Off the Beaten Track: Is Time Travel International?

 

This week we welcome the gorgeous Pamela DuMond, talented writer and lady of many talents. In grade school Pamela stuttered and was bullied. Reading became her refuge. At age twenty she conquered stuttering and started talking. Her brother swears she hasn't shut up since.

Pamela discovered Erin Brockovich's life story, thought it would make a great movie and pitched it to a production company. Erin Brockovich the movie was nominated for four Academy Awards. Julia Roberts won an Oscar for portraying Erin.

Pamela writes romantic YA thrillers—The Messenger (Mortal Beloved, Book One)—and sexy comedic Cupcake mysteries. Cupcakes, Pies, and Hot Guys is the latest in the series.

Pamela is also a chiropractor, cranio-sacral therapist and cat wrangler. Besides writing, she loves reading, the beach, yoga, movies, animals, her family and friends. She lives in Venice, California with her furballs.

Thanks Alli Sinclair for having me on your fun blog!

I’m a huge fan of YA novels. I’m also a huge fan of Last of the Mohicans, the 1992 movie featuring a young, very buff Daniel Day Lewis as Hawkeye, and the perennially gorgeous Madeline Stowe as Cora.

The IMDB description: “Three trappers protect a British Colonel's daughters in the midst of the French and Indian War.”

My description: “An epic romantic action-adventure historical fiction movie that makes every woman with half a heart break into goose bumps and pinch herself repeatedly when Daniel Day utters what is perhaps the most romantic line, ever.

“You be strong, you survive... You stay alive, no matter what occurs! I will find you. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far, I will find you.”

Ack! Kill me now. Instead of that, I decided to write my own version of that story.

My book, The Messenger, (Mortal Beloved, Book One) is about Madeline (yes, named after you-know-who) who travels hundreds of years back in time to a bloody war between the Natives and the colonists.

INFINITY. LIFE. DEATH. REBIRTH. Some souls are meant to be together. But pursuing true love can be not only dangerous but, deadly.

Sixteen-year-old Madeline’s cheated death once. She was but a baby in a booster seat in her mama’s car when they were rammed off a tall, Chicago parking garage. She lived. Her mama disappeared. But when Madeline’s shoved in front of a speeding commuter train she believes death has claimed her.

Maybe. Maybe not.

My Samuel

Madeline wakes in the warm, dead body of a girl who was slain moments earlier in a brutal raid on a colonial outpost in Rhode Island during King Philip’s War in 1675. She quickly learns she has time traveled hundreds of years into the past to claim her birth right as a MESSENGER — a soul, who if properly trained, can slip through time’s fabric at will, delivering messages that could change one life or many.

My Madeline

But falling into a forbidden love with her soul mate, Samuel, a Native boy, attracts the wrong kind of attention.

Rumors of witchcraft and spying could get them killed. Worse - deadly HUNTERS, dark-souled predators as well as skilled time travelers, crave Madeline's powers. Can Madeline find the way back to the future in time to save herself and Samuel?

This book was a blast to write, but also tough, as I had to do so much research into a time period and a war I knew nothing about. I picked Rhode Island to be the location of the colonial garrison as the state has high bluffs overlooking the Atlantic. (Figured I could use that in a romantic scene!)

Rhode Island at sunrise

I chose King Philip’s War as I didn’t want to completely rip-off Last of the Mohicans. I discovered it is America’s ‘forgotten war’—very few people know about it. It’s also considered America’s bloodiest war in terms of casualties. The outcome stripped the East Coast Natives of pretty much all their land; their rights and many were even sold into slavery. The balance of power between the colonists and the Natives completely shifted at the end of this conflict.

I also learned more about the colonists. They left Europe to pursue religious freedom and be able to own land. In turn they religiously persecuted the Natives, even pitching Native babies into river waters to see who was pure and who was possessed by demons. The pure babies would float. The babies with demons would drown. Cruelty and stupidity are also ‘international’ and not practiced by one race or culture.

Years ago while traveling in Portugal with my BFF we stumbled across the churches, castles and the “Romeo-Juliet” story of Portugal. I decided to set book two in the MORTAL BELOVED series in 14^th Century Portugal during the true historical story of Prince Pedro and his beloved, Inez. When his father the King and his advisors killed Inez, Pedro lost his mind in his quest to bring the traitors to justice. My characters, Madeline and Samuel, will play out their own romantic saga in medieval times filled of castles and kings, nobility and gypsies, intrigue and deception. Let the games begin!

