thrupiecefilm executives were put firmly on the back foot yesterday as momentum gathered amongst a small group of protesters to have their latest release - the nouveau-nouveu film noir thriller Brian - "either withdrawn outright or at the very least significantly re-edited". But the film, which has thus far been a notable critical success amongst the cinemaratti and is set to open the Threadbone Film Festival later next month, is says Executive Producer Mrs Amanda J Threadbone "Just perfect as it is and not a frame will be changed."
Brian is an adaptation of the book Scene of the Crime by Shelley-Lulette Sizemore - itself a hemi-demi-semi-autobiographical account of her last overseas meeting with the Professor at a Culinary Bio-ethical Conference in Geneva, Switzerland (both book and film transpose events to the city of Cheb in Sudetenland). It is not the first time that representations of the Professor - there are many unauthorised and unauthenticated portraits - have landed their creators in hot water.
The latest row surrounds, says Thrupiece fan and leading Brian critic Enid Harper-Carper, both the film's name ("The Professor was never known as "Brian" even in childhood and even to his mother so how they have the bare cheek to call him by his Christian name I'll never know") and various scenes in which the Professor is seen to be smoking a cigarette (believed to be a Gauloises Caporal Type IIe from c1998). "The Professor never smoked cigarettes", Mrs Harper-Carper continued "and certainly not French ones. He was a patriot was the Professor ,and apart from the odd cigar which I believe he acquired on a trip to Cuba, tobacco was something against which he would have made the firmest bio-ethical stance.". Mrs Harper-Carper remains adamant on the matter despite photographic evidence of the professor with cigars, pipes and cigarettes ("Fake photos" - Mrs Harper-Carper) and several academic papers by Professor Thrupiece including: "Adding tobacco to the thrupiecediet", International Journal for the Promotion of Tobacco-based Products (1968); "Cigarettes: An Essential Supplement" Dorset Smokers' Monthly June 1981; "When a Cigarette's The Only Thing That Will Do", Fore- and Afterplay Illustrated Weekly Magazine and "Cigarettes and Me: A LIfetime's Obsession" (Thrupiece Autobiographical Notes Vol 4 (1996).
Keen-eyed visitors to the Thrupiece Museum of Domestic Life in Stourprovost will also be aware that Cabinet D in the lovingly recreated Thrupiece Rumpus Room contains a packet of Gauloises Caporal Type IIc c 2 from 1998 believed to be the property of the late Professor. At 10 am this morning, The Threadbone Corporation issued a single world statement: "Touché" (translated by The Threadbone Corporation's multilingual spokesperson Dick Shenery as "touched" and believed to refer to Mrs Harper-Carper's recent diagnosis.)
TOP: Still from the controversial film Brian (courtesy thrupiecefilm); BOTTOM LEFT: Gauloises Caporal Type IIe Packet c1998 preserved in the Rumpus Room Cabinet, Stourprovost; BELOW RIGHT: The Thrupiece Museum of Domestic Life, Stourprovost. (Open Tuesday-Saturday in School Term only April - September)
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