Oh Marbella! Experiences from my first feature film.
Prologue
At the time of writing this (2022) I have completed 5 feature films, developed 15 or so more with directors and other writers and also translated and edited a number of incomprehensive Pidgeon English scripts for international co productions. I have (and I worked it out) about 18,000hrs of screen writing time under my belt. I also know a thing or two about the independent film making process. I have always been in demand because I write insanely fast and never ask for a credit Once that second draft is delivered I no longer have any wish to get involved with the creative politics and move on to the next thing. That's experience talking too, I never get too close to a project anymore, I have had far too many failures and heartbreaks when I have become too attached. It still happens of course, I have just become better at letting stuff go.
I don't write like a normal person, my grammar and spelling are utterly atrocious. I think in screenplay format, which is another language entirely. I am an expert at fudging, meeting deadlines, creative problem solving, script doctoring and writing to the confines of a films budget. I can tell you how to find finance, source lucrative tax incentives, access film finds and slash your production budget. Hell, I might just be the most prolific film writer you have never heard of....
This is now.
But we all had to start somewhere...
Introduction to Oh! Marbella
It's been over two decades since the very first film production I was ever involved with. That film was called Oh Marbella!
It was a comedy romp featuring a cast of top British talent such as Rik Mayall, Mike Reid, Tom Bell, David Gant, Roland Manookian and more. It had a great script with four cleverly interwoven stories about a holiday gone wrong on the Costa del Sol. It was undeniably quirky and had it all gone to plan, I firmly believe we would be mentioning it in the same breath as other British films of the time such as The Full Monty, Bend it Like Beckham, East is East and Snatch.
Never heard of Oh Marbella? Don't worry neither has almost anybody. .
We did make a film, but the entire production turned out to be a complete disaster financially and what should have been a small budget indie movie ended up costing millions of pounds. In its wake it bankrupted a successful company, placed multiple individuals on blacklists within the industry and left people financially ruined and mentally scarred. It even led to threats of violence for the producers.
All that for what is a very watchable, but very average film. A solid 3 out of five, C+. There is nothing worse than being average.
By all means call me a masochist, but I struggle to really recall or take any long term joy in the successful things I have accomplished. The buzz is fleeting and I only feel real enjoyment and adrenaline talking to people about all the messed up and crazy situations I have found myself in during my career, which are numerous. It's like watching England at the world cup, if we win easily by 4-0 its just not that fun or memorable, it has to come down to the drama, poor referee decisions and sudden death penalties to truly raise the pulse and be memorable. It also makes for a far better story.
So it is with great pleasure I present to you this Odyssey of misadventure that is Oh! Marbella
CHAPTER 1: The Romford Matador
Back in summer 2000 My business partner Darryn and I were introduced to a writer/director named Piers Ashworth. Piers was a script editor who had worked on a few big budget things such as the original Mission Impossible film with Tom Cruse. He would tell us stories about Hollywood and boy did we lap up his every word,. This was someone who actively worked in the industry at a high level. He was in Spain prepping and scouting locations for his upcoming project, The Romford Matador. The script was ready. cast in place, he was directing himself and he was just closing the finance.
He needed a local company with digital editing facilities to help put the assembly cut together. (More on that later). We were one of the few IT companies on the coast that had these facilities at the time.
We read the script and while I thought it was a well written comedy, it was hardly ground-breaking (The fact I remember nothing about the plot says enough) and the humour was a throw back to the worst misogyny of the "Carry On" films. What I do remember is that everyone else was absolutely flipping their lids over it. I think its because they were all happy go lucky Londoners and as a Northerner whenever I read a film in my head every line is delivered with the stoicism of Sean Bean and not Del Boy, Whatever the reason I was clearly in a minority of one who didn't care for it.
His budget to shoot and edit was £10M of which we would receive a cool £1M for post production. That naturally this was an amount of money to make the eyes water for two 21 year olds. How long did it take for Piers to complete the financing part of his film? Well its 2022 now, so as of writing this its been about 22 years and counting. (So fingers crossed, any day now)
So we were in limbo and to make matters complicated we had also jumped the gun somewhat on our side. We were so sure that the deal was going to be done in a matter of weeks that we had decided to pre-emptively upgrade our editing suite. In the words of John Hammond, CEO of Jurassic park "We spared no expense" and bought a state of the art AVID editing suite on finance to the tune of £250,000.
