PETER CHELSOM
PHOTOGRAPHY

My most personal film and the third of three stories from my home town, Blackpool. A dark film about comedy.

W.C. Fields once said, “I never saw anything funny that wasn’t terrible, that didn’t cause pain.” I think that sums it all up pretty well. Lee Evans plays a comedian who got his biggest laugh by killing someone in the circus ring to a full house. Oliver Platt plays his half-brother.

 

We wrote FUNNY BONES with four other actors in mind: Jerry Lewis, Leslie Caron, George Carl and Freddie Davies. As hardly ever happens, none of them died, and they all said yes.

 

I was recently asked to do a director’s commentary for the relaunch BluRay by Kino Lorber. I hadn’t seen the film in a long time but when I watched it I was consumed with the feeling of “what the fuck was I smoking and where can I get some more?” It was the most unleashed I’ve ever been.

 

UK Guardian article about my time with Jerry Lewis:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/sep/07/jerry-lewis-went-to-blackpool-funny-bones