Trying to get into writing runners my idea for this year’s Blank Slate shorts run by B3 Media. carving out the time has been difficult as I have gotten out of my late night writing routine. Only got the next 6/7 days to complete it so need to get cracking. I am about 75% in with no idea of the ending. Need to finish and rewrite in that time.

read the vincente minnelli biog last week. also read one about quentin tarantino. now reading bad boy drive about Nicholson, Beatty, Hopper and Brando. Loose idea is that they all lived close to each other on Mulholland Drive, Cali.

It’s a bit lurid and potentially misogynistic at the moment. It might get better. Not holding out much hope.

Not researching anything in particular and as I read more biogs than I do novels these are simply the latest. Going to read The Suspicions of Mr Whicher next.

This year’s Blank Slate scheme is now taking applications. Read the Guidelines to make sure you’re eligible. As the deadline 30th November it now means my writing break is over. Hoorah!!!

Attended a session put on at Broadway Cinema as a member of the Nottingham Media Academy. It was billed as Hollywood Screenwriting-Jumping the First Hurdle and was delivered by scriptreader James Barlett. Barlett has lived in America for the last five years. He delivered his 13 top tips to avoid. He said he was motivated to write this after the scripts he received from the UK compared badly to the American scripts. Not in content, character or story but in the little details that acculate to a ‘no’. Barlett echoed what has been written and spoken about elsewhere in that these executives jobs are to say no. Saying no is less risky than saying yes and committing, thousands, hundreds of thousands and/or millions to a project that doesn’t work and so exposing them as the one who said yes. Only yesterday I was reading the same idea allegedly as spoken by a Channel Four executive.

I’m not going to outline all the tips here as the session had a charge associated with it so presumably James got paid to deliver it but the tips went from 1- spelling, punctuation etc to 12- Transitions to Nudges, jokes, prompts to the reader.

Barlett reads 500 scripts a year probably equivalent to all the scripts sent to the regional screen agencies in the uk so this process means that anything that takes him out of the story is a negative mark, not necessarily a dealbreaker but they accumulate negatively against the script.

Finished Greatest SciFi Films (Movies sorry. It’s American in sensibility) Never Made yesterday (author David Hughes). What struck me, as ever when reading these types of books is how difficult it is to get work made. I pitched for a SciFi film a couple of years ago which I got some support to develop as a feature through a BBC WritersRoom and Royal Court scheme.  I was clear that the project was very ambitious and that it required a ‘leap of faith’ by the commissioners to move it on. The discussion about the films were really more  about ‘development hell’  as opposed to films that were never made so the different levels of leaps of faith required to get work made struck me. This isn’t really about the funding levels of the projects the book describes but more how work is commissioned and developed.

The other major thing that I’m reflecting on is how difficult it is to get a script that ‘works’. This challenge is what I love about writing. The script is both a technical document and a literary piece of work and getting this balance ‘to work’ on the page is the motivation that keeps me writing.

Now as to the title of this post- I have moved on to now reading Emanuel Levy’s biog about Vincente Minnelli. He always struck me as someone who tried to make ‘different’ films inside a very particular creative system.

Started watching Romanzo Criminale last night. I seem to remember it was reviewed well but couldn’t watch it. It seemed overly derivative of gangster films to me and very disjojnted so I bailed out. Unusual in that I normally watch all films to the bitter end but didn’t have the patience last night. The Consequences of Love was a much more interesting angle to approach these types of stories I found.

Boat Gypsies was presented last night at the Momentum:Nottingham Festival organised by Theatre Writing Partnership.

I didn’t feel it went as well as the showing in July but this is why I like theatre. The five shows were presented and I felt the shows after the interval, including Boat Gypsies didn’t play as well as before. My cast were the same, Ivan Cuttings Directed once again, traverse again but I felt the energy after the interval resulted in a slightly different show. Their were small changes to the script but everything was pretty much the same. So the audience, the audience, the audience.

What really did work was the traverse. Traverse in the Nottingham playhouse was a new experience for me. The space was very tight but this worked really well as they no longer needed to ‘act’ the limited space. Their proximity was also very good.

Woke up this morning with a clear idea of how to approach the next draft. The feedback after last night’s performance at Nottm playhouse was positive. The characters seemed vivid and were the thing that got the most response from the audience. The thoughts this morning were about clarifiying the story. Will reflect a while before committing to the next draft after convo with Kate Chapman and Bianca Winter at TWP.

Enjoyed the Momentum: Northampton readings on the 24th. They took place at the Royal and Derngate theatre Northampton. My monologue piece Ending Panel was presented as part of the Young Britain season. The actor got the energy of the piece and did a good job. The piece got lots of positive comments from the locals. The specific Northampton references to places and postcodes in a way that people recognised and identified with, It’s language, particularly seemed to strike a chord. People kept complimenting my on how I ‘captured’ the speech. I kept reminding them it was the edirol R09 record button that did that. As I’ve posted before about 90% of the script is directly from the young peoples words, almost always used in context also.
Some light talks about whether the piece can be expanded from it’s 15 mins to a larger piece. I am confident this can be easily and creatively done to make an interesting piece of work. We’ll see what happens over the next few weeks and months.

First day of two days of rehearsal over. Met the cast (I was late), made lots of decisions. Cut twenty pages. Still not sure what I feel about the piece. See what happens with it in front of an audience.