DOING THE TIME WARP

I was wondering when this lot would rear their ugly heads again. Yes, it’s Warp X, who according to Variety have held their first workshop for would-be female horror directors.

www.variety.com/article/VR1117960209.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

Maybe Warp X would be better off making some of those low-budget movies they promised a year ago instead of veering off in a whole other direction – or talking about it, for that matter. When you’re sitting on a pile of other people’s money – in this case, the taxpayer and Lottery punters – and when you’re paying no fewer than four in-house ‘executive producers’ – and the rest – then surely it’s time to get the stick out of your ass and go and make something because not one film has come out of this scheme so far.

I may be missing the point. Then again a sensible, hard-working person like myself would be forgiven for thinking that when the Film Council hands you millions of pounds for a low-budget digital movie scheme, you’re obliged to deliver some films – and fast. Isn’t that the whole point of low-budget digital movies? Is Warp X trying to say that when they pitched for this gig they told the FC that it would take years to accomplish? Or that the ‘contemporary UK genre’ films they promised really meant ‘period French drama’ – a ‘film’ that’s still to see the light of day?

As I wrote a while back, this detour into female horror might look good on paper, but not if it takes years of workshopping, development and general fannying about. And why bother with endless shortlisting to boil it down to two projects? Don’t they know what the good ideas are already? Sounds to me that while they’re hedging their bets, the trick is to keep a bunch of people on the payroll. And speaking of bets, you can bet the would-be horror writers and directors aren’t getting paid to be in development hell.

Me, I’d be more scared of the bailiffs taking an axe to my door.

AYE CORRADO

The Oscar winners have been announced. This is news?

Still, good to see Scorsese finally getting his gong. The man’s waited so long he’s managed to turn into Junior Soprano only with hair. Maybe they share the same false teeth, who knows?

As for the Brits stealing the show, we can breathe a sigh of relief that only Helen Mirren won otherwise the rags would be full of it. It’s bad enough when Channel 4 News talks about Peter Morgan’s ‘The Queen’ like Stephen Frears had nothing to do with it. This wouldn’t be the same Peter Morgan who only last year was listed on IMDB as getting a development handout from Scottish Screen for a script called ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’? We'll never know. The credit mysteriously vanished off SS’s own IMDB listing along with ‘Red Road’ and a few other movies they’ve put money into over the years.

Maybe it’s time SS blew their own trumpet a bit louder…

TAKE THE HIGH ROAD

Not long ago I wrote about the head count of Scottish Screen staff and how on their website that number suddenly shot up from the 30s to the 50s. The question I asked – surely this couldn’t be connected to the whereabouts of the new Creative Scotland headquarters?

Well I never. Today’s Scotsman and Herald report on a posse of Edinburgh campaigners, led by the head of the city council, arguing to base the CS HQ in the capital. According to them, Edinburgh is the capital, and that includes the cultural capital. Besides, the Scottish Arts Council that’s based there has more staff than Scottish Screen – 90 over 54.

Judging by the reader’s comments – example – more gays live in Edinburgh and they like art – the debate’s turning into the usual playground tiff between Embra and Glesga, with both ends of the country claiming the yet to be created mega arts agency as their own. But wait a minute – why does it have to be either of these two cities? And isn’t there a thing called a consultation going on to decide whether the Culture Bill – the legislation to rubber-stamp Creative Scotland – gets through parliament?

What nobody’s asking is this – what’s the point of forcing two very different public bodies together anyway? SS can’t seem to decide who and what it’s for while the SAC, like a nervous bride, isn’t too sure if she really fancies that bit of Glasgow rough enough to get into bed with it. Like a lot of mixed marriages, neither side can decide where they should live – the flash pad on the Clyde or the run-down genteel townhouse in the New Town.

Here’s an idea – Easterhouse! After all, the National Theatre of Scotland doesn’t want to live there. And at least it’s on the M8.

YOU'VE BEEN FRAMED

Uh-oh, watch out. Another ‘artist makes film’ alert.

