Four gentlemen of Amman

I was wandering through the middle of Amman, the Jordanian capital, on my last day in town some nine years ago (6 November 2008) when these four chaps noticed my camera and asked me to take their picture. I can't remember how extensive their English was, but they liked the picture. Didn't spot the naughty cigarette no.2 is rocking! Wonder what they're up to now? (That was a great trip, by the way).

Coalition formation & potential Executives

One feature of the continuing coalition negotiations has been speculation about the likely shape of any resulting Cabinet. Now the election result is final there's no such thing as a 'moral right to govern' in the rulebook: the fate of the next Parliament is determined by Parliament alone.

While New Zealand First may choose to sit on the cross-benches outside of Government, it’s more interesting to guess what a full coalition arrangement with shared responsibilities might look like. In these negotiations Ministerial positions are the subject of negotiations along with policy concessions and other appointments, but parties generally receive a number of positions proportionate to their vote. In practice this means that if it goes into a formal coalition New Zealand First could expect to have four of its caucus of nine ending up holding Ministerial warrants, whichever major party Winston Peters ends up deciding to support.

The estimates below are based on a hypothetical Ministerial list of 25 Ministers. While this is smaller than the 27 Ministers under the last English administration (or 28 if you count the non-Ministerial Parliamentary Under-Secretary role created for ACT’s David Seymour), there are fewer minor parties in the new Parliament and an Executive of 28 was arguably too many in a House of 120 members. For the purposes of this discussion I’ve opted to keep things simple with 25, with 20 in Cabinet and five Ministers outside Cabinet. Given the number of tiny portfolios used to flesh out the numbers, a new administration wanting to economise could do worse than opting for an even smaller Executive, but the need to reward ambitious caucus members probably makes this unlikely.

If Peters supports a National-led Government the combined parties would have 65 votes. This would suggest 21 Ministerial positions for National and four for New Zealand First. If there was no major National reshuffle, that would allow all the present Cabinet to keep their warrants, plus Hon Nicky Wagner. Four National Ministers at the bottom of the current Ministerial list would lose their warrants: Jacqui Dean, David Bennett, Tim Macindoe and Scott Simpson. The four New Zealand First members to receive Ministerial warrants would likely be Winston Peters, Tracy Martin, Ron Mark and Shane Jones.

If Peters supports Labour plus the Greens (63 votes), this would suggest a line-up of 18 Ministerial positions for Labour, four for New Zealand First and three for the Greens. While the Green vote (6.3 percent) is only slightly smaller than New Zealand First’s (7.2 percent), it would probably be smart politics to reward New Zealand First with an extra spot. Examining the Labour caucus and list rankings, a line-up of 18 ministers could consist of: Jacinda Ardern, Kelvin Davis, Andrew Little, Grant Robertson, Phil Twyford, Megan Woods, Chris Hipkins, Carmel Sepuloni, David Clark, David Parker, Stuart Nash, Raymond Huo, Iain Lees-Galloway, Su’a William Sio, Damien O’Connor, Ruth Dyson, Nanaia Mahuta and Rino Tirikatene. Four of the 18 have previous Ministerial experience: Parker, O’Connor, Dyson and Mahuta. Trevor Mallard would be given the role of Speaker. The New Zealand First Ministers would be the same as under the National-led administration. The Green Party would receive three warrants, perhaps for their top three list candidates James Shaw, Marama Davidson and Julie Anne Genter.

While the prospect of a National coalition with the Greens excited some comment among National-aligned commentators last week, it’s a toxic option as far as the Greens are concerned. In any case, a hypothetical National-Green administration (64 votes) would look similar to a National-New Zealand First one: 22 National Ministers plus three Green Ministers. Jacqui Dean could retain her warrant and the same three Green members as above would become Ministers.

Of course this all becomes moot if Peters decides to stay on the cross-benches!

'Not one of them would have dampened my ambition'

Working on Michael Cacoyannis' 1971 film The Trojan Women, English actor and raconteur Brian Blessed became friends with the film's lead actor, the legendary Katharine Hepburn. In his autobiography Absolute Pandemonium Blessed recounts in his own words Hepburn's reasoning for never having had children.

One of the more interesting yet difficult conversations I had with Katharine was about her decision never to have children. This, I believe, revealed the mark of Katharine Hepburn. She spoke with honesty, candour, empathy and consideration; four words I believe sum her up perfectly. They were her bywords. 

I remember what she said and will attempt to convey this to you now. I think you'll find it illuminating. 

'I could not bear the thought of being a mother, Brian. I've been attacked for this over the years, attacked and pilloried by all kinds of people: journalists, politicians, fellow actors; even fans. And, do you know, I'm sick of it. I've had it up to here. Being a mother is the most important job in the world and it is probably the hardest job in the world, and I'm afraid that I just wasn't up to it. But at least I was honest enough to admit that. Do you know how many people have children because they believe they should, or because other people tell them they should? Millions. But the consequence of bringing a child into the world under those kind of circumstances and in that kind of environment wasn't lost on me, Brian. It made me think and it made me act. 

