So I religiously job-searched through all the usual channels, and in those pre-internet days that involved plenty of footwork.
Every week I’d go to the media and entertainment industry hubs where jobs were posted on notice boards watched-over by office staff jaded from listening to every up-and-coming industry professional in the city. I’d also trawl through industry magazines at the news stand, and then head to my office – a phone booth on Charing Cross Road.
I managed to land a few meetings and interviews with television networks, agents, and production offices, but meetings were as far as these opportunities ever went.
Eventually I was offered a position as a Production Assistant at a small television studio in West London, primarily to work on corporate videos.
‘The Corporates’ dance to a different drum, all very ideas-driven and upbeat. In reality, it’s an industry which relies on making the most boring subjects seem incredibly interesting.
To achieve that, corporations need artists willing to sell their souls for a little while, and with London’s infamous cost-of-living on the increase, and the rent still to pay, I dubiously accepted the invitation.
One of the first things to learn is how to speak Corporate language – a meeting is ‘face time’; giving something a try is ‘running it up the flag pole’; and discussing the fine details over coffee is ‘stirring some sugar over it’.
Just about everything is underscored, literally, with motivational (‘Movin’ on up’) stock music to leave even the most pessimistic participant humming with new-found enthusiasm.
One of the most famous corporate videos ever produced was the management training series presented by John Cleese which cashed-in on his Basil Fawlty notoriety. These set the benchmark in many-a corporate video meeting I attended over the next few years.
My soul has blocked-out most of the utterly boring products, concepts and sales-pitches I made videos about, but there was one project which was so forward-thinking it was impossible to not get genuinely excited about.
This was a drama-documentary produced by an inspiring scientist, Professor Robert (‘Bob’) Spence, of London’s Imperial College of Technology.
Bob had interviewed eminent design engineers about what they imagined human-computer interaction might be like in the year 2020, and he wanted these ideas realised in an ‘envisionment’ of social interaction 25 years into the future. This was my kind of corporate video.
We set about producing what became known as Translations, and it was my role to put a team together to create a drama-style production.
My eye for great locations had fallen on a property owned by the college in Berkshire, a wonderfully out-of-the-way place called Silwood Park House. Once a private home designed by Alfred Waterhouse (1830–1905), this place had all the trimmings that made it perfect for a timeless feel.
Now, thanks to one of the core ideas envisaged in Bob’s project – the internet – I was able to watch Translations again via YouTube.
We had very non-John Cleese resources (you’re only allowed to laugh with us, not at us!), but what is amazing about watching this production now is how many of the concepts have become realities – touch screens, flat screens, video conferencing, Intelligent Person Assistants … and there is still plenty of time for the rest of the ideas to see the light of day before 2020.
Student films aside, Translations was my first real crack at a complete production which relied on my skills as a director realising a vision onscreen. I saw it as a warm-up for things to come – working with skilled friends, on location in old homes and gardens, bringing ground-breaking screenplays to the screen.
If only life were so wonderfully linear.
Further work was in short supply (here come the days jobs!), but I did spend most of that summer polishing my second screenplay, Menace, which I developed into a one-hour format for a television production application. Inspired and deeply moved by the homelessness in London, and the impact of Thatcherite policies on Britain in the 1990s, this polemic little piece was full of gritty realities which Other Kingdom lacked, and remains one of my first works not to hit the rubbish bin.
I think the reason it survives is the rejection letter I received, a kind note which appealed to me on two counts – (a), to believe that not everyone was getting such a letter, and (b), that I should not give up writing.
I threw the letter away because I wasn’t sure (a) was true, but almost 20 years on, technology might have changed dramatically, but (b), I am still writing.
FICTION MEETS FACT Brenda Blethyn as Jane Austen’s Mrs Bennet
A Writer’s fascination with an incredible journey.
ONE of Australia’s pioneering settler families – the Pitts – have occupied much of my research and writing for the past two decades.
The primary feature of their story remains the incredible journey taken by matriarch Mary Pitt (née Matcham) who, with her five children, embarked from Portsmouth in England and sailed to the other side of the world in 1801.
Mary’s descendants (and many others) have speculated about the driving forces behind the journey ever since.
Inspired by Germaine Greer’s enlightening life of Ann Hathaway in Shakespeare’s Wife (in which factual possibilities are explored in lieu of primary evidence on a woman who has become relatively ‘invisible’ to history); and with the help of a group of Mary’s great great great great granddaughters (all of them excellent researchers and writers), I eventually got the opportunity to publish a feature article on Mary’s story in the April-May 2010 edition of Blue Mountains Life Magazine (Vintage Press).
Grit & Gentility
A family reunion and Jane Austen shed light on the Hawkesbury’s pioneering matron-of-honour, Mary Pitt.
