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00:00Oh
00:30Oh, mr. Bean was just who I was
00:44I still find him funny, and I think I can still perform him. You know dye my hair and and I'm off
00:57But do you think Rowan is a genius
01:00They're the university boys and I was the second school kid and I rough it up a bit I
01:08Had the seventh most recognizable face in the world
01:23He is also in my opinion the greatest clown of our lifetime
01:30Oh
01:42At 8 p.m. On New Year's Day
01:45ITV broadcast a pilot for a new comedy sketch show starring Rowan Atkinson
01:50simply entitled mr. Bean
01:53I
01:54TV we're looking for one half-hour show to fill this one gap in the shit you and ours was the only one that seemed
02:02to be about
02:04Then it was just a complete fluke really that the first time it was shown was at 8 o'clock immediately after Coronation Street
02:11It was put in this prime spot
02:14When it was presented to the British public
02:16It was so mainstream that it never occurred to people that what they were watching was the sort of unique bit of
02:22Genius by an irreplaceable comedian. They just thought oh, he is a big popular show
02:30This first episode was made up of three sketches
02:33Church sketch was the first mr. Bean sketch with Richard Branson
02:38Church sketch was the first mr. Bean sketch with Richard Briers playing the guy that unfortunately for him. I'm next to
02:50Just watching a guy trying to stay awake and he's failing
02:58And it's fun just to watch it in real time
03:08The
03:15Longer it takes for him to
03:19Slowly fall asleep in his own lap. It becomes funnier
03:29The great joy of these was the rehearsal of them and they didn't take very long we had an idea
03:35It seemed rich and we would just sit in a room and say well
03:39What's the next thing that could happen with the resources that we've got?
03:49So we've got a hymn book he could have something in the pockets of his jacket
04:01There'll be a hymn
04:05And
04:12We just worked it out communally probably church took, you know an hour
04:22Row has this tremendous ability once he's got something that's funny never to forget it
04:29You
04:34Know really lucky to have met Richard all those years ago when we were students
04:39Really lucky. Well Rowan and I turned up at a sketchwriting club in Oxford and
04:46I thought that Rowan was a stuffed toy because he didn't say anything at all for the first three meetings
04:51And then we were asked to submit some material and he stood up and did two sketches and I thought well, no, he's a genius
04:58That's awkward. I actually met Rowan in my first hour at university
05:04I thought I'd heard there might be like a comedy review group
05:07So I went to the desk and said look I do music and I'd love to maybe help out and the guy at the desk was
05:13Rowan so he said well, okay, someone will come and see you and Richard came around and said well
05:17We're doing a show in three weeks. Do you want to do the music? So I said, yes
05:21It really was a group of friends laughing at Rowan, you know pulling faces
05:29We
05:31Called it a one-man show that'll be Richard myself and Rowan that which is three people
05:36It's not to be more and more about Rowan really because everything he did an audience would just hang on what he was doing
05:42I mean, mr
05:43Bean was created for theater for the comedy show the group that Richard and I used to do
05:48We started to create these purely visual sketches if I had to tell a story
05:53Entirely visually I just naturally became this character
05:57So mr. Bean was just who I was
06:01When denied verbal expression, I guess a funny idea, you know, he's absurd, but he makes me laugh
06:09Sketches they created for the theater would become the three sketches in the first episode of mr
06:14Bean it hadn't occurred to us that there was a
06:17Universal character one was a kind of bloke who goes to church a lot
06:20One was some awkward guy with some swimming trunks
06:23The other one was a younger guy who was cheating in an exam when we thought let's do this
06:29TV show with whatever it was three of them in it. We thought we better wear the same costume
06:41What was usually funny was just the process of how he gets out of a difficult situation or how he gets into a difficult situation
06:54Done your revision. Oh, yes
06:59I've concentrated on trigonometry. I've done calculus mainly. I
07:07Believe they concentrated on calculus last year. Oh dear
07:13Quiet ladies and gentlemen, please the exam starts now
