Scriptwriter
Deadlines.
Love ’em. Loathe ’em.
Got ’em.
If I blog between now and the new month, it’ll be an admission of failure. Or a cry for help. Or just some post-dated posts that I’ve set up to keep my online presence up in my uh, absence.
Of course I’ll be back – if Mr Molloy can post about his blog’s first birthday, I absolutely must for this blog’s approaching third anniversary. Not that I’m competitive or anything.
Found myself pitching a couple of shows not long ago. I thought it was a meet and greet. Nah-ah.
One pitch was just one that had been bouncing around my head for the past while – let’s call it the I’m Cool About This Pitch. The other is one I’m quite sweet on – the I’m Hot About This Pitch.
The Cool Pitch: A depressed and suicidal multihyphenate is given five million dollars with which to make her debut feature.
The Hot Pitch: A year in the life of genetically engineered soldiers.
Guess which one they liked more? Guess which one I promised to write up within eighteen hours? Sigh*.
I should learn to be more aware of my audience: given the choice between a period of time with super-soldiers/planarian-worms/domesticated-chickens, and a personal, identifiable journey from darkness into light, they went for the unwritten and undeveloped pitch.
* Mental note for the next Hot Pitch: Private First Class Ray Gunn awakens one morning to discover he is the ultimate soldier. Nothing can stop, hurt or kill him. His imagination is the limit. One day, he stops taking orders….
We here at Fortress Mamea caught a couple of episodes Wallander this month. The cinematography is gorgeous. The acting, particularly from lead Kenneth Branagh, is unsurprisingly excellent. The first 45 to 60 minutes of each ep have set mood and tone beautifully, and I’m wanting to get to the bottom of the case du jour, but the remaining minutes have left me… very cool.
I was too angry after the second ep to contemplate watching the final of the season.
But I’m a compleatist at heart.
How much worse more insulting can it get?
I met with a couple of young writers a few weeks back. They’d completed two drafts, each event accompanied by a sense of fulfilment and great achievement. And after each draft, they’d met with someone like their reader or script consultant or mentor, and their pride and joy, their fruit of sleepless nights, arguments, compromises and exhilarating flights of co-writing, was taken apart in front of their eyes.
They admitted that maybe they were floundering a little. After a few carefully worded questions, I could see they were angry, too. It’s all so bloody personal, they said tightly.
No, it’s not, I told them. It’s never about you. It’s about what you’ve written. Whereupon I joined their reader, et al, in field-stripping their script, along with the following spiel.
Having been on the receiving end of feedback and notes countless times, -. There – right there: ‘on the receiving end’.
That’s the wrong way to look at it: readers don’t have it in for you the writer. They want to like what you given them.
It takes no effort at all to declare a script brilliant or needs work or sucks, and hang up walk away.
A reader – a true reader – puts in time and thought into studying your script. As a nail-gnawing writer awaiting feedback, all you might see of this reading process is the report, laying out what works (and what doesn’t), and most importantly, why it works (or doesn’t).
When I’m wearing my reading hat, the better (or worse) the script, I can turn it around in a few hours; but if it’s damaged (but not irrevocably), or passionate (but muddled), I can easily spend double that time on it. You want numbers? Okay. Let’s say, for a better (or worse) kind of script, it takes me an hour or so to read it, another hour to mull it over, then an hour to formulate what I’m going to say to the writer. That’s three hours minimum that I’m not writing. And if it’s not better (or worse)… don’t tell my manager.
Anyway, back to our young writers where, after I’d laid their script bare, they said, Okay. Um. Thanks. After a few more carefully worded questions, however, I got them started on disputing my feedback.
That’s the spirit! I cried in my besht Connery voishe – but that’s for another post.
Seeking a change of pace from genial lashings of River Cottage, I suggested to The Goddess a thriller, State of Play, even going so far as to disclose its probable political content. Such is Her love for me that She said She’d try the first episode. (This is Her code for And if it’s boringly political, you are on your own.)
I vaguely remembered the excited reviews of Paul Abbott‘s series a few years back. I’d read them too late – they’d already screened the first couple of eps – but to be honest, at the time, I would’ve been too entranced in The Shield and The Wire to consider anything else seriously.
After the first ep, I found myself hunched forward, bunched fists at my sides. After the second ep, I looked wild-eyed at The Goddess: I’m all wound up and there weren’t even any bodies! After the third ep, a Voice beside me said, despite the lateness of the hour, Can we watch the next episode?
You get the picture.
I’m glad I didn’t try jumping in mid-season way back when: the pace is unforgiving. Never was there anything as crass as a character reminding another of what they’d discovered in an earlier episode. There were no genre white lies of Shh, everything’ll be okay to hold on to. I was never given the opportunity – the breathing space, even – to think, Okay, this is the bit where they do something stupid but a handy deus ex machina will save the day – because that shit just didn’t happen. That’s how freaking good the writing is.
We lapped it up.
And I am so not going to the big-screen adaptation.
Is it the season or am I just being mean?
(Fedora-tip: The Big Picture.)
Just over a year ago, I reeled from a Pasifika playwrights forum.
This year, I networked at it.
