Locked in the Cannes!

La Petit Carlton, Cannes (not there now I hear).

A little story for you:

I have been to Cannes a few times; Cannes, in the south of France, that is; well four times, actually, and each time I stayed in a flat near La Croisette which I really liked; I think I was in there by myself twice and definitely shared twice.

I travelled three times with round trip flights from London to Nice and the other time I drove there, with two posh chaps who were old Etonians, and on that particular trip I caught a train back from Marseilles which arrived at its destination in the north of France smack on time.

You may ask why I came back by train? Well the old Etonians left me there and I had to find the money to get back – moral of the story? Never trust an old Etonian! They're not even trusted amongst their own posh fraternity; the 'public schools' of England.

The upper classes tend to think, and they may be right, that Eton and Harrow are populated by the Neauvo Riche as they're the only public schools the plebs have ever heard of – who cares, aye?

I was there trying to sell the idea of my film being a TV series; since it's been on YouTube, by the way, a few people have contacted me and said it would have made a good series – too late, I'm afraid – those days are gone, Joxer 'dem dayz is gone!! Have a look if you wish http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUZXIPAd9Z8

So why am I writing about this now?

I was listening to one of my favourite programmes on the radio, on Saturday, and they started talking about people's experiences of being locked in places and being rescued by the fire brigade or whatever.

On one particular trip I was locked in somewhere three times in three different places; this was one of the times when I was staying in the flat alone.

I loved Cannes and considered moving there on a permanent basis; in those days I smoked and I would inhale those delicious Gauloises and blow the smoke out over anybody within passive distance; but then we all smoked so they didn't care – well most of us did.

We could even smoke on the plane and each time I flew back to London we nearly drank the plane dry – pissy, hazy journeys with the Gauloises/Gitanes air making it even hazier than I can remember!!

I had a favourite super market, in Cannes, which sold wonderful Olive Oil, I knew some street markets too, that I would frequent and my local drinking hole was Le Petit Carlton; that was a wonderful deli/restaurant/bar with a very rude waiter called Pierre – well he wasn't that rude he just gave as good as he got and we were very fond of him.

I remember the French Onion soup, the millions of French Fries that were served up with each meal – I was so French it was unbelievable; but I could hardly speak a word of the language. I can speak a little bit of Spanish, enough to get by but French?? Sounded all Greek to me.

One time I was in the apartment and someone knocked on the door; I answered and a desperate looking man, with five and a half days of beard growth, got through a whole sentence before I could get the word in that I didn't understand him - mon chaton il disparu, he said.

Sorry, I said, no French no French!

Then he started making susshhhh, noises and waving his arms about saying shooo sheee shaaa!!

Sorry, I said.

Mon chaton, he said, looking passed me, Mon chaton!! – then went.

What the . . . who the?????

Not long after that I saw a cat on the balcony; I might have felt French but I knew they had rabies in France, every cat, every dog – all animals there, all had rabies. Well I would think this, wouldn't I, as we were propagandised to all the time by the British Media about Rabies!

I saw the man later and he told me he had brought his cat along from Paris and it had escaped from his apartment – but he got it back; maybe that man was some kind of omen as strange things seemed to happen later.

One evening I was on my way out but when I tried to open the door the key wouldn't work; I was locked in. It was the only way out; there was a balcony but I was five floors up, I didn't fancy doing a spider man down the side of the building then I remembered some friends of mine were staying on the floor above; I prayed that they were sober or even in. In those days we didn't have cel/mobile phones and I hadn't taken the phone number of their apartment yet.

Their balcony was almost directly above mine, just one over, so I went out and called out to them but I couldn't make them hear.

But I could make the man directly above me hear who didn't speak English; I found this out earlier, of course, as he was the man with the cat.

Non Engleeesh, he said, mon chaton bon!

Mon chaton bon – mon key, kay que not bon not work kaput!!

Then I heard them stir in my friends' apartment – hello matey, said my pal, what's going on?

I explained and suggested I throw the key up – No matey, he said, I'll never catch it.

He came down to my door and I slipped the key under the door to him hoping it would work from outside; it did!

Apparently if I'd broken the lock, the management would have sent for a locksmith and I would have had to pay the bill.

