Metaphors for writing

It’s a common writerly exercise.  Instead of thinking about the characters and the story we are working on, we choose to stare out of the window and think about what we are doing and how we are doing it.  Then we come up with some poetic analogies for the process, which makes our creative struggle seem more epic, fundamental, heroic.  It’s more navel gazing procrastination, but it’s quite fun, too.  Here are two creative-process-metaphors that I have heard from other people, and two that I’ve developed on my own.

The first comes from Stephen King’s wonderful book ‘On Writing’, which describes the screenwriter as palaeontologist.  “Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world,” he says.  “The writer’s job is to… get as much of each one out of the ground as intact as possible.”  I love this image.  The writer, equipped with a backpack, some tools, a map and a hunch, sets out into the desert.  At a certain point they have a sense that they should stop walking and start digging.  Lo and behold, they hit upon a fragment of the skeleton of a long-deceased beast.  But is it the thigh bone of a stegosaurus or the nose bone of a pterodactyl?  The writer digs further, revealing more of the skeleton.  They might dig in the wrong direction and find no more bones.  They might think, at one point, that they have uncovered the whole skeleton, only to see that this is barely the big toe of a much larger monster.  All the time, their impression of the subject that they are working on is changing.  Only once the complete skeleton is revealed can they see what they have discovered.  Then (perhaps to extend the metaphor beyond King’s original description) their job is to buff, dust and whiten the bones until they look gleaming and new.  Or maybe (I don’t know how far this goes) they get all taxidermist on it and reanimate the creature?  The point is, like a crossword puzzle, the right story is there, waiting for you to find it and reveal it with care.  As both a writer and a script editor I find this philosophy challenging and inspiring.  At every decision point, you must ask yourself, as honestly as possible, is this the right move?  If it feels wrong, there is probably something better out there.  You just need to dig deeper.

The second comparison isn’t a million miles from this first one.  It was told to me on the first day of my professional career, as a trainee account manager at Saatchi and Saatchi.  The agency’s all-powerful creative director was booked to give a one-hour talk on creativity to us wide-eyed recruits.  His talk lasted less than a minute.  I think I can remember it verbatim.  “A tourist was walking along a street in Delhi, and he sees an old swami, carving a beautifully intricate wooden elephant.  The tourist watches for a few moments before going over and engaging the old man in conversation (the swami presumably spoke English, essential in the modern tourist industry).  The tourist asks ‘how do you carve such a beautiful elephant?’  The swami smiles wisely (as swamis do) and replies ‘I start with a block of wood, and then I take away everything that is not an elephant.’”  With that zinger, the creative director swept out of the room, leaving a dozen confused young executives to wonder what the hell that was about.  Fifteen years – and fifteen scripts – on, I think I sort of get it.  As with the earth that the palaeontologist removes from around the skeleton, so the act of creativity is as much about taking away as putting in.  How many times have you re-written a draft of your script, only to realise that this character, or scene, or plot line is actually superfluous to the story you are trying to tell?  Often it’s the character / scene / plot line that got you into the story in the first place, but that is no matter.  It has served its purpose, but now it must go.  Read the best scripts and you will see that they often have a wonderfully spare feel to them (THE SOCIAL NETWORK is a recent, brilliant example).  There is not a syllable in there that should not be there, which does not earn its place or add to the journey.  Have you taken away everything that is not your particular elephant?

The two further metaphors that I often fall back on, mainly for my own edification, both draw on the natural world for inspiration.  Both also have an element of man interacting with nature, which set them alongside the palaeontologist with his spade and brushes or the swami with his penknife.  And they both have a message of waiting until the time is right, of not fighting or trying to force the process. 

The first is writer as surfer, bobbing around in the outback on your gleaming board (slash Sony Vaio), waiting for your wave.  Some you might let pass, because either they are too undeveloped, or are already breaking.  Maybe some of the waves are just too daunting, while others are beneath your current skill level.  But at a certain point you will see a swell approaching, and you’ll think ‘this is the one for me’.  You get yourself into position, start to paddle and, as the wave begins to pick you up, you trust to your technique and leap on your board, and ride the wave all the way into the shore.  Hell, you might even have time to throw in a switch, or catch a tube (thank you Jonny Utah), depending on how confident you’re feeling.  The wave does its thing, you do yours.

