Cayle Chernin's Blog

Dennis Hopper Remembered, Elegy for an Effigy

2010-04-12T10:17:00.000-07:00

It is with mixed feelings I am hearing and reading accolades to the life and career of Madman Dennis Hopper with the news of his fatal cancer.

NY Times critic Manohla Dargis reflects on a 17 year old Hopper in Rebel With Out a Cause, affected by mentor, idol (my word) James Dean, whose untimely death shortly thereafter made him the Jesus Christ of bad boy actors.

She speaks of how important Easy Rider was, and refers to the “unfortunate” Last Movie, suggesting that Hopper was “Spiralling out of control. That he disappeared and re-emerged with Apocalypse Now”.

Speaking of unfortunate, and bad timing, that was the period in which I met Dennis in Hollywood and was to appear opposite him in Henry Jaglom’s second movie Tracks. I ended up mostly on the cutting room floor and probably owe some of what Henry thought was my ‘bad acting’ to Dennis mentorship:

We were living it out. I have written about the Tracks experience and my own Hollywood “foolish period” and it all comes back now. What I remember most about Dennis Hopper:.

Dennis Hopper beat me up! And I know that I was not the only woman to be the recipient of his rage and drug addled sensibility and physical violence.

Dragis refers to his friend Jack Nicholson being with him at the Hollywood Sidewalk Star ceremony. I recall then, that Jack wouldn’t come near Hopper’s New Mexico retreat, having run from there one crazed night in the past and being more than aware of Hopper’s insanely volatile irrational temper.

I was captivated by this actor who created “scenes” which is how he referred to sex and orchestrated it.

I got an interesting education from him and was certainly there of my own accord, though Henry Jaglom tried to dissuade me from joining Dennis in New Mexico after Tracks was finished shooting.

There were fabulous times. Dennis was a lot of fun a lot of the time and a very contrite lover after he threw me against a table for objecting to his “scene” with another woman when I thought he had brought me “home” – his ‘acting’ bride.

I bruised some ribs and he took me to the clinic and said he must love me because he only lashed out like that at the one he loved. Daddy took me in his arms, on his lap and was forgiven. I don’t blame Dennis for this. I came face to face with my own syndrome.

I have always said that the allure of the ‘bad boy’ is really that we get to be ‘bad girls’ and I was a hippy, a liberated woman, alternative and dedicated to the ‘life of the actor’. I had already been in Goin’ Down the Road and Cinepix’ Love In A Four letter World’ in Canada. Life with Dennis actually made more sense than my previous three struggling Hollywood years. I had arrived, I was making movies again, I was back in the saddle, living and loving and yes learning from a ‘pro’ that “making a movie is a lot like being in love”.

One friend at the time described my behaviour as being blinded by ‘the star’ and living out the American Dream, staring in a movie, albeit a Jaglom film. Really it was about how fascinating Dennis was to me, a little middle-class Jewish girl from Cape Breton, never imaging that a man would ever hit me. Here I was staying in the house of Mable Dodge and Tony Luhan in Taos, New Mexico where Mable had brought D.H. Lawrence, where the Indians chant on the radio at night, where there are Hot Springs and rumours that this is the oldest place on Earth, where pottery shards grew like weeds in the sides of sacred mountains.

It was heaven and it was Hell. Dennis made it so.

He claimed that despite his obvious abusiveness, resentment and love/hate relationship with the female sex, he helped women to find themselves. It was a puzzle for him, and who else besides a shrink you paid took that much interest in your psychology.

Admittedly, I was quite self-fascinated at the time. I was my own mirror into the World of Emotions and Reactions, of studying my own behaviour, my own unconscious to be able to serve as an actor. With Dennis, there was never a dull moment. The drama of entering New Mexico, of the Taos Artist Community that reminded me so much of the Markle/Headly/Raynor/Coughtree fabulous weekend drunks with the Boys from the Three Schools – artists and madmen, my people.

But no one had ever hit me before and the shock of that first altercation with Dennis should have been enough to send me screaming from a situation that I had no ‘smarts’ to handle.

But I loved him..honest to pete, I was crazy about him.

My ribs healed, I went back to L.A. to work on a short film and then, I went back to New Mexico! Because I guess I hadn’t learned the lesson well enough: That a man, you thought cared for you could beat you up and hurt you physically. Call it loss of innocence or a cure for naivety. When I finally ran from Dennis’ House in the middle of the night following a terrifying frightening beating from a freaked out, insane spewing lunatic, I called a cab which ended up dumping me and my trunk in the middle of the dark night Taos road. I prayed to God (fallen from my atheistic pinnacle) that whatever piece of information I was lacking, whatever I needed to learn to not be in this position, whatever I needed to have happen to rescue me, would happen and I would survive and thrive again.

And it did come to pass, I was rescued, I played out a final scene’ with Dennis, called the ambulance to pick him up from an accident of his own causing and moved on.

Dennis may have been right that the women he was involved with all learned valuable lessons in life. That they left him better than they arrived. I can’t speak for other women but I did learn a lesson for my own life that would be beneficial. Oh cruel teachers, I even appreciate your lessons because how ever we learn, we must. For me that period of my life was an opportunity if I could survive Hopper and my own ‘craziness’ – an effigy of my failed self - that little girl was who walked bravely into the lion’s den because she was too stupid to know better.

Still I feel a bit squeamish at Dargis’ revering of Dennis Hopper, that he gets to be lauded and appreciated before he dies. I don’t begrudge it exactly. He’s young to die, though he has packed some serious living into his iconic life. Because Dennis in his insanity did as Dargis said “push it to the edge, gave us “uncomfortable, … to embarrassing” work as an actor, revealing a man on “the verge of losing control”.

Brecht said: “the art of the actor is to expose life”. Dennis Hopper consciously or otherwise gave us a case study of a dangerous man – certainly for me that is what he was. The American Dream gone bad. I think he “blew it” as a human being in certain ways, I think he got away with too much, that he profited from a Hollywood and an World that gave him his success.

Someone once asked me in Dennis’ presence what the Last movie was really about. I said it was about Jesus Christ dying on the Cross. Dennis agreed. Dennis was the quintessential actor/martyr. A classic sado-masochist. We could watch his terrifying antics and laugh and be titillated because at the basis of our obsession with pornography and sexualising and using and abusing, he was Catholic enough to also beat himself up.

Reprise One in 2000, original post in Wildsound blog, Blog archives

2009-09-03T11:23:00.000-07:00

The movies and Marlon saved my sorry little non- life as a failing high school student running downtown to spend the weekends at Bloor and Yonge (how much time in my life is going to be spent in that vicinity, on the strip from Bloor to Wellesley, I have attended acting classes, sessions, workshops etc since my 'sainted' Mother schlepped me to Marjory Purvey's Theatre of The Air - School of Radio Drama, when I was 12 and we had just moved to Toronto from Stevenville, Newfoundland, a move I thought the Family had made for my acting career..I would have preferred New York, but Bloor and Yonge became the center of my Universe.

Smash Cut To Hollywood:

Canadian actress, first day in Hollywood, lunch at the Old World Restaurant with Henry Jaglom, one of three people she knows. Ten hours later, and an incredible parade of exotic people, like Roger who couldn't eat vegetables and seemed very intelligent and Rita, the beautiful Black activist who would become a close friend and so many more, capped by the image at closing time at the Rainbow when the handsome, great actor rising movie star JACK is coming at you, with a grin, you know that grin, meant for you, yes you, he's coming to see you.

Henry had alerted Jack that there was fresh meat in town.

"He's got a notch on his cock and he thinks he's a man" - Country Joe MacDonald song.

Now apparently the Big Bad Jack-be-nimble has 2000 notches to his credit. Lota water under that bridge, which would overwhelm even the large black dildo Jack pulls out of his pants in The Departed.

I bring this up only because my first night in Holly wood to have been cast in this Henry Jaglom experimental improv was more than even I could have expected of the Hollywood experience! WOW!

And Don Johnson had one line: "Cayle, Henry had to go, his friend Jack will take you home".

No kidding, crazy girl, you are here.

Would I kiss and tell or talk out of school about something that probably I would be the only one who remembers. Why mention it? Star fucking is a long tradition, but for my part, sleeping with the famous is not what it was about - rather the romance and excitement of dreams coming true, which is more as Biff Rose used to sing: 'the dream come false' or as I later thought The American dream had become the American nightmare. see Tracks blog.

I treasure all the many experiences I have had, some are worth talking about, some become the fabric for something else, all contribute to whatever it is I have to offer at this juncture.

I am the sum total of my parts.

Summer and Smoke Screens

2009-08-26T03:53:00.000-07:00

I recently got my hands on the novel The Queen Bee (1949) by Edna Lee remembered darkly and vaguely from adolescence as a seminal work in the creating of my ‘romanticism’:

Re-Reading it, in my present ‘woman-as-crone arch-typical goddess’ – isn’t that who I am supposed to aspire to be as a ‘women of a certain age’ instead of just being the sadder but wiser Gal.

Originally serialized in 3 parts in Woman's Home Companion magazine, May - July 1949, THE QUEEN BEE, owned by my Mother, reflected the view of women and romance of the time that preceded my arrival on Earth and would affect me and my sexuality when I came of age at the end of the 60ies – you can call that ‘good timing..!

I caught some phases I thought were key to my sensibility

you're young enough to believe life has value…the fairy tale like all fairy tales was shattered…Beauty, it’s like worrying about a dead man…when it’s love you know it - how, i queried - there was love and there was the biological urge, how could you tell which was which? did love come first or the urge? when would I be old enough to be treated like a grown up, how did one grow up?…I did not know that before this day was done I would have started to grow up, and then, much as I might desire it, I could never be a child again….Then he stood and taking my hands pulled me up beside him..held my hands, looked into my eyes steadily..some dark force, some potency I saw in his - inner trembling crept from my knees to my thighs even to my breasts - rapt and blinded…” and most important to me: when would I be old enough to be treated like grown up, how did one grow up?

So was the heroine of The Novel as she fell hard for the Rochester-like older man, husband of her selfish ‘feminine’(as in wiles)Aunt.

That was then, and now, not since women mourned the shock and awww of the outing of Rock Hudson, our romantic fantasy via the Hollywood Dream Machine has homo-eroticism reached a peak of extravagance with The Passion of the Christ and the passion of the Paul. (Passchendaele)

I know that gentile Christian males have a Christ thing and fear death at 33, but who are they fantazicing about, after all - a renegade Jewish Rabbi of Biblical fame, who’s mythology replaced the traditions of Greece and Rome and the Jewish Creator with a man-God, the son of God.

And in the Catholic catechism, “Who am I” “I am a child of God” “Who is God”? “God is Father in heaven”, the children chant as the incense of denial burns sexual repression into tiny brains that will one day persecute Jews for killing their ‘Saviour, who died for their sins’.

Maybe it has something to do with these mama's boyz fantasizing about their Mothers in childhood and freezing them in adolescent sexuality which is about where they are at sexually. The VIRGIN Mary is apparently the most famous woman of all time.

Images of Heff and his Playmates; Jack Nicholson cavorting on a yacht surrounded by nubile young things..just not too young as to cause Polanski type souris.

Jack Nicholson reputedly bragged that he's had sex with more than 2000 women.

http://the-legion-of-decency.blogspot.com/2008/10/passchendaele.html

2009-02-23T11:21:00.000-08:00

Link for Jim Henshaw's brilliant look at Passchendaele and the Canadian Film biz scene. I wrote a reply, don't know if I posted properly to the blog so here it is:
Jim Henshaw, you nailed it. From Calgary to Cavalry and to the crosses row on row, the P's of Passchendaele include predictable and in the final glory sequence, preposterous. Styled somewhere between old Hollywood, due South of Calgary, in Movie Land, though perhaps coming from fine intention, "P" bogged down in manipulative contrivances and way more suspension of credibility than is acceptable. We're told that the movie is a success because it brought in 4 mill. How can that be true of a 20 million-dollar movie. But it’s a movie Harper can see and so might endorse funding and various Canadians across Canada will cry and self congratulate and die rather than see Young People Fucking which is a terrific film, Yes, it may have seemed a stupid 'cutting off the nose to spite the face' but the choice of title is an unabashed slap in the face of hypocrisy - and in the end it was brave and caused an uproar and a rally to arms. Jim, you have beautifully described the mentality and the ‘religion of the sacred cow’ that controls our culture. We champion the 'chosen' and perpetuate our failure to communicate or create. We’ve seen the success of the Quebec model when it worked, the Australian film industry that funded but kept its nose out of content, and yet we pursue our copycat version of the American dream creating our very own nightmare goverment funding with private sector criteria - however, Actra's TIP and CIPIC programs, the critical success of those $100,000 films that are being made by brave and 'resourceful' film makers to use the word Rosemary Dunsmore elegantly posed in her Actra Award Acceptance speech for her role in the indie 'The Baby Formula'. Jim, your idea for funding is brilliant. It harkens back to the model that followed the success of Easy Rider when BBS gave one million to 10 film makers and got one Last Picture Show which made up for the investment. The 9 other films may not have made money but they made filmmakers who went on to do more good work. Let’s not worry about a ‘star system’ or box office as such. Let's keep our 'nut' low and encourage and champion 'good work'. Hugh Jackman to Barbra Walters: “put the show back in show business”. We can take good inspiration from the entertainment & universality of last night’s Academy Awards that in the age of Obama, were less about competition and more about the solidarity, love, honour and respect that the acting community feels for each other and for ‘the work’. Take heart, there is a new day dawning. We will make our movies like Nurse.Fighter.Boy. I refer you to wonderful work of The First Weekend Club and to Cam Haynes Film Circuit, an alternative distribution exhibition model which brings Canadian films to communities across Canada and cities throughout the world. Our Canadian movies are better than ever. Anne Tait and Barry Pearson's Iron Road could have opened TIFF not Passchendale and we would have been truly amazed at the ability of our filmmakers to make a multi-million dollar movie. Given accomplished, wise and movie-loving intellects like Dan Lyon and Paul Gratton, fabulous producing teams like Jennifer Jonas and Leonard Farlinger, Reginald Harkema of New Real Films, WE WILL OVERCOME!
Cayle Chernin
www.cayle.ca

NATURE WITHOUT NURTURE - "You mean men".

2008-03-03T14:02:00.000-08:00

Marching on: February, Suicide Month in Toronto is happily over and we survived only to be reminded in the immortal words of Tennessee via Blanche DuBois “don't hang back with the brutes”.

The brutes have been out there in full cinematic force: Daniel Day-Lewis in Let There Be Blood, the inhabitants of No Country for Old Men, Viggo's Russian Mafioso.

Oh yes, and there will be more blood, to flow. It is ever thus, the anointment of blood, oil and water – not mixing, just coagulating to choke us in these last days of Pomp(ei)osity! What struck me about the movies was the total lack of nurture that existed in the lives of these doomed and dooming men, none of whom one would want to meet in a dark alley or even in bright sunlight for that matter. In the Coen brothers masterpiece, I wondered if Javier's downfall happened: slight spoiler alert: (accident) because he didn't do what the victim/heroine girl said he didn't have to do...my feeling was he spared her and that signified a change in him that affected his radar – as the cowboys say: Stay Hungry.

Perhaps more upsetting is our own real life brutes: ah yes, censorship has reared its ugly head again just as our World is opening up – imagine: Hot at it in their underhanded way, Straussian neo-conservatism: (it's for our own good) want to be sure that the government doesn't fund anything offensive, and Heritage Canada will be the judge of that.

