The Ideas Man (1970)

D. Robert Parrish
Colour


So, how will ‘Mad Men’ end? How will Don Draper cope with the final days of the 1960s? Will a swarm of hippies take over Sterling Cooper, lured there by Roger and the promise of LSD? Will Peggy and Joan stage a management buy-out, and guide their new firm in a truly feminist direction with copies of ‘The Female Eunuch’ and ‘Spare Rib’ scattered about the place? Or will the final shot be a close-up of Sally Draper taking a puff of a specially rolled cigarette, the younger generation hailing in the 1970s through a haze of marijuana smoke?


Maybe we can hunt for clues in this neglected 1970 comedy about advertising, one of the many, many, many, many Peter Sellers films which now sit ignored and gathering dust in our collective memory. Much like his friend and sometime co-star, Michael Caine (we’ll cover some of their work together later this week), Sellers seemed to delight in just making total and utter tripe. We all remember ‘The Pink Panther’ films (although we can probably agree there that quality was rarely the watch word), we of course know ‘Doctor Strangelove’ and we have a soft spot for ‘Being There’. But amongst those high points there is masses of crap, a troupe of elephants worth of crap, literally your mind would explode if you tried to visualise just how much crap there is.


What are we waiting for?


Peter Sellers is Simon Harper, a new arrival at a Madison Avenue ad agency. He comes with a big reputation, apparently having done fantastic work in Britain and looking to make it in Manhattan. Unfortunately the ad agency has chosen the wrong Simon Harper, this one has flunked out of every ad agency he ever worked at and is a joke back home. However his guileless self-confidence carries him through and he acts as if he’s earned his position. And of course when he comes up with his simple, childish ideas the yanks love them. They see it as a new wave in advertising, clients are eating out of his hand and before long he’s the wunderkind of New York. (Although ostensibly a satire on advertising, isn’t this scenario really just a swipe at Americans? After all this character was a flop in sophisticated Britain, but in New York his work is apparently infantile enough to be cutting edge). Of course this is the same type of thing Sellers would later do with Chancy Gardner, though probably the reason this  film is less well known is that ‘Being There’ doesn’t try to marry it to the occasional Inspector Clouseau pratfall or a disconcertingly rampant libido.


If you’ve seen ‘Mad Men’, then you’ll see all the trappings in their original form.  There are the very bright late 60s wall dressings and furniture, there are the girls in miniskirts, there is even a buxom redhead (although nowhere near as swoonsome as Christina Hendricks). And what’s more, once his ‘talent’ starts to show Sellers finds himself fawned over and flirted with by nubile young sweetie after nubile young sweetie. Peter Sellers as Don Draper, before Don Draper even existed. A far-seeing spoof that comments on advertising, work place politics of the time and two nations separated by a common language – whilst also peering forward to one of our finest modern day dramas.


And yet none of it works.


Peter Sellers, the fat boy of 1950s British cinema lost weight and decided he wanted to be a sex symbol. This change from just wanting to make people laugh to wanting to be James Bond had a terrible effect on his career. It’s a basic truism that it’s hard to be funny whilst also portraying yourself as a successful ladies man. The comedy of failure is just too seductive; the comedy of failure in actual seduction doubly so. As a result this film stops being a comedy, and just becomes a fantasy for a randy middle-aged man who wants to cop off with young flesh (while occasionally slipping out of an office swivel chair). There’s actually a pattern of this in Sellers’ career - his randy forty something shagging Goldie Hawn comedy ‘There’s a Girl in My Soup’ has not aged well, nor his attempts to seduce his own wife in ‘The Bobo’. It must have been nice to get the girls, the kissing scenes no doubt boosted his ego – but, seriously, why is this supposed to be funny? Even in 1970 the hand of our middle aged star creeping up the thigh of his just turned twenty secretary, would surely have counted more as ‘ewwww’ creepy rather than ‘roll around on the floor, clutch our sides, piss ourselves with laughter’ merriment.


At the end a cameoing Roger Moore arrives as the real and unbelievable glamorous Simon Harper, the one who succeeded in London. It involves another comic pratfall from our star, but Moore exposes Sellers as a fraud. But here’s the thing, Sellers work was so good he has won the respect of his colleagues and peers, they decide to stay with the idiot savant manqué anyway. Why not? They’re all making money and living the life, so what’s not to like? And maybe that’s how ‘Mad Men’ should end. It turns out the real Don Draper didn’t die in Korea and instead walks back through the doors of Sterling Cooper to claim his place. But the power of consumerism wins out and our Don gets to keep his name and his life and they all live happily ever after.


And I will love the show more than I already do, if in this big revelation, the returning Don Draper is played by – please, please, please – Sir Roger Moore!