The prime minister’s Indiana Jones-style film idea may have been even less successful than his parliamentary votes, but the follow-ups could hit big
Of course
Boris Johnson is a frustrated scriptwriter. It makes so much sense. Last week, Emily Sheffield – journalist and sister-in-law of David Cameron – unearthed a “hilariously awful” film pitch, apparently penned by Johnson, entitled Mission to Assyria.
In the script, described by Johnson as “a glorious wish-fulfilment dream movie, a mixture of Golan-Globus and Raiders of the Lost Ark”, a brave archaeologist and possible Johnson stand-in named named Marmaduke Montmorency Burton attempts to rescue a Syrian city from the clutches of Islamic State. Enemies are beheaded, helicopters go “dugga, dugga, dugga, thwok, thwok, thwok” and, at the end, a “horrible cologne-drenched jihadi with an air of mincing menace” is murdered with the phrase “Aaargh. Splatteroo”. It sounds a bit like what Inglourious Basterds would have been like if the only film Quentin Tarantino had ever seen was Rambo III.