{"id":363,"date":"2013-04-04T17:45:36","date_gmt":"2013-04-05T00:45:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/?p=363"},"modified":"2013-04-04T17:45:47","modified_gmt":"2013-04-05T00:45:47","slug":"363","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/363\/","title":{"rendered":"Unfinished Business 2:"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pirates of Penzance<\/h1>\n

\u00a0I began to write this movie around 1976.\u00a0\u00a0 I always loved Gilbert & Sullivan.\u00a0\u00a0 Especially The Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance.\u00a0 I thought the latter\u00a0might make a good movie and I went on location around Penzance scouting St. Michael’s Mount and various beautiful locations, and\u00a0then I wrote the screenplay for the locations I had found.\u00a0 As you see I was foolish enough to have the opening scenes printed in Victorian handwriting.\u00a0\u00a0 Good luck there with Hollywood!\u00a0\u00a0 Jim Beach tried for many years but we were never able to raise the funds.\u00a0 It was indeed a very eccentric looking script.\u00a0\u00a0 With many fine pre-Raphaelite paintings to show the kind of look I wanted.\u00a0 <\/span><\/h3>\n

We went up to visit Ken Russell at his home in the Lake District and interested him in directing.\u00a0 I wanted Michael Caine for the Major General and Bette Midler as Ruth.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But we still couldn’t find the funds.<\/span><\/h3>\n

When we had almost given up we\u00a0had a late surge of interest.\u00a0 \u00a0Joseph Papp had a famous production in the Park in New York, with Kevin Klein and Linda Ronstadt.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ed Pressman picked up\u00a0my rights and then eventually\u00a0ditched us for the Papp team, which was a pity as they were forced to film their version on a Studio Film Stage in London,\u00a0\u00a0wherein it lost all it’s original charm and became a huge flop.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/h3>\n

For best effect reading this you might want to play a recording of The Pirates of\u00a0 Penzance Overture while reading the “silent film” just after the fake opening.<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

Oh and Dr. Roy Strong was far from flattered to be invited to appear and turned down his big screen chance….\u00a0 <\/span><\/h3>\n

I was anxious to open the film on the 100th anniversary of the play’s first performance in New York,\u00a0 though as you see there was a brief performance in Paignton to \u00a0establish copyright before the whole company shipped to America.\u00a0\u00a0 They wished to avoid repeating the experience of five Pinafores on Broadway, none of them paying royalties.<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/h3>\n

The movie proper starts inside a Victorian Theater in London with a huge coal-fired steam driven projector.\u00a0\u00a0 But after we establish the Victorian cinema filled with Victorian celebrities, and we see shots of Victorian London,\u00a0 and the plot is established as a silent movie then the red plush curtain rises and we are into a full reality shot of a Pirate ship under full sail.<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"HP0022\"<\/a><\/h3>\n

And so on….<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

For the ending of the movie I lifted another song from Pinafore, which I felt was a much better song.<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

\"HP0016\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For the big finale I\u00a0shot the British army marching down the Mall\u00a0at The Trooping of the Color.\u00a0 We got magnificent footage for virtually nothing.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Of course I couldn’t shoot any film of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh and they both watched me, a long haired hippy, running around on the Victoria monument, totally ignoring them and shooting only the soldiers and horses at their big show.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They both sat on their horses staring at me.\u00a0 They simply couldn’t understand why I was ignoring them!\u00a0 I sort of smiled and shrugged.\u00a0\u00a0 What could I say?\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks for the use of your army?<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"HP0017\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"HP0018\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"HP0019\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Pirates of Penzance \u00a0I began to write this movie around 1976.\u00a0\u00a0 I always loved Gilbert & Sullivan.\u00a0\u00a0 Especially The Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance.\u00a0 I thought the latter\u00a0might make a good movie and I went on location around Penzance scouting St. Michael’s Mount and various beautiful locations, and\u00a0then I wrote the screenplay for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":367,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions\/367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}