Stammering and Stuttering.

 

                                                                  Michael Palin.

The strange thing is, and this is a strange thing to say as an actor: most of my life I suffered from a stammer – a stutter. Apparently the Americans say stammer and the UK stutter; I found that out yesterday. Not many people notice it and one time I met a well known actor who had one. It disappeared when he was working and that's what happens to me.

Most of the time I don't have one but I would be in – shall we say – a town hall meeting and I wanted to say something and as my turn came I would start my sentence with 'err' and then ask my question. I asked a question once when my dad was with me and he said he could see me contorting in the seat as my turn got nearer. I didn't notice that, of course.

My dad had a friend called Kendrick. He had a terrible stammer and one day he wrote his name on a piece of paper as Kackity-Kackity eeegh effing Kendrick. The effing means the F word and this isn't the place for it. Kendrick would use it all the time and my mother would say 'he doesn't stutter with that word.'

He had a sense of humour about it and the other day I saw a comedian who stammered. When talking to the audience one of his comments was 'people come up to me an tell me I have a stammer; as if I didn't know.'

If ever I'm in the company of someone who stammers I feel uncomfortable and feel I might stammer if I say anything.

One of the things I realised is I didn't stutter when I sang. So I kind of sung answers on things I was going to say – it seemed to work and it really only happens now if I'm some kind of insecure situation which is not often.

When I started school I had an Irish accent and when I met the other kids they spoke with Birmingham accents. You many notice that some vowel sounds are the same in each dialect. The 'U' in Dublin, for instance, but that is the same in the north of England too.

At that age I didn't want to stand out so I gradually started to speak the way they did but when I got home in the evenings I reverted back to the Dublin. I think this did me good as I developed an ear for accents and also the pitch people spoke in so I could impersonate a lot of people. I wasn't the best there was always someone else who was a better mimic that me and that goes for when I went to work and even as an actor. Always someone else funnier but I remember all those people and their talents so that has stood me in good stead.

I think the last words to go from Irish into Brummy – or the sounds – were walk, work, talk etc, but when we went back to Dublin for the summer we – me and my two brothers – came back with Dublin accents. It seemed to be okay for the other two as by the time they started school they could hear how I spoke.

One time we got on the bus in Birmingham from the station and heard the Birmingham accents for the first time in months; they all seemed to be singing.

The big trouble for me was when my two worlds collided.

Sometimes I couldn't get any words out at all – the Irish side of my life and the English side of my life coming together almost struck me dumb; which way to speak should I choose; my insides would be panicking and I would be churning up inside.

Many years later when my mother was dying she came to live with us and I looked after her. Of course a lot of the Irish came back but I would go out each lunch time and leave her in the wheel chair watching TV. I would go for a couple of pints of Guinness in an Irish pub close by. I can't remember or didn't notice how I spoke.

But one day I was somewhere else, talking with a load of Londoners and one of the guys from the pub came up and said 'hey Chris: why are you speaking in an English accent?'

I hadn't noticed.

These days if I meet someone from Dublin or Birmingham I tend to slip into a bit of one of those accents.

When we lived in Los Angeles, I knew an Irish actor who brought his English wife and their two children across from London. The children had well spoken London dialects, the mother was quite posh and the husband had a lovely Dublin accent.

After a couple of months we went to their house and the children asked how 'we guys' were doing; we guys!!! I think they'd be between five and ten years of age, and those accents were certainly American which had developed in that short period.

It brought me to mind when I started school, in Birmingham, I didn't like it, I didn't know why I was there and why I was left alone. So I screamed the place down and when the teacher, Miss Jones, picked me up I kicked out and must have hurt the poor woman and didn't deserve the kindness she always showed me.

I was speaking to my cousin over the phone yesterday, who was in Dublin, and my wife said the longer the conversation lasted the more Irish I became. I think it was the same as a child when we would go to Manchester, where my other granny and granddad lived as they had come over to England too.

I would always say 'I don't know' in the Manchester accent. They wouldn't say things like 'I'll be here till ten-o-clock' they would say 'I'll be here while ten-o-clock.' There were lots of other things, other phrases and sayings, and I would get mixed up sometimes.

Last night there was a programme on TV about stuttering and stammering – that's where I found out that the Americans say stammer: hey! They say stammer here too.

They seemed to figure out that it was caused by the way our brains are wired – a bit like autism. I don't know if I agreed with that no matter how clever and well researched they are as I think it has something to do with confidence.

Most of the time I appear confident. 

Lately I have a problem remembering certain words or names but I think that has always been the case with me. One time I could never remember the name of the actor Ray Winstone. No reason why I should remember but when you see people on TV you do remember and that's all that's to it.

At the same time I can remember cast lists from films many years ago. Scripts from plays I've been in – I did The Caretaker once by Harold Pinter and I can still remember one of the speeches. This is not unusual when it comes to actors remembering Shakespeare's speeches and I can remember some of them too.

