Recently Sir Michael Caine announced that he is retiring from acting. “I keep saying I’m going to retire. Well I am now,” he said. Thankfully we have all his old movies to watch (and one more new one on the way). Simon Pegg sums up his career rather well:
I read his memoir a few years ago and he is a stand up guy. So hats off to Michael Caine and a toast tonight to his illustrious career. I think I’ll watch Zulu (1964).
Sigh. We are all getting older. Think of the Rolling Stones and ol’ Mick Jagger who is 80. Good grief. Here he is in 1964 making his debut on Ed Sullivan. He was twenty-one.
O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds. So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come.
What are you reading? I just finished Blowing the Bloody Doors Off, a memoir by the actor Michael Caine.
I have to admit I enjoyed it a lot. He writes well and he is a very positive fellow who has enjoyed his life, from a happy, but what we might term, disadvantaged upbringing in London to international stardom. He is grateful and he is happy to share what he has learned. The book is full of practical advice for actors, but it is all applicable to the rest of us.
I remember Roger Moore, years ago, saying to me “Cheer up. You’d better have a good time because this is not a rehearsal, this is life. This is the show.”
Yes, indeed. He is all about hard work: know your lines, be on time, don’t fool around.
When you are prepared, you are able to subdue your fear, control your nerves, channel your energy, and enter that state of highly alert relaxation that is spontaneity’s best friend.
Don’t think you deserve anything.
Find something you want to do and learn how to do it really well. Take what you got and make the most of it. Learn how to do something, whatever it is, you would choose to do for nothing. Whatever it is, when you are doing it, it makes you feel amazing and most yourself. Throw yourself into it. Challenge yourself to be the best you can be. We can’t all be famous actors. But, if you can find something you love and if that something will also pay the bills, you will be on your way to your own personal paradise.
Anyway, now I am going to watch a lot of Michael Caine movies. He is the first to admit that he has made a lot of bad ones. (I watched Swarm recently and, despite its stellar cast, it is pretty terrible.) But I watched The Man Who Would be King (1975) the other night and enjoyed it.
Caine and his good friend Sean Connery are perfectly cast as the two British soldiers who set out to be kings of Kafiristan in the Rudyard Kipling story. “We meet upon the level, and part upon the square.”
Next up: Zulu (1964), The Italian Job (1969) and Alfie (1966).
We will also note the passing of “controversial” Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong–as Anne Kennedy describes him, “that famous Episcopal bishop who denied so many tenets of the Christian faith that eventually he ran out of stuff to deny. And yet, he remained a bishop.” Listen to her podcast to find out “why that’s not a good thing and how to avoid it.” She and her husband are right on target about actual heresy and how it takes over the church because everyone is too embarrassed to say anything. “The Episcopal bishop in Hell believes he has led a courageous life.”
Can you believe it has been 18 years since Johnny Cash died? Well, it has–September 12, 2003.
(Photo by Marty Stuart)
So a belated toast to Johnny and here’s Bob on Johnny’s show back in the good ol’ days.
“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
dual personalities 