So I’m back from my first time at the Screenwriters’ Festival in Cheltenham and … yeah, I enjoyed it.
It was nice meeting people and putting names to faces, it was slightly scary being told “I love your blog” on an almost hourly basis (if you caught me near the end of the day I may have reacted strangely – sorry) and it was god damn bone-achingly wearing being nice to people for five days in a row. I’m just not used to it.
All in all – I met a lot of people, I chatted, I ate a lot of Italian food.
What else?
I’ve now got a near-permanent numb bum from sitting in various lectures/seminars/speeches/panels – not sure what to call them really.
Events, maybe?
I chatted to some agents at the speed dating thing, mainly trying to find out if they thought I needed them. Not surprisingly, they all agreed I do, but let’s face it, they were unlikely to say:
“No, don’t bother; we’re a complete waste of space. I haven’t achieved a single thing for any of my clients in seventeen years. I would be ashamed, if I wasn’t creaming off so much money.”
Mind you, if an agent did say that I would try to sign with them instantly – just for comedy value.
Michelle, Piers and I drove to Cheltenham together and getting there was largely uneventful despite my phone having a nasty habit of shutting down whenever I’m using the sat-nav and am nearing my destination. It never shuts down on the motorways – you know, the straight lines where you know where you’re going. Oh no, it always, always shuts down and resets as soon as you enter a town – you know, the bit where you actually need it.
I suspect the random shut downs have something to do with child saliva and percussive play – but that’s only a suspicion. Maybe I should stop Alice licking my phone and throwing it at the cat? Still, it is quite funny.
There was some comedy value to be had on the first night when Michelle, Jason and I – with three sat-nav enabled phones between us – couldn’t find the Queen’s Hotel for the first night drinks. According to our technologically dependent navigation the Queen’s Hotel was somewhere inside a men’s clothing shop and it took a long time before we finally admitted we were lost. Happily a passing stranger remedied that situation for us.
Not the first passing stranger mind; he confidently pointed us in the wrong direction and ran off cackling to himself. Luckily the second passing stranger was so drunk she had no option but to tell us the truth.
As an aside – are there any adults in Cheltenham? Apart from at the festival they all seem to be fancy-dress clad teenagers on the rampage. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but it is rather odd.
The festival itself … well, I’m not sure I’d go again without a very specific goal in mind. I turned up with no agenda and I can safely say I achieved everything on my list. And I drank a lot of tea whilst doing it.
The festival seems to be geared towards people just starting out as a writer (anyone with any experience being squirreled away in a separate green room) and since I’m in this odd in-between stage of not really being a beginner but not really being any bloody good at it – I felt a bit lost at times. I chose events mostly based on what might be interesting rather than what might be useful since I don’t really have any projects to sell and don’t really want to meet anybody in particular.
And that, like Cannes, is the key – if you’ve got a specific goal in mind Festivals are useful places to visit. If you haven’t, they’re just an expensive jolly. I met a few people at the Screenwriters’ Festival who could really help further my career – if my career interests were in any way similar to theirs.
Which they aren’t.
As a result I just had a nice chat with them and a cup of tea.
I don’t really have a lot more to say about it other than that. I am a bit annoyed with myself for spending a nice half-hour or so chatting to Bob Baker and then failing to attend his thing about K9 and Friends. I did want to go – I’m not really sure why I didn’t, especially since he seems like such a nice bloke and it feels like an enormous waste of money to go all the way to Cheltenham just to not listen to Bob Baker.
Which I think will be my overiding memory of the Festival - an expensive way to chat to people over a cup of tea.
I haven’t got an agent and for the most part I’m not really bothered. I have a plan, I have a strategy to follow and I’m vaguely heading in the right direction at frustrating speeds so it’s all well and good. At the moment I get paid for everything I write and I get to write pretty much what I feel like in any genre or style without too much interference.
In short, my writing life is pretty peachy.
Every now and then I get this vague pang of guilt for not having an agent, kind of like I need one in order to be a real writer. When that feeling of self-doubt strikes I make a halfhearted effort to send something to the first agent I think of … and I get rejected.
This happens about once every two years or so and is to be expected. The chances of picking one agent at random and them liking your work is pretty small. The best way is to make a concerted effort, do your research and specifically target agents who match your preferred style/genre/oeuvre (isn’t that French for egg?) or whatever. Merely pointing at another writer, thinking ‘I want his career’ and spamming his agent isn’t really the best way to go about these things.
