Reflections

I’ve let this whole blog thing drift.  Four posts in 2012, none since 13^th March.  Simply not good enough, Williams.

I had planned to write a post on Friday, but was scratching around for a topic.  I’m in treatment land at the moment, pushing four separate – and very different – projects forwards until one of them gets the momentum, or money, necessary for me to start writing the script.  So I could have written about treatments.  I’ve also been doing a bit of teaching, at the Met Film School, and was going to write about what teaching teaches the teacher (answer, probably more than it teaches the students).  I also thought about writing about the view from my office window, and how the farmers tilling the land around me never fails to strike me as the most apt metaphor I’ve yet come upon for the creative process.  Prepare, plant, water, reap.  Repeat – if you’re lucky.

But then on Thursday my wife and I got knocked by a very sad piece of news, and our lives took a sudden, unexpected and unwanted diversion.  A blog isn’t the place for mawkish public grieving, but it has given me a few small reflections about life and writing that I might as well share – if only because they’re occupying my own thoughts at the moment.

The first is this.  Life bumbles along without much incident, by and large, and that’s the way we like it.  A certain level of comfort is reassuring – particularly the older you get, and the more responsibilities you take on.  But this is why normal life doesn’t make for very good art.  Every now and then, however, your life will take a turn for the dramatic.  Suddenly – and it usually is quite sudden – you’ll find yourself in a state of quite bewilderingly intense emotion.  This could be love.  It could be fear.  It could be anger, or pain, or ecstasy, or grief.  And you’ll realise that this is where drama exists.  This is where art exists.  You are existing on such a dramatically different plane that nothing else becomes important.  Indeed, it’s only on this plane that you get a sense of what actually is important.  I think back to that maxim from screenwriting 101: “Are the events of this story the most important events in your protagonist’s life?”  If they aren’t, then keep looking.  And if they are, spend as much time there, and as little time as possible in the normal, boring part of their lives.

Secondly.  Art is training for life.  That’s how I’ve always thought of it and, in recent days, I’ve felt it to be true.  You watch a film, or read a book, or look at a painting.  You experience a hero’s journey and consider their reactions to a set of circumstances, and consider whether your own response would be similar, or different, and why.  And through this process, you begin to develop a philosophy about life.  Your own, unique philosophy.  What makes sense to you, and what sounds like nonsense.  Call it your faith.  Faith in the way the world should work, and faith in the way you might cope when it doesn’t work as it should.  It can be religious, spiritual, humanist, anarchist.  But you think about it in the boring days, so that you’re prepared for the days of drama. 

I’ve leant on my faith a lot in the last few days, and it’s helped me out.  I’ve heard “It wasn’t meant to be” or “Everything happens for a reason” a lot.  I understand these are meant to offer comfort, and peace, hinting as they do at a grander plan.  But they haven’t really helped, to be honest (though the kindness of the people expressing those sentiments has).  It’s not that it wasn’t meant to be, it’s just that it didn’t happen.  Things don’t happen for reasons, they just happen.  And that’s okay.  That’s been enough for me.

So, as an audience member, don’t forget to go through that training process when you engage with someone else’s story.  And, as a storyteller, don’t forget the responsibility you owe to your audiences.  You could be a life saver.

Thirdly.  Sadness is a part of life.  Once the rawness and shock of a sudden loss subsides, sadness remains.  But that sadness is not something to be feared, or resented, or buried, or ignored.  It’s just there, like a knot in a tree trunk.  It might fade with time, but it will always be a part of your story, as much as the wonderful days, as much as the memories you cherish.  So I’m aware of the sadness; not wallowing in it but accepting it.

Fourth and finally.  There aren’t any silver linings from all of this, but when you go to dark places and you make it out again, you emerge – as any hero’s journey professor will tell you – with an elixir.  Some knowledge, some tool or weapon.  I’m not magically enlightened now, and I wish I hadn’t had to go on this journey, but I do think that I’ll come out of this a better writer.  We’ll see.

An odd blog, and largely for my own benefit, as you might have figured out.  But thanks for letting me share.  Back to boring normal life for a while, I hope.

Real people

Just a quickie today.  I know I always say that, but there’s lots on – more on that below.

I’ve got four new scripts I’m working hard on at the moment and they have one thing in common: they are all based on real people.  One is a romcom that is very loosely based on a true story I heard about many years ago, so for that sake of this blog post it’s the exception to the rule.  But the three other projects are all directly based on real people who did real things: one is a modern-day war tale of unspeakable heroism which I’m trying to replicate as faithfully and unsentimentally as possible; another is a period tale about a now-dead man who did something incredible, and about whose life certain facts are known and well documented; and the third is a sort of a hybrid tale – a fictional story based on a real person.  In projects one and three I have met and talked with the people I’m writing about, and in the second project I have spoken to people who knew the man in question.

