Some puppies

Watch "Merry Christmas from some cute puppies!" on YouTube

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Skyfall is rubbish. Here's why.

**MASSIVE SPOILERS**

The more I think about Skyfall the more I hate it.

Its such a massive backstep for the series that I don't quite understand how it happened or why. Or how someone as talented as Sam Mendes got mixed up in it all. I need to try and figure it out and bleat about it for a bit.

• If your story focuses on the bad guy, you'd better make him formidable and super bad.

Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace were about Bond. They began a story arc that Skyfall for some reason breaks with. What we have in Skyfall is a standalone villain of the week piece with Javier Bardem at its centre. Now, I don't understand the logic of breaking with the story arc established in the first two films save for giving the franchise legs. However, the break would have been ok if the reason was they'd come up with this incredible villain that justified it. But they haven't. Javier Bardem is a great actor and I think he does his best with a badly written part, but he's just not that interesting. What we needed was Darth Vader or Hannibal Lecter. What we get is David Walliams in a wig loaded with abandonment issues. 

Our first inkling of what to expect from the character is fed to us by one of Bardem's flunkies in the casino. She's terrified of this character we know nothing about. Literally shaking terrified. You don't know fear she says to Bond or words to that effect. Brilliant. He must be a proper balls-out psycho. But no. Bardem does nothing even remotely menacing for the entire running time of the film. He's a Mummy's boy sucking his thumb. There are five specific things in the story that are meant to illustrate how scary a guy he is. 1) We're told he's scary. 2) When we meet him he makes a partly creepy speech about rats eating each other. 3) He shoots one woman. 4) He is disfigured (how old school!). 5) He wants to get a bit sweaty with Bond. 

None of that makes him the least bit menacing. It never felt like Bond was in danger, it felt like Bond would give him an absolute kicking if he could. Basically he's supposed to be scary because he's deformed and he's gay. Nice work script writers. Nice work. 

• All the familiar old bullshit is back. 

Casino Royale was brilliant. It was pitch perfect. The Bond franchise was a ridiculous dinosaur that could not continue because it was shit. Jason Bourne came along and the right people realised that Bond could not go on as he was in a post Bourne world. So they rebooted him and somehow the stars aligned. They managed to take the visceral grittiness of Bourne and marry it with the glamour and coolness of Bond. This is looking like a more and more impressive achievement all the time. Then we had Quantum of Solace. It wasn't great, but the action was still visceral and the story arc set up in the first film was nicely continued. It was dark, humourless, but it had to be, Bond had fallen in love, been fucked over by his love, watched her die, and found out she was being controlled by a mysterious organisation that orchestrated it all. That's not going to make anyone sing the hills are alive. But it was ok because it felt like the middle film of a trilogy. We knew we'd get there in the end, the Bond of Casino Royale would return, smarter and wiser and would wreak his revenge. 

But it looks like the producers lost their nerve after Quantum came in for criticism. So what we've been given is another reboot. Out is the grittiness and the visceral stomach churning action. Back is the ridiculous action (CGI motorbike chase on Istanbul tiled roofs?, killer Komodo dragons?, a tube train plunging through a ceiling as a getaway diversion?) , the misogyny, the double entendrees, fucking Q branch, gadgets, unfunny one liners, and Miss Moneypenny. They've even thrown in the old Aston Martin for good measure for fucks sake. All of this is good for nostalgia's sake but for no other reason. Casino Royale reinvented Bond and made it relevant again. Skyfall uninvents the new Bond and goes back in time a couple of decades. We're back in Moore and Brosnan territory. Daniel Craig is still great, this plot is not.

• Needless back story

Bond has no need of a back story. His character does not need to be explained. But here he goes home to the family pile and we learn more about him being an orphan. Its unnecessary. We have Albert Finney as an old gameskeeper for no good reason. He doesn't need to be in the film. The important thing is the relationship between M and Bond, and that's already been set up. It doesn't need drumming home that M is his surrogate Mum because he was orphaned. 

