MUTINY ON THE BUSES

Still on a bus theme...

In that familiar ‘when did you stop beating your wife’ way of our government, I wasn’t surprised to come across a banner ad on a bus the other day announcing that DVD piracy is financing ‘people smuggling’. The ad features a pathetically witless picture of a DVD with a rubbishy handscribbled label. The film they chose? Pirates of the Caribbean 2, (gettit?) - a snip at a fiver, I thought, put me down for a copy. It’s not like I’d be leaving Jerry Bruckheimer, Walt Disney or Buena Vista International short of a few quid.

The ad belongs to FACT, the self-appointed anti-piracy outfit mentioned in a previous blog. Not content with accusing film fans of bank-rolling drug dealers, prostitution and terrorism, they’ve now tapped into the latest tabloid xenophobic scaremongering over migrant workers – suggesting that by buying a pirate movie, we’re somehow letting the darkies and East European gangsters loose (their mentality, not mine) all over the place.

Yet again we – decent, law abiding folks - have to put up with a non-governmental finger wagging, like the majority of so-called terrorists accused, judged and charged on no evidence whatsoever. It’s just like the recent imbecilic legislation designed to make criminals out of anyone downloading porn in the privacy of their own home, while every corner shop in the country carries a top shelf of titles whose content would make Jenna Jameson reach for the smelling salts.

The trouble is, it’s not an offence to buy a pirate DVD, only to flog 'em. That’s why the FACT lobby’s getting all upset. Easier to pick on the punters than the tiny minority who probably don’t scratch much of a living from the mass burning of movies. If anything, the pirates are providing a public service when it costs six quid to visit the multiplex. How would FACT feel if I went around spray-painting slogans in public places accusing major film studios and distributors of investing in arms, alcohol and backing war-mongering governments?

The irony of the ‘people smuggling’ charge is all the more insulting when you consider the growing numbers of Polish bus drivers, Somalian hospital cleaners and Kurdish cinema ushers, doing the crapola low-paid jobs that none of us want to do. Even worse, these are the very people likely to get on a bus. How do they feel, I wonder, being branded as criminals on two counts? If this keeps up, how long before legitimate migrant workers - and the rest of us - will be made to sew little badges on our clothes to identify ourselves? Or is an ID card different?

Me, I welcome each and every one. The country would soon grind to a halt without them.

Am I offended? Totally. Collaring the bus driver, I asked, what do you think of this advert on the side of your bus? He looked at it, his face slightly puzzled, then told me he thought a fiver to see Johnny Depp was reasonable. Good for you, I tell him, but thinking, too bad respect for the average punter comes a lot dearer. FACT should be made to walk the plank...

WORMS ON A BUS

Yeah, yeah, shove up on that bandwagon…

But here’s the thing. Critics are soooo ready to pan Snakes on a Plane, which deserves an award for the title alone, yet as dumb action movies go, at least it got made and at least it’s got all the production values you expect from an action movie, dumb or not.

Meanwhile in Scotland – and no, Braveheart was a long time ago and anyway it’s American – we can only dream of making a movie as trashily great as SOAP. The closest we get to action is games, which may be underwhelming when it comes to original narrative but otherwise do a great job of packing the action in. They’re also good at hiding their national origins. Who can blame the game boys for the cover-up?

Far better to pretend to be from LA or Mongolian – anything but Scottish – because in the international arena, Scotland is a mythical place eternally trapped in the 14th century - a place populated with large aquatic monsters, violent men in woolly blankets capable of living on a diet of gorse and for that George Lucas appeal, cute little haggis running round hills on two short legs. If you’re not laughing, you’re scared of being hacked to death with a claymore.

I had an uncle way back in the 70s who told my cousins he couldn’t buy a colour telly because their flat was so damp the colours would run. Modern day Scotland as imagined by filmmakers is an equally mythical, monochrome state, where you’re more likely to come up against a blootered blade wielding patter merchant who lives on chips and curry sauce than an action hero. Scotland’s idea of an action movie is somebody getting a bus, where there’s more life in the vomit on the floor than the passengers. Now there’s an idea…

A sneaky item in the Guardian recently –

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/edinburgh2006/story/0,,1839529,00.html

- pretty much sums up the lack of ambition and ignorance when it comes to homegrown movies. Commenting on the smoking ban, a Scottish Screen spokesperson suggested that to counter the lack of fag action in movies the answer is ‘special effects’. Great idea. And how do you pull that off when the average Scottish film budget is about £4.50? Is there a cheapo software package out there called Mayfair FX V.10 I haven't heard about?

Worms on a Bus is about our level, starring Shuggy P. Jackson. Costumes by Pitlochry Woollen Mills and catering sponsored by the Parks Department. Munch, munch…

ROCK ME BABY, NOT ROB ME

If ever a reminder of exploitation needed to be painted in letters ten foot high, let alone repeated, it’s Chris Rock’s observation – minimum wage is a way of saying if they could pay you less, they would.

It’s with these words in mind that I checked out the Ideas Factory Scotland website which is calling for people happy to work as trainee TV crew for the Boom Room, a Channel 4/Nexuslive internet music show. The only problem here is it’s not even minimum wage. Oh, and they give you a whole day to shoot and edit the goods, because as they say - it should possible (sic) to record and edit the whole thing during the day in Edinburgh in September.

