The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer is a British 1970 satirical film starring Peter Cook, and cowritten by Cook, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, and Kevin Billington, who directed the film. The film was devised and produced by David Frost under the pseudonym David Paradine.
The mysterious Michael Rimmer Cook appears at a small and ailing British advertising agency, where the employees assume he is working on a time and motion study. However, he quickly begins to assert a de facto authority over the firms mostly ineffectual staff and soon acquires control of the business from the incompetent boss Ferret Arthur Lowe. Rimmer then succeeds in establishing the newly invigorated firm as the countrys leading polling agency, and begins to make regular TV appearances as a polling expert. He subsequently moves into politics, acting as an adviser to the leader of the Tory opposition, and then becomes an MP himself, for the constituency of Budleigh Moor a reference to Cooks frequent collaborator, Dudley Moore, along the way acquiring a trophy wife Vanessa Howard. Relying on a combination of charisma and deceptionand murderhe then rapidly works his way up the political ladder to become prime minister after throwing his predecessor off an oil rig, and finally, by public demand, a neardictatorial president. Ferret attempts to assassinate Rimmer as he and his wife ride through the capital in an opentopped convertible, but fails and falls to his death.The concept of the film was devised by David Frost in 1967, and the first draft of the screenplay was then cowritten by Cleese and Chapman, during a threemonth sabbatical in Ibiza. Cook was lined up to star, but it took another two years before funding could be secured. It was the third of three films Cook was contracted to make for Columbia, the previous two being The Wrong Box and A Dandy in Aspic. ........
Source: Wikipedia
