Ask Alan!

From Gayle: Dear Alan,  I have been enjoying seeing you doing the intros for Mystery on PBS. I wanted to know if you will be starring in any of the Poirot or Miss Marple in the future. Would love to see you in something like that. Wouldn't that be funny?  Me introducing myself? I have no plans to be in Poirot or Miss Marple, but never say never!  I did feel a bit Miss Marpleish recently when I did the BBC show Who Do You Think You Are? which airs on BBC1 in the UK on September 6th.  I was investigating the life of my grandfather and I was channeling her.

hey alan did you know i am your number 1 fan and i friended you on myspace  I did not know that cos it's not me on myspace or facebook, sorry about that.  This site is my only online presence.  Do not let the impostors trick you!!

Katarzyna-Anna from Poland writes: Aren't people confused because of your fame?  I'm wondering if it's hard to find real friends when you're famous? Have you ever met any people whose kindness was fake because of your prestige?  Yes, I suppose is the answer.  But as you get older you are more able to see people's real motivations and reasons for wanting to be your friend.  Also people seem to forget that I have a role in any friendship. People don't just become my friend, whether I want it or not! So I am very good at making sure people who come into my life, and into the private parts of it, are true and kind.  Sometimes I have made mistakes, but I think now I have a really great bunch of friends who are kind and protective, and at the same time I have not closed myself off from the possibility of having new people join that happy band. Also, the people who really want to be your friends just for the glory and the celeby rub-off are usually not very good at hiding their true desires.

Gloria writes: any plans to bring I Bought a Blue Car Today to Vancouver? That's Vancouver in Canada not Washington. Oh my goodness I would love to take the show to the Couv, but right now there are no plans. I know I have a flurry of dates at the beginning of next year, but none for a while apart from a few benefit things.  I have come to Vancouver many times to shoot films so mayeb the enxt time I do I will arrange to do the show somewhere there!

What's been your favourite song you've ever sung in a role?.....if that makes sense  I really liked singing I Don't Care Much from Cabaret.  Right now I love singing Almost There, the Tom Baxter song in my show, but that isn't really a role from a show, cos it's just me singing it.

From Ryan: how did you get your start as an actor and has there ever been a time where you doubted yourself or capability in any way?  I went to drama school.  Whilst there, in my final year, I was asked to be in a professional production of Macbeth and then in a movie, so I had a little head start before I graduated.  But that's how I did it, quite a traditional route.  And it all sort of blossomed from there. And yes, of course I have had doubts, and still do sometmes. I think it's healthy, cos in some ways it galvanises you to work harder and having doubts reminds you that you are not invincible and your vulnerability is a part of who you are as a performer.

Tess asks: have you ever experienced any Paranormal activity in the Edinburgh Castle, or in your life? No, not in Edinburgh Castle! But I sometimes feel the energy of people in places. Last year I stayed in a hotel (also in Edinburgh incidentally) which had once been a mental hospital and I definitely felt some tormented souls around me. I had to give them a little talking to, telling them I understood and that I was a bit mad myself, so to please chill out and let me have a good night's sleep. It worked!

Rowda sent this poem by Kahlil Gibran.  I think it's great:

Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

Finally Lindsay sent me this video, which I think deserves a viewing from us all...

Flying visits

On Sunday in Edinburgh I was filmed by the TV channel New York 1, and today I was in thier building in Manhattan filming for The Good Wife. Funny old world, huh?!

I am still reeling a little from my weekend of Fringe fun and merriment, the flights back and forth and then being flung back into filming.  But I have enjoyed the scenes we have been shooting. Each week the show deals with issues that are pertinent and current in a really interesting and provocative way and I like that.

This weekend the madness will continue as on Friday I fly to Los Angeles for the Creative Emmys.  The award I am nominated for (Supporting Guest Actor in a Drama) is announced during this ceremony, and then I will return to LA the following weekend with the rest of The Good Wife cast for the Prime Time Emmys. And I thought my days of gadding about on planes had stopped for a while!

I have been getting up so early and having long filming days so I am glad that now, before I go to meet friends for drinks at my favourite local bar, I can walk Honey and Leon and have some daddy/kids time.  Honey has had a funny tummy again, poor thing.  But she is still boisterous and loves a rough house, so I don't think it's anything serious.  It is still really hot and humid here in NYC and I think being an old hairy lady must be pretty tough in this climate.

What a great thing it was tonight to see that all the combat troops leaving Iraq!!  Finally! Obama is keeping his word and washing his hands of the mess that Bush left him.  The West should never ever have invaded that country in the first place.

Someone put this up on youtube and I really like it. It's got audio of me singing Money from Cabaretset against footage of the Hindenburgh burning. Pretty powerful and weird.

woozy day

This made me laugh today.

So did this.

Today I had to get up at 6am to go and shoot the last scenes of episode 3 of the new season of The Good Wife. It's funny to think that since the last scenes I shot I have been across the Atlantic and performed at the Edinburgh fringe as well as engaged in all the extraneous activities that can be viewed in the videos below.  I was a little woozy at points today, no wonder.

