You can read the piece here. And if you're coming here after reading the piece, looking for the full lowdown on the book, then hello! Please click here for those details.
Showing posts with label interviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label interviews. Show all posts
Spectator Piece On My 'How To Interview' Book
You can read the piece here. And if you're coming here after reading the piece, looking for the full lowdown on the book, then hello! Please click here for those details.
Flush The Fashion Interview
Hello! Stormhouse plays the Film4 FrightFest tonight. Very exciting indeed. I'll let you know how it goes.
Fine site Flush The Fashion interviewed me this week, about the film and indeed my whole career, including the rock journalism in the 80s and 90s. You can read it here.
Fine site Flush The Fashion interviewed me this week, about the film and indeed my whole career, including the rock journalism in the 80s and 90s. You can read it here.
E-Book Is Go!
My first ever e-book, How To Interview Doctor Who, Ozzy Osbourne And Everyone Else, is available now, via Amazon as a Kindle Edition or direct from me as a shiny PDF.
While my focus these days is very much on fiction and scriptwriting, I thought it might be a good idea to make use of the experience I built up over two decades as a journo-scribe.
If you'd like to know more about interviewing people or are just interested in the topic then you can, by all means, read the full blurb here on my How To Be A Journalist site. Good day to you!
Big Finish Day 2011 & Steven Moffat Interview
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| Peter Anghelides, signing way more than me, yesterday |
Had a good time at Big Finish Day yesterday. The event happened at Barking's Abbey School and was a right old hoot for fans of the company's increasingly varied output. There were various panels, podcast-recordings and signings. Good lord, people even wanted my autograph, without me having to pay them money to come up to my table and pretend to know stuff that I'd written. I signed a fair few sleeves of Big Finish's Doctor Who: The Demons Of Red Lodge & Other Stories, to which I contributed the title-story. It was also nice to be presented with a few other items for which I'd written, like BBC audiobooks Doctor Who: The Gemini Contagion (craving more Matt Smith-era Who before the series resumes in the Autumn? Buy it, damn you!) and The Sarah Jane Adventures: Deadly Download.
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| That lovely card! |
It was also great to catch up with various friends and meet a few new ones. I got to meet Who novelist Una McCormack, Full Circle scripter Andrew Smith and Scott Andrews for the first time, for instance. Lovely. A really fun day, and I was glad to hear there are plans for it to happen again next year.
While I've got you: since this is a Doctor Who-related post, you might be interested to learn that I've added an in-depth Steven Moffat interview to this very site. It's the online debut of an epic feature I wrote for Doctor Who Magazine in 2008, in which Lord Moffat reveals a great deal about his approach to writing, the love-hate madness of it and the psychology behind the whole creative thing. You can find it here, after you've scrolled down past my Doctor Who CV. Enjoy!
Kevin Bishop Talks Sketch-Writing
A few weeks back, I visited Channel 4 to interview Kevin Bishop for heat magazine. The occasion? The second series of his ticklesome sketch-fest The Kevin Bishop Show, which will soon hit our televisual screens. Perhaps contrary to the impression you might have formed of the man, thanks to the often vicious nature of his show, or his riotously boozy behaviour at last year's British Comedy Awards, he came across as a perfectly likeable guy. Loud, confident and a right old laugh. Furthermore, the clips I saw of the new run - with new characters including a hilarious 'Hugh Laurie' as Doctor House, constantly slipping out of his American accent into 'What-ho!' English - were very funny indeed.The heat interview is in the latest issue of the magazine, out right now. What follows, though, are some exclusive excerpts from our chat, which touched upon the business and the mechanics of comedy, and sketch-writing in particular. Enjoy.
Your show’s even faster than The Fast Show, isn’t it?
“We actually delivered more sketches this year, and had a fantastic writing period before filming. We write the whole show in around six or seven weeks. It’s mental. Literally no sleep!”
Are your sketches literally not allowed to last for more than one minute?
“It’s not the rule – I think we might have one or two which are two minutes long. But we have to be brutally honest with each other – when performers have too much control over their own vehicles, they can be a little bit self-indulgent and drag their performacnes out. If you watch a sketch show, you might think, ‘Wow, that’s a really good performance from that actor and it’s really funny… but it goes on for three minutes’. Then they tell that same joke six times in a series. It goes from something which was brilliant, to slightly irritating and a bit boring. So we didn’t want to get into that. If it was left to me, like most actors I’d probably go, ‘Fucking hell! This is gold! I’m really good in this! Let’s make it four minutes long’. That’s why you need a good producer to sit there and go, ‘It’s finished. Move on’. That’s why I had very little to do with the edit, because we’d probably argue.”
