Sometimes filmmakers and actors make the silliest mistakes - No 1.

A great many actors and budding filmmakers I have met over the many years work so hard in training and then getting a foot on the ladder but then an opportunity comes their way and they just blow it or in many cases ignore them. I have employed thousands of people over almost 40 years, directly or indirectly and I do notice some stupid mistakes that could be so easily avoided.

So many times I am asked talks and on panels for advice on how to get on in the entertainment industry. I am not sure I can say, for I do not know, if I did I suppose I would be rich and famous or something. These are some random thoughts about what not to do which I write as I am bored with a cold over this Yuletide break. 

Maybe they are useful. Maybe they are not.

Every year I get hundreds of emails from actors or filmmakers. The former want work with me, the latter want me to consider taking on their films. Nothing wrong in that. I like it when people take that inchoative. If YOU don't help yourself no one else will. 

Whilst the majority of these are well written and courteous some take no care or attention in the composition. I have them addressed to -

Dear Guerilla Films

To whom it may concern.

Dear Sir or Madam.

In one case Dear Mr Guerilla.

For fucks sake!!

With any form of communications, it reveals a little about you.

What these tell me is that the writer is either an idiot, lazy, not aware of how to behave or worse, all three. Either way they are certainly not someone I would want to employ or work with so I bin them. Most everyone I know in the same position as me gets similar emails and does the same. 

In my day you had to go to the reference library to find out information. Now it’s just a click away.

IMDB should be the first port of call to find out who anyone is. IMDBPro if you have the money as it gives contact details. 

You look me up or my company and there is as much information as you need to work with someone. 

The alert readers of this blog will have already been to that film database to check if I am worth taking note of, or else I am just some fool spouting off, thinking he knows it all when it fact he knows sweet FA. Maybe some of you know who I am now, because this blog is after all a form of networking. 

This seeking of background information seems obvious but over the last four decades I am amazed at how a sizeable number do not check and double check.

So many times in Cannes or the London Screenings or the Galway Film Fleadh filmmakers have come to me and said "We love Guerilla Films and what you do/ how you market film and what have chosen/ etc. that we really want you to distribute our film".

To which I always reply "which of the films that we have released did you particularly like"?  I would say about half of these people I have caught out as they can't name one.

I know they are just keen for anyone to show an interest and are scatter gunning everyone, so if you don't know what that person has done, and you really can't find out before a meeting, just don't say anything. 

However, if we have a meeting scheduled you really should do your homework.

Everyone will treat you better if you know who they are. Flattery gets you everywhere. It’s what they teach you are English public schools (that's fee paying if you are in the USA).

Remember though not shoehorn this new found information into your meeting. No one likes a brown noser or kiss arse/ ass, (depending where you are from).

When I was an actor I went for an interview with an up and coming director called Mike Newell for the juv lead in script by an up and coming writer Ian McEwan. How many of you are already looking them up? More importantly how many already know their names. If you are British, you really should know them.

Mike had seen me in something and asked to have a meeting with me. However, he was seeing a great many other young men over a one-week period. In the course of the conversation he said he was looking for XXX ( I can't now remember exactly what). I said like you did in READY WHEN YOU ARE, MR MCGILL (something he had directed). He was so impressed that I knew this TV film and mentioned it a few times in that interview.

I got the job.

I will never know if my knowing his former work, and as well as I did, was a factor in him selecting me from a great many others for such an important role. What I do know is that it certainly did me no harm.

I never expect people to know the films I have produced or distribute as they are nearly all niche and have never broken out. However not having taken the trouble to find out my name for an email does make me cross and in a prearranged meeting not to know anything about my company is rude and also foolish because I am not going to take that meeting seriously.  I suspect there are so many other distributors, sales agents, producers, directors who think just like me.

