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A brief bit about Sir Alec Guiness
During my trip to London last summer, I met a pair of absolutely insane freaks from Manchester that drove all the way to London to hang out in my room. As a result... Well, I still remember the strange music they tried to batter my ears with... though it now strangely comes from my tape deck often... Thanks St Nick! Anyway, St Nick, was in attendance at a recent event that Sir Alec Guiness was at, and decided to write in with a brief tell of that tale. Not any real news, just the comfort that somewhere in England, the Force is still with him!
Sir Alec Guiness made good on a three year old promise to visit the Royal
Exchange Theatre this lunchtime and I haven't stopped smiling since.
Tickets for this special event went quietly on sale last week at ?5. Sir
Alec had been invited to read from his autobiography '' A postively final
appearance" shortly before the IRA bombed Manchester in April 1996.
Following a brief introduction Sir Alec wandered elegantly into the round
took his seat.
Mine and about nine hundred others' hearts soared. The man and the voice
were both very much alive and right there infront of us, and I couldn't
quite get over it.
He read 3 passages from his new additions to "AFPA" including a mention of
meeting a rather drunk duke and duchess of windsor, his love of "Romeo and
Juliet" with Leonardo De Caprio ( a film he went to see 3 times) and his
recent catarax operation, which also lead to brief Star Wars mention -
the immortal line "may the force be with you."
That made it for me.
On the back of the tickets it had read " due to delicate health and time
constraints Sir Alec has requested no questions on Star Wars etc etc..."
But he sneaked it out anyway - god bless him.
Just thought all Aint it Cool readers should know... the wisest of jedi is
very much alive and well... and so too the charm and wit...
Just by looking at him you know he could still play Ben all over again.
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Alec Guinness is not the world's greatest Star Wars fan. He has gone on record in this very same autobiography as saying Star Wars was nothing more than a puerile fantasy. To Alec, the movie was just a good way of paying the rent; it was just a part. I hate to bring a man down from a high but I suspect Alec was attempting to broaden his potential market by appealing to the SW fans.
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He was trying to "broaden his base by appealing to SW fans" by appearing to read his biography, talking about various aspects of his life and career, and then making one passing reference to Star Wars? Funny way of pandering to SW fans, isn't it? As for his comments about SW, I don't recall any other actors from the film ever intimating that it was more than "just a part." Actors take parts in movies all the time -- it's kind of what they do for a living -- regardless of whether they think the director is God, or whether they consider the film to be a life-changing philosophical statement. If those were requirements for accepting a part in a movie, there would be a tremendous shortage of working actors in the world.
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I think it's not that he dislikes the films, but that he dislikes the commercial aura around them more than he likes the films. I get the impression that when he looks back, his distaste for all the hype and marketing make him question whether he should have been involved. Perhaps he also feels a bit of displeasure that relatively few younger people appreciate all the other work he's done -- a position a lot of actors in hit genre films find themselves in. Then again, if he hated it so much, he wouldn't end an appearance with May The Force Be With You. He's certainly attuned enough to recognize the value that the mythology has to so many people. I imagine some days he likes it, some days he doesn't.
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Alec Guinness is one of the great actors of the 20th century, and had achieved that status LONG before Kenobi. His English stagework stands toe-to-toe with the Oliviers and the Gielguds. His work in film is varied on impressive, from those great Ealing comedies that influenced Peter Seller's generation of comic minds (go rent "The Lavender Hill Mob" or "The Man in the White Suit", etc.) and his work with David Lean (his Fagan in "Oliver Twist" is jaw-dropping and his Oscar-winning Colonel Nicholson in the peerless "The Bridge on the River Kwai"), and that's only the surface. the man is a major talent. He obviously has mixed feelings about "Star Wars": after 50 years of diverse roles and a sort of brilliant anonimity - a chameleon - he became the 'may the force be with you' guy almost exclusively in the public's mind. However, the man was in for two and a half percent of the original film's gross take (wow...do THAT math!), and he came back for all three films in the trilogy. I think he feels more good will than ill, but I'm sure there are 'bad' days when all he hears on the street is 'may the force...' and he's done SO MUCH more than that, and he's never sure if it's appreciation or mocking. Here's a quote from Guinness about Lucas: "Like all the best directors, Lucas had very little to say during the actual filming. He simply sensed when you were uncomfortable and just walked across and dropped a brief word in your ear. It was almost like being on stage...in his total concentration, in his reliance on both his eye and his ear, he reminded me of the young David Lean."............THAT's Sir Alec Guinness, man. Thanks for sharing that brief story.