Is comedy a riskier business to try your luck at, than drama? “Much riskier, in this country - because people actually get offended if you don’t make them laugh! You can get killed for that. I was talking to Eddie Izzard the other day, who asked me why I don’t do stand-up. And it’s because I couldn’t bear someone telling me to fuck off while I was onstage. I’ll do theatre, where people will applaud while turning to their partner and murmuring, ‘That was shit’, but they won’t shout, ‘Fuck off – you’re shit!’. That’ll never happen to you in theatre… hopefully! Stand-ups are so tough. They’re robust. I’m quite envious of a lot of stand-ups and their bravery. But to be a good stand-up, you need to go out there and bare your soul. As an actor, I’m not comfortable with that. The minute you tell people who you are, the parameters of what you can achieve become narrowed. If they know who you are, the game’s up.”
What makes a perfect sketch? Are there any absolutes?
“Well, the good thing about sketch stuff, is that it can be anything. I remember having this argument with a TV executive. We’d written some sketches that we thought were great, and he said, ‘It doesn’t fit the rest of the show’. And my argument was: how can a sketch not fit in a sketch show? It doesn’t matter what it is: a sketch can be anything. That’s why we did The Kevin Bishop Show. I did a sketch show, years ago, called Spoons, which was a Channel 4 show about relationships. You do a series and suddenly go, ‘Where are we gonna take the next one? All the sketches have got to be about relationships’. So with our show, we chose television – and there are areas of television that we haven’t even touched. National Geographic, Babestation, MTV… we could go into some areas. The ideal sketch can be anything that’s funny… but quick. I do think that. If you watch old Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sketches, or the Dead Parrot sketch in Monty Python… the parrot sketch is an epic. It goes for, like, 10 minutes. It’s still funny and they pull it off – but nowadays, I think it has to be ‘Idea, joke, it’s funny, okay, now move on’. That’s it.”
Does a sketch have to be about one thing?
“Yeah. With sketch shows, you need to keep people’s short attention span. Increasingly, especially younger audiences, are becoming less focused. The Fast Show had long sketches involving Ted and Ralph, which would go on and on, but there was something so great about it. Those characters were so complex that they drew you in. It was like watching a film, which is fine. But in our show, we’ve got to shoot 10 sketches in a day. You have to get in there, hit the note and get out.”
Is ending a sketch the hardest part?
“Yeah, you’ve got to have a good ‘out’, or there’s absolutely no point in doing a sketch. Every now and again, one of those little sketches will pop up, and you go, ‘Where’s the out on this fucking sketch? It’s rubbish’. You’ve got to have some sort of pay-off at the end, otherwise it’s irritating when this thing you’ve just watched for two minutes just… ends, and that’s it. The characer stuff isn’t so bad, because it’s the character that’s funny throughout. Whereas if you’re telling a joke throughout and you don’t have a punchline, it’s totally pointless.”
Your show is an interesting mix of the topical and the random. A deliberate policy?
“Topicality’s not my department, see - that’s all down to Lee [Hupfield, producer and co-writer]. I’ll happily come up with characters all the time. I’ll sit in a room with writers and do some impressions of people I know, and we’ll come up with a character. Whereas Lee will want to do a sketch on Christian Bale, after the incident in the hotel with his mum and his sister. Like, if we were filming this now [a week after Michael Jackson’s death], we’d be doing a Michael Jackson sketch today. That’s the way that Lee works – it has to be of the minute, right now. It’s a good and bad thing – there isn’t any comedy quite like this, but the bad thing is that you might watch in three years’ time and go, ‘Jesus!’. It dates very, very quickly, which we’re aware of.”
Perhaps unusually for a sketch-show performer, you enjoy treading theatrical boards. How’d you enjoy being in Fat Pig, before Christmas?“It was absolutely brilliant, like a gift. I’d just finished my show and Star Stories, then got married and been on my honeymoon. It was great to be offered the play, and I took Kris Marshall’s role. Such a funny play. [Playwright] Neil LaBute has become a good friend now. I love doing theatre. That’s where I started years ago, then you get swept away doing stuff. In England, people are very keen to pigeon-hole you, so that they can say ‘He does that’. But I’ve always enjoyed playing a whole range of different characters...”
Is there such a thing as going too far with humour?
“I think you can go too far, when something ceases to be funny. All the time it’s funny, right or wrong, it’s still serving a purpose. We’re not out to offend, but… when you go and see a stand-up comic, there’s nothing less funny than knowing what they’re going to say. Laughter tends to happen when an audience are slightly nervous, in anticipation of what you’re gonna say. But there have been a couple of things we’ve done this year, where we’ve looked at each other and asked if it was too much. Then we just decide to let Channel 4 decide!”
Have Channel 4 vetoed much, then?
“I can only speak about last year, because they actually won’t
The Kevin Bishop Show returns to Channel 4 on Friday, July 31.
Christopher H Bidmead...
