Tag Archives: film

Beginnings and Ends

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I’ve been off work for quite a while with my sore arm and neck and even though I don’t feel quite right I’ve started to think that perhaps I won’t ever be fully ‘normal’ again. I said as much to my physio and he didn’t agree. Keep doing the exercises he reckons and one day I’ll be back to my usual fitness. OK, that’s pretty positive so I’ll just keep calm and carry on, what else can anyone do? Well, I can go back to work for a start, which is what I did this week. It was a little odd at first but by the second day, it felt as if I’d never been away.

As my time off has come to an end you might think that as an enthusiastic writer, I might have completed a draft of a new book or screenplay. Well actually no, I didn’t. It was the same old story and once again I succumbed to laziness or procrastination or being me, probably both.

I read a blog post on Medium the other day in which the writer rejected all those terms which writers like me cling to and put forward another one. Unwillingness. That’s right. It’s not laziness that stops us writing but an unwillingness to write. In order to write said the author, we must be willing to write, we must sort out a writing space, sort out a writing time and just write. It was actually a pretty motivating piece, so much so that I pulled out my finger and wrote a few new pages of my next novel.

I’ve applied for a few jobs while I’ve been off. One job looked ideal for me, it was only a customer services role but according to the job advert it was weekend work, just what I wanted. I applied and was invited for an interview but it was an online interview. I read all the information they had sent and it looked like the interview involved answering various questions then doing something with a webcam. I guessed that they wanted to see me in a sort of simulated question/answer situation with the public so as they advised, I put on a smart shirt and clicked the link to start.

The first question was the usual one; Did I have to right to work in the UK? Yes. Was I willing to work shifts? Yes. Did I want the full time role or the part time? Part time. Was I ok selling media packages to the public? Wait a minute, selling? I thought it was a customer services role, what has selling got to do with it? Wait a minute I thought, maybe this was just a general question and there were other roles available as well as the customer service ones? There must be sales roles too. Anyway, that’s where I made a big mistake and pressed no.

The system thought for a moment and then a message came on the screen. The interview is over, thanks for your interest in Virgin media. Whoa, wait a minute, where’s the rest? Where’s the webcam bit where I simulate talking to the public. Alas, that was not to be, I’d blown it and that was the end of that.

Books

Here are two of my favourite beginnings and ends from books. My favourite book of all time has to be David Copperfield from that late, great master of the written word Charles Dickens.

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

Some of Dickens’ other books I’ve found hard to read. I’ve never finished The Pickwick Papers and Bleak House is another book I started then found reading enjoyment elsewhere but Copperfield draws me back time and time again and it’s a book I probably re read every few years. Dickens died in 1870 but his stories will live on for as long as books are read.

Here’s another quote, this one is from the end of a book.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter, tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther and one fine morning . . So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

If you haven’t guessed already, that’s a quote from another of my favourite books of all time, The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald. Like Dickens, I’ve tried to read other books by Fitzgerald but not really found them to my taste. Gatsby though is a wonderful book, opening up a window back into the jazz age of America and with a story told through some outstanding descriptive passages just like that last paragraph above.

Films

I wrote a post a long time ago about the texts my brother and I send each other. They are just quotes from films, usually pretty obscure ones and because he and I generally watch the same kind of films we usually know which film the quote is from. Here’s one he sent me a while ago. I knew straight away which film he was watching, what about you?

Take ‘em to Missouri Matt!

Did you get the film? Well, perhaps you are not a fan of classic westerns then. Red River is a 1948 film directed by Howard Hawks and starring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift. It’s about a cattle drive from Texas to Kansas along the Chisholm Trail and John Wayne says the line to Montgomery Clift when they begin their epic drive. The men encounter many difficulties along the way including a big fall out between Wayne’s character and his adoptive son, played by Clift. It’s one of the great westerns of all time and even if you haven’t seen it you might have seen a clip of it in the film The Last Picture Show. At the end of the film when the only cinema in a small American town is closing, the last picture show is Red River.

Robert Zemeckis is one of my favourite directors. He directed Back to the Future, Castaway and Forrest Gump among others. Forrest Gump isn’t a great favourite of mine but I love the way the film opens and closes. A feather is floating high up on the wind and the camera follows it as it falls down towards the ground. Forrest Gump played by Tom Hanks is revealed sitting on a wooden bench and he picks up the feather and places it in his book as a bookmark. Zemeckis’ films are full of little touches like that and of course the film ends in a similar way, Gump opens his notebook and the feather blows away.

I’m going to end with a clip I used in another post a few weeks ago. It’s the last scene in Castaway again with Tom Hanks. Hanks’ character has been rescued from a desert island after four years. The love of his life has married someone else and now he has arrived back to civilisation he doesn’t know what to do, after all, his home is gone and all his possessions presumably either sold or given away. He decides to deliver in person a package which washed up on the desert island with him. The person isn’t home so he leaves it with a note. Then he stops and wonders what to do next.

Come to think of it, I’m wondering what to do next myself.

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More ‘Didn’t Quite Make it’ Cinema Stories

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I did a post a while ago about actors who came close to the role of a lifetime but didn’t quite make it to the screen. Here are a few more and a film itself that also didn’t quite make it to the screen.

Lawrence of Arabia

Director David Lean made many classic films and Steven Spielberg famously said that it was Lean who caused him to become a film director. Lean’s most famous film was the story of TE Lawrence aka Lawrence of Arabia. That name, Lawrence of Arabia, was coined by Lowell Thomas, an American journalist who wrote about Lawrence’s role in the desert revolt in Arabia during the First World War.

Lean was fascinated by the subject and various scripts were produced, the final one by Robert Bolt, but who would play the enigmatic Lawrence? Lean chose a young actor called Albert Finney. Finney was not widely known at the time. He had starred in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and apparently two days of filming in the role of Lawrence were done before he was either sacked or departed. Other sources say that he filmed an extensive four-day screen test but would not sign a long-term contract with producer Sam Spiegel and so left the production. Not so long ago I watched an interview with Finney on BBC’s Talking Pictures series in which he said pretty much the same, that Spiegel wanted him to sign a seven year contract and he didn’t want to be tied to a producer in such a way.

According to Wikipedia, Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift were considered for the part before Peter O’Toole was cast.

The film was a huge success and has since been acclaimed as one of the greatest films of all time. It won seven academy awards. Missing out on the role didn’t affect the career of Albert Finney. When he died in 2019 he left behind an impressive collection of film, TV and theatre performances. His last screen appearance was in the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall.

The Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz.

Buddy Ebson is a name you might remember from the TV comedy The Beverly Hillbillies. Buddy played the part of Jed Clampett, the head of a country family which discovered oil on their property, became rich and moved to Beverly Hills. Ebson started out as a dancer and appeared in many Broadway musicals. In 1935 he signed a two year contract with MGM after a successful screen test and made his film debut in Broadway Melody of 1936. In 1939 he won the part of the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz but swapped parts with Ray Bolger who wanted to play the Scarecrow rather than the Tin man. Ebson recorded all his songs and worked through the rehearsals but during filming became very ill. It was found he was having an allergic reaction to the make up used for the Tin Man and Buddy was unable to continue. Jack Haley took over the role and the make up was changed to something safer. According to Wikipedia, they didn’t bother to tell Buddy that the make up had caused his problem until much later.

Buddy Ebson went on to appear in the Beverly Hillbillies and Barnaby Jones and numerous other productions. He made a cameo appearance in the film version of the Beverly Hillbillies in 1993. He died in 2003 aged 95.

Clemenza from The Godfather.

Sometimes an actor plays a great part in a film and then when the time comes for a sequel, he tries to use a little leverage to get a better deal. In the Godfather, Richard S Castellano plays the part of Clemenza, one of Don Corleone’s Caporegimes. A Caporegime is a sort of captain in the mafia who heads a team of ‘soldiers’. He plays a pivotal part in the original film and it is clear by the film’s end he is one of new Godfather Michael’s most trusted lieutenants.

When it came to Godfather II, Castellano wanted more money as well as wanting to write his own dialogue. According to a post I found on whatculture.com Castellano was the highest paid actor on The Godfather. Brando was considered pretty much washed up before the Godfather and had to do a screen test to get the part. Al Pacino was a complete unknown and James Caan and Robert Duvall were not well known at the time whereas Castellano came straight to the project from an Academy Award nomination. For Godfather II, having an actor write his own dialogue was a complete no-no for director Francis Ford Coppola so the character was written out and a new character, Frank Pentangeli was brought in to take Clemenza’s place.

Richard S Castellano died in 1988 aged only 55.

All The Money in The World

Here is one final story concerning an actor. It is slightly different to the ones above as the actor concerned was hired for the role, he played the part, the film was completed and ready for its première and then they cut the actor out. They then recast the role and added the new actor. The actor concerned was Kevin Spacey and he appeared as J. Paul Getty in the 2017 film All the Money in the World. The film was directed by Ridley Scott and is about the kidnapping of Getty’s grandson and Getty’s refusal to pay the ransom.

