Abolitionist drama Amazing Grace screens at Los Angeles Pan-African Film Festival!

...And in OTHER news: Abolitionist drama Amazing Grace screens at Los Angeles Pan-African Film Festival!



http://www.independentngonline.com/news/45/ARTICLE/21388/2007-02-22.html

"Jeta Amata’s 135-minute Amazing Grace was screened on Tuesday, February 13 and Saturday, February 17. It is the Governor Donald Duke beloved story said to have been penned by a slave ship captain after hearing it sung by the people captured, enslaved and transported in his ship. But like it happened at the Cannes Film Festival in France last year, the more acclaimed and better-packaged Amazing Grace by Michael Apted was a star attraction at PAFF. It was given a special screening on Thursday, February 15 and it attracted a higher gate fee, drew more crowd and better received. There was, however, no denying Jeta of his five minutes of fame. He shone like a million stars at the Saturday screening of his film and was seen in the company of some female admirers as he stepped out of the Magic Johnson Theatre in Crenshaw, LA, where all the films were screened."

Serendipitous, ain't it?

August 3, 2006 - “I’m a artist… and I’m sensitive about my s#!t” (Part Two)

(So... It's about time that I got back to posting blogs from the vaults and general backstory. Sorry I slacked off on this before, but things got kinda hectic during my last couple of weeks in Lagos and it actually takes a little time for me to "assemble" these entries. Pretty much all of them were written on the run, so I'll have half the entry composed on my laptop, then I got to find another quarter that's scribbled in one of my many notebooks, and locate various random paragraphs scrawled on the myriad scraps of paper constantly stuffed into the pockets of my jeans and compartments of my backpack. So organization is not necessarily my strong suit; believe me, Denis never let me hear the end of it. Anyway, let's continue with the story I was telling here.)


As it turns out, yesterday was the ninth anniversary of the death of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. As such, there was a celebration of his life and legacy at New Afrika Shrine - the reconstituted version of the club Fela maintained as his personal court, soapbox, and alternate reality for more than two decades - as a prelude to the massive "Felabration" slated for October.

Denis and I want to go to the Shrine. We're both huge Fela fans; in fact, Fela was a bit of a catalyst in our friendship. We "met" a few years ago on the Okayplayer music board when he posted a poll posing the question "Who is the most prominent African musician - Myriam Makeba, Franco, Manu Dibango or Meiway?" Outraged, I immediately fired back with "How the hell you gonna make a post about important African musicians and not include Fela?" He calmly explained to me that he didn't really know all that much about Fela, having grown up in Francophone Africa, where the influence of a figure like Franco loomed a little larger. The truth is, at the time I was just really getting about Fela's music myself.

By the time I was coming up in the 1980s, Fela was a shadow of the fiercely creative and popular musician he had been in the previous decade. Since the 1977 government-mandated firebombing of his home and the resultant death of his mother, he seemed to be become less known for his music than for his controversial public antics--the weed, the nudity, the polygamy, the blasphemy, the highly theatrical presidential campaigns, the frequent trips to jail and drawn-out court cases--kinda like 2Pac would be in the '90s. His music wasn't played much on the radio and when it was, it tended to be humourous, relatively innocuous dance records like "Open and Close" and "Excuse-O." Our government was a fairly repressive military dictatorship, and just whistling one of Fela's more anti-establishment tunes like "Zombie" within earshot of any soldier, policeman, customs officer or even a traffic warden was enough to get you beaten within an inch of the pearly gates and thrown in jail.

In the eyes of a lot of middle-class parents (like mine), messing with Fela was a gateway to a seriously fucked-up life and they endeavoured to insulate their children from his influence the same way you do your best to keep your kids away from crack pipes, stripper poles and religious cults. Because, really, that's kinda what Fela fandom was: a cult. But it wasn't just a cult full of thieves, thugs and hookers, like most people thought; its membership spanned across all walks of society, including some sectors of the government. I was a late convert: Fela didn't really capture my soul until the day I was getting on the plane to leave Nigeria in the early '90s, but now that I was back, I was looking forward to making a pilgrimage to his sacred temple. Me and Denis had planned a trip to the Shrine for a long time and this seemed the best time to make it happen.

Except that Koko wasn't trynna hear it.

Not that he's not a Fela fan; he is--hardcore. In fact, he was the one who first introduced me to "Baba 70"'s music (or tried to, anyway) back in high school, and he always has a Fela tape in the car (along with a cassette of really cheesy '80s funk & R&B and Toni Braxton's first album, which he plays specifically when he wants to torture me and Denis). As a true Fela-head, he's been to the Shrine a couple of times and he had the portent that the night's event was going to be like an area boy* homecoming festival; unless one absolutely, positively needs to experience the feeling of blood gushing from one's forehead like a geyser as multiple beer bottles shatter upon one's cranium, it might be a good idea to put a considerable distance between oneself and that general area. Me and Denis tried to persist, but Koko was the one driving and if he said we weren't going to the Shrine, then we weren't going to the Shrine.

So there we were yesterday evening, sitting in the middle of one of Lagos's trademark traffic jams, listening to the radio. All the stations are playing Fela's classic jams (well, the two that weren't playing Christina Aguilera's "Ain't No Other Man" and that dreadful new Beyonce song every twelve minutes, anyway). As "Roforofo Fight" comes on, I'm reminded exactly how much Fela's music informed the creation of TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN. The very first scene I wrote in the script (the one where Boy scuffles in the street with the market woman Madam Kuku as a jeering crowd gathers around) was directly inspired by the abrupt, chaotic energy of this song. The second scene I wrote (which is now the first scene in the script) was inspired by "Water No Get Enemy." The go-slow scene was dictated by, of course, "Go Slow." Hell, even the fast-paced, semi-cartoonish mise-en-scene was less an attempt to emulate Guy Ritchie than it was a desire to achieve the kind of collage of vivid detail, grotesque humour and jarring juxtapositions that characterized the sleeve art Ghariokwu Lemi created for Fela's albums.

These thoughts only reinforced my belief that a visit to Fela's house would restore my sagging confidence, so I tried to gain some leverage for my case by cloaking my selfish desires in the guise of selfless professionalism:

"You know... This might be a good way to earn some much-needed production scratch. Straight No Chaser would probably pay good money for some pictures of that event."

"If you even THINK of taking a camera into that place---!!" Koko snapped. He took a breath, regained compsure and then sighed wearily. "See... That's the reason why we're not going to the Shrine. Because I don't plan to be the one to explain to your parents the events surrounding the death death of their son. Besides, weren't you the one who just had to see Yinka Davies tonight?"

Ah yes. Let's get things straight about that. While I do have the tendency to sometimes come off as an obsessive crackpot who's seen Vertigo four or five times too many, there was a fairly logical and practical reason for my yen to meet with Yinka. In fact, there were at least two such reasons:

1. At five o'clock in the morning, after two and a half hours of watching Nigerian videos that mostly looked like this


Get this video and more at MySpace.com

or this



the simplicity and spirituality of Yinka's video washed over me like a moment of clarity.

[I really wish I could include a clip of the video so you could see what I'm talking about, but I just can't find it anywhere.]

2. The Koyaanisqatsi-esque montage of the video impressed upon me the fact that what I really needed to hold this film together was a powerful score like the one Philip Glass provided.

