And...we're back

The operation on the arm seems to have gone okay but it's one of those things that gets better with time - and with rest. My consultant says that excessive use of a keyboard it verboten. So, most of what's being written here is left handed but having spent three days in a sling with my right arm tightly bandaged even this is a kind freedom.

Writers write.

The op came at an inconvenient time, just when the new sit-com script was approaching a final draft. But here's the thing, writing isn't about typing.

The physical act of striking keys or using a pen - I type, print out, correct in ink, retype - has nothing to do with with the process of writing. What we do when we record is just that, record our thoughts, assemble them into a script. We create the form. There are lots of people who write using dictation.  Some to a person who sits there, rolling their eyes, throwing in the odd," you really want to put that?". Others spout their thoughts into a dictaphone, just like Walter Neff. You can get progrmmes for your computer that will record what you say, you can see it coming up on the screen. But to go this route you need to practice saying your script out loud.

The strange thing is, once you hear what you're thinking it sharpens you up. Your dialogue gets better, your plots get tighter. You can't fool yourlself in quite the same way as when you leave your words, unspoken, on the page. Remember what Harrison Ford said to George Lucas about his Star Wars script, "You can type this shit, George but you can't say it".

Although, I always read my dialogue aloud, I don't speak the whole script. But I'm doing it now. You know what, it really helps. So, I may have one good arm for a while but maybe that's no bad thing.

A Very Short Break

This blog is taking a VERY short break whilst I have an operation on my arm, so, no typing allowed for a short while. It will return just as soon as the fingers can hover over the keyboard once again.

Classy Comedy

Classy Comedy - Harold and Albert Steptoe

 The new controller of BBC1, Danny Cohen, has apparently decided there are too many middle- class sitcoms and not enough working-class ones. Sources say that he feels the Beeb is "too focused on formats about comfortable, well-off middle-class families whose lives are perhaps more reflective of BBC staff than viewers in other parts of the UK", and that we need more of "what he describes as 'blue-collar' comedies".

Off the top of my head - and in no particular order - here are the the 'working-class' British sitcoms I grew up watching: Hancock's Half Hour, Steptoe and Son, Til Death Us Do Part, Open All Hours, Porridge (criminal working class), The Likely Lads and Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads, On The Buses, Rising Damp, Only Fools and Horses and The Royle Family.

The middle-class sitcoms that stick in my mind are Yes, Minister/Prime Minister, Fawlty Towers, The Good Life, Are You Being Served.

There was also a high volume of American sitcoms but here I'm concentrating on class in the Britcom. 

Class has undoubtedly played its part in great sitcom writing; the struggle between the working man and his boss, the struggle between the working man and the system. What many of the earlier working-class comedies share are a) authorship - they were written by Galton and Simpson and b) characters that may have been low down on the ladder but who had mighty aspirations.
The Tony Hancock of Hancock's Half Hour lived in a run down house at 23, Railway Cuttings. He may have had delusions of grandeur but he was in many respects as common as muck. His pretensions were intellectual but the moment he spoke we knew he was all bluff - "Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain?".

Harold Steptoe, from Steptoe and Son. was tied forever to his scheming father and yet was always trying to better himself. Yes, he was working class but he wanted to climb out of the mire, be a member of the tennis club, be center stage at the Amateur  Dramatics Society, read the philosophers and watch ballet on television. In one episode he bemoans how he could have been a doctor if his father hadn't held him back "I could have had a string of abortion clinics by now!"

When Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais brought The Likely Lads back to TV as Whatever Happened to The Likely Lads class was at the epicenter of the relationship between the two friends. Bob was middle management, with a  three piece suit, a company car and a sensible wife. Terry was downtrodden working class, bitter about years wasted in the Army. He was unemployed and lived with his mum, the only thing he took to bed was the Racing Post. Bob had aspirations, all Terry wanted to do was drag him back down to their working-class roots. If ever there was a dyed-in-the-wool, know-your-place character in British sitcom it was Terry Collier.