07:19Bodily expression particularly with mr. Bean is so very very important. It's sort of
07:24Screaming at you, you know, there may be no words, but you're being shouted at I think very loudly by the bodily expression
07:43The
07:52Word compelling is quite good because I think that's what draws you into a lot of mr. Bean sketches
07:58You
08:09Only had to have the
08:11starting point of the idea he gets locked out of his room or he's going to a swimming pool or something like that and then
08:16You could be pretty confident that we would be able to to make it work with those who answer the green
08:23Calculus papers, please put them in the green box
08:26And those who answer the white trigonometry papers
08:42What I've always done on the mr. Beans is as it where I've done the charcoal outline and then Rowan adds all the color and
08:50The texture and I laughed at him while he's doing it. I said stop writing
08:56Will you stop writing
09:11It is 30 years since the first mr. Bean was shown on British television and it became an instant hit
09:18Between
09:211990 and 1995 the team went on to produce 14 episodes in total. I
09:28Didn't know until this moment. There were only 14
09:30I thought there were probably a hundred and fourteen and that Rowan had been coining in for years and years making
09:37This never-ending flow of mr. Beans
09:42We did the other 14 episodes in drips and drabs we didn't make 14 at once
09:47We made two and then we made three more never made one one and we made four more and eventually we got to this rather
09:53paltry sum of
09:5414
09:56They were always given
09:58So prime spot and earned their keep there and suddenly, you know people realized that visual comedy could actually hold a large audience
10:06After
10:14The overnight success of episode one the team was in need of new material and comedy writer Robin Driscoll was hired
10:25He would also feature in various sketches as a straight man to Rowan I would say in the story of mr
10:31Bean, it's Rowan Robin and then possibly me
10:37I
10:42Always think in a way Rowan and I did the obvious ones
10:45We got the low-hanging fruit and what was brilliant about Robin is that he's just kept as it were
10:53Squeezing the lemon finding new things finding different ways
10:58Taking a little thread be it to do with a car or with the teddy or anything like that
11:03My agent rang and said that they were gonna
11:06Commission a bunch of writers just to send in some scripts to see if any of us could write for the show
11:12And I just wrote a stack like that
11:14Richard and Rowan called me in and said I'd love you to join us
11:24They're the University boys the Oxford boys and I was the second school kid, yeah, I was the last in the team
11:30You know rough it up a bit
11:34I
11:36One of the sketches was one that I'd actually submitted
11:39They're trying to get the job and it was being sat in an armchair on top of the mini and I just thought
11:46Now that cost too much. They never do that
11:58And I watched the other day and I thought what's quite good in it really
12:04A
12:11Little lap belt, I think is holding me in I think
12:16That is the huge difference between filming 30 years ago and filming now
12:21Basically, we did everything for real and I I so preferred that
12:34I'm sorry to have to tell you that there is a man
12:37Hidden in the car with a small video screen doing the donkey work
12:44But still let's dance
12:54Even in that sketch the sound of a mini disappearing into the back of a removal van into a pile of mattresses
13:01you know, what is that sound and it was mainly I
13:12Like the little moment when he comes back into his room and he blows some of the feathers out of his mouth
13:18You had other members of crew often, you know whispering to me
13:23ideas one of the set hands just came up to me and he just went
13:27I
13:37Like that I'd forgotten that joke, it's rather sweet
13:45The scripts of purely visual comedy nonverbal comedy are sort of dull as ditch water
13:52You know, they're dull to read and they're dull to deal with so it's actually much more fun
13:57Just to have a one-line idea
14:04And
14:05Then to be sort of semi improvising and then and then Richard would be there very diligently or Robin just you know
14:11Writing down what I was doing and then at least I could remember
14:28The simpler it is the more extraordinary Rowan is
14:46We set such small boundaries because we were thinking almost in terms of theater rather than terms of what you can set up
14:54with a camera
14:57And
