Crucify The Clown!

[poliphilo]

Fantabulosa wasn't fantabulous. It was a dramatisation of the Kenneth Williams diaries and told us the old, old story of how the funny man was fucked over by his parents, lived a tortured life and died friendless and alone.

Michael Sheen had the mannerisms more or less right, but he didn'tlook like Williams and he wasn't funny. The real Williams was weird and anarchic, bordering on dangerous; Sheen's Williams was merely annoying.

There have been a lot of these shows recently. The best of them was the Life and Death of Peter Sellers. We seem to have an appetite for crucifing clowns. How dare you make us laugh, you freak! Now cry- go on- cry!

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what you are talking about, but I did want to use my clown icon--its sad face seemed appropriate to your post.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Highly appropriate.

Kenneth Williams is best known for The Carry On films (if you don't know them, you're not missing much) and for his work on the radio. He was- as they used to say- "screamingly camp".

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

"Screamingly camp" says it all. "Screamingly" is always too much.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I heard the radio trailers, and they didn't make me want to see the show: the laugh sounded all wrong.

And I am trying to avoid these tell-all biographies which take someone whose work you enjoyed and prove that they were abject failures, really. Having fallen for the ones of Peter Cook and Frankie Howerd, I'm learning to duck when I see them coming!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The laugh was subtly wrong. So was the body language. Sheen was utterly wrong for the role.

I'm getting really sick of these things.