Martin Cuff Consulting

Thanks to my beloved (twin) sister Emma, we are luxuriating in the second series of the flabbergastingly awesome Downton Abbey. The familiar characters are all growing up and moving on, this time completely dragged through the clothing mangler by the tumultuous events of World War I (which has just ended on our viewing schedule.) Most importantly for the Upstairs-Downstairs, social boundaries are collapsing, (hurrah!) and its almost inconceivable that anyone ever thought life would return to pre-war indolence. So what will this mean for Downton?

Well, Series 3, obviously – and the news that Shirley MacLaine is joining the cast as Lady Cora’s brash, Yankee mother (surely the casting coup of the decade?) will only add to the excitement. But interestingly there’s also been a lot of buzz around the location of Downton itself, the lush Highclere House outside Newbury, that was built by the same chap who built the Houses of Parliament. The LA Times again steps forward with a loving behind-the-scenes portrait of the house: 10 Facts About the Show’s Real Castle. You too can visit the house – the ancestral home of the family that discovered King Tut’s tomb – at a cool twelve hundred bucks a visit. You heard me right.

I realized again this week that no-one in my family and only a few in my circle of friends actually has much of a clue what I do for a living. This video on the making of The Hobbit in New Zealand I think offers a first class insight into the requirements of filming on location. Now film commissions don’t actually organize the logistics of on location filming themselves – that’s the production’s job. What a film commission does, on behalf of the local community, is to promote their specific locations as a great place to film, and then ensure that it actually IS a great place to film – by coordinating and promoting available crews and equipment and services and labor and permit issuing bodies, so that filming is easy and the maximum amount of money is spent in local area. And at the AFCI, I now coordinate between all of the governments in the world who offer this unique service to the film industry – we also provide the definitive training for Film Commissioners, and we host an annual event in LA where film commissions gather to market their destinations to Hollywood.

Happy Thanksgiving to my dear Amerifriends.

Continuing with the American History theme in this week’s film-watching, I caught Robert Redford’s The Conspirator this morning. Awesome. I admit, I cried a bit. You know, Redford’s previous attempt to criticize the Bush government’s abuses of power – Lions for Lambs – was a complete clunker and virtually unwatchable? This time though, he couches his righteous indignation within one of the most painful moments in the US’s turbulent history, in the events surrounding the assassination of President Lincoln. His film focuses on the show trial of Mary Surratt, the only woman tried for the monstrous crime, and whose boarding house was the meeting place of the conspirators (who included her 21 year old son Johnny.)

Guilly? Innocent? Involved? Not? Well that’s not really the point. Because to the horror of her lawyer and her surviving daughter (and to the horror of me, in the audience) the Secretary of War is basically out for a mighty swift revenge that will prevent any such event happening again. In the panic and scramble, all her rights are essentially stripped, as a civilian she becomes subject to a Military tribunal, is judged by nine military men rather than a jury of her peers, and her right to council is undermined. In the light of the Bush government’s treatment of Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, for example – designating them “enemy combatants” and asserting the power to hold them indefinitely, without charges and without access to counsel, there’s clearly a terrible historical parallel post 9-11.

So, big, important themes. But it’s also tremendously well executed. Every scene is painstakingly stylish, the casting is pitch-perfect (James McAvoy and Robin Wright, excellent) and even the pacing is great for a court-room drama. And it filmed in historic Savannah, one of my favorite US cities, and an evocative, photogenic place I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the years. It was wonderful to see the city come to life on the screen, and the streets that I’ve walked on too many occasions to recount, transformed into their muddy, horse-drawn, gas-lit glory. Loved it.

No sign of Kylie when I drove past this location in downtown LA today.

James Peak of The Location Guide talks to AFCI caretaker manager Martin Cuff about his appointment and plans:

After the unexpected departure of CEO Larry Brownell, the Association of Film Commissioners has a new caretaker manager. Martin Cuff is an economics expert based in Cape Town, South Africa. So the most American of institutions has hired someone outside Hollywood? Who is this guy, and what is he doing? And is he interested in the job on a permanent basis?

Martin is a film sector specialist: “I have a small business that specialises in establishing and mentoring film commissions around the world. I’ve run film commissions and film permit offices on two continents. I was the first African representative to be voted onto the AFCI board. I’m the only foreigner to ever have been hired in to run a US state film commission….

Click here for more.

I lived in London in 1992, in a flat in St. John’s that I shared with my beloved friend Helen. Now I can’t watch Sandra Bullock without remembering Helen’s beauty, grace and zany humour – and each episode of Will and Grace plunges me right back to that tiny apartment. (When I told her this recently, she said “They put a hidden camera in our living room and stole our lives…”)

I’m remembering this because Hels was the one who introduced me to Jane Russell in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” - a fabulous grrrrl-power exposition that’s really powered by the kindness and solidarity and wit and intelligence and bravery and earthy sexiness of Russell’s counterfoil to the ditzy Marilyn. I didn’t prefer the blonde, I preferred Jane, and I am therefore very sorry she’s finally gone aged 89. What a star.

On a personal note, today I had to say goodbye to my beloved Finley Child – aka Chopsy, Lumpy, Running Girl, The Angel, Old Lady, Miss Fin. When she came into my life, she was 10 weeks old and fat and brown and glossy as a seal pup. She only ever settled when she sat on my lap. “Oh the places we”ll go,” I said to her, as I brought her home. And we did – all the way to Colorado and back. Finley was the sweetest, gentlest, most awesome dogchild a man could ever have. We had thirteen fantastic years together and my life will really not be the same without her in it.

A year in movies.

Still on a SethEffriken theme (will this joy know no abatement?) the new Judge Dredd film – with the understated if unimaginative working title Dredd – is currently shooting in Cape Town, starring the groovy Karl Urban (who so impressed in Red). Dredd is Africa’s first 3-D movie production and the first to use the Cape Town Film Studios, a precinct I was closely involved with whilst at the Cape Film Commission. But I digress…… Dredd is currently out and about, filming on location in the Mother City – and Live for Films has some pics.

This one is taken at the strikingly grotesque sixties Civic Centre. Check the African Hat. Anyway, LFF also includes a casting list from the film – check out the fairly specific racial requirements. How do you do that and avoid god-awful Hobbit-esque embarassment?