Post Hollywood - Fly Toronto

Cayle Chernin's Blog

When I returned from four years in Hollywood in 1976, post TRACKS, Henry Jaglom and Dennis Hopper notwithstanding, I did survive 1975 - whose motto according to Nicholas Ray (REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE) was "Survive and stay alive in '75". Ray told this to me and Rosie Shuster when we took him out to dinner at Imperial Gardens to pick his brain because Rosie was about to direct me and Michael Margotta in her first short film: PAPER LIFE.

I took that advice seriously to heart and managed to survive going to New Mexico with Dennis Hopper after TRACKS was completed shooting. This really was my naive 'season in hell' from which I eventually managed to drag myself back to Toronto, a sadder but wiser girl - well there was still some distance to go to get to wiser but I had logged all the experience I needed to be able to get there..

Back in Toronto, my Father uncharacteristically took me to visit two of his 'patients' - he was a dentist. They were a married couple. He was a physic and she was a writer of True Confessions Stories. Do they even exist anymore, not the couple, those mags? Prime Time TV has replaced these provocative stories of sexual escapade that happened behind closed doors with brazen blatant reality television. The couple were quite delightful and I was fascinated as I guess Daddy knew I would be by her filing system for characters..she had a wheel that she could spin and match traits..then come up with behaviour.

The psychic husband told me not to bother trying to talk to people about what I'd been through. Nobody would really be able to understand the world I had come back from. He knew. He had spent time there after building a bridge somewhere(?) and been wined and dined but managed to escape..all the stories I wanted to tell were for another time or place - just return now to the land of the living and build my life from here on..

I took his advice as well. I moved on. I tabled my outrageous experiences except for the occasional interview but I was circumspect about revealing the more salient details, which I felt was to my credit.

I got very involved in Video through Artist Access places like A Space and Trinity Square Video, Rogers Cable Community Access and St Christopher House United Way Settlement house. It was a good combination and I made many tapes, mostly on 3/4" format, that were disposed of in 1998 when My Parents sold their house. I have some VHS copies of the ones I thought most deserving, but they remain to be transferred at some later date - or not to some less time-resistant format. I understand that CD's and DVD's are not indestructible at all.

I would infrequently regale friends with 'stories' from my Holly'weird period but mostly I considered it a great lesson in life that I was trying to apply myself to.

Looking back I would have to say that I was obviously open to certain advice and perhaps lucky enough to get it.

Dennis Hopper was in the habit of saying: "Why write, nobody reads" and I questioned my desire to act when I returned. My first breakthrough was reading for the Blind at the CNIB - it made sense and so I was able to do it and that led to my Living Literature Program - reading for the Old Folks at several Parkdale Nursing Homes and that led to making a series of 3 shows called aging In Institutions for Cable and that led to being hired as a Video Producer at Baycrest Geriatric Center and finally to my 'oeuve' - the programs I sold for Broadcast.

The last of those docs was my journey to find my Russian relatives that resulted in the television hour I AM HOME, finally completed in 1997. After that I was ready to get back into acting full tilt. That's when Lorraine Sinclair was born.

Nudity and Love In A Four Letter World

Cayle Chernin's Blog

I goggled myself to see if my blog was accessible. It's not, but the plethora of deviant websites featuring nude pictures of Glace Bay's own Cayle Chernin was mind-numbing.

At the same time as GOIN' DOWN THE ROAD was being shot in Toronto, I was commuting to Montreal do LOVE IN A FOUR LETTER WORLD, Cinepix' second s'exploitation movie after the successful VALERIE. My family was outraged because there were nude scenes, but Arthur Voronka was co-producing, Canadian actor Michael Kane, (Art Hindle's Uncle and respected Canadian actor) was starring, Baker Advertising exec John Sone was directing and it was in some way his story and the splendid MONIQUE MERCURE was in it, already a Quebequois actress of note - so I thought I'd hit the big time.

I was living with my acting teacher (of course) and Eli Rill being a New Yorker from the Actors Studio didn't think nudity was an issue for a professional actress, though he did have concerns about the script which were well founded. Voronka, who I love and still see, was furious at me when I was quoted in the Montreal Star as saying I didn't find the movie at all sexy inspite of its focus on sex. When I later became acquainted with Anais Nin and read her erotica and journals, I realized why I felt that way.

This online diary, this note to myself, this emotional journalizing is something I forsook some years ago as a predilection to avoid, because as Anais Nin discovered, it becomes a 'habit' a way of being in the world having a conversation essentially with yourself.. a way of retreating from life; avoiding being in the moment. But it is placing me in touch with what I am really thinking and feeling. I feel inspired to write truth because of the dangerous notion that there is a possibility that some others may be privy to these random thoughts. That at some future time I may really regret my big mouth. Or my big need to communicate my real self. Acting is a wonderful way to be myself while being someone else entirely and yet only that much more myself. To live many lives.

