At one point in her operatic career, Maria Callas became so portly that in a performance where she sang next to live elephants on stage – they were there as props – […]
Hitting the high notes
Teach writing by dancing up a storm
Among the things I revisit to maintain my sense of wonder is this one-minute video clip dating back to the1970s showing the choreographer Balanchine teaching the great dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov the role […]
A beauty who aged like fine wine
It was the mother of a primary school classmate – a woman of uncommon good looks – who gave me my first inkling of the kind of power female beauty can command: […]
「理想的年代，美麗的人」
「你真像剛從片場走出來啊！」大街上有陌生人跟我說。
Setting the scene
The scene is to be filmed in a diner in Los Angeles, but the story is set in Manhattan. Solution? Place neon signs outside the eatery and drizzle down artificial rain, so […]
Writing conclusions that work
“A rope is made up of a huge number of fibres, but not a single fibre goes through its entire length. It’s the way the fibres overlap that creates the rope’s strength,” […]
Writer as acrobat
“A writer, like an acrobat, must occasionally try a stunt that is too much for him,’ The New Yorker editorial writer E. B. White once counseled. I lack the nerve to knowingly […]
To write well, sweat the small stuff
It was only after My Fair Lady was showing in the cinemas that its set designer Cecil Beaton noticed a mistake he had overlooked: towards the end of the film, in the […]
