Congratulations Harold

Pitching

2011-10-10T17:01:00.000+01:00

This year, the friendly folks at the London Screenwriters' Festival are running their speed pitching sessions again. Whether it's with agents, producers or both, speed pitching presents the golden opportunity to get your desperate face in front of the creative behemoths and life-changing giants who spend the rest of their year locked behind The Firewall of Fuck-Off.

There can often be a whisper of negativity and cynicism surrounding these kinds of sessions, especially from those who have participated in similar events and not had any success, but success really boils down to three massively important factors:

1. Have you got something that they want?

2. Can you present it to them in a way that makes them understand what you're selling?

3. Have you got a snub-nosed .38 pointing at them under the desk when you slide them the "read my script or die" note?

I've speed pitched before. I pitched to three producers and it resulted in all requesting to read my work without me having to fire a single shot.

The guidelines are very straightforward: research who you're pitching to, prepare the very best pitch you possibly can, and present it to the best of your ability without shitting your pants. Although the speed pitching sessions last five minutes, you really need to be pitching your project in 30 seconds, definitely in under a minute, allowing enough time to chat about your script and work. If you give a confident and succinct pitch, you are more likely to have a confident discussion about that script in the time remaining. If you don't think you can pitch your project in under a minute, then you won't be able to pitch it in five. I pitched two projects in each five-minute session and had a relaxed chat about both of them. Two producers requested to read one, the other wanted to read both. It is doable.

You need to strip your story back to basics to cater for the event and also for small attention spans. I guarantee it's much better to have a brief pitch that leaves questions than a rambling pitch that creates doubt, plus, no matter how well rehearsed you are, the moment you sit in front of Scary Person Who Can Change Your Life, it's understandable that you will definitely, unquestionably, without shadow of a doubt, break down and start weeping uncontrollably, so creating a short pitch gives you less words to get wrong and less time to make a complete arse of yourself.

Introduce yourself, include any credits and awards (but leave out criminal records and diseases), thank them for their time and set the scene for your pitch. I said something like, "I'd like to pitch you a low-budget screwball comedy set in contemporary England." Once you establish those basics they instantly know how to listen to your pitch. You've now got under one minute to briefly explain your story plus any business the script has been involved in (placed in any competitions, significant development, etc)

The session is immediately easier once you've got over that pants-soiling first hurdle, because then you'll be fielding questions about a story and characters you should know inside out. Just don't ramble. Have another longer and looser pitch prepared that expands your opening salvo into a half-page/one-page synopsis. Learn that in the same way and use it to riff back and forth while discussing your film.

Always have back-up pitches! Were they to apologise and say comedy isn't really their thing, you can calmly respond with, "I have a creature-feature horror set in the Scottish Highlands at the turn of the century. Would you mind if I pitched that to you?" Hopefully this is less likely to happen at these kind of organised events because you'll have researched who you're pitching to in order to cater your pitch and projects to their preferences. Try saying that drunk.

Don't take along scripts or USBs to thrust into their hands, but do take along carefully prepared one-page pitches and business cards. Your one-pager should include logline, synopsis, any script business and your details. Ask before you produce either of them. The producers who requested to read my work were not interested in my one-pagers, but other folk I met during the festival were interested in them (okay, so it was for a paper aeroplane competition in the car park, but I'll take whatever I can).

Plan your pitch like you would when writing dialogue in a script. You need to hone it by reading it out, by performing it, to iron out any word combinations that don't feel or sound right coming out of your mouth. Once you've got your pitch down, print off several copies to take with you and keep reading and rehearsing.

Remember the recipients of your pitch are not in your head (at least not until you follow them home and eat their brains), so make sure you explain your story as simply, clearly and calmly as possible without overselling yourself. Do not tell them your comedy is "hilarious" or your horror is "really scary", that's up to them to decide when they read it later that weekend at gunpoint.

It's important not to confuse speed pitching with speed dating. Also, do not eat whilst pitching. I made the honest mistake of buying a baked potato with tuna, cheese and beans just before I was due to pitch. Not wanting to wait (cold beans? I don't think so) I brought it to the pitching table. Turns out me going to all the extra effort of providing an extra fork for the producer is somehow not considered thoughtful. Neither is using that fork to stab the security guard. Basically, if you want to eat a baked potato during the pitching session, simply buy extra ones to give to each of the producers and agents when you sit down. They'll really appreciate it.

Good luck with your pitching and your writing and try to enjoy the experience.

This piece was originally published here on the LSWF website.

SCRIVENER

2011-06-08T10:27:00.000+01:00

Although I’ve owned Scrivener for a good few years, I’ve been predictably lazy using it, playing with it every now and then rather than devoting serious time to understanding how it could work best for me. If you can imagine trying to teach a dog to sit still in the middle of a field full of squirrels smothered in cheese then you’ll start to get an idea of the scale of problem I face when trying to engage the analytical side of my brain.

The best way for me to learn something is by doing, so I made a 2011 resolution to write my next project using Scrivener and pick it up as I go along. Although I reckon I ended up using only a small percentage of the software’s potential, it resulted in me producing the fastest, least complicated screenplay I have ever written, and one that is presently being read by an Oscar-winning producer. That last bit obviously has less to do with what Scrivener has to offer and everything to do with me showing off, but the fact remains Scrivener made it a hell of a lot easier and quicker to get the screenplay to that point.

All my story/character stuff is initially written by hand, from concept through various treatments, until I get to a definitive treatment. The physical process of writing by hand seems to help me access the parts of my brain that have somehow survived a lifetime of utter lunacy; so that process won’t change, nor will the fact I prefer to write the story in prose first before writing it up as a screenplay, effectively adapting my own work.

That process means that by the time I finally get to writing the actual screenplay, a lot of the sobbing, head-butting walls, more sobbing, stabbing legs with pens, even more sobbing and soul crushing self-doubt has already been dealt with, meaning most problems that arise at screenplay stage are more likely to be minor ones quickly resolved without the introduction of prescription tranquillisers, and often by referencing the reams of story and character detailed earlier. I’ve experimented with various ways of writing screenplays over the years and this seems to work best for me.

What Scrivener has done is revolutionise an established process that I know works for me by offering the main thing lacking from that process (and my life); order. Scrivener is a fantastic aid to outlining. It makes stuff easy. Once I’ve got to my final treatment stage, rather than write that treatment up as a continuous manuscript, I use Scrivener to build it into a detailed outline using the software’s great outlining tools.

I surprised myself having a lot of fun learning, probably because it was a lot more creative than I was expecting, and the ease with which I could decipher the technical stuff meant I experienced very few cheese-dipped squirrels along the way. By the time I’d finished outlining my treatment, writing up the screenplay was the easy bit. I’m not going to break down or attempt to go into detail about how Scrivener works, not just because I can smell cheesy squirrels heading my way, but also because it’s already been done much better than I could do justice.

Best-selling author, David Hewson, has been successfully using Scrivener for his last five novels. David is extremely generous with his knowledge and often posts helpful Scrivener tips on his blog (one such tip recently saved my arse, big time) and I would gobble up each tip as posted. Much easier than bothering to learn myself, right? Er...

David recently wrote an ebook about using Scrivener. My recent experience, combined with the knowledge that David’s previous tips were written in such a way as to be easily processed by a brain that often resembles a badger trapped in a wheelie bin, made it an easy decision to buy. Plus I kinda wanted to say thanks to him for doing my homework.

I read David’s book in one sitting, which is more than I can say about any other ‘how to’ book I’ve ever forced myself to trudge through. It’s simple, easy, very accessible, and, like Scrivener itself, great value for money. If you’re considering investing in Scrivener, you could do a lot worse than have a nose at this book to help decide whether the investment is worthwhile. If you already own Scrivener but are unsure/lazy about how to get the best out of it, then it’s a great working guide to help you learn the basics from a writer who continues to make it work successfully for him.

I should stress that I’m coming at this from a screenwriting perspective and David’s book is written from the angle of writing a novel, so don’t expect to be walked through how to structure and outline a screenplay. The book covers just one particular way – David’s methodology – out of countless potential ways of using Scrivener to suit individual ways of writing. The fact I write drama and David’s book is about writing literature had no bearing whatsoever on how useful it was in helping me grasp the important basics of a brilliant piece of writing software, and has given me the perfect platform to experiment with my own work.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a Kindle, the free Kindle app enables you to read the book on your computer screen (quite handy, as you can refer to Scrivener as you read off the same screen) or from your iPad (screenshots look much prettier than on the Kindle).

I also quite like the fact that owning it as an electronic file means it’s only ever one click away whenever I’m using Scrivener on my laptop – it’s a handy safety net. Now all I need to do is find a similar tool that puts my personal life in order and then… ooo… look, squirrel!

“No software will write your book for you. No program can make the creative side of writing easier. But Scrivener transforms the mountain ahead so that it’s a sight more manageable to climb.” David Hewson

"It's makes stuff easy." Jared Kelly

"Cheese-dipped squirrels! Woo hoo!" A Dog

SUBTEXT & FRUIT

2011-05-23T11:37:00.000+01:00

Last year I clicked on a Twitter link (twink?) from Danny Stack that introduced me to the wonderful world of Julie Gray.

At the time, Julie was running a screenplay competition which involved submitting a one-pager based on three random words she had chosen. Although the three words could be used however the writer fancied, the lighthearted premise was tempered by a strict ruling that the one-page script should still be treated as a professional submission and adhere to correct formatting and represent real time, with one page roughly reflecting one minute of screen time.

Julie's three words were: Plum, Sweater, Volcano.

I'd never really been one for competitions, but the idea did seem fun, and maybe I was also a tad inspired by Julie's rallying cry to US readers of her website: "Let's show those Brits how it's done!" So I planted my arse and soon found myself peering into the melancholy world of plums and their relationship woes. I sent in my script and was pleasantly surprised to receive a lovely response from Julie expressing her delight having read it.

The script was shortlisted for the competition's online vote and promptly bombed, finishing a proud but lowly last. It would seem my plums are not to everyone's taste. Who knew? The real prize, though, was meeting up with Julie in London later that year. Julie is as lovely, lively and fun as she comes across online, reassuringly obsessive about writing and a genuine delight to be around. She happily informed me that my submission was one of the best one-page examples she'd read from any of her competitions and she's subsequently been using it as a handout in her screenwriting classes as an example of subtext. That was genuinely nice to hear.

I recently discovered the forgotten script sitting in an unrelated folder. So, without further ado, here are my plums:

ON TOP OF THE WORLD

Reading it again reminded me of a more recent competition by The London Screenwriters' Festival. They organised a successful comedy weekend in April this year and offered a free festival pass to the winner of their own one-page screenplay competition (see what you started, Julie?) Their guideline being the script should reflect the tone of the festival and therefore be comical. Maybe inspired by my plums, I once again found myself in the angst-ridden world of fruit. The script was shortlisted but ended its journey there, though this time there was no online vote to relegate my fruit to the bottom of the no-win zone. Fruit have feelings too.

I thought I'd include that LSWF one-page script with this post, if for no other reason than it gets you closer to your five-a-day. Yes, that's right, reading this post WILL make you healthier.

BANANAS ARE NOT THE ONLY FRUIT

INTELLECTUAL IMPROPRIETY?

2011-02-25T11:53:00.001Z

Reading Lucy’s great post the other day reminded me of an article I wrote for Scriptwriter Magazine a few years ago, inspired by the myth of ideas theft.

Motivation for screenwriting wasn’t immediately obvious to me. It would be easy to say I always wanted to tell stories to entertain people, but in truth that’s a predictably lazy piece of twaddle, and, certainly in my case, wouldn’t be the truth on its own.

The obvious motivations exist for me as they do for all writers. Orwell said it more eloquently, but it’s basically a very healthy dose of ego, combined with the pleasure of storytelling, the urge to uncover facts and truths, and a driven, almost self-righteous desire to expose injustice - all traits shared by all writers (don’t let them tell you any different); it’s just the proportions that differ, dependent on the writer’s state of mind at the time and the subject matter.

I’ve always had stories floating around my head. Actually, part of my problem is they don’t float at all, they wear cricket spikes and barbed-wire gloves and take lots of ecstasy and I’ve been forced to experiment with various ways of extracting them, or at least calming them down. Screenwriting appears to work as a way to get them out of my head and stop their bad dancing. Either that or I have to anesthetize my brain to such an extent that they appear to go away, which, although often a popular choice, is a bit like removing the flashing oil light on a dashboard because it’s becoming annoying - at some point you’ll need to take a bus.

I’ve been taking a lot of buses lately.

A while back I read in The Hollywood Reporter that a film addressing climate change was in pre-production. That wasn’t a good day, week or month for me. The Day After Tomorrow - a high-concept exploration of the effect of global-warming on a deluded population. Oh bollocks…

I’ve never been a naturally paranoid person, but I knew right then I’d been cyber-burgled. I've got pages and pages of research, treatments and character bios to prove it. The first draft was only a week away. Well, maybe a month away. Actually, thinking about what time of year it was, and taking into consideration my work commitments and a wealth of other thinking projects, along with my continued financial obligation to several local bartenders, plus all those bus journeys, I probably would have got round to nailing the first draft in about, oh, I don't know, a year or so? Maybe.

And there it was, my motivational epiphany: Get Stuff Done.

Ideas are everywhere, but until someone knuckles down and turns one of them into a viable script, they are worthless, hence the oft-repeated mantra about why there exists no copyright on ideas, just the manifestation of those ideas into scripts. This motivational epiphany extended to the knowledge that every single great idea I come up with - no matter how unbelievably unique and utterly brilliant I know I am - there will always be people the world over toying with a similar idea (just nowhere near as good) and maybe some of them are already working on treatments, maybe some have already completed drafts, and just maybe… uh oh…

It’s the most natural thing for storytellers to share a common currency of thought. Imagine a busy street with hundreds of people walking along it every day. Add something of interest in that street that draws attention and could inspire a story. Throw in a couple of screenwriters walking down that same street at different times, and they’ll be the ones most likely sucked into imagining the story behind it and the possibilities that story could inspire. In the same way that out of all those hundreds of people it will be the few photographers walking down that street who will focus on something else and be inspired in a different way, seeing hidden possibilities that most people walking past wouldn’t, and which crucially they feel are unique to them. And so it goes. Hence it really shouldn’t be a surprise when we screenwriters come up with similar ideas at similar times.

Sometimes, though, it is cyber-burglary, but I’m not going to dwell on that, even if it was by a successful German writer-director with an impressive list of films under his belt and possibly a bigger cock than mine. I’m over it. I’ve moved on. I’M FINE.

So, it’s quite simple. There are endless stories out there with varying basic motivations for telling them, but my immediate motivation lies in writing them before some other fucker does and I get my nose rubbed in it by The Hollywood Reporter. And you know what? It seems to be working. It’s helping me to get stuff done.