Last time we were in Lagos, a ladyfriend mentioned to me that Yinka Davies was an old acquaintance and that I should give her a call to provide some music for the movie. I wasn't that interested, though. Pretty much from the beginning, we knew what kind of music we wanted for the movie. We were aiming squarely for a retro-romantic feel, so we wanted some afrobeat by Fela (or if that turned out to be too expensive, one of the many Fela disciples) and vintage highlife, rumba and cha-cha-cha from the 1950s and '60s. The idea of using contemporary music wasn't something we had on the agenda at all. In fact, we had something of a maxim: "No jeans and no rapping!" [I'll explain the jeans thing later, fam] But all of a sudden, I felt that Yinka probably did have a certain sensibility that could add something to the vision we were trying to realize.

So I called Yinka. I found her to be warm and cordial on the phone, though she seemed a bit curious about how I had gotten her number. I told her that B____ had given it to me. I told her that I had been a fan of her work as a lead vocalist in Lagbaja's band.

"That was a long time ago," she laughed.

"I heard you were doing some stuff with the Jazzhole folks now, right?"

"Well, I've worked with them in the past... But not at the moment."

"So... uh, what else have you been up to? I heard you were on the new Tony Allen record, too."

"Oh yes! Have you heard it?"

"No... Not yet. Heard good things about it, though." [I've since heard it; here's one of the tracks Yinka features on, "Losun"]

"So what's the deal, then? What can I help you with?"

I told her that I was a filmmaker and I was looking for music for my movie. I told her about seeing her video at 5 a.m. and I hoped that I didn't sound like a crazy person.

She was quiet for a moment and then she said "Why don't you come over and see me today?"

I was quite pleased.. If she's actually inviting me over to her home, that means that I didn't sound crazy, right?

Or maybe it just meant that I did sound crazy, but that she recognized a kindred spirit.


(to be concluded)
___________________________________________________

* The “area boy” is the Naija equivalent of the “rudeboy” or “gangsta” or “generally thugged-out individual that you don’t want to mess with”

How friggin' great is this video, though?

Yeah, yeah... I know you want to say that it kinda rips off Spike Jonze's clip for Fatboy Slim's "Praise You," but I think it's much better executed, especially since Conn's performance is so full of ebullience and sheer joy that it never comes off as malicious like Spike's work does sometimes.

I never knew Bobby was so little, though.

This is Nollywood: The Movie

Once in a while, during the rare reprieves from the dizzying vortex of frustration that was the TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN shoot, Denis, Koko and I would sit back and ruminate upon our state of affairs.

Oftentimes during these moments of reflection, it would occur to us that the seemingly unending saga of us trying to get this damn movie made was actually richer in drama, intrigue, spectacle and pathos than the one we were trying to shoot. (In fact, for a time, Koko was seriously pushing for us to dedicate some resources to the production of a feature-length chronicle of our Nollywood journey. Proposed title? Three Blind Mice.)

Of course, we weren't the first ones to recognize the dramatic (and comedic) potential inherent in a candid Nollywood expose: Nick Moran's sardonic Nick Does Nollywood, documenting the English actor's botched 2003 attempt to produce a Nollywood feature, still airs fairly frequently on BBC Prime, and I was able to catch it one evening, during one of our rare reprieves from the dizzying vortex of frustration. Tears of weary recognition welled up in my eyes as I watched, it seemed, recent episodes from my life being re-enacted upon the screen by a hunky, shirtless white man:

SEE! The director struggle to juggle the inflated egos of temperamental actors!

SEE! The director flail desperately to set up shots in hostile filming environments!

SEE! The director's initial cockiness flag as he comes to the sad realization that he is in well over his head and hopes that the cast and crew don't notice the same!

By the time we got to the scene where Moran spends a good deal of time painstakingly setting up a shot, calls "Action!" and as if on cue, the sky opens up and a torrent of rain pours down, the feelings of deja vu were so overpowering that Koko actually hugged me and said "It's alright, man... It's alright."

While pretty damn entertaining, the slightly patronizing tone of Moran's doc ruffled a few feathers and so industry folks have since viewed any "outsiders" professing make inroads into Nollywood through a veil of suspicion. Later, when we were in Lagos shooting the TV pilot, an editor and a few actors told me that there were recently some other white folks in town doing a Nollywood behind-the-scenes, but nobody knew too much what became of the project. Well, I got an answer to that question when I happened to stumble upon ThisIsNollywood dot com earlier this evening.



Not too shabby, eh? I have to admit that I bristled a bit at about 1:33 where the nice lady says "We're doing films for the masses; we're not doing films for the elite and the people in their glass houses." It gets my goat whenever I hear people say shit like that. To me, it's nothing but a half-ass excuse to rationalize half-ass movie-making, but working in Nollywood you hear it a lot:

"...We're making African movies for African people, not for the judges at the Berlin Film Festival..."

"...Movies aimed at real, everyday Nigerians, for the illiterate bus driver and market woman, not for the aristos drinking champagne on Victoria Island..."

"..Our audience is not highly sophisticated, so why should our movies be?"

I will never cease being offended by the idea that the "illiterate market woman" is somehow more of a "real" Nigerian than an educated professional by sheer virtue of being poorer and more ignorant. It's just a different version of the low expectation/definition by lowest common denominator syndrome that weighs down Negroes in the States: the more "ghetto" you are, the more inarticulate and uncouth, the "realer" a nigga you are. The fuck outta here with that bullshit.

Anyway, I was interested to learn that two of the the movie's three producers, Franco Sacchi and Aimee Corrigan, seem to be based here in the Bean. I'll probably holler at them later in the week, just to see what's up.

I wonder why This is Nollywood isn't screening at this year's African Film Festival at the Museum of Fine Arts, though. I actually forgot that it was going on this week, to be honest. I used to go to the festival every year, but I sort of gave up on it last year. Granted, it's a great site to sight some hot, Afrocentric boho sistas, but by and large, it depresses me.

Most African film festivals depress me a little, really, because it's kinda like a bizarro version of Nollywood: One panders to poor and uneducated Africans, the other panders to white liberals' fantasies of poor and uneducated Africans ("calabash cinema" is what we call the latter).

Neither one of them ever has relatable, well-rounded characters; in Nollywood it's because the producers are often inept and assume that the audience is too dumb to notice or care. In calabash cinema, it's because the audience really doesn't care about African characters as, y'know, characters, but prefers that they function as symbols of social problems. I really can't make up my mind which one I think is worse.

Either way, neither one of them really portray an Africa that I recognize from my own experience. And I know that a lot of Aficans agree with me. When I got to Nigeria last summer, I was really surprised to find so many people who didn't like Nollywood flicks at all and ridiculed me for my interest in them... In fact, for a while, it was a challenge for me to find anybody who did like them. (I eventually found a lot of them, though.) But that's why we're making TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN, isn't it? There's a pretty large segment of the audience that's not being served by the current crop of movies being made in and/or about Africa. And we intend to exploit that.

I did kinda want to see Abderrahmane Sissako's Bamako, though; not because it sounds particularly interesting to me (an African village puts the World Bank on trial? The premise might be a bit too polemical for my taste) but I missed seeing it when I went to the New African Film Festival in DC last December, and hey... It's got Danny Glover in it!

But dammit, it's too damn icy out for me to go anywhere, so I think I'll just wait for the DVD. Shit... I'm Nigerian, right? Home video is our preferred mode of movie viewing.

I almost want to see this movie

I never really got the appeal of Hugh Grant during his heyday in the 1990s. Actually, that's putting it a bit lightly; I was nothing short of bewildered by the fact that he was considered to be something of a sex symbol. I mean, since when did America develop the hots for foppish, effete Englishmen? While we're at it, why don't we crown Prince Charles a bird-chested love god?