I’m writing about this today because I spent yesterday afternoon with a director talking for three hours with one of the ex-military guys featured in project one.  I recorded the interview and I’m going to spend this morning transcribing my notes from our conversation.  But I know already what I’ve got.  It’s fucking gold dust.  It’s moment after moment, nugget after nugget of pure, compelling, original, distinctive and totally real dialogue, character and narrative material.  The sort of thing that I would usually spend hours trying to dredge up from some long-forgotten part of my psyche, and even then it wouldn’t be a fraction of the quality of the material generated by our meeting yesterday.

It has prompted me to think three things, in particular.

1.  If my plan with this war project is to replicate people’s thoughts, words and deeds as accurately and faithfully as possible (I’m taking UNITED 93 as a reference point) then what is the actual role of the writer?  In an ideal world, I won’t ‘invent’ a single line of dialogue in this script – it will all come verbatim from interviews and transcripts.  And yet I do think I have a role, and it’s the same role the writer always plays.  It’s knowing what to look for.  It’s shaping, finding a structure, giving a direction, making it ‘movie-shaped’, to use Jane Goldman’s expression.  The only difference is that the raw material is coming from the outside, rather than from within (although, if we’re being literal, most of the within began without too, so it’s not technically a difference after all.)  It does make the writing process easier, though.  Not only do you have this database of raw material for you to turn to if you’re ever running dry, you also have certain set-in-stone elements – characters, timings, events – that force you to focus your thinking.  I always prefer half a dozen immoveables to a totally blank piece of paper; at least then I know what I’m working with.  (The danger comes when outsiders to the project consider those immoveables more moveable than you do, but that’s another war to fight.)

2.  Real is always better than made-up.  It just is.  Audiences know it, and film-makers know it when they see it, that’s why they get so excited about it.  It’s no coincidence that all four projects I’m working on are based on the truth: it just gives a surer basis on which to build a project.  That doesn’t mean they all need to be documentaries, or docu-style.  They can be dramas, of course.  Just founded on something real, something true.

3.  (The following is Stating The Bleeding Obvious, but it bears repeating.)  So it follows that, if you don’t have anything really real with which to start, or to which to tie your characters and actions, then it’s your job as a writer to get as close to it as possible, every step of the way.  Real emotions, real dialogue, real behaviour, real-world ‘you wouldn’t believe it if they made it up’ improbability.  This is Good Writing 101 of course, but my meeting yesterday – with ‘a real person’ – reminded me of that.  Real rules.  Fake blows.  The rest is detail.

And so, back to it.

My theme

This is likely to be one of the more self-indulgent blog posts I've written, for which I apologise.  But I write what's on my mind, and today it's this.  That said, I'll try to keep it brief.

I'd like to take you on a train of thought journey on which I found myself yesterday afternoon.  I was gazing out of my office window, as you do when you're a writer, and found myself staring at a bird (don't ask what kind of bird, a smallish brownish one) and wondering what it was doing as it sat on its perch.  (The answer is it was probably staring back at me, wondering what I was doing.)  And I found myself thinking, wow, that bird's got it good.  A few worms a day, and a nest, probably a Mrs bird and some chicks somewhere (you can see I'm pretty big on the whole ornithology thing).  That'll do nicely for the bird.  Granted, it has a brain the size of my little toe, could be eaten by any of a number of predators, and doesn't have Sky Sports or Guinness or Mozart.  But it doesn't have freezing pipes, council tax or Take Me Out, either.  On balance, life could be worse for that small brown bird.

My mind then – for reasons which would become clear later on – made the connection back to an exquisitely awkward meeting I had with the producer Paul Webster, then at Kudos Films, about three years ago.  Chalet Girl was in production and Paul wanted me to pitch some ideas.  Very thrilled I was, too.  So I pitched a dozen of my finest, mintest ideas, and they all fell on stony ground.  Which is fine, it happens.  So then we started spit-balling around themes and worlds, as you do, and Paul asked me what I considered to be some of my guiding themes as a writer.  I have to say I wasn't prepared for this question, but I answered as honestly as I could, at the time, which was that I didn't think I had a guiding theme.  I didn't – I don't – consider myself a polemical writer, a political writer, a drum-banging, let-me-tell-you-how-to-live-your-life writer.  If I had a theme, it was that people shouldn't listen to what other people are telling them.  A no-theme theme; your basic existential, individual, small-c conservative ideology.  Of course, I didn't say any of that.  What I said was "I don't really feel like I have anything to say," which is a different thing altogether, and which didn't go down well at all.