But these characters, and the list of working-class sitcoms above, all came from a different era. Britain has since had a spending spree. With easily available credit the working man could buy his own home, furnish it with middle-class trappings and jet off to Disney World. During the nineties and early years of this this century class struggle was off the sitcom agenda. Now the landscape has changed again, we're living through 'the new austerity', the struggle of the working man is back. But he has changed.

Victor Meldrew as a character is no more. David Renwick may have killed off his famous creation but he may show us the way to a new slate of comedies. I say this because Victor was a working man (albeit retired) who sat well in the contemporary landscape, an extraordinary example of an 'ordinary man'. He railed against life, as so many of us do, shaking our fists at next door's skip that has been dumped outside our door, shouting at the television and finding ourselves on the wrong side of council form fillers.

Rather than 'the working-class' I think a better word for the group underrepresented in TV sitcom at the moment is the 'ordinary' person. And there are plenty of stories to tell about them.

But anyone who thinks writing ordinary people means sinking to the lowest common denominator is wrong. Look at my list of working class sitcoms again. Some of the best written pieces ever to grace the box - and On The Buses. 

So I say bring back the ordinary man - and lets have some more aspiration.

If there is one genuine working class comedy on television today, standing head and shoulders above anything else it is Shameless. It may portray foul-mouthed characters from a sink estate but it sure as hell has the ambition to do it with a style and wit that some other comedy/drama could only dream of.

Aaron Sorkin's Worst Crime

The Social Network

“The worst crime you can commit with an audience is telling them something they already know”.
Aaron Sorkin, screenwriter The Social Network, writer and creator The West Wing

Cut to

A long-running drama series somewhere on British terrestrial TV.



Stressed Woman: Freddie's gone to The Azores

2nd Woman You mean the Archipelago of  nine volcanic islands situated in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean?

Woman: Yes. He won't be back until next Wednesday

2nd Woman: That's the middle of the week famously named after the English god Wodan.

Woman: Um. What the hell, I think I'm going to take up Johnny's offer of a fling.

2nd Woman: An extra-marital affair?

Woman: He's so loving and his wife has claustrophobia.

2nd Woman: The fear of confined spaces can be so restricting.


Woman: But I'm a little scared that Father Michael won't be too impressed.

2nd Woman:  The Church teachers us not to have sex outside marriage.

Woman:  You don't think I could be excommunicated do you?

2nd Woman: What, totally expelled from the Catholic church?

Woman: You see my dilemma?.

2nd Woman: The choice of two paths.

Woman: I need a coffee. Let's go to Mall.

2nd Woman: It's the kind of big shopping center experience every woman needs at a time like this. So many shops all under one roof.

Woman: We'll have to take the bus my car failed the MOT.

2nd Woman: You're right, you can't drive your car without its annual test of roadworthiness which is applied to vehicles overs three years old in the UK. Of course the MOT is now a misnomer as the name derives from the Ministry of Transport which was one of several ancestors of the current Department of transport but is still officially used...

Sorkin is absolutely right. but there are other writing crimes (one day we may get around to doing a list), here's another - "As you know..."
It's used as a shorthand way of delivering a fact but it is one of the clumsiest, least believable tools in the box:

"As you know I am your father...
"As you know, you are a nuclear physicist" or
"As you know you are Adolph Hitler".

Sorkin's dialogue is fast and unrelenting. He expects the audience to have to work to keep up and when we have to listen hard don't we concentrate and enjoy it all the more? Don't stop to explain, don't assume your audience is thick - how patronizing is that? In an age when we are surrounded by so many things that talk down to us, anyone with the ambition to talk up has to be applauded.

Golden Globes and Ballsing up Awards

Golden Globe Winners 2011

So, now we know. Colin Firth is officially a good actor, Social Network is a good film, Robert De Niro has been in lots of good things (blank out the last ten years) and Natalie Portman put herself through hell to add ballet to her 'specialist skills'. The Golden Globes kicked off the scramble for this years top TV and Film Awards, pointing the way to possible Oscar winners. This morning we heard the nominations for the 2011 BAFTA awards - although these days they split up Film and TV into two separate ceremonies, it's so glitzy film people from Yogi Bear The Movie don't have to rub up against trashy TV people like the cast of Cranford. 

