The Academy Awards.

I thought I wrote about the Academy Awards last year but not so; so here we go.

To start off if I went out of my front door I could be at The Kodak Theatre, where they have the show and present the awards, in five minutes; walking.

The streets around here will be very busy as Hollywood Boulevard will be blocked off and made into a pedestrian precinct and why they don't make that permanent is beyond me.

They build a bridge across the street to enable ABC Television to put their cameras on and they also interview people on it.

Over the street from the Kodak Theatre is a Belfast type security fence where you have to be searched or patted down just to walk along the street; the footpath is unavailable to pedestrians and the Kodak Theatre is not in view from anywhere across any street or building; it's all be blocked off.

So when people ask me if I go down to watch the arrivals the answer is no.

Now don't get me wrong I really do enjoy the show and I see nothing wrong with it but the winners are not always the best; there will be a big shock if Colin Firth doesn't win for best actor because he has been in the frame from the time he opened his mouth on the first day of shooting The King's Speech; it seems to be a forgone conclusion as it is every year.

The strongest voting block in the Academy are the actors and they will also be the ones to choose the best film.

Everybody is only allowed a vote in their own category and everybody votes for the film and that's why the actors are so powerful.

Let me get one thing out of the way; if anybody tells you they know the winner of any of the Academy Awards they are mistaken. It is the one award where it never leaks out. The reason? Only two people know so if it leaks out the one that did not do the leaking will know the other guy did it – and here in the USA you can't bet on it. In fact I don't think you can get a bet on anywhere after the voting papers have gone in; if you don't believe me and think the winner gets leaked take it up with Price Waterhouse!

I know an actor who lives here, and gets plenty of work, who goes out to Santa Monica on Academy Award day and reads his book in a place where the awards are not on; the rest of us are eating pizza or going to Oscar parties – and there must be thousands of Oscar parties here.

In the afternoon before the show starts it's very hard to park at Rock and Roll Ralphs – the local supermarket – as people are in their buying booze, finger food, pizza, ready made party feast and lashings and lashings of ginger beer. I put that last one in as you can't buy it here but I love it.

Living down the street within eye sight of my balcony is Helen Mirren; on the year she won for The Queen I was in London so didn't see the limo arrive to pick her up; but she goes to loads of award ceremonies and I haven't seen a limo yet. I might have done if I'd been looking through the window I suppose.

Now who is that above?

That is the great Randy Newman; singer songwriter, composer of film music. He is the nephew of Alfred Newman who scored over 200 films; he was nominated for 45 Academy Awards and won 9.

His nephew, Randy, gets nominated nearly every year and never gets nervous because he knows, sometimes, that he doesn't stand a chance; he has been nominated for 19 Academy Awards and won 1; he was the one winner that the orchestra would not drown out for going over his allotted time in his acceptance speech; he looked at them and said “some of these guys sometimes work for me” - he was only kidding, of course, but would you want to upset him?

I have always liked Randy Newman and his songs which I think are very clever; read this from Wikipedia - Newman often writes lyrics from the perspective of a character far removed from Newman's own experiences. For example, the 1972 song “Sail Away” is written as a slave trader's sales pitch to attract slaves, while the narrator of “Political Science” is a U.S. nationalist who complains of worldwide ingratitude toward America and proposes a brutally ironic final solution. One of his biggest hits, “Short People” was written from the perspective of "a lunatic" who hates short people.

He is nominated this year for the song in Toy Story 3 and was on the radio today being interviewed.

On one of the movies (Air Force One) he scored, the director changed his mind about the music at the last minute and asked Jerry Goldsmith to do the music and he (Newman) was asked today how he felt about such things. I mean it takes a long time to compose, score, arrange and record music for a full length feature film.

He said he accepted it; he said in other departments, such as costumes, the costume designer would approach the director to see if a hat is suitable for one of the characters and the director would be the one to choose with no consultation. It was as if the director - who could be just a few months out of college – was suddenly an expert on hats. He said the rejection of his music was exactly the same!!

I like Randy Newman.

Making a film on the cheap.