This then swiftly reminded me of the time when, on an eQuinoxe writers' week in Germany, my very first tutor in my very first session let me guff on for about twenty minutes, telling her what I thought was wrong with my script, before she finally piped up and asked me what my theme was.  And then of course I realised that I didn't have a theme, or any unifying message (yes, that word) to bind the material together.  That's what was wrong with the script.

And then my mind leapt nimbly, like a mental mountain goat, onto a tale told by another mentor, on another course, of how he would write a new script, and get really excited about all these new characters and situations and gags and whatever, and then he'd re-read it and think "Huh.  This one again."  Basically the same theme, obviously an important theme to him, which turned over and over in his head, day and night, and which as a result found its way into everything he wrote.  Not a bad thing.  Just, good to be aware of it.

If I were a film student now I'd go through some famous directors or writers and list the themes that inform their work, but I'm not really (or haven't been for a while) so I'll limit my external references to Stanley Kubrick (I did my dissertation on him, so am on reasonably firm ground).  He basically made eight or ten movies with exactly the same storyline.  Man vs machine.  Ape vs spaceship.  Individual vs society.  Chaos vs order.  Look at the films, from Paths of Glory to Lolita to Dr Strangelove to 2001 to A Clockwork Orange to Barry Lyndon to Full Metal Jacket to Eyes Wide Shut.  Same tension, same conflict, same explosion.  Same story.  Same theme.  (You might argue that it's the only theme and, if you want to be reductive, that all movies, all art are about the same thing.  But this seems a particularly well-defined, not to say obsessive, thematic territory for one artist to return to time and again.)

And as I continued stroking my beard (I was daydreaming, so I had one) I wondered whether I do have something to say, these days.  I think I'm a better writer, I have better craft skills and I can more readily entertain people, but do I have a theme?  The don't-let-other-people-tell-you-how-to-live-your-life idea is still there, and is something I believe in almost above anything else (probably why self-employment is the only option for me).  But this theme can be rather self-defeating when you use it to inform your drama.  You get lots of angry kids spitting at their parents, and affairs, and alcohol-based-suicides and not much else.  Not great for a romantic comedy writer.  So where does that thought lead?

And then I thought about Chalet Girl, and my favourite, proudest moment.  Felicity Jones on top of the mountain, at dawn, laying to rest the memory of her dead mum in the chill Alpine air.  And I thought of the other scripts I've written, and am writing, and my favourite moments in them, the key points of dramatic transformation.  And it struck me that there was one thing that linked them all.  A small detail but to me, in that moment, an important one.

They all happen outside.  They all happen with our characters somehow getting back in touch with nature, first physically and then, I guess, emotionally.  In the prairie graveyard.  At the top of a building.  At the end of a railway station platform.  And, sure, a lot of that will have been driven by my wannabe-director's eye for the sweeping sunset shot (though not quite as sweeping as those in War Horse).  But it's also where these scenes feel like they ought to happen.

And I thought about how I love living in the countryside.  And walking the dog.  And watching birds, whose names I don't know.  And driving round the safari park at Longleat and learning about the dynamics of the lion pride.  And thinking about how our ape-like ancestors moved from sea to land to sea to land over eons of evolution, and developed all these curious habits, and abilities, and appendages, all for an evolutionary reason, all with a particular purpose.

And then I realised that that was it, and why my mind had made the link between that happy bird and the meeting at Kudos.  That's my theme.  It's not an original one.  If I can throw some Greek out there, it's probably γνῶθι σεαυτόν, or 'Know Thyself', the line from above the entrance to the Oracle at Delphi.

To my very limited understanding of the world, Knowing Thyself involves knowing thy natural self, thy animal self.  What can we learn from the bird sitting on its branch, that we may have forgotten?  What can an understanding of how we evolved over all those millions of years teach us about how we should live today?  What is all that technology, all that energy expenditure, all that concrete in our cities concealing from us?

And I feel like it's the job of me, the writer (I shy away from 'artist'), and those like me, who have the time to stroke their imaginary beards and consider the birds, to remind us all of that from time to time.

I'm not saying it's a fool-proof theory.  We've developed important and elaborate social institutions to co-exist, and to look after those less fortunate than ourselves.  We've developed Sky Sports, Guinness and Mozart.  And clearly "survival of the fittest" has deeply nasty, eugenic connotations (and that's not really what informs evolution, anyway).  We're not animals any more.  We are better than that. 

