The Life and Death of Peter Sellers

Last night I was watching a film on television called The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, directed by Stephen Hopkins. The film opens in the 1950s with Peter Sellers (played by Geoffrey Rush) already fairly successful in Britain due to his starring role in the hugely popular BBC radio series The Goon Show. However, encouraged by his pushy mother (Miriam Margolyes) and supportive wife Anne (Emily Watson), Sellers sets his sights on the film world and soon becomes a major star due to films such as The Pink Panther and Dr. Strangelove. However, as he plunges into the world of Hollywood excess, his wife leaves him, and he starts to lose his own sense of identity, as well as suffering increasing ill-health. The film depicts Sellers' personal relationships with women such as his second wife Britt Ekland (Charlize Theron), and his difficult professional relationships with directors such as Blake Edwards (John Lithgow), who is portrayed as a glitzy Hollywood type who pronounces "Hollywood is a state of mind!" and Stanley Kubrick (Stanley Tucci), who is a portrayed as a sinister control freak. Sellers is portrayed as a phenomenally talented, and very funny man, who is also selfish, childish, irresponsible, sex-obsessed and given to violent tantrums. He is also portrayed as someone who was only comfortable when he was pretending to be someone else (in an inteview he once said: "There was a real me behind the mask once, but I had him surgically removed"). The film is really sad but also very funny. It's very well-acted, particularly by Rush who plays not only Sellers but also delivers monologues to the camera in the persona of the various other characters.

I also watched a good episode of Tales of the Unexpected called "Skeleton in the Cupboard" and starred Charles Dance as a very rich executive, who meets a young woman who is trying to track him down. He immediately assumes it was because some years previously he killed a child in a hit and run accident and was never found out. Terrified of his secret being revealed he decides that the only solution is murder.

Today has been very quiet and fairly dull at work. I spent some time trying to solve a puzzle that was going around the office. It was kind of a riddle, but I managed to solve it eventually.