No business like snow business...

Ice cold in Berlin

After the joy of cooking comes the fun of washing up, and after the excitement of film-making comes the thrill of selling the damn thing...

Hence, I found myself on the midnight flight to the Fatherland, en route via Swissair to Zurich, then on to Berlin for the European Film Market. There, I gave my support to our indefatigable sales agent, Art Birzneck of Birchtree Entertainment, and meet up with old friends and fiends from east and west, including Stan Wertlieb from Grindstone, Andreas Klein from Splendid, Dave and Steve from Showbox UK, Coco Hamilton from Hamco...

I like boutique hotels, and had my assistant book me into the near-by hotel that looked funkiest on line. I hadn't anticipated quite how funky it was, and ended up checking in to the Casa Tim Burton. That was a scary place to come back to late at night (and I don't scare easy!)

Art and I ran business out of the Marriott. Let me tell you, folks: there is a glamorous side to the business, with pretty girls and parties and premieres, and then there's getting up at 5am and running out of money for post and these hustlers (including me!) buying and selling on the EFM shopfloor... That's the side you don't get to see on E!, but, without it, the industry would grind to a halt.

I hadn't seen snow for a while, and it was nice to see it on the ground and feel the fresh, cold air...

Ha! That lasted about five minutes.

I didn't get to see much of Berlin. The last time I was here, it was to shoot a TV series called Die Puma (Der Puma?) with Donnie Yen. I got to see more of the town then. There were loads of very new buildings in the area, but the market's main offices were in the Martin-Gropius. The headless statues outside were a bit disconcerting...

Despite the cold, 'The Blood Bond' was warmly received, and I came back to Hong Kong re-energised to resume post-production.