I was thinking about how about 6 weeks or so ago I was in Tokyo and skyped with friends who were at my country house on Friday night at about 8.30pm and then I arrived there the next day at 3.30 in the afternoon.  I couldn't get my head around it.  Or my body for that matter.  I kept thinking about what Jacques says in As You Like It: I have gained my experience.

I didn't feel I had gained my experience when I came from Tokyo. In some way the way speed and time zones enabled me to cheat my body into being somewhere else so soon demeaned the rather huge experiences I had just had (filming for the BBC show Who Do You Think You Are in Malyasia).

This weekend in Edinburgh I talked a lot about age and the idea of returning to the fringe festival after so many years and after so many years of having performed there.  Something about going back to my roots, both geographically and artistically made me feel that actually I had gained my experience. It was a nice feeling.

What happened on Friday

It was Friday, I went to the gym at about 6pm, something I had not done for a long time.  I haven't been to the gym for ages because I've been away but I also always try and go at times when it isn't so full, so on Friday I was reminded how self-conscious I am when I do.

There are lots of mirrors in gyms, and something perhaps about the fact that everyone is not interacting as they would normally in a room with people at such close quarters, semi-clad and sweating, makes for a weird combination of, in my experience, uninhibited looking and equally as uninhibited and brazen reporting of what they see to others not there.

Do you get what I mean?  Maybe it's just me and past experience.  Maybe the fact that someone wrote to Gawker.com and told them I was next to them in a boxing class makes me a little leery when I see a boy at the free weights section clock me and do a cartoonish double take in the mirror then immediatley grab his Blackberry and start tapping away. Who is he suddenly writing to I wonder? Is he tweeting that I am sweating away next to him?  Is he texting his friends? Maybe he just suddenly remembered he had to write an email but, as I am sure you get by now, that's hard for me to believe.

I have been in a bar talking to someone, a friend of a friend, and later realised that they has excused themselves, gone to the loo and tweeted about the fact that they were talking to me and that I had bought them a drink!  Last year I in was in a fender bender in L.A. and people very close to me heard about it because someone outside the bar where it happened tweeted about it before I had a chance to tell them. And then of course there's the cameraphones and the videophones and, oh hooray, the new camera that can stream instantly to youtube.

I suppose what I am getting at is this: when people ask me about my life and being recognised and people sometimes freaking out and screaming on the street, I tell them that I understand and accept it for what it is (I certainly prefer that to feigned insousciance and immediate grabbing of an electronic device!) and I just live my life with a huge level of self-consciousness.  And on Friday, I guess I just forgot. I was back home and getting back into a routine and I didn't have all my force fields fully fired.  That's all.

Goldendays

I am at JFK about to get on a plane for Paris and then Edinburgh. I love Air France.

I found this clip of me on a Scottish TV talk show in 1995 talking about Goldeneye, which was about to come out, and also harking back to my Victor and Barry glory days.    Again, ah youth.

I do note more than a little nostalgia this week, as I head back to the Edinburgh fringe.  It's funny because although I have been doing my show all round the world for the last year and a half, taking it to Edinburgh makes me realise how much its content and tone, and also my desire to do it at all, is tied up with the amazing experiences I had as a barely twenty-something performing on the Fringe.  I guess it's true that the apple never falls far from the tree.

It's also weird thatjust yesterday I was shooting scenes for The Good Wife in Harlem, and will be back shooting the end of this episode on Tuesday, and yet in the middle of that I can fly across the Atlantic and take part in the world's biggest arts festival and see laods of old friends, and my mum, do a bunch of press things, see quite a few shows and then return and be all Eli again as though none of it happened.  I love showbiz.

 I am also very happy to read today that the results from various elections yesterday indicate that those Republicans who thought they were going to have it easy in November and take back both houses are in for a bit of a shock.  I can't help but think that the rise of the 24 hour news channels and their need for constant content and speculation, can create a very false impression compared to what real people are experiencing and thinking out there in America.  Media types and for the most part viewers of those types of channels will not be the ones who will be most feeling the affects of the changes this administration is making, I should imagine.

Combing my fringes

I am packing to go to Edinburgh tomorrow. It is quite a funny experience to be going back to perform on the Edinburgh fringe after 19 years!! There are a lot of memories flooding though my mind's sluice gates.

Mostly I have been thinking about how I am coming full circle artistically. I strated off at the Fringe in 1984 doing cabaret, with Victor and Barry.  Over the years we refined and honed our act but we never quite lost the thrilling aspect of often, especially when opening a new show at Edinburgh, going onstage and not being utterly confident of knowing how it ended or even the chords of some of the songs!  That feeling of leaping off a cliff is partly what I wanted to revisit with my own cabaret show.

Of course, Victor and Barry were characters who were very different to Forbes and I, and so now, with the show just being me, me and more me, I feel I am coming back to the style of performance of my roots and also making it even more personal.

But when it comes down to it it's still just a daft boy singing some songs and chatting. To wit, here is a little vid I made in the dressing room of the theater on Fire Island the other week, as I was warming up for the performance...