Carrie Fisher: a missive

It's probably fair to say that my first crush back in 1978 was on Carrie Fisher - in the form of the character she was playing in Star Wars of course, but to me the two were inseparable, and still are.

She was often very insecure and typically self-castigating about herself in the role ("it made a star of Princess Leia, and I just happened to look like her"), but what became self-evident from the later SW films was how Carrie herself brought such pugnacity to the role, that was so missing without her; when she returned to the role 22 years later in The Force Awakens, it looked a rather cosmetic Leia Organa, but Fisher the actress had lost none of her conviction.

As is well known, she has brushed with death 30 years before - her drug overdose is charted in her semi-autobiographical Postcards from the Edge. It brought out the other side to Carrie Fisher, that in point of fact was always there if one took the trouble to notice it. The later years for me were, to be honest, times of increasing disillusion - her revelations about "going through the crew" and of her affair with Harrison Ford make her death seem ill-timed with a slight element of distaste. But she was what she was - and a manic depressive too, it was part of her whole being and in some ways the secret of her appeal.

I met her once at an autograph signing event in 2003. She was a vision embedded somewhere under layers of mascara, in a hotel function room behind the Dominion Tottenham Court Road (the place where I first saw Star Wars, on Carrie's birthday in 1978.) She was pleasant, smiled adequately, as did I, and left it at that. I was just another geeky fan in the queue, after all.

Years before that I had written a fan letter as an aspiring actor and film maker, to which she graciously signed a photo - which I did not ask for but she sent along anyway - in reply.

I've never known Carrie personally, but I felt as if a part of me has - and in some ways I am glad of the distance between here and Beverly Hills, between her pain and fame and any of my woes. I can't possibly relate to her lifestyle or her problems, but I do feel a curious sense of symbiosis - how apt that her death should be just as much publicised as parts of her life.

The final thoughts have to be with her family - Debbie Reynolds is a survivor, not only of a scandalous break-up from her husband Eddie Fisher after his affair with Elizabeth Taylor, but also now of her - and our - brightest stardust, and Billie Lourd has now not only lost a mother but also probably her best friend.

But Carrie's (and Leia's) name and aura live eternal, certainly for long-term fans like me.

(message originally posted on Facebook)

United States Wars

Reading the novelisation of The Force Awakens recently I came upon a passage where Princess (aka. General) Leia Organa declines an invitation to visit the New Republic Senate, because there are too many factions that would quietly want her dead. As a character who has become part of an old establishment, now turned into a warrior and leader, the comparisons with Hilary Clinton are striking.

It sets me thinking as a further reminder of how, unwittingly or otherwise, the Star Wars saga has been a semi-commentary for the course of American political istory too. Back in 1977, the US was recovering from the humiliation and the trauma of the Vietnam war (that Lucas admits was an early creative influence), but within 3 years, the "feelgood" factor, whether phoney or otherwise, spread its way from the culture of Star Wars into American politics. The subsequently elected president, Ronald Reagan, also declared the Soviet Union to be an "evil empire" and announced his Strategic Defence Initiative, quickly dubbed by the press, "the Star Wars strategy."

This was all of its time when Star Wars was still very much part of the zeitgeist, but the parallels with history continued: in 1999 out came The Phantom Menace, with its tale of an old Republic threatened from without (and within) by sinister forces and a seemingly unknown enemy - within 2 years the Republic of the United States was attacked for the first time on its own mainland in Washington and New York. When the second Star Wars prequel came out in 2005, Lucas reciprocated the eerie historical similarity, by showing the Jedi temple ablaze, in an echo of New York on September 11th (above).

We now have the reestablished Republic (in Star Wars) now under threat from a new sinister "First Order", with a new tyranny also threatening the United States, so the parallels look like continuing for a while yet.

Good Things: 30.

The new £5 note

There are good and bad views on this one, but I side with the 'goodies' here: it feels like toy money but has that superb portrait of Churchill on the reverse, and brings back into circulation a rather neglected and very useful note into the national currency.

Good Things: 29.

"Google doodles"

Such as this latest one (celebrating the first day of Spring.) Google may have their shady dealings with the taxman in the UK, but their little animated intros are in the best tradition of short cartoons from the 50's and earlier. I find them quite distractingly funny but charming.

N.H.O. Clough (1943-2015)

That was his name as far as the cricket scorecards were concerned (and he makes it into the 1962 Wisden for the match between Clifton College and Tonbridge School at Lord's), for a man who was an utter gent (with an additional cheeky side), both on and off the field.

I knew Nick as a colleague on the local stage in Colchester (most recently in Pass the Butler below), but I confess to a boyish tingle of admiration whenever I'm involved with a colleague who is also a cricketer. A genuine hero.

Rest in peace Nick.

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The Smallest Show on Earth

Sept 25th-Oct 10th 2015

Mercury Theatre/Brian Eastman/Christabel Albery.

"The smallest show with the biggest heart.", thus tweeted Robert Lindsay, who mingled among the admirers at this evening's Press night for an Irving Berlin-themed musical adaptation of Basil Dearden's "classic" nostalgic comedy about a run-down old cinema. 

Romanticised in many respects, with Old Tom the Commissioner turned into young Tom the son of Mrs. Fazackerly (Liza Goddard instead of Margaret Rutherford, on formidable form). Plot devices such as this and the young couple being driven apart by his screenwriting chores for a B-Movie Western seem hackneyed, as well as obvious black-and-white villains and heroes, but these are mostly incidentals in between the musical numbers, which are vibrantly staged and choreographed particularly by the younger performers. 

This is most certainly intended to be a shameless crowd-pleaser, turning an endearing piece of cinema into a glossy piece of theatre. It therefore only has any partial resemblance to the original Smallest Show on Earth.

w: Thom Southerland, Paul Alexander.

d: Thom Southerland.

s: Liza Goddard, Brian Capron, Laura Pitt-Pulford, Haydn Oakley, Matthew Crowe, Sam O'Rourke, Christina Bennington, Philip Rham, Ricky Butt, Leo Andrew.

Lighting: Howard Hudson.

Musical Supervision: Gareth Valentine.

Angel's Advocate: Original Theatrical Versions

With the latest release of yet another, optimistically titled, "Final Cut" of Blade Runner coming out, it's worth noting that none of the versions of Ridley Scott's landmark science fiction film from 1982 have ever really made any sense, except perhaps the much derided first version with Harrison Ford's clunky narration and a happy ending thrown in, both of which were approved at the time by Scott, ever with an eye to the film's box office chances.

Similarly, Don Siegel reluctantly shot a prologue and epilogue to Invasion of the Body Snatchers at the instruction of Allied Artists, in order to give Kevin McCarthy (and the audience) hope rather than letting the aliens win, which (*SPOILER ALERT*) they do however in the scary but largely inferior 1978 remake with Donald Sutherland.

The Day of the Triffids also has a horrendously clunky framing device of a husband and wife (Kieron Moore and Janette Scott) marooned on a lighthouse when the world is attacked by triffids, whilst throughout the rest of the film Howard Keel and company are battling through a very uncertain future in Steve Sekely's stark fantasy horror drama. The framing device that came up with a ludicrously simple solution to the alien menace was shot was a new director in the making, Freddie Francis, and the lighthouse scenes had their own element of refreshing entertainment about them.

Through all these slightly dubiously revised films, the one factor that executives considered at the back of their minds was the audience feeling of Hope - much derided, but also rather underestimated, and not just because the fact that studios are out to make a fast buck. Sometimes not just Hollywood, but also the audience, wants a happy ending.