In the day time I would wander around the Le Palais du Festival bumping shoulders with the famous and not so famous then I would go back to the apartment at around 5:00, take a nap, and then go out in the evening trying to sell my idea of a TV series, usually ending up singing either The Wild Rover, in La Petit Carlton or Beatles songs in the Carlton Hotel with a load of Germans who sang exceedingly high which ruined my throat; it was a hard life in those days, I can tell you.

The pianist at the Carlton Hotel got to know me and would play Danny Boy whenever I entered the bar.

One evening I came back to the apartment building and entered the building with a woman; we both walked to the lift which was an old style lift/elevator with see through iron gates; like this:

I didn't speak French, she didn't speak English so we pressed the buttons of the desired floors ourselves and when the lift went up passed the third floor it came to an abrupt stop!

We pressed the buttons, rattled the doors and she screamed!

She screamed and screamed and screamed and screeched!

Then she started moving around the lift screaming; I didn't know what to do – I couldn't touch her to stop her as she might have accused me of something.

She screamed so loud that it was as if I was attacking her.

Everybody heard her and everybody came out of their doors and a load of French was spoken and shouted and I tried to get a word in and the manager said things to her and she screamed back unintelligibly and I . . .. what could I do?

They managed to get us out and I went and had my nap – by the time I woke up my friends had gone out so I decided I would take a shower and go and eat by myself.

I found a small restaurant near the harbour and took a seat on the patio but . . . I needed to go to the loo; it was a single loo so I locked the door and when I had finished it wouldn't open; I was locked in again.

I banged on the door and shouted; nothing! I was in the cellar and the staff were on street level.

Eventually someone came down and asked me something. I don't know what I was asked and they didn't know what I answered but eventually, after a lot of scraping and tapping and bumping they got me out; they couldn't stop laughing and neither could I – till they presented me with the bill for my food; I would have thought it might have been on the house.

I remember saying to the waitress that I was sorry that I could only speak English but that I was learning French; Moi aussi, she said, Moi aussi.

Obviously she meant she was learning English.

Why! Billy Connelly and My Son's Carp!

Billy Connelly

I noticed recently in the wonderful tributes to Seamus Heaney his pronunciation of the wh words; whale, wheat, why, when and the wonderful while or whilst etc.

Seamus pronounced 'why' correctly, as most of the Irish do as hwahy – try it!

The aitch is on the breath of the double-u as the lips pucker themselves together for the double-u plunge – fun isn't it?

By the way, as we are at it, aitch is pronounced aitch – not haitch as I have heard a lot these days.

The other place where it's pronounced correctly is Inverness in Scotland; in fact it is said that the best pronunciations in English are in Dublin and Inverness.

Wouldn't believe that would you?

But that spreads to the rest of Ireland and Scotland; thick accents notwithstanding.

When people like Noah Webster come along and try to change the spelling of the words to make things simple for the Americans they are obliterating the origin of some words. I mean why did he take the 'u' out of colour; the 'u' tells us where it came from – 1250–1300; Middle English col ( o ) ur   Anglo-French  ( French couleur )  Latin colōr-  (stem of color ) – I mean why didn't he leave things as they were? It was a pain, when I lived there, that I eventually ended up confusing the two.

 

Someone said to me at a party one night that the 'U' was only put in to words by the English to be flashy or pedantic; I didn't comment on that at the time and I won't now.

When I said 'people like Noah Webster come along' I mean what I say 'come' along, present tense, as they still do; I knew a teacher there who wanted to see Americans spell catalogue as catalog – now what looks better on the page in this day and age of shortening everything, BTW, the former or the latter?

Yes, BTW, my little joke – or joak, to use a private family joke!

My daughter was talking to one of the school mistresses at her son's school, the other day, and she asked her about the basketball court and the school mistress said - don't you mean the multi-sports hall?

Give me a break!!

Seamus Heaney also pronounced Drogheda the way it's spelt without the 'g' but the very posh English say Droyida – they also pronounce Daventry and a town in the north east of England in a funny way too but I think they do that as a test for 'pretenders.' They say Dayentry, by the way.

Do people in other languages have this kind of trouble? I mean do the Mexicans have Mexican Spanish and the people from Quebec and various African countries have their own French spellings? Are they allowed to say actress in their languages unlike us; The Guardian always refer to females as actors – I know a lot of women don't like the word actress but it isn't exactly a word like poetess or authoress is it? It always seemed silly to me, when old dames die like Dame Wendy Hiller, being described as the actor Wendy Hiller. It seems okay for someone like Germaine Greer or even Vanessa Redgrave but Wendy Hiller?