However, I do have another motivation that started long before I began writing for the screen, and it’s just as inspirational. I want my mum and dad to live in a big house by the sea and never have to worry about getting stuff done. That one helps when the bus journeys get longer.

Published in Scriptwriter Magazine, September 2006.

A Beautifully Crafted Work Of Art

2010-09-21T10:35:00.000+01:00

En La Ciudad De Sylvia, by José Luis Guerín, is a film pretty much devoid of dialogue, plot and any urgency whatsoever, about a man whose raison d'être seems to be pursuing the life of a stalker. It is also one of the most compelling and captivating films I have seen in a long time, and is beautiful in almost every single way. How it looks, sounds, feels, the silences, the space, the actors, the story (what there is of it), everything is sublimely beautiful. Be warned, though: you have to put in what you expect to get out, as this film is certainly not the territory of the easily distracted or the manic household.

The film opens with the nameless protagonist (played by the striking French actor Xavier Lafitte) sitting unmoving and silent in his room. We watch him thinking, yet with nothing to go on we have no idea what might be on his mind, and we stay with him for what seems an age until he is finally moved to scribble something into his sketchbook. It couldn’t be further removed from the scriptwriting maxim of "hit the ground running", but it sucked me in and set the tone perfectly for how this gentle film calmly unfolds.

Lafitte’s character remains a mystery throughout. We discover nothing about him, other than he’s good at sketching and he’s searching for a girl. He spends much of his time trying to recreate the girl’s image in his sketchbook, but the sense here is that he remembers the feeling of her more than any specific detail. As he sits outside a busy café, he watches, and occasionally sketches, many of the surrounding women. Some are dining, some sharing coffee, others simply passing by, and each glimpse of someone new seems to set his heart racing as if she could be the one. (I've been searching for a café like this all my life.)

It is a truly remarkable and powerful scene, with each new face bringing real hope and drama. As the scene plays out, the camera settles into a relaxed voyeuristic rhythm of watching these strangers’ everyday lives, moving from one face to the next, then returning to the first. As these faces become more familiar to us, personalities slowly begin to unravel, offering little glimpses of stories, guessed relationships, happiness, maybe tragedy, all gently revealed through subtle character action, with an accompanying soundtrack of this bustling, vibrant city. It is an audio-visual masterclass, a fascinating scene, and one I would demand anyone study, no matter what side of the camera you aspire to.

Lafitte’s character does finally catch sight of a girl who, his reaction suggests, could be the elusive Sylvia (the equally stunning Spanish actress Pilar López de Ayala) and he leaps up and follows her on a journey through the cobblestone streets of this wonderful old city. She walks, he follows, and that’s it: yet this meandering stalking session through this ancient town makes fascinating viewing and gripped me more than most high-octane Hollywood chase sequences. This is real drama, yet is remarkably achieved without much happening at all, with very little plot and hardly anyone saying anything. Wonderful!

En La Ciudad De Sylvia is about the romance of memory and chasing those lost moments and chance encounters we’ve all had at some point in our lives. Maybe it was a conversation, a shared drink, or a silent coming together across a crowded room or train carriage, or even the momentary passing smile from a beautiful stranger - all brief but powerful moments wrapped up in the extraordinary excitement that comes with the blushing rush of embarrassment and elation when your heart suddenly leaps so violently you believe the surrounding world instantly knows your secret.

Love at first sight? Fate? Destiny? Although just a whisper in our lives, those moments leave an indelible mark on our memories that over time can develop into an exaggerated picture of lost opportunity, occasionally rearing up unannounced at the most unlikely of times or even deliberately recalled during melancholic moments. What if we had followed our heart that day? The mystique of these brief encounters is reinforced by our inaction, and gives fertile ground to imagine any number of wild and wonderful possibilities.

Most of us at some point in our lives have entertained and experienced the romantic notion that a specific other person exists, written in the stars, with whom it’s our destiny to meet and fall unconditionally in love with. Such fatalistic belief in predestined love reinforces all these near misses. What if she had been the one? What if that smile, that look, that gesture, belonged to the one person on this earth with whom I was fated to meet and love above all others?

The director José Luis Guerín used such an experience as the inspiration for En La Ciudad De Sylvia. As a young man on his travels he met a girl in a café in Strasbourg, spoke with her briefly, then they parted company. And that was it. But as the years passed he became so haunted with thoughts of that encounter, and what might have been, that he finally returned to the same café ten years later in the hope he might see her again.

Unfortunately for him he didn’t find her, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing. A decade spent re-imagining and fantasizing about what could have been would surely have engendered a romantic legend too great for the reality to live up to. Maybe. What Guerín did find on his return, though, was the inspiration to document that emotion in a remarkable and extremely brave film.

Will Self recently expressed disenchantment with the current state of film, proclaiming the art of movie making “definitely dead”! José Luis Guerín has thankfully proven that Will Self is a little premature in his evaluation. En La Ciudad De Sylvia is a beautifully crafted work of art by a master of the medium, and it reassuringly touched the heart of this hopeless romantic.

En La Ciudad De Sylvia

WATCH THE UK TRAILER HERE

SERENDIPITY AT THE LONDON BOOK FAIR

2010-05-17T11:10:00.000+01:00

For a while now I have been vaguely contemplating adapting one of my specs into a graphic novel. I say “vaguely contemplating” in its loosest sense, pretty much the equivalent of a tortoise flirting with the idea of possibly entering the London Marathon before he gets too old. I’m not sure where the idea first came from, probably just evolved from countless industry-related stories absorbed over the years, certainly not born of any desire to emulate any graphic novels for the simple reason I’ve never owned or even read one * so I presume it’s just a case of head over heart.

I loved traditional comics as a boy and religiously read The Beano and The Dandy, along with some ancient Marvel and DC comics handed down from a family friend (which are still in my parent’s house… mmm, aren’t those things worth stupid amounts of money?) but as I erupted into my teens and began devouring novels as fast as I could lay my hands on them, comics soon faded into the befuddled mist of childhood memory.

So, whilst attending the Selling To Hollywood panel discussion, it was with growing interest that I listened to Andy Briggs pushing the idea that graphic novels are definitely worth considering as a serious route to getting an original story picked up. It’s all well and good me thinking I already know that, but it’s an entirely different matter hearing someone enthusing about it as passionately as Andy. As I listened, my dormant vague contemplation rumbled slowly into life, like the stomach of that same tortoise awakening from hibernation, and it dawned on me that one of my specs not only fits Andy’s take on the current US market vogue for mega-bucks commercial projects, but also involves a character who could easily drive a graphic novel franchise. Cue light bulb moment...

That's me, that is. Looking at a lightbulb.

So I hung around after the panel discussion and hijacked Andy for a quick chat. He was very friendly and offered some good advice and support, after which, armed with my new and less vague plan of action, I trotted downstairs into the expanse of exhibitors to seek out the graphic novel stands and investigate what is it about these famed man-comics that makes so many go geek at the knees.

After walking around for what seemed an eternity and failing to find anything that remotely resembled a graphic novel, despite walking past all the graphic novel stands several times on Monday, I opted to repair to the bar (a decision made much easier as I was passing it for the third time) and there attempted to make my new plan slightly less vague. Armed with directions from the friendly French barman, and a nerve-steadying beer coursing through my veins, I set off in hot pursuit of my destiny.

CUT TO:

I had some interesting and enlightening chats with some very interesting and enlightening people, and had my first proper glimpse inside these previously unexplored books. What immediately struck me is how cinematic they are, or at least the ones I flicked through were, with the imagery storyboarded using close ups, long shots, various POV, and it quickly became apparent these graphic artists are effectively directing the story on the page, just with much fewer shots. All blindingly obvious to graphic novel fans and probably any vertebrate under the age of thirty, but it was all a revelation to this card-carrying member of The Dennis the Menace Fan Club.

Two graphic novel publishers claimed to genuinely like my idea and were keen to read the script. Interestingly, every graphic novel person I spoke to, after hearing what I was proposing, warned me off the Marvel stand on the grounds they are the one group in attendance who wouldn’t be interested in hearing a pitch. Fair enough, but for the record, never point at the big red button and tell me not to press it. Having absorbed as much graphic novel info as possible I headed straight for the Marvel stand (I say straight, in reality I got lost again and ended up doing a few more hilarious circuits of the hall) and on eventual arrival at the Marvel stand aimed for the most important/bored looking bloke in a suit, whose screwed up eyes tracked my progress towards him with the same disdain I reserve for those punchable grinning charity-mugger fuckwits that infest London’s streets.

Although he remained a little uncertain of eye, once he started talking about his side of the business he was quite forthcoming and informative, and we were soon having a good chat. I eventually explained my curiosity, and as I took my first tentative steps into the territory of pitching my script as having graphic novel potential, I could sense him beginning to mentally retreat, so I did the honourable thing and stopped before I started. He explained that Marvel didn’t accept submissions and went on to offer some sound advice, and it was right there that the London Book Fair’s serendipitous climate kicked into overdrive. Mr. Marvel produced some literature for me to take away, to help me visualise the directions he was suggesting, and emblazoned across the front of all this Marvel literature was the very familiar yellow and red trademark of Panini.

“Aha!” I exclaimed. “Panini? What’s the connection?” He explained that Panini and Marvel were partners. I then mentioned that a while back I had written a screenplay for a Channel 4 project, a charming little story about childhood unrequited love and Panini stickers. Lots of Panini stickers. Turns out that not only was Mr. Marvel also Mr. Panini but he'd also seen the film and liked it (hurrah!) He then asked me to elaborate on the project I’d just swerved pitching him and we had an interesting chat, after which he produced his card and told me to contact him with a view to working something out. Ta da!

So, thank you Andy Briggs for giving me a virtual boot up the arse. I’m now off to read some of these graphic novel things and work stuff out. The future's bright. And glossy. And maybe got lots of drawings in it.

* POST EDIT: I have since read three of these graphic novel things, chosen from an online recommended list. One was so shit I wanted to rip my eyeballs out and smash them with a hammer; one was just very very very dull, and the last one was thankfully a page-turner (in fairness, compared to the other two a BNP manifesto written in Greek and covered in cat shit would be more of a page turner). Rather than invest in any more graphic novels for the moment, I think I’ll do what I should have done in the first place and drag my arse down to the wonderful Westminster library and therein take my sport.

A surprising development of considering this specific story existing outside the screenplay format is that I now sense a growing exciting possibility that this thrilling spec script could also give birth to a fantastic novel sans drawings. A tingle and glow rears up at the bifurcation of the novel. The future might still be bright, but maybe not so glossy, with no drawings and lots of words instead.

SELLING TO HOLLYWOOD: THE LONDON BOOK FAIR

2010-05-05T11:44:00.005+01:00

The other week I ventured out into this green and sunny London and headed to the London Book Fair. Although it was a worthwhile experience for me personally, it was unfortunately an event that had been so painfully disrupted by the volcanic ash mayhem that I fully expect to see a slew of new books invading next year’s fair all bad-mouthing naughty volcanoes.

I spent the first day doing THIS with Lucy, missed the following day’s events due to several delightful prior engagements, and returned for the last day to plant my arse and immerse myself in the morning’s panel discussion on writing and selling to Hollywood from a UK perspective.

The panel, chaired by Quentin Faulk, consisted of AP Watts agent, Rob Kraitt, and last-minute stand-in, British author and screenwriter, Andy Briggs, who was a worthy substitute for ash-grounded US producer David Gerson.

It was a fun and interesting discussion, and one that reinforced the grim reality that it’s now much harder to sell across the pond than ever before. Rob highlighted that it used to be much easier to sell unpublished books for adaptation to US studios but now the studios are pretty much looking for material that’s already some way along the proven success route with a built-in audience and existing market.

Andy expanded on that by saying whatever you can do to help sell your product is to be encouraged, citing the recent film, 30 Days Of Night, which was originally written on spec, to no avail, then adapted as a graphic novel, to much avail, and subsequently picked up as an original screenplay. All hail the vail! Basically, anything you can do to enhance pre-sell and help executives imagine the finished film is a positive.

Dealing a further body blow to prospective sellers to the US, Andy relayed his recent experience attending meetings in LA where he was uniformly told “drama is dead” by all those in the know (aka all those holding the purse strings). Andy believes the “drama is dead” bombshell is down to the simple fact that US TV produces drama so damn well that the film studios feel it’s best left to that medium, at least for the present. Of course, we all know what statements like that mean in this world where "nobody knows anything", so watch this space for an international drama hit coming to a screen near you soon!

So, with drama being the dirty word, this year’s vogue in Hollywood is the tent pole offerings, the popcorn movies, the mega-bucks mega-commercial movies, which naturally led the panel to discuss the impact of 3D. Rob dismissed 3D as a passing fad, but Andy feels this is just the beginning and 3D is definitely here to stay, but only for those tent pole offerings.

Quentin Faulk wrapped the session up by asking both Rob and Andy to divulge one gem of advice for those hoping to sell their work/themselves to the US. Rob said aim to get produced here first, and Andy advised make sure you have good back-up projects as you should always expect to hear the words “What else have you got?”

My personal feelings about the future of 3D leans towards Andy’s view, and although Andy said he felt 3D would only involve the tent-pole productions, I still see that having a huge impact across the board, with the concern that the huge sums of money being pumped into these 3D behemoths can only mean less money and focus for smaller productions, ensuring the industry’s rich get richer and the poor just stay that way.

It’s not just the ridiculous extremes of money that will further freeze out those already on the outside, it’s also very easy to imagine 3D cinema changing the very nature of how we’re expected to write screenplays, as we’ll need to maintain a focus on events that involve characters and objects leaping off the screen and floating around the theatre, making the audience ~~feel sick~~ giddy with joy. With the huge kinds of cash involved there’s every reason to assume there will be studio issued objectives stating how many leap-off-the-screen moments and big scares are required to be inserted into scenes, further focusing these prodigious popcorn peddlers on the quick-fix draw of spectacle over conflict, sacrificing the heart and soul of storytelling along the way. How long before we begin to see the first of many “How to write 3D films” books and seminars appearing?

The simple reason why most traditional children’s fairytales have achieved universal success throughout the ages is because they employ storytelling that focuses on conflict as identification. Our lives, no matter how dull and spectacle-free, are jam-packed full of conflict from the moment we’re born, which gives us a common grounding in reality that we can all identify with on many different levels. Sitting in a darkened theatre confronted with the latest ostentatious Wow Factor can be immediately impressive, but it doesn’t leave an impression, at least not a lasting impression, and I fear the battle to pursue bigger and better will eventually become more distracting than attracting, and degenerate into a sad pissing contest where Hollywood studios compete like desperate Roman emperors trying to appease bloodthirsty crowds with increasingly grotesque budget-busting pomp.

“Fear and pity may certainly arise from spectacle, but they may also arise simply from the system of the facts itself. This is the procedure that matters most, one that reveals the better poet.” Aristotle

WORKING AT THE BBC - Part 3

2010-03-01T14:01:00.000Z

Things you find at work on a BBC printer:

My employer pays more for the hire of a dog for a day than they pay me to do a day’s work.

