Director's Weekly Post Production Blog WEEK 87 Friday July 03rd...

Strangely I feel worse now than I did last week. Until today I hadn’t even cried for a week. I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about things.

For the last two nights, although not full, the moon has been a yellowish colour like it was at the end of the French shoot and indeed how it appears in the film. Somehow this should be a good omen.

Last weekend I tried to track down my father’s brother. I have no idea if he is still alive as they hadn’t talked for 30 years. I imagined I would find a telephone number in my father’s papers but no such luck. After exhausting directory enquiries and Facebook, I decided to go to the street in south east London where he used to live. I didn’t have a house number, only the street so I knocked on doors. Middle Park Road, Eltham has 340 houses and some flats. I got directed to old ladies that had lived there 20 and 30 years and to one gentleman who had lived there 52 years! I found two Brian’s but no Brian Hills. The closest I came was someone claiming they had a letter to Trevor Hills (my cousin) 20 years ago but it was addressed to the wrong number. An old lady said “There was a Mrs. Hills but she died 20 years ago”.

I had a chance to read and respond to an e-mail from Masheika Allen last weekend also. She wrote the poem that we feature in the film. She informed me that the blog had not been censored by "Creditor X". That was a relief as I’m still writing blind. I certainly don’t want to re-read my last one anyway! Masheika was wonderfully supportive of the film and was worried that somehow her own personal black cloud had affected our film. She shouldn’t have been. Everyone has their own black clouds. As Shona says in Boston Kickout “You just need to accept them”.

On Monday my sister’s attendance at the funeral was approved by the Governor of her prison. As fate has it, her next hearing will be two days before! The following night I saw John Last, Dougal Porteous and Billy Murray (who I last worked with in 1990!) at my friend Dave Simpson’s play “The Naked Truth” at the Hackney Empire. Abi Titmus has a part in the play and did a great job. I was pleased for her. I’d not seen her for a year so it was lovely to catch up.

I spent most of the week sorting out stuff to do with my father’s estate and catching up on things that slipped last week. The EMI contract finally was returned on Wednesday. That’s the last music contract filed. Also this week another donation arrived. This time it was from JD Evans our foley editor. How sweet of him. Amazing.

Yesterday we got the long awaited de-spotting review. It has been such a long time since the last one that in a way it was quite a shock to be back on things. Neil and Caroline came along as well. Neil gave me the long lost Synxspeed contract so that some more paperwork was tied up. Caroline told me a couple of weeks ago that she had dreamed about de-spotting such is her relationship with it! In addition to checking the removal of spots we were able to also check all the titles (apart from the end roller) that are in the film now. One had a spelling mistake whilst another seemed to not have the right timings. I will correct them next week.

Reels 1 to 5 were nearly clean. We found very few spots. From 8 to 25 spots per reel. The last time we checked it was 300 plus per reel so that is a definite improvement. Reel 6, though, we had to abandon. We found 50 in the first 3 minutes. Obviously that one hadn’t been done. Steve and Katie said they would sort this out over the weekend and predicted another final review next week. Steve was optimistic.

In between reels 4 and 5 Julie called having just read last week’s blog. There was a lot of emotion in her voice. It was nice to speak to her. I told her what I was doing, how I was still watching her over and over silently. She apologised for having to see her face over and over again! I told her she needn’t. After the session I texted Jonnie saying “The de-spotting is still not finished”. Maybe I should have given more details as he replied with a long text saying that we should change company and start from scratch. Is he going to come back to London to supervise that? I’m certainly not starting from scratch again.

Still 3 weeks away from completion.

In a strange way I am looking forward to the funeral now. I imagined that I would do everything myself but on Monday I decided to hire someone to do the MC part and introductions/Biography detail etc. My father was certainly not religious so that person is not a priest, but instead a humanist.

I met the guy on Wednesday. At the start he said “We do it like this” I stopped him immediately “Sorry but that doesn’t matter to me. We’ll do it how I want things is best” I suspected an exchange similar to the woman in the Co-Op funeral directors but luckily instead he replied “That’s fine. Just tell me what you’d like.”

