Lionel, the writer, turns up at around midday and we drive into the Hertfordshire countryside seeking the ideal village. The ideal village will have parking for our crew and equipment van, a village shop where a sports car can pull up outside, space in front of the shop for our hero to walk a dozen paces from the car to the entrance and various photogenic qualities.

Eventually we end up in Aldbury. Aldbury is the ubiquitous Hertfordshire village. It has a pond in the middle with some medieval stocks to one side, a couple of pubs, a tea room, a picturesque church and town hall–and a ton of tourists. Yes, Aldbury is one of *the* destinations for day-trippers coming out this way, so it’s always packed. That’s the major drawback.

Apart from that, everything else is a plus, so we stop to drink Badger’s IPA in one of the pubs. The sun shines, birds sing. Life is good. I go through the script with Lionel telling him I’m less interested in shots of the car than in developing the characters with the actors. That means the village, our primary location, is more important than finding picturesque country lanes.

Reading through the script a bit more, I realise we’ll need quite a few graphic design elements. Forms, a poster, a magazine cover, closing credits. Lionel says he can do all of these on the Mac, so that’s sorted and I go to have a look to see if I can frame a shot of the country lane through the old stocks. Perfect. We drive onwards to Tring to look for a nice police station exterior.

On the way, we pass Pendley Court Theatre. “We should stop there,” I suggest. “They probably have a ticket office or something we could dress up as the police station interior. And as they do amateur dramatics they might be sympathetic to us making a film.” Lionel says, “Good idea.” and we resolve to come back that way.

We also pass Tring railway station, which means London based actors and crew can get there really easily. Bonus. But once in Tring, when we eventually locate the police station, the exterior is rather bland and there’s nowhere to park a car. Especially for an overnight period when I want to do a time lapse sequence. No good. So we head back to the theatre.

The theatre is locked but looking through the window we can see the lobby is absolutely ideal for what’s needed. The doors are locked but I can dig out a phone number and contact them later. It also looks like we might be able to dress the outside a bit to make it look like a police station exterior too. If that’s possible, I think we’re in business. Show business.

Back home, I complete casting by phoning an actress friend of many years, Sarah, who jumps at the chance. “It’s funny you should call,” she says, “I’ve been doing loads of film and television recently.” I remind her of the ghost stories we made years ago and we crack up laughing. “Send me a script,” she says, “I’m up for it.”

So far, so good. Next I need to call Anela, the production designer, and try to find some 16mm stock at a ridiculously cheap price. Oh, and a camera. Must have a camera. Pendley Theatre’s contact is away until Friday, which comes as no surprise, does it? Now, where’s my producer?

The saga continues for this new production, The Car. I placed an advert in the New Producer’s Alliance newsletter last week to try to get someone else to do the production work–basically making sure everything cast, crew, props, equipment, etc is in the right place at the right time for filming. The newsletter doesn’t come out until September, though, and I’ll actually be away when it does so that’s not very helpful.

I call around to cast actors I want rather than trying the writers’ suggestion, “Let’s get big names!” Yeah, right guys. And who is going to do this? You? You are actually going to make the calls and find the people? Let me guess. Hmmm. I’m thinking perchance no. They mean well and I love them to bits but I just don’t think it will happen.

So I brush that aside, ask them pretty please if they could sort out some kind of catering and call an actor who I think is really great, Blair Plant, formerly of Hull Truck Theatre Co and who regularly appears on TV. I ask him if he’d like to play the lead role of Charlie. He sounds interested so I email him a script. Then I call Jack Wood who was Fate in Fate & Fortune. He also sounds interested so a script is posted to him.

That leaves me two actors to find and I start realising that some of these people are going to want expenses. That means that I need to keep their days down to a minimum in order to keep my non-existent budget down. I call Lyn Fernee who appeared as a clubber in Last Train and would have been the lead actress but for her height. Answering machine. I leave a message.

