My friend Rudy Wurlitzer once flew to Japan with director Sam Peckinpah to promote "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid". They were in what they thought was the first class cabin, but in mid-flight, Peckinpah, completely drunk, discovered a flight of stairs.

He went up, and came storming back down. "Rudy!" he yelled. "They got a whole 'nother first class up there! With BEDS!" Peckinpah rose to new heights of unstoppable, superhuman, wounded-American fury. "I have a first class ticket! And I demand a first class bed!" The embarrassed flight attendants quickly roused one of the sleeping Japanese passengers so that Sam could be installed in a full-length, super first class bed, for the remaining four or five hours.

Rudy, of course, remained downstairs.

Moral of the story: If you are a worker in the film industry, you will have the experience of being treated like kitchen help.

A couple of years ago, I directed a feature called "Revengers Tragedy" (recounted in previous diaries). I was lucky to be directing a film that really was mine: an idea I had nurtured and pursued for years, finally brought to the screen. But what they don't tell you at film school is that if you are a director you may spend six months to a year making a film, but you will then spend between one and two years promoting it.

Since "Revengers Tragedy" was finished, 18 months have passed. During that time I've paid for and maintained the website, attended at least 20 screenings and Q&A sessions, travelled all over the world and done maybe 100 interviews.

In other words, on a modestly-budgeted independent feature, a director works for a modest salary for nine months, and then works 18 months for free.

Why am I telling you this? Am I so downhearted that I must actually unburden myself in this embarrassing and public way?

Actually, no. I'm actually quite chuffed. The reason is; on Wednesday I was up to my neck in work promoting the US release of "Revengers" and on Thursday I was not.

After The Film Council and Pathé agreed to our US distribution proposal for "Revengers", Tod and I assumed that the other investor would accept it as well. But because we didn't want to get in any deeper into distribution without their agreement (and because Tod's just written a script and I have been asked to direct it!) we gave them a deadline of Thursday to respond.

The financiers ignored the deadline. It was too late to cancel the screenings in Portland and Seattle, so we must still make sure they receive prints and publicity materials and absorb the cost of that. But we were able to shut the rest of the US distribution down.

As a rule, you don't make money from the theatrical distribution of an independent film. You put it in the cinema because the opening brings reviews from the major newspapers. These reviews, if they're good, can be put on the video box and the DVD cover. And this translates into a more enthusiasm and a better price when one makes a sale to the DVD distributor, or to TV.

So from a business point of view a cinema release in a major market is a common sense thing to do. Not to have one means the film will be worth less, and will be seen by fewer people. Why then am I glad that we aren't having one?

Because missing our deadline meant that the financiers didn't think it was worth observing. Which suggests to me they have a rather low opinion of us. (The Peckinpah complex.)

So we withdrew our offer, and I contacted Liverpool-based producer Sol Papadopoulos to say I'd be available to direct "I'm a Juvenile Delinquent - Jail Me!", based on Tod's screenplay, in September.

Today my esteemed business partner finally broke the news to me that one of these financiers (not The Film Council) had objected to our taking the "Revengers Tragedy" website offline in protest against the Iraqi War. To this financier I say, and to anyone who doesn't like political content on film-related websites, you'd better avoid www.revengerstragedy.com, starting next week.

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