For those in the business of movie punditry there’s a horrible temptation to gush at every little piece of even slightly interesting movie news. We froth with unbridled excitement at the mere mention of a film or performance that might, when it eventually hits our screens, divert and distract us for more than a few minutes. I’m afraid to say that this temptation looks to me more like a trap when it comes to today’s, let’s face it, really rather depressing news that Russell Brand is grooming Hollywood scriptwriters to come up with a winning treatment to remake Arthur – the Oscar nominated Dudley Moore vehicle - in which Brand would take on Dud’s role of a millionaire playboy caught between the moon and New York City.
Sachsgate
Now, I was hoping it would be possible to have a rant about this without tossing in my ten-cents worth on the Sachsgate scandal - remember, that minor news event when Jonathon Ross came over all Peter Cook on Brand's Radio 2 show by profaning the already questionable reptuation of an elderly actor’s granddaughter while Russ winced in the corner like a silly schoolboy - but whenever I think of Brand I can't help but compare this infamous broadcast with the legendary Bill Grundy interview of the Sex Pistols (brilliantly dissected in Julien Temple’s Filth and the Fury here,) where Rotten and Co – in a live broadcast remember, and at a time when words like fuck and shit were a genuine taboo – quickly got into their stride after an initial moment of coy-embarrassment. It took a good bit of time and the freedom that comes with a pre-recorded show to drag Russ Brand out of his prude shock and try to outdo the endlessly amusing Ross.
I was also reminded of the most outrageous of the Derek and Clive sketches – the one where Derek is explaining how he once tried to get into the Guinness Book of Records with the world's longest trail of snot but his wife failed to Polaroid it before the chain broke – which descends into a particularly brutish description of spousal abuse. The look on Dud’s face in this clip shows that he knows his friend was going too far – he was both embarrassed by and powerless in the face of Cook’s genius. And just as Dud could only bring himself to throw in a few expectoratory fucks, so Russ was unable to escape the ‘I fucked your granddaughter’ riff and move the skit onto genuinely satirical or even mildly funny comedic ground. With this comparison in mind, perhaps it’s only fitting that Russ, like Dud, should conquer Hollywood while Ross languishes in BBC exile.
At this stage I must admit to being a moderate champion of some of Russell’s work. I remember seeing his act at the Secret Policeman’s Ball a few years ago and being deeply impressed by the unity and erudition of his performance. He seemed to be doing something that no-one had done in comedy for a while. He had created a strange character that was one part Byron, one part Sid James and a wholelotta Kenneth Williams, and that was refreshing at the time. Unfortunately he seems stuck in this character. And so any attempt to perform (cf. Forgetting Sarah Marshall) will always fail to escape the rather narrow confines of his acting talent: his 'Booky Wook' may well be a work of genius but any extended exposure to his unrehearsed verbosity leaves one aghast at that flurry of camped-up ooohs and ahhhs, ‘aints and wots which most of his comic impulses feed off.
Brit Comics Stateside
It takes a lot of talent for a British comedy star to conquer America. We may speak the same language but our different comprehensions of what makes funny seldom dovetail.
Peter Sellers was a genuinely great actor with the ability to find a universal, sometimes absurd, always mesmerising, humour in any role and America fell at his feet, but John Cleese has never been able to completely shake off the yoke of Basil Fawlty; Steve Coogan, despite a memorable turn as himself in Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes, will never fight free of Alan Partridge which our trans-Atlantic cousins don't even find funny, nonetheless that same audience made Rowan Atkinson’s Bean a hit whilst stopping well short of making its star a star; Sacha Baron Cohen has become a huge star by doing over there exactly the same as what he did over here - that said, where he was once a satirist he is now a clown and nothing he does from now on in will ever have the staying power of a Clouseau or a Strangelove; and while that other 11 O’Clock Show veteran Ricky Gervais seems to be playing it smart by doing very little, he will always be Ricky Gervais – a foil that works on the small screen where the actor gradually morphs into the characters of David Brent and Andy Millman but is a much more difficult thing to pull off on the big screen.
Staying Home
So where does that leave our homegrown comedy hopes on the big screen? Must we simply shut up and keep schtum until the next Richard Curtis film (The Boat that Rocked) grips us in its smugly sentimental tendrils?
Happily the answer is no. A great duo of comedic royalty is tiptoeing towards the multiplexes and you might not even know it. Their names are Armando Iannucci and Chris Morris. Of course I hope you’ve heard of them: they were the trailblazers who spearheaded an entire generation of British acting talent from Steve Coogan to Simon Pegg; from The Day Today and Brass Eye to The Thick of It and Nathan Barley they have each constantly tested and probed the very limits of what is funny and acceptable whilst always remaining both challenging and hilarious. Happily esconsed in the comedy pantheon, they peer down from time to time as if to say to the likes of Russ and Ross ‘we’ve seen it all before’ and now (we’re happy to tell/remind you) they’re each working on their first feature films.
Morris – whose brilliantly dark satirical mind has been behind such projects as Jam and the BAFTA winning short-film My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117 and has proven that he is not afriad to find ripe humour in subjects as diverse and provocative as drug-crazes, suicide and paedophilia – is currently working on a comedy about homegrown jihadis preparing for a suicide attack on British soil; while his old friend Iannucci, the Oxford Professor of Broadcast Media, has written and directed a big-screen follow up to his award winning political satire The Thick of It; starring Steve Coogan (yes, him again), James Gandolfini and a host of actors from the TV show, In The Loop is set for release next year.
All of which is just to say that you mustn’t get depressed like I did this morning about Russell Brand becoming a big flowery American star, nor despondent at Richard Curtis coming out with another crummy film. Instead you should be looking forward to the very best of British talent finally finding the exposure and attention that only the silver screen can deliver. Afterall, with brilliant tried and tested comedy finally finding its way into cinemas to join other breakthrough British talent like Shane Meadows and Steve McQueen (if you’ve not see his Hunger yet, you must, and right now!) as well as proven artists such as Terence Davies, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach – all of them telling British stories that are at once funny, sad, moving and entertaining – you should be, like me, happy to let the dross sod off to Hollywood while we hold on to the genius!
SL
