SALMON GENT AND THE CASE OF THE JELLY SPINE It's been a while since I got hate-mail so I was quite excited to see the following in my inbox under the header About you: "Mike you are a smug fat dick wipe who I wouldn't piss on if on fire." The last batch of silliness like this I got came from the States but the term dick wipe sounded very British. The sender hadn't signed it so I was left with their preferred mail handle Gent Salmon which at first led me to believe I was being hounded by the fisheries commission or perhaps some obscure superhero from the 1930's who used to run around with Doc Savage. I replied in the usual way: "Cheers. Glad my message isn't lost on everyone. You forgot to add 'hairy' to the list." I honestly don't understand what people think is going to happen after they have called me a name. Am I supposed to pack up and run off crying? Is there some kind of interweb teacher or schoolyard prefect I should report this to while clutching my packed lunch and biting my trembling lip? It just makes me want to get t shirts printed up with the website address and the slogan SMUG FAT DICK WIPE across the front. Maybe PISS HERE IN CASE OF FIRE written on the back. Anyhow, a little while later I get a reply from the mysterious GENT SALMON this time under the heading More about you: "You are also staggeringly unkind." My unkindness made someone stagger? I asked for clarification but getting none I dug around a bit and searched for the actual email address of the person who was sending this. sgys05930@blueyonder.co.uk That led me to the production company Cargo Film Ltd who reside at 82 Wake Road, Netheredge, Sheffield S7 1HG (Tel: +44 (0)114 255 6169). Now I know Sheffield isn't the best place to find yourself in and to be fair if I lived there I'd probably want some attention too but I felt there was something more to this... Do you remember the review I wrote for a film called Jelly Dolly? You can read it here but the gist was that I didn't really like it: I was just praying for the thing to end quickly. We need to create a hospice facility for films like this where nurses can watch the final reels and then break the news to the directors. It really was a bad film. Not in the Michael Jackson circa 1990 sense of the word 'bad' but in the Michael Jackson with his finger inside your children sense of the word. Not a pretty sight. So it turns out that the production company who are calling me names is the same production company responsible for Jelly Dolly. The films director is Susannah Gent: One of the poor souls working on her next film, The Leaving Party, is Tom Salmon. It's (I'm guessing here and please correct me if I'm wrong) their shared email that kicked off this whole entry. Maybe they took it in turns typing the email. Maybe they were googling themselves and found my review was right under their official website. That's gotta smart. Then again the review has it's own comments space so maybe that would have been the place to enter into discussion about the review. Or maybe just adding a name to the emails that they sent would help. Or maybe entering into a real conversation rather than dropping insults and running away would have helped too. Maybe the director was actually serious when she asked the audience not to say anything if they didn't like her movie. If nothing else it reveals the true vision and integrity of these brave British film makers. I just hope that anyone wanting to work with them in the future doesn't stumble across this post while googling for them, their production company or their films. We wouldn't want anyone to think they weren't professional. Mike is blogging to: fireworks