Celebrity Big Brother (UK)

These are all people who need the exposure to survive.

Tara Reid was a great young actress. But she chose being a celebrity over being an actor. Jedward are the product of Simon Cowell and were dropped by Sony after the first single. They got signed by Universal for a while but no-one cares. The record sales are poor and they don't matter. That's why they need to whore out to Big Brother.

Amy Childs got known for an idiotic TV show. After she got known she could have worked on some independent films but instead she posed for lads mags. And she could have got an acting coach but instead she got a boob job. So now she has to keep doing the reality shows because she needs the exposure. She's resigned to a life of gossip mags. But it's not even a life, it's two years, because then no-one cares.

Kerry Katona. Who? Nobody cares. I vaguely recall she was in a girl band. When you're in a band that teens love, you either commit to the music, like Hanson, or you work on producing great material like Beyonce. Kerry did neither, she just turned up on TV and did the celebrity thing.

The show is an embarrassing array of has-beens, parading around like a big orgy of plastic surgery.

No-one needs to be a has-been in this industry. There are ups and downs but if you hold onto yourself as a professional, you can continue to grow. The plastic, the reality shows, they add up to nothing. Sure, we sometimes watch, but it's the same way we slow down to look at car crashes.

There's always a deal being offered somewhere that will ebb away at your credibility, it'll suck away your individuality. I remember when I first saw Tara Reid in 'American Pie', I was in love. The voice was so sexy and she was a beautiful blonde dream. It meant something. But she didn't try to build a career like Michelle Pfeiffer or Kate Winslet, she went the other way.

And these weird celebrities may continue to turn up on reality shows and cooking programs for the next three or four years but it's only because the schedules need filling. After that it will fade because there'll be a new group with fresher fake tans and boob jobs.

If you want a career or longevity, be an artist. Be a worker. It takes longer but it also lasts longer.

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Film Directing: Final Cut Privilege

Every director wants final cut privilege. What this means is: they have control, the final say.

There is no certain way to make sure you have it unless you produce and fund your own work, otherwise, it's a struggle.

If you're a new and upcoming film director, the concern of producers will be that, due to your inexperience, they need to have the rights to the final edit in case you mess up or don't deliver a strong ending.

Paradoxically, the more financially successful you are as a director, the bigger the budget, the more responsibilities you carry. A studio won't want to spend a hundred million dollars and then let the director have complete freedom.

It's not uncommon to see extremely great debut feature films from writer/director's, who then go on to do uninspired big budget studio films. Often, this is because they have lost the freedom, the control. The decisions are made by producers, studio heads and focus group data.

Because who should control a film? Easy for us to say "the director!". But it's the producer who gets sued if the film doesn't get delivered. It's the investors who lose out if the film is unwatchable. Even when you give a great director the final cut, he won't always make 'Annie Hall'. Sometimes you'll get 'Cassandra's Dream'.

That's why the new crop of director's cut their teeth on low-budget short films. They learn the craft and build up a body of work to prove they know what they're doing. It's a producer's job to know what sells but it's a director's job to know what resonates. You just need to decide what kind of project yours is.

If you're directing a small independent film, you need to do everything you can to ensure you have the final cut privileges. It's your attempt at telling a story, it's your vision. No producer or investor could ever know how to nail your vision. You need to hold onto it at all costs and get it in the contract. That's why the festivals and awards and YouTube 'likes' are important, they prove your talent, your understanding, your ability.

You need to build a reputation as an artist. Never go over budget, and confidently stand by your vision, otherwise you'll get eaten. Then again, the truth is that the vast majority of films aren't art, they're product. If that's where you're going, then don't worry about final cut, you'll certainly have an easier time getting hired. But you may never get to make 'Annie Hall'.

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The Kid In The Front Row Manifesto

"It's not a memo, it's a mission statement." -J.M.

You don't even know what you're going to create yet, you have no idea what you're capable of. Your first screenplay or your fifth might be great, but what about your nineteenth? We have no idea. When Woody Allen was writing stand up routines for comics, he didn't know he'd write 'Hannah And Her Sisters' or 'Crimes and Misdemeanours.' That was twenty five years later.

You don't even know who you'll meet this weekend. You don't know what problems you'll overcome in the next ten years. You don't know what your favourite film of the next five years will be. Who knows what will inspire us? Who knows who our future muses will be? We often worry about not getting the gig or not being good enough-- but we're worrying about projects and jobs that don't even exist yet.

