Contrary to some of my less enthusiastic posts, below, may I now join myself in a chorus of joyful thanks in celebration of the wonderful nerdy powers that be: Ladies and Gentlemen... Nick and Stew!

*the crowd goes wild!*

Anyway look I'm excited.
 

Here's the deal: our website is now less likely to explode and die as a result of spam overloading in the comments section. This means people such as your good self can now, once again, post comments. We apologise for the rather one-sided conversation that has been droning on from these pages over the past few weeks. To be honest, I couldn't really do it without you.

Now, when you post comments, you need to prove you're not a robot. It's easy. You just have to believe.

Also, guess what? You know how I said ladies and gentleman Nick and Stew hurrah for them fixing the website and you all went mad with the screaming and the celebrating? Well guess which Nick I'm talking about? That's right! The Nick who helped us shoot our film a billion years ago and who helped us make our website half a billion years ago and who has, in the meantime, been sailing from Europe to America on a boat having previously know nothing about sailing, or boats, or how to speak in an international Kylie Minogue style accent. Now, however, he is devastatingly good at all of these things... and he's in Australia! It is very exciting to see him in real life, and although you still possibly have no idea who he is: this is what I mean when I say heart warming things like "this company is more than just the three of us" and so forth.

Okay so stay with me. So you know that exact same film of ours that Nick worked on that I mentioned like thirty seconds ago? STAY WITH ME. You know that film? Okay so you know the 1st AD on that film? Okay so maybe you don't. You know in that film how there was a guy who made paper aeroplanes? Okay so maybe you don't know that either, but anyway trust me THAT guy, well he's also very talented. His name is Robin, and he plays in a band called the Little Stevies. He also makes brilliant films, one of which was shot by our very own Stewart Thorn and was in the recent Human Rights Arts & Film Festival in Melbourne.

Anyway okay so you know Stew and Robin?

They made this.

Just a few words of warning. If someone comes to your house and asks with kind eyes whether they can use your house as a filming location, tell them the house is chock full of asbestos, cough thickly, and slam the door.

Location Managers on films are always gorgeous, divine, lovely people. They're the sort of people you see in kids' story books, picking potatoes in the fields and helping children into brightly coloured gumboots so they can jump into puddles and enjoy the simple joys of splashing. If location managers want to film something in your house, or your front garden, they will do anything. They will learn your birthday, your mother's name, the number of points by which your team won on the weekend. They will get your kids tickets to the movies. They will offer to pay you, to put you up in a "flash hotel". They will peer deep into your eyes with their gorgeous open faces, faces that speak of kindness and hot chocolate by the fire, faces that indicate that it doesn't matter what your answer is, they will always share a deep understanding with you, about the important things in life.

Close. The. Door. Do not be fooled. Look away! LOOK AWAY, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS SACRED.

You see, on Friday, we filmed in my house. Us. Standing There Productions. We used my house as a location.

For all intents and purposes, I was the location manager. I was the one who convinced me it would be a good idea. I was the one who looked deep into my own eyes and shared a moment with myself. What could possibly be slightly annoying or inconvenient about using my own house to film in? After all, the filming schedule is only four hours, it will hardly take ANY time, and it requires NO SET UP.

Well, I wish I could post a photograph here of the dire state of affairs in what used to be my home office, but I can't find my camera. I can't find anything, except several hundred kilometres of gaffa tape, half a dozen discarded light bulbs, multicoloured gells and cords and spots on the wall to mark eye-lines (one of which is fashioned from an old birthday card) and an assortment of props. There is a pair of waterproof pants, too, which I do believe belong to our cinematographer, but which were not necessary while filming inside, so they have been discarded, thoughtfully, on the work desk. That's right next to the lamp from my bedroom which has been removed from there and installed here instead, with a trillion watt globe in it such that turning it on will instantly blind you, whereupon you will trip over the pile of old scripts we removed from within shot on set and stored, in a large wonky pile, on the floor.

I am also, for all intents and purposes, the Standing There Productions OH&S officer. Obviously, I'm fired.

But as you can see, I brought this on myself. YOU can avoid it.

When I was helping to write the coffee table book "20 Years Of Neighbours" (no, really), I discovered something mildly astonishing. From memory, it goes like this: if you want to buy a house in Pin Oak Court in Vermont South (where Neighbours is shot), you have to sign a contract with Grundies. Among other things, the contract specifies that you will notify them of any changes to the physical appearance of your property. There was a famous time when one of the residents in Pin Oak Court wanted to buy a new letterbox. What happened on Neighbours that week? Well, Susan Kennedy went out and bought a new letterbox, didn't she.

Of course, those guys are paid a fee. I'm not. Mind you, I don't have to answer the door to giggling groups of Neighbours fans asking if Harold is home, or British backpackers shagging in the backyard.

Don't do it, peeps. Unless there's a chance you can get in on the film set catering. In which case: open the throttle.

PS. Check out this hilarious article, as if you needed any more convincing.

PPS. When I was a kid, I thought "for all intents and purposes" was "for all intense and purposes", so I am never one hundred percent confident using the phrase. I also thought there was a story book called "Alison Wonderland", about Mr and Mrs Wonderland's little girl, Alice. Just saying. Hope I got it right this time.

