#yes its more me shaming clives wife

[florasolarsystem]

Some more of the memes by popular request (shout out to autism fella who likes HWFWM @quadruple-a-battery-under-ur-bed )

[olehistorian]

PHYLLIS Logan is only minutes back from New York where the actress has been promoting the new Downton Abbey movie. The national station PBS has been beaming out interviews across the nation, given the series about toffs and toff-servers has been such an success in the classless land of the free.

Logan’s voice is soft and a little subdued. She speaks in thumbnails, not given to flourishes at all. I factor in that the expansive, often dramatic language of hyperbole was spoken by very few in Renfrewshire in the 1950s and 1960s (yet actors tend to be more effusive). And I factor in jetlag of course.

But then again, perhaps there’s a little more of her laconic head housekeeper character Mrs Hughes in Phyllis Logan than we’d suspected? “Well, I can be a bit snippy, a bit terse,” she offers, smiling. “But only to my nearest and dearest.” Would Kevin (actor husband Kevin McNally) agree with that? “Probably,” she says, dryly.

Logan’s thoughts on the Mrs Hughes comparison continues: “She was written down in the script, of course, but I like to think I gave her the legs to run. But when you play a character there are always elements of you in that person. You can’t completely step away from yourself.”

Downton is a phenomenal television success story. The series, which began eight years ago featuring the Crawley family and their legion of servants, began with the Titanic going down, and has covered plague, rape, murder, interwoven with romance, often crossing the class barriers.

Logan’s character was voted No 1 Ever in a 2014 Radio Times poll; no mean feat given the subdued nature of Mrs H, a woman to whom flashes of excitement are to be discouraged as much as relations with those upstairs.

Yet, the original script described Elsie Hughes as a Yorkshire woman. Logan reveals it was only when the casting directors heard the Scot’s natural voice that they asked her to read in her own accent. “I was happy when she was cast as a Scot. She had that Scottish bluntness and I felt right because I have known women like her.”

During the six series of Downton, Mrs Hughes negotiated Branson the chauffeur’s assassination attempt, Carson’s Spanish flu and helped Ethel with her illegitimate Upstairs son, Charlie. The psychologist with an apron also sorted out Thomas’s homosexuality. And although she fell for Mr Carson, (or at least lurched slightly in his direction) it took a bit of persuasion before she agreed to a “full” marriage, where he would make occasional visits downstairs.

“We all know those types,” grins Logan. “But what’s nice about her is she does have a sense of humour. And she’s quite forward thinking. She’s a republican, and has a socialist bent to her for sure.”

Does Logan have left-wing sympathies, considering her late father, an engineer, was a trade unionist? She deflects by referring to Mrs Hughes. “She was of a different type. She knew people were thrown into a caste system but had to make the best of it.”

Yes, but what about you, Phyllis? Did you feel working class containment in Johnstone, where most people’s horizons didn't stretch beyond Rootes car plant or the local carpet factory (where John Byrne took inspiration for The Slab Boys – Logan appeared in the sequel, Cuttin’ A Rug)?

“You just accepted the way things were,” she says, sounding ever so Mrs Hughes. “I never thought I’d break out and become posh. But I did think it would be nice to spread my wings a little.”

Just a little? She smiles and adds: “But I didn’t audition for some of the big London drama schools. I thought that was a step too far for me at the time so I went to Glasgow.”

Not a risk taker. Not a wild child. But very, very good at what she does. Despite her careers teacher declaring the teenager was wasting her time with acting, Logan picked up the James Bridie Gold Medal at the RSAMD. On leaving she landed work at Dundee Rep and worked continuously throughout the 1970s and 1980s with the likes of Borderline Theatre. Real talent was revealed. Yet few would have expected her to land the role of Britain’s most popular posh totty in dodgy antiques dealer series Lovejoy.

Aged 30 in 1986, Logan walked into an audition room as Lady Felsham. Logan’s Lady had a cut-glass accent, spoke authoritatively of renaissance art and invoked a world of stately homes and castles. But in reality, Logan’s only castle connection was her housing scheme, Johnstone Castle, where the recognised art on living room walls was a classic Sara Moon picture. This new cut-glass accent had somehow emerged from a world where ginger bottles were a form of currency.

Logan’s clever deception (aided by being forced to speak RP at drama college) revealed that you don’t have to be a loud extrovert to be emboldened enough to convince you are actually blue blooded: you just need to be talented. “I can’t believe looking back now that 20 million were watching us on Sunday nights. The show was so huge.”

