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e p h e m e r a The 1,000 Best Movies Ever Made (by Vincent Canby, Janet Maslin and the Film Critics of the New York Times It's a fun list - you'll probably be surprised by how many terrific films you've seen, it will remind you to rent or buy a few. Almost certainly, you'll find some favourites that are not there. Here are the surprising five Bates films that were included, and some very subjective comments: The Entertainer (1960) This is, of course, Laurence Olivier's film, and a prestigious credit for newcomers Bates, Finney, Plowright (whose previous film roles had been tiny). It's a classic, and has certainly earned it's place on a "best" list. Nothing But the Best (1964) A film with real 60's zany flair, now looking pretty dated. Further, it's deeply out of print, so unless it's re-issued, it is a great film that virtually nobody can see. "Zorba the Greek," released in the same year, is NOT listed! Georgy Girl (1966) Fine performances from Redgrave, Rampling, Mason and Bates. I've always wondered why this is considered a comedy - it seems dark, cynical, sad if not tragic. Well worth revisiting ... so far unavailable as DVD. Women in Love (1969) No question - D H Lawrence as good as it can be done, with brilliant, nuanced performances, daring direction (but not over the top). I think that I never understood the book fully, until I saw the film. There's a fine new DVD, with special features. Hamlet (1990) This film was not well received because of director Zefirelli's liberties with the sacred text. But I've always found it brilliant, and am delighted that the critics have honoured it. Alan and Glenn Close are a tremendous match as Claudius and Gertrude. DVD end of February 2004. The book was published in 1999, so the Times website (you'll need to sign in if you haven't visited before) has updated it for 1999 to 2002, resulting in the selection of two more Bates films: The Cherry Orchard (1999) - another lovely surprise; and Gosford Park (2001) not surprising at all. But... what about the years between 1969 and 1990? Allowing for the fact that the critics would probably not honour filmed plays such as "Butley," what about "The Go-Between" with its extraordinary Pinter screenplay? Mazursky's great "An Unmarried Woman"? Bette Middler's shattering performance in "The Rose"? Alan's superb portrait of Diaghilev in "Nijinsky"? Alan with fellow actor Joanna Pettet, at the "Evelyn" London opening, Odeon Leicester Square, 17 March 03 Pierce Brosnan takes questions Q: One of the dangers of making a film such as this is that you could venture into the world of sentimentality very easily, especially if you're using kids in such a potent drama as this. Did you feel that that was one of Bruce's strengths, keeping it back from that? PB: I think so. There was an almost documentary feel. His style of directing is one of great ease and he's so well-prepared with his camera and his shots, and he's just pushing you to keep it simple. And to listen. We really did have a wonderful ensemble and the day we went across the Wicklow hills, I looked and there was Sir Alan Bates in the front seat and Stephen Rea driving, Aidan Quinn and Julianna Margulies and myself, and Alan said, "It's so wonderful, it's not like acting, it's like being." So it's his style, supported by a text which had meaning. Royal National Theatre, Tuesday, 18 March 2003  Clive Barnes in the New York Post "The most important lesson I ever had in the difference between the two styles of acting was given to me by Alan Bates who was with a movie director, Clive Donner, in a boozey late-night session nearly 40 years ago in the bar of the Roxburgh Hotel during an Edinburgh Festival. I'd never met Bates before (his play "Fortune's Fool" is now in previews on Broadway), and I'm sure he's forgotten the incident. But Bates, one of those rare consummate craftsmen/artists, was marvelously eloquent on the differences between stage and screen. He'd happily discuss the size of gestures, which were vastly magnified by the screen, the importance of vocal nuance, the tonal difference demanded by cinematic intimacy, and, in movies, the need to convey character partly by projecting image." New York Post, Thursday, 21 March 2002  "Eve's Tattoo," a novel by Emily Prager A description of Adolph Hitler: "He was handsome when he was young ... a little Alan Bates, a little Anthony Newley, and a soupcon of Frederic March."  "... In a book strangely short of theatrical anecdote there is nevertheless one which I shall treasure. Wesker tells how he wanted to re-create a moment of passion from his youth in his play The Four Seasons. When he was a teenager, a girlfriend undid her blouse, bade him close his eyes and pressed her breasts against him. Wesker put this scene in his 1965 play. But, even in the midst of the permissive society, Diane Cilento refused to bare her breasts either to the audience or to Alan Bates on stage with her. Instead, with her back to the auditorium, she faced Bates with her nipples criss-crossed with Elastoplast. By the end of the run Bates and Cilento weren't talking to each other. "It was the first of my plays,'' writes Wesker mournfully, "which appeared on stage not as I conceived it.'' By DAVID LISTER, BOOK REVIEW / An angry old man remembers his youth, Independent, 11-09-1994, pp 018.  "...Nathan Lane, a native of Jersey City, N.J., says his passion for acting started at an early age. "My oldest brother took me to see my first Broadway show. I was about 11 years old. And I thought, 'That's what I'm going to do when I grow up.' "That first play was called Black Comedy. Then my brother took me to see a matinee performance of Butley with Alan Bates. I remember being shocked that Bates had to do the performance again. "My brother said, 'You know, he'll have to go back to the theater and do it again in the evening.' And I thought, 'How can he do that? How can he go through all that again?' See, even then I was rejecting matinees!'' ... Associated Press, LANE GLAD HE TOOK 'MOUSE HUNT' BAIT, 12-17-1997  A degree of separation For a man whose films feel so deeply grounded in their respective locations, film maker Michael Winterbottom's own roots are a long way from the surface... He first picked up a cine-camera while at Oxford University and now lives in London. ... He grew up in Blackburn, where his mum was a teacher and his dad worked as a draughtsman at Mullards, the valve factory in which John Schlesinger shot "A Kind of Loving." 'My one family connection to film,' Winterbottom recalls, 'is that my dad got a day off when Alan Bates came to be a draughtsman in the office.' The Daily Telegraph, 15 .i.00  In Vogue... The Sixties: A decade of Vogue edited by Nicholas Drake Prentice Hall ISBN 0-13-811647-4 This coffee-table book features a full page photo of Alan taken by Frank Horvat, with this caption: "Alan Bates who plays the lead in 'A Kind of Loving,' directed by John Schlesinger from Stan Barstow's novel. A sturdy, interesting actor, he made his first impact in 'The Caretaker' in London and later New York, until he was bought out at vast cost to make 'A Kind of Loving.'" Too bad it's a joke... TALK, Tina Brown's new magazine features a faux "letters" page (they are all written by Christopher Buckley) in the premiere September 99 issue. Alan Bates is mentioned in a letter from one "G.W.M. Feddowes, Wipping Sodbury, Berkshire, UK": "Famous Amis Martin Amis's memoir about growing up as the son of Kingsley Amis ["Lucky Him"] was bang-on. He did a marvelous job of portraying how much Sir Kingsley resented the fact that Martin was a better writer, cocksman, father, drinker, and snooker, chess, and tennis player than he; and yet Martin's stubborn affection for his old da managed somehow to poke through. I look eagerly forward to the Miramax book, movie, website, miniseries, and tie-in action figures. What about Joseph Fiennes for Martin and Alan Bates as Sir K?"  It's in the genes... ...according to the April 99 Tatler. "Sarah Standing and Stefanie Mars rounded up 20 British acting dynasties to find our what inspires actors' children to follow in their parents' footsteps." Photographed by David Eustace. Francis Matthews, Benedick Bates and Alan Bates. Here is the text that relates to the Bateses: "Benedick Bates, 27, poses with his father Alan Bates, 65. 'We acted together in a play called Simply Disconnected, in which I played his stage son,' says Ben. 'I had to hold a gun to his head every night. It was quite cathartic.' Alan is perhaps best known for his screen performances in Women in Love and The Go-Between." A serendipitous note for those of you who see the entire Tatler article: look at the toddler in the next Ephemera item, below, sitting on Tom Conti's lap. Nina Conti is now an actress, and the father/daughter pair was also featured.   Bates, Remick, Conti and Conti at a London press event, late 60s.  The Company He Kept (20 years ago)... November, 1979 PLAYGIRL: Playgirl's Ten Sexiest Men: Calvin Klein, Woody Allen, Ted Turner, OJ Simpson, Burt Reynolds, Bruce Springsteen, Jerry Brown, Ted Kennedy, Johnny Carson...and Alan Bates.   This, then, is fame ... Women in the Background by Barry Humphries Heinemann, £14.99 Novelists are often asked, as they tour the book shops promoting their work, where on earth they come up with their ideas. Most of them shrug modestly and say that there's no simple answer. But Barry Humphries - whose first novel is a mirthless comedy about the marital misadventures of an Australian drag artiste - will hardly be stumped for a reply. The man behind Dame Edna has written a book whose central figure is a cross- dressing comedienne called Mrs Petty, a ''puritanical but hilarious housewife''. Blimey, readers will mutter - how the heck did he think of that? ...he seems happy to serve up references to London' s artsy milieu as if it added glamour to his unhappy story. Pettyfer' s flat contains sculpted busts of Melvyn Bragg and Martin Amis. And he can't go into a restaurant without mentioning who else is there (''Derek walked among the tables, saying a word to Alan Bates and another to Peter Hall''); sometimes he even drops the names of absentees: ''Derek sat at a corner table ... a table at which he had often observed Sir Harold Pinter and Lady Antonia Fraser.'' Sir Harold Pinter? Is this all set in the future?