There’s been so much drama and sadness and happiness that I’m very ashamed to admit my art has suffered for it; I’ve written little, filmed nothing and let my goals ebb away just a little…but no doubt the above named will have the last laugh as my ultimate sacrifice is for the greater good. This move is not something I want to do, it’s something I NEED to do…I feel like I was put here to do it and if I can’t do it, I’ll eventually just fade away into nothing and then nobody would be able to pull me up. I’m too afraid to ask her if she’ll try to make it work. Part of me feels like it’s fruitless, the relationship is just, just developing…the bond only in the initial stages of being formed…how can it last? Well it can’t but I’m too devastated to admit it.

I’m just someone you call dear
Anytime you choose
I’m just someone you run to
I’m just someone you use

I’m just someone you can talk to
And that’s all I’ll ever be
Just a clown you can laugh with
Someone to treat you as you need

I’m just a fool you can love on
Any time you choose
I’m just someone you run to
I’m just someone you use

I’m just someone you run to
I’m just someone you use
Don’t you know when you need me
My little heart just can’t refuse

I’m just someone who loves you, baby
I can’t win and I can’t lose
I’m just someone you run to
I’m just someone you use

Firstly, I queued yesterday for an hour and a half to view it but the theatre was full so no go there, then today for the final viewing I arrived 2 hours early and managed to nab a good seat. The film started off with a beautiful, slow motion montage to Handel; it was stylistic and masterful; I thought, a great omen to what was to follow. Unfortunately for me, the movie turned out to be a monstrous, slap in the face to the female gender. It was THE most misogynistic piece of cinema I have ever seen and what bothers me the most is that no-one is mentioning the blatant depiction of hatred towards women! The press are using words like ‘shocking’, ‘perverse’, ‘audacious’ but not ‘MISOGYNISTIC’ – it is the most prevailing, damning and offensive theme of the movie.

In wrap up as I don’t like to dwell too long for it doth boil my blood with fury, the movie is about a couple whose child dies tragically by falling from a balcony window whilst the couple are engaging in sexual intercourse or you know, crass sex from the male perspective. The mother is obviously overwhelmed with grief and confesses to her therapist husband (Willem Defoe) that her despair has led her to fear the woods, aptly named Eden. He takes her there in order to bury her grief but instead she succumbs to what can only be described as insanity; she says she believes that all women are intrinsically evil. Blatant. Blunt. In your face. The film progresses to indulge in a medley of torture that She (Charlotte Gainsbourg) inflicts on both herself and her husband. She (for that is the character’s name) is ferocious all the way through, desperate for rough sex (as women are apparently) and determined to destroy men (again, as women obviously are). Well the denouement reveals that She, during the montage at the beginning, watched her son crawl onto the table and approach the balcony but was so involved in her own self-indulgent pleasure that she did not stop him, the film also reveals that she actually tortured her son by inflicting deliberate pain on him by making him wear his shoes the wrong way around (just another little jab of the knife by Von Prick). Later, during a sexual romp (obviously) She grabs a log and proceeds to bash Defoe’s penis with it, then she screws some kind of old fashioned tool to his leg and jacks him off with blood/cum squirting all over her top (I’m not joking). Towards the end, after copious back and forth, She uses Defoe’s hand to masturbate and then…in one of the most offensive scenes I have ever seen, she takes a pair off scissors and cuts off her clitoris; symbolizing without apologies that women’s intrinsic evil comes from their pleasure, perhaps the idea that women are able to orgasm without a man is a problem for Von Prick? or perhaps he is deathly traumatized by his teeny, tiny penis. Okay, after all this, Defoe strangles her. Then, THE biggest slap in the face comes when he burns her outside; an ode (if you can believe it) to the 15th-18th century Witch Hunts where hundreds of thousands of innocent women were murdered and brutalized simply because they were women. Finally the scene ends with Willem Defoe PICKING BERRIES!! BERRIES!! As in; man is prevalent, man is the survivor, the keeper of nature. I’m still fuming about the whole film.

