Dear directors,

first of all, can I just say thank you for deigning to come down from Mount Olympus and walk among us mere mortals? We really do appreciate and respect your innate genius and your ability to magic an entire movie out of thin air without any help whatsoever.

Except a small army of extremely professional experts.

But apart from them, it’s all you. Give yourself a round of applause.

Oh, you already are.

Can I also add a personal thank you for condescending to make a film from one of my scripts? That’s particularly nice of you and I really am ever so grateful to be part of your vision.

Despite the fact the producer came up with the story and I wrote the script.

But apart from that, it is your vision. And I’m being momentarily and uncharacteristically serious about that. I know there are plenty of writers who get massively bent out of shape about the credit ”A (insert name of pretentious twat here) film”; but not me. Nope, I’m quite happy for you to have it. As I will doubtlessly explain at great length in another post at some point in the future, of all the people involved in the film making process, you directors come the closest to deserving that credit and hey, you’ve got to market the film somehow, right?

It does, however, give me a nice gooey feeling inside to know if you fuck this film up, the next one you work on (providing you’re clever enough to shunt the blame onto someone else) will be “From the producer of …” or “From the writer of …” or even “From the people who brought you…” which could be the caterers from some past hit for all I know.

So you’re welcome to the God-like credit. Have it. It’s yours. Well done you.

I do have one request though. Just a tiny one. A teensy little one, nothing major. Could you, and I’m really trying to word this politely now, could you … no … would you mind awfully, leaving the fucking script alone you ball-achingly stupid cock-ring?

I’m not saying you can’t develop the script, I’m not saying you can’t bend the story to your will, change character names, the ending, the theme or even the fucking plot; but for the love of God (who doesn’t exist and certainly isn’t you) will you stop tweaking minor things and demanding a fucking writing credit?

It’s just fucking rude.

I’m pretty certain you don’t just wander on set, rip a sleeve off someone’s dress and demand a wardrobe credit. The lighting guys would probably have a complete and utter hissy fit if you nudged a light two inches to the left and claimed you deserve a lighting design credit. And I’m absolutely fucking certain you don’t push the actors out of the way, pick up a teapot and claim an acting credit – so why the fuck do you feel it’s perfectly acceptable to change “Hi” to “Hello” and claim a co-writing credit?

I mean, what the fuck?

Fine, if you want the protagonist to die in the first scene, that’s up to you; but here’s how you do it – you ring me up and you ask me to change the script. It’s your fucking movie, you can ask me to do whatever you want (as long as the producer lets you) and I will make the changes – after hanging up, kicking the cat and calling you a cunt, of course.

This is my job, this is why I was hired – as a story expert. Just like the DOP is the camera expert (or lens expert or whatever the fuck he does) I’m here to carry out your will in script form. Just ask me. Go on, try it. Why is my fucking department the only one you feel the need to weasel a fucking credit out of? Why? Answer me god damn it!

I’m fucking sick of getting emails telling me so-and-so has been cast as Billy – only for me to wonder who the fuck Billy is. There’s no fucking Billy in the script. Ah, you say, I’ve added an old man to the lesbian sex scenes.

What? What the fuck? Why would you do that? Why didn’t you behave like a decent fucking person and ask me to make the changes?

I would have told you you’re being a fucking twat and an old man, by definition, isn’t a fucking lesbian; but after I’d calmed down, I would have changed the scene so that it wasn’t a lesbian sex scene.

I’m not being precious about this – a script, as soon as it’s sold, stops being my property – it’s yours, that’s fine. If you want to remove me and hire another writer then that’s fine too. Of course, I’ll slash your tyres and set fire to your gonads; but it’s part and parcel of the industry. At least if you hire another writer you’re hiring another expert, I …

Hmm, I’ve just realised, I’ve been describing myself as an expert – bit of false advertising there. Sorry.

Anyway, fucking knock it off. I’m perfectly capable of altering the script to fit your idiot fucking idea of what a script should be. If I prove I can’t do it, by all means replace me but at least have the fucking courtesy of letting me do my fucking job.

