Oh hello, it’s been a while. Haven’t the months been kind to you? I like what you’ve done to your hair/shoes/teeth.
And so on.
I moved house back in April and blogging seemed less important than unpacking and DIY. I’d like to say I’m back now, but I’m probably not. In the meantime though, here’s a quick video of me moving my office from the old house to the new.
Hopefully see you soon?
So that was 2015.
No flying cars, there were hoverboards … but they didn’t hover, they just set fire to people’s houses.
Behind the scenes I had a thrilling and exciting year … but I can’t really talk about it.
Not yet, anyway … but one day. soon.
This is what’s immensely frustrating about being a scriptwriter – all the exciting things happen (and often die) out of the spotlight. By the time I’m allowed to talk about things (because contracts have finally been negotiated and signed) it’s old news and any excitement is feigned.
Well, not feigned … diluted. Like having to remember how excited you were about a Christmas present you got last year when it’s since been broken by the kid next door.
But hey, it’s been a busy year with lots of stuff going on. On paper, it probably looks like not a lot … but that’s just the nature of the business. I’ve done a few uncredited rewrites, one of which has just been released … which is a yay I can’t publicly acknowledge.
But never mind. If I was in it for the applause, I wouldn’t be a writer.
The rest of 2015, the bits I did talk about, went something like this:
Apparently all I did in January was talk about 2014, which although it included Ghostbusters and a suspicious looking codpiece …
… seems a bit of a waste of a bloggy month.
Ah, hello groove I was wondering where you’d gone.
February was a proper blogging month full of blogs and … well, just blogs.
First off I tried to get you all to commit acts of phone-related mischief by adding ‘Okay Google’ phrases into scripts which would punish anyone who had their phone on in the cinema.
Did any of you do it? Please say someone did it.
Then I defended Footloose because … it’s fucking Footloose. Footloose is awesome.
After succcessfully re-educating the world about the joys of ’80s dance, I went on to prove the three act structure is fine – stop trying to reinvent the wheel, it works just fine.
And then I immediately explained why it doesn’t really work that well for a scriptwriter.
Aren’t you glad you’ve got me around to explain these things to you?
March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb …
I, on the other hand, came in with a thing about the joy of failing …
… stumbled into a confused ramble about clichés …
… mumbled something I can’t be bothered to reread about page thinking …
… compared Joss Whedon to HTC and rambled about how frustrating it must be to be either of them …
… and went out with an in-depth discussing about liars and lying for a living.
April is where things got interesting …
Just not at first. First I wondered if maybe you shouldn’t really be able to point to the midpoint in a film.
Then I used my blog to educate my producer as to why he shouldn’t get his hopes up about the first draft I was just about to deliver …
Just as it might have got interesting … I got angry about spoilers instead.
Then it got interesting. I had a phone call …
It was Danny Stack … and he didn’t want anything except a chat.
Where it got interesting was it kicked off a string of phone calls between me and … well, just people. Nice people. People like Calum Chalmers.
And it carried on with more nice people like Robin Bell, Andrew Mullins and Dominic Carver.
In fact, most of May was taken up with phone calls, broken only by me trying to figure out how to write the perfect cameo (it worked! I wish I could tell you how well it worked … but I can’t) and to celebrate my 10th wedding anniversary.
Oh and I went on a bit about competition and how much I enjoy it.
June continued the #PhonePhill-ing bringing delightful chats with Dee Chilton, Rosie Claverton and Rebecca Handley.
In fact, June was all phone calls apart from one post about being better and how we should all pursue knowledge as if it were a … thing. I don’t know. Insert your own simile, I’m tired.
July brought yet more telephone awesomeness …
This time in the shape of Mac McSharry, James Moran, Jay Sutherland and Terry Newman.
As well as yakking to people, I also (gasp!) worked over a weekend.
Apparently this is so shocking to me I felt the need to blog about it.
I also made an uncredited appearance as Iron Man at a little boy’s birthday party in a homemade, cardboard costume:
I enjoyed that.
In August I had a little panic about potentially offending someone I quite like by giving them script notes. In order to cover my anxiety, I wrote this post about the kind of script notes I get and how upsetting they can be … if you don’t take them in the spirit they’re intended.
Later on, I followed that post up by giving myself notes on an old script.
I also pretended a meal/drink with some friends was a sort of #PhonePhill episode … even though it wasn’t.
But it did lead to this picture, which is my favourite of the year:
I rounded off August by highlighting my inability to not focus on background detail.
Man, I did a lot of blogging in 2015. Too much, some might say.
In September I added one more thing to a script and felt the need to tell everyone.
Then I added a second thing and banged on about that too.
I did a thing about tokenism and … well, I don’t know what my point was there. Feel free to read it and let me know.
Oh, and then I added some nonsense to Jason Arnopp’s blog post about hands.
I kicked off October by contrasting Rose Tyler with Jurassic Park … which, you know, is clearly two different things and needs a blog explaining why.
And then … the future arrived!
I meant to take a photo of myself with my trousers on inside out … but I didn’t. Possibly because I don’t think I wore any in October.
Instead of wearing trousers, I watched some videos about deleted scenes from all three Star Wars films:
I say three because I’m a prequel denier. At that point I was adamant there were only three Star Wars films. Now, of course, there’s been another half of a Star Wars film.
Hopefully we’ll find out in a couple of years whether or not any of it makes sense.
Just when you thought I’d forgotten about it, another #PhonePhill – this time with William Gallagher. He’s written a book, you know. Bits of it are about me.
Inspired by the resurgence of telephonic communication, I immediately didn’t do it again and instead waffled on about River Theory …
Expressed my love for the Verity podcast …
And raved on and on and on about this speech from Doctor Who:
Oh, and I found this photo of a Burt Reynolds crab.
Which brings us to now. All I did in December was a handful of short blogs about other people’s stuff. Things like:
Arnopp’s patreon campaign, the UK Scriptwriter’s Handbook and the Heaven Sent/Hell Bent scripts.
