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.

I'm a Loser, Baby...

So the scores are on the doors for the next round of Red Planet. And as Paul Campbell points out, the entire Scribodome and its dog are through – everyone that is, except me.*

As Chester Babcock might say:

Cock.

There – that feels better already.

Huge congratulations to everyone who made it through (too many to mention here, but you know who you are, you lucky swines!), and commiserations to me. I suppose I ought to start on that supernatural period piece I’ve been planning for the last couple of minutes (dystopian sci-fi being hopelessly outré this year, of course) ;-)

Ah well – time for a beer.
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*And Lucy and Elinor and Rach, of course. Commiserations, guys – I feel your pain. *sob*

TAPS - Finding the Writer's Voice: Update

Three months after getting shortlisted (and eight months after my application went in), it transpires that TAPS doesn’t want me or my script – which is quite a relief, as it happens. Although I could have applied for funding through Skillset and/or my regional Screen Agency, the last time I looked at the online forms they resembled a Kafkaesque bureaucratic quagmire, so I ran away and hid. Just the thought of parting with £500 made my blood run cold.

Anyhoo, on the road to eventual rejection, something weird happened. The original TAPS notice stated this:

All submitted scripts are read and assessed by a specially assembled reading panel of industry professionals.

A couple of weeks back, the industry professional who had been allotted to read my shortlisted script e-mailed to say that he thought it was “terrific”, and could I send him a few lines about myself? Done! I have no idea what the TAPS protocol is, but the e-mail seemed completely spontaneous and obviously well outside the usual TAPS channels of communication.

Two weeks later, I get a rejection letter. Are the two events related? Who knows? As David Bishop stated a little while back, having a half decent script is perhaps only half the battle. However, there’s an established producer out there who at least liked my script, so I’ll give him a call once the silly/holiday season is over and see where it goes from there.

Sharps: Over and Out

Like Oli, David and the rest of the scribosphere, my Sharps entry did absolutely fup all, which doesn’t mean to say that what I submitted was a pile of unmentionables. Everyone who read it and passed comment seemed to genuinely like the concept, and it even made people laugh (intentionally, I hasten to add) - so all round, I was pretty pleased with the way it turned out. OK, so it’s been passed over this time, but there’s nothing to say that it can’t act as a valuable ‘calling card’/writing sample for something else – and let’s face it, thirty pages is much easier for a reader to gaily skip through than that dense 130 page sci-fi epic that you’ve been slaving over for the last decade (my own dense sci-fi epic that I’ve been slaving over for the last decade comes in at 94 pages, so I’m one up on you already. Ha! ;-))

In retrospect, I have a creeping suspicion that the first ten pages of my script did not do an adequate job of grabbing the Writersroom reader by the old proverbials right from the get-go – too much set up perhaps, too much of a slow burn before my cabal of sociopathic MPs went completely off the rails and tried hitching a lift to the nearest star system. That said, perhaps they thought it was shite, but I don’t care – it may sound terrifically arrogant of me, but I like it enough to use it again for something else. And as Lucy says over at her esteemed gaff, this game is pretty subjective – if you write something that excites you and that you believe in rather than what you think people want to read, I think you’re onto something pretty decent. It’s just that what excites you may not be the same as what excites and interests your reader – but when the two match up, that’s where the fun starts. But for the moment, I’m happy in my little transparent bubble.

More Agent Bothering

Every six months or so, I do a more-or-less random trawl through the labyrinthe of UK literary agents in an attempt to cajole them into reading one of my scripts. My ‘hit rate’ was a fairly respectable one in four – until Monday that is. Out of six e-mails, two agents came back on the same day requesting material – which was nice. What usually happens now is that they read the script and go strangely silent for several months, as did Marjacq Scripts. That said, one interesting e-mail I received was from a large agency who stated that they were not looking at any unsolicited scripts – ten minutes later, I got emails from not one but two agents at the same agency (one requesting a script). So, we’ll see what happens. When the dust has settled, I may even name names (but don't hold your breath - I tried this once waiting for Dench Arnold to respond and it all got very painful).

In other non-agent news (well, it might be related, depending on your take on the PFD/United Agents dust up), Gladiators is back! True trash television at its best.

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!

Metlab Update, Part 3

OK, so the Red Planet results are in, and I didn’t get through to the second round. Hey ho, no great shakes.

However, as if to balance up this obvious karmic injustice, the man from Metlab has just said yes!

Well, not exactly ‘the man’ himself, but his warped yet strangely loveable sidekick, Lucy Vee.

