For sale

Selling a script is a lot like selling a car – you just want to get the damn thing off the drive because it’s annoying your wife.

Um …

Okay, selling a script is nothing like selling a car unless you count ‘having the same word in the sentence’ or ‘a financial transaction involving the exchange of goods’ as similarities.

Oh, which I guess they are.

Maybe selling a script is like selling a car?

No. No it’s not, is it?

Although, by an amazing coincidence, I am trying to sell this car:

… and can’t really figure a way to mention it on a scriptwriting blog.

Go on, what do you say? It’s blue, mostly shiny and got all sorts of neat gadgets. Like wheels. Four of them. Five if you count the spare. Six if you count the steering wheel, which is probably cheating.

Climate control, electric windows, electric mirrors, electric sunroof, headlights, immobiliser, power steering, central locking, CD player … um, what else?

Once owned by a completely un-famous (but vaguely infamous) scriptwriter – does that stir you in any way? I think the car’s immortal, I’ve certainly never been able to kill it despite a homicidal approach to roundabouts and a complete lack of interest in maintenance.

I once drove it through a puddle so deep the water was lapping at the windows. Well, I say puddle, pond is more like it. Lake maybe? No, pond – let’s not exaggerate.

Ooh! The interior is exactly 26 seconds into the past. That’s right, the interior is in a different time zone – a weird and fabulous land where the radio still plays the intro of the song while the rest of the world is on the first verse. Seriously, if you approach the car with a portable radio you can hear the time shift. If you shine a light into the windscreen, you can get into the car before the light hits the interior!

Granted, that does make reading road signs rather difficult; but what’s life without danger?

Longer. That’s the answer. In case you were wondering.

Come on, what do you say? It looks a bit like K.I.T.T. – assuming K.I.T.T. was Japanese and a bit shit. Volunteer a reasonable price and it’s yours! I’ll even throw in a personal visit from me as I drive it to anywhere in the world of your choosing!

Subject, of course, to you paying the petrol and my return train ticket/flight/submarine fare.

Come on people, how can you afford to pass up this, the bargain of a lifetime?

It really is for sale, honest.

Masturbating monkeys

Two words I never thought I’d find contained in one sentence in a set of script notes.

At least, two words I certainly never thought I’d be asked to put into an action line in a script.

When I envisaged my writing career, all those minutes ago, I never dared dream that one day someone would instruct me (whilst paying me) to write those two words in a script.

My life is now complete.

And yes, it is exactly what you think it is.

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:

Grubby furniture

I love it when I’ve finished a script for the first time, not necessarily the point when I type THE END for the first time; but that point when the first draft is properly finished. The point when it’s beautiful and it’s pristine. It’s something I’ve crafted, like an exquisite piece of furniture … only one about killer elves or something.

I love that first draft, the one I’ve taken extra special care to make sure all the joints fit and the drawers and secret compartments open smoothly, the one where it all just works and feels like one seamless piece of art.

Not all first drafts, obviously. Some of them are appalling piles of poo which aren’t fit to line even an Argos chest of drawers. Some of them I look at in rising panic as I realise I’ve just created the perfect evidence to prove the theory ‘I can’t fucking write’. Random bits of wood which are badly cobbled together to form hideously ugly furniture with no apparent use or function. The kind of thing you have no choice but to burn lest anyone lays eyes upon its mangled nastiness and is immediately struck blind and brain numb.

I apologise, by the way, I’ve no idea why I’ve started using furniture metaphors. I guess that’s just the kind of thing which happens at midnight on a Sunday.

The first draft (which may well be the eighth time I’ve gone from page 1 to page 110), the pure draft, the one which is MY idea. Mine. This is what I meant, this is what I wanted to write. This is the genius which has been bubbling in my brain for quite possibly days … the pristine draft before the notes arrive.

The notes which point out it makes no fucking sense.

