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Fake Newspapers: “Bright Young Things”

When it comes to newspapers, the visual element is all-important to an extent that shockingly few in the powerful parts of the industry comprehend. In the county of Westchester — my home turf — there is a monopoly when it comes to the newspaper as a means of local information delivery, and that monopoly belongs to the Gannett chain. Gannett newspapers are among the ugliest in the country, but then most American newspapers are abominations when it comes to design. The glory days of newspapers were, of course, the 1920s & 30s, and Stephen Fry’s film “Bright Young Things” — a rejigged dramatisation of Waugh’s Vile Bodies — highlights, as many Waughvian tales do, newspapers as a central plot instrument.

In Vile Bodies, Adam Fenwick-Symes is in debt to Canadian press baron Lord Monomark to the tune of one zeitgesit-capturing book manuscript. Monomark’s paper is the Daily Excess; other newspaper titles in the Waugh universe include Lord Copper’s Daily Beast, Lord Zinc’s Daily Brute. Fry’s “Bright Young Things” includes a number of fake newspapers, chief among them Monomark’s Excess. The filmmakers quite capably recreated the look and feel of 1930’s-era newspapers, usually by simply using altered copies of the Daily Express and inserting the required copy related to the film’s plot. Above, for example, we see the headline “OUTSTANDING SCENES AT PASTMASTER HOUSE” under the nameplate of the Daily Excess, but if we look under the headline of the “Rancher Earl on His Estate” we see a byline for “Daily Express Special Correspondent”.

The red emblem of a caduceus-bearing Mercury works well with the newspaper’s tag line “Bearing News on Winged Sandals”.

My favourite of Adam’s inventions as Mr. Chatterbox is found under the headline “ZELLDORF: SACKED CHAUFFEUR TELLS OF SAVAGE BEATING”.

Strange stories are emerging of the private life of COUNT ERICH ZELLDORF, London’s latest fashionable foreigner, and his vigorous way with servants. Friends tell me they have seen with their own eyes Zelldorf whip, beat, kick and verbally torment any of his staff who fail to please. … It seems the count, a close friend of the new German chancellor, had cause to chastise his chauffeur late last week. Astonished passers-by were treated to the sight of this unfortunate man, spreadeagled athwart the bonnet of his master’s Daimler, trousers about his ankles…

It rather reminds me of an amusing tale about a certain Italian count and his hilarious way of showing his contempt for the fickle Roman mob, but I’ll leave that story for another day.

Sometimes the filmmakers disposed with the Excess altogether and just had characters, such as Lady Metroland above, peruse up contemporary copies of the Daily Express.

The London Despatch (above) and the Evening Bugle (below) are two more fake newspapers featured in “Bright Young Things”.

Incidentally, Tina Brown — Britain’s revenge on New York for the American Revolution — has started a website called the Daily Beast which takes its name, but not much else, from Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop.

Published at 7:41 pm on Thursday 30 April 2009. Categories: Cinema Design Newspapers Tags: , , , .
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