Why not? After all, it’s a brilliant showcase for writers, with unsurpassed prizes. True, true. But in terms of where I am and where I want to be, I don’t currently have a new pilot script in me that’ll be sufficiently distinct from the one I entered last year, set in the world of drugs work. Sure, I could write something, but the only new project that’s close to me writing it is one that’s not too far away in subject matter.

Why is that important? Because I feel I’m at an interesting stage with my writing, with a strong pilot script for the drug worker series that’s already attracted professional interest, and which I want to circulate further around the industry. And when I do, it’ll be accompanied by a feature script that I’m happy with.

So, how come it’s taken so long to get these scripts sorted out? Well, I’ve written all kinds of work over the years, some of it commissioned and paid for. But somewhere along the line I got sidetracked by my relationship with a particular filmmaker. We made a short together that got to tour internationally with the support of the British Council, and he turned up on a regular basis with other opportunities following that initial success. Which was great. I developed any number of treatments for shorts and features alongside him, and learned a lot in the process. Great to a point, except you can only work on projects for no money for so long before weariness starts to set in. And the projects being dangled were further and further away from my true interests.

Things came to a head when I was coaxed into writing a treatment set in the world of American cage fighting. It was reasonable enough, a perfectly professional piece of work that would have made a solid film of its sort. Only, my heart wasn’t in it. Even less so when a meeting was arranged in America at which the story was pitched (thankfully not by me) to Jean Claude Van Damme. At which point I realised that I was participating in some kind of cheesefest that didn’t represent me in any way.

Since then, I’ve taken a different tack. It took a while to sort out exactly where it was taking me, but what matters is that I can honestly say every project I’ve been involved with since those days has been one I’m fully engaged with and committed to. Yes, I can turn round a competent and well executed story of various sorts - but for me, with my background in advertising, that’s really just a demonstration of copywriting skills. And I’d still be working in advertising if that’s all I aspired to.

Instead, I’m finding that I’ve regained the enthusiasm for writing I had in my early days, before I knew quite what I was doing. Some of the sample scripts on this site come from that period; the play Breaking In for instance. God only knows what the structure of that play is, but it’s not one you’d find recommended in any book on writing for theatre. But it doesn’t matter. It’s a story about two people in a relationship that seems to be doomed, but where there’s the hint of light if they can only stop for a moment and see what they’re doing to themselves and each other. Simple as that. And funny, too. The core is what matters, and that’s what I’ve realised anew in the range of stories I’ve been developing in recent years.

The seed for the stories I’m interested in can be all kinds of things. It can come from knowing drugs workers and being fascinated by how they keep going in the face of overwhelming odds. From wanting to tell a modern day fable with a talented illustrator. From finding an original way to tell what might otherwise be an imagination-free genre tale. Whatever it is, there’s got to be a kernel there, a challenge I’ve not taken on before that can inspire me to keep working, whatever else is happening. And if that challenge is there, and I can meet it, then I can honestly say I’m doing the best I can at writing what matters to me. And believe me, that feels a lot better than knowing your cage fighting yarn is being discussed by the Muscles from Brussels.

Once you’ve worked out the kind of stories a character tells about themselves, you’re a long way to working out what kind of person they are in practice. I’ve never been a big fan of the whole detailed biography approach to character creation where you know what they had for breakfast and what colour socks they wear. Too much information. But if you get a feel for the way they talk about themselves, the stories they share and roles they play in them, other stuff starts to fall into place.

Someone who plays martyr in their tales, and likes to be different without having the smarts to figure out an original way of doing so…it’s kind of easy to see them wearing a big old leather trenchcoat. Contrarily, a character who never realises the joke is on him…well, there’s something about putting them in a ‘comedy’ tie, and having their clothes chosen by their mother into their twenties and beyond. These things have a logic of their own: you might not agree with my choices, and that’s fine as long as you’ve got your own radar for such nuances.

Nuances are what it’s all about. The distinctions a character makes inform their place in the world, and what they are capable of doing to change it. Norris Cole of Coronation Street meticulously places everyone on a social scale that’s of utmost importance to him, while Phil Mitchell of Eastenders pays heed to social convention only when it doesn’t interfere with his personal goals.

When different worldviews meet, sparks can fly. Drama often reaches its climax points when characters who have been close are polarised by their attitudes and actions in a new situation. The trick then, is to know your characters well enough to find situations that will force them apart. Will they accept the new reality, or will it cause them to redefine their relationship?

