You may think that I’ve been quiet for a while and you would be right, at least from a film-making point of view. The last couple of years I have been concentrating more on my music. For anyone that doesn’t know I have a country band called the Rock’n’Roll Hillbillies and last night we had our first official gig at the Buckhurst Hill Sports & Social Club.

Hopefully I will expand the scope of the blog to include band related news as eventually I’m hoping it will all link together in a music based movie project.

I had to do a little checking through the archives of Chris Jones’ blog but September 15th, 2007 was the day the ‘Gone Fishing Gangsters’ first met at Bury Hill Fisheries, just a stones throw from Gatwick Airport. John Basham, Trevor Hughes, Steve Payne and myself had all responded to a cry for help as the production (Gone Fishing) was short of extra’s for a funeral scene. I had briefly met Trevor and Steve before at Ealing Studio’s but on this day with the addition of our new friend we spent most of the day standing around (the glamorous life of an extra), talking and being filmed by Trevor on his mobile phone who thought that with our somber attire we should make a gangster movie.

It wasn’t until the next April (2008) that as I was preparing for my first visit to the Cannes Film Festival I stumbled upon John’s blog and saw that he had attempted to get accredited for the festival and been turned down. As I already had my accreditation sorted I emailed him and said that if he wanted to come along then we would find a way of getting him in as a member of my company. As I had been let down by my supposed film-making collaborator at that time I even had a two bedroom apartment all to myself so was even in a position to offer a free room.

May arrived and I made my way out to the festival and a day or two later was joined by John. As fate would have it, it was there, in the UK Pavillion that we ran into Trevor and Steve who were out there promoting their short film ‘Babbage’. John and myself had already begun discussing the possibility of joining forces in order to get each others short films made and I liked the idea of reuniting the four of us on my film project ‘Intruder’. It was also from this chance meeting in Cannes that John became involved in ‘Babbage’ as a writer.

So we began our exploration of Cannes and soon settled into a regular routine of lunch at ‘Chick and Chips’ (a distinctly down-market purveyor of fine cuisine) and evening drinks and people watching at the Carlton Hotel. By the time we returned to the UK we had a pretty clear vision of where we wanted to go with our first projects. My first film would be ‘Intruder’, John’s would be ‘A Question of Content’ (then known as ‘A Letter from Calgary’) and we could co-produce each others projects. This we did, and we returned to Cannes the following year with our completed short films to exhibit them at the Short Film Corner side-bar of the festival.

We submitted both films to numerous festivals both domestic and foreign and after ‘Intruder’ was selected by three festivals and ‘A Question of  Content’ was selected by the Washougal Film Festival in the US we both ended up with a trophy for our efforts.

Towards the end of last year (2009) we shot John’s follow up production ‘The Triumph of Venus’ which again went this year to Cannes and Washougal. It was always our intention to move on to features as quickly as possible as neither of us were ever very enamoured with the short film format. We decided that when we got back from Cannes this year we would get together and make plans to get our first features off of the ground. John liked the idea of hiring BAFTA for an evening and exhibiting our short films for friends, family and anyone else we could grab off of the street and after the screenings we would outline our feature film plans and beg for money.

As it turned out John couldn’t make it to Cannes this year due to ill health so I alone ventured out with his new movie, and I have to say that it didn’t seem right at all sitting eating my gourmet chick’and’chips alone. While in Cannes I had time to contemplate possible ideas for a low budget movie that we could pitch at our evening at BAFTA and I returned home eager to discuss them with my colleague.

My friend John Basham died on June 28th just a few short weeks after being diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer. We never managed to have our post-Cannes get-together or our evening at BAFTA. What we did do in a little under three years however was to make three short films, walk the red carpet of London and Cannes festival premieres and become good friends. We didn’t always agree with each other and were both probably as stubborn as each other so never were going to agree on everything but in movies we had a shared dream and I am proud of the things we did in this area, no matter how insignificant they are in a world of Hollywood mega-budgets.

The Washougal Film Festival (now renamed The Columbia Gorge Film Festival)this year introduced the John Basham International Award for short film in his honour (with the inaugural award going to Suzanne Croker for her film ‘Time Lines’). I wasn’t planning on making any more short films but now I quite like the idea of winning a John Basham award so I’m off to come up with a short film idea, also in honour of my friend, John Basham.

I will be indefinitely taking a break from the film world.

Maybe in time I will feel like picking up where I left off but for the time being at least I will be attending to other matters. Keep an eye out however as you never know when I may return.

Today was the final day of the festival and all the competition films were shows again through the main theatres, so today was a chance to catch up with the films that I missed. An early start an an hours queuing and I was watching ‘Buitiful’ staring Javier Bardem as a man with terminal cancer trying to ensure that his children will be looked after once he is gone. Verdict: from the competition films I have seen, this is the one I would vote for for the Palm D’Or.

‘Des Hommes et de Deux’ (Of God and Men) was my midday viewing and was the story of Cistercian monks refusing to be driven from their monastery by fundamentalists.  Not my favorite of the festival but one of the better films I have seen while here.