• Weak women

Casino Royale had a Bond girl that was smart as a whip. Quantum had a Bond girl that was tough as nails. Bond was misogynistic but was shown up for it. We weren't meant to be sympathetic to his misogyny. In Skyfall we have a prostitute who Bond climbs into a shower with uninvited, and a field agent who should really accept she's better off as a secretary and is there just as a foil for Bond's double entendres. This is an unsettling reversal, we're back to being sympathetic with his misogyny. I get that M is the real Bond girl of this film, but her relationship with Bond and her demise felt forced. The M in the previous films didn't need taking care of by Bond. She was in control of the situation. Now she's just vulnerable and needs him to protect her in some Oedipal nightmare. 

In conclusion, I didn't enjoy it and if its a sign of a new direction for the series I've lost interest.

I wish people had no ears

Lesson learned. Never, ever attempt to do a whole soundtrack to a film in post production.

I'm just putting the finishing touches to my next short film. Over the last month or so I've been creating the ambient soundtrack and effects. Due to shooting most of the film near busy roads only about 10% of the location sound was usable. Doing the sound in post has taught me a valuable lesson and wasted a good portion of my young life.

Sound is hard. It's time consuming, painstaking and consuming. Luckily there's no shortage of great free sound effects out there on the interweb. Unluckily there is no easy way of finding them. How do you know when you start searching that the perfect sound for your ammo rounds hitting the floor will be a Latvian fixing a gate post? Or that the perfect sound of a body being dragged will be a distorted recording of a cat eating Felix? In my first short I replicated the sound of Gernan military orders over a megaphone using a recording someone had made of their drunk Spanish neighbour trying to smash his own door in at the 3am.

Welcome to the weird world of sound foley. This is not a world that makes sense. You need a good level of abstract logic to work in this world.

It's made me realise that animated films must be really hard to do. When everything has to be created from scratch. They must have the most amazing sound people at pixar and Disney.

The film sounds fantastic and it was worth it. But its hard work and it's something you can easily get lost in while you obsess over the smallest sound effect nobody will ever notice.

So heed my advice and don't do it. Get your sound on location. Just say no.

Looper is brilliant, but not quite genius.

So I saw Looper last night and absolutely loved it. It put me in a really good mood and I was smiling when I left the cinema. There were some things in the film that I've never seen before and some really subtle scenes that will influence me in the future. I'm loving seeing Joseph Gordon-Levitt becoming the leading man I predicted he would after seeing Brick the first time. He's a great actor.

Rian Johnson is a very talented director and has a knack with writing. I liked the fact that all the characters were made a little sympathetic and the characters you expected to be rooting for did some pretty terrible things. It kept you off balance and unsure of what direction the story was taking. You're never totally sure who the hero is.

However, it did bring to mind one of my writing rules. There's something about the story that stops it just short of being a classic in spite of everything else about it being so well done.

• Always try to make your whole story develop out of the initial premise

One problem that Looper has, and I don't think I'm spoiling anything here, is the telekinesis subplot. I'm not spoiling anything as telekinesis is discussed from the very beginning of the film so it stands to reason its going to be an integral part of the film.  However, the core concept of the film is that Joseph Gordon-Levitt has to kill an older version of himself. That's very clever, he's a hitman who's facing an older and slower version of himself but who is also wiser, more experienced and has the advantage of having his memories. Brilliant.

However, the film also develops a Johnny Bravo-esque sub plot about telekinisis that actually overshadows  the main concept towards the end of the film. So you have a film that starts off being about one thing and finishes being about something else. I should say in fairness that it's all resolved very nicely and its never anything less than entertaining and clever. But there are very few films that have pulled off the trick of twisting the story into something else halfway through. Psycho maybe, The Birds, maybe Memento. You might say detective fiction has always played that trick. The gumshoe starts out investigating one thing but it turns out to be something totally different. But the main concept is that the gumshoe is investigating something. Nothing more.

