On Showing your First Film

Bosco world:



You’ve finished the making of your film. It’s yours and it’s something very deep and personal. In fact, it’s your very bloody marrow. May’be this film will be just the making of me. Or, just a mo’; might it all have been just an exercise in ego?

And anyway, isn’t fame just a crude striving after immortality? Rubbish to all that, this film is your essence on celluloid. And now it is time to let the world see your work. But mustn’t rush, let’s just tread carefully after all, it is your first film.

Children first; my kids. Trenchant critics they may be, but nonetheless fair, yes tough but fair. They seem to like it, and as you watch them, presumably lost in admiration for their Dad, you recall the difficulty of making the thing; the initial dithering where you begin to feel you are morphing into Gordon Brown. Then someone I know gives it to me straight from the shoulder, “Just do it, man. Grab the moment.” “Crede quod habes, et habes,” ups my better half. “What does that mean.” “Believe that you have it, and you do.” Offers my nobler half; she’s a good woman but I do wish she would stop throwing these Latin quotations at me.

More dithering and just because that ‘do it’ chap came from California.
My children appear to be enjoying it. You look at the actors you have chosen - up there on the screen. God bless them.

Finding them was not easy, it was very easy. You place an ad’- it doesn’t really matter where. Could be a notice pinned to a tree in Sherwood Forest - the actor’s network will find it and spread the word. As actors mail shots begin to deluge you, you begin to wonder is there really that many adults prepared to work for nothing to ‘further their careers’; aren’t these difficult times?

The photos keep pouring in and some of them are well, gosh, striking but the actors who arrive for the casting are nothing like their photos. Why is that? You have to marvel at the wonders of photographic lighting. My children have finished watching the film and although two of them are still knee high to a grasshopper, such unadulterated critical faculties are a not to be dismissed benchmark. They express their approval and I feel that I have captured the under ten market.

Now timidly, hesitantly, you dare to show it to adults. Friends first, at least they will let you down gently. The film ends, let’s call her, ‘Linda’ speaks, “...you know it’s interesting, as I watching it I thought...that’s what we should do with our homes videos, Anthony, give them more of a professional look.” Your ‘home videos’! This is a serious bloody film; my life's blood went into this. The husband gives me a haiku like - “Keep it up.” Keep what up? This is what happens to people who leave the city to live in the country, they turn into turnips, I rue bitterly.

Next I show it to a more philosophical friend. She advises me to be a bit more pagan about it all. ‘Pagan you say?’, “Yes pagan, let it go, release your clenched fist hold on it and let it take wing from your open palm. Let it fly, it will eventually finds its own level.” “Right, let it fly.” Hold on, it’s not a bloody bird, it’s a film. No wonder the one successful thing she has ever written was a novella set in the 70s.
More friends,urbane Londoners,cosmopolitan to their bloody Islington fingertips. “Good” they say, “Well-done you”, in tones of such sophistication that I want to move back to Hackney right now. The kids will love it, I am partnered out of it. “Aren’t you getting a bit carried away with all this? And besides isn’t ‘Well done, you’ profoundly patronising, don't they realise we are in a post-Colonial age?.”
“No, no, I don’t think... look, they are leaving.”
“Liked the film” throws the metropolitan friend from his departing Saab. The way he said it, with some people you don’t have to embellish. I knew exactly what he meant, and to me it was a profound aesthetic insight, on a par with say a Mallarmé aperçu. Bit over the top that perhaps. Still, I am on to something here, as far as I am concerned, the London market has spoken.

Confidence rising, now to the professionals. Albert first, a straight talking Mancunian, been in the ‘biz’ for years. A real ‘pro’. You will get it straight for Albert, I wait and wait and eventually he comes back, “Yeah, yeah ...well...” This inability to formulate simple words is indeed high praise from Albert. I think of how they wait for the Pope’s election. So will it be black smoke, grey, or white? Go on Albert I am in St. Peter’s Square and agog with anticipation.
"Yeah...well it’s not rubbish, is it?”
“God bless you Albert and while I am at it God bless all of Manchester, Eeh aye addio...”
‘Why are you singing Dad?’ “We are moving to Manchester, my darling.” “Why Dad?” “Why? Because it’s real, that’s why, because the people from there are real...”

I decide I will start sending copies off to all and sundry.
Yet faint praise is a meagre meal when eroded by the voracious appetite of self doubt. And I hesitate; it needs showing before I commit myself to over saturating the market. I will send it to that academic friend of mine; she teaches Film Studies. She rings back, “Hmm”.
What does ‘Hmm’ mean? Would I be interested in showing the film to her students.
“Yes, yes, of course...I would.” Mustn’t sound too enthusiastic.

My first public showing; Film students, the ‘pros’ of the future. The perfect appreciation society. I arrive and the students help me to set up. I must say they seem very sympathetic; this augurs well. The film starts running I am nervous, for are not these the Soderbergh's and Almodóvar’s of the future? But didn’t Albert say ‘yeah’.
The film ends and I wait. I must say I do feel a bit dizzy, for goodness sake, that’s panic. Now pack it in. “Take a seat out front, Peter.” I’m not sure my legs are up to this, Good God, have I lost the power of my limbs. For goodness sake, pull yourself together and pack it in. I make it to the chair and I am now sitting facing this phalanx of the future film industry. The silence is excruciating. I have faced some longuers in my time at dinner tables and social gathering but never one that makes you feel that you now have a deep insight into infinity.

This is deeply painful,I am feeling a sense of weightlessness and I start fantasing that I have wandered into a convention of mediums, and at any moment I am going to hear, “I see a Roger, there is Roger trying to get into touch.” But no, just silence. What are they, Trappist monks? Then they lay in. “I have to say,’ ups a bespectacled all intense, ‘I really found this film almost unwatchable. Then ponderously, “...now my reasons for saying that are...’


It gets worse, I am not sure I am hearing this. But it continues with all the ferocity of drug dealer’s dogs. I look across at my Doctor friend, she wears a benign half smile, that can’t be pride, can it? What’s she been teaching them ‘scorched earth criticism’. Now another impossible young looking sprog chimes in; to rescue? no, it’s just to chew at the morsel left sitting in front of him. If I need a support group I will know not to come here. He finishes and I know I have lost the under ten market.

My Doctor friend intervenes. “Anything positive, all getting a tad overly critical.” A ‘tad’? The response of stillness and quiet would be appropriate in a monastery, but in this situation it’s like a CIA torture technique for it just sears into your pscyhyie. With the help of a couple of female students oozing pity for me, I clumsily gather my equipment and beat a hasty retreat. Where is that pub? Jesus Christ, there must be a pub round here.

Now I bitterly regret having shown it. How degrading. It was a mistake to be encouraged by ‘Alby; I mean all he said was ‘Yeah’. How naive of me. And I have sent it out to so many people. Made a right arse of myself. And now the film is coming back with cryptic self-publishing notes. I’m angry, very angry, cant they see that what is not happening in this film is just as important as what's happening, What's these people’s motto anyway? ‘Above all, show no enthusiasm.;

My daughters look at me, “...well Dad; they have never erected a statue for a critic, have they?” Where did she get that from? I am consoled perhaps all these critics are just a bundle of biases held together by spurious taste. They all seem so sure they can drive the car but do they know the bloody way. Ah well, at least my children liked it.