2008

Another year over (nearly). How was your 2008?

Mine was suspiciously like this:

JANUARY

George MacDonald Fraser died. I was a bit upset about that.

I set out to write a feature in six days (due to some ridiculously bad time-management skills). I actually managed to write it in three … and it was shit.

I found out I had no idea what blue pages actually are. Or rather, I knew what they were, but not exactly what they looked like and how to do them. I’m still not 100% sure but I’ve come up with my own version and no one’s complained so far.

Whilst on location for ‘K‘ I managed to work out a cheap way of throwing an actor off the roof.

I got fired from a film and inexplicably became obsessed with tin foil as a direct result. Looking back on that, it might have been a teeny tiny nervous breakdown.

I learnt how to write a sex scene which won’t upset actresses, then got called a sexist by Piers for using the word ‘actresses’.

Weirdly, someone asked me to put more swearing into a script. I’ve never been asked for that before or since.

‘K‘ started shooting.

I began the script for ‘Mixed Up‘ and immediately tried to hide under the tin foil again.

I bought my first ever calendar.

And to wrap January up, BBC Three announced the airdate for ‘The Wrong Door‘.

 

FEBRUARY

I learnt how to keep actors happy. Or happier, anyway.

I finished the first draft of ‘Mixed Up‘ and for some reason felt the need to post a video of my friends and I massacring ‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’.

IMDB made me happy.

After a couple of years of faithful service, I abandoned this room:

And moved into this one:

Which has a sofa for me to lie on whilst wrapped in tin foil:

And a light switch shaped like a nipple:

All to make space for my soon-to-be-arriving daughter. My old office looks more like this now:

And then I got memed. I didn’t like it.

 

MARCH

I decided ‘Mixed Up‘ was going to be my last low budget film and from now on I was going to concentrate purely on some TV specs.

I started work on two more low budget films. Since I can’t remember what they were, they obviously went the way of most low budget films and imploded on contact with reality.

I wrote a lot of shit about strategy.

Adele Silva completely failed to mention me in Hello!

I learnt taking meetings when your brain is in a different time zone is a bad idea.

I got invited to a mysterious gathering.

I learnt I used to live in Croydon – or at least that’s what the Croydon Guardian believes.

I worked out how to introduce a character without having her in the scene.

And then I got dressed up as Captain Kirk.

 

APRIL

Wow, are you still reading? Really?

I went to the thing I got invited to – a BBC shindig and chance to meet the producers of the BBC’s New Comedy Unit. Where I stood in the corner for a few hours, got very hot, very angry and completely failed to meet any of the producers of the BBC’s New Comedy Unit.

I realised there are very few female sidekicks.

I picked up even more low budget film work.

Abi Titmuss completely failed to mention me in The Sun and then promised to continue to never mention me in public. I decided not to believe she existed.

Karma Magnet turned up online. People seemed to like it.

Abi Titmuss made good her promise and failed to mention me in Closer.

I confirmed, once and for all, actors don’t really have sex in sex scenes. Unless it’s porn.

I got to write for Doctor Who. Not the show, or even the current Doctor, but for Sylvester McCoy and that’s good enough for me.

I decided some actors needed punching in the throat.

And then ‘Mixed Up‘ started shooting, so I went and hid in the Caribbean.

 

MAY

 I finally gave in and went on set. It was fun. I made tea.

Shouted at people for getting upset about not winning competitions. If you’ve entered the Red Planet Prize this year, you should read this post again.

I had a day off. That was nice too.

Someone said something nice about me on IMDB. I immediately became suspicious.

I had another shout at people for being idiots and starving themselves to death whilst failing as a writer. Get a proper job, for fuck’s sake.

Had my first, and so far only, guest post.

Wrote a short guide to dealing with notes which basically involved a lot of swearing and some minor violence.

Hmm … May was a bit rubbish, wasn’t it?

 

JUNE

I decided to murder my old spec scripts and just deleted them.

I rescued  my old spec scripts from the recycle bin and hid them where I couldn’t find them.

‘Fleeced‘ started filming – that’s three features so far this year.

Got another black belt – also my third.

Went on a bit about loving the treatment I was writing. I wish I hadn’t now.

Shouted a bit about questions and then took two weeks off because:

Seriously, who gives a fuck about the rest of the year?

 

JULY

Oh, you’re still reading, are you?

Fine, come on then.

Shall we just have one more photo of Alice?

 Aw.

Anyway.

In July I organised a museum heist.

Got invited to a screening of The Wrong Door.

