Tuesday 6 February 2007

The Feeling is not just a soppy band

Jobs. Jobs. Jobs.
One thing about 90% of the positions that I have done in the past have one thing in common. The feeling. The feeling that I just want to go home. Have you ever literally fallen asleep for a second at work. I have plenty of times. My eyelids feel like they weigh a ton, and I'm so tired that I could whitey from smoking a cigarette.
my start time was pushed from 9am to 8.45am; fucking great. that's 15 mins in bed that I have lost (In fact it's more like 20 mins as I've always had trouble with pre-9am starts)
The truth is my CV reads like a yellow pages. I've always given my best at whatever I've done (to an extent) and People have praised me for it. I was described as an 'asset' at Aerofone, despite never being able to make it in for 8.30am and always being stoned in the second half of the day. (it was summer, though)
But then I moved to Manchester.
New Start.
New Job.
New Attitude.
New Feeling? Nope. I still just wanted to get home.
HKW was pretty boring. back at Wetherspoons I was getting death threats. (lovely) and I simply could not be bothered.
after HKW finished I put my CV out on mymanchesterjobs.co.uk and got a call from a lovely girl called Sarah, she had a client, Adidas, who my be interested in meeting me. While on the phone I explained the gap in my CV was when I was writing Sex With Friends, she told her partner was directing a film he had written and was looking for a producer. "Have you produced anything before?" In 1999 I had directed The Edge of Town, So I told her about that. Asking if it was okay to pass my number on to Mike, I obviously said yes and a couple of days later Mike phoned me. We met for a coffee between Christmas and New years and talked about the project. Most of the crew were in place, but because of the need to push the shoot back some of them needed to be replaced as they had other commitments, and a budget still needed to be finalised, so we set to work.
I was working again, this time between 12 and 17 hours a day, from home, on location, recceing, and do you know what, I didn't want to go home, not once did I watch the clock and never did I think, "fuck man, I'm bored"
That horrible feeling had gone away. I'd found my calling.
But with only expenses keeping my head afloat, I was getting a little nervous. Loving the film and being torn between my financial responsibilities brought be to tears. Things were becoming tense between me and Kat and several arguments exploded. Two weeks before production Mike said that he'd "understand if I had to walk away" and that he wouldn't hold it against me. But there was no way I was walking away from this. The feeling of dreading my job had finally gone, and thinking back to what my brother, Jonny had said to me about eight years ago "We're working Class, Ant. We're always going to have to work and graft for what we want" I wondered, Does that mean I have to live with that horrible feeling for the rest of my life? NO THANK YOU.
I battled on into and through production and the film was in the can. A job well done. A starved bank account. It needed a feeding and pretty quickly.
Hitting the agencies to find a job, the same week as gang members moved into the flat stopped me from getting any real rest after the film. My skin has exploded and I have the eyes of a junkie. But I'm back at work. Sitting in an office, with a phone, a PC, a time sheet and The Feeling that I just want to go home.
And there is nothing more depressing than that.
The difference is that I have seen and had the role where that feeling is nothing but a distant memory - and I can do that job better and with more passion than any other bollocks.
So here we go, work. get my own place. Get some corporate work. Be ahead in my rent by a few months. Quit this job. get a part time job. Develop a feature film, in fact, develop two, get more corporate, get some work on a crew to get more set experience. Because then and only then will the feeling only ever be a distant memory, and that 40/50 hours a week we spend at work, will be something that I look forward too.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You gotta keep at it Ant, staying in the same job for more than 6 months might help matters - you have to be more tolerant and less "chatty". Have you thought about doing some voluntry work with any film / drama groups? Would keep you outta trouble for a while and would be a good way to meet people!
Anyway, although your not in an ideal position at least you've had a taste of passion which is definatley healthy. You need to think of what your priorities are and what you're going to do to have long-term happiness.