Category Archives: Film and Television

Drawing: Edward Berger and Conclave

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Autographed drawing of director Edward Berger

My favourite anti-war film and in fact, recent cinema experience, is Edward Berger’s epic 147 minute remake of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (2022). It is the third film adaption following the 1930 and 1979, productions, all based on the 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque. The German-born director also co-wrote the screenplay with Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell and co-produced with Malte Grunert and Daniel Dreifuss and featured Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch, Daniel Bruhl, Sebastian Hulk, Aaron Hilmer, Edin Hasanovic and Devid Striesow in the lead roles. Set during World War I, it centres on 17 year-old Paul Baumer, an idealistic young German soldier who finds himself exposed to the realities of war.

In this version of the movie, a parallel storyline follows the armistice negotiations to end the hostilities, which is not in the book. It received 14 nominations at the BAFTA Awards-winning seven, including Best Film and Edward also winning for Best Direction and Adapted Screenplay. At the Academy Awards, its nine nominations resulted in four Oscars, including Best International Feature.

Edward continued his remarkable success with his first English-language film, CONCLAVE (2024), a political thriller surrounding a Conclave to elect the next pope, written by Peter Straughan and based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris. Given recent events following the death of Papa Francesco, there has been renewed interest in the movie, returning to the big screens worldwide. Life has certainly imitated art. After the official nine-day mourning period, the Conclave has begun with 133 cardinals gathering once again in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican to elect the 267th Pope.

The film won four BAFTA Awards; Best Film, Outstanding British Film, Adapted Screenplay and Editing from 12 nominations and received the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and seven other nominations including Best Picture.

I caught up with the affable Edward in London during this year’s BAFTA Awards and he very kindly signed a quick portrait I did of him and a CONCLAVE montage I designed.

Autographed Conclave montage

Drawing: Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker in ‘Plaza Suite’

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Autographed drawing of Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker in Plaza Suite on Broadway

The mail at the moment is about as reliable as the weather with strikes and cyber attacks, but I did receive a very pleasant surprise in the post last week when a small line sketch I did and sent a year ago to Matthew Broderick and his wife Sarah Jessica Parker when they featured in the Broadway revival of Neil Simon’s PLAZA SUITE came back signed and dedicated.

The production, which was delayed by over a year due to the Covid Pandemic and temporaily paused while both leads has respective bouts of the bug, opened last February at the Hudson Theater and extended its run to replace the lost performances, finishing on 10 July. This was the first revival of a Neil Simon play following his passing at the age of 91 in 2018.

It originally opened on Broadway at the Plymouth Theater on Valentine’s Day 1968 with George C.Scott and Maureen Stapleton, running for 1097 performances, directed by Mike Nichol, who won the Tony Award for Best Direction.The play, in three acts, is set in Suite 719 of New York’s iconic Plaza Hotel in Midtown Manhatten. Matthew and Sarah play three wildly divergent couples across three vignettes-the first, Sam and Karen Nash revisiting their honeymoon suite to rekindle their love on their 23rd anniversary, only to end in a raging argument when Karen accuses Sam of having an affair with his secretary. The second set of couples, Jesse Kiplinger, a Hollywood movie producer catches up with his old flame, Murial Tate with only one thing in mind and the final act sees parents Ray and Norma Hubley on their daughter, Mimsey’s wedding day, who has locked herself in the bathroom in a state of nervousness, refusing to attend her wedding downstairs.

This was the first time Matthew and Sarah had worked together in 20 years, since both appearing in the final weeks of the 1996 revival of HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING. Their performances were well received by both audiences and critics alike. In his Variety review, Daniel D’Addario writes, “Neil Simon’s look at three romantic couples facing down the passage of time is sharp and knowing… thank goodness for Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, the real-life married couple bring a serious commitment to the spirit of the work, allowing their own personas to throw some meta-textual sparks without overtaking the spirit of Simon. As directed by John Benjamin Hickey, Parker and Broderick provoke, alienate and woo one another, and provide a strong argument for a playwright whose work seems next-to-impossible to subvert.”

Drawing: Dave Grusin

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Autographed drawing of composer Dave Grusin

One of my favourite and frequently viewed films is Sydney Pollack’s meticulously directed 1975 political thriller THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, featuring Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, John Houseman and Max von Sydow. And one of the many reasons for its favouritism is the wonderful musical score by the great and prolific legendary American jazz pianist and composer Dave Grusin. It’s considered to be one of the best and most memorable spy film soundtracks of the 1970’s. Described as ‘jazzy with an R&B funk infusion, characterised by a haunting mellow jazz with heavy strings and a smooth saxophone lead.