Finally I dig around and come up with the name ‘Dorrie’ for the sweet old lady character. She was in a commercial I shot about six years ago appearing as a sweet old lady. Typecasting, I know. The commercial was never shown because the two proprietors of the computer company, which operated from a cubby hole in a cubicle farm, vanished into thin air with a lot of their clients’ money.

After some enquiries, Dorrie turns out to be Doreen Steward and I find I have her phone number so I ring. She’s there. I remind her who I am and she remembers, which is good, so I tell her what I’m planning. “Let me guess,” she says, “you’d like me to play the part of a little old lady.” I admit that, yes, it is something like that. “Well, I haven’t acted for a long time, you know,” she warns me. “I’ve been directing theatre for the past thirty years and I don’t really appear. I’m not sure I can learn lines.”

Having assured Dorrie that she won’t actually have any lines, I feel like this is a winner and I put a script in an envelope for her. I remember something in the back of my mind about Andy, the DoP, hating the Company of Ten–the theatre group Dorrie is part of–and make a mental note to tell him to keep his big mouth shut. If I use him. Which I’m not sure I will.

Finally, I get hold of Sandhya, the clapper-loader, and she good-humouredly agrees to join the crew, “As long as I’m not doing anything else.” Like paid work. This isn’t totally helpful as it’s not a total commitment, but it’s a start and another script is dispatched. Pete, my photographer buddy, promises to ask his cousin–who works at a Porsche dealership–for a flash car for us to use and I feel like I’m making progress.

Next thing I need: location location location. Wednesday is pencilled in for recce’s. More soon.

Ascalon Films’ next project, The Car, a ten minute comedy, is now officially out of development and into preproduction. Shooting will be three days in the first week of October. Format will probably be 16mm although I might try digital video if I can get hold of a camera at a reasonable rate (free would be nice).

So far, the writers, the editor and the production designer have been informed, with the latest draft of the script in the hands of each. Next up will be finding a DoP, then casting, crewing and location hunting. Oh, and finding a yellow convertable Porsche which we’ll also need for some pre-production shots in various locations.

Most important person to find, however, is a reliable producer who can organise everything and everyone to get the right places at the right times while I concentrate on the artistic side. That’s going to be tricky.

The madness continues. Everyone who’s read the new script so far likes it, so that’s a good start. Maybe I should have done that with the first two films. You live and learn.

Meanwhile, I wait for my friend and collaborator, Jaffa, to send me a French translation of Fate & Fortune for submitting to the Clermont-Ferrand festival. I wait. And I wait…

Clermont-Ferrand is the short film equivalent of the Cannes International Film Festival (apparently) so after wrestling with the new cable modem (it conceded after two falls and a body slam), I managed to register Fate & Fortune on their website today. Now the drawback: they want the script in French.

So far I’ve managed to get as far as Destin et Fortune for the title and a poorly translated synopsis: Destin et Fortune est un comédie foncé et magique au sujet du futility de l’avarice. Destin apparaît d’un homme âgé moyen et la femme au foyer Marge Tucker devient son instrument inconscient mortel, hanté avec sa nouvelle voiture brillante.

Anyone wants to help with the translation of the 15 pages of script, please feel free to drop me a line.

****

Next up, I have two short film scripts pretty much ready to shoot and an idea for a thirty second short. The Goober Script boys (that’s what they want to call themselves, who am I to argue) are happy with the edits I’ve made to The Car so that can go ahead and I’ve applied for a grant for Strawberries to be shot on 16mm.

I’m thinking of shooting The Car on video and getting it finished on film. I’ve no idea what that would look like. There’s a website which promises they can grade it, computer enhance it and print it out on 35mm to look perfect if it’s shot on DV. That would reduce the cost to around a third (ie. approx £3,500 instead of £10k). Sounds attractive.

So, wisely or unwisely, I’ve booked a week’s leave in October and that should be the time for shooting. Once I start casting and crewing, that’s it. No turning back. Stay tuned…

****

I’ll tell you what’s weird. About five minutes after I wrote the message above, the phone went and it was the director of photography from Last Train. You decide to make a film and five minutes later, a cinematographer rings you. That’s weird.

