The Ministry of Silly Talks

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Like so many other contributors to this site, my future with True/Slant’s future is uncertain, unless, hey, I missed a memo?  So anyway, I figure I might as well go nuts, and just post anything that moves me, or I feel moved to post. As a few of you may be aware – those that care, sob – I’m something of a thespian as well as a hack. The showreel above is a demo of some of my character voicework. Listening to it, I think a couple of the characterisations are not my absolute best, but it was all done in one take, practically one breath. And er, soon, I may need all the gigs I can get.

The photos incidentally were taken in Buenos Aires, by a writer/director friend of mine named Eric. He seemed to think that if I was living in New York or LA I’d be going to castings all the time. Later that day when I excitedly repeated this to another friend, Emily, a savvy, on-the-make journalist from New York, she laughed and said, “I don’t know Scott really. I mean you do have a very unAmerican nose!”

The Duchess of Porkies

The lady in question is Sarah Ferguson, who was at one time married to Prince Andrew, Prince Charles’ younger, even more equestrian looking brother. (He has molars like Mr. Ed).

Divorced a long time ago, but still trading on that royal connection for all it is worth, the Duchess of York is clearly someone that believes charity begins at home. She has been secretly filmed by the gutter rag ‘News of the World’ (known also as the ‘news of the screws’) selling access to her ex-husband for 500,000 pounds, with a $40,000 deposit.

Hardly the image that the silly moo was trying to project, that of a tireless campaigner for the needy and downtrodden.

Indeed, almost no sooner had the incident made the headlines in the UK (but not, evidently, on Americancentric True/Slant) before ‘Fergie’ was on her way to the United States to accept an award for her work with underprivileged children.

Vintage quality Bill Bryson – and it's brand new…

Image via Wikipedia

Bill Bryson: The secret life of your home

Ever wondered why forks have four prongs? Or why we choose salt and pepper over other spices? For his new book, Bill Bryson took a trip around his own house to find out why we live the way we do.

via Bill Bryson: The secret life of your home | Life and style | The Guardian.

In one passage, describing the original owner of the house in Norfolk where he and his family now lives, Bryson writes:

“If it was Thomas Marsham’s goal in life to make as little impression as possible upon history, he achieved it gloriously.”

We’re in the presence of a master here, possibly the most informative and yet funniest non-fiction writer of our times. In the wake of that kind of writing, I know when I’m outclassed. So just read the rest of the article, and marvel again at Bryson’s gift for finding such wonder in the seemingly commonplace and mundane. Still on top of his form, after a long run including A Short History of Nearly Everything, the man shows no sign yet of slowing down. It’s enough to make you weep.

'Smart salad dressing' could save Venice

Venice could be saved from sinking into the sea by releasing fat globules similar to olive oil into the water that are ‘programmed’ to form limestone reefs, say architects. The novel solution for the threatened Italian city, built on silty islands on the Adriatic coast, uses experimental technology that they have dubbed “smart salad dressing”. It would work by releasing oil droplets into the water that are chemically programmed to react with carbon dioxide in the water, precipitating an artificial limestone carbonate. Two British architects at University College, London, are among those behind the Future Venice project.

Rachel Armstrong, from UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture, explained the “protocell” technology. She said: “This technology is based on the chemistry of oil and water and has the special property of transforming carbon dioxide into a limestone-like substance.” The globules would form “solid pearls” of artificial limestone that could protect buildings from future damage, she argued. via ‘Smart salad dressing’ could save Venice – Telegraph.

This might just be the first post I’ve added to this site which comes under the environmental category. Doubtless it has to do with my all encompassing belief that the world has gone to hell in a handbasket anyway. But some things are worth preserving, and a few of these are man made.

Colin Firth shows how it's done

He shows how to give an award acceptance speech with ‘aplomb’, that is. And I use the word advisedly, as it is the word which Mickey Rourke seemed to have so much trouble with while reading off the autocue last night, at the BAFTA awards. That ladies and gentlemen, would be the British Academy of Film & Television Arts. These are the awards which are more or less accepted as being the British equivalent of the Oscars. Anyway, one actor who seemed perfectly at ease up on the podium was Colin Firth, who won the Best Actor gong for his work in A Single Man.