Bussaco Forest, Portugal

And if you’re interested, here’s a link to the book here.

If you'd like to watch a video of my mystery series, here.

One Century, Two Actresses, Big Choices

Estelle Merle Thompson, born a hundred years ago into a humble Indian family, became one of the world’s most noted actresses, and not just professionally.
 

Born in Bombay, British India, in 1911, to a Sinhalese mother and an English (or perhaps Irish) father, Estelle grew up dirt poor, living in a shabby Mumbai flat with her single mother and five siblings. In 1917, she moved to Calcutta, where she was lucky enough to receive a scholarship to an exclusive private school for girls. She didn’t last long there, quitting school after being teased for her mixed heritage and opting instead to receive tuition at home.

By the time she was 18, Estelle had developed a passion for acting, watching films, and going to nightclubs. She dated an English actor who promised to help break her into the acting world if only she could find her way to a particular movie studio in France. It’s possible he sponsored her trip, because she and her mother were able to pack up all their belongings and get themselves to Nice. As a result of this acquaintance, by the late 1920s, Estelle appeared as an extra or in other minor or unbilled roles under the name “Queenie O’Brien,” receiving at least one offer because of her “exotic” looks.

Within the span of a few short years, Estelle hopped from France to England and eventually to Hollywood. By 1933, her career had taken off under a new stage name, Merle Oberon, the one in which the world would remember her by.

Merle Oberon achieved dazzling fame in the 1930s and 1940s, playing the glamorous leading lady in many classic films – Wuthering Heights (opposite Laurence Olivier), The Scarlet Pimpernel (with Leslie Howard), as Anne Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIII (with Charles Laughton). In 1935, she was nominated for an Oscar for best actress for her role in Dark Angel. She enjoyed a glamorous, jet-setting lifestyle as a starlet during the Golden Age of Hollywood. She played both royalty and high-society dames in her famous movies, romanced the likes of David Niven (a heartthrob in his day), and married at least four times before she ultimately died after suffering a stroke at the age of 68 in Malibu, California.

I’ve always been fascinated by this actress. Her Indian background was revealed through an unauthorized biography only after she died. Throughout her life, Oberon guarded her secret closely, though it wasn’t easy. When her dark-skinned mother was around, Oberon told people she was the maid. When her brother came to visit her in Los Angeles, Oberon refused to see him and had him turned away. Oberon also led everyone to believe she was from… of all places, Tasmania.

Why Tasmania? Probably because it sounded exotic and remote (all the better that it was hard to fact check) while still vaguely white and western. In 1978, a year before she died, she bizarrely accepted an invitation to Hobart, Tasmania, to be honored as one of its hometown heroes. Bizarre because we now know that she’d never stepped foot on Tasmanian soil until that point. (Sad but true, her husband at the time urged her to accept the invitation, because he wanted to see the place where she grew up, and she couldn’t find a way to fanagle out of it without telling him the truth. She spent a large chunk of that trip in her hotel room, suffering from some mystery ailment, and collapsed at the main event itself and had to be helped back to her hotel early.)

(Photo: David Shankbone)

Fast forward a hundred years to a sort of reverse story. Sarita Catherine Louise Choudhury, born in England to a Bengali father and English mother, carved a very different acting career from her mixed heritage. For one thing, she used her real name, the ethnic one. Raised in Jamaica, Mexico, and Italy, and completing two university degrees in Canada may have expanded her mind to the possibilities of breaking out of the stereotypes. 

Sarita Choudhury isn’t a Hollywood starlet like Oberon was but that’s in part the path she forged, preferring complex, independent productions over big budget, blockbuster ones. And her exotic looks and knack with accents has made it easy for casting agents to place her in a diverse range of roles, which she continues to embrace.

Her first film role, as an Indian-American lead in a major mainstream movie, Mississippi Masala, made her a household name both in India and its diaspora. Following the surprise success of that film, Choudhury has played a stunning array of roles: as a Pakistani country-western singer in the 1992 film Wild West, a Chilean maid in the 1993 film adaptation of The House of Spirits, a lesbian mother in 1994’s Fresh Kill, and a Bosnian refugee  in 2001’s 3 A.M. She’s also appeared in multiple genres—mystery (A Perfect Murder) and fantasy (M. Night Shyamalan’s The Lady in the Water)—and taken on bold roles such as Queen Tara in Mira Nair’s sexually frank period piece, Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love.

