Connolly documentary found on ebay for £50
It is an intimate portrait of one of Scotland’s best-known performers coming to terms with the reality of his new-found fame.
But few fans of Sir Billy Connollyhavehadthechancetosee a fly-on-the-wall documentary following the comic on tour to Dublin and Belfast for some of his earliest stand-up shows nearly half a century ago – until now.
Painstaking restoration work on one of only two surviving prints of the 1975 feature, made by Murray Grigor and Patrick
Higson, has paved the way for it to return to cinemas and the homes of The Big Yin’s followers after it was spotted for sale on ebay for £50.
Partly inspired by the 1967 Bob Dylan documentary Don’t Look Back, Big Banana Feet shows the Glasgow comic nervously preparing to go on stage, navigating the political tensions of the Troubles, handling hecklers and responding to critics of his on-stage swearing.
It will be shown at the Glasgow Film Festival next month ahead of a cinema and Blu-ray/ DVD release. It explores how Connolly’s popularity exploded after his first appearance on Michael Parkinson’s chat show in 1975 and the surge in media attention that came with it.
Grigor, a former Edinburgh International Film Festival director who has made around 50 films, left the only other surviving print with an American film archive while travelling in theusbecausehissuitcasewas too heavy.
He will speak about the documentary after its Glasgow screening on March 3.
He told The Scotsman: “I first saw Billy perform with The Humblebums in Comrie. He hadamazingreparteebetween numbers. The Great Northern Welly Boot Show at the Fringe, which was extraordinary – it was in a 600-seater venue, which was completely packed out. They had a power cut and he performed on his own for about 40 minutes. You could see that he could go on forever.”
Grigor and Higson reached agreement from Connolly to make the documentary after pitching the idea to him in a meeting at the Tennent’s Bar, on Byres Road, in Glasgow.
Grigor said: “We made it for £10,000. It was a joy to do as he was really just getting going as a comedian at the time. You can really see him gaining confidence.
“Wehopedtosellittothebbc, but they wanted us to cut it back to under half an hour, take a lot of the dirty bits and politics out of it, and clean it up. But I didn’t want to do that."
Douglas Weir, technical producer at the BFI, who has overseen the restoration, said: “I stumbled across a 16mm print [of Big Banana Feet] on ebay and bought it for fifty quid. I couldn’tbelievemyluck.thisis the only other copy apart from the one that’s been in America since the 1970s. It’s taken four years to fully reconstruct and restoreit.butwecanmakenew copies very easily now.
“Thebestbitinthewholefilm is a section where he is about to go on stage in Belfast and you can see he is nervous. He is sitting on his own having a beer and smoking a cigarette. It is an amazing little bit of nothing, but at the same time is everything.”
The BBC wanted to take a lot of the dirty bits and politics out of it