The Last Cigarette

Andrew Vance — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 14:15:19 +0000

This is a new play by Simon Gray and Hugh Whitmore, based on Simon Gray’s The Smoking Diaries and his final book Coda. He is played by three actors, including Felicity Kendal, not at different time periods but all at the same time. It is as though he is having an inner conversation with himself. He talks about life from his early years to being diagnosed with cancer. It could be melancholy, but due to Grays sharp wit it is ofter hilarious. You did feel what a waste of a life. But he knew what he was doing. He was warned by friends to give up smoking many times. He also drank heavily, consuming several bottles of champagne a night. He also had the habit of working through the night and sleeping in to midday. This did cause problems with his co author Hugh Whitmore, who had more sociable hours. But they have managed to construct a very enjoyable play about a man who lived life the way he wanted. At the end of the play he is told that instead of one year to live it was more likely going to be two. He then died, last August, not from the cancer caused by the smoking but from an aneurysm only a couple of months into his two years. He did not live long enough to complete the play.

There are some lovely passages in the play – “I regret the hundreds and hundreds and thousands and thousands of cigarettes… pause, as if to denounce the weed, but ends … I’ve never experienced.”

My favourite is when he was talking to Harold Pinter, who also died last year, ”We can’t die yet, we haven’t grown up!” They were in their 70’s.

In the end it left me wishing to know more about this extraordinary man.

I also saw “The curious case of Benjamin Button”. I thoroughly enjoyed this film. It is nearly 3 hours long, but it kept my attention throughout. It was a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald which I had never read and never heard of before. It seems to say that your course in life is the same, whether you grow old naturally or are born old and become young. This is what happen to Benjamin. In growing up this way he had only a short time with the one woman he really loved before he grew too young for her. It was a sad and thoughtful film worthy of its Oscar nomination.

Work Out

Andrew Vance — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 12:06:11 +0000

I have just crawled back from the gym. They haveall new equipment at Goodwood. On the treadmill you can connect your IPod and watch any music or videos you have recorded. You can also chose to watch TV including the news if you want to be depressed. (Its interesting to note that my bank has in theory been nationalised. Who would have thought this would happen a year ago!) The machine also shows in graphic form myheart rate. The best thing I can say about that is that it recovers fairly quickly. On the spinning bike you can watch a video of a male blond very fit Californian fitness instructor. Not my type. I won’t be watching him again.

The whole experience is quite addictive which is good as I spend more time oin the machines without the boredom factor.

I have seen two films in the last week. Slumdog Millionaire and Young Victoria. Both enjoyable fils for different reasons. Slumdog nearly ended up as a film going straight to DVD thus excluding it from the Oscars. It was brave of the Academy to give it the best picture Oscar. The film does deserve it and even though it is uplifting at the end, it depicts a very violent underclass in India.

Young Victoria is quite a different film. It is semi truthful depiction of the young Victoria prior to her becoming Queen and her relationship and eventual marriage to Albert. It has stunning scenery including Arundel Castle, but there is no real depth to the film.

This is a talk in the TED series about the computer grahics that went to make ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’. I will be seeing this film next week.

www.sussexaestheticdentist.co.uk » Health

The Last Cigarette

Work Out