Mck Sands: Screenwriter in Royal Tunbridge Wells, United Kingdom.

Thanks, Anna. My name is actually Mick but I mistyped it and can't figure out how to change it. I wouldn't know how to pronounce Mck. I suppose it could be Scottish, as in MacKay, but us English folk are not happy with the Scots at the moment, unless they vote no tomorrow. Have an awesome week yourself. -M

That's funny that your grandson is older than my son. It makes me feel young, which is something that happens less and less these days. I'm 55, which probably does not sound old to you. I feel about 20 years younger and sometimes when I consider my age, I think there has been some kind of mistake. I shouldn't be that old! I've figured out from your dates that you're 82. You're obviously very active, still mentally sharp and even ambitious, and I admire that. My observation is that people start to die when they give up, even if they're in their twenties. In that case, it's a slow death, but the decline has certainly started. I have an old newspaper clipping of a 110 year old Thai man. He has plenty of wrinkles but he looks pretty good. He was asked what was the secret of his longevity and he answered, "Prayer and cigarettes." I liked that. It sounds like your wife was a challenging woman. I found it very descriptive when you said you liked to look at her. I think that men are not just seduced but sometimes bewitched by a woman's looks. Whenever I'd have a big fight with my wife, I would hate her, then I'd look at her and think how attractive she was and my anger would melt. And when I think back further than that, I remember that whenever I was infatuated with a woman, rather than her body it was her face I couldn't get out of my mind. It must have been very difficult raising children with someone who undermined your fatherhood. Kids need a firm hand and I think that women who don't realise that spoil the children in both senses of the word. Your son Greg must be very devoted to his mother to spend five hours a day with her when she has dementia. I certainly couldn't do that. My mother is 80 in December and still compos mentis, but very concerned about Scotland leaving the UK, and concerned too that the Queen may be upset. She believes that the royal family are actually superior to the rest of us, which I find ridiculous, but I understand she was brought up in a different age, when women were women and men were men! M

