Paperback
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Done Hunting brings Martin Hunter’s memoirs to a close, sharing adventures and observations from his sixth to ninth decades. With descriptions of theatrical productions he’s written and directed, it also provides a subtle commentary on Canada and its social and cultural place in the world. Done Hunting also chronicles Hunter’s experiences as a magazine and radio journalist and his unsuccessful attempts to break into film and television as a scriptwriter. Accounts of his travels in Mexico, Sweden, England, France, and Italy include fascinating encounters with Laurier LaPierre, Bill Glassco, David Earle, and Adrienne Clarkson and writers Barry Callaghan, Mavis Gallant, and Gore Vidal. His friendship with Richard Monette and peripheral involvement with the Stratford Festival, as well as his work as a philanthropist as president of the K.M. Hunter Charitable Foundation, are highlights of this fascinating and insightful self-examination.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781770413290 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | ECW Press |
| Publication date: | 09/13/2016 |
| Pages: | 192 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.70(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
LOLLING IN LOTUS LAND
Flying across the Rockies as the setting sun gilded their snow-capped peaks and landing at the Vancouver airport just as the lights began to come on all across the city, I felt the promise of new beginnings, new adventures. I took a taxi to the house that Laurier LaPierre was renting with some friends in English Bay and was welcomed with a shot of whisky and a quizzical grin.
“’Ow nice to see you, mon cher. You look sexier than evair.” He introduced his housemates: my friend Bill Glassco’s cousin Chris Price, and a pretty young boy of twenty-two named Kevin who was trying to recover from a recent breakup with his boyfriend. We tucked into some smoked salmon and then sat down to a splendid meal: lamb ragout and braised parsnips, followed by crème brûlée. I had forgotten what an accomplished cook Laurier was.
I had returned to Toronto after a round-the-world tour hoping to find work as a theatre director; it was what I had done for the previous ten years. But I found that working as a freelancer was not easy. Unless you were a promising kid with a pretty face, you were expected to have a theatre of your own so you could reciprocate by offering theatre directors a show in your space. Besides, after ten years at the university I was labelled an “academic” director, whatever that was supposed to mean.
Then I learned that Ryerson Community College, as it was then known, was looking for a new head of their theatre department. I was summoned to meet a panel, one of whose members was a former student with whom I had always gotten along well. He was very encouraging, and I thought the interview had gone well. A few weeks later I received a letter informing me that although they thought I was qualified, they had interviewed another applicant who had an Oxford degree, so of course I would understand that they considered him preferable.
I learned that Christopher Newton was leaving the Vancouver Playhouse to become the leader of the Shaw Festival, and the Playhouse was looking for a new artistic director. I sent in an application and received an enthusiastic reply explaining that the board would be very interested in meeting me. I decided to fly to Vancouver at my own expense to show my enthusiasm. Did I want to move to Vancouver? I had only the briefest acquaintance with the city, gained during a weekend on leave when I was a naval cadet back in the 1950s, but I had heard good things about the coastal city and had several friends and acquaintances there. It would be a chance to remake myself in a new environment and I was determined to grasp the opportunity.
The interview with the board members was courteous. The chairman was an Englishman with a neatly trimmed moustache, who peered at me over his half-glasses. There were two or three men in business suits and half a dozen women, all smartly dressed.
“Tell us a little bit about yourself,” said the chairman.
I explained that I had been a child actor, had played leading roles at university, and studied briefly at the LAMDA in London.
“Why did you come to Canada?” asked one of the women. She was a big woman, big hair, big lips, big breasts, and no doubt a big bum.
“I was born here.”
“So you’re a Canadian. How amusing.” A slight titter went around the table.
“From your résumé, you seem to have mainly directed classical texts. Shakespeare, Molière, the Greeks.”
“I’ve done a number of Canadian plays by James Reaney, Robertson Davies, Angus Braid . . .”
“Braid? Should we know him?”
“A very talented young writer. One of my former students.”
“Ah, a student.” Her breasts heaved as she turned to signal the chairman her dismissal of this minor accomplishment.
“Do you have any experience with musicals?”
“I turned a number of classical texts into musicals. Works by Brecht, Aristophanes, Wedekind . . .”
“Pardon my ignorance. Who is Wedekind?”
“An Austrian writer of the early twentieth century. He wrote the Lulu plays that formed the basis of the opera by Alban Berg.”
“Your interests seem rather esoteric, if you don’t mind me saying so,” volunteered a rather acid-faced woman in a pinstriped pantsuit. “What about comedy? Do you have any experience directing comedy? Audiences like to be amused.”
“I’ve directed comedies by Shakespeare, Garrick, Alexander Pope, Edward Albee.”
“What about Neil Simon?”
“Well, no . . .”
“Your experience strikes me as rather academic,” said one of the businessmen.
“I was working for a university.”
“Of course.”
I realized I was losing their interest. The interview went on for perhaps another ten minutes before the chairman thanked me and said they would be in touch. Then he shot his final salvo: “What a pity you’re not English.” I was not surprised that I didn’t get the job.
The next day I visited my friend Tony Bourne, who lived in a neat little apartment in English Bay. He had been in my year in Trinity and after failing first year three times had been told that he was not suited to academic study. He took a job in advertising in Montreal for a while and then drifted west where he settled with his mother, who lived in an apartment on the floor above him. Another friend described her as “a sweet English rose who had been insufficiently watered.” Mother and son dined together most evenings, though they no longer dressed for dinner as they had done when Tony’s father, who had been a colonel of the Shanghai police before the war, was still alive.