But never mind. The rejection fires me up, indignant rage burns off the paralysing blanket self-doubt and I just carry on writing. I have this (possibly ill-conceived) idea that sooner or later someone will just ring me up and offer me representation. In fact, I think it might have just happened; but I was inadvertently rude to the guy and he hasn’t been back in touch.
Oh well, fuck it.
The question is, do I actually need an agent? What do they actually do for you? Okay, so if I was hell-bent on getting into TV then they might be useful for putting me forward - but I’m not that bothered. There isn’t really anything on TV I desperately feel like writing for (except Doctor Who and maybe The Sarah Jane Adventures) and at the moment I’m having too much fun with movies to concentrate on learning new skills. I have plenty of ideas for TV shows but rarely have the time to write them down – if I did, I have a handful of contacts I could send ideas to and I know they’d be happy to read them. They might think they’re shit, but they’d be happy to read them.
Movie wise, yeah, I’m doing fine. I have enough work for the rest of the year and probably the beginning of next year – I haven’t had to generate any work for myself for a while because of repeat custom and random emailers; and the only time I’ve recently expressed a vague interest in a spec project I find myself signing a contract for it a few months later.
I suppose the only thing I’d be looking for in an agent (apart from maybe approaching TV people on my behalf when I’m ready) is negotiating contracts – I fucking hate the whole thing. I mean, it’s not difficult (or at least I don’t think it is. I’ve been doing my own for years now and I still have both kidneys and all of my many pounds of flesh) but it’s fucking tedious and I have very limited interest. I’m kind of like Will Ferrell’s character in Austin Powers – talk about the same clause three times and I just give up.
“Oh, so if the Option is exercised, to make such reasonable amendments to Assignment A and the documents set out in Exhibit 2 as the Purchaser’s distributors or financiers may require then I don’t fucking care! I just don’t! Whatever you fucking want, just leave me alone in my box with my imaginary friends!”
Having someone to read the small print and be an obstreperous cunt during negotiations would be rather helpful, but is that a good enough reason for wanting an agent? But still, there’s that small nagging voice – real writers have agents. I don’t have an agent therefore …
And then there’s the Screenwriting Festival Speed Dating thing. Can I be bothered to apply? Do I actually want three face to face meetings with agents? Assuming I won a place, which I probably wouldn’t. Would I just be wasting their time and taking up space which could be allocated to be people who are desperately pursuing representation?
I had a look at the application process and figured I had nothing really to lose until I got to the question about ‘genre of your project’ – what project? I’m not trying to push one project on anyone, I have a raft of things going on all the time and want that to continue forever. Can I just put ‘all’? I know this is so they can match the lucky winners up with suitable agents, but I’m quite happy bouncing around from one genre to the next – conventional wisdom says you can’t carve out a career like this because people won’t think of you as the ’western guy’ or the ‘comedy guy’ … but I don’t care. I’m enjoying myself and don’t want to specialise just yet.
So
I’ve decided to leave it in your hands. My questions are:
Those of you with agents, do you find them useful and have they helped your career?
Should I enter this speed dating draw or not?
Someone please make some decisions for me, I’m far too busy and only have a limited interest in my own well being.
In the last post I drew a picture which I thought best summed up my thoughts during the Screenwriters’ Festival Launch (Part 2 – Revenge of the Buffet) although, actually, as I listened to the writers and agents talk about how hard it is to get anyone interested in your script, the main thought running through my head was:
‘Thank fuck I’m not in the spec market any more.’
True, one day I may have to start peddling my scripts again – this lucky streak I’m on probably can’t last forever … but it might. I guess if I managed to get into writing for TV (trying might possibly be the place to start), after a period writing for other peoples’ shows I might start touting my own ideas for series; but as it stands, I’m so happy to always be writing a script FOR someone.
It’s a fuck load easier for several reasons:
1) You already have someone waiting for the script, so you don’t have to go out and find them when it’s written.
2) The person you’re giving the script to already likes the genre, the story and probably the characters – or else they wouldn’t have signed off on the treatment.
3) You know you’re getting paid.
And in case any of you were thinking it’s more satisfying to write your own stories rather than anyone else’s – you’re absolutely right; but it’s EVEN MORE satisfying when someone says to you: ‘Have you got any ideas for a rom-com?’, you say yes and they pay you to write the idea you were going to write on spec anyway.
