The continuing story of how I ended up a storyliner on A Top Soap...
I ask around. Nearly everyone feels I should make the leap from my comfort zone. People talk about Jimmy McGovern, Paul Abbott, Alan Bleasdale... A couple of people - my closest friends - do say 'But Steve, you don't like TV. You don't even have a TV.' But most people don't feel that not watching television is any impediment to success in the medium. And I get the impression that several people always thought my not having a TV was kind of an affectation anyway...
I swear that's not the case. The reason I don't have a Tv is not snobbery, it's a combination of ADD and laziness. I never have the patience to sit through a whole programme. I'm always wandering off to read or listen to music, or phoning people, or doodling. I can't concentrate on watching anything for more than ten minutes at a time. That's the ADD... and the laziness is that we moved house, the new house didn't have an aeriel and we couldn't be arsed to organise a new one. And these days you don't really need a telly. There's the iplayer and if something's really good you buy the boxset for xmas and spend the whole of January watching it.
The really interesting thing is that our kids aren't bothered about TV either.
I never watched much Tv growing either. My Dad had complicated rules about what could or couldn't be watched. These boiled down to things he liked - good. Things he didn't - not only bad but forbidden. These rules extended to times when he wasn't even in the house. And my Dad's taste meant we couldn't watch anything American, anything violent, anything ecessively maudlin. We also couldn't watch gameshows, or Top of the Pops. A few things were practically compulsory (Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads; Yes, Minister, Steptoe and Son; Dad's Army) but still this regime meant that 80% of everyday playground chat was mystifying to me. Starsky and who? The Generation What? The Sweeney is a police unit? What does it stand for?
One lingering consequence of this regime has meant that a lot of 90s and noughties television has meant little to me too. Life on Mars makes no sense if you didn't get The Sweeney, any panel show where comedians get an easy laughs imitating Mr T (basically all of them) is spoken in a foreign language.
Nevertheless despite this draconian domestic government even my dad never went so far as to ever suggest that we got rid of the telly. And I don't think we would have stood for it if he had. The masses in number 75 Curlew Crescent would have been provoked beyond endurance and surelyrevolted... but our kids don't seem to care.
No, the truth is even teenagers don't need TV now. And for them it's not just the iplayer and the DVD boxset. The also have msn messanger and Rome Total War. They have 24 hour talk and retail opportunities. They have their own arcades in their bedrooms. TV is the past... talking bollocks in hyperspace and endless wasting of aliens, that's the future...
Of course I should have taken the hint from this. If the kids aren't bothered about TV, then it's a dying thing and bound to go the way of county cricket and riding tandems. A marginal activity for the eccentric middle aged.
Here's something I notice in TV owning households. The TV is always on, but no-one is taking any notice. Certainly the kids aren't watching it. It chirrups away in the corner of every room like a cheerful but demented relative. Someone who is easily ignored. It's only the middle-aged who care about TV.
Which is, perhaps, why people thought it might be a good move for me.
Anyway, anyway... I askaround, tot up the responses, do a swot analysis, write lists of pros and cons. Think hard about it. And, after days and weeks of careful debate. I do the wrong thing. I take the job.
I phone Redford. 'That storyliner job? Is it still going?'
'Yeah. I guess.'
'Cool. I'll take it.'
Somewhere of course the descants of Carmen Burana were swelling ominously in the background. I wasn't listening.
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
Friday, 9 October 2009
Should I Stay or Should I go?
Been away a lot... apologies for that... Suffolk, Stroud, and working and trying to find work... and writing... and reading...
Anyway, I think we're about done with the interview process... Redford came back from the bar. We had more drinks and cheesy snack and then I weaved my way home...
In the morning I was too embarrassed - and too hungover - to ring Redford and ask him directly whether what I thought had happened really had... Did he offer me a job or what?Did I dream it? Was it a drunken misunderstanding? And what if he had offered me a job, but only because he was a bit pissed and was now regretting it? And if he had offered me a job... had I accepted it or what?
It's a terrible thing being English... these are questions that Americans would have sorted in one five second phone call. But then, Americans probably wouldn't have done TV business in a boozer. And if they had done it a boozer there would have been at least one note-taking participant who would have stuck to mineral water...
Anyway, I don't call... and Redford doesn't call. And I'm quite relieved because I'm not sure what I will say if he does call...
