JANUARY 2009
A Happy New Year to you all and most importantly one full of health, happiness and hope. It would be fatuous of me to say that we should understand now that money really isn’t everything, because it is, if you are one of those facing or have faced job and home losses. It is overwhelming for many people to lose their basic security and many cannot cope. However I believe that you can cope and you will manage, one day at a time.
There are three things in my life that have helped me to face an uncertain future:
1. My father lost every vestige of financial security when he left Germany and came to the UK as a refugee. He supported his parents, did anything he could including digging roads and selling door to door and yet kept his sense of proportion and optimism.
2. I have always been in a profession with no job and financial security.
3. I lived in a country – the US- where there is no social fall back, you will get unemployment benefit for a finite number of months and welfare, if you have lost everything, but that’s it. It is not a safe feeling.
There are always those numbing moments in life, which you would rather forget. When my marriage failed, I moved back here at the start of the early nineties recession to try to help my father with the business, which had been supporting us all for several years. My father had had a stroke and really couldn’t work anymore – in his early eighties! I moved from our lovely huge house in Los Angeles to a room in my father’s house and on my first day into our office, I was greeted by an atmosphere which would have frozen out Jack Frost. My son was thousands of miles away in the US and life had never seemed bleaker.
However I am, I suppose, a ‘bloody minded’ person, very stubborn, one who will not give up easily and these reversals were to me like ‘red rag to a bull’. Things do get better, but you really have to do a bit of a ‘Scarlett O’Hara’ and grit it out.
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I am really enjoying having this web site, which has grown into more than just a career site, but much more an opportunity to communicate with other like minded people, who love the business.
A new feature, recently added to the site, is a series of film review pages. These give you the opportunity to learn a little more about the film and TV work I've done and provide short excerpts in the form of video clips for each. The list is by no means complete and the section will grow as time progresses. Please have a look at the pages which are available by clicking "Reviews" and let me know what you think via the "Guest Book" at the bottom of this page.
So on to the New Year. We have a busy two months ahead with with the BAFTA’s and the Oscars coming up, viewing films, voting etc. There are some outstanding films this year and the choices will be difficult. The business is becoming more and more competitive and even work in TV is declining up to a point, especially as advertising revenue and budgets decrease, but opportunity in other areas is growing, cable, small films and the Internet, it’s amazing how resourceful this profession is.
Again Happy New Year ! and talk again soon.
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