Missing Missy ….. comedy genius

Although I follow quite a few blogs, there is also a comedy website that I like to visit on a regular basis, purely because it makes me laugh my bloody head off. Ha ha bonk.

The website was created by graphic designer David Thorne and is called 27bslash6 . On this website, David publishes the details of email conversations that he has with random people. I know it sounds a bit vague, so I thought I would give you a taster of one particularly fine email conversation that David had with a secretary at his workplace. Enjoy!

Hi David

I opened the screen door yesterday and my cat got out and has been missing since then so I was wondering if you are not to busy you could make a poster for me. It has to be A4 and I will photocopy it and put it around my suburb this afternoon.

 

Complete randomness

Ugh. I’ve just realised that Naughty George starts smelling like digestive biscuits when he hasn’t been washed for a couple of years. I keep meaning to give him a bath, but I can’t face wrestling him like a crocodile, and all his dog hairs clogging up my plughole. 

Even his dog-bed has started smelling. I put my key in the front door today, and the odour hits me; “Jeez George, that’s a bit rich.” He remained unconcernedly prostrate, just lifting his head slightly to see who had entered the house. I think the bed might need a blow torch.

Anyway, on a totally different subject, I have got some really good news for those of you who can’t bear to leave your patio behind when you go on holiday.

After witnessing the heartache experienced by homeowners who abondon their patios to go on summer vacation, an inspired inventor has developed a product that will lessen the wrench.

Yes, yes, it is true! You can now take your Patio on holiday with you! And before you think I am pulling your leg, this was an actual product advertised in the Betterware catalogue.

Is it me, but what the bloody hell is that all about then? Who in god’s name wants to take their patio on holiday? Even accepting the fact that some people prefer to travel with their patios, what do they do with them when they get there? Sit in a camping chair in a superior fashion, pitying those who are patio-less?

Finally, to complete my random blog, I saw this today.

So, I have a challenge for you. Can you ‘out-random’ me? It can be anything from a bizarre invention, to a weird sign, to an odd happening. Ummmmm, well can you?

The Art of Being At Home

1.

In the introduction to George Monbiot’s No Man’s Land, I read: “Humankind was born on the road. Our brains…are those of the migrant. The restlessness which, in one corrupted form or another, is felt by every human being on earth, is incurable.”

We’re far from Africa and we’ve lost our roots, but there’s still an everyday restlessness, corrupted by centuries of evolution and years of education, skulking in the dark corners of our consciousness.

Friends of ours have just bought a boat to live on. They like the idea of portability; their boat gives physical form to an unspoken desire to periodically migrate. They can float up and down the Thames with their possessions and their love. It’s more a metaphor than anything – in rainy England, confined by villages and narrow rivers, by family homes and local pubs, we’re hardly the Turkana, traversing inhospitable desert lands, setting up temporary camp after temporary camp – but I’m not immune to the temptation of just…picking up. And going.

Why do I like the idea of a floating existence, the ability to suddenly pick up my life and simply shift it elsewhere? The reality of it – the friendships lying fallow, the swapping of time zones, the stress of every mundane detail – is not romantic, and an anxious person is not naturally suited to rootlessness. But still.

In 2007, during the floods, we helped a man called Rob prevent his houseboat from running adrift. It was my first summer here, I had just met the Man, and everything looked bright and strange. I was surprised by the power of the river, swollen and purple in its malleable banks, but I understood intuitively what it is to have one’s home threatened by a force bigger than oneself. Years of fretting over the smell of fire in the California hills had taught me to respect the fragility of a man-made structure; I still had dreams (nightmares?) of choosing, methodically, ruthlessly, which possessions to flee with. That boat was Rob’s home but it could as easily be carried away, or “dash’d all to pieces”, as Shakespeare’s Miranda put it, on the rocks.

Later, we sat in the boat and shared a bottle of wine. We felt a million miles away from Port Meadow, which glistened in the murky twilight, a galaxy away from Jericho with its cocktail bars and boutiques. Rob’s self-sufficiency (he even had a set of solar panels on the roof) captivated us completely, and when we did eventually meander back into town, we sat in a hot pub stunned by the brightness of the lights and said very little.

A few weeks ago, a friend emailed me to say that, almost exactly three years on, Rob had passed away. This will go down in history as a hot summer, a happy time during which the sky burned blue and children ate ice cream and young people got slowly drunk on champagne as they punted down the Cherwell; no floods this year, no boats needing rescue. And when we next visit that spot on Port Meadow, what will we see? Not Rob’s boat, moved a hundred times since we sat near the fire in its belly, hungry for warmth and company on a cool midsummer evening, now ownerless, adrift in spirit. No; the landscape changes constantly.

2.

So you could say that maybe it is not as easy to be at home somewhere, anywhere, as it might seem.

