Thanks to the Copy Writer's Roundtable for this
Wall Street Journal interview with Steve Jobs:
"I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired.
"How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him.
"So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
"I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley.
"But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
"During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.
"In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
"I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.
"Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.
"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking."
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Doing the right/write/white stuff
By Christian Lander, Author of 'Stuff White People Like' - from Stuff White People
We all have a fantasy of something incredible happening to us by accident. It's impossible not to be captivated by the story of Lana Turner, sitting on a stool at a drugstore one moment, acting in Hollywood movies the next.
Well, you could say that I am Lana Turner . . . of the internet (the latter tag is important for clarifying any misconceptions about my physical attractiveness). I am the author of the accidental New York Times bestseller and popular blog Stuff White People Like, and this is my story.
On 18 January 2008, my friend Myles and I were having an instant messenger conversation about The Wire. Myles, who is Filipino, said he didn't trust any white person who didn't watch the show. I agreed with him, so we started talking about what white people might be doing instead of watching The Wire. Going to therapy, watching plays, doing yoga and getting divorced were the first things that popped into our heads. For some reason, the idea that a white person was too busy getting divorced to watch television was particularly hilarious to me, so I started a blog about it.
Originally, my plan was to take this instant messenger conversation and turn it into something that would make Myles and two other friends laugh. There was no expectation that it was going to be anything bigger – I wasn't even sure it would make them laugh. I just went to Wordpress.com, gave it the title "Stuff White People Like", and started writing.
The first few entries were short and almost completely directed at people Myles and I knew from our high school. The first entry, on coffee, was about the male students who would proudly attach a refillable mug to their backpacks as a gesture of their maturity. Man, we hated those guys.
But the more I started writing, the more I realised that I wasn't writing about other people, I was writing about myself. And I was full of far more self-loathing than I had expected. Within a week the site was up to 25 entries.
I thought it was entertaining enough to send to my (20) friends as a mass email, asking them to read it. But then an amazing thing happened. The readership started growing.
It's not hard to get your friends to forward on your web project, largely out of guilt or obligation. But when their friends, the ones who don't know you, start forwarding it to their friends, you have something special. I watched as the site traffic grew from a few hundred hits a day (mostly misguided searches for organic fair trade coffee) to more than a thousand. Then, somehow, it wound up on the blog for Good Magazine (published by Al Gore's son) and Comedy Central's Insider (the official blog for the US cable channel). Traffic jumped to 30,000 hits a day. From there it spread exponentially; soon it was crossing a 100,000, then 300,000 and 400,000. Every day I would just stare at my computer and say, "It can't get any bigger than this."
I began receiving emails from literary agents in New York City and Los Angeles. They wanted to turn the site into a book. I was floored. I knew that people spent their entire lives trying to get the attention of a literary agent, yet they were coming to me to turn my silly little blog into a book. By early March – less than two months after the blog started – I had chosen an agent. By the end of the month, I had a book deal in place. On 31 March, I quit my job.
Over the next year, the book would go on to be a New York Times bestseller, while I appeared on Conan O'Brien's talkshow and gave lectures at Google, Harvard, Brown – and now the London School of Economics. So in case it's something you'd like to happen to you too, here are a few thoughts on the matter:
• Be lucky I can't stress this enough. I would say it is responsible for approximately 41% of my success.
• Be true to yourself When you try to create something that you think will please everyone, it ends up pleasing no one. People can see through attempts to do something with the sole intention of getting famous. When you start your blog, do something that entertains you – and live with the expectation that your only reward will be writing the blog.
• Be Canadian People seem to like us.
• Be perceived as racist by idiots This will lead to more traffic than you could ever imagine. I would, however, strongly recommend not being perceived as racist by smart people. That will end poorly.
• Have an email address on your site This is how every agent and media outlet reached me. It is also how every piece of hate mail reached me. For the majority of blogs, the ratio will likely be one agent email for every 200 pieces of hate mail. Successful blogs can expect that ratio to be 1:400. Super successful blogs can expect some of the hate mail to come from agents.
• Be nice to everyone It may surprise you that being famous on the internet does not last for ever. Apparently, people have short attention spans nowadays. However, one thing that people will remember is if someone marginally famous was a jerk to them. I still remember and hate the baseball player who refused to sign an autograph for me when I was 15. Also, it will be less humiliating to ask them for help in finding a job once your internet fame is over.
Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/oct/15/christian-lander-stuff-white-people-like
We all have a fantasy of something incredible happening to us by accident. It's impossible not to be captivated by the story of Lana Turner, sitting on a stool at a drugstore one moment, acting in Hollywood movies the next.
Well, you could say that I am Lana Turner . . . of the internet (the latter tag is important for clarifying any misconceptions about my physical attractiveness). I am the author of the accidental New York Times bestseller and popular blog Stuff White People Like, and this is my story.
On 18 January 2008, my friend Myles and I were having an instant messenger conversation about The Wire. Myles, who is Filipino, said he didn't trust any white person who didn't watch the show. I agreed with him, so we started talking about what white people might be doing instead of watching The Wire. Going to therapy, watching plays, doing yoga and getting divorced were the first things that popped into our heads. For some reason, the idea that a white person was too busy getting divorced to watch television was particularly hilarious to me, so I started a blog about it.
Originally, my plan was to take this instant messenger conversation and turn it into something that would make Myles and two other friends laugh. There was no expectation that it was going to be anything bigger – I wasn't even sure it would make them laugh. I just went to Wordpress.com, gave it the title "Stuff White People Like", and started writing.
The first few entries were short and almost completely directed at people Myles and I knew from our high school. The first entry, on coffee, was about the male students who would proudly attach a refillable mug to their backpacks as a gesture of their maturity. Man, we hated those guys.
But the more I started writing, the more I realised that I wasn't writing about other people, I was writing about myself. And I was full of far more self-loathing than I had expected. Within a week the site was up to 25 entries.
I thought it was entertaining enough to send to my (20) friends as a mass email, asking them to read it. But then an amazing thing happened. The readership started growing.
It's not hard to get your friends to forward on your web project, largely out of guilt or obligation. But when their friends, the ones who don't know you, start forwarding it to their friends, you have something special. I watched as the site traffic grew from a few hundred hits a day (mostly misguided searches for organic fair trade coffee) to more than a thousand. Then, somehow, it wound up on the blog for Good Magazine (published by Al Gore's son) and Comedy Central's Insider (the official blog for the US cable channel). Traffic jumped to 30,000 hits a day. From there it spread exponentially; soon it was crossing a 100,000, then 300,000 and 400,000. Every day I would just stare at my computer and say, "It can't get any bigger than this."
I began receiving emails from literary agents in New York City and Los Angeles. They wanted to turn the site into a book. I was floored. I knew that people spent their entire lives trying to get the attention of a literary agent, yet they were coming to me to turn my silly little blog into a book. By early March – less than two months after the blog started – I had chosen an agent. By the end of the month, I had a book deal in place. On 31 March, I quit my job.
Over the next year, the book would go on to be a New York Times bestseller, while I appeared on Conan O'Brien's talkshow and gave lectures at Google, Harvard, Brown – and now the London School of Economics. So in case it's something you'd like to happen to you too, here are a few thoughts on the matter:
• Be lucky I can't stress this enough. I would say it is responsible for approximately 41% of my success.
• Be true to yourself When you try to create something that you think will please everyone, it ends up pleasing no one. People can see through attempts to do something with the sole intention of getting famous. When you start your blog, do something that entertains you – and live with the expectation that your only reward will be writing the blog.
• Be Canadian People seem to like us.
• Be perceived as racist by idiots This will lead to more traffic than you could ever imagine. I would, however, strongly recommend not being perceived as racist by smart people. That will end poorly.
• Have an email address on your site This is how every agent and media outlet reached me. It is also how every piece of hate mail reached me. For the majority of blogs, the ratio will likely be one agent email for every 200 pieces of hate mail. Successful blogs can expect that ratio to be 1:400. Super successful blogs can expect some of the hate mail to come from agents.
