People assume that jobs in television are well paid. I did. And so they are, if you are head of marketing, or in charge of flogging reality formats to the Chinese. It's HUGELY lucrative then.
If you work in Reality you can rack up a footballer's salary. A fantasy salary. If you work in real reality, lower-case reality, ie a shop, a school, a call centre, a building site, a hospital, then you just make ordinary money. Pitifully ordinary money often.
We know this.
The last thing Reality is, is real. Reality is a carefully scripted fantasy where the top practitioners cavort with one another in baths of the finest Krug, snorting coke from each other's gym-honed, lipo-sucked and silicon enhanced torsos. Strippers wrap themselves celebrity widowers (that's you, Tweed) and boxers swap the undignified pantomime of the ring for the far more brutal arena of hoofing before twinkling starlets on Strictly. (Sit up straight at the back there, Calzaghe)
Ordinary people like us, we can rage against the insanity of Reality. It won't do any good. We can fulminate all we want against the injustice of a system that rewards ASBO personalities at the expense of the psychiatric nurses they will no doubt require in the years to come. However hard you swear and curse be in no doubt that you won't be able to curse the glittery Reality machine any harder than those who toil in the mines of TV drama.
However angry you are - they are angrier. However hard badly you want to twat the endlessly bobbing shrunken twin heads of the beast they call Antndec, they want to do it more urgently and harder.
If you would be put out not at all by the demise of Bruce Forsythe, then the average TV drama drone wants to be there at the funeral to tramp the dirt down on in person.
The way TV drama people feel about Reality people is the way a BNP councillor feels towards the Asylum seeker who moves in next door starts dating his sister and, after several months on benefits, finally gets a job as a diversity compliance officer and announces that he has now got enough security to start trying for a baby. There might just be some antipathy there.
Those who work in TV drama feel that Reality has stolen several things that were important to them: Money, status, audiences.
Of course there is still some money in TV drama, and not just if you work in HR or marketing. If you have a track record and a regular gig on a popular show, then you can make very decent wedge. Not as much as the top people in Reality, but far more than the poor sods who have to stay in reality.
For the rest TV is far more penny-pinching that you'd think. Most people in TV earn less than 30k. A lot earn less than 20k. Some earn nothing at all (remember our friends Molly, Polly and Olly - remember them, but don't feel sorry for them).
When I ask Redford how much he's going to pay the storyliners in this brave new world where it becomes home for his best writers, he looks puzzled. It hasn't occured to him.
'What do you want?' He says.
'Well...' I begin. What do I want? I'm not even sure I want the job for a start.
'Well...' I have no idea what to ask for. There's a pause. I go to the bar.
In the end I take a deep, deep breath and I say ' You'd be paying me for my life experience as much as my imagination I guess. And the thing is my life experience has resulted in me building a collection of children - all at awkward (ie expensive) ages. You'd be paying me for my divorces, my unhappy love affairs. You'd be paying for all the jobs I've been sacked from, the dreams I've had trampled on. You'd be paying for all my degrees from the University of Life, School of Hard Knocks - and the tuition fees at that particular alma mater ain't cheap.
'You'd be paying me for for my proven resilence in the face of disaster. Plus, you'd be paying me for all the books I've read and films I've seen. You'd be paying for all the stuff you can never get from Molly, Polly and Olly.'
'Who?' He says, frowning.
'Never mind.' I say. 'The point is you say the current crop of storyliners are children and how can they come up with stories about the terrifying comedy of adult life, if their idea of an emotional trauma is getting zapped on the PS3, or finding out that half-price WKDs at the local nitespot have been rendered illegal by new government anti-happy hour legislation.'
In Ye Olde Daze of course bright kids could have learned about the bitterness of life from Zola novels. Or from Jane Ayre. Or from Watership Down at the very least. Now, however, you can't assume that even the very brightest kids will have read anything much since Biff, Chip and Kipper in Year 2. And nothing bad ever happens to them. (more's the pity).
