So it’s been a funny old week in that it’s passed quickly and without incident and suddenly I’m a week older with nothing to show for it. Wait - that’s not quite true. I went to see “No Country For Old Men” on Saturday (which brings my tally of films seen in the cinema over last 30 days to 3 which almost equals the number of films I saw on the big screen throughout the preceding 9 months) It’s a fantastic film. Go and see it. Then come back here and we can talk about it.

On the job front, I was due to leave my current contract tomorrow but as of yesterday, have a three week reprieve which is handy because contracts in my line of work have been a bit thin on the ground unless I want to go to Paris. Or Germany. My ability to speak French far surpasses my skills in German (which are non-existent) but still amount to little more than being able to ask “Ou sont les toilettes?” so I failed on the requirement to be able to parlez dans le Francais Businessomatique or something. That being said, it’s looking likely I’ll get an interview for a job with a good rate of pay that my CV is more than a match for. The downside being that it’s at the other end of the country which would entail being away from home in cheap-as-shit accommodation during the week for the best part of the next three months (IF I get the contract!)

The two implications of this are i) I’ll be in a contract away from home over the time that Hatchling #2 arrives and ii) the idea of shooting one of my shorts between now and then has evaporated into nothingness as weekends will, understandably, be devoted to quality family time. Verily doth the cookie crumbleth in this manner. The other implication is that I’ll have plenty of free time in the evenings to write. Or run. Or write and run. Or write while running. Or run then think about writing. Or build some of the websites that I’ve got to work on. Although that requires a laptop (very much like the one I didn’t buy on eBay this time last year) which I won’t be getting until April because of the tax benefits in waiting.

Speaking of short films - Wormwood is highly unlikely to happen just yet, irrespective of whether I’m away or not. The main reason is that I want it to do it as well as I can but feel that I need more practice behind the camera first. The supporting reasons are that it’s quite an involved script and has a lot of elements that will cost (as previously mentioned) in either time, money or resources. It might also take more than a weekend to shoot so will need vast amounts of production and logistical planning. Instead I’m going back to my original original plan (Plan A, revision 7, release candidate 0.93beta) and redrafting a script that only has 3 main characters and 2 siginificant locations. It’ll much easier and cheaper to film and I don’t mind doing it with my own camera.

In other news: The Writer’s Strike still going on although the DGA have come to an agreement with the AMPTP that may or may not bode well for future WGA negotiations. And this just in - Tom Cruise is a total nutter and Jerry “That bloke from Sliders” O’Connell is a very, very funny man. (The linked site is a video site dedicated to comedy videos and was set up by Will Ferrell of all people. With some of his friends. And Judd Apatow. A good way of killing time if you need to. Better than killing someone else. Or yourself.)