Mr. Strangelove_ A Biography of Peter Sellers - Ed Sikov [149]
In The Party, Edwards gives Leo McCarey’s comedic “pain barrier” theory a literal twist in a meticulously constructed ten-minute sequence in which Hrundi cannot find a proper place to urinate. The most accessible bathroom is occupied by several women. His hands clasped in front of him, he finds another; it’s taken up by a group of men smoking pot. Still another is used by a waiter in red bikini briefs enthusiastically flexing in front of the mirror. All the while, Sellers is tensing his body, his gait becoming more and more warped and constricted. Hrundi wanders out to the lawn and sets off the sprinklers. Then a waif-like aspiring starlet (Claudine Longet) decides to sing a Henry Mancini song just as Hrundi rushes, dripping, through the living room.
Politely, he waits for her to finish. With a wretched grin plastered on his face, he leans against the wall, crosses his legs, clenches his fists, torques from the waist, and looks to heaven for salvation. As the song concludes, he creeps away in baby steps.
The sequence goes on for two more excruciating minutes. Hrundi tears frantically from room to room to no avail before he finally gets to pee, and, at the moment of relief, the look on Peter’s sweaty face is inimitable. In close-up, his head lolls around in coarse ecstasy while his facial expression suggests the more beatific joy of a martyred saint at the moment of ascension, and it’s still not the end of the sequence. An entire roll of toilet paper unspools by itself, Hrundi stuffs it all in the toilet, breaks the toilet’s lid, flushes, stops up the plumbing, and floods the bathroom before Sellers and Edwards’s tour-de-force of bladder agony concludes.
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As fundamentally visual as this film is, it’s nevertheless in The Party that Peter Sellers, in his exquisite front-of-the-mouth Indian accent, utters one of the choicest lines of his career, the immortal “Birdie num-num.” The birdie is a parrot in a vast bamboo cage. The num-num is its seed.
“Birdie num-num,” Hrundi V. Bakshi announces, gazing at the feathered thing. “Birdie num-num. Birdie num-num!”
Seed by seed, he feeds the parrot for a few moments and then pitches in a fistful. “I give you a lot,” he explains before wandering away. He spies an elaborate electronic contraption built into the wall and flips a switch. “Num-num. Num-num! Birdie num-num!” Hrundi V. Bakshi proclaims to all the guests through the whole-house intercom. Then he makes an impromptu series of chicken noises.
This is quintessential Peter Sellers—silly, insane, brilliant. “Birdie num-num” is funny for reasons that remain entirely obscure: a phrase verging on meaninglessness, an accent both accurate and farcical, a bland and indefinable comportment that manages somehow to register as purely hilarious. For no apparent reason, the bit coalesces into something precise and emblematic. It is impossible to imagine anyone other than Peter Sellers achieving glory with “birdie num-num.” He remains to this day the master of playing men who have no idea how ridiculous they are.
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When The Party opened in April 1968, Time was snide: “This party, in short, is strictly for those who don’t get around much.” The New York Times was offended: “When, eventually, Sellers is reduced to mugging the poor Indian’s pain at not being able to empty his bladder, the picture hits a low point from which it never recovers.” When the British royal family watched The Party together at Balmoral Castle, however, Elizabeth II laughed so hard that tears rolled down her face. The queen got it right.
SEVENTEEN
Let me see—how is it to be managed?
I suppose I ought to eat or drink something or other; but the great question is, what?
It was 1967. The Beatles had their maharishi, Peter had his yoga,