So I got the news on
You Can Choose Your Friends.... As I suspected it's not entirely good, but it's not totally bad. The Controller of BBC1 doesn't want it, which might not be a bad thing. The BBC2 people liked it, but aren't sure where it would go from here, so want me to write another script to show how the series would develop. I am not sure what I am going to do. Writing the first script was so tortuous and protracted and I don't know if I can go through that again unless I know the thing is really going to happen. Also I had finally got the script to a point where I thought it was pretty good and it seems obvious to me how it would develop, so if the powers that be don't see that then will another script really make any difference? I have already invested a lot of emotional energy in this project and I wonder if doing more will just make failure even more painful. Maybe I should just move on and try and work on something new. Well, I will think about it, but it's slightly disappointing obviously. I still haven't got the Channel 4 script together and have so much else to do that I am not sure when I'd be able to get another script done by anyway. Ah well.
But other work offers keep coming in, so I'm not going to starve. Today I was offered an audition for the new Carry On film
Carry On London. I do want to do a bit more acting and it's nice that someone has thought to ask for me, but it's not a project that makes me immediately full of excitement. Just as I think it's borderline evil of Steve Martin to think, "Yeah, I'll have a crack at Inspector Clouseau - no-one's really nailed that part yet!", I am somewhat sceptical about the idea of reviving the Carry On Franchise. I have a fondness for a lot of the old Carry On films, but most of that fondness is for the people who were in them and let's face it, practically all those people are dead. And in any case doesn't the spirit of the Carry Ons belong to a different, more innocent time? Is there any point in trying to recapture that in the more cynical, more blatant 21st century? Even it it was, would the people behind this enterprise capture the spirit of Carry On? Whoever was behind
Carry on Colombus certainly didn't. But so much of Carry On was down to extraordinary actors like Kenneth Williams and Sid James and solid back up players like Charles Hawtree and the brilliant Kenneth Connor, not forgetting Jaques, Sims, Bresslaw and even lovely little Babs. Even when the scripts became predictable and silly you could get some pleasure from the performances and at least the familiarity of these strange avuncular figures. Surely it's foolish to try and recapture this. And is Shane Ritchie (the only person I think they have cast so far) really the man to do the job?
Isn't calling a film with a totally different cast a Carry On a little precocious and disrespectful? Would it be going too far to call it pissing into the graves of those late great men and women and on to the living faces of Barbara Windsor and Jim Dale (who possibly might deserve this)? Wouldn't that be a better film
Carry On Pissing On To Kenneth William's Grave where Shane Ritchie, Keith Allen, Brian from Big Brother and Jodie Marsh take it in turns urinating into the hollow eye sockets of the Will of the Wisp star's skull, whilst saying "oooh you're-in trouble" and "look at the wee coming out of my willy-ums" and "in for you, in for you, we've all got it in for you"?
I decided I would try not to judge the project without at least reading the script. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad as I thought. Maybe it would be a part that I could bring something to. So I got them to email me a copy. Let's just say it did nothing to make me reconsider my immediate knee-jerk reaction.
Nice to know that someone has green-lighted this project, whilst my own script remains locked in development Hell. This business sucks a big dog's cock and then just as the dog is about to come the business pulls the cock out of its mouth and aims it at the skellington faces of what was once pure and beautiful so its dog spunk shoots all over it.
Luckily I enjoy being spunked on by dogs and also like seeing dog spunk on the skellingtons of the dead comedians that I most admired, so I am happy to remain a part of it all.
I politely declined the invite to the audition. But have now possibly ruined that politeness by being rude and honest. Ah well, fuck it. The people doing this new Carry On film must in their hearts know that what they are doing is wrong and evil. Or at least they must know it in their bladders.