After completion of the film various allegations of sexual misconduct appeared against Spacey, notably one by an actor called Anthony Rapp, who claimed Spacey had made sexual advances towards him when he was only 14. Spacey responding by apologising and saying if he had acted in that way his behaviour would have been deeply inappropriate. However more complaints against Spacey came forward and TV producers of the series House of Cards dropped Spacey from the show. It seems that the producers of All the Money in the World must have been getting nervous about their production and the possibility of Kevin Spacey spoiling their box office takings so director Ridley Scott engaged Christopher Plummer to play the part. A partial reshoot of Spacey’s scenes were done with Plummer, the film was re-edited and Spacey was out and Plummer was in.

Kevin Spacey has not worked since but I did notice an article in the news that he had been signed to play a detective in a film directed by Franco Nero.

David Lean and Nostromo

David Lean had been inactive as a director since the poor reception of his film Ryan’s Daughter. He was apparently so upset over the critics dislike of the film that he had not made another film until his adaptation of E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India in 1984. That and the restoration of his classic Lawrence of Arabia, in which around 35 minutes of cuts had been edited back into the film had put him back on top of the film business.

He started pre-production on various projects in his final years. One was a version of Mutiny on the Bounty. Lean dropped out after his preferred screen writer Robert Bolt suffered from a stroke. Star Mel Gibson brought in Roger Donaldson as director and the film was finally released as the Bounty.

Lean also began work on Empire of the Sun which Steven Spielberg took over when Lean again dropped out.

David put together a stellar cast for Nostromo including Marlon Brando, Paul Schofield and Peter O’Toole. Spielberg wanted to work with his directorial hero and signed on as producer but Lean wasn’t amused when Spielberg criticised the screenplay.

Lean once again turned to Robert Bolt who had recovered somewhat from his stroke and rewrote the screenplay. Not long ago I finished Sarah Miles’ autobiography. Sarah was Bolt’s wife and she tells how Bolt and Lean began to work together again and the many meetings they had in Lean’s impressive London home. Lean had bought two warehouses in a street near to the Tower of London. He knocked one down to create a lovely garden and the other he and his wife transformed into a wonderful riverside home. There, the two worked on Nostromo. The novel was written in 1904 and is set in South America. A man called Nostromo helps hide the silver from a mine which is then used to prop up the government which the mine owner, Charles Gould, believes will bring stability to the region.

I’m not quite sure what attracted Lean to the project but he was extremely keen on the story and worked hard to complete the film. Numerous storyboards were made for the project which Lean wanted to shoot on 65mm film. The budget grew to $46 million.

David Lean sadly contracted throat cancer and became very ill just before the cameras were ready to turn. In her book Sarah tells of a phone call from set designer John Box talking about the sets that had been built at Pinewood Studios, ‘Those sets’ he said to Sarah, ‘my best work ever.’

The sets were never used. Lean passed away on 16th April 1991. He was 83 and without him, Nostromo collapsed.

There is an interesting documentary film to be found about the production of Nostromo, here is a clip I found on YouTube:

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Prisons and Prisoners in TV, Books and Film

Posted on by Steve Higgins

As usual on this blog I’ll be talking about books, films and TV and what started me off on this theme of prisons and prisoners was watching my box set of the 60’s TV series the Prisoner. Anyway, I’ll get to that shortly but first let me start with a book. It’s one I reviewed earlier in the year

Papillon by Henri Charrière

Papillon is a book by Frenchman Henri Charrière. It is an autobiographical novel about Charrière’s imprisonment in the French penal colony of French Guiana and covers a period of about fifteen years. The original novel was written on a series of exercise books and is presented in just that way. Charrière describes his experience of imprisonment as a terrible one. He escaped and was recaptured many times and ended up in solitary imprisonment twice. The first time was for two years and he was kept in solitary for 24 hours a day. In his second bout of solitary a new officer takes over the running of the area and prisoners are let out for exercise every day. At one point in his escape Charrière encounters a tribe of Indians and joins them for many months, even marrying one of the Indian girls but despite finding this apparent paradise, he leaves and is imprisoned again. He eventually escapes from Devil’s Island by jumping into the sea aboard a sack filled with coconuts. The book is an incredible read and I found it one I just couldn’t put down. It is filled with action and adventure but also with thoughtful observations about the human condition and there are many moments when simple acts of kindness stand out to the author against a background of cruelty and inhumanity.

The book was an instant hit when it was published in France in 1969 and the author, Henri Charrière, nicknamed Papillon because of a tattoo of a butterfly on his chest, became a French celebrity. He died in 1973 but always maintained the book was true and based on his own recollections despite claims to the contrary. Whatever its origins the book is a true classic adventure story.

Papillon was made into a film in 1973 and on paper this should have been a brilliant film; Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman star, there was a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo and the author acted as an advisor. Actually it’s pretty poor, I’m not sure why but McQueen was not suited for the role and the writers tried to cram in all the events of a pretty hefty book into a film when there really wasn’t room. Forget the film, read the book.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

It’s a long time since I read this book and I couldn’t seem to dig my copy out so I don’t think I can be too critical. According to Wikipedia it was first published in a Soviet magazine and was only later published in book form. It’s the story of a single day in the life of a prisoner in a Soviet labour camp seen through the eyes of a man called Ivan. It’s a pretty bleak book as I remember and unlike the book by Henri Charrière, it’s not a hopeful book and there is no feeling that Ivan will ever escape or would even try to escape. It is a book about survival rather than escape. The book was first published during the Khrushchev years when the new Premier Nikita Khrushchev attempted a degree of openness after the repressive years of Stalin’s rule. Author Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel prize for Literature in 1970.

The Prisoner TV Series.

Actor Patrick McGoohan was the man behind this exceptional TV series made at the end of the 1960’s. McGoohan had become a TV star with a series called Danger Man about a secret agent called John Drake and the actor had become fascinated with what would happen to a spy or agent when they decided to retire. Would their spymasters be happy to let someone with highly classified secret information emigrate for instance? On Danger Man, McGoohan met writer George Markstein and the two discussed McGoohan’s ideas. Markstein hinted that he might have had connections to the secret service in the past and told McGoohan about a top secret establishment called Inverlair Lodge in Inverness, Scotland where during the Second World War ‘recalcitrant agents were housed.’ McGoohan and producer David Tomblin, also from the Danger Man series, started their own production company, later called Everyman Films to produce a new TV series based on these ideas. McGoohan asked Tomblin and Markstein to write the script for the first episode into which he later incorporated some of his own ideas.

The basic idea was that a secret agent resigns and he is kidnapped and taken to an unknown place known only as the village. The agent was possibly John Drake from the Danger Man series but this could never be said publicly because of copyright reasons. In the village there are no names, only numbers. McGoohan plays Number Six and the chairman of the village is Number Two, played by a different actor every week. Will Number Six reveal why he has resigned? Who is running the village? Is it our side or the enemy?

McGoohan, then a hugely popular TV star went to Lew Grade, the head of the ITV network and told him he wasn’t keen on a new Danger Man series but had an idea called the Prisoner. Grade apparently said ‘you know it’s so crazy, it just might work’, and production went ahead.

In the first episode we see McGoohan driving into London in his Lotus 7 and slapping down his resignation letter on the desk of some unknown person. The man at the desk was in fact George Markstein who became the story editor of the series. McGoohan returns home to pack but then his house fills with gas rendering him unconscious. When he awakes, he is not at home but in the village.

Confused and disorientated he attempts to find out where he is and soon meets Number Two. Number Two explains that he wants to know why McGoohan resigned and that there is no escape from the village. The exteriors of the village were filmed in the Welsh village of Portmerion but the interiors, especially Number Two’s office, had a very futuristic, hi-tech feel.

Lew Grade had expected various seasons of The Prisoner but Patrick realised early on that the format was not something that could be sustained for multiple seasons so eventually he and Lew Grade agreed on making 17 episodes in order to realise a product that could be marketed to other countries, particularly the USA.

The 17 episodes all had either a mystery, sci-fi, espionage appeal or leaned towards McGoogan’s vision of an avant-garde allegory about the individual and freedom. In the first episode, Arrival, the prisoner who we come to know only as Number Six wakes up in the mysterious village. What is it all about? Why is here?

Number Two comes straight to the point, ‘why did you resign?’ he asks.

Number Six looks down at his file and observes the time of his birth is missing.

‘Let’s bring it up to date’ replies Number Two.

‘4:30 am, 19th March, 1928’ answers Six. ‘I’ve nothing more to say’ he adds slapping the file shut.

4:30am, 19th March 1928 just happens to be Patrick McGoohan’s date and time of birth so we can see just how personal The Prisoner was to him. The file photo of number Six used throughout the series was McGoohan’s own actual publicity picture.

The final episode where viewers expected everything to be explained and for Number Six to escape and find out who was Number One was a controversial episode and many viewers jammed the network in the UK complaining about the crazy ending in which a mock trial descends into a psychedelic montage of 1960’s music and imagery.

McGoohan defended himself by describing The Prisoner as an allegory when the viewers were still expecting something similar to The Saint or Man in a Suitcase, the action/ adventure and espionage series that were being filmed at the time. Today over 50 years later the Prisoner is a TV show with cult status.

