Tag: movies

MEDITATION 111

I am sitting here by my candle as always and gathering my thoughts. Or rather my memories. Memories of Hollywood. I never worked there of course. I do not think I would have been a good film director except maybe as a ‘dialogue coach’ on individual scenes.  However, I imagine I might have been a good character actor in the Golden Age of Hollywood, as it is termed, when the big studios reigned. I could see myself working in a major studio in a variety of roles in a plethora of movies. As a youth, I would have liked to pursue a career as a character actor. I had no ambitions to be a leading man. 

I could see myself as a screenwriter too, knocking out scenes for whatever assignment a studio handed me. Writing for school was like that, when I was a Drama teacher. I would knock out a scene or two quickly ready for the next rehearsal. I have been writing a script for school again recently or rather re-writing it (in a more gentle manner than mentioned in the last sentence!). It is my play ‘Will and Juliet’ (first performed in 2017). It is about the boy apprentices who were in Shakespeare’s acting company. It is also an attempt to answer the question ‘Who was the first boy to play Juliet in ‘Romeo and Juliet?’  I have re-written the script for younger students and I am directing the play myself. Rehearsals have just begun and it is interesting working with students whom I do not know at all. 

Those memories of Hollywood that are flickering in my thoughts like an old movie are of the three times I visited there, while staying in LA. They have resurfaced because of an exhibition on the film star Marilyn Monroe which is currently showing in London. The visit was a birthday present for a friend. It was quite an unusual experience as the tickets included both the entry to the exhibition and a cabaret with actor Suzy Kennedy playing Marilyn and it took place on a Saturday evening. 

Miss Kennedy gave a vibrant impersonation, not only singing the songs from Marilyn’s films but also injecting anecdotes and biographical details about the star into her patter. It was a hugely entertaining 90 minute cabaret (I imagined it would be much shorter) and very upbeat (as all Marilyn’s songs were). 

There was no mention of Marilyn’s tragic death from a presumed overdose at the age of 36 in 1962. But why should there be? It would cast a pall over the lively show. Besides, Marilyn lives on in her movies. And she is still drawing the crowds, I thought to myself, as I scanned the enthusiastic audience (of around 200 people) around me. She has not been on the screen for over 60 years and it will be her centenary next year. Yet her image is still everywhere, fixed in time as, because of her untimely death, she has never grown old.

 She has become iconic. This is thanks partly to Andy Warhol’s famous picture of her. Images of her images are still as ubiquitous as when she was in her heyday as a star.

As might be expected, displayed in the exhibition were photos, film clips, newsreel extracts, magazine and news articles, original posters and costumes from her films. But of the 250 items on display there were also many of her personal effects, some of which were rather poignant. For example, some of her books (she was an avid reader), school books and sketch books as she loved drawing when she was a teenager, especially making sketches of the latest fashions. There were personal clothes and shoes. Some were from when she was a child and teenager too, which were also quite poignant and of course many items from her adult wardrobe. Her short life was displayed through the clothes she wore. There were numerous letters, postcards, film scripts and even some of her household bills, not to mention a bottle of unopened expensive champagne!

The exhibition comprised the personal collection of Ted Stamfer, and came from Marilyn Monroe’s private estate. When she died in 1962, her private effects were bequeathed to Lee Strasberg her acting coach and mentor, which he passed on to his daughter Paula. They languished in storage until they were finally auctioned in the late 90’s. Some of the auction catalogues were also on display. I remember seeing some of her personal effects in the Hollywood Museum in LA , including her fridge and a sofa and some of her famous sweaters, which made me realise that she wasn’t as tall as she appeared on film. In fact she was 5’4”. I think the museum collection may have been donated by other private collectors. 

I have had an interest in old movies from quite an early age and have developed a keen interest in film history as a result. So exhibitions of film memorabilia have always attracted me. I’ve always been fascinated by costumes, props, furniture, scripts and film equipment that have survived down the years. So I was impressed by the exhibits on show at the Marilyn exhibition. 

