Klaatu Barada Nikto

Look at this – would you believe that I have passed 130,000 hits in the six years I have been writing this blog. I started in 2009 and I have written (with this) 367 posts, most of them between 650 and 1500 words so how many words are there? Enough for a novel – so maybe I should have been doing that! This post is 775 words.

It was supposed to be the musings of a Hollywood actor – well I'm back in London now and still musing.

Here's a muse - we've all heard this – Why are the same actors in everything on TV? And we all answer – I don't know – but we do; don't we. Or do we?

The reason Casting Directors choose the same people over and over again is because they like to please the director – it's no good sending me in at 5'9” (or maybe 5'7½” in stockinged feet; just like Stallone) to play someone like Schwarzenegger. I wouldn't stand a chance of getting the job.

Well someone did last month. I wasn't available for the audition so I was asked to submit on line which I did. I shot and edited a piece but I didn't get the job. And why not?

The character was a big big man; a bare knuckle fighter who fought a gypsy. He had two huge men holding on to a punch bag for all they were worth whilst he pummelled it and knocked it and the two men to the other side of the room. My agent told the casting director that I wasn't that big but she said that the director said he knew me – yeh right!

They really needed someone like Stallone!!

Hang on he's the same size as me! Okay he wears lifts but you know what I mean.

I bet the casting director must have had the shock of her life when they saw my piece – to be honest it didn't look that bad (above) and in Hollywood they would get some actors smaller than me or stand me on a box, but they were really after someone like The Rock – or Stallone.

Another memory - I remember one time, years ago when I was a child of about 8, the kids in my neighbourhood were playing on a Bombed Building – that's where we used to play and there were many of them about.

 It was really a piece of waste ground but they called them bombed buildings in inner cities in those days as the war had only been over about 6 or 7 years (if that) and the phrase was still in the vernacular.

We used to play The Day the Earth Stood Still – a great Sci-fi movie from 1951 and still one of my favourite films although not the remake. The great thing about it is that it was shot in black and white and has a space ship that lands in a field in Washington. It has to be said it's a bit preachy but still a great movie.

One day the rest of the kids were playing it as there was a local pervert who was older than the rest of us and we would use him to play Gort – the big robot. It was the same game each time we played it but I wasn't there on this particular occasion so they sent for me.

Some kid came running down our little alley cum lane and told me I was wanted. I was the only one who knew the magic words that Klaatu, the hero from outer space, spoke to the robot to stop him destroying earth; I didn't really I just made them up but in the film they were Klaatu Barada Nikto.

I went to the bombed building and the kids were all standing around, the perv was standing by an old dumped car we used as the space ship, some kids with their little guns, who were playing cops, were hiding with their little guns behind a pile of dirt, and I came in, like a movie star, said the magic words and the game commenced; nice being a movie star for the day.

Patricia Neal, in an interview in later years, said she said the first words that came in to her head but they actually were in the script.

We don't know what happened to the pervert; there were many of them around in those days but us kids had to be wary of him as he was bigger than us – just like these days.

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