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.