My Life Story

I remember well the moments before my birth. I was stuck.

(to be continued)

The Meaning of Life

Basically there isn't one. Not an overall easy to understand thing, that is. The most difficult aspect is the brain, difficult insofar as it (the brain) is able to perceive absolutely nothing beyond its own conditioning. Remove memories, it's fucked.

So we have to transcend the brain. Easier said than done. Ever tried it? Well the secret if there is one is not to try, but to be aware of the gaps between the chatter of the brain's activity. Wam. Suddenly everything's crystal clear and wonderful. Then wam and you're back into brainland saying to yourself, 'Hey. I glimpsed it. I'm enlightened. I saw the truth.' Or some such bollocks.

And you're back in the underworld of Brain Tyranny.

Problem is, if you need to write stuff, having an empty brain isn't the best state in which to be. You need information and that curious thing called emotion. You have to entertain. Unless of course you're one of these odd souls who writes for him or herself (ffs, why bother?).

Which brings me onto information, and in a curious way back to where we started... Most research nowadays is done on the net. Easy, innit. You sit there on your arse and trawl the web, looking for something exciting and original to add to your work. Cunt. Your brain is like that web - not a piece of originality in it, just the mindless dribblings of countless secondhand brains. So you copy someone's already copied idea and produce your masterpiece. And some of the more discerning among us wonder why practically everything that's produced nowadays is banal crap.

Have you ever tried to pitch a script? GENRE is what they all want to know; fucking genre. Because if you can't pigeonhole the thing, you're screwed. And the latest genre bollocks is - wait for it - High Concept. D'you know what that means? No, neither does anyone else, beyond it has to have an immediate 'hook' (eh?), a good title (I kid ye not) and must be able to be described in one sentence with words of one syllable for the ignorant who are going to sell it to the financiers. Good job they weren't trying to pitch The Bible eh? Cos sure as heck that's High Concept by anybody's book, unless you want to get blasphemous about this. Anyway, genres only count if they're What Everyone's Looking For Right Now. And that boils down to what the financiers believe is going to give them a reasonable return. And what they want is BANKABLE NAMES in the central roles - you know why? Because the public are mindless idiots who go to see a movie because so-and-so's in it. It guarantees a return, because they know that x million females will pay good money to see Mister Knobhead with the tattoo in the right place - remember filling in that little questionnaire, that little survey, which among other things asked you your favourite star? Well, you fed the machine and it shits out crap. And it's all your fault.

Anyone want to start a Give Us Exciting Original Stuff blog? Go for it. Hell, I've been trying all my life.

Instead, I think I might just start by telling you my life story.

Unpublished sequel to Sawdust Caesar and Enlightenment and the Death of Michael Mouse

Yeh, there's a third in the series, but would you believe it, the publisher thinks it 'too dark' and 'not a true story'. Well it may be dark, but it's definitely true. I'll give you a quick rundown on it:

Tommy Spitz gets back from his overland to India gig, meets the love of his life, Nelly, and moves with her and their new baby to a derelict cottage in Wales where they meet up with a whole new bunch of freak arrivals to the area intent on living a life of self-sufficiency away from the weirdos running society. The sad thing is, that wherever you go, there are always weirdos - 'straights' who need to fuck up the lives of other people... (remind me to tell you about the latest batch who've come to visit us here in France)... and one of these is a neighbouring farmer, Elgan, who not only kills Tommy's goat and poisons his dog, but kills a dear friend of Tommy's by setting fire to his caravan while he's asleep, stoned, inside. Tommy later learns that this piece of shit, Elgan, may have been responsible for the torching and death of another local Bohemian, so he sets out intent on retribution which he achieves by spiking Elgan with strong acid and forcing him to drive home minus his brakes.
But from there on, things go rapidly downhill among the freak community as drugs are increasingly consumed and work on the land is avoided. Relationships founder and the viability of a dream life becomes increasingly precarious. And by now penniless and with another child, Tommy and Nelly are forced to live on the road with the gypsies, the only people prepared to befriend such social outcasts.

