An entrepreneur wanted to start a casting website for wannabes. A first-time producer wanted to cast his ‘fully funded’ British gangster film with wannabes. It was a match made in hell. The two men – neither of whom would seem out of place selling insurance or threatening shopkeepers – decided to tour the country with a casting roadshow in search of 86 ‘stars of the future’ and 2000 extras. Fortunately for us, they hired a documentary crew to follow them.

Richard E Grant dons his wryest voice to narrate what follows – but almost needn’t have bothered: this is car crash viewing at it’s finest. The horrors fall into four main categories: The Tour (locked venues, incorrect advertising etc); The Applicants (squeaky-voiced lunatics, drunken floozies, earnest amdram hams and a few genuine gangsters); The Organisers (lies, backstabbing, more lies, vanishing finances, lies and so on); and, most bizarre of all, Mr Cream The Warm Up Man (you just have to see him).

We’d like to think The Making Of A Film Idol movie will give the indie filmmakers amongst you a bit of a boost: We’ve all seen docs about productions dogged by shooting problems, but to see something so miserably ill-conceived from the get-go may give you new hope that your epic postmodernist animated triptych has some chance of getting off the ground. OS

Playing with HOBBY

UK MiniDV 7 mins Director/Producer/DoP Geoffrey Parsons Print Source speed_industries@yahoo.co.uk