Thing is I already have my perfect day-job. I divide my time between writing novels and plays and programming, organising and running courses for aspriring writers at Ted Hughes old manor in West Yorkshire. (This is a literal old manor - not just a mockney geezerism). The Ted Hughes Arvon Centre comes complete with the best view in England. As the man himself called it 'That beautiful little kingdom, that eyrie above the crevasse of trees and water...'
More important than the view is the fact that it's that rarest of things a day-job that dove-tails perfectly with my own writing. The students go into a workshop and I go into the library. They emerge a couple of hours later for coffee, so do I. they come out for lunch, so do I. In the afternoon they go off to write or to talk through their work with the tutors, and then I start my actual work... liaising with potential tutors, or, more often, talking to plumbers, gardeners, dry stone walling experts, roofers, IT specialists, cleaners and suppliers of bog-roll. Ialso spend some time mucking about with the people who do the real work. Caron and Ilona. And it's a laugh, with just enough annoyances to have the illusion of being a proper job. Many of these annoyances are helpfully supplied by head office in London who sit in the Ministry of Literature, working out how to corral creativity so it fits this framework and that strategy and answers to Arts Council memorandum 576a sub-section c. Or hassling us about Health and Safety leaflets.
(Note to the tories: If you get in - abolish the arts council. See what artists not only survive the three years post abolition, but continue to make creative work. Fund those. And have a directly elected Arts Supremo in charge. Only Don't call her or him an arts czar though, please. There are enough Czars. Call him or her an Arts Chef. Or something.)
It's a good job. Not brilliantly paid, but it's Ok. Couldn't be more congenial. Plus I've learned loads. About writing, about publishing, about human nature... Because each week sixteen students rock up and they are all ages, all beckgrounds... I've met lesbian strippers. I've met priests and doctors and lawyers and journalists (lots of journos, lots of teachers...) and actors and unapologetic housewifes and very apologetic soldiers. I've met call girls and politicians and PR gurus and eco-warriors. And not only that but I've met them in the context of all of them meeting each other. And not just meeting each other, but living together, eating together, cooking together, working together.
The Arvon Foundation courses are like week long communes. A hang over of the sixties that provides a space where aspiring writers work intensively, guided by professionals, without the distractions of the modern world. There's no internet, no Tv, no fuss and no bother. And freed from the shackles buzz and bleep of the day-to-day world, people becaome their best selves. they return to the state of energy and hope that they lived in before the demands of work and family kicked in. They come alive again. It's an ordinary miracle that is in itself energising to be around.
It's a great, great job. Lovely people in a lovely place, talking about lovely things. What could be better than that? Why would I give that up for a TV soap?
Well, there is the money I suppose. There's always the money. Of which more anon...
Anyway, I think we're about done with the interview process... Redford came back from the bar. We had more drinks and cheesy snack and then I weaved my way home...
In the morning I was too embarrassed - and too hungover - to ring Redford and ask him directly whether what I thought had happened really had... Did he offer me a job or what?Did I dream it? Was it a drunken misunderstanding? And what if he had offered me a job, but only because he was a bit pissed and was now regretting it? And if he had offered me a job... had I accepted it or what?
It's a terrible thing being English... these are questions that Americans would have sorted in one five second phone call. But then, Americans probably wouldn't have done TV business in a boozer. And if they had done it a boozer there would have been at least one note-taking participant who would have stuck to mineral water...
Anyway, I don't call... and Redford doesn't call. And I'm quite relieved because I'm not sure what I will say if he does call...
Thing is I already have my perfect day-job. I divide my time between writing novels and plays and programming, organising and running courses for aspriring writers at Ted Hughes old manor in West Yorkshire. (This is a literal old manor - not just a mockney geezerism). The Ted Hughes Arvon Centre comes complete with the best view in England. As the man himself called it 'That beautiful little kingdom, that eyrie above the crevasse of trees and water...'
More important than the view is the fact that it's that rarest of things a day-job that dove-tails perfectly with my own writing. The students go into a workshop and I go into the library. They emerge a couple of hours later for coffee, so do I. they come out for lunch, so do I. In the afternoon they go off to write or to talk through their work with the tutors, and then I start my actual work... liaising with potential tutors, or, more often, talking to plumbers, gardeners, dry stone walling experts, roofers, IT specialists, cleaners and suppliers of bog-roll. Ialso spend some time mucking about with the people who do the real work. Caron and Ilona. And it's a laugh, with just enough annoyances to have the illusion of being a proper job. Many of these annoyances are helpfully supplied by head office in London who sit in the Ministry of Literature, working out how to corral creativity so it fits this framework and that strategy and answers to Arts Council memorandum 576a sub-section c. Or hassling us about Health and Safety leaflets.
