I have been asked to make a few changes to my Scrabble sit-com pilot script, "Absolutely Scrabulous", which is probably a good sign, as if they didn't like it then it's unlikely they would make me do more work on it. All the points made by the executives are (slightly unusually) pretty valid, and they were things I was planning to look at if and when the script got commissioned. Personally I don't think there's much point in putting loads and loads of effort into making the first draft of a script absolutely perfect, because once you have cast and rehearsed the thing you will have so many more ideas and so much more idea of how things should go, that it's actually a bit pointless to put the work in early. Of course it needs to be good enough to show the potential of the series and of the characters within it, but I like to do most of the work once I have some actors. If you go to the downloads section you can trace the various drafts of "You Can Choose Your Friends" and see how much that changed - though in that case the first draft is so poor that I am amazed I was asked to do a second.
I think the first draft of the current sitcom was pretty good. There was stuff in there that I knew wouldn't be in episode 1, but which I put in anyway to show how things would develop (they asked me to take this out - they are correct). Also the opening scene was way too long, but I knew this and would prefer to cut it down in rehearsal, but have cut it down in any case (there's nothing to stop me rehearsing the longer version if we get the commission).
The biggest task though, and the only thing that I don't one hundred per cent agree on, is that they feel there are too many characters. I like to have lots of characters in the things I write and I think I am pretty good at both giving everyone enough to do and establishing them fast enough and with enough detail to accommodate the number. And if you look at something like "Gavin and Stacey", that has a lot of main characters (none of whom are the absolute focus of the show) and yet the audience still seem to be able to cope.
However, even when I was writing the first draft I was aware that I wasn't necessarily getting quite enough out of all my characters and there was one who I wondered wasn't a bit of a halfway house between two of the others. But I left him in because I liked him and thought he had potential.
Looking at it again though I think it would probably be better if he wasn't in there and if I used the space he filled up to more fully explore the two characters he crossed over with a bit.
It's the right thing to do and will make the execs happy and increase the chances of the script being made, but still it felt a little discombobulating.
As I erased him from the script I felt a little bit like I was murdering him in a Stalinistic purge. I had created him, but before he had had a chance to live I was deciding that he would be wiped out. It felt harsh and unfair even though mainly it was only a murder on the fictional plane and no-one was getting hurt, but in a sense I was wiping out a part that an actor would one day have played, so it was erasing something from the real world as well. In the Marty McFly press shot photo of the cast, someone (probably Robert Daws who I was envisaging in the part as I wrote it) was going translucent.
I suppose it's not even fictional murder because the character only lived on the page and in my mind - it isn't like deciding to expunge a character from a show that already exists. This was just the foetus of the character and so it was nothing more than a fictional abortion, something I am not opposed to in the real world, though when the foetus was created by me, it suddenly did seem unsettling.
Anyway, he's going. For now. From the pilot episode. And it's the right thing to do. And there's no reason why he couldn't appear later in the series. In fact I think that might be altogether better. To make him an outsider from the group, rather than one of its members, so he's more like the Warden in Dad's Army.
Whatever the case I know that how ever much work I do on this now, it will nearly all prove irrelevant as it won't be until the thing is happening that my brain really snaps into focus and once I have spent a month or so thinking about nothing else and working with the actors on it and really weighing up the possibilities will I be anywhere near a final draft.
Fingers crossed that the second draft will be good enough to allow the final draft to happen. If not the whole thing becomes a suicide note for the entire cast of characters. None of them may ever exist in a three dimensional state and perhaps it will be the final revenge of "Simon" to take everyone with him.
I wouldn't blame him. He has been created by a murderer and vengeance should be his.
And just a reminder that if you want to get your name in the "Headmaster's Son" programme (sadly no venue was found for Christ on a Bike, but I will either do it next year, or maybe work it up in London later on and at least get the DVD done), please donate at least £12.50 at
my Just Giving Page. All the money goes to SCOPE and you get the kudos of having your name seen by thousands of people, plus get a limited edition copy of the programme mailed to you and the chance to win some cool prizes.
Thanks so much to those of you who have already donated - we're a third of our way to the target. But be great if we could get more. Much more. So do donate. And remember whoever gives the most will win the T shirt I wore in the last tour.
Do remember to email me your address though
Due to either email problems, computer crashes or your own incompetence I have not had the addresses of the following -
Smilerbull
Jessie Simmons
Pete (who did not donate enough to qualify anyway)
Rachel Ripley
Denise
Simon Martin
Mark Barratt
Graeme MacLennan
Stephen Kent-Taylor
Daniel Brownsill
Nigel Robinson
Monastico
Sarah Grocott
Loretta Riordan
Richard Caine
Renata Jones
David and Sarah Pashley
Nick Bradbury
Chris Hambling
Caroline Rayfield
Barry Shapiro
I know many of you have sent your address in the past, but I need you to send it again. Please email me at herring1967@googlemail.com
I will acknowledge receipt of your email and if I don't do so in five days then please leave a message in my guestbook and I will give out a different email address, as I suspect this is my fault. Thanks very much.
