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- Ways Into Text
If I ever do anything with these acting classes, like spend a few evenings performing in a tiny no-budget theatre production somewhere out-of-the-way in London, then, with a whole lot of luck, perhaps even getting a paying part in something slightly bigger, leading to a role in a play people I know might even hear about which would allow me to say “I'm an actor” without feeling too embarrassed when strangers ask what I do, and I'd maybe do a few of those before dabbling in a bit of indie film-making for variety and a change of pace, while going for more endless humiliating auditions, eventually, with a following wind, getting a tiny character part in a real grown-up professional film with catering trucks and everything, and be on-screen in theatres across the UK for several entire minutes, and attend a premiere in Leicester Square that's a lot of fun but, really, is a lot of fuss about a film ignored by most of the population, but all of which helps set up a flukey moment where, because of someone who knows someone who happened to be somewhere at a particular time with someone else who knew this other person who'd seen this thing once, it leads to me getting a role in an American indie film that isn't to everyone's tastes but gets a few four-star reviews for its integrity and painful honesty, all of which just about raises my profile high enough to, standing on tippy toes, be considered for a part in a Hollywood movie that even normal people would pay to watch from behind buckets of popcorn on stadium-style seating, and, after a lengthy series of hateful auditions and interviews and phone calls and parties and promises of favours I don't even want to think about from my burned-out agent, I land the part and I can't believe it and I sing in celebration and after an interminable period of pre-production, during which I descend into a deep, deep depression, convinced it's never going to happen, I spend a couple of months filming, in the desert, in New York and, for too much of the time, in front of a huge green screen which will eventually be filled with more shiny, fast-moving and futuristic CGI contraptions than the human eye can take in, even when watching the Special Edition DVD frame-by-frame, after which I have another period of depression while the film meanders its way through post-production and seems to get lost in marketing labyrinths somewhere in LA while the production company is merged with its bitter rival who, the PR team smoothly claims, it actually has a lot in common with, not least its commitment to bringing the very best movies to cinemas around the world and, incidentally, increasing its profits thanks to the remarkable synergies and cost-savings now possible, but eventually the film, my film as I like to think of it, is released and my name is even on the poster, not at the very top, granted, but still perfectly readable if you stop and look, and I appear on talk shows with slickly-suited, self-deprecating American gentlemen to promote the film and if we, for once, cut the story short a little, I end up taking gradually more prominent parts in a few more films of diminishing worth but increasing profits, dabble with peculiar quasi-religions and have people working for me who insist they do important things for the international brand that is me, but I'm really past caring by this point and, after losing a lengthy battle to keep the flatulent and wobbling public off my perfectly golden private beach I sell up, sack everyone and retreat from public life, only to emerge ten years later in an LAPD mugshot, having been arrested while running, naked, with a long beard and curly black fingernails, from a conflagration I accidentally started in the hills while trying to build a fire in my elaborate treehouse out of rejected and increasingly inarticulate film scripts I'd been writing fuelled only by a diet of yoghurt-covered pretzels and forest creatures I'd shot with my eclectic but fearsome armoury, if that should ever happen, then the prosecutor will be able to direct the jury to the day that started it all, Saturday 8th January 2005, when I took my first Ways Into Text class at the City Lit.
In City Lit on 14 July 2005. Permalink
- Photos taken Thursday 14 July 2005
- Cityofsound: Podcasting in iTunes and Odeo
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A comment posted on another site on 14 July 2005. Permalink
One problem with the Podcast implementation in iTunes, which I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere, is that you must have the Music Store enabled to access the Podcast Directory.
I switched the Music Store off months ago, as I was never going to buy anything from it. I upgraded to the new iTunes and saw the new purple 'Podcasts' icon. But when I click it I see a blank playlist and some greyed-out buttons/links - the 'Podcast Directory' link only becomes active if I go into Preferences and re-enable the Music Store, something it took me a few days to realise.
So, having switched the Music Store off again, I've never subscribed to a podcast and I have no idea how to (I searched Apple's 'iTunes and Music Store Help', but there's apparently nothing in there for 'podcast' or 'podcasts').