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For me, the greatest Alec Guinness film ever committed to celluloid is the 1955 comedy THE LADYKILLERS. Guinness plays the leader of a gang of criminals (including Peter Sellers in his first major film role and Herbert Lom, who went on to play Inspector Dreyfuss in the PINK PANTHER films), who disguise themselves as musicians and hide out in the boarding house of an old woman, played by Katie Johnson. When the old woman seems to know too much about the gang, each member tries to murder her, but it's usually the murderer who ends up dead. Now here's an interesting little tidbit about Guinness: in 1951, he was appearing on stage in HAMLET. This production was plagued by troubles almost from the start, panned by critics, and generally considered a mistake at the time. On opening night, it was rumored that Guinness saw the ghost of William Shakespeare in the audience. In the middle of the play, the ghost got up, and walked out. Pretty freaky, huh?
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I hate to say this in a non-Tolkien-nut forum...and Sir Alec probably isn't doing any more films...but wouldn't he just make a great Theoden? Mebbe someone should ask him to. :)
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I hate to say this in a non-Tolkien-nut forum...and Sir Alec probably isn't doing any more films...but wouldn't he just make a great Theoden? Mebbe someone should ask him to. :)
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Like most people of my generation, my first exposure to him was SW. As the years have passed though, I have come to appreciate that his stage and film career had already spanned two genraions before SW. I'm gratified to hear that he still enjoys film, and that he still acknowledges SW, if only in passing. Thanks for the news, it did my heart good.
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Sir Alec was a GREAT actor long before Star Wars. He was quite the comic actor at the start of his career--and a good physical comedian. The Lady Killers, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Our Man in Havana, The Man In The White Suit. Look up all his flicks on the IMDB and rent as many as you can. You are in for a BIG treat!!
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Sir Alec's comic performances are incredable and I think you can find that in SW as you look into his eyes as he's talking with Harrison Ford in their first scence togather. I've seen a lot of his comic movies and used him as a template of sorts when I was performing in The Fantastiks as "The Actor".
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When did ob1 ever say "May the force be with you?" I thought what he had said was "The force WILL be with you.....always". Am I way off?
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Hey
The mp3 for Duel of the Fates is awesome people...it took me a while to get it...lots of hours searching for a mirror site that was actually up...well i got it and if enough of you geeks bug me i'll upload it somewhere...my icq is 26522794 or email me...adios
Dan -
THE DUEL OF THE FATES!!! It is up somewhere...If you email me I will send you the URL...I am sure someone could tell you who i've already told but that would not be nice since i asked them not to tell. Eventually I will be asked to kill it but for now it is up at a very public place...Let's just say church is a great place to do some not so great stuff...So email me as i will not be on ICQ...
Dan -
One of my personal favorite of Sir Alec's flicks is a Neil Simon comedy starring Peter Sellers called Murder By Death. It's great. Very similar to Clue, but in my opinion, far superior. Sir Alec plays a blind butler. Just thought I'd mention the film since I didn't see it anywhere else in talkback.
-Q -
Way back in 1983, I had the good fortune to work on A PASSAGE TO INDIA as an assistant and one of the pleasures of working on that film was getting to meet and spend some time with Sir Alec. He was an absolutey charming man and incredibly generous in his advice and encouragment to a novice like myself. I remember on my last evening in India, he and Peggy Ashcroft took me out to dinner and the evening was preceeded by this one comment "Please, let's talk about the theatre - NOT the cinema!"
It was a fun-filled, unforgetable evening with the two veterans talking about their careers in the theatre. Bless them both.
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