Alan Moore’s Watchmen is full of fine stuff emerging from a profound understanding of the distinctions between his characters, ably illustrated by Dave Gibbons. All are superheroes, each has their unique take on what can and should be done about humanity, the distinctions between them leading to a monstrous plot hatched by one of their number in the name of the greater good. Other, more grounded characters, have their more human response to the grand scheme, but are so ‘normal’ in their perspectives that they are easily outfoxed by the mastermind. It’s brilliantly realised, and for all the structural excellence on display that takes it several cuts above any other work in the comics form from a technical viewpoint, the character work is what makes Watchmen tick. And it all starts with the stories they tell themselves, about the world and their place in it…

As ever with Darwyn, his work looks out of time. He’s fascinated by commercial art from the 1940s onwards, and that shows in his take on Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the other characters in this globe-spanning adventure. His style is deceptively simple, and relies on a minimalist approach. It means he’s got less to hide behind: every line has to count for something, whether it’s a just-so facial expression, perfectly formed experimental jet, or fierce dinosaur. Take any element away and the whole would fall apart - it’s pretty much the antithesis of detail-heavy art that the likes of Ethan Van Sciver specialise in, and gives it a lightness of touch that I find refreshing.

The same elegant approach applies to Cooke’s scripting. He writes well plotted tales with lean characterisation: the look of his heroes tells you as much about them as what comes out of their mouths, a synergy that’s best realised when the person writing is also doing the art.

The retro approach here isn’t a mindless indulgence in all things fifties. Cooke carefully incorporates social issues into the world he portrays in ways that were never addressed in the comics contemporary to the period the story is set in. No surprise, since comics were firmly seen as kids stuff then, but it’s interesting to see how an awareness of race, for instance, plays out in a story that is a homage to the roots of today’s comics.

Cooke’s mastery of page design marks him out as one of the medium’s sharpest creators. Most of the time he sticks to one illustrative style, but dips into other approaches - childrens’ book illustration for instance - where that serves the story best. And it always is what serves the story best: unlike some of Dave McKean’s experiments, the focus here is always on making the narrative as clear as possible.

What’s next for Darwyn Cooke? I just picked up a copy of western adventure Jonah Hex that he illustrated, which was great to look at but felt overwritten compared to the stories he writes himself. And it’s just been announced that he’ll be adapting the Richard Stark Parker crime novels in comic form for IDW: considering they include one that was brilliantly adapted for screen as Point Blank, I’m gagging to see what Cooke comes up with. He’s already shown his affinity for crime and period tales, so the combination should be sublime.

***

Anyway, that’s all for a few days. I’m off on holiday for a little while. Expect me back around Monday August 4. Enjoy…

Christopher Nolan’s first outing with Batman was largely successful, but the story became more of a generic action thriller towards the end. This time round, the story is firmly rooted in the psyches of two characters who are poles apart: Batman and The Joker. Batman lives in a world of absolutes, hoping that his example can help turn the tide of evil in Gotham, and seeing in legal crusader Harvey Dent a populist whose success within the justice system may allow Batman to hang up his cape.

That analysis only works if you believe Batman really is capable of relinquishing his identity though, and one person who’s sceptical about that is The Joker. A poster child for the post-Columbine generation, The Joker has chosen to embrace chaos as the best response to the world he’s been brought up in. Every time he gets the chance to talk about his past, a different ‘origin’ story emerges from his mouth, empty as the tales of suffering and rebirth on Oprah that he’s grown up watching. Never mind what people tell you they’re like: what interests The Joker is how they really are, and to that end he sets up a series of deadly scenarios around Gotham that test its citizens, its police, and its caped crusader. There’s no winning any of The Joker’s games: they’re pretty much guaranteed to cause death and destruction, the only distinction being exactly how the situations play out, and what that tells him about human nature.

This being Gotham, human nature tends towards the bleak. Even love is no guarantee of freeing yourself from the all-pervading corruption of the city, as the fate of Harvey Dent and his love Rachel - also involved in a triangle with Bruce Wayne, Batman’s alter ego - demonstrates. And if Venus will not win through, it’s left to the forces of warlike Mars and stern Jupiter to fight it out in the streets of the city.

And if all of that sounds epic and dark, you’d be right. This is cinema for adults who are willing to tackle big questions about ethics and morality. Sure, it also delivers astonishing action sequences, fabulous gadgets, and world class acting, but really this is a film that should leave you feeling uncomfortable by the time it finishes. If all you’re left with is adrenaline, then you got the booby prize basically.

All the actors deliver the goods, though I’m still not convinced by Christian Bale’s impossibly deep Batman voice, but towering above them all is Heath Ledger’s take on The Joker. Previously a part owned by Jack Nicholson, Ledger indelibly stamps his mark on the role in the same way that Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit trumped Led Zeppelin’s take on rock and roll: both classic performances, and each attuned to their times.

