SoundZ

Wow it's been a week or two since I wrote anything on here; I've been busy making a film – that one above. Now don't get too excited out there as it's only a short one – although it gets longer by the day like Pinocchio's nose each time I work on it – but the idea is to get the movie in to the Edinburgh Film Festival in June which means it has to be ready for February 28.

I am getting on well with it especially as the object of the exercise is to do everything myself and make it for less than – well, what can I say? Less than £100 which is about $150; okay let's say less than $100 – although I might be pushing it at that as I'll have to buy blank DVDs.

I'm writing, editing and shooting as I go along. I've done a lot of the sound editing and music and the only thing I am having a bit of trouble with is rendering on to HD!!! In English that is saving the film in High Definition. My computer keeps telling me that it's running out of memory even though I did bigger projects with my music videos before Christmas.

So if anybody out there has any ideas?

You know where to find me.

Here is a still from the film, by the way:

 

which looks more like the reaction I had to the first listening of my love song for Valentine's Day, I Love You. (still on YouTube).

The other thing I have to do is to not make it look like a vanity project but I suppose that is what it is; the same with the one man shows I have done in the past. One was the Irish show and the other my one man play.

The Irish show I did from the year 2000 to 2010 in Los Angeles; not all the time, you understand, just on St Patrick's Day, a few colleges and the Irish Fair at Santa Anita Racetrack; I would say it was very successful as it played to full houses but it didn't really work in London – there we are.

When the time came to do any of these shows I would get on with it but in the hiatus, if I thought of them at all, I would wonder at the gall I had to actually get up and do them; I'm not thinking of that now I am working at getting the film completed – tomorrow I have to learn more lines.

Now you may wonder how I can do a one man film – or a one person film to be boringly politically correct – without making it look barmy or even talking to the camera but there are loads of devices and techniques that have been used in movies over the years and I'm using some of those.

There is a trailer which was on You Tube for a couple of days but I've taken it down as the film itself has not to be on the Internet before the festival – if you missed it sorry!!

So wish me luck and if you have a solution to my little problem of rendering let me know.

Oh and here is another still from the film where I am looking a bit more intelligent.

The Golden Globes.

2 of the funniest people on earth.

 

Do I ever miss Los Angeles? All the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, the weather, palm trees, Schwarzenegger cycling along the beach – me cycling along the beach? Me waving at Schwarzenegger – Schwarzenegger giving me the finger!!! No he would always wave back and sometimes he would wave first but do I miss all that? Well I would be a liar if I said I didn't. I know some people don't like sunshine for 12 months a year but we did have seasons of a sort; very hot, hot and not so hot! And I loved it, never missed Britain at all – just the family.

When you visit LA, you might cycle along the beach and think it great but we did it nearly every week. Now all that has gone and I am back in cultured London with the cultured theatre – the last show I saw was Barry Humphries as Dame Edna Everage; now what could be more cultured than that – he/she is a phenomenon – a legend – but what I really miss about Hollywood are the award ceremonies.

Yesterday it was The Golden Globes; now The Golden Globes are nothing really, they are nominated and chosen by such a small group of journalists that they can't mean much. These journalists are the Hollywood Foreign Press; journalists from newspapers and other journals from the rest of the world. The reason it is well attended by movies stars and the like is that it is a huge fantastic party; what they would call over here a big piss up. And even though they don't mean that much I miss them and when the academy awards are announced this week I will miss those too.

I will miss the arguments and discussions with people who don't agree with me and I will know that they don't mean anything either; just fun.

There is no way you can say what the best film is or the best actor or actress (actrice); the difference between the two ceremonies is that the Academy nominations will be more realistic.

So I miss all that; the crowds of people in Rock 'n' Roll Ralphs (the supermarket) buying pizza and beer for their parties on award days, the endless TV shows – the pre award show, the post award show, the after party, the Mayor's party, the Governor's Ball, the Elton John party and all the glamour – watching all the glitz and the jewellery from the comfort of our modest apartment and throwing cushions at the TV screen when Day-Lewis gets it again!!!!

But we are back here and things are swinging along with me and my sandwich.

I love the joke the director told at the ceremony yesterday – the director of Gravity said he thanks Sandra Bullock who didn't walk (float?) off the set when he offered to give her herpes; the poor fella is from Mexico and his accent made it sound like that when he was really offering her an ear piece.

