TO MISS THE FOREST FOR A TREE

A few days ago I was invited as a film production expert to the press conference of the new film by Franco Tibaldi and Rita Barbero, Return to Santa Vittoria.

It is a low budget film, but despite their lack of money, it’s impressive the organization and the professionalism they showed: they have been able to fill the press room with journalists and local authorities and can go theatrically in many cinemas at the same time.
All of it not with solid deals and pre deals, but the involvement of the local population, enthusiasm and friendship.

People who are looking for 10 million have the same problems as the ones who just look for 10 thousand: both are desperate for money.
But who works on a big project needs to have all very well organized, whilst the one who has just a little budget to cover can be careless and say Let’s start, and we’ll find a way.
And while I was waiting for my time to intervene in the press conference, I found out I miss this kind of mentality.

Are we filmmakers missing the forest for a tree?
When we work on a project where our strengths and money are not enough anymore we are so busy to find the budget we need, close our deals with the actors, try not to be destroyed by the banks and fight the distributors to let them respect the deals and distribute our film we miss the reason why we loose our health in doing that: making a film is fun.

HOW FAR YOU WILL GO TO FOLLOW YOUR DREAM?

A good number of people contact me every week from allover the World, telling me they wrote a script worth an Oscar, that they locked themselves in their room for a certain period of time, just writing and watching films, and now they want me to produce it.

Guys, this is not how it works. If you really want to know how it works, below I report the story of my friend Geoff Talbot: a talented Writer, Director and Producer who like most people in this business is fighting Destiny to find his way.

I left London for Hollywood in March thinking I had the world at my feet. With two very different screenplays in development and an offer of full finance (US $20 Million on The Emancipation of Putz) things were looking positive. I had a couple of meetings lined up with very big Hollywood Producers and although things were tight financially… surely the dam was about to break…

But the dam didn’t break and so the desert (my bank account) is still very dry. But I wouldn’t change it for the world. As artists we can learn so much from our hungry & thirsty times. These are crucial periods that provide us with a deep wellspring of experience, from which we can draw water for the rest of our lives. So what happened? What didn’t happen more like it?

I had to tell some financiers that I didn’t want their 20 million dollars; it was easier than you might think because despite all their promises (aka small untruths) I didn’t believe they actually had the money. So I flew back to Europe, to Cannes, to the sunny Rivera where the French girls were just as pretty as they had been the year before; only this time they were not quite so friendly.

During my hungry & thirsty times I had dreamed up a new way of filmmaking that used the internet and social media sites like facebook & twitter. I had created this model around the second feature film I have in development, a bohemian love story called Lucky & Rich. Technology is changing so rapidly, and the internet enables the filmmaker/artist to converse directly with their audience like never before. It stands to reason that the way we use to make films… will not be the way we make them in the future. So I went back to LA, to the land of broken dreams.

I wish I could say that it all went swimmingly, but it never rains in California.

One of the things I’ve learnt in the last five months and I mean this in an encouraging way… when it comes to a new idea, or a film, or new technology… NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING. If your script, if your song, if your idea is truly great, if it is different in any way… nearly everybody will turn it down. They will reject it because their reference points are the films they have already seen or ideas that have already worked etc. New is different and different is scary. But keep going. Colonel Sanders was an unemployed pensioner who spent two years taking his revolutionary chicken recipe (KFC) around restaurants in the United States. He got turned down 1019 times before someone finally said yes… and the rest is history.

Since I left London in March I have slept in over thirty different locations and I have run out of money 25 times… soon to be 26. Some days I wouldn’t know exactly where I would be sleeping that night, and for a couple of days all I had to eat was stale pizza and flat coke.

Never again will I look down on someone who lives on the street. You try it and see if you can do it better than them.

I'M NOT BAD, I'M JUST DRAWN THAT WAY

I lately met a Hollywood Producer whose neighbor is Keanu Reeves, and he told me he's one of the nicest persons he knows: hard to say he's actually one of the biggest Holywood stars.

So I told him an impression I had: I said that I met a number of film people now, and they have all been nice to me.

This world is not as dirty as it's said. I think this is because they all know how difficult is to make films, and are in general open minded and willing to exchange ideas, or tell their story, or looking for future collaborations.