July is hot. She turns a sultry curve midway through her journey, slinks winks a longlashed eye over her shoulder and moves relentlessly in mesmerizing slow steps.

July never breaks sweat. But you do. You burn. You feel the temperature grinding at you while you show that inane rictus show of teeth for the neighbours and head off to work da treadmill for da man. July knows. She knows it’s easier to bitch about workin’ for da man than relax, relax completely, surrender to the moment, give in to the Now and maybe anticipate the innocent charms of August.

****

So off you go to your interview, black jeans and grey jacket getting ahead of casual but just a bit behind smart. Comfortable enough to feel like you’re not doing this one for da man. Personally I felt the interview went really well. These always start strangely at the BBC and this one was no exception. They kept me waiting 45 minutes and were a bit stoney faced to start with but they thawed after a few minutes and were actually laughing at some of my humour by the end. I took this as a good sign.

Questions questions. Why do you want this position? What can you offer? When have you dealt with discipline? What’s one of your highest achievements? Tell us about your most recent film. I’d been to the Big Website Of Standard Interview Questions so I was ready. I talked a good talk and they said they’d be phoning people the next week. That was two weeks ago. It seems they were talking the other kind of talk.

Well then, it looks as if someone else got that position then. Rats. However, I dropped the interviewers an email this morning saying thanks for the meet and volunteering to help out some other way because it’s such a good project teaching kids aged 13-19 the skills of film makingething I’ve done many times before while making a series of programmes for terrestrial TV. As it happens, I’ve actually been a volunteer with this particular project for the past year as an Expert Advisor. Which looks very good on my CV.

****

July, of course, has done all this before. Year after year after year. Frying brains and making people sweat. She knows you’ll never surrender but she’s still got to challenge you because a peaceful existence isn’t part of the Faustian pact you made before you were born. It’s in your nature to fight the treadmill until it makes you drop and finally realise the workhouse ethic got overlaid on meshed in with your struggling soul’s perception of the world, conditioning you. Once you realise that, you’ll be ready to move on, into fall with a spring in you step. But not yet. First there’s a grant application to do.

****

You repeatedly phone Eastern Screen to try to talk to the production person about drawing up a distribution strategy. Brrrrrringgg! Everything else is done. Brrrrrringgg! The script is now reasonable, you have a treatment drawn up and you’ve costed out the whole thing in Excel. Brrrringgg! In the valley of the previously done budget, the cut and paste spreadsheet is king. You’ve got a budget for production on 16mm, postproduction on DigiBeta and a 35mm film print. There’s even a budget for distribution and marketing. Ah yes, distribution and marketing…

The distribution strategy. You cobble together a rough plan and then more or less forget about it. Or you would if you didn’t already have two 35mm prints sitting around waiting for an audience, recognition and cult followings. One flies round the world under the power of dozens of festival applications while the other sits on your staircase. It sits there as blissfully ignorant and just as pushed back as the distribution thoughts at the back of your mind, the nagging reminders almost buried by the research for your job interview.

But then, suddenly somehow it’s the job interview research that makes it happen when your surfing takes you to the British Film Institute website.

****

July still has things to show you. Many things. She has the wisdom of years of experience while August, dear sweet young thing, she’s ignorant. Tomorrow’s promise to be born into more naivete than yesterday could have ever imagined. But that is a world yet to be. Right now behind you a choir of heavenly voices breaks into song as the BFI hands you a free guide to distribution and marketing which you download and print out, 84 pages of invaluable insights and contacts at zero cost on da man’s laser printer.

****

Thus it comes to pass, dear reader, that I have a distribution strategy. It takes some checking some of the information is out of date but much of it is good. Highlights include what materials to prepare in advance for distribution, most of which I knew about, clearances, stills, synopsis and biographies, plus what to include in a press kit, which has been a mystery.

Then there’s the whole strategy. Stagger release dates and use embargoes to maximise revenue from each platform before moving the film to the next showcasetivals first, then theatres, pay television, video and finally free television. Yes, I kind of knew this too, but it focusses the mind.

