If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

http://youtu.be/I-zo12V81oU

(Scrub to 3:08)

I confess to feeling a little uncomfortable watching that; after all, it’s a bit shit.

Then again, it was a different time, and my first ad.

As I played it my wife quoted all the words, while I muttered ‘what was I thinking?’

Anyway, enjoy, and if you watch it you have to put up a link to your own first ad, otherwise your children will die in agony (I don’t make up the rules).

I haven’t seen Paul Blart: Mall Cop; I haven’t even seen its trailer. In my imagination it’s an utterly dreadful film.

Let’s see if I’m right:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UX51lmL6sk

Yeah, looks pretty shit.

Anyway, that film took over $146m at the 2009 US box office, beating Inglourious Basterds, District 9 and Up In The Air.

‘Quality’-wise it managed a fairly poor 33% on Rotten Tomatoes and gained reviews such as, ‘It’s not hard to see why the studio dumped this suckfest in January,’ and ‘The last name Blart may be the funniest thing in the movie’.

So lots of people went to see a shit film. So far, so unremarkable. But when a piece of crap like this succeeds it makes many people question what they’re doing. They think that if Paul Blart: Mall Cop can take in a ton of cash then maybe the search for success should end in pisspoor pratfalls and dismal, derivative plotting. Of course, some people are trying to make Django Unchained or American Hustle, but for the others out there who just want to be rich and famous, a glance in the direction of PBMC would suggest that there’s an S-Class Mercedes awaiting anyone bovine enough to string a few unimaginative gags together.

I think it’s the same when anything succeeds that makes people scratch their heads and go ‘really?’. People start to wonder if they’ve got it wrong, if the path they were on was somehow deluded or misguided. Creativity takes confidence, the kind of self-belief that can build a brick wall to protect against naysayers and internal doubts, and all sorts of things can chip away at that confidence. So when something you think of as awful streaks ahead on the outside it can make sane people question themselves just a little bit more. Sure, PBMC looks woefully unfunny, but it obviously made millions of people very happy indeed (not least its financial backers), and what’s so bad about that? The magazine covers, swanky lunches and all-round adulation that would have resulted from the success of PBMC are the goals of many, many talented people. Is it wrong to go down whatever route takes you to the land of milk and honey?

These are rhetorical questions, of course. Most people are incapable of creating that success because its actually very difficult; otherwise they’d make 50 of those a year and retire as billionaires (although I should point out that Adam Sandler’s production company is behind PBMC and he does seem intent on shit-movie-ing himself into enough cash to choke a hippo).

Have you ever seen a shit ad win loads of awards and wondered if your taste is out of whack? Or written a script and thought ‘If such-and-such crappy ad can win a Gold at Cannes then why can’t this?’? But for your own sanity, for the preservation of whatever you think your soul is, you have to keep those thoughts at bay. What you consider to be good or bad is a true a reflection of yourself as anything. For all intents and purposes it defines your every creative action. It may be hard to keep your compass pointing to true north, but at the end of the day that’s all you’ve got.

So treasure it as you crawl into that cardboard box under Waterloo Bridge, smug in the knowledge you never inflicted Paul Blart fucking Mall Cop on the world.

The GoT cast in the 21st Century (thanks, M).

How to win at Rock, Paper, Scissors (thanks, J).

James Joyce reading from Finnegan’s Wake (thanks, V):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtOQi7xspRc

Ker-azee planets.

Obama being funny (thanks, D):

Who has the widest vocab in hip-hop? (Thanks, J.)

The crazy shit people search Google for (thanks, J).

The most ironic photos of all time (thanks, J).

Shakespeare movies improved by Danny Dyer (thanks, D).

Tree rings sound fucking cool:

Urinal fail:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InR7tip2Izk

Amazing shot of film vs greenscreen (thanks, J).

Babies with eyebrows is too much awesome (thanks, S).

The world’s most terrifying penises: the echidna (thanks, J):

We all saw this a couple of months ago, didn’t we?

Well, some incredibly bright sparks made a massive change to it then stuck a logo on the end (and an annoying VO on top).

I don’t mind people being inspired by the internet, but this just makes the industry look lazy.

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):