A Tale Of Three Films

First of all, go here. Read carefully.
OK? Great.
This weekend, the Sick Puppies shot their first Straight 8 film. After a month of planning, expense, writes and rewrites, heartbreak, laughs and a few too many late nights, we have a film.
It’s not the film we initially planned.
In fact, it’s not the film we slung together as a backup, either.

This is the story of how we made “The Gourmand.”

It began, as most Sick Puppy things do, in a pub. We had decided to get back into the swing of film-making after a frustrating 2006 which had led to an awful lot of writing and abortive fund-chasing, and nothing but a short video for a Robbie Williams competition to our name. This was the way to put something together that was filled with the can-do spirit and skewed sense of humour that typified the Sick Puppy approach.

The idea we settled on was entitled “Rock ‘n’ Roll Martians vs Red Planet Earth!!!” It was pulp sci-fi done in the style of a Soviet propoganda film. It had a cardboard and tin-foil robot. It had degenerate hipster youths. It had a dance sequence, for frak’s sake. It was far and away the most ambitious thing we’d ever attempted, with special and model effects, and a team of 50s dancers.

The script was great, we had actors in place, models were coming together, sound design was by all accounts rolling along nicely.
Then it all started unravelling. Steve, the third head of the SPs, producer, composer and sound designer, vanished. Phone calls and emails went unanswered. The actor’s schedule’s began to conflict. Suddenly, people couldn’t do certain days. Everyone had day jobs. Everyone had prior commitments. The weekends that we had to do the shoot began evaporating.

Finally, a crisis meeting was called. Clive and I were the only two Puppies to show. Carefully, Clive went through the plus and minus points. In Steve’s absence, he had become defacto producer. The main Mars shoot was still just about doable, but on the one weekend that I couldn’t make. We’d have to split our resources. I could still do the model and interior shoots. It would be a three day project, but still within possibilities.
Until we looked at the budget. Bear in mind that no-one was getting paid for this. All we could manage was food and travel expenses. Three days of costume hire and transport bulked out the budget.
Once we got to the thick end of a thousand quid, we realised that “Rock ‘n’ Roll Martians” couldn’t happen. Not now, not like this.

An urgent brainstorm later brought us a plan B. A weekend shoot at my place in Reading, a crew of three incorporating our model-builder Adam, and a new premise.
Robot Porn. A standard 70’s porn scenario, acted out by two tin-foil and cardboard robots, under the title Input:Output or DB-E does DL-S. It was silly and peurile, but hey, it’s blokes in cardboard banging together. Comedy value – priceless.

Friday evening. I’m gathering prop materials, and prepping the house. The phone goes at quarter to nine. Clive. With bad news.
Adam had dropped out, with maybe three hours warning. There was no-one else available. It was us. That was it. And there was no way we could do Input:Output with two people.

There’s a point in any endeavour where you realised it’s doomed. When you come to the final understanding that the world has conspired against you to teach you that sometimes you just have to say no. That sometimes it’s just not worth the trouble.

This was that moment.

“Screw it”, I said to Clive. “Come to Reading. Bring the camera. We’ll work something out.”

Saturday morning dawned, sunny and clear. Over bacon sarnies and coffee, Clive and I worked out a plan. One person behind the camera, one in front. A monolouge piece. Clive joked about doing a cookery piece.

A light came on in my head. Yes, a cookery piece. An illustrated recipe. Narrated by a cannibal.

It was perfect. The details came together almost too quickly. I would be the cannibal. Clive would be the “meat”, hanging in my shed. The voiceover and sound design could come later. It was a true Straight8 moment. Suddenly, we were forced to think outside our normal comfort zone, without a proper script, inventing on the fly.

It made absolute sense. It was completely stupid. It would work. Unless it didn’t. Either way – we’d tried.

A quick hunt for materials, and a wasted hour while Clive shaved himself (we thought that meat should not be hairy. We were extemporising.) meant that we began shooting at around 2pm. Three hours of available light, and whatever we could push out of my house lighting. I bought a million candle-power torch from a local hardware store, that resolutely refused to work. Heyho. Just another obstacle.

The shoot ticked on, moving between cooking bits in the kitchen, and the horror bits in the shed. Clive became increasingly naked, and increasingly coated in lard and seasonings, and I can’t believe I’ve just written that sentence. I made my first attempt at mixing fake blood. It was too see-through. It didn’t matter.

As we chased the last of the spring light down the garden, we started to realise maybe we did have something after all. Whatever else, we were working with people whose creative instincts we trusted completely. There were no arguments, no ego trips. We were coming up with proof that all you needed to make a film was a camera, and an idea.
At 6pm we ran the stock out on the final shot, the cannibal chewing slowly on the meal he’s spent all day on. It was pork, and it tasted deeply wrong.

