f i l m f l a m

FAT'S ALL FOLKS

2008-01-08T16:38:00.001Z

You’ll be glad to hear I made it through another Christmas and New Year without stabbing my nearest and dearest - mainly by munching my way through Iceland party platters and downing a crate of Lidl cava with voddie chasers. Not to mention scoffing those Thornton Continentals and the two-for-a-fiver boxes of choccies nobody’s ever heard of that my cheapskate sister-in-law bought at Poundstretchers and foisted on everybody.

You can tell the party season’s over. In most public places the air reeks of Intimately Beckham and dazzling white trainers can now be spotted pounding the pavements. Meanwhile I console myself with Teletext holidays and the sales - at least until the credit card statement drops on the mat with a dull and threatening thud, which is okay by me since I don’t plan on eating again till March.

So what have we got to look forward to in 2008? If it’s film and telly, forget it. All that’s happening film-wise in Scotland is an imported horror, Clive Barker’s Book of Blood, currently shooting in Edinburgh and so keeping a handful of local crew off benefits. Elsewhere (ie. Glasgow) there’s the DIY feature, Running in Traffic, the reason why GMAC’s been shut since November. Maintenance and stocktaking, my arse. Do their backers – City of Glasgow, Scottish Screen, the BBC and the Film Council - know they’re dogging it? Still, if it's the only way to get a local film produced then good luck to them. Good luck too to Yasmin Fedda whose documentary, Breadmakers, is off to Sundance. Go girl.

Less enticing is Skillset Scotland’s ‘career makeover competition’. A week at the Berlinale Talent Campus? You’ll be beating off offers galore I’m sure, sadly none of them to do working with film or TV. Or a week working at games company, Sky, learning all about video production which chances are you know all about anyway since you can’t apply to Skillset unless you’ve got a HND in coffee-stirring. Or how about a week’s worth of office slavery at IWC? A must for anybody’s CV and yet another version of the sit-up-and-beg mentality that passes for unmissable opportunity. I’m sure somebody’s patting themselves on the back with this one.

Scouring the papers I notice another of those tiresome items in the Sunday Herald predicting what 2008 will look like. Second bottom of the heap is arts which for some reason (er, Creative Scotland?) now includes the entire Scottish screen sector. Quoted is Anne Bonnar, theatre fan and recently-appointed director of the transitional body for CS. If you can stay awake -

I'm optimistic. The development of Creative Scotland will challenge some of our thinking about how to create a leading cultural development agency. As a small country in confident times, we have the opportunity to create a support structure which will enable our artists and creative communities to deliver for Scotland and the world. That's a fantastic opportunity.

The challenge for the arts and artists in Scotland has never been about talent or creativity. Its been about recognition and appropriate support and advocacy, here and abroad. Many artists, and those involved in the broader creative industries, are looking for clear leadership and for a co-ordinated approach to investment, development and advocacy across the sector. Over recent years there has been uncertainty about future support structures.

The Scottish government has made a commitment to the formation of Creative Scotland, which will have a leadership role across the arts, screen and the creative sector. During 2008 the role, shape and style of Creative Scotland will become clear as will its relationships with other public agencies, local authorities and others. This will present opportunities and perhaps some challenges for the arts and creative community and has the potential to make a positive difference to the arts in and from Scotland.

Bonnar's statement, delivered in deadly corporate-speak, is utter tosh. I don’t know a single filmmaker, writer, artist or musician who’s looking for leadership. They’re looking for money, pure and simple, just like all those chair polishers in the arts worried whether they’ll still be in a job by the time CS kicks in. As far as film and TV is concerned, what kind of leadership from Anne Bonnar can persuade a London distributor or sales company to buy into a Scottish film or TV show? All the optimism in the world won’t get a film financed or on to our screens.

Yadda yadda, so it goes. If Anne Bonnar or anybody else thinks I’m too pessimistic then go ask my 18-year-old niece, J, who worked hard at school, passed her exams, held down not one but three part-time jobs and last year enrolled for a media course at a well-known university. I just heard J’s quit the course, as she says – ‘to get a life’. Waking up to the fact that four years of study and a five-figure debt guarantees nothing, J knows her chances of even an average-waged job in film or telly are practically zilch. She’s now signed up with Strathclyde Police.

Unlike Anne Bonnar, at least my niece won’t have to worry about the ‘uncertainty about future support structures’. Neither will I. After hearing about J's decision, I can’t convince myself that another year of naysaying on this blog is in any way life-affirming or even fun so after 158 posts I’m off to try something more profitable – and positive. I might even write a half-decent script.

Thanks to the many thousands of you who’ve read this blog, especially those who took the time to comment. Good luck to you all.

OH YES SHE WILL

2007-12-19T12:58:00.000Z

Christmas is round the corner, like we need reminding. Still, it’s good to know that in some quarters there are people who just can’t stop giving. Earlier this year I wrote a piece on Easterhouse and how the National Theatre of Scotland didn’t want to live there, there being a flashy £10 million arts centre, The Bridge, because it was deemed ‘too small’. For what? Their egos?

Today’s Herald runs a piece about the soon-to-be homeless NTS, and how fairy godmother and Scottish culture minister, Linda Fabiani, has answered Vicky Featherstone’s letter to Santa by giving her a whole new building – The Shed, a former shipbuilding site in Govan. Not that the NTS is handing back the Bridge. They’re keeping that for their youth arm. But with the lease running out at their other branch in Hope Street, a deal’s been struck with the owner of The Shed, Angus McMillan who, so the article claims, has been waiting 17 years to flog it to an arts organisation.

I guess in Mr McMillan’s opinion film doesn’t qualify as art which is why Film City Glasgow is slumming it in the old Govan Town Hall. And I’m sure Mr McMillan’s altruism when it comes to arts patronage has nothing to do with the undisclosed amount he’ll earn when he flogs his empty shed to the Scottish Government to house the NTS.

For a company that claims they’re not interested in buildings, the NTS sure has an interest in buildings. While film companies stump up for production offices, storage and rehearsal space, the NTS gets handouts galore, presumably because it has the words ‘National’ and ‘Scotland’ in the title. Maybe it’s time some enterprising film producer started the ‘National Film Company of Scotland’, though there's a better chance of the ugly sister shagging Prince Charming than Cinderella filmmakers getting a similar deal.

The one question not being asked here is how much is this going to cost the taxpayer. Buying an empty shed is one thing, but refitting it to suit the NTS is another. One thing’s for sure – it’ll cost a lot more than its neighbour, Film City, just as I’m sure the good folk of Govan won’t benefit one iota from having a private theatre club on its doorstep. And pity the poor actor having to rehearse in a big cold shed, though judging by the way the NTS spends our money I wouldn’t be surprised if Vicky’s round the back burning shedloads of twenty quid notes.

As long as they don’t stage a revival of The Ship.

REJECT PILE

2007-12-10T13:34:00.000Z

Spotted in today’s Guardian Comment is Free - a lively discussion on the rejection letter to celebrated filmmaker, Tony Palmer, from the BBC when he pitched his doco on the life of composer, Vaughan Williams. The film is now scheduled to screen on that champion of arts programming, Channel Five.

As rejections go, the BBC letter’s too good to be faked, as some sceptics suggest.

“Dear Mr Palmer,

Thank you for your enquiry about the composer Mr V Williams. Having looked at our own activity via the lens of find, play & share, we came to the conclusion that a film about Mr Williams would not be appropriate at this time. This is essentially because we are... reconstructing the architecture of bbc.co.uk, and to do that, we need to maximise the routes to content.

We must establish the tools that allow shared behaviours, and so harness the power of the audience and our network to make our content more findable. We have decided to take a radically new approach... and therefore free resources for projects of real ambition... So, given that this is the new vision for Vision, you will understand why a film about Mr V Williams such as you have proposed does not fit our remit. But good luck with the project, and do let me know if Mr V Williams has an important premiere in the future as this findability might allow us to reconsider.”

Cracker, isn’t it?

No signature, but who cares? When somebody’s kicking your teeth in, you don’t pay that much attention to who’s wearing the boots, although I think it’s more to do with Mr Palmer looking to spare somebody’s blushes. Still, the letter could have been written by any number of 20-year-old Oxbridge graduates fondling their way up Auntie’s skirts. Never mind the sheer ignorance – eg. V. Williams, or the idea he's got an upcoming gig – phrases like ‘lens of find’ and ‘play and share’ are absolute gems of consultantese. As one commentator pointed out, this is the outfit that can put you in jail for not having a TV licence.

Being no stranger to rejection letters myself – from agents, producers, funders – I just wish they could be a bit more a) truthful and b) imaginative. The standard two-line letter telling you how the standard of applications was SO high is really just saying ‘by the way, you’re crap’. I’d rather hear that than how other folk are more talented.

Mislaid scripts and paperwork is another ruse. How many times have I heard that so-and-so had your script on their desk three months ago but how it mysteriously vanished. Where, into their shredder/recycle bin?

Come on, Tony, be a man about it. Time to name and shame. Folk go to jail for less.

FOLK RIGHT OFF

2007-12-01T22:42:00.000Z

What does 30 quid buy you these days? Half a hairdo? A night in a crap hotel? A Czech hooker? Among my spam this week comes an invitation to join the latest in a long line of short-lived film networking websites. FilmingFolk.com bills itself as Scotland’s premier resource and networking community for anyone working, or wishing to gain experience, within the film and television industry. All for just £30 a year.

After all, when you can’t make a living out of the film business, surely the next best thing is to exploit all those wannabe filmmakers who are either too dumb or too lazy to find out for themselves that film isn’t some clandestine closed shop. All the information’s out there for free if you can be bothered to look, so who needs to spend 30 quid a year to read content written by other members who presumably joined up because they don’t have a clue about the business either.

You can’t shoot them for trying, but if I want to give somebody my money, I like to know who I’m giving it to. On FilmingFolk you'll find a Terry Dray, who has a single credit on IMDB as an AD on a short made five years ago, alongside Lynzie Dray and Christine Davidson, plus a couple of outfits purporting to be production companies, neither of which musters a Google ranking. Like, how much do they know about making films? Or, like most companies here, have they made the standard couple of shorts and the odd corporate?

Especially not enticing is the rate they charge for script feedback. I mean, £279 for ‘extensive analysis’ of a feature script? Are they kidding? Even the Script Factory only charges £75 for a feature script and at least they've got some screenwriting chops.

As for FilmingFolk’s 'short film competition', this really beggars belief. For a start they’re charging £25 to enter (£40 if you want feedback). And the prize? I quote -

“The winning script will be produced using a professional producer, director, crew and actors and will go into pre-production on Monday 3rd November 2008 for a 7 week shoot, which includes, development, pre-production, the shoot and edit time”.

Hello-oh? A 7-week shoot for a short? I think FilmingFolk must’ve got D minus at film school, because any idiot knows the shoot is the bit where you have a camera and actors, not the bit when you sit in front of a computer editing, or rewriting the script. It makes you wonder what the losers get – two scripts produced by FilmingFolk Productions Ltd?

If this sounds like a slagging, you’re dead right. It’s one thing to be fleeced by professionals, but it’s another to get mugged by a bunch of amateurs who clearly don’t have the first clue about making films or is qualified to teach anyone else how to. Because if they could, then why aren’t they doing it? Here's why - nobody in the real film business wants to fund films these days, especially films in Scotland. Even big grown-up filmmakers who know what they're doing can't make a living. So unless you want to starve...

FF has got what must be the world's wordiest website with delusional claims about how they deal with ‘industry professionals’. If that's so, then what’s the point of submitting the finished film to BAFTA Scotland? What do you think Alison Forsyth is going to do with it, apart from use it as a coaster? And as for the claims about getting the film to festivals – it’s just pish. Anybody can fill in a form for a festival but getting accepted is a whole lot harder.

If FF wants my advice, they should cut the crap, post their CVs, and get rid of their dumbass terms and conditions. By all means be in business, but don’t lie about your so-called expertise because you come across like a bunch of chancers. I've been shaken down by better than you guys. And finally, stop spamming me. I’d rather throw thirty quid down the toilet than sign up to you lot.

BURNED OUT

2007-11-22T13:47:00.001Z

I’ve been staring at a blank screen for about three minutes now, thinking of something positive to say about the film business.....

I’ll start again.

This week an item on MTV movies grabs my attention, seeing as how it relates to some of the recent comments on my posts, especially from my pal, English Dave, about the dire state of distribution. The item concerns Ed ‘Brothers McMullen' Burns and the death of the art house film (so he says). Ed’s beef is that his latest film, Purple Violet, has failed to get bums on seats. In fact, it’s failed to get anywhere near the seats since he couldn’t bag a distributor, so instead he’s releasing it as a download on iTunes for $14.99.

Not a great move, Ed.

Now I admit I don’t know much about Ed’s movies, but it seems he’s made the same one about eight times now, dealing mainly with ‘relationship issues’. In other words, a few folk standing in rooms either shouting at each other or not talking to each other, maybe with a bit of door slamming thrown in. What Ed fails to grasp is that this sounds too much like real life to entice the punters to part with their cash. We can all do our own door-slamming, thank you. As he blubbers, “If they’re not going to see Reese Witherspoon and Tom Cruise they’re not coming out to see me and Patrick Wilson. The audience isn’t there anymore.”

Not so, Ed, so don’t point that huffy lip at us. The reason people are staying away in droves from your movies isn’t Tom Cruise. They’re staying away from him too, if the reported box for Lions for Lambs is anything to go by. No, the reason people are staying away from your movies is because a) they’re not in the cinemas and anyway, b) there are much better films out there.

The question is, how likely is it for punters to shell out 15 bucks to watch a movie on a screen smaller than a packet of fags? For years people have talked up the great online revolution that promised to turn distribution on its head. Lots of people have sat on lots of panels yakking about online distribution, film on demand, mobile phone downloads and suchlike. Apart from filmmakers flogging a few DVDs on a website, I’ve yet to see a rush on this.

Maybe it’s because unlike watching a couple of minutes of nonsense on YouTube or any of the other sites for free, there’s only a few nutters willing spend more money than it costs to rent a film to download an entire feature and watch it on their phone or their iPod, a bit like being in the cheap seats at a gig, since the screen’s so tiny it detracts from the ‘experience’. It doesn’t seem to matter that the technology’s out there, because all the technology’s done is make us part with cash for the latest gadget and brainwash us all into only watching shorts, usually topped and tailed with some corporate message.

They used to say that adverts were the good bits between telly programmes. Now we’ve got a situation where we dummies fork out for the hardware to watch ads and fork out for the subscription to download the ‘good’ stuff. Why anybody would want to pay more than the cost of cinema ticket to watch a screen the size of one is beyond me. Apart from watching porn, cause at least you've still got a free hand. (see pic)

Maybe Ed Burns would be better off with a camcorder and a YouTube account rather than get all sulky about nobody wanting to release his films. As he says, “I don’t think I’m going to make another small dialogue driven movie for a while.” I don’t think you’ve got much say in the matter, Ed, not when the audiences’ bums are firmly planted on their own seats.

SMALL EARTHQUAKE, NOBODY DEAD

2007-11-12T11:37:00.000Z

Judging by the UK coverage – e.g. page 9 of Saturday’s Guardian and second last item on Friday’s national BBC Radio news - you’d never guess that Glasgow just won its bid to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games. But much as we Scots love to moan about southern bias and indifference, we could do with sorting out our own house when it comes to reporting on matters of national importance.

It’s a while since I last mentioned the Culture Bill, so long overdue I’m surprised the bailiffs haven’t been round. That, and a fully-fledged Creative Scotland, the body to replace both the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen. Yawn all you want but the scrapping of these two agencies marks the biggest shake-up in the arts in Scotland in decades so it’s bound to have an impact.

Filmmakers, ignore the small print at your peril. That goes for SS boss Ken Hay too because if anybody ought to watch his back, it’s him. Even on their own website, buried in the news section you’ll find a recent speech by Scottish Culture Minister, Linda Fabiani, who gives glowing mentions to the National Theatre of Scotland, the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra, Edinburgh’s festivals, the National Collections, National Museums and the National Library.

What she doesn’t mention is film, an omission that not only ignores every filmmaker in the country but also fails to acknowledge our one and only screen agency, an agency paid for out of government’s own coffers. Not a good sign, is it? In fact, her only film reference begins and ends with David Mackenzie, presumably because Hallam Foe opened this year’s EIFF.

It’s here you really begin to wonder about the future because if Ms Fabiani fails to talk up film as a cultural asset because the powers-that-be and advisors failed to remind her to talk it up, then we might as well give up now.

So what does Ken Hay have to worry about? How about Richard Holloway, chair of the joint board of SS and SAC, for a start. After years at the SAC, we can only guess where his loyalties lie and you can bet it’s not film since apart from turning up at a few gala screenings he doesn’t know the first thing about it. I’d have thought theatre, dance and opera was more his bag. Then you have the recent appointment of Anne Bonnar as director of the interim body set up to oversee the transition to CS. Her background? The NTS and Traverse Theatre. So no 'advocacy' for film there either.

It’s hardly an exaggeration then that it’s all beginning to look like the players here are a bit skewed in favour of the stage. Now I might be dead wrong but at a time when the National Theatre of Scotland is grabbing favourable headlines for Black Watch, its success is maybe less to do with the plays they put on than the fact their head of marketing is on a 55K a year salary. SS has no equivalent but then again, unlike the NTS, Scottish Screen isn’t a production company with untold riches at its disposal.

One obvious conclusion is for SS to hand over the keys to West George Street and its annual budget to the National Theatre since the NTS looks like it can claim success where SS can’t and so might be better at the job of getting films made. But you only have to look at the numerous stage plays adapted for the big screen over the years to know it’s a very bad idea.

The Life of Stuff, for instance?

“Devoid of any wit, humour or cinematic style” – FilmFour review.

Or The Slab Boys?

“As much enjoyment as slowly squeezing your finger in a vice.” – User comment on IMDB.

Or Blood Red Roses?

“Mind-numbingly boring, self-righteous and over-prone to the use of that terrible short-cut of having its characters reacting to world events on TV”. – Time Out.

All based on stage plays, of course. And just because a playwright might fancy getting into movies doesn’t mean they’re any good at it. In fact, I couldn't turn up a single Scottish stage play-turned-film that got a decent review.

Meanwhile those of us in Scotland who genuinely want to make movies are forced into entering competitions to make TV dramas at a time when telly is shedding jobs by the skipload. I’ve never heard of playwrights having to do the same thing, because in theatre it’s more a case of a cosy phone call and ‘here’s the cheque, away and write what you fancy’. And unlike theatre, our film producers and directors start from a base of no wages and no funding to treat themselves or writers properly. It’s more like ‘give me your draft and if we’re lucky I might get us a few grand’. No, in Scottish theatre the money’s in place from the start. Nobody ever goes hungry, not when the government and the joint SS/SAC board value theatre so much more than film.

In February next year a 3-day conference, The Cultural Summit, is due to take place in Edinburgh. Guess which cultural item is off the menu? If any or all of what I've written here doesn’t sound the death knell of film in Scotland, I don’t know what does. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if sometime next year, SS and the idea of Scottish film will be quietly strangled and dumped. And if track record is anything to go by, our press and media won’t bother to tell us where the body’s been buried.

PI-LOSS IN GLESGA

2007-11-05T12:17:00.000Z

Thank you Light&Shade for keeping us alert to the non-opportunity that is The Pilot scheme.

Maybe they should rebrand it Pi-loss, since that's what it amounts to. And shame on WGGB for not jumping on Channel 4, SS and HIE's heads for coming up with this tawdry, ill-thought and totally exploitative scheme.

Even worse, Pi-loss has got fuck all to do with cheap telly, it's about grabbing 12 properties for a pittance - you only have to look at the rights that you, the writer, have to give away even to take part in this bag of shite. And sorry Lucy - (see comments on my post 4CryingOut Loud) - I hate to piss on the parade here, but to say that the scheme gives a leg-up to Scottish writers is bogus. Only rich kids looking for a wee jolly up north need apply.

They might as well mug you in the street. Don't fall for it folks.

WINNER TAKES ALL

2007-11-01T11:46:00.000Z

Costume? Who said anything about clothes, dear?

As part of my public service blogcast remit to readers south of the border – since you won’t hear about it on the national news – this year’s BAFTA Scotland Award nominations have just been announced. Cue the readers of our national rag, The Scotsman, who are already chucking bangers at the door of West George Street due to the woeful lack of names in the Best Actress category.

If you thought the two contenders last year was a joke, this year BS boasts only one – Sophia Myles – for her role as – and let’s be honest here – an unhappy slapper. It’s not enough to get your kit off, Sophie, you need to do some acting as well, darling. To her credit, parting her legs for slumming-it nipper, Jamie Bell, shows some range.

What does this tell us? Well, according to the story one actress, Angela Coates, who played in Wilma and Duncan’s ‘My Life as a Bus Stop’- fell off the list. The fact she appeared as a fat, deluded, struggling actress is ironic enough, but having seen the film what’s tragic here is that Ms Coates’ performance was genius and more than deserving of a nomination. Hell, they should have just handed her the prize.

So why the omission? Snobbery, probably. BAFTA Scotland, desperate to make their annual event look credible in the eyes of the wider media – and keep the sponsors and telly tarts interested – can’t be seen hanging out with the likes of Angela.

Whyever not? You might ask. Because they think ‘My Life as a Bus Stop’ isn’t a REAL film, just a few folk from Coatbridge farting about with a camcorder. Forget being selected for the EIFF, Wilma and Duncan can’t be counted as serious filmmakers. Their film didn’t have a big budget, they didn’t have ‘stars’ but at least they didn’t waste public money or take a nosedive at the box office like Hallam Foe did.

As one of the saner commentees writing in the Hootsman points out, a nomination can go a long way in helping an actor’s career. Maybe Angela Coates could carve a niche for herself in the business. She deserves to. So shame on BAFTA Scotland for not putting her on the list.

CELLULOID SPONGERS

2007-10-26T17:12:00.000+01:00

Trawling round the film websites – as you do – I notice the Irish Film Board has shortlisted 10 projects for their low-budget scheme, Catalyst, three of which will get made on budgets of 250,000 Euros apiece. And I’m thinking, not another bloody low-budget feature film scheme. While Film UK is hurtling to hell in a handcart for want of getting some movies made and with co-production mangled on the buffers, lately the low-budget film scheme is being wheeled out again as the saviour – not of the film business, but of the hundreds of public sector jobs in screen agencies up and down the country.

I was musing on this while watching a DVD of London to Brighton the other night. As low budget films go, it’s okay – some decent acting, if a bit miscast, the photography’s fine and the script’s not the worst I’ve come across. More than that, I got the feeling that everybody involved was 100% committed to its making. According to the official website, the film was privately funded, apart from some completion money chipped in by the Film Council, who, if they had had any sense, ought to have funded it from the off. But they didn’t. And probably just as well, because more than likely they would have fucked it up at the script stage and the filmmakers would have lost the will to live, meaning the movie would have suffered the death of a thousand cuts. So good luck to them for raising the money themselves and getting LTB made they way they wanted to make it.

As I write this piece, there are precisely no films getting made in Scotland, well, none that I’m aware of, apart from some piece of schlocky horror that’s threatening to shoot soon. It’s a dire situation. Yet for years now, the low-budget film scheme’s been a kind of Holy Grail. So how come all these various schemes – Film London’s Microwave, Warp X, Slingshot being a few examples – fallen flat on their arse? Here, north of the border, we tried with the 300K New Found Films, an exercise that for reasons unknown, the backers - SMG and Scottish Screen - never bothered to repeat.

In Microwave’s case, with budgets of 75 grand, it must be a bit galling for the filmmakers, knowing that the boss of Film London earns about the same amount. Meanwhile the scheme’s funders, the BBC, must be having a laugh, knowing that they’re getting ultra-cheap content on the back of minimum wage/unpaid labour, because no way can you make a movie for 75K and follow all the rules and regs that public money places on you. And what’s the point of having all these heavy-duty industry mentors on board anyway? I bet they’re not giving it away for free. I doubt very much if Gurinder Chadha, Stephen Frears and Jeremy Thomas would have the first clue about making a film for 75K, so why bother asking them?