There were meant to be more, but there wasn’t.
I didn’t even wish you a merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas.
There, I did it.
And so, with this year nearly spent, all eyes turn to the next one.
Hopefully it’ll include at least one blog about my new office:
And loads and loads about my next script to be produced:
Happy New Year, let’s chat soon.
WARNING!
CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR
SAVING MR BANKS
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
AND
THE SIXTH SENSE
MIND YOU, IF YOU’VE READ THIS WARNING THEN YOU’VE ALREADY SPOILERED SAVING MR BANKS
Too many cooks may spoil the broth, but too much information definitely spoilers the movie.
For me, at least.
I’ve long been bamboozled by the level of spoilers in soap operas. I can’t understand why people want to know what’s happening in an episode before they’ve seen it.
“This is the one where so and so finds out thingamajig is her dad!”
As far as I can tell that’s every episode of every soap ever, but why would you want to know that before you watch it? Why is that fun? Why would you want to know anything about an episode of your favourite show before you’ve seen it?
Same goes for films. Why do people spend the year before a film is released dissecting trailers in the hope of finding out what the story is about? Why do people hunt down leaked screenplays and set images?
Isn’t half the fun of seeing a movie being surprised?
Or is that just me?
Some films don’t wait for their audience to hunt down spoilers, they just spoiler themselves right off the bat.
The piece de resistance when it comes to spoilers has to be Saving Mr Banks – never before has a film been so comprehensively spoilered by its own title.
How much more amazing would that film have been if you didn’t know P L Travers’ objections were all about Saving Mr Banks? Imagine what a revelation it would have been to have got to the Walt Disney speech where he figures it out and have a light bulb click on in your own head.
I don’t even know if I’d have linked the flashbacks to P L Travers if I’d hadn’t read the title of the film.
But no, they put the twist in the title of the film. That’s like calling “The Empire Strikes Back”, “Vader is Luke’s Dad!”.
And just in case you didn’t get it from the title, they put the revelation scene in the fucking trailer. Right in there. Front and centre. Who made that decision? And why?
Imagine that person or persons cutting a trailer for The Sixth Sense. Would that film have been better or worse if it had a shot of Bruce Willis staring at the camera and saying “I’m dead, aren’t I?” in the trailer?
I’m voting worse, you may beg to differ.
“Let’s not call it “The Sixth Sense”, let’s call it “Kid Counseled by Dead Guy” that would be sooooooooo coooooooooool.”
“It’s about Saving Mr Banks, isn’t it?” For fuck’s sake – why was that line in the trailer? Why was anything from that late in the film in the trailer?
All I want in the trailer is the set up and maybe a montage-y thing summing up the first half of the second act. I want it to be a pictorial version of the blurb on the back of a DVD.
Or BluRay, if you want to be fancy.
“This is a story about someone who wants something but can’t get it because of reasons.” Thanks very much, that sounds interesting, I’ll go and see that.
“This is a story about someone who wants something but can’t get it because of reasons and there’s this really cool bit at the end where you realise everyone has escaped from his imagination.”
No! Noooooooooooooo! Fucking NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Stop spoilering films for me! Stop spoilering them in trailers and posters and especially stop spoilering them for me on Facebook, at great length, and then tagging me in the post.
I don’t want to know. Honestly, I don’t. I’ll unfriend you. Seriously, I’ll fucking do it.
Well, okay, I won’t do it because I’m vaguely interested in your amusing cat stories and the outside chance you might post a photo of yourself in your pants … but, come on! Don’t spoiler the film for me.
Hell, don’t spoiler the film for yourself.
And trailer makers, just fucking don’t.
In general.
Please?
I love technology. I love gadgets. I love how they make simple things slightly more complicated but cooler. In particular, I love mobile phones.
People who know me well find that amusing because of my outspoken hatred of mobiles for many, many years. I hated them. I found them intrusive and unnecessary and socially destructive … but, as I often say, if you’re going to change your mind, change it properly.
The best way to change your mind isn’t by increments, it’s by swerving wildly from one extreme to the other.
Probably.
To be fair though, the point at which I changed my mind coincided with the point at which phones stopped being just phones and became cameras and music players and Internet portals.
Nowadays I use my phone for emails, for satnav, for web browsing, as a remote control for the telly (and our lounge lights), as a camera (a 3D-ish camera, even!), for messaging and as a calendar … but rarely for phone calls. When it rings, I’m surprised – what the hell is that noise?
From a scriptwriting point of view, I still hate mobile phones. I hate how they can deflate dramatic situations – why is he running across town? Why doesn’t he just phone her? Why doesn’t she just google how to pick the lock? How come all these people keep running into trouble in areas with no phone signal?
I also hate sitting in cinemas while people are checking their phones. Presumably they’ve paid to be there, why aren’t they watching the film? And if they haven’t paid to be there, I fucking have! Turn it off!
Or maybe don’t?
Maybe it’s time to use this technology for mischief?
Apparently 60% of smartphone users own an Android device. If you think that’s incorrect and believe close to 80 or 90% of people have iPhones then you probably work in media of some description because, for some reason, everyone in media has an iPhone.
You may choose to believe that’s because they’re the best phones on the market or because media-folk are unusually susceptible to marketing, depending on your point of view. Neither of which are probably correct.
Anyway, according to official(ish) figures, 60-odd percent of smartphones are Android and (as far as I’m aware) all Android smartphones can run Google Now and a significant proportion of them are always listening for the words “Okay Google”.
For those of you who don’t have an Android phone (which given the media-focus of this blog is probably everyone reading this), Google Now is the Android equivalent of Siri, but a bit more intrusive and Big Brother-ish. It watches you, it collects information, it makes frighteningly accurate suggestions about things you might want to do, visit or be interested in and … it listens.
“Okay Google” is the activation phrase. Say it while the screen is on^ and the phone responds to any command you give it. No buttons need pressing, no other action is required.*
It occurs to me that it’s our civic duty as scriptwriters to abuse this technology wherever possible.