It wasn't until Grant's subdued, laddish turn in Paul Weitz's About a Boy that I was able to see him as something other than a Bertie Wooster-esque stereotype,* and since then I've really wanted to check out more of his stuff.

Too bad this particular film comes courtesy of the man who gave us Two Weeks Notice and the Miss Congeniality movies. I'll have to pass, thanks.


*Interestingly, I read somewhere that Grant himself admitted that About a Boy is the only one of his films that does not make him cringe. I guess the guy has good taste, after all!

Since last we spoke...

An essay rehabilitating the image of much-maligned Negro movie star Stepin Fetchit?

An explanation for my seeming near-religious obsession with John Wayne?

Annotated reviews of various great yet underappreciated DC comics of the 1980s, maybe?

A wild-eyed rant about how the main reason so many people believe that Amy Winehouse's gimmicky and garish new album is superior to her confidently understated debut is because the contemporary "urban" audience is addicted to "production"?

My picks for the Oscars?

A review of Dreamgirls?

An account of bumping into former New Kid on the Block Jordan Knight in the movie theater when coming out of Dreamgirls?

Or perhaps an appreciation of Gjon Mili's 1944 short film Jammin' the Blues



and some random theorizing about its influence on the aesthetic of hip-hop videos of the late 1980s and early 1990s?

How about an argument positing that the true modern-day heir to pioneering American Negro filmmakers Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Williams, and the most important Black filmmaker in America today is not Spike, not Charles Burnett, but in fact, this guy?

It's been like three whole months since I last updated this blog and for the past month or so, my mind has been a revolving door for different subjects to blog about. I'll admit that most of these ideas have been pretty shitty. A handful of them have been cool. But ultimately, none of them have had much to do with the mission statement indicated in that little marquee at the top of the page ie talking about a little motion picture project I'm supposedly working on with two other guys? A little something called TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN?

Yeah... I haven't talked much about it with anybody since I got back to the States--I mean nobody, not even my family--mainly because... Well, to be honest, I don't really know what to say.

Last time you heard from me, I was still waiting to start production on the TV pilot. Well, I eventually went on and got through that and while I'll talk more about it a little later, for now I'll just say that it was an experience that was simultaneously exhilarating and enervating. On one hand, I came out of it feeling more confident and motivated as a filmmaker; on the other, it made me ever more conscious of the unique challenges inherent to making movies in Nigeria. Both of these discoveries ultimately impact the plan for completing TMBW.

I feel a lot wiser than I was when we started shooting the movie last July--we all do, really. Remember how I had to fight with Denis and Koko to reshoot two scenes? Now I feel like there's almost thirty scenes we could do better, knowing what we know now. I was hesitant to pitch the idea to my partners, but surprisingly, they agreed almost immediately. We've all put so much into this, and we appreciate all the support that our friends and families and even perfect strangers have given us, we're not willing to come back with anything less than best work we can possibly put together.

Originally, the plan was to return to shooting around February, but me and Denis talked about it... The thing that crippled us most--beyond even the lack of money--was underestimating the difficiulty of the Nigerian landscape and not allocating enough time to pre-production. We all want to get back to work as soon as possible, but we had to face the fact that if we go back to Nigeria right now, we're most likely going to face the exact same problems we did last time. So yeah... We decided that the smart thing to do would be to take a few months to plan this thing the right way before jumping back in.

Actually, after we made that decision, it occurred to me that there was even more reason for us to take a little hiatus. You see... 2007 is an election year in Nigeria, and I don't know if you know what often happens during election periods in so-called Third World countries but it's usually not the safest of environments. Hell, even when we were there last summer, the curfews and the killings had already started. It's probably not a great idea to return to Nigeria until after the elections... Which are in June. sigh... The thought of it kills us, but it's better it's better than some political thugs killing us, no?

More recently, another issue popped up that basically clinched it for us. Apparently, for various reasons, Nollywood is going on holiday. There have been moratoria on film production in the past, usually when the market has gotten too saturated with product. We can't get too much done during the break, so we're better off just staying where we are (me in Boston, Denis in New York, Koko in Lagos) and working on getting our organization as tight and effective as possible for when it's time to go back.

It hurts, though; after the intense high of being a flashy filmmaker in Nigeria for a few months, it's a massive crash coming back to life as an everyday schlub back in the States. Now I fully understand the way Denis described being back in the grey little town of Pointe Noire, Congo after our Nigerian adventure: "It's kinda like being dead."

Well... In the meantime, I'll be updating y'all on the pre-production process for phase 2 of the TMBW, as well as filling you in on the backstory of phase 1.

Aluta continua!

Back in Babylon again

Yup... I've been back in the U S of A since Wednesday and I suppose I need to apologize for my slow (or no) response to those who have called and emailed me over the past couple of days (at this point, I'm tired of apologizing for not keeping this blog anything even approaching up to date).

I dunno... I just haven't much felt like talking to anybody since I got back. I feel a bit fatigued and culture-shocked and I definitely don't feel like answering the inevitable question, "What's up with the movie?" (Incidentally, the answer to that particular query is actually "Quite a lot," but I reveal all of that in due time.)

It's just kinda weird being back after - What is it? Almost five months? - and it's taking me a little while to get used to it. As it is, I've barely stepped out of the house since Thursday.

Actually, I did venture out last night... I went out with some friends to see the 7:15 screening of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan... I fell asleep like, 30 minutes into it.

That's not really an indictment of the movie, by the way... It's just that my body is yet to re-attune itself to the UTC-5 time zone. As it is, I've been dozing off every evening at around 6:30 pm (which is 12:30 am Nigeria time) and then waking up at about 11:30 (which still feels like 5:30 am to me), staying up all night, then taking a quick nap from about 5 to 7:30 am and repeating the cycle.

(Maybe it would have been more appropriate for me to have watched the movie I really wanted to see last night.)

Anyway, I'm working on getting my shit together. And since I have plenty of time on my hands these days, I really have no excuse for not blogging more and updating you all on what's happening, as well as what's happened over the past month (and the four months prior, too, come to think of it).

Thanks for the support, folks; though you may not hear from me, you are always on my mind... never far away (I freely admit that this mushy signoff is a shameless excuse to seque into this awesome Lagbaja! track I want y'all to check out:

).

September 14, 2006 - Let's Do The Deadbeat Dodge!!

Awwwwwww yeah, party people! I'm about to teach y'all a brand new dance!

Well... It's really not that new, since it's been danced for years and years by producers all over the world, but it's new to me. Some might call it "The Creditor Creep" or "The Money Hustle" or "The Shaft" or "The Cheque's in the Mail." I call it "The Deadbeat Dodge"!

You can do this dance just about anywhere and any ol' time - when you're sitting on the john or eating lunch or watching TV or trying to sleep at five in the morning. The only music you need is the sound of a ringing cellphone.

Now, my current ringtone is "Let's Make This Precious" by Kevin Rowland & Dexy's Midnight Runners, but it don't matter what the ringing sounds like. All that matters is that when you answer the phone, you hear the voice of an actor or a production assistant or a sound engineer or camera assistant or an equipment rental outfit:

"Good morning, director. Sorry to bother you at this time, but about that money you still owe us..."

"...I thought I would have been paid by now..."

"...You know you guys left us really broke..."

"...Checked my account this morning and the funds still haven't been deposited..."

"...We really need to get that money right now..."

Okay, we're about to get funky now.. Ready... set...

Now DODGE!