Michael Palin, who played someone with a stammer in the movie A Fish Called Wanda (above) has started a school where they coach or teach a way to rid people of the stammer. I don't know if it works. His father had a terrible stammer and he had reservations when accepting the role but he did and it was funny. But so is falling on a banana skin – especially if you can see the banana and the person walking towards it. A lot of comedy is laughing at other people's misfortunes – I wonder if they all mind.

Fame and Fortune.

 I had an idea the other day of what I was going to write here. It had something to do with the bloke, above, who I think is one of the funniest and talented people in the movie business – well any business for that matter. I know some people think that our business is a bit shallow or unimportant and there is only one answer to that and I would put it here - if I could spell it.

When he made the second Ace Ventura movie they also cast in it a very respectable English actor with a posh voice and because Jim Carrey wasn't well known in Britain, the respectable English actor had probably – and I am guessing probably – never heard of him.

If you see the movie you will see that Jim Carrey does a lot of face pulling, mugging and improvisation and when they were filming there was a special camera on Carrey all the time. This must have really foxed the Englishman with his acting priorities of minding his diction and keeping clear of the furniture. I look out for his reactions, the Englishman, every time I see the film.

The film above is The Truman Show; it is a favourite of mine and was made in the late nineties. I saw it again recently – a few times – and there are magic moments in it for me. One scene is when the Philip Glass soundtrack is used for the first time. I particularly like the director – Peter Weir. He also directed Witness which is also one of my favourite pictures. It has Harrison Ford, in it, and a particular scene when the Hamish are building a barn and we see Harrison Ford working as a carpenter, which is what he trained and worked at before, and during, his time as an actor, the music in that sequence is by . . . now who was it by? Maurice Jaare.

The Truman Show put a stop to a film based on the TV series The Prisoner the Patrick McGoohan cult TV series, which was seen in the 1970s. I knew someone quite well who knew Patrick McGoohan and he changed his mind for some reason when The Truman Show started shooting. He probably went back to writing and directing episodes of Columbo.

In the movie Jim Carrey plays Truman. There is something very strange about it because when it starts it seems like a regular film, set in the suburbs of small town America, - the burbs - but Truman's wife tends to mention various products as if she is making a TV commercial. Sometimes, when he goes to work, he stands near an advertising billboard and if it's not quite in shot he seems to be moved by another member of the cast so the sign can he seen.

The Philip Glass music comes in when Jim Carey is walking along the street and a light seems to fall out of the sky (there he is above with it). Loads of confusion when people come from nowhere to move the light – a big spotlight used in movies – and as Jim drives along, cars seem to veer him over to change his route and then . . . . we get the picture. He is actually being watched by everybody else in America and is the only one who doesn't know it. His character's wife, is played by an actress, his pals, work mates, the guy in the news-stand and everyone are actors. And that is the Truman Show.

It is an experiment where they took a child from birth and the nation watched him grow up. A bit similar to the TV series 7UP where they took children from upper, middle and working class backgrounds to see whether the Jesuit saying is true 'show me the child at seven and I will show you the man.'

The last episode of the series – or the last that had been shown – was 63UP. It seems that the predictions, in lots of cases, have happened. But the kids who did the show have been plagued by it and some of them have feared, every seven years, the inevitable invitation to film again. Sometimes it has affected their lives quite badly and one or two of them dropped out. It was an exciting sociological experiment. I studied sociology in my forties and I can't remember how many essays I wrote about this series, how many lectures and discussions we had, and when I see it now I go back to them and their little histories as if they are my relations.

When I said I was thinking about this, in my opening sentence, it must have been this series that I was thinking about as I saw 63UP a couple of weeks ago.

The Truman Show shows how the media works or could work. How we are obsessed with fame, celebrity, renown – we rush to the TV every time we hear that a famous person has had something happen to them. Yesterday every newspaper in the UK (and there are many of them) had a picture of Tiger Woods' SUV on the front page. Every news bulletin led with the Tiger Woods story and millions tuned in to see if he was dead.

The Truman Show shows what affect if has on Truman Burbank. When he finds out he wants out. He tries many ways and that's where it is similar to The Prisoner. When I was working in a play in Cheltenham I was working with an actor who had been in an episode of The Prisoner and he received post cards and a few autograph hunters at the stage door – in fact when I did my play in London in 2016 a few blokes were at the stage door one night and they had photographs of me in their binder and I was asked to sign under them in various places and these were fans of a movie called Lifeforce which is a kind of cult movie very popular with film students and horror film buffs, which I was in.

It never worried me being recognised whenever I have been in a TV series or on TV but some actors find it a strain especially when it's been going on for years. I was on the tube once and when I got on there was a gang of skin heads near where I was going to sit and when I sat down they started saying 'TV' and nudging each other. Then they all turned around menacingly 'Oye TV?' I just nodded and smiled. I remember too when I was in the north of England on a train and as I took my newspaper out to read a couple of yobbos shouted 'Oye! Guardian!!' They took a dislike to my newspaper.