When it comes to finding theatric venues for a short, the bfi book had info about sales agents (who haven’t got back to me), independent distributors (hooray!), independent threatres in the UK, the National and Regional Film Theatres (hooray!), and film societies00 groups in Britain all working along the lines of the Lost Film Festival. The bfi’s list of important festivals for shorts turned out to have a few red herrings (eg. Toronto doesn’t show shorts made outside Canada), but easily verified.

So, I have a strategy written up and ready to roll. I plan to use some of this information to get Last Train and Fate & Fortune shown, so I already started making calls. As usual it turns out that imdb is an invaluable resource and there’s also the Film Distributors Association who have a miserable snotty man who deigns to answer their phone and condescends to give me their unguessable web address . But now I have it. There it is. And I’ve also got a contact for the body representing all those 300 film societies. Glory be.

****

I swivel on the chair and reflect. Time passes and… Brrrrrinnnggg! I eventually get through to Eastern Screen who further verify my facts. The Lux has gone into receivership which means I have to change the line which says where I’ll be hiring a cheap camera but another phone call reveals they’re still going to be doing some distribution.

I take time out to meet my production designer and the characters become more real in my mind as we discuss the look of this project. I come up with a funny idea for a micro-short to use the three minutes worth of stock in my fridge and throw the rest of my thoughts into the grant form ready to go tomorrow. Another day, another five thousand. Can it really be this much work and yet this simple? Of course it is.

****

July blinks in wonder at my ability to make the world turn through sheer willpower and all the time August sits there, beckoning me on. Ahh, August. Boy, is she in for a surprise. But not half the surprise September is going to get.

Sleep. Sleep sleep sleep. I’m currently working a 60-hour week. Yes, of course, there’s some slacking in there but once you add in all the travelling time, 60 hours pretty much covers it. Two days of that is overtime. I need the money. Boy, do I need the money. Entering a film festival in the USA costs $30-40 and in the past month I’ve entered about 50, so do the math.

Those entry fees don’t include tape duplicating, by the way. Nor do they include postage. That’s just the entry fees which are bleeding my bank account white. Oh, and interesting fact: pretty much nowhere else on the planet actually charges an entry fee to be considered for a film festival. That’s right. And, yes, it’s to ‘be considered’ as opposed to be shown. Most of these festivals will only show ten percent of the entries.

Maui, for instance, wrote me an email this week all the way from the Pacific to say, Pacifically, that they’re only showing 64 of the 600 entries they’ve received and mine wasn’t Pacifically one of them. That’s 600 multiplied by $30. Yes, 18000USD, for sitting watching other people’s films. Not the money from entry fees which you need to run the festival. Hmmm. I’ve been thinking about this business idea where I run a film festival in the USA. Aloha moolah!

Despite that, in the past week I’ve managed to go to something called Filmstock–a local film festival, three rail stations up the line, ten minutes distant–and taken in two dozen short films made by peers I’ve never met in four sessions over two days. They were really good. I’ve also seen Some Like It Hot on the big screen on Monday, Unfaithful (Richard Gere/Diane Lane) Tuesday, and Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire/Kirsten Dunst) yesterday.

Yesterday, Thursday was my day off. And I slept. Boy, did I sleep. I could have slept for Britain. The neighbours don’t know if I’m in or out which I think is a good thing. When I finally did surface, it was some time in the afternoon which I initially spent productively shoving videotapes into envelopes and getting them down to the post office for the cast and crew of Fate & Fortune. Then I had my Spider-Man fix at the local multiplex.

*****

Spider-Man actually lives up to the hype, I think. But then I’m the target audience. I *was* that geeky kid at school who drew superheroes in his text book and secretly loved the girl next door. Of course I didn’t have any super powers and Hemel Hempstead (let’s call it Hem-Hell, shall we?) only had one large tower block, so swinging on a thread was out of the question. Nevertheless I could relate to Spider-Man.

