Behind The Scenes

A lot of people ask me “Sir, can you please bay the bill and get out of here please?”

No-one really asks about the marketing campaign for The Big 9. I assume questions would be:

• Do you get a top ad agency in to do it?
• Does whoever does it spend mi££ion$?
• Does it use state of the art technology?

Well….sit down…prepare to be stunned….all the adverts are done by……me and me alone….on my laptop….at a cost of……zero pounds (0$)*.

Yes, you are right to be stunned. THIS was created by me and me alone. “Fuck off, Phil,” you’re spitting at the screen of whatever you’re reading this on. Want me to explain it? Well I’m going to anyway.

Step 1: Google “Man on Wire” – save image.
Step 2: Use Gimp image manipulation software to airbrush out image of man from the wire and (all of ) the title.
Step 3: Use Picasa to draw a big 9 (that’s where the logo comes from) and drag it so it looks like it is on the wire. Also find font that looks like the original poster and use that to write ‘Big 9 on Wire’ in place of original title. Also re-do the quote from the NY Times as it looked odd after editing.
Step 4: Save image and think, “yeah, I’m quite proud of that: no-one cares but me, but that still means I have satisfied my target audience.”

It really is that simple kids.

However, for the image at the bottom of this blog I did have copyright problems so I paid $7 million to get Samuel L Jackson for the day while we recreated the image from Pulp Fiction. It was quite tricky to get it to look like I had copied and pasted my head from an old picture – but, thankfully, we had a great make-up team and the crew were fantastic.

*If we’re being pedantic I did have to my my laptop and my hourly rate would probably be about £3000. So, in a way, it was pretty expensive.

Big Mouth Strikes Again

Some people just don’t help themselves do they?

I can see the problem faced with religion in 2012. Things aint what they used to be. Religion and believers, while hardly marginalised, are on the wane. Clearly there are a set of values at the core of religions that aren’t really flexible – but, lets take Christianity, they aren’t going to all of a sudden remove Jesus from the mythology but they might make a reference to iPods in a sermon (that’s the easy bit of religion if you ask me, because you can make ANYTHING like faith/God if you’re flexible enough).

Of course, there is a lot in the middle that people have different ideas about. For me, who should shut up because I don’t believe (in anything, but yes,I want to be someone who believes (Mr Jones)*), religion/faith is about all the good stuff like being nice, treating people well, being accepting and all that kind of thing. Unfortunately there are a few (euphemism – there are loads I am sure) people who just seem entirely motivated by hate and fuel their interaction with judgement of others. Like The Bishop of Carlisle has here. Sadly that is what gets media interest and then you end up with well-meaning people having no other course of action than to write something about what a massive knobber he is in their (extremely low viewing figures) blog.

I think there is a fundamental issue with the image of God (of any religion) as a vengeful God. I’m fucked if I am going to respect someone who rules with force. If someone is going to flood the planet because I coveted my neighbour’s ox. What if my neighbour has a fucking brilliant ox? I am going to covet it: FACT. And sloth, yeah I went 10 commandments to deadly sins, drowning people because they like a lie-in seems a bit much. Given the choice between worshipping Rihanna and God you’re going to go for the one knocking out catchy fusions of dance and R’n’B music and not the one where someone is saying  that treating gay people as humans is why natural disasters happen. (I am specifically having a go at these quotes by this man here, OK? Unlike some others I am not trying to imply the barmy few represent everyone in the world who is religious.)

*I don’t want to believe in something, I just like the song Mr Jones by The Counting Crows and wanted to reference it, believing in stuff is (a) hard work and (b) setting yourself up for disappointment.

BIG 9 “Pulp Friction” Promo