31 October 2007
No blog yesterday because it was my last day on Jam and Jerusalem and we had a bit of a doo afterwards so, to be perfectly honest, I was a bit too tipsy to write anything…I’d say the typos would’ve been spectacular if I had though.
Today is in fact the last day of filming and I believe the crew are all dressed up in honour of Halloween. Fans of Rufus the dog, whose photo as Elvis is further down this site, will be delighted to hear that he is dressed as a pumpkin and I hope to post that wondrous image when it is sent to me.
29 October 2007
Am’n’t I great to tell you of cyberspace with a twist just there? For those of you who’re ignorant ot it, it’s THE latest thing…or PERHAPS another typo from yours truly? you decide…or should that be yuo dceide?
29 October 2007
I had a GREAT time writing with miss jan over the weekend (which includes today for me as us showbiz types know not the day nor the hour and so on). I have a lovely sense of satisfaction as we got to do most of what we needed to – all tweeks and flourishes can happen in cyberspcae now if needs be. But hanging over this is the fact that, tomorrow, is my last day on my beloved Jam and Jerusalem. And there’s another aspect to this job – the heart break of constant goodbyes. We move on and miss all of our co workers and hope we will meet again soon.
29 October 2007
Sunday has flown by but some great writing work got done and hopefully tomorrow will be as good a day. It’s amazing to me the amount of ‘process’ that goes into a film. Myself and Jan Dunn are at the treatment stage of a movie – this is where we set out, in a structured order, what would happen in a script. We already put together a synopsis a while ago – and mind you it was very helpful whenever we got bogged down today as it put us right back on track. But the treatment stage is tricky because you are explaining things in a genral way without dialogue yet quite specifically as to what the purpose of each scene or scenario is. After this, should the treatment be of any interest to the producer who has commissioned it, we would attempt a first draft of a script and from then on it can take as many drafts as are seen fit and that can go on for a very long time. It sometimes amazes me that anything makes it out and into the cinema because after a script being decided on, there’s raising finance, casting, shooting, editing and distribution to battle with before the public decide whether they want ot see it or not. It’s all very exciting but I am glad that novels are more my way of life writingwise…
28 October 2007
I don’t normally go out on a Saturday night in London but tonight was the big night out to Carmen, and I loved it. If anything I’d’ve taken a lot more of the mixed media approach that Sally Potter adopted and I thought it was great to see that a classic could be used in a new way. And the audience loved it. Now I want to see more. Opera is such an accessible medium on it’s most basic level. It’s clearly to do with the music. And tonight also it was to do with reference points that were familiar – CCTV, sex workers (we’ve all seen programmes and read newspaper reports and, for example, I live in Soho so I see it all in action daily) and celebrity. And the ENO have fairly affordable seats each night so I do hope everyone feels they could and should go. Sure, the live experience costs more than the cinema, say, but at one point there were at least 50 people on stage and an orchestra playing in the pit so I think value for money cannot be disputed.
On the way back home it was business as usual in a capital city – drunks getting sick, people making eejits of themselves and a gentle wetting drizzle.
We get an extra hour in bed tonight which is not really enough to make up for the many weeks ahead of longer darker mornings and nights, but I will enjoy it all the same.
26 October 2007
A new, and not unpleasant, problem has reared it’s head – I am becoming addicted to the lunchtime snooze. I say new in a loose way – I have been aware of my capacity for sleep on a set/at work always as long as a longish settee/sofa/bedtypearrangement is available. It is one of the joys of being on location or in a studio, frankly. So that’s not ‘new’, I guess. The Problem, if indeed it is to be one, is that these days, if I finish work early and get home in the afternoon hours I am inclined to take to the bed for what, I think, is going to be a snooze and what turns out to be a solid 2 hours if those hours are available…and I am worried now that I have a craving/habit? what to do? I LOVE those sleeps – My name is Pauline and I am a Sleeper…? What’s to happen after Tuesday when I am no longer citing early starts for my ‘habit’? Also, Miss Jan Dunn of GYPO fame is coming to London this weekend to write with me cos I have Sunday and Monday off and I may have to tell her I have to have a little lie down in the early evenings…not massively impressive I’m thinking…
25 October 2007
Oh, alright, I accidentally got a bit squiffy in Stockwell last night. Bad news this morning when I had to get up early and go to work but work was so great that it dispelled the edge. Must be something to do with adrenalin, I suppose. Would that the same adrenalin would burn off the calories from the good food. It will all be over next week and I have to return to a somewhat monkish existence because I have to get VERY stuck into the book and also to attach myself a little surgically to the treadmill to get rid of the extra layer of body.
It’s a rainy night in Soho right now and someone upstairs is having a birthday party – mad to hear gals singing Bananarama and Pointer Sisters songs without really hearing the disc they are all singing along to. I once had a dream in which I was on the street in the Temple Bar area of Dublin and heard clearly the sound of many women singing I Will Survive, word for word, from beginning to end, in The Norseman pub close by…
24 October 2007
In London you think it’s all possible and I suppose that it is BUT sometimes you’ll hear friends whinge about how long it takes to get somewhere and how you have to plan ahead and that it actually really did take that time – so I am happy to relate that I had a night (out) in Stockwell and yes, although it wasn’t far (and I lived there forever) yes it was a schlep and I whinged like a Londoner – thanks to the lovely young barman in the royal albert in albert sq (in stockwell/vauxhall) for calling the cab by the way.
23 October 2007
And as I sent that into cyberspace I was mentally accosted by the image of my breakfast arriving each day – the porridge encased in two polystyrene bowls and often wrapped in tinfoil to keep it warm (so that I can get to make up and costume and have something waiting for me in my dressing room before the dash to the set). Breakfast always has plastic cutlery and, as we were on mini location for the last two days, our lunches were on poly plates accompanied by plastic utensils and all went in the bin. SHRIEK, guilt ain’t in it…To mitigate, the weather is cold and the hours are long so we do eat up all of our food – which is why I am Pauline Two Bellies now… So, to recap – Guilt. Self loathing. The HORROR.
23 October 2007
One of the downsides of filming is the huge amount of paper that we accumulate and then throw away. I am here at a table looking at a small mountain of rewrites and call sheets that are now redundant and although I should reuse them to print out documents I already have several sets of book galley proofs for that. I will, of course, make it to the recycling bin (which is a mere and unchallenging stroll away) but the sense of waste is hard to dispel.
Worst of all is that I don’t know where I can greenly dump the plastic packaging for recycling here in Soho – the unit close by only takes plastic bottles and it’s stunning the amount of plastic that comes off other stuff. Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.