{spotlight} feature reports

New Directions 2002

In August my producer at Hopscotch Films, John Archer, and I were selected for First Film’s New Directions scheme. It’s a fantastic opportunity. They pick six directors and send them with accompanying producers to America for two weeks to make contacts and pitch feature projects.

Scottish Screen agrees to pay the course fee (hooray!) and Glasgow Film Office will help with my expenses (hooray and thank you!). But First Film doesn’t want to showcase “Unscrew”, which we applied with, but another of my shorts “It’s Not You, It’s Me”. Jonathan Rawlinson, who runs First Film, says if the Americans see “Unscrew” they will think I am mad and sick. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

The New Directions brochure arrives: everyone else looks very glamorous in their photos, I look like a camel. But Glasgow Film Office have a page where they list all the filmmakers they’ve helped do New Directions. I’m on the same page as Lynne Ramsay, Peter Mullan and Jim Gillespie. How cool is that?

Meeting the other directors and producers feels a little like the first day of Big Brother, - who are these people? - how will I feel about them after two weeks together? The other people on the course are Martin Jones, Andrea Arnold, Jocelyn Cammack, Camille Griffin and Eric Christiansen and Sol Papadopoulos. Eric and Sol are from Liverpool, everyone else is from London.

When we arrive in New York in our swanky hotel we discover that the hotel is SO swanky that none of us can afford to drink there. We head down the road to a bar. Eric points out a large cockroach crawling across the floor. “I’ve not been to America before, is that normal?” Martin, who looks like Jarvis Cocker and directs commercials, stretches out an elegant foot and crunches it flat.

The first screening of the short films goes well. Afterwards Jonathan gets us up on the stage in a long line to introduce ourselves. It feels like that scene from The Usual Suspects. One of the other directors is my hair and body double, and everyone confuses us, which is very bizarre, because her film is a tower-block-underage-sex-grim-wasted-lives sort of thing, and mine is a seaside-sunshine-pink-lipstick-sexy-comedy sort of thing.

We had about four meetings a day in New York. Before our first meeting we rehearse our thirty second pitches for our feature films over and over “Mistrust is a psychological thriller but it’s also a film about love”.“Doug and Dave is the story of two old men, a plank and a bit of rope”. The Americans respond really well to the short, to Hopscotch Film’s slate of feature projects, and to me as a director. Lots of people are very keen to read our scripts and Robert DeNiro’s company Tribeca give me a script to read.

Our best New York meeting was Miramax, who are very encouraging. I think Jonathan was probably right about which short to showcase, “It’s Not You, It’s Me” is going down very well, and I think that is partly because the Americans see it as commercial. They definitely respond well to comedy.

Then on to LA. I never realized how far away LA was, geographically or culturally. No one in LA thinks about anything else except the film business. With the stress very definitely on the second word. There’s a whole different vocabulary, which John and I started to collect: “She’s good in a room” “He’s being cocktailed all over town” “Star bait” (which means a director who might be rubbish, but is best mates with Nicole
Kidman) and “He’s getting ready to sink the pool” (meaning he’s about to get a deal).

On the third night in LA I got a call at 4.30am from Carolynne Sinclair-Kidd, my other producer, saying our shorts had been nominated for four Scottish BAFTAs. I sent my mum an email from LA telling her this, and that Samuel Goldwyn said I was the next Sandra Goldbacher and she emailed back saying “Don’t get a big head, I’m your mother, it’s my job to say these things”. She’s got a point of course, and getting back to Glasgow, to the rain, and my overdraft, brought me back to reality. But we left America with a bulging contacts book, an LA agent who wants to take me on and although we’re not getting ready to sink the pool yet, we’re good in a room, and we’re ready to go for it.

New Directions was a great experience, and it was very useful. I’m very grateful for the financial support I received. I’d really recommend New Directions to other directors. If anyone is applying and wants to chat about it, do email me (Ed’s note: If you want to contact Clara drop us a line and we’ll happily pas it on).

CLARA GLYNN

http://www.firstfilm.co.uk/about.asp

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