In just a few minutes, the clock will start ticking, and I will have 48 hours to write, shoot, and edit a complete short film. But that’s not the hard part.
Why must you mock the tears of the poet?
There are a few film festivals that are known around the world–the Berlinale, the Venice film festival, Cannes, and Sundance. They attract big name stars and famous directors, who in turn attract crowds of fans and swarms of paparazzi.
But those massive happenings are in the minority. At virtually any moment on any day of the year, some more obscure film festival is taking place somewhere in the world. Park City may have Sundance, but London has Raindance and Rhode Island has Clamdance, and we mustn’t forget Lapdance and Slumdance and Slamdance and Squaredance. There is the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival and the Belgrade International Film Festival and the Copenhagen International Film Festival , all the way through to the Yugoslav Festival and the Zanzibar International Film Festival.
Well Done, Ram
I admit it; I am not a fan of professional athletics. My idea of a perfect sports-related evening is when my wife finds somebody else to go to a baseball game with her, so that I can stay home and watch a Busby Berkely musical. (By the way, if anybody ever holds a contest to construct the least heterosexual sentence possible that contains the phrase “my wife,” I plan on entering the one you have just read.)
But Lauren has always thought it would be fun to go to Wimbledon, and since going to Wimbledon will never require a smaller investment of time than it does now, I agree to come along.
And thus it is that, on a beautifully sunny day that would be absolutely perfect for sitting inside watching a movie, I find myself having to endure fresh air and world-class athletics.
British for “911”
As I sit at home working, I smell something that smells kind of like candles burning. I look around my flat, but there seem to be no candles. Then I see smoke gushing past my window. I look outside, and it is clearly belching from a window of the building next door. The building is set back a bit, so I can’t see exactly where it’s coming from, but it seems to be a window in the third floor flat, which almost unquestionably must be on fire.
Should I go outside and check? No–if I delay, people could die. I call 999 (which is British for “911”) and report what is happening.
The Oxford/Cambridge Crew Race
In England, a spring without the Oxford/Cambridge crew race would be like a winter with sunshine. The race is one of the most-watched sporting events in the UK, watched on TV by some 400 million people around the world.
And so on this April day, we’ve joined a quarter of a million other Londoners along the Thames. Or, at least, that’s the theory. In practice, there’s simply not enough space along the Thames for a quarter of a million Londoners. London has evolved for river trading and river industry, not river race watching, and throughout much of the city, buildings crowd right up to the edge of the river, leaving little or no space for pedestrians.
My Brilliant Career
London is one of the most expensive cities in the world. If you want to know what something will cost here–from a packet of tea to a month’s rent on a flat–you need only apply a simple three-step process. One, write down a reasonable price in dollars. Two, erase the “$” and replace it with “£.” Three, weep–because £1 is worth roughly $1.60.
As a result, a single salary isn’t enough to keep two people in tea and crumpets, but in the half a year that we’ve been in England, I haven’t yet found steady work. True, I’ve been doing bits and pieces of freelance writing, and making slow progress on finding a more steady writing job. Unfortunately, our landlady will not accept payment in the form of steady progress.
Marxist-Socialist Spider Man
In my latest diary entry, I mentioned that the recent Spiderman movie was “practically a socialist tract.” In case my offhand comment inspires any Hollywood producers to go whole hog by creating a movie about a mild-mannered Socialist teen who is bitten by a rabidly Marxist spider, thereby enablng him to combine not merely the powers of man and spider but of Communist and Socialist as well, I would like to propose the following themesong.
Berlinale Roundup
February 14-28
The Berlin International Film Festival has been attracting big names since it began in 1951, when Joan Fontaine appeared at a special screening of her 1940 film Rebecca. But it was only this year, after decades of hosting such established filmmakers as Akira Kurasawa and Francois Truffaut, that somebody had an elegantly simple idea: why not invite a bunch of young filmmakers to learn from the masters? Thus was born the Berlinale Talent Campus.
The application process was as simple as the idea. Writers, directors, actors, and producers who wanted to attend sent in a one-minute mini-film as a sample of their work. I choose an excerpt from a short film that I wrote and directed. Although I don’t like to brag, I am fairly certain that my film is the finest musical version of “Citizen Kane” ever to be shot on digital video. Fortunately, the big opening number is just about exactly one minute long. (Sample lyrics, sung to a tune much like “Oklahoma!”: “Xanadu! Where the world’s treasures come to lay! To describe this thing, you just gotta sing, ’cause the price is one no man can say!”)
The campus organizers obviously agree, because some two months after I apply, I receive a letter telling me I’ve been selected from over 2000 applicants. It is only when I go to the website that I discover the slightly less flattering fact that 499 other filmmakers have also been selected. It would be so much more satisfying to be included if more people had been excluded. Nonetheless, on February 9, I fly to Berlin for what proves to be a remarkable week.
What follows are some of the highlights. I should note that, although I took notes throughout the week, many of the quotes are presented from memory.
The Toblerone Millionaire
Heathrow Airport has what may be the world’s largest collection of duty free shops. Today, I have arrived early for my flight to Berlin, giving me plenty of time to browse them.
Rapidly, I discover certain subtle similarities among the shops. W.H. Smith sells books, magazines, and Toblerone bars. The Chocolate Box sells truffles and Toblerone bars. World Duty Free sells perfume, gargantuan bottles of vodka, and Toblerone bars. And then I notice a fact that sends shivers of excitement up my spine: the value of 400 grams of Toblerone seems to fluctuate depending on where in the airport you are.