And for fuck’s sake, for fuck’s fucking sake, can you please, please, pretty please, stop handing over the scripts you’ve fucking bastardised and filled with spelling, grammar and format errors to actors, agents and the crew? The ones where the plot doesn’t make any sense because you’ve relocated every other scene to Italy because you fancy a holiday. The ones where you’ve changed the character’s name but not all of the time, just enough of the time for it to stop making any fucking sense. The ones where you’ve put dialogue in the action lines and action in dialogue, with some random fucking words in the margin that might be your shopping list for all I fucking know – can you please, please stop giving those out to people WITH MY FUCKING NAME ON THE FRONT.

And no, the solution isn’t taking my name off the script and replacing it with your own, mis-spelt and in turquoise crayon. The solution is doing exactly what you do with every other fucking department under your command – command them to make the changes for you.

What’s another word for that?

Oh yeah … fucking direct me you power hungry cunts.

Other than that, hope you’re doing well and I’ll see you soon.

Love,

Phill

Cars

Let’s say you design cars for a living and this guy hires you because he wants to sell a car. Ostensibly, he hires you because you’re the expert in designing the thing whereas he’s the expert in selling them.

Sounds simple, yes?

You discuss what he wants and he tells you he’s looking for a mid-budget, four-door, family saloon. Okay, so that’s cool – you start with the basics, the things all cars have: wheels, engine, windows, steering wheel, doors … then you arrange them to suit the requested specifications: four doors, a boot, leg-room in the back … and then you add your own touch, the individual design elements which are both unique to this model but also are in keeping with your general style.

You deliver the design and he likes it. Not loves it, but likes it. It’s a good place to start … but he has a few minor suggestions:

1. Does it need four doors?
2. Does it need all that leg-room in the back?
3. Why not have a sloping hatchback thingy instead of a boot?
4. Will this car appeal to teenagers?
5. Can you make it more sporty?

All of which sounds rather odd and you patiently explain why it is the way it is:

1. It’s a four door saloon, four-door saloons tend to have four doors.
2. It’s a family car, family cars need space for the family.
3. A sloping hatchback thingy makes it a hatchback, not a saloon.
4. Teenagers with children rarely have the money to buy a new car.
5. Maybe. But do families want sporty family cars? It’s a debatable point.

But this guy is adamant, he knows all about selling cars and he knows what people will buy. To impress you, he reels off a list of cars he’s trying to emulate which have all sold really, really well.

All the cars on the list are fucking expensive, two-door, sports coupés … and that’s where you realise the problem. He doesn’t want to make a mid-budget, four-door, family saloon – he wants to make an expensive, two-door, sports coupé … he just doesn’t know what those words mean or indeed have any fucking clue which bits of the car any of those technical words you’ve been using (like ‘doors’) actually refer to.

Patiently, you try to explain to him the difference between what he wants and what he’s asking for but he won’t listen. Why are you getting so fucking uppity? He’s paying you, just do what he fucking asks!

So you go away and you try to design the impossible: an expensive, mid-budget, two-door, four-door, sporty, family saloon, hatchback. After many, many sleepless nights and a rift in your own family which will probably never heal – you manage to satisfy all of the bozo’s requirements … and the result is a fucking mess.

You can see it’s a fucking mess, everyone else can see it’s a fucking mess … but the guy who hired you thinks it’s a work of art and can’t understand why it took you so long to deliver. Still, fuck it, you’re getting paid and you’ll get a percentage  however many of these monstrosities are sold. Someone’s bound to buy one, there are a lot of idiots in the world.

Including the one you’re working for.

The one who’s now hired a guy to build your design. The builder takes one look at your design (believing it to be a mid-budget, four-door, family saloon – because that’s what he was hired to make) and sacks you. You’re obviously a fucking moron who can’t even count to four. He convinces the sales guy you’re a twat and hires his own designer. His designer thinks all this bullshit about a car needing doors and wheels and engines is just crap taught by people who can’t design cars themselves. It’s a bullshit formula which gets in the way of proper artistic vision and he turns in a design which appears, at first glance, to be a seven-foot long ashtray … but on closer inspection is just a God awful piece of shit.

He gets fired and promptly makes millions selling his revolutionary new theory on car design to the world in a series of books, webisodes and lectures.

