2.Main Content
A Script Factory filmmaker heads stateside
Hannah Robinson's In The Mood
Thu, 14 Sep 2006
We’ve long been fans of filmmakers Hannah Robinson (a member of our Writers’ Group back in 2003), and Jonathan Hall (who took a feature project through our Writers’ Passage programme the same year), and we were delighted to see them collaborating to make a new short In The Mood. Winning screening slots in both Palm Springs and Los Angeles short festivals this month, Hannah is now in sunny California on a mission to try her luck in Hollywood – and is sending us this blog to let us know how she gets on...
Scroll to the bottom to follow Hannah's journey from the beginning...
Tuesday 12 September
Last day in LA, trying to fit in a few more locations before we leave. I'm in Santa Monica when I get an email from Julie Corman, telling me to call her. Her office is just round the corner, but she's gone out. And I can't wait til she's back as I have my flight to catch. But I drop off a couple of DVDs with her secretary, and hopefully I'll speak with her when I get home. Julie and her husband Roger Corman run Concorde New Alliance, making low budget films and television. Roger Corman famously gave Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme their first breaks. Maybe Julie, who exec produced Boxcar Bertha, can do the same for me. You never know, I could be living in this sprawling mess of a city one day. Wouldn't be so bad
Monday 11 September
Today is the LA screening of In the Mood. We head up to the Arclight for the morning Panel pitching session, which has been changed to a talk with Mark Burnett, a Mile End boy who's made it huge in TV, having brought to the world the likes of Survivor and The Apprentice. He's promoting the new reality TV show On the Lot, he's producing with Steven Spielberg. It's going to be like The Apprentice/Pop Idol but with film makers. The winner gets a one million dollar feature deal with Dreamworks. Amazing. I had never understood the contestants on Big Brother, but when the carrot is right, suddenly the idea of making a complete arse of myself in front of the nation seems...well, I might have to apply.
Before our short screens I have a quick word with the projectionist about our Digibeta tape. Just checking its ok. Yeah no problem. And anamorphic is ok? "Oh, it'll be fine, but it might spill off the screen a bit." I swap it for my letterbox copy. To my relief the screening goes really well. It's the crispest, most saturated projection I've seen, and the audience really laughs hard. Which is a relief as it's a programme of just comedies, so it could lose some of its impact. Most strangely, there are 2 shorts about penis anxiety in the screening. One about a man who has surgery because he thinks his uvula is too small, and another about a man who simply wakes up with no penis. Even more oddly, one of my new London filmmaker friends, Jann Demange, is here with his short Incomplete‚ about Daniel who wakes up one morning to discover that...his penis has disappeared. Jann's film is a darker, more serious tone, but what is this crisis in male confidence?
Lawrence, the producer slash production designer is here and he introduces me to an executive producer and suddenly I have to pitch Fireworks‚ again. I'm getting good at this. In the evening a group of us go out to another bar, this time with a bongo player, and I talk with Adam Schlachter who has been mounting an Oscar campaign for his short. It's fascinating. There are all sorts of hoops to jump through - screen 3 times in a row on 35mm to paying public in the state of California. No promotional materials at the screening or you're disqualified. No images or descriptions on your invites or you're disqualified. No deal with a short film distributor, or...I get the impression that the films that win the Oscars are simply the few that managed to satisfy the entry rules.
Sunday 10 September
Security checking for guns at the door. Darkly lit bar with big glass windows. It's an LA party. Fabrice and I have just rolled in from our 4 day road trip out East. One night in Vegas - I expected to be blown away by the light and the architecture, but it was all a bit sad and seedy. The themed hotels with all their adult Disneyland décor are a flimsy disguise for miles and miles of slot machines. What little glamour remains is drowned out by the smoke-soaked crusted chintz carpets. The place stinks. On my birthday we saw dawn at the Grand Canyon and sunset at Bryce. Bryce Canyon was actually the most impressive, made even more so by a 30 minute helicopter ride over the Hoodoos (for only 20 quid). And then the last night in Williams on route 66, playing pool, listening to country rock and drinking JD with the cowboys in the Sultana bar. Rich, a cowboy in a multi-coloured stripey shirt tells me the last time he drank JD he got so drunk he pulled a gun in the restrooms and shot the toilet to smithereens. Calls it shooting shit. Fabrice and I have discovered we're a bit of a sharp pool team but it seems the locals don't like European tactics. We were a couple of games up when Fabrice caused an uproar by snookering our opponents. We had to lose in a hurry. By the end of the night we were all old friends, though some of the friends had more guns than the others.