The world is changing and the world is getting smaller. There are thousands of people out there who love the things you love. And there are writers and actors and directors and camera operators and make up artists scattered all around the world who you don't know yet. But you will. Who knows what the future will bring.

There are no rules. We live in the generation that invented Facebook, that developed YouTube, that made the studio execs a little less sure how big their pools are going to be in the coming years.

This is our time to get good. And if we suck, let's work at getting better. You used to need money and contacts to make a film. Now you need a video phone and a YouTube account.

We are the generation of Zuckerberg. Of Banksy. Of communicating in 140 characters. Anything is possible. Art has been getting its ass kicked for a long time. But things are different now. We can have voices again. It takes effort and its a choice we have to make. We need to decide on what we value.

On the one hand we have movie franchises where they remake Spiderman every four years because they know we're dumb enough to buy a ticket, we have short films made to promote chocolate bars, we have countless movies of girls running around in bikinis saying dumb bullshit in horror films that can only be called original because they have a different title to the ones that came before. We have the same thing we see every year because we've become numb to the notion of actually being challenged.

On the other hand, we have art. Personal expression. Standing up for what we believe, what we love. Nobody wanted to let Chaplin direct, nobody was comfortable with George Carlin's comedy, nobody loved that band you love when they started out; it was just their girlfriends and parents.

Art takes longer. And it's harder. And someone is more likely to fund a project about a cheerleader who went to blow-job school than your passion piece about an Israeli sandwich delivery driver who takes a road trip to Sweden to find his son. But if you follow through with it against all the odds, you get to be Bob Dylan, you get to be Godard. But more than all that you get to be yourself. You get to be a kid in the huge playground that is the unstoppable and ever surprising oasis of magic that is the human imagination.

Be art. Be yourself. Be a film that means more than the sum total of its opening weekend figures. Be Charlie Chaplin, be David Foster Wallace, be Joni Mitchell. If we don't do this, who will?

I meet, tweet, email and speak to SO MANY hugely talented writers, directors and actors every single day. But most of the time they're struggling, or pissed off, or going through a rut. It's because we're in an industry that doesn't care about us because the industry is about money, about making rich people richer. Good films don't cost $120million to make, and cinema tickets shouldn't be double or treble the minimum wage, and you shouldn't have to sell yourself out day after day in the hope that by the time you're 80 you'll get to do the projects you're really passionate about.

Lets take our ideas, our talents and our energy and let's find ways to work together, to create the projects that really matter. Its time.

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Thirteen

I was in the bakery near where I live today, buying some lunch - and got talking to the lady about film. I was asking if they'd consider catering for my next movie, because even when you're buying bread, you never stop thinking with your film hat on. So of course, I explained who I am and what I do - and she told me about her thirteen year old boy, and how he's been auditioning for acting jobs, and creating music; and doing all sorts of wonderful things.

And within two minutes and the buttering of a baguette -- she told me about how one minute she was young and wanted to see the world and the next minute she was working in a bakery for twenty years. And the boy is only thirteen but you can see she's hoping he's her ticket to see the world. She told me, quite touchingly, how more than anything she wants to make some money so she can take him to America. Because for her, that's where people like him will succeed.

But right now he's thirteen and he's got to figure out what he wants to do, without a heap of pressure on his shoulders. She said his music and acting could be terrible, what does she know, she's just his Mother. I said that his stuff probably is terrible but it's not what matters. Right now, he's thirteen. At sixteen he'll be better. I told her the thing I always tell Mother's of young talented people; I tell them how long it takes. I explain that "The X Factor" and "American Idol" are bullshit. They make it look like fame and success come after two minutes of talent and an audition. But that's not talent, that's a TV show and a bit of marketing. Real talent is spending your last penny on some bread and crying your eyes out because the nineteenth person in a row rejected you.

"The girl doesn't, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the 'curiosity' level." -Rejection Slip for 'The Diary Of Anne Frank'

Talent takes a long time. Nobody cared about John Wayne's early films. Nobody turned up to Steve Martin's stand-up gigs for eight years.

But you're not thirteen anymore. You're twenty two or twenty nine or fifty six and nobody is watching or reading or buying your stuff. Or six people are when you need fifty thousand to break even. It's stressful, right? And one side of your brain is telling you to give up and the other side is telling you to get an office job for two months even though you know you will probably kill all the staff there. Everyone is trying to work it out. And right now your best friend has a role on Broadway, and you're struggling. But next year you sell a screenplay and get interviewed on TV, and that friend who was on Broadway is back on Broadway but he's selling tickets at the discount booth.