Just because a London to Brighton or a Once gets made against the odds from time to time doesn’t mean a public agency can learn any lessons from them. The very things that get these films made are the very things that the public money hates – filmmakers making their films by any means necessary, not sitting on their arses waiting on somebody else’s say-so. Low-no budget films only get made by getting rid of half the crew. They use unknown, hungry actors. They use locations. They don’t write endless drafts of the script. They shoot on camcorders, or do great deals to shoot film. They don’t have expensive soundtracks. They edit on home computers. They don’t have eight ‘executive producers’. But more than anything, these filmmakers make their own decisions, not wait a week for somebody in an office to return the phone call and decide for them.

Warp X, which I’ve written about elsewhere on this blog, is probably the best example of how not to make low-budget films. Launched over two years ago in a blaze of publicity, Warp’s Mark Herbert promised six films, bought with £3 million investment from the Film Council. Here’s his pitch –

“We need movies that can be made faster, leaner, lighter - with no excess baggage. That way the films will become profitable much quicker”.

Aye, so you keep telling us, Mark. But how many of these faster, leaner, lighter Warp X films have been made so far? Well, we still haven’t seen hide nor hair of Donkey Punch, have we? According to their site, the film’s currently in post-production after a four-week shoot in South Africa, which no doubt involved some excess baggage. Or did Robin Gutch stay at home counting what’s left of the 3 million quid after two years of paying himself a hefty wage?

Which leaves Slingshot. An odd bunch this lot, because as far as I can make out from their site, their business plan has a fatal flaw. Only idiots make cheap movies and distribute them themselves. At least they raised their money in the private sector, but what of the films? Well, they put out Sugarhouse, an off-the-peg gangster movie that underwhelmed the hacks (eg. Philip French: considerable promise here, but little actual achievement) and so escaped the notice of cinema-going punters. Like Warp X, they’ve managed to con Skillset out of money for ‘innovative training’, along with professional spongers, Performing Arts Lab and the Met School in London – more finishing than film school. Just chuck in that magic word ‘digital’ somewhere on the form and you too can write your own cheque.

What I’d like to know is who they’re training because you can’t submit a project to them unless you’ve already had a movie broadcast or distributed in the UK. Besides, what’s to train for? How to apply for jobseeker’s allowance after your film goes down the pan? While Slingshot are playing at being movie moguls, the majority of filmmakers are too busy working in bars, shops, crappy teaching jobs, call centres and care homes to think much about how to get their next short made, never mind a feature film.

I guess on paper these schemes might look attractive to public bodies desperate to look as if they’re busy. The sad truth of it is that writers will still have to work for free, directors have to shoot movies on suicidal schedules and producers still have rely on their partners to pay the bills. What’s also sad is that for years we’ve heard about how anybody with a camcorder can go out and make a movie – if it’s that easy, then how come it’s not happening? Maybe because in the end it takes more than money to make a film, no matter how crap the budget.

HASTE YE BACKERS

2007-10-15T17:39:00.000+01:00

Scotland, as we all know, is rich in landscape: mountain ranges, dark, lovely lochs, unspoilt coastline and vibrant cities with a grand architectural heritage. Who wouldn’t want to come here? Even better if you can get your host to foot the bill.

Well, not Hollywood, according to an item in the Scotsman, reporting on a recce by the great and good of Tinseltown to these shores. Scottish Screen, touting for business, recently ‘organised’ a trip by a bunch of LA producers, starting at Prestonfields Hotel, Edinburgh, a place so swanky it doesn’t bother to publish the room rate on its website. A helicopter ride later, the producers gave it the thumbs up but stopped short of committing to filming due to the weather and the dire lack of studio facilities. Of course, anybody from the States with a likely-looking business card could pull that stunt. I’m just surprised more of them don’t.

I could complain about Hollywood being treated like royalty while our own filmmakers are scratching a living, but that would be too obvious. No, what I take issue with here is how ignorant and lazy journalism asserts that these visitors, quote -

‘…felt the UK and Scottish film industries were making efforts to make production more financially rewarding with tax incentives, and the production talents north of the border were exemplary’.

Plainly this is rubbish. To talk about a UK or Scottish film industry is fantasy when what you’re really talking about is government subsidy to a set of agencies whose job is to oversee what happens to drop on their desks, be it a spec script, a submission for some gladiatorial ‘initiative’ they’ve cooked up or, more likely, to subsidise the BBC or Channel 4.

As for making production more lucrative through tax breaks – well, the industry’s hardly in a position to do that, not with the current exchange rate and especially since Mr Brown decided to clamp down on dodgy funds pretending to be movie moguls. Why do you think so many American producers are so fond of Ireland? Besides, your average UK production company can’t pay itself a regular wage let alone provide incentives for US studios.

And so what if production talent north of the border is ‘exemplary’? They’re hardly likely to get too high up the food chain if Hollywood rolls into town. The best freelancers here can hope for is a location manager gig maybe, so they can kill themselves on 18 hour days or a sub-minimum wage runner/driver job, ferrying the above-the-line from their five star hotel to some freezing castle somewhere and be expected to be thankful for the privilege.

The main getout here – as ever – is the lack of studio facilities in Scotland. For years now there’s been countless attempts to get one built, usually on the back of a land grab for a golf course with hotel and retail complex, such as Sean Connery’s doomed scheme. Every time it’s died for lack of investment and political will. If the Americans are so keen on coming to Scotland then why can’t Donald Trump stump up? A large shed wouldn’t make much of a dent in the billion dollars he’s planning to spend here on 18 holes. Well, it's one way to attract the A-listers...

thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1636432007

4CRYINGOUTLOUD

2007-10-02T12:04:00.000+01:00

Channel 4 script executive offers his feedback...

4Talent has just announced a competition, The Pilot, aimed at budding (and no doubt, withered) writers to come up with ideas for a 23-minute drama capable of becoming a six-part series on a par with Skins, Shameless and, bizarrely, Cape Wrath. The twelve lucky winners will then be farmed out to one of three production companies – Synchronicity Films, Brocken Spectre and Move On Up – who then have to compete X-Factor style for a rubbish 90 grand budget, which for setting up a six-parter from scratch is sweetie money. Just don’t tell me Douglas Rae made Cape Wrath for 90 grand a pop.

Me, I just wish they would pay writers from the off, instead of demanding they clamber over obstacle courses by making them enter convoluted contests that involve working for free. On the PILOT scheme the entry requirements are hefty. Reading the terms and conditions alone is a day's work for a lawyer. Not only do you have to come up with an original idea for a 23-minute drama, a page of script for said drama but also a treatment for another five episodes. Yep, just like that. Of course, you don’t get paid for any of this toil unless you get chosen – and even then Channel 4 are a bit shy in the small print when it comes to hard cash. I wonder how much they’re not paying the would-be producers?

While many people, including Channel 4, see this as an amazing opportunity, I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling a bit jaded when it comes to these initiatives. What other business operates like this? Car mechanics? Neurosurgeons? Why is it okay to solicit unpaid work from writers, who can never be sure if their ‘rejected’ idea will turn up in C4’s schedules in 2010? Of course, you can’t make headway as a writer by being that paranoid, but to me this sounds like a re-run of the starving-the-slaves tactic because it not only punishes the writers by making unpaid work a condition of entry but the wannabe producers too by making them sit up and beg. And as we all know, you don’t get work out of starving slaves, but I guess it saves C4 a packet in overheads.

Rather than have any confidence in producers, Channel 4, like BBC Scotland on the Singles, is spreading its bets because, ironically, it doesn’t believe that by paying a producer to pay a writer they’ll come up with anything worth making. So in the guise of ‘opportunity’, they’ll get hundreds of submissions, most of which will be dross – but hey, it’s free dross, so who cares? In an overcrowded market where too many otherwise sane people fantasise about becoming screenwriters, C4 can sit back and let three companies harvest the good ‘uns without having to fork out as much as the cost of paper, let alone the time and talent.

Auntie Leanne’s advice? Reheat that old Singles pitch now. What’s to lose?

www.channel4.com/4talent/pilot/

A FIT OF PEAK

2007-10-01T15:20:00.000+01:00

Who is this guy, you might wonder? Well I never, it's none other than Douglas Rae, Scotland's 'leading movie mogul', whose Ecosse Films is based in a nice office in Chelsea and who sits on the committee of BAFTA. Watch your back though, this guy wields a mean steakie...

The latest stushie over BAFTA’s decision not to submit the Gaelic movie, Seachd – The Inaccessible Pinnacle, for the Foreign Film Oscars grinds on with barely a peep out of the local media. One exception is Brian Pendreigh, writing in Scotland on Sunday on how miffed producer Christopher Young is so hacked off with BAFTA he’s torn up his membership.

scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/entertainment.cfm?id=1560962007

Apart from the usual batty Nats chucking in their tuppence worth, what’s interesting about the article is the it-wisnae-me half-arsed apology from Alison Forsyth, head of BAFTA Scotland, claiming it’s nothing to do with her because ‘she only runs a branch office’ of the organisation. So much for BAFTA Scotland’s claim to champion Scottish filmmaking. And with old duffer Douglas Rae so quick to put the boot in, so much for cameraderie among Scottish filmmakers. Mind you, Rae's about as Scottish as Gordon Ramsay.

If Ms Forsyth can’t come out in support of Seachd, who can? Well, how about one of the stakeholders, Scottish Screen? Didn’t they put £170,000 into the film? You’d think maybe that CEO, Ken Hay, might have something to say about BAFTA’s decision but like many a gagged filmmaker in receipt of large amounts of public cash, I guess he’d rather keep stumm than rock the establishment boat, especially when there’s a lucrative job coming up at Creative Scotland. And why is co-funder, Ishbel Maclennan of BBC Alba not kicking up a fuss about the film’s non-inclusion? You can bet all parties concerned would be quick enough to claim credit if Seachd wound up with an Oscar nomination.

Not having seen the movie myself, it’s hard to know whether or not it’s as unworthy as BAFTA would have us believe. Surely it’s hard enough for a film, especially one made on a paltry £700,000, to compete on the international stage, up against multi-million dollar rivals from all corners of the earth. It’s pretty bad when your own country puts up barricades and it’s not as if there’s anything to lose – unless, of course, BAFTA feels too embarrassed to put forward such a low budget film - be it good, bad or indifferent – because it might reflect badly on the state of Film UK by showing up the lie of our so-called thriving industry.

At a time when practically bugger-all is getting made inhouse in Scotland, it’s interesting to note that a couple of films are allegedly heading this way. I say allegedly because producers Jinx Films’ Eating Dust, (billed as a ‘Celtic comedy’ – and no doubt as hilarious as that other English movie, One Last Chance) is still touting for investors, according to their website. The other film is some cheapo horror whose title I forget, but it’s another English import. Good to know then that Film City isn’t turning out to be a total waste of public money. Just a shame we can’t seem to get any Scottish films made there.

Again my thanks go to Andy, perennial contributor of ideas for this blog, for pointing me towards this Guardian article, national coverage being a rare thing for any Scottish film –

film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2177934,00.html

Seachd seems to have its admirers, so how come BAFTA decided to bury it? It’s worth adding that they knocked back a Welsh film too, while across the water, our canny Northern Irish friends have submitted Kings as their Best Foreign Film contender - or so I saw advertised on screendaily.com last week. How does that work? By pulling a fast one with the Irish Film Board, probably and BAFTA be damned. Like the mad Nats on the Hootsmon say – independence now. Maybe Alex Salmond should apply to Scandinavia for membership...

WLTM...

2007-09-18T09:16:00.001+01:00

I’ve never been so desperate that I’ve tried speed dating, not even for a laugh.

The basic problem I think is living in Paisley. Not that your chances improve much in Glasgow, where most of the guys you meet are either dumb or too busy acting dumb, usually because they’re hiding a wife and three weans. To balance it, there are a lot of females out there doing pretty much the same thing. Don’t believe me? Get your arse down to Union Street at half two on a weekend night (or any night) and, like the remote police camera vans now blocking the corner of Union Street, you too can witness the hordes of drunk lassies at the taxi rank clutching heels in one hand while smoking a Mayfair with a Mulberry handbag in the other. In other words, your average BBC 1 audience.

I get the feeling that this kind of semi-comedic social realism is exactly what BBC Scotland, together with their pals at Scottish Screen, want to encourage. The deadline’s just passed for a drama scheme called The Singles which on paper looks like a brave attempt at getting homegrown writers/filmmakers on the bottom rung of the biz. The budget - £450,000 may look like a useful amount of money, but it’s not. Not according to somebody I went to Uni with a few years back who knows somebody who knows that the average per-hour cost of network TV drama is calculated at around £750,000.

But like everything else about the BBC – and there’s plenty to slag but I won’t slag SS here because they never got round to Fast Forward Features (see archive) – the problem is a) London, b) London and c) London. Apart from River City – and it doesn’t take a genius to know that particular show will never go network, no matter what anybody says. Personally I think it’s gone downhill again lately, but I live in hope.

I expect when it comes down to it, London will beat BBC Scotland into submission and before you can say opt-out – the budget for The Singles will be instantly halved and the whole scheme will languish in purgatorial development. How do I know this? I don’t. The other day I googled ‘BBC Scotland Drama’ which took me to the BBC Scotland Drama site from where the only drama I could find was River City. No mention of any other show – one-offs or series.

Hmmm… I thought, unless RC’s the only gig in town, then either BBC Scotland Drama is worse off than I thought or they’re not telling us something. I’ll take a punt on the latter. Seems to me that virtually all the drama commissioned out of BBC Drama Scotland comes out of England anyway. Scratching round online, you find companies like Sony Productions credited for ‘Sea of Souls’ Not that anybody gives a toss about where the money comes from – or goes – so long as the programmes don’t insult the intelligence of the average settee tattie.

While Alex Salmond rants about a drop in overall UK spend on TV production in Scotland and when you’ve got the likes of Mark Thompson, ex C4, now top BBC axe-wielder, telling us that there’s not enough talent or ideas here, well – you have to wonder if The Singles will ever happen. Or if they do go ahead, can these dramas be trusted to such untalented locals?

Now I don’t know what any other writer has submitted for The Singles, but you can bet cash-strapped indies from down south have spent the last few months pouncing on anybody remotely Scottish to milk them for ideas, just as every writer on River City will have chucked a treatment in, no matter how comfy their current gig. And no doubt a few ambitious shorts filmmakers will hope TV will buy into their quirky ‘loosely-based-on-my-childhood’ stories.
No doubt other ideas will include mid life crisis domestics featuring downtrodden-but-fiesty 40-something females taking on men, say in a crap football team where they’re suddenly championed to victory by some unreconstituted old fart who thinks they should be nailed to the kitchen floor.

Maybe Thompson’s got a point after all… but I live in hope.

SNIFF MOVIE

2007-08-04T23:36:00.000+01:00

No apologies to Antonioni here, boring old shit that he was...

For those of you who’ve missed me lately, you’ll be glad to know I haven’t drowned in a flood, caught foot-and-mouth disease or been kidnapped by terrorists. No, a fortnight self-catering with three drug and sex-crazed girlfriends in Ibiza was way worse… but that’s another story.

Still, it’s nice to be back, especially now the Edinburgh festival’s kicking in and the EIFF’s just around the corner. Window-shopping what’s on offer, it looks like yet another duff year for UK films – with the possible exception of Anton Corbijn’s ‘Control’ and Wilma and Duncan Finnegan’s ‘My Life as a Bus Stop’, the first screening of which has already sold out.

The rest? Well, if you’ve got a short attention span they’re right up your street – a lot of them run around 90 minutes, some less. You’ll note I’m not including David Mackenzie’s ‘Hallam Foe’ here, since it’s already bagged the Opening Gala slot, the film being conveniently set in Edinburgh, where during the shoot, the director was allegedly spot-fined in the street for chucking away a fag, the smoking kind. So the story goes… And you can be sure there won’t be anything remotely Scottish about the film, though I guess you can say the same for the city.

I worry about David Mackenzie, I really do. Not that I know the guy, but I saw him one time drinking in the old St Judes in Bath Street, and he looked to me like a character out of some crapola 70s TV show, because he’s got one of those period faces like David Hemmings in his pre-alcoholocaust days. And I thought, does he know this? And even if he doesn’t, how long will it be before he ends up looking like the dead David Hemmings? All this trying so hard to be pervy with your pictures might be good for your profile but it can’t be that good for your soul, so unless he’s got a portrait lurking in the attic… And where is his brother these days? It’s been a while since Monarch of the Glen, but maybe I’m watching the wrong channels.

Anyway, I was talking about Wilma and Duncan. A few years ago, I spent a night at the GFT where they gave a wee retrospective on their work, showing their early shorts. They’ve been a real inspiration to me since, having made a few features, shot on DV with no funding. ‘My Life as a Bus Stop’ is their second outing to Edinburgh, having screened ‘Four Eyes’ a few years back. Their trick, sadly missing in UK film these days, is having a sense of humour. They don’t agonise over raising finance, they don’t spend years in painful ‘development’. They accept the crapiness of being Scottish filmmakers and in that spirit of, say, the Belgians, go out and shoot their movies, using whatever and whoever's available. Even their website is admirable in its low-tech attitude. The point being, they love what they do and they have a laugh doing it.

Unlike, I suspect, Mr Mackenzie. I remember reading something in Sight and Sound a while back, around the time of the whole DIY digital movie thing. Mackenzie was quoted as saying something about the future of film being in the hands of the amateur. Maybe he’s right. But amateur is in the eye of the beholder – and besides, any prick with a 4 or 5 million budget can elevate himself and patronise all the wannabe ‘amateurs’ out there who’ll never get a sniff of what’s he’s on.

But here’s the thing – who’s having the better time? I’d sooner spend my hard-earned on ‘My Life as Bus Stop’ and be entertained than watch a pile of up-yourself, glossy-but-vacant, middle-class, emotionally-zero tripe from someone who’s rapidly turning into Scotland’s answer to Michael Winterbottom. In other words, a perplexing so-what, who no doubt will keep churning them out, even though audiences will stay away in droves. Meanwhile Wilma and Duncan, good on them – could probably make about six movies on Hallam Foe’s marketing budget alone… And what’s the answer to Scotland’s non-existent film biz? Duh-uh…

www.finscotland.co.uk

GET UP, STAND UP

2007-07-05T16:09:00.002+01:00

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had a problem with erectile dysfunction. But among my other urgent emails today comes a link from Andy, asking me if there’s a blog to be written about a Guardian article on the problem of creeping political correctness and the cult of ‘story’ in TV drama specifically and in scriptwriting generally.

Happy to oblige, Andy.

And here was me thinking that terrorists attacking Glasgow Airport (which is closer to Paisley than Glasgow) was the story du jour, what with John Smeaton enjoying his fifteen minutes by mouthing off about how the ragheads picked the wrong city and how he gladly battered their melt in. Or how, according to a reliable source, a construction worker who intervened was later treated for a strained tendon after kicking one of the terrorists in the nuts. Yeah, that’ll learn the buggers. They’d have had more luck in Edinburgh.

Anyway, I digress. Here’s the link -

film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2110659,00.html

Mark Ravenhill’s piece bemoans the existence of Robert McKee, well-known screenwriting guru and mugger of writers, whose seminal book ‘Story’ he claims is having an adverse affect on the business of scriptwriting. His beef is that McKee’s tome, in the hands of junior development executives, is a blunt instrument with which to give writers what is colourfully known in these parts as a dull yin.

As Ravenhill reminds us, it’s hard to write a script. Most of the people who sit in judgement of scriptwriters are aspiring scriptwriters themselves. Or, more often the case, they’re failed scriptwriters, just like the people who run all these screenwriting seminars or teach on film and media courses or collect their paycheques from public sector script development departments. Seems to me they’re only doing it because they found to their cost (or rather, overdraft) that they don’t have the chops to make a living out of any actual scriptwriting, so they’re forced to pronounce on other people’s work, usually with dire consequences for the script itself.

And there you have it – an entire sector of UK entertainment predicated on failure and open season on those who write by those who don’t. It’s writing by committee. It’s writing by proxy. It’s not so much crafting scripts but taking a sledgehammer to them because they don’t hit their mid act plot points or – ooh missus - the climax comes prematurely. And it’s why we’ve got so much guff clogging up our screens. That’s not to say there’s nothing to be learned from McKee or any of the other (mainly US) scriptmeisters out there touting their theories – some of it is worthwhile, I’m sure. Hell, I’ve been known to read them myself, and even I know a lot of it's pure page-padding waffle.

And while some of the rules of storytelling are universal, some, especially in the context of UK drama, are a joke. Ask yourself - why does America have The West Wing while we have The Thick of It, sadly quarantined on BBC4? No amount of story rejigging could ever make these shows mutually interchangeable. Maybe we need to recognise we have a distinct take on character and all the cultural signifiers and baggage that make us what we are and the Americans what they are. We talk a different language that sometimes doesn’t translate into box-ticking plotting.

And while I’m at it, just how politically correct is the cliché of Glesga baws-oot hardman? You only have to look at the archetypes of your standard British drama to know that the men are either a) limp-dicked and awfully insecure (eg. Richard Curtis) or b) too violently macho for their own good (eg. Paul Abbott) – where in both cases the pill's sugar-coated with so-called humour to mask the bitter lack of truth or substance. Hence the tripe the Sun’s been peddling all week about John Smeaton and his chums taking on Al-Queda in Glasgow with a swift boot to their collective Masonic Halls.

Nae Viagra needed here, pal.

BA (HONS) AMONG THIEVES

2007-06-16T19:29:00.000+01:00

Things must be bad when even a nonentity like yours truly finds their inbox stuffed with begging emails. These come mostly from hopeful graduates telling me how in exchange for a bottom-rung job in the film and TV biz they can – quote – make a mean cup of tea, as if that’s something to be proud of after three or four years of expensive education.

Yep, folks – up and down the country academe is busily ejecting yet another bunch of film and media graduates now burdened with five figure debts and with virtually no prospect of a job in the business. And whose fault is that? Well, not having enough fingers to point at them all, I’d say the blame lies with educational institutions who care more about making up numbers and building their brands than providing a useful experience for the saps they snare with a prospectus full of wishful thinking if not downright lies. Been there.

Isn’t it about time somebody set up a crap college/useless university website? I know more than a few people who would be only too glad to get post-graduate grievances off their tits. Maybe that way those punters thinking about signing up could get some real information about what they’re in for, instead of falling for the rubbish universities and colleges tell them.

Top of my list would be the teaching staff – who on your average film/TV course means some loser who made a couple of dire shorts about ten years ago but who never quite got a feature made because they realised that drinking/getting stoned/watching daytime TV was more fun than filmmaking. Next on the list is the technical staff, the guys who pull their cagoules on and rush out the door on at five on the dot but somehow manage a nice sideline in weddings or their mate’s bands videos, which means you can never get your hands on any kit when it comes to your graduation piece. I mean, how many times can the only 'good' camera be in for a service?

Throw in some pointless ‘course’ work eg. ‘Representations of the Working Class in Scottish Cinema’, in other words, a waste of a term, because none of the staff has a clue what else to do with the students but they need to tick a box to justify next year’s funding – and their salaries. Repeat for four years and – ta-ra – you too can come out the other end with a crappy 2:2 in Moving Image Culture and join the queue at the local Jobcentre Plus to find a way to dig a hole in your fifteen grand debt.

And no, don’t be tempted by those post-graduate courses. There’s already enough rubbish scripts/short films to go round so why prolong the pain? If after all this, you’re still burning to make movies, then you’ll find a way to do it. It’s just a pity that our educational institutions don’t tell you that your fifteen grand would have been better spent on some kit and a flight to LA, because at least there nobody asks - or cares - if you’ve got a BA or HND in being broke.