As I write this a profile of Billy Connelly is on the radio and he, as a Scotsman, is pronouncing his 'wh' properly; the big Yin is not too great at the moment with the recent announcement of his prostrate cancer and his Parkinsons. Ironic isn't it, and he would point it out, that he shot to fame on the Michael Parkinson Show in the 70s. 

He came on to that show, the first time, and told one very famous joke and that joke, that one joke, made him a star. 

When he got back to Glasgow he was spotted at the airport and a crowd of people saw him and started to clap; there were only about 4 TV stations in Britain at the time and he hadn't quite reckoned how many people were watching and how he would affect people. 

I remember thinking he was the funniest person I had ever seen and when I went to see him live in the theatre he was even funnier; he wasn't restricted by language and he could say anything he liked and that's the problem with censorship – it's for the narrow minded; I mean what's the matter with a word; what harm can it do? If we welcomed words, rejoiced in their original spelling and meaning, things would be easier for everybody; there is not one name you can call me which would cause me offence. I know I'm white, reluctantly middle class, medium height, regular looks but I've been called lots of things in my life. When I first started on the post office the old sweats would ask me if I was going on my holidays – they were referring to the bags under my eyes and I hadn't quite worked it out what they meant. 

Then I was called the Mekon (I have a big head), the green man (I was usually pale) and the incredible hulk. I didn't figure out the last one till fairly recently; apparently I looked like the guy who played him on TV – the David Banner side to him.

I do feel it for Billy Connelly as my mother had Parkinsons and I do realise that the Americans, with their lack of patience for foreign accents, have never seen him at his best but I have and I'm not putting that joke down here – you can look it up – but I can put a picture of my son with one of the fishes he caught over the weekend. That's a Carp and I think it's probably 15 – 20 years old as the fishermen, or anglers, look after them over the years.

Cuts, Austerity and idiocy!

Pinner Park.

Well there's not much to say at the moment about anything unless of course you are interested in the fact that the British Government are actually selling the post office; can you believe that – they are selling the one stable thing that is beginning to work properly and which is starting to make money!

Not that making money is the main thing the post office is there for, it's supposed to be a service and not necessarily a money making machine.

The British Post Office is maybe the only post office in the world – maybe – that delivers first class mail the day after it's been posted to all parts of the country.

That is impossible in America because of its size but I know you could mail something in Santa Monica on one day, first class, and it might not reach its destination five miles away in the same week. And by the way they have no plans to privatise the American post office and that is the superior capitalist of countries – good or bad that's what it is!

Someone said on TV the other night that the modern post office is out of date – people buy things from Amazon and E Bay, these days, she said, and we can't wait for the post office to open to return them.

Can't wait for it to open???? Return them????

Give me a break!

Oh by the way – they say they are not selling the post office at all – they are selling the Royal Mail.

The Royal Mail is 497 years old and is owned by the government and every time they argue about it on the radio or TV the Conservatives say they are not selling the post office they are selling the Royal Mail – over and over they say this as if the one is nothing to do with the other.

Here's what it says on good old Wikipedia:

Royal Mail is the postal service in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland that, as of 2013, is 497 years-old and government-owned Royal Mail Holdings plc owns Royal Mail Group Limited, which in turn operates the brands Royal Mail (letters) and Parcelforce Worldwide (parcels). Post Office Ltd (counters) and General Logistics Systems, an international logistics company, are wholly owned subsidiaries of Royal Mail Holdings.

So they're not selling the post office.

If you go to Ealing, for example, in west London, there is no post office at all. It has been closed and put in to the back of the newsagents and stationers WH Smith. In Eastcote the post office is for sale and we – the population – are letting it happen.

Got it? Good!

As I say – not much to say at the moment about anything unless of course you are interested in the austerity policies and all the other government cuts that we don't really understand; let me give you a silly example.

Harrow Council have decided to close the public lavatories in the parks – it saves money. If the loo is closed you don't have to employ people to lock and open them each day; make sense??

Outside the loo, in the park, people take their dogs for walks and to help them keep the place tidy and encourage the owners to make sure the place isn't covered in defecation – shit - (I wanted to put a different word instead of defecation and the word 'shit' came up; made me laugh) – yes to make sure it's tidy the council provided bins. Well now, to save money, they have taken the bins away; it saves paying people to put them there each day, empty them and take them away.

