Lee Kemp

Bear with me, it’ll take me a couple of paragraphs to explain why I’m annoyed. But it’s to do with my dog’s arse.

Dogs have glands in their arses. Two small anal glands manufacture a particularly awful smelling liquid that is unique to your dog. This is the aroma your dog is seeking when it smells another dog’s arse.

When your doggie does a toilet, the poop will squeeze against the glands and force some liquid onto the excrement  and essentially barcode it with his own aroma. It’s a statement that tells other dogs “not only have I dropped one here, I want you to know that i’m the one wot done it”. A canine sociological researcher would be able to identify all the areas related to a particular dog’s poop just by scent,  like twitter hashtags but for shit.

If your dog’s diet isn’t perfect he won’t digest food properly, the poop won’t solidify properly and it won’t press against the glands as it comes out. The glands will fill up and become prone to infection. My dog hasn’t got an infection, but you do occasionally get this disgusting metallic stench emanating from his general direction. If your dog is nipping at his hind quarters regularly its often a gland problem and you should take your dog to the vet to get him checked. Your vet will stick a rubber begloved into your dog’s anus and express the excess liquid from the glands.

Tonight we were having a conversation about Marley & Me. It’s shit, don’t bother watching it. But we were talking about how awesome it is having a dog and how completely unconditional a dog’s love is for its owners when a particularly powerful disgusting metallic stench began to emanate. Alfie was laid looking up at me with his gorgeous, expectant brown eyes. He was laying on my new favourite woollen jumper. When it comes to favourite clothes I’m like a kid with a spiderman costume. I find something I like and I wear it continuously until someone responsible peels its decaying mass from my skin.

It took me about half an hour to work out that Alfie’s ass had actually leaked onto my new favourite jumper. Ordinarily you shouldn’t be able to smell what is produced by a dog’s glands. Tonight I could see it.

Alfie’s going to the vets this week. I love my dog more than you would believe, but right now I’m in the market for a vet with really fat fingers.

The other end of Alfie

I went to a lecture this afternoon held by a representative of the British Board of Film Classification with colleagues from work, Rachel and Dave. It was held at the Lighthouse in Wolverhampton which is a nice little place though you’d need to ask Rachel in person about how angry some elements made her! It was a really interesting afternoon. Generally I think the BBFC does a sterling job, in 2006 they classified nearly 14,000 films for cinema release then again for DVD, also games and other little bits. Of these thousands they banned 2. Not exactly the reputation they still seem to carry from the video nasty.

There are 29 full time examiners and they watch on average 5.5 hours of material around 3-4 days per week. Screenings are selected at random. Our lecturer once spent a day viewing The Departed, 2.5 hours of hardcore sado-masochism porn followed by several episodes of Noddy.

He gave us a detailed explanation of how some films fall into the margins of each classification and how those grey areas are defined, such as between a 15 or an 18 certificate. We explored Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm episode that features two usages of the C-word along with Veronica Guerin which has a violent sequence with 6 instances of everyone’s favourite shock factor cuss word. Curb Your Enthusiasm managed a 15 certificate on the basis of the inherent comedy and the rather sweet way it was intended (you really need to see it) whereas Veronica Guerin got an 18. Sustained and most importantly aggressive use of the word alongside sudden and prolonged male to female violence was sufficient to bump it higher.

Saving Private Ryan (15) was compared to The Last Temptation of Christ (18) with an interesting focus on history. Hard lobbying from Christians on the basis of special educational merit failed to get the certificate reduced to 15 because of the sustained and particular focus on one individual.

The BBFC has an interesting history and stands in starkly independent contrast to the MPAA. I think it’s a British institution to be proud of and it will become of more interest in the near future. It is funded entirely out of charges paid by studios for the legal requirement of a certificate. It’s been financially sustained over the past  few years by the classification of studio back catalogues that are running out. The other factor is that their remit only really covers theatrical releases and there’s nothing required for online delivery so keep that in the back of your mind because it’ll be a topic of conversation in film circles in years to come.

The presentation ended with a Q&A and I asked if there was support within the BBFC for a lower age limit on the 12A certificate. This was a polite re-phrasing of the question I wanted to ask, how do I stop adults taking kids to films that are clearly not suitable for them, not really understanding what the A means in 12A and through their own ignorance abrogating responsibility for that decision? The answer to both questions was the same; the BBFC is undergoing a lengthy public consultation. Let’s hope they ask the right people.

Yes. I mean me.

Writing, yay.

This blog has been very quiet recently so for the 8 of you that do subscribe, my apologies. Mostly it has been due to work which has been extremely busy recently. I spent a week in Amsterdam shooting tractors for AGCO with DoP Ed Moore and camera operator Phil Wood. There are more details of this over at Ed’s website The DoP Diaries and on Fullrange’s website and work at Fullrange. I had another shoot with Bedford County Council for Bonfire Design. That’s a company I’ve been trying to do work with for about 3 years now so that was a little bit of a victory. Then we managed to get a competition in the Birmingham Post giving away three films and loads of other exciting stuff. So yes, busy.

The second reason I haven’t blogged is that I had a particular blog post in mind and it’s taking a little bit of time to put together as I want to give the season 5 and series finale of The Wire a really good close up look. Subconsciously this became one of those ‘big jobs’ that just seems bigger and bigger the longer you leave it. But i’m going to make a start this morning.

Finally I want to mention that the writer’s group I was talking about a little while ago launched last Thursday. I’d had it booked in the diary for a while so I was disappointed that the Birmingham Filmmaker’s group launched a midweek fixture on the same night and I couldn’t go to that too. I met with another writer, David Wake, who has previously run another very successful writer’s group called PostSCRIPT and we put together some ideas for what we would like this one to be. Our aim is to provide an open, honest forum to critique each other’s work, learn from each other and I would hope that eventually we will be able to give the members a sense of community. It was decided that we should keep this group small until it finds its feet.

I was fortunate enough to have one of my short scripts analysed. I had put forward one that is a finished first draft that I’ve had two working screenwriters that I know look at. They’ve both given me good feedback, pointing out flaws but being encouraging of my abilities as a writer so my ‘magical shield of self belief’ was in place. As it turns out it wasn’t needed. We went round the room saying one thing we liked and one thing we didn’t. It’s a useful exercise to enforce both parts of that. Then we began looking in detail at 9 point story structure and applying the various break points to my script. Here’s where the fun started. Two of us couldn’t agree on where various break points were and in the ensuing discussion it became apparent that there were two areas in which the script could be improved quite dramatically. I didn’t have to agree with what was said but it so happens that I did and I’m looking forward to making those changes.

The group meets on the last Thursday of every month so we’ve decided to call it Last Thursdays and once the feet are found, i’ll start inviting people.