historic times

Well it has to be said these are amazing times for America and subsequently, I’m sure, the rest of the world. We, my family and I, couldn’t have chosen a more exciting time to decide to come and live here, but having said that of course economically, timing could have been better on the one hand and on the other, it’s pretty damn bad everywhere unless you happen to live in Finland. Why Finland….? Nothing to do with economics of which I know little, it just sounds to me like a forgotten part of the planet that’s not only cold and white, but just doesn’t really show up much on the world stage. Except when your agent sends you a script set in Finland during the rule of the Romanoffs about some geyser of whom I have never heard of, Mannerheim. Suddenly, that part of the world looks more interesting and certainly, after reading this epic of a Dr. Zhivago - type thing, my radar is on full alert and my Google finger hovering nicely. The whole story wraps up nicely around a time and a place like no other. A production designers dream. I have read no less than three scripts this past two weeks and certainly this beats them all. Scripts can be soooooo ploddingly boring at the best of times. The imagination of the reader has to define most of the story as you are dealing with a visual medium, not a novel. A novel will lead you through the nuances of a good story whereas the grey matter is relied upon heavily to steer one through the demanding pages of a script. Which is why I firstly admire people like ‘the script reader’ for being apparently able to sift through the multiple piles of drivel sorting for those diamonds that may or may not exist, and secondly why I fear that those people responsible for green lighting this stuff have any clue at all when it comes down to it. How many diamonds are being cast over….? how many shit scripts are being made….(eg. ‘funny games’…..what the fuck….?????)When I first got hold of Saving Private Ryan I was bored rigid. Jeez, what a load of old cod…..who gives a flying toss about some geyser stuck in the mud of northern France being fought over by a bunch of whiney Americans led by Forrest Gump? Well, actually, about ten frigging million or so it turns out. That’s because I had little less than a clue how to ‘read’ these things but by the time I got hold of Waking Ned, I had learned a whole lot more. Production design is about scripts, storytelling and humanity… It is also about a whole lot of other things which is why it’s so damned interesting.   Anyway, three recent scripts and two let downs later, I’m stuck with a script I like but I don’t know why. Is it because, bottom line, I have to feed the kids? I don’t after all care what your script smells like, if you’re going to pay the bucks, I will LOVE it and do the best damned job no matter how bad it is. And we will sift relentlessly through the sludge in the hope of finding some gem of a storyline or an emotional treat that will take it out of the realms of stupidity and into the realm of ’indi’ or some such? Hell, lets get one thing straight here….no matter how crap your script is, as a production designer in need or otherwise of paid work, I am never going to tell you the truth about your long-agonised-over-missive-work-of-art. No siree….careful what you say to those on the way up because…blah, blah blah on the way down etc etc…..(I’ve been on the up for 30 years…there is no down, there can’t be.) And if you DO intend to pay me handsomely then your script is the best goddamned thing since the last goddamned thing. But whatever my intentions, and when we have agreed the basis upon which I will do my very best to make your film look great, then that is what you will get if I have to sweat blood to achieve it unless of course you turn out to be a prick which is a whole other thing altogether….! Then, occasionally, thank the baby J, every once or thrice in a life time, along comes an Awaydays or similar lovely little number being developed, nurtured, lovingly whittled and eventually green-lit by those aforementioned twats who still may not have much of a clue but have been suitably harangued into acceptance of the indisputable fact that you cannot possibly pass up on this little beauty guv’nor……..and that is what it may turn out to be so long as all the miriad of other ingredients that go into making a masterpiece fall eventually into place. These, and other figments we will discuss in future episodes. Meanwhile, this is late as usual.