These facilities – the public lavatories and the bins – are in the parks which usually get locked each evening and opened the next day; not any more. To save money Harrow Council are going to leave the parks open to save people having to open them in the mornings and locking them in the evening to save money; they don't think any harm will come to the parks as people would vandalise them whether they're locked or not so they say.

So they say!!

When darkness comes people will go in there; maybe lay around and drink? Smoke a joint? Maybe lay around and fornicate? Maybe lay around and . . . . no lavatories??? No bins for the dog shit??? No light??? I'll leave it to your imagination as to what state the clothes of the vandals, fornicators and boozers would be in by next morning; but will it save money?

If they hired people to do these jobs – let's say they pay them, shall we say, £650 per week and let's say, to be totally outrageous, that the people earning this money decided to spend £600 of that, each week, on booze and fags and squander the rest, the money that they would spend would attract a lot of tax which would go straight into the government's coffers and . . .

Well, you know, they are making stupid cuts to the NHS; spending many billions refurbishing hospitals, then saying they're not working – not paying their way - so they close them down and sell them.

True!!

In Northwick Park Hospital –  still in Harrow by the way – they are closing down the rheumatology department – closing it down!!!

So come on – come on Generation X or the Generation after that whatever you are called – the boomers have done enough; it's time to stop this lot.

Do you believe, American readers, that in Britain we have 'Virgin Medical' trying to edge its way in to the National Health Service and ruin it.

Nuff said!!

Amazon.

 The River Amazon - seems to go round and round.

A lot of people liked my post last week about acting; it was actually a revue I wrote for Amazon which I copied and pasted here – I thought it might be of interest.

A word about Amazon; in Britain it's http://Amazon.co.uk and America http://Amazon.com – the same derided company both sides of the Atlantic. In France, I believe, they were prevented from selling stuff with no postal charges as they were undercutting the book shops.

I have friends who never use Amazon; they never use them because of the loyalty they feel to the book shops and believe Amazon are closing them down.

That's a fair point.

Over the years I have had friends – other friends – who have worked in book shops, including a famous one in Charing Cross Road, who have been on slave wages; working for next to nothing, being supervised by the supervisor from hell and working very long hours. Well why didn't they get a job somewhere else? Yes, why?

Now those same book shops have been given a kick up the arse by Amazon and at the same time Amazon has saved the post office; Ebay also saved the day for the British Post Office and has put them into a decent profit position so now the government wants to sell off the post office counters to large stores or private enterprises now they have Amazon and Ebay on board for the mail side of things. Apparently the post office counters don't make a profit but the parcels side does; good old Amazon, good old Ebay.

I remember when Amazon first started; they were making no money at all but even so they were sponsoring the Charlie Rose Show on PBS; every night Charlie would espouse their virtues – what a great company Amazon is, he would say, and the rest of us who had read about the stocks wondered just how long it would last; just as we are now wondering how Netflix has lasted so long; that's a very strange company but it hasn't been taken over yet by Google like - YouTube.

But there is a good side to Amazon; not only did they help Charlie Rose, they help first time writers to get started and first time film makers with their film festival information company which is a subsidiary of the Internet Movie Date Base (IMDb.com) which is an Amazon Company. That's a place where all actors have to be aware of so things go around in circles don't they.

But those old book shops hardly ever helped writers to get started. I say, hardly ever as there may be a few – not that I know of any – who are helping new writers and novice novelists like me; but I haven't heard of any so that's just to cover myself.

Well that's it for today and here's a picture of a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize!

And here's a man - in one photo with John Lennon, no less was was an anti war campaigner:

Such is life - going round in circles.

Reclaiming the Stanislavski Approach.

The movie 'Stagecoach.' - good acting? natural.

 

An actor I used to work with, many years ago, John Gillett, has written a book on acting; it's called Acting on Impulse: Reclaiming the Stanislavski Approach: A Practical Workbook for Actors.

He wrote it a few years ago and I have just found it on Amazon.

Oh dear; another book about acting, was my first reaction; but then I started to read some of it.

First of all I have to give John 4 stars for the writing of the book and for the kick in the arse the British acting profession needs.

He is right; we don't talk about acting here, we tell stories of old times in rep when so and so came on stage with his flies undone or a large piece of spinach in their front teeth. That's okay; nobody wants to stop the fun but there is a very interesting side to acting theory and, indeed, I spent some time doing this when I lived in Los Angeles.

