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.

What the fuck is this shit?

As many people are aware, I’m not a big fan of Apple products and can safely say I’ll never own any. Assuming of course that by ‘never’ I mean ‘until I do’. The reasons have nothing to do with the intrinsic worth of any of the products, components or software and I’m by no means convinced Microsoft, Windows or any mobile phone manufacturer you care to mention are any better – I just have a strong dislike of Apple and everything they stand for.

To me it comes down to two things:

1)The weird cult-like aura which surrounds happy-clappy Apple users and the self-satisfied smugness they exude. It’s just fucking weird and slightly creepy how you people behave. No offense meant – I just don’t want to risk being like you because you freak me out.

I have a strong desire not to belong to any organisation or group – it’s part of the reason I have no interest in team sports, when you don’t care who wins it makes the mechanics of the games very dull. Although I have zero belief in any of the numerous gods knocking around, I hesitate to consider myself an atheist because I don’t like the idea of belonging to that group.

I experienced a lovely bit of Apple-mania the other day when I had to endure eight hours of four Apple-users haranguing me because I was using a non-Apple laptop. Eight fucking hours and the only time they went a bit quiet was when someone else saw me using the touchscreen on my laptop and went on for a little bit about how cool she thought it was. The Apple-loons went quiet for a bit before deciding that nobody actually wants touchscreen on a laptop – that’s why Apple don’t make them and I was obviously deluded or deranged for believing I did want it.

Later on, at the hotel we were all staying in, I found Team Apple in a bit of a funk because none of them could access the Internet. Weird, I thought, I’ve got no problems. It turns out they’d phoned the hotel’s business centre for technical support and after the usual lengthy process of determining they weren’t complete fuckwads, had worked out how to plug the cable in and turn their computers on, the helpful woman asked if they were using Macbooks.

“Of course,” they all cried, “what else would we use?”

So the woman explained Macbooks never seem to work with the hotel’s Internet and promptly hung up.

I did laugh quite a bit … but then, being the kind chap I aspire to be, I offered to let them use the Internet in my room. Oddly enough, they all declined presumably on the grounds if Steve Jobs intended for them to use the Internet he would have made their computers compatible with it.

The second reason, 2)if you’re keeping track of these things, is Apple’s advertising campaign which makes me want to hurl bricks at the telly. The whole concept of Apple’s advertising is ‘Sell the sizzle, not the sausage’ and they’ll do anything to avoid telling you the truth. It’s a string of brightly coloured lies to a funky dance track designed to make you think the product is cool rather than asking what it actually does and why it costs three times as much as everyone else’s identical products.

Things like the iPhone 2’s “GPS mapping like you’ve never seen before!’ or the iPhone 3Gs’ ‘we’ve invented video!’ claim get my blood boiling. And nothing makes me laugh harder (except perhaps old people falling over onto kittens) than the small print at the end of the ads:

“Steps removed and sequences shortened”

Or, in other words:

“Doesn’t actually do any of this.”

Or my new favourite for whatever it iPod it is they’ve just added video to where the small print points out it can’t actually take video like they’ve just shown you.

Not that the ads aren’t seductive – many’s the time I’ve watched an ad for the latest app and wished my phone could do that … only to remember it can because it, like most phones these days, has access to the Internet and most of the apps they advertise can be replicated with Google and an Internet connection.

The words which spring to mind when I think of Apple are Sirius Cybernetics Corporation with their smug doors, GPP features and ‘your plastic pal who’s fun to be with’.

Again, let me point out before you all go mental that I don’t particularly like Microsoft products either and suspect Apple stuff might be slightly better but probably still falls short of adequate. The difference I think is in the way the companies present themselves and I’ve long thought if I was at a party I’d rather spend time with Bill Gates than with Steve Jobs. I mean, yeah, Bill Gates is probably boring, nerdy and embarrassing. He’s the friend you don’t introduce to women because he’ll bore the shit out of them and they’ll hate you by association. A bit like a retarded cousin your parents force you to play with.

Steve Jobs on the other hand comes across as the kind of guy who’d steal all your possessions and try to sell them back to you for a profit. He looks and sounds like a used car salesman and seems about as trustworthy as a politician. In fact, nothing would surprise me less than if he went into politics one day. He might get the pussy, but only because he’s a verbal rapist.