So we had a problem, we had a super expensive piece of kit and Piers' film financing wasn't progressing. No amount of local corporate videos was going to cover the cost of repayments on this beast, we needed to edit an actual film.
Early in March 2000 I did something that would change my life forever. I decided to show Piers something that I had been working on. It was a pilot for TV series about a group of rich international teenagers in Marbella along the lines of Beverly Hills 90210. Piers read it and annoyingly didn't comment on my work, but he did think the idea of making our own film whilst waiting on his was a great one.
The working title of my project was Oh Marbella! I had casually named the show after my favourite summer nightspot in and it was the name that stuck.
CHAPTER 2: From Pitch to script - (AKA The only bit that went smoothly!)
I'll talk about how we decided to finance the thing later and move on to the best part of any creative process, the pitch meeting.
We would all meet up in our office twice a week to pitch story ideas for the film. There was Myself, Piers, Darryn, his father Keith and Nick Moorcroft another film guy we had met recently. I probably won't mention him much again in this story, but Nick has gone on to write some films you might have seen including The New "St Trinians" movies and also "Burke and Hair".
The initial concept was agreed upon quickly. Four of us were actual writers so we would all submit a self contained story, each of which would play out in its entirety before the next story began. The through line linking them would be that the decisions of all our characters would have consequences on the next story without any interaction between protagonists. So what seemed random and bizarre at the start of the film would eventually make sense. It was Pulp fiction in Marbella.
Pitch meetings are always unintentionally hilarious because at this early point in the game its just brain storming and there is no real financial risk. Ideas are free and so we would pitch totally mental ideas about gangsters babies being kidnapped accidently, hippies on LSD trying to find the ultimate party, disgruntled house wives on the game. Lots of utter crap to be honest. We even had our own version of the gong show to speed up the process. This went on for a few a weeks until we eventually settled on our final concept.
It was about a long weekend in Marbella and all the stories would feature characters that had shared the same budget flight together. The 4 stories were called Losers, Hitman, Goat Hurlers and Nudists. We would all write one story and Piers as script editor and Director would put them together in a coherent order and add the links. So the next step was to go away and write a 20 page draft each and submit it within 2 weeks.
A few Things I wished I had known back then....
You need a few things to successfully pitch your movie. Don't approach anyone of importance about it until you have at least the first two of the following as you probably will not get more than one bite of the proverbial cherry. I will write articles on the whole process later, but to keep it brief you need:
(1) A Tagline
A single sentence that captures the idea, concept and genre of your film. Use a direct comparison to a successful film in the genre or a Film A meets Film B comparison. (I'll go into more detail in a future article about this too). Don't try to be clever, don't try to intellectualise. KISS.( Keep It Simple, Stupid. People need to understand what you are pitching in ten seconds maximum. Take it from me that no one of importance is likely to read your script on first submission. It will go to an intern (I know, I had several at once). They will read them, sift out the wheat from the chaff and when finally asked by the exec if they have read anything interesting, they will use the tagline to describe it to their bosses.
(2) Synopsis
(1 or 2 pages) that explains your film from start to finish, all the key plot points., some character details. It also needs to have a beginning, middle and something resembling an end. You can still be vague as hell about the end at this point if you haven't got one. Just make sure you tie up the loose ends, E.G. The film ends when characters A and B finally resolved their issues and then have to save the world in an epic final climax.
(3) Treatment
(4- 8 Pages) A full summary of the entire film, every key scene, all major plot points and character arcs. It should literally read like the story of the movie without the dialogue. You don't have to explain away any plot holes here, but everything has to make logical sense in a treatment. Pretend the audience is actually watching, keep them hooked by revealing interesting plot points as late as possible. This time you will need to have a satisfactory and well thought out ending. The treatment in all honesty is one of your best tools as a screenwriter, once you have it, it makes the whole writing process a lot easier as it lets you know what you are doing now and where you are going next.
4) The actual script in the appropriate screenplay format.
