Baby Boomers.

Elvis Presley.

As John Lennon said 'he started it.'

Yes that's right! Baby Boomers; who are they? Well they seem to be mentioned in America more than over here. In fact the man in the street here wouldn't know what the various generations are called; and why would they.

The Baby Boomers were that generation born after the war – yes the 2^nd world war – up to 1964; so that is between the years 1945 and 1964. The war was over, the troops came home and all those children were born.

And what did they create? Nothing.

They think they did; they think they're special but you look at the people who actually changed the world. The tremendous amount of people born in 1926 – The Queen, Marilyn Monroe, Mel Brooks, Andy Griffith, Don Rickles, Jerry Lewis, David Attenborough, Hugh Hefner, Chuck Berry, Kenneth Williams, Eric Morecambe, Leonard Rosseter, my pal Aubrey Morris and many more.

Now if you haven't heard of all of them or appreciated their talent you are the one who is 'missing out.'

What ever happened in 1925 or the first few months of 1926 to produce such a unique and talented lot might be worth looking into. 

They were born eight years after a whole generation died in the first world war – two million, in fact, never came back from the war to have kids who would create jobs fifteen to twenty years later and leave four to six million vacancies in the jobs market when they retired in the seventies.

That was the real cause of stagflation – but that's another subject!

Now I don't fall into the category of a Baby Boomer – I'm not too young I'm too old. I was a war baby; just like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. They were the ones who followed the pioneers – people like Elvis Presley, Woody Allen, John Cazalle and the subject of one of my recent posts Jerry Lee Lewis.

Those were the people who started Rock'n'roll as it became. There might have been something else beforehand but Little Richard, Jerry Lee and Elvis are the ones who started it; The Beatles built on to that with the Stones.

Then in the seventies it all went wrong, musically, which we have seen recently with the excellent TV series here in Britain called The Seventies.

People like James Taylor, Crosby Stills and Nash ruined everything with their savourless songs with no beat and very little melody; it's no wonder that in the late seventies punk came along.

The Ramones.

Great band but all dead now.

Punk Rock was originally supposed to have started with garage bands or groups. People have always said it started near where they used to live; well it probably did. They were all influenced by the same people – The Kinks, The Kinsmen and main stream rock 'n' roll – but the people who made it famous – really famous – were The Ramones, The Sex Pistols and The Clash.

Punk Rock went back to the three chord basic guitar playing – 'C' 'G' and 'F' – sometimes throwing in an A minor chord for good measure but it was back to basics like the fifties.

These punk rockers were the late Baby Boomers and they disappeared when their time came unlike the early ones.

So now the Baby Boomers will be retiring – the first ones retired here last year (aged sixty five) and over the next twenty years they will be dying.

If you want to invest in the future – go into the funeral business.

Hollywood agents.

The  I. M. Pei Building in Beverly Hills.

 

One or two people have asked me about the agents in Hollywood; the theatrical agents that is. The people that actually run the place.

Yes they are very powerful and one or two can't compare to any agency in London. They are CAA – (Creative Artists Agency); William Morris Endeavor, ICM (International Creative Management) and United Talent Agency.

CAA are the big ones and were the super agents in the 90s. A few agents headed by Michael Ovitz, who actually assumed power, broke away from ICM and started up on their own in 1975. Their first office was rented, they had 2 cars between them, folding card tables for desks and the agents' wives were the receptionists.

They went from humble beginnings to running the world; they had the top stars, the top writers, directors, producers and they put packages together – that is what I mean when I say they ran the world; and still do.