To add insult to injury they even pay the dog’s travel expenses and I’ve got half as many legs as a dog. How is that fair?

I’m gonna get me a dog suit.

Then we’ll see who’s laughing.

BAFTA: from the page to the screen

2010-02-23T13:25:00.000Z

Inspiration shouldn't be short in the world of screenwriting with last night's BAFTA results. The best film and the best short film were both directed by women, which is fantastic news, and two great scripts, Up In The Air and The Hurt Locker, deservedly won their respective awards, with the added thrill that the best original screenplay went to a script with a protagonist who (sshhhh, say it quietly...) doesn’t change. How many readers would return that script with well-rehearsed notes demanding more character arc, more resolution, more depth, more... insert guru quote here... further proof that if you write something that damn well the truth will always be more powerful than the idea. In keeping with that, an honorable mention goes to the stunning Un Prophète for winning the Best Foreign Language Film with a story that contained a mesmerising protagonist with hardly any back story or character exposition. Superb.

The two best actor wins may also be something worth thinking about. At the time of reading them I remember feeling that both scripts (An Education and A Single Man) were similar in being so basic in their execution I wondered how they would be received in the hands of the right actor; they felt like blueprints in the truest sense, nothing exciting as written but everything laid out clearly giving the actors free reign and space to do what they do best. Whether that was a conscious decision or a stylistic choice, who knows, but it certainly paid dividends for those actors, and it’s certainly arguable as to whether that’s exactly what a screenplay should be: no embellishments whatsoever, just a basic template to inspire others to work their magic.

My gut feeling on reading them centered on the main character roles, and although there were elements of both scripts that didn’t quite click for me, I genuinely felt excited at the potential for those main roles, especially in An Education, as it read as such a rare and great opportunity for a young female actress. What struck a chord with me (as someone who is moved very easily by writing) is that I didn’t *feel* either script and thought there was a distinct lack of emotion, more so in An Education, but both scripts have been bugging me since reading them, and the subsequent BAFTA wins got me thinking about them, and about my own writing and this confusing discipline as a whole.

There are so many obstacles to getting your script produced, but writing such an appealing lead part could increase the chances of a great actor championing your cause, even if the narrative is a bit creaky or slightly lacking in places, and even if the overall effect of reading the script isn’t particularly emotionally gripping. Just because I didn’t feel emotion from the page doesn’t mean some wonderful actor won’t then reduce me to tears with their interpretation. So what was it about those two characters that laid the groundwork for two storming award-winning performances?

They are both iconic figures. They are both very representative of their time and place in history. A desperately lonely gay man in a repressed 60s society and a confused rebellious girl in a repressed 60s society. They aren’t just characters dropped into any old setting, they are characters that helped define their generation. Throw into the mix a few universal themes of love, loss, despair and humiliation, and it doesn’t get much bigger than that.

When characters step off the page in front of a camera lens the magic kicks in. The power of film to communicate and provoke visually on such a primitive level is unrivalled by anything literature or theatre can offer, from camera angles, framing, editing, lighting, point of view, music, and is why most writers would benefit hugely from a greater understanding, awareness and confidence in the power of the camera to communicate through imagery, often in a way that reaches out to us at a subconscious level. Being constantly aware of that, and being able to write into our scripts that intangible magical something, is what separates the good from the great.

Shit. This doesn’t get any easier.

The Day Of The Triffids: BBC Drama

2009-12-31T15:29:00.000Z

Following on from last year’s remake of SURVIVORSthis year’s dip into the BBC’s post-apocalyptic remake hat reveals an adaptation of John Wyndham’s The Day Of The Triffids (aka When Plants Attack!)

As a child I was a big fan of John Wyndham’s sci-fi books. My runaway favourite was The Midwich Cuckoos but the Triffids still had the desired effect and scared the bejesus out of me, and even once became an excuse for me leveling a patch of daffodils with a tennis racket. “Sorry mum,” I said, as I handed over my trusty yellow-stained Excalibur, “but you can’t be too careful these days.”

One obvious problem with adapting a book with such a fantastic premise is imagination over spectacle. Books leave the work of visualization to the reader: literature’s great storytellers excel at stimulating mental imagery with their words, but cinema spares the spectator such effort and instead opts to show instead of tell by spoon-feeding someone else’s vision. They do the work for us, but at their own peril with adaptations, as what we imagine as terrifying in a book can turn out, either by design or bad luck, ludicrous on screen, especially if it’s a film about walking plants. The Ents worked in the Lord of the Rings but only because they belonged in a fantastic world populated by fantastic creatures with a huge budget, but DOTT presents itself the challenge of being set in our normal world and because of this needs careful preparation if it hopes to suspend belief. It failed from the off in this respect.

It opens with several staggering moments of whoosh bumping. The first being when the plant expert dude is stung by a plant (in a very contrived and highly implausible incident involving Spud from Trainspotting) at a factory that has been specifically designed and built to cultivate lots and lots of dangerous plants that sting, yet for some reason they have no facility for dealing with, er, plant stings and so he has to be raced to London to get the required medical attention from the plant sting experts who work nowhere near the plants that sting. Right. Well, at least that gets the plant expert to London where he’ll soon be needed to do stuff, right after --

-- the much-anticipated solar flare, which we are shown being watched in London, Paris, Sydney… eh? Yes. Sydney. In fact all over the world in a variety of faraway places that surely wouldn’t be able to simultaneously see the sun on account of the small issue of the planet Earth blocking their view during the ancient phenomenon that Galileo identified as bedtime. And even assuming the solar flare did flare all day, I’m thinking by the time it hit sunrise in London we would already know enough to put the shades on before breakfast.

CUT TO:

Meanwhile, 50,000 feet up in the clouds and unfazed by waking up in a plummeting plane surrounded by blind passengers, Eddie Izzard’s panto villain proceeds to calmly lock himself into the only plane toilet in existence that’s ever been vacant when needed and surrounds himself with half a dozen inflated lifejackets. The plane then falls out of the sky, crashes into London, explodes on impact, and when the smoke clears Eddie strolls out of the burning wreckage with a smug smile on his soot-stained face and the remains of a burst lifejacket clinging to his torn, smoking trousers. That scene inspired howls of laughter not uncommonly heard at Eddie’s stand-up shows and that was just from my cat. Maybe Arnie as the Terminator and an extra $100 million can carry off that kind of conceit, but not a comedian in a TV drama about humans running away from plants.

And so our plant expert hero awakes in a hospital bed to discover a world where practically everyone has been struck down with Solar Stupidity Syndrome, a terrible affliction that would appear to inspire normal everyday people, who have recently been inexplicably blinded by a solar flash, to want walk absolutely everywhere all the time in the hope that they can find a sighted person to kidnap. Right. Cue everyone bumping into each other and tripping over everything in sight (or not as the case may be). Would that really happen? Do people suddenly struck blind immediately try and walk everywhere? And why is everyone blind anyway? I accept that all those people staring at the sky at the time of the solar flash would have been struck blind, but what about all the other people who weren’t looking at the sky at the time, who were either asleep, otherwise engaged or simply not interested? As someone who has been a shift worker, I know full well there’s a whole other city out there that sleeps through the day ready to work through the night (which itself would make an interesting story if the city’s lowly unseen workers became the eyes of the city’s leaders…), which makes a mockery out of the mass blindness. Terminator Eddie wakes up on the doomed plane with his eyesight saved by a simple sleeping mask. If that’s all it takes then there would be millions of people also unaffected, who were either asleep or not near windows, not to mention the thousands of Londoners who would have been underground on the tube network. How come the plant expert’s love interest, Jo, finds herself all alone in a deserted subway? Has anyone had the joy of traveling on London’s tubes lately?

All this painful whoosh bumping before we even get to the pièce de résistance, the stars of the show, the BBC’s very own shuffling pantomime trees, the triffids! Stumbling around like Steve Bell inspired purple-headed geriatric bishops making noises like cows eating apples. They looked ridiculous. I couldn’t help thinking the mass blindness simply saved everyone from pissing themselves laughing when they saw swathes of mildly psychotic rhubarb wobbling towards them.

“Ooooo, look, angry plants, coming this way. Quick, ru... Actually, are they coming this way? Are they even moving? They’re swaying a little. I think. Hmmm… anyway, where were we? Oh yes. Ooooo, look, angry plants… er, just standing over there. Quick, walk.”

In a recent interview, the writer, Patrick Harbinson, explained how he tackled the problem of plants not really being perceived as all that threatening. “Do the Jaws thing,” he said. “Hide them as long as you can.” Right. Okay. Here’s the thing, Patrick. Sharks, whether you can see them or not, are already… prettyfuckingscary. We know what we’re getting with a shark, no matter how well hidden it is. A hungry plant somewhere in your back yard versus a hungry shark somewhere beneath your surfboard? I think the shark just shades that one. Mind you, I suppose I can understand the triffids being a tad coy and wanting to stay hidden for as long as possible. Being constantly mistaken for a giant turkey on roller-skates can’t be easy.

Why are the triffids attacking anyway? (I use the word attacking in its loosest sense). Are there no animals in this England to eat? Shouldn’t there be thousands, millions even, of blinded animals bumping into each other practically begging to be eaten by these starving pansies? Or were they all on the tube with Jo? Or wearing welders’ masks? And on the flipside, why are the humans also desperately seeking out food supplies when this crisis has only just happened? They’re suddenly reduced to searching small London pubs for bar snacks when there must be thousands of supermarkets stocked with food that the majority of people have been unable to find because they’re too busy being blind and bumping into each other in the outside world.

It was just all too painful to take in. From little girls in quaint English villages carrying machine guns, to the plant expert dude killing a triffid with a candle (yes, a candle! Just how dangerous can these things be?) To people building walls to keep the triffids out even though they’re already surrounded by massive concrete walls on account of them being in London, to the constant flashbacks to Africa and the mask… the mask… the mask… okay we get it, the mask! That ludicrous ending was risible. If we all wear eyeliner the triffids will leave us alone! No wonder Terminator Eddie threw in the towel. Mr. Guyliner himself discovers to his horror that he’s slap bang in the middle of a BBC production where everyone is suddenly wearing eyeliner except him. That’s gotta hurt.

The BBC’s 2009 production of The Day Of The Triffids was a real disappointment. It had so many problems with plot, continuity, reality and characterisation, many of which reeked of its previous post-apocalyptic effortand the purple pineapple-headed villains of the title were just not scary and gave off the unfortunate impression that an enthusiastic child with a tennis racket could lay waste to the lot of them in no time at all. The BBC should be encouraging writers and filmmakers to create their own wonderful flights of fancy rather than throwing money at them to create images of other writer’s narratives.

There was a moment towards the end when the plant expert dude opens the front door to what looks like a billowing snow storm, except they’re not snow flakes, they’re spores, triffid spores, millions of them spreading over the countryside. He stands there open-mouthed as the shock registers, then looks to the sky and cries in horror, “The triffids are sporing!”

I couldn’t agree more. The triffids really are sporing.

Blinded By The Light

PS. I got stung by a triffid the other day. He wanted £20 for a jar of honey.

PPS. I apologise to the bees for stealing their joke.

Anyone Getting A Signal?

2009-11-03T00:31:00.000Z

Anyone?

"97% nationwide coverage and we find ourselves in that 3%"

Jeez, buddy, who'd have thunk it? Looks like you're on the menu tonight!

Most of these films are horrors (quite literally) with their common genre themes of isolation and loneliness highlighting the cell phone’s beepingly buzzingly annoyingly omnipresence in our everyday lives, to the point that filmmakers now feel almost forced to justify their exclusion [as working phones] and subsequently compete to come up with increasingly ridiculous excuses and stupid things to say.

As ridiculous as these clips look when bundled together, I am intrigued by what this string of edited excuses say about our technologically driven existence. We are now more than ever reliant on gadgets and gizmos to help make things easier and get us out of trouble. Cell phones morph into detailed street maps of wherever we alight and talking boxes in cars ensure we’ll never do battle with stupidly folding maps again. It’s now becoming increasingly common to read amazing stories like this:

“Off the coast of Bali the boat had engine problems and they were stranded without any GPS or emergency radio. Rebecca sent a text message to her boyfriend in England, he called the Thames Coastguard, who called the Falmouth office, they called their counterparts in Australia, who contacted the Indonesian authorities via the embassy in Canberra and eventually an Indonesian Navy gunboat was dispatched from Lombok to look for the stricken tourists.”

Following last month’s Sumatra earthquake, a victim texted friends to say he was buried under his house and could someone please come and dig him up. Thankfully they obliged. There’s also this mental story about how two surgeons carried out an operation by text and subsequently saved a young man’s life.

All amazing, fascinating stories… unless of course you’re a seasoned horror flick writer, left wringing your hands in despair as each new cell phone story rears its heroic head in the news. Let’s face genre facts: isolation builds tension, and the reliance on ticking clock psychology, with death as a threat, flags up the phone issue much more regularly than in most other genres, and if we’ve now got people texting from lost boats in the Indian Ocean, texting from underneath rubble in earthquake-ravaged Indonesia, and texting from the dense jungles of Western Africa, what hope does any horror screenwriter have in justifying why his endangered charges simply don’t send a quick text and avert the impending mass slaughter that’s about to fill our screens for the next 40 minutes.

Of course, everyone knows there are plenty of places where we can’t get a phone signal – I can’t get one at my place of work, a place ironically most likely to be the setting for an epic slasher biopic real soon – but the problem is that these publicised rescue stories, combined with the leap-off-the-screen awkwardness of many cell phone caveats, just don’t sit well with an audience brought up to unconsciously adhere to the Aristotelian wisdom that a believable untruth is much easier to accept than an unbelievable truth. The cell phone 'problem' and subsequent excuse in contemporary horror has become a bit of an elephant in the script.

“We gotta be in some kind of sun spot or something, there’s no signal getting out!”

Forget not having a signal. The majority of times I need my cell phone for any length of time, no matter where I’ve gone, it’s more or less guaranteed I’ll have hardly any battery left, especially the further from home I am. Fact. The lack of useable cell phones in those film clips, at least the ones where the phones suddenly choke and die, is without doubt the most realistic part of any of those movies from my point of view. My phone is always dying on me when I’m out. My friends, thankfully, are not. But just because it happens in real life, it doesn’t stop it threatening to be a big stomping elephant, trumping away whenever the phone issue is raised. What to do?

The repeated issue with many of these films is the lack of creativity; we see time and again phones dying or being dropped at the very moment they’re most needed. In most cases, the filmmakers should flag the issue before the audience identifies it; place the get-out clause before the conflict and give the audience an answer before the problem appears. Hence the "No phones allowed on this trip!" as if by acknowledging it beforehand they’re saying to the audience, "You can't accuse us when we were the ones that flagged it before you even thought it!" It’s always better to know there are no bullets left in a gun than to find out when the gun goes click... click... dull ... and we’re left feeling cheated. Bring it forward, foreshadow, and use subtle plants and payoffs to at least give yourself a fighting chance.