'And then there's the fact that I already have my perfect job.' I say.
'Really?' Say Birkin and Redford together. Their incredulity is piercingly unfeigned and causes the whole pub to pause and stare our way. I blush. They sound so shocked that I think I must be missing something about my current day-job.
'Yes. Really.' I say. But I'm suddenly uncertain. Maybe I am in a rut. Maybe I do need a change? A new challenge? Maybe I do.
Redford stands up. 'Same again?'
'No,' I say. 'Something different. Surprise me.
A blog about the workings of a leading British soap opera... From someone who accidentally found himself on the wrong side of the screen - the inside....
Friday, 7 August 2009
Tuesday, 4 August 2009
job interview 4
A while ago, I had the idea for a television series. A 40 year old bloke, finally on the cusp of settling down with his lovely 30something partner, comes back to his flat - the flat that he is leaving - to find his 18 year old self, there on the doorstep. No-one else can see young Eddie except for old Eddie and his arrival causes various hilarious yet poignant problems. His settling down is derailed for a while by this embodiment of his youth hanging around. It was a good idea and I showed it to my friend Marcella. And she liked it. And wanted to change it, build on it. Improve it. And she's a good writer and hugely experienced in telly. She works on The Show for gawd's sake. Has done for ten years.
Together we argued and wrestled and fought over the script. We are very civilised and very English, so the rows about the script weren't bloody. If either of us thought that the other had got it wrong we'd lapse into silence. Or say 'maybe' rather than 'great' to the other's idea. And the other would get the message. It's a polite, if prolonged, way to do creative work.
But eventually we had a script for a first ep of a fine comedy drama. We were pleased with it anyway. It was Marcella who suggested we send it to Redford. At that time Redford wasn't running The Show, he was in charge of development at A Major Independent Company. And he liked it. Really liked it. And wanted to change it.This is the way with TV... Anyway we wrote another three drafts for Marcella and eventually in a position to present it to Marcella's boss - the owner of the Major TV company - we were going to clim it was a first draft of course, even though it was about the sixth. This way Sir Fred MBE (Services to Broadcasting) at A Major Independent Company (AMIC) would feel that there was still room for his input...
Sir Fred read it over lunch and said 'This sudden apparition from the past. This contemporary world and 1980s world colliding thing - Don't believe in it. It'll never work...'
Redford said to us. 'He's an idiot. I'm going to leave...'
Then the TV world went mad for Life on Mars and all that, and we gnashed our teeth a bit. I wrote a play which about 11 people saw (Redford was one of them though...) Marcella wrote a low-budget Brit-flick about Faeries. I wrote a novel which was published and won a prize but only about 11 people read (Not quite the same 11 as saw the play. Redford didn't read it for a start. Doesn't have time for novels. And living with a novelist probably puts you off. I know it puts my wife off. There they are - novelists - plundering a perfectly good domestic life and ruining it by exposing it to the world, being satirical and cynical about it. Not to mention all the time they spend staring at the wall and calling it work.)
And then Redford got the job on The Show. And whenever I met him I gave him discarded play/novel ideas and suggested that they might work for The Show and he would always laugh politely (though not always that politely actually) and change the subject...
I take another delicate sip. 'What did you say?'
'You could work in the story office. If you wanted.'
'What is the story office?' Birkin laughs. Redford rolls his eyes. I suspect he's already regretting the whole pub/interview thing. He puts on his patient, slow I'm-speaking-to-a-remedial-child-voice again.
The Story Office, it transpires, is where soap operas are really born. Ideas that have been conceived in hotel bedrooms, in baths, in the back of cars, on planes, in the middle of arguments, at desks, at the washing up or the ironing, during sex, or even, occasionally, at a special story conference convened for the purpose of story procreation - they all find there way to the story office. Here the storyliners - a team of dedicated professionals - soap opera midwives - shape, develop, hone, check, draft, redraft and eventually haul the story screaming into the world.
