homework

I'm trying to write a press release, aka, homework.

You'd think after 20 years of reading them I'd know how that's done. Must've not been paying attention at the back.

Our premier is in early June, a special charity preview screening is in early May. Then we take the film on the road, and at the end of July go to show it to a bunch of Metallica fans in California at Orien Fest.

Meanwhile, I have to write a press release/homework.

HOMEWORK ALERT

More soon. In the meantime, if you don't mind giving us a LIKE on our Facebook page, it'd be helpful.

HOMEWORK ALERT still flashing, noisy

Thanks.

HOMEWORK ALERT now so loud cannot breathe

must.do.homework...

Waiting waiting waiting

Soundmix - nearly complete; colour grade - done. Finished film by end of February. Will do a friends and family screening, for crew, investors and a few key supporters round Valentine's Day. Website should be active by then too. Apparently the tardiness is my fault, because I haven't written all our publicity and website material.

It's painful work, and watching myself on film is excruciating. If there are any profoundly altruistic film PRs out there...

Seen Tom a lot lately. He's been having some big adventures, like, taking the bus to Exmouth and disappearing for a day. He was registered as a missing person, and police were taking it very seriously, given that he is considered vulnerable.

He rang Mum on his mobile to say he was lost, then lost battery. He's only recently been allowed on the buses on his own and is meant to stick to only the buses with numbers he recognises. Pushing the limits, the day before he went not just to Exmouth on the bus, but on into Exeter.

Well done Tom. Then, this. Where had he gone, where did he get to. Mum said he sounded frightened. We all went into full on flap mode, my Mum couldn't stop crying. And then, around 8pm, he walked through the door at Bystock, his home, and asked where he's been he said, Plymouth, and went straight to his room.

that's plymouth bus station's graffiti there on the right

He'd got lost and found his way home. I wish I knew more, but extracting details from Tom isn't always that easy.

We've taglined Mission to Lars, "everyone deserves one big adventure".

Seems Tom's got an appetite for them.

Me and him are going to take the bus to Bickington next time I go to visit him. I asked him where he'd really like to go and he said, "Don't mind, somewhere far away from here."

Ahhh Mumbo. You are so excellent. I can't wait to get you up on a big screen and let people judge you, then think again. the label, 'learning disabled' takes so much away from what people imagine you are capable of.

x

No post for two months and then twice in one day. It's like buses this blog

Thought a couple of photos of Tom living large on his 40th birthday celebrations might provide warmen the cockles. I am especially proud of the boadyboarding...

It was hard work getting Tom in that wetsuit, took three strong men...

...but once he was in we were cooking on gas

walked through Newquay, rolling with my crew, lots of pisstaking

met Brendan, the instructor at Rob Barber's Body Boarding School

...caught some waves, man. no sweat

afterwards the lovely people at rob barber's gave tom a birthday cake

then we all went home to have 'posh dinner' and Tom made a short speech.

Afterwards he opened some birthday presents. His electric drumkit left him speechless

Happy 40th Birthday Bro, for you I really mean it when I say life begins n all that shit. You've climbed some big mountains in recent years, and I think you're feeling good about yourself...

Loutallica, Lousie Mensch, wet people, hard people, Tom's 40th birthday

Watched Metallica and Lou Reed play Later with Jools Holland last night. White Light/White Heat was a satisfying mash up of poetry, french pop music and perky heavy rock, and while the album might be about sad things, tortured artists and wotnot, I found that one song poificktly cheery. Not sure what the Metallers think though. It's not exactly Master of Puppets

I shuffled myself into a camera free corner and watched lots of familiar faces from Metallica's backstage world act really busy and important. I didn't have the balls to go and say hello, but they were all there. Lars' drum tech, the manager, the security guy, bald Tom who always wear boot cut jeans and looks really mean. Tom Spicer was slightly obsessed by him, and for a while I worried that his affections would shift from Lars to Tom the security guy mid filming.

This did not happen with Tom the security guy, but by the time we got really close to the centre of power there was a very great danger that Tom Spicer was going to do a capricious volte face and make James Hetfield the object of his affections.