The Truman Show

The Truman show is a film starring Jim Carrey. Carrey plays Truman who lives in a small town but does not realise that he is in fact the star of a reality TV show. Secret cameras film everything he does and all those around him, including his mother, his wife and best friend who are all actors in on the secret. The TV show is the brainchild of Christof, a producer/director played by Ed Harris. As the film unfolds we gradually realise that Truman is becoming aware of things that are not right; a spotlight that falls from the sky, people who approach him and want to talk but are hustled away by strange people, an office building where no one is working and his wife who seems to announce the benefits of various products as if she is in a TV advert.

The film is based on an episode of the Twilight Zone. A man getting ready for work finds a camera in his bathroom and realises he is being secretly filmed. It turns out that unknown to him, he is the star of a reality TV show. The producers take him aside and explain what a hit the show is and how much money he could be making. Why not carry on as if he never found out the truth they ask. Keep the show running. No one would ever know.

The man decides to just carry on with his life and allow the filming and the money to continue. In some ways I think that might even be a better storyline than the Truman show. Either way, this film is a really interesting look at the current reality TV genre and flips the whole concept on its head. Carrey is great in what is really his first dramatic role too. The most telling moment comes at the end when the whole world has been glued to the last episode. When it has finished one of the enthralled TV viewers asks ‘what’s on now?’

So, are we all prisoners then, prisoners trying to break free from either the bars of our cell or from the restrictions imposed on us by modern living, the media or society itself?

As they say in The Prisoner, ‘be seeing you!’

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TV, Westerns and The Outlaw

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Once upon a time Howard Hughes was the richest man in the world. In today’s society being the richest man requires some serious wealth and Howard Hughes ticked all the financial boxes you can think of. He inherited his father’s tool company when he was very young. Too young in fact to take control but he found a law that said if he could prove he was capable of running the company then he could take control. He proved he could and did just that, took control. His father had designed a tool bit that was essential to America’s oil industry but instead of selling the drill bit he patented it and then rented it out. Howard Hughes though had other ambitions which did not involve oil or drilling but the profits from the Hughes Tool Company were vital for his ambitions in aviation and film making.

Hughes combined those two interests in making the WW1 movie ‘Hell’s Angels’ about fighter pilots and for the shoot he assembled the largest private air force in the world. Towards the end of the shooting, sound pictures made their appearance so what did Howard do? He reshot the entire film with sound equipment!

The_Outlaw-poster-trimAnother movie Hughes made that is famous, or perhaps infamous, was the 1943 Movie ‘Outlaw’ starring Jane Russell. Hughes appeared to be obsessed with Jane’s breasts, even to the extent of designing a new bra for her and reshooting a famous close up of her time after time. Hughes clearly had some psychological issues; he was a compulsive, obsessive man. He usually had the same meal when he went out with one of the many starlets he courted. Jane Greer recounted in a TV interview how Hughes would eat things in the same order; the peas first, then the potatoes and finally the meat. Once when they dined Hughes came back to the table and Jane noticed that his shirt was wet. Hughes had spilt something onto his shirt so he had washed the shirt in the men’s room, rinsed and squeezed it out, then put it back on.

As his mental health deteriorated, Hughes retreated into a world of blacked out penthouse suites and midnight telephone calls to his army of assistants, some of whom were private investigators keeping close tabs on anyone Hughes had an interest in, particularly starlets he had signed to personal contracts and his girlfriends like Katharine Hepburn or Jean Peters whom he later married.

Anyway, this isn’t a post about Hughes, it’s about TV and looking through my old posts I noticed a couple that caught my attention. One was about Hughes and I have to confess, I pinched the text above from that post, and another was about my life as a couch potato and avid TV viewer. A few days ago, staying at my mother’s house I once again had a few couch potato days. On the first one I was tapping away on my laptop with the TV on but no sound. On Mum’s old TV you can go through the on screen menu and choose programmes you want to watch and the TV will flip to that channel at the appointed time. It was Saturday afternoon and even though that Saturday’s post had just been published, as usual I was already worrying about the next one.

As I looked up from my laptop I could see a new film had started. I switched on the volume and was surprised to find it was The Outlaw, the Hughes film I mentioned above. I had never seen the film and everything I knew about it came from either books, documentaries or films like the Aviator, the Martin Scorsese film about Hughes himself. Hughes filmed The Outlaw in 1941 but had trouble with the film censors of the time. He had to cut half a minute from the film where the camera had lingered for too long on Jane Russell’s ample bosom. 20th Century Fox however decided not to release the film thinking perhaps it was too hot to handle. Hughes decided to build his publicity on that very idea. The film was released for a quick showing and then Hughes put the film under wraps for the next few years while his publicity people whipped up controversy and hysteria, meaning that when it opened in 1946, released finally by RKO, the film was a huge hit.

Even over half a century later people like me are still liable to be caught up in the controversy because I always thought the film was about Rio, the character played by Jane Russell and was of a risqué nature, or at least as risqué as films could get in 1941. I have to admit I missed the beginning of the film the other day and the famous scene of Jane Russell in the hay must have occurred either before I looked up from my laptop or when I was in the kitchen making a brew.

Hughes seemed to be obsessed with Jane’s breasts and wasn’t happy with the way they looked on screen, so much so he designed a new cantilevered bra for her, perhaps the first push up bra ever made. Russell later claimed that the bra was a nightmare to wear so she simply used her own but padded the cups with tissue, which apparently achieved the effect that Hughes wanted.

The action, such as it was, seemed to revolve around the friendship which blossomed between Billy the Kid and Doc Holliday which seems to make Pat Garrett very jealous as he considered himself a better friend to the Doc than Billy. It was actually a quirky sort of film. Walter Huston, father of film director John, played the part of Doc Holliday and Jack Buetel, an actor I don’t think I’ve heard of before, played Billy.

Billy the Kid has been portrayed a number of times in films, as have Pat Garrett and Doc Holliday. Paul Newman played Billy in The Left Handed Gun, a part originally earmarked for James Dean until Dean was killed in a car crash. In the 1970’s Sam Peckinpah directed Pat Garret and Billy The Kid starring James Coburn as Pat Garret and Kris Kristofferson as Billy. Bob Dylan also had a small part as well as writing the music for the film including the hit single Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.

Billy the Kid was killed in 1881 by Pat Garrett. There were rumours however that Pat staged Billy’s death so that he would be free of pursuit by the law. That scenario was used in the end of The Outlaw, although in the film it was Doc Holliday who gets the bullet but it was Billy’s name on the gravestone.

One of my favourite cowboy/outlaw films has to be Jesse James, the 1939 film starring Tyrone Power as Jesse and Henry Fonda as his brother. The film was so successful that they made a sequel, The Return of Frank James starring Henry Fonda as Frank on track to find his brother’s killer.

Two more outlaws whose fame has lasted right down to the present day were Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and the two were played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford in a film called just that: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I saw a film programme a while back on the BBC where Paul Newman explained that screenwriter William Goldman had approached him about making the film and starring as Butch. Various people were suggested for the Sundance Kid and Newman even met with Steve McQueen about the part but eventually it was Robert Redford who won the role.

The film was released in 1969 but has a very 1970’s feel about it. There is even a musical interlude in the film where Paul Newman tries out a new fangled bicycle with Sundance’s girlfriend Etta to the tune of Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on my Head.

My two favourite westerns both star John Wayne, the quintessential cowboy hero. Wayne starred in The Searchers, directed by John Ford. Wayne stars as a civil war veteran whose niece has been kidnapped by a band of warlike Commanches. Ethan Edwards takes his adoptive nephew on a long search for the kidnapped girl until they finally rescue her.

My other favourite is The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Lee Marvin plays a brilliant part in that of Liberty Valance, a mean, no good bully who terrorises a western town until lawyer James Stewart manages to shoot him dead, or so we think. Later, when Stewart decides he is unwilling to base his career on being the man who shot Valance, John Wayne reveals what really happened.

Back in the fifties and sixties was probably the heyday of cowboy films and TV shows. Today it seems that the western is a genre that has been almost forgotten. As a schoolkid I was an avid watcher of The Lone Ranger, Branded, The Virginian, Bonanza, Casey Jones and many others. One of my favourites was Alias Smith and Jones, a series about two outlaws, Kid Curry and Hannibal Hayes who are on the run but have been offered an amnesty on the condition that they give up crime and go straight. They adopt new identities, that of Smith and Jones and try to live law abiding lives. It was a great series with some excellent episodes but in December 1971, Pete Duel, the actor who had played Hannibal Hayes committed suicide. Another actor was substituted in the role but the series was never as popular afterwards.

Another great western was Kung Fu. Kung Fu was an oddball western in many ways; it was about a half Chinese, half American called Kwai Chang Caine played by David Carradine. Caine becomes a Shaolin monk after he has been taken in by the monastery as an orphan. Caine has been tutored in the Buddhist religion and martial arts by master Po. When Po is murdered by the Emperor’s son, Caine retaliates and kills him. Now with a price on his head Caine flees to the USA. In the USA of the old west, Caine encounters many situations which then cause him to reflect on his own upbringing and tutoring in China, shown in many flashback sequences. Caine defends himself in many situations with his mastery of Kung Fu and the series became not only a great success but the forerunner in a world wide Kung Fu craze with many Hong Kong martial arts films also becoming popular.

The western film and TV shows seemed to have all fizzled out by the end of the 1970’s. Perhaps these days audiences prefer sci fi series like Star Wars and Star Trek. Tastes change of course and one day perhaps audiences will once again want more westerns. For now I think I’ll settle down after a busy shift, pour myself a glass of wine and wind down with my copy of John Ford’s The Searchers.