Actually, they are not midwives so much as IVF technicians, nursing the embryo stories in test-tubes and then implanting them in the writers went they are strong enough. It is the writers who are meant to provide flesh, muscle and brain.
I realise I mistakenly used the words 'dedicated professionals'. In truth the storylining is seen as pretty much an entry level TV drama job.
The ways into TV are as an 'intern' - in other words your Dad is so loaded that he can support you while you work for nothing for two years. The hope here is that some power-broker 1) Gets used to having you around. 2) Decides he wants to shag you 3) Sees how Goddam efficient you are, how insightful your opinions are, how creative your ideas are and decides the world of TV would be the poorer if you had to go back to college and do a law conversion course or whatever your Dad thinks would be good if TV doesn't work out.
Number 3 is preferable and if number 1 and 2 apply - well, they'll always tell you it was no 3 wot swung it anyway...
If your Dad has made the mistake of not being loaded (or given you the wrong name - Mandy say, instead of Molly, Polly, Olly, Amelia, Jasper, Jemima or Jake), or you are not 21, you can get a job as a receptionist and hope that you one day get into a conversation with a power-broker that progresses beyond 'mornin' into something where your insight, efficiency or shaggability gets noticed. I wouldn't bet on it frankly.
The other classic avenues into TV drama are as a 'researcher' (Basically an intern who theoretically works in a library but who more usually who spends her days on wikipedia) or as a Storyliner.
It is pretty unusual for storyliners to be recruited in a pub. It is even more unusual for them to be unsuccessful 40something playwrights/novelists. The more usual thing is to gather a 100 or so media studies graduates in a room ask them all to come up with stories in groups all day and pick the four who seem the least mad. A pretty hard job because a mad set-up usually produces a mad response. A mad reaction to a mad world is actually a sane response, ya get me? But hey,wtf cos if you pick the wrong four you can always fire them and repeat the process.
All this Redford (and Birkin - who knows a thing or two about TV herself having had several of her novels optioned) explain to me. Slowly, carefully, with plenty of pauses to make sure I follow.
Redford explains that his new plan is to fill the story office with proven writers. That actually you want your best writers in the story office. Soaps live or die by their characters and their storylines not by dialogue.
There's a pause. I'm expected to say something. I reach for a pork scratching. I take my time eating it.
'How much are you going to pay these best writers then?' I say
Together we argued and wrestled and fought over the script. We are very civilised and very English, so the rows about the script weren't bloody. If either of us thought that the other had got it wrong we'd lapse into silence. Or say 'maybe' rather than 'great' to the other's idea. And the other would get the message. It's a polite, if prolonged, way to do creative work.
But eventually we had a script for a first ep of a fine comedy drama. We were pleased with it anyway. It was Marcella who suggested we send it to Redford. At that time Redford wasn't running The Show, he was in charge of development at A Major Independent Company. And he liked it. Really liked it. And wanted to change it.This is the way with TV... Anyway we wrote another three drafts for Marcella and eventually in a position to present it to Marcella's boss - the owner of the Major TV company - we were going to clim it was a first draft of course, even though it was about the sixth. This way Sir Fred MBE (Services to Broadcasting) at A Major Independent Company (AMIC) would feel that there was still room for his input...
Sir Fred read it over lunch and said 'This sudden apparition from the past. This contemporary world and 1980s world colliding thing - Don't believe in it. It'll never work...'
Redford said to us. 'He's an idiot. I'm going to leave...'
Then the TV world went mad for Life on Mars and all that, and we gnashed our teeth a bit. I wrote a play which about 11 people saw (Redford was one of them though...) Marcella wrote a low-budget Brit-flick about Faeries. I wrote a novel which was published and won a prize but only about 11 people read (Not quite the same 11 as saw the play. Redford didn't read it for a start. Doesn't have time for novels. And living with a novelist probably puts you off. I know it puts my wife off. There they are - novelists - plundering a perfectly good domestic life and ruining it by exposing it to the world, being satirical and cynical about it. Not to mention all the time they spend staring at the wall and calling it work.)
