Hello.

I’ve had my WordPress blog for a few moons now, so I thought I’d say a quick hello and drop a few random facts about the woman behind the words…

📸 by Alan Harding

I’m horrifically shy. Like heart palp/flop-sweat shy. You wouldn’t know to meet me, as I do my best to be cucumber-level cool, (and a lot of energy goes into this façade) but inside I’m wanting to put a me-shaped hole through the wall and get the heck out of Dodge. I’ve tried the whole ‘fake-it-til-you-make-it’ majiggy, but it ain’t happening. Some of us are born hermits, I think.

That said, I try to speak openly about uncomfortable topics. Particularly mental health. This is definitely a step out of my comfort zone, as I’m naturally quite an inward person, (particularly about my own relationship with mental health) but I think it’s important to normalise depression, anxiety, cognitive function disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, etc. Nothing good ever came from sweeping shit under the rug.

I’m not really sure of the when or whereabouts of my interest in writing stemmed, it’s just something that has always been there really. I say I don’t technically have a tone, for the sake of versatility, but secretly I do and I like to refer to it as ‘eloquent and a little sweary’. Obviously I use this tone exclusively for my own projects, as that shoe tends not to fit all manner of foot!

I have a cat called Squeak, who is of equal parts grumpy and sweet. I would like to add a dog to my little family one day.

One of my favourite book is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I like the sentiments behind it, the humour, and the fact the lead character is a total mud-slinging, tree-climbing tomboy, like I was (and secretly still am!)

I bloody love food. Particularly anything of the pasta variety. Food is literally what gets me out of bed in the morning (well, that and a full bladder…)

Despite using technology daily, I am something of a technophobe. My devices get sworn at… a lot.

My nickname is ‘Maurice’. It derived from an ill-fated trip to a hairdressers a few years ago, when the (obviously hard-of-hearing) receptionist misunderstood my name… because I clearly look like someone called ‘Maurice’… Needless to say, this story tends to amuse people, and the nickname stuck.

I used to live on a canal boat. A proper Rosie & Jim style barge. Did I fall in from time-to-time? Yes, yes I did. Once I fell in, scrambled myself out on to the plank between the embankment and the boat, just for the plank to give way, sending me face-first back in again. Not my finest hour.

Marmite all the way. Marmite on everything. Marmite on crumpets, marmite and cheese toasties, marmite on roast potatoes. Heck, marmite for president. Vive la Marmite

Snippet

I sighed as I tossed the newspaper onto the passenger seat and got out of my truck. It was still early, but I couldn’t bear to sit there any longer; the sound of the fire alarm and the clonk playing over and over in my head like a jammed mix-tape.

I started to make my way over to the main building: an old brick affair that would have looked like a romantic French dream if it wasn’t for the modern extension on the side that looked like someone had stolen a small millennial build and stuck it on, hoping nobody would notice how out of place it looked. I was busy scowling at it when I almost involuntarily stopped in my tracks; my view re-directed to the left of the building. The house was shaded by giant live oak trees and beyond them were rows and rows of vineyards. The rolling hills of the colourful valley popping up behind them. It reminded me of a picture I’d seen of Tuscany a few years ago, when I’d debated doing the backpacking-across-Europe-thing after graduating, but had decided against it, incorrectly assuming my career wouldn’t wait for me.

“Quite a view, huh?” a female voice cut into my thoughts. I turned to the main entrance and saw a woman with silver hair and a men’s white cotton shirt over a pair of faded blue jeans stood watching me.

“I’ve certainly seen worse!” I smiled, shading my eyes. She wore colourful beads that glittered in the sun and from which, upon closer inspection, dangled a simple artisan-looking silver elephant. “You must be Rose.” I said, reaching to shake her hand.

After the obligatory formalities, we made our way across the winery floor, up a little flight of stairs and into a small airy mezzanine office which overlooked the main building. The room was full of houseplants and various wine prizes. The walls were dappled with photographs of three women, often holding glasses of wine, and of whom I assumed were the namesake of the business. Not your typical winery office, I thought to myself. Not that I’d frequented many. I settled in my seat across from Rose. She skimmed her eyes over the burns on my face, and asked how I was feeling. I lied and said I was never better.