CORRECT FORMAT, CORRECT FORMAT, CORRECT FORMAT.. That is all. I don't care if your name is William Shakespeare. if you have submitted a script in MS word document format and a times news roman font, its going in the bin. Use final draft or something industry standard. We have our own rules and conventions that whilst not the prettiest looking on the page serve certain purposes, E.G. determining running time. (Again more on this another time). Also, omit any complicated stage directions and never ever say what the camera is supposed to be doing at any time, that is the Directors job, not yours. Leave room for the readers minds to interpret a scene in their own way, don't be overly rigid and force it upon then. This excites prospective directors who will all imagine your script differently.
Back to the story....
The story I was turning from a two line concept to script was an idea of mine based upon an actual experience called Goat Hurling.
It was about a guy meeting a girl at the baggage claim at the airport. He is there to relax and buy cheap cigarettes for his family, she is a vegan, militant animal activist heading to a small town to stop them sacrificing a goat in their annual fiesta. Naturally he goes there to meet up with her and hilarity ensues as they attempt to save the goat and outrun the locals. That was all I had. written down in my note book, Now I had to make a 25 page script out of it.
At this early point in my career, i didn't know that I should have written a synopsis or a treatment to help me with the process. I just assumed I could make it up as I went along.
I must have written about a dozen drafts of this initial idea. I was relying on the sheer uniqueness of my premise to somehow shape everything around it. In this case it was the goat hurling event in the village.. I focused the whole script on the village location because i honestly didn't know what to write about. So I went off on wild tangents involving a crazy Vietnam veteran holding people hostage. There was no story or logic to anything, just a bunch of random occurrence's for scene after scene and then the eventual conclusion. I just could not make it work and I had my first wobble as a screenwriter when I realised.. This is not as easy as I thought it was going to be. I had concluded I would be a natural at this long before ever putting pen to paper.
Luckily Piers was a pro and told me what to do. He simply said.. "The stuff in the village., that's really only about 5 pages."
So I started again from scratch only this time the first half of the story focused entirely on Bradley having a terrible night out in Puerto Banus, striking out with every girl he meets and realising the next morning his best chance of hooking up was with the crazy girl he had a connection to at the airport. It wrote itself, I remembered every embarrassing situation I had ever found myself in as a teenager going out for the night, put it on paper and it was quite frankly hilariously accurate and true to life. It made Bradley a relatable character. So by the time he arrived at the village to meet Sophie he was already down and out and so ready to complete his hero's' journey. As the audience we were rooting for him now. So coming back to my inexperience at the time. I really wish I had written a treatment first.
I powered out the next draft in a day and that was it. The version I handed in was the one we used. It never changed it again, not a single page. (Although later it did get changed without me knowing anything about it)
Two months later in May 2000 we had a working script that we were comfortable starting to raise finance for. To this day I will defend the excellence of that production script, if the quality on the page had mirrored the eventual final product I would not be writing this now. We all honestly believed hand on our hearts we had created something very special.
CHAPTER 3: Financing Oh! Marbella
I think the most common question I am asked about the production process is about how films get financed. I am extremely experienced in this process and can rattle off my presales, tax rebate and co- production explanation whilst also cooking a roast dinner for 12. All I say to people is, even if you don't understand me, understand this....
"Whatever you do, Don't use your own money. That will come back to bite you in the ass. Also... don't use gangster money either. Their understanding of risk exposure is somewhat limited when shit hits the fan!"
So with our script ready we moved on to finance.
Our offices at this time were located in the lovely area of Guadalmina Alta, just outside of San Pedro in a busy if somewhat unglamorous commercial centre. (It had however have plenty of free parking, what more do you want).
Piers said we needed to start looking the part if we wanted to attract investors and start behaving like an actual Hollywood production company, perception in films as I am sure you know is everything. A few miles down the road in the sleepy Spanish village of Cansalada was Mundo Studios, the second largest soundstage in Spain.
It was in all honesty considered a bit of a white elelphant by locals. Whoever had built it, expected a lot of people to use it and they just never had done. Outside of the occasional car commercial or music video, the studio was usually empty. What it did have going for it was it was very impressive looking, like a gigantic pristine white blimp hanger that glistened in the summer sun.
Piers convinced us that if we moved to the studio with our editing facilities, of which we now had 3, we could offer post production facilities to the studio once the film was completed as they had none. So even though the rent was 3 times the price we were currently paying, we moved to a very prestigious location and set up our new office with a really swanky and luxurious VIP editing room, complete with massive sofas, fridges, etc.