It’s not lost on me that in a way it’s like a small production. In the 45 minute slot there needs to be an order to things, a structure that build to a conclusion and hopefully thus a pay off. Music is important especially for the entry and the committal. I’ve been wracking my brains for a week trying to find the right music, appropriate to my father, touching or indeed dramatic. I think I’ve found them now.

The next thing I will have to do is write a tribute to my father.

After meeting the Humanist guy I went and paid the funeral bill and then met Steve Weston again about the project he has. We talked about the death of our fathers and the similarities.

I’ve had no success trying to track down my father’s brother. I’ve been through the censuses and even the old telephone directories. It looks like he died or moved away some time in the late 80’s. But I can’t be sure.

Every day this week I have called Andrew Dearnley. Finally on Thursday I got through to him. “You’ve been avoiding me” I said as an opening.
“I’ve not had anything to report”
“How about the work that Steve and Katie were going to do at the weekend”
“Oh. That happened.”
“So is it done?”
“I’m not sure.”
We talked some more and he suggested dates next week. Either Tuesday of Friday evening. I said I couldn’t do Friday as that’s the day of the funeral. I hope it will happen Tuesday.

I did the Elephant accounts this week also. It’s the first time I have had to do admin without Jonnie. It felt strange somehow. The DCMS money has still not arrived. How long will this go on?

Tomorrow is another Grand Prix. It occurs to me I can barely remember the last one as I watched it alone in my father’s flat after he died. What an irony - to die on the day of the British GP, something we used to watch together when I was a kid! And that’s forgetting it was Father’s day also that day. Those two events will have new significance now. You couldn’t write it better.

Still 3 weeks away from completion.

Today is the funeral. Yesterday was quite dark. I visited my father who was lying in the chapel of rest at the funeral home. He was cold and lifeless. Changed. I ordered some flowers – the last of the things I had to do. Somehow until yesterday I thought that inappropriate. Like me, he thought flowers somehow too feminine for expressing male to male affection!

They say it is darkest before the dawn. That’s where I was last night in Soho with John Gavin. I felt the lowest I’ve felt since my father’s death. In a way the looming day has given me much apprehension.

At 7pm yesterday my old friend David Richardson texted to say he couldn’t come to the funeral. At 9pm my best friend Simon called to say as he had been delayed coming back from Austria and he also couldn’t come.

I have planned the funeral down to the final second. How will it go? I do not know?
Am I nervous? Very much! In a way, it’s like before a shoot where there are a lot of unknowns. The biggest, of course, is can I keep it together.

Earlier in the week someone told me that it will be worse a couple of weeks after the funeral when it finally hits you that you are more alone. I’m not sure if that was a comfort but if that’s the case I don’t look forward to that moment either. Indeed, I hope that the funeral today will be at least a punctuation point.

Again this week I have chased Andrew Dearnley and Molinare. I have chased him nearly every day. The dates to review we were promised this week, unfortunately though, seem to have evaporated so we have not done the final review as I expected at the end of last week. I have heard, though, that the end credits are now in the film. That is some progress.

On Wednesday Mark Foglino, the managing director of Molinare, called me with concern about the amount of time it had taken to de-spot the film. I’m not sure if he had received incorrect information but he seemed to be under the impression that either we were de-spotting endlessly for “fun” or that we were being pedantic. I tried to make him aware of the real situation – that we had de-spotted things time and again - without them actually being sorted.

In the end we agreed to have a meeting the week after next. I hope by that time the de-spotting will actually be finished. Rather than blow up I further asked Mark Foglino to talk to Katie and Steve to get a true appraisal of the situation. Later I talked to Neil Harris who’s first words were “Well it’s certainly been no fun!!!” In that he is more than right.

The strange thing is that that actually I have not seen a contiguous film since we locked picture in 2008. I’ve never been able to appraise a full length film. Not at Midnight nor at Molinare. Just parts of it - a reel or a sequence. I got close last week where I saw the first 5 reels but that has been the only occasion.

The buzzer has just gone. Marc is picking me up to take me to the funeral. I can’t be sure what will happen now. I assume I will get through today somehow. I was with Roger on Tuesday watching films relevant to TP. When he enquired about the funeral arrangements, knowing me well, as he does, he said “I’m not sure you will be able to manage that.”

We will see. Unfortunately Do Elephants Pray is still 3 weeks away from completion with negligible progress this week.