"Okay, I'm kinda on vacation right now, spending time with my family and stuff, so there's nothing going on at the moment. But I'll be getting some more funding when I get to Lagos next week, alright? Just call me back then, alright?"

DODGE!

"Hey, I'm in a meeting with some investors right now. I'll call you back later tonight, okay? This is your number, right? (So's I can be sure to avoid it when you call back)"

DODGE!

"Look... I'm just the director. If you wanna talk about creative concerns, I'm your man. If it's administrative, call Denis. If it's money, talk to Koko."

DODGE!

"Wait... Koko told you to call me?"

DODGE!

"Hang on a minute... Let me give you Denis's number in Congo..."

C'mon now! DODGE!

"crzzzt crzzzt shit, you're breaking up... crzzzzt I can't hear a word you're crzzzzzt This connection is crzzzzt terrible... Lemme crzzzt you back later..."

Alright, party people... Here comes the best part! You know the breakdown - the part of the record where all the words and the melody and all that fall away, leaving just that basic beat? Okay, we're gonna stop answering the phone and just let the music play and play and play...

I gotta admit, it took me a while to get a hang of the rhythm, but now I'm really becoming an ace when it comes to doin' the Dodge. Yes sir, I'm like a one-man Sam & Dave.

Hard to believe it was barely two weeks ago that I asked Koko:

"So... How long do we plan to stay in town once we wrap production?"

Koko: "I'd say somewhere under twenty-four hours."

"Um... And then how are we planning to settle all our accounts before we leave?"

Koko doesn't say anything. He just smiles mischievously. I feel a pain in my heart.

"No... Please don't tell me that. Basically, our exit plan is..."

"We exit."

I'm silent for a minute. "I'm really not comfortable with that."

I find Denis by the bar and we share a bottle of Fanta for breakfast. He's not cool with the exit plan, either. We're just starting out in this business and so far we like the fact that we've been pretty fair in our dealings with people. We don't want to get the reputation of being deadbeat producers.

Then again, that's kinda the way the game is played, isn't it? Right after my exchange with Koko, Frank and Linda came into the room and proceeded with a completely unrelated conversation about some of the work they've done in the modelling world - print ads and billboards and stuff.



Me and Koko sat down and listened as these two beautiful people spoke quite matter-of-factly about being stiffed for up to eighteen months at a time by The Coca-Cola Company and Motorola and the big phone companies.

Now if even massive multinational corporations have trouble issuing payment on time, why the hell should I - a startup producer - be stressing out over it? Hell, I think these people actually expect to have to pull teeth to get paid.

We'll get 'em the money sometime, and hopefully soon. But until then, I'm dancing as fast as I can.

Circumstance has made a liar of me

So I promised to post some stuff yesterday and that didn't happen. What can I say? I promised to pay a bunch of actors last week and that hasn't happened either. Shit happens... or doesn't happen; after all, I spent most of yesterday waiting around for a meeting that ended up not happening. The pilot thing is happening, but not quite at the speed that I would like it to... I'm getting antsy, feeling like I need to get out of here, get back to the States and raise the money to come back and finish TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN as soon as possible.

Funny thing about it, though, is that at the moment I am kinda stranded in Nigeria. When I called the airline to postpone my return last time, I had to give them a "theoretical" date that I might be coming back... I selected September 30th. They said cool, there'll be no problem changing the date again if I have to.

Of course, I couldn't select a date because I wasn't sure exactly when I would be done with the pilot... Come September 30th (last Saturday) I go to the Lufthansa office and they tell me it does't matter what date I choose because I can't change the date on this ticket anymore anyway because I've been in Nigeria for more than three months. So unless I planned on getting on the plane that afternoon, my ticket was worth about as much as toilet paper (and considering the rough edges and low absorbency of an airline ticket, a lot less useful, too).

Anyway, I'll talk more about all that later... In the meantime, I'll post some shit from the vaults.

Sorry I left you...

I haven't written anything in a while, folks - well, i haven't posted anything, anyway. I haven't been online in almost two weeks, so I got a lot of shit just piling up. I'll post it tomorrow.

On one hand, I've been really busy and on the other I've been so bored that I've thought of amputating my own limbs just to liven things up.

Oh yeah, and speaking of amputating limbs... I've been having a lot of trouble with my bum shoulder so I'm working with one arm these days. I'll tell y'all about that tomorrow.

Hmmm... I just realized that I didn't even get around to posting Part 2 of the last post.

Tomorrow.

I'll post everything tomorrow, folks. I promise.

How are y'all doing, though?

From the vault: August 2, 2006 - “I’m a artist… and I’m sensitive about my s#!t” © Erykah Badu (Part One)

INT. THE HOME OF YINKA DAVIES – NIGHT

The three producers of TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN sit on the balcony with Yinka Davies – the erstwhile “Erykah Badu of Nigeria” – drinking sodas and looking over the late-evening Lagos bustle.

Yinka looks at the producers and smiles. Denis smiles. Koko smiles. Nana sports an especially wide and goofy grin as he tries not to stare at the soul diva’s ample breasts.

(He fails.)

YINKA: So… Everybody is smiling. But why are we here?

Six expectant eyes turn to Nana, who takes a sip of his drink and clears his throat.

NANA: Well, I… um, I’ve been thinking about you since 5 o’clock this morning. I was lying on the floor this morning, all by myself in the dark, just watching TV… And you appeared onscreen and it… it was like you were speaking to me, telling me that I… I just had to find you. It was like a vision, you know? At 5 o’clock in the morning, I just knew that I had to see you tonight.

Silence.

Koko’s eyes are closed; he rubs his temples in exasperation. Denis and Yinka still smile, but somewhat uncomfortably.

YINKA: Okaaayyyy…

DENIS (to Nana): Could you say that again… but make it sound a little less stalkerish this time?

***************************************************************************

Remember that time in “Entourage” when cocky, eccentric genius director Billy Walsh freaked out before the first screening of Queen’s Boulevard?



Then he hijacks the film, locks himself up with it in a hotel room, obsessively edits it over and over and issues the Zen-like proclamation that he doesn’t care if it’s ever released or if anybody ever sees it as long as he knows in his soul that he has created something perfect.

That’s kinda where I’m at right now. Kinda. I ain’t hacked off my hair, though.

I can’t sleep at night. I can’t eat in the daytime. I go to the bathroom like 50 times a day. I’m moody, sullen and withdrawn (at this point, one or two of my exes hiss “What else is new?”). I take long walks before anybody else wakes up. I compulsively listen to 1960s girl-group records like “Jimmy Mack,” “Out in the Streets,” “Leader of the Pack” and “I’d Much Rather Be With the Girls.” I watch and re-watch the 13 hours of footage we’ve shot so far like it were the effing Zapruder film. At this point, I’m pretty sure Denis and Koko wouldn’t mind making TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN a posthumous release for me.

We’ve shot some good stuff; I know this intuitively, and pretty much all of the innocent bystanders I have abducted and forced to view the footage confirm that it looks great. But when I look at the screen all I see is the compromises, the faux pas, the fuckups. Every frame taunts me with its imperfection.

It’s ridiculous to try to judge the final quality of a film from about half of the raw footage but I can’t help it… I can’t reconcile myself to the fact that what I see on the screen is not an exact realization of what I saw in my head when I wrote it.

But I know that’s kinda silly, too… Unless you’re Hitchcock or maybe the Coen Brothers, chances are that what you end up shooting will never be exactly what you planned. Film is a collaborative art… There’s way too many other people contributing their input for your vision to remain that pure.

