film called Death Wish. He read the script. He loved it. He said he wanted Henry Fonda to play the lead role and they said: Henry Fonda’s too old. You can have anybody else on the planet except him. Then, because he had promised Henry Fonda the part, he walked off the project which went on to be made by Michael Winner with Charles Bronson.”

“It would have been an interestingly different film with Henry Fonda,” I said.

“Yes,” agreed Paul. “Medak saw Henry Fonda as a sort-of shy, retiring accountant type who is pushed into becoming a vigilante. With Bronson, he looked like a tough guy from the start.

“Anyway, Medak came back from New York, was walking along the King’s Road in London and bumped into Peter Sellers who said: Don’t worry about it. Come with me to Cyprus. I have a film ready to go. I want you to direct it. Let’s go. So he did.

“Peter Sellers was his friend. And then Sellers turned on him because Sellers decided, when he got here, he didn’t want to do the movie. And it knocked Peter Medak off that trajectory of success and he’s been carrying this weight with him for 43 years.

Peter Medak directing Ghost of the Noonday Sun in 1973

“They completed the whole film but, because Sellers became so difficult and he was unavailable for so much of the filming, they ended up falling behind schedule and cutting out a big fight scene between Sellers and Anthony Franciosa and other scenes and then, when they delivered it to Columbia, they said: But the fight scene is missing! and they rejected it. They said: We don’t want to release it now. It ended up costing John Hayman, the producer, $2½ million in 1973.”

“John Hayman?” I asked.

“He’s a financier,” explained Paul, “who has made something like 180 films. He says: Forty of them I should never have made. This was one of them. His son, David Hayman, produced the Harry Potter films. John was the 7th employee at the BBC when they re-started TV after the War and he’s still going strong at 84.”

“If you can’t get the Indiegogo money,” I asked, “does that mean you can’t complete your film?”

“Well,” said Paul, “it makes it harder. It means we won’t complete it NOW. We would lose a bit of momentum. The most important thing is to finish the film ourselves without going to any distributor who then takes a big chunk of it and then could end up diluting the film we want to make.

“It’s kind of grown and grown, which is very good on the one hand but was very difficult for the budget. We’re 90% complete. We shot in London and Cyprus last summer and we just about finished shooting in LA the other day. When we started the crowdfunding campaign, it was to shoot in LA but we took a leap of faith and started shooting anyway.

“The crowdfunding is basically to cover the cost of what we’ve shot and some other stuff we need to shoot and then post production, which is going to be a huge cost because we want to lace the film with as much archive content as we can of Sellers and Milligan etc etc. But we’ve also got permission to use of about 15-18 minutes of the original film itself. The thing is for people to see these incredible scenes that they’ve never seen of Milligan and Sellers – that nobody’s ever seen. That’s where it all started for me.”

How did spaghetti-juggling get into this year’s Edinburgh Fringe programme?

The ever-energetic comic Bob Slayer is looking after The Hive venue at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe for the Laughing Horse Free Festival and, back in January, he asked me if I wanted to do any chat-type shows based on my blog.

I had already arranged to stage a two-hour Malcolm Hardee Awards Show on the final Friday of the Fringe.

So we arranged that I would precede this with four ‘talking head’ shows. Debates, but with comedians. I would chair the first two and doyenne of Edinburgh Fringe comedy reviewers Kate Copstick (a Malcolm Hardee Award judge) would chair the second two. The subjects seemed quite clear:

On Monday – “Comedians are psychopathic masochists with a death wish” – based on a blog I wrote which comedy industry website Chortle later used.

On Tuesday – “Racist or sexist jokes? It doesn’t matter if they’re funny!” – again based on a blog of mine which Chortle later printed.

On Wednesday –  “Have the Big Boys Fucked Up The Fringe?” about large promoters, producers and management agencies’ effect on the Fringe.

On Thursday – “Are Bono, Bob and the Big Boys Fucking Up The World?” about charity and aid money.

This was all OK until Copstick discovered, at the last moment, that she had to be in London for the final of ITV’s new reality TV series Show Me The Funny on the same days as her planned Fringe debates – and possibly rehearsing in London on the previous two days.

This happened a few days before the final Fringe Programme deadline, when the titles and billings had already been submitted.

I have always wanted to hear the introduction, “And now… a man juggling spaghetti…”

I would accept a woman. If you have a spare one, let me know.

