Trivia
There are a few Doctor Who in-jokes:
The Doctor and his breathless female assistant who asks questions like,
"What ever can you mean Doctor?"
Dr Arbuthnott's surname is taken from Alan Arbuthnott who was Technical Resources
Manager on some of the mid-eighties Doctor Who stories.
The music playing in the background of the Layton Bridges tape was used as a
sound effect in a Doctor Who episode.
Janice Pennyworth's surname is a corruption of
Moneypenny, the faithful secretary from the James Bond books. Pennyworth is also
the same surname given to Alfred the butler in the Batman comics. The squirting
water at the plant was a reference to the secretary in the Oscar-winning
animated short Bob's Birthday.
Jeremy Joseph-Sinclair.
His double-barrelled surname comes from the writer/directors two flatmates
middle names.
The T-shirt saying 'banana' on it was suggested by the actor playing the part.
Bernard Wright.
Bernard came from a weird child who went to the same school as the writer. He
was exactly the sort of person who you easily imagine having a strange sexual
perversion of some kind. The last time I heard of him he was trying to get onto
a drama course at University.
Nerys Perkins.
Her name was a combination of Nerys Hughes and the comedian Sue Perkins. I used
the name Nerys because the BBC brought back The Liver Birds while I was writing
the script. I just liked the name and gave it to the poor downtrodden woman who
didn't have a name up until that point. I nicked Sue Perkins surname for no
other good reason except I spent too much time watching Light Lunch when I
should really have been writing the script.
Layton Bridges.
Layton is based on those awful American self-fulfilment tapes that you see on
The Clive James Show and programmes of that sort. They are all presented by
terribly sincere people whose only thought is to help you in the most terribly
sincere and caring way. They are always presented from the presenter's home.
Usually an enormous mansion somewhere in Beverley Hills.
The name Layton Bridges was one that had been
rattling around my head for ages. It just seemed to suit the character. I have a
list somewhere of names that I've thought up from time to time, he probably came
from there.
The line "...learn to take a swim in Lake
You" was really said to Peter Seller's daughter by an LA psychiatrist. She
decided to stop going shortly afterwards. I don't really blame her.
The curly-wurlys used in the production caused
endless problems because they kept melting under the heat from the lights.
Bill Steel doesn't actually eat the curly-wurly.
He had given chocolate up for Lent. He did offer to eat it if necessary.
However, I had just finished working on a film where Jesus comes back as a curry
delivery boy and just about everything that could go wrong had one way or
another. I decided not to annoy the Big Man Upstairs any more then I could
avoid.
The shooting style is a reference to the Jim
Jarmusch film, "Down by Law" which starts is filmed in black and
white, starts with a tracking shot after which the camera is locked down for
every other shot. In many ways it is also similar to the style of the Japanese
director Ozu with its low camera angle and lack of camera movement - a technique
which focuses the audiences attention on the performances.
The scene in the park is a homage to a similar
scene in Jaws.
The captions showing the day are almost identical
to those used in The Shining, a film in which a man slowly loses his sanity and
Looker, a film in which a man thinks he is losing his sanity.
The intro music to Dr Arbuthnott's self-help film
is the old ATV signature tune. Bill Steel worked as a continuity announcer for
Thames which replaced ATV.
The scene where Dr Arbuthnott tells Jeremy to
bugger off is the scene which always gets the biggest laugh. Mainly because
there aren't any actual jokes in the script up until that point.
The telecine was done by Granada Television.
Therefore the film was run through the same telecine machine as 'Cracker'!
The "That's it, finito, finished" is a
homage both to the X-Files and the cartoon series 'King of the Hill". The
lines used are different takes from those used in the film itself.
Bernard's hands are played in the final scene by
sound recordist and editor Dylan Pank. He also supplied the heavy breathing
heard in the scene.
One in-joke that I only thought of in retrospect
would have included an additional caption during the closing credits. It would
have read: "Dr Arbuthnott will return in: "The Psychiatrist Who Loved
Me". Perhaps I'll edit it in one day.
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