THE DAYS FLY BY
05/10/12
Hello and welcome back to my Blog, if you’re still with me and reading it. I see it has been
too long since the last one and I do not know where the time has flown. I seem to have been so caught up in learning lines, doing contracts, watching little ones, that I have neglected other important matters.
 One thing has happened... we are going to film THE YELLOW WALLPAPER on October 13 and 14 for our online films .....newchillingtales.com. I am playing the almost sole character in it and there are a lot of lines to learn! The great actress Dame Sybil Thorndyke used to learn a bit of poetry everyday, until she died, just to keep her brain in tune for learning lines. It does get harder as you get older and I wish I had followed her example.....crossword puzzles aren’t really enough and my grandchildren can both beat me at chess...so I need to sharpen up a bit. Still this script is not as difficult as Shakespeare thank goodness. I found doing that recently hard indeed. I am excited though, it’s a terrific story, a woman empathizing with the wallpaper in the room where she is confined and eventually going mad with it. We will bring the wallpaper to life with special effects, which will give the film an added edge and life.
I lie in my garden here in my swing and learn my lines under the oak tree, while the squirrels throw acorns down on the roof cover of the hammock. Think they want to get rid of me?
The other thing that is taking so much time is the promotion of the newchillingtales website, which is a challenge and a half. That is the Search Engine Optimization of the site, so that people can find it and it is so difficult for amateurs like me. Worst of all, the Facebooks and Google +’s of this world keep changing their game plans and just when you have learned to do one thing properly it’s gone and you cant do it anymore. Life definitely used to be simpler and easier, but if you want or have to play in the game, you have to play by their rules.
I dont think I mentioned that the film I am going to make in Vienna, called EDITH is based on the life of Edith Stein, a Jewish woman, who became a Roman Catholic nun and was canonized for her work helping the Jews escape Nazi Germany. Her life parallels the story of my father’s sister Lisamaria Meirowsky, who did the same, although she wasn’t canonized. They were both remarkable women, who were braver than, I think, I could ever be. If you’re interested, they both appear in a book called “Edith Stein and Companions, the Road to Auschwitz.” It’s important that we keep the story alive, because there are apparently people who don’t believe that the Holocaust existed. The same people probably don’t believe in current slave trafficking and other horrific activities, the worst of mankind get up to.
I am so lucky to still be working at this stage in my career and doing so many interesting things. I am afraid I have given up going to auditions for Commercials, although the money is good. But is rather depressing sitting in a room full of old ducks like me, knowing that your record counts for nothing, only that you have the right ‘look” for the Advertisers. I do remember once in Hollywood when I was there going to an audition for a commercial and the casting Director, came out to where we were all waiting for our turn to be auditioned and took a Polaroid shot of two of us and then cut it in half, to show the Director.....how cheap and funny is that. It can be a brutal profession.
I must say though that with the arrival of the internet I get a lot of fan mail from people who are seeing many of my old shows anew ... a whole new generation out there, who have never seen them and they do stand up pretty well, most having been made on film and not digitally, which wont last. You know that so much wonderful material made by the BBC was lost, because it was made on tape and they wanted to re-use the tapes .... so gone with the wind are many great performances. I played Julia (pictured right) in George Orwell’s 1984 in the 60’s and saw that again recently, think you can buy it now through the BBC and was so pleased to see how well it stood up. The fact that it was largely made in a studio, gave it a very claustrophobic feel, which really suits the story.
Well that’s all for now friends....more soon!!
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