BOX-TICKING IN BOHO

2007-06-04T10:10:00.000+01:00

Now that Scotland’s got itself a new government, you can be sure of one thing – it’s business as usual. Today’s Herald has a piece about the new culture minister, Linda Fabiani, in her first interview since giving Patricia Ferguson even less to do. Linda who? Yeah, my thought exactly, since before the election the Culture hat belonged to Stewart Maxwell MSP, the Nat’s shadow minister for all things arty. Maybe he got a better offer, who knows?

So what do we learn about Ms Fabiani? First, she won’t be making any more reviews about the arts in Scotland. Second, Culture Scotland will go ahead as planned, just when we had forgotten about the so-called consultation rumoured to be happening pre-election. Third, that she ‘can’t stand detective novels’, but quickly backtracks to give Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall Smith honourable mentions, in case they go off on a major sulk, as if the skiploads of cash they make from their literary-lite piffle isn’t enough for them.

No mention of film - what else did you expect? But Linda says she’s ‘excited’ about Doc Richard Holloway stealing an idea from the Venezuelans to bring youth orchestras to ‘deprived’ areas, a prospect about as exciting as eating cardboard. Can anybody tell me how the tuneless scraping of fiddles in Drumchapel or Castlemilk will benefit people who’d rather stay in and watch Sky? No clue, have they?

Elsewhere – meaning the Scotsman – we have a puff on another exotically-named female, the London-based ‘filmmaker’, Rosalind Nashashibi, whose connection to Scotland is that she’s a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art and she’s repping Scotland at this year’s Venice Biennale. Oh, and she’s managed to get piles of cash out of the Arts Council coffers.

Like picking scabs, I’m always interested to know what goes on in the mind of the artist-cum-filmmaker because any time I’ve dragged myself into a gallery to watch this stuff, I’m usually confronted by a crappy video of some scrawny waif dressed out of a jumble sale dancing around their living room or an out-of-focus shot of a tree that lasts for about four days. And like the rest of the punters, mentally I scratch my head and wonder what would happen if you asked any of these ‘artists’ to actually draw something vaguely recognisable.

Maybe I’m missing the point. The point isn’t to make a decent film – and I’m not talking multiplex fodder here – but a set of pictures and sound that’s competent and at least tries to make some kind of sense to the viewer. Stupid me. Artist/filmmakers only cut it if they’ve got some elaborate excuse to make up for their lack of chops. They do this by covering the bases so much that any justification becomes invisible. To quote Ms Nashashibi – "I use reality because that's available with film, but it's not in order to show something that's true, or what real life is like, or documentary. It's more in order to show that transformation between everyday life and miraculous things, or mundane things and ritual or theatre."

Well I’m glad that’s clear, though I doubt it would wash with Warner Bros. Me, I’m more interested in how much take-home Rosalind got for her eight-month Scottish Arts Council-funded stint in New York shooting lightbulbs and stanks. Meanwhile the rest of us have to put up with job adverts that coyly read ‘meets the minimum wage requirement’. I’m not saying that artists get an easy ride but at least they have more fun than flipping burgers. Not so much BoHo as boo-hoo...

YEAR OF THE DONKEY

2007-05-20T00:12:00.000+01:00

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

2007-05-08T22:39:00.000+01:00

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).

SHAME, SHAME, SHANE

2007-04-27T20:26:00.000+01:00

Only in your worst nightmare could you find yourself waking up next to this bloater. Is it just me or is there really any point to Shane Meadows? And the same could be said about his latest piece of filmmaking, This Is England, which opens today at the pictures.

Don't all rush.

Pointless because every couple of years he makes the same film, usually involving a troubled kid who gets adopted by someone alongside a 2D psycho, which only makes you think Shane’s got an absent father complex going on because he insists on making films-as-therapy so he can inflict his problems on the rest of us. Even when he’s dealing with grown-ups, like in Dead Man’s Shoes, Shane's characters come over as emotional retards. And because Shane usually gives up on plot about half way through, his movies end up in a fight or a mass killing since he can’t think up a better ending.

If I want to watch ugly bad tempered guys being violent, I’ll go to an Old Firm game, not waste my money on a Shane Meadows movie. So how come he keeps getting the funding to make this guff you may wonder? Well, speaking of male inadequacy, maybe it’s because middle-class eejits at FilmFour – the types who fancy themselves as being a bit hard and down with the lads - actually believe Shane’s films paint a realistic picture of working class England. Yeah, about as realistic as Jordan's tits. After all, they’ve backed his last three films, along with enough public money to choke the Channel Tunnel.

This Is England is just another gloomy skinhead flick where we’re meant to be interested in watching a bunch of bad haircuts in too-short trousers hurl abuse at each other until one of them (yawn) gets their come-uppance. So what if he goes on about Pakis 'smelling of curry', like, are we meant to be shocked? Shane’s storytelling's about as predictable as a fire in a Paisley nightclub. And anyway, Alan Clarke did it much better back in 1982 with Made in Britain.

Maybe it’s being Scottish that makes me hate his films, but really, who gives a toss? Like his fellow-countryman, Michael Winterbottom, Shane’s carved a nice career for himself by making serial box office stiffs but somehow manages to stay bulletproof. But if Shane’s so good then ask yourself this - how come you can’t find a pirate copy of any of his movies?

Peter Bradshaw’s write-up for TIE in today’s Guardian is way too polite but reading between the lines you get the feeling that he’d rather be watching something else. Like paint dry. The best you can say for TIE is at least rodent-faced Paddy Considine’s not in it. Oi!

RANK BADYIN

2007-04-16T11:33:00.000+01:00

Who, you ask? Well, Rank Badyin was a famous comic strip character in Glasgow's Evening Times about a hundred years ago. He's so famous the city put up a statue to him across from the Halt Bar in Woodlands Road.

You can tell I'm bored. But I never thought I’d be so bored that I’d find myself writing about Ian Rankin.

I’m sure Ian’s a nice enough guy, but boy, he’s milked his one good idea dry over the years. In the last couple of days he's popped up in the rags linked to everything - from slagging off Shir Sean during New York’s Tartan Week to writing song lyrics for St Jude’s Infirmary or librettos for Craig Armstrong and tossing off a comic book.

When it comes to writing for comic books, Ian’s proved himself a total numptie. According to him "It is much more like a screenwriter's skill than a novelist's skill. You have to use very few words, and a lot of the writing is just instructions to the artist."

Gee, thanks for the advice, Ian, but I think screenwriting’s just a wee bit more complicated than that. You might be able to get away with duff padding in Rebus – such as –

‘Papers are going to have a field day with this,’ someone was muttering. There were a dozen figures shuffling around in the covered walkway between two of the high-rise blocks. The place smelled faintly of urine, human or otherwise. Plenty of dogs in the vicinity, one or two even wearing collars. They would come sniffing at the entrance to the walkway, until chased off by one of the uniforms. Crime-scene tape now blocked both ends of the passage. Kids on bikes were craning their necks for a look. Police photographers were gathering evidence, vying for space with the forensic team. They were dressed in white overalls, heads covered. An anonymous grey van was parked alongside the police cars on the muddy play area outside. Its driver had complained to Rebus that some kids had demanded money from him to keep an eye on it. ‘Bloody sharks.’

Muddy play area outside? Not inside? You just can’t tell with these lower orders, can you? Next thing you know they’ll be storing black coals in their grubby grey baths in their dingy cooncil lavvies.

Get real, Ian. You might have made a pile with Rebus, but this is one foot in front of the other writing, with just the right amount of adjectives but an overcooked use of the present participle. Screenwriting, where every single word counts, isn’t about using ‘very few words’. It’s about using the best few words, something novelists could learn a lot from.

As for scripts being ‘just instructions to the artists’ – well, it just goes to show what Ian knows about scripts – or actors. In the real world struggling screenwriters slog to get past the barricades of readers and development people until they reach the guy who signs the cheque. This happens before the script gets anywhere near the ‘artist’ who, if they’re not dyslexic – and most actors are - usually only read their own lines and ignore the other stuff.

Here we go again – the painter who wants to be a filmmaker and the novelist who fancies themselves as a screenwriter. Funny the way screenwriters don’t want to be anything but better screenwriters. My advice? The next time the Scotsman comes looking for a quote, Ian, don’t talk about stuff you don’t know about. In fact, try using fewer words.

HD OR NOT HD

2007-04-10T15:26:00.000+01:00

Being more of a Heat/Closer gal, this one almost got away. Does high-def make actors ugly? According to Wendy Ides writing in Times Online it does.

timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article1614166.ece

Love the quote about HD only being good for shooting ‘ant’s arseholes’. Which might be good news for ant’s agents, but not for actors, not when every pimple, plook and surgery scar shows up big time on the big screen.

Even worse, now that the average telly’s roughly the size of a Transit van, maybe actors should be worried. It’s bad enough that the paps cash in on a girl’s sweaty armpits, bad tit job or lips like a walrus’s private parts, but to pay to see this stuff forty feet wide down at the multiplex is not my idea of entertainment. Then again, maybe that’s exactly what it is.

What’s troubling is the idea that actors ought to look perfect. As the article argues, it’s not high-def that’s the problem, it’s bad make-up artists, which I think is a bit unfair to make-up artists. After all, when all you’ve got to work with is a tube of Preparation H and a panstick it’s pretty much impossible to make certain stars look less scary – and if you don’t believe me then you’ve obviously missed Uma Thurman plugging Virgin Broadband. Mind you, I'd get up like Witchypoo myself if Branson had offered me £18 million quid.

JUNKIES REUNITED

2007-04-07T18:46:00.000+01:00

Don’t blame me for the heading, blame those highly-paid hacks at The Scotsman.

Regular subscribers to this blog already know my Robert Carlyle theory – that if you attach Bobby to a Scottish film, it’s doomed to perpetual development. So what are we to make of the announcement in today’s Scotsman about the long-awaited follow-up to Trainspotting?

thescotsman.scotsman.com/entertainment.cfm?id=536452007

It might be bad news for the Ecstasy crew, but don’t all rush to book your tickets because reading between the lines you’ll see big question marks floating all over this one. First off, how come Irvine Welsh ‘gave’ away the rights to Porno? Maybe because he got it into his baldy dome that there’s only one outfit who can make this – the original Trainspotting team. Or maybe, just maybe, there were no other takers. Just don’t let him write the script.

And how come Ewan MacGregor is reported as ‘interested’ in signing up for it? Didn’t he come out in public to say how much he hated the book - and Danny Boyle for dissing him by casting Leo DiCaprio in the jolly for the crew and rubbish film that was ‘The Beach’? The only way I reckon Ewan will come on board is if he gets a large chunk of ching and suites at the Balmoral for his entire entourage, hardly in the spirit of a movie about a bunch of skankers.

According to Scottish Screen, this is ‘fantastic’ news. Is it? Well, as Danny Boyle says, he’s happy to wait until the cast are old and ‘ravaged’ enough to play the parts convincingly. Well, forget the wrinkles, because if Ewan’s ‘acting’ is anything to go by, he’ll have a long bloody wait. As for Bobby, he pretty much qualifies in the ageing stakes, with a face like a well-chewed ciabatta. And you can bet it’ll be riders at dawn, when he goes up against Ewan for who can make the starriest demands on the budget, such as organic bog rolls, organic baked beans and lumps of organic blaw delivered to his luxury chambers.

Spare a thought for poor Ewan Bremner – he’ll be lucky to get a portakabin and a two-day old bridie…

NOLLYWOOD OR BUST

2007-04-01T09:36:00.000+01:00

Nigeria made around a thousand films last year. Scotland made, er… one.

No folks, it’s nothing to do with April Fool’s Day. You might have thought I was joking when I wrote earlier about this country being a third-world filmmaking nation. So did I, but not after reading Hannah McGill’s piece in the Guardian –

film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2045524,00.html

Double-checking Scotland’s 2006 filmmaking output, sure enough, I found only one ‘Scottish’ film produced north of the border last year – David MacKenzie’s Hallam Foe. But it’s not what Scottish Screen would have us believe, not if you buy their press release.

Sure, Red Road was a success and deserved to be, but it was made in 2005. So was True North – but hang on, was that not a German film, with its dozen or so producers? Same goes for the others on Scottish Screen's list: The Last King of Scotland, The Queen and Shooting Dogs - but claiming them as in any way Scottish is pushing it a bit.

You might as well say Lucky Number Slevin was Scottish too because it was directed by Paul McGuigan. Just because a director ups and leaves doesn’t mean their films can pass the tartan test, though I guess if Paul had stayed put in Glasgow, his career would be non-existent. As for The Flying Scotsman, with more of a claim than the others, like True North it’s sitting on a shelf for want of a distributor. And no, Harry Potter doesn’t count either. Or The Da Vinci Code, or any of the other blockbusters that shot here for three days, hired a couple of runners, took a few taxis and made their getaway.

I’m not saying we should only be making small-minded, small-scale movies about Scottish subjects. Let’s leave parochial filmmaking to the English – the clapped out ‘gritty realism’ involving football and gangsters or upper class Aga angst based on the latest literary luvvie or Jane fucking Austen played by Americans for the nth time. Our filmmaking could and should be a lot more adventurous and outward looking than that. After all, we’re a different country with different social values and a different sense of humour. A thousand years of invasion and three hundred years of playing the underdog surely makes for better stories. Scotland probably has more in common with Nigeria than we'd like to think - an oppressed population, oil revenues leeched by multinationals and corrupt governments, poverty, bad housing, high mortality rate.

So how come Nigeria makes so many films while Scotland, a European nation, makes next to nothing? You’d think with all the subsidy sloshing about – Media, Film Council, the regional film agencies, city film offices - every filmmaker in the country would be run off their feet. Pointing the finger at the public funds might be obvious, but it’s the wrong target. No amount of public money makes a difference because no amount of public money is ever enough, not when movies cost millions, forcing producers to dip into the state funds of twenty different countries and pull a fast one with the books. Anyway, it’s not the fault of the public funds that a lot of these films never get seen. It’s not like the government owns the multiplexes.

But Hollywood does, judging by the number of American films playing in them. The Scottish film that gets an outing in a mainstream cinema is a novelty indeedy. When Hannah McGill says African filmmakers are attracting ‘international acclaim’ you need to ask if it’s just early hype for this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival or if it’s actually true. Which is worrying because if it’s really true it only makes Scotland’s film sector – its public bodies, producers, directors and writers - look all the more pathetic and deprived.

If there’s any logical conclusion, it’s this – scrap the subsidy. Which means getting rid of Scottish Screen because, overhead apart, it’s hard to justify an agency that acts mainly as a top-up for bigger, non-Scottish productions like Last King of Scotland. Not because they’re not Scottish but because no money ever finds its way back here in a way that benefits local filmmakers. And no, I’m not talking about David MacKenzie. You’d think with Hallam Foe - his fourth feature – he could have found the money elsewhere. Like, duh, Nigeria?

AXE THE QUESTION

2007-03-26T14:59:00.000+01:00

All last week The Scotsman ran ‘The 20 Greatest Scottish Movie Moments’, chosen by various film pundits, including the critic Alistair Harkness, he being no stranger to my stats.

thescotsman.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=445412007

And the movie moment that topped the list? The red telephone box ringing at the end of Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero, a film made nearly 25 years ago.

I might as well pack up now.

Where was Breaking the Waves, I wonder? Or The Maggie? Or Michael Powell’s I Know Where I’m Going or The Edge of the World? Or Stephen McCole’s infamous ‘Bawbag’ line out of Rushmore? Or even Shrek for that matter – since the inclusion of ‘I Married an Axe Murderer’ in the list is pushing it a bit.

If nothing else, the list just shows up the poverty-stricken list of films the panel had to choose from – over a century’s worth. Which only leads you to think – where do Scottish filmmakers end up? They sure ain’t getting any work here. I’ve heard of only one film being shot in Scotland this year so far and even that’s not home-grown.

Is there an answer? Well, not as long as politicians and agencies keep believing we’re incapable of turning out a decent movie, which presumably is why they’d rather put the welcome mat out for Hollywood than the red carpet for their own filmmakers.

Maybe it’s time to cuddle up to Stewart Maxwell, the SNP Shadow Culture Minister and try to persuade him that a few tax breaks are what’s needed to bring us in line with the Irish system. And bury the Culture Bill while he’s at it – the last thing filmmakers need is even more committee-sitters coining it while our screens are blank.

ECCE HOMO

2007-03-16T21:32:00.000Z

What oh what is the point of IMDB, I wonder? That is, apart from trying to mug ‘film professionals’ by urging them to sign on for their IMDB Pro service by taking an imprint of your plastic then after a free fortnight, charging a 100 bucks a year for information you can find elsewhere for nowt.

Well, come to think of it, if you’re a wannabe filmmaker or even just a fantasist, you can pretty much carve a career on IMDB without ever having to make a movie. And that’s got to be worth cash money.

For weeks now I’ve been checking into the website’s message board to read the latest on the phantom film of Irvine Welsh’s Ecstasy. And judging by the bizarre exchanges going on – multiple deleted messages, flaming a go-go, rants and insults - it’s a lot more intriguing and entertaining than the book ever was. A while back, Scottish film hack, Brian Pendreigh, wrote a piece in the Sunday rags here (that I reported on) on the mystery surrounding the project, and how several Scottish crew were sacked – before the film even went into pre-production.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0462269/

If you’ve ever seen Living in Oblivion, you’ll know what I mean. Ecstasy was due to start shooting in Edinburgh this month, but it seems, like a few tabs of eccy, the dates have been pushed – and pushed – so much that nobody knows what the eff’s going on. Deciphering the message boards, the latest I can tell you is that it’s now filming in Hungary in May, sorry - make that Scotland again - and boo-hoo, Billy Boyd’s no longer attached, but to make up for it they’ve got Karen Dunbar (and no, none of you south of the border know who she is, so count yourself lucky) and Gary ‘Gangs of New York’ Lewis in bit parts. Oh, and Howard Marks in a cameo spot as a ‘senior airport security man’ – genius casting – if only any of it was true.

As for the credit roll, how’s this for a list of ‘producers’?

John Board
Marc Booth
Joni Cuquet
Olivier Farcouli
Cinzia Genuardi
Sershen Govender
Jonas Grossman
Michael Heydon
Paul Heydon
Rob Heydon
Allan Levine
Allan Levine - also line producer
Ashley Pover
Keith Wyatt

And we think cheapo UK flicks are overrun with producers?

Not to mention the four screenwriters and three story editors, who like the producers, all seem to be related to each other. Are they fantasists? Well, digging deeper, it turns out that the multi-talented writer, co-producer and director of this slice of fiction, Rob Heydon, along with his dad and his brother are more interested in PR, hosting parties and compiling a wishlist of music tracks than actually getting behind a camera. According to the one item on the sad ‘director’s blog’, they’ve been partying everywhere from Sundance to Miami to ‘meet with talent’ and generally bullshit to anyone who’ll listen about how this one’s a definite goer.

And maybe this is the point of IMDB. What better way to get people like me talking about this ‘£6 million film’ than to post up on an official film site, wind people up enough to get them to shout and bawl on the messageboard? If Rob ever makes it over from Canada, then I’ll be the first to welcome him. Assuming he ever gets off the drugs…

BIRDS EYE STEW

2007-03-06T22:09:00.000Z

Still on the subject of women in film - is there such a thing as a celluloid ceiling? Yes, according to this item -

film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2025932,00.html

Not sure what to make of this one. For a start, I’d like to know where they’re getting their figures from – that only 7% of UK filmmakers – by which they mean directors – are female. And that only 12% of screenwriters are women too. How does anybody know for sure the numbers of females out there making – or not making – films?

The piece is a plug for Bird’s Eye View, a film festival celebrating women filmmakers. While it’s great to see us girls get a platform for our work, I fail to see why they’re getting their knickers in a twist. Bird’s Eye View director, Rachel Millward, blames the clash between raising children and the culture of film – as she says, 'Working insane hours, filming on location, the insecurity of the job.'

Big deal. I ask myself – is this any different from what any other group of working women have to put up with? Okay, the location filming might be a bit tricky, but so is working as a sales rep for a cosmetics company, a jobbing musician or an airline stewardess – only they don’t bitch about it. Call me an anti-feminist but it’s really simple - if a woman wants/needs to work, fine, but don’t moan about not being there for the kids. Women are not superhuman, even if some of them think they are.

Watching Allison Ander’s film Grace of my Heart on telly a while back, I noticed buried in the end credits a thank you to her six child minders. and no, I'm not making it up. Which got me thinking – would a male director who happened to be a father ever put up a caption like that? No, they would have been laughed at. So maybe the problem lies less with the way women in film are treated by the business but more on the way they say want to be treated – and what they say is that in some cases they want to be mothers first and film directors second. Not a great sell, is it? ‘I’d love to direct your picture but right now I need to buy Huggies/express some milk/read the nippers a bedtime story? If I were a producer, I’d think twice about hiring a woman.

If I sound hard-faced, maybe you need to ask one of the many female UK film producers why there’s so few female directors. God knows, there’s enough of them to go round – Andrea Calderwood, Alison Owen, Rebecca O’Brien, Ruth Caleb, Robyn Slovo, Gillian Berry, Margaret Mathieson – to name a few. The fact they outnumber women directors surely shows up their unsisterly bias because they sure ain’t hiring out of their own gender pool.

For Gurinder ‘Bend it Like Beckham’ Chadha to bemoan the lack of opportunities for women filmmakers smacks of condescension, especially when she’s carved a such a lucrative niche for herself. Like – ‘I’m dead successful but I’ve suffered prejudice too’ – when for years she’s traded on prejudice by declaring herself a one-woman positive discrimination case. You can’t have it both ways – either you’re shut out of the club or you’re not. And you’re not, Gurinder, you're helming in Hollywood – so count yourself lucky and shut up.

What these women seem to forget is that the film business is every bit as hard for men. And if, as the article claims, it’s soooo much easier to get a job in the States, then how come only seven per cent of American directors are female too? Has it ever occurred to them that these figures only reinforce the fact that very few women really want to direct? Maybe if women moaned a little less and fought a little more we might get some movies made. It worked for Leni Riefenstahl...

DOING THE TIME WARP

2007-02-28T17:55:00.000Z

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

2007-02-27T09:32:00.000Z

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

2007-02-20T11:11:00.000Z

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

2007-02-18T15:01:00.000Z

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

2007-02-14T11:14:00.000Z

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

2007-02-13T14:08:00.000Z

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

2007-02-12T09:20:00.000Z

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?

2007-02-06T16:33:00.000Z

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

2007-02-02T09:48:00.000Z

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...

NEW TUBE, OLD TUBE

2007-01-31T10:57:00.000Z

Here’s a movie idea. In a hundred different countries a cat gets stuck up a tree. Imagine the hundred little scenarios that unfold as a result. Ask yourself, which one of these cat-up-a-tree stories will catch the attention of the world’s media? Is it random? Is the cat with a PR company behind it more likely to catch your eye? Or does the cat that was rescued by a 6-year-old blind kid from a poor area make for the better story?

No, I’m not on drugs. This week YouTube announced it will now pay for content. Meanwhile old media, ie. The Scotsman - reports today on computer science student, James Provan, who has been “spotted and signed by the media giant Time Warner”. Good for James. His YouTube videos – short pieces of stop motion camcorder jinks backed with his own music – are apparently getting millions of hits. And the deal with Time Warner? Well, he’s getting a whole two grand for his efforts, so that TW can use his ‘Garden’ video as part of an ad campaign to launch one of their businesses, along with 19 other YouTuber’s clips, which in advertising budget terms is the equivalent of chucking a penny into a busker’s bunnet.

I’m sure James isn’t complaining. Neither would I. But it raises some interesting questions about the idea of filmmaking and the notion of what the Scotsman quotes as (yawn) the "democratisation of opportunity" for filmmakers, which if you ask me sounds a bit like the democratisation of Iraq, a meaningless bit of blah when over 65,000 clips are going up on YouTube every day. The odds of getting blown to bits in Baghdad are shorter than getting your movie seen.

I wonder, at what point do you become a filmmaker? Is it the moment you take the camcorder out of its box? Is it when you get your pals together and perform in front of the camera? Is it when you upload your video to YouTube? Or is it when some lazy-minded hack can’t come up with anything better to say?