How the financing of Oh! Marbella worked.
We decided we were going to make Oh! Marbella its own LTD company. There would be something I remember like 40 shares, each with the value of £35,000. The 40 shares would total some £1.4milliom which was to be the cost of the production. The company owned this production and any and all intellectual rights and that was it.
So who would these shareholders be? Why, the rich and famous of the Costa del Sol of course.
We hosted two very booze heavy parties at the studios with the aim of getting people to buy shares in the production. Marbella didn't make many movies and other than the failed BBC series El Dorado almost a decade prior, no one had filmed anything major on the coast in years. So we made these parties the place to be, invitation only, free unlimited champagne and canapes. The studio car park was a sea of Bentleys, Aston Martins and Ferrari's. It was the most Marbellary of Marbella things. Piers gave a slick presentation to the 70 or so high rollers we had invited, complimented by an awesome promo film that showed graphs of all the money they could expect in return for investing, clips of potential cast, locations, etc.
It was honestly a big deal and really, really cool!
Our psychology behind doing it this way in one room was that Marbella was (and still is) famous for its superficiality. It's full of narcissists who want to be in it for the glamour and hang around with celebrities. Drunk on champagne and with no one wanting to seem like they couldn't afford it, It didn't take much to convince most of these people to buy about half the shares at these two parties.
For the cost of just a few thousand euros in champagne and smoked salmon blinis, it had translated into £750,000 of production capital in a couple of hours. Later on as the production commenced and the sceptics could see it was the real deal, we knew that we would probably sell the rest. FOMO in Marbella was as real and rampant in 2001 as it is now in 2022. If you weren't going to be part of this once in a lifetime chance to make a movie ,well frankly you were a loser.
Because these shares were £35.000 a pop there was a finance plan in place to let people pay for them in instalments. The banks in Spain wouldn't lend us anything against them (smart people). So even though on paper we had enough for the shoot, we still needed to raise probably an additional £50 - 100,000 to cover principal photography costs.
We did this through a combination of local product placement, auctioning of walk on parts and in the case of one investor we had to agree to let his daughter sing the theme song at the end of the movie (She did and its terrible, I wrote the lyrics and its possibly the worst song to ever close a film). We also pulled in every favour we could from local companies. As such for a few seconds screen time, we managed to secure services that would cost money, rather than the money itself.
If you ever do see the film there are some hilarious shots that linger on the most obvious of product placements that we forgot to include in the storyboards and had to shoehorn into the production during pickups. There is a tense scene with a hitman character scoping out his targets villa through a telescope and for some reasons he just "pans left" to a random delivery van with a logo on it, stays there about four full seconds and then pans back. It's just plain weird.
So with enough shares sold, product placement and favours in place, all we had to do was collectively turn out our pockets for the remaining couple of euros and we were ready to begin.
CHAPTER 4: The Production
Piers was friends with Dan Hubbard of Hubbard Casting, who amongst many films cast the Lord of The Rings and they did a stellar job securing us the talent for the film. For film stock we were going to shoot on 16mm kodak. If we had known that in two years what digital magic would do for the industry, we could probably have waited and then saved a lot of money.
Shooting on film always has been an expensive business that requires very competent, very skilled individuals to run a production, so things had to be kept super tight. We had a very complicated and precise five week shoot with almost no margin for error. We would film one story a week as the main actors in each story had to be wrapped up and done in eight days as we simply could not afford to have them come back for pick ups at this point.
My job was office based as I still had our core company to run, but to keep me involved I became the assistant editor for the production with the job of picking up the rushes at the cargo side of the airport every other day, which was a lovely 6 hour round trip made worse by the stifling summer air and constant traffic jams.
So apart from two days when I got to meet the cast and crew on set I was in the office. I had no idea what was happening on the set during the day/night, but I was the first person on the production to see the completed rushes as I would transfer them from betamax onto the AVID. Anyone who edits film will tell you, that being the first to see the rushes, even ahead of the director is considered an honour.
