Trouble in Tinseltown
It is 6.45 am and I am outside CBS studios in West Hollywood with a Writers Guild of America picket sign in one hand and my six year old son Gabriel’s hand in the other. “Dad” he says, matter of factly, ”will we get arrested?” This is in his mind as he’d just seen the film Across the Universe which had Vietnam protesters being dragged off the street.
It is two years to the day since I moved to Los Angeles to write for Craig Ferguson on his daily TV show. With a wife, three kids and a five bedroom house to support I have been waking up early in the morning in a panic.
Many of the cars honk their horns in sympathy, the loudest being the big rigs which have those air horns which are deafening. A number of lorry drivers refuse to cross the picket lines at various studios on principle and do this at the risk of losing their jobs.
Today is Veteran’s day, America’s Day of Remembrance, so a lot of kids are off school and my boy Gabriel is pigging out on the snacks he has found in a box by the signs. He is not so keen on the pounding the pavements for a four hour stretch, a position I sympathise with. “Are we poor now, dad?” he asks, casually, like being poor might be fun. I say not yet.
“Why are we doing this ?”. I feel that explaining the rates of pay for re-use of shows on the net and other platforms might be a bit over his head.
“You know when your big sister won’t share ?” I say, “This is because some people don’t want to share.”
He mulls this over for a bit and says, “If we need money can’t we just go to the bank?” I tried to clear this one up, having tried to live like that myself at times. Each explanation leads on to more questions.
He keeps asking me for the next few days after this, “What was that thing we were doing called?” For some reason the word picketing slips away from him. A couple of days ago he sees me scribbling in a notebook and he says, “Dad are you supposed to be writing while you’re on strike?” The honest answer to that is that I’m not sure.
On the first day a comedy writer at a different lot has his leg broken by some guy who didn’t want to wait for the pickets to clear the entrance. There is a photo on one of the blogs of his Nike under the tyre of the car.
The background to the dispute is that when video came along the studios got the writers to agree to a miserly slice of the profits claiming that they needed an introductory deal as the machines would be expensive and might not catch on. This same rate was maintained for DVDs so that when you buy a thirty dollar DVD the writer’s share is two and half cents. With new technology threatening to render DVDs as obsolete as the abacus, the rates of pay for downloads are a key issue.
I have friends who maintain that by going on strike we are playing into the hands of the producers, like turkeys voting for an early Christmas. The logic here is that after we have been out for eight weeks there is a contractual clause that allows studios to suspend deals that are proving unprofitable, so that this is a chance for them to trim the fat from their operation.
The last long strike was in 1988; it lasted for twenty-two weeks and was when the reality shows like Cops gained a foothold here, so there is also a concern that we may be eroding our own share of the market.
To middle America Hollywood writers going on strike is about as understandable as pop stars going on strike, like Duran Duran circling the stadium and refusing to play Rio unless they’re promised more money.
Yet the truth of the matter is that of the twelve thousand or so members of the guild, sixty per cent won’t make the necessary thirty thousand dollars a year that would get them health insurance for themselves and their families.
Like in the acting profession, a tiny number earn a fortune, a few make a good living and the majority cannot live off their earnings as writers and so take other jobs.
On the Friday before the Thanksgiving holiday there is a rally on Hollywood Boulevard. There are over four thousand of us marching along the walk of fame. The whole thing has a carnival feel to it, as we meander along past the Scientology buildings,’ Come in and take a free personality test today.’
I pass Spiderman or at least a guy dressed up as him, and an African American Wicked Witch of the West, green faced in the middle of it all. Hollywood Boulevard is the place where, for a negotiable fee you can have your picture taken with the movie character of your choice.
It’s not quite Disneyland, it’s a little cracky and turf wars often end in fistfights and the police having to separate Chewbacca and the Hulk then lead them off in handcuffs.
There are dogs wearing t-shirts, and an eighty-foot model pouts down at us from a huge ad which has been draped over the side of an apartment block. There are holes cut in it for the windows of the apartment where people stare down at us or take pictures.
Marching along side us are nurses, actresses, directors, cinematographers, and a blonde model like you’d see at boxing matches holding up a sign that has the number of days we’ve been out.
Outside a shop that sells collectibles from film and TV, an old guy in a beard holds a sign, “Writers, in need of cash? I pay top dollar for film and TV scripts.”
Also marching along side us are the local Teamsters, a union of big rig drivers, those monster trucks, which also bizarrely includes the casting directors. Junior agents from mega agency CAA are on hand to dole out water and scones, the Jarrow marches of the thirties it ain’t.
As we march along there is chanting, “On strike, shut ‘em down, Hollywood’s a union town!” and my own personal favourite “They wanted me to do a re-write, but I said no, no, no!”
Outside the studios of NBC whose CEO is a Mr. Zucker, they chant “Treat us fairly Mr. Zucker, we are not your two bit hooker!”
As motorcycle cops usher us forward behind our banners I see a wooden platform with a dozen photographers on it taking shots of us as we pass, this is not just a rally but also a media event, a photo op. Everyone has a camera of some sort and is taking pictures of everyone else taking pictures of them.
The first person to address the rally is the President of the Guild, Patric Verrone. Rather alarmingly for a public figure in the media age he has what I can only describe as Hitler hair, the trademark long dark side parting, though mercifully not a brown shirt or the Chaplinesque moustache, as that would be playing into the hands of the enemy.
The producers have enlisted the help of one of those ad agencies who proved that cigarettes are not bad for you to make their case, taking out full page ads in newspapers throughout the country.
While the studios insist to us that the net is too new and that it may not pay, one writer has edited together a series of clips of the studio CEOs boasting about how confident they are that they can make money from the internet.
Today is day two of three days of talks at an undisclosed location and everyone in this company town is hoping that a fair deal will be made.
A local councilor addressed our rally and tells us the Munchkins had agreed to move their award ceremony outside Mann’s Chinese theatre to accommodate our rally, so it was good to know that even the lollipop guild were behind us.
At first I thought that this was a joke until I saw the headlines the next day. After seventy years the few surviving Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz have finally been given their own star on the Hollywood walk of fame.
Even if it took a while, it was good to see those little guys getting what they deserved. I’m hoping it’s a good omen.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Sunday, August 26, 2007
sunday times column week sixteen
Soaps, Blond Justice, and Farewell.
