Bad Friends, Phantoms and The Boss

In conversation with Chris Cooke the other day, he was talking about a title for a film that he wishes he'd used - 'Bad Friend'. (Apparently, the actual film with that name is a horror about a man who orders a zombie off the internet). It sounds like a Cooke title, as the unreliability and often corrosive nature of friendship is one of the themes that often crops up in his scripts (speaking as his friend, yeah, that is weird and slightly discomfiting), so I told him he should just nick it. I mean, who's going to mind? It's not as though the original is that well known (and for that matter, there's at least four other films called 'One For The Road'...). 'Mum and Dad' got its title courtesy of me reading about 'The most notorious Exploitation/Sex Hygiene film ever made!', and just anglicizing it. I don't think that anyone's going to get the two confused (and I don't even mind the link to the other one - in fact, it just increases the exploitation element that I tried to get into the film).

I like thinking up titles - I can spend days doing it, sometimes longer (and sometimes still not get anywhere - some of my projects have been gestating for years, slouching slowly towards becoming scripts, and I still haven't got good titles for them - with others, I've got a great title, but precious little story to go with them.) I don't think that there's any real formula to it (although there's probably whole chapters in some scriptwriting manuals dedicated to finding the perfect title) - I guess it's more to do with finding something that has the right feel for the film.

The first horror short I made was called 'Autopsy' (although for a long time it was labouring under the distinctly underwhelming 'Phantoms' (which sounds like a terrible made-for-TV-drama, or a terrible conjunction between Dean R. Koontz and Ben Affleck). I think 'Autopsy' came about through reading an Alan Moore comic that listed the dictionary definition of the word as being both 'an examination and dissection of a dead body to determine cause of death' and 'Personal observation or examination; seeing with one's own eyes'. Because the film was about a woman investigating the death of her brother and being quite skeptical about the prospect of some supernatural force behind it, thus being propelled into a first-hand witnessing of it, it seemed to fit. Also, it had a more horror-filmy feel to it than the wet 'Phantoms'.

Next up was 'Cry' - and I think the film had the title pretty much from the off. In the orginal script, the film was going to feature the famous cursed 'Crying Boy' painting, kind of like this: (Note: there are very many different versions of the 'Crying Boy' painting, which was reputedly cursed, but I always had this one in mind because when I was a kid it used to hang over our stairwell at home and creep me out.) Anyway, despite the painting getting lost from the script, I still kept the motif and I liked the idea that the film would start and end with a cry. I didn't, at the time, realise that it sounded like a weak rip-off of 'Scream', probably one of the most famous horror films of the time, but there you go.

'Through A Vulture Eye' came from a line in Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart', which was a direct influence on the script, while 'Awake' was pretty self-explanatory within the context of the film, although even now I'm wishing that it had a more dynamic title.

'Deliver Me' was another one of those projects which didn't really have a proper title for quite a long time. I think I eventually got the title from, of all places, Bruce Springsteen (stay with me..) - I love the 'Nebraska' album and one of the lines that's featured in a couple of the songs is 'Deliver me from nowhere'. The line stuck in my head and one day it just butted up against a thought about faith healing and then it seemed to fit. It's not as though the essence of The Boss permeates the very fabric of the film - more like in listening to the album something hooked into the spot where I was thinking up the feel for the film. (My next film, a zombie massacre, is going to be called 'Wrap Your Legs Round These Velvet Rims and Strap Your Hands Across My Engines'...)

A title I always wanted to use, but never was able was 'Provisions For Survival In A World Less Fantastic'. I wrote a script with that name which got rejected from Cinema Extreme (alongside every other script I ever submitted to them, the fuckers), which was a story about a bloke having a mid-life crisis and going to live in the woods. The title itself comes from a line in a Thomas Pynchon book, 'Mason and Dixon'. I remember reading the line, liking it, memorising it and then never being able to find it again, so it's most probably misquoted (and I can't even go back and check - the book got mangled years ago, during my days as an usher, when I had an altercation with a boozed-up Spaniard (which was a bit less dramatic than I've just made it sound - I wasn't having a smackdown with El Cid or anything)). Although long titles are sometimes really pretentious and annoying (and possibly even so in this case), sometimes they feel right. (While searching for Cooke's 'Bad Friend' film on IMDB, I also came across the fantastically lengthy 1914 silent short 'The Fable of the Fellow Who Had a Friend Who Knew a Girl Who Had a Friend' (which already sounds like a contemporary Hollywood romcom, probably starring Ryan Reynolds and, making her screen debut, I dunno, Rihanna). The same writer also did 'The Fable of the Preacher Who Flew His Kite But Not Because He Wished to Do So', 'The Fable of the Kid Who Shifted His Ideals to Golf and Finally Became a Baseball Fan and Took the Only Known Cure' and 'The Fable of the Kittenish Super-Anns and the World-Weary Snipes' which sounds like a Joss Whedon series waiting to happen.)