Choudhury’s presence isn’t limited to the big screen either; she’s appeared on stage in 2004’s Roar and on television, with recurring roles in two NBC serials, Kings and Deadlines, as well as guest spots on popular shows such as Law and Order.

Last year, the single mom moved herself and her young daughter to India to shoot her first Indian-made film, For Real. In media interviews, Choudhury appears to view her move to India as one of her most celebrated adventures, including the chance to reconnect with her roots.

Living in different times, with more progressive outlooks, opportunities, and cultural mores, obviously caused these women to take divergent paths, but doesn’t it kind of make you wonder what Oberon’s life would have been like had she been born in our times, with circumstances similar to Choudhury’s? What choices would she have made?

In one sense, acting freed Oberon from her humble roots, allowing her to pursue fame and fortune, to redefine her past and her future. But for me, growing up Indian-American and hearing Oberon’s story, I always found it a slap in the face, that she found it better to live such a large lie than to just be herself (a powerful message for me at a time when there were few, if any, Asian-American role models, especially South Asian ones). I’d wondered, of course, whether she’d ever regretted her choices but even more, how and why she went through the charade at all. She couldn’t have died thinking the shame and secrecy had been worth it, could she? But it wasn’t only a career decision; she obviously hid her secret even from those closest to her. 

At what point, did it go from being a circumstance dictated by external forces to her own choice?

Definitely Not A Fruit Loop

From the movie "The Gang's All Here"

When I hear the name Carmen Miranda, I picture a vivacious lass sashaying across the floor. She’s wearing a hat made of fruit and is singing with a Latin accent, wooing onlookers with a cheeky smile. Sure, it’s the image Carmen portrayed in Hollywood movies, but not one her fellow countrymen in Brazil were too happy about.

Born in 1909 to Portuguese parents, Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha immigrated to Brazil with her father when she was ten months old. Her father worked in the produce business, and her mother joined the family in Brazil the following year. Maria do Carmo earned the nickname of Carmen from her father, due to his love for the opera Carmen.

When Carmen was a teenager, her sister contracted tuberculosis, so Carmen worked in a hat shop to pay for her sister’s medical bills. Carmen dreamed of entering show business but her father disapproved and when she sung at festivals and parties, her father would beat her mother for allowing his daughter to perform. In 1929, Carmen made her first recording and became the first singer in Brazil to sign a contract for regular work on Brazilian radio. She acted in a few Brazilian movies then traveled to New York to perform on Broadway.

Hollywood found this spirited actress irresistible, starring her in an English speaking movie, Down Argentine Way. Not only did this movie introduce Carmen Miranda to an American audience, but it was the movie that made Betty Grable a household name. Carmen soon performed at the White House and sang for Franklin D. Roosevelt. And as a result, she became involved in the Good Neighbor Policy—a program designed to strengthen the ties between the U.S.A., Latin America, and Europe.

By 1946, Carmen Miranda was Hollywood’s highest-paid entertainer. Her image in Hollywood enraged many in Latin America though. People felt she blurred the differences between the people of Brazil, Portugal, Argentina, and Mexico, and that she mish-mashed samba, tango, and habanera music. With her wacky head dresses laden with fruit, Carmen earned the name as “the lady in the tutti-frutti hat.”

Upset that the Brazilians criticized her for selling out to the Americans, Carmen sang Disseram que Voltei Americanizada (They Say I’ve Become Americanized). She also released the song, Bananas is My Business, based on a line from one of her movies. The criticism from her countrymen upset her greatly though, and it took 14 years before she returned for a visit. 

From the movie "The Gang's All Here"

Unfortunately, by then, Carmen had turned to drugs, alcohol and heavy smoking as a way of coping with an abusive marriage she had endured for many years. In 1955, Carmen filmed a segment on The Jimmy Durante Show. After her dance number had finished, she collapsed and Durante ran to her side. She laughed it off, commented about being out of breath, but continued on with the show, only to suffer a heart attack later that evening in her Beverly Hills home. Carmen passed away that night.

