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Is this funny?

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With the death of George Martin the Peter Sellers’ version of A Hard Day’s Night has once more come to the fore.

I, unfortunately, heard it on Desert Island Discs for the first time ages fairly recently. One of Hugh Bonneville’s choices.

Neither my wife nor I find it remotely amusing. We never have. The thought of it as a DID is bewildering. Does anyone really find it funny? It was slightly clever, but always shite. IMHO.

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Comments

  1. Spot on.
    As a piece of art it is raw sewage. Never impressed by Sellers, an odious piece of crap in real life. Just making a few more bucks by piggybacking on a piece of genuinely great popular culture while taking the piss. In a spectacularly unfunny way. It beggars belief that someone could choose this as a DID.

    • If you’re unimpressed by Sellers, you should do yourself a favour and read Roger Lewis’s extraordinary biography of him. Tremendously bitchy, entertaining and illuminating. Brilliantly written and savagely condemnatory of Sellers.

  2. when I was a kid I liked it because it was a bit risqué when it came on the radiogram “when Im home feeling you (pause)…”. So for that reason alone Im quite fond of it. But agree that apart from Clouseau which really was funny, Sellers never really did it for me.

  3. Clever and of its time.

    Just like “Balham – Gateway to the South” which I used to love. Having just replayed it I never need to hear it again as it is not funny! It was in 1958 I am sure.

  4. Tbf there’s very few things 50 odd years old that are even remotely funny now.

    If you tried watching, say, The Young Ones now you’d cringe at it, likewise things like the Goodies and even *hushed tones* most of Monty Python. Actually even The Simpsons.

    In the longevity stakes music is just somehow very different from comedy. Hard Day’s night the song stands up better.

    • Sums it up pretty well. I’ve actually never seen that before and the main thing that stopped me laughing was the half a dozen or so sketches I have seen which clearly lifted from it.
      Re Sellers – I always think his Achilles heel in the funny stakes is his vanity. Like, say, Eddie Murphy he always wants to be the coolest dude in the room and is reluctant to allow himself to be the butt of the joke. Even playing überbuffon Clouseau he couldn’t unclench enough to just be a clot…

      • Silent Comedy still makes me laugh: Ben Turpin, Keystone Cops, Mabel Normand, Edna Purviance, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Harry Langdon, Charley Chase, Laurel & Hardy.

      • O there are exceptions for sure. Laurel and Hardy for example.

        But us looking at that clip in the OP is as devoid of context now as sellers and co looking at a Charlie Chaplin film then. A 50 odd year gap.

        It would be interesting to really look at why there are exceptions to the ‘not funny any more’ rule ie what it is about some things that makes them timeless. Maybe they’re not timeless at all. Both the Marx bros and L&H were probably the ultimate in cringe comedy in the late 50s when new, genuinely innovative (and now severely unfunny) stuff like the Goons were being written. It’s just that now the general consensus is that they’re great. Who knows.

        • Laurel and Hardy are timeless. Peerless . I have a dvd boxset of their classic films and they never fail to gladden the heart and have me in giggles. The best comedy duo of all time. Yep, The Beatles of comedy, accept there was only two of them. The Twotels of Comedy. Yes. That’s it. Indisputable fact. End of.

          • Totally in agreement with the Magus of Worplesdon. I have that box set too and it’s of unimpeachable quality. I think they’ve remained popular through the ages, though, of course, dependent upon the amount of TV exposure they’ve been granted.
            I think their appeal is timeless, mainly because of Stan’s unmatched genius for the framing of their physical comedy. I also believe their immense understated talents as comic actors has helped. They rarely, if ever, overplay or mug their way through scenes. Hardy’s breaking of the fourth wall was also revolutionary.
            They’re two sweet, endearing, naive individuals trying their best to make their way in the world, failing constantly, yet never giving up. No wonder they appealed to Beckett.
            Greatest ever? No doubt.

  5. Goodness gracious me with Sophie Loren was funny but of course in this day and age you can’t laugh at such things.
    This on the other hand is a pile of shite.

