Directed by Dick Lester
In February 1959, Spike and Peter Sellers made their first
short film: "The Running, Jumping and Standing Still
Film" with Dick Lester (who later made "A Hard
Day’s Night" with The Beatles and "The Three
Musketeers"). Australian actor Leo McKern was in the
film and it was later nominated for an Oscar.
Dick Lester directed three series of the Goon Show for
BBC Television after Peter Sellers approached him with the
idea. Spike initially had reservations:
"He told me, 'Comedy will never work on TV –
if I write that two Eskimos go down in a lift and come up
in Trafalgar Square, I can do it. But you can’t, so
it will never work'."
"So we did the first show without Spike. The next
day I got a call from Spike, who said, 'Come over and I’ll
give you the running order for the second show'. It was
inconceivable that we’d do a TV version of the Goon
Show without him."
Dick Lester
"A famous critic once observed that [on the Goon Show
set] I looked like a bemused lion tamer who in the cage
without a whip or a chair."
"Two or three people have influenced me hugely in
my life. Spike was certainly one of them. John Lennon was
another.
"[There were] moments when his raw intensity produced
a burst of creativity that could never have been rehearsed."
Dick Lester
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