rhythmaning (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rhythmaning) wrote2007-01-25 10:41 pm
rhythmaning) wrote2007-01-25 10:41 pm
My Life On Film
The other day I was talking to a friend about my childhood, and I let out that I was almost a movie star. I actually meant to share this with you a while back, when ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chickenfeet2003 mentioned that all his in-laws could be found on IMDB. Thing is, I can’t be found there; unless you know where to look.
I was a cute child. (At this point, I should post some pictures of me looking like a cute four year old; but I haven’t got any.) My mother being my mother knew people that worked in advertising, and so I made ads.
I was pictured wearing a kilt for a fashion spread for, I think, Vanity Fair – I wore a kilt (I wasn’t the subject of the shoot – I was a page boy or something). Somewhere, my mother still has the contact sheet.
I was in an ad for Wall’s vanilla ice cream. This was shot in Spain, on a beach (the only time I went to Spain as a child, I think; though perhaps we snuck over the border once when on holiday in the French Pyrenees). I think it rained on the beach. The worst thing was that although we were advertising Wall’s vanilla ice cream, we couldn't eat it. The ad wasn’t made using ice cream; it was made using cold mashed potato – since ice cream would melt. So there was no ice cream on the Spanish beach. I was very disappointed.
I was in an ad for Sunblest bread. I had to stand beside a “baker” – a rotund guy in a white suit. This was for some kind of sales conference, I think. I have no idea if I ate the bread or not. I hope not.
My brother was also in ads, and we did one ad together: we advertised Rice Crispies. We had to sit by a lake, fishing. In my memory this is Hampstead Ponds, but that might be just because they were down the road from where we lived. It was winter and cold when we made this ad.
The last advert I made – or rather didn’t – really kind of killed my career in advertising. It was for rose hip syrup. The director really liked me, everyone liked me, until it actually came to make the ad. There was a problem. I had to drink rose hip syrup. I spat it out – it was horrible, sickly sweet; I hated it. They gave my mother a bottle to take home, so we could practice over night, ready for the shoot the next day. It didn’t work: I refused to touch the stuff. So I didn’t get to make that ad. Then I went to school, and my mother went back to work, and that was the end of advertising.
But not the end of my career on film. A friend of my parents was making a film, and he saw me at a party – I was handing around food – and declared that I had to be in his film.
Indeed, I was one of the lead actors: my character’s name is in the film’s title. The director, a South African guy who was exiled in the UK (and joyfully returned when the ANC came to power), had a script for an anti-racism film, set amongst the race riots of post-war Ladbroke Grove – the same milieu as Colin McInnes. Twenty years after the war, large chunks of Ladbroke Grove were still bomb sites – where there are modern flats beside the railway to Bristol, where the Westway goes, were abandoned houses and desolate piles of rubble.
I played a little white boy who befriends a little black girl who is a newly arrived immigrant. It was a simple story really – my film-father was in the National Front, but in adversity – as the children played in a collapsing building – black and white parents had to work together to save us.
I don’t remember a great deal about the filming, which I think was done in November of 1965. I had to get up very early – 5am (but I could be inventing this); it was dark and cold.
It was shot on a very tight budget, using silent film: all the speech was dubbed on afterwards (and they used a female actress for my voice – she didn’t sound like a little boy at all). (The lack of budget is why I don’t appear in IMDB: they got my name wrong in the credits – a common mistake – and they couldn’t afford to correct it. If you know my name – and some of you do – change the third letter of my surname to a T. You’ll find the movie.)
We spent the time wandering – being told to wander – around the streets of Ladbroke Grove and Kensington, playing in the rubble and derelict buildings. I guess most of what I remember is actually from watching the film (I have it on video). Eating chips on Portobello Road; skipping along the road. Petting a horse (horses were used to pull rag-and-bone carts). Playing with a white rat (crucial to the plot). Kids running in the street – my brother played part of a gang of kids tearing around.
A few years ago, the Filmhouse ran a short festival of anti-racism films, and my magnum opus featured. I couldn’t get along to it – I am not sure that I really wanted to, anyway – but my wife went. I sent the festival organiser an email, which they read out – they seemed quite pleased with the connection.
[I fished out my video of the movie to try to capture some stills; but my digital camera doesn’t like the tv – there are interference lines all over the place, whatever speed I set the camera. So you’ll just have to imagine me as a cute five year old.]
