Stupid Government in Britain.

Petrol Pump Chaos in Britain Yesterday.

I have experienced lots of things in Britain; lots of crazy things that you wouldn't think a government capable of; it's great that it's not a banana republic or has a dictator in charge but that is no excuse for stupidity.

I lived through the Thatcher years when they abolished rates on property and introduced the Community Charge, the so called Poll Tax, the dismantling of the railway system in to a group of separate businesses that own various part of the rail network, like Virgin (try and get a train easily in the UK now), and saw the privatisation of many nationalised companies, but nothing can be prepared to what is going on here at the moment.

For people who do not live here there is a tax called Valued Added Tax – VAT or just vat – which is a kind of sales tax which is common in America. From now on I'm going to call it tax for the purposes of what I am talking about here.

Last week the Chancellor of the Exchequer delivered his budget to the House of Commons; this is the government's plan of fiscal action for the next 12 months.

This is where the government raises and decreases taxes and traditionally it's where they raise the price of booze, cigarettes, petrol and road tax. Road tax is the same as the tags you have to put on your car in America.

The budget was a bad budget for seniors and a good one for top earners; they have increased the tax for some pensioners who work and reduced the tax for the so called top earners. Top earners pay 50% of their income on the slice of their income over 150 or 250 grand; the Chancellor lowered that to 45% and paid for it with the pensioners tax increase.

That's by the by.

The VAT – the sales tax – is also applied to hot food and if you buy fish and chips you have to pay tax on the food – because it's hot.

The Chancellor has extended the tax to pasties, and other hot food sold over the counter, when they're hot so when you go to a deli and buy a hot pastie you have to pay the tax. If the pastie goes cold, whilst it's behind the counter waiting to be sold, no tax is applicable – I don't have to comment on that it's stupid; you can see that.

Then last week a cabinet minister went on TV and suggested that people stock up with petrol in case the tanker drivers go on strike. He said as well as filling your fuel tanks you should fill a spare can too.

This has resulted in all the filling stations in the country running out of fuel; lines of cars are queuing in the streets and causing traffic jams; police have had to close some of them because of the disruption to traffic.

It was on the news that the army is being trained to deliver the tankers to the petrol stations in case of an emergency because they don't want to see essential services such as hospitals being affected.

And guess what!!

There is no strike planned; the union for the tanker drivers are talking to the managements about the health and safety of actually delivering petrol – they are in talks; nothing more.

I hope we don't go to war with this lot running the country if those are the tactics they would use – they didn't think that a statement such as 'fill you cars just in case' would panic the country.

I rest my case.

American/British TV writing.

Fawlty Towers title card.

There is a big difference in attitudes between America and Britain; it is said that when you come up with an idea in Britain and talk to people about it they try and talk you out of it; if you want to do a comedy about crooks, for example, they'll say 'what about Bonnie and Clyde?' whereas the attitude in America is that when you come up with an idea they try and find a way of doing it. They will say about the comedy crooks idea 'a new take on Bonnie and Clyde; I like it.'

It's not a bed of roses over there where everything gets made as many a writer has found out; over there you have to learn to pitch an idea to the studios and if you're no good at pitching your script doesn't get looked at.

If your pitch is good and the script is good it still doesn't mean anything till a studio takes it on. There is such a thing over there called the black list. Now the black list in this case is not a bad thing; the black list is a list of the best scripts that haven't been bought by somebody – somebody important that is who are going to actually make the film.

There is also a big difference in the way a TV series is written; in Britain one person, or team, writes all the episodes of a TV series. Julian Fellowes wrote all the episodes of Downton Abbey and his latest hit Titanic; Dennis Potter wrote all the episodes of The Singing Detective; John Cleese wrote every episode of Fawlty Towers with his then wife Connie Booth.

On The Sopranos, in America, they had 12 writers, on Lost they had 23 writers (no wonder the plot went haywire) and on Cheers they had 36.

Sometimes the American series run in to hundreds of episodes so maybe a team of writers is understandable but some of the series in Britain, for example Till Death Us Do Part went in to 53 episodes and all of them written by Johnny Speight; it's interesting that when Till Death Us Do Part was remade in America under the title All In the Family they had 50 – one of them Johnnie Speight.

