Many writers have shared their thoughts with the public:

"There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you." - Beatrix Potter

"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say." - Anaïs Nin

"Sharing your writing, being enlarged by others' writing, is what makes you feel famous." - Gretchen Bernabei

"Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth." - Edna Ferber

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." - Ben Franklin

"One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones to form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment." - Hart Crane

"There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one can agree what they are." - W. Somerset Maugham

The Sex Thriller Director a True Story

I'm not really a self-pitier but my patience has been running thin. Nobody, really, wants much to do with me. No successful producer, no failed producer, no distributor, no failed distributor, no bureaucrat, no discredited bureaucrat, no honest investor, no lying investor.

I have pretended I haven’t cared. I've made films since I was ten, a lot of them with my own money. That’s how you become a director. You make films. You dream.

It’s bad enough having no money but it’s worse having no cache or cultural power. It’s an ignominious death.

I have had success over the years. I've directed two low budget features (one self financed of course) and worked on a few television series. I've made three short films, and one part of a mini-series. Isn’t that success?

One of my feature films went to Berlin. It was a love story. I was hailed for my new style, my fresh approach to actors. I was feted in Berlin, they told me. Unfortunately I couldn’t afford to go there. The film didn’t draw audiences. My other feature was about illegal migrant workers in the suburbs stealing cheap drugs, was screened on the ABC at 11.30 at night.

The mini series, about kids on a holiday island, was a success on pay television though I only shot one of ten episodes. It won a big children’s prize in Canada but I only heard about it a year later. The television series was a reality show about wrestlers, male and female, and was big on Channel Ten for a while, until one of the wrestlers was arrested for selling heroin and wrestle fixing. It never got reviewed.

I haven't worked for seven years. Well, not in paid directing. I've taught, assessed, been a camera assistant, driven taxis. It's been death, as they say. All directing work for me has dried up. It’s not just me but the industry. It’s cyclic. It’s overrun with streaming TV series now but it’s like I’m out of the loop. The new young directors are the rage. I’ve been prepared to sell my soul and my girlfriend's soul for a wage. I don’t care what I direct as long as I am directing. I am a professional. Aren’t I? Okay, I haven’t made a hit but does that make me a cipher?

Recently I met Marcel. Marcel is a Melbourne producer. He had a big hit ten years ago but, like me, is out of work. Marcel has lots of connections. He's impressive, the way he can talk. He felt like a close friend. He was interested in me. I actually met him at a strip club in Sydney. It's my secret vice. I lied to him I was researching a documentary on strippers. My girlfriend would kill me if she knew. He understood. We've all got secrets.

Marcel is mainstream. He was embarrassed that I saw him there but he said I gave him an idea. He said he'd met some Japanese people who wanted to make some movies I might be interested in. Cheap movies. Sex thrillers. Soft porn. Would I be involved?

I was flattered. This was work, real work. Marcel was important, connected.

I wanted to make films again. Any films. So I said yes. I was so bloody frustrated and flattered. I said yes. Maybe I'm talentless, maybe my projects are shit, maybe I'll never work again and you can go to hell you silly whining fart (someone actually said that to me once)... I want to work. I’m broke and in debt.

Look into my face. My name is 'might have been’. I am also called ‘too late, no more, farewell.' I am sick to death of rejection and condescension.

'Not enough story'. 'Too much story'. 'Not enough sex'. 'Too much sex'. 'Lacking originality, lacking surprise’, ‘too unconventional’, 'too soap opera.' 'Not enough overt drama', 'too much overt drama', ‘too nasty’, ‘too nice’, ‘not enough racial balance’, ‘too dark’, ‘too light’, ‘not enough like my other movies’.

If I showed the funding people Shakespeare’s Hamlet they would have twenty pages of carping. 'Too many people die, the ghost scene doesn't work, Ophelia too small a role for female lead', ‘main character unlikeable, too much self pity’, ‘no scope for a co production’, ‘too many Anglo-Saxons.’

I stare into my gin and tonic. Weak. No overt drama. I pour in more gin. A lot more drama. I've smuggled a flask onto the plane. I am sitting in the back seat of the cheapest seats on the cheapest plane on the cheapest airline. Nursing my bottle. They say gin is a depressive. Okay, it depresses me but I kinda like it, that nice feeling of being unimportantly important. Ever felt like that? I do all the time.