Still, there’s at least two major scenes that I think are complete garbage. Mind you, these are scenes that we were all incredibly proud of three weeks ago… Every time we watched them, we hi-fived each other, basking in the certainty that we were creating something very special… Something great. Today, I announce that I want to shitcan them.

Koko doesn’t say anything for a long time; he just stares at me for a long, long time with that gimlet-like gaze of his. And I can see the SCUD missiles being primed in those eyes. Then, finally:

“So… Will it make you happy to reshoot those scenes from scratch?”

“Why do you ask? Are you gonna let me reshoot them?”

“Shit, if you want to,” he says. “It’s your movie.”

I recoil from those three words like an acid-coated bitchslap.

“My movie?”

On the real, I haven’t necessarily thought of it as my movie for a long time. I kinda gave up on that notion since the sign incident on the first day of shooting.* Since then, if anything, I think of it more of as our movie.

And now this dude wants to dump this mess in my lap?

But it's true, though... It's my name that everybody associates with this thing... and if it sucks, then I suck.

Damn... I wanna hack off all my hair right now.

So I'm lying on the floor at 5 o'clock this morning, watching music videos. Nigerian music vids have gotten pretty good of late... Back in the day, most videos had a budget of like 17 bucks and the production values of the average bar mitzvah video. But since the introduction of MTV Base Africa and the resultant opportunity for local acts to gain unprecendented international attention, cats have stepped their game up considerably on some Hype Williams shit.

Maybe I can get into the music video game if I flop as a movie director... Become the Nigerian Michel Gondry or something...

These are the thoughts I am thinking when Yinka Davies' video comes on at 5 o'clock. The song has some long-ass Yoruba title that I can't spell or pronounce, but it features her wearing a white gown, floating through the urban jungle of Lagos like Mama Yemanja with her healing waters.

Suddenly, I feel like everything's gonna be alright.

(to be continued)
______________________________________________________________________________________
*Ah yes… "The sign incident," he says, as if you should know what the hell that even means. I’ll post up the “First Sign of Trouble” entry later. I wanted to incorporate it into this post, but this shit is long enough already

Why Does This Blog Kinda Suck?

Gold stars for all of you who answered “Because you ain’t write in it, fool!”

That’s actually been a pretty big disappointment to me… When I started this blog, I truly wanted to it to be an honest, no-holds-barred, real-time chronicle of what it’s like to make a movie under these particular conditions, but shit… There’s hardly anything up on here that tells you the actual story of the making of TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.

Thing is (as I’ve said before) it’s not that I didn’t write it all down… I just didn’t post most of what I wrote because I often didn’t have the time (or, in some cases, the money) to go to a cybercafe.

Also, I think I deliberately censored myself quite a bit because… Well, I suppose I never completely got a handle on exactly what I wanted this blog to be. Was it a personal journal, a promotional tool, or something in between?

As a result, I opted not to post some of my more navel-gazing thoughts like, say, my unhappiness with my inexplicable rapid weight gain and acne breakouts during this production (which, by the way, served as an endless source of punchlines for my two compadres).

Then there were the entries about my so-called love life… I thought they were just gratuitous and kinda silly (Let’s not even talk about that one T.M.I. post about hemorrhoids).

Hell, I even held back from posting on a lot of purely professional subjects, like the numerous dickheads and assholes we had to deal with on the daily. Y’see, unlike Denis who has stated repeatedly that he cannot wait to publicly skewer all the jerks who have pissed him off, I’m still a bit reluctant to badmouth people… Partially because I’m trying to build a career here and I’m not trynna be burning bridges just yet, but also because… *shrug* I dunno, probably (as Koko is wont to berate me) I’m just too nice to take pleasure in slagging people off that way.

Likewise, I wasn’t sure if I should air out some of the internal squabbles we’ve had even within our own crew. But y’know, despite our similar interests, we’re all different personalities and hence, there is bound to be conflict. Actually, I’m pretty surprised at how relatively few conflicts there were and how quickly they always blew over. At the end of the day, it’s all love between us and this experience has definitely bonded us in a way you rarely see outside of war veterans and boarding school peers.

In addition, I was always wary of being too candid because while I mostly didn’t tell the cast and crew about the blog’s existence, I always worried that they might just Google “Comb & Razor” or “TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN,” find this page and discover that, oh, we had no money to pay them, for instance.

I know I was definitely a bit ashamed to expose our collective ass by discussing some of the boneheaded mistakes we made, too. I mean, we had some bad stuff happen that threw us way off course… Unforeseen Acts of God and the like. But then there was a whole bunch of shit that went wrong because of our own inexperience and poor judgment. We really made some bad calls… And I mean decisions that would make you look at us with genuine concern and ask “Ummm… So how long exactly have you suffered from this brain damage?”

(It’s particularly embarrassing because some of these problems my friend Mildred cautioned me about in advance and we still walked straight into them like dummies. Sometimes you just gotta experience it firsthand, I guess. Kinda like when someone warns you that they just laid a really stinky fart… Rather than just taking their word for it and immediately vacating the area, you first go take a sniff of it yourself to personally confirm the degree of rancidness, don’t you?)

More than anything, the conflict between my dueling desires to be an honest diarist and an effective salesman made me very hesitant to post about my own personal struggles with the actual quality of the footage we were shooting. I guess I thought it might be a bit discouraging to some of y’all who have been so supportive of us from jump… And hey, if this blog is supposed to be a form of advertisement to make you want to see the movie, isn’t it a bit counterproductive for me to admit that I’m a bit dissatisfied with it myself (even though it’s nowhere close to done)?

Mainly I feared that it might be read as preemptive pleading, y’know? Pro-facto apologizing just in case the movie ended up sucking.

(It is totally not gonna suck, by the way)

But, y’know, that oftentimes sharp dichotomy between artistic intent and final product is a regular part of the creative process so it’s only fair that you get some glimpse of it.

As I start working on editing almost 30 hours of footage into some form of coherent narrative, I’ll be keeping you all up to date on my progress (hopefully sharing some footage with you too) and also putting up “flashback” journal entries – WITH COMB & RAZOR: THE LOST EPISODES.

Hopefully you will find them to be readable and entertaining. Maybe they will comfort and inspire some other fledgling artists who struggle with the hurdles inherent to manifesting their dreams in the material plane.

At the very least, you can read them and laugh at what a moody, self-flagellating, passive-aggressive bitch boy I can be sometimes.

So yeah… I’ll start with that tomorrow. I’m here all week, folks.

As always, thanks for being here, too.

All Things Must Come to an End

EXT. ATEKONG DRIVE, CALABAR – JULY 1991

Three teenagers, KOKO (19), NANA (18) and UDEME (18) stroll down the street past Paradise City Hotel, a few blocks from Nana's house.

KOKO: Whatever happened to that screenplay you wrote back in school? “Trouble In Paradise”… It was pretty funny.

NANA: It’s still there. I’ve written a couple more since then, though.

UDEME: Do you think you're ever going to actually make these movies you write?

NANA: I don't know... I never really thought about it too seriously. I just write them for fun.

KOKO: We could make a movie.

UDEME: If you want to make a movie, you should probably go do it in Abuja. That city is looking really pretty these days.

KOKO: Who cares how pretty it looks? Why can’t we make a movie right here in Calabar? About our lives in this town and stuff?

NANA: Yeah, we can shoot “Trouble in Paradise” right here in Cal… Shoot it in this hotel right here and call it “Trouble in Paradise City”!

