How Billy Connolly’s genius shone at the hours of darkness days of The Troubles
Big Banana Feet
Glasgow Film Festival
There’s a seminal second on this long-lost fly-on-the-wall documentary about Billy Connolly’s 1975 tour to Dublin and Belfast the place the Big Yin, sporting his iconic banana boots, picks up a rose from the stage on the ABC Cinema in Belfast solely to fake it is a bomb.
It’s a darkish, edgy, off-the-cuff second. (To put it in context, solely weeks earlier, three members of The Miami Showband cabaret group had been murdered by a paramilitary group throughout their tour of Ireland.)
It’s additionally a stroke of comedy genius that exhibits Connolly at his iconoclastic greatest – a jester holding up a mirror to the risky nature and horrors of the time, whereas defusing any pressure within the viewers.
Still from Big Banana Feet, the Billy Connolly documentary, which is being proven at this yr’s Glasgow Film Festival
Billy Connolly on stage carrying massive banana boots. He was clearly nervous about performing in Northern Ireland
Shot over a weekend on a hand-held digital camera, filmmaker Murray Grigor took his cue from D A Pennebaker’s iconic Bob Dylan rockumentary, Don’t Look Back
The movie, being proven in a restored print, was considered misplaced after its distributor went bust. Almost 50 years on, an archivist noticed a duplicate on eBay and acquired it for £50.
It was made on the peak of the Troubles, and Connolly is clearly nervous at enjoying the North. Clips present troopers patrolling inside and outside the venue.
But quizzed in Dublin concerning the reality he could possibly be blown up in Belfast, the Big Yin replies: ‘I’m frightened to consider it actually. I do not really feel like a crusader or something. But I promote quite a lot of data there they usually requested me, so I assumed, “what the hell?”‘
Shot over a weekend on a hand-held digital camera, filmmaker Murray Grigor took his cue from D A Pennebaker’s iconic Bob Dylan rockumentary, Don’t Look Back.
The movie tracks Connolly each onstage and off, providing up a captivating perception into his early work, and the down-to-earth perspective of the welder turned comic simply as he is on the cusp of stardom.
But whereas Don’t Look Back unmasked Dylan as a little bit of a prima donna, Big Banana Feet exhibits Connolly’s frequent contact.
The movie tracks Connolly each onstage and off, providing up a captivating perception into his early work
On arriving in Dublin and being advised he is ‘a much bigger fella than I assumed,’ the Big Yin cheekily responds’ Oh, I’m very massive in Glasgow’
Billy Connolly Tartan Day Parade, New York, USA in 2019
On arriving in Dublin and being advised he is ‘a much bigger fella than I assumed,’ fast as a flash the Big Yin cheekily responds’ Oh, I’m very massive in Glasgow.’
At his most straightforward going when charming the tea women behind the scenes at his present, he appears non-plussed at having an inventory of all the large stars (Burton and Taylor; Kim Novak; Rod Stewart) who’ve stayed in his swanky lodge suite rhymed off by its supervisor.
The movie additionally options the hilarious comedy songs – pastiches of Oh Boy and Help Me Make It Through the Night – that the previous folks singer used to pepper his act and early albums with.
It’s additionally attention-grabbing to witness routines recent out of the field which have since handed into folklore such because the Glasgow drunk getting nowhere quick as just one leg is working. Now 81, the comic retired from stand-up in 2018 as Parkinson’s illness took its more and more debilitating toll.
Which makes this look again at one in every of Scotland’s favorite sons in all his glory a pleasure to behold as he takes his first steps in direction of conquering the world in his personal irrepressible fashion. If something, at 77 minutes, this glimpse of the beginnings of a comedy legend and nationwide treasure, is simply too quick.
