sheer curiosity

hi there

well, when i am bankrupt, destitute and living a life of drinking meths and polish, living under a bush with Spiros (yes, i am looking forward to it) i suppose you can point to an incident like this one as to exactly how and why my estate was squandered.

every now and then sheer curiosity gets the better of me, look you see, and i feel obliged to make a minimal financial investment to investigate something. it does not always work out exactly as i had planned, but all the same it at least gives me something to write about here. the best example of this, i suppose, was that time i decided to see what Harry Nilsson was on about in one of his songs.

this time, however, it was slightly less lime, more pink. i saw this on my travels across the internet and was promptly intrigued. 

yes, that's right, a 'new' paperback for £2,499.50.

i have little or no doubt that there are many books out there valued at that sort of price, indeed perhaps even higher. i do, however, doubt that it is usual for a book valued so high to also have second hand copies of it available for slightly less.

my mate Shaun considers me a deadbeat for doing this, and he is quite right to do so. all the same, i did feel it prudent, indeed wise, to invest in one of the 1p second hand / used copies of the book prior to giving any consideration at all to throwing £2,499.50 at a new copy.

why is it that i was looking at a Pink Panther novel to begin with? well, firstly, as it turns out it is not a novel as such (see just now). it was the case that i wasn't actually looking for it, in truth. William has taken quite a shine to that cartoon featuring the panther of pink and, as he is of an age where reading will happen soon, i decided to look for some storybooks featuring the off-red cat.

it turns out there are no kids books of the cartoon Pink Panther, which is quite a shame, really. but they did, at the least, have this paperback.

novelizations of films are something that i used to love, to be honest. i had quite a collection of them. usually they were based on the screenplay itself, rather than the finished film, so you always had extra stuff. the "schoolyard rescue", for instance, was right there in the novelization of Lethal Weapon, with the scene only being seen in the film some 15 years after release, when they did one of them "director's cut" things.

this, however, is no novelization. it is, as you can see, the screenplay itself slammed into a paperback.

the book was listed as being in "very good condition", and indeed it is for a paperback from 1978, which is what, some 36 years ago? the pages are a tad yellowish, but that's expected with books.

i am somewhat disappointed in this. screenplays are interesting and all that, but i was rather curious as to how they would have novelized the film, story and screenplay. hey ho. despite the allegation, or if you like plausible and accurate accusation, that i am a deadbeat as a consequence, i cannot but help think it was just as well i did not spend £2,499.50 on a "new" copy. Shaun probably reckons i am a deadbeat in general anyway, which is fine.

in respect of the £2,499.50 valuation for a copy in presumably even better condition, it's hard to comprehend how they got to it. presumably it's one of those "chancer" sellers; putting it out there at a ludicrous price on the off chance someone is of a mind to pay it.

a remote chance of where the value may be is in the 8 or so pages of pictures the novelization features. images from the film are a standard to include in film novelizations (or at least they were when such novels were produced for basically every film released), but in the case of Revenge Of The Pink Panther you get some behind the scenes images.

i don't recall every seeing behind the scenes pictures from the film before, but then again i have not gone looking for them. even then, i really don't think 8 pages of black and white, or if you like monochrome, images really justifies that high a price.

what do i think of Revenge Of The Pink Panther as a film? it's one of the funniest ones i have ever seen. and now i can make a reasonably accurate version of it myself, what with me having the screenplay and something akin to video camera capability on my blueberry phone.

i would strongly suggest, then, that anyone who wants to get a copy of the screenplay for Revenge Of The Pink Panther give their strongest and most earnest consideration to purchasing a 1p used copy of it. yes, spending £2,499.50 will mean you get the approval of my mate Shaun, and he will respect you for it, but you have to think very carefully indeed about if that to you is an important enough thing to have in the light of the financial outlay to achieve, indeed attain, it.

hopefully the 1p + £2.80 postage i invested here provides some useful information to one, two or indeed more of you out there reading this!



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!