The awards season prickles with electricity. TV channels go overboard to screen them, sending their best people out to interview stars on the red carpet, step forward Fern Cotton and George Lamb. Journos write yards of copy about who's wearing what, what they should have worn and why wearing a dress is so last century anyway. It's all part of the hooplah.

I've been involved in a few awards ceremonies, as a Producer (if there's shit flying it's flying in your direction). as Executive Producer (let the producers do all the work then swan around on the day like you masterminded the whole thing), as a nominee and occasional winner and as a writer.

Writing the host's script sounds like the easiest gig in television. The best hosts make it look easy. Ricky Gervais plays to the room, he doesn't care who he insults or if the jokes mean anything to the wider audience.  Believe me, a room full of industry people is not a room sitting there ready to laugh. It's a tough gig. Gervais does it well - he doesn't so much ruffle feathers as pluck the bird while it's screaming.

The last time I was involved in writing the script was fifteen years ago. A very big TV name (I'll not name him but he's tall, curly haired and knocks around with a couple of petrol-heads) was one of two hosts. His co-host was a not such a big name but she was talented and sweet and lovely and therefore not working anymore. We scripted the links, put in the jokes, loaded the autocue and went off for a drink. Everything was fine.

Except it wasn't.


By the time we got back the room was filling with TV types and the hosts were avoiding the writers. This was because our tall TV star had decided he didn't like any of the script - it had been agreed for days - and had rewritten the whole thing whilst we were in the bar.
Okay.
He'd decided to give it a bit more edge, have a dig at a few people in the room.
Okay.
He though his stuff was better.
Fine.
Believe me I have no ego at all about this kind of writing. There are times to fight for every line, there are times to scrap over a joke and there are times to sit back and say - fine, no problem, whatever works for you.

But in rewriting the host had misread the occasion. This was a room full of pretty tough TV production types; they may have cared about the category in which they'd been nominated, they may have cared about winning but they sure as hell didn't care about laughing along with the witty script. For many this was a works outing. They weren't seated in an auditorium but at tables, where they'd just eaten - and drunk...and drunk...and drunk.

The writers had been warned about this. Our script was quick and amusing, didn't rely on waiting for laughs but ploughed on through. The new script, with it's barbs and caustic asides relied upon reaction from the room. Laughter was expected.

It never arrived.

I've been to too many awards ceremonies over the years but this one was the lead balloon. There was only one table that cared about what was happening on stage that night. The writer's table. Oh how we lapped it up. Every boo, hiss and pregnant pause was greeted by the smug knowing looks and contented faces around me. We were in our own little bubble and the air was thick with schadenfreude. The material was dying but we knew we couldn't be bollocked. The producers had gone along with the star's rewrite. It was the only night in my writing career when I was happy not to get a laughs. I know that sounds harsh but our efforts had been cast aside, what did we care.

Sometimes you don't need to win an award, sometimes  it's enough to suck the cheque.

Witter

I get a lot of hits from Twitter referrals so for the next few paragraphs I'm treading very carefully. You see, I've come up with an idea that just might (say it quietly) topple the mighty Twitter - I'm calling it Witter. Yup, it sounds kind of similar but actually that is where the resemblance ends. My idea is to encourage all those famous funny people to come over to my site where they can relax and just be Funny because Witter is all about Wit.

No longer will they feel the need to commentate on their lives. No longer will they need to update us on such minutia  as "Going into bathroom to cut toe-nails", though the knowledge that a fine comic goes to the bathroom to clip his nails is fascinating and illuminating and a positive ice breaker at parties, "I see (insert name of red nosed clown) just popped off to clip his big pinky".
which can then be met with the rejoiner, "Ah yes but he's now popped out for a coffee".

Here are some recent Tweets by top comedic talent:


Just got back from going out for coffee.

Raining, Again. Coat or mac?

Can't stand woman over the road she looks at me every time I take in the milk.

Anyone know if they still do Victory V's ?