• Be nice to everyone It may surprise you that being famous on the internet does not last for ever. Apparently, people have short attention spans nowadays. However, one thing that people will remember is if someone marginally famous was a jerk to them. I still remember and hate the baseball player who refused to sign an autograph for me when I was 15. Also, it will be less humiliating to ask them for help in finding a job once your internet fame is over.
Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/oct/15/christian-lander-stuff-white-people-like
Monday, August 17, 2009
Friday, June 05, 2009
Some stories just break your heart
Like this one from the Guardian about a grieving couple that 'jumped off Beachy Head—with their dead son.
The bodies of Neil Puttick, 34, and his wife, Kazumi, 44, from Wiltshire, were spotted at the foot of the cliffs on Sunday evening. The body of their child, Samuel, was found in a rucksack nearby.
Samuel had been discharged from hospital on Friday after it became clear he was not going to survive. He was allowed to leave so he could die peacefully at home. The boy, who neighbours said had suffered serious spinal injuries in an accident about three years ago, was confirmed dead later that evening.
A spokesman for the Bath and north-east Somerset NHS said: "Samuel Puttick had been receiving treatment for pneumococcal meningitis at the paediatric intensive children's unit at Bristol Royal hospital for children.
"When it became clear that Sam had no hope of recovery from his severe infection, he was discharged to his family home on Friday 29 May at his parents' request. He was certified dead at his home by a doctor at approximately 8pm that evening.
"We offer our sincere condolences to the relatives and friends of this family. It would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage as the matter will be the subject of an extensive investigation and coroner's inquest."
Detective Inspector Ian Williams, from Sussex police, said: "As a result of our investigation, I am satisfied that Samuel's grieving parents, Neil and Kazumi, appear to have taken their own lives.
"This is a tragic incident and we extend our sympathies to their family and to the large number of friends and carers affected."
Flowers were left at the couple's farmhouse in the village of Brokerswood, Wiltshire. One neighbour said: "They were a lovely couple and they did 150% for that boy. It is all such a shock."
Sue Capon, who runs Brokerswood country park, said everyone was still coming to terms with the tragedy. "All of them were very good friends. It's such a shame," she said. "I only saw them three days ago."
On Monday, the bodies were winched to the top of the 550ft (168 metre) cliffs, as detectives broke into a silver Volkswagen people carrier found in a nearby car park that was believed to have belonged to the group. A half-eaten banana and family-sized bag of peanuts were left on the front seat, and there was a wheelchair lift in the back. The vehicle was towed away to be examined.
An Eastbourne coastguard station officer, Stuart McNab, said coastguards on a routine clifftop patrol had seen what they believed to be two bodies about 400ft down the cliff just before 8pm on Sunday and alerted police, but it was decided it would be safer to wait and carry out the recovery the next day.
McNab, who was one of the first people to be taken to the scene by helicopter, said he had found the child's body in a rucksack along with a second rucksack filled with soft toys and a toy tractor.
Sussex police said no one else was believed to have been involved in the tragedy, which was not being treated as suspicious.
A spokesman for Dover coastguard said: "It is really horrific and incredibly sad. In my four years with the coastguard I have never known anything like this."
The bodies of Neil Puttick, 34, and his wife, Kazumi, 44, from Wiltshire, were spotted at the foot of the cliffs on Sunday evening. The body of their child, Samuel, was found in a rucksack nearby.
Samuel had been discharged from hospital on Friday after it became clear he was not going to survive. He was allowed to leave so he could die peacefully at home. The boy, who neighbours said had suffered serious spinal injuries in an accident about three years ago, was confirmed dead later that evening.
A spokesman for the Bath and north-east Somerset NHS said: "Samuel Puttick had been receiving treatment for pneumococcal meningitis at the paediatric intensive children's unit at Bristol Royal hospital for children.
"When it became clear that Sam had no hope of recovery from his severe infection, he was discharged to his family home on Friday 29 May at his parents' request. He was certified dead at his home by a doctor at approximately 8pm that evening.
"We offer our sincere condolences to the relatives and friends of this family. It would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage as the matter will be the subject of an extensive investigation and coroner's inquest."
Detective Inspector Ian Williams, from Sussex police, said: "As a result of our investigation, I am satisfied that Samuel's grieving parents, Neil and Kazumi, appear to have taken their own lives.
"This is a tragic incident and we extend our sympathies to their family and to the large number of friends and carers affected."
Flowers were left at the couple's farmhouse in the village of Brokerswood, Wiltshire. One neighbour said: "They were a lovely couple and they did 150% for that boy. It is all such a shock."
Sue Capon, who runs Brokerswood country park, said everyone was still coming to terms with the tragedy. "All of them were very good friends. It's such a shame," she said. "I only saw them three days ago."
On Monday, the bodies were winched to the top of the 550ft (168 metre) cliffs, as detectives broke into a silver Volkswagen people carrier found in a nearby car park that was believed to have belonged to the group. A half-eaten banana and family-sized bag of peanuts were left on the front seat, and there was a wheelchair lift in the back. The vehicle was towed away to be examined.
An Eastbourne coastguard station officer, Stuart McNab, said coastguards on a routine clifftop patrol had seen what they believed to be two bodies about 400ft down the cliff just before 8pm on Sunday and alerted police, but it was decided it would be safer to wait and carry out the recovery the next day.
McNab, who was one of the first people to be taken to the scene by helicopter, said he had found the child's body in a rucksack along with a second rucksack filled with soft toys and a toy tractor.
Sussex police said no one else was believed to have been involved in the tragedy, which was not being treated as suspicious.
A spokesman for Dover coastguard said: "It is really horrific and incredibly sad. In my four years with the coastguard I have never known anything like this."
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Note to Self
In the next couple of weeks, I must update my CV / Portfolio - and ensure that a version is available online. And when I get to do the online version, I don't think i can go far wrong than mimicking this site by Jamie Gregory.
Enjoy the Silence?
Does anyone recall the video for Depeche Mode's Enjoy The Silence? If not watch Coldplay's latest video - which was shot by the same director, Anton Corbjin
Friday, August 01, 2008
Sir Ken Robinson
Sarah saw this Sir Ken Robinson talk a while ago here in Singapore - actually, it was a while ago everywhere else too - and said how awesome he was. After watching this video, I tend to agree with the missus. And the video has also prompted me to finish reading his book, Out Our Minds: Learning to be Creative. Anyway, the guy is quality. And the vid is a must for any parent or teacher.
Ogilvy on Advertising
“The headline is the ‘ticket on the meat.’ Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising.”
“On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”
“I don’t know the rules of grammar… If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.”
“I have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive.”
“Good copy can’t be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You’ve got to believe in the product.”
“The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.”
“What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.”
“A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.”
“Nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else’s advertising.”
“I do not regard advertising as entertainment or art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product. When Aeschines spoke, they said, ‘How well he speaks.’ But when Demosthenes spoke, they said, ‘Let us march against Philip.’”
“On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”
“I don’t know the rules of grammar… If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.”
“I have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive.”
“Good copy can’t be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You’ve got to believe in the product.”
“The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.”
“What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.”
“A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.”
“Nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else’s advertising.”
“I do not regard advertising as entertainment or art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product. When Aeschines spoke, they said, ‘How well he speaks.’ But when Demosthenes spoke, they said, ‘Let us march against Philip.’”
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose (8)
While doing some research for cryptic crossword clues, I came across this article. So will have to get a copy of this book. Btw, my favourite cryptic crossword clue is 'gegs (9,4)'. And if you need a clue to solve it, think of something that you may have on toast!
Friday, June 13, 2008
If you do one thing today, read this ...
Quality copy. And stirring stuff. From the actor, Lennie James.
Barely a week goes by without another young Briton being brutally killed in a knife attack. Acclaimed actor and writer Lennie James, who will star in Fallout, the TV version of Roy Williams's play about teenage violence, has watched in horror as the death toll mounts. Here, in an open letter to the knife carriers, he draws on his own difficult upbringing to make an impassioned plea to the lost generation of young boys who visit random savagery on their victims
Lennie James
Sunday June 8 2008
The Observer
Next month Channel 4 will show Fallout by Roy Williams, the screen version of his critically acclaimed stage play. Beautifully directed by Ian Rickson, Fallout is the enthralling story of the murder of a 16-year-old boy, Kwame, and the consequences that befall the four boys involved in the killing, the two girls connected to it and the police officers investigating the case.
