YEAR OF THE DONKEY

Cannes. Is it just me or is the British media only pretending to be interested in this year’s Cannes Film Festival? Or - more than likely - is it because there’s not a single UK feature in competition?

And no, Michael Winterbottom’s latest offering, A Mighty Heart doesn’t count – one, it’s playing out of competition, two, it’s not British and three, it’s by Michael Winterbottom, so it’s bound to be boring and weirdly undirected. Not that it matters much to the discerning filmgoer, because given Mikey boy’s track record no doubt it’ll be politely reviewed by our middlebrow critics, the only people who will trouble themselves to see it at the flicks for no other reason than it’s their job. The rest of us will stay away in droves.

Still, Blighty being a non-presence at the festival won’t stop legions of publicly-remunerated pen pushers from attending, where the Film Council and their offshoots will host pointless get-togethers at our expense to talk up the hundreds of projects they’ve got in development. Which reminds me – didn’t our pals at WarpX do a big launch at Cannes last year to announce the now long-overdue ‘Travels with my Virginity’? According to this press release -

www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/information/news/?p=D4A157780f04227C21l
Yp1EB0BC9&skip=5

Supposedly the first film out of the WarpX stable yet to see the light of day in what looks like a case of the vanishing slate. Oh dear. Do I see flashbacks of the doomed Scottish Fast Forward Features scheme of 2004 (announced at Cannes) here? Or are they too up to their ears with Donkey Punch, which if nothing else needs a better title. How about Horse Doin’? Or Ass Skelper?

So much for their rule about low budget digital films made in the UK – why bother, when you have to go off to South Africa to shoot? Which only makes me think – if WarpX needs to pull in South African money to get a ‘low-budget UK digital film’ made, where does it leave the idea of the low-budget British film? Like I said before, is that not the point of these schemes, to help hungry new talent get off the starting block fast and get on screen? All hail to the producer that can raise SA dosh on the back of some talented-but-untried shorts filmmaker for a feature, but that wasn't the selling point of the WarpX scheme, was it?

Well, not when WarpX hires old gits from FilmFour Lab like Robin Gutch, whose claim to fame was a bunch of tragic misfires that wound up buried up the late night u-bend of FilmFour’s schedules. Like a Zombie in Shaun of the Dead, he's not bothered what happens, as long he gets his wageslip.

Seems to me the whole idea of the low-budget digital movie scheme is redundant because the minute you toss committees and TV companies and regional film funds into the mix, you end up with prevarication, incompetence and endless delays that suck the life out of fresh ideas and enthusiasm. Same goes for the hopefuls involved in making them real.

Why do I get the feeling the only people who profit from these futile ventures are the professional fencesitters, the admin junkies, the failed filmmakers, the ones who manage to pay their mortgages while the writers and would-be directors scratch in day jobs as drama workers and corporate video makers as an alternative to unpaid purgatory?

WarpX and their backers could do worse than learn a lesson from the Irish film made a couple of years ago. Adam and Paul is a small-scale picture made for less than half a mill that ticked most of the boxes of what a low budget movie ought to be. The story of a pair of hapless Dublin junkies, the film runs out of steam story-wise by the second act but at least it’s got charm and humour without being Oirish whimsy, something you don’t see often these days in UK films, too busy chasing after invisible monsters and what passes for name talent.

So it’s good to see the makers of Adam and Paul at Cannes this year with their follow-up, Garage. I’m sure it does what it says on the tin, a wee story about a lone loser trying to make their way in the world in that understated way of the best US indie tradition. Good on them.
At least they’ve made it to the Croissette on a budget less than the collective expenses of all the UK no-hoper public servants who would do better to hold their hands up, admit ‘I’m guilty of depriving the talent’ and deny themselves a fortnight of swapping business cards from some Czech studio manager after three bottles of cheap plonk before staggering back to the crap no-star hostel they’re sharing with their development assistant and waking up to a hangover, which maybe, but maybe is what Film UK feels about Cannes, thinking they have to be there but in the cold light of day realising how utterly pointless their presence is.

It’s their own fault. Hee-haw.

LET SMOKING DOGS LIE

Never mind the hoo-hah over the Scottish Elections.

About a year ago I reported on the smoking ban, soon to be foisted on the English. But what separates us from our Sassanach pals is that English actors, like their Irish counterparts, will still be allowed to smoke to their art’s content in film and on stage.

Yesterday’s Scotsman ran a piece on a film due to shoot in Scotland but now headed south of the border because its main character, real-life civils rights champion, Lord John Wolfenden smoked a pipe. Cue a bunch of loony comments from the readership – suggesting everything from CGI pipe smoking to how shampoo and furniture polish are killing us anyway – which means I should have dropped dead a long time ago. Hell, we all need to die of something – and without being too morbid about it most of us won’t die a glamourous death. To extend the smoking ban to film and telly just invites defiance, whether a filmmaker chooses to break the law and risk the penalty or to ignore reality and sacrifice authentic locations by shooting somewhere where they won’t be fined or arrested. Like they say, money talks – but money walks too – and in this case I don’t blame the filmmakers for going elsewhere.

Whoever ends up running this country would do us a big favour if they looked again at this mad legislation and allowed smoking on set where it can be justified. It’s not just about drawing room dramas and period autheniticity here. With a third of the adult population still merrily puffing away in Scotland, if there’s not a human rights issue at stake, there’s a cultural one – that folk who smoke deserve to be represented on screen and stage every bit as much as other minority groups.

And what happens when the big budget Hollywood drama arrives? Here it would help if Harry Potter enjoyed the odd Mayfair round the back of the broom cupboard because if that was the case I’m sure Alex Salmond would change the law as fast as you can say Abracadabra for fear of the prestige, the publicity and the multi-million dollar budget going up in smoke. When what passes for a film business here is already about as much use as an ashtray, we could use some help, before I (seriously) - and my fellow recent-ish graduate filmmakers - head elsewhere.

In the end it makes you think - who are they coming for next? How long before fat folk are fingered for eating on screen? Or anybody getting just a wee bit too tiddly? From there it’s but a short step to poor people being pilloried for shopping in Lidl and gays being put back in their box for, well, bad décor mostly and putting milk in first, so I wonder what any future law means for a girl like me for having a dirty mind (but clean underwear, if you must know).