So fame is not as great as it is painted. Very famous people get it all the time. The Truman Show is a fantasy - a stretch of the imagination when the unfortunate subject was viewed like an animal in the zoo.

But this is no fantasy.

This family has been locked up for years. The whole world takes a daily interest in them especially in America where they look and admire; all knowing of course that the family, as long as it is locked up and used will prevent a monster like Trump ever happening in the UK. When Charlie takes over it may be a chance for pieces of faeces like Farage to take a chance on getting rid of them but . . . . I don't think he'll stand a chance!

England's upper classes.

 There he is; above. What a lot of people might think is an eccentric Englishman, or even an upper class Englishmen. Well he is neither.

That is Mister Jacob Rees-Mogg.

His father was a journalist, and editor of a newspaper and then the Chief Executive of Channel 4 Television. The poor fella, his father, had an unfortunate lisp which made him very easy to impersonate. The staff of Channel 4 would mimic him all the time.

Channel 4 was a groundbreaking television service introduced into the UK in the early eighties. A lot of it was experimental and it was part funded by the government and the other ITV stations. One of the regular late night programmes was a relaxed discussion kind of chat show with people sitting around shooting the shit. Most of the time these people would be fairly well known in their field and some would be celebrities. Also because of the late hour a lot of those were, to put it mildly, shit faced. The show was open ended and would end when the conversation ground to an halt.

One evening, Oliver Read was one of the guests and was sailing three sheets to the wind, drinking and cursing: effing this and effing that and the insults were flying with some sober person trying to talk sense to him and telling him what kind of an arsehole he was – if ever you've tried this, or had someone try and tame you when you've been pickled, you'll know all about it.

I was watching this with glee when suddenly it all went off. The continuity person was explaining why it had been taken off and then, suddenly, it came back on again.

What had happened was some wag had called the Channel 4 switchboard impersonating William Rees-Mogg and told them to end the programme – 'take it off' he said. Now William the father (not the son or the holy ghost) was The Lord Rees-Mogg. He didn't inherit this title, so he wasn't landed gentry, an aristocrat or even upper class. But he thought he was and taught his son, laughing boy Jacob, to do the same. William was a 'life peer' which meant his title died with him so poor old Jacob would have to be a Mister, not a lord. There are not that many inherited titles left and the life peerage was introduced by Harold Wilson's Labour Government in the 1960s.

Jacob will probably get kicked up to the House of Lords when his time comes. The House of Lords is the second chamber, in the UK, rather like the senate in the USA. One difference – The Lords, in The House of Lords are selected. I have no problem with this as the senate, in America, has an election every two years. One third of them have to stand every six years but as soon as most of them are elected they are fighting the next election. That's why most of the Republicans voted not guilty in Trump's last impeachment. To me the House of Lords doesn't have that incentive and, even though they can claim £350 a day expenses, it's worth it even if they all went in every day. The total added together is a teeny weeny bit of the British economy and the government borrow at a very low rate – in fact the bonds they are now selling (which is one way they borrow money) offer zero interest. The bank rate at the moment is 4.00% and reverse repo rate at 3.35% so don't tell me they don't lend some of the money they borrow - the banks charge around 30% on some overdrafts.

Back to Jacob:

Most, if not all, of the upper classes are Roman Catholic, even though the Queen, who is head of the Church of England, is a Protestant. The public school for Roman Catholics is Ampleforth College in Yorkshire. The upper class people I know all went there but I don't think many of them profess to be descendants of Charles II.

Jacob is a Roman Catholic. His father was born into an Anglican family but his mother was an Irish Roman Catholic (as I was) so that is why he is of that faith and not because he was a Baron.

The Rees-Moggs, for some reason, go for strange names: Jacob's sister is Annunziata, which is fair enough, but Jacob's children, of which there are six, has the sixth child named as Sixtus. Rather like the parents of another member of the same government, David Davies? Little imagination.

When announcing his birth Jacob said that Sixtus Dominic Boniface Christopher, a brother for Peter, Mary, Thomas, Anselm and Alfred.

Give me a break!!

Jacob has the attitude of an eccentric but it is practised. I have known and worked with eccentrics and they are not practised, they just are.

When the Coronavirus pandemic started last year we were advised by the government to wash our hands frequently, wear masks and keep at least six feet away from other people.

Jacob's solution was to tell us to 'sing happy birthday, twice, as you wash your hands; that should do the trick.'

For some reason Jacob, who is leader of the House of Commons, had to take over a debate and here he is conducting it:

A few weeks ago when they were debating the new fishing policy, because of Brexit, and because they dumped the fishing industry under a bus, he said the fish now being caught are British fish.

When I first moved to America I got a job selling tickets at The Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and Hollywood Bowl and one of the perks was free tickets. It wasn't that easy as I was a telemarketer and had to make loads of calls to sell a series of tickets. It was good if you sold them but they're not all tickets to see Yo Yo Ma or Rod Stewart, who are easy sales, but maybe a series of Mahler Concerts, a series of Schubert concerts etc. 