So we're wondering if it's going to have been worth leaving all that excitement behind for the hitherto unimpressive LA Shorts Fest. But in fact the party's cool, it's in a bar, there is alcohol, and we head on to club Van Guard afterwards. A huge deep house club, with your actual break dancers taking turns in the centre and a huge roof patio with palm trees and night lights. The taxi deposits an unpaying 60 year old inebriated Chinese hooker on the street before driving us back to our cheap hotel. This is more like it.
Tuesday 5 September
I’m back in LA. The last 3 days we spent driving up the Pacific Coast Highway towards San Francisco, winding along the cliff edge, passing movie location after movie location. Fabrice and I are still having a good time, it seems to be working out with the driving and the playing music. We check into the Magic Castle Hotel, a gothic monument in Hollywood, where magicians apparently hang out, though all seem to have done a disappearing act. At 7pm we head to the Arclight for the opening of the LA Shorts Festival. A long line of filmmakers seem to be making slow progress towards the entrance. Producers with a promotion budget are working the queue, employing gimmicks to advertise their screenings - red carnations, dolly birds in yellow t-shirts, vials of (liquorice) drugs. There are 800 films screening here, it seems a good idea to try and make yours stand out. What could we have done for In the Mood? Glen Miller 78’s? Swastika badges? Perhaps we should employ tap dancers to hand out flyers to a rhythmic clatter.
When we finally get into the cinema, there is another hour long wait for things to get started. Fabrice eats two vials of liquorice flavoured promotional material. Finally it is announced that Paul Haggis is being handed an award. The compere seems to be all over the place with the Q&A but Paul survives it. Then we get the screening. And it all starts to go really wrong. There are ten minute gaps between the films, which the host tries to fill with Q&As with the directors, but they haven’t prepped so the questions are like “that bit in the film where the cat got run over? That was really cool. Uh…." He asks one of the directors to sing the song from the soundtrack of his short. The director refuses. It’s just excruciating. And then the final short, Barrier Method by Grace Lee, appears upside down – it’s been threaded backwards. There is a groan from the audience and the lights come back up. Poor Grace has to do a terrible Q&A about a film the audience hasn’t yet seen. When her film starts again, the sound is muffled for 2 minutes before a loud crunch snaps it into place. I have never seen such a disorganized screening. This is the Arclight, it’s a posh cinema, in the heart of Hollywood. How could they have messed up so bad? 500 filmmakers in the audience are seized with screening anxiety – if they can’t get four 35mm prints right, how will they manage screenings of 12 multi format films?
The party isn’t much better. It’s sponsored by a non alcoholic drink, Fizzle or something appropriate. An opening party without booze? No-one relaxes. We talk to a few filmmakers I met in Palm Springs, but everyone is distracted and pissed off. Fabrice and I have our first disagreement – he hates Crash and I love it. But he goes to get Paul Haggis’ autograph for his friend. I’m worried he’s going to tell him what he thinks of his movie, I still don’t know how the exchange went. We walk back along the Hollywood boulevard, I slip off my
painful new shoes and walk barefoot along the star lined pavement. I’m glad I didn’t come over just for this fest.
