30 Days Premiere

As I type this, the time is 6:43 in the PM, which means that the World Premiere of 30 Days will be starting in 17 minutes... Well, maybe I'm better off saying that it's scheduled to begin in 17 minutes. After all, it's a Nigerian function and Nigerians, like all other nations of the Sable Genus of Humanity, are notorious for never starting anything on time!

I really wish I could have attended, but I'm unable to get down down to Maryland due to work obligations. I really hope the movie does well, though. It's written, produced and directed by Mildred Okwo, who has become something of an aquaintance of mine through Nigerian film circles. I have to admit that I feel somewhat... Well, not "jealous," but y'know... One of our original goals with TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN (ha! this all caps thing will take a little getting used to) was to be the first Young Turks out the gate with an high profile, high quality, crowd-pleasing Nigerian flick. Now that I'm not as young of a Turk (this project has been in gestation for some time), I'm not as obsessed with being the first... Just the best.

In any case, if Mildred's film does well, it will only help us because she would have kicked down the gate. I'm already learning from her experience anyway, in terms of adapting to the unique challenges of shooting in Nigeria. One of those challenges is, of course, access to good equipment and access to it when you need it. To that end, I am currently working on acquiring as much of my own equipment as possible. I am prepared to sell my blood, plasma, sperm, and even pimp myself out to VI A COM. Worse comes to worst, I'll just rent the stuff out to other poor suckers.

Actually, that gives me an idea about what I should probably write about on this blog until we start production: Nollywood. I know that the phenomenon of the Nigerian film scene has been widely reported on lately but I'm not sure that they've given a clear enough picture. Maybe I'll write about Nollywood, explain its ins and outs and why what we are doing with TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN is so... er, revolutionary (self-promotion alert) within that context.

Yeah, that's something to think about.

Anyway, the mp3 of the day is Gbe Mi Lo by Ofege

(This is also a track I hope to include on the soundtrack, but I promise not to make this a continuing theme of any sort)

Ofege - "the schoolboy sensations," as the band's membership was largely composed of high school students - was probably the most popular Nigerian band of the early to mid-1970s, but they are near forgotten today. Unlike other outfits of era such as BLO and Monomono, they didn't benefit at all from the Afro-funk revival of a few years ago and were represented on none of the many compilations. I pitched the idea of an Ofege retrospective to Strut Records a few years ago, but unfortunately they went out of business shortly thereafter.

I've often described Ofege as a mix of the Bay City Rollers and Santana as they were a boy band with a penchant for trippy rock freakouts. As is the case with a lot of their Nigerian rock peers, I find their vocals disappointing. It's like they were so obsessed with rocking out instrumentally that they never really gave a second thought to recruiting a decent singer. This one's an instrumental, though; from their debut album, Try and Love, released in... um, I think 1972. Enjoy.

(I think there's got to be a better way to post these mp3s than Rapidshare... I'll work that out later. Time to get my grub on.)