We wander down long roads towards manor houses. I read that the English have this fixation on the home; and maybe these vast estates were built, I think, to allow their owners the illusion of wandering – a harrowing journey down a dark corridor, a flitting between huge empty rooms.

My home is more the man I live with than the walls around us; it’s my books, not my post code. But for us, the constant movement of the summer has made me crave a period of stillness. The backstage passes, the train journeys, the forays into the exotic, the picnics and punting. It’s been a kaleidoscope period, a beautiful whirlwind.

Now we’re housesitting for friends on the edge of the Cotswolds. And what I feel here is maybe the opposite of Monbiot’s corrupted restlessness. Late in the afternoon, after too many hours with my legs folded up against a wooden desk, I go for a walk with the tiny brown terrier who has attached himself to me like a miniature shadow, who follows me from room to room, who curls up at night beside us. The sky is full of puffy clouds, a grey mist on the horizon (I’m caught a mile from the house at the point at which it evolves into a downpour). I walk down bridleways, past fields of wheat edged with a lace of white flowers.

In the evening we go to the pub for our dinner, or else we roast a chicken and eat it sitting in the lounge watching an unexpectedly good film starring Helen Hunt and Colin Firth, with an appearance by Salman Rushdie as a obstetrician. We drive to the train station and back in a big green Land Rover; I feed the pigs in red wellies, denim shorts, one of the Man’s old button-up shirts. I tell the dog not to pee on the poppies that grow in bunches by the fence, though I don’t know why, as I’ve let him pee on every hedge between here and the next village.

A frail rain falls; the sun comes out.

A judge says… (some dubious things)

Whilst passing sentence on Sean Goodfellow and Murray McAllan, both found guilty of causing death by dangerous driving, temporary judge Kenneth McIver said, ‘As in many of these tragic driving deaths, issues are here raised as to the wisdom of allowing new drivers immediate, unrestricted and unconditional driving opportunity.’

The judge also said, ‘To drive at speeds in excess of 90mph on such a road is complete folly. To do so while engaging in a contest of speed, effectively a road race with another vehicle, is indescribably stupid and dangerous.’

Whilst I agree with His Honour Judge McIver as to the folly of racing on roads, I think that the DVLA and VOSA should be taking immediate steps to remove Judge McIver’s driving licence from him until he can demonstrate his knowledge, by passing a new test.

Why?

Because the speed limit on that stretch of road is not ‘unrestricted and unconditional,’ to use the Judge’s words.

It is 60mph.

So the Judge appears not to know that the speed on that road is 60mph, and the Judge appears to be unable to understand that these two foolish young men, who drove at speeds of up to 90mph along it, would have broken whatever restriction had been put in their way.

It also seems to me that (again, to use his own words) the Judge seems to believe that we have some roads in the UK that are ‘unrestricted and unconditional’.

This is also not the case.

Therefore the Judge, Mr McIver, should have his licence removed and should be compelled to take a retest with immediate effect; he has clearly demonstrated he does not know some of the most fundamental rules of the road.

Source

Video (from the Latin: ‘I see’)

I’m desperately trying to keep this away from a Bristol-related rant. And also I’m going to work hard to keep this away from an ‘Underage and Having Sex’ (which we’re currently watching) rant…

I’m thinking of making a video.

No, really. A proper one, not one of those videos!

My sitcom sits on the hard-disk; finished and ready to get pimped around London. I think it’s not a bad piece of writing, obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t be setting myself up for the pain and rejection that the odds indicate are going to come my way.

I also think it’s not a bad piece of comedic writing (which isn’t much of an indication of quality, because writing comedy has always been my weak suit).

But, and here’s my problem, I’m having trouble seeing it as a piece of visual… stuff.

And that’s why I’m thinking of making a video.

Because making a video would help me with the visualisation, no? And it would give me an opportunity to fine-tune the screenplay and really help to develop the shooting-script. No?

It wouldn’t be a posh job.

We’re talking a wobbly hand-held or tripod-mounted camera and the whole product subjected to some seriously bad editing.

But the soundtrack would be a killer. And the soundtrack is a significant component of the sitcom.

My dilemma is, unfortunately, twofold.

Dilemma #1. Setting. Apart from the opening scene, all of episode one is set indoors – but in three different sets. But I think that could be OK. This isn’t supposed to be the finished article, and with a little creativity from the props department (me!) and a bucketload of imagination from the viewers (probably no-one), I think we can work around this.

Dilemma #2. The cast. Episode 1 scripts 6 speaking parts and a bunch of non-speaking extras. Even from the position that no-one will be expecting Oscar-winning performances, how does one begin getting the potential company together, where from and – when they’ve been found – what’s the best way of casting?

Hmmm… I think I need to consult an AmDram specialist. Fortunately, I have one at the stables.

