Latest news with #DrStrangelove
Glasgow Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Glasgow Times
Outlander star to play Hercule Poirot at Glasgow theatre
Mark Hadfield will play the iconic detective in Lucy Bailey's new production of Death on the Nile, coming to the Theatre Royal, Glasgow from February 24 to 28. The new production marks the European premiere of Ken Ludwig's adaptation of the Agatha Christie classic. It follows sell-out tours of And Then There Were None and Murder on the Orient Express. Read more: True crime tale of Glasgow poisoning turned into city play Mark is well-versed in theatre, with his latest credits including Dr Strangelove and Accidental Death of an Anarchist in the West End. He has also starred in several productions for the RSC, including Cymbeline and Tamburlaine. The thespian has also starred in popular films including Belfast, Into the Woods, Hamlet, and Frankenstein. Alongside his role in Outlander, he has had several TV appearances including Maigret, Trollied, Wallander, Doc Martin, People Like Us, and Cracker. Mark Hadfield will play Hercule Poirot in Lucy Bailey's new production of Death on the Nile (Image: Supplied) Read more: Horrible Histories to stage special production in Glasgow - here's when Mark said: "I am delighted and excited to be playing the iconic role of Hercule Poirot in the forthcoming production of Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile, directed by Lucy Bailey and produced by Fiery Angel. "I'm also thrilled that this production, adapted by Ken Ludwig, will be touring the UK and Ireland, and have no doubt that it will be enjoyed by both those who already admire Christie's genius and those yet to discover it." The performance, produced by Fiery Angel in association with Agatha Christie Limited, follows Poirot's investigation as he tries to solve a murder on a cruise ship under the heat of the Egyptian sun. It will be designed by Mike Britton, with lighting design by Oliver Fenwick, sound design by Mic Pool, and movement direction by Liam Steele. Lucy Waterhouse will be the associate director, and Helena Palmer will be the casting director. Further casting details are yet to be announced.
Irish Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Barry Lyndon turns 50: Is Kubrick's epic, filmed in Ireland, a folly or a masterpiece?
Some 20 years ago, I was invited round to Sir Ken Adam's house in Knightsbridge for a conversation about a new book on his work as a production designer. I knew I was in the right place when I saw his Rolls-Royce parked outside the grand stucco porch. One of only three German-born airmen to fly for the RAF in the second World War, Adam had long been recognised as a legend of the industry. Over a 50-year career, he worked on every variety of picture – from Addams Family Values to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – but Adam was, by then, resigned to the awareness that, in any interview, the conversation would quickly touch upon James Bond and Stanley Kubrick . He made seven Bond films. The two pictures he made with Kubrick were among the most striking looking ever made: Dr Strangelove and Barry Lyndon. I remember approaching the subject of the latter film with some caution. Half a century after its release, Barry Lyndon, much of which was shot in Ireland, remains shrouded in myth and controversy. Is the lavish 18th-century epic a folly or a masterpiece? Did the IRA really chase Kubrick away? Was the pressure on the crew so great? It was said the stress of dealing with Kubrick's obsessions on that film – shooting by candlelight, replicating 19th-century paintings – accelerated this former fighter pilot towards (as we then still said) a nervous breakdown. Stanley Kubrick on the set of Barry Lyndon. Photograph: Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images Adam, who died in 2016, did not balk when I used those words. 'Oh yes, a terrible breakdown,' he told me. 'We were working these incredibly long hours. And there was the closeness to Stanley, who was so completely disorganised. We didn't have a script as such. He had just [photocopied] pages from [William Makepeace] Thackeray's novel and then discovered that didn't work; I could have told him that at the beginning.' [ One of Stanley Kubrick's greatest films was made free to watch on YouTube. It's a sign of the trouble movie studios are in Opens in new window ] This gets at an often-overlooked aspect of Kubrick's approach. Yes, he was meticulous. But, according to Adam (who would know), that perfectionism was at odds with a lack of structural discipline. 