(PRESS RELEASE) An evening with Calum Best, Angie Best, Phil Hughes & Director Luigi Maria Perotti
8pm, 24th March 2017, Soho Hotel Cinema, 4 Richmond Mews, London, United Kingdom, W1D 3DH.
Director Luigi Maria Perotti and Calum Best available for interview 23 March 2017, 15.00 hrs.
Cannes Film Festival Guide, Tips and Tricks
Synopsis
‘MY BEST: George Best – The Man Behind the Legend’
“I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered”
So said George Best, one of the greatest football players. Handsome, talented and utterly cheeky, he became the Fifth Beatle, the footballing rock star of the late sixties and early seventies. And, like many rock stars, he died too young, at age 59, a victim of himself.
Calum Best was born in San Jose, California in 1981. Raised on the beaches of Malibu, he was ambivalent to the notion that he was the son of a legend. That all changed when, at 23, he arrived in the UK for the first time and was hit by the full force of his father’s fame.
“We didn’t know each other very well. I came to the UK to learn who my father was, but I didn’t learn it at all. He was an alcoholic. We talked about girls and football but that was it. He never said “I love you
Monaco International Film Festival
Several years have passed since George Best died. Calum, blessed also with good looks and heir to the Best celebrity status, has indulged in many of his famous father’s excesses. He has become more and more uncomfortable with the fact that a surname made famous by a man he knows nothing about has had such an influence on his life. Calum embarks on a journey to discover who his father really was and ask why his father was unable to have a relationship with his only son?
Not a film about football but a study in a familial identification, of loss, and questions about celebrity, masculinity, and addiction.
For further information, trailer and stills, please contact:
Patrick Hazard (Director, LIDF)
patrick.hazard@lidf.co.uk
For Interview Film Producer Kent Walwin
LETTER OF INTENT – CALUM BEST
A Bittersweet Legacy
“Like father, like son?” I am not entirely sure. I honestly don’t feel I knew him well enough to apply that particular statement. The public that I shared him with, the people that celebrated him and continue to exalt his life are content and satisfied, basking in the glow of one facet of George Best, my Dad.
I don’t have that option. The other murkier dimensions, the memories swept under the rug, have clouded and impeded my reflections and compositions of the past. Yet I know that I have only scratched the surface of what and who George Best was, who indeed my father really was. With this film, I want to find clarity, closure, resolve and to fill in the blanks of the many questions I have and couldn’t ask him directly.
I hope by speaking with those people closest to him I will find a familiarity through their eyes. I don’t feel a whole person – I feel a boy, interrupted. I know that something is missing and with this journey and quest for answers, I want that void to be filled. I know there’s a chance that my quest may reap little or no rewards but just the fact that I am emotionally ready and willing to seek out truth, no matter what I may find, has already empowered me.
My story is not dissimilar to many other people. It resonates. Borrowing a verse from the famous Philip Larkin poem: They fuck you up your mum and dad, they may not mean to but they do.
Arts for India Charity event at BAFTA
They fill you with the faults they had, and add some extra just for you. This rings true for most of us on some level. The disconnection and alienation from a parent is an experience that is shared by so many others. The resulting emotional toll can be devastating. I am looking at this experience to dig deep and to begin to heal the scar tissue as well as allow me to sincerely laugh out loud at the wonderful and happy times we shared.
For my story is not all doom and gloom and liver transplants and grave sites. Mine is a bittersweet legacy. The agony and the ecstasy played out in public. Daily reminders of what your dead father’s life meant to a stranger that stops you on the street. I am not uncomfortable with that – it is what it is. It does not enhance my story nor give my soul nourishment. I look at gaining insight from this film. It is my story, it is MY BEST.
Calum Best
For IIFA Awards