Script-writing is a very different discipline to writing a book. When I’ve written fiction in the past, I tend to take a “hammer it out approach” – mainly because I like to have my prose have an immediacy and urgentcy about it. I also get very bored quickly and going back and revising and revising and revising is incredibly dull – books that are written this way are also terrible dull. I think it is because my writing is based in the oral tradition of story-telling rather than the literary world. I could just be a lazy arse and talking bollocks. But the same can be said of my music – I tend to nail things in one take, very rarely relying on edits, in order to preserve the live energy of the performance – so it is really an extension of that. (Plus I get bored real easy)
But with script-writing it is more about creating something that flows, has an internal logic and the dialogue has to crackle. There’s no literary conceits of setting up a scene or filling the page with frippery – it is all done by the eye and ear, rather than the mind and imagination. So I would say it is more like making a sculpture or a collage, you chip away at the idea until you have something workable and then you refine, adding and subtracting as you go. I quite like it because it feels like it the whole tone of the movie could change by adding or deleting a scene – it is a precarious pursuit and I like it.
But back to Melvin, I am only a day or so away from completing it. I need to add one more scene, I think. Then it is all about reading it through and nixing what I don’t like. I know what I’ve written isn’t particular good or original but a week’s work isn’t bad on an idea that came to me on in the bath.
I’ve decided that the film could be subtitled: “A New Zealand Vampire in New York”. Yes, I’ve written a vampire film that bends the rules somewhat and created a world where vampires are too concerned working the 9 to 5 and making money rather than biting necks – and Melvin finds himself the odd one out. The name “Melvin” is a knock on the film “Martin” by George Romero – a horror film oft-forgotten probably because it isn’t a straight vampire movie (the protagonist may or may not be a real vampire or he could be just a kid who has a sexual fetish for drinking blood) but it left an impression and I wanted to honour it in a way.
But yeah, I’ve gone and written a vampire movie…
(And a big hello to the reader from New Hampshire who has been visiting this site two, three, four times in a day. Not sure what I’ve done to warrant such studious attention, but if I were you I’d visit just once a day to avoid disappointment as I don’t always update on a daily basis)
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I admire people who can pull off musical comedy greatly – mainly because it combines two difficult disciplines into one and creates a third art. It’s can be hard to make people laugh and it can be hard to write memorable songs – so combining the two forms sometimes seems like pulling a rabbit from an invisible hat (think about it).
Hurt Feelings
So I’ve been on a bit of a Flight of the Conchords bender the last weeks after buying the boxset online. I’d missed the series on TV and caught a couple of the later episodes so I was keen to see all of it. I’m glad I did because I think this is where the seed of my “Melvin” script germinated from. Watching all that comedy and music must have watered my grey matter or somefink.
Inner City Pressure
Of course parodies are great – especially if they are well done and I love the Pet Shop Boys parody (I’ve actually got a lot of time for the Pet Shops too – I know my tastes are broad). But maybe I’ve got a man-crush on Bret and Jemaine, I don’t know.
Sugar Lumps
I mean, if you aren’t humming “Sugar Lumps” by the end of this post, then you are either a member of the living dead or have had your humour gland removed. Again, it is too clever by half commenting on the sexualisation of women in pop music as well as questioning why men can’t be viewed in the same frame of reference – obviously because it is too comedic.
Carol Brown
But at the heart of the duo is a really good ear for a tune – even though this is a comedy song, it has such a delightful melody, it is a shame that it isn’t a “real” song if you know what I mean. Also, the episode was directed by the great Michel Gondry – responsible for mind-bending videos by Bjork, Radiohead and The Chemical Brothers – and it shows here.
Of course, the title of this post coincides to a conversation I had with my dear mother yesterday about ways of improving the business. She said: “Maybe you could all move out and I’ll stay here and put up an ‘Under New Management’ sign?” To say my feelings were a little hurt are an understatement especially as I have very little to do with the customers (I prefer child-care duties, heavy lifting and book-keeping/money wrangling) and I have fought hard to rebuild the place and keep it going. Oh well, you can’t choose your family, I guess!
Yesterday’s title was stolen from this song by Roy Harper – the opening line just seemed very apt: “It was one of those days in England, that I thought would never end…” but I took it in a bad way, not a good way as in “I wish this day would end” but the car journey just went on and on and on…
One of those Days in England – Roy Harper
The idea was simple – take the kids to see Great Grandmother back in the old country. A simple feat involved a two-hour drive back to the capital. On the way down we were delayed on the A11 close to Thetford by a forest fire at the side of the road, which caused us about a 20 minute delay – in the heat.
Then closer to London, by the junction of the Eastern Avenue to M11, a Land Rover caught fire on the opposite carriageway. This didn’t cause us delays on the way there, but added another 15 minute delay on the way back – three hours later! Yes, it took nearly three hours of the police to “not” clear the burnt out car from the carriageway – meanwhile the poor owners were left on the verge sifting through their smoke damaged belongings which were strewn around them.
Then on the A11 outside Thetford on the way back, there were some bollards being put down at a slip-road and The Missus mistakenly thought that they were closing the sliproad and drove on. But instead, we had driven onto a massive tailback on the A11. Without further ado, The Missus broke the law by doing a U-turn on the A11 and riding the WRONG WAY down the closed section and nipping back off on the sliproad.