... was Doctor Who's script editor between 1980 and 1981, handling the final year of Tom Baker's tenure. Don't worry - he's still alive. It's just that I've interviewed him for the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine, hot on the shelves today.I haven't written for Doctor Who Magazine in the last nine months or thereabouts, because of the need to concentrate on establishing my screenwriting career. Which is a shame, because I love DWM work. So it was a real delight to be able to accept the Bidmead assignment. Season 18, which he presided over, was a really unique gem, and I knew in advance that he was an interesting, outspoken character. Still, the interview he gave surpassed even my expectations. He's a man patently unafraid to offer his straight opinion on any era of Who, including Russell T Davies'. I absolutely loved visiting his home in North London and having a right old healthy debate with this fascinating man who helped shape my childhood Who experience. Didn't agree with half of the stuff he said, but that was part of the fun, because he didn't mind me telling him so.
If people are ever interested in my journalistic endeavours, they'll generally ask for my favourite interviewees - so it's nice to have a recent job to add to the list. Hooray! The DWM feature also includes a comic strip which Bidmead himself designed, featuring the two of us. Yes, I know. Utterly mental.
Naturally, there's loads of fine stuff elsewhere in the issue, including a set report from the imminent Easter Special Planet Of The Dead (screening on BBC One on April 11), an interview with POTD's guest star Michelle Ryan, a review of the latest Attack Of The Cybermen DVD, a Fact Of Fiction feature on Castrovalva (a 1981 story written by Bidmead, funnily enough), and the chance to win a pile of Who DVD boxsets. Get in!
PS Two Splendid sketches were filmed on Tuesday by the unstoppable Dan Turner, Johnny Caution and crew. Two of the blighters, if you please! One written by me, the other by Sarah Morgan. Tremendous.
PPS Went for a drink with TV's James Moran, on that very same night. Here's a little-known fact for Moran fans: when he's out drinking of an evening, he wears a rather tall top-hat (about four-feet from brim to peak). Every once in a while, he takes it off, inverts it and vomits into it, in order to make room for more booze. I've literally never seen the like in all my born days.
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And check out my:
Peep Show Writers: Exclusive Interview
Archival note: this interview took place in 2008, but has dated pretty well, due to mainly focusing on the duo's early writing years.
You do know that I love you, right? Like the brother/sister I never had? Well, in case you were in any doubt, I’d like to treat you to an epic, utterly exclusive interview with Jesse Armstrong (on the left, in the picture) and Sam Bain, the creators and writers of Channel 4’s painfully funny sitcom Peep Show.
I recently interviewed the duo in a Clapham boozer, ostensibly for a forthcoming feature in The Word magazine. They’re a friendly, self-deprecating pair, as dryly funny as you’d expect – and like any self-respecting writers, were delighted when I bought them lunch. While The Word’s feature focuses on the story of how Peep Show came to be, and how it works as an entity, I naturally couldn’t resist asking them all kinds of things which would be primarily of interest to writers and would never make the article. I was thinking of you, dear reader. And, clearly, myself.
Sam and Jesse in the early 90s, while on a university writing course in Manchester. After producing various short stories, they spent a while doing their own thing – novels, short films. They finally got together to collaborate on a script in about 1996, and did a few. 1998 saw them start writing professionally, working on various shows until Peep Show finally convinced the world of their genius in 2003.
So when you started work on Peep Show, did it feel like the classic last roll of the dice? A now-or-never type deal?
Sam: In retrospect, that would’ve been quite pathetic, because it was quite early in our careers! But we definitely felt like we’ve been through the mill a bit. We’d done Days Like These, that big ITV show, which really flopped big-time. So that was quite interesting to be around.
Jesse: Then we did another flop – Ed Stone Is Dead, which starred Richard Blackwood as a man who’d died, then come back to life.
Sam: We were part of a large writing team, but it turned out to be another big failure that we were involved with. After those big projects, it was a bit of a fallow time. I mean, we were always doing okay - we would write links for The Big Breakfast…
Jesse: And a lot of sitcoms, which was good training.
Sam: We know a lot of writers who have real talent, but haven’t had their own original sitcom. And that’s just because they haven’t had the confluence of the right people, the right commissioners, the right production company. It’s a real piece of luck when you can get everything to work, and it all comes together.
Bedsitcom is one of the entries on your pre-Peep Show CV…
Jesse: There are a number of people who have been really important to our careers. Andrew O’Connor was a producer who went on produce Peep Show. But before that, he developed a couple of projects with us, and believed in us when we were at our lowest ebb. That’s when you need the money and the support. Bedsitcom was one of the shows we helped him out with.
And how was working on Smack The Pony?
