My take on the abolition of the UK Film Council.

This is hastily written because I’ve had a long day, maybe later in the week I’ll rewrite it with less swearwords and more actual examples….

To everyone who’s bitching about the UK Film Council being abolished:

As someone who has been trained by, taught for, been through the funding process and had to attend seminars with the organisation, I’d just like to say this: THANK FUCK IT’S BEING SHITCANNED. It is without doubt the most ineffective, bureaucratic gravy train I have ever had the misfortune to witness. If you think that the organisation has been some kind of saviour for British film, you are HUGELY mistaken.

The UKFC was basically a place where a handful of people who didn’t seem to have had any obvious practical film-making experience lauded over all those who wanted to get interesting films made. For the best part of a decade, I’ve watched them waste money on lavish parties, regular ‘networking’ trips to L.A. and schemes which channeled money into the pockets of endless ‘experts’ and ‘consultants’ and not into films. Most of the films which have their name on it were actually independent productions which got off the ground completely independently and, at the point the film was looking like a sure bet, the UKFC would kick in a few thousand ‘completion money’ to get their name on the poster and justify their existence.

I’ve seen fantastic screenwriters have their scripts endlessly ‘workshopped’ until the script has no meaning on character and ends up not being made. I’ve seen huge amounts of money wasted on predominantly awful short films.

My main personal experience of them was that they spent a load of money training me to teach the screenwriting course – putting me up in hotels in London and paying my expenses, paying a guy to create and the course and train us to deliver it, then they never once asked for feedback. Not once. Not only this, they complained about having to spend money on script readers to find screenplays to produce but constantly ignored my offers to recommend to them excellent screenwriters who’d just spent 22 weeks doing their bloody course.

The times I have applied for funding have generally consisted of being sat in rooms with arrogant idiots spouting non-committal rubbish.

Back when film funding came through the Arts Council, they didn’t interfere. You applied, got some money, made your film warts n’all. That’s how we developed great filmmakers in this country.

In the decade that it has been operational, the ONLY filmmaker I can name who possibly owes their career to the UKFC is Andrea Arnold – director of Red Road and Fishtank. I don’t consider that much of an achievement.

The BBC today quoted Chris Atkins – director of the excellent doc Taking Liberties and Starsuckers as saying:

‘UK FILM COUNCIL ABOLISHED! Fabulous day! I wonder what 70 incompetent overpaid bureaucrats are going to do? I could use a couple of runners. [It had] far more misses than hits. Funded Sex Lives Of Potato Men, U2 3D, 4321, Rolling Stones, St Trinian’s, I could go on…’

I think you’ll find that to be the response from most actual film-makers.

I’m no Tory and I object to actual arts funding cuts but the UKFC was a gravy train for a bunch of arseholes and I’m absolutely chuffed to bits that it’s gone.

Blogging bullets

• 17th March, 2004
• My first blog post
• Over here
• I’m re-reading it all
• Sad git

Life Lessons

It was my birthday yesterday. 31. I remember my 30th birthday being a surprisingly simple and elegant time, but the year that followed was punctuated by way too much personal angst and drama: big decisions, loss, two grief cycles, isolation, moving rooms five times (moving house sounds too glamorous), uncertainty, and the tension that thesis boredom and repetition can create. There were chunks of stable, productive, and very happy times, but, on the whole, I think, during 2009-2010, I coughed up some pretty staggeringly high prices for some lessons that I guess I couldn’t just steal from the self-help aisle or pinch from a website. I feel better today, in most senses, than ever before, but I paid up, kiddies.

Here are some of those lessons:

1. Take charge. No one is going to get you out of situations you don’t want to be in, or help you into others, and certainly not the right way, anyway. Those who love you can’t always be expected to push you off from the shore, even if you’re fretfully thinking, ‘Can’t they see that I need a push?’ This goes for personal and professional stuff.

2. Beware fear of loss and rejection. These anxieties mean that you can attach too early, fantasize at the cost of really knowing the other, become ungrounded, and ultimately disrespect your own personal standards and boundaries. Don’t foreclose early. Loss creates space, and rejection is, for the most part, a benevolent thing.

