Lee Kemp

Bore off

…annoy me. I fidget. I fuss and I deliberately analyse. None of which are ‘good things’.

I’m there to watch a film and even the very best title sequences simply elaborate on the themes of the film. Frankly, a little bit more thought by way of actually elaborating on the themes of the film, within said film, would be much better placed*.

What about the recognition of the artists and artisans who have slaved tirelessly? All the cast and crew on a film have worked very hard. You can tell that because they didn’t get fired and stuck around long enough to get their name in the credits. But I really don’t need to see their credits at the start either. There is genuinely no requirement whatsoever to delay the start of the film with names, even if it’s to say A Stephen Soderbergh Film. I know that. It’s why I’m there. If the person is even semi-famous, even in giant movie geek terms there’s a good chance that the people that care about that kind of stuff (me) will know about it already. Save the credits for the end. I’ll sit and read them. I promise.

Then there are those people who’s names you don’t know going in. The not yet Soderberghs, the never will be Tom Cruises and the grips and juicers happy to be getting paid. Perhaps some star turn from a lesser known actor or a half recognised face under a metric ton of superb prosthetics, maybe it’s music that makes your heart pound or writing so good it blisters your ears just to listen. Save it. For the end. Again, those people who care (me) will sit and wait. They won’t even wait until they go home to check imdb. They (I) will sit in the theatre and wait until the the relevant name turns up in the credits and they’ll keep it there.

Save the credits for the end. Please. And don’t get me started on James Bond credit sequences.

I’d be really interested in a list of credit sequences worth watching though, or ones that actually add something to the film. Any suggestions?

Go Dave!

*David Fincher’s Se7en is automatically excluded from any diatribe.

Like most other people I (possibly) found out who the Stig was this week and felt a little bit less once I knew. I liked that there was a secret and if I was going to find out, I didn’t want everyone else to know.

This brings me far from neatly onto Battlestar Galactica. It’s been a long feverish wait after the mid-season break following the WGA strike in the states. I don’t care if you’re not a fan, you should be. The writing is excellent, the themes are complex and intriguing and the approach is utterly fearless; no character is safe and no topic is taboo. The second half of season 4 is now showing and it’s the last season. Ever. The end is coming and I feel like a teenage mixture of quietly sad and completely joyous. The impending resolution, no more secrets, all the answers will be mine. But there’s another ten episodes or so and apparently the last one will be a three hour special. OMFG, as they say. The end is coming, the secrets will be blown wide open and I can’t wait.

Then there’s Lost. I got bored around about season 3 and then picked it up again recently and now have the last 2 episodes of season 4 to get through and it’s looking pretty damn impressive. The character’s have remained mostly the same, Kate is annoying and wet and suddenly a crack native American tracker, Locke needs to realise respect is earned and not given and Jack needs to earn it and not be given it. Sawyer just gets better and better. In my frankly not that humble opinion. But it has just got so damned good recently. I think the reason I’m enjoying it so much more now is that for a while the prospect of questions without answers, or answers that just lead to more questions was just irritating. Now it feels like there is a plan, there is an answer and they’re drip feeding it to me. I’m sucking at the breast of JJ Abrams and the experience is much more comfortable than the image. The show’s gone in directions I never expected  but at least it’s going somewhere, not just meandering. The weirder it gets the better it gets. It feels like the end is coming and that anticipation, no matter how long it takes, is where the excitement comes from.

Finally I’m on the last episode of season 4 of The Wire. I believe season 5 is the last one ever. I love these characters. Literally. Their actions are completely dictated by who they are and they still manage to surprise me. In this case it’s just the plot that’s a secret but the unfolding of it and the trajectory the characters are on is intense and addictive.

I have complete faith in the writers of all 3 shows. They’ve brought me this far and haven’t abused my trust, where they’ve faltered they’ve brought me back and I know that whatever answers they choose to give me will be surprising and satisfying. But when they’re finished I’m going to feel completely full and a little bit empty. This lack is what will drive me to find the next series, the next Quality American Drama. I’ll become entangled once again, hopelessly addicted. Yearning for the answers, worried that I might actually get them and scared that I won’t.

Wow this sucks, but isn’t it great? Ed and Tony have both told me I should be watching Mad Men next. God bless you writers of Quality American Drama. God bless you and all who sail in you.

Good grief woman. Do you see Helen Mirren blubbing like that?

Here are my predictions in the key Oscar categories. Before you read on, I’ll give you a complete list of nominated films that i’ve seen. It’s very short.

Frost/Nixon, Tropic Thunder, Wall-E, Dark Knight, Slumdog Millionaire, In Bruges and Australia.

There probably should be some kind of rule about not having an opinion on films you haven’t seen, but you don’t have to seen the films to vote on them so why should I hold back?