Here are some photos – I wonder what the poor people are doing?

Michael Holmes

The killer wields a knife near the canal in Venice in Nic Roeg's Don't Look Now.

A lot of the great capital cities in the world have a river running through them; I hasten to add that one of my favourite cities, Los Angeles – yes I know it's fashionable to hate it and it's not a capital – has The Los Angeles River which is usually dry. Well you know that from the scenes in Grease where Travolta and a few of his mates raced their hot rods.

In real life, of course, kids play down there in the dry but when a storm comes, and when it rains it really rains in LA, some of those kids end up under six feet of water and are swept away. I've lost count of the number of live rescues I've seen on TV.

Of the capital cities, I think firstly, of course, of Dublin where The River Liffey runs between the north and the south side; it's the same in London with the River Thames separating the north from the south but because they named New York twice (as in the words of the song) they have two rivers: The East River and The Hudson River – Paris has the River Seine, Rome The Tiber and so on.

A lot of those cities are proud of their rivers especially the Dubs who swear that the Guinness is made from Liffey Water.

A friend of mine recently sent a link to a video about Birmingham; it's on You Tube and it's called More Canals than Venice. First of all when I lived in Birmingham I never went near the canal; I'll explain later but it has always amazed me that a lot of Brummies carry this information; that Birmingham has more canals than Venice and the other thing they usually follow up with is that Venice smells.

There is nothing wrong with Birmingham, it's a fine place with a good football team (Aston Villa) but why the perpetual comparison to Venice. Venice is one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

It is one of the most visited cities because of its architecture and large collection of renaissance art and to cap it all one of my favourite films was shot there – Don't Look Now (above) by Nicholas Roeg.

So I am going to stop there, hoping I haven't offended the good people of Birmingham, with the comparisons because the people of Venice don't care how much canal water is in Birmingham and, even though the beautiful city only has a wooden base, I bet the people of Venice wished there were no canals there at all.

When I was a boy, I had a friend called Michael Holmes; we went to Clifton Road School in Balsall Heath, which is a neighbourhood in Birmingham. We were in the same class when we both went up a year and into Mr Hennessey's class. I know his first name it was Fred; he was 5'3” tall, a Yorkshire man and a Communist; so there we have straight away three things against him!!! Sorry Yorkshire folk, my little joke.

How would I know him to be a communist? Well I didn't; it only comes clear to me now. I think I have written about him before on here so forgive me if you remember.

The first thing he showed us eight year old kids on the first day was his cane; it was a short cane with a knob on one end; he said “don't worry I won't be hitting you with the knob end; that's for me to hold.”

Then he swished it.

You could feel the sting of it as the little fella swung it through the air; he was in his element; he was in charge of some people smaller than he was – although there was one girl, Lavinia Smith who was taller and she pushed him one day and he nearly fell over.

“If I give you the stick” he said “there's no good complaining to your moms and dads and trying to take me to court – it won't work; it's been tried before. The courts always come down on the side of the school master.”

He did give the cane on occasions to my fellow eight year olds and it was not pleasant to watch. Some of the kids, even at 8, just sneered at him after the smack. A shock would come over the whole class room followed by silence; the little man had won again!!

One day in the art class he told us to draw a picture; I did and it was of a house – two windows downstairs and two windows up; you know the one – with a door in the middle.

Walking up the path I drew the postman. He had just delivered letters to the house and he had a broad smile on his face.

Hennessey hovered close by then picked up my picture and took it out front; I thought it was because it was good - but no!

“Put your brushes down” he said “look at this!”

He held up my painting for all to see.

“Look at this” he said pointing at the mail bag of my postman “ US Mail!”

I had no idea what he was talking about.

“US Mail!!! This is not America, young man – it should say Royal Mail – or the GPO – but not US Mail. We're not Americans, you know, and we never will be – you'll see!! You'll see when the Russians come, you'll see then; then we'll see about the US Mail.” And he really articulated the US Mail and because of his Yorkshire accent it sound like a US Meal!!

Then he tore up my painting, took it over to the waste paper basket, which was right by his stick, screwed it up and dumped it.

I looked at that stick and so did he,

I was eight years old and he was 5'3”.

Sorry about my little couplet; I couldn't resist.

He didn't hit me. I played in the playground with Michael but can you imagine why I might think now that he was a communist?

