My Merry Christmas post...

http://www.smodcast.net/holidayhavoc/venture_bros-the_chipmunk_song.mp3

Courtesy of The Monarch, 21, Tim-Tom and Kevin.

How to Try and Fix the Australian Film Industry, Part 1

"It is going to be a long and arduous process to convince Australians that we should want to see our own films, but it will be easier if we remember that cinema's tenacious grip on our imagination came about because of its extraordinary capacity to entertain and astonish us" - Louis Nowra, The Monthly Dec 09-Jan 10 edition

Louis Nowra, internationally renowned playwright responsible for Cosi and The Temple, has written a fantastic article in The Monthly. In it, he explains how he forced himself to watch every Australian film that came out this year and then proceeded to identify what's wrong with the industry in his opinion. What he says is EVERYTHING I've been yammering on about within Green Rabbit and that some but not enough of my peers echo.

The filmmakers of this country are the biggest problem with the industry. The very root and soul of the business is the fact that it is not treated like a business and, even worse, that the storytellers are completely ignoring their audience. Green Rabbit was created in some large part so that one day we could make films and TV series that were awesome. What does awesome mean? For us, it means that the majority of Australia and hopefully the Western world would watch our films and go, "Wow! Cool! Let's watch that again, get it on DVD and talk about it at work or school with our mates." Our aim is to make films that succeed commercially.

This approach to movie making, which is certainly based on the Hollywood and even Bollywood approach to filmmaking as an industry, a business that trades in stories, is so foreign in Australia that it is seen in some corners as downright evil. The idea that a film should actually make money and, God forbid, generate profit is blasphemous to so many of our young contemporaries. Making rash generalisations, I happily paint a huge swathe of fellow graduates now, before and in the future with the colour of apathy towards these goals of commercial success. So very many film students want to change the world with their craft, which is great except they all seem to want to do it by making the same bleak, art house films that were made every year for the last decade and that failed as dramatically as the plots therein. And by fail I do indeed mean commercially.

A daydreaming pearl diver from the Northern Territory, torn in two by the expectations of his family profession and the love he feels for a young indigenous girl. A disaffected young man suddenly aswirl in the heady rush of inner city drug gangs tries to escape but is inevitably dragged down to a bloody death by his own needled up hand. A family ripped apart by the incest that has fed on their energies like a parasite all their life. These are the sorts of stories our filmmakers want to tell, are telling right now in cinemas across the country. And that's fine. I would never begrudge a creative person the chance to tell the types of stories they want to tell. My problem is that none of us seem to look around at the world outside of our heads and our tight little group of friends and see that these stories are NOT what our industry needs. Every member of the media, the faculty and the student body has a rant about why the industry sucks, but none of them seem to realise what industry means and how business plays a crucial role.

Industry requires money to be fed into equipment, infrastructure and manpower so as to stimulate production of profitable goods, the revenue of which can be fed back into the whole cycle. It's capitalism and like it or not, Australia is a part of that system. How on earth can an industry sustain itself when, as Mr. Nowra puts it, in 2009 only one film (Samson and Delilah) made its budget back out of the entire local crop, bringing in $3 million all up. According to Wikipedia, 34 Australian films were released this year. Screen Australia's website claims that in the 08/09 financial year, they budgeted $102 million for Screen Australia alone. As a whole, expenditure by federal agencies annually average $93.4 million per year on production and $3.59 million per year on project development. State agencies' expenditure annually average $14.02 million per year on production and $4.82 million per year on project development. Screen Australia's stats for Australian films' share of box office in 2008 states that Aussie films pulled in $35.5 million or 3.8% of the total box office for that year. While these figures don't come together as the perfect puzzle, it casts light on the very, very poor profitability of the Australian film as a business model.

How can an industry function like this? Quite simply, it can't. When a product doesn't make money then the only stream of income comes from government agencies and the odd independent financers, who, if they saw these statistics, would suddenly reschedule your meeting and never call you back. What results, if nothing changes, is an industry that limps along, feeding filmmakers who make movies nobody seems to watch. It's fair to say that Screen Australia and the rest of the funding bodies don't help matters by funding and encouraging films that dont become revenue stream, and though Screen Australia has started investing more heavily into the marketing of films, there needs to be a change that adjusts for the failure of our filmmakers to connect to audiences. But the gatekeepers of government money are not the biggest problem.