All this is a really long winded way of talking about the differences between the two companies marketing strategies. Apple seem like a self-promotion company who also sell a few electronic items. Microsoft seem like a clueless, but harmless bunch of geeks who get stiffed by other marketing companies because they have no idea how to talk to anyone.

I loved those Apple commercials with Mitchell and Webb where the Apple guy was smug, trying too hard to be cool and annoying while the PC was a bit rubbish, shabby and trying hard to please everyone – that always felt right to me …

Until I saw this pile of shit:

I mean, seriously, what the fuck is this shit? Have they lost their fucking minds? Is this really the best way they could find to advertise Windows 7 (which I don’t fucking care about anyway)? A bunch of retards who can’t act sitting on a sofa pretending listening to some moron talk about ‘new’ features (which I’m pretty sure are exactly the fucking same just with different names) on a fucking laptop?

With cocking balloons in the background?

What the fuck?

Is this really the best they can do?

Or is that the point? Did they have a meeting say “Face it guys, we suck at marketing. Why don’t we just go the whole hog and suck dead man’s balls?” Maybe the point is it’s so fucking awful it’s even got people like me talking about it? Jesus fucking Christ, I never really cared about owning a laptop with Windows on it before but now I feel the need to look into Linux or whatever the hell the other minority OS is called.

That advert is so bad, at first I assumed it was some Apple-fanatics with too much fucking time on their hands and a camcorder making a piss take. I sat through the first minute or so thinking it wasn’t very funny. But apparently it’s real. I just … I can’t … what the fuck?

Even worse – there’s a whole fucking series of them!

Luckily, this school orchestra came along at exactly the right time and distracted me with laughter:

Unspoken dialogue

Every now and then I imagine I’m Steve McQueen.

Not in a ’stealing a motorbike, out-running the Nazis and failing to jump over barb wire fences’ kind of way … although, put me in a fast car with a long bonnet and I inevitably hum the theme tune to ‘Bullitt’ … but no, every now then when I’m re-writing a script I remember a story I once heard about Steve McQueen – apparently, so the story goes, the first thing he did when looking through a script was to cross out all the dialogue he felt was unnecessary.

A wise move I feel. Frequently, on a first draft, I include loads of dialogue which could easily be conveyed by a look or a glance. People, particularly friends, often communicate without actually saying anything and it’s a great way to reduce the length of your script without actually cutting anything.

The problem is, how do you convey the exact meaning of the removed line with a few words which describe the expression on an unseen person’s face?

For example. If you take this random shit scene:

COLIN
Stuart!

STEVE
You what?

COLIN
No, not Stuart ... Simon?

STEVE
Are you fucking kidding me?

COLIN
Shit, sorry. Erm ... Sam? Sanjay? Sarah? Steve!
Steve McQueen! Hey!

STEVE
What the fuck do you want?

COLIN
Can I have an autograph?

STEVE
No. Fuck off.

COLIN
Right.

And you cross out all of Steve’s dialogue, you get:

COLIN
Stuart!

COLIN
No, not Stuart ... Simon?

COLIN
Shit, sorry. Erm ... Sam? Sanjay? Sarah? Steve!
Steve McQueen! Hey!

COLIN
Can I have an autograph?

COLIN
Right.

Which makes no fucking sense. Adding in action lines to describe Steve’s expressions gives you:

COLIN
Stuart!

Steve frowns.

COLIN
No, not Stuart ... Simon?

Incredulous, Steve stares at Colin.

COLIN
Shit, sorry. Erm ... Sam? Sanjay? Sarah? Steve!
Steve McQueen! Hey!

STEVE
What the fuck do you want?

COLIN
Can I have an autograph?

Steve scowls.

COLIN
Right.

Hmm … which actually works quite well. Damn, this is a pretty poor example. Although, ‘Steve scowls.’ is a fairly ambiguous statement; you can scowl in anger, scowl in confusion, scowl in something else I can’t think of with everyone fucking talking at me and the TV on.

Seriously, why am I writing this fucking post in the lounge?