In one of the weirdest puff pieces I’ve read lately, Scotland on Sunday reports that painter, Adrian Wiszniewski, is ‘in talks’ with ‘top Hollywood director’, Baz Luhrmann, about a screenplay he’s written, based on a book he’s yet to write, based on a story he made up for his kid. According to SoS, one-time boss of Scottish Screen, John Archer, told Wiszniewski to ‘go to the BFI’, who told him he’d be better off directing the ‘£30 million blockbuster’ himself. So he took the script to his pal, composer Craig Armstrong, who passed it on to Luhrmann.

What’s intriguing about this one is the way the journalist shows no curiosity but a whole load of ignorance about how the film biz works. For instance – why did Wiszniewski decide that a bedtime story for his kid would make a great script? Like, has he ever written a script? Is he qualified to write a script? Or like his fellow artist, Douglas Gordon, does filmmaking come easily to these arty types? At least Wiszniewski’s not ripping off famous filmmakers and slapping his own logo on it.

All the same, why did John Archer tell him to go to the BFI? Sounds like a brush-off to me. Did the BFI not give up producing films donkey’s years ago? And who decided this ‘script’ - and the ‘blockbuster’ it’s going to be – will cost £30 million?

I’m not blaming Wiszniewski here – he’s only doing what artists do - playing the game, getting your mugshot in the papers. But the way these things get reported is shameful because the average punter must be left thinking - ‘£30 million? Filmmaking’s a total mug’s game’. Which is a bigger fiction than Ade's bedtime story... good luck to the guy.

scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/review.cfm?id=261382007

NOTHING LIKE A DANE

The news that more European money is being funneled into film ought to be welcome. But not chez Smith. Now I may be dead wrong – or just sceptical - but seems to me if you’re unlucky enough to be a Scottish filmmaker the numbers just don’t stack up.

The 755 million euros announced for the 2007 Media Programme is a lot of dough. According to the Film Council, over the last six years, 70 million euros of Media money was ‘spent’ in the UK, with 22.3 million going to filmmakers. This is just for development, mind, so you might wonder, just how many duff scripts are out there? Too bad the UK Media Desk website doesn’t say how this figure breaks down or how much of the pot found its way north of the border.

European film funding is marginally less complicated than Enron’s accounting practices. To make a film anywhere in Europe depends on finding accomplices, otherwise known as co-producers, which is why we’ve got a bunch of red tape and things called treaties that even people with degrees in international law can’t get their heads round.

As if making movies isn’t hard enough.

But not for some. Take a country like Denmark. For years Scottish filmmakers have been told by ‘those in the know’ to look to Denmark if they want to learn how to make films. Why not, you might think. We’ve got roughly the same population.

But that’s where the similarity ends. There’s nothing about Danish film that Scotland can learn from, not when Danes have their own language, their own film institute, their own national broadcasters and more subsidy than filmmakers here can dream of. They also have national distributors and sales companies. All the things we don't.

Looking at the Glasgow Film Festival programme, trying to decide what to see, I couldn’t help but notice a strand called Danish Focus, featuring 11 features and a PA with Anders Thomas Jensen. Great, I think, give us Scots a showing-up. But then I thought, hang on, if the Danes are so great at making movies then how come their filmmakers need so much subsidy from the UK - and Scotland in particular?

Over the last few years, a fair amount of UK - and Scottish - public money has boosted the careers of several Danish filmmakers, including -

Anders Thomas Jensen
Lars von Trier
Susanne Bier
Thomas Vinterberg
Lone Scherfig
Per Fly
Søren Kragh-Jacobsen

What links all bar one of the above to Scotland is the Glasgow-based company, Sigma, whose website claims credits on no less than six Danish films, an astonishing number. And all the more astonishing because as co-producers, Sigma has backed more Danish movies than UK or even Scottish movies. Good for them. At least they’re getting films made.

Now even I know that film’s a global business. But what I’d like to know is exactly how much UK – and Scottish - Lottery funding has gone to bolstering Danish films? What I’d like to know even more is how many UK filmmakers have benefited from Denmark’s film pot? Does it work both ways or do the canny Danes, via Sigma, have the pin number to Scottish Screen and the Film Council’s bank accounts?

