Shooting day five

I think it must be so difficult to be an international leader right now. There are so many nut-jobs around, that a semi-sensible Prime Minister is forced to suck up lunacy, simply to stop some sort of major crisis from kicking off. It’s all very well for the London Mayor and the leader of the Scottish National Party to front demonstrations against Trump, but to my mind, that’s one of the manifold benefits of being on the second tier of leadership: You can actually speak your mind instead of playing a game of diplomacy. Imagine having to talk to Trump or Putin like they’re sensible? Terrifying.

Yesterday’s filming started in the East End of London at 19 Princelet Street, which is a stunning Victorian synagogue situated within one of those grand Huguenot weavers’ cottages around Spitalfields. These days it’s rather run down and somewhat “shabby chic” like the theatre at Ally Pally where we got married. Chunks of plaster are falling off the walls, and the roof, which is entirely made of glass, has missing coloured panes where the rain surely comes in. They’re fundraising at the moment to secure the place and turn it into a museum of immigration and diversity. They certainly deserve the funding. This is a vitally important building. I was, however, a little underwhelmed by the way we were dealt with by the institution in the run up to the filming. I didn’t even know they were going to allow us to film there until Thursday last week. I guess I have become very used to people really getting behind 100 Faces and genuinely celebrating the vision of the piece, so it was a shock to find an institution which didn’t seem that bothered. I’m sure I’m wrong, but I ended up being made to feel that the only reason we were being allowed to film there was because we’d brought Steven Berkoff with us.

Nevertheless, the building yielded some rather lovely shots and had a stunning acoustic which we took advantage of to record three vocalists on the film: Ashley, Tim and Harry. Berkoff did his thing. Brilliantly. As did John Kleeman, whose charming wife, Julie, one of the Fleet Singers, came along to the shoot to offer moral support. It was so lovely to see her, although a little surprising out of context. It’s funny how we attach people so firmly to situations and locations that it becomes quite confusing when they’re in a different setting. Your brain starts putting two and two together and coming up with six! I knew her name. I knew I knew her but for a few seconds I’d decided she was a trustee at UK Jewish Film!

From the East End we travelled to Hampstead to film Dame Esther Rantzen. I was rather excited to be filming her. That’s Life played an important role in my childhood. We used to sit down as a family and watch the show on Sunday nights. It reminds me of having “homework tummy” - which is the sensation exclusive to a Sunday night when you realise you haven’t done enough prep for the working week! I realised as we filmed Esther, quite how many of the stories I’d remembered from the show. The badly stuffed cat. The piece they did on people who were able to roll their tongues in two places. The dog that jumped up to drink from a soda fountain. The dog that said “sausages”... People reading this who don’t know the show will think I’ve gone mad!

With Esther, you don’t really get to say what you want. Everything, from shot size, position and type of chair, even what she’s going to say, is pre-arranged and un-negotiable, which made me panic a little that I wasn’t going to be able to make her segment fit into the world of the film. But she’s a total pro and it was a delight to be in the presence of someone whose charity work alone would make most people feel entirely inadequate. She’s a legend.

Next up for filming was another Dame, Janet Suzman, who welcomed us into her beautiful house and gave us all a warm, fuzzy feeling inside! You can instantly tell what kind of a person someone is by the way they deal with film crews. Filming can be intrusive. It can be boring and repetitive. And some film crews will really test people’s limits. But ultimately, everyone is trying to make something good, and therefore, putting people at their ease is a really important thing. On both sides.

After Janet, we headed to the Finchley Road to film Bernard Kops, whom I have grown to adore in a very short period of time. I plan to work with him again after this. He’s 92 and still going strong. He has memories of Cable Street and the wartime Bethnal Green tube disaster, where hundreds were killed in a crush caused by a woman tripping on a flight of stairs, after an air raid siren created wide-scale panic.

Bernard was amazing on screen. Both Keith and Andrei immediately placed him at the top of their list of favourite faces. So much of the trick to getting older is maintaining ones own sense of being... and dignity. I appreciate that this doesn’t always happen through choice. But sometimes you get the impression that a person has simply given up. Kops keeps a steeliness, and a sense of style. He wanted to be filmed in his Greek Fisherman’s hat. “This is more “me” than my face” he said.

Next up was the biggie: Our 100 year old, Eva. Actually, though born in 1918, Eva is still 99 for a few months. She’s ferociously independent and still lives on her own. She’s kind, warm, witty and intelligent with a razor-sharp memory. She’d dressed up for the filming, and looked a million dollars.

There was something pretty special about passing the milestone of filming her. I suspect I’ve always thought if we could get our 100-year-old in the can, everything else would somehow slot into place. This is probably due to the amount of people who have seemed utterly incredulous at the idea that there might be a one hundred year-old Jewish person out there! In reality, of course, people are far more likely to know of the existence of a centenarian than they are of a 96 year old.

The day’s shooting ended, up in High Barnet, in the garden of a 17 year old A-level student. The house itself had been utterly gutted, and the garden was full of rubble and chairs piled high. The family were terribly apologetic, but it made for a very quirky shot. I actually like to arrive in a venue and work with what’s there visually, rather than trying to imagine what I want beforehand. If confronted with a building site, then the building site becomes the perfect location for our shot. It’s more truthful somehow.