Jim Broadbent on his 'Illuminatus!' experience

Jim Broadbent in 2012. (Creative Commons photo, details here.)

 In an article in the British newspaper The Guardian, Academy Award-winning actor Jim Broadbent talks about his experience in performing in Ken Campbell's stage adaptation of the Illuminatus! trilogy. There's a lot of good descriptions of what Campbell was like and how he worked with actors:

"He never wanted understatement from actors. (Unless, he might say: “I want you to understate this even more. Even smaller than that!”) No. He just wanted you to make sure it was fascinating. At one point I said to him, Ken, I’m a bit worried I’m upstaging the actor whose scene this is. 'Don’t worry about that. If you’re more interesting than he is, that’s his problem'.”

Movie in the works about Illuminatus! play and Ken Campbell

 Grant McPhee, the Scottish film director, cinematographer and writer

A Scottish movie director named Grant McPhee is making a movie about the Illuminatus! play and the Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun. He has posted a teaser clip on X that includes Peter O'Halligan, Ken Campbell, Jim Broadbent, Chris Langham, Robert Anton Wilson, Bill Drummond and Chris Bernard. I particularly liked the brief clip of Robert Shea talking. 

As the clip is not on YouTube, I can't embed the video here. When I asked McPhee on X about embedding the video and for details of the movie, he replied, "Only on Twitter for a few days Tom. Details of the full film release will be here, sooner than later. Thanks!"

McPhee has directed some movies I want to try  and has written a book about Scottish postpunk rock music, he seems quite interesting, see the Wikipedia bio  and also his official page.  I am  now following him on Twitter/X and will provide more information about the upcoming movie as it becomes available, so stay tuned.