Note to self: Be patient and brave with love and art.
When last I posted, it was 2011, so… Happy New Year STILL! Around and around the globe we go… after tinseling and bubbling for the holidays in Paris & London, skype’ng and working for 7 weeks back in LA then finally tripping on 3 jetlagged days in Berlin, you guessed it, I’m back in India and just in time for chai.
After spending 8 months out of the last 2 years as a photo-journalist in Mumbai; fixing my lens and sharpening my pencil on my (photography) book about Actors here, I jokingly told a friend of mine last year, with a slap on the back, “... 2012 may just be the year of my acting comeback!” Strangely enough, my recent return to India has been just that, has an Actor… playing the role of a Journalist!
Now, I sincerely have no interest in pounding-the-pavement for an acting career anymore, yet after having been tenured in Theater and Television from 1993 to 2003, I am finally doing my first feature film.
It’s an American production called "The Letters" with an astonishing international cast telling the life story of Mother Teresa, played by the miraculous Juliet Stevenson. Penned and directed by Bill Riead and shot by Academy Award winner Jack Green, it is set in the late 1940’s and also stars the venerable Max Von Sydow and still rugged Rutger Hauer. I play an ex-war correspondent and the only reporter who got close to MT (loosely based on Malcom Muggeridge) and scribed her famous line, “I am just a pencil in God’s hand.” We’ve actually been shooting for the last month here in Goa.
I’ve also been using this time to go back and forth to Bombay, completing my work on the book: transcribing the last 25+ remaining interviews and shooting a few more actors of various levels to flesh things out and broaden the perspective.
Unfortunately, I did hear back from the two mega-stars I had hoped to feature in the book, Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan, neither of whom are willing or able to participate at this time. So, as they say, “The show must go on!”... and who knows, a “No” today could be a “Yes” tomorrow- crazier things have happened.
Yes, 'we are all pencils in ‘God’s’ hand'… writing & rewriting our stories, signing contracts, penning poems for love and of course… making notes.
Until next time… Be patient and brave,
Mark