Many other drama successes followed such as Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies. But did she feel Downton would be the massive success it became? “I read the scripts and loved them. And when I heard Maggie Smith and Hugh (Bonneville) and Penelope (Wilton) were on board it looked good. Then we signed an option for three series but there was always the chance it could have gone down the pan after one.” Her voice lifts. “And then six came along.”

Did this kill the fear, the insecurity that comes with being an actor waiting to be hired? She answers indirectly. “It used to be that you always knew that when one job was finishing another would be on its way. But that seems to be far less the case these days. That’s why it was great having that guarantee of six months' work each year. And each time it was like going back to school after the summer holidays and seeing your friends.”

Logan seems the worrying type, so why volunteer for a life of insecurity? “And rejection,” she adds in soft voice. “And I’ve had a certain amount of that.” She thinks for a second and makes a dramatic statement that seems out of character. “You know, I wanted this part in Downton so badly I think I might have given up [acting] had I not got it. I don’t often feel that. Usually I have a what’s-for-you-will-not-go-by-you outlook.”

She laughs and allows herself a little flightiness: “Somehow I felt, ‘This is mine! It’s meant to be.'" She then contains herself and becomes more Mrs Hughes. “No, I felt I’d like to give it a bash.”

Logan certainly didn’t get into acting for the glory. She doesn’t seem to be consumed by ambition or the fripperies of acting success. She had genuinely forgotten she’d won a Bridie Gold Medal, and mention of her Bafta for Another Time, Another Place, (the 1983 Scotswoman falls for Italian POW tragic romance) doesn’t swell her head in the slightest. What she does want, however, is to act. All the time. In all the best roles.

“I just wanted to be the best I could. To find the truth in every role. You don’t think about awards. Acting has been the only thing that remotely interested me since I played Mary in the Nativity play at primary school. Then at Johnstone High I’d join every club that had anything to do with acting and take trips to the Citizens'. I’d be in any play going, starting in the chorus and working my way up to playing Polly in the Boyfriend.”

But, of course, there have been set backs. “My dad [David] didn’t live to see me graduate, [he died, aged 59] and that was a real shame but my mum would come and see all my shows.”

Logan’s voice becomes more upbeat as she tells of how her mum and aunt landed roles in one of her films, when the actress appeared in a drama set in Spain, The Legendary Life of Ernest Hemingway (1989). “My mum Betty and my auntie Margaret came on set to have a look around, and they were asked if they wanted to be extras. They loved the idea of this, and were dressed up as posh ladies with big frocks and they had all the make-up done.

“But it was a night shoot, and the second night as they should have been getting picked up they declared, ‘Oh, pet, we don’t think we’ll bother tonight.’ I thought ‘Have you never heard of continuity? Do you know what this means? I had to tell the director they’d both eaten something dodgy.”

Betty and Margaret clearly weren’t captivated by the acting world. Logan herself once claimed she wasn’t captivated by actors. She said she wouldn’t have one in the house, that they were vain people. But then she met McNally while filming the 1993 miniseries Love and Reason and they fell in love and married.

“What I meant was I’d never get together with one,” she backtracks, grinning. “But in a way it makes real sense. We know the business. And we can help each other. Recently, Kevin was doing three episodes of the missing Dad’s Army scripts (playing Captain Mainwaring) and I read lines with him every night. It meant I got to play every other character in the cast.” McNally must have found it a delight, given his wife’s talent. (She slips into a remarkable Clive Dunn/Corporal Jones voice. “Don’t panic, don’t panic Mr Mannering.”

But if all that sounds a little perfunctory, Logan, who lives in west London, once declared: “There’s an excitement in discovering that you can still fall in love when you’re an ancient old trout.”

There’s little doubt the relationship really works. But the Mrs Hughes cross voice emerges when I ask if Pirates of the Caribbean star McNally, who has appeared in Downton in the past, playing Horace Bryant, has a role this time around? “No, he does not,” she says emphatically, (subtext: he’s had his shot and should be thankful, a sentiment which sits neatly against her husband’s quote of the time: “Phyllis said it was like take-your-husband-to-work day.”

Was she a bit territorial? “Yes,” she smiles. “I was thinking: ‘You don’t get me a part as Johnny Depp’s mother and take me to the Caribbean. So why are you here?’”

What of the Downton film, set in 1927, two years after the end of the series? It transpires tiaras and silver will be polished until they sparkle. “We get a visit from the King and Queen (George V and Queen Mary) and there’s a bit of friction between the Downton team and the Royal household staff. Mr Carson (now on gardening duty) is begged by Lady Mary to help out. The cavalry ride into town!”