But, for all that, in any given situation or decision, I would argue that reconnecting with our natural self, our natural state, our natural values, will probably solve more problems than it causes, do more good than harm.  It's Kubrick-lite, I suppose – it's ape vs spaceship again, but the ape takes it on points.  So anyway, that's my theme, or one of them at least.  And that's why so many big moments in movies happen outside.

So I've got a theme.  Excellent.  Now, what am I supposed to do with it?

ps 1 – Chalet Girl has been showing on Sky Movies Premiere this week – great to see twitter abuzz once again with nice comments about our little film – it's definitely about 9:1 in favour of 'my favourite film everrrr' vs 'the biggest piece of shit I've ever seen', and I'll take that ratio;

ps 2 – BAFTAs, Sunday night – all round enjoyable, personally would have given Director and Actor to Tinker Tailor, and adapted screenplay to the matchless Moneyball, but my only real gripe was with Adam Deacon winning the Orange Rising Star award, NOT because it should have gone to the not-even-nominated Felicity Jones (although it probably should) and NOT because Deacon didn't deserve it (I've never seen his films, and he eventually gave quite a charming acceptance speech) but because it was such an unfair fight.  Everybody was predicting Deacon would win because he has a massive Twitter following, had a website dedicated to this campaign, and has a core block of young, Orange-using fans.  And so it was.  But this voting process totally undermines the award, and is insulting to the other nominees.  Well done to Deacon, and I know BAFTA has to keep Orange happy, but this has got to change.

ps 3 – I said I would try to keep this brief.  As ever, I failed.  Poor blog readers, you get my first draft, not the finessed and heavily edited ninth.  Way it goes.

Don't stare into the sun

Just a quickie, and just because I wanted to get my January blog count up to a substantial 2.

So my Priority C time is going great guns.  Having delivered “Her Royal Spyness” and a big corporate job before Christmas, I now have the time, space, and a little bit of money to work up some new script outlines, put together my first proper TV series proposals and do the much-delayed rewrite on Romeo and Rosaline (it looks like the competitive project mentioned in that post isn’t going anywhere particularly fast, so we’re taking another crack at our version).

In between all of this, two more immediate feature projects have emerged, both low budget and contained and concept-driven and for which I might end up writing drafts or ‘scriptments’ in February, just to keep the ball rolling.  Both very exciting and more on both to follow.

But within my Priority C, new business pitch ideas, two patterns are emerging.  The first type of idea, usually a chunky high concept, is the one that knocks you sideways when you first happen upon it and then almost overwhelms you with its potential.  The idea immediately generates so much obvious material – scenes, characters, act breaks – that your job as a writer is to make some sense and order of it all (and sift out the obvious from the interesting, too).  I liken it to being swamped by an avalanche, and then having to dig your way out.  It can be hard work, but if you know where you’re heading, and you give yourself enough time, and you approach the job in a rational, methodical manner, you know you’re going to get through it all.

Then there is the second type of idea – less digging up and out, more digging down and in.  I’ve mentioned this before, specifically in the old writer-as-palaeontologist metaphor from Stephen King.  I’m walking around a desert and I stub my toe on the nub of an idea.  I look around and my writer-as-palaeontologist senses start to twitch.  There is something here, below, buried.  I know it.  So I get out my tools, and start to dig.

But sometimes, after days and days of digging, all I have to show for it is a load of old bones and a very big hole.  It doesn’t fit.  It doesn’t work.  So what do I do now?

It seems there are three options.  One is to give up and walk away.  Perhaps my senses were wrong.  Maybe there is nothing there after all.  And, sometimes, knowing when to quit is the writer’s most valuable tool.  But not in this case.  I KNOW there is a movie here, I’m just not going about it the right way. 

So option two.  Keep going.  Keep digging.  Follow Gene Fowler’s advice and “stare at the blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead”.  (I always knew this quote but didn’t know its source, possibly thought it was Hemingway.  Fowler was an interesting man it appears, an early-days screenwriter whose other great tip was "The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from."  This seems to say it all.)

But is option two smart?  And does it work?  This seems a different problem to the avalanche situation.  There is no guarantee that, just by hacking away at the bare earth, you will eventually strike oil or hit the gold seam (to mix a number of metaphors).  And when do you know when to quit, after all that?  You’d be like Costner on the 18^th  in TIN CUP, hitting three wood after three wood into the drink.  Heroic, maybe, but still a failure.  And with time being the most precious commodity a writer has, how many heroic failures can we afford?

