Hey folks, Harry here... This review of the script for THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PETER SELLERS has now got me insanely excited about this film... Just the fact that Charlize Theron is playing Britt Ekland and that the first line from Sellers is what it is... Jesus... What a great moment! Personally I believe Geoffrey Rush can be genius in this film... my only fear lies with Stephen Hopkins, who seems to always make movies that just miss or totally suck, but never films that completely please me. I'm rooting for him this time out. BEWARE of spoilers below... there's quite a few. But damn this sounds like it could turn out to be a great film!
Hi Harry,
One of your reporter/reviewers over in England here. Recently had chance to read the script for The Life And Death Of Peter Sellers, which is being filmed right now in London with Geoffrey Rush as the man himself and Charlize Theron (hubba hubba!) as Britt Ekland.
I have to admit that before I read the script, the name Peter Sellers always brought the same two images to my mind: Strangleove and Ladykillers. I never knew much else about him so I came to read it wide eyed and (relatively) innocent.
The film starts off with Sellers and Ekland having sex, really going at it, followed immediately by Sellers collapsing from a heart attack. His first line in the film is: "You can't be my wife... No wife fucks that good!"
Following this, we go back in time to when Sellers was a radio star desperately wanting to break into film and then follow his progress to the big screen.
Breaking up the narrative are interludes where the film itself actually becomes a film within a film with Sellers taking on the role of whichever character spoke the previous line. This sounds confusing and is hard to describe accurately, but works to break the film into chapters as if Sellers himself is actually narrating and directing his own life story. An odd method of punctuating the narrative, which reminded me of the way 24 Hour Party People would regularly stop and start under Tony Wilson's voiceover and direct-to-camera monologues.
The contrast between the public Sellers and the private Sellers is Raging Bull-esque, focusing on his obsession with fame and his trouble with maintaining a stable family. One of the most shocking sequences concentrates on Sellers complaining that the paint job on his new car was peeling off. Hearing this, his young son Michael tries to paint over it (saying, "There, Daddy. I made it beautiful."). Sellers silently pulls his son into the house, lines up all his toy cars in a line and stamps on them in turn screaming, "There, Son! I'm making them beautiful!" An equally ugly incident occurs later when Ekland brings their baby onto set and Sellers orders them both out, referring to the child as "your fucking baby" and "it".
However, this was not an unfeeling monster by any means, more of a lonely, unhappy man frustrated by the fact that his only means of communication seemed to be through comic characters in films. This is shown in heartbreaking scenes towards the end when Sellers is struggling to get Being There made, only to be offered The Return Of The Pink Pinther instead. By this point he is Chance the Gardener, people mistaking what he is saying, people expecting comedy genius on tap.
However, the killer scene comes after Being There has been released, as Sellers watches Dustin Hoffman nab the Best Actor Oscar that he too was up for, and rewinds Hoffman's speech ("...I don't believe I beat Peter Sellers...") over and over until he is playing a mere fragment of it ("... I beat Peter Sellers...").
Along the way, we learn about his love-hate relationship with Blake Edwards and The Pink Pather movies ("Pink Panther? Sounds like a gay strip joint!"). The best cameo is Stanley Kubrick (described by Sellers as "one peculiar fucker") who appears in a hotel hallway as a "Mysterious Man In Overcoat" to convince Sellers to be in Strangelove ("Which part?", "All of them."). At one point, Sellers fakes a broken leg to escape Kubrick's punishing work schedule.
This could make a worthy biopic and Rush seems to be fitting into the part from what I hear. My main concern is the director, Stephen Hopkins. His filmography reads like Satan's Curriculum Vitae. Nightmare on Elm st 5... Predator 2... Judgment Night... Blown Away... Lost in Space... Yuk!!! This guy even managed to put Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman and Monica Belluci in one room and still make a naff picture (Under Suspicion) with his hyperactive approach to directing. Hopefully, he'll have more respect for the material he is dealing with here and curb his instinct to keep the camera whizzing around his actors while they try to say their lines. Fingers crossed.
All the best, Harry.
James Lowe
