The Scroll - my small movie from 1990.

I made a film about 25 years ago and for the past week or two I have been very busy re-cutting it. Only a half hour or so long – well 28 minutes – and I've cut it down to about 22.

The reason I did this was because, after all these years, I can.

I have the editing facilities and there was always something nagging me about it: one of the scenes in the movie concerns an American tourist calling his Rabi in New York to tell him that he has found a Jewish scroll – a Torah – at Portobello Market in London and, when we shot it, I read the 'other' voice whilst an old pal of mine, playing the American, speaks.

It's quite a normal technique and I did a 'cod' American/New York accent. I was never satisfied with my accent but it was good enough for the day; I had planned to get an American to do the voice but when it came to it I couldn't afford it.

Even today I listen to the so called American voices in the plays on Radio 4 and they are awful; even then I didn't want anybody but an American doing it. 

But my voice stayed with it and each time I have seen the film since that voice sticks out like a sore thumb!

My pal – Jeff Chiswick – who was playing the American tourist, died of a heart attack in 1993; he was a really good actor and in my film, The Scroll, he is terrific.

As the writer and director on the picture he asked me the right questions, questions which made me go back to the drawing board and re-write his role and that was a lesson learned.

Working 'with him' for the past couple of weeks made me realise just how good he was or is in the film.

A couple of years ago I asked my pal in Los Angeles, Ron, to record the 'other voice' for me, the one that I did; I was never sure if I would ever be able to do anything with it but I kept it; I played the movie and recorded the sound in to my sound editing system and there it is on the screen as follows:

As you can see it's in sound waves; some of them are mine and some of them as Jeff's. Then I separated the two voice – like so and put Ron's voice in:

You can see where I have changed the volume etc and left gaps where my voice used to be.

I did that a few years ago and left it on my lap top somewhere.

And then last year one of my daughter's friends, who was in the film as a seller at the jumble sale, found a VHS copy of The Scroll and I asked him to send his copy to me which he did.

Of course I don't have a VHS VCR any more so I couldn't play it which meant taking the tape into Wardour Street without being able to check it, to get it transferred to DVD MP4 so I could edit it. Forgive me for the gobbledygook but . . .well.

At last I had the chance and rushed home with the DVD; I knew it wouldn't play on my DVD machine, as it was on MP4, so put it onto my computer and played it back.

Of course what happened was that my daughter's friend, who had very kindly sent the tape to me, had, some years ago, wiped my movie off the tape and it contained footage of people on holiday – maybe his relations. Sitting in the beach, I think, walking around etc.

So there we are – it was a nice idea whilst it lasted.

Then I remembered that my other pal, Gary, who played my partner in the movie, might have a copy, and when I called him he did and he sent it to me.

There was another bit of confusion as the two copies were sitting on my desk looking exactly like each other – which one was which?

But that was sorted out when I took both of them in to be transferred.

You may remember that last year my pal Ron, in Los Angeles, died. I wrote a post about him and here he is:

Ronald Hunter.

So for the last few weeks I have been working with two of my late friends; both of them dead, neither had ever met the other.

It was strange and somehow very rewarding; a few other people in the film have died since I made it – I love the way I say I made it when making a film is a group effort, but you know what I mean.

It's only a small nondescript movie so it should be flattered that it's getting a 'director's cut' – but there we are.

I found there were other things in the film I had compromised with at the time; a pool ball sound I wanted, maybe a little cutting here and there but any way it is done and who knows what I'm going to do with it now and you will know that Who is on first base!!

By the way – The Beans:

English speakers have been using the word "spill" to mean "divulge secret information" since 1547, but the spilling of beans in particular may predate the term by millennia. Many historians claim that secret societies in ancient Greece voted by dropping black or white beans into a clay urn. To spill those beans would be to reveal the results of a secret vote before the ballots had been counted. Kidney he lives, pinto he dies!

The Director, the Cameraman and the one legged man in Wolverhampton.

 Long John Silver

by

Treasure Island

Robert Louis Stevenson

Do you know I am sure I have written this before; I looked and looked but it seems I haven't. If you have seen it somewhere let me know but I can't believe I left it till now; maybe it's just one of those stories I have bored people with in the past.

