With the exception of Kate Herron, Ugo Onwutalu & Nadia
Denton, 6 board members have guest-written the BUFF Blog in the 3 or so years
since its’ inception in April 2009 which, at the time, lauded the film
‘Adulthood’ as a watershed for urban independent cinema. A lot has happened
since then...
@buffenterprises sent out its very first tweet in April
2009, 3 ½ years on @SpikeLee no less is retweeting BUFF NEWS ALERTS. Also back
in 2009, @NoelClarke was still churning out films, Arsenal still hadn’t won a
trophy and Chelsea had an interim manager in charge though he’s the only one
(Gus Hiddink if you must know) who walked away from Roman Abramovich as opposed
to being fired. And being fired (or at least being reminded of it) crops up on
more than one occasion in the blog you’re about to read - only in the BUFF Blog
will you see Roman Abramovich and Noel Clarke co-exist in a parallel universe –
welcome to the world of BUFF!!
And in doing so, please extend that welcome to BUFF’s newest
member of the British Urban Film Festival board and this month’s guest writer
of the 30th BUFF Blog (post the Leveson Inquiry), Jesse Lawrence...
Having recently directed my feature debut - romantic comedy ‘The
Knot’ - Emmanuel kindly asked me to be guest writer for November’s edition of
the BUFF monthly blog. I foolishly agreed, forgetting how much like school homework
this would be. Remember the homework that you put off until the very last
minute and so nothing but a final 24-hour-Dostoyevsky surge of madness can save
you from missing that deadline? Well this time I was saved from that particular
type of pain by the fact that I did keep a loose diary on ‘The Knot’,
chronicling my experiences from day dot when I was lobbying to be the director,
right through production, culminating with its’ eventual theatrical release.
This two and a half year journey has felt long but is
actually nothing compared to the years many filmmakers sacrifice to get their
debut off the ground - check Lawrence Coke’s entertaining yet sobering account
(BUFF Blog - August 2012).
Anyhow, I think the best way of approaching this blog is to
revisit one of my diary entries and fatten it up for public consumption. It
should be one that gives a little flavour of the business as well as highlighting
some of the typical anxieties experienced by a first time director. Okay here
goes…
6th August 2010
So here I am sitting in a swanky restaurant in a swanky
central London hotel. It’s breakfast time and I nurse a bitter pot of green tea
and wait for a well-known trans-Atlantic actress. She’s late. Thirty minutes
late. She’s thirty minutes late even though we’re meeting her at her hotel. You
know, where she’s staying and stuff. All she has to do is skip down those
marble steps and voila! here we are. Or, if she’s not in the mood for skipping,
she could saunter into the art deco elevator and have elevator man press the
Ground floor button for her. What can she be doing? Getting ready I suppose.
Powdering her nose.
Until a couple of days ago I’d barely heard of her - but
this means nothing. If you’re looking for someone plugged into up-to-the-minute
popular culture, it’s not me. But yes even I can comprehend the magnitude of
this meeting. She’s big; basically a star and it would be a real result if we
bagged her. Securing stars or ‘named actors’ was an important part of ‘The
Knot’ recruitment process; important because they lifted the profile of the
brand which, in turn, had knock-on benefits like unlocking a missing piece of
investor finance or attracting other stars to the project or making it easier
for the wardrobe department to secure designer dresses for example. But mostly,
stars were important because they shouted out to the world our mainstream
intentions - that this film was a full fat, bona fide commercial one. To be clear, stars do not audition. They are offered (the
part). If they accept, all that is left is to negotiate the details of their
fee and schedule and this is when the producers put their serious face on. But
this is really about the agents – and the agents are in pig heaven. This is
their opportunity to demonstrate their clout and the best ones will play poker;
feign disinterest, make a counter offer, invite you to bid with a competing
project and any other play that secures the most advantageous contract for
their client. Then the papers are signed and that is that. Mostly. Sometime,
before an agreement is reached, the star will want to meet. They’ll want to
meet the team behind the project. They’ll want to meet the director.
The risk here is that this meeting can turn into a kind of
audition - not for the star of course but for you the director. What is your
vision for the film? But I saw it this way don’t you think this way would be
better? How are you going to shoot this? How are you going to light me? How do
I know that your first film is not going to be some amateurish bullshit where
my skin looks bad and my career takes a nosedive? All valid questions of course and ones I’d prepared for. A director, especially a ‘hired gun’, which essentially what
I was, is not really going to get fired for one bad meeting, for one scoffed
opportunity. “Don’t worry man, the chemistry wasn’t right. It wasn’t meant to
be. It’s probably for the best anyway.”
But filmmaking, directing in particular, is often about
perception. Are we in a safe pair of hands? Is he competent? Yeah he made a
couple of good shorts but this is different. When the shit hits the fan will he
crumble? Does the man helming this actually know what the fuck he is doing?!!
