My Pop Life #243 : The Blacker The Berry – Kendrick Lamar

My Pop Life #242 : Brown Sugar – D’Angelo

Brown Sugar – D’Angelo

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Over the course of these blogs I have tried to describe what happens when I hear certain songs, how they echo through my memories through the years, how I have been marked by melodies, touched by tunes, sprung by songs.

So let’s go back to 1996.

When people ask me what my favourite job was, I usually pause for a second, then say Ivanhoe.   The 6-part BBC TV series.

Normans and Saxons, Jewish pogroms, Robin Hood, the Crusades, the Knights Templar, jousting, mead, scandal, intrigue and a mysterious wounded knight, Ivanhoe.

We filmed all over Britain in Norman churches or on rolling hills with no electricity pylons, muddy lanes, deep forests and candlelit castles.

My personal highlight was working with Sir Christopher Lee in Durham Cathedral.

He was playing Beaumanoir, Grand Master of the Templars, knights who led the crusades with the holy cross of Rome and also conducted the witch trial of Jewess Rebecca and others.  I was playing Prince John,  Regent of England while his brother Richard was in an Austrian prison returning from the Third Crusade.  Brilliant Susan Lynch played Rebecca, and swooned at Jenny when she came on set one day because she’d gone to see Pecong at The Tricycle, where Jen played the Trini Medea.

The Wad, Prince John, Susan Lynch

Steve Waddington played the titular character Ivanhoe, we called him The Wad, and years later a group of friends went to see him take part in a genuine boxing match on the Harrow Road – three rounds only but gruelling.  Rory Edwards my old brer from West in 1983 (My Pop Life#221) and who had a tendency to disappear for months on end on his motorbike played my screen brother Richard Couer De Lion.  The next time I saw him was at Heathrow with his then wife Julia Ormond on their way to  St Lucia.    Trevor Cooper my other old brer from Edinburgh 1978 played Gurth.

Trevor getting tooled up

The next time I saw Trevor was when he’d moved to Hove briefly and we played croquet on Hove Lawns, a competition which birthed the catchphrase “He made up the rules – and he won!!”, and he then turns up in BBC3 comedy series This Country

Ronnie Pickup played Fitzurse my advisor and confidante.

What a delightful fellow.  What a great actor.  So pleased when he got such a great role in Marigold Hotel.  Ciaran Hinds played Bois-Gilbert brilliantly as ever, then turned up in The Crucible on Broadway with my wife Jenny in 2016, twenty years later.  Yes, we drank Guinness.  Vicky Smurfitt a beautiful Irish actress played Rowena and we would see her over the years in Los Angeles or London, working, because she is a very good actor.   Another comrade Peter Guinness, veteran of the Alien 3 wars (My Pop Life#171) played Montfichet, Christopher Lee’s right-hand man.  He would later turn up in Lithuania on The Assets in 2013 playing a Russian general.  Dermott Keaney became a neighbour in Brighton.

Chris Walker who had been on The Bill with me in 1983 turned up modelling the Saxon look. 

All these many streams flowing through each other’s lives, crossing and re-crossing each other, growing, working, surviving.  All friends, still.

But my real true highlight and great friend since those days was director Stuart Orme who offered me the role of Prince John.  It was a fantastic role, full of possibility, and I took it by the horns.  Researched it a lot  – then threw it all away and followed my instinct again as ever.  Tried to imagine what it would be like to be born into Royalty in the 12th century in England.  Son of Henry the 2nd.  History of course is written by the victors, or in this case, those who could write – the Church, who hated John because he confiscated much of their land.  I had a ball though, because Stuart was so mercurial quicksilver in his direction.  He would encourage us to play in rehearsal, knowing we could do the scenes but allowing for expansion.

Classically though, he would consistently do two things which have always stayed with me as an actor.  First he would suggest – if the shot would allow (ie no fancy camera moves where the camera finished in a different place from whence it started) – that we do two takes one after the other without cutting in-between.  He would just say reset then Action! again instead of cut.   Second he would, when he was happy, say “Cut” and then announce with twinkling eyes that we’d got the shot for the BBC and so now we were going to do one for us.  What a brilliant guy.  What a great director.  He got the very best out of everyone on that show I believe.  So much trust, so much confidence, so much love for what he was doing, and it was infectious.

Stuart Orme with baseball cap on the left directing Ivanhoe

I have worked with dear Stuart three more times since then, starting with The Last Train a superb thriller about the survivors of some kind of meteor attack or nerve gas or something or other who are on a train in a tunnel and wake up to find an empty land.  Christopher Fulford, Nicola Walker, Treva Etienne… So they move north to find the guy who invented the Thing – me – only to find that I have aged CONSIDERABLY.  Lol.