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The Film of the Book or the Book of the Film Pt 3

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Papillon by Henri Charrière

Papillon is a book by Frenchman Henri Charrière. It is an autobiographical novel about Charrière’s imprisonment in the French penal colony of French Guiana and covers a period of about fifteen years. The original novel was written on a series of exercise books and is presented in just that way. Charrière describes his experience of imprisonment as a terrible one. He escaped and was recaptured many times and ended up in solitary imprisonment twice. The first time was for two years and he was kept in solitary for 24 hours a day. In his second bout of solitary a new officer takes over the running of the area and prisoners are let out for exercise every day. At one point in his escape Charrière encounters a tribe of Indians and joins them for many months, even marrying one of the Indian girls but despite finding this apparent paradise, he leaves and is imprisoned again. He eventually escapes from Devil’s Island by jumping into the sea aboard a sack filled with coconuts. The book is an incredible read and I found it one I just couldn’t put down. It is filled with action and adventure but also with thoughtful observations about the human condition and there are many moments when simple acts of kindness stand out to the author against a background of cruelty and inhumanity.

The book was an instant hit when it was published in France in 1969 and the author, Henri Charrière, nicknamed Papillon because of a tattoo of a butterfly on his chest, became a French celebrity. He died in 1973 but always maintained the book was true and based on his own recollections despite claims to the contrary. Whatever its origins the book is a true classic adventure story.

The Film

On paper this should have been a brilliant film; Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman star, there was a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo and Lorenzo Semple Jr and music by Jerry Goldsmith. The director was Franklin J Shaffner, who I’ve not heard of but there are plenty of big names involved who would normally guarantee a great film. They even had author Henri Charrière who acted as an advisor to the production. Somehow though, they managed to turn out something of a dud. It’s hard to put the finger on what went wrong but reviewer Robert Ebert said the big flaw was that the audience failed to gain interest in the McQueen and Hoffman characters. I think the big problem was that the book was a long book, packed with incident and instead of trying to cram the whole book into a film, perhaps the producers should have concentrated on just a part of it. Steve McQueen was a reasonable actor and he was good in basic action roles but I just don’t think he was good enough to play Papillon. The film skips over many interesting elements of the book and at the end of the film when Charrière is imprisoned on Devil’s Island, McQueen appears to be an old man which wasn’t the case in real life. My advice: Don’t bother with the film, read the book.

The Wooden Horse by Eric Williams

I’ve been trying to remember which came first for me, the book or the film. After some reflection, it was probably the film but I read the book soon afterwards. I found a copy in a box of paperbacks someone had given to my Father. The book is a classic escape story from World War II. It’s a great read and the story starts with a usual day in the POW camp which consists of tea making, cooking and cleaning and exercising by walking a circuit around the camp. The author, real life escapee Eric Williams, tells the reader about the everyday problems of living in a hut full of bored officers looking forward to either red cross parcels, letters from home or escaping. The problems of escaping are many. The soil is soft and sandy meaning that a tunnel would be liable to collapse and the soil cleared from underground is different to the grey topsoil making it difficult to hide from the German guards. The main problem is the distance from the huts to the camp perimeter but the author and a friend hit on the idea of taking a vaulting horse and placing it near to the perimeter fence and having a tunnel dug from there with the prisoners exercised by vaulting over the horse and masking the escape operation. The POW camp, Stalag Luft III was also the same camp where the events depicted in The Great Escape took place.

The Film

The film is pretty faithful to the book and stars the usual stalwarts of British films in the 1950’s, actors like Leo Genn, Anthony Steel and David Tomlinson. It’s a nicely paced film showing the boredom of camp life and then the idea for the vaulting horse and its preparation and use. Various problems have to be overcome including tunnel cave ins and disposal of the resulting excavated sand but all goes well. The two escapees decide to add another man to their escape team and one night the three emerge from the tunnel into freedom. Of course the escape is not over; two of the men make their way to the Baltic port of Lubeck and manage to escape to neutral Sweden with the help of the Danish resistance by stowing away on a Danish ship. The third escapee also makes his way to freedom separately and all three meet up in neutral Sweden.

On her Majesty’s Secret Service by Ian Fleming

This book as you probably know is one of the James Bond series of books and is one of the last in the series. As usual, the book is well written and James Bond 007 is on the lookout for Ernst Stavro Blofeld whose fiendish plot was thwarted by Bond in the previous book, Thunderball. In this one Bond is close to resigning but after being given some holiday leave from work, meets a young girl, Tracy, who appears to be suicidal. After saving her from one such attempt Bond is introduced to her father Draco, who is head of a Corsican crime syndicate. Draco gives Bond a lead on Blofeld who appears to be trying to establish that he is in fact a baronet. Anyway, without going on and explaining the plot in detail, the book is an excellent read, one of the best in the Bond series.

The Film

The film was notable for being the first in the film franchise without Sean Connery as James Bond. Connery was tired of playing the part and so a search for a new Bond had begun. The new actor chosen was George Lazenby whose only claim to fame at the time was appearing in a TV advertisement for a Big Fry chocolate bar. For me, Lazenby was the perfect Bond. He looked the part, in fact I’ve always thought that he fitted Ian Fleming’s description perfectly. The film is a fast paced thriller and is one of the more serious of the Bond films. Diana Rigg plays Contessa Tracy Di Vincezo who Bond saves from a suicide attempt, just as he does in the book. Tracy’s father Marc Ange Draco who happens to be an underworld boss, gives Bond a tip as to Blofeld’s whereabouts. Bond, masquerading as Sir Hilary Bray, a representative of the College of Arms meets Blofeld in Switzerland on the pretext of confirming Blofeld as a baronet. Bond arrives at the ski resort of Piz Gloria and finds Blofeld is engaged on a new plot against the UK. The film throws in some great fight scenes, car chases and also an exciting ski chase sequence. It was directed by Peter Hunt and is still a favourite today amongst Bond fans. Sadly Lazenby decided not to play Bond again and Sean Connery returned for another outing as 007 in Diamonds are Forever.

Hamish Macbeth

This last entry is a little of a cheat really as the Hamish Macbeth series of books were made into a TV series rather than a film but here we go anyway.

Robert Carlyle played the eponymous TV police officer in the BBC series which first aired in 1995. The series is about a local Bobby based in the village of Lochdubh in the Scottish Highlands. Macbeth applies the rule of law in his own way and dispenses his own brand of laid back justice. Although successful at solving numerous crimes Macbeth avoids promotion in order to stay in the village.

Three series of Hamish Macbeth were produced with six episodes each. Although the series was based on the books by MC Beaton, the TV series differs greatly from the books, with new characters devised by the TV producers and various other aspects changed. I enjoyed the series enormously and even once visited Plockton, the Highland village that doubles for Lochdubh on television. MC Beaton, whose real name is Marion Chesney, apparently hated the TV production which I can understand as they changed her work considerably, adding and changing characters. I have to say though, I’ve always liked it.

Death of A Dreamer by MC Beaton

I picked up this copy of one of MC Beaton’s books in a second hand bookshop in Skipton. At first I wasn’t sure if it was a book for me but I soon settled into the story and it bumbles along nicely with a few twists and turns on the way. A lady artist, Effie Gerrard, arrives in the village and develops an obsession with another artist named Jock. Later Effie is found dead. Was it a suicide or was it murder? The police decide it was suicide but Hamish is not so sure and he decides to make further investigations.

In the books Hamish has a dog and a wild cat as pets unlike the TV show where his only pet is ‘Wee Jock’, a highland Westie dog. The book is heavy on dialogue and light on descriptive passages but it was an easy and enjoyable read and I liked it immensely. The only annoying thing was that after finishing the book, the first chapter of the next book had been added to tempt the reader I suppose into buying that one. I read that and found myself wanting the next book in the series so it might be time to begin scouring the bookshops of St Annes for more books in the series.

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Star Trek: The Blog Post

Posted on by Steve Higgins

On many of the posts in this blog you will find references to Star Trek. I’ve been a big fan of Star Trek for many years and even though I’m not an actual ‘Trekkie’, visiting conventions and dressing up as a Klingon and so on, I do love a good episode of Star Trek so it’s high time I put all my Trek thoughts into one handy blog post.

Star Trek the Original series.

Here is something that may be a revelation to you; if you don’t know it already it will vastly improve your understanding of Star Trek. It’s a simple truth and here it is, Star Trek is about three guys, Captain Kirk, Mr Spock and Doctor McCoy. Sometimes there are four, we can maybe throw in Scotty but that’s it, that’s the essential truth about Star Trek and that’s why things like the Next Generation and Deep Space 9 will never come up to scratch, simply because Kirk, Spock and McCoy are not involved. Even the Star Trek people themselves understand this, which is why Star Trek has been reinvented (re-imagined to use movie speak) with new actors playing Kirk and his crew in the latest Trek movies.

