So what is this really?
I write it down here and it comes out there; on your computer. I don't think we stop and think about the wonders of science and technology; I get hits from India and China in seconds and replies to e-mails almost straight away from there too. It make me wonder why I don't get replies from people just down the street as fast.
I'm due to go to London next Thursday for a couple of weeks; I have three things I have to do there. Number one to go to our grandson's Christening on November 8th; I haven't seen the little darling yet; he has two teeth already and I feel terrible as I missed timed my last trip there and missed the birth – his name is Conor Ruben Johnstone.
Then I have a meeting with someone to set up my one man show at the Edinburgh Festival next year; this should be straight forward just putting a face to a name, have a chat and take it from there. I will probably commit but there are numerous things you need to know when you take your show there. The last time I went I was always receiving bits of bad news from the managers of the venue I took the show to.
For instance I had to pay public liability insurance; this was to be expected, I suppose, but I had to pay nearly ₤200 for my one hour per day. Everybody else had to pay the same rate too which means either the insurance company or the management of the theatre made a lot of money as there must have been at least fifteen shows at the venue.
Some managements make you pay money to the PRS for the songs you sing or the music you play – either live or recorded – and sometimes you don't. I suppose the places where you don't have to pay are usually the places with a music licence and they pay PRS with their licence fee.
I do some songs in the show which I wrote myself and I arrange some traditional ones and that money comes back to me as I'm a PRS member so it's nice to know that someone has my back.
The other plan I have is to shoot a pilot for a comedy series in London in the Spring of next year; I'll be looking for a DP or, as they say in Britain, a DOP – Director of Photography. He's the most important guy in a film crew.
A friend of mine did his first movie with Michael Winner in New York many years ago; everybody called him Mr Winner and the only person he called mister was the DP; so my friend realised straight away how important the DP was.
In England a film crew usually calls the director 'governor' or 'gov' for short; they don't do that here. When Michael Caton-Jones first came here he tried to get them to call him governor but they wouldn't.
Apart from that the film making is exactly the same here as in the UK; the crews in Hollywood have the reputation of being the best in the world – so do the crews inLondon. I have no preference but I have noticed that a lot of the big budget movies get made in London; things like Star Wars, the Indiana Jones series and the James Bond series to name three and a lot of films made in Hollywood do their post production in London too; some films made in London get their post production here by the same token.
But it usually has nothing to do with which place has the better crew – it's usually some kind of tax break or other incentive.
They were all set in Scotland to shoot Brave Heart some years ago but suddenly the Irish Government came in with a deal for the film company and the production went there; they even supplied the Irish army as extras. And what happened to the Scottish money? They made Rob Roy.
By the way no news about the bloody street incident from Sunday evening; it shows how many violent incidents happen here that don't even make the news. Today two people were shot at a Synagogue in North Hollywood and the police cordoned off Sunset Boulevard at about 4.00 this afternoon and surrounded a motel to no avail.
My wife works near there and didn't notice a thing; also two aircraft collided in mid air off the Californian coast; the crash may have involved a Coast Guard plane and a Marine helicopter carrying nine crew members. A search has been launched and debris has been spotted about 15 miles off San Clemente Island.
So we're not without incident here – there's usually some kind of news circus going on but there's not much happening on that front at the moment. The owner of the Dodgers, Frank McCourt (no relation to the late great writer) and his wife are filing for a divorce and of course we have Polanski hovering in the background. And we've just heard news that Dennis Hopper has been diagnozed with prostate cancer - so our thoughts are with him.
So that's it – didn't quite make Thursday; it's a coldish Los Angeles night at 59° and the forecast is 74 for tomorrow leading up to 80 on Sunday.
This is going on at the moment here in good old LA:
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