Charlie Productions : What you filming? Blue movies?

Thankfully it has been sometime since I've had the traumatic job of arranging a film shoot. Good fortune and hard work means that, generally speaking, I'm now safely ensconced in the protective bubble of being the director. The task of actually getting people to agree to let Chris and I unfold our weirdness on the world is all someone else's problem. However there was a time when Chris and I did every job on the film and we've both had our fair share of trying to persuade normal decent people to let us take over their house, pub, park, high street, supermarket or underground railway system for the good of cinema. Invariably this seemed to involve a question I never knew how to answer. "What you filming? Blue movie is it?"

[not porn from danny's found jesus]

The wording ranged from "So - ah - what - ah - sort of - ah - film - is this exactly?" to "There's nothing - I mean we'd need to see a copy of the script or whatever first obviously - but I mean - there's nothing - is there?" but the meaning remains (to quote Lady Chatterly) "Tell me it's not just fucking."

Two things always struck me about this. One was the impossibility of saying yes, an impossibility which made clear the wistful nature of the question. No one could have seriously expected us to admit we were intending to make a porn film (not that we ever were). Nice Barbara in the Savacentre couldn't have really imagined I would waste her time by bothering to ask if I and my mates could film some guys fucking in the freezer department? Surely we take for read that the phone call that starts "Hallo is that the Savacentre, yeah, we're making a film called "Supermarket Slappers" and I was wondering if you'd mind us spraying gisum over the fruit and veg...." is a phone call asking for the shortest shrift in the history of shrifts, it is a question that demands shrift so short even a porn star would hesitate to wear it outdoors.

Nevertheless the question is always asked, perhaps never more honestly than by the pair of old men in genuinely dirty macs who some how managed to talk their way into the flat in which we were shooting our second short film "Cold" and, glancing lustfully around the shabby interior sidled up and muttered "What you filming then? Blue Movie is it?"

Perhaps with the odd democratisation of internet pornography where every lonely soul with a webcam seems keen to record themselves in gynaecological detail for perpetuity, the magical aura of a porn film is finally fading. But back then it seemed plain that everyone hoped they knew what we were really up to and it felt like they wanted us to be up to it much more than we did.

[not pornography from good morning, who are you?]

This is the other side of the blue movie question, the side that has not gone away. I still get assured, often by the most surprising people, that if Chris and I want to make some money out of our filmmaking we should knock off a porn film. No one, it seems, would hold it against us. We all have to eat and if filming someone eat out their pretty neighbour is the easiest way to fund our serious filmmaking then why the hell shouldn't we.

Sadly, since I'm all in favour of easy money, pornography is not the answer. I researched the matter a few years ago when it seemed like the possible core of a feature script that never really held together as a story. Going into Soho's proper porn emporia and asking questions about the actual business of the business was a delightfully chilly experience. For a short while their caginess gave the whole thing a taste of that illicit glamour that lay behind nice Barbara Savacentre's worried tone on the phone. It felt other worldly and under the counter...

Then through a rather tortuous series of connections and phone calls I ended up talking to a guy who made his living as something between producer, pimp and casting agent and the whole thing became clear. Though at first suspicious of me when he realised I was genuinely just researching a non-porn film he launched into a long winded moan about the state of the industry the like of which you can find on an almost daily basis on Shooting People. The market was shrinking, the costs were going up, the profits were being squeezed and a bunch of (literally) fucking amateurs were cutting the ground from under him.

The money isn't in the making it's in the distribution and if you want to get your film taken up by a distributor then you need to do a lot of work first, at your own expense. If you can build your own audience and prove that they like your kind of filth then may be, just may be, a distributor will take you on but the terms are generally pretty negative so you're unlikely to see much of a return.

In short the porn business was just like the normal film business but smellier and more desperate. It takes just as long, is just as hard and the rewards are, if anything, much smaller.

In different ways I have, since, repeated this basic conversation with people who work in music videos, corporate videos, wedding videos, television comedy, television drama and commercials as well, of course, with people in the feature film business. Everywhere the answer is annoyingly the same... there is no quick way to make money, if you want to earn a living you have to first prove that you are serious and capable.

As soon people learn that you are trying to make a film they will helpfully suggest you try your hand at pornography or weddings or music videos or adverts so you can support yourself as you go. However all of these things are just as hard and just as time consuming, so you may well be better off focusing your energy on the thing that really engages you.

Charlie Productions believe passionately in doing things and always trying to stop in time for tea.

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