The first series of Star Trek starred William Shatner as Captain James T Kirk. Forget Captain pointy head Picard, Kirk is a proper Captain and after a good twenty minutes of any episode he will usually have blasted a number of aliens with his phaser (a sort of ray gun) and done some pretty serious kissing of any beautiful girl, alien, android or otherwise, within a 100 yard area. Mr Spock was played by Leonard Nimoy. He is the ship’s science officer and as a Vulcan rarely displays emotion, logic being his primary motivation. Doctor McCoy played by DeForest Kelley is a doctor of the old school and he and Spock frequently get into verbal confrontations. Together they are the chief officers of the starship Enterprise on its five year mission to go where no man has gone before.

william_shatnerAs a schoolboy I wrote to Desilu studios where I believed Star Trek was made, based on credits shown at the end of the show. After a while I received a set of glossy pictures of the show’s stars. They were all signed by the various actors, Shatner, Nimoy and so on but the signatures, I have long suspected, were made by a machine.

The original Star Trek, like many TV programmes of the sixties was shot on film and today it looks pretty sharp compared to shows from the 80’s that were shot straight to video. It was given a digital makeover a few years back with digital effects and new CGI spacecraft and is looking pretty good these days. Which was my favourite episode? Well I’d have to say it was the one that fans voted the best Star Trek episode ever; City on the Edge of Forever. The crew of the Enterprise arrive at a distant planet searching for the source of some time displacement. The source is a time portal, left among the ruins of an ancient civilisation which although abandoned, still emits waves of time displacement. In the meantime, Doctor McCoy is suffering from paranoia brought on by an accidental overdose of the wonder drug cordrazine which any Star Trek fan will tell you can cure any known Galactic ailment. McCoy in his crazed state bumbles through the time portal, back to 1930’s America (handy for that old 1930’s set on the Paramount back lot) and changes history. Kirk and Spock are forced to also go back in time, stop McCoy from changing history and restore things to the way they were. Joan Collins plays a charity worker at the core of events; does she have to die in order to restore normality?

Star Trek the Motion Picture

After three series the show was cancelled but was remade a few years later as a TV cartoon. The huge fan base of the series caused the producers to think again and in 1977 they decided to make a big screen version of the show to cash in on the huge success of Star Wars. Star Trek the Motion Picture was released in 1979 and was directed by Robert Wise who was one of the editors on the film classic, Citizen Kane. I enjoyed the film very much although I feel the story was a little lacking. An entity called Vega is on the way to destroy the earth and the only starship in interception range is the recently refurbished Enterprise. All the favourites from the TV series make their return with a few additions. It was a good film but not a great one.

The Next Generation

The success of the film made the producers think about a new TV series, not with Kirk, Spock and McCoy but with a new crew. The Next Generation is set further into the future than the original series. Patrick Stewart plays the Captain and Jonathan Frakes is the first officer. There is no Vulcan science officer like Mr Spock but Brent Spiner plays a similar character; Data, an android.

The Next Generation is something I have always found rather lacking. I wasn’t keen on Mr Pointy-head Captain Picard and the cocktail lounge style bridge on his version of the starship Enterprise. Why on earth does he have to run every decision by his first officer, his councillor and everyone else on the bridge when Kirk would have just sorted that situation out like a shot, fired off a few photon torpedos and would even have found a pretty girl to flirt with too? The series was filmed on video and doesn’t look as good today when compared to the pin sharp original series.

Deep Space 9.

What can I say about this series? My knee jerk reaction was that it’s a load of old tosh might sound a bit mean to die hard Trek fans, but it was never my cup of tea. The only episode I ever enjoyed was an episode in which the crew of Deep Space 9 return to the past and get involved in the old original series episode ‘The Trouble with Tribbles’ using some pretty nifty special effects.

Star Trek Voyager.

I wasn’t so keen on Voyager at first, but I have to say I do like the later episodes when Captain Janeway finally got rid of her early weird hair styles and the drippy alien Kes got the bullet from the show.

Captain Janeway was the Star Trek world’s first female captain and as she began to look more normal as far as her hair, the writers decided to shake things up with the new and pretty sexy Seven of Nine character. She was rescued from the Borg, an alien race whose catchphrase is you will be assimilated. Seven was given a very appealing tight fitting catsuit to wear instead of the Space Federation regulation uniform. Catsuits are OK and maybe they are pretty popular in the 24th century but they never seem to have any pockets. What Seven does with her handkerchiefs, lip gloss, mobile phone and purse I really don’t know. In the future people must prefer looking sexy rather than worrying about their stuff, at least they do in the eyes of the Star Trek writers.

Seven is the nucleus of some great episodes especially one where we go back and see how young Annika Hanson (Seven as a young girl), and her family were assimilated by the Borg. The Borg are a race of aliens who assimilate other species into their own and at their centre is the Borg Queen who really likes the idea of Seven coming back to her ‘collective’.

Star Trek Enterprise.

This is supposed to be a prequel to the original series. I can’t say I’ve ever got through a complete episode. My only observations are that the crew go around in overalls and the Captain is played by the guy who used to be in the time travel show Quantum Leap.

Star Trek Discovery.

The latest series in the franchise is Star Trek Discovery, which is rather like watching a very fast music video, I gave it a good 15 minutes and then had to switch off. Sorry, it’s just not my cup of sci-fi.

Star Trek Picard.

Picard airs on Netflix or Amazon or some such channel that I have no access to and have no intention of subscribing to, mainly because I am allergic to opening up my wallet. After watching a few clips of Picard on YouTube I actually found it quite appealing so I decided to search for a cheap DVD of the episodes on eBay. Picard, I have to say is a pretty amazing slice of sci-fi. It’s not perfect and in fact it is rather complicated but it’s about a mystery at the heart of Star Fleet and Admiral Picard, no longer a member of Star Fleet, is determined to find out. Along the way he meets Seven of Nine and various other favourites from the old TV shows. Some of the episodes have been a little slow and yes, I know I’ve slagged off Captain Picard before but for the most part this series has been pretty good and anyone wanting to buy my DVDs is welcome to make me an offer as soon as I have got through series one.

William Shatner has reached the venerable age of 90 this year so it was good to read in the media that he is still going strong. Wonder if there is any chance of him playing Kirk again just one last time? Star Trek Kirk sounds good to me.

More on the Star Trek Films.

Getting back to the Star Trek films; Paramount studios decided to have another go at filming Star Trek for the big screen. For the second film they decided to employ producer Harve Bennett to make a better and cheaper Star Trek film. He apparently watched all the episodes of the TV series and decided to bring back the character of Khan who had once attempted to take over the Enterprise and was later left on a distant planet to start a new life with his crew. In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Mr Chekhov finds that the planet Khan was abandoned on has become a desert and Kahn isn’t happy; he wants revenge on Kirk. Wrath of Khan is a really good film, much more like the original TV episodes than Motion Picture. The crew all sport some new natty uniforms and clearly it must be a little chilly on the Enterprise because all the staff seem to be wearing woolly jumpers and jackets. I don’t remember the Apollo astronauts ever wearing woolly jumpers but maybe astronauts in the 24th century are not made of such stern stuff. Of course it could be that they just have never thought about turning up the central heating.

Trek III was another excellent film. In this one we find that although Spock died in the previous film, his body has been regenerated by the Genesis project. In Star Trek IV the crew return to the 1980’s in order to bring a whale back to the future for reasons which I won’t even begin to get into. Watch out for the scene where Spock deals with a guy playing loud music on the bus; I loved it.

The character of Captain Kirk was actually killed off in the movie Generations which started off pretty well, combining the usual sci-fi elements of Star Trek with an intriguing mystery; who is the mysterious Soran and what is he up to? As it happened what he was up to wasn’t really that interesting, but the film marked the cinema handover from the original Star Trek cast to the new one. Pity really because as I mentioned above, I never really took to the Next Generation.

Just as I’d got to the end of this post I thought it might be an idea to actually watch some Star Trek again for some final opinions. After a quick scan through my DVDs I came across Star Trek III in which the crew of the Enterprise are grieving over the loss of Mr Spock in the previous film. Captain Kirk finds that Spock, who knew he was about to die, had left his Katra, his soul, in the mind of Dr McCoy and the crew undertake to take McCoy and Spock’s body back to the planet Vulcan, Spock’s home. A lot of stuff happens along the way and of course they finally succeed in reuniting Spock’s body with his Katra, although sadly, Kirk’s son is murdered by the Klingons along the way. It’s a great film, very reminiscent of the original episodes but a big factor in the film is the performance of William Shatner. He really is an outstanding actor and I think the success of Star Trek is in no small measure due to him. Shatner went on to play many other roles on TV so he can hardly claim to be type cast but I wonder if he hadn’t played Kirk, would he have gone on to a better career as a film actor.

Star Trek is ultimately about three people, Kirk, Spock and McCoy and the producers probably realised that which is why, in the latest Trek films, a new generation of actors have been asked to recreate the old characters meaning that Captain Kirk lives on again for a new generation of sci-fi fans.

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A Slice of my Locked Down Life

Posted on by Steve Higgins

When I used to work a nine to five job, I always looked forward to a bank holiday. It meant only working four days instead of five. Nowadays when I work shifts, I sometimes end up working the bank holiday but when it comes down to it, I don’t really care. It’s actually nicer having a break when the holiday resorts and seaside destinations are not packed. This bank holiday I wasn’t working but the weather in the UK, at least in the northwest where I live, was dreadful. It was cold and did nothing but rain so I spent the day watching TV.