Saturday 2 September
This morning I'm meeting Lawrence S. Kim for brunch at the Grove, fancy mall area with a farmers market and fountain action. He's the production designer and co-producer from Caroline's Crossing, a short which screened alongside ours at Palm Springs. He loved In The Mood - It is a production designer's film - We spent ages choosing the colour scheme and getting 1944 props from the Vintage Radio Museum. I tell him about Fireworks, the feature screenplay I am co-writing with Jonathan, and he gets very excited. He would love to be the production designer and he thinks he can raise finance for this. One of our characters is, or could be, American, and that makes it attractive for casting. This is the key to getting films off the ground in LA. Soon he's got Susan Sarandon & Jim Broadbent in there and Sean Connery as the tyrannical wheelchair bound grandfather. I have to admit, it does bring the film to life.
Fabrice is flying out to join me today. I pick him up from LAX, customes let him through despite the French accent and slacker look. We're going to go on a road trip, up the Pacific Coast Highway for a few days, back in town for the opening of the LA Shorts fest, and then off again round Vegas and Grand Canyon way until my screening on the 11th. I'm excited to see him but nervous. We hardly know each other- I met him only a month ago. I was standing on the platform waiting for the last tube home, looking at the poster for the Pixar animation Cars. A French accent says 'It's beautiful isn't it?' I jump. We laugh. He points out the detail of the Grand Canyon backdrop designed as American 50's car bonnets. The tube arrives, he sits a few seats down from me, starts reading a newspaper. As do I. He looks up, drops his paper and talks again. Explains he's an animator. He asks if he can take the seat next to me. He gets out a PSP and plays me some of his work. It's the beautiful Tim Burton style national lottery ad, the one with the man throwing out smiles. No purple pony shit. I have always loved this piece. Suddenly he realises he's about to miss his stop and jumps out. Oh well.
A couple of days later I look up the lottery ad on the web. It's made by London-based Studio AKA. And there are the credits, with two French names in it. I take a chance and email Fabrice. 'I think it was you I met on the last tube home....‚ Oh my God. I'm a stalker. But I get a mail back 'Why don't you come in and I'll show you round the studio, maybe we can go for a beer?' That was 4 weeks ago. I've hardly been home since - I've been away in Denmark for North by North West, and then Palm Springs. We must have spent 5 days together. Is this the man I want to drive through the Nevada Desert with?
Friday 1 September
I have a meeting with Women in Film & TV at 10am. Brilliantly, Checco has given me his SatNav system for the car. This solves everything. I can turn up, unflustered, on time, and I can take in the view as I drive instead of constantly referring to a map. Gayle Nachlis greets me at WFTV, and gathers everyone round to watch In the Mood. Much flattery ensues and she tells me she's going to email the membership to get them to attend the LA screening. I spend the day writing in my LA pad, and in the evening go for cocktails with Jennifer Arnold and Patti Lee, film director and DOP friends that Briony at The Script Factory has put me in touch with. They're really lovely, helpful, and they are going to come to my screening, but their advice is a little depressing: The Studios are just making blockbusters now; It takes years to get a first feature off the ground, and twice that if you're a woman. The best thing I can do here is smile and be charming to everyone and when I have made a feature, come back and remind them who you are. In some ways this is good - it takes the pressure off. I can smile for Scotland.
Thursday 31 August
I drive out of Palm Springs past the enormous wind farm where the Spielberg camera guy from Sunday night says he shot the Mission Impossible 3 helicopter chase sequence. I’m heading into LA but on my way I’m visiting Martin Daniel, my tutor on North by North West. He lives at Lake Arrowhead in the mountains, right by Twin Peaks. How many of David Lynch’s movies are named after places in LA? It’s a pretty hairy drive up, with amazing hairpin bends over plummeting cliff edges. Martin makes me lunch and takes me swimming in Lake Arrowhead. We dive off the pier into sparkling fresh water, surrounded by Ponderosa pines and log cabins. I can’t believe this is only an hour from the desert.