****************************************************

EXT. ATEKONG DRIVE, CALABAR – JULY 2006

In front of a student compound a few feet up the road from Paradise City, an old blue Peugeot van is parked. Nicknamed “The Magic Bus,” it is the official production vehicle of TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN. Inside the bus, NANA (33) and KOKO (34) recline in the front seats as they wait for their ingénue, Emma, to get dressed.

NANA: So… Back then did you ever think we would really do this?

KOKO: Yup.

NANA: Did you ever think it would be this fucked up?

Silence.

NANA: I love this, though… I feel like I was meant to do this. The idea of going back to the States and working another 9 to 5... It's just kinda repulsive to me, you know? I mean, if we were to fail with this - If the movie flops or we never even get to finish it at all - could you go back to that? Wearing a tie, sitting in a cubicle and shit?

KOKO: Do I have a choice? I got mouths to feed.

NANA: Yeah.

Silence.

NANA: But... Would you try again?

KOKO: Are you asking me would I drop everything and jump aboard if you called me to come out and play again?

NANA: Yeah… I guess so.

Long silence.

KOKO: The terms would have to be different.

Silence.

NANA: Yeah.

****************************************************************

So… After a grueling two months, we finally ended production on TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN this past Tuesday.

The more observant reader will notice that I said that we “ended” production, not that we “finished” it – At this time, the film remains incomplete. There’s still about six or eight scenes we never got around to shooting, and there are at least two scenes that I insist we must re-shoot (much to the annoyance of my co-producers). Still, I decided that for now, we must stop.

This production has been like the Neverending Story, especially when viewed in light of the Nigerian film industry where a lot of movies are shot in like, ten days or so. In fact, we’ve become something of a joke in the community. People see us shooting and they’re like “Oh, you’re still here? I thought you guys had gone back to South Africa.”*

“Nope… We’re still here. Still working.”

“So are you shooting another movie?”

“Nope… Same one.”

“What? You’re still working on that same one? This has got to be part two or part three, right? Ha ha ha.”

Ha mudderfuggin’ ha.

Not that I’m bothered by the ridicule at all. I actually take pride in investing the time and energy into producing a piece of work that I can be moderately proud of rather than knocking out some quick, hacky bullshit just because that’s what everybody else is doing. But the fact remains: this shit is taking too long.

For a number of reasons, the remaining scenes were not materializing at the speed or in the form that they should have and we were spending day after day not really getting much done and all the while paying racking up bills by the day for equipment, crew, talent and lodging. Something had to give. I for one felt that a malaise was dragging down the cast and crew and it was showing up onscreen in the form of increasingly half-ass scenes.

I actually suffered a nervous breakdown of sorts after a particularly trying all-night shoot and fled barefoot and screaming into dawn’s early light. Here’s some pics of me being escorted back to the set after Koko found me wandering through the remote Ikot Ishie area of Calabar.




Check out the awkward looks on the faces of the cast and crew as El Director (pictured in doorway) returns to the set. Nobody says a word and nobody looks him in the eye (probably because they're worried that insanity might be transmissible by direct eye contact).





Needless to say, the speculation already started circulating about the nature of the drug abuse that triggered my psychotic episode. (Of course, I love that… Let my legend grow!)

But the truth is, I was just tired, man. Not just physically tired… That shit don’t matter to me. I was tired of having to compromise my vision because despite all the time we’ve spent, we’ve never really had the time or money to make this movie the way we wanted to.

So yeah, I’m like “Let’s stop. Let’s take some time to step back, re-evaluate how to whip this thing into shape and then come back in a few weeks or months or whatever and finish it off.”**

So that’s what we’re doing. Or what I’m doing, anyway. I kinda fear that from this point on, TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN might be more or less a solo affair for me.

Denis has been in Nigeria for almost four months now and it’s about time for him to go home. In fact, he should be on the way to catch flight back to Congo even as I type this.

Koko has been away from his family for a long time too, and he’s had to return to Lagos to resume his role of husband and father. I think he might be too occupied dealing with issues like paying the kids’ school fees to jump back into the wonderful world of movie production right now.

Me, at the moment I am back in the family digs at Aba. Another reason I had to call things to a halt was because I sensed my dad was growing really impatient with my continued assurances of “I’ll be back home after we wrap production next week. Next week, I promise!”

Originally, I was supposed to be in Nigeria for just under three months. The assumption was that this would be more than enough time for me to finish this picture, spend time with my family, party in three or four cities and still get back to the States with time to spare.

My plane ticket says that I was supposed to return to the States on August 29th. Two weeks ago, I called the airline to postpone my return indefinitely. That’s not just because I need to stay and finish TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN… The fact is that returning to America is an idea that has very little appeal to me right now. I’ve more or less committed myself to trying to make some kind of living in the Nigerian film world.

My dad does not approve of this decision (“Why not just go back to America and get a job?”) and neither do Koko and Denis (“So after all this, what you really want is to stay here and become the next Fred Amata? It’s a waste, you hear me? A fucking WASTE!”), but I just feel it’s something I need to do.

So I’ll be here in Aba (and Port Harcourt) for about a week or so, and then I jet off for Lagos to get started on my next job: writing and directing a pilot for the massive trans-African M-NET cable network.

I kinda worry whether or not taking this gig might be a mistake: Part of my head tells me that it’s probably better to be completely done with one thing before starting another… But opportunities like this don’t present themselves every day, and part of the reason for making TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN in the first place was to create further opportunities. Hopefully, doing stuff like this will get me in a stronger position to get the support I need to finish the movie.

To be honest, I’m a little bit scared: I really have no idea how I’m gonna complete TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN by myself in the midst of all this, but goddamn it, I’m gonna do it somehow. We’ve all worked too hard to not finish this shit now.

I’ll keep you all posted, I promise.

_____________________________________________________________


* For some reason, there has been this persistent and widespread belief in the local movie community that Koko, Denis and I are from South Africa. Where this idea came from, I do not know.

** Besides, Frank really had to go since production was resuming on "One Love," the soap opera/sitcom he stars in and we didn’t get to finish all his scenes (not to my satisfaction anyway)

Damn... It's been that long?

I can't believe almost a whole month has passed since I last posted anything here... My apologies; it's been mega-hectic and this is the first time I've even gotten a chance to check my email since August 15th.

In any case, today is pretty much our last day of production... It feels weird, I tell ya. Kinda sad and at the same time relieved. The good thing is that from tomorrow I'll have a lot more time to post on this page regularly as I promised I would. And boy, do I have some juicy stories for y'all!

So... See you tomorrow, like; I got some heavy drinking to do right now.

Escape from Lagos Part 2

(Or maybe this should be Part 4, considering the fact that I my last "Escape from Lagos" entry ended up posting three times and I never bothered to delete the extra ones)

We've been in Lag for more than two weeks now, and I have to admit that this trip has been something of a bust. Kinduva "one step forward, two steps backward" type thang.

Anyway, I just wanted to holler real quick because it's been a while since I posted anything... I'll be back in full force tomorrow, mi gente, this I promise. I'll also be back in Calabar tomorrow... We were supposed to have returned this evening, but we missed our flight. That's the thing about whenever we come to this monstrous metropolis... It's like the city swallows us and won't let us escape.

Oh yeah, I owe a whole bunch of you emails... Don't think I've forgotten. Thanks a lot for all your aid, support, and most of all for your belief.

Shut up, Rosey! Shut up!

EXT. THE HIDEOUT – NIGHT

Denis, Koko and Nana sit in silence, pondering what they need to go through to complete TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.

