So what now?

Dead flies

I was looking at a graveyard of splatted flies in front of me and couldn't help wondering about my own life. Our lives.

I don't know how many flies there are but there's an absolute shitload of us. And we die all the time. We're born and then BAM! Dead. That's it. Two generations later, we may as well never have existed.

Our atoms, those things that made up each of our parts, are still there though, right? We're all just made up of bits. Not all that different to the flies. To a chair. Anything. Just a bunch of stuff that came together and made a form. Could actively move those atoms around.

Isn't that amazing? That we can group these parts together and move them around in space actively, with our own thoughts? Which, in turn, are some incredibly complex organisation of these parts and impulses from one to another. It is amazing. In many ways, it's totally and utterly unbelievable.

Am I to believe this is an accident?

That our self-awareness is little more than an accidental curse? A by-product of a random system created by millions of years of chaos?

That looking down on Earth, we're nothing more than the movement of atoms brought together by gravity?

Doesn't sound quite right. It actually doesn't sound all that likely.

If it is, it's not likely that we'd be unique. The only ones here. There must be others like us (at least in some ways) in the Universe. You know, now that I think about it, it's weird to think that there is so much life, has been so much life, all over our planet... and we're the only ones writing books? Painting pictures? Wasting our time on blogs? How is it we have come so far and not one of those millions of other life forms on our planet haven't?

There's not just one life form that can swim. Not just one that has camouflage. Not just one that can light up. Not just one that can use sonar.

But there is just one that can make a television. Build a car. Flip a burger.

That just doesn't sound likely to me.

There's something not quite right about our whole existence. It just doesn't sound likely to me.

Having to end it...

Thing is, I knew this wasn't going to work right back when he came on board. Well, Colonel Ginger Nuts has to go. He just isn't cut out for children's shows.

And it's not a pleasant conversation.

Never should have happened in the first place. I said the project was shit. Said it from day one. And, in cases like this, I hate being right. So now it's taken well over a year to get to a point where the realisation kicks in that this man will never turn it into something good.

Now, it's up to other writers to try to make this into something other than a train wreck. And someone has to explain to this guy why he's not going to get to work on this show he created and will never see in its current form ever again.


I hope it's not me.

How many drafts?

I'm rapidly losing the will to live.

The reason I didn't want to write on this project was that I thought it was utter cack. Why would I spend my effort trying to turn something awful into something slightly less awful? Seems like a losing battle.

So I'm not writing it.

But, by the looks of what I am being given to read, nor is anyone else. I need to not even be aware of this project's existence. I need it to go away.

Go away piece of shit project with your shit writers. Go away.

Distributors

Does anyone out there have any positive stories about distributors?

Anyone?

Hello?

Even one?

No. No, I didn't think so. It's funny - I thought it was just the distribution company our show was with. I thought we went with a pack of monkeys and all those other distributors were great. After all, many distributors have great visibility in the business. They must all be great while we were lumbered with idiots.


Turns out everyone feels the same.

People on big shows with high-profile distributors have nothing but horror stories about how their show has been treated. Everyone feeling they went with the wrong distributor. And that's a real problem.

You see, when a show is made (as ours is now), it falls to the distributor to sell the show, usually internationally. They have to find the best platforms for the show, try to hype it up as much as they can, get it the best time slots from broadcasters. They have to find licensing deals, build what they would call a brand. Get books into shops. Toys if people want them. That sort of thing. Take the raw materials that are the show itself and get it out there.

Handing a show over to a distributor is like handing your child over...

...to an abusive coke addict who barely knows or cares that your child exists.


Things I have seen from distributors that bug the living shit out of me:

- Not actually getting to know the show. Like, not even watching the goddam episodes. How can you possibly expect to sell something if you don't know what it is?!

- Trying to tell the show makers who live with the show every single day what the show is or should be, even though they don't know the show, as in the previous point.

- Not talking to other people within their company. Seriously - do you guys spend so much time glued to your Blackberries that you can't even talk to somebody in the next room? Stop asking for the same shit all the time when the people in your office already have it.

- Not forming any sort of strategy. Probably as a result of the previous point, distributors routinely wander around aimlessly until those few minutes a month they decide they should do something. Without the preparation and resources, they achieve nothing.

- Spending more time coming up with reasons why things won't work or can't happen than actually trying to find out what you can do. We've made a show. That's an uphill struggle. We know all about how difficult things can be. We don't care. What you can't do isn't worth shit to us. Go do something.

The list goes on and on...


How most of these people keep their jobs is absolutely beyond me. Actually, some distributors have a fairly high rate of staff turnover so maybe they don't. And of course, because they don't actually ever communicate with people in their own company, every time someone leaves it is like starting from scratch. The new person will be sure to tell us just what great things they've worked on. But that silence when we ask them a question about our show tells us so much more.

In a way, I suppose it's comforting to know that I'm not the only one who ended up with a fuckwit for a distributor.

Oh and if any distributor comes across this, you know I don't mean you, right? It's those other distributors...

Remakes

Yeah, yeah so you're going to say, oh but The Thing is a remake and that's great. And The Fly. And...


No.


I've had a lot of discussion recently about remakes (because there are so many of them) and any remake you can name that was actually good, you have to go back about 20 years or more to find. They were made because someone thought they could make a great movie out of the concept. They weren't made during a time of total creative bankrupcy and cynical lowest-common-denominator film financing.

Oh, but what about Dawn of the...

No.

That wasn't a remake. It shared the name of a movie and one location - a shopping mall. That's it. No characters were brought over. Not the story. It didn't even have zombies in it. Wasn't a remake.


The use of the title there was little more than a symptom of the problem. Slap a name on it that people will recognise and hope that will sell it. Do you think The Thing really had any value in its name? Wasn't even the full title of the original movie. Was a whole different time when Carpenter made that movie.

Modern remakes are not made with love. They are dead. Soulless. Especially those that are remakes of current movies that just happen to be made in a language other than English.

They're shit.

And that's why I don't watch them.

The come down is a bitch

The crash at the end of long creative projects is apparently very common. Someone once told me that there is a course in dealing with it for actors. I wonder if I could find it and sign up.

With a quiet studio and empty desks, after so much creativity, I feel isolated. Empty.

Something happens when you move up the chain in animation (and probably any creative business). When you get to a certain level, where you're calling the shots, you can inspire others, you can get people to go along with your vision (however misguided), you can have a whole team of people willing to help you, wanting to help you...

And yet, as that happens, a gap forms between you and them.

An isolation.

As much as this business depends on being part of a team, the old expression of it being lonely at the top is true. Worse, if you're not at the top but at least in the upper part, you have the loneliness without the security of being overlord of all you survey. You're just overlord of a few little things.

Overlord for a brief period. But the isolation lasts longer and hits so much harder when the project is over. At that point, you no longer have a team of people around you willing to help. They're now just colleagues, distanced by some change in dynamic.

I'm in a void right now.