Jesse: That was one of the ‘jobbing writer’ things we did before Peep Show. I don’t think we ever thought we were particularly good at writing sketches, but it was our first experience of telling people in a pub about a show you’d written for and they’d go, “Oh! I’ve seen that”. So that was quite a nice feeling – to work on a quality show. We’d worked with lots of good performers, but Smack The Pony’s were at the cool end of comedy, rather than the… less cool end.
You knew Peep Show stars David Mitchell and Robert Webb before Peep Show, right? How did that come about? Jesse: We were all part of a writing team experiment at the BBC. We liked them a lot and we had a show which we wanted to write for them. The four of us wrote episodes for the BBC with Gareth Edwards. It was a really good show – a bit like Peep Show, in the sense that two guys shared a flat, and they were a bit like Mark and Jez. There was also a Super Hans figure! It was a helpful process to develop a show like that – we got a sense of Robert and David’s voices, and spend a lot of time collaborating with them. They’ve really got their DNA into Peep Show, because we’ve got similar comic sensibilities. Not always, though – they write amazing sketches that we could never come up with. There’s just a big common ground of comedy stuff that we know from that period – what works for them and what makes them laugh. Not only how they speak, but good comic things that they appreciate. It was an incredibly important and fertile period for us. There are plots and idea and vibes that we still go back to now and plunder.
Did you cannibalise any of it for Peep Show?
Jesse: We did, actually. The Peep Show episode where Mark’s sitting on the toilet at the end is a more developed version of something we originally wrote for that show.
What are the main benefits of writing as a duo?
Sam: With comedy, if the other writer is laughing, you know you’re onto something. It’d be so hard otherwise. You get constant feedback.
Jesse: It’s a morale thing, because it’s quite tough when you’re starting out. It’s good to have someone to talk to and laugh with, about the constant disappointments! With two people, as well, if one of you isn’t having a great day, you can still keep going. It probably triples your output, at least, because you’ve always got double the ideas and can work things out together. As long as you’ve got the same work ethic and sense of humour, it’s gold.
So how does your writing system work? Is one of you the typer, while the other one paces around?Sam: For the actual writing, we use the same method as Richard Curtis and Ben Elton used on Blackadder. We write separately, then cross-edit. But when we are breaking plots, one of us will write stuff down. Often Jesse, because he types faster.
Jesse: I do have a good typing speed. I think that was one of the things Sam originally liked about me. He thought, “This guy can really type!”.
What’s your estimated words-per-minute speed, Jesse?
Jesse: Wellll… it’s not amazing. I’d say 45 words, tops. But on a good day, I go like the wind!
So does one of you ever say, “Hold on a minute, why did you rewrite my scene involving the goose-heads in a bag? That was hilarious, you bastard!”.
Jesse: That’s what collaboration is. We have three of those moments, per page! Co-writing works because you’ve found a way of negotiating difference of opinion. Of course, it’s not always three moments per page. Sometimes I’ll send a scene to Sam and he’ll completely re-write it and I’ll be very pleased because I know it wasn’t totally working. Equally, sometimes you might think, “Hold on, I thought that
You must have a pretty good shorthand with each other by now.
Sam: Or, in our case, “shit” or “acceptable”.
If you ever reach a complete stalemate, does the readthrough ever become the decider?Sam: Yeah, actually, sometimes you do that and see what happens.
Jesse: Often, like a lot of writers, we overwrite. It becomes a difficult decision, as to what to cut and what to leave in. That can often be the most painful part of the process. Up until that point, everything’s like, “Well, give it a go, try it that way – we can always put it back”. But as you move towards that final script, you know that if a joke goes, no-one’s ever gonna see or hear it. That’s why the readthrough is really great, because you know when something’s working or not, and that’s illuminating.
There’s bonus behind-the-scenes readthrough footage on the Peep Show Series Five DVD, which makes it look like you’re all having a right old hoot.Sam: We only film the laughter, of course! Not the uncomfortable, painful silences.
Jesse: It probably looks pretty self-congratulatory, because we all like each other in the room! And our director Becky Martin is a good laugher. It’s important to hear people laughing when that material’s first done.
Sam: The readthrough is make-or-break for us. If a script dies, you have to start again. It happens.
Does the readthrough freeze your guts with terror?
Sam: It’s scary and exciting. We often end up heavily rewriting at least one episode after the first readthrough. Last series, we did major surgery on a couple. We expect that, so it’s not a huge surprise. Obviously it’s disappointing because you want it all to be perfect, but it never is.
Jesse: What often happens is that the episode you thought was great ends up lagging behind and becomes the runt of the litter. You’re like, “Shit! I thought that episode was great, but now it seems to be crap!”.
Did Peep Show’s POV concept go through Channel 4 quite smoothly? Or did someone go, “Christ, I don’t know about that?”