And that was that. I packed Clive off to the station, drove home and flopped. An exhausting, yet deeply satisfying day. The sound design and voiceover is yet to be done, but shouldn’t cause any major obstacles. (Hark, the hollow sound of sarcastic laughter…)

On Saturday, March 16th, Rob Wickings and Clive Ashenden made a Sick Puppy film. With luck and a following wind, it will be screened at Straight8 in May. If not, it’ll be on YouTube soon after.

Of the three films we could have made, this is the one I’m proud of.

Free movies without the guilt!

Now this is pretty neat. A Linkbunnies reader has pointed in the direction of Free Public Domain Movies
This is a repository of all kinds of public domain goodies, including DOA, Battleship Potemkin, Fritz Lang’s M and, most excitingly, the 1954 Hammer “The Last Man On Earth”, the one true version of Richard Matheson’s “I Am Legend. Check it out, and be grateful for that 50 year copyright cap!

A Formal Announcement of Connubial Intention

I hereby post notice of my intentions to engage in an interlude of amatory distraction with you. Following are my terms:

1) an exchange of tokens, serving as a draft contract of casual partnership, will take place during the hours of 9am to 12pm noon, February 14th.

2) A further meeting will be scheduled to take place on the evening of that day. This will consolidate earlier discussions on the nature of the forthcoming interlude.

3) The interlude will commence at a time and venue to be agreed by both parties, but preferably to take place that evening.

4) Negotiations on future contact between the two parties are not covered under the terms of this agreement.

Full terms and conditions can be found here.

Storytelling Week Continues… (even though it’s not storytelling week anymore)

I didn’t post as much as I’d planned last week, so I’ll try to make up for it with a couple more tales.
This first one continues on from the asylum seekers theme I ranted about previously. It was a final piece for a creative writing course I took in 2005, and has never been seen anywhere else. You lucky people.

“Freedom”

And here comes Marek, a shard of darkness in the golden, foggy haze, shouldering his way through the crowd. Sleeveless muscle top, tattoos aflame in the heat, his bulky, shaven head thrust forward on its wide neck, impassive in his knock-off Oakley wraparounds, all intent, all threat.

“The package, Islam.” A statement, not a question. Husayin flinches involuntarily, as he reaches into the jacket of his windbreaker for the thin manila envelope that everything today depends upon. He tries to stop his hand shaking as he passes it over.

There is a stillness for a moment, intensely localised around the two men. Amidst the roar and rush and tear of the Holloway Road on a Monday morning in May, they stand quietly, the giant and the slight, dark Muslim, focussed entirely on the envelope in Marek’s fist.

“This is everything.” Marek’s voice is a grinding of stones. “You’re not holding anything back, Islam. This is all of it.”

Husayin nods mutely. He’s usually a garrulous man. Normally, people will pay him to shut up. But here, now, confronted with this, silent deference seems to be the safe option.
Marek relaxes a little, steps back.

“OK, Islam. Don’t forget, the meet’s at noon. Yusuf will expect an answer. I’ll see you then.”

Then he turns and is gone, lost to the murk and the traffic noise. Husayin Canal, journalist, illegal immigrant, lost soul, watches him go, and wonders what he has done that Allah should feel that he should need to consort with giants.

§§§§§§

Dawn prayers, as the sky over North London took on a watery blue wash over a burnt orange ground, were said hastily and without enthusiasm. It had been cold. His knees hurt from kneeling on concrete through the thin layer of protection his prayer mat afforded. Husayin’s mind had not been on his devotional responsibilities. Instead, there on the roof of the squat at Campdale Road, while his compatriots slumbered in a ten-foot square room two floors down, he had concerned himself with more worldly matters. His wife. His son. His country.

Now, on the Holloway Road, with clouds wearing holes in the fine blue sky, and dhuhr two hours away, Husayin once again found his mind wandering. At home, he had known his position in life. He had been important, and people had listened to his opinions. No, people had paid to read them.

He had been the lead reporter on the one independent newspaper in Kajistan after the Russians had gone. He had striven for truth and integrity in all things, taking as his example the new democratic government. He winces to think of it now, the naivety. That he was not alone in his foolishness was no consolation. It was like a drunkenness, an intoxication. The very thought of freedom made his head spin, even now, being so close to it and yet so far away.

Better not to think of it. Better to concentrate on the job at hand, on selling knock-off cigarettes to schoolchildren and the elderly. Better to stand outside a dilapidated McDonalds on the Holloway Road, thousands of miles from all he holds dear. Better that than to remember the things that can happen when freedom is openly discussed in Kajistan.

§§§§§§

As the sun cloaks itself in cloud for the third time that morning, Husayin decides to stop for the day. Business had been slow, and would remain so until the schools finished for lunch. Besides, after noon, whatever else happened, he would not be selling cigarettes any more.
It is time, he decides, to see what was happening in the real world.

