On why I can’t catch a fucking break publicising Falling

In my unfiltered, wouldn’t-it-be-nice dream state, I imagine a great director making an event series based on Falling for a streaming service.

A really big one, you know… $60-90m per episode, ten episodes, billboards, the same filmmaker behind every one so it’s more like a 10 hour movie than a series (it’s been done before, see Netflix’s The Dark Crystal prequel series, where every episode was directed by Louis Leterrier), enormous buzz online and in the film press, etc.

Silly dreams, I know, but you never win the tries you don’t take, as they say, so no matter how ridiculous my dreams are for Falling to make my name and career, if I think of it, I try it.

In just one example, I once emailed Scott Stuber, then-production head of Netflix and second only to co-CEO and creative tsar Ted Sarandos, to pitch it. I got a generic reply that they don’t read unsolicited submissions (as expected), but if I hadn’t shot for the moon I would have spent the rest of my life wondering.

More realistic (albeit still pretty out of reach) would be to befriend a writer or director by doing a profile on them and then staying in touch, an old trick I’ve been doing for years. Not to sound conniving and inauthentic – I genuinely like many of the people in the film industry whose email address or numbers I have.

After doing so, maybe emailing a few times to talk about other ideas or projects or during a subsequent discussion, the ostensible plan was always to let slip that I have a story I think will really suit them.

I’m a big fan of Roar Uthaug, the Norwegian director who’s done a handful of VFX heavy thrillers homaging the great disaster films of Hollywood that are better than anything Hollywood itself has turned out in a generation or more. See The Wave and Troll. It’s telling that the one film he made with an American studio – a Lara Croft remake with Alicia Vikander – sucked.

Another one’s an Icelandic filmmaker named Baltasar Kormákur, who’s done some of the best movies around combining spectacle-based action and emotional heart. See Everest, Adrift and several others.

Then there’s the inimitable Dan Aykroyd, who wrote my favourite movie of all time with Harold Ramis and is famous for having a genuine interest in the paranormal.

All I figured it might take for Falling to be on track for the destiny I envision above is for someone with a name and reputation in Hollywood to offer to take a look, read it, like it and offer to call an agent or producer they know.

And so, keeping the axiom about the swings you take firmly in mind, I’m constantly on the lookout for opportunities to ask for interviews with those above – and many more like them.

The opportunity came recently so I duly woke up at 6.30am to call some publicists and agents in LA to investigate the possibility.

Aykroyd has been publicising Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, which is in cinemas as I write these words. The 40th anniversary of the original is this coming July so I thought it’d be a great time to talk to him about it and try to get some tidbits not even hardcore Ghostbusters nerds know.

Unfortunately, I should have started asking earlier. They’ve all done their press for Frozen Empire because it’s already out, so doing so in a few more weeks – when I’d ordinarily try to organise long lead interviews for a story to appear in July to coincide with the anniversary – wouldn’t work in this case.

That might all sound confusing, but the consequences of me getting it wrong was an email from Aykroyd’s publicist saying he’s finished all the press he’s going to do about Ghostbusters.

The next chance I’ll ever get might be a subsequent sequel (if there is one), maybe something to do with his alcohol brand, Crystal Head – but what the hell do I know or care about vodka?

I also tried Uthaug because I have a story to do on the impacts AI is going to have on filmmaking crafts, and after doing VFX so well in so many of his films, I thought he’d be perfect to interview for it.

But no, I got an email back from his agent saying he was in production on the sequel to Troll so wasn’t doing any press.

All of which makes me feel even more like the universe is set against anyone ever enjoying, reading or even hearing about the passion project that defined so much of my life. Every time I take a big swing – one our culture promises will be etched into stone tablets for millennia to come after becoming part of a mythology – the don’t only not work, the ball hits me in the mouth and knocks out a few more teeth.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo launched an entertainment trend in Scandi-noir that became so huge it rivalled the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a movement its progenitor (author Stieg Larsson), never knew about because he had the bad luck of dying in 2004 before his books caught fire. He never got to enjoy the impact he had on our culture, but we all know his name. There, but for the grace of god…?

Anyway, the constant nagging awareness of my having failed at my life’s singular ambition notwithstanding, I promise the next few entries in the Falling blog won’t be so dour or dispiriting.