The Art of Waiting
Hello!
And sorry it had been an age since I was last in touch — the summer has very much got in the way of me writing on here. I hope you enjoy and as always, if you want to get in touch with me, just hit reply!
The Art of Waiting
Despite how busy it’s been here, there’s also been a lot of waiting. I’m currently in a semi-regular stand-off with Business Affairs at a studio I’m working with — waiting for them to agree the fee for the latest stage of my current project. They say they’ve got no money, I say I couldn’t do it for the paltry amount that they’ve offered, we will probably end up somewhere in the middle.
It’s not an easy time, psychologically speaking. The only thing we’re really interested in as creators is getting stuck into creative problems: wrangling story, trying to make a project the best it can be. But while we’re waiting, our projects are in this sort of Schrödinger’s box and — like with the cat — you don’t want to get too attached in case in a week’s time you open the box and find out it’s been dead all along.
Who’d be a Producer?
We met a producer friend for lunch the other day, and she was on very good form — talking about the independent film she’s working on, which seems to have blossomed out of all proportion. An adaptation of a successful but seemingly straightforward memoir, it has grown into a large budget spectacular involving helicopters, sets built underwater and basically taking over a remote community for a couple of weeks.
She says the worst moment was deep into pre-production was when a backer pulled out (leaving £1m), and there was only a small amount of money in the company account. Production cards were coming back declined, payroll was not unable to go out: they just about got through it. Remarkably, she was incredibly calm and unstressed by the whole thing.
I much prefer being a writer, causing budget problems rather than trying to deal with them.
A New PM, the Queen passing
Well, Liz Truss became Prime Minister this week — to no one’s surprise. And while it is tempting to think about seeing the back of such characters as Boris, Priti Patel and Nadine Dorries — one can’t help but have trepidation for the government taking yet another incrementally rightward lurch. It’s possible that Truss — being so unknown — may come through all this and be a transformative leader, but she shows no sign of it so far. If her public appearances so far may turn out to be an electoral car crash. It may be good for the long-term hopes of the Labour party, but perhaps by the time we’ve got through a financially disastrous year, that will seem cold comfort.
And, of course, yesterday the Queen died, followed soon after a lot of ceremonious hogwash, national sentimentality, and some pretty good Twitter jokes (not to say a little reflection on where we are in our process of decolonising our country). While her death didn’t affect me much in itself — I’m never had much interest in the monarchy either fervently for or fervently against — it did make me think of a generation of women in my own family, all of whom are now dead, who (rightly or wrongly) felt they had a strong and visceral connection to her. They had a sense of duty; the calm, reassuring presence and steeliness that is being so much attributed to her in the papers and television this morning, and it’s they who came, unbidden, to mind as I watched the news yesterday afternoon.
Psalms for the End of the World by Cole Haddon
I was recently fortunate enough to read Cole Haddon’s book, Psalms for the End of the World, which is an interesting, sprawling novel that shuttles in a fascinating cinematic style between times and worlds. It’s got a really interesting sci-fi conceit too — definitely worth grabbing a copy now that it’s out.
All my best,
James.