(Note to the tories: If you get in - abolish the arts council. See what artists not only survive the three years post abolition, but continue to make creative work. Fund those. And have a directly elected Arts Supremo in charge. Only Don't call her or him an arts czar though, please. There are enough Czars. Call him or her an Arts Chef. Or something.)
It's a good job. Not brilliantly paid, but it's Ok. Couldn't be more congenial. Plus I've learned loads. About writing, about publishing, about human nature... Because each week sixteen students rock up and they are all ages, all beckgrounds... I've met lesbian strippers. I've met priests and doctors and lawyers and journalists (lots of journos, lots of teachers...) and actors and unapologetic housewifes and very apologetic soldiers. I've met call girls and politicians and PR gurus and eco-warriors. And not only that but I've met them in the context of all of them meeting each other. And not just meeting each other, but living together, eating together, cooking together, working together.
The Arvon Foundation courses are like week long communes. A hang over of the sixties that provides a space where aspiring writers work intensively, guided by professionals, without the distractions of the modern world. There's no internet, no Tv, no fuss and no bother. And freed from the shackles buzz and bleep of the day-to-day world, people becaome their best selves. they return to the state of energy and hope that they lived in before the demands of work and family kicked in. They come alive again. It's an ordinary miracle that is in itself energising to be around.
It's a great, great job. Lovely people in a lovely place, talking about lovely things. What could be better than that? Why would I give that up for a TV soap?
Well, there is the money I suppose. There's always the money. Of which more anon...
Friday, 7 August 2009
Job Interview 5
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.
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.
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?'
Saturday, 25 July 2009
The job interview 2
The things I know about soap opera are the things that everyone knows. I know that they were first broadcast on radio in the USA in the 1930s. Short, lurid dramas sponsored by washing powder manufacturers hence the name. The original British version is still going. The Archers - an everyday storyof country folk - began life as part of a government initiative in the 1940s to educate farmers about methods of increasing yields. It quickly out-grew its brief and now contains the same kind of stories as all the others - though the best episodes still contain much to warm the heart of the ministry of agriculture. There's still much discussion of organic leeks, the soil association and breeding of rare pigs...
By the 1950s soap opera had made it across to TV in the states, where they tended to focus on the fabulous skullduggery of the privileged classes. The first British versions were far more dour and came from the whole Kitchen-sink, play for today thing. Far more Saturday night, sunday morning than The Great Gatsby.
Coronation Street which began in 1963, was a place where the tensions of the 1960s could be played out in living rooms across the land. Ken Barlow was the grammar school boy who came back from University to his Northern terrace wanting something better and brighter than his parents generation who, having come through two brutal world wars were just happy to have a house, a bit of a garden, pub at the end of the road and dreamt of maybe one day having an indoor toilet and central heating.
What else did I know?
That Crossroads (every day story life in a West Midlands motel) was crap, though the woolly cap wearing simpleton Bennie captured the imagination of the nation, and that the sister of the cult (and dead) singer-songwriter Nick Drake was one of the leads.
An aside: In the Falklands War the locals were called 'Bennies' by the liberating forces. Understandably the good people of Port Stanley were a tad upset and complained to the military authorities. A few days after the order forbidding soldiers to use this pejorative term, a captain was puzzled to hear a private referring to Port Stanley residents as 'stills' asking why he was informed that it was'because they're still Bennies, Sir!'
What else? Channel Four had launched a gritty Liverpool based soap Brookside as one of it's flagship programmes on it's launch in 1982, and that the BBC had, a year or so later, finally launched it's own soap set in London. Eastenders aimed to out-grit them all announcing it's presence with a storyline based around the sudden death of a baby.
The soaps had comedy too, but twenty-five years after their launch British soaps were still largely working class stories concerned with imaginative, intelligent ordinary people trying to make their way without quite enough money or quite enough options. American soaps on the other hand were still largely upper class stories of people with too much money and too many options trying to discover what really counted in a world of greed and betrayal.
And then the Australians changed everything. Neighbours and Home and Away were sunnier in every way than the British versions. Happier people in a happier climate. Younger people too. These twin soaps were full of pinafore dresses and pig-tails. And Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan. The blast of sun, surf, sea and germ-free sexuality these shows brought to British television led to a change in the home grown soaps. It took a while but essentially it was goodbye Brookie, hello Hollyoaks.