A child needs to be loved unconditionally, but especially by its mother. When I was of child-bearing age, I was obsessed with my career. Nothing else mattered to me and I did a lot of things to further my career that I'm not proud of. Things I should never have done. Can you imagine what kind of life a child of mine would have had? Because, believe me, I could have given birth to a thousand children and not one of them would have dampened my ambition. There would have been precious little love for a child of mine. I'm ashamed to say; and no attention or affection. Just a room full of au pairs and a lifetime of resentment. Hollywood has been having these kinds of babies for years, Brian. It's abuse. It's child abuse. So that's why I decided never to have children and I stand by my decision. It doesn't matter to me any more because I'm over sixty now, but it still does to some'.
- Brian Blessed, Absolute Pandemonium: My louder than life story, 2015

Visit scenic Penrose

Young Spielberg

The young [Steven] Spielberg seems a picture of an unsettled personality darting about internally in search of its own borders. He was a brilliant child whose intellectual curiosity did not motivate him to be more than a desultory student; a nerd who shunned athletics and the outdoor life yet found his greatest social fulfillment in the Boy Scouts; a Jewish kid uncomfortable with his identity, fantasizing about the communal joys of Christmas. He yearned, apparently, for the mainstream American life evoked by the paintings of Norman Rockwell (of whom Spielberg would become a major collector) and from which his Jewish identity seemed to exclude him. “Being a Jew meant that I was not normal,” he would explain, “I was not like everybody else. I just wanted to be accepted. Not for who I was. I wanted to be accepted for who everybody else was.”

The sense of a barrier was heightened by the communities in which he found himself living—especially after his family moved to Arizona when he was nine, to a suburb on the edge of the desert, an environment of (in Spielberg’s words) “kitchen windows facing kitchen windows facing kitchen windows,” precisely analogous to the freshly built development so thoroughly devastated by the angry dead at the climax of Poltergeist (a film, written and produced but not, at least officially, directed by Spielberg, that as [biographer Molly] Haskell notes serves as a repository for some of his darkest fantasies).

Not long after the move to Arizona his father gave him an 8-millimeter movie camera, and a life still nebulous came abruptly into focus. At first he took over responsibility for filming the family’s vacations, complete with retakes and carefully elaborated setups, and discovered that “staging real life was so much more fun than just recording it.” By the age of twelve his ambition as a filmmaker was fully formulated, and with it the conscious construction of his own legend. Filmmaking defined his social life, reinforcing his ties with his fellow Boy Scouts and classmates, as he roped everyone in his circle (including of course his parents) into increasingly complex projects.

- Geoffrey O'Brien, 'Spielberg: The Inner Lives of a Genius', New York Review of Books, 23 February 2017

See also:

Movies: The remarkable impact of My Forgotten Man, 1 May 2016

Movies: Great are the marvels of living photography, 28 September 2015

Movies: Marilyn demonstrates the Theory of Relativity, 23 June 2014

In every respect the theatre is comfortable, convenient & hygienic

The cast of Wim Wenders' Falsche Bewegung

Tonight several hundred Wellingtonians gathered at the Paramount Theatre in Courtenay Place for the last ever Wellington Film Society screening at the venue. Thanks to the perfidy of some nameless council flunky, the theatre building had been re-designated to allow other uses, and the building owner wasn't keen on spending the money to refurbish its aging structure. So the culture capital of New Zealand loses an irreplaceable strand of its artistic heritage: a cinema that has been operating for just over 100 years, and the cinema that screened the first ever talking picture in New Zealand. And unless the new Film Museum provides the option, with the demise of the Paramount Wellington loses its only cinema with 35mm film projection capability.

An almost capacity crowd gathered on the cinema's last day in action to watch some traditional Filmsoc fare, the 1974 Wim Wenders road movie Falsche Bewegung (Wrong Move). I love the line from the 1975 Variety write-up of the movie in the Filmsoc catalogue: 'The single drawback is that it's probably too German to be grasped by uninitiated audiences'.

Photos: Last night at the Paramount

The sad end of a grand old cinema should be countered with the optimism of its birth a century earlier. Cinema was big business in New Zealand in 1917, despite the ongoing war, and the newspapers covered its opening in early August.

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Source

The opening of the new Paramount Theatre at the Courtenay-place tramway junction will take place next Saturday evening. The theatre has been planned on up-to-date lines, due care having been paid to seating, ventilation, and other essentials, while only the latest machinery has been installed for the purpose of showing pictures to the best advantage. The screen was specially imported from America. It is made of a scientific composition, and is said to greatly improve the quality of the pictures. The Paramount Theatre will be on the Paramount circuit, and the first production shown will feature the ever popular Mary Pickford in an Artcraft film, "Less Than the Dust," the scenes in which are laid in India and England.

- Evening Post, 30 July 1917

(Less Than the Dust was Pickford's first of 13 self-produced pictures for the Paramount Artcraft division. In 1919 she co-founded United Artists with Charlie Chaplin, DW Griffith and her soon-to-be husband, Douglas Fairbanks).

