First, an apology for that crime against music that was the Artful Dodger featuring Craig David. Ouch. Secondly, why? I’ve been watching the West Wing recently, right from Season 1 because I missed it first time it was on and because, after watching the Social Network I was in the mood for a bit more Sorkin. Nothing very much happens, a lot of gobby people walk around a lot looking smug or anxious or both and everything’s so wonderfully verbose. The acting is great, you get the sense that everyone is really enjoying themselves and it all feels incredibly fresh, even now. That is all the way up until the point the titles roll, or you’re given that twee musical zap to take you into the ad breaks. Then it shows its age in desperate fashion. And why not, it’s over ten years old, from 1999 in fact, and the same year that rancid Artful Dodger song came out. In the show they’re using black Apple Powerbooks, and I remember that was the computer I had in my first job in a brand consultancy in London. We didn’t have flat screens back then, mobile phones were in their infancy and home broadband was way off. But you forget that. Somehow it gets lost.

Back then I was a young buck, I hadn’t even thought about a career in film at that point and I was a lot less cynical. Or was I? We tend to be revisionist in our view of history and it’s tempting to view life as one long journey of evolution, improvement, progress. Never look back, always look forward, the unknown possibilities of glorious potential are far more glittering and seductive than the partial failures of the past. By the way, if you are going to fail, do it gloriously – nothing worse than a damp squib. It’s one of my favourite things to do, revisit the past, review my old work in light of what I think now and I’m constantly reminded that it hasn’t been a voyage of progress and constant improvement. Sure, my sensibilities, technique, experience and skills have all moved forward but the fun spark that gave it all lift off is clearly written across all my idiotic creative meanderings from earlier on in my life. Comforting and yet somehow disappointing. It’d be nice to feel, yes I’ve really moved forward, changed, evolved and transformed, but maybe that’s the wrong way to look at things. Maybe it’s less about the brush strokes of a painter, creating something from nothing, and more about the crafted chisel of a sculptor – the art is hiding inside, you just have to cut away everything else.

Blah blah blah

When I was younger I spent a year in France, living with a host family, and going to school. It was my gap year, a time when most people sling on a backpack and get grubby in exotic places for the passport stamp and a tropical disease. I had my A-Levels already and three years at Oxford were on the cards, but I ended up sitting the Baccalauréat that year and am in the very unusual position of having two sets of senior school qualifications. Bizarre. During that time I kept an extensive journal. I never saw the connection to this blog till recently but scribbling inane mutterings about myself and indulging in auto-Freudian analysis is nothing new. I did the same thing when I worked at Camp in America and I’ve been doing it intermittently now for the last three years, the blog being the most public and refined iteration. When I dug up those journals and began reading about this eighteen year old who I thought would bear no resemblance to me. Identical in every way. Nothing has changed, I’m exactly the same person I always was. Now, I’m more self-confident and sure-footed but I haven’t changed a bit.

This year has promised so much and has begun to deliver. The dreams of so many years are now starting to be realised and that feels good. You can spend a lot of time trying to escape past versions of yourself, but I think the really strong filmmakers just have a better understanding of who they are and what that means than the rest of us. Embrace that and you ought to be onto something good.

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