“We like to set up our own kind of world, to make a fantasy and invite people into it”
Rik Mayall.
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Hélène Mahieu as Gina |
Fenella Fielding as Mrs Foxfur. |
Although this is their first film together, neither performer is a stranger to the movies - or, for that matter, unable to work on their own. Mayall, for instance, played the title character, an imaginary but extremely embarrassing childhood friend, in Drop Dead Fred, and provided the voice of Mr Toad in the recent Emmy-winning version of The Wind in the Willows, while Edmondson has played guest roles in the cult TV series Absolutely Fabulous (written by his wife, Jennifer Saunders), directed music videos for artistes as diverse as Sandy Shaw, The Pogues and Squeeze, and written a novel.
What is more, to give the lie to Mayall’s claim that Richie and Eddie are the only two characters they can play together, he and Edmondson have appeared in a successful West End version of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
Discovering the effects of irradiated fish. |
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GUESTHOUSE PARADISO |
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A Phil McIntyre and Universal Pictures International.
Prod: Phil McIntyre; Exec prod: Helen Parker, Marc Samuelson, Peter Samuelson; Dir: Adrian Edmondson; Scr: Adrian Edmondson, Rik Mayall; Ph: Alan Almond; Prod des: Tom Brown; Cost des: Pam Downe; Ed: Sean Barton; Mus: Colin Towns.
With Rik Mayall (Richie), Adrian Edmondson (Eddie), Vincent Cassel (Gino Bolognese), Hélène Mahieu (Gina Carbonara), Bill Nighy (Mr Johnson), Fenella Fielding (Mrs Foxfur), Simon Pegg (Mr Nice), Lisa Palfrey (Mrs Nice), Joseph Hughes (Damien Nice), Jessica Mann (Charlene Nice).
International
distribution: UIP.
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But Guesthouse Paradiso is their first time together on the big screen. And it is the first feature Edmondson has directed. He remains wary of the experience. “Simon Pegg, who plays Mr Nice, was telling me that a director friend of his says the difference between directing and acting is the difference between sitting in the back of a car going through a safari park looking at all the animals, and sitting in the front and being worried about the baboons taking your windscreen wipers,” he says. “Well, he’s wrong. It’s the difference between sitting in the back of the car and running through the safari park in your underpants with only a plastic fork to protect yourself.”
Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson on the Guesthouse Paradiso set |
But at least he had Mayall there, too, also in his underpants. And the partnership is what makes the film work. “Rik is genuinely a charmer and Ade is the more methodical person, who’s willing to be angry to make things happen,” says producer Phil McIntyre, a stalwart of the rock ‘n’ roll and stand-up comedy circuits who is also making his feature debut here. “I think it’s a certain amount of hatred between them that gives their relationship that edge. Some of the punches actually land at times!”
Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson on the Guesthouse Paradiso set |
“Ade’s my best friend: he makes me laugh most and I make him laugh most,” says Mayall. “You could get dangerously intellectual about the characters we play and think that it’s been a kind of male-female thing, in that Eddie is the male and Richie is much more feminine - or at least the other side of the moon.”
And Guesthouse Paradiso? Well, says comedy veteran Fenella Fielding, who cameos as Mrs Foxfur: “It makes Fawlty Towers look like The Ritz!”
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