Petition to give Ian McCollum a cameo in a John Wick movie

 There actually is just such a petition on change.org, started by Gabriel Nir (a Swedish resident) and here is a link to it:   https://chng.it/wwVkJLCkdF

  But this article is not just intended to be an advert for Mr Nir's petition, although there's no harm done if it fulfills that role. The thing is, it is rare for anyone who actually knows their stuff to feature in a Hollywood movie, and when they do, they are often subservient to someone who either doesn't care about getting technical details right, or who is deliberately trying to rewrite them in furtherance of some kind of personal agenda.

 Movies are made by people who mainly know how to make movies, but those people are controlled by people (executives) who know the people who are putting up the money (often in the form of investments entrusted to them by others). So that's at least three conflicting layers of opinion and personal agenda between the hapless expert who knows there were no Spitfires at Pearl Harbour and what actually happens in the movie.

 When it comes to acting roles, what the producers are looking for is someone who can project the director's vision of the role. The best actors manage to put something of their own vision into each performance, but they are treading a fine line and if they do it too much, or too well, they may find further work hard to come by. In the main, and especially in the American film industry, they are not looking for anyone who has their own strong ideas on how things should look or whether they make sense; that's not the actor's place, but the director's. And the director actually knows who else he has to be obedient to, the actor may not.

  The only known James Bond candidate who might have successfully carried out a Bond-style sabotage mission in real life was Lewis Collins and it is widely believed that he came across as "too tough" in the audition. (It's worth pointing out that Jimmy Hendrix had equivalent paratrooper training to Lewis Collins: he would presumably have failed the test by being "much too cool"!)

 A cameo is one way of smuggling a real expert past all these barriers, but in the American film-making system they are reserved either for people outside the Hollywood bubble who are sufficiently famous to sell cinema tickets, or as a form of pension supplement for fading Hollywood figures. In the former case, the famous person has to be politically onside with all the figures in the decision-making process and not pose a threat to the creativity of any of the professionals in the production, either. Ian McCollum does have a very high public recognition factor (and globally), but he is probably too expert for Hollywood to let through the door. So, whilst I support the petition for all the reasons Mr Nir had in mind when he created it, as long as the John Wick franchise remains the American hero platform it is designed to be, I doubt that Mr McCollum will ever get his cameo.

  In the British film industry, things are not quite the same. A significantly lower percentage of the professionals and decision-makers have their heads completely up their own arse and there's a long tradition of film-makers, such as Humphrey Jennings and even Bill Owen roping in local people to play local roles. The British film industry rarely creates on an expensive film-stage, anything that exists as a usable location in real life, too. Precisely because they lack American budgets, British producers may not hesitate to use the real thing if it's cheaper than the elaborate fake which fits in exactly with their "vision." One example of this is the 1963 film "The Iron Maiden" where many of the locations are the actual places described in the script and the Duke of Bedford was played by the Duke of Bedford, owner of most of those locations. The advanced airliner in the story got played by a (brand new) Victor Bomber, which was the most aerodynamically-sophisticated large airframe around at the time (the equivalent of the Pentagon lending a film-maker a real B21 in 2022). The whole thing was probably made for less than Hollywood would spend developing a B-movie script.

 Even big-budget films like the Bond movies are open to outside ideas: "Little Nellie" the auto-gyro appeared in "You Only Live Twice" at the suggestion of viewers of the BBC technology programme "Tomorrow's World" and its presenter, Raymond Baxter. The trouble there is that Bond films are not made on the same sort of conveyor-belt as the John Wicke franchise and the opportunities to play a role are less frequent.

 But the number of films being made in the UK is actually high and growing; big new studios are being built all over the place (mainly because there are enough people already trained or willing to train for the many different technical jobs rather than everyone wanting to be a star). Hollywood seems to be trading on its past a bit; it is certainly not loved as it once was and it may be fading away into Bollywood-style mass production of generic films, except that nobody in Hollywood knows how to stick to a budget. If Mr McCollum actually wants and seeks cameos or technical consultancies in the film world, he stands a much better chance of getting started in the U.K. industry (he is a frequent visitor) than in America. 