Anyway … maybe, for some completely unknown reason, it’s vitally important to get across the specific meaning of a scowl. Don’t ask me why, I’ve no fucking idea. It just is, okay? Obviously the whole film hinges on this one scowl.

On a more serious note, I have had actors ask what their characters are thinking during a particular scene and it’s handy to be able to specify what a particular reaction means without loading your dialogue up with exposition.

STEVE
I really am rather miffed at your inability to remember my name,
because I'm rather famous and should be instantly recognisable.
You cunt.

I also remember Aardman saying they wrote dialogue for Gromit in all the Wallace and Gromit films so the animators could get the expressions right. I think it’s a good idea to specify exactly what the unspoken dialogue is since it helps with the read, the audience will be able to decipher the actor’s expression and body language and it steers the actors towards getting the right meaning across. But how best to go about it?

Personally, I’ve opted for just writing the dialogue in the action lines:

Steve scowls - no. Fuck off.

Again, this is a particularly bad example, but there you go. I’m tired.

I have no idea whether or not this is considered correct or incorrect format; but I do know no one’s ever complained. An actor may choose to express the words in a different manner, that’s up to them. The point is the meaning should be clear in the script.

Some people will tell you putting dialogue like this in the action lines is an unfilmable. Those people are of course completely fucking wrong. Describing the intent behind an expression is not unfilmable since actors can pull faces and cameras can be pointed at them. It only becomes an unfilmable when there’s absolutely no fucking way to deduce the words from specific face movements:

Steve scowls - maybe Maria had a point back in 1979 when she set
fire to Elton John's wig? Although the thing with the alpaca
was just wrong.

But that’s another post for another time when I’m feeling less likely to kick a hole in my computer at the memory of random fuckwits telling me it’s unfilmable when I describe an actress as angry or scared as if people are incapable of conveying such complex emotions.

And don’t get me started on the mongo-fuck-loons who bandy ’show don’t tell’ around as if they actually know what it means.

Fuck this shit, I’m going to bed.

I’m all annoyed now.

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.

Now look what you’ve gone and done

Before you read on, if you haven’t already done so, head over to James Moran’s blog and read this:

 http://jamesmoran.blogspot.com/2009/07/stepping-back.html

Right, are you back? Up to speed on the whole situation? Good.

So in a nutshell, James, being the talented chap that he is, was one of three writers on the latest series of Torchwood – handpicked by the mighty RTD himself.

By the way, there are going to be spoilers from now on – don’t read on if you haven’t seen all five episodes of the last season.

James helped plot out the season and co-wrote one of the episodes – the hardest episode to write too, if I may make so bold. The middle episode of five is tricky because it’s the tipping point of the story, there’s a lot of explaining to do after the crash bang opening, dismantling of the team in episode one and the regrouping, rebuilding of the team in episode two. Episode three is where we find out what’s going on and where everything reorients itself towards the end – it’s fucking hard to write just that bit on its own … but James pulled it off with style, panache and other words which mean the same thing.

And can I just say, the whole season was fucking excellent. I’m not a Torchwood fan, I don’t like the show at all, but I was completely gripped by the story. Even Mandy sat and watched it with me – and as a rule, the words Sci-Fi have her reaching for the eye-gouging pins. It was a fantastic piece of telly which thrilled, chilled and made me cry.

On top of actually writing the show, James then went on to inform, educate and amuse his and Torchwood’s fans by explaining the process behind the writing, talking about the show as it aired and generally giving everyone the kind of insight into how TV is made which is usually reserved for specialist magazines or DVD extras.

He didn’t have to do this, he doesn’t get paid for it and it’s not going to generate him any new work. He gets no benefit out of it apart from the satisfaction of being nice to people.

And those people repay him by calling him names, accusing him of moronic stuff and generally being a bunch of whining cunts ABOUT SOMETHING HE DIDN’T ACTUALLY WRITE!

All of you should just fucking grow up. It’s a TV show, Ianto Jones is a fictional character – he doesn’t exist. Yes, you should be sad at his death because that’s what good telly is about, eliciting emotions. It’s okay to be disappointed because he was your favourite and now he’s not in it anymore and it’s perfectly acceptable to decide a show is no longer something you like and opt not to watch it again.