And, of course, there will be lashings of scandal, romance and intrigue “that will leave the future of Downton hanging in the balance,” says the official movie site.

But what of the future for Phyllis Logan? Despite running up continuous film and TV series, success, from Taggarts to Rab C Nesbitt, from the more recent The Good Karma Hospital to Girlfriends – and attracting great crits for her West End role earlier this year as Patricia Highsmith in Switzerland – she certainly has Elsie Hughes’ worry gene.

Logan’s run, she feels, could end at any minute.

“It’s a snakes and ladders life,” she says in Mrs Hughes' tones. “Your career can be going really well and suddenly the snake appears. But I guess I’ve been lucky because I persevered.”

Nonsense, Phyllis. Talent kicked in. You don’t get Bridies and Baftas and almost continuous work for perseverance. “It’s lovely of you to say so, but I’m not sure that’s really the case.”

Downton Abbey is out on September 13

[alwaysalreadyangry]

anyway if i had the brainpower and expertise to write about maurice properly (i have not yet read the book, have only seen the film), here are some aspects i would like to think about:

1) letters, telegrams, so much that is written down, and yet. there’s something about the way people can’t write down and keep a record of their truest feelings. there’s the scene where maurice reads out the letter from alec, which scares him because of its openness, which he finds terrifying - what’s behind it? and so of course the letter has to burn.

1a) a small amusing/bittersweet addition to this: clive is a poet, but nobody ever seems to see his poetry. clive is the character who most hides his own true nature, who denies what he feels, what he wants, who he loves. what does his poetry look like?

1b) the opposite of amusing: everybody assumes that maurice is carrying on a courtship with a woman in london (they’ve convinced themselves; it would be the proper thing for him to do) when he receives a wire calling him back to the city. he lets them believe this, but it’s the opposite: a wire from a therapist he’s hoping will be able to cure his gayness. there’s something interesting here about the way what is written can convey a truth to one person and signify a lie to those around them, just through the object... everybody else just sees what they want to see. it’s only maurice, who can both read the written message and who has the full knowledge to understand it, who knows what the wire means in terms of his life. this is interesting when we consider that maurice was, for a very long time, a completed but unpublished, private manuscript. which signified one thing to forster and to its early private readers, but which he believed couldn’t be published because its happy ending - the thing, or one of the things which made it so valuable to him/its early readership - would signify entirely the wrong things to society at large. they wouldn’t understand what it meant, why it ended like this - they would see immorality instead of righteous love.

2) i can’t stop thinking about the moment in which simon callow’s schoolteacher reappears, and maurice tells him that his name is scudder. it comes very soon after alec has been hurt by maurice calling him scudder instead of alec once more - a sign that he is distancing himself from him, but also that he is putting him down, reasserting the class barriers between them. so then what does this moment mean? he is joking, he doesn’t want to get into a deep conversation with his old schoolmaster. but also, this is the teacher who told him that in ten years, he would like to see him with his wife. so, then, what about the ways in which taking scudder’s name, even in jest like this, is about a kind of marriage, a kind of love union? but it’s not a heterosexual marriage, where a woman takes on a man’s name and erases her own history (i’m not into wives taking their husband’s names on principle, although if people want to do it, by all means). there’s something else here. 

2a) this is the CMBYN parallel i’m most interested in. in CMBYN, elio & oliver call each other by their own names. i was talking with someone who isn’t queer about why this is so significant, and am sure i didn’t scratch the surface... but once again i talked about the ways in which it is both about identification with the similarities and differences between you, and about total surrender to the other, to the one you love/desire, about wanting to become one, in a kind of relationship where there is little to no tradition of joining together in a traditional marriage... and it’s about claiming someone else by saying, i am you, we are the same. and so all of this, for me, is behind that moment. it’s a private joke! it’s a dismissal! but it’s also a mea culpa, maybe? or it’s a private statement of something, of some kind of desire, some kind of feeling which exists between them even in the middle of their mess of maybe-blackmail-definitely-hurt-feelings argument in the british museum.

2b) to sum up: maurice likes alec and he is both teasing him and trying to get that across! they are both very weird flirters, which is not exactly surprising, given the circumstances.

3) it’s amazing that this is a beautiful merchant ivory costume drama and yet they are so skilled at making the “costume drama” element of these character’s lives... feel so stuffy, so constraining, so painful. these are characters who really feel like they are stuck in a cloying, harmful, overgrown, victorian society... and it’s interesting then too how the spectre of the coming great war hangs over the story without somehow ruining it. 

