Angelo Marcos's Blog, page 9

Just a nightmare? You wish…

Two hours after falling asleep in your warm, comfortable bed, your eyes spring open as a horrific dread squeezes your chest. In the corner of the room is a presence, you don’t know who or what it is – you can’t even see it – but you know it’s there. And you know it’s malevolent. […]

To Plan Or To Pants? How Should You Get Your Book Written?

Originally posted on Allison Maruska:
Did anyone else imagine a general guy holding a sword in the air yelling, “To pants!” with that title? He’s probably in his undies, because why else go to pants? Sorry. It’s 4:30 AM. I’ll try to stay on task. *snicker*. To pants. That’s funny. I know it doesn’t seem…

“Wait. I think I just… yeah, I just had an idea…”

I can sense it before it happens now.

Something about the look in their eye. A slightly quizzical glance, as though they’re weighing something up. This is normally the point in the evening just after the information that I write/perform has been introduced. Generally not by me, as I usually try to avoid having to answer the inevitable questio-

“So where do you get your ideas?”

A-a-and it’s all downhill from there – me stuttering away, and desperately trying not to a) bore everybody, b) sound pre...

The tragic and unexplained case of Elisa Lam

I can’t actually remember when I first became interested in behavioural science and real-life crime cases, but I do know it’s been a long time.

I’ve never been particularly interested in the gory side of the crimes, more the psychology of the perpetrator/s. In other words, for me it’s always been about the ‘why’ rather than the ‘how’.

Every so often I come across a case that I absolutely cannot get out of my head – sometimes because of the ‘how’, sometimes because of the ‘why’. And sometimes be...

“In your choices lies your talent.”

You might not have heard of her, but you’ll definitely know of the legacy of Stella Adler.

She was one of the most influential and seminal acting teachers in the history of, well, acting. Taking her cue from Stanislavski’s ‘method’, she taught among others Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Harvey Keitel, and Warren Beatty.

So she was, y’know, pretty good.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about her approach – although her life and work were fascinating – what I do want to do is...

Stop talking about it…

I get excited about writing. Which is a good thing – after all if I didn’t get excited by it I’d stop.

(I’m definitely not doing it for the money…)

The thing is, generally whenever anyone gets excited about something they want to talk about it and share it with everyone else. After a period of really productive writing, it’s natural to want to discuss the great idea that came to you seemingly out of the ether, or the genuine surprise you felt when one of your characters did something that you...

Celebrities vs Reality…

I recently watched an old man dress up in a leather-look S and M outfit, thrust about in what looked like a strip club and get perilously close to having a heart attack on live TV. Ordinarily this wouldn’t have made me laugh, in fact in any other context I probably would’ve been quite concerned.

But the old guy was a celebrity, you see. So I actually quite enjoyed it.

As with anything I enjoy, I thought I better analyse it to death so as to ensure I never enjoy it again. Which is why this parti...

Sun, sea and unreasonable expectations…

Well, it’s that time again.

Christmas feels like it happened about eight months ago, we’re into the new year, everyone’s stopped going to the gym and started smoking and eating lard again, and there’s only one thing advertisers think is gonna keep us going.

Holidays.

Yup, you can’t open a newspaper or turn on the TV without being blasted with images of happier-than-average people with their prettier-than-average families, lying on a sandier-than-average beach under a bluer-than-average sky, sitt...

Fame, me and Angelina Jolie

Not to boast or anything, but Angelina Jolie put her arm around my waist once.

The short version of the story is that I saw her in a shop, asked if I could take a photo with her, told her she was great in ‘Gia’ (still one of the greatest performances by anyone in anything as far as I’m concerned), took the photo, and that was it.

Except that wasn’t quite it, because that short exchange taught me more about fame than I could have imagined.

You see, as I was summoning up the courage to speak to he...

Does success change your performance?

I’ve just spent 90 minutes watching Tom Hardy fight everybody, act like a pantomime character, pretend to be two people having a conversation with each other, and break the fourth wall by ranting down the camera at me.

And I thought it was incredible.

After watching Tom Hardy in Bronson, I started thinking about other performances that I’ve loved over the years, and realised that – generally speaking – the best, most daring work is done by actors early on in their careers. I’m talking about Ga...