The Holidays provided a useful opportunity to do three things:
1) Complete new draft of script.
2) Play with the guitar I bought on eBay.
3) Live in complete denial about what I’m letting myself in for.

I mean – blagging to the press that you’re going to bomb Bagdad is one thing. Actually finding the camels, elephants, smart bombs, bullets and people who’re willing to die while wearing matching camo outfits is something else. So, I’m compiling a list of things I’ll need to buy / borrow / get / steal / do…
1) Need car – any convertible will do. Preferably something looking battered or cheap that an out of work actor could afford.
2) Need to buy video camera to shoot movie.
3) Need to learn how to use it.
4) Need a lot of extras.
5) Need to make some t-shirts to get a buzz going: “I invested in a Hollywood movie – all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”
6) Need better idea for t-shirt logo.
7) Need Fed-ex or UPS outfit.
8) Need a pineapple costume.
9) Need a purple dinosaur costume.
10) Need a cute girl who’ll wear underwear in a film.
11) Need a cheesy office location for a seedy Hollywood agent (and girl in underwear).
12) Need 1 pair red satin shorts, 1 gag, 1 pair handcuffs. (the kind that a girl in underwear might have).
13) Need a new Range Rover for a day.
14) Need a bunch of people in swim-wear for a day…kind of like the girl in her underwear.
15) Need some free press.
16) Need forty empty or used Starbucks cups.
17) Need a beret with a red star on it.
18) Need a loudhailer – doesn’t have to work.
19) Need to blag an outdoor restaurant patio for an afternoon.
20) Need some Roman helmets and togas.
21) Need a spear with some fake movie blood on it and a paramedic uniform.
22) Need a girl who’ll pretend she’s in a porno movie – doesn’t need to get naked.
23) Need a partially deflated balloon.
24) Need a man-dressed-as-a-Tampon outfit.
25) Need to get a favor from the guy who wrote “Act Naturally.” My guess is he’s dead so I’ll have to blag his publisher.

Don’t feel embarrassed about offering to help me with any of the above. I’ll let you know how the search is going.

I couldn’t sleep.

It was the middle of the night so I got on the web. CNN.com was too depressing – full of stories of death and mutilation – so I started surfing, eventually winding up on eBay. Another flash of inspiration hit me. In the script there’s a scene where all of Moe’s acting pals are armed with video cameras. When we eventually shoot this scene I’m going to need maybe 20 or 30 video cameras of various ages – I’m going to be on a budget and I’ll need cheap ones – doesn’t matter if they don’t work. Within minutes I’d bid on 10 cameras – all costing less than 2 bucks a piece.

“I’m a frigging genius,” I thought, “Ten cameras for less than $15!”.

Now I’ll confess that this was the first time I’d ever actually bid for anything on eBay – call me old school but I’d always given the place a wide birth. Suddenly I felt I could dress the entire movie on the cheap through the web. This was going to be a cakewalk. That’s when I saw that small print about the shipping costs. These lo-cost cams all came with battery packs and chargers and those suckers are heavy. Most people were estimating around $20 for shipping. Help! My bargain basement approach to propping the movie had just leapt by over 1,000%.

First lesson of home-financed movies learned. Have patience. Read the small print. Humbled and dispirited I did what any grown man would do at four in the morning while dressed in his PJs and surfing on the web.

I bought a guitar.

POSTSCRIPT. It seems I was outbid on nearly all of the cameras. I did however get a winning bid in on one camera for less than $9 including postage. It should arrive any day now.

It’s been 15 long months since I wrote that first missive and obviously things didn’t work out quite as I’d hoped.

But maybe it’s all part of a bigger plan that I am only just beginning to appreciate. Chasing Fate indeed.

After I’d posted that first optimistic blog we all threw ourselves into the process of getting a large production underway. First came the fun dinners as the producers and the writers and myself all became friends and we all tried to establish what made each other tick. They were enamored of my video career and seemed obsessed by Britney’s ‘Oops’ video – I loved them for their enthusiasm and their determination to get this movie made with me at the helm. We started taking meetings at the Film Company and soon we were meeting casting directors and establishing what kind of movie we were making. It seemed that our budget would be about 15 million bucks and, in my quietest moments, I was full of awe that at last I was going to be making a real movie. “Don’t screw this one up!” I thought.

With a casting director in place the casting process began and as the pale Los Angeles winter crept upon us we spent hours and hours meeting every attractive and interesting and vaguely available young actor and actress in town. It was a fascinating process. Some were enormously talented, some were amazingly beautiful, some were obviously desperate, others were just plain ordinary. But as the months passed by I became more confidant and truly felt that we were all getting somewhere.

Meanwhile the project’s announcement had hit the papers. Amazingly I found myself and a certain enormously successful entertainment person who was involved mentioned in the same headline in a Reuters report. “This is bloody marvelous!” I thought.

As we worked away I continued making videos. On one occasion, in order to remain available for casting in LA, I persuaded a six piece band from the UK (along with their managers and their label folk) against their wishes and at their expense to fly to LA so I could shoot them here rather leave town for a week and miss some meetings. I got permission to take a long-planned fortnight’s holiday in Australia and the casting sessions were adjusted to let me go. As I sat on the cusp of 2004 and cycled along a windy beach Down-Under I was very excited about what the New Year had in store for me. Even so, having been disappointed before, I told those around me that the back-slapping was very premature and they should keep their much-appreciated congratulatory messages on hold till the movie’s release party.