'We were chasing around all day looking for a location and then shooting all night,' Adam told me. 'If a scene didn't work it was, of course, the fault of the location.' Marisa Berenson in Barry Lyndon Adam ended up in the care of 'a famous Scottish psychiatrist' who told him that, to get well, he would have to 'cut the umbilical cord' with Kubrick. When he emerged from care he got a phone call from the director. Kubrick noted how pleased he was that Adam was better and explained that he now wanted the production designer to shoot a second-unit sequence in Potsdam. 'That gave me such a shock that the next day I was back in the clinic!' he told Sir Christopher Frayling. Adam could, reasonably enough, have concluded, on the film's release in 1975, that it was not worth the effort or the strain on his mental health. Barry Lyndon, adaptation of a short novel by Thackeray, received mixed reviews and was not a financial success. [ Reissue of the Week: Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon - terribly beautiful, relentlessly authentic Opens in new window ] Pauline Kael, then in her pomp as film critic of the New Yorker, greatly enjoyed revealing her disappointment. 'Kubrick has taken a quick-witted story, full of vaudeville turns ... and he's controlled it so meticulously that he's drained the blood out of it,' she wrote. 'He suppresses most of the active elements that make movies pleasurable.' Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times thought it 'the motion picture equivalent of one of those very large, very heavy, very expensive, very elegant and very dull books that exist solely to be seen on coffee tables'. The great Derek Malcolm, writing in the Guardian, turned to a cricketing analogy. 'It's half a film,' he wrote. 'He is like a batsman trying to score a century without anybody noticing.' Many were unconvinced by Ryan O'Neal's deadened performance in the title role (domestic viewers still wince a little at his so-so Irish accent). Huntington Castle's yew tree walk, made famous when a scene in Barry Lyndon was filmed there. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw It would be wrong to suggest the whole world was against it. There were good reviews from Gene Siskel in the Chicago Tribune and Vincent Canby in the New York Times. The Irish Times, on first glance, also caught its brilliance. In his review, Fergus Linehan railed against negative criticism 'that misunderstood both the film's method and purpose'. Linehan went on to place it alongside the likes of The Godfather Part II and Badlands among his 12 best films (on Irish release dates) of 1975. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated Barry Lyndon as best picture in what now seems a contender for the finest line-up in the Oscars' history. It competed opposite Dog Day Afternoon, Nashville, Jaws and eventual winner One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Adam won his second Oscar (an award he thought 'ironic' for a film largely set on already existing locations). Yet there was still a sense the film was a grand extravagance that failed to repay the effort demanded of any viewer. Kubrick's films often take a long time to settle in with critics and viewers. 2001: A Space Odyssey divided opinion on release in 1968. It is said Rock Hudson sloped out early grumbling 'What is this bullsh**t?' as Discovery One made its glacial way towards Jupiter. On Sight and Sound's 2022 poll to find the greatest films of all time, 2001 landed in sixth place. [Kubrick] was not a designer, but he knew every technical job: editing, sound, photography. Nobody could say: 'This couldn't be done.' They would have been fired immediately. — Sir Ken Adam Kubrick was famously nominated as worst director in the first ever (admittedly idiotic) Golden Raspberry Awards for The Shining in 1980. It was also trashed by Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert before going on to establish itself as one of the greatest of all horror pictures. As a crisp new 4K restoration of Barry Lyndon arrives in cinemas for the golden jubilee, the early sceptical responses seem as distant and eccentric as the riots at the first night of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. It was the second highest rated Kubrick film on that recent Sight and Sound poll. Five years ago, this newspaper, enjoying itself in the pandemic