Beyond Peep Show’s neat camera-POV gimmick, it’s Mark and Jez’s internal monologues which really make the show work and make it special. It’s a different approach to the comedy of recognition - revealing people’s lowdown, dirty thoughts, which we might often be ashamed to admit we share. Are human beings that rubbish, or is it an exaggeration?
Jesse: It is an exaggeration…
Sam: We all think reprehensible thoughts. I certainly do, as much as possible.
Jesse: We could have people thinking nice, kind thoughts, and it might be a more accurate picture of the average person. But it really wouldn’t be as funny.
How did you feel when the first episode of Peep Show went out?Sam: And we would’ve been saying, “Yeah, we still know them. They’re still nice to us!”.
Jesse: Sean Lock had a show on at the same time as ours. We thought it was a great show, but it never really ‘arrived’. Our show could’ve so easily been like that.
Sam: Our show is quite small. But after five series, you feel like you have some little place in the culture. You feel as though everyone who might like Peep Show has had a chance to watch it.
I’ve hardly ever met anyone who doesn’t like Peep Show.
The character Jeremy is hilariously selfish. Was it ever a concern, though, that he might become too unlikeable?
Any other learning curve realisations, after the first series?
The media’s partyline on Peep Show is that it has fairly poor viewing figures, but does well on DVD. How true is that?
Sam: It doesn’t really bother us that much. The show keeps being commissioned, we get good reviews. We’re not too worried about beating Jonathan Ross. It’s a good position for us to be in.
Jesse: Channel 4 has been pretty good for us over the years. It would be nice to give the people that we deal with there, like [Channel 4’s head of entertainment and comedy] Andrew Newman, a birthday present in terms of a massive viewing spike. But on a creative level, the main thing is to have the respect of people who I respect. People who I like, like the show.Sam: We’ve been very supported by Channel 4. They’ve never said, “You’ve got to buck your ideas up or we’ll cancel!”. The only thing they ever did was suggest we put a sexy girl in the second series – which turned out to be the American character, Nancy. But that wasn’t even exactly about changing everything: it was about maybe getting a few more viewers.
Jesse: Luckily, we’d had the sexy girl idea anyway.
Mitchell and Webb are credited with additional material on the show. How does that work?Jesse: Before each series, we have a “plot party” at one of our houses. We tell them things we’ve been thinking about, and they tell us what they think of storylines. They offer up ideas and maybe things develop out of that. At the other end of the process, we’ll often send them a script that we’re not happy with and they’ll suggest lines. It’s nice for us to have input from their very good comedy brains and to know they’re available.
I noticed that one episode in Series Five was written by Simon Blackwell – a different writer, for the first time…
Jesse: It wasn’t mentioned in the Radio Times, which was unfortunate, because Simon’s brilliant. It was something we’d been toying with for a while, wondering if Peep Show was too personal. But he did such a brilliant job. We storylined the episode with him, so we still felt involved! Most people wouldn’t have noticed a difference, good or bad. It was such a shame he didn’t get credited more widely.
So how did that come about? Was it a time thing?
Jesse: We’re very collaborative – there’s always been a big committee around. We like having a lot of comedy brains around, so it wasn’t really such a big deal, having someone else come in and go that extra step. Although it actually
It must have been nice, when Series Five was commissioned while Series Four was airing.
Sam: Did we?
Jesse: Oh, didn’t I tell you?
Series Five’s final episode was quite brave territory, I thought, in the sense that Jez joins a cult which could be interpreted as a Scientology affair.
Jesse: Well, we’re both in a cult. So that was handy.
Sam: People have asked if it was all about Scientology, and we thought about doing that. But we didn’t know enough about the subject to do a specific satire of Scientology. It’s just about that world where people go into these places and feel a little wobbled and changed. It felt like a good area to do – especially with Jeremy. I did a ‘personality test’ about ten years ago, while researching a script. It was an emotional experience, which was the jumping-off point for the story. I went in there, not really knowing what I was dealing with, and leaving feeling quite emotionally raw. You go in there, thinking you’re going to patronize these idiots. Then you come out thinking, ‘Maybe my life is all a failure. Maybe I should call my mother and apologise. Oh my God, I need a drink!’. The most interesting scenes, for us, were when Jez was going in and coming out. We only did one scene where he was fully fledged.
How would you sum up your experiences in writing the film Magicians, which also starred Mitchell and Webb, but sadly didn’t do especially well at the cinema box office?Jesse: It was fascinating and Andrew O’Connor directed it, so it was nice to hang around him and David and Robert. It’s hard, getting a film to sustain over 90 minutes. The thing we always think about sitcoms is: if you get a tone that works, most other things will follow from that. Most shows fail, and a lot of them don’t have a certain tone. With film, you don’t get much of a chance to finesse your tone.
Sam: There are no pilots for films.
