Ben and I adore George Smiley. If you haven’t seen the BBC TV series ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ and ‘Smiley’s People’, you should. It’s how we wish TV was still made. Alec Guinness in the role of his life as a retired British spy being brought back to find a mole in the British Secret Intelligence Service, the story takes its time, with lengthy scenes of dialogue pulsating with tension for their entirety. It is quite simply brilliant, as indeed are the books by John Le Carré.
So to hear they’re going to make a film of it? Ooh. Bad. Must be bad. Surely. It’s going to be bad. And then I read (again via the good folks of Slash Film) that it’s being directed by Tomas Alfredson, who made the brilliant ‘Let The Right One In’, which tonally is great for ‘Tinker, Tailor…’. And it’s going to star Gary Oldman as Smiley. Fuck Yeah. Gary Oldman back being a fucking brilliant actor in a fucking brilliant role. And the supporting cast includes Ralph Fiennes, Michael Fassbender and Colin Firth, who I presume will be the other three main chaps at ‘the circus’, as they used to call the SIS (which if the TV series is a guide, is because it was based at Cambridge Circus in London, which is ironic, what with the Cambridge Spies scandal, which is what Le Carré was riffing on with ‘Tinker, Tailor…’). Oh and it’s been written by Peter Morgan wot did ‘The Queen’ (and also ‘The Damned Utd’, which is an enjoyable film but a bloody amazing book*), which is the smallest “yes!” from me about the whole thing, but it’s still a yes.
Gary Fucking Oldman. Smiley. Brilliant director and supporting cast. This better be bloody brilliant. I want to buy a ticket already.
* (When it first came out I read it, loved it, showed it to Ben and Barrington. They loved it. “Fuckin’ Leeds” – a phrase much-used in the book, not once in the film. Anyway. We loved it. We tried to option it. Surprisingly they went with the team wot made ‘The Queen’ rather than three unknown film-makers then making a film about wanking off a bear. Don’t know why.)
One of the most annoying things about our having taken so long in making feature films is that some of the films we always dreamed of making as kids are now being made by other folks. Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg turning to MoCap for TinTin (could still work with the ever-excellent Jamie Bell in the lead role). Asterix going from animation to live action starring Christian Clavier and Gerard Depardieu (why no-one’s thought to get Jean Pierre-Jeunet to direct an Asterix film, I don’t know). Ridley Scott doing Robin Hood almost well. Ridley Scott possibly doing a Monopoly movie (which won’t be anywhere near as weird and wonderful as the first ever feature script I wrote, “Paint The Town Red Yellow Green Blue Brown Blue Magenta And Orange” which was all about an artist attempting to paint the roads of London the corresponding colours of the Monopoly board and his rivalry with the jealous guy painting all the traffic symbols on the roads, who has to keep repainting double yellows every time a new road is coloured in).
And now, Warner Brothers are doing a Lego movie. They’d announced is some time ago, but the studios announce all sorts of stuff that doesn’t come to light. And this movie is still some way off, as they’ve got the directors of ‘Cloudy With Meatballs’ on board to do it, and they’ve got to do something else first…
However, a new post by the ever-excellent folks over at Slash Film shows that Phil Lord and Chris Miller at least have the right idea – “the vast majority of the film takes place in an immersive all-Lego environment. So it’s going to star mini-figs and we’ve created these really cool characters and a really nice character story between these mini-figs. And it’s going to take place in a universe that’s made entirely out of Lego to the point where if there’s water or clouds or like a big explosion, that will be made out of animated Legos. And our goal was to make it look like a super charged stop-motion.”
It’s enough to make me not mind that we’re not the ones doing it. Almost.
Read more: Phil Lord Offers Details About Lego Movie: “Like if Michael Bay Kidnapped Henry Selick” | /Filmhttp://www.slashfilm.com/2010/07/07/phil-lord-offers-details-about-lego-movie-like-if-michael-bay-kidnapped-henry-selick/#ixzz0t4oOrl3I
Summer comes along and so does money. Being a freelancer means making much use of such phrases as “make hay while the sun shines” and “feast or famine”. Right now I’m having to feast. I’d rather not.
We’ve spent the vast majority of the past two years writing scripts, and it’s been brilliant. Right now we’re in one of those phases where we just have to say yes to everything that comes along – although that said I have had to turn down going to Nicaragua to shoot people doing parkour, the chance to shoot an Unkle gig. Both would have been nice to do. The weekends of 3rd/4th and 10th/11th have been requested for shoots multiple times. A job shooting interviews at the world cup didn’t come off. Another job, a behind-the-scenes making-of, was offered at a bargain basement price and they balked when I told them how much I’d need for the job. Not that it was anything other than a standard rate – sadly, I’m still some way off the DoP I once worked with whose favourite phrase was “I don’t get out of bed for less than a thousand pounds a day”.
That’d be nice.
Most of my work (and therefore money) comes from only a few clients – one of whom also tries to get me to work for less, or at least pleads poverty. They also have the rather annoying habit of getting other people to do jobs I’d normally be doing – people who then invariably fuck it up, leaving me to recut their shitty footage to make the final film in any way appetising for the general public. This routine is why I stopped giving discounts to this client – if you have to keep coming back to me, well, I’m damn well worth the money, aren’t I?
But that obviously tempts them into trying cheaper routes. I guess as long as they keep employing fuckwits, I’m safe. Still, would have been nice to do Nicaragua and Unkle – two new clients to start working with, stop me being quite so dependent. I’ve just got another four edits to bang out in the next three days, along with a music video shoot and an N-Dubz gig (instead of watching the world cup final, dammit), and then we’re back onto the writing. About time too.
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