We can only guess at what is happening behind the scenes and in the small print that we are not privy to. We have seen the damage done as the Christian soldiers march onwards and backwards, while we cry: "let there be light", and we can only hope that our present bastion of free speech and fine mature work can overwhelm the childish and reprehensibly threatening grown men and women who think they have the right to decide what is offensive and what isn't...how offensive is that!

Just as our movie business is gaining in international presence and what we have to say in our very own idiosyncratic way is making new strides in the World, The born-again Neo-Cons come along and crush it all with the incense of denial and the smothering righteousness of dirty-minded duality.

We know that people LIE when they are indulging in the same duality that allowed the Nazis' to be good husbands and fathers or at least animal and music loving culturists while exterminating vast amounts of human kind as vermin. (And of course we realize in some milieus it is still a crime not to be tall, blond and blue eyed – this, mandated from a short dark man). Let us not linger longer with these diaTRIBES: let us be mature – we've been here long enough to know better, let poor Blanche emerge from her incarceration in the Looney bin, guilty of nothing more than heightened sensitivity and poverty and shame and guilt..let us point our finger at the real 'crazies'.

The Vikings, a bllooddy, thirsty lot were apparently the genesis of Den Land and Eng Land, born side by side, but neither must cross the line. They must stay on their side of the line. This reminds me of a story my old friend (well he was in his nineties) Marcus Adeney told me of a time when he was visiting an Aunt in England and every day would go to a place in the woods where two ant hills resided peacefully side by side. He experimented to see what would happen if he shifted one ant hill a touch closer to the other. He carefully did so over several days and when the black ants became aware of the increasing millimeters of the red ant colony, they attacked in full force and decimated the whole community. Territorial self preservation activated by seeming invasion of space. We experience it all the time, we all know the feeling when a person gets too close when they are talking to you, gets in your face, or the one who takes up too much space.

The fight for god-given land, which is the greatest marketplace of all, though the Indians said “you can't own the land” has been the property and currency of much war..the Middle East standing as a horrible reminder of escalation and agony for all the inhabitants which ever side they are on.

Bush says he is just a “simple president” as opposed to what some have termed “simple-minded”. “It's simple” he says, he's “on the defensive” - “we gotta be in the League, otherwise we're in a political fetal position”. Interesting choice of words Buddy Boy, now that you appear to be choosing your own words according to some notion that they make sense: “Our philosophy won and it's going to win again” What philosophy is that? That America right or wrong are the good guys”? “Success is paramount if democracy is to take hold” Try strangle-hold from the man who entered the presidency in a bogus election. The gist of his discourse: we changed the law, so now what we did that was illegal is legal. It's that simple, sports fans, you just have to change the law, back to the old ball game. And our Canada, led by Steven Harper, another born again aspires to be in that League of American Super heroes, and take us down that tired territorial garden path.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Emperor is naked, the Commander-in Chief 'starkers'; Liberal is not a dirty word, the conservatives are not conservative, they are reactionary, the born-agains are not Christian in the true sense of the Jewish Rabbi Christ's teachings. The Censors have the dirty minds and we are in a dangerous place in time - the brutes are gaining more and more power to crush the common peoples, corporations reign tax exempt, and greed continues to prove that the desire to receive for yourself alone is a downward spiral that gathers all up in the vortex of it's death-wake.

The cult of celebrity, the lives of the rich and famous, and the competition to join, are all a smoke screen dating back to the beginning of time when un-nurtured nature wrecked havoc. Yet, Humanity's harrowing existence continues to give us great movies and the Earth, polluted and ravaged as it is, is still generous to a fault and affords us great joy though Dr. Strangelove still rides the rails, an A bomb between his legs, now he's fueled by Viagra... the dinosaurs dance of death, for the old men who have no country is to take us out with them, to push that button, drop that bomb, go nuclear, because human kind is not always to be trusted as Diogenes knew only too well and Alan Price reiterated: "the only honest man he's seen was standing there in tears".

Yet let us take heart because Oprah is glorifying GOOD Deeds, albeit as a competition but kindness as the Talmud says, one should act with, as each person is negotiating their own journey through his veil of tears and finally in the immortal words of Gandhi: "Be the change you want to see in the World" I want to see the smart people smarten up, put their neurosis and fear aside and take the power. As Mr. Adeney posited: “War is an agreement”.

I saw Tracey Erin Smith's wonderful one woman show The Burning Bush, the story of a rabbinical student, rejected, who finds real spirituality doing a pole dance and who ends her show by asking the audience to join in on "I ain't going to study war no more" Hi(s)Story Channel be damned..it's time for the go round to stop and the merry to start..we still have a beautiful planet, we have enough food and comfort for all, yes brother hates brother and the holy land is holier than thou and damage is done daily fellowman and woman to fellow, but its like looking a gift horse in the face not to work with what we've got.

It all begins with a child saying the Emperor is naked, the Censor complicit and the war of the worlds an economic field day..why are the corps and the rich tax-exempt while the welfare Mothers are called onto their dirty or non existent carpets for draining the system? a mere drop in the proverbial bucket as Alec Guiness so aptly put it in Bridge on The River Quai: “those mean men” and the legacy of sex without intimacy, a form of violence.

It is not surprising that there is no sexual activity in Let there Be Blood, only the sado-masochistic relationship between Daniel Plainview's greedy capitalism and his nemesis preacher, Eli's religious fervour – as they engage in humiliating each other. Day-Lewis' only gentleness is towards the children, only where he can control. The sex supplied by Viggo's long legged battle to the death is purient naked violence. We've come a long way since Straw Dogs shocked and excited the World with the rape scene that became a sex scene. Or have we? This years movie anti-heroes are essentially sexless narcissists living on the most materialistic plain (view) of existenze! Classic cases and we still live with these archetypes. In the excellent new show at Can Stage STUFF HAPPENS, David Hare has laid out the journey America in her super powerfulness travelled from 9/11 to Iraq..led by a Commander in Chief who believes God put him in the White House because the people didn't and who has smirked his way through his reign of terror-mongering, exacerbating and escalating the lucrative business of war.

The Emperor is naked and the fashion designers are selling us a bill of goods that we pay through the teeth for as we run to stand in line for the latest ....

Up The Yangtze - new Canadian Hot Doc

2008-02-18T11:29:00.000-08:00

Up The Yangtze, a commentary on contemporary China from Canadian Director/Creator Yung Chang is a well conceived, beautifully shot “must see” documentary, toasted at Sundance and already currying what promises to be only the beginning in a long line of honours.

Originally titled Up Your Yangtze, the film really puts a face, several faces on the emerging New China. And what faces they are..a lovely young girl, Shui Yu, raised with Mother, Father and siblings at water's edge, in a lean-to of sorts, barely at the time we meet them, with food to eat. We follow her to her first job on the cruise ship, and how the family agonizes about sending her out to work, where she becomes Cindy (Americanized to suit the Tourists) and where we meet among others, Jerry, a male Counterpart.

Only a film maker who is living his story with an open mind and heart like Yung Chang, can bond with his subjects, and have them share for us, extraordinary moments of intimacy and personal truths.

Actors are very attune to being 'private in public' as Yung must also know from the Meisner classes he took in New York at The Neighbourhood PlayHouse. It is no surprise that this talented graduate of Film Production from Montreal's Concordia University, calls his movie “the Cassavettes version of what's going on”...in which he wanted “to capture the raw emotions” and he sure does.

Moving, illuminating, a real window and open door into a World that most North Americans can almost not fathom and must learn about. Even Chang, who grew up in Whitby, Ontario expected the China of his Grand Father, who's moving song at the beginning of the film guides us into the Four Gorges Dam scenario of the not only shifting sands of time but the floodgates that will immerse the homes of the riverside inhabitants and cause mass migration.

One expects next a Dramatic Feature from Chang as if Up The Yangtze is not dramatic enough. Chang: “The Cruise Ship became this kind of microcosm – above decks were the Western tourists and below decks were the crew workers looking above and trying to climb that ladder to join the tourists eventually”.

We follow the upward mobility of the young Chinese kids and their sometimes hilarious teachers who clue them in on their cruising customers, along for a last ride up the Yangtze: “ Don't say Canadians and Americans are the same” which brought a great cheer from the sold-out opening night screening at the Cumberland. “Never call them fat”...”say plump”.

Cindy buys her first new clothing, puts on make up, entertains a visit from her parents.. Cindy's Father like Lear's Wise Fool tears your heart out. Her Mother, intelligent and suffering because of what she comprehends about the changes. And watching Gerry scam the tourists has me thinking of what Yung Chang's feature could be: 'Jerry and Cindy get ----'!

`

naiveté: Wild Mouth to The Sand Factory – More Blood on The Tracks

2008-02-18T11:26:00.000-08:00

Monday night, February 4th at 7:30 I participated in the PRAXIS sponsored reading of a new play: THE SAND FACTORY by a talented young writer Taylor Sutherland at the Concord Cafe.

The play deals with some issues and thoughts that have been provoked lately in some of the material I've been seeing like the recent production of WILD MOUTH by Maureen Hunter..thought it was an amazing work tackling the great divide that WAR produces particularly between the sexes and particularly when we are talking about the two past World Wars. I was struck and intrigued by the exploration of Blood significance, the Christian male Christ fixation and the attraction/repulsion law of Magnetism - the eternal battle of the Sexes.

THE SECRET, that esoteric new Bible packaged like an infomercial but informative nonetheless addresses the Laws of Magnetism and you are what you think, hence drawing to you, attracting what you are being - (of course it's all true but sometimes the over-simplification is as annoying as the graphics)

In WILD MOUTH, the British teacher, who has lost a son in the ongoing War needs to find some explanation for why her Boy wrote of an experience where he laid beside a dead naked body and felt peace. She is tormented by her inability to understand what could have possibly happened to her son to have him write of something so alarmingly inexplicable, prior to his death and to try to comprehend the unique relationship those who have experienced WAR have to it.

I don't really want to critique The Tarragon's production, directed by R.H. Thompson, I am more interested in the play itself . The fact that I was introduced to the play and enjoyed some of the work is sufficient: The attraction/repulsion between the The Teacher (feminist) and the Ukrainian War Hero (brute): the grieving Mother's attempt to understand what men see in war, or what war is:
“The good and evil invented by people trapped in scenes” is a line someone says in the play and it took me to the Hollywood experience of seeing everything as a “scene”, while working on Tracks, a film that starred Dennis Hopper, I learned a great deal about people trapped in scenes, and about good and evil.

When David Fox says to the woman at the end of the play that what you want to tell the Man who attacked her sexually, and provoked her to shoot him, is that “you are grateful”, she finally understood what it meant to be 'at war' - it resonated with certain of my lessons in life administered in the school of hard knocks by less than nurturing teachers. But sometimes that's what it takes to learn something, like a particularly bad relationship I had, that actually taught me the most about myself.

I remember Dennis Hopper believed that in terrorizing certain women in his life he had given them a gift: The loss of naiveté, is different than loss of innocence. To be naive is a kind of privilege-ness – one discovers that naiveté neither protects you nor justifies ignorance. It is 'precious', in the negative sense of being oh so self conscious, protected, and though sometimes enviable, is not really valuable in the search for truth, for real living and ultimately it is unfair, the very first lesson in growing up..that life is unfair, becomes another lesson, that the real unfairness is the protected one who fails to understand the pain of reality as it impacts those who cannot escape it.
Subsequent to working on TRACKS, I wrote a teleplay for CBC Drama inspired by my experience working on the film. Like TRACKS it dealt with a soldier returning from Vietnam who ends up punching a 'round-eyed' woman, when she tries to take his photograph and thereby capture his pain..."you want to feel my pain..try this" he says as he delivers a blow to her solar plexus.
In Wild Mouth, the woman is also a photographer,and I have been reading about Diane Arbus, the extra-ordinary photographer who revolutionized photography with her challenging stirring disturbing photos of so-called freaks and marginal types. Arbus delivered a humanity, a comprehensive penetrating and exciting new way of recorded 'seeing'. I ran out to get the movie FUR when I started reading the excellent biography by Patricia Bosworh. As for FUR, they couldn't have gotten it more wrong.

Mabou Mines DollHouse

2007-01-30T08:26:00.000-08:00

Cayle Chernin's Blog

Mabou Mines adaptation of Ibsen’s Doll House
Jan 30-Feb 4 at Harbourfront Center World Stage

From their website: www.maboumines.org :

Mabou Mines DollHouse transforms Ibsen’s bourgeois tragedy into high comedy with a deep bite. In the tradition of a series of award winning deconstructed classics directed by Lee Breuer, like Gospel at Colonus and the gender-reversed Mabou Mines Lear, DollHouse is on a political track that speaks not a word of politics.
Breuer turns Ibsen’s mythic feminist “anthem” on its head by physicalizing the equation of Power and Scale. Torvald, Rank and Krogstad, (the men), are all played by actors whose heights range from 3’4” to 4’5”. Nora and Kristine are tall and the maid is a full 6 feet. Nothing dramatizes Ibsen’s patriarchal point more clearly than the image of these little men dominating and commanding women 1 1⁄2 times their size in a “playhouse size” doll house. The collage of Edvard Grieg’s piano music assembled by Eve Beglarian accompanies each scene, silent movie-like, while Narelle Sisson′s mannerist set further skews our sense of proportion and reality.

It’s a stiff ticket unless you can get an Equity half price discount, but what a fantastic theatre experience, reminding one of what Theatre is really all about. I felt that Ibsen’s play has survived so that this production could transport us past the gender warfare and struggles for equality that has brought us into this 21st Century.

Almost indescribable is the effect of the tall women and the small men – small only in stature, as the actors rip the tiny doll house furniture to shredded wheat and gnaw away at preconceptions and even at what we think we know about the patriarchal system that has fostered the great divide that still clouds our lives and times.

To see these women fall to their knees before their tiny ‘gods’, machinate, baby talk and suffer at the iron whims of their oppressor/protectors, and finally Nora’s emancipation in a shocking operatic rendering of the last scene that is accompanied by a stripping down of the actor physically that underscores with a vengeance how we are shocked by truth and comfortable with ‘feminine’ artifice.

The production was so imaginative, the actors so committed and compelling, the lines reverberated with new illuminating nuances, that I was mesmerized and slightly removed emotionally I thought..until I realized that it was hitting me in a place of new emotional territory.. such an intellectual transcendence of proscribed thought, that even feminism cannot see beyond the patriarchal bonds of human mating that we are locked into…

At some point I felt like I was watching the oppression of Tall people by Short people and the insanity, hilarity and irony of that underscores all inequality making the worse bully an agent of our own willingness to succumb to the ‘manner born’.

How cowed we are by status quo’ted!

Adventures On The Green Screen

2006-11-01T13:01:00.000-08:00

my first live action/animation venture LETTER TO LIZA has two screenings in the Nov 9-18 RENDEZVOUS with MADNESS FILM FESTIVAL:

Tuesday Nov 14 at 1:30
Friday Nov 17 at 1

Letter to Liza was nominated as best experimental short in this Summer's (06) Female Eye Film Festival.

