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Savage Messiah: Ken Russell => Savage Messiah: Ken Russell => Topic started by: Iain Fisher on March 30, 2010, 01:37:14 AM
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The South Bank Show: Final Cut by Melvyn Bragg
The Daily Mail savages Melvyn's book about the South Bank Show:
"What's great and lasting about the documentaries of Tony Palmer - among them Richard Burton, Peter Sellers, Liberace, classics all - is that he edits himself out. We don't even hear him ask the questions. Bragg edits himself in. There's Dennis Potter dying or Laurence Olivier speechifying - and Bragg needs to be there, in frequent cut-away shots, looking perky or fascinated or caring"
I would normally stand up for Bragg, but the Daily Mirror says "He additionally supplied scripts for our own beetroot-faced Fellini, Ken Russell. But the latter gets no mention in this book. Why not? Ken made some of the better, livelier South Bank Show episodes, if I remember rightly. That is to say, the ones with less of attention-seeking Melvyn in them".
Melvyn not mentioning Ken? I don't think I will be buying the book.
www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-1262055/An-end-Bragging-THE-SOUTH-BANK-SHOW-BY-MELVYN-BRAGG.html (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-1262055/An-end-Bragging-THE-SOUTH-BANK-SHOW-BY-MELVYN-BRAGG.html)