But all this is a digression. The point is, whilst listening to the various speeches …
Oh, another digression – during Christopher Hampton’s speech, at one point he mentioned Julia Roberts being attached to one of his scripts and a ripple of scornful chuckles ran through the audience.
“Not Julia Roberts, pshaw!”
This really pissed me off.
On the one hand you’ve got an audience full of sympathy for writers who can’t get films made, yet they scoff at having one of the most successful actresses in the world attached to a script. And what’s wrong with Julia Roberts? She’s very good at was she does, pretty much guarantees a theatrical release (or at least guarantees distribution interest) and is rather foxy to boot.
Yes her films are unerringly commercial and you could argue she tends to play the same role; but what’s wrong with making money at the thing you love doing? And ‘having a limited range’ is an accusation you can level at all of the best movie actors. The reason they’re ultra-famous and uber-rich is because they’re good at what they do and are instantly recognisable. Robert De Niro is ALWAYS Robert De Niro in every film he does – you never watch a film and think … was that Robert De Niro, I’m not sure? And have to look it up on IMDb. I think actors who become other people to the extent their body language is totally unrecognisable – tend not to become mega famous because no one knows who they are from one film to the next.
I’ll happily say this for the record, right now: I’d be delighted to write a film for Julia Roberts and would never scoff at someone for being popular because they’re good at what they do.
Except, you know, when I do.
But all that’s still beside the point. Or not even beside the point, it’s actually miles away from the point and I’m guessing ‘all that’ and ‘the point’ have never even met. Not even at a party. Which is shame because I think they’d get on famously.
The point is, whilst listening to various speeches – I had a very clear image in my head. This image, in fact:
For those of you too lazy to look further down the page, with short memories or who’ve come here directly from a search engine/link.
And unusually, given I’m a writer not a drawer (hmm … I need to find a better word for that) I chose to draw the picture rather than describe it; because, it occurs to me, the process of scriptwriting is actually one of picture translating. We translate mental pictures into words and get someone else to translate the words back into pictures.
You start with a picture of the scene in your head and even though we all know a picture is worth a thousand words (possibly a bit less in the current economic climate) our job is to describe that picture in as few words as possible. So we carefully choose the words which do the most work or somehow tap into pictures we already have. Hence we instantly know an IKEA kitchen looks different to a country kitchen or a restaurant kitchen.
Two word descriptions which, by just changing one word, create three completely different mental images. To me, an IKEA kitchen looks, smells, feels and sounds totally different to a restaurant kitchen. I immediately associate them with different types of people and imagine different atmospheres, different characters and different scenes. Those two words negate the need to describe colours, materials, light dappling on stuff, furniture, textures, light fittings, dimensions … and all the other millions of data a computer needs to recreate a picture of a …
Oh fuck, I’ve wandered off the point again. I’m talking about kitchens now.
Sorry.
It just amuses me that we think of a picture, create a two word sentence which describes it and then someone else comes along and recreates the picture. Or more likely, a totally different picture which, if you’re lucky, has the same basic intent as the picture you had in your head whilst combatting insomnia at three o’clock in the morning by masturbating to reruns of Mr Ben.
Or whatever works for you.
It occurs to me you don’t write films, you write the script the film is based on. The finished product is always different to how you imagined it … unless of course you write, direct, produce, costume design, makeup design, light, edit, score and do all the other things needed to bring a film to the big, small or tiny screen.
The bugger, of course, being when the finished product is a bit rubbish and nothing like you imagined it – yet you have to promote it anyway in the interests of being polite to the filmmakers and not being a complete cunt. Even if the completed project makes you look like one.
Oh look, this post didn’t really have a point after all.
So last night I went to the second launch night for this year’s SWF and I’ve got to say the evening was a bit of blur … not because it involved any kind of great rampage on my behalf (it’s kind of hard to get that effect with a cup of tea and a diet coke)nor was it bewildering, star-strucking (which I know isn’t a real word – but it should be) or fast moving … no. Last night ws a bit of a blur because I forgot to take my glasses.