Your talent, your ideas, your voice; they're in constant development. Take my blog for example --- sometimes I nail it, sometimes I send you to sleep. Sometimes you're inspired, sometimes you wish I'd shut up. But hopefully, I get better at it. And it keeps growing. One minute you have one follower, the next you have two hundred, and it keeps going. You start out with no followers partly because you've not written anything yet, and partly because you're not the best you'll be yet. It's a lifetime commitment. We're not getting rich, but that was never the dream. The dream was to be artists. And that shitty feeling you get when you fuck up an audition or when a producer laughs you out of the room or you post your new film on Youtube and only get 9 views--------- that's the journey. You get stronger each time you fail.

But the thirteen year old just plays and experiments; and we need to hold on to that essence. We need to be kids in the front row.

Won't you let me walk you home from school?
Won't you let me meet you at the pool?
Maybe Friday I can
Get tickets for the dance
And I'll take you.

-Big Star - Thirteen

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1%

"I'm writing about 'The Apartment' all week. problem is, it bores 99% of readers. The good thing? 1% love it. Never forget the 1%."

That was me, on Twitter two days ago. I'd never thought about that until I wrote it, but it's been playing on my side ever since. Blogging is like making a movie; you have an idea and then try and shape it into something that everyone will like.

But when you go chasing everyone, you don't truly grab anyone. But when you do what you truly want to do, even if it's for one person, that's when it means something. The problem is, when you do it for the 1%, there's not going to be a lot of support because it doesn't make a lot of business sense.

Film is about business. Every artist suffers. Even most great indie films have a rewritten beginning or a re-cut ending. We're always changing and adapting things to appeal to a bigger percentage. But when the percentage gets bigger, the true satisfaction gets smaller.

The stuff we truly and madly love is rarely the stuff that was made for everyone. You can cook yourself a perfect pie but if you're going to sell a lot of them, you need to package them differently; and you need a recipe that will appeal to everyone.

But that's the reality. That's the business. And we all cave. We take out the violent scene to get a lower rating, we hire the famous actor over the right actor to get the funding. By doing it-- we make a living. But we rarely make magic.

Magic is made when you do things for the 1%. It's just hard, is all.

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Branding & Marketing: Knowing Your Demographic

You can brand yourself a certain way. You can market yourself to the right people. You can focus on the right demographic. You can change things and make them more commercial. You can manipulate people and get their money. You can work out a strategy for the marketplace.

But please don't ever think any of those things are what it's really all about. They might get a kid to buy a ticket and stuff popcorn down his face, but it won't make him a Kid In The Front Row. 

A Kid In The Front Row is looking for a Jack Lemmon chuckle, or Buzz Lightyear Spanish dancing, or Jimmy Stewart throwing his hands up and promising to see the world, or Julia Roberts standing in front of a boy, or Paulie Bleeker laying on the hospital bed with Juno, or The Tramp smiling, or Red grinning in Shawshank. This stuff is of the heart. It's life! It's love! It's THE MOVIES! That's what inspires people! You got into this to inspire people!

You can try and brand yourself and market things correctly and sure, you might hit a cash jackpot. But it means nothing and it's temporary, it's last year's reality TV shows. Instead you can get into people's hearts one Kid In The Front Row at a time. It might just be your Aunt Martha and your friend Jack who find your work meaningful, but that means more to them than a well-marketed franchise is going to mean to anyone two years from now. That's what it's about: inspiring people. It's about building a career so that one day you can write something as simple as "Run Forrest, Run," or you can deliver a performance as iconic as when Samuel L. Jackson ate a tasty burger, or you can direct a scene as sweet as when Maguire had her at hello.

We gotta keep a hold of this drive. This essence. This is why we got up on stages when we were twelve, or hid in our rooms writing stories when everyone else was out socializing, it wasn't for no reason, and it sure as fuck wasn't so that we could pander to demographics and corporate branding.

Don't forget who you are, and what this means to you.

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A 2010 Bloggies Nomination, and Dreaming On A Bigger Scale.

I was never totally sure anybody would read this. But here you all are. And it's gotten me thinking and dreaming about the film industry. Let me try and explain without sounding completely insane.

