Philadelphia

Lifting the lid off America’s most notorious cheesemakers.

This is a Michael Moore type documentary, set to crumble the soft cheese and cracker visionaries, Philadelphia. Shrouded in controversy, even now rumours are rife that the whole film was an elaborate marketing ploy to increase disappointing sales of chocolate Philadelphia, hailed as “the folly of the cheesemakers” upon its release.

[MOSTLY SHOT WITH A HAND-HELD CAMERA, WHICH LED TO CHRONIC MOTION SICKNESS FOR MOST CINEMA AUDIENCES]

The documentary is narrated by a voice-over artist whose brief was “an American Patrick Stewart”. His response was to impersonate William Shatner. For the UK release, the producers went with Richard Madeley — who does his Ali G impression seven times, despite this not being in the script. This version is now only available to buy from websites registered in New Zealand, where Madeley is somewhat of a national hero after they mistook his impression for a biting satire on their Education Secretary.

The narration is set to a montage of photos. There are actually just six pictures, so the same ones are endlessly repeated with different Instagram filters, interspersed with low quality thumbnails from Google images. The story we hear focuses on the rumoured seedy underbelly of the Philadelphia cheese emporium — that the Executive Board share a penchant for clothing cats in various national dress, and then photographing them.

[WE SEE SOME BORING NEWS REPORTS]

It all started back in the ‘90s, widely considered as Philadelphia’s heyday. The legend goes that a now-forgotten pitch for an ad campaign showed a mouse drawing lipstick and a fake moustache on a cat. Apparently, PETA saw the footage and immediately petitioned to have it banned. Philadelphia Corps neither confirmed nor denied the allegations. But when a cat-hair covered pair of miniature lederhosen were found in a bin behind their offices, the rumours were fuelled. They continued to run rife, even snowballing to include tales of the Board trawling the streets for stray felines willing to do anything for a tin of Dolphin-friendly tuna.

[GRAINY NIGHT FOOTAGE WITH WAILING CATS HEARD IN BACKGROUND]

Legal action was threatened when an investigative journalist insisted that the Philadelphia Corporation took the internet cat (that one that’s always wearing a hollowed-out lime helmet) hostage in their executive disabled toilet.

I should add here that our intrepid documentary maker is a man (women don’t really do that sort of thing). Like a hairy Richard O’Brien dashing around the Aztec Zone of the Crystal Maze, we see shot after shot of him skirting Philly HQ, trying to get in.

[‘STREETS OF PHILADELPHIA’ BY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN PLAYS]

He’s met with hostility, and lots of people putting their hand to the camera. Most are people saying (without saying) that they don’t want to say anything. The only exception being a man who just has a squeaky voice and is embarrassed about it.

It soon escalates and he does stunts to try and provoke them into talking. One involves stuffing 300 Garfield toys dressed as Andalusians into the MDs car. Another included Siegfried or Roy — whichever one got attacked by a tiger — being filmed getting a tattoo of the Blue Peter cats with “Purrrfect” underneath.

There is also an interview with an ex-employee who worked there too long ago for it to be relevant. The man is clearly old enough to remember cats being invented, and is very confused. He utters the phrase “I was promised hot pastries. Where are my hot pastries?” on more than one occasion. We learn nothing and the man is almost incomprehensible (with the exception of the hot pastry requests). But our documentary-maker insists that he’s pretty much sort of admitted Philadelphia Corps’ involvement in cat-gate.

So that we don’t forget the real underlying issue of the hit film ‘Philadelphia’, he digs a grubby finger into the creamy spread. He’s even bought it from Walmart, just to prove how evil it is. He also makes a big deal about how they only sell fattening food with zero nutritional value. However, he needs a new gun and they sell those, so doesn’t give Walmart too much of a hard time. That documentary is saved for another time.

[LOTS OF PIE CHARTS ARE SHOWN, SET TO ‘AGADOO’, TO LIFT THE SERIOUS TONE]

When it finishes, we don’t really get any closer to finding out what happened. However, just before the credits, the screen goes black and text appears — sort of like the ‘people who’ve died this year’ bit at the Oscars. It tells us that it turns out they didn’t exploit real animals at all. Instead, they used very small children in cat costumes. Knowing that his wife had been trying to get their daughter to break into the pageant circuit, in a surprise twist, the documentary-maker volunteers his own child in exchange for a year’s supply of spread.

We also find out that the old pastry guy died before the end of filming. He choked on a Ginster’s, but sadly nobody knew first aid or the Heimlich maneuver. Another life tragically lost due to a lack of awareness about aid.