The first thing I learned was that the Americans pronounce most of the foreign words in their native pronunciation. The first one was brochure; the first time I offered to send one to someone they didn't know what I was talking about. I would say browsher but they wanted bre-shure. The French words kept cropping up: Maurice, filet etc although they had their own way of saying Boulevard as Bullavard and Louis as Lewis.

I found it fascinating and when I ordered Mexican food I found out that Tortilla was torteeya etc. They didn't pronounce Picasso with a Catalonian accent though.

The first time I got back to the UK I had dinner one evening with a few people and one of them was an upper class bloke and I was talking to him about the French pronunciation and then . . . . of course he wasn't impressed. And then it hit me - the colonial attitude kicked in – they didn't use French accents as they thought the Americans were plebs for doing so. 

It was the same as when they invited the middle classes into their big houses in the country and laughed at the way they dressed, the way they held their knife and fork and laughed to themselves when they referred to the lavatory as the little boys room or, heaven forbid, the toilet. You can think of the worst curse word and the upper class county set mother would sooner they asked for the shit house than use the word toilet.

Of course it can be useful to know some of these things and as an actor you have to know certain manners and etiquette when playing different roles especially in rep. Whilst living in Los Angeles we dabbled in antiques and got to know all the dealers, who were really actors, singers and writers. One of them, a girl who had small business, was also producing a play and one day she said that she knew an upper class Englishman who wanted to do business with her and she wanted to introduce us. He came along and he had the swagger, the swish of the scarf okay, but he kept calling Sri Lanka, Ceylon. And stressing it, complaining that it should be called Ceylon. He also used the word toilet. I told her he was a phoney. A couple of weeks later she told me he had disappeared. He didn't swindle her out of any money but let her down badly about some money he was to provide – I was right.

So when you look at Jacob Rees-Mogg, with his top hat and lazing about in the house of commons, boasting that he's never changed a nappy in his life just don't believe what you hear or take it with a pinch of salt as you sing happy birthday twice, when washing your hands.

CONFESSION.

 Hi folks: I thought I would promote my film with this post as there is very little chance of a screening the way things are; the way things are? Well this blog seems to be viewed for years so if this is someone reading it way into the future who has only heard of the Lockdown this is written during the second one – or is it the third one? Or the turd one as my poppa would say.

Here it is – the movie. All twenty seven minutes of it and if you like it you can always put a 'like' where there is a heart – that's if there is a heart from the viewer and you are not a robot.

If you are a friend on Facebook, or just a friend or even related to me or my agent - this won't be the only notification about CONFESSION - yup, that's the name of the movie, or the film or even the picture.

I'll write a few more original posts soon as my typing fingers are telling me to carry on now in a stream of consciousness but no – here it is the movie.

Enjoy it – just to put enjoy, without the 'it,' is a bit like English actors in TV series set in the 1950s using a fork only to eat dinner – a la American; it doesn't fly.

https://vimeo.com/505608541

Crimble.

to lighten things up here is a picture of our wedding all those years ago.

                      

Let's hope things will be different this time next year for everybody's sake. Then we can have, what people seem to think is the biggest priority this year, a Christmas.

But is it that important? Maybe for people's peace of mind, a link to a kind of normality – or as an American President said, normalcy! But every time you look at TV to see a movie or a play, you can see people in crowds, hugging, kissing and being normal and regular.

I don't think the hug or the hand shake will ever come back. Maybe in family circles but not generally. Maybe the fist or elbow bump? I don't know. The open-handed handshake was to prove you came as a friend and it stuck through the ages and maybe the elbow.

People in the south of England, in the London area mainly, would always greet you with a hug and a kiss. Men to men; women to women. In the midlands and the north, where they are supposed to have a friendly reputation, it doesn't happen so much. When you visit people in London, say meet some friends, the trend and the custom it to kiss your pal's wife. Maybe a kiss on the cheek but in the north, and this has happened to me, they think a kiss means you are flirting or trying to 'get off' with the wife so the next step is everybody throwing their car keys in to something so couples can pair off.

Of course, as I have said many times, I am no expert on anything and these are only my opinions and what I surmise as I lie in bed listening to the Today programmes on BBC Radio 4 every morning.

The Today Programme, by the way, is considered serious news in Britain. It has an obligation to devote a few minutes to tell the public what happened in Parliament the day before. This is supposed to be without political bias or prejudice although some people think it does have a bias but those people maybe don't know what playing devil's advocate is. Extreme left wing people think the BBC is too right wing and extreme right wingers think it's too left wing.

There are people in this world who don't know the difference. They say they are 'right wing' and have left wing views.

I like the BBC, I have always preferred their programmes from any other channel and that includes Netflix which I no longer subscribe to. I had it for years but when it became popular, using and making TV programmes and shows, I missed the movies I used to get from there. I don't know, it might still be the same in America where they sent, by mail (snail mail to use the expression) DVDs. I watched all the French films I missed over the years, all the film noir Hollywood classics, which are my favourites to this day, and now I miss them.