Terminator is about terminators. Twelve Monkeys is about identifying who unleashed a virus in the past. Inception is about planting an idea in someone's mind and what it might do to them. They all explore a core concept and everything in them is an offshoot of that initial premise. To me that makes them neat, clean and gives them the extra oomph to lift them above the rest. Where Looper just misses the mark is in having two concepts. Its as though Johnson couldn't figure out how to make two men hunting each other for 2 hours interesting and so had to introduce another plot element to give it some legs.

We're all taught that you should be able to sum up your film in one sentence. Looper would take two.

If you publish this I will ruin you.

Big week this week as I hit page 30 of my first feature length script. According to lore that should mean roughly 30 minutes of screen time which means I'm a third of the way through. That makes me very happy and makes the whole project seem far more real. Which in turn has made me realise that if I want to hit my goal of having completed a film by the end of next year then I have a lot of work to do and may have to revise my estimates.

This week I've been concerned that the story I'm writing is in part inspired by real life events. I am highly fictionalising it with only the opening sequence being the same as a story ripped from the headlines. All the characters are fictional and what happens after Act 1 is totally made up. However, the opening would be clearly recognisable and I worry that this could cause problems. There's no way I can change it as its pivotal to the plot. Even if I were to state that the work is a fiction at the beginning of the film am I still leaving myself wide open to legal action?

Its not like I'm writing a political expose about david cameron smashing up frogs with a cricket bat to get his kicks. But how far can art imitate life these days?

I worry that it wouldn't stop the film being made but might stop potential distributors picking up the film lest they be sued. I've been scouring the internet but can't find a great deal on the subject. I've found some good advice and some bad. Anyway, I've not let it deter me and I'm ploughing on. I think maybe the important thing to do is to document exactly what steps I'm taking in the writing to distance it from the real story.

And to keep those photos of david cameron smashing up frogs in a safe somewhere.

Time to tweak the nuts of the elephant in the room

So, my girlfriend recently moved in with me. This has not happened before. There is no precedent, and there's trouble brewing.

The problem is this: I am an avid film fan in the true sense of the word. I am fanatical. I love watching films to a ridiculous degree. I could happily watch three films an evening and that would be a great night for me.

I have spent weekends doing nothing but watching films. I rarely watch television, I like a computer game but can drop them without too much dismay, I read on the commute, I'm not sporty. But films, films are my bread and butter. The chicken in my bucket. I own hundreds of DVDs and blu rays and can watch a film over and over again. I have even spent many a night firing up dozens of DVDs just to watch my favourite few scenes. Eject, bang in the next. In short, I gorge on film. I binge. I am nerdy and obsessive and I love it.

So here's the rub: my girlfriend can't stay awake through a film to save her life. I swear, to the extent that its almost some kind of super power. I thought it was dimming the lights but no. If a film was put on 20 mins after she woke up in the morning she would be back asleep again in half an hour.

This unnervingly puts my love for film under the microscope. One of my worst traits is that I tend to feel nervous about the things I enjoy in front of other people. I'm secretive and furtive. If someone walks in on me playing a computer game I feel ashamed and have to switch it off. I feel compelled to justify drinking a bit too much wine over and over in my head. And now my love of film is starting to seem a bit sordid. Confronted with this absolute ability to sleep during the best cinema has to offer I feel somehow like I'm in the wrong. Like I should be sleeping my way through this bullshit too. In short, I lack conviction in my own sense of pleasure.

What to do?

For the record. She has stayed awake through Drive, anything by Pixar and Moneyball, a three hour long film about baseball. How the hell did that happen?

Sabattical

So I've proved the rule that I'm terrible at this business by taking a brief hiatus almost as soon as I started this blog.

I've been absent for a little while as I've been finishing work on a drama-documentary about the Australian troops in the Vietnam war. It was someone else's baby, I just shot it and edited it and mighty fine its looking too I must say.

Here are some teaser stills.

