THE BRITISH INVASION BLOG

Have you ever tried to write a script? Do you know how long it takes researching, writing a treatment, developing scenes and a storyboard, producing a finished script -- ? Let alone funding, casting, shooting and editing a movie? Now that I have a treatment (mostly written over a very tough winter in Greece which is never a vacation, more like a season of SURVIVOR) I am working on a list of scenes. I'm not fundraising for the film -- its an ongoing project. The less than $4000 raised bought me some time to focus on writing. I did the writing. Now I'm back and the Montreal Experiments Memory Project is well underway -

Launched on my 75th birthday, and reminiscent of the first Rolling Stones single which the band members secretly bought in quantities to drive it up the hit parade charts, the new vinyl single by the Cockroaches sold out in hours, leaving many fans angry and disappointed. Not me. What would I do with a vinyl disc? I really only cared about the lyrics and whether or not they illuminate my story, which I call the British invasion I found them on line, along with a bootlegged mp3, and by George, by gum, they do relate to me. I'll explain why later but meanwhile you can read them for yourself. Rough and Twisted Yeah, why don't you drive me Down that rough and twisted road Why don't you guide me Cause I don't know which way to go Promise to take me Down to where the water glows Somewhere, somwehere down to Puerto Rico Where the tide just ebbs and flows Fetch me all your jewelery Poetry and friends? Promise me I dance like Nijinski Nothing, nothin...

Until the age of 12, and without my knowing it, I was being groomed as the future bride of a future British pop star. "Future" is the operative word here, because my intended future never arrived. It was canceled for several reasons, mostly because I opted out, beginning at age 8 -- and later at 12 when they flew me to England and I witnessed reality at Edith Grove. Child trafficking by any other name. At age 8 I began to ditch the plan after reading The Little Mermaid which plunged me into an emotional crisis. The "fate" of the little mermaid was a grim, conscious choice to abandon her Prince after a series of traumatic shocks made it clear to her that she wasn't cut out for life as a Princess. Her fairytale lover is too self absorbed and busy being a Prince to see her for who she is, while in various ways she is crippled by her deal with the witch. Her tongue gets cut out and the legs she acquires make walking on land unbearably painful. Besides, she...

A Malignant Narcissist writes: Heads up. The Montreal Experiments fraudster MKultra Ann Diamond claims she's writing a book about Allan memorial survivor stories [false. I am collecting interviews for an oral history project. Not writing a book.] Her last completed writing project in 2015 is a smear campaign against Leonard Cohen, someone she claims was a victim of the Allan memorial [Leonard told people he was in the Allan, and my last book is an updated edition of The Man Next Door]. She has defrauded supporters for money for numerous bogus projects. [false. What bogus projects? Where are these supporters I have defrauded?] Last year she defrauded almost $2,000 using GoFundMe claiming she was writing about her relationship with Mick Jagger she claims came to her door when she was a child in Montreal and asked her to marry him. This isn't fiction she actually believes it. Nothing came of it, just like her Netflix documentary, her play, her screen play and many other un...

REPOSTED FROM SUBSTACK I go by two names: my writing name is Ann Diamond. My birth name is Anne McLean. I am also the granddaughter of the former mayor of St-Jean sur Richelieu, Doctor Alexis Bouthillier. Last year, by chance, I learned that his house at 240 rue Jacques-Cartier-Nord was being restored to become a shelter for homeless drug addicts and would reopen in 2024. I had never visited this house, which my grandfather sold in 1932, but I had seen photos of it and heard about it from my mother. In my possession I still had my grandfather's eight foot tall clock. Last October I spoke with the director of Le Musée du Haut-Richelieu who accepted it into their collection. I also left them the family photo album. I am currently working on a screenplay called The British Invasion, which begins in St Jean sur Richelieu where my mother was born in 1913 and lived until 1941. My mother Thérèse Bouthillier was almost erased from the history of SJSR but she was the only daughter of...

Winter is ending and so is a phase of writing that involved exploring characters hidden in memory, drawing them out of hiding, understanding lines of conflict and how together they build the story. The mother, the father, their child- the actors whose movements create the whole world. Past, present, future - and the aftermath of events that ran off with your life when you were too young to know or react. Like footprints in flowing water, like stones at the bottom of a pond, truth reshapes memory into something bigger than we knew. If someone stole our memories, we can steal them back. *** My third Big Bang (climax) I had a book I had brought home from the Baron Byng High School library which I hadn't read or even opened. It was called Trilby by Georges Du Maurier - the story of a naive young singer who is controlled by a mesmerizing Jewish handler. Either the librarian had recommended it - she'd recommended other novels she thou It was important to me to figure out wh...