The young lady with a penchant for wearing fruit hats is still remembered today. She has a special place on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and many documentaries and books have been devoted to Carmen Miranda’s life. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Marco de Canavese, Portugal, there are museums dedicated to this songstress.

Her fame spans decades. In 1982, a hot air balloon named “Chic-I-Boom,” flew at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta and the bananas alone were 50 feet long. Velvet Underground released a song called, The Soul of Carmen Miranda and in Sydney, Australia, there’s a suburb called Miranda with a night club called Carmen’s. In 1998, Carmen Miranda Square opened in Hollywood and is only one of a dozen city squares in Los Angles dedicated to performers. The square is located on the intersection of Orange Drive and Hollywood Boulevard, near the spot where Carmen entertained a group of servicemen from the USO.

I’m still undecided about whether Carmen Miranda sold out. She certainly made people aware of Brazil and the rest of Latin America but many felt her image did a disservice to her people. She was in the entertainment business, and she performed that aspect of her job brilliantly. People loved her Latin flair and sense of humor, and even today, she is still widely remembered. So as a business woman, she achieved her goal but as an ambassador for Brazil, she upset a lot of people.

What do you think? Do you have examples of people who have portrayed their countrymen in a way that isn’t necessarily a true reflection of their culture?

And of course, this post wouldn’t be complete without some videos. I bet you can’t watch them without smiling. Close the door and sing until you’re hoarse!

The Actress Who Kicked the Cultural Barrier

Shohreh Aghdashloo at the 2008
Toronto International Film Festival

These days, I spend a lot of time thinking about cross-over artists—singers, actresses, and writers who start out in one culture or language and later make it big in another. Partly, this is because I’ve just started writing a new book about an Iranian rapper who has just released her first English-language hit in the United States and is poised to become a household name. Like many Iranian performers in the real world, my rapper grows tired of the restrictions imposed on her by the Islamic regime in her native country and she flees to California where the language barrier means that she initially performs only in front of Iranian audiences.

One real-life artist who followed a similar path is the Iranian-American actress, Shohreh Aghdashloo. She may not be a household name yet, but Aghdashloo has worked steadily in Hollywood and American TV for a couple of decades now. Her breakthrough role came in the 2003 film The House of Sand and Fog, where she played the English-challenged wife of a former colonel in the Iranian Air Force (Ben Kingsley) and earned an Oscar nomination for her nuanced performance. Before that, she’d already appeared in TV shows such as Matlock (1990) and Martin (1993) and later took guest roles in Will & Grace, ER, Gray’s Anatomy, Law and Order: Special Victim’s Unit, House, M.D., and The Simpsons, among others. So even if you can’t pronounce her name, you may have seen her in one of these programs.

Shohreh Aghdashloo was born in Tehran in 1952 to a family of intellectuals. She built a successful acting career in the 1970s with roles in Iranian movies such as Gozaresh (The Report) and Sooteh Delan (Broken Hearts). During the 1979 Islamic Revolution, she moved to England to study international relations with the intention of working to improve the situation in her homeland. But a few years later, when a friend offered her a role in a play that became a big hit in the Iranian diaspora, Aghdashloo revived her acting career. Now a U.S. citizen, Aghdashloo lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the actor/playwright Houshang Touzie and their daughter Tara.

In 2005, Aghdashloo drew heavy criticism from the Iranian community for her role as the terrorist, Dina Araz, in the hit TV show 24. Prior to that time, the actress had avoided roles that reinforced negative stereotypes, and she even worked exclusively in theater for some years because the only film roles on offer were for terrorists or battered Middle Eastern women, portrayals she feels do not reflect reality.

At the time, I sided with the Iranian critics and wondered why this rising star would choose to reinforce such a disparaging view of her nationality by playing Dina Araz. But in an interview with Time Magazine, Aghdashloo defended her choice by saying, “[…] this role was a full-dimensional character. She’s a very strong woman, and she has many faces. And things may not be what they seem.”

I can’t fault her for making this kind of artistic choice. What performer can resist an intriguing role? And it raises the question of whether an actress must always see herself as an advocate for her culture and avoid stereotypes at all cost, or whether her primary responsibility is to her art and the opportunity to turn even a stereotype into a fully fleshed character. I think Aghdashloo has struggled with this question, and her choices have taken her to both sides of the issue.