More Than Just a Dumb Blonde…

[Trigger warning: sexual abuse.]

Photo by Sam Shaw, 1955

Lots of folks (present company included) have at one point or another, adorned their bedroom/livingroom/bathroom wall with a poster of Marilyn Monroe. It’s totally reasonable – she was a mega-babe. But to me, there are only two ends of the spectrum when it comes Monroe-mania: the first is the lover of the flirty, red dress-wearing Marilyn; adorned in diamonds, and pouting at the camera. And that’s okay. That’s a love of Marilyn: the Brand. The firmest proof that marketing done well can create a cash-cow in the form of a beloved icon.

But then there’s the empathetic category: the Norma Jeane Devotee. Those who look a little beyond the cheesy Hollywood caricature, and instead see the doe-eyed innocence, open vulnerability, creeping insecurities, and the desire to be loved – all subtly resonating from the lesser-noticed sensitive soul behind the charade. Someone with whom we can empathise, and even relate.

In the late 1940s, some misogynistic Hollywood dick-for-brains looked at a young Norma Jeane and money signs appeared in front of his eyes. He would go on create what he perceived to be the female epitome of the American Dream in the form of a voluptuous blonde with zero brain cells – and it was a genius formula really, because here we are, almost sixty years after her death, still talking about her.

Photo credit unknown

I find it somewhat depressing that one of the world’s most famous icons is such a strong presence in popular culture – even today – and yet, she is still so grossly misunderstood. Part of this Hollywood creation was the imperative detail that her brain capacity must appear to be similar to that of a garden gnome’s – the more dense and bobble-headed the better – because sadly there is a demograph of heterosexual men (both then and now) who like their women to be thick as pigshit. But let’s not open up that can of worms tonight…

One of Hollywood’s best-kept secrets is Norma Jeane’s surprisingly high IQ, as well as her love of books, poetry, and psychology – subjects far from bimbo fodder. So as a little tribute to the intelligent face behind the ditzy mask, here’s a few lesser-known facts that the old-school douche elite of classic Hollywood would rather you didn’t know.

– Norma Jeane LOVED to read. She owned a library in her home, and was a fast and avid reader. Her closest friends described her relationship with literature as ‘devouring’. She tackled the volumes by writers that even keen readers, such as myself, have yet to either get through or fully comprehend, such as James Joyce, Proust, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Whitman, among others. She also had a special fondness for Jack Kerouac, and the other literary bone-daddies of the Beatnik generation. She was married to the playwright Arthur Miller for a few years, whose circle of literary friends were both surprised and delighted by his wife’s love of books.

Photo by Eve Arnold, 1953

– She wrote poetry – and she was actually rather good. A collection of her poems, letters, notes and general musings were discovered a few years ago and were published as a book titled Fragments (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2013) giving a never-before-seen insight to her life behind the glittering lights of showbiz. Her poems depict a sometimes dark and troubled mind, riddled with insecurity and frustrated with the full-time role of being Marilyn Monroe, as well as the loneliness of her marriages (and life in general), the craving of stability and the desire for strong female role-models in her life. Here was someone desperately searching for deeper meaning in life. Desperately searching for safety nets beyond the flimsy, fickle ones provided by her wealth and career, and who was trying to find ways of expressing herself beyond the realms of the often-shallow one-dimensional roles doled out by her agents.

– She studied at UCLA. There are a LOT of fake Marilyn Monroe quotes knocking around on the internet. None more so than that bloody “If you can’t handle me at my worst blah blah blah”, but one of the actual legit ones is her response to a reporter’s question as to why she was rarely seen at parties and premiers early in her career: “I was going to school. In the day I was attending auditions and rehearsals, and in the evening I was taking classes in English and History.”

