‘In the Loop’ and Scots at the 2010 Oscars.

The 2010 Oscars are coming up this Sunday…and I got to thinking about Scots who have won the coveted golden statuette.

Streaker at the Oscars presented by David Niven

Well Kirk Douglas got one for Spartacus… but wait, only his stage name is Scottish. The same applies to Joan Crawford, her real name was Lucille Le Seuer. There’s James Stewart who was nominated seven times and won a lifetime achievement Oscar, but to be fair, although his parents were Scots he was first generation American.

Sir Sean wins an Oscar

So this leaves us with a handful. First there is David Niven, (see my Avatar) who won best Actor in 1955, then there is Sir Sean Connery who got best supporting for playing an Irishman in ‘The Untouchables’. Kevin Macdonald won for best Documentary in 2000, Annie Lennox in 2004 for best song. Camera man Ian Neil  has won an astonishing eleven times… and Peter Capaldi  won a best short film in 1994 with , “Franz Kafka’s it’s a wonderful life.”

As it happens Peter Capaldi is in another film that is up for a nomination this year, for best Screenplay. Until recently Capaldi was best known for his sweet and innocent role as Oldsen in “Local Hero”, but in the film “In the Loop” he plays Malcolm Tucker, a Westminster spin doctor,  the antithesis of Oldsen. He rattles of insults quicker and louder and than a machine gun and he doesn’t care who he hits.

Capaldi described the film as the West Wing, but with bad teeth and swearing. It is written and directed by Glaswegian Armando Ianucci who has done lots of great British TV comedy like The Thick Of It and The Day Today. Ianucci is one the UK’s top political satirists and In the Loop satires a weak British politician who helps start a war for the Americans. Malcolm Tuckers job is to minimize the damage, in the most damaging way possible. It is one of the funniest films of the year and has the best swearing in any film, play or creative project.

Capaldi and Gondolfini

Through out the film there are slightly vicious Scotsmen, Tucker and Jamie Macdonald (Paul Higgins) who clean up the departmental mess like coked up sergeant majors. They reflect real spin doctors in the labour government, but as a Scotsman who  works in England , Ianucci relishes the chance to have a Scotsman bully some English folk and get the chip on his shoulder about being an outsider in his own country.

My favorite part of the whole film is when James Gandolfini and Malcolm Tucker have a huge argument. Gandolfini’s character is a mix between Tony Soprano and a bullying Army general, it looks like he has won a battle of words with Tucker, but in fact the Scotsman has the last laugh. Tucker puts the icing on the cake by reminding Gandolfini that he’s a Scot, not English. Touche. How often have we had to explain we’re no English, and seen that blank glaikit stare in their eyes? Well Tucker does what I’ve frequently wanted to do. Ram it down their gentle lovely throats.

Good luck to Armando and his crew for the Oscars. It is a huge outsider, but good luck..

De Niro, Douglas,Pinter and National novel writing month.

 

Kirk Douglas 1949

 

 

Man oh man I been busy. This is national novel writing month. The idea is to write about 1500 words a day, without thinking about it too much and see what you get at the end of the month. The idea is you’ll have a first draft of a novel that is at least 50.000 words. Nanowrimo link.

I started writing late in the month so I have had to average high-about 3,000 words a day to get to where I am now which is 35,000. It’s been fun and I’m pleased with what I have written. It’s  Mid grade story and Freddie, the hero has just escaped the giant spider and the evil princess.

Steve Martin said the subconscious mind is the writer the conscious mind the editor. This process of writing in a month with out planning or editing is all subconscious work. It’s great to be able to work in this free wheeling kind of way. Two pals have also taken the challenge. One of them is buzzing with life, kinda energized by the experience. When I was most focused on the novel, last week, I was writting from somewhere ‘deep’ with in and that night I had the MOST trippy visual dreams, reflecting what I had been writing. It was fab. At one point there was knock on the door. “Whose there?” I asked.” Meisner”, a man replied. (actors will get it)

But I have still been getting on with my Hollywood lifestyle!! Last week I went to the Britannia awards, Bafta’s given to Americans. It was a super star studded event. I brushed shoulders with some huge Hollywood animals, the biggest shouldered of whom was the Governator himself Arnie. He can’t talk proper, he mumbled on about park benches or something, said Kirk Douglas was his entire inspiration and grinned those big gnashers of his. But imagine that, without Kirk there’d have been no Arnie, then no body building, then no gyms and we’d all be fat. Arnie then handed a life time achievement award to screen legend Kirk Douglas. Despite his stroke Kirk ran onto the stage. He told us all a lovely story about how he and Burt Lancaster had performed to the Queen in the London Paladium. He then sung “Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner.” And fairly scooted off the stage again! He is 92 but still a super star.

