My Comical Romance

This is where I boil blogging down to its essence: moaning about "chicks and stuff".

I've never been one to air my dirty laundry for all to see. I'm a fairly private person in that regard. But when it comes to creative writing I could not advise you enough to go straight to your love life.

It's a pot of gold.

Often, I have trouble expressing my feelings and emotions, especially when it comes to anger.

Now, if experience has taught me anything it's that bottling up emotions is not a good thing. Sure, its an easy way to deal with things, but it will damage you. Seriously.

So my advice to you is take your feelings and put them in the form of words. It can be however subtle you like, depending on what your writing for. I think one of the best things I've ever written was my creative writing coursework for my English A-level.

Long story short, I wrote about how crap my love life had been since I was old enough to realise I had one. I tried to write it in a comic way, painting myself as a pathetic idiot who set himself up for disaster everytime he came in contact with a woman.

Not much has changed really.

But it was an extroadarily honest piece of writing because of the realistic level of emotion I was using. I think it could've been taken either way, but fortunately I got a very good grade for it.

Now, I'm not saying that everything I've written/will write is taken directly from my life, nor am I saying you should do that. But borrow things and put a different spin on them. It'll also make you feel a hell of a lot better about it all.

Think about Alice Still Lives Here. Underneath all the hammy acting and terrible continuity you have probably the scariest ex-girl friend imagineable.

I haven't had the worst love life ever, by a long shot. But things have rarely ended pleasantly. I don't really communicate with any of my ex's, two of them flat out hate me. Yet interestingly, they're ones I've never written about...

I bring all this up because I'm going in a similar direction for the short film I'm working on. I want to do something on a more personal level that people will be able to connect with.

That's a pretty tall order for film that has to be less than ten minutes long, but I just want to make something people can watch and be like "Yeah, that's true."

I'm not going to making any overly obvious references to specific individuals, just in case you were thinking "Oh great, I can take revenge by suing his ass Mars and back." I'm smarter than that.

Well, maybe I am...

On a similar note, a film that has always been very personal to me is High Fidelity.

I was in my early teens when I first saw it and at that time I was mostly loved it for Jack Black (to this day I still think it's his best performance) but as I grew older I was able to relate to the whole failed love side of the film, as well idea of living a life through music.

I'm sure I have a great film in me that is of the same ilk as High Fidelity, it'll probably be a complete rip off, but at least it'll be flattering.

That'll be how I get sued, I'm sure of it.

But to me the film offers great insight into the male mind in a way few other films do. I'd love to just write something that was simply about being the kind of man I am.

I was lucky enough to meet High Fidelity's director, the oscar nominated Stephen Frears, a few months ago. I told him how much the film meant to me and then had a brief conversation with him about "watching out for Clint Eastwood".

It was all very embarrassing in hind sight, like so many of the things I do (see "Video Nasty").