  6. You generally know as early as their first choice whether or not a Desert Island Disc guest has any real interest in music or not. A choice of a comedy record is a particular giveaway. It was clear from the off that Hugh Bonneville doesn’t

  7. Oh, for goodness sake lighten up, people…it’s just a tossed-off piece of fluff that’s very much of its time. I dare say the Beatles were amused (and flattered) by it. I wouldn’t choose it for my desert island either, but it’s probably worth reminding people that whoever chose it isn’t actually going to a desert island, he/she simply likes the record and thinks that choosing it makes him/her look like an interesting person.

    FWIW I think Sellers was a genius, albeit a flawed one who spread himself too thinly. And since when did being an odious piece of crap in real life disqualify an artist from producing great art?

    • I agree with Mike. I hadn’t heard it before, and my expectations were set suitably low from the OP – which actually made me want to like it out of perversity. Which I did.
      It really is the best thing ever – superb comedy.
      Of course not, but I thought it throwaway fun. I like the idea of Richard III (the original Tricky Dicky) coming home from the battlefield for a bit of slap and tickle.

    • WHAT!!!!!????

      The guest on Desert Island Discs doesn’t really get marooned on an island. Phew! What a relief. I always thought that was a high price to pay for 45 minutes on the radio.

  8. It wasn’t funny, to answer the question in the opening post.

    I thought Sellers was very good in ‘Being There’. I wasn’t much of a fan of the Clouseau films, but the one that I find truly bewildering is ‘Doctor Strangelove’. I don’t think the film is particularly good, but the extent to which Kubrick indulges Sellers makes it look like a vanity project.

            • That’s more like it. The correct answer.

              Key culprit in the ‘over-rated’ territory is A Clockwork Orange. An ill-considered, preachy mess of a movie. And looks just awful: half-baked sets and costumes that make the ’60s Batman TV show look restrained and sophisticated by comparison.

              Kubrick has a reputation as a perfectionist, controlling every shot. A Clockwork Orange looks and feels like it was filmed on the cheap with rejected film stock and an amateur cast.

              Malcolm McDowall is good though. Goes without saying.

              But the film as a whole is a soggy blancmange after the fine cuisine of 2001 A Space Odyssey.

                • I’m with you, Poppy. With the benefit of a bit of distance, Eyes Wide Shut is absolutely wonderful.

                  For me, the weaker Kubricks (smallest giant in the village) are Clockwork Orange and Lolita. The latter of which also brings us neatly back round to Peter Sellers.

                  Who was it on here who really dislikes Kubrick? I’ve forgotten. Saucecraft?

                  • I loved Eyes Wide Shut even from my first viewing. I now regularly indulge in a saucy masked ball of a weekend.

                    Yeah, Lolita is pretty poor. I find Barry Lyndon rather yawnsome as well.

                  • Won’t surprise you to know that I’m no fan of Kubrick, Bingo. I haven’t seen the early films, but I’ve seen everything from Spartacus onwards and don’t really like any of them. They all have their moments, but they all have their glaring defects too. Admittedly the defects are always, without exception, to do with the screenplay or the casting rather than with Kubrick’s direction, which is frequently inventive and brilliant. The one I dislike most is probably The Shining.

                    • Apparently Stephen King directed his on TV movie version of The Shining, as he didn’t like Kubrick’s. I haven’t seen it.

                    • The Shining – mainly Jack. Ham factor 100. (I reckon the whole thing would have been better had a fairly normal person turned screwball loon rather than a screwball loon turning screwball loon.)
                      2001 – a “read-meaning-into-this (suckers!)”, movie. I haven’t read the novel, so have no idea what it’s on about half the time. As I say, direction has its moments and is at times impressively inventive, easily the best thing about it, but as a whole I find it pretentious and boring. (“Ooh, a monolith!”).
                      And while we’re on the subject, Full Metal Jacket looks like it was shot in London’s Docklands.

                    • I thought you liked pretentious and boring ; )

                      I’m with you on FMJ – first half is excellent, but the second is a real let down. You probably make a fair point on Nicholson too, but The Shining remains my favourite.