Ruth Quinn (make-up designer) and the great Nick Dudman (Alien 3 and countless other genius creations) – prosthetics created this look

Then on a TV show with another friend Jemma Redgrave called Cold Blood in 2007 in Liverpool, also with Matthew Kelly, Ace Bhatti and Pauline Quirke and Kwame Kwei-Armah.  Then finally and very wonderfully in beautiful Galway for the first episode of Jack Taylor starring Iain Glen, another old reprobate of the old school and Richard E Grant parties.  People say that your dreams die in Galway, meaning why would you need any dreams (or ambitions) if you lived in Galway?  Having spent some weeks working there I would concur – but then I lived in Brighton for 18 years, another city which fills its graveyards with ambition.

Which means for me I suppose that I will retire in or near Brighton – or Galway !

Stuart was just the same in those other three gigs as he was in Ivanhoe – alive, generous, calm, confident and full of trust in each and every actor he had cast.  He’s a dreamboat really.  I genuinely feel sorry for any actors who have not experienced his ways.

In that year of 1996 we filmed on the beach at Bambrugh Castle – Northumbria, bleak and beautiful with my brother Rory (Richard) and my mother Eleanor of Aquitaine (Sian Phillips).  All of us on horseback.  She gave us both a proper telling off.  Vivid to me today as it was when we filmed it.

We filmed in the Cloisters of Durham Cathedral with Sir Christopher Lee playing the scary Grandmaster Templar Knight.  He had a complicated hair and make-up situation I seem to recall but I’m not a gossip.  Much.

My castle – Prince John’s – was in Essex, the outstandingly well-preserved Norman keep at Hedingham Castle.  Here was my space, my tapestries, my heavy curtains, my servants, my dogs, my faithful advisor Fitzurse and my hawks. I threw cups around, jumped on the heavy wooden tables and schemed against my dear brother in that castle.  We feasted & we received news and ordered executions in that castle.  Those were the days!

The final location for me and most of us was the Tournament sequence which took up most of Episode 2.   It was near London, just outside of the western side of the M25, and we had a hotel we could use if we didn’t want the drive in and out every day, but no PDs to spend.  It was on this gig that I discovered a dark truth about some productions – that it is part of a Production Manager’s job (or a Line Producer’s job, there is considerable overlap) to save money, and often they would get a percentage of any money saved.  Which is called an incentive.  And often why the unfortunate person in that position would often be the least popular person on the unit.

But my overwhelming memories of those two weeks were the sheer numbers of extras who turned up – many of them from Historical Re-enactment Societies so they had all the haircuts and costumes and knowledge of the period already.  We’re in 1194 remember.  There was a jousting arena with a great tent above where the clashes would happen for Prince John and his retinue, (Valentine Pelka, Simon Donald, Ronnie Pickup, Jack Klaff), various Bishops and others.  So we had seats and shade at least.  I had an amazing horse who I loved to ride.  Before we’d even started we all had to spend a week at Steve Dent‘s riding school in Rickmansworth learning to trot, to stop on a mark, to get off and on with elegance, and to act while riding a horse.  I loved it all and have done it quite a few times since.

But it was the extras who did it for me.  In their hundreds.  Dedicated. Strewn around the great park where we were filming, many camping in the woods.  I overheard one group as I walked past one day, a young woman being welcomed to join a group who were sitting down, relaxing for a bit. “Come and join us” I heard one say, “Sit down a while and tell us your story”.  

It was medieval so it was.

And this was the LP – D’Angelo’s Brown Sugar – that I would play in the green room when it was my turn.  Not much to say about that really.  But it is a marvellous piece of work.

My Pop Life #241 : Good Times – Chic

Good Times – Chic

…leave your cares behind…

The end of a very bad week.  The final week of July 2020.  May is years ago, March is ancient history.  Everything is vague and without form, stretched and lumpen at the same time, the same time, at the same time.  Is it Thursday?  And yet things are moving so fast.  Future historians, claiming to be experts in 2020 will be asked “which month?” Unmarked cars bundling protestors to unknown destinations.  Tear gas and Federal troops in Portland being faced down by a Wall of Moms.  Covid-19 raging through Florida, Texas, California, Georgia, Arizona.  Statues of confederate generals coming down.  The $600 pandemic unemployment assistance (PUA) landed into our bank account on Wednesday to save us but there will be no more.  Unless the House Bill already passed to renew the payments (in May!) is taken by the Senate before Friday.  It feels like the whole country is teetering on the edge of chaos.  We certainly are.  Without that $600 every week – on top of our normal unemployment ‘insurance’ – we couldn’t pay our rent.  It actually covers the rent, gas and power, internet and TV.  The rest goes on food.  Union dues (not suspended).  We do sums.  We could survive until December, just.  Trump declares a $200 a week renewal instead.  This will extend us for another month.  It is not up to him though thank fuck.  But have the Senate left it too late?  What is going on?  Then the accountant calls.  How do we plan on paying our tax bill this year??