Yes: I hate networking. It feels false:
INT. A GATHERING – WHENEVER
Our WRITER walks up to a STRANGER --
WRITER
(extends hand)
Hi I’m D F Mamea.
STRANGER
Hi.
Beat.
WRITER
(drops hand)
And your name is?
STRANGER
Dave.
WRITER
(shit-eating grin)
Well, hi Dave. What do you do?
(I really should just let go of such exchanges – it’s just -, it’s not often that I want to smash someone in the face [half an hour later because it didn’t register with me at the time].)
What I meant to illustrate as false was something like this:
INT. A GATHERING – WHENEVER
Our WRITER approaches a STRANGER --
WRITER
(extends his hand)
Hi, my name’s D F Mamea.
(voice-over)
Should I’ve said I was a writer? Or is that too forward? Too desperate?
They shake hands.
STRANGER
Steve Ranger. Pleasetameetcha.
(voice-over)
Oh please god no, not another desperate writer.
What was different this time around was that I knew more of the faces. Familiarity breeds confidence.
Now for some rampant name-dropping:
It wasn’t all about the laying on of hands – forum attendees were treated to works in progress:
(A first draft of this post had one-word adjectives for each of the above. I’ve changed my mind, obviously: you can stew in anticipation.)
My plan to be in the right place at the right time has yet to bear fruit. But seeds have been sown. The competition has been reconnoitred and noted.
I am patient.
EXT. MEADOW – MORNING
TITLE: Monday
A fine shower of BANTAM MIX descends on FOUR CHICKENS who set upon gobbling up the tasty seed ingredients.
GODDESS
(sing-song)
Hello girls.
THE GODDESS, dressed for Her day job, tosses up another handful of bantam mix --
-- a second shower of bantam mix falls about the chickens, the beaks pecking greedily in all directions.
One chicken in particular – we shall call her BUFFY – looks up from the seeds on the ground and goes up to The Goddess.
GODDESS
Hello Buffy.
Buffy pecks Her TROUSERS.
GODDESS
Watch it.
Buffy pecks at Her trousers again.
GODDESS
Oh alright.
She crouches beside the chicken – Buffy opens her wings at the sudden movement and we see that the clipped feathers from the previous episode are MUCH shorter now – and offers a palm of bantam mix. Buffy pecks at the proffered seeds.
BUFFY
(low)
Booooaaaahh.
The Goddess looks over her shoulder --
ANGLE ON our WRITER, also dressed for his day job, looking on from the BACKYARD.
WRITER
All’s well that ends well, eh?
The Goddess looks at the chicken eating out of her hand.
CLOSE on Her look of satisfaction.
CUT TO:
EXT. MEADOW – AFTERNOON
Three chickens crowd the GATE, looking out into the backyard.
We hear a car door open in the distance as --
EXT. DRIVEWAY – CONTINUOUS
-- our Writer closes the door of the SPORTSWAGON and --
EXT. BACKYARD – CONTINUOUS
-- he wearily approaches the BACKDOOR. He sees the chickens staring at him through the gate.
BUFFY
(O.O.S.; low)
Boooaaahh.
He looks down to see a lone chicken standing before him, opening and closings her wings with some measure of pride.
He crouches in front of her, holding up his CELLPHONE, thumb holding down the ‘Camera’ button. He frames the chicken who pecks at his trouser leg – and takes a photo.
WRITER
I hereby rename you....
ANGLE ON our Writer’s cellphone screen as he selects The Goddess’s cell number – he thumbs ‘Send’.
WRITER
(cont’d)
... Steve McQueen.
FADE OUT.
No chickens were harmed in either the actual events or this subsequent dramatisation.
EXT. MEADOW – DAY
TITLE: Sunday
FOUR CHICKENS excitedly gobble down STALE BREAD CRUMBS.
GODDESS
(O.O.S.; sing-song)
Hey girls. You like that?
ANGLE ON THE GODDESS as she peers through the fence from the BACKYARD.
One chicken in particular – we recognise BUFFY from our earlier episode – looks up before gingerly moving her right wing: we see that a number of feathers have been shorn in an unnatural but geometric straight line.
EXT. BACKYARD – CONTINUOUS
The Goddess grasps a fence paling in one hand as --
GODDESS
Look, it hurt me much more than it hurt you to do that.
(beat)
It was for your own good.
CUT TO:
INT. KITCHEN – LATER
Our WRITER enters with some DIRTY DISHES. Movement outside catches his eye.
WRITER
Um. Dear?
EXT. BACKYARD – MOMENTS LATER
Buffy stretches her wings defiantly as she approaches the GARDEN.
We hear a backdoor opening.
GODDESS
The books said clipping one wing would work.
Buffy manages a few panicked strides before she’s in The Goddess’s arms.
She and her captor stare at each other, not moving.
BUFFY
(low)
Booooaaaahhh.
The chicken cranes her neck to eye her captor RIGHT IN HER FACE. She doesn’t blink.
A muscle twitches in The Goddess’s cheek.
A long beat.
GODDESS
Right then.
The Goddess strides into the HOUSE, chicken in arm.
TITLE: TO BE CONCLUDED