But, if I could hear that introduction and then see someone do it, I could die happy and fulfilled.

Since the mid-1980s, when I was working on the LWT series Game For a Laugh, through series like The Last Resort with Jonathan Ross, I half-heartedly tried to find someone who could juggle cooked spaghetti for more than one minute. It appears it cannot be done. In the 1990s, I tried with the brilliant juggler Steve Rawlings, at which point, I gave up – If he can’t do it, no-one can do it, I thought – but it has always simmered away at the back of my mind.

So, on the basis that I could not think of anything better, I decided to hold the Malcolm Hardee Spaghetti-Juggling Contest – Year One (who knows if there will be a Year Two, but it sounds good) at the Laughing Horse Free Fringe venue which is exactly what it says in the name – Outside The Beehive – in Grassmarket for 45 minutes on the final Tuesday and Wednesday nights of the Edinburgh Fringe.

It should be messy and, if it rains, shambolically messy – a fitting tribute to Malcolm Hardee. But it might get a few pictures in the media and/or some word-of-mouth to plug the Malcolm Hardee Awards Show on the Friday night. And I suspect I can get quite a few comics to wander along and take part as well as members of the public.

The submission has gone in to Guinness to see if – in the unlikely event someone can actually keep cooked spaghetti in the air for more than a minute – they would actually recognise spaghetti-juggling as a world record.

Now all I have to do is find somewhere to get large amounts of cooked spaghetti on two nights in Edinburgh in late August…

The search for the ultimate film title: from Abba to Jesus Christ via “Surf Nazis Must Die!”

I saw the Abba movie Mama Mia! on TV at the weekend – I’d missed it in the cinema. The only problem is that, whenever I hear the words Mama Mia! in my head I start singing Queen’s song Bohemian Rhapsody not the Abba song Mama Mia!

Titles are almost more important than content.

I did say “almost”.

When Alex Reid’s not-quite-critically-acclaimed but certainly noticed movie Killer Bitch was being mooted, other titles were talked-of. As it is about a woman forced to kill lots of people, I rather fancied the title:

THE KILLER WORE A BRA

At least it is what it says on the label.

But it was suggested to me that the core audience of young lads and the core cast of a large number of heavies, crime figures, boxers and martial arts exponents might not take kindly to being associated with a movie called The Killer Wore a Bra and I should factor in an element of self-preservation when discussing the choice of title. At the point The Killer Wore a Bra was mentioned, though, we did also semi-seriously discuss the possibility of approaching Carry On movie star Leslie Philips for a role in the film.

Other titles considered included Die, You Bastards, Die! (echoing Sergio Leone’s Duck You Sucker! aka For a Fistful of Dynamite aka Once Upon a Time… the Revolution)… Forced to Kill and Kill Again (slightly echoing Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!)… as well as Bitch on the Rampage… Bloody Bitch From Hell… and Lipstick and Leather.

Lipstick and Leather sounds to me like a classy Italian art film.

I would pay to see it.

I have always wanted to see the movie originally titled Snow White and The Seven Perverts because, after complaints from the Walt Disney Company, the makers changed their title to Some Day My Prince Will Come and anyone who can think up that as a secondary title is OK in my book.

A friend of mine says she actually saw this movie in London in the company of seven Persians but doesn’t remember the movie itself. “This was before the Shah was overthrown,” she says, “so they were a very different type of Persian back then. They were more like the French.”

The other film I have always wanted to see is She Lost Her You-Know-What which was also known as Tower of the Screaming Virgins and was billed in the publicity as “Based on a story by Alexandre Dumas”. This sounded, at the very least, intriguing and was presumably only loosely based on a Dumas  novel.

Anthony Newley’s gobsmackingly OTT Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? (which I’ve mentioned more than once before) lived up to its OTT title but, alas, I’m told by someone unfortunate enough to see it that the legendary Troma production Surf Nazis Must Die! failed utterly – it was simply about some surfers with an attitude problem and didn’t equal the kitsch mix of Nazis, breasts and dodgy rock music that Russ Meyer managed in Beyond The Valley of The Dolls.

