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 ;-)

Off on a Tangent (Part 1 of many)

The first of an occasional series that has nothing to do with screenwriting whatsoever. As I might’ve mentioned before, I might infrequently go off on a tangent and indulge in my tastes for noisy, obscure music that no-one else has ever heard of. To prove this, go to my ‘Profile’ page and click on the word ‘Slab!’ under music (second line). Go on, do it now, you know you want to.

Bloggers with favourite music that includes Slab! – No Profiles Found

No other person in the entire blogging universe lists this band.

I don’t think you can get more obscure than that.

Try plugging Slab! into Google and see what you come up with. Apart from a Brummie metal band who have nicked the name, not a lot.

In some respects, these facts make me feel incredibly smug, inasmuch as I know about this band and the rest of the world doesn’t. However, for the most part, I feel massively aggrieved that such a brilliant and essential record has passed people by without anyone noticing.

The following review is a sort of adaptation of the one on Amazon (I wrote that one too).
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SLAB! – DESCENSION – Ink Records, 1987 (re-issue - Release Records)

Re-issued from a long deleted vinyl release, this is still one of the few records that I would unhesitatingly define as 'essential', purely because there's nothing out there either before or since that quite sounds like this.

Forget the scary looking band photo, all silly hats and mullets. This was originally released in 1987, so perhaps they can be forgiven.

Imagine Michael Gira from Swans waking up one morning with a nagging pop tune in his head, but only being able to play it with the volume turned up as loud as it will go. Or the scuzzed up, stroppy older brother of Material's Memory Serves. Or Trent Reznor slumming it without a major record deal, forced to record in the shittiest south London studios that his meagre dole money could afford. If any band melded together such a disparate range of musical styles, emerging at the other end with something that still sounds entirely modern, progressive and above all unique, then I wanna hear it.

Before this record, Slab had released three 12" singles, noted for their dedication to a particular type of Clintonesque groove, albeit somewhat scuzzy – slick, geometric basslines with bursts of jazzy horns all married to a droll vocal delivery. All very listenable, but very late eighties: a little contrived maybe – studied, over-polished perhaps. Slab! was a band with a plethora of members, so maybe a degree of democratic watering down was to be expected.

Nothing this band did before quite prepares you for the assault of Descension.

'Slab' just about sums up this record. Tunnel of Love, the opener, hits the ground screaming with a burst of white noise guitar sampled to sound like no other guitar you've ever heard in your life. If this is a statement of intent, it works. From this point on, there is no let up.

This is like the soundtrack to the scariest movie you've never seen. Undriven Snow melds a discordant two note guitar riff with a surprisingly melodic vocal, the bass bucking and warping, threatening to take the whole song down some dark alley and give it a damn good kicking.

Think of Descension as an industrial jazz record with all the stops pulled out.

This is dark stuff – drone laden, dubby, loud as hell, the classic definition of lo-fi. Put this band in a 48 track digital studio and they wouldn't make any sense. Slab! need that dirty, scuzzed out sound, that rough around the edges feel that you can only apparently find in cheap, decrepit south London studios.

Slab! rip into every song as if their recording time is on a meter. Everything sounds urgent, impassioned. Dolores is a huge stand out track, at once both paranoid and immense, the hushed verse giving way to monstrous beats, hesitant horns punctuating a fierce bass line.

Improvisation is high on the agenda on tracks such as Dr Bombay and Moosleand, where Slab slip effortlessly slip into a relaxed, scuzzy loungecore, improvising effortlessly around skittery piano notes and erratic beats – the sound of a band confident enough to know that they can get away with this and still make it compelling. Even the way in which the tracks have been recorded suggest an urgency. There is a real desperation to get this stuff down onto tape before the moment is lost – ticks and buzzes, feedback, strange industrial clankings, buzzy amps – all have their place here. Even the primitive samples are ragged, punched in when required, speed of the essence.

And all this is before you enter the paranoid, cinematic world that Paul Jarvis’ lyrics conjure up. The album’s openers – Tunnel of Love and Undriven Snow - read like narratives from serene but ultimately disturbing short films. Dolores is an unsettling dream of environmental collapse – “On the banks of a river, in a sweltering town, She can sense there’s great sickness in the water supply.” Vigilante justice groups roam the streets in Gutter Busting, kicking down doors and dealing drugs with impunity. If this sounds exhausting, it is, but this is exhilarating stuff. Music played by a band straining at the end of its tether, music teetering on the edge of collapse.

Two bonus tracks are included from the People Pie 12", but they already show a band retreating, as if the excesses of Descension were merely a freak aberration. As good as the reworked People Pie is, it can't disguise a move into a more commercial sound – backing singers, a guitar solo, a lot less of the ‘knackered studio aesthetic’ that their previous sound was rooted in – details that Descension does not concern itself with at all.

And why should it? Twenty years on, this sounds as good now as it did then.
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In short, if you want to know where Trent Reznor gets the majority of his ideas from, check out this album.

Slab! released a further album entitled Sanity Allergy a year later, also on Ink Records. To date, this has not been released on CD – my vinyl copy is still playable, but only just.

Just for fun, look what happened to their bass player, Bill Davies.

On a screenwriting related note, the first script I ever wrote was called Descension. I sent it to Planet 24, who asked me, "Is Descension actually a word?" Well, no – technically it isn’t, but it’s a damn great record. It’s a crying shame nobody’s even heard of it.

Later in the week I'll be discussing the difference between a bitch slap (as administered by Gordy Hoffman in the previous post) and a pimp slap (as administered by a well known UK script editor), so stay tuned!