Still more pieces I pitched that were never commissioned. Again, I think the following all had potential. And who knows? Perhaps some far-sighted individual will read what follows and feel an uncontrolble urge to drop me a line at richardluck@yahoo.com…
Fat Man And Little Boy - When Withnail Took On The Nuclear Family
With Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer out soon, I believe there's a fascinating article to be written about an earlier Manhattan Project picture, Roland Joffe's Fat Man And Little Boy. Starring The A-Team's Dwight Schultz as J Robert Oppenheimer and Paul Newman as Leslie Groves (the Matt Damon role in Nolan’s picture), this handsome movie died at the box office, this in spite of the fact Joffe's previous pictures - The Killing Fields and The Mission - had been critical and commercial successes. As for why the movie failed, one person is particularly well placed to discuss this issue - Bruce Robinson, writer-director of Withnail & I and author of the original Fat Man And Little Boy script. Having spent two years researching the Manhattan Project, Robinson was in a great position to recount an oft told tale in a wholly original fashion. The reasons he didn't would form the basis of the piece which would be further informed by my friendship with Alastair Owen whose Smoking In Bed remains the last word on Robinson and his work. Through his interviews with Bruce, Alastair discovered that Fat Man (aka Shadow Makers) ought to have been a definitive work which debunked the myths at the heart of the atom bomb's creation and dared to suggest that the death of Oppenheimer's mistress Jean Tatlock wasn’t suicide but an effort to bring him into line. A great story about a great story, I believe retelling it has plenty of merit, especially now Nolan's Oppenheimer on the horizon.
Eau No! The Perrier Scandal Turns 30*
Come January 2020, it'll be 30 years since Perrier embarked on the worst piece of firefighting outside of Trumpton. When traces of Benzene were discovered in Perrier bottles, the company went to extraordinary lengths to pass off the readings as either the result of sabotage or as a rare-but-natural occurrence that only affected a handful of bottles. The truth of the matter was that the heightened Benzene levels were natural in origin. However, in seeking to save face, Perrier destroyed the reputation of their product. For years the White House's bottled water of choice, Perrier would no longer be held up as the beverage against whose purity all other bottled waters were judged. Heck, they even had to remove the words 'naturally carbonated' from the label. The sort of catastrophe that makes the Gerald Ratner affair seem like a small misunderstanding, have we the bottle to cover Perriergate…?
Rolling Stone UK
While the 50th anniversary of Rolling Stone's US launch received all manner of coverage, little has been written about the short, colourful life of the British edition. Launched with some fanfare in 1969, Rolling Stone UK was more or less the American magazine only with a few pages given over to the British music scene. What ensured it'd be more than a mere insert was the calibre of the people involved in its creation. Charles Shaar Murray, Felix Dennis, Rosie Boycott, Alan Marcuson - RSUK had more in common with alternative British titles like Oz than Jann Wenner's American behemoth. What's more, the Rolling Stones themselves took an interest in the UK edition, something that must have appalled Wenner who liked nothing more than schmoozing the rock world's best and brightest. So at odds were the two versions of the magazine that Rolling Stone UK later changed its name to Friendz. By the time it ceased publication in 1972, the periodical had collapsed into insolvency and the staff were obliged to find proper (i.e. paid) work. But for three chaotic years, our Rolling Stone was everything you felt the US version wanted to be but wasn't.
Twist And Shout - Anthology Television
With Inside No 9 going great guns - there's now a US version of the show in the works - the anthology TV phenomenon is deserving of fresh investigation. For while The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits and Tales Of The Unexpected have been discussed elsewhere at great length, there have in fact been any number of anthology programmes over the years. Indeed, long before his fireside introductions for Tales Of The Unexpected, Roald Dahl was book-ending the US series Way Out. Then there was The Veil hosted by Boris Karloff, The Unexpected which aired almost a decade before The Twilight Zone, and One Step Beyond which was such a rip-off of Rod Serling's programme, it's a wonder he didn't sue. In the UK meanwhile, there was Nigel Kneale's Beasts - a clear influence on Inside No 9, in particular 'The Devil Of Christmas' - and Brian Clemens' Thriller, not to mention children's TV strands such as Dramarama. And for every episode that didn't work - which is to say an awful lot of them - there were moments that would haunt your dreams forever. The unmasking of the pro wrestler in Dramarama's Death Angel, the doppelganger dilemma at the heart of the Hammer House Of Horror episode 'The Two Faces Of Evil', the squirm-inducing urban myth that fuels Night Gallery's 'The Caterpillar' - there are all manner of memorable sequences, more than enough for an engrossing box-out.