Fat Man on a Beach (1973) - full transcript

($ Scott Joplin: "The Entertainer")

(Narrator) This is a film
about a fat man on a beach.

Did you hear what I said?

This is a film about a fat man
on a beach.

Do you really want to sit there
and watch if?

Well, don't say I didn't warn you.

($ Ragtime piano music continues...)

(Seagulls screech)

A man taking pictures of
a man taking pictures.

There must be something in that.

(Ragtime music fades)



So... let's be comfortable, shall we?

Now then, why are we here?

Ah, the old questions!
You remember the old questions?

Why are we here?
Why are we here?

The old philosophical questions.

I'll have to go and think about it.

($ Ragtime piano music resumes...)

So, if we can't answer questions like:
'Why are we here?'

Can we answer any other sorts
of questions?

One, like say: 'Where are we?'

Where are we?
Well, it's a long story actually,

but I'm going to tell it to you
all the same.

Round the coast from here
there was a tribe, an aboriginal tribe.

This was several hundreds of thousands
of years ago.



Very little is known about them,
of course, except their name,

they were called the Hellawi,
and they lived in a marshy district.

And this marshy district
had enormous bulrushes

or sort of prehistoric reeds
which grew six foot tall.

This was a bit tough on the Hellawi

because unfortunately,
they were only five foot six tall.

So they spent most of their time
going around saying:

"Where the hell are we?
Where the hell are we?

"Where the hell are we?"

(Welsh man)
"What do you know of Lleyn?

You'll notice the weather changes a bit
in this picture from time to time.

Where the hell are we, though?
We still haven't decided where we are.

Can I start that again? Yes.

You'll notice the weather changes
quite a lot in this picture.

Where the hell are we?
Well, we're just about here.

Right on the end there.

I used to chew my nails,
but I couldn't live off it

and I only had 21 in any case.

We're just on the end here.

This is the Lleyn Peninsula
in North Wales, Caernarfonshire.

It sticks out like an arm
from North Wales.

And there's Anglesey up here.

Every school girl knows that.

It looks like a head of a diver
diving into the Bristol Channel,

the Irish Sea.

We're on a beach called
Porth Ceiriad Bay,

right on the end here.

This enormous lock-jaw like location

is called Hell's Mouth.

It was called Hell's Mouth
because any sailing ship

that got becalmed across here

was driven ashore by the currents

and inevitably wrecked.

The locals used to be very savage
at the time

and used to cut rings off people's fingers,

and things like that
if they foundered ashore.

There's a mountain here called
Garn Fadrun.

You can stand on top of that mountain

and see all around the peninsula.

You can comprehend this...

(Pop!)

...peninsula as a place...
Now one of the lights has gone.

So probably you can't see
very much at all now.

Why all these explanations?

Anyone would think we were making
a film for the mass audience.

(Welsh man) "What can an Englishman
know about Lleyn?

How did I find this place
in the first place?

Well, I was hitchhiking through
North Wales.

At the time I was
a rather elderly student at 26

and I'd been reading English, which is
a very bad thing for a writer to read.

A quite stupid thing for a writer
to read actually at university.

And I'd been besotted by Irish writers -

like Sam Beckett and James Joyce
and Flann O'Brien -

and I wanted to see the Dublin
that they'd all written about.

So I hitchhiked from London
on the Holyhead Road

through North Wales,

and I was given a lift,
not to say picked up,

by a man who owned a country club
at Abersoch.

And he, during a course of perhaps
three quarters of an hour car journey

along the Ab,

offered me a job as a student,
as a barman -

because I was a student, I was obviously
going to be cheap for him -

at this country club he ran in Abersoch.

I couldn't take the job then,
I went on to Dublin.

But after about a month my money
ran out then, naturally,

and so I rang him up and said,
"Is the offer of the job still open?”

And I came here. And that's the way,
one of those things...

if I'd been sitting in a different place
on that road,

or if I'd...

in some way just missed it
by ten seconds,

that man stopping at that point...

the whole of my life would have been
different subsequently.

I shouldn't for instance have written
the first novel I wrote,

which was about the experiences
of that summer here in Lleyn.

