2008 - Uh, What?

2008 has certainly been a weird and erratic year for me. In the vast majority of cases, it really has been one step forward and two steps back – which is to be expected of course. However, in true Chipster style, absolutely nothing has gone to plan. Just when I think the stars might be aligning in some kind of weird cosmic jam, something comes along and gives me a swift slap round the back of the legs for daring to think that things are ever going to be that simple. So, on I go. For some reason, I suspect that 2009 is going to deliver up biblical proportions of weird as well – which I enjoy in a masochistic, absurd kinda way. Like I’m fond of saying: do the exact opposite of what I do, and you won’t go far wrong.

I had scripts in for both METLAB and TAPS which both came to nothing. Even though I had a sneaky feeling that nothing much was ever going to happen METLAB-wise, the scheme got credit crunched – so, one down. Another script got shortlisted for a TAPS scheme, and I got some hugely encouraging noises from an ITV producer who sits on the TAPS selection board. However, the script didn’t make the final hurdle, so that was that.

Better news came in February when I launched upon a collaboration with a well respected producer/director. Two meetings and lots of phone calls later it’s still trundling on, but again in true Chipster style, I have absolutely no idea where it’s headed. When the thing winds up/down to its natural conclusion I’ll write about it some more, but at this rate it’s going to take a while (unless I get unceremoniously slung off it of course). So, maybe a half step forward there.

(One good thing that has come off the back of this collaboration is that a simple mention of the name of the person I am collaborating with is often enough to get my work read in any variety of places (bear in mind that I did ask if it would be OK for me to bandy this person’s name around in the first place). I’m waiting to hear back from three opportunities at the moment, all of which would be utterly brilliant to work on. However, each one is going to need a lot more hustle yet).

I had a short script that got through to the first round of the BSSC, and then promptly fell flat on its arse. My Sharps entry did precisely fup all, as did my entry for Red Planet. I don’t subscribe to the view that competitions are the only opportunities out there, but even so, perhaps I’ve been guilty of putting in too much work on competition entries at the expense of pursuing real world opportunities (having to work to a deadline is always handy though). So, the monumental decision I’ve reached with regards to the year ahead is, regardless of what they are, no more competitions (that said, in the spirit of doing exactly the opposite to whatever I do, I suggest that everyone enter every competition going next year. You’ll all win big, I guarantee it*).

Throw in some demented stuff regarding Pitof (unbelievably, that one is still trundling on as well), a BBC Writersroom event, a few meetings here and there, Marchmont Films finally throwing in the towel, and there you have it: 2008 expressed as a random series of unlinked events. I think rather than one step forward and two back, it’s been one step forward, one to the side, half a step back and then a funny little dance on the spot. At the least, it's been an entertaining year.
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*Guarantee not legally enforceable. But if anyone does win, could you cut me in for 10%? ;-)

A to B (And All the Way Back Again)

Once upon a time, I wrote a script. In chronological order, this is what happened to it:

1) To start with, read about Terry Illot and the Hammer Films episode here.

2) After that, Marchmont Films got their grubby little hands on it – you can read the full sorry lowdown here.

3) More or less at the same time, this happened (hello Yellow UK!) (I never got those script reports done, incidentally).

4) November 2007, and the script is selected by METLAB for development and eventual pitching to a cabal of investors. After a meeting in January 2008, I launched upon a month’s worth of rewrite and whizzed the new draft over to the truly gorgeous Lucy Vee for comment (Lucy is/was METLAB’s script editor of choice). Notes came back: super! At this stage, I was hoping to get another meeting with both Lucy and John Sweeney (METLAB head cheese) as per the original ‘calling notice’ to discuss potential ways forward. For whatever reason, the meeting never materialised. Wary of putting a lot of work in for no discernible gain, I turned my attention elsewhere (I was mid-way through a tricksy collaboration/treatment; stay tuned for more fun and games on that one at some point). Over the next few months, I waited for a meeting and a plan of action from John Sweeney, but nothing turned up. By now, I was starting to get the feeling that nothing was going to come of this (my sixth sense by now is quite well attuned to episodes of this sort). The project sat on the backburner for several months until I e-mailed John asking him what was going on (and giving him an ultimatum of sorts). I received this in reply. Game over.

5) In February 2008, I got this from an agent at United Agents:

...I absolutely loved it. It is smart and witty and unsettling.

...I’d love to read anything else you might want an agent to sell and I’d love to meet, if you’re still looking for representation.

Er, let’s think about this for a second – yes please!

Then: complete and utter silence for months. I chased up Mr Agent on a couple of occasions - he was always politeness and charm personified, but still nothing doing. Is it worth another chase? Probably not.

(Apropos of nothing at all, United Agents represent Henry Naylor: a couple of friends of mine were on the same Cambridge Footlights revue as Mister Naylor, and had a frankly uncalled for rhyme whenever his name arose in conversation: “Henry Naylor, Henry Naylor; about as funny as Vlad the Impaler.” Honestly, there’s just no need for it (*chortle*)).

6) “Notable Producer X”: I am wary of blogging too much about this at the moment, as I might say something I'll regret (as if that's ever stopped me before).

7) BBC Writersroom: a couple of months ago I got a lovely letter from Writersoom with a couple of pages of notes saying how much they liked the script and inviting me to send my next grand opus in (which I duly did, only for it to come back a month later – they’d already read it, you see. Oops).

Strangely enough, I wrote this in a post on 30th July 2007:

... if you want to know where NOT to send your speculative scripts, then stay tuned – I seem to have an almost supernatural knack for ferreting out production companies for whom procrastination is a profitable pastime...

In a bizarrely circuitous fashion, over a year later I’m back to where I started from - which really does go to show that if you want a successful screenwriting career, keep one eye permanently glued on Unfit for Print. Whatever I do, do the exact opposite: you really can’t go wrong.

Codeword: Demented

Before I recount this story, let me just say that this sort of thing happens to me ALL THE TIME. I’m under no illusion that at the outset of any ‘writing career’, you’ve got to be pretty relentless when it comes to chasing down work, but the big difference with this one was how much it made me laugh (interspersed with a good degree of, ‘Oh, shit! Whatever next?’). I will try and be as discrete and polite as I possibly can be, so apologies in advance if you think I’m being coy – I just don’t want to upset anyone unnecessarily here, but perhaps it’s unavoidable at the end of the day - who knows?

