Round and Round

Plenty of back and forth at the moment as the pre-Cannes period hots up. More of the good old chicken and egg stuff, with all parties wanting to know what everyone else is doing before they commit.

We're busy checking availability of principal cast. We have letters of intent from them all, subject to the usual budget and schedule considerations. Funders want us to lock the cast before they go further. But of course we can't lock the cast until we're sure what our budget is going to be.

And every time someone else reads the script, they have another set of ideas. As a writer as well as a producer, I end up in my besetting bad habit of seeing the merit of these entirely contradictory notes. The story is either too big or too small, too spiritual or not magic enough, too tragic or too humorous. And yet the writer (in conjunction with the creative team) holds responsibility for hanging on to the vision which inspired it all.

Kind of like trying to keep clean in a sewage pond. Not that I'm complaining. It's just the real life nitty-gritty of getting a film up. Bring it on.