‘The Tree’ featuring Charlotte Gainsbourg was this years closing film and after the closing ceremony there was a late night showing which I managed to obtain a ticket for. This was a good way to end the festival and told the story of a family getting over the death of the man of the house by seeking solace in the branches of the large tree outside the family home that they are convinced holds his spirit.

So, with the end of the festival comes the winners and the losers. Probably unsurprisingly, virtually all the awards were won by the films that I hated the most with the unusual Thai film winning the top prize. Javier Bardem won best actor which is one award I would not question but I guess this just highlights how the Cannes festival has a distinctly different taste in film to myself.

Tonight I once again managed to get a ticket to the red carpet premiere, this time it was Nikita Mikhalkov’s sequel to his Oscar winning Russian war movie Burnt by the Sun. Apparently this movie is about as historically accurate as ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ and the action sequences may have resulted in a decent movie if it wasn’t for regular apparent attempts at humour which for me at least were hugely unsuccessful.

Three films today; firstly an early morning screening of ‘Hors-la-loi’ (Outside the Law) by French/Algerian director Rachid Bouchareb. I was looking forward to this film as having seen his Oscar nominated Second World War film ‘Indigenes’ (Days of Glory) which I liked very much I knew roughly what I was in store for. I have to say that I was not disappointed and thought the film was very good. My enthusiasm wasn’t shared by everyone however as demonstrated by the Police in full Judge Dredd style riot gear which suddenly appeared on every corner in fear of a backlash resulting from the anti-french slant the film took.

Doug Liman’s ‘Fair Game’ was today’s midday entertainment and is the only American movie in competition this year. Starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts this was a political thriller that took a long time to get going and was just hitting it’s stride when it ended.

Tonight I once again negotiated the red carpet for the premiere of ‘Uncle Boomnee Who Can Recall His Past Lives’ from Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. By far my least favorite film of the festival I actually went to sleep on purpose in this one. By the half an hour point there were many people heading for the exits.

Highlight of the day today was Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ which has a brand new remastered soundtrack in preparation for a forthcoming BluRay release.

Today myself and Trevor ambled around the Film Market and spoke to a few companies and generally took things fairly easy. A late morning trip to the UK Pavilion once again proved how effectively these discussions can yield no information of any use whatso ever in a talk about ‘The Road to the Red Carpet’. After this we watched a few films in the Short Film Corner including John Basham’s ‘The Triumph of Venus’ and a very impressive ‘A Great Mistake’ which was a beautifully shot time travel movie where the only criticism I would have is the unexplainable inclusion of a side plot involving Zombies! Why does everything have to have zombies or vampires in these days? I am now worrying that when I try and get funding for the script I am working on there response will be ‘but there’s no zombies!, no vampires!’.

The one movie I went to see today was ‘Blue Valentine’ which was one of very few american movies in the festival and is showing in the ‘Un Certain Regard’ section of the festival and out of the main competition. The film starred Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams and told the story of their relationship over a number of years. Vedict: Maybe a little too long during the ‘space station hotel room scene’ (I’m not even going to try and explain) but on the whole I thought it was very well shot and acted and I liked it. The only criticism I would make is that the sound seemed very poor and I found it hard to understand much of the dialogue. This is surprsing for a movie made at this level and unfortunately can’t be blamed on the screening room as all three main theatres here in the Palais are first class.

After breakfast we made our way into town and while Trevor headed off to meet with some short film buyers I went to the UK Pavilion where Mike Leigh was to give a talk about his work and his latest film ‘Another Year’. Mr Leigh is indeed an interesting fellow and he spoke for an hour about the way he worked with actors and developed his stories and was amusing in the way he jokingly treated the audience with contempt for asking such moronic questions as they did (Actually I think he was only half joking!).

In the afternoon we went to see the new Stephen Frears movie ‘Tamara Drewe’, starring Gemma Arterton. This is my favorite movie of the festival so far, well written, well acted and never trying to be anything more than what it is (which is not something that I can say for all the movies here).

Copie Conforme (Certified Copy) with Juliete Binoche was tonight’s red carpet premiere and we had high hopes that it would be more exciting than our previous trip down the paparazzi lined route to see a film about a swimming pool attendant! After about ten or fifteen minutes however swimming pool attendants suddenly seemed very exciting as we struggled to stay awake in this snooze-fest. We managed to get about half way until we couldn’t stand it any longer and joined the increasingly popular trend of making for the exit! Verdict: Zzzzzz, wake me up when it’s over.

I spent a good portion of the day today wandering around the film market (Marche du Film) and the pavilions of the various countries talking to a few people. I stopped by the UK Pavilion a couple of times and heard parts of a couple of talks about finance and the future of micro-budget film-making but quickly lost interest as I usually find that there is very little to be learned from such events and the speakers usually reveal little that isn’t already known or common sense.

I saw just one movie today, an Argentinian film, ‘Carancho’ told the story of a insurance swindler who helps victims of road accidents make claims and sometimes even resorts to staging the accidents as well. There were a couple of minor things that I thought let it down but on the whole a well crafted film.

Fellow film-maker Trevor Hughes arrived late this evening so there was just enough time for a couple of drinks before heading back to retire for the evening.