In the world of YouTube, if all filmmakers are equal, then how come James got 1.5 million hits for his ‘Pancake’ video? And even that doesn’t top ‘Bride has Massive Hair Wig Out’ which so far has had 2,009,357 hits. Or the recent one featuring two rabbits staring dumbly at the camera, watched in offices worldwide by bored drones staring dumbly at the screen.

It’s random, that’s what. When the makers of say, The Blair Witch Project, got lucky, were they the only people with a cheapo horror film? I doubt it. Did people watch the rabbit clip because it was good filmmaking? Or did they watch because 3 million other people watched it? It’s the old tipping point syndrome, where for no reason, a three minute clip turns into a phenomenon.

If there’s something that has less value than entertainment, it’s amusement. It’s the puggy with the million quid jackpot. Human nature being what it is, we just keep pushing the button, hoping we’ll get a payout. So it goes with YouTube. We just keep clicking on clips, watch mutely, maybe get a laugh and move on. For the pundits to suggest that there’s a living to be made out of uploading daft wee movies is absurd. Nobody’s filling their boots with this rubbish. Maybe that’s why Google (who bought YouTube for a gazillion dollars) is drumming up headlines while they figure out how to cash in on it before the site turns into OldTube.

For James, getting a pittance for his old movies isn't democracy of opportunity - how can it be when he's been plucked out by an oligarchy like TW? And as for the 'deal' as reported in the Hootsmon, it's hardly likely to involve handing a few million to an emerging film talent to do the same thing. No, it's the usual old wishful thinking by a lazy-minded, poverty-stricken press.

If you look at James’ website - www.gir2007.com – you’ll see he’s got a donations page. Here he makes a refreshingly direct plea to punters – ‘it costs me money to amuse you, so please, cough up’. He’s had a single figure response so far – not enough to give up computer studies – and a wee bit disappointing considering he’s had millions of hits. I watched his ‘I can’t believe it’s Christmas’ clip and it’s nicely done - up to a point. I wonder what Sight and Sound would make of his effort?

Here the auteur, in his attempt to consolidate the metatextual resonance of his subject matter and to challenge our preconceptions of the ritualistic mores of Western society, ie. the season of Christmas, with a reference to primitive, even pagan symbolism, subverts his subject by the intervention of socio-realist imagery, placed to provoke in the viewer a disquieting response and a stark reminder of the unpalatable realities of late capitalism.

Du-uh… Maybe there’s mileage in the cat-up-a-tree idea. After all, it can’t be any worse than Babel, can it?

ROCKY ROAD TO RUIN

2007-01-23T21:35:00.000Z

Here we go again. No films getting made - what's new? More jobs on offer at Scottish Screen - what's new?

Anybody reading the comments on my last blog – see below - would have spotted the anonymous posting about how SS is recruiting even more staff. If you take the comment at face value, presumably these new jobs are to make up for the seven staff Ken Hay saw fit to get rid of during what my disgruntled correspondent calls ‘the night of the long knives’ shortly after Hay’s appointment as CEO of the agency last April.

I can’t thank this person enough, because it’s the first I’d heard of the mass job cuts at West George Street. More intriguing is why - why is SS now advertising a post of Education Development Manager at a salary that’s £7000 a year below what their last Education Development Manager, Alison Butchart, earned before her job was axed? In other words, it's a total scandal and quite possibly illegal under current employment legislation.

Not to say that Education or Marketing or Audience Development's not important, but how can SS justify adding to their 53 staff, not including various committees and the board? When I checked their 'Our Team' list a few months back, there were around 35 staff. Now Ken Hay sees fit to include all the Archive staff he banished to a shed in Hillington, a department apparently now under the control of Scottish Museums and Galleries and not SS.

The plot thickens. Or does it?

It doesn’t take Strathclyde Police to work out what’s going on here. Not if Creative Scotland goes ahead – and whatever the rags are told to tell the Scottish public – CS is by no means a done deal. This is in spite of the fact a board's been appointed - before the non-event of the much-derided draft Culture Bill finagles its way through consultation.

No, what’s going on here is smoke and mirrors to make SS look like a bigger deal than it actually is. By claiming lots of staff and looking busy when he's not, Ken Hay's trying to look like a bigger banana than he really is, when the truth is he looks more like Ian Beale than a contender for the CEO gig at the proposed CS. That’s assuming they get to make their unholy alliance with the Scottish Arts Council at all. Because you can be sure when they get into the ring, it’ll be Rocky Balboa all over again, and the SAC have all the moves and heel-dragging experience needed to beat any hopeful upstart, especially with an £80 million annual pot at stake.

I reckon there’s probably ten worthwhile employees at Scottish Screen. That means they could lose about 40 and nobody would notice. If you read their website – especially the recent Best Actor Oscar nomination of Forest Whitaker for LKOS – it’s kind of pathetic of them to claim any credit. Strange the way only ‘good’ news makes it to their site. Like, for instance, where’s the Q&A from last October’s Open Events? Could it be that embarrassing? And why does the 2005-06 Annual Report fail to list development and production awards like it used to? Is it because most of the money’s disappearing to TV and London-based companies? Scottish taxpayers and Lottery players have a right to know.

As my anonymous poster says, Alison Butchart and six other talented staff were described by Ken Hay as having ‘chosen a new career path’. For all you SS employees who read my blog - and my stats tell me some of you do - I feel for you, I really do - it must be pretty insecure not knowing if you're about to get the boot only to see your old job advertised - at a lower rate. And even more insecure when you don't know if you'll be in a job next year anyway. Then again, that prospect can't be any worse than all the filmmakers I know - the ones pulling pints, driving taxis and selling SKY TV packages. On minimum wage. And it doesn't get much lower than that...

THE LYNX EFFECT

2007-01-20T22:57:00.000Z

Slim pickings at the pictures or what? So off I went to see The Last King of Scotland, or rather, Forest Whittaker’s awards-minded Idi Amin and just as well. Without him there wouldn’t be much of a movie because his co-star, James McAvoy’s weirdly effeminate mug alone (see above) couldn’t entertain me for twenty minutes, let alone the whole two hours.

While critics rave about Forest's portrayal of Idi Amin as a party animal turned sadistic cannibal – no doubt jumping on his line about ‘no human flesh on the menu’ – what nobody else is talking about is the limp-dicked sexist colonialism that sabotages the film. It’s the same guff that still turns up in BBC dramas – an English public school boy fantasy where black women’s knickers fall off at the first sight of whitey.

McAvoy, who looks like he’s got about three inches to his name, gets his end away first with a cheery native girl on a bus. After a ten second chat, we catch them at it – and surprise, surprise, the gal’s on top, while McAvoy goes along with it, smirking like the guy out of the Lynx advert. You just want to smack him and we're only ten minutes in.

Next up, we see Gillian Anderson in a non-part as a bored doctor’s wife, gagging to get her end away with the only other white guy in town - odd when there’s plenty of well-hung black guys under her snooty nose. We can tell this by the way she gives McAvoy those longing looks. But being a white woman of virtue and conscience – ‘my husband’s a good man, but dull’ – she doesn’t give it away, not even as much as wee blowie round the back of a mud hut. Doesn’t take a genius to work out the moral meta-narrative there.

Then we have Kay, Amin’s third wife. From the minute they’re introduced, we know that Kay fancies McAvoy by the way she gives him the come on. How irresistible can this wee guy get? Never mind the fact that her husband’s a psychopathic murder-happy dictator. After a few scenes where Doctor McAvoy tends to her epileptic son, she throws herself at him and obviously, as a black woman, gets up the stick as soon as she parts her legs. I don’t want to be a spoiler but I think you can guess the outcome.

Who knows, maybe the producers assumed the audience would be too busy being overawed by Whittaker’s methody Amin to notice this double dose of racism/sexism. The audience I sat with laughed loudest at the deep fried monkey line – a cheap racist gag in itself, if you think about it. and not exactly accurate either when nobody commented on deep-fried anything in the 70s. But Peter Morgan’s script bypassed a lot of things – such as why did the British put Amin in power? And why did the filmmakers skip the 300,000 murdered civilians? I guess on a measly $6 million budget genocide was beyond their reach and the director's ability, being so fond of the close-up.

Not that they’re advertising the fact, but rumour has it that Scottish Screen pumped £500,000 into The LKOS, presumably minus the fee for the uncredited ‘producer’ based here who filled in the forms. The question is, what value for money did SS get for the three badly shot, badly lit and badly acted scenes that open the film? Somehow I doubt any profits will work their way back to West George Street. Still, it looks good on the website, if not the books, to claim it as their own. Solidarity with Uganda, I say, and good luck to the filmmakers for choosing to spend the budget there. After all, when it comes to filmmaking, we’re a third-world nation too.

DESPERATE MEASURES

2007-01-09T22:04:00.000Z

Missed me?

I didn’t think so. While everybody else is blowing dust off their cross trainers and digging out that ab-sculptor they got in the Argos sale three years ago, I’m recovering from festive double shifts by munching cut-price Christmas choccies and getting hammered on cava. And I don’t plan on sobering up till February.

Still, January’s not all doom and gloom, not while Dougray Scott’s appearing in Desperate Housewives. Desperate Accents, more like. And just how crapola is the overhyped Ugly Betty? They ought to change the title to Insult-my-intelligence-why-don’t-you Betty and fire the eejit at Channel 4 who bought in this rubbish.

After my last post of 2006 on not-forthcoming attractions to look forward to, I was chuffed to see Brian Pendreigh’s piece in Scotland on Sunday -

scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/entertainment.cfm?id=33552007

It goes like this – a bunch of chancers are claiming they’re raring to go on a screen version of Embra’s favourite baldy, Irvine Welsh’s ‘Ecstasy’. Only they’re not. If you read the ‘lively’ comments on IMDB, then do a bit of digging on the people involved, you’ll find as I did that this movie, with a rumoured budget of £6.5 million, is about as likely to happen as Rangers winning anything this season. Apart from mass deportation orders.

The beef seems to be that some Scottish crew got hired. Then got fired. Judging by the mud-slinging on IMDB, they’re not taking it well. Do I have any sympathy? Not really. Because with thirteen Canadian producers – I know, a joke in search of a punchline – it ought to have been obvious to anybody that this was a total disaster from the off. Especially when none of said producers – or the director for that matter - have any previous credits. Seems they’re more interested in the soundtrack than actually turning up here with a camera.

Now I may be naïve about film finance, but even I know you can’t raise £6.5 million on the back of Greg Hemphill or Ford Kiernan. No offence guys, but for that kind of money I expect to see some starrier stars in my movie, not a pair of parochial telly tarts who think pishing in a lift rates as knee-slapping comedy.

As for Billy Boyd, cute as he was as a Hobbit, he’s not going to draw the punters, never mind the money men. Neither will Richard E. Grant, who ought be ashamed to show his face back here after his performance in The Match. Where’s Dougray when we need him? Still, it could be worse. I mean, they could have attached Bobby Carlyle…

NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS

2006-12-18T18:50:00.000Z

Thanks to the reader who sent me this –

www.theherald.co.uk/features/76906.html

Déjà vu or what? Phil Miller’s piece in the Herald echoes pretty much all the stuff I’ve been saying about the paralyzed state of Scottish film. I just hope he gets some feedback because if true to form, Scottish filmmakers will do their usual mute trick and say nothing. I suspect it’s not that filmmakers don’t care, more to do with not wanting to upset their public paymasters for fear of having their applications for funding ‘mislaid’. Not that you need to criticise the funders for that to happen.

Miller makes the comparison with Scotland’s five big cultural companies – two orchestras, a ballet, an opera and a theatre. But what he doesn’t say is that unlike, say, the National Theatre of Scotland, with its annual budget of double what Scottish Screen gets, the NTS doesn’t have to sell out its performances in order to get the gig. The problem is SS doesn't make anything, yet under their guidelines, filmmakers must have a guaranteed outlet for their work in the shape of a distributor, crudely the equivalent of making a sell-out movie and having the winning numbers for the Lottery all in one go. What's more they do this on their own, because SS has no sway over the film industry, no route to cinemas and no dealmaking chops.

And unlike all the other big national companies, cinemas aren’t subsidised to the same level – certainly not the multiplexes. The arthouse venues are great, but there’s just too few of them to go round and even then the likes of the GFT has to screen movies just to get bums on seats and not for their own sake.

Just like filmmakers, journalists need to be wary of upsetting the great and the good, so Mr Miller was at pains not to wag the finger too hard at SS. But reading Ken Hay’s interview in today’s allmediascotland, you get the impression that rather than support film at a time when there’s virtually nothing being made, he’s already got his feet under the table at Creative Scotland. In fact, wasn’t it the Herald who mentioned something earlier this year about Hay seen to be vying for the top job at CS?

Elsewhere, in another of those fantastic non stories, the news section of the Herald includes a piece by Brian Pendreigh about a ‘film’ (like it’s been shot already) that ‘may’ get made, this time about a meeting between John Lennon and a minister from up north, which as film ideas go, sounds like a bit of non story itself. Oh, and like so many other films not being made, it won't star Robert Carlyle (above).

Not again, I’m thinking, another ‘film’ that won’t get made here, adding to a long list of films that will never get made in Scotland, like the much-talked about Paul Ferris story (not starring Robert Carlyle), The Benny Lynch Story (also not starring Robert Carlyle) The Sins and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Sunset Song, Lanark and the one about the safecracker...

How sad can it get? Meanwhile, in a fanfare of confidence and optimism, the Irish Film Board has just announced their production list for next year - nine feature films. And just how many are being made in Scotland? If any of you dear readers know the answer, I’d love to hear from you…

CULTURE CLUB

2006-12-15T17:06:00.000Z

What better time than the season of hibernation and office parties to announce the long awaited draft Culture Bill, you might ask? It may be less of a launch than a sneak out the back door, still I bet Patricia Ferguson’s keeping her fingers crossed that nobody will pay attention to the 65 page document, let alone comment on it.

I’m more intrigued by the organisations and companies listed at the back. Or rather, who’s not. At the centre of this cultural shake-up is the scrapping of Scottish Screen, the only agency in the country with a remit for things film, so it’s bound to have an impact on anybody involved in the business.

But can I find a single independent production company or filmmaker on the Executive’s distribution list? No, but every two-bit theatre and dance company in the country gets a namecheck, along with some of the nation’s more obscure arty outfits, such as the Wigtonshire Guild of Spinners, Dyers and Weavers or the International Feltmakers Association. And a load of charities.

This speaks volumes about the status of film. First, because it shows the apathy of Scotland’s filmmakers who, with some justification (and day jobs) don’t give a shit about Creative Scotland. Why should we? We’ve already got an agency that makes our lives miserable by raising the bar impossibly high for would-be applicants. We don’t need another, bigger, more expensive one.

Most production companies limp along from one low budget TV gig to the next, scratching the odd bit of funding wherever they can. The rest keep up the pretence of being in the film business, when all they’ve got is a camcorder and a few mates to indulge their hobby. Unlike their theatrical counterparts, who are experts at shaking down the Scottish Arts Council, filmmakers are more likely to get a knockback – and that’s after a load of work, such as writing the script and bringing in the biggest chunk of the budget before they're even allowed near an application form.

Second, having ignored filmmakers and keeping them out of the loop, Scottish Screen’s website now has boss, Ken Hay, begging for responses to the draft bill.

“We would encourage everyone who cares about the future of the screen and creative industries in Scotland to read and respond to this consultation document. This is our opportunity to place film and the wider screen industries at the heart of the creative life of Scotland.”

Yeah, we’ll get right on it, Ken. It’s not like all us unemployed filmmakers have anything better to do. But it might help if politicians could meet us halfway. If they really want us to help them to ‘inform the development of a particular policy’, then the least they can do is a bit of homework to find out why there’s virtually no films getting made in this country. Besides, the terms of the so-called consultation have no relevance for anybody working in film or telly, and like the failed Cultural Commission a couple of years back, I doubt they’ll get much of a response.

After the hoo-ha over the Scottish Film Lobby earlier this year, now strangely off the political menu, it’s business as usual at Holyrood, where MSPs and public servants barely know how to work a DVD player, never mind get to grips with the film industry. You only have to look at the new UK tax legislation for film to know how the Treasury’s managed to fuck it up, so what chance of the Executive understanding the business?

Yet politicians are quick off the mark to claim credit any time a Scottish film breaks out and wins a prize somewhere, just like they love to line up with what passes for celebrity here, riding the talent by using them to sell Scotland as some kind of cultural oasis, as Ms Ferguson did recently with her famous list of 'successes'. Some of us remember Frank McAveety hobnobbing at the Cannes Film Festival a couple of years back.

Oh, and isn’t there the small problem of an election next year? With any luck, Creative Scotland will go the way of the last four culture ministers, presumably out the back door.

MINCE PIES ON THE PRIZE

2006-12-04T17:24:00.000Z

It’s January 2007 and I’m in my local bank for a friendly chat with the manager. As he pores over my statement with a sorry shake of the head, I give him the following line –

“What overdraft? Have you never heard of a historic deficit?’

Christmas came early today as almost two million quid was handed out to Scottish Ballet (300K) and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (£1.4 million) by the Scottish Executive, keeping the debt-ridden companies out of the workhouse.

Nice to see Patricia Ferguson coming over all nice and cuddly, especially after (and in a piece of totally bammy logic) announcing the nation’s cultural success has risen by 3%. But can I find the list of 140 Scottish successes she claims credit for? Not a chance, not even on the Executive’s own website.

Also nice to see the local papers putting the boot in while milking Gordon Ramsay, ‘Doctor’ Gillian McKeith and various other slebby toerags for an effort-free headline. Yep, out rolled every five-year plan, tractor and Joe Stalin cliché in the book. And quite right too. After my Ode to Jack (below) it’s laughable that the Minister thinks cultural success can be tallied in the same way as, say, the overspend on the Holyrood Parliament building or the amount of expenses claimed for MSP’s taxis.

And since when did a nomination for some award count as a success? You only have to look at the rising numbers of gongs in this country, everything from Best Steak Pie -

sfmta.co.uk/index.php?ID=1500&CATEGORY2=B-Best%20Pies

to Best Corporate Entertainment

www.maximillion.co.uk/about/info.asp?p=29

And you’ll see what I mean. I don’t need to go on, do I? Because if it’s true that nominations matter then surely the answer’s effingly and blindingly obvious. Create more awards, so we can all be a success and Patricia Ferguson won’t just meet her target, she’ll hit the bullseye, too.

And the reason for her sudden generosity? Surely nothing to do with cutting the ballet and orchestra out of Creative Scotland? No, according to the Executive, the debts run up by the two companies are "historic deficits". Historic deficits? Good one, guys. Now I know what to tell the bank manager. Now where's my Christmas shopping list...

ODE TO JACK

2006-11-30T00:07:00.000Z

On the 3rd Anniversary of The First Minister's Speech on Culture

On the day of St Andrew, two thousand and three
The great and the good and a few MSPs
Gathered in Glasgow, lending their ears
To a speech by bold Jack at the RSAMD

We focused on health care, on crime and the ned
Cried Jack from the stage, and now let it be said
That what people need is not pills or the jail
But their cultural rights or our nation will fail

In future Executive Heid Yins, said Jack
Will rise to this challenge or else face the sack
For culture’s the answer to all of our needs
And starting with weans, I intend to succeed

If weans are our future, they need to express
Themselves; here let me stress
The value of drama, the beauty of dance
Or music and art, so let’s offer the chance

To every wee numptie who thinks they’re a star
We’ll promise them access, hand out a guitar
Or a paintbrush or something that helps them to grow
And save us a fortune in benefits, so –

The jobless and feckless in future will be
A bygone statistic, and no longer free
To hang out in bookies or pubs or the hoose
Watching Flog It, or some other half-baked excuse

For not taking part in artistic pursuits
So we’re giving them rights and we’re letting them loose
With digital camcorders in the hope they’ll become
The next Ridley Scott, and not unemployed scum

If Jack Vettriano can make a good pile
Then why can’t the nation just copy his style?
In high-priced apartments all over the land
Your paintings can hang for a mere twenty grand

For all you musicians who can’t get a gig
And need some advice about making it big
Just get a computer to burn your CD
And let folk download it for 79p

Then up pipes a voice from the back of the hall
But Jack, comes the cry, what’s the point of it all?
If we don’t have the cash then your scheme’s just a sham
And as usual the talent will go on the lam

You tell us that culture’s the thing Scotland needs
To rise as a nation, but fail to concede
That without the spendulies we’ll be at a loss
And too busy working to give much of a toss

You’re offering less than the minimum wage
To writers and painters or those on the stage
While bean counters thrive on the back of our sweat
And force us to beg because they get to vet –

The submissions for funds about which they know shit
While we wait months on end for them not to commit
By which time we’re in debt and we’re in arrears deep
So we work for low wages to dodge the scrap heap

You say Jack in Scotland we need to aspire
That the talent is here, but we need to aim higher
But your words just ring hollow, and it’s here I predict
That by twenty-oh-six there will still be no fix

For culture is born in the heart and the soul
It cannot be made an objective or goal
And art isn’t something that’s done on the cheap
So stop making promises not yours to keep

THE LATE LATE SHOW

2006-11-23T13:26:00.000Z

The great UGC (User Generated Content) debate continues. Well, it does here.

Thanks to Andy (again) for forwarding this link from the Guardian

media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1949139,00.html

It’s a two-edged thing. If I had something 'particularly editorially important or unique’ on my mobile, say (apart from compromising snaps of my mates) then I’d be looking for the highest bidder, not haggling with some assistant at BBC News and Current Affairs over a measly 100 quid use fee. And not when they’re shedding jobs at the rate they are in the so-called regions.

Then again, you can’t blame broadcasters, not when they’re being bombarded with zillions of emails and images every day, unsolicited or not. They’re hardly likely to cough up when people are throwing free content their way, are they? Besides, telly’s already having to compete with self-styled media moguls on the internet, where pretty much everybody has their own website, or at least a page on MySpace. Or a podcast. Or a blog…

Where it’s going to end, I wonder? Surely it can’t be long before your status in society will be judged not by your class, income or education, but by your web presence, not by who you are but by who you say you are – or what other people say you are. Not by what you achieve, but by the number of hits you get. There’s digital democracy for you.

In the Guardian piece, I like the way the BBC guidelines advise -

"Audiences should not be encouraged to think that payment is the norm, or in any way encouraged to take risks, put themselves in danger or break any laws in order to secure what they perceive to be material of high monetary value."

Changed days at the BBC then. Not so long ago Noel Edmonds fronted a show where the audience was encouraged to do exactly that – until somebody died – in the name of light entertainment. And funny to think how Johnny Knoxville and his crew have made their fortune with dumb ass stunts you’d need to be off your face to take part in.

I guess the Beeb’s message here is, don’t ask us to carry the can for the punter daft or desperate enough to put their neck on the line for a bit of rare footage. Tell that to all the freelance cameramen working in war zones for less than a hundred quid a day.

SPELL IT LIKE IT IS

2006-11-21T22:09:00.000Z

I'm not beating about the minge here.

If the UK Film Council really want quality responses to their consultation on the future of film in this country, they could start by firing whoever did the feature graphics on the .pdf file

www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/usr/ukfcdownloads/206/
FilmInTheDigitalAge-ExecSummary.pdf

Or at least tell them to use spellcheck the next time.

Awarness?

Please. Is this hitting new lows in irony or just a new way of describing what Blair’s doing in Iraq and Afghanistan or what?

RADGE OF DISHONOUR

2006-11-15T12:06:00.000Z

Guess what was on the menu on Sunday night?

No big surprises at the Bafta Scotland Awards then. Red Road ran away with the prizes, and so it should have. Also no big surprise that Monday’s Scotsman ran a piece on the winners that attracted some radge ranting from Embra loonies taking exception to RR for being Glaswegian like it’s a punishable offence. Which is a bit rich when their favourite son, writer and (a whole music video later) director Irvine Welsh is shooting a slice of Leithian bawbaggery for Channel 4. See, they’ve even got me at it.

