Book summary “Ayoade on Ayoade”: summary

Introduction

You want to make movies, write scripts, or act, but you find yourself trapped by conventional wisdom and actual talent. Industry manuals offer boring advice about narrative arcs, character motivation, and funding sources that actually require money. Richard Ayoade on Ayoade solves this by treating cinematic creation as an administrative burden best managed through complete delusion and absolute cynicism.

Cinema history is divided into the Early Period and the New Common Era, with the nexus being Ayoade's birth in 1977.

The book explores this philosophy through a series of exhaustive interviews and spurious manifestos. You will discover how to structure your daily writing routine around inactivity, adapt existing masterpieces poorly, and command a film set without ever making eye contact.

• How do you secure funding by crowdsourcing your mortgage?
• What constitutes correct behavior during an audition?
• Why is your filmography already inferior to a card index?

1. Chronology and the Philosophy of Cinema

Cinema history is split into Pre-Ayoade and post-Ayoade eras, arguing that film and life are identical.

Early Period and New Common Era

The chronology of cinema is divided into two distinct parts centered around Ayoade's birth. Cinema history splits into Pre-Ayoade, known as the Early Period, and post-Ayoade, known as the New Common Era. The nexus is 1977, the year of Ayoade's birth.

Leonardo da Vinci thinking up moving projected images in 1488 or the invention of the Perambulascope in 1818 are cataloged alongside events in Ayoade's life. You can view gestation as an extended pre-production phase for future creative projects. Ayoade recalls his time as a fetus as a period of biding time, hardening his skeleton, and developing future projects instead of panicking.

Ayoade remembers being minus six or seven months old in the womb, finding it dark, restricted, and suitable for contemplating future films.

Film is Life

Film and life are inextricably the same, rendering film school redundant. Ayoade argues that because film is life, studying it in an academic environment makes no sense, since true education comes from living. Ayoade claims he is at film school right now simply by virtue of living.

Writing and creating cinema is an exhausting athletic and emotional event. The creative process requires wrestling with characters and the concept of cinema itself, leading to physical exhaustion akin to decathlon sports. Ayoade wears a track suit before writing because he ends the day sweating from the emotional exhaustion of pulling on his own heart strings.

Audiences and critics have no right to criticize films because the work is inherently beyond criticism if understood. Ayoade asserts that any negative audience reaction is a failure of the viewer, not the film, since a piece of celluloid is a non-ethical entity that cannot be wrong. Ayoade maintained a mental breakdown in 2005 as a performance art piece representing the institutional corruption of funding bodies, backed 120 per cent by his own artistic choices, alongside a 9 minutes 22 seconds length of silence on the tape during a discussion about potential breakdowns.

Creative visions require extreme physical hydration and electrolyte replenishment. Ayoade connects his receipt of artistic visions to maintaining physical hydration, specifically consuming massive amounts of Lucozade. Ayoade drinks four to six litres of Lucozade around his creative visions to replenish essential salts, containing half a kilo of sugar in six litres of drink.

2. Writing Routines and Adaptation

Writing is approached through absurd daily routines, cynical commandments for adaptation, and chaotic scriptwriting schedules.

Everything you do, from eating to sleeping, carries political weight. When questioned by an interviewer, you assert that your actions display deep political engagement. You might whisper about nation-building or make scathing comments about the euro during foreplay. You also dismiss the distinction between truth and falsehood. You claim you have never told a single true thing and never will.

The Art of Adaptation

You adapt novels into screenplays using a deeply cynical and absurd set of commandments. The rules mock standard Hollywood adaptation advice while demanding strange physical preparation.

Follow these steps when adapting a text:

• Read most if not all of the novel rather than skimming Wikipedia summaries.
• Have your manager enlarge the novel to A4 size and write INT or EXT at the start of action passages.
• Stay hydrated with an isotonic sports drink while reading.
• Capitalise to convey urgency, such as Ingmar SMASHED the small ALARM CLOCK.
• Keep stage directions brief.
• Type out everything from the novel in inverted commas to cover dialogue.
• Call the author and use threats if you need help understanding the theme.
• Deal with being in court for threatening the author.
• Take a commission to adapt another book to clear your expenses.
• Return to point one.

