Best director at the Academy Awards!!

David Seidler and his statue.

Well the Academy Awards have been and gone for another year and the winners and losers are have gone on to pastures new and revisited. The winners can report to their agents, publicists and their staff and say that they did indeed thank them from the podium and bored the arses off the rest of us!

No matter how the Academy try and stop they always come out with a list of people to thank – wouldn't be so bad if they just thanked their spouses but to thank people they actually pay!!!!

It's strange that the best speeches were from non-actors and in particular the writers; namely the fella who wrote the script for The King's Speech, David Seidler, and Aaron Sorkin, the writer of The Social Network.

Incidentally it was good to see the former win at the age of 73 – kind of knocks ageism on the head – but not really; one swallow doesn't make a summer.

By the way the publicity has him as a British writer but he sounded American to me!

The best picture went to The King's Speech and it also got the best director – as you will know.

Some years the awards have been split and people have suggested to me – in a bar, over coffee; nowhere important – that if a picture wins the director should win too.

How does that leave the 5 extra movies that are now nominated for best picture – 10 in all now – when they only nominate 5 directors?

Personally I thought the best director this year was Christopher Nolan for Inception – but how do I know that? How could I even have an opinion? I wasn't there and didn't see any of the work.

There are 3 big bosses on a movie but the director oversees the lot: the editor, the director of photography (the DP) and the directors themselves.

The director's main job is to direct the actors and lots of directors just don't know how to talk to actors to get the best performance from them; so they hire actors who direct themselves and in films and television that's most of the time.

These directors are more concerned with the lenses, the shots and how the film looks but – even though this is commendable – isn't that really the job of the DP?

How does a director advise an actor to play an excruciating, difficult emotional scene if they don't know themselves or don't know what to say to them to give them a clue. It's no good saying 'you have to cry here' or 'here you are angry;' an actor needs to know the reason.

There is one form of direction and lots of directors use which is 'faster' or 'slower' or even 'give it more energy.'

I did some work with student directors at The Royal College of Art film school in London and when asked how they would direct a very difficult and emotional scene for an actor, one of the replies was 'I'll start off with a tracking shot and move into a close up.'

Great direction?

So how did the director of The King's Speech win as best director? Because the performances were good? If so – what about Churchill? Or the fella who played Churchill – a fine actor but totally miscast; what did the best director do about that?

Don't get me wrong, I loved The King's Speech and mentioned it in this blog in November - Bugger Bogner - the Oscar goes to . . . http://dlvr.it/9Ht9B – but when I saw it I couldn't help but wonder about the composure of some of the shots.

I have noticed the same kind of shots in some of the stuff that comes out of Britain particularly in one of my favourite shows MI5.

A close up in a movie – or a single shot – should not have the subject in the middle of the frame; the subject should be slightly to one side or the other. Documentary film makers usually put them in the middle when photographing talking heads.

The middle is the weakest part of the screen.

So the character you are shooting should be on one side or the other – like this photo of me I edited from the imdB.

You see I am slightly over and looking across to whoever I am talking to; when the other person speaks they face the other way and are on the other side of the screen; this way you don't cross the line (I won't go into what that is now but if you are interested there are other places). It also looks comfortable and dynamic.

But in The King's Speech, and the things I have seen coming out of the UK they do this:

They have the characters talking to the side of the screen with a space at the back of the head. My picture might not be a great example but I'm sure somebody out there knows what I'm talking about!!!!

It makes it difficult to know where the other person in the scene is!

My question is this: if this was the only clue to his direction, apart from the aforementioned performances, why was the director of The King's Speech the winner on Sunday?

Bugger Bogner - the Oscar goes to . . .

There is a small town on the south coast of England called Bognor Regis; it was, originally, plain old baldy Bognor but King George V went there to convalesce with his wife, Queen Mary, in 1929, and as a result, the King was asked to bestow the Regis (of the King) suffix onto Bognor so since then that is what it has been called.

In the new film, The King's Speech, King George V is admirably played by Michael Gambon and there is a death bed scene in the film when the family gather around his bed to await his death.

There is an apocryphal story about this moment in history and I'm glad to say that the film makers avoided it. It goes like this: someone says to the King something to do with Bognor, something like 'when you're better you can go to Bognor' or 'we'll always have Bognor' and the King is supposed to have replied 'Bugger Bognor' and died making those his last words. I saw the film last night and when the moment came I couldn't help but whisper to my wife 'Bugger Bognor.'

The film itself, The King's Speech, is absolutely wonderful; I won't be surprised if it wins Best Picture Oscar at the Academy Awards in February.

