The Ghost of Peter Sellers

Spike Milligan, not Peter Sellers, is at fault for the pirate movie being so bad since it was Spike who talked his former Goon, Sellers, into doing a movie that he hardly even had developed on the page.

In one reflection, Medak says that both he AND Sellers cried on the phone together after having read what there was to read of the script. Then, when Sellers becomes a pain to the director on set, Spike shows up to write the last half of the script, and acts like the hero for bringing Sellers back to the set, but in reality, it was a set that should have never been built because the script wasn't even finished from the very beginning. A screenplay is the most important "set" of a movie. It's everything.

Seeing parts of the movie, that is, the ACTUAL movie, it doesn't seem all Sellers fault despite Sellers being horrible in it. The direction looks like test shots for rehearsals or casting auditions, so this supposedly brilliant young director wasn't really directing but rather just pointing his camera and filming.

The fault isn't just on Peter Sellers here. And when Medak is sitting next to Spike Milligan's statue, praising him after defecating on Sellers for two hours, it makes very little sense.

This documentary by Hungarian-born director of mostly British films, Peter Medak, is an interesting self-retrospective. In 1973 Medak was fresh off a few successful films like "The Ruling Class" (1972). He was then asked by world famous comedian Peter Sellers, to helm a pirate-themed comedy, starring Sellers and his comedic frenemy Spike Milligan. This resulted in "Ghost in the Noonday Sun", a film so infamously bad, that it couldn't be released.

"The Ghost of Peter Sellers" documents the making of the pirate comedy in Cyprus. Sellers was always difficult but on this film, he was unbearable. Medak recounts everything he had to go through during the production. It obviously left him with a great deal of traumas, and this documentary seems to be his way of finally getting closure. The title is correct in that Peter Sellers is a ghost looming over this narrative, not the main subject of the narrative. I found this to be very interesting, and it's educational too. You should never make a film just because you can get the financing together. Otherwise you are bound to have on your hands nightmares just like this one.

I'm not really sure why Peter Medak made this movie.

He says he was blamed for the failure of the Sellars film, but Sellars was a monster to work with.

Meanwhile, Medak reads his and other's correspondance from back in the day, and frankly he comes off as a weakling who didnt know how to take control of his own set.

Weird.

He keeps saying his career could have been so much better if he hadnt made the pirate movie, but you actually get the feeling that he's be in the same place.

Serviceable enough documentary- I always have a soft spot for ones that look at troubled film productions, so such a documentary would have to be pretty bad for me to come away truly disliking it.

I think this is seriously flawed in some ways, but I got some enjoyment out of it because of my fondness for this documentary sub-genre (for lack of a better description). It's also technically pretty well made, and feels well-paced and appropriately brisk at just 93 minutes.

It's not quite funny enough to be completely entertaining as a tragicomedy, and I wasn't that big a fan of the main subject at points. He did come across as somewhat petty, but he had also had a tough life and rough creative struggles, so my emotions towards him ended up being conflicted. The film however is incredibly sympathetic towards him, and I'm not sure he 100% earned that portrayal.

Sellers comes across pretty mean, but they do ultimately celebrate his legacy and comedic talent, even whilst lamenting the struggles of working with him and knowing him personally. The look at Sellers (who isn't really the main subject of the documentary- thanks somewhat misleading title) is therefore more balanced and ultimately more interesting.

Also might be a minor flaw, but they REALLY should have got the interviewees to do a better job at specifying which Peter they were reminiscing about, as Peter Medak and Peter Sellers are the two most discussed people in the documentary, and their full names are hardly used during interviews...

Greetings again from the darkness. Watching someone go through therapy - exorcising the demons of their life - is a bit uncomfortable. So while we understand Peter Medak's 'need' to revisit the project (from almost 50 years ago) that nearly derailed his promising career, there are plenty of moments here where we feel like we are intruding. As a filmmaker, Mr. Medak's most natural form of expression is with a camera, so re-tracing a dark time as a documentary makes some sense; we just wonder why he had to drag us along to share his misery.

A "67 day nightmare" is how Peter Medak describes the experience of filming GHOST IN THE NOONDAY SUN, a film that was never officially released. It was 1973 and Medak was a hot young director, fresh off THE RULING CLASS with Peter O'Toole. When Peter Sellers, one of the most sought-after international film stars, agreed to sign on, the 17th century Pirate movie based on the novel by Albert Sydney Fleischman, was thought to be a sure-thing box office smash. In reality, it was the beginning of Medak's nightmare that still haunts him today.

While re-visiting the original Cyprus sets, and meeting with seemingly anyone who was involved with production and is still alive, Medak recollects specific instances of things that went sideways. The vast majority of it leads right back to the behavior of Peter Sellers, who seemed to be sabotaging the film from very early on. Was it arrogant "star" behavior? Was Sellers depressed over his breakup with Liza Minnelli? Was he bi-polar? We get interviews with co-writer (and Sellers' buddy) Spike Milligan's agent Norma Farnes, as well as the film's Costume Director Ruth Myers, and Sellers' stuntman Joe Dunne. None of these folks seem to have any pleasant memories of making the movie, and when you add in commentary from other filmmakers like director Piers Haggard (THE FIENDISH PLOT OF DR FU MANCHU, Sellers' final film, 1980) and director Joseph McGrath (CASINO ROYALE, THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN), it appears the common denominator in creating anguish was Peter Sellers.

Among the tales we hear are in regards to Sellers firing a producer, his clashes with Medak and co-star Tony Franciosa, his push to keep Spike Milligan involved as writer and director of some scenes, and most shocking of all, Sellers' faking a heart attack on set, and the admission of collaboration in fraud from Dr. Greenburgh. We expect artists to have unusual personalities and quirks, but it's unfortunate when one person can affect the livelihood of so many others.

'Why go through the pain of re-visiting this?' Medak is asked the question a couple of times, and it certainly runs through our head while watching. Clips from the film are dropped in throughout the documentary, and it comes across as a pirate farce that appears to have been disjointed at best. I recently watched a "lost" Sellers film entitled MR TOPAZE (aka I LIKE MONEY) from 1961. It was the only feature film where he was credited as director, and if the stories from behind-the-scenes are true, it was yet another case was Sellers was guilty of sabotage.

Medak's mission with this documentary seems to be one of catharsis. Or maybe it's his chance to prove he wasn't to blame for the tragedy of this project. When he talks to producer John Heyman, it seems clear that Heyman, despite losing millions on the film, was able to move on - to get over the setback ... something Medak still hasn't done. While no cast or crew members attended the wrap party, we do wonder if anyone will have an interest in this mess that occurred nearly five decades ago. The only value may be from the perspective of cinematic history or lore, at least other than, hopefully, Peter Medak's mental well-being and soul cleansing.