I play one of the police officers, DS Joe Stephens, who is returning for the first time to the estate where he grew up to help in the investigation. He identifies greatly with the victim. Like Joe, Kwame had ambitions outside the confines and dictates of his estate and his background. Joe takes Kwame's death very personally, as if the killers had murdered Joe's younger self. This leads him to pursue the suspects with a zeal that alarms his colleagues, and to bend the rules to breaking point.
First and foremost, as it was on stage, Fallout is a wonderfully written, engrossing and entertaining story about belonging, escape, revenge and love. It is also a story that attempts to make sense of the seemingly senseless killing of a 16-year-old boy, stabbed to death for his trainers.
The issue of knife and gun crime among the young is firmly on the agenda at the moment, and rightly so. Since we premiered Roy's play at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2003 some 350 teenagers have been shot or stabbed to death by other teenagers or young adults, and that may be a conservative estimate. Twenty-six teenagers were shot or stabbed in London alone in 2007. So far this year more than 100 have been attacked using knives. The number of dead is already at 13 and likely to rise.
Much has been written on the subject of this seeming spike in teen-on-teen violence over the past year or so. Columnists, commentators, politicians, child psychologists, law-makers, police officers, religious and community leaders, bereaved parents, gang members and ex-teenage killers have all expressed their opinions, apportioned blame and offered solutions. I myself was intent on writing a comparison between the war in Iraq and Afghanistan with the so-called 'war on street crime' announced by Boris Johnson, and others before him, and the relative collateral damage and loss of young lives. It was to be an investigation into whether the best response to our young people killing our young people is to declare war on them.
But as I sat down to complete the article, to add some statistics to bolster my argument and to clarify my misgivings as to whether Boris had an exit strategy for his war, I read of the death of Robert Knox. Robert, 18, was allegedly stabbed to death by a 21-year-old who was carrying two knives. So I scrolled up my article to change '13 [dead] and likely to rise' to 14 and likely to... As I did so I wondered how many more times I would have to scroll up and change that number before the article was printed. Would I have to change 16 to 17 and 18 and 19 and so on, and would it still be 'likely to rise'?
Suddenly the article I'd thought would be an interesting and insightful take on the subject became little more than another voice added to the collective hand-wringing and navel-gazing that seems to have characterised the response to this issue. It is all well intentioned and absolutely necessary if we are to find solutions. The problem is that we are so very adept at exploring our own deficiencies but so very slow to improve on them or to learn from them.
Like a huge tanker turning 180 degrees, it takes for ever for our sentiment to be made into decisive action. In the meantime, should the current trend continue, a teenager or two will be stabbed, possibly killed, every week for the rest of this year, like last, by someone no older than themselves.
So instead I have written an open letter to the knife-carriers, to the murderers-in-waiting and their potential victims. I don't know how many of them might be Observer readers, but in this www. world, where this is written may not be where it is read.
Since this article was written, two more teenagers have been killed in London, bringing the total to 16.
· Fallout, part of Disarming Britain, Channel 4's season on gun and knife crime, is to be screened at 10pm on Thursday 3 JulyTo whom it may concern,
My name is Lennie James. I am a 42-year-old father of three. I grew up in south-west London. I was brought up by a single mother. I was orphaned at 10, lived in a kids' home until I was 15 and was then fostered. I tell you this not to claim any special knowledge of how you've grown, but to explain how I have, and from where I draw my understanding.
I want to talk to you about the knife you're carrying in your belt or pocket or shoe. The one you got from your mum's kitchen or ordered online or robbed out of the camping shop. The knife you tell yourself you carry for protection, because you never know who else has got one.
I want to talk to you about what that knife will do for you. If you carry it, the chances are you will be called on to use it. It is a deadly weapon, so if you use it the chances are you will kill with it. So after you've killed with it, after you've seen how little force it takes for sharpened steel to puncture flesh. After your mates have run away from the boy you've left bleeding. When you're looking for somewhere to dash the blade, and lighter fluid to burn your clothes. When your blood is burning in your veins and your heart is beating out of your chest to where you want to puke or cry, but can't coz you're toughing it out for your boyz. When you are bang smack in the middle of 'Did you see that!' and 'Oh, Jesus Christ!' here's who to blame...
Blame the boy you just left for dead. Blame him for not believing you when you told him you were a bigger man than him. Blame him for not backing down when you made your chest broad, bounced into him and told him about your knife and how you would use it. Blame him for calling you on and making you prove yourself. Tell yourself if he had just freed up his phone or not cut his eyes at you like he did, he wouldn't be choking on his blood and crying for his mum.
Then blame your mum. When the police are banging down her door looking for you, or she hears the whispers behind the 'wall of silence', tell her it's all her fault for being worthless. Cuss her out for having kids when she was nothing but a kid herself, or for picking some drug or some man over you again and again. Even if she only had you and devoted herself to you, even if she is a great mum, blame her anyway. Blame her for not being around more to make sure you took the chances she was out working her fingers to the bone to give you.
When you're done with her, blame the man she picked to make you with. Blame him for being less than half the man he should have been. When he comes to bail you out and starts running you down for the terrible thing you've done, tell him straight: 'I did what I did coz you didn't do what you should have done.' Even if he did right; respected your mother, worked to provide for his family financially and spiritually, taught you right from wrong and drummed it home everyday... Even if he nurtured you as best he could, blame him for the generation of men he comes from.
The one that allowed an adolescent definition of manhood to become so dominant. The one that measures a man by how many babymothers he has wrangling his offspring, or by how 'bad' his reputation is on the streets of whatever couple of square miles he chooses to call his 'ends'.
Damn them for letting you believe that respect is to be found with gun in hand or knife in pocket. Damn them and everyone who feeds the myth of these gangsters, villains, thieves and hustlers. Anyone who makes them heroes while damning hard-working, educated, honest men as weak, sell-outs or pussies.
If you are black, blame white people for the history of indignities they heaped on you and yours. For the humiliation of having to go cap-in-hand or get down on bended knee or having to burn shit down before you are afforded something so basically fundamental as equality. If you are white, blame black folk and Muslims for taking all your excuses. Failing that, blame a class system that keeps you poor and ignorant so the 'uppers' and 'middles' can feel better about themselves.
You have good reason to blame them all. I wouldn't be you growing up now for love nor money. Your generation has so little room to manoeuvre. We had more space to step around the bullshit. We weren't excluded at the rate you lot are. Teachers hadn't given up or lost their authority over us. They still tried to protect and guide us even through our most disruptive years.
The police stopped and searched us, but we fought that right out of their hands - we hoped into extinction. But they want to bring back that abusive practice. They are still hooked on punishment rather than prevention. They seem ignorant to the fact that they are feeding you acceptance of an already prevalent gang mentality. As far as you can see, the police are not protecting and serving you, they are coming at you like just another street gang trying to boss your postcode.
When I was where you are now, generations of state agencies, social services, policy-makers and politicians had not abdicated all responsibility for me. We weren't left to our own devices like you have been. Is it any wonder that you end up expressing yourself in such a violently pathetic way?
We should be ashamed. I am. You have shamed us into a desperate need to do something about ourselves. We have collectively failed you and we should take all the blame that is ours for that... but so should you.
I blame you. I blame you because as a generation you are selfish, self-centred and have little or no empathy for anyone but yourselves. You are politically stunted and socially irresponsible and... you scare us. What scares us most is that you would rather die than learn. Your only salvation may be that still most of you aren't playing it out dirty. The vast majority of young men, even with all that is stacked against them, are finding their way around the crap. The boy you will kill, should you continue to carry that knife, almost certainly had the same collective failures testing him. He probably felt no less abandoned and no less scared. He also, almost certainly, wasn't carrying a knife.