Jesse: Yeah, you get one shot. We like a lot of things about Magicians, but you need a lot of time to make something really good. We feel like it’s a piece of work that we’re not unhappy that we did. We’re glad we did it and it’s a good film in many ways, but we did learn a lot from doing it. God, I sound like a politician! But it was hard: there were bruising reviews for it, and that was quite tough. A lot of that came from being a well-loved TV show – and because it had David and Robert in it, comparisons were naturally made.
Sam: Everybody mentioned Peep Show. The irony was, we got the film made because of Peep Show, but it was never anything like Peep Show. So everyone was disappointed. That’s a very difficult thing to overcome.
Jesse: It’s one of those films which didn’t take off, but it doesn’t mean we don’t want to do more. We definitely intend to write more films. Just because one film doesn’t take off, doesn’t mean you can’t do the next one. We’re doing rewrites for American films at the moment.
When Magicians was released last year, there seemed to be a mini-wave of magic-centric flicks, with The Prestige and The Illusionist.
How does Peep Show fit into the TV comedy landscape?
Sam: Gavin & Stacey might be that breakthrough show. It feels like it could do that. It’s not in-your-face like Nighty Night, which ripped your head off and shoved it up your arse. It’s more characters and relationships, which works very well.
Can you see Peep Show mellowing any time soon?
Browse Peep Show delights at Amazon UK
And check out my:
Steven Moffat On Writing
Thanks to Steven for giving me the go-ahead to run these previously unpublished extracts from an interview I did with him for Doctor Who Magazine.
On whether he still writes script outlines:
“No, I never ever do. I’ve always stuck to this theory, apart from one occasion when I was very tired: you never write a storyline and you certainly never submit one. Or at least, I haven’t had to for years and I rebel if asked! You write the script, and you write it in order. Because if you ever find yourself in a situation where... (thinks for a moment) You want each scene to justify itself and be good at the time. The ride has to be good at every point. You can’t be justifying things because they’ll be interesting later. If that makes sense! You could have the best idea in the world for the second half of the episode, but if the first half of the episode doesn’t have an interesting way of getting there, you’re screwed. So if you write everything in order, you know that it’s good.
“It's probably worth adding that lots of brilliant writers, much more brlliant than me, do outlines, and swear by them. I think - I'm a bit hazy - that Paul Abbott is one of them, and he's the very best. Everyone's different, and the 'no outlines' things is just personal preference. Also on a show like Who, some amount of outlining is inevitable. I'm outlining series 5 right now, after all. And okay, Russell let get me away with it, but the truth is, the absolute truth, he was just avoiding spoilers! He was the only Who fan in the country who knew everything that was coming, and he wanted the odd surprise! Ah well.”
On whether he still has to pitch to executive types:
“I did pitch Jekyll to a degree, because people wanted me to. But I was pretty confident. The reason I don’t pitch is not because I’m not any good at it. Honestly, I could pitch my laundry list and people would buy it – and they’d be wrong to, because it’s my bloody laundry list and it would be rubbish. My problem is, I’m so good at persuading people that I will successfully short-circuit people’s judgement and get them to give in. And I don’t really want them to – I want their critical acumen to be in place, to see if I’m going to be wasting my time doing this thing!
“At a certain point, you get very good at pitching but I think it’s an absolutely useless skill. The problem is, you make everything sound better than it could ever be, then at some point you have to hand in the arsing script! When I did Coupling I refused to write treatments, or letters detailing the story. I said, ‘No, I’m not going to do that. I’ll just write it. I won’t even take any money off you. I think I know what I want to do. But I don’t want to say it out loud.’ Also, it seems pointless writing a treatment for a comedy. What do you write? ‘It’s funny, it’s funny, it’s funny, with hilarious consequences’?”
On the US Writers Strike:
“All the TV shows shut down. With movies you’d barely notice, because they take so long to get going. It just seemed like they were having a slightly longer lunch than normal.”
On how Doctor Who companions shouldn’t complain:
“Even at the very beginning of Doctor Who, Ian and Barbara wanted to go back to the TARDIS all the time. Sometimes, even the Doctor didn't wanna be in the adventure! Which was bad storytelling – you then have to invent reasons to keep them away from the TARDIS, which takes weeks. You know they’re not going to get back to the TARDIS, so don’t waste your time with the scene! There’s always a girder or a boulder in front of the TARDIS! Just make it a lovely adventure that they want to go on, and you don’t have to worry about it ever again.”
On missing out on writing a two-part story for Doctor Who’s Series Three, but writing Blink instead:
“I was exec-producing on Jekyll as well as writing it, so there wasn’t enough time to do a two-part Doctor Who story. I kept asking for a later and later story. Then I finally said, ‘Look, I’ve messed everything up – I will throw myself on the grenade of the unpopular episode and do the low-budget Doctor-light one!’ I just wanted to stay involved with the season, really.