My greatest frustration is that a nasty and self-defeating attitude seems to prevail among filmmakers and critics: that the audience is stupid, that we're making excellent films and, as Margaret Pomeranz said, "if Australian audiences don't want to go and see them, stuff them." I put this very simple question to those who say our films are fine and that it's the audience that is the problem: if you're the only one who thinks your film is any good, is it? Is it really? If you're not making a film for a specific audience, then who are you making it for? Yourself? Your best mate? If so, fine, but do you really expect that anyone else will like the film? Do you really expect your industry to benefit from a film you and a handful of critics like but a large audience doesn't? Since when should we expect people to  purchase tickets for a product they don't like, just becasue of some vague sense of forced patriotism? Business, capitalism, industry - they just don't work like that.

This is the problem - movies are made for audiences. We're taught that in film school, but so many of us think that it's bullshit, that we're above that, that we're smarter than our audience, our teachers and every other filmmaker, especially those damn Yanks. And then every film we produce, year after year after year, tanks spectacularly while Titanic rakes in over $900 million in worldwide rentals and grosses $600 million in the USA alone under a year after release. Titanic cost $200 million to create and then made astronomical profits. Of course it's an extreme example, but if an Australian filmmaker made a movie that could achieve even one-fifth of the financial success of this extravagant, whimsical, melodramatic blockbuster, just think of all the arthouse films about pearl divers, street gangs and incestuous fathers that filmmaker could fund afterwards?

Comaplain all you want about capitalism's yoke but take note of how industry works. Blockbuster is not a dirty word and we need to scrub that mentality out of every single filmmaker and film student that populates this great nation of ours. Movies that appeal to the masses make money, and that money can then be pumped back into smaller films that meet more personal aims. In Hollywood, for every Requiem for a Dream there are fifty My Big Fat Greek Weddings. I'd like to see more graduates idolising Harvey Weinstein instead of Lars Von Trier, because while Von Trier makes powerful movies, they are of a certain type that right now, right here, would not help our industry grow and strengthen. The Weinsteins on the other hand constantly espouse the strategy of making large, profitable, blockbuster studio films to finance smaller, more modest, perhaps deeper projects. Hell, Kevin Smith says throughout both My Boring Ass Life and Silent Bob Speaks that you can make whatever movie you want so long as you don't lose the studio money. This finance-conscious attitude shouldn't be seen as a bad thing by filmmakers, because the naturally combative, anti-authoritarian attitude of the Australian in this respect does not work. Instead, see this as camaraderie, as all of us working together to better our circumstances by bringing money and renown to an ailing business. It's our job to stay in touch with our audience and know what they want, and then use our creative skills to meet those expectations as artfully and uniquely as our voices and visions will allow. We need to dispel the tired notion that we should be telling Australian stories and look at what exactly certain demographics of Australian - no, human audiences want to see. That is the charge of the communal activity known as storytelling. If the bearded elder sitting around a fire after a day on the hunt started recounting the existential crisis he experienced while trying to light the fire, instead of the bloody, titanic struggle of the day's kill, we may never have evolved the ability to talk. If we can make movies that people want to pay money to see, we'll be on the right track.

(Stay tuned for the second instalment on this topic)

References: 
My Boring Ass Life and Silent Bob Speaks, by Kevin Smith 
Get the Picture - Release of Australian productions - Cinema box office - Australian share
Get the Picture - Government funding: Summary of key data
Get the Picture - Release of Australian productions - Overview of cinema release
Australian films of 2009 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 
Titanic (1997) - Box office / business
Nowhere Near Hollywood, by Louis Nowra, published in Dec 09-Jan 10 edition of The Monthly

Fwd: Is this address real?

This is an email I sent the other day.

From: Simon J Green <simonjongreen@gmail.com>
Date: 8 December 2009 11:51:48 AM AEDT
To: "whosdaman@whosdaman.com" <whosdaman@whosdaman.com>
Subject: Is this address real?

Hello,
I just had a dream that I was the chief aide to President Obama, but on my first day, I found out the White House had gotten my address wrong, and the President had been inexplicably emailing this address, whosdaman@whosdaman.com. When I asked him why, he told me this was the address White House staff had given him. He then gave me a look that said he was disappointed in me, and it cut me to the core. So I woke up wondering if this address was real. Is it?

---
Simon J. Green
Producer, Writer, Friend.

Sent from Mr iPhone.

Chk-chk-FUCK OFF!

