↑Murmel's blog

I was hoping to get a 20.000 Euro subsidy for a screenplay. Because that's how we make movies in Germany - we use subsidy programs to develop a script, then film subsidies for actually shooting it. German production companies usually don't take any risks and spend about zero money in development. Neither do the broadcasting companies. Nobody does but the writers. Sit down for a couple of weeks, write your treatment and then try to get money from the state while figuring out how to pay your tax prepayments, your rent and your rabbits food who of course doesn't eat carrots but chicory. It's a bad system and I'm sick of it. 

At the moment the only good things in my live are my wife Caren and the Canon EOS 400D she came home with yesterday. I had been going on for a couple of months of how much I loved to have a SLR. Actually since our trip to Namibia last december. Now she got one for me and I'm hoping to find out how to use it right. 

 I got my ticket to Helsinki today. Petteri payed for the flight since I am a pocco broke at the moment. It's the first time I accept something like that - but I haven't been to Finland in two years and I suppose the days will be very recreational. By then I'll hopefully have my next project sold, a sitcom based on a stageplay I wrote two years ago. 

The good thing about midsummer is the week after the four days of heavy drinking. Your body just doesn't want you to consume anything alcoholic. You see a beer and your stomach turns, your head aches and your thirst wins. Can't let your body controly your life. 

Caren won't join me on the trip, she'll be working while I'll spent my days wondering what time of day it is. It's usually time for another beer except when you find out that it's sunday. So that's midsummer. I uploaded a video of the midsummer 2005. The, well, slightly tipsy guy is Petteri, the others are Mikka, Mirko, Mirta, Mape, Marko and other nice people with names starting with the letter M. Fins just love them. 

I'll be working on my finish for the nex couple of weeks. Right now I only know "Höppe, höppe" and "Ala lahentele", which means "Blabla" and "Leave me alone". That was actually enough to spend four interesting days there three years ago. Might as well leave it with that. Kitos.

 Work on a day like this. Refuse to drink beer. Stay awake in the afternoon. Stare at the damn monitor. Wonder why a story doesn't work. Let the sun rise, shine and set. Couldn't do any of that.

 Thing is that people never call when you need them. Or their money, to be un pocco more precise. But then, all of a sudden, they all want you. How about a movie? Time for a show? We have this idea for a sitcom... 

They started calling yesterday. Just after I started with the ever so humiliating customer acquisition. It's okay to pitch an idea, to send a concept to a producer or ring them up to chat and allude that you have a lot of time these days. But to send an email aksing whether or not they have a writer for an upcoming casting-show is just not my cup of tea. I did it though, praying not to sound desperate.

An hour later the phone rings. It's another company. They do a new show and want me to deliver some ideas. Another hour later yet another company invites me to spend a couple of days in Berlin to a writers' room. And then there's the pending sitcom thing - the prospect of ten scripts to be written.

What's the name of the law that states that whenever you need work you get none or three times as much as you can handle? If it doens't exist, call it Murmel's Law. Or would that be a paradox?

 The calls are coming in. RTL, a private German broadcaster, is very interested in developing a movie I pitched. It's a comedy about a planned murder during the Grand Prix of Folk Music, a very nasty competition with the worst music composed in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. They want to meet me in Cologne on the 29th of May to discuss the plot. Fine with me. Not so fine for the second pitch I prepared for them over the last two weeks, since I don't think they'll want me to write two movies at the same time. On the other hand - one movie is not enough to live from. But luckily some other projects develop well.

I'll be in Vienna from the 31st until the 2nd of June to read the first episode of my new sitcom with the actors to the people from the ORF - the Austrian Broadcasting company. With a little luck they'll buy it and I'll have two write another 13 episodes. It's also in a folk music setting, but about two performers that have never been on stage before, struggling each episode with new problems regarding their performance. It's a real-time-series like 24 with their big tv-gig at the end. 

From June  3rd to 6th I'll attend a writers room in Berlin, where I'll be working on a new series which is not to be talked about. In this case I understand the secretive manner of the producers - I believe they don't want it to be public until the deal with the broadcaster is sealed. I was asked to write one episode. 

So there I have it. If it all goes well I will spend the next months writing like a mad cow. It's enough work for about a year, I suppose. But they'll all want their scripts by tomorrow. My fingertips will be bleeding and my brain will lose quite some weight. I already had to turn down another enquiry for a movie. I hope it was the right decision. But then there still is my other pitch.