Category: Entertainment

Alternate Universe

Entertainment

We often imagine how things might have turned out if instead of X, we’d done Y or Z, and so on.  Imagine how TV show Gilligan’s Island might have turned out with this cast:

  • Raquel Welch for the role of Mary Ann
  • Jayne Mansfield as Ginger
  • Carroll O’Connor as Skipper
  • Jerry Van Dyke as Gilligan, and
  • Dabney Coleman as the Professor.

Whoa.  In fact, all the above auditioned for those parts in the show, but were rejected.  And here’s Mary Ann in the alternate universe:

For the record, I’ve only ever watched a few episodes of Gilligan’s Island  because boredom, and not since because brain bleed.  With the above cast, I might have been tempted to watch more, and not just because of Raquel.

Here’s an exercise.  Put your favorite modern actors (at any age) into those roles, and imagine how the show would have changed.

Here are my suggestions, by way of example, which I think would have made the show not only more grown-up, but more watchable (and funnier):

  •  Helena Bonham-Carter for the role of Mary Ann

  •  Kate Walsh as Ginger

  •  Bob Newhart as The Skipper

  •  Robin Williams as Gilligan

…but I can’t beat

  • Dabney Coleman as the Professor.

Go on, it’s your turn (and it’s harder than you think).

Snatchers

Entertainment

Some Brit toffs just got married at the groom’s future digs (which he gets when his dad snuffs it), said shack being so vast that no ground-level photo can quite do it justice :

Now ordinarily I am disinterested in the couplings of nobility;  the nuptials of Lady Fontinella Waxwork-ffolkes and Lord Beastly Stiff-Upper-Lypp pass by my gaze unnoticed, and even Prince Harry’s marriage would have been disregarded by me but for the fact that the poor royal ginger ended up with some foul feminist Hollywood slag and was therefore only worthy of comment insofar as I predict that this unfortunate alliance will not end well (you heard it here 455th).

Anyway, the thing which caught my idle glance in the above report was this unfortunate description:

“George, the Marquess of Blandford, 26, married childhood sweetheart Camilla Thorp, 31”

Say what?  I’m assuming / hoping that he wasn’t 5 years old, and she 10 when they became sweethearts… oh wait, it turns out that they met ten years ago when he was 16 (not really a “child”, was he?) and she ummmm…. carry the two, 21.  That’s a fair age difference but not overly so.

Phew.  I am relieved.  Of course, had this liaison been consummated in Murka, she’d have been facing statutory rape charges at some point (assuming that they’d started bonking soon after first meeting, as seems to be the custom these days), but I suppose the aristocracy has a much more benign attitude towards this kind of thing so it’s okay, albeit risky.  (Remember that Chinless Charles married Super-Sloane-Ranger Di when he was in his thirties and she yet in her teens, and we all know how that turned out.)  Also, the Dukes of Marlborough are outrageously wealthy, thanks to Great-Grandpappy Marlborough marrying a Vanderbilt girl, so maybe there’s a different rule for the rich when it comes to bonking sixteen-year-olds.

Anyway:  congratulations and good luck to the happy couple, who seem to be quite charming.  And as wedding pics go, you have to admit that this isn’t one of yer ordinary backgrounds:

And all over Britain can be heard the gnashing of desperate debutante teeth as another eligible “catch” escapes their hooks.

Another age-distinct couple got married recently, and their backdrop was also rather special:

That’s the Umaid Bhawan palace in Jodhpur, but it’s not likely to be owned by either the bride or groom anytime in the future, as they are neither royal not even noble.  Like we couldn’t tell (note the bride’s ceremonial hand tattoo UGH):

Anyway, he is someone called Nick Jonas, a one-time (or current?) pop star of whom I know nothing except that like the future duke (above), he’s 26.  His bride, like the Royal Ginger’s wife, is some houri actress named Priyanka Chopra, and who like the Marchioness Blandford is older than her husband, but she by some ten summers.

At least this couple are not “childhood sweethearts”:  the thought of a twenty-one-year old woman bonking an eleven-year-old boy… well, you know.

This marriage, I give a couple of years.  Call it a hunch.

