Jamie Drew has a blog

Everything I Knew About 'The Avengers' Before I'd Even Seen It

It took me a while to see The Avengers so naturally I was fair game for spoilers just for being on the internet. This is all of them. Question: how long can you – yes, you – leave it until you start spoiling films for me? I’m thinking “forever.” Just assume I didn’t see whatever film you’re talking about.

Ever since my housemate murmured after Cabin in the Woods that Chris Hemsworth might be an objectively attractive man, my favourite thing to do is elbow him whenever Hemsworth appears on screen and say “hey, Adam, it’s your boyfriend.”

So far, this has yielded a statistically significant amount of hilarity.

That is to say: 100%.

Rules for “Supernova Johnson” (working title)

• Don’t be cheesy;
• Don’t be “meta.”
• Just be funny.

I’m Torn Between “Fuck You!” and “Thank You?”

— the reason I brought you in for an interview is your background in film. I like a messy CV; I hate the assembly-line CVs that come through here.

— well, I’m glad it was messy, then.

— so where did this interest start? Was it childhood?

— yes, my mum had a shelf full of of Schwarzenegger videos when I was little.

(This is an interview for a marketing job, by the way. This is only tangentially related.)

— I assume your taste has broadened since then?

— ha ha, yes, I’m more of a Kubrick guy these days.

— so what is it that brings you here today? What are you looking for? What is it you want to do eventually? What’s the goal?

— well, I’m looking for a career that’s creative, where I can utilise my ‘natural talents,’ and I want something challenging. I go a little bit mad very easily.

— okay, but what do you want to do? What job, specifically?

— er,

— not necessarily right away.

— …blue-skies thinking?

— yes.

— well, you know, I do a lot of writing in my spare time, always keeping busy.

(We have discussed this at length earlier in the interview. The interview has actually just been a series of questions I wasn’t prepared for because they were so unexpected; tell me about yourself, no, university is too far along, what do your parents do, where did you grow up, what took you down this path, and so on. He seemed interested in this aspect of my life, so I told him. I am very confused by this point in the conversation.)

— I guess, many years down the line, I’d like to be a working screenwriter. Oh, you’re writing that down. That’s interesting.

— I’m going to stop this here. I don’t think this is going to work out.

— oh. Okay.

— it’s not that you aren’t talented; I just think you should be doing that instead. Working towards that. You need to be a little more tenacious, I think. The trick is just to not go away until someone offers you a job.

— well… all right. It was nice meeting you, and I appreciate the… quick feedback.

— there’s no time for fucking around.

thedailydoodles:

“You’re Going to Die in Space!!”

Jamie Drew’s mother’s last sneer echoed in his head every morning of every day… “You’re going to die in space, little man!!!”. 

The words powered him all the way through college, the Pre-Astronaut masters program, Astronaut school, the residency on the Moon, and even the revered Space Academy, motivating him to show her she was wrong and fat and stupid and dumb. 

“What the hell do you know about SPACE?!” he’d scream at her memory in his head, “I’m a goddamned astrophysicist, MOM, you don’t know anything!!!!!”

But as the cheap twine safety rope that hadn’t been replaced for years due to budget cutbacks caused by the profit-centric privatization of space SNAPPED, severing him from his tether to the celebrity gossip channel’s satellite he was repairing, he realized… dammit. 

My stupid mom was right.

And that was a fate worth than death itself.

Posted 5/8/2012

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I’m famous! I knew it would happen one of these days.

I actually did an unpaid trial shift at a Victorian gastropub in Holborn last week, even though I’ve done innumerable unpaid shifts in the past and none of them has ever led to an actual job. It was eight hours long, incredibly busy on a Thursday night: 5pm until about 1am. My prospective employer decided to work in another room for the evening so he couldn’t actually observe me on that shift but left me with a wonderful, helpful supervisor who worked here to support her blossoming acting career. I did well. I got along with customers, learned the ropes pretty quickly, made a lot of money in tips.

“I hear you did really well today,” boss-to-be said at the end of the shift.

I smiled at my supervisor for the evening: thank you. ”It took a while to get the hang of where everything was.”

“Well, so,” he said, yawning and checking his diary, “what I’ll do is, I’ll write up the rota and get you in for a second trial maybe next week.”

“Brilliant,” I said at the moment, but after I’d woken up a little on the bus half an hour later — “wait.”

A second trial shift? Eight more hours of unpaid work? All for a job which – to be frank – could be done by a trained golden retriever? Nobody had ever said anything about a second shift, and what then? How many hoops do they want me to jump through, exactly?

So, long story short: I didn’t answer the phone or return any calls the next day. I may not have a real job, but I still have that last, tiny scrap of self-respect.

Variations on the Phrase “You’re Probably Overqualified for This Job”

• and what did you learn from your second degree?
• and the first was an M.A., is that right?
• so why did you decide not to go into speech therapy?
• I see from your CV you spent a bit of time in healthcare…
• so why are you looking at the hospitality industry — would this be a career change or a quick stepping stone?
• would your freelance work interfere with the hours you can work here?
• what kind of skills can you bring from your volunteering?
• what kind of hours do you work at the… ‘Ministry of Stories’?
• wow, that’s a real place?
• so you give away your time for free.
• that’s interesting.
• would you be interested in an indeterminate number of unpaid trial shifts?

The snake, Basil, was introduced into the film by Stanley Kubrick when he found out Malcolm McDowell had a fear of reptiles.

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Hypothesis: fuckyeahbehindthescenes is the most addictive blog on all the Tumblrs. When I was a pretentious sixteen/seventeen-year-old boy I discovered the IMDB’s ‘trivia’ section and spent more hours than I’d like to admit trawling through it. Then someone added behind-the-scenes photographs to that concept and ensnared me for the whole afternoon.

Anecdotes like this one made Stanley Kubrick (along with Tarantino, as discussed) the model for the kind of filmmaker I wanted to be until I realised that directing bored the hell out of me and the meat of the thing was usually in the screenplay anyway.

A truth: you can’t make a good film out of a bad script. Take Children of Men: undeniably it’s a beautifully-directed piece of cinema, but a terrible film. The exposition, so awkward! The dialogue, so on-the-nose! Clive Owen, who let you out of acting school?

The inverse isn’t true. You very much can make a bad film out of an amazing script. I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head. Maybe the shot-for-shot remakes of Night of the Living Dead or Psycho. The lesson here is that directing is harder than it looks. Also, kind of boring.

But, I don’t know. I haven’t given it a shot – oh-ho! – in years. Maybe if this whole ‘jobsearch’ thing works out I’ll invest in a new camera. What are they, £300? I could get £300 through a Kickstarter campaign. “I am bored. Give me a camera to make some terrible short films and maybe they’ll be good one day.”

“I know I have a lot of ideas and plans, and yes that whole start-doing-comedy-again thing didn’t work out but I promise this one is different.”

“Come on, guys, it’s £300.”

“Update: Oh, also, I’ll need money for herbal cigarettes and moustache wax. What is that, £50?”

Joss Whedon on Comic Books, Abusing Language and the Joys of Genre

“I have abused language. I love it and I abuse it…. I don’t write just to be clever. But sometimes I do. And if you don’t have an understanding of the language, then the way in which it’s bent doesn’t actually register. It’s the old you-gotta-paint-like-them-before-you-can-paint-like-you thing.”