Like the slogan says – Scotland – The Best Small Country in the World – only they left out the word ‘Minded’.

thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1675652006

If you ever wanted to know why filmmaking in Scotland is a dead loss, here’s the proof. Bad enough when the papers only announce half the Bafta awards, leaving out the New Talent, who don’t merit a mention since it’s unlikely they’ll ever get to be old talent. It’s pretty bad as well when some snider writing in the Sunday Times Scotland rubbished the awards, slagged off the organiser, Alison Forsyth, and insulted anybody lucky enough to have a ticket. Clothes out of Primark and Barnados? How amusing. Has this clown never heard of TK Maxx?

If you want the full story check the link. Me, I recommend Listerine.

www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,2764-2447075,00.html

When will Scottish hacks finally understand that TV and filmmakers in this country are not all freeloading talentless spongers wasting taxpayers money? Or that the films that get made here, like it or not, hold an undistorted mirror up to who we are? If, as the journalists never tire of telling us, nobody here goes to see Scottish movies, then doesn’t some of the blame lie at the door of the rags? And as for the nutters writing in, where do you think they're getting their information?

And no, there’s no point wagging the finger at Scottish films for not making money. English, Welsh and Irish films don’t either. Come to that, neither do most other European or even American films. That’s showbiz. But being too lazy to do any research, the hacks just pick away at the scabs in that same old self-loathing way, then have the cheek to snipe when the talent ups and leaves.

I’m not saying we should only make wee miserable films. But when you’ve only got wee miserable budgets to make them with then what’s the option? I’d rather watch a film with something true to say than a couthy tartan and shortbreid pack of lies that might satisfy the rags, the Tourist Board and Jock McConnell, who wouldn’t know a good film if it bit their arse. Although I’m sure rubber chicken tastes better.

CABBAGES AND KINGS

2006-11-12T11:52:00.000Z

The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don’t believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week – that’s what we think of the writer.

– Barton Fink

A long overdue mention goes to my fellow bloggers, the ones linked to Filmflam. I’m guilty as charged for not returning the favour yet, eejit that I am for not working out how to create the links, but I’ll get there, I promise.

Meanwhile, here’s the blogs worth checking if you want sound advice and cautionary tales -

dannystack.blogspot.com/
scriptuality.blogspot.com/
pavementandstars.blogspot.com/
journals.aol.co.uk/bang2write/thewriteway/
bleedingforehead.blogspot.com/

They’re all great, but I particularly like Paul Campbell’s blog on scriptuality about his four year slog from script to screen writing an episode of the BBC soap Doctors. An eye-opener for anybody who thinks writing TV scripts is an easy gig. I was shocked at the hoop jumping he went through but also humbled by his good nature – though I suspect in private he bites chunks out of the furniture. Writers are human too, you know.

Can it get any worse? I ask myself. Being none too familiar with the black art of telly writing, I wouldn’t know where to start but I suspect the BBC provides the perfect breeding ground for sadistic script editors and imbecilic producers who in a past life thought they were destined for a creative and lucrative job in the entertainment business. That is, until they ended up at the home of the £750 draft, which is roughly what Paul earned for his efforts. And that’s not counting the prep and the right to torture the Beeb got for free.

Somebody once told me most of us are only ever two paychecks away from the gutter. To be fair to all those script editors out there, it can’t be fun rounding up writers and licking their ideas into shape. They’re insecure too, hanging by their fingernails to short term contracts and judging from Paul’s story, being shunted from one crappy show to another. You could argue that by this method, the Beeb weeds out the weaklings. I suspect it’s got less to do with writing fresh and original material than taunting hopeful new writers. Scratch a bully and you’ll find a history of abuse lurking deep inside.

Writing a good script is like cooking cabbage, a perfectly good vegetable. When you boil it to death it turns into taste-free mush, so sending endless pages of script notes doesn’t strike me as having anything to do with improving scripts. It’s about control, exploitation and keeping the talent in a state of perpetual dementedness, which is why our screens are filled with shows with all the calibre and polish of, say, a Holby City or Hotel Babylon.

And you wonder why reality rules?

CURSE OF THE RUBBER CHICKEN

2006-11-04T22:43:00.000Z

Whit d'ye mean ah'm oan the effin menu?

Back in June I predicted Red Road would top the nominations at the BAFTA Film and TV Scotland Awards. And sure enough, there it is, alongside The Flying Scotsman and True North. At least they managed to come up with more than two films, but in a repeat of last year only two names appear on the Best Actress list – Kate Dickie and Laura Fraser, probably because there was no standard-issue simpering girlfriend part in True North.

Faring better is telly, the more prolific of the categories. Still, nice to see River City (a local soap, you non-Scottish readers) going up against Low Winter Sun in the Best Drama category. Why a soap is competing with a heavy duty two-part drama who knows, but I know which one I’d choose. Sandwiched between them we find the smoke-free Rebus, for no other reason than the embarrassment of leaving STV out of a Scottish Film and TV awards do. With the way things are heading at the House of Taggart, the BAFTA audience may well be asked to call a premium rate number during the gong show to answer the following –

In which country are the BAFTA Scotland Awards being held? Is it -

A – Wales
B – Afghanistan
C – Scotland

Calls cost a quid plus network charges, with all profits going behind the bar at the City Hall.

But seriously, good luck to them. Filmmakers need a bit of cheering up because they sure don’t get rewarded anywhere else for their efforts. Today’s Scotsman featured an item on the value of winning an award –

thescotsman.scotsman.com/entertainment.cfm?id=1633622006

What’s sad to note here is that when director Morag Mackinnon won eight years ago with her short, Home, I’ll bet she didn’t think she’d still be waiting to make her debut feature in 2006. The same could be said for a lot of past winners, whose promising careers grind to a halt for want of a break. Do they all give up, I wonder? Or more likely, go elsewhere? Because unless they’re all making adverts for the Scottish Executive, I don’t know how they pay their rent.

I don’t get it. There are those who say filmmakers ought to stop whining, that they don’t deserve handouts from the Lottery. If that’s the case then maybe they ought to shut down every film and TV course in the country to stop encouraging people into thinking a career in the glitzy world of content provision is possible. Let’s not forget that all this education’s costing the taxpayer a bomb as well.

While we’re at it, why not downsize Scottish Screen? Overseeing a paltry two or three features and a crop of shorts a year doesn’t take an entire organisation, not when they’ve farmed out training to Skillset and sent their archive to the museum department. They could also give local cinemas the funding direct, instead of acting as middlemen. And TV can look after itself, so let the BBC and SMG sub the indies, instead of stealing cash from underemployed filmmakers.

Trawling through the net for film news, it’s remarkable the way a film made in Scotland is always Scottish, while an English film is never English. If only that pride (or is it prejudice?) could be translated into production, then the BAFTA Scotland Awards would be a real cause for celebration. But like the MacDonald Brothers on X-Factor, we’re seen as the eternal underdogs with chips on both shoulders, no doubt to go with the rubber chicken on the menu next Sunday night at City Hall. Enjoy…

BEGGARS AND LOSERS

2006-11-01T09:48:00.000Z

The people have spoken. And they said – ‘Aye, right’. Yesterday’s item in The Scotsman about the future of the Edinburgh International Film Festival drew a lively response from people, including yours truly.

thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1608002006

But why did it take a request under the Freedom of Information Act to learn the findings of a report commissioned by the EIFF costing 30 grand? Consultants Split Screen – who have no internet presence that I could find, so who knows - someone’s pal? – was hired to look at ways to develop the festival. Their conclusions, as deciphered by the media, involve more public funding, something that clearly got up the reader's noses, judging by their comments.

It’s been suggested that the EIFF has to grow in order to survive. Does it? Maybe they shouldn’t be doing themselves down. After all, and much to the annoyance of London, the EIFF is the best known, best loved British film festival. One of its charms has always been its small scale and the way it fits with all the other festivals happening in August. In reaction to the loss of a major sponsor, the talk now is of it being shifted to October, grafting on a film market and growing the number of films on show. But in an already overcrowded film festival market, it’s hard to see how the EIFF can pull this off, especially in an October slot, when London steals the limelight with the LFF and Raindance.

Seems to me the EIFF needs to decide who it’s aiming to attract – the cinema-going public, the festival visitor or a film industry whose diaries are already crammed. Like a hamster’s wheel, the annual bunch of markets and fests goes round – Rotterdam, Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, Toronto, Venice, San Sebastian, Rome and countless others. Festivals are big business, but the reason the film industry turns up in Edinburgh is easy to figure. It gives film folk a wee holiday, where agents, producers, sales companies and distributors can combine a few days business with the chance to catch a fringe show or a PA at the book fest or even grab a grandee at the Television Festival.

They also come because the weather’s about as good as it gets, which isn’t as petty as you might think. When you don’t have the facilities of major A-list festivals, like a centrally-located set of screens, a proper delegates centre and venues for talks and socialising, then you need to provide other attractions. You can’t expect your guests to hike from Lothian Road to Fountain Park in the pishing rain either.

A film market needs films. What it doesn’t need is the dross left over from all the other festivals, so how does the EIFF hope to attract the best? If I were a distributor or a sales company, where would I want to stage my world premiere? Like it or not, Edinburgh’s not the first place that comes to mind, no matter how much public cash is ploughed into it.

And here’s where it gets complicated. Reading the comments on the Scotsman article, you can feel the static. Me, I liked the BEGGING BOWL ALERT at the top of the list, because it sums up the feeling among people whether they understand the politics or not. They just don’t like the idea of chucking public money at something they feel excluded from. Most folks’ perception of the film business is that of the fat cat, knocking back free booze at the Council Tax payer’s expense. How much of the EIFF’s emergency cash injection this year, I wonder, went into flying Charlize Theron or Kevin Smith in from the States and putting them up in five star luxury? It just doesn’t play well with the punters, especially with a price hike on tickets from £6.20 to £7.45.

I blame the media because in the past when the EIFF failed to deliver red carpeteers of superior standing, they were criticised. Now, after a relatively starry year, the knives are out. They just can’t win. For years the EIFF has championed indie filmmaking, especially from the UK. It shouldn’t need to draft in big budget movies or create a market just to survive. It should ignore London, do what it can to attract another major sponsor and get on with the business of loving movies for their own sake, instead of chasing their tails in an overcrowded cage.

THE PIT AND THE PENDULOUS

2006-10-31T09:47:00.000Z

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

2006-10-30T11:41:00.000Z

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

2006-10-26T09:58:00.000+01:00

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

2006-10-25T10:06:00.000+01:00

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

2006-10-24T09:23:00.000+01:00

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

2006-10-19T08:48:00.000+01:00

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

2006-10-18T13:43:00.000+01:00

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

2006-10-08T08:55:00.000+01:00

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.

NEW SLAVE LABOUR

2006-09-28T10:41:00.000+01:00

Heard it.

More non-paid shenanigans. Last night’s Channel 4 News reported on Danny Dewsbury, the media graduate at the centre of the row between him and his ‘employers’, The Labour Party.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJlhClw4Qng

education.guardian.co.uk/students/news/story/0,,1879042,00.html

The job ad Danny replied to reads as follows –

Director/Cameraman with own mini-DV camera required to film interviews for Labour party conference 2006. No fee, but expenses paid and great experience going around the country filming cabinet ministers."

This is worryingly normal these days. Not only do you work for free, but you have to supply your own gear. Labour’s justification? Well, Channel 4 hires plenty of volunteers too. So that’s okay then. These days you can exploit anybody because everyone else is at it. And here’s me thinking - probably more to the point - that Labour’s strapped for cash, now the peers-for-cash scam is sitting in the in-tray at Scotland Yard.

But is whistle-blowing a good career move for young Danny? It’s mighty brave of him, but I don’t know too many companies in the market for a grass. Then again, he might be fighting off job offers galore. I hope so, but not as a cameraman, judging by his dodgy hand-held of Hazel Blears looking very much at home at the checkout of her local supermarket.

Shame on Labour. Not a lot of point patting yourself on the back for the minimum wage if you can't pay it. And as for Channel 4, as I reported in an earlier blog about the Boom Room, it’s the pot calling the kettle black. Same goes for all these bogus unpaid gigs masking as training schemes. Like I say - if you can already do the job, then they ought to pay up. If you can’t, do you really think you’ll get hired?

The nuance of what’s an employee as opposed to a volunteer isn’t what matters. What matters is if you let them get away with it, they’ll keep getting away with it. What’s worse is the rise in so–called training endorsed by the government and exploited by greedy no-hopers like PAL, WarpX or PropellerTV, say, who tap into Skillset, Film Council, Arts Council and all the other free public dosh out there.

Talk about collective delusion. Are we meant to fall for it when the government tells us that the creative industries are set to become the UK’s biggest employer? Isn’t it a lie to say that with enough training, one day we can look forward to paid work? Because for how long can anybody’s overdraft wear working for free before they jack it all in and get a job at Gap? You only have to look at the chancers posting on Shooting People for slave labour on their movies. No wonder the screen biz is riddled with the offspring of rich tax dodgers – the buggers need something to do in between shopping and snowboarding.

New Slave Labour. Thanks a bunch, Tony.

SCAMMERAMA

2006-09-26T12:03:00.000+01:00

Good old allmediascotland.com, thanks for alerting us to the latest scam from WarpX.

What’s she on about now, you wonder?

Whenever I go to see a film these days, which can be anything from the latest Hollywood schlockbuster to the standard British no budget dud, I’m amazed at the number of producer credits. These come in many stripes, e.g.

Producer – the guy who puts their house up for the movie and does all the work

Line Producer – the guy who hires their mates then pays the rest of the crew in Whoppers

Executive Producer – the guy who gets paid more than he chipped in and does no work.

Co-executive Producer - ditto

Associate Producer – who the hell knows?

I first noticed this trend years ago, on the credits for American TV shows, you know, the ones with names like Randy Fischfinger or Amy Dwong, that last through to the advert break? Credit where credit’s due, you’d suppose – at least you’re watching something they spent money on.

By comparison, the UK equivalent’s a bit pathetic because it looks like anybody who read the script gets a producer handle. Usually this means some eejit from the BBC or Channel 4, plus any number of payrolled public servants whose egos get the better of them where a screen credit’s concerned.

Which brings me back to WarpX.

As far as I know, Warp, a record company with lots of pals called Chris, managed to con the Film Council out of a pile of cash for a low budget film scheme a while back. They put out a call to hungry filmmakers asking for submissions that were a) genre, b) contemporary and c) set in the UK. The more sceptical among us already knew the films were a done deal with their mates, so didn’t bother to apply. And what did they commission? A period drama set in France. Good one, guys. Public money well spent and I don’t think.

But here’s the thing. Not content with kidding us on about a level playing field, WarpX has decided to jump on the horror bandwagon. On a premise flimsier than my knickers, they’ve hooked up with another dodgy outfit, Threshold Studios, whose one-page website looks like it was cooked up last night, to promote a scheme for female directors to make horror films. The reason? Because according to them, more women watch horror films than men, so it’s really sensible that women should be making them. It’s on a par with women making porn films, like they’ll bring some unique sensitivity to the genre, when all you want is a bit of horny titillation before the money shot. And it's vaguely insulting to women.

Before all you girlies rush to apply, a word of warning, because if you read the blurb it looks to me like WarpX and Threshold are a wee bit confused about what a director does. They say you don’t need to have a writer on board, but they still want not one, but three ideas for films from any budding director. Huh? Also troubling is the idea that through a ‘process of residential workshops, ‘specialised’ script editing and a lot of public fund-raiding fannying about, only two of the ideas will go ahead and if you’re lucky, in three years time you might finally get to make a crappy no-budget horror movie. Assuming the gravy train keeps on rolling for WarpX and Threshold, whose site promises they’ll be ‘broadcasting soon’. Broadcasting? Is that not another word for telly fodder? Of course it is – why else has Skillset got its grubby little moniker on it?

Where film and TV is concerned, here we have the biggest lie of recent times. It’s bad enough when a cheapo film boasts ten producers, but to have ten companies involved in so-called training when it’s unlikely that a film will come out the other end just shows how much of a mug’s game this ‘opportunity’ is.

What do aspiring female directors expect to get out of this scam? A couple of weekends in a crappy Ibis hotel in Sheffield, funded by taxpayers and Lottery money. If you're really lucky you’ll also get a weasly contract that steals your rights, pays you eff all and keeps the folks at WarpX and Threshold in salaries fatter than Jade Goody’s arse.

Quelle horreur…

THE LYING, THE TWITS AND THE WARDROBE

2006-09-21T10:58:00.000+01:00

Q: What lies steaming in the corner?
A: A drunk jobby.

By adding the letter ‘r’ to the above joke, here you have a glimpse of the future, a future where a single click of the mouse adds to the profits of the major media conglomerates while your overdraft/credit card bill gets depressingly larger.

How does that work, you wonder? Well, when you decided to buy that new HDV camcorder/MP3/digital stills camera/laptop, I bet you didn’t think you were capitalising big outfits by helping them to get your content on their netspace. Welcome to the world of User Generated Content.

Following on from my blog about YouTube, I have Andy to thank for this link –

technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1876697,00.html

In a nutshell, it comes down to this – by uploading your movie/music/snaps of your cat – you’re handing over the rights to big business. By agreeing to their terms and for as long as you stay on their site, they become the owners of your content. In other words, they’ll make the money, not you. Why? Because unlike you, they can. They own the bandwidth, they own the marketing muscle – and in the end it’s their brand, not yours.

We should have seen it coming. Recently, while watching the decorating show, Home, on BBC2, tiny alarm bells went off while watching a set of pictures of other people’s bedrooms uploaded to the BBC website. With no incentive other than their own vanity, viewers were invited to send in their snaps. It soon occurred to me that when the programme makers eventually sell through to Estonia, Venezuela and wherever else they flog this stuff, the unwitting, houseproud punters supplying snapshots of IKEA wardrobes won’t get a cut of the profits.

Just how bad can it get I wonder? If you cast your mind back to BBC’s ‘Video Diaries’, what we saw on screen then was the infant of reality broadcasting. This kicked off a trend in DIY telly where the subject became the author, with the schedules chock full of camcorder confessionals, from gardening shows to bad drivers to plastic surgery – all on prime time TV, all ultra-cheap to produce, all grabbing ratings. How could it fail? How long has You’ve Been Framed been running? The best you can say about YBF is they’ve always coughed up for the clips.

We're all willing participants. After all, you bought the damn camera and that edit package - what else are you going to do with it? How long before the BBC start soliciting entire homegrown soap operas, light entertainment shows and six-part dramas? You don't think in some corner of Shepherd's Bush there isn't an office working out how to get you to do their work for them and not pay you? At a time when a 30 quid rise in the BBC licence fee is expected, how long before we vote with the remote?

With the rise of the internet and interactivity, we’re all content providers now where, by sharing the same space, the cream and the scum rise to the top. Some might argue that these sites give the undiscovered the chance to shine from some dingy corner of My Space (owned by the News Corporation) If only it was that easy. Go tell it to Sandi Thom and the Arctic Monkeys, who had more than a bit of bandwidth behind them to thank for their careers. For the vast majority, they’ll stay where they are – in obscurity - with 6 downloads and no comments.

There’s always Creative Commons, you might argue. Well, I’m not so sure that by choosing the CC method of licensing, both the BBC and Channel 4 are falling over themselves to share the spoils with the UGC providers, and not when a growing slice of their content is commissioned through independent production companies. Try untangling that in a courtroom.

The hypocrisy here is the idea that somehow UGC is about community and sharing. Yeah, right. While MTV Flux bleat on about ‘finding new talent’ (where have I heard that before?) none of these outfits seems willing to pay you, the mug providing the free content. The moral? If you think Tiddles deserves a shot at fame, fine, as long as you know it's about their kitty, not yours.

DON'T LOOK NOW

2006-09-20T13:03:00.000+01:00

Type the words ‘Scottish Film Lobby’ into Google and top of the list you’ll find an out-of-date article on The Movie Blog with the headline ‘Scottish film industry failing’. Surely not. This piece of trivia just about sums up the state of play here, despite the recent gnashing of teeth in the media by the group calling itself the Scottish Film Lobby. Their complaint? The end of support for film production by Scottish Screen, current holders of the Lottery pot and the main source of funding.

So what’s happening? Not much – at least nothing that’s being reported. This is where the film lobby’s missing a trick, because when you can wheel out a few ‘famous’ names and grab yourself some column inches, you need to keep the show on the road. That’s what lobbies do. You chat up the hacks, get the great and the good onside and appeal to the folks on the ground.

On my one outing to the EIFF I met a producer (or so he said) who told me about a similar protest years ago by a mob calling itself Scottish Stand who tried to go up against the funding body and failed because, he reckoned, you can’t put a bunch of filmmakers in the same room without them cutting each other’s throats. Seems to me this is a very Scottish pastime, with apathy at the other extreme. So what can we expect this time round?

If they get that far, the film lobby’s idea of setting up a separate film office isn’t bad, but it totally lacks imagination. Besides, when you already have one funding body that doesn’t return your phone calls and emails, what’s the point of having another?

The individuals who put their name to the lobby probably had good intentions but I don’t think for one minute they give a toss about struggling young filmmakers who’ve managed to make their own films. I doubt any new film office wants to make shorts just as I doubt they’d ever take a punt on a first time feature director, not unless they're called David MacKenzie or they’ve already shot twenty-six episodes of Taggart. Which is exactly what Scottish Screen are up to, with their new-found admission that they plan to support telly above all else and by scrapping - sorry, streamlining - their shorts schemes.

Five minutes rooting round the internet shows what the Scottish film lobby’s up against. Here you’ll find two main broadcasters, plus Channels 4 and 5. Then there’s PACT, Skillset and the Research Centre – every one dominated by television executives. Add the growing list of major London-backed TV independents cashing in and there you have it – a giant voice drowning out film.

Where’s film’s version of the Research Centre, I wonder? Wouldn’t it be better if Creative Scotland, if and when it ever happens, set up a Film Centre for Scotland? Instead of giving companies the dough to pay researchers slave wages – as advertised recently – surely they could pay writers? Because as it stands, no producer I’ve ever talked to can afford to pay a writer. They - and SS - want the first draft for free. And as we all know, the only good script is the one that's sold. In fact, it might help if producers could learn how to find money in the first place, instead of acting as the middle men between you, the starving writer and the likes of SS and the Film Council.

And maybe it would help if our pals at SS recognised the fact that writing takes time, especially when you’re holding down a day job to sub it. Training won’t solve the problem. I've been on the courses and I've yet to meet anybody who actually wrote a script because they're too busy yakking about it in the pub. Recently I got an email from a mate advertising a 22 week course on how to write a short. Yes, a short film script. No offence to the course, but half a year? What's to learn? Turns out the scheme’s backed by SS and the Scottish Arts Council, which makes you wonder how long a course in how to write a feature would take. Okay, let’s take a short film, say, ten minutes long. Multiply by ten for a 100 minute film and you’re looking at what, four and half years? I think the keyword here is clueless.

And that’s before you get knocked back for script, sorry - content - development.

Good luck to the film lobby, I say, but until you come up with a better idea than a miniature version of what doesn’t work already I don’t rate your chances with the Holyrood heid yins, not when SS are out on the road, telling all the no-hopers that the future’s in kid’s TV shows, video games and parochial comedies. Having Tilda Swinton in your corner might get you a mention in the rags but if you can’t come out fighting, if you’ve got nothing new to offer and if you ignore the next crop of filmmakers, then maybe we’d be forgiven for thinking you’re only in it for yourselves and your next bunch of two million quid flops - none of which will star the lovely, underfed and overpriced Tilda.

NO TUBE LIKE A YOU TUBE

2006-09-16T10:49:00.000+01:00

You borrowed money from your family and mates. You melted your plastic. You gave up this year’s holiday. You raided your brother’s wardrobe. You turned your flat into storage space. You became a taxi. Your mobile bill went north. You shared a bedroom with a bad tempered computer. Which is okay, because you gave up sleeping ages ago…

Congratulations. You made your short.