The tension is palpable in the house as Jenny and I both individually go through mental scenarios of how this will play out.  Result : misery.  We are 100 days from the election.  Which Trump wants to postpone.  Because he is also refusing to bail out the Post Office – the USPS – which is almost bankrupt.  Because he is against voting by mail aka absentee ballots.  Which have a close to zero history of fraud and abuse.  Already Republican Governors have been closing down voting stations in african-american areas, causing lines of waiting voters of five hours or more in the recent primaries.  In the middle of a pandemic.  The crisis is real.  His tactics are obvious. He wants to claim – when he loses, because he is toast as I have been saying for months now – I say he wants to claim that the election is rigged.  He wants to pave the way for clinging to power.  He really needs to be defeated very heavily indeed.  Of course Biden is a corporate stooge, same old steady hand on the tiller of business-as-usual theft and corruption and poverty.  But four more years of Trump and I cannot see any kind of democracy surviving in this beknighted land.  Dark times.  Racism thrives everywhere. Police violence every single day.  Prisons full of black men. Making profits for corporations.  For marijuana offences.  Latinx families under constant threat of ICE bashing down their doors in dawn raids and pulling out people to be taken away like the Slave Catchers of 1850.  The leading scientists and epidemiologists being pilloried by the President in the media and people refusing to wear masks across the land.  This country is sick.  The only balm is that Brooklyn is still fairly sensible at the moment and we feel relatively safe outside. It has taken months to get here.

Safe enough to go for a short walk out to buy Jenny some hair grease and drop into Trader Joe’s.  We walk across the park on Friday afternoon as the time ticks by and no agreement is reached in the  Senate.  Are we all doomed.  It doesn’t just affect us, of course – millions of people are expected to pay rent on the 1st of August, and landlords are now coming for the four months rent which was suspended in March.  The whole week has been in shadow and foreboding.  Worry and doubt.  We cannot concentrate on our projects, there is no focus.  We ‘re not in the right headspace I heard somebody say.

The stress of lockdown has expressed itself in various invisible and visible ways.  I have had styes on both eyes which needed constant care with witch hazel and requests for Lucy and Mandy to send me the gel which is not available over here.  It does, slowly, work.  Jenny has had tight shoulder and neck muscles which develops into a migraine if she doesn’t time the medication precisely.  Sometimes it happens overnight as she sleeps.  Many people are eating their feelings and getting heavy.  So tempting.  But it is summer and I decide to change my size by eating smaller portions. A fistful of food for each meal as Richard Grant told me last time he was over.  And – yes – the size changes.  Jenny and I do pilates every other day, stretching and mixing up push-ups and floor exercises to a disco soundtrack, otherwise we’d have become gargoyles locked in our final frozen embrace no longer able to walk up or down the spiral stairs.

We look at our two cats Roxy and Boy and how they trust us and demand love.  We brought them over on a plane with us in 2014 and we really don’t want to put them through that again.  If and when we leave New York it will be by car or boat.  We like it here, the local NY Governor Andrew Cuomo has handled the pandemic well, his competence is welcome enough in the current climate.  He shields us from the worst instincts of this moronic President.  (I’m not discussing his dodgy Democratic politics and wooing of the wealthy).  In many ways the Federal system is saving our bacon – or facon which we eat with boiled egg in a breakfast salad.  Bars and restaurants that don’t follow the covid protocols are closed, have their licences withdrawn because people just can’t stand to not be in crowds, drinking, maskless.  People are going crazy.  I don’t blame them.

We’re in regular contact with England and the pandemic response there doesn’t really make us want to go back.  They have to work out their own shielding because the government gave up months ago.   Barnard Castle and beyond.  How dark must the shadow go before the light appears?  We are about a year away from opening theatres, concerts, football matches to the public.  Let’s Be Honest.

