Speed is a Sloth's nemesis...

Where and how do i begin?... I have soon realised that looping that question in my head will only make me look like a chanting Buddhist monk. I can forget about actually churning out a blog entry. So, good tidings to the alive not dead crew and its' community.

Having spent the last 7 years working as a full time actor reduced me with only one nagging question... How the hell did i make it this far? Anyone out there who is familiar with Malaysia's entertainment industry would tell you that, that's a perfectly valid, justifiable question. If a producer calls up to rope me in to a production, if he says, "we have a very good budget for this one", i'd ask, "did somebody part the Red Sea?"... Here's a true story, a producer actually told his assistant to count the amount of fruits bought as props and count the amount that appeared on-screen. Being hesitant in paying for an office location, he asked writers and director to re-write the script, the protagonist who was written out to be a successful manager, is now a bum.

Corruption is more omnipresent than air. How so? Corruption exists in all levels of society and corporate hierarchy, high or low, but air, on the other hand, becomes gradually thinner and eventually disappears as altitude increases... Or, perhaps, air and corruption are parallel, except they go on separate directions vertically... The higher in altitude, the thinner air gets, The higher in ranking, the thicker wallet gets. People are money crazy, we know that, but people here are foolishly money crazy.

It's a lonely trip when majority of the people involved in the entertainment industry has zero integrity in making good films or TV shows. That's when it gets frustrating when the money that goes into production keeps falling on the wrong laps.

Let me paint a very simple picture, Guy A gets funding for production, Guy A thinks, why go through the hassles of making a film or TV show? I'll just take a chunk of the money and pass on the rest to Guy B, Guy B is uncannily identical to Guy A, so Guy B takes another chunk, passes on what pathetically little left of the budget to Guy C. Poor Guy C calls Alvin Wong, other actors, director, film crew and says "We have very tight budget / We have no budget for this production lah". Alvin says, "So, the Red Sea wasn't parted after all / Deja Vu Loop".

When i do chance upon individuals who are truly passionate about making a good film and TV show, ever so often, they're nowhere near any source of investments... We do have great talents in this country but a portion of them had flowed out of the country with the despair of being forsaken over and over... Hence, the growth of our industry is like a Sloth whose nemesis is simply, speed...