Post by RedMoon11 on Dec 4, 2014 16:54:03 GMT
My Lost Little Bear Set Clarkson On His Way
The author of Paddington reveals his doubts over the new film, and a young Jeremy’s hairy moments, to Oliver Thring
Oliver Thring Published: 23 November 2014
Michael Bond is protective of Paddington, star of the new film
IT HAD always seemed inevitable that some day someone would make a film about Paddington Bear and his travels to London from darkest Peru. Yet no one foresaw that when that film was finally unveiled, it would be accompanied by an immigration drama, a minor sex scandal and an 88-year-old author who at one point became very worried indeed.
Michael Bond, the man who dreamt up the Paddington story 56 years ago, revealed this weekend that when he saw the original script for the live-action, digitally enhanced Paddington blockbuster about to appear on cinema screens around the world he had to have “a bit of an argument” with film makers about their portrayal of a bear who has become a British institution.
Bond said that when he saw a preview of the film last week he was alarmed by a slapstick scene that showed Paddington plunging his head into a toilet to take away the taste of earwax after he used a toothbrush to clean his ears.
“I hated it,” said Bond, who is still fiercely protective of Paddington’s sweet and innocent image.
Instead of flooding the bathroom and sliding down the stairs in a bathtub — as he does in the new film — Bond originally wrote that the bear signed his name in toothpaste on the mirror and splashed in the bath in his duffle coat (which had toggles “for ease of paw”).
Bond said he dislikes seeing anything about Paddington “that I don’t think would happen in the books”. He challenged the film makers about an early deviation from his original account of the moment that a London couple named Brown discovered a Peruvian bear apparently lost at Paddington station.
In the film’s first script “Mr and Mrs Brown met Paddington on the platform and immediately took him to an immigration office,” said Bond, now sitting in his cosy, book-lined study at the house he shares with his wife Sue in northwest London.
“I said: ‘Look, there isn’t an immigration office at Paddington.’ And they said: ‘OK, we can move it somewhere else.’ But I said: ‘If you found a bear on Paddington station would you really rush off to an immigration office? You’d call for a porter or ring the RSPCA.’”
It seems hard to imagine that a children’s film about a wandering bear should generate an immigration controversy — unless Ukip announces a boycott — but Brown’s concerns about the script were not the new film’s only problem.
Last week Britain’s film censors caused a minor kerfuffle by awarding the film a PG certificate, citing supposed “mild sex references”. What, thought millions of anguished parents . . . a Paddington film with sex?
But the material in question was later downgraded to “innuendo” and turned out to be no more salacious than a cross-dressing scene milder than any Christmas pantomime.
Despite his worries about the original script and his niggles with certain scenes, Bond said he was delighted with the overall effect of the film: “I came, I saw, I was conquered.”
nuk-tnl-editorial-prod-staticassets.s3.amazonaws.com/2014/hotspots/ST1123-Paddington/index.html
The movie, which is released nationwide on Friday, is likely to be a huge hit at the Christmas box office, introducing a new generation of children to the exploits of a well-meaning but hapless bear who has a thing about marmalade.
It also raises the intriguing question of how, more than half a century after Bond published the first Paddington book, this improbable Peruvian adventurer still makes so many want to give him a hug.
Paddington’s creation story is almost as famous as the bear himself. It was Christmas Eve in 1956 when Bond, then a 30-year-old BBC cameraman and struggling writer, spotted the last remaining teddy bear for sale at a London store.
He thought: “I can’t let that bear spend Christmas alone,” and took it home as a last-minute present for his then wife, Brenda.
“We were living in a small room — practically a caravan — on the Portobello Road,” he said. A few days later, “I saw the bear sitting on the shelf at home and wondered what it would be like if a real bear had landed on Paddington station. I wrote down the first words without meaning to tell a story, but it caught my fancy and I carried on.” He finished the book in 10 days.
Bond went on to write 25 further Paddington books, selling at least 35m copies in more than 40 languages. The most recent, Love from Paddington, came out this month; it is a book of the bear’s letters to his aunt Lucy in a part of Peru that is always identified only as “darkest”.
The book is published by HarperCollins Children’s Book, a subsidiary of News Corp, the parent company of The Sunday Times.
Since Paddington first appeared there has been a television series, musicals and now a film, although the toys are the most popular spin-off for many children.