It’s one of Dave’s many great scores, included in nearly 100 movie titles, including THE GRADUATE (1967),  HEAVEN CAN WAIT (1979), THE CHAMP (1980), ON GOLDEN POND (1982), THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS (1990), HAVANA (1991), THE FIRM (1994) and countless TV productions such as COLUMBO, BARETTA, ST ELSEWHERE, and THE WILD,WILD WEST. During the 15-year period between 1979-1994 Dave received eight Academy Award nominations, winning the Oscar for Best Original Score for THE MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR in 1989. He has been nominated for the Grammy Award 38 times, winning ten and has also received two BAFTA, two Primetime Emmys and four Golden Globe Award nominations.

He was the subject of a feature-length documentary DAVE GRUSIN: NOT ENOUGH TIME in 2018 and a person high on my list to meet and have a drawing signed. I planned to post a letter and drawing to him, but then discovered that he was a frequent performer at Ronnie Scott’s in London with one of his regular collaborators, guitarist Lee Ritenour. My timing of this revelation was less than impressive. He and Lee had just finished a four-day gig at the iconic Soho jazz club. He was, however, scheduled to return the following year, but due to the Covid pandemic and resulting lockdowns that was cancelled. Eventually he did return in July this year and I finally got to meet him, get my sketch signed and tell him in person how much I loved his work, especially the THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR score.

Drawing: Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in DARKEST HOUR

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Autographed drawing of Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour

Gary Oldman unsuccessfully applied for a place in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He was told he could apply again the following year, but was also advised to “find something else for a living.”  Forty years on his films have grossed over $11 billion worldwide, making him one of the highest-grossing actors of all time. Back in the 1970’s he did, in fact already have a variety of jobs on assembly lines, selling shoes, a porter in an operating theatre and beheading pigs at an abattoir while he attended the Young People’s Theatre in Greenwich, before gaining a scholarship at the Rose Bruford College in south-east London, graduating with a BA in acting.

His stage career began in 1979 and he made his film debut in REMEMBRANCE three years later. By the second half of the 1980’s, having already won acclaim in the theatre with the Royal Court in London and the Royal Shakespeare Company, Gary quickly established himself as a new major force in film, first in Britain then in Hollywood. He was recognised as a member of the ‘Brit Pack’ – a term first used in an article by Elissa Van Poznak in the January edition of ‘The Face’.

BFI season programmer Geoff Andrew wrote, “His playing of real-life figures as different as Joe Orton, Lee Harvey Oswald and Winston Churchill demonstrates his extraordinary versatility; moreover, he’s always been prepared to portray a character’s less than attractive qualities. At the same time, his tonal range has extended from the frighteningly powerful (THE FIRM’s Clive Bissel) to the quietly reticent Le Carre’s George Smiley in TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY)” His career was frontloaded with exceptional performances before moving to America, where he worked with Oliver Stone on JFK and Francis Ford Coppola on BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA as well as becoming a necessary stable in the HARRY POTTER and BATMAN film franchises.

With over 70 feature films, spanning forty-years, Gary has 64 wins from 101 award nominations. It was his portrayal of Britain’s wartime prime minister Winston Churchill in Joe Wright’s  DARKEST HOUR (2017), that has won him the most accolades. Written by Anthony McCarten, it covers the critical month in the early days of Churchill’s premiership and the 1940 war cabinet crisis with his refusal to seek a peace treaty with Nazi Germany amid their advance into Western Europe.

Gary’s memorable and mesmerizing performance won the Oscar, the BAFTA, a Golden Globe and the SAG award plus numerous critics gongs including the Critic’s Choice Award. Last years BFI London Film Festival celebrated the 25th Anniversary of Gary’s singular directoral masterpiece, NIL BY MOUTH with a screening of a 4K remastered print. It was followed by a Gary Oldman Season with the man himself taking part in an In Conversation at BFI Southbank on 20 October, when I was fortunate to meet him and get my drawing signed.

Drawing: Alejandro González Iñárritu

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Autographed drawing of director Alejandro González Iñárritu

The brilliant Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu attended last year’s BFI london Film Festival with his latest feature BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS. While I had been lucky enough to meet him briefly on a handful of occasions, I finally got my act together and drew this portrait sketch for him to sign, which he did outside his London hotel, stopping for a chat and a graph… as you do. It’s intriguing reading about his teenage years and what shaped his future direction. He was apparently a poor student, expelled from high school for poor grades and misbehaviour, running off to Acapulco,with a girl from a wealthy family, influenced by the Milos Forman film HAIR, which lasted a week, before returning home to Mexico City. After a stint working on cargo boats, he travelled around Europe for a year, which had a great influence as a filmmaker.