Whatever it seems like, whatever you've read, whatever you tell yourself about protection being your reason, statistics show the life you take will be that of an unarmed person. That is what that knife will do for you. It will make you escalate a situation to where it is needed. It will give you a misguided sense of confidence. It will make you the aggressor. That knife will make you use it. It will bring you nothing worth having. There is no respect there. The street may give you some passing recognition, but any name you think you might make will soon be forgotten.
Your victim will be remembered long after you. Name me one of the boys who killed Stephen Lawrence. Once you've bloodied that knife you may as well be dead because you'll be buried for 10 to 20 years. Banged up for that long, only a fool would look back and think it was worth it. You'll be nothing more than a sad, unwanted, unnecessary statistic.
If you were mine, this is what I would tell you. I would make myself a big enough man to beg. I'd get down on bended knees if I had to. I would beg you to take that knife out of your pocket and leave it at home. I would tell you that I know you are scared and lost and that I know the risks involved in what I'm asking you to do. I know that what we could step around, you have to walk through, and that there is always some fool who isn't going to make it any other way but the wrong way. I'm just begging you not to be that fool.
Be a better man than that. Let the story they tell of you be that you exceeded expectations... that you didn't drown. Don't spend your days looking to be a 'bad-man' - try to be a good one. Our biggest failure is that our actions have left you not knowing how precious you are. We have left you unaware of your worth to us. You are precious to us. Give yourself the chance to grow enough to understand why.
Be safe.
Lennie James
Knives, young people and the law: The roller coaster of tragedy:
24 January 2007 Jevon Henry, 18, is stabbed to death in St John's Wood, north London - the first in a spate of teen-on-teen stabbings and shootings at the start of the year.
1 February 2007 Maximum sentence for carrying a knife is increased from two to four years.
22 February Church and community group leaders attend a Downing Street summit on knife crime. Tony Blair and Home Secretary John Reid promise tougher legislation, but Shadow Home Secretary David Davis says: 'This is the fourth summit on gun crimes and gangsters Tony Blair has had and at every turn the problem has got worse.'
Speaking on the same day in Manchester, David Cameron says the solution to teenage gun and knife crime is to strengthen the family: 'Gangs are crowded with boys who have never been part of an intact family, where people belonged with and to each other. The same boys may never have known the innate respect which flows from having access to a father's love and direction. They cannot survive in an emotional vacuum and their absent fathers know it.'
March 2007 Five teen-on-teen stabbings in the UK in under three weeks. Odwayne Anthony Barnes, 16, in Birmingham; Jason Spencer, 17, in Nottingham; Kodjo Yenga, 16, in Hammersmith, west London; Adam Regis, 15, in Plaistow, east London; Michael Metcalfe, 19, in Garston, near Liverpool.
19 March John Reid announces that police will now be required to record whether an incident involved a knife, telling Parliament: 'It has to involve personal and parental responsibility as well as the local community.'
27 March A one-off select committee inquiry into knife crime takes place. Martin Salter MP advises: 'We need to cut through all this nonsense and bring all the legislation together in an overarching knives and offensive weapons bill to simplify the process.'
April 2007 Blair claims that teen violence is a problem of black culture and cannot be solved 'by pretending it is not young black kids doing it'. Lee Jasper, senior adviser on equality to London Mayor Ken Livingstone says: 'The government has failed to respond to... a clear demand for additional resources to tackle youth alienation and disaffection.'
1 October 2007 The Violent Crime Reduction Act comes into force, making it illegal to sell a knife or any item with a blade or point to a person under the age of 18. Previously the age limit was 16.
1 January 2008 Henry Bolombi, 18, becomes the first teen-on-teen violence fatality of 2008; stabbed after he gets off a bus in Edmonton, north London on the way home from New Year's Eve celebrations.
February 2008 Government publishes Violent Crime Action Plan, a three-year strategy to tackle gun and knife crime including a £20m investment for interventions and information sharing between police and communities.
May 2008 A survey of 355 people aged 16 to 24 in London, Manchester and Bristol found 30 per cent said it was acceptable sometimes to carry a knife while 23 per cent would use one. One in 10 claimed to have had access to a gun.
5 May London Mayor Boris Johnson appoints Ray Lewis as his deputy for young people. Speaking at a knife crime summit in City Hall Lewis said 'We need to offer them [teenagers] outlets and guidance that will respond to their aspirations and divert them away from gangs and antisocial behaviour, whether it is sporting activities, after-school clubs or mentoring.'
24 May Harry Potter actor Robert Knox is stabbed to death outside a bar in Sidcup.
29 May A two-week campaign by police in London resulted in almost 200 knives being seized.
5 June 2008 A Downing Street summit results in the prosecution age for carrying a knife being lowered from 18 to 16.
Barely a week goes by without another young Briton being brutally killed in a knife attack. Acclaimed actor and writer Lennie James, who will star in Fallout, the TV version of Roy Williams's play about teenage violence, has watched in horror as the death toll mounts. Here, in an open letter to the knife carriers, he draws on his own difficult upbringing to make an impassioned plea to the lost generation of young boys who visit random savagery on their victims
Lennie James
Sunday June 8 2008
The Observer
Next month Channel 4 will show Fallout by Roy Williams, the screen version of his critically acclaimed stage play. Beautifully directed by Ian Rickson, Fallout is the enthralling story of the murder of a 16-year-old boy, Kwame, and the consequences that befall the four boys involved in the killing, the two girls connected to it and the police officers investigating the case.
I play one of the police officers, DS Joe Stephens, who is returning for the first time to the estate where he grew up to help in the investigation. He identifies greatly with the victim. Like Joe, Kwame had ambitions outside the confines and dictates of his estate and his background. Joe takes Kwame's death very personally, as if the killers had murdered Joe's younger self. This leads him to pursue the suspects with a zeal that alarms his colleagues, and to bend the rules to breaking point.
First and foremost, as it was on stage, Fallout is a wonderfully written, engrossing and entertaining story about belonging, escape, revenge and love. It is also a story that attempts to make sense of the seemingly senseless killing of a 16-year-old boy, stabbed to death for his trainers.
The issue of knife and gun crime among the young is firmly on the agenda at the moment, and rightly so. Since we premiered Roy's play at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2003 some 350 teenagers have been shot or stabbed to death by other teenagers or young adults, and that may be a conservative estimate. Twenty-six teenagers were shot or stabbed in London alone in 2007. So far this year more than 100 have been attacked using knives. The number of dead is already at 13 and likely to rise.
Much has been written on the subject of this seeming spike in teen-on-teen violence over the past year or so. Columnists, commentators, politicians, child psychologists, law-makers, police officers, religious and community leaders, bereaved parents, gang members and ex-teenage killers have all expressed their opinions, apportioned blame and offered solutions. I myself was intent on writing a comparison between the war in Iraq and Afghanistan with the so-called 'war on street crime' announced by Boris Johnson, and others before him, and the relative collateral damage and loss of young lives. It was to be an investigation into whether the best response to our young people killing our young people is to declare war on them.
But as I sat down to complete the article, to add some statistics to bolster my argument and to clarify my misgivings as to whether Boris had an exit strategy for his war, I read of the death of Robert Knox. Robert, 18, was allegedly stabbed to death by a 21-year-old who was carrying two knives. So I scrolled up my article to change '13 [dead] and likely to rise' to 14 and likely to... As I did so I wondered how many more times I would have to scroll up and change that number before the article was printed. Would I have to change 16 to 17 and 18 and 19 and so on, and would it still be 'likely to rise'?
Suddenly the article I'd thought would be an interesting and insightful take on the subject became little more than another voice added to the collective hand-wringing and navel-gazing that seems to have characterised the response to this issue. It is all well intentioned and absolutely necessary if we are to find solutions. The problem is that we are so very adept at exploring our own deficiencies but so very slow to improve on them or to learn from them.
Like a huge tanker turning 180 degrees, it takes for ever for our sentiment to be made into decisive action. In the meantime, should the current trend continue, a teenager or two will be stabbed, possibly killed, every week for the rest of this year, like last, by someone no older than themselves.
