I get an email from Andy, one of the potential Line Producers I called yesterday, a brilliant young Producer who produced a short film I was in last year. We have already taken on another of that production team as the Elephants Art Director and a guy called Job as our Grip. Andy is tempted but concerned about the commitment. He asks what the job will entail? I reply that it will largely involve organising the shoot, securing locations & permissions, liaising with cast & crew and hiring equipment whilst Paul and I attend lavish showbiz champagne & oyster parties, hoover vast amounts of cocaine and sleep with high-class prostitutes.

The day’s post brings me a birthday card from my parents and the company paying-in book. I head to the bank and deposit the first of our investment cheques. We now have 1/12th of the shooting budget in place with a promise of a further 1/3rd to come. Let the good times roll. Or should that be “Live in the fantasy before the reality of putting the rest of the budget on credit cards kicks in”.

Paul has been bugging me to rewrite the script to make Sark, the second female lead, and Jode, one of the male support characters, more interesting. The former has been easy, give her an accent and stick a boomerang in her office. The other is a bit of a pain. I want his character to do something other than work, a hobby, build something maybe, anything to distract from what he is supposed to do. I, like the characters in the script, am devoid of all ideas.

I abandon my role as scriptwriter and concentrate instead on deleting names from the crew list on the website and posting some adverts on the Shooting People and Talent Circle film making websites asking for potential Line Producers. I get an almost instant reply from someone and in my mind the sun shines again (not in reality as we are in the middle of a six month autumn).

I feel a little depressed and make a production decision to have a cup of tea. No sooner have I strained the bag when the phone rings. I dread the news it might bring but it is Paul.
“I’ve found a Line Producer,” he crows with appropriate pride.
“Great, who is it?”
“It’s this chap I know from Mexico!”
“Williams!”
“Yes, he had been in the Pyrénées and out of phone range and has been waiting for us to call him.”

Clearly tea works miracles, I will remember that.

Bloody Mexicans.

Crew members. 1 gained. 0 lost.

Day 3 Wednesday 15th August 2007

First meeting is in The Blue Posts again at midday. Paul and I chat about a few things when the prodigal child returns.
“I’ve never been so pleased to see a Mexican before,” I say as I throw open my arms and hug Williams.
“I’m from Venezuela,” he says. The air turns a little icy for a brief moment before retuning to its usual chilly August normality.
We spend the next few hours planning the next few weeks. Listing the locations we have and assessing our state regarding cast and crew. The inevitable subject of finance rears its never diminishing ugly large head and I mention that my girlfriend is about to have lunch with a millionaire in Paris. Hopefully she can convince him to part with a few Euros.

We check out a great location in Covent Garden and have lunch. Paul enthuses about the delights of eating pig’s trotters and I am somewhat put off my vegetarian pizza.

We repair to a delightful little French Patisserie in Soho to meet a French actress who is interested in the lead role. She is very keen and loves the script but...

Here it comes.

She is concerned about her TV presenting job and how it will fit in with the shooting schedule. Short answer. It won’t. She says she will investigate the possibility and that she definitely wants to read for the part.

We meet Job in the evening and he proves to be a perfect Grip. We also get a call from Marc Warren, who having been in four films with Paul already, agrees to play the role of Marrlen, which is a great boost, particularly as I wrote the character with him in mind. He confesses he hasn’t yet read the script but is willing to do it anyway as Paul is directing and we cast his mate Steven in the Jode role.
 
I get home to a call from my friend who was supposed to make the on-screen web pages the lead character Callum looks at. He is not happy and despite having known him since before the members of the Arctic Monkeys were born he decides to quit.

Crew members. 1 gained. 1 lost.
Cast members. 1 gained. 0 lost.

Day 4 Thursday 16th August 2007

Happy birthday me.

This is an odd one as I have become used to of late spending my birthday in some obscure part of Europe, far from anyone I know. Last year it was the French Alps, the year before was Minsk, the year before that I was in the Arctic Circle in Finland, the year before that was in Budapest. You get the idea. This year I had planned to be in Albania but Paul decided he wanted to make a film from my screenplay instead and so I have sacrificed my annual birthday retreat to confuse people by asking them if elephants pray? Paul on the other hand has flown off to Marrakech so he can spend five days sitting in a café making the shot list. He texts me to say it is very hot and sunny and the opening of the film will be “f**king amazing”. I look at the dull slab of endless grey outside and sigh.

So my birthday was spent sorting out my apartment into an office and playing games with my friend and her three year old son, broken only by an email from the French actress we met yesterday saying she is unable to commit to he film and therefore not going to be able to read for it.

After they leave I stare at my old sofa bed in my front room. I need get rid of it to free up space that is to become the production office. I have been wanting to get rid of it since I moved in ten years earlier but it is too large to fit through the door. There is only one thing for it, I have to smash it to pieces. I spend an hour and a half on the phone chatting to my French girlfriend Stéphanie, whom the lead female character Malika in the film is based on. She wonders what all the banging is.
“It’s a surprise. I’m changing my front room around a bit.”
“Why?” Comes the inevitable reply.
Now, to clarify the situation here and fill in some back story Stéphanie and I have decided that next week would be a perfect time for her to quit Paris and come and live with me in London. I haven’t yet told her that my small two-bed apartment is about to be converted into the production office and be invaded by several people everyday until October. I take the less than honourable way out of this revelation and settle for the more convivial…
“I wanted a change in my life!”
Yes. A change. I am starting to see how big a change it
is. However, it will not be changed by the generous donation from a French millionaire. Tant pis.

She accepts my reasoning and lives in the temporary bliss of not-knowing for another week until she gets here.

Crew members. 0 gained. 0 lost.
Cast members. 0 gained. 1 lost.

Day 5 Friday 17th August 2007

Williams comes round and I spring the need to help destroy the sofa be on him (having given up on it last night). We take it in turns to jump on it and eventually fragment it enough to get out the door. We set up the office and I spend 2 hours talking with a succession of people all with indecipherable regional British accents in a technical call centre to try and install a wireless network.

I fail dismally.

I call my friend Matt Blackmore an actor who is also a web designer and ask if he wants to design some web pages for us promising to let him win our monthly poker game if he does so. He agrees.

I get an email from the French actress who confesses that she “Can’t get the script out her head” and that her agent has said she should do our film and that she will sort it out with her TV people. We add her to the list for the casting next week.

I go to work in the evening and sort of crash back into the real world of earning money for pressing buttons all weekend whilst watching poker on the TV.

Crew members. 0 gained. 0 lost.
Cast members. 0 gained. 0 lost.