Films About Ghosts

The woman next to me on the train has the same perfume as my ex-girlfriend. I've not been around this smell in three years. 

The memories come flooding back of the times that smell was most potent. Some of those were very intimate, but others were a gust of wind when we walked by the sea, or when she shuffled around trying to get comfortable in the car.

Those memories are just like movies. Little pieces of cinema in my mind. The only difference being the odours. You can smell a memory. I'm still on the train and this woman has no idea she's sent me tripping back to the past.

Films are strange because once they're done, that's it. You can go back again and again but you're rewatching the same thing.

Memories are different. They fade. They're not Blu-ray, they're old VHS copies. They wear out.

With a movie you believe that Harry and Sally stay together, maybe Alvy and Annie hold on to something.

In real life you're left with a smell. She's somewhere else now, and you're on a train dreaming of years that died long ago. They are so real, yet somehow feel like they never existed at all. They're just some movie you watched.

"If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts" -Adam Duritz.

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Dust

The hardest thing of all, is writing what's really in your heart. It's usually that very thing that makes you bolt it towards your laptop, desperate to capture in a bottle the spark of yourself that you just figured out.

But when you get there, a little something dies every time, and it blurs into ideas of stories and characters and meanings and somehow, you just lose something.

But the films you love, that you REALLY love, the ones that you cried yourself to sleep over when someone left you or when you felt all alone or when your friend died; you know those movies? The reason they resonate with you was because someone thumped their heart down on a page, or into a scene; and you saw them, you truly saw THEM ---- and because of that, you saw you. You saw your heart and soul smashed down on a page and rolled out on a screen and dumped in front of you.

But getting to those heights with your own work is the toughest thing of all. Because you tell yourself it's always too cheesy, or too personal, or too emotional, or too esoteric, or too much of a blur inside your brain.

The things you know and feel the most, the things you are so DESPERATE to say; despite the fact you know them with such definiteness and clarity -- despite that, when it comes to it; it seems you hardly know them at all. The very core of you you are, when it comes to chucking it out onto the page, it becomes a blur, a something, a speck of dust in a room of old books. Writing and directing and acting, they're all looking for that one piece of truth, yet the distractions are abundant everywhere we look. We always find a way to obscure it, to over-complicate it, to miss it.

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STEVEN SPIELBERG Interview at AIN'T IT COOL NEWS

Spielberg, he's one of us. Just a kid who loves movies. Check out Quint's amazing interview with the one and only Steven Spielberg here.

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Meaning Of Life: Cheryl Cole, Shopping Malls & Beansprouts

You ever have one of them days when you wonder what the fuck it is you're doing?

I bought a pack of raspberries. Once upon a time people grew raspberries themselves, or they went out to pick them, now you decide whether to get the cheap ones or the expensive ones, because they have both at the store. How does a raspberry become an expensive one? Does it go through training? Why aren't we growing fruit? Why are we spending all this money?

And they were selling 'The Social Network' on DVD for £4. A month ago it was £12.99. A MONTH AGO! This is how DVD sales work. Why do we pay more? Why is the immediate purchase necessary? What is the real value, 12 or 4?

Just one of them days when everything seems insane. And I happened to be in Shepherds Bush today. I went into Westfields, a shopping mall, because I needed to pee. Westfields was in the news yesterday because Tom Hanks was there, promoting 'Larry Crowne' at the cinema. Since when are movies Premiered at the shopping mall? Now you can wave to the movie stars from the 4th isle of Marks & Spencer's, then go buy some Toy Story 3 merchandise.

I walked around Westfield in amazement at how expensive everything was, and in shock at how fake-tanned everyone looked. All the women looked like Paris Hilton, but less authentic. And Paris Hilton isn't even authentic.

And I just can't help but think, surely this isn't it? The artists can't get nine people to look at their work, but the tanning people get a whole nation changing their skin colour. What meeting did I miss? What am I not getting?

I realise my thinking is outdated. I should be blogging gossip and naked Blake Lively pictures like TMZ.

Someone convinced us all that our tans are important, just like the coming and goings of Cheryl Cole (she has a nice tan, don't you think?). And the government is telling me beansprouts are out to kill me. The beansprouts and cucumbers are out to get me. 16 people died in Germany and apparently it's definitely 100% the vegetables. Our armies turned half of the Middle East into vegetables. Truth is I'm ignorant about it, I should know more. Instead they're telling me which Pussycat Doll is going to judge a talent show on television and hyping the killer lettuce. I'm waiting for the TV show, 'Lettuce Got Talent', 'Bean Sprout Factor'!