Or maybe even remove them altogether. Is the problem with half of these cell phone issues the fact that they are even mentioned in the first place? Is the fact that the filmmakers highlight an issue that's common knowledge, yet having highlighted it they do nothing new or convincing with it? Is the pain of a terrible excuse – “Jesus, you’d think what I paid for this thing I’d get more than one bar service!” - any worse than the potential for a question left hanging over why they didn't have a phone?

I juggled with CPD (cell phone dilemma) in a thriller script that involved a situation in a jungle where medical assistance was needed. I opted to not even mention or involve cell phones and instead had characters head to a village they knew had a radio transmitter. It suited the plot, felt natural and I don't think the piece suffered because of it. Not one person who read it flagged it as an issue and my feeling is that if I had opted to write in some dramatic disclaimer as to why these guys couldn’t use their phones then I’m sure those same readers would probably have raised a knowing eyebrow at that point.

Cell phones are now such a part of everyday life that they increasingly put pressure on writers to explain them away, especially when their working presence, or lack of, is highlighted by an endangered or terrified character’s inability to reach out to those better placed to save them. How you overcome or address that problem in your own work is a combination of creativity, calculated risk and pot luck, but my fascination with this being an issue nowadays is that for all the serial killers and cannibals out there living in teen-friendly no-signal zones, the real monster highlighted in these film clips is the technology itself. The threat of everyday technology failing us, deserting us, leaving us stranded to the ravages of nature. That’s where the real horror lies... what happens when everything stops working?

Then again, what if all movies had cell phones? Bonjour?

Censorship

2009-06-16T08:13:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the BBC: where the Thought Police are alive and kicking

The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain recently issued a press release following the BBC’s rejection of Caryl Churchill’s 'Seven Jewish Children', a play criticising Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Radio 4’s Commissioning Editor for Drama, Jeremy Howe, said that although he thought the play was a “brilliant piece”, the BBC could not broadcast the play “on the grounds of impartiality”. Howe went onto to say, “It would be nearly impossible to run a drama that counters Caryl Churchill’s view.”

Somebody should have told Jeremy to break the pills in two. It’s utter lunacy that a commissioning editor for drama would read a piece of drama that he considers a “brilliant piece” and subsequently reject it on the grounds that he would need to find another piece of drama to offer a counter argument to justify the commission? Huh? Exactly what planet do I send my license fee to? How rare must it be for a drama commissioning editor to discover a piece of drama they actually deem to be brilliant? And to then not commission it? It’s a decision that makes no artistic sense whatsoever. Exactly what kind of play is Radio 4 looking for, if not brilliant?

One year ago, Jeffery himself answered that: "At its best Radio 4 is challenging, curious and mischievous. And is content rich. [Radio 4 are looking for] a good story told in a fresh and original way. It is that simple. Good dialogue is pretty crucial. Because it is a single it has to stand out, it has to grab us.” Right. So there’s your BBC submitting guidelines: aim for all the above but just make sure it’s not brilliant. Oh, and also don’t make it controversial and also not anything likely to upset the government, please.

As worrying as this blatant censorship is, unfortunately it comes as no surprise when you consider the BBC’s shocking refusal, in January 2009, to broadcast a charity plea for Gaza by the Disasters Emergency Committee on similar grounds. The decision on its own was abhorrent, but for them to cite impartiality as a motive is ridiculous. Impartiality to what, exactly? The charity DEC cited that “at least 412 Children have been killed and 1,855 injured” and wanted to broadcast an urgent plea in a desperate attempt to slow, and ultimately halt, the continuing deaths of more children in Gaza. Unfortunately that route of publicity was denied them by decision makers whose motives are founded on the importance of upholding an institution over the less important lives of children.

Is this the same due diligence to impartiality that, following our government’s brutal and illegal assault on Iraq in 2003, saw the BBC’s then Political Editor, Andrew Marr, on the steps of number 10 Downing Street, gleefully telling BBC viewers that Tony Blair had “said they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating, and on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right.” That’s the height of BBC impartiality, is it? With Amnesty and UNICEF having publicly estimated over half a million Iraqis dead, children dying from chronic malnutrition and diarrhoea (one in eight dying before their fifth birthday), a contaminated water supply and crippled energy grid, over four million refugees, and whole regions practically glowing with the promise of cancer as a result of non-stop Allied bombardment with depleted uranium. Yep. Let’s all hear it for BBC impartiality.

The BBC produces an internal newspaper run by its own staff for its own staff. In the edition published after the blocked Gaza appeal, the letters page was titled “In blocking Gaza appeal we are taking sides” and each letter voiced strong opinion against the decision not to broadcast the charity appeal. BBC producer, Jonathon Renouf, said: “There is a smell of fear about this decision. Fear of controversy, fear of criticism, fear of repercussions. Perhaps this is the true fallout from the Hutton Report, Queengate and Jonathon Ross; an organization so mired in fear that it finds itself able to sacrifice aid to the victims of war for a principle that nobody (outside the BBC higher echelons) seems to believe was at stake.”

If that is the case, which it increasingly looks to be, it would suggest some tough times ahead for those writers hoping to push boundaries and inspire change. Not quite so tough, though, as the future of those children denied a chance by a public service broadcaster whose primary motivation is a commitment to a hypocrisy that assumes God-like precedence over a child’s suffering and survival.

Reading The Future

2009-06-09T16:02:00.000+01:00

Have you often fantasized about reading a book but were put off by their bookiness? Have you always yearned for that intimate reading experience but just couldn’t get over the booky hurdle of bookiness that most books exude? Well Amazon has come up with just the solution for YOU.

“At half the thickness of Amazon's first e-book reader, the Amazon Kindle 2 ($359) is pretty inviting. It's a, sleek, curved tablet that you can easily hold in your hands.”

My God! This revolutionary invention is so book-like that you can actually easily hold it in your hands! Like a book!

“The first-generation Kindle weighed 10.3 ounces and offered a paperlike E-Ink display that keeps eyestrain at bay.”

And it has a paper-like quality! Wow! Just like books!

“The first Kindle was readable in sunlight…”

Hallelujah! Like books!

“… it also had long battery life…”

Brilliant! Who doesn’t hate it when you get to a good bit and your book stops working?

“… and allows you to highlight passages at will.”

What, like a pen, on paper? AT WILL? It’s a miracle I tell you!

“The Kindle 2 retains all of those capabilities, in a slimmer form. In my tests with the device, it felt easier to hold, especially one-handed.”

My God AGAIN! This new not-book is SO book-like it’s even like one those books you can hold in one hand. Is that like a paperback? A paperback BOOK? If so, that's brilliant!

“And the slim form made it easier to pack alongside my ultraportable laptop and other devices in my gear bag.”

It IS like a paperback book! Brilliant. It’s SO paperback book-like you can put it in bags! Genius! And the pièce de résistance of this God-like-genius invention? Drum roll… PERLEEZE!

“The Kindle 2 turns pages 20 percent faster than the original Kindle does. The faster refresh allows you to navigate the screen in real time, at least.”

It… turns… pages… as… fast… as… a… REAL BOOK! I had a quick scan of the Amazon reviews but couldn’t get past the first amazed customer's review:

“I've had the Kindle 2 in my hands for almost a day and have carried it on one commute.”

Cat Straw™

2009-06-08T14:55:00.000+01:00

So, why is it that cats can’t pour water down their throats? Other than not possessing opposable thumbs and having access to small cups, surely if they just lowered their heads into a bowl of water far enough so their bottom jaw is fully immersed in the water, then all they’d then need to do is open their mouth and suck and they’d quench their thirst a lot quicker than THE HALF A FUCKING HOUR IT TAKES MY CAT AT SIX O’CLOCK EVERY MORNING TO NOISILY SLURP WHAT MUST AMOUNT TO NO MORE THAN A THIMBLE FULL.

I don’t see it being that intellectually challenging. It’s how my tortoise drinks, he doesn’t seem to have a problem with it, he just lowers his little head into the bird bath and sucks away, yet my tortoise can’t operate the cat flap or open the bathroom door or stealthily stalk squirrels and he certainly doesn’t come bounding down the garden having recognized that I’ve just called out his name (not for want of trying on my part), so what is it that’s stopping my more-intelligent-than-a-tortoise cat from taking a few silent gulps of water in the morning just like my tortoise does?

Is it simply that cats don’t like getting their chins wet? I know most domestic cats generally don’t like getting wet, so maybe that’s all it is, they’d rather spend half an hour dipping their tongue in and out and in and out and in and out of a bowl of water than risk the horror of getting a damp chin. But I wonder. Can cats suck? Is it because cats can’t suck that they don’t suck, or is it because cats are so blissfully unaware that sucking even exists that they have no concept of the suck? They don’t smoke, they don’t drink milkshakes, and they’ve certainly never needed to siphon petrol, so maybe it’s just that they’ve never had to evolve an intricate sucking system (neither have tortoises, I hear you cry, but tortoises do smoke. Constantly. Why do you think they’re so slow?) So it could be that sucking might be the answer to the cat drinking problem. I appreciate cats might not think they’ve got much of a problem with drinking, but, hey, our ancestors used to think drinking warm beer was normal. Progress. Things change.

So, can cats suck? And if so, what about straws, can cats use straws? Has anyone even thought to ask them? The straw would certainly be the natural solution to any damp chin concerns, plus a lot of resources and money go into researching cat foods and if we establish cats can suck then there’s a whole other industry out there. Isotonic cat drinks for the active moggy, diet drinks for the less active. It all comes down to the straw and whether cats can use them. Even rabbits can use straws and they’re hardly rocket scientists, they understand the principle behind the ‘suck a straw-sized tube and get a drink’ scenario - they suck on those upside down water bottles that look like small versions of cyclists’ water bottles, or even just small cyclists’ water bottles, and quench their thirst. My dear old rabbit, Miffy, would always have a glug on his water bottle to wash his carrots down. No problem for him, he understood the concept of suck. So why not my cat?

This could be the start of something big. Or at least something long, thin and straw-like.

The Cat Straw™. In shops now!

"When your cat wants more...

... use The Cat Straw™"

On With The New

2009-06-03T15:32:00.000+01:00

And off with the old... Adios Tom!

WORKING AT THE BBC – Part 2

2009-05-12T01:36:00.000+01:00

POWER MAN

It’s pointless me charting a path to what you’re about to read because you already pretty much know how I arrived at this point. If in any doubt, just substitute the previous bureaucratic madness about trying to get someone to come and make a phone work, with something similarly ridiculous about how to get someone to come and get a desk powered up, and then simply apply the same RIDICULOUS timeframe, chuck in half a dozen disinterested people who each think anyone but themselves should be sorting this out and then add magic mushrooms.

Allow me to make the introductions.

POWER MAN (40s) smart new boiler suit, a confident swagger to his walk, saunters through the open-plan office. He stops at a desk, puts his surprisingly clean and very shiny toolbox down on the floor, straightens up and winks at me.

POWER MAN
Alright. Got a couple of desks need powering up?

(It still really bothers me that I failed to initially note two massively glaring pieces of characterization: the smart boiler suit - it even had ironed creases - and a shiny clean toolbox.)

Anyway, I pointed out that indeed these were the two desks that needed powering up.

POWER MAN
Let’s see what we can do for you.

(The royal plural, eh? Pluralis maiestatis. Unless he actually means a hoard of them are about to turn up similarly dressed in brand new boiler suits? Maybe enacting a synchronized saunter across the office to musical accompaniment. “MEN AT WORK - The Musical: it’s men working, but with songs!”)

He drops to his knees (mind those creases) and crawls under my desk.

I back away a little whilst trying to determine what should be a respectful distance in this kind of scenario, somewhere between not too far away that it seems I’m not interested in the work he is doing on my behalf, but also not too close for him to think I’m somehow checking up on his work. The result, I think, must have been maybe a little too close, because when he reappeared from under my desk I stupidly pretended to be surprised that he had just appeared from under my desk. His head popped out, my eyebrows shot up and I gave a little “Oh! Hello!” and consequently felt a right twat.

Why did I do that?

Anyway…

POWER MAN
Yeah. The problem is your desk isn’t plugged in. You’ve got no power to your desk.

(If only this genius had thought to study the great diseases of our time or famine prevention instead of desk plugs, then the world as we know it might be a different place. I stress might.)

ME
I know. That’s why I called you.

POWER MAN
There’s nothing powering it up. It needs connecting to the mains.

ME
Right.

POWER MAN
You see, what you’ve got, you got the power block attached to your desk, that’s those plugs you see under there. See? That line of plugs?

I make a point of looking under the desk to look at the plugs. I nod my head.

POWER MAN
Well they’re your plugs. But they’re not plugged in themselves. What you need is a lead to plug into your power block, that block there, that also plugs into the mains via that floor box.

I continue to stare at my powerless plugs and sagely nod my head as if I’m finally being allowed in to the inner sanctum of plug knowledge.

POWER MAN
That’s how you power it.

ME
Right.

POWER MAN
Basically you’re gonna need a lead. A lead and a plug.

ME
Right. A lead and a plug.

POWER MAN
Yeah. You’ll need a lead and plug.

ME
Right.

Power Man gathers together his shiny toolbox. I take note of this worrying action but remain rooted to the spot unsure of what to do or what say to him. The gormless concern obviously etched across my face prompts him to reiterate by way of reassurance --

POWER MAN
You need a lead and a plug. You’ll need to put in a request for a lead and a plug.

ME
Sorry?

POWER MAN
You’ll need to put in a request for a lead and a plug.

I stare at Power Man. I look around at the surrounding desks, all inhabited by silent strangers beavering away at whatever it is they do. I can’t find one person to make eye contact with in the hope of exchanging a knowing smile, or maybe even a Valium or two. I look across to the window, half expecting to see Jeremy Beadle grinning back at me. Except he’s dead now. Although I’m not convinced seeing him standing there would make any less sense.

It turns out that there are four different departments involved in the installation of my desk. Of course there is. Firstly, naturally, there is the actual desk department who deliver and build my desk and kindly throw in a wonky chair for good measure but not good posture. Then there’s the floor box department who install holes in the floors under desks for plugging things into. Then there’s the guys who wire up the holes in the floors and make them work. Then there’s the department who supply power leads and plugs. They are four separate departments, each owned by separate independent contractors, who each bill the BBC for each job they carry out. They do not appear to communicate with each other or have a good word to say about each other. I should also point out that Phone Man is not employed by any of the above departments as the phones are also a separate outsourced service. Fun, eh?