I hereby call upon all our writers worldwide to include the phrase “Okay Google” in every film from now on … and follow it with something embarrassing and/or annoying.
Feel free to be as creative as possible here.
“I understand you! I just disagree, okay? Google it, call mum and see if she gives a fuck, because I fucking don’t.”
At which point, a small proportion of people watching the film will find their phones dialing their mothers. The ‘it’ probably won’t register since there is a slight lag between saying the phrase and the phone activating.
Why not call a henchman ‘Google’ because he’s dead clever and knows how to find all sorts of shit. Then you can crowbar in phrases like:
“Enough’s enough, okay? Google, send John a message, I can see you … want to hurt him.”
If you make the pause between ‘you’ and ‘want’ big enough then a small percentage of the world’s Johns will get a text saying “I can see you.”
Or why not include a phrase like … butt plug? The phone will search for anything it doesn’t recognise as a command. Best case scenario, it will read out the Wiki definition of ‘butt plug’ to everyone in the cinema. Worst case, Google Now will spam the fuck out of them with ads and articles for butt plugs forever more.
I think the potential here is limitless. It’s our civic duty to do this. If we work together we can really, really annoy a small handful of people worldwide … which, when I put it like that sounds slightly less appealing.
Plus … I’m not really sure it would work.
Still, it would amuse me and sometimes that’s all that matters.
—————————————————————————————–
^ I’ve just found out some Samsungs do this with the screen off, which is even better. I guess other phones must do it too?
* I think Siri does it too, but I’ve no idea what the activation phrase is. “Hello Siri” maybe? I think I heard that somewhere … kind of hard to get into a script. Cortana … no idea. Sorry.
Happy October!
Is it October yet? If it’s not we must be nearly there, surely? I have a plan for October, even if I’m not 100% certain when it begins. It’s a plan with lots of parts. It’s quite a good plan. I think.
Or maybe it isn’t? I don’t know.
Two sets of circumstances have occurred to lead me to this plan:
1) Both of the scripts I’ve been working on are … well, if not finished then currently in a good place. One’s going out to actors (in a really, really good way), the other is in the hands of my management. Both are awaiting the next phase, whatever that may be.
2) It’s nearly Halloween.
These two things form the crux of my October-Plan.
1) Write a new script. One for me. Something I want to write.
2) Make a Halloween costume.
Number 1) is something I haven’t managed for a long time … despite threatening to do it every six months or so. Something always comes up, but this time I’m pretty certain I’ve actually got the time to do it.
Number 2) … well, I’ve been picking at it for a while and need one last push to get it finished. You see, a couple of months back a mate of mine was going to an 80s’ fancy dress party and decided to go as a Ghostbuster – I offered to make the proton pack for him, for I like making stuff.
Nothing fancy. It had to be cheap, but look vaguely like the real deal. It should be recognisable, if nothing else.
This was the result.
Made from Tupperware and assorted knick-knacks which were hiding in my shed (if anyone knows why I had all that tubing, I’d love to know) it’s lit with a few Poundshop lights and decorated with labels found at the frankly awesome GBFans.com.
The switches work. It lights up. It fires. It does the job.
But I can’t help thinking I could have done better.
Plus … I want one. I’ve always wanted one.
And now’s my chance! If I make my own, we can go trick-or-treating with the kids! Last year I went as Batman … there’s at least one kid who thinks he met the real deal.
This year … Ghostbusters all the way!
This decision was made a few months back and I’ve since been fiddling with various bits of costume. I wanted to make sure I had a fairly accurate one and, like I say, I just like making props.
I started out with the Belt Gizmo. In 1984 this was the insides of a calculator stuck to the Ghostbusters’ belts to make them look all science-y. It didn’t do anything and is never referred to in the film, but I wanted mine to actually do something … so mine detects ghosts:
Next up was the Ecto-Goggles, as modeled here by Dan Ackroyd:
Again, I felt mine should do something so I made them with a night-vision mode:
An infra-red mode:
And Slimer-vision:
After that I got a bit cocky and made the PKE Meter out of a clothes brush:
I should probably point out none of these are my original ideas – I’ve copied them extensively from various Internet sources.
Yesterday (depending on when I actually post this) I turned these craptastic 80s toys:
… into replicas of the Motorola MT500s used by the boys in grey themselves (depsite them actually wearing a kind of beige colour).
I’ve got a couple of bits and bobs left to do, but mainly I’ve got to build the proton pack … which has to be better than last time. The last one lit up. This one has to light up and make noises and shake when it fires and possibly vent smoke.
That would be nice.
And I won’t be alone. Alice will be joining in:
So that’s my October planned. Hopefully I’ll finish both by the end of the month by following this schedule:
Tuesday to Friday: off to the Secret Writing Island for some serious, uninterrupted, head down scripting.
Saturday and Sunday daytime: family time.
Saturday and Sunday evening and all day Monday (aside from the odd bit of kung fu in the evenings): build an unlicenced nuclear accelerator.
Anyone who’s interested in seeing my progress (on both projects), there’ll be regular updates here.
Anyone who isn’t … come back in November, I’m sure I’ll be back on ranty-sweary form by then.
October or not, the work starts now.
Is there an emoticon for *excited cackle* or *gleeful hand rub*? If not, please imagine one in this space:
Which is better?
Do they mean the same thing?
Can I arbitrarily choose one over the other?
Does it actually matter?
Well … yes, it does. The knock on effect of one over the other is an entire page of script and several hours more work.
By the way, this post is really fucking whiny. If you’re having a good day, don’t bother reading this – it’s all a bit pointless.
There’s that odd point in a script’s life where everyone loves it. It’s done. We’ve spent months heading down numerous blind alleys and years tweaking it as new people come and go from the project and opportunities rise and fall.
Yes, if it goes into production then there’ll be continuous fire-fighting as we try to match the budget or cope with the usual strops, disasters, incompetence, death and just general misfortune … but for now, the script is as good as it’s going to get.