I made a film once in which I was involved from writing the script, acting and directing in it to putting the china graph marks onto the cutting copy to denote where I wanted cuts, fades, wipes or whatever on the negative.

Then I had to sit and grade it in the studio to make sure the colours were consistent and then take it to Cannes to try and sell it as a pilot for a TV series.

The story was about two antique dealers from the bottom end of the market who find a valuable item at Portobello Antiques market in London, sell it after a lot of negotiations and then lose it before getting paid.

Just a bit of fun, really, but people liked the two lead characters and thought they would look good if the short film was made into a TV series; so I was asked, by a film distribution company, to write some outlines for future scripts before setting off to Cannes - in between helping the sound editor by plying him and accompanying him with many a glass of Guinness; it's a wonder our livers survived.

This might sound a bit like a one man show but there were a lot of others involved and I sorted out a way to pay for it - eventually.

When I was working at the theatre in Northampton, I bumped into a business man on the train coming up from London, who was a big fan of the theatre. He took his wife to every play and invited us to his big house in Northampton one of the nights after the show for dinner.

I stayed on living in Northampton after finishing the season there and lots of times, when I travelled on the train to and from London, I would meet the same businessman.

We would talk of plans for the future and one time I told him of my wish to make a film of my own. He said he would fund it and he said he could easily do it as a tax write off.

So I set about writing the script based on a true incident from the antiques trade which we dabbled in – and still do.

I had directed before when someone asked me to take over on a film so I contacted the director of photography from that film, the DP, and showed him the script.

He wanted to do drama, as he had been specialising in documentaries up to then so away we went; I would get the actors and he would get the crew.

To get everybody to work for nothing we gave the crew a rise in rank; somebody new would be the clapper/loader, a clapper/loader would go to camera assistant (focus puller) a camera assistant took the job of a camera operator and the DP became the DP on a drama as opposed to a DP on a documentary.

The sound was a different story; I had to use about three of four sound people on the film.

When a documentary is planned they hire their DP and he or she would choose where they would hire the camera, lenses and camera equipment from; so we went to a camera house in London and on the promise that he would use them for his next paying project they let us have camera and equipment for nothing.

I told him about the businessman and the fact that he had a very photogenic house which he might let us use for the film.

I had to buy the stock; this is film for the camera, tape for the sound and mag-stock which is what you transfer the sound to edit in an editing machine which is the same size as the film and we planned to shoot on sixteen millimetre.

Shooting on film was and is very expensive as opposed to shooting today on Digital which is relatively cheap.

The two music videos I shot over the past few years were shot on Digital and cost virtually nothing.

The other thing about digital is that you can play it back as soon as you shoot it but the only time you can do that with film is with a video assist – invented by Jerry Lewis – and we didn't have that kind of money; in fact we had no money at all.

I opened an account with the Rank Organisation – J. Arthur Rank of the famous rhyming slang activity – to process the film we shot and the rest of the stuff was begged or borrowed as with the camera and the actors worked for food; even though the crew ate it all – I'm joking I'm sorry.

I remember one of the days I took everybody out for a meal in Northampton and, when they ordered everything, I went to the lavatory to count the money in my pocket to see if I could pay for it.

I hadn't counted in going to a restaurant as I had laid food on for them back at my house – where we shot some of the film – but off to the restaurant they all trotted.

When I counted what was in my pocket I found I didn't have enough so I went back to the table and watched everybody eating and asking for more and maybe more wine and what about a pudding? – ha ha ha ha, they were laughing and having a lovely time and there we were; me and the crew, the actors had gone back go London, and I kind of sat there and looked at them having a good time wondering how I was going to pay for it.

“Excuse me” I said and I went out; I stood there in the street and wondered if I should just go home – but I'm not like that.

I tried my ATM card at the bank over the street but it was declined so I found a phone box and called a friend who didn't live very far away; luckily he was in and met me in the street with a hundred pounds which was enough to pay the bill.

Yes you're right; what happened to that businessman. That's what we were thinking!