If you want to read it in its entirety, it's called BRDLIK'S WATCH, and you'll have to contact me. Unless of course you happen to be or know of a publisher who's prepared to print something a little out of the ordinary, ha-fuckin'-ha.

Scam which produces mediochre writers

Yeh. How about this... (Town) Scriptwriting Agency will promote your work. Aims to support struggling talent. Fed-up with rejection? Unable to get your work in front of the right people? Come to us, an independent agency that has all the right connections.

You check their website and the glowing recommendations

What happens is that you eventually get to speak to a Jimmy Saville soundalike on the phone who asks you to send a 50-word logline of your script, so you do. Next time you speak to him he is obviously performing to someone in his office or the same room as him and he smugly pulls your logline to bits, throwing in bollocks about unique selling points, protagonists and antagonists, their long-term aims and fears and the resolution of those fears, and rounds it off by adding - and listen to this - 'The protagonist has to have a fight with the antagonist at the end.' I suggest that in the case I've offered it's more a mental than physical fight. He says, 'No, it's got to be physical. All films end up with a physical fight. They've got to or they won't sell.'

Two weeks later you receive an email asking you to join their next screenwriting course at a knock-down fee; a 3 week course reduced to a long weekend for just£250.

Ha ha indeed. Now here we have a clue as to just what is happening in the industry: homogenisation by the talentless. Writing to 2nd-rate formula. The world is just jam-packed with screenwriting experts who can show you how to write and sell that million buck movie. Well believe me, punter, they probably have less talent than you when it comes to writing that screenplay. But they've recognised that there are thousands of you out there with £250 to spend. Thousands of you who want to make it in the film world.

Thousands of gullible fools who haven't asked the one single question that shows these little enterprises up for what they are: why aren't they doing it? Why aren't they writing and selling those million-buck movies?

Pissed Off

I just wrote a long blog about another character worth avoiding - The 'C' List Director, pressed 'publish' and lost it with a notice which said it couldn't publish because of lack of ID or something. Stupid thing is I can't get into 'create' without the ID, so as I was in 'create' I had to have put in my ID, n'est ce pas? Fucking technology. Or maybe the 'C' List Director has friends in high places - I smell a conspiracy theory brewing here. Anyway, I'll now attempt to publish this. If it works I'll rewrite the 'C' List director. Bah.

Fuck's sake. It worked.

Excuse the expletives. I hate technical breakdowns over which I have no power.

'C' List Director. Well-known as a loser in the industry, but others treat him politely on account of his family background. They smile sympathetically and say 'Hello (insert name here),' then move on. Smile sympathetically as in how you'd smile at someone who's just had both legs removed after getting infected by a gnat-bite. Eats in third-rate restaurants full of loud writers and out-of-work actors where he feels superior. Constantly on the look out for a Bankable Name to produce a film that actually makes a profit, that someone actually pays to go and see. Because basically he's not much cop. He's wet and unimaginative, terrified of originality.
There you go. I have to stop there because thinking about him's making me depressed.

The Freeloader Producer

To coin a phrase, a sad git, this one. But costly to encounter. Frequently wears large hats. Similar to the Old Compton Street Producer but more hands-on. This one invites himself to stay at your home, usually on the pretext of discussing changes to your screenplay which he has optioned for one pound or dollar. Rarely pays for anything. Consumes vast amounts of your food and drink. Can be a sexual predator, preying on keen newcomers to the industry. An unscrupulous professional freeloader who will rarely, if ever, produce a mainstream film, but will sometimes produce a low-budget piece, usually a short, to which he will frequently refer as a reference to his credibility. Has also been known to sell off your ideas, and use your imaginative titles for his own shorts. Basically this guy is a fraud who uses someone else's talent and hospitality to stay hovering around the industry. The problem is spotting him, but a good way is to approach a reputable agent, tell them that someone is interested in optioning (or has already optioned if you're a rank amateur) your screenplay and ask if they know of him. I haven't yet met a female freeloader producer, by the way - I've generally found them more honorable than the men. The agent will have either not heard of him, or will warn you off. Another giveaway is a pronounced reluctance to invite you to his office, preferring instead to meet you in a members-only club, usually somewhere in the West End of London. Black's, Soho House, and The Groucho are usually pretty good at sifting out these fakes, but don't take it as gospel.