So instead I have written an open letter to the knife-carriers, to the murderers-in-waiting and their potential victims. I don't know how many of them might be Observer readers, but in this www. world, where this is written may not be where it is read.
Since this article was written, two more teenagers have been killed in London, bringing the total to 16.
· Fallout, part of Disarming Britain, Channel 4's season on gun and knife crime, is to be screened at 10pm on Thursday 3 JulyTo whom it may concern,
My name is Lennie James. I am a 42-year-old father of three. I grew up in south-west London. I was brought up by a single mother. I was orphaned at 10, lived in a kids' home until I was 15 and was then fostered. I tell you this not to claim any special knowledge of how you've grown, but to explain how I have, and from where I draw my understanding.
I want to talk to you about the knife you're carrying in your belt or pocket or shoe. The one you got from your mum's kitchen or ordered online or robbed out of the camping shop. The knife you tell yourself you carry for protection, because you never know who else has got one.
I want to talk to you about what that knife will do for you. If you carry it, the chances are you will be called on to use it. It is a deadly weapon, so if you use it the chances are you will kill with it. So after you've killed with it, after you've seen how little force it takes for sharpened steel to puncture flesh. After your mates have run away from the boy you've left bleeding. When you're looking for somewhere to dash the blade, and lighter fluid to burn your clothes. When your blood is burning in your veins and your heart is beating out of your chest to where you want to puke or cry, but can't coz you're toughing it out for your boyz. When you are bang smack in the middle of 'Did you see that!' and 'Oh, Jesus Christ!' here's who to blame...
Blame the boy you just left for dead. Blame him for not believing you when you told him you were a bigger man than him. Blame him for not backing down when you made your chest broad, bounced into him and told him about your knife and how you would use it. Blame him for calling you on and making you prove yourself. Tell yourself if he had just freed up his phone or not cut his eyes at you like he did, he wouldn't be choking on his blood and crying for his mum.
Then blame your mum. When the police are banging down her door looking for you, or she hears the whispers behind the 'wall of silence', tell her it's all her fault for being worthless. Cuss her out for having kids when she was nothing but a kid herself, or for picking some drug or some man over you again and again. Even if she only had you and devoted herself to you, even if she is a great mum, blame her anyway. Blame her for not being around more to make sure you took the chances she was out working her fingers to the bone to give you.
When you're done with her, blame the man she picked to make you with. Blame him for being less than half the man he should have been. When he comes to bail you out and starts running you down for the terrible thing you've done, tell him straight: 'I did what I did coz you didn't do what you should have done.' Even if he did right; respected your mother, worked to provide for his family financially and spiritually, taught you right from wrong and drummed it home everyday... Even if he nurtured you as best he could, blame him for the generation of men he comes from.
The one that allowed an adolescent definition of manhood to become so dominant. The one that measures a man by how many babymothers he has wrangling his offspring, or by how 'bad' his reputation is on the streets of whatever couple of square miles he chooses to call his 'ends'.
Damn them for letting you believe that respect is to be found with gun in hand or knife in pocket. Damn them and everyone who feeds the myth of these gangsters, villains, thieves and hustlers. Anyone who makes them heroes while damning hard-working, educated, honest men as weak, sell-outs or pussies.
If you are black, blame white people for the history of indignities they heaped on you and yours. For the humiliation of having to go cap-in-hand or get down on bended knee or having to burn shit down before you are afforded something so basically fundamental as equality. If you are white, blame black folk and Muslims for taking all your excuses. Failing that, blame a class system that keeps you poor and ignorant so the 'uppers' and 'middles' can feel better about themselves.
You have good reason to blame them all. I wouldn't be you growing up now for love nor money. Your generation has so little room to manoeuvre. We had more space to step around the bullshit. We weren't excluded at the rate you lot are. Teachers hadn't given up or lost their authority over us. They still tried to protect and guide us even through our most disruptive years.
The police stopped and searched us, but we fought that right out of their hands - we hoped into extinction. But they want to bring back that abusive practice. They are still hooked on punishment rather than prevention. They seem ignorant to the fact that they are feeding you acceptance of an already prevalent gang mentality. As far as you can see, the police are not protecting and serving you, they are coming at you like just another street gang trying to boss your postcode.
When I was where you are now, generations of state agencies, social services, policy-makers and politicians had not abdicated all responsibility for me. We weren't left to our own devices like you have been. Is it any wonder that you end up expressing yourself in such a violently pathetic way?
We should be ashamed. I am. You have shamed us into a desperate need to do something about ourselves. We have collectively failed you and we should take all the blame that is ours for that... but so should you.
I blame you. I blame you because as a generation you are selfish, self-centred and have little or no empathy for anyone but yourselves. You are politically stunted and socially irresponsible and... you scare us. What scares us most is that you would rather die than learn. Your only salvation may be that still most of you aren't playing it out dirty. The vast majority of young men, even with all that is stacked against them, are finding their way around the crap. The boy you will kill, should you continue to carry that knife, almost certainly had the same collective failures testing him. He probably felt no less abandoned and no less scared. He also, almost certainly, wasn't carrying a knife.
Whatever it seems like, whatever you've read, whatever you tell yourself about protection being your reason, statistics show the life you take will be that of an unarmed person. That is what that knife will do for you. It will make you escalate a situation to where it is needed. It will give you a misguided sense of confidence. It will make you the aggressor. That knife will make you use it. It will bring you nothing worth having. There is no respect there. The street may give you some passing recognition, but any name you think you might make will soon be forgotten.
Your victim will be remembered long after you. Name me one of the boys who killed Stephen Lawrence. Once you've bloodied that knife you may as well be dead because you'll be buried for 10 to 20 years. Banged up for that long, only a fool would look back and think it was worth it. You'll be nothing more than a sad, unwanted, unnecessary statistic.
If you were mine, this is what I would tell you. I would make myself a big enough man to beg. I'd get down on bended knees if I had to. I would beg you to take that knife out of your pocket and leave it at home. I would tell you that I know you are scared and lost and that I know the risks involved in what I'm asking you to do. I know that what we could step around, you have to walk through, and that there is always some fool who isn't going to make it any other way but the wrong way. I'm just begging you not to be that fool.
Be a better man than that. Let the story they tell of you be that you exceeded expectations... that you didn't drown. Don't spend your days looking to be a 'bad-man' - try to be a good one. Our biggest failure is that our actions have left you not knowing how precious you are. We have left you unaware of your worth to us. You are precious to us. Give yourself the chance to grow enough to understand why.
Be safe.
Lennie James
Knives, young people and the law: The roller coaster of tragedy:
24 January 2007 Jevon Henry, 18, is stabbed to death in St John's Wood, north London - the first in a spate of teen-on-teen stabbings and shootings at the start of the year.
1 February 2007 Maximum sentence for carrying a knife is increased from two to four years.
22 February Church and community group leaders attend a Downing Street summit on knife crime. Tony Blair and Home Secretary John Reid promise tougher legislation, but Shadow Home Secretary David Davis says: 'This is the fourth summit on gun crimes and gangsters Tony Blair has had and at every turn the problem has got worse.'
Speaking on the same day in Manchester, David Cameron says the solution to teenage gun and knife crime is to strengthen the family: 'Gangs are crowded with boys who have never been part of an intact family, where people belonged with and to each other. The same boys may never have known the innate respect which flows from having access to a father's love and direction. They cannot survive in an emotional vacuum and their absent fathers know it.'
March 2007 Five teen-on-teen stabbings in the UK in under three weeks. Odwayne Anthony Barnes, 16, in Birmingham; Jason Spencer, 17, in Nottingham; Kodjo Yenga, 16, in Hammersmith, west London; Adam Regis, 15, in Plaistow, east London; Michael Metcalfe, 19, in Garston, near Liverpool.
19 March John Reid announces that police will now be required to record whether an incident involved a knife, telling Parliament: 'It has to involve personal and parental responsibility as well as the local community.'