Driving on into LA, there are so many cars streaming, I understand why Cronenberg wanted to make Crash. I arrive in Hollywood at my friend Patricia Riggens', a Mexican film director who I met 4 years ago at the first Berlinale Talent Campus. We haven’t seen each other since but she’s delighted I got in touch and wants me to stay. She’s cutting her first feature – shot by her partner and top DOP Checco Varese, and part financed, believe it or not, by her agent. I knew she would be doing well. She’s going to introduce me to a friendly manager. Apparently managers are the key to getting work out here. Manager first, Agent second, Producer third. And the fact that I am a writer/director is a good thing. Here the script is king. There’s a surprise. In the UK it feels like writer directors are treated with some suspicion. They might be...auteurs.
Wednesday 30 August
5am. I’m up and driving out to Palm Desert. I find KMIR -TV station alright but there’s no obvious entrance. Eventually a very unrushed techy comes out and shows me in. I’ll be on in half an hour. I sit expecting to be prepped at some point – that’s what they do on the Larry Sanders show - but suddenly I’m taken on set, wired up and the news reader duo finish their headlines – ‘Polygamous Sect leader Warren Jeffs has been arrested today, for arranging underage marriages with girls as young as 13. And now for something closer to home. We have Hannah Robinson over from the UK for the Palm Springs Film Fest. Tell us about your film, Hannah.’ And I’m off. They just love my accent. Probably the only thing you can say in response to an incomprehensible top speed rant. I watch the footage back as the techy dupes a copy for me. Jesus.
The plan for this last day is to go up the cable car to the top of the mountains above Palm Springs. I take a bunch of film makers in my car. We swing up the mountain in the world’s first rotating cable car. The rotation means the handle you’ve been fearfully gripping pulls slowly but surely free of your grasp. In the cool mountain air at the top, I video some vox pops with the other filmmakers. The Aussies are the best, they’re not interested in promoting themselves at all, just wanna make lewd jokes. They’re having a barbie tonight, I’m invited. We walk round the nature trail, which seems like a western film set. I’m convinced the birds and animals are all background action being cue-ed by a hidden 2nd AD.
Melbourne & Shangai based producer Simon Myer’s film End of Town has been chosen for the Programmer’s Pick of the Fest screening. He’s been telling me about it and I really want to see it. We make it to the cinema just in time and sit through a whole programme of really sentimental shorts before he realizes that we’re in the wrong screening. Ooops. That was the audience favourites. No wonder there was so many shorts about wheelchairs and grandchildren.
At the Aussie barbie, we are joined by one of the festival programmers, Charles Ira Sachs, one time actor, film producer and titanic expedition obsessive. He talks non stop for 5 hours solid. His anecdotes all start with ‘8 years ago I had this great idea for a script’, inevitably end in the script not getting made, and are interspersed with a peppering of really offensive jokes. I’m going cross eyed as he starts on his 4th impersonation of the wicked witch on her vibrating broomstick. He reminds me of something out of the Big Lebowski. I gotta get out of this town.
Tuesday 29 August
Spend the day sorting out admin, buying new shoes and recovering from last night. I go to a screening of films by people I met at the party, including Ewan Telford, a Scot who’s based in LA. His short, Apocalypse Oz, boasts that it contains zero original dialogue as its all taken from Apocalypse Now and Wizard of Oz. The evening’s party is at a Mexican restaurant but I can’t hang out too long else I’ll never make it to my NBC affiliate TV interview tomorrow at 5.40am. A British Producer, Nicola Clayton, finds me and tells me that all evening people have been mistaking her for me, thinking it was her that danced with them last night. Poor girl, I’ve ruined her reputation. But apparently she quite enjoys it, and she’s going to give me her pass for LA shorts so I can take my animator friend Fabrice with me, who’s coming out to join me on Saturday. In return we will hand out flyers for her cannibal comedy Free Range.