DENIS: Would you guys call me a bitch if I were to cry right now?

Silence.

NANA: Actually, I’ve been kinda waiting for one of you guys to cry first so that I can feel like less of a bitch when I do.

KOKO: Keep waiting.

***************************

INT. KOKO’S LIVING ROOM – DAY

Grace lies on the couch watching Channel O, her feet in Nana’s lap as he gives her a rather half-ass foot massage.

GRACE: Maybe you should cry. You’ll probably feel better if you let it out instead of holding things in the way you do. (extends arms in an embrace) Come on… Let it all out.

NANA: Hell no. I’ll never cry. And you know who else never cried?

GRACE: John Wayne, shey?

NANA: The most the Duke ever did was turn away a little and say “Hol’ on a minnit, pardner… I think I got somethin’ in my eye” and then wipe away the eye-water and get back to the business of killin’ Injuns or Japs or gooks.

GRACE: You know this obsession with what John Wayne would and wouldn’t do is a crazy way to live your life, right?

NANA: So is making movies.

I was about to continue the story about my trip home

But on the real, I'm way too overwhelmed by all the support you guys have thrown our way right now... I'll post that shit up tomorrow. I wanna thank each and every one of you guys, though... I gotta think of some way to do that. I guess making the best film we can is probably the best way to do that, huh?

Anyway, for now, here's some photos of our female lead, Emma... (and some others if Blogger stops acting up)

Grubbin' in the dark (whaddup, Cody ChesnuTT)

It’s 12:20 a.m. and I’m sitting in the dark, gnawing on corn, coconut chunks and spicy barbecue beef as everybody sleeps around me.

Remember how I told you we had to send our two leads back home to Lagos and hope that they would come back to Calabar when we were ready to shoot again? Well, you didn’t actually think we were gonna sit around wishing on (movie) stars, did you? Hell no! We followed them to Lagos and we’re gonna shoot them here.

I actually quite like the idea; the story is set in Lagos after all, and that unique Lagosian sense of chaos and energy has been hard to replicate in a small town like Calabar. It’s good for Koko to be back with his family, too (and I must admit that I was missing Uchenna and the kids myself) and even Denis – who kinda hates Lagos – is enjoying being back.

We’re gonna start shooting here in a few days and in the meantime we’re lining up all the stuff we need, like lights and equipment (Unfortunately, it looks like we’ll have to deal with those Cinekraft dicks again, though).

Right now we’re a bit frustrated, though… It’s hot as fark and NEPA is on their regular bullshit. I don’t know how many of you are hip to the whole NEPA thing, but it’s been a running joke here in Nigeria for… I dunno, 30+ years. NEPA officially stands for the Nigeria Electric Power Authority but colloquially it means “Never Expect Power Always.” You see, the national electric company only provides electricity some of the time, so electric power generators like this



are essential household appliances more common than microwave ovens. Ours is acting up. It’s been acting up since we came back to Lagos on Sunday, but we dropped it off yesterday morning and paid for it to be fixed. Allegedly it was. So we’re all chilling, watching Kiss Kiss Bang Bang on DVD when all of a sudden, the electricity conks out again.

Koko goes out to fiddle with it while me and Denis wait in the living room for him to come back so we can get our grub on. We had eaten lunch at about 5 p.m. – less than 2 hours before – but for some reason we were hungry again (Denis says he’s gonna blog about metabolism and how odd sleeping and working hours affect it) and I felt we should eat again at 7 p.m. rather than having to eat at 1 a.m.

So we went out and got a mess of suya and corn on the cob and coconut and plantain and were ready to chow down before we were plunged into darkness.

Koko was away tinkering with the generator for a long, long time… Me and Denis sprawled on the floor and he gradually fell asleep while I belt out off-key renditions of Motown tunes. I was at the end of “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” when I realized that Koko was lying on the couch, simmering and then eventually sleeping, too.

Like, I realize this generator thing is frustrating as hell, but how does that translate into us not eating? I don’t need the lights to see where my mouth is!

I must have drifted off during my Stevie Wonder medley, but I was awoken just before midnight by vicious hunger pains. I called my friend Grace to be the first one to wish her a happy birthday and went to the kitchen to get my grub on, dolo.

So here I am now… As all the world is counting sheep, I count the moments of the last few days.

cue flashback music as I return to my weekend trip back home

Wednesday 26 July 2006

One of the things about going back home as an adult is the way that you find yourself time-warped back into a state of childhood (which can work out to be simultaneously comforting and humiliating).

I’m back at the family house at Aba tonight and I have to admit that I’m just a teensy bit relieved to be able to step away from the production pressure pit for a day or two. Actually, the issue of me coming here in the first place was quite controversial; if I left town, production would grind to a halt for the duration of my absence, and we really can’t afford that, considering the fact that we are already, what? Ummm… Like two weeks behind schedule?

We already pretty much lost our crew yesterday… After all, they were originally contracted for 15 days of work and paid a pittance for that period to begin with. Yet for some reason, they’ve stuck around this long… I’ve never been able to figure out exactly why. Could it be that they believe that much in the project? Or maybe they just like us personally (We have shared some pretty fun times and artistically affirming moments with them? More than likely their professional ethos just won’t allow them to leave a job unfinished. But alas, there comes a breaking point even there and it’s time for them to move on, back to their lives and other (almost certainly better-paying) gigs.

We’re losing our cast too, in a fashion. Our lead, Frank, has been such a trooper, putting up with all manner of hardship and bullshit just because he believes so damn much in TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN. Hell, he even missed an exam at his university because he agreed to stay in Calabar longer when we had to extend the shooting period..

But now we can feel his depression and homesickness weighing him down like a cannonball around his neck, so we have to send him home to Lagos for the sake of his sanity (plus, we need a little break from his hotel bills, truth be told).

Our second lead, Chinedu, is getting pretty antsy, too. He’s a minor celebrity around Africa, having featured in
a wildly popular reality show and so he’s always jetting off to one corner of the continent or the other, doing promotions and stuff. He flew in from South Africa to shoot with us and even agreed to come back again from an event in Abuja when we didn’t get to finish all his scenes the first time. Just because he believed so damn much in TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.

As it is, he is being sorely underutilized… We’ve been unable to shoot most of his scenes due to various problems that I will get into a bit later. In the end, we decided it was best to just release him too... and hope that his faith in the production is strong enough to make him come to Calabar yet a third time.

In addition, we were breaking down physically: Denis looked like he was near-death with some kind of bronchial infection and I was down with malaria. So, yeah, we probably were not gonna get much shooting done in the next few days so we figured it was okay for me to go to Aba for a little bit of R&R.

…Aaah, who am I kidding? The only reason this trip was approved was because of the certain knowledge that if I go home, I’m gonna come back with money in my pocket. And, um, in case I haven’t mentioned it before, money is some shit we need. Like how a crackhead needs that pipe.

Asking your parents for money can be some majorly emasculating shit, though. Denis doesn’t agree, but me and Koko tell him it’s just because he’s in his early 20s. When you’re that age, you kinda view getting broken off by your folks as a God-given right… The natural order of the universe, in fact.

By the time you’re in your early 30s, though? It’s like a admission of complete failure in life. Your mates are buying luxury automobiles to thank Mom and Dad for putting in all that hard work of raising them right all those years and you’re standing there with your hat out, begging for coins to finish a movie. So-ooo… Where exactly did you go wrong, buddy?