Here goes:

Best Actor: Mickey Rourke. Hollywood loves a sob story (Rourke’s not Randy’s).

Best Actress in Supporting Role: Heath Ledger. He’s awesome, even without the posthumous** force multiplier.

Best Actress: Kate Winslet. 0 for 5. Can’t see it.

Best Actress in a Support Role: I genuinely have no idea. But my guess is Marisa Tomei isn’t winning. Unless Charlton Heston is actually in witness protection.

Best Animated Feature Film: Wall-E, despite being in the wrong category. This should be in Best Film.

Best Directing: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (though I want Slumdog to get it).

Best Picture: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. No idea why. Haven’t seen it. And Slumdog won’t win simply because I want it to. Sorry Danny Boyle.

Let’s see how many I get?

*If you’re gonna steal a joke, steal it from Terry Pratchett.

**isn’t posthumous a strange word? Post-humous. Who would have considered the dangers of mashed chickpeas.

post it: ubiquitous

The humble post it note figures heavily in my daily life. When scheduling a short film I produced last year, each scene made it’s way onto a Post It note and my wall was covered and then persistently rearranged until order emerged from chaos. Until chaos won out in production).

In putting together a creative pitch for a big client for a corporate film i’ll be directing later in the year (Germany, Holland, Brazil and one of the Baltic States, fingers crossed!) we covered one wall in post its. They’re still there because we haven’t finished yet.

Every company strategy day I’ve ever attended has piles of post it notes obliterated, their tattered remnants papering the walls. The end of each day usually sees the MD taking photos of the wall for posterity and to write up the day. It always puts me in mind of a crime scene photographer.

When Romy and Michelle needed to pretend to have invented something simple, clever and ubiquitous, they picked the post it note. Though the writer Robin Schiff was careful to credit the actual invention to 3M.

So I bought a pile of Post Its the other day. My shooting deadline for Aftermath is the end of March. I have agreed that Ed Moore can hit me full on in the jewels with a cricket bat if we’re not shooting at the end of Q1. It’s a simple premise but it needs Post Its and I don’t find Final Draft or Celtx that helpful in these situations.

09 Plan update: apart from the Post Its i’ve had a further email conversation with my interview guy. More to follow.

In other news Battlestar Galactica is back. If you’re not watching it, you’re missing out on some of the most fearless dramatic writing ever. Ever ever.

It is of concern to me that I haven’t made the films I promised myself I would.  There is nothing else that makes me feel old. When I think about it I can feel the seconds go by.  For every one that’s taken I feel like three have been stolen. But William Goldman didn’t even see a script until he was 33, the age I am now so it’s far from being the end of the world.

I’ve got to burn my bridges. By that I mean talking openly about my ambitions. Failing is bad, but not as bad as failing publicy. I have a lot of good ideas and I talk about them far more than I do them. So here is a public statement of intent:

1. 4 short films in 2009. The first of which gets filmed in March. It’s called Aftermath and the first draft is finished.

Potential others might be Alien, (2/3 written), Code Duello of 1773 Rule 13 (easily my favourite title and 1/2 written) and Hard Man (first draft written and received good feedback from working writers).

2. Director showreels to every appropriate Creative Director by the end of the year. I love commercials and that’s one of the two things I want to be doing (through Fullrange)

3. Screenwriters group up and running in February. Started work on this already, got some writer’s interested. Birmingham writer’s please get in touch (leekemplives@gmail.com).

4. Filmaker interviews on here. I used to think there weren’t very many resources out there for directors wanting to get started. I believed this was mostly because you learn by watching, working your way up the hierarchy of the film set OR you did something awesome in film school and got a big break. As it turns out there’s plenty of resources out there (not least audio commentaries on DVDs) but I still think it’s a good idea. I like hearing about how other people have done it.

I’ve got someone who’s agreed to do the first one. Director of a low budget, horror that has a bit of  cult following.

So there it is. If I don’t manage this I’m gonna look pretty stupid. At least to the 5 people that subscribe to this blog. I’ve no idea who 4 of you are, but thanks for following. You’re my conscience and come 1st January 2010. It’s open season on me if I haven’t achieved these things.

Tick follows tock…

time marches on...

…is what I would be saying if I was a complete arse.

That’s a Simpsons joke just there. Brilliant.

I love foreign films. Not all of them, obviously. But Korean and Japanese cinema have given us some of the most inventive and exciting films around. Oldboy is stupendously grand. Giving Oldboy to your colleagues and hearing the trouble they get in from their girlfriends is almost as good. A Bittersweet Life is a lovely story about violence and love. 3 Iron is a gorgeous love story.  Happiness of the Katakuris is inventive madness.

