Popcorn

Something amazing happened on Saturday evening: I went to the cinema.

Now, that might not be amazing for you, but it is for me. I don’t do films. I maintain that there’s no detrimental side to my feelings around the film industry, save for the fact that it does tend to be my Achilles’ heel in pub quizzes. But I make up for that by being brilliant at science and obscure 90s music, and by sitting with people who know about films.

Now, I thought that the film we went to see was all very nice – it was called All Good Things and it starred Kirsten Dunst, who is a good-looking young actress, together with some good-looking young actor and a somewhat distinguished older actor who has been in some stuff before.

Before the film, however, we were treated to some advertisements, imploring us to buy things, including whisky. You’ve probably all seen this a million times before, but like I said, I don’t do films, so it was a first for me.

Here is Robert Carlyle’s The Man Who Walked Around The World, for Johnnie Walker:

Now (said he, in the style of Robert Carlyle in The Man Who Walked Around The World), I found myself rather impressed by the monologue and I began to wonder if it had been created in a single take. Well, turns out that it was and moreover, that it was filmed by a gentleman sat in a rickshaw pulled by two grips. Much like a certain lubricant, the first 39 efforts were none too special and so this work represents take 40, which was the final take from the final day of filming up in Bonnie Scotland.

Consider yourselves informed.

I recognise that this ad is 2 years old. I recognise that I’m behind the times. But I don’t care.
This “short film” had everyone in the cinema transfixed. Transfixed to an ad with a bloke talking about history  for 6 minutes – and they’d probably all seen it before.
I’m not in advertising, but if I was, I think I would probably think that that was a pretty special achievement. And Robert Carlyle was also pretty amazing, although nowhere near as pretty as Kirsten Dunst.

Now, keep walking and go and buy me some whisky.