Except for that one lone voice, somewhere in the production tangle, who decides the script is too long. It needs to be under so many pages. Needs to be.
Personally, I’ve never met the people who say this because it always come to me through a third party – the pronouncement comes down from on high and suddenly the script needs to be trimmed.
My first drafts are always under 110 pages (well, nearly always … except when they’re not) because I control exactly what I’m putting in there. Second drafts are usually shorter because I hate everything I put in the first draft. Third draft onwards stuff keeps getting added – we need this scene and we want this actor who wants to do this and we’ve got this location which we MUST use and someone’s lent us a Ferrari so we need that in there somewhere. Oh and we need a sex scene. Preferably in the Ferrari … but with a towel down.
And so on.
The script gets longer for a bit, then it gets shorter for a bit and finally it balances out somewhere in the mid hundred-and-teens.
Then the “under x number of pages” bomb gets dropped. As it always does, even when the script is already lean and everyone agrees that everything in the script is absolutely essential to the story.
Obviously half of the absolutely essential stuff won’t get filmed because the actors on the day will have a ‘better’ idea, but at the moment it all seems essential.
There’s just too much essential stuff, can I fix it?
I hate this point in the script, it’s a fucking moronic request because I’m not going to make it shorter by cutting anything expensive or time-consuming … I’m going to make it shorter by cheating.
This script will magically lose five to ten pages without actually losing anything worthwhile. It won’t be cheaper to make or quicker to film, it will be exactly the same film … just have less pages.
That’s why it’s fucking moronic.
I don’t blame anyone, I’m not calling anyone a fucking moron … I’m just pointing out the accepted wisdom on what page count actually means in terms of screentime/budget really just means a day or two of pointless fiddling for me.
This always felt impossible when I first started – how can you trim five to ten pages from a script without changing it?
Well, now I can. I’m sure everyone has their own tricks, but basically I just try to kill all the widows and orphans.
Get rid of them. Every single fucking one. No block of dialogue nor piece of action can have even one word slipping onto the next line. I hate doing this with dialogue, so I’ll do it with action first – if that’s not enough, then I go back through with a dialogue pass.
Frequently I can get away with just tweaking the right-hand margin by one character. Weirdly, if I do this to the whole script, say move the global dialogue margin one space to the right … then it’s immediately noticeable. It all just looks wrong and people can tell I’ve cheated.
One of the first things I do when I get a Final Draft script from someone else is put the margins back to where they should be so I can see how long the script actually is. But one space here and there, now and then … it’s less noticeable. Practically undetectable in fact. Two spaces stand out a mile, one space … yeah, fine.
If I’ve used an ellipsis to end dialogue or action then I’m not so bothered – that can run three or four spaces out and it’s not really a problem. To me. Other opinions are available.
If that’s not enough (and it’s surprising how much space I can reclaim) then I might have to delete a word or two or comb through the thesaurus for a similar word which is one or two characters shorter.
I try to get the first line (of whatever, dialogue, action … sometimes even scene headings) of page 2 onto page 1. There’s always a way, somehow. Then I do the same for the first line of page 3 (onto page 2, not page 1 – that would be fucking weird) and so on. Every page HAS to have the first line on the preceding page.
Except when it’s impossible. Then I don’t bother.
Sadly, among the first casualties are the bits which make reading the script easier. Passages like:
He shoots …
Misses.
She shoots …
Misses.
Reload! Reload! Hurry the fuck up! Reload!
She drops her powder – oh shit.
Triumphant, he snaps his pistol closed, takes careful aim …
… sneers …
… and …
… the escaped Bolivian rhino smashes through the wall, charges straight over him and tramples him into strawberry jam.
Become:
He shoots … Misses.
She shoots … Misses.
Reload! Reload! Hurry the fuck up! Reload!
She drops her powder – oh shit!
Triumphant, he snaps his pistol closed, takes careful aim … sneers … and … the escaped Bolivian rhino smashes through the wall, charges straight over him and tramples him into strawberry jam.
Or maybe:
He shoots … Misses. She shoots … Misses.
Reload! Reload! Hurry the fuck up! Reload!
She drops her powder. He snaps his pistol closed, takes careful aim … sneers … and … the escaped Bolivian rhino smashes through the wall, charges straight over him and tramples him into a gooey mess.
Or in extreme cases.
They shoot, miss and scramble to reload. She drops her powder. He snaps his pistol closed, aims … and is flattened by a charging rhino.
Now the last sentence is probably better being shorter. The spacing of the first bits just makes it all a bit worse. And that’s my problem with this process – I’m not making it cheaper or more tightly written, I’m just making it a little bit worse for no real reason.
Because of the way Final Draft (and probably other programs) clumps action or dialogue together, a small change on page 1 can make a HUGE change at the end of the script. In my last script, saving one line on page 1 dragged an action block up from page 2 which knocked on all the way through the script until it moved ALL of page 106 onto page 105. All of it. An entire page of action and dialogue moved to the requisite 105 pages by changing four words:
State of the Art into Hi-Tech.
Saving those nine characters cuts off an entire page of script. Not just one line which had spilled onto page 106, but an entire pageful of text.
And everyone’s happy.
Everyone except me.
Because I like the phrase STATE OF THE ART more than I like the phrase HI-TECH. Same all the way through – I originally chose all those words and pacing for a reason. The script is now shorter, but it reads worse as a result.
Does it matter?
Maybe. Maybe the short, truncated rhythm will put readers off. Maybe it won’t. In the end, if the film gets made, no one will ever know … but, damn it, the script is my art form. It’s what I produce. The film is my work filtered through the minds of a small army of creatives. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. But the script … that’s mine and I’m forced to make it (slightly) worse to please people who think the page count is somehow important. Which it isn’t.
Not really.
But the myth persists and as long as people believe it, I’ll continue to spend hours staring at every page in the vague hope I can delete a preposition or remove a punctuation mark without removing all meaning.
Writing – occasionally it’s hard work.