In other news…

The girl on the television in the show ‘Underage and Having Sex’ was just talking about how, as a 13-year-old, she had sex for the first time.

She said ‘It happened, I don’t know how’.

Well dear, I could be a million miles off target with this, but I’d hazard a guess that you let him put his cock in your cunt. Is there anything else you need to know?

Tsk, kids.

As you can see, I successfully avoided a Bristol rant, but the ‘Underage and Having Sex’ rant just kind of slipped out. Sorry.

Teachers. Bastions of society? I don’t think so

Last Friday I drove from Oxford to Leeds to spend the weekend with my friend Sarah. It was an arduous four hour journey in my old jalopy; the thing didn’t like being driven above 65mph and protested by vigorously rattling and shaking whenever I attempted the feat. To make matters worse, the only form of in-car entertainment was my Sat Nav, and to be honest that got a bit samey a couple of hours into the journey. How I rue the day I dropped my iPhone down the toilet.

When I arrived, Sarah opened the front door and announced, “you’re late.”

“Am I?” I asked, “I thought you said 4pm? It’s now 5pm, so I’m only an hour later than planned.”

“Nope, I told you to get here at 3pm you drongo,” replied Sarah.

Ooops, I must have put it in my diary incorrectly. So unlike me.

“Anyway,” said Sarah, “we’re going out, so hurry up and get ready.”

Sarah is a teacher and Friday was the last day of school before breaking up for the summer holidays. It meant that scores of Teachers were now free from the shackles of school life and wanted to celebrate the fact …. and I was going to be joining in.

I had never been out with teachers en masse before, and I wondered what to expect from these bastions of society, guardians of our future generation, and cerebral educators. We took a taxi into Leeds city centre and met about fifteen of them in a pub. They had been there some time (yes, it was because I was late), so we ordered ourselves a chilled glass of Rose wine each and took a seat.

I was sitting next to a teacher called Jo, who introduced herself and then said, “we were just talking about interesting facts”.

“Ooh, carry on,” I said, “don’t mind me”. In my minds eye, I imagined them discussing something clever like the Socratic Method-Problem Method Dichotomy teaching debate, and so leaned forward to listen.

Jo continued, “Rob who is sitting opposite you, has just worked out that he is three shags away from Robbie Williams.”

I laughed, nearly spluttering my drink over her. Blimey, I didn’t see that coming. “How so?” I asked.

“Well,” Jo said, “Rob’s wife used to be engaged to a guy (shag 1), who had a friend (casual shag 2), who was propositioned by Robbie Williams (shag 3).”

How amazing is that? Bloody amazing, that’s what.

Rob himself then entered the conversation; “Not only am I three shags away from Robbie Williams, but another interesting fact is that I have got six toes.”

“No way. That’s freaky.” I said. “Can I take a picture?”

“Of course you can,” he said obligingly, removing his sock.

“How come you’ve got six toes?” I asked, after taking the pictures.

“I come from Burnley,” he shrugged. [Note to Burnley readers: I did not say that, Rob did. So please can you aim all your rotten tomatoes at him. I thought his comment was bad and evil and I didn't laugh..... at all.... not even a little bit........ that would've been wrong.].

After a couple of hours, we decided to move to a more lively place called the Revolution Bar, by which stage things were starting to get a bit hazy.

There was me thinking that teachers were upstanding members of the community. Not a bit of it, they are all animaux de partie. Also, if I am totally honest, most of the night from then on was pieced together using a pictures and videos that I didn’t realise I had taken, but found on my camera the next day. How bad is that? And how bad is it that I actually admitted to it? Thank god that Moral Police don’t exist otherwise I would be stoned to death in the village stocks.

So, from a patchy memory and random videos and photographs, here is what happened last Friday night:

We met Suzie, who works with Sarah at the school. She was extremely friendly and soon we were all best friends.

We met an unknown teacher who insisted that I take at least twenty pictures of him in various poses. “Take another one,” he kept saying. “I already have,” I replied, and he would get into another pose and then say “quickly, just one more. Do you think I should be a model?” and I said, “yes of course you should, you are my new best friend and I love you.”

The best bit about the video was the chap walking past. He stopped and asked, “is she ok?” To which Sarah replied; “she’s just having a photograph taken for her blog, thank you.” Bizarrely, he seemed quite happy with that explanation.

You will be pleased to know that we did make it home safely, and more importantly, we managed to order a huge pizza each to top off the evening. And just in case you were wondering…. yes, my head did hurt the next day, and as a penance, I had to drink a hundred cups of Earl Grey tea because Sarah didn’t have any coffee. Bloody teachers!

Taking council

I think this is the post that I’m most trepidatious making. Spellcheck tells me that ‘trepidatious’ isn’t even a word – that’s how trepidatious I am – I’m making up pretentious words.

