Anne Hathaway

I was under the impression that actress Anne Hathaway, who played an awkward American teen in “The Princess Diaries” and who was Jake Gyllenhaal’s long-suffering wife in “Brokeback Mountain,” was another example of a movie star who had been born with a name that didn’t seem right for film publicity, the way Greta Gustafsson’s last name had to be changed to Garbo.

So I thought that this young woman chose, as a nom de movie, the name of William Shakespeare’s wife: Anne Hathaway.



But none of that is true; actress Anne Hathaway was born Anne Hathaway.

However, this interesting factoid got me to thinking about Will Shakespeare’s marriage. Most people don’t think of our greatest playwright as a family man, but he was, with three kids, by the time he was 21.

In fact, he had been forced to get married. As a lad, he had gotten mixed up with an older woman. (Did they have “cougars” back then?)

Actually, Anne wasn’t all that old, but she was eight years older than teenager Will. One embarrassment was that Anne had to go with her family to get the marriage license; the guy she was marrying was a minor so he couldn’t do it.

Years later Shakespeare wrote these lines:
“Between the acres of the rye
These pretty country folk would lie.”

And that’s evidently pretty much what they did.

From the evidence that exists, it would appear that young Will was not all that eager to get married. However, in his Puritan community once it was determined that Ms Hathaway was definitely preggers there weren’t many other choices. And Anne would certainly have insisted.

James Joyce put it this way: “Shakespeare hath a Will, but Anne Hathaway.”

Acai is Just Acai

I don’t usually burden others with my problems, but I have to tell you about a recurring nightmare I’ve been having.

I guess it’s because I’ve read so many good health-good nutrition articles over the past years.

In my nightmare, the setting is always the same. I find myself in a strange, surreal, fog-covered area, next to a large building.

Then it begins. A person who’s wearing a white coat – looking very much like a medical professional of some kind – emerges from the building and begins shouting at me.



I am of course asleep, so I can’t understand all that well but what he shouts seems to have something to do with almonds.

“Eat almonds!” he cries. “Almonds are IT! They make you live longer and happier. They’ve got protein and things like that.”

But as he’s shouting, he is brusquely shoved aside by another white-coated chap who hollers even louder: “No, it’s walnuts! Don’t listen to this guy. Walnuts are better because they contain both zinc and boron!”

At this moment, another individual, also wearing a white coat, emerges from the building, pushes the two men aside and then he too begins yelling at me:

“It’s blueberries! Here in our lab we have demonstrated conclusively that blueberries contain nutrients and nutriments – both of ‘em! So blueberries are all you need. Blueberry jam, preserves, any kind of blueberries.”

Sleepy though I am, I happen to notice there’s a quiet, kindly-looking gentleman off to the side who looks like he wants to say something too.

“Forgive me for mentioning it,” he says, “but I’d like to put in a word for Brazil nuts. They contain riboflavin.”

“YOU contain riboflavin,” one of the other men says in a rude tone, “and a lot of it.”



“Stop the presses! Hold the front page for replate!” shouts another guy who has just rushed out of the building and who has perhaps seen too many 1930s newspaper movies. “What you’ve got to eat is: acai! Acai is a miracle berry from the Amazon and it not only tastes good it will actually cure every disease you’ve got, including some you don’t have yet.”

At this point, I wake up from my nightmare, exhausted.

And quite confused. :-)

GOATH GOETH FORTH

Let me take you back to an earlier day, the day when I, a callow youth, was entering high school. I found that among other classes I was scheduled for one titled “Beginning German.”



Well, that was okay. I didn’t know much about German – I was fifteen; I didn’t know much about anything – but I figured that was what the class was for: I would learn.

One of my first assignments was to prepare a report on a famous German writer, perhaps the greatest of them all, the writer whose name was spelled like thusly: G – O – E – T – H - E.

The day came for my report. No problem; I had done my homework. I was prepared. As I spoke, holding the class spellbound with my confidence and authority, I was nevertheless a bit unsettled to hear titters of amusement as I proceeded because I pronounced the guy’s name as “Goath” (rhymed with “both”).

Undaunted, I went on about Goath’s youth – well, I got “youth” right anyway – and how Goath had originally intended to be a lawyer, etc., etc.


Goath

One of my friends in the class told me later that, while I was orating, he noticed that our teacher, a nice, quite elderly gentleman, who was sort of out of it most of the time, was surreptitiously leafing through the text as the report continued. My friend was convinced that the teacher was a bit worried; after all, he was the scholar, he was supposed to know the key writers and it appeared to him that there was one, some chap named Goath, that he had never heard of. He was trying to learn something about him before the class discussion began.

I finished my report, sitting down to what should have been thunderous applause (though there wasn’t all that much, actually).

By the way, the writer in question, Goethe, went on to a fairly successful career, in spite of his difficult-to-pronounce name – difficult at least for 15-year-old Amerikanischers. :-)

Big Jules

For no really good reason, I thought I'd post a home movie made of my family during the Yuletide season.



Hey, it's a home movie -- you expected quality? :-)

Happy New Year!