I tend to go through little phases with my writing. Certain stylistic things which, for some reason, catch my fancy and make their way into most of my scripts during a certain, brief window of time … before being jettisoned from my tool box like a pair of *insert whatever style of jeans are currently unfashionable here*.#
Currently, I seem to be rather enamoured with intercutting between two people talking to the same third person in the same room at different times.
No, I don’t know why either. I just am.
The problem with that is: it’s fucking difficult to format properly.
I guess the accepted way would be something like this:
INT. INTERROGATION ROOM - DAY
DETECTIVE CINDY questions MAVIS.
CINDY
Come on, Mavis, we've got you bang to
rights and no mistake.
MAVIS
Oh lordy, lordy.
INTERCUT:
INT. INTERROGATION ROOM - DAY
The same room, hours later. Cindy interviews REGINA.
REGINA
Fuck you copper, I ain't telling you
nothing.
CINDY
The other woman, the one in the tutu, she
told us everything.
MAVIS
Oh lordy, lordy.
CINDY
You said that.
REGINA
Eat my shit, pig?
CINDY
Yeah, and that.
REGINA
What about-- ?
CINDY
Look, can we just assume you've used every
cliché under the sun and just get on with
the confessing?
MAVIS
Oh lordy, lordy?
CINDY
Once more! Just once! And my fist is going
right up your ...
And so on.
The problem with that example, is it’s really hard to tell who Cindy’s talking to. I mean, this line:
CINDY
The other woman, the one in the tutu, she
told us everything.
Is that said to Mavis or Regina? How about the rest of Cindy’s lines? Who is she talking to?
Another way of writing this might be:
INT. INTERROGATION ROOM - DAY
DETECTIVE CINDY questions MAVIS.
CINDY
Come on, Mavis, we've got you bang to
rights and no mistake.
MAVIS
Oh lordy, lordy.
INTERCUT:
INT. INTERROGATION ROOM - DAY
The same room, hours later. Cindy interviews REGINA.
REGINA
Fuck you copper, I ain't telling you
nothing.
CINDY AND MAVIS
CINDY
The other woman, the one in the tutu, she
told us everything.
MAVIS
Oh lordy, lordy.
CINDY
You said that.
CINDY AND REGINA
REGINA
Eat my shit, pig?
CINDY
Yeah, and that.
REGINA
What about-- ?
CINDY AND MAVIS
CINDY
Look, can we just assume you've used every
cliché under the sun and just get on with
the confessing?
MAVIS
Oh lordy, lordy?
CINDY AND REGINA
CINDY
Once more! Just once! And my fist is going
right up your ...
Yuck.
I don’t know about you, but I find that fucking horrible.
I also have a weird thing about scene headings without an action line underneath it. Don’t know why, I just do. But writing “Cindy interviews Mavis”, “Cindy interrogates Mavis”, “Cindy’s still getting fucking nowhere with Mavis” is even worse.
So, recently (and I know this is slightly less than interesting; but I’ve started now and am determined to finish regardless) I’ve been bolding the intercut scenes. Rather like this:
INT. INTERROGATION ROOM - DAY
DETECTIVE CINDY questions MAVIS.
CINDY
Come on, Mavis, we've got you bang to
rights and no mistake.
MAVIS
Oh lordy, lordy.
INTERCUT:
INT. INTERROGATION ROOM - DAY
The same room, hours later. Cindy interviews REGINA.
REGINA
Fuck you copper, I ain't telling you
nothing.
CINDY
The other woman, the one in the tutu, she
told us everything.
MAVIS
Oh lordy, lordy.
CINDY
You said that.
REGINA
Eat my shit, pig?
CINDY
Yeah, and that.
REGINA
What about-- ?
CINDY
Look, can we just assume you've used every
cliché under the sun and just get on with
the confessing?
MAVIS
Oh lordy, lordy?
CINDY
Once more! Just once! And my fist is going
right up your ...
Which I feel reads much better. Okay, it’s shit; but that’s beside the point. You may disagree, but please don’t – it unsettles my ego.
I’ve also started doing it for bits of a scene which occur away from the main characters. So, for instance:
EXT. ROOFTOP - DAY
Sam squeals with fear, points at the alley below. Bemused,
Wilf peers over the edge - what the hell is Sam pointing at?
There's nothing there but:
Bins, a cat, a used condom.
WILF
What? What is it?
Sam shrieks with fear, points even more pointedly:
The cat chokes on one of the condoms. There's a bit of
newspaper meandering around the alley.
WILF
What? Use your words, goddamn it!
Point. Point. Shriek. Point:
A cat. A condom. A newspaper. A Burmese Zombie Ninja.
Nothing unusual!
WILF
Seriously, just spit it out or my fist
is going right up your ...
And so on.
I don’t know if this sort of thing is allowed or not, but it works for me and fuck you, it’s my script+.
Oh and apparently I now end every scene with the threat of intimate cavity violence.
—————————————————————————————————————-
# At fourteen I reached breaking point with fashion and decided it could fuck off. Fashion means looking like a twat but not realising it until a year later. Far better to be stylish than fashionable I thought. Never quite managed it, but the thought was there.
I don’t know about you, but I’m so bored with fashion cycling endlessly through the 60s, 70s and 80s (the 90s being a brief pause before we all went back to the 60s). Can’t we have something different? I vote for Elizabethan gear to come back into fashion: tights, codpiece and a fuck-off ruff – that would be awesome.
+ Unless you’ve paid me for it, then technically it’s your script. But still fuck you. I have my own funky style, that’s why you hired me and … what’s that? Difficult? Me? You’re never going to hire me again? Oh … well. Yes. Um … uoy kcuf (that’s me taking it back).
I’m never quite sure what to do with minor characters. Or rather, I know what to do with them, but not what to call them.