Now what? Burn DVDs for your pals? Fork out a fortune to withoutabox and submit it to the Berks County/Tucson Slow Food/Smogdance/
Sunscreen Film Festivals? Or maybe you could upload it to one of the hundreds of film sites now on offer? I mean, what could possibly be wrong with free hosting?

Well, it’s hardly a new story but it never hurts to remind the stupid. Boingboing and the Movie Blog recently put up alerts warning filmmakers to read the small print on YouTube. Which goes something like this –

…by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successor's) business… in any media formats and through any media channels."

And it’s at this point your eyes glaze over.

As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, it’s not just YouTube. Similar clauses turn up on other hosting sites. So what’s the problem? It’s not like they’re asking for an exclusive deal and anyway, they have to make their money somehow because a few clicks on a banner ad won’t keep them in business.

The great mystery here is how any of these sites make money. In the past I’ve criticised Propeller TV for demanding the right to re-edit your work, even add a new soundtrack or, if you’ve uploaded a music video say, vice versa, by taking the track and chucking away the pictures. Before you can say royalty payments, an ad for toilet rolls plays on real telly with your music on it. And you have no comeback. Whatsoever. At all.

There’s also the issue of library-building. By handing over rights, you’re giving these sites an asset, an asset that’s transferable when they get bought out by the big fry. Okay, maybe YouTube/Ifilm/
Propeller etc can claim to have 10,000 titles, of which 9,990 are on a par with clips out of You’ve Been Framed, only without the laughs. It doesn’t matter. What matters is they hold the rights to your film which, as long as you keep it on their site, means any money they make is theirs, not yours. Big business doesn’t give a toss whether your film’s any good or not – it’s all about being able to claim an audience, about having a few hundred thousand mugs listing their personal details so they can be targeted. About what looks good on the spreadsheet, not on the screen.

So why do people do it? Well, you could ask why two-bit film festivals set up ridiculous ‘film challenges’, you know, like ‘shoot and cut a movie in ten minutes with your pals’? It’s the modern day equivalent of downing a pint in a oner – it’s a distraction, a way of filling in a boring weekend, appealing to a weird kind of egoism that lets joe average think they can write/act/direct and who knows, even get paid. Or get famous…

It’s no different from my dad being in a band thinking him and his pals were the next U2 or (God forbid) Simple Minds. Never mind they were a bunch of no-hopers, but for about five minutes back in the 80s they believed they were on their way to a major deal and stardom. Back then buying a guitar was a lot cheaper and easier than trying to make a film. Now everybody owns a camcorder and a computer, we all want to be movie moguls, me included.

Sites inviting you to upload your movie only perpetuate the delusion that somebody out there will recognise your talent and pay you for it. It’s a modern myth. Most of us will end up doing whatever we need to do to stay alive. You only need to watch the X Factor auditions to know that only the few will be chosen. And just like YouTube and their pals, X Factor cashes in on the duffers – if you don’t believe me go buy their ‘Greatest Ever Auditions’ DVD. You think the talent-free punters get a cut? Tell it to Steve Whatshisname. Or Simon Cowell's accountant.

They don’t call it YouTube for nothing.

GONG HO

2006-09-11T08:53:00.000+01:00

Apropos nothing, Scottish Screen has just published a list of its top ten films. Or rather, ten films they’ve put a bit of money into. According to an item in Scotland on Sunday, these movies received £6 million in public subsidy and made ‘at least’ £13 million. This is the trouble with numbers. Who was it that said if you squeeze the figures harder enough, they’ll squeal? Because you’d be forgiven for thinking that £13 million was found kicking and screaming its way into Scottish Screen’s bank account.

This is where I think SS is getting it wrong – but not because they don’t make money from their films. Never mind the Lottery losers that the rags are so fond of airing – even critic's faves such as Morvern Callar or Young Adam didn’t return anything to the public coffers.

When a half million is put into a £3 million film, say, with all the accounting trickery pulled by sales companies and distributors, you can be sure that the public funders are last in the queue for a payoff.

But profit’s not the point here. There’s also kudos to consider. First, because the idea that awards matter is no bad thing, that when your film’s only ever played on six screens, you can always take comfort from winning a gong somewhere. Second, because the films SS backs are low budget, mainly non-genre and generally made by first-timers, they don’t make money anyway. Okay, maybe Magdalene Sisters made a few quid, but I seem to remember reading a piece in the Daily Record where Peter Mullan complained he was still owed his director’s wages. Maybe you can’t up your overdraft by showing off your Golden Lion at the bank, but you can get yourself a better paid gig.

Where distributors get all excited by some US indie effort that screened at Sundance, when it comes to Scottish films made by Scottish filmmakers, they’d sooner crawl over broken glass. In an earlier blog I asked the question – on how many of the 400 or so screens in the UK will Red Road (which features on the list) play when Verve gets round to releasing it? 20? 60? Will the average joe look at the poster and go, oh wow, it won the Prix du Jury at Cannes - it has to be worth parting with six quid? Doesn't matter - what matters is Andrea Arnold will get another shot at making a film. Here's where the interface between the audience and the business goes a bit squiffy - because punters don't fund films, they only get what they're given. It's the biz that will decide whether AA has a career. Or not.

Scottish Screen doesn’t need to play the profit and loss game. What matters is that films get made and win prizes. Surely it’s enough to keep people employed, give some real experience to trainees, find some new talent and keep the country on the filmmaking map. If the odd picture breaks out and makes some money, then great. In a world that turns on the latest press puff, SS could do a lot worse. Let's face it, you can’t roll out the red carpet for another series of Re-edit, Re-edit, Re-edit.

RUFF TIMES AHEAD

2006-09-06T23:45:00.000+01:00

Welcome to my special first anniversary blog…

After mentioning the film lobby on Sunday, I thought I’d check out the original letter that caused the fussette in the first place.

http://www.netribution.co.uk/2/content/view/681/182/

If they can be believed, the numbers are pretty revealing. So what I’d like to know is this - does Scottish Screen think it’s good value for money to spend £60K plus on wages and expenses to oversee £150K worth of development funding? And why do we need three development executives anyway? Are they suddenly being deluged with scripts? The SS website names a trio of new recruits - Robbie Allen, Becky Lloyd and Leslie Finlay. The question is, is this good news?

Is it a lack of candidates or pure coincidence that all three new execs share a background in TV? And if so, does it offer a clue to those worried about the likely direction of SS and the future of the Scottish feature film? After all, wasn’t the first ad hastily redrafted before it appeared in the Guardian media jobs page to include the word ‘film’?

Why should it matter anyway? Surely writing is writing and a good script is what counts.

If only it was that easy. Becky, Robbie and Leslie are all coming out of telly in one form or another at a time when SS seems to think the future's in TV. Their job is to decide who and what gets funding – so what’s it to be? TV or film? My guess? Both - because it doesn’t take a genius to work out that only indie TV companies looking to break into drama will win public funding for film. This has got less to do with talent or ability than having the chops to run a business. Or look like you’re running a business.

It’s also got a lot to do with PR because judging by the drip feed of negative press over the years, Scottish film producers have been attacked on various fronts – miserable films, insolvent companies, bad debts – all adding to the perception that filmmakers are inept. I’m sure some of them are eejits, but not all – how else did the film lobby rack up around 150 films between them? They can’t all be crap.

Making movies from scratch is a lot harder than getting a commission out of BBC Scotland or C4 to make a comedy or a cheapo lifestyle series year in year out. Those who make TV shows don’t have the same problems as feature film producers when it comes to getting their work shown. Producers need to knock on the doors of London companies, not only to raise the funding to make a film but also to get it in front of an audience. A bit harder than handing a tape in to a broadcaster, no?

Some might argue that if film producers are that skint then why don’t they go off and make telly? Seems to me if you’ve set yourself up as a film company, it’s kind of hard to persuade the powers that be that suddenly you’re in the telly game, especially when the big London outfits, when they’re not buying out the small fry, are opening branches all over Scotland. So for the average local film producer, 'diversification' looks like a non-starter, made all the harder when you’re already remortgaged up to the hilt and feeling just a wee bit suicidal.

As for writers, having three dev execs at SS means three times the excuses for a knockback. Take your pick...

‘we’d really need to see a draft’
(translation – go away)

‘we’ve read an awful lot of horrors/romcoms/Charlie Kaufman knockoffs this year’
(no really, go away and stop annoying us)

’we already blew the budget on draft 15 of that historical costume drama’
(your script’s utter shite, so will you please just leave now?)

So who’ll win development funding from SS? My money’s on the box. Maybe there should be a prize for guessing...

READER'S INDIGESTION

2006-09-03T13:21:00.000+01:00

You have to admire the persistence of the wannabe Scottish filmmaker. Poring over the local Sundays online, I couldn’t help but notice a bunch of loosely related articles about film. To take our hacks to task about the way film gets reported here needs a blog of its own, so until then I’ll stick with the crop in question, namely a piece on Douglas Gordon, a report on the Scottish film lobby and a pair of features about two local filmers.

Interviewed in an Edinburgh wine bar, we learn Douglas Gordon wants to make a film version of James Hogg’s The Sins and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Not that old chestnut surely. Ever since the late Bill Douglas wrote a spec script back in the 80s, the idea of turning the book into a film has floated around – and sank. Actor/director Peter Mullan was supposedly up for it one time – and yes, nothing happened. But if anyone can pull it off, then surely it’s our Dougie who, having reinvented himself as a filmmaker, can simply bend a few well-connected ears. In the end though it’s a non-story. The journalist could as easily have interviewed me – ‘yeah, well, I’m thinking of doing a remake of Taxi Driver set in the mean streets of Paisley. I might even approach Bobby Carlyle to play Travis Bickle’. Doesn’t quite have the same cachet, does it?

Meanwhile, in another non-story, the Scottish film lobby gets quoted in the Sunday Herald, following a meeting of the Scottish Screen/SAC board on Friday, discussing the ‘mounting support’ for a separate film body as part of the proposed Creative Scotland.

Do we learn what the board said?
No.

Do we believe another bureaucratic outfit can solve the problem of not getting films made?
Nope.

Do we care about three ex-beneficiaries of SS lottery funding trying to hitch their bandwagon to a decommissioned gravy train?
Not really.

Are we enlightened in any way by this article?
Nah.

For some useful comment, I point you to Ruth Wishart’s informative piece in the Herald –

http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/68958.html

Let’s move on to a heart-warming little tale of an Edinburgh student who made it to the EIFF with a film that cost £200. It’s the kind of article that turns up in the Scottish rags all too often – plucky but hard-up filmmaker makes short and wins the day. ‘Well, y’know, we were so skint I had to sell my sperm/granny/arse to get the film made’. Jamie Stone managed to make his film, Fritz, and get it all the way to the festival. But what kind of career can he expect when so-called established filmmakers can’t get it together? I’m all for can-do and DIY, but you can’t take your camcorder short to the bank. And with Scottish Screen girning about too many pointless short film schemes (that they created), where do all the Jamie Stones go? How many self-funded calling card shorts does it take before anyone thinks your talent’s worth paying for?

Slightly higher up the food chain is Martin Smith. No offence Martin, but while the States has Martin Scorcese, we have you - Martin ‘I’m not part of that short filmmaking world’ Smith, with three shorts and a bunch of music vids to your name. So what world are you part of? Beats me why the Sunday Herald bothered to write you up because it’s not like you’ve scored a major deal or anything – one film festival outing isn’t news, even if it’s in LA - a bit like Penilee with sunshine. So what if, like me, you’ve written a feature? It’s not much of a story when you can’t walk into a Glasgow pub without falling over somebody with a script in ‘development’. I seem to remember reading about you in another non-article a while back and even then I wondered, how long can your pals in the press keep talking you up as the next big thing? At least the Aberdonian boys got their sci-fi feature made…

Maybe a little less wishful thinking by the media and a little less empire-building by the quangos is what’s needed. Instead of how Jamie scraped to make his short, we need some real reporting on the problems of trying to make films in a hostile climate, how telly taps into public funds and how much moolah gets burned on salaries for public servants seemingly incapable of making decisions, let alone the right ones.

Now excuse me while I eat my fry-up and turn to the Nudes of the Screws for some quality journalism…

MUTINY ON THE BUSES

2006-08-31T10:48:00.000+01:00

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

2006-08-25T10:21:00.000+01:00

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

2006-08-22T23:00:00.000+01:00

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

2006-08-21T22:57:00.000+01:00

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

2006-08-15T10:17:00.000+01:00

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

2006-08-11T19:17:00.000+01:00

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

2006-08-05T10:36:00.000+01:00

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.

FLYING PICKETS

2006-07-31T19:01:00.000+01:00

Great story in today’s Scotsman about another Scotsman – The Flying Scotsman, due to open the Edinburgh Film Fest on August 14.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1099772006

In an earlier blog I mentioned the small matter of the 170,000 quid that the film’s producer, Peter Broughan, claims to be owed by Scottish Screen to pay off overdue invoices from crew and extras. This is a tricky one, because the company making the film, Mel Films, went bust and as reported, so far hasn’t bothered to file any accounts. Which poses the question - why should SS fork out?

At a time when Scottish film production has ground to a halt and with massive uncertainty over its future, this sorry tale does the business no favours. The recent hoo-ha over the begging letter signed by 45 of Scotland’s ‘top’ filmmakers has yet to result in anything. And while there’s a case for film to be subsidised, in the same way that, say, opera or theatre continues to be backed by the government, threats of picketing extras outside Fountain Park at the Flying Scotsman premiere only gives the powers-that-be further justification to write off moviemaking as a cultural pursuit.

If I were in Shane Danielsen’s shoes, I’d be seriously tempted to pull the plug. Not because the film’s stars, Brian Cox and Jonny Lee Miller, might be a no-show if they have to run the gauntlet of unpaid extras, but more because of the dubious morality of screening the movie. At almost eight quid a ticket (not to mention the freebies dished out to those who can afford it) I’d feel pretty uncomfortable knowing I’m watching faces on screen that haven’t been paid. Look, if this was a film made with unpaid child labour, you can bet the festival would have run a mile from it. We’re talking about the lowest paid workers here, not Brian and Jonny, reported to have had theirs and then some.

Some might argue that only by showing the film could it hope to make a profit. Pull the other one, guys. Turns out The Flying Scotsman doesn’t have a distributor and even if it did, isn’t there a queue of financiers all waiting for payback? If I were an unpaid extra or crew member I’d storm Cineworld, pelt Brian and Jonny with eggs and hold the projectionist hostage. And pull the plug on the popcorn machine while I’m at it.

Shame on the lot of them. Up the workers.

JOBS FOR THE BOYS

2006-07-19T13:27:00.000+01:00

What’s going on? The sweltering heat? The Moon in Venus? Everybody seems to be quitting their jobs for pastures new - or not.

First off, congratulations to Lenny Crooks, Head of the Glasgow Film Office, who's about to become the Head of the Film Council’s New Cinema Fund. Lenny’s replacing Paul Trijbits, champion of fresh filmmaking talent such as Ken Loach, Nicholas Roeg and Michael Caton Jones. Let’s hope the bold Lenny can improve on that. My guess is he saw the writing on the wall for film in Scotland, so good luck to him.

Second - Hannah McGill is replacing Shane Danielsen at the EIFF amid ‘stiff competition’. Good for her. But as a rare female in the fest biz can she make a better job of it than loony Lizzie Francke did? Still, Hannah’s well qualified – I mean, she’s already well used to watching lots of movies.

Third - the boss of Scottish Television, Andrew Flanagan, has also quit. Why? Probably because he’d prefer a job in television, not running a website and a bunch of premium rate number quizzes.

Fourth - BBC Scotland’s Head of Current Affairs, Blair Jenkins, has flown the coop under a dusty cloud of unknowing. Nothing to do with job cuts, a strike ballot and a general lack of morale at QMD, I don’t suppose?

So who’s next for the off I wonder? There’s more than a few candidates I’d like to see heading for the Jobcentre.

MINE'S A LARGE STIFF ONE

2006-07-16T19:02:00.000+01:00

Ahoy boys. Today’s Scotland on Sunday reports that the long-awaited £10m remake of the Ealing Studio classic, Whisky Galore! has run aground – yet again. This time the excuses range from uncertainty over tax breaks to anti-Scottish casting. Apparently writer/producer Peter MacDougall is raging about the proposed stars, saying, ‘the list had five Sirs and not a single fucking Scottish actor’. Nicely put, Peter.

He’s got a point though. When names like Steve Coogan and Ricky Gervais are talked up as ‘big in America’ it only confirms the delusion of London film lovies because Steve and Ricky are about as recognisable to American audiences as clootie dumpling. Besides, at an alleged £10 million budget, it doesn’t sound like Hollywood’s chipping in, so why worry? Did the makers of the original give a toss about cracking the States? I doubt it. They just wanted to make an enjoyable movie that did okay business on its home turf, which is about as much as we can hope for any film made in this country.

Whenever I read about British C-list slebs trying their luck in Hollywood, I can’t help but cringe on their behalf, in the same way I feel embarrassed at the thought of Tessa Jowell out in LA, trying to flog the new film tax regime to a bunch of moguls who really don’t give a toss.

Where Mr MacDougall’s argument falls down is in thinking that Whisky Galore! was a Scottish film in the first place. It wasn’t. It might have been based on a story set in Barra and it was filmed there with a few token Scottish actors but it took a London-based film company to make it and a London-based distributor to put it in cinemas. So what’s new?

The virtue of the original was its simplicity and small scale, relying more on stunning scenery and wry humour than on ‘starry’ actors, be they Robbie Coltrane, Brian Cox or their English below-the-radar equivalents. In fact, why are the makers bothering? Do they really think they can improve on the original? How can Mr MacDougall's script ever top Compton MacKenzie and Angus MacPhail's? And why do they need 10 million quid anyway when the 1949 version was probably shot for 40 guineas? Unless it’s to cover the producer’s tab at the Castlebay Bar.

Sounds like this one’s going the way of the SS Politician…

RUBBER JOHNNIES

2006-07-13T10:44:00.000+01:00

This year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival kicks off with The Flying Scotsman, the only Scottish feature listed in the entire programme. Let’s just hope the film’s producer, Peter Broughan managed to persuade Scottish Screen to cough up the £170,000 they owe him – as revealed in his angry letter to the Herald a few weeks ago – so he can finally pay off his overdue invoices.

Away from the glittery sideshow of the EIFF, closed-door politics prevail. According to Screendaily.com, Scottish Screen and the Scottish Arts Council are to form a joint board for Creative Scotland by the end of the year, which sounds like a done deal to me. If so, then isn’t there the small matter of legislation, such as, duh, a draft Culture Bill to be put before members of the Scottish Executive? Anyone whose eyes glazed over reading the Scottish Executive response to the Cultural Commission Recommendations -

www.hi-arts.co.uk/Scotlands-Culture-SE-Response-to-Cultural-Commission-Review.pdf

- might have missed the small print on page 51 that suggests there’s a way to go before anybody goes around setting up boards for quangos that haven’t yet been rubber-stamped by the government. And isn’t there supposed to be proper scrutiny of said Culture Bill and a consultation period before anything gets passed?

A quick sniff around the Scottish Executive website admits as much in a press release dated 11th July.

www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2006/07/11110842

"Creative Scotland will be responsible for developing talent and excellence in all branches of the arts, and the creative and screen industries. The new body to be regulated by OCPAS will need legislation to establish it and the Executive will publish a draft Bill later this year.

Culture Minister Patricia Ferguson said:

"The establishment of this joint board is a positive step in the development of Creative Scotland. It will give a new focus and clear leadership to the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen during this time of change. It will facilitate working arrangements as the two organisations work more closely together. The new cultural agency will sustain talent and provide an environment in which culture will flourish and be appreciated."

On January 19, 2006 Ms Ferguson outlined plans to invest an extra £20 million per year from April 2007 to nurture the best creative and cultural talent, and boost participation while cutting back on unnecessary bureaucracy.

Each of the existing members of Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen will be invited to apply for posts on the joint Board. The chairman will be appointed following an open competition. The persons appointed will be members of both the Scottish Arts Council and the Board of Scottish Screen Limited."

Looks like a done deal, though why it’s gone unreported by the Scottish press is a mystery to me. But shuffling an old pack to practice a sleight of hand shouldn’t surprise anybody. As long as our politicians view culture as an occult minority activity best left to ‘those in the know’ they're giving licence to the same cast of feckless self-interested individuals who, as Peter Broughan would testify, think it’s okay to cheat freelance film crews out of their wages.

And they call this progress? On yer bikes…

SKY MOO-VIES

2006-07-10T11:57:00.000+01:00

With the festival season looming in Auld Reekie, it’s probably not the best time to flit back to Paisley. There’ll be no more fun directing shivering Spaniards to public toilets when they ask the way to Arthur’s Seat. No more rubbish chat-up lines from the likes of Barry and his mate Colin from Wolverhampton here on a stag weekend. No more sponsored cow-verts (see above) littering the capital’s streets or hatchet-faced matrons elbowing you in the knicker department of Jenners. And saddest of all, no more Harvey Nicks.

One of the best things I saw recently was a tourist sign opposite the Marbella Holiday Village otherwise known as the Scottish Parliament building. Under ‘Places to Visit’ some wag had scrawled the word ‘Glasgow’, proof of the ongoing rivalry between the two cities, with one renowned for history, architecture and culture, the other known for, well, shopping. Which poses a question, because with all the talk of ‘cultural entitlement’ in political circles, who’s really calling the shots about the kind of culture on offer?

Among the upcoming fests is the Edinburgh International Film Festival, which launches its programme next week. The details are sketchy, but according to the EIFF website, it is -

"recognised as a place to find new, important, international work"

No mention of British films then, new or important. Unless it’s got Julie Walters in it (Wah-Wah, Driving Lessons). The only noteworthy Scottish film, Red Road, won't feature on the list, thanks to distributor, Verve, who thinks playing Edinburgh could damage the film’s UK box potential – on how many screens is that? There’s optimism for you. Didn’t Young Adam play the EIFF a couple of years back only to be released in cinemas a week or so later? If anyone knows how hard it is to compete with Hollywood, surely it’s a two-bit British distributor. Or are they planning a major PR splash, with an Empire front cover and 400 prints? Unlikely. Did the film’s investors forget to read the small print when they condemned Red Road to a one week run in 20 arthouses?

So what can filmgoers expect to see at Fountain Park this year? A couple of Korean capers and a few Sundance leftovers? Probably. At eight quid a time, mind, popcorn not included.

What does this tell us about cultural entitlement? Because where film’s concerned it looks to me like it’s in the grubby hands of minor London film distributors, a greedy multiplex chain and a bunch of programmers trying to turn a few scrappy pictures into an ‘eclectic’ programme for discerning cinephiles. Me, I’m sticking with Sky Moo-vies.

THE LESSER SPOTTED ZOOMER

2006-07-05T09:36:00.000+01:00

For once it’s not all bad news on the Scottish film front, what with the Glasgow Film Office quietly getting on with the business of supporting films being shot here.

Though I guess if my name was Harmony Korine (above), I’d have no problems getting what even the GFO describe as an ‘outlandish’ plot into production. To quote from their site -

"This is a yarn about a young American lost in Paris, eking out a living as a Michael Jackson lookalike. By coincidence, he meets Marilyn Monroe. He follows her to a commune in Scotland, joining her husband Charlie Chaplin and her daughter Shirley Temple. Fellow residents include The Pope, The Queen of England, Madonna and James Dean. The drama is also partly set in a Brazilian forest where a community of missionary nuns bring aid to the locals".

The film stars Diego Luna, Anita Pallenberg, Werner Herzog and Samantha Morton. A cast to conjure with, if not to die for.

Somehow I think if yours truly from Paisley was the writer/director, I’d be more likely to get a kick in the arse before I’d get a cheque from Lenny and a mention in Screen International and the Guardian. And that’s where we Scottish filmmakers are going wrong. Maybe we should reinvent ourselves as grungers with funny names and American accents because it’s obviously got more cachet with local funders than being Scottish with zilch profile in trendy mags. Still, it just might be worth a shot…

"Zat the Glesga Film Oaffice?"

"It is, hi, how can we help?"