Altering the plot of Pride and Prejudice by one degree would expose prospects for Georgian women which Jane Austen might never have contemplated. If she’d killed off Mr Bennet in the feared duel over his daughter Lydia’s elopement, his women might have landed in the same boat as early Australian settlers Mary Pitt and her five children, on a factual voyage from Dorset to New South Wales in 1801.
“With her heightened concerns, Mary Pitt even seems like a real-life Mrs. Bennet.”
According to family myth, the death of husband Robert Pitt (a shopkeeper) left Mary in ‘reduced circumstances’ and reliant on her cousin George Matcham, brother-in-law to naval hero Lord Nelson. Their connection brought about a seafaring solution to Mary’s imminent poverty.
Mary wrote to George from onboard the Canada moored at Portsmouth – “May 31 1801 Good Sir We came on board yesterday my situation here is very bad … God knows my heart I would rather fall into the hands of a merciful Creator or to suffer any poverty by his grace to restrain me from falling into the hands of wicked people”.
George had worked for the East India Company and knew the shortage of women in the colony made Mary’s daughters (Susannah, Lucy, Jemima and Esther) a precious currency in a land yet to have its own coin economy. “Have as much patience as possible until the voyage is over,” he wrote, “and then comforts will crowd upon you”.
But Mary was not satisfied about threats to her family’s gentility – “at first the ships crew were continually (sic) passing by to the stores and the surgeons room close by us which I complained of to Captain Patton as being a very unfit place for women …” she related, adding “since there is some alterations”.
The first Pitt family reunion has seen much sorting of historical evidence from family myths, myths that give depth to the lives of the Pitt women but require evidence to be taken seriously as oral history.
As the story of a rural family whose gentility is at risk, with multiple daughters of marriageable age, Pride and Prejudice serves as a cheat’s guide to the period. With her heightened concerns, Mary Pitt even seems like a real-life Mrs. Bennet.
Records of the Pitt’s arrival in Sydney include the marriage of Lucy Pitt to John Wood, third mate on the Canada. On January 11, 1802, barely three weeks after landing, the Pitt women (with Thomas as one of the witnesses) attended Lucy at St John’s church in Parramatta. An old family myth holds that the family stayed with Governor King and his wife Anna at Government House in the same township.
Austen outlines the timing of a genteel marriage – “allowing for the necessary preparation of settlements, new carriages, and wedding clothes,” Mrs Bennet “should undoubtedly see her daughter settled … in the course of three or four months”.
If Lucy and John courted during the social stopovers typical of migration voyages, Mary had months at sea after Rio de Janeiro for marriage preparations. The makings of muslin dresses for a midsummer wedding filled her luggage lists. Lucy already had a settlement in the form of a letter from Lord Nelson’s father to Governor King – the same secured land grants for every one of the Pitts.
SIMILAR SISTERS Jane Austen’s fictional Bennet sisters
The marriage was granted by special license, an expensive option allowing couples to choose the time and parish of their wedding. Mrs Bennet reveals they were also a status symbol when she encourages Lizzie into one upon betrothal to Mr D’Arcy.
It was in Governor King’s power to grant one, and perhaps the kudos the Pitts received from such a license was elaborated into a stay at Government House?
Before the dust settled on Lucy’s nuptials, Mary was granted one-hundred acres close to the Hawkesbury River. Watched-over by a garrison of redcoats, this small community was not unlike Austen’s fictitious rural Meryton, although at Pitt Farm marriage prospects remained secondary to the production of food until 1804.
By then, Susannah Pitt was thirty and nearly past marriageable age. When pressed by Lady de Bourgh about her age, Elizabeth Bennet pluckily refuses to reveal it. She was barely twenty. Like Lizzy, Susannah had younger sisters at her heels.
The Bennet sisters relied on their father to encourage good matches. In 1804, King wrote to Nelson describing the Pitts as the “object of my care”, which might have extended to fostering connections with eligible single men.
Corporal William Faithfull retired from the militia and started farming before King arrived in the colony. Permission for Susannah and William to wed was granted for November 21, 1804, in Parramatta.
James Wilshire arrived in 1800 and soon began the colony’s first tannery. His wedding on February 12, 1805, made the Sydney Gazette – “Married on Tuesday at Sydney, Mr James Wilshire to Miss Esther Pitt”.
This brings to mind the reporting of more Bennet nuptials – “…it was not put in as it ought to be,” Mrs Bennet complains, “it only said ‘Lately, George Wickham, Esq. to Miss Lydia Bennet,’ without their being a syllable said of her father’”.
Esther Pitt was in the same position, it seems, since her father Robert similarly gets no mention in print.