I also liked working for the BBC and they paid more money than ITV to an actor like me. Big stars – Tom Jones etc – would get big money from ITV, even though the quality was on the BBC, but to me not that much. It's hard to show comparison because what seemed like a lot of money in the 1970s sounds a tiny amount now but when you did a drama your fee was, shall we say, £10. That was the fee they worked on for the repeat fees and that would be for the London area only. As the programmes would be networked, shown on all the nation's stations, the actual fee would be £40. The same job on BBC you would get £40. Then when it was repeated or sold abroad the repeat fee was based on the original fee £10 ITV and £40 BBC. That's why when John Hurt won an EMMY for The Naked Civil Servant in America he told the press how much he was paid for the American showing which was only in double figures.

'Oy' an old pal said to me 'I work on the building as a chippie, a carpenter, and I put the doors in the houses.'

'Yes?' I said.

'Why don't they pay me every time somebody uses it?'

'That's a silly question' I said.

Happy Christmas.

Once Upon a Time . . 2.

 

Yes we're back at Once Upon a Time in America as I wanted to point out something strange.

First of all, I like discussing movies, they are as much a part of art as any other medium and in some cases they are more important. As you may see from the comments section I am not the only one who prefers good movies as opposed to blockbusters but I am very grateful for them; they pay for the films I like. Some of those are hits, of course, as I love The Godfather series of movies and what could be more satisfying than a piece of work that lots of others appreciate.

But I remember when I first started out as an actor I would be asked questions about my choice of work, warned I would spend a lot time unemployed and I remember that that was something I liked about it. I know now that some huge stars spend a lot of time not working. They don't worry financially about it but one very famous actor, recently, only worked two days in a twelve month period.

There was also a list of considered important jobs, I should follow, like a barber, a toolmaker or an electrician; amazing it was never something like a lawyer or a musician but I came to realise that all jobs are of the same so called importance. In brutal terms they are there to pay income tax and nothing else. However, it is widely considered that the farmer and the poet are the two most important jobs. The farmer feeds your body and the poet feeds your brain and maybe your philosophy. 

And you know something I think the actor is in the branch of poetry - as we interpret it.

If you say that to anybody they will say 'what about the doctor, the nurse, the President - well, we've all learned about the latter - but just think about it: the farmer or the poet. I know which one of them would never be on a bike.

The other idea of work is to 'put bread on the table' which must be a phrase from a Hollywood movie.

Getting back to Once Upon a Time in America - I do digress, don't I – when I went to live in America in January 1995 I met someone who could convert videos from the British system to the American one – PAL to NTSC. So I asked my wife to send my VHS copy over and had it converted.

Another guy told me it was his favourite film so I gave him the copy. He returned and said 'that was weird' – he had seen the film before, but never 'in that order.'

The film has a very well known opening. It starts with the sound of a telephone ringing and it rings a few hundred times as the action goes to montage scenes from the story including telephones being answered, which is strange to watch; it also had the thing of making us think it had stopped and then another ring. 

The film is set in 1920, 1932 1933 and 1968; and the montage flips from 1933 to 1968 then back 1920 for the start of the story.

The order my friend saw the original showing on TV went in date order and I am so glad I saw it as it was meant; someone at the television station had re-edited it.

 I like lots of films like that – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Slaughterhouse 5 – a lot of those movies, by the way, may have a character thinking back to days gone by but, if I can remember correctly, in Slaughterhouse 5 – the lead character, Billy Pilgrim, thinks forward.

Once Upon a Time . . .

 

Do you know I don't really have a favourite – a favourite anything. When I go to the supermarkets the machine will ask me if I would like to browse my favourites; I find that very strange to have a favourite anything that you can buy in a supermarket. Bit like window shopping at Tesco's or Ralphs and ogling the goodies that I used to look at in toys or bicycle shops when I was a child.

I spent the weekend looking at one of my favourite movies: Once Upon a Time in America. All three hours and forty minutes of it. But can I really say it's my favourite film? what about The Godfather or Annie Hall?

I read the other day that they actually cut two hours from it.

It was made in 1984 and is a masterpiece; terrific performances by Robert de Niro and James Woods – now how can I like James Woods when he is so right wing, or appears to be? Well it's his acting I like. It is a big performance but natural and that is the be all and end all for me. It's so well crafted and it slips into two or three time zones effortlessly. When I say natural I mean I believe it.

I think back to 1984 and figure what I was doing. I was doing a movie called Lifeforce which really wasn't well received here. It wasn't received well in America but when I moved there in 1994 a film editor, in the building where we lived, recognised me from it. When we were coming up in the elevator one of the days he welcomed his guest and introduced me and said 'guess what movie he is in?' and the guy said Lifeforce.

I went to a horror book shop in the valley one day, with a pal, and the guy in the shop wanted me to sign his DVD and VHS copies of the movie and when I met a movie director, casually, at a movie screening he told me he had met me before in the Horror Shop; maybe I should have asked him for a job?

