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Showing posts from 2023

Brad Pitt: I knew him well. (Okay, that’s a lie. But I did know him!)

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I only worked on a couple of movies during my short-lived career as a production coordinator. By a couple, I mean two. Literally two. The Favor was one of those movies, a film most of you will have never heard of even though it starred Elizabeth McGovern, Bill Pullman and Brad Pitt.  Brad Pitt was just a beautiful young man back then, only twenty four, with the beginnings of a resume; some small parts in episodic tv, nothing noteworthy. The director cast him based on some footage his agent had sent from LA up to our location production office in downtown Portland. It was from the as yet unreleased Thelma & Louise ; my boss had seen the video clip and trilled that he was delicious. And we all knew that instead of flying up from LA, he’d driven up in the cutest little sports car with Juliette Lewis by his side.  Brad played Elliot, an artist and Elizabeth McGovern's love interest, Emily, who runs an art gallery. The film is called  The Favor  because Emil...

Sim Carter

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WRITER A novel is in the works but for now … Some of my credits include  Beach Music   in the  Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine ,  Last Dance   in Purdue U's   Skylark Literary Journal,  The Arab boy who took out his eye  appeared under the title Double Vision in the  South Bay Reader.  The Good Men Project featured  7 Reasons Older Women Love Older Men  in their online magazine.  Doing Nothing  appeared in  Children. I  was a regular monthly contributing writer to 805Living Magazine for several years  while various other pieces appeared in LA Family, the national magazine Parents, and the Daily Breeze.  For more see  Out of Order . While you're here, can you please do me a favor? If you like what you read—or even if you don't— can you please let me know? I've disabled comments here because —well you probably know why and it has nothing to do with what you like or don't like about my ...

#9.1 Snow Day

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# 9.1    Cherry Grove Road, Niagara Falls, Canada We hopped about quite a bit once we ’ d arrived in Canada from England via Turkey and Libya. We moved from Montreal to Toronto to Niagara Falls where we lived in a big old two-story house with a grassy lawn, surrounded by ancient maple trees.  A place where I was perfectly happy. As perfectly happy as a ten-year-old girl just discovering boys were another species could be.  Happy until my parents bought a house in Cherrywood Acres, a new development on the outskirts of town.  This is # 9.1 of the  “ On the Street  Where I Lived ”  stories. It ’ s a close up view of one day in particular.   Snow Day It was only a few miles from our gloomy old house on Ryerson Crescent to our family ’ s new split level across town in Cherrywood Acres but it could just as easily have been light years away. It was a whole different world out there in the barely built developmen...

Snow Day — Part 2

  Alright class, carry on with your math until the bell. ”    Miss Allen gestured for me to come up to her desk while the rest of the class got busy with their math books. She told me not to worry about Walter. “ He ’ s usually such a nice boy. ”    Handing me a page of math problems, she asked me to give them a try so she could see if I was as far along as the rest of the class. The good news was that since we used the same SRA system back at Simcoe Street as her class did, I didn't have to take a reading test! I would still be in my same group, the second highest in the class. I ’ d always loved walking to the back of the classroom to the big SRA box and flipping through the color-coded cards, like I was a librarian. I always wanted to be a librarian. In fact, I secretly still played  ‘ librarian ’  with my little sister; we made Date Due slips out of my parents ’  bridge game score pad and taped them inside our mother ’ s books. We didn ’ t own...

#9 OF BRASSO & BROWNIES: coming of age in the 60's

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My dad on the far left, Mum on the far right, my brother Russell towering over our mother,  My younger sister, Nancy, the little girl holding the bundle. Family friends, the Waldmans.  I’m the one in the black & white Op Art suit. I was 13 at the time.  # Cherrygrove Road, Cherrywood Acres, Niagara Falls, Canada It’s daunting to move into a new house and make it yours. A never-before-lived-in house seems more than new as it stands before you, untouched, immaculate, strangely virginal. The difference between new and brand new can be an almost empty hollow feeling. No ghosts live within those walls. No child’s smudged fingerprints have been wiped away. I was ten years old when we moved into our new house in Niagara Falls, a brand new subdivision called Cherrywood Acres, houses studding the land where cherry trees used to grow.  We moved in the spring of 1963, the season of change in what would turn out to be a decade of change. In a house without histo...

We'll Always Have Nobu : Robert De Niro

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Reposting on the occasion of Robert De Niro’s 75th birthday. I guess you know you're old when all your crushes have turned into old men! Anyway ... here’s the one about the time ... I put down the phone, hoping no one could see my hand was literally shaking. Bob's assistant, Elena, was calling from New York, wanting to see if I could organize some lunch for her boss. Her boss Bob. Bob as in Bob De Niro. Oh, that Bob. The actor was going to be in LA and planned on squeezing in a quick meeting with Rowdy Herrington, the director shooting the next episode of Tales from the Crypt . As the APOC at Tales, it fell to me to take on the task.  An APOC—Assistant Production Office Coordinator to the uninitiated—is nothing more than an overworked secretary to about 150 people. Twelve hour days minimum. No overtime. My job meant inputting every single one of those names, phone numbers and addresses into the Crew List data base and keeping it updated. I generated the cast list wh...

Fallen Woman

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My daily three-mile walk in the morning keeps me in passable shape, clears my head, and gets me going. I start each day, after coffee but before breakfast and writing by heading out to the park where I walk in circles. As a writer, I'm seeking inspiration for my novel, working out plotholes. As a human being, I sometimes need to blow off steam. The Jacarandas shading the pea gravel pathway are a beautiful distraction, stunning in springtime when they bloom in deep blue purples, and mandatory in the summer when Los Angeles heats up early. Today as I near the patio sitting on the perimeter of the park, I see the gardeners have hosed down the cement. The entire surface is still wet and puddled. Slick. Without my permission, my heart starts pounding, bringing me crashing to a halt. Wimp, I think. That's in the past. Shake it off. I can't. I’m afraid. I'm fifteen years old again, walking along a sandy road near the beach in San Juan with my best friend. We're both...