You know, what’s really pleasing (and I won’t review it here but just a word) is you can see that Stan ‘the man’ Lee has been consulted and respected throughout the production. Peter Parker is insecure, Spidey wisecracks and there’s a humanity there which only the Marvel comics really ever achieved. In the end, he’s a true hero, even if it is a comic book hero. He makes hard choices and you see him struggle to live up to his ideal of who he should be. That’s why he’s the best.

*****

So, I see Spider-Man and it brings a lump to my throat, partly borne of nostalgia, partly because the movie actually does have some emotional depth. And I figure, I’ve worked hard, I’ve played hard, I deserve a lift. I deserve steak. So I go shopping and I find prime steak, a potato I can bake and some broccoli. I also stock up on wine, in my usual clueless fashion–ie. go for the quality graphic design of the labels and look for the shelves which are almost sold out.

At the checkout they question the validity of my American Express card because the signature is nearly worn out and we have this scenario with coupons and airmiles vouchers which I eventually win. I buy a lottery ticket on the way out too. This is something I never do. I’ve played the lottery twice in my life, in fact, but I was sent a piece of turquoise on Tuesday and there was this clairvoyant said I should buy a lotto ticket two days after someone gave me a piece of turquoise…

You can see I’m not going to get rich quick, can’t you? Maybe I should also confess to buying Telewest (LSE: TWT) at £4.50, then again at £2.50, £1.20, 60p, 20p and lately 12p. I compulsively check the latest price. They’re currently worth 4.5p and going down the U-bend. It’s not my whole portfolio, you’ll be relieved to know, but an expensive lesson–don’t buy a company so deep in debt it can’t trade out and which has already realised it’s potential value when the previous owners sold it. Several times.

*****

Back home I eat steak and drink fine wine. It is good. Life is good. I look at the redraft of my new script for Strawberries and decide again that it’s ready to start shooting, perhaps in September. I send copies out to people and think that I really need a producer and a production designer. I call my friend Paul and tell him I’d like him to sculpt a chess set to look like fruit and he makes these gargling choking noises. “Do you know how long that will take?” he asks. No, why would I? “I’ll think about it,” he says, eventually. Good.

I’ll think about it too. Meanwhile, it’s time to pass out. The night has reached the incredible hour of 10pm and there’s work the next day. The emails stack up, the boards go unread, the cooker, fridge and various appliances disappear under piles of correspondence and paperwork in the kitchen. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

==================================

June 15th

I buy a lottery ticket on the way out too. This is something I never do. I’ve played the lottery twice in my life, in fact, but I was sent a piece of turquoise on Tuesday and there was this clairvoyant said I should buy a lotto ticket two days after someone gave me a piece of turquoise…

Now you’re all sitting there wondering if this actually came to anything. The funny thing is that I got a cheque through the post this morning for £100 from a club lottery I have been doing every month for some time but had forgotten about because the money goes straight out of my bank account. That’s right. Yes. And yes. I won!

To coincide with that I got an invitation from the director’s guild to go on a one-day workshop with the New Producers’ Alliance at BAFTA this coming Friday. It’s something called Zentropa Film Day and is being run by a group of auspicious Danish film makers, including some of the people who worked on Dancer in the Dark.

As luck would have it, I’m not actually working on Friday, so my lottery winnings are almost immediately spent. There’s some technical talk, a chance to network and a one hour session where we can openly pitch ideas at the Zentropa CEO. I wonder what he’d think if I suggested my feature idea for a group of immortals living under a university town in the industrial north of England?

Best hope for the day, anyway, is that I might bump into a producer at the NPA who can help with Strawberries. Meanwhile, I still haven’t checked tonight’s national lottery numbers so I go and have a look. I’ve won £10–my money back. Life, as I said before, is good.

*****

Talking of money, on Friday I discovered that there’s a pool of money being offered by the London Production Fund for shorts. The deadline for applications was 5pm Friday evening. I phoned them. They said, “The office closes at five. We won’t be looking at anything until Monday. There’s a letterbox.” I don’t need a bigger hint.

The script is done. Tonight I’ve drafted a budget, which I might bump up a little, but not too much, so that we can have decent catering and a good set of prime lenses. I particularly want a long telephoto to shoot with, something that was sadly lacking in both camera kits on Last Train and Fate & Fortune.

