The Strike
- Episode aired Feb 20, 1988
- 59m
Paul, a former miner, writes a hard-hitting left-wing screenplay about the 1984 miners' strike. It is accepted by a Hollywood film company but gets turned into a distorted action thriller fi... Read allPaul, a former miner, writes a hard-hitting left-wing screenplay about the 1984 miners' strike. It is accepted by a Hollywood film company but gets turned into a distorted action thriller film in which Arthur Scargill is portrayed by Al Pacino.Paul, a former miner, writes a hard-hitting left-wing screenplay about the 1984 miners' strike. It is accepted by a Hollywood film company but gets turned into a distorted action thriller film in which Arthur Scargill is portrayed by Al Pacino.
- Tammy
- (as Katrina Mansoor)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe film won the Rose d'Or television award for 1988. Peter Richardson reportedly gave the $5,000 prize money to Arthur Scargill.
- GoofsWhen Arthur Scargill is trying to reach The Houses Of Parliament he passes Buckingham Palace and starts to come up The Mall. He is going in the wrong direction, he should have gone around the fountain and up Birdcage Walk. However, this sequence is from the film-within-a-film and is therefore probably an intentional parody of Hollywood's habit of making movie characters pass famous landmarks with little regard for continuity.
- Quotes
[first lines]
Verity: We're all very excited about your script, aren't we David?
Film Executive: Oh, we all love the script. All of us.
Verity: It's so wonderful. It's... It's quite fabulous.
Film Executive: Absolutely
Verity: It's brilliant, quite brilliant.
Bernard: Yes, well what initially attracted me to the idea is...
Verity: [to waiter] Bucks Fizz, please.
Bernard: ...is there's this unashamedly powerful, socialist epic. And as a director, the way Paul's captured the sheer size of the struggle...
Film Executive: [to waiter] Anything but a Coca Cola, thank you.
Bernard: ...millions of people unemployed. Families ripped apart, whole communities on tranquilisers.
[to waiter]
Bernard: Thank you. It's... It's... It's magnificent.
Verity: No, It's smashing stuff. I mean when I got to the end I felt as if I had been through the miners' strike myself.
Film Executive: Oh absolutely! I mean if we're going to revitalize the British film industry from an American perspective then 'Miners Strike' is undoubtedly the sort of film we should be doing this year.
Verity: Oh, I agree. It has terrific potential.
Film Executive: [pause] What about Al Pacino as Arthur Scargill?
Goldie: Can Pacino box?
You might have heard of the term " audience identification " which simply put is an audience identifying with the characters in the film . This explains over the decades why so many British films have had the lead character being implicitly an American or played by an American actor . The idea of the thinking behind this that an American audience wouldn't be able to empathise with a non American in the lead role . This explains why a British film like MEMPHEIS BELLE has an American aircrew on a mission rather than a British one because a Lancaster bomber crew would be of little interest from an American marketing point of view . It also explains why an eagerly anticipated event movie like ALIEN 3 flopped at the US box office almost mainly down to a cast composed of British character actors
This film by the collective of comedians known as The Comic Strip hit creative gold with THE STRIKE . It's take 1980s satire to new levels in what was a turbulent period in domestic British politics . The obvious target is Hollywood and its philistine attitude to making money but other targets are carefully sniped in its sights not least the politics of the middle class champagne socialists who claim to be on the side of the people but their principal is mainly built upon being fashionable in public . To a degree all this is somewhat dated because you'd have to remember who Arthur Scargill , a firebrand socialist leader of the miners union who in order to save the workers went in to the year long strike with a large union and a small house and came out of the strike with a small union and a large house
You could be churlish and say perhaps Peter Richardson as Al Pacino and more especially Jennifer Saunders as Meryl Streep aren't all that identical to the actors they're playing but that's not the point because they're exaggerating and parodying the characters rather than emulating them . And whatever the minor faults of THE STRIKE the scenes were the audience get to see the film proper where Britain has been turned in to an almost surreal Americanised landscape are genuinely laugh out loud funny along with some fantastic and scathing dialogue
- Theo Robertson
- Jul 26, 2013
Details
- Runtime59 minutes