Truly, Madly & Wonderfully
Sunday, January 12, 2014
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| Georgito O'Reilly |
I sometimes think about those strange and unlikely
events. Consider that Roman Emperor Constantine the Great became emperor when
his father died. Constantine was in York. In the few times
that I have been in London
I can imagine passing through the ghost of Julius Caesar who did cross to
Britannia in a galley.
Another unlikely occurrence is that of
Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart’s librettist who in 1805 ran a grocery
store in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. My favourite is that of
Napoleon’s brother Joseph (formerly the King of Spain) who in the 1820s lived
in Bordentown, New Jersey.
I have my own example of a strange and
unlikely event. It may be of a minor scale in comparison to the above but, for
me most interesting as I was personally involved.
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| John Lekich |
The first picture you see here is of
Georgito O’Reilly, an Argentine nephew of mine who now plays golf but formerly
was one of Argentina’s
rugby stars. Second you have my friend John Lekich who is a novelist and
writer. He lives in Vancouver.
Third is actress Juliet Stevenson from Kelvedon,
Essex, England.
All three happened to converge one weekend
in Vancouver.
Lekich had to interview Stevenson for the Globe & Mail. I was the
photographer the Globe usually assigned for these hotel room portraits. The
place for the interview and photographic session was the beautiful Sun Room at
the Vancouver Hotel.
It just so happened that in that weekend in
1993 my nephew O’Reilly in a business trip to Chicago
from Buenos Aires, stopped in Vancouver on his way home. I told him he
could come along.
There is something to be said about Juliet Stevenson not being fazed I the least in having three men with her during her interview
 |
| Juliet Stevenson |
.
Only today did I finally get to see her
fabulous 1990 film Truly, Madly, Deeply,
directed by Anthony Minghella and with the sonorously voiced Alan Rickman. Without
letting to much out of the hat this is not a ghost story but a story with ghosts
who are into Bach and film noir. There is a little magic, too.
All I can ad here is that I instructed
Stevenson to do three different things, one after the other while I clicked my
shutter and did not move the camera from its tripod.
The film I obtained (naturally) from the
Vancouver Public Library.