I used to think that the price I paid for each character I played or acting situation I was in was that I was impacted irrevocably. As an actor I have worked, studied, braved humiliation to be able to reach my spontaneous self on camera. In my 20ies I was terrified of being a phony conventional actor. There were many trials by fire, particularly Henry Jaglom's second film TRACKS, starring Dennis Hopper. Hopper called sexual encounters "scenes" the way you'd refer to an acting scene, but at that point he was straddling the fact/fiction line very precariously as I would find out.

Years later I attributed my casual sexuality with being in LOVE IN A FOUR LETTER WORLD and playing an itinerant Hippy Chicky who sleeps with musicians and prances about naked with ease since I considered it just another challenge for the actor. I was young and happy to respond to whatever the demands of the role were, but it did unlock a sexual freedom that had only existed in relation to my first lover til then.

While shooting 'LOVE IN A ...' I took the train back to Toronto to do a few of the GDTR shoots, Don Shebib had alluded to the possibility that we may try a scene where Pete (Doug McGrath) and Selina (Me) have sex and after she starts eating potato chips and talking too much so it kills what little attraction she has for him. We never shot that scene, instead I was running around naked with Andre Lawrence on the Montreal set, with wardrobe, makeup, an apartment on Crescent Street and 6 weeks work..The GDTR cast was a little envious but I knew that they were starring in a great movie in which I had a very small part though I got 4th billing and the movie I was starring in was notsogood and opened me up for a lot of flak in Toronto, because there I was barring it all before everybody and their Mother did so. IT was appropriately 1969. If I had done my nude scene in GDTR it would have been so much better than doing it in the context of an explotation genre film in every way. So there were regrets even at the time, but I did my job. I did a nude scene, well a love scene for TRACKS but it never made it into the film, and we even shot one for NOT A FISH STORY very recently but it didn't end up being used..so I figure it is LOVE IN A ....that has placed me in the celebrity nude sites - whether they actually have any material is another story, but it certainly exists and in a way who cares. I always liked the idea that I would be able to view my younger self from a distance and spent my early 20ies trying to get on film as much as possible. I wanted to be able to look back and I've been pretty good about not regretting some of the bad work that now exists and pops up on late night TV or video here and there..but all those internet pops are a little disconcerting. My legit hits dwarfed by their tawdry, lurid flashing come ons.

More important to me is that I didn't know what was troubling me this morning - put me into a real funk. When I realized the impact of those sites, as I was blogging away, I rose right out of said 'funk.' The Truth dissolved the emotionalism and took me to the heart of the matter:

Does how you see me affect how I am?
Or am I how I am whether you can see it or not?

These may seem like stupid questions but they defined my sexuality for many years, the fragmentation Anais Nin was talking about when she said: "Passion gives me moments of wholeness".....

and blogging right now is stimulating my connection to my truths.

I have also started to work on a scene from THE GLASS MENAGERIE for our Monday class. I've always wanted to play Amanda. Perhaps her tenuous position is infiltrating my situation. The creative safe place is not without its dangers, not to mention, those incipient a-ffects that linger on or pop up to spoil your morning coffee.

Cayle Chernin's Blog

Cayle Chernin's Blog

Hello Out There!
(A beautiful play by William Saroyan)

It was wonderful to work last night. Bob Desrosiers (*correct spelling) and I did a scene from IN THE BEDROOM, Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek flick. Difficult scene taking place after their son has been murdered by his girlfriend's ex husband..ugly, because the confront is riddled with pain and msconception, but it resolves to where they come back together.

* my techno ineptness rears its head in things like - I don't know how to re-edit a previous blog - I spelled Bob's last name wrong and then couldn't correct it - which makes this the daring blog days, no net...should I quit now?

I have to to have lunch with Mother over at George Brown College where she is taking one of her 'courses' - the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree. My Mother Beryl Adeline Moraff Chernin would be horrified if she knew I was even mentioning her name. She used to tell me in no uncertain terms as a teenager that I'd better not write about her...Or as Ted Allan's Mother once asked him (and its the title of one of his books of short stories) "Don't you know anyone else"...

It appears that The Toronto Film Festival will be honouring Don Owen with a Retrospective which is really wonderful..It just shows to go you that if you survive long enough things come to pass..one of the films mentioned was PARTNERS (1976) which he did with Hollis McLaren (sp?) and MICHAEL MARGOTTA. Don met Margotta in L.A. through Rosie Shuster (then Roz Michaels) and I and cast him as the American renegade, Hollis as the all Canadian girl. Martin Knelman cites it: "for sheer novelty...the only movie ever made in which love story and thriller elements are combined with ringing declarations of Canadian Nationalism and dire warnings about the risk of US takeover"...well now doesn't that just sound ...'timely'.

I wonder if Don will wear his leopard-skin pillbox hat to the Fest.