In Other News, Dogs Chase Cats

Entertainment, Men & Women

I’ve never been involved in the movie business at all, so I’m not really qualified to comment on this story (not that this has ever stopped me before):

Alexa Chung has revealed how she was once ordered to strip by a movie producer while being auditioned for a role. In a worrying #MeToo moment, the model was told to remove her clothes so that the exec could see what she looked like naked.
Addressing the Oxford Union, Alexa said: ‘He told me to strip because he needed to see what I looked like naked for a scene that required it.’

Okay, let’s all accept the fact that the whole casting thing could just turn into an opportunity for men to catch a free look at naked women.  (In other news, Gen. Custer seems to be having some difficulties with the Sioux.)  And yeah yeah, that’s just awful and terrible etc. etc.

I have some parallel thoughts, however:  if you are auditioning for a part where you’re going to be filmed in the nude, don’t be shocked when you’re asked to show what you look like naked.  If you’re Julia Roberts, for example, you can turn down such demands because you’re going to get a body double anyway — they’re casting the face, not your ironing-board body.  But if you’re a nobody, you can’t really turn it down because appearing or performing in the nude is one of the reasons you’re being cast at all and if we’re going to be blunt about it, if you have some blemish (e.g. saggy boobs or a large birthmark), the producer is not going to hire a body double for a nobody.  

The other thought is that the director has to be sure that when he films a scene — any scene, let alone a nude one — he has to be sure that viewers concentrate on what he’s trying to show, not on the fact that Second Actress From The Left has one breast considerably larger than the other.

So while I can sympathize with this Alexa Chung (whoever she is) because of the voyeur thing, I can also see things from the other side of the desk, so to speak.  I should also point out that this woman is an ex-model, and didn’t seem to have too many qualms about being naked anyway:

And here’s another thought:  a producer asking to see what you look like on the nude is not a Harvey Weinstein/#MeToo moment;  a producer wanting you to fuck him to get the part, is.

We can also talk about why nude modelling or nude scenes in movies are necessary at all, but that’s a topic for another post.

Killing The Monster

Entertainment

I see that singer Michael Bublé has decided to quit singing and the limelight.  I can quite understand why.  At a time when his beloved son was close to death from cancer, Bublé found himself in a blizzard of “well-meaning” Press attention, with articles sensitively entitled “Michael’s Torment“, “Michael Looks Depressed As He Leaves Hospital” and the always-popular “Will Michael Bublé Ever Be Able To Sing Again?”  (“No” being the eventual answer to this question, as it happens.)

Under those circumstances, Bublé discovered that while his fame sold albums and made him rich, the price he had to pay was the complete loss of privacy and even dignity.  For attention-whores like the Kardashians and their ilk, this celebrity and attention might have been accepted, even welcomed;  for him, facing that most awful and personal of tragedies, the scouring of his anguish and its parade in the tabloids must have been torture — and his desire to quit the spotlight both literally and figuratively is both understandable and even laudable.

And good for him, say I.  His wealth is secure, his family likewise;  but should his young son ever get nailed by cancer again — a horrible possibility — I can only hope that he and his wife can deal with whatever happens in solitude and isolation.  I don’t even want to hear about it, for that matter.  Whatever happens, Michael Bublé deserves his privacy, and I can only hope that the Media Vultures leave him alone from now on.

I for one will refuse to read anything about him and his family ever again.  I can’t escape the future headlines, should they occur, but I don’t have to reward the Jackals Of The Press by reading about the details.  He deserves the anonymity he craves, and I’m happy to grant it to him.

Michael, I wish lasting happiness, health and peace to you and your family;  and thank you for sharing your magnificent talent with us while you did.

Best Comedy TV (Part 8)

Entertainment

Absolutely Fabulous (UK)

Absolutely nobody I know likes this ridiculous, over-the-top, outrageous and over-acted series, but I absolutely fucking love it.  The fact that the show is based on an actual PR person (no names, no pack drill) makes it even more delicious.

The point is that from beginning to end, AbFab is not actually a comedy, but satire — and it lampoons everything, from the PR business to fashion to feminism to family relations and oh so much more.  Whether it’s the frantic, hysterical Edina’s latest fad diet, the feline Patsy’s fondness for Bollinger at 8am or insufferable daughter Saffron’s earnest espousal of everything PC, AbFab doesn’t so much skewer it as either a bludgeon it with a club or flay it with a razor.

