THE PIT AND THE PENDULOUS

Oh, put them away, Ingrid...

Always on the lookout for conspiracy, I see that my local Tesco, in a bid to get shot of their unsold pumpkins, had cut all their locally grown turnips in half. They were out of apples too, which can mean only one thing. Halloween.

I read somewhere that the Halloween business has grown tenfold in the UK in the last five years. Either this proves the power of marketing or the punters really want to buy the toxic iced cakes in Greggs, the ones with wee plastic spiders. Is there really an appetite for all things scary? Well, after googling the words Scottish Horror Film, I came across a site that deserves a mention -

lbhfs.proboards18.com/index.cgi

This is the home of the Low Budget Horror Film Society. I say good luck to them. Making films is akin to having the blood drained from your body drip by drip anyway, so why not make a horror? There are academic types who’ll argue that in troubled times – of war, economic depression, low social morale – the horror genre always enjoys a resurgence.

From Murnau to Wes Craven, we can’t get enough of the stuff. On any given week down the multiplex, you’ll always find a few horrors on the list. For instance, playing this week at Cineworld Renfrew Street you’ll find The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, Grudge 2 and Saw III, all sequels and all coining it in. You’ll also find A Good Year, but we’re talking horror here, not horrible.

You’d think here in Scotland, we’d be knocking these out. After all, we’ve got the locations, from skanky suburban nightmare (say, Sighthill) to dark closes and creepy castles. We’ve also got some of the ugliest mugs – think of the saving on prosthetics. Sadly what we don’t have is a film agency that takes the genre seriously. This is in spite of the fact that horror can be made on monkey nuts, like Blair Witch, that you can get away with not having ‘stars’ in your cast and that like comedy, horror is one of the highest grossing genres on the planet.

What’s stopping us?

Maybe it’s just plain snobbery. A lot of filmmakers turn up their noses at the idea of making horrors because you can’t win awards with them. But when times get rough and when the mortgage is in arrears even quoted directors like Marc Evans and Danny Boyle can find it in themselves to make them, justifying it with statements about the psychological needs of the characters. Hell, the punters just enjoy a good fright.

On that score, horror films make the best date movies. Even when they’re not scared, girls can use them as an excuse to grab a tight hold of the boy’s bits. And when you’re sitting in the dark, we all know how much neck biting goes on. If you don't believe me, check the number of people wearing polo necks tomorrow to hide the nooky badges. Which is no bad thing. Me, I can’t think of a better way to spend a wet Tuesday night in Paisley. And at least when you’re out at the pictures, you can avoid all those wee muggers in bin bags turning up at your door looking for money with menaces.

SEEING RED

In the beginning God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made journalists.

So it’s a steal from Mark Twain but it’s still true. A while back I promised a deeper delve into the way filmmaking gets reported in this country, until I caught myself doing more useful stuff such as watching X Factor and painting my toenails.

After seeing Red Road at the weekend – better than Ratcatcher, funnier than One Last Chance – I felt even more cheesed off with the write-up in The Scotsman, not just for the cheap shot ‘porn’ headline or the usual jibes about Glasgow and the way RR shows ‘litter in the street’ (scandal!)

Here I got the feeling Alistair Harkness was at pains to compare RR with Loach, Ramsay, Campion and the Dardennes brothers just so he could chalk up all the ways he thinks it failed. Like, which movie did he think he was reviewing? Not a total hatchet job, but then I guess anybody who thinks Francis Coppola’s daughter deserves four stars for the $40 million Marie Antoinette isn’t going to be persuaded.

Making the perfect movie is mission impossible on any budget, so it’s a shame RR didn’t get any credit for delivering a half-decent film on a mere million quid, or that Kate Dickie shows more integrity in her performance as Jackie than any British actress you’d care to mention right now. If anything Red Road deserves an award for being the first Scottish film to bust its cherry when it comes to a realistic portrayal of sex, a fact overlooked by most of the reviewers.

This is a big deal because if you were to judge Scotland by its movies, you’d think sex was an alien concept to anybody north of Newcastle. And because no one here makes middle class films, at least we don’t suffer from the Richard Curtis syndrome of embarrassed posh overgrown boys doing rumpy-pumpy sugared as ever by perky girls on top. At least in RR we get to see some grown up sex, with real bits in action, no doubt accounting for its 18 certificate, so credit to the public funders for not demanding a 15 rating. Some of us remember the front page fuss in the Evening Times when Lynne Ramsay put two weans in a bath. But who knows, maybe the backers didn’t want to upset the czars at Zentropa. So what if the motive behind the shagging is suss? In the end, we never get to know the real outcome for Jackie - probably for the best – but good on Andrea Arnold for going there.