However the Americans make their series for years and Till Death Us Do Part is a good example of the difference in how long series run in the 2 countries. If the ratings drop in America the series gets dropped; not in the UK.

So what's the better way? The Americans will like their way and the British will like theirs.

However when it came to the greatest situation comedy ever the prize would go to Fawlty Towers even though they only made 12 episodes. 12 classic episodes and the writing team of Cleese and Booth said they couldn't write any more.

Before the days of popular videos pirate video tapes of Fawlty Towers were being sold for hundreds of pounds.

There is a series on television at the moment on both sides of the Atlantic called Homeland (12 writers) and I believe it's wonderful. It's everything I would want to see in a series as I have always been interested in the subject matter.

One of my favourite films is The Manchurian Candidate; I can't remember how many times I have seen it but the last time was in Los Angeles with the guy who directed it, John Frankenheimer, and one of the stars, Angela Lansbury.

That's what Homeland is about but the reason I won't watch it is because I really liked Lost when it first came on but because it was so successful they made hundreds of episodes and lost the plot; by the time it finished we were all bored with it and disappointed by the outcome.

That is why The Singing Detective (the TV series not the movie) was better than The Sopranos and Fawlty Towers was better than Cheers – in my opinion anyway.

There's a very interesting page about Fawlty Towers on Wikipedia which gives a few insights into the writing, the submission (the first episode was rejected by the BBC) and the difference between what would would have happened if the Americans tried to make it – here it is

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fawlty_towers you may have to copy and paste.

Acting and Writing.

What is the creative difference between acting and writing apart from the obvious mechanics?

Why would I ask this question, first of all? Because I heard someone discussing it on the tube but I won't bore you with what they said because that's not my opinion – I'll bore you with what I think instead.

There is not a lot of difference at all – actors and writers have their own way of creating characters. Some sit in cafés or pubs and study people and some even go to the zoo.

I was playing a psychopathic murderer in a play once – Night Must Fall by Emlyn Williams – and there was a scene where the stage was bare apart from an old woman sitting in her wheel chair. It was dark and quiet and as she sat there the wind howled from outside and it was very scary then suddenly I poked my head through the curtain and the audience gasped and screamed.

The woman looked at me and was relieved as she knew me – Danny! Danny! she cried, then I came in and talked to her for a while.

As I was talking to her the audience could tell that I was going to kill her, chop her head off and put it in a hat box – at least that's what they thought and by the time the scene closed they knew that's what I was going to do.

There was something about the dialogue that the writer had written which needed something from the actor; I was saying one thing but meaning something else; I couldn't just stand there with my hands in my pockets or try to speak evil or look menacing. People don't pull faces and show their inner emotions if they're trying to trick somebody so what should I do – in my case I usually ask what would I do in that situation?

Then someone – not the director – gave me a note. He said I needed to stalk the woman like a lion or a tiger; and he was right. That's what I meant about going to the zoo!

So I paced around the stage as I talked to her and it worked. I was as charming as I had been in the previous scenes with her but there was something about me which gave the message to the audience that I was up to no good.

Some actors would say, never mind the audience - worry about 'the work' – I know what they mean but we are doing it for the audience; who else?

In that case the writer had given me the bare bones and I had to put flesh onto them.

The lines – or the dialogue – should come last in a characterisation even though you learn them first; you learn them first to get them out of the way but these days with film acting you don't learn anything as you don't rehearse much.

Rehearsals are a learning process and this you do as you rehearse. Sometimes on a film I have only just about got the lines into my head before having to say them; so I deliver them as if that's my raison detre then go away; nothing learned.

Later I might think maybe I should have done them this way or that way and the day after that I had forgotten them altogether.

That's what you have to do as an actor but it's a shame as the chances of you seeing that performance many years down the line and cringing is quite a possibility.

Whereas the performance in a theatre, which disappears into oblivion, is rehearsed, practised and has the benefit of being performed many times to near perfection.

Some of the great film directors, such as Sydney Lumet, would have a period of rehearsals which is why their movies have great performances – I mean look at Dog Day Afternoon.