That was how I came to Lleyn.

I remember leaving him

on the junction of that road in,
um... off the Ab.

He took me as far as, er...
I think it was just past Betws-y-Coed,

and he said,
"I'm going down there."

And I looked down there,

and it was a marvellously sunlit
glacial valley.

It looked like El Dorado.

It looked absolutely marvellous.

So when... This was probably one of
the things which made me remember

his offer of the job
and made me want to go,

because it looked like El Dorado.

It looked like a very special place.

And Lleyn is a very special

and a very curious

and a very strange place.

($ Welsh ballad,
"The Young Man From Lleyn")

(5 Ballad draws to a close)

That's enough of that! You're not meant
to be enjoying this, you know.

Someone's laid a fire,
isn't that nice?

Scull cap.

Skull cup.

The man who produced my first film
was called Bruce Beresford.

And he used this expression

whenever we got in trouble
on the film, which was often.

He said, "It'll be all right, we can cut away
to a bunch of bananas."

It was some time before I understood
exactly what this meant.

He'd worked
for some film unit in Africa

which belonged to the government,
and the only films the government -

who happened to be the people in power
at the time -

wanted to make,
were films about their own speeches.

So he used to have to
put together

these enormously long speeches
by African politicians

and try to make a film out of them,

And of course, there are jumps.

That is to say, film only lasts for
ten minutes in the camera, normally.

So every ten minutes
you have a jump.

You can demonstrate it very easily,
like his...

You see? If you take a bit out there
there's a big jump.

My head appears to jump about.

Now, if you slip in a shot between
those two things,

then the audience accepts it
more readily.

They think, while the thing
was on the screen

that then something else
happened.

It's one of the little deceits
that filmmakers practise.

Bruce Beresford in this...
in this African situation.

In the middle of
these politicians' speeches,

just used to cut away
to a bunch of bananas.

Hence the expression.

Now, the first time I came down
to this beach,

I was brought here by the man
who ran the club that I worked for

at um... at Abersoch.

He was a man who was about 60,
I suppose,

and he was trying to pretend
that he was much younger.

He had young girlfriends,
he dressed in a young manner.

And to me at the age of 26 -
I was a very young 26,

I was very much of a prig

and it seemed to me that
one ought to be one's age

and that one ought not to pretend
that the one was younger.

This man had brought me to this beach
with a young girl of about 20,

whom he was - in those days,
in those words - courting.

And I was, in a sense,
playing gooseberry

and was very ashamed of it,
in a sense.

He, as I say,
was courting her,

but he was trying to impress me
at the same time.

So when we came down here,

he showed me these
stratified cliffs behind me

and talked about them,
and then went back to her.

Later, I wrote a poem about this,
in which I tried to sort myself out.

It's called Porth Ceiriad Bay'

It's quite short, so don't go away.

Porth Ceiriad Bay

Descended to the shore,

Odd how we left the young girl with us
to herself

and went straight to examine
the stratified cliffs,

forgot her entirely in our interest.

You marvelled at the shapes
the clockwork sea had worn the stone,

talking keenly,

until the pace
of this random sculpture

recalled your age to you,

and then its anodynes.

And so you turned, pretending youth,

courting the girl
as if you were a boy again,

leaving the wry cliffs to their erosion

and me to my observant solitude.

($ Ragtime piano music)

($ Music fades...)

(Gulls screech)

One of the things
that happened to me down here

is something that stayed with me
a very long time.

The place is full of images,
of metaphors, of things happening.

This one could, in fact,
have taken place anywhere,

but it happened in Lleyn
and I think that's significant.

I was driving from Pwliheli
to Abersoch

and I happened on a road accident
very shortly after it had happened.

There'd been a crash between,
I think, two cars

and a motorcycle with
a pillion passenger as well as a rider.

The pillion passenger had gone
straight through the windscreen

of the car
coming in the opposite direction.

And the rider of the motorcycle
had been thrown across the road

and had hit a wire fence

of the sort which has
concrete posts with holes in them

and single wires through them.