After dinner Tony sometimes went out on the town visiting gay bars, where he had an extensive acquaintance. He was not a serious drinker, but even so I could not understand where he got the money to do this. He did work several afternoons a week for an antique dealer, but I think his mother must have given him an allowance. As the widow of a British officer she would have had a meagre pension, but perhaps she had inherited some family money. After a typically English meal of overdone beef, boiled potatoes, and Brussels sprouts, Tony turned to me, “Carpe diem, carpe balls. Let’s head to the Castle.”
In the bar at the Castle Hotel, a long-time gay hangout, we encountered Tony’s friend Arthur, an enormous and genial Native Canadian. Tony confided later that Arthur was an aristocrat in whatever tribe he belonged to, where he had a rank roughly equivalent to the Duke of Edinburgh.
Arthur was a well-known figure in the Vancouver gay community. Two years earlier he had been crowned Empress of the Pacific Northwest at the annual drag ball. Tony, Arthur, and I were to spend several evenings together. Arthur was quick-witted but not malicious, and he pointed out a number of prominent Vancouver gays, commenting on their entertainment value and sexual endowment and proficiency. He suggested we round off the evening with a visit to the baths but we declined.
The next evening Chris Price and Laurier took me to hear their friend June Katz, a jazz singer at a local bistro. June was a New Yorker and a divorcee, a handsome woman with a smoky voice and a style reminiscent of Billie Holiday. She sang several standards; I particularly remember her rendition of “Don’t Smoke in Bed.” In between sets she came to our table, and we immediately clicked. We made a date to have lunch the next day in her house at Point Grey.
June’s other luncheon guest was her friend Emmanuelle Gattuso, an equally lively woman, who drove up in a rickety old Mercedes. We all drank martinis and ate lobster sandwiches. Emmanuelle reported that she had started dating a very rich man but wasn’t sure whether it was leading anywhere. June encouraged her to keep on; her own boyfriend was far from perfect, but she couldn’t imagine not having a man in her life. She was still on very good terms with her ex-husband. “He’s a sweetheart. I wish I was still in love with him, but what can you do? I just knew it was time to move on.”
After lunch, they suggested we go to Wreck Beach. We drove in the Mercedes to the UBC campus, parked, and went down a steep wooden stairway to the beach below. It turned out to be a nude beach, populated by people of all ages walking around in the buff. There were some very attractive young people but also people in their forties, fifties, and even sixties. We all shed our clothes and set out on a walk to admire the eye candy.
I found myself being ogled by a rather fleshy young woman in her twenties. I encouraged June and Emmanuelle to go off on a stroll on their own and the young woman came over and introduced herself as Melissa. She told me she was a student of anthropology and asked me if I had seen the museum of native artifacts on the university campus. When I replied in the negative, she offered to give me a tour the next afternoon. I was to meet her at the entrance at one o’clock. She gave me an appraising look and took off when she saw June and Emmanuelle coming back. “Good for you. You scored!” crowed June, with a knowing grimace.
The next afternoon I waited for Melissa. Outside the museum were tall totems, carved by the various tribes of the West Coast. I had seen totem poles at the museum in Toronto but they were encased in stairwells. Here they stood in the open air, majestic against a background of distant mountains and forests. I had a sense of the mystery of an ancient culture.
Melissa was a bit late, but when she showed up she took me inside the museum, which displayed the fantastic brightly painted masks the native people had carved to be used in their rituals. Melissa explained that they danced in these masks, which represented the spirit of the animals associated with the various tribes. Each tribe had a winter potlatch, a feast at which they gave each other gifts. The grander the gift, the greater the status of the giver. Unfortunately, this tradition led to the destruction of native society. With the coming of the white man, the chiefs aspired to give even more magnificent gifts: top hats, bathtubs, copper spittoons.
In order to afford these luxuries, they sent their women into the cities of Vancouver and Victoria to work as prostitutes. Many of them contracted diseases, which they brought home, which rapidly decimated the native population. The native societies, which had survived more or less intact until nearly the end of the nineteenth century, collapsed. Early in the twentieth century, the Canadian government banned the potlatches and confiscated many of the masks and other regalia associated with the ceremonies. They took them to Ottawa and sold many of them, reportedly for a few thousand dollars, to the Museum of Natural History in New York, where they can still be seen gathering dust in the basement, although the Canadian government kept some of the best items, which are now proudly displayed at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau.
I was fascinated by these expressive masks and painted boxes. I had always been interested in Aboriginal culture, beginning with the displays in the basement of the Royal Ontario Museum where, in glass cases, models of native communities were set up with mannequins clothed in fringed and beaded buckskin, squatting around fires or sewing leather leggings and moccasins. But this was another world altogether, a world that took shape in dense forests by the Pacific shore. These native people went to sea in huge war canoes and the museum actually had some early bits of film showing these activities.
As we lay together in her bed in her room in a campus residence, I asked Melissa if I could visit some of the native communities. She told me they still performed some
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements — viii
Lolling in Lotus Land — 1
Johnny Bananas — 19
Movie Madness — 28
School for Gossips — 36
Nasty Surprise — 45
Serendipity in Sweden — 58
Radio Days — 74
Down Mexico Way — 91
Up And Down in London, Paris, and Toronto — 99
The Stratford Experience — 108
Escapade — 118
God Save the Foundation — 129
Lovers and Madmen — 139
No Fool Like An Old Fool — 149
The Tennessee Waltz — 157
Coasting — 168