Talking to walls

Do me a favour, do it right now. Come on, don’t be shy, no one’s watching you. Unless you’re on a bus or in the library or something, in which case everyone’s watching you, you fucking freak – but hey, fuck ‘em.

What I want you to do is sit on a slightly uncomfortable chair about six feet from the nearest wall.

Are you sitting comfortably?

Well fucking knock it off. Sit upright, no slouching. Face the wall, take a deep breath and talk about your latest project.

To the wall. Out loud. Imagine it’s interested and you have to be interesting. See how long you can talk about one of the characters or the plot or the writing process before you dry up, repeat yourself or completely forget what you’re talking about while you’re talking about it.

Don’t just do it in your head, that’s cheating and you can trick yourself into thinking you’re doing alright. Actually talking out loud is far more difficult – in exactly the same way you can think about a scene and know you’ve got every detail nailed down … only to start writing it and realise you haven’t got the faintest idea what it’s about.

Now imagine there’s someone just to the right of the spot you’re looking at, just out of your eye-line. They’re listening intently and judging you. Oh and they’re recording everything you say with the intent of broadcasting it to the whole fucking world.

Try it. It’s not fun. Well not much fun, anyway. It’s quite funny if you enjoy embarrassing yourself. It’s also how I spent Thursday afternoon – staring at a wall (it was green) and babbling about spaceships, explosions, aliens and, for reasons I can’t quite remember at the moment, bananas.

Actually, I have to admit I loved every minute of it – my first proper ‘Behind the Scenes’ interview. I say proper because I have done one before, but it was by accident. I’d stupidly wandered on set to have a mosey around and found myself chatting to one of the actors – who was armed with a camcorder and was asking a lot of questions. Halfway through our chat I realised he was recording it for the EPK and I suddenly lost the ability to form coherent sentences.

At least I’m mostly positive that particular tape will never see the light of day. It’s possible my disjointed ramblings this time can be edited into a couple of lines which make sense – but I don’t hold out much hope.

My favourite technique appears to be to forget what I was going to say and sit quietly trying to remember. After a while I realise I’ve also forgotten what I was talking about … and then I realise I’ve been sitting silently for the best part of a minute before asking if I can start again.

I can’t begin to imagine how difficult press junkets are, although I guess with journalist after journalist being wheeled in to ask you the exact same questions you either eventually start getting it right or you lapse into a kind of automatic pilot where it doesn’t matter what questions people ask you, you talk about how great it was working with ‘x’. Where ‘x’ is any one of a dozen people you threatened to kill on a daily basis.

Just not to their face.

I implore you, have a go. Talk to your wall today. If you’re feeling adventurous, why not film it and post it on your blog? Then we can all have a good fucking laugh at your ineptitude.

Unless, of course, you’re all really good at it and it’s just me who’s incapable of talking in complete …

…

???

Fuck, what was I talking about?

Spinal Flap

Earlier today I was reading the paper over someone’s shoulder …

I should explain, I don’t buy newspapers any more – they’re depressing, inaccurate and generally full of shit.

For example: according to the papers, Britain is a perilous place to live full of knife wielding youths, lethal viruses and is about to be completely overrun by illegal immigrants. The police are either buried under piles of paperwork, incompetent and impotent ora bunch of baton toting fascists who’d rather beat the shit out of you than tell you the time – depending on what best suits the story of the day.

However, if you don’t read the papers, Britain (or at least Eastbourne) is a lovely sunny place full of reasonably friendly people who rarely knife you and the police are now so young they look like they might burst into tears if you stare at them too long.

Seriously, if you’re depressed, anxious or fearful about the modern world – stop reading the news and you’ll find you brighten up immeasurably.

Anyway, I was reading the paper over this guy’s shoulder – not because I suddenly felt the need to know how soon we’re all going to die from Swine Flu, but because it was The Sun and I thought I might see some boobs – when this article caught my eye:

Specifically, this bit:

By the way, if you’re wondering how I managed to get a scan of someone else’s paper – there’s this little pressure point under the ear which, if pressed while pulling back on the head, will result in a complete neurological shutdown. After that, stealing a paper from someone who’s unconscious is child’s play. It’s fun, practice on your friends … if you don’t like them much.

“Bruce has been making films and a pilot for a TV comedy called Spinal Flap, set in the world of boy bands.”

That’s me they’re not talking about there.

Yes, I can exclusively reveal I co-wrote Spinal Flap (or ‘Untitled Boy Band Sitcom Pilot’ as I prefer to call it) with my enigmatic and mysterious co-writer Earl Grey. A man so enigmatic and mysterious he needs two words which mean exactly the same thing to describe him.

In fact, he may not even be a man, that’s how enigmatic he truly is.

Shit. I meant ‘or she truly is’.

No, it is a man. To be honest, I think I’ve given his identity away many times on this blog.

Fuck it, it’s Lee Otway.

Anyway, the sitcom pilot mentioned is one I co-wrote with Lee (he did most of the work and it’s his idea), which was filmed last month (or was it the month before?) with Bruce Jones and SOME OTHER PEOPLE!

That isn’t to say the other people aren’t as exciting or famous as Bruce Jones, but they haven’t been promoting it in the papers and as yet are protected by an impenetrable shield of anonymity.

In other words, I was hiding in the Caribbean during the shoot, didn’t meet any of the cast and can’t find the email which contains the list of actors.

I was going to write a post today about the Movable Goalposts of Excitement, but I thought not being talked about in The Sun was more interesting.