3a) this is a very interesting film to watch from the vantage point of 2018, as i’m sure it was on first release. because we know that wwi is coming, yes. but we also know everything else that’s to come, including the century (and change, now) of social change. decriminalisation, and everything that came after.

3b) i think this is part of why the extended final scene between clive and maurice strikes us so much now, and why it seems like a shame to see it cut. because it resonates so much with us now; maurice’s self-possession, the way in which he is right, the way in which this character who has often had to be so passive, so unable to take charge of his life... can suddenly see a route out of this life, the constraints of his tired old society, and is willing to take it. from the vantage point of now, that self-possession, that final unwillingness to give in to clive’s need for silence, for love and feelings to go unspoken, to be denied... it seems inevitable, because we know it’s going to come. we know that much change is going to come. but this is not all, and i think leabing this thought here privileges the current moment too much...

3c) because of course also the extraordinary thing is that despite maurice being published in 1971, after forster’s death, it is not what we would think of a historical novel. it was written in 1913-1914, although it was revised later.

3d) this thought is muddled. but there is something very interesting about how the long period between its being written/its being published/its finally being filmed... both make us look back at this time in the past from the vantage point of the other side of a big historical change, and it also makes us see, makes us feel the ways in which these radically different times... collapse together, are in many ways the same, made up of the same people. we see maurice’s self possession, his final willingness to fully speak up (although of course, maurice has always been more willing to speak than clive?). 

3e) we see that maurice won’t submit to the silence that society and history demands, and we say: good. but this is not just us imposing our own values on the past - it’s a mirror, it’s a letter, no, a wire from the past, and it’s saying, we spoke and would speak too, we may have been silenced by history, we may have had to burn our letters, hide our words. but you now are not the first or only generation who has felt, who has spoken, as you do. in the past, we feel the same, and we are living vital lives there still. 

3f) in other words: it could be that they cut this scene down because they didn’t want to make it seem too contemporary. but it’s not: it’s the written and redacted true words of the past shining out.

4) rupert graves is very beautiful and wild in this film and i don’t have anything clever to say. just, for the record. wow.

5) the other CMBYN parallel to take away, for me: is it better to speak or die? maurice starts the film asserting that deeds are more important than words: but the whole film illustrates risley’s point, that words are actions, and they can ruin your life - whether they are spoken, written, or suppressed.

5a) and so, for maurice, it is better to speak: and to act. to cower in fear, to suppress? that is not possible for him, or for alec. that is not the route out of this moment, towards a life worth living.

[head-test-dummy-blog]

2. Lunch

“Why did you separate from your, Anna?”. Lunch had been strange or awkward rather than strange. Kate was late so we sat outside the lunch hall waiting. I say we as I guessed that the vacant looking blonde, clearly American and the serious looking slightly larger reddish brunette was;

“Sorry I’m late, have you introduced yourself?” As the Doctor interrupted my own scientific study.

“No, we just arrived ourselves” In a Boston nasal twang from the dumpy one

“Clive, this is Henrietta” Henry was fine “this is Tilda” it was just her light coloured eyes and practically unnoticeable eyebrows that made her look “and this is Erik” who I hadn’t seen. “everyone, this is Clive”

“Tjäna” Hello from Erik, very Swedish, professional, good humoured, smart.

“Nice to meet you’ from Henry.

“Hej” slightly high pitched and curt from Tilda, Norwegian perhaps?

“Hi” I was nervous, actually slightly agitated. I’d forgotten what that felt like, could even be excitement

The food was fairly nondescript as per most Swedish meals and it was after 1230 so not so many people left eating. It meant we had room and freedom to speak and

“I love Catherine, I yumped at the chance to work with her, she’s always pushing boundaries” Tilda from Bergen is the blueprint of a Scandinavian white gold blonde. Her father a Norwegian fisherman/alcoholic and her mother was a Swedish model in her 20’s and PR consultant for a charity in her 50’s which means that she’s tall, but tall with long legs tall rather than long body tall, completely naturally blonde her hair probably midway down her back with small platted, things, on either side that many Scandi’s had in years gone. And she’s calm, she speaks slowly as she knows people will listen to her and not interrupt and all that at 24 or 5. I’m watching her speak rather than listening when I get caught

“A lot like Anna isn’t she?” I hadn’t realised that Tilda had finished talking or that I was staring

“Um, well, apart from, erm, yes very like Anna” apart from maybe 10 years and whilst Anna’s hair was blonde when she was younger, it tries not to be now. I try to refocus my attention and as I do I notice Henry also eyeing Tilda.