I am a great fan of the genuinely highly talented writer/director Larry Cohen, whose works include Dial Rat for Terror, the wonderful Q: The Winged Serpent and the utterly bonkers God Told Me To in which a string of people who kill random strangers explain, “God told me to,” and, bugger me, it turns out God actually DID tell them to… and Jesus is reincarnated as a hermaphrodite. (Larry Cohen is a great writer)

I did suggest a follow-up to Killer Bitch called Killer Christ. The outline read:

_____

KILLER CHRIST

The world is full of scum: the pimps, the whores, the conmen, robbers, murderers, psychos and killer bitches. It needs cleaning up. Now time has run out for the scum of the Earth. It’s Apocalypse time! Only one man is big enough for the job. The Big Man is back. He cleared the scum from the Temple in Jerusalem almost 2,000 years ago. Now his job is bigger but his firepower is bigger.

This is Death Wish crossed with Terminator.

He is the ultimate vigilante for the 21st Century.

Your wildest dreams were only the beginning…

JESUS IS BACK… AND THIS TIME HE’S MAD AS HELL !

_____

No-one has come back to me on this one.

I live in hope.

Why comedians are psychopathic masochists with an overwhelming death wish

(This blog was re-published by the Chortle comedy website in March 2011)

I have seen several comedians get very close to big-time success and then destroy their own own chances.

Sometimes I have seen a comedian, after years of struggling, so close to their big-time breakthrough that they can almost reach out and touch it… they can smell it… they can feel the potential big change coming… and then they throw the chance away. Because, I think, after years of struggle, they know the taste of failure and know they can deal with that acid-like ache in the pit of their stomach… but they are frightened by the unknown challenges and feelings which success may throw at them.

It is fear of the unknown and also, perhaps, an inbuilt urge to fail.

Masochism.

I have a theory that there is very little difference between a stand-up comedian and someone who walks into a supermarket or sits atop a high building and randomly shoots people with an AK-47 assault rifle. Most of the psycho shooters are not homicidal but suicidal; they are not sadists, they are masochists; they know they will die and welcome it because someone else will kill them, someone else will ‘suicide’ them.

Comedians are, perhaps, psychopaths with a strong streak of masochism stirred in.

The motivation of both the psycho shooter and the stand up comic is to have a God-like, deep and lasting effect on the lives of others.

They want the public to be so affected by their actions that ‘ordinary’ people completely lose control over their emotions. They want to so affect ‘ordinary’ people’s minds, to have such a vivid, immediate impact that their name will be remembered for the rest of their contemporaries’ lives.

Choose which one is which. Toss a coin.

In the perfect comedy performance, the audience cannot control their basic bodily emotions – their laughter – the comic is in control. But, equally, if the comedian loses control for even a few seconds, the tables may be turned almost instantly and he or she may ‘die’. In the case of the random shooter, a police marksman may fire a fatal round at him/her. In the case of a comic, not just heckles but beer glasses can get thrown at you. I have seen blood drawn on more than one occasion. But it is the psychological damage which hurts more.

What sort of person decides to randomly shoot people knowing they will eventually and soon be shot themselves? The same sort of person who stands on a stage inviting inevitable (even if unjustified) rejection.

Arguably, psychopathic masochists.

Comedy performers have a need to be in control, yet are totally at the mercy of their audiences’ collective whims. Only the very insecure would risk such total rejection for such total control over others. Standing on stage is a masochist’s delight.

If you succeed, if you play the best gig of your life, you know that future gigs are highly unlikely ever to surpass this triumphant peak; the rest of your life will be less successful. If you fail, if the audience and/or the critics don’t find you or your thoughts funny right now, that reinforces your belief in your own worthlessness. It is a lose-lose situation and who would open themselves up to the risk of such rejection? Most comics I’ve met are a combination of vast ego and vast insecurity and self-doubt.

Masochists with a large ego.

Stand-up comics are not like the rest of us. And that is partly why their acts and their minds can be uniquely entertaining and uniquely insightful. If you put a talented masochistic psychopath on stage and say “Go on! Make me laugh!” you are bound to get a wonderfully unexpected result.

The irony is that audiences think it’s easy, that comedians are happy people offstage and that ‘anybody’ can do it.

Give me a well-balanced, happy person, content with their life, content in themselves and I will give you a person who will never be a good comedian.

Give me a psychologically-damaged mess, a mixture of dictator and masochistic neurotic and I will give you a potentially good comedian – which is why I enjoy being with them so much.

Perhaps I should start worrying about my own psychological make-up…