It’s not acceptable to hound and abuse a guy who DIDN’T ACTUALLY WRITE THE BIT YOU DON’T LIKE, call him names and accuse him of some nasty stuff.

The accusation I find particularly moronic (apart perhaps from the twat who accused him of deepening his/her depression) is that of homophobia. As if somehow Ianto was selected for death because he was gay.

Fuck off.

Russell T Davies has done more to promote gay characters on TV than any other writer working today. He is fucking gay for God’s sake. He’s even put gay and bisexual characters into Doctor Who, showing kids it’s perfectly okay to fancy whoever the fuck you want.

James, whilst not being gay to the best of my knowledge, is quite a strong proponent of gay rights and always sites man on man action as being one of Torchwood’s strengths.

John Fay who actually wrote that episode – I have no idea and I don’t care. He wrote a great episode, his sexuality isn’t important.

The argument here is really a variation of the girlfriend in a fridge syndrome – which is all bullshit. Hurting or killing a main character’s loved ones is a powerful writing tool which generates plot and emotion. In most comics, which is where the fridge thing comes from, the protagonists are straight men so the loved ones are usually their girlfriends/wives. If Jack had been straight or currently seeing a girl, then it would have been a girl who died in that episode.

The gender or sexuality of the character is not the deciding factor in the death of a character – it’s their closeness to the main character. In this case, Ianto was the closest so he copped it. If things had gone differently, it would have been Gwen who died.

But it wasn’t. Ianto died and it was very sad. Jack’s miserable and the world is doomed – that’s great telly. Cry while it’s on and then go out and enjoy your life because, and this is an absolutely vital piece of information which will improve your life immeasurably, if you reserve that depth of emotion and compassion for REAL people instead of fictional characters, your life will be so much better.

Drama is all about the suspension of disbelief and in order to enjoy anything you have to be able to PRETEND the characters are real for the duration of the show – but when that show finishes you have to be able to switch your disbelief back on. It’s not real, they’re not real and the writers can do whatever the fuck they like to them – it shouldn’t in any way, shape or form affect your real life.

If a show stops pleasing you, either hang on in the hope it’s going to get better or stop watching. You do not own those characters and it’s not up to you what happens to them. If you want to own the characters, learn how to write, practice until you’re as good as James Moran and then fucking do it yourself.

The bottom line is, I enjoy James’ blog and have done so for a long time. I sincerely hope he doesn’t let a few (and it is just a few, the majority were quite supportive) random nutcases stop him from imparting his wisdom to up and coming writers who look at him as an inspiration.

James is a writer who’s acheived what the rest of us are aspiring to and his blog tells us he achieved it not with some God given talent or blind luck, but by working fucking hard and making sure when opportunity knocked he was ready and good enough to make the jump to being a professional writer.

He left the door open a chink, just to shine a little light on the path and show the rest of us the way. Now whinging morons have forced him to shut that door to protect himself. It’s a damn shame and you should all be fucking ashamed of your behavior.

Grow the fuck up.

What do you want?

As everyone knows, writing is hard …

Well, perhaps not everyone. I know a few producers who think you just slap the words on a page and then get on with the important stuff – like seducing the actresses.

Come to think of it, I’ve also met directors who find the whole writing process just an inconvenient series of arguments which happen before the creative process can begin.

Oh, and then there’s the script editors, actors, ADs, costumers, makeup artists, cinematographers and indeed most of the technical crew who think writers moan about having the easiest job going – sitting still and thinking.

Okay, so it’s only writers who know how hard writing is and you know what? We’re fucking right. And it’s only made harder by producers/directors who DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY FUCKING WANT. They know what they don’t want, but only after you’ve said it. Other than that they haven’t got a clue and it’s really, really difficult to divine exactly what it is they might possibly be thinking the film may vaguely be about. Meetings involve long periods of Guess Who style guessing games as you try to winkle some kind of opinion out of them on what kind of script they think they’re paying for:

“What I’m looking for is Jaws meets The Karate Kid.”

“Right. So the Karate Kid fights a big fucking shark? In the water? Or does the shark sprout legs?”