Meanwhile, sales guy and builder guy hire someone who knows all the theories. Someone who’s been to every fancy lecture going, read all the books and got some mighty fancy looking letters after their name. They know exactly what goes into making a car and they turn in their design … six months late  – because they had a very understanding tutor at uni who allowed them to do that sort of thing. This new design has all the elements you’d expect to see in a mid-budget, four-door, family saloon. Doors, windows, engines, steering wheel, leg room, boot space … it’s got it all … laid out on the ground in a chalk outline of a car.

The builder guy points out it’s not a car, it’s a collection of car parts laid out in the general shape of a car but the designer doesn’t understand the difference. He avidly points out all the bits are there, so what’s the problem? And he gets fired.

By this time, the builder guy has had enough and either leaves or gets fired – depending on whose account you believe. A new builder is hired, he looks through all the designs and he decides your original one was the best – so you’re back on the project.

Fuck.

Still, it’s all money at the end of the day – so you agree to a few minor design tweaks.

Three years later, you’ve redesigned the fucking thing eighteen times. It’s been a jeep, a camper van, a 4×4, a moped and currently resembles a flowerpot on wheels. The original sales guy has had a nervous breakdown and has been replaced by a guy who’s realised that what the original guy meant by mid-budget and what the rest of the world mean by mid-budget are two completely fucking different things. He has a go at you for not being able to stick to the apparently non-existent budget and demands you fix the design so it can be made for four and a half pence.

Which can’t be done.

Never mind, he has some ideas – chief among which is cutting the number of wheels to three, the number of doors to one and using kite string instead of a steering wheel. At this point, the tight-arsed money men (who only invested in the car so they have something to tell girls instead of having to develop a personality) pull out and the car project dies.

Until the original sales guy comes back from the loony asylum with millions of pounds he won from some deranged billionaire resident in a game of ‘guess when I’ve shit my pants’.

All systems are go!

Everyone likes the design (which is now so close to the original as to be virtually indistinguishable) and the builder finally gets to do his job instead of spending all his time telling the press how he had to redesign the fucking car because you couldn’t do your job properly. It’s started! He’s actually doing the job he was hired for!

Spectacularly badly.

So badly in fact, you wonder why he even bothered with the fucking design in the first place since he obviously hasn’t looked at it at all and is just randomly making shit up. Eighteen wheels, in one corner! Cardboard diaphragms instead of doors! And the engine is so woefully underpowered its output is measured in mouse-power as opposed to the traditional horse.

And the only explanation he’ll offer? It’s symbolic. Symbolic of fucking what? His inability to build a car or grasp simple reading skills?

When the abomoination is finally finished, the sales guy fires the builder, hacks off all the bits he doesn’t think belong to a car (including all the fucking wheels) and puts the resulting mess on sale where (surprise, sur-fucking-prise) it fails to sell a single unit and garners rightly appalling reviews.

All of which blame you.

And you know the real tragedy?

THIS IS MY FUCKING LIFE, EVERY FUCKING DAY!

Balls to the lot of you. I’m going to buy a car to cheer myself up.

Questions about agents

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:

1. Those of you with agents, do you find them useful and have they helped your career?
2. 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.

Seriously, no one cares

Recently, or maybe it wasn’t – I can’t remember, there was another bun-fight on Shooting People about script format. You know, the usual thing: one side of optimistic dreamers thinks script format should be thrown out and is limiting and restricting. The other side of staunch stick in the muds think format is a rigid, fixed thing which is vitally important to making a living as a writer.

Of course, in the main, neither side has actually made any money or headway in the industry. At least not in the UK, and the reason I can say this with reasonable assurance is because NO ONE FUCKING CARES.

Seriously.

No one.

Not really.

Let me clarify that with the old ’script format is wearing a suit to a job interview’ analogy. In this analogy, the person is the story and the clothes are the format.

So the opposing positions:

1. I should be able to turn up to the interview dressed as Coco the fucking clown if I feel like it because they’re hiring the person, not the clothes.
2. Employers expect you to wear a suit, therefore you should wear a suit if you want the job. Further more, the lapels should be exactly 1.7 inches wide. The tie must be a neutral colour tied in a double Windsor falling no higher than the top of your belt. At its widest point it should be 2 inches. The belt should be … blah, blah, blah.

