Première

Pete works for us in the pub and he also makes movies. His company, Gumboot Pictures, has produced “shorts” which I think are excellent and very professional, particularly when you consider the budget they work within (i.e. nil + Pete’s credit card). Just over two years ago, I think, they formed an idea for a film which has now become a full length feature, called "Small Town Folk". We've had a couple of showings on the big-screen TV at the pub and regulars organised a raffle to raise money for it last May. They have already featured on local BBC radio, taken the film to Cannes (and been interviewed there for BBC Radio 1) and made several contacts in the industry, so good luck to them. There are actually two well-known actors making cameo appearances (as the Knackermen) in it: Howard Hew Lewis, who played Elmo Putney, the pub landlord in "Brush Strokes", and Warwick Davis, who plays Professor Filius Flitwick in the Harry Potter films (and, incidentally a goblin bank teller at Gringott's in the first one) and Marvin the Paranoid Android (though not his voice), in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Anyway, last Saturday morning, they organised a showing at the Harbour Lights cinema in Southampton (overlooking the Ocean Village Marina) and about 240 friends, family, cast and crew turned up to see the film get its first major screening. If you ever get the chance to see it, do watch it, it's good fun (and some of it was shot in the pub). Unfortunately, a scene in which I appeared ended up on the cutting-room floor, although it might be on the Bonus Features disc when it comes out on DVD! I had never been to this particular cinema before, so I used my Garmin Streetpilot ("it's only an aid to navigation" © Omally) to take us the last two or three miles. Towards what that damn' Garmin woman indicated was almost the end of the journey, we turned at some traffic lights and entered an estate of new offices and other commercial buildings, eventually turning into a Pay and Display car park. Befuddled, I wound my window down and asked a lady unloading stuff from a van if she could tell me where the Harbour Lights cinema was. "I think you'll find that's it" she replied, pointing to the building I was parked next to.