It's out of my hands having a voiceover done for it at the moment but should be finished soon. I don't know what will end up happening to it but I'm just happy to have made it and got some invaluable experience. It did make me appreciate just how much easier it is to make something look beautiful when you don't have to worry about anything else happening on the set. 

The break has given me some time to think about my first project and backtrack a bit. I had decided to plough on with a film I knew I could make with no money and keep the one I care the most about, but will take some cash to make, in reserve for when I can raise some capital off the back of my first feature. 

However, I'm just too invested in the film that will take some money to make. So I've shelved the cheaper film while I write the script for the one I care most about. I think I've decided you should run with what you're most passionate about at the time. I still think I'll have to make the cheaper film first but I really want to have both scripts to play with. That way I can put the more expensive script out there while I work on the cheaper film. It means if the first film is successful there won't be a gap while I have to write the second. 

I hope that's a smart move. 

Anyway, the good news is the first ten minutes of the first script is complete and I'm writing it quickly. I don't want to discuss the plot in detail but its about a man who can play the piano. It seems to me that a good piano movie comes along every six or seven years and they always seem to do very well. The Piano, The Pianist, Shine. I'm hoping mine will be the next. The core themes are tragedy and loss and the redemptive power of music. 

I became aware of an incredibly talented young American pianist about a year ago and have approached him about doing the music. He really liked the story idea and seemed very enthusiastic. He released an EP last year that just astonished me and he's still in university undiscovered at the moment though he is bound to hit the limelight at some point so I hope I can get him before it happens. Maybe it will come from the back of this film.

I'm also friends on Facebook with a couple of actors who I really like and are rapidly rising through the up and coming ranks. One has asked me to send the script when its finished. But its early days yet and I don't want to jump the shark before its time. Its frustrating to have to bite your tongue when you have something you want to get people excited about but aren't ready to sell yet. How do you sow the seeds for something you may not accomplish for several years? 

My aim is to have a feature film under my belt by the end of next year but at the moment I don't know which film that will be. The temptation is to jump three steps at a time. I caught myself looking at locations for the more expensive film online the other night and bookmarking ones that I like. I have to run before I can walk and get these scripts finished and out there first. 

Lesson number one: Finish your script before you do anything. 

What I learned from Prometheus

SPOILERS

When I was at university I kept a little book detailing important lessons I learned in writing technique and story telling, every time I watched a film or read book and was impressed or annoyed about something I'd note it down in the book. I amassed an impressive series of rules and guidelines that inform my writing to this day, albeit indirectly.

Unfortunately I lost the book somewhere along the line and I can't replicate it. I often wonder if I'm making mistakes in my writing that I railed against in those rules, hopefully I learned the lessons without having to revisit them.

Anyway, I'd like to start it again and this blog seems as good a way as any to do it. As I saw Prometheus last night and was enraged by it, it occurred to me I can trigger these rules from whatever I've been watching recently. So, today I'm going to set out some rules triggered by watching Prometheus. I apologise if this turns into a rant.

• If you're telling part of a larger story, that part still needs to tell a satisfying story in and of itself. 

Prometheus is clearly establishing itself as the first of further films. During the course of the film so many things are introduced and then brushed under the carpet that it leaves the plot looking like it has more holes than Danny Trejo's face. I suspect the reason for this is that much will be picked up in the following films. I'm fine with that. The problem is that doesn't unburden the writer of the responsibility of telling a satisfying story within that first part. I didn't pay £12 to see 2hrs of claptrap that only serves as Act one to a larger story. Look at the first part of any of the big trilogies and they serve as stories in themselves with the characters making an important journey. I don't really see that in Prometheus.

• All of your characters should be necessary.

Prometheus contains a large assortment of characters, a good half or more of which are totally unnecessary to the story. When the Captain of Prometheus sacrifices himself to destroy the Engineers' ship at the end there are two co pilots who go along with him. Two co pilots who we have not seen before this point who have a bit of light hearted banter with the Captain before hurling themselves into a fiery black ball of screaming death agony. Who the fuck were they?!!!! Having characters you don't know anything about perform heroic deeds robs the deed of any emotional investment. There are a half dozen more of these moments and characters throughout the film.