And most of all, they all know there's not all that money people usually think: it's true we talk about projects worth millions, but when you start taking off the salaries for the Actors and the technicians, all the expenses, the cut for distributors and advertising and the money you have to give back to your investors, what it usually remains is very little.

He agreed with me and confirmed my opinion: the real nasty people in this business are the ones who don't really belong to it: Agents, Lawyers, and most of all Investors.
Most of the investors think they will put in your film project 100 and will take a million, and because they finance a (small) part of your project they own it. They ask to change the script, to cast some of their friends or fiancé or want to use your film to wash the money they earned illegally.

You have to face difficult situations: from a side, you want to make a film that costs an enormous amount of money and can't do alone. From the other side, accepting their offer could mean destroying your film project and yourself.

So you spend most of your time looking for money, and when you find someone interested, in most of the cases you have to turn his offer down.

This made me think of Jessica Rabbit as a metaphore of the movie business, and her famous sentence as the catching phrase movie people should use to present themselves to the World:

"I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way".

THE ADDAMS FAMILY CAFE

A few days ago I met Actress Elizabeth Cooper, who lately opened a very special coffee shop and for this decision had 4 pages on the local newspaper.

Although being in London, the coffee shop is based near Westcombe Park Station, in a place that seems to be another world, so hidden that most of the locals are unaware there is a park in there.

After half an hour of desperate search, a woman shows me the entrance, and says she lived there for 2 years before finding that park.

Then I find Elizabeth having a tea with a customer and his dog, in a calmness I never saw in London.

She shows me this amazing eco sustainable place: on the roof she has solar panels to get electricity independently and flowers to attract bees, and out of the walls she has iron framing where ivy is growing up: "Next spring the coffee shop will be all covered in green", she says.

Admiring the place and all her efforts to make it something unique, I ask her:

- Isn't it a graveyard you have in front of your coffee shop?

- Oh, yes! - she replies enthusiastically, and takes me to see it.

She introduces me to some of her friends (soldiers died in past wars), and shows me her secret place when she wants to stay alone or read: a small portion among the tombs, covered by the willows.

She asks me what I think about all this, and I ask her "What about your career in acting?".

She says she is planning to drop it for a year, let her coffee shop take off and then come back to the scenes.

She says she has been an actress for 10 years now, always rushing for castings and taking any jobs, just because of all the competition there is in this business: everyone fearing to be forgotten, losing opportunities and not being able to pay the rent.

She wants to build something to care about now, something that can make the difference.

And if a part of me is starting to agree with her, another one says:

- But Actors have a limited career, and especially for women it's hard to find a job when you get older. A year is a lot of time.

I stated the obvious, and she smiles at me.

With the manners one would use to calm down a child and open his eyes, she says:

- Films reflect real life, and as far as there will be old people in real life, there'll be always an acting job for old actors.

She is so beautiful...

EMBARRASSING MISUNDERSTANDINGS

One of the things that commonly happen when you're a foreigner in England are embarrassing misunderstandings, often based on sexual double meanings.

That usually happens to me with women.

I think this is because English is so different compared to Italian in the way you structure sentences, and because it's sometimes difficult for a foreigner to have a correct prononciation, so when Italian people in London gather they like to laught telling these anecdotes one another .

DISCLAIMER: This is something that just happened to me, and it contains some vulgarity I can't avoid. If you follow reading, some of you could feel offended.

There is a TV series I like called Hustle, produced by BBC , and I decided if the DVDs are not too expensive I'll buy them.

I get to the information point of the store and start cueing. The guy at the computer is visibly gay.

The man before me is the classic Londoner with a bad mood, smoker and big time beer drinker who you know will send you to f*** **f as soon as your glance will cross his.

This fellow asks the information guy for a certain DVD he doesn't know the title of. The guy tries some combinations with no results, the customer loses his temper and argues he's not finding that effing DVD on purpose, and going away, he calls him fag.

Which is strange in London, because here homosexuality is something people are used to and don't care about, so the guy feels angry and humiliated.

After a few seconds to recover, he smiles at me and pretends everything's fine.

Understanding his feelings, I try to be more gentle than what I'd usually be, and I ask him:
- Do you have the DVD, Asshole?

Between the instant I complete the sentence and the one a killing glance raises in his eyes I get aware of the missunderstanding, and very shyly I say to him:

- Ma-maybe I pronounced it a little bit bad...