Just one of those days. You wonder what the hell life is all about.

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10 Tips For Directing Comedy

1. Welcome collaboration, but make sure the ideas resonate with your vision.

2. Do takes that are faster. It's always slower when you watch it back. Faster is funnier.

3. Make sure the actors are comfortable doing less.

4. Do as much as you can in single shots. Cutting to different angles makes it less funny.

5. Have really old people in the background and out of focus. Don't know why, but it's funny.

6. Use funny names.

7. Keep to the page.

8. Ignore the page.

9. In drama, your characters sit and talk. In comedy your characters can't talk because one is deaf and the other is trapped under the sofa.

10. Don't be too topical. Good humour lasts forever, but a joke about George Bush is an embarrassment, much like his foreign policy.

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Diana Ross Syndrome

I was on the train, and listening to Diana Ross & Lionel Richie sing "Endless Love". And then as we stopped at a station, a trendy guy boarded the train and sat down on my right, and a pretty girl sat to my left, and I turned my music down a little. Some part of me didn't want the strangers to hear what I was listening to.

What the hell is that? I'm turning down part of who I am. And for what?

In school you're meant to conform and fit in. A lot of us rebel against it, but we still conform sometimes. It's easier to rebel using Marilyn Manson and Slipknot, because it has attitude, you can conform to something else.

But people shut out the fact they like Lionel Richie and Phil Collins. What the fuck?

I know that these two strangers on the train don't care about me and can't hear my music. But I turned it down. Am I turning down the part of me that likes that music? Or am I turning down the part of me that has endless love in it?

Let's take it to a crazy level.

Let's say the girl sitting next to me finds me attractive, and has no idea what I'm listening to. We get talking, and an hour later we're in Starbucks talking about our mutual love of Tupac and Oasis. Would I keep quiet about the fact I like some Diana Ross songs?

Actually I wouldn't. Everyone who gets to know me knows my music tastes are all over the place. But yet, something in me, some reaction, made me turn the music down. Who in me was that?

I know what you're thinking, you're thinking 'Kid, stop reading into pointless bullshit', or 'Kid, review the new X-Men film', but you can read that on all the other blogs.

Some parts of us we share, some parts we oppress. When did it start? We do it unconsciously all the time, we don't even realize, we shut things out, shut 'em down. And I just caught that little moment on the train, and it made me curious. How often have I done that?

People hide passions that way. You can know someone for six years before they tell you they like drawing. People die before you find their poetry.

Is this nature or is it society? Maybe I should just get some speakers and make the whole train listen to Lionel Richie and Diana Ross.

Maybe what you hide the most is what is really needed. The poet dies without sharing her poetry, when in life all you got were status updates about her cat.

Us humans are strange.

And some part of me wants to shut this down. "Why are you blogging about this shit on a film blog!", says the inner-voice. This is what happens when you begin exploring yourself, you think you're insane. You think you won't fit in.

You care about that stuff after all.

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You're Gonna Get Screwed Over

It's unavoidable. You're going to give a script away to an enthusiastic producer who promises the world and then takes it all from you. Or you're going to be a camera operator for four months on the promise of a deferred payment that never comes because it wasn't on paper. Or you'll pay some charlatan from Craigslist a year's wages because of some scheme he's running that you think will make you successful.

You think you're wise, but you're not. Because everyone has this story. We're so hungry for success, that we dive in and trust people. But this industry always has and always will attract people who betray that trust. And when we begin we begin naively, and we do things because we think we'll get the credits, and we think there are shortcuts.

But you'll accidentally sign a bad script deal that you should've got a lawyer to look at. And you'll spend your money on some bullshit course that you should've got your parent's wisdom-like advice on first.

Your instincts as an individual are the key to being an artist. But artists are also dumb and naive. We sign bullshit deals. We give our rights over, we work too hard, and we let someone else pick up the rewards.

First time it happens you wanna vomit. The second time it happens you wanna quit. Eventually you just become wise, and you know how to handle yourself, and your art, and your value. You stop making the bad deal.

Everyone has this story.

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