June 6th.

A Short Story.

I logged on to Facebook. I was kind of hoping that Sally would have messaged me back, but she hadn't. Although she did write on Paul's wall so she had been online. Aggh, I'm so depressed. Why won't she message me back? Should I write on her wall? Poke her?. Not only that, but my boss keeps giving me shit because I keep showing up late. Fucking idiot, doesn't he know I've got enough problems? I logged back on to Facebook, Sally has deleted me. OMG. How could she block me?.

He was in the middle of the sea. He was probably freezing cold, he was probably scared - but he didn't really notice because he was so focused on the task ahead. And what was ahead, he didn't really know. He wanted to look into the eyes of the men beside him but he couldn't, because he was in the darkness of night. The horrors that were only hours away were too big to think about. He took comfort in knowing that his best friend Timmy was on the same boat as him.

I messaged Jane and asked her why Sally deleted me. I didn't understand. I am also looking for new jobs but it's so hard with the recession on. I took comfort in my Xbox 360. But then midway through a game it FROZE! This is why I don't let my Brother play my Xbox. Obviously he's broken it somehow. I just about managed to stop myself going insane and throwing the console out of the window. Fuck it, I just need comfort food. I made myself a sandwich. Actually I didn't - because there was no chicken left in the fridge. How can there be no chicken left in the Fridge? I tried phoning my brother to find out if he'd stolen my chicken but I couldn't get a reception on my phone. My phone is crap, I need a new phone.

He couldn't help but notice the eerie silence around him. The only noises were the occasional cough, or some guy at the back being sick. Everybody felt sick. Most wouldn't admit it. The night was nearly over and the beaches were ever closer. He instinctively knew that what was to come was going to be a lot different to everything he had experienced before. He thought briefly about Mary. He wondered what she was doing right now. He hoped she was sleeping.

I did a google image search for Scarlet Johannson. Life was suddenly great again and all my stresses were gone. After about fifty pictures of her I moved on to Meagan Good. Maybe life wasn't such a drag after all. My friend Charlie came round and we ordered a pizza. Charlie's my mate but to be honest, he annoys me. For example, he blatantly always tries it on with Sally, right in front of me. And he always belittles the things I say. AND, the dude owes me £50 from like three months ago. I wanna smash his face in. I can't deal with a friend owing me money and hitting on my girl.

He didn't quite get time to have a thought pass through his head, because the bullet flew right into his helmet before he even saw the enemy. Luckily, his helmet managed to hold out. Little Bryan wasn't as lucky, it sliced right through his shoulder and took him down. Within seconds, they were all in the water, fighting to get to dry land. Not that dry land was any better-- the onslaught of German fire was non-stop. He saw a small dip in the sand that could be used as cover. He headed for it but another soldier got there first. Good job the other soldier got there first because his arm got blown off just as he touched the ground.

I was meant to go to JJ's party tonight but instead thought I'd stay at home. I logged onto facebook and looked at some pictures. Pictures of Sally that her friends had tagged. I had reached the point of official devastation. Maybe I should just kill myself. Nah, I think I'll just throw on a DVD and drown my sorrows.

He could almost burst due to the sheer pressure in his head. Everything was happening at once. The water behind him was a sickening red, and the beach before him was a sea of men falling. It was too many things to take in at once - the smells and sights were indescribable. He would have taken more time to be dazzled by all this but there were still Germans shooting at him. Suddenly, a soldier dived on top of him-- they both fell to the ground. "What was that?" he asked. The bald comrade who wasn't wearing a helmet said "Keep moving, you nearly got your head blown off". Before he could say thanks the bald guy was already saving another life. As for our hero, he never saw the bald guy again. He never saw Timmy again either, but he didn't have time to think about that.

I think the world is falling apart. Seriously. Apparently, they think that maybe too much coffee can now cause mental issues. So I'm fucked! And I've just found out they're thinking of making a new Back To The Future movie, why Lord, WHY? Nothing makes sense anymore. Even Ronaldo is thinking of signing for Real Madrid!. I left Sally a voicemail. I know I shouldn't, but I did.

His uniform was ripped on one side from shrapnel and the other side was covered in blood. Although it looked brown. He thought blood was meant to look red. They were shooting at him again. Everyone was exploding. One guy was on fire, he didn't know how that happened. It was at this point he realised he needed to kill some Germans. He nervously hovered behind some tall soldier he'd never seen before and another guy who might be Mikey J but he can't be sure because his face was half blown off.