Saffie:  I’m sorry, mum, but I’ve never seen what it is that you actually do.
Eddie:  PRrr.
Saffie:  Yes, but —
Eddie:  PR.  I PR things.  People.  Places.  Concepts…
Patsy:  Lulu.
Eddie:  Lulu.  I make the fabulous…  I make the crap into credible.  I make the dull into —
Patsy:  Delicious.

No better description of public relations was ever penned.  And as for PR awards:

Eddie:  They don’t matter, do they, darling?… Awards, Pats?
Patsy:  Oh, Eddy. We’ve been here before.
Eddie:  It’s just… you know… I WANT one. I don’t just want one, darling, I NEED one. My career is on a toboggan run of failure at the moment… I just need one. It’s the only thing that seems to mean ANYthing these days… I need one now before the menopause drags me into her gaping jaws. Before my creative hormonal oil-well dribbles to a halt. Before my bottom becomes just a patch-work quilt of monkey glands, darling.
Saffie:  But, Mum, menopause can be a very exhilarating and positive experience for a woman.
Eddie:  Oooh, yes.  And the curse is a blessing and childbirth is painless.  No.  Unless that gaping hole on my mantle piece is filled pretty soon, darling, I might as well… I might as well lick this light-switch and do us all a favour, darling…

And:

[to daughter Saffron, after a heated argument]
Eddie:  With any luck we’d get Roman Polanski interested in you.
Patsy (snarling):  She was never young enough for him.

Not to mention the booze:

Patsy:  What will you drink if you stop drinking?
Eddie:  I shall drink water.
[pause]
Eddie:  It’s a mixer, Pats.  We have it with whisky… I mean, you‘ve given up drinking before? 
Patsy:  Worst eight hours of my life.

Finally, there’s Eddie’s mother, played by the amazing June Whitfield:

Eddy:  Mother, are you still on the computer?
Gran:  Yes, dear.  Sometimes you get into a porn loop and just can’t get out.

And then of course there’s Patsy:

“The last mosquito that bit me had to check into the Betty Ford Clinic.”

Fabulous.  Absolutely fabulous.

Best Comedy TV (Part 7)

Entertainment

The Young Ones (UK)

Not many people in the U.S. saw this anarchic comedy, I suspect, and theirs is the loss.  Headed by the incomparable Rik Mayall, the ensemble cast of misfits and social failures living in a boarding house somewhere in one of the seedier parts of London managed to savage not only the house itself, but just about every social institution as well.  (The house, despite being partially — and once, completely — destroyed each week, somehow managed to rejuvenate itself by the following episode, much as South Park‘s Kenny was killed each episode and came back to life ditto.)

Trying to explain the plot of The Young Ones in a few lines is akin to doing the same for James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake :  quite impossible, and something I’m sure the late Rik Mayall, one of the principal writers, would have enjoyed to see me try.  But the way the all-male cast played off each other was incredible — the loutish thug Vyvyan, the dreamy hippie Neil, the suave gangster Mike and the hapless homosexual Rick took turns in sabotaging each other’s plans, insulting and /or assaulting each other and doing much worse to the outside world.  Whatever they did, I would cry with astonished laughter pretty much all the way through each episode, before rewinding the VHS tape (yes, that again) to re-watch the show in amazement.

To give you the smallest hint of the insanity, let me just list a few of the bit-part actors who appeared in The Young Ones — and the actors of the time would fight each other to be invited onto the show, such was its cachet.  And the names of some of the guest characters will only hint at the barely-concealed insanity:

Alexei Sayle (the Balowski Family)
Jim Barclay (Policeman in Comic Strip)
Robbie Coltrane (Bouncer)
Ruth Burnett (Goldilocks)
Gareth Hale (Gravedigger)
Dawn French (Easter Bunny)
David Rappaport (Ftumch)
Jennifer Saunders (Helen Mucus)
Alan Freeman (God)
Jonathan Caplan (Knight of the Square Table)
Stephen Fry (Lord Snot)
Hugh Laurie (Lord Monty)
Tony Robinson (Dr. Not the Nine O’Clock News)
Emma Thompson (Miss Money-Sterling)
Damaris Hayman (Woman Pushing Corpse)
…and so on.

There were only twelve episodes of The Young Ones.

There was no regular female part on the show (which kind of added to the fun), so I’m going to feature the ever-silly Dawn French, who appeared in three episodes: