Press for Time

PRESS FOR TIME is the name of a Norman Wisdom comedy from 1966 in which he’s a journalist. “Press”, you see. I always remember that because the title has to be the lamest non-pun in the history of English-speaking cinema. The only comparably lousy title is the ’90s thriller OUT OF DEPTH, which vanished without a trace. While the Wisdom flick attempts to be a sort of innocent double entendre but doesn’t actually achieve a singly functioning entendre, the crime movie is only trying to mean one thing, and fails. Did nobody point out, “You know, that isn’t actually a phrase…“?

I mention all this irrelevance because I’m apparently getting a press pass to the Edinburgh Film Festival in its new June incarnation, so I will be live-blogging the fest like a man possessed, during the run-up, when they start the press shows, then all through the event proper, until I drop to the ground, exhausted, spasming and barking with pain. It’ll be great.

I did offer to be their Official Blogger, saying only nice things (integrity is my middle name — I never use it), but they’re quite happy to have me as a rogue element saying whatever the hell I feel like. Which is even better.

Back to Sir Norman. He was HUGE in the UK through the ’50s and ’60s. A sort of sub-Jerry Lewis gump-clown. His stuff hasn’t worn that well, I find, but he still has loyal fans. Animator Nick Park (WALLACE AND GROMMIT) loves those tatty movies. Norm made a stab at a Hollywood career, appearing in THE NIGHT THEY RAIDED MINSKY’S for William Friedkin (makes a great trivia question: what film has Jason Robards, Britt Ekland, Norman Wisdom and Bert Lahr?) and when that didn’t work out, came back to the UK and appeared in WHAT’S GOOD FOR THE GOOSE? a sex comedy that shows Norman romping naked with a rather young Sally Geeson (19). Directed by Z-list hack Menahem Golem, who became a serious movie mogul before falling from “grace” and winding up a Z-list hack again, produced by Tony Tenser’s Tigon pictures, a low point for everybody — even Golan, and that’s LOW. Actor Stevie McNicoll watched the film and was appalled. I asked if it was worse than NOT NOW DARLING, for me the low-water-mark in awful British sex farce. “It makes NOT NOW DARLING look like the fucking Mahabharata,” he replied.

But Norman had a strange renaissance in the ’90s, when it emerged that old prints of his films were doing the rounds in Albania, and he was a major star there. I guess the Wisdom-Albania thing is equivalent to the Jerry Lewis-France paradigm, only this one is true, and it’s rather lovely. And anyway, those French critics who admire Lewis are RIGHT.

Our Norm is now 93 and afflicted with Altzheimer’s, which has had the rather strange effect of turning him into his own movie persona. He seems fantastically lively and fit, but with a childlike intellect and sense of mischief. In a recent TV profile, he turned to the documentary camera and attempted a greeting which seems to encapsulate the essence of all actors:

“Thanks… awfully… for looking at me.”