15:05I'm a great believer that you've got to sit back. You've got to shoot things
15:09Wide so you can see as much of the body as you can at any one time
15:16And you get this feeling that that you are trapped in that room
15:22With mr. Bean you're being forced to watch him in this very
15:27Viristic rather embarrassing way and it's sorted but it's who generates a laughter. I think I think it does
15:46Just frame it and look at it and stay there and let the action play out
15:57If you want a master class in physical comedy
15:59I would recommend that you look at the Queen Mother gag you join us as the royal car
16:05Winds its way to the front entrance of the Odeon cinema. It's the perfect setup
16:10for mr. Bean a long line of people
16:13About to do something or expectant about something and then you just kind of stick him in the middle
16:19Yes
16:22Yes, the funny thing about this is that it was originally conceived and supposed to be the Queen Mother
16:28And of course what happened is, you know
16:30the Queen Mother got older and the Queen got older and the Queen started to look like the Queen Mother and
16:35Everyone now assumes it's the Queen that mr. Bean is meeting but that was never the intention. It was supposed to be the Queen Mother
16:43That man on the left there is very very handsome younger version of me
16:49I was put into that scene as a last-minute thing. Someone else was gonna do it and I just I don't know what happened
16:55But it was a last-minute
16:57insertion of Matilda
17:01Clearly mr. Bean knows that this is a very formal occasion and you're supposed to behave like an adult and he's supposed to stand in
17:06Line and wear the right clothing and he's got all dressed up. He feels as though he's done everything he could possibly do
17:12To fit in with the conventions of polite society
17:19The expectation and the payoffs that build throughout that scene I thought was just amazingly clever. I
17:29Had this idea for the one with the Queen and I stood in my living room
17:33I put on a suit and I basically stood still
17:37for an hour
17:39Thinking what might I have?
17:50And then I'd take my seven ideas this could happen this could happen this could happen
17:54Into the rehearsal one with Rowan and then they would turn into you know, 15
18:01The costume department put dental floss inside the lace so that Rowan could actually see it
18:06It's thing at the back and just pull it and then when I led forward to look for the Queen Mother
18:12It just flopped it down
18:15I'm on dirty look number seven right now
18:35It's very silly his fingers to get the trousers very very silly
18:40Oh
18:41Nothing too low. I like that with comedy when you build up to something really very shocking and surprising
18:57Oh, yeah, it wasn't just thrown together. Yeah. Yeah, we tried to make it work
19:03Matilda Ziegler was subsequently cast as Irma gob mr.
19:08Bean's girlfriend and was the show's only returning character
19:12Irma's character. I'm so pleased to say was actively encouraged to be a bit sort of stroppy
19:20They were equally self-centered which is why I thought they came together really well
19:31He met his match
19:49Oh
19:55Matilda Ziegler has got a fantastic deadpan all the life drains from her body
20:03Deliberately becoming part of the background
20:11Except when he goes blank and then it's your turn
20:19The last episode Irma appeared in was Merry Christmas, mr. Bean it was watched by 19 million viewers
20:33Christmas shopping is going on and mr
20:35Bean accidentally gets given a battle to conduct the Salvation Army band that's playing carols now
20:42You could do that one way, which is just chaos. But what we wanted to do was something much more precise
20:50And
21:01The delight I think is seeing that work itself out and the fantastic precision and beauty of his physical comedy
21:08So
21:17There were two turkeys one of them was absolutely brilliant, but not quite right it was smaller and then on the day
21:26This thing arrived I
21:29Thought of the idea for the turkey on a Christmas Day
21:39Because I was shoving stuff into a turkey and then I just thought
21:55And just that moment when he rises up into shot the whole I wasn't expecting that
22:08Mr
22:11Bean walking around with the turkey on his head looks like an alien creature from another place. There's something he came from somewhere else
22:25Christ alive if someone came down from Mars and saw this they would destroy the planet wouldn't they?
22:30The
22:37Catchphrase of all the rehearsals was will they get it in Egypt?