I’m new to the whole glasses wearing game and rarely remember to take them anywhere. In fact, I wear them so infrequently I often forget I actually wear glasses at all and sometimes spend weeks at a time wondering why the world is out of focus. So even though we (me, Piers, Michelle, Jason, Helen and Elena) were sitting on the second row (which Piers complained about) the people on stage were a little fuzzy.
I could give you a blow by blow account of who said what and when, but I’m fairly certain since journalist extraordinaire Arnopp was sitting not four seats away – he’ll be covering all that. Instead, I thought I’d give you my impressions of the underlying message and the the reality of screenwriting in the UK.
Just so you know roughly what happened while we’re waiting for Jason to pull his finger out …
Some drinks.
David Pearson (Festival Director) and Kevin Loader (Chairman) introduced the evening.
Two writers who are finalists in the ScriptMarket initiative talked about how difficult it is to break into the industry.
Two agents, Rob Kraitt (A P Watt) and Matthew Bates (Sayle Screen), talked about how hard it was for writers to break into the industry and how there actually isn’t really an industry as such to break into.
Christopher Hampton talked about how difficult it was to get a film made after you’d broken into the industry and then given up and gone to America (he’s written 42 scripts – 14 have been produced, the other 28 vanished up their own arses).
And then we had some more drinks.
A lot of what was said is interesting but the basic message I kept getting from everyone on stage and everyone asking questions in the audience was scriptwriting in the UK looks something like this:
There are only a couple of companies with money and thousands of people jumping through increasingly smaller hoops to compete for a minuscule amount of money which has almost no chance of making you rich but might, just might, if you’re very, very lucky make you a modest living.
Getting a film made under these conditions is nigh on impossible but it does happen so although it’s mostly fruitless, it has to happen to someone so don’t give up. Even though most of you aren’t good enough and haven’t got a hope in hell.
Hmm … inspiring stuff.
But hang on, I can’t help thinking this is only half the picture.
While all these people were talking about it being virtually impossible to get a project off the ground … I’ve had seven feature films produced and haven’t had to jump through a single hoop.
One of the the writer/finalists mentioned the Microwave Feature Fund – where 90 odd projects were competing for 2 lots of funding. Funding which, if memory serves (and it probably doesn’t), is a maximum of £100,000 … so nobody’s doing that for the money. Getting that kind of funding means you can make a feature film for almost nothing as a calling card and hope it will lead onto better things, whilst basking in the satisfaction of having achieved what should be your real goal – getting the script right.
I firmly believe the script should be the writer’s ultimate goal – getting it to the point when you’re proud of it and other people think it’s good enough to get made. The feature film is the bonus at the end and belongs to the cast and crew – they made the film, you wrote the script – the two things are different.
The script is your work, your product and I think should be your ultimate goal. The produced feature film is the advert someone else makes to promote your product – your next script.
So if you’re resigned to not making much money at first and just want to get some adverts for you as a writer into the market place, then why spend all your time and attention competing for the one egg? There is another way and I’ve had seven feature films made to prove it.
True, only one of them has actually been finished so far, so it’s an experiment with no proper conclusion and may turn out to be hopelessly inaccurate – but it seems to me the full picture of screenwriting in the UK is this:
You may need to clicky clicky make biggy biggy in order to see it properly.
Or you may not. Maybe you don’t need glasses or actually wear the ones you have?
There are a lot of very rich people in this country who are happy to hand over a £100,000 in return for telling their mates (and the people they want to sleep with) they’re in the film business.
There is a lot less competition in this sector of the industry and no hoops to jump through, hence mediocre writers like me can easily get films produced … so why aren’t more people doing it?
Or maybe they are and I’m just not paying attention?
WARNING – EXTREMELY LONG AND REASONABLY TECHNICAL POST
YOU MAY LIKE TO SKIP TO THE END AND READ THE HAPPY NEWS
OR YOU MAY NOT
RUN AWAY! SAVE YOURSELVES!
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
———————————————————————————————————-
It’s been a bit of an epic week writing wise, but it’s finishing up in the nicest possible way.
Last Tuesday I had a meeting about an ongoing feature project. It was the first time I’d met the director and that’s always a difficult moment – will he be a nice guy or will he be a twat? Will he appreciate what you’ve done so far or will he ‘want to move in a different direction’ – code for ‘it’s shit, do it again’ … or sometimes ‘it’s shit, you’re fired’. But even getting fired can be considered pleasant compared to the most horrible thing a director can say:
“I think I should co-write it with you.”