Off to Collumpton with the kids. Don't think I've spelt that right.

The mac's not bloody waterproof. (wet shirt now)

You can get them in Sturriges Olde Worlde Sweete Emporium. Brighton. (Victory V's)

Why do I own three polo shirts? I never play polo. Never have, never will.

Bastard Jag just cut me up.

It's Cullompton.

I use chicken stock instead of water.

My plan is that over on "Witter" all these mundane little details will be expunged from the conversation and snappy one liners will grow in their stead. So, instead of shared Tweets with Peter Andre about his latest photo shoot or Fern Cotton telling us about her shopping excursion to Tesco Express with Leona Lewis we can prepare to howl long and hard at the the droll and witty remarks of our finest comic brains.

But of course this is fantasy. I have neither the technical talent or know-how to write a computer programme to bring this hilarious idea to fruition. If only.

Ah well.

You can follow me on twitter @lazlovictor

...Off to have a wee.

The Death of the Cliff-Hanger

‘Emmerdale’ fans were up in arms this week after a TV listings magazine spoiled the outcome of the fire storyline by printing the names of the characters who perished in the blaze.
While this incident does appear to have been a mistake, it is becoming increasingly difficult – or should that be impossible? – to avoid finding out what’s going to happen in the soaps in advance'. 
So writes Soap Insider.

When you pick up a book, do you flip to the end and read the last page? Actually, to properly know who, what. when, where and why you'd probably have to read the last chapter and I don't think people do that. Do they? Really? And armed with this information do they then settle down to read from the beginning?

Perhaps such people exist but why ruin a good story? I am not a big soap watcher. Once upon a time I made it a point never to miss Coronation Street and of them all it is the one I dip in and out of occasionally - it's always good - but as a regular, strapped to the chair, gotta know what's going on soap addict I fail miserably. It's the time and dedication they demand, I fall short. But were I to plunge in and make the necessary commitment I would hate, loathe and detest to know what was going to happen. What is the point?
And yet, storylines are leaked to the press, whole magazines exist purely to tell you what is coming up. If the show isn't gripping viewers enough the promise of what is to come shouldn't make one iota of difference.

I have two particular pet hates where this practice is concerned.

ONE  I do not want to watch a movie trailer that lasts four minutes and gives me every major plot point and twist in the story three weeks before I see the film. But if you regularly go to the cinema you cannot help but expose yourself to these aberrations of marketing.

TWO TV series that trail the next episode at the end. We've just watched a gripping, taught, high-stakes episode of, lets say, Dexter. He is on the point of being exposed as the serial killer he is and then CUT TO scenes from the next episode that make it abundantly clear this aint gonna happen. So why did I bother investing 50 minutes of my life watching. I'll tell you why - I like the show. The bit stuck on the end is nothing to do with it. It is the monster child of some ad man. I want my cliff-hanger to be a cliff-hanger. I don't want the bubble burst by some little shit who decreed 'thou shalt trail ahead at the end of thy show'. Sorry, Mister, I turn off before I find out. Ha! Gotcha.

Both come down to the same thing. Terror.

Terror that they've spent all this money making this movie and no-one will come unless we make it pretty obvious that this is their kind of movie and to do that let's show them how much their kind of movie it is.

Terror that you will not return to see the next exciting episode of this TV show that cost millions and will be axed unless we get really good numbers week on week.

Writers hate it. Why would you spend all that time in your pit desperately trying to hide all the plot points only for some ejit in marketing to destroy the suspense. Why not put up a placard at the start of the show that says some thing like: it doesn't matter what happens in this episode everything will be fine, none of your favourite characters die. It's like going on a roller coaster that stops every thirty seconds while somebody tells you about the next part of the ride. How does that make the experience better.

Which is why when people ask if I have any inside knowledge on plotlines I always say yes and then spin them a yarn about how so-and-so gets a sex change and then dies in a horrible umbrella accident and how everyone who goes to his/her funeral picks up e-coli poisoning from the sausages at the wake, meanwhile a drugs baron goes on the warpath when he accidentally picks up the wrong puffa jacket in the laundrette....