In summary: Power Man informs me our desks are without specific leads and plugs required for power. I point out that we had already worked out that bombshell, hence the request for someone to come and power us up. He then points out that the actual supplying of leads and plugs are not his area of responsibility, his area of responsibility is simply to ensure that there is actual power available but stops at making that power accessible through the unusual and outdated practice of supplying an actual power cord and an actual plug. Or as he succinctly put it:

POWER MAN
Look. I can confirm your desks have the ability to get power. That’s not a problem. But as to whether you can actually access that power, well that’s not my area of responsibility. You need to speak to the building facilities department to get a plug and a lead. They can supply you with the route to the power but not the power itself; that’s my department.

So…

… having known for six months that I was due to start here on a specific date and would need a desk on arrival, it still took one month after I arrived to actually get a desk, and having got that desk it then took a further two weeks to get a working phone and power to that desk. Brilliant.

Once this Millennium Dome of desks was finally complete, with all the different departments having contributed their bit to the jigsaw, the first item I plugged in, of course, didn’t work. No power. Nothing. Which, it turns out, wasn’t such a bad thing as it meant I avoided electrocution when I repeatedly smashed my skull into my monitor screen. Eventually they/someone/not sure who at this point, returned in my absence and diagnosed the fuses in my desk plugs needed replacing. Yet it wasn’t because I was told about the fuses that I knew they had been changed. Oh no. Nothing that obvious. It was simply because when I returned to my desk, planted my arse and moved my mouse, the resulting sharp pain and subsequent smear of blood across my desk was revealed to be caused by smashed fuse glass imbedded in my palm. I discovered more small pieces of glass generously scattered across my desk, as if a mouse juggling act had gone terribly wrong in my absence.

A kind soul from a neighboring desk advised me where the first aid box was kept. I thanked him for his concern, and then apologized to his colleagues for screaming the word “FUCK!” at the top of my voice. I'm sure they heard my apology from under their desks.

My hand wrapped in tissue paper, I trotted off to the kitchenette area, as instructed.

What a marvelous sight to behold…

I found this Telegraph article written in 2002: Suffering Succotash! which has since left me with with one eye on the ceiling and the other browsing Ebay for secondhand Miner's hats.

It looks like I picked a bad year to give up glue.

Working At The BBC - Part 3

WORKING AT THE BBC - Part 1

2009-04-11T04:32:00.001+01:00

(a tragicomedy in two acts)

So, after patiently ‘hot-desking’ for one whole month (one of those annoying sugar-coated expressions that attempts to pointlessly garner excitement from a miserably dull reality, in this case the supremely uninspiring practice of sharing desks with everyone and their empty coffee cups) my buddy and I, working together on our latest broadcasting caper, finally manage to get our very own desks. Hurrah! Two empty desks. All ours. Not anyone else’s desks. No seats left uncomfortably warm by unknown bums. No mysterious coats over chairs. No dirty mugs beside keyboards smothered with buttery breakfasty fingerprints. Nope. Two fresh, clean, empty desks devoid of any suggestion of previous habitation and intended for the sole use of us both. Time to plant a flag and claim these babies as ours - one twelfth of a year later and we finally got them. And considering the insane bureaucracy we’ve been privy to during this time maybe we should consider one month as being quite an achievement.

Yeah right.

We got no phones. Well, we got phones, two of them, one on each desk, but neither of them actually in working order. A condition compounded by the fact we’re also in an area that has no mobile phone coverage, we’re basically on the dark side of the moon. Except on Earth. And the desks have no power. Like the phone situation, there are plug sockets in attendance, several of them smiling away under the desk, but they don’t work. Nothing works. Nothing actually works.

So we mention that neither of our desk phones work and that our desks have no power. We mention this to several people. Repeatedly. A lot. We repeatedly mention this a lot. To a lot of people. And finally… it gets “elevated to a higher level” and we’re told that we need to put in a proper request to the relevant people.

So let’s start with getting these phones working…

ME
Okay. How do I do that?

BLOKE
Phone them. Here…
(writes number down)
… here’s their number.

I stare at him as he holds out the post-it note with the number on it. He smiles, nods, and holds the number towards me. Embarrassed for him, I take it.

ME
You want me to phone them?

BLOKE
Yeah. Just mention my name as a reference if there’s any problem.

ME
Right. Thanks. You want me to phone someone to report my phone isn’t working?

(I’m thinking to myself as I’m looking at him, well, I’m no psychic, but I can already predict there being one massive problem with that suggestion. But I’m looking at him and he just isn’t getting it. I should point out that this is also the same bloke who one month ago suggested I email the IS department to tell them that I wasn’t able to log onto my computer.)

BLOKE
Yeah. Seriously, if you get any hassle just put them onto me.

ME
I won’t be able to phone them. My phone doesn’t work. I can’t phone them.

I follow his lead and stare at the defunct phone on my new desk, both of us willing it to do something to get us out of this mess…

Finally…

BLOKE
Leave it to me. I’ll phone them.

It was a further TWO weeks before the smiling phone man appeared and my phone was networked to the BBC system and finally up and running. But only my phone, not my fellow workmate’s. Once the phone man had finished pressing my buttons and explained some phone functions that I can’t imagine anyone ever needing, ever, I then pointed him towards our other phone that needed doing, a phone less than three feet away on a desk opposite and attached to mine.

PHONE MAN
You’ll need to put in a request for that one.

ME
We did.

PHONE MAN
For that phone. You’ll need a request for that phone.

ME
We did. That’s why you’re here. We already put it in.

PHONE MAN
No. I only got a job request for one phone. This phone.

ME
But we got these desks at the same time. Two weeks ago. And neither phone was working. That’s when we put in the request. Two weeks ago.

PHONE MAN
I only got a job request for one phone. You’ll need to put in another request for that phone.

ME
I’m sorry if it wasn’t made clear. It was BLOKE who put in the request for us, obviously we couldn’t because we didn’t have a phone, and I’m sure he would have put in a request for both phones because he knew we needed both --

PHONE MAN
I only got one job request for one phone.

ME
-- so maybe he got it wrong or didn’t explain himself properly, and if that’s the case I do apologise, but --

PHONE MAN
You’ll need to put in another request for that phone.

ME
Okay.
(one… two… three… four…)
Can I put in a request now, then? To you? Whilst you’re here? The phone’s right there. Please? We would be really grateful. Really. It only took a couple of minutes to do this one.

We look at each other…

… he looks towards the other phone…

… looks back to me…

(Jesus, the suspense is killing me!)

ME
Please?

PHONE MAN
Sorry. I only got one job request for one phone. You need to phone a request in for that phone.

An internal primal scream threatens to blow my eyeballs out of their sockets. Thankfully, years of regimented study in several Japanese martial disciplines has taught me well. I take a deep breath and instantly calm my inner psycho. It’s only a phone. A phone. It’s not as if it’s anything actually important. Yeah. I'm cool.

PHONE MAN
Do you need the number?

I decide right there and then to kill him.

Tune in soon to WORKING AT THE BBC - Part 2 where you’ll find out all about POWER MAN: the man in charge of powering up my new desk. He’s a real hoot, that one, a right barrel of laughs.

Screenwriting Gurus

2009-03-03T10:33:00.000Z

Contrary to popular belief, I think many of the popular screenwriting books and self-styled screenwriting gurus can be responsible for driving away promising hopefuls by shackling their writing potential. I stress many, but not all…

I accept that any book or teacher that offers the best/easiest/guaranteed route to success will always attract customers from both the lazy and inquisitive camps, but once they have your cash and your attention, then what? Most of us have only been schooled in the ways of reading and writing literature and to throw ourselves suddenly at drama, via a book or course that guarantees success, can easily end in confusion when we’re presented with a new language, new set of rules, and an assortment of scientific formulas.

It’s easy to see why, after several miserable attempts to grasp these new doctrines, so many enthusiasts fade into disgruntled oblivion. Wasn’t this meant to be easy? A thought further exacerbated by examples of successful screenplays.

A screenplay should be slick, succinct, and easy to read and understand. But we put so much time and effort into researching, structuring and writing a screenplay, to ensure it looks simple and is easy to read, that the finished product looks like anybody can do it, which naturally leads everyone who reads a screenplay into thinking they can do it. Take the recent critically acclaimed release, The Reader, as an example. The very talented playwright and screenwriter David Hare took Bernard Schlink’s complex 224 page novel and crafted it into an 82 page non-linear narrative, telling two stories fifty years apart, that reads ever-so simply and must have been a dream for both director and actors to work with; and was rightly nominated for an Oscar. Anyone reading that script with aspirations to dabble in dramatic writing could be forgiven for initially thinking “Only eighty-two pages? Not many words on those pages. Mmmm, have to say, this looks pretty easy.” Add to that the promise of a book/guru/course pretty much guaranteeing success and you can understand why most wannabe writers end up nonplussed when they repeatedly fail to create a winning screenplay.

We do not need to be spoon fed how to write stories, basic storytelling technique is instinctive. Many moons ago I was on a beach with my young nephew. He's a quiet, sensitive little chap, not one for pouring his heart out, so when he began telling me how he was being bullied at school, I didn't make a fuss, I simply continued to look for stranded mermaids in rock pools and let him get on with it. As I listened, I realised we are all born with the ability to tell stories, it's just that as we grow up those who become the storytellers tend to have a more natural ability to successfully convey those stories.

He set his little world up for me. He told me about school, about a particular lesson, about the teacher, the kids and what they were all doing. I knew who the bad guy was, although he didn't initially tell me, then he threw in the inciting incident and the effect it had on him, swiftly followed by the subsequent plot point which seemed to tie in with the end of his Act I. Although hardly a riveting story, it was still a story, and one that was structured pretty traditionally. But ask my nephew who McKee is and he'll probably suggest that's what Ronald McDonald uses to get into his house every night. So what miracle occurred to gift him the power of story?

I firmly believe we are all born with an unconscious understanding of the basic principles of story. Combine that with years of being told stories, reading stories and watching stories, and it’s easy to see how we develop an unconscious appreciation of drama - a perfect platform to experiment with writing drama at a later stage. I also believe that those formative years, spent unconsciously absorbing valuable dramatic information, can be quickly rendered redundant by opting to become disciples of books and gurus rather than having faith in our own natural ability to work things out ourselves. Learning by writing through our own mistakes, rather than being told what those mistakes might be before we even know they exist, is what contributes to us developing our voice and becoming individuals in a field awash with imitators.

Novice screenwriters should read scripts instead of books and avoid the gurus, concentrating more on writing and telling their own stories, in prose, in their own way, without the restrictions of previously unknown dramatic rules and principles. It is a much more organic fertile environment and will allow any hidden potential to happily flourish. Once a writer has become more confident and established in his/her ability, then it makes more sense to dabble in the informative arts of gurus and their offerings, as these resources are much more useful to those already familiar with a basic understanding of drama in practice.

In positing this theory I fully accept I’m now off the Christmas card list of most gurus, their agents and publishers. Mind you, maybe that’s not such a bad thing: once you’ve read one, you’ve read them all.

Thought For The Day

2009-02-14T01:29:00.000Z

Cambozola is good
it's better than wood
coz it's easier to spread on your bread.
But it's hard to believe
that a full fat soft cheese
would make a strong four poster bed.

Preparation... It's All In The Sauce

2009-01-15T18:17:00.000Z

Plants & Payoffs

When a writer introduces a specific detail into a story, he needs to examine whether that detail will be unconsciously believed by the audience. If it isn’t, the writer runs the risk of alienating the audience and undoing all the hard work that went into the script. To avoid that happening the writer should subtly foreshadow the specific detail so it feels completely natural when it eventually happens. The writer has to prepare.

Subtle preparation starts with our characters: how we set them up and how they subsequently behave. For example, if we know a character is a former soldier and when jumped by three heavies easily overpowers them, the audience are ready to accept that. If the character is a mild-mannered accountant yet still manages to come out on top, unless the audience have been prepared to think otherwise, they could be sceptical of the outcome and might snap out of the story. A mild mannered accountant who also boxes as a hobby would at least be a good starting point.

Likewise, imagine that same accountant, off work with a broken leg, watching his neighbours from his apartment window. Thinking he’s just witnessed a murder, he opens a drawer and produces binoculars and various telescopic lenses to zoom in for a clear view. Might that be just a little too convenient? If we were to establish earlier in the narrative that he’s a bird-watching enthusiast or, even simpler, change his profession to that of a photographer, then the groundwork has been laid for unquestioned audience acceptance.

This may all seem very obvious to read, but so many films and their audiences suffer because of a failure in preparation. It could be a result of the filmmakers being too involved and losing perspective or simply through complacency or maybe even arrogance, but the fact remains even seasoned pros fall foul of poor preparation.

In the David Koepp-penned, Steven Spielberg classic, Jurassic Park, poor preparation results in a disappointing finale, made all the more disappointing by how simple it would have been to avoid. Following a tense chase scene, the two kids, Timmy and Lex, find themselves trapped in the computer room with Dr Grant and his fiancé, Ellie. Earlier in the film, a computer breach results in all security doors being automatically unlocked and disabled, which now poses a serious problem for the kids as the one and only door to the computer room cannot be locked manually and a velociraptor is about to get in. They are trapped. They are dinner.

Dr Grant and Ellie are fighting a losing battle to hold the door shut against the raptor’s superior strength and weight. It’s surely only a matter of seconds before the raptor bursts through and massacres them all. We hold our breath … the kids cower … any moment now … and then something miraculous happens. Lex sits down at the recently rebooted computer system, speedily navigates through its operating systems and promptly activates the security systems. The door slams shut and locks, the disappointed raptor peers dolefully through the glass and the kids breathe a sigh of relief, safe and sound within the locked room. WHOOSH BUMP! That’s the sound of me returning to reality; suspension of belief has just been suspended until further notice. How I hate those whoosh bump moments.

I invested time and emotional energy rooting for these kids only to be rudely affronted when one of them (who up until this moment has spent the majority of the film crying and screaming) morphs into a high-security computer systems analyst in the nick of time and saves the day. Where on earth did that come from? Poor preparation.

Lex using her computer skills was a specific detail that should have been a payoff moment. The problem was, there hadn’t been a significant plant earlier in the script to make that payoff acceptable. All we had were a few lines of dialogue, very late on in the film, where Timmy calls Lex a nerd because she’s always on her computer at home. Lex responds to Timmy by saying she’s a hacker; Timmy again calls her a nerd. And that’s it, a brief dialogue exchange in which a nine-year-old boy tells us that a twelve-year-old girl likes computers, and from that we are expected to accept her elevation to heroine über-geek status as she speedily navigates her way around a complex computer system whilst a terrifying monster breathes down her neck.

What’s even worse about that scene is that in Michael Crichton’s original draft, adapted from his novel, it is Timmy, not Lex, who saves the day in the computer room. Crichton turns bad preparation into an art form by failing to plant even a whiff of Timmy’s technical prowess. I assume Koepp and/or Spielberg, in reading that draft, figured it a bit far-fetched that a nine-year-old would be so au fait with computers and so, in the new draft, they changed the nine-year-old boy to the twelve-year-old girl, and for good measure threw in a line about her being a computer nerd to plant a seed in our minds. It’s a real shame that having identified a problem, the resulting fix was too weak.

