5630/18650
Hooray, managed to hide myself away for most of the day and got draft 1 of script 2 of Relativity finished. As always it’s just application of bum to seat that made it happen, and once I stopped procrastinating I just let the characters get on with it and quickly found the right words and scenarios to get to the end. The hardest thing is balancing the funny and the serious in this series. It’s ended up covering some big family topics, like birth, death and marriage and more, but I want to keep the laughs coming (whilst hopefully make people cry a little bit), whilst also exploring the weird way that families operate and the characters we all play to keep it running smoothly and what happens when huge spanners fly into the works. I think it’s going to be good, but who knows really? I am glad I have enough time to do it justice now and it’s worth getting this right and spending the time on it. Being halfway through the first draft scripts feels a lot less terrifying than being a quarter of the way through. Will the last two be easier? No. No they won’t. But I feel confident that I will get there.
Sadly nothing I will ever write will be as funny as a Q and A interview with a footballer that @charlieconnelly tweeted today. I saw it after I’d come home from a gig. I didn’t know the footballer concerned, but having done questionnaires myself I can appreciate how he was feeling, but there’s so much to unpack in this wonderful and stupidly long interview with Derek Hales that it kept me laughing until I was crying for the next hour. Every time I reread it I would find something new or consider the scenario of this interview in a different way. The laughter hurt making this exquisite pleasure and pain. I felt like I could laugh until I literally died or that I might never stop laughing.
I don’t really need to explain why it’s funny - you can just read it for yourself, but there are things that make it so much more than a monosyllabic, negative and bored response to a load of stock questions.
Firstly how was this done - because we’re so used to the internet you almost instinctively see him replying to this by email, but it was printed in 1979 so unless this was done by post then the interviewer was either sitting opposite Derek or they did this on the phone. I just hope the interview was face to face and he looked the interviewer right in the eye as he said “tolerating boring peopleâ€. And the the interviewer gave a sardonic laugh at the fucking cheek of this.
And maybe Derek felt bad about his rudeness, because he has a proper go at answering the next few. Until he gets irritated by the cinema question for some reason.
Indeed this Q and A would be amusing but not hilarious if Derek had no opinion on anything. But the thing is that he does make an effort on some questions, which somehow makes his weird answers all the more surreal. Why does he want to be so specific about the kind of shooting he enjoys? What the Hell is “meat pudding� Does he really eat scrambled eggs before every game or is he taking the piss?†Similarly is Tom and Jerry a genuine or facetious answer? He doesn’t come across as a man who would be interested in the antics of a cartoon cat and mouse and yet his answers about his won and his family being his best friend (true for so many men, I am sure, but not something that many would have the bravery to admit to - being seen as a top, social bloke is so important to many and yet the truth is that many of us are terrible at that sort of thing), shows a genuine soft side to him.
How was he treated unfairly? Why is he so callous as to not be prepared to even name a young player to look out for and what resentments lead him to give the advice that football is not all honey?
Why did the interviewer include all the answers in the questionnaire? Did he/she appreciate how funny this was or was he/she just a slave to the format and the space that meant he/she couldn’t break away from it? Presuming he was talking to Derek, did the interviewer attempt to squeeze out answers with a bit more commitment - I mean sure Derek, you have enjoyed all your goals, but there must be one that stands out as being technically better or more meaningful than the others: "No, none. Put noneâ€- or did he/she just want to get the job done. They were actually both as noncommittal as each other.
I admire the artistic bravery in replying to these sometimes fatuous questions in such a bored fashion. It’s honest and makes his proper answers all the more revealing. Some people called for it to be made into a sketch. I feel it’s almost an entire play.
Because I found out a bit about Derek Hales subsequently and it turns out that he had lost a testicle. Was that the groin injury which he refers to? No wonder he clammed up and no wonder he was so pleased to have a son. No wonder the game is not all honey. Not if you can lose a ball doing it.
Everything about this is hilarious, beautiful and brutal - even in the off centre photo Hales looks like he doesn’t want to be doing this. He just wants to be playing football for the rest of this life, keeping fit, shooting wild fowl, attempting to be happy.
I fucking love this man. I will never do anything as funny as this.