The last time I met him on the train I told him I was going ahead and he was very excited but when we were about to start I found him hard to get hold of; his secretary took a few messages but he didn't return any of my calls so I went around to his house and knocked the door.

He had a huge glass door and when I rang the bell I could hear his children playing in the hall; then I could see them as they were looking at us through the curtains; but nobody answered; I got the message.

I had shot the whole film, I owed the Rank Organisation and when I took some lights back I was told that money was outstanding on them so I paid.

My daughter's boy friend's father had let me use his big van for the shoot for nothing, so I didn't owe any money there but I did owe everybody in the movie to get it finished.

A few years earlier I did an award winning student film so I contacted the editor to see if he would be interested in editing in editing my film and he said he would do it at the cutting rooms at the film school in Bournemouth but I would have to pay him; so I did; six weeks wages as he could only do it part time.

It was then finished at the cutting rooms at the Royal College of Art in South Kensington – they didn't know; sorry. We would climb over the gate and creep in to the editing suites after the pub closed at night and do it then and it was eventually finished up to a rough cut. The editing and paying the editor cost more than the rest of the film, apart from the stock, even though I didn't have to pay for the use of the equipment.

My solution to funding the film was the same as any, and probably every other, businessman in the UK; an overdraft! So I booked an appointment with the bank manager.

This I did and he gave me an overdraft; with this I paid Rank and anybody else who needed paying and went to see the distributors; they let me use their cutting room for free for the sound editing and that's when I called my pal Giles and we gave our livers the Guinness test.

So I was bound for Cannes to try and sell the thing as a series. The distributors were involved in trying to get funding and set up loads of meetings in Cannes – and what a time that was.

I was asked if I would change the casting of the other character in it for an actor called Iain Cutherberson who was well known; the distributors had a connection with a Scottish TV company and as he was Scottish they wanted him in it.

But it wouldn't have worked; I promised my friend that he would be in it if we actually made the series but in any case I am about 5'9” and Iain Cutherberson was 6'4” - the dynamic would have changed. It wouldn't be about two fellas trying to make money out of antiques – it would have been about the long and the short of it.

At the end of the day we didn't get the series made; a series called Perfect Scoundrels was taken up by Southern TV, one of the people we were talking to, which was about two other guys on the make and which was very good I have to say.

My film sold to Finland and other Scandinavian countries but I didn't see a penny – that's show business.

The bank wrote off the overdraft and I came to Hollywood.

One night I went to the International House of Pancakes (IHOP) on Sunset Boulevard for a short stack of pancakes and coffee. As I sat there I noticed someone looking over at me; he was sitting with his friend and eventually came over.

“Are you Chris Sullivan?” he said.

“Yes” I said “and I know who you are.”

It was the rich businessman from Northampton.

I didn't hold a grudge so I joined them at their table.

“I'm sorry to let you down” he said “I was going through a bad patch.”

“That's okay” I said “but you could have answered your door!”

Sitcoms, laugh tracks and the Audience Response Duplicator

We've all seen sit-coms on TV – situation comedies – with laugh tracks.

When ITV first started in Britain and we got the Lucy Show someone came to our house, who didn't have ITV, and asked who those people were who were laughing and I said it was the audience. Of course I was wrong; I Love Lucy was shot on film with a 3 camera set up and they used a laugh track – or to be more precise – an Audience Response Duplicator.

They were machines that looked like an open pin ball machine full of rods and balls; to be honest I don't think they were invented till the 60's and Lucy was on in the 50s so I don't know what they used; maybe it was, in fact, an audience.

Or someone will write in and tell me it was a machine invented by Dougglas!!

The big shock to a lot of actors like me was when we went to do a sit-com we found that they did, in fact, have an audience. Each time I did one – and I didn't do too many – there was an audience of around 300 people; sitting there with smiling faces ready to laugh.

They would be warmed up by a comedian and the last time I saw a warm up man that I got to know he was warming up audiences in Nottingham on a quiz show that shot 3 episodes a day. I can't remember the name of the show but over here it was hosted by Bob Barker who, incidentally, lives almost next door, and had the phrase 'come on down.'