It met with boos during the press screening and a few sporadic claps and general silence in ours but the resounding murmur leaving the auditorium was of shock and disgust. The women in the audience were genuinely horrified. Lars Von Trier, you are an embarrassment to yourself and the film industry. As for Cannes, I am completely bewildered as to why they screened it at all. The film should be burned. And my god, Charlotte Gainsbourg? are you an idiot? do you know what you have allowed yourself to represent?? I also happen to think Defoe will also be supremely embarrassed at the outrage that will surely ensue upon the release of this disgusting piece of male-misogynistic-bravada.

In more exciting news, my short, The Peculiar Blues of Melody Peach will be gracing the Short Film Corner of the Cannes Film Festival(!) It’ll be my second outing to Cannes and this year I couldn’t be less prepared; I booked my flight two days go and I’m flying out on Thursday sans business cards, copies of the movie, posters, money or much excitement…I know I will have a blast and trust me, I am so grateful for the opportunity but I just don’t have the energy or the funds this year to galavant into hyperdom. I’m starting to develop anxiety over my funding for the US, I have been awarded a fellowship of modest sorts by Chapman which I am smiley about but my god, it doesn’t even scratch the surface of funding my mere basics for a year.

I am supposed to move country in two months…TWO MONTHS and it has not struck me at all. I still feel uncreative and am still wallowing in self doubt. Can I get my head back into that kind of studious work mode again? I don’t know. I feel like all of my anger and sadness and happiness and motivation have been quashed with a schtum-ing sense of zombified numbness. It could be the toll of the night shifts or it could simply be that I’m losing my mind. I’ll get back to you on that one.

“This melancholy London – I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through it’s streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.”

- William Butler Yeats

On another tangent, completely unrelated, I’ve found myself addicted to podcasts! After all, isn’t it better to have someone else’s voice in your head for a change? Well I for one would much rather it be Sandi T of The Lesbian Mafia or KC and Elka from The Planet; yep, both big gay podcasts and both incredibly hilarious!! Sandi T is in a world of her own when it comes to honest, sharp, unadulterated humour that packs a fierce punch. Her shows all deal with important issues to do with lesbianism in the current state of our disjointed society. I love her and what it is she represents. KC and Elka are also hilarious but their podcast is really an L Word commentary and has now, sadly, ceased to exist…the final series of The L Word aired recently.

Okay on a final note, I really think Oprah is a dick. I recently heard her ask ‘if lesbianism existed because of a shortage of men?’…seriously. The bollocks that comes out of that woman’s mouth is astounding. Yes she’s done some wonderful things but my god, what unbelievable ignorance! The fact that she has so much influence over people is a scary, scary thing. 

http://thelesbianmafia.com

Even if you’re straight male/female or gay/lesbian, check it out…it’s pure hilarity of which may give you an unapologetic insight into the perspective of a minority you may not be privy to.

So, I came out to view the campus…I’m still in the O.C actually (flying back to Laaandon Town tomorra afternoon). I was invited to the Women In Focus event being held at Chapman with; Martha Coolidge (Material Girls), Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight), Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry), Jocelyn Moorehouse (How To Make An American Quilt), Sanaa Hamri (The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2) and Penelope Spheeris (Wayne’s World) who will also be teaching at Chapman in the Fall, hell yes! Spheeris, Peirce and Coolidge totally stole the show with their quick witted hilarity, their controversial statements, their indepth insights and their tales of rogue antics and scenarios. Without sounding too Californ-IA, it was way, way, rad.

So, while I am melancholy about leaving…well everything behind, I’m incredibly excited and motivated to move forward from the rocky blows of the passed couple of years. My passion and my overwhelming dream is to translate how I feel into some form of filmic representation that might somehow provoke or move others in a way that helps them to feel part of a community and that one voice, however solitary can make a difference amidst a whole crowd of monotonous murmuring. 

One worry is…there are gays in the O.C right?? I saw a whole lot of conservative suburbia…they’re out there somewhere I’m sure…right?!