summer, named it as the best Irish film of all time. The troubled history of its production only adds to the legend. By the time Kubrick, a middle-class Bronx boy who had begun as a still photographer, came to shoot Barry Lyndon, his forbidding reputation was already in place. Dr Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange, his three previous films, had all kicked up different degrees of furore. The controversy around that last film (talk of copycat violence eventually led to the director withdrawing A Clockwork Orange in the UK) heaped sombre mystique on overcooked intimations of heroic genius. The director had originally wanted to follow up A Clockwork Orange with a film on Napoleon, but financing fell through after the failure of Sergei Bondarchuk's bombastic Waterloo. He then considered a take on Thackeray's Vanity Fair, but, deciding that book was too huge, settled instead on the same author's more compact The Luck of Barry Lyndon. O'Neal, huge in the aftermath of Love Story, secured the title role – an Irish rogue who romances a rich widow after conning his way through the Seven Years' War – when Robert Redford turned it down. Supermodel Marisa Berenson was to play the moneyed Lady Lyndon. Ryan O'Neill, photographed in 2015, 40 years after filming Barry Lyndon In 1973 the Warner Bros charabanc arrived to an Ireland which was less accustomed to huge American productions than is now the case. Ardmore Studios accommodated some of the shooting, but it is the location work that really sticks in the brain. Powerscourt House in County Wicklow provided elegant backdrops just a few months before its destruction in a fire. One can also spot Kells Priory in Co Kilkenny, Huntingdon Castle in Co Carlow and Castletown House in Co Kildare. Not everywhere is representing a domestic location. Dublin Castle stands in for the Prussian retreat of Chevalier de Balibari, a grifter (actually Irish) played with majestic oddness by the untouchable Patrick Magee. Reasonably enough, much attention has gone the way of the technical innovations that characterised a complex production. If you know anything about Barry Lyndon you probably know that John Alcott, who won that year's Oscar for best cinematography, was required to shoot some scenes solely by candlelight. This ultimately required the adaptation of superfast 50mm Zeiss lenses that had originally been designed by Nasa for use on the moon. 'I was very good friends with Stanley,' Adam told me. 'He was not a designer, but he knew every technical job: editing, sound, photography. Nobody could say: 'This couldn't be done.' They would have been fired immediately.' Adam argued that Kubrick enjoyed his time in Ireland, but he wasn't sufficiently enamoured to ignore an apparent phone call from the IRA demanding that he leave the country within 24 hours. He was gone in 12. 'Whether the threat was a hoax or it was real, almost doesn't matter,' Jan Harlan, a producer on the film, later told the Irish Independent. 'Stanley was not willing to take the risk. He was threatened, and he packed his bag and went home. And the whole crew went with him.' Fifty years later, the reputation of Barry Lyndon could hardly be more secure. Elevated by music from The Chieftains , subverted by an ironic voiceover from Michael Hordern, the film winds a sinister mordancy around its overwhelmingly beautiful images. There is a sense throughout of impending loss. None of this can last. I can't say if Adam felt it was all worthwhile. It was then 30 years after the fact, but the mental stress clearly still rankled. 'I took all Stanley's problems on my shoulders,' he said. 'And ended up apologising for things that were nothing to do with me.' The 4K restoration of Barry Lyndon is on limited release from July 18th
Irish Examiner
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
The story of Barry Lyndon: 50 years since Stanley Kubrick made his epic in Ireland