This blog, Kid In The Front Row, has really been about me filling a gap I've found growing in recent years--- the gap of the story. The gap of the character with good intentions. The gap of writers who write through inspiration rather than set guidelines on how to sell a screenplay. I have been wanting, for a long time, a community of people who just want a good story, and who want to be inspired, and who want to write stories from their hearts. And it was then I figured, well I can try and start that myself. And that's what this blog was, and is, it's about finding Jimmy Stewart in the modern era. It's about writing from the heart again.

This blog is one of the five blogs nominated under the 'Best Entertainment Category' -- and of course, this is immensely exciting and unexpected for me - I never knew that people would be so interested in this. Through google followers and networkedblogs, this site has some great, active, readers-- not to mention the people on the film blogs groups and the lurkers who show up on my stats but I have no idea who you are. I'm glad you're here.

And the fact that this little blog where I ramble about Chaplin, and ramble about finding and nurturing creativity, the fact it's been nominated at all --- it gives me belief and hope that, on a wider, bigger scale, this is still what people want. And maybe, just maybe, on a big cinematic scale; maybe the return of Jimmy Stewart is near.

Okay, I don't actually mean the return of Jimmy Stewart. It's unlikely he'd be available and let's face it, he'd be worth a bigger paycheck than anyone else in Hollywood right now. But maybe people are yearning for a bit of heart and soul again. It's a tough one because upcoming writers are taught all these stringent guidelines now on what a film is, and what's marketable. But occasionally; someone ignores that and makes 'Once,' or 'Funny Ha Ha' or even 'Juno' - and it just hits you that, yes, this is what a movie should be about. This is why we love the movies.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm saying. I just know that I get some really wonderful emails from people and that people have gotten a lot from the interviews with professionals and from the inner-critic and writers block articles, and it's good to know that people do care - that they do love a good story and expression, it's not all about films like the one where Megan Fox's boobs flap about and big metal things collide with each other for hours.

Thank you for the nominations, and you can still vote for me for the next day or two to make me a finalist out of the five nominees in the 'Best Entertainment Category' http://2010.bloggies.com/. But bare in mind, if you do vote for me and I become a finalist, I will then ditch my love for cinema and instead become a fame-hungry, explosions-and-sex-scenes blogger, with predictable endings. You've been warned......

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In Search Of The Magic Formula For Screenwriting - Figuring Out What A Producer Or Studio Executive Wants

There's this weird thing that screenwriters have to go through - a battle between their natural instincts and pandering to what a studio/producer will want. And pretty soon, that wonderfully original idea about a piece of cabbage that invents a spaceship becomes... A standard rom-com about a 22 year old fashion designer. And the script never gets bought anyway, and the sad thing is that the idea about the cabbage never gets written.

I wonder, how much of this is based on the reality of the industry, and how much of it is based on this myth that's been built up? You feel it every time you watch an awful film - like at the end of 'Hancock' when Will Smith puts the heart thing on the moon, it just leaves you wanting to scream at how predictable and pathetic Hollywood can be. And you feel even worse about that idea you had, about the pensioner who who turns his bingo club into a terrorist training camp-- you tell yourself 'nobody will want this,' 'this won't sell.' and you're right.. But it's not because no-one likes the idea but because you never wrote the script.. Instead you wrote a film about an FBI man who tells the NYPD man "this isn't your jurisdiction." And the producer says "I don't like your FBI script, it has no imagination," and he's right.. Because instead of writing your passion piece, you anchored it to suit a bunch of producers and executives you've never met, who've never told you what they do and don't want. You're going on the basis of the big thing you just saw at the cinema where robots threw each other around, or based on what some script-reading-girl-turned-blogger told you to do.

For some people - this is fine. I've met many writers who just enjoy writing and then having meetings and going to lunch and redrafting. They're happy to do the FBI script with no imagination whilst they start a draft of a World War 2 screenplay even though World War 2 means nothing too them. And for these people, they can write happily like this and it's not soul destroying at all.

But the more artistic writers, who struggle and fight with themselves over one piece of work, they also battle with the worry of who will buy/produce/fund it - and it affects the work.

It's commonplace for writers and film lovers to bemoan the lack of original scripts. The writers often feel the industry is polarizing them and their ideas, but actually - us writers do it to ourselves. We end up conforming more and more to this idea in our head of what a commercial screenplay is meant to be.

There are legitimate reasons why we think like this -- but I just want to stand up for that artistic part of you (and me) that needs supporting. That part that says write what you want. Fuck, write it backwards, one word per page, if that's really what you want to do.