   

3. Fear is contagious. No matter how sensible and sincere you think you are being in a relationship, there is nothing like a bit of fear (anger, defensiveness, dishonesty etc) from the other to warp your behaviour. Builds up. It becomes very hard to listen. Goes both ways.
4. Remember the love. Lots of people love and value me, and I adore them. I am absurdly lucky in this way. I just spoke to my twin. Last week, my parents treated me to a holiday in France in which we met up with our French family friends. We also won pretty big on Neptune’s Fortune at the Casino of Monte Carlo. I like that I’ve now been to a casino with my parents. They go all the time so it was nice of them to finally include me (wink, wink). Yesterday, a friend took me to late lunch at this nice French place in Oxford, then last night, a bunch of friends took me out for cocktails, dinner and nice chat. They also granted me my wish: to be sung Happy Birthday in a non-English language, in character. Included Latin, Dutch, Urdu, and Spanish. If that’s not supremely loving…well, I just don’t know…(fierce shake of my double chin)

   

5. Generosity emerges from unexpected sources. A new friend made my birthday very special by taking me to a lovely dinner and out to a College party on Friday night. We laughed a lot and he just knows.
6. Adversity can be a good test. Crap situations test your ability to respond to life with creativity and self-composure, and this, I think, is a reflection of how much you know and like yourself, in the good way, not the narcissistic way (narcissism actually blocks these opportunities for growth). Of course, some situations are just crap and you have to just get through without any theorising.

   

7. Maybe just don’t say it. Not everything needs to be expressed. Wait and see what remains to be said. My friend says to put things through the ‘necessary and kind’ test. Equally, not everything deserves a response. I have realised over the year that I actually don’t like talking as much about things as I used to. I don’t need to. Plus, I am more practical, outward, and flexible by nature. But I did hurt someone I love with too many words. Fortunately, we had enough in the bank. I am hoping the next year is one big ’shh…’
8. Take your time. Giving yourself enough time and space for recalibration after set-backs is crucial. If you don’t consciously do this, your body and mind will take it from you anyway, in some form, which means that no matter what you’re intending, you simply won’t have enough of the right stuff to give, and you’ll probably be giving it to the wrong thing or person anyway.

   

9. Chin up, chaps. Even if you have to start again at your beginnings, you’re wiser for it, and it can be quite a light time anyway.
10. Give yourself more credit.

    

Please tell me a life lesson or two that you have acquired over the past year…But only if you feel like it. ; )

Life Lessons

It was my birthday yesterday. 31. My 30th birthday itself was a surprisingly simple and elegant time, but the year that followed was punctuated by way too much personal angst and drama for my liking: loss, two grief cycles, isolation, moving rooms five times (moving house sounds too glamorous), uncertainty, and the tension that thesis boredom and repetition can create. There was, of course, a lot of stable, productive, and very happy times, but, on the whole, I think, during 2009-2010, I coughed up some pretty staggeringly high prices for some lessons that I guess I couldn’t just steal from the self-help aisle or pinch from a website. I feel better today, in most senses, than ever before, but I paid up, kiddies.

Here are some of those lessons:

1. Take charge. No one is going to get yourself out of situations you don’t want to be in, or help you into others, certainly not the right way, anyway. Those who love you can’t always be expected to push you off from the shore, even if you’re fretfully thinking, ‘Can’t they see that I need a push?’ This goes for personal and professional stuff.

2. Beware fear of loss and rejection. These anxieties mean that you can attach too early, fantasize at the cost of really knowing and caring for the other, become ungrounded, and ultimately disrespect your own personal standards and boundaries. Don’t foreclose early. Loss can be a breath of fresh air, and rejection is, for the most part, a benevolent thing.

