When this happened with my last script it got picked up by a top producer and an amazing director. Here’s to lightening striking twice 🤞🏻
https://blcklst.com/projects/149594
A Short Guide to Watching The Big Lebowski
First you’ll need to find an appropriate glass. A straight short tumbler. Put ice in it. Eyeball measure one part Kahlua to one part vodka, then pour in two parts light cream (milk is also suitable). Stir. You now have a White Russian. Every time The Dude makes himself a White Russian, make yourself one too. If you are watching with friends, ensure that they do the same.
If they don’t drink due to being pregnant, they’re a recovering alcoholic, because they are currently taking medicine that reacts badly with alcohol, or simply because they are one of those annoyingly high achieving twats who has their shit together (fuck those guys), they can watch the film too, just know that they won’t be enjoying the film as much as you.
Slowly get drunk until the film swims into your soul and becomes a part of you.
When the credits roll, have an existential crisis, quit your job and dedicate the rest of your life to trying and failing to write a screenplay half as good as this one.
Die knowing that you tried to do something interesting with your small insignificant life.
Jimmy Stewart Rides Again
We’ve been on a Jimmy Stewart fix in this house recently, watching Rear Window, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Winchester ’73, Destry Rides Again (one of his best in my opinion), tonight’s film: Mr Smith Goes to Washington, and soon, as with every Christmas, It’s A Wonderful Life.
He had a certain way with him, in his mannerisms, and the way he spoke, and his comedic intuitions. He was a funny actor. I would love to have written a film for him. I wonder if there’s a modern actor like him out there somewhere? I mean, I haven’t made a single film yet, but if you’re going to fantasise about a future career in filmmaking you might as well make it unbelievable. Anybody got a time machine I can borrow?
8 On The Black List!
This has made my day! I just got a really excellent evaluation on The Black List for a screenplay I wrote called Runts. (I’ve shared the final part of the evaluation in the second image). A previous evaluation described the script as being “stunningly executed”.
The crazy thing is, I wasn’t sure about this one. I abandoned it a few years ago, convincing myself it wasn’t good enough. And then Rachel read it a few months ago and told me I was crazy, it’s great! (Her words). And convinced me to revisit the story and get it out there. Now I kinda love it.
Link to The Black List page: https://blcklst.com/dashboard/projects/149594
An Unexpected Gunslinging Gift
A parcel arrived today. A parcel I was not expecting. Inside… was a gunbelt.
It is such an unbelievable and unexpected gift! It’s amazing!!
It was sent by friend and novelist Angela C Nurse, who writes very popular Scotland based detective mysteries, and had belonged to her late father. I know it has great sentimental value. I will cherish it!!
I have written two western novellas that are yet to be published (I’ve been too busy procrastinating, writing film scripts instead of books). It’s about time I released the gunslinging Robin Castle into the wild. Angela has reignited my desire to get back to them with one simple and generous act. Watch this space!
Thank you Angela!!!!!
Check out Angela on Instagram: @angelacnurseauthor
Her website: https://www.angelacnurse.com/
Writing Runts
While I was between jobs, about a year and a half ago, I wrote a feature-length script in four weeks. This week, I read it for the first time since then. It’s a hell of a lot better than I remember. It needs a couple of new scenes and a slightly different ending, but I’ve got that all figured out, and I’m on a mission to finish it today.
The next step for this script is the almost impossible step. It requires luck, an incredible amount of random chance, and not much else. Somewhere out there is a director who is looking for something exactly like this, and our paths have to cross at just the right time.
RUNTS. A council house in the south of England. Night. Two young brothers bury their dead mother in the garden.
So begins a story of two boys, Brian, aged 11, and Dean, 16, as they learn to fend for themselves while keeping this dark secret. Things spiral out of control, and Brian begins to realise that there is something very, very, wrong with his older brother.
The Slightly Morbid Reason I Write
I was looking back over a book I had abandoned writing a few years ago, and was surprised by the final few paragraphs, which had nothing to do with the novel. They were instead my reflections on hearing the news about my dad’s diagnosis, which would take his life shortly after, and how death is the driving force that keeps me writing. If grief is a trigger for you, I would recommend skipping this post.
I wrote the following back in 2022, while Dad was still around, a few months before he passed.
***
There is no greater sedative than bad news. One month ago, my dad was told he had two months to live.
