James Ricketson
Europe Guest House
# 51, Street 136 Phnom Penh
+855 17 898 361
Mark
Hamlyn
Manager,
Development and Production
Screen
NSW
22nd
September 2014
Dear
Mark
How many filmmakers are there in Australia who
have made three feature films, dozens of hours of TV documentary, who shoot
their own documentaries and record sound and who have written more than a dozen
feature screenplays?
My guess is that you could count them on two
hands. Maybe one. I am one such filmmaker and yet, with my 43 years of
experiences in most areas of filmmaking, you have shifted the goalposts in such
a way as to render me ineligible to even apply for Early Stage script
development! ANGKOR, a TV series to be shot, documentary style, on the streets
of Phnom Penh, is a series unlike any that has ever been shot in Cambodia! Maybe anywhere!
So secure are you in the wisdom of Screen NWS’s
policy of exclusion, you feel no need for anyone at Screen NSW to read my 30
page submission(not even the one page synopsis, it seems!) to see if ANGKOR is
potentially brilliant or second rate and unworthy of funding! This exercise
would take all of half an hour. No, the to priority for you, as Manager for
Development and Production, is having ticks in all the right boxes. If I had
made a feature film 10 years and one month ago I would not qualify to apply! If
I had made a feature film 9 years and 11 months ago, I would qualify to apply!
What an extraordinary state of affairs. And one
that you know, I know, any and everyone in the industry knows, will not apply
to those filmmakers whose careers you wish to help. It will apply only to those
to whom you wish to thwart.
If you had bothered to ask me who my script
editor for ANGKOR was going to be you would have learnt that, with close to 40
years experience, he more than qualifies to be a producer in accordance with
the guidelines that render me ineligible. If you had bothered to ask I would
have also told you that one of the directors I want to work with on the series
is likewise more than qualified under your guidelines. ANGKOR is much too big a
project to do by myself. It requires a team, as was evident in the cover letter
for my application. But no, the leader of the team, the ‘showrunner’ if you
like, does not qualify so that’s that!
Nothing in my application, Mark, has elicited
even the mildest of curiosity on your part, despite the ‘careful consideration’
you applied to rejecting my application outright, unread. The reason why you
refuse to read or assess ANGKOR has, of course, little or nothing at all to do
with your guidelines - the operative
word being ‘guide’. It has to do with
your falling into line behind the Screen Australia ban on me – a ban based on a
lie.
C’est la vie!
Screen Australia and Screen NSW agree that the
Australian film industry does not need ‘trouble-makers’ such as myself; does
not want filmmakers who are not cowed into silence by film bureaucrats who,
more concerned with their own jobs than with Australian film, intimidate
critics who suggest in public that they may lack qualifications to perform
their jobs efficiently or be outright incompetent.
It is perfectly OK (indeed it is expected) that
filmmakers be judged, in public, for the work they produce. David Michod copped
a public serving recently for THE ROVER and this must have been, I imagine,
painful for him. However, it goes with the territory and we filmmakers have to
cop it sweet when criticized in public. (David is a talented filmmaker. He will recover.)
Say anything unpleasant about the performance of
thin-skinned Australia film bureaucrats, however, and you stand a very good
chance of being blackballed – as I have been by both Screen Australia and
Screen NSW. I can live with this. I will still be making films (albeit with the
help of a zimmer frame on set) when the current lot of film bureaucrats have
been put out to pasture, including yourself.
The saddest aspect of the proliferation of guidelines
that serve no creative purpose other than to act as albratrosses about
filmmaker’s necks, is the impact your rules and regulations will have on a new
generation of filmmakers for whom there should be no rules at all other than to
elicit in their audiences, in whatever way they can, a ‘wow’ reaction. Your ‘guidelines’
are so many buckets of cold water thrown over the imaginations of these
youngsters.
I know that answering questions is not your forte,
Mark (indeed the very asking of questions of a film bureaucrat seems evidence
enough for a filmmaker to be banned!) but here are a few:
If I have a script editor/screenwriter/producer
on my team who meets the Screen NSW guidelines, will you accept my application
for Early Development for ANGKOR?
Given that ANGKOR will require an international
cast, does a producer with the requisite qualifications have to be an
Australian citizen?
In relation to SHIPS IN THE NIGHT, the first
draft funded by Screen NSW, what funds am I qualified to apply for with this
project? I would like to know, in advance, where the goalposts are. I do not
wish to make an application only to find that the goalposts have shifted or
that you have found, somewhere in your guidelines, some reason to knock my
application back.
At the risk of repeating myself, this exclusionary
policy of Screen NSW’s is plain stupid. Other than being used as a way to punish
persona non grata filmmakers such as myself, it serves no purpose. I presented
Graeme Mason with an alternative way of assessing projects some months ago. It
is to be found at:
http://jamesricketson.blogspot.com/2013/12/alternativer-script-development-model.html
Graham never did respond to my suggestions.
Whilst I have never met him, Graham seems to have brought into the idea that
communicating with me would place him at risk – the proposition presented by
Ruth Harley to the board (and accepted by its members) as one of the reasons
for the ban placed on me.
Here is another set of thoughts re screenwriting
and the ways in which funding bodies can, perhaps, start to relate to
screenwriters in a more productive way.
What I am suggesting by way of a change in the
assessment system would save on paperwork and consume much less time on the part
of film bureaucrats. With such a system in place a barely literate 14 year old
with a great idea could have his or her idea read by someone. There is a high likelihood that the next ‘big
thing’ will be created by teenagers with no formal filmmaking experience. If Screen
NSW (and Screen Australia) does not have in place structures that can accommodate
such a 14 year old and his/her mates you will miss the boat and be playing
catch-up once you realize that the times they are a changing.
If you are prepared to take the risk that reading
my 30 pages may not, in fact, place you at any risk at all, read them Mark, or
get some other daring person within Screen NSW to do so.
best wishes
James Ricketson
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