I was sitting in a pub in Wolverhampton with a film director, a cameraman and a sound guy; in the corner was a one legged man. He wasn't a frail looking thing and he made a lot of noise with the mouth, with the chat, and with the big piss taking laugh.

He was a rough looking customer and you would think by looking at him, with his tattoo patterned shirt and scruffy demeanour, that he lost his leg in a fight or had it sawn off for a bet or even lost it in a game of poker.

We were touring the country, the bare bones of a film crew, visiting wonderful locations like Leighton Buzzard, London Docks and Gravesend; to name a few of the places. The cameraman had taken time off from working a camera when he reached his thirties and went to study wine, becoming a wine expert in the process. As we sat eating dinner one evening in the Gravesend hotel, drinking his chosen wine, he suddenly went off and ordered another bottle of red.

Delightedly he poured, after a decent wait for the wine to breath, a glass for each of us. We didn't know that it was a special vintage as we drank and after we drank, our expert looked at us and asked what we thought; well it tasted a bit smoky with a gentle hint of sulphur and a slight bouquet of a six month old baby's poo.

He looked at us; we pulled faces and he got the message: “Don't you find it interesting?” he said.

We were touring because we were making a film for a fork lift company called – I think – Lancer Boss. Their headquarters were in Leighton Buzzard, which is why we were there, and other locations where there were companies using the Lancer Boss fork lift trucks. I had to drive one at each place and then go in to the studio, with the director, and work in a blue screen studio – that is being superimposed into each scene.

His studio was in Buckinghamshire and when I worked with him I had to stay over night at an hotel near by; he came and had a drink with me, told me he was also a pilot and I told him that I could never be a pilot, as I am too slap dash and would never have the patience to check things three times. “Oh it's easy” he said.

That's when I made the mistake of saying “Why? What do you have to do?”

He went through everything he had to do when sitting in the cockpit and I was wondering when he was going to stop.

“I'm not boring you, am I?” he said.

“No no!” I said, and on he continued.

When we sat in the pub in Wolverhampton that day, a small dingy hotel really, I didn't know what I was going to have to listen to after the studio day but I should have.

As we sat there in Wolverhampton – and he didn't talk quietly – he explained to us what his job as a director involved: “I direct the actor; he is in the charge of the photography” he said as he referred to the cameraman, then pointing at the sound guy he said “and he is in charge of the sound.”

Everybody in the bar could hear him pontificating away as if he was giving a lecture. He was smoking a pipe and said his doctor had told him it was okay to smoke as it relaxed him because if he didn't relax he would probably have a heart attack – heaven forbid.

Word got about in the bar that porn videos were to be shown in one of the other bars after the pub closed to the public for residents. The one legged man asked if he would be able to stay and our director asked the landlord if he had a licence.

“What for?” said the landlord.

“You can't show videos without a licence” the director said.

I went off to the loo and left them to it. When I came back, the director had trickles of blood on the outside of his nose “what happened?” I asked.

“Long John Silver dropped the nut on him” said the sound guy.

I looked around and the one legged man had disappeared.

“What?”

“Yeh; he just hopped over here and head butted the big mouthed sod.”

Can you imagine it?

How to be a Movie Star.

  Laurence Olivier.  

I read a biography of Laurence Olivier at one time and the writer opined that he was the greatest actor in the world for one reason and one reason alone; because he wanted to be.

Now there is something to that.

Not too long ago I wrote a post about Mark Rylance whom it was considered was the current (then) best actor in the world; same reason! He wanted to be - or people wanted him to be - or whatever floated their boat or, to be more precise, filled their theatres.

There was something else I read about Olivier and it opened (not opined this time) by saying 'he was no intellectual' – I mean how could he be he left school at 15? Okay he went to drama school but so did I.

Even though Olivier may have been considered to be the best actor etc, at one time, he had to do about 30 or 40 takes in a film with William Wyler and when he got frustrated he said to Wyler “Willie; I did it this way, I've done it that way. I've done it faster and slower - what do you want me to do?” And Wyler said “I want you to do it better!”

Best actor in the world?

The thing is – and it might have been whilst getting the above direction – he stamped his character on Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights – Samuel Goldwyn called it Withering Heights, according to Olivier. In fact the anecdotes above are from Olivier himself.

