Hello, TV monkey Steve Penk here, and welcome to another teeth-grindingly bad edition of The Way We Were, the show that looks at old clips of celebrities and sneers it's head off! In the next hour (which we'll make seem like days) we'll look at old clips that aren't embarassing for the actors involved but which are actually quite well-made programmes designed for entertainment, which is more than you can say for Carlton's current output. Still, we'll laugh our bollocks off at a clip of the HeeBeeGeeBees' "Meaningless Words" video. Not because it's a funny, well-intentioned music parody written and performed by people with genuine talent, but because it features Angus Deayton with a beard! Angus Deayton with a beard!!!! Do you see?!? He had a beard then, but he doesn't now!!!! HA HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! That's SOOOO eighties!!!! Ha heh heh heh....
So join me on my trip through the world of digging up pieces of non-revelatory footage and making a pointless joke about nothing. This programme is guaranteed to make you cringe, but not for the reasons we think.
Heh. Beard.
For our first clip, here's a young Michelle Pfieffer in an obsure American film called Amazon Women On The Moon. It's quite old so it's probably not very funny. Ha ha, look, she's in a hospital with a hairy man and some balloons. And there's a doctor with an eighties haircut. And he's looking at her cunt, how EMBARASSING for Ms Pfieffer who's bound to be covering her eyes while watching this!!!!
Who's this handsome young lumberjack? Why, it's a young Michael Palin in this super-rare clip we found in our producer's rubbish bin!!! Doesn't he look ridiculous (Michael Palin, not our producer!!!! Although...)?!? With his clothes and hair. How does he expect to go around the world dressed like that!! Still, I wonder if he knows he's going places!!!!!!
Who's this young man ROMAN around? It's a ginger-haired Leslie Nielsen in a screen test for yonks ago before he was Lieutenant Frank Drebin! This is a extremely rare piece of footage so were only going to show you 10 seconds off it without telling you what it's about, where we found it or who that other actor is before cutting to a clip of a young Kevin Kennedy in an early episode of Coronation Street. Still who cares about history and what could have been, look it's Curly Watts, and he's young!!!! Ha hahahahaha...
Who's this Oscar®-winning actress being seduced by a monster in this seventies cult classic? Why, it's Susan Sarandon!!! How EMBARRASSED is she?!?!? We sent someone out to have an exclusive tete-a-tete with Ms Sarandon, to found out how embarassed she is!!!
THE WAY WE WERE: Susan Sarandon, through our exhaustive research process of rummaging through hundreds of personal archives, watching hours of unmarked tapes, restoring miles of scratched and faded film, and doing a search on the Internet Movie Database, we've discovered that you had a large and embarassing part in The Rocky Horror Picture Show...
SUSAN SARANDON: Yes, I played the part of Janet Weiss, which I got after auditioning in England in front of Richard O'Brian and Jim Sharman. I hadn't been in the stage play, of course, like many of the rest of the cast so I was rather worried as you can imagine...
TWWW: Yes, yes, but you were NAKED, nearly, with a muscley man. Weren't you hideously embarassed????
SS: Well, at first, yes. But I wasn't fully naked, I was wearing underwear, and the song Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me was intregral to the plot and an extremely popular song among both the cast and the fans of the stage show, and of course Peter Hinwood was also...
TWWW: Who?
SS: Peter Hinwood. He played Rocky Horror. He was just as nervous, it was his first acting job. But I'm not embarrassed. My fourteen-year-old daughter saw the film recently for the first time and she loves it. The witty and original songs (which she can't stop singing, incidentally), the stylised sets...
TWWW: B-but... aren't you ashamed? I mean, don't you regret having appeared in his film? Doesn't it make you want to die?
