Monday morning 26 March. Slingshot starts shooting its 2nd feature, FRENCH FILM.

There’s more to say, but I’m too damn tired right now, so I’ll let VARIETY tell it.

Not a movie this time, but a chat-up conversation with a machine:

I’ll let Dom introduce it himself:

Check this out for something from the future. I was trying to buy something online from IKEA and I got put through to this infuriating automatic machine woman thing.

http://193.108.42.79/cgi-bin/IKEA_UK.cgi

You ask ‘her’ questions and ’she’ answers. Well I have to say ’she’ was really quite useless. But I did go onto to have a bizarre conversation with ‘her’. Check it out:

Me: So. What does IKEA stand for then?

Her: The name IKEA was formed of the founder’s initials (Ingvar Kampard) plus the first letters of Elmtaryd and Agunnyard, the farm and village where he grew up.

Me: That’s really interesting.

Her: I’m glad your interest has been pricked.

Me: You’ve got lovely eyes. What are you doing this evening?

Her: I can’t answer that for you. Sorry. Please talk to me about IKEA.

Me: Playing hard to get are we?

Her: I prefer not to talk about those sort of things. Let’s talk about IKEA.

Me: You’re blushing!

Her: You are perfectly entitled to hold any opinion you want about me. Furthermore your comments improve my knowledge base. Thank you!

Me: Let’s go out tonight! Me and you.

Her: Please, I’d much prefer to talk about IKEA.

Me: We can talk about IKEA over a nice bottle of red.

Her: The web page will tell you more about IKEA, our products and services.

Me: The web page ain’t as pretty as you baby.

Her: If it’s the kids furniture you’re looking for IKEA has a fantastic selection.

Me: Whoa. Slow down. Who said anything about kids?

Her: Family is important. But I’d rather not talk about it right now.

Me: You’re going a little fast for me. I’m asking you out for a bite to eat.

Her: I understand that you are asking me something. Could you be more specific?

Me: What?

Her: You want me to repeat my last answer? Okay, it was “I understand that you are asking me something. Could you be more specific?”

Me: There’s no need to be facecious.

Her: I’m afraid I don’t exactly know what you are talking about.

Me: I’m just asking you on a date! That’s all.

Her: Could you rephrase the question please?

Me: Would you like to have dinner with me? Tonight!

Her: To which IKEA store are you referring to when asking about the restaurant?

Me: Oh Jesus.

Her: There’s no need to pray - just ask me what you’d like to know about IKEA and I’ll help you.

Me: I don’t want to know about IKEA. I want to know about you!

Her: The web page will tell you more about IKEA, our products and services.

Me: No, I want to know about you!!!

Her: I wish I knew what it was you meant by that, but I don’t. Sorry.

Me: Just forget it.

Her: As you wish. I will forget it, but, would you like to ask me something else about IKEA?

Me: Not really, no.

Her: It’s not always possible for me to understand what it is you mean. It is one of those times.

Me: Oh. Time of the month is it?

Her: I’m very sorry, but I can’t really talk about things like that at this time.

Me: Fair enough.

Her: Very well.

Me: Was that an awkward pause that just passed between us?

Her: My job is to talk about IKEA, so if you have a question please ask me now.

Me: Come on. Let’s go out tonight!

Her: I’m not real. I’m an Online Assistant designed to help with your queries about IKEA, so I can’t go out.

Me: You’re not real?!

Her: I’m an Online Assistant. I am an advanced compurter software program; my task is to help you with your IKEA experience.

Me: Oh.

Her: I’m really not sure what you are trying to say. I’m going to go now.

Then she cut me off. I can’t believe it! Turned down by a machine!

Well, kind of, a new production company based on the principal of low up front fees, gross participation, and creative control for writers, has just been set up on the Warner Brothers lot. Sound a bit familiar?
Click on link for full story at Variety.

3. portia Says:
   March 6th, 2007 at 12:30 pm My comment doesn’t actually relate to the script competition blog (though i appreciated it greatly) but I couldn’t find a direct email address & I have a request for you…. - your thoughts on the recent blocking of GAAP funds by the government. Does this change impact you directly as a producer in the UK? Is slingshot run in such a way that it is not effected by the recent changes and prevention of sale & leaseback? I’m curious because the Varietys and Screen Internationals are painting a very negative, dramatic picture with this news simply about how much money will not be invested in the UK industry & that it makes it ‘nearly impossible for the independent producer’ etc etc, so was just wondering what your perspective on it was…

Three years ago, almost to the day, the Inland Revenue closed a number of GAAP loop-holes, which scuppered a selection of film funds, causing the shut-down or rescheduling of a bunch of high profile films and the loss of lots of revenue from the boutique finance firms that put together these limited partnerships. Independent producers and the trade press were up in arms, there was talk about the end of the British film industry, letters were written, producers bemoaned on talk-shows; the Revenue remained intransigent.

Sound familiar?

I was embroiled in the thick of that episode (melodramatically christened ‘Black Tuesday’ in the film industry), because I was involved with the biggest budget and highest profile project to be killed by the tax change. TULIP FEVER, was to be a period romantic epic, re-uniting the multiple Oscar winning team of John Madden and Tom Stoppard, the script based on a novel by Deborah Maggoch, told of star-crossed lovers against the back-drop of the Tulip boom of 17th century Amsterdam.

We were 6 weeks into pre-production, millions had been spent, entire fields of tulips planted, big stars committed. And it all fell apart. In vain protest against the inevitability of tax, I added my voice to the chorus of despair, and on behalf of my then boss, the film’s producer Alison Owen, drafted letters to the Chancellor, and worked frantically to try and rescue the picture. It didn’t work.
So my heart goes out to all those producers in similar binds this time round. I know their pain.

But actually, the horrible dirty secret, then as now, is that I’m with the Revenue on this. There, I said it. Why?

First, because lets call a cat a cat. The GAAP schemes are tax avoidance. That’s the view of the revenue, and if you sift through the protesting voices, you won’t find a compelling argument to the contrary. There’s a reason that all the tax funds are bemoaning the effect of the decision, not the rational of it. The truth is that the structure of most of these funds is so complex and obscure as to suggest either Columbian drug cartels money laundering schemes, or (as is the case) avoidance.

So much as I love people giving money to film, I also like the fact that we live in a civil society, where the cost of being rich is paying tax.

That’s my left liberal reason for being with the revenue on this one. Now for the free-market capitalist reason. Subsidy distorts markets. And distorted markets, as the story of the Tulips of Amsterdam showed, are bad things in the long run.

The availability of money for films that is motivated not by profit, but by tax, means that films get made that don’t have market justification, or they get made at price points that would be unsustainable in the absence of tax breaks. In short: bad films get made, or good ones get made inefficiently.

And that makes us less competitive as an industry.

So, no, slingshot was not affected by the ruling. We made it a principal of our financing that we don’t depend on such schemes, we utilise the Film Tax Credit and EIS structures, both of which are statutorily approved and strike an appropriate balance between motivating investors and encouraging a valuable cultural industry on the one hand, and allowing the market to do its work on the other.

And in the long run, that balance will make us healthier. Despite the short-term pain (as intense now as it was in 2004 after black Tuesday), the industry will absorb the shock and evolve to be better - that’s what sustainability means, and that’s what we all say we want, right?