Applications also have to include a synopsis and a one or two page treatment–“It must describe and evoke the work you are proposing to make”–ie. the cutting style, camera angles, filters, lighting, style and suchlike. They also want a career summary–I kick myself for not updating my resumé two weeks ago–and then they want my marketing and distribution plans.

Hang on.

Marketing and distribution plans. For a short? Who are they kidding? I’ve sketched out a budget for video copying, festival entries and publicity material. I trust that’s the sort of thing they mean. It comes to around £5,000. Shooting on 16mm and editing to finish on DigiBeta comes to roughly the same amount, with another £2k if I want to have a 16mm print made.

Yep, marketing is half the budget.

*******

Well, marketing might be half the budget, but production design is a huge percentage of the look. On Last Train I did my own design work. On Fate & Fortune I worked with an art director, a graphic designer and Jaffa did a lot of property construction. The DoP and I knocked heads together to get very specific locations and vehicles. Next time, on Strawberries, I want a designer to take on getting all those things done.

Last month I bumped into the sound editor from Last Train at the Production Show in London, as mentioned previously on this board. Also mentioned previously, I found out she studied textile design and fashion and is keen to take on the role of production designer, so yesterday I spoke to her and sent her a script. We shall see.

*******

Getting there, gradually. Maybe I’ll get sleep on Monday. In the meantime I just keep thinking. Yes. Getting there.

One. Bit. At. A. Time.

==============================

June 16th

Talking of money, on Friday I discovered that there’s a pool of money being offered by the London Production Fund for shorts. The deadline for applications was 5pm Friday evening. I phoned them. They said, “The office closes at five. We won’t be looking at anything until Monday. There’s a letterbox.” I don’t need a bigger hint.

Application form – done
Synopsis – done
Treatment – done
Full Script – done
Budget – done
Schedule – done (rough)
Career Summary – done
Exhibition & Distribution – done (kind of)
Supporting Material – done

Checked with Whatever Pictures. They aren’t applying and I can use their address, so that’s pretty much it. Now I have to find where this letterbox is, drive there tonight, then wait until September to find out if I’ve been successful in getting some hard cash…

===================================

June 22nd

got an invitation from the director’s guild to go on a one-day workshop with the New Producers’ Alliance at BAFTA this coming Friday. It’s something called Zentropa Film Day and is being run by a group of auspicious Danish film makers, including some of the people who worked on Dancer in the Dark.

Would you believe it? They cancelled it “due to unforeseen circumstances”. To round off this thread, I got another day off. Ha! It was spent watching England lose in the World Cup quarter finals, followed by napping, filling out three application forms for different directing jobs, talking to people on the phone, chasing up an application form to get funding from the National Lottery and, finally, going to the Lower Red.

More napping follows soon.

Last night was the special preview screening for Fate & Fortune at the Curzon Soho, a cinema in London’s West End. I’d sent out 500 postcards to cast and crew, industry contacts, friends and relations. I’d also emailed about 200 people I work with. I was seriously worried about being able to fit everyone into the theater. I needn’t have.

This week, for those of you in the twilight zone, is the beginning of the major festival of sport that is the World Cup. Football. The Beautiful Game. The sport of sports. Everything else is, as my mate Mike would say, “muggy bonehead.” I must ask him what that means.

Football. For three and a half years I’m blissfully ignorant of the ins and outs of football, then like so many others, I become an instant expert and follow every England match. Beckham, Owen, Seaman, Coles, Schole, Butt, Sheringham… Now household names.

All of which means most people are getting up early in the morning and have no intention of going out in the evening. Even to see my film. Add to that that this is also the week of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, which means a four day weekend which many have extended into a week off, and London is pretty quiet. So the worries about overfilling the Curzon became worries about getting anyone at all.

