Blog 4c

Watched “Death In Venice” again, after a long long absence and still fell under its spell. As with Colin Farrell, Dirk Bogarde has lengthy shots of “just looking” except in Bogarde’s case he was such a consummate actor you knew exactly every little changing thought and feeling behind the looks. Another movie on TV switched off as soon as one realised it was going to be rubbish. This one was called “The Knight’s Tale.” With Heath Ledger who was actually audible. This must have been before his Hollywood less is more mumble mumble days.
In yesterday’s Mail, Chris Tookey critiquing three movies “New In Town”, “The Unborn” and “Push” gives all three the turkey. Direction and performances might have been slagged off but basically the fault with all three according to Mister Tookey are the dire screenplays. Once many years ago when I was in a “Play For Today” for the BBC, the actor David Kossoff, when we were talking about my writing ambitions, said “Just keep on writing, dear boy. One day when you write a big hit you will then be able to write shit on the lavatory wall and they’ll knock the wall down and buy it.”
Well I haven’t yet had that big hit but it would seem producers in the film business have been knocking down a lot of lavatory walls of late. But then what is new?
After a few hours of glorious sunshine yesterday, albeit with chilly winds blowing down from the mountains, hardly surprising because I have never seen them blanketed with quite so much snow, right down to the foothills; the rain was back last night and now the forecast is sunshine and showers which doesn’t bode well for the carnival parades, but then it seems to be that way every year.
Ford Prior writing in The Breeze, the student paper at James Madison University has given me a colourful write-up for the autobiography. Thanks Ford.