I hand you over to Ross Garland!!!

I see John has been insulting me on his blog for my procrastination.

So here is an update for your blogging delight.

Spud the movie feels like it has passed its watershed moment in its journey towards being made. We have a real international star on board to play the GUV. I’m hoping to be able to reveal his name in the coming weeks. I see that BBC is doing reruns of his top tv show at the moment.

On the back of this news, the money to make the film is starting to piece itself together. As soon as I get confirmation that all is on track for our target shoot date of December we will be rolling out our casting for all the teenage roles, both at certain schools around the country and online. I wish we could do a full on Idols style process because I have no doubt the talent out there will be overwhelming but with the usual limitations of money we are going to have to be smart to give everyone a chance to have a go at auditioning for the film. So we will also launch a web process where people can go online and try out that way. Just like Spud’s audition for Oliver…the long shot at fame and fortune.

Other news is that the same Hollywood distributor that distributed “Tsotsi” to the world has picked up the film, which certainly confirms our view that the film has international legs.

Meanwhile we slowly put together the behind the scenes team – cinematographer, editor, art director – who will all play their part in the 57 person crew who will ultimately make the film what it is. And we are also starting to look at the more mundane issues of where the crew will all stay in the KZN Midlands whilst we shoot, and whether our star should stop over in Rio or London on his way from LA.

And for me, the producer, it’s the usual thing of trying to hold it altogether in the face of constant questions about whether anything we are doing is right – is the budget too high? Is the budget too low? Is the script too commercial? Is the script commercial enough? I too would love to disappear in Vietnam for two months but alas I am not a famous author.

Your man in Cape Town,
Ross

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In the Dark
Mark Billingham

EAN: 9781408700709
Format: Trade Paperback
Release Date: 1 September 2008

Recommended Retail Price: R190

A rainy night in London. Shots are fired into a car which swerves on to the pavement, ploughing into a bus stop. It seems that a chilling gang initiation has cost an innocent victim their life. But the reality is far more sinister…

One life is wiped out and three more are changed forever: the young man whose finger was on the trigger; an ageing gangster planning a deadly revenge, and the pregnant woman who struggles desperately to uncover the truth.

Two weeks away from giving birth, how will she deal with a world where death is an occupational hazard? In a city where violence can be random or meticulously planned, where teenage gangs clash with career criminals and where loyalty is paid for in blood, anything is possible.

Secrets are uncovered as fast as bodies, and the story’s final twist is as breathtakingly surprising as they come.

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EAN: 9781846271830
Format: Trade Paperback
Release Date: 1 March 2009

Recommended Retail Price: R210

My memories of Grace never added up to how she really was. She was always impossible to pin down, dancing just out of my reach, exactly as she did when she was alive. Nora was a girl of twelve when the war broke out and she was forced to join the train-loads of evacuees leaving London’s East End for rural Kent. Her surrogate family, the Rivers family, are unlike anyone she has met before and she soon comes to love her new life with them, and in particular with twelve-year old Grace. Over the next few years, as the dog-fights rage ever more fiercely over head and it becomes clear that the Rivers marriage contains deep and irreparable cracks, Nora and Grace grow as close as sisters – though, to Nora’s confusion, even this is not quite as close as she would like – What happened next is a secret that will gnaw away at Nora for the rest of her life – a secret that she can only begin to tell when she is certain that she is approaching the end.

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