Monday 28 August
Instead of viewing shorts, I spend the day sorting out technology. I need a US sim card as roaming charges are a fortune and I need a laptop, which I have been delaying buying until this trip. Really good idea - I get a pretty high spec for $750 which would have cost twice that in the UK. Everywhere has free wifi so I feel much more secure being able to check my email at leisure. I move hotels to a cheaper and closer model, where most of the film makers are staying and now I feel set. I have a trial subscription to Hollywood Creative Directory so I can look up numbers for anyone I want to contact. I remember Julie Corman made a speech at when I was at Clermont Ferrand, where she singled out my half hour film Night Swimmer as her favourite. I look her up and send off an email. I get a mail from producer Barry Hanson who I met when I pitched him my features on North by North West [European training programme], who has kindly sent advice from his friend Kishore Verma, who did Palm Springs before, on how best to approach producers. These are the instructions: Get an A4 piece of paper fold it in thirds: First third - who you are and contact details; Second third - projects already successfully completed and any awards in very brief. Lastly: The title of the project you want to approach them about; A 25 words or less pitch about it; what stage it is at; and what level (not the amount) are you asking the financial interest to be at. Attach your calling card (it helps if the calling card has your photo on it like an ID card), fold it all together- go up to the person, introduce yourself to them and hand them this stuff, cause this is all they will carry.
Tonight's party is at TwoCan's, as we arrive our id gets checked for under 21s (I wish) and we get garlanded with Hawain flowers: they call it getting lei'd. A 12 foot drag queen swishes past in sparkling miniskirt and margueritas are the drink of choice. This time the music is good. I dance all night - in fact until my shoe breaks - and make a lot of new friends but don't manage to hand out any A4s. Tomorrow I'm going to be more professional.
War-time tension - In The MoodSunday 27 August
My film is screening at 2 this afternoon. I wake at 6am, still on UK body clock, and step out my poolside hotel room into a palm tree lined swimming pool. No-one is up. Palm Springs is a very beautiful desert town, long wide grid streets lined with palm trees and cacti, framed by huge mountains and azure skies. In August it’s 120 degrees, so the walkways by the shops and the outdoor seating areas of restaurants have little jets of water mist raining down from above - the opposite of our patio heaters, but just as wasteful. The population is 70% retirement age and 70% gay. ie well maintained, good restaurants and no kids. Fantastic. I make my way to the mall, where I register with the film festival guest services. They are all very friendly and tell me how much they love my film. There’s 5 more days of the festival but it’s the last day of one-to-one, a really great ‘meet the industry’ system. Annoyingly I can’t make any of the time slots as they coincide with my screening. I wish I’d got here a few days earlier – I couldn’t as we had our Edinburgh Film Festival premiere – but it would have been good to have been able to meet people and encourage them to attend my screening. Our program is called ‘The Wages of War’ and I’m a little nervous that people are going to be turned off by the heavy subject matter. However it turns out that the cinema is sold out. The average age of the audience is 75. A host asks if film makers from each of the films is here and the audience whoop as I head down to the stage. 4 of the 8 films have representatives and we’re told we will be back for a Q&A after. I text Jonathan (Hall - the writer) for good anecdotes to tell them. The screening is great – there’s only one bad film in there, the American shorts have very high production values, they look like they’ve had a lot of money. In the Mood goes down well – our wrinklies laugh in all the right places and I hear someone behind me exclaim ‘It’s brilliant’ at the Namibian Biscuits line. It’s a shame we don’t have a 35mm print. The digibeta projection is good but at this size it’s soft and doesn’t stand up against the prints. In the Q&A the Americans are very gushy – thanking everyone for coming and being sweetly sincere. I counter this with self-deprecating wit. That’ll confuse them. A journalist asks about Kelly Brook – I explain her celebrity status in the UK. They know her here, but only a little (mind you this particular audience is not her target demographic). I tell the story of Billy Zane choosing the costume Kelly wore, and of how Jonathan got the idea for the film. As soon as we’re off, I am swarmed by people giving me their business cards and asking for DVD copies. Luckily my producer, Jeremy [Redhouse] has sent me out with 15 NTSC copies. Lots of short film distributors and other film festivals. I take cards and write down on each card what each one said.
