The Ghost of Peter Sellers

I have seen the bones of "Ghost in the Noonday Sun" and wonder if a successful movie could ever have been made out of it. Sid Fleishman's book was a curious idea for a movie, anyway.

In this documentary, director Peter Medak (The Ruling Class) diagnoses what went wrong with this troubled production, which Peter Sellers went out of his way to sink.

Sellers was a strange fellow. He wasn't, by all accounts, a team player. Except in rare cases (The Wrong Box springs to mind) he'd rather be the star of a thoroughly rotten movie than take a bit part in a good movie. No one who knew him likes him in retrospect but everyone I've ever heard interviewed about him, whatever else they had to say about him, end up saying he was a genius.

And so he was. And still is. That doesn't excuse him. I'm an artist myself (not an actor and certainly no Sellers) but I side with those who say the "artistic temperament" is a thin cover for bad manners. Like him or hate him, he's still a star, 40 years after his death. Medak himself had to put Sellers' name in the title to rouse any interest in this cathartic film. That speaks volumes.

For anyone interested in behind-the-curtain goings on in the movie business, this documentary is invaluable. It highlights so much that can go wrong in movie making (and the ridiculous power games I have no doubt other stars than Sellers have played) and why anyone who gets involved in it needs to be crazy or at least have good blood pressure.

...for a start, 1989's THE FAVORITE, aka INTIMATE POWER. Train-wreck productions are memorable for those involved, in the worst way!

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.

I was left very touched. Whether you liked the movie they're taking about or not, this documentary is definitely more than just "behind-the-scenes". After watching it, you shall know exactly why it was made.

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.