At a time when the future of Scottish film is quietly sliding down the pan, it’ll be interesting to see if the other two films in the Advance Party trilogy will ever see the light of day. If they don’t, at least it’ll save the critics from the bothersome task of reviewing them.

THE DEVIL WEARS PRIMARK

Congrats to Red Road for the five nominations at the British Independent Film Awards. It’s always good to see something out of Scotland travel further south than Gretna.

Today’s rags feature a crop of reviews. Like this slightly reverential one in the Herald

www.theherald.co.uk/goingout/72913.html

and, surprise, surprise, this sniffy one in the Hootsmon

thescotsman.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=1582642006

Not to take anything away from the film, because I’ve yet to see it, in the end Red Road will only play on a fraction of British screens, competing against slicker, bigger budget movies. Just like the now forgotten Frozen did, where Shirley ‘icky bicky’ Henderson did her squeaky shoes-pointing-together routine while glued to a CCTV screen and wandering about in a trance when she wasn’t curling up in a foetal position having issues. I just hope Kate Dickie turns in something better because it’s a crime the way she’s been patronised in more than one of the rags for her ‘committed’ performance.

From what I’ve read about RR, there’s the predictable charge of it being another slice of grimy Glasgow realism. But then you can always rely on the hacks to cut the legs off any movie that dares to get above itself. Some critics have even had a go at Andrea Arnold for not coming from Shettleston, as if to say how dare she come here and make a film?

It’s the fate of every movie shot in Glasgow to be palmed off with adjectives like gritty, manky, Loachian, social worker wank. Meanwhile Peter Bradshaw comes in his shorts every time some Iranian teenager learns to push the on button on a camcorder. If Red Road had been Latvian or made by Shane Meadows, say, you can bet every journo in the land would be praising it to the heavens, instead of patting Andrea Arnold on the head and giving her a wee silver star on her jotter.

There’s a feeling of déjà vu about this because every time someone makes a film in Scotland that doesn’t have Tom Hanks in it, the filmmaker concerned has to shoulder the burden of blame, not achievement, for their effort. It’s like for about five minutes the entire Scottish film industry holds its breath and pins its hopes on that one film and woe betide all of us if some London hack puts the boot in.

A lot of column inches about RR have been devoted to it's Danish input. Well, given we don’t have a single film sales outfit in Scotland, good luck to anybody who latches on to Zentropa or Trust Film. It’s a sad day when this country has to rely on Denmark to get a film made, let alone any kind of exposure.

Let’s see if it lasts longer in the pictures than The Devil Wears Prada.

PAYROLL UP

I hear you, I hear you. Stop with the minimum effing wage, you say.

Then let’s look at the other end of the food chain. There I was, casting a jaded eye over the Guardian media jobs section the other day, and what do I see? A whole load of jobs, all linked to this vibrant film industry we keep hearing about, but nothing to do with the cut and thrust of actually making them.

Exhibit A – a First Year Tutor at the London Film School. Salary 32K.

Exhibit B – Two Media Grant Managers at First Light Movies. Salary 35K each.

Exhibit C – HR and Training Manager at the Film Council. Salary 47K.

Let’s leave the private sector out of the mix. They rule, so they can pay what they like. And working for the public sector shouldn’t automatically mean low pay, far from it. I say good luck to anybody who bags a well-paid gig. But the problem is these jobs make it look like there’s a lot of filmmaking going on. Not so. And not here.

Take the recent appointment of three development execs at Scottish Screen, mentioned in a previous blog. Even I underestimated the cost to the taxpayer, because if you add up three salaries at say, 27K a piece, pile on some benefits and expenses, it stacks up to roughly two-thirds of SS’s entire annual development budget of 150K. Which, put simply, would be okay if three times the number of new film or TV projects were being developed.

Not only is this nuts financially, but I can’t see how the workload justifies it, a workload that depends on writers and producers putting in unpaid slog before making an application. I mean, how many submissions do they get at West George Street? Especially given how hard it is these days for a Scottish producer to get their mitts on what are very expensive loans. Didn’t the BBC hand out a pile of cash to regional indie TV companies earlier this year to hire their own development people? Like I said about training, just how much more development do we need when the usual scenario, played over and over again, involves producers sheepishly begging writers for free scripts? It’s happened to me more than once and I’m just starting out.