They went from rented offices in Century City to hiring the world famous architect. I. M. Pei to design a very striking building on the corner of Santa Monica Blvd and Wilshire Blvd in Beverly Hills; it cost $25 million and that was in 1989.
Things kind of cooled in the 90s when Ovitz went to work for Disney but they are still up there. They represent Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Stephen Spielberg and many more and according to Wikipedia In March 2009 Fast Company named CAA among the 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World, alongside Apple, Google and others, noting that "in Hollywood, there's CAA and then there's everybody else." Fortune named CAA "the entertainment industry's most influential organization.
If you start to make it in the business they will approach you – no need to contact them.
The other agencies above do packaging too but at the moment CAA have 10 movies in development, 14 in production and 94 past films. But they don't produce them they are the 'sales representatives'.
Apart from the agents mentioned above there are other agents – some good, some not so good and they are known as boutique agencies; those are the ones people like me have to approach to be represented – and it isn't easy.
To get an agent in Hollywood you have to be introduced by someone in the business and that doesn't mean they will take you on.
If you are my age they look at your résumé to see if you have worked with any of the Hollywood casting directors – in other words have you been in ER, Friends, LAPD Blue or even New York casting directors who do Law & Order etc.
If you don't know any of the casting directors through work the agent will not take you on. It doesn't matter if you have been working with the Royal Shakespeare Company or The National Theatre of Britain, they will pass; 'great reel' they say and show you the door.
They don't want anybody my age with no Hollywood credits; if they take you on it means they will have to work.
I did have a few agents over there. The first one I called up asked me to send her a head shot. I did and she took me on on the strength of it. I asked why and she said the casting directors only go on head shots – so she was prepared to work.
She asked me to get some more head shots taken which I did. She wanted to see all the proofs so I sent them to her and she picked one she liked.
No one else liked it. They said it just wasn't 'me.' That was her problem – she had never met me so she didn't really know me.
But she got me my first job on TV – it was the only TV job I did there.
After a few months I decided to leave her and go to a manager – a manager in Hollywood takes 15% - agents are only allowed to take 10%.
Sometimes if you get a job for scale the producers pay your agency commission so it's 'scale + 10%.'
I did one commercial with the management company and then my first agent called me one day and asked how things were going – I said not too good that I'd only worked in one non-union commercial (I wasn't a SAG member then ) and she asked me if I'd like to go back with her.
It was an unusual request so I said yes.
A couple of days later she called and said she had an audition for me in the movie Titanic. She had seen that they were after Irish and English actors which is why she called me and fair play to her for that.
It didn't work out – I got a 'call back' but that was it.
The Hollywood actor usually has 2 agents: a theatrical one and a commercial one.
The theatrical agent, by the way, wouldn't be for jobs in the theatre, like in London, but would be for TV and movies.
After I did a play at Santa Monica Playhouse, my friend, whom I met there, suggested me to his Commercial Agent who took me on that's how I managed to do voice work on movies.
After a few theatrical agents I went my own way and the movies I got in to, which were usually low budget and which I'd got myself, were arranged by my commercial agent; but they wouldn't take any commission. I'll say that again an agent wouldn't take commission.
When I did a commercial through them I went for the audition, got a call back and was then kept waiting for 2 hours. I told them about it and they invoiced the advertising agency who eventually sent me about $400 for being kept waiting – some of that was for late payment – and when I went in to their office (the agents) to give them their 10% they wouldn't take it. They said they were not entitled to it – I actually made them take it and buy lunch.
So agents are not all that bad.
I actually did a movie called Father Joe Blow with my agent – he played father Joe and I played a randy college professor.
One agent I called on the phone for representation told me to come in to see him; this was a boutique agent called Capital Artists on Wilshire Blvd; no big deal.
I arrived and waited in the waiting room; he was a stout young kid of about 30 and his assistant showed me in to see him; he took one look at me and realised I wasn't in the age group he wanted; I was too old. Obviously I sounded younger on the phone.
I sat down in his office and waited for him to finish his phone call. When he did he made another call. We made very little small talk but it became obvious to me what the score was.
When I left the shit bag didn't even shake hands – I asked him if I should call and he said yes.
Of course when I called he wouldn't come to the phone and in fact every agent I went to see who passed on representing me wouldn't come to the phone either; so what does that say about them?
The guy from Capital went on my shit list but you know what – I've forgotten his name.

Our Garden, the Fox and Boris.

There's a little mouse who lives in our garden; it lives under an old dilapidated shed, which has a couple of trees between it and our back door. Each day, I put a few nuts down at the bottom of a little wall, and the mouse comes out of his home, runs along a smaller wall, drops down to the ground and up to where the nuts are; then it takes one and scurries back home to its family.

This takes it about five minutes as it must do something to the nut before making the journey back for more. Sometimes one of the squirrels will take all the nuts in one go and then when the mouse returns it finds that they've disappeared.

Poor old mouse aye?

Some days it manages to take them all before the squirrels have their fill. There are plenty of other nuts for the squirrels and the pigeons but they like to take the ones which aren't theirs because they don't know any better.

The birds, robins, dunnocks and the black birds, have another pile of food we put out: wild bird seed, crumbs and suet, all mixed together, and as soon as I come back inside the robin lands within seconds of me closing the door.

When the little dunnock comes over for some food, the robin flies up to about four inches from the ground and makes itself as big as possible by flapping its wings and the dunnock flies away; but it doesn't starve – it comes back later.

The birds, squirrels and mice live in this wild world where they would starve without using their wits. They wouldn't starve without us and it probably makes us feel a lot better than it does them, but they are living in the world where the stronger survive.

Sometimes all the birds, squirrels and mice disappear and the garden is quiet; we look out and it usually means a cat is crossing the garden. Our cat would look at the goings on through the window just as we do but he never went out. 

 

The cat that crosses the garden is the King, at that point, but once in a while, the fox comes in and that cat is nowhere to be seen.

The fox lives between some trees and bushes nearby and she comes in to the garden every day to see what she can eat.

I have put a little video for you to view at the top; my voice sounds a bit breathy as I had to run up the stairs to use the camera and I have also described her as a male; sorry Foxie!

You should be able to see the little wall where the mouse lives too.

It's nice to look at nature once in a while but these animals and birds are nuisances to a lot of other people so they would probably not be very pleased with me for encouraging them.

But that's me.

I look at those animals and I think of how we would survive; most of us can't do that at all. We have big strong people who tread over weaker ones and take from them what they can.

For those who read my last post, who do not live in the UK, Boris the buffoon won the election and stays on as the mayor of London. I didn't vote for him as he doesn't appear, to me, to know what is going on. He has been elected totally because he is a buffoon. 