The machine I mention above came to light on the American version of the Antiques Road Show this week and was valued at many thousands of dollars; have a look on You Tube; an Audience Response Duplicator.

There was a show in the UK which was a mock documentary called 'People Like Us' which was a comedy show with no studio audience. I think the guy who played the lead and devised it got into some kind of trouble with the law and it was dropped but it was very funny.

Anyway it started the fad of not using studio audiences and maybe that's where The Office got the idea. All new comedy shows over here – well most of them – do without the laugh track (live or otherwise) now and the ones that still use it have failed; Kelsey Grammar to name one, but there are others.

The number one sit-com here at the moment is The Modern Family and that goes without canned laughter.

The trouble with having a studio audience is that they would not laugh at the same joke twice so if you needed to do a re-take the sound editor would cut and paste a laugh from somewhere else in the show. They would do this when a gag didn't go too well too.

Then something happened here in the 90s. A show called The Nanny became a hit and for that show they used professional laughers, for want of a better word.

Here's how that came about; in 1985 the star of The Nanny was, unfortunately, raped by two men who broke into her home with guns and raped her and her friend.

When The Nanny started to become popular the star, started to be stalked. The two men who broke in and raped her, by the way, were in prison, so there must have been some other kind of weird psyche that led other nutters to bother her.

So she asked if there was some way that the audience could be vetted as she felt vulnerable playing in front of an audience that were so close.

They got rid of the audience altogether and went to Central Casting.

Central Casting is a very famous agency for extras and they asked for about 35 people from there for the audience. Then the idea hit them that if they were going to hire the audience they might as well ask for good laughers.

The casting director made the calls to the artistes and asked them to laugh over the phone; some of these people were in the supermarket or the laundry or even in the hairdressers and went straight into their laugh as soon as they were asked; they had to explain themselves to some of the people they were with that they were doing an audition of course.

They became very good at their job on The Nanny and knew what kind of laugh the producers needed and suddenly they were being treated differently.

Usually extras don't get spoken to by the actors; it's a kind of class system – the leading actors stick together, then the featured ones, the day players and then the extras; a terrible pecking order.

The laughers were getting invited to the Christmas Parties and soon other shows heard about the laughers and hired them in other sit-coms and talk shows and soon they were doing 3 shows a week.

In those days they were being paid $75 a day and any of them on therapy suddenly didn't need a therapist as laughter is a cure all – if you ever feel down just try it; force yourself to laugh; it's amazing.

Of course all good things come to an end; at the end of the 90s reality shows became popular and they didn't need audiences any more; then the sit-coms dropped them, as I have said before, so now the laughers are looking for a laugh.

I am due to take a show to Edinburgh this year, again, this time a play, and I could do with a laugher or two. A friend of mine, and he knows who he is, is the best laugher I have ever known. If ever he comes to my show I know I'm half way there as laughter is infectious; $75 a day in Edinburgh? Who knows?

By the way - it's Hogarth above.

Acting in Hollywood

All that stuff about the British Royal Family being lizards, and 9/11 being an inside job and all the rest of it including the so called murder of Princess Diana was not a joke; I was pointing out that people actually believe that rubbish. And why do they believe it? Because they are paranoiac – not paranoid but paranoiac; I am paranoiac about the use of the word paranoid; I don't know why it's replaced paranoiac in the vernacular.

They are paranoiac because they believe that the reason they being left behind is because of the world wide conspiracy – but I don't want to write any more about it as I know as soon as I put a certain word in here a red flag will go up in CIA Headquarters, the game will be up and I'll disappear.

I have written the above in response to about 10 e-mails which, if I haven't replied to them already, I will soon.

By the way I have had a few complaints about not being able to leave comments on here and sometimes I have the same problem in replying to a comment. I think if you have a G-mail account you can sign in using that or maybe if you are a 'follower.'

Even though I get loads and loads of hits and page-loads I don't have that many followers. It doesn’t matter I can see – well I used to be able to see – who's reading it. I say used to because that was when the hits were low. For example I have had over 400 hits on the Julian Assange story, over the past two weeks, and over 300 on the one I wrote about The Golden Globes and Javier Barden.

