“Everyone” is an artist..”

closing chapters and revisiting old books
Current mood: contemplative
Category: Life

Me again. (Told you I’d be blogging more regularly from now on) So yes I told you that the first chapter of offcuts has passed but I felt I needed to share a little bit of the denouement. After a year of hard work it was well satisfying to see everything come together on April first for the Offcuts Finals. By all accounts it was a success. Though we didn’t pack out the two roomed 600 capacity venue, the 350 we did have in the audience certainly made it feel full. The films were a diverse selection, and it was great to meet a lot of the filmmakers for the first time.

The buzz was fantastic, everyone was really charged to be part of this big happening. I had grown more and more attached to the bands over the last year, seeing them in countless gigs. And I’m proud to say they all played that night to a mind blowing standard. It was a wonderfully eclectic line up and the audience were well into it from start to finish. By the time Selfish c*** played the last set I couldn’t have been more exhilarated. Then there was champagne and my much missed girlfriend arrived from Brazil (looking brown, relaxed and more gorgeous than when she had left)

I remember literally jumping out of my chair mid conversation to run to her arms and embrace her. I remember hearing someone saying "I guess they haven’t seen each other in a while" And then the venue closed and I was home with the lady.

We broke out one of the bottles of tequila I had brought back from

Mexico

at new years, and she ripped out the carton of smokes she’d brought from

Brazil

. And then we proceeded to drain the entire bottle and go through a frightening number of cigarettes. But then we hadn’t seen each other in a month there was a lot to catch up on. I don’t think we got to bed until five or six in the morning. True to the word of acquaintances I’d made in

Mexico City

, the pure white tequila left me with no hangover when I woke up. However the day after was pretty much a write off.

But it wasn’t over yet. The east end film festival had asked offcuts to curate another program on April 24^{th (i’ll save that story for my next post).} And before that I had my best friend’s wedding to go to. So then came a much needed holiday. Off I went to dc for the first time in two or three years. It was weird to be back. I kind of overcommitted myself in terms of how much I thought I could do in four days. I didn’t have as regular internet access as I thought and quickly realised most of the people I planned to see I couldn’t (big apologies esp. to Sarah and David!) but another dc trip is imminent as when I saw my lovely friend Ann for drinks and rather tasty Mexican food, I was sweetly asked to be one of her bridesmaids. It’s going to be the year of homecomings then I guess.

What else did I do in dc? I saw grind house, the latesttarantino/Rodriguez effort, which won me some street cred when I returned to London as its all looking sketchy as to whether it will be released here. I spent an obscene amount of cash on gifts, clothes, makeup, cigarettes and oh yes… cabs and  You see my lovely friend Alex had wanted to pay me back for my hospitality when he had visited me last year. But I don’t think he was quite prepared for my aims to bar crawl and stay up late many nights in a row. and then there was the taste i accquired for drinking makers mark neat with the odd ice cube, when we got back to the flat. Its not that he wasn’t keen on doing the same, it just may have been a bit unfair that after our nightly adventures I could lounge about in his flat reading the city paper and watching telly, while he had to leave somewhere around 8 in the morning and go to work. Alex if you’re reading this I’m sorry if I was a high maintenance guest, but you do get five stars in the hosting department.

The whole trip was tainted by a strange feeling of displacement. I felt the culture clash in a way I haven’t visiting any other city. Maybe because I expected it to feel more familiar than it did. Maybe I’ve changed more than I realised. Sometimes I wish I had an accent just so Americans I meet in would understand why I’m not quite there, why I’m that little bit phased. For example, customer service completely floors me now; I’m totally not used to it anymore. It was lucky that my friend Dan was in town for a job interview. Seeing him on the second day really helped my transition from

London

to dc. The one night we hung out made it feel like there was a secret magical back road connecting

to Adams Morgan.

But all of this activity was just a prelude for the real reason I was in the city, my best friend Hee’s wedding. I was her maid of honour and I had no idea really what that meant until the day before. It was a big wedding, and much more of a production than many of the weddings I’ve been too previously. Or maybe it just felt like that because never before had I been directly involved in rehearsals, place setting, greeting, posing for pictures etc. I was crazy and wonderful to see my friend getting married. Having known her since I was eight, I felt a profound impact from seeing her in this big beautiful church in this ornate white dress. It made me feel like we really finally had grown up.

After countless pictures, a little bit of drinking (I watched myself as I wanted to maintain some level of decorum with much family present) then there was dancing. And as one of the bridesmaids, sitting out wasn’t tolerated. But the best thing about this was dancing with my friend. Back back in the day in junior high, we would all go to dances and my friend was more into hanging out at the sides. Hip-hop and dance music weren’t’ really her thing, she was more of an indie chick. So it was super cool dancing with her after her wedding, and finally seeing her releasing all the stress that had come for preparing for the big day. She looked so beautiful and radiant and happy. I’m so happy I could be there with her.

