Cake or Death's Groovy News

If you want advance tix go to http://www.eddieizzard.com/ & get on the mailing list by 4pm UK Time 1st May.

Actor/comedian Eddie Izzard is determined to revamp the image of the pirate as Treasure Island cutthroat Long John Silver.

The British star insists his new movie version of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson tale will terrify kids who thought the outlaws of the sea were lovable rogues like Captain Hook and Captain Jack Sparrow.

He tells TV Guide magazine, “We certainly have softened and romanticised them (pirates)… It’s probably the Disney effect.

“The truth is, pirates were drunken, murderous bastards who didn’t give a f**k about anyone but themselves and would not hesitate to rip you up.

“They were well organised, like mafia gangs. In fact, our approach here is much less classic Treasure Island and much more Goodfellas.”

Treasure Island is on SyFy in the USA on Saturday, May 5th (both episodes). Check local listings.

“What About Dick” (co-starring Eddie) will be at the Orpheum in LA April 26-29. Izzardfan, Chrissy has 2 tickets for sale at face value, first row mezzanine! The tickets are for Friday, April 27. You can view them for sale on Stubhub. Or you can contact Chrissy directly and by-pass Stubhub’s service charge 🙂

THE STORY OF DICK…
“The astonishing cast we have assembled to work on my Dick is a comedy writer’s wet dream…“It’s comedy porn.” – Eric Idle

Idle calls WHAT ABOUT DICK? an “Emotion Picture for Radio,” set between 1910 and eight o’clock, which tells the story of young Dick (Russell Brand) who is studying philosophy and gynecology at Oxford; his two cousins: Emma, (Jane Leeves) an emotionally retarded English girl; her kleptomaniac sister Helena (Sophie Winkleman) and their dipsomaniac Aunt Maggie (Tracey Ullman) all live together in Kensington in a large, rambling, Edwardian novel. When the Reverend Whoopsie (Tim Curry) discovers a piano on a beach, a plot is set afoot that can be solved only by a private Dick, the incomprehensible Scottish sleuth Inspector McGuffin (Billy Connolly) who with the aid of Sergeant Ken Russell (Jim Piddock) finally reveals the identity of the Houndsditch Mutilator.

Described by Idle as “Oscar Wilde on acid, or like Downton Abbey, only even funnier,” “Dick”begins with the birth of the personal vibrator, invented in Shagistan in 1898 by Deepak Obi Ben Kingsley (Eddie Izzard), and tells the story of the subsequent decline of the British Empire as seen through the eyes of a piano.

John Du Prez plays the piano, and Eric Idle appears in his own play as The Narrator. The Grammy Award-winning duo who brought you SPAMALOT (which begins a run at The Pantages Theater February 28-March 3) and NOT THE MESSIAH (a comic oratorio performed at The Hollywood Bowl in 2009) have written eight new songs for the production.