So yes, one bad meeting is not going to get you fired – but
it will taint you. It will open doubts in the minds of decision makers, doubts
that you don’t really want them to be entertaining. One more bad meeting, a
wobbly first shooting day and that’s it. You are out, relieved of your
position. Fired. I’ve seen this happen. If you’re directing a script that you
don’t own then it’s the law of the jungle. It’s political. It’s about
diplomacy, relationships, alliances. Things might be just fine, ‘hunky-dory’ as
they say, before the sudden arrival of a new character upsets the equilibrium.
They have influence. They want their mate in the director’s chair. They scheme
and await their chance. In the bush, yellow eyes watch your every move, each
set with a different agenda. Meanwhile you are out in the open, butt naked up
there on the hilltop, a target for every jackal and joker to take pot shots at. So these are my fears as I sit here sipping this now cold
beverage. Actually they are not just my fears - they are Noel’s too.
The most singularly powerful player in the production, Noel
Clarke, is in my corner. I think he likes me. He saw something in my shorts, he
saw talent and potential, the glimmer of something special and he wants this to
be my coming out party. He wants this to be my big break. But before we get too sentimental, make no mistake, Noel has
calculated all the angles, all the plays and all the repercussions. He has the
most riding on this venture and if he decides, for whatever reason, that I am
jeopardising this venture, I will be dropped in a heartbeat. Noel was taking this meeting very seriously. Earlier, when
we’d met up, there was probably something about my Hawaiian shirt and
unflustered disposition that alerted him to the fact that I was failing to
appreciate the full gravity of the task at hand. So he decided to force my appreciation
and he did so in quite a clever way.
After joking about my weight, “are you sure you can squeeze
through there?,” when he stood up at Bar Italia to let me pass, he became
grave.
“No nervous giggling,” he warned. I was to “take the lead”
and impose my “vision” on the meeting. This was actually music to my ears and I
was more than happy for Noel to take a back seat. Noel was still driving his
point home though.
“I mean I can take the lead bruv, I can talk but I’m not the
director…”
“Yeah, yeah of course,” I conferred. “Don’t worry, I get it.
It’s about reassuring her, letting her know that she’s in safe hands and that,
you know, we’re serious.”
Noel nodded vigorously. “Exactly.” Then Noel did his clever thing. He recounted a meeting he’d
had recently with a major Hollywood studio. Things had been going well.
“They were like, great, like the script, like the project,
let’s just have a quick meeting with the director. And you know what he did
bruv?”
“What?”
“He fucked it.”
I laughed out loud as I am prone to. Noel wasn’t laughing.
“It would be funny if it wasn’t tragic.”
By now we were strolling up Greek Street towards a member’s
club and strolling is the correct description as our lead producer, Enrico
Tessarin, was literally pushing a stroller with one hand and Blackberrying with
the other. I’ve been conditioned not to bring kids to meetings but here was
Enrico rolling with his tiny bambina like it wasn’t anything. If this was how they
roll in Italy then they’d definitely won a fan in me. But as Enrico later put
it, “I’m hiring you (the star) and you’re gonna tell me I can’t bring my child
to a meeting? You can fuck off.”
We paused outside a nondescript door. I was keen to know how
the director had fucked the big studio meeting.
“Shit what did he do?”
We got buzzed through and Noel continued.
“He was stammering, he was nervous. He was interrupting
himself to take a glass of water. He was like…”
Noel proceeded to act out the director in question
stuttering and mumbling before taking a long pause to down an imaginary glass
of water with shaky hand. It was a funny impression but it had the desired
effect. I suddenly started to feel nervous. You could say that I began to
appreciate the full gravity of the task at hand.
“No pressure,” Ros winked at me. Ros is Noel’s reassuringly down to earth personal assistant.
She’s also one of the producers on The Knot. We settled down on sofas.
“Get your shit together,” Noel advised before disappearing
upstairs with Enrico to hold a conference call with a key investor. Fast-forward 90 minutes and here we all are, waiting in this
swanky hotel. My shit is together and our star is thirty minutes late. Her
chair sits unoccupied between Noel and myself. Around the marble table Enrico
sits to my right and feeds bambina while Ros sits besides Noel checking
something out with the obligatory iPad. Noel swills freshly squeezed orange juice from a wine glass
and breaks Enrico’s balls regarding a financial transaction that has failed to
materialise. The banter is playful and Enrico takes it in his stride, weighing
the options the tax credit may or may not have on delayed investment. There are
details but behind the technicality is a general sense of frustration at the
‘nailing jelly to a plate’ exercise that is securing private equity.
Enrico and his partner Junior Quartey have done a fine job
raising money, performing out of their skin to get us this far. But six weeks away from production and we find ourselves
about to propose to a major Hollywood actress without actually having the
budget to afford her. This is not a good look. We risk looking like a bunch of
jokers – Noel most of all. But Noel is looking past Enrico now – and doing his best
attempt at a smile. I turn and follow his gaze. Yep, here she comes striding
towards us. Here comes our star*...
(Ends)
* Note from the editor: the alluded to star does not relate
to the final cast of ‘The Knot’.
‘The Knot’ is available on DVD from February 4, 2013. Online, on-air, and in person, BUFF is the home of urban
film coverage in the UK. The 8th British Urban Film Festival returns
in September 2013.