Yesterday we shot the last of our sketches for Ford. In the finale Craig pulls up in a sports car with the registration number Ferg # 1, I chase him, bursting into set of The Bold and The Beautiful, a cheesey day time soap on CBS populated by these freakishly attractive day time actors.
Ashley, the lead in the show tells me that she has been doing the gig for twenty straight years and her character has been married a grand total of twelve times, twice to the same guy and once to his father.
At the end of the bit, Craig tazers me, and I’m bundled into the car. The last shot is of me in the back of the Ford Escape with stamps and a sticker saying ‘Return to Scotland’. You can see the sketches on www.cbs/late late show.com
We booked a family holiday in Cancun in Mexico, a four hour flight from LA, the big spring break destination for American college students, only to find that it was directly in the path of Hurricane Dean, as it approached I tried to take out extra insurance but apparently they don’t let you do that. In the end the resort was unscathed.
In an attempt to show that the days of celebrities like OJ and Michael Jackson getting away with breaking the law are long gone here in California ; Lindsay Lohan has been sentenced for possession of coke and two incidents of drunk driving. She was given four days in jail.
Nicole Richie’s sentence for reversing on the freeway out of her head on drugs was a measly ninety hours. She was sent home after an hour and a quarter. One newspaper describes this as ‘Blond Justice’.
One explanation is that LA county’s prisons are so overcrowded that anyone given a sentence of thirty days or less is processed in twelve hours and sent home to do their time, so it seems to me that they are certainly not overcrowded with celebrities.
I imagine that bewigged record producer Phil Spector who is on trial for a murder he actually confessed to, must be rubbing his blood stained hands in glee, thinking it is only a matter of time before he’s out and up to his old tricks.
There are rumours that Britney Spears is planning to move to London to get away from her troubles. Under California law, if you take a kid out of the state without the express permission of the other parent, you can be arrested for child abduction, and besides she’ll never master the parallel parking that London demands.
The rumours of a looming writers’ strike continue to build here with the current writer producer agreement due to run out in a couple of months. The studios boast to Wall St that their record profits will continue, and tell the writers guild that they can’t give them a better deal.
Back in 1988, there was a strike which lasted five months and gave a huge boost to the reality TV sector which has grown so much since then.
Given the huge publicity machine that the producers have access to it is hard for the writers to get their case across, especially since most people think that actors make up their own lines and that all Hollywood writers sit by their pools being fed seedless grapes by their semi naked assistants pausing now and then to jot down a few thoughts on their solid gold typewriters.
The truth of the matter is that only one in every six writers is actually making a living from writing, so that when it comes to a vote, there will probably a lot of guys who are now cutting hair or teaching kindergarten who would rather be telling people that they are a writer on strike than admit that the last thing they wrote was an episode of Flash Gordon.
Another scenario is that we will go on strike along with the Screen Actors Guild a little later. Since this is my last column I thought I’d finish it with an actor joke I just heard.
An actor finishes work earlier than expected, lets himself in the house and goes upstairs to his bedroom to catch a glimpse of a guy’s ass leaping out of the window. His wife is on the bed looking very sheepish.
“What the hell is going on ?” he demands.
“Look, I’m not going to lie to you. I’m sick of your selfishness and the fact that all you care about is your career. I’m having an affair” she hisses, “with your agent !”
The actor thinks about this for a second, catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and says, excited, “My agent came to my house !”
Yesterday we shot the last of our sketches for Ford. In the finale Craig pulls up in a sports car with the registration number Ferg # 1, I chase him, bursting into set of The Bold and The Beautiful, a cheesey day time soap on CBS populated by these freakishly attractive day time actors.
Ashley, the lead in the show tells me that she has been doing the gig for twenty straight years and her character has been married a grand total of twelve times, twice to the same guy and once to his father.
At the end of the bit, Craig tazers me, and I’m bundled into the car. The last shot is of me in the back of the Ford Escape with stamps and a sticker saying ‘Return to Scotland’. You can see the sketches on www.cbs/late late show.com
We booked a family holiday in Cancun in Mexico, a four hour flight from LA, the big spring break destination for American college students, only to find that it was directly in the path of Hurricane Dean, as it approached I tried to take out extra insurance but apparently they don’t let you do that. In the end the resort was unscathed.
In an attempt to show that the days of celebrities like OJ and Michael Jackson getting away with breaking the law are long gone here in California ; Lindsay Lohan has been sentenced for possession of coke and two incidents of drunk driving. She was given four days in jail.
Nicole Richie’s sentence for reversing on the freeway out of her head on drugs was a measly ninety hours. She was sent home after an hour and a quarter. One newspaper describes this as ‘Blond Justice’.
One explanation is that LA county’s prisons are so overcrowded that anyone given a sentence of thirty days or less is processed in twelve hours and sent home to do their time, so it seems to me that they are certainly not overcrowded with celebrities.
I imagine that bewigged record producer Phil Spector who is on trial for a murder he actually confessed to, must be rubbing his blood stained hands in glee, thinking it is only a matter of time before he’s out and up to his old tricks.
There are rumours that Britney Spears is planning to move to London to get away from her troubles. Under California law, if you take a kid out of the state without the express permission of the other parent, you can be arrested for child abduction, and besides she’ll never master the parallel parking that London demands.
The rumours of a looming writers’ strike continue to build here with the current writer producer agreement due to run out in a couple of months. The studios boast to Wall St that their record profits will continue, and tell the writers guild that they can’t give them a better deal.
Back in 1988, there was a strike which lasted five months and gave a huge boost to the reality TV sector which has grown so much since then.
Given the huge publicity machine that the producers have access to it is hard for the writers to get their case across, especially since most people think that actors make up their own lines and that all Hollywood writers sit by their pools being fed seedless grapes by their semi naked assistants pausing now and then to jot down a few thoughts on their solid gold typewriters.
The truth of the matter is that only one in every six writers is actually making a living from writing, so that when it comes to a vote, there will probably a lot of guys who are now cutting hair or teaching kindergarten who would rather be telling people that they are a writer on strike than admit that the last thing they wrote was an episode of Flash Gordon.