Went to the screening of The Wrong Door, met loads of people including Doctor Fox, Sarah Morgan and her boyfriend, didn’t make a tit of myself (except with Doctor Fox) and managed to steal a T-shirt:

Two days later, I had to give the T-shirt back. A handy tip – if you steal something, don’t mention it on your blog.

Learnt how to be constructive with my criticism rather than just scrawling SHIT on the script in red ink, wiping my arse on it and sending it back.

Met Gordon Robertson after knowing him via email (not in the biblical sense, that’s impossible) for a few years. He’s a nice bloke.

And then waffled on a bit about random shit to avoid having to do any real work.

 

AUGUST

Crap. Still working on that fucking treatment.

Got asked an annoying question.

Got offered a shit load of imaginary money.

Got asked if I wanted to run a sketch writing workshop. I didn’t. Then I thought I might. Then the guy stopped talking to me. So I didn’t.

Didn’t have dinner with Gordy Hoffman.

Bought a new computer:

It has touchscreen. I like touching it.

Discovered cats and touchscreen computers don’t mix.

The Wrong Door got a lot of publicity in the run up to the show – 12 of the 14 reviews I read were very positive. 2 were very negative.

The Wrong Door kicked off. So did a guy called Ben Randall who was so upset he didn’t find a programme funny he came all the way over to this blog to call me names.

 

SEPTEMBER

The Wrong Door had the highest opening of any show on BBC Three (about four people) which seemed to greatly upset a handful of Internet loonies who went on and on and on about it for fucking ages.

I made the mistake of suggesting the people coming to my blog to call me names because they didn’t find a TV programme funny were a bit mental. Several people took great exception to this and went far out of their way to call me names in an effort to prove how mistaken I was about their lack of sanity and a real life.

Got my first death threat. Actually I got two death threats and one offer to rape my three month old daughter to ‘teach me a lesson’. That was nice. Perfectly sane behaviour that, I thought.

Still working on that fucking treatment.

Had a superb meeting where people offered me lots of money. I didn’t, and still don’t, really believe them.

Got offered another low budget feature film. That’s more like it.

Yet more abuse about The Wrong Door. One guy has taken to posting insults then changing names and agreeing with himself. He doesn’t seem to be able to grasp concepts like IP addresses, I can see it’s all one guy. I assumed this was a guy because I like to think women have better things to do.

There was a new trailer for LVJ. Again.

An old project threatened to spring back to life … and then didn’t.

Finally finished that fucking treatment.

Oh and a bit more abuse about The Wrong Door.

On a serious note, all that abuse was a bit wearing. You write in the privacy of your own room for years until someone decides they want to make your work. You’re pleased, they’re pleased, the show comes out and generally people either like it or turn it off. Then a small contingent of morons think it’s perfectly acceptable to come and call you names, threaten your family and generally behave like cunts because – horror of horrors – THEY don’t like it. It’s depressing and it’s demotivating. I expected to be slagged off in papers if the critics didn’t like something I’d written. I expected to be slagged off on forums or other people’s blogs – all that’s fair enough; but the sheer persistence of a few individuals who felt the need to come here and spout off about it did actually get me down.

Until Oli sent me a cartoon. Which explained everything and really cheered me up. I decided I would find some way to repay him, somehow.

I completely failed to do some writing and in a gargantuan procrastination session, I redesigned my website.

 

OCTOBER

I revealed the one true secret of screenwriting THEY don’t want you to know.

The Wrong Door finished.

The abuse didn’t.

Took on far too much work and struggled to cope.

Found out I didn’t have a second act. Bit of a bugger that one.

Had a dream about Jason Arnopp, James Moran and an over-ground submarine.

Fixed the second act thing and discovered it no longer matched the ending.

Wrote a whiny post about writing treatments in the hope a certain producer was reading and would let me off for not turning in a treatment he was expecting. It didn’t work. Turns out he can’t read.

Wrote a writer’s vision for a sales pack – I don’t have any vision.

That guy’s still answering himself on The Wrong Door posts.

Found out I’m a celebrity.

 

NOVEMBER

Is anybody still reading?

Why?

Are you fucking mental? Go outside and play.

November:

The second-act-less treatment went to script stage. Bugger. Now I have to write the fucking thing.

Saw some footage from Fleeced. Was pleasantly surprised.

Found out I’m an anal bastard.

That loon is still at it, still posting bile and answering himself. It’s been three months!

Didn’t get an email from Kristen Kreuk.

Made Alice do some writing for me:

She’s better than me, so I banned her from using the computer.