I was working with a young filmmaker once. Now my modus operandi with distribution side was that I specialised in only British & Irish films for eighteen years, and the difficult films that other distributors had turned down. I would say this to anyone who asked. In the course of a meeting with that young filmmaker I suggested that I offer some of my DVD's as a prize for something we were working on.

He just blurted out "David why would anyone want any of your crappy films". He was not making any kind of a joke. He was serious. Everyone there was shocked. He had totally misinterpreted the companies MO. Even if he thought we distributed crappy films that he should not have said it, especially as he had not even made one feature film. He had not seen any of the over 100 films I had distributed nor had he done his research even though he said he was a hard and diligent worker keen to get on in the film industry. I have distributed films written by Oscar winners, directed by Oscar winners starring Sir Anthony Hopkins, Sir Alan Bates, Sir Ian Holm, Sir Kenneth Branagh, Sir Lenny Henry, Sir Derek Jacobi plus numerous famous serfs and other assorted peasants (don't you just love the English class system). I have distributed a great many excellent award winning films as well as some that maybe some would not think are as good as they should be.

As I was employing him, giving him a chance that no one else in the film industry had, you would think he would have spent an hour on IMDB clicking on the films we distribute to get an overview. 

Lazy or daft ?

Talking about making enemies. 

You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

The smoothest and most charming person I have ever encountered, who was not known when I met them, and even though she was just 17 when we met, I knew from that first encounter she would get on, was Elizabeth Hurley. And she has. She is very wealthy and famous despite being an especially limited actress. But does she care? She will never be a Maxine Peake because she will never give her all, her acting lacks fearlessness, you can see it in her eyes when she performs. However, I would warrant that the only reason she is a star is solely down to Elizabeth Hurley. She I bet never put a foot wrong. She was, and I bet still is, a master networker. 

One of the best actors ever to come of Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop in the 1950's was James Booth. Handsome as well as a seriously talented actor he was in great demand in the early 60's, he even turned down the lead in the film ALFIE.

He became a theatre star and everyone thought he would move effortlessly into film. He made a few. After his initial youthful new kid in town impact wore off his career just drifted. I was told by those who knew him that he refused to play the game and would not network. He did the work ( film/ TV/ theatre) and went home but never socialised with anyone in the industry and never did anything at all to help himself. He relied solely on his agent. Agents do of course have many clients, and many that are very similar to each other. He had what it took to be a big film star. Maybe he just did not want it. 

I have a friend who I think is an excellent writer. Really good. He has written a few scripts for me and earned over £60,000 from Guerilla Films in the process but they were never made, so very few that are developed actually do end up produced. In Cannes one year I introduced him to one of London's top literary agents. This agent took an interest and invited him to a party to talk more later that day as he was rushing to a screening.

My friend never went because he said he did not like parties. I told him that's what he had to do - Socialise and it might actually lead to the agent reading one of your scripts and taking you on. My friend said he refused to do that when he was an actor and was not going to do it as a writer.

Fifteen years on my friend is neither a writer nor an actor and now does something totally different.  Would he have succeeded if he had networked? I don't know. But what harm would it have done.

The Americans are really good at understanding the importance of networking. They are better at it than anyone in Europe. 

There are two networking events coming up in London in early 2017. I have invited a number of your actors/ filmmakers I know as I thought it would help them as they do not know that many people. Many can’t come. Some are working but some have said to me that they cannot see the point.

I said to them as they are doing nothing what have they got to lose.

I dragged a young actor who I have employed and think could be a big star  to one such event before Christmas and there he met a director at the gathering, someone else I had also invited. The actor is now workshopping for a lead role in a rather exciting film by a director who had wanted to meet more actors as he does not know that many. Nine actors I invited that night did not turn up. 

It might not lead to anything but then again…….

That's how the film industry works. Always has. And always will. 

“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.”
                                                                                                            Carrie Fisher.

Random thoughts and suggestions to take into 2017 with you.

© David Nicholas Wilkinson. 2016. All Rights Reserved.