The second image I like is that of writer as farmer.  You till the soil and plant your seed.  Then, up to a certain point, you sit back and let nature take its course.  You might need to fertilise or water or weed from time to time, but really you are doing an overseeing job as the green shoots naturally reach higher and higher.  Only when the crop is fully ripe and ready do you jump into your combine and gather in your harvest.  It has often been said that it takes six months to write a screenplay, but you only spend the last two weeks actually typing.  This analogy reflects that process.  That said, any farmer will tell you that there’s a lot more to their job than just sitting back, puffing on a pipe and watching the corn grow.  As with the farmer, the writer should be growing a number of different crops, in different fields, throughout the year.  Ideally you’ll finish harvesting one crop and be able to move on seamlessly to the next field.  It’s the only way to make the economics work!

So there, that’s my four.  What is your favourite metaphor for the creative process of writing?  And does it help you practically in your work?  Or is it all a load of bollocks?

Barking up the right tree?

In my second blog entry I want to call out to the ‘sphere for some advice.  I know the point of the whole blog thing is that the advice is meant to go in other direction, but I’m in a genuine pickle at the moment and looking for some professional guidance.

We’ve all been in this situation.  You have a great idea.  You noodle around with it, maybe write a treatment.  Maybe even write a script.  Then you go to the Odeon on Friday night and you realise the movie you’re watching is exactly the same as the one you’ve been working on.  Shit.  Right idea, wrong time.  Or it was the right idea at the right time, and you just didn’t do anything about it.

I have a document with about a dozen ideas that I’ve had, completely on my own, that have later come to light in other forms.  I clearly remember driving up to London and hearing the story of Darwin and his relationship with his devoutly religious wife on an ‘In Our Time’ and thinking – absolutely, that’s a movie.  I rushed home, did some research and... ten minutes later saw that CREATION was coming out in two weeks.  Hey ho.  Still, barking up the right tree, I figured.  (And, incidentally, my version would have been way better, and without the silly prosthetic bald head.)

So here’s this story.  This time last year I hit upon quite a fruity idea for a romantic comedy, a revisionist take on Romeo and Juliet that allows us to see these familiar characters and scenes in a new light.  I developed it with my friend and occasional writing partner Donald Rice and this is the pitch we came up with:

Romeo and Juliet is the defining love story of Western literature.  The most performed of Shakespeare’s plays, it tells of the doomed romance between two young lovers who struggle to find happiness in the face of opposition from their feuding families, and a malign fate which seems determined to keep them apart.

But there is a strange detail about the play that can be overlooked.  When the play opens, Romeo is in love with another woman, Rosaline.  He is completely smitten, spending hours wandering alone in a sycamore grove, his ‘tears augmenting the fresh morning dew’ and so on.  Romeo goes to the Capulet party in order to see Rosaline, not Juliet.  But when he claps eyes on the winsome daughter of Capulet, Romeo’s eyes light up – ‘I never saw true beauty till this night’ – and off they go, to love, death and romance immortality.

The character of Rosaline is mentioned ten times in Shakespeare’s play.  She is Capulet’s niece (therefore a cousin of Juliet) and Mercutio describes her as having ‘bright eyes, a ‘high forehead’ and a ‘scarlet lip’.  But she has no lines and is never seen on stage.  She is last referred to half way through act two.

ROMEO AND ROSALINE asks what might happen if Rosaline, instead of withdrawing meekly into the wings, were to set out to win back her man.

As Rosaline’s efforts to derail the World’s Greatest Love Story escalate from the mischievous to the downright Machiavellian, events begin to escape her control.  Soon people are dying, and Romeo and Juliet are rushing headlong towards their meeting with destiny’s dark night.  Can Rosaline come to her senses in time, undo what she has done and save the lives of these two young lovers?

Find out what really happens in Romeo and Juliet, in this ‘noises off’, behind-the-scenes comedy complete with poisons and potions, mishaps and misunderstandings, codpieces and cock-ups.  Find out how the story really ends, and also maybe a thing or two you never knew about true love. 

This is MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING meets SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, a new twist on and old story and an original way to bring this classic material to a whole new audience.

Quite good fun, don’t you think?  Well, we thought so.  We pitched it around London and got lots of positive feedback (‘but would need to see a script’).  We did get an offer from one producer, who was going to commission us to write a screenplay based on this idea, but we couldn’t agree terms so decided to write it on spec.

About two weeks ago, a healthily developed second draft was ready to be sent out to friends and confidants for their feedback.  And the first person I sent it to pointed me to this link - http://www.deadline.com/2010/11/fox-2000-and-shawn-levy-to-tell-revisionist-romeo-juliet-story/ - which had appeared on deadline that very day.

