is specially recommended to Members of
Parliament. For instance one can be filmed writing a letter, which
can be closed down and handed to a messenger, which action can be
followed by the letter itself being thrown on the screen.... Think
what this means to a prospective Candidate when he goes to a
constituency where he is unknown. He takes with him twenty or more
films. Your constituents must see and know you before you can hope
for their vote. The Cinema introduces your personality and your
policy.
"Your film will cost you--
First reel ... Three guineas.
Each extra reel. One guinea."
The more I see of business-men the less they seem to me to know about
business. I never read an advertisement without thinking, "How much
better I (or even you) could have done that!" Yet they will tell you
that it is their advertisements which make the money. It only shows....
However. Messrs. Mump and Gump, for instance, have scarcely skimmed the
surface possibilities of their brilliant notion. This invention is going
to make politics tolerable at last. No man minds being in the House of
Commons; it is being in his constituency which is so dreadful. _And now
he need never go there._
For instance, when the constituency is tired of the letter-film, he can
be filmed making a speech, which can be taken down and handed to a
typist, which action can be followed by the speech itself being thrown
on the screen--in instalments. The constituency will enjoy this, because
it will take much less time to read it than it would to listen to it,
and they can argue out loud about the meaning of Early English phrases
like Datum-line and Functional Representation. In fact they can go on
arguing during the _Whips of Sin_ which will follow.
As for the public man, it won't take him two minutes to be filmed making
the speech, unless, of course, he has any very complicated gestures; and
it won't take him any time at all to compose it, because the private
secretary will do that; and the private secretary will be able to make
sure that his joke about JEREBOAM is not turned into a joke about
JEHOSHAPHAT at the last minute, or simply shelved in favour of a
peroration on rainbows. After the speech the M.P. can be filmed opening
a flowershow and, if necessary, writing a cheque to the local
hortiphilist society, which cheque can be thrown on the screen amid loud
applause, but need not, of course, go any further.
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