And here's me thinking BBC Scotland are cheapskates...

Am I being unfair by trashing this ‘opportunity’? No, I’m not. The application form makes no mention of pay, not even expenses apart from some free booze after the work’s been done and maybe somewhere to doss. Candidates are also being asked to work at weekends – long gone are the days of time and a half for dragging yourself in on a Saturday.

These media muggers also ask for your preferred ‘specialism’ – eg. are you a camera op, a sound engineer or a web encoder? Web encoder? Is that not a skill worth money? As if, like making the tea, it’s just something you’re expected to do these days as long as you don’t go round asking daft questions such as - why am I not getting paid for this?

Just when it couldn’t get any cheekier, C4 and Nexuslive also solicit your ideas – the intellectual capital of any creative venture. Only these chancers don’t think they’re worth paying for either. Tell that to those format floggers who rake in millions off the back of tired old programme ideas scribbled on napkins over expenses-paid lunches in W1.

Where any actual ‘training’ is concerned, we’re left in the dark. No mention of who, or how. Maybe that’s because they expect you to know what the job is. At a rough guess I’d say if your application’s successful, the next thing C4/Nexuslive will be asking for is you bring your own gear, burn your own tape stock, use your own computer and buy your own lunch.

C4 and Nexuslive would say their intentions are good. Nexuslive claim they do it for free and even work to promote charities. Fair enough, you might think, but if that’s the case then how come they’re being funded by Ideasmart, a NESTA initiative whose support is conditional on creating viable businesses? And don’t tell me that somebody somewhere won't be making money out of this, if not now, but when they’ve built a big enough library and client base – in other words a business built on the back of free labour and talent disguised as ‘training’. And as long as broadcasters won’t employ people at realistic rates, then they’ll keep getting away with exploiting those poor hopefuls looking for a TV career. Put it this way, if you're no good they won't hire you anyway. But if you are that good and you really want a job in telly, why not make your own video virals and flog ‘em as downloads online?

Auntie Leanne’s advice? Avoid like a dose of NSU. And remember the Rock.

ALL IT TAKES IS BALLS

Piracy - so we’re told - is damaging the film business by robbing the majors and funding terrorism, prostitution and drug racketeering. So how come arty gagmeister Douglas Gordon – he of the suffix ‘Turner Prize winner’- can get away with hi-jacking Hitchcock’s Psycho, playing it at two frames a second, call it art, yet never get arrested?

I’m definitely in the wrong game. Like many a filmmaker-in-waiting I could do a lot worse than rebrand myself as an artist and go around calling my short movies 'time-based conceptual works'. Maybe that way not only could I tap into the Arts Council but I could also break into film festivals, just as the bold Douglas is currently doing with his Zidane flick by screening at the EIFF.

Being too skint to make it to Cannes this year, I didn’t get the chance to see what one reviewer called ‘the best film playing in Cannes’. Well, it's easy when you know how - in Douglas' case he must have worked out the profit margin to be had if you take the world's most famous football player and flatter him by saying you're making a video artwork based on a tenuous notion of the working man's experience. Then add a posse of up-themselves but down-with-the-lads art hacks to write a thesis or two about the balletic qualities and poetry of Zidane taking a corner, say - et voilà, you've got a hit on your hands.

What I’d like to know is this – how do you go about raising the cashola to shoot on 17 HD cameras (and why 17? Couldn't they manage on 6?) hire famous camerawhizz Darius Khondji and persuade Zidane and his people to get on board? And get into Cannes?

And while we all know the mark-up on DVDs is a total rip-off, the Royal Scottish Academy seems to think it’s got itself a bargain by forking out 70 grand of Lottery spoils for a copy of Zidane. I doubt there’s a filmmaker in the UK who can flog their movie at that price and (presumably) keep the rights, allowing them to cash in when the next sucker wants to buy a copy.

Not only that, with time-based art – otherwise known as dodgy videos, the artist gets bespoke screening facilities. Galleries are known to kit out special rooms to show this guff. Having seen a clip of Zidane on Reporting Scotland – half of it out of focus and barely edited – it occurs to me you can get pretty much the same effect using a BBC OB unit with hangovers at Parkhead on any given Saturday.

They say you can fool some of the people all of the time, an equation our Dougie obviously worked out ages ago. Good for him, I say. Football might be the beautiful game, but art’s the more lucrative one.

DOWNHILL RACER

Sadly there were no riots at the opening night of the Edinburgh International Film Fest but then, nobody does apathy like the Scots. The Flying Scotsman came and went, greeted with tepid applause and whose six reels are now destined to become an expensive doorstop.

The argument for not staging a picket for unpaid crew and extras seemed pretty lame. I’m hardly an expert in film finance but even I know that a UK film without a distributor stands a snowball’s chance in hell of making money. Even with a distributor a UK film won’t make money, especially for those cheated out of their wages. What do these dumb commentators think is going to happen? That an outfit like Verve or Soda Pictures is going to have a fit of altruism and a whip-round for a bunch of Scottish extras? Or for the film’s uncredited producer, Peter Broughan?

