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And on it goes. Once Sellers turns against Medak, the actor, who famously insisted that he had no actual personality of his own, morphs into Fred Kite, the agitating shop steward of his 1959 trade union comedy “I’m All Right Jack.” Tony Franciosa, hired to play the role of a dashing swashbuckler in the farcical pirate tale, looks forward to working with Sellers, who was a friend. By the middle of the shoot Sellers had turned on Franciosa to the extent that he refused to share the frame with him, and all their scenes had to be shot in reverse shot alternations. And once Spike Milligan shows up at Sellers’ behest, he begins to hijack the shoot.
It’s not just Sellers. Shooting a film on a ship in the water, in the real sea as opposed to a tank where you have some measure of control, is practically an impossibility. One director is said to believe “anything with water, even someone washing their hands, they want nothing to do with.” And here you see why.
There’s a lot more, a lot of it appalling, all of it kind of delicious. Especially valuable is Medak’s chat with Piers Haggard (who helmed Sellers’ last picture, the unfortunate Fu Manchu one) and Joseph McGrath (who, God love him, directed Sellers in not only the Bond pastiche “Casino Royale” but also “The Magic Christian” and the obscure “The Great McGonagall”). “Even with a good film,” muses McGrath with a “I can laugh about it now” twinkle, “it was never fun.”
Available on VOD today, 5/22.
— 2019 Hollywood Movie Review