P.S. for my Italian readers:

HUSTLE, pronounced ASSOL, is the name of the TV series.

ASSHOLE, pronounced ASSOL, with the A that slightly waves to an E, is offensive, and you should be careful in using it.

KENTON & MILES AT THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

I would like to thank Kenton & Miles International, and in a special way its President Mr Salvatore Biscozzi, for having reported on their News of May my activities in Cannes during the last Film Festival.

TENACITY MOST ALWAYS WINS, BY KENNETH JOHNSON

I often get calls and e-mails from people asking me for advices and telling me their frustrating experiences in the film industry, and in the most of the cases I ask myself what to reply.

I’m by nature optimistic and realistic: I’m crazy enough to try with all my strength to do something almost impossible, with all the odds against me, and then I understand that sometimes there’s no way to do it, and you have to change your plans even if on paper it was almost done.

So should I tell them the truth (that is hard, stressful, it never ends and the ones who fail are far more then the ones who succeed), or should I wink and say with a smile “Yeah, go on with it, good job!”?

To answer that, I report below what Kenneth Johnson (creator of the TV series V) told me once:

Bartolo, I think all artists have faced similar frustrations. Many of the greatest directors & writers have faced seeming insurmountable odds and all of us sometimes suffer defeat and rejection despite our very best efforts... but passion and tenacity most always wins eventually.

We're still working hard to get V before the cameras as a movie. On the hardest days, I can still say, hey, I'm not dead yet -- and try another tack.

CANNES FAKE PICTURES

THE BIG SECRET OF THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

People usually ask me if I met some actors in Cannes during the Festival. Yes I did, but that’s not the most juicy part of the tale.
The really interesting thing that no journalist tells is that it’s all fake: all this inaccessibility is actually just a way the Cannes Council uses to let people talk about this event on which they spend a lot of money.

If people knew Actors are around, make shopping and go to restaurants it would all become something usual, like in London and Los Angeles.

Cannes is a nice little town that lives on tourism and for 10 days a year earns the attention of the World: they can’t afford an actor to walk alone the 200 meters that separate the Hotel Martinez from the Palais.

So at a certain time of the afternoon the main street is closed and the police start bottle up the pedestrians.
All of a sudden you can’t walk freely anymore: you’re stopped to let pass cars of the Festival that care VIPs.
Policemen force passers by to press themselves against the barriers of the Hotel Martinez (from where the cars of the Festival pull off), and this increases the mess.
Then start to come passers by who are attracted by all this concentration of people.

Confusion becomes frenzy to see and take pictures of someone known passing in the cars.
From a balcony of the hotel a young lady waves her arm to the people like a goddess, and all of us take pictures of her enthusiastically, even thought she’s too far to understand who she is.

The black cars of the Festival come and go from the hotel, all now, but who’s inside them? Hard to say, because the wind shields are darkened.
Isn’t it strange? This event is based on the opportunity for normal people to see some actors just a few meters from them: darkening the screens doesn’t make any sense.

Unless…

I bend a little, in an uncomfortable position and the Sun on my face. From there, I can see the inside of the cars that slowly pass by in front of me, and…
they’re empty.

All this people are jubilant and fight to take pictures of empty cars.
So there aren’t any actors at all? No, they’re in the not obscured screen cars.

It’s the idea of the inaccessibility of these people that makes them fascinating: the guy who until a few minutes ago was just getting an ice cream in the main street now is surrounded by bodyguards to protect him.
But is the Festival itself that made up this need for security.

It’s all fake: last year I was cueing for the screening of a film, and behind me there was the Actress of Notte Prima degli Esami Oggi. I didn’t remember what her name was, so I didn’t say anything.

I get into the cinema, I sit down and I have a mega screen where they show in real time what happens outside, and here is the Actress who a few minutes ago was cueing with me, now on the red carpet, to let the photographers take pictures of her, and all of a sudden inaccessible.

And here’s another news: what happens when an Artist hasn’t time to go to the Hotel Martinez and for any reason is already at the Palais, without doing his crowd bath?

Then there’s a secondary entrance that leads them in a reserved area, where one of the official cars takes them, does roughly 150 meters to circle the Palais and leaves them in front of the photographers and the crowd.

THE DAY I INSULTED JAMES GRAY

I’m in Cannes, the day is almost finished and I get into the Palais Stéphanie. I hear people saying they’re waiting for Francis Ford Coppola on the terrace for a conference.