I am on a mission. I had another call from Marcel. A Japanese soft porn sex thriller film producer is holed up in St Kilda. He's interested in sex thriller ideas. Did I have any? Would I go and pitch to him? He will fund immediately.

And remember my 5% commission, Henry. Sweet man. How would I forget?

I've never made a sex thriller in my life but I'm excited. I'm thinking up a dozen ideas at a time. Apparently there has to be eight sex scenes, no more than two between women, no full frontals except in wide shot. The first sex scene has to occur five minutes from the beginning of the film, the last one five minutes from the end. Fair enough. The Japanese are very particular.

If he likes my idea he will invest $250,000. Wow! And my fee will be…?

'A beautiful woman, left alone in a huge house by her rich husband, invites her handsome neighbour for morning tea'. Rubbish. 'A woman, alone on a lonely road at night hails a passing car. Her car has broken down. The driver is a doctor and he asks her to get in the car. But he's a serial sex killer'. Oh my god... 'A man leaves a lonely country house. His pretty young wife waves him goodbye. As he leaves a desperate man appears out of the surrounding bush. He knocks on the door'. Bugger... what am I doing? These are clichés!

Is this a pipedream? Perhaps I have no sense of audience? No sense of story. No talent? How can I want to be a director and have no talent? Am I really as ‘out of it’ as everyone implies? I wobble out of my seat, clutching what’s left of my gin, as the plane arrives in Melbourne.

It is raining.

I've had to borrow money (from my mother of course) for the taxi fare to St Kilda and back. It will cost an arm and a leg. I take a quick swig of the gin as I go past the hostess. Hang on, a sex thriller idea, 'a pretty airhostess is smitten by a handsome passenger. He takes her to his isolated hotel’… oh god.

Mr Jumo is on the fourth floor of a brown walled, third class St Kilda hotel called Mabels. He’s a cheapskate like all these other shuffling, sneezing, second rate inhabitants in the lift with me? I am still desperately making up a sex thriller story in my mind.

When I bang on the door there's a muffled grunt. I open the door. Mr Jumo is still in bed, coughing and sneezing.

He has the Melbourne flu. Next to him is another large, hard breathing lump. “Stand by the end of the bed, no closer,” mumbles Mr Jumo. “Tell me your scenario. Quick. Before you catch flu.”

I can hardly see through the dark. The room smells of stale urine, body odor and cheap perfume. The lump is still motionless. This is what my life has come to. A cold pitch to a man (I know nothing about) for a sex thriller (which I know nothing about) in a town where I am a stranger.

“A pretty blonde girl, married to a policeman,” I stutter, “is visiting her girlfriend who she is secretly attracted to. Her girlfriend has a devious lover who has sent a text message saying he’s been captured by criminals. He still has his mobile, undiscovered. He says they must come and rescue him. Our heroine decides to text message her policeman husband first. Before they leave the two women make passionate love…”

I can't believe I'm telling Mr Jumo this film junk. I expected him to slap my face.

“That's enough, it'll do,” says Mr Jumo, wheezing. “Go downstairs, have breakfast, I meet you there.”

The lump beside him sneezes.

“My star,” says Mr Jumo dismissively, patting the lump affectionately which then belches obligingly. Mr Jumo laughs. I cringe.

I'm bolting the last of the cheap scrambled eggs and cold coffee down l when Mr Jumo appears... His face is pasty and lined and he hardly looks me in the eye. “Come into the toilet,” he says, “we can't talk here.”

I blink. The toilet. Yes. How apt.

He sits in a filthy cubicle and I can hear him farting and wheezing as he talks. I stand in front of the urinal pretending to wee.

“Can you start in two weeks?” Mr Jumo asks calmly, when he can hear himself.

I blanche. I have no infrastructure. Where can I get actresses who will do the nude lesbian scenes? In two weeks? Is he kidding? I don’t have a script, I don't even have a producer.

I stare into the urinal as it hisses and leaks. Gurgling its fluid across the tiles of my life. My reputation is the urine gurgling down the plughole.

“Yes,” I lie nonchalantly, thinking desperately 'I'll ring those bastards of line producers I know and make them work for once in their cotton pickin’...'