“Blink remains the fastest thing I’ve ever done, because it was so late! I did a second draft with no notes from anyone, because there wasn’t any time. Then it was straight into the script meeting, then into the tone meeting, and then it was in production 10 days later! Blink feels like the tiniest sliver of my writing career because I really can’t remember it!”
On how remarkable it is that Blink’s plotting is so complex, given the limited time he had to write it:
“Complex is probably what I do when I’m in a hurry. It’s my default setting and my biggest weakness. But I’m only starting to realise now, looking back, that in all immodesty that’s a really great episode!”
On being an executive producer:
“When you’re in that job, you don’t get any pats on the head. I’ve done that job, and people generally just complain. I remember handing in the last episode of Jekyll, being really proud of it, and the producer said, ‘We need to talk. We’ve spent a lot of money. Again.’ And you don’t want ‘We need to talk’ – you want, ‘You are wonderful and great! You haven’t embarrassed yourself with your hideous pretentiousness!’.”
On advice for aspiring writers:
“Write an awful lot, and always write. Don’t go round whining that your stuff is better than everything else on television, because that’s a hopeless waste of talent. Don’t rave at the world for not employing you. Don’t moan that television executives are fools: I’ve worked with television executives and none of them are fools. They’re really bright, and they’d take most people to pieces in a conversation. It’s all too easy to be a neglected genius in a reeking bedsit, railing at the world.”
Want more vintage Moffat, on this very site? Hit this link, then scroll down a bit, for an entire two-part Doctor Who Magazine interview.
Toby Whithouse Interview, Part Three
Here's the final instalment, folks. Thanks to Toby for agreeing to this exclusive Q&A. If you need to catch up, you'll be wanting to read Part One and Part Two.
How many episodes will comprise Series One of Being Human, and when will it air? Did you write any of those episodes while waiting for the green light, in an optimistic state of mind?
It's 6 x 60 mins. As I said, the BBC kept Being Human in development even after it was originally overlooked. I was commissioned to write another episode - what would in theory be the first episode of the series proper. Though I confess after we didn't get the commission, it did rather knock the wind out of my sails. But I carried on, nonetheless. And it meant that when we finally got the nod, I'd already written the first draft of the first episode.
Do you have a writing routine? Do you, for instance, work with concentrated intensity for three hours a day, or all day, every day like some breed of madman?
I approach it very much like a job. I start at about 8.30am and finish about 5pm. But the best time of the day is certainly the first three hours. That's when I write best. Everything after that is diminishing returns. Also, bear in mind, between 8.30am and 5pm, there is a lot of surfing, emailing, talking to my friend Harriet, weeping, tea drinking and perhaps a crafty nap.
Certainly now I'm writing Being human full time, I'm a little more disciplined. There is a heap of work to get through, so generally my days involve a lot more writing and a lot less porn.
What advice would you give to screenwriters hungry for their first TV credit?
Never write for an audience. It sounds odd, but you have to get yourself into a state of mind whereby you're imagining that whatever you're writing will never get made. The reason is, you need to develop your style and your voice, not ape someone else's. And the best way - I found - to do that is write without worrying about getting a commission.
There will be plenty of occasions, once your career is up and running, when you'll have to adopt a house style on a show. Every show I've written on that I haven't originated, I've had to write in the style - albeit with my own colours and twirls and nonsense - of the show. But the thing that will get you those jobs is your calling card script. Be it a play, a feature, a sit-com, a single drama. And that script has to demonstrate your own unique voice. And I found the moment I stopped writing for an audience, but for my own enjoyment, my voice started to develop.
That doesn't mean to say you shouldn't have writers you admire or are influenced by. But you should let these people inspire you rather than form you.
The original Being Human BBC press office page
The BBC press office announces the full-series commission
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My Amazon-acclaimed non-fiction ebook How To Interview Doctor Who, Ozzy Osbourne And Everyone Else is out now on Amazon UK, Amazon US and Amazon.de. Amazon Prime members can also rent it for free. Full details here, you splendid individual.
Toby Whithouse Interview, Part Two
Part One began yesterday, here.
What was the score with the season of six BBC3 pilots, of which Being Human was one? Some perceived it as a competition, in which only one series would receive the green light.
Hmmmm. Good question. Yeah, I think it was a competition. But to be fair, every round of commissioning is a competition. The only difference is this time the submissions were filmed and broadcast.
There are pros and cons to piloting shows. For the broadcaster, it allows them to try something out and see whether it appeals to the audience, instead of green-lighting a series of eight and then finding (as we've seen happen quite a lot recently) the show tanks in episode two, but you've still got weeks and weeks left of episodes to transmit. And for the writer, it's like a lottery - you have to be in it to win it, as they say - and you never know, you might be the one...