Sometimes a title doesn't come to you even when you've finished the script. The last project I put in for Cinema Extreme (blah blah fuckers blah blah) was called 'Damaged' which was relevant to the story, but still sounded quite generic, and also awakes memories of the Jeremy Irons artfilmsexfest 'Damage' (which probably isn't good). I recently started tooling around with the project again, but still couldn't come up with a better title. Maybe it means it's not meant to be. Or maybe I just need to get The Boss on the case...

Deliver Mum?... Dadliver Me?...

I'm on a bit of a double-header at the moment - still finishing off 'Deliver Me' while going into pre-production on 'Mum and Dad'. Lisa came up today and we spent the morning being driven round by Dan from Em-media, who is helping us to try and sort out the main location for the film. It was just a preliminary scout round, really - we checked out certain areas in Nottingham - The Park, Arboretum, Mapperley Park, Lenton, Sherwood - where we might find a big empty house. We need somewhere that is usually described by estate agents as 'an investment opportunity' - i.e. somewhere that needs work doing. Ideally, somewhere that a property developer bought cheaply because it was in a state, then didn't get the chance to redevelop before the bottom fell out of the buy-to-let market and now it's like an albatross around their neck because they can't sell it, can't develop it and would be happy to let a film crew have it for a month for a nominal fee, just to make SOME money out of it....(Lisa suggested that we put a ad in the paper with words to that effect. Not sure if she was joking or not...). We found a couple of potentially interesting looking places - and even, purely by chance, got the chance to have a look round a place as the owner was there just as we drove past - it was mad - a former residential home in Mapperley with about 8 bedrooms and a layout like an Escher drawing. It was a really interesting place, but not ideal for us. Still, it was quite reassuring to think that there are at least potential places out there.

This afternoon we met up with Tina, who is going to work on the production side as well. Going through the list of what we need to do was both a little scary and quite reassuring - it's back to that thing of decision-making - the schedule requires us to have certain things in place at certain times, so we're forced to make decisions - for good or ill...But, like I've said before - once a decision's made, it's like a weight comes off, because you then don't have to (hopefully) make it again.

Time spent Not Knowing is the weight that settles most heavily on filmmakers, I think. For 'Deliver Me' we've been waiting to hear back from the execs over the past couple of weeks. We've had all our feedback now, but it felt like it took ages. (It sometimes feels like Exec Time is like dog years - for every week that passes in normal time, it's only an hour or so for them. Or something...) I know it's because they've got a lot of other things to do (mainly getting pissed on expense accounts at film festivals, I think...)(If any of my execs are reading this, I don't mean you) - but it's a really frustrating and anxious time because it means the film stops moving - and instead of you feeling like you're pushing it up a hill, it feels like you're just holding it in place, straining like a spindly-legged Sisyphus (yeah, that's right, highbrow Greek myth references now) or Wile E. Coyote (with an Acme Boulder-O-Matic 9000...).

Anyway, the feedback on 'Deliver Me' was mostly good - there's not a massive amount of re-editing to do, and a lot of it can be helped with the sound mix and edit - so hopefully, once a few changes are made, we should get the okay to go forward. I really want it all finished now, just so I can have that bit of brain back...

Building a new Empire

MyAnna Buring as Heather in 'Deliver Me'. Photo by Dan Hodgett.


It’s been a week since we delivered the edit of ‘Deliver Me’ and we’re still waiting for any official feedback – I did get a line in an email about it, but it’s hardly enough to go on for a fine cut. So, while that film floats about in Exec Viewing Limbo, I’ve had my head down finishing the first redraft of “Mum and Dad”. The script’s up to 90 pages now, with a handful of extra scenes added and some substantial revisions to existing sequences – although the basic structure and characters of the piece have remained the same. We had a really good chat with our script editor the last time we saw him, and he worked with me to bring out a lot of the relationships and back history of the family, a lot of which I’ve tried to get into this draft.