On working with my hero Rik Mayall
The highlight of my entire shoot was meeting Rik Mayall. Back since I lived in Yorkshire as a preteen, I had always loved Rik. I had a 1984 Young Ones Bachelor Boys book that had once belonged to my older brother. On set, I asked him to sign it with a very specific phrase my brother had suggested - "THIS IS RIK MAYALLS TOILET, SO FUCK OFF!" He obliged, then he got on one knee, bowed his head and presented it to me like a knight presenting a sword to a king. It honestly was the best moment of my life.
At first he had thought I was just a random fan, but when I told him I was one of the writers, he reintroduced himself and was really interested in what I had to say. Later at lunch, we ate sandwiches whilst he mused to myself and a few other crew about the nature of why y-fronts are always funny in comedy. Despite everything else that happened, I would always treasure this afternoon.
WEEK 1: The Losers
The first week went absolutely brilliantly, at least that's what I was interpreting from the rushes, it was Rik Mayalls story The Losers and it looked lovely. The sound had been recorded separately and often took a few extra days to get back to me, so I could only go by the image on the screen. If it sounded half as good as it looked, then it was going to be everything I hoped it could be.
The only problem I remembered about this week of production was that we were filming at the old terminal at Malaga airport and catering were not allowed for security reasons. So our friend Andrew the Production PA had to source something like 300 sandwiches from a local industrial estate at the last minute, which then had to sit in his car for hours with all that lovely mayonnaise bubbling to about 40 degrees. Needless to say the 100 or so extras we had that day were not very happy with us, but on the plus side, nobody died from any fizzy tasting tuna mayo.
WEEK 2: The Hitman
Week two was our Hitman story with Tom Bell and Mike Reid. This also went well according to the rushes I was seeing. Once I received the sound for this story though it was clear that Mike Reid wasn't using a single line of the script and was just making it up as he went along. I literally couldn't tell what he was saying half the time. I have to say, that I had met Mike a couple of times before production started when he had come into the office (He lived locally) and unlike Rik, who was charming and obliging, Mike Reid was a disinterested and obnoxious c**t who thought he was the lord of all.
There were a few more incidents on week two. Tom Bell fainted on the first night of a two night shoot and we lost half a day (night) and we were genuinely worried he was going to die on set. Spoiler warning: He was absolutely fine and we finished the scenes.
The next incident concerned me directly. The main editor, an Australian dude who's name escapes me, didn't show up to the office that morning. He literally just vanished in the night and absolutely no one knew what had happened to him. So a few days later I was sent to the airport to pick up a new Editor to continue.
He did say a weird thing to me. "I am not walking into a warzone am I?"
"No!", I said, confident, yet confused.
Because the producers Darryn, Keith and Piers were on set and most people had their phones on silent, I just went about my day as usual. Then a day later something else happened. The line producer organising everything stormed into the office, I heard a few shouts and slams and then he was gone as well.
I was also asked along with Andrew to do some increasingly weird things. Every Friday we would be given about £20,000 in cash (each) and told to go to banks to split it into smaller notes to pay everyone. I was 21 at the time and living on a still very corrupt Costa so I didn't even think about what was being asked. By todays standards if I walked into a bank with 20k in cash every week and asked them to change it, I would be sitting in an interview room trying to explain that I wasn't money laundering. Naturally no sane bank would do a single transaction for such a large amount and Andrew and I had to literally had to go to about 20 banks between us every week. The production was suddenly paying for everything in cash, which meant we probably didn't have a functioning accounts department either. What was going on?
WEEK 3: The Nudists
Week 3 was the nudists story. Two yuppies, (Craig Kelly, Charlotte Lucas) accidently get booked into a naturist resort and bump into their boss (David Gant). in an attempt to save their jobs they will have to embrace this lifestyle. I cannot stress enough how easy it was to get dozens of actual naturists to feature in this story.
My problem was that in my head it had been shot Austin Powers style, with peoples modesty hidden behind various pieces of set dressing. Boobs behind a tree branch, Penis hidden by a carefully placed teapot, etc. By doing it that way we wouldn't be risking a higher rating by the film board and potentially alienating a large part of the British audience. I had assumed we were aiming for a 12 rating.
I had pleaded with Piers to shoot covering footage that would allow us to work around any problematic bits and pieces flapping about. He shot none, he went full frontal on everything and while it is very honest, body positive and accurate to the naturist way of life, it meant our film was instantly ruled out for a child friendly audience. Sex and swearing could be cut or dubbed without affecting the story, but almost twenty minutes of balls and bush on display, not so much.