So… So about fifty or sixty people turned up, in all. Maybe even seventy. Yes, let’s call it seventy. Hoorah! And it was good. Most of the cast and a good number of the crew, along with their partners and buddies. Plus a lot of old friends including people I haven’t seen for many many years. Even one school friend I haven’t seen for nearly a decade. I didn’t spot any industry people but then there were a few faces I didn’t know who kind of slipped in at the last minute then slipped away afterwards. Mystery guests.

I stood up on the stage without a microphone (Nkako, the organiser, suddenly realised I’d probably want one and just as quickly realised it was too late to sort one out). I shouted a few words at the assembled dark hordes to introduce Fate & Fortune, thanked people for coming, briefly described what they were about to see and thanked them for coming again. There was a round of applause, which was nice.

Then the lights went even lower and the film rolled. I think the most pleasing thing is that people laughed in the places I thought were funny. Afterwards they applauded again and said they’d enjoyed it.

In fact, it got two reactions, generally, in the bar afterwards: “I thought it was really great.” and, “I enjoyed it but I wasn’t sure what it was all about.” Haha! I’ve made a cult-ish arthouse film, as I intended. Well, we can but hope. People also commented on how good the sound was and the excellent visuals. Not bad, considering I’ve seen it so many times that I’m now hypercritical of both.

A group of us went onwards to eat bland Chinese food in Wong Kei’s, around the corner in London’s Chinatown. Okay, the crispy duck was quite nice because the sauce had a flavour. Otherwise it was bland bland bland. Even something that tasted of chicken would have been a bonus. But they could seat 19 people at the drop of a hat and conjured up food and wine for us all for only £15 a head.

Oh, digressing even more but still talking of Chinatown, it’s growing, I noticed, spreading on to Shaftesbury Avenue more and more. And what are all these acupuncture parlours that have sprung up everywhere this year, like prickly mushrooms? I even saw one in St Albans this afternoon.

Eventually we escaped Wong Kei’s with our wallets fairly unscathed and went on to Bar One-O-One, under Centre Point, because it has a late licence. This is good. The drawback is that they play the music so loud that you have to practically scream at the person next to you to have a conversation. But they are open until 2am. That’s rare anywhere in England. Nevertheless, this afternoon, when I finally got up, my voice sounded gravelly from so much shouting.

Now I have a load more festival applications to send out, two scripts to work on–which scriptwriter Simon and I discussed and dissected at length yesterday afternoon. And everyone wants a video, so no rest for the wicked. Today, however, was spent watching England beat Argentina one-nil in a nailbiting ninety minutes followed by a brief trip into town to take the Memento DVD back to the library. The whole of St Albans seemed to be full of people in England football shirts singing and blowing the car horns. Football is here. Football football football.

Otherwise I think, films. Films films films. Everything else that’s not films is the real muggy bonehead. Including my hangover.

Get up at the crack of dawn and head into London. Arrive at the Curzon at 10.30. No one there. Go to McDonald’s and eat a cheeseburger for no particularly good reason. Go to newsagent and get a banana milkshake. Head back to Curzon which is now open and meet N’kako, the girl who’s apparently looking after my screening, and the projectionist, who takes my print. Add orange juice to the unsavory morning cocktail in my stomach.

After about ten minutes, the projectionist returns to say he’s ready and we head into the theatre. The lights go down, the curtains part and the film appears. Without sound. We call the projectionist on the internal phone. Ten minutes later sound appears. Slightly buzzy sound. The film is rewound, I get him to rack it down a bit so people’s heads aren’t cropped off at the top of the frame and we watch it. It’s cool, except for the buzzy sound. Very cool, in fact, regardless to see your film in the cinema!

Projectionist returns and tells us they’ve a problem with one of their amps which is being fixed tomorrow. They hang on to the print and I head for home. On the way I read some more of the seminal Peter Biskind book, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and think more about what kind of film maker I want to be. An artist auteur? A collaborative enabler? A seriously commercial mainstream moviemaker? It’s all up for grabs.

Home: I want to pass out. I’ve had about five hours sleep. But sleep, like failure, isn’t an option. I package up two videos for the Short Film Bureau acquisitions department then drive to the post office. From there, I head into St Albans and shed unwanted clothes (half a dozen shirts) at the charity shop plus some books unread for more than a decade. They’ll also find an inflatable pink bat in there which I didn’t tell them about. I’ve no idea where it came from, just that it’s extra baggage on life’s journey and I don’t need it.