I don’t know how many people work at the Film Council, but it must be a lot, otherwise why would they need a HR and Training (note the training bit) Manager? Which again strikes me as a bit surplus, because apart from giving their money to the BBC, Andrew Eaton and Michael Kuhn, they don’t back too many films. From what I’ve read, most British movies are made by mysterious tax dodging funds anyway, with titles like Tooth and Plots with a View, none of which has ever seen the light of a projector.

Likewise the jobs on offer at First Light. Can anybody tell me the point of encouraging kids to make films when grown-ups in this country can’t get them made? Looking at their annual report, where most of the space is taken up by big happy (but heavily posed) pictures of kids twiddling about with bits of video kit, I notice they’re funded by the Film Council to the tune of £1 million a year. I’m all for helping kids to appreciate cinema yadda yadda, but for the average family a night out at the local multiplex costs about 50 quid. And when most families these days have a camcorder collecting dust in a cupboard, why do we need First Light?

Just as you’d expect, the lowest salary on offer is for the teaching post. But First Year Tutor? Does it cost less to teach first years or what? Still, 32K a year is better than a poke in the eye and much higher than the average secondary school teacher’s wage. But what can you really teach at a film school that’s useful apart from elbow sharpening for when you get out?

What links all of these jobs is Lottery funding. Who would have predicted ten years ago that so many jobs would have been carved out of legalised gambling? But like the Lottery, people get their hopes up, forgetting that in any game of chance, some win, but for most of us the odds don’t look that great.

SWEET AND SOUR CHARITY

Thank you allmediascotland.com for the mention. So I’m a ‘provocative’ writer on Scottish film? Call me naïve, but either there’s not much else happening in the world of film or you’re looking to bait your readership with a storm in a teacup controversy.

Folk may take offence at my piece on the Zero Tolerance Charitable Trust, but let me assure you it’s nothing personal. As readers of this blog know very well, I regularly expose anyone looking to fleece filmmakers. What’s personal is the level of debt run up by students only to come out the other end and be faced with ‘opportunities’ like ZTCT’s competition. Every day I read about so-called training, sub minimum wage jobs, rights-stealers and massive amounts of public money being poured into schemes that profit no-one but administrators.

What I didn’t say in my last blog is that it’s all very well to invite people to compete for a slot at the Filmhouse. It’s even okay to use other people’s films to promote your cause. What’s not okay is to pay nothing, not even expenses for the labour that goes into them, just as it’s really not okay to charge the cinema-going public to watch films that cost next-to-nothing to make. Like most cinemas, the Filmhouse charges around 6 quid a ticket. I’m sure by the time they take their cut and the rest goes to charity, the filmmakers will get zip for their effort.

Like I say, the ZTCT could have played this one better. Think of the positive publicity they’d attract by offering even a small amount of money to help a hard-up student or a recent graduate. Or get an established but unemployed actor or filmmaker to make a promotional film – judging by the lack of film production in Scotland right now I’m sure a lot of them are kicking their heels. That way, the good people at allmediascotland might have something else to write about.

Thanks for the plug.

ROBBERY WITH VIOLENCE

After yesterday’s passing mention of Shooting People and the offers of ‘training’ posted on their site, what should turn up but yet another example that looks to steal from hard-up filmmakers. What’s more, this one’s a bit touchy but I make no apology.

Call me hard-bitten, but am I really the only person who took offence at the person posting on SP on behalf of the Zero Tolerance Charitable Trust in Edinburgh? Well if I am, there goes the sisterhood…

And here’s what they’re after...

“We are looking for short films, less than 4 minutes long, that examine any or all aspects of violence in young relationships including the beliefs that lead to violence and the effect it has on young women. The best 10 films we receive will be screened at the Edinburgh Filmhouse on Monday 5th March 2007 to mark the start of International Women's Week and your film could be one of them.”

Or to paraphrase this clumsily worded brief, because that’s what it is, what the ZTCT is asking for are free films to promote their charity. Now I’m sure a lot of people might be thinking, oh, it’s only a competition and it’s for a really good cause. Is that so? How many people do you know who spend their spare time, hard-earned cash and whatever gear they can muster on making ‘less than four minute’ films about men being violent to women? And if it’s a competition, then how come there’s no mention of a prize, apart from the promise of an outing at the Edinburgh Filmhouse – no doubt in poxy Cinema 3 to fourteen people. Oh, but I’m forgetting.