See? Both wrong. The truth, as fucking usual, is in the middle. Wear a suit, yes; but no one fucking cares what the specifics are. As long as it’s got all the essential parts of a suit – no one in the UK cares.

They just don’t.

A script should have sluglines, action, dialogue and characters. Bold them, italic them, put them in capitals – do whatever makes you feel good – just make sure they’re all there and are recognisable.

Okay, some readers do care and you might want to try and please them since they might be your first point of contact; but the thought process goes like this for each opposing point of view:

1. Oh fuck, this guy doesn’t know format at all – he’s going to be a God awful writer. I’m not looking forward to this.
2. This guy knows how to format a script, let’s see if he’s a good writer.

Both points of view will become equally irrelevant if you’ve written a pile of shit. Granted, a badly formatted pile of shit is a thousand times more painful to read than a well formatted pile of shit – but they are both piles of shit.

If you think format isn’t important, you’re wrong. It’s there for a reason. Lots of reasons. Lots of very good reasons in fact. By saying format is irrelevant, you’re actually saying ‘I have no fucking idea what a script is for’.

If you think format is everything and has to be adhered to, to the millimetre or you’ll be laughed out of town – you’re also fucking wrong. What you’re saying there is ‘I’ve read too many books and believed all of them’.

Group one: read a formatting book so you understand exactly why things are the way they are.

Group two: read more scripts for fuck’s sake. See the variations in produced material – the variations NO ONE FUCKING CARES ABOUT.

Another facet of the Shooting People argument was one side wanted to throw out the current format in favour of one he’d invented. While the other side thought format has evolved to where it is now and is totally and immutably fixed.

Both wrong again.

The reason you can’t just throw away one set of rules and replace them with another is because no one would understand the new rules for quite a long time. In other words, chaos.

And the reason script format isn’t immutably fixed is because it has evolved and is still evolving.

Things go in and out of fashion, just like with suits. If you turned up to a 1970’s job interview in a 1980’s suit – they’d think you were in fancy dress. 70’s suits didn’t become 80’s suits overnight – they changed slowly.

Or at least I think they did, I have no idea. Fashion, as anyone who’s seen me dress, really isn’t my strong point.

I’m all about the style, baby.

Anyway, the point is, script format changes all the time – just slowly. Someone does something, someone else thinks it’s a good idea and copies it. It just takes little steps to change the broad strokes.

Personally, I’m a little fussy about format because I like to be. It’s a choice, not a requirement. If I started putting my sluglines in bold, guess what?

NO ONE WOULD FUCKING CARE.

How do I know? Well, here’s the annoying part for fellow sticklers – on pretty much every production I’ve worked on, someone else has fucked about with the script before it’s been sent out to cast and crew.

Sometimes it’s the director’s copy which he’s scribbled camera directions all over, chucked in loads of ‘we sees’ and ‘we hears’ and generally just moved margins around for the sake of it. Or, on other occasions, some fucking monkey in the production team has retyped the script, used the wrong tense, spelt the words wrong and in extreme cases added random bits of action onto dialogue blocks. This makes for lovely bits of speech which go something like.

DREW
God Damn you, I’m not fucking taking this. Drew punches her in the face.

Wonderful.

And yet no one complains or apparently even fucking notices.

TV uses a different format for every show. Hell, one show (whose format I was asked to copy) used a slightly different format on every fucking page.

And guess what?

Yep, NO ONE FUCKING CARED.

Make the story entertaining, the characters interesting and the read compelling. The format … just make it readable and then shut the fuck up.

Picture translator

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.

I think I’ll stop now.

Screenwriters’ Festival Launch (again)

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?

Soup and zombies

It’s all a bit of a mad rush at the moment; I’m writing sketches in the morning and a horror film in the afternoon. Both projects are important to me and both have rather tight deadlines, hence the panicked rush to get them both done.

Actually, to be fair, the film hasn’t really got a deadline; but since the provisional shooting date is in January I’m guessing they want it as soon as possible. The producer did say he wanted it done overnight and I suspect he was only half joking.