I know that Lars is his one true hero but Tom Spicer does like to keep us on our toes.

And how was LwJH?

There were the great, the good, the bad and the ugly of the Metallica world in that TV studio. I didn't walk in front of a camera to press flesh network and sshnuffle up to showbiz-metal botty, but I did go and say hello to Louise Mensch and her husband, Peter, the big boss man at Metallica's management company Q Prime.

She was very lovely and charming and friendly and (to drop in a note perfect bad feminist detail here) has a ludicrously good body for a 40 year old mother of three. She told me she'd followed the blog when we were adventuring across America in our exploding toilet RV trying to find Lars; Peter Mensch didn't know what the hell I was on about until she did some wifely nudging and then he was very, very, briefly friendly. I suppose in music management terms Q Prime are like Barack Obama, but a lot better with money and planning, but slightly less urbane looking.

Man, for rock impresarios at the top of the premier league, Mensch was wearing some superbad jeans, as in, ugly, not 'bad' as in 'good'.

Mensch was the first person I spoke to in the management realms as we tried to make M2L happen. I rang him in NY from London late one night and I will never forget that phone conversation. The man was scary. I was lying on my sitting room floor, taking notes of the conversation (HOW I WISH I HAD RECORDED IT, a lesson to me there) and he was saying, with real big boy menace, words to the effect of, 'without our blessing at Q Prime you're fucked you little pip squeak nobody'

It was an exciting moment, and I knew that if I was working in, say, arms sales or organ sales, I couldn't have met a nicer guy. No, I'm joking, he was firm but fair. Frankly, I was seriously impressed. Working at home, alone, with occasional forays to the library and Ibiza, I have become a pussy. I'm wet. Occasionally I sally forth into newspaper offices where I always regret not having packed a helmet. The world of work is a tough place, and I am a freelance wetty. The world of heavy metal work is appropriately, a really really tough place. It's appropriate that Mensch's wife is an MP. Those two must be major hard asses.

Louise Mensch was a good egg. (She sits on the Culture Media and Sport Committee Murdoch inquisition but our glorious lady journalists are only interested in whether she has had a facelift or not - er, who gives a toss? I'd hazard fillers and botox, but what do i know, I only have them myself.) She asked me if Tom was at the filming and I said no, it's his birthday today (8th December) and he was in Cornwall having one of his beloved 'posh dinners' with his mate Bob, who is another hero of Tom's, but one we don't have to chase across America to find. She said he should have been there, and I felt sister shame and like those characters in Little Britain who use their kid's terminal illness to meet stars they want to meet.

Ah yes, the film, where is the film now. The film is waiting to hear which film festivals it has or has not got in to. And it is finished, fully graded, locked and all those other filmy business words I don't actually understand.

Anyway, better shuffle off to the library to be wet. Enough of this blog shaped wambling, it's time to do some efficient terse journalism.

Goodbye.
Ah hello again...
We have a Facebook page now, please come and visit it and say something friendly, or rude, either's cool. Don't know where the promised website is. (OY, WEBSITE DESIGNER - you know who you are - GET YOUR FUCKING ARSE IN GEAR or I'LL COME AND KICK IT FOR YOU. HELLO!?)

Ah, sweet, I'm not such a wetty afterall....

PS. Check out Mencap's Little Noise sessions, Being a wetty, I'm holding out for Chris Martin on 24th

WEBSITE

Soon, this modest, amateurish, heartfelt blog will turn into a proper website. This will function like buying a load of new sports gear and get me all excited about doing something that I was getting a bit slack at. It will function like that new geometry set and pencil case I got in August for the new term in September. It will encourage enthusiasm and it will force me to blog regularly, it will force me to search for meaning and answers where currently I push things under the carpet to resolve themselves.

Navigating the festival application political dance and wondering how much money to spunk on PR is currently the thing I am least able to think about.

By the time I blog again, at greater length, it will be something else.