I logged off of Facebook and I ignored JJ's missed calls. My life was becoming more than stressful, I'm too old to be dealing with this shit lol.

He turned to look at the boy who was giving him instructions. He really was a boy, he looked 14. The boy didn't get to finish giving instructions because his head got blown off. All around there were boys crying, boys screaming, boys dying. But more common than that, were boys coming together. Boys focused. Boys advancing on an enemy that had to be stopped. He suddenly felt a jolt of confidence, a reminder of his purpose. It was all he needed. He wasn't going to go down without a fight. He pointed his gun at the tower above and took aim.

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Yes Yes YES!!!!

This is what pure joy looks like.

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Why Struggling Actors Should Produce Their Own Work

If I hear one more actor say "there's just nothing out there at the moment" or "I don't have anything for my showreel" I am going to scream.

When you're starting out in the industry it's hard, I get it. But the industry doesn't owe you anything. And that can really frustrate me about young actors; they feel like they are owed acting roles, owed great showreels, owed everything. But the industry owes you nothing. And the thing most of you don't realise is that there are thousands of actors out there working harder than you. You need to catch up.

Acting, like Producing and Directing, is creating. Something didn't exist and now it does. If you do a short film TODAY, then you have put something out there into the world. It is a part of your legacy. Now it may suck, so you may not want to make it. But what's better, a film that sucks or a film that doesn't exist? To begin with, just by making something that sucks, you wipe out 50% of the competition, because the other half is sitting in offices and supermarkets saying "I want to be an actor".

Most actors get a bit scared when they get DVD's of their performances. It's usually "oh God, I wasn't as good as I thought". But imagine if before doing that film; you had made five of your own shorts and acted in them-- chances are your performance in the DVD you just received might be a bit better.

There is no need for an actor to wait for roles, CREATE the roles. If you want to play a nurse, make a film about a nurse. You want to be an astronaut, be an astronaut. You want to play a whore, play a whore. "But I have no money!" you say. Okay, well - how about you and two other struggling actors make a short film set in one location. 'An Astronaut misses his last day of training due to being caught with a whore by his girlfriend - who uses her nursing skills to help the whore who's struck down by a fever.' - there you go. Grab a camera, shoot it. You have a film.
Make a mockumentary about an out of work actor who has a fear of leaving his house. Make a film about a man who keeps watch over his garden as he's convinced the pigeons are Nazi's. Film a bunch of your acting friends talking about their fears and hopes and put it on YouTube, it's footage of YOU.

If you have showreel footage, you immediately overtake 80% of the actors currently doing the short film circuit.

Back to creating. Maybe you're scared by the term 'Producing'. A producer takes nothing and turns it into a product. He finds a story and finds the people needed to make it end up on the screen. You can do that. You can do it by borrowing your Aunt's camera, getting a friend to press record whilst you perform.
"But it doesn't look professional," you say. Casting Directors don't care. Whether it was Patrick Fugit in Almost Famous or Katie Holmes in Dawson's Creek; the industry is full of cases where some struggling nobody who lived in a farm in nowhere managed to win a role by showing Producers/Casting Directors who they are. Tom Hanks on 35mm is Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks on your Aunt's camera is still Tom Hanks. I was watching a behind the scenes video of 'Vanilla Sky' yesterday; it was just Cameron Crowe and the crew messing around-- but every time Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz are on screen; they steal the show. Why? Because they have that thing. In their eyes, in their movement, in who they are -- they are great personalities, great actors. It shines through. YOU WILL SHINE THROUGH if you create video content of yourself, being yourself, and showing the world your talents.

There is no need to be distraught if you are not getting roles, or if Directors everywhere are ignoring you or saying "I may be casting next month," who cares; a lot of their films will be terrible anyway.

Go watch 'Ellie Parker' - it's Naomi Watts in a horribly rough and cheaply shot feature film; but what she does in the film is show off every aspect of her acting skills. She proves to the world how great she is. You can do exactly that.


Some of the best short films I have seen have been terribly shot. But if you can act, you should show people. You want to know what is worse? Terrible acting with beautiful photography.
It will ruin you. If a casting director sees you on TV or in your showreel or, even worse, in the cinema and your performance is wooden and stagey - then you're screwed. So go pick up a camera; this is the most freedom you'll ever have as an actor. Go create, go and become the very characters you want to play. The ball is in your court - and you need to smash it right into the Casting Directors face so he can't miss you.

"I am getting my reel together soon" should not be a sentence you ever utter.

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Watching as your baby drifts violently away. The Soul-Destroying Job of a Low-Budget Film Director.