It’s a good question. I guess Sigma can lay claim to so many Danish films because it was a co-producer. But how, I wonder, does that work when Gordon Brown is clamping down on pillaging foreign filmmakers? Surely they only come over here if they can claim tax breaks on the whole budget? Why else would they bother? And with a lot of these films being shot in Denmark (or elsewhere) in what way do they qualify as a British film?

Can I be bothered to look it up?

Well, being a nosey kind of person, I dug up a copy of the treaty. It says to qualify for tax breaks here, a Danish film needs to spend 40% of its budget in the UK if it’s on a bi-lateral basis, ie. between a UK company and a Danish company. This drops to 30% UK spend on a multi-party co-production.

Now I’m not a producer and I’m certainly not a lawyer, but even I know that a film shot in Denmark, edited in Denmark and starring Danes, won’t have much left in the kitty to spend in the UK. So 40%? They’d be hard-pushed to claim a 20% spend.

A couple of years back, Scottish Screen’s Roughcuts ran a piece on Lars von Trier’s Manderlay, claiming it as a ‘Scottish’ film when it was nominated for a gong at the European Film Awards. Sigma lists the film on its website, so it’s fair to assume it was a co-producer. And since Roughcuts mentioned the fact, it’s likely Sigma got funding from SS.

My point being?

If you want to be small-minded about it, you could argue that a big grown-up director like Lars didn’t need backing from a very small Scottish film fund. That doesn’t make Sigma wrong, but as a public body, did SS think it made a good investment? Take a look at the IMDB’s list of production companies for the film –

Zentropa Entertainments
Edith Film Oy (in association with)
Film i Väst
Invicta Capital Ltd.
Isabella Films B.V.
Manderlay Ltd.
Memfis Film & Television
Ognon Pictures
Pain Unlimited GmbH Filmproduktion
Sigmalll (sic) Films Ltd.

Last on this long list is UK company, Sigmalll – is it a typo or a smokescreen? Either way, with so many partners involved, you’d need your head examined to buy into Manderlay and expect to see your money back, never mind a profit.

When a public funder invests in established foreign filmmakers, if it can’t claim a share of profits, it can still usually claim things like ‘cultural’ or ‘economic’ benefit - even in the most suspect cases. Still, I don’t remember Manderlay shooting in Scotland, hiring local crew or staying in local B&Bs. When you don’t see a slice of the profits and if nobody here gets hired, what other reason could there be for giving Lars von Trier local public funds?

How about vanity? The illusion of status that comes with lining up with the well-known, as if to say, ‘we’re players too’. Maybe it's a way of helping local film companies, who knows? Is SS aware of the UK tax law for film or does it think the rules don't apply here?

When Anders Thomas Jensen appears at the GFT, I can't help but think - am I looking at a man in danger of replacing Ken Loach as most-funded guy out of the film pot here? So much for his ‘incredibly prolific career’. Maybe I ought to up sticks to Copenhagen and steal their money, see how they like it.

A JOLLY GOOD FELLATIO

With Valentine’s Day round the corner, I’m wondering – where have all the great date movies gone? There’s a gaping hole in the market. And please don’t mention Music and Lyrics because I still can’t decide what’s worse about Hugh Grant – that he shagged Liz Hurley or got caught with Divine Brown. Or, for that matter, his acting...

A glance at the Cineworld site suggests what we need right now are love stories – rom coms, sex comedies, good old weepies. For instance, why hasn’t there been a remake of Love Story? You’d think some Hollywood exec would have seen the sense of casting an Anne Hathaway or a Tobey Maguire or some other starry pairing in a tragic retelling of this ‘timeless classic’ (according to IMDB, that is)

Looking down the list of what’s on offer, you’d be hard pressed to find a decent back seat movie. I mean, Goal 2? Hannibal Rising? Blood Diamond? The best on offer is probably Dreamgirls, if you can get past the cast suddenly bursting into song every five minutes and the anorexic plot. The rest – Rocky Balboa, Smokin’ Aces and Epic Movie - are either a bit too mucho macho or just plain dumb.