Magpie 101

I don't usually do reruns. But the prompt this week seems to demand re-posting the following from several years ago.
You see, I was once pleased to be given an interesting assignment: I was to make a movie about a top American corporation. The film would involve some shooting in Japan.

So I flew to Tokyo, ready to go to work. As I got off the plane, I believed that the Japanese were really taking this motion picture project seriously because, as I was surprised to see, I was being met at the airport by a large limo. And not just a limo; the car had a uniformed driver and another chap, also uniformed, who rode shotgun - though in Japan I suppose it would be shogun :-) - in the front passenger seat.

I was able to cruise through the world-famous Tokyo traffic jam in comfort. In fact, I had never had a job, of any kind, that started off so auspiciously. They drove me to their head office and I got to meet everyone. They were all friendly and welcoming; there was a lot of bowing, me doing my share, of course.

It was lunchtime, so they asked if I would prefer going to a steak-house or would I like to try some authentic Japanese food? Well, of course, we had steak-houses back in the Stytes and besides, I thought it would be a good political move to opt for the indigenous cuisine, so we headed off for what I would today recognize as a sushi place.

I say I would recognize it today; I didn’t recognize it then. Truth is, a few decades ago there weren’t many sushi joints in the U S of A, and you certainly didn’t see sushi for sale in just about any American grocery store. Most Yankees of that era didn’t know from sushi; the idea of eating raw fish was regarded as just sort of weird.

However I could see that this restaurant I was being taken to was elegant and upscale – i.e., expensive – so I looked forward to an excellent meal.
But there was a fly in the saki. Something had been worrying me, and it had nothing to do with raw fish. It had gradually dawned on me, as time went on, that I was inadvertently sailing under false colors.
The reason for the great welcome I had received? I came to realize that they thought that I, a humble artisan, a simple, rather impecunious documentary-maker, was actually one of the top executives of the American corporation in question. That explained the limo and its two charioteers.
That was bad enough. Just as bad was the question, how on earth do I go about telling them of the mistake? I had heard all about the importance of saving face in the Orient; would they think I had intentionally tried to trick them? Would hara kiri knives be involved in any way?
At this point the waiter served the meal. I felt like I had just come into the big city from Mayberry; I recognized absolutely nothing that was being served. But one thing struck me forcibly. Among everything else on the plate there was a little creature there – who was walking around.
I had never gone in for ambulatory victuals. However, when in Rome… I took up my chopsticks and went after him. He valiantly fought off my preliminary attack. This was followed by a certain amount of thrusting and parrying. Fortunately, I remembered the rules of fencing from my college days. What was odd was that he seemed to know them too.
Then, while I sat there planning my next move, the little fellow climbed over the edge of the plate and headed off to the left. The Japanese are a polite people; the two guys with me were trying desperately not to laugh, but not succeeding. The waiter took pity on me and swooped the whatever-it-was away with a towel. In a way I was sorry to see the little chap leave; he had fought well, and with a certain panache.
Well, long story short – it’s been long enough – the gentlemen I was visiting took the explanation of the misconception well enough and, as that great Japanese playwright Shakespeare used to say, all was well that ended well.

Brief Encounter

In 1985 my boss, Mr. Grandfromage (not his real name), wanted me to become a technical writer. “You write film scripts, right?” he said. “Well, we need someone to write technical scripts. There’s a demand for technical films.”

“But I’m not really a technical person,” I replied.

“Don’t worry about that. We can get technical people and they can give you the basic information. Trouble is, it’s never in film form. So you take their info and write a suitable film script.”

“Well, if you say so.”

“There’s a Technical Writers Convention in Houston next week. I want you to go there and see what you can pick up.”

So I flew to Houston. I couldn’t make head or tail of many of the highly technical topics and subjects that were to be discussed at the convention so I picked one I thought I’d be able to understand. It was a seminar – six people around a small table – discussing how to staple reports.

That was the topic; the boring discussion went on and on. Should one just use staples on the report or should one create a sort of spine to make it look a little more like a book?

I kept eyeing the door, wondering if I could make a dash for it. Suddenly something remarkable happened.



An astronaut appeared in the doorway. Not just an astronaut, a very attractive young woman astronaut. In full fig, as our British friends say – in full astronaut uniform. And she sat next to me.

It seems that, as part of their duties, astronauts had to visit various meetings and conventions that were held in Houston; evidently it was good PR for NASA. I wondered if the astronauts knew about this requirement when they signed up. :-)

Well, she listened dutifully to the seminar discussion and after a suitable period of time the PR person who was taking her around said the astronaut had to visit some other seminars, so she got up to leave. I was sorry to see her go.

She couldn’t resist making a small wry comment as she stepped out the door. “I hadn’t realized your work was so complex,” she said.

We had been talking about how to staple reports.

Back in New York I was working on a film in an editing suite in January of ’86. We stopped work to see a blastoff on the TV monitor because this was to be a special rocket launch: for the first time there was a civilian, a high school teacher, to ride into space with the regular astronauts.