   

3. Fear is contagious. No matter how sensible you think you are being in a relationship, there is nothing like a bit of fear (anger, defensiveness, dishonesty etc) from the other to taint and warp your behaviour. Goes both ways. Builds up.
4. Remember the love. Lots of people love and value me, and I adore them. I am absurdly lucky in this way. I just spoke to my twin. Last week, my parents treated me to a holiday in France in which we met up with our French family friends. Yesterday, a friend took me to late lunch at this nice French place in Oxford, then last night, a bunch of friends took me out for cocktails, dinner and nice chat. They also granted me my wish: to be sung Happy Birthday in a non-English language, in character. Included Latin, Dutch, Urdu, and Spanish. If that’s not supremely loving…well, I just don’t know…(fierce shake of my double chin)

   

5. Generosity emerges from unexpected gaps. A new friend made my birthday very special by taking me to dinner and out to a College party on Friday night. We laughed a lot and he just knows.
6. Adversity can be a good test. Crap situations test your ability to respond to life with creativity and self-composure, and this, I think, is a reflection of how much you know and like yourself, in the good way, not the narcissistic way (narcissism actually blocks these opportunities for growth). Of course, some situations are just crap and you have to just get through without any theorising.

   

7. Maybe just don’t say it. Not everything needs to be expressed. Wait and see what remains to be said. Equally, not everything deserves a response. I have realised over the year that I actually don’t like talking as much about things as I used to. I don’t need to. Plus, I am more practical by nature. I am hoping the next year is one big ’shh…’
8. Take your time. Giving yourself enough time and space for recalibration after set-backs is crucial. If you don’t consciously do this, your body and mind will take it from you anyway, in some form, which means that no matter what you’re intending, you simply don’t have enough of the right stuff to give.

   

9. Chin up, and just keep going. Even if you have to start again at your beginnings, you’re wiser for it, and it can be quite a light time anyway.
10. Give yourself more credit. I have proven to myself over and over that I am kind, dependable, optimistic, pretty self-reliant, and definitely resilient. Lock it in, AH. Also, I like the fact that I would go for a run along the promenade of a beach in the Riviera to then decide to strip down to my underpants and dive into that unclouded blue water because my bikini was back in my bag in the hotel locker, and because dolphining about is better than any land-based exercise.

    

Please tell me a life lesson or two that you have acquired over the past year…But only if you feel like it. ; )

Ha-ha, fooled you!

Yesterday Soph and I drove in to London, parked the car at Queensway and caught the tube to Mile End where we met Ash for lunch.

Ash is a unique guy. Genuinely talented and blessed with an abundance of creativity, Ash chooses to spend most of his time working in the public sector; providing valuable services to some of our fellow humans most in need of assistance.

With his free time, Ash indulges his creative talents as a composer/musician of serious worth – we have shared just a fraction of his musical talent with our podcast listeners, under the names of artists ‘Warning! Heat Ray!’ and ‘Unsound’.

And he writes; as a music analyst/reviewer, Ash is one of the few muso-writers whose opinions – and writing – I hold in genuinely high regard.

Lunch, with Ash, was brilliant; that’s a measure of what a genuinely nice guy he is.

Later in the afternoon we went back to the West End, had a meal in an Italian restaurant in Berner Street, then walked to the place where we were to meet up with author Alex Marsh and renowned blogger Jonny B.

Alex Marsh and Jonny B are the same person, obv.

The occasion was an informal launch of Alex’s new book ‘Sex and Bowls and Rock & Roll’, or as Alex put it ‘Not a book launch, just a drink in a pub with a few friends’.

Sitting next to Alex was the deliciously gorgeous Catherine Sanderson (aka internationally renowned author and erstwhile blogger, Petite Anglaise).

So that wasn’t very intimidating at all, was it? Jonny B and Petite Anglaise sitting next to me.

Erm, yes. I may have slipped in to idiot mode.

More people arrived.

Mike Atkinson (aka influential blogger/journalist Troubled Diva) was followed by a pair of very high-profile internet characters: bloggers, writers and podcasters, Cliff Jones and Mr Angry.

Then the gorgeous Girl With A One-Track Mind rocked up.

The very lovely (he once did me a favour by personalising a copy of his book for Soph) Andrew Viner followed on behind.

And there were others!

People whose names I can’t remember; intelligent, articulate people who said bright, witty (if not outrageously funny) things.

It was a fun, funny evening.

We bailed out, leaving the survivors to carry on, around 8pm.

