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The festival life of WAITING FOR YOU came to an end this month, with a final screening at the Norwich Film Festival. It's been wonderful to see the film put on a big screen: It needs, I think, the focus and attention of a seated audience in a cinema to really work well, though as is so often the case now, the film enjoyed only a brief life in cinemas before a sale to Sky Premiere. From then on, its future life will be mainly via international sales to TV and VOD.

As I've said in last month's blog, the film was co-written with the director; this is something I've not done since my first film BEGGING THE RING. From an artistic point of view this was an excellent experience, but when I encountered the festival circuit there was a rude awakening. Where there has been co-writing with the director, and it is increasingly standard practice for the director to seek a co-writing credit, then the screenwriter vanishes. Over 20 festivals, my name appeared in maybe one or two programmes but otherwise the fact that the director was co-writer was ignored. Charles Garrad was repeatedly called Writer/Director and the film was described as his sole work. Of course the truth is there in the screen credits (which Charles ensured were right, with myself as lead writer, in accordance with what we’d agreed) but who notices that?

I'm a veteran but it must be so discouraging to younger people facing the long climb to get established as screenwriters, to see their contribution ignored. Writers are not invited to festivals and the Q&A's are normally only for directors. I attended a few, however, and I found someone always asks whether there were changes to the script during the shoot. They are just so wanting there to be! The truth is, in a low-budget film like WAITING FOR YOU, the finished film might be more or less verbatim as per the script. This is because the director has worked closely on the script and is happy with it, and because there is simply not the time to deviate from the script within a very tight shooting schedule. But this means talking about the writing.

It's relevant here to refer back to my blog for July/August, when I questioned (with regard specifically to Nicholas Roeg) the myth of "director as author" (a misunderstanding I think of the auteur theory). Sadly, this month saw the death of that great film-maker, but it's annoying to see Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian write a long piece about Roeg implying he did everything...

Aside from that, little to say this month. As per last month, I've continued to be obsessed with a thorough re-working of my script based on MEMOIRS OF HADRIAN.

Too tired to do much in the evenings aside from collapse happily in front of fine work by other people! Devotion to long-running series continues: BREAKING BAD has dominated, I watched KILLING EVE via BBC catch-up: refreshing stuff, and it made a contrast with the rather macho world of B.B. But it's a wonderful series for any screenwriter to study: the skill its creator Vince Gilligan shows in sustaining a story over such a prodigious number of episodes repays attention. For a writer, perhaps TV is the place to be?

 

The battle against Brexit loomed rather large this month: I was volunteering for the European Movement on the 5th, leafleting outside Vauxhall Station on the 10th and joined the March on the 20th. But many people are doing vastly more: a heroic band of volunteers... It's depressing to see government-funded organisations falling into line: on the last day of the month I was invited to attend a conference run by the British Council about how "the arts" will continue to have jolly relations with Europe "post-Brexit". I don't believe any of it; I explained why I wouldn't be attending.

There was good news about WAITING FOR YOU: at last there is to be a limited cinema release. This was launched by a lunchtime screening at the Rio Cinema in Dalston and a Q&A with Charles the director and Colin Morgan. The reviews so far have been kind of cool, which is strange, as reactions from audiences have been so good. We will have to see what develops.

Following the reading given in March, a properly rehearsed performance of my re-discovered play GIBRALTAR STRAIT was presented this month, again by Brass Neck Theatre Company. Funds were tight and didn't stretch to a programme, which was a shame as I would have liked to make clear how almost all the dialogue was distilled from interviews. I went over to Belfast to join in a post-show discussion held one evening during the run. The whole week was sold out. I felt very much the outsider compared to the audience, obviously, with all the pain my play must inevitably evoke. On the other side of that coin, I think there was some astonishment (perhaps gratitude?) that an English writer would choose to tackle such a subject. As Brexit has revealed (sorry, there it is again) the ignorance here about Ireland, and that includes politicians, is appalling.

Aside from these events, the month has been filled by intensive work on my screenplay based on MEMOIRS OF HADRIAN. Charles Garrad has come "on board" as director and the producer has decided the film will need to be scaled down. I'm sure it will be all the better for this. Interesting to be working with Charles again and on a piece that will be profoundly different from WAITING FOR YOU. Different firstly because we are basing the film on a novel (and a novel rooted in turn in historical facts) and also because Charles has come in to work with me in a writer-director partnership not as co-writer. And the subject matter could not be more different!