I take out £20 cash from the ATM and stop at the stationers. Five pounds immediately vanishes purchasing padded envelopes for film festival submissions. Then the library where I return this week’s DVDs–Blow, which was fairly good and has brilliant extra material; La Malena, a wonderful coming-of-age Italian film which made me shed a tear near the end; and Dude, Where’s My Car?, which was every bit as dreadful as all the reviews said. In fact, it was worse. Consoling, though, that films with acting and dialogue more pitiful than anything I could imagine do actually get made.

On the shelf Memento sits, daring me to rent it. Another three pounds vanishes, then 30 pence for a chocolate bar and 70 pence for parking and my twenty pounds is nearly halved. I drive back home and nap for a couple of hours before taking a bath and heading back into London.

The Screenwriters Workshop is hosting a seminar about development funding. Nearly a hundred people are packed into a sweaty little room with fifties windowframes high in the white walls, a few posters and a framed print of Marlon Brando as Don Corleoni on the wall. I surmise that the screenwriters here would prefer the art of Coppola to the even more rampant commercial success of Lucas. Would that one could synthesize both.

Looking around the room, all ages and walks of life are represented on the plastic chairs or hanging on the walls. Potential competitors. Potential collaborators. We’ve paid £5/£7 each for this and they don’t actually have enough chairs. The chairman introduces a woman from the Film Council and everyone scribbles furious notes. There is money to be had, and lots of it. We all want it. Up to £10k for individuals to work on screenplays. Yes please. She mentions the currently underrepresented genres–thrillers, horror and sci-fi. I grin the grin of badness.

The chairman drones on about the ‘non-existent’ British film industry and has this big chip on his shoulder about the Hollywood studios. He clearly has no clue and obviously is a stranger to Biskind. The Film Council spokesman mentions something about how marvellous British television is and I roll my eyes. But I continue to take notes when the funding is mentioned. That’s all that matters.

Afterwards I wind up chatting to a guy called Darren in the bar. Darren is a writer who part owns a four bedroom house in London with his girlfriend and rents out the other rooms, which means he can write full-time without worrying too much. He’s currently working on a vampire story and has an agent touting his scripts around for him. I invite him to the Fate & Fortune screening. I’m embarrassed that I can’t actually afford to buy him a beer, even though they’re only £1.50 a bottle, but it turns out we’re both down to our last £2. We pay for ourselves. Such is the life of struggling artists.

I get home at around 1am and fall straight into bed, full of ideas but without the energy to make anything happen. I’m asleep before my head hits the pillow. Another day full of promise. It’s all good.

Last Train has been accepted for the Commonwealth Film Festival in Manchester (UK) on Saturday 6th July at 21:30 in something called the Chillers Programme, which sounds like it fits in really well. Anyone wants to go it will be playing at the Cornerhouse–a really cool arthouse cinema near the centre of the city.

The programme (which anyone planning on attending should double check) will be posted here:

http://www.commonwealthfilm.com

Yay me!

Two thousand postcards seemed like a really good idea at the time. Whatever Pictures has got a database of 600 names, I should be able to scoop up another couple of hundred or so and that means 2,000 cards should give me enough to do two mailshots.

Two thousand postcards in reality actually a carton the size of two shoeboxes. I’ve printed out several hundred labels with the details of the Fate & Fortune preview on June 6th and pulling them off the backing sheet, slapping them on the backs of cards is just as tedious as it sounds.

And this is before I’ve begun making labels to go on the other side with names and addresses of cast and crew, friends, agents, industry contacts and so on. A hundred or so of those.

And of course, Whatever’s database includes the name of every cast and crew member they’ve ever hired or worked with, many of whom will be irrelevant to me so tomorrow I have to go to their offices and trawl the database for what’s relevant instead of sleeping.

Two thousand postcards is a lot of postcards.