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It’s been a punishing schedule this week and by the end of today I was feeling the strain. Over this weekend I am appearing in a short film and we shot the interior bits today (getting through a little more than a page of the 7 page script -with the rest to do on Sunday). It was mainly walking down alleys and up and down steps, with only about 20 words of dialogue in total, but it took a long time to get right - and due to a slight scheduling error we had to do the trickiest scene in double quick time because we were about to lose one of the other actors as she’s appearing in a play.
There was a good atmosphere and everyone worked hard to get their bits done, but as glamorous as it looks, acting is a tough and sometimes tedious business and on top of the lack of sleep and lingering virus and stepping in a little trough of some very dubious liquid which soaked through my trainer into my sock, it was hard to keep the energy and enthusiasm up. But we did.
I dropped one prop (as instructed in the script) and it broke, which made it pretty tricky to do the subsequent shots. I then also dropped a phone I was using by accident and its case broke. This is not a production with a huge budget and every little set back like this is greeted without anger and an immediate attempt to work out how to circumvent the problem. I think we managed to get round all the problems.
I was amused that some of my tweets decrying the performance of York City got picked up by the local press - but more amused by the comments about it. I particulary loved being accused of cashing in! I don’t know how the person who left that remark thought I might manage to monetise half a dozen off-the-cuff tweets about a football team currently lying in 20th place in the 5th division, but I enjoyed imagining myself thinking I’d come up with a masterplan that would boost my career as I sat down to write the tweets.
Having said that, it did work to some extent for Andrew Lawrence. I watched the documentary about his controversial Facebook post tonight, which I don’t think really got to the bottom of who he is, or why he did it, but there were some very astute comments from Brendan Burns and Reg D Hunter in particular. I can understand some of the impetus for Lawrence lashing out, because political correctness can seem up itself and from the outside (as I know very well) it does feel like some kind of clique is operating within TV. I think his original post might have been unremarked upon if he hadn’t mentioned “ethnic comedians” or “women posing as comedians”. I have met him a few times and I liked the stuff I saw him doing back then. He comes across in the documentary as shy and unassuming and mainly likeable. Mostly in his act you can see his “controversial” statements are mischievous attempts to get a laugh from saying what you’re not meant to say (and all comedians do that to some extent), though occasionally the pay off might not warrant the reinforcement of stereotypes… But the section where he looks through his book of clippings about himself is the most revealing. He says he feels sorry for any new comedians being told that they are going to be the next big thing and then have the disappointment of that not happening. And this is what this was really all about and I have to say most comedians will have some sympathy with that. I struggled with the fact that my early promise didn’t translate into more “success” and certainly at times have thrown my toys out of the pram about the unfairness of it all. But in a neat parallel with current politics, you shouldn’t be looking to blame others for this. It’s probably not anyone’s fault at all, but it’s most likely to be your own. And no one wants to acknowledge that they might have been at fault. There are so many great comedians and so much luck in which ones catch the eye of TV executives and the public. But ultimately the impetus for that Facebook post was a voicing of that frustration (and if you searched through this blog I bet you could find some similar stuff from me, if hopefully less racist and sexist). All comedians want attention to some degree and that’s why they do this job and most of us would like to be more successful than we are and will moan and bitch. The irony is that Lawrence is actually doing much better than most of those comedians already. And doesn’t realise that the comedians he perceives of being ahead of him will also feel the same about the comedians they perceive to be ahead of them. You can never be happy if that’s the way you look at your own life.
He’s seen a way of maybe using this attitude to boost his career and maybe it’s a big joke or a sort of 24 hour a day character. Good luck to him if that’s the case. I’d like to see a more focused and intelligent and less self-concerned attack on political correctness (even though I don’t think there’s generally much wrong with it), because there’s stuff that is in need of mocking.
But I realised that the way to stop this stuff getting to you is to look inwards and not outwards. And also to realise that hardly any of it is actually personal.
Bonus RHLSTP special with Dan Schreiber is now up here.