Okay, I’m really tired now. I’ll write some more when I get back home, it’s just turned 12.35 am and my trip has been a little to short to get over the jetlag. Sorry about the spelling mistakes, I’m sure it looks like I wrote this drunk. 

By the way, I was accepted into the AFI and waitlisted by UCLA. It’s an honour and privilege to have gotten so far and to have been held in high regard by all of these prestigious programs. If anyone out there has dreamed of getting into UCLA, AFI, USC, Chapman, NYU or Columbia apply and if you don’t get in, apply again and if you don’t get in, apply again and keep going until they say yes. Never, ever give up. I applied to a bunch of the schools above last year and I didn’t get in; I felt destroyed, humilated, deflated of self-worth and void of confidence in my abilities as a filmmaker but after wallowing for a couple of months, I picked myself back up, made another short and applied again. Getting into film (the industry, school or both), in any concentration is a long, hard slog…it already feels that way for me even though I am at the very, very early stage of my career but keep at it, even if your head is bleeding from ramming against that seemingly invincible brick wall, I promise you, it will crumble eventually and you will come through it, battered and beaten but the last one standing nevertheless. Wowza. Al Pacino. Any Given Sunday. Do I flatter myself? Me thinks I do.

Peace out, happy dreaming and I’ll catch up with you on the other side of the pond. Lordy, lord, bring on the Bloody Marys!! I hate, hate flying!!

x

Following the interview I was in good spirits so I went to the cinema to check out Coraline in 3D…I bow to Henry Selick and his absolute mastery of stop-motion. The film was beautiful and incredibly imaginitive…so a big, warm congratulations to the deliciously rapturous coupling of Neil Gaiman and Mr. Selick; I seriously hope they collaborate again…I can actually see a Master Burton being a little miffed at the fact that he didn’t come up with this one…I will say however that I found myself thinking ‘Ooooh…if Burton got his Scissorhands on this one, it too would be fantabulous!!’ …I missed some of the Burton stylizations but the mad-haired chappy can’t have everything, he got Alice and that’s enough for the time being!

On my last day in NYC I decided to see The Watchmen on the IMAX in Times Square… I just think this movie should be seen in IMAX but it did mean I had to queue for an hour and a half; I’m not a happy queuer and I ended up chewing my way through a whole pack of gum. Anyhoo, the film itself was very, very cool and though I am by NO means a fan of Zack Snyder, I think he managed to pull off one of, if not the best comic book adaptation that has been. The film was very dark, at points even in the vein of Fincher but there were noticeable flaws such as the *cough* Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah scene…that was a big, big speed bump. If you’ve seen it, please comment. I did however dig the sweet interpretation of Dr. Manhattan by Billy Crudup *thumbs up* and the side story between Sally Spectre and The Comedian…I wasn’t sure about Patrick Wilson (Night Owl II), I normally really like this guy so I was disappointed here. I really, really disliked Malin Ackerman (Laurie Spectre)…I genuinely thought she was poo; very unconvincing and sans the emotional spectrum the character needed in order to elicit catharsis at the end…did you really care who her father was? (intentionally not spoiling it) and she lacked va-va-voom; that missing ingredient that Michelle Pfeiffer had as Catwoman or Famke Janssen as Jean Grey or Angelina Jolie as…anything at all

Okay so I’m now back in Blighty and I have about 4 days of prep for my phone interview with the AFI, send wee leprechauns my way. On a side note, I’ve just finished watching the insanely great documentary, ‘Taxi To The Dark Side’, it was actually directed by former UCLA student Alex Gibney and it won the Oscar in 2008 for best doc; it’s about the atrocities that happened in Bagram prison and then Guantanamo Bay to the captured, ‘alleged’ terrorists…if your faith is dwindling in the powers that be, this might just sever that last, oh so fragile tie. It will shock you but the truth often does.

x

I realize this post is ridiculously, foolishly philosophical and kitsch but give me that; at the very least, allow me compassion.