I’m doing that because, for the first time, I get the feeling my blog is being scrutinised. The short rant I posted on Facebook and subsequently here when people started telling me non-Facebook people would like to read it got far more hits, tweets, re-tweets, emails and new followers than anything I’ve talked about before.

I do want to talk about it more but want to stress that this is personal opinion based on personal experience and discussions I’ve had. This is not researched and I’m sure you could fire a barrage of facts and statistics at me to prove that the UK Film Council is a wonderful organization. A lot seems to have been said in recent days about  how profitable they are and how many significant films they have supported and that might well be true or spin (and I personally believe that their skills have always been far more evident in the talent of spinning rather than doing), what I offer here is my personal take. Even the people involved who I mention might refute what I say or object to how their circumstances are portrayed – they are welcome to use the comments section to do so.

A little bit about me to give you some idea of my perspective. I’m one of the legion of lower-rung film-makers in this country. You wouldn’t have heard of me or probably anything I’ve done but I’ve worked professionally on-and-off for the last 12 years and my story is probably truer to that of most film-makers than the ones you’ve heard of. Film school trained, high aspirations, failed to deliver on either the aspiration or the potential so is perfectly happy ‘jobbing’. I worked professionally for a while as a screenwriter, most notably (if that’s the right word) on the TV show LEXX, but I didn’t ever manage to bring one of my own projects to the screen. A lot of my friends – lifelong friendships from the film school days – are in the same predicament. Producers, editors, cameramen on things you might have kind of heard of but none of us have managed to become ‘known’. In fact, the only guy from my whole film school who has become ‘a name’ was the guy who got sectioned for trying to stab some girls – he now directs some of those horrible British ‘thug’ movies. I owned a couple of indie video shops for the last 8 years so haven’t depended on film work for my living but have been back working freelance since February (and am already having to sue a famous author, pulling my hair out about filming industrial plants in hard-to-reach areas of Europe and spending full days auditioning people trying to pull condoms over their heads). I’ve also spent the last three years independently making a feature documentary about the Oxford music scene – more about that later, no doubt, I shan’t be missing my chance to plug.

Since 2001, I’ve taught various courses at Oxford Film and Video Makers (OFVM) which is a non-profit film workshop which has been running since the sixties. In the late eighties and early nineties, they trained me to make films. By the time I was 18, I could load and operate a 16mm film camera and edit film on a flatbed machine. I could also, thanks to OFVM and a long-gone workshop called Oxford Independent Video, operate video cameras and edit tape. I don’t really need to teach at OFVM and often find it a frustrating experience but I like teaching there. The point of it is that anybody can wander in off the street and say they want to be a film-maker and it’s OFVM’s job to make that happen. I’ve taught various courses there but my heart has always been in teaching screenwriting. I consider it the ‘worthwhile’ part of my life, I get to see the difference I make and feel like I’m doing my bit to enhance British cinema. Film education standards in this country are generally, I think, pretty poor and in particular few seem to put much emphasis on teaching or learning good screenwriting skills.

I think it’s important to stress  that I am not a Tory since I’m worried that people might construe my support of their decision as an endorsement in some way. No, I basically hate them and can’t see myself ever voting for them.  I don’t affiliate myself to any party – they’re all pretty vile now – but traditionally have voted Labour or Lib-dem.

The reason I felt I had to make my original comment was I was shocked to see how many people I know and respect bemoaning the loss of the Film Council. They were using it as an example of Tory evil, and far be it from my to defend the evil bastards, but it was like watching a shoplifter being arrested for GBH. I don’t doubt that the shits will cut arts funding left, right and centre but they seem to be being upfront about the cuts they’re making and the abolition of the Film Council is not being presented as a cut in film funding but a necessary removal of an overly-bureaucratic institution which has been diverting a lot of film funds into the pockets of over-paid charlatans.

This is from an article in prospect magazine last year:

One area where Woodward has succeeded is in setting financial records for the quangocracy. A DCMS written reply this summer confirmed that four executives are earning more than a cabinet minister (that is, more than £144,520). Others argue that, if bonuses are included, the figure is actually seven. These figures bear no comparison to salaries in the industry itself: the head of development is on a cool £165,000 a year, at least three times the industry norm. Given these salaries, it is not surprising that the last four year’s accounts show overheads running at a staggering £8m—more than the total government funding for the bodies the UKFC replaced. The accounts also show that these overheads make up 25 per cent of the income that the Council derives from its lottery income. In 2008, for example, the UKFC received £29.7m in direct lottery grants and another £5.7m in recoupment from previous lottery investments. Besides spending £8m on itself, the UKFC put not one penny of its return from films back into film production, a feat it has managed every year that it has existed.