By the time we got home, watched Big Brother drank tea and fell in to bed it was midnight.

This morning Soph and I are teetering around the house like a pair of newly-dead zombies.

Why teetering around the house? Because we are not the grown-up people we pretended to be on two occasions, in front of all those folk, yesterday.

We are a pair of kids  who went out and successfully hoodwinked them all into believing that we were grown-up.

Ha-ha, fooled you!

But not only was it really nice to meet everyone – from lunch with Ash to to the afternoon/evening’s meeting with Jonny B and all of his friends – it was very pleasant to meet such a thoroughly nice group of people.

Ha-ha, fooled you!

Yesterday Soph and I drove in to London, parked the car at Queensway and caught the tube to Mile End where we met Ash for lunch.

Ash is a unique guy. Genuinely talented and blessed with an abundance of creativity Ash chooses to spend most of his time working in the public sector; providing valuable services to some of our fellow humans most in need of assistance.

With his free time, Ash indulges his creative talents as a composer/musician of serious ability – we have shared just a fraction of his musical talent with our podcast listeners, under the names of artists ‘Warning! Heat Ray!’ and ‘Unsound’.

And he writes; as a music analyst/reviewer, Ash is one of the few muso-writers whose opinions – and writing – I hold in genuinely high regard.

Lunch, with Ash, was brilliant; that’s a measure of what a genuinely nice guy he is.

Later in the afternoon we went back to the West End, had lunch in an Italian restaurant in Berner Street then walked to the place where we were to meet up with author Alex Marsh and renowned blogger Jonny B.

Alex Marsh and Jonny B are the same person, obv.

The occasion was an informal launch of Alex’s new book ‘Sex and Bowls and Rock & Roll’, or as Alex put it ‘Not a book launch, just a drink in a pub with a few friends’.

Sitting next to Alex was the deliciously gorgeous Catherine Sanderson (aka internationally renowned author and erstwhile blogger, Petite Anglaise).

So that wasn’t very intimidating at all, was it? Jonny B and Petite Anglaise sitting next to me.

Erm, yes. I may have slipped in to idiot mode.

More people arrived.

Mike Atkinson (aka influential blogger/journalist Troubled Diva) was followed by a pair of very influential internet characters, bloggers, writers and podcasters, Cliff Jones and Mr Angry.

The very lovely (he did me a favour by personalising a copy of his book for Soph) Andrew Viner.

And there were others!

People whose names I can’t remember; intelligent, articulate people who said bright, witty (if not outrageously funny) things.

It was a fun, funny evening.

We bailed out, leaving the survivors to carry on, around 8pm.

By the time we got home, watched Big Brother drank tea and fell in to bed it was midnight.

This morning Soph and I are teetering around the house like a pair of newly-dead zombies.

Because we are not the grown-up people we pretended to be on two occasions, in front of all those folk, yesterday.

We are a pair of kids  who went out and successfully fooled them all.

Ha-ha, fooled you!

But not only was it really nice to meet everyone – from lunch with Ash to Jonny B and all of his friends – it was very pleasant to meet such a thoroughly nice group of people.

A very Spanish show

This week’s digital broadcast (or podcast, if you prefer) is out and bouncing around every corner of the interwebs.

It’s a very Spanish affair – intended to celebrate a few of the *many* peculiarities that Bren experienced when he lived in Bérchules, a tiny, remote, high-mountain village in the district of Granada.

The music is Spanish (and yet it isn’t), and the facts are all true – even the one about Bren getting arrested when he lived there.

1. You can listen by streaming the show straight from our website: just click here!
2. Or you can download the show to your computer – or your mobile phone – so you can listen whenever you want, and in the privacy of your own home: just right click here and use the ‘save’ or ‘save as’ option in your browser
3. Or, if you have iTunes, you can get the show from the iTunes store (free of charge!): just click here and listen to it on your iPod, iPhone, iPad, your computer or other iTunes-compatible music player. Better than radio!

Naughty George goes mentalist

Yesterday morning, I woke up and went downstairs to find that Naughty George was acting oddly. When I say oddly, I mean that he was standing on the sideboard in my kitchen as though he was an ornament. He was stock still, the only movement being his nose twitching.

