Search and Destroy: Peter Sellers

jeezus, M Jones, his Olivier doing Beatles is brilliant

love this guy -- more genuinely great performances than any other comedic actor i can think of. sellers had a wonderful comment about clouseau being "fundamentally a sad and serious man," which is absolutely key to why any of those movies ever worked at all. i suspect he gave most of his performances pre-strangelove in obscure stuff, based on what i've seen -- he's very moving and funny in "battle of the sexes," an old film based on a james thurber story i caught on TCM one late afternoon a long time ago.

haven't seen the biopic yet, but the roger lewis book it's based on is sort of a masterpiece (if a half-unreadable one, since lewis's obsession with sellers probably can't be equalled by any reader).

that's cool!

just as long as i never have to see what's new pussycat again.

Always wanted to see those two early Goon films - I remember watching Down Among The Z Men on Saturday morning BBC1 about 35 years ago; not fantastically brilliant but it's the only extended documented record of the original Bentine-including Goon quartet. Wonder if any of those Show Called Fred episodes from around the same time will ever turn up?

What about "The Case of the Mukkinese Battle Horn"? Bentine not in that?

In other Goons related news 'The Bed Sitting Room' has finally been released on DVD.

(xp) No, and neither is Secombe for that matter. Watchable here.

What film is Henry Crun in?

Battlehorn

I think he turns up in Z Men as well and possibly Let's Go Crazy

LOL. I'm thinking of the scene where he takes forever to open the door.

i've been shocked, rewatching the party, pink panther movies, etc how poor sellers is in them!

i used to love him though

by my lights louis de funes is the real clouseau - self-important, ridiculous, constantly having his authority eroded (plus actually french, plus he actually gives the impression of working for his paycheck)

sellers too often gives me the impression that the actual business of being funny is beneath him

roger lewis' line is essentially that sellers was great until he thought he was great, i.e. the early brit stuff is unsurpassed but after he became an international star and thought he was it he got lazy and the work suffered. evidence to the contrary? well, some of clouseau, strangelove obv, quilty in kubrick's lolita, and all those buried/tax loss films lewis describes in detail like the blockhouse, hoffman etc. also, from the seventies, the optimist of nine elms which played on tv once in the early eighties and was v. good indeed. and being there of course. quite like girl in my soup but that was the boultings rescuing his career again. but in the later years too many of those international cops n' robbers capers/thinking he's cary grant affairs for sure. and the fu manchu film he did just before he died is unspeakably bad.

Watched the Criterion of Being There, which as in '79 struck me as fine for a 'literary' one-joke film. What's poignant are the two contemporary TV interviews included (one with the clowny Gene Shalit)... Sellers (very gaunt, after gaining weight for BT) slowly works around to doing character voices, and you realize when he says he's editing Fu Manchu, his career is done; he died a few months after these interviews.

Sellers simply didn't have to work that hard to get by as Clouseau, tho I think A Shot in the Dark is great.

The only feature film he directed, long lost, now available from the BFI.

https://shop.bfi.org.uk/pre-order-mr-topaze-dual-format-edition.html