While Marvel’s slate of superhero films could have been made pretty much anywhen, the only contemporary aspect being the CGI, The Dark Knight is absolutely a product of its times in ways that run deeper than how the effects are done. One argument I’ve heard that’s pretty convincing is that this take on Batman is about how America sees itself in the world today: wanting both to be powerful and popular, turning to extreme measures in the face of its failure to deal with terrorism, wanting to continue to use democratic methods but increasingly subverting them when they’re inconvenient. There’s a lot to be said for that perspective, and getting that kind of mileage out of a superhero film is quite an achievement.

The first line of the old song ‘Misty’ goes ‘Look at me, I’m as helpless as a kitten up a tree’. Aah, sweet: we empathise with the singer’s vulnerability straight away. Substitute ‘kitten’ for the similarly syllabled and sounding ‘chicken’ and all of a sudden things are different. A chicken is just as helpless as a kitten is up a tree, but the empathy disappears. It’d be easy to say it’s because a chicken is a ludicrous creature, but let’s look a little deeper than that. Is it because a chicken is feathered and kind of reptilian in its movements, whereas a kitten is indisputably mammalian?

All this is towards making a point about what fits, and what doesn’t, and what kind of non-fitting thing you want to put into your screenplay when the time comes to break whatever pattern the audience is currently experiencing and present them with something unusual. Huh? Well, let’s say you have a thriller. The protagonist fearfully opens the curtains in her living room to discover…a sheep looking in at her. Unexpected alright, but not the kind of unexpected that works with a thriller. Whereas, if the curtains are pulled back and a man with a knife is seen outside, then all is well with the world.

In any screenplay, you’re seeking to strike a delicate balance between the expected and the unexpected. Veer to far off track and you lose the audience with what comes across as irrelevance. (Unless you make it your trademark and you become known as a surrealist: stand up The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.) But if your concerns are more narrative and linear, there’s only so far off the path you can stray without losing your audience.

So, how do you cement a surprise into your screenplay such that it will work on screen? Part of the answer is the inner logic of the story you’re telling. Donkey Punch features assault with a deadly weapon in the form of an outboard motor engine, but the story is set at sea, the absence of the engine has featured as a plot point, and it has been seen and thus foreshadowed.

Music and sound are your friend in situations like this too. If you create an auditory cue at one point, its reappearance will be associated with whatever was happening the first time it was heard. So, let’s say you have a string section stab just before a jack-in-the-box pops open. Later in the film, all you need to do is hear the same string stab to expect an equivalent surprise.

The degree of surprise you allow for in a film depends on the nature of the genre you’re working in. You probably won’t get far writing a romcom if the protagonists hate each other at the end as much as they did in the beginning, unless there was a love story in the middle. And so on. But finding ways to create surprise is one way to keep you as a writer on your toes. And face it, if you’re not engaged by what you’re writing, what hope has anyone else got?

Anyone who’s heard a sea shanty could tell our heroines that they’re unlikely to be due a pleasant time. And I had the misfortune to study the godawful poem Peter Grimes for A level English, which is all about what happens when a salty seadog takes a series of handsome young men off the shore and returns without them. The canon is against our heroines, basically, so it’s no surprise that what follows is nasty.

The fate that befalls the women is a very modern sort of nasty, which is no surprise since this film is made under the Warp X umbrella, one of eight low budget features they’re making in the wake of the modest success of their first experiment in film, the Shane Meadows feature Dead Man’s Shoes. The role models for Warp X include Oz shocker Wolf Creek, and to some extent this is an aquatic variation on the theme.

The film is a morality tale of sorts, though one that’s already upset the Daily Mail. Our plucky Leeds ladies are wooed onto the boat by public school smoothies, plied with drugs, and what follows has a sick inevitability about it. Young people being up for sex is all well and good, but there’s a twisted laddishness at work that leads to one of the women being killed as the result of one of the guys trying to live out an urban myth, the one referred to in the film’s title.

The thing with corpses is, it’s hard to stop at one when you’re on a roll. And what follows is a textbook example of plotting that maximises the potential for conflict between every pairing of characters on board. It’s understandable that there’s tension between the guys about what to do now that one of their number is a killer, but even the two remaining women are split by their different understandings and objectives.

There are no great surprises here other than the ones you’d expect of a well executed film of this sort. It’s pacy, well performed and edited, and has a strong score, as you’d hope from Warp, up till now known for their music rather than their films.