Faring better is the Glasgow Film Theatre, by showing a new print of The African Queen. You can’t beat old school romance. The GFT also deserves a big big-up for the Glasgow Film Festival which, judging by the programme, is shaping up to be a serious contender to Edinburgh. Check it out -

www.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk

Me, I’m already booking my tickets.

THE BRIT PACK

So that was the BAFTAs. When it comes to opening envelopes I’ve been more excited by my credit card statement. Even Judy Dench knew when she was licked, saying she’d already put her money on Helen Mirren for playing Her Maj in a TV movie. But good on Andrea Arnold for winning the Carl Foreman Award – and for saying she needs the money to fix her boiler. You’d never get anyone at the Oscars admitting that. Oh, the glamour of it all...

But how many of these films are really truly British? Virtually none. Okay, so The Queen’s a cheapo TV drama but it still took the combined efforts of these - mostly foreign - production companies to make it –

BIM Distribuzione
Canal+
France 3 Cinéma
Granada Film Productions
Pathé Pictures International
Pathé Renn Productions
Scott Rudin Productions

If ever a film could have been funded out the UK, The Queen was it. But like every other ‘British’ film, it needed a whole posse of so-called producers. The BAFTA stage was pretty crowded when the producers of the Last King of Scotland went up for their Best British Feature gong –

DNA Films
Fox Searchlight Pictures
FilmFour
Cowboy Films
Scottish Screen
Slate Films
Tatfilm
UK Film Council

No wonder it takes so long to get a film made in this country. Which makes you think – what does a producer do for a living? Out of the above list, how many companies actually put any money in the pot? You’ve got public funders, telly and a Hollywood mini-major chipping in, but somehow I doubt the rest did – even Kevin MacDonald’s brother, Andrew, whose DNA Films got £30 million of public money a few years back for a so-called ‘film franchise’ had to call in the Film Council to bail this one out. Like, did he eat the money or what?

I don’t get it. If I ran a widget factory, I wouldn’t hire a bunch of companies who can’t invest in my widgets interfering in my business. Besides, what do these ‘producers’ do all day? How many phone calls does it take to round up an actor or hire a crew? Don't eight 'production' companies need eight offices, eight loads of staff, eight lawyers and eight accountants?

And that’s not counting the fat fees all those non-investing parties pay themselves.

Doesn’t make sense for UK plc, does it? Not when multi-million quid ned-wear firm Burberry - not Pringle as I previously said - thank you to the person who SHOUTED IN CAPITALS to correct me - is making polo shirts in China. No coincidence that Burberry, the original sponsors of this year’s BAFTA party, pulled out because of protests threatened by redundant Welsh factory workers.

See comment below. Like the newspapers always get it right? She said sulkily...

HOORAY FOR HOLYROOD?

Who can tell me what this picture is? Is it -

a) the hoops a filmmaker in Scotland has to jump through?
b) the bike rack outside the Parliament building?

When it comes to the proposed Scottish Culture Bill, can anybody be arsed? Well, Davie Hutchison can. The other day I stumbled on his blog -

northtoleith.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html

Davie goes some way to explain the machinations of the Executive when it comes to legislation affecting the future of Scottish Screen. He also thinks the bill is deader than a Bernard Matthew turkey roast. As he says –

“No matter which way you look at it the Culture Bill that has been published is dead in the water. Even if it was re-introduced Dr Richard Holloway admitted on Newsnight Scotland last night that it would be May 2009 before the legislation was passed! Never mind when Creative Scotland would actually be set up. Leaving the sector in limbo for yet another 2 years”.

If that’s the case - and even if it isn’t - can anybody tell me why the joint board of Creative Scotland is a done deal? How is it possible to have a board for a body that doesn’t exist? You don’t hear Doc Holloway querying the legality of that, not when he’s just been appointed as its chairman.

Like all politicians, what Davie doesn’t know is that when it comes to limbo, filmmakers here are experts in bending over, be it backwards or in other, more submissive ways. So with an election round the corner, aspiring MSPs ought to realise there’s plenty of votes in them thar arty types, disgruntled by the way culture, and film especially is being downgraded both as a business and a way to fly the saltire.

