"Article about PARTY CULT HOST beginnings of Hemmings House Pictures in Halifax Magazine! haha!"

Very cool, Halifax magazine published a pretty major spread about what we are doing at HHP and where our roots were at Acamac. If anyone wants to know what Acamac was, ask any cabbie in Southern NB...its where Hemmings House Pictures was born, a place where working hard so we could play hard was our code, I would never consider myself a "party cult host", not even sure what that is! haha, but its funny and I'll roll with it! If the magazine scan is to small click on it and it will expand. I didn't crop any of the ads out, sorry, just no time!

" Your Check is in the Mail! - Southern France "

Sept 28^th, 2009

Cannes France - Halifax

“ #MIPCOM ”

Sound Track:

Artist – Wilco

Song – “Deep Down”

I am flying somewhere close to Iceland back across the Atlantic after a bit of a cluster F-bomb of a trip to Cannes. Sometimes I wish I could just jump out of the plane and see where I would land, would I land in the ocean? Possibly the Faroe Islands? Reykjavik maybe? Greenland? Newfoundland? Wilco is always a great blogging soundtrack, that reminds me of Quentin Tarantino actually…I was recently listening to the Coffee House channel on Sirius Satellite Radio and Quinton was doing a guest DJ spot playing all the tunes that he listened to while writing his latest screenplay “Inglorious Bastards”. It was funny hearing that one of Quentin’s favorite channels is the Coffee House, its such a chill channel as its name implies. If there is one thing that Tarantino is brilliant at, it is his amazing ability to choose the fucking best soundtracks for his films. I have always appreciated that about his films, however I am not the biggest fan of the ultra violence that he throws up on the screen, but I do respect his work rightfully so. For me, the best part of the editing experience is the marriage of the most divine music to the perfect images. Sometimes when freestyle editing I chose a random song, throw it in and it just works, the pictures is to the rhythm, the emotion is created…that’s divine editing.

Before I go into my random ramblings of my trip to the old world, I have to let you read my latest postcard that I just wrote before this post. I will be posting the postcard itself very soon.

October 3, 2009

Postcards

“Papikatuk Enroute”

I am currently flying somewhere above the French Alps on the way to Nice France. Typically I use my time while flying writing journal entries for my blog that I appropriately call “The Airplane Journals” (www.greghemmings.com), and when I am not writing I browse through the Air Canada onboard television channels. Today marks a real fun milestone as I was just able to watch one of my own films on the screen. Air Canada has a film festival called Enroute Film Festival that features short films from filmmakers across the country. My short film “Papikatuk” was chosen as one of the finalist so I just had to take a picture of the screen for the novelty of it all. You can check the film out and vote online at www.enroute.com. Once I land in Nice I will take a bus to Cannes where I will be trying to sell my television content. It is a great satisfaction to see my own productions on the air, and as I have just witnessed, the icing on the cake is when I get to see my productions in the air!

So if you want to watch Papikatuk, go to http://enroute.aircanada.com/films/en-index.html and PLEASE vote for it! I may win a lease for 2 years on a car! OOOOOH! Very fun!...Ok, back to my blog…

This was my 6^th time to Cannes for MIPCOM. I think it will be the last for a while. It costs me so much money, but it’s a catch 22, the TV industry of the world meets there, and when I’m not there I feel like I am missing out on the world. This of course is not true, the world actually keeps going and I am able to be aware of its direction whether I spend 10K every 6 months or not. To be brutally honest, I just love travelling to the Mediterranean, drinking red wine, swimming, absorbing French culture, great parties, and well yeah I guess the business part id pretty stellar as well. Its not being brutally honest I guess, there is nothing brutal about that, except for the fact that my credit cards seem to bleed every time I get sucked into the MIPCOM vortex. I had a great one this year for businesses, some movements on El Sistema, a sale or two for Melting Lands, and a strong expressed US interest for Kardinal Sinners.

This time Andrew Tidby, Alistair Meux , Cindy D’Orsay, John Wesley Chisholm, his wife Leanne and two kids Emily and Jack and I rented a mansion up in Cannet, a mountain side suburb of Cannes that looks over the city and the bay. When I say mansion, that’s what I mean, this place was sick…the swimming pool was the perfect temperature, yes I felt like I was living the life of Vince and the guys of Entourage (without the half naked women though of course!). It was great.