22:40The idea was that it had to be something that every person in the world would get
23:00You
23:11Within three years of the first television show
23:15Mr. Bean had become a global sensation
23:23Some strange survey declared that I had the seventh most
23:27Recognizable face in the world and you sort of think it's odd our friend. Mr. Bean
23:37Sorry Eric
23:41Globally, well, I mean, I think we sold I don't know how many television markets there are 180 or something. We've sold in 180
23:47So he became very very very globally famous, you know, the internationalist thing
23:53Means that people certainly can enjoy mr. Bean without speaking any particular language. I
24:01Remember a video signing and the policemen on horseback dispelling the crowds and there was an extraordinary turnout
24:08I
24:08remember having this arch of
24:10policemen allowing us to get out the back of the building into a car and zoom off and I thought this is fun and
24:17Rowan getting in the back saying I'm hating every minute of this
24:20He because he doesn't hanker after that sort of
24:24Adulation. Well, I thought it was an absolute riot. Well, it wouldn't almost was a riot
24:29One of the things I love about mr. Bean in its success is the strange fact that it's so English at the same time
24:37be so
24:39completely international
24:41It's
24:46Odd how such an inherently selfish and self-centered person can generate affection in people
24:59The likability of mr. Bean I think is one of his charms
25:11I
25:24Suppose it's it's the sympathy or the empathy that you have for children finding it very difficult to contain his excitement
25:33He just gets it slightly wrong
25:42I
25:48Doesn't time fly when you're enjoying yourself not easy company
26:02An awful lot of people will say to me I wouldn't it be fun to have dinner with mr. Bean
26:08No
26:10No, you don't be doing that he would ruin your evening. He's just got that sort of tension between conformity
26:17He's a everything. All right. Oh, yes
26:21Are you sure? Oh, yeah a
26:25Non-conformity which I think actually is inside me a bit
26:37That
26:39fight that
26:40Bean has between doing what you're supposed to do and doing what he wants to do the desire to
26:46Challenge and to undermine and to be silly and to not do what people expect you to do
26:52And that's definitely a big part of me
27:01It's a very interesting
27:04juxtaposition, but the more you know him
27:06the more mr. Bean sort of makes sense because in a way there's an element of
27:13Rowan's a quite lonely schoolboy who people didn't talk to existing in a silent world, you know in that character
27:27It was myself and a friend of mine who used to run a thing called the sixth form of Film Society when we were
27:33And this was just an excuse to get a whole lot of you know
27:36Weird and arty films and enjoy them really for ourselves. And if anyone else, you know wanted to watch them then fine
27:43And I remember getting Jack Tatty's from issue who loves holiday and being so inspired by it
27:52Yeah, Rowan used to bang on about Jack Tatty a bit the comedy that I'd seen had been
27:57Mostly verbal rather than visual and it was just a moment of revelation for me
28:03it just opened up a world that I'd never seen before really of a sort of a very particular kind of comedy, which took its
28:11time
28:13That I think is a feature actually of the mr. Bean live-action TV is that the comedy actually is never in a rush
28:20Morning do sit down. Yeah, we had the extremely good Richard Wilson airplane the dentist
28:41When I met Rowan for the first time quiet farmer's son, you know studying chemical engineering
28:48That couldn't have been further from this
28:51Extraordinary outpouring when he just uses all his physical skills to be a great silent comedian
29:06And he is very very physically skilled he makes it look easy
29:10Well, he doesn't he makes it look difficult difficult for the character, but not for him
29:18You
29:27See how well executed that is it to get the timing of that right is not easy
29:47You
29:57It's all in a sense so very predictable and yet so gloriously funny
30:06Mr. Bean is in a dentist's chair and he somehow has managed to contrive to render unconscious the dentist that he turned up to
30:14Then he's got to do it himself, you know
30:16He's got to get to the same place but via a different route and it involves his own ingenuity
30:33And working out mechanically how the problem could be solved
30:37That's my brain at work, I'm afraid
30:58I think the truth of matter is mr. Bean was huge fun to rehearse
31:05Quite a lot of fun to perform in the theater and quite hard to film
31:15Susie
31:17Yeah
31:32Person shot back there, but just give him a good haircut. Will you be good Jamie the thing you would find surprising about watching
31:39We're on rehearse some of these sketches is how the atmosphere is really about detail. Sorry to stop but I have a feeling that if
31:46This happened the bean would what is some, you know, normal people would say hang on a minute
31:52He'll be back in a second and I'm first, you know
31:54I mean, he will want to do something again and again and again until he's absolutely sure that he's got it, right
32:04Popped out for lunch
32:10Me too
32:13I think like a quick sandwich
32:18When you're actually on the studio floor trying to make the joke work and do what I'm supposed to be good at
32:25Which is to perform and make things work that that's when it just gets very very stressful
32:43Rowan is a perfectionist. He's constantly taking in is that lighting, right?
