Another 24 Hours

Last night we went along to the poetry night at The Wick café on Brunswick Street. It’s a nice place run by a nice girl who’s trying to bring the old Brunswick Street back. Unfortunately only two ‘poets’ turned up, but it was the first night.

That said, the night has the potential to be great so long as it gets support. Most live poetry tends to drain the blood from my face, but fortunately I know enough good poets to remind me that it can also be amazing.

Anyway, drewgs showed up and we had a good time talking to him about movies, theatre and tattoos for about three hours. morgan303 and I tried out the French Brandy toast, had a good chai, then we all wandered over to Joe’s Garage for fries. Had my heart set on Bimbos Pizza but the place was packed.

I don’t know what it is about the stars and my spending time with drewgs, but almost without exception I’m in some kind of fugue state each time we meet up. My brightest contribution to the evening, I think, was the story about the time I thought dressing myself in meat for a university assignment was a good idea (turns out it was, bafflingly.) The guy must think I have the IQ of a bonobo.

After that we came home and watched the last three eps of the second season of Dexter. Easily… easily some of the best, if not the best, scripted television I’ve ever seen. Brilliant stuff, and I learn a lot from watching it while enjoying the hell out of it. Also, between that and An Old Mistress, it’s been a week for Mad Goth Chicks In Film.


Signed on to QuickFlix, the Oz version of Netflix. Wow. I’m in two minds. On the one, overwhelming, side: where have you been all my life? On the other, I can see this driving a shiv into the ribs of people like Small Screen. Small Screen is a small video store run by a nice guy named Joel and his pet Schnauzer. Joel is a little younger than me, loves film, has had short films screened at Cannes and was once kissed by Monica Bellucci. Anything on the shelves can also be bought (I got Dmetri a hard-to-find copy of Fritz Leiber’s M from Small Screen, Joel was fine with just selling it to someone who wanted it. Dmetri’s eyes almost fell out of his head when I gave it to him.) He really, really believes in film and even keeps a stock of films we can’t get over here, and loans them out to customers for free just so they’re being seen. He’s a really good soul.

Quickflix, it can’t be denied, is a faultless business idea: queue up movies you want to see via their website (and almost anything you want is there), pay a pittance each month and they mail you 2-3 DVDs at a time, in return mailers. When you’re done, send them back and they mail you the next lot within 2-3 days tops. No overdue fees. What we just spent on two Black Books rentals and fees would cover our Quickflix subscription for a month. It’s the future, no denying it. But it’s also one more step away from 21st Century citizens being able to remember the last time they had a meaningful conversation with someone whose acquaintance they made in meatspace. And I think that’s a genuinely sad thing. What Quickflix doesn’t provide is interaction with someone passionate about film, you don't get to hear his stories, or have his dog dancing around your feet with an oven mitt in his mouth trying to make friends. You don’t get to give money to a guy you really want to see do well in exchange for something really lovely.

Most people don’t have Joel; most people have Blockbuster or some other glorified vending machine. I get that. So for them Quickflix doesn’t represent the same sort of loss, I suppose. For our part, at least, we’re going to keep using Small Screen for whatever we can, and Quickflix for the stuff Joel doesn’t have in stock.

And last night I got a call from my mother in Cairns. She’d put off calling me because she didn’t know how to tell me, but they think they’ve sold the house - for a pittance - on the advice of their financial advisor who sounds like he really does have the IQ of a bonobo. The short story, though, is that they may not have a choice. Mum was devastated. I haven’t heard her sound like that for maybe twenty years. Times like these are one of the rare ones I wish I’d spent my life just making money. There is an alternative to selling the place, but the obstacle there is my Dad. Long story. I’m going to have a word with him though.

In other news, as a result of talking with drewgs last night, I’ve decided to buy rather than rent a video camera once my finances pick up again. Once Fateless is squared away the next thing was to finally spin up the filmmaking side of things. There’s a lot of positives to just renting the gear, but I also want to be continually learning and I can’t do that in 24-hour inflexible bursts. With my own camera I can not only take it with me everywhere, I can experiment with it, learn its strengths and weaknesses, and get proficient with the editing software in a way that I simply couldn’t with a rental. Not sure when that’ll be – probably not until next year – but it’s nice to have a direction picked out. In the meantime I’ve been collecting together script ideas and notes to start messing with in Celtx (which is a piece of free scripting software morgan303 pointed me to, and is brilliant.) Comedy is a hard thing to do well, but I think I may have enough material to pull off a couple of decent short films.

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I am woken in the morning by the cat's efforts to make out with me, and spend the day trying to write while fending off his attempts to obsessively clean my feet.  Stymied, he chirpily leaps onto the keyboard and prances up and down in front of the screen.

I wish he'd take up knitting.