So for any politicians reading this, here’s a few ideas, because it strikes me that apart from renting a DVD at the weekend, you guys know hee-haw about film.

1 - Why can’t we have a National Cinema for Scotland? One that’s run by filmmakers for filmmakers, not 55 admin staff. If Vicki Featherstone at the National Theatre of Scotland can have total artistic freedom and the autonomy to spend millions of pounds of taxpayer’s money, why can’t filmmakers have the same deal? And like the NTS, don’t expect the NCS to turn a profit either. The numbers show that most European films don’t make money – why should Scotland be an exception?

2 - Why can’t Scotland introduce tax and other financial incentives for filmmakers, whether from here or abroad? If Ireland can inject 188 million Euro into film, why can’t Scotland? If bringing in Hollywood films is as good for the economy as politicians like to claim, then why wouldn’t they invest more in that, rather than chuck money at dodgy asset-stripping electronics multinationals who up and leave as soon as the handouts dry up? At least with movies, you get a lasting legacy that brings in the tourists year after year.

3 - Why can’t local authorities charge a levy on multiplex cinemas to fund homegrown films from ticket sales? And while you’re at it, get a commitment to show them too. Cineworld in Renfrew Street has 18 screens – one screen for Scottish or UK films could make a big difference to getting local films seen.

4 - Why can’t we have a proper film studio? For years dodgy schemes have come and gone and we’re still waiting. A PFI initiative for a massive out-of-town shed would be a start, plus it would go a long way to encouraging big budget movies out of London. And no, I don’t mean Film City, because the Glasgow Social Work department’s still there and anyway, it’s not a real studio. There’s not even a sign outside that says Film City, at least not the last time I went by.

I could go on, but unlike many a politician, I know when to get off my soap box.

EASTERN PROMISE

Talk about spoilt brats. The boss of the National Theatre of Scotland, Vicki Featherstone, is getting all tetchy with journalists asking her why she doesn’t want the company to move to a brand new £9.5 million building in Easterhouse. ‘I don’t want to talk about that’, she moans, ‘why aren’t you talking about all the great plays we put on?’

Here's why, Vicki - but it's not like you don't know already.

Easterhouse. Easterhouse, for all of you who don’t know, is a scummy housing scheme in the East End of Glasgow. I should know, my auntie lives there. Like any scheme, it’s not perfect but it’s not that bad. At least the people there are decent. The only reason the place got the money for a ‘flagship cultural centre’ is because the area’s so deprived it qualifies for EU social funding. It needs a cultural centre like I need penis enlargement.

I suspect Ms Featherstone’s excuse is not, as she claims, because the building’s too small to house the NTS and their 22 core staff. If that’s the case, the building must have shrunk in the rain because almost ten million quid is a lot of cash in anybody’s book. No. The reason she doesn’t want to be in Easterhouse is because it’s Easterhouse – and she’s too much of a snob to admit it. After all, you’d be hard-pressed to run out at lunchtime for sushi and green tea in Easterhoose, a place where a lot of folk have never seen a potato in the raw.

So while a shiny new building lies vacant, the Scottish taxpayer’s coughing up for temporary offices in Glasgow city centre. Never mind the fact that the Scottish Executive is chucking money at what is essentially a private business, a production company by any other name. It’s hard to imagine a film or TV company being funded to the tune of £7.6 million a year out of the public coffers. Talk about wanting your cake and eating it. Not content with hefty five-figure salaries – for instance – Marketing Manager at 55K a year and a website so flashy it doesn’t work – Vicki probably won’t be happy until the National Theatre gets its own palace, with a five star hotel and spa attached.

My solution? Ms Featherstone could do worse than go to the Scottish Screen website and check out their Locations superb Build Space pdf file that lists some of the best – and biggest – empty spaces in the country. Surely one of these ex-industrial buildings would be big enough to house her ego, her staff and all her thespy pals. Somehow I doubt it...