The kicker was a few years ago, when I was doing my play at Jermyn Street Theatre, a group of guys waited for me one of the nights when I was going home. They were Lifeforce fans and had photos of me which I had never seen which I had to sign. I know about Star Wars and Star Trek conventions but Lifeforce?

When working on that film, and there were one or two actors who looked down their noses at the movie, two actors were brought in for one of the scenes. Two actor laddie types with perfect diction and big movements. The director thought they were wonderful when they came in but after a few takes he thanked them very much and off they went – they didn't use the scene.

I did learn a lot about natural acting when living in LA. They loved the perfect diction – which I never have had, in any case – but when it came to the work it was never needed. If the film is American and set in America why should they worry about some cinema in London, e.g.

The reason I put the movie on was to listen to the music of Ennio Morricone at the beginning when the character De Niro plays goes in to Grand Central Station in New York to open a case from a safe deposit box. When he finds it empty he buys a ticket to Buffalo and as the wonderful Morricone music swells the music changes to 'Yesterday' by Paul McCartney and we have gone forward 35 years.

I omitted saying it is at least fifteen minutes into the film and I was hooked. By the way, have you ever noticed that at twenty minutes in most films there is something called a Life Changing Event – and that would be the moment; end of the first act.

Not in my new film, of course, as that will only be 25 minutes long.

I have seen Once Upon a Time in America many times and I hope to see it again as it is like a great painting.

As we were watching it I said to my wife 'Wife' I said – only kidding. I pointed out that a section of the music was like some of The Pogues Christmas song Fairytale of New York which has to be one of my all time favourite Christmas songs. The bit that goes: la la la laa la (so happy Christmas) and when I was researching the movie today look what I found:

When Shane MacGowan of The Pogues was writing "Fairytale of New York", he had never actually visited the city, so he watched this movie countless times to get a feel for the New York City atmosphere. (The first bar of the Pogues song bears a strong resemblance to "Deborah's Theme.")

Tilly Fairfax.

 

Hi folks,

Yes it is a new blog: I've been following this one which came to be on Facebook – yes I still have FB, as some people call it but it is as far as I go. As with smart phones I think they're for the birds too.

I think about you all, especially those sitting at home by yourselves who would like to be with others and want to share, maybe even want to see good movies or TV shows.

I just watched a good movie Uncle Frank. It stars Paul Bettany and I watched on Amazon Prime – yes, get me I have a movie channel.

But you don't need a movie channel to read this blog. It's about a young lady who is in the body of an older lady – not that old, by the way - who is going through the change which is a little more than a menopause. 

It's a change: children getting older, getting independent in some departments but not others, adventures around the corner – give it a go. Also very well written, by the way

https://therealtillyfairfax.wixsite.com/website/post/taken-for-granted

this will also be on my blog so I will send that link too.

Botham

 

I read an interview the other day with Ian Botham. He was a great hero when he played cricket for England and a sight not to behold these days when he took his seat in The House of Lords. The interview was published as a Q&A and when it came to the inevitable question of Brexit his quick answer was 'Forget it mate, we won.'

First of all 'we' and secondly he and they, didn't win. They lost – they lost confidence in a great idea, an idea of a peaceful togetherness with the other peoples of Europe, lost faith in their trust of others and became suspicious of them claiming that a non-elected body was making the rules when we actually  voted for MEPs - but all that is water under the bridge. By the time the UK try to rejoin the EU I will be water under the bridge. So it won't affect me at all. I don't live near a lorry park in Kent and I can carry on making my little films and entering them in the festivals all over the world – including Europe. The irony is, of course, that Botham was of the opinion he was getting rid of an unelected organisation and for this he joins another – The House of Lords.

But it's amazing how boyhood heroes suddenly become arseholes. I remember Clint Eastwood at one of the 'nasty party' conventions bringing a chair on to the stage and started talking to it, rather like someone at a drama school audition.

'My Lord I have letters here from France' – of course if that joke ever travels from this page it won't be in America. You see in Britain French Letters is another name for condoms.

Eastwood talked to the chair pretending he was speaking to Obama telling him where he went wrong. I loved Clint's films and love him as a director. He changed attitudes in Hollywood as he would never shout 'action' as most of the time he would be doing horse operas or big movie westerns. He had worked with many a director who would use the big voiced 'Action!!!' only to see the horses bolt as soon as they heard the clapper.

I have to say most of the people, who were heroes to me as a child, and whom I have met, have never let me down. I have written on here a couple of posts about Roger Bannister and he was the nicest man you could think of. One of my favourite actors, Tony Curtis, greeted me as if I was an old friend, as if we had a history and it was the same when I met Rod Stewart. He said, Chris, you were always my hero and you haven't let me down – of course I'm kidding there, but we had a couple of drinks together then parted company with a 'be lucky' farewell from both of us which made me laugh at least.