ETA: I have found some stills on the internet. I have posted them here.
chickenfeet2003 mentioned that all his in-laws could be found on IMDB. Thing is, I can’t be found there; unless you know where to look.I was a cute child. (At this point, I should post some pictures of me looking like a cute four year old; but I haven’t got any.) My mother being my mother knew people that worked in advertising, and so I made ads.
I was pictured wearing a kilt for a fashion spread for, I think, Vanity Fair – I wore a kilt (I wasn’t the subject of the shoot – I was a page boy or something). Somewhere, my mother still has the contact sheet.
I was in an ad for Wall’s vanilla ice cream. This was shot in Spain, on a beach (the only time I went to Spain as a child, I think; though perhaps we snuck over the border once when on holiday in the French Pyrenees). I think it rained on the beach. The worst thing was that although we were advertising Wall’s vanilla ice cream, we couldn't eat it. The ad wasn’t made using ice cream; it was made using cold mashed potato – since ice cream would melt. So there was no ice cream on the Spanish beach. I was very disappointed.
I was in an ad for Sunblest bread. I had to stand beside a “baker” – a rotund guy in a white suit. This was for some kind of sales conference, I think. I have no idea if I ate the bread or not. I hope not.
My brother was also in ads, and we did one ad together: we advertised Rice Crispies. We had to sit by a lake, fishing. In my memory this is Hampstead Ponds, but that might be just because they were down the road from where we lived. It was winter and cold when we made this ad.
The last advert I made – or rather didn’t – really kind of killed my career in advertising. It was for rose hip syrup. The director really liked me, everyone liked me, until it actually came to make the ad. There was a problem. I had to drink rose hip syrup. I spat it out – it was horrible, sickly sweet; I hated it. They gave my mother a bottle to take home, so we could practice over night, ready for the shoot the next day. It didn’t work: I refused to touch the stuff. So I didn’t get to make that ad. Then I went to school, and my mother went back to work, and that was the end of advertising.
But not the end of my career on film. A friend of my parents was making a film, and he saw me at a party – I was handing around food – and declared that I had to be in his film.
Indeed, I was one of the lead actors: my character’s name is in the film’s title. The director, a South African guy who was exiled in the UK (and joyfully returned when the ANC came to power), had a script for an anti-racism film, set amongst the race riots of post-war Ladbroke Grove – the same milieu as Colin McInnes. Twenty years after the war, large chunks of Ladbroke Grove were still bomb sites – where there are modern flats beside the railway to Bristol, where the Westway goes, were abandoned houses and desolate piles of rubble.
I played a little white boy who befriends a little black girl who is a newly arrived immigrant. It was a simple story really – my film-father was in the National Front, but in adversity – as the children played in a collapsing building – black and white parents had to work together to save us.
I don’t remember a great deal about the filming, which I think was done in November of 1965. I had to get up very early – 5am (but I could be inventing this); it was dark and cold.
It was shot on a very tight budget, using silent film: all the speech was dubbed on afterwards (and they used a female actress for my voice – she didn’t sound like a little boy at all). (The lack of budget is why I don’t appear in IMDB: they got my name wrong in the credits – a common mistake – and they couldn’t afford to correct it. If you know my name – and some of you do – change the third letter of my surname to a T. You’ll find the movie.)
We spent the time wandering – being told to wander – around the streets of Ladbroke Grove and Kensington, playing in the rubble and derelict buildings. I guess most of what I remember is actually from watching the film (I have it on video). Eating chips on Portobello Road; skipping along the road. Petting a horse (horses were used to pull rag-and-bone carts). Playing with a white rat (crucial to the plot). Kids running in the street – my brother played part of a gang of kids tearing around.
A few years ago, the Filmhouse ran a short festival of anti-racism films, and my magnum opus featured. I couldn’t get along to it – I am not sure that I really wanted to, anyway – but my wife went. I sent the festival organiser an email, which they read out – they seemed quite pleased with the connection.
[I fished out my video of the movie to try to capture some stills; but my digital camera doesn’t like the tv – there are interference lines all over the place, whatever speed I set the camera. So you’ll just have to imagine me as a cute five year old.]
ETA: I have found some stills on the internet. I have posted them here.