So here we are at the end of the year, hell at the end of the decade and …
Actually, when does the decade end? Is 2010 the end of this decade or the beginning of the next one? Tricky number, zero. Still, fuck it. If the Romans couldn’t get to grips with it then why the fuck should I? I mean, they built roads and shit while all I’ve ever done is push buttons on a keyboard … and even that I do pretty badly.
Mind you, have you seen the roads in Rome? Shockingly bad. Fuck knows how those people supplied an empire.
But I digress.
Did you have a good Christmas? Did Santa bring you everything you wanted? I asked for World Domination and some French Fancies but the fat git failed on both counts. How was 2009 in general? Mine went almost exactly like this:
I realised we were living in the 21st Century … nine years after the fact.
Discovered Oli stops reading when he reaches his own name and then talked briefly about magic puppies with Lego faces.
Tries to get someone to hold my hand.
Learnt, once again, communicating by email results in appalling scripts and that the more notes someone has for you, the better the script is.
Revealed I had a BIG IDEA … with no time to write it.
Had a pile of work, so massive and so daunting … I decided to fuck everyone off and go to Disney Land instead.
Didn’t go to Disney Land, just knuckled down and attacked the pile of work.
Talked about a Writer’s Vision – basically how to lie in order to get money.
Revealed to the world that Satan talks to me through the TV and told me I have to leave Pipex and sign up to Sky Broadband or he’s going to make me rape, kill and eat next door’s babies.
Fielded an email from an American Production company looking for something almost exactly like the BIG IDEA. It’s right easy this marketing lark – you just sit there and wait for them to call you.
And then saw Seven Pounds and got depressed because I can’t write like that.
Had a pointless conversation with an Air Hostess in the middle of a forest.
Got bored.
Decided, more or less on a whim, never to speak to anyone ever again.
Named and alphabetised my T-shirts.
Decided I didn’t want to be in Battlestar Galactica.
Revealed my obsession with Creative Screenwriting Podcasts.
Got confused about Easter.
And got bored once more, this time by Benjamin Button. Fuck it, if he doesn’t pay any interest in his own life, why should I?
Failed to blog about THE A TEAM V DAD’S ARMY and DAISY DOGNUTS. No, I have no idea what that means either.
Talked about the technical difficulties involved in writing a script … although for the life of me I can’t remember which fucking script I was talking about. I may have been making shit up to make myself seem cool.
Shit a solid gold brick.
Explained why this:
Made me into a writer.
Discovered a clone of me from the future used to stalk me in the past.
Got attacked by a T-Rex and rescued by Spiderman.
Got nominated for a Rose d’Or. Sort of.
Met up with Lara Greenway and Terry Wogan in Madam Tussauds.
Got emails from actors asking if they could be in a film I didn’t write. Only to find out I may have written bits of it, sort of.
Realised I could carry all my scripts around on my phone, all the time.
Got annoyed about mugs and companies who sell themselves as cool without actually telling you what their products do. Like Apple.
And offered to buy people lunch.
Got nominated for a BAFTA. Actually, this has nothing to do with me.
Dropped an imaginary phone into an imaginary vat of home brew at Dan Turner’s imaginary house.
Wrote a script to an extremely complicated and prescriptive set of rules. Rules which the producer who set them immediately complained about.
Karma Magnet came out as a DVD extra.
Pimped some stuff for someone else.
Got fucking angry about the media’s ‘information’ about Swine Flu and declared it was all fucking bullshit and no one was going to die from it. Bird Flu, anyone?
Warned people their ideas would make a 90 page script into a 180 page script. They didn’t listen, I wrote the script, they got upset.
And filming started on a sitcom pilot … so I hid in Crouch End.
Wow, nothing really happened in April, did it?
Got annoyed about story drops – the point in a film/TV thing where you could stop watching and not feel like you’d missed the next hour.
Got really unreasonably upset about MOMENTS LATER. That must have been a particularly bad day.
Just for the Record began filming. I went to hide in the Caribbean and got sucked off by an air steward in First Class. There was a video of that and everything … but I seem to have lost it.
Got a phone call from the Mail on Sunday who wanted to talk to me about not being in Cannes.
Took 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
Went to Nuneaton. Never again.
Apparently I went on holiday somewhere, but for the life of me I can’t remember where.
Oh, and I bought a new laptop:
Touchy touchy!
Came over all positive for a moment and said some nice things. Hopefully that was just a phase.
