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I was not chosen. One of the boys chosen was possibly one of the most obnoxious people I have ever known. I befriended a boy who was often beaten by this boy who’d been chosen as an extra. This stopped the beatings. The protected boy went into prison at 20 and came out a mountain of muscle. Suddenly no longer the butt of all, he became the leader of a group of heavy-drinking, hard-working, well-paid drivers. I, because of my Marxism, was excluded for not being proletarian enough.
The erstwhile film extra though, toadied up to the muscle mountain. All was forgiven and forgotten. No memories of the humiliations meted out to the former weak boy. And I, having witnessed the before and after of it all, was never invited (I was discouraged in fact) to attend The Black Bull pub on a Friday night and be loudly proletarian, racist, homophobic and chauvinistic towards women.
Also they didn’t want to ram my attempts at correcting their reactionary behaviour down my throat. I was, after all, an original proletarian. So I stayed away, though on odd occasions I would roll up to try and convert them to progressive politics.
All of that has gone. Those men are dead, or comatose grandads. The only one I miss though was the originator of the group, the weak boy made muscle. But a car crash ended his life in his late 30s, drink having unravelled him.
All of this flooded back as I watched the very poorly made film about a Chelsea artist and his destructive life. Played by Alec Guinness and called The Horse’s Mouth, it must be one of the worst films he ever made. What dross we were often served in those days as entertainment. Now we have carefully made, characterful episodes where acting seems to be of the highest level.