Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll : Hit Me!

Hit Me!

I saw "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll" yesterday and really liked it but have a couple of comments that I would like to share.

A while ago I saw a play about Ian Dury called "Hit Me!". I thought the film drew a lot from it I am not saying it plagiarised it. In the play, Ian Dury is also both a character in his own story and the sort of metalinguistical "master of ceremonies" introducing the different chapters of the story itself to the audience. I have read a couple of articles about the film and couldn't find a single comment crediting "Hit Me!" for being a possible inspiration to the film creators.

Secondly, I thought the film would have been a lot better if it didn't have all those "driving the van" animation sequences that "Snatch" comic strip opening credits syndrome that we see repeated now and again and to my view only serves to fragment the story telling. Something like that was used in the film "The Life And Death Of Peter Sellers" with the same annoying results.

Otherwise, great film. The acting was superb.

Re: Hit Me!

Interesting, I didn't know there'd been a play. Was that on in London? Who played Ian Dury? Were they as good, not as good, or better than Andy Serkis? Did they look more like Ian? I thought Andy did from a distance, but not so much close to, but then sometimes plays are better at creating an illusion because you can't get too close to the actor. Sorry for the 20 questions, but one last one, what the heck does metalinguistical mean?

Maybe the van animation wasn't entirely necessary, but it didn't spoil the film for me. I gathered those kind of arty bits in the film were supposed to reflect Ian's time at art school and his arts background.

Re: Hit Me!

I saw it in London. Ian Dury was being played by Adrian Schiller. I thought he was excellent, as good as Serkis. I just googled it and found this review:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/jan/11/theatre

Metalinguistical? In this context, it's when you have a character in a film who "knows" they are in a film, and plays with the idea of being in a film, they look and talk straight to the audience, etc. I hope I am not saying an absolute rubbish here.

Really looking forward to the release of the soundtrack, by the way!

Re: Hit Me!

Thanks for the article, it was interesting. I looked up a photo of Adrian Schiller. He didn't look much like Dury, but I think sometimes it's the force of an actor on stage that makes them be the person. I'd like to have seen that play. If it ever comes to Glasgow or it's on when I next visit London, I'll look out for it.

And thanks, too, for the definition of metalinguistical - you learn something new every day! It's like what they did in the film "Bronson", which I also thought was absolutely brilliant.

Re: Hit Me!

I liked the style of this film. Biopics aren't always accurate. Often events in the film happen in a different order to how they happened in real life. In this film Baxter Dury is clearly older than the real Baxter was at the time.

But because of the style of this film the innacuracies don't matter.

Re: Hit Me!

The way they presented this bio-pic was not original because the Bronson bio-pic took a similar approach.

It's that man again!!
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