Back in July this year, I responded to a highly unusual script call (through the Shooting People screenwriting bulletin, I think). Four times out of five I don’t even receive a reply, but on this occasion I did. The script I offered as a writing sample wasn’t exactly a 100% fit for the requirement, but it seemed unusual enough for the recipient (who we’ll call ‘Naomi’) to give it a whirl. And she liked it. It wasn’t quite what she had been tasked to find, but still – she stated she would be very happy to pass it on to some producers and directors ‘over here’.

I whizzed over another script and Naomi read that one as well. She liked it, and asked if I had optioned it to anyone? Uh, nope – not since I last checked anyway ;-)

In the meantime, I had a brainwave (a rare occurrence round these ‘ere parts) and plugged Naomi’s name into imdb.com. Turns out she’s an actress based in Los Angeles – a few minor credits, and then a role in this, directed by none than...

Uwe Boll.

Uh-oh.

It’s a living, as they say.

A couple of days later, Naomi e-mailed me to say she had passed one of my scripts onto the director Pitof. For the uninitiated, Pitof (or Jean-Christopher Comar to use his real name) was the visual effects designer for one of my favourite movies of all time, Delicatessen. He moved into directing with Vidocq in 2001 before re-locating to the States some time later where he directed...

Catwoman.

Uh-oh.

All this really shows is that you have absolutely no control over who reads your scripts – and indeed, why would you want any at this stage? Once the things are out there, it’s all you can do to hope that they’re not being used to prop open fire exits or being used as murder weapons or something.

That said, I’m reminded of a great Adrian Reynolds post here – I’m obviously a long way off from writing treatments set in the world of cage fighting and starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, but a boy can dream, eh? ;-)

Exposition Man

Drama was busting out all over last night, what with The Invisibles (Last of the Summer Wine with cheeky cat burglars), Heroes (saw the first three episodes of series one, then forgot all about it), and Midnight Man. Since ITV are down in the dumps after a record £5.68M fine for letting Robbie Williams appear on the British Comedy Awards*, I went with Midnight Man – ITV need all the viewers they can get, bless ‘em. Not that I think I made the right choice, mind you.

Given the stellar bunch of talent involved (David Drury, David Kane, Gareth Neame), the whole thing was about as subtle as a brick – and that was only once you’d gotten past the vast swathes of clunky exposition that stomped about the place like a hormonal teenager. Exposition is not a bad thing – after all, any writer has to impart a certain amount of information so that the audience know what the hell is going on at any point: but doing it well (i.e., not drawing attention to the technique itself) is difficult. For example, it’s all very well for a character to suffer from phengophobia (fear of daylight), but having somebody else tell him this because he ‘might have forgotten’ just seems silly. I suppose broad brush tactics such as this may work if you want to get to the crux of the story quickly, but I can’t help thinking that there’s a more dramatic way to impart information than just ‘casually’ dropping it into a conversation with all the subtlety of a shovel round the back of the head.

Lack of subtlety aside, Midnight Man cracked along at a decent enough pace, even if the whole thing did seem overly familiar. A troubled protagonist with marriage problems? Tick! A conspiracy that goes right to the heart of government? Tick! This is a template that’s been used before by TV drama to much greater effect than this, which is a shame as you know exactly how everything is going to turn out. I think next week I’ll have to try The Invisibles, but somehow I'm dreading it already.

Another interesting story is here in today’s Guardian, which details the abysmal first week’s box office for Three and Out. The marketing push behind this film has been phenomenal, to the extent that you couldn’t move without seeing some mention of it somewhere. Unfortunately, this huge push has not translated into box office moolah, probably because of two things: the subject matter (or more specifically, how the producers have gone about publicising it), and the absolutely horrible poster used to promote it. One look at Mackenzie Crook’s depressed boat would be enough to put anyone off, I think: couple that with the fact that Three and Out has been sold using an apparently lethal cocktail of suicide and the London Underground (not hugely cinematic concepts, I'd say), and there you have it – a first week take of £189,454: a sizeable lottery win, but not a figure to get massively excited about if you’re a film producer.

* Not strictly true, but hey - if you're going to fine ITV for something, it may as well involve Robbie Williams.

Three Days In and It's All Going Pear Shaped...

2008 has gotten off to an absolutely cracking start, courtesy of some pathological bad luck:

* Man-sized flu from Christmas day onwards – believe me, I was iller than a skip full of Beastie Boys CDs.
* The gear box on my car gave up the ghost. £1136 later, it’s fixed, but it looks like I’ll have to sell an internal organ to pay for it – what’s the going rate for a liver these days?
* New Year’s Eve – hooray! New Year’s Day – food poisoning!
* Dentist’s appointment yesterday. I hate the dentist even more than my mother hates the Krankies.

With all this in mind, I thought I’d better get my METLAB script in before my PC got hit by a stray meteorite.

I’ve also decided to go for the TAPS Finding the Writer’s Voice thing, so we’ll see how that pans out. According to the TAPS guidelines, it’s advisable to apply for funding through ScreenSouth. Right, sounds good to me. After downloading the training bursary application form from the ScreenSouth site, the first thing that strikes me is that you need to attach a ‘Career Plan’. Oh dear. This might take a bit longer than I thought. Also, reading through the RIFE guidelines, it states “all applicants must have applied to Skillset for a bursary before applying to Screen South.” Oh. OK then.

So it’s onto Skillset to discover that I probably won’t get any funding from this source, which is no great shakes. But the ScreenSouth application form states that I have to attach three copies of my Skillset submission. Hmmm.

Attempting to unravel the vagaries of ScreenSouth application forms is perhaps not the best way to start 2008. That said, the TAPS course is only £500 – what’s the going rate for a bit of bone marrow these days?

Blue Cat Early Deadline

Three days until the early Blue Cat deadline...

Now accepting Feature length screenplays.

*Winner receives $10,000
*Four finalists receive $1500
*Every writer who submits to BlueCat receives a written script analysis of their screenplay.

EARLY DEADLINE: December 1st, 2007

Early Bird Script Analysis: Screenplays submitted by December 1st will receive their analysis by January 5th.

Entry Fee: $50

I am exempt from the entry fee this year after an exchange of emails with Gordy Hoffman (for the full unpleasant story, see here), which only went to prove that Gordy is an all round nice guy and I am a complete and utter shit! Suffice to say, I think I'll give this comp a miss this year...

Chip vs Poliakoff

Franz Kafka’s Amerika is a remarkable book for many reasons, not least because when he wrote it Kafka had never actually been to America. In this spirit, I’ll set out a few reasons as to why I can’t get my head round the oeuvre of Stephen Poliakoff (not that I’ve consciously gone out of my way to watch a huge amount penned by the great man himself, you understand).