A whole bunch of other stars got awards but I can’t be bothered mentioning them becos they weren’t in the wild. They were indoors which I feel is less celebrity safari and more celebrity safari park. However Ben Stiller did take the piss out of Robert De Niro in a very funny speech (He took all the credit for De Niro’s career) then gave him another very important Bafta. Bob was cool as can be. He took the mick out of british theatrical lovies and retold his Travis Bickle lines from the Taxi Driver in a Sir John Geilgud voice “I say sir. Are you looking at me sir? I mean I wonder very much are you looking at me sir?”

Talking of Geilgud, god bless his thespian soul, I went to a really good production of Harold Pinters play “No mans Land” at the Odyssey theatre. Geilgud was one of the original cast, with Ralph Richardson (Oh I miss those chaps so!) Everyone was good but the lead, Alan Mundell was world class. The play is wonderfully from the subconscious. It is about success, the lack of it and the price of the two! Mandell has a wonderful monologue where he begs a character to change his life. See the play if you can. Mandell is Beckett scholar and worked with the man. Below is a link of his performance in the original version of ‘The endgame’ he is the guy in the bin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN0oXalNQ1Q

Also congratulations to my good buddy KJ Miller whose film ‘Nobody the great‘ ( a comedy about 2 posho brits who mistake the Gasman for a terrorsist) won the Bel Air Film Festival audience award.

Rock on.

Halloween, Cricket and Props.

Last Saturday, the 31st of October, Halloween, Samhain, descent into deep winter and I am playing cricket beneath the Hollywood sign, in the blazing sun.

Beverlyhills and Hollywood Cricket Club

It was a special occasion, Halloween and the cricket match. For many Americans Halloween is a huge ‘holiday’. West Hollywood embraces the festival with a huge street party, the costumes and atmosphere is amazing. LA’s concentration of creatives, make up artists and costume designers makes for amazing costumes. They  create costumes based on Hollywood film  icons- Freddie, Dracula, Snow White, Jason, Toxic Avenger. This year two hundred thousand people took to the streets- nearly as many as Edinburgh’s Hogmanay.  Perhaps the Los Angelinos take to it because it’s an escape form their normally very restrained and puritan lifestyles. 

Hollywood Halloween barely mentions death. But the Day of the Dead, the Mexican celebration on the 1st of Nov is more like it! People build alters for dead relatives. And they stare the future right in its scary face. Here are some pics my pal Martina took from the Hollywood Forever graveyard on the day.

However  Hallow-bloody-ween was not foremost in the minds of the members of the Beverly Hills and Hollywood Cricket Club. Oh no! Instead it was Old boys against New boys, celebrating its twentieth birthday. We played on the clubs original pitch, which is now a dog park, beneath the hollywood sign. It had to be done, didn’t it!  

I’m not massively into cricket. Soccer, I mean footie, is my thing, but I’ve been playing a bit since I got over here. It is the ex-pat thing of becoming more British abroad, that I have been trying, and succeeding to avoid, most of the time. But Cricket is much easier over here. Probably because of the weather and the big open spaces. Evelyn Waugh wrote a story about cricket in Hollywood called ‘The Loved one’.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Loved_One
It is a parody of Britishness based on Sir Aubrey Smith, a real life tyrant, public school fart, who lived and bored in Hollywood in the 40’s… Cricket is also set to raise its profile with “Netherland” the book by Joseph O’Neil, which is about cricket in NY during 9/11 and it is set to become “Netherland” the movie soon too.

Finally, I was prop master on a commercial this week. The Director was a radge. Before shooting he’d talk to the actors sweetly, giving them so much confidence. Then he’d sit behind the camera and scream at them. No wonder it took so long to get a good shot, poor actors were frazzled! But I love the prop houses in the valley. Here are some pics from the interior of Lenny Marvins prop heaven http://www.incengine.org/incEngine/?store=propheaven

Lenny's Heid

Chairs hanging out

Pawn shops in West Hollywood.

I am still reeling about getting my computer knicked. I left it in the car overnight and when I came down in the morning it was gone, courtesy of a scumbag thief.