But back to writing and acting – they are the two things that everybody thinks they can do; they think they can do this because they can put words on a page – writing – and they can speak – acting!

But that's not all there is to it.

The best scripts, movies, books, plays or whatever are character driven; the alternative would be plot driven.

There are some great films, I'm sure, which are plot driven; I haven't seen the Star Wars films but I am told they are plot driven with lousy dialogue and poor development of character but I am also told they are great films.

Look at the film Avatar – no nothing to do with an Indian deity - which was a pioneering film which everybody thought was the answer to the future, a new way of making films, with 3D and all that; only the characters were one dimensional and the dialogue was terrible but then again – I didn't see it.

A film I did see was Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy which I loved; I loved it because the acting was good, the characters were well drawn, the plot took a lot to figure out and I like to have to work things out for myself.

Of course a lot of people didn't like it, because they couldn't follow it, but people thought the same when the TV series was popular in 1979 with Alec Guinness playing Smiley; I wonder if they'll make the sequel Smiley's People?

So writing and directing are one and the same apart from the logistics of it – they both create characters and some of them even go to the zoo.

Here I am in Night Must Fall – many years ago:

as Danny in Night Must Fall.

Cats.

The smiling cat - El Grande.

We are, unashamedly, lovers of cats. We love their habits, their games and their funny little ways.

We know some people don't like them and prefer dogs as the dogs seem more dependent on them and the cat is independent but that's what we like about them.

Stroking a cat, as you watch television, is said to be good for your blood pressure but the love and pleasure you get from them can make you very happy – and when you lose them they break your heart – just as when you lose a dog.

Of course, some people don't like cats or dogs or any animals even though they give us more than we ever give them – there's something the matter with you if you don't like animals at all and people who are cruel to animals certainly have something wrong with them.

We have had dogs too and dogs at the same time as the cats; one dog we had would let one of the cats sleep on his head – not whilst he was lying down but as he sat up; I can still see him sitting there frightened to move in case the cat fell off.

But I have had cats all my life; when a child I had a kitten called Elvis who suddenly didn't come back one day; he was a black cat with a white breast and I was sure that somebody had taken him till my mother told me that he had been killed on the main road.

That is the problem when you let your cat out – they don't know the highway code and they run in front of cars and lorries.

When we lived in the country we had a dog, and at least 3 cats that were run over, but then went through a good patch when we had 5 at the same time; their names were Graymalkin, Biddy, Biggun, Lamb Chop (or Fluff) and Gizmo.

When we went to the vets they would say 'you're the family with the funny cat's names' – I got the name Graymalkin from the cat that's mentioned in Macbeth!!!

But as I said when you lose one they break your heart.

Our cat – El Grande – died yesterday; he seemed to be as fit as a fiddle 6 weeks ago, jumping over the furniture and the bannisters but suddenly he started falling over, it got so bad that he couldn't walk or even stand; all in 6 weeks.

The vet said it was probably a brain tumour so he was put to sleep.

He came with us from America and only managed to spend 3 months in his new house so now when we come in there is no cat to say hello as we walk through the door.

There he is above - smiling.

Saint Patrick's Day.

Saint Patrick's Window.

In the 18^th century, about 1770, there was a fella called John O'Leary in County Cork, Ireland, who had something to do with my existence.

He was married to Kathleen and one day he was caught stealing sheep and was transported to Australia; poor Kathleen had to stay behind and never saw John again.

However, she remarried and I will presume she had some kind of divorce first; although that seems hardly likely.

Divorce wasn't easy in Ireland in the 20^th Century don't mind the 18^th as it took an act of parliament for women to divorce their husbands in those days as Ireland was still governed by the British Crown.

Kathleen became Kathleen O'Sullivan and eventually some way down the line of Sullivans I arrived.

Now was John O'Leary – or was it O'Laoghaire? - hungry when he stole the sheep or was he just a rustler? Was he out drinking the night he stole into the field and made it away with the animal and did he crouch at the side of the field thinking “Will I take it? Will I? Will I?”

Or did he draw up in his horse and cart with a few friends and load them up on to the back of the cart and distribute them to the poor and was then shopped by a customer?