As they filed out to board the spaceship named Challenger I was startled to see my astronaut was among the group, one of the two women.



The catastrophe that followed, 73 seconds after liftoff, happened before my eyes, before the eyes of the entire world. The sleek space machine Challenger erupted into a fireball and clouds of smoke that were seared into my brain forever.

Judith Resnik was a remarkable person. She had a PhD in electrical engineering, she was a classical pianist and she was beautiful too. Her family handled her death with quiet dignity. There was a lot of publicity after the explosion about the other astronauts who had died; the Resniks sought no publicity.

No question, my encounter with Dr. Resnik had been brief; I never had the opportunity to really get to know her.

But I’ll never forget her.





This week, I thought you might be interested in checking out A Little Blog About Nothing, where an interesting question has been posed: What's the best advice you've received?

Odd Santa

Try to picture this setting.



First off, it’s very hot, the sun’s beating down; we’re in the tropics. There’s a beautiful beach and the ocean, it’s the Mediterranean, is dazzling.

This is what they call the Turkish Riviera, and the name is justified; it can hold its own with the French Riviera.



Reason I’m telling you about this place is that this is, after all, the Christmas season. And some years ago I was in this tropical paradise and had a chance to meet Santa. The real Santa.

Everyone knows that ol’ S. Claus lives up in the frozen north with Mrs Claus and a houseful of industrious, non-union elves, not to mention a stable of reindeer, and that Santa has always lived there.

Not true.



Santa Claus was originally Saint Nicholas, who lived in the fourth century and who never saw the North Pole (and maybe never saw any snow). He was born and lived right here in the hot, sunny Turkish Riviera, though the name would not have been familiar to him.

I was there working on a tourism-promotion project for the Turkish government and I thought it would be interesting to show Santa’s real home, where he was born and raised.

As for the actual saint, Nicholas, he had been famous for his generosity, for the way he gave gifts to the needy. (Well, he should have; he was a saint.) He became known throughout the Christian world.



He wound up in Holland, where they changed his appearance somewhat. They also took his name and sort of Dutchified it: St. Nicholas became Sinterklaas.

When the Dutch lived in New Amsterdam they celebrated Christmas with Sinterklaas and all the English folks living around them thought the old fellow was sort of cool so they adopted him for their Christmas too.

They couldn’t quite pronounce “Sinterklaas” however; the closest they could get to it was “Santa Claus.”



So somehow the old fellow had metamorphosed from a 4th-century saint to a corpulent chap in a red suit who was always smiling about something.

One day I was standing on that beach, working, when an Orthodox Christian priest approached and asked if I would like to see the bones of St. Nicholas? Of course, I said.

He returned with a small case, beautifully made, lined with satin, that, he assured me, contained some of the bones of the Saint. I was aware of the thousands of kids who go to see Santa at Christmastime and here I was getting to see the real Santa.

For a fleeting moment I thought of saying that I wanted a pony for Christmas, but I couldn’t be sure Orthodox priests had a sense of humor. 






This week, if you’ve had the experience, the joys as well as the plain old hard work, of raising a teenager – and yes, I’ve been there, done that – check out the clever comments of A Mom on Spin.

Remembering Miss Gustafsson

Scene: Stockholm, Sweden, a few decades ago.

I was making a tourism-promotion film for the Swedish government. Included in the list of things to show in the movie was Stockholm’s magnificent department store “NK” -- pronounced “Enkaw.” A huge place, some 12 million visitors annually, and with a staff of 1200. The client very much wanted it in the film.



So I’m standing across the street taking its picture. As I was working an employee of the store came over to me with a strange question: “You’re American? Would you like to meet an old man who was a good friend of Miss Gustafsson way back when they were both teenagers?”

Of course I would. Any friend of Miss Gustafsson would be a friend of mine.

He took me upstairs and I met the old gentleman in question. He told me how they had both, right around the time of the end of World War I, worked together at NK, a couple of kids, in the same department.

Of course, he didn’t call her Miss Gustafsson; he called her by her first name, Greta.

One day an ad agency person – yes, they had ad agencies in Sweden even then, nearly a century ago – an ad agency guy came through their workplace. He was looking for a comely female employee they might be able to use in their newspaper advertising.

Truth is, Miss Gustafsson was then a bit more on the plump side than she was later, but she was selected to pose for the ads.

It could only happen in Hollywood – or in Stockholm. A movie director liked her pictures in the paper and she suddenly found herself embarked on an amazing film career. It was clear that the name “Gustafsson” had to go; she became Greta Garbo.

“Anna Christie,” “Grand Hotel,” “Anna Karenina,” “Camille” and “Ninotchka,” among other film classics, turned Miss Gustafsson into one of the great legends of screen history.

She later stated that she had never said “I want to be alone,” though that had become sort of her trademark. What she had said, she carefully explained, was that she wanted to be left alone, which was quite different.





This week, because of the huge snowstorms in various parts of our country, I recommend Willow's winter poetry over at Willow Manor. (As the child said in "The Winter's Tale": "A sad tale's best for winter.")