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Into London again today to film a short sketch with the Drunk Women Solving Crime team, Jenny Eclair and a few others. I was playing the vital role of Darren who has no lines but has to look through a window at one point. I was told it was pivotal. I told them I was a film star now and so it better be vital and they said it was.
This sketch is also the first Sky Potato production which has not been created by me. I want to put the profits from advertising into making new projects, both my own and others, so it was nice to dip our toe in the water with this very funny idea and it was great to see Jenny and to hang out in an office on a Saturday afternoon pretending I worked in an office. There was a lovely energy to the filming, with drunk woman Hannah directing, but with a light touch on the helm and everyone getting input. There were spontaneous rounds of applause after takes and lots of laughter and the three men in the sketch were really there just as eye candy to hook in the viewer. It was a proper female workplace and noticeably better for that.
After filming a few of us went to a pub in Notting Hill for an afternoon drink. I like the system where you order and pay for drinks from your phone at the table and then some brings them to you. Though I suppose it’s impractical when a pub is heaving, it would still be cool if this could survive lockdown (presuming lockdown ever really finishes).
Things felt like they were almost normal again. Though that doesn’t mean they will be.
Once home we watched Blazing Saddles, which I don’t think I’ve seen since the 1980s (though am probably wrong about that) when it did get a fair few views from my friends and me. There’s stuff in there that is a bit shocking by today’s standards, mainly the liberal use of the N word and other racial epithets. However, the film is very much on the side of the black characters and whilst maybe having its cake and eating it (I am not sure that my friends and I laughed for all the right reasons), it’s broadly speaking rather progressive and the breaking of the fourth wall still seems fresh and many of the gags are solid. It’s approaching it’s 50th birthday and so it’s not surprising that some of humour has dated or that bits of it would be written differently now. But when you look at most 70s comedy and how it dealt with race, this is a film that gives a lead role to a black actor and points up the stupidity and tragedy of racism. It’s sort of incredible that the scene that everyone seemed to remember as the stand out was the rather lame one of cowboys eating beans and immediately farting and burping, but I love the film spilling out into the real and modern world and the characters watching the film (and then later Gene Wilder still having his popcorn in the Wild West) and had never noticed that the ice cream parlour boasted that it had one flavour.