Another scenario is that we will go on strike along with the Screen Actors Guild a little later. Since this is my last column I thought I’d finish it with an actor joke I just heard.
An actor finishes work earlier than expected, lets himself in the house and goes upstairs to his bedroom to catch a glimpse of a guy’s ass leaping out of the window. His wife is on the bed looking very sheepish.
“What the hell is going on ?” he demands.
“Look, I’m not going to lie to you. I’m sick of your selfishness and the fact that all you care about is your career. I’m having an affair” she hisses, “with your agent !”
The actor thinks about this for a second, catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and says, excited, “My agent came to my house !”
sunday times column week fifteen
Stspiecewk16
This week all of America’s celebrity magazines are full of Kevin Federline’s subpoena spree, his attempts to serve court orders on various employees/relatives and rehabs in the run up to a bid to change the custody arrangements.
Britney Spears is accused of being an unfit mother, of putting fizzy drinks in her kids’ baby bottles, keeping them up all night so they’ll sleep the next day, dating a Vegas magician, and smashing into parked cars in full view of thirty paparazzi then walking away. She has also been photographed snuggling up to various people in pools and hot tubs all around town.
One magazine’s shrink suggests that she might be bi-polar. To give her credit, she’s not devoid of all maternal feelings, she did ask her dentist if he’d whiten her kids’ teeth.
With Lindsay off in rehab in Utah, Nicole Ritchie pregnant and Paris keeping a relatively low profile, someone has to pick up the slack. Even Amy Winehouse who said no, no, no to rehab has elected to address her pharmaceutical intake and is in treatment here. She reportedly overdosed on a large cocktail of class A drugs including ketamine, or special k, a horse tranquiliser.
The obsessive and constantly updated coverage of Britney’s sad demise has a motorway pile up quality to it, you know that you shouldn’t really be staring but you just can’t help sneaking just one more look. I wonder how future generations will view our unsavoury voyeurism.
It makes me think of Bedlam, the Royal Bethelem Hospital in London. This was the Victorian world’s first psychiatric hospital. For a penny visitors could peer into the cells, view the freaks and laugh at their fights and sexual antics. Visitors were permitted to bring long sticks with which to poke and enrage the inmates. We are much more sophisticated, we have the paparazzi with their long lenses.
On Friday my kids went to yet another theme park with their summer camp. This one is called California Big Adventure and the camp suggested they be given twenty dollars each for lunch and souvenirs. My ginger brood insist that this is not enough.
At my high school we once went to Glen Shee in Aberdeenshire for a one day skiing trip, we were meant to wear water proof clothing and I remember that I wore these painter’s trousers on that were too big for me, covered in yellow paint and not actually water proof.
I only got as far as putting skis on and shuffling around in icy puddles. I went to the café where I discovered that I couldn’t even afford a Mars Bar. We went with Mr Connolly the technical drawing teacher who looked like Peter Cushing and was the colour of tracing paper due to his constant smoking.
On the way home along the winding roads some kid threw up, triggering a chain reaction. By the time we pulled up in Cambuslang we were all knee deep in honked up Opal Fruits and regurgitated Curly Wurlies. Thank God for the painter’s trousers.
In a couple of weeks time Grace starts a new school and she tells me that she is nervous about it all. I try to console by telling her about my high school but it doesn’t help as she thinks I’m either making it all up or at the very least exaggerating.
My worst teacher was Mr McGann, a gingery, bull necked psychopath who ‘taught’ technical drawing. He was big on blanket punishments, and loved belting the whole class. There was something so openly sadistic about him that makes me shudder even now . He carried two belts with him and alarmingly gave them women’s names, one was called Wee Ina, the other Big Bertha.
This sounds like a joke, but I promise you this is the truth ; at our school even the janny carried a belt. He was an intense red head with a beard. He once tried to belt me out in the yard for taking a short cut past some building works. I felt that there was something not right about a janny giving you the belt out in the playground after school was over and I ran off. He looked exactly like Van Gogh, if Van Gogh had been an irate janny.
To be fair to the teachers, there were some crazy kids at my school, like Gerry Duffy who spent a morning rolling around in puddles so that he could come back in the afternoon wearing his new Wrangler jacket and jeans. He once stood on his desk and challenged the head of the school to a ‘square go’. He was eleven years old.
He was from the Circuit, an area of Cambuslang which was as rough as a bear’s arse and had one or two crazy families who worked in the Chunky Chicken factory. Every now and then an entire family would show up outside our school to settle some kind of vendetta. They were easy to spot, they were the ones with a couple of dogs, an air rifle and an array of chicken slaughtering equipment.
A TV film crew once went in there to do a documentary on social deprivation but their investigation had to be abandoned when the locals broke into their van and stole all their equipment.
“Excuse me, pal, wanna buy a TV camera ? It’s no knocked.”
This week all of America’s celebrity magazines are full of Kevin Federline’s subpoena spree, his attempts to serve court orders on various employees/relatives and rehabs in the run up to a bid to change the custody arrangements.
Britney Spears is accused of being an unfit mother, of putting fizzy drinks in her kids’ baby bottles, keeping them up all night so they’ll sleep the next day, dating a Vegas magician, and smashing into parked cars in full view of thirty paparazzi then walking away. She has also been photographed snuggling up to various people in pools and hot tubs all around town.
One magazine’s shrink suggests that she might be bi-polar. To give her credit, she’s not devoid of all maternal feelings, she did ask her dentist if he’d whiten her kids’ teeth.
With Lindsay off in rehab in Utah, Nicole Ritchie pregnant and Paris keeping a relatively low profile, someone has to pick up the slack. Even Amy Winehouse who said no, no, no to rehab has elected to address her pharmaceutical intake and is in treatment here. She reportedly overdosed on a large cocktail of class A drugs including ketamine, or special k, a horse tranquiliser.
The obsessive and constantly updated coverage of Britney’s sad demise has a motorway pile up quality to it, you know that you shouldn’t really be staring but you just can’t help sneaking just one more look. I wonder how future generations will view our unsavoury voyeurism.
It makes me think of Bedlam, the Royal Bethelem Hospital in London. This was the Victorian world’s first psychiatric hospital. For a penny visitors could peer into the cells, view the freaks and laugh at their fights and sexual antics. Visitors were permitted to bring long sticks with which to poke and enrage the inmates. We are much more sophisticated, we have the paparazzi with their long lenses.
