Leaving Los Angeles

Due to an administrative hiccup, I'm flying back to London tonight, and not Tuesday, as I'd planned for. It's a shame I don't have another two days and a shame I couldn't spend a final contemplative moment on Venice Beach watching the waves and bikinis and plotting out the course of my future, which I enjoyed doing so much. But it's fitting that the manner of my departure should be as unexpectedly sudden as my arrival. When I left London, although I knew the departure date only too well, I was taking care of small items of business and generally getting my runnings in order right up until the last minute, and the flight crept up on me - now today I'm doing the same, fitting in packing bags, cleaning 119 1/2 Wave Crest Ave, arranging the inspection, returning computer equipment, with doing and drying laundry so I can have clean boxers for my homecoming parade.

LA has been a resounding success for me. I'm really, really pleased to be able to say that - there were certainly many times when I wondered if I was doing the right thing - at times I felt that I might have come out here too early, that there was more to learn and a lot more to do before launching myself headlong at trying to break into the world's biggest entertainment industry. If I hadn't found the success that I have, getting signed to direct music video and commercials for Bill's company, then I would still have considered my time worthwhile - I met some cool people, made some good supportive friends, taught myself a lot about the craft of screenwriting (and decided which bits of that were relevant and useful to me), wrote this blog, deconstructed the legend of the Hollywood Lottery a bit, and learnt that if I try hard, my chances of making it here are good.

LA is better for my career than London because:

I am new there, I am British, and that, apparently is useful.
Efforts are on the whole rewarded, rather than taken for granted.
LA is about the idea. It's the only currency that you can't bail out with dollars. Hollywood is a giant sea of all types of highly skilled production people, so if an idea gets the go-ahead there's an army of people who can put it on the screen, but only a few good people who can conceive it in the first place. So my work (which I have always felt exhibited decent ideas, but was a bit low-budget and scruffy) has been universally well received here, instead of the usual London production-values snobbery, the fear of praise, the 'be great to see what you've done in a couple of years', and a music video scene in danger of strangling itself with it's own skinny jeans leg.

At first, when I arrived here I was quiet, slightly dumbstruck. Now I am comfortable and confident, and I can talk the talk if need be.

I feel very good about the journey home. I am really excited to see my family and friends - my Mum and Dad, my bro Nick who is getting married on Saturday, my homeboys Oli, Duncan, Joe and Jess, all of whom I have been in regular contact since I came out here, forcing them to listen to endless tales of my totally awesome, totally new life. As much as I have fallen in love with this place and the way of life, I'm excited to be coming home, not heartbroken, because I now know I will be returning. The last few evenings I spent here had a different complexion in the light of that knowledge - I was still riding around the streets of Venice in the warm evenings, on the lowrider as before, but now those streets look like becoming my new neighbourhood, and I'm looking forward to the challenges of the year ahead, instead of wondering how I'm going to make it through.

Remember how when MySpace came out there was a little gay check box where people would choose from a drop-down menu an entry that described their mood? A sort of precursor to the Facebook Status Update. If I had that checkbox now, as then, it would be unsufficient to define how I feel at this moment. Mood is beyond positive, beyond just merely capable. I feel ready to take care of business. I know what I have to do now, for maybe the first time in my life. Thank you to everyone who helped me get here and get to that precious realisation. You don't know how badly I needed it.

Goldfish In Sunshine

These feesh were at one of the locations today. I ought to try and paint these sometime, they look great with the bright whites of the sparkles on the water.

'Turning Ordinary Places Into Extraordinary Spaces'

Went to work on location today for a reality TV pilot shoot. The riveting concept that is breathing much needed fresh air into the format is as thus: We follow a landscape designer from West Covina, and share the thrills and spills of her dichotomous life juggling being a suburban mum, with her red carpet existence as landscape designer to the stars.

