CLAUDE'S CIRCUS A MODERN FAIRY STORY OF FILMLAND IN THREE PARTS
PART I: TELEVISION
Once upon a time there was a French estate agent who shall be known as Claude. He was interested in buying and selling films although hedidn'town any himself. He realised that every country in the Western world had TV stations and that the worst fear of the people who ran these stations was that the screen would go silent. So they sent out Programme Buyers all over the world to buy 'product*.
Claude hit on a plan that could make life easier for the Programme Buyers and make him a rich man. He called his plan MIPTV. I will call it The Circus.
He found a small town by the sea with big, old hotels where the people lived mainly from the tourist industry and made a deal with the Town Council and the local hoteliers. If they paid him 20% of their profits, he would pay for the most important TV Programme Buyers of the world to come to their town. The hoteliers were very happy. They knew that if they increased their prices by 25% , they could pay Claude his 20% and still have some left over.
At Easter the Programme Buyers of the world came to Claude's Circus. The film sellers came too. They came to talk to the Programme Buyers, and the international world press came to watch.
* The 18th MIPTV (Mercato Internazionale di Programmi Televisivi) (International TV Programme Market) has just finished in Cannes, France.
Everyone paid Claude an entrance fee; in return Claude gave them a plastic nametag with their photograph on and a colour code: Red for Buyer, Blue for Seller and Orange for Press. He put security guards on all the doors so that nobody could get in without paying him.
Claude smiled. The sellers smiled. The press smiled. The buyers smiled. This is called 'good business'.
After ten years, Claude's Circus was getting too crowded for the Town Centre. He told the Town Council that unless they could build him a new building with better security (too many people had been getting in for free), he would move his circus elsewhere. So they built him a brand new big concrete Palais by the sea with a basement where he could run his circus and not worry about people getting in free.
And that is why, to this day, in the week after Easter, the world TV industry comes to Claude's circus to sit underground at great expense and buy and sell a lot of the programmes which will be seen in your living room over the next year.
End of Part I
COMMERCIAL BREAK. Time for you, dear reader, to make a cup of tea. But be back in time for Part II of our Modern Fairy Story of Filmland.
Fade up music. "Yesterday" - the Beatles.
PART II
Once upon a time, on the edge of the world, in a place called New Zealand, a little girl called Princ«ss was born. She was trained to grow up to be a Mother Princess. This meant that she learned how to cook and sew, read and write (no-one likes their wife to be stupid) and get used to the idea of always following her husband wherever his important work might take him.
She also liked to go to the movies, where she saw kings and queens and princes and princesses getting married and living happily ever after. "That"s what life will be like for me!", she sighed happily as she chewed her Jaffas and ignored her brother and his rude friend princes who were having a farting competition in the back stalls.
But as she grew up, she began to understand that life wasn't at all like the movies. She questioned the roles of 'King*, 'Queen', 'Prince' and 'Princess'. She changed her name to Ms, grew into a woman, and still liked to go to the movies, but she never saw another woman in the films who was remotely like her or any of her woman friends. She figured that this could be to do with the fact that the movies were made by Kings and Princes. She decided to make her own movies with her friends. But you need money to make films and to get money you have to have 'a good track record' and a union card. The only people who had a good track record were Princes and Kings
"Never mind", said Ms and her friends "Money doesn't make films. Enthusiasm makes films." And so they did.
But though they had good ideas and worked very hard, shooting their films on out-of-date film stock and using old cameras (which sometimes scratched the film) and using old microphones and tape recorders which did not always record the soundtrack properly, they became very tired and poor. This was because they spent all their nights editing their films, when the editing rooms were cheaper, and some of their days working to pay the rent on their 'homes', where they kept their beds but didn't often sleep. Any money left over from take-away meals was used to pay the laboratory bills for the film.
After many long days and nights their films were completed. They showed them to the other women, who didn't mind if there were scratches on the negative and the sound wasn't perfect. At least there was the possibility of seeing life-as-theyknew- it on the silver screen.
"Now we can use this worxierful and powerful medium to help build a better world where people don't have to be kings, queens, princes and princesses if they don't want to.
Where people can have equal opportunities and nuclear warheads will be dismantled." These women and their friends wanted to See their grandchildren grow up, and become grandmothers if they wanted to.
End of Part II
Commercial break. Proprietor's message: We apologise for any over-simplifications, but they are necessary in any programme which has to fit into this time-slot Music up (money, money, money... Pink Floyd.
PART III: THE CRUNCH
So Ms and her frierxis now knew that making films was not biologically or genetically predetermined. They knew that other women (and some Princesses who were thinking about becoming women) (and even some Princes who were thinking of changing the world) liked the films that she and her friends had been making.