“… your work will also be viewed by a panel of professionals in the film industry who are always on the lookout for emerging Scottish talent.”

What film industry would that be then? The ZTCT might want to try naming some names of those professionals, because I can’t think of anybody in film here who’s making a living right now. No, because it’s that same old shabby line about looking for new talent. Seems to me the only talent that gets spotted is the talent that’s already made a name for itself. Okay, so Elaine C. Smith is a trustee of the charity, and no offence to her, but I fail to see in what way an actress can propel anybody’s film career.

Finally we get to the truth.

“…the films we receive will be used as part of our vital campaigning work throughout Scotland.”

That’s the cat right out of the bag then. Why couldn’t they just be honest about it and ask for a volunteer? Or commission a promo from one of the local colleges? Or offer expenses to a filmmaker willing to do the job for free?

I can just see myself phoning round my pals – ‘hiya, how d’you fancy playing a victim for less than four minutes and no money?’ or ‘you too can have a starring role as a wife beater – that’ll really help your chances of getting a girlfriend’.

This charity supports women who suffer domestic violence. A good cause, definitely. As their campaign slogan says – No Man Has the Right. In my book, neither does a charity, no matter how worthy, to lie to people. The ZTCT needs to educate themselves about another kind of violence – economic violence, the kind that robs people by exploiting their labour and even worse, to ask for tailor-made commercials under the false premise of being talent-spotted. Judging by the great and the good on their board and the staff on their payroll, like a lot of charities, surely this one can afford to pay even the minimum costs of a commercial.

Zero tolerance to that, I say. And it took less than four minutes to get it off my tits.

GRAVY TRAINING

How many film, TV and media graduates, I wonder, crawled out of their beds this morning, grabbed a coffee, a quick bowl of Cheerios and ran out the door to catch a bus to face another 8 hours of drudgery down the local mall, call centre or fast food joint?

It’s a scenario repeated across the country, year after year. Because when government talks about skills and training for the creative industries what they don’t talk about is a dirty little truth – namely that this country has the world’s most overqualified coffee makers, pint pullers and checkout ops.

I’m not complaining. After all it can’t be any worse than the lucky few clocking up 14 hours a day as an underpaid skivvy at some two bit TV outfit, local rag or non-job at a publicly-backed initiative. Like a lot of my peers I regularly trawl the sites looking for a break – film schemes, business start-ups, you name it – anything to put my very expensive education to good use. What I see time and again is a colossal waste of money called training.

Yep, training. Then some more training. Followed by a wee bit of skills updating. And after that, yet more training.

It’s a daunting prospect to realise that after two, three or even four years in some educational institution, the majority of folks who did their work and got into debt to do it have nothing better to look forward to than signing up to hear some unemployed screenwriter or clapped out producer (usually with only two shorts to their credit) drone on about the film and telly game like it’s some mythical country. Don’t forget the only reason they’re standing there is because they can’t get a job either, but with mortgages to pay they too are forced to invent irrelevant tosh about how to break into the biz.

For example -

New Entrant Technical Training Programme includes opportunities to work over TWO YEARS full time, as technical assistants across film and television.

The Independent Companies Researcher Training Scheme trains people to become high quality researchers in factual programming. This is an apprenticeship-style training with four 4 month blocks of attachments with three or four independent production companies over 18 MONTHS.

Setcrafts Apprenticeship Training Scheme. During the TWO YEARS apprentices will be attached to a number of construction crews across a range of feature films and commercials and will gain real practical "on the job training".

I’ve known shorter jail sentences. And no mention of payment either. But am I wrong in thinking that 2 years or 18 months is a long time in training after you’ve spent four years in training? You might think, to hell with it, why bother going to uni or college at all? Yet to win a place on any of these schemes, you’re usually expected to show some kind of qualification to start with. The brutal reality for most graduates is the need to get out there pronto and earn some cash, not apply for sub-minimum wage subsistence to learn things - assuming you didn’t squander your student loan in the pub - you already know.

What we’re looking at here is a game show mentality where we’re all meant to rip each other’s throats out for a placement as a 12K a year researcher gig at the BBC.

If you can be bothered try reading this – http://scotland.ideasfactory.com/careers/features/feature35.htm

Note the phrase about PD150 skills. After all, chances are after six weeks you’ll be shooting BBC programmes on a Z1 and editing them yourself in a dark cupboard for the same money.