Close My Eyes: hmmm. I saw this at the cinema years ago – god knows why a film about incest and architecture appealed, but something must have made me want to go and see it.

Alan Rickman plays Sinclair Bryant, a wealthy and powerful stock analyst. Since one of its sub-plots involves the development of Docklands in the early nineties (Clive Owen’s character – Richard – has a rather unfeasible job with a magazine called Urban Alert), I would’ve thought that maybe this would have some bearing on the film as a whole – but it doesn’t. Richard and Natalie (Saskia Reeves) flounce about and end up having a shag, which is a little unfortunate as, a) they are brother and sister, and b) Natalie is married to Sinclair. Oops! But, come the end of the film, Sinclair doesn’t really care either way, which is a bit of a non sequitur. If drama is truly about conflict, then Close My Eyes spends an inordinate amount of time promising a firework display, only to conclude with someone half-heartedly waving a sparkler about. Ho hum.

However, the overriding feeling I took away from it was how ambivalent it seemed about the whole question of wealth. Sinclair Bryant is a very typical Poliakoff character: a vague, strangely benign presence who also happens to be extraordinarily rich. Is this fact significant? A great deal of Poliakoff’s work seems to have a seam of over-privileged clots running through it (Friends and Crocodiles, Shooting the Past, Joe’s Palace, Capturing Mary, The Lost Prince), as if the stories he wants to tell can only be sustained by those with the requisite wealth. I have no idea what this means, or why Poliakoff feels the need to return to this theme time and time again.

Bearing this in mind, I watched an hour of Friends and Crocodiles the other day – I was still none the wiser. Damien Lewis plays Paul Reynolds, a ‘maverick entrepreneur’, who seems to spend most of his time attempting to wind up his many employees (as well as the audience). For instance, Reynolds drives a double decker bus around his sprawling country pile (because, you know, that’s what maverick entrepreneurs do). He then drives under some low hanging trees, freaking out his various hippied-up friends on the open top deck. Hmmm – do I sense a rather pained metaphor trying to break free here?

Later there’s a huge party at Reynolds’ country pile (another recurring Poliakoff motif, which suggests he’s getting full use out of that National Trust membership card) – Reynolds takes it upon himself to invite along a bunch of comedy punks, who gatecrash and run riot in predictable fashion. There is obviously an interesting cultural gap between the more ‘respectable’ party goers (black tied politicians, movers and shakers, Robert Lindsay) and the crowd of rent-a-punks, but the only thing Poliakoff wants to do with this milieu is create little visual vignettes without really bothering to explore any wider conflict.

As above, the dramatic conflict in Poliakoff’s work doesn’t necessarily come from what his characters do – it often arises due to where these characters are placed (be it a stately pile or a yuppied up London circa 1987) or by what they possess. The central characters in Friends and Crocodiles – Reynolds and his long suffering personal assistant Lizzy – seem to bear this out. Their paths meet and entwine over the course of twenty years, but their characters seem so rigidly determined by their immediate environments that we get very little sense of who they really are, which is incredibly frustrating. Similarly, the fact that Poliakoff’s rich liberal elite does not adhere to the usual stereotyping of “piles of money = evil capitalist” is all well and good – but in attempting to find something to put in its place, he comes up rather empty handed.

I lasted ten minutes with Joe’s Palace, which seemed so staggeringly silly I couldn’t be bothered hanging around to see what it might do (not a lot, according to The Guardian). Again, it featured yet another benign rich personage (Michael Gambon this time) who lets a bunch of considerably less rich characters run about in his opulent city house. I didn’t even get that far with Capturing Mary – seeing David Walliams mug his way through the trailer was enough to make me flick through the schedules to see if Kate & Peter Unleashed was on (it wasn’t).

Perhaps this makes me a bad person, but I really can’t be bothered to sift through Poliakoff’s entire oeuvre on the quarter chance that I might turn up something that might engage me. Like Charlie Brooker, perhaps I’m just not intelligent enough to grasp the point (if there is one). Oh well – no doubt I’ll get over it.

This Week’s Round of Rejection is Brought to you by the Letter ‘M’.

It’s always good for the soul to get rejections, so I thought I’d run through a few of my most recent failures for your delectation and delight:

Marjacq Scripts: Luke Speed asked for a script a few months back. Well, actually that’s not quite true – one of his assistants did. And from then on, complete silence. I chased Luke recently, and guess what? A deafening silence.

Shall I take that as a ‘no’ then? ;-)

Many Hands Productions: none other than Danny Stack tipped this lot. One beautifully crafted e-mail that adhered to MH's very particular requirements (their 'wants' list read a bit like a kidnap demand), and guess what? More thundering silence.

OK, I’m getting the idea now.

Marchmont Films (aka Bloomsbury Weddings): TonyB kindly supplied this link in which Marchmont want you, yes YOU, to wade through their EU wedding video mountain with a view to editing it down into a 45 minute package that someone’s paid a couple of thousand quid for. However, before you all pile in, bear in mind that you need your own editing equipment and the available funds to pay your own salary (I made that last bit up).

Even so, I’m sorely tempted. Just imagine the fun you could have Fight Club style, editing in screenshots from Marchmont’s website that no-one’s bothered to update since July 2006.

(What is it with companies beginning with the letter ‘M’? I would make a crack here about M standing for monosyllabic, but as these companies can’t muster a three word e-mail between them, I won’t bother).

London Pictures: the only company with the decency to send an e-mail saying, ‘No thanks, not what we’re looking for at the moment.’ And is it any co-incidence that the letter 'L' comes before 'M' in the alphabet? Conspiracy a-hoy (dons tin foil hat) me hearties!

As I’ve written before in previous posts, I seem to have developed some strange script-related abilities:

1. In general, my query letters always seem to get some sort of positive attention (mostly because, I suspect, I don’t write in crayon).
2. After I send prodcos and agents a script, they fall silent for months – this makes me worry, as I start to think that they may have been abducted.

Or maybe there’s another explanation: I read The Information by Martin Amis a little while back, where one of the characters – an avant garde novelist – writes books that give readers instant headaches and/or nosebleeds. In turn, perhaps my work sends agents and prodcos into weird deep space Ripley-esque comas.

Pip pip!

Spooky Spooks

I happen to like Spooks (but no doubt will forget to watch the next nine episodes). Last Tuesday’s opener twisted and turned through an hour of morally dubious decision making before leaving Asnik out on the streets of London, breathing something deadly and American all over an unsuspecting populace. No doubt if this was a movie, we’d arrive at this point after ten minutes, but as we have ten hours of this storyline to get through an hour was perfectly adequate. And very skilfully done it was too.