32:48It's that chair the right chair. Is there a draft? No, I don't think there's a draft and
32:53And all that is going on inside him
32:56It's part of that perfectionism that means that you never lose a laugh
33:01So wherever there is a potential funny moment, the audience will see it
33:12I
33:15Will say oh it's so marvelous because
33:17He's a perfectionist, you know, and I don't regard a perfectionism as a particularly admirable
33:23Quality, I think it's more a disease
33:26Than a quality because it's very debilitating. It's very draining
33:39My flexible friend
33:43I
33:45Didn't feel the burden to be funny on the blackout
33:49Whereas something like being it does tend to come down to me and my performance
34:02They definitely get letters now if you did that you can't kill fish like that
34:07Even if they are rubber that probably would have taken about 30 takes. I mean I can't he certainly didn't do it first time
34:29Sometimes I've just got to get to the point when literally I can't be bothered to do any more takes and maybe
34:36You know take 18 is better than take five
34:40But usually it isn't
34:52There's definitely a number of looks that as a straight man
34:56You have to make sure you don't double up on so there's a sort of look askance
35:01They look surprised and they look disapproving and they have to kind of which one should I use here 7a
35:09I'll use condescending
35:30After
35:41Five years of continuing success
35:44Good night. Good night. Mr. Bean was the last episode to be made for television. I
35:51Felt towards the end of the 14 episodes that we made that I felt as though we'd sort of done it
35:57You know not done the character necessarily but done the TV world
36:03And of course it was after that that we made the first movie
36:21Seven years after mr. Bean was first shown on TV being the ultimate disaster movie was released
36:27followed by mr. Bean's holiday
36:32Between them they took half a billion dollars at the box office
36:44When we made the bean movie in 1996 we decided to plagiarize ourselves and
36:51Use the turkey on the head joke again
36:57And also shooting in the 90s was friends the famous American sitcom and they stole the joke
37:08And of course when it came out in the movie everyone said oh well, of course they stole that from friends
37:14I'm absolutely dazzled by the friends thing. I only saw it the other day. I literally can't believe what
37:19Happened there
37:21bizarre
37:23Bizarre, but in the end, you know, you can't steal jokes joke jokes are there to be stolen or to inspire
37:29to inspire others
37:36We made him talk a lot in the first mr. Bean movie, you know
37:40We decided that he had to talk a lot in order to tell our story
37:43It's sort of like finding another aspect to him and I like the way he talks
37:53After the success of the TV shows and films mr. Bean made a surprising move to a new audience
38:02Now to find my card how hard can it be when in
38:072002 Rowan became the voice of mr. Bean for a children's animation series
38:14When it came to contriving an animated series for mr. Bean it wasn't conceptually that bigger shift
38:24My relationship with the animation is the single business deal of which I am most proud because row rang me up and said
38:31You know, we've got this idea. We should do an animation. Mr. Bean and it was a quick phone call
38:36And I remember saying I wouldn't if I were you and I've been receiving checks for it ever since I
38:44Find that I can't do the voice, you know
38:47You know doing the face it it it has to you know, the two have to go together
38:54I
38:56Know that I tend to very quickly go into him that sort of switch has to be switched before he becomes that strange entity
39:09I've never seen him in the booth
39:23Oh
39:29That is hilarious that's even worse than I thought poor row, I'll say I'm glad he's getting paid
39:34you know, I think if ever they made a
39:36Cartoon about the adventures of Baldrick and it was as good as the cartoon of mr. Bean. I would be quite happy with that. I
39:49Think most of us forget
39:51Quite how gloomy the nation was in the run-up to the London Olympics
39:56So when the opening ceremony happened, I think we were all sitting there go on then prove something to me
40:04The London Symphony Orchestra going to play
40:08Chariots of Fire now, that's just poetry, isn't it for any Olympian?