 

I enjoy occasional opportunities to dip back into the world of contemporary art, and there were two this month. The first was a private view at Dorich House in Kingston, to see work by the British artist Cathie Pilkington, who had been awarded a short residency there. The house formerly belonged to Dora Gordine; it's a strange and rather beautiful building designed by the artist herself. She made it to be both a living place and a studio, even including the wherewithal to create sculpture on a large scale. Restored from a state of dereliction, it is now under the care of Kingston University.

The other opportunity came with a show at the Gagosian Gallery in London of work by Californian artist Chris Burden, who died in 2015. I was the first person (I think) to invite him to the UK to create a work, when I was director of the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. This was in 1980 and I wrote about his work for Performance Magazine.The magazine is now archived as a searchable resource online. Many years later Chris came again to the UK to make a piece at Tate Britain. I interviewed him for a piece in the Independent; that is no longer accessible online, but more recently I reviewed a major book about him, and I have combined these two pieces of writing into one article for the ART section of this website.

Earlier that same last Saturday of the month I held a screening of WAITING FOR YOU for friends at the Electric Palace Cinema in Hastings. Clare Holman was able to be there by nice coincidence: she has a role in the film and spends part of her time in a house near Rye. September included another screening as well: WE THINK THE WORLD OF YOU at the Cinema Museum - a rather wonderful place, I discovered. The event went well and it was good to see a reasonable audience built by word of mouth / invitation. I was pleased that Tommaso Jandelli was willing to come over for it, though I wouldn’t have expected this had he not at the same time arranged to meet with a possible director for our current project MEMOIRS OF HADRIAN. Simone Reynolds also came: she cast the film and previously cast THE TRESPASSER, REMEMBRANCE, and TO THE LIGHTHOUSE. Good to see Julian Jacobson there too, who wrote the music, as he also did for other films.

I went to the launch of SAFAR, a short festival of films from "the Arab world." The focus this year was on adaptation. The opening film was a very melodramatic movie EL TAREEQ made in 1964, based on a novel by Naguib Mahfouz. Unfortunately I was away from London from the next day on; it would have been good to see a contemporary film.

And adaptation again! Earlier in the month I was a speaker at the London Screenwriting Festival. I left it to them to decide what I should talk about and was a wee bit disappointed to be once again saddled with talking about adaptation - a subject that has been the one that brings me to the stage for such events... It was a one-hour session alongside Deborah Moggach and Marcy Kahan, so there was little time to get down to the details. Good to meet Deborah, being pretty much my generation: of course we were aware of each other's work but we had never I think met - though perhaps briefly at one of the lobbying events run by the ALCS. Marcy works pretty exclusively in radio - a medium I didn't expect to be included. I didn't expect either to find there was an Awards evening with everyone getting their glad rags on!

I've been gorging on long-running series: first RECTIFY in its entirety. This was compelling stuff: I was happy to watch two episodes each evening, so that's two hours at a sitting. Previously I've watched THE WIRE, HOUSE OF CARDS, and FARGO - but each of these used its own particular issues of jeopardy to keep the thing going. RECTIFY didn't do that but raised a question about a crime in the past and delayed for the entire string of "seasons" before revealing the answer, our attention held by the continuing impact on the central character's family following his release from prison. Then it was time to start on BREAKING BAD - despite many urgings from friends to watch this, I hadn't till now. Series like these, as we all know, now dominate TV; every production company is hunting for material that can make such a "returning series."

 

I spent a few days at the Galway Film Fleadh. I saw several films, met old friends and pitched MY SONGS INSIDE to someone from a big Irish production company, so the trip was worth it. It's 20 years since the Good Friday Agreement and this was the trigger for a number of documentaries to be included about "the Troubles." Two of these made tough viewing: I, Dolours about the IRA member Dolours Price, and The Life After about people who lost loved ones, innocent victims from both communities. I also saw Under The Tree, a bizarre but memorable film from Iceland about neighbours falling out with each other. "Spiralling out of control" is one of the tired clichés used to summarise so many movies but, in this case, it's a perfect description.