“No, no, no. When I said they meet, I don’t mean they actually meet - I mean thematically.”

“A shark teaches a kid how to defend himself against bullies? Or maybe a weedy teen martial artist terrorises a local fishing community?”

“No! You’re not listening”

“I only wish that were true.”

Another favourite of mine is when I get asked to write something which is A crossed with B when A and B are the same fucking thing. A bit like asking for ‘Life on Mars’ crossed with ‘Ashes to Ashes’ – unless you’re looking for a series set in 1977 I have no idea what you’re talking about.

And this is what makes writing difficult – the picture they have in their head, the one they want the writer to translate into a script, isn’t really a picture. It’s not fully formed and it actually makes little or no sense. Usually it’s more like a dream – something which makes perfect sense until they have to describe it and then turns into a random stream of unconnected images:

“I was in this room, only it wasn’t me and it wasn’t really a room but there was this iguana wearing a trilby … or possibly a smoking jacket, I can’t remember. Anyway, the iguana which is now a 1964 Studebaker Challenger who’s got this fruitbowl, says … something in German. Possibly about a spatula.”

“Sounds great. How much are you paying me again?”

And so here I sit, staring at a pile of index cards with random words on them like SPATULA, IGUANA and FRUITBOWL, trying to rearrange them into an order which makes some kind of sense, whilst vaguely wondering if it’s too late to just give the money back … when suddenly it hits me …

I’ve done it again.

I’ve completely forgotten why I started this post.

What the fuck was the point of all this?

Shit.

Sorry.

Something to do with hats I think …

Moments later …

——————————————————————————————————–

WARNING!

THIS POST WILL POSSIBLY  PROBABLY  UNDOUBTEDLY TURN INTO A POINTLESS RANT WHICH AT LEAST HALF OF YOU WILL VEHMENTLY DISAGREE WITH

RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

——————————————————————————————————–

I was reading a script a while back which was … well, fairly dull to be honest. Not dull enough to be unpleasant, but one of those scripts you read without really taking anything in. There’s some people, a lot of people, and they’re doing some stuff, not sure why, don’t really care and … oh.

Hang on.

Something happened which made no sense. One of those visual things which would probably be fine on screen, but in the script seems impossible.

Unless it’s night time.

Yes, that must be it. It must be dark and he can’t see … yes, that must be it. I’ll just check the scene heading.

I probably should explain at this point, I don’t read scene headings when I read scripts – I rely on the location being obvious enough from the scene – if the character sits on a sofa, he’s probably in a lounge. If he perches nervously on the edge of the sofa, it’s probably not his lounge, if he throws himself into the sofa, swings his feet onto the coffee table and flicks the TV on, it probably is his lounge.

Or he’s trying to annoy his mother-in-law.

Or he’s a very confident, and slightly moronic, burglar.

Regardless, it’s generally clear who’s where and if it’s not a quick glance back at the scene heading usually does the trick. If there’s anything unusual in the scene heading like FLASHBACK, DREAM SEQUENCE, HALLUCINATION … it tends to catch my eye and I’ll actually read it instead of skipping onto the interesting words.

So I check the scene heading – is it EXT. SOMEWHERE – NIGHT … ?

No.

It’s EXT. SOMEWHERE – MOMENTS LATER

Okay, fair enough – not to my taste, but let’s see what it’s moments later from …

INT. SOMEWHERE ELSE – CONTINUOUS

Right.

Back another scene:

LATER

And another:

A LITTLE LATER

I keep going:

CONTINUOUS

MOMENTS LATER

CONTINUOUS

CONTINUOUS

CONTINUOUS (yet strangely in a different location with different characters – continuous from what exactly?)

LATER

MOMENTS LATER

LATER

LATER

A LITTLE LATER

SAME (what the fuck? Same what? Same day? Same time? Is this split screen? Have we gone back in time since the last scene?)

MOMENTS LATER

CONTINUOUS

CONTINUOUS

CONTINUOUS

LATER

MOMENTS LATER

CONTINUOUS

Aha! EARLY MORNING …

Fifty two fucking pages earlier!

FIFTY TWO!