The lockdown is easing in the UK and pubs and restaurants are open but, and it’s a rather big but, for outdoors only. We went to our favourite restaurant the other week. It had been a pretty warm day but it was cooling quickly by the time our table was ready. Luckily they have those outside heaters which helped but not that much. I couldn’t help comparing the situation to eating out in Lanzarote in January 2020. The restaurants over there have much more effective patio heaters but either way, it was good to be out again.

Last week we tried eating out again. This time we went to the 54 bistro in St Annes. It describes itself as a Mediterranean restaurant and it serves mainly tapas. Liz always goes for the fish platter they serve there. For me, I went for bruschetta followed by spicy pasta and some cheesy flatbread. The restaurant was still pretty busy and various potential diners got turned away while we were eating as the small dining area was either full or waiting for diners who had booked a table. There were patio heaters but up at a high level and they were not particularly effective. Maybe no one had told them that heat rises. We were dining at about six and by seven it had gone a lot cooler. Towards the end of the meal, it was actually really cold and despite my thick cardigan I was really chilled.

For some mad reason we decided to have a quick pint, our first of 2021 sat outside Wetherspoons and by the time I had supped my beer I was frozen to the bone. Roll on summer!

I don’t know if you remember but a few years back an aircraft that had just taken off from New York had to ditch in the Hudson river. For some reason Clint Eastwood decided to make a film about it and they showed it last week on BBC1.

I’ve actually always wondered how could they make a whole film about that short event. The aircraft takes off, hits a flock of birds, the engines get jammed up and this being New York, a pretty densely populated place, there was nowhere to land except in the river.

The film which was called Sully, after the pilot’s nickname, shows the plane landing in the river quite a few times. Pilot Sully played by Tom Hanks calls his wife up after the rescue to say he is OK. OK she asks? OK how? What has happened? Turn on the TV he says and you’ll see. The film then goes on to show Sully as a young pilot and later as an air force jet pilot following a colleague with a problem aircraft back to base.

Sully then has an interview with his bosses from the airline who, rather than being pleased he saved all those lives, seem to think Sully could have got the aircraft back to the airfield and the rest of the film tends to focus on that. Sully becomes a bit of a New York celebrity but early investigation reports also seem to indicate that the pilots could have made it back to LaGuardia airport. Sully says they could not have done so as both engines failed but the aircraft telemetry suggested that one engine was OK.

At the investigation hearing, a flight simulation is shown where various pilots easily turn back to the airport. Simulations are fine but as Sully points out, a simulation is just that, a simulation not reality. How many tries did the simulator pilots have? The answer was 17! Sully and his co-pilot only got one chance and after adding 35 seconds on to the simulator, for decision time, the simulator pilots all crashed. Later when the aircraft engines are raised from the river bed and checked, it is confirmed that both engines failed, just as the pilots said.

I have to say although parts of the film were interesting, as a whole it didn’t work for me. I remember seeing a film years ago where an aircraft ran out of fuel. I think they may have just changed from imperial measurement to metric and there was some confusion. Anyway the plane ran out of fuel somewhere over the USA but happily the pilots were able to glide down to earth using an unused airfield that the pilot happened to know about. That as I remember was a very good film with a really exciting build up of tension.(After some quick research I found it was called Freefall: Flight 174.)

Getting back to Sully I read somewhere that the whole incident was a tonic to New York as the previous aircraft disaster in the city, the 9/11 disaster did not have a happy ending, unlike this one.

In my draft folder I’ve got a post started called The Best Worst films of All Time. You might be confused by that at first but just think for a moment, how many crap films are there that you actually enjoy and continue to watch again and again every time they pop up on your TV screen. One of the films on the list was a film I watched last week and I must have watched it fifty times at least. It’s called Uncle Buck. I know, it’s a complete load of old tosh but I just seem to be drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Never seen it? Really? OK it’s a sort of variant on the film Home Alone and in fact one of the characters is played by that kid from the Home Alone films, Macauley Culkin.

In this movie a couple have to leave home because the wife’s mother has suddenly passed away. Who can they get to babysit the three kids? No one is available so the no good bum of a brother in law is roped in, you guessed it, Uncle Buck. Uncle Buck is played by the late John Candy and he has to contend with kids he doesn’t even know including, as well as young Mr Culkin, two screen sisters, one of them a teenage girl with a big attitude problem. She is completely embarrassed by her uncouth uncle and his smoke screen producing old banger automobile and even though the film is just a notch above rubbish, it’s actually quite fun in parts.

Buck sorts out ‘Bug’, the teenage girl’s cheating boyfriend and in doing so finally makes friends with his teenage niece. Uncle Buck is a great film to watch when you’re tired and not really paying attention and I always get the feeling it was written by a sort of committee of writers. (Probably the same committee that wrote Home Alone and Three Men and a Baby and so on.) I remember once seeing a documentary about the US sitcom Friends. The show is not one of my favourite programmes but in the documentary they showed how Friends was recorded in front of a live audience. If a bit of business didn’t quite work out, the recording was stopped while a whole bunch of writers and producers had a chat about things. Then a new line or even a section of dialogue was inserted or some of the action was changed. That was then run past the live audience. If it still wasn’t quite right the laughter track was updated to fill in. Writing by committee, interesting.

Anyway, that’s my draft post about great but crap films rendered completely useless even though I only had two other films on my list. Still by the time I finally finish it in about six months, this post will just be a distant memory for regular readers so maybe I can still use it after all.

Getting back to Sully, the actual plane crash (sorry, water landing as the pilots called it) happened on January 15th 2009. It was a freezing day and those passengers looked particularly cold when I checked out the newsreel video from back then. That was just how I felt shivering outside Wetherspoons last week. At least I was able to call a cab, rush back home and light the fire!

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Some Thoughts on Books and Reading

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I really do love books and reading. My idea of heaven is lying by a pool in somewhere like Lanzarote with the sun shining and a book in my hand. What is important for a good read is time. It’s alright to read a book on your lunch break or on the bus travelling home after work but to really get into a book, some uninterrupted time is important. So, what is really so good about reading? You, the reader must like reading otherwise you probably wouldn’t be reading this but for me reading is about connecting with worlds I will never see and connecting with my own world too; finding that I’m not as unique or as different as I had thought and that other people have had similar experiences to me.

Looking through a box of my old books I found a book I had read many years ago. It’s called the Wooden Horse and it’s a classic wartime escape book. The author conveys vividly the boredom of incarceration during WWII as a prisoner of war and the feelings that time was just slipping away and also the petty arguments that arose when confined with other people. Escape was on the minds of many but digging an escape tunnel was difficult as there was such a long way to tunnel. The huts were deliberately placed well away from the camp perimeter. One day, one of the men had an idea, what if they could start the tunnel nearer the wire? They hit on the idea of making a vaulting horse, putting a couple of men inside and then digging while their fellow prisoners exercised above.

The Wooden Horse was written by one of the actual escapees, Eric Williams. He was an RAF pilot shot down over Germany and imprisoned in 1942 and in 1950 the book was made into a classic WWII film.

As a child I remember reading books at night in bed before going to sleep and arguing with my brother who wanted the light turned out. Sometimes I’d read under the covers with a torch.

There was a small library a short ten-minute walk from my old house and I used to spend many an early evening there with my mother and brother. I remember a particular series of books I used to read when I was very young about someone called Mr Grimpwinkle.

A quick search on Google showed my memory had not failed me and there was such a series of books. They were written by a lady called Joan Drake. One example was Mr Grimpwinkle’s Marrow published in 1959. The going price on Abebooks was £148.95, quite a considerable sum for a book. The author, Joan Drake, seems to have published quite a few children’s books but I couldn’t find out anything more about her. I did actually fancy buying a copy of Mr Grimpwinkle’s Marrow just for nostalgic reasons but £149 is a lot to pay for nostalgia.

Another book I particularly remember was one I got for Christmas one year. It was two stories in one book. I forget the title and the author but one part was the story of Robin Hood and the other was about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The end of both stories has always struck me. In Robin Hood, Robin lies on his death bed and fires a last arrow asking to be buried wherever the arrow lands. That could have been tricky for Robin’s merry men but as far as we know everything went to plan and Robin was laid to rest somewhere, I assume, in Sherwood forest. When Arthur lies dying, he entrusts one of his lieutenants with the sword Excalibur and tasks him to throw the sword into a lake. The knight, who I believe was Sir Bedivere, wasn’t happy with throwing away such an excellent sword so he hid it. When Arthur asked what had happened and Sir Bedivere replied ‘nothing’, Arthur knew he was lying. Eventually the knight was persuaded to follow Arthur’s instructions and saw that Excalibur was caught by the lady of the lake, brandished three times then disappeared into the waters.

Now that is a book I would like to read again and ever since that first read many years ago I have always been interested in Robin and King Arthur.

The story of Robin Hood has been made into many films. A recent one from 2010 was Robin Hood which starred Russell Crowe as Robin and was directed by Ridley Scott. I’ve only seen it once but it was a pretty good film. Another version from 1991 starred Kevin Costner. Robin Hood Prince of Thieves was a highly enjoyable film if you can overlook Costner’s American accent. Alan Rickman plays a slightly over the top Sheriff of Nottingham and the film is well worth watching.