The problem I’m having is trying to re-gear during lunch so I come back in a horror frame of mind as opposed to a comedy one. It’s quite tricky switching off from one project and turning on to the next on a daily basis. The horror is in danger of becoming a piss take and the sketches are slightly more gruesome than is probably required: you can only use “she stabs him in the face” as a punchline so many times before it stops being funny.

About once, realistically. Possibly less than that.

The blog’s helping; spouting random bits of shit helps to clear the mind. A kind of mental sorbet, if you will. I’ve been watching bits of ‘Dead Set’ during lunch, which goes someway towards resetting my mental state, but it’s still difficult. It’s particularly hard when I don’t quite manage to finish a sketch in the morning and the ending hangs around in my brain all day. I guess I could finish it off in the afternoon, but then I feel like I’m stealing time from the film. Occasionally I think I’ll draw up some kind of time-share timetable and repay any minutes I borrow for the morning session – but without a break to reset my brain I find I can’t switch straight to the horror.

And all this time the sword and sorcery movie keeps staring over my shoulder. This is the project I had to set aside in order to work on these other two and the cards are still up on the board, waiting for me to pay them some attention like some kind of bastard step-child who’s fallen out of favour.

“When are you going to play with me, daddy? Did I do something wrong?”

Shut up.

I keep thinking there’s got to be a point when this all gets easier? Surely someday I’ll find myself working on one project at a time, secure in the knowledge that project pays enough not to have to cram in seven more before tea-time? That’s got to happen soon, right? Can anyone give me a date?

No?

Oh well, time for soup and zombies before getting back to work.

Same difference

One of the things I love about the whole ‘collaborative medium’ of film making is the sheer difference between the idea and the finished product. Yeah, sometimes it can be a bad thing which leaves you speechless, staring at the screen and shaking in numb horror; while a single thought echoes round and round your brain:

“What the fuck have you done to my script?”

Other times though, the divergence is a good thing and produces unexpected results. I’ve been watching a few rough cuts of scenes from Fleeced* and at first I thought one of the characters had been completely miscast. He’s so far removed from the character I’d envisaged, I struggled to accept him as my creation; but then that’s the point – he isn’t.

I wrote the character one way, but the director interpreted him completely differently. The actor has come along and added his own spin and before you know it the result is the polar opposite of the character I originally intended. It’s amazing how you can have him saying the same dialogue in the same story and yet have a completely different result.

And you know, once I got over the initial ‘that’s all wrong’ reaction – I really like the way he’s come out. I don’t know if he’s better than my intention; but he’s certainly no worse and works really well in the context of the film.

You could argue if I’d described him better there wouldn’t be any ambiguity to exploit – but I like seeing how things differ by the time they reach the screen. It’s a part of the process I find fascinating; I love finding out how others interpret my work. If I didn’t, I’d write, direct and produce my own stuff; but apart from that sounding like a hell of a lot of work and me being too lazy, I think it’s a shame to miss out on that melting pot evolution of ideas.

Most writers can’t write, most directors can’t direct and most producers can’t produce fuck all. Hyphenates are usually people who fail at more than one thing and I’d rather specialise in being distinctly average in one area. Plus, I get the added excitement of having to wait to see how it comes out.

Sure, sometimes it goes wrong, but sometimes it goes so right.

* I really should re-write that synopsis, it’s not my finest hour.

Writing for TV

Earlier this year I said I was getting fed up with low-budget movies and wanted to try and get more TV work. Well, so far, I haven’t.

(The Wrong Door doesn’t count because I did all the writing for that last year.)

A while back, after voicing this opinion (the one about wanting to write for TV, not the one about The Wrong Door) someone asked me which shows I’d like to write for:

“Well, there’s Doctor Who, obviously, and … um … hmm.”

The truth is: I don’t watch that much telly. I don’t really have the time and a lot of the stuff I manage to catch, I don’t like.

I’m not a big fan of soaps, for two reasons:

1. I don’t watch them regularly and find them difficult to drop into. Because the stories run over many, many weeks – if you don’t know who the characters are then it’s hard to get excited about a tiny fraction of a scene from the middle of the story.
2. I’m not a big fan of reality on TV. I like my entertainment to be quite far removed from reality. That’s not to say it shouldn’t be dramatic and have human issues at the heart – but I like there to be some element to it which is a bit fantastical. Most of the stuff I see in soaps has happened to me or one of my friends and it wasn’t particularly entertaining at the time.

