Flying in America.

It is always ‘for Operational Reasons’ that has me bounding down endless corridors to get to a revised Gate in time. You book a flight, they cancel it – you run. I had 8 minutes today at Washington Dulles to get from check-in to Gate B73 – and that included passport, security, train ride and the 100 metre sprint… I guess Operational Reasons means they didn’t sell enough tickets. If I missed it, I had three hours to wait and I’d miss the start of tonight’s screening. Luckily I made it on board and it was fine though a shame I had to go via Dallas to get to Kansas. Makes for a long trip. But this country is huge and I do wonder if it really is worth having these screenings and doing these Q&As when I’ll only ever scratch the surface here. On the other hand, every day I get exciting emails with requests and offers so maybe there’s a rhyme to the reason. And the occasional jogs through airline terminals keep me a wee bit fitter…. LATER SAME DAY…OK, so I arrive in Dallas and wander through the very busy airport (lots of soldiers) and get to the gate only to be told the plane is undergoing a technical inspection…the delay is …three hours. Eventually we take off. The flight is note-worthy for being served the worst coffee ever. To cap things off, at Kansas airport, they tell me they have lost my bag! I have to wait (a short while) until the next plane. I finally get to the hotel and the electronics on the doors are bust so I can’t get into any of the rooms…Man-o-Man. One hour after the film has started, I arrive at the cinema. I’m very apologetic but the very nice manager is all smiles: ‘we are 100% full, not a spare seat. We’ve had some many phone calls we’re extending by five days’. Somehow that makes it all worthwhile….

On a voyage of Discovery

He started, so they say, from his garage. He mortgaged his house and then bought documentaries for $1000 /each. A ridiculously low figure 20 years ago – now so common. He felt that Americans wanted to know more about the roots – that, unlike their parents, the new generation was interested in the ‘old countries’. His name was John Hendricks and he started the Discovery Channel. Today, many years later, in a wet, miserable Silver Spring towards the end of the Washington DC Metro line, I stood at the doors of a huge office block holding the many Discovery Channel families. John I expect was enjoying his multi-million dollar wealth somewhere. I’ve made many films for them but that was back in the day when they wanted decent history shows rather than reality shows about deep sea fishermen, gold pan-handlers or whatever. TV has changed almost beyond recognition in two decades and Discovery has been a part of that – part the cause and part the effect. Like so many big institutions it has always come down to individuals. My friend there is one of the good guys – smart, hard-working, passionately interested in the world. Yet even he (a high up exec) feels the jelly under his feet of job insecurity. VPs and CEOs come and go – familiar names swop between Discovery, A&E, BBC and others. The impact, the value, of programmes become secondary to audience numbers. The audience wants blood, give them blood. Julius Caesar had this worked out two thousand years ago when he flooded arenas for sea battles, brought in wild animals from Africa to fight gladiators and so on. But you know what? No kid wants to go the theatre but take them to see Romeo and Juliet and they’ll want to go back. Take them to see Marriage of Figaro and they’ll want to see The Magic Flute. So, I say to my buddy at Discovery, hang in there, they need you!

An Incident

There were two doors – an In and an Out. They were clearly marked. The Out had that familiar red circle with a white line. I couldn’t miss it. Big official building on Capitol Hill, central Washington DC. Very Roman – all big walls and columns. Police cars and blocked-off roads. A city in fear of terrorist attack. Two doors and I was there for a TV interview about war in Afghanistan, poverty & education in Afghanistan, a young boy’s life in Afghanistan. Someone came out of the Out door and while it slowly closed I nipped in. ‘Other door, sir!’ A large man in a crisp blue shirt with official letters across the chest as well as keys and phones and maybe even a gun. ‘Other door’. ‘So sorry’, I said and started to walk to the desk. ‘Out of the Out door, and come back in the In door’. ‘You’re joking’, I said, knowing he wasn’t. ‘You want me to go out that door and come back in the one next to it?!’ ‘That, sir, is what you will do’. Another crisp blue shirt took up position behind me. And another gazed my way, aware of a slight disturbance and eager to somehow participate. Now some things wash over me; I don’t care. But this kind of petty nonsense always winds me up. ‘That, sir, is the height of stupid-ness!’ I decided in a split second not to say ‘stupidity’ as ‘stupid-ness’ sounded more appropriate. ‘That door sir is the way in’. I saw the producer of my interview plead with her eyes for me to swallow my indignation and retrace my clearly all-too-vital steps. I did, laughing out loud to show I had the moral high ground. The man who was there to provide security had, in his incredibly small way, done quite the opposite. Crisp blue shirts no longer suggest order and calm; they now say to me needlessly aggressive, short-sighted and stupid. Then I talked on TV about the war in Afghanistan.

Tuesday 29 March 2011 - Washington DC. USA.

I arrived in Washington yesterday after a nice easy British Airways flight and came straight to the Austrian Embassy for tonight's screening. I had showed Mozart here a couple of years ago and they very nicely have invited me back for a screening of IN SEARCH OF BEETHOVEN. The embassies are all next to each-other out here and we're opposite the UAE and the Egyptian - you can imagine how busy these embassies have been over the last few weeks. Maybe that's how Vienna felt back in the late 1700s when Napoleon was charging through Europe - you simply didn't know what was what. Here the Ambassadors of so many embassies, especially the North African and Middle Eastern countries, have been turned upside down and inside out. Fascinating times indeed. But my film concerns an earlier period though no less fascinating and I was delighted to see a full auditorium seated at 7.30pm ready to go. It wasn’t the greatest screen or projector but it didn't seem to matter - the audience loved the film and stayed afterwards for many questions. As so often in US screenings, you meet so many delightful people, albeit briefly. It only serves to frustrate me too as I know there are not 300 but 30,000 people like last night's audience who would enjoy the film in Washington but connecting to them, making them aware of the film and giving them the chance & easy possibility to see it is so difficult - but we'll keep trying. And Social Media - Facebook, blogs, twitter, etc - whatever one thinks of it all is undoubtedly a great tool to help us. Anyway, a good first night of this two week tour...