27 March A one-off select committee inquiry into knife crime takes place. Martin Salter MP advises: 'We need to cut through all this nonsense and bring all the legislation together in an overarching knives and offensive weapons bill to simplify the process.'
April 2007 Blair claims that teen violence is a problem of black culture and cannot be solved 'by pretending it is not young black kids doing it'. Lee Jasper, senior adviser on equality to London Mayor Ken Livingstone says: 'The government has failed to respond to... a clear demand for additional resources to tackle youth alienation and disaffection.'
1 October 2007 The Violent Crime Reduction Act comes into force, making it illegal to sell a knife or any item with a blade or point to a person under the age of 18. Previously the age limit was 16.
1 January 2008 Henry Bolombi, 18, becomes the first teen-on-teen violence fatality of 2008; stabbed after he gets off a bus in Edmonton, north London on the way home from New Year's Eve celebrations.
February 2008 Government publishes Violent Crime Action Plan, a three-year strategy to tackle gun and knife crime including a £20m investment for interventions and information sharing between police and communities.
May 2008 A survey of 355 people aged 16 to 24 in London, Manchester and Bristol found 30 per cent said it was acceptable sometimes to carry a knife while 23 per cent would use one. One in 10 claimed to have had access to a gun.
5 May London Mayor Boris Johnson appoints Ray Lewis as his deputy for young people. Speaking at a knife crime summit in City Hall Lewis said 'We need to offer them [teenagers] outlets and guidance that will respond to their aspirations and divert them away from gangs and antisocial behaviour, whether it is sporting activities, after-school clubs or mentoring.'
24 May Harry Potter actor Robert Knox is stabbed to death outside a bar in Sidcup.
29 May A two-week campaign by police in London resulted in almost 200 knives being seized.
5 June 2008 A Downing Street summit results in the prosecution age for carrying a knife being lowered from 18 to 16.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
So here's the story ...
The Cannes festival is the biggest film market in the world - but what makes a producer bite? Actor Peter Capaldi on the art of the pitch.
Folks with no money and a bit of an idea have always gone to folks with a bit of money and no idea and said, How about it? It's what they call "pitching". Pitching as we know it arrived in the UK somewhere between Hugh Grant stuttering through Four Weddings and Ewan McGregor putting his head down a toilet in Trainspotting. The British film industry discovered financial success was indeed possible - as long as we all went American.
And for some, it worked. Ideas were streamlined. Enthusiasm was harnessed. The director Dylan Kidd recalls giving a vigorous pitch on a conference call; after 15 minutes he was breathless. He was flummoxed by the silence at the other end, until he discovered he'd pulled the phone from the wall and had been pitching to no one.
The American film executive exists in a corporate environment as opaque and deadly as the court of the Medicis. Despite impressive displays of intelligence and savvy, they remain bewildering people. One celebrated British playwright, when pitching an Oscar Wilde biopic, was asked if he could make Bosie a girl. The head of Fox recalls that, when pitching his updated version of Romeo and Juliet, director Baz Luhrmann did not reveal until the very last moment that he intended to retain the original Elizabethan dialogue. It was said to be the worst pitch in the history of the studio. Yet they bought it, and from it sprang one of their best films.
The British can be unpredictable, too. I once pitched three ideas to the head of Britain's top film production company. He was clearly bored by ideas one and two, but on idea three he came to life. "That is a great idea," he said. "A truly great idea." I have not heard from him since.
Sometimes the American execs will decamp to London. In a grand hotel, a lady exec sat Marie Antoinette-like through my pitch without ever moving her fingers from a bowl of paper-thin potato chips. But at least she had a democratic approach to talent: as I left I saw Tom Stoppard waiting outside, along with a bloke who sold gags to the Chuckle Brothers.
Some producers will give you stock reactions, the best of which is: "I'm intrigued." Brilliant. "How did it go?" "He was intrigued!" It satisfies everyone, bestowing upon the idea a uniqueness that is hard to test, and bathing the exec in a glow of benevolent intelligence. He didn't buy it, but it haunts him.
Some truths are self-evident.
You'd better make sure you're pitching to The Guy. I'm talking bananas here.
A second, third or fourth banana might often be the only way in, but nothing happens without the say-so of the top banana. So check your banana. What's his number? Is he in the bunch? Is he actually a banana?
My worst pitch experience was in the mid-90s. The smart British film-makers were working on Jane Austen adaptations, or heart-warming comedies about redundant coalmen who regain their dignity by dressing up as women to infiltrate Women's Institute allotments and grow marijuana to fund their sons' ballet training with hilarious and moving consequences.
I, however, with my usual sure touch, was working on an updated version of the Roger Corman sci-fi shocker, The Man With the X-Ray Eyes.
The studio was the real thing. Spence, Bogey, Astaire - they'd all walked through those gates. We were early, of course. Which became on time, which became waiting.
Eventually, the guy shows up. And he is The Guy. Banana-wise, he's in the big yellow penthouse at the top of the banana-shaped Chrysler building looking down on all the other bananas, far, far below, in the streets of Bananahattan.
At that time, all studio heads were called Larry, Barry, or sometimes Gary. Larry, Barry or Gary looks like Kris Kristofferson, as rendered in wax, in a not-too-shabby country music wax museum. Fresh from Sundance, he is still roughing it in a voluminous oat-coloured cardigan and faded but very expensive denim shirt and jeans.
I launch into my pitch. It's post-Desert Storm I. Sensitive jarhead (River Phoenix or Leonardo DiCaprio or maybe David Schwimmer in a breakthrough serious role) returns home to Walton Mountain, suffering from bizarre sight problems, which eventually mutate into full-blown x-ray vision. High points included the obligatory seeing-through-the-waitress's-uniform scene (the girl from Species, I thought, in Agent Provocateur), to watching an aneurism blow in someone's brain, and eventually seeing through skin, cars, walls, buildings, mountains, the planet and universe into a new and terrifying dimension. What's not to like? Larry, Barry or Gary's eyes reveal nothing. Unlike Kris Kristofferson's, they are dead.
Keep going. As in the original, this is a journey into madness. River/Leonardo/maybe David Schwimmer in a breakthrough serious role discovers that he and his platoon have been experimented on in Iraq by the US military, which is looking to create soldier/robot hybrids. X-ray vision apparatus has been implanted into the soldiers' brains. His only choice is to track down the doctor who did the experiments and see if they can be reversed.
Not a flicker of emotion from The Guy. Now I'm feeling faint, and where his eyes are I'm seeing a cheap Roger Corman effects shot: almond-shaped card pasted over them, on to which angry flames are superimposed. I am hit with a desire of frightening power and vividness: I want to go home. Not to the hotel, not to London and my family. I want to get on a plane and go home to Scotland. To my mother. Just to be loved unconditionally.
I then heard myself say: "And we know he's in trouble because the doctor is played by Chris Walken." The eyes remained impassive, although to me they were now displaying a raging volcanic inferno. And then Larry, Barry or Gary spoke. "Chris Walken?" he said. I nodded. Without a word he got up, turned around, and walked out of the room.
The rest is a blur. I remember only blistering sunshine, lots of alcohol, and finding myself face down on the pavement, where, this being Hollywood, I was still looking up at the stars.
Of course, our film was never made. Not for the reasons you might think: some months after the pitch, the great Tim Burton announced he was doing The Man With the X-Ray Eyes for a rival studio, so all bets were off. The funny thing was, in the interim, we got the gig: a script was commissioned and we were all paid handsomely. Apparently, Larry, Barry or Garry loved it.
By Peter Capaldi in the Guardian on Wednesday May 21, 2008
Folks with no money and a bit of an idea have always gone to folks with a bit of money and no idea and said, How about it? It's what they call "pitching". Pitching as we know it arrived in the UK somewhere between Hugh Grant stuttering through Four Weddings and Ewan McGregor putting his head down a toilet in Trainspotting. The British film industry discovered financial success was indeed possible - as long as we all went American.
And for some, it worked. Ideas were streamlined. Enthusiasm was harnessed. The director Dylan Kidd recalls giving a vigorous pitch on a conference call; after 15 minutes he was breathless. He was flummoxed by the silence at the other end, until he discovered he'd pulled the phone from the wall and had been pitching to no one.