I’ve been really angry all day. I’ve been angry at the homeless, angry at the super rich in their Ferraris, pissed off with the guy infront of me in the line at Joans on third. It’s like I’m greiving. I look at the world, it’s carrying on regardless while I’ve got to think of a way to earn myself enough dough to get a new mac, new scriptwriting software etcetra etcetera. I woke up this morning and the first thing I went to do was turn on MY computer, but it wasn’t there. The Mac had become part of me. I travelled everywhere with it, I typed for hours every day at it…you don’t know what ya got until ya loose it huh!

The other day I decided to try and find the Mac. It was only an outside chance, and at the end of the day a chance that didn’t pay, but I decided to go look at the local pawn shops to see if my gear had been handed in.

There’s about five pawn shops down on Santa Monica boulevard. I visited them all.  They’re sad  places. There’s no trust in them. The owners and the desperate try to screw each other out of a couple of bucks on a deal for some crappy electrical appliance.

The shops are stacked with three things, more than anything else. Jewellry, Golf Clubs and watches. The watches are really nice. Rolex’s, Tag’s Patek’s. The clubs are top of the range, big bertha’s and Callaways. And the jewels, they are big and very shiny.

It was friday afternoon and as I entered the last shop a guy in a suit and aviator glasses followed. The owner, a dour old Russian woman, knew him. They weren’t exactly on friendly terms but they had a routine. He unstrapped his watch, a silver metal one, and put it on the counter.

“I want a thousand dollar loan for the weekend.”

“Hmm. It vood be better vor me if you sold the thing.” Said the lady.

I didn’t make sense to me. This guy looked the mint. Then, later, a friend who used to be the personal assistant of an actress who was VERY famous in the eighties explained it to me. The studio types are asset rich but they aint got no cashish. Result, they pawn off their incredibly expensive trinkets until they can ease up some cash. The other trick is to pawn off your watch, buy a bag of Coke, dilute it with baby powder, sell it to your pals at the party, get a nice little buzz yourself, end up with a small profit, have a nice breakfast, go into the shop on Monday and redeem your watch.

The Americans, and Los Angelinos in particular, are experts at ignoring the seedy side of life. And yet it is here alright. Sunset Strip where I live is all about the surface. It’s the place to show off your new car, your new girl, your new clothes, your new plastic surgery. The side walk is lined with tables where people can sit outside the restaurant and watch the show while they eat. Then once they’ve seen enough the can get up and parade whatever it is they have to show off to everyone else. It’s all rather ‘Ab-Fab’, if you are into that thing. And then there’s the slightly bedazzling fact that you know the super wealthy and super famous are around you, nearby, liable to appear when least expected, like a Lion at a Safari park.

What we don’t see so readily are the poor people on the streets. There are actually rather alot of them… On morning I had an early call time at a film set down town. I drove along Mission Street, near the homeless shelter. The walkways were lined with sleeping backs, shopping carts and even tents. There were hundreds of people sleeping on this one street. It was a shock and also a disgrace.

Yesterday, after I got back from the Pawn shop, I looked over the back fence of the apartment building at a spot where a homeless couple have been sleeping for a few weeks. I had been very ‘live and let live’ about them being there. But it was almost certainly them who took my computer and bag. When I looked over the fence it was clear that they had already left for good, but incase something of mine was there I climbed over the fence to investigate their hide.

It stank of piss, shit and beer. Sleeping bags were stuffed into the cracks of bushes to keep them clean, I guess. There was a pile two foot deep of lager bottles. To my surprise there was a little over hang, a kind of cave, below the wall where they were sleeping. It was packed with these guys lives. I prodded them with the tip of my shoe. Second hand clothes, empty leather wallets with milldew, a minature bible, a teddy bear, second hand science fiction books. It stank. It was a shithole. A horrible insect ridden place to live. Are the couple that lived here married? Did they loose everything they owned in the recession? Or did they just get together on the street? Whatever it is a pitious way to have to live.

And what would I do if I could have met them? Well the stupid bastard probably stole my computer. An eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth. But what revenge do you take on someone who has already lost nearly everything?.. Ho hum. I just ask you dear universe that I will be able to find back ups of all the hard work I have done. Of the childrens stories I wrote. Of the Novel I wrote. Of the screenplay I recently completed. And because I know I don’t have complete back ups- they were actually on a harddrive in the same bag that was stolen, I pray that I can re-write the stories as well as I did last time …Ho hum, thankyou therapist, but I am  pissed off.