Mr Jumo clutters out of the cubicle and noisily splashes his hands in the sink. He gives me his email number on a wet card, takes my card and bank account number.

“That's fixed then. The money will be in the account in two weeks,” he says. Then, in a more or less warning tone: “Get it made.”

Or else it'll be the Yakuza with machetes, his face says.

His ‘star’ is waiting outside the toilet. She is a drugged out Japanese actress with pink hair and an over sequined dress that's way too short. Chubby legs. Her face bloated. She is out of a horror movie.

She giggles.

“Lets haff breakfast sh…ugar,” she says to Jumo. He beams.

They shuffle off.

Suddenly I can't do it. I sit despondently at the hotel's early morning bar. Why was this so easy? Why did I agree? I like films about emotions, with real stories, real people. I'm actually scared of naked women. And I never watch thrillers. I want to kill Marcel.

I am aping a sex thriller genre director and aping scenarios that I have seen, making up stories I don’t understand, pretending I am an American or a Frenchman, or worse, a New Zealander.

I order another gin and tonic. I have an epiphany. My life is one long epiphany.

I ring an actress I remembered from my mobile. She’s good looking and desperate for work.

“Vanessa,” I say, “have you ever considered working in a soft porn movie? The money’s good.” She says ‘piss off’, she’s having lunch with her grandmother. The phone clicks dead.

Maybe it’s my manner. I ring another actress, famous for stripping nude on a television serial years ago.

“Amanda,” I say, “You wouldn’t be interested in making a sex thriller movie would you? Yeah, okay, full frontals only in wide shot. Two lesbian scenes. Hey, there’s no need to be insulting. I’m offering you work!” She screams for me ‘to take my filthy mind to a psychiatrist’.

I delete her name from my mobile. Not dirty money, not clandestine filth, you actress slut. This is genre, sex thriller genre. It’s not porn. It’s quality genre.

I can’t even convince myself.

I ring Marcel.

“Oh my God, you didn’t ring main stream actresses?” he rages. “Where have you been? I’ll get a line producer for you. An expert. Not me no. NEVER mention my name… understood? The man I’ll get you is an illegal Russian immigrant... he’s an expert in porn… remains anonymous, like me… you just transfer the money. Stay in your hotel. He’ll come to you. He’ll get low life actors, locations, a cameraman and editor. You just direct the bloody thing. And remember my commission.”

I hurry into the urinal and stare at the cracked and fading yellow tiles.

I am a casualty of the system. It’s called survival. I’ll have money. I’ll have work. I will be able to hold my head high. I don’t think.

Why does it take a leaking Melbourne urinal to make me see this? The self-delusional arse-end of the industry reflected in urine bubbles spilling through a crack in the urinal base.

Maybe this will be my watershed, this foul smelling grubby, dead-end bar. The experience will re-awaken me as a director. It will hone my talent, bring out the suppressed Bergman inside me. Yes, and maybe it won’t.

I go back to the bar and order another gin. Headily, I swallow it in one gulp. My head spins. I ask for more... I slip to the floor and slop my drink over the last night's dust and crumbs. I am passing out. Here among my friends, the cockroaches.

I sense Mr Jumo and his starlet returning from late breakfast bending over me. He is very concerned. The barman races around the counter.

“Will you be all right?” asks Jumo.

“The film is as good as made Mr Jumo,” I say groggily. “I haven’t been well you know but I will direct you the best film you ever saw.”

Mr Jumo smiles uncertainly and starts to walk away with his sequined escort. Oh God, he won’t pull out will he? I can’t seem to raise myself off the floor. I clutch his leg as he walks past, pulling him down to my beery home but he yells and kicks me in the stomach. He calls the hotel detective.

“Do you have a room available,” I ask the nice, grim police officer helping me into the police car. “Do you know a producer called Marcel Jones? I want him dead. Can you fix it? Tell that Mr Jumo we’ll have breakfast together tomorrow... I’m sorry about the mess on the floor… I don’t normally drink that much… I’ll fix the mess tomorrow, and tomorrow, and…”

The policemen in the car smile bleakly as policemen always do.

“I’m a film director, you see.” I say. “Sex thrillers. And a very well known one, well respected. In the little known world of the soft porn sex thriller genre. Boy, could I tell you some stories…”