It's the lavish, lauded and lovingly lit period drama centred around the rise and fall of a charming scoundrel and social climber. Shot across a variety of Irish locations including Dublin Castle, Powerscourt, Waterford and Cahir. Barry Lyndon brought cutting-edge technology and storytelling to our screens when it was released in 1975. Now, Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of William Thackeray's novel returns to Irish cinema screens in a new 4K restoration to mark its 50th anniversary. The Triskel and Cork Omniplex are among the cinemas bringing it to the big screen. Fresh from making such beloved movies as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Dr Strangelove, British filmmaker Kubrick travelled to Ireland to make his period epic, starring Ryan O'Neill in the title role and Marisa Berenson as his wife. The movie revolves around a young 18th-century Irishman who, following a series of setbacks, goes to great lengths to advance himself. But there was a dramatic ending to the shoot - approximately nine months after filming on the ambitious movie began in late 1973, Kubrick would beat a hasty retreat out of Ireland amid reported threats and complicating factors connected with The Troubles. Ryan O'Neill and Marisa Berenson in Barry Lyndon. Nevertheless, Barry Lyndon is regarded as a memorable time in Ireland's screen history - coming as it did at a time of growing momentum for the then-tiny Irish film industry. Kubrick, one of cinema's best known and most admired filmmakers following a string of critical hits, would go on to shoot only three more movies - The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut, before his sudden death at the age of 70, just days after delivering his final film. Barry Lyndon is a film that has become more loved with time, believes Dr Barry Monahan, senior lecturer in the Department of Film and Screen Media at UCC - and its re-release this week is an opportunity to embrace its many qualities. 'You can drill into it and find magnificent little moments, and then see the whole thing weave together,' says Monahan, adding that Kubrick always liked to add a heightened feel to his films. 'Everything had to be epic. That's exactly what he leaned into with Barry Lyndon - its sheer scope, its complexity, is incredibly admirable.' Remarkably, Kubrick - who wanted to film many of Barry Lyndon's striking scenes by candlelight - used a lens initially developed for NASA that enabled him to do so. 'He wanted to shoot the interiors with candlelight predominantly, or natural light coming in through windows,' says Monahan. 'That's one of the big technical feats, and that really was a big thing.' The ZEISS lens - known as one of the fastest lenses ever developed - could film with very low light and without artificial light and only a small number of them were ever developed. They were originally used for lunar exploration. The advertisement in the Cork Examiner in May 1976 for Barry Lyndon showing at the Capitol cinema. Barry Lyndon was shot here at a time when Ireland's film industry had yet to build indigenously to become the internationally respected industry it is today. It would be another number of years before the act to establish The Film Board (now Screen Ireland) was passed in 1980. There had been efforts to build a screen industry here for many decades before, but the arrival of such a prolific filmmaker helped showcase Ireland's beauty as a location, says Monahan, at a time there had long been a growing desire to develop more of a film culture in Ireland. 'As a venue, as a place that could really dress up as a period piece very well, that was beautiful, it had the kind of backdrops that producers would need in a reasonably accessible and reasonably low-budget way. And Kubrick's name associated with a project like that was just magnificent.' Film academics Dr Maria Pramaggiore and Dr Barry Monahan. The shoot also brought a top US heartthrob to these shores in the form of the late Ryan O'Neal. Having recently filmed the Hollywood hit, Love Story, and starred opposite his daughter Tatum in Paper Moon, the period epic marked something of a departure for the star. In fact, the film marked a new adventure for both its leading man and its director, says Dr Maria Pramaggiore, author of Making Time in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon: Art, History, and Empire. 'Kubrick's overall body of work is small and much beloved by an intense fan and critical following,' says Pramaggiore. 'My interest in Barry Lyndon and my approach to it were motivated by my interest in Irish cinema,' adds the US writer and academic, who was based in Ireland for several years. 'It is arguable - some people might not characterise or categorise Barry Lyndon as Irish cinema.' She feels that the film has been historically underloved - but that that has changed. 