Lori Axler is a homeless girl waking up under a bridge and wandering through Jason J Brown's 3 D Downtown Toronto Animation until she is driven to drastic measures involving a digital bridge and digital train..the impact is POWERFUL!

it has been fascinating to see th actor's performance on th bare green screen set(any handled props are real) transformed by Jason's imaginative animated environments/sets

(if you're counting pixels, this is no Disney extravaganza, but it is imagination unlimited and solid movie-making, and a great experimental ground for actors)

i have always disliked cartoon people, an early aversion to being regarded as a cartoon, fragmented by another's inability to see all of me, now i like to think i'm all of me, whether you can see me or not

i loved comic books as a child, but I loved most the ones in which the cartoon people seemed most like real people (Ray Forrest Tv show?)

i began to realize that i can't really relate to animated people, i don't wish to invest any feeling in them, because of course people cause th most empathy in me, and it is that quality that i attempt to develop in myself, so i became interested in live action animation with real people, as opposed to animated people in real settings

i saw how the process worked for th actor and also what doesn't work:

a perfectly acceptable performance, where the actor is truthful and solid turned the whole thing into animation including th actor..the missing ingredient is th actor's emoting (energy/vibration) and 'action'

what Jason and I discovered was that th actor must be 'full' and doing something at all times with interesting and idiosyncratic choices driven by a strong sense of truth and a willingness to 'play' and make discoveries as an actor

from an experimental point of view, acting in this venue is a sort of cross between Stage and the old Silent Movie Acting and if a great place for an actor to begin working is PLACE, then this work has th actor create the PLACE and react to it dynamically in the moment

Since Jason can now paste video into the animations we are experimenting with movement and perspectives: a ship at sea and an island on a collision course across time and space and

The Place is:

www.jasonjbrown.com

where you can see THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER'S WIFE trailer

a subsequent experiment with various actors

The Bedside Alice

2006-09-03T09:14:00.000-07:00

or "Daddy you should have told me you were already taken"

The first 10 pages of a book i wrote in th 70ies while living in Los Angeles.

THE FAIRY TALES I READ WHEN I WAS THREE
PERSIST IN COMING BACK ON ME.
THEY WERE FOR ADULTS
IN US CHILDREN.
A WONDERFUL MIRROR
TO SEE LIFE IN.

A WONDERFUL TREAT FOR MY SEVEN YEAR SPIN.
A POSITIVE ESSENCE OF THE WORLD WE’RE IN.

I KNEW IT THEN. I KNOW IT NOW
THOSE FAIRY TALES WERE ALL SOMEHOW,
A PRICE I PAID FOR FEELING HEIGHT,
SUPERIOR, ABOVE IT ALL
READING ADULT TALES WHEN I WAS SMALL –

UNDERSTANDING THE INNER PACE
OF PERSUING
A TIME
OR SPACE
OR

PLACE.

OR

There are two alternatives:

1) FANTASY
2) VACUUM

Footnote:
Reality doesn’t exist
It’s just the projection of someone’s fantasy
Sometimes it matches your own and you feel REAL
Too often

THE DAY ALICE STUMBLED INTO WONDERLAND
(once again)
and
instead of the dream
found
DISNEYLAND

where Prince Charming is an out-of-work actor
where the Seven Dwarfs wanted Show White to give
them a blow job
where
reality was making a lot of bread and Alice was
offered a porno movie because she had a “good body”
and
where Humpety Dumpety will never get-it-together
again
because
he’s just a rotten egg in drag

TITLES:

ALICE IN DISNEYLAND

ALICE IN DISNEYLAND SEARCHING FOR KANSAS

ALICE’S SEARCH FOR KANSAS

AND LEWIS CARROLL WAS JUST ANOTHER CHILD MOLESTER

AND PRINCE CHARMING IS A HALLOWEAN DRAG QUEEN

DREAM ON, ALICE ....

THE STORY:

"Tell me a story" the little girl said.
"Give me a reason to get out of bed".

"The time is coming, help is near", when I didn't know the answer, i was dramatically clear

but then she told me the story,
she was very very clear.

And the answer loomed up

"I am still here".

ALICE’S TIME TRIP:

TODAY – I want something
TOMORROW – I know I’ll want something else
so
LET’S PRETEND it’s
TOMORROW
And I want something else

YESTERDAY, I loved you
TODAY, oh god, today, I don’t
TODAY is YESTERDAY
And
I LOVE YOU
(yesterday)

I’m losing TIME
By blocking NOW
Going from half past seven to midnight
In a flash
Losing 4and a ½ hours

I’M LATE, I’M LATE FOR A VERY IMPORTANT DATE
Said ALICE on an ACID TRIP one day
And proceeded to trip acidly on.

HOW ALICE LOST HER CREATIVITY:

(a sort of “how I spent my summer vacation”)

You remember that poem, that terrible poem:
“I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the . . .”
SHIT, that could turn anybody off, couldn’t it???

I mean, they said that’s how you had to write poems –
So I wrote
“I must go down to the sea again. . .”
and I gave up.
I was 7
And I gave up
And tried to write just a little better than
“I must go down to the “
but of course I couldn’t
having no particular need to go to the ___.

Realizing my capitulation, I reversed the process –
I wrote:
I HATE NATURE
Surely rather unpoetic and generally unpopular

And now I write poems like this that are critiques of my poetry

That was the next step
My present step
Out-of-step
I step
As freely as possible
In the confines of my desperate fear
That
JOHN MASEFIELD
Was a Poet-Leaureate

And who, pray tell, AM I ???

This is the complete, unexpurgated account of Alice’s
Coming of age. Everyone kept telling her to GROW UP. . .
So she did.
And above all. . . . .
It was interesting . . . .
If nothing else . . .
It certainly was . .
Interesting.

The beginning:

“tell me, tell me, I want to know. I want to learn. . . .
about life and such. You know, the stuff that life is made of.
The facts. Give ‘em to me straight. No bullshit. Cut the
Crap. TRUTH. Tell me the truth”
said Alice.

YOU HAVE TO GIVE US A LITTLE MORE INFORMATION, first, tell
us about yourself?
said They.

“I’m attractive, intelligent, I’m twenty or so and I’m a
good student. I love to learn. or. As the bright, attractive
young woman said to the stupid, ugly, old man:
TEACH ME MASTER.

A little joke. A little hostility. Alice, is just a little
Freaked out. Alice needs HELP. Bear with her, be patient.
She’s really a good kid.

“I’m really a good kid....I’m just a kid, you know”.

GROW UP ALICE.

O.K. O.K. I’m a good student, and the teacher, daddy, (can
You hear me, daddy?) is, the teacher is irrevocably fashioned
In your image. God is not dead. He lives in the resentment-
Filled psyches of un-habited nuns the world over. Our convent
Is Fantasyland, pandered to and elevated (?) to reality by the male of the species. If you’re Jewish , as I tend to be ,
(Alice, jewish? Why not?) he probably has a beard and kind
eyes . . . .he’s Sigmund Fraud or Henry Miller, the bastard who
views you as a hole to be conquered –

HOLD IT, ALICE. WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE. after all, little girls
Should be seen and not . . . . .well, of course we don’t really mean that, but after all, even little girls who are making
An effort should, well, you know . . .COOL IT.

Alice falls silent. Alice can’t speak.

SPEAK UP, ALICE

“- hole to be conquered, or the -“

SHUT UP, ALICE. we’re beginning to ge the idea. You’re a
Foul-mouthed little slut and here we thought you’d come a long way
Baby.

Rhinocerous Eyes

2006-03-04T08:44:00.000-08:00

Rhinoceros Eyes:

A boy watches a movie, completely enthralled, living it. A little later, back home at The Prop Shop, he sees an Act of Violence, one human being beating another to death..he yawns.

Our Hero. His Golden Fleece/Grail, delivering ‘the goods’ to a upscale ‘props-girl’ with an authentic desire to distinguish herself and redeem her life by bringing a little reality into ‘the biz’ like real rhinoceros eyes, which unfortunately are already rented out to a porno shoot.

Give them an inch and they’ll take a finger – the fickle finger, that can only wag or spurt blood when subjected to that border-crossing feeling that plagues and excites outlaws/outcasts/idiot savants/artists.

The fact/fiction line of fire delivered by first time feature director Aaron Woodley is straight from the hip – and made entirely magical with the presence of these extraordinary animated characters who menace Michael Pitt’s amazing simple-boy, living in his fantasy.

I enjoyed a day’s work playing the Waitress in the Nurse outfit, Halloween in the Prop Shop when all Hell breaks loose. The terrific actors who played the Prop shop ‘hoods’ were wonderful to work with as was Aaron Woodley, whose mind created this Universe.

The first time I saw the Film was at a cast/crew screening…pre Toronto Film Festival, I think.. I was blown away by the eerie, scary animated figments, disturbing events, and the boy with the Rhinoceros eyes through which we could see reality distorted by fantasy.

This time, I was delighted to get to see the ‘creatures’ again and intrigued by the story or perhaps ‘the themes’ - the revealing of this myopic consciousness, this boy of the movies, and Michael Pitt, a savvy New York Actor portrayed the levels of consciousness of this Hunchback of Hollywood Scenic land with compelling empathy.

Great imagery, original story. Magic.

Gaetano Di Falco's beautiful story

2006-02-09T12:17:00.000-08:00

Azzuri eyes, Azzuri skies

Grandparents are revered in most cultural backgrounds; this is particularly true in my Italian-Canadian upbringing. I have met my paternal nonna only. So I can merely speak of this fable-like experience. For my nonna was treated like royalty, our own matriarchal queen. We, the grandchildren, were precious rings on her trembling, yet comforting fingers. Rewind your childhood’s film without it entangling on your memory reel. Now, can you see when your parents probably dragged you to visit la nonna? It was on a bright, Sunday afternoon. You could have been playing at the park—matter-of-fact, you probably wished you were—but you knew it would be magical to see your nonna. My nonna allowed me to plunge into the depth of my childhood. I was spoiled! When my parents reprimanded me, nonna always came to my rescue. A slow, staccato laugh would conceal her order: “Ma lasciato gioca, è un bambino”. Who dared not to oblige to her wish? A wise, crooked smile would magnify her wrinkles.

My nonna typically took an afternoon nap when babysitting me. Alas, I was afraid never to hear her euphonious snore again. Meticulously, I kept pace, counting the lapse of time between each breath. Sometimes, I’d play the apprentice doctor, pressing my ear near nonna’s vibrating lips. This time, however, her gentle snore was seized by the absolute silence: death. There she lay in bed, a sacred statue. A thin, white blanket covered her; her arms were crossed over her chest. Earth would become her permanent blanket hereafter. A vivid image crawled out of my subconscious: a little child playing guardian angel. Wake up, nonna…Wake up!

Our ancestors came to Canada after sowing their values in Italian soil. Italy fueled my nonna’s love, sense of life and character. Italy was all she knew—the scars of war, bleak times and political instability. Suddenly, the umbilical cord binding her to her mother country was cut off. Only her family would heal my nonna’s wounds. Our ancestors physically divorced Italy, but they never parted in their hearts. Their lives were left behind, sailing across the sea, seeking a better life. An invisible, nostalgic cloud still hovers over them. Notable is the fact that my nonna helped carve the identity of Italian immigrants. Who could not get along with my jovial nonna, dressed in black, wiping her forehead with a flowery handkerchief? Can you hear it? I hear a chorus of all nonnas, speaking harmoniously, half in their Italian dialect, half in their broken English and French; their words and hands gesture dancing in harmony, as though “speaking” the tarantella.

My stomach roaring, I’d sprint home from school. My nonna and mother warm smiles and a hearty meal greeted me. I devoured my food, barely chewing it. They laughed, as I’d lick the tomato sauce moustache contouring my lips. My eyes glued to the TV set, I created my own version of the Holy Trinity: nonna, mamma and the… Flintstones. My belly was full—yaba daba doo! Lunchtime was over; I had to rush back to school. Outside, the winds were crisp. Both would slip a hat on my dishevelled hair and wrap a thick scarf around my neck, concealing my face—as a result, I was a short, slightly chubby, Italian mummy. Kissing them goodbye, I sensed their affection, despite the strands of wool in my mouth

Furthermore, the hospital was silent, almost desolate. It was during the infamous ice storm in 1999. My nonna was recovering in her room. She had aged overnight. Pearls of tears trickled from her icy, azzuri eyes. But they were warm tears, unlike the drops that had frosted our streets. In spite of her age and condition, she was quite lucid. A bionic nonna! Consequently, she wore her ‘storyteller’ mask. She recited chapters of her life, family tales, and many stories from the old country—some true, others apocryphal—hence reviving the curious child within me. In the end, a fragmented lifetime was recited in five hours...a lifetime of mementoes for me.

Today, my espresso is bitter. My nonna had a habit of pouring sugar yet never stirring it. She blamed it on diabetes and always shrugged it off. My nonna gulped her coffee up to when the sugar brushed her lips. Then, the cup belonged to me. The last coffee drop and sugar created a creamy blend. I’d scoop the treat with a spoon and relished my nonna’s treat. My espresso was so sweet then… Now, her mouth is wide opened from her final gulp of life, not coffee. Her skin is cold, pale and criss-crossed by motionless wrinkles. Today, May 16, 2003—the sky is a prodigious, azzuro umbrella. A radiant sunshine... what a stunning day! Death, though, is like a chained ball on one’s wings.

Sleep well, nonna.

Wo(man's) Best friend - a cross corporate encounter

2006-02-08T13:13:00.000-08:00

Thank you, Gaetano Di Falco

Recently My Fido cel phone was disconnected because I was $66. in arrears. I wrote a letter to FIDO: addressing it to their sponsorship e mail address. I have asked the permission of the fido representative who contacted me if I could share our dialogue. It was a reinforcement for me that when you reach out to a human being you can bypass the corporate consciencelessness and find humanity.

TO: FIDO
This was the only email address I could obtain from your site. Please forward
to:
René Bousquet
Senior Vice-President (Rogers) and President, Fido

Fadel Chbihna
Vice-President, Customer Relations and Operations

Steven Picco
Vice-President, Sales

Karim Salabi
Vice-President, Marketing

I was one of the first Fido customer. I liked your style way back when, because you see I am a Canadian artist. I act , write, am what they call a ‘kitchen table’ producer. Small potatoes..but a solid and loyal customer for oh these many years.
Some years ago, I cancelled the phone when at that time your rep was mean-spirited and unhelpful. Your head office decently waived my bill and reinstated me at no charge, and even with a free month of service..how could i not love (wo)man's best friend.
Most recently $66. was owing on my account, as I say of long-standing . My phone service was discontinued, without notice when I was expecting a call from a make up artist re a week-end film shoot and she is told the cellular customer is NOT available. At some point we manage to connect and sort out the problem and then I call Fido. 'What up'?
I had an unsatisfactory conversation with Cedric, your representative: it appears I was text messaged several times..Sorry, I don’t do text messages..will learn but have been avoiding them. There’s only so much technology I can handle..so I didn’t realize that $66.00 was promoting these messages. I assumed it was advertising.
I do not respond to calls from unidentified persons..so if as C---- claims they tried to call me, I never once was aware that Fido was looking for me…or barking up the wrong tree, as it were, when asked who was calling, they said they could call back?
C----- was kind of annoying, and I was kind of aggravated, so when he insisted on calling me Ma'am in a condescending way, I started calling him Ma'am so he would see how complete disinterest and insensitivity feels. No worry, he never heard it.He had learned his words by ‘rote’..
As you have been taken over by Rogers anyway and that might account for the rabid text messages and automated phone employees, I would love to offer my services at a very high fee, to come into your offices and train your personnel on how to speak with human customers.
Short of that, I would like to recommend that you keep some kindness in your Big Business mandate and understand that every person is fighting a great battle.
I paid the $66.00 owing on my account that your second rep insisted i had to pay by Tuesday in order to prevent the phone from being disconnected and a reconnection fee applied.
I just discovered from two of your reps S------ and then J---, that I am being charged a reconmection fee of $25 for what J--- described as my second suspension of services, apparently the suspension on the 15th was not charged but there was a suspension on the 27th unbeknownst to me that appears to have occurred after I made payment arrangements.
If you do not waive this disconnection fee consider my service and our long time relationship CANCELLED.
With regret at the end of a long association
Cayle Chernin

-----Original Message-----
From: Gaetano Di Falco
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2006 10:42 AM
To: cayle@sympatico.ca
Subject: Fido account
Importance: High

Dear Cayle,

We appreciate your concerns and for the trouble that we have caused you in not keeping with our goal in the area of customer service. We also appreciate, and recognize your loyalty towards the Fido brand.