Things kick off in January, which means one of two things:

i) Based on the notes I took in the meeting with John on 1st November, I crank out a third draft of the script that’s been selected for the patented METLAB hack ‘n’ slash, or

ii) I rely on the robust yet slightly pedestrian second draft.

Bit of a no-brainer isn’t it?

Third draft here we come.

I’ve absolutely no idea how many people applied for METLAB, but apparently I’m one of four, which is nice.

Incidentally, the last time I got selected for something like this was a few years back when Lighthouse ran a little critique course for writers. I was one of twelve in the group, and of course was all hugely excited over it. In an idle moment, I asked one of the Lighthouse bods how many people had applied: was it a lot? She looked at me as if I had just escaped from secure accommodation, and said, ‘Twelve’.

Hey ho!

Carla Lane Goes Off On One

Continuing with our series ‘Famous Playwrights and Screenwriters Sound Off’, Carla Lane (author of hit sitcoms The Liver Birds and Butterflies) is the latest to step up to the plate. In this week’s edition of Latest Homes (which is essentially a Brighton based estate agent’s flyer with dreams of one day being a ‘proper’ magazine – you know, one that people actually pay for) Carla complains that the BBC didn’t want her latest two scripts, and that they rely on a ‘clique’ of writers rather than the talents of the fifteenth most famous Liverpudlian in the country. “I sent them two scripts three months ago,” she grumbles, “and they sent them straight back.” (I wonder where she sent them? BBC Writersroom perhaps? My commiserations – we’ve all been there).

It’s a well known fact that Carla Lane now devotes most of her attention these days to her animal sanctuary, and good luck to her; no doubt the two scripts that the BBC passed on were efforts to rustle up some funding to keep the sanctuary running – nowt wrong with that (or maybe she needs the money for things like this). I was just amused as to exactly who is in this mysterious ‘clique’ of writers the BBC now relies upon – is there some sort of satanic ritual you have to undergo before you can join (if so, count me in, but go easy on the animal sacrifice – Carla might get upset!).

Any idea who might be in this clique? Answers on a postcard please!

Down and Dirty with Inktip

I put a couple of scripts up on Inktip a little while back – and all I can say is that the site’s popularity is frightening. In the period January to July this year, the loglines for two of my scripts were viewed approximately 400 times! However, in the grand scheme of Inktip, this means absolutely bugger all – the exceedingly broad brush way in which interested parties can interrogate the Inktip database means that your logline will get thrown up with literally hundreds of others all jockeying for position in what I’m sure is one of the biggest online markets of its kind. It didn’t work for me, but I suspect that’s down to the quality of my loglines – out of these 400 ‘hits’, my scripts were viewed three times! I get a better hit rate hassling UK agents. Ah well.

There was a debate on Trigger Street a little while back that revolved around the fact that a lot of the companies using Inktip are looking for scripts that can be produced for a relatively small budget – that’s absolutely fine by me, but something to bear in mind when you’re uploading your new sword n’ sorcery epic with added CGI dragons. The site is also pretty Ameri-centric as you might expect - however, I did have a few small British prodcos stop by and eye up my CV, but no bites unfortunately (curses to my rubbish loglines).

For info, here are a few of the companies that came up in my profile:

Skeleton Factory
Scar Tissue Films
Graceland Film Company AS
Intrinsic Value Films
Ministry of Film
Spare Change Productions
Thunderball Films
Strangeland Films
Twisted Pictures
Bonsai Entertainment
Indiewood Pictures
Diesel Movie Werks

Loads more where these came from! Other than low budget American indies, for some reason there are a lot of small Dutch outfits searching for material as well.

It also appears that my CV was viewed by someone who was busted back in 2003 by the Plaintiff Securities and Exchange Commission in the US for being an “unlicensed dealer-broker” (i.e., the guy purchased shares from two US companies, then sold them on at considerable profit to investors with the promise that these companies were going public, which never happened). Naughty boy! Which all goes to show that we’ve got to be careful out there – you never know who might be eyeing up your on-line wares (so to speak).

Rejection Times Two

Two more rejections from agents today – the first from David Higham, the second from Eric Glass. But what makes the rejection this time round a little more bearable is that I simply can’t remember having written to either of them!

Perhaps this is the best way to handle rejection (which is, let’s face it, going to happen more often than not in this game) – get those scripts and letters in the post and forget all about them. I do the same with competitions (I put two scripts in this year for Blue Cat but completely forgot about the second – Gordy Hoffman was not amused at my response).

I have stuff out with a couple of agents at the moment who are due a chase, so stay tuned...