To which, the correct response is to drop to your knees, throw your arms wide and scream to the heavens …
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Sometimes there’s nothing worse than ‘Director’s Dialogue’. Not always, some directors are very, very good writers; but as I’ve said many times: most directors can’t direct and most writers can’t write, so a writer/director is usually someone who fails at two things.
And yes, you could point out exceptions, but I could also come round and stab you in the eye with a pencil – so let’s just leave it at that.
So I go for this meeting, a bit on the tired side and woefully unprepared. I didn’t go from home so I didn’t have a copy of the script with me and I hadn’t slept for a little over 24 hours … but it was fine. It was a sunny day, the director’s a nice guy and the first thing he said was about how much he liked the script and DIDN’T WANT TO CHANGE ANY OF THE WORDS I’D WRITTEN.
Fuck me.
None of them?
Cool.
To explain what he did want, I need to go back a little bit and give you a bit of info about the script.
The script was originally conceived as an ultra low budget, single location with no action and where none of the characters ever speak to each other. It’s a talking heads mockumentary with the characters giving their version of an event direct to camera. Since they’re all doing it against the same background, there’re no scene changes and the illusion of a conversation is created by cutting between the different characters. There were a couple of bits of other footage dropped in occasionally, but for all intents and purposes, from a script point of view, it’s one scene for 90 pages.
That was the first draft.
The second draft, along with some story and character changes, was about moving the characters to locations whic reflect their personalities. So instead of everyone coming to a central location to be interviewed, the documentary team went to them at their homes or places of work. Again, there’s no communication between characters and no changing scenes once they’ve been established. It seemed to me, the best way to write this is a scene heading when we first meet the character and then just INTERCUT between them for the rest of the script. What I didn’t want was a new scene heading for every line of dialogue because it would be a) unreadable and b) hundreds of pages long.
All well and good.
Draft three … there is no draft three.
Or not really, one character changed – which amounted to two or three pages worth of re-writes. I accidentally called it draft three while I was waiting for this meeting and it kind of stuck. And that brings us up to last Tuesday.
So we have a script which is essentially just dialogue and the director, quite rightly I thought, wants to make sure it’s visually interesting because otherwise it might as well be a radio play. Yes, the actors would make it come alive on screen, but he wanted to give them things to do as a start point. The other concern was, at 90 pages of pure dialogue, it would probably come in at around 60 mins of screen time.
The task seemed simple: take 90 pages of dialogue and add another 30-40 pages and action to every scene. What he was looking for was something funny (for ’tis a comedy) happening in the background or to the character every time we cut back to them; in other words, a visual gag for every line of dialogue.
That doesn’t sound too hard. He’d even come up with ideas for the first 30 pages so a third of it was already more or less done. On the way home I was thinking about this and came to the conclusion: as well as seeing something funny, since we were now going to be moving some of the characters around a bit, why not visually tell a different story for each character? It doesn’t have to be anything complicated, but the characters can be trying to achieve something and every time we see them they’re either closer or further away from their goal.
No problems. 30-40 pages of extra dialogue – that’s a couple of days’ work.
Funny visuals for each line of dialogue which follow on from each other to create multiple interlocking storylines – that’s … fucking hard.
Hence the reason, at 4 am this morning, I finished a week of 12 to 18 hour days.
Oh, and the rush is because the film shoots on the 17th May and needs to be scheduled asap. In fact, because of the way the script was written, until the end of the 4th draft no one has any idea of what locations might be needed – not even me.
And to be fair, I actually typed THE END at 10.30 pm yesterday; but a) it took a couple of hours to spell check and proof read and b) there was one more huge fucking problem: the resulting script is completely unfilmable.
Because it was shit?
Hopefully not, but you never know.
It’s unfilmable in a technical sense because of the way it’s been written. Again, purely for reasons of clarity and enjoyment of reading, there are very few scene headings. I only put scene headings in the first time we see someone in that location and don’t mention where they are again until they move to a new one.
So for the main characters, they might spend the first 30 or so pages of the script in one location; but only speak twice a page or so. From a scheduling point of view, that scene isn’t 30 pages long, it might only be 6 or 7 pages long. From an actor’s point of view they have to learn 6 or 7 pages of dialogue by combing through 30 pages of script.
