So, a few of my projects get to go out to Cannes next month.  I won’t be going with them, this year anyway.  But they’ll be with a producer who I like and trust, and who shares my ambitions to create films that attract audiences and acclaim.  That means I have a few weeks to polish the work that she will be taking out with her, so that each treatment is in tiptop condition.

In turn, that’s involved listening to some interesting feedback.  The producer likes one particular concept, but suggests moving it into a fairly near future and changing the culture of the characters.  Hmm.  Interesting, but she’s actually picked up on something very relevant: by having a present day setting with Muslims in my tale, I immediately limit the potential audience I’d attract, especially given what would be a potentially contentious ending that might put American backers off.

The answer came to me this morning while I waited for a tram: Buddhists!  Yes, shift the action in the prologue to Tibet and make the victims Buddhists, and the story works just as well but has new added potency because of the popularity of Buddhism.  Didn’t Noel Coward write a song called Don’t Be Beastly to the Buddhists?  Well, I’ll save you the bother of Googling and tell you that the answer is no.  But having Buddhists in the story will make the ending a lot more palatable to a mainstream audience, while maintaining the meaning it always had.  Result.

Said producer is also asking me to come up with a treatment based on a concept of her own, a science fiction horror fusion.  The core idea was always a winner, the interesting bit has been coming up with a way of bringing out its strengths.  And I feel that’s the contribution I’ve made, so that what could have been seen as a Dog Soldiers/Predator riff now has something deeper about it, a touch of Quatermass.  In other words, a film that’s about something other than the adrenaline its viewers experience, though they’ll still get to produce plenty.

(Fusion is a funny word, especially used in the context of science fiction.  I have visions of a Star Trek officer saying ‘There’s jamming in the fusion chamber!  John McLaughlin is duetting with Stanley Clarke on a 12/8 version of A Love Supreme!’.  That said, genre-splicing is not much better a term, conjuring up images of the Brundlefly from Cronenberg’s signature sf-horror blend The Fly.)

Said producer will also be taking my psychological thriller that’s actually a personal drama, and has yet to find a convincing title.  This is a special tale for me, one I’m particularly proud of: sf/horror romps tap into my love of genre storytelling, but this is one that has its roots in personal experience.  All of which serves to make me sound like Barton Fink I’m sure…but damnit, didn’t he want to write the best wrestling movies a man could write?  And once again I’m twitching in reminiscence of the cage fighting treatment that made it to a meeting with Jean Claude Van Damme, wondering with a shudder what would have happened had he decided he was interested in the project…

Anyway, all of the above means I’ve got plenty to keep me busy in the coming weeks.  Especially since the main item on the agenda is writing a book.  Best say little about that save that it’s a biography, so part of the process is coming up with a way of working that suits its subject and myself equally.  And, so far, I’m pleased to say that seems to be what’s happening.