Charlize Theron and the ageing Weyland are irrelevant and could be removed from the plot without consequence. Charlize's character is set up as the cliche corporate shill then never does anything remotely sinister for the whole film before being killed in the end for being too stupid to run sideways instead of forwards. (Note to film characters, if something tall and thin is falling towards you you will have more chance of survival if you run at a right angle to where the thing is going to fall.) The ridiculous looking Weyland (Guy Pearce acting half Mr Burns / half Danish pastry) is supposed to be dead for most of the film only to turn up alive just in time to have his head kicked in and die. There is no point in introducing a character we thought was dead just to kill him. We already thought he was dead anyway. The same applies for relationships, Charlize reveals in a piece of awful acting that Weyland is her father. So what? Nothing in the film has made that revelation in any way sensational or shocking. Absolutely pointless.

• Do not duplicate character arcs

The story of Prometheus is the story of Noomi Rapace. She wants to find out about the people that made us and try to find some answers why. The first two acts take us on that journey so we invest ourselves in it. So there is no point in having another character turn up in the final act and try to muscle in on that journey. Weyland turns up and effectively says actually this film isn't about your journey its about mine. But his journey is resolved so quickly as to make it utterly pointless: 'Can you extend my life?' 'No' Punch. 'There's nothing!' Weyland makes some exclamation as to the pointlessness of it all as he dies. But he was never looking for meaning, that was Noomi Rapace's journey. He just wanted longer life. Weyland's introduction is just a distraction and duplication of Noomi's story. 

The same applies to Charlize Theron. We already have a villain of the piece in Fassbender. So what purpose does Charlize serve? It's like they thought we needed an Ash and a Carter Burke together to up the ante. Never have too many villains. Since Charlize never does anything particularly reprehensible but is drawn as cold and callous it feels like she's just been included to distract us from the naughty things Fassbender is doing so we can still root for him later or in the sequel. So we have two bad guys where one would have worked better. 

This replication smacks of TV writing where a series will need a larger cast of characters with metronome motivations to keep our interest up over 24 episodes. That's not necessary in a 2 hr long film. I think this is baggage Lindelof is carrying over from writing Lost. 

• The world of your story should be consistent in and of itself.

The premise of the film is that ancient cave paintings and pictograms all over the world contain a star chart that Noomi Rapace reads as an open invitation to visit our creators the Engineers. These must have been planted by the Engineers, the ancients wouldn't have a clue as the Stars are too far to be seen from our planet. So why the hell do these same aliens want to dish out hot agonising vicious death on us? The mission to destroy us was supposed to happen in around 90AD. So what was so different between our ancient ancestors and the Romans that the Engineers decided we needed to be wiped out? One of the cave paintings was Mayan from around 600 AD, placing it 500 years after the Engineers had decided to kill us. Doesn't make sense. Presumably a sequel will address this but Prometheus makes it seem like our next door neighbour has invited us to his birthday party just so he can kick us in the nuts in front of his friends. 

The black goo... the fucking black goo. So, in order, the black goo: turns the Engineers inside out if they drink it, makes earthworms from nothing, makes snakes that intelligent rational scientists want to cuddle instead of dissect, makes angry geologists (who specialise in mapping but who lose their way out of a cave system they've only just entered) turn into The Thing, makes little silver worms come out of the eyes of any human that drinks it (even though we have identical DNA to the Engineers and it destroys them in seconds) it makes intelligent rational scientists too shy to mention the worms in their eyes to anyone or seek medical attention when they notice it, is the worst STD ever and makes you pregnant with squids that turn into massive facehuggers that sit on your face like the fat guy from Borat that go on to make crappy aliens that look like Olympic cyclists and would have HR Geiger retching into his popcorn. The black goo is like the Engineer's iPhone. It's got an app for everything. The black goo does not make sense and is not consistent. 