What’s even more humiliating about having to crawl back to the ‘rents is the loss of control. When you’re a kid, you can’t wait to grow up, get a job, make your own money, get your own crib and live by your own rules. The moment you cede financial dependence back to Mommy and Daddy... Well, you might as well just go sit in the backseat, junior. Because you’re not holding the steering wheel of this car called Your Life anymore.

I had been wanting to come home for a few days for a long time now, largely because I’ve felt so guilty about the way I dashed off to Calabar as soon as my feet hit the Nigerian tarmac. My dad “strongly suggested” I come back at some point after I made my last blog entry. Now, I don’t think he reads my blog, so maybe someone who does told him that I sounded seriously depressed. Plus, the driver must have informed him that I was working myself ragged (mainly because he was pissed that I was making him work from 7 a.m. to 3 a.m. too). So yes… This “strong suggestion” that I come back and rest for a few days.

“But dad!” I protest. “You don’t rest in the middle of a race! If I take a few days off now, all I’ve struggled for up until this point will be for naught!” (Yes, I really do talk like that)

“Okay,” Dad says. “Why don’t you just come back on Wednesday night, attend the prize-giving ceremony at our school on Thursday morning and then go back on Thursday night?”

“Okay… I can do that. Deal.”

Even then I knew I was in for a bait-and-switch.

You’ve heard that old joke about the Jewish father whose son asks him for sixty dollars and he quickly prattles, “SIXTY dollars? What do you need FIFTY dollars for? Wouldn’t FORTY do? Okay, I’ll give you THIRTY. Here’s TWENTY, give me back TEN.”

Soon as I get home, my father took one look at me with my bloodshot eyes and mangy beard and bags under my eyes so big and dark that Oprah Winfrey is like “Damn, you got some serious bags under your eyes, son!” and he says “So you’re staying till Sunday, right?”

“Ummm… No. We agreed that I’m going back tomorrow, remember?”

“Yes… But the prize-giving will go on until at least 5 or 6 and by then it will be a bit too late to leave to Calabar because the road is bad.”

(This is actually true. In fact, in some places the road is not just bad, it’s straight-up nonexistent. You have to detour through some village path along which gangs of local youth erect bamboo tollgates every ten feet or so and charge you 20 naira to pass through. You can expect to pay more than 200 naira by the time you get to the end of the road.)

“Okay then,” I say. “I’ll stay Thursday night. But I’m outta here first thing Friday morning before you go to Port Harcourt.”

“Oh. Okay.”

He leaves. Comes back a little later.

“So… How much money do you need again?”

Ha! I ain’t gonna tell him that! “Whatever you can give.”

“Hmmm. Okay. But you know I need to go to the bank in Port Harcourt since I’ll be tied up with the prize-giving all Thursday, so you’ll have to come to Port to get the money.”

Curses! “Okay. I’ll come to Port Friday morning, get the money and leave Friday afternoon.”

“Saturday morning.”

“Friday night.”

“We’ll see,” he laughs. “By the way, do you think this is blackmail?”

“HELL YEAH I DO!”

But all in all, it’s not bad at all being back in Aba. A lot of people think that I really hate it here (and that I have issues with my Igbo-ness in general) but I really don’t. Sure, I sometimes speak contemptuously of the place, but it’s the site of some of my fondest memories. Back in the day, I used to spend every single weekend here, and those were good times indeed. My dissatisfaction with the city only goes back a few years – back to the last time I came back, in 2001 – and it’s mostly aesthetic. The crumbling, dust-coloured architecture and rugged, dusty roads that turn to muddy canals every time it rains… That shit depresses me.

And then there’s the filth… Aba is one of the dirtiest cities in the nation. Now bear in mind that I’m the kind of person who regularly picks up the litter of perfect strangers, who winces in pain when I see someone throw a candy wrapper on the ground instead of a trashcan. Imagine how traumatic it is for me to be in a city where it is not uncommon for 2/3 of a major thoroughfare to be clogged with huge ridges of solid rubbish? And then there’s people lining up with wheelbarrows of more garbage to dump in the street?

Compare that to Calabar, with its clean, paved streets and manicured sidewalks and functional streetlights and yellow “Keep Calabar Clean” wastebaskets every few metres. Is it any surprise I’d feel a bit more comfortable there?

But Aba is not looking too shabby right now, really… The streets are relatively clean (Did the president visit this week or something?) and it’s a cool night… This might not be such a bad trip, after all.

(Except that my dad “strongly suggested” that I shave and since I didn’t have my clippers with me, I had to use a razor… My face is lousy with bumps now)

Fear Not for Man

Yo… It seems my last blog entry got some of y’all a bit worried for me! I appreciate the outpouring of concern, but I’m alright, folks… I’m not depressed (no more than usual, anyway) and I’m not about to off myself or anything. Shoot… If anything, this experience has opened my eyes to levels of inner strength and stick-to-itivity that I never even realized I possessed. Plus, I think I’ve felt generally happier and more at peace this past month and change in Naija than I’ve been in ages and I’m seriously considering at the possibility of relocating here on at least a semi-permanent basis.

Yes, times are kinda hard on the boulevard, but the fact is that this thing has been an uphill battle from Day Zero. We’ve never let it phase us then and we’re not about to start doing so now. I wish I could tell you how many times me, Denis and Koko have been sitting in our room, sharing a single bottle of Fanta, so broke that we couldn’t even afford a phone call or a roll of toilet paper and wondering how the hell we are gonna manage another day of shooting… and someone says “We are gonna laugh so hard at this one day” and someone else says “One day? Dude, we’re laughing right now, aren’t we?”

How many times have we firmly decided “This is the end of the road. We have to stop now. It’s the only sane thing. We must shut down this production immediately”* and the next day, some new miracle emerges that allows us to continue for another few days?

We are gonna finish this movie. And it’s going to be good.

And even if we don’t, I’m gonna make sure I spin something out of this whole experience… I’ll turn it into an African filmmaker version of The Broke Diaries or a book about youth and young manhood or I’ll put out a collection of photographs or something (I’m already thinking of doing a photo essay featuring every man, woman and child I see wearing 50 Cent T-shirts in various Nigerian cities).

My heart melted when I read all the support that you guys offered, though… Believe me, charity usually embarrasses me, but the time for pride is well past.

(In fact, I’m even thinking of emailing that United Children's Fund dude who appeals to white/western guilt to help poor Africans like us. I mean, if a thousand people chip in 70 cents a day for the next week, we’re all good, right?)


Yes, donations are quite welcome, and they mean a lot to us. I don’t want to mention the amount that we need to finish right now, but even though it seems like a lot in African terms, it’s really a bullshit amount in American/European money. So every little bit helps.

If you got a Paypal account, you can send money to takestyle@hotmail.com. If you don’t fuck with Paypal like that, you can email eemesih@hotmail.com or kuntual@mac.com to make alternate arrangements. Just put “TOO MUCH MONEY!” in the subject line (that phrase is a running joke amongst our crew).

Words can’t express my gratitude… I’ll make it up to you all somehow… Maybe I’ll come to your city and clean your apartment for you or something.

Anyway, I promised that I would return to blogging in full force and I was able to write some stuff over the past couple of days since we’re currently on hiatus, kinda (We’ll be back in business tomorrow, though). I originally made a jumbo-sized bumper post covering the past couple of days, but I’ll break it down into more readable chunks over the next couple of days. I apologize for the intensely navel-gazing, depressive tenor of some of the material… This is what happens to my mind when I have too much free time on my hands.

*Koko would want me to state explicitly that at no point has he ever advocated, cosigned, endorsed or supported the possibility of stopping. Ever.