Apart from toughing it out on some scheme, here’s the dilemma. How exactly is anybody expected to eat/pay rent/mobile bills while hanging around waiting for the break? Are you supposed to drop your low-paid day job for the chance of another? Will anybody fork out for your bus fare for the interview? If all this training’s meant to help willing candidates, why is so much moolah being spent on training courses while the poor downtrodden hopefuls can’t afford a Gregg’s sausage roll? Maybe because the kind of people who run courses, the kind of people who once dreamt of a film or telly career themselves have to cash in, having learned the hard way what a myth it all is. And they make sure they get theirs ahead of the wannabes.

Just how much more training can we take? According to the completely useless Skillset website there’s now over 5000 courses in the UK for film and TV. And that’s not counting all the pishy wee ones you read about on Shooting People set up by skint filmmakers trying to fleece the unsuspecting punter. My point being if all of this training actually achieved anything, then how come we’re not making brilliant films and telly by the truckload? With all of this expertise going around, why aren’t we skelping Hollywood’s arse?

Here’s why. Because it’s a fiction and it doesn’t work. Unlike the majority of graduates trying to pay off their debts. So maybe the next time you’re in Starbucks or Top Shop, spare a thought for the person serving you. You might just be looking at the next Christopher Nolan or Sophia Coppolla – well, judging by the way her career’s heading, there’s a pretty good chance she'll soon be training to work at old MacDonald's Farm.

A-WOP-BOP-A-LOSER

How much do you think this charming couple are costing you, the taxpayer? 100K? 200K? How about getting on for half a million? More?

Is it just me or has UK Culture PLC hit rock bottom when it comes to new ideas? A while back I blogged on the recycling of duff old TV comedies as duff new movies. You wouldn’t mind if they were funny but they’re not. The same applies to old TV dramas. You wouldn’t mind if they were dramatic, but they’re not, and not when the collective cultural wisdom – whoever they are – insist in churning out film after film based on the old play, the old book or the old TV show.

But it seems the traffic’s two-way. The National Theatre of Scotland's current staging of John Byrne’s 80’s TV series Tutti Frutti boasts a cast and crew of thousands and a set as ugly as Robbie Coltrane’s arse in houndstooth check pants and nearly as big. From what I saw of it (the play, not the arse) on a BBC Scotland arts programme last week, it looks less like high profile national theatre than amateur night at the Glasgow King’s where all the actors TALK LIKE THAT to each other, with dialogue not matched for spell-it-out crapiness since Tony Roper’s ‘The Steamie’. All that’s missing is a couple of couthy windae-hingers tossing jeely pieces out the top floor window of a Glesga slum.

By way of justification for reviving this rubbish, the NTS say it’s partly because the series was never repeated by the BBC and so holds a mythical status for the audience. Well they never repeated The Singing Detective either, but nobody, thank God, is threatening to stage Dennis Potter’s brandy-and-diamorphine fuelled masturbatory rant. The reason I think they’ve opted for Tutti Frutti is because the NTS is at pains to be ‘popular’, even if it means treating the audience like eejits, just so they can keep their highly paid staff in business (eg their Marketing Manager on 55K a year) Good luck to John Byrne – paid twice through the public purse for the same gig, once by the TV licence payers and again by the NTS. Did he put an advert on Ebay? Vintage TV scripts for sale? To be fair to Byrne though, it’s not his fault. In his brothel creepers, I’d have taken the money too, but wasn’t there a time when the BBC bagged the rights for everything they paid for?

No surprise then that the hacks have gone to sleep on this one. Every review so far has been glowing to the point of sycophancy, apart from the odd dig about the mad set and the choppy TV-style scenes. The fact that Dawn Steele can’t string three chords together doesn’t seem to bother the critics. Strikes me that if I wanted to watch a bunch of amateur musos my money would be better spent at karaoke night down the boozer. This is supposed to be the cream of Scottish theatre, after all, so at the very least it ought to have all the slickness of a Mamma Mia or a Chicago, not some clunky tribute band down the local Scout Hall, got up in the Emperor’s Second Hand Clothes. It’s sad to think that audiences across the country will probably lap this up, not because it’s any good, but because they’ve been told to.

The NTS has a bigger annual budget than Scottish Screen. Yet the last time I looked their very expensive website was out of order. Why am I not surprised? If their version of Tutti Frutti sets the standard of - as they threateningly announce - 'world class theatre for Scotland - and beyond', then maybe they ought to bring the curtain down. Preferably on Jack McConnell's head.