Fox 2000 has completed its second book purchase in the last two days, acquiring Rebecca Serle's debut novel Rosaline for Shawn Levy to produce under his 21 Laps banner. (500) Days of Summer scribes Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber will adapt the novel, which provides a new way into the classic story ofRomeo and Juliet.  This is a contemporary version set in a high school, and the famed love story is told from the vantage point of Rosaline, the jilted ex-girlfriend of Romeo.

Exactly the same idea, only based on a book, and set in contemporary times (ours is in classic Elizabethan period).  Not only that, two days later came this - http://www.deadline.com/2010/11/dr-who-star-to-play-time-travelling-juliet/.

Karen Gillan, co-star of BBC TV’s sci-fi show, is to play a spiky New Jersey high school teenager who finds herself trapped Alice In Wonderland-style in Shakespeare’sRomeo and Juliet. Gillan wakes up in mythical 13th century Verona with all the people she knows from her high school life playing characters in the play. And she wants to get out because she knows how the play ends. 

Jesus Christ.  So now there are two similar projects that have hit the ‘deadline’ radar, within three days of us finishing our draft.  What is going on here?  There’s zeitgeist and then there’s uncanny.  For one thing, it takes the wind out of your sails when you hear that your brilliantly original idea isn’t quite so original after all.  Is there really no such thing as a new idea?

We have a great script that is getting a strong response from people who are reading it.  But what do we do?  Shelve it?  Send it out now and try to muscle our way to the top of the pile?  Not worry about it and just continue doing our thing?

Your thoughts, please.

My interview with http://chaletgirlfilm.wordpress.com/

In case anyone missed it first time around, and because I don't want to repeat myself, here is the interview I did with the Chalet Girl blogger that covers a lot of the usual script-to-screen territory.

INTERVIEW | TOM WILLIAMS

ROLE | WRITER OF CHALET GIRL

The beginning…..

Q1. | What gave you the idea for the script Chalet Girl?

I was developing a load of ideas with a producer called Dan Shepherd back in 2004.  Dan used to be at Working Title, where I had also worked as a script reader, and we shared their commercial sensibility, and desire to make British romantic comedies that could travel internationally.  Working Title are great at taking ‘worlds’ and turning them into fun movies (like weddings, or Notting Hill, or Wimbledon, or even Christmas time in LOVE ACTUALLY) and Dan and I, who both loved skiing, realised that the world of the ski resort, and the ski season, hadn’t been done before.  It immediately felt like an attractive world to spend some time in, and one around which we could develop a fun story.  The ‘chalet girl’ concept is particularly British (something that we are going to have to address when we try and sell the film abroad) but we both loved this idea – a non-skiing girl from London who ends up in a posh chalet in the Alps – and this title straight away.  Brits abroad, with some snow and sport and schnapps.  What’s not to love?

I worked up a treatment (five drafts), which ended up actually remarkably similar to the final script structure, but Dan couldn’t raise the money to commission me to write a screenplay (neither of us had a track record to speak of).  So the project rather went to sleep for a few years and we went our separate ways.

Q2. | How did you attach your script to a producer?

I was at the first Cheltenham Screenwriters’ Festival in 2006, where I was one of the winners of a pitching competition they held (with a different project).  So I won tickets to the next two days of the festival.  At one of those seminars I found myself sitting next to a young producer called Harriet Rees, who had produced a few shorts for Screen South and was looking for features.  I pitched her about forty three ideas and Harriet, who had been a chalet girl herself back in the day, responded to this one.  So she optioned the old treatment and we developed it.

I’m looking through my notes now and can see that we worked on the treatment on its own for almost a year, throughout 2007 and through another five or six drafts, while Harriet was trying to raise money to commission a script.  She eventually got some interest from various places – she had been accepted onto a Screen South mentoring scheme with the project– and I started to write the script.

I delivered the first draft on Christmas Eve 2007.  Between then and May 2010 when the script finished shooting I wrote 123 different versions of the script.  That’s not to say each one is completely new, but we went back over it a lot.  A whole heap of lot.  And even after shooting had finished there was extra dialogue and fiddling around to do.  So it was about a three year intensive script development process for me and Harriet.

Pre – Production….

Q3. | What was it like when you first met the team?

