Saturday, November 19, 2005

Things Are Afoot

Just a quickie to say that honing the script continues and the search for finance... sorry, I meant the Holy Grail, continues.

The UK Film Council have the project now, and we are also presenting it next week at the Co-Production Meetings at the Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival. This will be my third visit to Mannheim, and my second time at the Meetings. The first time I had a project selected, a sadly had a producer who did nothing with it. This time I am happy to report that my producer is the brilliant Andre Bennett - who has worked with the likes of Atom Egoyan and Guy Maddin (to say nothing of distributing Tarkovsky and Angelopoulos). Andre's experience at raising money for independent features is proving invaluable. In addition, several UK production outfits are also interested in the film.

When not at the Meetings (17 in 3 days), I will be relaxing by drinking heavily, mainly at Stars, the cocktail bar that floats over the Stadhaus (where the festival takes place) like an airship. Or at least that's the feeling I always get when I'm there. I'm sure this is something to do with the strength of their cocktails. All of them are named after movie stars from the so-called Golden Age of Movies (golden age of American crap if you ask me). I am partial to Fred Astaires. Two of those and you're flying. It's the nearest I want to get to Smith's state of mind.