So as I staggered in from the park with two children, two scooters, two remote controlled cars and the knowledge that there were two squashed bananas waiting to be scraped off the bottom of my rucksack, Hanan asked me if I'd written a blog today. I resisted the urge to say, yes, I dictated it into my remote controlled Macbook as I chased after runaway kids, and that it was all swear words. Instead, I asked my wife what I should write a blog about. She looked at me, and I could feel the wheels in her mind whirring..I waited, hopeful she would suggest something exciting, funny, brilliant. Here was her list: 1. NTSC DVDs of I Can't Think Straight & The World Unseen 2. Another award in Miami 3. Our upcoming screening in San Francisco Well, I can feel you all falling about laughing already. I considered explaining to my wife that not everything in life can be reduced to bullet points, but I knew she would only have six reasons why it can be. So I kept quiet and started writing: 1. NTSC DVDs. When I first started being a writer I had lofty expectations of living in Paris, sucking down oysters and a crisp white wine, and doing nothing in between bouts at the typewriter but wrestling with existential angst and the meaning of life. In reality, I find myself wrestling with DVD formats. Part of the world is NTSC (North America, Japan, bits of South America) and most of the rest is PAL. Do you care? No. Should you care? If you want to watch Tala and Leyla making out on your TV and you live in Alaska or Tokyo, yes. You can get both formats now, from either film site, or www.enlightenment-producti
ons.com.
2. We just won the Audience Award for I Can't Think Straight at the Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival. We won the same award last year for The World Unseen, so there are no words to express how tasteful and brilliant I personally find all the lesbians of Miami. Hanan and I were there last year for the festival and they were so over sold that they actually screened the movie simultaneously in two cinemas. After which they threw us a beautiful dinner at a cool restaurant filled with women who looked like extras from The L Word. Not a bad day at the office.
3. San Francisco GLFF (Frameline) just invited us to be at the screening of I Can't Think Sttraight on June 22nd at the Castro. I missed last year (The World Unseen) because I was in Mumbai, finishing post production on I Can't Think Straight. That sounds a lot more glamorous than the reality, which was that I was being driven through Mumbai in the monsoon floods, with my prized final print of I Can't Think Straight in the boot of the car. At this point, the car started filling up with water. I turned to Aseem Bajaj (my DP) and mentioned this. Or I may have shrieked and started jumping on the seats. 'The car's full of water'. 'I know,' he said, lifting a foot out of the pool gathering below us. 'That's why I wore flip flops'. 'But what about the film?' I whined. 'If it gets up to here,' he said, indicating his chin, 'we'll get out and carry it over our heads.' Obviously, I felt instantly reassured and there are still moments when I stop weeping at the thought of all my weeks in India and actually miss it, but it will be good to be slurping oysters and a dry white at Fishermans Wharf in SF rather than dodging the swimming rats in Mumbai. Just for this once...