Again concerning the Troubles, I finally got to watch '71 in August - a riveting film but very much a thriller. Wonderfully portrayed though he was I'd have liked a bit more about the central character and his background, and I'm doubtful about the portrayal of the undercover soldiers; they seemed too mouthy and hyperactive, given they were selected and trained for this kind of work and probably kept well away from uniformed troops.

Good to have two of my films in one festival: this happened, as noted in my blog for JUNE, at the Chichester Film Festival. The Festival Director Roger Gibson sent me the brief text they were proposing to use in their programme for TO THE LIGHTHOUSE: this quoted a review that said the film was "not as good as the novel but wondrously close." This was intended to be a compliment (if a slightly back-handed one!) but the approach is wrong. There are two different experiences involved, reading and viewing: an adaptation makes a new work that requires a different experience from those who make the audience. So criticism needs to accept that: the film might fail to address an aspect of the novel, or it might distort the essence of it, for example. But for better or worse, a new element has come in: the screenwriter doing the adaptation and his/her subjectivity is involved. There is no neutral toolkit to transform prose to screen.

Incidentally, this kind of direct comparison is rarely made in cinema, where the source book is made little of. In TV it is foregrounded: the tendency is to say "we are presenting this novel on screen." And that can set people up to be disappointed! In fact, I try to avoid the term "adaptation" in the credits: "Screenplay by..., based on the novel by..." expresses more accurately the process that has occurred.

Anyway, Roger kindly gave me the opportunity to change the text, so no harm done. This does, though, bring me to another thought about how films originate. I heard someone recently insisting that Nicholas Roeg is an "auteur." He's a wonderful director but must we have that word "auteur"? The "auteur theory" asserts that the director is the true author of the film, but it is only a theory. And yet, while it does not seek to deny the facts of source books and screenwriting, it has led to these elements being largely ignored, and this in turn distorts the truth of how many films come about. Best wishes to Roeg, 90 this August, but he doesn't write his films, he doesn't originate them. He chooses what he wants to work on and brings his vision to the films he directs. But he works with writers - particularly Allan Scott who has been his close collaborator on many of his films.

If we take a look at some of Roeg's best known films: Castaway, for example, along with Don't Look Now, were made from screenplays by Allan, in both cases adapted - from Lucy Irvine's book in the first case and Daphne Du Maurier's short story in the second. Allan has also been a producer in some cases, which doubtless has helped them keep artistic control of their work. As for Performance: Roeg was I believe originally only credited as Director of Photography and, probably rightly, he is now credited as co-director. Donald Cammell wrote the screenplay and it is said he supervised the re-edit to enable the film to be released. Regarding The Man who Fell to Earth: Paul Mayersberg wrote the screenplay based on the novel by Walter Tevis. As for Bad Timing, another example from Roeg's work - the screenplay was by Yale Udoff. In none of these films did Roeg claim a co-writing credit.

The relentless focus on directors is largely a matter of marketing: films are sold on the director and/or the actors. It's not easy for screenwriters like me to be told endlessly that film making is "about collaboration" but then to find their contribution, which may include the very initiation of the film, is so little acknowledged. I have worked amicably and successfully with directors - my gripe is less with them than those who promote and write about the films they are involved in. Everyone loves the singular genius and even films themselves increasingly reflect this: they have to be a single person's "journey" - the protagonist. We live in an age of the selfie!

 

A quiet month in terms of things happening, but a lot of interest suddenly surfacing all at once in work of mine from the past. The following are events fixed in June but for later in the year.

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE will be screened on August 11 during Chichester Film Festival. There will also be screenings of the other three films made from work by Virginia Woolf to link with an exhibition at the Pallant House Gallery

WE THINK THE WORLD OF YOU will be screened on September 21 at Cinema Museum in London by the Max Wall Society: Max plays Tom in the film, one of his last pieces of work before his death in 1990. Inspired casting for that film by Simone Reynolds: alongside Max Wall, we had Frances Barber, Alan Bates, Gary Oldman and Liz Smith.