The rushes looked fine, but I was not happy about it. It was the first time when I thought, I wouldn't want my mum or dad to see the finished film, they'd find it too much.
Week 4: Goathurling
This was my story and as it was the quirkiest it was supposed to open the film as the first story.
We had all agreed as a vanity, that each of us writers would have a small cameo in the movie. I would be playing a bartender in the famous Linekers bar in Puerto Banus. I filmed my scene, but the lines I had to say...Well I didn't write them, they had been added and so they totally threw me. I didn't make it into the final cut of the film, there is the briefest shot of me just walking down the bar.
When I saw the rushes as they came in I was really not happy. They were so far and away from what I imagined and the difference in quality between footage from week one and week four was gaping. I knew by this point that the final film was going to be very average.
More and more arguments were happening on an almost daily basis now. I wasn't privy to all of them, but I knew we were out of money for the production at this point. What's worse is I had been told that we were going to abandon Marbellalife.com, our core internet business that we had created together and I was insanely proud of.
The business had become a strictly family affair and my opinion on anything was moot. Darryn, his dad Keith and his mum Fabienne who had taken over as accountant on the film had now committed an awful lot of their own money into the film to see it through and therefore they were going to be making all the decisions. I did not own any shares in Oh Marbella LTD. and my fee on the film was tied to a distribution deal, so that was effectively that. Our website company was probably losing a few thousand a week by not actively working on it, but at this point Oh! Marbella was costing us 10k a day. The film had to come first.
Editing
I was also no longer needed as the assistant editor. As soon as principal photography wrapped, Piers requested we move our AVID to his house 20 miles down the coast so he could work on it from home. I tried to remind everyone that it had been his idea in the first place to move into our expensive film studio offices for this purpose. Piers said he didn't feel like the 40 minute drive everyday. We also couldn't afford an editor, so Piers pretty much took over that job too.
As expected the edit did not go smoothly. Due to our severe time and budget constraints we had filmed the bare minimum of footage required to make a functioning feature film. In total the edits were all less than 80 minutes with credits (of which there were a lot). Key shots were missing entirely and the quality difference between each story edited was very telling. So instead of opting for the original Pulp Fiction style we had to edit the timeline in a linear fashion, cutting between stories to make sense of it all, which totally ruined all of its cleverness, the surprises, the nuance, EVERYTHING!!!.
We had zero money to do any reshoots with the cast, so this is all we had to work with. We had to finish the edit though, we had investors who were getting edgy and we still needed to sort out a distribution deal.
Also.... Music rights.
TIP: This one is really quick and mega important: For the love of God, do not edit your film to commercial music, match cut it, etc.
JUST DO NOT DO IT - "The Antinike"
Even if you can clear a song with the relevant artist and their company, they are really, really expensive and we did not know this. If we had been able to afford the music we just nonchalantly edited the film to, it would have cost us millions. So we had to record soundalikes to fit to the editing at the last minute as it was too late. There is a scene with the naturists on a beach that was originally set to Mungo Jerry's - "In the summertime", which we couldn't afford. If you watch the scene now, there is this soundalike that is so clearly a rip off with similar lyrics it actually makes the scene worse.
On writing the THEME for a feature film
I used to write a lot of bad songs in my teenage years. I could write lyrics fairly well, but my inability to play an instrument was somewhat a hurdle to any aspirations I might have had. None the less I was permitted to write the theme song for Oh Marbella.
We had made friends with popular New York musical act The Fun Lovin' Criminals of Scooby Snacks fame and I was going to write a cool rap for them to perform for our movie. I remember this much of what I wrote from memory...
The ticket was cheap, But the price was high
When I stepped off flight E -Z-Y
looking for love, but barely staying alive
Right from the get go, I had to lay low
As the custom guys, took a look at my passport
with my cheesy smile, then opened my case to take a look inside.
It said my name's Bill, But they were looking for Charlie.
My threads were too dope, cooler than bob Marley
Oh, oh oh Marbellla, come be a player...
