Amazon.

 The River Amazon - seems to go round and round.

A lot of people liked my post last week about acting; it was actually a revue I wrote for Amazon which I copied and pasted here – I thought it might be of interest.

A word about Amazon; in Britain it's http://Amazon.co.uk and America http://Amazon.com – the same derided company both sides of the Atlantic. In France, I believe, they were prevented from selling stuff with no postal charges as they were undercutting the book shops.

I have friends who never use Amazon; they never use them because of the loyalty they feel to the book shops and believe Amazon are closing them down.

That's a fair point.

Over the years I have had friends – other friends – who have worked in book shops, including a famous one in Charing Cross Road, who have been on slave wages; working for next to nothing, being supervised by the supervisor from hell and working very long hours. Well why didn't they get a job somewhere else? Yes, why?

Now those same book shops have been given a kick up the arse by Amazon and at the same time Amazon has saved the post office; Ebay also saved the day for the British Post Office and has put them into a decent profit position so now the government wants to sell off the post office counters to large stores or private enterprises now they have Amazon and Ebay on board for the mail side of things. Apparently the post office counters don't make a profit but the parcels side does; good old Amazon, good old Ebay.

I remember when Amazon first started; they were making no money at all but even so they were sponsoring the Charlie Rose Show on PBS; every night Charlie would espouse their virtues – what a great company Amazon is, he would say, and the rest of us who had read about the stocks wondered just how long it would last; just as we are now wondering how Netflix has lasted so long; that's a very strange company but it hasn't been taken over yet by Google like - YouTube.

But there is a good side to Amazon; not only did they help Charlie Rose, they help first time writers to get started and first time film makers with their film festival information company which is a subsidiary of the Internet Movie Date Base (IMDb.com) which is an Amazon Company. That's a place where all actors have to be aware of so things go around in circles don't they.

But those old book shops hardly ever helped writers to get started. I say, hardly ever as there may be a few – not that I know of any – who are helping new writers and novice novelists like me; but I haven't heard of any so that's just to cover myself.

Well that's it for today and here's a picture of a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize!

And here's a man - in one photo with John Lennon, no less was was an anti war campaigner:

Such is life - going round in circles.

Col Needham's Story.

There he is – the man himself: one Col Needham; the man a lot of people aspire to be.

At one time everybody wanted to be Clark Gable then other movie stars or pop singers of the day; I wanted to be Elvis, Steve McQueen or James Dean then later Robert De Niro and then James Joyce. Of course as a child I wanted to be Superman, Roy Rogers and then Geoff Duke!!

Women wanted to be the female equivalent - shall we say Marilyn Monroe, then Marilyn Monroe again, then Gertrude Stein.

Others wanted to be sports figures like Joe DiMaggio, George Best and now David Beckham but that man above has taken over; and who is he? He is Col Needham?

Col was born in Manchester on January 26^th 1967; I don't know if his birth name is Colin but he is known as 'Col' and he is one of the hand full of multi-billionaires who have made their fortune by accident, out of a hobby or a convenience they invented. I don't mean a public convenience, like a public lavatory, I mean something they made or adapted or, in the case of Col, wrote a computer programme for.

I made a movie in the 90s in the north of England and next to the place where we shot the scenes, there was a young man listing every film he had ever seen; he was entering the titles, the stars, the directors and the writers and he was filing them away. This was in Cheshire and I often wondered if that was Col; the time line seems to fit.

Because that's what Col, himself, says he was doing around that time!

He wanted the information for easy reference when he wanted to find something. Just the fella to meet at a party eh?

Rather like the driver who always has spare bulbs, spare tyres, a full petrol can in the boot so that when he breaks down he can look rather smugly at everybody else. The last time I had a puncture it was a 'double blow out' in Los Angeles when my two off side wheels went down a sharp pot hole; so my spare was no good as I needed two and to make matters worse, I had just watched a documentary on TV which said that two tyres blowing out in pot holes in Los Angeles was very common after huge downpours of rain!!

Back to Col; he was doing all this stuff before the advent of the world wide web so he invented a little data base to share with friends and to make easy access to it he wrote the computer programme.

When the Internet started someone contacted him and said his site was great but needed writers' details as well so that particular person was asked to put the writers information in; then someone said the site needed composer information and that someone was recruited too.