'I thought it was quite interesting that Kubrick chose this project. He lived so very long in Britain, and saw himself as stepping outside of the Hollywood system to make his films. It was never going to suit him, because he wanted so much authority over the projects that he was never going to sit comfortably in the Hollywood system, and yet he used Hollywood studios to release his work.' While writing her book, Pramaggiore aimed to delve deeper into the circumstances behind the sudden departure of Kubrick and his production from these shores after several months of filming here. It was a shoot that didn't end conventionally, amid claims that Kubrick had come under IRA threat. Has she been able to piece together the final dramatic days of the production? 'I remain with question marks. It is a mystery. It speaks to, in some ways, both politics that could not be escaped at that time and in that place, Dublin in 1973 with the IRA campaign moving across the border. And also to the industry side of film - the debate about how the production ended was based on reports that there had been a bombing in the Phoenix Park on a day production was due to film there, and they did not film that day. And then there were reported phone calls to Kubrick: 'You better leave, or else; people are in danger'. It's always been reported threats. It took a very long time after they left - two more years - to finish production.' A scene from Barry Lyndon. As the richly detailed film - regarded by many as a masterpiece - returns to our screens, Pramaggiore feels its uniqueness continues to resonate with new and returning audiences. 'It was rolled out in very much an art film, masterpiece mode. It's a period drama. Fans of Ryan O'Neal might have been surprised, coming off of Love Story and Paper Moon. If you were a fan of Ryan O'Neal, and you rocked up to Barry Lyndon at three hours and 14 minutes with an intermission and the voice over and the inter-titles, you would have been confused.' Likewise, she feels that even Kubrick fans mightn't have been expecting Barry Lyndon at this time in the filmmaker's career. 'I would venture that Kubrick fans coming from 2001, A Clockwork Orange, Doctor Strangelove, they would not be expecting what I would call the sort of toxic masculinity that Kubrick did so well. He wouldn't have called it that, probably! He was very keenly aware of the problems of masculinity and warfare, so often a theme in his work.' Barry Lyndon returns to select cinemas from July 18
Telegraph
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Steve Coogan on Peter Sellers: ‘Selfish, narcissistic – and a genius'
My agent has a sign above his office desk. It pictures a jaunty, smiling man with a speech bubble which says simply, 'Remember, don't be a c---.' A simple piece of advice, which Peter Sellers seems to have never heeded. An emotional tornado of talent caused havoc to all who crossed his path. Tortured genius or spoilt narcissist – depends on your point of view. There is a school of thought that says there is an inherent dysfunction that goes hand in hand with clowning. I've sometimes been compared to the troubled, funny man. It's usually meant as a compliment but makes me feel uneasy. I can't think of any of his brilliant performances without thinking of the cost to other people. And he was brilliant. At his best in I'm All Right Jack or Dr Strangelove, and as his most successful character, Inspector Clouseau, he flew. A perfect combination of intuitive ability to inhabit these absurd but recognisable people with the technical skill honed from years in his craft, trying to emulate his heroes, Stan Laurel and Alec Guinness although even Guinness would find his way into the crosshairs of Sellers's sniper rifle, or more accurately, blunderbuss. Sellers. Shall we call him Peter? It might help him a bit. Peter took the well-worn path through ENSA, which produced a welter of British talent which dominated through the heyday of radio and onto television in the 1960s and 1970s. It's easy to forget that radio was an intrinsic part of the fabric of British life. Before the internet, before video recorders or even audio cassette recorders were available to mere mortals, the only way to catch your favourite show was to be next to the wireless (radio, the original wireless), or for me, sitting in front of the television, when your favourite show was broadcast, and The Goon Show was a favourite for everyone. Arriving at the end of rationing and sober post-war austerity, it was like punk rock in a world of bland pop. Anarchic, disruptive avant-garde, but with enough silly voices to make it popular and inviting. A television in every