I always thought of Rik Mayall as a good actor. Never a comedian or comic actor. I thought he missed on many roles he would have been perfect for because casting directors etc could not see beyond the over the top creations he made his own and we all loved. I worked with him only once. It was his first ever acting role and my last. I would later turn down jobs such as working with one of the greatest British directors of all time Alan Clarke on a production of BAAL with David Bowie. I am not sure why I did THE ORCHARD END MURDER. Rik did it because, as he said he was desperate to do anything at the time. I knew I had to stop acting quick if I was ever going to be taken seriously as a producer. Back then everyone said I could not do both. My part, as was Riks, was nothing to write home about and hardly a swan song. It even came to me by chance. I had accompanied a friend to his interview and for some reason they asked me to come in with him. I made them laugh and they said I must be in it. I said no and they kept ringing me. The ham in me just could not resist the begging so I finally said yes. As it turned out it was a very enjoyable couple of days in the Kent countryside and they allowed me to improvise most of my lines, which I recall many were edited out. However the director said really nice things at the cast and crew screening. It was a short but ran for 48 minutes. I think the original cut was well over an hour. GTO the distributor of another film I was in BIRTH OF THE BEATLES, picked it up and released it in the cinema in 1981 with an American feature film DEAD & BURIED. In those days, just before Margaret Thatcher closed it down, there was something called the Eady Levy. This was a tax on every cinema ticket which was then paid to British films only. Because DEAD & BURIED became the BLAIR WITCH of its day it returned, if memory serves me, a tax of £68,000. Thats £227, 442 in todays money. OK Chris Jones, Elliot Grove, Stephen Follows, Philip Ilson, Dawni Dawni Christine Hartland etc name me one British short that has returned that much money from the UK only ?? Just one ! Sadly I think the producers did not see a penny of it as it all went to the distributors. Bastard distributors :) If they Eady Levy was still around there would be far, far more British films in cinemas than there are today and certainly there would be a British short film with every PLANET OF THE APES, GUARDIANS OF….., SPIDERMAN franchise all making great deal of money for the filmmakers and the distributors alike. Oh Margaret Thatcher how good you were for BRITISH films !!! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eady_Levy
Posted on: Sat, 09 Aug 2014 08:46:50 +0000
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