If
like Julian Fellowes and Ronnie
Corbett you feel that the the
closure of Croydon's "intimate"*
David Lean Cinema is a cultural
disaster**
(despite the fact it "sold no
tickets")*** ...then
to
fill the void created by its
passing (and
in an attempt to move Pear
Shaped into the year 2000)
here are some films you may
enjoy to give you a feeling of
the similarly intimate
atmosphere of "the Pear".
Here we see one of the
regular features of the Pear
Shaped
the Roll Call - a feature Mr
Damage includes to raise the
moral
of the acts ...of which there
are very many making the process
extremely time consuming ...
...as you can see Mr
Miller is very tired and
unusually sober
but after a mere 12 minutes Mr
Damage has succeeded in thanking
every single person for
performing personally ... if
they could
be bothered to stay to the
end...
Here is some footage of
Stuart Black doing a short set
that he kindly agreed to allow
us to upload
Mr Miller explains
how watching poorly filmed
Youtube films is bound to cause
a rapid increase in ticket sales
and how all comedy is
fundamentally anti-social.
If you would like to know more
about drilling I believe you can
now buy a CD
containing some of his old work
for a mere
£14
Mr Damage sings one of his
amusing ditties in an attempt to
make the whole
internet grind to a halt within
two years under the pressure of
booming demand
for silly
online
videos
Are you aware of the plight of
the rare patagonian toothfish?
he lives on his own in the sea.
Mr Damage is a little drunk. This is remarkable as one of the few videos that Mr Damage has managed to load in High Definition.
Dave Dynamite explains the
disadvantages of having David
Beckham's voice
Tony
Bournemouth talks about prawns
a lot.
Mr Damage cheers up with
one of his catchy ditties.
Krrystal tells us of her
granny
although you probably need to
be logged into Youtube to see
it
as it's age restricted
because of naughty words
Some highlights of Mr
Damage's Australian Tour
In an unexpected outbreak of
satire material
Brian & Krrystal explain
the sub prime mortgage crisis
Brian and Krystal at a
proper club with actual people
Although
these
clips may not look like very
much please bare in mind that
trying to get funny footage of
Pear Shaped that doesn't reveal
anyone's sets without their
permission so that their jokes
can be stolen and doesn't libel
anyone and is interesting enough
to be watchable is like trying
to film the storm scene in
Ryan's daughter. A second unit
had to wait sixth months before
even these few short dramatic
sequences appeared and a total
of 60,960 m (200,000 ft) of film
was shot which was eventually
edited down to 229 m (750
ft). The image is kept
clear by a glass disk spinning
in front of the lense. John
Sharp was injured and badly
shaken up while filming some of
his extracts and lost his glass
eye. Al Mandalino also
disliked the amount of time
spent working on the
project. In his words "I
don't like to be paid £500
a week for sitting down and
playing Scrabble." while Jimbo
commented that "Working with
Anthony Miller is like
constructing the Taj Mahal out
of toothpicks." For
technical reasons it was not
possible to film some sequences
in the actual Pear Shaped Comedy
Club and some sequences had to
be remounted on the back lot at
Pinewood with Ramón
Novarro recast as Brian Damage.
*Okay
with its 60 seats the Pear
Shaped is not the same
atmosphere as being in a
real cinema or real comedy
club but neither was the
David Lean with its 60 seats
- unless your idea of an
atmosphere is an old woman
saying "You can tell the
snow aint real though" in
the middle of Doctor
Zhivago.
**After
all people really need 60
seat arts council funded
cinemas when you can now buy
an HD TV for less than
£200 in Sainsburys and
thewebsite
was designed by civil
servants so simply trying to
find out what was on at the
David Lean was like trying
to crack the enigma machine
cipher-
its rumoured that the only
person who actually knew
what was on at the David
Lean was Alan Turing.
***People forget that the
Cinema only sold 50,000
tickets a year and turned
over £350,000 yet
still managed to accumulate
a loss according to the
council of £500,000
which means either running
it involved employing up to
25 people at £20,000 a
year or the budget was
supervised Erich von
Stroheim. Of course
there are many art house
cinemas that make a profit
with much less turnover so
it's a testament to the
council that they can manage
to lose half the budget of a
independent motion picture
on something that should be
self-funding....?
