4 - Wednesday, August 24, 1988 -

North Shore News

® strictly personal @

ww Cayce

IT WASN’T that I needed lessons in acting. I mean, we all

act, don’t we?

The ability to act is ingrained. It
is such an essential part of the
huraan condition that life as we
know it would be impossible
without this most rudimentary of
skills, Somewhere in the DNA is a
program that says: Thou shalt act.

An acting instructor told me
recently that when casting calls go
out for kids to play parts in com-
mercials, the people who scrutinize
the little Thespians have a rule of
thumb that goes roughly like this:
the younger they are, the better
they are.

Where child actors fall down is
once they reach the age of some-
where around six or seven, the
point at which they become old
enough to be trained how to act.

Once you start training them,
the element of play is lost. It
becomes work. It becomes forced.
It starts to get phoney. It’s as
though we are born knowing how
to ride a bicycle. Someone showing
us how only confuses us.

Asa student of scriptwriting at
the Canadian Centre for Advanced
Film Studies these last several
months, I have been cajoled into
studying acting a bit. And recently,
| actually had to perform,

Movies are not, [ have learned, a
writer's medium. Everybody
genuflects in the direction of the
script. Producers and directors and
actors all solemnly vow that

without the script, there is nothing.

But then once they have the
script in their grubby little fists,
they begin to do all sorts of
perverted things to it. They call it
‘interpreting’ the script. It looks
inore like gang rape to me, the
writer. But enough whimpering...

Some acting classes were better
than others. We had a ‘“‘Method’’
acting instructor up from Los
Angeles who frankly drove me
batty, but did get it through my
thick skull about how to make
oneself cry on the spot, for in-
stance. Or, better yet, how to
make someone else cry on ttre spot.

Not that there’s anything par-
ticularly new here. I have a hard
time getting through the morning
paper without finding something
to cry about. As for making other
people cry, well, have | tried any
of my latest jokes on you?

Anyway, the crunch came the
other day when | was cast as the
preacher in a short movie being
made here about a Gold Rush-era
lady whose husband dies, forcing
her to work as a bar-girl in a
saloon.

Dressing up in a 19th century
preacher's costume was great fun.
All black except for the cleric’s
collar. Everyone agreed | looked
the part, no problem. It was what
is known as a ‘*bit’’ part. | was an
extra, you understand. Nothing
more.

Whirlpool Sauna & Steam!

The role called for me to stand
at the foot of a grave and joina
small group of bereaved people
singing The Lord Is My Shepherd.
And then I got to read from the
scriptures, the part about walking
through the Valley of Death.

li should have been easy
enough. Yet movie-making is never
as easy as it looks by the time it és
up on the screen.

In our case, it happened to be
one of the hottest days of the hot-
test summer on record in Toronto.
Cleric’s collars, as | always
suspected, are for masochists.

A stroke of seeming good for-
tune saved us from sweltering to
death, however. A terrific wind
sprang up, just as we started
shooting.

There we were, standing in a
field, surrounded by fake tomb-
stones, with the ‘Rev. Bob’’ hav-
ing to keep chasing after his black
hat as it blew away.

This was great dramatic stuff,
what with the trees thrashing in the
wind and the dust blowing from
the grave and this moaning scund
all around.

Except that the styrofoam
tombstones kept blowing over, one
after another, and cach time the
director would have to yell ‘*Cut!””

While the crew figured out new
and interesting ways to keep the
tombstones propped up, the cast
would stand around perspiring or
chasing hats.

By the 10th ‘‘take’? — that is,
shooting the whole scence all over
again — my inclination was just to
have someone re-write the script,
making it into a horror flick or
something...

Oops! Re-write the seript!!!!27?
What was | thinking?

Funny how, out under the blaze
of lights and sun, the script doesr:’t
seem so precious any more. One
wishes, in fact, that the bloody
script could be overturned as easily
as the fake tombstones.

The writer? Who cares about
him? Probably sitting off some-
where having a beer @
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SPECIAL OFFER

N. Shore building
permits increase

THE NORTH Shore continues tc experience a building
boom, with the value of building permits on the increase in

all three municipalities.

North Vancouver District is
showing the highest development
figures, with as much as $80 mil-
lion worth of building permits
estimated for the whole of 1988,
compared to $54,737,500 for 1987.

West Vancouver District expects
to equa! or exceed last year’s total
for buiifding permits at
$69,141,002.

North Vancouver City issued
$43,159,894 worth of building
permits in 1987 and predicts an in-
crease to $49 million by the end of
this year.

Volume of building starts figures
importantly in the increases in
building permits being seen in
North Vancouver District.

“The largest increase has been in
inultipie-family dwellings, primari-
ly in the Seymour area,” district
chief building inspector Einar
Carison said Monday.

Last year’s figure for multiple
family was $5,862,000, compared
to $23,456,000 for this year.

Single-family construction has
experienced an increase from $20
miltion last year to $25 million in
1988. Commercia! development
has seen a decline, from $5.6 mil-
lion to $2.4 million. Last year's ac-
tivity was due to a lot of commer-
cial activity along Marine Drive,
which has now been filled in for
the most past, said Carlson,

Carlson said that issuing of
building permits should continue,
with the Canadian International
College coming on stream, as well
as more single family and
multiple-family developments.

Development. activity should
stay about the same, Carlson said,
providing interest rates continue to

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hold where they are. Most activity
should occur in the eastern part of
North Vancouver District, where
the bulk of the available land is, as
well as along the Braemar-Demp-
sey connector in the North Lons-
dale area.

As of the end of July, West
Vancouver District had issued
$46,245,599 worth of building
permits, similar to the $46,928,424
for the same time period in 1987.

Most of the building activity in
West Vancouver can be attributed
to the construction of expensive
single-family residences. In 1987,
222 homes were built worth a total
of $35,760,265.

Duplexes totalled $3 million,
while apartments came in at
$17,950,000. Even additions and
alterations to homes were valued at
$7,392,599,

Commercial activity did not fig-
ure highly in the West Vancouver
building permits, with a total of
$560,000 for last year.

West Vancouver’s high numbers
in residential development can be
attributed to some extent to the
great value of the homes being
built. The areas seeing the most
activity now are Westhaven and
Cypress.

North Vancouver City's total
building permits, as of the end of
July, came to a value of
$19,696,644 — lower than last
year’s figure at the same time of
$23,803,886.

See Building
Page 9