It was a Doncaster couple named Shirley and Eddie Clarkson who made the first Paddington bears in the 1960s as presents for their children, Jeremy and Joanna.
Jeremy Clarkson is now quite well known, and Bond says he remembers little Jeremy’s taste for speed long before he became a Top Gear presenter and Sunday Times columnist: “I once saw him riding his tricycle straight into a car.”
The Clarksons started selling the bears, a fact that Bond only discovered when a Surrey shopkeeper rang him up to tell him. “I went to the lawyer about it”, said Bond, “and I got in the lift with Shirley and Eddie. They were terribly nice and pretended it had all been a mistake — and we were friends by the time we got out of the lift. I gave them a licence.”
The Clarksons made a fortune selling millions of the bears, sourcing good-quality miniature duffle coats and buying all Dunlop’s size-five wellington boots so that Paddington could stand up; Bond had to write the wellies into a 1964 story.
Soon, Paddington’s likeness was all over mugs, cookery books, teapots, duvet covers, figurines, “peppermint tins”, clockwork toys, bags, brooches and money boxes — and that was just the first few pages of eBay last week.
The film seems certain to result in a further deluge of bearabilia, although some critics have complained that the computer-generated Paddington looks more like a fox or a meerkat than a bear.
Bond says he put a lot of his father into the character: a man who also never failed to wear his hat outside and who was equally polite to everyone.
“I think the world has speeded up an awful lot, but Paddington still lives life at his own pace,” Bond added. “And people are perhaps quite envious of this small character who goes to bed when he wants to.”
If Britain’s favourite bear had ever been in danger of retreating from national life, it now seems safe to conclude that the new film will spur a lasting revival. Children will emerge from cinemas demanding a bear in their Christmas stockings; their parents will retrieve the old books from the attic and recount Paddington’s adventures once more. If the film does well, sequels appear inevitable.
In an age in which many small children rarely lift their heads from action-packed video games, a meandering Peruvian bear offers something quite different.
More than Yogi, Baloo or Rupert — some would even say more than Winnie-the-Pooh — Paddington has an enduring magnetism. Just don’t call it sex appeal.
www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Arts/article1487210.ece
The author of Paddington reveals his doubts over the new film, and a young Jeremy’s hairy moments, to Oliver Thring
Oliver Thring Published: 23 November 2014
Michael Bond is protective of Paddington, star of the new film
IT HAD always seemed inevitable that some day someone would make a film about Paddington Bear and his travels to London from darkest Peru. Yet no one foresaw that when that film was finally unveiled, it would be accompanied by an immigration drama, a minor sex scandal and an 88-year-old author who at one point became very worried indeed.
Michael Bond, the man who dreamt up the Paddington story 56 years ago, revealed this weekend that when he saw the original script for the live-action, digitally enhanced Paddington blockbuster about to appear on cinema screens around the world he had to have “a bit of an argument” with film makers about their portrayal of a bear who has become a British institution.
Bond said that when he saw a preview of the film last week he was alarmed by a slapstick scene that showed Paddington plunging his head into a toilet to take away the taste of earwax after he used a toothbrush to clean his ears.
“I hated it,” said Bond, who is still fiercely protective of Paddington’s sweet and innocent image.
Instead of flooding the bathroom and sliding down the stairs in a bathtub — as he does in the new film — Bond originally wrote that the bear signed his name in toothpaste on the mirror and splashed in the bath in his duffle coat (which had toggles “for ease of paw”).
Bond said he dislikes seeing anything about Paddington “that I don’t think would happen in the books”. He challenged the film makers about an early deviation from his original account of the moment that a London couple named Brown discovered a Peruvian bear apparently lost at Paddington station.
In the film’s first script “Mr and Mrs Brown met Paddington on the platform and immediately took him to an immigration office,” said Bond, now sitting in his cosy, book-lined study at the house he shares with his wife Sue in northwest London.
“I said: ‘Look, there isn’t an immigration office at Paddington.’ And they said: ‘OK, we can move it somewhere else.’ But I said: ‘If you found a bear on Paddington station would you really rush off to an immigration office? You’d call for a porter or ring the RSPCA.’”