On Friday my kids went to yet another theme park with their summer camp. This one is called California Big Adventure and the camp suggested they be given twenty dollars each for lunch and souvenirs. My ginger brood insist that this is not enough.
At my high school we once went to Glen Shee in Aberdeenshire for a one day skiing trip, we were meant to wear water proof clothing and I remember that I wore these painter’s trousers on that were too big for me, covered in yellow paint and not actually water proof.
I only got as far as putting skis on and shuffling around in icy puddles. I went to the café where I discovered that I couldn’t even afford a Mars Bar. We went with Mr Connolly the technical drawing teacher who looked like Peter Cushing and was the colour of tracing paper due to his constant smoking.
On the way home along the winding roads some kid threw up, triggering a chain reaction. By the time we pulled up in Cambuslang we were all knee deep in honked up Opal Fruits and regurgitated Curly Wurlies. Thank God for the painter’s trousers.
In a couple of weeks time Grace starts a new school and she tells me that she is nervous about it all. I try to console by telling her about my high school but it doesn’t help as she thinks I’m either making it all up or at the very least exaggerating.
My worst teacher was Mr McGann, a gingery, bull necked psychopath who ‘taught’ technical drawing. He was big on blanket punishments, and loved belting the whole class. There was something so openly sadistic about him that makes me shudder even now . He carried two belts with him and alarmingly gave them women’s names, one was called Wee Ina, the other Big Bertha.
This sounds like a joke, but I promise you this is the truth ; at our school even the janny carried a belt. He was an intense red head with a beard. He once tried to belt me out in the yard for taking a short cut past some building works. I felt that there was something not right about a janny giving you the belt out in the playground after school was over and I ran off. He looked exactly like Van Gogh, if Van Gogh had been an irate janny.
To be fair to the teachers, there were some crazy kids at my school, like Gerry Duffy who spent a morning rolling around in puddles so that he could come back in the afternoon wearing his new Wrangler jacket and jeans. He once stood on his desk and challenged the head of the school to a ‘square go’. He was eleven years old.
He was from the Circuit, an area of Cambuslang which was as rough as a bear’s arse and had one or two crazy families who worked in the Chunky Chicken factory. Every now and then an entire family would show up outside our school to settle some kind of vendetta. They were easy to spot, they were the ones with a couple of dogs, an air rifle and an array of chicken slaughtering equipment.
A TV film crew once went in there to do a documentary on social deprivation but their investigation had to be abandoned when the locals broke into their van and stole all their equipment.
“Excuse me, pal, wanna buy a TV camera ? It’s no knocked.”
sunday times column week fourteen
What happened in Vegas.
There was an earthquake at one am on Thursday of this week. It measured a four point five on the Richter scale. A friend of mine who lives in the Hollywood hills said he was up and could hear the coyotes calling an hour before it happened. I slept through it
The same day Gabriel my six year old constructed some kind of Dr Seuss device to get up to a very high shelf, undid the childproof lid and took a giant swig of a bottle of Calpol. The medics said that he is so big for his age that he was fine.
Back in London we were practically on first name terms with the people at casualty. There was the plate he smashed with a splinter going into his eye, he was fine, there was the plastic ball that he swallowed which didn’t show up on the X rays but was casually coughed up and presented to me a day or so later. Maybe he has a career as a Vegas magician ahead of him.
Out on the street a platinum haired woman buttonholed me and said, “Excuse me, is this your son? he’s cute”, at which point I stopped her as I knew what was coming. I said that I was not looking to get him into show business. She said ‘that’s a pity, we’re looking for kids for ‘The Suite Life of Zac and Cody’. Every time I’m out with my kids someone tries to get me to put them up for commercials. There must be a shortage of red heads here.
My twelve year old Grace is doing ‘Beauty and The Beast’ at Summer Camp. She tells me that she disagrees with the director, he wants her to sound like the voice in the movie, whereas she wants to make the speaking clock character more her own. I suggest she does it his way for now but when it comes to the final performance she can do it whatever damn way she pleases.
On Thursday I went to Las Vegas, an hour’s flight from LA. We are shooting two more sketches for the show. I play Craig’s deranged cousin who is being driven round America by Matt, one of the show’s production assistants.
They have a sign up by the line for security screening which says that it is a crime to joke about the security measures. The cab driver asks me if I’m English and wants to be sure we have enough cash to give him a good tip, because if not he can take us to an ATM en route. Welcome to Vegas.
We shoot one scene in the Red Rock Casino’s “Lucky” suite one of only four VIP suites at the casino, ten grand a night, but usually given to high rollers who spend a lot of money there. The room and everything in it is purple and there are giant plasma flatscreen TV’s everywhere including the shower.
The best part is the loo. I walk in and the lid lifts up automatically. There is also a built in Japanese style bidet, so that after you’ve done your business a jet of warm water shoots up to ensure that you are clean and fresh. Since I’ve been in Hollywood I’m used to people blowing smoke up my ass, but this is a whole other matter.
Matt and I dress up as showgirls for one sketch, fish nets, pink sequined frocks, four inch heels and a massive Vegas showgirl backpack of pink feathers. The make up is put on with a trowel. As Kenny Everett used to say, “it is all in the best possible taste.”
At 2 am at the end of the shoot, a chubby woman in a tight dress walks over and says my friend wants to give you her card. At first I thought she was an actress who had been watching the filming. Her card had two photos and said Nicole: classy, discrete, professional entertainment, private parties, couples, home, office, hotel, and a phone number. She was in a different branch of late night entertainment.
It must be a weird life living in a giant bookies in the middle of a desert. There is something so unforgiving about Vegas, there’s the sun, and the slots, and the way the odds always favour the house. It has a Wild West vibe to it, it is kind of Deadwood on steroids.
The casino management were helpful but there is something so steely about these guys, they all have those secret service things in their ears and a cold glint in their eyes that makes me think of a homicide cop, of someone who seen too much of the dark side of human nature.
As one of them said to me, as long as they keep making people who are not very good at maths, Vegas will just keep on growing.
