How do you advertise a film where nothing happens?
How do you advertise a film where nothing happens? Most heavily TV-promoted films are completely Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – in 2002 that means either massive special effects or “hilarious” gross-outs. But the commercial for The Importance of Being Earnest suggests that pretty-ish girls – they’re wearing too many clothes to see if they’re really fit – twitter about sophistication. There’s a lot of white linen being worn and it’s all set in those houses you’re taken to for supplementary history so you can see how they lived then.
The market for big TV-promoted films is young, and male. You can’t remotely assume that it knows the Oscar Wilde canon; fragmentation means you’re lucky if it knows even a couple of Shakespeare’s greatest hits.
It’s not dumbing down; there’s just so much more to know about now. So what are the makers of The Importance of Being Earnest doing showing us what looks like a set of out-takes from any BBC costume drama? Let’s assume at least that they’re buying their TV time to reach as many Tatler babes, middle-aged middle-class women and gay men as possible – and then going for the themes that really matter Interior decoration, for a start The Hello! pic factor. See the gorgeous houses of the stars, more Aubussons, more hand-made tassels than any film this year.Then there are the careers of the players. For instance, you could make a lot more of Judi Dench as Lady Bracknell She’s a Dame, for Christ’s sake.
Will she win another Academy Award? How does this performance compare with her Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love?And Rupert Everett and Colin Firth, together again after Another Country. Can they exchange meaningful looks? Are they competing for Most Pimped? Will Colin get wet?The whole unnatural sex angle is a godsend, and you’re throwing it away, boys. Is Lady Bracknell a man? Is something going on between the Earnests? Is the whole thing a touch of the Edward Albees? And what does Earnest really mean, anyway, as in “nothing could afford me greater pleasure than to be really Earnest with you”? Come on ad directors, get jiggy with it: you owe it to your country.Peter sru.co.uk. Mary Archer may have been able to dismiss her husband’s imprisonment for perjury with typically stylish froideur, but she could find it much harder to dispel the image of a demanding, cheapskate employer that is fast emerging from the industrial tribunal on the sacking of her former PA. Revelations of “insulting” gifts to the PA Lady Archer once called her “second skin” allegedly ranged from an inch of flat champagne to a fake Calvin Klein watch and a ring with three diamonds missing.
All rather embarrassing for the scientist and businesswoman famously described by a High Court judge as “fragrant”.Other high-profile figures, from industrialists to pop stars, live in such terror of similar humiliating allegations from disgruntled staff that almost all now insist on cast-iron confidentiality contracts. But this has not prevented some bitter disputes between celebrity and PA spilling out into the open – affording we mere mortals a glimpse of the often dysfunctional lifestyles behind their carefully constructed images.The true nature of Naomi Campbell’s tortured private life came out in her much-publicised problems with two former PAs. One accused the supermodel of throwing her against a lift door, although she was then arrested over blackmail allegations that were later dropped. Another sued Ms Campbell over her treatment, including claims that she had been beaten with a telephone, punched and slammed against a wall. The dispute was settled by the model.While that behaviour may be extreme, even the recruitment agencies specialising in finding PAs for “personalities” warn of the pitfalls of the job.