I’m not sure why they were so keen to have Lex using the computer as a tension-building moment (let’s face it, in a story involving dinosaurs and children there’s hardly limited options for creating tension) but having decided to include that element, why not prepare it properly?

We are first introduced to Lex and Timmy in an amusing scene that is a payoff for Dr Grant’s character. We are shown early in the film that Dr Grant hates kids, yet his fiancé, Ellie, wants kids. When Dr Grant is about to embark on the much-anticipated tour of the dinosaur park, he discovers to his horror that two children are to accompany him. This is the first time we realise there are children on the island. It’s a surprise that instantly annoys Grant, which amuses Ellie and in turn amuses us. That joke is a payoff for the earlier plant but unfortunately it’s included at the expense of the ultimate payoff scene towards the end of the movie.

Any number of options could have been used in this instance. They could have introduced Lex in the computer room being given a systems demonstration by the resident computer genius. She is the owner’s granddaughter, after all, and if he’s happy for the kids to drive around a park full of dinosaurs, surely he’ll not mind a little tinkering in the engine room? The sibling rivalry can still be used as a tool to disguise the plant. The computer guy could be impressed by how quickly Lex picks up what he’s showing her - specifically, the park security systems – and say, “She certainly knows her way around a computer.” This would prompt a smile from the proud grandfather, which in turn would be swiftly followed by Timmy’s, “She’s a nerd! She’s always on the computer at home.”

It’s still subtle yet establishes a more effective plant to help us accept the plausibility of a twelve-year-old sussing out an automated security system at the end of the film. Furthermore, rather than show us an effective plant, they use a nine-year-old boy to tell us a weak plant. Whoosh bump. Bad decision in what is otherwise an extremely well-written script.

For this kind of subtle preparation to work, not only is it important for the plant to establish enough information to justify the payoff (as above), it’s also important the plant appears as an insignificant detail, nothing to arouse excitement or suspicion. It’s only later during the payoff moment, when the critical detail has been introduced, that it all falls into place and the relevance of the plant pays off. When this works, it’s a great moment because the audience feel they have participated in the story. They’ve had to work for it, plus they know you’ve trusted them enough not to spoon-feed them exposition. You’ve connected with your audience.

In M Night Shyamalan's Signs, the young girl, Bo, believes that all drinking water is contaminated. Whenever she’s given a glass of water, she takes a sip, turns her nose up and puts the glass down. As the film progresses, more and more glasses of abandoned water collect throughout the house. Her family indulge her, knowing it’s just a harmless childhood phase, and we all smile at what is a very cute little girl with a very charming character trait. At no point do we suspect these actions to be anything other than good characterisation. It’s only at the end of the film that we discover the perfect combination of great characterisation with a well-crafted plant.

Shyamalan offers further examples of great preparation for all his main cast, giving them subtle and believable character traits that never feel forced or telegraphed yet all serve as great payoff moments at the climax. The script is a masterclass in preparation, as well as a great example of low-budget scriptwriting.

Good preparation isn’t always about being subtle. Telegraphed preparation - flagging information to the audience - can serve as a good tension builder simply because the audience are aware there’s a payoff coming. One of the more common forms of telegraphing is through variations of: "If you do this, then this will happen." When Little Red Riding Hood is warned, "Do not stray from the path!" we are immediately on high alert when she eventually does stray from the path because we’ve been told to expect trouble.

Where this type of preparation can suffer is not necessarily with the original plant, but with the expected payoff, and to demonstrate I’ll use another Spielberg classic, Minority Report and another well-written script, this one by Scott Frank and Jon Cohen.

A policeman, John Anderton, is on the run in a futuristic society where everyone is tracked and identified by eye scanners wherever they go. There is no avoiding detection and because it’s only a matter of time before he will be caught, Anderton takes the only route left to remain a free man: he has an eye transplant to remove his ‘fugitive’ eyes and replace them with those of an average Joe. It’s this scene that lays down two pretty heavy plants that both result in unnecessary whoosh bump moments.

With the Jurassic Park example, we saw a weak plant fail at the payoff due to shoddy preparation. With both the examples in Minority Report we see two blatantly telegraphed plants fail miserably because there is no pay off in either instance.

John Anderton’s fugitive status forces him to visit a shady back-street surgeon for the eye transplant. Just prior to the operation, Anderton is given an anaesthetic that quickly renders him physically useless, although he can still speak and hear. It’s at this point that the surgeon reveals he and Anderton know each other. Many years ago, Anderton arrested and locked up the surgeon for the shocking crime of setting female patients on fire. Anderton remembers him (not one to forget) and as Anderton lies there paralysed, trapped in the surgeon’s chair, the surgeon recounts his prison experiences, even alluding to the fact that he was raped.

As Anderton struggles with the grim reality that this nutter is probably after some serious payback, the surgeon lifts a laser gun to Anderton’s face, thanks him for sending him to prison and then says, “Let me return the favour…” and as the laser gun moves in, we collectively recoil from what must inevitably be this madman’s gruesome retribution.

The script then cuts to another scene and when we eventually return to Anderton, he’s in the same place, post-op, with his face and eyes wrapped in bandages. The surgeon is still with him and explains that it’s imperative he waits twelve hours before removing the bandages otherwise he will go blind. The surgeon stresses this several times, to the point that Anderton even repeats it back to him, demonstrating that he (we) understands he will go blind if he removes the bandages before twelve hours have passed. This is the second telegraphed plant. The audience are still waiting for the payoff on the first one. What has this nutter done to Anderton’s face and eyes they wonder? Also, why isn’t Anderton wondering that, too?

The surgeon gives Anderton a timer and some recreational drugs. An alarm will sound in twelve hours letting him know he can safely remove the bandages. The surgeon exits, Anderton takes a hit on the drugs and settles down to wait the allotted time. Unfortunately for him, the police are closing in and with six hours still remaining on his “gonna-go-blind” timer, Anderton is forced to uncover his newly transplanted left eye so a scanner can read it. He peels back the bandages, forces open his eye and the scanner strobes across it. Ouch! The new eye fools the police. They think it’s a different guy and the audience breathe a huge sigh of relief at the end of an extremely tense scene. The pain and suffering and ultimate blindness in one eye were worth it because he’s still a free man.

The next scene shows Anderton in public wearing sunglasses. We sympathise with him and his recent sacrifice, that is until he removes the glasses and can see perfectly well with both eyes! Whoosh bump.

If you telegraph this kind of detail you have to follow through with your promise and deliver, otherwise the audience will feel cheated and you could risk losing them. If Little Red Riding Hood defies her mother’s warning and strays from the path, something pretty rotten must happen to her. Failing to realise telegraphed preparation deprives the audience of expected payoff. It’s part of the deal. Chekhov said it more succinctly: “do not show a rifle on stage unless you are planning for someone to use it.” This is exactly what happens in Minority Report. What about the mad surgeon? Where’s the payoff there? Exactly what did that warped, woman-burning psychopathic surgeon with a chip on his shoulder do to our hero’s eyes? Is something yet to come? No. Nothing.

Anderton’s face is unscathed and his eyes work perfectly well for the rest of the film, despite the surgeon heavily hinting it was payback time, and despite the fact that Anderton exposed one eye within the timeframe that we had it drummed into us he would go blind. That’s a double whoosh bump moment. Two massive payoff scenes that should have been written were deafening in their absence.

Although both preparation problems in Minority Report are the same type of problem - telegraphed plants with no payoff - their differences lie in accountability. Whereas in Jurassic Park the problem is created at script level, with Minority Report the honours are even, with both writer and director demonstrating a shocking lack of vision. (I think it’s safe to say I’ll never work for Mr. Spielberg.) The first problem, the telegraphed threat from the lunatic surgeon, was a poorly-executed attempt to create even more tension in a succession of scenes already crammed full of tension.

In continually trying to up the stakes for the already beleaguered protagonist, the writers overlooked the required payoff scene. The result? Audience distraction and disappointment, the very opposite of what they were after. It’s a great example of where less would have been more. Throwing more and more problems at your protagonist just for the sake of it doesn’t equate to heightened tension. Allowing the scene to breathe and for the audience to focus, allows for existing tension, of which there is plenty in this example, to take root and build, making the eventual payoff that much more rewarding.

The second telegraphed plant, the warning not to expose his new eyes until twelve hours have passed, was originally followed by the required payoff scene but only in the script. In Scott Frank and Jon Cohen’s script, when Anderton exposes his left eye after only six hours have passed, the eye actually turns white and for the rest of the script, as promised, he remains blind in that eye. That is the payoff scene that should have been seen, has to be seen, but unfortunately didn’t materialise in the finished film.

For whatever reason Spielberg decided to remove the element of Anderton going blind from the film. That’s fair enough; it’s the director’s prerogative, scenes are dropped and chopped all the time. However, having made the decision to drop the blindness element, Spielberg failed to remove its preparation, which left a gaping hole where there should have been a payoff scene, resulting in confusion, frustration and ultimately a betrayal of investment for the audience.

A similar problem occurs in Kieslowski’s Trzy Kolory: Bialy, where a confusing and disappointing finale is the direct result of specific preparation, present in the script, being cut from the finished film. Rejected husband, Karol, decides to fake his own death in a ploy to bring his estranged ex-wife, Dominique, from France to Poland for his funeral. Karol’s best friend, Mikolai, is in on the plan and after Karol’s ‘death’, arranges for a new identity, a new house and a new life for Karol in Hong Kong. Karol is due to fly to Hong Kong the morning after his own funeral.

Spying on his fake funeral, Karol is both moved and shocked at Dominique’s genuine grief, which prompts him to visit her at her hotel that same night. She expresses enormous relief that he is alive and they make sweet beautiful love and fall asleep in each other’s arms. It’s unclear why, after yearning for her for so long and going to such extreme lengths to induce her to come to Poland, Karol then sneaks off early in the morning before she wakes.

The police suddenly arrive and Dominique is surprisingly arrested for Karol’s murder. She is subsequently convicted and imprisoned leaving a sad Karol to pine outside her Polish prison with no further mention of his proposed Hong Kong plans. THE END. Whoosh bump.

The script reveals all. It turns out that Karol faked his own death to deliberately implicate Dominique as payback for the hell and humiliation she put him through in France. What we don’t see in the finished film is Karol arranging the set-up by having one of his men pinch Dominique’s passport whilst she’s at his funeral and replace it with one containing a new airport stamp that proves she was in the right place at the right time for his murder, the plan being that as Karol takes off for Hong Kong in the morning, his friend Mikolai will tip off the police about Dominique and all will be wrapped up nicely.

But it isn’t wrapped up nicely, at least not in the film, because the audience do not see any of that significant preparation and so when the police unexpectedly arrive at Dominique’s hotel and question her about her passport, we have no idea it has been faked and cannot understand why she has been arrested.

The script further reveals that following their night of passion after the funeral, Karol decides he can’t go through with the frame-up and he has also changed his mind about going to Hong Kong. So, the next morning, he leaves Dominique asleep in bed and hurries to the airport to cancel his ticket before phoning Mikolai to call the whole thing off.

Unfortunately, his arrival at the airport reveals that the clocks have gone forward. He tries to get hold of Mikolai but it’s too late; Mikolai’s already phoned the police and there’s no going back. And so we get the bittersweet ending. But only in the script, because in the film Karol sneaks off without explanation and Dominique is bizarrely arrested for Karol’s murder. We then see Karol seemingly devastated about Dominique’s arrest and imprisonment yet still allowing her to be wrongly accused of his murder, and there is no mention whatsoever of why Karol’s planned new life in Hong Kong hasn’t materialised. It’s about as clear as mud. Whoosh bump.

Kieslowski recognised this and admitted the ending was not clear. He agreed with the criticism but still defended his decision to cut the film saying he didn’t want to burden the viewer with a longer story. It seems very strange to cite audience welfare as his reason for cutting a film’s length when the subsequent result is mass audience confusion, especially when you consider the film is only an hour and a half long and the actual time cut from the finished film, according to Kieslowski himself, would have extended it by only “at least another ten minutes”.

Let’s suppose that is the case and for whatever reason he was against breaking the ninety-minute barrier. Director’s prerogative. But why did he choose to remove critical preparation that would undoubtedly lead to audience confusion and disappointment when he could just as easily reclaim that time from other areas of the film and sacrifice less important material? There’s plenty of opportunity to do that, plus he could have perfectly adequately foreshadowed the climax in less than “at least another ten minutes”.

All Kieslowski needed to do was show the all-important set-up with the passport forgery, then show Karol, after leaving Dominique in the hotel, discovering the time differential and trying to stop Mikolai from making that fateful phone call. That’s it. No longer than a few minutes. Instead we’re left with an intriguing and amusing film that ultimately confuses and disappoints at its climax. With all due respect to another brilliant director, I think he simply got it wrong. I think he made a mistake, an error in preparation, something none of us is immune to, neither the gods of film nor those of us who aspire to lie at their feet.

Of course, it’s always easy to pick holes in others’ hard work, but despite the problems highlighted above, all the examples have been consciously chosen from films that are recognised as being both critical and commercial successes. I just believe they could have been better. I fully accept that it’s extremely difficult to craft a work of drama without any holes, but we have some wonderful tools at our disposal to help do that, and by respecting just how delicate those tools are and understanding that even the greats can sometimes get it painfully wrong, hopefully we can be aware of our own fallibility and never become complacent.