This being said, we have reviewed your account - we have proceeded as follows:
reversed $25 (before tax) charge to reinstate your service (November, 2005 invoice)
reversed $25 (before tax) charge to reinstate your service (January, 2006 invoice)
reversed $2.32 (tax inclusive) charge to reverse the late payment charge (January, 2006 invoice)
For your information, your service has been reinstated - we did not charge $25 to reconnect it.

Please be advised that your new balance is $65.32; the latter is due February 25, 2006.

We trust the above is satisfactory and wish to thank you for the opportunity to regain your confidence.

Cordially yours,

Gaetano Di Falco
Attaché au Bureau de la direction
Services des relations avec la clientèle
Advisor, Office of the Executive
Customer Relations Services

Dear Gaetano,
Thank you very much for your consideration. I am happy that I do not have to leave Fido - I have always promoted you and now will continue to do so. I was thinking that an interesting promotion on your part would be to select an actor to give a free year's service to as a way to support Canadian talent and our Film business...not suggesting that I be the recipent but I think it would be amazing to link the cel phone, a must in our business to support of our talent..what do you think? So Fido can become the actor's best friend as well.
Best, Cayle Chernin
www.cayle.ca

Hello Cayle,

Many thanks for your positive reply. I, too, am happy to know you will continue to be a Fido ambassador.

I will forward your creative suggestion to our Sponsorship team, and this, in order for them to consider your request.

Best,

Gaetano

Can you pass on my website address to them?

Thanks, Cayle.

Indeed, I always share interesting customer information.

As an apprentice freelance writer (short stories), I have the utmost respect for you, and revere people that have tapped into their pool of creativity, instead of leaving it to evaporate...

I especially enjoyed your A Canadian Actor in Italy account. Bravissimo!

Best,

Gaetano

There is a GOD! Thank you so much..all the best in your creative endeavours. It's not easy, but its important to develop and support your 'own' voice. We are indeed all "one" but the individual, I feel, has a responsibility to themself to develop with original thouight and desire for clarity and communication..Italy was an amazing experience..a moment in time I will always treasure and hope to return to so that i can work again with Margotta and other like-minded people.
How would you feel about me putting our communication up on my blog..I think it shows how people can reach across the great Divide and solve problems. A little respect goes a long way, but if it could impact negatively on your job, i won't..
Best, Cayle

Thanks for the kind words.

I do not see how this could have a negative impact, aside from the information related to your account.

Italy is in my blood, my parents having to part, and cut their umbilical cord, from its mother country at a young adult age. But I visit whenever I can, and cherish the time I spend there, as new memories then mingle with tales recited, now apocryphal over the years, by my parents.

Take good care,

Gaetano
Gaetano Di Falco

Arts and Letters Club, Writers Circle. ADAPTATION

2005-11-09T08:16:00.000-08:00

Had the pleasure of addressing the Writers Circle at the Arts and Letters Club about adapting from one medium to another. Having worked with Anne Tait to create a screenplay from her stage play Yeats in Love and presently working with Michael Mortensen, to take his novella Mrs. Harper to a feature script, and some years ago creating a first draft sceenplay for Henry Jaglom based on the continuous novel Cities Of The Interior by Anais Nin, I have experienced crossing those borders and exploring the boundaries of each medium.

I've come to see it almost like the old Walt Disney World series, where at the top of the show you would find out if you were going to Fantasy Land, Tomorrow land, Adventure land.

Movie land. Book land. TV Land. Each with their atmosphere, unique environment. As an actor I usually start work on any script or character from PLACE: Where am I?
One course for actors recently advertised: “not for beginner actors but would be appropriate for actors making the transition from stage to film/television”.

The medium defines how we give and get the message.

Movie Land was recently beautiflly defined for me by Jerome Charyn's book MOVIE LAND, which I have alluded to previously: his description of how those 'shadows on the wall' captured our hearts and minds, from childhood and sold us on the Hollywood culture and the marketing of America.

Raymond Chandler's quote (in Movie land) that defines Film as being closer to music than Literature or Theatre: "...its finest effects can be independent of precise meaning, that its transitions can be more eloquent that its high lit scenes, and that its dissolves and camera movements which cannot be censored, are often far more emotionally effective than its plots, which can”.

This certainly raises the challenges of transiting from one land to another. As the country Western song says: “That border crossing feeling makes a fool out of a man”.

The traveler in this world can avail themself of numerous screen writing seminars and books and tips that tell us how to win that Academy Award winning lottery ticket to the Stars. Handy tips like how to take “a 400 page novel to a 110 page screenplay by capturing the essence and spirit of the story, the through-line and major sub-plot of the story and viciously cutting everything else. . Develop your outline, treatment or beat sheet accordingly. “Show, don’t tell!” - a sounding board to which thoughts can be voiced aloud, express the character’s dilemma or internal world through action in the external world”.

Director David Weaver (Moon Palace, Siblings, Century Hotel) moderated a discussion on screenwriting at LIFT:

“PLOT CHARACTER THEME are the elemental connections. Character is TV – the people you welcome into your home every week. Plot is mechanics. Theme is what its about and defines every moment and should be reflected in Title, visuals, persistent images. Eg Godfather: every scene is about family and the father/son relationship.
For the actor it gives you where to pitch it, but without theme its sketch comedy versus film”.

He advises that you must find the ‘thematic” of the story.

Heard Clement Virgo last night talk about his latest film Lie With me, which was adapted from the novel by his wife. The novel had no back story for the lovers and was a series of vignettes. In adapting it for the screen, they developed families and resonating similar back stories for the two characters.

BOOK LAND:
Elaine Newton, at the Jewish Bookfair described Chicago as Saul Bellows NOVEL PLACE and quotes him “ I am an American, Chicago born” as “the mongrel voice of America, the melting pot culture”.

Bellow she says, “in expressing thoughts and feelings voluminously on the page and believing that the purpose of literature is to raise moral values has created:
ART that which is Fundamental, Enduring, Essential”

In the wonderful film ADAPTION, Nicolas Cage and Nicolas Cage (as twin screenwriting bro’s) agonizes about how to adapt a book about orchids to a movie. He gets advice from the screenwriting guru Robert McKee:

“A screenplay without conflict or crisis will bore you to death. You need the drama. WOW in the end and you’ve got them. Your characters must change and change must come from them”.

Today the New York Times memorialized John Fowles, the British writer “whose teasing, multilayered fiction explored the tensions between free will and the constraints of society, even as it played with traditional novelistic conventions and challenged readers to find their own interpretations”…” Fowles's success in the marketplace derives from his great skill as a storyteller," wrote Ellen Pifer in the "Dictionary of Literary Biography: "Remarkably, he manages to sustain such effects at the same time that, as an experimental writer testing conventional assumptions about reality, he examines and parodies the traditional devices of storytelling."

Anais Nin tried to influence what she considered to be a male model for the novel by introducing her continuous novel that spanned decades, whose characters, Lillian, Sabina and Djuna’s initials give us LSD and Nin’s streaming consciousness gives us a window into the soul of female sexuality and sensibility. Her influences, Henry Miller and DH Lawrence who made their innovations.

It seems that the greatest works play havoc with the rules but always there is the PLACE and when you inhabit that place, that land of book or movie or TV, you get to explore the perameters and avail yourself of the uniqueness of that landscape..to tell the story.

As artists we are often asked to adapt – our novel to screenplay, our life to a TV series, our character to a medium where the close up takes the place of the wide shot of Theatre. I was recently in a play that the Director had conceptualized as a film. One saavy audience member was heard to retort: “A film, then where were the goddamn close ups..hello"!

Financing Jaglom style versus The Canadian/Hollywood way

2005-10-02T13:24:00.000-07:00

Thursday, September 29, 2005. Just making the cut: Canadian film enjoys a prolific year. Too bad most of the work is mediocre.
Vancouver Sun,Katherine Monk on the kick-off of the Vancouver Film Festival.
http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=3b237df5-2549-4f70-9272-3414ca211fe2

This is a comprehensive piece about Canadian Film that supports and undermines: On the one hand she gives us that Canadian film is having a record year with over 700 submissions to the Festival and that Atom Egoyan (Where the Truth Lies) and David Cronenberg (A History of Violence) will get U.S. distribution and that smaller, lesser-known film also had sales at festivals this year.

Then she laments the lack of Canadian actors on the red carpet as how can we compete with the American stars and that most of the films were average “though by no means worse, or more mediocre, than films from anywhere else with similar budgets and production restraints”.

She tells us both the Aussie and New Zealand industries are suffering with their success and the small-town mentality that prevails in the industry: "In New Zealand, no one ever tells you if you're good ... There's a [colonial] mentality that says if I support you, I won't get my own” –

Now doesn’t that sound too familiar.

She concludes that: “We're supporting too much mediocrity in the name of the national interest, and as prolific as we've been -- as outgoing and brave as we have been -- this year's bumper crop of mediocre reels proves we've got to do better”.

It’s an extra ordinary thing for a movie to even get made. Bumper crops? Okay, if we're farming films, the amount of indigenous activity in Canada is growing by leaps and bounds, and not imitating Hollywood and finding our own voice is all moving forward.

To make a really fine film is not easy, if we looked at any countries output and measured the stats, the odds are that you have to make so many to get one good one. The rest are canon fooder for the voracious airwaves and video store consumption.

There is something to learn from The Independent U.S. scene of the seventies, when BBS productions took the earnings from Easy Rider and funded 10 movies, that included Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie, Jack Nicolson’s Drive He said etc, only one made it at the box office: The Last Picture Show, and that one paid for all the others.

Most movies are mediocre, only the great ones rise to the top and they are few and far – and sometimes they don't make it on their release but survive to be revived. Making the movies and doing the work is what ensures that great ones will get made..lets stop this colonialism and celebrate our successes.

The Americans would know how to spin this - record production in Canada, indiginous, unapologetically Canadian - a country of film makers...blady.. bla

Exerpted from a piece on Henry Jaglom's new movie, an inventive way of financing by an American Director, who lives in Hollywood, making Movies and defying the System.

Sep. 21, 2005
Hollywood Reporter
Jaglom's 'Shopping' feels women's pleasure, pain
Filmmaker's latest is terrific exception to Hollywood embrace of teenage boy audiences….

Financing independent films is never easy, but Jaglom pointed out, "I'm lucky about that because of Europe. I learned from Orson Welles very early a wonderful positive lesson which he told me, which was make movies for yourself. Ultimately, you don't know what's going to work anyway so you want to live with them for the rest of your life and not be embarrassed. So make them as good as you can for your own taste. But the negative example (Welles gave) was don't ever depend on Hollywood for your source of financing. Of course, as you know, they took away his financing (and) for the last 20 years (of his life) he couldn't get financing.

"What happened was my first two films, which were financial failures in America -- 'A Safe Place' (1971, with Welles, Jack Nicholson and Tuesday Weld) and 'Tracks' (1976, with Dennis Hopper) -- did very well in Europe and got me a kind of audience there (that was) very different from the audience here and got me the distributors in Europe, who wanted my next films. With 'Sitting Ducks' (1980, with Jaglom, Michael Emil and Zack Norman) and 'Can She Bake A Cherry Pie?' (1985, with Jaglom, Karen Black and Michael Emil) and 'Always' (1985, with Jaglom and Patricia Townsend) and so on I started finding was all I had to was go over to the Cannes Film Festival or go up to Toronto and I could get for a film so and so much money from Germany and so and so much from France and Italy and Scandinavia and England and I could put together the small budgets that I need for the films.

"By keeping the budget under control I could stay in creative control. And now I've got contracts which read, 'Jaglom Number 15, 16 and 17.' They're paying me in advance because they know that in their territory -- and the territories are increasing all the time, which is wonderful -- they're going to at least break even or they'll make a profit. The films do nicely. They don't do 'great' business, but they certainly are profitable. And that gives me the freedom to creatively not have anybody looking over my shoulder and tell me what all my friends in this business have always had to deal with. Even my most successful Hollywood friends have always had to deal with (studio directives like) 'don't use that actor' and 'change that ending.' I don't have to do any of that."

As a result, Jaglom's movies are definitely what he wants them to be: "You love my movies or hate them, (but) they're my movies frame for frame. And it's because of the freedom (through financing them in Europe) because Orson really cautioned me when I started out. There were times when I was offered quite a bit of attractive lure here and he really was cautioning me. After I made my third film 'Sitting Ducks' they started really trying to be very seductive. He said, if you get into that there's going to be a time very soon when they'll pull it away and then you're dependent on that for the rest of your life. So I heeded that advice and that's been probably the most important thing anybody's ever told me."

Memorials

2005-10-02T13:09:00.000-07:00

Richard Leiterman DOP/Director, remembered by friends and family and professional acquaintances at The new Gladstone Hotel. Some beautiful poetry was given by the Nearest and the Dearest. It was an honour to be there and I got to experience it with Jayne Eastwood and our old friend Elva, Don Shebib and Tedde Moore. We regretted the occasion but enjoyed the opportunity to be together again.

So too with the people of Paul Bettis, Director/Actor, who's name was on all our lips all that remembrance night at Buddies in Badtimes.

From: MOVIELAND by Jerome Charyn:
For: two artists who knew all about it:

"Film is not a transplanted literary or dramatic artÂit is much closer to music, in the sense that its finest effects can be independent of precise meaning, that its transitions can be more eloquent that its high lit scenes, and that its dissolves and camera movements which cannot be censored, are often far more emotionally effective than its plots, which can.

Raymond Chandler

answering to my blog

2005-09-16T08:26:00.000-07:00

It can now be done. Please feel free to coment back to me on the blog

DELUXE COMBO PLATTER

2005-08-26T15:28:00.000-07:00

Saw a screening of a new Canadian Film tonight which opens at Canada Square today and on behalf of the First Weekend Club, as in get out there this week end and support the film to keep it in the Theatres, I really want to recommend: DELUXE COMBO PLATTER - directed and shot by Vic Sarin (the great Margaret's Museum).
By the bye, coincidently, I'm just back from Cape Breton where I had the unpleasure of seeing the big Summer success WEDDING CRASHERS - a puerile piece of assaultive, offensive crapola that I walked out on.
Though comparisons are odious, because both are romantic comedies,I can't help but look at how differently the two films treated romance and comedy..and the audience.
'DELUXE COMBO...' is really satisfying, amusing, clever, heart-warming, a really nice twist on the boy/girl thing - all the things Crashers wasn't. It had Dave Thomas and Jennifer Tilly and Monique Schnarre being actually very good as were the young actors in the leads. Len Doncheff has a great turn as the Uncle.
Really good work with characters we can respond to, root for, be moved by,recognize and identify with. And all this for under 2 mil. Mind you first time screenwriter from a George Brown program Brigitte Talevski said she didn't mind going unpaid to date.