The next big step was when Pippa Cross came on board, Harriet and Pippa had joined forces to get chalet girl made together.  She was Harriet’s mentor on the Screen South scheme and she beasted me and Harriet on the script for quite a while.  Pippa has an immense track record in all sorts of movies (from JACK AND SARAH to HEARTLESS and almost everything in between) so we both respected her opinions, and she kept on pushing us to make it both funnier and more dramatic and character-driven.  She wasn’t a huge fan of the project at the start but through 2008 we wore her down (overwhelmed her with drafts, probably) so in the end she found something she could respond to and joined Harriet as co-producer.  This was a great endorsement for us both and also meant that we could start seriously thinking about when, where and how we were going to make it.

Q4. | Did the script change at all when you met Phil (Director)?

I’ve known Phil for ages.  He was the year above me at Newcastle University and we bonded over ropey productions of The Tempest and pretentious student films.  We had kept in touch over the intervening years and I hooked up with Phil and his family in LA when I was out there in 2007 (we watched the rugby World Cup final together, I remember – a disappointing result for England).  Phil had just finished shooting ALL ABOUT STEVE and was doing loads of TV stuff, so when Harriet went out to LA herself in the spring of 2008 she met up with Phil and, when the script was ready, she sent it to him.  Phil loved it straight away and, with him and Pippa on board, the core team was in place.

There was an outside chance that we were going to make the script in early 2009, but we couldn’t get the cast right and, to be honest, the script wasn’t ready then.  When this moment passed it gave us an extra six months to re-open the script and perform a bit of coronary repair work.  Phil led that process, which involved lots of small but very significant shifts to character and structure, and the script emerged leaner and meaner and funnier at the end of it.

Q5. | Was there a point when you felt that you now had to let go of your creation?

I’ve never been too precious or protective about the script, and great ideas have come from all over the place.  Phil has contributed as much to the script as anybody and he, like Pippa, kept on pushing me to make what I had better and better.  A lot of the later drafts were informed by Phil pushing me for absolute clarity of intent in every scene and sequence, and to that extent he really became the final creative voice behind the story, even before filming began.  When it became clear that we stood a really good chance of making it in spring 2010, and Phil came over from LA and started casting and scouting locations in Austria and Germany, I knew I had to step back and let him run with it.

But Phil has been incredibly generous in keeping me as ‘the writer’ throughout.  Some directors would get their pointy elbows out and take possession of the script, sometimes even sharing or claiming sole writing credit.  There was none of that here.  Particularly in the latter stages, when production and budget logistics meant we had to lose or compress scenes, or change locations, or combine characters, Phil would always brief me and then let me go away and pitch him some ideas about how this could work.  Having worked in US TV a lot, Phil creates a very healthy creative atmosphere, where everybody has a say and the best ideas go into the script.  I learned so much from him and from this process and the shooting script – and the final film – is a genuinely collaborative piece of work.

The Characters….

Q6. | Was the character of Kim Matthews based on anyone?

No, but she is the kind of character that we all love to see in movies.  She is talented and funny, but she has taken some knocks in her life and this story shows her getting back on her feet and fulfilling her potential.  We decided early on that snowboarding was way cooler than skiing (I could tell because I prefer skiing to snowboarding, and am in no way cool), but we also realised that we needed an explanation for why Kim could suddenly become this awesome boarder who might compete in a huge competition three months after stepping on a board.  So we came up with this notion that she had been a champion skateboarder when she was younger, but that this family tragedy had forced her to give it up – for practical and also for emotional reasons.  So when she steps on a snowboard, it’s like she is coming home.

Q7. | Which character was the most fun to create?

Honestly, the whole journey has been about trying to get Kim right, and so in that sense the way her character has evolved and deepened has been the most challenging and satisfying and (therefore) fun part of the process.  Literally in every one of the 123 drafts I found a new little piece of her, a new line that reflected some part of her personality, a new piece of her relationship with her dad and so on.  Lots of that never made it into the film, or was discarded along the way, but it all helped to make her someone who is, I hope, interesting and sympathetic and real.  One of the biggest problems was to make sure that her sarcasm (on which she relies a lot, partly as a defence mechanism) was endearing and funny rather than chippy or catty.  It’s something we got close to in the script, and obviously casting the endearing and funny Felicity Jones helped massively too.

Q8. | When you met the cast who were to play the characters what was your initial reaction?