So I take the lift, which is impressively large and quiet full of people.
A plunging neckline on the opposite side of the entrance drags my attention.Nobody talks.

All of a sudden I realize they must have seen my glance, maybe too insistent, because they all watch down and try to hide their laughs.
I look somewhere else and I find out that in front of me, a kiss distance, there’s a tall and slim guy without the badge, who looks like a geek and seems familiar to me.
A year ago I was at the première of his film, where the guests of honor were him (the Director) and Gwyneth Paltrow.

So I exclaim:
- Hey, I think I know you!

All start laughing, because they think I was fixing him and were waiting for my reaction.
- Your film, last year. Good.
- Thanks for not saying it was even bad.

And we get out.

P.S.: The neckline in the lift was of his wife.

AN USUAL HOLLYWOOD STORY

I met a Brazilian Actress who lived in Hollywood for a long while. To pay the rent she used to work as screaming girl in low budget horror films.

She tells me that one evening she is at a party and a young man holds her face and starts talking like a crazy, telling her he likes her very much, he saw all her films and they must do something together.

He writes his number on a piece of paper, and later she throws it out, because she thinks he’s a maniac.
Then she leaves for Brazil, and for a year she works in a soap opera. But she gets bored, and comes back to Hollywood.
There, she sees the guy from the party on TV, now famous.

It was Quentin Tarantino.

THE DAY I MET VITTORIO CECCHI GORI

I get in Vittorio Cecchi Gori’s house with just one thought: whatever the result of our meeting will be, this event will stuck forever in my life, and will mark the edge between before knowing Cecchi Gori and after I met him.

Whoever I will be, whatever job I will have, from now on I can say at the age of 27 and with no big studio backing me I’ve been able to set up an appointment with the biggest Italian Producer, 3 times Grammy winner, in his home, to tell him about my project.
I’m with the giants now, that is Cecchi Gori’s Christmas tree, and the bathroom I get in is the same Cecchi Gori uses.

We are at the end of a busy day for both of us, he has just finished a meeting with his management, he’s tired, but welcomes me in his studio like I were one of his lot.

I’m struck by the humanity I find in this room: his collaborators treat him with an intimate respect, because he’s the boss, but is also a man for whom they have feelings.
But most of all I’m struck by the humanity the man I consider the biggest one shows to me, who am still no one, and I don’t feel anymore I’m the professional who is leading a very ambitious project, but a little boy deeply inadequate.

Despite his tiredness, I see a charisma in him I never saw elsewhere, and if in my other experiences I faced bureaucrats who seemed interested just in delaying my projects, he seems to try to find a way to help me before any valid reason not to.

Cecchi Gori doesn't tret me with the patience of a teacher with a student, but as a professional who talks to another professional. He doesn't just talk about his ideas, he fights for them: he slaps the table and cries Films have to be made in Italian and subtitled in English, that’s the way you win Oscars! Americans have 10 professions to do what just one can do, and Financiers can’t say anything. I’ve always been a Producer, Executive Producer and so on… like [he names a film I don’t understand] they had to shoot in a villa full of mirrors in the woods, and nobody thought that the cameras were going to be reflected in the mirrors! Then they called the agency to make things straight. Hey, that little joke costed me 2 million dollars!

He’s not just a person with the right intuitions, who treats all the film as products that grant him money: he is someone that still puts his soul in what he does, he puts his face in his projects.

At the end of our meeting he asks me for the script, and tells me we will meet up again. His sentence appears to me meaningful and a lot more real compared to the usual We’ll let you know that people use in the show business.

We’ll meet up again, he says, Nobody does a film in just one meeting.

P.S.: I’d like to thank very much the Head of the Press Office of Cecchi Gori Group, Mr Emilio Sturla Furnò: a very nice guy without whom I wouldn’t be able to have this meeting.

THE END OF THE BEGINNING

(Cannes, 20th May 2009) Sometimes it is hard to be a man and keep the emotions, especially thinking about all the efforts, and that that hell could be ended forever.These are me and Charles Fries: my American Distributor and Executive Producer, with whom today I signed a deal for a worldwide distribution.

From now on I have all the guarantees I need to give to my investors, I can take their money and make my film.

Shaking his hand, today he told me:

“The end of the beginning”.