stock-taking

At this age, birthdays are generally bittersweet - gone are the days of eating jellybeans with potato chips and playing the chocolate game (which is a damned good game btw - maybe I'll play it on my 30th birthday as a sort of regression therapy - though maybe I should subsititute the chocolate with something healthy? Hmm. The tofu game doesn't have the same allure somehow...). Sugar-crazed romps have been replaced with the rather more morose sitting around by yourself and taking stock of your life - where you thought you would be at this age, where others are at this age, why you're not where they're at... and so on. I distinctly remember in my early twenties, one goal was to have made my first critically acclaimed feature by 25, because Orson Welles was 25 when he made Citizen Kane, which is still regarded by most critical polls as the best film of all time - I mean, I don't see it myself, but that's irrelevant. Here I am, yet to even crack a script someone wants to make, and 25 is long, long, looong gone.

I was thinking about this stuff the other night, eating dinner with Stephen, and we were talking about retirement and where we saw ourselves at 70, and I suddenly had this image of me at 70, on set. Quite unexpectedly, an indescribable wave of excitement and well-being washed over me.

See, this filmmaking malarkey, this stuff I'm doing right now, is what I want to do until I grow old and die. I don't want to retire, I don't want to do something else, I'm not trying to make money now so I can relax later, this is what I want to do until I draw last breath. And for a moment I felt like I did when I was like 22 - my whole life was ahead of me, and it always would be, and it didn't feel like 'shit what do I have to show for myself now I'm old', it was like 'shit, I can't wait to do more of this stuff as I get older!'. It's been a long time since I've felt excited like this. Sure, stuff happens, stuff changes, and who knows how I'm actually going to feel as the years go by, but right now, I don't see myself wanting to do anything else - more than that, I see myself wanting to do this in old age, which for me, is a wonderfully warming thought.

This is how I want to die: I want to be over 80 at least, and I want to be on the set of my, say, 30th film. I want it to be the martini shot of the whole damn film. Maybe we've done this take 17 times or something, and I'm frustrated, everybody's frustrated, it's been a long day, and something's missing. I talk quietly to the actors, I don't know who comes up with the something missing - maybe me, maybe them. They do it again. This time, the crew become suddenly still as the actors completely nail it. It's perfection. I call cut, and it's a wrap. The AD thanks everybody, and I thank my DOP, and my editor is standing by, and we have a small chat, and I know we completely see eye to eye on this film. That night, on the way home, during a wee kip in the shuttle, I slide gently off this mortal coil.

Don't laugh! Of all days, today I'm allowed my indulgences!

So, stock-taking. I'm sitting here at my desk in our little house 2Kms from a wild, stormy beach (we can't see it), in my pyjamas. The PJ top has a little cat on it, and the text underneath it reads "...Purrrfect...". It's 10.02am. Stephen is on his way to work in the city - this morning, he cooked me a hot breakfast, and it was delicious. I don't have any really pressing business today, so options include blobbing in bed and watching the DVDs I really need to return to Marc because I've kept them for so long; scanning articles for skiting in my website; and writing. The writing is probably the most important thing, but I'm procrastinating. I want to bask in the honeymoon glow of the good feedback we got for our treatment before embarking on the next painful, yet worthy leg of this trip. This evening I'm seeing family, and all my little nephews. It's going to be good. And messy. And loud. Funtime!

Things are pretty good. And not so good as well. Our most-probably terminal cat, which I got last birthday, is sleeping on our bed. It's going to be so hard to say goodbye. I'm looong past 25, and I haven't made anything close to Citizen Kane. Will I ever? Time will tell. We have a big fat mortgage, and I feel guilty I'm not earning at least as much as Stephen. There's war, and inequality, and general lack of basic humanity in the world the likes of which I can't comprehend, much less do something about. I saw Miyazaki's The Grave of the Fireflies last night, and I cried bitterly. I felt so awful, in my comfortable home in the bush, plenty of food in my fridge.

This is my life, this stock-taking day of 2007 - the last in my 20s. And I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Breakfast:
French toast, free-range bacon (go freedom farms!), grilled banana with maple syrup.

Verdict:
Wonderfully delicious. The secret ingredient was love. No sniggering!

Batman, Nolan, Bale and Gyllenhaal - a prayer to thee.

OMG OMG OMG

I just read that Maggie Gyllenhaal is going to be in the next Batman, and my heart started thumping like a lovestruck teeanager... it's happening again dammit, I'm starting to care about the new Batman sequel too damn much. My cinema heart is setting itself up for a fall the likes of The Phantom Menace and Matrix Reloaded, and I'm not sure if it can take it again...

But they can't screw it up! They just can't! Christopher Nolan? Christian Bale? Maggie Gyllenhaal? There's no way! This is a director who has never failed! These are actors I am completely infatuated with! It's true, I haven't seen everything they've done (you couldn't pay me, Mona Lisa Smile), but I have seen what they can do and by golly, there's no way this can go wrong! Touch wood! Touch wood dammit!

I so excited I could pee my pants.