                • Honestly?! I thought it would right up your street from the kind of cosmic ramblings I’ve seen from you on here! Do yourself a favour and watch it on Blu Ray on the biggest screen and sound system you can muster. The ‘star gate’ sequence will blow your puny human mind into infinity. And the special effects are better than a hundred CGI-heavy pretenders like Gravity (pah) or Interstellar (groo).

                  • 2001: brilliant film, one of my all-time favourites, superb, ground-breaking special effects.

                    Gravity: also a brilliant film, one of my all-time favourites, but if you think there’s anything wrong with the special effects in Gravity, you need to have a word with yourself.

                    • Its the showiness of it I cant take, the constantly whirling camera, spinning around just because it can. Its also far too sharp and defined: compare to 2001’s stately slow movements and warm palette.

                      I suppose it comes down to personal taste. Strangely, I quite like the long-takes-whirling-camera aesthetic when its more earthbound stuff like Birdman or Children of Men.

                      But for science fiction special effects, I usually can’t see past 2001 and Blade Runner.

                    • I think the two movies are doing very different things.

                      In terms of sci-fi fx, I think the stewardess grabbing the floating pen in 2001 is about as good as it gets, but I’d give honourable mentions to the chest bursting scene in the original Alien, bullet time in the Matrix (much maligned movie, but it’s easy to forget how jaw dropping the effects were upon release), all the scenes involving the monster in Cloverfield, the T-Rex intro in J-Park and all the scenes involving the monster in the remake of The Thing.

                      However, taking context into account, I think the original Godzilla pretty much takes the cake. When you look at what they were working with, what the finished product looks like and what audiences of the time were used to, it’s an absolutely mind-blowing fx movie – the sound alone is about 50 years ahead of its time.

                  • I don’t have a Blue Ray thingy, buy it’s available on remastered dvd. I will purchase it, set an evening aside. Create the right vibe. Candles, incense, Indian snacks, chilled San Pellegrino etc !

                    • Now you’re talking! Can’t go far wrong with the DVD. The blu ray, though, was one of the first releases which made me realise how much of a step up from DVD the format is. People always seem to think blue ray is only useful for modern, hi def digital movies: but the vibrancy and colour depth it reveals in the 2001 print is astonishing.

                      Hope you enjoy it, Mr C. I might dabble in some Steve Hillage in return.

                    • Far enough, Arthur Cowslip, but they’re two different depictions of the environment. Personally I like the fact that Gravity slips the reins of 2001, Alien et al, but I don’t necessarily think one is better than the other, just different.

  9. Hearing it in the context of the time A Hard Day’s Night was a stroke of genius. While never exactly hilarious, I remember the Sellers record seeming very clever and totally relevant in 1964.

    The Beatles were still just a pop phenomena who appealed almost exclusively to the kids back then and the juxtaposition of someone tapping into the zeitgeist and performing one of their songs in the highbrow theatrical style of Shakespeare was mirthsome, if not exactly side-splittingly funny.

    It’s dated badly perhaps but I can still listen to A Hard Day’s Night (and the Sellers follow-up version of Help! done in the same style) and enjoy the craft he employs on the record.

    To sum up. You had to be there.

  14. Grumpy bastard writes…

    Peter Sellers was a fine comedian but of his time. His best work, Dr Strangelove, The Ladykillers. some Goons, etc etc is pretty bloody timeless. But like all comedians he did a lot of throwaway stuff. Hard days Night was throwaway but good throwaway. But I think he was Stanley Kubrik’s most used actor? The Mouse That Roared is brilliant. I’m All Right Jack is brilliant.

    None of us escape our times. John Lennon’s onstage disabled jokes fare very badly now. We should judge art by the overall joy. I think Sellars overall joy outweighs the misery.

    • Oh yes. Forgot The Mouse That Roared.

      The other comedy trope Sellars is responsible for is the outtake. He was so naturally hilarious, filming with him could be a nightmare, involving a lot of corpsing. There were clips of outtakes from A Pink Panther movie released after his death. My favourite involved farting in a lift. The number of takes was exponential. Now, these outtakes are routinely added during the closing credits and are often funnier than the film itself.

