Why Rude Reviews?

In 1994, having written a short thriller novella, whilst keeping on the day job, I was completely unable to develop the story as, in the critical scenario, every attempt resulted in blowing the plot. I complained to a friend and he was unsympathetic saying the solution was really obvious. Which was, he said, that I was writing a story. And so? You should be writing a script. A script. It was pretty obvious really so I duly signed for a year’s script writing course at Birkbeck College.

Having finished that I continued teaching myself by watching flicks on Video - simultaneously reading the actual script. I then started attending film festivals and joined the New Producers Alliance - their best part having a monthly showing of a feature, after which the director or producer would field questions in theatre, and the pub afterwards. A great learning opportunity!

It seemed obvious that, to make any headway, I should try to get a short of mine made into a film. So, whilst at film fests I especially watched shorts and in due course someone made a film from one of my scripts and I even made an animated short, using a VHSC camera and having to self-discover how to deal with the sound and the light. After having written 3 feature length scripts ( one was an adaptation of Lorna Doone) and about 20 others of various lengths I stopped to reassess what I was doing in this field.

Whilst teaching myself about shorts I had joined Shootingepople and had been attending the Raindance and Edinburgh Film Festivals watching shorts, I even counted the ones I had seen. Which was approximately 300. Not difficult actually, but wearing on the brain, sometimes! Then I realised that nowhere was it possible to read about those deserving films. So, and it was also pretty obvious, that that was what I should do, whilst still keeping the day job, of course.

Writing about shorts is pretty difficult if there is only 90secs to opine about so I developed a way which seemed most satisfactory to me ( which is to describe what you are seeing, using infrequently the jargon of the trade) and then wrote a few, whilst still watching shorts. Having then seen about 500shorts I then quite gingerly put a review onto Shootingpeople, and the rest is history, so it is said! I then applied the same method with features, always trying to write constructively, for someone has actually made a film - it is their baby and presumably they’ve put their all into it - and they deserve respect for their creative effort. The exception being --blockbusters- and it is jolly good fun writing ridiculous send ups - the result of which is unlikely to have any effect at all on the film’s success.

So, what’s with Rude Reviews? After one seeing, you get the set up, a paragraph or two about the direction, the producer and aspects of the actual making, notes about the flick and then other comments. It's that easy.

simon