Deluxe Combo Platter Premise/Synopsis:
The film follows a small-town waitress, Eve Stuckley, (Marla Sokoloff) who secretly lusts for Jeff Sweeney, the town's most eligible bachelor. When Eve finally decides to throw caution to the wind and pursue her man, a beautiful corporate executive called Linda Avery (Schnarre) comes into town, throwing the entire male population into an uproar.

May I add to that she also throws the female population for a loop or two, too.

Henry responds to Tracks piece

2005-08-07T08:03:00.000-07:00

From: HJAGLOM
Sent: Sunday, August 07, 2005 5:11 AM
To: cayle
Subject: Re: website

-----Original Message-----
Wow Cayle, what a piece of writing...obviously I disagree with you about the film
I think it's among my 2 or 3 best when I see it now and i'm not alone but your experience on it is so vivid and well written and fascinating, so much i'd forgotten or never had your perspective on, much truth in it though and a fascinating tale out of our lives...a great cautionary tale for young actresses...
But don't you think though it is necessary to explain how you fell under Dennis' spell and as a result, I thought, froze?.. you tell the freezing part vividly in The Central Park scene (I had totally forgotten that) but didn't ..drugs and lots of other wierd stuff with Dennis cause a lot of this problem? Or was I just so unconscious that I attributed your freezing up to that and didn't understand the fear it was coming from? I remember how shocked i was because you had shown up looking abused and wiped out and acted so "not yourself", at least as I had known you or thought I knew you...Jesus, I am so sorry that i wasn't able to handle this better..........Anyway I looked at lots of the other stuff too and it's all pretty terrific!!!

My reply to Henry:

Thanks Henry for this feedback and your ability to see my perspective..that was how I experienced it. Yes of course there was a huge component that was what happened with Dennis..I'm not sure it was about falling under his spell, but being exposed to something I had no idea existed. You threw me together with him and fostered the notion that I was to live out the film..not that I wasn't a willing participant ...The freeze occurred because I wasn't treated as an actor but as a 'real person' who was supposed to provide you with certain responses. Dennis of course was no help but at the time I confused a psychotic person with an actor treading the fact/fiction line. It wasn't about drugs. As for showing up in a condition that you immediately reacted to - it was about being with Dennis for a few days, working our way into the logic of the film, travelling etc..it was a wild time but really it concurred with what you wanted to I felt scapegoated all the way and really didn't have a hope in hell caught between the devil that would be Dennis and the deep blue see - as in how you wanted to see me.

When I finally managed to perform on camera to your approval, I was so angry about the treatment I had received as a professional actor and a friend that I I found our situation irreconcilable. What subsequently happened with Dennis - 'the lion's den' portion of the experience ultimately provided me with the missing piece of my own psychology - that indeed there were more things in heaven and earth than I had formerly taken into consideration..I like to call it the development of my spiritual side..but that's a whole other story.

Canadian Film Ambassador, I

2005-07-22T07:38:00.000-07:00

This from:
Katherine Brodsky
katherine@firstweekendclub.ca
FWC Public Relations/Ambassador Program Coordinator

Congratulations! We've gotten lots and lots of wonderful submissions for
Canadian Film Ambassadors, ranging from funny/witty to profound and
strange. And YOU made it.
We'd like to welcome you aboard First Weekend Club's Canadian Film
Ambassador Team. .
You can post on our brand new forum at: http://forum.firstweekendclub.ca

Part of what we're trying to achieve with FWC is the growth of a film
community and the forum is a crucial aspect of that in terms of providing
Canadian film lovers & industry with a place to gather and chat.

I'm looking forward to getting involved and seeing lots of Canadian Films. I opened in Sara's Cave in Brampton last night which runs through July 31. (see home page for details) After that I shall take my Ambassador-ship to heart.

In the meantime at Katherine's request I wrote about Anita Doren's new film and the passing of Richard Leiterman.

THE END OF SILENCE, first feature from ANITA DORON
Anita Doron's The End Of Silence gives us a Russian Ballerina's period of
defection and love affair with a free country and free love. It is not
only written and directed, but also shot by her. Brilliantly. The images she
creates with her actors who include Sarah Harmer in I think her acting
debut and an impressive one it is, take us into this moment of time and
its resolution with compelling and excruciating truth and depth.

Anita has achieved the intimacy that is her strength and purpose and created a
unique, beautiful and moving film. One producer said to me that she loved the
film and thought Anita was a great talent, but that there was no money in
it..hum, I wonder what would have happened to Atom Agoyan if Andre Bennet
had felt that way and not invested in and distributed Agoyan's early work.

ON THE SAD PASSING OF BRILLIANT CANADIAN DOP RICHARD LEITERMAN

I last ran into Richard Leiterman at the release of Goin' Down The Road's
35 mm print at the Toronto Film festival a few years ago. I hadn't really seen him since the early 70ies but we were laughing with Don Shebib like it was yesterday about a potential follow up to GDTR. What happened to Betty,Pete, Joey and speaking for myself, Selina? That sense of being right back in time, hanging out on set, his ease and warmth reminded me that I had found him to be a sweet and talented man. My husband Dwight McFee worked with Richard in Vancouver on Danger Bay among other shows early in his career and remembers him the same way: "Great to be around, very helpful, put you right at ease around the camera".

Follow My car, an L.A. memoir

2005-07-02T07:16:00.000-07:00

I spent four years living in Los Angeles in the early seventies. The following piece was written after being there for a while and obviously experiencing some culture shock..or maybe just being in a state of shock.

“FOLLOW MY CAR”
Or
CRUISING ~ L.A. STYLE

Atmosphere has a lot to do with it – you know, vibes, the weather, energy levels:
You could be in Toronto, New York, London, wherever. But you’re not. You’re in L.A.
Los Angeles. Hollywood. California.

I came to Los Angeles from Toronto Canada, last May 1972. I came as a writer and an actress. I came because there didn’t seem to be a lot of writing and acting to do in Canada and because there was not a lot of anything to do there on any level, for me. I came to L.A., because “That’s where the action is”. I came to L.A. and sat a lot and drove a lot, before I began to figure out just exactly where I had come to and just what exactly the action is.

You’re sitting with friends in a favored (this month) restaurant watching all the ____’s go by
As the rheostat lighting go into its act - four o’clock bright sunshine slides easily into the six o’clock shadow, eight o’clock twilight, ten o’clock street light dark against a backdrop of billboard studded beautiful sky - the boards telling you which beer has class which new group is doing it to Vegas. The establishments line the street like false fronts. You feel like a character in a Hollywood movie, on location Sunset Strip. “Incredible – really captures the feeling of Hollywood”.

It’s getting late in the evening and suddenly you realize the profound difference: You’re in L.A., not Toronto, New York, or London; you’re at a restaurant in L.A., eating, watching, talking, relaxing… no…you’re…you are cruising.

And even if you’re not, the person sitting next to you probably is. He’s probably just made a remark about a blond sixteen-year-old-looking “chick” (lot of chicks in L.A.) who’s making a big display of playing with her gigantic puppy dog just outside and very visible through the glass front door of the café, because the dog, was refused admittance to the restaurant. Potential sympathizers rear their heads in all corners of the place. Who gets to the girl and her dog first will be decided in the next moment or so. The prize will go not to Mr. Right (We know he’s dead, thank God) but to Mr. Quick. Mr. Eager. Mr. Hasn’t Got Anything Better Going On At The Moment. And sure enough he makes his move, a young, pretty, but not too pretty, blue jean, denim jacket dude who strolls casually the length of the restaurant clutching in his cooled-out hand, a piece of hamburger meat, the house specialty, an introductory offer for the…for the dog, of course. All eyes turn away from the door. One down.

Your actor friend is now summing up his career possibilities for the tenth time this evening and though rather bored with it all, you actually welcome a change of pace from a girl and her dog type dialogue, which threatened to monopolize the evening.

Your girl friend, who has had past relationships with three out of the four guys at the table, is in a state of deep depression. She’s trying desperately to avoid that fourth guy who obviously knows about the other three and figures it’s his turn. She’s trying to avoid him and she’s also trying to decide on whether or not she should give him a chance. After all, the night is getting old and what the hell’s the difference and why not and why and…

A very pretty young native Los Angelino (a rarity, you meet very few natives here in the Transient Hills of Hollywood) is making frantic phone calls every five minutes to try to round up some Quaaludes (downs to get up on) and alternately hugging and kissing all her guy friends, table hopping with hysterical consistency.

“And yes, everyone is going to the screening tomorrow …he’s a damn good director… oh yeah, you see his last fiasco?Sure, he was trying to go commercial… is that what it was… I hardly pay to go to movies anymore. Hell, why pay… but why at noon, weather’s so great I thought I’d go to the beach … Listen, I read for that schmuck two years ago. Wouldn’t give me the time of day. I’ll go to the beach with you. Not about to waste my time on his shit… you shouldn’t talk like that, old Sour Grapes-didn’t-get-the-part… Bullshit, the man’s a total lame filmmaker…Hey I lived with the guy last year right before he got married again. That’s my ex-old man you’re shitting on…So, everyone’s going to the screening tomorrow… Fantastic”.

Post-screening dialogue can be left up to your imagination, and a few clues:
“What did I tell you? I read for the schmuck two years ago”.
“Total lame filmmaker”.
“Great screening room”.
“Why’s she crying? Couldn’t be the flick”.
“He was her ex-old man. Don’t be so goddamn insensitive”.
“Hey man, we all shoulda gone to the beach”.

Screenings are an integral part of the scene and attract many different factions: there is the – “absolutely adored it, he’s brilliant, an innovator, a genius – we simply have to tell you we think you’re brilliant and can we rap down our idea for your next project” contingent. Whatever business heads are operating here you can also be sure of a fuck or two emanating from this reaction. Then there is the “It’s a piece of shit” reaction, already discussed and thirdly there seems to be another set entirely. They can be seen at almost every screening in town and invariably they have no opinion, no reaction, but they all look fairly terrific and seem none the worse for the wear and tear of all those screening room hours. They are simply there. Afterwards, either in groups or couples they go out to eat and it’s very unlikely that anything related to the film just viewed will be discussed, except perhaps the lead actor’s bedside manner.

Screenings can be as cruisy as a local bar. They are useful for locals looking around or filling in hours that come when there’s nothing to see yet or you haven’t been seen. Screenings are hope and sometimes, you even get off on the movie and that starts the irritating process of analyzing why you’ve fallen into this peculiar lifestyle: this hip, casual, L.A. sophisticated bullshit number. Because, for that moment you connect with feelings, the picture has stirred your cool and you start to wonder just what the hell is, has happened to you. And you start to wonder about L.A. Because you didn’t fall into this pattern in Toronto or New York or anywhere else. In those places, you didn’t find yourself - looking for a fuck.

Los Angeles is in many ways an easy place to come to. Life is easy here. It’s not exorbitant like New York. People are incredibly helpful. Perhaps because, like you, everyone seems to have come here from some other place and they’ve been where you are now.
They’ve come from places where there’s not a lot happening, they’ve come to where the action is. They’ve come looking. And somehow, they’re still looking, regardless of what they might have found. There’s always something left to look for here – if not something, then someone- the one some one.

What separates your particular looking from their more seasoned version is…is hard to define: So many of them seem wasted by their effort; so many seem bored; and though they’re all looking you get the impression that they are never really looking with the investment or commitment to actually finding anything.

Exploration abounds here. Scenes are everywhere. Everything conceivable is happening here. Make your choice: there are people somewhere in L.A. doing that same trip, whatever it is.
Whether you want to Gestalt your way through the next few months, primal, analyze, blank out, orgyize, commune-ize, beach it, meditate on it, deviate from it, film it, trip out or freak out … it’s all L.A.

You’re depressed. You find yourself back at the hangout trying to communicate all this to a close friend of six days. After all, you and this friend have been inseparable since you met through another mutual close friend (at a screening?). And six days is a long time in L.A. The days are long here. The nights longer still. And in those long days and nights it seems that a lot can happen because there’s so much time when nothing happens at all.

So you’re communicating with your friend about how shitty you feel about yourself and she’s nodding and you both decide you’re tired of looking for a fuck, tired of fucking altogether. You find out that you have both had your worst mornings after right here in L.A. Nowhere else, it seems to you collectively have you ever suffered the total ignominy that accompanies The Fast Fuck when morning light takes each of you to your job, an interview, a doctor’s appointment or whatever activity (you usually can plan only one due to the spread out geography of the city) you have that day. You and he pull out of the driveway together, in your separate cars, just as you arrived. You probably have no particular desire to ever see him again, but you’re having trouble dealing with the gnawing realization that he feels much the same way. Ego? Not really.
Your girlfriend suggests that maybe it has to do with the meaninglessness of what the night before really was, suddenly confronting you in the form of your two separate and incompatible vehicles. You agree. Even when you just fucked in other places, just a moment with somebody that you both knew was just that, it didn’t have the casual cool of that morning-after-distance that happens so often under the hot California sun. Your girlfriend tells you that in the two years she’s been here she’s lived with five different men for short periods of time. You express amazement. You can’t imagine getting that far into a relationship here that you’d actually be living with someone. Your friend laughs. She clarifies, saying that she’s never before, anywhere else so casually entered into living-together situations with men. You begin to see the connection. You begin to understand all the allusions to exes - old men and ladies, because you know so few people who are together, unless they’ve been together, probably married for years, and came out to L.A. as a couple.

You’re glad you’re sharing these feelings finally, you’ve been hurting for some sort of corroboration and you find yourself saddened by the knowledge that you have just spent an enormous amount of time and feeling talking about the meaninglessness of non-relationships, until the important question becomes: “Why is this so meaningless? Again?”

Someone comes to your table, (as you and your friend grin at each other through slightly embarrassed tears) and tells you they have just located another very close mutual friend. Good news. This friend had moved her living quarters for the fourth time this month and you haven’t been able to find her and you’ve been staying with friends because your old place changed hands and the new landlord is into renting only to gay guys, so your friend hasn’t been able to find you either: “She’s been living in the Valley and hardly gets into Hollywood at all because her car died two weeks ago.”

Without a car in Los Angeles you might as well be dead. Not having a roof over your head to call your own is no big deal here, but if you’re car-less, forget it. You really feel bad for your friend out in the Valley and call her immediately. She’s “really alright” and she’s now living blissfully with the guy she used to be with before, the guy she was with the last time you saw her. You make plans to see each other as soon as possible. You hope she really is happy.
You also wonder if the guy she was with the last time you saw her is now available, because he was sort of interesting. Then you realize that’s stupid because everyone’s available, for one night anyway, and you just finished saying, not fifteen minutes before that you’re tired of one night anyway, but you don’t totally eliminate the possibility and that makes you feel worse about it all. The endless possibilities here have a decided effect of making it even worse. You’re beginning to wish you were in Idaho. Idaho? Well, somewhere where the possibilities weren’t so endless and where there might conceivably be a possibility. Or even in New York or back in Canada, where, sure, guys were out to just fuck you, but at least they invited you to lunch first, at least you got to know each other a little, took some time with each other. Here you sit around for five hours with someone, find yourself in bed with them five hours later and sometimes find classically that you don’t even know his last name and that it doesn’t really seem important or maybe he’s a Movie Star and you know lots about him except that you don’t know him at all and he sure as hell doesn’t know you.

