It Came From Memphis

It’s all been very Memphicentric on here of late so how about a snapshot of the reality – life as a low-budget filmmaker? Well, one of the most important issues for low-budget filmmakers is discovering which supermarkets give the best mark-downs on food that is approaching its sell-by date. Over the past year I have become very familiar with the various procedures in Sainsbury’s (I can’t afford the food even after it’s marked down), Waitrose (pretty good but you have to get there before all the elderly posh people grab every last piece of organic sirloin steak), Somerfields (fine if you like eating reformed pork) and Tesco’s (I can’t figure out when they mark their food down, it must be a nocturnal activity for their insomniac staff).
Having just moved to the posh part of town, by no choice of my own – an ex-GF is letting me stay in her flat while she’s off in Brazil shooting a feature – I expected the worst. Instead, I found that Marks and Spencer’s is an untapped goldmine of fine food at half price. Twice I’ve been there and twice I’ve discovered tasty treats with little red stickers on them that tell me ‘I’m Affordable!’ And as the only people that can afford to live around here aren’t desperately in need of cut-price protein, they turn their noses up at these bargains. I haven’t had to fight a single OAP since I arrived here.
One observation though: liver is continually marked down wherever I go, huge piles of unsold, unwanted calves’ liver swimming in its own blood... so why do they buy so much of the disgusting stuff, if nobody likes it?
Oh yeah, my agent called, I am being put forward for a TV show. Whoop de do. I told him that the last time I worked for this company as director I ended up not on speaking terms with the executive producer. I even took my name off the show (which – of course – ended up being the highest profile thing I’ve done to this day). It would be a miracle on a par with the loaves and the fishes if I end up getting this job. But it would mean I could afford to buy a bit of grub without having to wait for it to go out of date. In fact, as far as I remember from my last experience as a TV director, they actually feed you on the job...