Straightblog

dawn of the collective yeeeuch!

The press cuttings are beginning to come in from Verve Pictures' PR people, and in spite of the fact that I've always known (see this blog) we'd get a lot of vitriol thrown at us, it's still frustrating to read review after review basically going Yeeuch! without much more analysis than that. There was an intelligent review in the May issue of Sight and Sound, by Anna Smith, another in Little White Lies, so you see folks, it can be done! Straightheads is dark, violent and provocative etc.., it's not a worthy kitchen sinker or a safe cozzie drama, so I'm really not looking for approval here, just a couple of well-articulated thoughts would do. But we aren't going to get that, judging by the majority of press so far. And this is proving to be a tricky week for me because the movie's not out yet and people can't watch it and make up their own minds, and that's the equivalent of being pelted with rotten eggs without being able to throw any back. As you can see, being a writer/director has its humorous moments.

I really enjoyed the Radio 3 interview I did last night for Nightwaves (that's on Monday folks, from 945pm onwards) about new British stories of revenge. The questions were insightful and smart, and they also interviewed Jonny Glynn, whose dark debut novel "The Seven Days of Peter Crumb" I just happened to pick up in a bookshop the other day. You should be able to listen to that online via the BBC radio website, if you're not based in the UK.

Straightheads isn't a film for everyone, and the reviews certainly reflect that, though my belief in the film and its qualities (and flaws!) is unshaken. I also believe it has an audience out there, and that many of you reading this blog will find it rewarding and highly memorable at the very least. So please don't let the sniping trouble you, and make up your own minds once the movie opens at a cinema near you - there should be a few more screens added to the official list of venues this week, the total now is well over 200. But right now, yes, it's nerve-racking, for me, for Gillian and Danny and all the cast, and for Verve Pictures, who have backed us to the hilt and given us a proper good cinema release. Let's just keep our nerve and see what happens over the opening weekend.

Deep breath. Grim smile... Hang on in there, folks.

seven days to go

Verve Pictures hosted a small but beautiful launch event on Tuesday at the Rex, a members' club with a great screening room in Soho. It was a friendly, memorable evening with just a few people, and I really loved it though I admit such occasions always make me a touch nervous and very thirsty. No press were allowed in, barring a couple of photographers to get pictures for the newspapers - the Evening Standard ran a nice picture of GA and DD in their diary section, there may have been pics elsewhere too. Guest numbers were limited, so mine were mainly family. There was a lovely, chilled vibe and as I introduced Gillian and Danny before the screening, I must have got a little over-animated because I took a step too far backwards, plunged off the stage and into the cinema screen - well, almost. Somehow I didn't actually fall all the way, and managed to bounce back on stage. That really broke the ice.

As usual after every screening so far, a lot of pale, shocked faces, people couldn't stop discussing it, and predictably a number of people took me to one side and asked me to consider psychotherapy...

This coming week things accelerate on the publicity front - in addition to the TV spots on Sky and Channel Four and the cinema trailers already out there, Verve are running a poster campaign on the Tube (the underground metro network), plus radio ads and I think some print ads too. I'm starting to hear back from frineds of mine "Oh, I spotted a Straighthead poster... " or "I caught the end of a Straightheads trailer on Sky...". I'm still praying for grey skies a week today.

Tomorrow we'll get the first newspaper reviews. I hope they're as favourable as the one in May's "Sight and Sound" (the British Film Institute mag) but somehow I suspect they won't be! But as Gillian says it's out of our hands now and we just have to let go of the result. I know Verve Pictures are giving Straightheads the best possible release here in the UK, and have got it into more than double the maximum number I ever thought we'd get. Still, that means nothing until those screens have rows and rows of people sitting there in the dark watching my movie. It's up to all the people out there now. Straightheads has to find its audience. That means YOU and YOUR FRIENDS! You have no idea how much I'm counting on you.

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I'll leave you with the last of the clips from our press day at the Dorchester.

Have a great weekend.

the film-maker's fear of sunny weekends

The sun is out here in London, with promise of hot days (by our standards!) to come. But for the first time in my life I'm wishing for dull, stay-home-or-catch-a-movie weather in a fortnight's time. You can all guess why. Exactly two weeks to go until UK release.

By the way, for those of you worried about whether the movie's coming to a Cinema Near You - it's too early to fret. Straightheads is coming out on 200 + screens, but the Straightheads official site so far lists less than 50 venues. That list will be updated regularly. Another 50 screens have already been booked, Verve Pictures tell me, with plenty more coming through next week. And by the way this is a much wider release than most UK films get (if they're ever released at all) so Verve have done us all proud.

Gotta dash. Started a new gig. It helps to be working, the pressure's on now ...

the Burbank files

OK so how many people were at the screening last night in Burbank, CA? I only found out about it by chance when I read a post on the IMDB message board for Straightheads. For those of you not in the know, Sony Pictures (they acquired Straightheads for most of the world including USA and Canada)  organized a test screening at a cinema in Burbank, California, which I imagine involved an invited / randomly selected NRG-type audience, special forms to fill in and a focus group at the end of it all. I wonder how big the audience sample was. More than that, I wonder what the test result was!! I'd love to hear more, so please post your comments if you were one of the Chosen Few of Burbank. A well-organized test is a great thing - we screened Straightheads in a late rough-cut to a proper test audience in London and the results were phenomenal. In fact the test screening took a lot of the executive pressure off me in the cutting room, as it reassured our wonderful financiers that audiences would "get" the film. But that was London. Now let's see if Straightheads translates...