“What the bloody hell are you doing on that sideboard?” I asked him, before remembering that he could only speak ‘woof’.

He looked at me contemptuously (yep, my own dog), and then turned away to carry on …. well…. standing. How come I always end up with the strange dog? Someone should write a book called ‘Dogs are from Pluto, and Humans are from Earth’, it would be an international bestseller, and I would earn loads of money for coming up with the concept.

Anyway, I decided to leave him to his own devices and get on with some work.When I returned to the kitchen an hour later, Naughty George had abandoned his position on top of the sideboard and was now wedged in the small gap between the sideboard and the fridge.

“Right that’s it,” I said to him, “if you don’t stop acting all weird, I am going to send you to a mental institution for dogs, and they will probably give you electro-dog-therapy.” He backed out of the small gap, looked at me blankly before proceeding to start sniffing away at the bottom of the sideboard.

That’s when it dawned on me; some food had probably dropped down the back, and he was trying to get to it….. hence the freaky behaviour. No problem, we could solve this one easily. I grabbed hold of the sideboard and pulled it away from the wall, only to be confronted by a bloody great rat sitting there.

I screamed and shot out of the back door, the rat squeaked (I didn’t realise how loud they actually were) and shot back under the sideboard, and Naughty George tried to follow the rat, barking frenziedly. 

I stood in the garden and contemplated my dilemma with that old UB40 song spinning around in my head. ‘There’s a rat in mi kitchen, what am I gonna do?’ I peeked around the kitchen door and saw Naughty George lying on his side with both front paws under the sideboard trying to get at the rat.

I mean, just how is one supposed to get a rat out of a kitchen? Bribe it with lumps of cheese (or is it only mice that like cheese)? Ring up a rat charmer….. I don’t know.

All of a sudden my dilemma was solved. Upon seeing Naughty George, the rat had decided to make a run for the open back door, and at breakneck speed (I didn’t realise how scarily fast they were), ran past me with NG in hot pursuit. 

Needless to say, Naughty George 1 – Rat 0.

“Naughty George, you are my hero!” I said to him as he reappeared looking pleased with himself, “I’m sorry I threatened to send you to a Mental Institution.” He wagged his tail vacuously and climbed into his dog basket. Drama over.

P.S. I just want to add that I haven’t got a rat in my house because of slovenly housekeeping standards or anything like that. It’s because I live next to a farm, so they tend to be an occupational hazard.

Pregnant cousin comes to visit

“So,” I hear you cry, “what the blazes did you get up to last weekend?”

Well, it was all rather exciting. My cousin, Jane (we’ve been close all our lives), suddenly announced that she was pregnant with her first baby and wanted to come and visit with her boyfriend Martin; probably to get top parenting tips from me. Yeh, yeh, I say that ironically. There are numerous past instances that will point to the fact that I am unequivocally not the most conventional (apparently that is the kind way of putting it) of mothers.

Like when the Health Visitor told me off for teaching Izzy to drive a Fork Lift Truck. She said it was ‘inappropriate’, but to this day, I still view it as an essential life skill.

Then there was the time Izzy when was first born and the Midwife visited to find out how I was getting on. I was desperately trying to impress her, and would have probably managed it if it wasn’t for Naughty George. Firstly, as soon as the Midwife arrived, Izzy decided to fill her nappy with the brown stuff, so it looked like she had been sat in it for ages. DOH. I nipped out the room to get a new nappy, and when I got back, Naughty George was licking the baby’s face. What a git.

At this point, I was getting increasingly nervous, but still managed a passable nappy change – a little skewiff, but it was still on. I lifted up Izzy to show the Midwife when all of a sudden, Naughty George created a commotion behind me. I turned to find him ragging Izzy’s dirty nappy like it was a dead rat, showering the immediate vicinity with baby plop. That dog has got a lot to answer for.

Anyway, I digress. Jane and Martin arrived on Saturday afternoon, and we sat down for a cup of tea in the garden.

“Blimey”, I said to Jane, “I can’t believe you’re up the duff.”

