Part of Constantinople

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 21:03:38 -0700

Had to begin to share my recent, fabulous journey. It will probably occupy several entries as I try to grapple with sheer vibrancy and mind expansivity (another word I’ve just made up!) of Istanbul.
But I’ll start with the photo and the delight it brings. For there I am, in a bookstore in Constantinople, about to do a signing of my most recently published novel, VLAD.
I can’t help it - I am inordinately proud. To be a little part of the extraordinary literary heritage of that city. This place of words for thousands of years. Where the great texts - historical, astronomical, alchemical - were written or collected. The conduit of the great Persian love poetry. For the Arab expositions of mathematics and medicine. Where tradition was preserved, this Rome of the East taking over from that other Rome as the centre of classical civilization, disseminating to the West the sacred, the holy, the inspirational, the scientific texts that fuelled the Renaissance. And since the Christian city fell in 1453, eleven hundred years after its founding (of which, dear reader, much, much more!), all the great ideas that have flowed from it since!
And I was there, signing copies of my little drop in that vast ocean of language. My book, translated into Turkish. And my delightful publishers -Tahir, Murad, Selen - making a fuss of me, taking me out for raki and meze, puffing on narghile pipes with me, debating politics and religion afterwards. Bliss!
Leaving for later the wonderful adventures I had there, my reasons for going - researching my new novel about that fateful year of 1453, (said novel sucking up ALL available time and hence my poor blog work of late!), that evening was truly a special one. I have added to the word-hoard of Istanbul/Constantinople in my own very small way. As they say in Yorkshire (or at least on Yorkshire TV) ‘I am reet chufffed’

Oh, and by the way, for any locals or indeed any who want to visit another fab city - Vancouver - I am teaching a 2 day workshop on writing the action-adventure novel August 7th and 8th. Details at:
http://www.cchumphreys.com/Site_4/Welcome.html

Slingshots in Tunisia

Fri, 7 May 2010 15:03:47 -0700

So that’s me up there, June 1983, in the desert in Tunisia. Actually in the same valley where they filmed the star fighters chase in the first Star Wars. But I don’t have my light sabre. I have my slingshot.

Down there to shoot the Biblical-Roman epic mini series ‘AD - Anno Domini’, I’d been training on the beach every morning back at our base in Monastir. I was in the hands of an ex Scottish Army officer, ex Congo mercenary, turned Buddhist, named Bill. A Buddhist mercenary? Get your head around that if you can because I couldn’t. Every morning at 6 AM he’d have me out there, getting me into the shape required to be a gladiator whose costume consisted of a leather strap and a skimpy loin cloth. I’d star jump and push up and run in the sea for an hour and then he’d leave me, on a deserted beach, to practice with a slingshot about which I had no clue. I tried but I was pretty useless.

One day the man who owned the camel concession came down the beach. He’d give rides to the tourists on his mummy camel and baby camel. He asked what I was doing (in French which they speak there and which I speak a little). I told him I was in the film about to start shooting there. Yes, he said, but what are you doing with that? Its a slingshot, I said. I know, he replied, we use these, Tunisian boys hunt with them. Really? I said. Could you, uh, show me some stuff? He looked around, shrugged, said ‘sure’ tied up his camels and I then had a two hour seminar with a Tunisian slingshot champion! He taught me amazing things - like how to get it off the shoulder, loaded with a stone and whirling with hardly making a sound, barely a movment. He showed me what sort of stones I needed to use. Most importantly, he showed me how to hit a target.

Cut (we are talking a film here!) to a month later in the desert. I am up on a ten foot high platform, the entire film crew - about 70 people - spread out below me, shooting me as if I am on a cliff about to attack a Roman column. Caleb, they say (they always called me by my character name), aim there, maybe at that bush? There was a small bush, about 40 yards away, beyond them. Oh-K. No one checked if I could use the bloody thing, just pointed and shouted action.

I put five stones through the bush.

Everyone just shrugged. Absolutely accepted that an English actor would know how to use a biblical slingshot and not kill anyone. Though my good friend, the American actor Bruce Winant, did tell me a funny thing. He was one of the 70 watching, standing in front of the platform and he noticed - only because he finally realized that he was also doing it - that every time my slingshot whirled over my head the entire crew, to a man, dipped their knees. A whole film crew, oblivious to anyone else, bobbing like plastic ducks into a glass.

So next blog, I’ll tell you about my further adventures in the slingshot trade... and how I made a new one.

The Tale of Two Slingshots - Part One

Mon, 3 May 2010 15:04:23 -0700

There comes a time in every man’s life... when his old slingshot has to be retired. Mine arrived when I was visiting Moscrop School, in Burnaby, British Columbia and, in the middle of my usual demonstration - during which I’d cunningly palmed the stone I’d displayed and had stated that I was going to aim at the teacher’s head - I managed to hurl half the weapon at a girl in the front row. Never wise to assault the pupils, I’ve found. My much-patched weapon, more duct tape than leather and rope, that I had first used to attack the Romans when filming the biblical epic ‘AD-Anno Domini’ in 1983 in Tunisia, had finally died. But since this is very much part of my school-visiting schtick - nothing gets a jaded Grade 8’s attention so much as the potential of imminent pain - I knew I had to replace it. And I was determined to make one myself.

So what follows, over the next few blog entries, will be ‘Tales of Two Slingshots’, with digressions on the art of this most ancient of weapons and my own experiences with it. What I’ll have to do is dig out some old photos of AD days - and explain why I am probably the only member of Canadian Actors Equity licensed to use such a device. Well, not really. But I do have some skills that others perhaps do not.

Before I begin on my tales... the slingshot itself. Most know the tale of David and Goliath, yes? The Israelite shepherd boy’s offer to kill the great Philistine (Oh yes, they existed in biblical times, not just in present day government arts departments!), using the weapon he defended his flocks with. The slingshot is one long piece of rope with a leather cup or pouch attached in the middle. A stone is fitted, the rope’s ends are gripped in one hand, then whirled, one end released, the stone is propelled out... and smites the giant right between the eyes. And lo there is much gnashing of philistine teeth - and a few picking out of bone scraps, no doubt.

But of course, there is a little more to it than that.

Meantime - that’s my old slingshot up there, pre-retirement. How I acquired it, learned to use it, smote my own philistines with it and eventually and recently replaced it, will be elaborated upon forthwith. (The pencil? It’s to give perspective and width for the one I hoped to build).

Anon...