It seems hard to imagine that a children’s film about a wandering bear should generate an immigration controversy — unless Ukip announces a boycott — but Brown’s concerns about the script were not the new film’s only problem.
Last week Britain’s film censors caused a minor kerfuffle by awarding the film a PG certificate, citing supposed “mild sex references”. What, thought millions of anguished parents . . . a Paddington film with sex?
But the material in question was later downgraded to “innuendo” and turned out to be no more salacious than a cross-dressing scene milder than any Christmas pantomime.
Despite his worries about the original script and his niggles with certain scenes, Bond said he was delighted with the overall effect of the film: “I came, I saw, I was conquered.”
nuk-tnl-editorial-prod-staticassets.s3.amazonaws.com/2014/hotspots/ST1123-Paddington/index.html
The movie, which is released nationwide on Friday, is likely to be a huge hit at the Christmas box office, introducing a new generation of children to the exploits of a well-meaning but hapless bear who has a thing about marmalade.
It also raises the intriguing question of how, more than half a century after Bond published the first Paddington book, this improbable Peruvian adventurer still makes so many want to give him a hug.
Paddington’s creation story is almost as famous as the bear himself. It was Christmas Eve in 1956 when Bond, then a 30-year-old BBC cameraman and struggling writer, spotted the last remaining teddy bear for sale at a London store.
He thought: “I can’t let that bear spend Christmas alone,” and took it home as a last-minute present for his then wife, Brenda.
“We were living in a small room — practically a caravan — on the Portobello Road,” he said. A few days later, “I saw the bear sitting on the shelf at home and wondered what it would be like if a real bear had landed on Paddington station. I wrote down the first words without meaning to tell a story, but it caught my fancy and I carried on.” He finished the book in 10 days.
Bond went on to write 25 further Paddington books, selling at least 35m copies in more than 40 languages. The most recent, Love from Paddington, came out this month; it is a book of the bear’s letters to his aunt Lucy in a part of Peru that is always identified only as “darkest”.
The book is published by HarperCollins Children’s Book, a subsidiary of News Corp, the parent company of The Sunday Times.
Since Paddington first appeared there has been a television series, musicals and now a film, although the toys are the most popular spin-off for many children.
It was a Doncaster couple named Shirley and Eddie Clarkson who made the first Paddington bears in the 1960s as presents for their children, Jeremy and Joanna.
Jeremy Clarkson is now quite well known, and Bond says he remembers little Jeremy’s taste for speed long before he became a Top Gear presenter and Sunday Times columnist: “I once saw him riding his tricycle straight into a car.”
The Clarksons started selling the bears, a fact that Bond only discovered when a Surrey shopkeeper rang him up to tell him. “I went to the lawyer about it”, said Bond, “and I got in the lift with Shirley and Eddie. They were terribly nice and pretended it had all been a mistake — and we were friends by the time we got out of the lift. I gave them a licence.”
The Clarksons made a fortune selling millions of the bears, sourcing good-quality miniature duffle coats and buying all Dunlop’s size-five wellington boots so that Paddington could stand up; Bond had to write the wellies into a 1964 story.
Soon, Paddington’s likeness was all over mugs, cookery books, teapots, duvet covers, figurines, “peppermint tins”, clockwork toys, bags, brooches and money boxes — and that was just the first few pages of eBay last week.
The film seems certain to result in a further deluge of bearabilia, although some critics have complained that the computer-generated Paddington looks more like a fox or a meerkat than a bear.
Bond says he put a lot of his father into the character: a man who also never failed to wear his hat outside and who was equally polite to everyone.
“I think the world has speeded up an awful lot, but Paddington still lives life at his own pace,” Bond added. “And people are perhaps quite envious of this small character who goes to bed when he wants to.”
If Britain’s favourite bear had ever been in danger of retreating from national life, it now seems safe to conclude that the new film will spur a lasting revival. Children will emerge from cinemas demanding a bear in their Christmas stockings; their parents will retrieve the old books from the attic and recount Paddington’s adventures once more. If the film does well, sequels appear inevitable.
In an age in which many small children rarely lift their heads from action-packed video games, a meandering Peruvian bear offers something quite different.
More than Yogi, Baloo or Rupert — some would even say more than Winnie-the-Pooh — Paddington has an enduring magnetism. Just don’t call it sex appeal.
www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Arts/article1487210.ece