One of the locations was a millionaire's house in Covina, where the designer had built him a Disneyland-inspired playground swimming pool, to the tune of $800,000, and seemingly themed 'Pirates vs. King Arthur At The Scene Of A Runaway Mine Cart Incident' . The true horror of this thing is hard to convey in pictures. It wasn't quite finished yet, but was described as the owner's dream 'home vacation space', was built from very poorly rendered fibreglass and contained a deep pool, a jumping platform that was atop a 'crows nest' on a fake ship's mast, a 'lazy river' - (an orbital channel with a constant gentle current), a water slide shaped like a huge hollow fibreglass tree trunk, bridges galore and an electric powered water cannon, that you could fire at people. This cannon was working.













That's not smoke, unfortunately. That's his mist generation system.

Oh, in case anyone reading this doesn't already know. Reality TV is scripted. Sorry sis. It can go in the file with professional wrestling and prison bum sex as activities that hold a universal truth that everyone prefers to deny.

Allow me to introduce Coco Chanel, the designer's puppy. She was mad cool, but she got shut away in a room for most of the shoot. She was too real.

Timex , RVB, Siege. Candles Cafe 2009

A really old friend of mine from a good twenty years back, Thomas Bullock, is in LA this week, playing a party on Saturday night in his current musical incarnation, Rub 'N' Tug. He also makes music in a project called Map Of Africa, with Harvey, who I'd seen in Venice a couple of times since being here, and had told me Thomas was on his way. Harvey's a world famous DJ now but was another old face from the exact same era and crew as Tom. An era when I had bunked out of my bedroom window to go to the warehouse parties they did, and stood behind crowds as the Police shut the party down with riot gear.

This will sound like one of those nauseating 'good old days' stories, but it's easy to forget I was there, I was priviledged to be so, and people like Thomas and Harvey can back it. And easy to forget how unique the birth of the warehouse party was, so much has evolved since then. This was really early, I mean '86, when those guys were really the first people doing it, the idea was totally new, as fresh as the first painted wholecar. I'm proud I lived through that, as well as proud of being a first generation UK hip hop kid and having that as a lifestyle to live by. I grew up and participated in an explosion of creativity that sometimes it's hard to imagine can ever happen again.

We were able to annexe our conversation from the rest of the table for a little bit and chew the fat over names pulled from out of the fogs of time. Names from the club and graffiti scenes of the late 80s - Devil 666, Robbo, Sham59, Rev, Rob & Elisa, the Tonka lot. All pieces of a very precious time slice in all three of our lives, and from the perspective of all three of us sitting in a bar in Venice, a time that has influenced all three profoundly, but in varied ways.

I was grinning from ear to ear when Thomas told a story about being in a millionaire's rainforest hideway in Bali, an architect-designed stunner made of granite boulders and live tree trunks, plumb spang in the middle of the jungle, going for a pony in the guy's toilet, and finding a graffiti magazine, with a six page article on my work. Always a good way to get introduced to a group of cool LA music people, that one.

a few pictures from sunday

H.O.U.S.E. spells House

Sunday Pool Party at the Custom Hotel, where I stayed the very first night I was here. Dope house music, sunshine, bikinis, poptarts & Patron shots. Jon's mate Ron was on the boards, Sam was doing pre-natal massages by the pool. How Mode2 is this flick?

I Get Goose Bumps When The Bassline Thumps

I felt my first ever earthquake today. Sitting in the edit suite at Bill Fishman's office when for a few seconds, everything rumbled. It felt just like living next to a train line, but being west Los Angeles, there's no trains for miles around. Bill thought I'd had the bass turned up on the G5's sub-woofer.

Coincidentally I'd been in Home Depot earlier that day, admiring the fine selection of 'Earthquake Straps' they sell for tethering your valuables to the floor. Californian wisdom is that when you feel the earthquake hit, sit under a door frame, and stay there. Living with that above your heads all the time is another bizarre aspect of life in LA, destruction and success potentially equally sudden and absolute. A whole town comprised of people all crossing their fingers the Big One doesn't hit before their studio deal comes in.