Lessons:
1) Don't sign anything without discussing it with an agent
2) Don't agree to him visiting you at home
3) Treat any unknown as a potential ***hole

The Sloane Reader

Ah yes, this particular type is probably the the most potent cause of the demise of literary art and filmic excellence in the UK today. This type, although a minion in the general scheme of things, has been and still is the most damaging creature in the book and film world, a frontline dilettante with enormous power but no talent. Frequently called Arabella, or Ben, or Lucinda, or Annabel, or Leah, or Toby, or Adam, or some such other significantly striving wannabe middle-class tag, these beings are recruited as friends or offspring of friends already in the industry to read your work. Devoid of life-experience and interested only in the media merry-go-round, they are appointed to read and sift through the volumes of literature that daily arrives on their desk, a job for which in fact they are utterly unqualified and therefore incapable of doing. Give them The Bible and they'd consider it unsaleable: give them War and Peace they'd say it was too long or that they weren't gripped by the first page. Gripped by the first page? Now there's a thing - at least 80% of all work submitted never gets further than the dustbin. Not for these the subtlety of character or plot, the gripping denouement, or gut-wrenching finale, oh no. They cast their vapid eyes over a synopsis or the first paragraph, check to see if it fits into their Currently In Vogue view of life, a safe viewpoint from which they stand no risk of ridicule or exposure as a fraud, and condemn out of hand next year's Bulgakov or Vonnegut. Because they don't understand. Because they don't know how to read. Because they have nothing within that empty frame but last season's best-sellers with which to compare true excellence.
As a writer you'll be lucky indeed to receive even a reply or acknowledgement of receipt from them. If you do it'll probably be a cursory 'we read your manuscript with interest, but sadly it's not for us' - even though you didn't actually send them a manuscript but merely a note asking if they'd be interested in reading it.
On a less negative note one should realise that these readers are burdened with an impossible task: that they have to find a best-seller, a work worthy of time, effort and massive expense which will make it a best-seller, with little or no guidance; after all, their bosses are as clueless as they are as when it comes to understanding what makes the public tick, living as they do in the rarified air of the kingdom of publishing or cinematography where originality has no place. Safety by repetition has become the maxim - if it's been done and was a success, do it again. Or copy someone else's success. You only have to watch a Bond film to see where that leads, or read yet another formulaic crimewriter to understand why the industry is probably at its lowest ebb ever. And when one takes into account the appalling fact that in this age of the fast buck just about every Tom, Nick and Harriet believes they are capable of writing a blockbuster which will turn them into a millionaire celebrity overnight, just what chance does the serious writer have of getting his work in front of someone who counts, someone with vision, flair, and perhaps above all, the balls to take a chance?
As a published writer I'm often asked to assess the work of others, but here it has to be said that most of what I've read is dismally poor. And whoever it was that glibly pronounced 'everyone has a book in them', should have gone one step further and added that there it should stay.
Anyway, a big thumbs down to those readers to whom I above refer.

Lessons to be learned:
1) Don't kid yourself on the excellence of your writing
2) Don't kid yourself it's gonna be easy
3) Even if you are good, don't take it for granted anyone's going to read your work without a lot of effort on your part
4)Get to know people in the industry - no-one's going to beat a path to your door. Put your name about by continually presenting good work
5) If it's big money you want, do something else. Or change your parents.
Finally, 6) If you can churn out mindless pap by the vanload, there could be a place for you yet with (name withheld because I'm not as yet a complete ****)