And the key to going anywhere is getting started! 

First Reader's Reviews of The Farshoreman

 The first two reader's reviews of The Farshoreman by Matthew K. Spencer are now up on Amazon, see link below:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B47FLBDS#customerReviews

So far, so good!

American link below:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B47FLBDS#customerReviews

 

Apparently one reviewer bought their Amazon paperback through Barnes & Noble, which is why one of the reviews appears on both platforms. The Smashwords E-PUB version (below) is now available through Barnes & Noble alongside the Amazon paperback (above).

https://mswritingshowcase.blogspot.com/2022/12/where-to-buy-farshoreman.html

Book Review of A Winter Warmer at the Little Cornish Kitchen by Jane Linfoot

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A “hedgehog” romance between two bereaved people.

This is a feel-good story about two people who have reason to feel very bad indeed having both lost the most important person in their lives, neither of whom was a romantic partner. Both are frightened of forming new relationships or even carrying on with many aspects of normal everyday life associated with their departed most important persons. Even small steps are a significant risk and challenge to them. They have to form friendships very carefully, like hedgehogs.

The author creates an environment for them, the fictional Cornish resort/fishing village of St Aidan, where this kind of healing is possible. And what is depicted is indeed healing rather than “moving on” or “replacement” because the relationship being formed is romantic and sexual in nature and neither of the relationships ended by tragedy was. This is made possible by a community of people who, while not neglecting their own interests, abstain from putting their own wants above the evident needs of others. Even new members of the community are looked after and coaxed back into life. It is a utopia, but one which might be within our grasp if we allowed common decency to take precedence over political doctrine and group identity.

The fact that a flight-impaired white pigeon survives for the entire novel suggests that St Aidan is also a utopia largely free of ginger and white tomcats.

“A Winter Warmer at the Little Cornish Kitchen” by Jane Linfoot is published in the UK by Harper Collins on the 30^th of September 2022

Book Review of Steel Girls on the Home Front by Michelle Rawlins

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The war in 1940 without the benefit of any hindsight or strategic overview.

 

This is well-researched historical fiction, but the author has done a good job of finding out (and imagining) what her characters would have known and thought about the early stages of the second world war rather than conducting detailed research into the big picture at any particular stage. Everything is changing because of how the war is going in Norway, but this is all about working class people in Sheffield and they had only the vaguest idea just what it was that was happening in Norway. (Non-fiction works that I have read suggest that in early 1940 the British War Cabinet didn’t really know either. It was only after the surviving Norwegian forces were based on British soil that cooperation and information-sharing really began to happen.)

When the same disaster happens in France, then the Cabinet does know, because British forces have been there in strength for long enough to establish proper communications and the distances are shorter. This magnifies the shock when the public are actually told the worst because their new Prime Minister actually knows how bad things are.

Most of this book is about how the women who work for Vickers in Sheffield cope with not knowing where most of their menfolk are and how much danger they are in. They cope by unselfishly looking after each other and the few men they have left as best they can -and by keeping as busy as they can, not only to “do their bit” and help the war effort, but also to stop themselves thinking about what might happen. (Incidentally, in both NAZI Germany and the Soviet Union the ruling party took control of neighbourliness and social cohesion at every level through national party organisations or local party committees. Britain may have benefited from not having a ruling party as such during the second world war because it ruled out an entire category of fatal mistakes.)

But then there is the question of how such brave and kind women, mostly quite young, make the transition from coping with the unknown to coping with the worst. And that appears to be a question for the next book in this series.

Steel Girls on the Home Front by Michelle Rawlins is published in the UK by HQ on the 18^th of August 2022.