In fact, you should read the whole  article: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2009/12/breaking-the-british-movie-myth/ because it nicely sums up my feelings and suspicions but is journalism rather than opinion – which is what a blog will always be. Mine, at least. It was nice to see in print what I had always felt.

People are rallying like they did when the BBC announced it’s plans to shut down 6music. The Film Council is not a hallowed, wonderful institution – it is merely a flawed and, I feel, corrupt method of distributing lottery funding.

Here, in no particular order are my experiences and observations of the Film Council and Screen South – their agency in my region.

1. My friend Hank and I decided to write a short film and apply for funding. The script was a simple little film called Mugwump about a guy who hated his father but had to care for him since he’d had a stroke. It’s not as kitchen-sink as it might sound and was actually about the pair of them getting lost in the forest on a mission the father couldn’t convey to his son. It’s hard to be objective but it was a solid script. Honestly, I teach screenwriting, I’ve been through film school and I work as a script editor – it was a good script. We submitted it and got shortlisted. I was told that to progress to the next stage, I would have to attend a one-day workshop on screenwriting. I pointed out that I had been trained by the Film Council to teach their 22-week screenwriting course – which I was delivering twice a year – so, could I maybe sit this one out? They said no. I had to attend. I went and I behaved but was shocked to find that the lady teaching it had no professional experience as a screenwriter and was not teaching screenwriting in the official Film Council sanctioned manner. In fact, she didn’t really know what she was talking about. Why would they spend so much money creating a whole course, training tutors in how to deliver it and then not only not use those tutors or even the course basics to train applicants but hire a complete yahoo? We got onto the final shortlist for funding and had to attend a meeting in London. We were ushered into an expensive looking boardroom and faced about 8 or 9 people – who didn’t see fit to introduce themselves – who grilled us as to our project aggressively. One old man ranted at us about the film being ‘NOT FUNNY’ and ‘mocking the disabled’. Hank and I both spoke eloquently about how it was in no way mocking and how we thought it was funny (one lady actually really defended us on this score in the meeting) but humour is a very personal thing and a lot of the funnier moments are visual and maybe he didn’t pick up on them. The project got rejected. Two weeks later, I got a phone call from the person running the scheme offering me the choice of several of the chosen scripts to produce. I told them they were probably trying to get hold of Hank – he was the producer – but they said, no, they thought I should try producing a film. I told them that I was a writer and a director but not  producer and they explained to me that their remit was to ‘develop’ people and they saw huge potential in me as a producer. I agreed, purely because I wanted a look at the scripts that had been selected for production. The scripts were awful.

2. Hank went on to write a truly fantastic screenplay. it is genuinely one of – if not THE – best short screenplays I’ve ever read. Brilliantly, he got selected for funding. He was then given some kind of script editor who forced him through multiple re-drafts. I should state again (although it might start to sound braggy) that I work professionally as a script editor and this script – the first draft he submitted – was PERFECT. The changes she demanded were petty and ludicrous and her reports read to me like somebody who was just stirring the pot to prove they had made a contribution. I don’t know how much she was being paid but Hank followed her guidance and each draft lost more an more subtlety, character and nuance. They assigned the script to a director who really didn’t understand it and it appeared to me that Hank was under a lot of stress. He had written the script as a personal exercise. It was a personal story for him and I could see so much of him in there as a human being. Hank eventually withdrew the script from the scheme. Thank god. It would have been heartbreaking to see how his personal vision had ended up.  What should have happened? What would I have done? If I had been sent such a personal and obviously unique script, I would have told the screenwriter that he should think about directing it himself – since it was so obviously filled with meaning and raw talent. I would have funded him to go on a short course in directing, given him a modest budget and surrounded him with upcoming talented people who could help him realise the film and also learn and benefit from the experience themselves. I believe the budgets for films on this scheme are between 3k-10k. Add on top of that the cost of all the consultants and the marketing of the scheme and the films it produces and it sounds like a lot of money to produce a handful of short films by first-timers. I’ve made short films my whole life and know that you make them on the cheap. You call in favours, you muddle through. Give someone a budget of even 1k and they should be able to produce something spectacular. Especially since digital production has taken off. You do not inspire burgeoning talent by editing them and forcing restrictions on them. They learn through their own mistakes and if you really care about their development, you give them space and encouragement to make those mistakes and learn some lessons and produce some raw but excellent short films.