This was before the famine – but he might have been hungry!!

“Will I take it and will I get caught and if I get caught will I be transported which will give life to a load of Sullivans? What's it to be?”

Whatever the reason or the explanation we will never know; the fact is I'm here; I arrived and the actual act of putting his two hands around that animal was the cause of my existence. So I have been giving sheep a sheepish look ever since I found out about this fact.

But poor old John; nobody knows what really happened to him – they might have at one time but that is all forgotten; let's hope he had a wonderful life in Botany Bay.

The Irish Rebellion came about 25 years later and the famine came about 50 years after that so he was just as well living in the sunshine for the rest of his life.

The Rebellion, the famine, and all the other trials and tribulations, made the Irish a strong people and the experience of this produced an extraordinary amount of writers from such a tiny isle.

7 Million people were pared down to 4 million in no time at all and Irish writers, like the Jews, made fun of their rulers and colonists and commented further about their plight; maybe this was the reason 4 Irish writers – and I say again – from such a small country, won the Nobel Prize for Literature; and that's not counting James Joyce, Brendan Behan and a host of others.

So this week celebrate Saint Patrick's Day and think how lucky you are that the Irish are here to amuse, enlighten and maybe even educate you.

I will be doing my one man Irish show at a small private theatre here in Eastcote, Middlesex, so for the rest of this week I will be practicing my guitar to get my fingers nimble for the task – so wish me luck.

Seats for the Oscars and Goodbye to a Day Dream Believer.

Peter Tork and Davy Jones.

It's been a week since the Oscars and in that week we've lost Davy Jones who died of a heart attack; there were a few initial stories as to where he died: one version said he died in his sleep another said he was found in his car complaining of chest pains and experiencing breathing difficulties and after being rushed to hospital in Florida he was pronounced dead on arrival and the latest is that he died in his horse riding stable with his horses; the bottom line is he died.

Not a lot of people know this (to paraphrase Michael Caine) but he was the original Monkee – he was cast first and the others had to audition.

Peter Tork said he kind of resented him when he came in to the auditions and swanned straight in to see the producers; then when they had to go in for their auditions they were 'paired' with him.

Of course they got on well later.

And how did they know about him? The producers, I mean.

On the night The Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan Show, when street crime and burglaries stopped for an hour in New York, Davy Jones was in the show with them.
He was playing The Artful Dodger on Broadway in Oliver and sang a song, with Georgia Brown, from the show and the producers saw him.

So he was already contracted to the film company who produced The Monkees but had to meet the producers first.

Before that he was in Coronation Street playing Ena Sharples' grandson and various other British TV appearances and then he trained as a jockey before going into The West End in Oliver and then to Broadway.
I don't think any of the Monkees made money from the re-runs of the show, so when he finished with it he started a street market in New York and then, after losing a lot of money, resumed his career as a jockey.
In tribute to Jones, Lingfield Park Race Track announced that the first two races on the card for 3 March 2012 would be renamed the Hey Hey We're The Monkees Handicap and the In Memory of Davy Jones Selling Stakes with successful horses in those races accompanied into the Winners' Enclosure by some of The Monkees' biggest hits. Plans were also announced to erect a plaque to commemorate Jones next to a Monkee Puzzle tree on the course.
Of course he died in a leap year on February 29^th – a date they will only remember every four years which coincides each year with the Olympic Games and the American Presidential Election.
Changing the subject a lot of people have asked me, as I lived around the corner from The Kodak Theatre, if I ever went to the Academy Awards show or even waited outside to see the stars coming and going; well not necessarily going just coming.

Well no, I never went; it is possible to get an invitation to the actual show if you are a prominent business owner but you'll end up in the gods. My landlady went the first year I was there and it might have been possible to go in those days and stand in the crowd outside.

The Oscars were held at a different place each year; one year it would be the Shrine Auditorium and the next it would be in The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in The Music Center. Since they have been held at The Kodak Theatre in Hollywood all has changed.

As I mentioned before, you can't even walk along Hollywood Blvd without going through security checks, so who are those people outside that greet the stars?

