The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film

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The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film
The Running Jumping and Standing Still Film.jpg
Title card
Directed byDick Lester
Peter Sellers
Screenplay bySpike Milligan
Peter Sellers
Mario Fabrizi
Dick Lester
Story byPeter Sellers
Produced byPeter Sellers
StarringPeter Sellers
Spike Milligan
CinematographyDick Lester
Edited byDick Lester
Peter Sellers
Music byDick Lester
Production
company
Peter Sellers Productions
Distributed byBritish Lion Films
Release date
November 1959
Running time
11 minutes[1]
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget£70

The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film is a 1959 British sketch comedy short film directed by Richard Lester and Peter Sellers, in collaboration with Bruce Lacey. The film was released in 1959.[2]

It was filmed over two Sundays in 1959, at a cost of around £70 (equivalent to £2,057 in 2023) (including £5 for the rental of a field).[3]

It was nominated for an Academy Award, but did not win.[4] It was a favourite of The Beatles, which led to Lester's being hired to direct A Hard Day's Night and then Help!, in which Lacey makes a guest appearance as George Harrison's gardener in the sequence where the group arrive at their 'home'.[5]

The short film has been made available as a special feature on several home video releases of A Hard Day's Night. It is also featured in The Unknown Peter Sellers and a BFI released collection of rarely seen films from Bruce Lacey's career entitled The Lacey Rituals. It is also included as a special feature of the StudioCanal issue of I'm All Right Jack.

Cast

Critical reception

BFI Screenonline concluded that the film's lasting legacy "was its influence (as part of Milligan's overall body of work) on British comedy in general, and on Monty Python's Flying Circus (BBC, 1969-74) in particular. This is evident not only in its surreal humour, but in the way that elements of one routine are threaded through subsequent scenes, transcending the stand-alone sketch form - a tactic subsequently favoured by the Python team."[6] Empire magazine called it "Sublime slapstick surrealism."[7]

References

  1. ^ "THE RUNNING JUMPING & STANDING STILL FILM - British Board of Film Classification". www.bbfc.co.uk.
  2. ^ "The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1959) - Richard Lester, Peter Sellers - Cast and Crew - AllMovie". AllMovie.
  3. ^ "Running Jumping & Standing Still..." A Short History of The Telegoons... The Goon Show Preservation Society. Retrieved 2008-07-02.
  4. ^ Philo, Simon (6 November 2014). British Invasion: The Crosscurrents of Musical Influence. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780810886278 – via Google Books.
  5. ^ James, David E. (10 December 2015). Rock 'N' Film: Cinema's Dance With Popular Music. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199387625 – via Google Books.
  6. ^ "BFI Screenonline: Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film, The (1960)". www.screenonline.org.uk.
  7. ^ Parkinson, David. "The Running, Jumping And Standing Still Film". Empire.

External links

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