household was still a decade away and radio could command the kind of audience figures which have all but vanished for any broadcast entertainment today. I caught the tail end of the pre-digital age when I arrived at the BBC in 1991 with my own radio show. We recorded the first series of Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge at the Paris Studios in Lower Regent Street, London. As I stood at the microphone performing my comedy character in front of a live audience (they laughed, by the way!), I remember seeing images of the Goons lining the walls, often pictured huddled around that iconic BBC microphone. I remember inviting the ghost of Sellers to haunt the studio where he had recorded The Goon Show and bring us luck. I'm still performing that character 34 years later, but that first show, surrounded by those images of Sellers, has stayed with me. Standing on the shoulders of giants. I was too young by a good 20 years to have heard of the Goons, but as fortune would have it, my dad was a great fan, he owned a handful of the shows on vinyl along with Bob Newhart, Shelley Berman, and Mel Brooks. Later additions, courtesy of my big brothers , were Monty Python, Billy Connolly, Jasper Carrott and Mike Harding. As a child in the early 1970s, I didn't fully understand the content but understood the comedic power of funny voices and how they make people laugh. By this time, of course, Peter was an international film star and the Pink Panther films were at the height of their success. My memory of him at that time is of the slim, tanned, denim-clad, happy, shiny guest on the BBC's Parkinson. He seemed to bear no relation to the black-and-white photograph of a slightly podgy short-back-and-sides demob fella looking back at me from the record cover. How could he exist in two worlds? And yet, he did. Looking back, he seemed to step effortlessly from the monochromatic, joyless, overcast world of the 1950s and into the warm Kodak glow of the late 1960s, of Twiggy, the longer-haired Beatles and, err, 'sexual liberation'? He left the old world and joined the new. He appealed to everyone, a classless, joyous sophistication. He made comedy glamorous as well as funny. He seemed to have everything an adolescent boy would see as the key to a happy life – money, fast cars, beautiful women, cool clothes, a bit of bounce to the hair, probably expensive aftershave, and always smiling. But... is there a but? Yes, I'm afraid there is. Peter spent a lifetime thinking you could find contentment and peace by accessorising yourself into the kind of image you would see in a glossy magazine advert. He swapped his soul for stuff. Lots of stuff. Perhaps he thought if there was enough shiny stuff, the light would drown out the darkness. But it was never quite shiny enough. Like a petulant, spoilt child, Peter never learnt how to behave. I blame the parents. He was selfish, narcissistic and by all accounts a terrible father. On one occasion he returned home with a brand-new Bentley only to find stone chips on the paint work. Witnessing his father's displeasure, his five-year-old son, Michael, found a tin of house paint and dutifully painted over the blemishes. On discovering this clumsy attempt to please his father, Peter proceeded to smash all of his son's toys. The kindest thing you can say about this repulsive behaviour is that he was mentally ill. Certainly, today it is easy to see his behaviour as sociopathic. He wrought havoc on all those he encountered on both a professional and personal level. Women he saw as an acquisition, children an inconvenience. He passed on his dysfunction to his widow, Lynne Frederick, a talented actress who never really recovered from her encounter. And there are countless other tales of woe, recounted in Roger Lewis's forensically insightful biography. He never learnt that happiness comes from being a functioning human being. From understanding that kindness, unconditional love and the generosity of the human spirit are where contentment lies. But the darkness in his soul is what saves him, because he did have a soul. You see it even now in his performances. The inadequacies and failures of his greatest roles betray a loneliness, a poignancy, that lies at the heart of all great comedy. There are so many sublime moments where Peter captures the comedic tragedy of human existence. We literally cry with laughter, that guttural, visceral noise we make as an audience, a crowd of strangers. Shining a light on the