Sharmia’s place is cool, dim and quiet after the blast of noise and heat out on the Holloway Road. Past the cash desk, two rows of shabby cubicles rack back into the gloom, each with a stained old PC casting blue pools of light into the shadows. It’s still early, well before noon, and yet already more than half the booths are occupied. Intense young men with beards, pretty girls in burkhas, bent into the electric glow. The only sounds are the rattle of the keyboards, the hum of the mainframe. Sharmia’s is a café in name only. This is not a place for relaxation.
Husayin grabs a 30-minute slot from the stern matriarch at the cash desk, and finds a seat at the back. He logs in, and maps a circuitous path through Kajistani weblogs and message boards, using five different passwords, three different user names.

The news from home is grim. Four more mosques closed in Cosja, the capital, and his home. One firebombed, during maghrib. Twenty worshippers killed. He probes for details, a faint sweat starting on his brow. Women? Youths? Asir, his boy, was fourteen. A devout and serious young man. He could have been there, prostrate before God, as the flames rose.
Nothing. Nothing.

Finally, frantic, Husayin risks accessing the email account. A desperate step. He knows how closely the Christian Democrats monitor mail traffic. Just checking the account could compromise him, or worse, Soraya and Asir. But he has to know.

There is nothing in the main mailbox. Instead, he checks the junk mail. And there, under the header for Vigara (the choice of the potent Muslim!), the secret sign, the one he and his wife had laughed so hard over when they had set it up, a scant paragraph.

His heart leaps. They are safe. Finally, Soraya has complied with her husband’s wishes, the one thing he asked her to do as they were frantically throwing clothes into a bag together, their last moments together in ten months. She took Asir and got out of the capital. They are safe, for the moment, with Husayin’s parents fifty miles to the west. For how much longer, no one can tell. And finally she asks, again. The one thing she asked of her husband that frantic evening last August.

“Why are you still silent, Husayin? Why have you not told the world what you have seen? Where are you?”

Where, indeed. There is no answer to that question, because to answer it is to put everything he loves under threat. He is in a place where silence is the only choice. He is in limbo, the gateway to hell.

A hand lands firmly on his shoulder. Without turning round, Husayin knows who is behind him, and what lies ahead.

“It’s time, Islam,” says Marek.

§§§§§§

Yusuf smiles his diseased smile as Marek marches Husayin down the alley. If dental work could reflect personality, then ex-Colonel Petrovian’s seeping gums and crumbling bridgework would be an accurate signifier.

“Good morning, Husayin,” he says, as Marek hauls the smaller man to a rough at-ease in front of him. “I’ll keep this brief.”

“That’s appreciated,” Husayin says. “We’re both busy men.”

“Indeed. I’m not offering you a choice. You have none. You continue to do as I say, or I inform the authorities back home of your whereabouts. You work for me, or I track down and slaughter your wife and son. We understand each other, of course.”

“Of course,” Husayin says. In his pockets, his hands are trembling. Behind him, Marek is still.

“You’re wasted selling cigarettes. I have other merchandising opportunities for you. Much more profitable, for me, of course.”

Husayin is dumb, his world at the tipping point. He can only will for the right thing to happen, hope that what he has done prior to this moment is enough.

He has one chance, and it’s as thin as a single sheet of paper in a manila envelope.

“I’m not hearing agreement,” Yusuf says. “Threatening your family is not enough, perhaps. Maybe Marek can persuade you.”

Marek is a giant, so how can he move so silently? He is no longer behind Husayin. He is behind Yusuf, wrapping one hand almost tenderly round his waist. He moves his huge head close to the ex-Colonel’s avian features, his stinking maw.

“No,” he says. “I think before I do anything more for you, you need to explain to me why exactly you left Kajistan so quickly. Islam gave me something to read about you.”

Husayin starts to back away, towards the mouth of the alley, slowly.

“You forgot that he’s not just a refugee,” Marek says. “You forgot that he knows how to gather proof about the things people like you commit, and how to get them into the right hands.”
“Killing Muslims is one thing,” he whispers, “but using tanks in schoolyards, against children…”

He looks up abruptly, nods at Husayin. “Go, he says. You’re free to tell your stories. You can leave Yusuf here with me to tell his.”

Husayin turns and walks away, keeping his pace steady. Once again, the image of the Muslim school floods his memory. The tanks in a rough semi-circle. The small, bird-like man in front of the children. The girl in the burkha, yelling at him. The flat crack of the gun going off, as she falls in a heap at his feet.

At the head of the alley, he thinks he hears the sound again, behind him, like a car back-firing, the snap of a twig. He keeps walking, not looking back, trying, and ultimately failing, not to run.

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