Ha! I tell folks that I suffer from a terminal condition called life expectancy. I'll be 87 in two days, on the 17th. Dad was a powerful man, an athlete but he picked up cancer of the bladder at 71 which is what brought us back to Canada. They removed his whole bladder and somehow fashioned a new out out of some of his guts, I never quite understood. He had to learn how to use it as babies learn bladder control. They told him that he would never play tennis again but six months later he was playing again and a year later he came around to ask me to give him back the skis he had given me because he saw I hadn't been using them. He used them in a park near by which had some small hill. He went back for annual checkups and after five years they told him he had nothing more to worry about. Foolishly, he stopped going back for his annual checkups. My guess is that the cancer started coming back in ten years but he was in denial and didn't see any doctors. He just started slowing down. I had written my first screenplay in 1979. It was a fumy story about a Hollywood producer who had turned down JAWS and then we learn he had spent life turning down script that others picked up to turn into blockbusters - and the had a breakdown and they bring in a shrink who learns the man had always had an interest in his roots because he had been adopted - and they bring in Alex Haley who has written the book Roots but hasn't sold it as yet and signs on as a genealogist. He determines that our protagonist is a direct descendant of Vlad, the Impaler from Transylvania, the real Prince Dracula - on and on. I had found a British distribution sales agent, Sidney Safir, an ex-J. Arthur Rank exec. He liked it very much. In the fall of that year I got a call from a man at HBO with which I'd never been in touch. The man started talking about my screenplay and I thought I had lost my mind because I knew I had sent them nothing. Then I thought that perhaps I had sent them an outline earlier - I had sent a number of outlines to people. The man stopped as you stop when you realize you are speaking to a demented moron. "I thought you would get a bit more enthusiastic," he said, "We read 1500 screenplays this year and this one is one of three we want produced." He wanted me to send him a list of semi-names as a proposed cast. Then I learned that Safir had been at a Spanish film festival and had given a copy of the screenplay to the president of HBO but forgot to tell me about it. Well I got into trying to cast it. I hired a production manager to do a budget, a very strange and angry woman who lived in a filthy hovel. Hollywood agents are just as difficult to deal with when you want to buy talent as when you try to sell yourself as talent and I was getting very frustrated. I needed a break and asked my wife to come on a brief vacation to Florida. in the meantime, mother called to inform that dad had become quite ill. I called his doctor to find out what it was because I was ready to cancel the trip. The doctor lied, said they were just going to run some tests and send him home. So we went to Florida when I got a pinched nerve and became a wreck myself. Meantime, dad got worse and worse. I ran out to his mill to find out what was what and if I could provide some help. I checked the books and realized he had been operating technically bankrupt. I got dad back into the hospital where they didn't want to take him. I threatened to sue them and close down the whole hospital and then I took over at the mill while trying to continue with the film's production - insanity. Finally, I told everyone that the production had to be postponed. Dad died in January of '81 and he was 84 - he had been born in 1895. I had a crazy idea that I could get the mill in shape and get it sold in less than a year so that mum would have something to live off and then I'd go back to the film. Well, it took two years and by then my contact at HBO had gone, even the president had been replaced, in fact the whole division had moved from New York to Hollywood - none of them knew of my project nor had any interest. And here I am three years older than dad was when he died and I'm still moving on and on. And I smoked for 55 years, and lived far to sedentary life but may have inherited some good genes. Mother made it to 94, in reasonable shape to the end. It was a stroke that got her. I had a mini-stroke, they call it a TIA last March. I had been typing and suddenly my right hand refused to work. I tried to hunt and peck with it and couldn't even hit the right keys with my index finger. I was always an excellent and very fast typist and never made mistakes. Now I make them all the time. That strange condition lasted only a few minutes. I got up and checked my face in the mirror but there were no signs of stroke. Then it all became fine again and I continued with my work. My doctor's group had instituted an unconscionably new system. When you called you spoke to an answering system and would leave your name and number and which doctor you want to seer and why you want to see her or him. Actually they have only one 'him' - the rest are all women. The machine informed you that they would get back to you in 72 hours and be sure to have a pencil by your phone so that you can write down the appointment date they would give you. I left a message that I had had some stroke symptoms. That was on a Thursday morning. I also needed my doctor to give me a referral to my ear specialist and had that on my mind more than my mini-stroke. By the following Tuesday noon they had still not returned my call and I needed to stop at the post office which was only a block away from what they call a "walk-in-clinic," where they'll see anyone at anytime. They have wretched, overloaded waiting rooms but this particular clinic has a young Chinese doctor of whom I am very fond. An excellent doctor. So I stopped in there and the receptionist said it might take up to three hours of waiting time. I thought that beats three days of waiting so I just got my name down and went out to have a coffee and buy a paper. It was a nice, sunny day, I found a park bench and read. I finally got to see him in three and a half hours and he immediately faxed the ear specialist (in our health care system you cannot to a specialist without a referral if you haven't seen him before during the same year) Then I recalled my mini stroke and mentioned it to him. He went into immediate action - left a telephone message at my doctor's, also faxed them - pointed out what percent chance I would have of a major stroke within days or weeks or months. That brought about some action, and within a week I was in hospital and they pushed a stent up from my groin into my left carotid artery which, they had determined, was quite blocked. I had asked for a "left-side transplant." I want to be sawed in half vertically and be given a new left side. Everything that goes wrong with me is on the left side. My left eye has perhaps 30% site. It's been a bum eye since childhood. I had knee troubles for years - left knee. I have some sort of blockage in my arteries to the left arm. My blood pressure in the left arm is about 70 over 37 while in my right arm it averages about 140 over 80. I developed a mysterious discharge of an oily substance from my left ear which has lost about 50% hearing. I've had MRIs and Cat Scans and nobody can figure it out. Harvard University's ear group asked me to donate my temporal bone after death so they can get in there and study it. There was a very serious Chinese surgeon who did my stent operation. Many orientals have no sense of humor. He came in to talk to me just before the operation. Greg had dropped in at that time. The surgeon informed that I had a one in twenty chance of not surviving the procedure which freaked out poor Greg. I had the same procedure done back in September of 2001 at New York Presbyterian and I could watch their wire advance through my arteries on a monitor but they went only as far as the heart, found only 25% blockage which doesn't worry them. There is no pain since arteries have no nerve ends. I calmed Greg by explaining that by NOT doing the operation I had only a one in ten chance of croaking. The surgeon agreed and that was that. It went well without a hitch and the next morning I went home. With this history, I'm fairly certain that when I finally go it will be because of a stroke and that's a good way to go as long as it is massive and kills you on the spot. But I need at least five more productive years and then perhaps two more for retirement and travel. I would like to die on a beach in the South Seas, far removed from hospitals and so-called civilization. The worst that can happen to us is to be incarcerated in a nursing home or some such facility. I was an anti-royalist most of my adult life but now I get a sense somewhat akin to that of your mother. I think there is some psychological value to having royalty in a country. It's a bit like having a God to look up to. In early life and in our declining years there seems to be some need for an elevated being to look up to. In my infancy I had King Carol and Prince Mihai (Michael) in Romania. And during the war years in Canada we saluted King George and sang to him and felt stirred as we sang "There'll Always be an England." Canadians were probably more devoted to the royal family than all the other colonials. Today my favorite royal is Prince Harry. I wish he were my son. He always looks ready for some jokes or mischief. I find myself grinning whenever I see a picture of him. I couldn't stand his mother, she never fit in, but I liked his grandfather always, Prince Philip. He has 6 years on me and is holding up fairly well. One wants to think of them as elevated, being above the grubbiness of politicians who run the country. The U.K. has done very poorly in that department of late. The U.S. is equally disastrous. Obama has turned race relations back by 50 years. He has divided Americans more than they were before the Civil War. I used to take pride in my American passport. Now I've been debating about rejecting my citizenship. Americans have no one to look up to which is why various religious cults crop up constantly. Canada's salvation may turn out to be the Chinese immigrants who are industrious and civilized. We have a lot of them. Canadian generally are not very bright. I had a Welsh scientist friend here who was close to 7 feet tall. I called him a gentle giant because he was the most liberal and considerate of men I'd known. We were talking about Canadians once and he said, "It is strange, they are, after all, really us, and yet they are so different." I asked what he meant by "us" and he said from the U.K. I said that left me out and he went on to wonder what it was that made Canadians so different. It was the scientist probing for an answer and then he mumbled, "Do you suppose it was the long Canadian winters that have atrophied their brains?" Worrisome are are the Muslim immigrants. We have far too many of them and I consider them the world's cancer. Over a billion of them trapped by a sick ideology of violence and evil. As a friend my age keeps saying, "The good thing about our age is, we won't have to put up with this world for much longer." On that cheerful note I'll fold my tent and get to work. I want to hear more about your backpacker film. Try to inject some music into it, be it Indian or contemporary from the West, whatever will attract the teens and twenties. Make sure it is something that can go out on a CD and if in some way you can glean a music video out of the film it will give you the most effective trailer. Cheers, Andy