Well you could be one of those if you wanted to be – all you have to do is write to the Academy, tell them you would like to be in the Bleachers Seats– which is what those seats are called – and they will choose so many out of the hat, so to speak, and then you can go.

They will, of course, put you through a very strict security check and, if you are successful, you can go and they will wine and dine you for the day – they even have wheel chair access for those needing it.

They have elevators to get you to your seats, food service and when the show starts they take you across to El Capitan Theatre, opposite, and you see the show on the big screen; there you get hot dogs as opposed to the Wolfgang Puck menu the stars will eat.

So give it a go for next year but don't ask me for any addresses.

Oscar odds and the hanging British Light Switch.

British bathroom hanging light switch.

Being relatively new to being back here, the mind wanders when I look around and think about what my American friends would think if they saw certain things here.

I know it's like that when you get to America; the one thing I have always known is that when you use the light switch in the USA you put it into the 'up' position to put the light on whereas over here you put it down.

Everything else is the other way around too, as you will know, like driving on the other side of the road and, which I found a surprise, the back brake on my bicycle over there was on the right handle bar.

Well I was in the bathroom the other day and I wondered what they would think of the light switch here in all bathrooms.

For the Americans who have never been to the UK, there are no electrical devices in bathrooms here, no electric sockets just a piece of string, with a weight, hanging from the ceiling - as above. This is everywhere and this is in case we would try to put the lights on or off with wet hands and be electrocuted.

By the way electrocution is death – in the USA they use electrocution when they mean a shock.

So it might be funny to them – it should be funny to us but we have got used to it. I mean we don't have the string in any other parts of the house such as the kitchen when our hands are nearly always wet. We use the electric mixer with wet hands so why don't they have hanging light switches in there - just a thought.

Now this is Academy Award weekend and I will really miss the sense of occasion by not being in Hollywood for the first time in 17 years – or 17 award shows apart from one one when I was filming over here; that was the year Helen Mirren won for The Queen and as she lived just around the corner from us we might have seen the limo.

The betting odds for the OSCARS are interesting. The best actor is a toss up between George Clooney for the Descendants and Jean Dujardin for The Artist; Dujardin is odds on at 4/6 and Clooney is slightly better than evens at 11/10.

Meryl Streep was the favourite at one time but the favourite now is Viola Davis from The Help at 8/13.

The best supporting actor should go to Christopher Plummer; at the moment he is not worth a bet as his odds are 1/33 – for those who know nothing about betting, you have to put £33 to win £1; which is hardly worth it unless you are putting £33,000 on and in that case the bookie would give you £34,000 back for your £33,000 staked. It's an easy grand but you would have to put it on in the UK where there is no gambling tax and there is a chance that he might not win – I liked Kenneth Branagh in My Week With Marilyn.

For Best adapted screenplay The Descendants is strong favourite at 1/5, but Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a good outside bet at 20/1.

If betting on the winners doesn't take your fancy, there are plenty of other ways to spread around you money at this year's event.

William Hill are offering 6/1 on Meryl Streep losing her shoe again if she wins Best Actress (she first did it at the BAFTAs).

There's a 3/1 chance one of the winners will swear during a speech, while you get 8/1 on a host to announce the wrong winner.

Based on the above here's what I say for the OSCARS; I have no special qualifications or knowledge and also I think it's too late to get a bet on here:

Best Actor – George Clooney. Best Actress - Viola Davis.

Best supporting actor - Christopher Plummer. Best adapted screenplay - The Descendants (Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon). Best Picture – The Artist.

You can only make money on this if you have a yankee bet so drop Christopher Plummer and go for the rest – that is 6 doubles, 4 trebles and one accumulator. A £1 yankee, which is 11 bets, will cost £11.

You won't make a fortune but the accumulator on the above odds for the £1 bet would bring you will bring you about 3/1 – put Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in there at 20/1 instead of The Descendants and it's worth doing as that is a really clever brilliant screenplay and my favourite film of the year.

My teenage love story!

The Poni Tails

Well, when I was a young man never been kissed

I got to thinkin' it over how much I had missed

So I got me a girl and I kissed her and then, and then

Oh, lordy, well I kissed 'er again . . . . .