He was wrong though wasn't he; the Americans did take over with their butchery of the English language, their Starbucks, Amazon, Google and McDonalds but we love them don't we?

Hennessy died young – maybe of bitterness – who knows; but that was later.

Michael came to my house to play on occasions; we lived on the Moseley Road in a little lane or alley called South View Terrance – you remember me telling you this – and on the first day he came, my mother asked him in. It was only a tiny place but I remember him pausing as he crossed over the threshold - “come in son” my mother said.

He saw that in the minuscule kitchen, my mother had fitted a Hoover Washing Machine and on the floor in the sitting room we had carpets; he looked very closely at these and there was something about Michael's reaction which told me he didn't have these things where he lived. I never got to find out exactly where that was so I never pushed it.

He had come straight from school in the days before I became a latch key kid; my mother gave us refreshments, we played for a bit and off he went.

One day we had a new girl come to our class called Ann; Hennessey looked at the class and said “we have a new girl who has just started” - as if we hadn't noticed. He said “Ann – if you want to go to the lavatory just go.”

With that Michael jumped up out of his seat and disappeared through the door; Hennessey shouted after him “where do you think you're going?”

He thought Hennessey had said 'and if you want to go to the lavatory . . .” and ran out; it made me laugh as I thought he said 'and' too.

A week or two later Michael didn't come to school; nobody missed him, I don't suppose they'd have missed me if I hadn't come in - “gone back to Ireland” they would say.

We were always going to Ireland at that age.

Then one day, one of the kids in the playground said “Do you know why Michael Holmes hasn't been to school? He fell in the canal and drowned.”

And it was true – he died a week after his mother and that's all I ever knew.

So when I hear about the canal in Birmingham, I think about Michael and I sometimes wonder what he would have been like; how he would have grown. He was the very first friend I had who died. I told my parents and they remembered him - “poor little fella” my mother said.

I was in Birmingham two years ago at a reunion; I couldn't find the way to the venue so parked at a place called The Mail Box and caught a cab. On the way back, a doorman called a cab for me and asked me where I was going; when I told him he said “That's ten minutes walk along the canal”

I looked in the direction of where I would go and it was pitch black; not for me, I thought and caught the cab.

Maybe I would have seen the spirit of Michael rising from the evening darkness; the little boy in scruffy short trousers who jumped at the chance of going to the lavatory just to get an extra five minutes out of class.

Great Movies - what happened??

Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver

I remember in 1978, I was in Scotland filming a Shakespeare for the BBC; we were in Glamis Castle which is mentioned in the play Macbeth, and, to use a phrase, I was the only person in the cast that I'd never heard of.

The cast was peppered with famous actors from the RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company), who were mostly very nice to me apart from one or two who thought they were God's gift to the theatre and to acting – in fact if you look up the play on YouTube - As You Like It (1978) Helen Mirren - you should see me sword fighting in the first few shots which is followed by a piece of very bad acting and sweating.

By the way 'As You Like It' is known to some people in the profession, namely casting directors, as 'as you' – it saves them saying the 'like it' part!! I kid you not!!

One of the members in the cast was David Prowse who had, fairly recently, played Darth Vader in the movie Star Wars; this didn't mean much to us as most of us hadn't seen the film but one day, a load of kids found out we were filming and came up for autographs.

The RSC actors sharpened their pencils, so to speak, but the kids wanted David. They knew what he looked like beneath the mask as he was well known in Britain as the Green Cross Code man which he had played in a series of road safety films on TV; he was surrounded and the rest of us kicked our heels.

We got on quite well – me and David, well Dave, you know how it is - in fact I gave him a lift in my car one day and, whilst I can't remember where we went or came from, I recall the car leaning over sideways when he got in, as he was, and is, a huge man.

What we were witnessing, and we didn't realise it at the time, was a new world order in movie making, pop music and general technology.

If you get the chance to look at the original Star Wars you will see that a lot of the technology in that movie was old hat by the time the second movie came out and because of the technology Star Wars and the like were discovering and using, the great movies of the early seventies – The Godfather (I & II), Taxi Driver and dozens of others - were on the way out only to be replaced by children's films.

Now you might not think they are children's films but what else would you call super hero movies? Films adapted from comic strips? Graphic novels?