human condition we seem to know each other clearly for a second, then suddenly the light fades and we forget what it was that we saw. These moments save us from ourselves. I suppose what I mean to say is that we all like a laugh. And so did Peter, he just wasn't very nice. But when the damage he inflicted and all the bad feelings become fading memories, his comic genius will remain with us, immortalised. Perhaps the best way to remember him is to think of him in those early days. The young man, at the Grafton Arms pub in London, meeting with his comedy friends, before the fame, the money, and the adulation, creating and sharing. Laughing. The Life and Death of Peter Sellers by Roger Lewis, updated with an introduction by Steve Coogan (Quercus, £30), will be published on July 3 Peter Sellers – his five greatest roles By Alexander Larman 1. Lionel Meadows, Never Let Go (1960) There are plenty of roles in which Sellers played it relatively straight, but the only certifiably villainous part he played was as Lionel Meadows, a crooked car dealer, in this gritty slice of late Fifties-set London pulp noir. The film itself is nothing particularly unusual, but Sellers' performance is a fascinating exercise in malevolence and nastiness. He'd played other buffoonish baddies before, in pictures such as The Ladykillers and (gloriously) the strident shop steward in I'm All Right Jack, but it was as Meadows that he turned his gift for observation and imitation inside out. According to his then-wife Anne Howe, Sellers went 'full Method', becoming a brooding and even violent presence at home. The unlovely results are up there on the screen. 2. Clare Quilty, Lolita (1962) The first of Sellers's two collaborations with Stanley Kubrick was only a supporting role – he's on screen a total of around 10 minutes – but his appearance as the vainglorious paedophile Humbert Humbert's nemesis is still one of his finest achievements. Kubrick understood that Sellers was not just a master of disguise but someone who buried what little identity he had under make-up, accents and costumes, so casting him as a fundamentally empty – and deeply sinister – figure was both logical and near-genius. 3. Dr Strangelove, Dr Strangelove (1964) Sellers famously played three parts in his second Kubrick film (and was supposed to play a fourth, as Coogan did on stage, but injured himself beforehand). He's excellent as the hapless stiff-upper-lip British RAF officer Lionel Mandrake, and hilarious as the incompetent US President Merkin Muffley, trying vainly to placate his drunken Russian counterpart. Yet it's his wheelchair-bound former Nazi Dr Strangelove, forever attempting to frustrate himself from giving stiff-armed salutes, that makes for the film's most memorable character. As with many of the roles Sellers played, it's very funny, but very creepy too. The most iconic moment of all, when Strangelove, revitalised by the prospect of imminent nuclear war, stands up and shouts 'Mein Führer, I can walk!' has been imitated and parodied many times, but never to the same effect as here. 4. Inspector Clouseau, The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) Sellers's best-loved character is, of course, the accident-prone, wholly impervious Inspector Clouseau, whom he played in five pictures. Any of the films in which Clouseau appeared could be included on this list, save perhaps the first in which he is very much a supporting part to David Niven's suave cat burglar, but for my money, the giddy, mounting hilarity of Sellers' penultimate turn in the part cannot be beaten. Ignore the relatively thin plot, in which Clouseau's insane boss Dreyfus tries, and fails, to murder his nemesis, and revel instead in some of cinema's finest pratfalls. The other great Pink Panther film is the second, A Shot In The Dark, but this one just pips it. 5. Chauncey Gardiner, Being There (1979) It would have been wonderfully fitting for Sellers's greatest-ever performance to have been his last, but unfortunately he went out with the rather less distinguished The Fiendish Plot of Dr Fu Manchu instead. For all that, Sellers's appearance in Hal Ashby's unforgettable black comic satire as the simple-minded Chance the gardener, aka 'Chauncey Gardiner', whose gnomic words of horticultural advice are taken up as incisive nuggets of philosophical wisdom, is not just the best thing that he ever did on film, but one of the finest performances any actor has ever given. He should have won an Oscar for it.