GIBRALTAR STRAIT: following the successful rehearsed reading in March in Belfast, there are plans for a proper performance of my play during the Belfast International Arts Festival in October.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS: interest has been expressed by the George Eliot Fellowship in the possibility of a screening of my adaptation. This is still available as a DVD from the BBC but to show it on a bigger screen would be welcome.

My most recent film, WAITING FOR YOU, is nearing the end of its life in film festivals, but will be in the Chichester Festival (August 15) and also in the Norwich Film Festival in November.

Aside from that I spent quite a bit of time working on a significant rewrite of MY SONGS INSIDE, a script that has been "in development" for way too long. Keeping faith is hard!

 

Couldn't resist a few days in Cannes - a self-indulgence really. Film Bridge International were there with WAITING FOR YOU as one of the films they were hoping to sell but that didn't involve me.

It's becoming the convention in the UK to say the Cannes Festival is passé with its insistence on a dress code for evening screenings and scores nul points re sexism etc - but it's all rather charming to be strolling in the sun and drifting round the Palais, and going to "happy hours" i.e. quaffing rosé whenever allowed. And the silly stuff is rooted in a passion for cinema and I like that. Anyway, I had a good time, hung out with friends, saw some interesting films... The Godard film was incomprehensible but got a special award anyway. Quelle surprise.

Straight after I got back, I was down to Plymouth for a second screening of REMEMBRANCE. The cinema at Peninsula Arts was only half full this time but I'm glad I went anyway - I did an intro and a Q&A afterwards.

Surprised to find that my time at the Medway campus, where I have been on a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship, was already coming to an end. The other tutors, employed by the university, were friendly and helpful as was my manager, but it was a strange place, not really feeling like a university at all. I remain grateful to the RLF for giving me a fourth fellowship.

Speaking of the RLF, I was pleased to be asked last month for ideas for another article to appear in COLLECTED, a strand on their website where RLF writers contribute articles about aspects of what we do. I thought again about the re-discovery of some of my old work and so arrived at the subject for the article. It was uploaded near the end of April, so here's a link to it: www.rlf.org.uk/showcase/old-hat/

And here, while we are on the subject, is a link to my earlier one: www.rlf.org.uk/showcase/what-is-screenwriting/ This draws on the content of many talks I've given. There's so little knowledge about screenwriting and what it involves, I take advantage of any opportunity to speak about it!

Back on the mentoring at the London Film School now, which I've done for some years. I had a first meeting with the MA screenwriting student who's been allocated to me, giving her first draft a gentle but thorough shake-up.

 

I've known producer and director David Wilkinson for a long time: he found the money for TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, for which I shall always be very grateful. More recently he has been making documentaries; his feature-length film POSTCARDS FROM THE 48% opposing Brexit was given a screening at the EU Commission through the help of Catherine Bearder, an MEP who is one of the many people interviewed in the film. I went over to Brussels to be in the audience. A thorough rousing evening all in all: following the screening and discussion with a panel of speakers, everyone ended up in an Irish-themed pub (is there a city in the world without one?) for some food and drinks.

Any excuse to be in Europe, as far as I'm concerned: I decided to stay on a few days, travelling to Paris then on to Poitiers and to Bordeaux.

Delighted to be at the screening of WAITING FOR YOU during the East End Film Festival - a sold-out Saturday evening event at the Rich Mix cinema with some cast and crew present and a good Q&A afterwards. Aside from that, other films seen include BEAST, written and directed by Michael Pearce. He achieved what everyone starting out must dream of achieving: a hugely successful first film, liked by both critics and audiences. He's probably gone to Hollywood already. But there's no denying the film's appeal.

Teaching still pops up occasionally (I don't include the RLF as that's not teaching in the sense of drawing on my own work.) I still have my fellowship at Manchester Metropolitan University's Writing School, and that means an occasional gig: this month there was a short intensive course in script writing for both stage and screen. I did an afternoon session focusing specifically on the single film / cinema as Anjum Malik was focusing on writing for TV. I moan a bit to myself - frankly, for the time it takes with travel, prep, and so on, the fee so low, it's hardly worth it, etc etc - but the truth is I enjoy these sessions.

