KeithD
Virgin
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2012
- Posts
- 29,626
Anne Perry, The Whitechapel Conspiracy
(reading essentially because my wife bit on a “whole pile of them” Anne Perry sale and I want to get to the bottom of that pile so I can more on.)
Victoria Thompson, City of Scoundrels
(Not normally my cup of java, but this was written at the beginning of the Covid pandemic with New York City during the Spanish flu epidemic as a setting. It includes measures taken to try to protect from the flu and how rampant the flu was. It doesn’t shy away from miscalls—e.g., emphasizing wearing masks outdoors and not indoors.)
Don Graham, Giant: Making of a Legendary American Film
A delightful find (for me) at a book sale. A comprehensive backgrounder on the filming of the iconic movie (which I’ve alluded to in some of my own stories). I am finding it especially interesting, as it was the first movie I had a connection to. The opening scene of the movie supposedly is at a thoroughbred horse stud stable in Maryland, but it was actually filmed in Keswick, east of Charlottesville, Virginia, in the spring of 1955, and, as a stage play acting student in Washington, D.C., at the age of eight, I got to be an extra standing on a rural railway station platform while Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor did a bit of a couple of minutes (which took hours). Most of the movie was filmed in Texas, sort of a first for Hollywood. Up until then, the Texas movies were usually filmed on a Hollywood backlot (one actually was filmed in Copenhagen, Denmark).
I didn’t see the finished movie for years, as my family moved to Europe that summer. Europe was still recovering from the war and there weren’t many movie houses showing American movies.
That was similar to another movie I worked on, The Deer Hunter, where I worked on scenes filmed at a closed U.S. military commissary (transformed into a hospital) in Bangkok, Thailand. In both cases, I had such a small part in what was happening in movies that were extensively being filmed elsewhere from where I was that I didn’t know they were major movies until the Academy Awards of their respective years rolled around. We weren't getting English-language movies in Bangkok in 1978.
(reading essentially because my wife bit on a “whole pile of them” Anne Perry sale and I want to get to the bottom of that pile so I can more on.)
Victoria Thompson, City of Scoundrels
(Not normally my cup of java, but this was written at the beginning of the Covid pandemic with New York City during the Spanish flu epidemic as a setting. It includes measures taken to try to protect from the flu and how rampant the flu was. It doesn’t shy away from miscalls—e.g., emphasizing wearing masks outdoors and not indoors.)
Don Graham, Giant: Making of a Legendary American Film
A delightful find (for me) at a book sale. A comprehensive backgrounder on the filming of the iconic movie (which I’ve alluded to in some of my own stories). I am finding it especially interesting, as it was the first movie I had a connection to. The opening scene of the movie supposedly is at a thoroughbred horse stud stable in Maryland, but it was actually filmed in Keswick, east of Charlottesville, Virginia, in the spring of 1955, and, as a stage play acting student in Washington, D.C., at the age of eight, I got to be an extra standing on a rural railway station platform while Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor did a bit of a couple of minutes (which took hours). Most of the movie was filmed in Texas, sort of a first for Hollywood. Up until then, the Texas movies were usually filmed on a Hollywood backlot (one actually was filmed in Copenhagen, Denmark).
I didn’t see the finished movie for years, as my family moved to Europe that summer. Europe was still recovering from the war and there weren’t many movie houses showing American movies.
That was similar to another movie I worked on, The Deer Hunter, where I worked on scenes filmed at a closed U.S. military commissary (transformed into a hospital) in Bangkok, Thailand. In both cases, I had such a small part in what was happening in movies that were extensively being filmed elsewhere from where I was that I didn’t know they were major movies until the Academy Awards of their respective years rolled around. We weren't getting English-language movies in Bangkok in 1978.
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