Conventional wisdom is to just call them Thug #1 or Florist #17 (which is a lot of florists). The problem with conventional wisdom is not everyone agrees and, frankly, I’m one of them. Keeping track of three or four Thugs in an action sequence is really difficult. Okay, so they don’t all have to talk and you can sometimes get away with:
Bob shoots three THUGS in the head. *
But what about when you have six thugs who split into teams of two? What if you have three heroes running around dealing with them on different floors of the same building? And then the Thug-teams meet back up and join together?
Sure, you can still call them THUG(S) #1 – 6 but it’s a bit of a dull read.
Wiser conventional wisdom says give them all an adjective as a name: SKINNY THUG, FAT THUG, STUPID THUG, TRANSVESTITE THUG … and so on.
That works well … except when it doesn’t.
Some scripts have lots of Vox Pops from one-line characters. Or have the protagonist meeting small groups of near-identical speaking characters at regular intervals like TAKEN, for example. I’ve not made the slightest effort to find the script for TAKEN, but I can imagine running out of adjectives towards the end of the script CREPUSCULAR BADDIE, HOMOGENEOUS BADDIE, TUTU-WEARING BADDIE …
Similarly, listing them up to BADDIE #113 would be quite wearing.
Then you get the producers (usually the micro-budget ones) who want all the characters to have names, citing the logic that it’s easier to get a slightly better actor to agree to a low-paid cameo if they’re playing CAESAR BING as opposed to FACELESS NOBODY #7.
This is an opinion which varies from production to production and while I don’t think it’s terrible advice, some producers think it’s nonsense and just panic when they generate a cast list and see forty-odd named characters.
Personally, I think it’s best not to do this until you know that’s what this particular producer wants. Especially if you have a lot of people getting beaten up or shouting during the first few pages – it’s just confusing and scares readers who don’t know which names they have to remember. I’d rather only the major characters were named in the first ten pages or so, but that might just be me.
When a producer does insist every character is named, then I find I still have the issue of keeping track of who’s who. SEBASTIAN on page 93 – did we meet him on page 4? No, that CASPIAN. Or was it a talking SEABASS? Oh look, I’ve lost interest.
Was GERALD one of the biker gang or one of the scientists? They’ve been arguing for several scenes now and I’m beginning to lose the will to care.
Sometimes I experiment with different naming systems. If someone gets into trouble with a small gang of ROWDY YOUTHS … I might give them names which belong together, like FANCY, SPOOK, CHOO-CHOO, BENNY and BRAIN. Or HERCULES, SHIRO and LEE. Or SCOTT, ALAN, VIRGIL, GORDON and … um … BRIAN? WAYNE? MAYNARD? Fuck, can’t remember. Oh dear.
Point is, these names only belong together if you’re of a certain age and wasted too many Saturday mornings in front of the telly.
LAUREL and HARDY might be good names for two bumbling security guards … unless the reader is in their early twenties and has no idea who Laurel and Hardy were.
“Oh, those two guys from that black and white poster?”
Fucking criminal, I know – but nobody’s famous forever.
Other times I’ve tried giving a group of DISPOSABLE MERCENARIES colours for names: RED, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE … That seemed to work quite well during a particularly convoluted fight scene.
Very recently, I had a multitude of characters commenting on the action to camera, like an expanded Internet-based Greek chorus. We occasionally came back to the same person, but the number of them keeps growing. I tried calling them by their job title – but most of them weren’t in situations where their job was easily recognisable from their clothes/backgrounds – unlike, say, PARAMEDIC or NAZI.
So I tried giving all the characters an adjective-based name … but that wasn’t really working either because there were too many of them.
Then, after a dressing down from a frustrated producer on a different project who thought “giving all of the minor characters proper names is just standard and why the fuck aren’t you doing it?”, I panicked and rewrote every script I was working on … but this one just didn’t lend itself to that kind of thing. If you call the Paramedic STEVE, then you have to include an action line explaining he’s a paramedic, whereas a PARAMEDIC can just start talking.
Then I had a brain wave – why not give every character an alliterative name? NURSE NERYS, DOCTOR DAN, RENE THE RETRO-PHRENOLOGIST?
Yes! This was genius! Why hadn’t I thought of this before?
Because it’s fucking stupid, that’s why.
Never, ever do this.
Unless you want to. Because, obviously, rule number one is never, ever take advice from me.
I still haven’t found a solution I’m happy with. Or perhaps I just still haven’t found a solution which works every time. I’m searching for the Grand Unified Theory of Minor Character Naming … but perhaps there isn’t one?
Perhaps it’s something I should just review on a script by script basis?
Or perhaps I’m just writing this because I’m avoiding writing something useful and feel better knowing you’ve just wasted a significant chunk of your day too?
Yes, that sounds more likely.
—————————————————————————————-
* With one bullet? Or one after the other with three bullets? This is a terrible action line. Never put this line in a script.
Oh come on! That was never a year!
Really? Did we have all the months? Does everyone remember having all the months? We must have skimped on one of the summer months. July? Anyone remember there being a July in 2013?
The rate time’s passing is getting ridiculous.
On the plus side, if it’s 2014 tomorrow, then it means we only have one more year until hoverboards and flying cars!
And yes, they are both on my future Christmas list.
So how was your 2013? Was it good? Did you enjoy it? All of it? Even the July which I’m sure the Government have covertly pinched?
Mine, since you’re doubtlessly asking, went something like this:
I started the year by getting a bit excited about January. No, I have no idea why either.
Then, inspired by this post by Debbie Moon, I got a bit ranty about jealousy.
And I finished off the month by rambling on a bit about HMV maybe shutting down.
Which it didn’t.
The essence of my argument was it would be a shame if HMV went bust because the immediate next wave of filmmakers would never know the elation of walking into a shop and buying a copy of your own DVD. HMV is one of the last outlets who stock pretty much any low budget films. If they went, the only shelf space would be in supermarkets and they are a bit funny about what films they’ll sell.
Now, okay, DVDs (or Blu-Rays, if you prefer) will ultimately go away and people will feel giddy and excited about something else.