First published in SCRIPTWRITER MAGAZINE issue 43 November 2008
TwelvePoint

Little Red Riding Hood by the very talented Annie Rodrigue

The Pursuit of Literature

2009-01-08T17:20:00.000Z

2009 is the year of the book. At least the book I’m writing. Or going to write. Which isn’t easy on two counts. No, three actually. The first being the actual writing of a book. No walk in the park, that. Secondly, I’ve been stuck in a present tense declarative world of writing drama for so long that any other way of writing looks plain wrong and in all honesty extremely dull. And thirdly, each time I try and write something I end up in a late nineteenth century novel…

The ancient grandfather clock chimed for the twelfth and final time and returned the room to a silence interrupted only by the occasional crack and pop from the fireplace.
Donald Leach looked at each of his two friends, both similarly reclined in well-worn leather armchairs, all in possession of cigars and brandy glasses.
“There it is, gentlemen, the witching hour,” he produced a fresh cigar from the box on the table beside him. “Who would like to start proceedings?”
James Patrick, a giant of an Irishman with purple ruddy cheeks and a shock of blonde hair that would please a man half his age, looked over to Donald, then to his gathered friends.
“I wouldn’t know where to start, to be honest. I can’t say I’ve ever done anything to inspire concern or controversy, contrary to popular belief.”
“Oh, come now, James, if there’s one amongst us who is surely over-qualified in that area, surely it must be you?”
The big man laughed, “Oh, I’ve lived a life, there’s no debating that, but not one full of the kind of intrigue you’re sniffing for. I’ve fought in wars, yes, I’ve killed people, and I’ve seen some pretty unpleasant things, some of which still weigh heavy on this old mind, for sure, but there’s nothing out there exists, or happened, that I feel was out of place or against my nature. I’ll go to my grave with a full belly and happy conscience.”
“Now that’s disappointing to hear. I was expecting tales of dark mischief from foreign lands, with maybe evil done with foreign hands? And here you sit amongst us, a decorated war hero, without so much as a blemish on your soul. What is the world coming to?” Donald reached across towards the fireplace and gave the long satin sash a silent tug. “Another brandy, gentlemen?”
“And I’ll not be much use to you, either, I’m afraid.” Robert Jackson was a slender, elegant man, around seventy with a full head of glorious white hair, with eyebrows and moustache to match. “I have no war medals to boast of, but neither do I have any dark tales to further darken this room. Although content with my lot, my life has been relatively dull, certainly in comparison to the Major here.”
“Oh, Bob,” said James, “routine is routine. My tales of derring-do are only of interest to those that have no experience of the army. You sit in a room filled with retired officers and you’ll soon see how dull life sounds. It’s always what the other man has that is of interest. You, for example, have had three wives, and for a man that has kept true to his vows to the same woman for fifty years, that certainly inspires a raised eyebrow or two.”
“Robert Jackson and his harem,” laughed Donald, “an ongoing saga that has kept many a tongue busy in certain circles and not a few happily married men more than a little jealous, mark my words. Yours is no dull life, my friend. But where is the darkness? Somewhere amongst us we must have a secret, some sin knocking on our conscience, waiting to get out. None of us have long left on this earth, gentlemen, confession time is upon us, lest we miss out on our place on the other side.”
“What about you, then, Donald, you brought this up, you suggested this evening’s post-dinner confessional. Are you about to drop on us a bombshell of the type that will have James comparing endless near-miss encounters with enemy mortar?
“No, nothing of the sort, unfortunately,” laughed Donald, “there is nothing remarkable about my life, not only are there no skeletons in my closet but no defining moments, either. I fell in love with my first and only wife, the dear and departed Isabelle, whilst still only in short pants. It seems I always new what I wanted before I ever really needed it and always ended up getting it. Pretty damn dull, really. My only regret would be never telling her just how much I really did love her.”
“Come now, Donald, that woman doted on you, night and day, she knew how much you loved her, there was never any question about that.” Robert drained the last of his brandy and, as if on cue, a light knock at the door advertised the arrival of their refills.
“Come in, Batters,” called Donald, “bring on the booze, this lot are in need of livening up.”
The aged Batters entered the room, silver tray loaded with glistening crystal refills, his crumpled trousers dragging along the floor, looking as if they were pinched from a man twice his size, and possibly twice his age. Batters shuffled across the library and laid the tray down on the serving table. “I took the liberty of bringing in some cheese, sir, and a few of those chocolates that arrived the other day.”
“Batters, I don’t know what I’d do without you,” smiled Donald, “well, apart from lose weight, that is. I don’t suppose you can gift us with any dark tales from your seedy past and save this evening from being a complete failure? Any skeletons in your well groomed butler’s closet?”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you there, sir, a butler’s closet is always skeleton free. Our time is mostly taken up removing the skeletons from those who employ us.”
The room erupted into laughter.
“Oh, if only that were true, then I’d have a glorious tale to regale my dull old friends with, but my old antique closets are only rich in moth-eaten silks and not much more. Thank you, Batters, that will be all, you may retire now.”
“Very good, sir. Goodnight gentlemen.”
A chorus of muttered good evenings accompanied Batters as he shuffled from the room, leaving the men sitting in silence.
A loud crack and pop drew their attention to the fire. They all stared in silence as the flickering flames cast a ballet of shadows around the enormous fireplace. After what seemed an eternity, Robert Jackson cleared his throat, shifted uneasily in his seat and said quietly, "There is something, actually. Something I would like to say."

Gujarat Gallivanting

2008-12-25T01:38:00.000Z

Extract from The India Diaries, by Jared Kelly.

Journeying on foot across this wild unchecked country, having left behind the oasis that serves the coldest beer on this remote arid island (and there having indulged in a lunchtime tipple) I stumbled along with the sun on my face, booze in my belly and a distinctly rolling gait to my step, not unlike that of the sea-faring man back on terra firma after months walking the decks. And even with the beating sun cooking my already parboiled brain, I somehow managed to deftly avoid any untimely detonations through this holy-cowpat minefield up the side of this gentle hill.

But somehow failed to avoid the snake.

Bladder full to bursting and not a native in sight, I drunkenly lurched from the unbeaten path to offer these parched Aloe plants a much-needed drink. Initially I thought I’d stepped on a stick of sorts, my weight pushing it out from under my planted foot and shooting it across the dusty ground, but to then be punched on the shin I thought a tad peculiar, least not because I hadn't seen a single dwarf since leaving Mumbai. So I looked down. And there it was. Or there it went. This rather long, dark, shiny thing. Slithering off into the undergrowth. Leaving me alone with my thoughts. Of which there were about a thousand. Including the quite popular, "The cunt just bit me."

Immediate examination of the jeans revealed no obvious puncture holes. Heart thumping like a woodpecker on speed, I ripped my belt open, popped my fly buttons and dropped my jeans to my ankles. What horror show awaited me? What would I see on my shin? Already discolouring skin surrounding two fresh puncture marks leaking blood and lethal serum? Would it be haemotoxin or neurotoxin speeding through these doomed veins, unfairly aided by this heart working overtime to bring about an untimely death in this desolate land? Who would find me out here? Miles from help. Belly full of booze and fingers stained yellow from that particularly tasty lunch. Left to die and rot under this relentless sun. But no matter how hard I rummaged through the hairy foliage on my shin, I could see no evidence of attack. Even in my drunken paranoid state I couldn't even see anything that I could even remotely pretend could be a serpent's kiss.

And so it transpired there was no horror show for me that day. Which does not mean there was no horror show on offer. As this mini-bus jam-packed with grinning natives now charges past, being forced to slow down to take the sharp bend around a hill devoid of any architecture or life. Apart from one arse. Devoid of underwear. With a pair of balls dangling between the cheeks. Would make a marvelous target. If they had thought to pack catapults and pea-shooters. And for some reason, having quite generously exposed the rear, I am now less inclined to reveal the face. And so I remain bent over. Praying that the snake doesn't suddenly reappear and bop me one on the nose as I wait for them to pass on their merry way.

Made much the merrier
By a glimpse of a chap
His balls in his lap
And a distinctly foreign derriere

It would seem that for each sprinkling of relief God grants me he also sends a deluge of horror.

Product Placement

2008-11-30T01:41:00.000Z

The Writers’ Guild recently sent a response to OFCOM’s proposed rule change on product placement on television. here

Personally, I think they should have just sent David Lynch.

Survivors BBC New Drama

2008-11-29T02:46:00.000Z

So, I’m thinking that maybe some BBC think-tank studying successful US television shows (like LOST with its diverse cast of strangers thrown together in a survival situation) came up with the thought, “Hey, if we copy that kind of format but with shit production values we might achieve similar success but with shit production values.” Except rather than come up with an original take on the ‘group of strangers thrown together’ scenario they just borrowed an old idea (one they conveniently already owned) and justified the lack of imagination on the grounds that we’re all a bit worried about flu these days.

I know influenza in its various forms is a real concern, but a person dying of flu doesn’t really make great television. “Oh no, she sneezed again!” “Shit, we’ve run out of tissues!” “Oh look, another person has died in their bed!” And that’s it. That’s as exciting as it gets; most people dying from flu really would expire in their beds, the only real concern being if their mattresses were capable of soaking up the gallons of Lemsip released by their bladders post mortem.

For this reason, and plenty of others, having a feature length first episode was a waste of time as the narrative could, and should, have started 40 minutes later. Instead we get uninspiring stock characters telling us (rarely are we shown) about the global spread of lots of people dying in their beds, with very little drama occurring before the real story starts when Julie Graham wakes up in bed. It took Danny Boyle about five minutes to arrive at the same point in 28 Days Later, that’s including a tense prologue that fired us straight into the story. A post-apocalyptic drama can be many things, but boring? Now that’s a first.

Poor storytelling. Poor casting. Poor acting. Even poor music. All represented on our screens by many of the same tired worn out TV actors who must all be part of some secret actors collective blackmailing the BBC board for constant work. In their defence, they didn't have much to work with. The characters were so badly drawn they felt like they'd been written by a Parkinson’s sufferer perched on a washing machine on spin dry. All the characters, bar none, seem remarkably okay about the fact that EVERYONE THEY KNOW IS DEAD yet just three days previously EVERYONE THEY KNEW WAS ALIVE. Surely people wouldn't behave like that if this really did happen? I don’t believe they would. And that’s the problem; I just didn’t believe in the characters. I didn't believe in their actions or lack of reaction. They didn’t feel like real people, they felt like they were created by someone who lives, not in the real world, but in a world that exists in front of a television set. These characters weren’t born out of life experience and imagination; they were born of a hundred other dramas before them. They’re reflections of reflections.

The pace and timing felt like it was written under the instruction to be absolutely clear about absolutely everything just in case not absolutely everyone understands absolutely everything. It's the drama of sheep on Valium, and in complete contrast to those US shows that probably inspired this remake. Plot-wise, there were just so many stupid and annoying moments, from the ridiculous mosque scene to the utterly pointless dog trapped in a car scene.

Why make a point of showing us this lonely little boy hearing a dog barking, and then cutting to show us that same dog trapped inside a car, but then NOT SAVING THE DOG YOU BASTARDS! They even went so far as to zoom in close on the boy’s ear just as we heard the dog barking >>okay okay we get it! The boy has heard the dog barking!<< Everything about that scene suggested a set up for the boy to discover the dog. But he didn’t, and the dog didn’t feature again. That’s just plain bad filmmaking (and also not very nice for the poor widdle doggie) plus it was such a great opportunity to inject some much needed sentiment and have the boy rescue the dog and them team up together for the rest of the series. The dog would have been a much better companion for the boy than his stupid football, and their growing relationship could have contributed to future storylines, plus the dog could have been used as a device to discover other survivors rather than relying on coincidence; there was a little too much bumping into each other on deserted motorways for my liking.

Oh, and to top it off, it’s got no zombies. Not one zombie. Rubbish. I blame 28 Days Later. And 28 Weeks Later. And now Dead Set. In fact, I blame me for watching those films. Because I sat through Survivors constantly waiting for the zombies to appear, for no other reason than they are supposed to appear in a drama that looks like this. Empty streets, empty shops, abandoned cars, no electricity, no running water, no television… because we all know who lives in the land of the empty streets and no electricity, right? Right! ZOMBIES! Running really fast, foaming blood at the mouth with bulging white eyes. “Arrgghh! Run! It’s the zombies!” But even though I knew it wasn’t a zombie film, I still couldn’t stop thinking about bloody zombies.

It’s like when you alight at a tube station and step onto the elevator that’s undergoing maintenance and isn’t working and subsequently your feet and head have a mild communication problem. Your brain’s thinking, “Cool. This is where we get to float to the top.” But your feet are shouting, “Walk! Walk! Walk! It’s not working!” Well that’s how I felt throughout much of Survivors, with my zombie motor neurons kicking in whenever someone entered a deserted building, “RUN! There’s gonna be zombies in there!” Or when someone went into a deserted shop, “RUN! There’s gonna be zombies in there!” Or when anyone approached a body on the floor, “RUN! It’s a zombie you idiot!” But nothing would happen. Nothing frightening. Nothing scary. In fact nothing even mildly interesting, which might be scary from a commissioning point of view but certainly not from where I was sitting.

Mind you, a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by the same actors on UK television playing stereotypical characters that say stupid things and don’t care about the fact that everyone is dead is extremely scary. Maybe that’s where the horror lies, and I'm just coming at it from the wrong angle?

The Rock Biography

2008-11-20T02:14:00.000Z

My fondness for music extends to its history and associated literature, and when it comes to musical literature nothing irritates me more than the rock biography. If the author takes a back seat and simply concentrates on the artist, then fine, but quite often the author is compelled to include themselves in their story. I appreciate that authors need to spend time with their subject, sometimes as a participant observer, but when authors then include themselves as part of the bigger picture, an accomplice on their subject’s rocky road to infamy, then that’s where I draw the line and the book goes in the oven.

The reality of these books is that as much as we like the music we also want to hear the stories of rock‘n’roll excess. That’s really why we buy the book. We want to be shocked, amazed, disgusted and also a little jealous. Then we too, just like that author, get to repeat those great stories with some authority. We believe these insights help us identify with the artist, though the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. We are reading about a lifestyle we could never hope to achieve, and, if truth be told, a lifestyle completely unsuited to most of us. Which brings me back to that pesky author.

It’s not uncommon in the standard rock biography for the author to get somewhat over-enthusiastic and include himself (I say ‘himself’ because they are invariably male) in some vainglorious attempt to impress upon us just how crazy he is. But let’s face it, who really cares? Be your stories true or fantasy we just don’t care about you - the only reason we are reading your book is because of your choice of subject matter. Give us the booze, the drugs, the parties, the near death experiences, the music, in fact give us anything but you.

Here is music journalist extraordinaire, Dave Bluez, and his insightful history of popular music... READ HERE.

Sunday Driver

2008-11-03T16:01:00.000Z

A Most Popular Hermit

2008-10-30T19:46:00.002Z

I met Beryl Bainbridge last night. Was at a party quaffing expensive booze and smelly cheese and was introduced to the chain-smoking whiskey-guzzling great Dame.

Beautiful. Remarkable. As mad as a hatter. My kind of gal.

Clare “I used to be a pirate” Francis was also there. And suddenly they proceed to have a very public spat. No fisticuffs, of course, not these dignified ladies, and certainly no ground-to-air fountain pens were in evidence, just a few choice blue words hurled back and forth across a crowded room.

As I understood it, Beryl referred to Clare as “that sailor bird…” to which that sailor bird took great offence. Clare’s gripe seemed to be that the being a "sailor bird" days were long behind her, and now that she’s a best-selling author she felt she should be referred to as such. But Beryl seemed to be of the opinion that the title “sailor bird” was more appropriate. It was all rather interesting and definitely a timely diversion from the peculiar couple from Perth who were spitting bits of Stilton into my Rioja.

So then I get introduced to this tall, interesting chap. Long unruly hair, tweed suit, tweed waistcoat, tweed hat, round glasses as thick as submarine windows, long flappy shoes, a flower in his button-hole and teeth so long they inspired thoughts of garden patio decking. We get chatting and he tells me he is a hermit.