"Oh, hiya, ma name’s Chastity Zoomer, y’know, fillummaker? Ye mighta hearda me. Ah'm lookin’ tae dae a movie an’… "

"Sorry, what was the name again?

"Chastity - as in nae nooky? Zoomer – as in Zoo. Waant me ‘ae spell it fur ye? Z-O-O-"

"That's okay. And you say you're a filmmaker?"

"Aye, too right ah um. See, ah’ve goat a pure brulliant idea fur a fillum…"

"Uh-huh..?"

"Aye, aboot aw these dead famous guys in a mental home, y’know? The Pope, her Maj, coupla deid film stars an’at – pure amazin’, so it is.

(cue sudden loud click)

"Hello? Hello? Ye still there? Ah'm runnin' oota credit here..."

Good for Harmony though – with a handle like that he must have got a few doings at school, the poor soul. And good for underemployed Glasgow-based companies. They could sure use the work.

THE FINGER OF SUSPICION

2006-07-04T08:46:00.000+01:00

Last week it was widely reported that women don't blog, which is news to me. Plenty of us in the blogosphere are hard at it, thanks to sites like Blogger. But there can't be many bloggers out there who've had every single item flagged up to the blog police as potential 'objectionable content'. Apart from Filmflam that is, according to Google, who owns Blogger.

All I can conclude from this is somebody's got their knickers in a twist. That's good. It means I'm doing my job. Like the header says - 'She cares so you don't have to' - the 'you' being the thousands of people from all over the planet, fellow filmmakers linked to my blog from other sites, blogs and message boards, who seem to agree that I'm saying the stuff that ought to be said. Anyone petty enough to wear out their finger repeatedly clicking a flag button to complain about my blog deserves RSI. And chipped nail varnish.

It doesn't take a genius to work out who the phantom flaggers are, judging by my stats - which lists every visitor to the site. You know who you are - and so do I. But until Blogger decides the content of Filmflam is too objectionable for public consumption I plan to keep on reporting on the highs and lows of Scottish film and the shenanigans of those who make life hard for filmmakers while pretending to support them or by offering 'opportunities' - shorthand for working for less than the going rate.

This may disappoint all you frustrated flaggers out there but you've got a choice. One - if you don't like my opinions, don't read them. Two - if you really don't like my opinions, you're free to disagree - either anonymously or privately via my email, if you're that shy.

As Blogger states - one person's vulgarity is another's poetry. Besides, what's so objectionable about presenting facts, opinions and gossip? Unless folk have something to hide, of course. When I started this blog last year it wasn't my mission to take a swipe at anyone, but as time passed and more and more fellow filmmakers told me about the shabby way they've been treated - by funding bodies, producers, TV companies and dodgy outfits (I wonder how Propeller TV's doing these days?) somebody had to claim the right of reply. All the facts are out there anyway, the rest is opinion.

As Voltaire said, 'We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation". Those ideas have to start somewhere - but not if we gag free-thinkers. Still, a girl can't be too careful. That's why my blogs are safely archived away from this site and in the unlikely event of censorship, ready to be posted elsewhere at the click of a button. That's what you call forward planning...

THE HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG

2006-06-30T23:54:00.000+01:00

I hate to admit it, but I'm a sucker for those TV property makeover shows. You name it, I'll watch it because their appeal hinges on impending disaster. In fact, it's just like the house down the road from where I live where the builders are renovating. They've been at it now for over eighteen months, which beggars belief considering they had a house to start with.

Which got me thinking...

It's as good an analogy as it gets for Scottish Screen's doomed Fast Forward scheme. While fed-up Scottish filmmakers light a fire under the funeral pyre of the agency and while 'industry insiders' (usually code for SS feeding a line to the Scotsman) accuse those same filmmakers of squandering lottery funds on duds, what everyone seems to have forgotten is the total incompetence and bad juju surrounding Fast Forward. My point being - Scottish Screen and their partners, BBC and ContentFilm - unlike many a remortgaged producer - had a house to start with.

For months I've been keeping an eye on the FF scheme. The aim - to commission three feature films each co-funded to the tune of £1.2 million. In a blaze of expensive PR, Fast Forward was hailed as a great opportunity for emerging talent when announced in May 2004 at the Cannes Film Festival. Not surprisingly, local filmmakers got all excited - and why not? To not have to raise money for a film is like finding the proverbial suitcase full of used notes and reads like the plot of any Danny Boyle film you care to mention, eg. Shallow Grave/Trainspotting/Millions.

The original press release - http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfilms/press/fastforwardrelease.shtml did raise hope among filmmakers, many of them friends of mine who applied in vain. Now, over two years down the line they - and I - would like to know what became of it all.

They had the moolah, but who was really providing? Not Content, according to a press release in May 26th 2004.

"Content International will handle international sales and UK distribution for a slate of three new feature films emerging from a low-budget production initiative backed by BBC and Scottish Screen. Fast Forward Features, to which ContentFilm has no upfront financial exposure, is focused on developing new Scottish talent. It aims to fully fund three low-budget features with a target budget of up to £1.2 million per film".

Of course Content wouldn't be exposed - because it was never going to happen. Those in the know may recall Content pulling a similar stunt in Ireland in 2002 by announcing a slate of 12 pictures in association with Rapid Films. Nothing came of that either. Meanwhile this left SS and BBC to fund the three pictures between them - a big bite out of a meagre Lottery pot.

The cast list of this sorry drama, long on names but short on credibility, reads as follows -

Frank McAveety - ex Scottish Culture Minister
Steve McIntyre - ex CEO, Scottish Screen
Alyson Hagan - ex stand-in CEO, Scottish Screen
Ray MacFarlane - current chair of Scottish Screen's board
Claire Chapman - ex Head of 'Talent and Creativity'
Carole Sheridan - ex Development, now Head of 'Talent and Creativity'
Barbara McKissick - ex Head of Drama, BBC Scotland, member of SS board
Nadine Marsh-Edwards - ex BBC drama producer
Laurence Gornall - ex ContentFilm, ex member of SS Lottery panel
Celia Stevenson - Head of Communications and 'Inward Investment'
Ken Hay - current CEO of Scottish Screen
David Thompson - Head of BBC Films
MacDonald and Rutter - PR company hired to launch FF
Portland - ContentFilm's PR company - ditto

Here, anybody might suppose, was a dream team - including a public body, a broadcaster, a sales and distribution company and the best PR money could buy. If anyone could make a film happen, surely they were the key enablers. So when did it all go wrong? Well, as recently as October last year, in a report to the DCMS, Scottish Screen was still claiming Fast Forward as a go-ahead project in a case study - 17 months after its initial launch and with Ken Hay already six months into the job as SS boss.

Which is strange, because by October last year Content had pulled the plug and the key players at the BBC had quit their jobs, leaving the project in limbo. Presumably this left only SS holding the baby, but with the climate at West George Street turning chilly against the very idea of film, it grew increasingly unlikely that the scheme would go ahead. There was also the vexing question of the films themselves - the shortlisted scripts had been chosen but to date - 26 months later - no overall winner has been selected, no doubt to the frustration of the hopeful filmmakers, especially the writers, for many of whom FF was their first foray into features and who knows, maybe their last.

Are there lessons to be learned? Yes, definitely. But who am I to dare offer an opinion to the collective expertise listed above? You'd think the troubles faced by the parties involved might have provided a wee bit more insight into the same problems faced by filmmakers at the bottom of the food chain. And though I'm sure the intention behind FF was admirable, maybe before embarking on the scheme SS should have consulted local filmmakers who had actually produced a film in the £1.2 million bracket - or less. But no. This seems to be the beginning and the end of the problems with the agency, who in their own lack of confidence and low opinion of the talent on their doorstep instead tuned in to the forked tongues of Content - looking for free films to punt - and the BBC - looking as always for cut-price TV filler.

Returning to the theme of DIY, in Scotland on Sunday, Alex Kapranos criticises Glasgow Council for allowing UPVC windows to be fitted in the Art Deco Baird Hall. As he says, 'they see creative people as the enemy'. I couldn't put it better myself. As I say, a plague on all their houses. Never mind a lick of Dulux - it's time for the wrecking ball.

BRITISH ACADEMY FILM AND TV TV TV TV TV AWARDS

2006-06-27T08:55:00.000+01:00

If there was a prize for optimism, then surely BAFTA Scotland would win hands down.

The industry body is calling for entries for this year's awards ceremony, with categories for New Talent, Film, Telly and Interactive Media. Good for them. I just hope they find something to celebrate. It's nice to see students getting a shot at glory too, although you'd have thought the Scottish Students on Screen awards had already cornered the market in camcorder capers.

The film category might be tricky though. And the nominations are - Red Road, Red Road and Red Road. Unless David MacKenzie's Hallam Foe makes the September deadline - in which case we'll have two films in the running because I can't think of anything else that's been made here recently, unless you count Lassie and Greyfriar's Bobby or some other sub-Hollywood filler. How about Last King of Scotland? Well, it's got the word 'Scotland' in the title, but does a couple of days shoot here qualify? Can Twentieth Century Fox be arsed filling in the forms?

TV, no doubt will provide an embarrassment of riches so BAFTA Scotland will be spoilt for choice in this section. Which is odd, because if you check the forms on their website you'll find while the other two categories are being charged an entry fee for each category (of 15 and 20 quid) telly's exempt. Maybe BAFTA's hoping that TV tarts can sprinkle some Z-list glitter on the proceedings so doesn't want to scare them off by charging. Which strikes me as a wee bit unfair because of all the categories listed, surely telly's the only one that can afford to cough up. The students and filmmakers I know are already below the poverty line. I guess it all makes a dent in BAFTA's bar bill.

Last but definitely least - Interactive Media. Who cares? They've only got one award to bid for anyway and even that's a side door prize for telly. Instead of 15 quid, I'd charge them 150 to put the toerags off. Unless somebody's got a great shoot em up. That would get my vote...

STEELING SIGNS

2006-06-25T23:35:00.000+01:00

Watching Scottish Television is a rare thing in the Smith house, so rare in fact that the channel seems to have had a wee makeover since my last visit. It's not like the company can't afford it, judging by their profits, but I'm not sure that their latest station ident is going to win them any fans in the Central Belt area - so my dad reminds me - especially anywhere close to the long-defunct Ravenscraig steel plant.

Now I wouldn't begin to guess how much the big blue S cost the company, or how many manhours the designers sweated over the concept, but if I were boss of logos at STV, I'd be looking for a refund because Big Blue S bears an uncanny resemblance to the old British Steel sign (see image on left) only not half as clever. At least the old BS logo had a kind of integrity about it, recalling the sturdy links of a chain, sadly a chain that was rattled and pulled by old Thatcher as she choked the industry (along with the miners) into submission.

STV's nice n' safe graphic says nothing about the kind of business it's in. It almost makes you nostalgic for their old Bertie Bassett creation, a piece of pure 80s post modern, sub-Memphis design kookery. Their daft trailer with people fondling a big plastic S, looks like they've taken part in a drunken student prank dismantling shop signage.

Now I know why they're called corporate image con-sultants. S for suckers, I say.

THE DEV-IL YOU KNOW

2006-06-23T12:45:00.000+01:00

I'm surprised the staff at Scottish Screen can afford to spend so much time looking at this blog - around 25 visits yesterday alone. So I'll do my best today to offer some constructive advice to the beleaguered body.

First, I'm glad to see on the SS website that someone decided to remove the words 'latest product' from the Red Road banner. I know a lot of folk thought it was a weird way to plug a movie, like some kind of obscure machine tooling system.

Second, I saw the ad for 'development executives' - the telltale s meaning that not one, but two jobs are on offer. What's worrying though is the emphasis on television. The very first line of the first post speaks volumes about the status of film in West George Street -

This post will support the television sector in Scotland.

Please note - not film, but television. In the light of the open letter to Ken Hay and Jack McConnell, the consequences of which will, I predict, come home to roost in the very near future, you'd think the drafting of this advert might have been a tad more sensitive.

Still, it raises a very pertinent question - why should even more public money be spent on television? How much profit did SMG make last year? (46% rise in 2005 from £13.7 million to £20 million, according to The Scotsman) Have they suddenly abolished the licence fee? (up by 4.2% to £131 this April, with £13 billion revenue from 2000-05 - source - BBC) Does IWC, Endemol, Wall to Wall or Lion really need handouts from a cash-starved public sector agency?

It's hard enough for filmmakers, forced into handing over rights and working with broadcasters as a condition of funding, only to be beaten up by telly executives demanding that 'films' should be squeezed to fit TV agendas - that scripts be heavy on 'dramatic irony', appealing only to the lowest common denominator, made as stylistically adventurous as say, Weir's World, on half the budget. Oh, and they must be shot 14:9 and last no longer than 90 minutes. Or, if you're lucky enough to make one of those 300K 'feature-length' TV dramas, make sure the director hands over the deeds to their flat for the privilege of the 'opportunity', closer to the truth than we know.

The second development post is no better -

This post will support the television, games and interactive sector in Scotland.

Still no support for film. I've already done TV, but what about games? Why do they need support when they make megabucks? The margin for retail games is three times that of DVD and the sector and, like the music business, has survived very nicely without subsidy so far. As for interactive - can anyone tell me what this is? Ebay is interactive. My telly is interactive. Porn chatrooms are interactive. Again, these are private enterprises, supported elsewhere. Let Scottish Enterprise do the subsidising.

What saddens me is Scottish Screen's tacit hostility towards film while it hypocritically hijacks the kudos for Red Road. You can't do that on a cheapo opt-out shorts scheme. Looking at it objectively, it appears the agency has long had a clear agenda to remove film from its portfolio. By allowing broadcasters to dictate what a Scottish film is (not that they care, they just want cheap fodder) Scottish Screen is following, not leading and is not, as it claims, acting as an advocate for the screen industries of this country. Well, maybe only the small screens.

IT'S BEHIND YOU

2006-06-22T10:07:00.000+01:00

If I was a guy, I'd have crystal balls.

As I predicted on June 6th (see Big Brother's Wee Bother) filmmakers have finally come out in protest over Ken Hay's plans to make himself and the entire film sector redundant by scrapping Scottish Screen and merging with the Scottish Arts Council. As agencies go, the SAC may be equally feckless but at least they've had more practice when it comes to self-preservation. And you don't need an MBA in Arts Admin to guess which of the two bodies will become the head, not the arse-end of the pantomime donkey that is Creative Scotland.

In an open letter to First Minister, Jack McConnell and Ken Hay, 45 'top' Scottish filmmakers have signed up to complain about the quango's demise. Nothing like a bit of solidarity, guys, even when you're two years too late and the government machine's already set on a collision course. To be fair to filmmakers though, Ken Hay failed to consult them, too busy bowing to bureaucracy and scraping to Holyrood high heid yins, forgetting the one part of his constituency - film - that justifies his salary. His tragic letter in today's Herald is positively Blairite in tone - but it doesn't wash. Hay was appointed to the post in April last year, ample time to assess the situation, consult with those keeping him in tenure and arrive at some solutions. Okay, he may well be justified in arguing the need for efficiencies in the way Scottish film operates, but his tardiness would never have been tolerated in the private sector.

But guess what? Scottish Screen isn't a private company. It may be accountable to government, but it doesn't have to answer to shareholders. Does the SAC worry about the profitability of poets or stained glass artists? The film business knows only too well that in order to survive you need to turn a buck. But when Scottish producers have to fight on several fronts - woeful lack of resource, London prejudice, Hollywood's cultural dominance - they need all the support they can get. Isn't it the case that for decades, various local theatre companies have had their overheads met, not to mention nice premises and large custom-liveried Mercedes vans to boot? Has any Scottish film company ever been so privileged? No. That's why they need a dedicated agency that understands the FILM business - not TV, who only ever looks out for itself. And not DIGITAL MEDIA. Ken Hay fails to make the distinction between the delivery mechanism and content, which is what ought to matter, not the box it comes in.

The fundamental problem is a total lack of trust. When a producer walks through the doors of West George Street, the first thing they're expected to do is hand over 100% of their rights in a project in exchange for a few paltry grand in development. They also need to fit together all the pieces of the finance puzzle before they can get past go. And, more recently, make their scripts 'upbeat'. Since the scrapping of the Seed Fund a couple of years ago, writers - a crucial part of the process - have nowhere to go, forced to write on spec. And they wonder why there's no good scripts in spite of a glut of screenwriting courses? Just who assesses these scripts? Amateurs, that's who, with little (okay, maybe one short) or no filmmaking experience, unknown individuals who've managed to make pals with some SS admin assistant. The TV execs, academics and media consultants and various committee-sitters who make up SS's panels and board don't know either. They don't know what film is. They're simply not qualified. The sad unspoken implication being - filmmakers, you're all shite, you're addicted to handouts and you moan all the time.

Which raises an important question, lost in the current brouhaha. Why wasn't the recent vacant post of 'Head of Talent and Creativity' advertised? Or was this a case of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic? Does anyone know why Carole Sheridan was so hastily appointed to a key public post when she had already quit her own job to work in the private sector? Is it legitimate for any publicly funded body to operate in this way? And even if it is, what incentive was Ms Sheridan given to suddenly entice her to turn down a job in order to step into Claire Chapman's shoes? No offence to Carole Sheridan, but is she really the best person to succeed La Chapman? On that score, I guess the cleaner could give them all a run for their money.

The trouble is, as it always is, we're not told who does the deciding - or why. Witness the (presumably) defunct Fast Forward scheme of two years ago, an exercise in futility, money spent by Scottish Screen but with absolutely no outcome. Perhaps Ken shouldn't be so quick to accuse filmmakers of inefficency and loss-making, and certainly not while he clings to wrong-headed notions of audience development and training at a cost of millions. The former has lately become the holy grail of all publicly funded cultural bodies - but what's to develop? How to find your way to the local Cineworld? Meanwhile the latter - training - remains a joke. As the open letter says - in Scotland it's about creating labour, not talent. It's making tea at Hammerhead, not doing a deal with Celluloid Dreams. How many people are currently attending the much-lauded Screen Academy? A single figure, where a bunch of students all aspire to be directors, producers and screenwriters. What hope of their ambitions being fulfilled when our most experienced filmmakers can't even raise even a low budget? And what exactly does Skillset (with its 50 million pot) do that justifies a regular cash injection from SS? Is this the price of shifting blame when it goes tits up?

For Ken Hay to say on the one hand - 'I'm right and I'm not moving' - and then to state that "Creative Scotland is a step into the unknown for all of us" is an abject admission of failure. If, after fifteen months in the job he doesn't know - unless he's not telling us - then what are we paying him for? Rather than write disgruntled letters to the rags, maybe it's time for filmmakers to ask a few pertinent questions under the Freedom of Information Act. Or, if the worst comes to the worst, perhaps every filmmaker in Scotland should withdraw their talent, as well as their labour by turning their back on Scottish Screen. Well, it's no more than they've done to us and let's face it, it's an easy option, given how 'unknown' the future is. Maybe then we'll see how long the agency can stay in business. Otherwise our leading producers and directors can shout all they like - the prospect of a Scottish film industry is behind all of us.

A FISHY TALE

2006-06-18T17:46:00.000+01:00

Day 31 in the Big Sister house and Leanne’s in the bedroom…

Those of you (like my fans at Scottish Screen and the CIA, according to my stats) who think I spend too much time blogging might be surprised to learn that I’m writing a feature script. For months I’ve been doing the rounds of the city’s saunas and dancing venues talking to girls and punters about their lives. And while the tabs would have us believe these establishments are dens of debasement, where innocent young east European girls get exploited by the lorry load, it’s no more skanky or unethical than say, working for Standard Life, whose chairman also happens to head a brewery. Okay, the hours might be less sociable but at least the work’s better paid.

As one of the top stag party destinations in the UK, Edinburgh seems quite happy to play pimp to these premises. Since 1982 the city council has granted licences in exchange for a hefty cut in the form of local taxes. This makes good civic sense because saunas and clubs play their part in keeping antisocial behaviour off the streets. On that score, I think the city should invest in more public toilets – especially in this weather because the streets here hum like Something Fishy, the Broughton Street monger, at close of business. A new spin on Auld Reekie you might say.

Well, there’s two things that smell like fish and one of them’s fish. For the purposes of research I met up with Lenka (not her real name) who works out of a sauna a spit away from Lothian Road. Her story is she arrived here in February after being laid off at a baked goods factory in her Polish hometown. Tall and tawny blonde, she’s a lovely looking girl with a can-do attitude and could easily be mistaken for an attractive student. Her aim - to make money and improve her English. Lenka shares a flat with two other girls and in her spare time likes going to the gym and nail bars. She watches DVDs and shops at the supermarket. Just a nice, normal girl who happens to barter sex for cash.

Lenka’s shift begins around 6pm when she arrives at the shop. Depending on traffic, she’s often there until 4am, usually four nights a week, Thursday to Sunday being the busy time. Her co-workers include a nurse, a PhD student and a single mum – hardly your stereotypical hookers. While stories of exploitation are rife – of beatings, rapes, drugs and gangmasters withholding passports – they’re also sadly true. But not for a savvy girl like Lenka, who insists her sauna’s safe, certainly a lot safer than working on Leith Links or Salamander Street, an area where desperate girls work to feed their habit and put themselves at risk in more ways than one.

The punters are mostly harmless, Lenka tells me - lawyers, bus drivers, businessmen, tourists, divorced guys, sad men whose wives got ill or died. Some want to talk, some don’t. Thankfully though, the job’s not without some relief. The john who coughed out his false teeth mid-orgasm, for instance, or the 28-year-old stay-at-home virgin dragged in by his mother or the under-performing drunk groom-to-be who turned out to be wearing lingerie. Lenka’s seen it all.

When I tell her I’m writing a script she’s bemused. Why? It’s boring. It’s a job. It’s about the money, nothing else. Sounds like the film business, I tell her, but with fewer punters to tout to it takes longer to notice the pricks. She laughs. On a grand a week plus she can afford to. Good luck to her, I say, she earns it. Let's hope she gets a happy ending. Me, I just want to get to the end of the draft.

LENNY VS THE NEDS

2006-06-13T22:57:00.000+01:00

"McDougal left over a hundred thousand pounds when he died," remarked McNab. "McDougal didn't leave that money," said McTavish, "he was taken from it."

This old stingy Scotsman joke reminded me of what's happening at the Glasgow Film Office ever since the neds - non executive delinquents - at Scottish Enterprise decided to cut their annual £80,000 handout for the GFO's Winter Working/New Directors scheme. But rather than keep stumm and be well behaved about it, the plucky GFO has responded with a refreshingly honest comeback, publicly accusing SE of financial mismanagement and telling the quango to 'overcome their institutional fear of creativity'. They also cheekily suggest SE should cancel their annual golf outing and reinstate the missing money.

Good for them. If only more agencies had their bottle, people like me would have no right to criticise the system. Over the years, Lenny Crooks, head of the GFO, has probably done more to champion local filmmaking than a dozen Scottish Screens. At least he backs genuine local talent, not just dodgy shell companies and rather than put producers through an inquisition for a measly few grand, he shows faith by delivering fast. No wonder Scottish Screen boss, Ken Hay wants to rein them in - Lenny and his crew have long been a thorn in the side of SS, by doing nothing more than getting it right.

And unlike other local film agencies, the GFO boasts a great website, taking pride in all the films they back, not just what the critics decide is flavour of the month. Whether or not you think Film City Glasgow is a dumb idea or not, at least it's better than the empty promises of various scammers who for years have talked about building a studio - or in Shir Shean's case - a golf course with a portakabin attached.

In the scheme of things - film especially - 80 grand is a pish amount of money, far less I reckon than what SE squanders on limos for their head honchos or part time board members' salaries. Shame on them. I wish GFO the very best of luck in getting it back - there's no better and deserving cause. Well, maybe apart from Glesga Ned http://www.glesganed.com/ - ropey but a good laugh.

BRING ME THE HEAD OF...

2006-06-12T08:49:00.000+01:00

Just learned that rather than take up a post in Ireland, Scottish Screen's Head of Development, Carole Sheridan has moved into Claire Chapman's job as Head of Talent and Creativity. Funny, because when I looked up the who's who of the organisation last week, Ms Sheridan didn't merit a mention at all.