He'd been thrown against
this wire fence

and the wires had gone through him

like a cheese cutter through...
through cheese.

You...

They don't have many of them
these days -

a piece of wire on a board,
or a piece of marble.

And the wire is simply pulled
through the cheese.

It's a very good way of cutting cheese.

I expect the machines which package
cheese use the same method.

But we don't see that,
we just see the plastic packets.

Thank God.

This... The way this motorcyclist
had been cut up

by these wires...

I passed it only fleetingly.

I just drove past

and saw this man
in a motorcyclist helmet -

and a fat lot of good that did him -

lying by the side of the road

having been thrown against

this wire fence.

And it's stayed with me,
that image, that metaphor -

wires going through a man
like a cheese cutter through cheese -

for a long while now.

It's a metaphor for the way
the human condition

seems to treat humankind.

The body as a "soft machine”
as William Burroughs said.

The soft machine,
thrown against a wire fence,

is just cut into pieces.

I passed that image
just in that fleeting time

with that man's life ebbing away.

I learnt later he'd been killed.
They said instantly.

But there his life was, ebbing away,

and it happened in Lleyn.

(5 Jolly ragtime piano music)

(Music stops abruptly)

The word 'gull' comes from
a Welsh word 'gwylan' to wail.

So a sea 'gull' in English
is really the sea wailer.

Wailer - I've got to use English
when I talk to you.

Wailer.
W-A-I-L-E-R.

It's a wonder we can talk at all,
communicate with each other

with these sort of words
that have several meanings.

It reminds me of a joke -

everything reminds me of a joke,
if I'm lucky.

There was a girl
who'd been taken

to the pictures -
remember the pictures? - by a man.

And he said, "We're going to see
a film about whales."

And she said, "I'm not terribly
keen on Taffies, as you know."

He said, "No, no, no, no.
Not that kind of 'whales'.

"This is a film called 'Moby Dick'

And she said,
"I don't like sex films either."

But the seagull, the wailer,

the sea wailer,

is a word which has different meanings
in different languages

very closely connected with English.

For instance, in old Dutch,
the word gulle, G-U-L-L-E,

means a great wench without wit.

This is all genuine stuff, you know.
That's why I've got the script here.

And there's a bloody aeroplane now.

(Drones overhead)

A Folland Gnat, if I'm not mistaken.

...and in old high-German,
gull without an 'e',

or rather low-German...

I'm not making this up, you know.
It's all here in the script.

Gull is a soft, mild,
open-hearted,

good-natured sort of person.

Is that your idea of a gull?

(Screeching)

The great Welsh poet,
Dafydd ap Gwilym,

wrote a poem about gulls,
called 'the Seagull"

I have tried to translate
the first stanza of it.

Erm... except,
translate is the wrong word.

You can...
You cannot translate.

You lose everything -
as someone said - except the poetry.

I mean, you can translate everything
except the poetry.

This is my attempt at the first stanza

of Dafydd ap Gwilym's 'Seagull"

Gull, all grace on the flood tide

Mailed hand of sea salt

Moonlight white, reflected snow

Perfect lily of the wave's valley

Fish fattened, cork-like coaster

Shining sheet of paper

Gull, gwylan, wailer

Gull, all grace

Oh! I've driven him off. He can't take
my version of Dafydd.

($ Ragtime piano music)

(Music fades)

If I hit these stones,
will it be an accident, do you think?

You can't deny that that's what
I'm trying to do, and I did it.

But is it an accident?

Why can't a film be
a celebration of accidents?

Why does it have to be
neat and tidy and logical?

Because life isn't neat
and tidy and logical.

Why can't a film be
a celebration of the accidental?

Do you have to be told a story
every time?

Do you have 10 be, em...

do you have to have all the ends
tied up so neatly?

"Telling stories', if you remember,

is a child's euphemism for
'telling lies'.

Telling stories is telling lies.

Because life doesn't tell you stories,

life is accidental.

If you tidy life up,

you have to admit
that you're falsifying it.

See? Was that an accident?

I think it was, actually.

The thing is, telling stories is
tidying life up

in a way that it may not be...