The thing about Heathcliff is that he was from the back streets of Liverpool – a bit of rough – and he fell for the lady of the house, the posh girl and Olivier played him with a posh English accent. Today he would be played by someone from Liverpool.

There are people – actors – here who still worship him; of course there are others who don't like him at all but he had the two or three things it calls for to be a star – he was ambitious, talented and not very clever. I think the latter is very important because, according to the great playwright Brien Friel, to be a star to have to have huge huge ambition, a talent that is sensational and unique (there's only one Sir Laurence) and no brain.

And when you think about it, it has a lot of truth.

I know – and I am bound to know – a lot of actors. A lot of them are friends but none of my friends are huge stars – I have a very famous cousin, whom I have never met and when I think about him he may be as thick as two short planks too, for all I know; I don't know which is why I won't name him, but Friel's view is that brains get in the way. 

Maybe they do and maybe they don't!

If you wanted to be a movie star, you are good looking and you think you have what it takes, what kind of a reaction would you get if you took the idea to the bank? What kind of business plan would you present to them and if they fell for it, what advice would these very clever people give you?

Imagine, for one wonderful moment, going on to the TV show Dragon's Den.

The people on Dragon's Den – the so called Dragons – are the most ambitious kind of people there are, but would you really want to have a drink with them? They'd be talking about the business plan, the yield, the profit, the bottom line – I have been in the company of such people and I have seen the attitude and the way their face changes if you give them a good idea.

I was on a train once and standing next to me was a businessman with the suit, the brief case, the Financial Times, the whole nine yards, and he complained about the train.

It was British Rail then and he said they had no idea (BR that was – look at it now) how to run it. 

And I said “why don't they put advertisements at the back of the seats” and a bulb went off in his head; I could see it.

“Advertise!” he said.

His name?

I have no idea who he was! But that bulb!!

As I was saying I know loads of actors and I have known briefly well known ones on the way up: pains in the arse, stars up there: pains in the arse and stars who were stars here and when I met them in Hollywood they were nice people again; they were lost, they didn't know where to go, where to network (arse hole creep) but when I pointed them in the right direction they became pains in the arse again. Not being able to look you in the eye in case an important casting director or director came into the room so they could talk to them and you know it's a sight to see. What happens is, they sidle up to their prey with a big smile on their face and start a little chat; after about 3 minutes or so another person will come up and take the head honcho away - I'm sure they are hired to do this – leaving the networker marooned in the middle of the floor.

But you will see others, other networkers, dappled throughout the room, waiting to pounce like hyenas on the savanna – in fact looking like hyenas with their teeth, ready to smile, and their eyes widening and scrunching so as to show them off at their best, waiting for their victim to be alone.

I think the reason I don't know the big big stars intimately is that they don't seem to have many friends; on the way up they twitch and walk around, can't sit down for long, they worry that they'll miss a phone call or a casting and they are no company at all and in any case, as in Hollywood, they drop you and forget you as soon as you've shown them the way.

They pretend to forget you as they know that you know what kind of a prat they really are.

I met quite a few stars in Hollywood and some of them were nice – George Clooney is charming and quite well informed – so it doesn't happen to everybody.

The radio is on at the moment and as I typed they didn't know where to go, where to network, a trailer came on (a trail as they call it) to say that next week on Radio 4 a new series starts called Networking Britain – what a coincidence.

Oh well – back to John Tavener and his beautiful music.

Esther Sullivan - nee Tuite born 1914.

As you might have noticed, if you read this on a regular basis, I don't usually mention any of my family, or friends, by name; I have done this once or twice with my parents, Christy Sullivan Dublin Barber and my mother – Essie Sullivan – in previous posts of those names and I think I mentioned the brudder's name once.

Well today is the centenary of my mother's birth – our mother's birth – Esther Mary Tuite, born October 5^th 1914 in Dublin, Ireland.

Later she became Esther Sullivan – Essie from the Alex and previous to that Esther Sullivan, company director of the Lawden Manfacturing Company, Broad Street, Birmingham.

She died in 1993 on December 19^th so may she rest in peace.