By the way I found out that one of Marlon Brando's favourite actors was Tony Curtis. I remember telling a New York antique dealer, when we were talking late at night over glasses on wine, and how do you learn the lines and who is your favourite actor and I mentioned Tony Curtis.

'Oh you mean, my mudder and my farder, Tony Curtis?' sometimes, some people think they know all about acting and who it is fashionable to like and that is all they know.

I think the reason why Brando liked him was because he could smile – so you smile now and look in the mirror. 

Does it still look like a smile? Well fake it.

Be Lucky.

Whatever happened to great movies?

 There I am in an episode of The Angels in BBC – or was it called just Angels. Now why is that up there? Well why not.

In London, you have to be six feet high to be a cop – in Los Angeles it's probably four feet six. I say that because most of the cops there seem to be shorter than I am but there we are.

Above, I am playing a cop who is supposed to be a certain height but it doesn't matter as it is only TV – or movies. Paul Newman was shorter than me but look how many cops he played – and I don't mean at table tennis.

I wrote this a few years ago but someone wrote to me recently and said they liked it – so here it is again and just as relevant:

I remember in 1978, I was in Scotland filming a Shakespeare for the BBC; we were in Glamis Castle which is mentioned in the play Macbeth, and, to use a phrase, I was the only person in the cast that I'd never heard of.

The cast was peppered with famous actors from the RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company), who were mostly very nice to me apart from one or two who thought they were God's gift to the theatre and to acting – in fact if you look up the play on YouTube - As You Like It (1978) Helen Mirren - you should see me sword fighting in the first few shots which is followed by a piece of very bad acting and sweating.

By the way 'As You Like It' is known to some people in the profession, namely casting directors, as 'as you' – it saves them saying the 'like it' part!! I kid you not!!

One of the members in the cast was David Prowse who had, just before that, played Darth Vader in the movie Star Wars; this didn't mean much to us as most of us hadn't seen the film but one day, a load of kids found out we were filming and came up for autographs.

The RSC actors sharpened their pencils, so to speak, but the kids wanted David. They knew what he looked like beneath the mask as he was well known in Britain as the Green Cross Code man which he had played in a series of road safety films on TV; he was surrounded and the rest of us kicked our heels.

We got on quite well – me and David, well Dave, you know how it is - in fact I gave him a lift in my car one day and, whilst I can't remember where we went to or came from, I recall the car leaning over sideways when he got in, as he was, and is, a huge man.

What we were witnessing, and we didn't realise it at the time, was a new world order in movie making, pop music and general technology.

If you get the chance to look at the original Star Wars you will see that a lot of the technology in that movie was old hat by the time the second movie came out and because of the technology Star Wars and the like were discovering and using, the great movies of the early seventies – The Godfather (I & II), Taxi Driver and dozens of others - were on the way out only to be replaced by children's films.

Now you might not think they are children's films but what else would you call super hero movies? Films adapted from comic strips? Graphic novels?

There are those that have asked what happened to the movie business, what happened to the business after those great movies of the 70s – there's only Woody Allen still going in the same way, I mean look at these films:

  1. The Godfather - (1972, Francis Ford Coppola) (Marlon Brando, Al Pacino)
  2. The Godfather part II - (1974, Francis Ford Coppola) (Al Pacino, Robert De Niro)
  3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - (1975, Milos Forman) (Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher)
  4. Apocalypse Now - (1979, Francis Ford Coppola) (Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall)
  5. Chinatown - (1974, Roman Polanski) (Jack Nicholson, John Huston)
  6. A Clockwork Orange - (1971, Stanley Kubrick) (Malcolm McDowell, Patrick McGee)
  7. Star Wars - (1977, George Lucas) (Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford)
  8. Jaws - (1975, Steven Spielberg) (Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss)
  9. Taxi Driver - (1976, Martin Scorsese) (Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster)
10. The Deer Hunter - (1978, Michael Cimino) (Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken)
11. Annie Hall - (1977, Woody Allen) (Woody Allen, Diane Keaton)
12. Network - (1976, Sydney Lumet) (Peter Finch, William Holden)
13. Rocky - (1976, John G. Avildsen) (Sylvester Stallone, Carl Weathers)
14. Patton - (1970, Franklin J. Schaffner) (George C. Scott, Karl Malden)
15. Close Encounters of the Third Kind - (1977, Steven Spielberg) (Richard Dreyfuss, Teri Garr)
16. M*A*S*H - (1970, Robert Altman) (Elliot Gould, Donald Sutherland)
17. The Exorcist - (1973, William Friedkin) (Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair)
18. American Graffiti - (1973, George Lucas) (Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss)
19. The French Connection - (1971, William Friedkin) (Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider)
20. Mean Streets - (1973, Martin Scorsese) (Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro).

There will be some people – and I have no idea who they might be – who will not like any of the above  but I'll bet your favourite is amongst them – I think I love them all apart from you know what.

