Mayfair Playboy Put the little word de in front of your name. This makes people think that you are important. I knew a man called Leo Rosenberg from Graz who called himself Lionel de Rosenberg and everyone thought he was an Austrian prince. Understand that the most important thing in life is to have a nice time, go to nice places and meet nice people. (Now: to have a nice time you must drink too much; nice places are great hotels and large houses with a lot of music and no books; nice people say stupid things in good English - unpleasant people say clever things with a bad accent.) In the old days the man who had no money was not a gentleman. Today, in Mayfair, tilings are different. A gentleman can have money or borrow money from his friends; the important thing is that even if he is very poor he must not do useful work.
Always laugh if someone says something amusing. Be polite, but do not be serious. Laugh at everything that you are not intelligent enough to understand. Don't forget that your clothes — your trousers, ties and shirts — are the most important things in your life. Always be drunk after 6.30 p.m.
Chapter 18 How to Be A Film-Maker
To become a really great British film-maker, you need to have a little foreign blood in you.
The first thing a British film-maker wants to do is to teach Hollywood how to make good films. To do this you must not try to make films about American subjects. Here is the subject for an American film. Do not use it.
A young man from Carthage (Kentucky), who can sing beautifully, goes to town. After many difficulties he becomes New York's most famous singer. At the same time he falls in love with a poor girl who works in a local shop. She is very beautiful but nobody knows that she also has the best voice in the city. She helps her lover when she sings a song in his theatre in front of six million people. The young and very famous singer marries the girl.
Here is an example of a serious and 'deep' American film: a happy but very poor young man in New Golders Green (Alabama) becomes very rich selling thousands of machines to other poor people. The richer he becomes, the more unhappy he is — everybody knows that money cannot make you happy; it is better to be poor and have no job. The young man buys seven big cars and three aeroplanes and becomes more unhappy. He builds a large and beautiful house and is very, very unhappy. When the woman he has loved for fifteen years finally says she will marry him, he cries for three days.
This story is very deep; it has soul. To show the film has soul, the cameraman takes interesting and surprising pictures of the filmstars. He takes photographs of the bottom of their feet and the tops of their heads. Everybody is happy with this new way of making films and thinks that the film-maker is very clever.
English film-makers are different. They know that not all the people who watch films are stupid and some of them can enjoy intelligent films.
Here are some important rules you must remember if you want to make a really and truly British film:
1 The famous writer, Mr Noel Coward, says that he met a man who once saw a Cockney. Cockneys are people who were born in the east of London. They cannot speak good English and they cannot say the letter 'h', but they are kind and have big hearts. Now all good people in films are Cockneys and every British film must have a Cockney.
2 Nothing is too good for a British film-maker — he must have the best. I have heard of a man (I do not know if this story is true, but it shows how British film-makers work) who made a film about Egypt. He built a sphinx in England. He sailed to Egypt (where there is a real sphinx) and he took his own sphinx. He was quite right to do this, because the Egyptian sphinx is very old and great film-makers do not use anything old. Secondly, the old sphinx is good enough for the Egyptians but the Egyptians are foreigners; British film-makers need something better.
3 To make a good film, change the story and the people a little. Make Peter Pan (a famous children's story) into a murder story. Make the Concise Oxford Dictionary into a funny film and sing all the words!
главная мысль, вообще не понимаю о чём там...
Відповідь:
Поймите, что самое главное в жизни - хорошо проводить время, посещать красивые места и знакомиться с хорошими людьми. (Теперь: чтобы хорошо провести время, вы должны выпить слишком много; хорошие места - это отличные отели и большие дома с большим количеством музыки и без книг; хорошие люди говорят глупости на хорошем английском - неприятные люди говорят умные вещи с плохим акцентом. )
Пояснення:
Understand that the most important thing in life is to have a nice time, go to nice places and meet nice people. (Now: to have a nice time you must drink too much; nice places are great hotels and large houses with a lot of music and no books; nice people say stupid things in good English - unpleasant people say clever things with a bad accent.)