“Why did you leave your wife?” One expects Americans to be direct, doesn’t one.

“Anna and I weren’t married” and Erik looks up

“Yes I know, I meant your English wife!” so they pretty much know everything about me and I will need to guess. Kate has seen my look go slightly sullen

“Come on, I haven’t told them everything Clive, why did you leave Sarah?” if I imagine her naked will she have more or less power over me?

“She forgot about me” Which was clearly all I was going to say “So are all of you going to ..”

“Shhhh!” as I’m abruptly cut off “Not here! Erik” she nods at him as if to say your turn “Please”

“Yeah, hej. Well I'm the shrink, I'm not involved in any of the other stuff which I'm sure you’re pleased to hear”

“Bit of a relief”

“I think it’s a shame” from Tilda and I can't tell if she was joking or serious

“So yeah, I’m going to document how everyone feels, make my own observations and try to understand how everyone changes or adapts over the next six?” he looks at Kate who looks down and to the left “or nine to twelve months”

“So, like a study within a study?” is my guess

“I guess so and I can see you wondering but I did my studies in the US and my doctorate at Boston Uni which is wear I met Henry. She and I met Catherine a few years back when you were lecturing” as he looks at Kate and they smile a secret smile “and we hit it off, my studies coincided with her teaching and Henry was part of..”

“Why men love lesbians” as Henry looks directly at me “Do you love lesbians, Clive?” I think it’s a challenge as she clearly fits the mould

“Love them? I am one” said with all the false sincerity I can muster and its fine, it breaks the tension.

“So Clive, what I what we need you to do is write up your own feelings and publish them on a blog directly after, I mean directly after, after” and he nods at me “well after a procedure. I’ve prepared an excel or a Google sheet for you to record location, time, place, person, etc and immediate reaction but within an hour I want you to also record what happened, how you felt and publish it. Can you do that?”

“Can we add our comments to the sheet, excel?” will Tilda also be giving my BJ’s I wonder. Kate is half taking notes, half looking up, eyes darting between me and Tilda

“Can you?” who asked that, it was female, erm Kate

“Yes” Erik and I both say at the same time

“We, I don't want you to reflect on your thoughts, clearly you will but actually within 5 to 10 minutes of..” not as comfortable as the ladies then

“You want me to take notes on the acts, how long they took, positions and so on and then right away write up how I felt about the bee..”

“Clive I told you, not here!”

“There isn’t anyone in earshot” as I looked around I noticed that there were a couple of people, older male professors hanging about a long time after they finished eating

“There are and there will be, the competition always wants to know what everyone else is working on and this one, this study I prefer as tight a lid as possible” her eyes were fixed and breathing under forced control “We don’t need to the second, one of us will do that so to the minute will be fine”

“Like?” said quietly as I lean forward my chin pushed against my chest

“Like small talk or chit chat beforehand”

“As you get comfortable and undressed” as Tilda interrupts Henry

“Or more after you are undressed and lying back, starting to get aroused” Henry looking at Tilda to continue

“Yes and use of the hand to get you fully aroused then time from lips on to finish” the blank look is back, is it a kind of self protection thing?

“Right OK, sure, I’m sure all that is fine. Erm who..” I have to know

“Me mostly Clive. Tild, have you spoken to your boyfriend yet?” wow and, wow again

“No but he’ll just say I always do what I want to do and disappear off to an oil rig again for three months. I don’t need or want to ask him” Not completely in control then as her head is slightly moving almost electronically from side to side.

“I���m just hand, Sylvia said it was fine but she wasn’t kissing me knowing I had some guy all over me again, but hand was fine” Fine, am I fine?

“Yes and that works well” which both Erik and Kate almost say at the same time “we could have thought about that anyway but I’m not sure if anyone has done this sort of experiment before, so we are kind of working this out as we go” as he pushes his lips together at an angle and nods to himself.

The thumb and forefinger or my left hand push my eyes under their lids to make sure they are still there and with the help of the other fingers that my nose in still there and rounded rather than pointy

“Right, I thought this before, but where is the camera, where is Anna?” if one of them got naked now, now that everyone else has left the room then I would definitely know I was on a Swedish version of Playboy TV’s Totally Busted or Just for Laughs or something.

“Ok, lets go to my office, my secretary has left for the day”