Roll up your sleeves and work.

I'm rather a limbo slump at the moment. I'm loving life in Los Angeles and doing all the right technical things I can possibly do on my own, whilst apartment hunting and visa applying but truly until my visa has come through I may not by law work for anyone else. 

In the meantime, I write new work that I may produce myself on little-to-no budget. Though in the past few days, I've struggled to motivate myself to do that because, let's face it, limbo sucks.

This morning, however, I read something that has completely reignited that fire in me (and I am going to have it printed and put on my wall right away).

"The best advice I can offer to those heading into the world of film is not to wait for the system to finance your projects and for others to decide your fate. If you can’t afford to make a million-dollar film, raise $10,000 and produce it yourself. That’s all you need to make a feature film these days. Beware of useless, bottom-rung secretarial jobs in film-production companies. Instead, so long as you are able-bodied, head out to where the real world is. Roll up your sleeves and work as a bouncer in a sex club or a warden in a lunatic asylum or a machine operator in a slaughterhouse. Drive a taxi for six months and you’ll have enough money to make a film. Walk on foot, learn languages and a craft or trade that has nothing to do with cinema. Filmmaking — like great literature — must have experience of life at its foundation. Read Conrad or Hemingway and you can tell how much real life is in those books. A lot of what you see in my films isn’t invention; it’s very much life itself, my own life. If you have an image in your head, hold on to it because — as remote as it might seem — at some point you might be able to use it in a film. I have always sought to transform my own experiences and fantasies into cinema."

-Werner Herzog
(full article here)

Dr Mandela

Earlier, I was listening to the radio and 5fm was tuned into a conference wherein Madiba's health was discussed. There was an announcement that he was to be discharged from the hospital at some point this afternoon, and that - owing to his contraction of Tuberculosis when he was imprisoned - he has always had weaker lungs, but that he is reacting astonishingly well to the treatment and, hence, for a 92-year-old man, he never fails to surprise us all... even the doctors, it seems. 


I got so emotional waiting for the verdict on the radio. I just sat there, alone in my car, on the verge of tears, not knowing why but hoping for the best and eventually just having a little sob of relief. I think he must be the strongest dude on earth. 


What a legend.

In.

I fucking got in. I can't contain myself. I've been jumping around and screaming like a crazy person, which, anyone who knows me would say is very unusual. I'm just not like that. So... I'm pretty damn excited! I just wanna kiss someone!


The agent I saw was a woman named Janet and she was really much sweeter and friendlier than I had imagined her to be but was also super straight with me about things one normally wouldn't want to have been straight to about. Make sense? Like, she told me my big front teeth don't need to be seen so I need to practice smiling in a way that connects the essence of my smile to the viewer of the photograph or footage but without showing my front teeth OR looking like a spaz who's trying to hide her front teeth.


I also had to do some impromptu accent work for her. That was intimidating. Wow.


And then I did my trusty Juno monologue and got a couple laughs but she said the beginning was too fast - a crit I ALWAYS get. It's really a problem for me. Perhaps it's the nerves. Probably. I'll trump that shit. Eventually.


The whole process made me wonder what all the big guys went through at their first meeting with an agent. I wish I could watch the footage... But for now. Some pics of Bonnie Timmermann's actors in their early days:

and a couple more...

(hahah! Look at the similarity between Sandra Bullock and George Clooney!)

...and, last but not least:

... my favourite: Brad Pitt, Gwyneth Paltrow and Uma Thurman.

Over and out xxx