The Engineers want to kill us but fail. 2,000 years then pass and apparently they don't know that the attempt failed as they make no further attempt. What have the rest of the Engineers been up to? Ball jugglers. Somewhere in the universe there is an admin Engineer trying to leave the room without being noticed. 'Philip, didn't you reschedule the destruction of Earth?' 'Yeah, I was going to do that, but then I didn't.' 'Why not?' 'The post it note fell behind the desk' 'This isn't going to look good on your annual appraisal Philip.' 

The events of Prometheus occur about 30 years before Alien yet the technology is way more advanced. The only attempt to make the ships look consistent is the rubber cladding on the walls.

On watching Alien again it seems fairly clear in the design of the Space Jockey that it is something biological  and fossilised, not something mechanical.

Apparently it doesn't seem to bother anyone on Earth that Weyland, the founder of the corporation that seems to run the Earth in Aliens, spends vast sums of money to launch the mission and dies during it. No one on the ship sent a message to Earth to let them know what was going on and no one on Earth seems to care that they never came back since no one followed them in the next 100 years before Aliens to find out. If Bill Gates spent his fortune flying to Mars and was killed by Martians I think a few of us would know about it. 

'Hey remember when our boss and his daughter went to go and find out the origins of life and never came back?'

'Aye, mad that wasn't it? I'm glad we never discussed it with anyone, they might have stopped our paycheques.'

• Make the actions and motivations of your characters consistent.

Noomi Rapace's boyfriend is an apparently stable, gentle, intelligent and rational scientist who discovers evidence of the creators of our species and is so disappointed by that astounding discovery that he goes on a bender and is a prick to everyone around him. He has not been a prick before. This seemed contrived simply so we'd root for Fassbender when he puts the black goo in his drink. 

Our geologist is set up as a mean bad ass mercenary who within 5 minutes has become Scooby Doo and is running around the base like its a haunted mansion even though very little has happened. His Shaggy is a scientist who is set up as a boffin who when confronted with a totally unknown snake looking creature clearly exhibiting threat behaviour just wants to pet it like a kitten. 

Charlize is set up as an inhuman robot who will climb over anyone in the interests of the corporation. For most of the film though she is the only rational voice and appears just to be desperately trying to save herself from the stupid decisions of everybody else. 

Prometheus has a contingent of security personnel who are never heard from again after the first 5 mins on the planet. Where were they and their guns? Why do they obey Naomi's dictat not to bring weapons when she is not funding or leading the expedition? 

Given that everyone is of the opinion that the Engineers are militaristic and hell bent on our destruction why was no attempt made to restrain or minimise the threat of the one survivor when they wake him?

Apparently if you're the pilot of a ship it takes no more than someone telling you that you can't let another ship leave for you to decide your only course of action is to crash your ship into it in a suicidal action. You don't have to ask what's going on. This is especially true if you're a copilot, if your Captain decides to commit heroic suicide on the word of someone hysterical you will go along with it no questions asked because it seems like a bit of a laugh. 

• Do not claim your story is one thing and then make it the exact opposite

A lot of people online seem to think the negative reaction to the film derives from it not being an Alien film. I don't think that's true. I would have been more than happy if it was not an Alien film but something new instead. That's what I expected it to be and what the excellent marketing led me to believe. Throughout the hype of Prometheus Ridley Scott was at pains to state that the film was not really a prequel to Alien but that it was a thought provoking sci fi set in the same Universe. If that's the case then don't make the last half of the film a creature feature about face huggers, chest bursters and finish it with the birth of an alien variant. THAT MAKES IT AN ALIEN FILM. This film is not thought provoking or philosophical. It asks the question of what the motivation behind creation is and what it means to try to reverse engineer your understanding of your own existence. But it doesn't explore any answers. It simply shows you what life would be like if the person that gave you life was also a massive tit. Plenty of people suffer that in real life and don't have to be shown an allegory of it at the flicks. (I don't mean me Mam, Dad.) 

