Billy Liar

Starring: Tom Courtenay, Wilfred Pickles Director: John Schlesinger Original UK Premiere: 1963 Dvd Release: 25th February, 2002 Number Of Discs: 1 Format: Black & White, PAL, Region 2 Encoding

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Billy Liar is a novel by Keith Waterhouse. It concerns the activities of a Walter Mitty -style character, a young man from a working-class background who has greater aspirations. In 1963, it was made into a film with Tom Courtenay in the role of Billy & Julie Christie as his love interest. Mona Washbourne played his mother & Wilfred Pickles his father. Rodney Bewes played his best friend. The piece is often seen as archetypal of UK literature in the 1960s & inspired many later kitchen-sink televised dramas. In 2004 the magazine Total Film named it the 12th greatest British film of all time. The novel was also used as the basis for a television sitcom series of the 1970s & was made into a successful West End musical starring Michael Crawford. Waterhouse later wrote a sequel called Billy Liar on the Moon Billy Liar is also the title of the second track off of Her Majesty The Decemberists by The Decemberists

DVD Extras: just the theatrical trailer which is a fairly crass affair. There's been no remastering, it seems, but both sound & vision are clean enough & the print preserves the original's full 2.35:1 widescreen ratio.

Billy Liar was the multimedia phenomenon of its era. Starting out as a novel by Yorkshire writer Keith Waterhouse, it rapidly became a long-running stage play, adapted by Waterhouse with playwright Willis Hall, which lead to the movie, scripted by Waterhouse & Hall for John Schlesinger to direct, then a stage musical & finally a spin-off TV series. Do you get the feeling it caught the mood of the times?

The basic set-up owes a lot to James Thurbers classic short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Our hero, Billy Fisher, lives at home in a Bradford semi with his nagging parents & works as a lowly clerk in an undertakers parlour. But, in his imagination he lives a rich & varied fantasy life as gallant military leader, suave socialite, best-selling novelist & so forth. Trouble is, he cant always keep fantasy & reality apart, any more than he can the keep two girls hes engaged to separate. Not to mention his other problems….

Schlesingers direction brings out the desperation behind the comedy, & Tom Courtenay, at once defiant & hangdog, slips perfectly into the role created on stage by Albert Finney. But the whole casts a joy, not least the great Leonard Rossiter as undertaker Mr Shadrach, Billys saturnine boss. And then theres Julie Christie, the luminous spirit of the Swinging 60s, in her first starring role as the girl who offers Billy a chance of real escape. At the end, when she takes the train to London, away from the smoke & the grimness oop north, the whole British New Wave went with her.

Tom Courtenay is a British actor who came to prominence in the early 1960s with a succession of critically-acclaimed films including The Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner, Billy Liar & Dr Zhivago.. He was born Thomas Courtenay in Hull, England & made his stage debut in 1960 with the Old Vic company. His Hamlet at the Edinburgh Festival of 1968 marked him out as one of Britains leading stage actors as well as a film actor. He showed his comic talent again by creating the role of Norman in Alan Ayckbourn s trilogy, The Norman Conquests. He was briefly married to the actress, Cheryl Kennedy. His television appearances have been relatively few, but have included She Stoops to Conquer on BBC & several Ayckbourn plays. He appeared in I Heard the Owl Call My Name on US television in 1973. His best known film role after the 1960s is probably in The Dresser,, with Albert Finney. In 2003 he appeared on the West End stage again in the one-man show Pretending To Be Me, as Philip Larkin. Sir Thomas Courtenay was knighted in 2001. Posters Of The Dresser

Editors Choice: Last Orders, A Rather English Marriage, Let Him Have It, The Dresser, Billy Liar, King Rat, King And Country, The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner, View DVDology

Wilfred Pickles was an English actor & radio presenter. Born in Halifax, Calderdale, he was a proud Yorkshireman & having been selected by the BBC as an announcer for its North Region radio service, went on to be an occasional newsreader on the National service during World War II. He was the first newsreader to speak in a regional accent rather than the BBC English of the period & caused some comment with his farewell catchphrase. & to all in the North, good neet. He soon became a radio celebrity & also pursued an acting career in West End theatre. His most significant work was as host of the BBC Radio show Have A Go, which ran from 1946 to 1967 & launched such catchphrases as How do, how are yer?, Are yer courting? & Give him the money, Mabel, delivered in Pickles inimitable style. He appeared in the show with his wife Mabel Pickles née Myerscough. He was awarded the OBE for services to broadcasting in 1950. He is the uncle of judge James Pickles & great-uncle of actress Carolyn Pickles.

Editors Choice: Billy Liar, View DVDology

John Richard Schlesinger was a British film director. Born in London, he went on to work in television as an actor after graduating from the Balliol College, Oxford. One of his first movies, the documentary Terminus, earned him a Venice Film Festival Gold Lion & a British Academy Award. His first three movies, A Kind of Loving, Billy Liar & Darling describe tartly the modern urban way of life in England. Schlesingers next movie was Far From the Madding Crowd, an adaptation of Thomas Hardy s popular novel. Schlesingers Midnight Cowboy was probably one of his best movies & it won Oscars for Best Director & Best Picture. His later films include Sunday, Bloody Sunday, The Day of the Locust, Marathon Man, Yanks, Pacific Heights & The Innocent. Schlesinger also directed Timon of Athens for the Royal Shakespeare Company & the musical I & Albert at Londons Piccadilly Theater. Schlesinger underwent a quadruple heart bypass in 1998, before suffering a stroke in December 2000. Posters Of The Next Best Thing

Editors Choice: The Next Best Thing, Eye For An Eye, Royal Opera House, The Falcon And The Snowman, Yanks, Day Of The Locust, Marathon Man, Midnight Cowboy, View DVDology

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