 

Through the last year or so, partly through my own efforts but certainly helped by other people, there has been quite a bit of activity around my films from a long time back. Re-discovery! I spoke back in Aug/Sept 2017 of this blog about screenings of THE TRESPASSER and TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, and I wrote in November about REMEMBRANCE. That film received another boost, being selected for screening by Channel Four, along with three other early films in which Gary Oldman appeared. This was to mark the occasion of him winning big awards for his portrayal of Winston Churchill.

Another re-discovery was of GIBRALTAR STRAIT, my short theatre play about the killing of three members of the IRA by the British Army. This occurred in March 1988 and there has been a big memorial event (I think every ten years, perhaps yearly) to mark it in Belfast among Republicans there. I suddenly had an email from a lecturer at Queens University and hey presto, I was flown over there for a rehearsed reading by Belfast's very active theatre company BRASSNECK - amazingly, the company's director, Tony Devlin, put the whole event together in about two weeks. It played to a packed house, following a candlelit gathering of remembrance for not only the three dead but also other people who died in the subsequent attack in the cemetery during their burial.

I spoke for a while after the play with a small group of Queens students, but I read out a short intro before it: I wanted to try to be clear why I written the play. Tony is determined to stage the play properly during the International Festival in Belfast in October, but this requires a lot of funds to be found.

 

I got back in touch with Peter Ansorge via Facebook early in the month; Peter commissioned THE BIG BATTALIONS for Channel Four when he was head of drama there. He now teaches at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, and he invited me to visit it. Amazing to see how it has grown since I did some teaching there myself in 2002.

Mostly when I read a novel, I start to think whether I could make a film based on it - daft, but I can't help it. I came across an article that was relevant to this. It was in the Guardian in January, and I made a note to comment on it at some point. It's by Tim Lott, read it here.

He puts his head in the lion's mouth by attacking "literary fiction" and, even more risky, he speaks up for screenwriters, which is a rare thing even in the film world, let alone in the world of literature. Specifically, he bemoans the lack of interest in plot among writers of "serious" fiction. He refers to a visit he made to the University of East Anglia, where he was shocked to find the postgraduate students on the creative writing course there knew nothing about plot. Plot, it seems, is for hacks.

I think of myself as a storyteller but my outlet is film drama. Storytellers, using more typically the outlet of live performance, always set out, carefully and deliberately, to hook the audience. It's useful to refer here to David Lodge's dictum, that fiction works by "raising questions and delaying on the answers."

I saw a connection in Lott's piece with my own experience in reading contemporary fiction, which is that the novelist is so often looking backwards. As Lott says, there are novels that are beautifully written but lack any real forward momentum. The "present time" of a novel is more like a situation and events (things happening with consequences) are often placed in the past, typically they lie in the central character's memory. This is not fruitful material to adapt for the screen because to hold an audience, there needs to be that momentum: they want to know what will happen next. This doesn't need to be "edge of the seat" stuff, but there needs to a bit of compulsion. I struggle with this myself, in fact: Charles Garrad and I spent a long time on the screenplay for WAITING FOR YOU building up the story of the present (what is happening) so as to be strong enough, as it were, to carry the weight of the past (what happened before.) The film has to be about the search to find out about the past (which is active) not a study of someone "dealing with" the past (which is passive.)

 

Interest in my work from way back has continued. Following the live screening of REMEMBRANCE in Plymouth, C4 also screened this film early in the month to celebrate Gary Oldman's award-winning success as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour. I'm hopeful of at least another screening in Plymouth and possibly others.

Good to see Danny Leigh mention my other film with Gary (WE THINK THE WORLD OF YOU) in an important article for the Guardian He records how we have lost the class mobility that was such a valuable thing for actors of Gary's generation.

I would add that everything has become so rigid now, which makes the situation even more difficult. The universities are the gatekeepers, flogging their creative courses to those who can afford them. And there are so few openings otherwise. I was a middle-class type, but I was broke after university, and if I hadn't been able to move relatively easily out of one kind of field to another I couldn't have succeeded. None of the writers of my generation studied writing - there was nowhere to do that.

WAITING FOR YOU has been selected for several more festivals - most recently a third U.S. one and a debut festival screening in Canada.

My screenplay for MEMOIRS OF HADRIAN is now finished, at least as a revised first draft. This may be as far as my involvement will go.