When I was about fifteen or so I fell in love; I fell in love with three girls in a place called Wythenshawe, which was in the south part of the city of Manchester.

I was staying there for two weeks at my aunt's house and quite near to the house was a block of flats – and of course in the flats there were plenty of young girls.

I would pass the flats most days as I was staying up there by myself. I worked for the post office and had to take my holidays when they told me so everybody else was at work or school at the time.

I was kicking my heels around the house and my mother suggested I go and stay with her sister, my Godmother, and her family; their children were little more than babies so they were no good for me to pal about with; one day we went on a picnic with a maiden aunt of theirs and I went along too.

It wasn't a picnic as such, she called it a ramble – I don't know if she was part of a ramblers club or anything but she might have been in her forties and wore sensible shoes, a tweed skirt and carried a stick.

It was pleasant and at one point my little cousin sat on my lap and the aunt said 'Oh, Christopher isn't used to having little girls sitting on his lap' and I said 'no, I'm used to big girls' and her face kind of dropped.

It was the first thing that came in to my head but I got to know the girls from the flats – well some of them – and they used to sit on my lap. There was a pair of sisters – one aged 14 and the other 15 – and another girl older who was about 17 or 18.

I dated each of them and they seemed to know about each other going out with me. We went to a fair ground, which was a bus ride away, and to the movies which was also a bus ride away. In fact everything was a bus ride away as Wythenshawe, in those days, was in the countryside.

I took the older girl to see The Duke Wore Jeans, in the centre of Manchester, which starred Tommy Steele and whilst we were sitting there a fight broke out – between 2 girls.

One was sitting in front of the other and something was said, then the one in front stood up and they were fighting and pulling each others hair over the seats . . they were kicked out.

Now when I said I fell in love I mean I fell in love with a different one each day; I was only 15 and what did I know about love?

We would 'make out' on the stairs of the building in which they lived, and the pop music of the time was the sound track to our activities. The 14 year old was really gorgeous but she was too young for me – don't forget I was 15 and she was 14; I wasn't a baby snatcher!!
The song by The Pony Tails, Born Too Late, would ring in my ears when I thought of her and the same song rang out when I was with the older one.
Born too late for you to notice me
To you, I'm just a kid that you won't date
Why was I born too late?
The other one, the 15 year old, was the one who wrote to me when I returned to Birmingham and once or twice the older one wrote but never the 14 year old.
It was nothing serious, of course, but my aunt found out about it and didn't want me going with people from the flats – maybe she thought they were leading me in to a life of vice and drugs!!

One day I was due to meet the girls but my aunt said it wasn't to be; they were taking me out somewhere in the car – I can't remember where but it wasn't for a ramble.

I had to go and tell the girls that I wouldn't be there that day and when we went out in the car the 3 girls, and some of their friends, came out and got close to the car and blew kisses and waived – my aunt was disgusted.

Eventually the time came for me to go back to Birmingham and we were all heartbroken; I remember the tears welling up inside of me as the train pulled out of Manchester, Piccadilly Railway Station. I was in bits as I loved my life up there for the two weeks and then it was back to Birmingham and back to work.

I did nothing but mope around for what seemed weeks and then one night I decided to run away to Manchester. I knew where it was – in the north of England – so I started out.

I walked in to the city centre then up through Aston, which is going north; I seemed to walk for hours, in fact I did, and pretty soon it was after midnight and I was in Sutton Coldfield, which is 8 miles from the centre of Birmingham.

Near Sutton Coldfield, a car pulled in and asked me the way to somewhere – I couldn't really tell them anything and they told me they were eventually going to Manchester; oh I was tempted, I can tell you, and when they drove off I realised I was on an impossible trip, so I turned around and walked back.

After a little while a policeman came up to me and asked what I was doing – I told him I was out for a walk.

He took me to Aston Police Station, sat me down and gave me a cup of tea; then they called the police station, close to where I lived, and a copper from there went and told my worried parents that I was safe – we didn't have a telephone in those days; who did?

My dad didn't have a car so he rode across to Aston on his bike; the Raleigh that I have written about before, the Raleigh that I inherited and the Raleigh that my brother was knocked off one day as he rode along Moseley Road, which was a main thoroughfare.