So there’s option three.  A third way.  Not giving up but not blindly ploughing on, either.  Just take a break.  Put the kettle on.  Go for a run, have a bath.  (These can all be read either metaphorically or literally, by the way).  Read a book, a script, watch a movie that might have some kind of overlap with the problem you’re currently taking.  Don’t give up but just don’t think about it.  Don’t stare into the sun until it blinds you.  Look askance.  Look around the problem and see what that throws up.  See the wood, not the trees.  Even work on something else.  And then the answer might just hit you in a flash.  Or, when you return to the script, the yellow brick road will shine invitingly and you will wonder what all the fuss was about.  Crossword puzzlers will know this technique of old.  (And if it doesn’t hit you, then you haven’t wasted hours and days and weeks staring at the blank sheet of paper and beating yourself up over your shortcomings as a writer.)

In the last few weeks I’ve found that it actually works a treat.  One time recently I was laid low with some horrific man-flu (probably just a mild cold).  It coincided with hitting a brick wall on another script.  So I took myself away from my computer and off to bed.  Two hours of near-delirious mid-afternoon-napping later and the problem was solved.

But I’m conflicted about option three.  It feels like a smart move, the right way to finesse your way through a problem.  The subconscious shouldn’t be overlooked, nor instinct, nor the need to “feel” a complete solution to a script problem rather than cobbling together something that might look okay but doesn’t feel right.

But I’m also worried that I’m kidding myself.  That it’s actually the lazy option, the passive option, that I’m leaving too much to luck / fate / “inspiration” whereas in fact a more deliberate, left-brain, blood-from-forehead approach will yield better results over time.

Anyone got any thoughts on this that they want to share with me?

As a post script, my last post, about War Horse vs Tintin provoked some strident but, to me, still baffling, defence of the former film.  One of its most ardent advocates was the British writer Stuart Hazeldine, and we had a bit of back and forth over it on Facebook.  I concluded that even the greats make mis-steps, whereas his position was that you don’t get to ‘great’ by not knowing precisely what you’re doing all the time.  He also kept referring to the director as Steven, which I found a little familiar, until I read this.  So what do I know?  Well done Stuart, you bastard.

(Although a little part of me still thinks he’s only defending War Horse because he doesn’t want his future employer googling him and finding out he’s been slagging him off online.  Although I also don’t think Spielberg spends too much time googling screenwriters, so there goes that theory.  Incidentally, I once met Stuart and some other people for a drink, way back in the day, and he spent the entire evening scribbling into his notepad and not talking to anybody.  So maybe he’s an option two guy.  And that hasn’t worked out too badly for him.)

War Horse vs Tintin

Happy New Year to my seventeen loyal followers, and other more occasional visitors.

Updates, before we get to the matter of the moment: I delivered my Her Royal Spyness rewrite on 23^rd December, lunging for the Christmas line; watched a whole heap of films between then and now, in advance of BAFTA round one voting deadline this evening – I’ll give you my thoughts on the long-list nominations when they’re announced; and I’m now into my aforementioned ‘Priority C’ season, a good chunk of time (I’m giving myself three months) to spend at least two or three days a week writing new material – finishing my spec feature romcom, developing another two or three high concept feature treatments, and finally devoting some serious energy to developing some TV series concepts – rather than endlessly chasing my tail of paying bills and responding to short-term opportunities.  Not that I won’t be doing a bit of that, and new opportunities crop up all the time, so who knows how it will eventually go?  But it’s a plan, at least.

But I’m not here to talk about that.  I’m here to talk about Steven Spielberg.  More specifically, to talk to Steven Spielberg.  I’m here to give Steven Spielberg a bit of advice.

Steven.  War Horse.  What’s going on there then?  Haven’t read the book, didn’t see the play, but was pretty keen to see your latest mud-soaked war epic.  But about five minutes in, with that weird Gone with the Wind house that those Devonshire folk live in, and the comedy geese, and comedy Emily Watson, and bizarre ploughing competition, I have to say I was worried.  There followed a further 141 minutes of plodding, unconvincing, structurally saggy and dramatically inept tedium – and I say that with all due respect.  By the end I wasn’t just worried, I was bored.  No matter how many times you go to a close up, that horse cannot act.  No matter how pretty the little French windmill was, I didn’t give a shit because I didn’t know what I was doing there.  No matter how much I cried (yes) when (spoiler) poor blinded Aaaahlbert gave his little whistle at the end and the horse came running, you still didn’t make me believe that what I was watching was actually any good.  In fact, I resented the film even more because I was being manipulated so obviously and so grotesquely.  Then the funny French bloke bought the horse at auction – and then gave him back three minutes later!  It was a mess.  Honestly, what were you thinking about?  It wasn’t about the audience, I can tell you that much.

