I Want to Be Famous 1976
I Want to Be Famous 1976
40min | Drama, Short
Storyline:
Steve is the smallest eleven year old in his class, thinks girls are soppy and prefers painting. He creates an exciting but violent fantasy world of his own, but in reality he is lonely and introspective. Stuart, his best mate, is the most solid thing thing about a comfortless world where people argue too much – usually about him – and, with studied indifference, both boys establish and re-establish their devotion to each other.
User review:
“I Want to be Famous” is a “lost film” that is finally resurfacing after more than two decades of neglect (although not yet on video or dvd). It concerns Steven (Steven Bratt), an 11 year old British kid who thinks football (soccer in the US) is “rubbish,” preferring to paint pictures or just daydream. His unsympathetic dad is disappointed in his son’s lack of interest in sports and denigrates his artistic inclinations. His mum defends her child and Steven must listen to many arguments about which he is the topic. His only solace is his friendship with another boy (Stuart Elliot) who is good at football but still likes to hang out with Steven. They get involved in various kinds of mischief, such as having a mud fight, harassing a band practice and playing “strip down naked” hide n’ seek.” A comparison has been made with this film to the movie, “If…,” because of the boy’s violent fantasies. There is virtually no plot, just a brief view of an unhappy childhood.
Director: Roger Lambert
Writer: Roger Lambert
Stars: Stephen Bratt, Stuart Elliot, Andy Gough
Country: UK
Language: English
Filming Locations: Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England, UK
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0229467/
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 2
File size : 429 MiB
Duration : 37 min 34 s
Overall bit rate : 1 596 kb/s
Better copy added
This is an excellent little film that was filmed in August, 1975, in Hanley, Stoke on Trent. I was living there at the time and recognised the locations. It is also a magnificently honest and true-to-life view of the boyhood of this eleven year old, especially in the scene where he’s lay in bed playing with himself. Most people today have been brainwashed by the mass media since the 1980s into believing that child sexuality doesn’t exist and no boy has any sexual interests or feelings until one second past midnight on their 18th birthday, This odd belief is, of course, absolute nonsense…a nonsense believed by people who suffer from a kind of selective amnesia in that they have forgotten what they used to do in their own childhoods. However, because of the paranoia about child sexuality that has grown considerably since this film was made, the masturbation scene would never get past the censor today.
It was passed with an ‘A’ certificate by the British Board of Film Censors at the time (equivelant to a PG today), I suppose mainly because of the Sten gun fantasy sequences (obviously influenced by the 1968 film “if…”). I admire the film, mainly because I can identify with Steve (although I was an eleven year old in 1958, which was a different era). I also hated football and doing P.E. at school and I hated my father and the violent rows between my parents that made for a very unhappy home life for me and there were times when, if I’d had a Sten gun (or even an ordinary revolver), I would have killed my own father. He was lucky that I couldn’t get my hands on such a weapon. If I had have done, make no mistake, when he was violently attacking my mother, I would have used it on him.
A near complete version of the film is up on YouTube, although it’s missing the first one or two minutes where Steve is having a violent shoot-out with some soldiers. I have the complete film on DVD.
Oh, yes, and did I play with myself when I was an eleven year old? Of course I did. Seems pretty natural to me.
Excellent comment! Thank you for this.
Thank you. I enjoyed writing it.
For me masturbation started very early in my life at about 3 years old…but not with my hand..I had to have either a pillow or or riding horsey on someones knee
I was an early starter, too, but by hand. I’m not sure how far back it I started, but I can remember back to when I was 3 years old in 1950 and I was doing it even that far back and that’s 71 years ago. In fact, I could have started as far back as 1949, which is really going back a bit. But whether I discovered it through self exploration or seduction, There’s no way of knowing, as it’s too long ago. Perhaps both things were happening at around the same time.