When he came to the police station my dad was all smiles for me and the cops and they asked him how he would get me home.

'On my crossbar' he said 'if there are no police about.' it was against the law to give lifts on crossbars but it was two-o-clock in the morning and the coppers laughed.

On the way home he said 'we won't tell your mother you were on your way to your aunts.'

I said 'I was on my way to see my girl friend.' He didn't understand.

Young love, first love Filled with true devotion 
Young love, our love We share with deep emotion

It took me a few days to recover as every part of my body 
really ached.

In 1984 I was on TV in a series called 'Eh Brian! It's a Whopper, a drama comedy series about some anglers, and I received a fan letter from the older girl. She told me her marriage wasn't going very well and said I looked really good for 50!!!! 50??

So I got me a girl and I kissed her and then, and then

Oh, lordy well I kissed 'er again

Because she had kisses sweeter than wine

She had, mmm mmm, kisses sweeter than wine.

Jimmy Rodgers

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Between the BAFTAs and The Oscars.

Well here we are half way between the BAFTAs and the Oscars – the British Academy Awards and the Academy Awards proper. I say the Academy Awards proper as opposed to the American BAFTAs which is what the Americans say about some of their things.

They described Casualty as the British ER when Casualty was on over here way before ER – it's just something they do, I suppose, thinking that anything on television started over there.

The number one TV show over there is Dancing With the Stars which is a BBC Production (they even produce it) taken from Strictly Come Dancing which is a hit over here.

Their title is better, of course, but 'Strictly' – as they call it here – is taken from a very old popular show on TV called Come Dancing which was a top dancing show for many years over here; it was a competition between professional ballroom dancers. Sometimes there would be solo dancers and sometimes formation. I have to say it was very impressive, even though I hardly watched it, and my parents and most people of their age, then, loved it.

In the 1980s TV series, Edge of Darkness, Joe Don Baker played a CIA agent and would praise to the skies Come Dancing saying what a great show to have on television – yes, by the way, the same Edge of Darkness which was a recent feature film and totally unwatchable.

So next week I will miss the Oscars which was something I really enjoyed; I enjoyed the day with the parties, the pizzas and the razzamatazz.

We lived close enough to the place where the Oscars are held each year to be affected by it and, of course, it took them a week to get the streets ready, so at the moment I can imagine the streets of Hollywood will be blocked off. Hollywood Boulevard itself will be for pedestrians only; it is interesting as you can go and look at the rehearsals they hold in the street.

Not with stars, of course, but with extras; they get out of limos and other extras are in the crowd and cheer them; it's a rehearsal for the cameras and they do as much as they can.

They have tarpaulins in case of rain which very rarely have to be used and they build a bridge across Hollywood Boulevard to use for interviews and camera shots.

All the windows opposite, in the Roosevelt Hotel and other places, are blocked off and there is nowhere you can go on the boulevard to look through windows.

The people you see cheering have tickets to sit in those places and the security is so tight that on the day you cannot walk along Hollywood Blvd without going through security cages and being felt all over by faceless security people.

Hollywood Blvd goes from east to west and so do all the other streets with Boulevard as their tag – Sunset, Melrose and Beverly.

At about eleven-o-clock on the day of the awards, the limos have to line up on Beverly Blvd with the VIPs who are attending the show.

Inside the limos the nominees are being comforted as they sit in the big line of traffic and when they reach Hollywood Blvd they arrive in a pre-ordained order.

I have noticed that the big stars arrive later and the smaller ones and the technical nominees arrive very early; when the limos drop them off they go around the corner to the Highland Centre Parking lot.

When it's all over I should imagine it's a mess of confusion trying to find your limo – one year Steven Spielberg was interviewed holding a load of coats as he waited for both the limo and his wife – just like we've all stood waiting for our women holding bags and coats.

Standing around inside the theatre are people called seat fillers; these are people dressed formally who sit in seats as soon as one of the stars gets up to either present an award, receive one of just goes to the loo.

When I moved there in 1995, I knew someone who had worked on the production side of the awards many times, and he told me about the seat fillers and I tried to get in on it, just for the crac, but I was told they didn't need anybody else.