    • One of Sellers’ great weaknesses was a lack of quality control – for every “Ladykillers” or “I’m All Right Jack”, there were a dozen crappy laughter vacuums, apparently done because he simply feared being out of work… I always thought it quite appropriate that his final 2 movies were “Being There” (arguably his best performance – calm, restrained, minimal, generous), followed by “The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu” (awful, horrific mugging from start to finish)…

      • You have to remember that he was a comedy actor, not a comedian. He relied on having decent material, written by someone else. He then gave it life. Some material was cremated.

  16. It’s amusing.

    However, my favourite Sellers is The Magic Christian, which I first saw years ago and which made a lasting impression on me. Also stars Ringo and has music from Badfinger.

  18. Peter Sellers may well have been a shit in real life, messed up by his overbearing mum and was a less than doting father, but in his public role he was brilliant in a few things – invariably early on in his career – and patchy for the rest of his career. In a way, his public life mirrors Peter Cook who did his memorable work early on and then lived off the glory. One of the things that hasn’t been mentioned was an interview with Parky when he recounted the tale of how he got onto the Goons, by impersonating BBC staff to get himself an appointment and then when he finally met the editor, asked what his skills were – “well, impersonation obviously”. Must be somewhere on youtube.

    • Nice to see Steve Allen get a shoutout – pretty much unknown over here (i.e. the UK) but he was the originator of “The Tonight Show” (followed as host by Jack Paar, Johnny Carson & Jay Leno), and in turn most of the tropes of chat shows which are still a staple to this day… he was also a really funny comedian – his early-80’s books “Funny People” and “More Funny People” feature excellent profiles and analyses of many comedians, from old pros like Groucho Marx and Jimmy Durante, to (then) young guns like Robin Williams and Andy Kaufman, plus the likes of Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, and (as it happens) Peter Sellers… the only things that semi-spoils the books is Allen’s own immodesty, but they’re definitely worth checking out…

  20. I’m one one of the few to find it funny. Not laugh out loud – no comedy record manages that- but amusing enough to put a smile on my face some 40 years after I first heard it.

    But of course it has dated. It is an impression, a caricature. 50 years after the event we no longer remember what it is a parody of. I find it remarkable that back in 1964 it was possible to make a successful record doing a pisstake of the latest Shakespearean film by a classical stage actor with people getting the joke. For some reason Laurence Olivier decided to not just add a hump to play Richard III but a huge false nose and speak in a strange voice with odd …… pauses and peculiar emphaSIS. So, Sellars takes the mickey out of Sir Larry by getting his Richard to recite the Beatles with all the suggestiveness he can muster. 50 years on, how many are familiar with the original film? It’s like all those poems in Alice in Wonderland which are barely funny because we don’t know the “improving” poetry for Victorian kids that they are parodies of. How funny is some previously topical comedian’s impression of a politician that we’ve now forgotten?

    So, I sort of get why an actor like Hugh Bonneville would enjoy a send-up of the absurdities of his profession on his desert island.

  21. It was of its time. I’d imagine its appeal was greater back then because of the much bigger division between “high” and “low” culture, and things that young people were into being entirely different to things that older people were into; so the idea of an old luvvie reading pop song lyrics might have been a big novelty(?)

    Sellers was a phenomenal talent and a dreadful human being; not exactly a rarity with comics.

  22. This Is Spinal Tap : The Early Years

    I was unsurprised when I learnt via the Criterion DVD commentary (don’t look for it, its not for sale anymore) that this was an influence on them

  25. Reading these posts makes me wonder. Who is categorically the unfunniest comedian or act ever? I mean someone who has not only dated badly, but was objectively rotten even in their prime?

    I think a good candidate might be Hale and Pace. My favourite description of them was when Victor Lewis Smith called them two straight men.

    ‘What’s that?’

    ‘It’s a rubber, Johnny.’

    Truly gruesome punnery.

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