There was an earthquake at one am on Thursday of this week. It measured a four point five on the Richter scale. A friend of mine who lives in the Hollywood hills said he was up and could hear the coyotes calling an hour before it happened. I slept through it
The same day Gabriel my six year old constructed some kind of Dr Seuss device to get up to a very high shelf, undid the childproof lid and took a giant swig of a bottle of Calpol. The medics said that he is so big for his age that he was fine.
Back in London we were practically on first name terms with the people at casualty. There was the plate he smashed with a splinter going into his eye, he was fine, there was the plastic ball that he swallowed which didn’t show up on the X rays but was casually coughed up and presented to me a day or so later. Maybe he has a career as a Vegas magician ahead of him.
Out on the street a platinum haired woman buttonholed me and said, “Excuse me, is this your son? he’s cute”, at which point I stopped her as I knew what was coming. I said that I was not looking to get him into show business. She said ‘that’s a pity, we’re looking for kids for ‘The Suite Life of Zac and Cody’. Every time I’m out with my kids someone tries to get me to put them up for commercials. There must be a shortage of red heads here.
My twelve year old Grace is doing ‘Beauty and The Beast’ at Summer Camp. She tells me that she disagrees with the director, he wants her to sound like the voice in the movie, whereas she wants to make the speaking clock character more her own. I suggest she does it his way for now but when it comes to the final performance she can do it whatever damn way she pleases.
On Thursday I went to Las Vegas, an hour’s flight from LA. We are shooting two more sketches for the show. I play Craig’s deranged cousin who is being driven round America by Matt, one of the show’s production assistants.
They have a sign up by the line for security screening which says that it is a crime to joke about the security measures. The cab driver asks me if I’m English and wants to be sure we have enough cash to give him a good tip, because if not he can take us to an ATM en route. Welcome to Vegas.
We shoot one scene in the Red Rock Casino’s “Lucky” suite one of only four VIP suites at the casino, ten grand a night, but usually given to high rollers who spend a lot of money there. The room and everything in it is purple and there are giant plasma flatscreen TV’s everywhere including the shower.
The best part is the loo. I walk in and the lid lifts up automatically. There is also a built in Japanese style bidet, so that after you’ve done your business a jet of warm water shoots up to ensure that you are clean and fresh. Since I’ve been in Hollywood I’m used to people blowing smoke up my ass, but this is a whole other matter.
Matt and I dress up as showgirls for one sketch, fish nets, pink sequined frocks, four inch heels and a massive Vegas showgirl backpack of pink feathers. The make up is put on with a trowel. As Kenny Everett used to say, “it is all in the best possible taste.”
At 2 am at the end of the shoot, a chubby woman in a tight dress walks over and says my friend wants to give you her card. At first I thought she was an actress who had been watching the filming. Her card had two photos and said Nicole: classy, discrete, professional entertainment, private parties, couples, home, office, hotel, and a phone number. She was in a different branch of late night entertainment.
It must be a weird life living in a giant bookies in the middle of a desert. There is something so unforgiving about Vegas, there’s the sun, and the slots, and the way the odds always favour the house. It has a Wild West vibe to it, it is kind of Deadwood on steroids.
The casino management were helpful but there is something so steely about these guys, they all have those secret service things in their ears and a cold glint in their eyes that makes me think of a homicide cop, of someone who seen too much of the dark side of human nature.
As one of them said to me, as long as they keep making people who are not very good at maths, Vegas will just keep on growing.
sunday times column week thirteen
Pammy, Swords and Gambling.
‘Pamela will be here in ten minutes’ Doug our slightly creepy stage manager told me, as if this was going to be the highlight of our lives.
Pamela Anderson was coming on to plug a Vegas magic show in which she is an assistant to a Dutch magician called Hans Klok. At key points in the show Pammy leaps out of various types of containers, but he also has a Dutch lady assistant who does the bulk of the getting sawn in half and saying ‘Ta Da!’, or the Dutch equivalent.
Mr Klok wears more make up than Joan Collins and Little Richard combined. He looks like a hairdresser from the eighties. His show is all flames and wind machines and dyed blond hair. In fact if you are looking for a good working definition of the word camp, you could do worse than check out his act.
At one point in the interview with Pammy and Hans, Craig asks them if they made out, and Hans is clearly a little confused by the term, so Pamela leans over to him and says sotto voce, “Just nod your head’. Hans did his best to flirt with her once he got the idea, but as soon as the interview was over he rushed over to his Dutch assistant to explain what was going on. Before the show had even aired, the story was on the internet.
On Wednesday I saw a British film “This is England” set among skinheads in the North of England in the early eighties. It is a powerful movie and brought back memories of growing up in Glasgow in the seventies.
I spent the bulk of my teens running away from complete strangers who wished to do me harm. I was always very tall for my age and every time I left our housing scheme a large group of smallish kids would materialise from nowhere and ask ‘What team do you support? Even if you guessed right on the team, the follow up would be along the lines of ‘I heard you called me a poof’ or ‘I saw you looking at my bird’ these were dubious allegations but the onus was on me to disprove them, so I’d have to start running.
I reckon that the seventies fashions saved my life; because these guys were wearing platforms and huge flairs, I usually got away.
The whole decade had a kind of Lord of the Rings quality to it, a sort of undeclared civil war fought with swords.
A friend of mine was a junior doctor at the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow in the early eighties and he worked alongside a German doctor who had specifically asked to come to Glasgow because he had made a special study of medieval war wounds. When he found out that my native city was one of the few places where people still fought with swords, he immediately applied for a residency there.
One of the first nights that he was on call a guy came into casualty with some kind of broadsword injury, sustained no doubt by looking at someone else’s bird. The wound ran from his shoulder across his back down to his waist. The victim arrived at the hospital pre’ anaesthetized and was a little blasé about the extent of his injuries.
As the excited German medic is sewing the guy up, he looks at the wound and asks “Vat kind of sword vas it, that you were attacked vith?”. The guy on the gurney shrugs and said, ‘Just an ordinary sword.’ This became the title of the piece the doctor wrote recounting his time in Glasgow in a medical journal.
This is a stark contrast to the life my own kids have here in Southern California. I’ve become the Yorkshireman in the Monty Python sketch who keeps banging on about how tough he had it.