I used to write here about all the movies I saw. Then it just got depressing because clearly I was doing a little too much watching and not enough making. But recently, I was coerced into seeing The Bourne Ultimatum, starring Matt Damon and reviewed here by David Denby in The New Yorker, a film I feel following me everywhere I go.

The thing about the Bourne series is, I shouldn't like it. Not really. Not when I think about all the other things I like (The West Wing, Pixar films, Press Gang, earl grey tea, mashed banana on toast) and all the things I hate (Bruce Willis car chase movies, Daryl Somers, English Breakfast Tea, cheddar cheese sticks, and films about blokes having existential struggles that for a flimsy ill-explained reason involve the perpetration of large scale violence and computer animation).

At first glance, The Bourne Ultimatum (and its predecessors) are English Breakfast Tea, cheddar cheese stick kinds of films. Kind of like Bond films. There's a girl and there's a pen with a bomb in it and there's revenge to be sought and there's a manly untouchable emotional quality to our main man, which means he looks hot while sprinting the wrong way up fire escapes.

HOWEVER, this film is different. No, really. Firstly, there's something familiar about the torture techniques (very Abu Graib), and the new legislation allowing the authorities to do exactly what they want in the name of national security. There are also, wait for it, women. I know! Crazy idea. In fact, every significant intellectual connection Jason makes in this film is with a woman. Not all of whom he intends to shag.

It's also interesting that Jason Bourne is clever and subversive, and the delicate balance between self-awareness and farce within the film is so beautifully handled (the ending got a great thwacking laugh in the cinema, with smatterings of applause to follow) and I've been feeling like Jason Bourne ever since. Just like when my sister and I watched a BBC adaptation of a Dickens novel and spoke to each other in broken cockney for a week or so, I feel (just like I do when I watch the West Wing) that it would be very exciting to be second-guessing everyone's every move, coming up with witty rejoinders, and glancing about for the nearest exit.

So, if you see me about during the next few weeks and I'm looking cagey, don't make any sudden moves.

Saw Harry Potter tonight. Me and five trillion other people squashed into too many hours worth of epic.

Did you know that epic does not mean long?

No. Epic means: noting or pertaining to a long poetic composition, usually centered upon a hero, in which a series of great achievements or events is narrated in elevated style.

Nowhere in there does it say epic needs to involve between two to three hours of facial grimacing.

I don't mean to knock the film, or the kids in it, or, you know, fun in general, but MY GOD there was a lot of pomp and not a great deal of circumstance in the last few movies I saw described as "epic".

Please stop with the epic. It makes my eyes tired.

There is bike riding to be done.

So last night our short film I Could Be Anybody screened as part of the Angry Film Festival in Fitzroy. The festival itself went for four hours, which is like three weeks in Standing There Productions Time (we have our own time now) so it was a mammoth effort just to be there. Watching our film with an audience of strangers was fun though. I'd almost forgotten about the film, what with the play coming up. It was nice to see it again.

In other news, we have our first video coming up on the site soon, and the cast photos should be on the comedy festival website any day now. I'm working so hard it should be terrible but I'm having so much fun. Yay for being too busy and having not enough money! Yay for that! What could possibly go wrong...?... watch this space for details.

Sometimes, when you're researching for some writing, you stumble across some crazy stuff.

Did you know that Bertolt Brecht, the revolutionary dramatist we all struggle to understand in year eleven drama classes, insisted that when he died, a stiletto heel be inserted into his heart?

Did you? Did you know that? Is that one of those things people know?

I did not know that. The doctors were apparently instructed to ensure he was dead, insert a stiletto heel in his heart, encase him in a steel coffin, and bury him.

AND THEY DID!!

What a nutter! What a fantastic story! Where are all the plays about Brecht being a nutter who lies somewhere in a steel box with a shoe in his most vital organ?!

I'm very excited. Extra information I wasn't looking for is so tantalising. Problem is, I have nothing to do with it, nowhere for it to go, and yet it is so delicious and begging to be known.

Over the last six months I have discovered the following while trying to find out other things:

1. Paris Hilton is distantly related to somebody called George Mason, best known as one of the "Founding Fathers" of the American Bill of Rights.

2. Paris Hilton is also related to Zsa Zsa Gabor.

3. The Australian anthem used to be the ABC news theme.

4. Paris Hilton's book was on the New York Times Best Seller List. It was written by somebody else.

5. Prince Charles and Prince William never travel together on the same aeroplane.

This last one has nothing to do with any of my research and is just a gratuitous extra fact thrown in because I heard it once.

See? Don't you feel enriched?

Have a lovely weekend and see you Tuesday at the screening of I Could Be Anybody at The Angry Film Festival at First Floor on Brunswick Street starting at 7.30. Obviously if I don't see you there then I will see you twice at our show during April. Huzzah!

Hey so how hot is our cast...

... and yes, we are starting a band.

Left to right: Michael Roper (who plays Peter Dodds McCormick, the bloke who wrote the Australian anthem), Dylan Lloyd (who plays Dad), Miriam Glaser (Paris Hilton) and Emily O'Brien-Brown (Genevieve).

And a very talented bunch they are too.

By the by, did I mention that our short film, I Could Be Anybody, is screening on Tuesday next week (13 March) at First Floor in Brunswick Street? Maybe I didn't mention that.