This is a blog only
Oh dear, I had a ‘little t(w)itter’ this morning. No not the internet thingy, but one of those little spasms of laughter enjoyed by the late British camp comedian Frankie Howerd.
This morning Geoffrey Giuliano , formerly known as ‘Ronald Macdonald’, sent me a clip with his latest starring role in another foreign made film in Thailand, this one made in Pattaya. He stars as the murdered foreigner but has lots of lines before his corpse is found on the street below a condo.
Now if the Thai Film Board are going to get upset about such documentaries as ‘Big Trouble in Thailand’ which was ‘reality television’, ehem with a few little tweaks, then they won’t be happy with the fictitional ‘Monks and mama-sans’, produced by a chap called Lab Ky Mo.
Well I know Lab sounds more Burmese than British, but this is another British/American made film, and it’s got it all, go-go girls, massage parlours, and sleazy sex tourists cue ‘Geoffrey’ scripted as ‘Freddie the Farang’ plunging from balconies etc. Top marks to the casting director.
It’s a short film. In fact you can read the entire script by clicking here. First of all I should explain that Geoffrey and I are old sparring partners. I usually duck when he is around. His language can be loud, and he does not mediate his vocabulary.
The last time he was at my house his voice boomed across the lake, sentences liberally sprinkled with four letter words, or rather four letter words somehow linked into sentences, as I patched him through to a news editor in London.
He was once very famous. He is a former rock author, hobnobbed with the stars, had his own weekly radio show ‘Geoffrey Guiliano’s Roots of Rock’ syndicated across 60 stations, and probably still is an authority on everyone from ‘The Beatles’ to the ‘Rolling Stones’. “I know I am not your cup of tea,” he tells me, a limey. As a journalist I keep in contact because Geofffrey I believe is a story waiting to happen. It could be messy.
Anyway several films have been based on his books including ‘his Paint it Black’ - The Murder of Brian Jones.
He has hours and hours of potentially explosive secret tapes of confessions of well known stars which have never made it to the light of day. Lawyers for Yoko Ono have been giving him a headache. I am keeping some of the tapes for him. I think a lot of people may have to die before these tapes are released.
Ironically, in an art imitating reality sort of way, much of that has been lost after he came to Thailand, and had a Thai wife, who will not realise what she has run away with. Had they stayed together I supect he would have ended up in the same way as the character Freddie the Farang, who he plays.
This is Freddie the Farang talking in the film to a young male tourist in Pattaya for the first time before Freddy himself takes the balcony plunge. You can watch it here
“Well, lemme tell you
something, - anyone out here who
is not a diplomat or working for
a large multi-national firm, is
in some way broken or running
away from something.
Geoffrey Giuliano in former years
They’re either running away from
themselves, ex-wives, child
support, or the police, IRS, or even running away
from success - me, believe it or
not, I used to be a corporate
millionaire… but I was 320
pounds and very unfulfilled!
And then comes:
“Freddie: Oh I get it, you’re looking for love
here? From a bar girl?
(scoffs)
You can’t buy love here, son.
You can buy a condo. And that’s
what a lot of guys do. They
come over here, fall madly in love
with a beautiful Thai babe in a
bar within 5 days of landing into
the country. Within a month
they’re married. But do these
fools really think these women
love them? The girls don’t love
them. Most of these women
already have Thai husbands, for
Christsake! But they call
them their brothers! Some of
them even have their ‘brothers’
live with them! Some farangs are
stupid enough to buy them a
$100,000 apartment. And then one
day, their ‘brother’ and maybe an uncle
and a couple of cousins come
around and toss them out the
balcony from the thirty fifth floor,
And the police just write it off
as suicide. It’s just another
ex-pat story. You can’t buy
love here, my friend…
Why Ronald Macdonald? Well he was Ronald MacDonald for over a year playing Ronald in the ‘Ronald MacDonald safety show all across Canada.
After he quit he became a vegatarian and expressed concerns about companies “who make their millions off the murder of countless animals and the exploitation of children for their own ends” in a submission on behalf of the plaintiffs in the 1991 famous London McLibel case.
Mind you in between times he seems to have also acquired a job playing ‘Marvelous Magical Burger King in New England for the Burger King empire.
Cracking good training for his acting role as a large, ugly, sex tourist in Thailand.
Geoffrey - George Harrison