The only problem I have with it is that it all seems so reactionary.

The heroes of Spooks are members of the Security Services, which is all very well, but I can’t help hankering after the days of Edge of Darkness and Defence of the Realm for something a little more hard edged, subversive even. These well regarded series were informed by nuclear paranoia, and took strident and well considered anti-establishment positions.

Not so Spooks, which is set almost entirely inside the world of government. How much of this is a knock-on effect from 9/11 it perhaps difficult to quantify, but maybe it’s no co-incidence that, since then, we have seen a proliferation of series such as The West Wing and 24, where the machinery of the State is seen as being benign and even overly moral (or, at least, sacrificing the interests of the few for the many).

Where Edge of Darkness and Defence of the Realm explored complex conspiracies that went right to the heart of government, Spooks seems to invert this to give us a wholly new type of paranoia:

Series 5, Episode 10: An environmental terrorist group threaten to flood London if the government doesn't publish a secret document.

The role of government is now to protect us from an ever present array of long haired, loon panted left wingers and other assorted crazies with evil agendas.

Series 4, Episode 10: Ruth is asked to procure evidence that Harry was responsible for the assassination of Princess Diana.

Harry wasn’t responsible for any such thing of course – he’s merely been the target of another crazy person whom MI6 is duty bound to stop at all costs.

No doubt if a crusty old peace campaigner dared show his/her face in the world of Spooks at the moment, they would get a swift garrotting.

The current series of Spooks is a bit of a concern for precisely these reasons: we’ve already discounted the (now benevolent) Iranians as being behind the plot to let loose a deadly chemical agent on the hard working people of Britain (Copyright Gordon Brown), so I guess that leaves the old ‘splinter militant group’ fallback (Albanians? Disgruntled Russian business interests? It really doesn’t matter at the end of the day). What this does is to ensure that no-one is offended – a cop out in other words (didn’t The Devil’s Own do something similar?). Instead of taking some left field narrative choices to inspire some meaningful debate (like: what exactly is it that MI5/MI6 do that the police can’t?), I suspect that Spooks will focus entirely on just such a plot strand, but I hope (against expectation) to be corrected.

BBC Invent New Genre!

Bruce in Vegas, BBC1 – 5th October 2007.

Synopsis: Bruce Forsyth heads to Las Vegas, the Entertainment Capital of the World, in search of the stories behind such legendary entertainers as the Rat Pack, Elvis Presley, Liberace and many more.

For the sweet love of baby Jesus, nooooooo!

Suffice to say, Bruce does nothing of the sort. He takes his wife to the Venetian where he attempts to serenade a gondolier with toe curling results. He does a bit of a tap dancing, and looks flabbergasted when people stare suspiciously at his syrup and say, ‘Bruce who?’ Bruce and the wife renew their wedding vows. An Elvis impersonator makes a predictable appearance. Bruce meets Barry Manilow and attempts to steer the conversation round to himself. Bruce visits the Liberace museum and has a tinkle on an old Joanna. And on it goes. Where’s Songs of Praise when you need a bit of hard edged television?

However, rather than asking what the flaming arse the point of the whole thing was I think it’s tempting to surmise that the BBC has actually invented a whole new genre here. I mean, it can’t be classified as a travel show – we get shots of Vegas of course, but it doesn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know about the place (i.e., it’s a got a few hotels, the odd casino and an Elvis impersonator on every street corner). It doesn’t really tell you anything about the personalities that Bruce purports to interview, as the old duffer is too busy tap dancing/reminiscing/being irritating to pay much attention to whatever people might be saying.

No, what it is is an hour devoted to Bruce Forsythe: vanity television, TV’s equivalent to the vanity publishing industry (with the major exception that Brucie didn’t have to pay for it). As the programme served no real purpose, this has to be the only conclusion.

So, where next for this new genre? Well, the malevolent evil that is Cilla Black has been away for a while (save the odd spot of funeral advertising) – there’s got to be a few miles left in the old dear yet.
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Update, 15th October - Censored by the Muppets! Sad news: I have been blacklisted by muppetcentral.com, so you'll have to put up with Bruce's gurning visage from the BBC website instead of the rather fetching pic I had of him and Fozzy Bear.

Google Is Your Friend

It’s early days for this crappy little blog, but some of the Google searches that bring people inadvertently spinning here are starting to become worthy of comment (all courtesy of the good folks over at Statcounter).

Alan Yentob Blue Peter Tortoise: what?! Alan Yentob implicated in yet another Blue Peter scandal, this time involving a tortoise? What kind of sick freak reads this blog?!

Incidental music on X-Factor: glad to be of service, sir and/or madam.

Stitched Back Foot Airman: my sole mention of this late 80’s indie band must have been a bit of a disappointment to whoever searched for them, so here’s a SBFA anecdote for you:

Years and years ago, I saw Stump at the Escape Club in Brighton, supported by Stitched Back Foot Airman (who were by that time going under the moniker Stitch). I went with a couple of friends, one of whom – Lester – was a stick thin psychopath who stood six foot four in his socks (ones with little grinning skulls all over them no doubt). Halfway through Stitch’s set, during a break between songs, Lester stood up and screamed, ‘FUCK OFF!’ As heckles go, it wasn’t big and it wasn’t clever, but hey – it made me laugh. Stitch looked mortified. They mumbled something about dancing and launched into another song that sounded like the wheels were going to come off at any second. Stump were brilliant, of course.

Michael Winterbot: I can only assume this has been searched for by someone who can’t spell ‘bottom’ (either that or a censorious born-again Christian).

Review of last night's BBC Best Elvis with Vernon Kay: I am proud to announce that this blog is a Vernon Kay free zone, much the same way that Manchester is a nuclear free city. I take Charlie Brooker’s line, inasmuch as his ideal video game is something for the Wii where you incessantly punch Vernon Kay in the face for two hours. Take that, you whey faced, no-talent twerp!

Blue Peter Pussy Socks: not again. I’m sick of Blue Peter now (thereagain, Pussy Socks sounds like a good name for a punk band to me).

Dench Arnold response: the answer to this query? Very, very slow.

London to Brighton – The Ubiquity of Ideas

Warning! This post contains spoilers for London to Brighton.

First off, let me say that I have absolutely nothing against London to Brighton – all round, it’s a pretty decent film (with one major lapse of narrative logic, but you can’t have everything).