As we walk across the park towards De Kalb Avenue everyone is out enjoying the mild warm sunshine – a rare pleasant day amid the incessant humidity and tropical sunshine which beats New York City into a puddle every summer.  Everyone is masked unless they’re eating ice-cream or drinking, or maybe just a wanker.  Past the hospital where I got my coronavirus test four weeks ago, two days after Cuomo encouraged everyone on television to get the test “it’s free” if you’d been on a demonstration or protest.  I had, so I went in, they took 40 minutes to do the paperwork then probe my sinus cavity with a swab and off I went.  The result was negative, delivered by phone two days later.  But then two weeks after that my HealthPlan, run by my union the Screen Actor’s Guild, sent me the paperwork which showed that the test had cost $1600 and they had covered it.  I appealed because Cuomo had said it was free.  I wasn’t paying it, but they shouldn’t either.  I don’t understand the health system here at all I must say.  And they didn’t do the antibody test either.  Although there is now evidence that after three months, the antibodies weaken considerably which is not good news for a vaccine.

As James Lovelock said the other day, the virus is there because of us.  Because we have spread our influence and interference over the planet for so long and in so many disrespectful ways, that it is doing the balance that it has always done. A self-regulating living entity – Gaia – has a constantly cycling and recycling amount of every chemical which has always been here and is always in flux, rising and falling going in and out like the tide, turning carbon into sand which washes into the sea, becomes used for shells of creatures who die and deposit on the sea bed which will one day become another landmass and be washed out again into sand.  Or – be burned by volcanic activity – the only way in which CO2 is naturally sourced by the atmosphere.  According to this theory, human production of CO2 is causing the planet to change the cycle, and among other conditions – coral bleaching, algal blooms and grape vines in Norway – we seeing icecaps melting.  Humans have also crowded animals into smaller and smaller pieces of land.  The pressure we have exerted on the natural cycles (of which we are part obviously) is causing a reaction.  Viruses are a way of balancing the conditions for life back to health – which is what Gaia always does.  And the way coronavirus is spreading through our species, attacking people in myriads of different ways indicates that we have become food.

Some people are in denial, but we have become food.

And so the two masked foods walked past the hospital and did not clap for the health workers inside as we had done at 7pm every night for three months, banging bin lids and saucepans, whistling and cheering.  That bit of the lockdown was over.  Actually the numbers in New York State have got better – 8 deaths today, 11 yesterday – and the city has started to open up.  Carefully.  Restaurants have put tables and chairs and awnings on the sidewalks, spilling out into the streets and little pockets of Brooklyn have becomes scenes with DJs and drinks and masks.  As we cross Flatbush Avenue into downtown Brooklyn we walk through the outdoor seating area for Juniors, one of the oldest established diners in New York, black-owned.  Famous Cheesecake.  Nice atmosphere inside.   And outside today.

Downtown Brooklyn – Fulton Street mall – christened Kingston Jamaica by Jenny years ago – is bustling with sidewalk stalls selling head-wraps and CDs,  masks and disinfectant wipes, incense and hats.  Only buses and the odd bicycle to make you jump out of the road.  Almost 100% black people.  All masked.  Shopping.  Selling.  Hanging.  A feeling that we are at the end of July and tomorrow the axe will fall on all of our finances.  Teetering on the edge.  I stop outside the hair shop as Jenny goes inside for her stuff.  I light a cigarette and let my mask drop.  It is relaxed and focussed but I imagine that everyone is dreading the beginning of August tomorrow. I inhale and watch a man talking to everyone who walks by.  I imagine a story of someone stealing his story for their drama project.  I watch the wonderful mixture of clothes, hairstyles, ages, shapes.  I finish my cigarette and pull the mask back up.

What will we all do?   I can’t feel the tension, but I know it’s there because this is the new weird, as my beautiful friend Jo Thornhill said this week.

And then I hear it.  The distinctive four on the floor beat bass drum and slap, the scratchy guitar, the genius cameo piano line, the harmony female vocals as the sound gets nearer and nearer and I realise that a man is pushing a large speaker along – like a Peavey amp & speaker combo inside a shopping trolley which absolutely thumps out bright and loud as a discotheque as he marches down the sidewalk bouncing in time to the beat :

Good times !
These. are. the. good. times
Leave. your. cares. behind
These. are. the. good. times

Ha!!  I had to laugh inside my mask.

A rumor has it that it’s getting late
Time marches on, just can’t wait
The clock keeps turning, why hesitate?
You silly fool; you can’t change your fate
Let’s cut a rug, a little jive and jitterbug
We want the best, we won’t settle for less
Don’t be a drag; participate
Clams on the half shell, and roller-skates, roller-skates

I mean it was genius.  The guy was a genius.  These covid 19 times.  These Trump times. These Black Lives Matter times.   These Brexit times.   These good times.

Good times
These are the good times
Leave your cares behind
These are the good times