And another thing--: the world according to Clarkson Read Free Page A

scheme of things, shooting a pheasant in the face or attaching a Friesian to the national grid really isn’t all that bad.
    Of course, if you don’t want to be a party to the killing or the exploitation, that’s fine. Be a vegetarian. But if you’re going to eat meat, don’t stand on tiptoe and shriek when you find out how the cow became a McMeal.
    Sunday 1 February 2004

To win a war, first you need a location scout
    Hollywood’s powerful film and television workers’ union has called for cinemagoers to boycott
Cold Mountain
because this all-American Civil War story was ‘stolen’ by the British and filmed in Romania.
    Brit director Anthony Minghella has hit back, saying that he shot the movie in Transylvania because these days North Carolina, the actual location of
Cold Mountain
, is ‘too full of golf courses’.
    This isn’t true. North Carolina is a spectacular place with many smoky mountains, frothy rivers and spooky forests. It was the setting for
Deliverance
which, like
Cold Mountain
, needed huge vistas to give a sense of scale. But I don’t recall catching a glimpse of Tiger Woods wandering through shot as Ned Beatty was being asked to squeal like a piggy.
    North Carolina was also used as an epic backdrop for
The Last of the Mohicans
, and again Daniel Day-Lewis did not have to worry about the French, the Huron and being hit on the head by one of Colin Montgomerie’s tricky little chip shots.
    Nevertheless, Minghella insists that he went to Romania because the Carpathian Mountains more accurately reflect America in the 1860s. It’s hard to argue with that. Certainly the 1,200 extras he hired for the battle scenes were more realistic. None that I could see was tobe found fighting with a pistol in one hand and a £3.99 McMeal in the other.
    However, I suspect that the real reason why Minghella went to Romania rather than America is money. It’s reckoned that, because of the cost of living and the minimal fees charged by all those extras, he saved about £16 million. Seems like plain common sense to me, but that hasn’t stopped the Americans crying foul over the location, the Australian lead actress, the British lead actor and Ray Winstone’s amazing Deep South (London) accent.
    This is rich. In fact, it couldn’t be richer if they weighed down the argument with five gallons of double cream and two hundredweight of butter. What about
Pearl Harbor
in which Ben Affleck managed, single-handedly, to win the Battle of Britain? I know Tony Blair once made a post-9/11 speech thanking the Americans for standing side by side with us during the Blitz, but then he doesn’t know the difference between a .22 air pistol and a Trident nuclear missile.
    In reality, there were some Americans who came over here to help in the early days of the war – 244 of them to be precise. But don’t think they came in a state of righteousness. Most were wannabe fly boys and adventurers who came because they had been turned down by the USAAF for being blind or daft, and they felt that the battered RAF wouldn’t be so picky.
    We are, of course, grateful to them, even though the day after the Japanese attacked Hawaii, just about all of them went home, taking their Spitfires with them and leaving us with the bill for their training. This point, Ifeel, wasn’t accurately made in the Affleck film, but that didn’t stop me buying the DVD.
    Then you have
Shaving Ryan’s Privates
in which the American army won the war despite the British making a complete hash of things, and
A Bridge Too Far
, in which Ryan O’Neal failed to storm though Arnhem thanks to the incompetence of Sean Connery.
    Oh, and let’s not forget
U-571
, where Matthew Mc-Conaughey bravely stole an Enigma decoding machine, thus clearing the way for Steven Spielberg to take his Band of Brothers through Belgiumshire.
    And why was Steve McQueen wearing his home clothes in
The Great Escape
? What branch of the services allows you to face the enemy in a pair of chinos,