Douglas Fairbanks made the original version of Robin Hood in 1922. It was the very first film to have a Hollywood premiere which was held at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre on October 18th 1922. I’ve always thought that this was the film in which Fairbanks slides down a huge curtain by slashing it with his sword but after a quick internet check it looks like that was The Black Pirate from 1926.

Alan Hale played Little John in Fairbank’s version and interestingly, he played the same role in the later Errol Flynn version The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938.

Flynn’s version is probably the definitive film of Robin Hood. It was shot in Technicolor and starred Flynn alongside Olivia de Havilland as Lady Marian and Basil Rathbone as Guy of Gisbourne. Claude Rains played Prince John who plots to steal the throne from King Richard who is away at the Crusades. Michael Curtiz directed.

King Arthur and the legend of the Knights of the Round Table has also inspired quite a few films. King Arthur and the Legend of the Sword from 2017 was probably the latest. It was directed by Guy Ritchie and stars Charlie Hunnam (never heard of him myself) and Jude Law.

There was a version called First Knight from 1995 starring the highly over rated Richard Gere and a 2004 version simply called King Arthur with Clive Owen as Arthur. ‘A gritty attempt to update Arthurian legend’ said the one review I found on Google.

There was a cartoon version, the Sword in the Stone released in 1963 and a musical, Camelot from 1967 but my favourite film adaptation is Excalibur directed by John Boorman. Nicol Williamson plays an impressive Merlin and the film is an absorbing mix of sorcery, legend and fantasy all remaining fairly true to Le Morte d’Arthur, the book published by Thomas Mallory in 1485.

Under normal circumstances I might go on to talk further about my favourite books but I have done that already. I think I did my top ten favourite books in two parts a few weeks back. At various points in my blogging life I’ve written about David Copperfield, The Great Gatsby and Lost Horizon, my three all time favourite books. I’ve also written a few posts about James Bond, the UK’s top secret agent but I’d like to focus on one of the Bond books, Goldfinger.

Back in the early 1960’s Harry Saltzman bought the film rights for the Bond books. He formed a partnership with fellow producer Albert Broccoli and they cast Sean Connery as Bond and in 1962 produced the first Bond movie, Doctor No. I was a schoolboy back then and had never seen the films but there was a great deal of hype about them on television. So much so that I went down to the library to read one of the books. There was only one in stock at the time and it was The Man with the Golden Gun, one of the worst books in the series. The author, Ian Fleming, had passed away before finishing the final draft of the book which accounts for the poor quality. Luckily, my uncle brought round a box of paperbacks for my dad to read and one was a cheap paperback version of Goldfinger. I read it, thought it was wonderful and embarked on a mission to buy all the other Bond books.

At school in English class our teacher had asked us to bring in a book with a vivid description of someone and my choice was Goldfinger. The book is about a man called Auric Goldfinger, a rich businessman who is suspected of smuggling gold. Bond is tasked to find out more and Fleming gives the reader a particularly compelling description of Goldfinger.  Fleming describes him as having a body seemingly put together with parts of other people’s bodies. I always thought that was pretty good. Fleming used to write his first drafts of a book and then add in all sorts of details afterwards like the vodka martinis that James Bond liked so much and the Sea Island cotton shirts that Bond favours in the novels. It was actually Fleming who wore those particular shirts and who drank vodka martinis and also preferred scrambled eggs for breakfast. Many people have speculated who Bond was based on and my feeling has always been that in fact it was Ian Fleming himself.

My current read is a book I mentioned last week, Charlie Chaplin and his Times by Kenneth S Lynn. Chaplin was a music hall entertainer working for the great impresario Fred Karno. Karno regularly sent teams of entertainers to the USA and while there Chaplin was invited to make a film for Mack Sennett, the famous producer of comedy films. Chaplin’s films proved to be enormously popular and so Chaplin moved on to different studios, all for better and better money until he established his own studio. I’ve always found the early days of Hollywood to be fascinating and this book is no exception.

Which books are you reading?

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Getting to the Heart of a Classic Film

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Two of my absolute favourite films are Citizen Kane and On The Waterfront. Kane is a masterpiece of  visual brilliance whilst Waterfront is a masterpiece of acting brilliance. Waterfront has at its centre a heart of fire whilst Kane‘s centre is a little cooler. I thought a quick comparison of the two films might be interesting so here we go:

Citizen Kane

Back at home in my default position, in my favourite chair watching TV, I picked up the tail end of an interview with actor Gary Oldman about his new film Mank. Mank sounds like an interesting film in many ways. Firstly, it only had a limited cinema release before being streamed on Netflix. Whether this was a reaction to the global lockdown or an indication of how cinema will work in the future I’m not sure, but if cinemas are unable to open then producers must find other ways to show their films.

Gary Oldman is an English actor with an interesting array of roles behind him. He won the academy award for his role as Winston Churchill in the film Darkest Hour and played assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in Oliver Stone’s JFK. Mank is about Herman Mankiewicz and his writing of the screenplay for Citizen Kane. Kane is one of my favourite films although I haven’t seen it for a long time.

Mankiewicz was asked by Orson Welles to write the script but without a credit, presumably so that Welles himself could use the resulting script as a basis for his own work. Later Mankiewicz changed his mind and decided he wanted a screen credit as he had come to think that the script was his best work. Welles then gave screen credit to both himself and Mankiewicz although it was Mankiewicz himself who accepted the Oscar at the award ceremony in Hollywood.

Just flipping through my extensive back catalogue of VHS documentaries I found one from the BBC about the making of Citizen Kane which I have recently copied to DVD. The documentary covered various areas including the filming, the actors and of course the script. The origin of the script was a contentious subject, especially after film critic Pauline Kael wrote an article in the New Yorker on the subject. She seemed to favour Mankiewicz as writing the lion’s share of the project. Peter Bogdanovich wrote a rebuttal in the Esquire magazine, defending Welles as the screenwriter.

The truth is that Welles, as he said himself, put together a screenplay based on both his version and the one by Mankiewicz. Elements of the story were based on personal experiences of both men, for instance Mankiewicz was friendly with William Hearst who inspired the character of Kane but Welles maintained that tycoons Samuel Insull and Harold Fowler McCormick also inspired parts of Kane’s story.

The cinematographer was Gregg Toland, one of the film industry’s top photographers. Toland asked to work on the film and Welles replied ‘Why? I don’t know anything about making films.’ Toland countered that was exactly why he wanted to work on the film because a film by a newcomer, Kane was actually Welles’ first film, would produce something new and original.

There are some fascinating elements to Citizen Kane, especially in the special effects department. A famous one is where the camera flies through a rooftop sign and then drops down through a skylight into a restaurant. That was done with a sign that came apart as the camera approached and then a fade from a model shot into the restaurant set disguised in a flash of lightning. I could go on and mention plenty of elements like that but if you haven’t seen Citizen Kane let me just explain what it’s all about. The film opens with the death of Kane, a millionaire newspaper magnate. His last words were ‘Rosebud’. The makers of a cinema newsreel decide to find out what or who Rosebud was.

To do so they research Kane’s life; his inheritance of a huge fortune, his takeover of a newspaper, his great wealth, his power and influence, his marriage and divorce and ultimately his death. The reporters never find the answers to their questions but we, the cinema audience, have the secret revealed to us right at the end of the picture. The end is what makes the film really and Welles admitted that Rosebud, and the idea behind it, was the idea of Herman Mankiewicz.

Citizen Kane is a wonderful piece of cinema with an outstanding visual style and the only criticism I can put forward is that for all its visual fireworks it is a film with a cold centre, a cold heart. Does the viewer feel sympathy for Kane? I’m not sure he does.

On the Waterfront

On the Waterfront stars Marlon Brando as dock worker Terry Malloy, brother of Charlie ‘the gent’ who is the right hand man of union boss John Friendly played by Lee J Cobb. Terry unwittingly leads fellow dockworker Joey Doyle into an ambush, thinking Doyle will be threatened to withdraw his statements to the Crime Commission. However, Doyle is murdered leaving Terry shocked and confused. Later he becomes friendly with Joey’s sister played by Eva Marie Saint in her film debut. Charlie, played by Rod Steiger, tries to get Terry back into line in the famous scene with the two in the back of a taxi but fails. After John Friendly has Terry’s brother murdered, the local priest played by Karl Malden convinces Terry to tell everything he knows to the Waterfront Crime Commission. Terry does so but is ostracised by his fellow dockers until Terry forces Friendly into a brutal fight. The dockers then stand with Terry when bruised and battered, he returns to work.

Director Elia Kazan had originally employed Arthur Miller to write the screenplay for On the Waterfront but the two fell out over various things especially the fact that Kazan had identified eight former communists to the House Unamerican Activities Committee. This was the time of the McCarthy witch hunts and careers and livelihoods were on the line when Senator Joe McCarthy asked the question ‘are you now or ever have been a member of the communist party?’

Kazan then asked Budd Schulberg to write the script. There was still some difficulty in getting the film to the screen and eventually Kazan approached Sam Spiegel to act as producer. He was able to set up a deal with Columbia Studios.

The film was thought to be Kazan’s response to criticism of his stand at the HUAC hearings. Arthur Miller in his play A View from the Bridge has his character become an informer but Miller puts a different spin on things, portraying the informing as a betrayal rather than a way of fighting back at crime as Terry Malloy does On the Waterfront.