 

Considerable interest is being shown in the opening of the new Paramount Theatre, a luxuriously-fitted picture palace situated at Courtenay place, at which the initial screenings commence to-night. The Paramount is a spacious, cosy building, in which quaint architecture and new designs in appointments have combined to ensure the comfort and congenial surroundings that movie “fans" and general entertainment patrons appreciate. For the opening session, the first of the Artcraft productions, “Less Than the Dust," has been secured. In this big feature play the idol of the screen, Mary Pickford, is seen at her best, in the role of a deserted orphan, reared among sordid native surroundings in India. There is an uprising, very realistically carried out, and thence on there is a tender love story interwoven in the exciting plot. Miss Pickford’s latest effort is described as her triumph in dramatic acting. There are other well-selected pictures, an ideal programme for first-nighters in a new and handsome entertainment house. Excellent lighting, seating, and ventilation arrangements have been installed in the building, which ranks among the handsomest of Wellington's many theatres.

- New Zealand Times, 4 August 1917

(One of Less Than the Dust's two assistant directors was the later-famed Austrian emigre, Erich von Stroheim)

The Paramount Theatre, the twelfth addition to the picture theatres of Wellington, was opened on Saturday night under the most favourable conditions. The theatre itself may be described as up to date. Seating accommodation is provided for about twelve hundred, and the house was filled to overflowing on Saturday evening. The seats are comfortable, and the rows are wide enough apart to permit patrons to pass with comfort. The screen can be seen from every part of the house without any straining or twisting about. The decorations are simple but effective, and in every respect the theatre is comfortable, convenient, and hygienic. There was no hitch or delay in the opening, showing clearly that the management had given attention to every detail. The screen is quite the latest, and its special merit lies in the fact that it brings out the contrasts of light and shade. It is claimed that this screen is the only one of its kind in New Zealand up to the present time. The biograph is known as Baird's, and is a very powerful machine, projecting the pictures with remarkable clearness and free from flicker. Prom the smoothness with which everything went along from the start few people could be led to believe that it was the opening night, for usually there are delays and drawbacks at the initial performance through little details being overlooked. For about twenty minutes or more before the first picture was shown a very capable orchestra entertained the early patrons with a fine selection of music, and appropriate music was rendered throughout the evening. 

Pickford in Rebecca
of Sunnybrook Farm (1917)

The star picture chosen for the opening, entitled "Less Than the Dust," and featuring Mary Pickford, the popular artiste of the films, proved highly attractive. The story is an endeavour to blend East and West. It opens in India, where Radha (the role assumed by Mary Pickford), the little English castaway daughter of a social derelict, is shown in her daily life as the adopted daughter of a Hindoo swordmaker, and some typical Indian scenes and customs are depicted. The natives of the district are called upon to submit to vaccination, which they resent, and some of the hot-headed natives foster a rebellion, the Hindoo sword-maker being a leader among the rebels. Radha meets Captain Richard Townsend, of the local garrison, in the course of her wanderings through the bazaars, and her efforts to study English are helped by the gift of a book from Captain Townsend. During a fight with the rebels, Radha saves Townsand's life, and the latter goes on furlough to England to recuperate. The sword-maker finds himself in prison, and Radha's identity is discovered. She is sent to a boarding-school in England, where she again meets Townsend, and they eventually marry. The young couple return to India, and a Mrs Bradshaw, a widow who had marked out Townsend for her second husband, persuades Radha that she is unworthy to be the wife of Townsend, and the heartbroken girl flees to the desert with the intention of ending her life, but is saved by her husband. The picture is very fascinating, and the Eastern life and customs are very faithfully reproduced. Some very fine scenic pictures of the West India Islands, including St. Thomas and Martinique, were also shown. The Paramount should have a prosperous future.

- Dominion, 6 August 1917

"Less Than the Dust," now being screened daily at the Paramount Theatre, Courtenay-place, is a play that overshadows all Mary Pickford's screen triumphs. This picture was extremely successful in America, and the reason is easily apparent to all who see this superb superfeature. Smiles and tears are exquisitely blended, and the film will be remembered by all who see it for the sheer charm of its simplicity. At the evening performance the orchestral accompaniment adds greatly to the enjoyment of this picture. The music has been most carefully selected, and is very effectively rendered.

- Evening Post, 8 August 1917

(Less Than the Dust is listed as a seven-reeler)

"And departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of Time," doesn't quite apply in a literal sense to Mr James Bennie, Wellington's architect, who, when he goes hence, will leave his "handmark'' on the features of Wellington City. Thorough in his work is Mr Bennie, combined with which excellent trait is an artistic taste of the highest grade, as several public buildings in this city bear silent testimony. His latest "output" is the Paramount Picture Theatre in Courtenay-place. That end of Wellington is flourishing like unto the green bay tree. Shops are springing into existence daily — substantial structures — to catch the trade of those who walk from the centre of the city to collar the trams at Courtenay-place to save an honest "brown''

- Free Lance, 10 August 1917

(The Lance also records the run in another theatre of DW Griffith's racist blockbuster epic, The Birth of a Nation. Saving an 'honest brown' would I guess refer to saving a half-penny or perhaps the tram tickets for the city section were coloured differently to the suburban service tickets)