Keep Out

In a movie, it's much easier to be free. I came up with the name 'Kid In The Front Row' on a whim. But I think it expresses everything I feel about the cinema.

If I'm standing outside a fascinating old building with a 'Do Not Enter' sign, I don't want to obey it. I want to cross the line, I want to explore, and it's possible I will. But I'll feel guilty if I do, and I'll look over my back, convinced a security guy or policeman will make it a nightmare.

But when I write a screenplay, or film a scene, the characters can walk straight past that sign with ease.

'Do Not Enter' is everywhere. Don't enter that derelict building, don't enter into a relationship, don't enter into the film industry.

We go after the safe options. It's as if all of human experience has led us to a place of fear, where making a decision based on heart, or curiosity or hope is seen as absurd. Tell the person next to you that you want to go explore a haunted house, or you want to go explore Romania on your own, you'll meet resistance. People who know better. People who know the answers.

Movies are different. People stretch those boundaries, and they change. The best movies are about people who dare to risk, dare to love, dare to break out of the rules that society and the law placed down so pointlessly.

The other side of the no entry sign is where all the fun is. It's where life happens. For the most part, our fictional counterparts do it better than we do. And we get older, and less bolder, and satisfaction remains amiss.

Just a thought.

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Tiny Dancer

This was always a great song. But in 2000, Cameron Crowe put it in 'Almost Famous' - which made the song even better. Crowe has a way of doing that.

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Work

There are those that do the work and those that don't do the work. The difference between them is that those who do the work do the work, and the other side don't. It's that simple. 

And you can be either and most of the time you're caught dancing between the two. Constantly prioritizing and re-prioritizing and never quite figuring out where you are. But if you want to be hired, or you want to be taken seriously, you have to do the work. You have to be the writer who gets called up because the producer knows you can write them a scene at 2am ready for shooting at 6am. 

Because that's exactly how it is. There are those who do the work and those who avoid it, or delay it, or have the excuses. 

This is for me just like it's for you. Because some projects this year that should have taken five minutes took about seven months. 

The only difference between someone who does the work and someone who doesn't do the work is that the one who does the work does the work. The other one almost does it. Or does it five months from now. 

Do the work. It's why you here. Why you got into this thing. The daydreaming about red-carpets can come later, so can the moaning about bad auditions and evil producers. Forget about that and do the work.

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Five Questions For You

Would love for you to answer these, and also pass this on to anyone else who might be interested.

1. Has a film storyline or character ever inspired you to say or do something in your life that, otherwise, you wouldn't have said or done?

2. Artists die, but their work stays, as long as we keep viewing it. Why is the past important? Where do Chaplin, Capra and Hepburn fit into a world of iPhones and social networks?

3. What do you dislike most about movies?

4. Please sum up in only ONE word, what you are looking when you watch a film.

5. When you think of your love for movies, what one image comes to mind? (could be an image from a movie, could be a flashback of you as a kid eating popcorn, could be anything!)

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Talent? No-one Cares

When you were young, you found out you had talent. Some people can put a sentence together better than others, some can sing a nice tune.

You think that's your ticket.

But talent isn't personal. Talent doesn't resonate.

But your personal story does. The tales and tumbles that make you a unique person.

A hundred years from now you're dead. There'll be others who can sing, others who can light a scene or hold a paintbrush.

But none of them have your fingerprints. Your handwriting is your own and when you look out of your window at night you see it in a way that only you can see.

Show us that. We want to know what you feel, and how it hurts you, and how it makes you scream with joy.

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A Fast Five

1. 'Insidious' is a cool movie. My friends tell me it's a rip off of some other films but I wouldn't know, as Horror isn't really my thing. I saw this on a whim, without knowing what it was.

Some bits made me jump, and I loved the tension. I bought into the nonsense. I usually have such a low bullshit meter, but with 'Insidious' I bought into it. And there was a weird bit at the end where Patrick Wilson goes into 'The Further' which was creepily like a recurring dream/nightmare I have.. so I was fascinated!

2. 'My Date With Drew's is a documentary about a guy who won $1100 on a game show and spent it documenting himself going after a dream he'd had his whole life: to have a date with Drew Barrymore.

It's funny, heartwarming and unexpectedly inspiring. Check it out, it came out on DVD like seven years ago.

3. I'm working my way through 'The Pacific'. It's different to what I expected. I'm six episodes in and I haven't really latched onto the characters. When someone on screen says a name I just kind of pretend I know who they're talking about. It's like when you're 200 pages into a book and the name Vera is mentioned and you haven't a clue who she is or how she relates to the main character.

But there are some poignant moments. And the 3rd episode was really moving.

4. I struggle to relax in the cinema. I need a perfect environment. Any sign of phone use, or chatter-- or, yesterday, in the row behind me was a constant foot shuffler tapper man! Tapping his feet, shuffling them around, munching on his little snacks he'd smuggled in. What a nightmare!

5. Who will they cast as Bin Laden?

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The World Inside Of You

Osama Bin Laden is dead. Or maybe he's alive. Or maybe he was killed years ago.

And the Royal Wedding was a glorious triumph of love. Or maybe it was unearned privilege paid for by the people who struggle to put bread on the table. Or maybe it was irrelevant.

And President Obama is American. Or maybe he's a terrorist. Or maybe he's a dancer on Broadway and owned by Freemasons.

The job of the artist isn't to judge the different opinions, it's to get inside of them. To feel them, to understand where they come from.

Why do some English people want the Royal's out? Why do some Americans have a big problem with the color of Obama's skin? Why are people so quick to assume the Osama Bin Laden assassination was anything apart from what we were told?

Your answers to these questions aren't meant to be factual, but you're meant to be able to feel them. Feel the part of you that believes everything you're told and -- feel the part of you that mistrusts authority every single time. Dig into who you are until you find the part of you that is judgemental, or has prejudice. What's underneath that? Do you have fears? Painful experiences?

We are all so similar, yet so different. But we don't just want our art to appeal to people who look and feel like us. It needs to reach further. But we all have limits. Everyone is liberal, to a point. Everyone is loving, until they're fearful. Everyone is carefree, until they wake up in the morning.

Hitler was evil. Osama Bin Laden too. But most people aren't, they're doing the best they can. They believe they're doing right. It's easy to get caught up in the circus of calling the other side dumb, or ignorant; but it's more productive to explore it on a deeper level. Explore the ways in which you are dumb and ignorant, and help it make your work richer. 

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