And then Redford got the job on The Show. And whenever I met him I gave him discarded play/novel ideas and suggested that they might work for The Show and he would always laugh politely (though not always that politely actually) and change the subject...
I take another delicate sip. 'What did you say?'
'You could work in the story office. If you wanted.'
'What is the story office?' Birkin laughs. Redford rolls his eyes. I suspect he's already regretting the whole pub/interview thing. He puts on his patient, slow I'm-speaking-to-a-remedial-child-voice again.
The Story Office, it transpires, is where soap operas are really born. Ideas that have been conceived in hotel bedrooms, in baths, in the back of cars, on planes, in the middle of arguments, at desks, at the washing up or the ironing, during sex, or even, occasionally, at a special story conference convened for the purpose of story procreation - they all find there way to the story office. Here the storyliners - a team of dedicated professionals - soap opera midwives - shape, develop, hone, check, draft, redraft and eventually haul the story screaming into the world.
Actually, they are not midwives so much as IVF technicians, nursing the embryo stories in test-tubes and then implanting them in the writers went they are strong enough. It is the writers who are meant to provide flesh, muscle and brain.
I realise I mistakenly used the words 'dedicated professionals'. In truth the storylining is seen as pretty much an entry level TV drama job.
The ways into TV are as an 'intern' - in other words your Dad is so loaded that he can support you while you work for nothing for two years. The hope here is that some power-broker 1) Gets used to having you around. 2) Decides he wants to shag you 3) Sees how Goddam efficient you are, how insightful your opinions are, how creative your ideas are and decides the world of TV would be the poorer if you had to go back to college and do a law conversion course or whatever your Dad thinks would be good if TV doesn't work out.
Number 3 is preferable and if number 1 and 2 apply - well, they'll always tell you it was no 3 wot swung it anyway...
If your Dad has made the mistake of not being loaded (or given you the wrong name - Mandy say, instead of Molly, Polly, Olly, Amelia, Jasper, Jemima or Jake), or you are not 21, you can get a job as a receptionist and hope that you one day get into a conversation with a power-broker that progresses beyond 'mornin' into something where your insight, efficiency or shaggability gets noticed. I wouldn't bet on it frankly.
The other classic avenues into TV drama are as a 'researcher' (Basically an intern who theoretically works in a library but who more usually who spends her days on wikipedia) or as a Storyliner.
It is pretty unusual for storyliners to be recruited in a pub. It is even more unusual for them to be unsuccessful 40something playwrights/novelists. The more usual thing is to gather a 100 or so media studies graduates in a room ask them all to come up with stories in groups all day and pick the four who seem the least mad. A pretty hard job because a mad set-up usually produces a mad response. A mad reaction to a mad world is actually a sane response, ya get me? But hey,wtf cos if you pick the wrong four you can always fire them and repeat the process.
All this Redford (and Birkin - who knows a thing or two about TV herself having had several of her novels optioned) explain to me. Slowly, carefully, with plenty of pauses to make sure I follow.
Redford explains that his new plan is to fill the story office with proven writers. That actually you want your best writers in the story office. Soaps live or die by their characters and their storylines not by dialogue.
There's a pause. I'm expected to say something. I reach for a pork scratching. I take my time eating it.
'How much are you going to pay these best writers then?' I say
Monday, 3 August 2009
job interview 3
When I get back to the table, I am careful to take a smallish sip from my pint of landlord. This is a job interview after all. No deep swigs for me. Not any more. Redford takes things to the next level. He's frank about the state of the show. 'Thing is Steve, it's fucked. Completely fucked. Stories are rubbish. Writing is shit. Actors are feeble.'
This could be true. It seems harsh but I don't know, I haven't watched the show. Not ever. No-one I know has (except Redford. Oh and except my friend Marcella. But she writes for the show. So doesn't count. And even she doesn't watch it often.)