I remember Phil calling me up after he had cast Felicity and I’ve never heard anyone so excited.  I had to look up Felicity’s credits on imdb and saw that she had been in the recent Brideshead Revisited, which I had just seen.  I remembered being struck by the small part that she had in that film at the time (those lips!) but I couldn’t match that character to Kim at all.  Then Phil sent me her audition tape and I thought ‘oh, right, I get it.’  I can’t say enough about how fabulous she is in the film, and how good she makes the script look, and I always end up getting a bit embarrassing and gushing, so I’ll just say that she is fantastic and we’re really lucky to have had her.

Tamsin was a name on everyone’s lips from Georgie right from the start and she totally nailed every single one of her comic beats, as well as providing an important bit of friction with Felicity’s character at the start (posh girl vs chav).  I met some of the other actors when I visited the set, like Georgia King and Ken Duken, and it was so exciting to see them all having such a great time and bringing so much to each role.

Another benefit from going through this whole process was that I basically did a fresh pass over the script for almost every single character, as and when the actors were brought on board.  Each new actor would have notes for their character, which I would try to incorporate into the script (Bill Nighy’s was ‘could I have three more jokes please?’).  It’s really instructive to go through a script from every character’s point of view and check that their own journeys are functioning, independent of the hero or heroine’s.  Because, at the end of the day, an actor is going to have to play that role and find a real person within it.  So we tried to give even the smallest parts something to play with.

Q9. | If you were a girl would you fancy Jonny (Ed Westwick)?

Forget being a girl, I totally fancy him.  And I know my wife does.  She’s 35 and addicted to Gossip Girl, poor thing.  When I told her that Ed had agreed to play Jonny (which, incidentally, was a huge moment in the whole financing equation of the movie) she practically wet herself.  And then she told her five best mates, all of whom also wet themselves.  It got quite messy.

He’s the big name in the film for that important teenage movie-going audience and it is great to see him play someone different from Chuck Bass.  He’s got an English accent, a slightly more sober wardrobe and less product in his hair.  He’s also quite a nice guy in our story (most of the time).  Ed was really conscientious about interrogating the script, working through it to make sure that Jonny wasn’t just a bit of fluff, helping me to bring out his own journey of self-discovery.

Q10. | Do you think that Felicity (Kim) & Ed (Jonny) capture the chemistry that you wrote in the script?

Totally.  When they’re on screen together nothing else matters.  It’s well shot and lit of course, and some of the music Phil has laid over it is beautiful, but they are just a great looking couple and you totally get that they fancy each other.

One thing I noticed, watching the film again recently, is how much Felicity (brown hair, blue eyes, not unattractive) looks like Brooke Shields (brown hair, blue eyes, not unattractive) who plays Jonny’s mum, Caroline.  So maybe there’s a whole Oedipal thing going on there.  Which, clearly, I cannot take credit for.  And don’t worry, it’s not gross or anything.

(Incidentally, Brooke Shields, oh my God, I can’t believe she is in a film I wrote.  Don’t even get me started on the Blue Lagoon.  “Richard, what are you doing?” etc.  And, again, what a pro.  She always resisted the idea that Caroline is a characterless, stuck-up bitch and gave an extra level of complexity to her, both in the script and in the performance, that would have been so easy to overlook.  Gush, gush.)

The Story…..

Q11. | What was your inspiration for the films back drop of the Ski Season?

Like I said, it’s just a world that we haven’t really seen before on screen.  I grew up in Germany, where my dad was in the army, and have been skiing in the Alps all my life.  I adore the mountains and I adore the sport and just knew that it would work as the setting for a romantic comedy.

There is a lot of money out there, but also the sports (whether it’s skiing or snowboarding or all the other activities you can do in the mountains) are all pretty cheap and inclusive these days.  So it felt like a good place to set a clash of worlds, where we could do a bit of a British social examination thing but in a not-depressing way.  Kim goes out there because it’s a job and she needs the money, then she discovers snowboarding and she is tempted by that, then this thing with Jonny kicks off and she is tempted by that too.  So there is a lot going on, Kim is pulled in a few different directions and the decisions she makes help to define herself.

I should also say that the chalet girl life that we’re showing here isn’t the traditional chalet girl (sorry, chalet ‘host’) experience that most people will be familiar with.  Kim and Georgie are private staff in a big chalet owned by a wealthy family.  So in that respects they are lucky – Georgie tells Kim they’ve got ‘the best job in the Alps’.  There is loads of fun to be had with the more package-holiday side of chalet girling (hosting), but we’re planning on saving that for the sequel.

