The Casting Couch, Harry Potter, Tony Blair and Me

Hermione, Ron & Harry - note the top quality jumper on Ron

Yesterday I had my first ever screen test.  I was awful and yet still better than most of the cast in Harry Potter.  It was a strange, strange experience.  I’ve never been attacked by lots of cats at once but I’m fairly sure the feeling would be similar.   When I left the flat with my hands stuck in a claw like grip.

The film has been written and is being directed by Tim who plays music in Katerwaul and makes coffee in Kilau.  The part I was going for is a man who gets fucked over by a woman and goes proper mental.  There’s also a bit of time travel.  I’m fairly sure if I get the part I’ll probably humiliate myself.  And there’ll probably be nudity and I’ll have to get my cock out and show it to hunners of people.  Still, it was interesting to do something a bit different.  Good to push myself.

Went to see Harry Potter at about half eleven last night and got there as the trailers were starting.  Because there were four of us and not four empty seats anywhere in the proper cinema we had to sit in the special seats at the front.  Thankfully my eyes are quite far apart and I was able to take the whole thing in.  It was a really underwhelming film.  It looks beautiful, possibly the most beautiful of all the Potter films, the music is superb and Ron Weasley has some very good knitwear.  It doesn’t really run very smoothly and is annoyingly different from the book.  But it does set up the final two films.  Much the same way that the sixth book is a little underwhelming but sets up book seven.

The beginning of this book is where the Minister of Magic appears to the Prime Minister.  I remember when I used to work for Anne Begg MP and she came up in the draw for PMQs.  We were desperately trying to think a question and because Half Blood Prince had come out this week I suggested we ask about it.  So she did.  Here’s the Hansard of her question and Tony Blair’s reply.

Q8. [13349]

Miss Anne Begg (Aberdeen, South)

(Lab): Now that the summer recess is almost upon us, will my right hon. Friend have time to do what millions of people did this weekend and read the new Harry Potter novel by Scotland’s most successful writer? What would he say to people who have been critical of those books, especially as they have done more to improve literacy and children’s enjoyment of reading than even this Government’s excellent education policies and everything that I did in 19 years as an English teacher?

The Prime Minister: The Harry Potter brief in my file is somewhat thin, which only shows that my officials’ sense of importance is not what it should be. I was told by someone, however, that in the first chapter of the new book the Minister of Magic comes out of a picture to confront the Prime Minister. I am still searching for the Minister.

That was actually asked in Parliament!  And I had something to do with it.  Oooh, the reaction was awful.  The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Mail and the Evening Express all had a go.  I think it was then that I knew I wasn’t going to be a West Wing style advisor for any senior politician.  The closest I ever got was writing jokes for Wendy Alexander for about two weeks.

Quick, get in the fridge. There’s a bomb-a-coming

I came across a great phrase the other day – Nuking  The Fridge.  In a way it kind of means the same as jumping the shark but more sort of aimed at movie franchises than TV series. 

It takes it name from the god awful-pissing-on-his-legacy-for-more-cash-Lucas_written-Spielberg-directed Indiana Jones 4.  A film which gave you a burst of nostalgia by managing to recreate the feeling you got when you found out Santa was your dad.  In the film Indy finds himself in a testing site for a nuclear bomb and so he hides in a fridge which then gets blown a couple of miles away.  He walks out of the fridge completely fine.

Basically the phrase means the point when a film streches believability.  No, not quite believability but… Most films require you to suspend your disbelief but it’s when a film takes the piss and does something that doesn’t seem quite right.  Spidey jazz dancing in Spiderman 3, the whole of Batman & Robin.  I think it’s the point when a writer thinks ‘fuck how do I finish this?  Sod it I’ll just put a magic portal here which sorts everything out.’

This webiste has been set up which can define it much better than I.

Also there’s a rumour that George Lucas might make an Indy 5.  This is really very upsetting.  Can’t you just leave your franchises alone George?  Haven’t you done enough?