We have been blessed with some blinding support since the film's come closer to the final edit, from some truly excellent people. We have secured theatrical release and a few other things I can't write about without getting myself in do-do. It is nearly impossible to celebrate any successes when everything else, hanging, is a potential failure.

Do I sound glass half empty when it is actually three-quarters full?

That's because one person's decision can affect so many outcomes. It's a well-known cause of IBS, I'm sure...

Adieu, til next time. Hopefully on a propa site, with moving shit n buttons n stuff

Wading through a stack of scientific papers. "What would Lars say?"

I should have done this in a meticulous detailed way not months, but years, even a decade ago. As ever I have left everything until a few weeks after the last minute and I sit on a train to Devon elbow deep in genetic and behavioural development research papers trying to learn as much as possible about Fragile X in a day.

A minor (ok, medium to major) creative and ethical division is our latest elephant in the room. There is yet another difference between the boys (the boys being the two MEN who directed the film, James Moore and William Spicer - yes, the latter is some relation) and me (me being a sort of producer come executive producer come lumpen prole fundraiser and self-effacing emo philips monkey in front of the camera gimp).

What is this conflict all about?

I wonder if we can't layer some more sciencey science into the film, something that explains the effect of having a fragile x chromosome on my brother Tom more explicitly?

The boys think that the film needs to be a rolling tale, an emotional journey, and that just having this intense portrait of Tom and his siblings ranging outside of our collective comfort zones, is asking enough of what is a simple and emotional story.

I agree with them, and I have seen documentaries with too many cute devices that muddy the simpler and more important tale. In a gay way, documentary of this sort is a bit like style and architecture. Less is more.

I figure the cure for this little dilemma is to read, loads. Sleep on it. Write some lists. Watch the film. And then talk to James at the Wellcome Institute (who have given us a bit of a grant for the film, rather pleasingly) on Monday. Thankfully, William is away. While the bitter and simmering differences between us have gone, they are easily dredged up the minute we have disagreements. Kids and animals, pah. try working with younger brothers.

Will call Tom and ask him what he thinks, fairly sure he will says, "Er," thinking pause, "Dunno. What would Lars say?"

Okelly doke. Thanks for listening.

PS. Below is some information about Fragile X Syndrome, from release issued by lab developing treatments. Should add, Tom hates taking pills, and (aside from a short period requiring a whole other post) never has taken them - except for imaginary hangovers.

Fragile X Syndrome is the most common inherited form of mental impairment and
the most common known cause of autism. Fragile X Syndrome is caused by a
mutation of a single gene, the Fragile X mental retardation 1 (FMR1) gene, on
the X chromosome. The FMR1 gene produces a protein needed for normal brain
development. Individuals with Fragile X Syndrome lack this protein and, as a
result, exhibit a number of behavioral and physical symptoms including mental
and developmental impairment to varying degrees, attention deficit and
hyperactivity, autistic behaviors, anxiety, large physical attributes,
particularly of the face, and seizures. Fragile X Syndrome typically impacts
boys more severely than girls, with 20% of boys also receiving a diagnosis of
autism. There is no cure for Fragile X Syndrome at this time. A variety of
medications and behavioral interventions are used in an attempt to address
individual symptoms of the disease. Drugs currently used primarily focus on
treating specific symptoms such as anxiety, or improving and controlling
behavior.

friday 15th July, literary salon, latitude festival, 545. you coming down?

Dongles ahoy! I'm sitting in the car going up the A12 to Latitude Festival, if this road is an artery there's a heart attacks ahead - probably mine if the traffic doesn't get budging.

Baby's first "Performer Campsite and Car park" sticker is already displayed proudly on the windscreen, like a 14 year old who doesn't take off their festival tags all year, if I didn't know what a modest and self-effacing person I was, I might think better I was showing off.

Latitude is a music festival with literary and arts bells on and an ideal place to do a test screening of the film. I'm also interviewing some authors in the Literary Arena and, cough, playing some music, cough, disc jokeying (yes i spelt that right) in the Sunday Times Style tent.