The thing that really intrigued me however, was the ending – despicable gangster Stuart Allen drives tart with a heart Kelly and her ward Joanne deep into the Sussex countryside with the express intention of having them killed by his gormless foot soldiers – Derek and Chum. Whilst Derek and Chum get busy digging a shallow grave, Kelly and Joanne plead for their lives, convinced that they are going to be killed. However, when the moment of truth arrives, Stuart’s cronies’ guns are aimed at Derek and Chum, and Kelly and Joanne are freed. It’s a great scene, full of menace, and the switch is cleverly played out.

There was just one problem for me – it all seemed a little familiar. The reason?

A few years back, I wrote an almost identical scene.

My script was set in south London circa 1974 and focussed on a timid accountant who gets drawn into a violent criminal underworld. The scene I wrote featured the accountant digging what is supposedly his own grave, only for it to become the final resting place for the big bad gangster’s psychotic rival. Without labouring the point too much, the scene in London to Brighton is almost identical.

And what’s more, that’s cool.

I am not for one moment suggesting that plagiarism of any sort has occurred here (my script did the rounds just as the British gangster movie was about to explode messily all over the place, so it got lost in the noise I guess). I think what this episode shows is that some ideas are simply ubiquitous – they possess a weird form of common currency. The fact that I wrote an identical scene a few years back means nothing. And besides, there are so many damn scripts out there all jockeying for attention, at least of few of them are going to share a lot of unintentional similarities.

On the other hand, a friend of mine got understandably upset a little while back when a British feature came out that seemed to borrow entirely from one of his own scripts. To add insult to injury, my friend had actually sent the script to the lead actor’s agent a few years before, only to see the idea apparently recycled wholesale into a starring vehicle. I think he consulted an entertainment lawyer but from then on the trail went cold (the film bombed big time anyway, so a law suit is pretty pointless when no-one has any money available to compensate).

Whether or not this was a similar situation was difficult to tell. There was a certain ubiquity in the idea, and, as we all know, you can’t copyright an idea (believe me, I deal with this sort of crap every day). You could launch an action based on a like-for-like comparison of the two scripts side by side, but if that test fails, you’re screwed. It’s all in the specifics – the idea/concept is obviously important, but what counts in an instance like this is the execution (there are other issues to consider here of course: unless you have a compelling case, try finding a media lawyer who would take this sort of thing on for free, not to mention the damage it would do to any career if litigation was a first port of call).

Anyone can have an idea for a screenplay – it’s not difficult. The difficulty comes when you have to actually write the damn thing. How many times have you seen someone on Shooting People announce that they have a drop dead brilliant idea for a script, but what they really need is for someone to write the thing for (or ‘with’) them? In the next breath they start talking about confidentiality agreements just in case you think their diamond studded, gold plated idea is worth stealing. Pah. It’s the execution that matters.

My solution to this? Be original. What I took from London to Brighton is that I’m not being original enough (must try harder). If nothing else, being original gets you remembered.

And that lapse of narrative logic in London to Brighton? When Derek and Chum happen across Kelly in her friend’s house in Brighton, they order everyone (a bunch of dozy dope smoking slackers) out of the house at gunpoint – the slackers then promptly disappear! Hang on a minute – crazy pimp with a shotgun holding two women hostage? Quick! Call the cops! On second thoughts, don’t bother. We’re all pretty laid back here in sunny Brighton, so when crazy pimps start waving shotguns around, we all go, ‘Meh – been there, done that.’ Besides, I think I’m getting a bit autistic about narrative logic (which in the case of London to Brighton seems to be directly related to how much money was left in the budget). I need to relax a bit, I think.

Code 46 - Postscript...

Leanne commented that none of Michael Winterbottom’s films ever seem to set the box office alight, so I thought I’d have a dig about for Code 46. And whaddya know:

Budget; $7,500,000
Worldwide Theatrical Gross: $741, 273

Add DVD rentals and sales, and I guess you might be looking at a generous estimate gross of about $1 million.

I think we can safely say that these figures are a disaster.

So who’s to blame when a film such as Code 46 goes tits up with a barely a whimper? Search me, but perhaps The Washington Post sums it up best:

It will almost certainly attract a cult audience - it has the kind of self-serious grandiosity that swindles the young and feckless into believing it's significant - but it could have used a few ray guns and mind melds.

Pip pip!

Money Money Money

Channel 4 have announced this:

PILOT is an opportunity for drama screenwriters to win the chance to have their work produced and screened on Channel 4. We're inviting exciting, talented writers to submit a treatment for a six-part drama series, an outline for a pilot episode for that series, and a script for a sample scene from that episode.

Tell me more...

12 writers will be selected to take part in a packed weekend of industry workshops and masterclasses. They will then be hot-housed in one of three Scottish independent production companies, where mentoring producers and Channel 4 script editors will help them develop their series idea and complete a first draft script.

Hmmm...

One creative team will head home with a £90,000 commission to produce a pilot episode of their drama series, including a fee for the winning writer to complete a final draft script.

Ninety grand is a lot of money. But in the context of TV drama, all it’s probably going to buy is a half hour of Neighbours.

By way of comparison, the BBC drama genre tariff for independents is here.

Borrowing liberally from the BBC website, this is the band under which £90k falls:

Daytime and Low Cost Drama - Indicative Tariff Range: £50k - £500k per hour

Within this range, programmes tend to fall into the following categories:

Drama 1: Up to £375k per hour

This category covers a range of low cost output primarily for Daytime together with long running series for BBC ONE; BBC TWO and BBC THREE.

Producers will use innovative techniques and clever ideas to maximise the funds available especially for BBC FOUR. New talent will launch and grow here.

£90,000 might seem a lot of money, but in an environment where an hour of TV drama can cost up to £900,000 plus (the ‘Drama 7’ category), it starts to look like pocket money – especially when direct comparisons are being made to Skins and Shameless. What ninety grand means is essentially a maximum of two locations, a contemporary setting and a small cast. It can be done of course, but ninety grand seems a ludicrously small budget for any production company to chase after.

And what’s more...

PILOT is a 4Talent Scotland project in partnership with Scottish Screen, supported by The National Lottery, and by Highlands & Islands Enterprise.

The opportunity itself is of course great news, but behind the scenes, perhaps the way it has been funded is the whole point – Channel 4 would be delighted if a high quality drama could be produced from such a low cost base; no doubt this initiative is being looked at as a ‘double whammy’, as it appears that Channel 4 haven’t had to stump up much of the cash at all (thanks to our friend the humble tax payer).

And before everyone in every far flung corner of the United Kingdom steams in, bear this in mind:

Amanda Millen, screen and broadcast industries development manager at Highlands and Islands Enterprise, said: “Highlands and Islands Enterprise is very excited to be part of this fantastic initiative and is looking forward to discovering and developing some strong screenwriting talent from the Highlands and Islands.”