I quickly head back to the mall to see if I can catch Dan Dubiecki, producer of Thank you for Smoking, who has stated he’s interested to see comedy shorts. I can tell he’s kind of shattered from an afternoon of One-to-Ones so I try not to waste his time. I give him a DVD copy and ask him what he’s looking for. He has a deal with Fox Searchlight – coincidentally I have been given an introduction to Charlotte Koh, the creative exec, by DNA films and I’m hoping she’ll meet me while I’m over here. I ask how to go about this meeting and he advises me to send a copy of the DVD to her in advance of the meeting. Good idea. I’m going to have to get burning DVDs.
There’s a party each evening and despite being shattered I head down to ‘Crazy Bones’ for cocktails and ribs. The film makers are a friendly bunch, and I get given a stack of flyers and cards. Lots of them are also screening at the LA shorts fest so I’m going to see them again. I talk to the woman from the American Writers’ Guild, a vampiress who’s friend is a slasher movie director with tattoos on his face. She talks about the lack of women directors in the industry. Maybe she’ll help me get meetings in LA. I’m too shattered to stay long, but the lounge music is terrible so no big loss.
I get back to my hotel and go for a midnight swim in the empty pool. When I get out my neighbour is sitting on the porch. He asks, do I get high? Hmmm... He chats manically at me - apparently he's a cameraman who works with Spielberg. He operated on Munich, which I loved. I can't work out how to handle him, but I give him a copy of our DVD, just in case he's telling the truth...
Saturday 26 August - 9am
Security levels are still high on American Airlines. The queue in Heathrow T4 curls down the foyer, round to the landing, up the stairs and, having run out of room, doubles back down the stairs, along the landing and back into the foyer. Our impressive self-management fails to register with the staff who promptly institute a new regime of pulling us out of the queue according to boarding times. 4 queues and 3 body searches later we are deemed liquid and make-up free and board a bus to a top secret location where the plane is being held. It feels already like an (albeit rather boring) episode of 24.
12 hours later we land in LAX. It’s 2 in the afternoon here, though 10pm in my head. I feel surprisingly elated – I’m not sure what my attitude was towards California, but I remember being disdainful about the car culture. I pick up my mid-range charcoal Chevrolet Malibu, fully automatic, with leather bound steering wheel, tinted windows, sunroof and aircon. It’s fucking fantastic. My car at home is my granny’s 1983 Peugeot 205 (junior). As I drive out to Palm Springs, East along Highway 10, I realize never want to get out of this car. I pull in at a drive thru Taco-Bell and reconsider my previous anti-American stance. It’s very easy to dismiss a life-style you’ve never tried. I want to move to California.
Scroll up for the rest of Hannah's journey as she heads to LA...
More on Hannah Robinson
Hannah Robinson's Candy FlossHannah is an award winning Scottish director and writer. Her first film, Relax, a provocative comedy about an amorous couple on a crowded train, was snapped up by the then emerging Channel Four shorts programming. Her second film, Sheila, a slickly distilled film noir, won her Best European Director at Rome's Donne in Corto Film Festival. Night Swimmer - a half hour drama about a couple whose marriage breaks down under the strain of living in a foreign culture - won the Grand Prix Européene at France’s Vendôme Film Festival and was selected for international competition at the Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival.
In The Mood, which she directed from a script by Jonathan R Hall, takes place in 1944 London and follows an undercover German spy trying to thwart the D Day landings. It was awarded Completion funds by the UK Film Council and premiered at the EIFF this August before starting its international film Festival journey.
Hannah has written two feature scripts: Family Planning, co-written with Rachel Howard, is a twisted comedy about warring Cypriot neighbours in Glasgow, and is being developed with the financial support of Scottish Screen; and her current project, a coming of age feature script, Fireworks, again with Jonathan R Hall.
The Script Factory selected Hannah for its Writers’ Group, which champions emerging talent, in 2003.
Find out more about Hannah, her collaborators, and In The Mood at www.perfectworldfilms.com