However, as I wandered around the exhibits I began asking myself why I was as fascinated by her private personal effects as everyone else there.  They are a kind of biography of their own I suppose, coupled with explanatory panels beside the display cases. They are a sort of social history too. But most of all a glimpse, a tantalising glimpse, into what Marilyn may have been like as a person off screen. What it might have been like to be a guest at a dinner party at her modest Hollywood home for example. In some strange way the exhibits created an opportunity to get a little up close and personal to Marilyn.  Something which the numerous biographies, documentaries and movies about her cannot provide.

I must admit that I would have liked to have met Marilyn. I think she would have been good company at dinner or fun at a party. I said so to my friend after we left the exhibition. I have a feeling she was far more intelligent than those around her understood. It was just that she had little formal education.  I think she may have been eager to discuss those books she read but few people wanted to listen to her. And she was talented: as an actress (especially in comedy) and singer and dancer. Perhaps her greatest tragedy was that she had so little confidence in her own talents. 

 Before we sat down for the cabaret my friend and I had time to look around the exhibits a little. We looked mainly at the room which was adjacent to the cabaret space. This was the room that focused on her home and displayed photos of her modest bungalow and all sorts of household things, even examples of kitchen ware and that unopened bottle of champagne I mentioned earlier. 

It was also the final room in the exhibition and included photos, newsreel extracts and newspaper coverage of Marilyn’s untimely death and of her funeral. On the three occasions I have visited Hollywood, there has always been a moment when I have experienced a sadness like a chill breeze. And just for a moment what came to my mind each time was all the unhappiness in that town, past and present. Going through that one exhibition room, that sadness, that chill breeze returned. Just for a moment. But it was there. 

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Golden Age of Hollywood

Los Angeles

Marilyn Monroe London Exhibition

Film history

Lee Strasberg 

Ted Stamfer

Suzy Kennedy

Hollywood Museum, L.A.

Meditation 95

As I sit here beside my candle I have found that my thoughts have slipped back into Drama teacher mode. Please understand I have not been walking around my lounge as if I was back in my Drama studio at school, teaching an imaginary lesson to imaginary students. I am not living in the past, just yet! Although in an imaginary lesson the students are at least attentive, being invisible! However, in my teaching days, I would sometimes practice a lesson at home, especially if the text or topic was new.
My thinking this evening has gone into Drama mode because I have been considering different styles of acting, having recently returned to acting myself. An ex student who is now a film director asked me if I would like to take on a role in one of his projects. The film was going to be shot on location in South London, not in a major film studio like Shepperton down the road, sadly! He asked if I would play a nasty, racist pensioner. Not a very glamorous role for my professional film debut either! It was a professional engagement, as I was being paid a fee. It was also an important project: a short training film, sponsored by Southwark Council, about how to deal with racism.
A good friend of mine helped me develop a South London accent which is different from the quasi -Eastenders one I had been adopting when rehearsing at home. So I did engage in some research! Apparently, South Londoners have a tendency to play down ends of words (unless they are angry). This is the exact opposite of my vocal training, of course, which I passed onto my students. I was always telling them to make ends of words clear. This is very important on stage so as to be heard by the audience. So a slight mental adjustment on my part was needed. It was all about getting into role, after all.
So, there I was, a week later, standing on a landing in a block of council flats in Peckham, surrounded by the film crew, while verbally abusing a ‘Nigerian cleaner’ on the landing below. The cleaner, played by an actor called Glen, had no lines in the scene in response to my abuse. The crew had filmed him cleaning the floor first and were now filming his facial reactions while I repeated my abusive line off camera so that he could react to it. I also had to pretend to spit on the floor, shouting to him to clean it up. Yes: I was not a very nice character!
Then it was time for the crew to film me. My character was leaving his flat to go shopping so I had a couple of empty carrier bags under my arm. I had to pretend to close the door of the flat to my left, see the cleaner on the landing underneath, deliver my abusive lines, spit on the floor and then walk to the lift to the right and press the button to go down.

