George Mikes. How to be an Alien
№2
...xample of the serious and 'deep'type of American films - there is a gay, buoyant, happy and miserably poor
young man in New Golders Green (Alabama), who becomes tremendously rich just
by selling thousands of tractors and jet-propelled aeroplanes to other poor
fellows. The richer he becomes, the unhappier he is - which is a subtle
point to prove that money does not mean happiness, consequently one had
better be content to remain a poor labourer, possibly unemployed. He buys
seven huge motor cars and three private planes and is bitter and pained; he
builds a magnificent and ostentatious palace and gets gloomier and gloomier;
and when the woman he has loved without hope for fifteen years at last falls
in love with him, he breaks down completely and groans and moans desperately
for three days. To increase the 'deep' meaning of the film they photograph
the heroes from the most surprising angles: the cameraman crawls under
people's feet, swings on the chandelier, and hides himself in a bowl of
soup. Everybody is delighted with the new technique and admires the
director's richness of thought. English film directors follow a different
and quite original line. They have discovered somehow that the majority of
the public does not consist, after all, of idiots, and that an intelligent
film is not necessarily foredoomed to failure. It was a tremendous risk to
make experiments based on this assumption, but it has proved worth while.
There are certain rules you must bear in mind if you want to make a really
and truly British film.
1. The 'cockney heart' has definitely been discovered, i.e. the fact
that even people who drop their aitches have a heart. The discovery was
originally made by Mr Noel Coward, who is reported to have met a man who
knew someone who had actually seen a cockney from quite near. Ever since it
has been essential that a cockney should figure in every British film and
display his heart throughout the performance.
2. It has also been discovered that ordinary men occasionally use
unparliamentary expressions in the course of their every-day conversation.
It has been decided that the more often the adjective referring to the
sanguinary character of certain things or persons is used and the
exclamation 'Damn I ' is uttered, the more realistic and more convincing the
film becomes, as able seamen and flight-sergeants sometimes go so far as to
say 'Damni ' when they are carried away by passion. All bodies and
associations formed to preserve the purity of the English soul should note
that I do not agree with this habit - I simply record it. But as it is a
habit, the author readily agrees to supply by correspondence a further list
of the most expressive military terms which would make any new film
surprisingly realistic.
3. Nothing should be good enough for a British film producer. I have
heard of a gentleman (I don't know whether the story is true, or only
characteristic) who made a film about Egypt and had a sphinx built in the
studio. When he and his company sailed to Egypt to make some exterior shots,
he took his own sphinx with him to the desert. He was quite right, because
first of all the original sphinx is very old and film people should not use
second-hand stuff; secondly, the old sphinx might have been good enough for
Egyptians (who are all foreigners, after all) but not for a British film
company.
4. As I have seen political events successfully filmed as
detective-stories, and historical personages appear as 'great lovers' (and
nothing else), I have come to the conclusion that this slight change in the
character of a person is highly recommendable, and I advise the filming of
Peter Pan as a thriller, and the Concise Oxford Dictionary as a comic opera.
DRIVING CARS
it is about the same to drive a car in England as anywhere else. To
change a punctured tyre in the wind and rain gives about the same pleasure
outside London as outside Rio de Janeiro; it is not more fun to try to start
up a cold motor with the handle in Moscow than in Manchester, the roughly
50-50 proportion between driving an average car and pushing it is the same
in Sydney and Edinburgh.
There are, however, a few characteristics which distinguish the English
motorist from the continental, and some points which the English motorist
has to remember.
1. In English towns there is a thirty miles an hour speed-limit and the
police keep a watchful eye on law-breakers. The fight against reckless
driving is directed extremely skilfully and carefully according to the very
best English detective-traditions. It is practically impossible to find out
whether you are being followed by a police car or not. There are, however, a
few indications which may help people of extraordinary intelligence and with
very keen powers of observation:
(a) The police always use a 13 h.p., blue Wolseley car;
(b) three uniformed policemen sit in it; and
© on these cars you can read the word police written in large letters
in front and rear, all in capitals - lit up during the hours of darkness.
2. I think England is the only country in the world where you have to
leave your lights on even if you park in a brilliantly lit-up street. The
advantage being that your battery gets exhausted, you cannot start up again
and consequently the number of road accidents are greatly reduced. Safety
first !