Got horribly busy.

Actually did some work.

Ate some soup.

Got upset about writing the first ten pages of a script.

Painted the lounge, got high on paint fumes, wrote a load of shit about writing sketches. I have no idea what my point was.

Got a request about re-writing. Wrote a loooooooooooooooooooooooong post about it.

Got sacked from a project I didn’t know I was involved in.

Learnt that A and B are the same thing.

Talked about bookcases and wallpaper. No idea why. Probably trying to avoid working.

Got all arsey about the word ‘what’.

That lone loon’s finally stopped commenting. I miss him, the crazy bastard.

 

DECEMBER

Hooray! December! This post is finally over and we can all go home!

Assuming any of you are still here.

Met some more writers in the pub: Paul Campbell, Danny Stack, Lara Greenway, Michelle Lipton and Oli … as well as the normal crowd. They were all nice. I told Danny and Michelle the secret which isn’t really a secret – just something I don’t bother telling people. Danny immediately left the pub, Michelle wanted to hug me.

Got angry with ten imaginary people because there were ten of them.

Panicked. Finished the script.

Cut out every other word in the vague feeling it might make it exciting and mysterious. It didn’t.

Told people how to wait. Not sure why, probably avoiding some other work.

Declared my love affair with Apparitions. Which I still haven’t seen the last episode of. I’m a fickle fucker sometimes.

Had some fun. It was fun.

Met James Moran. Told him the secret which isn’t really a secret – he seemed to find it funny.

And there you go. That was 2008 for me. How was it for you? 

Wrong Door – Bondo

Last episode of the series tonight:

Commander Bondo of the Clown Secret Service is tasked with thwarting a dastardly Ninja plot to assassinate Captain Goitre, leader of The Train Pirates.

Melanie’s relationship with Philip the Dinosaur reaches breaking point and Xotang the giant robot’s holiday plans are ruined when he forgets his passport.

There’s a vague possibility that some of the Bondo stuff is based on a couple of sketches I wrote. I say vague because it’s equally plausible that someone else submitted a similar idea and it all sprang from that, or possibly several similar ideas arrived at the same time and were merged together.

By the sound of it, the sketches were all handed round for rewrites a few times anyway, so even if my sketches were part of the original inspiration there’s only a very slim chance any of the lines survived to the final version. Maybe some of the words might have made it in? You know, like ‘the’ and ‘of’ and ‘cockface’.

I guess I’ll find out tonight: 10.30pm - BBC Three.

Wrong Door – The Wizard of Office

It’s Thursday again and time for more from The Wrong Door: 10.30 pm – BBC Three. Tonight’s exciting installment …

When Dorothy Tempest’s office is hit by a tornado she is transported to the far-from-magical land of Oswestry, where her desk lands on Justin Beales, the Regional Sales Director for the East.

There’s more disappointing magic when Louise and Tom visit the so-called Magical Wood; the world’s most dangerous restaurant gets a visit; and Transformo and Perky Girl audition for Superhero Tryouts.

Wrong Door – The Train Pirates

Thursday again and there’s more Wrong Door tonight. This week’s episode:

The Train Pirates strike fear into the hearts of Britain’s commuters. Britain’s most eccentric military boffin, Commander Kevin Cheeks, shows off his latest gadgets; masked vigilante The Raven puts in an appearance; and Melanie introduces Philip The Dinosaur to her friends.

Originally this episode was supposed to be episode one, but someone somewhere decided what was supposed to be episode two was stronger and switched them all around. Unfortunately tonight’s episode has a lot of the initial set-ups for the recurring characters – and although it doesn’t exactly ruin everything, it does kind of mess it up a little bit.

Personally, I think this episode is much stronger – but that might just be because it’s got Brian Blessed dressed as a pirate and shouting a lot. I think the opening sketch sums up the show too and would have been the perfect introduction to what it’s all about.

Still, there you go apparently this sort of thing happens a lot.

Tonight: BBC Three, 10.30pm

Wrong Door – The Smutty Aliens

I’m kind of bored of mentioning this since I guess anyone who’s going to watch it already knows about it by now; but at the same time I feel like now I’ve started talking about it, I have to carry on or it’ll look like I don’t care any more.

So, tonight, BBC 3 – 10.30 pm: The Wrong Door episode 3 (or episode 4, depending how you count it) – The Smutty Aliens:

Chief Inspector Barnes struggles to balance his budget, while the offices of Baum Technologies find themselves with an unusual pest control problem.

