41 Slings & Arrows

Image by asifthebes / sxc.hu

What do you do when get a bad review? Try to remember the fashion world maxim: bad publicity is better than no publicity. Then sit down and cry. Little margie productions has been lucky: the critiques have been mostly positive. But I did have one shock. A half-page with color photograph of one of our docs: "Lucia." I was thrilled, but my Finnish wasn´t fluent enough to get the gist. I happened to be with the media buyer at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He translated it for me, but not before he burst out laughing. "Lucia" is essentially a Swedish-speaking celebration. In the doc I said it was spilling over into the Finnish-speaking population, especially with children. The writer took exception, in a lot of words. Some unkind.

But that was a blip compared to what The Daily Telegraph wrote about composer/conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. It was the day after the London debut of his piano concerto at Royal Albert Hall. We were there filming him for the doc, "Chasing Esa-Pekka." The next day we had an appointment to interview him. At breakfast I read the review to Eki and Antti. It was, in one word, devastating. I asked the guys if they thought he´d show up. They said, "Sure." And he did. One of the questions I had to ask was, what did he think of the critique. He was cool and appeared not the least bothered. He said, "That´s just part of the game." And we went on to other things. But I´m sure it hurt.


Lesson 41: Do what Esa-Pekka did, keep truckin.


Next week: 42 Press Kits