I'll tell you a poem.

Mary had a little lamb

She put it in a bucket

And every time the lamb got out

The bulldog tried to put it back again

You see,
life doesn't tell you stories like that.

That's tidied life up.
It is really all chaos.

It is chaos.

I say it is.
I can't prove it is chaos

any more than anyone else
can prove there is a pattern

or there is some sort of deity.

But, even if it is all chaos,

and you say, 'Let's celebrate the chaos.
Let's celebrate the accidental.'

Does that make us any the worse off?

Are we any the worse off?

There's still love. There's still humour.

Umm...

Mary had another lamb,
she also had a duck

She put it on the mantelpiece
to see if it would

fall off

That's wrong, actually.

Mary had a little lamb,
she also had a duck

She put THEM on the mantelpiece
to see if they would

fall off

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Cut.

(5 Ragtime piano)

(Music continues...)

(Music fades)

One can learn lessons from anything...
Anything.

One can probably even learn lessons
from eating apples.

Learn lessons from anything.

Cheers.

I'm going to read
some more poems now. Erm...

It may be that if you want to go
and have a cup of tea,

this would be a good time.

I know that's what
you masses are like.

The mention of poetry
and off you go.

This one's a Welsh one, of course.

It's called 'Independence'

Rhiain the Gas,
the Welsh introduced her -

a girl who so much looked like her
on whom my life had foundered,

that I could not help but offer her
a kind of love at sight.

Rhiain once received me

in her office at the Gas Co.
opposite the college,

to show the male
her independent state

and corner him
on her own territory.

The trouble was that just as
She appeared so much like her,

So she behaved the same.

"Ah, yes," said lolo,
some weeks later,

"We should really have fold you
about Rhiain.”

There's something primeval
about a beach, isn't there?

The first poem I ever wrote
was about a beach.

I'm not going to recite that one though.

(Gulls screech)

During the time I was, um...

Gregynog Fellow
at University of Wales,

I wrote some englynion,

or, I tried to write Welsh poems
that were...

(Crack of explosives)

World War Ill has broken out.

As I was saying
before I was so crudely interrupted,

I tried to write englynion,
Welsh poems,

which are very difficult
to do in English.

However, here are my poor attempts.

This first one is called Fern'

Hookheaded hairy young fern,

springy, curled,
coy greeny thruster

set on its own spread revelation

'Broom'

Common broom confused
with whin, gorse, furse,

finds its own-ness
in ternate leaves,

coiled styles
and jet black seedpods:.

Yet it is kin.

Beech'

Beech, from which book:
like learning,

pellucid leaves' late turning

Slows ending, adds adjourning.

(5 Ragtime piano)

The third summer I spent down here

was the strangest of all three,
in many ways.

I'd been asked to come down
this time

by a man I'd better call Henry,
who...

...believed that the treasure ship
of the Spanish Armada

was somewhere out there.

You're remembering
the peninsula like this,

the treasure ship would be about there
off Abersoch.

Now, you remember
the Spanish Armada, 1588,

it had a punch up in the Channel,

and couldn't get back
through the Channel to Spain,

so they had to go all the way round
northern Scotland past Ireland.

And this man Henry's idea was,
or belief it was -

a religious belief almost...

One of them
had come down through Ireland

and had run for shelter
in Abersoch here

and sunk in the bay.

And that this one was carrying
all the, er...

...all the treasure to pay the mercenaries

in the Spanish fleet.

The whole Spanish army.

So he got me here...

Ahem, can I have your attention, please?

Just a moment, come back, please.

This is an interesting story.

This man Henry got me here
for the whole summer

with the promise of skin-diving
down off Abersoch

with the promise of untold millions
of gold doubloons and pieces of eight

and all those romantic things.

When I actually got here,
I found that he hadn't got a boat

and he hadn't got any sort of
skin-diving equipment.

There was nothing we could do.

It was just a romantic story.

Do you mind! This is an interesting
story I'm telling you.

You keep wandering off.

Anyone would think we were making
a film for the masses

where they have to be entertained
every second.

This man Henry had a cottage.