The American film executive exists in a corporate environment as opaque and deadly as the court of the Medicis. Despite impressive displays of intelligence and savvy, they remain bewildering people. One celebrated British playwright, when pitching an Oscar Wilde biopic, was asked if he could make Bosie a girl. The head of Fox recalls that, when pitching his updated version of Romeo and Juliet, director Baz Luhrmann did not reveal until the very last moment that he intended to retain the original Elizabethan dialogue. It was said to be the worst pitch in the history of the studio. Yet they bought it, and from it sprang one of their best films.
The British can be unpredictable, too. I once pitched three ideas to the head of Britain's top film production company. He was clearly bored by ideas one and two, but on idea three he came to life. "That is a great idea," he said. "A truly great idea." I have not heard from him since.
Sometimes the American execs will decamp to London. In a grand hotel, a lady exec sat Marie Antoinette-like through my pitch without ever moving her fingers from a bowl of paper-thin potato chips. But at least she had a democratic approach to talent: as I left I saw Tom Stoppard waiting outside, along with a bloke who sold gags to the Chuckle Brothers.
Some producers will give you stock reactions, the best of which is: "I'm intrigued." Brilliant. "How did it go?" "He was intrigued!" It satisfies everyone, bestowing upon the idea a uniqueness that is hard to test, and bathing the exec in a glow of benevolent intelligence. He didn't buy it, but it haunts him.
Some truths are self-evident.
You'd better make sure you're pitching to The Guy. I'm talking bananas here.
A second, third or fourth banana might often be the only way in, but nothing happens without the say-so of the top banana. So check your banana. What's his number? Is he in the bunch? Is he actually a banana?
My worst pitch experience was in the mid-90s. The smart British film-makers were working on Jane Austen adaptations, or heart-warming comedies about redundant coalmen who regain their dignity by dressing up as women to infiltrate Women's Institute allotments and grow marijuana to fund their sons' ballet training with hilarious and moving consequences.
I, however, with my usual sure touch, was working on an updated version of the Roger Corman sci-fi shocker, The Man With the X-Ray Eyes.
The studio was the real thing. Spence, Bogey, Astaire - they'd all walked through those gates. We were early, of course. Which became on time, which became waiting.
Eventually, the guy shows up. And he is The Guy. Banana-wise, he's in the big yellow penthouse at the top of the banana-shaped Chrysler building looking down on all the other bananas, far, far below, in the streets of Bananahattan.
At that time, all studio heads were called Larry, Barry, or sometimes Gary. Larry, Barry or Gary looks like Kris Kristofferson, as rendered in wax, in a not-too-shabby country music wax museum. Fresh from Sundance, he is still roughing it in a voluminous oat-coloured cardigan and faded but very expensive denim shirt and jeans.
I launch into my pitch. It's post-Desert Storm I. Sensitive jarhead (River Phoenix or Leonardo DiCaprio or maybe David Schwimmer in a breakthrough serious role) returns home to Walton Mountain, suffering from bizarre sight problems, which eventually mutate into full-blown x-ray vision. High points included the obligatory seeing-through-the-waitress's-uniform scene (the girl from Species, I thought, in Agent Provocateur), to watching an aneurism blow in someone's brain, and eventually seeing through skin, cars, walls, buildings, mountains, the planet and universe into a new and terrifying dimension. What's not to like? Larry, Barry or Gary's eyes reveal nothing. Unlike Kris Kristofferson's, they are dead.
Keep going. As in the original, this is a journey into madness. River/Leonardo/maybe David Schwimmer in a breakthrough serious role discovers that he and his platoon have been experimented on in Iraq by the US military, which is looking to create soldier/robot hybrids. X-ray vision apparatus has been implanted into the soldiers' brains. His only choice is to track down the doctor who did the experiments and see if they can be reversed.
Not a flicker of emotion from The Guy. Now I'm feeling faint, and where his eyes are I'm seeing a cheap Roger Corman effects shot: almond-shaped card pasted over them, on to which angry flames are superimposed. I am hit with a desire of frightening power and vividness: I want to go home. Not to the hotel, not to London and my family. I want to get on a plane and go home to Scotland. To my mother. Just to be loved unconditionally.
I then heard myself say: "And we know he's in trouble because the doctor is played by Chris Walken." The eyes remained impassive, although to me they were now displaying a raging volcanic inferno. And then Larry, Barry or Gary spoke. "Chris Walken?" he said. I nodded. Without a word he got up, turned around, and walked out of the room.
The rest is a blur. I remember only blistering sunshine, lots of alcohol, and finding myself face down on the pavement, where, this being Hollywood, I was still looking up at the stars.
Of course, our film was never made. Not for the reasons you might think: some months after the pitch, the great Tim Burton announced he was doing The Man With the X-Ray Eyes for a rival studio, so all bets were off. The funny thing was, in the interim, we got the gig: a script was commissioned and we were all paid handsomely. Apparently, Larry, Barry or Garry loved it.
By Peter Capaldi in the Guardian on Wednesday May 21, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Jack's Dilemma
It's the semi-finals of the Champions League and while Barcelona take on Man Utd in tomorrow's semi-final, tonight sees Chelsea take on Liverpool.
A game that has always divided the Robinson/Hargreaves household.
So what's poor Jack to do ...
A game that has always divided the Robinson/Hargreaves household.
So what's poor Jack to do ...
Friday, March 28, 2008
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
R.T.F.L.
I felt rough towards the end of the last week and, after promising Sarah that if I did not feel better by Monday that I would see the quack, I duly went to see the doctor yesterday. She said that I had a touch of bronchitis and the flu - and prescribed some antibiotics, as well as signing me of until Wednesday.
I took two pills yesterday lunchtime and it knocked me for six. Ended up cat-napping from 2 to 6pm! Took another two last night after eating and, again, was cream crackered by 9 and so went to bed early.
Still felt fluey this am so did not attempt to go back to work. But it was only after taking another two pills at lunchtime (which sent me to night-night-bye-byes for a couple of hours), that I bothered to read the label. It stated 'take one pill twice a day'!
That will teach me to R.T.F.L in future!
I took two pills yesterday lunchtime and it knocked me for six. Ended up cat-napping from 2 to 6pm! Took another two last night after eating and, again, was cream crackered by 9 and so went to bed early.
Still felt fluey this am so did not attempt to go back to work. But it was only after taking another two pills at lunchtime (which sent me to night-night-bye-byes for a couple of hours), that I bothered to read the label. It stated 'take one pill twice a day'!
That will teach me to R.T.F.L in future!
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Note to Self: 'Stop Reading - And Get Writing!'
“We've inherited the idea that stew is cheap, nourishing and virtuous. We start with an outsized cauldron, a load of cheap meat and veg and keep adding ingredients until it looks right. Nothing beats that Little House on the Prairie feeling that you've made enough food to feed everyone on the homestead through a cruel winter - nothing except the realisation that there are only two of you, in a suburban semi and that you'd probably rather eat the dog than another bowl of stew.”
I have just spent the past hour reading Tim Hayward articles – and they all contain some brilliant pearls – as demonstrated above.
It just reminds me that I need to get writing myself!
I have just spent the past hour reading Tim Hayward articles – and they all contain some brilliant pearls – as demonstrated above.
It just reminds me that I need to get writing myself!
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Some choice words from The Guardian's Harry Pearson:
'Fabio Capello has his first meeting with John Terry and the England squad. The initial reaction is positive: "His English is rudimentary, he doesn't know many words, but he gets his point across forcibly." And the Italian's comments about the other players are equally complimentary.'
'Fabio Capello has his first meeting with John Terry and the England squad. The initial reaction is positive: "His English is rudimentary, he doesn't know many words, but he gets his point across forcibly." And the Italian's comments about the other players are equally complimentary.'
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Patronising, embarrassing, lurid - the high street stores have got their Christmas ads all wrong
A quality article from Charlie Brooker in The Guardian:
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Well, on TV it is anyway. At this time of year, every ad break turns into an extended brainwashing exercise as one campaign after another hammers its way into your head by dint of sheer repetition alone.