But the 70s wasn't the only decade of great movies; look at the 60s:

 1. Lawrence of Arabia - (1962, David Lean) (Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness)
  2. Psycho - (1960, Alfred Hitchcock) (Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh)
  3. Dr. Strangelove... - (1964, Stanley Kubrick) (Peter Sellers, George C. Scott)
  4. 8 1/2 - (1963, Federico Fellini) (Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale)
  5. 2001: A Space Odyssey - (1968, Stanley Kubrick) (Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood)
  6. Once Upon a Time in the West - (1968, Sergio Leone) (Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson)
  7. To Kill a Mockingbird - (1962, Robert Mulligan) (Gregory Peck, Mary Badham)
  8. Midnight Cowboy - (1969, John Schlesinger) (Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight)
  9. Bonnie and Clyde - (1967, Arthur Penn) (Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway)
10. La Dolce Vita - (1960, Federico Fellini) (Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee).

Only ten there but that's because I didn't want to fill the page with charts – I love all those movies and nearly in that order so what happened?

I have nothing against Star Wars but it's a kids' film – the same as Dr Who; it's for children; I have yet to see an episode but again, I have nothing against it.

But look at them – look at those movies; the film business will never be the same again it out technologised itself (I know – no such word).

I know they tried to make Batman weird or more grown up but watching it you have to buy in to the fact that the hero walks around in a bat suit – come on!!!!!

I know it's technology gone mad but when other innovations were invented they died down a bit after they'd got use to it.

When talkies started every movie seemed to be a musical; coloured movies gave a kaleidoscope of colour as happened on TV later and the zoom lens left a lot to be desired in some of those great 70s films above but they got used to it and this time it doesn't appear to be ironing itself out.

Will we ever see the likes of Lawrence of Arabia again? I doubt it.

One of the biggest flops in 2013 was The Lone Ranger starring Johnny Depp; it was a huge budget but back in the 40s and 50s directors like Raoul Walsh used to knock out cowboy movies like that in a matter of weeks.

The Lone Ranger series on TV was made for the price of the parking fees on the new one so what is going wrong? Why would The Lone Ranger cost so much money – maybe because they like to use a Lone Arranger these days?

The same happened to pop music with the invention of the boring over technologised stadium super groups . . . but that's another story!

height!

This is a funny old post, I'm warning you. I am probably thinking out loud, and writing as I speak – to paraphrase John Lennon.

I was speaking to someone yesterday about dying hair red – my daughter, in fact, and I mentioned that I played Richard I in a play some years ago and the director wanted me to dye my hair red. 

When I went to the hairdresser – my hair was black – they said said it would be too difficult and it would ruin my hair. I don't know how you can ruin someone's hair but they said they would have to bleach my hair before applying the dye. 

So I had to wear a bloody tight fitting red wig for the four or five weeks. They wanted me to grow a beard too and so I had to apply make up every night – all that to get me to Richard I.

Richard I was five feet eight inches – which was tall for those days (doze daze) and it got me thinking because that is roughly my size. Very slightly bigger – or higher – than my dad and my son and my brothers (bruds). 

If that was tall for then what will the average height be in another eight hundred years? We can see the consequences of the increase in height every time we go into an old building when people even as tiny as me hit their heads on the ceilings and doorways. I mean can you imagine someone hitting their head on a seven foot ceiling? Someone at the average height?

But I have seen people very tall at the gym in the shower. I don't take long looks at them – by the way I don't go any more – but I know that their genitals are not necessarily bigger than anybody else's and can presume it's the same with really great big tall women – when I say presume there, am I telling more about myself than I want to?

Now here is the question – if we, homo-sapiens, are getting bigger and babies are getting bigger with their bigger heads and the average size of genitals are not growing in proportion with height are we in danger of seeing the end of natural births? The end of natural births will mean less births, I should think, with more caesarians and more birth deaths of mothers.

Makes you think, doesn't it. Or maybe it doesn't.

It's a strange thing height. I would never, and I have never, wanted to be any other height. I mean can you imagine meeting, shall we say, George Clooney and finding him over six feet? He must be about five ten, or so, but if he was four feet ten or I was suddenly over six feet it wouldn't suit it's like . . . . .

. . . . well what is it like?

There is fella on TV here in a show called Pointless, which is the British equivalent to Jeopardy but not as good – I like it but not as much as the former which I used to record if I was out – the fella is near seven feet on Pointless. Like the late lamented Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan; they are not welcome in theatre, cinemas or concerts. I have been sitting in a theatre, as it is filling up, seeing my wonderful view change into the view from hell when Gulliver takes his seat. He can't help it and neither can his Amazonian wife. 

In every day life it doesn't matter as we get used to it, I have had and still have very tall friends but when I talk to someone, some kid, who doesn't seem to be growing fast enough and who is, obviously, going to be short and they are depressed about it I say there are certain things that tall people can't do like get under the door when you've locked yourself in the lavatory, maybe get into a racing car, unless it's made for you, a space ship, be a jockey or even make a comfortable parachute jump.

'But, I don't want to be a jockey, I want to play basket ball.'

Well there's no answer to that!