Cayle Chernin's Blog

Cayle Chernin's Blog

My original intention with this blog was to create an ongoing Actor Diary, so here goes:

Easter Monday - waiting for fellow actor Bob Desrocier to come over to rehearse the scene we are doing for Chris Owen's Monday night class which I am new to, but which has been going on for years..it's a great group and now that our Green Room Group is on hiatus I am thrilled to have a place to work out..

I am working on a new reel with friend actor/film maker Pamela Matthews - my old reel is mostly blonde and two years old, so it's time..ah, an actors work is never done..and bears the name Lorraine Sinclair, a stage name I used for the past 5 years accumulating new credits after several years spent doing documentaries and only sporadic acting work. The idea was that Cayle Chernin was known from GOIN' DOWN THE ROAD (long time ago)and as a documentary film maker and that Lorraine would be all about acting - it sort of worked - well who'se to say what would have happened if I had simply stayed with Cayle. Eventually I added Cayle to the LS handle and used the unwieldy Cayle Lorraine Sinclair which was rather embarrassing, like I was trying to do some 3 name Hollywood thing - then when I started to be listed as Cayle Sinclair, it was the end of the name game...Cayle Chernin is back to stay.

On Friday I will be at Humber College courtesy of Martin Lager, another Eli Rill alumnus, to talk to the students about GDTR and was asked to also bring Anita Doren's NOT A FISH STORY, a short we did together that got into the Toronto Film Festival two years ago..a lot of years in between those two projects!

I ran into an actor from Cape Breton at an audition recently and he started to tell me about an amazing film called Goin' Down The Road. When I told him I was in it, he said: "wow, you look great" - I said "Well I was very young at the time, it was my first film". He said "Yeah, but do the math...you look great"!

The life of the actor: how do you keep those juices flowing when the work is few and far between? I have a short coming up in May for director Alan Powell, an Actra co-op which means no dough but a two day shoot when I get to play a great role of a 'grifter-type' Mother warring with her two sons..a lovely dark and dirty piece which I'm looking forward to.

Otherwise, I'll be teaching Pilates, doing wine tastings and bugging my agent Jack Frizelle to get me some auditions..

I have two scripts to work on:

ACROSS TIME a feature about a woman who slips through time and falls in love with the younger version of a dying old man - I've been working on it for years, first inspired by an association with Marcus Adeney, a cellist and writer who passed away in 1997 at the age of 97. I made a docu-portrait of him in 1991: THE MAN WHO COULDN'T LOSE that I sold to CBC Canadian Reflections and Vision TV. Marcus had played for the Silent Movies in the 20ies and that's the period my heroine time travels to in her psychic distress. I'm looking for a month somewhere that will allow me to reenter the script and do a final draft before trying to get it to an interested producer/director.

MOONSHADOW is a one act play, I originally wrote in the Fringe All Night Play Writing Contest two years ago. This year it won third prize in the Fringe New Play Contest - but we didn't win a venue in the Lottery so there are no immediate plans to mount it. Set on an Native Rez, a fishing guide catches a Mermaid and tries to get her to grant his wish - Money to send his nephew Jimi Henrdix Moonshadow to Toronto to play guitar. Two tourists, a Mother and Daughter come to the Island to have a spiritual experience a la Native AND CULTURES CLASH.

Please scroll down and check out the links in my initial entry - Michael Mortensen's mini website for me gives a filmography, a bio and acting credits and talks about our project THE CIRCLE ETERNAL, the script Michael is working on and that I hope to play Mrs. Harper in.

The links feature a lengthy 4 installment piece about the Actor take Action Seminar that I attended two summers ago in Rome at Michael Margotta's Actors Center Roma - which is set up to operate like The Actors Studio - well not the one on TV, but the one that Michael studied at with Lee Strasberg. The Method has gotten a very bad name over the years but Margotta's work with actors importantly utilizes the great explorations of Stanislavsky and Lee Strasberg and others who pioneered the authentic work of the actor.

The GOIN' DOWN THE ROAD link is a story I wrote for Canadian Actor Online about the maiking of the film in 1969 and was used to kick off an online chat that can be found at that site.

Just found out that one of my Pilates classes has been cut -- hum, now what...

Cayle Chernin's Blog: Today is the first day of the rest of my blogging

Cayle Chernin's Blog: Today is the first day of the rest of my blogging

another fabulous link is Ross Manson's www.thewreckingball.ca

Today is the first day of the rest of my blogging

For the time being, here are links to my various professional, internet accessible info.

www.michaelmortensen.com has a minisite with selected credits and filmography.

www.canadianactor.com/cayle features links to my pieces on "Goin' Down the Road" and Michael Margotta's Actor Roma Acting Seminars.

www.avalanchefilms.com is Anita Doron's website. The film we did together, "Not A Fish Story" is featured there. For our upcoming project, see Michael Mortensen's website.

www.aaronberg.com Friend Aaron Berg, an original voice and talent.