Flood, famine and civil unrest brought a swift end to the governorship of the Kings in 1806. Governor William Bligh was removed during the Rum Rebellion of 1808. Meanwhile, Jemima Pitt waited five years for a suitable match – these were not times for courtship or marriage. The already-wed got on with the business of producing children.
Cut forward two hundred years and the genetic inheritance of Mary Pitt is gathering for the first time at a family reunion. Most of the older generation speak of “time passing” as the motivating factor in attending. A younger descendent of Lucy Pitt says, only half-joking: “I finally know why I have an irrational fear of water – all those sea voyages”.
When asked about what he thinks of Mary’s courage, a descendent of Thomas Pitt shrugs and tells me with more enthusiasm about opening a family vault in a Richmond cemetery to inter the ashes of his grandmother, only to witness a coffin crumble in the rush of air.
There are group photos, a cake and speeches, and a moment of pure pathos as tribute is paid to Mary Pitt for having the grit to make the journey.
Did Mary achieve what she hoped?
‘Gentility’ was described by poet John Ciardi as “what is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone”. Whatever Robert did to leave his family in the wonderfully genteel state of ‘reduced circumstances’ is the biggest family myth of all, and remains Mary’s best kept secret.
After the Governorship of Lachlan Macquarie began in 1810, Mary prepared her last unmarried daughter for the journey to Richmond where Jemima married Captain Austin Forrest on April 18th 1810.
But happy times did not last. Jemima and Austin lost their only child, followed soon by Austin’s death after being thrown from his horse on Christmas Eve 1811. Sometime in 1812, John Wood, Lucy’s husband, also died in unknown circumstances.
Within Mary Pitt’s luggage lists on board the Canada was a goodly amount of black crepe, for the purpose of making mourning blacks. It would have been put to good use in that year.
The speed with which Jemima found a new match probably had a lot to do with Mary. Lucy had the distraction of children, whereas a childless widow of marriageable age went against the very grain of gentility.
Barely a year after Forrest’s untimely death, Robert Jenkins was “courting a rich widow”, according to a letter he wrote on November 29, 1812, “young, rather handsome, very good-tempered, a great economist and therefore very desirable … this is at present a great secret”. On March 22, 1813, Robert married Jemima Pitt, so we might assume he was describing her in his letter.
By 1813, Mary was happy to release her only son Thomas for a match of his own. He’d spent a decade making a good name for himself as a farmer on his own land grant. At the age of thirty-two he offered his hand to seventeen-year-old Eliza Laycock, a perfectly genteel age difference.
By the time Mary died in 1815 at the age of sixty-seven, she left thirteen grandchildren in the colony which was soon to adopt the name Australia. Although without her, the family’s gentility faced further challenges.
THE NEW WORLD Parramatta c.1820 by Joseph Lycett.
Susannah Faithful died in 1820. A year later, William Faithfull and his sister-in-law Lucy Wood applied for a license to marry.
Marrying your deceased wife’s sister was permissible before 1835 unless someone objected, and someone probably did, judging by what appeared in the Sydney Gazette on September 26, 1821.
“William Faithfull of Richmond in this territory maketh oath that he is single and unmarried and under no contract or promise of marriage to anyone except to Mrs Lucy Wood of Richmond, widow …”.
Before the marriage on September 29, the Reverend cancelled proceedings. Perhaps William was bound by another match? Only two months later he married a Margaret Thompson. Things may never have gone so far on Mary’s watch – she would not have tolerated the impact on Lucy’s reputation.
Lucy never remarried and survived all her siblings long enough to regale the first Australian Pitt generations with her journey from Dorset.
The Pitt’s reunion may have unearthed more family myths than it solved, but it would be a shame to rely only on primary evidence and deny a rich oral history that might be surviving snippets of Lucy’s eyewitness account of that journey.
Pride and Prejudice suggests that fallen women be “secluded from the world, in some distant farm-house”. Jane Austen spared Mrs Bennet and her daughters the farmhouse, but they never saw the New World, whereas Mary Pitt’s journey from Austen’s England to Pitt Farm placed her alongside the mothers of a nation.
WITHOUT a short-cut into the BBC or an entrée into a production company, it was almost impossible to get a job in film or television production in London, but pushing a foot through the door of a post production (editing) facility with a resume in your hand was a viable way to enter the industry.
And so, within 24 hours of pounding the narrow thoroughfares of Soho, between Shaftesbury Avenue and Oxford Street, I was offered two jobs.
Having just signed a lease with a group of friends on a cottage on the Isle of Dogs in east London, I had rent to pay, so I said yes to both.