That's about it. That's about all I knew of soaps - like I said - the same stuff everyone knows, and here I was, drunk, being interviewed for a chance to shape the direction of one of the oldest, most established, most respected examples of the genre. Did I want to climb aboard this train? Was there a train? Was I just being delusional? Was it actually just a friendly beer or two after all?
By the 1950s soap opera had made it across to TV in the states, where they tended to focus on the fabulous skullduggery of the privileged classes. The first British versions were far more dour and came from the whole Kitchen-sink, play for today thing. Far more Saturday night, sunday morning than The Great Gatsby.
Coronation Street which began in 1963, was a place where the tensions of the 1960s could be played out in living rooms across the land. Ken Barlow was the grammar school boy who came back from University to his Northern terrace wanting something better and brighter than his parents generation who, having come through two brutal world wars were just happy to have a house, a bit of a garden, pub at the end of the road and dreamt of maybe one day having an indoor toilet and central heating.
What else did I know?
That Crossroads (every day story life in a West Midlands motel) was crap, though the woolly cap wearing simpleton Bennie captured the imagination of the nation, and that the sister of the cult (and dead) singer-songwriter Nick Drake was one of the leads.
An aside: In the Falklands War the locals were called 'Bennies' by the liberating forces. Understandably the good people of Port Stanley were a tad upset and complained to the military authorities. A few days after the order forbidding soldiers to use this pejorative term, a captain was puzzled to hear a private referring to Port Stanley residents as 'stills' asking why he was informed that it was'because they're still Bennies, Sir!'
What else? Channel Four had launched a gritty Liverpool based soap Brookside as one of it's flagship programmes on it's launch in 1982, and that the BBC had, a year or so later, finally launched it's own soap set in London. Eastenders aimed to out-grit them all announcing it's presence with a storyline based around the sudden death of a baby.
The soaps had comedy too, but twenty-five years after their launch British soaps were still largely working class stories concerned with imaginative, intelligent ordinary people trying to make their way without quite enough money or quite enough options. American soaps on the other hand were still largely upper class stories of people with too much money and too many options trying to discover what really counted in a world of greed and betrayal.
And then the Australians changed everything. Neighbours and Home and Away were sunnier in every way than the British versions. Happier people in a happier climate. Younger people too. These twin soaps were full of pinafore dresses and pig-tails. And Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan. The blast of sun, surf, sea and germ-free sexuality these shows brought to British television led to a change in the home grown soaps. It took a while but essentially it was goodbye Brookie, hello Hollyoaks.
That's about it. That's about all I knew of soaps - like I said - the same stuff everyone knows, and here I was, drunk, being interviewed for a chance to shape the direction of one of the oldest, most established, most respected examples of the genre. Did I want to climb aboard this train? Was there a train? Was I just being delusional? Was it actually just a friendly beer or two after all?
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
A job interview
It takes me a while to realise that it is a job interview. About five pints in fact. Until then I'm thinking I'm just out for a quiet night's drinking with the only successful glamourous power couple I know. He's a TV producer on a well established and much loved continuing drama series, she's a multi-award winning writer of books for children and young adults. And in addition to all this , they are - both good-looking, still young and, despite having been together for years, still in a good-naturedly lustful stage in their relationship. Frankly proud of each other and each other's biggest fan. I know it sounds nausating and I know that you are itching to hate them, but you shouldn't. Because they are also good company. Interested in other people in a way that is rare in the truly successful. Often, the fight to claw a way to the front of the rat race means the development of a narrow vision, reflexes trained to focus on what is immediately useful. Often the truly successful are sharks, chewing people up and swimming on towards the sound of the splashing, machine-like in their progress, unheeding of the incarnadine froth around them. Deaf to screams and pleading. The professionally successful often resemble sharks in two other ways also: 1) They don't have much of a sense of humour (this is especially true of successful comedians) and 2) you can only real deal with them by way of a thumb in their eyes. Don't waste time on conversation, go nuclear as soon as you see them circling, punch, kick, bite and try to make sure you have a harpoon about your person.
But Alistair and Micheala aren't like that. They're a laugh. And not in that poisonous, bitchy way that often passes for conversation in the homes of the successful, rich and good-looking. Oh, did I not tell you that they how good-looking they are? I probably didn't want to depress you. I was sparing your feelings. They are fantastic looking. They look like film stars. He's craggily handsome in an ageless Robert Redford kind of a way, and she's lithe and thin, - lithe and thin only with massive tits, how does that work? - and flawlessly complected too. He's Robert Redford and she's Jane Birkin. An English rose with a sexy smear of French dirt.