After a week of “bidness” with a touch of late night disco parties and midnight Mediterranean swims, Tidby and I rented a car and hit the mountains like we did last year…only we were missing Matt Webber and Gene Fowler this time. A lot of the Canadian production contingent didn’t go this year, you want to know what’s brutal? Its our Canadian TV industry, its bleak man, no one is buying, I am investing my whole professional life and career in one of the most unstable industries. If you are looking at getting into the TV world in Canada, do yourself a favor and wait a few years…right now it’s a great way to spend your hard earned cash! Things will change I hope. So our road trip up the winding roads was of course breathtaking, the cliff side 17^th century towns, the mountains, valleys, rivers, old world culture, it was all there. We ended up driving so far up a mountain and the road got so thin and unworn that we were literally driving on a grassy goat path until the car would not go any further. We ended up at only a few scrappy remains of an old castle. We were hoping to find the castle that we found last year but to no avail, but we did find something almost as cool. Magic hour was upon us and to be honest we were getting a wee bit peckish! We were winding up this mountain that would eventually lead us to Nice, the hopes of finding our last year’s castle were on our minds, we were determined to open a bottle of wine when we found it and live if only for 10 minutes the life of Santiago from the Alchemist, or of Paulo Coehelo’s other brilliant book “The Pilgram” (which I have only gotten through 10 or 11 pages of...I will finish it one day I promise!).

About 15 minutes up the winding road from the town of Roquebilliere-Vieux heading South towards La Tour, I pulled the car over to the side of the road… remember these are French Alp roads that have no guard rails and are so thin that 2 cars can barely share the same paved real estate without one falling hundreds of meters off the Cliffside to a fiery demise (oh so dramatic!). I stopped the car because there was a small sign that said Aubergerie Du Campo. We were hungry so we pulled over, there was a VERY small area where we could park the car, but there was no restaurant in sight. We went over to the sign and realized that there was a long and steep path that led down the cliff face down through lush vegetation to a small building with no other access. So old world. We went down and ate and incredible French meal with great French wine and French cheese that was so old and strong that I can still smell it on my fingers…uggg, yeah.

The view off the terrace where we ate was ridiculous looking over the valley with the raging Riviere St. Jean flowing past mountain cliffs with multiple waterfalls lining its river sides up hundreds of meters. Yes it was one of the most beautiful places I have ever eaten. The topper? When we asked to pay with credit card he said no, then handed us a pre-stamped envelope with 8 Euros change…change for a bill I hadn’t paid for yet! He said he has been feeding people for 17 years and has billed them with an envelope since the beginning with 100% success. Basically if you don’t have cash you go home and when you can afford to pay the meal, a week later, a year later, whatever, you pop in cash in the envelop and mail it to him! CRAZY!!! And he tried to give us change! Ha, I said “no keep the change for a tip for goodness sakes”. I can’t believe how trusting this guys is, he will be getting more than the bill when I send him payment I know that for sure…hey maybe that’s his experiment, I bet he makes more money that way because I do believe that deep down the majority of people on this earth are honest people. What a trip!

As Tidby said as his Facebook status:

Greg and I just had dinner in the French Alps. When it came time to pay, the chef (as he cooks and serves the food), gave us an envelope with the bill, and a mailing address and told us to mail him the money! The reason: "When you eat my food,... I do’nt want you to think of the cost". AMAZING!

So what made this trip so anxious for me? Well I had to leave Jessica and Kaiya alone and Jessica had become a single mom….again. We had some visitors at our house in Halifax when I was gone…unwanted guests of the rodent variety! So in the middle of the night Jess and Kaiya packed up and moved to a hotel for a week, and I was across the ocean feeling horrible. But that’s the risks of being a traveler. Our family travels a lot together, and I want to do that as much as possible because travel is fuel for my soul, but not at the expense of being with Jessica and Kaiya. Lots of stretching life lessons as a new father. I love Southern France. Almost back home now. When I get there Jess and I have 2 days to pack our whole house as we are moving to Saint John for 4 months, after our packing job we drive to Saint John to hit the airport and fly to Vancouver together…ahhh travelling with my girls, that’s way better than red wine and Mediterranean adventures any day!