In the following round, the act Spellbound lost some of its spell, in fact it isn’t moving at all compared to their first effort which was fresh and wonderfully, what can one say, innocent? There was no surprise element. The addition of costumes, fire effects, set etcetera added nothing really – detracted rather. It reminded me of the wonderful funny Jacques Tati film ‘M.Hulot’s Holiday’ which was originally released with an absolute minimal soundtrack: people greeting each other ‘Hello’ ‘Good morning’, the sound of the sea, squeaking doors in the hotel dining room etc. Then someone had the bright idea of adding a more elaborate soundtrack and the whole feeling of the film, for me at any rate, was destroyed; in fact it lost a great deal of its humour which was such a disappointment.
Films one raved about on second viewing can be a big disappointment if not a cause for embarrassment. I remember going on about a film “New Faces of ‘54” and looking at it much later with friends wondering what all the fuss was about in the first place and how really unspectacular it was. The main memory of course was the introduction of Eartha Kitt singing ‘Old Fashioned Millionaire’ and I still remember the song, ‘Oh you can’t chop your mama up in Massachusetts’. “Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her father forty whacks, and when she saw what she had done she gave her mother forty-one.” Apart from Miss Kitt and a diminutive Frenchman (and I can’t even remember his name or number) the rest of the cast is a total blank.
We watched “Yes Prime Minister” again and found it as deliriously funny as ever. Sheer bloody genius if I may be so bold: setting, direction and acting of a truly witty script absolutely faultless. A lesson in TV acting for any would-be thespian. Every tiny change of expression worth a thousand words. It’s not often I am taken by a television programme. Did this series win any prizes? I may have asked this question before and the answer is if not why not?
Another programme I remember so well and for which in fact I wrote to the director saying how fabulous I thought it was, (something rare for me) was the original ‘The Lost Boys’ about James Barrie and the Llewellyn boys. There was one scene where one of the boys is playing checkers with Barrie and it was unbelievably seductive. Did that child know what he was doing? Did the boy in ‘Death In Venice’ realise what he was doing albeit unconsciously?
I say the original Lost Boys to differentiate it from the programme I was in about paedophile murders. That’s the trouble with titles, they’re not copywrite. It would be a wee bit stupid to repeat titles like ‘Gone With The Wind’ or ‘Wizard of Oz’ but looking on Amazon there are three books with the title ‘Just In Case.’ One was published shortly before mine so I was aware of it but I wasn’t going to change what was a perfect title for my own book. ‘Just in case’ said everything about it.