The open air cinema in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery is showing ‘Pee Wee’s Big Adventure’. Pee Wee’s career came to an abrupt end when he was caught in an adult cinema, doing something other than looking for his bike. The e mail they send says : ‘Watch classic movies under the stars, and above the stars.’
Hollywood is a surprisingly morbid place. This week the TMZ celebrity gossip website has a link to another website called Ghoulpool.us which as its name suggests allows you to put up money to bet on which celebrities will move on to that big V.I.P. room in the sky in the coming year. It was under a piece about Lindsey Lohan.
There is a complicated formula of rewards depending on the age of the celeb and the nature of their demise. To be fair though, they do stress that if you kill the person yourself, you forfeit the right to any prize money.
‘Pamela will be here in ten minutes’ Doug our slightly creepy stage manager told me, as if this was going to be the highlight of our lives.
Pamela Anderson was coming on to plug a Vegas magic show in which she is an assistant to a Dutch magician called Hans Klok. At key points in the show Pammy leaps out of various types of containers, but he also has a Dutch lady assistant who does the bulk of the getting sawn in half and saying ‘Ta Da!’, or the Dutch equivalent.
Mr Klok wears more make up than Joan Collins and Little Richard combined. He looks like a hairdresser from the eighties. His show is all flames and wind machines and dyed blond hair. In fact if you are looking for a good working definition of the word camp, you could do worse than check out his act.
At one point in the interview with Pammy and Hans, Craig asks them if they made out, and Hans is clearly a little confused by the term, so Pamela leans over to him and says sotto voce, “Just nod your head’. Hans did his best to flirt with her once he got the idea, but as soon as the interview was over he rushed over to his Dutch assistant to explain what was going on. Before the show had even aired, the story was on the internet.
On Wednesday I saw a British film “This is England” set among skinheads in the North of England in the early eighties. It is a powerful movie and brought back memories of growing up in Glasgow in the seventies.
I spent the bulk of my teens running away from complete strangers who wished to do me harm. I was always very tall for my age and every time I left our housing scheme a large group of smallish kids would materialise from nowhere and ask ‘What team do you support? Even if you guessed right on the team, the follow up would be along the lines of ‘I heard you called me a poof’ or ‘I saw you looking at my bird’ these were dubious allegations but the onus was on me to disprove them, so I’d have to start running.
I reckon that the seventies fashions saved my life; because these guys were wearing platforms and huge flairs, I usually got away.
The whole decade had a kind of Lord of the Rings quality to it, a sort of undeclared civil war fought with swords.
A friend of mine was a junior doctor at the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow in the early eighties and he worked alongside a German doctor who had specifically asked to come to Glasgow because he had made a special study of medieval war wounds. When he found out that my native city was one of the few places where people still fought with swords, he immediately applied for a residency there.
One of the first nights that he was on call a guy came into casualty with some kind of broadsword injury, sustained no doubt by looking at someone else’s bird. The wound ran from his shoulder across his back down to his waist. The victim arrived at the hospital pre’ anaesthetized and was a little blasé about the extent of his injuries.
As the excited German medic is sewing the guy up, he looks at the wound and asks “Vat kind of sword vas it, that you were attacked vith?”. The guy on the gurney shrugs and said, ‘Just an ordinary sword.’ This became the title of the piece the doctor wrote recounting his time in Glasgow in a medical journal.
This is a stark contrast to the life my own kids have here in Southern California. I’ve become the Yorkshireman in the Monty Python sketch who keeps banging on about how tough he had it.
The open air cinema in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery is showing ‘Pee Wee’s Big Adventure’. Pee Wee’s career came to an abrupt end when he was caught in an adult cinema, doing something other than looking for his bike. The e mail they send says : ‘Watch classic movies under the stars, and above the stars.’
Hollywood is a surprisingly morbid place. This week the TMZ celebrity gossip website has a link to another website called Ghoulpool.us which as its name suggests allows you to put up money to bet on which celebrities will move on to that big V.I.P. room in the sky in the coming year. It was under a piece about Lindsey Lohan.
There is a complicated formula of rewards depending on the age of the celeb and the nature of their demise. To be fair though, they do stress that if you kill the person yourself, you forfeit the right to any prize money.
sunday times column week twelve
Gambling and Girls Gone Wild
This week I sat in on a conference call to find a location for some sketches we are hoping to shoot in Vegas. We were looking for a flash looking penthouse with a view overlooking the strip there.
Some of the options were the one used in the film Rainman which has a Jacuzzi with a commanding view of Vegas and is the size of Livingston.
Classier again is the Playboy casino which has a mammoth purple suite whose centerpiece is a tastefully lit stripper pole. Yeah, baby!
There is another which has been specially designed for high rolling players from the NBA, the National Basketball Association, it has an extra large, extra long bed, and that thing you always dreamed of having in your bedroom, a half size basketball court. If you can’t score here, you might as well hang up your giant Nikes.
Vegas is Babylon, a city of pure capitalism, a neon circus in the desert founded by Mafiosi as a haven for gamblers and built for money laundering. You land at the airport and there are slot machines in the arrivals lounge, for those who are in too much of a hurry to lose all their money to even wait until they get to the hotel.
It is so hot there that you can barely step into the street without your hair going on fire. There are no clocks, this is a place where they want you to lose all sense of time. I remember standing at the window of my room on the twentieth floor of my hotel looking down on people hanging out by the pool at five am.
Sin City is trying to re-brand itself as a family destination, like someone with b.o. trying to cover it up with cheap perfume. Their TV ad slogan is “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”
The truth is that what happens in Vegas, such as serious gambling debts or certain kinds of diseases, may well actually follow you home.
All this is a long way from the one arm bandits of Saltcoats of my youth or the greyhound track that used to run in Shawfield Stadium that my dad took me to. There were often rumours of races being fixed, dogs being given valium or a greasy meat pie before a race, it was sort of the Tour De France, for dogs, of its day.
As a topical comedy writer, human misery is my stock in trade and it’s been a pretty good week.
Lindsey Lohan has fallen off the wagon, chasing her assistant into Santa Monica police station, having left her sobriety monitoring device but not her cocaine, back in the bar.