We rehearsed it a few times and then we were ready for a ‘take’. Alex shouted ‘Action’. I moved my hand on the door handle of of the flat as if I had just locked it. I was about to turn and see Glen below me, when the door of the flat suddenly flew open and a lady in a pink dressing gown stood in the doorway.
‘Here – what’s going on?’, she said to me (or words to that effect), ruining the scene. She thought I was a burglar trying the door. I can’t understand why she hadn’t heard Alex shouting instructions earlier, or me shouting my abusive line down the stairwell for that matter. Alex had to explain that we were filming. She then became demure, apologised and retreated back into her flat. Apparently, no-one from Southwark Council had informed the residents that filming was taking place!
Despite this unexpected interruption we were finished in an hour. I found it was quite a relaxing experience even though I had to focus and stay in the zone repeating my performance for the crew. I did not have to continually project my voice as on stage. Also, it was a very short scene, of course, and a long way from playing a major role such as Prospero from Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ which I played several years ago.
I was experiencing what I used to tell my students in my classes: that film acting is more low key than stage acting and can therefore take less effort. I remember several actors talking about this in TV interviews.
However, film acting does demand acute concentration as I have just mentioned. You may have to wait around for a length of time too and yet be ready to go into your scene, to ‘be on’ as they say. The phrase comes from the Theatre and being ‘on’ stage, adapted to being ‘on’ camera. I had no waiting around at all.
Also, while you are performing, the crew is all around you and you have to forget they are there. It was quite cramped on the landing where we were filming. As well as Alex, the director, there were the cameraman, the sound man with a microphone, the lighting man and two ladies from Southwark Council in close proximity. It made me realise how more difficult it must be for an actor working on a major film in a large studio (or on location, even, as I was) with an army of technicians around them, and yet be in role, focused, ‘on’. I thought this while I was standing there waiting for the crew to change positions from filming Glen to filming myself.
I was reminded of this again a few weeks later when I attended a special screening of the new film ‘Maestro’ which is about the American classical conductor, composer, pianist and educator, Leonard Bernstein, who died in 1991. He is perhaps best remembered for composing the score for the musical ‘West Side Story’.
The screening took place in the IMAX cinema near Waterloo station in London and it was a special event because it was being introduced by the film’s stars Bradley Cooper

(who plays Bernstein and also directs the film) and Carey Mulligan (who plays his wife, Felicia). The film charts their marriage through the years with the conductor/composer’s phenomenal, high octane career as a backdrop. It is a remarkable film and both actors are remarkable in it, especially Bradley Cooper who not only gives a highly detailed performance as Bernstein (he is Lennie to the life!) but also directs the film. Mr Cooper had obviously done his research: but then there is so much archive footage of Leonard Bernstein as he was a media personality for most of his career, giving interviews, making his own TV programmes and documentaries, and there is endless footage of him in rehearsal and in concert too. Both actors also consulted Bernstein’s three children, to whom the film in dedicated.
There was nothing of the ‘star’ about Mr Cooper and Miss Mulligan, when they were interviewed before the screening. They were both very natural and down to earth, indeed, Mr Copper came across as being quite humble. It was such a contrast seeing them in person immediately before seeing the film, where they were towering over us on the huge IMAX screen. I remember Mr Cooper commenting on this himself, wondering what this intimate portrait of a marriage would look like on a larger than normal screen. His worries were unfounded: the intimacy seemed even more evident as if we were in the room with them. And the music on the IMAX sound system was something else! Watching the film reminded me of the big close-ups so prevalent in movies of the golden age of Hollywood, which we see so little of now in movies.
I do recommend the film: it is screened on the smaller screen on Netflix soon.
Well now that I have made my professional film debut I wonder where it will lead me? Will I end up emblazoned on a big IMAX screen? I doubt it. ‘Eastenders’? No thank you. However I would like to do some more filming in a modest way. It was a very relaxing and enjoyable experience and it enervated me, because I was acting again.
Yes it would be lovely to act again. Too late for panto now! And it’s too late to get a job playing Santa in his grotto too! Let’s see what the New Year brings.
Meanwhile, dear reader, wishing you a very Happy Christmas and here’s to peace on earth in the New Year. We need peace.
Ave atque Vale Neilus Aurelius
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