The Show has five million or so regular viewers and yet you never meet any. People will tell you that their mum watches it. Or their granny. Or there's a maiden aunt they sometimes visit in an old peoples home in Scarborough who always has The Show on, which is why, for them, it is forever associated with the smells of bleach, cauliflower and wee-wee.
Despite - or because of - this people feel warm about The Show. In the media The Show is often praised, if faintly. It wins plaudits - awards too sometimes - for its gentle humour, its humanity, its heart.
'We've got to change everything,' says Redford firmly.
'Everything?' I say, (remember, I'm trying to sober up... I'm playing for time here.)
'Everything.' Redford repeats.
'What about the gentle humour? The humanity? The heart?'
Redford explains - as if to a slow child - that say the words gentle humour, humanity, heart to todays TV executive and they hear bleach, cauliflower, wee-wee. They hear the scrape of zimmer frames approaching. They see hoods and scythes. Say gentle humour, humanity, heart to Tristram the executive producer and he hears an accountant, dressed all smart casual, muttering 'aging demographic.' And an aging demographic is, as any fule kno, the wrong demographic.
I'm not sure why this is. After all young people don't watch TV. They don't. No, they don't. Stop arguing with me and think about it for a second. Yes, they have it on. Constantly. It's on all the time, an endless parade of legs and teeth, tears, kisses, people falling over, car chases and giggling. (Not explosions. Explosions are strictly DVD. Explosions are too expensive for TV), but they're not watching it. It prattles on in the corner, more or less ignored, like an amiable, occasionally entertaining mate. The kind who loses keys and gets entangled with the wrong sort of lover, the kind that doesn't learn from mistakes and can't stop talking. An idiot friend, the fuck up, the kind we've all got and that make us feel better about our own lives. (if you haven't got a friend like this - then I'm afraid it's you.)
For young people TV is like that. A chatterbox, you can safely ignore, who makes you feel slightly more in control and won't interfere while they get on with talking with their real friends via facebook or Bebo. Or they shop. Or play computer games. Or drink. Or talk. Or shag. Young people act on the advice they we so signally failed to take from why don't you back in the 1980s. They do something - anything - less boring than television. They don't actually switch off of course. They don't need to. They're not listening anyway.
It's the middle-aged and upwards that actually watch television. We're the ones who care, who bother to look through the listings magazines.
I say this to Redford. There's a pause. That's it, I think. I've messed up. This interview is terminated. But I'm wrong.
'I agree with you.' Says Redford. 'Only I'd keep that to yourself.'
Redford explains that he's been given permission to overhaul the show from top to bottom. There's going to a purge. A blood-letting of French Revolution proportions. 'Camera crews, make up, directors, set designers, storyliners, writers, actors. We've got to have a clear out. Start again. We're building up to a plane crash moment.' There's another significant pause. One of the things I was to learn during my stint on television is that The plane crash is never invoked lightly. Like priest mentioning Our Lady, continuing drama people always want to cross themselves when mentioning planes and the crashing thereof.
Ah yes, the plane crash. Even I have heard of the plane crash. The plane crash is one of Soap World's legendary moments, one of its key myths. You're reading this, so I guess you already know about the plane crash, but just in case: the plane crash was the moment when a show wiped out several key members of its cast by the simple, if brutal, expedient of having a plane fall from the sky. A breath-taking use of deus ex machina that was both ridiculed and shoved the programme to the top of the ratings. It also played out within weeks of the Lockerbie plane disaster where a plane, blown up by terrorists, crashed on the small town below. This event made the timing of the storyline cruelly distasteful. Or perfect. Or both, depending on your personal morality and position up the TV heirarchy.
It's time for Redford to put his cards onto the sticky, beery pub table. 'I'm thinking that you might fit into our new story team.' He said.
'Why?' I said. 'Why me? What have I done?'
