I’m afraid that I can’t really tell you all that much about ‘Is Anybody There?’. I haven’t seen any of the previous work of the writer or director, haven’t even watched the trailer yet. I know from the synopsis from the Mayfair schedule and from IMDb that it’s an odd-couple genre of a story, revolving around a retired magician who befriends a ten year old boy.

Despite my minimal level of knowledge on the project, I’ll be there to catch it this week when we show it at the Mayfair. Reason being, is that Michael Caine is my favorite actor ever. I’m not quite sure the exact point that he became so. I know that when I was a lil’ kid, I managed to catch a lot of his classic stuff on (I think) PBS and TVO. I remember watching ‘Zulu’ on a tiny TV, and just being enthralled. Viewings of ‘Alfie’, ‘Italian Job’ and ‘Get Carter’ followed.

I won’t bother to continue to list his movies, ’cause the man’s done somewhere in the neighbourhood of 120 of ‘em. And in doing so has pretty much covered every genre, playing hero’s and villains, comedy and drama, lil’ indie films and big Hollywood mainstream productions. He’s played Scrooge (with the Muppets!), Jekyll & Hyde, Sherlock Holmes and the latest generation of film fans now know him as Nigel Powers or Alfred Pennyworth. It’s hard for me to point out a favorite…but I really love director Sidney Lumet’s Hitchcockian ‘Deathtrap’, which he starred alongside Christopher Reeve.

Of course, his busy productivity does lead to some strange choices popping up on his filmography (‘Beyond the Poseidon Adventure’…‘Jaws 4: the Revenge’). Without throwing too much fan worship his way though, I think that even those oddity’s on his resume are impressive to me. That old fashioned British commitment to the craft. I’ve read interviews where he’s commented that he’s not going to pass up a gig if he has a couple weeks open in his calendar. He brings his A game to any project, and works with the mindset of a carpenter, not a thespian diva.

Oh, and I don’t put much stock in awards, but the man has been won or been nominated for Oscars in five consecutive decades. Add seven nominations and an award from the BAFTA’s, and nine nominations and three awards from the Golden Globes.

Much like Peter O’Toole, who was hesitant to accept a life-time achievement award ’cause he didn’t think his career was over yet, Michael Caine isn’t slowing down. In his seventies he keeps a more productive schedule then successful actors half his age.

Evidently Michael Caine did this movie for pretty much nothing in the way of payment: “It’s an extraordinary film. It’s the only script I’ve ever read that made me cry. And I don’t cry easily. So I said I’d do it.” So take Mr. Caine’s word for it, and come on out to see ‘Is Anyone There?’.

When you come to see The Long Goodbye at the Mayfair (and for God’s sake, come see this film!), keep in mind the words Raymond Chandler wrote in his essay on detective fiction, “The Simple Art of Murder“:

“The realistic style is easy to abuse: from haste, from lack of awareness, from inability to bridge the chasm that lies between what a writer would like to be able to say and what he actually knows how to say. It is easy to fake; brutality is not strength, flipness is not wit, edge-of-the-chair writing can be as boring as flat writing; dalliance with promiscuous blondes can be very dull stuff when described by goaty young men with no other purpose in mind than to describe dalliance with promiscuous blondes…

“The realist in murder writes of a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities, in which hotels and apartment houses and celebrated restaurants are owned by men who made their money out of brothels, in which a screen star can be the fingerman for a mob, and the nice man down the hall is a boss of the numbers racket; a world where a judge with a cellar full of bootleg liquor can send a man to jail for having a pint in his pocket, where the mayor of your town may have condoned murder as an instrument of moneymaking, where no man can walk down a dark street in safety because law and order are things we talk about but refrain from practising; a world where you may witness a hold-up in broad daylight and see who did it, but you will fade quickly back into the crowd rather than tell anyone, because the hold-up men may have friends with long guns, or the police may not like your testimony, and in any case the shyster for the defense will be allowed to abuse and vilify you in open court, before a jury of selected morons, without any but the most perfunctory interference from a political judge.

“It is not a very fragrant world, but it is the world you live in, and certain writers with tough minds and a cool spirit of detachment can make very interesting and even amusing patterns out of it. It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization. All this still is not quite enough.

“In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things. He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. The story is his adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in.

“If there were enough like him, I think the world would be a very safe place to live in, and yet not too dull to be worth living in.”

You can read his full essay here.

Or, you could borrow a copy from the literature rack in our candy bar. All the books, magazines and comics there are available for your reading and browsing pleasure, and we operate on the honour system. Because what else can you do, walking these mean streets?