Trying to listen to myself

April 08, 2006 | 11:35 PM
Trying to listen to myself
Film making is so much now about fitting a square peg (a script) into a round hole (a schedule and a budget), that so much of my time on Golden Age gets taken up with production meetings, budget meetings, schedule meetings etc etc. Time now to shut my ears to the organizational noise and listen to myslelf. Get back in touch with myself.

It alsmost makes me feel that the bussiness and organization of the film takes precedence over the creative. But I also know how absolutely neccesary it is. For the last few months we have been planning, budgetting and writing, and then re writing, re budgetting and re planning. I am now two weeks away from the shoot and we are still re-writing,re- budgetting and re-planning !

But something strange has happened to me. A scalm has descended on me. I have switched off from the planning and given into the unknown. At the last production meeting I found myself laughing and smiling, while in all the previous ones I was fretting and exasperated.

Why ? Because I have pushed myslef over the cliff now. I am in the middle of the stormy choppy seas. will I survive ? Will I sink ? Who knows, but now I have to swim like hell !

And therefore the calm. Now what will be will be.

Now is the time not to listen to the financial or the production noise, but to the voice in my own heart. I need to try and listen to myself.

Ofcourse a large part of this has been caused by the arrival in London of Cate Blanchette and Abbie Cornish. The film comes alive when u meet actors. I always have seen actors, especially of the calibre of Cate and Abbie (even though she is new) as collaborators in our joureny to self discovery.

I will write later about Abbie, but Cate also has such a searching soul, matched by a razor sharp intellect and a facility over her physicality that lends her to be such an amazing actress. We have had such great conversations on the meaning of the film, the ideas behind the lines and plots. I think we have both grown through parenthood, and both are searching for life in deeper more meaningful ways. How wonderful if we could bring all that subtext to the screen,

we shall see

Shekhar