Terry Southern of the Monty Python team. Cleese later described McGrath as having "no idea of comedy structure" and complained that the film ended up as "a series of celebrity walk-ons." The film was shot in London between February and May 1969. The cast was headed by Sellers (as Guy Grand) and Ringo Starr as his son Youngman Grand (a new character created for the movie), with cameo appearances by Spike Milligan, Christopher Lee, Laurence Harvey, Raquel Welch, Roman Polanski and Yul Brynner. As with "Dr Strangelove", Sellers habitually improvised on the script during filming. During production McGrath and Southern discussed a
Peter Sellers be known as 'alternative'"—including himself, while the media historian Graham McCann states "the anarchic spirit of the Goon Show ... would inspire, directly or indirectly and to varying extents, ... "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", "The Young Ones", "Vic Reeves Big Night Out", "The League of Gentlemen" [and] "Brass Eye"." The stage play "Being Sellers" premiered in Australia in 1998, three years after the release of the biography by Roger Lewis, "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers". In 2004, the book was turned into an HBO film with the same title, starring Geoffrey Rush. The play later transferred