Next month he will be taking part in the four-day Slapstick Silent Comedy Festival in Bristol
Posted in General on 26. Sep, 2010
Next month, he will be taking part in the four-day Slapstick Silent Comedy Festival in Bristol. With Chris Daniels, another film buff who has been organising silent- movie events in Bristol for the last four years, and a team of experts including David Robinson and Kevin Brownlow, Merton has been involved in selecting films for the programme, including rarely seen classics such as His Wooden Wedding (1925), starring Charley Chase.He will also be a guest presenter at several of the events, most notably on Friday 14 January when he is hosting Silent Clowns, a gala celebration, at Colston Hall, of gems including Charlie Chaplin’s The Pawnshop (1916) and Buster Keaton’s Cops (1922).Ask Merton to explain his passion, and you are treated to a rhapsody on the early days of cinema and a eulogy to movies of which many will never have heard. Indeed, the arrival of the DVD, and a growing archive of silent-movie classics available for the first time since they premiered in British cinemas, has only reinforced his interest.And that is why the notoriously interview-shy comic has agreed to talk. Today, Merton, 47, is a popular, award-winning stalwart of the BBC’s satirical news quiz Have I Got News For You (HIGNFY). In the course of a career that officially commenced on 29 February 1980, when he quit his job in the employment office in Tooting, south London, to become a full-time comedian, he has written sketches for Julian Clary, contributed to Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and written and performed in two series of sketches under his own name.Given Merton’s childhood passion, it is, perhaps, curious that he has come to be associated with a very verbal humour, a capacity for punning and rapid responses that comes into its own on HIGNFY But his original love of silent comedy has not diminished.
To someone like me, brought up in the Catholic tradition, the ability to create laughter long after you were gone smacked of immortality,” he says “I wanted to be part of that I wanted to do that.”And, of course, he did. Already an avid silent-movie fan, with his own 8mm projector and the beginnings of an encyclopaedic knowledge, Merton had spotted a poster outside the old Academy cinema, in London’s Oxford Street, for a Buster Keaton season. His first big-screen experience of Keaton’s comic genius bowled him over.
“I was knocked out I floated out of the cinema on a cushion of joy. It was nearly 50 years after the film had been made, and it was long after he was dead.
Paul Merton had his first intimation of comic immortality when, at the age of 12, he saw the classic Buster Keaton film, The General. He added that the letters were “alarming, harassing and annoying”.. Last week, a homeless man who repeatedly asked to pray with him was ordered to stand trial for stalking.Zack Sinclair, 34, was first arrested in September after allegedly turning up at Gibson’s home and local church and demanding to pray with the actor.Gibson – a devout Catholic, with seven children – said he found Mr Sinclair’s behaviour “alarming, harassing and annoying”, and expressed concern for “the safety of my family”. Mago’s indigenous Fijian owners were moved off the island when they converted to Christianity in the 19th century.An English planter, Rupert Ryder, purchased the island, and his family held it until 1930, when it was sold to copra planter Jim Barron.The hotel group did not develop the island and Gibson hopes to use the beaches and two lagoons to entertain friends in private.The Passion of the Christ is only nine months old but has shattered video sales records and is also making money on pay-per-view TV.Gibson’s personal profit is likely to be further boosted by DVD sales of the film.The film was the biggest-ever release not during the summer or on a holiday.Gibson’s desire to hide himself away is not surprising.
Earlier this year, the actor Johnny Depp bought a Caribbean island for about £1.6m.According to the Fiji Times , Gibson stayed with his wife Robyn and their two children on a private estate in Fiji last week before flying to the island by helicopter last week to see if it was worth the price.The island, which the international hotel developers Tokyu Corp of Japan bought in 1985 for £1.8m, is in the north-west sector of the Northern Lau Group of islands.Mago “rises majestically” to 200m on its eastern cliffs and is fringed entirely by protective reefs, “powder-white beaches” and “turquoise lagoons”, says estate agents Colliers International. “It seemed too dark a thought to have,” he admits, “but then, the darkness never bothered me.”. Xzibit presents himself on this fifth album, with some justification, as the heir presumptive to the West Coast hip-hop tradition, the last in the string of Great Cali Rappers that includes Dr Dre, Ice Cube, 2Pac and Snoop Dogg. The gospel stylings of “Judgement Day” backdrop Xzibit’s reflections on his former waywardness, and how “the devil brings out the soldier in the peaceful man”, while “Back 2 The Way It Was” finds him hankering for old-school days and ways, “‘cos right now, hip hop is hollow…/ And maybe, from the way we act, we lost our minds.” Maybe.. One track, the annoyingly catchy “Muthafucka”, even namechecks the Washington sniper Lee Boyd Malvo, which probably wouldn’t have happened had Xzibit’s family been among the victims. Set to a Wu-Tang-style lonely piano figure and synth whine, it’s a sharp portrait of how times are hard in every ‘hood these days.Sadly, it’s pretty much all downhill from that point, with a succession of raps celebrating gun violence (“Beware of Us”, “Tough Guy”, “LAX”), and a couple (“Saturday Night Live”, “Hey Now”) about the undertow of violence in hip-hop club culture.