Either way, On the Waterfront is one of my very favourite films and Brando’s performance as Terry Malloy won him one of the film’s eight Oscars. Forget about Don Corleone, this was Marlon Brando’s finest hour.

It is the performances that are at the heart of this great film. Brando is outstanding but so too are Karl Malden, Rod Steiger, Lee J Cobb and Eva Marie Saint. Kazan was a director who worked well with actors bringing out the best in their performances and respecting the way they worked. He had worked with Brando before in A Streetcar Named Desire and would go on to work with fellow method actor James Dean in East of Eden.

The cameraman, Boris Kaufman had previously worked on documentaries so perhaps that was why Kazan engaged him to film Waterfront as, in a documentary like style, the camera follows Brando as Terry Malloy and watches him become slowly disappointed in the thuggish world he has become part of.

The scene in a taxi with Rod Steiger is clearly a studio set but we don’t care because Steiger and Brando keep the viewer riveted to the screen ignoring the poor lighting and the bad set because the actors take all our attention.

In another scene Brando chats with Eva Marie Saint who plays Edie, the sister of the dockworker who Brando as Terry Malloy had set up for the kill. The two talk as they walk and Edie drops her glove but Terry picks it up and instead of giving it back puts it on his own hand. The glove becomes a focal point holding the two together as they talk. For me it is one of the great scenes in cinema. This is a film with a beating heart at its centre, a heart of fire and emotion and it is Brando with this wonderful performance who is right at the film’s centre.

Next time you see either of these films in your TV schedule, put your phone on silent, settle down and enjoy some great cinema.

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More From a Locked Down Blogger

Posted on by Steve Higgins

The lockdown isn’t over yet but at least we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. As much as I like staying at home and watching my favourite films and TV shows I miss visiting my favourite bars and restaurants.  Our motorhome has been left quietly on the drive awaiting the day when we can once more drive off for a short or even a long break. We did take it on a run to the shopping centre a few weeks ago but that really doesn’t count.

As the weather has brightened up lately I thought it might be a good time to take my new drone for its maiden flight. It was a Christmas present from Liz but the cold and the rain have put me off venturing out to use it. Now that some nice weather has finally appeared here in the north of England I charged it up and had a quick scan through the instructions. I noticed that on the box the drone was described as perfect for 14 years and older so how hard could it be to fly one?

Flying the Drone

Down by the beach in St Annes I had envisioned some establishing shots from up on high looking down to reveal the layout of the sea front and the pier; a tracking shot showing the sturdy girders holding the structure in place followed by a flight moving up from the sand to the top of the pier. Maybe now is the time to mention that the drone also has a video camera. I’d recently watched a very poor drone video taken in the same area and I knew absolutely that I could do better.

The beach was pretty busy on the day I chose to venture out but everyone seemed to be keeping their distance. I found a suitable spot and switched on the drone. All ok so far, the correct lights were flashing but the rotors were not spinning. I went through the start procedure and still nothing happened so I went for that old computer stand by, switch off and switch on again.

A small group of locals began to hover around me. I heard a young boy tell his mother about the man that was about to fly a drone. A man called his dog to heel and he also stopped to watch. A group of lads appeared too. They all seemed fascinated by the forthcoming spectacle. The big problem was that I just couldn’t get anything to happen. Like a fool I was wearing my new pair of specs I had bought from a cheap online site. The specs were wonderful and had photochromic lenses, the ones that go dark when it gets sunny. I may have looked pretty cool but began to realise I should have worn my substantially uncool reading glasses.  Then I could have made out what was going on with the various lights that were lit up on my drone control panel. A few beads of sweat began to form on my forehead and I could feel my audience getting restless. The young lad was dragged away by his mother and the dog walker was fed up of waiting. It was time to pick up my drone and leave.

I imagined myself for a moment as a music hall performer being booed off the stage, departing before an onslaught of rotten fruit came my way.

Back at my car I pulled out the instructions, written of course in very tiny writing and with the help of a magnifying glass gave them another look. Ah ha. The drone must first be synchronised by pushing the throttle lever forward and then back. Armed with this new information I walked over to the nearby car park. It was mostly empty, although there was a big white van parked right in the centre.

This time I felt a little better as there was no audience to distract me. I went through the process a few times without getting anywhere. Another look at the instructions. Had I forgotten to press the start flight button? Ha! A press of the button and finally the rotors began to spin. Up we went to about ten or fifteen feet. Move left, fine. Move right, fine. Move back, not so fine. The drone seemed to wander away from me towards the white van and just as I thought we might have a possible impact I remembered the end flight button and the drone settled softly down. I tried two or three more flights and every time the drone began to wander towards that van but luckily I was able to abort the proceedings before the inevitable impact. Drone flying is not quite as easy as I had thought and the video of St Annes pier which I had hoped to include on this post must sadly wait for another day.

Stan and Ollie

Not so very long ago in my Book Bag Silent film edition, I talked about Stan, a biography of Stan Laurel by Fred Laurence Guiles. Since then, I’ve been pretty interested in seeing the biopic about the comedy duo, Stan and Ollie. I did hope that one day it might come up on Film 4 or some other free to air channel but alas, it has not. The only alternative for a low-tech guy like me then was to browse eBay until a suitably cheap DVD came available. There are some who will tell you that I am mean, others who will say I am a cheapskate. There are even some who might describe me as tight as a fish’s rear end. None of these descriptions really get to the heart of the matter because I am in fact a fully paid up, card carrying tightwad and I am happy to report that an ‘as good as new’ DVD copy of the aforementioned cinematic epic is now in my possession after parting with a minimal amount of my hard earned cash.

Some time ago a young TV salesman who was close to selling me a very expensive new television set told me that DVDs were ‘old technology’. Sadly for him, he lost a sale as I vehemently disagreed. The idea that the customer is always right was clearly lost on him. I love DVDs and this particular one gave me a great deal of pleasure on the evening I decided to pour myself a glass of port and settle down with a cheese sandwich, the remote control and then pressed the play button.

Stan and Ollie is about the latter days of the comedy twosome. Their film career is over and they have come to the UK with their stage act as at the time, it seemed to have been the only offer available to them. Stan is hoping that the two might be doing one final film and looks forward to the producer, Mr Miffen coming to the theatre to take in their performance. Mr Miffen sadly never appears and neither does the hoped-for film production although in real life the pair made a film in Europe called Atoll K that was beset with production problems.

In the early part of the film Stan is at odds with producer Hal Roach. I had always assumed that Laurel and Hardy were a long-time comedy duo that brought their act to the movies. Not so. They came to the Roach studio separately and it was Roach and director Leo McCarey who brought the pair together but they were on different contracts that expired at different times so they could never sit down and negotiate a contract for Laurel and Hardy together. Stan laments the fact that Charlie Chaplin owned his own films and made a great deal of money, while Stan and Ollie were only contract players. Stan thought the two should have held out for a better deal with Roach or another studio but the fact is that both men had trouble with wives, divorces and financial settlements and always signed with Roach again because they were always short of money.

Later in the film, Oliver Hardy suffers a heart attack and though he gamely carries on with the tour, the two realise after a performance in Ireland that their performing days are over.

The film correctly shows that Stan worked long hours with the director and editors of the films as well as scripting much of their work but the incident where Stan decides to work with another comedian in England but then fails to go through with it, is not true.

It’s a little disappointing that the film strays from real life in many ways and I always find it hard to reconcile this in true to life films. If you are going to portray real people and real events then why change them and add a dose of fiction? Perhaps the answer here is that it was a way to show the spirit of the relationship between the two comedians in their twilight years. The two principal actors are excellent; Steve Coogan as Stan Laurel and John C Reilly as Oliver Hardy. They pick up the essence of the comedy duo very well although the film has a bittersweet tone rather than a funny one. The strange thing is that for me, Stan and Ollie were laugh out loud comedians and I still laugh at their antics today but I’m not sure the film shows just how funny they were. The bittersweet tone is really more appropriate to a film about Chaplin because although Charlie makes me smile, he could never really make me laugh like Laurel and Hardy.

Oliver Hardy died in 1957 and despite many offers, Stan declined to work without Hardy. Stan died in 1965. All in all, Stan and Ollie is a sad film but a highly enjoyable one and it is clear that all those involved with the production had a true affection for Laurel and Hardy.

Covid 19

A few days ago I finally had my invitation from the UK government to be innoculated against the dreaded Coronavirus. I was pleased as a couple of people who I knew were younger than me had already had their invite so I was beginning to wonder whether I had somehow been missed off the list. Anyway, I made my appointment and on the appointed day, Wednesday March 3rd, I made my way to the vaccination centre. The staff there, all volunteers apart from the NHS professionals actually giving the jab, were all cheerful and efficient. I queued for a short while at the regulation 2 metre distance and finally was asked a few questions about my health and then quick as a flash, in went the needle. It wasn’t painful and it all seemed to go ok. While we filled in some bits and pieces of paperwork the lady filled up another needle with the vaccine and for a moment there I thought maybe the vaccination involves two injections. Happily, that was for the next victim. The next day I felt a little queasy and had a mild headache, nothing more but that was one small step towards sorting out the virus and getting back to normal.

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