Turns out that Mr Broughan was a no-show at the premiere. Who can blame the guy? After almost a decade of putting the Flying Scotsman together, taking a punt on a TV director and committing the cardinal sin of every Scottish film producer by putting his house up to make it, he must be feeling as deflated as a flat tyre. For all I know the poor guy couldn’t afford the train fare to Edinburgh.

Yet again Scottish film falls on its arse. Eclipsed by financial ruin and bad juju in the media, The Flying Scotsman may not be this year’s must-see movie, but when the backbiting of its making becomes a better story than its plot, aspiring filmmakers could do no worse than hop on their bike to London and get a job in TV, knowing that up here the hills are too steep and the wind will always be against you.

MEATBALLS, MASH AND GRAVY

Déjà vu or what? If you’re wondering why UK film’s in the dire state it’s in, then look no further than today’s Screendaily.com. The announcement that the makers of Peep Show are making a movie for Intermedia only proves that comedy is the last refuge of an ideas-free industry desperate to cash in on a ‘hit’ TV show.

What they’re forgetting is that telly’s a different, many-tentacled animal these days. When Big Brother can only manage to attract 220,000 viewers in Scotland, the idea of any comedy series being a hit is delusional when the audience share is so paltry.

Long gone are the days when millions would gather round the box to watch ‘classic’ unfunny comedies such as On The Buses, Love Thy Neighbour, Are You Being Served and George and Mildred. So it’s no surprise that this pile of crap, alongside Morecambe and Wise, Steptoe and Son and Porridge were all made into films, only to find that 20 million TV viewers stayed away from the cinema in droves.

Haven’t they learned anything? Recently we’ve had The League of Gentlemen, Alien Autopsy, Shaun of the Dead and possibly the worst film of all time, Sex Lives of the Potato Men, causing one irate viewer on IMBD to ask – Who provided the financing?

Who indeedy? Well stand up the UK Film Council, who proudly palmed 750,000 quid to the makers of SLOPM. I don’t mind the real film industry taking a punt on fart jokes, toilet stunts or eejits getting their balls mauled – that’s their business. But when lottery ticket buyers are being asked to cough up twice to watch stuff they don’t bother to watch on telly anymore, it only goes to show the poverty of imagination that keeps a peculiarly English culture afloat.

And in a culture where filmmakers aren’t allowed to get serious, who can blame the average cinema-goer for giving their six quid to Warner Brothers and Universal? At least with Hollywood you’re getting some money on the screen. And at least it’s film, with real stars, not some TV spin-off badly shot in a disused factory with ugly non-actor stand-ups.

Even quasi-dramatic guff like Shane Meadows’ dire ‘Once Upon a Time in the Midlands’ follows an age-old comedic tradition, only with fewer laughs and a cast of tired professional proles such as Ricky 'one-note' Tomlinson. And at the other end of the food chain, when will Richard Curtis learn that we’ve heard all his quirky posh-guy tosh, again and again and again? Some of us remember his cringe-making Oxo cube adverts. I mean - suckbutt? What's a suckbutt?

Which is about as funny as the three-legged dog picking over the ashes of the orphanage fire…

COOKING WITH CHASTITY

Hiya, zat the Endemol Weegie oafice?

No, this is Endemol Glasgow, can I ask who’s calling?

It’s me, Chastity Zoomer, fillummaker. But ah dae telly an’ aw. Ye lookin’ fur any programme ideas?

I’m sorry? Say that again?

Programme ideas. Fur the telly. Seein’ as BB’s nearly done n’ at. Ah’ve goat a pure cracker fur ye, reality show. Zat no’ whit you lot dae?

Well, if you’d like to submit a treatment…

Treatment? Whit fur? This wan’s a belter, man. Cookry.

Cookery?

Aye, cookry, but no’ yer Gordon effin Ramsay pish. Guy’s goat a face like a biled shite.

A what?

Ye waant tae hear this ur naw? Ye get in a few tap slebs, right? Stick ‘em in a hoose in Foxbar and get ‘em tae phone out fur a ruby, ur a pizza an’ at. Ur a chinky…

I’m sorry?

Hing oan, ah’m brekkin’ up here, the signal’s pish. Ye there? So ye get a coupla chefs workin’ in the kerry oot, y’know, like Jamie Oliver an’ at. See if they kin beat the cloak. Gie ‘em aboot twinty minutes.

Uh-huh, then what?

Ah but, here’s the brulliant bit. Ye get in a few neds tae deliver the kerry oots but ye gie them a hard time, know? Like mad dugs an’ at. Ur tan thur motors, ye wi’ me?

No, I don’t quite understand…

How no? It’s meant tae be drama, so it is! Then ye see aw the slebs go aff thur chump coz thur aw hank marvin, ye gettit?

I think so, but what’s the point of that?

Ye dief ur whit, hen? The punters vote tae keep the slebs in, no’ oot! Fuck, um ah talkin’ tae masel’ here?

(cue loud click)

Hullo, ye still there? Hullo? Well, ye better no' steal it aff me, by thi way. Copyright n' at.