But a year later, DVDs are still here (as is HMV) and they’re still exciting. I don’t know about you, but I have a hierarchy of film-love. Only my absolute favourites get bought on DVD. Films I really enjoy … I probably won’t bother to buy. I might watch it several times on TV or pay to stream something … but only my absolute bestest films get bought.
Unless I know the writer and want to annoy/promote them.
Having a film produced is exciting. Attending the première is more exciting. Seeing it in released in the cinemas is even more exciting still. But holding a physical copy in your hand, one you can put on the shelf or lend to people or just look at and smile … that’s the best bit.
For me.
Because that, in a small way, puts the thing I wrote on a similar footing to all the other films I love. Even when I fucking hate the actual film itself.
I began February by busting the shit out of the motivation, willpower and confidence conspiracy myth bullshit.
Or possibly by just ranting aimlessly about those imaginary things. One of the two.
I finished off the month by loving Wreck-It Ralph. A lot.
At least I was right about that.
Was that it? Hmm … didn’t blog much in February, did I? Probably because I gave up chocolate, biscuits, sweets, crisps and cake in a vague effort to stop looking like a fucking hippo. That kind of thing is bound to make someone less bloggy.
I began March by explaining, politely, that they don’t fucking love your script in Cannes – no matter what they may have said. If they loved it, they would have bought it. Did they buy it?
No. Then they didn’t love it.
Yes, you can still pay me to re-write it.
I also blogged about exercise, P90X and biscuits – somehow finding it appropriate to insert myself into Death in Paradise wielding a spoon.
No, I have no idea why either.
That was a weird thing to do. Although, the good news is I still have that spoon. In a lovely bit of serendipity, I stole it from the Jamaican hotel which initially inspired Death in Paradise. It’s now my emergency back up spoon.
Then I wrote a blog about Other People’s Ideas and how hard they are to write. For some reason I equated it to making a human being and having too many ears.
Seriously, never give up biscuits. It’s just not worth it.
APRIL
Wait … what the fuck? THERE WAS NO APRIL! I fucking knew we hadn’t had a full year! Here’s the proof …
Or rather, here isn’t the proof because April never fucking existed. It can’t have existed or I would have blogged about it.
You fuckers stole my April!
I’m a bit cross about that.
All I did in May was give away a really cool book which, despite the cover, has no information in it about how to get laid by writing scripts.
What a rotten swizz.
Apparently, some insanely exciting things were happening in June … but I have no idea what they might have been.
My laptop had a bit of an accident. That was annoying.
But I fixed it. Sort of.
What else happened?
Ooh, I wrote some stuff and edited some stuff and had some meetings and all sort of proper writing stuff. That was exciting.
I then went on to promote a writing development scheme thingy.
What was exceptionally exciting about that is a writer friend of mine later told me she’d applied and been accepted onto the course – something she never would have known existed if I hadn’t mentioned it.
That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. I love being vaguely useful occasionally.
Buoyed on by that, I promoted some free stuff. Which probably isn’t free any more, so … don’t bother clicking that link.
Assuming anyone’s still reading and is even clicking anything. Are you?
Really?
Why? Go do something more fun.
Oh, no, wait! This next post was my most popular post of the year. Still is.
I think.
MAN OF STEEL – 3 THINGS I TRY NOT TO PUT IN A SCRIPT
July was simple. All I did in July was reveal the meaning of life and the meaning of illegal.
I got both of them completely and utterly right too.
Because I’m awesome.
I totally rocked July.
AUGUST
I’m getting bored now. Anyone else getting bored?
August! What did I do in August?
NOTHING!
There was no August either.
Wait a minute … no April? No August? No months beginning with the letter A?
Hmm …
That video would probably be more relevant if it was actually about the letter A.
There was a September! Since September doesn’t begin with the letter A, this completely proves my theory.
It fucking does!
In September I went to see Monsters University.
Then I gave you writer-based fashion advice.
And I rounded out the month by getting upset about a wine glass.
Jesus.
In October I had a letter from Linda Aronson, which was far politer than I deserved.
Then I wrote the first two parts of my fantastically successful Notes from the Other Side series; which was about my inept fumblings as a script editor for PERSONA.
They were called Part One and Part Two. I’m original like that, I am. I was the first person ever to think of calling something part one and part two.
I’m really bored with this now. I’ve no idea why I do this every year, I mean what is the fucking point? Does anyone read this far? I will send a five pound note to the first person who quotes these three words in the comments:
Fresnel
Turpentine
Jamais vu
That’s a serious offer. I’ll send you a proper five pound note through the proper mail and everything if you’re the first person to copy and paste those three words into a comment.
And 12p to the first person who can use them in a sentence.
And now that I’ve (hopefully) successfully proved no one’s reading any more … on with November.
First up, Part Three of the Notes from the Other Side trilogy. I broke boundaries here by calling the third part Part Three. I also got a bit ranty about it all.
Sorry.
Especially to the person I referred to as a fucking twat; but to be fair. You were.
Or I was.
One of the two.
Possibly both.
Then I talked about tailoring. It was in relation to an upcoming meeting … at which everyone behaved in almost exactly the way I hoped they wouldn’t.
For some reason I then had a pop at actors who don’t afford my scripts the same respect as Shakespeare’s.
No, seriously. I can only assume I was heavily medicated at the time.
And I finished the month by gushing about my love for a man. Well, eleven men. Twelve, as it turned out. Thirteen now.
If you’re feeling particularly geeky, you can spot seven differences between this photo and the one uploaded in November. Although, I warn you now imaginary person who’s never going to fucking bother doing this … number four is almost impossible to spot.
I began December by delivering my verdict of The Day of the Doctor … I fucking loved it. I know I fucking loved it because I wrote “I fucking loved it.”
You can’t argue with that kind of proof.
Then I decided to tattoo something on my forehead so I wouldn’t forget it. This is the worst possible way of remembering stuff … mainly because it’s really fucking hard to see your own forehead.
Don’t do this. Seriously, it’s silly.
