Kicking wasps

Went scouting locations for ‘Mum and Dad’ today. Looked at four places in Sherwood and West Bridgford, all of which had something about them – good bedrooms, good kitchen, great living-room – but unfortunately not together in the same house. Emma, our location scout, is working really hard and seems to think that we’ll get somewhere soon, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed – ideally we’d like to get one location to serve for the bulk of the film, rather than have to try and piece the house together from different parts around the city, but the closer it gets to the shoot date, the more ready we’ll have to be to think about maybe doing just that.

Lisa had a meeting yesterday with Film London and Em-media and it looks like we’re going to get some money by the end of next week. She also said that they had signed off on the script – although both Sol from FL and Lizzie from EMM had the same note about one of the characters that they’d like me to look at (so signed off, but not quite…). At first I bridled – worrying about putting things into the script that might start opening things up and potentially causing more problems, (like kicking a wasp nest or something) – but then I just realised that I what I was actually worrying about was the prospect of trying to find the time (and headspace) to think about writing in the middle of doing everything else.

So, kicking myself up the arse, I sat down today (in between locations) and had a go at adding some more nuance to the script – attempting to flesh out the back story of this particular character, without impacting too much on what’s already there. I basically changed three scenes, adding a bit of dialogue for Dad, a horrible kissing moment and a suggestive bit of action in the Terrible Room At The Top Of The Stairs. I’ve sent it to Lisa (as my monitor for the Wrongness Quotient in the film) to see what she thinks.

Also yesterday, I appeared (live!) on the radio to talk about horror. It was Radio Nottingham, 9 in the morning, alongside Paul Welsh from Em-media (who assures me that I’ve misjudged him in suggesting that he’s not a horror fan…). It was only a quick thing – 20 minutes or so, with records and phone-ins (“That was Peter Cetera, ‘The Glory of Love” – and now it’s over to Gillian from Wollaton…”). I got to plug ‘Mum and Dad’ (although when I mentioned it was about a brutal and perverse family torturing and killing people at the end of a runway, the presenter’s eyes seemed to flash a little with concern for his audience…) and Mayhem, so I guess it was worth doing.

Over in another part of the world…Jeanie’s film 'Teenland' has just had its premiere at the Big Sky documentary festival in Missoula, Montana. Jeanie’s gone over there for the week (stopping off in a snowbound New York on the way), and is documenting it on her blog.
It’s great that ‘Teenland’’s finally getting out there – it seems like ages ago that we shot it. She also had a couple of meetings about her next film, which is in development at the moment and is due to start pretty much when I’m scheduled to be finishing ‘Mum and Dad’. Hopefully, I’ll get to work on it – then at least we’ll get to see each other this year…

Poundslayers (?)

I’ve spent the past couple of days in London on M+D business – meeting up with our casting agent, production designer, sfx designer and others. Because everything’s up in the air – we don’t have a definite cast, location or half the crew yet – there’s a limited amount I can actually say about what went on. At the moment, clouds of possibilities are swirling, mingling and dividing above mine and Lisa’s heads, and we really need to start nailing things down. Lisa’s working really hard to stick to our (terrifyingly tight) schedule, and we’re both having to zip back and forth between London and Nottingham (I might as well just give Midland Mainline my bank account details at the moment – despite hovering over the edge of starting production, we still haven’t actually been given any money by the funders (story of my fucking life, apparently…) so everything’s coming out of our pockets…)

To distract myself from having to think about things that terrify me (like how to shoot the film and who to get in it), and to leave Lisa in peace for a while, I scouted round Camden for an hour or two – and managed to pick up some bargains. First off, for £1.99, I got a DVD copy of Don Coscarelli’s ‘Phantasm’, which I’ve never actually seen before (and which means that sometime in the future, I can actually get to watch ‘Phantasm II, which I bought a few years ago, and which I’ve held off from watching due to a kind of geek OCD which demands that you don’t’ watcht the sequel before the orginal), then, in a discount and remainder bookstore, I picked up a digest-sized compiliation of early Stan Lee/Jack Kirby ‘Fantastic Four’ issues for 99p. Featuring not only the FF themselves, but early appearances by the Black Panther, the Inhumans, the Silver Surfer and Doctor Doom, it’s great stuff, filled with classic Kirby panels like this:

BOK! Indeed.

Finally, in a charity shop, I found this:

Yup, a big box Hong Kong VHS copy of Stuart ‘Re-animator’ Gordon’s H.P. Lovecraft adaptation ‘From Beyond’, complete with HK Chinese subtitles, for 99p.

The discovery of 'Street Trash" – again in classic big box VHS style – has led me to try and seek out more retro thrills (unlike Cooke, who seems to have spent the Eighties locked in a flat watching ‘video nasties’ over and over again until they became permanently etched onto the craggy terrain of his psyche, I feel like I missed out on a lot of stuff, through being at university and reading loads of books which I now can’t remember.) Maybe I’ll try and make it a regular feature – ‘99p reviews’ or ‘Poundslayers’ or something.

It means I might finally get round to watching another BBVHS which I bought years ago and which has been decorating my office ever since – a reminder that David Cronenberg wasn’t always sold as the cerebral, arty, thinking-person’s horror director.

It's like someone described the film to the artist using semaphore across a foggy lake or something. What I especially like is the appearance, in the bottom left hand corner, of a bayonet. Just in case the rifles, shotgun and flamethrower fail to do the job, I guess...

Mayhem Awakening!

Just a quick bit of self-promotion on two counts - 'Awake' the film we shot in the Lake District last summer is being shown tomorrow night as a supporting short for the Korean monster movie 'The Host', as part of the Gala Weekend to celebrate the move of Derby's Metro Cinema to the Heap Lecture Theatre at the University of Derby. We got asked by Sally who works at the Metro to provide a 'Mayhem' short, and because we've pretty much shown everything from the past two years in Derby already, Cooke suggested we put on 'Awake'. I'm quite happy for it to go on - even though the sound mix could do with some work... - because I think it would be good to get an idea of how it works for an audience, and also, with my 'Mayhem' hat on, I think it's good to have new films to present, to get people regarding 'Mayhem' as a source of new local, national and international horror. Myself and Gareth are going to try and get over there tomorrow night, and maybe do a bit of promotion (well, talking to people in the bar) for the next upcoming event - 'Mayhem 3', which we really have got to do something about planning, seeing as it's bloody February already...