3. Only motorists can answer this puzzling question: What are taxis
for? A simple pedestrian knows that they are certainly not there to carry
passengers. Taxis, in fact, are a Christian institution. They are here to
teach drivers modesty and humility. They teach us never to be
over-confident; they remind us that we never can tell what the next moment
will bring for us, whether we shall be able to drive on or a taxi will bump
into us from the back or the side. ' ... and thou shalt fear day and night,
and shalt have none assurance of thy life' (Deut., chapter 28, verse 66).
4. There is a huge ideological warfare going on behind the scenes of
the motorist world.
Whenever you stop your car in the City, the West End or many other
places, two or three policemen rush at you and tell you that you must not
park there. Where may you park? They shrug their shoulders. There are a
couple of spots on the South Coast and in a village called Minchinhampton.
Three cars may park there for half an hour every other Sunday morning
between 7 and 8 a.m.
The police are perfectly right. After all, cars have been built to run,
and run fast, so they should not stop.
This healthy philosophy of the police has been seriously challenged by
a certain group of motorists who maintain that cars have been built to park
and not to move. These people drive out to Hampstead Heath or Richmond on
beautiful, sunny days, pull up all their windows and go to sleep. They do
not get a spot of air; they are miserably uncomfortable; they have
nightmares, and the whole procedure is called 'spending a lovely afternoon
in the open.'
THREE GAMES FOR BUS DRIVERS
if you become a bus driver there are three lovely and very popular
games you must learn to play.
1. Blind man's buff. When you turn right just signal by showing two
millimetres of your finger-tips. It is great fun when motorists do not
notice your signal and run into your huge bus with their tiny cars.
2. Hide and seek. Whenever you approach a request stop hide behind a
large lorry or another bus and when you have almost reached the stop shoot
off at a terrific speed. It is very amusing to see people shake their fists
at you. It is ten to one they miss some important business appointment.
3. Hospital game. If you have to stop for one reason or another, never
wait until the conductor rings the bell. If you start moving quickly and
unexpectedly, and if you are lucky - and in slippery weather you have a very
good chance - people will fall on top of one another. This looks extremely
funny from the driver's seat. (Sometimes the people themselves, who fall
into a muddy pool and break their legs, make a fuss, but, alas! every
society has its bores who have no sense of humour and cannot enjoy a joke at
their own expense.)
HOW TO PLAN A TOWN
britain, far from being a 'decadent democracy', is a Spartan country.
This is mainly due to the British way of building towns, which dispenses
with the reasonable comfort enjoyed by all the other weak and effeminate
peoples of the world.
Medieval warriors wore steel breast-plates and leggings not only for
defence but also to keep up their fighting spirit; priests of the Middle
Ages tortured their bodies with hair-shirts; Indian yogis take their daily
nap lying on a carpet of nails to remain fit. The English plan their towns
in such a way that these replace the discomfort of steel breast-plates,
hair-shirts and nail-carpets.
On the Continent doctors, lawyers, booksellers -just to mention a few
examples - are sprinkled all over the city, so you can call on a good or at
least expensive doctor in any district. In England the idea is that it is
the address that makes the man. Doctors in London are crowded in Harley
Street, solicitors in Lincoln's Inn Fields, second-hand-bookshops in Charing
Cross Road, newspaper offices in Fleet Street, tailors in Saville Row,
car-merchants in Great Portland Street, theatres around Piccadilly Circus,
cinemas in Leicester Square, etc. If you have a chance of replanning London
you can greatly improve on this idea. All greengrocers should be placed in
Hornsey Lane (N6), all butchers in Mile End (e1), and all gentlemen's
conveniences in Bloomsbury (WC).
Now I should like to give you a little practical advice on how to build
an English town.
You must understand that an English town is a vast conspiracy to
mislead foreigners. You have to use century-old little practices and tricks.
1. First of all, never build a street straight. The English love
privacy and do not want to see one end of the street from the other end.
Make sudden curves in the streets and build them S-shaped too; the letters
L, T, V, Y, W and 0 are also becoming increasingly popular. It would be a
fine tribute to the Greeks to build a few Ϥ and ͘-shaped streets; it would
be an ingenious compliment to the Russians to favour the shape ϯ, and I am
sure the Chinese would be more than flattered to see some
