My Writer's Voice...And Ken

Last night at my penultimate evening class in How To Write For Stage And Screen, out tutor gave us an exercise where, off of the top of our heads, we were to write a short internal dialogue about something personal to us. As a bit of a control-freak, I hate these kind of "spur-of-the-moment" pieces and wrachked my brains for a topic to write on. I had been reading about the death of film-maker Ken Russell so as a bit of a filmbuff myself, I thought a wee piece on Ken and his films would be me to a tee. However, when we passed round our writings and each read out someone else's anonymously, my tutor managed to identify everyone's correctly, excpet for mine. He had guessed that I had written the pieces on someone's dog or the death of a father but didn't think this was my style. What do you think?

Ken Russell died yesterday and I noticed it particularly because of my doing this course in screenwriting.
I’m no expert on his movies – I was too young to have been aware of the outcry surrounding “Women In Love” with Olly Reed and Alan Bates wrestling nude or “The Devils”.
The Ken Russell film that had the biggest impact on me I think was “Tommy”. Again, I was never a big fan of “The Who” but it was something new and amazing – a film that’s basis was “rock opera” - songs telling a story.
From the first scenes of Robert Powell as Tommy’s airman father and then the appearance Keith Moon as the paedophile Uncle Ernie – “down with the bedclothes, up with the nightshirt” – I had no idea of what paedophilia was but I knew from this that it was creepy and awful.
I remember Roger Daltrey’s face in its innocence and his wide eyes apparently lost in his own word until he discovered that this “deaf, dumb and blind kid sure” could play “a mean Pinball”.
The scene I think that I found most affecting was not the Pinball Wizard one with Elton falling literally from grace but Tommy’s encounter with The Acid Queen. Again in my youth and naivety I had no idea what “acid” was or what it could do to a person. I just remember the vision of Tina Turner and her terrible but terrific screeching and, most horrendous of all, the needles, like some horrific iron maiden.
In my later years I enjoyed Ken’s production of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”, possibly Sean bean’s first big role and also the movie “The Lair Of The White Worm” with Peter Capaldi in his kilt fighting off Amanda Donohoe and her scarily huge dildo!
He may not have always been popular, he may have set out to shock and he succeeded but he couldn’t be ignored.
So I say don’t R.I.P. Ken but ROCK ON!