"Now all we need to do is to beam our message into the living rooms of the world" they said to themselves. But when they tried to get their films shown to a wider audience they were told the quality was not good enough. "We can't show scratched film on the TV screens of the nation" said the Programme Buyers.
"Then give us some money to make films without xratches on" said the women. "We have 'good track records' now. All we need is some money."
They gave some of them a little money so they wouldn't make too much fuss. But when the women came back with their 'professionally-made' films, the Programme Buyer threw up his hands in horror. "These films are too specialist/feminist/ man-hating/depressing/short/long/non-violent/violent/real/ unreal to be shown at any other time than Sunday afternoons in the summer at 3.00 pm, and in winter not at all."
The women were very angry about this because nobody much watched TV in summer on sunny days at three o'clock in the afternoon. They decided to fight the distribution monopoly and set up independent alternative film distribution networks so that their films could be seen arxi discussed by a larger audience. And they did.
Their networks encouraged more women to become involved in communications, using all sorts of modern technology, and the movement grew. Films about all sorts of subjects which the TV stations considered 'too political' were toured on the network. Soon there was an alternative network of alternative films for an alternative audience in almost every main city. But our little princess from the edge of the world, who had grown up and become a film maker, was still interested in reaching the larger audience of non-alternative Princes, Princesses, Kings and Queens who didn't live in the main cities.
"There's nothing for it" she decided "I must go to Claude's Circus disguised as a seller and try to find out why my films are so specialist/feminist/man-hating/depressing/short/long/ non-violent/violent/real/unreal that they are unsuitable for the TV stations of the world."
And she did.
She was amazed by what she found. (She shouldn't have been by now I) Everywhere in the concrete bunkers under Cannes, where Claude's Circus was in full swing, were
hurxlreds of TV sets. Every TV set was showing a different programme every half hour. And none of the programmes were the same. There were soapbox dramas, situation
comedies, music specials, music unspecials, animation shorts, animation longs, semi-animation mediums and Christmas Specials (not to mention Easter Specials, Father's Day Specials and Mother's Day Specials). There were children's adventure series, documentaries, docudramas and dramadocus. And all of them were playing at the same time in Claude's Circus.
The Sellers pretended to the Press that they had already sold their product to a major network on Monday, so that this would be announced in Claude's Circus News on Tuesday and the programmes really sold to the rival network on Wednesday for double the price and cocktails at the Majestic.
The Buyers like to buy series. This way they don't have to spend hours sitting in Claude's bunker buying individual programmes (a time-consuming occupation) and can have more time for cocktails. They like to buy soapbox drama serials about rich people of confusing parentage best of all.
"The audience like to escape from their ordinary, humdrum and boring lives" said the Buyers, "but they like a bit of real violence too." Wars sell well, arxj so do documentaries about deeply deprived or problematic situations. " Expose TV is a highly competitive area. There is a middle class educated audience who like to feel informed" said a market researcher. "But the effects of continual information about problems which are horrifying and huge make people feel more powerless" said Ms. But no-one was listening
Rich people in fantastic adult conflict is good television People killing one another is good television Ordinary people talking to ordinary people about the things
they find important is not good television People sharing ways of solving problems is not good television Wild life is good television but Conservation Is not good television
Sex is good television (within limits) but showing the effects of sexism is not and whatever it is (even if it Is Naked Jazzercise, which sold well this year on the soft porn circuit, an under-the-table aspect of Claude's Circus), it must be in a series of 6 by 60 minutes or 13 by 30 minutes.
Ms mused on all this as she sat in her cheap hotel with the 25% mark-up (20% for Claude). Sometimes, in moments like these, she wondered whether it might not have been better for her to have stayed at home on the edge of the world and been a Princess and married a Prince and had little Princelings and Princesslings and not worried about nuclear warheads or racism, sexism and other oppressions. She could have lived happily ever after.
But then she remembered the strong women's action that had inspired her, and that all over the world people were working in all sorts of ways, small and important, to try and upset the Insanity of places like Claude's Circus. To communicate some of their concerns to a mass audience seemed a very small part to play. "Never mind", she said to herself. " I f my films are not marketable for the TV screens of the world, then I shall have to make a cinema feature. Maybe that way my ideas will affect a larger audieme. Who wants to live happily ever after anyway?"
And Claude had better watch out, because there are more and more of us all over the world every day.
THE END - OR IS IT?
This fairy story is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. The writer cannot afford expensive lawsuits. Watch out for the next episodes in this series: feminists In the cinema; and feminist TV.
Gaylene Preston is a woman film director/producer from New Zealand who is about to tr/ and raise money to make a feature film.