Launched Jack Tweed’s movie career. Great.
Went to the Screenwriters’ Festival and drew some sperm:
Muttered something about being forced to promote stuff even when I thought it was shit
Saw a preview/promo for Fleeced:
Saw a trailer for Just for the Record … which has since been removed. Damn.
Saw a poster for Just for the Record … which has since been binned.
Tried to make sense of Spatulas, Iguanas and a fruitbowl.
Attacked a man on the bus so I could rip this page from his paper:
Because of this paragraph:
Which is about a sitcom pilot I co-wrote.
And came over all nice again and promoted other people’s short films.
Finally explained about the movable goalposts of excitement.
Held a meeting in a street which was on fire.
Attended a screening of Splendid. It was.
Got hassled by an all female Squad of pissed up Motown fans. One of whom insisted she was a natural blonde with the landing strip to prove it who went on to kick me in the chest with a spiked heel. I quite enjoyed that day.
Got angry about morons giving James Moran a hard time for writing good telly.
Did this:
For these people:
Deleted more than I wrote.
Ran out of ways to procrastinate and very nearly had to do some work.
And saw the trailer for the sitcom pilot I co-wrote:
Oh, and a music video from the same:
Another trailer for Just for the Record. This one’s still there!
Took part in a three-way conference call between New York, Barbados and Crawley. (I was in Barbados, but strangely my car was in Crawley).
Was told I wasn’t allowed to photograph an imaginary gorilla and used it as an excuse to show this trailer again:
Finally realised (but haven’t fully accepted) that NO ONE FUCKING CARES ABOUT SCRIPT FORMAT.
Confessed I frequently imagine I’m Steve McQueen.
And tried to work out what I wanted out of the SWF.
Are we all still here? Are you as bored as I am yet? Yes? Good, moving on.
Saw a trailer for Exposé.
Signed contracts and received feedback for the BIG IDEA. Wait, did I mention I sold the BIG IDEA without trying? No, not to the American Production company, but to a different American Production company. Actually, my friend sold it for me without my permission or knowledge. Suits me, as long as I don’t have to do any work.
Made some cats out of blue icing.
Talked about two adaptations and how they’d missed the fucking point. Since I’m now working on two adaptations I look forward to people throwing that blog back in my face.
The Dutch gave me some money, via the BBC.
So did Sweden, Denmark, Italy, America and Russia.
And, for reasons which escape me, babbled about furniture for far too long.
Is that it? Is that all I did in September? Was it a short month this year?
Hooray! This is nearly over and I can go and do something more interesting!
In October, I lost my rag with Microsoft.
Got suckered into thinking this was a real school orchestra:
Got stuck in a rant about designing cars and then bought one to cheer myself up.
And … that’s it? That’s fucking it? What the fuck was I doing in October?
Went to the Screenwriters’ Festival – fannyed around, didn’t really make the most of it and met a lot of nice people. Like Hayley McKenzie – she’s lovely. Oh, and I compared cock size with Simon Beaufoy. I’m not telling you who won.
Masturbating monkeys … I still don’t really want to talk about that.
Tried to sell my car via my blog. Bizarrely, I actually sold it in absolute darkness, during a storm and a power cut to two Eastern Europeans who paid cash and didn’t want to test drive or even inspect it.
Got all mellow and wibbly over stuff like this:
Wrote an open letter to directors.
Wrote an open letter to writers.
Wrote an open letter to producers.
Hmm … looks like I did more in November than October but still, come on! Have I really been too busy to blog?
Yes, I have as it happens …
Moaned a lot about writing constantly without actually writing any scripts.
Pointed out the target audience for a script is the producer and the director, not the people who pay to go and see a film. That’s the target audience for a film.
Spoke to a wall.
And that was it. That’s the entire fucking year.
I can’t help noticing the beginning of the year involved a lot more blogging than the end of the year. I’m sorry about that (unless you hate my blog, then I’m happy for you) but I have been exceedingly busy. I’m currently working on four feature scripts as well as keeping all the other plates spinning and blogging has become an expensive luxury.
January and February 2010 promise to be absolutely fucking mental and possibly completely impossible – but hopefully once this lot is out of the way, normal blogging service will be resumed.
And by normal service I mean me talking shit in extremely long-winded, ill-thought out and ill-advised posts.
Happy New Year to you all, see you in the next decade!
Or maybe the last year of this decade … depending on how you count it.
The Jobbing Scriptwriter 