 

I have seen him in debate and I get the impression that he probably wears big hard brogues and treads over the things he doesn't see and, because he walks and doesn't look down, he does a lot of damage – and that is metaphorically speaking.

When I lived here before, there was no mayor of London and there are no mayors in the rest of the country. There were elections in other cities, the other day, to see if they wanted to have a mayor and only one other city, Bristol, have voted to have one; I'm with the cities who rejected them.

The election in London was a personality contest between two big hitters and a few smaller ones. Boris won by a small majority over Ken Livingstone; Boris is a Conservative and Ken is Labour.

The election of Boris has gone against the national trend as there has been a huge swing to Labour in the local elections.

The Conservatives are making the usual excuses saying that this is a natural thing half way through an administration and in a way they are right. But they are a minority government to start with so where will they end up.

There is also a swing to the left in France and Greece as the people there don't like the austerity policies either. This word austerity is associated with the word asceticism which is a philosophical school of thought which means self-discipline, self-denial, non indulgence. 

Maybe we should start living like monks, growing our own food, and if we can't do that maybe someone will come along and throw us a few nuts and hope that the fox doesn't come along and eat us.

Strange isn't it that in 2008 some top bankers in America were calling home and telling their loved ones to go to the ATM and withdraw as much money as possible as the system was going to break down – this is true as I have heard them say it in interviews; Henry Poulson for one said it.

The problems with the sub-prime mortgages, derivatives and all the other commission at every stage swindles, caused a world financial crisis with the major powers throughout the world and that is what the Conservative Government here have inherited – so it wasn't just the Labour Party's fault.

But the USA have gone from the brink of a total collapse into growth and that is due to spending their way out of the recession just as John Maynard-Keynes advocated and just as the Labour Party would have done if they'd have been re-elected.

And the animals in the garden have no idea of what is going on in the world; neither have the young children who will be denied education because of the austerity measures but do you know something – children cannot wait for their education it has to come at a certain time in their lives so in twenty years time, when those children cannot find jobs and can't pay their taxes, when they are living on welfare it will be this government’s fault; just as Thatcher's children are experiencing now.

News from Britain and Hollywood.

Let me just tell the people of the world what is happening here in Great Britain; the people of the world who read this, of course.
We know what is happening in Hollywood because it's in all the papers. The world famous, and comparatively recently built, Kodak Theatre, the place where they hold The Academy Awards, is to have a name change. I'm afraid Kodak has gone bankrupt and so the sponsorship has been withdrawn and it will be known, for the time being, as The Former Kodak Theatre.
This will go on for a while till the new sponsor, Dolby, has its name added to the illustrious place and then it will be known as The Dolby Theatre.
Of course who is Dolby? Is it Thomas Dolby the rock'n'roller who wrote many a soundtrack to a movie or, to be more precise, had some of his music used in movies.

Thomas Dolby sued the mighty Dolby Corporation and won. What he sued them for is unknown to me – I suppose I could look it up but – as they say here – I can't be arsed!!
Now, before we skip on to things happening here, what do the Dolby Corporation do? And why should they have their logo on the former Kodak Theatre?
Well they, Dolby, specialise in sound; originally it was called Dolby Stereo and they specialised in putting sound on to 35mm film which gets used on movies – even today with films being shown and edited in a digital format.
I can't get technical as I want to move on (and I'm not technical) but here is a shot of a frame of 35mm film print

featuring all four audio formats (or "quad track")- from left to right: SDDS (blue area to the left of the sprocket holes), Dolby Digital (grey area between the sprocket holes labelled with the Dolby "Double-D" logo in the middle), analog optical sound (the two white lines to the right of the sprocket holes), and the DTS Time Code (the dashed line to the far right.) 
Did you get that? Oh! 
So back to Blighty, which is where I started this post – back to Britain.
Today, Thursday May 3^rd, is election day. Not the general election but local authority elections and also the London Mayoral election.

In London there is a Mayor; at the moment it is a buffoon called Boris Johnson – here he is and what a prat he looks:

there is no need to say anything else; the picture tells it all.
London is the only city in Britain that has a mayor. The rest have leaders of the council or the city, or whatever, and have a non-elected Lord Mayor who is only some kind of figurehead. He is the man who meets a VIP visitor to the city or town and opens supermarkets and shopping centres. Here is the picture of a Lord Mayor:

Does he look as silly as Boris with that silly hat? It's debatable. And that chain??
What will be debatable, soon, is whether other towns and cities here should have a proper Mayor and not just a Lord Mayor.
At the moment we just don't know as they have to talk about it.
Oh and another thing: Britain is in a drought and there is a hose pipe ban; people cannot use hosepipes to wash their cars or do the garden and do you know what? It has been the wettest April since records began and still we are in a drought and cannot use the hosepipe.
Apparently it is the wrong kind of rain. That's what the experts have said The Wrong Kind of Rain.
Birmingham, a city in the west midlands, sold some water to a county in the south recently; it took the water, from where it was storing it, put it into a river, and down south the county took that water, when it reached them, from the river and paid the City of Birmingham for it; that's trust isn't it?
And who did I vote for in the Mayoral election? Not Boris. You can't trust people with white hair . . . oops!!