And I finished off the year with a series of Christmas crackers – little bloglet mentions of things I either think are cool or just felt like mentioning:
And that was pretty much it in blogging terms.
Behind the scenes, this was an interesting year. It’s the first year for nearly a decade I haven’t had anything produced or released … and yet I probably earnt more this year than any previous year to date.
Apparently a writer can earn more money by not getting films made than by actually getting involved in all that icky and annoying shooting business.
Who knew?
At the beginning of the year, I made a conscious decision to write something for myself. Something I really, really wanted to write which I would then try to sell.
That didn’t happen.
Instead, I worked almost continuously on other people’s ideas with varying degrees of success.
I had some lovely meetings with some lovely people and at least one of them I didn’t completely screw up.
I got paid to write stuff I enjoyed writing for people who actually cared about the script and wanted to get it right … as opposed to caring about the shooting date (tomorrow) and wanting to get it finished … even if ‘finished’ means ‘nobody fucking cares how good it is, we just need some words’.
As an added extra bonus, a producer sent one of my scripts to a director whose work I really, really admire. I’ve no idea if that guy actually liked the script or not. Probably not, but he wanted to read it and therefore at least now knows who I am.
I’m the guy who’s script he (probably) didn’t like.
Unless he hasn’t read it yet. Which is entirely possible and extremely likely.
2014 already has some super cool awesome stuff lined up with a couple of projects lining up on the starting blocks and even a few lumbering asthmatically towards the final set of hurdles.
Beyond which are another set of even higher hurdles, because that’s what the whole writing gig’s about.
So bring it on 2014, do your worst!
Just nicely.
Please?
I was listening to the Nerdist Writers’ Panel Comics Edition Podcast thing the other day.
You know, the other day. Not this day, but the other one.
If you haven’t heard it, you really should. It’s great. Anyway, Ashley Miller was talking about writing Thor (the movie), about sitting with Kenneth Branagh and how Kenneth said he had spent twenty years trying to understand the soliloquy in Hamlet.
And it got me thinking.
First off, I was thinking about the time I nearly accidentally killed Kenneth Branagh one day in Bath.
The town, not the tub.
He parked his car on double yellows and leapt out into traffic, forcing me to swerve wildly to avoid him. I don’t think he noticed; but if it weren’t for my mongoose-like reflexes, he would be dead now.
Thank you, I am directly responsible for Thor. You’re welcome.
If it was him.
Maybe it wasn’t? Maybe it was just someone who looked like him?
Fuck it, I saved someone’s life. Sort of.
The car behind swerved into the opposite lane and caused a ten-car pile-up, killing fifteen people and a small pigeon; but that’s not the point. I didn’t kill anyone. I specifically didn’t kill Kenneth Branagh (or someone who looked a lot like him). *
Next up, I thought about how dedicated, awesome and serious he is as an actor and how amazing it is that he’s spent all this time trying to understand a single passage in a single play.
My third thought was that would never fucking happen to one of my scripts.
Okay, so there’s a quality differential between me and Shakespeare. In fact, you could argue that every other writer in the entire world sits between me and Shakespeare … and I wouldn’t argue back.
I’m like that.
But that’s kind of irrelevant because no actor would attach that much weight to any speech in any film script they were presented with. Theatre – yes, I believe maybe that does happen. Certainly among the work by the deader playwrights.
I can imagine a very kind actor spending half an hour, maybe 45 mins, trying to figure out how to make one of my speeches work before declaring “my character wouldn’t say that; but twenty years?
Twenty?
No chance. Probably because very few films are at the script stage for twenty years.
More likely because if a play is still being performed 400 years after it was written then it’s kind of proved itself and probably doesn’t need to be improvised† all over thank you so very much.
So not only is it pointless comparing myself (unfavourably) to Shakespeare; but it’s equally pointless comparing a film script written four days ago to a theatre script written four centuries ago.
Films change all the way through production. Lines are rewritten, chucked out, improvised, dug out of the bin and reinstated, forgotten and finally misread in an exercise which frequently leaves the scene unusable.
New plays, I guess, go through a similar process.
Older plays, ones which have stood the test of time … they’re recited. They’re given respect. They’re given it because they’ve earnt it.
It’s different. I know it’s different. I do, honestly … but still, I can’t help feeling a little jealous.
Twenty years trying to understand the text.
Twenty. ^
Wouldn’t that be nice? For people to assume you put those specific words in that specific order for a specific reason and then try to figure out what that reason might be?
Makes me go all misty just thinking about it.
Then I go all sad because I know it’ll never happen.
—————————————————————————————————-
* It’s possible, not all of this story is true.
^ Actually, I can’t remember how long he’s spent – I heard the podcast weeks ago now (or possibly yesterday) and don’t hold information in my head for that long; but let’s go with twenty.
† You know the only thing worse than an actor improvising all over a script? An actor not improvising anything at all. It’s all about balance, people. Good actors know when to improvise and when not to. Bad actors improvise the line back to the place-holder-line the writer discarded because it’s a cliché.
My biggest bugbear is when an actor decides not to use a word because they don’t know what it means. Especially when that word is a technical term used in a field their character specialises in:
“I don’t think my character, a submarine captain, would use all these long words about submarines and oceans. I think he’d say something simple like ‘Let’s go under water, please’.”
Mind you, I’ve also had an actor pronounce one of my spelling mistakes because they believed in the sanctity of the written word.
Both of these approaches are fairly extreme and, luckily, pretty rare. As ever, reality, common sense and the majority lie somewhere in the middle.
I'm a UK scriptwriter who's had nine feature films produced. I've also had some bits and bobs on TV and co-created the first smartphone broadcast, app-drama series, PERSONA.
Now in its thirteenth year, this blog is mostly a chronicle of my career; but it's also an insight into the grubby bits of writing no one really tells you about.
Reality here has been stretched, altered, bent and completely ignored to make my life funnier, more interesting or just different for the sake of it.
Please don't take offence.
The Jobbing Scriptwriter 