– She also studied at the Lee Strasburg Institute in New York. Now, for anyone unfamiliar with the name, Lee Strasburg was the founder of the Method approach to acting. His best-known clients include Robert DeNiro, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, and James Dean. His lesser-known clients were a bunch of people I’ve never heard of… and Marilyn Monroe. Her time at the institute wasn’t particularly a hush-hush affair, but it’s not overly common knowledge either. The reason is this: there have been long-standing debates about Norma Jeane’s skills as an actor, and this is largely down to the systems Hollywood had in place to control its stars. Basically if you were an actor, up until the early 1970s, you had next to no rights, and very little say in the roles you took. As I mentioned earlier, Marilyn Monroe was a brand first and a person second, so the roles her agents obtained for her were largely opaque, simple characters that mirrored her public persona.

– She was one of the first females in Hollywood to publicly admit the film industry is rife with sexual abuse. Long before anyone had heard of Harvey Weinstein, or uttered the words “me too”, Norma Jeane had famously outed what is now commonly referred to as the ‘Hollywood couch’ – a polite euphemism for ‘If you want this role, get on your knees.’

– She was incredibly street-smart. This was a girl who came from one fucked-up background. So much so, no one (including Norma Jeane herself) actually knew what her surname was. Basically, it’s either Baker or Mortensen. There was clearly some overlapping around the time of her conception, and her questionable excuse for a mother never knew which one was the father. Her mother was schizophrenic, and for large chunks of little Norma Jeane’s childhood, was both physically and emotionally unable to care for her. This resulted in a musical chair-style upbringing of being dotted around between aunts, foster parents, and even an orphanage. She grew up fast, which probably helped her navigate her way through the choppy, shark-infested waters of Hollywood, but also likely left her craving love and stability, and resulting in a vulnerable, predator-exposed and lonely personal life.

– She was difficult to work with. The term that was commonly used in reference to her work attitude was ‘dark perfectionist’. She was riddled with nerves and anxiety about her performance, and often insisted on numerous takes of even the most simple scenes, which frequently infuriated her co-stars and directors. She often delayed production by locking herself in her dressing room; crippled with self-doubt, and too embarrassed to come to set. She wanted to add complexities to the characters that just didn’t exist, and wanted to go beyond the bimbo persona, but because these characters were often synonymous with the MM persona, she wasn’t able to do so, which left her feeling like a failure.

Photo credit unknown

One thing we all know is that there has been much iffiness surrounding the circumstances of her death. There are theories – all of which have both strong possibility and holes in the evidence. Maybe we already know what happened. Maybe we don’t. Maybe we never will.

Norma Jeane/Marilyn Monroe died at home alone on the 4th of August, 1962, at the age of 36. She was/is loved by everybody for their own reasons, but her complex truth is what should be remembered over the silly façade. Her softness and her sensitive, vulnerable light that still remained, despite the harshness of her life.

[All words are my own, unless quoted otherwise, and are subject to copyright. None of the images are mine. I’ve done my best to correctly credit them, but no copyright infringement is intended if I managed to balls up the references.]

The Blues Brothers – 40 Years On

“Jesus H. Tap-Dancing Christ, I Have Seen the Light!“

Anyone who grew up in the 80s or 90s will very likely hold a torch for the 1980 classic, The Blues Brothers.
I, for one, can’t hear those three words without cracking a little smile. Those familiar with the film will know that it holds a similar die-hard cult fanbase, similar to that of the other bangers of its generation, such as The Goonies and the Back to the Future trio. The only difference is The Blues Brothers managed to hire the legendary James Brown as a fuchsia-wearing, gospel-singing priest, and Aretha Franklin as a sweary, no-nonsense café owner. Does this make it better than its box-office rivals? Yes, yes it does (in my humble opinion, anyway.)

The Blues Brothers turned 40 last week, so to celebrate, I decided to don my rose-tinted glasses (or in this case, my black wayfarers) and take a little stroll down memory lane to look at how this bonkers little movie is still relevant (and wonderful) today.

So, gosh. Where to begin?

I think with the crux of the film, which is the music. The musical performances in the film are so effin’ good, it’s unreal. As a huge music lover, (even as a wee whippersnapper, when I first saw this movie), what makes TBB stand in its own unique league is the killer musical performances that transcend the rather silly plotline (“We’re on a mission from God!”) from silly crime caper to musical velociraptor. What did it for me (and still does) is the incredible RnB guests, that range from John Lee Hooker to Ray Charles. Even a young Chaka Khan makes an appearance!