I came from Canada determined not to let Stars get into my eyes – stars that obscure people; dressing-room-door-stars; movie-magazine-stars: The Celebrity-Fucker-Syndrome which is not unrelated to the “You love me for my money” Rich-Man-Syndrome. I found myself being more concerned about the discomfort and paranoia of some Movie Star who was out to fuck me than for me getting fucked - Fame Pain – Hollywood’s own peculiar mark of Cain. The Stars are Lookers too – they’re in the bars, restaurants, canyons and cars – L.A. tripping, just like the almost-stars, potential stars, hustlers and has-beens. The Stars are looking too for that some one soul mate who will make it all, all right. They are used and they abuse.

Then, there’s the Pick Up Conversation that you’re positive could only happen in L.A.:
“You’re a far out chick”, he says, sotto voce. “I knew you weren’t just an actress…man, some of those chicks are so fucking dumb. Man, I can’t see wasting my time, you dig?” He’s an actor. Just an actor. But, he’d like to “get into directing … no shit,” like his agent’s “Who’s your agent? Just curious, they’re all full of shit anyway … agents. Man, they suck got him up for “three major flicks, heavyweight roles, no shit. Man, it’s Star-time”… Not that he “gives a shit about all that Star shit, but you gotta flow with the scene, star shit and all.
He tells you he’s really “a damn good fucking actor” and he wants to know has he “seen” you in anything and “who’d you say your agent was?”

You find yourself slightly fascinated because you’re beginning to wonder if he is coming on to you or whether he just wants to talk… about himself. But then he winks at you and you get that flash of recognition: Yes, it is a come on… oh God, how do you get out of this one? Besides, his friend’s not bad at all. He’s been staring at you and he’s smirking and the smirk looks familiar like maybe you’ve met before or maybe he was on television last week and that’s why he’s smirking or maybe… and hope rears it’s ugly head once again… maybe… and you’re lonely and you feel particularly empty and he’s got a cute smirk and maybe…

And he is cute. Come to think of it, they’re all cute.

You’re in Physical U.S.A. Everybody emanates physicalness. I mean, they are all so aware of their tanned, tight bodies. Take this guy who’s still smirking at you, and now reaches over to move a strand of your hair gently out of your eye, breathing a little on your neck, as he does so. You figure he either saw it in a movie (you know you did) or did it in a movie or maybe … maybe… And all the while he’s so sure he’s looking good, you’re not about to argue. You stare into each other’s eyes (corny, but slightly thrilling). The type who is up for three major flicks is starting to move away. He’s beginning to get the idea he didn’t score and time is a wastin’. Eye to eye. Size each other up. Sending out positive vibrations. He moves into the space beside you vacated by the potential Star. He’s tanned and slender and he is looking good. You feel fat. And you’re actually saying to him: “I feel fat”. He smirks and mumbles something sexily under his breath that could be that he finds you “earthy…sexy”, in fact, there’s a producer he’d really like to turn you on to, who’s looking for someone just like you. “Looking for someone fat?” you say, finding it increasingly difficult to hold the eye contact. He does a double-wammy smirk designed to incite instant orgasm and the best you can manage is a grim acknowledgement for his effort, and a guilty (you actually feel guilty that you’re not in the least interested, even though you know he’s just doing a number) “Scuse me, I have to … my cat… I mean ... well, I really have to be calling my agent”, and you don’t know why you couldn’t have just said “not interested” or just walked away.

Oh well, you try not to be too hard on yourself. At least you didn’t let it go any further. Chalk it up to your growing feeling of L.A. disasters being visited on your confused consciousness.

Confusion: Fastest entrances and exits in the world. You get into and (often thankfully) out of a person in minutes, and you’re left as before, dangling on some wobbly pathetic attempt at constructing foundations (every five minutes) and you marvel at the fact that you’ve never seemed this hungry before. And you remember a line someone said in a conversation you remember vaguely: “Some people always have to look around.” You know you don’t really want to be looking around, but you do and you see that everyone around you is also looking around and the why of it all seems somehow inherent in this place, this city L.A.

You’ve become an L.A. Looker, assembled your own cast of victims and getting off is the order of the day.

It’s indicative that in a place where ambition is the raison d’être, I became increasingly incapable of hustling my own work. Shortly after arriving in L.A., I stopped saying I was an actress, certainly not a great career move. I found the response humiliating, condescending or worse -distrustful: the cover that slides down over the eyes of some producer or director I’d just been chatting pleasantly with; the moment when, I became a starlet of sorts. At least being a writer seemed to enable me to come closer to being viewed as a person. So I became just a writer.

While women here can and are politicizing within the film industry, the painful struggle to relate human being to human being, that person to person contact that lies at the core of The Movement, seems to have less than a fighting chance in L.A. It is heightened and made even more elusive by the unique level of interrelating that has as its consciousness, a reinforcement of this particular lifestyle that is the essence of the Fuck Over: men and women continually victimizing each other, cruising each other, a search whose logic can only be defined as some bizarre version of romance where everyone becomes Just a fuck. It goes beyond politics, beyond injustice. It goes … beyond…

What it is. L.A. Home of transients. Many people passing in, out and through.“Guess who’s in town?” A new diversion. A new face. Everybody on limited time. New York actors are plentiful here. They’ve come to where the work is, the bread, the opportunity, but they still call themselves New York Actors and they long for New York, for home.

You can set your own pace, but the city insidiously seems to undermine, the sun is shining, lethargy sets in invariably between interviews, bouts with your typewriter, calls from your agent and I was told when I first got to Los Angeles that I shouldn’t try to do too much in one day -
an interview, coffee with a friend, a film to see. That can be a lot of driving for one day and yet and that’s somehow the epitome of the insidious quality of the city. Fed up as you are with getting in and out of the car, you almost never walk anywhere – not to the corner grocery store, not to pick up your cleaning or to a restaurant that’s maybe three blocks away. You develop a bizarre need to drive wherever you’re going.

There’s a lot of excess energy crying for an outlet here and that outlet so often seems to manifest itself in rampant sexuality - beautiful people beautifying themselves constantly for confrontations with each other that ultimately revolve around transportation arrangements:
Romantic moment: Standing in the parking lot having decided his place or yours – if you’re in the Flatlands and he’s in the Canyon, he’s probably got a better place – or if he’s crashing with friends and you’ve got your own place or…
Standing in the parking lot:
“Hey, I love your car.”
“What happened to your front fender?”
A little more getting acquainted car talk and you lean up against his or your car, exchange a little passion, each jump behind your separate but mutually admired wheels and proceed to the rendezvous. And that’s part of it too.

L.A. foreplay:
Pulling up alongside each other at stop signs; waving coyly as the traffic light turns green; trying to have a conversation through your passenger side window and his driver-side window, as the driver behind is honking you on your way.
And there’s always the possibility of stirring up those nasty little doubts while cooling out en route: The Strip is crowded and he waves at some tall freaky looking girl and you think maybe he’d rather be with her or it crosses your mind that if you don’t make it home soon, you may both have lost the initial thrust or decide you don’t really know each other well enough because he seems to be driving with some interesting though (you can’t help feeling) slightly offensive characteristic, like manipulating the steering wheel with his pinkie finger… and… and… DO YOU REALLY WANT TO DO THIS THING? Again? Really?

And is it you? You really wonder how it all came to pass? You’re behaving like everybody else, driving along beside a car you really don’t know in pursuit of a one-night co-habitation that you really don’t want. You’ve become:

L.A.
People so busy trying to touch, touching physically, some sort of weird masturbatory reaching out. Preoccupied with their own physiques, only occupied by your physique, peculiarly spaced-out head wise on a drug much more lethal than grass or cocaine or acid could ever be – the drugged state of living in vast, gaping spaces that stretch out under endless sun from dream to shining dream.
L.A.
Where the action is. Everybody wants a piece of the action and if that is held in abeyance (only temporarily of course … keep on dreaming) then everybody settles (only temporarily, of course) for a piece of each other: touch quickly, get-it-over-with, try-it-on-for-size - end the long day with something that resembles activity and once again you find in HOLLYWOOD, unlike The Hollywood Movie that brought all the transient dreamers here in the first place, that in spite of the talents residing here pouring out produce that at its best can and does inspire, elate, create truth and beauty - movies are better than ever, you find some of the emptiest, most uninspiring realities to deal with and from, one less fulfilling that the last.

It’s a trip! It’s all here, the action, but the participants, the creators of the Scenes – which do far better on celluloid than they do in person.
And the beautiful love scenes are few and too far between all the other crap we lay on each other daily, acting out of our trippy L.A. consciousness.

L.A.:
Home of the Fast Flying Fuck.
The brutality of the sexes isn’t confined to Los Angeles but it sure is particularly brutal here.
The nature of the beast. Where everything… geography, climate, opportunity – winners and losers on every corner, seems to result in the ultimate “cruise-style living”. And everybody somehow gets shortchanged, everybody seems to get had here, whether today you’re The Fucker or tomorrow you get fucked. It’s Cock and Cunt morality and the depersonalization, the physicalization, the disconnection implicit in such a morality, makes losers of us all.

The only fleshed out reality that exists here seems to be confined to the vision of its artists as they elevate on the screen, create life on camera, edit the moments and spend the time between their creative bouts attempting to crush the weird boredom if that’s what the spaciness is of this place with the much less meaningful, much emptier, vacant application of their on-hiatus imagery, the tricks of the trade.

Whether Dreamers or Achievers, all are somehow trapped in the mysterious vacuum of the great L.A. discrepancy: The romance of creation, of expressing a vision, of making a fortune, finding the fame, takes place in a town, has created a town, where the sense of wonder of the product and its execution bears no similarity to the lives of its inhabitants. A place where the hip, cooled-out hope of the young rides along bumper to bumper with the steadfast, ever-anticipation of the old. Winners and losers on every corner. People like me, who all came looking but didn’t expect to lose sight of seeing.

TRACKS, a film by Henry Jaglom circa 74/75

2005-06-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

TRACKS remembered….

With GDTR I was present for an experience in Canadian film making which is still regarded as seminal. I was also ‘there’ in a somewhat less happy way for Henry Jaglom’s second film in Los Angeles TRACKS. I always thought the movie turned out to be a bit of a mish-mash, but perhaps that was because of my experience. Henry hadn’t quite perfected his style of film making, but he was vigilant about it. He could “feel” if an actor was being “truthful”. At one point he screamed at me onset: “you can’t act” – by then I was so inured to him, I just tried to improvise on. American Director Paul Wiliams, on-set that day on the train, L.A. to San Diego (I think) Daily runs said I was “a brave actress”.

It’s not the only time I’ve had my work called brave, I think it means “you are so foolish, it almost works”.

A lot of the footage that did end up in the movie was shot with these daily trainloads of children of movie Stars, Taryn Power, Topo Swope and many more. The girls were beautiful and far more deserving of the attentions of Dennis the Menace because they thought he was just an old weird actor and didn’t get sucked in the way I did.

I felt like I was making movie history, that I was having an opportunity to live life to the fullest, to make the most demands on myself, to soar creatively. I thought Dennis was amazingly dedicated to the work. He harranged me for hours the first night we shot in New York because when I was leading him through the crowd in front of St. Patrick’s cathedral on I think the eve of the Easter Parade he kept walking on my heels. I was "going too slowly", he said, "causing him to walk on my heels. I was leading and I wasn't doing it right".

Henry maintained I was absolutely terrible until the one scene that has stayed in the film, and which was the first scene I wrote when Henry asked me to make changes to the script he’d written for and with Bob Rafelson 5 years before for Jack Nicolson to star in.

We always referred to it as ‘the cottage cheese scene’. I frankly think I’m terrible. I can see that I was trying to be Tuesday Weld because these were the responses Henry wanted to draw out of me, or something – I’ll never really know what happpened, if he hated me on camera, I think the more he hated me the worse I got…Dennis didn’t help, he was very hard to work with - a bully, you always have to play on their turf, and they try to trip you up all the time, constant tests to see if you really can hang out with the boys. I was a very willing participant. Henry thought I was way too willing, but he’s the one who put me in the same compartment on the train with Dennis when we were shooting around corners and trying stuff and getting caught and almost thrown off the train..all kinds of excitement and I was lost in the world of Dennis and ‘making movies’..

Let me be clear - It’s entirely possible that I was hideous on camera..I’m less than lovely in the cottage cheese scene that Henry felt was the only thing usable. As droll and wonderfully aware Randy Spires of Toronto radio station fame once said to me: “You didn’t look like a leading lady”..I was so out of it, caught up in living out a mad adventure..Alice had indeed fallen down the rabbit hole and was having too much fun hanging out with some wild people. In other words. I was nuts.

I read the original script for TRACKS five years earlier when Eli Rill took me to New York for my first time – he was someone who helped me to a lot of ‘first times’ – those important times when it matters so hard.

Five years later, when Henry decided to make the movie with Dennis, as Jack and Rafelson were on to other things he asked me to do some rewriting on the script, I was to provide scenes between the character Fran (of Zooey fame) and Dennis’ character Jack. Henry was creating an on screen family like Saliger had created his short stories family and calling her Fran was a tribute to Salinger.

Just as Tuesday Weld in his first film A SAFE PLACE was his female self, a beautiful, unstable, feeling woman-child, bewitched, bothered and bewildered and beautiful, I was to be Fran, a kind of new woman, not to be too confused with New Age, but a feminist, curly hair’d ‘type’.

Henry loved calling people ‘types’ but he did it very charmingly.

We shot scenes in Henry’s parent’s apartment where Dennis, a soldier home from Vietnam escorting a dead hero’s casket, his buddy who he is bringing home to the small New England town that he came from, acosts me in the apartment and has sex with me, after which I’m much friendlier and then he screams at me for not understanding the world he comes from – sheltered as I am in wealth and dumps me.

This is the equivalent scene in the movie where he fucks Taran Power very unromantically in a field, shaming her.

In the final scene we discover that the coffin is full of guns and ammunition as Dennis comes up from the grave armed and dangerous to Mei lei a small New England town.

It was about the soldiers back from Vietnam who weren’t heros like in the other great Wars. They were schmucks – trained killers in a bad war.

TRACKS was very important in my development as an actor and a person. It sent me screaming home from Hollywood, unfortunately a bit late rather than sooner. It was a trial by fire working with Henry, Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell on a train that for me derailed when we pulled into L.A. and Henry started really shooting the movie. I was part of the warm-up and the boys had a lot of fun with me and vice versa. Dean actually came onboard in L.A. and we were the Three Muskateers, only they did okay and I got left on the cutting room floor..

I subsequently landed in New Mexico as Dennis’ guest which resulted in me finally devloping a healthy respect for ‘something larger than my own feelings’ at about 3 a.m. in the middle of a New Mexican road ..in other words I grew spiritually from having been in a dangerous place. I don’t recommend this method of spiritual enlightenment, or acting but I like to think, since I did it, it worked for me. I’m pretty sure I learned something. I’d already been in GOING DOWN THE ROAD, LOVE IN A FOUR LETTER WORLD and thought I was ready to make my Hollywood debut and I wanted to do in in Tracks.

