I finally got round to watching the film, "Festival" this afternoon. I had Skyplussed it off of the newly free Film4. I have heard mixed reports of the movie, but it was a discussion about it with my manager Jon that had prompted me to think about writing the Channel 4 drama about comedians (that I have still failed to finish). He had said it was hopelessly inaccurate about the Fringe and comedians in general and I know the esteemed director Stewart Lee recently mentioned in an article about bad films, though others I have talked to have called it brilliant. So I thought I would have a look, partly because I am writing this script and partly because I am about to head up to the Fringe.
I hate to agree with Stewart Lee (having professionally disagreed with everything he said for so long), but he is right. It is an awful film on many, many levels. Primarily it's just very badly written, employing stereotype characters, most of whom have no redeeming features and hardly any of whom progress or change throughout the piece. It is indeed as my manager intimated very poor on the subject of comedians themselves. The main character is a thinly veiled parody of Steve Coogan, but it is awfully one dimensional. Steve (like many comedians) has his flaws, but he is a fascinating man with all sorts of depths and conflicts to his personality, who you could write a much more interesting film about. He himself has done a much better job of this with "A Cock and Bull Story". And another DVD I saw this week "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers" at least has a punt at having an intelligent look at what makes such a comedian tick (I still found it a bit simplistic in places, as these comedy films often are - Peter Cook always being shown as this aloof, cruel, selfish man, where even a brief perusal of his work and life gives you a clear understanding that there was a lot more to him than this).
But all the comedians in
Festival are selfish, depressed, self-hating, ambitious idiots. Most comedians have a strong flavour of most of these ingredients, but there is more to all the good ones than this. And there is certainly more to Edinburgh for the majority than going up and winning an award at any cost.
I am not annoyed because I am a comedian and feel impugned or worse stung by the portrayal of my profession. I was annoyed because the film is so lazy and first base and because it felt like it was just being made up as it went along. It's as dismissive of journalists and actors and techies as well and just very confused about what it's trying to say about anything. And it tries to encompass so much that nothing is really covered in any satisfying way: a priest doing a play about paedophilia, turns out to be a potential paedophile himself, then overdoses and goes to hospital where for some reason they allow him to keep more pills by his bed so he can overdose again successfully; a bored Edinburgh housewife gets swept along in the romance of the fringe and leaves her husband and baby to go and hang out with a load of dippy Canadian actors (thus ruining her life one would imagine) and so on; a ventriloquist is still trying to find the right puppet for his act and keeps changing from one day to the next (surely he would just have his lost puppet remade, rather than having to keep rewriting an act based on what he's managed to find), before being fisted by the man at the puppet shop, for no other reason than the joke of him having a hand up his arse.
Oh whatever, it feels like a wasted opportunity. Not that I am too upset as it means there is still room for a more realistic portrayal of what comedians are like. They are idiots. Just different kinds of idiots.
And the female comic only getting by by being attractive and wanking people off was just insulting. But I can't call it sexist because it was equally insulting to the men. Just unhelpful I would say for a woman to write a film that makes such an implication when there are so many great new female comedians out there. Fuck it. It's not worth the energy.
It didn't really put me in the mood for the Fringe as it's nothing like the Fringe. Go to the Fringe. Come and see the show. And if you're on the Perrier committee (I know it's not called that, but it is) then email me and I will happily have sex with you if you can guarantee me a nomination. It's just how these things work.