I plotted a diversion through Bury St Edmunds and Diss in order to avoid the hellhole that is the A11, which added further time onto our journey. All in all, we were on the road for a whopping five-and-a-half hours.
The kids were absolute troupers who did not complain once, but were very tired and emotional (and thirsty) by the end of our ordeal-by-road.
I took delivery of the new Microsoft Xbox 360 Slim yesterday. I wouldn’t normally upgrade my gear for the sake of it, but I was having so much trouble with my old Xbox connecting wirelessly to the Xbox Live service that I was hoping that this new iteration would solve my problems. It turns out I was right and it is good to get everything working properly again. Safe to say, my old Xbox is on eBay at the moment.
Do I like the new design? It’s OK, I guess. It’s very shiny, which is good. It’s also very small and I am used to the Microsoft design ethos of everything being chunky and workmanlike – whereas this new design has a more aesthetic approach to its stylings. It’s also a lot quiter and doesn’t sound like a jet engine taking off whenever you fire up a game.
Having the kids, I don’t play many games mainly because of the adult content in them. When you are a childless, you tend to blot out all the bad language and inappropriateness of computer games and TV programmes because you have no need to filter: afterall you are an adult, right? But now that Verity is speaking and is like a sponge, I’m very careful about what they see and hear: even with videogames. So my gaming has taken a second step and happens after bedtime – unless it is racing game. Verity likes to watch me racing the cars – she likes cars a lot.
But now I am surprised how much swearing and blood is in modern computer games – and I am also surprised I never really took notice before. What annoys me is that there could be a switch in these games that bleeps out the swear words and removes the blood. In Germany (so I’ve heard), it is illegal to show blood in computer games and so all blood is re-coloured as green. You also can show Nazi insignia either, so it makes WWII-based games a little problematic over there.
It is heartening when Verity asks me to “play the hedgehog game” and I get to fire up the Sega classic “Sonic the Hedgehog” for her to watch. It also reminds how computer games used to be: for all the family, inclusive and relatively harmless. Why does everything have to be so “adult” now. Even the rating of my ice hockey game is rated at 15 – so anyone under fifteen years cannot play ice hockey on the Xbox because there’s a rating for “violence”. Slamming people into the walls of the arena is regarded as too warping for little Johnny and so you shan’t enjoy the joys of whopping the virtual puck into the back of the net.
That evidence of the incredible disparity between computer game content and their actual rating. I remember once standing in Woolworths (remember them) and a teenager was being served in front of me. He was buying a copy of the latest “The Sims” game (or update or whatever) and he was asked for his age and then told he couldn’t buy the game because he wasn’t old enough. Now this kid must have been fourteen or pushing fifteen and as far as I know there’s no objectionable content in “The Sims” games – so I felt really sorry for the kid. We never had anything like that back in the days of the ZX Spectrum.
But again, video games do not make children violent. It’s parents who let their kids play video games for 14 hours a day that turn them into unempathetic automatons. If you let any child obsess about any hobby like that, you are going to end up with a troubled child. Moderation is the key!
Meanwhile, I’ve finished the first draft of “Melvin” – the story has a beginning, a middle of sorts and an end – but I need to work on it a bit. There’s something needed in the middle of the story – not padding – something extra, an extra dimension. The beginning and endings are good – but the middle, ah, the middle, the middle, the middle. I know what it needs, but I just need to do it.
So I am two thirds into my rough draft of “Melvin” and I am up to page 51. The rate of writing has slowed somewhat because I had to do Daddy stuff today, but I reckon I can get this done by the end of the weekend if I put in a few more hours.
I have one of those weird beliefs that the perfect movie is around 90 minutes long. 87 minutes if you take off the credits. It’s the same way I believe that the perfect album is between 37 and 42 minutes in length. Human concentration can only be stretched so far and I would prefer to keep people interested rather than bore them to tears.
Of course, I could be completely wasting my time with this, but I must admit I am enjoying the feeling of the keyboard under my fingertips again. When I worked in the heady annals of Teletext, I broke three computer keyboards in four years. The power of my typing is such that I used to wear the lettering off the keys around the most popular vowels.
Look – sparks come from my fingers!
I must admit that it is good to be writing creatively again. I’ve been putting finger to keyboard and have knocked up 25 pages of my “Melvin” script so far. I’ve got the first two acts pretty much worked out in my head and the third act is coming together nicely too. I was worried that I didn’t have enough dramatic tension, but with a little help from The Missus, we worked something out.
This isn’t some great work, you know. This is just a comedy about a loser who has something really bad happen to him that would normally be a real disadvantage to some, but to him he really capitalises on it.
The film poster should be spelt with the “V” in Melvin capitalised or accentuated someway.
In the bath, a fully-formed idea for a movie script appeared in my head called “Melvin”. This is a bit alarming because I had no plans to write a movie script nor write a comedy script either – but whatever creative spark that put this idea into my head should be honoured, shouldn’t it?
I don’t know whether to write it or not? Even if I write this script, what then? It was strange because I’ve even got a lead actor in mind to go with the script. Weird. Not had anything like this happen to me for a long, long, long time.