REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY
11 November 2012
I am in England at the moment and my film EDITH has been postponed until next year. This is disappointing but not unusual for independent films, when money is so precarious. We were to film in Austria, but now, I am told it may be Hungary, where it will be less expensive and where there may be some money for the film. We shall see, this business is uncertain at the best of times.
So I will stay in the UK until early December, see friends and hunt around for more interest in my series : New Chilling Tales.
Today is Remembrance Sunday and I am in Eye, in Suffolk with my close friends at their lovely country home. After church we went to the laying of Poppy wreaths and the two minute silence, thinking of those who gave their lives for us in the last World Wars, at the town War Memorial. It was very moving and I enjoyed it. It was cold and as I wriggled my icy toes in my thin shoes, I thought back to the Sixties, when I was filming a David Mercer play for the BBC. I was in a freezing Yorkshire graveyard with Tony Garnett, now a prominent Producer, playing my brother, trying to keep my feet warm, while we were filming for the clever, very political film....THE BIRTH OF A PRIVATE MAN. Today and that day long ago were so quintessentially British and I liked that. We are now living in such a Global environment and of course I am living largely in America at the moment, and I enjoyed being taken back to such a British ceremony in such an English town.
I believe many of those wonderful BBC plays in which I appeared on television, were wiped off the tapes we used....a great loss...in those days I don't think the powers that be looked far enough ahead to the future, when the films could be of value to new audiences in a different format. They were very shortsighted. A few of the shows have been saved and can now be seen on BBC America, among other networks and of course later shows were saved and are popping up all over the place. I have a whole new fan base from the shows like THE SAINT, DANGER MAN (SECRET AGENT), THE AVENGERS, THE PRISONER.....etc, etc. It ' s wonderful to hear from all sorts of new people everywhere who have recently seen my work. The BBC are not the only ones who were so casual with the great works they created. MGM also sold its great archive for a pittance to Ted Turner. Did they not realize its value?
And now the BBC is in turmoil with a couple of Newsnight shows that have gone sour and resulted in the Director General resigning. Sometimes I don't think many of our leaders quite realize how global the world has become, especially that of the media. Our modern media is so hungry and indeed greedy for any story that can create a stir and is scandalous. So that you had better be aware and ready for dealing with its fallout, if you're running the show and this man apparently wasn't. I was also amazed that Prince Harry's protectors were not more 'savvy' in protecting him from unexpected photography by his 'guests' at the party in Las Vegas. Did they not know to keep those sort of people away? We British can be very naive sometimes and imagine that we are above all "that sort of thing", and we do not understand that the rest of the world isn't.
In the meantime, Director/Editor Jesse in Idaho is finishing off the THE YELLOW WALLPAPER and then we will get it out to the important film festivals and get on with another one. It's good to be working even at my age!
That' s all for now friends...more later
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