I had seen A SAFE PLACE – Tuesday Weld, Orson Wells, Jack Nicolson in New York at a screening when Eli Rill and I stayed with Henry and his then girl-friend the extraordinary Barbara Flood. Eli brought me to a New York I had only dreamed of, but unfortunately Henry saw the chink in my sophisticated manner, he saw the little girl in love with her teacher, a Daddy’s little girl. He had my number and he swept me away from Eli and towards him and California.

Henry’s way of assembling the components, working off cards and creating scenes with actors through various directorial techniques including some he picked up from Machiavelli, still had some wrinkles. In my case I was the scapegoat in the trio of me and Dennis and Dean. Henry threw us together, he knew they were both crazy, so I was the only one he could control, and through me he would control them, which of course is a laugh in itself..I was way out of my league.

Let’s put it this way:
It was the best and the worst of times…these guys played hardball, “ya wanna hang around with us, we’ll supply the rope…and yes we will kick ya while you’re down, what better time to kick ‘ya!

New York, the first day of shooting, Henry and his crew were way up in his parent’s Central Park Apartment shooting down at me and Dennis in the park..Over the walkie we hear. “ACTION” and Dennis jumps up on the park bench and I am totally frozen, my knees locked. I can hear Henry screaming “tell her to do something…natural” I couldn’t move. Dennis said “come up on the bench with me”. I couldn’t move … Henry’s disappointment was visceral, I could feel it in the dead air coming from the walkie.

Then Dennis said “lets run into these pigeons” ..which I couldn’t do, any more than I could go out on the cliff in GOIN’ DOWN THE ROAD in the scene at Scarborough Bluffs. Salina and Fran were obviously cut from the same cloth. Sometimes I'm able to do things on camera that i am very afrid of in real life, like jumping out of a moving car in LOVE IN A FOUR LETTER WORLD but in this case I couldn't run into a sea of pigeons so I held back as Dennis dragged me into their midst, scattering them. I was hardly Henry’s Audrey Hepburn, more Ethel Mertz.

I came to think of my ignominious Hollywood movie experience, as ‘survive and stay alive in ’75’, advice from Nick Ray, the director of ‘Rebel Without A Cause’. 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 returned from four years in Hollywood in 1976, post TRACKS, Henry Jaglom and Dennis Hopper notwithstanding, I did survive. In a lot of ways this really was my naive 'season in hell' aka my early twenties, 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..

Victoria Day Week end May 2005

2005-05-23T11:13:00.000-07:00

My interview with Theatre Pasta, an India-based Theatre company magazine

What does theatre mean to you?

A safe place in which to explore life and human being and feelings. A laboratory for experimenting on how to (re-) create reality with truth, insight, heightened awareness, high stakes drama afforded through the ritual of theatrical presentation. A communication, actor to actor and actor to audience sometimes on that deepest of levels where change happens. A partnership of listening and responding – actor to actor before an audience of spectator participants who have suspended their credibility, sharing the space of that particular story and the best thing of all, with Theatre, you had to be there.
A way of life. A way of being in the world. A path. A dedication. A vocation. A journey. Learning things the hard way and putting them to use constructively. Learning. Sharing.

When and where did your career in theatre start?

Artistically - Grade 6, Stephenville Newfoundland when Sister Mary Patrick James wrote her version of Anne Of Green Gables ‘My Eileen’ for St. Patrick’s Day and cast me as ‘Eileen’ – I remember very little – but one thing was the cast surrounding me and singing ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling’ and I wanted to sing, but Sister said I should just smile – I didn’t realize till much later it was because they were singing to and about me, I thought she didn’t like my singing voice. I didn’t understand my part in the story perhaps. In retrospect I think she was being a good Director and using me in a good way – I’ve always tried to be able to put myself in the directors hands, but it has sometimes been a harrowing experience.

I started studying and attending acting classes as soon as we moved to Toronto. I was 12. I went to Marjorie Purvey. She had a radio show that she used students in and she was I think a good teacher because I continued to love acting. I remember working on a poem and she had me pounding on the door into the classroom area to help me achieve the sense of reality of being kept out-side, not being able to get in. When I was sixteen a friend Charles Dennis said I had to study with Eli Rill, who would commute to Toronto every weekend from New York, who had studied with Lee Strasberg and knew ‘the Method’ and I studies it over the next 10 years.

Professionally, my career started after all my Theatre training with Film, doing the Canadian Film GOIN’ DOWN THE ROAD –a case of ‘being there’ when History was being made in Canada and on an International level. But mostly being where great work was being done.

With GDTR I was present for an experience in Canadian film making which is still regarded as seminal. I was also ‘there’ in a somewhat less happy way for Henry Jaglom’s second film in Los Angeles TRACKS.

These though film shoots were very important in my development as an actor. I describe GDTR though a link on my website and I am still coming to terms with the TRACKS experience, (there are some blog entries about “survive and stay alive in ’75). It was a trial by fire working with Henry, Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell and many other actors - children of movie stars who Henry assembled on a train that for me derailed and landed me in New Mexico with a new respect for ‘something larger than my own feelings’..in other words I grew spiritually from having been in a dangerous place. I don’t recommend this method of spiritual enlightenment, or acting technique however it is part of what I draw on as an actor and a person in my struggle to understand this life.

Any incident during the practices or staging of a play that you just can’t forget.

Lots – something every time – but to be specific – when we did MEPHISTO, the Play based on Klaus Mann’s description of a Hamburg Theatre Company during the rise of Hitler – we had a school audience from one of the city housing projects. We were all trepidatious because we knew they might be rowdy and shout out during the show and in the first act they did, they went wild when one actor drops his pants but in Act Two when things are falling apart and people are disappearing to concentration camps and murdered, they became very quiet and it was obvious at the Curtain that they ‘got it’ and were deeply moved. They waited after to congratulate and meet the cast. It was one of those times when the power of theatre and the possibilities to affect and alter sensibilities was so clear and beautiful. It was an excellent production directed by Bruce Pitkin under the auspices of Equity Showcase Theatre, the teaching arm of Equity in Toronto.

What do you feel is more important to have when pursuing a dream: passion or skill?

Of course - Both – you start with the passion – the desire, the need and I think in the arts with a soul that can empathize – with compassion.

Though some actors that come from such angst in their lives that they are raw may not have the compassion initially but they have a raw creative energy forged on the front lines. They’re naturals like Paul Bradley who also starred in GDTR.

My husband Dwight (Click on Dwight McFee link) for example was a kid from a mining town who hitch hiked to Toronto for a Theatre audition and ended up in one of the best training programs in Canada at University of Alberta for 4 years…he’s a highly skilled actor with over 80 plays to his credits = over 40 first productions and 100’s of TV shows and Films. Initially he was raw talent. Raw life.

I was a kid from a Middle Class Jewish family growing up in the Maritimes after WW2 –I was informed by what had happened in Europe, raised by loving parents and Grandparents and became the odd man out, the one who wandered from the fold to live out my own destiny. I think my greatest talent was compassion as a child which probably came from my Jewish identity and then a rough and rocky journey to whatever wisdom I possess to date.

What do you think is the most rewarding aspect of performing in Toronto?

I used to say Toronto is like a bad neighborhood – “you don’t bother them, they don’t bother you” – that in the biz’ nobody really helps you but they don’t stop you either – so you can go your merry way and do what you can.

Another way to look at it is that Canadian actors are very entrepreneurial, very clever at finding and creating venues to work in – very versatile – working in any medium or situation that affords a chance to do our work – we do everything – write, act, produce, direct. We’re not about making money because aside from the American productions that are drying up these days there is no way to make ‘big bucks’ here.

What do you consider your greatest achievement in theatre so far?

That I’m still doing it.

If you had to choose, between your memories of the particular theatre
experiences that have given you the most satisfaction, which would you
choose?

I have never had an unsatisfactory experience in doing theatre. It is always thrilling, exciting, challenging, rewarding, stimulating.
Because no matter what happens in rehearsal you have the performances and they are yours in a way that cannot be taken from you. Perhaps it’s what John Cusack said about film: “that magic time between action and cut, when anything can happen”. You have an experience of spontaneity inside very specific boundaries, parameters. A beinginess.

As you have more and more success, what keeps you grounded in your life?

I’ve had no real success, other than some performances that moved some people. Other than that I’m still doing it, other than that I still love it. What is important is the work - a use of myself that helps me to live as fully as I can.

Any Theatre Person you really admire?

So many – Paul Scofield never fails to amaze me. Judy Davis, Vanessa Redgrave who I saw onstage in THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE, I could just create a long long list. But all the great actors stage and screen who have moved me, astounded me, educated me, thrilled me since Bette Davis and Joan Crawford and early Hollywood fascinated me. Since I saw Sir Lawrence Olivier onstage in Strindberg’s THE DANCE OF DEATH, Rudolph Nureyev dance GISELLE. Peter Brook’s writings about Theatre. Stanislavsky. Strasberg. Growtoski.

Were there any particular teachers at your university who played an
important part in your development as an Actor?

I picked my teachers carefully and as much as a beginning actor can, my projects. I didn’t want to go into a training program that picked my teachers for me – so I chose Eli Rill when I was 16. From Eli I learned to live the ‘life of the artist’ – the life of the imagination’ through our personal relationship, and I learned of the talents and techniques of the great Masters and Mistresses who came before me – the creative ancestors – and I learned how to work on a role, how to make ‘discoveries’ about my character, how to listen and answer and how to be PRESENT! later from Henry Jaglom I learned about bringing ‘the components’ together to create live theatre on camera. I learned that my technique wasn’t strong enough to withstand a ‘bout’ with the boys. Every job taught me something – even if it was how to survive with my love for ‘the work’ in tact.

When I returned from L.A. and the TRACKS experience, I questioned my desire to act – how important was it to the World that I keep on acting. How important was it to me to put myself out there only to find they’ll kick you when you’re down..and I crawled back to Canada, my tail between my legs. I needed a dose of ‘reality’ Canadian-style after my L.A. experience. I started reading aloud on tape for The Canadian National Institute for The Blind because it made sense to me to read for people who couldn’t themselves see to read. That led to a reading program in Nursing homes called Living Literature. That, to a series of Documentaries for Cable called AGING IN INSTITUTIONS.

And I went back to acting classes, studying in the first year of Tony Pierce and Louise Nolans’s NEW SCHOOL OP DRAMA based on their Meisner studies in New York. I kind of figured I did my university years in Hollywood, the School of Weird knocks.

I did several plays, got back up on the horse and loved to act more than ever once the TRACKS experience settled into the distant past and I moved on.

What personal qualities do you feel a person should possess who wants to do Theatre?

Resilience as I just described, emotional honesty, or at least a need for it. Ability to withstand or at least survive severe humiliation, trauma and insanity – or hey is this just what is required to live life. As my Mother says “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken.”

The most difficult thing is that we have to recognize the importance of the body as our vehicle, our vessel our mode and means of experiencing life on earth. Or as we say in the Theatre ‘our instrument’.

So, what’s the coolest part about being a Successful theatre actor?

By my definition, successful being that I am still doing it, the cool thing is every time out, every project is a step forward in my ability ‘to be’..

There are so many roles I’d love to play that I never can: Anne Frank, many plays that I am too old to play certain roles in and I never got to – but maybe that’s okay. I did my Anne Frank my way –through performances pieces, documentaries, maybe I’ll never get to play Maggie in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF but I may yet get to play Amanda in THE GLASS MENAGERIE.

I love the opportunity a character gives me to have yet another life- time. Perhaps that’s the greatest thrill of all! To inhabit another life, set of circumstances, set of habits, as Michael Margotta (click on A Canadian Actor in Italy) describes it:

Making a decision begins with a thought.
Sow a handful of thoughts
you have a handful of Actions.
Sow a handful of actions you have
a handful of habits
from which we reap Character.
Sow a character
and reap a Destiny

Is acting an art that anyone can succeed at with training or are there other natural talent one must possess to excel in this discipline?

Depends on what kind of acting, or actor. You can have a series on TV, be a regional theatre actor or a Sir Lawrence Olivier. You can win an Oscar, die unknown or change the World like Marlon Brando did, or Barrymore, Duse, Sarah Bernhart. Lots can and have succeeded in various ways. The art is the thing that is created out of its need to exist, everything else is craft.

Describe your dream Role....

My next role is a chance to be the dream, to create life on camera in this instance a short film I’m working on this week end in Toronto called FAMILY PRCTICE or with SARA’S CAVE onstage this Summer to create both THE CROW a Polish Peasant and a Jewish woman concealed in a basement root cellar in Poland during WW2.

But in a larger sense my dream role could be something like getting to play Hannah Arendt or just something so challenging and mind and consciousness expanding for me that I get to grow and use every aspect of my being to create. (as I did to create the documentary IN THE SHADOWS about the forgotten Jews of Syria for a woman who was rescuing them, buying them out head by head – literally saving lives)

Aside from working on making things happen I don’t really like to have too much of an agenda because the wonderful thing about this business of being an actor is that you never know what might come up.

What kinds of scripts turn you on?

Ones I might have a chance to work on. Beautiful ones. A play by Arthur Miller I just read BROKEN GLASS. Pinter. Beckett, John Patrick Shanley et al.

Was your family supportive about your decision to pursue acting? Were you worried about the risks of pursuing it as a full time career?

Yes and no – long story. We battled long and hard. Sometimes it was me against them, sometimes them against me. There was always love and hence pain-filled misunderstandings and cross-purposes. If I was more financially successful and less crazy they probably would have been better about it.

What was it like playing for the first time to an audience?
Back in Stevenville Newfoundland, I actually recall going on stage the first time, at age 11 and feeling sick to my stomach and praying to God to help me get through it, and if I did survive I promised myself I’d never do it again.

Every tine since has been exciting, terrifying, and just as wondrous.

Has there been any time in your life when you planned that you won't be able to do theatre...

As long as the body’s willing, the spirit able and the work available, I’m there.

You have done films & theatre both, which is more satisfying?

I don’t think about being a Theatre actor or a film actor – the projects vary and sometimes you’re on stage, sometimes on camera. It’s still about a character and a story and giving it your best shot and full attention at the moment.

I like to work in all available mediums. When I’m doing film or television I explore the character in the same way as theatre minus the Rehearsal process and of course the experience of creating it is different - the logistics. My old friend Doug McGrath, who starred in GDTR a terrific actor, says: “On television you have to make it happen, in film you have to let it happen".

In Theatre you can play around with both.

If someone offers you an opportunity to perform with your husband what is the role you would like to play with your Husband?

Dwight and I (click on husband Dwight McFee) would love to do WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOLF. We did a scene from it for our 5th Anniversary party. But there are many possibilities and I would love the chance for us to work together on anything.

How do you define your world — the one from which you are acting?

My friends far and near. People. My world is a comfy flat with my husband in Toronto’s East End. It’s bare bones survival but somehow very luxurious. I type this on a sunny Friday afternoon after participating in a staged reading of two plays by Yehuda Amichai last night. I have a rehearsal tonight where I will see the set being built as my apartment where I live with one of my two sons, both of who try to kill me over the course of 20 minutes in FAMILY PRACTICE.

What are we going to see you in, in the future?

Theatre–wise I will be onstage the last two weeks in July in SARA’S CAVE a new Canadian play in Brampton, Ontario.