Not something that is made terrifically clear on the Channel 4 website!

Ravenhill, Waters, McKee

What follows is an article published in The Guardian on 21st December 2006 by Steve Waters (original article is here). There’s a Mark Ravenhill article that covers similar ground, but I suspect that Ravenhill hasn’t really read too much McKee – this doesn’t matter a great deal, as it’s a very entertaining read.

It now seems, as Steve Waters states below and Ravenhill echoes, that all readers, script editors and commissioners are now wrapped up in the “three act, sole protagonist, inciting incident” model of screenwriting. There are plenty of films that buck this trend – Paris, Texas, as Waters states below, but how about Psycho, Babel, Full Metal Jacket, The Prestige, Eraserhead, Chung King Express - the list goes on. If narrative is to be churned out to a predetermined, homogenised pattern, is it any wonder we end up with movies that are the production-line equivalent of Big Macs?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Story is a metaphor for life. Or so says the guru of "story", Robert McKee, whose ideas have spread like a virus. Infamous for having been impersonated by Brian Cox in Spike Jonze's Adaptation, McKee's ideas - which are expounded in his weekend seminars (£460, including software) and in his tome, Story - are on the lips of writers, script editors and commissioners. Such ubiquity surely places McKee beyond suspicion.

So what's the idea? McKee proposes that the art of story (which he promotes from humble noun to abstract concept) is on the wane. Movie-makers opt for mere incident to tart up underdeveloped screenplays, while in the arthouse sector story is snubbed by elitist conceptualism. As film audiences shrink, so story withers; for story was most ascendant when film was a mass art and when audiences weren't coteries.

There's much truth in this, and McKee's paean to the undervalued art of screenwriting is a corrective to years of auteurist ideology. But his ideas don't stop there; he seeks to offer a grand prescription for dramatic narrative comparable in its ambitions to Aristotle.

Here is the orthodoxy: every story has a three-act structure. It begins with an "inciting incident", centres on a protagonist under unimaginable pressure seeking a burning objective, and rides out on the spine of this quest with "progressive complications" ratcheting up the pressure. Thus every story is driven by antagonism, crisis, conflict - you can almost feel the honest sweat seeping from the pages of his book.

Can a man whose pupils include the winners of 26 Academy Awards be wrong? The old joke that there's a two-word answer to McKee - Paris, Texas - suggests he can. It's telling that the majority of his exemplar films are middlebrow products such as Ordinary People; when he turns his attention to Chinatown his reading feels off the mark. Theatre gets the odd nod but it's Ibsen's Hedda Gabler rather than When We Dead Awaken; God knows what he'd make of Saved or Blasted.

The most lethal fallout from McKee's approach comes in his proposition that good stories must be engineered in advance like municipal car parks, thus ushering in the stultifying world of 80-page story treatments where the improvised life of the narrative is nailed dead before a line of dialogue is written.

And this is not simply about fiction; I heard a TV producer admit that story is now colonising narrative history; and where the facts don't fit the template they are simply set aside. In the recent BBC docu-drama on the history of Rome it became apparent that the life and times of Emperor Augustus didn't conform to the demands of story to make the series: where was his third act crisis?

Isn't there already too much narrative cliche clogging up our relationship to experience; the Brown/Blair tiff is packaged in advance as a three act drama with deferred climax; Global Warming as a set of progressive complications yielding the mother of all climaxes. We can't blame McKee for his influence, but story's looking increasingly like another patent, branding random experience into manipulable commodity.

Truly great stories shatter the crust of cliche. I remember watching Caryl Churchill's play Top Girls and experiencing that delirium of uncertainty that great narrative art induces. What about the early Wim Wenders films which weave around their narrative core releasing us to enjoy time and space for itself. Writers learn their craft from the canon of drama but they should steer clear of recipes - and McKee's work has become one more ideology filtering out the shocks that radical fiction uses to shake us from our slumbers.”

Fun with Marchmont Films, Part 3

The Marchmont saga continues to run and run, with more disgruntled writers piling into the breach on Shooting People. However, a novel reason for their extended silence has been floated by Carl Allport, which is about the most feasible explanation I've heard so far.

I'd have thought that it was obvious what was going on. Come on- script submissions, Marchmont, division of Bloomsbury films, wedding season... It might be worth turning up outside of the church on Saturday and checking the confetti for 'courier 12'...

I suppose we should all just be grateful that it's not being run by Andrex... :)

All I can say is that it makes me feel all warm and gooey inside to think that my script might have helped some happy couple complete their day...

Fun with Marchmont Films, Part 2

Those naughty people over at Marchmont have been at it again. This from the Shooting People, Screenwriters Network mail out, issue 3081 (thanks to James for the tip off):

"Not demotivated exactly, Marchmont... From: Louise Bentinck Pennington

I felt the usual sympathy for Andrew Thackeray with regard to the ‘non-responses’ he has received for his script submissions and, as usual, thought ‘that’s part of script writing’. However, read this and see what you think –

“Thank you for submitting your script material to Marchmont Films (18 April)… I am pleased to inform you that it has been recommended to our producers for final consideration.

Although we are unable to comment on the likely outcome, we do feel that it is an exceptional achievement to have reached this stage and would like to express our sincere appreciation for your writing work.

Our producers will obviously be considering this against other recommended projects, but will endeavour to advise you personally of the outcome within approximately six weeks.”

I think I could be forgiven for actually anticipating a response of some kind at some point, but no, not even a ‘thanks but no thanks’.

I decided to contact Marchmont direct (last week) and Andrew Cussens in particular (he emailed me when I was short listed), and discovered it was virtually impossible to reach anyone at the company until I went through their ‘website form’ and finally received a reply back from someone called Iris No-Name (no offence, Iris), who proceeded to email the standard gumpf about ‘not taking any projects further at the moment…’

Frankly, I’m surprised that a production company like Marchmont with a good reputation would behave in this way, particularly as several of the production team have writing backgrounds themselves and know the score. However, perhaps there is a good reason for this ‘non response’, but having taken me thus far and shooting themselves in the foot with the phrase “will endeavour to advise you personally”, even a ‘personal email’ would have sufficed.

Part of Life's rich tapestry as they say. In the meantime, best of luck to all you scribes…"

Worry not, Louise, the wedding season is almost over!

Agent Bothering and Other Hobbies

I’ve been bothering UK literary agents for years with a spectacular run of what I like to describe as ‘ur-success’ (which is a lot like failure but stretched over a period of many years). Bear in mind the agents below are only the ones I’ve had significant exchanges with over the last few years.