I had to flick through fifty two pages of bad script to find out if it’s dark or not and I’m still not fucking sure. Are fifty two pages enough time for it to go dark? Or have the characters inexplicably, and very quietly, gone fucking blind?

Needless to say I chucked the script in the bin, took it out, burnt it and put it back in the bin.

Then felt guilty about not recycling it.

Then changed my mind, I’d hate to think I was drinking tea from a cup recycled from that script.

See how it’s suddenly gone from a dull script to a bad script? Merely by annoying me?

What’s wrong with a simple DAY or NIGHT? That’s all I want to know. DAY or NIGHT? DAY or fucking NIGHT?

Alright, fine, if you really, really want to – go for DAWN or DUSK or EARLY MORNING or AFTERNOON or something else you feel is absolutely vital and won’t be immediately clear by reading the script – but LATER? CONTINUOUS? A LITTLE LATER? That’s different from LATER how?

And how the fuck do you schedule a script like that? Let’s break it down:

“Number of DAY scenes?”

“One.”

“Number of NIGHT scenes?”

“Zero.”

“Right. So is this all just one ninety-page scene?”

“No, because there are 17 LATER scenes, 14 CONTINUOUS scenes and 29 MOMENTS fucking LATER scenes.”

MOMENTS LATER than what? And even fucking worse SECONDS LATER – and that’s different from MOMENTS LATER how?

No wait, I’ve found a worse one: FOUR DAYS LATER

Four!

Not five or three, but four. How the fuck are the audience going to know, just by looking and without any visual aids like a TITLE OVER or a calender or a man growing four days worth of beard, that it’s four fucking days later? And why four? Why? For fuck’s sake why?

Here’s a handy hint gleaned from hiding in the Caribbean whilst my scripts are being shot: FILMS ARE SHOT OUT OF SEQUENCE. There’s a tendency to lump scenes together by location, cast and DAY or NIGHT to make filming easier, shorter and fucking possible. I may be wrong and will happily accept a correction from any passing AD, but I strongly fucking doubt scenes are shot together because they’re CONTINUOUS or MOMENTS fucking LATER.

“Ah, all these scenes are MOMENTS LATER, are they? Excellent, we’ll schedule them for one block of … um … hmm, DAY or NIGHT shooting?”

For the love of Internet porn, just put DAY or fucking NIGHT in your scene headings and be done with it. Look how upset I am. Look at me. I can barely type I’m so angry. Oh no, wait, I can type. Fuck it, just don’t do it – take your MOMENTS LATER and shove it up your arse.

Or don’t.

Maybe if you absolutely have to do it. HAVE TO! Or the pixies will pull your pubes out one by one, then you could use A LITTLE LATER sparingly, but not EVERY FUCKING SCENE. Don’t do it. Don’t fucking do it!

Or do, do it.

Do what you like.

It’s your script.

Sorry.

Unimportant stuff

1) Put the link of the person who tagged you on your blog.

Piers

2) Write the rules.

1. Put the link of the person who tagged you on your blog.
2. Write the rules.
3. Mention 6 things or habits of no real importance about you.
4. Tag 6 persons adding their links directly.
5. Alert the persons that you tagged them.

3) Mention 6 things or habits of no real importance about you.