Book Review of Daughters of Paris by Elisabeth Hobbes

 

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Two young women grow up as France changes

This is a novel about two girls from different social classes growing up together in a time when the French middle classes were still trying to get back to the world they knew before the Great War and many of the social and political changes which took place in Britain and the United States in the twenties and thirties (especially votes for women) simply did not happen. But the author gets it right, rather than right-on, and the characters see things as young women of the the time might have seen them -and this changes throughout the story -and France changes with the young women.

The failure of French government and army in 1940 destroys that world and all hope (or danger) of it ever coming back, and the German occupation of Paris brings the two young women, who had been drifting apart, back together and steadily destroys the social and economic distinctions between them. We see the women coping with the occupiers (surrendered soldiers were sent at once to do forced labour in Germany, followed later by nearly all the young men who had not been soldiers) and the resistance eventually depends on brave young women when brave young men cannot be seen to walk the streets.

This is all well-described, and although the author doesn’t beat the reader over her head with her research she does get a lot of details pleasingly right: a single Lysander flying over a drop-point as if by chance and releasing a single supply cannister rather than drawing attention to any particular spot by landing on a field at night (which needed all sorts of extra skills and preparation) is exactly right for a supply drop to the French Resistance in the early days when everything had to be kept as simple as possible. As an Army Cooperation machine, dropping supply cannisters was designed into the Lysander from the start and was even used to sustain rearguard troops during the battle of France in 1940. The author also shows us that brave young French women were always likely to regard the cannister’s parachute as a resource to equal the cannister’s contents.

The other historically-accurate detail is that the greatest danger to all citizens in Occupied France, whether they were resistance workers or just young mothers desperate to find food for their children, was a denunciation to the Police or Gestapo born completely out of spite over some entirely petty confrontation or vendetta. (There actually was an internal Gestapo memo in 1942 which complained that most of the people they were arresting were completely innocent and had been denounced either for revenge or for rewards.)

This is a pleasing book which gets its messages across in the right sort of way.

“Daughters of Paris” by Elisabeth Hobbes is published in the UK by Harper Collins on the 5^th of August 2022.

Amazon Author's Page

Matthew K. Spencer has an author's page on Amazon, see:

United Kingdom                    https://www.amazon.co.uk/~/e/B00I2R1M2I

Amazon.com (The Americas) https://www.amazon.com/~/e/B00I2R1M2I

Germany                                https://www.amazon.de/~/e/B00I2R1M2I

France                                   https://www.amazon.fr/~/e/B00I2R1M2I

India                                      https://www.amazon.in/~/e/B00I2R1M2I

Japan                                     https://www.amazon.co.jp/~/e/B00I2R1M2I

Spain                                     https://www.amazon.es/~/e/B00I2R1M2I

Italy                                      https://www.amazon.it/~/e/B00I2R1M2I

Brazil https://www.amazon.com.br/kindle-dbs/entity/author?asin=B00I2R1M2I

Book Review of My Husband’s Secret by Karen Clarke

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A battle over a man who can’t remember, between two women who are both hiding the truth.

 

This novel is billed as a romantic thriller and it is, but it’s much better than that billing might suggest.

Two female protagonists clash over a man who’s lost his memory, and the story is seen through the eyes of each woman in turn, but knowing their thoughts leads the reader to both share and try and choose between their mistaken conclusions. The reader is actually given all the information needed to work out what is really going on; the author relies on our cultural conditioning to make the plot twists shocking rather than predictable and this works so well that I am sure the lessons won’t be wasted.

The story reaches a shocking climax on the North York Moors (accurately depicted as cold, wet and squidgy underfoot rather than romantic) which results in something resembling an Icelandic Happy Ending in which everyone decides to live with the bad things that have happened rather than involve the authorities. But the story does not end there, and goes on to explore the consequences of this and the actual ending really is a shock!

My four star recommendation is because the bridge between those two final shocks is not quite as good as it could be. But in general this is a much better novel than I expected it to be, given the way it was presented and it was only a couple of slightly clumsy pages away from five stars.

My Husband’s Secret by Karen Clarke is published by HQ on the 30^th of June 2022.