There are may things I love about New York, but
one of the most attractive is the enthusiasm and joie de vivre possessed by much of the population. From the cherry Korean deli-owner on Lexington on the sleek sophisticated vendeuses in the Firth Avenue boutiques, New Yorkers seem to be bursting with unbridled optimism, in spite of 9/11. There are exceptions, of
course.
Cab Drivers in general are sullen, surly and often verge on the abusive, but the whole, to walk down any street or avenue in Manhattan is mostly to see a people who seem at peace with themselves and others. Returning to London the other week for the US, I was struck by one particular difference as a pedestrian. When you cross the road in NY, drivers (in the majority of cases) slow down and let you cross, but when you attempt the same stunt in London, more often than not, drivers will speed up with maniacal gleam in their eye that augurs a view to a kill and makes you hope to it.
I must admit, however, that I do have sympathy for London drivers.
Who can blame then when a drive into the West End is a daily re-enactment of the evacuation of Dunkirk? What Ken Livingstone is doing to the streets of central London is monstrous, an din the three months I’ve been away the congestion, road works and blatant outrageousness of the ‘fixed’ traffic lights appear to have worsened considerably. In New York, Mayor Bloomberg has attempted to ease congestion by creating ‘through streets’ (or ‘thru streets’, as the quaint efficiency of American-English requires). On these ‘thru streets, drivers are not allowed to turn left or right for several blocks, the aim being to give drivers who want to go across town a thoroughfare. Similarly, no one may turn into these streets from the main avenues.
This has massively increased congestion in NY, and horns honk ferociously all day long, but at least Bloomberg admits that it’s an experiment, and if it doesn’t work by the New Year, it will be a relatively simple job to remove some misspelled signs. No such luck in London, where Red Ken, the obdurate car-hater, has
carried out radical infrastructure modifications, gleefully making the lives of motorists and passengers sheer hell. I wonder if he’s on his balcony playing a lute by the light of thousands of gridlocked cars, listening to the honking of horns. I have been roundly criticised by some of the press for ‘deserting’ to
the United States recently. The more boring truth of the matter ( and therefore less salable for the press) is that I have always been fortunate enough to keep a place in the US, and I had merely exchanged the dubious smoggy delights of LA for the razzle-dazzle of Manhattan, where I’ve spent the past three months slaving away on a daily soap opera called Guiding Light. To say it was hard work is like saying jihad is a bit of a drag. Acting in a serial in which 55 minutes (or more, depending on who’s going on holiday) of taped film must be shot daily is the show business equivalent of boot camp. I haven’t worked so hard or felt so pressured since I was raising two children under two without a nanny. I had thought that a prime-time serial like Dynasty was reasonably tough, since we had to get 50 minutes of film in the can in six days, but that was a sun-kissed holiday on the Riviera compared with ‘Daytime’.
To commit to memory anywhere between 15 and 45 pages of dialogue every day, you need the mind-bending concentration of Uri Geller and the stamina of an SAS operative.
There is no proper rehearsal time, which as any actor knows is essential, and when the times comes for blocking camera moves, the mayhem from the lightning crew and technicians manning the cameras makes concentrating on not getting clocked by the boom mic and imperative achievement, never mind the lines. WE then ‘dress rehearse’ three, for or five scenes which take place on the same set, and immediately shoot the scenes one after another without a break. This is like performing half of the first act of a play without rehearsals, and it is admirable that the wonderful actors with whom I worked seem to do it effortlessly. I consider it a great accomplishment that I have been able to keep up form day one (well, day tow, really – there is a learning curve). ‘You almost get used to it after a while,’ grinned Ron Raines who has been in Guiding Light for nine years. ‘You train your short-term memory to learn all this stuff real fast and then by the next day you’ve forgotten it, but even after nine years it’s still pretty tough.
Pretty tough, indeed. When I told Helen Wroth, who has acted on Coronation Street for more than 20 years, about our schedule, she was aghast. ‘It’s not possible,’ she said. ‘On Corrie we shoot five half-hour episodes in six days, and sometimes we shoot until midnight, until we get it right. How can you possibly remember all that dialogue?’
‘Because of strict labor regulations, American soaps can only shoot for a limited amount of time – about four to five hours. We tape on the first take and, unless you fall flat on you face, they’ll print it,’ I replied. Helen, whom I respect as an actress who know her stuff, still couldn’t believe it, which
further justifies my feelings of awe at the professionalism and dedication of the actors I was privileged to work with. But I’m glad I’ve finished the stint and don’t have to learn 30 pages of dialogue every night. The feds are out in force at JFK airport, instead of the indolent-looking amateurs we’ve grown
accustomed to. Going through (or thru) security these days, you are greeted and searched by lynx-eyed professional men and women who wouldn’t look out of place behind the barrel of a Kalashnikov.
It does make on feel more secure, but to one young man boarding Concorde last week it caused some embarrassment. After he had beeped when going through the X-ray, a lady officer keenly probed him with her security fairy wand. His metal buckle kept on making the pesky thing go of but, instead of asking him to remove his belt, the officer diligently ran her machine over and over the front of his skin-tight trousers until, lo and behold, to the amusement of fellow passengers, it wasn’t a gun in his pocket at all.
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