In fact I'm going to drop this Alistair and Micheala crap. They're not their real names anyway for Chrissake sake. I'm going to call my mates Redford and Birkin from now on. And remember this is Redford and Birkin at their peak. This is 1968 Redford and Birkin. Or possibly 1974. That kind of ball-park.
So Redford and Birkin have fulfilled and successful lives. Yes, they've had their sadnesses in the past. Divorces, wayward children, illnesses, unexpected career set-backs, all that, but they've over-come it all and now they are enjoying the view from the top of the mountain. They've pitched camp here. They're going to stay for a while and when the pressure gets too much, well they've got plans to pack up their lives and travel steadily down the other side to a leisurely but still productive semi-retirement in Portugal, Croatia, Tashkent. Somewhere balmy and relaxed anyway. And there'll still be books to write, films to make, friends to see, wine to drink. They've got it sussed.
And just in case I haven't rammed it home enough, they nice. Not just witty, clever, successful, good-looking and rich - they're properly decent too. Which means they are popular. They'd be popular anyway cos of the whole TV production, book prize, good-looking, rich thing, but kind and interested in others... I'm almost certain they mentioned - and not in a boastful way - a direct debit to Amnesty International, a fun run for epilepsy action, a table top sale to help save the white rhino. Something like that.
Of course I should have known something was up. There's only the three of us in the pub and I think that's a first. We met through mutual friends and there's always been at least one other person around before. But I'm a bit special needs, sometimes. A bit remedial. Which is why it takes me five pints to realise that i'm not simply out for a blether with some friends. We're not simply catching up on children, work etc. We haven't simply gathered to chew the fat and slag off the government and talk about what bastards agents and publishers are... we're in a meeting. Christ. Better shape up. I'm in the bogs when I realise this, so I lean my head against the tiles and try to sober up. Five pints? It's not that much is it. When I was 21 five pints was just warming up... but I'm not 21. I'm just entering 44 with it's very prominent 'please drive carefully' signs...
But Alistair and Micheala aren't like that. They're a laugh. And not in that poisonous, bitchy way that often passes for conversation in the homes of the successful, rich and good-looking. Oh, did I not tell you that they how good-looking they are? I probably didn't want to depress you. I was sparing your feelings. They are fantastic looking. They look like film stars. He's craggily handsome in an ageless Robert Redford kind of a way, and she's lithe and thin, - lithe and thin only with massive tits, how does that work? - and flawlessly complected too. He's Robert Redford and she's Jane Birkin. An English rose with a sexy smear of French dirt.
In fact I'm going to drop this Alistair and Micheala crap. They're not their real names anyway for Chrissake sake. I'm going to call my mates Redford and Birkin from now on. And remember this is Redford and Birkin at their peak. This is 1968 Redford and Birkin. Or possibly 1974. That kind of ball-park.
So Redford and Birkin have fulfilled and successful lives. Yes, they've had their sadnesses in the past. Divorces, wayward children, illnesses, unexpected career set-backs, all that, but they've over-come it all and now they are enjoying the view from the top of the mountain. They've pitched camp here. They're going to stay for a while and when the pressure gets too much, well they've got plans to pack up their lives and travel steadily down the other side to a leisurely but still productive semi-retirement in Portugal, Croatia, Tashkent. Somewhere balmy and relaxed anyway. And there'll still be books to write, films to make, friends to see, wine to drink. They've got it sussed.
And just in case I haven't rammed it home enough, they nice. Not just witty, clever, successful, good-looking and rich - they're properly decent too. Which means they are popular. They'd be popular anyway cos of the whole TV production, book prize, good-looking, rich thing, but kind and interested in others... I'm almost certain they mentioned - and not in a boastful way - a direct debit to Amnesty International, a fun run for epilepsy action, a table top sale to help save the white rhino. Something like that.
Of course I should have known something was up. There's only the three of us in the pub and I think that's a first. We met through mutual friends and there's always been at least one other person around before. But I'm a bit special needs, sometimes. A bit remedial. Which is why it takes me five pints to realise that i'm not simply out for a blether with some friends. We're not simply catching up on children, work etc. We haven't simply gathered to chew the fat and slag off the government and talk about what bastards agents and publishers are... we're in a meeting. Christ. Better shape up. I'm in the bogs when I realise this, so I lean my head against the tiles and try to sober up. Five pints? It's not that much is it. When I was 21 five pints was just warming up... but I'm not 21. I'm just entering 44 with it's very prominent 'please drive carefully' signs...
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