After the awards there are plenty of parties, plenty of after the awards TV shows and interviews; some of the shows are at the parties (never inside) and the day after, the LA Times is full of the red carpet pictures and Academy Awards stories and the day after that it all stops till the end of the year; that's when all the films, who will be nominated for the following year's Academy Awards, will be released. The reason for this is that the films which come out in the first six months or so of the year are forgotten.

The Iron Lady, for example, was released in the last week of December and some films over the years have been released on December 31^st – the last qualifying day. Sometimes those films only play for one week, to get the qualification in, and are released later.

One film that would have been nominated for Oscars was Bloody Sunday which was a British film but some clever clogs put it on TV in Britain first which disqualified it.

There are Oscar shows in Australia, Britain, Japan, Norway and probably many more but there is only one Oscar show and that's in Hollywood.

This year Billy Crystal will be presenting which means that Jack Nicholson will probably go so he can sit in the front row so Billy can make jokes about him.

The show, the razzamatazz, the people, the paparazzi and everything else is great fun but it doesn't mean anything at all.

The best actor, the best film and everything else is something that cannot be defined. It's only an opinion – I mean how can you compare one acting performance to another. One of the greatest performances by an actor one year was by Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop – he wasn't even nominated!

By the way, the name of the theatre, where the Academy Awards are held, is the Kodak Theatre and the company, Kodak, have just gone into Bankruptcy. They had signed a 20 year sponsorship deal in 2000 and because of their bankruptcy they had hoped to take their name off the theatre; a bankruptcy judge ruled that they could but the owners don't want that to happen; so we shall see what it will be called next year.

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.

George VI and school days.

King George VI

There was a kid in my class at school called Raymond Simmons, and one day he took the day off. He wasn't playing truant – playing the wag, we called it – as playing the wag is when your parents send you to school but you don't go – you do something else.

I only ever did that once – I went around to Alan Chance's house and we smoked cigarettes and played rock 'n' roll records. Proper rock 'n' roll records by Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis - maybe even Larry Williams.

On the day that Raymond Simmons played the wag, I asked if I could go to the lavatory and, when I went into the playground on my way to the boys lavatories, I saw him; he was putting a stick down a drain and wiggling it about.

I asked him what he was doing out there and he told me that he wasn't at school that day and not to tell the teacher that I'd seen him. His mother had kept him away, pretending he was ill; I went off for my pee and when I returned he was sitting on the steps.

'The King is dead” he said as a matter of fact.

“How do you know?”

“My mom told me; it was on the wireless.”

I went back into the classroom with this heavy piece of knowledge resting in my head. If I told the teacher she would have asked how I knew and I would have had to say that Raymond Simmons told me and then he would be in trouble; or his mother would be so I stayed quiet.

I knew that Princess Elizabeth would now be Queen and I salivated in this cognition knowing that for the time being I knew something important that nobody else in the class room did.

I was comfortable with my secret knowing full well that it was big news which would burst forth into general knowledge fairly soon and then into history.

I would have thought that someone, maybe the headmistress, would have come in and tell our teacher, but no; not a word was mentioned.

When we broke up and went out to lunch I told one or two of the other kids and Carol Ecclestone said “that means Princess Elizabeth will be Queen.”

“No she won't” said another “Princess Margaret will be.”

That was 60 years ago today; and it seems like – 60 years ago!!!!

That was the end of King George VI, who was in the news all last year as he was the subject of the film The King's Speech. His first name wasn't George at all. He was named after his grandfather, Prince Albert who was Queen Victoria's husband and known as Bertie, which is short for Albert.

However Prince Albert was German, and as Bertie came to the throne in 1936 when relations with Germany were at their lowest, he chose his second name to use as his title.

His birthday was on December 14^th – the same day as mine. They would commemorate it on the radio (the wireless in those days) every year and I think they would sing or play 'happy birthday' - and I would think it was for me.

I wasn't there for the first few birthdays, and in any case at that age, I wouldn't have heard it as I was a baby, but 1951 was the last time they played 'happy birthday' on my birthday; these days my children call and sing it to me.

Thought you'd like to know all that!