 Known for his, and I quote, “modern psychological drama films about the human condition”, which have garnered plenty of Awards recognition -126 wins from 168 nominations to be precise, according to IMDb. They includes five Oscars, three BAFTAs and four Golden Globes. His 2014 black comedy-drama BIRDMAN or (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) won the Best Picture, Director and Original Screenplay Academy Awards. He was the third person (and the first in 65 years) to win consecutive Best Director Oscars, taking the prize the following year for THE REVENANT. In 2018 he received a Special Achievement Award in for FLESH AND SAND (CARNE Y ARENA), a short (7 minute) virtual reality project from the POV of migrants crossing the Mexican/US  border, which was the first ever VR installation presented at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. In 2019, he was made Commander of the Order of the Arts and Letters in France.

Drawing: Guillermo del Toro

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Autographed drawing of director Guillermo del Toro

The list of foreign-born film directors who have reached the pinnacle of their careers on Oscar night is long, but few countries can claim to have produced a cohesive group of collaborators with the level of success that three Mexican auteurs have enjoyed for more than two decades. The Academy Award-dominating trio; Alfonso Cuaron, Alejandro G. Inarritu and Guillermo del Toro, collectively known as ‘The Three Amigos of Cinema’; have won Best Director five times in six years from 2013-2018. They are three of my favourite helmers, who I have been fortunate to meet at the BFI London Film Festival, Alfonso in 2018 and Alejandro and Guillermo at last years event. They are very affable and accommodating, graciously sharing their time.

Guillermo attended the 2022 Festival for the World Premiere of PINOCCHIO, his Netflix stop-motion animated musical fantasy, co-directed with Mark Gustafson (in his feature debut), loosely based on Carlo Collodi’s classic 1883 book ‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’, which re-imagines the story of a wooden puppet who comes to life as the son of his carver Geppetto, set in Fascist Italy during the interwar period and WW ll. It has been received with critical acclaim, and has been recognised as we enter the business end of the awards season, including three Golden Globe noms including Best Animated Feature. More nominations are inevitable.

Guillermo’s body of work has collected many accolades. His 12 feature films have been recognised with many awards, including six Oscar nominations, winning two – Best Picture and Best Director for THE SHAPE OF WATER (2017), the romantic fantasy that follows a mute cleaner at a high-security Government lab, who falls in love with a captured humanoid amphibian creature and decides to help him escape. He has also won two BAFTA’s from five nominations.

TIME magazine included him in their 2018 most influential people in the world list.

Guillermo signed my quick portrait sketch at the PINOCCHIO premiere on 15 October 2022.

Drawing: Paul Bettany in ‘The Collaboration’

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Autographed drawing of Paul Bettany as Andy Warhol in The Collaboration at London's Young Vic Theatre

In February this year, British actor Paul Bettany returned to the theatre after an absence of 25 years, fourteen of them spent in Marvel’s AVENGERS franchise to play longtime international superstar Andy Warhol in Anthony McCarten‘s THE COLLABORATION at London’s Young Vic.  It sees the Pop Art icon return to painting after a quarter of a century of parties, gossip and lucrative printmaking.

Billed as a ‘prize-fight between two cultural heavyweights’, the play is set in New York in the summer of 1984. Warhol and the art scene’s newest wunderkid, Jean-Michel Basquiat (played by Jeremy Pope) agree to work together on what may be the most talked about exhibition in the history of modern art. “There are also a couple of titanic lead performances… and Paul Bettany and Jeremy Pope really, really deliver… Bettany is a strange and riveting Warhol… he’s a fascinating creation”, wrote TimeOut’s theatre critic Andrzej Lukowski. After a successful run in London, the production has just opened on Broadway with the same leads and director Kwame Kwei-Armah at the Samuel J.Friedman Theater. All three are also central to a film version which is now in post production.

After dropping out of school, Paul lived in a small flat and earned money playing guitar as a busker on the London streets and working in a home for the elderly before enrolling in a three-year course at the Drama Centre London. He made his stage debut at the age of 19, playing Eric Birling in Stephen Daldry’s acclaimed West End revival of AN INSPECTOR CALLS at the Aldwych Theatre in 1993.

Six plays, including three for the Royal Shakespeare Company, 13 TV productions and 42 films later his career has be filled with many memorable highlights and accolades with nine wins from 19 award nominations. He received a BAFTA nom for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of surgeon and naturalist Stephen Maturinin in Peter Weir’s MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD (2003) and won the London Film Critic’s Award for Best British Actor and the Evening Standard Award for Best Actor. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe for his role as the posh android Vision in the TV miniseries WANDAVISION. He won the London Film Critics’ Circle Award in 2002 for his portrayal of Geoffrey Chaucer in THE KNIGHT’S TALE.

Paul signed my sketch in early March during the THE COLLABORATION’s six-week run at the Young Vic.

