Friday, November 3, 2023

A Mudder Was Misprounced

Last weekend was the weekend of the Grantown On Spey Dark Nights, Dark Deeds crime writing festival.

I had a play, a song, a short story, a quiz all to write or co-write..... well a very minor co-write  but I did all the good bits, according to me! The play this year was A Mudder Is Mispronounced. Murder At the Rude Morgue.

Spanky the monkey was innocent of all things.

Oh and I  had deadline for the novel three days later.


Here we are set up for the quiz. It looks like The Last Supper but we'd already had our supper- Chips!
                                                                  And some wine!

This is the process by which Douglas and I write the plays.
We end up falling around laughing at the most inappropriate things.

Douglas gave me the questions for the movie round.
How would you score?
I got zero for the first two.
100% for the Agatha Christie questions.
That was WITH the answers in front of me.
 

Countdown questions, worth five points if answered on first clue, four on second and so on.

 1.     This film, set in the US, was based on a bestselling book. Name the film and the author to score.

            Clue One: Kevin Bacon

            Clue Two: Laura Linney

            Clue Three: Laurence Fishbourne

            Clue Four: Clint Eastwood

            Clue Five: Sean Penn.

 

2.  Another set in the US. Name the film and the author of the original book.

            Clue One: James Cromwell

            Clue Two: David Strathairn

            Clue Three: Danny De Vito

            Clue Four: Kim Basinger

            Clue Five: Russell Crowe

 


Here's what you could win, a tiara or a gold cup.
The Rubber Ducks we had for second place were much more popular.

On which Agatha Christie book is the 1961 film ‘Murder She Said’, starring Margaret Rutherford, based?

6. On which Agatha Christie book is the 1964 film ‘Murder Most Foul’, again starring Margaret Rutherford, based?

Letitia Luvibod and the crew hit the stage.
This was the press photo call.


How would you do charades to Christopher Brookmyre's  'Boiling A Frog' ?
It was hilarious, if not at all helpful.

James Oswald doing his gravitas!


And we had a Kazoo round.
It started with the whole audience doing Van Der Valk.
Bonus point if you know his first name.....
Van Der Valk's first name, not the audience's first name!


We got out alive for the curtain call!


After Skelton's very simple movie round, I went deep into the cultural essence of the crime format, that narrative depth which really counterpoints the surrealism of the underlying metaphor.

The Scooby Doo theme!
 I bet you can all kazoo that.

Is this the same picture twice? Are you paying attention?

And Hawaii 5 0
The whole audience was doing that AND paddling their canoes



Murder She Wrote, can you Kazoo that?
 The audience got it straight away and did  some typing.


The theme for the British TV series Poirot was next ( The David Suchet one)
Not easy with the Murder She Wrote theme still in the head.
The audience twiddled minor bits of facial hair.
Yes, there was a lot of wine available.


The Professionals? Remember that?  Bodie and Doyle or Body and Foyle
 Something like that.


Scores- Marky Marks team  52
Capt James T Oswalds team 56
The Audience   45
The Girls from the hatch  190*


1 Answer Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
2 Answer LA Confidential by James Ellroy
3 Answer: 4.50 From Paddington
4 Answer: Mrs McGinty’s Dead

Piet Van Der Valk!


* Girls from the hatch were the 2 youngsters serving the vino.
Turned out they both have PhD's but had come home to Grantown for the festival.
I think their PhD's were in Scooby Doo!

Great fun had by all.
It'll take a year to recover.

 

5 comments:

  1. Reading this column was like trying to understand a French graphic novel of a Chinese television series based on a Kenyan gorilla opera inspired by an epic John Huston science fiction movie.

    My head hurts.

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  2. Ha! There are no words for how much I love this!!!!!!!

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  3. It all sounds like GREAT fun to me. I am sure of this assessment. But I have no idea how I can be so sure.

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  4. I would have been in stitches and udderly functionless. And what is it with the MUDDER thing on Scottish crime shows? There is actually an “R” in there, you know

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