Maybe tomorrow.

If you’re lucky.

Uh … what?

“Jack Tweed launches post-prison career… with a film role as a man with no heart”

Okay … so what’s that got to do with me?

“Jade Goody’s grieving widower has started filming his first ever acting role dressed as the ‘Wizard of Oz’ character in British film ‘Just For The Record’.”

He has?

Oh, apparently he has:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1190608/Jack-Tweed-launches-post-prison-career–role-tin-man-feature-film.html?ITO=1490

Blimey … there’s a Tin Man in ‘Just for the Record’?

More positively …

It occurs to me the last post could be perceived as a bit negative, descending as it did in to a rant about Star Trek when it was meant to be an ‘ooh look, I’ve got a new laptop’ affair. So I thought, in an effort to redress the balance, I’d post a list of things I liked about the film because overall I did genuinely enjoy it (I just would have enjoyed it more had it made a little bit of sense):

The cast

The explosions

The bright colours

The short skirts

That they didn’t move too far away from the original uniforms and hence lose the bright colours and short skirts

That green woman in her underwear

Kirk and Uhura in the bar

Kirk’s massive hands

Spock getting the girl

Did I mention the green woman in her underwear?

McCoy generally – more of him please

Whoever chose the underwear for the green woman; because, you know, it must be really difficult to get the right colour to match that skin tone and it worked perfectly as far as I was concerned.

Other things I want to be positive about:

The Ten Doctors - I know, I know – you’ve probably all read it and it finished a few days back; but I wanted to wait until it had finished before I linked to it, just in case it went shit at the end.

It didn’t.

I liked it. It was great.

Confessions of a Superhero - I haven’t seen this yet, but I want to – it looks really interesting.

Oh and then there’s this BBC Look East New Bulletin- tonight’s, I think. The link should work today, whether it still works tomorrow is anyone’s guess. You’re looking to skip forward over the gloom and doom until you get to about 13.30

Now go about your day in a more positive manner.

A bit of a blur

It’s been another busy few days. Wednesday/Thursday/Friday saw me:

Have dinner in Jamaica, breakfast at 38,000 feet, lunch in Nuneaton, dinner in Crawley, breakfast in Eastbourne and lunch in London. I’d like to tell you which days they happened on, but it was all a bit of a jet-lagged blur and I’m not 100% certain.

Simultaneously I plotted one screenplay, was commissioned for a second and optioned a third (which doesn’t actually exist yet, but I’m sure I’ll have written it - or something vaguely like it – by the time everyone’s excitement dies away and they realise they haven’t actually seen a script).

I’ve also completely disrupted and possibly ruined a serious meeting about tweaking the rough cut of a produced movie by shouting about Star Trek, had a phone call from the Mail on Sunday about not being in Cannes, undergone a three pronged Mac-vangelist attack (I claim victory on the grounds one of their Macs packed up halfway through the argument) and taken a meeting in a room chock full of little rubber pigs – every single one of which bore a sticker proudly proclaiming:

THIS IS NOT A TOY

In other news, ‘Just for the Record’ is getting a bit of local press attention:

http://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/4384415.On_location_in_Essex___funnyman_Rik_Mayall/

and

http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/4384407.Strip_club_plays_part_in_Rik_Mayall_movie/

My favourite quote being:

“Mr Lawson said: ‘To get the cast we’ve got, it must be considered a pretty good script and story!’”

Mr Lawson being Steve Lawson, the director and all round good egg.

I’ve never used the phrase ‘all round good egg’ before, but it seemed to fit and I’m always up for new things.

And that’s it. That’s your lot for a week or so since I’m now off on holiday to my parents’ house in France. I may post something mid week, I may not. In fact, I probably won’t.

Or maybe I will?

No. No, I doubt it.

But I will leave you with a few words of warning:

If you ever find yourself sitting in a cafe, calmly discussing whether or not to rape a young girl in front of the decaying corpse of her father … make sure you announce loudly, and at every possible juncture, that it’s JUST A FILM. It did seem to put a few people off their soup, but I thought the screaming histrionics and the threat to call the police were uncalled for.

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.

Closer

My anonymity grows.

It seems Abi Titmuss is running all over town, completely failing to mention me at every opportunity. After not being mentioned in Hello! and The Sun, I’ve now not been mentioned in Closer.

Okay, okay, so the Hello! article was actually Adele Silva not mentioning me. Meaning, technically, Abi’s only given two interviews which doesn’t really count as running all over town; but it’s still moderately exciting to see yourself failing to be mentioned in national publications. I really am on track for no one knowing who I am in the next few months.

In fact, I’d go so far as predicting that by Christmas, my anonymity will have grown to such proportions even Mandy will never have heard of me.

Truly we live in wonderous times.

The Sun

Abi Titmuss was in The Sun today:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/article1016941.ece

I would like to draw your attention to the following quote:

“I have just got a little part in a British film, a comedy, but I can’t talk about that yet!”

She may not be able to, but I can … because it’s my film.

Or at least a film I wrote.

That’s right, as well as not being mentioned in Hello! a few weeks back, I’ve now not been mentioned in The Sun. At this rate I’ll be completely anonymous for years to come. My name will literally be on no one’s lips.

Fame is ignoring me, but in public.

Basically, Abi is going to be in Mixed Up. Which also has a natty new poster:

So there you go: not being mentioned in The Sun and a new poster.

I told you life was good.