Jimmy M and The Descendants.

George Clooney.

I'm going to have a little go at my friend Jim today. He writes a terrific blog about the movie business which is linked on this page to the right there and it's one of the top 50 movie blogs – can you see it there to the right of George Clooney's picture Jim Makichuk's Film Project? – give it a try.
I'm sure that he will post an answer to this; he said in one of his posts on the blog '. . . The Descendants is a Hallmark TV movie, a nice movie, even admirable, but not a feature movie, more like a TV movie. Only difference is a few curse words.'
For the sake of people who don't live in America, the phrase Hallmark TV movie refers to the Hallmark Movie Channel, sister to the Hallmark Channel, which shows family friendly movies. It is owned by the same people who own Hallmark Cards who are headquartered in Kansas City Missouri.
Not the kind of channel that would show The Sopranos, The Wire or The Singing Detective or the kind of channel that would interest me.
Family friendly movies? That's not The Descendants – if The Descendants could be compared to anything it might be to an Anton Chekhov play.
The Descendants has a multilayered script admirably performed by an excellent cast and both the script and George Clooney, who plays the leading role, deserve Oscars. They probably won't get them as Clooney already has an Oscar and – well you never know – Alexander Payne and his co-writers might get it for adapted screenplay.
But I know what Jim means; I remember seeing a movie called City Hall which was directed by Harold Becker and starred Al Pacino. Pacino played the Mayor of New York City and it was about the accidental shooting of a boy and the investigation into it thereafter. I remember sitting and watching it, thinking that I could have sat at home and watched episodes of Law and Order as it was a run of the mill cop script.
The thing about The Descendants is that it is too complicated for television; it's something you have to sit down in the dark with strangers to watch; not have it pumped out of the TV with all the distractions of your living room.
Clooney gives a terrific nuanced performance; he has been criticised by “Mister Anonymous” in the blogesphere and by people who don't understand what acting is all about. One of them said that when he was given a particular piece of bad news in the movie he did nothing. Nothing?? What did they expect him to do; if you looked at his face you could see what was going on internally.
You see he can never get passed the fact that he is a movie star and good looking and people who don't know seem to think that those things don't go together.
Years ago when he was in ER I thought he was awful; he would play every scene with his head down and look up at people but something happened when he went into movies. He met directors who told him things, gave him direction and not only did he learn from that as an actor he learned to direct too.
He directed some really good movies: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Good Night and Good Luck, Leatherheads and The Ides of March – okay we'll sweep over Leatherheads but the others are good. He has also produced some 27 titles so he is an asset to the film business.
The Descendants will not appeal to people who prefer blockbusters or movies with special effects and computer-generated images but there is certainly room for it in the scheme of things; we can't give in totally to the 15 year olds.
As a footnote: I mentioned Harold Becker earlier as the director of City Hall. Well I was in his first full length feature film The Ragman's Daughter.
A couple of years ago, in Los Angeles, my wife went to a yard sale at a large house in the Hollywood Hills – where we lived. The house was, maybe, half a mile from us, and when she got there she saw a poster for The Ragman's Daughter and said “My husband was in that” and woman of the house said “My husband directed it.”
They were moving and all their stuff was in the front yard for sale.
The woman told my wife to tell me to come up to the house which I did.
When I got there, the poster was still in the yard and Harold Becker came out to see me.
The last time I had seen him was in 1971 but he looked kind of familiar and when we shook hands he said 'a familiar face.'
We'd been living close by for all those years. He knew what people who were in The Ragman's Daughter were doing which I thought was impressive and I see that at the age of 83 he is to direct another movie – certainly built of the right stuff.
By the way I didn't buy the poster.

Harold Becker.

Just another day in Hollywood.

There are a few things amazing about living here – too many to write about; sometimes it's like being in a movie. All the things we have seen over the years we kind of see: yellow cabs, short muscular Irish cops and men with guns.

Today I met my wife for lunch and we went to the Sunset Grill on Sunset Boulevard – yes that Sunset Grill in the famous song; before they re-modelled the building they had the disc on the wall by Joe Walsh.

So today after my chicken quasadilles (not as good as the ones in the late lamented Last America Hamburger) I leave Margaret and head north on Gardner; Gardner, as locals will know, crosses Hollywood Boulevard and when I reached the traffic lights there the traffic along Hollywood Boulevard was being controlled by a man with a rifle.

His car was parked in the middle of the Boulevard and he was not exactly dressed as a cop – or even a gangster.

He was wearing a greenish colour baseball type of cap and was not looking for a game of baseball.

After a few minutes he called the Boulevard traffic on and left me stuck at the lights with a few cars behind me. As far as I knew the third world war could have been happening down there as there was a fat tree blocking my view; the traffic going east was non existent but as he was calling west bound traffic on I figured that whatever had happened there had happened!

After what seemed like an eternity the lights changed to green and we could cross; looking left, as I crossed Hollywood Boulevard, I could see many other men with guns, loads of cars with their lights on and . . . nothing else!

I came home and put the news on, checked Twitter and nothing.

So I sent a tweet on Twitter and as one of the people I follow is West Hollywood Daily I sent it to him. He has just replied saying Man Armed with a Rifle at Hollywood and Gardner wearing camouflage was an ATF agent serving a warrant – wow some warrant!

I don't know anywhere in Britain where you would see such an incident – it looked like a SWAT incident!!

Going on I have decided to change the title of my novel; there are just too many novels called The Storyteller. Alan Sillitoe died the other day and even he wrote one with that title – together with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner; a great writer and I am proud to say I was in one of the films adapted from one of his novels The Ragman's Daughter.

I'll leave this blog as the same title though.

My novel is for sale in quite a few places including Smashwords and Kindle in electronic books; Smashwords was easy to change, I am working on Kindle but I think it will take a bit of arranging with Amazon.com.

The new title My Friend Alfredo Hunter. I was thinking of My Friend Alfredo Hunter; genius but I have opted for the former; however nothing is final so if you have a preference let me know.

The paper back hasn't been selling too much but it sells on Kindle and Smashwords – mainly to American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.