Actually, those notes I don’t really mind. The kind where people point out the main character disappears on page 50 and finally turns up on the last page, having spent the intervening time stuck in the express lane queue at Tesco. Those are good notes.

Then there are the bad notes. The ones which revolve around expanding someone’s part because someone else wants to sleep with them. Or the nonsensical ones like:

“What if the protagonist is a kettle?”

“A talking kettle? Bit weird, but I suppose it could be a metaphor for–”

“No, not a talking kettle. What the fuck are you on about? There’s no such thing as a talking kettle. Just a kettle. Make the hero a kettle”

“Right.”

“Don’t look at me like that. Mother used to look at me like that.”

“Yeah. I’ve got to go and … I’ve just got to go.”

At which point you just make the changes requested until he loses interest, sacks you or gets arrested for trying to rape hamsters.

But the notes I really hate, the ones which make my heart sink, are the ones which are perfectly reasonable but just different. They don’t make the script better, they don’t make it worse, they just make it different. The ones where you realise the director and/or producer isn’t really imagining the same project as you.

“Ah, so when I said I wanted to write a biopic of Muhammad Ali; you thought we were making a heist film set in Vietnam?”

These notes upset me, I hate having to take the chainsaw to my chest of drawers, hack out the bits people just don’t like and replace them with new bits. No matter how much I smooth the edges down or patch the gaps … I can still see the join. When I read the fourth or the fifth draft (which may well be a thousand times better than the first) I can still see all the joins, all the bits which are no longer there.

To me, my script now looks grubby – as if I’ve written it in pencil, continuously rubbed it out and started over and over again. There’s no white space any more, it’s all grey.

Or gray.

Helpfully, my spellchecker thinks both of those spellings are right. OH TECHNOLOGY, YOU FECKLESS WHORE; TELL ME HOW TO SPELL LIKE A SIX YEAR OLD, GOD DAMN IT!

You know, I’m pretty certain I had a point when I started this.

Maybe it was that I prefer my first drafts to my final drafts, even when the final drafts are manifestly better – they just seem so … dirty.

It’s not much of a point, but I’ve been working for 17 hours and it’s all you’re going to get.

Oh leave me alone.

… and Sweden and Denmark and Italy!

As it happens, as well as the Dutch being lovely and sending me money via the BBC, so have the Swedes, the Danish and the Italians.

Hooray!

Oh, and the Dutch have regrouped and sent me more money.

In fact, the Dutch and the Danish have been particularly generous and I now no longer need to put any money towards a DVD. Unless it’s a boxed set of something, in which case I might need to add a fiver or so.

Nevertheless, I now officially love our European cousins and look forward with eager anticipation to tomorrow’s post.

I’m looking at you, France. Come on, Daddy needs to find out what happens at the end of Battlestar Galactica.

The BBC, the Dutch and an unexpected pittance

A letter?

For me?

From the BBC?

Blimey o’Reilly, what could they possibly want?

(At this point I wanted to write the sound of me ripping open an envelope … but I couldn’t work out what that would sound like in words and gave up surprisingly quickly)

Oooh, fancy that! My first ever residuals statement!

It appears the Dutch have been exposed to The Wrong Door; and - given the lack of angry swearing hurled in my general direction – they either liked it, didn’t watch it or feel less inclined to proffer death threats merely because they didn’t find a TV programme funny.

I’ve always liked the Dutch. Very tall, nice and polite.

Oh, it’s also been sold to a TRAPPED AUDIENCE.

Good.

What the fuck does that mean? I presume they haven’t locked a group of people in a room and forced them to empty their pockets whilst the Smutty Aliens plays on a continuous loop? Or maybe they have? I’ve always thought there was something sinister about the BBC.

Unlike the lovely, non-death-threat-emailing  Dutch.

Well, well, well, unexpected money -  whatever shall I spend it on?

Hmm … if I added a tenner of my own money I could probably afford a DVD … if it was on sale. Happy days!

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.

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.