There are those that have asked what happened to the movie business, what happened to the business after those great movies of the 70s – there's only Woody Allen still going in the same way, I mean look at these films:

  1. The Godfather - (1972, Francis Ford Coppola) (Marlon Brando, Al Pacino)
  2. The Godfather part II - (1974, Francis Ford Coppola) (Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro)
  3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - (1975, Milos Forman) (Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher)
  4. Apocalypse Now - (1979, Francis Ford Coppola) (Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall)
  5. Chinatown - (1974, Roman Polanski) (Jack Nicholson, John Huston)
  6. A Clockwork Orange - (1971, Stanley Kubrick) (Malcolm McDowell, Patrick MaGee)
  7. Star Wars - (1977, George Lucas) (Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford)
  8. Jaws - (1975, Steven Spielberg) (Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss)
  9. Taxi Driver - (1976, Martin Scorsese) (Robert DeNiro, Jodie Foster)
10. The Deer Hunter - (1978, Michael Cimino) (Robert DeNiro, Christopher Walken)
11. Annie Hall - (1977, Woody Allen) (Woody Allen, Diane Keaton)
12. Network - (1976, Sydney Lumet) (Peter Finch, William Holden)
13. Rocky - (1976, John G. Avildsen) (Sylvester Stallone, Carl Weathers)
14. Patton - (1970, Franklin J. Schaffner) (George C. Scott, Karl Malden)
15. Close Encounters of the Third Kind - (1977, Steven Spielberg) (Richard Dreyfuss, Teri Garr)
16. M*A*S*H - (1970, Robert Altman) (Elliot Gould, Donald Sutherland)
17. The Exorcist - (1973, William Friedkin) (Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair)
18. American Graffiti - (1973, George Lucas) (Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss)
19. The French Connection - (1971, William Friedkin) (Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider)
20. Mean Streets - (1973, Martin Scorsese) (Harvey Keitel, Robert DeNiro)

There will be some people – and I have no idea who they might be – who will not like any of the above  but I'll bet your favourite is amongst them – I think I love them all apart from you know what.

But the 70s wasn't the only decade of great movies; look at the 60s:

 1. Lawrence of Arabia - (1962, David Lean) (Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness)
  2. Psycho - (1960, Alfred Hitchcock) (Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh)
  3. Dr. Strangelove... - (1964, Stanley Kubrick) (Peter Sellers, George C. Scott)
  4. 8 1/2 - (1963, Federico Fellini) (Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale)
  5. 2001: A Space Odyssey - (1968, Stanley Kubrick) (Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood)
  6. Once Upon a Time in the West - (1968, Sergio Leone) (Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson)
  7. To Kill a Mockingbird - (1962, Robert Mulligan) (Gregory Peck, Mary Badham)
  8. Midnight Cowboy - (1969, John Schlesinger) (Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight)
  9. Bonnie and Clyde - (1967, Arthur Penn) (Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway)
10. La Dolce Vita - (1960, Federico Fellini) (Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee)

Only ten there but that's because I didn't want to fill the page with charts – I love all those movies and nearly in that order so what happened?

I have nothing against Star Wars but it's a kids' film – the same as Dr Who; it's for children; I have yet to see an episode but again, I have nothing against it.

But look at them – look at those movies; the film business will never be the same again it out technologised itself (I know – no such word).

I know they tried to make Batman weird or more grown up but watching it you have to buy in to the fact that the hero walks around in a bat suit – come on!!!!!

I know it's technology gone mad but when other innovations were invented they died down a bit after they'd got use to it.

When talkies started every movie seemed to be a musical; coloured movies gave a kaleidoscope of colour as happened on TV later and the zoom lens left a lot to be desired in some of those great 70s films above but they got used to it and this time it doesn't appear to be ironing itself out.

Will we ever see the likes of Lawrence of Arabia again? I doubt it.

One of the biggest flops in 2013 was The Lone Ranger starring Johnny Depp; it was a huge budget but back in the 40s and 50s directors like Raoul Walsh used to knock out cowboy movies like that in a matter of weeks.

The Lone Ranger series on TV was made for the price of the parking fees on the new one so what is going wrong? Why would The Lone Ranger cost so much money – maybe because they like to use a Lone Arranger these days?

The same happened to pop music with the invention of the boring over technologised stadium super groups . . . but that's another story!

Happy New Year!!