Film is only a hundred and twenty years old - no-one can say, definitively, what works and what doesn't--- and it's a long time since something truly unique and wonderful has come along - and I'm hoping it's going to be you who's reading this.

"you can't start a fire -- can't start a fire without a spark"

-Springsteen

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Why We Do What We Do - The Importance Of Leaving A Legacy.

Something really beautiful has come out of Michael Jackson's passing. As I walked down the street yesterday, every car that passed had his music booming out of it. There were black people, little chinese old people, teens; everyone was doing the same thing. On the train, heaps of people had headphones in and it was clear we were all doing the same thing. Some of us even did a very subtle acknowledgement of each other. It was like a telepathetic, subtle nod to each other. Maybe that didn't happen, maybe I just felt it.

Either way, despite people reading about what drugs may have killed him and being reminded of what he may or may not have done to children -- what stood out most, what we were all reminded of, was the indeliable mark he has left on the universe with his art. When you really think of the power of that, it's enormous.

What really hit me - was his message. It was one of peace, one of love. I have always loved 'Man In The Mirror' but always heard it on a simplistic level. The message to me was 'make a change and improve your life!' But that really isn't the message, the message is about improving everybody elses lives by getting past your own ignorance.

"I see the kids in the streets,
with not enough to eat,
who am I to be blind?
pretending not to see their needs"

This message is in a lot of his songs - 'Earth Song', 'History', 'Heal The World' - in fact, it's probably in nearly every song. Even going back to 'I'll Be There' by Jackson Five; a song about being there for each other, about togetherness. The themes he cares about - if we all cared about them a bit more, the world would be a better place.

And I began to realise exactly what his legacy was. This is a man who, without his existence, without his creativity and his passion; there would have been a lot less dancing in the world. A lot less good times. I began to recount LOTS of memories of my childhood where his music played a central role - and I'm sure you could do the same. Whilst we can often get distracted by his controversies, underneath all that is this beautiful, moving music - this guy really cared about us. He really cared about the world. He did a lot to improve it.

That's really important to me. It makes you realise the effects of your own work. I know a lot of writers who simply want to 'get hired' and get paid. They'll take a job anywhere, because they want to be working screenwriters. But I think people at least need to be aware of the effect of their work. When you write an action film with lots of violence and little meaning; this has a knock on effect on the audience, and on the world. You are responsible for what you write, for what you do.

"I'd like people to remember me as someone who was good at his job and seemed to mean what he said"
-James Stewart

There's another quote I've been trying to find, but I can't find it - or at least, who it was by. It was "It's never too early to have principles." That's so true. Some people talk about doing whatever they have to do to 'make it' and then they will write the more meaningful stuff. I find that hard to accept, it's time to build our legacies now.

One of my favourite singer/songwriters is a man who has never had a record deal. We struck up a friendship after I found his music online. Sometimes he posted beautiful video versions of his songs on YouTube and they average only a hundred views. But this music is his legacy, and it's amazing - and it means more to me than so much of what counts for popular music today.

As creative people we get to do exactly what Michael Jackson did. We get to let our imagination play. We get to create. When we write a script or direct a film or act in something; we are bringing into existence things that don't even exist yet. When you think of that, it's really amazing.

"Be the change you want to see in the world"
-Gandhi

I only began to truly understand that quote recently. For me, relating to this industry, it's about not moaning about what films are out there, or how meaningless things are or how movie studios keep ruining films -- YOU CAN BE THAT CHANGE. You can be the exception to the rule. You can do things that are beautiful.

What is your message? What do you feel? Where is nature leading you? Be the change that you want to see in the world. What is your legacy?.

If you keep writing what people want to read; i.e. if you keep worrying about what the BBC want from a writer, or if you keep worrying about what is expected of a director; you will never reach your potential and you will never be happy.

Some of us do what we do for money, or for fame, or to look cool; but we can do something far more powerful; we can bring amazing material into the world that will have a positive effect on peoples lives. Let's do that, let's start today.

Even if you are caught up in the machine; maybe you write for the studios or you're writing a film about a serial killer, or you and your friends are making a short film with lots of blood -- but I'm sure, even in these films, you can find somewhere to put the humanity. Even if it's by writing a secondary character differently, or by putting more beautiful blue sky shots in your zombie film -- let's start thinking about who we are, and how we want to be remembered.

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