- Title: FRANCE: FILM "THE LIMEY " PREMIERED AT THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
- Date: 22nd May 1999
- Summary: CANNES, FRANCE [MAY 16, 1999] [REUTERS - ACCESS ALL] [SOUNDBITE] [English] TERENCE STAMP SAYING: "As it was told to me, they'd been writing this script for years and they couldn't crack it. They couldn't make it unusual enough. They just had a thriller and Steven is not going to waste his time. If he is going to make a movie it's got to be unique. And Lem Dobbs, he said,
- Embargoed: 6th June 1999 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: CANNES, FRANCE
- Country: France
- Reuters ID: LVA4HZM1YNIOSQEFFB0HFEI8J0BC
- Story Text: The 52nd Cannes Film Festival, may be a bit of a damp squib this year, with few star names and mideocre films.But the second festival week, has turned into a firecracker with some of the sexiest stars from the sixties making a dazzling showing in the out of competition film, 'The Limey'.
Steven Soderbergh's stylish thriller, 'The Limey' stars Terence Stamp as an Englishman named Wilson who comes to Los Angeles to avenge the murder of his daughter.She had been living there with a sleazeball record producer, played by Peter Fonda.
It's a battle of the sixties icons...Fonda, who produced and co-scripted the film 'Easy Rider' in 1969, captured the rebellious mood of 1960s beatnik culture.Stamp too was unforgettable in the drop out era, a sex god who dazzled in 'Billy Budd' and was immortalised in a song by the Kinks 'Waterloo Sunset'.He dated the actresses Julie Christie and Jacqueline Bisset, before meeting the first supermodel, Jean Shrimpton and settling down with her -- for at least a few years.
But in real life the two actors, synonomous with the psychedelic era, hung out, enjoying wild days and even wilder nights together.
'The Limey' is one long trip down memory lane.Steven Soderbergh, who directed the landmark film 'Sex, Lies and Videotape', in an unusual move put the two middle-aged stars together to fight it out.
Fonda, who plays a sleazy charmer, spends most of his time harking back to his droning theories on the meaning of the sixties.The actor says that he based the character of Terry Valentine on some of his closest friends.
In the film, Stamp too has links to the past and there are several flashbacks of him in his youth.
But instead of trying to replace Stamp with a younger actor for the earlier scenes, Soderbergh and writer Lem Dobbs came up with an ingenious idea -- they used footage of Stamp in his film 'Poor Cow', directed by Ken Loach in 1967.
Carefully chosen segments of 'Poor Cow' have been seamlessly edited into 'The Limey'.And Stamp re-inforced this innovation, by developing the character in the early film and turning the young Wilson into a maturer, grizzled villain in the new one, maintaining all the characteristics he possessed in the sixties movie, 'Poor Cow'.. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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