January 19, 2021, by Tosh Berman

 

January 19, 2021

It's the fate that Patricia Highsmith shares the same birthday date as Edgar Allen Poe. Two horror writers understood a troubled psyche and how that can cause an atrocity in one's life and fiction. I first discovered Highsmith's work just right before I made a massive trip to Europe in 1986. "The Talented Mr. Ripley" made an impression on me as a realistic study of a sociopath personality. Throughout the years, I felt I have met or known a version of Tom Ripley. They are more common than one thinks. They usually lurk around the fringes of the wealthy and powerful. 

Identity as an issue or subject matter lingers in my mind for many years now. I'm struck by how people adapt to their and other cultures by imitating genuinely not their behavior. Suppose you were not born in a specific class or social placement. In that case, therefore, you either re-do your personality or identity to fit into a social setting. One notices this in the art world, and I have to presume in the music and film world as well. Highsmith work's unique thing is that she doesn't take a moral stand on a crime or the conflicted personality who commits the crime or act of violence. The reader put themselves into the plot, and there is always that creepy feeling that you are in compliance with the crime.  

My father and I didn't have many serious talks, but I remember when I was a teenager, and he told me that I should never feel guilt. If I caused someone harm due to an accident, never feel guilty. Why he brought this up to me is still a mystery. Whenever I read Highsmith, I think of what my dad told me. They're five-years in the age difference, and I suspect if Wallace (my dad) knew Patricia, he would like her. Even though she was not crazy about Jewish people, I guess that there would have been some form of friendship between them. 

Highsmith wrote a book of short stories about animals who commit murder, "The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder." Her love of animals was not on the same plain as cute kitties and smiling dogs; no, her animals have a sinister quality. And she was an animal lover. Highsmith raised and traveled with snails. She would put them in her purse, with some lettuce, to feed themselves on trips.  I suspect that she lived a life without anyone around her. Highsmith wrote characters that were so real, with all the duality aspects of a figure who can't develop or deal with the lack of identity. Murder and violence in her books are, in a funny manner is a transgression of an intimate feeling between two people. When I was in Europe doing the travel thing, I would find her books used mostly in the Penguin editions. I brought them home with me, and reasons I don't know why, but her work makes me feel human. 

January 18, 2021, by Tosh Berman

 

January 18, 2021

“I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally, I became that person. Or he became me.” Acting or I should say performing, allowed me to wear someone else’s clothes. I never was interested in me being “me,” but more obsessed with the idea of being just something a bit more, if you get my drift? “I began by acting like the person I wanted to be, and eventually, I became that person.”

I do mostly comic roles because I have an understanding of absurdity. Each glance can bring a laugh, but there is a darkness that lurks behind the chortle. My facial expression shows laughter, but it can also be crying. The essence of acting to me is to land between misery and humor. Each scene should be seen as a sculpture, where I and the others take space and transform it into a dimensional landscape. The answer is never direct but more implied with nuance and skill with the written word (script). 

As a teenager, I often went to the Bristol Hippodrome to see the annual pantomime. It was a popular form of theater that was a variety show; it came from the 16th-century French commedia dell’arte. The entrance to that world leads me to New York performing with the Pender Troupe. Still, eventually, I stayed in New York and made a name for myself in Vaudeville. I moved to Hollywood in 1930 and made my first real successful film, “Blonde Venus.” It was around this time I met Randy. 

I had a happy life with Randy, but life has a way of pulling you to directions that one couldn’t control. I never regret the changes that took place, and I felt confident that destiny will work on my behalf. Working with Hawks and Hitch gave me the opportunity to convey a series of textures in my performance. A rich life doesn’t always mean the financial comforts, but more questioning who I’m. LSD interested me greatly, and I do recommend it under a doctor’s approval. I had so many barriers that I needed the assistance of the drug to remove the curtains that separated me from life. 

I can’t express how bizarre the world is and how lucky that I became what I became. The insanity of our times, and that I was able to float on the currents with nothing but my charm, is a skill, but chance has a lot to do with it. When I think back as that small boy in Bristol, England, raised by an alcoholic father and a clinically depressed mother, it seems I had no choice but to transform myself into another fellow. It’s interesting to note that my father was a tailor’s presser at a clothes factory, and my mother, a seamstress, that I instinctively know the importance of clothes. My father once told me to buy only expensive shoes, then say five cheap pairs of shoes. The expensive shoes will last longer and age beautifully. With the help of well-developed people and LSD, I became the man I wanted to be.