40:13So, you know that the violin started it was amazing
40:18And so you're kind of just waiting for that synthesized bit to come in
40:24Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun sort the finger an arm and
40:29then
40:35You saw mr. B
40:37Just genius. I mean, I just remember the whole stadium erupting and that was an international stadium
40:44My heart almost burst when they cut to Rowan and in some way it's
40:50Symbolizing something about the glorious daftness of our nation
40:55Bosch Beckham bean and bond in one opening ceremony
40:59brilliant
41:14Quite early on in the first couple of years. We began developing specifically musical sketches
41:23We later did a sketch for example where the whole stage was full of an invisible drum kit
41:33And I suppose the legacy of those sketches
41:37Ended up in its perhaps finest moment at the opening of the Olympic Games in 2012
41:42He was never intended to be mr. Bean
41:45Particularly. He was just a guy in an orchestra that Richard and I used to do on stage
41:49I mean obviously because it was mean because I was you know, trying to be funny without words and
41:54Surprisingly, I looked remarkably similar in terms of his body language and his his general demeanor to mr. Bean
42:00It was never meant to be
42:02It's just me
42:04Being silly and yet when you go on YouTube and an astonishing amount of people have watched it
42:10It says on the bottom mr. Bean
42:14Even though again and again in front of endless billions out there
42:18Watching on TV bring it all down to the job that you're doing
42:23Which is basically that?
42:24It wasn't quite perfect when he took a picture of the audience
42:3160,000 people laughing at him
42:341.2 billion people
42:36Enjoying it and fundamentally rose just a bit annoyed about the fact that the flash didn't go off
42:53It was an enlightened invention, you know, well done Rona Richard
42:59I
43:00suppose I always had faith in its longevity as an idea because I thought the idea was
43:06Broad and simple, you know this idea of a childlike figure just doing silly things
43:12The fact that it's lasted is not to me much more surprising than the fact that you know
43:17Buster Keaton has lasted or Charlie Chaplin has lasted
43:20So
43:25If anything was gonna last of our work, it would probably be mr. Bean
43:35There's a scene in four weddings which was originally a mr. Bean sketch in my mind
43:41it's the one where Hugh Grant's in a room and then a couple come in and
43:45You know do what couples do and he has to hide in the cupboard
43:50I
43:55Found it, you know Hughes performance isn't as funny as Rowan's would have been
44:04And I mean he'd be older has no doubt about that old bean is what we're now thinking of doing
44:10He's always had a kind of grumpy
44:13Selfishness which might adapt well
44:21I still like him. I suppose what I mean is I still find him funny and I think I can still perform him
44:41We've had some meetings and some discussions and some sort of mini rehearsals where we do exactly what we used to do before I
44:47Hope it happens and then there'll be another opportunity to see the original mr. Bean in his original
44:53Setting, you know dye my hair and and I'm off. I think you know, you must know as they never
45:06I mean, it's just been an honor in my life to have you know worked with someone who's that
45:14You know has got that basic brilliance
45:18I
45:21Think of Rowan as a brother really
45:38Yes, I mean I
45:47If you're ready
46:17You