It was my mum who told me. Called me up, crying. They were leaving the hospital, on their way home. Didn’t want visitors. Needed to process it.
I called David in Spain. Told him. He’s on holiday with Arthur. Mum and Dad were meant to be there but stayed home to wait for the results of the MRI. Dad was told he couldn’t travel.
I’ve always felt that we are marching at full speed towards mortality. My dad took a wrong turn and slipped off a cliff.
I was in the middle of doing the dishes when Mum called and after the phone call I got back to it. Rachel followed me into the kitchen and said I didn’t need to worry about some dirty pots. But I did, because they still needed to be done.
I think I washed one cup before I had to stop. I leant against the counter and stared at the floor. We talked, though I don’t remember what either of us said, and then a spontaneous burst of grief caused me to push away from the counter and sob into that gap between Rachel’s shoulder and neck.
I read somewhere that writers avoid death. I think that’s why I do it.
I write so that when I am gone, my daughter can pick up one of my books and say, ‘There you are, Dad.’
It’s got me thinking about voice. Anything other than death. Voice as in the authorial voice. A lot of creative writing advice focuses on removing yourself from the prose. The author should never be present. I disagree. Whatever style I have is fundamentally me and too much tidying up of the language will remove me from it. I don’t write to deliver a plot. I write to save some part of my soul. That’s not as grand a statement as it sounds. It’s vanity, really. And terror.
Prop Up Your Writing
I’m currently writing a pilot episode for a tv show (an original idea that nobody knows about yet), and I needed to get more inside the head of the main character than I was. He is Fletcher Madoc, an internationally renowned sceptic and debunker of conspiracy theories and myths.
On the wall of Fletcher’s office is the iconic poster from Fox Mulder’s office in the X-Files, but he has covered the words I WANT TO BELIEVE with the words IT’S ALL BOLLOCKS.
Trying to make fictional people feel real is an important and tricky thing to get right. I highly recommend bringing their reality into your own.
Logan’s Run – Moviedrome, BBC 2 – 1997
I picked up Logan’s Run on Blu-ray in HMV Brighton today. I first saw this film in 1997 on a double bill with Fahrenheit 451 on BBC 2’s Moviedrome, introduced by Mark Cousins.
I was thirteen then and I haven’t seen the film since but I remember it vividly. I’m nervous to watch it again in case it doesn’t live up to my fond memory of it. Rachel has never seen it and I’ve been talking about it for years (it’s never been on streaming when we’ve searched over the years) and I’m hoping it lives up to the hype I’ve given it.
I loved Moviedrome. I discovered so many great films because of it at an age I was probably too young to discover them. I had my own very boxy 14″ TV in my room. Westworld is another one that really stuck in my brain back then. Two very formative films in a lifelong love afair with cinema.
Do you remember Moviedrome?
RIP Martin Amis
I came to Martin Amis via Christopher Hitchens. There is something poignant about them both dying of the same thing (esophageal cancer). I’m sure they’re chuckling about it in the afterlife that neither of them believed in (although Amis was agnostic – “We’re about eight Einsteins away from getting any kind of handle on the universe … atheism is premature.” while Hitchens was leader supreme in the war against ancient magic beings).
One of the last books I read was Martin Amis’s collection of essays, War Against Cliché. He was a go-to writer for me. It didn’t matter the topic, his words were always a pleasure to read.
In his memory, I would like to share my favourite passage from one of his books; the “burglar” passage from London Fields –
“Little did they know that the place they were about to burgle — the shop, and the flat above it — had already been burgled the week before: yes, and the week before that. And the week before that. It was all burgled out. Indeed, burgling, when viewed in Darwinian terms, was clearly approaching a crisis. Burglars were finding that almost everywhere had been burgled. Burglars were forever bumping into one another, stepping on the toes of other burglars. There were burglar jams on rooftops and stairways, on groaning fire-escapes. Burglars were being burgled by fellow burglars, and were doing the same thing back. Burgled goods jigged from flat to flat. Returning from burgling, burglars would discover that they themselves had just been burgled, sometimes by the very burglar that they themselves had just burgled! How would this crisis in burgling be resolved? It would be resolved when enough burglars found burgling a waste of time, and stopped doing it. Then, for a while, burgling would become worth doing again. But burglars had plenty of time to waste — it was all they had plenty of, and there was nothing else to do with it — so they just went on burgling.”
RIP.
Andrew Chapman / Author and Screenwriter 