3. I had been teaching the OFVM screenwriting course for a year or so. It was a workshop-style discussion based practical course where I’d lead a class of four people at a time and, over 8 weeks, develop their screenplays. It was quite bespoke, and catered to their individual needs. Each week I would present relevant material to study for their specific projects and give focused advice. Then the Film Council talked to me about their plans to overhaul film education. I adored their vision. As I remember it, it was this simple; they were to create three big introductory courses. One in Screenwriting, another in Directing, a third in producing. These were to be 22-week long courses, taught by tutors trained by the Film Council themselves and delivered through all of their separate regional agencies. The idea being that if anybody said they wanted funding to develop as a film-maker – they would have to attend one of these courses (often on full bursaries) before applying for money. This would mean that everyone applying would be of a standard, have the backing of their tutors and somewhat trusted. it seemed like the perfect way of creating a solid film industry in this country – a clear progression route which would be fair and open to all who displayed commitment and graft. Talent would be recognised and rewarded.

The Film Council paid for me and the OFVM production co-ordinator to attend the training course. They put us up in hotel rooms and paid our expenses. The course was developed and explained to us by the excellent screenwriting academic Phil Parker and it was wonderful. There were about 25 other tutors there for the training and, at the end, Phil told us that we would reconvene after the first run of our courses in our regions to discuss and alter the course as needed. I believe only three of us in that room ever delivered the course at all. The Film Council never once asked for feedback from us and Phil later told me that they refused to fund any further development on the course or even pay him to chair a meeting to follow up on it. As far as I know, the directing and producing courses were never even designed.

Last year, I attended a day aptly entitled ‘Nobody Knows Anything’ at the London Film School where they invited screenwriting tutors, students and funders from around the country to have a supposed symposium on screenwriting education. It was just a bunch of keynote speakers uselessly pontificating and refusing to engage with an audience who could have put the whole issue right. It concluded with two women from the Film Council who just whinged about the amount of work they were put under to read scripts. I stood up and pointed out that they had a roomful of screenwriting tutors here who would – for free – tell them exactly which scripts to produce and which screenwriters to invest in developing. They didn’t like that. I pointed out that I was the only person in the country teaching their own screenwriting course. not only had they not thought to consult me but they didn’t even know of my existence. I was quickly silenced by the chair and they left the room hastily as he crowd seemed to demand proper answers.

4. My documentary. After years of being on and around the Oxford music scene, I decided it was time to tell it’s story. The story of the shared roots of Radiohead, Supergrass, Foals, The Young Knives, Ride, Swervedriver, Talulah Gosh, The Candyskins and many, many more bands – successful and not. All of the bands (except The Young Knives) supported the film and I got long, exclusive interviews with everyone. Talking about things they had never even been interviewed about. Radiohead in particular got enthusiastic about telling the story of this little music scene that went on to shape music globally but has never been credited as such. It’s filled with never-before-seen footage and photos of all of the bands involved and, frankly, it fucking rocks. OFVM gave me a bursary of free digital camera and light rental and some DV tapes. Good nepotism! I could have made it without, but this made it way easier and cheaper – since I was self-funding the whole film. I looked at some of the Film Council funding opportunities but the film was dependent on being filmed in a short period of time (between the closing of the independent club The Zodiac and it’s re-opening as a Carling (now 02) Academy and the volume of paperwork and hoops to be jumped through made it impractical. It took a couple of years, but I finished the film myself. It is edited, approved by those taking part and ready to be released. I have a distribution deal in America which is dependent on the two things that I can’t do by myself. I have completely made this film off my own back and brought it to the end of post-production but now I need money. I need about 10k to get the final sound mix and film online completed (not something I can do on my laptop) and about 30k to legally clear all of the music and footage used within it.

So, I went to Screen South. I figured that an entirely indie finished feature documentary coming through one of their own centres (OFVM) about subject matter that promotes their own region with a clear commercial bent considering the volume of exclusive Radiohead, Supergrass and Foals content, might interest them. They gave me 12 minutes with their temporary head whilst he ate his lunch. He said it ‘sounds great’ and he’d love to see it. I sent him a DVD, he didn’t confirm receipt. He didn’t respond to phone calls. I sent him another one. Again I heard nothing. Hank, who had more dealings with Screen South (I’m resisting the temptation to abbreviate) tried to contact the man on the subject but to no avail. Yeah, I could have been more persistant and, if I wanted funding, should have filled in all of the paperwork and applied for every scheme. But shouldn’t they also have been trying to encourage me? I’m going to get the project out there in the next couple of months through crowd-funding (email me at info@scriptguru.co.uk if you want to know more about the film. Fuck you, I’m allowed to plug it, I’ve just written over 3,000 words about the fucking Film Council)

So. To end this. I always hated the Film Council. It has appeared to me to be inefficient and baseless. From the expensive ‘networking breakfasts’ they paid OFVM to host (which was just a free breakfast for their employees and a couple of randoms) to their shameless ‘buying on’ to any high-profile British film which is being made, I’ve sneered. But what I HATE is that this has been the least interesting decade for British cinema in film history. So few new voices coming through, so little quality, and with the advent of digital technology – there is no excuse why the cinemas and dvd shops aren’t filled with wonderful quirky raw little indie films. If you gave me 35.4 million quid to get British films made and promoted, I’d get that education programme up and running and then get groups of screenwriters/producers/directors who had graduated from it to show us what they can do with a 10k budget and free equipment hire. I bet we’d get a whole new generation of incredible film-makers who, in turn, would re-vitalise the industry.