Of course this led to the giant Internet Movie Data Base which is what it is now – the IMDb – or the imdB (whatever).

In 1998 he sold it to Amazon but he still runs the company and is the CEO or the Managing Director – he runs it with a staff of between 100 – 200 from his office just outside Bristol.

I want to ask one question: why would Amazon want to buy it? Why did Ebay buy everything from Paypal to Skype? Why did Google buy YouTube? Why do they want so much power.

I know why Amazon bought Love Film, because they couldn't buy Netflix; Netflix was started by a couple of computer geeks from Silicon Valley in Northern California (computer guy again) who returned a DVD back to Blockbusters and had to pay a $40 late fee so decided to start his own little business with a partner and what a little business it turned out to be. It's now one of the biggest companies of its kind anywhere in the world – all because he kept Apollo 13 too long and Blockbusters were too greedy. That's the one I'm really pleased about and I'm glad they didn't sell it to the man.

One mistake may I point out to Netflix – you didn't design your envelope too well as you had to put that little sticker to keep the DVD in the packet. You can't see it in the picture but there's another sheet of paper you have to tear off before returning the DVD.

 But back to Mister Needham the IMDb boss: casting was always run by people in the business and records kept by people like The Academy Players and Spotlight but now the casting directors in Los Angeles use the IMDb and that might happen in the UK soon who knows? It'll mean the British actors will have to put their head shots up on there like they do in the USA.

Before I close I have to thank all those who sent emails to me following my last post commemorating my dad's centenary – it was appreciated and I'm glad you liked it.

But who was the guy keeping all the film records if it wasn't the Col?

My second novel has just been published in paperback and is available from Amazon – here we are - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Who-Gertie-Ford-Chris-Sullivan/dp/1482691973/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363609040&sr=8-1 that's for the UK and this is for the USA:

http://www.amazon.com/Who-Gertie-Ford-Chris-Sullivan/dp/1482691973/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363613415&sr=8-1&keywords=who+was+gertie+ford%3F You'll have to copy and paste.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

I got a few e-mails after my last post about the song 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' and I have to say maybe I didn't quite get my point across; I'm not saying I want another Christmas song but I think the crooners should move on with different songs as we have heard 'Goody Goody' and 'Jeeper Creepers' - enough already.

But my brother writes and tells me that 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' was recorded by 136 people from Judy Garland to Bob Dylan and that the original version was too maudlin for Judy Garland's husband, Minnelli, meaning that have yourself a merry little Christmas as it may be your last.

He thought it was in that military film when the bloke got executed in the end but according to 'Bing' it wasn't – well actually it was, Pat, your first thought was correct:

As the soldier is brought from his confinement and tied to the execution stake, the music is Frank Sinatra singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," and the moment the soldier is shot, it skips to a joyful recording of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing."

That was part of a review by Bosley Crowther Published: December 20, 1963 in the New York Times.

So BING is wrong and you're right.

I can't remember the Hark the Herald Angels bit but who could forget such a moment in a film; as I am writing this I looked on Netflix but it's not available and that is a shame as the film by Carl Foreman is a classic – a bit long but a classic.

Netflix is the on line video shop we use here.

My friend Jeffo in Florioda wrote to me and said - Well if I may boldly go against your argument, poetic license dictates the rules may be set aside. And we who write must appreciate that better than anyone. "To boldly go".......sounds much better than "boldly to go" or "to go boldly." Sure it violates the mores of grammarians, but so fucking what? It works so leave it alone.

As I said to Jeffo . . . . first of all I believe in nearly everything you say apart from the fact that I might not have got my point across; with regards to the splitting of the infinitive I am really nit-picking as I am sure I do it myself and also use bad English - the last phrase there in America would be 'use also bad English' - which to the ear, that has only been listening to English on the other side of the pond, strange. The strangest of all is the use of take and bring. On the other side of the pond it is take things to and bring things from.

Now when I say the other side of the pond I mean England as in Ireland they use the brings and takes the same as the US.

With regards to boldly go or go boldly - it depends on how good the actor is delivering the line.

Happy Christmas everybody!! The photo above is the LAPD arresting Kid Cudi here 18 hours ago - let's hope he played last night!!