You occasionally take a rewrite job on Hot Sauce II: Afterburn for financial reasons. Test screenings for Hot Sauce II: Afterburn result in rapturous applause, with audience members praising scenes featuring elderly women in hot tubs and excessive flatulence. Producer Irwin Chase pitches a film where Ashton Kutcher and Harrison Ford play the front and back halves of a man whose body spans two separate time continuums.

Writing Routine

You outline an eccentric daily writing routine that prioritizes evasion and odd habits over actual writing. Your day consists of waking up, climbing under the bed to Google yourself, committing tax evasion, taking biscuit breaks, crying, and eating nectarines.

Structure your writing day with strict time slots:

• 05.45 a.m. Wake up and go back to sleep
• 09.45-11.00 a.m. Tax evasion
• 11.00-11.20 a.m. Biscuit break
• 11.20-11.30 a.m. Crying

You dedicate specific slots of time to tax evasion, returning unwanted Amazon items, and picking up his mother from a secret wrestling practice in south Kent. Invited by Flaggkommandør Knut Ellefson under the false impression that you had made a film about submarines, you deliver a disastrous screenwriting masterclass in Norway. During a masterclass at a college in north-west Norway, you and an enraged cadet tumbled into an ice sculpture of Edvard Munch's The Scream, earning a fee of 130 pounds excluding ferry fare and cabin rental.

You attempt to draft a cinematic scene where a young Danny O'Donoghue tries to purchase hair gel with only one euro when the price tag is two euros. The workflow involves rewriting scenes multiple times, debating whether characters can afford hair gel, and pondering theological dilemmas regarding the existence of evil and commercial pop bands.

3. Acting, Auditions, and Awards

Acting subjects performers to impossible contractual conditions, micro-managed self-tapes, and strict on-set etiquette.

You face absurd critiques when you put yourself on tape for remote auditions. A director reviewing your footage for Boom Goes the Neighborhood! criticizes your teeth shape and nasal voice.

Self-Tape Auditions

You might receive notes suggesting that you file down your teeth and cut your hair half an inch at a time. Your agent DannytotheD can secure you roles that involve grueling conditions in distant locations. A contract for a seven-month shoot in Kuwait places you on a will-notify status with bread rations and a four-mile hike uphill.

You apply Stanislavski's method questions to minor roles to find existential depth. When you utter a single line, you wonder about the nature of existence and the band The Who. High-profile co-stars often enforce strict physical boundaries through their legal representatives. You receive instructions not to address a co-star verbally or to consume food that leaves a breath odor.

Hollywood Contracts

Awards ceremonies offer a structured template for public validation. Cameron Diaz winning a ShoWest Convention award for Female Star of Tomorrow in 1996 is a protective shield against depression. You can navigate any televised ceremony by following specific steps:

• Express complete surprise at receiving the award.
• Acknowledge the inspiration provided by specific people and fellow nominees.
• Briefly look like you might cry to prompt sympathetic audience murmurs.
• Express humility regarding the awarding organisation.
• Thank a sexual partner, deity, or Harvey Weinstein.
• Give genuine thanks for the award and describe its incongruous display location.

Terrence Malick operates as an oversharing Twitter addict under the username MagicHourMan during epic productions. You might try to stay grounded by visiting your mother to take out the rubbish. You struggle with a wheelie bin in the drizzle and realize you prefer scriptwriting.

4. Directing Rules and Card-File Systems

Directing requires maintaining absolute authority, keeping detailed film card files, and enduring the psychological toll of digital grading.

The Card-File System

You maintain a detailed record of every movie seen. This cine-file serves as both a memory aid and an autobiography. Over twenty-five cards form the total number of film cards currently kept. Card #8 analyzes the 1991 Warner Bros film Strictly Business directed by Kevin Hooks. It grades it an A+ and praises its nuanced treatment of yuppie culture and race.

Color Grading and Directing Rules

You document a multi-week grading diary for the film The Double. The digital intermediate or DI process reveals the psychological toll of manipulating color temperatures in a dark room. During the fifteen days estimated for color grading, you stop showering and smell like rotting meat.