Now, Steven.  Tintin.  You gorgeous, special, insightful, intuitive, timeless and audience-thinking-about genius.  I liked the Tintin books as a boy – preferred Asterix, but Tintin was pretty good.  I wasn’t desperately waiting to see the film but from the first frame – literally, the title sequence was amazing – you had me.  You literally cupped my two balls of audience engagement in your computer-generated hand at minute one, and then squeezed them tighter and tighter for the next 100 minutes or so.  Sometimes you gave them a big old yank, some times more of a caress, but you never let go, until the very end.  (In fact, I’d give the finale itself only an 8/10 – the plane sequence and the chase-from-the-palace sequences were the high points.)  So not a perfect film, but pretty bloody enjoyable and demonstrating in abundance the sort of special cinematic powers (as you did in Jaws, Raiders, ET, Goonies, Gremlins, Temple of Doom, Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List and about half of Saving Private Ryan) so noticeably lacking in War Horse (and 1941, Amistad, Hook, Indys 3&4, AI: Artificial Intelligence, Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal, Munich and the other half of SPR).

Some observations on all of this, in no particular order:

1. Spielberg is a genius, the formative influence in my career, and I am nobody to criticise him, clearly.  But he is also prolific, and this has resulted in almost (though not quite) as many stinkers as classics.  So even geniuses (genii?) can have off-days, even genii can stretch themselves too thin, even genii can cross their fingers during production and hope that it’ll all come together in the edit when it’s pretty clear that it won’t.  Steven, you’re 65 and you’ll be winding things down over the coming years.  Please pick your swansong projects with care, and with instinct, and with an eye on the audience rather than posterity.

2. Somehow, War Horse is appearing on people’s top 10 lists, and is in serious awards consideration.  This is patently bonkers and a sign that, if you spend enough, you can buy your way into contention.  Also that a respected director will be in the frame whenever awards season comes around (viz Clint Eastwood, who also suffers – respectfully – from making a few too many films and not enough great ones).

3. The hero’s journey really works.  War Horse is muddled precisely because the writers / director can’t decide if this is a story about a boy finding a horse or a horse finding a boy.  Tintin’s first scene established our hero and then the audience accompanied Tintin cheek by jowl as he undertook a heroic adventure, to return home at the end a little older and a little wiser (although in fact the bigger transformation took place in the character of Captain Haddock).  More and more I think the best films establish one perspective at the start and then we follow that character’s journey through to the end.  Obviously that doesn’t exclude sub-plots, or flash-backs, or even multiple storylines (where a binding theme is probably the central ‘character’).  But it’s about clarity, and structure – and, again, an appreciation of AUDIENCE.

4. Between these two projects, five British screenwriters were used (not to mention a British novelist and a Belgian cartoonist).  Lee Hall and Richard Curtis on War Horse, and the Moffat / Wright E. / Cornish triumvirate on Tintin.  So props for British screenwriters, but I’d be fascinated to hear more about the development journeys of either project.  Why was one writer jettisoned and another brought in, at any given stage?  Was Curtis responsible for the geese?  How did he and Hall not notice the almost total absence of a point of identification in the central section of the film – were we really expected to care about the horse?  Is that why one writer exited?  On Tintin, who came up with the plot (cobbled together from three separate books, so my brother-in-law tells me)?  This was arguably the least successful part of the film, but probably took up most of the screenwriters’ time.  Characters and dialogue were all good, if not sensational.  But the best ‘writing’ of all was in the detail of the action sequences – some of the chases in the first act, the boat escape / plane ride and the aforementioned palace escape.  I’m wondering if these three vaunted writers actually had much to do with the choreographing of these amazing moments, or were they handled by the CG equivalent of the stunt co-ordinators?  And if the writers didn’t do these, then what did they do?  Answers on a postcard please.

5. I can’t help feeling that the real difference between the two projects lies in Spielberg’s producer on Tintin (I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that he was co-director), Mr Peter Jackson.  Now there’s a man who knows how to please an audience (although he too, temporarily, lost that talent down the back of the sofa in The Lovely Bones).  Perhaps Steven works best when in partnership – with Jackson here, with Lucas on the Indiana Jones series, with Zemeckis on the Back to the Future series.  Even the greats need a guiding hand (as Lucas found out to his cost on Star Wars 1-3) – maybe a lesson in that for all of us.

6. This has become a bigger post than I intended it to be, and in fact I don’t have a massive beef with War Horse.  It’s certainly not the worst film I’ve ever seen (I did cry, more fool me), and I feel churlish criticising any of the names involved in the project.  Who are they, and who am I?  It’s just that I saw the two in quick succession.  One felt like an artist on top of his game, riffing confidently around a tight and attractive central theme.  The other – to continue the jazz theme – felt like a group of players trying to jam, but out of time, in different keys and with no basic melody or chord progression to hold them all together.  They might all have been brilliant musicians, but they weren’t making brilliant music.  Tintin isn’t in the running for any major awards (although it should be recognised for its technical achievements, which were considerable).  But as a piece of work, judged in terms of what it set out to achieve and how close it came to reaching that goal, it is infinitely the superior piece of work.