At World Duty Free, for example, you can buy a Toblerone bar for £3.50. A few yards away, The Chocolate Box sells the very same candy bar for the bargain price of £3.25. Meanwhile, across the passenger waiting lounge, in what must be the high-class neighborhood of the terminal, W.H. Smith expects you to pay a full £3.60 — but for that price, they will present the candy to you in a little cardboard sleeve that say “To My Love” or, for the less committal, “To My Friend.”
Things get even more complicated when you venture away from the simple realm of the individual bar. World Duty Free sells two bars for £5; The Chocolate Box sells 3 for £6.50.
Immediately, I realize that I am facing the single greatest opportunity for arbitrage since George Soros became a billionaire. If I invest £6.50 in three Toblerones at The Chocolate Box, I can then import them to the swanky neighborhood of W.H. Smith, where I can unload them for a grand total of £10.80. After two such trips, I’ll have £21.60–enough to purchase 9 Toblerones at The Chocolate Box, which I can then sell for a total of £32.40, which I can then use to purchase 15 Toblerones, which I can then sell for £54, which I can use to purchase more Toblerone. After my 13th trip, I will have enough money to buy Lauren the 18 carat gold earrings with diamond solitaire that Gassan Tax Free Jewelry Shop is offering for £2112.
And I’ll still have £966 left over, which I can invest in 444 more bars of Toblerone, which I can then sell for an additional £1598.40. If I reinvest this money, and make 13 more trips, I will have more than £1 million. Curious to see what this is worth in real money, I stop by the Bureau de Change, where UK£1 = US$1.57. Or, as I now think of it, US$1=289.9354 grams of Toblerone.
But wait a minute. I’ve been overlooking something obvious here. I’ve focused exclusively on one particular size of Toblerone bar, when the duty-free bazaar offers them in a dizzying array of sizes, all the way up to the torso-sized 4.5 kilogram bar that W.H. Smith sells for £50. A little bit of calculation reveals that there is no bulk discount when you purchase this chocolate mammoth. In fact, the humungous 4.5 kilo bar is more expensive per gram than any other Toblerone on the market here.
And that means an even bigger arbitrage opportunity. Clearly, I would be wasting my time if I merely carted individual bars back and forth. Could I but set up a chocolate forge and start smelting, I could transform £24.375 worth of individual chocolate bars from World Duty Free into a single behemoth bar worth £50 at W.H. Smith. I could double my investment in a matter of moments. Surely, in an airport of this size, there must be somebody who has a chocolate forge for sale.
Alas, I don’t have the chance to look. With all the time it has taken me to make my calculations, it is now time to board my plane. Curses! Opportunity has slipped through my fingers.
I board the plane, and as it takes off, I find myself browsing through the in-flight shopping catalog. Wait a minute: they’re selling a pack of 7 Toblerone bars, each weighing 50 grams, for a total of £5. That’s a staggeringly expensive £14.43 per kilogram. Stop the plane! I have to go make an investment!
Touch My Bum; This Is Life
Imagine a song with virtually no melody–only a throbbing, hypnotic beat. Now imagine that its lyrics, chanted over and over again with the manic intensity of a Gregorian monk after fifteen cups of cappuccino, consist of the immortal words, “We are the cheeky girls. You are the cheeky boys. Touch my bum. This is life.” Now imagine that the music video was directed by an autistic savant who has spent three solid years with his eyes taped open in front of a TV set playing nothing but Japanese commercials.
You have now succeeded in imagining the #2 hit in the UK.
Oh, and did I mention that it’s sung by a pair of 20-year-old identical twins? And that they’re from Transylvania? And that the song was written for them by their mother?
We first encountered this modern masterwork while visiting our friends Jennie and Eric on New Year’s Day. They made reference to it, and attempted to describe it to us, but mere words seemed unable convey its cheeky, bum-touching, hypnotic majesty.
Jennie and Eric couldn’t believe that we hadn’t seen the song, since it has evidentally been receiving near-constant airplay since it burst into the consciousness of an unsuspecting British public.
I, in turn, found it hard to believe that such an epilepsy-inducing amalgamation of sound and video could exist, let alone conquer a nation that produced Gilbert & Sullivan and the Beatles. I challenged them to prove it. “If it’s getting that much airplay,” I said, “just turn on the TV, and it’s guaranteed to be on.”
Eric called my bluff. He stood up, switched on the TV, flicked through a couple of channels, and the Cheeky Song shimmered into vibrant, hot-pants-wearing glory. It was just as horrific as I had imagined. The Cheeky Girls themselves looked anorexic, the song was mind-numbing, and the flashing lights and quick cuts of the video reeked of impending migraines. When it was over, there was only one thing I could possibly say.
“How can I see it again?”
As any reader of horror stories knows, the more foolish and self-destructive a wish is, the more gleefully fate will grant it. Later that evening, we borrowed a videotape from Jennie and Eric that was supposed to contain a recent episode of West Wing. Due to an error in setting their VCR, they had recorded over the first two minutes of the episode with whatever happened to be on at the time. This slice of television, recorded entirely at random, consisted of the Cheeky Song video in its entirety.
Lauren and I had no choice. The fates were against us. We took it home and watched it repeatedly.
(Note: Those of you who dare submit yourselves to whatever strange mind-control cult has fabricated this thing can find it at the official Cheeky website. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.)