1. There are a large number of products I will never buy because the advertising annoys me. Chief culprits among these are Apple, FCUK, Abercrombie and Fitch – in fact, most ’high end’ clothing shops - and every male perfume ever and/or yet to be invented (you mean to say, if I had a perfectly sculpted body, the looks of a male model, a team of make up artists, professional lighting, was in black and white AND splashed flavoured water on my neck I’d be irresistible to women? Wow. Obviously the perfume is the key ingredient there, where do I sign up?). Basically I get unreasonably angry by anyone who tries to sell me anything by telling me ‘it’s cool and everyone else is doing it’ without actually telling me what’s so good about their product in the first place. The epitome for me is the iPhone 3G – now with added 3G! Which is a bit like Ford advertising a Fiesta as ‘now with FOUR wheels!’ Oh, you mean it’s finally got something it should have had in the first place? It’s finally achieved one of the basic standards? I get particularly incensed by the current crop of ads which show it doing something wonderful but carry the disclaimer “Steps removed and sequences shortened” in other words – “Doesn’t actually do this”. “Imagine a phone which can browse the Internet!” You mean like all phones have been able to do for years? And since browsing “all of the net” was a chief selling point, it gives me great satisfaction to see everyone releasing iPhone versions of their websites. ”Imagine a phone which can take photos!” Yes … imagine if your camera was anywhere near the current industry standards, had a flash, could take video and could actually send the pictures to someone once you’d taken them. You know, like every other phone on the market. The phone itself is a perfectly good, middle of the range smart phone; but the advertising and the cult of Apple (who followed me around telling me my phone wasn’t as good as the iPhone for six months before the damn thing was even released) keep insisting it’s the best phone ever made – presumably because it does slightly less stuff than every other smart phone on the market yet costs more. Honestly, the phrase ‘Sent from my iPhone’ sends me into paroxysms of rage. It is very, very pretty though. Why can’t they just say that on the adverts?
2. I slip into rants far too easily and get unreasonably annoyed by things when I really shouldn’t. I shout at the TV a lot. I sometimes even shout at the screen in the cinema. And not just during the adverts.
3. Tom Baker sent me a postcard.
4. You can punch me or hit me with sticks quite hard and I don’t really notice, but I’m very ticklish and may wet myself with prolonged tickling activity.
5. I hate it when people try to motivate me – it doesn’t work. I’ll do it when I’m God damn ready, now fuck off and leave me alone.
6. Tea should be served in a mug and the shape of the mug is very important. Saucers are evil, pointless and obviously the work of Satan. Mugs should have straight sides because they’re easier to carry two in one hand, are more stable on curved sofa arms and lose heat slower than tapered mugs. They shouldn’t have a flared lip because the lip stays cold and annoys me. The handle should accommodate at least two fingers, preferably three, to make it easier to carry. And they shouldn’t be dainty porcelain or bone china because I always worry I’m going to bite through the side. Starbucks’ middle sized mugs are perfect. Costa’s large mugs are fucking awful. And really, really, don’t get me started on those fucking stainless steel teapots and milk jugs which EVERY fucking cafe in the world uses. You know, the ones which don’t actually pour but dribble down the sides and all over the table, leaving a pool of liquid which I then put my elbow in and … ah. See point 2).

4) Tag 6 persons adding their links directly.

No.

5) Alert the persons that you tagged them.

See above.

Spinning plates

I finished film number three in the Easter Extravaganza on Sunday. So far it’s all going swimmingly, I even managed Saturday off for Mandy and I to catch my brother’s play in London. Here’s a vaguely Danish video link:

http://www.tv2lorry.dk/moduler/nyheder/showregvideo.asp?dato=17-03-2009&cID=1&vId=474536

If you accidentally find yourself in Copenhagen in the next week or so, I highly recommend it.

I’ve got one more film to go now before Easter and plenty of time to do it in.

Sort of.

Because the problem is, the workload for each script doesn’t finish when you send it off. It’s just not that simple. It really is a case of setting the plates spinning then rushing back and forth occasionally to make sure they keep going. With each successive project set in motion it gets harder to keep them going, but so far it’s been remarkably easy.

Which worries me a bit.

A quick recap – four feature films before Easter:

Plate #1 – is a sword and sorcery re-write I’d been nibbling at since the last meeting in September. This was a major re-write which changed pretty much every word in the script. I finished this on the 3rd of March and so far haven’t heard anything back. This could be innocuous and just means producer and director haven’t had time to read it yet (we’re all busy) or it could be bad and they’re sitting around trying to work out how to tell me how truly awful it is. Either way, it’s a plate which has been spinning unaided for a long time and is beginning to look a bit suspicious …

Plate #2 – is ’til Death which had a minor re-write somewhere around the 5th and 6th of March in between me fucking about with Legoat my parents’ house. That draft was well loved but has generated some new ideas which I’ll get told at a meeting on Friday, and that means another minor re-write. In addition, the one-pager (logline and synopsis) no longer reflects the script so that has to be changed to match. It’s not the end of the world, we’re talking a couplle of days to do both but it’s a wobbling plate which needs a quick flick.

