Buffeted by unkind fates
Simon Hoggart
The most affecting programme of the week was Lost in La Mancha, a film shown as part of the Storyville series on BBC 2 (Sunday). It was about Terry Gilliam, who used to do the cartoons for Monty Python and who now has a reputation for being a ‘maverick’ director. This means that sometimes he works outside the Hollywood system successfully (Brazil) and sometimes disastrously (The Adventures of Baron Munchausen). He often refers to the catastrophe of Munchausen. We all have events that define our sense of ourselves; how awful it must be when the central incident in your life was a devastating failure.
But Gilliam can never do anything the easy way. He wanted to make a film of Don Quixote but he couldn’t let even this huge story speak for itself. The movie was titled The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and the Sancho Panza figure was to be played by Johnny Depp as a time traveller from the present day. The budget was so small it allowed for nothing to go wrong, yet the film was to be packed with stunts and special effects. What gave this documentary its resonance was the similarity between the crazed old knight and Gilliam himself — both deluded, the object of simultaneous affection and pity from those around them (‘Captain Chaos’ was one crew member’s description of their director), both buffeted by unkind fates.
And the fates were horribly unkind. Jean Rochefort, the actor playing Quixote, suffered from a double hernia and a pain in the prostate, both of which made riding a horse unpleasant if not impossible. Military jets flew overhead while important scenes were being filmed. The saddest moment came when hail and floods swept through the set and took off much of the equipment. As he watched his film being literally washed away, Gilliam demonstrated a nobility in suffering which we could only admire. When he said, ‘We are fucked, fucked and we didn’t know it. I want to know when we’re fucked, in advance,’ it was almost too painful to watch. For in those few words, he spoke for us all.
As does Gordon Ramsay, in the new series of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares (Channel 4, Tuesday), when he uses the Fword throughout. The appeal of this show has very little to do with cooking. I suppose it is a form of schadenfreude. It’s that moment in school when the cockiest kid in the class gets ripped apart by the teacher. You enjoy watching it, and you especially enjoy the fact that it’s not you. Imagine Ramsay coming into your kitchen. ‘Call that a fucking cup of tea? Fuck me... ’ Alex was certainly cocky. He styled himself Alessandro, and had a license plate reading A1 6HEF. But he couldn’t cook, spent the afternoons playing golf, his best friend made a useless maître d’, and his kitchen was filthy. In the past, restaurateurs given the Ramsay treatment have complained that the show twists the images — a rotten scallop spat out by the great man had, for example, been picked out of the rubbish bin. For this reason, it’s hard to trust the programme; you have the niggling fear that you might be being manipulated, and that’s damaging in a reality show, even a trivial one.
On the other hand, have you noticed that when a crash on one side of a motorway causes a tailback, there is an almost equally long queue on the other side? That’s because people slow down to gaze at the damage. Ramsay’s arrival has the same effect: you don’t want to look but you can’t help yourself.
I forced myself to watch one segment of Celebrity Love Island, which is ITV’s attempt to dent the ratings of the forthcoming Big Brother. It’s been described in the tabloids as the worst television programme ever made, which is a big claim since there is so much competition. However it will certainly feature on Channel 4’s Your Hundred Worst TV Shows, if and when they make that. A group of ‘celebrities’, some so obscure that Z-list doesn’t do them justice, and we may need to go on to the Greek alphabet, sit around on a tropical island and bitch about each other. The producers want them to have sex. Here’s a tip: never make a programme which depends entirely on an event you won’t be able to show on screen. Ratings have been poor to dreadful.
I wonder if the same fate waits for Johnny Vegas: 18 Stone of Idiot on Channel 4 (Friday). Having Neil Hamilton on your show usually indicates a degree of despair, even when he is being buried in fish. One of Vegas’s guests was the Cockney actor Ray Winstone. The audience was invited to ask him questions, one of which was, ‘Do you ever stick your finger up your arse while having a wank?’ And people complained about Benny Hill!
Previous page