So the chk-chk-boom girl lies on camera about a shooting and gets a TV show deal. Meanwhile, Robin Brown spends time, money and passion working on skills pertaining to the craft of acting and presenting, going to a Uni and a private school of performance and he gets...overlooked. Robin Brown and a dizzying number of other hopefuls will come home from a job outside of their chosen profession in 2010 to watch Clare Werbeloff co-present her very own series set, appropriately enough, around scams. Network 9 announced The Real Hustle along with a handful of other half-baked or tired notion for its home-grown 2010 line-up. Included in the list are Hey, Hey It's Saturday on a Wednesday, season three of Underbelly (The Golden Mile) and AFP, a behind the scenes style show that seems to be in the vein of Border Patrol, but focuses on the activities of the Australian Federal Police.


http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/blogs/the-vulture/nines-2010-lineup-a-bit-chkchkcheeky/20091204-kaos.html

While Underbelly is catering for those with acting chops, Werbeloff must be a slap in the face for those who get another casting rejection after a night in a crummy late night waiting job. Coming home to flick on the telly and seeing someone who scammed her way on air to a show I predict will tank fairly quickly must sting. There's just so many Robin Browns, people with talent, skills and training who can bring appeal and a higher chance of longevity that get over looked for flash in the pan flukes and fads.

CFV Newsletter: A Little Catch Up

A Man's Depression

A confluence of events revolving around men's depression means - oh you betcha - I'm posting about depression in the male. Movember just wrapped up and I wore a 'tache. During that 'tache wearing phase, I was privy to the good and hard facts the kind folks at Movember sent out. Here are the numbers from Movember's partner beyondblue:

Around one million Australian adults and 100,000 young people live with depression each year. On average, one in five people will experience depression in their lifetime - one in four females and one in six male.

That's pretty high. There are actually several types of mental illness that are slotted in under beyondblue's care and the over-title depression. Once again, beyondblue:

• Major depression - a depressed mood that lasts for at least two weeks. This may also be referred to as clinical depression or unipolar depression.
• Psychotic depression - a depressed mood which includes symptoms of psychosis. Psychosis involves seeing or hearing things that are not there (hallucinations), feeling everyone is against you (paranoia) and having delusions.
• Dysthymia - a less severe depressed mood that lasts for years.
• Mixed depression and anxiety - a combination of symptoms of depression  and anxiety. 
• Bipolar disorder - (formally known as manic depressive illness) - involves periods of feeling low (depressed) and high (manic). 

So, dudes get depressed. No big deal men, we're all human. There's no shame in the way our brains can sometimes work against us. In fact, an open approach to mental health is part of the awareness campaign Movember runs. It's OK that dudes get brain pain and hey, we have places to call and go to make it better, to help. A man who has helped the types of fellows who might otherwise withdraw into the dark, dank cupboard of depression is Gary Ablett. I know this is old news, but I stumbled across this article. In it he describes his depression and his subsequent addiction to cocaine, among other drugs, to numb the mental anguish. There's a conflict in this article that I'll address briefly then move on: he was a fool to resort to drugs and while many fall for this trap, there are moments of lucidity when the black veil is lifted and the depressed man can see where he is. It's in this moment, or moments, when we need to make that call, to choose the path that leads us out of the darkness, out of a drug's perverted, damaging love and into a life of self-control. To get so incredibly absorbed by the wrong choices, over and over again, is to me a sign of stupidity. Of the easy option. Of failure. It is an incredibly tough and some might say manly thing to ask for the help required to escape.

On the other hand, Mr. Ablett is great for being able to speak to a segment of manhood who might see depression as, well, bullshit. It's real, men, and it strikes artists and football players, dancers and tradies, professors and accountants, brothers, sons and dads. Suffering from depression is not weakness, stupidity or failure. These things are the result of choices we make and have control over. The physical construct and activity of our brain is completely the opposite. You can't stop getting depression any more than you can stop getting pancreatic cancer. There are ways to try and prevent it, but if you get it, it's nobody's fault, unless you blame someone for rain when you're out for a run. If you do, then blame that guy, girl, higher power or abstract concept, but don't blame yourself.

