Irony and self-deception fit so well together - and they can provide the writer with scope for gratuitous cruelty. Remember Noel Coward's advice to Mrs Worthington about not putting her daughter on the stage: "The width of her seat would surely defeat her chances of success." (In the polite version "seat" becomes "feet".)
Alan Bennett's Lesley (Comer) must have quite a shapely seat, because the male film-makers that she desperately wants to impress try to manoeuvre her into taking off her bikini bottom for this scene on a yacht. Lesley is portraying "Travis", who may or may not be a good-time party girl. Lesley is trying to "develop" the character. Good luck with that, darling.
One thing we learn from this episode "Her Big Chance": writers hate the movie business. Writers sweat their souls, trying to assemble coherent emotional structures; then they sweat their minds, hoping to discover some interesting ideas; then they sweat the language, eventually resorting to a thesaurus to find some words that are not already debased into drivel. At last, on paper or screen, a "script" appears. Writers love their scripts, as parents can love difficult children. The script is handed over to the movie business... and then complete idiots muck it all about! The film people that Lesley encounters - what a bunch of dopes and frauds.
Young female actors are the raw material at the very bottom of the food chain. But Alan Bennett seems to have made Lesley unnecessarily pathetic. We must assume that the director, Josie Rourke, is well aware of the ambiguities. Yes, we the audience are tricked into condescending to Lesley and laughing at her foibles and naïveté - and then perhaps we realise that we should be ashamed of ourselves.
Alan Bennett's Lesley (Comer) must have quite a shapely seat, because the male film-makers that she desperately wants to impress try to manoeuvre her into taking off her bikini bottom for this scene on a yacht. Lesley is portraying "Travis", who may or may not be a good-time party girl. Lesley is trying to "develop" the character. Good luck with that, darling.
One thing we learn from this episode "Her Big Chance": writers hate the movie business. Writers sweat their souls, trying to assemble coherent emotional structures; then they sweat their minds, hoping to discover some interesting ideas; then they sweat the language, eventually resorting to a thesaurus to find some words that are not already debased into drivel. At last, on paper or screen, a "script" appears. Writers love their scripts, as parents can love difficult children. The script is handed over to the movie business... and then complete idiots muck it all about! The film people that Lesley encounters - what a bunch of dopes and frauds.
Young female actors are the raw material at the very bottom of the food chain. But Alan Bennett seems to have made Lesley unnecessarily pathetic. We must assume that the director, Josie Rourke, is well aware of the ambiguities. Yes, we the audience are tricked into condescending to Lesley and laughing at her foibles and naïveté - and then perhaps we realise that we should be ashamed of ourselves.