Lisa finds out her boyfriend can make himself invisible, Trampoline Transit Ltd demonstrate an innovative commuting alternative and Susan is abducted by the Smutty Aliens.

Hmm … smutty aliens. I’m guessing that’s not going to help win over anyone who finds the show juvenile.

Wrong Door – Njarnia

You’d be forgiven for thinking there’s nothing else going on in my life at the moment except The Wrong Door; but the truth is the other stuff is fairly work-a-day. I’m just fiddling with treatments and bits and bobs of re-writes. I was hoping to have everything out of the way for the weekend – I’ve got a meeting tomorrow which is pretty important and will probably swamp me in more work - but hey-ho, I haven’t quite managed it.

So in lieu of a blog about some of the other stuff, none of which is particularly interesting just yet, here’s a reminder about tonight’s episode of The Wrong Door. This is what it’s vaguely about:

Ed and Lucy buy a cheap self-assembly wardrobe only to discover that it leads to the fantastical-but-rubbish land of Njarnia. Back in the normal parallel universe, we meet unfortunate superhero wannabe Rocketman and the monster who lives in the office stationery cupboard.

Philip the Dinosaur tries his hand at bowling, plus an intriguing new weight loss cure and a watercooler moment you probably won’t want to share.

Ten-thirty, tonight BBC3.

I look forward to the demented telling me how shit I am afterwards.

The Wrong Door – Aftermath

It’s been a few days since The Wrong Door opened, so what was the reaction?

Well, pretty good really. There’s an article in Broadcast here about the ratings. The basic gist is the show got the highest ever ratings for a new comedy on BBC Three. The pertinent sentences are:

“BBC3’s new comedy sketch show ‘The Wrong Door’ attracted 546,000 (3.5%) at 10.30pm last night, the highest ever audience for the launch of a comedy on the channel.”

and, perhaps more importantly:

“The half hour programme peaked in the final 15 minutes on 564,000 (3.8%). The first episode of the six-part series was just behind the channel’s slot average of 558,000 (4.1%).”

To me, the fact it got high ratings for the first episode reflects the level of advertising beforehand, rather than an indication of how much people liked the show. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to get those kind of ratings; but if the audience comes back this week I’ll be much more impressed.

The fact the ratings went up as the show continued excites me more – I think that means people not only stuck with the show throughout but more people tuned in. Mind you, I have no idea how it all works and it could be we lost all of the original viewers and then inherited a totally new set in the last few minutes because something popular finished on another channel and there was nothing else on.

Who knows? Okay, so half a million viewers is not a significant proportion of the country; but it is when you consider how many people actually know BBC Three exists, can receive it and have the inclination to watch it. I’m sure someone will be along to correct my tenuous grasp of ratings and audience share; but it looks good to me.

The show got some very good reviews. True, there were a couple of bad ones; but the good far outweighed the bad – with the average review giving it 4 out of 5 stars. I only saw two bad reviews as opposed to a dozen or so positive ones so I’ll take that as a generally good sign.

Of particular interest to me was when Mandy took Alice to baby yoga the next day, the yoga teacher started telling her about this great sketch show she’d seen the night before. Being a proud wife, Mandy pointed out I’d written one of the sketches and after the usual blank look (seriously, people don’t seem to realise TV shows are written by someone. There’s always a pause while people try to work out what the hell you’re talking about: “do you write the words or just the story?”) she asked which one I’d written. Mandy told her and apparently there was another pause, followed by a quiet “Yeah, that one was … okay.”

If you were to trawl the Internet for opinions, you’ll find quite a lot of negative comments; but that’s to be expected and mostly comes from frustrated writers who believe they can shit better sketches in their sleep than anything anyone else writes. Strangely, their prodigious talents go unrecognised by the powers that be because, obviously, there’s a massive conspiracy designed to keep them down. Presumably because they shit themselves whilst sleeping.

There’s a simple rule here: sane people change the channel if they don’t like something. Anyone who watches a show to the end and then makes the effort to write a scathing review online has far too much spare time, presumably down to not having enough friends. Let’s be honest, if anyone listened to them in real life they wouldn’t need to express their opinions via the Internet.

Um … obviously, this blog is different and provides a vital service which would severely damage the world should I ever stop. Everyone else though is mental.

A brand of insanity I find particularly amusing is the people who’ve gone to the effort of finding this blog and slagging off The Wrong Door in the comments*. I mean, what were they hoping to achieve? Bearing in mind I only wrote a tiny portion of the show and have nothing to do with commissioning, filming or casting, what response are they looking for? Do they think I’m going to realise the error of my ways and break down in tears?