All that done and dusted it was time to return to

London

. I came back feeling like the holiday had taken place in a parallel universe. I love dc, but I don’t’ think I ever could have stayed there. And I kind of feel that after this second trip in October I’m not sure if and when I’ll go back again. I drove by the house where I grew up. There are two little boys living there, they had matching kid size sports cars with pedals in the back yard. Then I went to see my mom’s best friend. That was great because it gave me a certain sense of continuity. Her house still being as I remembered it. One of her sons was there. We had gone to high school with each other. He had travelled quite a bit in

Europe

and it seemed that we had some favourite cities in common. And then his mum asked me for my email.

I walked into the kitchen with her where she got out a pen. I found myself facing her fridge and seeing a picture of me and her other son at our high school graduation. He had been one of my closest friends at the time. We fell out after high school. Or maybe we just drifted out of touch. I can’t even remember anymore. It was odd looking at that picture. I guess it made me think about us frozen in this point in time, and how much our lives changed after that point. Funny huh? But maybe going to your hometown inevitably makes you think about all of these things. I await the sequel in October…

Hey kids I’m back, and with any luck I may be blogging way more regularly again. Having just given birth to this happening called that took away any semblance I had of a life for the last year, I feel oddly grounded again. I see the last year as having happened from april 2006- april 2007 rather than from January to December. For me its been a life altering experience. Meanwhile, the day job has all but ground to a halt in terms of the heaviness of my workload. I know this will all change in a few months and get hectic again, but in the meantime I’ve got a silly amount of filing and the like to do. Its strange being back in the office because for months and months I was offsite working in a sound studio, managing voice records. Now that I’m back in my "real" workplace, I feel like I’m not used to sitting at a desk for 8 hours every day anymore. And I feel like I don’t know anyone in the office as well as they know each other. I would even stretch to say it is as if they don’t quite know how to relate to me either, as if I’m still not here. And I know what will happen is suddenly my services will be needed again and I will be called to task almost overnight with little prep. I’m going to try to pre-empt it this time but my role has a certain level of powerlessness .

Today has been especially weird. We’ve received a treatment for a new show and there has been an an enormous freak out as one of the characters is a rasta stereotype. Said character description has enraged the 2nd gen west Indians in the office. I havn’t been asked my opinion on the matter either because

a. I have no west Indian heritage

b.i’m mixed race

or most likely

c.i am overlooked in the office to the point of invisibility.

Its not the first time I’ve worked on something that had clichéd and stereotyped characters. maybe I’m mellowing but it doesn’t make me angry in the same way anymore just a little disappointed. Over the years working in this industry I have worked with the following stereotypes: the wise old proverb spouting Chinese man, the spoiled ditzy teenage jewish American princess, countless posh british villains, a lazy slovenly and not terribly clever Mexican sidekick, a fast talking, in your face attitude giving black American girl (who says "Girrrrrlfriend" at every opportunity) , all variations of camp fey squealy effeminate male characters (which I can attest that all straight male actors seem to love to play) And yes its not terribly big or clever, or original, or funny.

It doesn’t anger, rather it irritates. But this also seems part and parcel of the lowest common denominator school of cheap quick television entertainment. We continue to tell the same jokes and play on the same stereotypes, leaving the risk taking innovators to push boundaries and potentially not make money. But the weirdness about today is that this is the first time I have seen any reaction from anyone in my team. Of course I’m not a big fan of the idea of a lazy aggravating Jamaican character in a kids show, but it baffles me that the same people who are angry didn’t step to the fore to protest the same issue with a Mexican character we had previously. In fact for some reason that was not only ok, it was hilarious.

I don’t know how I would feel if this prospective character was African, but I do know that no one I work with seems nearly as bored and irritated with the overabundance of british villains in Hollywood and general as I am. Being on the other side as it were, you see how those decisions are made. How terrified the powers that be are about using british regional accents in shows targeted at an American public. How almost every decent british television program has to have an American version made before it has any real chance of making an impact on the American market. I saw an ep of yesterday that featured one of the main characters professing excited intentions to move to London with her british man (who was as expected, not posh per se’ but certainly accented on the upper side of middle class) he was sharp and brittle and totally in control of his emotions and she actually utters the line to him (about wanting to go to London) "I want to eat crumpets and drink tea and use the word ghastly". My eyes rolled up so high they practically went back into my head. My girlfriend laughed at me as I said "you see how they promote british men and british culture to the American public" Television doesn’t have to be educational. I don’t even think it has to be politically correct or particularly intelligent. I don’t watch a lot of tv, but if I’m going to be slumming it intellectually, I’d rather watch something outright trashy and melodramatic, than boring rehashing of the same unfunny archetypes, perpetuating cliché’s that weren’t terribly irreverent the first time they came round.

queering up at the kiddy stage
Current mood: awake

i believe subversion should start early. i remember seeing this when i was very little and it making a strange impact on me. a dolled up bugs bunny (ever the tranny) in passionate embrace with elmer fudd, who then turns nasty when  bugs’wig falls off. and yet he is distraught at the end ot lose him.. oh yeah and its all done opera stylee so its camp as f***  its probably my favourite looney tunes short. chuck jones was a genius

.what’s opera doc??