I hope this film does well commercially, and see no reason to think otherwise. It’s not very ambitious, but it succeeds in achieving its aims, and if the Warp X slate can do that across the board then maybe it’ll pave the way for more films in the future. And if some of them can be as adventurous as the Warp musical roster, which includes Aphex Twin and Battles, then I’d be very happy. As it is, the musical equivalent of Donkey Punch would be a compilation of indie anthems by laddish bands; a few good hooks but nothing truly distinctive.

The sheer scope of the film is staggering. It’s pretty much a creation myth, or at any rate a re-creation myth, although what’s in the foreground most of the time is a touching love story. Between two robots. In a cartoon. And believe me, it’s likely to be one of the most emotionally affecting films you see this year, as well as being a bravura demonstration of filmmaking. Oh, and it’s designed for an audience of 4 and up. Feel humble? You should.

I’m not going to say a great deal more about this film except that you owe it to yourself to experience it if you are at all interested in cinema as an artform. It’s one of the most completely realised visions I’ve seen, an elegaic tale of impossible love that begs the question of whether our species deserves to survive. It would be easy to call it pretentious, but it accomplishes its goals with a lightness of touch that’s breathtaking.

What comes across more than anything in Pixar’s movies is their lack of cynicism. And that’s a beautiful thing to see. When so many producers are second guessing the tolerance of audiences for gross out ‘comedies’ and torture porn, it’s refreshing to encounter an organisation thinking on an epic scale and coming up with such beautiful films for audiences just experiencing their first taste of what cinema has to offer.

It’d be amazing to see something of Pixar’s spirit in the low budget sector in the UK, but all too often I meet aspiring filmmakers who have jaded ideas and no real respect for their potential audience. Some time ago I went to the launch event of one prominent filmmaking initiative and what came across was, first, the unquestionable intelligence of the people behind it and, second, the decidedly questionable aims to which they planned to put that intelligence, creating films that first and foremost were about pulling in identifiable niche audiences. Never mind quality, get those bums onto cinema seats and then off to town to buy the DVD for the price of a pint or three.

Fortunately there are exceptions, and I’ve been lucky enough to meet people who want to make films that find audiences and make money and even have something to say in the process. And that, when it comes down to it, is one of the big differences between film and television: come out of a cinema and you can feel charged up with a sense of how the world could be. That matters, and if there’s one thing I’d like to see in the British film industry it’s more filmmakers with something to say, and no regard for whether that something is fashionable or not. Which in an industry of hustlers, opportunists, and schemers out for a deal, is not a vision that’s very tactical of me, but so be it.

That’s a lovely example of what happens when social changes crystallise around a particular group with economic freedoms but not the emotional experience they believe they’re due from family obligations. Societies change, in Japan and beyond, and some fascinating developments are outlined in the book Microtrends by Mark J. Penn with E. Kinney Zalesne.

The book is utterly fascinating, and if you’re at all interested in writing drama you can’t help but see the potential for stories to come out of the wealth of research that’s between its covers. Drama stems from conflict, and this book provides plenty of insight into the lifestyles that some of us are now leading. Cougars are a phenomenon I’d already heard of - successful career women in their 40s seeking younger playmates on their own terms - and this is the book that outlines the social and economic reasons for their existence. As I was reading the chapter on them, I realised that one key character in a story I’m working on could well be defined as a cougar, and the piece on them here usefully helped shape my thinking about who she is and what she does.

What about other subgroups though? Did you know that in America, more than 3.5 million couples are living apart much of the time thanks to having jobs far enough apart that the sensible thing is to maintain separate households? Think of the potential for stories that emerge straight from that fact. How do you keep a relationship alive when you’re spending so much time apart? Does absence make the heart grow fonder, or are evenings away a temptation to stray?

Further afield, 14% of marriages in South Korea were to foreigners in 2005, compared to 4% in 2000. A little poking around into that statistic, and you’ve got the makings of a film: you could feasibly have 2 marriages to foreigners within one family, and the upsets and surprises of being wedded to a European or American could provide plenty of story fodder.

A third of American cosmetic surgeons are dealing with requests to do work on both partners in couples, and the number of mother and daughter combos wanting assistance is increasing. And while Asia in general is anti plastic surgery, Korea has 1200 plastic surgeons, 300 more than California. Clearly something interesting is happening in Korea at the intersection of marrying foreigners and getting cosmetic surgery, and film is a good way to tell the story.

The above examples are just a few pulled out of a fascinating book. I’m all in favour of circulating widely to get experience of different social worlds, and Microtrends is a way of supporting that attitude with research breaking down trends around the globe into statistically significant social groups. If you’re at all interested in telling stories about the world we live in now, and the one that’s round the corner, I highly recommend that you pick up a copy of this book.