And I wouldn’t expect a salary of 144k per year to do it.

Self-Storage (Notes from a Train)

On the 17:36 to London Paddington. We keep passing those ubiquitous self-storage units. I associate them with trains now. Or perhaps it’s the other way round – I associate trains not with rolling countryside but with sprawling industrial amenities.

How can there possibly be so much stuff in the world that needs storing? Who rents these units, and for what purpose? It seems to me that once people become disengaged from their things, they cease to need them. For awhile I toyed with the idea of having some things in Oxford and some in California, but it really was pointless, and after a season I’d re-acquired everything I wanted but had left behind. The rest was duly carted off to the Salvation Army. What we own means nothing without us, not the other way around.

There’s a man who stores his furniture with us. No one really knows where he is anymore (Canada? Australia?) and it seems he has no thoughts for the things which gather dust in our house, though money continues to appear monthly in our account, like magic. Recompense for nothing at all.

So whenever I see those self-storage places I feel like I’m looking at these vast empty spaces. Even if they are full, even if people do use them – what’s the point? What’s inside is just abandoned stuff in its own abandoned world.

But back to trains. Air conditioned trains on a hot day, which always remind me of the summer I spent commuting from Goleta to Santa Ana. I was interning at the Orange County Transportation Authority (is there irony in the amount of time I spent transporting myself for those three months? Oh, yes!), spending three days down there before returning home for a long weekend. And on Wednesday evenings I’d buy a sandwich for dinner and change out of my suit and I’d catch the last train back.

Between Santa Ana and Los Angeles I’d watch the hot, pale sunlight turn into a Southern California twilight, and in that twilight we’d rush past the other side of things. People’s backyards – plastic toys, dirty pools, beer bottles. The tired backs of buildings, the places where cars go to die, the places where trucks go to stock up on goods. Warehouses and factories. A Spearmint Rhino with a neon sign and a mournful countenance.

But mostly self-storage places. They were everywhere – a part of the landscape, like rolling golden hills and stunning sea views.

You never really saw any people on that journey. A few stops out of L.A. it would suddenly be dark and you’d have to turn your eyes to the seat in front of you again, and outside there would be nothing but flashing lights.

When is a military secret not a military secret?

When anyone with a brain can work the truth out…

The ’90,000 item Wikileak dossier’ has got some sections of the internet huffing and puffing like a highly excited bunch of huffing and puffing things.

There are flaps of outrage and indignation from the US and UK governments which, when subjected to logical analysis, are shown to be incomprehensible and meaningless.

William Gibbs, the US President’s press secretary said (and I quote), ‘these documents [being in the public domain] pose a real and potential threat to national security’.

My response to William Gibbs is twofold.

Firstly, can you please learn to speak English? Because, William, until you do, everyone on this planet is going to ignore you from this point forward.

Let me explain.

Something can either be a real threat, or something can be a potential threat, but something can not be a real *and* a potential threat.

And secondly, William, you obviously haven’t noticed yet, so it falls to me to point out to you, that the situation in Afghanistan is an *international* one.

You are in no position to put American national security before the international security of *all of the states* who are caught up in the conflict. No legal position at all!

The truth must out, it is that simple. No matter how unpalatable to our political servants (and let’s just remember for a moment that the people in The White House and Downing Street are working *for us*) the truth is, it must be our default position.

That there are high-level elements in the Pakistan government who are actively backing and physically supporting al-Qaida is blindingly obvious to anyone with a functional brain.

But the US Government doesn’t want to be *saying* that publicly because:

• it would cause a PR shitstorm in the US heartlands amongst the voters whenever a new raft of coffins are repatriated
• it would upset elements of the Pakistan government
• it would (rightly) cause distrust amongst the forces on the ground
• it would make many people in many countries ask what the fuck is going on, and question the wisdom of our elected politicians

To underline my point I bring forward Frank Askin, Professor of Law at Rutgers School of Law, Newark (USA, not the original Newark).

Professor Askin says (and again I quote):  ‘Transparency should be the government’s default approach to national security’.

The lack of transparency in this conflict is staggering. Under the sacred banner of ‘national security’ (which I have already demonstrated is a meaningless concept in this war), things are being unsaid, truths remain unspoken and massacres of innocents are being unreported.

All of these things are wrong.

What is the difference between 20 civilians being killed by the Americans, or 20 civilians being killed by the Pakistan-backed al-Qaida?

