If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

A few months ago I was sent an email from an AMV account man.

He’d written a book and wondered if I’d have a look at it.

I think I was knee deep in some other novel at the time, but then I started reading Elliot Cooper’s Work Here Is Done and soon decided to jump ship.

It’s about a guy whose career is going downhill until he gets a lucky break to take a second chance. It’s funny, insightful, page-turny and really bloody filthy.

As I wrote to Nick: I finished ECYWHID. I have to say I really enjoyed it. I got through it pretty quickly and found myself constantly impressed by how competent the writing was (I know that sounds like a sideways insult but it’s not. I’m honestly really impressed that it reads like a proper novel and at no time did I feel as if you’d dropped the ball or made the characters inconsistent or paced it wrongly or let it sag. That’s what I mean by competent. You did the basics very well indeed). I also thought it was better than many books I’ve picked up in a book shop – like others it reminded me of Jonathan Coe’s What A Carve Up in its deft balance of comedy and drama. 

If you fancy a bit of the above, get in touch with Nick via his website.

(Sorry. Don’t know how to stop it looking squashed. Next size down is tiny, but you get the idea.)

Here’s another fine ad from John Lewis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAxO6KEbTiI

Charmingly shot,  affectionately portrayed, satisfyingly resolved.

What do we say when this happens nowadays?

Chapeau?

I quite like chapeau.

Here’s an interesting article about what’s happening to the film business.

Its main thrust analyses the change from developing lots of movies that might succeed or fail, with the successes paying for the failures, to banking on fewer sure things, or as they call them ‘tentpoles’ (which prop up the the rest of the business):

The number of tentpoles has risen, as has the average price per studio film, while smaller and mid-range movies have decreased. The money that used to be spent on a series of films is now being spent on a select few; instead of putting $500 million into the creation of eight, ten, or a dozen movies, the studios are pouring it all into just two or three at a time.

The other part explains that almost all big budget Hollywood movies are based on previous intellectual properties (IP), which come with a built-in audience to further increase chances of success. These IPs also help to attract bigger name actors and directors (increasing chances of success further still) because if they’re going to spend a few years making something they’d probably like to think it will reach the widest possible audience and give them even more cachet to make the next big thing. So now movies are really made as packages, with properties attached to attract other until there are enough people involved to make it worth spending $100-$200m on.

So… all this means that if you’re a talented writer who wants to make a movie, what you need to do is create something else. Maybe it’s a video game (Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, the upcoming Angry Birds), a book (Harry Potter, Twilight, about a billion others), a product (Transformers, the upcoming Monopoly) or a TV show (21 Jump Street, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Jackass etc.). Then you’ll be all set to write/exec produce a movie.

Strangely enough, as it was in the old days, when making commercials led many people to make movies,  advertising might well be a fertile training ground for this new diversification:

Maybe you want to learn how to make a product.

Or a game.

Or a book.

Or a TV show.

Or even a movie itself:

So if you want to make a film, just get into advertising, ask for all the odd briefs and let nature take its course.

(Thanks, L.)

Dolly Parton’s Jolene sounds much better when slowed to 33 rpm (thanks, M).

Terrible estate agent photos (thanks, J).

Billy Wilder on movie writing:

All the F-words in WOWS (thanks, A):

Shop name puns (thanks, T).

Prison sex threat supercut:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_NHDWl85DE

Great recap of Breaking Bad (spoilers etc. Thanks, J):

Gay people like to ‘eat the poo poo’, apparently (thanks, J):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17C_9TXgAms

The most boring ad ever made? (Thanks, S):

There isn’t an app for that (thanks, D).

Billy Wilder’s screenwriting tips (thanks, T).

Louis CK talks about dicks supercut (thanks, J):

The other day I had lunch with copywriter and ad blogger Jeff Kwiatek.

I thoroughly recommend his blog.

And if you get the chance to have a chat with him, do so.

It’s like listening to his blog, which is great if you’re very lazy.

Here’s an interview with Michel Gondry.

And here’s the first question and answer:

Mr. Gondry, why are you still doing commercials?