I am working in two short films now: FAMILY PRACTICE and LEO. I assume they will be Festival circuit fare. I have a short NOT A FISH STORY I did with Anita Doren currently playing on The Movie Channel and Anita and I are working on another project presently in script development with Michael Mortensen, THE CIRCLE ETERNAL based on his novella MRS. HARPER.

What is the quiet voice inside of you that needs to be heard?

I just need ‘to be,’ present, conscious, applying myself, understanding as much as possible. Loving being alive. Loving.

What is the message or advice that you would like to give to the Theatre Pasta readers ?

Keep up the good work! Theatre is good work.

Daddy

2005-05-02T08:52:00.000-07:00

May 2, 2000, my Father Solomon Lipman Chernin passed away at the age of 81.

From a novel(unpublished) I wrote in Los Angeles in the 70ies called THE BEDSIDE ALICE:

DADDY'S BIRTHDAY CARD from Alice:

Today, of all days is Daddy's Birthday and on the verge of tears I rock myself to sleep, because in the end and on the day of your Father's Birthday, you GROW UP, because Daddy's fifty and you're not a kid anymore.

It's raining. It's 5:30 in the morning and Daddy is 50.. Daddy is having his Birthday and I am giving birth to the day by staying up all night.

It's all in the shadows on the wall. Head in hands I write:

Happy Birthday Daddy,

saving the minutes of the only night when it will be Daddy's fiftieth Birthday...can't sleep on Daddy's Birthday.

Your little girl can't sleep, she's crying on your birthday. It's raining on your Birthday and your little girl's in pain on your birthday.

I'm tired. It's 5:30 in the morning, the night is gone until it comes again and if I don't get some sleep, I'll be even more tired and more tired and someday I'll be too tired to go on, and I don't want that to happen.

Let me sleep, Daddy, even though it's your only fiftieth birthday, especially because it's that day.

Love and Birthday xxxxx's

Alice.

Written On the occasion of the second anniversary of my Father’s death: May 2, 2002.

I have been talking to my Father incessantly for the past twenty four hours, on this day May 2, that marks the second anniversary of his passing in 2000. I have been talking to him about the two years without him, when I have not been able to pick up the phone to say, “Hi Daddy”, or been able to stop by and feel the comfort of his hugs and kisses. My father became much more demonstrative in his last years, showering his four daughters with affection and becoming the mellow companion of his wife of fifty plus years.
The last time I addressed a letter to my Father was on his 50ieth birthday. I was living in Los Angeles and I felt the impact of his ageing. I figured it was time for me to start maturing, because after all Daddy was 50 and I in my twenties saw it as a bench mark for my own growing up. That did not stop me from continuing to call him ‘Daddy’ except for a brief period in adolescence when it was ‘Father…yes Father, anything you say, Father’ a rather pathetic attempt at sarcasm as we waged a war over my life and his control over it. I wanted him to relinquish that control so I could follow my heart and I did so for many years, often to his distress.

So Daddy, thanks for hanging in with me. I know it was rough at times. My unconventional ways and needs were often a source of frustration and I know pain for you, but we survived, our love in tact. Of course I could never really say this to you, because as a man of few words you were not one for declarations. Au contraire, you were indeed, the strong silent type. There you sat behind your newspaper and in later years the ever present books that you read in your easy chair nightly. When you could no longer play tennis or even golf, it was the world of books and the beloved history channel that kept you gloriously occupied. You took to retirement very well, just another indication that all your years of dentistry were the sacrifice you made to raise your family – your girls. The four of us plus Mother were a constant source of amazement I know to your manly disposition. You were a man’s man and that’s what you understood. And I learned to understand you which was probably the greatest gift you gave me, although there were so many generous gifts – support for your artist daughter, whose mystifying commitment to the life of the imagination was if not always comprehended, never relinquished.

Dearest Father of mine, we struggled through my difficult high school years, my Hollywood sojourn which I know worried you and let me say, your concern was not unfounded. I was pretty ‘out there’ but I could always call home. Once when I phoned you, upset about a writing deadline, financial problems, building a career. You brought it down to a wonderful simplicity that gave me perspective: “You’re under pressure", you said, and it clicked and soothed me.

When the L.A. experience finally got the better of me and a billboard saying ‘Fly Toronto’ beckoned me home, you responded to my tearful ‘plaints with a ticket to come home. The first snowfall back in Toronto, we shovelled the walk and cleaned off the car together and some part of my brain that had been fried under the California sun was restored.

But Daddy, enough about me. You had 81 years of life, born on Armistice day, November 11, 1919, named Solomon for Peace. (My sister) Barbara wrote me from London England on one occasion in the year following your death when we corresponded by constant e mails that got me through the year: “I think a lot about how Daddy shaped my life and really how deep down good he was. He lived his life to the best of his ability. Let’s hope we all do”.

It’s harder to do without you, Daddy. I understand how Mother felt when she said “how could he go and leave me now”..I just wanted you to go on forever, taking your simple pleasures, your shelf of best sellers, your chair at the head of the Passover table, your wonderful recalcitrant monosyllabic ‘don’t bother me now’ replies as you rushed back to the TV with your plate of sliced apple, “a healthy snack” gleefully anticipating the conclusion of ‘Catherine The Great’….

To say I miss you is inadequate, but I have so many memories that live on in me daily so many indications that what Barbara said is so, that you shaped my life and now in my maturity I can be grateful.

When you took your last breath I was beside you, my heart breaking. I felt you were frightened and very confused. I felt helpless and terrified. I felt so much love for you. And you died like a man. You just suddenly died, no last minute capitulation’s or changes of character, somehow without ceremony your heart stopped. No last words, because you didn’t need words, that had been established in your lifetime.

It was your presence, Daddy that was so compelling for me always: your strong capable hands, your dear bald head, the layers of life that deepened your face and form, the warmth of your embrace that drew me close to your signature sweater vests, the sound of your voice, the humour that would surface and surprise us all and the laughter we shared in our little circle of Sol and his girls, Beryl and Cayle and Franky and Barbara and Nancy.

The other day I used up the last of the shirt cardboards that you used to save up for me from your laundered shirts because you knew I liked to use them for mailings. My source is gone.
My source is gone.

SOME ADDITIONAL NOTES -

Later when I again came to live with my parents, now a ‘maturer person’ and way too old to be living at home, but in spite of minor embarrassment on my Mother’s part, “it didn’t look right”, it was heavenly. It was my busiest year to date, if we don’t count my ignominious Hollywood movie experience, otherwise known as ‘survive and stay alive in ’75’, advise from Nick Ray, the director of ‘Rebel Without A cause’, but that’s another story (alluded to in a previous blog). One I couldn’t tell my Father.

I am so curious about the stories that he couldn’t tell me. Wish I could pry some ‘Solly’ stories out of the nephews he was so close with, who accompanied him on his once-a-year trips to Vegas. Sharing my parents house with them in adulthood was fantastic. Perhaps as someone wrote the prodigal daughter returns home because she has found no one to love out there. Basically I loved the service, dinner on the table, the air conditioner turned on in my room when I got home from late night editing sessions, because Daddy knew it would be too hot for me to sleep..living with people who love you is the best.

I am so grateful to be able to experience it now with my husband, my now love. But it was Daddy who was my first love, my friend, who drove me to airports, got the woeful calls, slipped me the twenties, bought me a car in L.A. We, Chernin girls are considered independent, and we are because we had that secret weapon, a Father who loved us through thick and thin. He didn’t speak to me once for three years because he thought I was in the process of ruining my life..his love was killing him. My Grandmother of course blamed it on me. When the relationship that he reviled broke up, (my five years with Eli Rill) in no small measure because I had a continual nightmare that I would wake up one day and someone would call and tell me that my father had died and I wouldn’t have known him for years. I couldn’t bear the thought and it was eliminated when he once more welcomed me into the bosom of the family – from which my Mother never allowed him to exile me from anyway.

Daddy, my first love, my friend, first shoulder I cried on, the first lap I sat in, my first man, the only man in what eventually became a house full of women. A funny place for a guy like Sol Chernin. The guy who hid his hockey skates from his mother and played hockey under an assumed name til he got busted when a Halifax paper showed a picture of him with the bogus name underneath. This was hidden from Grandma Chernin whose wrath or displeasure was not courted by her four boys, (Daddy being the second oldest) or two daughters for that matter. They were a tight knit bunch, Daddy and my Aunts and Uncles.

Solly, I wish you could have seen me holding the Torah at the service for you today. I could feel Mother’s proud and grateful eyes…’she is going to be alright, Sol. You don’t have to worry about her anymore”.

I miss your physical presence so much...after all, the alternative title for THE BEDSIDE ALICE was >"Daddy you should have told me you were already taken"

More Passover thoughts

2005-04-20T06:47:00.000-07:00

Passover Wishes:
It may be an old story for us, but the children need to know how it happened. How the Jews left Egypt and 400 years of captivity. A community of enslaved people with the blind faith of those willing to lose the little they have and act with one purpose, to pack their bags and go forth into the wilderness. The stakes high: they had to give up the only home they knew in the hope that it would be better - there.

The story goes that the first man to jump into the Red Sea, Nachman, went against his own cautious and reluctant nature and flung himself into the breach and so the miracle happened to part the sea - of troubles.

To go against your own nature is indeed a miracle. To be released from where you were. To celebrate where you are going now. Now that you have been ‘passed over’, have escaped whatever demons that have burdened your journey thus far and are free to wander for another year in search of milk and honey - fourty years in the wilderness with just a little manna to munch. The older ones never get to the promised land, not even Moses, but the generation born in the desert, they do.

Haggadah - the next generation. It is for them we ‘tell over’ the story every year.

The rituals of Passover, fasts from the regular bill of fare, changes in habit, positions, we lean through the long suppers, reading while eating, odd ritual foods, story telling, singing. An experience of withdrawal, release from routine, even defiance as we choose to be free of the ties that bind us, to strike out on the open road, to skewer the sacred cows and eat them for dinner, sustenance for what's lies ahead: escape from oppression, our own and others, the 'pharaoh' who enslaves us with enough bread to eat in exchange for our will, hostile friends who worship false gods.

Happy Pesach.

In the spirit of human kindness, I wish you the very thing that Passover is about – freedom. The freedom to make choices, to relinquish old modes in favour of the untried in search of the ‘true’.

Cayle

April tis the cruellest month

2005-04-13T14:39:00.000-07:00

Passover coming next week. A piece I wrote for the Star in 2002

TORONTO STAR
Mar. 25, 2002 01:00 EDT

`Next year in Glace Bay'

At Passover, we traditionally pray, "Next year in Jerusalem." This Canadian Jew, born in Cape Breton, would settle for "next year in Glace Bay" after the extraordinary reunion that took place in a small Nova Scotia town over the Aug. 1 long weekend.

Four hundred people descended on Glace Bay for the Kum-a-Haym, a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Congregation Sons of Israel synagogue, built by Russian immigrants at the turn of the last century. The synagogue still graces the once thriving Jewish community, now shrunk to an unbelievable 20 people. Neither may be there much longer.

I went with my husband Dwight from Toronto to introduce him to my Nova Scotia home and a Jewish community that was mostly a memory already. We drove down and after three days on the road entered New Waterford by a full moon. Carly Simon sang on the radio and made me cry: "And then God and Daddy died, there was nothing those two couldn't do," because this was the first time I'd been back since my father, Solomon Chernin, died at the age of 81.

The Kum-a-Haym was a glorious event, unprecedented. Dwight got to meet old friends and family, play golf with my Pascoe cousins at the beautiful Bell Bay Golf Course. We swam in the Mira River, an inlet of fresh and salt water. My memory hadn't played tricks at all: The pure, clean feeling of our Mira Bay water was fact.

David Chernin, who lives with his family in Boston, rustled up delicious mussels. The Boniuk cousins, Isaac, Vivian and Tiny, explored the ruins of their old bungalow behind the one my father built.

There were services in the shul, a boat ride at the Mira Boat Club. Saturday night the festivities began after the Sabbath ended. We gathered at the Savoy where Aunt Sadie took Franky and me to the movies. Only the "OY" was lit up in the sign — a little Jewish humour. More abounded as voices were raised in song and we entertained each other. The full Dubinsky family in performance, proud Phil Simon kvelling from the sidelines, our own poet laureate Ellie Marshall. I read a poem and got my laugh on the line: "I'm from the Bay, where are you from, bye?" Wasn't that my childhood friend Karen Lubetski across the crowded room? Innes, my baby-sitter? Wasn't that United Israel Appeal's Barney Harris, grinning ear to ear, schmoozing with Nova Scotia's lieutenant-governor, Myra Freeman, who presided over the festivities?

Four generations of Glace Bay Jewish life have come and almost gone. We gathered the last day at the Glace Bay Cemetery where I could visit so many.

My grandparents, Louis and Rose Chernin, are buried there. Aunt Sandra and Uncle Myer, Mennie and Joey, newly laid to rest. I missed the funeral four months ago but now I stand with his grieving widow, Shirley, who made this reunion happen, and their children Marta and Mark. We all made a pact to contribute to the maintenance of this sacred ground.

Five days after our arrival we departed from Aunt Mary Moraff's, where we stayed in Sydney and spent wonderful evenings with my Moraff cousins, the first time ever with all of us together: Dennis lives with his wife Lorna and son Montana in Yellowknife; Bruce was down from Halifax and Carla and Kevin were there from Victoria with their adorable daughters, Cayle and Alysha. When Dwight asked about their father, my Uncle Buddy, we all went silent. I said, "Buddy could sing like Al Jolson" and it was very quiet for a moment while we listened. "The sun shines east, the sun shines west but I know where the sun shines best ..."

Not a cloud was in the sky as we departed on our return trip. So many things to think about and remember: Milo and Bill's little Isaac running around Mira, where Vivian's lamb once roamed free. Susan and John's young Max, who took to the magnificent waters of Mira like the proverbial duck. Aunt Ruthie Shane. Mother and Etta, my sisters Franky and Nancy, Aunt Bella.

How rich an experience. My documentary I Am Home, the story of finding our Russian relatives, was a love letter to my family and to the beautiful days of childhood, to Grandma and Grandpa and Bibby and Jack, Uncle Buddy, to Mira and Keltic, and Camp Kadimah, to people whose lives will always be entwined with mine. Just to say the names again, to hold each other once more for a moment through the layers of time, eyes stinging because you miss them and you love them so much.

We remember together the time when they were all here, too, Sandra and Myer, Mennie and Joey and Sadie and Bessie. Daddy.

Next year in Glace Bay ...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cayle Chernin is an award-winning video producer in Toronto who began her career as part of the cast of the movie Goin' Down The Road.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

News |Greater Toronto|Business|Sports|Entertainment|Life|Weekly Sections

Sunday Rainy Sunday

2005-04-03T08:42:00.000-07:00

I forgot my password, my blogger name, and I've been entering my posts in the wrong place. It's Fall behind today and April showers are hitting with a vengence. Working on GLASS MENAGERIE, reading George Walker plays - letting the events of Friday, seeing myself across a century sink in and Pope John Paul is the news of the day.

this is a test to see if I can get it right.

Humber College

2005-04-01T06:49:00.000-08:00

Today 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!

Post Hollywood - Fly Toronto

2005-03-31T15:22:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-30T11:39:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-29T08:40:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-28T09:26:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-27T12:55:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-25T12:32:00.000-08:00

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.