Plate #3 – was the solid gold brick shat by a producer and I a couple of weeks back and the one I finished on Sunday. Which, since I only started it on Wednesday and had Saturday off, surprised the hell out of me. No outline, no planning, no cards, notes, character outlines, treatment or synopsis – just sit down, start at the beginning and write with the central premise in mind. Not something I’d recommend, but it seemed to fit the style of the project. I was on a bit of a roll with that, finished it at 23.06 on Sunday and handed it in safe in the knowledge I could forget about it for a few days at least. I’ve only just started it spinning, I don’t need to do anything for a while …

Except I get an email at 00.07 on Monday morning – the producer had read it. One hour and one minute later! The plate’s wobbling already! Crap, it might fall off before it even gets going. Worse still, he might have an immediate set of notes which interfere with moving on to plate #4 … but no. He read it, he laughed, he liked it. Meeting on Friday to discuss the next draft.

Cool.

I’m ahead of the game!

So Mandy and I buggered off to New York for a few days. We saw the Statue of Liberty:

Carrie Bradshaw’s house:

Real movie steam:

Went to Times Square:

And had a drink in a revolving restaurant:

Shortly after that we got attacked by a T-Rex:

But luckily, Spidey turned up to save the day:

And all was well in the Big Apple. Which is neither big nor Apple-ish. It is quite tall though.

Whilst queing endlessly for the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty and having to strip naked to get through the x-ray machine, it occurred to me terrorists are badly named. On September the 11th I imagine there were quite a lot of terrified people – but within a year that terror gives way to being bloody annoyed. “Why have I got to take my belt off? What the fuck do you think I’m hiding there? I was a child when I joined this queue.”

They should call them annoyingists, not terrorists. They’d get the same effect if they just followed people around and hummed all day or snuck up behind people and licked their ears – it’d be cheaper, kinder to the environment, nobody would have to die and it would have exactly the same impact on society.

Anyway, we’re back now and it’s time to set plate #4 in motion – a completely new feature project this and terribly exciting. I may even have to break out the new pack of index cards.

As long as nothing else wobbles in the meantime.

No more

Right, that’s it. No more procrastinating, no more dithering, no more picking aimlessly at bits of script.

In short, no more fannying around.

It seems to me I’ve achieved nothing particularly useful (writing wise) in the last half a year or so and have spent far too long not doing it. So no more.

From now on I’m back to just knuckling down and getting on with … oh look, Stargate’s on.

No, God damn it! No more Stargate. No more Simpsons. No more Battlestar Galactica … well, maybe I’ll just finish season 2 and then … definitely no more.

Except maybe season 3.

But after that, back to work baby.

With a vengeance.

Is there a season 4?

No, fuck season 4.

Work!

The script I’ve been picking randomly at since September – that’s going to be finished by March the 4th at the latest. No, shut up, no excuses. It’s going to be finished by March the 4th. Do you hear me, me? Am I listening to myself?

Why March the 4th? Because that’s when the meeting for the final(ish) set of notes for the final(ish) draft of  ’til Death is. And after March the 4th, I’m going to be busy with the final(ish) draft, obviously.

After that I’m working on a new script based on an old idea which has once again reared its malformed and, frankly, just plain weird head. It’s got everything – sex, death and … um … fish.

Actually, not so much fish. Mostly just sex and death.

Without the sex.

Okay, it’s just a lot of death.

But it’s got the whiff of sex all the way through it (which I’ve always thought smells a bit like telephones – you know, the old dial up ones). The treatment feels like the characters might spontaneously burst into sex at any minute … but probably won’t.

In fact they don’t. I know they don’t. I wrote the treatment. Four fucking years ago.

So no sex.

Just death.

And Nazis.

But not real ones.

Maybe in Jersey.

The country, not a pullover. That would be weird.

Although probably quite warm.

And that script WILL be done by Easter.

Why Easter?

Why fucking not?

When is Easter?

I don’t care. It will be done by Easter, whenever it fucking is, or there’ll be hell to pay.

If it existed.

Which it doesn’t.

Seriously, when is Easter?

Why did I agree to this?