Blue Sky Casting #2

Stanley Kubrick’s WHAT HO, JEEVES!

From the novel by P.G. Wodehouse.

Bertie Wooster — Alan Cumming

Jeeves — Philip Stone

Aunt Agatha – Peter Bull

Aunt Dahlia – Peter Sellers

Anatole – Scatman Crothers

Roderick Spode – Steven Berkoff

Gussie Fink-Nottle – Murray Melvin

Corky Pirbright – Sue Lyon

Madeleine Bassett – Shelley Duvall

Sir Roderick Glossop – Patrick Magee

Florence Craye – Papillon Soo

Bingo Little – Malcolm McDowell

It’s striking how few good films exist of P.G. Wodehouse’s work. His time in Hollywood resulted in only a couple of additional dialogue credits which don’t really show his unique gifts, and most film and television adaptations fall flat. 1937’s A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS, with Fred Astaire, perhaps comes closest to capturing Wodehouse lightness, gentle absurdity and sheet funniness, aided immeasurably by the cast, and George Stevens as director (Stevens had photographed numerous silent Laurel & Hardy shorts and developed beautiful comedy timing himself).

But clearly what’s needed is the master’s touch.

“Another day had dawned all hot and fresh and, in pursuance of my unswerving policy at that time, I was singing ‘Sonny Boy’ in my bath, when there was a soft step without and Jeeves’ voice came filtering through the woodwork.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8cFtl6Mggc

Let Fred make your day!

The Creative Process.

D. Cairns and friend.

Luke, the props guy, showed me scale drawings of three comedy hammers, and naturally I picked the biggest as being the funniest.

So we ended up with the hammer pictured here, which was almost too heavy to lift and almost too colossal to be recognisable as a hammer. My bad.

Lesson learned — in this picture, actor Stevie McNicoll drives the point home.

Arrr!

This is a short I wrote and directed for Fox Searchlab, reuniting many of the team from CRY FOR BOBO, but at one-seventh the cost.

As with CRY FOR BOBO, I realised afterwards the autobiographical subtext: Bobo the clown is a silly entertainer trapped in a world of serious people, analogous to my place in the Scottish film industry; Pete the Pirate here theoretically has a set of unique skills, but they do not fit into the conventional modern job market. Try going into the Job Centre and telling them you make films and you’ll know how he feels.

Funniest incident during shooting: a chap walked up to our eye-patched pirate, popped out a glass eye, and offered it to him.

Actually no, that was disgusting.

“You’re despicable.”

   

Recent email exchange with B. Kite:

We were talking about that moment in VERTIGO where Jimmy Stewart (in Britain we call him JAMES) is trying to get Kim Novak to change her hairdo, the better to resemble his dead love, and he cries out, “Judy, please — it can’t matter to YOU!”

Me: Always gets a knowing laugh from women. Not a bad laugh, just a shocked one.

B. Kite: It’s rare to see a base human response put so succinctly. In that it’s a bit like Daffy Duck’s great “I’m not like other people — pain hurts me.”

And that meeting of minds seems worth a blog entry in itself!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBMTC3×1xv4