Fawlty Tower三十周年了

对于完结篇来说 　　 BBC做了两个新的clip秀 　　 这里有个cleese的新访谈，挺有意思，电影版的点子相当地赞 　　 http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/a155249/john-cleese-fawlty-towers-re-opened.html John Cleese ('Fawlty Towers: Re-Opened') Friday, May 8 2009, 11:38 BST By Alex Fletcher, Senior Entertainment Reporter The cast of Fawlty Towers reunited in London earlier this week to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the classic BBC sitcom. John Cleese, Andrew Sachs, Prunella Scales and Connie Booth all came together to launch two new clips shows about Torquay's most famous hotel. We caught up with comedy legend and co-writer of the series John Cleese to chat about the programme's enduring appeal, a rumoured big screen adaptation and why the show very nearly didn't happen at all. When you watched the series back for these new clips shows did you still enjoy it? "I was really pleased with each episode when I watched them back. I can still see where the moose didn't quite fall quickly enough on Basil's head and other moments where we could have done things better, but on the whole, I was very, very pleased with them. Especially when you consider that we used to produce them on a single day in a studio. The average sitcom on the BBC was about 65 pages, but on Fawlty Towers we did around 135 pages or 140. People always say 'did you enjoy it?', but there was never really time to enjoy it. The timed pressure was pretty hair-raising! That's why I think people keep on watching it, simply because there's so much more in there than there is in most shows." Is it true that a BBC executive described the show as "dire" when they read the scripts? "There is a famous note that I have a copy of, in fact I have it framed. What happened was that me and Connie wrote the first episode and sent it into Jimmy Gilbert. Jimmy was an old friend who produced The Frost Report for me, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett. Anyway, we rang Jimmy up and said we wanted to do a show about a hotel and sent him a pilot sript. The funny thing is, the bloke whose job it was to assess the quality of writing said, 'This is full of cliched situations and stereotypical characters. I can not see it being anything other than a disaster'. Jimmy himself said we would have to get them out of the hotel. But it was in the hotel of course where the whole pressure cooker situation built up. The idea of taking people out would have taken the foot off the accelerator." So was there a lot of opposition to the show at the start? "Iain Johnstone, a man I've worked with a lot, told me that he heard four BBC producers at the bar having their beers and talking about the show. They were all saying, 'Have you seen this new script from Cleese? How embarrassing to move from Monty Python onto that. Why on earth would he do that?' I know this sounds smart-arsed, but you do realise as you get older that almost nobody knows what they're talking about. They really don't. As you well know we couldn't get a single studio to pay the £2 million for Python's Life Of Brian. If it wasn't for George Harrison that movie would not have been made. When I wrote Fish Called Wanda every single studio apart from MGM passed on it. What happens is you realise that there are very, very few people out there who know exactly what they are talking about." Do you remember the initial response from viewers when the show aired? "The initial response was puzzled. The Mirror said 'Long John Short On Jokes' and an Edinburgh paper said that it was no good. Those were the first few reviews. It began to get more liked when they repeated it. It was like Python in the early days, because it was so very different, people didn't know if it was any good. What they did was describe the show and didn't make a judgment. It was Alan Coren who wrote a piece at the end of the first series and he said he liked it and all of a sudden everyone started saying they loved it." Do you think any modern sitcoms stand up against Fawlty Towers? "My problem is that I don't watch them any more. I don't watch television. I am so guilty about not having read enough that I tend to read. Now and again I see something that I like. I watched three episodes of The Office and I thought it was terrific. I saw one Extras and it was excellent. I think there's a huge amount of talent, but writers don't work as hard as they used to. They lack experience. I do proudly say that in the '60s, '70s and '80s the UK had the least bad television in the world. I don't think that's true any more. The problem now is that it's run on the basis of money and the audience is broken up into too many small chunks. It takes a lot of money to make good series and they just won't pay for the writers." Whose decision was it to end the show after two series? Were you never tempted to keep it going? "It was a totally joint decision with me and Connie. We both felt we'd done our best. We both knew that if we did any more it would not be as good. I made that mistake with the film Fierce Creatures. There's actually some really funny stuff in that film, but there's some bad scenes at the start and it was up against the reputation of A Fish Called Wanda. It couldn't possibly reach it and you always have that problem if you achieve those levels of success. Someone once said to me when we started with Monty Python, 'You guys are trying too hard'. I said 'What do you mean?' So he replied, 'You put too many jokes in. Hold about half of them back and use them next week. You are in this to earn a lot of money over a long period of time. Don't tire yourself out'." Is it true that you considered doing a Manuel spinoff and a film? "I did speculate about doing a film, but I never got to the point of putting a pen to paper. I thought what would be really funny would be if Basil and Sybil got on a plane to visit Manuel in Spain. The reason I wanted to do that was because I thought Basil would be terrific if a plane ever got hijacked. He would become so furious and he would probably overcome the hijack. And then of course they would bring the plane back to Heathrow, which would make him even more angry. So he would then hijack the plane himself, force the pilot to take him to Spain, where he would be arrested on arrival and spend the rest of the holiday in a Spanish jail. It amused me for a while to play with that idea, but I don't think I ever mentioned it to Connie. We didn't put a single line down." Would you approve of a modern remake of the series? "Yeah, let them try. The Americans have given it a go three times. The first time was Harvey Korman and Betty White, but they played it too slow and were embarrassed by the edgy dialogue. The most extraordinary remake was with with Bea Arthur. I remember at a party I met these chaps from Viacom, who said they were working on a new Fawlty Towers. My ears pricked up at the sound of cash registers and said, 'That's wonderful, are you going to change anything?'. They said, 'Well we have changed one thing, we've written Basil out'. And that's absolutely true, they took Basil and Sybil's lines and gave them all to Bea Arthur. I always thought Peter Boyle could have played Basil well, but sadly he is no longer with us." Fawlty Towers: Re-Opened and Fawlty Exclusive: Basil's Best Bits will air exclusively on G.O.L.D. at 9pm on May 10 and 17 respectively.