Is this good news? Probably. At least it won't take six months now to find a replacement for La Chapman - which would have been Mission Impossible anyway since nobody of any calibre or competence would have climbed on board an agency that's getting scrapped soon. Second, it's continuity for the favoured few already in development. Otherwise it will be business as usual - and they've still got to find a development person. For all of you filmmakers with a cracking script, come back in December.

If I were in Carole Sheridan's shoes, the first thing I'd do is change my job title back to Head of Production. Talent and Creativity's a meaningless term and vaguely insulting to all of us talented and creative people who can't get our phone calls returned. The other thing I'd do is once and for all lose the logo of the wee Cairn Terrier with it's arse pointing to us. Not only has it outlived its welcome, its 'I'm ignoring you' posture speaks volumes about what the agency thinks of us - plus, it's just naff, naff, naff.

GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK

2006-06-09T10:48:00.000+01:00

Some blogs it seems are just too controversial, too opinionated, too unfit for consumption by right-thinking and decent people. I'm proud FilmFlam's one of them.

This blog - parts of which have featured on the Netribution site since March - was dropped today without any prior warning from the site administrator, Nic Wistreich. Well, that's what happens when you give it away for free. It would never have happened to Julie Burchill.

I didn't think folk could be that touchy, especially over my last piece about toerag Ken Loach. Agree, disagree, whatever - the facts are unarguable - Loach has a monopoly on public subsidy but returns nothing to the collective kitty. But I don't think that's the problem Netribution had with my piece. Sure, the site administrator felt offended by my publicly pointing out the Loach item had been taken down from their front page without telling me - because it was 'vicious'. He even reinstated it after I argued the toss. He needn't have bothered. The grief I got from one particular respondent almost made me feel like I had my very own stalker, a feeling reinforced when the site put up a Loach interview by the same guy. All very Ken Loach fanclub.

My other guess for the hump-and-dump is the class issue. To come out and say 'Get your hands off my class' is provocative, asserting a position that challenges the consensus, like Missy Elliot did when she hijacked the term 'bitch' from her brothers. I wonder if 'Get your hands off my race' would have played just as badly.

So much for open source and the free and frank exchange of views and information. Healthy debate I like, so when I was first asked to contribute to Netribution, I thought, why not? It's a labour of love for its creator and a reliable source of film news. It deserves support. But not any longer when after delivering free content on a regular basis I find I'm shot down in flames because the site thinks I'm being vicious about St Ken. But Loach isn't bulletproof. No filmmaker should be. He robs the Lottery coffers repeatedly and his brand of filmmaking portrays ordinary people in dire circumstances as pitiable objects, as if somehow deserving of our sympathy. Personally I think it's patronising because it accords no respect to either his characters or the audience. In the end though - who cares? Loach will go on doing what he does regardless of what I or anybody else thinks.

As for Netribution, no hard feelings, guys. In a world where film websites are ten a penny, you do an okay job of keeping the site updated and so far you haven't turned it into a starfuck fest like Shooting People with their subscriptions and 'famous' patrons. It's just a great shame Netribution doesn't have the space for considered argument and tough opinion. But I do.

BIG BROTHER'S WEE BOTHER

2006-06-06T12:10:00.000+01:00

Now I know how they feel on BB. After having my Loach piece evicted off the front page of Netribution (soon to be rebranded Kentribution) then having it reinstated, these days a girl needs to think twice about slagging off anyone or anything because even though I'm entitled to have a pop at the great and the good, it ain't worth the grief, let alone the sarky comments and catty insults. If I want abuse, I could always don a Celtic strip and parade up Broomloan Road during the Orange Walk.

Speaking of abuse, the pubs of Glasgow and Edinburgh may be smoke-free but lately they're filled with fuming film producers. Their problem? Two key players at Scottish Screen have went west. The heads of 'Talent and Creativity' (aye, right) and Development are offsky, one to take up a Film Council non-job in the States, the other to Ireland, leaving the agency - and any funding decisions - in limboland. Like an empty ATM on a Friday night, Scottish Screen is now in danger of a kicking because producers here are strange beasts, slow to rouse but capable of untold damage.

Their other problem? CEO Ken Hay's blueprint for the future, a plan that means more money for telly, a slush fund for Skillset but no dough for film, unless producers bring cast-iron deals to the table. Which makes me wonder, because if you already have the finance, a sales company and a distributor in place, then why trouble yourself with form-filling for an agency where no-one can make a decision? Going by track record, Scottish Screen takes at least six months to appoint staff, who usually need another six months to find out what their job is. Besides, with £2 million quid of Ken's paltry annual budget already spoken for, producers will be lucky to get a pat on the head and their train fare home.

They say if you want sympathy, look up the dictionary between shit and syphilis, But really, my heart goes to out to Ken Hay. Like Albert Speer poring over his doomed utopian models, Ken's looking lonelier by the day. Not only has he pissed off the regional film offices but he's been deaf to the noise of producers alert to the fact their gravy train will be derailed when Scottish Screen gets scrapped in 2008. In his zeal for demoting film and for appeasing his government masters what Ken seems to have forgotten is that the Lottery pot, snatched from the Scottish Arts Council in the late 90s, was ringfenced for film, not as a top-up for telly, not for pointless training schemes that turn wannabe directors into teamakers or for mobile phone virals and certainly not farting about on computers.

If Ken Hay's achieved anything, it's hammering round pegs into square holes. By batting for bureaucracy rather than backing the film business, he may think he's a shoe-in as top dog at Creative Scotland, but in a year or so when homegrown film output has dwindled to zero, questions may well be asked. After all, why spend over a million quid on audience development and marketing if our screens are blank and when the annual pot of development funding for the entire nation is a mere £150,000 - the same as it was in 1989. Like Tony Blair, doesn't Ken care about his lasting legacy - as the man who single-handedly dismantled film in Scotland? Producers, I suspect, won't take this lying down for much longer. Already miffed at not being consulted and having nothing better to do (because they sure ain't making movies) they're bound to kick up hell.

In the words of the song, I predict a riot. Or a small stushie at least. Who'll be next up for eviction, I wonder?

AND TO ALL WHO SAIL IN HER...

2006-05-31T11:33:00.000+01:00

Got it just about right in my Cannes prediction about Red Road - so well done Andrea Arnold for winning the Prix du Jury. Enjoy it while you can, doll. You're probably wondering why all these people you've never met are suddenly claiming credit for your movie and heaping hyperbole on you. Not least our pals at Scottish Screen.

Now it would be pushing it for me to claim credit for SS's new improved website, but whaddya know? Obviously someone, somewhere has made mention of it's crappiness because now it's beginning to look like a film agency website - at least now they admit they fund stuff like, y'know, films? They've hung up a few pictures on the site to replace the insipid seascape and there's even a list of who does what, even if we don't really know what they get up to. Now, that wasn't so hard, was it?

And the best news I've heard all week? Claire Chapman, Head of 'Talent and Creativity' - since when? - is quitting, along with sidekick Carol Sheridan, Head of Development, her name already struck off the who's who list. Well that's two down, I suppose.

As to why this pair are bailing out we can only speculate but rats and sinking ships come to mind. Maybe we should ask their boss, but I guess you'd only get the standard blah about 'due to the implementation of new strategies and the challenges faced by the organisational yadda yadda...' The kind of obfuscating guff we've come to expect from our Ken. Could it be that he's the reason? Maybe, but what we want to know is the real reason. Because if Scottish Screen is, as we're told, headed in the right direction then why would anybody give up the status let alone a fat salary? Or could it be that when Culture Scumbag or whatever it's called finally kicks in next year, the scrum for new jobs will soon sort the bitches from the dogs.

Whatever the reason for their departure, it's not like the two Cs will give two Fs about goes on in Scotland, what with one Ireland-bound and the other off to the States. So it doesn't matter what the new-look SS site says. Any hope of pitching work any time soon is bound to be an exercise in futility. But what's new?

NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LOACH

2006-05-20T08:31:00.000+01:00

No wonder he's smiling. Wouldn't you be if, despite tepid reviews, you'd just won the Palme D'Or and with yet another FilmFour deal in the bag?

Welcome to the world of Ken Loach, in whose gritty purview aspiring young filmmakers are invisible. Which is what the industrious, illustrious Ken must have felt when he started out last century. Since the early sixties he's had a good run at it, according to IMDB, crediting him with 42 productions, arguably the most consistent output of any living British director.

Good for him, but not for us next generation filmmakers.

I'm reluctant to slay this sacred cow because it looks plain churlish, but somebody has to call it. Many filmmakers, whatever their background, are hungry for a break, yet like Ken's favoured subjects we are deprived, largely in part to him and his producers hoovering up every bit of subsidy going. Living in Scotland, I sense a terrible crisis of confidence in what passes for a film industry, a nation that has always parted company with its talent, from the genius Alexander Mackendrick to Bill Forsyth, Michael Caton-Jones and Paul McGuigan, they've all had to leave for want of opportunity. Shame on Scotland for denying their ambition while repeatedly backing Ken Loach.

Digging into the past, it seems Ken has received more subsidy than any other filmmaker in this country. Which begs a lot of questions because I wouldn't object if Ken Loach's films returned a profit back into Scotland. But they don't. And we're talking millions here. Millions that didn't fund local filmmakers like you and me. It's not like filmmaking's a good cause anyway when you can't get a doctor's appointment and people are sleeping on our streets.

From Carla's Song, My Name is Joe, Sweet Sixteen to Ae Fond Kiss, Ken's earned a fair old wage over the years at the expense of the poor, the main purchasers of Lottery tickets, the same people who would never dream of parting with six quid at the multiplex to watch other downtrodden people somehow 'overcome' or 'accept' their lot in life. Hell, for the same ticket price you can watch a zillion dollars of entertainment.

But that's only part of the problem I have with Ken Loach.

Beyond the rumours of him directing commercials, I get the sense of a man with good intentions. Politically correct and socially aware Ken may be, but when I heard him address a Scottish Socialist party rally in 2001 at the Mitchell Theatre in Glasgow, I thought to myself, here's a man patronising his audience, coming across as he did like some hectoring nineteenth century cleric or some latter-day Dickens, talking down to the people about such matters as Iraq and telling us how awful it was. Like we didn't know already? And your point being, Ken?

To make a living by portraying the lives of the working/underclass as morally flawed is a cheap thrill and an indecent racket. To make victims of the poor is a treacherous lie. We're in the 21st century now, not the 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s where folks like me and my family - decent ordinary working people - get by. In ASBO country there's many a story, but you don't have to live there Ken. Your films are not even good drama - witness the ludicrous plotting on My Name is Joe. Unless there's a point that goes beyond exploiting the disenfranchised and until Ken's prepared to be more explicit in telling us who the real antagonists are (like we don't know) all he's doing is flying the flag for victimhood and in Scotland, handing out ammo to a feeble-minded but vicious provincial press who love nothing better than put the boot up film for being miserable.

An actor friend of mine once told me about his audition with Loach, reckoning the only way to get a part in his movie was to pretend to no previous acting experience. In My Name is Joe he said the majority of actors told Ken they were plasterers or carpet-fitters to be in with a shot and what's more, he bought it.

To learn that Ken Loach has yet another film lined up just depresses me. It's not like I'll rush to the cinema to see it and nor, I suspect, will anybody else. If this sounds disrespectful I don't apologise because when I read that his next outing has been funded by the UK Film Council's New Cinema Fund, yes, NEW Cinema Fund - I think, surely this is a joke but sadly it's one made at my - and my fellow filmmaker's expense.

So get your hands off my class, Ken. Away and draw blood from your own.

CANNES DOS AND DON'TS

2006-05-16T21:45:00.000+01:00

The closest I've been to Cannes is Marseilles on an EasyCrate hen-weekend but it's close enough to know the dos and don'ts. The way I see it, Cannes is like the Glasgow Fair Fortnight in Palma because it's just about as expensive and the same rules apply.

First, don't agonise over what to wear. A quick trip to Primark, New Look or Top Man will sort you out for 50 quid or less. The logic of this being, someone will always be better dressed than you anyway - with the possible exception of Harvey Weinstein or Ken Loach. Besides, it's not like you've got a suite at the Majestic or the Cap, so why worry? Naff logo T-shirts, like the one I saw recently that said - Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't want to hear your life story. Show us your tits - just might qualify as a talking point and a surefire way to a deal. Less is more - if you must burn your credit card any further, do it on the best shades, the best belt, the best gadget you can find.

Second, you'll spend a lot of time talking to idiots who are in the same place as you - ie. not getting a film made. This is a rough equivalent of trying to get a lumber (or, attracting a sexual partner for those viewers not in Scotland) Again - no problem! If you fancy them, then hang out - ask yourself, where else am I going? And at least that way you can split the bar bill. This only works if you're on Kir Royales and they're on water. Even better, hone in on the German exhibitor there on company expenses, laugh at his jokes - et voila - a friend for life and a free night out. Just make sure you're in one of the better hotels, so you can grab a meeting from 'important person'.

Three - shoes. For guys, any old loafers/trainers will do. For girls it's a little more tricksy, especially if you're a development exec who spends June to the following May on your fat arse reading bad scripts and eating too many Pret sandwiches, veggie crisps on the side, plus the brownie. That gym membership you took out on January 12th got lost, didn't it? If so, then heels it has to be, but if you can't afford Jimmy Choos go for wedges - but then again, you've probably got ten pairs of Manolos already, you bitch. Like you need my advice.

Four - party invites. Simple. Call the local catering companies and pretend you're a client for say, Soho House in Cannes. Better still, get a brainless posh girlfriend to do it because she'll get the dates mixed up and that way you'll find out who's doing the catering for the most exclusive soirees. That way you get the skinny on who's hosting what party when. All you do is turn up, saying you're there to oversee the arrangements. Or at a push, claim you lost a member of staff and blag your way in. Same tactic works for security if you're a guy.

Fifth on the list - moby ettiquette - be sure you've got yours glued to your ear, lest people think you don't know anybody or you've got nothing to talk about. Remember, these days people think it's an act of devotion if you switch a phone off in their presence, as if they and only they can command your attention. A cheap trick, but it's deeply flattering. Risky if you're really there on biz though and that vital call gets your voice mail. Same goes for texts.

Six, and crucially - if you actually have a script worth shopping, do a blind drop round all the best hotels, making sure you have a novel pitch. I'm told an oven glove in a Jiffy bag works, with a message to say your script's too hot to handle.

Lastly, the vexing question - do I Fake Bake or not? There's two schools of thought on this. If you're paler than milk then some folk might see it as a sign of long nights locked in an edit suite and therefore productive. If you turn up with a glowing tan they might think, well, here's a true player just because they look like a rich bastard who can afford the two weeks in Bermuda,
after the skiing holiday in Aspen. So the jury's out. I say - go tan.

If you're Cannes-bound this year - enjoy. But expect nothing more than a bunch of business cards of companies that will fold in six months and, if you're lucky, a quick and meaningless shag with Luiz - or was it Sophie? Or was it both?

FUND AND GAMES

2006-05-14T23:19:00.000+01:00

Just sign here doll, and mind and bring back your receipts.

Okay, we can't all be David O. Selznick, but can anybody tell me why Scottish Screen is trying to save money by not spending it on filmmakers? I note that their annual handouts to cash-strapped Scottish producers going to Cannes - which probably means all of them - was buried in the depths of their website.

Only on Friday, allmediascotland.com put out an urgent call on the agency's behalf, asking any producer going to Cannes to apply for said fund, with a deadline of 4pm the same day. Do they mean to say they didn't have any takers? Or is it that, rather than post an announcement on their homepage, Scottish Screen buried the info under 'talent and creativity'?

This is a wee bit worrying. Especially now they've appointed two communications officers. Because either it means no producers are going to Cannes (and who can blame them?). Or else it means SS 'forgot' to announce the fund, maybe in the hope that they could save themselves a few quid by not giving it to all of these useless, money-grabbing producers.

Well, thanks Ken. It's bad enough that producers here are so hard-up they need a couple of ton to get their sorry arses on the EasyCrate to Nice. It's even worse when you deliberately don't tell them you've got cash to spare, when no doubt you'll be taking more than a few staffers to top up their tans.

Bon Voyage indeedy.

DOTTY COMMUNICATIONS

2006-05-10T10:23:00.000+01:00

Allmediascotland.com today reports on Scottish Screen's appointment of not one, but two Communication Officers, one hailing from the voluntary sector, the other from an insurance company. Neither comes with any experience of film, TV or the media, which is maybe just as well, because it's the devil's game and possibly the reason why Ken Hay's all out to set up schemes aimed at children, more easily influenced in the ways of TV. Why they need a matching pair isn't revealed, but let's hope the new girls can improve things, starting with the SS website, which makes no mention of their new, publicly-funded jobs - pointed out on this blog ages ago.

The same item goes on to say - in a reversal of recent statements, Scottish Screen's mission is to create “a first-class Scottish film industry that can compete on the world stage".

I'm having one of those 'please won't you make up your mind' moments. For a nanosecond.

If they're so intent on a first class film industry in Scotland how come Head of Production, Claire Chapman, is busy telling Scottish producers not to come to her looking for finance unless they have all the other pieces in place? Would she say that to a US outfit looking to shoot in Scotland? After all, didn't she provide a handy bit on the side when George Clooney arrived in town with The Jacket?

With these new appointments and two more to come - I'm sure flights to Nice from Glasgow are getting busy, despite the fact that for the first time SS won't be setting up on the Croisette.

Questions:

How many SS staffers can we expect to see sunning themselves on the terrace of the Majestic?

Will there be an announcement of the first Fast Forward feature, promised by Frank 'Pieman' McAveety way back in 2004 and, after eighteen months dev, with Content crashed, BBC execs departed, new CEO at SS, still undecided?

Will Andrea Arnold lift the Palme D'Or with Red Road?

Answers:

At least 20.
No.
Doubt it.

Now how much communication did that take? And you got it for free.

ODE TO AN AGENT

2006-05-07T22:17:00.000+01:00

O, dreadful script, are you so cursed?
When agents none can I persuade
To read you, nor to reimburse
The postage costs or calls I made
To ICM and PFD
Or any agent in West One
In meetings long, their standard plea
While I am left upon the phone
For hours and days and weeks on end
I wait - and more impatient grow
For having nothing else to spend
But time; for agent's lunches slow
In Soho House, with someone's son
Who made a short and never paid
The crew; who now wants taken on
The agent thinks, can I get laid?
So to the ladies she retires
With handbag and a pounding heart
So anxious that she looks perspired
Sprays Gucci Rush on, then departs

While on a shelf, she thinks no more
Of worthy scripts that she must read
But wishing not to shun her chore
She writes a text in which she pleads
The meeting's been a great success
So don't expect me back till five
Put all my calls on hold unless
My mother's dead, else I contrive
To leave this famous person's son
For drunk is he and charlied up
And pain in arse he may become
In which event I'll kick the pup
Out of my flat in Gray's End Road
But not before I have my way
With Justin for the least I'm owed
A decent shag to make my day

Amid the sex, the mobile rings
The agent cuts off Justin's cries
And cruelly, as she is with things
Assumes her scary agent guise
You fuck! Exclaims she at a pitch
While intern cowers in anguished fear
For well she knows she is a bitch
And glad her heart that she's not here
Why call me now, the agent screams
What business is there that can't wait?
An urgent call has come, it seems
From senior partner to debate
The latest on the US fee
Of name director in LA
Insisting he won't work for free
Can she come in without delay?
With Justin passed out on the sack
Snoring; while the agent creeps
Out of her flat, her temper black
And hails a cab in rush hour deep
Her destination Wardour Street
But running late she's forced to run
And out of breath arrives to meet
The deadline set for deal undone

But LA time is hours behind
And while she waits to take the call
She reads a script to take her mind
Off Justin and and his penis small
At random, as it tends to be
The agent picks a weighty draft
And hopes it is a comedy
For in her mood, she needs a laugh
Ten pages in, a smile appears
On her torn face; a novel sight
The hottest script she's read in years
At last, a writer who can write
She shouts, do we know who this is?
The intern shrugs, for knows she not
The writer who, new to the biz
Had unsolicited wrote in
Last October, now it’s May
The agent, disbelieving, snaps
At poor intern who runs away
To Groucho’s where her latest chap
Had earlier arranged to meet
Arriving late, the intern’s stressed
Not knowing that her beau, discreet
Had shagged another – yes, you guessed
Young Justin, laid out on the bed
Has clean forgot his rendezvous
With little intern, who instead
Gets drunk on Beaujoulais Nouveau

Back in the office, agent scrolls
Through rolodex and number finds
Of unknown author who enrols
For late shift at Victoria Wines
The number rings but no reply
The answerphone is on the blink
And agent tries to fathom why
Some writers live just to defy
The rules; or are they just obtuse
These jumped-up hacks, do they not care
That agents take so much abuse?
And with a grudge she turns her stare
To you; poor unregarded script
Still on her desk, third act unread
And there you'll wait, until you're ripped
And tossed in bin, a screenplay dead.
The moral of this sorry tale
Is not to slag the agent's way
But more to say, don't moan and wail
If your hot script's in her in-tray.

CABBA CABBA HAY

2006-05-02T23:07:00.000+01:00

Supposing the Film Council suddenly shut up shop, you'd think more than a few disgruntled filmmakers would have something to say about it. Alas not here in Scotland, where the talent's already too downtrodden to give one about the demise of Scottish Screen or the latest missive from its CEO, Ken Hay aka Obi-Wan-Ken-Nobody, as he goes about his highly-remunerated business.

Who can blame us? Life's bad enough here now our streets are full of tetchy smokers, where Glasgow retains the proud title as murder capital of Europe and the average life expectancy is on a par with Somalia. Anyone dumb enough to be a filmmaker isn't going to win much sympathy.

A year into the job, Ken can congratulate himself. Not only has he pulled down the agency's website and replaced it with one more geared to say, civil engineering, he's managed to insult virtually every filmmaker in the land by saying that their rubbish shorts can't find an audience and don't make economic sense.

Duh, hello - since when did a short ever turn a buck?

Like Zippo lighters, casual sex and supporting Partick Thistle, making short films is a hobby - or at least it was until SS got into bed with the local telly tarts on the likes of Tartan Shorts and New Found Land and turned producer-baiting into a national pastime. Anyway, to say shorts are a waste of space is like saying karaoke singers ought to be banned because they'll never clinch a major record deal.

According to our Ken, the future of film can be found in the back of a taxi, thanks to sinister outfit Cab'ti'vate who fit screens in the back of black cabs. So at least we'll have something to distract us while being groped or throwing up. The other plus is not having to talk to the back of the driver's head. Which, according to realfastblacks. co.uk, might be entertaining because the screens, positioned two inches from their bonces, emit deadly radiation.

So apart from cabbie's heads frying, what else will we be watching? Adverts on the dangers of passive smoking? Or standard Scottish short film fare where the plots usually revolve round abused-but-plucky kids, drunk fathers, football and homeless junkies - with hilarious results. But since there's no off switch, expect a rise in sales of marker pens, handy for defacing some of our lesser-known actors. Call it Scotland's version of CGI.

Nice one, Ken. You excel at writing pie-in-the-sky policies, but by handing large wads of cash to Skillset and TV all you're doing is admitting your agency doesn't have the chops to train people or decide what a good film is. By going all out to attract Hollywood rather than support local filmmakers, you're writing us out of the script and like that other ex-pat, Tony Blair, selling us out to save your own skin. The only paperwork that could ever lure the big bananas here is the folding, spendable kind - but sadly Scottish Screen's coffers aren't deep enough to pay for Harvey's lunch, let alone co-invest in a major movie.

To claim that playing host to Hollywood will create lots of jobs is baloney. Go tell it to imported filmmaker Sylvan Chomet, whose Edinburgh-based animation company (heavily subbed locally and by Universal) this week closed its doors. Looks like it's not just Scottish filmmakers getting on their bikes. At least we'll be saving on taxis...