EXTERIOR. BLAZING HOUSE NIGHT

A modest suburban house is fully engulfed. A struggling film maker parks his beat up hybrid, as his distraught spouse runs up.

WIFE (hysterical)
Your agent came over and set fire to the house!!

 

FILM MAKER (awestruck)
My agent came to my house…?

 

Yes, we’ve all heard it. Love ‘em or hate ‘em. You gotta have someone out there spruiking for you. ” My guy’s better than his guy!”

Hollywood, the Cannibal Goddess that lures us all here with her Sweet Smelling siren song of Success, has hierarchical structures, customs and practices that take quite a bit of decoding when you first arrive. Standing now at the outskirts of geezerhood, I offer a few observations and experiences to those brave young persons fresh from film school contemplating a spell in the meat grinder. But bear in mind the Gospel According To Goldman: Nobody knows nothing.

To put my words of wisdom in context, I am compelled to offer my qualifications.This is difficult for me because of my innate modesty, but I will try.

I am a genre specialist, originally making 15 films in a country where the arts funding bodies, till recently, despised genre. However, Australia in the seventies and eighties was good for a renaissance person. I founded and wrote a quarterly movie magazine sold in theatres and drive-ins for 5 years, made trailers for other film makers, directed episodic between features. As I flew out of Sydney, I was possibly a medium sized fish in a small pond. Landing at LAX, without a recent US theatrical release to herald my arrival, I immediately became plankton. After many years of navigating this shark infested reef, I have now evolved into a sardine. My career goal is to become a dolphin, playfully cruising through a variety of genres on adequate budgets.

Don’t panic. The aquatic metaphors are now concluded.

So how do you start from scratch in this town?

First, create or attach yourself to as much material as possible. Throw as much mud at the wall as you can. Something will stick.

Second, make friends. I don’t mean throw parties. I mean deliver the goods above and beyond creative and fiscal expectations.

Mr. Reliable is a popular guy. Specialize in the difficult. No task to great, no budget too small. Work breeds work, particularly if you leave your producers smiling rather than looking like - unhappy rabbits. Thanks, Joseph Mankiewicz, for that brilliant metaphor. Great delivery too by MM.

Low budget genre film making does not mean you have to check your personality at the door. The producers of NIGHT OF THE DEMONS 2, LEPRECHAUN 3 and the totally off the wall LEPRECHAUN IN SPACE (Noon, March 17, Sci-Fi Channel. TiVO for later to share with group of St. Paddy’s Day sci-fi geeks Alchohol necessary.) actively encouraged me to apply my subversive sense of humor to the conventions of teen horror, as long as the set pieces still delivered to their target audience. A pubescent pre-occupation with penis size, boobs, and the prospect of sex (generally unfulfilled), sprinkled with pre-SCREAM genre parody for the cinephile helped the shelf life of these films alot.

Success in one genre can be a trap. “He can only do horror comedy” That’s where you need a good agent/manager to persuade the executives, who have rarely done it themselves, that film making is film making, regardless of formula. Diversification is essential to build up that body of work, so that you have many arrows in your quiver to offer as samples. Remember, this is a business that is founded on rumor, driven by greed, and ruled by fear. Hiring a director is a scary, potentially career threatening decision for an executive or producer. Having a range of specialties increases your chances of being bulletproof to more potential clients. For instance, 12 episodes of TARZAN ( elephants, lions, chimps and pythons) qualified me for ATOMIC DOG. A facility with visual effects got me BRITANNIC, an attempt to sail in James Cameron’s waters on the equivalent of his catering budget. That got me my fun-apocalyptic movie OMEGA CODE 2. The Omen meets Air Force One in The End Of Days, with The Final Conflict at the Battle Of The Bulge. Did you know that Armageddon will be fought with Gulf War tanks? Oh, Rapture. I had such fun.

Practice in a multiplicity of genres will get you on a list of ” reliables”. Then all you need is for one of your efforts to garner strong box office, high ratings, or awards. Then you are on the “hot list”, and agents WILL come to your house, hammer on the door, eat through the walls to get 10% of your action.

Finally, it is vital to stay current with the latest technology. The DGA recently held a symposium on 3D , superbly hosted by Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron. Stereoscopic movies are no longer special events, they will soon become a regular part of our regular cinema diet. The Hannah Montana concert film only cost 7 million.Look at the per-screen averages. Get on the train, folks. Can’t wait to do one. (Flagrant hint).

Brian Trenchard-Smith
(Hollywood’s best kept secret)