He said he became so inspired after reading about a Russian hermit that he proceeded to read all the books he could find on being a hermit, then procured a caravan (that he refers to as 'she' and references boat-speak when talking about 'her'), located a vast empty wasteland in South London and moored her there. And in doing so achieved his goal of becoming a hermit. Brilliant.

But I met him at a party?

Surely that's something of a lifestyle anachronism, or at least a not-quite-right-ism? I met a hermit at a party. How do you meet a hermit at a party? That’s like meeting a penguin in a sauna. And then it gets worse... he starts telling me about all these other famous hermits around the world. Exactly how does a hermit become famous? How does that work? As I stood amongst this group of well-heeled individuals, all desperately fascinated with this tweedy hermit and his tweedy tales of other hermits, my slightly sozzled brain started malfunctioning under the weight of these hermitry revelations. It was ridiculous. But no one else was laughing. I was trying so desperately hard to not spray red wine over everyone that I kept making silly little gargling noises, further compounded by the fact that hermit sounds too much like Kermit. That really wasn’t helping.

And then he mentions, to this enthralled wide-eyed audience, that he has a most fascinating tale to tell about the most famous hermit of them all. Cue drum roll…

... this hermit was SO famous and SO great, that... wait for it… loads of other hermits went to visit him. Ta da! Yep. And because there were now so many of them in one place, Mr. I’m-the-best-hermit-in-the-world decides to build a huge house so they could all live in it.

Together.

As hermits.

Living together.

Lots of them.

Got that?

Okay.

The Dark Knight at BFI IMAX

2008-08-25T17:12:00.000+01:00

Watching The Dark Knight on a screen that's the height of five double-decker buses with a 11,600-watt digital surround-sound system was the equivalent of being run over by five double-decker buses, peeled off the road by screaming baboons, stuffed into a cannon and fired head first into a brick wall.

As a viewing experience it has to go down as the most painfully dumb, excessive and utterly pointless battering of the senses I have ever experienced in a cinema, although I would hesitate to label the IMAX a cinema in the tradition sense, as the general effect is more in keeping with a rollercoaster ride that… just… doesn’t… end… leaving me feeling like I’d been subjected to some pointless human foie gras experiment and force fed four thousand cream cakes then ordered at gun point to trampoline for two and half hours whilst someone told me a really shit story that… just… wouldn’t… end.

Talking and telling. There’s so much talking and telling in this film. With his ridiculous 80-a-day voice (we’re talking cigars here, Marlboro Man’s a pussy compared to this bloke) and a mask that obscures all but his mouth, it’s only natural that Batman's teeth become the focal point of attention, especially as he’s constantly spouting endless soul destroying bat wisdom (what is it with all the endless ridiculous philosophizing? Is there a Batman bible I don’t know about? The Book of Bat? Bat Zen: the art of sucking the life from an audience via their ears?) and so it quickly becomes apparent that his mouth and teeth bare a striking resemblance to those of David Beckham’s, which further highlights how utterly ludicrous his more-gravel-than-a-footballer’s-driveway voice is. It is ridiculous. Then comical. Then annoying. Really annoying. To the point I started fantasizing about headbutting the chair in front of me until my skull caved in rather than sit through one more minute of endless bat babbling from what sounds like an asthmatic mountain gorilla who’s just eaten a maxi-tub of crunchy peanut butter at high altitude.

Ledger’s performance was good, it does stand out, but only because of a distinct lack of competition. The Joker, expectation-wise, surely has to be one of the easiest characters for an actor to play, and Ledger strolls through this (with his “I’ve just shit myself” geriatric shuffle) on auto-pilot with no surprises. Easy money. It's just that everything about the Joker is predictable, from how Ledger plays him, to how he is first introduced, to how he acts/reacts throughout the film, and the only real surprise is that he doesn’t figure in the finale. Go figure. Or not as the case may be. Bizarre really. The finale is gifted to Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent, Mr. Two-Face to his enemies, who turns overacting into an artform and screams and shouts a lot about a lot of stuff we really don’t care about - a performance that will surely be the envy of Nicolas Cage. Oscar-worthy performance from Ledger? Not if he was in last year's category, but then he’s gone and done that dead thing so watch this space.

In summary: the movie was an assault on the senses, yet still felt ponderous. It was already long at two and half hours, yet felt considerably longer. Although based on a comic book, it took itself very seriously, and because it took itself very seriously it subsequently failed in opting for caricature over character and cliché over invention. Overall the film displayed little grasp of the subtleties involved in good storytelling with only limited effort aimed at making dramatic sense. It was all about the spectacle.

The only thing that might have improved The Dark Knight would have been opium-dipped popcorn. And possibly a gun. My journey home that night was delayed due to an unfortunate person under a tube train. I'm thinking a quick rummage through bloodstained pockets would have revealed a ticket stub for the IMAX.

"It seems to me...

2008-06-08T14:38:00.001+01:00

... that the most important of all the rules is to please, and that if a play has achieved this goal, it has followed the right path." Molière

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

Mexican stand-offs gone wrong, suitcases of abandoned drug money, a bad-ass killer on the trail of a likeable desperado, a smooth-talking bounty hunter on the trail of the bad-ass killer, and a policeman who talks a lot about a lot of stuff a lot of the time – for ages.

It fails to deliver on a set-up that is driven down our throats with each gruesome murder. An unstoppable killer closes in on his prey, an intuitive and very capable Vietnam veteran, whilst a wise old philosophizing policeman tracks both of them. That's the set-up, and we sit back in expectation as these three hurtle towards each other and… well… nothing really.

So we're left with a psychotic Spaniard sporting a Beatles haircut on a big face, lugging what looks like a scuba diving tank around a desert, laying waste to all and sundry in his pursuit of a Vietnam vet who doesn't quite understand the concept of running away (1974 anyone?), all whilst being investigated – and I use the word in its loosest sense - by a walking drawling scrotum in a sheriff's uniform prone to a soliloquy or ten.

There were some scenes that were just, well, I don't know what they were or where they were going or why they even existed, I suspect simply to give McCarthy's prose a voice, and Woody Harrelson's character didn't really bring anything to the equation other than another corpse for el big face to scuba to death. As I sat there watching this film whimper to its conclusion, the bone marrow in my legs started itching, and when Tommy Lee Jones started getting all Hamlet on the motherfucker, I could actually feel my teeth growing. Jesus. I couldn't get to the pub fast enough.

I understand why they did it. McCarthy’s book is all about how things aren’t what they used to be and how things don’t always turn out how they are supposed to and the unpredictability of life (a bit like football, really) and so we are accordingly gifted a lesson in keeping with that theme: a chase thriller that ends, wait for it.... not.... how.... it's.... supposed to. Brilliant. They subverted the genre to establish the narrative theme of a piece of literature and shock us all with the revelation… BIG FUCKING DRUM ROLL… that real life doesn’t always turn out the way you want or expect it to. Gee, thanks dad, but can you lay off with the life lessons I’m trying to watch an imitation of real life through the medium of drama. What? This is the film? Oh. How silly of me.

Drama isn’t just something that exists in this world because people write it, it’s pretty much the reverse that’s true, and dramatists exist in this world because human beings have an inherent need for drama. Writers exist to feed that need, and their role is, or should be, defined by those needs. Writers who fail to take an interest in the public perception of drama (what the audience wants/expects) can end up all too easily misunderstood or inaccessible. A writer who finds, to his surprise and frustration, that his audience fails to connect with him is a world apart from a writer who is inaccessible by design. The former is a learning curve, the latter is unforgivable.

Which raises the question: does a work of art exist if it has been created without regard for the spectator? I accept that's debatable with regards to many forms of art, but I feel it's wholly indefensible with regards to drama. A work of drama exists for an audience.

My problem with No Country For Old Men is that they ignored a fundamental principle of drama to preach reality to thousands of people who paid hard-earned money to leave the real world behind for a few hours.

The Language of Coffee

2008-06-08T03:20:00.000+01:00

Here’s how it works at the little café round the corner. I pop in and say, "Hi. Can I have a very strong cappuccino with not a lot of milk, please?" And that's exactly what I get. Not bad, eh? We have an understanding, the Ecuadorian and I. We connect. So what was so different about my sojourn to Starbucks?

ORWELL IN STARBUCKS (A Tragedy in one act)

FADE IN:

INT. STARBUCKS - DAY
A rather DASHING YOUNG MAN enters and joins the fast-moving queue. He doesn't have long to wait.

SPOTTY ROBOT
Can I help you, sir?

JARED
Hi. Can I have a very strong cappuccino with not a lot of milk, please?

The SPOTTY ROBOT gives off the impression of having just been whacked over the head with a very heavy object.

SPOTTY ROBOT
I'm sorry?

JARED
Can I have a very strong cappuccino with not a lot of milk, please?

SPOTTY ROBOT
You mean you want a double shot?

JARED
Sorry?

SPOTTY ROBOT
A double shot. We put a double shot in for customers who want it strong.

JARED
OK. I'll have one of those then.

SPOTTY ROBOT
And you want that dry, right?

JARED
Sorry?

SPOTTY ROBOT
You want a dry cappuccino?

JARED
I have no idea what you’re asking me.

SPOTTY ROBOT
Dry means not a lot of milk. Froth.

JARED
Oh right. Froth. Yes. In that case I want it dry. Thank you.

SPOTTY ROBOT
So that's one dry cappuccino double shot. What size do you want?

JARED
Just a small one, thanks.

SPOTTY ROBOT
A tall one.

JARED
No. Just a small one, thanks.

SPOTTY ROBOT
Yes. A tall one.

JARED
No. I don't want a tall one.

SPOTTY ROBOT
Well what size do you want?

Grumbled mutterings emit from the growing queue behind.

JARED
I just want a small coffee. A little one. Your smallest coffee. That's all.

SPOTTY ROBOT
(gesturing to the board behind him)
The sizes are up there for you to choose from.

Up on the board, three sizes are offered. They start with the smallest and cheapest. This is called a Tall.

JARED
I'll have a tall one.

SPOTTY ROBOT
Thank you.

Sigh of relief from the masses behind.

SPOTTY ROBOT
One tall dry cappuccino with a double shot. That's two pounds ninety-eight, please.

Jared gives off the impression of having just been whacked over the head with a very heavy object.

Jared hands the money over the counter.

The spotty robot hands Jared his TWO FUCKING PENCE! change along with a little booklet.

SPOTTY ROBOT
And here's a little instruction manual to help you next time you order from Starbucks.

JARED
Thank you.

EXT. STARBUCKS - DAY
Jared steps off the pavement and throws himself in front of a bus.

FADE OUT:

THE END

Congratulations Harold

2008-05-28T12:41:00.000+01:00

In 2005 Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Apart from a few predictable pieces, the media silence was deafening. I wrote a small piece on the subject and posted it on my MySpace page, titled: Congratulations Harold. It was both a celebration of the great man and a damning assault on the lack of media coverage the event received.

A week or so later I received an email from the MySpace admin team asking me to edit or remove my post. The admin said they had been receiving a lot of “traffic” expressing concern at the content of my post and questioned what I hoped to achieve by publicizing such views. I said I wasn't trying to achieve anything, I was simply venting, voicing my opinion, plus I hadn't received one single complaint. They then suggested it might be in everyone's interest if I simply removed the post, as they were sure I wouldn't want to offend anyone.

Okay, I replied to them, so let me get this straight. MySpace happily promotes:

Smut? Yes.
Expressions of Violence? Yes.
Horrible music, in every sense? Sure.
Political campaigning? Yep.
Religious dogma? Disturbingly in greater quantities.
Adultery? Yes, and we made it easier.
Online Predators? Yes, and we made it way easier.
Exploitation? The site runs on it actually.
Ignorance? More the merrier.
Free exchange of ideas? Sure. Oh wait, you mean intelligent ideas? Then no.
British Playwrights? Heavens No!

I ended by asking if this kind of censorship would have happened before Murdoch took ownership of MySpace. Their response was short and to the point. “It's our policy not to discuss Mr. Murdoch with the public." It was then I suggested theirs was a rather bizarre policy, considering they seemed more than happy to suck his dick in public.

It was around that time I discovered myself and my account had parted company.

Below is the offending article, posted on my MySpace blog in 2005.

CONGRATULATIONS HAROLD

Last week, the finest living British playwright recorded, from his wheelchair, an acceptance speech for the greatest literary prize on earth. And yet anyone who wished or hoped to see an allusion to that talk would have searched the mainstream television schedules in vain.

He received no mention on any of the BBC’s main television news programmes. The BBC flagship news and culture programme, ‘Newsnight’, carried absolutely nothing; there was not a single mention of the fact that a British writer had, this month, been awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize for literature. Harold Pinter's acceptance speech was restricted to the satellite channel, More4, with a late night repeat on Channel 4. And that, quite simply, was that.

What about our newspapers, did they all celebrate this fantastic achievement? Or did many of them choose to ignore literary history in favour of a farcical assault on a dying man’s political beliefs? Long admired for his dramatic work, Harold Pinter has been equally reviled for his political activism. His crime, according to the media, is voicing strong concerns about others’ crimes; those being crimes against humanity. For his 'crime', one of the world’s greatest living writers suffers the fate of so many writers before him; censorship. Except this isn’t nineteenth century Russia; this is twenty-first century Britain.

Powerful interests with plenty at stake drive the brutal truth of modern media and politics - that honesty and sincerity are heavily punished rather than rewarded. It does not matter how often the likes of Harold Pinter are shown to be right. It does not matter how often the likes of Bush and Blair are shown to have lied in the cause of power and profits. The job of mainstream journalism is to learn nothing from the past, to treat rare individuals motivated by compassion as rare fools deserving contempt. The benefits are clear enough: if even high-profile dissidents can be painted as wretched, sickly fools, then which reader or viewer would want to be associated with dissent? As such, ‘normal’ (conforming, consuming, looking after number one) can be made to seem healthy, balanced, sensible and sane.

Journalists everywhere deferred to Les Roberts (one of the world’s leading epidemiologists) when he estimated millions of deaths in the Congo in 2000 and 2001. Yet he was publicly humiliated and judged a fool, guilty of schoolboy errors, when estimating 100,000 civilian deaths since the March 2003 US-UK invasion of Iraq. That is nothing less than disgusting - both his treatment and the grim reality of those figures. Realism is seductive because once you have accepted the reasonable notion that you should base your actions on reality, you are too often led to accept, without much questioning, someone else’s version of what that reality is. It is a crucial act of independent thinking to be sceptical of someone else’s description of reality.

The great task of propaganda is to make dissent seem unrealistic, embarrassing, and absurd. And unfortunately, in this very real crime against a wonderfully brilliant man, it’s done just that.

“The theatre is what the British have always been good at. And nobody has so come to represent the theatre’s strengths, its rigours, and its glories, as Harold Pinter.” (David Hare, December 10, 2005)

The 2005 Nobel Prize for literature belongs to Harold Pinter.

Congratulations Harold. I’m proud of you.