1914 was the year the great war broke out – the First World War – and my grandfather, Patrick Joseph Tuite, went off to that terrible war with the British Army and getting gassed in the trenches for his trouble; I think that was in 1916 and who knows maybe it was the Battle of the Somme.

I have no details as to whether he was invalided out of the army because of that but he went on to live till 1974.

As there is a lot of publicity concerning the first world war at the moment, I tried to find out if he was listed anywhere and, even though I can find two Tuites, with more or less the same forenames who were in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and another Irish regiment of the British Army, I can's find him in the war records because those two soldiers died in 1917.

In 1916, in Dublin, there was an insurrection called the Irish Uprising where Patrick Pearse (Padraig MacPiarais) read the famous proclamation from the steps of the General Post Office in O'Connell Street Dublin and then fighting broke out.

Padraig MacPiarais

I looked through loads of photos of him and they're mostly like this, as maybe posing for his portrait in profile - maybe posing for his portrait on the stamps and coins.

The English attacked the post office using their long range guns as they sailed in through the foggy dew – sound familiar? Yes the words to a song. Oh look – there I am singing it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tt3g3Hq6pE (do you know my hair is that long now; I'll get it cut next week).

In France an officer called my granddad in to the office and said “There's a 'bit of trouble in your country.” And that's all granddad knew about the uprising back home; I would fire questions at him but that's all he knew.

One of the things I found out recently was that nearly all the men who were killed in that war from Britain didn't get a vote - and don't forget Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom - they gave their lives without their permission; the only men who were allowed to vote were the gentry or property owners.

Men were given the vote at the same time as women which was after the war in 1918; men at 21 and women at 30.

It stayed like that for about 10 years and then the women's voting age came down to 21; this was, so they say, because too many men were killed in that war and they thought those voting ages would make things more even.

The reason my granddad went off to fight in the war – and I remember pictures of him on the sideboard at my Grannie Tuite's house wearing a skull cap – was because they were broke. My mother was born the same year as the war and then when the war was over there she saw a lot of fighting in the streets.

She told me a lot about that and how she saw men carrying their comrade from the battle of the Forecourts and how they used a door as a stretcher to carry him out.

So today (October 5^th 2014) would have been Esther Mary Tuite's 100^th birthday, Essie Sullivan, Essie from the Alex and previous to that Esther Sullivan, company director of the Lawden Manufacturing Company, Broad Street, Birmingham.

What would she think if she suddenly came back and saw all the apps, the internet, the smart phones and the smart arses using them and coming up with the answers to the Universe.

She died in 1993 on December 19^th and may she rest in peace.

Maps to the Stars.

Julianne Moore in Maps to the Stars

Today I saw one of my favourite films – for the first time.

I know it will be one of my favourite films already as it's in the genre of the films I like. Films about films that is, maybe set in the film capital of the world, namely Hollywood, California with a hint of the sordid side of things with corruption, horror, maybe a bit of incest and murder – all those things which would be a bad description of this film but I think you know what I mean; and they're all in this.

As you can see by the title of this post I am talking about Maps to the Stars by the great Canadian director David Cronenberg. His films have always been outstanding, although I can say I didn't like Cosmopolis at all but one thing I can say is that you may like it so don't let me put you off. The film starts as it goes on, nothing happens but there's one thing I noticed about both movies.

Robert Pattinson plays the lead in Cosmopolis and a smaller role in Maps to the Stars; he's a limo driver in the new film and gets into a limo in the former, and in each film there is an eerie silence outside the cabs as if there is a sound proof barrier around each vehicle. This is a technique I remember Tarantino using in Reservoir Dogs and I think it's quite affective.

One of the things that really seduced me about the film is its location; some scenes were shot in Runyon Canyon right behind where we used to live and for a period of my life I climbed every day. I suppose I will love all films – and I do – of movies shot in places I know and where I can recognise locations but Los Angeles is one of my favourite places on earth.

I sat transfixed and saw some great performances from everyone of the cast; Hollywood is so false, synthetic and subtle and when you see John Cusak with his middle aged large very white face and the jet black hair and then the brilliant Julianne Moore being so false and conniving you see right through the whole charade.

Now I'm not a film critic or reviewer but you must go and see it and the acting, by the way, is real; nobody asking if it's the right accent and it is so good you don't notice.

And the script – an Oscar nomination at least.