Foreign films rock and if you don’t have the patience to read subtitles then not only are you an idiot, you’re depriving yourself of some of the most fearsomely inventive and well-crafted films ever made.

How does this affect you Lee, I hear my 5 subscribers cry? Why should I care about what other people watch as it doesn’t really affect me. Well apart from the generalised effect whereby the more people tha watch films that fall outside of the Hollywood mainstream, Well I’ve just tried to watch the trailer for Tokyo Sonata, a Japanese film from Kuyoshi Kurosawa. It looks lovely. Good job really because there’s no bloody dialogue in the whole trailer. This is a problem that I first remember being conscious of when I watched the trailer for Brotherhood of the Wolf.  Marketing departments believe that people won’t go and see foreign films. So they try and trick people into thinking that a film by Kuyoshi Kurosawa called Tokyo Sonata with a trailer that solely features Japanese people and has absolutely no dialogue at all might somehow be set in Kansas.

Not only that, but because of this fear of the foreign, films don’t get a wide release, don’t make money and genius doesn’t get perpetuated. Until it gets remade with Nicholas Cage. No Nicholas. Oldboy is perfect, just as it is.

Russel Crowe - awesome actor - not so yay hair

On account of my not being a major player in Hollywood I don’t really know how the  dynamics of major movies work, but one assumes the pecking order is established relatively early on. I guess it’s dependent on a complex algorithm with variables like star power and ego.

The stories about stars and their egos are as endless and ridiculous as some of the stars themselves. In his book Bambi Vs Godzilla David Mamet relays a couple of stories about stars, without naming names. The prop master on a film had come in on his day off to find a particularly difficult to locate prop, in return the movie’s star tapdanced on the roof of his car in hobnail boots causing $10,000 of damage. Another movie found one star measuring the length of another star’s trailer with a tape measure because his contract dictated his be the largest. There is a story that Leonardo DiCaprio got publicly handed his own ass on Gangs of New York by Martin Scorcese because of his disrespectful attitude towards the film and the crew. He was allegedly turning up late, or worse for wear and outputs of Hollywood stardom. He’s gone from strength to strength ever since. My point is that the power play formula is pretty complicated. People without boundaries push as hard as they can until someone pushes back.

So I wonder where in the early hostilities of a power play does a star with naturally slightly rubbish hair, say Russel Crowe or Hugh Jackman, establish who has control of their hair in the film, because i’m noticing a pattern. Let’s look at some of Crowe’s films.

Romper Stomper – mainly TV roles then a great script falls into his lap and he gets the part. Not likely to insist on input on hair decisions. Also, he’s playing a skinhead.

Result: Movie par excellence

L.A. Confidential – After being hyped up by Sharon Stone and selected for her own vehicle The Quick and The Dead, success isn’t quite as quick as expected. He’s got a great role here and frankly, he nails it completely. The thought of the man who played Bud White reading this makes me nervous, but bollocks, I bet he can’t run as fast as me. Particularly with all that muscle and the hefty drag co-efficient of his bouffant. In this he’s a supporting role and hair decisions are shaped by the era not the actor. Probably not much control over hair decisions.

Result: Movie par excellence

The Insider – One of the immutable rules of life – you do what Michael Mann says. No hair decisions here.

Gladiator – Then he gets cast as the lead in a Ridley Scott movie.  I reckon it’s touch and go here, his star’s on the rise, Ridley’s not yet returned to the status of gigantic talent. I reckon history held sway and Roman slaves were unlikely to be particularly bouffant. You probably don’t screw with Scott either.

Result: Movie par excellence

On the other side of the argument…

The Quick and the Dead: He’s got Sharon Stone in his corner. She’s brought him in specially to be showcased in her own star vehicle. I reckon he’s beginning to insist on a little hair input.

Result: I hate this film.

Proof of Life: We’re post Gladiator now and Taylor Hackford‘s not the biggest action game in town. Definite hair input here.

Result: Why did they kiss? Why? What possible reason could there be? Meh.

A Good Year: Although this is only Crowe’s and Scott’s second film together, they go on to make American Gangster the following year, Body of Lies two years later and Nottingham is in production right now. Scott has found a creative partner and the results are great. So I’m guessing theirs is a collaborative relationship, with strong input on either side. I can’t imagine General Maximus or Bud White agreeing that a snotty London broker would have proper manly fighting hair, he needs to be different. I’m guessing hair was a Crowe decision here and the movie pays the price.

Result: Meh.

People always argue that story is king, this writer’s elegance and structure rules the day, or this director’s vision, or that actor’s extraordinary skill. My arse, it’s all in the complex relationship between an actor’s hair and his IMDB STARmeter.

p.s. It’s easy to beat on actors, but you never hear about all the good input they give do you? Or the wanker director’s they overrule.