For the minor characters it’s even worse. One character, for example, speaks on the first page and the last (as well as every now and then in between) – her total dialogue is one two-page scene – but she has to wade through 164*pages to find them. So do the ADs for scheduling – and they have to do that for every character!
Plus it’s difficult for me to work out what the character was doing last and to maintain a constant flow of their dialogue and story. Something needed to be done. Which is why, at 4 am this morning I finished a second script – the production script (178 pages!). I combed through 164 pages worth of dialogue and collected them all together into scenes, separating them with a transition: LATER – hence the extra pages.
The original script is now the STORY SCRIPT, which is one you can give people to read and enjoy – I would say for casting, but that’s pretty much all done now – and the PRODUCTION SCRIPT is for … well, production. It makes no fucking sense to read, since each scene is just one person’s side of a ten sided conversation, but at least it can be scheduled and filmed. As an extra level of common sense – all the scene numbers in both drafts match up.
The big problem now will be any tweaks for the next draft since every word changed has to be changed in two scripts where they’re on completely different pages – but fuck it, I’m not thinking about that for the moment. I’m thinking about tomorrow and the nice way to end the week of hard bloody graft.
Tomorrow there are two pleasant things happening:
Karma Magnet is showing at the Southend Film Festival - 6.30pm at the Southend Central Library for anyone in the area and/or desperate to see it on a big (?) screen.
A sitcom pilot I co-wrote with Lee Otway begins shooting. It’s got a great cast, so hopefully it’ll all turn out quite nicely.
I was going to post the cast list but I think that can wait until another post – this one has already got way out of hand.
As is traditional, I won’t be going anywhere near the filming and will be hiding somewhere exotic. A randomly thrown dart at the map tells me I’m going to be in … Crouch End.
Hmm … not that exotic then, but sounds vaguely rude so it might be fun.
Ta ta.
*I know, 164 pages! Fuck me! But there is a reason … I just haven’t decided what it is yet.
I thought the competition had disappeared up its own arse, until I found this. Hmm, did Mike Figgis really enter this competition?
I received the following notes about a feature film which was due for imminent production:
“We want the two Cuba Gooding Jnrs to be African tribesmen, one a medicine man and one a chief, who Tom Jones promised jobs as Traffic Wardens.”
“there is a mine of comedy related to having a dragon spunk bomb explode up your ass and the consequences thereof.I would encourage you to pursue that line of thought”
“I’ve got this animatronic stag’s head…”
and my favourite:
“Tom Jones should be more like Idi Amin.”
The film still hasn’t been made.
All in all, January was a bit of a failure. The only really positive bit was buying a board to cover with brightly coloured index cards.
I quite enjoyed that bit.
FEBRUARY
Feb kicked off with the Gothenburg Film Festival where, against all odds, The Evolved was being screened. It went down really well and even sold out; I fucked up my first Q&A and still got asked for an autograph by a deranged Japanese fan.
Upon my return, I decided to be more proactive and use one of my cinema contacts to arrange a screening of the film in the UK.
Still haven’t done that.
I somehow got bombarded with scripts from people who wanted feedback. Why did they choose me? Who knows. I tried to oblige for a while, but it was getting on my nerves and taking up far too much time – so I said no and it all stopped.
Christ, all this seemed much more exciting at the time.
MARCH
I lost £90,000 of money I hadn’t even received when a potential feature film budget got cut in half.
Bollocks.
On the plus side, the feature still hasn’t been produced so I haven’t actually lost any of the money I haven’t received.
Not much consolation.
I spent four hours watching someone light a bottle of whiskey and wrote an advert for scented hemorrhoid cream.
And got paid for both of them.
I decided to stop telling lies and remove all the bullshit from my CV.
Chameleon, a martial arts feature film, disappeared up its own arse. No one told me, I found out by accident.
I fought a man whilst dressed as a granny. To be fair, he was dressed as a granny too.
He won.
I decided, rather randomly I thought, to send a script into the BBC Writersroom.
They didn’t like it.
And that was pretty much all I did in March.
Depressing, isn’t it?
APRIL
Ah, right. April must be where it started to get better …
No.
Someone described The Evolved as a “new low for the British Empire”.
I’m quite proud of that.
One of my sketches featured in a ‘Best of …’ thing, despite me not having entered the competition.
That was quite special.