Mint
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
The consumer longs for humanity in music, says YouTube's head of music
Ten minutes into our interview, Lyor Cohen pulls out his phone and opens YouTube to play Fight for Your Right to Party. I hadn't heard the popular 1986 Beastie Boys track—one he backed in his early 20s, when hip-hop was still new and major labels had dismissed the song as 'scraping the bottom of the barrel." Cohen bobs his head as the Google India rep and I listen to the party anthem of the late 80s America that climbed to rank 7 on Billboard Hot 100 in 1987. Now 65, Cohen has spent over three decades in music, repping acts like Run-DMC and labels like Def Jam that helped define the '80s hip-hop era. He later led the Warner Music Group for nearly a decade, and for the past eight years, he's been the global head of music at YouTube and Google. Still, when asked about the platform's impact on the industry, he's clear: 'Even though I work for them, I don't represent them, I represent the music industry." 'Indians 'see' music, they don't 'hear' it," Cohen says of the second-biggest music market by number of streams that ranks 14th in revenue terms as per the last estimates from IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry). 'But a 14-year-old kid from India who doesn't have a job yet but loves Badshah should not be disrespected, right? They're not paying with a subscription, but they're paying with their eyeballs, which makes them a valuable customer." Cohen believes Indian artists should push themselves to go global, citing the example of rapper Hanumankind, arguing that success in music is 'not determined by a region, but by an artist's ambition". Also read: 'Dr Strangelove' remains the essential anti-war film Cohen was recently in Mumbai for the World Audio Visual & Entertainment Summit (WAVES) and spoke to Mint on the sidelines. Edited excerpts from the interview on the past, present, and the foreseeable future of the music industry: If you were 25 and starting over in this industry now, what would you do differently, both in terms of running a record label and championing artists? One of the things about my career that I value is that I didn't know so much to get scared. So I took a lot of risks without understanding how risky it was. Like just going from my hometown in Los Angeles to New York in 1983 with a hole in my shoe, and following artists who talked (rapped) instead of conventional singing... Sometimes, ignorance is bliss. Back then, it felt like walking into a dark room. I stayed close to the edges and somehow made it out, and my career advanced. Now people show me the room, and it is terrifying. The cost of making music and bringing it to the world has been reduced so dramatically, but it has created other problems. The endless scrolling, for instance. All of a sudden, artists are like 'social media people' chasing shortcuts to cut through that clutter. Isn't the platform that you represent also creating and providing that shortcut? So you're telling artists not to chase the endless scroll while the platform is providing users the scroll… I love that you went there. I declared this early on to my colleagues that even though I work for them, I don't represent them; I represent the music industry. And I think because of that, I'm one of the few traditional media people who have survived in this tech culture. I want scrolling to be used as a discovery vehicle. I look at it as a sugar high. I want our scroll to be an appetiser, and YouTube to act as the main course that allows people to go deep into the music experience. And the users who pay for the music subscription: that's the dessert. This way, it becomes a more nutritious experience. And we're the only ones that could do that. Can artists afford not to chase the scroll, though, when the consumer is so hooked on it as well? A lot of people think artists have an easy existence. But, like in almost every other profession, very few make it to the top here and are wildly successful. This is art... Sometimes, even if you cut through the clutter and you don't consistently do what an artist is supposed to do, you will end up having what we call a 'one-hit wonder'. To have a long-lasting career, you have to be a master craftsman of your craft. And what is your craft? You make the most compelling songs. Many artists still struggle to make money, often losing royalty to covers or lofi versions on audio streaming platforms. How do you see this gap between artist earnings and platform profits? This is not the case with us. We have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to prevent that. There's a whole campus in Zurich, Switzerland, dedicated to creating content IDs that capture that variation and allow the rights holders to capture the money. Fair point. But do you ever worry that being the biggest player in streaming can make YouTube complacent? The opposite of complacency doesn't have to be based on worry, but it can be based on ambition. I'm ambitious. And this company is ambitious. How do you see the role of music executives changing in the next 5–10 years, and how should the next generation of leaders prepare for it? I believe that the music industry never really landed the plane to take a moment to recognise the dramatic changes that are happening around us. So music executives have been changing the plane as they're flying. They must try to articulate the value proposition to the artistic community. It is also important that they protect artists in a way that gives them the courage to make those magical records. So you, as the music executive, hire all these cottage industries to get the clicks if you must, but don't tax the artist for it. Let them spend time in the haystack looking for the needle. Don't make them chase the endless scroll. Make them chase the magic that we're all desperately in need of. How do you view protecting human artistry in the wake of AI's intervention into music? Our system is organised around the consumer. And I think the consumer longs for humanity. Where we could be helpful is to augment the human touch, not replace it. If we replace it, I think the consumer would not dig it as much. With AI, I think the consumer is digging the ability to manage their life more efficiently, but music isn't about efficiency. You don't navigate music, you get lost in it. Also read: Trying to choose the right laptop? It depends on what you want it for