"That's why I think you should turn, go back, and be a lawyer or something. But I can tell from your face that you won't." -

Lester Bangs, in 'Almost Famous'

It's a day before the shoot on your zero-budget short film, or the feature you've strung together for about four dollars and a pizza. You've managed to get this far despite ten or fifteen or thirty years of people saying 'but what do you really want to do with your life?' and 'film director, right. yeah. that's nice.' - and 'have you got your big break yet?'

Here you are, it's the night before the shoot. And you realise that directing a film with no money isn't really directing. It's managing and it's sprinting and it's negotiating and it's compromising and it's being in thirteen places in one day. You realise there are things you wanted to do that you can't afford. There are people you wanted involved who couldn't be there -- and the conditions of your shoot are ever changing and will continue to do so until you say 'That's a wrap'.

And when a non-industry office worker friend says to you "when are you going to get a real job?" you want to smack them in the face. In a 'real' office job, you might work hard - but you work hard for somebody who doesn't care about you. And you might technically, day-to-day, work harder than the film director, I agree.. but you have never felt the pain that comes with being a Director the night before the shoot, knowing that things you had planned and things you had dreamed of are not going to come to fruition in quite the way you had planned.

We don't direct for the glamour. Fuck, there is no glamour. We don't do it for the money, even though we do want to earn lots of it. We do it because we have to do it, we were born to do it. And when problems amount and lights break and daylight fades -- you are left feeling your baby drifting away from you. The film that was meant to show everybody your HEART and TALENT and CREATIVITY instead is just a battle to do something adequate- you are fighting to do something that will at least be able to not totally suck.

And you battle. You really battle. You fight with yourself constantly. You work out how to do things. You work out how to wrap at 4am and transfer the footage at 5am and return the equipment to the rental company at 8am when you haven't slept in forever. And meanwhile, an actor says to you 'why are their no tea bags left? do you not even have tea?' and some production helper apologises profusely for accidentally making a huge hole in the wall of the location you borrowed from someone who was scary enough to begin with -- and you bump into someone you know just moments after wrapping -- and they say "but what if you don't make it? what if you don't get discovered?".

You bite your tongue and you say "I don't know. I'm just trying to make a good film." But what you meant to say was "Go fuck yourself. I don't want to 'get discovered' I just want to keep making movies. I want to find a way to get what's in my heart and put it on the page and then put it on the screen. That's it. That's what I'm doing and that's what I'll always do. I could just go get a real job but then why would I want it so easy?."

The way your heart breaks the night before a shoot; the way you come close to a mental break-down when an actor loses faith in you and looks to the AD for what to do in a scene, the way you want to smash up your home when you realise your final edit is not fit for viewing-- these are experiences that are more painful to your spirit, to your soul -- than anything anyone in a 'real job' ever experiences.

And the dumb thing about us filmmakers is that despite driving ourselves to the brink of insanity - we'll come back around a few months from now and do it all again. Meanwhile we'll smile politely when somebody judges us, our work and ambitions. Because the sad truth is -- there is no way of anyone but yourself ever truly understanding the pure pain of creative underachievement.

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Take Out The Trash Day: Vue Cinema and the Mystery Movie.

Last month Vue Cinemas started a monthly 'Mystery Movie.' You buy your ticket to a film having no idea what it is. If within twenty minutes you think the film blows, you can get your money back.

Why are they doing this? Well, to make money obviously. The hope is that it'll bring in more movie-goers. I didn't like the rather pretentious thing that Mark De Quervain, the marketing director of Vue said. "It’s all about getting people to see films they normally wouldn’t see, to see films that wouldn’t be their normal choice of film. We want to broaden their film repertoire.”"

Oh gee, thanks Mark. Thank you for enlightening all of us; without you we'd all be going to repeat viewings of 'Hannah Montana: The Movie'.

What I suspect is going on is that this is a way for the distributors to dump their trash on us. The films that have tested badly or that they fear are likely to flop -- these 'mystery movie' figures will count towards their box-office take. Meaning that, at 6:30pm on a Tuesday they can fill the nations Vue cinemas; meaning full audiences see, I dunno - some struggling Ray Liotta/Ben Affleck movie or whatever.

The first Mystery Movie was the new 'Star Trek,' which is admittedly a pretty cool choice - but then the first film was always going to be. Anyways, I'm open-minded-- anything that gets people into the cinema is a good thing, I just fear that we're going to be used to hand over money for films we don't want to see. And whilst, yes, they do offer your money back after twenty minutes; it's unlikely many people will take that option.

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