I offered a brief rant about bloggers cloaking themselves in anonymity whilst simultaneously trying to promote their writing … and the next day hordes of people (very small hordes, possibly just two people) revealed their real names.
I’d like to take credit for that, but I suspect it was just a coincidence.
I had a meeting with Don Allen about writing a film for him. I was on top form in that meeting … I babbled incoherently about random things until we ran out of time; and … HOLY SHIT! I got that job.
Cool.
A week later I met Jonathan Sothcott about him using one of my short scripts in a horror anthology – five shorts in one feature. He had my script, one other and needed three more. I pitched six ideas, he loved five of them enough to not even bother contacting the other writer and upped the film to six shorts in one feature.
He turned out to be Martin Kemp’s business partner and between them they knew enough people to pack the film full of celebs.
DOUBLE HOLY SHIT WITH CHOCOLATE MONKEYS ON TOP!
I was right, things did get better in April.
MAY
May kicked off with a bout off contract signing.
Cool.
The BBC Writersroom included me on their blogroll. I was one of nine links then, there’s only ten now – so I’m quite chuffed by that.
Thank you Mr … am I allowed to mention your name? Or will that provoke howls of jealousy from other non-linked-to writers?
I’ll just leave it, you know who you are.
I wrote all six segments of the horror anthology which became known as ‘The Summoning’.
I went to Cannes: crashed a car; crashed some parties, got some expensive dinners bought for me; nearly spent 23,000 Euro on a poker table (not gambling, I nearly bought it in a charity auction); got harrangued by a producer who kept asking innane questions; met some nice people; saw one shit film and spent an obscene amount of money.
Was it worth it?
No.
JUNE
Swore a lot.
Met Martin Kemp.
Walked into a lamp post.
None of these things are connected.
Poured Diet Coke into my laptop.
Optioned another feature film.
Got upset about stamps.
Killed a character because his name started with the wrong letter.
Got my phone bill from Cannes.
Cried about my phone bill from Cannes.
Briefly believed a Welsh woman was an Indian man in a kilt …
AND THEN SOME FUCKING CUNT POURED TEA INTO MY LAPTOP.
Okay, so I poured a teensy, tiny bit of Diet Coke into it a few days earlier; but this guy poured a whole cup tea in and then fucking denied it.
Son of a bitch.
Bastard fucking son of a bitch.
Bastard fucking whore-mongering, cock sucking, son of a bitch.
Oh, and I submitted some sketches to the BBC on a friend’s recommendation.
JULY
Karma Magnet was filmed, starring Gary Kemp and Adele Silva; and directed by Martin Kemp.
I wasn’t there.
The whole laptop saga kicked off. Read all about it here, here and here.
Mentioned to the world about how nice my wife’s breasts were.
Met a load of the fellow bloggers for the first time, most of whom didn’t believe I exist.
And … um … that’s all I did in August.
Pathetic, isn’t it?
SEPTEMBER
A new first for me, I turned down some paid work.
And then obsessed about it for monthsweeks … a bit.
Had a request for more sketches from the BBC and bought a toasted sandwich maker to celebrate.
Was sick from eating too many toasted sandwiches.
Slagged off writers in general, for no good reason.
Hit myself in the face with a big bastard sword.
And then fell asleep in a meeting at the BBC.
A particularly good month, I thought.
OCTOBER
Got a bit upset about mobile phones in movies.
Found out the BBC meeting didn’t go quite as badly as I thought.
Wrote a feature film in five days.
Swore never, ever to do it again.
Shouted at the BBC producer for not using script writing software – haven’t spoken to him since.
Met Gary Kemp.
One of the potential feature films got cancelled … and became something a lot, lot cooler which I still can’t talk about.
Wet myself with excitement.
And finally reached saturation point with projects and had to start turning down work in earnest. I turned down a lot of work in October – if you’re one of the rejected: sorry.
NOVEMBER
Wrote a factually, morally and in every other way just plain wrong rant about the term ‘Continuing Drama’.
Got asked to write a treatment for a feature which included the words nudity, vampire, caribbean and Nazis.
That was fun.
Had a cup of tea ruined by an explosion in an airport.
That wasn’t so fun.
And found out the BBC sketch show is using some of my stuff and wants to cast someone really, really exciting in my sketches … but not from the producer who still hasn’t been in touch.
DECEMBER
Got asked to write three more treatments for three more feature films.
