I watched a prog on the box last night about Anthony Minghella (he who wrote and directed Truly Madly Deeply, The English Patient, The Talented Mr Ripley etc).
The most startling fact about him was that he went to Hull University (no really). While he was there he developed a friendship with the playwright Alan Plater. Now my mate John's mum was a close friend of Alan Platers and I often used to have quick hello's with him. This puts me two degrees of separation from Jude Law, Juliettte Binoche, Alan Rickman, Juliet Stevenson, Nicole Kidman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon and.......in fact I almost feel like I live in Hollywood, where, instead of re-heated curried mould, I could be eating like this. (Well LA is almost Hollywood innit!)
But I guess as claims to fame go it's not that good. Not as good as my mate Tagd's mum who used to share a river boat in Paris with that woman from Planet Gong.
Which reminds me that I always meant to tell you that it is really weird driving across the flow country, windows wound down with Gong blasting out.
The original meaning of weird is: "having the power to control destiny".
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4 comments:
You old hippy!
Hello Chris! And the last time you listened to Gong was? You should try it - it's better than you remember.
Actually it was a couple of months ago. I bought Shamal for a fiver in Fopp. On the whole, I think I prefer Steve Hillage's solo stuff.
just fyi, Hollywood is totally in LA, both geographically and symbolically, as in the film industry. The only studio that is still in Hollywood proper, on their old studio lot (with haunted buildings and all) is Paramount, everyone else moved around a bit in the LA area. Sony Pictures for instance is now residing on our old MGM lot in Culver City, where Gone With the Wind was filmed etc. Warner, Universal, Disney are about 10 miles north in Burbank.
Your pal Minghella had a production company here, together with Sidney Pollack, who also unexpectedly died this year, leaving the place and all their projects in limbo. That's a bit of a sad first around here... from what I hear, one of the projects they were working on was a US remake of the German "The Lives of Others" - not sure how that would have turned out, in the absence of a US equivalent of the GDR, but still. Who else would even come up with this?
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