International Stuttering Awareness Day. Well. Stutterer here. I've appeared on stage in front of hundreds. I've done radio & TV. When I was a kid it all terrified me. I'd have panic attacks before speaking in class. I'm not how it changed, but I walked through a wall.
I guess I realised that for all the embarrassment and extra work it attuned me to things other people may not see or hear. Sort of a secret power.
Oct 20, 2023 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
Killers of the Flower Moon is a great work of art—Scorsese’s best film in years, in many ways a synthesis of his career.
It tells the same story as Goodfellas—a man who sells his soul for greed—but it goes beyond the biblical notion of sin. It basically asks if God is there at all.
Dec 24, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The most perfect screenplay ever written. Every single thing in it has exact and specific relation to everything else. Also the rare movie to be funny like life is funny. Not for a scene or two. It's there and never stops.
Billy Wilder: 'I knew I had a good picture. It worked.'
Yes, well.
Dec 24, 2022 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
Dickens is Christmas, really. And the thing to remember about Dickens is he was a haunted man. He wasn’t kidding.
He often couldn’t sleep. The only thing that brought him a bit of peace was walking all over London in the cold dark, like he’d find his own ghost there.
Nov 2, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Philadelphia is a deeply weird place, and needs to identify with its athletes. Here's a partial list of the Phillies and their parallel local characters. @FarFarrAway
This made it to @PhillyInquirer, lol
Dec 4, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I may not be here today.
Robert Holman’s beautiful, unclassifiable plays are a main reason I’m in the theatre. On one hand he was a humble, kind Quaker; on the other a fierce, precise, uncompromising genius who showed us other worlds. No else’s plays have stunned me to silence.
When I was young David Eldridge bought me a copy of Robert’s play Making Noise Quietly. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve returned the favour for others.
Nov 18, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Today I get to see Paris, Texas in the cinema. Because I'm delirious with joy I'll re-tell my favorite story about it, one of my favorites in all of movies.
The speech. You know the one.
They shot without a finished script. Shepard was elsewhere and he sent it from wherever he was. Harry Dean Stanton got it and was understandably shocked.
'I have to talk to Sam,' he said.
Jul 7, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Not so much a drummer but an artist who uses drums to give unity to things that would never otherwise work
Said it before, will say it again: anybody who condescends to Ringo, I counter the drum fills on A Day in the Life -- I've seen drummers from that guy in the bar straight up to Phil Collins descend into apoplexy
Jul 5, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
According to @TheAndreGregory’s memoir, he and Wally are giving Hedda the Vanya treatment 😨
Also, Derek Walcott agreed to play the third (de Keyser/Pine) role in The Designated Mourner if they rehearsed in St Lucia and Andre gave him a Vuillard painting that had been willed from his father.
Jan 7, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Billie Whitelaw did 'Not I' in about 11 mins - when Lisa Dwan does it, it takes about nine. She went to Hyde Park with her director to rehearse in a blindfold, all the better to get used to sensory deprivation. She did it and came to find herself surrounded by homeless people.
Dwan said they were captivated, stunned -- and they all shared a look and went on their way.
Oct 31, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Connery’s raw magnetism, which never diminished, got in the way of appreciating what a good actor he could be... even when the role was duff he always brought the goods, because like all the great stars often he knew more about the technical process than those he worked for.
And let’s face it, the decision to do three lines of Russian and then go full on with the Scottish accent in Hunt for Red October is one of the all-time ‘suck on that, folks’ moves... I respect it 😂😜
May 22, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
It is Sherlock Holmes Day. Think of Doyle and Chekhov, comtemporaries. Nothing in common? Well, being a cash-strapped doctor makes one look so close and just cold enough, forces your dark humor to stay near the top, that people swear your work is real.
Remember Jeremy Brett, too. Holmes killed him. Brett knew it was happening, too, but he kept on, like an evangelist. Brett did more for Holmes than anybody since William Gillette.