When searched, she said ‘it’s not mine’ the defence which I used myself when I was first caught with cigarettes by my mum when I was fifteen, and about as effective as ‘the dog ate my homework’.
The three guys who were in the car with her claim they were so traumatized that they want damages. They say that when they got to the cop shop the quick thinking starlet pointed to one of her hapless passengers and told the cop “I wasn’t me driving, it was the black guy” When in doubt, blame the black guy.
The posh rehab in Malibu she went to is called “Promises”. They should perhaps consider changing its name to “Broken Promises” or “Promises, Promises”.
In the old days the studio would have covered all this up, there is a famous story about a junior executive in the nineteen fifties who actually went to jail for a couple of years to cover up for the real drunk driver who was a big movie star.
Meanwhile Nicole Richie who drove the wrong way on the freeway with a big bag of grass and enough Vicodin pain killers to knock out an elephant, was made an example of and given four days in the slammer.
Britney, another Promises graduate, is also in trouble as her marathon meltdown continues apace. A shrink told me the real reason she’d shaved her head was that she’d been warned that a hair sample can identify any narcotics taken in the last two years, so she did it to avoid a drug test, out of fear that K Fed would get the kids.
Seemingly the poor thing turned up at a magazine photoshoot and wiped greasy chicken wings on an expensive designer dress. Then after her tiny dog left a brown calling card she used another frock to mop that up. She was in such a distressed state that the photos and the interview had to be scrapped as being altogether unusable. Apparently she fretted continually about the ceiling being about to fall in on her. Unfortunately I think it already has.
This week I sat in on a conference call to find a location for some sketches we are hoping to shoot in Vegas. We were looking for a flash looking penthouse with a view overlooking the strip there.
Some of the options were the one used in the film Rainman which has a Jacuzzi with a commanding view of Vegas and is the size of Livingston.
Classier again is the Playboy casino which has a mammoth purple suite whose centerpiece is a tastefully lit stripper pole. Yeah, baby!
There is another which has been specially designed for high rolling players from the NBA, the National Basketball Association, it has an extra large, extra long bed, and that thing you always dreamed of having in your bedroom, a half size basketball court. If you can’t score here, you might as well hang up your giant Nikes.
Vegas is Babylon, a city of pure capitalism, a neon circus in the desert founded by Mafiosi as a haven for gamblers and built for money laundering. You land at the airport and there are slot machines in the arrivals lounge, for those who are in too much of a hurry to lose all their money to even wait until they get to the hotel.
It is so hot there that you can barely step into the street without your hair going on fire. There are no clocks, this is a place where they want you to lose all sense of time. I remember standing at the window of my room on the twentieth floor of my hotel looking down on people hanging out by the pool at five am.
Sin City is trying to re-brand itself as a family destination, like someone with b.o. trying to cover it up with cheap perfume. Their TV ad slogan is “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”
The truth is that what happens in Vegas, such as serious gambling debts or certain kinds of diseases, may well actually follow you home.
All this is a long way from the one arm bandits of Saltcoats of my youth or the greyhound track that used to run in Shawfield Stadium that my dad took me to. There were often rumours of races being fixed, dogs being given valium or a greasy meat pie before a race, it was sort of the Tour De France, for dogs, of its day.
As a topical comedy writer, human misery is my stock in trade and it’s been a pretty good week.
Lindsey Lohan has fallen off the wagon, chasing her assistant into Santa Monica police station, having left her sobriety monitoring device but not her cocaine, back in the bar.
When searched, she said ‘it’s not mine’ the defence which I used myself when I was first caught with cigarettes by my mum when I was fifteen, and about as effective as ‘the dog ate my homework’.
The three guys who were in the car with her claim they were so traumatized that they want damages. They say that when they got to the cop shop the quick thinking starlet pointed to one of her hapless passengers and told the cop “I wasn’t me driving, it was the black guy” When in doubt, blame the black guy.
The posh rehab in Malibu she went to is called “Promises”. They should perhaps consider changing its name to “Broken Promises” or “Promises, Promises”.
In the old days the studio would have covered all this up, there is a famous story about a junior executive in the nineteen fifties who actually went to jail for a couple of years to cover up for the real drunk driver who was a big movie star.
Meanwhile Nicole Richie who drove the wrong way on the freeway with a big bag of grass and enough Vicodin pain killers to knock out an elephant, was made an example of and given four days in the slammer.
Britney, another Promises graduate, is also in trouble as her marathon meltdown continues apace. A shrink told me the real reason she’d shaved her head was that she’d been warned that a hair sample can identify any narcotics taken in the last two years, so she did it to avoid a drug test, out of fear that K Fed would get the kids.
Seemingly the poor thing turned up at a magazine photoshoot and wiped greasy chicken wings on an expensive designer dress. Then after her tiny dog left a brown calling card she used another frock to mop that up. She was in such a distressed state that the photos and the interview had to be scrapped as being altogether unusable. Apparently she fretted continually about the ceiling being about to fall in on her. Unfortunately I think it already has.
sunday times column week eleven
Harry Potter and the Philosopher Sharon Stone.
My eleven year old daughter started sobbing last night and I have only myself to blame.
When I asked what was wrong she told me she was crying because the Harry Potter books were coming to an end. I told her that she could always re-read the books and that JK Rowling would write other books. She shot me an angry look and said that I didn’t understand, that she had grown up with these characters and that this would be the last one.
When the books originally came out I got her the tapes to listen to before she was even able to read them.
By book two or three I remember looking in to check she was asleep and seeing her seven year old face wide eyed in terror at whatever awful thing was threatening to destroy the boy wizard. As a parent I’d wanted her to share my love of reading but on the other hand I did worry she was going to turn grey overnight.
I ordered the book on Amazon to be delivered to my office but we are away on holiday an hour and half north of LA and I’m now hiding newspapers and changing the TV channels so she doesn’t stumble across a spoiler before she has the chance to crack open the book.
I have seen all of the movies and found them hard going so it was with trepidation that on Saturday I got three tickets to see fifth movie at Mann’s Chinese theater on Hollywood Boulevard, where every inch of pavement has the handprint of a movie star from Charlie Chaplin’s little feet to Lassie’s pawprints.
To pick up our tickets, we had to fight our way past Johnny Depp, or actually three Johnny Depps, all look-alikes, one Edward Scissorhands, one Willie Wonka and one from Pirates.