Vote Jones

Calling all UK Orange Broadband users, please rush along to http://bafta.orange.co.uk/rising-star-award/felicity-jones/ and vote for Chalet Girl’s own Felicity Jones to win this year’s Bafta Rising Star Award.

It’s a strong field – Hiddleston and Chastain have had great years, too – but Felicity is surely the stand-out name on the list.  Not just for the miraculous work she did on Chalet Girl (packing such depth into a role that could, in other hands, have been waffer theen) but for all the striking dramatic performances she has given over the last four or five years.  Whenever she’s on screen, that’s where you’re looking.  What is that, if not white hot talent?  I’ve seen her in Cheerful Weather for the Wedding and there are moments that leave you (left me) genuinely short of breath.  She’s also got to be one of the hardest working actors around at the moment, and long may that continue. 

Incidentally, what’s with the whole ‘only being able to vote if you’re an Orange Broadband user’?  Does that mean the winner is going to be chosen from among the twelve people in the country eligible to vote?  Seems a little unfair.  When I tried to vote anyway I was given the reply “Unfortunately it looks like your not and Orange customer, so your vote cant be counted.”  Just the three typos in that sentence then.  Nice work Orange, makes me want to rush out and bring your (or should that be you’re) quality services into my home.

Lamp post update – delivered on my corporate job, galloping towards a Her Royal Spyness rewrite delivery by Christmas, then lining up the new lamp posts for the new year.

The next lamp post

As ever, it’s been a while.  And, as ever, that’s the subject of this post.  It’s all been going on and, you know what, it’s getting slightly overwhelming.  There are never enough hours in the day, we all know that, but for the self-employed writer trying to fight a war on many fronts, there are fewer hours than for most.  The hard part comes in knowing what and how to prioritise.

Priority A, you would think, would probably be the job with the most pressing deadline.  But what about Priority B, the job that will actually pay you a little bit of money, and sooner rather than later?  And then there’s Priority C, the job that you really want to be doing, the one which will move you closer towards your ultimate goal (in my case, a sustainable career as a screenwriter) but which carries with it a higher risk, a higher chance of all your (very valuable) time and effort actually being wasted.

I won’t bore you with the specifics of what is weighing me down at the moment, suffice it to say that there’s a lot of A, B and C knocking about: paid screenplay jobs to deliver within a set period of time; unpaid screenplay rewrites that have been dragging on for months and months; a lot of treatments and proposals to write (some paid but mostly unpaid) which you hope are going to lead to something but might not; other paid work (non-screenplay) on a quicker turnaround, which you try to fit in because you never know where your next meal is coming from; films and books and scripts that you need to find time to watch and read; and on and on and on.

There was a not-so great Adam Sandler movie a while ago called, I think, Click.  Yes, there it is.  I’m not sure if I saw it or just the trailer but I remember he had a remote control and could pause time and do whatever he wanted when the rest of the world was held in limbo.  I imagine Sandler did lots of hilarious romcom things like move a chair just as someone was about to sit on it or look up girls’ skirts or punch annoying cats in the face.  But if I could press pause I would spend a week – okay, maybe I’ll take a month – to get properly up to date on all that work in my inbox, that Top 100 Films Of All Time list (shamefully, I’ve probably only watched 50-60 of them – sorry Harold and Maude, I will get to you one day I promise...), not to mention the bulbs that need fixing, batteries in children’s toys that need replacing, leaves that need raking etc.

I also remember reading once that Margaret Thatcher only need four hours’ sleep a night when she was PM.  I’d love to be Maggie, but I need my eight hours.

And all of this is compounded by the pressure I’m feeling about the stage I’m at in my career.  Chalet Girl was made!  It came out!  It did alright!  We’re even making money out of North America, which not a lot of British movies can say.  But I don’t want this to be my high water mark.  That window of opportunity is open a crack, but it won’t be open for long.  The iron is hot, and it must be struck.  Every day counts, but have I been making them?

So what to do about this whole sorry state of affairs?  Four things.  I love a list.

One, I’ve started going to bed earlier.  Who cares about the news, anyway?  Euro crisis blah blah, deficit reduction blah blah.  Better to get half an hour of good reading in (denting that pile), light off by half past ten so you can either get up a bit earlier (after your eight hours) or at least you won’t be quite as knackered as you usually are when you do get up.