Being on Location…. Production

Q12. | Did you get to go on location?

I did.  Inconveniently my wife was about to have our second baby (Bertie – look for the name-check in the film) and so I had to stay in the UK until the little lad was born.  But I managed to get out to Garmisch for a few days and also visited the London set for a day at the beginning of May.  Out in Bavaria, Harriet and I had a couple of strange ‘pinch me’ moments, where maybe a hundred people – amazing, talented cast and crew from all over Europe – had dragged themselves up a mountain at dawn and were now filming scenes that we had dreamed up in Harriet’s kitchen in Surrey three years before.  Strange, but very wonderful.

Q13. | I hear you got to be in the film… what was that like?

It was fun, but unfortunately I look like a total prick whenever I am on screen.  I feature three times in the final cut (my one appearance in Chicken Cottage was ruthlessly edited out) and on each occasion I’m being a bit of an arsehole.  I appear in one of the bar scenes, with the director Phil, trying to chat up Tara Dakides and two of her boarding mates.  I’m over-acting horrendously and it’s very difficult to watch.  Then I’m in a mountain bar (with Harriet and your very good self, Kitty) wearing a silly hat and, again, looking like a bit of a tool.  And finally I’m actually skiing in one shot, where I nearly collide with Westwick before wiping out off camera.  Not my finest hours.  Annoying, actually, because I’m not actually a terrible actor, or skier.  Just stage fright I suppose.  I’ll stick to hiding behind the laptop in future.

Q14. | What was the atmosphere like on set?

I’m gutted that I had to vicariously experience most of the on-set atmosphere through your blog, Kitty!  I missed the whole of St Anton and lots of Bavaria (all those nights down at Peaches) but what I saw when I went out there was great.  I think everyone got a buzz out of the fact that they were shooting a film with a positive message in incredible locations.  So many people were putting their heart and soul into this film as well – for lots of us it was a really big break and everyone wanted to make it the best it could possibly be.  There was no sense of it being ‘just another gig’.  Everyone went above and beyond to try to make the most of this fantastic opportunity.

As to the rest of the on-set atmosphere, I think I’ll leave the saucy revelations up to you.  A great way to blackmail some of the cast into doing extra promotion for the movie…?

Q15. | Did you get to work with the actors as they shot any of there scenes when you where there?

I was in touch with the actors via Phil through the whole shoot.  Almost every day there was some tweaking to be done, if somebody wasn’t happy with a scene or if something had to change because of logistics.  The script kept evolving, just as the film kept evolving, and I like to think we were able to answer most of the actors’ questions as we went along.

Post Production

Q16. | Are you still involved throughout the editing process?

I was, but it’s all over now.  Howl.  Yes, if anything the last five months, since we wrapped in May, has been as hard core as the shoot itself.  I’ve been working on other stuff but every couple of weeks I’ve been invited up to see a cut and then, in the collaborative way that we’ve had since the start, we’ve all sat down and given our feedback.  Phil has been, as ever, incredibly receptive and open-minded about all of this, and it can be quite a painful process at times.  A few beloved lines – even some scenes – have had to go, and we had to do some nimble footwork in re-positioning a couple of scenes because they work better in their new locations.  There was a fair amount of ADR (additional dialogue recording) to do, to fill in some incidental details or to provide a gag that we thought of too late.  And a new opening sequence was shot in the summer to tell us more information about Kim’s skateboarding past.  But now all that is complete, the picture has been made to look pretty and the sound and music has all been mixed.  So it’s done.  Onto the next one.

Final few….

Q17. | How long did it take from the idea to the film being made, and is that normal?

From the timeline above, it’s been over six years since I came up with the idea and almost four years since I met Harriet.  Put it this way – I’ve got married, moved house and had two children in the time I’ve been working on Chalet Girl.  But, yes, I think that is normal.  In fact, it’s abnormal because the film actually got made at the end.  Which in my experience is not normal.

Q18. | Do you have any plans for a sequel?

Oh yes.  Big plans.  But we will have to wait and see if people like this one first.

Q19. | And final if you could sum up the film in 3 words what would they be?

A Snowmantic Comedy!

First blog

It’s happening.  I’m blogging.  I’ll be posting irregular updates on the scripts I’m working on, tracking the upcoming release of CHALET GIRL (18/02/2011 in the UK) and sharing any other searing insights that spring to mind.  Please follow me, if you’re into this sort of thing.