It’s the tale of an uptight academic widower, a specialist in international affairs, whose life is transformed when he encounters a Muslim couple. Were this a Tony Scott film, the transformation would be because they get him to swear allegiance to Allah after tying him up and dunking him in oil (politics, see?). But no, this is all about the slow alchemy that occurs when the academic is brought out of his shell by the erotic rhythms of a djembe drum.

The djembe is played by the male Syrian half of the Muslim couple, who are in America illegally as far as the authorities are concerned, and who turn up just at the moment you expect them to in the film. Which is one of its problems: I was a minute or five ahead of all of the film’s turning points, except the bit when a hovercraft full of liberal mavericks turned up to bust the Muslims out of their corporately owned detention centre. Turns out that was the ten minutes of the film I was asleep for, but damn if it wasn’t the most exciting part of the whole thing.

Actually, the corporately owned detention centre had cropped up before I nodded off, and it was one of the more effective aspects of the film. Sadly though, this is a film that has its heart in the right place, but thinks too small. An ageing academic is loosened up by his contact with a brown skinned percussionist, and the American government intervene to spare him the problem of having a houseguest outstay his welcome. That’s pretty much it. OK, at least we’re spared the big budget version of the story, where he quits his academic post and goes on the road with a Santana cover band populated by quirky seniors (The Bucket List meets School of Rock: I can see it happening, what with the lure of the grey dollar…). But it seriously would have helped the script (also written by McCarthy) for some more imagination and a sense of the epic to be brought into play.

What ultimately failed to convince me about The Visitor was its commitment to liberal politics instead of messy human realities. The academic is not attracted to the djembe player’s wife. The Muslim couple do not exploit his friendship. The academic’s field of study is international affairs, which far too neatly mirrors the film’s concerns. And so on. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the choices made, just that together they’re too obvious a selection. Result? A film that will only ever preach to the converted. Great for making white liberals feel better about themselves, and that they too might one day play drums with an exotic refugee, but in every other respect a film that consistently pulls short of really engaging your emotions because of the safety of the choices made at every step of the filmmaking process.

I like to see my attitude as part of a lineage which includes seminal creators such as Miles Davis and Brian Eno (and no, that doesn’t mean I believe I’m as ‘good as’ them).  Miles started off as a sideman in the bop era, before pretty much inventing cool jazz, and then reinventing himself a few other times.  He did so out of a desire to keep moving forward, not getting stuck in his or anyone else’s cliches.  As a result, it’s hard to hear the connections between, say, Kind Of Blue and On The Corner.  The former sounds accessible enough, a masterpiece of melodic group interplay.  The latter baffled people on its release, and only in recent years has it been reappraised in the light of its twin influences: experimental composer Stockhausen and funk maestro Sly Stone.  Personally, I love both disks, but even if you don’t it’s hard not to be impressed by Davis’s determination to keep his sound fresh.

Brian Eno takes that determination to experiment one step further with the Oblique Strategies cards he co-developed with Peter Schmidt.  They’re designed to keep the recording process alive when things get stale, giving gnomic instructions such as ‘What would your best friend do?’ and ‘Honour the error as a hidden intention’.  OK, maybe hard to imagine such processes being employed now that Eno is working with Coldplay, but listen further back to his solo albums or collaborations with Robert Fripp and David Byrne and you can hear a restless intelligence at work, navigating uncharted territories that would later be marked out as whole new genres of music.

What this has to do with writing is my conviction that writers should look in any and every possible direction when seeking inspiration and guidance.  Read Steven Pinker on language and thought.  Study Tarot for interesting ways to look at character and structure.  Pore over graphic novels for new possibilities in visual storytelling.  Talk to people outside of whatever social circles you usually move in to keep your antennae alert to difference.  Your job is to output writing, and its uniqueness will be determined by the range of your input.  There’s no shortage of writers out there who’ve studied with Robert McKee: how about instead soaking up all you can about hypnosis, anthropology, scuba diving, the tattoo business? 

I’ve not done a screenwriting MA and am perhaps stubbornly proud of the fact that whatever I’ve learned and accomplished I’ve done by doing it my way.  Perverse maybe, but it makes a difference.  OK, it’s taken me longer to make some connections than it otherwise would, but the particular path I’ve taken has been fascinating and absorbing, even on its darkest days, and I wouldn’t swap it for anything.  For me, perhaps the biggest lesson I’d pass on about writing is simply captured in the phrase ‘be where the difference is’.  By which I mean stay restless, tune in to what is most likely to take you off your own map and into the bit that reads ‘Here be dragons’.  History tells us that dragons are unlikely to have existed, but the pursuit of them - well, that’s a grand tale…