Pull Back And Reveal

Hello there

A happy Monday morning to you from over here.

Quick and brief update on my ailments first. I continue to be infirm and am at the point where it is officially “getting me down”. I have got shuffling, as my primary mode of transport, down to a fine art, and no stone has been ejected.  I do have constant abdominal discomfort/pain though, which is frankly adorable and if I was a horse they’d have shot me by now.

But, as you can tell, I’m keeping myself bright and positive.

On to business.  I’ve obviously been thinking a lot about what to bring you on the patreon page, during my temporary freefall, and I’ve hit a bit of a quandary as far as content pertaining to The ParaPod AVBGH is concerned.  There is a load more stuff to share, but we now step over into spoiler land with it.  Not in this post, just generally.

Now, I know that most of you reading this will have seen the film by now.  It’s been released in UK, Ireland, NZ, AUS, US and Canada. So, for the majority, there’s no issue with me straying into spoiler territory because it isn’t even a spoiler anymore.  We can luxuriate in me not talking in code, and just correspond like grown ups finally.  There’s still that Europe loophole though (and the other places, but I'm not sure there's much reach into those), and from a distribution standpoint it’s looking like there’s no sign of that being closed soon. It feels awful, and neglectful really, but there’s simply no money left, and no proper deal on the table for it.

I know I already spoke to you a bit about this recently, but this is the quandary I find myself in. I think I’ll just have to crack on with the next phase of content.  I actually had another quandary (a quandary within a quandary, if you will), when I’ve been dealing with these illegal uploads of the movie of late.  I say I’ve been dealing with it.  I tried to, and Bil tried to, before Blue Finch (the distribution company over here) took it over for us.  At one point they were asking me to prove I was involved in the film (my identity had been confirmed at this point), and I was saying “just play that pirated link for twenty seconds!” but they wouldn’t do that.  This was YouTube by the way.  A platform where you can actually buy and watch the film.  It's a film on their platform and they were still dragging their heels taking down a hooky copy. Really unnecessarily hard work and stressful and did I mention I was ill?

The quandary though, was that I know there are people – some on here - who are waiting to watch this film in their territory, with no release date announced.  Meanwhile, I know there’s (was) an illegal upload on the world’s biggest video site, that any stranger can click on and have a look. You see what I mean? I obviously can’t be promoting an illegal link to watch the film, but when people have waited so long with still no end in sight, and these are people who are supporting me already, it properly conflicts me. Yet the click validates the piracy, and you know there will be people (I’d have thought not on here, because of the nature of the ethos of patreon) who could go buy the film to stream, who would instead go watch the free one and that mugging would be an end to their investment and another kick to our budget recouping.

I’m having the frustration, from an audience point of view, with Bobcat Goldthwait’s latest movie, Joy Ride, which is also with the same North American distribution company as The ParaPod (Gravitas).  There’s presently no UK release date for it, and doesn’t seem to be one planned.  All the hints I’ve dropped to Gravitas about really wanting to see it so far haven’t been picked up on, and I think if it suddenly popped up on YouTube or whatever, I’d struggle not to have a look.  I wouldn’t go and torrent something (don’t actually know how to), but YouTube feels different for some reason. I’d also be able to justify it in my own head by being sure I would buy it at the first opportunity, same as I’ve bought all his other films, but – again – is this just playing into the hands of piracy?  Like, encouraging it? I can clearly see both sides of this. I got all the Star Wars films on dvd (ripped from LaserDisc) years before the official release, but I'd bought them so many times already and snapped up the dvd (and Blu-Ray...and 4K...) when it was officially released. I successfully alleviated any guilt on that.

I dunno, I guess what I don’t know can’t hurt me.  If I don’t know, I can’t call it out or have to form a response.  I certainly can’t be cross with somebody who resides where the film isn’t available, who has seen this film “illegally”, if I’m not even aware of it.  Their personal justification is for them to work out, not for me to declare. Even if that justification is “well I can’t even look at his patreon posts till I’ve seen it”.

I want everyone who wants to see this film to be able to see it, but I can’t magic it into certain territories.  The whole business side of this is so complicated, even the thing of releasing in different territories with different deals and companies, it’s all just mind-tangling.  It’s because of different restrictions and requirements and all that, but goodness me, wouldn’t it be lovely to just release something worldwide with the same company? I don’t even know how the film has performed in North America (so I presume not well), and only found out the other day that the Blu-Ray is already on sale over there (just a vanilla disc that they’ve put together, we’ve had no input into it).

I’d noticed on the carriage letter (a pdf thing they send out to give the details of when and where it would be released), that there was mention of the Blu-Ray and where it would be available.  It didn’t actually say when, and part of the release deal was that it would be in four phases, with Blu-Ray being the last one.  It looks like they’ve just released all at the same time.  All very confusing. Nobody has sent me a copy like!

The main point though, was to let you know that – going forward on Patreon – I’m gonna speak more openly about the content of the movie.  If you want me to flag it up with a spoiler warning then I can, but wasn’t going to.  Just one person asking will mean I gladly do, so speak now or forever hold your peace. Not a problem at all, but if I don’t have to flag it up then that’s one less thing for me to remember, and I'm presently regularly forgetting to take important tablets.

I like the potential freedom that comes with being able to talk about the movie properly.  It was how I used to feel during the Q&A’s at the screenings.  Just a real relief to not have to remember to omit certain things, because you knew everyone in that room had definitely seen it. I’d like to phase that into here, and it also frees up a load more deleted footage for you of course.

Not that being cagey about it wasn’t fun sometimes.  When I’ve been going through the posts to do the contents/index (and what a stupid job that was to take on, I uploaded ALL of 2019 on Saturday to the pinned Contents page), I’ve spotted some belting teases that all look very different now.  

My absolute favourite was when I showed a series of pictures with an “anomaly” on them, which were actually screen grabs from the bit that ended up in the final trailer, where I threw the headmaster’s cane down the hall at Barry.  I’d freezeframed it so the cane looked like the church spire pics in The Omen, and said it was unexplained.  I also said I hadn’t manipulated the footage in any way which was absolutely true. What a fun and friendly deceit that was.

Here’s one of those pics:

And here’s the original post so you can see what a naughty boy I was being:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/movie-oddness-24977493

Let’s pull the curtain slightly back now though.  Starting with the first of the month scene for December which is going to be a deleted scene that was falsified for the movie (one of the reasons it was ultimately deleted), but then mined for scraps to be reappropriated.  I think it’s an interesting untold story.

That all good with you?

Hope you’ve a lovely Monday up and running. Am gonna try really hard to get some video content for you this week, but I’m presently only managing written and audio (barely) because I’m proper off my feet here.  It’s very stressful, but at least know I am thinking of you (and worrying) all the time.

All the love as per.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx