On Friday evening, I went to the first showing of &Sons at the Phoenix Picture House. Victor Glynn, the father of the producer invited to me to be an extra . An early scene in the film is a memorial service in the exquisite Worcester College Chapel. Five hours of filming resulted in two minutes in & Sons and yes, I was there in a one second flash of fame alongside Bill Nighie . I took this pic when he walked passed me.
My connection with Victor?
He taught me screen writing on the Diploma Course in Creative Writing @Oxford. I pitched to him Shakespeare in Oxford, a series of contemporary adaptions of Shakespeare plays a few of us had written. He liked them and suggested we workshop Polly Biswas Gladwin’s take on Romeo and Juliet. This was the resulting film, taken by Philip Hind, of that workshop that Victor pitched to Channel 4… Ah well…. Nine months work organising it. The story of my life…
https://vimeo.com/123886243 Joe and Zara
Without spoiling the plot, in &Sons there isa theme of Nature /Nurture. For two decades I was involved in that debate through Atam . His PHD was in Quantitative Genetics and was published in Nature . Given the death of Jason Arday, Atam’s experience as a man of colour in academia is relevant. I wrote about it in my memoir .Scientific racism etc Chapter 17 FoL
Victor has had amazing experiences so I had to cast him away. Here is his story.Victor Glynn