Mr. Firth gets 10 out of 10 points for the sang froid, the style, the sheer aplomb of this acceptance speech. He even remembered to thank the fridge repair bloke, in fact he built his whole oratory around it, as you can see (below). Certainly it made a nice change from mushy self-congradulation. I draw no comparisons, especially with pompous and bombastic awards nights across the Atlantic. Whoops, too late.

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The Meaning Of Life, Part One

Spent a few wonderfully nostalgic hours in the company of one Chris Grant yesterday, a former colleague from 20 plus years back, with whom I worked at various radio stations: Essex Radio, (‘Don’t talk to me about Ethics, I own most of it’) and Chiltern Radio (‘broadcasting to Hearts, Beds & Bucks’ {Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire & Buckinghamshire}). Both stations are defunct now, gobbled up by the conglomerate GWR.

In those days Chris had a beautifully mellifluous, deep, velvety voice – and that certainly hasn’t changed. Then as now he lives in an apartment near Finchley Central, decorated in such a manner as to be dubbed ‘the old curiosity shop’. All those years ago, Chris revealed to me he was the voice of the narrator in Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life. I was deeply impressed, and in fact I still am. “The meaning of life, part two: Live organ transplants.” And so on.

It’s as remarkable an achievement to me as if I were ever realise my goal to play a baddie in a James Bond film one day, or have a bar named after me.

I’d say that the years have been a bit kinder to Chris than they have to me, given my girth and receding hairline, but that’s to be maudlin. It was indeed a nostalgic afternoon, yet we didn’t cry into our beer about the glory days. On its own, it was worth returning to Britain for – especially after the Lebanon.

What made Floyd so great

Ask yourself how many of today’s television ‘personalities’ would allow themselves to be upstaged in the following manner? Here he is, getting a jolly good telling off from a Frenchwoman who informs him that his cooking is rubbish. But does Keith throw a starry tantrum? Of course not. He just smiles and cradles his glass of red wine. And perhaps even more remarkable, this bit of self effacery didn’t end up on the cutting room floor, it made its way into the programme.  Class, ladies and gentlemen, no other word for it.

Back & thrice as bad

Yes, Jet-Set Hobo fans, the old smarm bucket from the South Seas is glad to be back and posting for the brave new media. In our absence, we have been dealing with the following: Finishing a novel called The wild cats of Piran. Going to meetings already about turning it into an animated feature film. Listening to a lot of Mozart, Vivaldi and Tartini. Avoiding a jealous husband who is stalking me on facebook. Keeping my end up as a gourmand and an imbiber. Trying to put together a grubsteak again at 43 years old, after years of wandering the world, scribbling in my notebook and making little art house movies. Teaching film appreciation and production at a film school. Most of the students on the course think that Pulp Fiction is ‘Old skool’ cinema. They want to be scriptwriters, but everything comes out in phone text speak. They consider themselves well read if they’ve got through the whole Harry Potter series. One of my students from a previous course, a 52 year old permanently unemployed Australian named Wayne told the whole class once that his favorite movie of all time was Lethal Weapon III. It defies credulity.

All the world's a stage…

School play at 15: A glittering performance of rare perception

The Jet-Set Hobo thought he might address the subject of his career as a character actor, however abstrusely. Perhaps the reason the Hobo travels so well is that he’s a natural actor, an accomplished mimic, with certain chameleon characteristics. He instinctively knows how to blend in, how to lose himself in a crowd, how to walk as if he knows where he’s going.

…When I was 17 years old and an actor in training at Christchurch’s Court Theatre, I was called upon marshal this ability improvise in a potential opportunity or crisis, while staying in character, when I took over a the role of the romantic male lead – halfway through a performance of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Alistair Browning, who had been playing the role of Ferdinand, had fallen ill very suddenly somewhere towards the end of Act II. (He lived to tell the tale and even played Blake Edwards in a Peter Cook biopic a little while back).

I got the idea when waiting in the wings with one of the stage hands, whose name was Victor. A wonderfully fruity old British thespian named Richard Mayes was doing his best to extemporise. In case you didn’t know, extemporising is improvising Shakespearian dialogue onstage. This was during a wedding scene at which stage managers dressed as nymphs and fairies were supposed to dance for the young lovers, and over which he as Prospero was meant to preside. Ferdi and Miranda’s absence in this scene he had to explain away by saying this was merely the rehearsal for the wedding, not the nuptials themselves. To get this message over in iambic pentameter there was an awful lot of “Hark Thee” and “Thisdidst Thou”ing going on, poor chap.