As it happened, that weekend I went back to ARTTS International in Yorkshire to complete the final edit on a drama-documentary, and I was greeted like a conquering hero on the Saturday morning by a mob of students, hungry for a taste of the world beyond the pig farm, and then confronted by a Feedback Session.
Only ARTTS alumni around the world will know exactly what I mean by the latter. How do I describe it and not make it sound like ARTTS was, on occasion, a little like a correctional centre?
In any case all the accolades looked kindly beyond the fact that the best position of the two on offer was that of a lowly Post Production Runner.
A Soho Runner in those days was not an enviable position. If you were serious about your career, you’d want to stay in the job for no longer than six months.
So I took the offer than a Dean Street post production facility made to me, and started that very week. By the end of summer, I hoped, I’d be up the next rung of the ladder.
The other runners showed me to my first task – to clean-up the soft drink supply room below street level in a dank passageway that looked (and smelt) like I’d imagine the very same street did in Dickens’ time. Five years of tertiary education had prepared me to recognise dramatic tension, at least.
The rats gave ground by retreating around a bend in the subterranean storeroom, while I re-arranged the pallets of lolly water, trying to ensure they were not sitting in the inch of water that flowed across my shoes.
This post-production company liked to keep its clients happy, so there was no set lunch menu. Instead, the gourmet delights of central London were ordered and fetched on foot.
FABULOUS FOOD For fabulous people, Berwick Street Markets, Soho.
But we runners were also required to make a selection of sandwiches for clients who just couldn’t wait, created from the fresh produce of the fruit and veg markets on Berwick Street, with slabs of fresh bread and the finest cold meats from local delis. Luckily I’d had some sandwich-hand training while studying at NIDA, so I knew my way around a slice of focaccia.
There were some pretty speccy people making their way through these doors, but also plenty of clients who just believed they were on the A-List, and the only way they could gauge their level on the ladder was by shouting at the runners.
I never got shouted-at, but when a music-video maven came through to the kitchen in a tube dress right to her tennis-shoed ankles, calling for a “toasted ciabatta with marmite”, I made the mistake of answering that we were fresh out of ciabatta, but we had plenty of focaccia.
Her perplexed look quite naturally led me to believe that she simply didn’t know what focaccia was, so I began to explain. Before I got through the basics, she said: “I know exactly what it is!”, before insisting her first choice was fetched.
LONDON’S MAZE Soho is a small district jammed in between four major thoroughfares.
Now, most people couldn’t pick ciabatta from focaccia in a blind test, and since I was a Soho Runner of some weeks’ experience, I knew at that hour there wouldn’t be a fresh piece of either available anywhere. So I just sliced some bread quite thickly and smothered it with the maven’s favourite spread.
And so the cry of “I know exactly what it is” went on to be summer’s catchphrase at that end of Dean Street.
Each week I religiously wrote my first screenplay (an adaptation of E.M. Forster’s Other Kingdom), and duly typed it up for consideration. The potential to make movies flowed through my veins, even if I was really working in catering under a fancy name.
Running video tapes and reels between editing houses meant I soon got a great knowledge of Soho’s street network. Rarely did we have to travel beyond the zone bordered by Oxford Street, Charing Cross Road, Shaftesbury Avenue and Regent Street.
I also discovered the locations of all the production offices listed in the films I aspired to join-in-on – Merchant Ivory, Goldcrest, The Oil Factory – behind glossy doorways with polished buzzers at street level, with people rarely coming and going.
In this maze I realised that if you spend enough time in Soho, you’ll encounter famous people. I saw Sean Connery looking both ways as he turned into Dean Street in his rather boring looking car; Greta Scacchi looking like she’d locked herself out of her flat; and Germaine Greer leaning into the wind of a stormy night as she ambled next to me along Oxford Street.
Soho also brought me face-to-face with entertainment by a different name. One racy shopfront near the markets displayed hilarious posters of new porn films with names that referenced the mainstream movies of the day. There was A League of their Moans (a slightly different take on the all-girl baseball team flick), and Howard’s End (in which Howard’s end was about to be spanked by a rather domineering lady).
The really sad element to Soho was the homelessness. At the end of almost every day I packed-up the leftover sandwiches and took them to St Anne’s Court, where legions of homeless men spent their days in the sunlight. They accepted the fresh, nutritious food with a quiet gratitude … they knew exactly what it was, and they didn’t care if it was ciabatta or focaccia.
After a couple of months the boss found out and told me to stop, since the bags I carried the food in were the very same we used to run tapes and reels around Soho – a handy way of advertising, I guess – and he didn’t want our company associated with any feeding-of-the-poor.
But I didn’t stop. I didn’t even use different bags. I wasn’t going to leave perfectly edible food for the rats.
Michael Burge Media 