And finished off the year by discovering a guy offered to completely fund one of the potential feature films.
So, where does this leave me? What conclusions can I draw from this year?
Um … I should learn to keep my fool mouth shut?
Probably.
What does 2008 hold?
Well, so far I’ve got one feature shooting in January, one in February and another ten in development which could spring into production at any moment.
But they probably won’t.
I’ve got a TV series being prepped to do the rounds, with three others hovering in the wings of potentiality and a BBC sketch show hurtling through production as we speak.
Or as I speak.
Or type.
And this morning, I managed to negotiate myself a bacon sandwich.
I got my phonebill this morning. The one which covers my brief stint in Cannes. The one which covers the period I spent in France when a friend’s phone malfunctioned and wouldn’t stop ringing me.
I’ve only just stopped crying.
I’d arranged a French sim card to use while I was over there. It’s a great idea: local calls are free, it’s free to receive calls and texts are cheap. There was only one snag, the company were waiting for me at the airport on the wrong day – the day before I arrived. On the day I did arrive, they were nowhere to be seen.
Never mind, I thought, I’ll just do without. It’s not like I use my phone that much anyway.
Except, apparently, in France. In France, Cannes in particular, I’m a mobile demon; and not just me, suddenly everyone wanted to phone me. At home, my phone rings so infrequently I forget what it sounds like (which, to be fair, is more to do with the inability of a mobile signal to penetrate my house walls than lack of calls); but not when I’m abroad, no. When it costs me just to receive a call, people ring me every half hour. In the case of Mark Shields, whose phone was making it’s own calls, I got a phone call every ten seconds.
For an hour.
Even when I switched it to voice mail, the voice mail kept ringing me to tell me I had 107 messages from the same number.
I thought something had gone desperately wrong and he was trying to get in touch with me. When I realised it was a mistake, I compounded the situation by firing off a large number of abusive (and expensive) texts:
“Knock it off, fuck nuts.”
“Leave me the fuck alone”
“Seriously, man; you’re going to get such a fucking kicking when I see you.”
And to be fair to Mark, he did buy me a fairly expensive dinner that night as an apology. At least, I think he did. If he didn’t, I ran away without paying.
That’ll teach ‘em to seat me so near a handy exit.
All these mistakes, and more, add up to a phone bill which is greater than the Gross National Product of many small countries. Put together.
On top of that I had to post another script today. Post. That means printing stuff. That means realising I’ve got no paper or ink, driving to Staples, driving back, finding out I’ve got no card stock, deciding to send it anyway because I can’t be arsed to go back to Staples, then driving to the Post Office and hoping they’re open.
They were. Miracle of miracles.
If I had any sense, I’d have a little stockpile of paper, ink cartridges, card stock, envelopes and other such useful items.
But I haven’t, because I can’t afford to splash out on a bulk buy.
And do you know why?
Because I’ve just had a fucking massive phone bill, that’s why.
All in all, Cannes has cost me somewhere in the region of fucking loads. Which has got me wondering: was it worth it?
I had fun, true; but then I would have had a similar amount of fun locking myself in my house with my wife.
I met some producers and directors who I’ve worked with before and want to work with again. Some of them I even think of as friends, despite only seeing them once a year.
I met some new producers and directors, all of whom have singularly failed to bring in any new work – so far. One did contact me with a view to working together in the future, but we’ll have to wait and see how that pans out.
The two main leads I came back with: one asked for a proposal, then a re-write, then seems to be ignoring me. The other was optioning a book which I’ve tried to read so I can offer my services as a writer – only for me to find out I can’t bring myself to even finish the book, I just can’t stand it.
So the question remains: was it worth it?
And the answer is a resounding NO!
I could have bought a new TV, a big one, with the cash I dropped in Cannes. Using ‘The Evolved’ as a budgetary model, I could almost have funded a feature film.
Will I be going next year?
Probably.
Why? Because it was fun, there’s nothing on TV worth watching and you never, ever put your own money into a feature film. And you just never know. I did get a couple of potential leads, some of which may yet convert into a paying job; and a lot of the people I was chatting to may be in a position to help me next year, or the year after or the year after that.
So where the question for me at the moment is: Cannes I afford to go next year?
The real question I have to ask is: Cannes I afford not to?
Posted by phillbarron 
Posted by phillbarron 
Posted by phillbarron 