In addition to the whole Christian Bale and Maggie Gyllenhaal thing, I have to confess that Batman is my first comic-book love. His chronicles were the first things I read cover to cover in my cousin's house (that and Bloom County), and Arkham Asylum the first comic to open my eyes to the profound artistic and literary integrity they could hold. Batman's the real deal, with no superpowers but money, grits and a heart of imperfect gold. He's deep and dark, complex and compelling, and I believe the modern world's most relevant comic-book hero.

Batman Begins was the very first satisfying audio-visual treatment of the myth, despite a long (and mostly awful) history in film and television. I think I'll start praying to the Gods of Cinema on this one. Maybe - just maybe, this one could be a keeper.

Breakfast:
Milo and cereal (Tasti Tropicana)
Verdict:
Boring, I know. Sometimes you just want not to think.

whinging and whining

Whilst tidying up my old study, I happened across some journals I'd kept when I was a teenager. With my corroded memory banks, I'd forgotten I'd actually kept these things, let along what it was like to be 15 - but by all accounts, it was a pretty bleak existence.

It was as if, when I was 15, I had this personal biosphere of hell wrapped around my head, and this tiny space was my everything. Everyone hated me, I hated them back, and getting marks below 85% made me suicidal. I kid you not - there is a suicide note in there, though the reason seems to be a combination of 'bad' marks and something about how everyone else is a lemming and has trodden me down, even though I have heaps of potential. When I was reading it, I think I had a new kind of grimace on my face - an amalgamation of mirth and utter embarrassment. Actually no, I take that back - that's quite a common grimace. But I digress.

I think there's two lessons to be learnt from reading old journals.

1) be more charitable to teenagers - they're having a rough time of it.
2) don't whine about getting older every birthday because lord knows you're actually happier for it!

And on a complete non-sequitur:

I am seriously considering boycotting the Newmarket Rialto cinemas altogether. I'm already actively avoiding their digital cinemas, which at standard ticket prices is fraud as far as I'm concerned. They don't seem to give a shit about the correct aspect ratio, shelling out for good projectors that don't have the rainbow effect and that don't freeze on a frame for minutes on end. I am so mad that 'Brick' was showing at the 'evil corporation' multiplex on a pristine 35mm print, and I opted to watch it at 'the home of arthouse cinema' crap-arse cheap-as Rialto on shitty lo-res, hi-contrast FREEZE FRAMING DVD. I AM RAGE! RAAAAAGE I SAY!!! Anyway, not only am I never, EVER setting foot into Cinema 1 or 2 until they clean up their act, I saw 'Shortbus' on print the other day, and the sound popped ALL THE WAY THROUGH. Which reminded me that a print of 'Good Night and Good Luck' way back when the cinema opened after 'refurbishment' was OUT OF SYNC for assorted periods of the film!

The thing is, when I do complain about aspect ratio and bad sync - things that to me, as a filmmaker, are the basic requirements of a cinema experience - I'm met with belligerent staff and confused managers who tell me I'm the first to complain about such things. I was even told one time that my problem with an incorrect aspect ratio was 'in my head', and the filmmaker had intended it to be that way. BULL CRAP. 3 years in post-production means that I know an incorrect aspect ratio when I see one - and that brings me to another gripe - how on earth do people with wide-screen TVs suffer an incorrect aspect ratio just so that there aren't any black lines on the side? One TV seller told me that black lines on the widescreen TV was bad for the screen. I think my jaw dropped and I just looked at him for a full 30 seconds. The screen is RUINED, JUST BY WANTING THE CORRECT ASPECT RATIO??? It BOGGLES THE MIND. Why would they make wide-screen TVs for the benefit of the AV-phile if the AV-phile couldn't watch TV as it was intended as well? And if the people who buy these widescreen TVs are such AV-philes and care about their widescreen movies, surely they would care about their goddam 4:3 TV as well? Apparently not. More than once, I've encountered idiot people who go ON AND ON about their FABULOUS widescreen, and then watch 4:3 TV on stretched widescreen, as if that would make their AV experience better. DOLTS! STUPID-HEADS! I AM EMBARRASSED BY THEIR IDIOCY! Anyway, I digress again.

Anyway, back to the rude cinema staff who told me I was imagining an incorrect aspect ratio. As a filmmaker hearing this utter 'it ain't my fault an you crazy' crap, I am mortified. Sure, the multiplexes may be evil, but at least they seem to care about the quality of the cinema-going experience. I'm not sure what it's going to take to restore my faith in the Rialto, but I sure as hell know it's not going to take a lot to completely shatter my confidence in them for the next very long while.

Am I being picky and neurotic? Hell yes. I'm a filmmaker, so I'm going to gosh-darn-well represent, dammit!

Hmm, recalling what I said about my whinging, bitter, 15-year-old self... I'm starting to believe that some things never change.

Breakfast:
Milo and Peanut Butter Toast
Verdict:
Passable. I'm dreaming of congee, actually, but lack foresight enough to make it for breakfast. When I do make it, I end up scoffing it all before breakfast. Ah well.