I actually enjoyed this one and the story engaged me so much that I was almost unaware of the buff Daniel Radcliffe and his blinky performance. For me the real stars of the movie were Imelda Staunton her smirking cruelty a reincarnation of Blessed Margaret Thatcher and Alan Rickman whose pained ennui at having to be a teacher was something I could identify with.
On Monday night I was one of the few here who watched the Posh Beckham reality show, Coming To America. If that was the best of the six hours they had hoped to air, I hope that the editor was given an extra muffin basket for having sat through all of it.
At one point to throw the paparazzi off the scent, so that she could surprise David with a new watch, she put a wig on a blow up doll to act as a decoy. As the seconds inched by I wondered if they had somehow got the two mixed up on the show and if I was still watching the doll.
At one point she goes to a Hollywood café to confront Perez Hilton, a startled little munchkin who runs a Hollywood gossip website called TMZ, named for the thirty mile zone around the centre of Hollywood. Watching her reminded me of Vinnie Jones’ interview on our show when he said that David was only coming here so he could help carry her bags.
This weekend Tom Cruise is flying back from filming in Germany to throw a welcome party for Posh & Becks at LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a massive art deco museum literally across the road from where I live. He’s invited six hundred of his closest friends and I’m only sorry I’m out of town this weekend.
The LA times this week has photos of Tom in the role of the German officer who was behind the failed attempt to blow up Hitler in the last days of the Third Reich. He is in Wehrmacht uniform complete eye patch and trying his damnest to look all Prussian and tough, but somehow he just reminds me of a camp Peter Sellers character.
There has been controversy in Germany where they are not fans of Scientology and they refused the film makers permission to use certain key locations if they insisted that Tom play him. I can only assume that they are anxious to protect the good name of the Nazis.
The TMZ website has just announced that Craig Ferguson is now dating Sharon Stone. They often get it wrong, like the time a Scottish tabloid announced that Craig was engaged to Laurel Canyon, which was in fact the area in Hollywood where he was living, rather like reporting that he is dating Newton Mearns.
From a link at the end of the story I came across an internet chat strand about Craig and Sharon Stone, the comments made me laugh out loud. They ranged from “dude, I thought he was gay!” to “I can believe it because I heard she likes funny, clever types and even considered moving to Ireland, to meet people like Dylan Thomas.”
None of them seemed to worry that Dylan is first of all Welsh and perhaps more importantly has been dead for over fifty years. Dude, whatever !
My eleven year old daughter started sobbing last night and I have only myself to blame.
When I asked what was wrong she told me she was crying because the Harry Potter books were coming to an end. I told her that she could always re-read the books and that JK Rowling would write other books. She shot me an angry look and said that I didn’t understand, that she had grown up with these characters and that this would be the last one.
When the books originally came out I got her the tapes to listen to before she was even able to read them.
By book two or three I remember looking in to check she was asleep and seeing her seven year old face wide eyed in terror at whatever awful thing was threatening to destroy the boy wizard. As a parent I’d wanted her to share my love of reading but on the other hand I did worry she was going to turn grey overnight.
I ordered the book on Amazon to be delivered to my office but we are away on holiday an hour and half north of LA and I’m now hiding newspapers and changing the TV channels so she doesn’t stumble across a spoiler before she has the chance to crack open the book.
I have seen all of the movies and found them hard going so it was with trepidation that on Saturday I got three tickets to see fifth movie at Mann’s Chinese theater on Hollywood Boulevard, where every inch of pavement has the handprint of a movie star from Charlie Chaplin’s little feet to Lassie’s pawprints.
To pick up our tickets, we had to fight our way past Johnny Depp, or actually three Johnny Depps, all look-alikes, one Edward Scissorhands, one Willie Wonka and one from Pirates.
I actually enjoyed this one and the story engaged me so much that I was almost unaware of the buff Daniel Radcliffe and his blinky performance. For me the real stars of the movie were Imelda Staunton her smirking cruelty a reincarnation of Blessed Margaret Thatcher and Alan Rickman whose pained ennui at having to be a teacher was something I could identify with.
On Monday night I was one of the few here who watched the Posh Beckham reality show, Coming To America. If that was the best of the six hours they had hoped to air, I hope that the editor was given an extra muffin basket for having sat through all of it.
At one point to throw the paparazzi off the scent, so that she could surprise David with a new watch, she put a wig on a blow up doll to act as a decoy. As the seconds inched by I wondered if they had somehow got the two mixed up on the show and if I was still watching the doll.
At one point she goes to a Hollywood café to confront Perez Hilton, a startled little munchkin who runs a Hollywood gossip website called TMZ, named for the thirty mile zone around the centre of Hollywood. Watching her reminded me of Vinnie Jones’ interview on our show when he said that David was only coming here so he could help carry her bags.
This weekend Tom Cruise is flying back from filming in Germany to throw a welcome party for Posh & Becks at LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a massive art deco museum literally across the road from where I live. He’s invited six hundred of his closest friends and I’m only sorry I’m out of town this weekend.
The LA times this week has photos of Tom in the role of the German officer who was behind the failed attempt to blow up Hitler in the last days of the Third Reich. He is in Wehrmacht uniform complete eye patch and trying his damnest to look all Prussian and tough, but somehow he just reminds me of a camp Peter Sellers character.
There has been controversy in Germany where they are not fans of Scientology and they refused the film makers permission to use certain key locations if they insisted that Tom play him. I can only assume that they are anxious to protect the good name of the Nazis.
The TMZ website has just announced that Craig Ferguson is now dating Sharon Stone. They often get it wrong, like the time a Scottish tabloid announced that Craig was engaged to Laurel Canyon, which was in fact the area in Hollywood where he was living, rather like reporting that he is dating Newton Mearns.
From a link at the end of the story I came across an internet chat strand about Craig and Sharon Stone, the comments made me laugh out loud. They ranged from “dude, I thought he was gay!” to “I can believe it because I heard she likes funny, clever types and even considered moving to Ireland, to meet people like Dylan Thomas.”
None of them seemed to worry that Dylan is first of all Welsh and perhaps more importantly has been dead for over fifty years. Dude, whatever !
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