Not sure which makes me feel the more nervous, but showing a (special Latitude festival edit of the) film to people with no connection to it is definitely hairy. In the last few weeks we've shown the near finished product to Important People and had some useful and cheering response. I felt something close to elation when we got the clearance from the Metallica people who could have majorly obstructed our access to footage and music. There's an amazing story to be told there, but not today, while I am driving and typing and eating M&S carrot batons while trying to find the right exit off this road with a bad cold. Man, this road is BUNGED UP.

If you know anyone at Latitude, send them down. Tonight we're on 5.45 til 6.45 in the Literary Salon. I'll get some drinks in. It was my birthday yesterday so I am pining for hair of the dog. That is definitely not something I am doing while driving.

Thanks for listening. Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech. Crash

Money is like buses...Wellcome and a Little Party and Cheques Pushed Down My Dress

So there we were, staring into the abyss of pennilessness, wondering if Will and James could finish the edit and sound and do the graphics themselves, after work, after the kids had gone to bed, for nothing, and other tales of near impossible creative sacrifice.

There was about £2K in the Mission bank account and this was all we had to finish the bugger off. I have often compared the process of making a low budget independent documentary for free, when you are doing 'proper' paid work in the daytime, to an endurance steeplechase, you get over one hurdle and relax for two seconds before looking up to see the next one ahead. Occasionally one of the hurdles feels like the last and you romp home, hopefully, only to see another round the corner. Thus is goes on, endlessly. It can be demoralising, oh yes.

We desperately needed money to finish the film. Our application for a grant from the Wellcome Trust looked like it wasn't going to come through, I gave up on that. My fledgling film producer's pleas and little begging paws and round saucer-like eyes had got me nowhere on the fundraising front. I had to own responsibility for completely ballsing up an application for an important festival, and he we hadn't got in. I felt shit, then shitter. if only I was an American Tigger and could put a self-loving spin on it all; I'm a self-loathing Eeyore, and it was making my ears droop so low they grazed the ground even when I was in heels.

Miserable or not, we needed money and self pity wasn't raising a bean, let alone a penny.

The only thing I knew how to do well was throw a knees up. The second Mission to Lars party was launched.

Sigrid Wilkinson helped, she hosted the thing, put her name to the invite, she has an arts consultancy called, erm, Arts Co, and that in itself was an endorsement. She worked like a Trojan, and between us we found some great auction lots which I'll attach as a document on another post if you are curious. They had to be auction lots people would actually want. Don't you hate those dodgy auctions that involve golfing weekends and spa days. Like, SO WHAT.

Darling Justin of Joybear Pictures; the caring porn tycoon and son of a Jewish upper west side socialite came through with another walking talking part in his beautiful fairtrade pornos. Julian Wild, Sophy Rickett and Gavin Turk donated art. The world Famous Dixon Brothers offered to pimp an iPod, John Torode offered a masterclass, Five year memberships for Milk and Honey in London and NY, Pascal Dangin said he would do what he normally only does for the cover of the best Vogues, and retouch any photograph. I thought the auction lots were cool. We made some raffle tickets and begged and borrowed more prizes, Jeroboams of MiP my favourite rose from Lea and Sandeman and some undercrackers by Dirty Pretty Things. Amazingly, when people know someone else is paying for the party and all the money raised is going to proper causes and not dodgy overheads, people are so generous. Even my wild friends over in Ibiza offered some very generous stuff.

Hawksmoor did the food for cheap, we invited good and caring people, interested people, many of whom mentioned when they got the invitation that actually, yes, they had learning disability in their family and they really wanted to support us. Frantic and a bit panicky that it would all go tits up, there was actually a lot of love in the room before we all actually, erm, got in the room.

The whole thing was a bit more smart than the last dinner, auction, rave up I'd thrown to get us enough dought to get out of the country and on the Mission in the US. We got Greg Sanderson, the editor of The Review Show, to come and compere a bit of a chat with me and Will; John Battsek turned up from Passion Pictures - which I was pretty grateful for given that the night before I'd sat in the 1400 strong audience with Mick Jagger and other epic sorts at the premier of his film, Fire in Babylon, and this was a bit of a step down to say the least. We planned on giving half the money we raised that night to Mencap, so Mark Goldring the MD of the charity watched the film and said, yes, he would come and say a few words.