“Boys, you gotta learn not to talk to nuns that way!”

For those who like their soul and RnB music coupled with rib-tickling humour from the vintage Saturday Night Live alumni, this movie is right up your alley. For those who haven’t seen it (do, obviously. It’s currently on Netflix) the story follows Chicago brothers, Jake and Elwood Blues – two guys who love their blues music, but just can’t seem to stay out of mischief. Elwood picks Jake up from prison in his grubby, shitty 1970 Dodge Sudan, (which happens to be a former police car) of which quite literally becomes the vehicle that gets the boys both in and out of all manner of trouble.

Their first port of call is to the formidable and slightly terrifying Reverend Mother (more affectionately known to the boys as The Penguin) at the orphanage they grew up in. This visit goes hilariously awry very quickly, (cue much swearing and a tumble down the stairs whilst stuck in an old-fashioned wooden desk/chair thingy-ma-bob, that is clearly aimed at persons of 12 years and under) but not before the Penguin reveals to them that the orphanage will be closed down unless it can come up with $5000 and fast.

Challenge accepted.

They then motor over to a church, where James Brown’s character invokes the light of God Almighty himself (yep, felt bonkers writing that entire sentence) and Jake has an epiphany of getting their band back together to raise money to save the orphanage.

What ensues is a hilarious series of music-based shenanigans, including the rehiring of their old band – most of whom are more than somewhat dubious, on account of the lies, bullshit and petty con jobs that Jake and Elwood inadvertently managed to rope them into back in the day. Finally reluctantly agreeing, the guys embark on a series of gigs, which as wonderful as they are, somehow manage to piss off everyone they come across. This ranges from every state trooper in the entire Illinois area, to a group of Nazis, to Twiggy… of all people.

And everyone in between.

It’s just crackers, the entire thing. But so much fun. The film also still holds the record for the biggest car pile-up in cinematic history. It’s also up there with most amount of cocaine snorted behind the scenes, but that’s a different story for a different day.

So, where are we now, forty years later?

Well, sadly we’re sans half of the cast. Everyone from John Candy, Carrie Fisher, and Ray Charles, to most of the band themselves (including the horribly untimely death of John Belushi less than two years after the film’s release) are no longer here to enjoy all the fun and laughter that 2020 has brought us… *ahem*

Some of the political events that occur in the film still echo today, particularly the infamous “Illinois Nazis… I hate Illinois Nazis” scene, when Jake and Elwood launch their car towards a group of marching Nazis, forcing them to jump off a bridge and into a river to escape being hit. This causes a crowd of angry anti-Nazi protesters to cheer and laugh. The scene, as hilarious as it is, highlights the sad fact that white supremacy culture still lurks within our society today, but with the implication of the anti-Nazi protester mass being much larger than the white supremacists themselves, offers the feeling of general solidarity, and that love is always stronger than hate.

There is also a scene in which the boys are sat having a drink with Cab Calloway, and behind them are posters clearly depicting the faces of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy, which is an obvious nod to the Civil Rights Movement. It’s moments like these that suggest, although the film is wacky, it also broods with obvious sentiments that nod towards the dark history behind blues and black Gospel music, outlining that yep, it’s nice to have fun and enjoy this music for what it is, but to also never forget where it came from.

“He broke my watch!”

The filming was by no means a smooth production. Much like Jaws, three years prior, it was marred with complications, temporarily halted by certain talented but troubled cast members (*coughs* John Belushi) and went horrendously over its budget; with producers having to beg, borrow or steal any rights they could for permission to shoot on location.

The car stunts alone are something of near-genius, given the time period. No use of CGI was implemented either. It’s just good old-fashioned filmmaking. Kooky, hilarious, and full of classic one-liners. If bucket list films are a thing, this should definitely be at the top of it.

[All words are my own and are subject to copyright, with the exception of the quotes which obviously come from the movie. Image is not mine. No copyright infringement intended.]