Patrick Beacham:  

ey through heaven, in order to meet the challenges he must overcome, the narrator encounters heaven’s version of his original family home in Southern California, Venice, Rome, the Scottish Highlands, the Lake District in England, and Lake Como. The vehicle provided to him for this journey is the same red ’63 T-Bird convertible he once owned on earth. He also learns of the boundless possibilities that exist in heaven. While in Venice, he develops a close relationship with Anton Walbrook, the actor who portrayed Boris Lermontov in The Red Shoes and who is one of several guides he will encounter. The actor likens heaven to a watch or timepiece, but a device so complex that to learn all its capabilities requires endless experimentation and a tireless imagination. But again, these are powers that are never granted or given, but that can only be discovered. As the story draws to a conclusion, he meets with all the dogs he has ever owned, and all the women he has ever loved, and learns his last, most important lessons. At the top of a hill on Lake Como, there is but one more meeting: the final reunion of Pat, Heather and Shamoo. * * * This is something I wrote to include in a website I created for my film, The Audience Strikes Back, so if it seems a bit lacking in details more pertinent to Classmates, that's the reason. I hope I get around to something a little more relevant later on. One of my fondest memories is of being taken every Thursday evening to UCLA and to the iconic Royce Hall in the center of campus to see the masterworks of such directors as John Ford, Josef von Sternberg, Fritz Lang and King Vidor. This was the mid-1960s, and all these directors were, miraculously, still alive, and even more miraculously, there, in Royce Hall, at the screenings, to talk about the films we had just seen:The Iron Horse and The Grapes of Wrath; The Blue Angel and Morocco; Woman in the Moon and Fury; The Crowd and Our Daily Bread. Of course, my love affair with film had begun long before this, and it must have seemed awfully strange to my parents that when I was ten or eleven I was asking for such books as "Classics of the Silent Screen;" or to my teachers when in an essay on American history, in the ninth grade, I bemoaned the fact that Frank Capra was no longer "being permitted" to make movies. I loved UCLA, even as a kid, and it was the only college I ever applied to. Why I didn't enroll in film school is still an unfathomable mystery to me. However, I did earn a degree in Political Science, and my continuing fascination with this subject is reflected in the various social and political issues that are at the core of The Audience Strikes Back. Much earlier, this interest was also reflected in the somewhat different set of issues that animate my one novel, "The Things That Are Thor's," completed in 1987. The book tells the story of how the world's largest oil company, Thor, capitalizes on the world-wide shortage of oil to engineer a colossal coup in Washington. Never sold, the novel may have been way ahead of its time - or just too dangerous to print (no, not really). So, as the age of technology began to blossom, and finding myself in dire need of a professional makeover after my book went nowhere, I signed on with Microsoft Corporation. And there, in the belly of the beast, I learned a good many useful things about myself. My tenure at Microsoft lasted, off and on, for nearly eight years, and when I left Microsoft in April 2005, it was for the purpose of making The Audience Strikes Back, my first feature film. I slipped into the role of director with surprising ease; perhaps it is the part I was born to play. I felt supremely confident throughout the entire production process, but unlike so many other directors who have succumbed to the same phenomenon, I hope and trust that this, in reality, was not some temporary form of megalomania. One thing only is assured: Sadly, I will never stand on equal ground with the likes of John Ford, Josef von Sternberg, Fritz Lang, or King Vidor, but I am grateful that I have been able to experience a little of what they experienced, and to feel a little of what they felt.