But it was very full up with his wife
and children and things,

so he put me in a sort of caravan
at a field called Dwyran.

Now Dwyran is a very strange place.

As I've said before, again and again,
this is a...

The whole of Lleyn is a strange place.

Dwyran is a place where you had to be
very careful what you did

with your toenail cuttings.

Now I used to cut mine
and keep them in a little pile

and eventually I buried them
in a stone wall.

That seemed the safest thing to do.

That third summer seemed to mark
some sort of a climacteric in my life

and I wrote a poem about it.

In the ember days
of my last free summer,

here [ lie,
outside myself

watching the gross body
eating a poor curry:.

Satisfied at what [ have done,

scared of what I have to do
in my last free winter.

A bit portentous.

You could charge people to watch this,
25p a head.

Anyone with two heads, 40p.

Cut away to a bunch of bananas.

($ Ragtime piano music)

Come along, this way.
Curious things to see.

Curious things to see. Come along.

Ah! Not so fast. Not so much.
Down boy.

Down, down.

That's a good boy. Sit.

Now, very gently, come and see
the curious things.

Curious things, well worth seeing.

Look, one there,
and another one there.

I think they've been making
all these footprints.

Do you see them all?
And what's that thing?

Is anyone at home, one wonders?

Hello?

Hello? Anyone at home?

No.

Ah, a sliver of the moon.

A representation of the moon.

Here's a light...
Another sort of light.

Isn't it good? Look.

And here are heels. Perhaps
they helped make the footprints.

That one's been ground into the ground
by another heel.

And here, a paperclip! My favourite.

Look, a paperclip.

A lovely paperclip.

And here a Schweik. Here's what
you've all been waiting for.

It's Schweik in his bunker.

The good soldier Schweik.
Isn't he sweet?

We all love him.

And over here,
careful not to trip now.

Don't trip on the banana skins.

There! Did you enjoy that?

Did you enjoy seeing
the curious things?

Here's a little present for you then.

Good boy, good boy. Sit!

Sit!

Right, off you go and have a run round
by yourself.

Off you go. Bye bye.

(Ragtime music continues...)

(Music fades)

Some things can only be said indirectly.

They can only be...

One can only reflect the truth
of what they were.

I'm not quite sure that I know the truth
about this particular thing

that I want to talk about indirectly.

There's a mountain
called Garn Fadrun on Lleyn.

It's the last mountain towards the tip
of the peninsular

which can be called a mountain,
that is, it's over 1,000 feet tall.

I found myself one morning at dawn
on top of that mountain,

almost not of my own volition,

and stripping off all my clothes,

and making what I can only think of
as religious gestures,

worshipping some sort of female deity.

Now, I'm not a religious person,

I can't explain how that happened,

or why I felt the need to do it.

It's... That's the sort of place Lleyn is.

I feel like I feel nowhere else on earth,
here in Lleyn.

And doing that sort of thing,
that archetypal...

Jung calls the archetype.

Something that we do

despite the last two
or three thousand years of civilisation.

There's a much longer period

with archetypal patterns of behaviour
inside us

that we respond to sometimes,
in certain places.

And Garn Fadrun must have been
the same way

for hundreds of thousands of years.

Lleyn, in many ways,
has been that sort of place

for many hundreds of thousands of years.

Cut.

(Piano music resumes...)

I think that will probably be
enough of that.

(Drone of helicopter)

(Director) Go ahead.

I think there have probably been
at least two films

trying to get out of this one film.

And if you feel that
you don't really know much more

about the Lleyn Peninsular
at the end of it,

well, that's probably because

I don't know much more about
the Lleyn Peninsular either.

One has to live here and be born here
for a long while

before one can begin to understand
the strange sort of place it is.

But at least we haven't pretended

to be doing anything
than making a film about it,

about that problem.

And we have, at the same time,
tried to be honest to film itself.

But, in the end, Lleyn ought to be left
to the Welsh, to them.

We ought to go.

You can go.

Off you go! Up, up up,

up, up, up...

($ Scott Joplin: "The Entertainer")

(Music fades)