My work suffered, the week before the do I made so little money I only just covered my most basic living expenses. Then I got an email from Wellcome. Against my every expectation, they were delighted to inform us that they would be giving us a very decent sized grant to help get the film out there (because of its under the radar sciencey bits).

We decided to give all but a little of the money we raised on the night to Mencap. And, it was worth it. 60 people stood in the garden of the very kindly secretive philanthropist's house and they watched while I quacked on with Will about the film; they sipped the rather excellent drinks that the very kindly secretive philanthropist had paid for and their eyes definitely stayed on us and I couldn't hear talking at the back - even though I expected it. Afterwards we had an auction, and people slipped cheques into my pocket to buy shares (they put them somewhere, i was wearing a lime green strapless cocktail dress with no pockets).

In the end we raised about £25,000 in total. After the sensible people had gone home some less sensible people had a kitchen disco full of cheer and my Mum talked to everyone and got through lots of electric cigarettes. I hadn't drunk much because of nerves, but I felt drunk.

We have money now; and we gave lots of money to Mencap too.

I had better do some proper work now, it's getting a bit dire the lack of printed word I'm getting out there.

Every day I wake up and wonder when the BBC are going to email me with a yes or a no. I assume No to everything now, even though deep down I'm an optimist and a pile of yesses clank around in the deep bits of my psyche.

Talking of yesses and a noes. I did ask Tom if he wanted to come to the party and of course he said no. "No thank you I'm busy that day", he says, even though you've yet to mention a day. It really is a miracle we got him out of Bystock and on the road in the US. This whole film feels like a miracle.

We have been talking to Wellcome about the outreach around the film, about how to get the message in the film out to as many people as possible and trying to get Tom on the road is definitely part of it.

One hurdle leapt and another several appear...

Goodbye, thanks, happy rest of May to you x

'the last ten grand'. party only option - as ever

S>N>A>F>U IT feels like every six months I write something about having to find 'the last ten grand'. currently i'm finding my latest last ten grand, well maybe a little bit more. i've proved myself v poor (D+ at best) at the whole 'picture the scene' richard e grant in the player style pitching for dough. instead i'm going to do what i know, and throw another party.

this one is going to be small - back in the day, before i was sensible, we used to call them microwaves - or to make it sound bit grander, a boutique bunfight. there will be a bit of banter about the film with someone important who can lend it some deserved credibility and showbizification, a screening of some of the film, in a beautiful house, stuffed with cool contemporary art, that i am borrowing from a secretive and philanthropic good guy. we'll draft in some thinking man/woman's crumpet to give the do a bit of conversational sex appeal and social jeopardy.

i will beg, borrow and steal lovely food and good wines. at the end (if people pay me enough money not to bring out my alter ego, a ridiculous middle aged mid life crisis type female who is a complete disc jokey, aka, DJ Set Wrecker) my philanthropy-soldier buddy, Sigrid, and I will stand at the door with more begged, borrowed, stolen goody bags, a copy of the film to take away and our hands held out, selling stakes in the film.

the guest list is small and nearly full of, let's be honest here, PEOPLE WE KNOW WITH MONEY. but if anyone out there in the world thinks they should be at this do, get in touch.

best way to contact me is via twitter, @spicerlife; or email me katespicer AT btinternet DOT com

the directors, will and james, are found at spicer & moore, their production company

i would dearly love to talk about where the film is at now in great detail but a deep suspicion tells me not to. don't want to jinx nuffink.

love and light (as my dear dear very old friend victoria beckham likes to say), kate

comrades! let's get thomas spicer on the television set. he's got more charisma than holly willoughby (but smaller boobs, for now at least given the rate he's gobbling pies he's catching up fast)

contact

best way to contact me is via twitter; or email me katespicerATbtinternetDOTcom

the directors, will and james, are at spicer & moore, their production company