On the eve of the Cannes Film Festival

I was on a panel last night chaired and organised by Matt Harlock in central London. 

Listening to my fellow panellists like Stephen Follows and talking to those attending I was struck, once again, that the film industry stalks us like a vampire, taking our souls, and we zombie like devote our lives in the pursuit of celluloid (now digital) immortality capturing those moments in time. 

The film industry really is at times a cruel heartless master. Dracula to our Renfield. 

Once again I was surrounded by bright minds thinking up so many ingenious ways to raise funding, create stories and market these films. Films that will then enter an overcrowded marketplace and will further struggle for recognition and financial recompense. 

A great many of the filmmakers I have met over the years struggle to make even minimum wage. I had one friend who was actually well paid for his film, £160,000. Wow. Fantastic. 

However, it was all he earned for 11 years. He worked on developing several other films (no payment naturally), often extremely hard but in the end it got the better of him and he gave up and now does something else. 

If these men and women I meet transferred their energy, commitment, ingenuity and soul into manufacturing or engineering they would become successes in every sense. 

30 years ago my former business partner, a self made man Sir Ernest Hall, came to the conclusion, after co-financing a film we made with Lenny Henry and Pete Postlethwaite that if I did anything else other than make films I would be far, far better off financially than I was then or am indeed today. 

He urged me then, when I was still fairly young at 31 years old, to seek another career. Like the men and women I meet today I chose the Dark Side.

As I have said to these men and women down the years, partly tongue in cheek, and of course using a film reference "for those of you about to die (reviews and box office wise) I salute you".

However, part of me says it in all seriousness. For the path they have chosen, for most them, will be long and hard with little reward for all that effort only to then have some critic think the whole exercise a waste of time. 

A sobering post on the eve of the Cannes Film Festival.

© David Nicholas Wilkinson. All rights reserved. 2017.