By the end of January we had our cast and my lawyer was spending hours hashing out my contract. A particularly tough point was the fact that he and my agent wanted me to get a Development Fee for all the hours I was spending working on the film. A compromise was reached and a sum agreed. I started turning work down to make myself available for the movie which was going to happen at any moment.

Then the Film Company bailed.

For a number of reasons, none of which were entirely clear but mostly I think to do with dollars, they announced didn’t want to make the film. The day after word came through that they had walked their lawyer rang me up demanding to know why I hadn’t signed my contract! I did the honest thing and suggested he should speak to his superiors. On reflection I should have kept my mouth shut and signed – I would have picked up that pesky Development Fee that had caused my lawyer so much grief.

My energetic producer was full of enthusiasm, “We’ll take it elsewhere,” he confidently predicted. But as the months drew on it seemed that no-one wanted to make a 15 million dollar movie and the cast we’d picked were too costly for a 5 million dollar version and didn’t justify the investment in a 30 million dollar one.

As the fallout became more noticeable on the Hollywood Geiger Counter the script well dried up. The amazing head of steam I’d felt I was being propelled along by at the end of 2003 had evaporated and the press clippings waiting to be filed announcing our casting choices and possible start dates taunted me like old lovers who’d moved on to newer pastures. The be-suited gentleman in whose hands I had trusted my career and who’d so happily wined and dined me as we felt we were on the brink of such a major breakthrough now confessed that I was such a nice and talented guy that he thought someone else should look after my career. Let’s just translate that piece of amazing double speak into other words shall we? “You’re so brilliant, I’m firing you!”

Plainly it was the last gasp of my involvement with Chasing Fate and all I had was some memories of some fine free meals and a bunch of unrecouped Beverly Hills style parking receipts for all those hours spent in casting. For all our months of work neither myself, my manager or my lawyer had received a penny.

Next.

One Friday afternoon I was putting together a reel for someone and I found myself watching a clip from 2gether – perhaps the best script and only decent film I’ve directed. I giggled as I watched the guys do their stuff and suddenly it dawned on me. Kevin Farley was born to play Moe Jones – the lead of a script called CALLBACK – a low budge comedy I’d written with my pal Jordan a few years back.

A new plan of world domination quickly hatched in my fertile brain cell and this time I’m going public with it. To hell with Hollywood! I’m going to make another movie even if they don’t want me to. Kevin has agreed to play the lead and I’ve agreed to break the first law of film-making and I’m going to spend my own money making the movie if I have to. Moe Jones, the part Kevin will play, is a lovable but desperate actor in Hollywood, a very talented and decent fellow, who can’t get a gig. He decides he’ll do whatever it takes to get the part of the bad guy in the next Die Hard movie. It took a week for me to realize that perhaps Moe’s story, one that I’d started writing years ago, is eerily familiar to me. Hmm.

As I recall many film productions are made under the banner of a new incorporated company so that the finances of the production can be more easily handled. If this is the case I will call the company that makes Callback ‘Nice and Talented Guy’ inc.

There I’ve said it. I’m going to make the damn movie. Better get to work and produce something now otherwise I’ll look like a real wanker!

It was a sunny morning in August as I sat down outside a small coffee shop on Fairfax and met the producers of a script called Chasing Fate.

All meetings follow a similar pattern. You shake hands and exchange small talk about what you’ve been up to and then eventually you talk about their script. What you have to say and how you say it is undoubtedly crucial. They’ve been working on the damn thing for months, they know the characters inside out, they know what they want to hear and you have no way of seeing inside their heads to see if you’re flying on the wings of genius or crashing and burning like a stricken fighter plane in some grainy History Channel War In The Pacific documentary. Like the pilot in that old film you take your life in your hands and propel yourself along the deck of the aircraft carrier and see if you’re flying yet. They nod as you wax lyrical about what you love and what you would like to change in their script. “Am I flying? Am I dying?” you wonder.

Just a few weeks previously I’d gone to meet a bunch of people over at Disney about a teen action movie. I felt the meeting was going great – my preparation was paying off until, on the spur of the moment, I suggested a minor approach as to how I felt you could (not should but could) take the look of the movie. They all jumped upon this idea. “Elaborate!” they asked and I did, feeling that they were truly enthusiastic about my radical idea, and their heads continued to nod and then slowly and imperceptibly their smiles slipped from their faces. I saw I had just written myself into the long list of also-rans: I was not going to get the gig. Nothing could make the last five minutes rewind. I’d crashed and I’d burnt and there were other pilots waiting to sacrifice themselves like I did knowing that just one of us would land safely at the other end.

So, as we sat in the sun and watched the traffic rumble along Fairfax Ave., I was honest. I asked the producers what they wanted to hear. They said they wanted the truth and so I strapped on my flying helmet, yelled, “Chocs Away!” and hurtled blindly into the sky. I gave it to them straight, I talked about things I wanted to change, ideas I had, cracked daft jokes and showed them a book I’d once bought about Screwball Comedies and looked for the tell-tale signs of an imminent prang.

Eventually I was out of breath and out of ideas and they shook my hand and wished me well promising me they’d be in touch. Yeah, right. Everyone says that. I walked to my car and went to start work on someone else’s script.

Well it seems that when I turned left everyone else turned right. Everytime the tracer shells came my way they either fell short or I dodged them. They tell me I’m their guy. I’ve landed safely and, looking back over my shoulder, I can see the burning wreckage of all the other pilots who didn’t make it.