The famous Straightheads premiere - well, it looks like there ain't going to be a premiere as such, more like a small private screening and no public hooha. No press, no red carpet (damn!) and therefore I suspect no reason for you intrepid travellers to rejig your travel plans. Now, are some of you really going to fly to London to see this movie - or are you just saying that to provide my fragile ego with a welcome boost? I guess we'll see, come the Weekend of Truth (27-29 April, for those of you who have just joined us). By the way for anyone who might be interested, one of the movie trade mags published this today: Download screen_international.pdf

is there going to be a premiere?

Well the short answer is "I don't know". There may not be a premiere - Julia at Verve Pictures is doing the math, as they say, and working out whether she can pull it all together. It's a little more complicated, apparently, than it may seem, and of course someone has to organize it and pay for it etc... From the distributors' point of view, understandabely on a low-budget production like this, a premiere is not an automatic thing. Although it would be nice to mark the launch of the movie in some way, it's all down to Julia and I have to respect her judgment on this. So we'll just wait and see...
I know that's unhelpful to those of you planning a trip to the UK for the opening weekend. Sorry I can't give you more of a lead, but it's genuinely up in the air at the moment and depends on a number of things coming together. BUT if there is a premiere of some kind, it'll be towards the beginning of the week before release i.e. around 17th April. Once again, it's quite likely there won't be a premiere at all if all the pieces don't fit together for Verve Pictures. Best I can do right now, sorry.

G AND D INTERVIEWS PART 1

So these are the first couple of clips of the interviews I recorded with Gillian and Danny on my little stills camera at the end of our last press day at a London hotel.

The other film Danny mentions is Nick Love's "Outlaw" - released in UK in March.

official webpage

Just a quick one as I'm on my toes at the moment, but you ought to know (if you haven't discovered it already) that there's now an official Straightheads website at www.straightheads.com. Not a whole lot there that dedicated readers of this blog haven't seen before but there should be
a couple of clips from the film on there before too long.

A couple of people I know have mentioned that their friends have seen trailers or posters at cinemas in and around London. I don't know why but that suddenly made the impending release very real for me... and yes I am nervous. Wouldn't you be??

More and more cinemas now want to take the film, and I know that Verve Pictures are aiming for something between 200 and 250 screens throughout the UK, which sounds like a really good number to me.

By the way a BIG THANKS to all of you who have set up Straightheads pages of your own, and who are helping to spread the word about this movie on the web - many small grains of sand add up to big heap, and every extra person who goes to see the movie in the opening week pushes us a millimetre closer to making Straightheads the worldwide cult hit it severely needs to be.

And thanks A.G. for turning your back on any skanky pirate copies that might pop up out there in Rostov, maximum respect for your ethical position. Wish there were more like you out there.

I'll be back soon with those some of those clips I promised... they're being digitized somewhere else so I'm waiting to get 'em back in my hot hands.

hold on now...

Well Gillian and Danny and I did a press day at a London hotel on Tuesday, which was a lot of fun, and I recorded my own little chats with G and D for this blog so I'll be posting those soon.... We're busy editing the TV spots and setting up the official website, which goes live next week. Lots of stuff happening but as it hasn't quite happened yet I've been loth to post, mea maxima culpa. There will be more plentifulness soon. Also I had the madre of all 'flus. I mean the mutter. Three days in bed, pole-axed. Feeling a whole lot better now, hamdulillah and slava bogu.

Straightheads poster art

SEVEN weeks to go till S-day! Gillian, Danny and I are doing press this week and next week, and I'm looking forward to haveing a chance to talk about the film. GA and I had lunch last week to catch up on various things, our first meeting since she, Danny and I recorded the DVD commentary back in December. We're both really buzzing about the forthcoming release: a year and a half ago we were stumbling around in a freezing cold forest in the middle of the night shooting these strange scenes, and now...  Straightheads is about to be disgorged on an unsuspecting public, on a couple of hundred screens here in the UK! Hope you like the final artwork by the way... Oh, and some of you have been asking about a premiere: there's no news on this, I know Verve Pictures are considering what to do, as a lot of people are expecting one. It's really in their hands... I'll let you know as soon as I have any info, OK?

more clippage from the second coldest night of the shoot

In quite random order, here are some more clips from the behind-the-scenes people. They're not edited together or anything, and I was wondering whether to ask Alistair or Verve to stitch them together, but then decided that might take a while and you'd probably rather just have the raw footage. I'll see if Verve Pictures can dig out some more later. They've got the poster up and framed in their office right now, and I think they're planning a larger version (is that an 8-sheet?) for the Tube (the underground railway / London metro). Gillian and Danny have kicked off their publicity schedule so there should be some stuff coming out in print in the UK and online, watch out for it. Just 7 weeks to go!

By the way for all of you out there, especially in the Americas, who have been wondering whether Straightheads will be released in their country, here's your answer, as far as I understand: all of Latin America has been sold to Sony Pics, excluding Brazil and Mexico, which were already sold when the Sony deal was done.

The one big thing we all have to keep in mind is that both Sony Pictures and the national distributors around the world will be watching very closely to see how Straightheads performs at the box-office here in the UK on 27-29 April. If crowds of people go to see it here on the opening weekend, the chances of it playing in your local picturehouse in, say, Santiago, will be a lot higher...