SS: No, not at all. I loved every minute of it, except when I had influenza. That was awful, but the rest was just great fun. It was a wonderful film, enjoyed by all at the time and continually enjoyed by a new audience nearly thirty years later. It was my first big break and without it I wouldn't be where I am today. Everyone does some bad projects when they start out in the business, but as first roles go this is pretty good. If fact it's great, as are all the people in your pathetic little programme, many of whom did these parts while they were famous, it's just that you haven't done any proper research and are trying to turn the viewers into armchair 'experts' who are just as lazy as you are.
TWWW: Well, that's all we have time for, thanks to --
SS: No, hold on. You sit here, criticising genuinely good films like Amazon Women Of The Moon and And Now For Something Completely Different in front of an audience who doesn't know any better, with no other reason than the crime of being made more than five years ago. People should be told to watch these films and form their own opinions rather than shy away from them simply because you say so. And because you can't make a decent programme you feel the need...
TWWW: Thanks to Ms Sarandon for letting --
SS: ...to sneer and to laugh at these people who put their hearts and souls into entertaining people. And succeed, dammit! Well, I not standing for it. I'm leaving. How do you take this... [fiddles with clip-on microphone] microphone off? [removes microphone]
TWWW: Thank you to Susan Sarandon for taking...
SS: Goodbye. And I sincerely hope you stop sneering at people who are only trying to entertain. [walks out] More than you are.
TWWW: ... the time to talk to us. Back to Steve Penk in the studio.
Thanks for that interview. Now, who's this twat?
Why, it's Dan Aykroyd. Here he is doing silly voices and wearing some OUTRAGEOUS costumes on some obsure American show which we found in a black bin bag underneath the cupboard!!!! He claims that he wore these clothes and deliberately looked silly because he was on a comedy show. We say he just looks ludicrous!!!! Anyway it was the seventies, so he must look ridiculous!!!! It was compulsory!!!!! Still, he's moved onto proper projects like Sgt Bilko and Blues Brothers 2000, so that's alright then!!!!! What a silly cunt.
Yes, you're quite right, we still haven't learnt, and we probably never will. Well, that was our show. I'll be back tomorrow presenting ITV's Greatest Nightmarish Bloomers From Hell 7. I'll also be back the day after tomorrow presenting ITV's Funniest Clearable Celebrity Swearing From A Central TV Christmas Tape From Hell 9, and the day after that presenting ITV's Clips Of Animals Shagging Each Other And Other Things That Dennis Norden Has Too Much Good Taste To Show From Hell 11, and every day after that for 21 years, until Satan takes control of my soul.
Goodnight.
Back to
or
"Every time a journalist tries to make me defensive about being in it [The Rocky Horror Picture Show], you know, gives me some leading question that he expects me to be apologetic, I'm not in the least bit apologetic [laughs]. I really like it, I think it's got a great energy, you know, they never were able to do sequels that kinda came up to it, but I don't apologise at all for doing it."
--Susan Sarandon on VH1's 'Where Are They Now?', as featured on the RHPS DVD. This article is dedicated to Susan Sarandon for not bowing down to the lazy, pre-written views of the media but stating her own opinions, which are all 100% correct. Except for that bit about the sequels, cos Shock Treatment's actually not that bad. It's got a fab title song, and Rik Mayall's in it. She also missed a killer opportunity to use the phrase 'lazy journalist scum'. But she has got beautiful eyes.
Amazon Women On The Moon: available on US VHS and Region 1 DVD (Universal/Image).
And Now For Something Completely Different: available on UK and US VHS and R1 DVD (Columbia Tristar).
The Leslie Nielsen screentest was taken from Ben Hur: available on US VHS and R1 DVD (screentest on the DVD only) (Warner). The other actor was Cesare Danova.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show: available on UK and US VHS and R1 and R2 DVD (Fox). Jam-packed with extras too. Lovely.
Saturday Night Live 25th Anniversary: available on US VHS and R1 DVD (Trimark/NBC Home Video).
The Way We Were can be seen all the fucking time on Carlton. Do as I do and watch a good DVD instead.