The hands-on-sides gesture also makes me think of Mr. Rigsby from Rising Damp. I doubt if Leonard Rossiter was influenced by Guinness though, somehow it seems more likely that he took the gesture from life.

But Guinness emulating a deathbird still seems distinctly possible.

I think I’ll send you an email about the Pasolini thing rather than posting it here, there are thirty+ year memories involved and the guy who passed the story on might not want it out there, I don’t know.

I had the great pleasure of meeting Lindsay Anderson at — of all places — the cast and crew screening of My Own Private Idaho. I told him how much If. . . meant to me and he was very pleased.

Then Keanu Reeves came swanning by and he was off like shot.

You know Kenneth Williams was supposed to play the court painter in Welles’ The Trial (having been in Moby Dick Rehearsed) but declined to be apart from his mother?

Williams used to scare me as a kid! “It’s all in the nose.” He breathes life into the Carry Ons. The films only function on any level due to the TOTAL dedication of the players, which is so undeserved by the material at times that it’s kind of dazzling.

Glad you caught the Ivor Novello reference in If. . .. I get blank stares when I mention that to most people. Like most gay men of his generation Lindsay Anderson was over the moon about Ivor Novello.

Of course there’s that bit in The Ladykillers where the Carry On team stage a pitch invasion, Frankie Howerd and Kenneth Connor turning up at once. And it’s the least funny part of the film.

I don’t hate the Carry Ons, I have that slightly embarrassed affection for them…but they’re not really cinema… Cleo and Screaming make me laugh, The last four or five are just very very upsetting.

Most annoying ever was Hanks saying “I love British Comedy…Ealing, Carry On…” To mention both in the same breath…gah…