"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" is, of course, the theme song of this year's offering from Argos, which affects solidarity with the average hard-shopping prole by depicting the high street as a hellish dog-eat-dog war zone straight out of Saving Private Ryan, the only thing missing being the occasional eye-popping shot of a young soldier getting his leg blown off - which, to be fair, wouldn't really be in keeping with the Yuletide spirit.
Stephen Fry's voiceover complains that Christmas should be "more ... well, Christmassy", at which point it cuts to a shot of an Argos delivery van pulling up outside a suburban home, as though that's the very essence of all things "Christmassy", which it isn't. The birth of Christ, a crowded train, a party-hatted boss drunkenly molesting a co-worker - that's Christmassy, you idiots.
Apart from Boots, whose "Here Come the Girls" celebration-of-vapidity is at least entertaining, all the high street stores seem to have got it a bit wrong this year. Iceland's ads are the most lurid, as they continue to hawk an increasingly terrifying range of oven-ready vol-au-vents (Loaded Prawns, Filo Parcels, Squirrel-and-Onion Swastikas and so on) using the dream-team combo of Kerry Katona and a Nolan sister. These ads precisely evoke the queasy sensation of drifting off in front of a bloated 90-minute festive edition of Birds of a Feather following an over-rich pudding and three Baileys too many. And maybe that's the point.
Celebrities feature heavily in supermarket ads. Asda continues its intensely patronising "stars in the aisles" campaign, in which well-loved faces slum it among the downtrodden workforce. Sainsbury's dumps Jamie Oliver into a sort of Dickensian pop-up book filled with miniature slaves. Morrisons has really dropped the ball, with an excruciating advert called "Lulu's Christmas Dream", in which Lulu wanders through a cosy, snow-caked market town peopled exclusively by a baffling combination of minor celebrities. There's Gabby Logan carving her turkey, Nick Hancock having a snowball fight, Denise van Outen giggling on a balcony, Diarmuid Gavin winking at Lulu as though recalling a particularly grubby one-night stand, and Alan Hansen filling his trolley with 500 tins of Miniature Heroes, all of it backed by Take That's Shine. It's like a low-rent Ocean's Thirteen. If it had used Alan Partridge instead of Lulu, and (I Believe in Miracles) You Sexy Thing by Hot Chocolate instead of Take That, it could have been the best Christmas commercial ever. As it is, it's just embarrassing.
Speaking of embarrassments, the Spice Girls have managed to imbue their long-awaited comeback with all the glamour and class of a hurried crap in a service station toilet by whoring themselves out to Tesco. The first instalment, in which the Girl Power quartet try to hide from each other while shopping for presents, represents a important landmark for the performing arts: Posh Spice becomes the first human being in history to be out-acted by a shopping trolley.
Marks & Sparks win a nerd rosette from me for managing to authentically replicate the style and tone of late-50s/early-60s movie trailers, although the undertone of its commercial is a tad suspect: it took me three or four viewings to realise it, but Twiggy and co are desperately showing off in a bid to impress Antonio Banderas, who looks a bit like a CEO in a brothel trying to decide which prostitute he fancies using. I keep expecting him to point out two of them at the end, and for the advert to cut suddenly to a grotesque scene where both of them pleasure him at once in a velvet boudoir, filmed in the same style as the slow-mo food porn it uses for its other commercials. All of which isn't very Christmassy either. But maybe that's just me.
Said ad is accompanied by yet another vintage song: It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. Presumably the ad agencies hold some sort of summit each year in the run-up to Christmas, where they negotiate who has the right to use each track, just so there's no duplication. "You can have Winter Wonderland provided we get to keep Wizzard." That kind of thing. Old-fashioned crooning is in vogue this year. I'm expecting the Bing Crosby/David Bowie take on Little Drummer Boy to make an appearance next time round - in a Currys ad, accompanying a shot of a wireless inkjet printer or something. You know. In keeping with the original sentiment of the song.
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Well, on TV it is anyway. At this time of year, every ad break turns into an extended brainwashing exercise as one campaign after another hammers its way into your head by dint of sheer repetition alone.
"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" is, of course, the theme song of this year's offering from Argos, which affects solidarity with the average hard-shopping prole by depicting the high street as a hellish dog-eat-dog war zone straight out of Saving Private Ryan, the only thing missing being the occasional eye-popping shot of a young soldier getting his leg blown off - which, to be fair, wouldn't really be in keeping with the Yuletide spirit.
Stephen Fry's voiceover complains that Christmas should be "more ... well, Christmassy", at which point it cuts to a shot of an Argos delivery van pulling up outside a suburban home, as though that's the very essence of all things "Christmassy", which it isn't. The birth of Christ, a crowded train, a party-hatted boss drunkenly molesting a co-worker - that's Christmassy, you idiots.
Apart from Boots, whose "Here Come the Girls" celebration-of-vapidity is at least entertaining, all the high street stores seem to have got it a bit wrong this year. Iceland's ads are the most lurid, as they continue to hawk an increasingly terrifying range of oven-ready vol-au-vents (Loaded Prawns, Filo Parcels, Squirrel-and-Onion Swastikas and so on) using the dream-team combo of Kerry Katona and a Nolan sister. These ads precisely evoke the queasy sensation of drifting off in front of a bloated 90-minute festive edition of Birds of a Feather following an over-rich pudding and three Baileys too many. And maybe that's the point.
Celebrities feature heavily in supermarket ads. Asda continues its intensely patronising "stars in the aisles" campaign, in which well-loved faces slum it among the downtrodden workforce. Sainsbury's dumps Jamie Oliver into a sort of Dickensian pop-up book filled with miniature slaves. Morrisons has really dropped the ball, with an excruciating advert called "Lulu's Christmas Dream", in which Lulu wanders through a cosy, snow-caked market town peopled exclusively by a baffling combination of minor celebrities. There's Gabby Logan carving her turkey, Nick Hancock having a snowball fight, Denise van Outen giggling on a balcony, Diarmuid Gavin winking at Lulu as though recalling a particularly grubby one-night stand, and Alan Hansen filling his trolley with 500 tins of Miniature Heroes, all of it backed by Take That's Shine. It's like a low-rent Ocean's Thirteen. If it had used Alan Partridge instead of Lulu, and (I Believe in Miracles) You Sexy Thing by Hot Chocolate instead of Take That, it could have been the best Christmas commercial ever. As it is, it's just embarrassing.
Speaking of embarrassments, the Spice Girls have managed to imbue their long-awaited comeback with all the glamour and class of a hurried crap in a service station toilet by whoring themselves out to Tesco. The first instalment, in which the Girl Power quartet try to hide from each other while shopping for presents, represents a important landmark for the performing arts: Posh Spice becomes the first human being in history to be out-acted by a shopping trolley.
Marks & Sparks win a nerd rosette from me for managing to authentically replicate the style and tone of late-50s/early-60s movie trailers, although the undertone of its commercial is a tad suspect: it took me three or four viewings to realise it, but Twiggy and co are desperately showing off in a bid to impress Antonio Banderas, who looks a bit like a CEO in a brothel trying to decide which prostitute he fancies using. I keep expecting him to point out two of them at the end, and for the advert to cut suddenly to a grotesque scene where both of them pleasure him at once in a velvet boudoir, filmed in the same style as the slow-mo food porn it uses for its other commercials. All of which isn't very Christmassy either. But maybe that's just me.
Said ad is accompanied by yet another vintage song: It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. Presumably the ad agencies hold some sort of summit each year in the run-up to Christmas, where they negotiate who has the right to use each track, just so there's no duplication. "You can have Winter Wonderland provided we get to keep Wizzard." That kind of thing. Old-fashioned crooning is in vogue this year. I'm expecting the Bing Crosby/David Bowie take on Little Drummer Boy to make an appearance next time round - in a Currys ad, accompanying a shot of a wireless inkjet printer or something. You know. In keeping with the original sentiment of the song.
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