This could be true. It seems harsh but I don't know, I haven't watched the show. Not ever. No-one I know has (except Redford. Oh and except my friend Marcella. But she writes for the show. So doesn't count. And even she doesn't watch it often.)
The Show has five million or so regular viewers and yet you never meet any. People will tell you that their mum watches it. Or their granny. Or there's a maiden aunt they sometimes visit in an old peoples home in Scarborough who always has The Show on, which is why, for them, it is forever associated with the smells of bleach, cauliflower and wee-wee.
Despite - or because of - this people feel warm about The Show. In the media The Show is often praised, if faintly. It wins plaudits - awards too sometimes - for its gentle humour, its humanity, its heart.
'We've got to change everything,' says Redford firmly.
'Everything?' I say, (remember, I'm trying to sober up... I'm playing for time here.)
'Everything.' Redford repeats.
'What about the gentle humour? The humanity? The heart?'
Redford explains - as if to a slow child - that say the words gentle humour, humanity, heart to todays TV executive and they hear bleach, cauliflower, wee-wee. They hear the scrape of zimmer frames approaching. They see hoods and scythes. Say gentle humour, humanity, heart to Tristram the executive producer and he hears an accountant, dressed all smart casual, muttering 'aging demographic.' And an aging demographic is, as any fule kno, the wrong demographic.
I'm not sure why this is. After all young people don't watch TV. They don't. No, they don't. Stop arguing with me and think about it for a second. Yes, they have it on. Constantly. It's on all the time, an endless parade of legs and teeth, tears, kisses, people falling over, car chases and giggling. (Not explosions. Explosions are strictly DVD. Explosions are too expensive for TV), but they're not watching it. It prattles on in the corner, more or less ignored, like an amiable, occasionally entertaining mate. The kind who loses keys and gets entangled with the wrong sort of lover, the kind that doesn't learn from mistakes and can't stop talking. An idiot friend, the fuck up, the kind we've all got and that make us feel better about our own lives. (if you haven't got a friend like this - then I'm afraid it's you.)
For young people TV is like that. A chatterbox, you can safely ignore, who makes you feel slightly more in control and won't interfere while they get on with talking with their real friends via facebook or Bebo. Or they shop. Or play computer games. Or drink. Or talk. Or shag. Young people act on the advice they we so signally failed to take from why don't you back in the 1980s. They do something - anything - less boring than television. They don't actually switch off of course. They don't need to. They're not listening anyway.
It's the middle-aged and upwards that actually watch television. We're the ones who care, who bother to look through the listings magazines.
I say this to Redford. There's a pause. That's it, I think. I've messed up. This interview is terminated. But I'm wrong.
'I agree with you.' Says Redford. 'Only I'd keep that to yourself.'
Redford explains that he's been given permission to overhaul the show from top to bottom. There's going to a purge. A blood-letting of French Revolution proportions. 'Camera crews, make up, directors, set designers, storyliners, writers, actors. We've got to have a clear out. Start again. We're building up to a plane crash moment.' There's another significant pause. One of the things I was to learn during my stint on television is that The plane crash is never invoked lightly. Like priest mentioning Our Lady, continuing drama people always want to cross themselves when mentioning planes and the crashing thereof.
Ah yes, the plane crash. Even I have heard of the plane crash. The plane crash is one of Soap World's legendary moments, one of its key myths. You're reading this, so I guess you already know about the plane crash, but just in case: the plane crash was the moment when a show wiped out several key members of its cast by the simple, if brutal, expedient of having a plane fall from the sky. A breath-taking use of deus ex machina that was both ridiculed and shoved the programme to the top of the ratings. It also played out within weeks of the Lockerbie plane disaster where a plane, blown up by terrorists, crashed on the small town below. This event made the timing of the storyline cruelly distasteful. Or perfect. Or both, depending on your personal morality and position up the TV heirarchy.
It's time for Redford to put his cards onto the sticky, beery pub table. 'I'm thinking that you might fit into our new story team.' He said.
'Why?' I said. 'Why me? What have I done?'