Your dad sounds like a powerful presence, and both him and your mum obviously passed down the right genes, at least on the right side of you. I didn't do my maths on your age very well! I think you should shoot for another ten years and then three of retirement, and then you'll reach an interesting figure. I like Prince Harry for exactly the same reasons you cited. Perhaps the explanation is that he is not the son of Prince Charles. Look at a picture of Princess Di's lover, James Hewitt, and you will see a definite likeness. It used to that when an English king produced an illegitimate son, and there were plenty of them, the child would be given the name Fitz, followed by the father's first name. Fitzwilliam, for example. So perhaps Harry Windsor is really Harold Fitzjames! I found his mother sweet enough, but I could never understand the fuss. People are so desperate for a fairytale princess. Like you said, someone to look up to. I was raised in a very religious household. My father tithed 10% of his income until he died at 47, when I was seven years old. I couldn't make sense of people telling me that God had summoned my dad to heaven where he would sit beside him. I was also given the distinct impression that God wanted me to be a missionary. Even when I was eager to please everyone, I really didn't fancy that! By the time I was eight, I knew I was much more interested in writing stories and drawing pictures. I had an active imagination, and believed there were sometimes fairies at the bottom of the garden. Naturally, these magical creatures were much more exciting to me that the big bullying God who had taken my dad away from me. Over the years, I've tried to find my God rather than someone else's. Carl Jung said that 'religion is a defense against the experience of God', and I go along with that completely. None of the people who tried to ram the bible down my throat saw fairies in their gardens! And I think that must be even more true of the Muslim crowd. They have so much murder in their hearts, there is no room for imagination or anything else. The best they seem to be able to manage is a fantasy that starts with death. I am in danger of generalising. I'm certain there are many good and worthy Muslims, but it remains a religion that seems to inspire a lot of anger and hatred. I read somewhere that such violence was a sign of a dying faith, and this was because, of all the religions, Islam was based on the least. In any case, I think people would do better to find their own personal religion, whatever it may be, and then holy wars would make no sense at all, as indeed they do not. My son, Tom, already has the music worked out for the backpacking film. I'd like to send you the information pack, which will tell you all about it. If you send me your email address, I'll zoom it in your direction. I have two email addresses: mick@micksands.com serves as the point of contact for paid work, and mick@substantialfilms.co.uk (Tom's company) seems to be the address for largely unpaid work. M

Hi Mark, You're welcome. I was scrolling through Stage32 members and you jumped out at me because you were one of the very few producers who weren't also screenwriters. Pretty much everyone on here has three or four jobs, and it's hard enough to do one properly! Cheers, Mick (I wrote Mck by accident and can't figure out how to change it)

And here I thought you were a cleaver fellow trying to brand yourself Mck! How disappointing to find out that your just an average Joe Blow Mick (lol). Keep in touch after the first of the year when an open to new projects. Thanks again.