Maybe I would make some money out of it if they'd have clicked on to the advertisements.

I wanted to follow up about the pilot season; I was asked what the pilot season is like in the UK; well there isn't one. Acting and entertainment is a totally different ball game over there but I have been here for 16 years and what I'm about to say will probably be out of date.

When I first came over here I noticed how professional it was; on the corners of most streets, instead of a pub or a bookies like in London, there were offers for head shots – actor photos.

Head shots were used as a calling card and I could buy 200 or 300 for less than $100. In London the actors would pay a lot more than that because their agent wanted quality shots and they would usually want their head shot back after they sent it to some casting director, which is why they would enclose a stamped address envelope.

Here the idea of a head shot is to get it so it looks like you, it has to be 8”x10” and your resume gets stapled on to the back.

If you are up for a job you just stick your head shot in the mail and nothing else; no 'dear sir would it be possible' you just stick it in the mail and make sure your agent's number is on there somewhere. You might just stick the character's name you or your agent is suggesting you for but nothing else; there is no need.

Digital photos and the internet have put a lot of the head shot shops out of business now, by the way.

The other place I was told about, on the first night I was here, was Frenches Book Shop on Sunset Boulevard. That place has everything for the actor.

In London there is a publication called 'Contacts' which gives you the address of every agent, film and TV company, prop house and lots more – a good digs guide too.

I always thought that would be a good idea over here but in Frenches you have a book, published every month or so, that is exclusively for agents. It gives you the names of the particular agents, what type of actors they are looking for and other useful information.

Of course it will have CAA and ICM in there but I'm sure nobody applies to them; when you are ready they will seek you out. But not all stars are with those big agents. Jack Nicholson and Harrison Ford, I believe, are still with their original agent.

Also in Frenches it gives you tips about how you should do most things – audition being one of them.

Casting directors were asked what annoys them more than anything about actors and the answer most of them gave was actors borrowing their stapler to stick their resume on the back of their head shot.

In London you have The Spotlight and in Hollywood there is The Academy Players – one big difference: the last time I advertised in The Spotlight it cost me a few hundred dollars for a half page. Again over here they don't care about the prestige of having a half page; there are 10 photos per page and for the year that costs $36 – that's about £24.

Don't you feel you are being ripped off over there?

The casting director wants to see what you look like not the fact that you can afford a half page!

The other places casting directors find actors, these days, is on the Internet Movie Date Base – the imdB – and you can usually tell who the British actors are on there as they rarely put a photo up.

Casting directors cast from the imdB so why don't they use it?

There are 300 million people here and when things get big they get big. I know somebody who was paid £250,000 for a commercial; it was a buy out for two years and when the two years ran out they renewed his contract.

That's why actors in Hollywood always carry their head shots and the guys who go for many commercials have heads shots and a change of clothes in their cars all the time.

I was out one day – British trained which means I don't go to the rip off acting coaches here and I was in my shorts – and my agent called me and told me to go over to West LA for a commercial audition; by the way they are all called auditions here not meetings etc – they tell it like it is.

There I was in my shorts at The Farmer's Market with my wife eating doughnuts and drinking coffee and the agent told me to get over there and to be wearing a suit. I came home, grabbed my suit, shoes, shirt and tie and got back into the car and went to West LA.

When I got there I got out of the car and got changed in the parking lot; no problem. On with the shirt, the tie, my trousers and socks and then I noticed; I had brought two odd shoes; they were both black but they were both the right foot and one was a tap shoe; so I had to wear my trainers/sneakers in with the suit.

But getting back to the pilot season in the UK which doesn't exist:

Because there are 300 million people here they have to get it right. When John Cleese wrote, with his then wife, Faulty Towers he wrote it to be broadcast on BBC2; the minority channel; he had plenty of time to write it and record it which is why it was so good.

That's John Cleese above with a reverse moustache - and me below stuffing cake into my mouth in a play - many many years ago; neither of them good headshots.

Anyway that's over 1300 words today so I'd better sign off.