The performances are first class with one exception; Timothy Spall is totally miscast as Winston Churchill. He is never what you might call bad but he is on a hiding to nothing being miscast as he is not Winston Churchill by any stretch of the imagination.

There are other well known people of the day with Helena Bonham-Carter playing Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and Claire Bloom playing George V's wife Queen Mary but two performances stand out and they are Colin Firth as George VI and Geoffrey Rush as his speech therapist Lionel Logue; they both deserve to win for best actor and that might be a problem.

If they are both nominated for best actor they could cancel each other out. However, if Colin Firth is nominated for best and Geoffrey Rush for best supporting they could get both – plus the film getting best picture.

King George VI had a very bad stammer and the King's speech in the title refers to two things: his speech in general and the speech he had to give to the nation on the advent of World War II in 1939.

The King's stammer seemed to be on nearly every letter; he had problems with his p, m, k and d sounds and others too and he is helped by an actor (Rush) who discovered, without any qualifications and letters after his name, that he had a gift for helping people with their speech defects.

As an actor he would because when you go to drama school half of the time you are studying speech.

In Hollywood at the moment people have on their CV that they trained with so and so in cold reading classes, commercial audition classes and all the other part time stuff but at drama school, when I went, we studied for three years full time speech and drama from 10:00am to 4:00pm every day.

We messed around, of course, like any other students and laughed through the lessons when we were trying to strengthen our diaphragms; we laughed at the fact that we took breathing lessons when we had been breathing all our lives and we had more fun when we had to try and touch the ceiling with a very big stretch and then let go letting our arms fall almost touching the floor – but we did it.

We would all chant par pay pee paw poo, par pay pee paw poo, par pay pee paw poo, par pay pee paw poo, par pay pee paw poo; I italicized the ones you have to stress – try it.

The other thing we would do is; 'one by one they went away' – in one breath going on to 'one by one and two by two and three by three' all the way to ten in one breath. It was great fun but it gave us breath control.

We would do tongue twisters like Tiptoe Tommy Turned a Turk for Tuppence and lots of others to help our diction.

At the end of it the fun we could do long Shakespeare speeches and the like with a lot of confidence; it didn't mean that none of us were physically sick before going on stage and didn't give any of us talent, where it didn't exist, but it helped our instrument; the instrument we had to play was our bodies – not just our voices but our bodies.

In our year at drama school there were about 30 students and only a few of us stuck it out as actors; a lot of the others were very sensible and went into speech therapy and successful careers.

I'm not saying speech therapy comes easy to actors but it is a kind of second nature; some of the techniques that the Geoffrey Rush character used in the film I had already worked out. For instance I have never heard anybody singing with a stammer or when they are really angry or losing their tempers.

When the King would swear he didn't stammer; he could say the 'f' word and the 's' word and all the others and this was part of his therapy.

I have never tried to help anybody with a stammer but I have helped someone eliminate a lisp; that was all down to the placement of the tongue. It was the same technique as in the film – repetition and tongue exercises.

I had a very slight stammer when I first went to drama school; I was suddenly thrust into an environment of people with great self confidence; sometimes I couldn't get a word in edgewise and nobody seemed to listen; I got to realise that there was some kind of panic in my throat and my chest as if I needed to cough but couldn't - then for some reason I started to tell jokes.

I would go around like a comedian looking for a stage taking my hat off, putting my hand out and cracking a gag. Then I would walk away; people must have thought I was crazy; but my stammer went!

So when I watched the King's Speech last night I could feel empathy for him because Colin Firth was so good.

Look for King George VI on You Tube and you will hear him give the speech and when you see the film you will know that Colin Firth was spot on – play it and you'll see what I mean.

One of the most important things about the film is the F-bomb; in the therapy it is used as the King didn't stammer when saying it; then as he is trying to get through the famous speech in rehearsal he goes through the emotions he feels by singing some of the speech to the tune of Swanee River or the Camptown Races and then in another part of the speech he has to say 'fuck fuck fuck' and there is a wonderful moment in the actual speech at the BBC when he pauses slightly, and he can't use the same help but has to think it; he looks for help to Geoffrey Rush on the other side of the microphone who mouths ' fuck fuck fuck' and the King carries on.

Some of the most extraordinary shots in the film are the long close ups on Colin Firth and how he is able to hold your attention through them; it was a technique the director in Colin Firth's previous film, A Single Man, used last year which worked very well. I wonder of the director of The King's Speech was inspired by the previous film?

Apparently The King's Speech got an 'R' rating because it used one fuck too many.

The only people who would be offended by this would be the archetypal 'disgusted' from Tunbridge Wells – or Royal Tunbridge Wells as it has become just like Bognor; well bugger Tunbridge Wells and bugger Bognor!