So there we go. Lessons learned. I'm off to watch Alien again and see if I can still enjoy it. 

Next time I might do the Avengers to address some positive lessons. 

Losing everything

Ok, the trains are delayed this evening so I'm using it as an excuse to have some beef noodles, a pint and to wax lyrical on risk.

I've been thinking about a comment a mystery contributor made to an earlier post. They said that being honest in this blog was brave and that if they did the same they'd likely lose what backing and financial support they had managed to drum up.

I remember watching a program years ago about a short film director who couldn't make the leap to feature films. Nobody would finance him, everyone told him his ideas were great but nobody would put their money where their mouths were. So he convinces himself there must be some trick, some technique to finding funding that he's missing. He went to a Hollywood producer to find out what it was and to get advice.

The Hollywood producer gave him short shrift. 'You want to get into feature film production?' He said. 'then make a feature length film.' And that was that, that was his advice. That had a profound effect on me. In order to get into the business of making films you have to first be in the business of making films.

For that film producer there were absolutely no barriers to stop someone from making a film. Just excuses. I believe in that totally and I think that digital camera technology has made that possible. I think now anybody can make a film with no money, no financial support. If you can't then its because you haven't figured out how to marry your ambitions to your reality. I'm not saying that looking for money is wrong, or undesirable. But its no longer the only way. People will work for free if they believe in the project. You have to create a story that people believe in. The rest is logistics.
Which brings me back to the comment about being brave. The truth is I can afford to be brave because I'm in the wonderful position of having nothing to lose. I'm treating this film as my calling card, I have no ambitions for distribution although it would be nice. I'm making a film to show what I can achieve with no money.  And I have absolute confidence in my ability to produce something from nothing. And hopefully that will lead to bigger and better things. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain from my honesty.

I may piss some people off along the way. But I'll try not to. I promise not to be mean, or spiteful, I won't go out of my way to say hurtful things because its not in my nature. But I will tell the truth in the interests of making progress.

However, that doesn't apply to any judges who have failed to shortlist my short films for competitions in the past. I hate you with an indescribable passion, and if I find out where you live I will burn your houses to the ground.

Later gaterz.

You can't say brainstorming because epileptics are selfish.

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Me Mam

OK.So this blog has already invited comment from my Mam who a) told me off for swearing and b) chastised me for daring to get my Lethal Weapon characters names confused. It's Roger Murtaugh, not Riggs Murtaugh.

Sorry Mam. I won't do it again.

Already things aren't going well

Already things aren't going well. 

In this blog I'm going to chart the creation of my first feature film. The idea is that I'll spend a few minutes every week trying to reach out and share my experiences. But I've been staring at the screen for 20 minutes now and this is all I've written.

I hate blogging. I fucking hate Twitter. It all seems one sided and self important to me. Twitter makes no sense. The messages seem like gobbledygook and there's too much information. If I follow more than two people I'm drowning in needless info. I love Amanda Palmer with all my heart and I put my $10 into her Kickstarter but I wish she'd SHUT THE FUCK UP.

But I get the feeling its because I don't understand it and its my problem. I wasn't raised to be loquacious, I only talk if I've got something worth saying or if I'm drunk. I need to change that.

So here's the deal. I'm making a film and I'm going to tell you all about it. But this isn't PR. It's not a publicity drive. I read Robert Rodriguez' Rebel Without a Crew a while ago and want to steal his idea. I just want to make a film and to tell you how it was done. I'm going to try to be honest. I'm going to record my insecurities, my arrogances, my conflicts as I go. I'm going to tell you when I think things are going wrong and when they're going right. So this isn't a blog about a film. It's a blog about me, trying to make a film. And it's probably a bad idea. It's ok to spread your ego out and tell the truth when you have money and success. When you have no money and depend on the good will of others, being candid is stupid. 

So we've established I'm stupid. 

Goodnight!