Shohreh Aghdashloo has built a career as a character actress rather than a leading lady. But in the 2009 film, The Stoning of Soraya M., she again bucks tradition and plays the main character. This movie tells the chilling tale of Soraya, who is falsely accused of adultery, a crime punishable by stoning. Aghdashloo plays Soraya’s aunt, Zahra, who tells her niece’s story to a foreign journalist in an attempt to spread the word about the terrible injustice and cruelty of her niece’s fate. As Zahra puts it to the journalist: “Voices of women do not matter here. I want you to take my voice with you.”

That line sends chills up my spine every time I replay it in my head.

In an interview with Backstage, Aghdashloo discusses this movie and the choices she’s made over her career.

Offscreen, Shohreh Aghdashloo demonstrates the social consciousness that led her to England and her interrupted pursuit of a career in international relations. She is a tireless advocate of Iranian artists in the diaspora (and has been a strong critic of the iconic Iranian singer, Googoosh, for failing to do the same). Most recently, Aghdashloo has spoken out in support of the Baha’is, a religion that is severely persecuted in Iran. Her latest project is, Iranium, a documentary about Iranian politics, the West's collective Mideast policies, and nuclear proliferation. Released in February 2011, the film is already generating controversy within and outside Iran.

To learn more about this versatile actress and her bold artistic choices, check out her interview with Brad Balfour.

Raising the Stakes

I’ve never been one to pay much attention to awards. Sure, they’re nice, but as with anything to do with the arts, they are subjective. Back in 2000 I discovered Nueve Reinas (Nine Queens), an Argentine movie that had won 21 out of the 28 film awards they’d been nominated for. Investing a couple of hours of my time to watch this movie appealed to me, and I’ve now lost count of how many times I’ve seen it and discovered something new. 

I will give full disclosure by saying I’m a sucker for heist and con-man movies. I’m also into movies and books that make me want to go back and study it in further detail so I can find those little pearls that weren’t obvious the first time around (The Sixth Sense is a classic example.) Nueve Reinas is another instance where knowing the ending will give you new insight and appreciation for the clever writing, acting, and directing when you watch it again.

Set in Buenos Aires, the film opens in a convenience store. Juan, a young con artist, successfully scams the cashier but on a second go with the con, Juan messes it up with the new cashier on the next shift. Marcos has been observing Juan and poses a detective, hauling him out of the shop and out of trouble. When Juan discovers Marcos is a fellow conman, he tries to enlist him as a mentor. Up until now, Juan has been conning small time but he needs to go large. If he can pull off a big scam then he’ll have enough money to bribe a judge to reduce his father’s jail sentence from ten years to six months.

At first, Marcos knocks Juan back, but then relents and takes on the protégé, and that’s when they learn about the Nine Queens—valuable stamps that really get the movie going. I will leave the plot description there for fear of ruining the story for those who haven’t seen this amazing movie. I will add, however, there is a wealthy widow with dubious motivations, a smuggling Spaniard, and Marcos’s estranged sister, Valeria, who can easily blow the con if she chooses to. Valeria almost steals the show with her femme fatal strut and pout. Mix this in with an ending you’re not likely to see coming, and Nueve Reinas is a wise investment of cinematic time.

Then there’s Buenos Aires, a gorgeous city. It has some dodgy areas, of course, but the architecture, plazas, gardens, and waterfronts give the Paris of the Americas a special beauty. None of this is clearly shown in Nueve Reinas which is a tad disappointing. It certainly would have been a great way to show the city at its best. But what this movie does do brilliantly is depict the Argentine sensibilities and humor while running with one storyline and having another, more complicated story, simmer just below the surface.

It’s the three-dimensional characters that are the catalyst for plot twists and will have you scratching your head long after a new turn appears. Unfortunately the film’s director, Fabián Bielinsky, passed away in 2006. Nueve Reinas was the first of two films he made, and I can only imagine what gems of Argentine cinema he would have produced if he were still around. The film’s actors--Gastón Pauls, Ricardo Darín and Leticia Brédice--are still contributing to the burgeoning South American film industry that is attracting attention from around the world. 

And to entice you just a little more to hire or buy the movie, here’s the trailer: