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graveyard of DOOM index < | > The final major assignment that I'm doing for this course is an animation based on a prose poem called "The Battle of Clarendon Street". It's something I wrote a while back. It's taken from a suite of 12 false-history prose poems called One History of the VFL - one poem for each of the 12 suburbs of Melbourne that had their own Australian Rules team back in the 1970s and 80s, which was the last time I actually gave a shit about football, or sport of any kind. I've been flexing my procrastination muscles a lot when it comes to this project, worrying about my crappy drawing style and pretending to do a lot of research into the way people dressed back in the late 1800s in Melbourne and what the inside of pubs looked like around that time. I've been playing around with watercolour pencils and wondering whether the old dog plus new tricks adage is more applicable to me than I had previously thought, all the while la-la-la not listening to the voice in my head saying, "you know, you've only got until November to get this done, punky..." But I promised I'd dust the loungeroom and I've got to prepare for that teaching gig and my blog hasn't been updated in ages and what about heading over to North Fitzroy to check my post office box for the third time this week? I showed my animation teacher, Nicole, the rough version of the animation a couple of weeks ago and told her that I thought that someone like veteran Aussie actor Charles "Bud" Tingwell would be perfect as the narrator, and she said that I should go for it and ask him if he'd be interested. So for the last three weeks I've been trying to find some point of contact whereby Mr. Tingwell can be reached. Well, the last two or so. I kind of fucked around a bit before I actually started looking. Shouldn't be too hard, I thought, once I'd cleared out my email inbox and realphabetised my comics bookshelf. Just punch his name into Google and his agent's details will come up. Can I get a supersized Nuh-uh? Finding out who to talk to so that I can pitch my idea to Bud has been a convoluted exercise in tracking down anything that could even remotely be regarded as a lead. First I thought I might find him through Working Dog, the film production company that made The Castle, in which Bud played a generous-hearted Queen's Counsel (that's "lawyer" for you non-Commonwealth citizens). Go to the Working Dog site and there's a page with no contact details at all. Call up directory assistance and discover that Working Dog are unlisted. Which seems a little strange. I mean, I can imagine that they get a lot of unsolicited crank calls, but you'd think that they'd have their phone number listed somewhere, at the very least for publicity reasons. Next I go out on a limb and call Blue Tongue, a game designer in Melbourne who used Bud as a voiceover actor for their Jurassic Park game "Operation Genesis". Turns out the game's about four years old and nobody at Blue Tongue has details - at least that's what the vaguely intolerant receptionist implied as she tried to get me off the phone in the shortest time possible. Next I try State Trustees, some kind of insurance company who use Bud as their spokesactor because he's so well recognised and seen as a true-blue trustworthy Aussie bloke that he's perfect for that sort of thing. I leave a message on the answering machine of the marketing director, but I figure I won't be hearing back from them. Then I find out Bud's just released a memoir, so I call Mary at Pan Macmillan in Sydney and have a chat to her, but she's not really sure she can put her hands on the details and besides which she's a bit toey about the passing out of personal information, so I back off a little, realising that I might have just crossed the boundaries of our professional relationship, make some small talk about proofreading, and hang up. Finally I call the Victorian College of the Arts, figuring they've got the whole film school thing going there with all the student film-makers who're approaching actors all the time to appear in their films gratis, so they might be able to at the very least put me onto the right track to find the name of Bud's agent. Paydirt. Joe at the film school asks if I've got access to some subscriber-only online acting talent database. I say no and he says hang on. Tapping of keys on the other end of the line and then Joe's back, making a strong play for my favourite person in the whole world by giving me Bud's agent's name, phone number and email address. I "god bless" him five or six times before hanging up and calling the agent. Later that day, just to underscore the fact that cynicism is a dirty, dirty thing and I should have more faith in my fellow man, the head of marketing at State Trustees calls me back and says that he likes the sound of the project, and he's left a message with Bud's agent saying as much, and passing on my contact details. Now I have two bestest favouritest people in the whole world. Two weeks and two messages later the agent calls back, saying yeah that sounds kind of interesting, I reckon Bud might be into that, and gives me her email address so that I can send her a project proposal. Make that three bestest favourites. Things just got a whole lot more shit or get off the pot around here. Let's hope that's a good thing.
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