Two, I’ve had to make those tough decisions about priorities, and stick to them.  I’m trying to be like the old long distance runner – just to the next lamp post...  Don’t be overwhelmed by everything that’s staring you in the face.  Break it down, think sensibly about what really needs to be done, and by when.  Strike a balance, set a plan, and then execute it.  A couple of hours here, on one project.  A day there, on something else.  It not only makes life more manageable, it also has a good motivating effect.  Look at it like an exam.  If you’ve only got two hours to work on something (say, your passion project) before you set it aside and get back to earning money, then you’d better bloody concentrate on it, and do the best you can on it, in the time allowed.  You might find you get more done in that quality two hours than you would have done in a whole day if left to your own devices.  (By the same token, don’t be distraught if, after two hours, there is still a blank page staring back at you.  Progress may yet have been made.  Writing isn’t typing.)

There is a caveat here.  Personally speaking, I only have so many ‘juicy’ hours of work in me, per day.  I can’t go 100mph from 8am till 8pm, or only in exceptional circumstances and usually only when I know precisely where I’m going.  The chewing-pencil, stroking beard stuff can’t be forced, and you can really feel it when you’re digging deep into your creative marrow.  So I need a balance of different activities, to make up a full working day.  Some outlining (the hard stuff).  Some writing up (a bit easier).  Some paid work.  Some reading.

It’s also sometimes hard to shift your head from one project to a next – but it can also be liberating and energising, so you see it fresh every time you come to it.  And if you’re blocked, work on something else, then come back to it.  Like that annoying crossword clue, the answer might be staring you in the face when you get back.

Three (we’re back to the list), I’m also setting myself some more distant lamp posts, and figuring out how I’m going to make it to those.  Looking back, in 2011 I have been too focussed on Priorities A and B.  I haven’t properly backed myself to go after Priority C.  It hasn’t been a retrograde year by any means – two script commissions, lots of other things-that-might-come-to-something, and a higher grade of meeting taken.  But when I stare at myself in the mirror, which I try not to do because I invariably obsess on the hair loss, but when I do I have to accept that I have taken the easy route a couple of times, gone after the pay cheque rather than (gasp) maybe trying to spend less money and working on my Hey This Guy Can Actually Write screenplays.  I went to LA in the summer, but I didn’t have my slam dunk script in my back pocket.  So it was like, ‘yeah, I’ll send you something in the September, in December, in the New Year...’.

So now it’s time to deliver.  I have a load of ‘tasks’ I need to tick off, to clear off my desk, in the near future – and Christmas is proving itself quite a natural deadline for these.  And in the New Year, things will change.  Priority C will move to the front of the queue.  I will, to some extent, press pause on my remote control, and I will work towards the Bigger Picture (“the Greater Good”, as Hot Fuzz would have it).  A month, three months, six months, who knows?  Two days a week, three days a week on Priority C.  Still earning money, of course, but shifting the focus.  Backing myself.

A very close professional colleague – who is, I must say, a few years older than I am – and I have had this chat quite a few times – “stop, I want to get off” etc.  We’ve been having the chat for the last ten years!  His circumstances are different, but the principle remains the same.  At some point, you’ve got to do it.  Jump off.  We’ve made a bit of a pact to hold the other to it.  Maybe we all need a buddy, because it certainly isn’t easy.

Four, and notwithstanding everything that has gone before, I’m also going to stop being quite so hard on myself.  I’ve got young kids to clothe, bills to pay, a wife to amuse.  Looking back on 2011 from a less self-loathing perspective, it’s been another year where I’ve made a living as a self-employed writer, had two or three meals a day with my family, and done some work I’m proud of.  The pressure to perform, to do something great, is still there, but I’m trying hard and a lot of it is out of my hands.  I’ve got to make some smarter decisions, maybe some harder ones, but there is also a wider world out there to be enjoyed, and a life that needs to be lived.  All work and no play, and so on.

So, anyway, I don’t really know where that’s got us.  It’s a jungle out there, but there’s a path through it.  And if there isn’t, get out your machete.  And don’t forget and stop to smell the flowers once in a while.  But watch out for the poisonous ones.  And if you pick a paw paw etc.  End of metaphor.  End of blog.

And in case I don’t write again before Christmas (Priority C and all that), then Yo Ho Ho and don’t forget that the Chalet Girl DVD and Blue Ray will make a perfect seasonal surprise for loved one and loathed enemy alike.

And apologies if this has all sounded like a massive white whine – it is, a bit, but I comfort myself with the knowledge that nobody actually reads my blog, and that the intended audience is, ultimately, me.  Thanks for letting me share.