Are My Blinkers Showing?: Adventures in Filmmaking in the New Russia

It's a mild book, with sidelights about the new Russia, a scary place in which millionaires have enormous power but the average person on the street has nothing. York should be ashamed of himself for participating in the continuing repression of nearly a billion people. Be that as it may, if it earned him and his attractive wife Pat, a noted photographer, a few rubles and Pat some photo ops, who's to grudge him his holiday in the cold? The movie he was working on three years ago, MOSCOW HEAT, is as he says almost a direct homage to an Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle of a decade back, RED HEAT, starring an improbable Arnold wannabe of Russia, who is very amusing. You know what the whole BLINKERS book remind me of? THE MUSES ARE HEARD, by Truman Capote, in which Capote joined a travelling troupe of black American singers who were presenting Gershwin'd folk opera PORGY AND BESS in Societ Russia back in the benighted 50s. York has some of Capote's amusing cosmopolitanisms down, though he's less anxious to offend his hosts, perhaps because they are, after all, threatening enough goombas and plus they might stop the check. But when things go wrong for Michael York, he can always amuse by recalling similar episodes from his long and up and down career, including the worst movie experiences (in Losey's ACCIDENT he was forced to wait upside down in a wrecked car for hours while the leading lady stepped on his face) so that whatever happens now, he's been through a lot worse, like the Brazilian director who lit everything, even exteriors, with tear-gas-like Liquid Smoke. He can also recall the genuine wit of famous friends, such as Noel Coward, who told him that "television is for being on, not watching," and Graham Greene, who once said that he has been to too many places to be happy. This book is recommended for all who enjoy a well-turned out tour to a devil-infested nation, with some laughs and insight stirred in like vodka.