So, in no particular order:

Brie Burkeman. I recently received a lovely e-mail from Brie saying that although 'technically' she is looking for new clients, she is simply too busy to dedicate any time to them at the moment. That said, her kind words are probably a euphemism for ‘feck off’. I think Brie used to be at:

Jonathan Clowes. These guys are the original big hitters. Clients include Len Deighton, Doris Lessing, David Nobbs and the Sir Kingsley Amis Estate. No email and no website, so you will have to approach by letter (unlike a lot of agents out there, JC always respond to initial queries, even if it is a ‘no thanks’).

Elspeth Cochrane. Now this is more like it. I can’t remember the name of the guy I dealt with here (a few years back, admittedly), but he was a rough diamond and make no mistake, guv’nor.

This agent (let’s call him Bob) expressed an interest in one of the first scripts I ever wrote – however, rather than taking me on as a bonafide client, he suggested that I reside on his ‘temporary list’ (something I suspected he had just made up on the spot). The concept behind this ‘list’ was that I should continue to market my script all by my lonesome with no assistance from the agency whatsoever – until I made a sale that is. Bob would then magically pop out of his box and slap a commission on whatever I had managed to negotiate for myself. Cracking deal, eh? I continued to market the script myself but without recourse to this obviously spaced out lunatic (me and about seven hundred other writers on his temporary list I suspect).

Six months later, I called Bob for an idle chat only to be told by Elspeth Cochrane herself (sounding delightfully cranky, like a dotty old maiden aunt in an Ealing film) that he had gone AWOL, and that she had no idea where he was (selling London Bridge to Japanese tourists perhaps?). By the way, she said, do you want your script back, or shall I shred it? What about your prestigious ‘temporary list’ I almost asked, but bit my tongue (that said, they’re the only agents to have done this to me. Everyone else has been thoroughly professional and eminently polite, even if they think my work is a load of plop).

Notable clients: Royce Ryton, Alex Jones and Robert Tanitch. Elspeth Cochrane appear to have had the same clients for about a million years, so god knows what they were doing toying with me (and on their high-status ‘temporary list’ to boot). I seem to recall they also counted Ernie Wise amongst their clients, but that’s not important right now.

They don’t have a website (I can’t find one anyway). How very post-modern!

Curtis Brown. I worried Ben Hall for a while when he was at AP Watt, and this tradition has continued since he moved to Curtis Brown. Ben writes very polite and encouraging ‘no thanks’ letters, which I receive with alarming frequency.

Notable clients: the prodigious Colin Bateman (just thinking about his output makes me want to go and lie down in dark room for a couple of weeks), Rob Grant, Harriet Warner.

Dench Arnold. The first port of call for screenwriters fresh out of the blocks these days, so it appears. They managed to kick me into touch after eight months and two scripts – always in a considerate and professional way, mind you. However, their email answering skills would occasionally fall into Marchmont type levels of inactivity. I’m not quite sure why it takes four months to respond to an initial script query, but there you go – ours is not to reason why.

Send Fiona Grant (Elizabeth Dench’s assistant) an email – she’d love to hear from you.

Notable clients: Peter Chelsom, Adrian Dunbar, Caroline Sax (the script supervisor for Underworld – like, wow, there was a script for that? You learn something new every day).

Futerman, Rose & Associates. Guy Rose was a thoroughly likeable sort, so I bothered him for a while to no avail. Barney Fisher-Turner as well – who also isn’t interested. Meh. Their loss.

Notable Clients: Toyah Wilcox, Brian Harvey (huh?) and Iain Duncan-Smith. There’s a nice picture of Toyah post-facelift on their website, which has got to be worth a visit.

Marjacq Scripts. What a beautiful front door!

We are always seeking to expand our talented client base and welcome new submissions.

Well, you don’t see that every day. Their website features potted biographies of the writers they represent, which should give you an idea of who they are looking for. Worth a punt, I reckon. Luke Speed is the man you need.

Peters, Fraser Dunlop: a tutor of mine at Cambridge is represented by Rosemary Canter (children’s illustration) – she put me in touch with Charles Walker a few years back. Charles was always polite and accommodating, so I continued to bother him for a while until I got the message. Jago Irwin was the next in line, another thoroughly decent chap with a sideline in carefully crafted automatic rejection emails. There are so many agents at PFD by the time you got round to being rejected by them all, you could probably start at the beginning again without Agent #1 recognising your name – a bit like painting the Forth Bridge I guess.

Notable Clients: take your pick really. Everyone who’s anyone. There are absolutely millions of writers, directors, illustrators and French polishers all available at handsome rates.

There is an excellent list of UK literary agents at the Bloomsbury website here.

Agents are, of course, looking for talented, prodigious writers with finely honed commercial sensibilities, which obviously means that I’m making a series of (rash?) assumptions about my ability that may or may not be true.

That said, give me a deadline and I’ll go at it like a fat kid after a doughnut – however, I’m sure that my ‘commercial sensibility’ could do with a bit of a buff. For god’s sake, my favourite book is Bouvard and Pecuchet by Flaubert. Perhaps I should catch up on all those Doctor Who episodes that I’ve been (deliberately) missing.

With all the above in mind, I don’t think that having an agent provides anyone with a gift wrapped solution. Friends of mine seem to get on perfectly well without representation – the percentage that the agent would have taken sits very nicely inside their pockets, thank you very much. At the very least, having an agent should widen the base of companies that are prepared to read your work.

As for marketing (when I can be bothered), my current hit rate comes in at about the 1 in 4 mark, i.e., for every agent that requests to see something, another three either don’t reply or simply send a brief ‘no thank you’ note - which I don’t think is too bad (that’s discounting all those offers I have to sit on prestigious ‘temporary lists’, of course).

Chip Gets the Script Editing Evils

Many thanks to my good friend Mister G, who convinced me to write this entry without naming names – there’s career suicide and career suicide he said in a sagely fashion (however, it does help if you have a career to ruin first).

A little while back, I attended a script workshop arranged by a notable media organisation and run by a script editor whom I shall call Nina (after the best popular song ever released, 99 Red Balloons).

The idea of the workshop was very simple: a week before, a script from a participating writer would be distributed amongst the eight writers or so taking part. Nina would then lead a critique centred on that script, the idea being that the writer went away with enough material for a rewrite. The fact that Nina was a professional script editor meant that the advice you would be getting with regards to your script was potentially going to be top notch. The price was a couple of quid so that croissants and coffee could be laid on. It sounded like a good deal to me.

My script was scheduled for about week 5 or 6, which was fine.