Drawing: Jodie Comer in PRIMA FACIE

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Autographed Drawing of Jodie Comer in Prima Facie on West End

“West End debuts don’t come much more astonishing than this solo tour de force by Jodie Comer,” wrote The Telegraph’s Chief Theatre Critic Dominic Cavendish in his five-star review of the 90 minute, one-hander PRIMA FACIE, which ran this spring at the Harold Pinter Theatre, for a sold-out nine week season. The BAFTA and Emmy Award-winning actress plays Tessa Ensler, a brilliant barrister, who specialises in defending men accused of sexual assault, until she is raped by a colleague. It was only her second ever stage role, the first in Scarborough, thirteen years ago when she was 16, playing Ruby in THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING at the Stephen Joseph Theatre.

“The KILLING EVE star makes a masterful West End debut in Suzi Miller’s play about sexual assault and the legal system,” said the Guardian’s Arifa Akbar. The Evening Standard’s Nick Curtis wrote, “We all wanted to know if she’s as good live on stage as she is on screen. And the answer is no: she’s better.”

“Comer evolves the character as the play goes on, twisting Tessa’s charismatic confidence into traumatised, fidgety panic-duality expressed in the publicity poster, which overlays an image of a self-satisfied lawyer-mode Comer into one of her letting out an anguished scream… and she plays all the other supporting roles… we watch her slip between the prim prosperity and rounded vowels of Tessa’s Cambridge Professors to the crotch-scratching arrogance of policemen and Elton-boy drawl of her peers among many others,” wrote Yasmin Omar in her Curzon Cinemas review for the NT Live screening of the production in movie theatres.
Jodie will make her Broadway debut at the Schubert Theatre later this year when the production transfers to New York.

She kindly signed my sketch at the Pinter stage door after her final performance on 18 June where hundreds of fans gathered, fifteen deep.

Drawing: David McCallum

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Autographed Drawing of actor David McCallum

Television transmission began in New Zealand in the early 1960s, coinciding with my formative years, influenced by many memorable programmes, including my favourite THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E with Robert Vaughn as the suave spy Napoleon Solo and his enigmatic partner, Russian Illya Kuryakin played by the Scottish-born David McCallum.

David’s father was the lead violinist for the London Philharmonic and his mother was a cellist so everything pointed to a musical career for their son and his favourite instrument, the oboe. A short stint at the Royal Academy of Music was replaced with the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, igniting a distinguished film, TV and stage career spanning over seven decades beginning with voice work for the BBC Radio in 1947.

He became a household name as the mysterious Illya Kuryakin, a character originally intended as a peripheral role but his popularity and the on-screen chemistry with Robert persuaded the producers to elevate David to co-star status. He received more fan mail than any other actor in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s history, including MGM stars Clark Gable and Ellis Presley with two Primetime Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe nod. He subsequently featured in COLDITZ (1972-74) and SAPPHIRE & STEELE (1978-1982) alongside Joanna Lumley before taking on the role of Donald ‘Ducky’ Mallard, the chief Medical Examiner in the American police procedural series NCIS since 2003. He is the only original cast member left, appearing briefly for season 19 last month.

David returned to his musical roots, recording four albums for Capitol Records in the 1960’s. In 2016 he published a crime novel ONCE A CROOKED MAN which centres on a young actor who foils a murder.

During the pandemic lockdowns I had the time to catch up on many of THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E episodes and drawing this quick portrait sketch of David, which I sent it to him at his New York home. He returned it, signed which I will treasure.

Drawing: Ang Lee

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Autographed Drawing of director Ang Lee

One of the most accomplished and popular contemporary filmmakers, Taiwanese-American director Ang Lee was ranked 27th in the Guardian’s top 40 directors and 41st in a list of greatest directors of all time in a 2007 poll conducted by Total Film magazine. Ang is also one of the nicest people in the business. I have a had the privilege of meeting him on a number of occasions over the past few years.

His 15 feature films have received a truck load of accolades, including 38 Oscar nominations (four for Best Picture) with 12 wins, 49 BAFTA nominations for 24 wins and 23 Golden Globe nominations for nine wins. Personally he has received five Academy Award nominations, winning two for Best Director for LIFE OF PI in 2013 and BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN in 2006. He has won five BAFTAS, including Best Film for SENSE AND SENSIBILITY (1995) and the Fellowship in 2020 for his Outstanding Contributions to British Cinema. He has also been the recipient of a number of honours and decorations, including a Knight of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2012) and the Legion of Honor (2021) from the French Government in the same year he received the Presidential Culture Award from Taiman’s president Thai-Ing-wen.

I sent this sketch to Ang to his home in New York State last year with a signing request and received a very nice reply from his wife Jane, thanking me for my letter and informing me that Ang was working in New Zealand and due to the covid restrictions was going to be there for some time, but as soon as he returned home she would make sure he signed and returned it, which is exactly what happened.