Danny DeVille suggests changing the title of The Double and adopting the DeVille Diet. You can follow these exact meal plans:

• Breakfast: Half a cup of kale, a quarter cup of soy, two steamed broccoli stems, and 50ml water
• Lunch: Half a cup of kale, one cup of soy, one steamed broccoli stem, and 30ml soy milk or 50ml water
• Dinner: Half a cup of kale, a cup of soy/millet mix, two or three walnuts, and 20ml low-sodium tomato-juice substitute

You establish absolute authority over actors by sending a demanding welcome letter. You warn Craig and Yasmin against taking outside work and demand the exact £5.40 toll charge for a Category One Vehicle for the Severn Bridge as of 1 January 2009. Two other people are auditioned and kept on the payroll as backups.

Your Flm-ifesto outlines the necessary wardrobe and behavioral rules for a film set. You can follow these operational principles:

• Pick out an outfit to be easily identifiable as the head of the team
• Conserve your energy by directing from a hammock
• Listen. Listen. Listen
• Only use drugs to reward yourself for a job well done
• Decide what kind of beard you want

Your signature directing outfit consists of a canary-yellow boiler suit teamed with a tan leather flight jacket and a hard hat.

5. Crowdsourcing and Epilogue

Crowdsourcing should fund personal mortgages rather than films, leading toward a dystopian cinematic conclusion.

Crowdsourcing Mortgages

Instead of asking fans to fund a creative film project, you can ask them to contribute funds toward paying off a personal home mortgage. You can offer trivial digital rewards in exchange for these donations instead of cinematic output.

The Money Men can manage these transactions while you offer tiered donor packages:

• Pledge $10 to get a PDF copy of mortgage repayments thus far.
• Pledge $25 to get a PDF copy of upcoming utility bills.
• Pledge $50 to be cc'd on any correspondence with the bank manager.
• Pledge $100 to receive an email stating how much money is actually owed.

Disney chief executive Bob Iger joyfully remarked on combining a world-class portfolio of content across multiple platforms after the $4.05 billion Disney purchase price for Lucasfilm. You can instead imagine hypothetical Star Wars Blu-ray deleted scenes highlighting mundane, domestic, and trivial interactions among characters using the QuadraQuartzBluBox format.

Richard Ayoade imagines absurd alternate takes and deleted scenes for a Star Wars re-release, focusing on mundane complaints about weather, sand, moisture vaporators, sandwich crusts, and insurance details. Luke Skywalker argues with a droid about cutting the crusts off his sandwich, nearly runs over an old man in Anchorhead, and exchanges insurance details.

The Epilogue

The epilogue presents a dystopian future where cinema is forgotten because the world has forgotten the author. The year 2020 marks the setting in the dramatic epilogue where auteur cinema faces symbolic memorialization.

Ayoade weeps at a solitary funeral where the coffin holds a film canister containing an image of Ayoade's head spliced with Martin Scorsese's. This final ceremony completes the digital intermediate process and VistaVision legacy of modern film history.

10 Key Ideas

1. Cinema history is split into the Early Period and the New Common Era with the nexus being Ayoade's birth in 1977.
2. Film and life are inextricably the same, rendering film school redundant.
3. Writing is approached through absurd daily routines, cynical commandments for adaptation, and chaotic scriptwriting schedules.
4. You adapt novels into screenplays using a deeply cynical and absurd set of commandments.
5. Acting subjects performers to impossible contractual conditions, micro-managed self-tapes, and strict on-set etiquette.
6. Cameron Diaz winning a ShoWest Convention award for Female Star of Tomorrow in 1996 is a protective shield against depression.
7. Directing requires maintaining absolute authority, keeping detailed film card files, and enduring the psychological toll of digital grading.
8. You establish absolute authority over actors by sending a demanding welcome letter.
9. Instead of asking fans to fund a creative film project, you can ask them to contribute funds toward paying off a personal home mortgage.
10. The year 2020 marks the setting in the dramatic epilogue where auteur cinema faces symbolic memorialization.