I finished the redraft on Tuesday and sent it off to ‘Mum and Dad”’s producer, Lisa Trnovski, who has been off on a commercial shoot for the past couple of weeks. We’re still waiting on contracts and money and stuff like that, so we can’t really get on with pre-production properly at the moment, although I’m hoping that’s all going to be resolved soon. I couldn’t take another situation like we had with ‘Deliver Me’ – waiting months and months for the whole thing to actually be confirmed.

As soon as I’d finished ‘Mum and Dad’ I went back to working on a new feature idea for a horror provisionally titled ‘Empire of Flesh’ (I know, it sounds a bit like one of those Japanese erotic art movies, or a Doris Wishman film…). On Wednesday, I met up with Caroline from Warp X and pitched it to her. It seemed to go well, and she’s interested in seeing an outline for it, so for the rest of this week I’ve been writing that up.

It’s weird, going from project to project to project like this – I always moan about it doing my head in, but in some ways I think it helps. Although you have to switch from one set of things – stories, characters, plots – to another, you’re still in the same space creatively – that is to say, the creative muscles that you employ for each of them are the same, so in a way it makes it easier to get up to speed quicker.

Also, it’s good to get this kind of work done when you’re in a kind of groove with it*, because there’s always that fear at the back of your mind that there’ll be other times where you won’t be able to come up with a single new idea. Strike while the iron’s hot, as they say.**

We’re going to aim to have another horror night tomorrow. Cooke got a good amount of horror-themed presents for Christmas – Kolchak and Masters of Horror box sets – so we’ll probably start in on some of those. He’s trying to persuade me to show the rough cut of ‘Deliver Me’ as well, but I’m not sure – horror nights are supposed to be enjoyable and relaxing and watching unfinished versions of your own work, even in front of your friends, isn’t exactly in that category. I think he just wants to check out his lighting on the big screen…

*No, I don’t know why I’ve started speaking like some 70s hipster, either
**Or a middle-aged dad.

Interlude

Had to take an enforced break from the edit suite today after the computer decided last thing last night to stop recognising the external drive, where we had all of our footage stored. For a brief half hour it seemed like we had lost the whole project - which would have meant starting again from scratch - but then Barbara managed to retrieve it. So, that meant that we had to spend today redigitising all of the footage back into the computer - basically losing a day out of the edit.

This came at the end of quite a difficult day anyway. We had our screening of the rough cut for our exec from Em-media Paul Welsh. He watched it twice through, then gave us some notes on where he thought the story wasn't working. Most of the points he identified were points we'd also talked about changing - but when we got into a discussion about the opening - with Paul insisting that it should do something which I'd never intended it to do - it felt like we were back into a morass of mutual miscommunication. I felt pissed off because he didn't seem to saying anything positive about the film, so I was in a crabby mood anyway, but trying to get my head round exactly what he was asking us to do just made it worse. By the end it just felt like we were a million miles apart in terms of how we're looking at the film. Which isn't good, really - you want people you're working with on a film to have a belief in what you're doing - and when you're editing it's quite a crucial time to get feedback that helps the project develop. It's just difficult if you feel - like I do - that what you're trying to make and what your expected to deliver are two different things.

Anyway, after all that it was almost a relief (albeit a relief thickly lined with intense stress) to have to take some time out today.

For a break, I started in again on 'Mum and Dad'. Up to now, I've been making notes for the redraft without actually getting back into the script again, but with this time available today I forced myself to sit down and give it a go. And, after a short period of mentally kicking myself up the arse, I found myself quickly getting back into it. By the end of the day I'd added about 7 or 8 new pages to the script, which was about the speed I was at when I writing the first draft. Of course, I'll have to go back and revise everything, and there's still a way to go, but all the way along with 'Mum and Dad', it's felt like it's flowed quite naturally. Maybe I've just been less precious about it because I've not had the time to think about it too much, or maybe it's because I can see the characters a bit more clearly than I usually can - whatever the reason, I hope it carries on that way.

Back in the edit suite tomorrow, so I'll have to switch my brain back to 'Deliver Me' again. We've got another viewing in the afternoon, so I'm going to try and get my head into a happy place in preparation. (Not to be confused with this. )