Movember and beyondblue have several aims, but one of them is awareness. Awareness is a term bandied about so often by organisations and not-for-profits that I think it sometimes loses meaning, like when you say broccoli over and over in your head and suddenly you have no idea what broccoli is anymore. To these organisations, awareness is about shining a light on truth. The obstruction of this light is rumour, hearsay and ignorance. Mental health and mental illness are heavy with stigma, often due to misunderstanding in those who simply don't know any better. Awareness hopes to make those people know better, to show depression in the right light so that those afflicted don't have to feel any worse than they already do. And believe me, depression feels dreadfully awful enough without having to worry about how everyone else sees you.

I've battled the blue twice in my life. The first lasted about three months, the second lasted two. I'm lucky in that respect, because while the length of each bout was enough to determine it clinical, I was able to reach out to a counselor in both instances and find ways to get out. I happen to go into hospital every three months for an unrelated illness called cystic fibrosis (although having a chronic disease can lead to causal depression), so I took advantage of that and spoke to my doctor and an in-house psychologist. You can do that guys, you can just mention it to your GP. We spoke a few times and even discussed going on anti-depressants, but I was able to work with her unmedicated and come out the other side. After the first quarter of a year of depression I installed an internal CCTV camera with face recognition software, firmly lodged inside my skull. Understanding how depression feels, I can now monitor every thought, mood and feeling that passes through check-in and if the CCTV system recognises too many known offenders, I can get the right people to intervene. That is exactly why the second bout only lasted two months. I saw it coming and got it seen to. But the method of detection is similar to skin cancer, breast cancer or prostate cancer. Just like a mole changing under a month of observation, the warning sign of depression is dark, disturbed, violent or suicidal thoughts, moods or feelings that stay around too long. My experience of depression saw long, painful days with the occasional moment of lucidity. It's these moments you must take advantage of. Know what you're looking for and if you think there's even the remotest chance you have the symptoms, you need to see a professional.

Self-medication is not the way, nor are home remedies or simply ignoring the problem. Ignore cancer and you die. Ignore depression, you could well die by throwing yourself under a train. Both deaths are the result of illness, but both have the possibility, the hope of a cure. So if you're feeling that hopeless, helpless, heartless feeling but happen to be reading this article, or see a man with a moustache or notice a clear blue sky, remember how you used to feel before the darkness came and ask for help. You can get back there again.

Tony Abbott's wiki

REASONS I'LL NEVER VOTE ABBOTT'S WIKI ENTRY AS RULER OF AUSTRALIA
Nothing new here, but thought I'd put it in words...

• Said to be a devout Catholic, he wanted to join the Catholic priesthood, and entered St Patrick's Seminary, Manly.
• Between 1993 and 1994 he was the Executive Director of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy.
• In March 2004 he asked "Why isn't the fact that 100,000 women choose to end their pregnancies regarded as a national tragedy approaching the scale, say, of Aboriginal life expectancy being 20 years less than that of the general community?"
• Abbott and previous Health Ministers had decided not to allow it (RU486) to be made available. Abbott responded to the vote by calling for funding of alternative counselling to pregnant women through church-affiliated groups.
• Abbott opposed allowing the introduction of Embryonic stem cell research or therapeutic cloning in another conscience vote, preferring continued use of Adult stem cells for research into cures for debilitating diseases.
• He has proposed a return to at-fault divorce, similar to the Matrimonial Causes Act, which would require spouses to prove offences like adultery, habitual drunkenness or cruelty before a divorce is granted. 

He's done some pretty good things too, like use the phrase, "shit eating grin" and volunteer for his local fire-fighters. He also, allegedly unethically, attacked The One Nation Party by supplying funds to those litigating against its leaders. But then, he's all for cutting off a route to me getting cured of Cystic Fibrosis. And forcing a woman to prove in court her husband hits her before she can divorce, instead of taking her shit and running. So, you know...never.
Thanks Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Abbott

We Win The Commonwealth!

Mr Kevin Rudd emails me when cool shit happens and yesterday afternoon he dropped me an electronic communication to let me know that he beat the ever loving crap out of the other Commonwealth cunts and as a victory, we host the next battle royal on Australian shores in 2011! The blood bath doesn't have a definite location yet, but K-Rudd let slip that the Foreign Minister would tell us where we can park out SUVs to get the best view of smackdown some time today.

I don't know about you, but that PM Keys has been asking for a slap in the chops for a while now, and I can't wait for Killer Kevin to put The Silver Tongued PM Singh on his head PILEDRIVER style. Bring on the Commonwealth Heads of Government Tour 2011.

YeeeeeaaaaaaAAAAAAHHHHHH