I do as few commercials as possible, maybe one or two per year because it allows me to do the movies that I want to do. I confess I am not proud of doing commercials. If tomorrow I could make a decision that would make the commercials disappear altogether, I would make this decision even if it means I would gain much less money. But since those commercials are getting made anyways, I am taking the opportunities. It’s true, I am not proud of that and it’s a good point you are underlining. I hope my movies will be more successful and then I won’t have to do commercials anymore.

So does that matter? Are people good at things they’re embarrassed by?

Having said that, it’s been a long time since Michel Gondry made a great commercial (here’s his most recent one):

http://vimeo.com/75224608

…and I have no idea if he felt the same way when his commercial work was better:

Has he grown to hate ads? Has his disdain coincided with the vague success of his film career (ESOTSM was amazing; the rest not so much)? How will people feel when he deigns to assign his lofty genius to their shitty commercials?

And does that interview make him sound like a bit of a bell?

I don’t like The Gap or Starbucks.

This is because they presented themselves with a hippy-dippy, tree-hugging image of niceness that was violently at odds with the sweat-shop-employing, tax-dodging truth we discovered later.

Until this past weekend I didn’t know that this feeling was both widespread and the subject of many a study. The concept of ‘tainted altruism’, whereby people seem to be out for themselves while attempting to appear wholly good and kind on behalf of others, is one that gets right up our noses.  As the article says:

This won’t be news to Dan Pallotta, an American fundraiser whose story the Yale researchers tell. In the 90s, Pallotta raised $0.5bn for Aids and other causes with sponsored walks and bike rides. But when it emerged that his salary was pushing $400,000 (£240,000), the outcry led to his downfall. These days, he gives slightly bitter talks, arguing that we’re doing altruism all wrong. “You want to make $50m selling violent videogames to kids? Go for it,” he said. “But you want to make half a million dollars trying to cure kids of malaria? You’re a parasite.”

I think the public annoyance comes from the feeling that the wool has been pulled over our eyes. When Goldman Sachs is evil we get pissed off, but that negative feeling is confined to the crime, whereas a transgression by a supposedly ‘good’ organisation carries the double wrong of the bad deed and the attempt to cover it up (along with the implicit suggestion that we are stupid enough to buy the trick). We feel like we’ve been had, and by someone we trusted; our feelings were toyed with by a charlatan, and that is harder to forgive.

The ‘irrationality’ of that is fascinating, and makes me wonder to what extent we punish people or things for other reasons that are hard to justify:

When credible stars take the money and exposure of a dumb blockbuster we feel somewhat betrayed. Of course, there are good reasons why they decide to accept $5m for a superhero movie instead of the usual few hundred grand for another Coen Bros. flick, but we bought into the career of the actor, whereby we could champion them in pub chats to establish our own good taste, then they punctured the whole thing, making us look like dicks for investing ourselves in liking them in the first place.

And football players. Would you move jobs for more money and the chance to win more awards? Of course. But when your favourite player leaves to do the same there is a sense of betrayal and rejection. They played for ‘us’; we loved them for it. The fact they they were only into their team for as long as it paid them a ‘fair’ wage passed our rational minds by, leaving us hurt and pissed off. They (kind of) lied to us, so fuck them.

And maybe we have a favourite restaurant that expands all over town. Now everyone can appreciate its good food, but to many of us that’s not a benefit. Instead it means their quality is spread more thinly and the great thing we helped build has used our patronage to become worse. Can you believe it? All that money they took from us and what do we get? A worse experience. How is that fair? Up yours, expanding pizza joint.

A loved car might be discontinued, or improved in a way we don’t like.

A band might go ‘commercial’, casting aside what made us love them.

A clothing brand might court exposure from a famous twat, rending it unwearable for any of us who patronised it in the early days.

So there are many facets to the ‘relationship’ we have with a brand or product. Who knows what will offend someone to the point of rejection? Just as deep personal relationships can be ruined by a misplaced opinion, love for companies can be destroyed by the unpredicted effects of an unintended slight.

Massive paranoia is surely the way forward (unless that makes one appear desperate and needy).