That's all I can remember now. Anyway, it didn't happen. I ended up writing this ballad called Love in the Afternoon a delicious pun on Hemingway's Blood in the Afternoon novel. As I mentioned ages back, as a favour for buying a share in the production we had agreed to let an investors daughter sing the thing. I supplied the lyrics and the melody for the recording studio, they gave us what is probably the worst song to ever feature on a post film credits scroll. The young lady was clearly talented, but her inexperience showed and what can I say.... I usually leave the room or squirm when it comes on. Still... I have an original song in a feature film.. Do you? No, shut up.
The Premiere
Despite everything we finally had a finished film, which meant that we could have a premier at the cinema in Puerto Banus. I remember it well, it was such an event, red carpet, local media, popcorn, gummy bears.... "mmmmm Gummies!" Because everyone knows everyone in Marbella it had a friendly, local energy about it all. Imagine when the Muppets all go to do something together in a film... It felt like that, a lot of unpredictable flailing energy and cocaine dilated pupils everywhere you looked, such was the buzz.
It was also as nervy an affair as I have ever experienced in my life. Sitting there with hundreds of people finally about to judge your (average) work. It was a local production so people laughed and heckled at walk on parts, cheered if they recognised a location and so in a sense it was a successful event, but it felt more pantomime than premiere as I was fully aware that the general public wouldn't be as forgiving.
CHAPTER 5: Distribution
So what happens next.
Well at this point, you are supposed to have your distribution deals already in place so that you can hand your film over to the people who do this better than you and they can get it onto cinema screens or worse case scenario for us, a highly advertised DVD release.
We had nothing.
Now this was a time before digital streaming and platforms such as Netflix and Prime simply didn't exist yet. There was no one just buying content to fill a platform like there is now. There was only Cinema, DVD and TV rights and these were fewer, the risks of failure higher and therefore quality control and tough negotiating on any product essential. Big Distributors were rarer and they did their research about a production and used that knowledge to their advantage.
In our case, the distributors knew we had a troubled production, that we were in serious financial trouble and needed to sell our film as quickly as possible. So the ones that did show interest, only put in a low ball offer that bordered on the derogatory. Their case against us, was that the film was average and all the swearing, sex and nudity limited its appeal. (I told him, I freaking told him didn't I)
There was another massive problem too.
You see, there was something important I forgot to mention about these independent share holders. Because the production was a company they all had a vote on what deal was made for distribution. Everytime something new was on the table they would be contacted and it would be put to a vote. Because the final cost of the production was now vastly higher than budgeted and the investor returns diminished to a fraction of what was promised at that initial pitch meeting, shareholders were just unwilling to budge. They didn't just want the big bucks, they needed them to break even.
So other than a DVD deal in Germany, where the film actually did quite well, nothing else was in place.
When comedian Mike Reid died the BBC approached us to buy the film to show on the BBC. Because the film hadn't been on at the cinema the BeeB have a policy to pay a fixed amount to show the film, needless to say it once again wasn't enough to appease investors.
I was long gone from the company when the more sinister stuff started to happen. As I said a long time ago, some of this investor money didn't come from the nicest of people and when a couple of years has passed with no returns they wanted their investment back, all of it, plus interest. Darryn and his family were repeatedly harassed and threatened with physical violence for almost a decade afterwards. It literally cost him and his parents everything to slowly buy back all the shares from disgruntled share holders and gradually gain back all the rights to the production.
The production had killed our IT company as well, five years of work to build it up and make it self sustaining, only for a few weeks of rampant production costs to deal an extinction level event to our once thriving little world. All that destruction for at best C- final movie.
My Final Thoughts.
So here we are 20 years later. I have a copy of Oh Marbella I bought online recently, which I will try to cut a few clips from to show you guys as soon as I can. It is an entertaining film and a lot happens in those 78 minutes that are on screen, the tinny and rushed soundalike soundtrack is as awful as I remember, but there is plenty to like there. I certainly don't hate it anymore.
But you can see the holes, how thread bare the production was. As Bilbo once said "It feels thin, like butter spread over too much bread". The fact its so anonymous is what disturbs me most, a few ancient reviews, the odd copy up for sale on Amazon. When looking for a few photos online to make this page, I could hardly find any. Its as though, this film never existed at all.
- Damian. Co-writer Oh! Marbella.
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