There is no difference.

Except in the former, the story is suppressed, whilst in the latter every single war reporter and every available photographer and film crew are ferried in to the area to record, in great detail, the once-human corpses, the blown-up cars, the dead livestock and the bullet-marked houses.

And come on, the only people who hadn’t figured out that the UK and US special forces have been operating under ‘locate and kill’ orders for the last couple of years, are sections of the UK and US public.

Does William Gibbs really think that members of al-Qaida have not worked these things out for themselves?

Of course they have.

I have downloaded my copy of the dossier and although I haven’t read it in detail yet, I have scanned most of it, and I have to say that all of the information I have seen so far would be known to the enemy!

All of it.

Yet the data has been withheld from the UK and US public.

The logical conclusion is that the governments of the UK and US see the public of the UK and US as the threat.

We are the enemy.

But perhaps we are not ‘the enemy’ within the context of this conflict in Afghanistan; just ‘the enemy of our elected representatives’ – by virtue of our power at the ballot box?

I’ll leave you with just one example of how the truth is being suppressed, and when it leaks out, corrupted.

When US intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, leaked a video that proved that US Apache helicopters fired on and killed two Reuters cameramen in Baghdad – information that, until that point, the US government had suppressed – who was charged with criminal offences?

Was it:

1. Bradley Manning for leaking the video, or
2. The Apache helicopter crews for murdering innocent civilians?

Ah, I can see from your wry smiles that you know the answer. The casualty is, once again, the truth.

Monkey nuts and motorways

I know I haven’t blogged for two days, but I have just returned home after a long weekend in Leeds, and haven’t had a second to put fingertips to keyboard. Overdue blog posts are all lined up and advancing upon me like ants carrying chopped up leaves. It’s like a cyber horror movie. Even though I am running really fast, and the blogs are moving really slowly, they are still catching up. I have tried stopping and throwing something ineffectual at them (like a small twig), but nothing stops their terrifying advances.

So I have resorted to writing this post under the duvet, because duvets are the only thing able to stop zombie blog postings in their tracks. Cunning… yep that’s me.

I must apologise because the blog postings are all going to be back-to-front, starting with my arrival back in Oxford today, continuing with what I did prior to that throughout the weekend. There is a good reason that I am doing it that way round, and it’s because I have a hundred million blog photographs to go through, and I am too tired to do it tonight. As Izzy would say, “I have got some tired inside my eyes”.

After a three hour journey from Leeds to Oxford, I finally arrived at Steve’s house ready to pick up Izzy and Naughty George, by which time I was feeling pretty knackered. I pressed the buzzer, and it was like I had never been away. Through the open window I could instantly hear a volley of Naughty George’s barks, and Izzy shouting, “Is that Mummy? Don’t tell her that I am going to hide under the bed.”

“Hiya,” I said to Steve as he opened the door, “do I really have to go through the rigmarole of finding Izzy’s hiding place?”

“Yep,” he replied, and then lowered his voice, adding; “she is under the bed.”

“She’s always under the bed,” I replied wearily, “do I still have to act surprised?”

“Of course you do, she’s five. That’s what five years olds do.”

Because I am like Mother Theresa, I feigned searching the entire house before ‘accidentally’ stumbling across Izzy’s hiding place under the bed.

“RAARRRRR! I’ve found you!” I shouted, tickling her feet.

She laughed uncontrollably for about 15 seconds and then emerged from under the bed, greeting my four day absence in the way that five year olds do; “I’m hungry,” she said.

I went to find Steve; “Izzy’s hungry, have you got any snacks to hand?”

“Yeh, sure,” he said before disappearing into the kitchen and returning with a handful of monkey nuts, handing them to Izzy.

Knowing that Izzy was preoccupied with her monkey nuts, I picked up the coffee that Steve had made me and turned to him to chat. Not thirty seconds passed before we heard an anguished wail coming from the other room; “Naughty George has nicked-ed [sic - it's past tense for five year olds] one of my monkey nuts!”

“Naughty George doesn’t eat monkey nuts!” I shouted, walking into the living room where Izzy was hollering.

How wrong was I? It turned out that Naughty George was the mutt equivalent of those Brazilian Capuchin monkeys who have learned how to use tools to access food.

He had the monkey nut in his mouth, and he bit it gently until the shell fell away and then he scoffed the nuts inside. Bloody hell, my dog was transforming himself into the missing link. Question one: how did he know that there was something edible inside the shell? Question 2: how did he figure out how to get the shell off?

There was only one thing for it. After discovering Naughty George’s ability to crack open nuts, I am going to have to pickle him in a jar of Formalehyde and sell him to some forensic Darwinists, making a huge profit in the process.

“Here, Georgie, Georgie…… here Georgie, Georgie…….”