The scripts from the other writers started to come thick and fast. To be honest, I only really remember two: the first was a short, impressionistic script about conscientious objectors that was actually wasn’t bad. The writer had a couple of short films under his belt for which he had managed to wangle positively huge budgets out of various regional film bodies (£20,000 for a 10 minute short anyone? Yowsa!) – and good luck to him.

The second script was written by an ex-lawyer, so when the package thumped onto my welcome mat, I looked forward to a good read.

It was probably the most insane thing I have ever read.

The script was constructed from three completely disparate narrative threads which confusingly featured the same character throughout. Thirty pages in and the protagonist did a one eighty about face and marched into a completely different script that bore no relation to the thirty pages that had gone before. The same happened after seventy pages. To call it schizophrenic would be doing the word a disservice. About the only logic that applied was the fact that act three followed act two, which followed act one. I was convinced that if I kept reading it would make some sort of sense, but it didn’t – not one iota. I was confused. My head hurt. I had to go and lie down for several hours until my nervous system rebooted.

Whilst not exactly lavishing praise on the script, Nina was careful to extol its virtues and suggest some areas for improvement. The other writers in the group sat around looking stunned. Everyone had read the script and had come to the same conclusion as I had – it made little sense, and even bordered on being severely mentalist. I even said as much as well. Nina took my comments on board and moved on, unconcerned. I don’t know if it was just me, but I got the feeling that everyone felt a little intimidated, too afraid to speak up to say what they really felt about the script.

Ordinarily I would not slate the work of a fellow writer in this way, but this script was most definitely out there. It’s also handy to gauge reactions to this script in comparison to what happened to my own a few weeks later.

The script I had selected for critique within the group probably wasn’t that good (then again, that’s the point isn’t it? The whole reason I was attending was for the feedback). The Player and After Hours are two of my favourite films, so I had written a script that was essentially a mash-up of the two – a washed up American actor with a crashed marriage behind him visits London to promote a rubbish action flick. After absconding from an interview to get laid and wasted, he wakes up in a hotel room next to a dead body. The script follows the actor as he tries to clear his name with the help of a friendly dominatrix and an assorted cast of screwed up hangers-on.

Well, when I say that it wasn’t very good, at least it had what I thought was a fairly coherent narrative to it. It was my attempt at writing comedy – OK, so it may have been derivative and naïve, but it wasn’t as out there as the schizophrenic script, surely.

Nina hated it.

Perhaps ‘hate’ is not a strong enough word. She despised it. There was nothing in it that was redeemable, she stated, nothing at all. And to make matters worse, Nina stated that I was writing about a milieu I knew absolutely nothing about, which, in her book, was a crime akin to being a fully paid up member of the Hitler Youth. She gave me no suggestions as to how I should improve it whatsoever, so the whole morning was dedicated to the wholesale trashing of my script.

I came out of the room at midday feeling dazed. What on earth had happened? I felt victimised and humiliated. I had no idea why Nina had gone for me in such a way – in comparison to the ‘schizo script’, I thought mine would have had at least the semblance of a sympathetic reading, some suggestions for improvements or further development. But no. It got the exact opposite.

Later that evening, I had a call from another participant in the workshop who stated that Nina’s criticisms had, for whatever reason, gone completely over the top, and for no good reason. Had she been having a bad day? Was the journey in a complete nightmare for her? Or was it really my script? Was it really as bad as she thought? Or was it me? Did my accent wind her up? Did my haircut annoy her? Who knows?

As the good Lucy Vee states here, there’s a fine balance to be struck between being pragmatic and trampling all over something that someone has spent hundreds of hours writing and tweaking just because you can. For whatever reason, Nina got the balance wrong that day and decided to go for the jugular.

When it’s constructive, I can take criticism as well as anyone else – after all, I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t expect what I write not to get criticised. When it’s not constructive, rightly or wrongly, it’s all too easy to take things personaly – when you’re face to face with a script editor who has apparently taken a pathological dislike to you and your writing, it’s difficult not to.

Nina has moved on to bigger and better things since that script workshop, to the extent that Mr G warned me against naming names – and that’s cool. Let’s hope that she doesn’t treat the scripts she comes across in her professional life with the sort of disdain she treated mine with.

Anyway, I took Nina’s advice and wrote a script about what I knew: a sci-fi drama about remote viewing with a tip of the hat to Cronenberg’s Scanners (yeah, okay, I’m joking). It’s still a script I use today, and has got me meetings with Hammer Films and September Films amongst others, so I know that I’m not a complete numpty (although I do have my moments). Besides, if I wrote solely about what I know, then everything I churned out would read like The Office on crack with a lot of premature death thrown in to lighten the mood, so I’m not about to do that at any point soon.

All the above said, I’ve just applied for METLAB this year ;-)

Blue Cat E-mail Tirade

Oops. I've just upset Gordy Hoffman (which means I'll have to shelve my Blue Cat acceptance speech for next year. Remember KLF playing the Brits a few years back with Extreme Noise Terror and an artfully placed dead sheep? It would've looked a bit like that).

I've just received feedback on an additional script I submitted to Blue Cat back in February and subsequently forgot all about it (which is the best way to be with competitions I think). On 15th August, a good few weeks after the top ten per cent, finalists and winners had been announced, my own feedback limps into my in-box.

Despite the fact that I'd forgotten all about the entry, I wasn't too impressed with this, so sent Gordy an email in which I threw my toys out of my pram plus a few more besides. This provoked a response from Gordy in which he basically bitch slapped me and told me to shut it - which, come to think of it, was a pretty fair response. Gordy stated that if I was dissatisfied with anything Blue Cat had done this year, then I could have a free entry next year. Very considerate (especially once you factor in my insulting email) - however, after my tirade, I don't think I'm welcome in the esteemed Blue Cat neighbourhood, so I shall slink off, all chastened and ashamed...

Anyway, the upshot of this is that Gordy sent me the marking criteria that Blue Cat use, which is reproduced below:

STORY
CHARACTERIZATION
DIALOGUE
DESCRIPTION
CLARITY
ORIGINALITY

They mark each script out of 60, 10 for each category. My second script scored 26 (43%, good enough for an A level!), with a '2' for characterization! Wow. The winner scored 58 (which meant that the winner was more than twice as good as my own script!).

In comparison, I saw The Bourne Ultimatum last night, and using the Blue Cat marking criteria above (and, of course, my own rigorous standards of critique), I gave it a mark of 21 - which makes it a load of old flapdoodle in my book. And don't get me started on The Walker, Paul Schrader's latest. Perhaps I ought to send him an email to see if I can upset him as well...