* From The Independent, Robert Winder, 13.i.96 * In fact, Harold Pinter rejected the offer of a knighthood during the time Margaret Thatcher was PM, saying that he could not accept honours from that government. [KR]  Alan Bates, Doctor of Letters ... In January 1997 the University of Derby recognized Alan Bates's contribution to contemporary drama by awarding him an honourary Doctor of Letters degree. In the words of Derbyshire Now! editor Liz Clarke, "Refreshingly down to earth for a star, Alan is genuinely surprised at the award: 'It's unexpected and rather overwhelming, and I was really touched by it because Derby is my home town, and God knows what I've done to get an honourary degree -- but it's a huge compliment.' He humourously adds that he hopes he doesn't have to suddenly become a lecturer at the university." She goes on, "Alan isn't vain and couldn't give two hoots for the sex-symbol tag. 'That sort of thing is always a complete mystery to me. Nobody ever thinks of themselves in those terms -- at least I hope they don't -- you don't always know that you are attractive to others. If people feel like that then it's a compliment but it certainly isn't the be-all and end-all of life.'" Unmarried Woman (abridged)? "Did you happen to see that movie AN UNMARRIED WOMAN? Well, I didn't get it... I mean, I would've been Mrs. Alan Bates so fast that guy wouldn't have known what hit him!" -- Goldie Hawn, as Judy, in Private Benjamin Kristin Scott-Thomas quote Scott-Thomas and Bates appeared together in the 1988 French film Force Majeure. "Born in Dorset, Scott-Thomas studied drama in London and Paris, where she now lives. Unlike most English actors, Scott-Thomas did not work her way through repertory. 'I really started working as a professional actress in films,' she said. 'When I came out of drama school, I did a couple of plays, which were sort of experimental productions. They weren't in the classic repertoire, and we did them in strange places, like fields or a church. 'So what I've learned has been in films, really. I had never made a film; I didn't know you had to do the same thing twice. 'I've been lucky enough to work with some pretty extraordinary actors in my very early days. When you're working with somebody like Judi Dench and Alan Bates, your eyes open, and you feel these things.' "(AP, undated) "A gentleman and a scholar..." This anecdote is taken from a Canadian newspaper article about Sharon Hamilton, author of books about literacy. In the fall of 1983, Sharon Hamilton, new in London, was headed back to her unheated basement flat in Chelsea after watching Alan Bates star in John Osborne's A Patriot for Me at the Haymarket Theatre. She was so impressed she wrote out several comments in a letter she put in her purse, thinking of dropping it off at the Haymarket the next time she was near. Almost home, she is crossing the King's Road in a drizzling rain and finds herself flying through the air. Hit by a car, an arm and a leg broken, she is asked by the distraught motorist whether there is anything the driver can do until the ambulance arrives. She says, pulling the letter from her purse, "Take this to Alan Bates at the Haymarket." Several days later, she receives a call: "Hello, this is Alan Bates. I just received your letter from the stage door manager. It has written on the envelope that you've been in some kind of accident. How are you?" Now there's a gentleman and a scholar. (He later takes her to lunch, and thirteen years later she visits him backstage in Toronto as he's performing in The Master Builder.) Maclean's, 2-26-96 © 1996 Maclean Hunter (Canada) "Invictus" Bates performs the Henley poem for a 1996 Union Bank of Switzerland ad campaign. In another UBS spot he reads Frost's "The Road Not Taken." Standing dourly erect in an ersatz sepulchral chamber, awash in a diffuse blue nimbus, actor Alan Bates intones from W.E. Henley's poem "Invictus": "In the fell clutch of circumstance / I have not winced nor cried aloud/ Under the bludgeonings of chance / My head is bloody, but unbowed..." Another installment of Masterpiece Theatre? Nay, it's one in a series of ads for the Union Bank of Switzerland. Airing only on CNN and CNBC, NBC's money-news cable channel, and aimed at highbrow financiers worldwide, the spots also feature equally pantheonic British actors Sir John Gielgud and Ben Kingsley reciting inspirational verse by Shakespeare and Shelley. Soft-sell "perception" campaigns have long been used to sell jeans and sneakers, but the UBS ads (which never make spoken reference to the bank) mark a slick new high in financial flackdom; their tony ethereality makes hyper-urbane Infiniti spokesman Jonathan Pryce look like Jim Varney. But what has all this poignancy got to do with banking? According to UBS project manager Vincenzo Travaglione, the readings chosen "talk about commitment, self-confidence, honesty, sincerity, and a determination to deliver. We're saying, here's a company with long-term relevance." The entire campaign cost $1.5 million to produce; of that, the actors earn a relatively small fee (one reason greedier Yanks weren't used). But why only men? "The choice of spokesperson was driven by the authors of the chosen poems, all of whom happened to be male," says Travaglione, who promises actresses will appear in future spots. Martin Spillmann, creative director of Young & Rubicam's Zurich office, ascribes the campaign's popularity to its "tone and manner. I think people are honored that someone isn't saying 'Hey, I want your money!' It's not this flashy, glitzy, trendy thing. It's timeless." Entertainment Weekly, 9-6-96 © 1996 Time Inc.

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