I was toying with editing some of the negative posts so they’re much more positive, you know, something like:

“Dear Phill,

I realise now I was totally incorrect when I was rude about The Wrong Door. The truth is I love the show and am extremely jealous. Sadly, I was born with a small cock and feel the need to bring others down in a pathetic attempt to make myself feel even slightly superior. I apologise whole heartedly and unreservedly.

Yours

Arthur Medleycott

PS I love you, please adopt me”

But in the end I decided I quite like the fruit loops raving about the show on my blog. Their constant checking for responses drives up my blog stats and the repeated mentions of The Wrong Door list this blog higher in Google’s search results which only generates more publicity for me. So I say, keep it up, you mental weirdos and God bless you. I get paid the same whether a handful of random loons like it or not. In fact, given these people will probably watch every episode in seething resentment, just so they can bitch about it with authority the next day, I should probably thank them – they’ll drive up the ratings and guarantee a second series.

The bottom line is nothing is universally loved or hated; people like different things and have different senses of humour. I don’t like every sketch in The Wrong Door – but then I don’t like every Monty Python sketch and still love that show. Funny is a subjective term, it’s not a fact or a definitive property. You can’t measure funny on any scale and just because you don’t find something funny doesn’t mean it’s shit - it just means you don’t like it. I didn’t find the Royale Family funny; but that doesn’t make it shit, because I know it was exceptionally well thought of by thousands of people. I may be a raving ego-maniac; but even I know my opinions don’t define the world.

I love the majority of Wrong Door sketches and I’m proud to be part of it. It makes me laugh and that’s good enough. The fact it had good ratings and reviews is just the icing on the cake.

I think the reviews in The Times sum it up for me. On Thursday, the four star review mentioned:

“… the hilarious X FACTOR rip-off, Superhero Tryouts.”

Which is the sketch I wrote.

The next day, the same paper gave another four star review and singled out the same sketch as an example of a ‘miss’, saying it was:

“… laboured and directionless.”

Which just goes to prove you can’t please all of The Times all of the time. I can’t wait to find out what people think of the next episode.

————————————————————————

* I’ll exclude Dave from this category on the grounds he made a genuinely funny comment about bourbon biscuits and Hitchcock.

Another Wrong Door review

Four more stars from … um … you know what? I have no idea. It’s from Hello! or OK or one of those big glossy magazines which nobody reads because they only buy them to look at the pictures. It was hard to tell which one because the woman I was trying to wrestle it away from was shrieking a lot and rolling around on the floor.

Still, I managed to tear the page out, it’s a good review and I didn’t even have to bribe the reviewer! Plus, as an added extra Brucie bonus – the photo is of my sketch! Those are my characters posing in costume for whatever magazine it is! Too many exclamation marks in one paragraph!

Just to give a sense of balance, here’s a review which is slightly less positive … no, you know what? Fuck that. Only positive thoughts here.

It was quite a nice experience to peer over someone’s shoulder and see my characters peering back at me. Even nicer that it’s a good review. Although, since they’ve got the dinosaur’s name wrong, perhaps they’re not to be trusted?

Oh fuck it. Four stars, baby!

Wrong Door online

Right, so apparently you don’t have to wait a week to see the first episode since it’s already online. You can watch it here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wrongdoor/

And sweet fucking Christ, there’s a lot of clever Internet stuff there. More than enough to keep you from doing any real work for at least a day. There’s even a website dedicated to my series of sketches:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wrongdoor/thejudgementalthreecouk/

Oh, and I might have something to do with this too:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wrongdoor/mpie5couk/

But I’m not sure, there seems to have been several people who came up with similar ideas and if it is based on one of my sketches then it’s been moved on a long way since. I’ll have to wait and see.

Speaking of waiting: I’ve already seen the first two episodes at a screening, but since what was then episode 2 now seems to be episode 1 and some of the sketches had an order to them … I’m not sure what this new episode 1 holds.

And now I’m torn. Call me old fashioned, but I want to wait and see the show on the telly. On the other hand … it’s there, taunting me.

Hmm, what’s a guy to do?

Wrong Door, one week to go

The Wrong Door opens, one week today on the 28th at 10.30pm on BBC Three.

Excited? I am.

Here’s the review from Heat:

Pick of the Day, see? Huh, do you see? Do you?

Wait a minute.

Arnopp? ARNOPP? Four Stars?

You bastard, I paid for five!

I want a fifth of my money back.