STAYING IN THE PICTURE Part 1: The Kid Stays in the Picture is the name the 1994 autobiography by film producer Robert Evans(1930- ). It is also the title of the 2002 film adaptation of the same book. Last night I watched this film adaptation.1 By 1994 I had my eye on an early retirement; by 2002 I had taken a sea-change and retired to a small town by the sea, about 5 kms from the Bass Strait, an extension of the Great Southern Ocean. Robert Evans had been part of my life since the 1950s, but he had always been far in the background beginning with the 3 films: Man of a Thousand Faces, The Sun Also Rises, and The Best of Everything. He has been so far in the background of my life that, until last night, I had never even heard of him. This should tell readers more about me than it does about Evans because Evans was at the centre of Hollywood life for decades. He has been called 'the Godfather of Hollywood'. During his 60 years in film, from the 1950s to the turn of the 21st century, the cinema was not that central to my life. I was no connoisseur of the celebrity circuit, and watching either TV or films was always a relatively peripheral part of my life. At least this was the case for the half-century from about 1954 until the last ten years, 2004 to 2014. By 2004 I had retired from all FT and PT paid employment. I had retired by degrees from FT, PT and most volunteer work, as well as the endless meetings involved. All of these occupations occupied me for 60 to 80 hours a week for more than half a century. My student-working life had lasted from 1949 to 1999. Going to "the pictures", as cinema is often called Downunder, and watching TV were both only occasional activities, certainly not definite parts of my daily diet. That has no longer been the case for the last decade. Part 2: Many elements from Evans' 1994 autobiography, such as his childhood and all but one of his seven marriages, were dropped from this doco because the producers felt that their inclusion would slow things down, and not move the visual-auditory-experience along with the pace required for modern audiences. Evans started writing his autobiography when he was in his 60s. I started writing mine, my memoirs & autobiography, in my 40s and there was much I also had to leave out for many reasons mainly associated with moving my story along in the direction I wanted it to go. A person's identity is not to be found in behaviour, important though that is, nor in the reactions of others, but in the capacity to keep a particular narrative going. The individual's autobiography or biography, if he or she is to maintain regular interaction with others in the day-to-day world, cannot be wholly fictive. The person must continually integrate events which occur in both their internal-world and the wider-external world, and sort them into the ongoing 'story' about the self.'2 I want to thank 1ABC1TV, 10:20-11:50 p.m., 2/2/'14 for this stimulating doco.

1. STAYING IN THE PICTURE
Part 1:
The Kid Stays in the Picture is the name the 1994 autobiography by
film producer Robert Evans(1930- ). It is also the title of the
2002 film adaptation of the same book. Last night I watched this film
adaptation.1 By 1994 I had my eye on an early retirement; by 2002 I
had taken a sea-change and retired to a small town by the sea, about 5
kms from the Bass Strait, an extension of the Great Southern Ocean.
Robert Evans had been part of my life since the 1950s, but he had
always been far in the background beginning with the 3 films: Man of
a Thousand Faces, The Sun Also Rises, and The Best of Everything.
He has been so far in the background of my life that, until last night, I
had never even heard of him. This should tell readers more about me
than it does about Evans because Evans was at the centre of
Hollywood life for decades. He has been called 'the Godfather of
Hollywood'. During his 60 years in film, from the 1950s to the turn
of the 21st century, the cinema was not that central to my life. I was
no connoisseur of the celebrity circuit, and watching either TV or
films was always a relatively peripheral part of my life. At least this
was the case for the half-century from about 1954 until the last ten
years, 2004 to 2014. By 2004 I had retired from all FT and PT paid
employment. I had retired by degrees from FT, PT and most volunteer
work, as well as the endless meetings involved. All of these
occupations occupied me for 60 to 80 hours a week for more than half
a century. My student-working life had lasted from 1949 to 1999.
Going to "the pictures", as cinema is often called Downunder, and
watching TV were both only occasional activities, certainly not
definite parts of my daily diet. That has no longer been the case for
the last decade.
Part 2:

2. Many elements from Evans' 1994 autobiography, such as his
childhood and all but one of his seven marriages, were dropped from
this doco because the producers felt that their inclusion would slow
things down, and not move the visual-auditory-experience along with
the pace required for modern audiences.
Evans started writing his autobiography when he was in his 60s. I
started writing mine, my memoirs and autobiography, in my 40s and
there was much I also had to leave out for many reasons mainly
associated with moving my story along in the direction I wanted it to
go.
A person's identity is not to be found in behaviour, important though
that is, nor in the reactions of others, but in the capacity to keep a
particular narrative going. The individual's autobiography or
biography, if he or she is to maintain regular interaction with others in
the day-to-day world, cannot be wholly fictive. The person must
continually integrate events which occur in both their internal-world
and the wider-external world, and sort them into the ongoing 'story'
about the self.'2
Part 3:
I want to thank 1ABC1TV, 10:20-11:50 p.m., 2/2/'14 for this
stimulating doco, and 2Anthony Giddens(1938-), a British sociologist
who is known for his holistic view of modern societies, for this idea
and many of the ideas in this prose-poem.
Giddens is considered to be one of the most prominent modern
sociologists, the author of at least 34 books, published in at least 29
languages, issuing on average more than one book every year. In
2007, Giddens was listed as the fifth most-referenced author of books
in the humanities.
Giddens links the rise of the narrative of the self, biography and
autobiography, with the emergence of romantic love. Passion and sex
have, of course, been around virtually forever, but the discourse of

3. romantic love is said to have developed from the late eighteenth
century.1 Romantic love introduced the idea of a narrative into an
individual's life, a story about two individuals with little connection to
wider social processes. Giddens connects this development with the
simultaneous emergence of the novel, a relatively early form of mass
media, that suggests ideal, and less than ideal, romantic life
narratives.
Part 4:
All of this sociological theory is, of course, arguable. These stories of
romantic love did not construct love as a partnership of equals, of
course. Instead, women were associated with a world of femininity
and motherhood which was supposedly unknowable to men.
Nevertheless, the female protagonists were usually independent and
spirited. The masculine world, meanwhile, was detached from the
domestic sphere, both emotionally and physically, and involved a
decisive sense of purpose in the outside world.
Whilst passionate affairs might come and go, rather unpredictably, the
more long-term and future-oriented narrative of romantic love created
a 'shared history' which made sense of two lives and gave their
relationship an important and recognised role. The rise of this 'mutual
narrative biography' led individuals to construct accounts of their lives
so that, even if the relationship with their partner went awry, a story
still had to be maintained. And so now the biography of the self has
taken on a life of its own. Giddens has much to say about the narrative
of the life-span which I have found useful in the three decades, 1984
to 2014, during which I have been engaged in writing my memoirs.
The self is made, only partly
inherited, partly static in our
post-traditional order.....It's a
reflective project, a project we
continuously work on--reflect.

4. We create, maintain, revise our set
of autobiographical narratives...the
story of who we are, how we came
to be where we are. This is our selfidentity, our understanding of who
is this self that we are, the account
of our life, actions and influences
which make sense to us and is also
oriented towards our anticipated....
future. Perhaps this all began with
the Greeks and those Romans, way
back in the Middle Ages, or in what
some historians call modern times.1
1
To Giddens modern times began in the late 18th century. There are,
of course, many takes on the modern and when it began, as well as on
the post-modern, and if it began. In my own literary work I take the
modern and the post-modern to be the last two-and-a-half centuries
associated, as those 250 years are, with the lives of the two precursors
of the Babi-Baha'i revelations and Babi-Baha'i history into the 21st
century.
Ron Price
3/2/'14.