Will this movie get made? I'm not so sure at the moment.
There's this depressing, sinking feeling deep in my stomach that maybe, just maybe, I'm a little over my head. I can't really put my finger on what's worrying me exactly, but it is worrying. The thought of it all last night was giving me a frickin' migraine.
...is there an 'e' at the end of that? I'm not so sure. Still fucked at the moment.
But yeah. I'm worried. One of my main worries is the dissapearance of my producer, Ariff.
Ariff, I know you read this occasionally, where the fuck you at?! Pick up the phone, jackass!
I was hoping Ariff would be able to cover all the stuff that needs to be done over the past and upcoming week (along with the period I was in England) so that we could shoot by now. At the moment, I don't have anyone to bounce any ideas off. I have no wing-man. This troubles me, and my confidence in this movie is rapidly dwindling down to the point of paranoid negative thoughts. What kind of thoughts? Here're a few:
(a) The cast and crew have not been prepped. At all. Some are waiting. Others are wondering how serious I am about all this.
(b) We're behind schedule.
(c) Contracts. Lack of.
(d) What if this script is a hunking pile of shit?
(e) What if it this movie doesn't get sold or shown anywhere?
(f) What the fuck am I doing?
The thing is, I keep myself intensely busy. Supremely busy. And not just on one thing. From the moment I wake up, it's a large amount of hours working the advertising gig (which is now in office-politics hell) followed by the Y2k album (and a deadline that's getting closer and closer) and this movie (which I spend nights in front of a laptop on my bed trying to fight my need to sleep so I can finish up the schedule and all other pre-pro planning crap) as well as the FYI Entertainment stuff (got a whole bunch of stuff to design and I'm nowhere near finishing it).
With all this going on, I need some serious help if I'm going to make this movie. I don't want another 'Much Ado' scenario.
Ok. NOW what the fuck is he talking about?
My first play was called 'Much Ado'. Myself and my friends had taken over the CUSU Drama Society and after many meetings and talks, I realized that's all it was. Talk. Nothing was getting done, and if a play was going to be put on, then where's the fucking script?
So I wrote the script in two days: a re-write of Shakespeare's 'Much Ado About Nothing' with a flurry of jokes, most of which were stolen from either Kevin Smith or Trey Parker/Matt Stone material. Then auditions. Then rehearsals. Set designs. Flyer designs. Posters. Programmes. Logistics. Health and safety officials. Promotion. Organization. 95% of all that crap was done myself.
And it almost killed me.
This was during my uni days, and I didn't attend a single lecture during this period. I worked my fingers to the fucking bone to get that fucking play done and in the end I was proud, but I was also very, very tired and a lot of the other aspects of my life were affected because of that.
In my second play I delegated a bit more, but not enough. In the end my co-director (who was actually more of my sounding board and muse), who we shall call American Badass Dave, told me a simple piece of advice,
"Dude, you need to delegate and take charge. You can't be doing all this shit by yourself."
Something along those lines, but that's the gist of it. I'm sure there was a 'dude' somewhere in the sentence.
I don't want to have to do all this shit myself. If I have to, I will. But I'm seriously considering either rewriting the script YET AGAIN to make the scope of it a lot smaller in terms of cast and crew and locations ('Swimming With Sharks' only had 3 main characters and 2 main locations. Why didn't I do that?).
Ariff, if you're reading this, pick up the phone, dammit.
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