“I know, it’s freaky isn’t it. Do you want to see a picture of my scan?” She replied, rummaging about in her handbag and producing a black and white grainy picture.

“Where’s the baby?” I asked, studying it closely.

“There,” Jane pointed at something in the black blob in the middle of the picture.

“Blimey, it looks like a pair of testicles,” I replied.

“I know,” she nodded.

“Cool,” I said.

After our tea, we had decided to go into Oxford and have a wonder around the city.

“Before we set off, let me take some pictures of you guys in my garden,” I said. First up was Martin.

I took the picture and then turned to Jane, “blimey, is it me, or is he a right poser?”

“He’s a right poser,” confirmed Jane, adding “he has to look in a mirror at least 100 times a day.”

“Wow, is that true?” I asked Martin.

“Yep,” he nodded proudly.

“What do you do if there isn’t a mirror available?” I asked out of curiosity.

“I always carry one with me, just in case,” he said.

“Good thinking,” I replied, impressed.

Once we arrived in Oxford, we decided to visit the oldest pub in the city which was tucked down a small alley off High Street. It was called The Bear and was built circa 1242 which is nearly 300 years before Shakespeare was born, and he is really old.

The pub was divided into two tiny bar areas, both of which were full when we entered.

“Hey cous,” I said to Jane, “can we play the pregnancy card in order to get some seats?”

“No,” she said shaking her head.

“Why not? I thought it was one of the perks of the condition,” I said.

“You’re just bloody embarrassing,” she replied, as I rued an opportunity missed.

After visiting The Bear Inn, we had 45 minutes to spare before going back to the Forest Hill to eat. So what better way to complete our cultural tour than a visit to another pub, called The White Horse Inn, this time situated in a building which dates back to Medieval times.

So, even though we were in one of the world’s most historical cities, we had only seen two pubs. That is a pretty poor effort even by my low standards. What’s worse, was that we left Oxford in order to go and eat at yet another pub in the village where I live.

Rather confusingly, it also was called The White Horse Inn. Blimey, the day was turning out to be a dobbin-fest.

We had a large meal of Thai food, and then out came the camera again. At first things started out quite normally………

And then everything rapidly degenerated into a pose-fest, inspired by Martin ‘I should’ve been a model, me’………

Sure enough, after thirty minutes our ears were ringing after being bombarded with 1980’s high octane dance music. Martin was jumping around the living room in appreciation of his choices.

“Blimey,” I said to Jane, “is he always like that when you give him access to youtube?”

“Yep,” she nodded despairingly, “and he can keep going for hours.”

And so he did, and I can confirm that it was the very early hours when everyone eventually went to bed. Not bad stamina for a pregnant girl eh?

Fez, 26 June

This time Fez is much less about us and much more about the place itself, the people here. Now I think it extraordinary that we came here when we did – only six weeks into our relationship, the future (our future, that is, he being English, me being American) only a cloud through which we could not even imagine passing. But we trusted each other completely here, and lay on our hotel bed taking photos of our sweaty, hairy, unclean selves.

Now we are staying with friends. But it is also different because three years of living together has made it so. It is lovely but also, weirdly, lonely. If you are no longer getting to know each other in such an active way (now I can make jokes about his past and he knows the geography of my history and there is much less exclaiming over a tajine: ‘oh, I didn’t know you’d done that!‘). It is sometimes almost like travelling with oneself. If he knows, now, that I like to wash my hands more than strictly necessary, and I know without thinking about it that he will smoke almost twice as much here, then there is little (nothing!) to try to hide, and even less to be grateful for the revelation of.

And this is such a sweet thing, but also scary – suddenly here we, this one thing that is a “we” but also an “I”, are, in a foreign country. Perhaps in a way this is why I slept badly last night – for, in spite of him being beside me, loving, handsome even in sleep, smelling and feeling more familiar than anything, than even myself, I felt a sense of being also alone. And perhaps also this is why people (eventually) have children – I had this thought yesterday, as we were discussing the merits of trans-national relationships: that at a certain point you become so close that you almost need someone else – who will be like him and like you but different and constantly, forever, surprising – again. Is that a strange thing to think? But then, everything is strange here.