I spent 16½ years living and working there and worked with actors who were trained in all kinds of methods from Stanislavsky to Meisner, Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, and I bought all the books, started learning all over again; I did workshops, joined an improv group - as it's the 'done thing' in a company town – went to 'Starbucks' and 'Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf' on Sunset, and did a bit of networking. 

Everybody walks around with a 'spec' script in their pocket, their 'head shot' in their bag and some changes of clothes in their car in case they get an emergency call from their agent with an audition or 'call back' for the one they went for the other day.

There are no 'rules of thumb' of course, but I have worked with actors who have talked at great length about acting techniques and it hasn't made a bit of difference to their performance. They were great at the theory and terrible at practice; as my dad used to say 'they could talk a good fight.'

I am a great fan of John Malkovitch who is, in my opinion, a great actor; very dangerous on the stage who does virtually no research at all. He knows how to 'behave' and that's what acting is all about. I didn't see anybody like him in any workshops.

I remember a Stella Adler lecture when she referred to British acting as something the Americans couldn't aspire to as 'they' (the Brits, as they're called) have their natural class, poise and manners that 'we' (the Americans) just cannot do. I am paraphrasing her, as it was a long time since I first became aware of the lecture, in the Stella Adler Studio on Hollywood Boulevard, which is played on a continuous loop - but it's something to bear in mind.

Maybe she was thinking of actors like David Niven and Leslie Howard?

Whilst in Los Angeles I would go to a workshop and 'work-shopped' quite a few plays including playing the title role in Richard III – that would never have happened here; another thing that would never happen here was that I was auditioned to play Sir Isaac Newton on TV. I didn't get it but over here I might have had a very slight chance to play his servant.

That is the main difference between British and American acting – class; and that's why you see the same faces on TV over here all the time and why we – and I shouldn't really say this as an actor – have to put up with so much stereotypical bad acting on our screens; acting we have got used to over the years and since I have returned to London I have got used to it too after the initial shock upon my return.

I remember working with an actor in LA who was trained in the Sandy Meisner technique and who used it; he would use a yellow highlighter on his script and that was the only part of the script that he ever read or even knew.

He thought this was enough; I loved having conversations with him, during the rehearsal breaks about his various techniques, but I could never get through to him that his character might have been mentioned in another part of the script and this might help him with his characterisation. What if his character committed suicide at the end of the story or had some kind of quirk or disability?

I mean what is the point of acting? To help tell the story I should think.

In Los Angeles there were coaches and workshops for everything: cold reading classes, audition classes, comedy classes, stand-up comedy classes and all the rest of it. I did the workshop aforementioned and a term at The Groundlings – the improv group.

There were quite a few stars emerged from The Groundlings, I have to say, who would go in to Saturday Night Live and then on to movies and then disappear with their money – apart from Will Ferrell who really made it big.

The people that make the most money in Hollywood are the acting coaches – they are all over the place; they're all 'in the moment.'

I had a friend there who taught at the Lee Strasberg Institute on Santa Monica Boulevard but nowhere did I see any classes in voice production or diction.

And the other way to make money in Los Angeles is to write an acting book; Samuel French's book shop on Sunset Blvd is always busy and puts to shame their branch in Fitzrovia, London.

So what about John's book? For a start he splits actors in to two types: Representational Actors and Organic Actors and you will know from the supermarket which one is considered the better in every day life - but can you taste the difference?

Representational, he says, use fake emotions and the Organic ones use experience. The other thing he points out is that public subsidy in the theatre here should be raised to European Rates and recent cut backs reversed – what that has to do with Stanislavsky is beyond me.

John also talks of group theatre philosophy, publicly funded; what about the National Theatre, here? It's government funded and employs lots of privileged actors and actresses?

Read this book if you think you need help but always remember, if you can't act in the first place this book will not teach you and furthermore ask yourself who the best actors are in your life; they are our children who are naturals. They only become unnatural when they are given lines to say or acting teachers get hold of them.

I have seen literally thousands of performances and I have loved some of them them, been swayed by some of them and thrilled by some of them. Sometimes I have almost been moved by some of them, but I've only been really moved twice and I know this was purely by technique and both times it was by Sydney Poitier: once in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and once with Bobby Darin in the movie Pressure Point. I fell for it both times.

Good actors? I don't know.