I’m not passing judgement on the quality or value of these shows – they just don’t really interest me. Reason two also applies to most cops and docs shows. Although I have other issues with hospital dramas – mainly the whole business of creating characters just so you can maim them and have a doctor show compassion for them. It all seems a little cruel.

Mandy loves Casualty and Holby and such like; and on the rare occasion I stay in the room when they’re on I keep thinking about how the writer came up with the storylines:

“Let’s have a little girl who loves to dance and wants to be a ballerina.”

“Yeah, and … ?”

“And then lets run her over with a train and have to amputate her legs.”

“Brilliant! You’re a fucking genius! I love it! Maim that happy little bitch”

Nah, not for me.

So what do I want to write for, seeing a I’ve ruled out just about everything on TV?

I still don’t really know. Although, I have to say I caught an episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures the other day and I thought it was brilliant. I can honestly say I thoroughly enjoyed it and will be making a vague effort to watch more.

So that makes the list:

Doctor Who
The Sarah Jane Adventures

And that’s it so far.

Pathetic, isn’t it? Must try harder.

Internet advice

A few years back I had gallstones and they really, really hurt. My doctor told me the only solution was surgery to have my gallbladder removed. Oddly enough, I’m a little adverse to having bits of my body cut off and became convinced there must be a better way; after all, they got in there without surgery, there must be a way to get them out.

Enter the Internet.

A quick Google later and I found numerous people who claimed to have solved their gallstone nightmare without surgery. There were numerous testimonials from a diverse range of people and since there was nothing to buy and no one to pay, I decided to give it a go. After all, I had nothing to lose except endless nights of crippling agony.

And so it was on one lonely night I locked the doors and drank a pint of olive oil and half a pint of lemon juice.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever drunk a pint of olive oil; but if you haven’t … don’t.

I mean, seriously, don’t. It’s fucking rank.

In the cold light of day you might think this was an incredibly strange thing to do; but at the time, whilst faced with crippling pain and impending surgery, it seemed perfectly logical and reasonable. It’s the same logic which drives people to pay large sums of money to Homeopaths for a mixture of sugar and water – the alternative isn’t very nice and there’s anecdotal evidence to say it works.

But here’s the thing, anecdotal evidence isn’t evidence. It’s just people talking shit.

A year or so and several gallstone attacks later, including one which led to me being hospitalised with pancreatitis on Christmas day, I had the operation and have lived in gallbladder-less comfort ever since.

The point is, the Internet is full of dodgy advice. There’s no regulations so anyone can post any old shit and claim to be an expert.

Now to the real point.

I keep reading the exact same advice from various ‘experts’ about how to create, write and sell scripts. They all say the same thing and it all sounds reasonable and correct; but, and here’s the thing, not one of these people have ever had a script produced. Most of them have never even had a script optioned.

This is not to say their advice is wrong, but it should be treated with a degree of suspicion. These people haven’t learnt their advice first hand, they’ve read it in books. Books written by other people who’ve never achieved any success but instead have chosen to earn a living by selling the ‘SECRETS OF WRITING’. The information and advice in these books, which may or may not be true, gets retold, embellished and re-distributed around the net by people who profess to know THE TRUTH.

They don’t.

Or at best they might be partially right.

I’m just a beginner, but already the advice I read just doesn’t quite marry to my experiences.

I just think people should be careful whose advice they treat as gospel. If someone claims to have had massive success with their career based on a particular website or method – where’s the evidence? If it’s done them so much good, why haven’t they got any IMDb credits?

This is not to say you should automatically ignore everything everyone says, but surely it’s better to add more weight to the advice of people who practice what they preach? Even advice from unproduced writers can be useful, but it’s not to be slavishly stuck to. Listen to what people have to say and then ignore the bits you don’t like.

Basically, have a healthy degree of scepticism.

Don’t just blindly follow advice, no matter how many others swear by it – unless it’s someone whose work you trust and respect. Question everything, ignore what you want and never, ever believe what people write on the Internet without proof.

Hell, if I was you I wouldn’t even believe this post.

I don’t.