But - and it's a big but - the problem is, if a show is piloted and turned down - the chances of getting another broadcaster to pick it up are very very very slim. Often, scripts that have been developed and turned down by one broadcaster will be picked up by another. Channel 4 developed and then passed on Life on Mars, for instance. Then the BBC picked it up. But if a pilot has been made and broadcast, then it's very difficult to get another channel interested.
Personally I'm not in a hurry to repeat the experience. But to be fair, I'd be surprised if the BBC were either.
How much pressure does it add, when you publicly air a pilot for approval or otherwise?
Well, under normal circumstances you make a show and it gets transmitted and the public either watch it or they don't and that dictates whether it gets commissioned / re-commissioned / repeated / buried in a lead lined casket. Consequently the public's approval is absolutely crucial. In this instance it's well known that the decision about what show would be commissioned was made before the pilots were aired, so the pressure was different.
In America obviously they make dozens of pilots and the various networks make their choices. But the pilots aren't broadcast. It's different for the BBC, because they're a public service broadcaster. They can't spend millions of pounds of license fee making a series of pilots and then not show them. In America, the networks are private companies, so they can spend their money doing what the hell they please.
I had a similar experience with Channel 4. They did a series of sit-com pilots recently, and I wrote one of those. Despite it being well received, the channel didn't choose it. Even though Being Human did eventually get the nod, it was an incredibly frustrating process. Writing the script was the easy bit. Consequently I don't think I'll be letting any more of my shows get piloted.
But you know what? Even though the rules of the piloting competitions are vague and ever-changing and sometimes feel unfair and baffling - ultimately, we all knew what we were getting into. I assume that every one of the shows that were piloted, were - like Being Human - being developed as series at the BBC, and no one put guns to our heads making us enter our scripts for the pilot scheme. So even though I'm not a fan of the pilot system - at least not the way it's done in this country - I can't complain about it.
How true is it to say, as many have speculated, that Being Human got the go-ahead because of a real groundswell of support, post-transmission?
Weeeeelllllllll, the BBC have acknowledged that Being Human struck the strongest chord with the audience. And, to be fair, even though we didn't get commissioned the first time around - when Phoo Action was commissioned - they did keep Being Human in development. I have a feeling most of the other shows were officially and definitively turned down at that point, but the work on Being Human did continue. Also, none of us were prepared for how strong a reaction it would get. That took us all by surprise. I think if Being Human had just sunk like a stone in a pond, then maybe things would have been different. But it would have been pretty weird for the BBC to ignore such an extreme reception. So I'm enormously grateful to all the people that reacted so positively to the show.
In tomorrow's final instalment: Toby's writing routine and tips for budding screenwriters.
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My Amazon-acclaimed non-fiction ebook How To Interview Doctor Who, Ozzy Osbourne And Everyone Else is out now on Amazon UK, Amazon US and Amazon.de. Amazon Prime members can also rent it for free. Full details here, you splendid individual.
Toby Whithouse Interview, Part One
First, some history. Toby trained as an actor at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His first play, Jump Mr Malinoff Jump, won the 1998 Verity Bargate award. It was the opening production at Soho Theatre in 2000, and has since been adapted for radio. His second play Blue Eyes And Heels was produced there five years later. For television he has written on Where The Heart Is, Attachments, Hotel Babylon, Doctor Who, Torchwood, The Armstrong and Miller Show. He wrote Other People for the C4 Comedy Playhouse season. And then, of course, there's Being Human...
What can you tell us about the genesis of Being Human as a concept? Did it spring from that hold-it-in-your-hand idea of "A vampire, a werewolf and a ghost share a house"?
I was approached by Touchpaper - an Independent TV company. They wanted to develop a drama series about a group of friends who buy a house together. To be honest, I wasn't exactly electrified by the idea. I rather felt this was territory that had been visited often before - in shows like This Life - so was on the verge of saying a polite no.
But then strangely, completely unbidden, three characters kind of dropped into my head. It was very odd and believe me it never normally works like that. But there they were, these three characters, fully formed. So I wrote their biogs (a couple of pages per character, describing their background and personalities, their lives and loves) and gave them to Touchpaper. They liked the characters, so we started developing the project.
There was still something missing. We spent months knocking ideas around, trying to get a story-line for the first episode, but nothing worked. We decided to have one last meeting and if nothing came of it, we'd call it a day. And half way through I said "You know, what we could do... is make George a werewolf, Mitchell a vampire, and Annie a ghost..."
I should explain, that suggestion didn't exactly come out of nowhere. I'd been developing an idea for a odd little rom-com about a werewolf, called Mild Thing (I literally just cringed). It was a bit of a guilty secret pleasure. I had grown up addicted to comics and British Sci-fi and Hammer Horror and John Wyndham and so on. But for years there hadn't been a place for that genre on British TV.
Anyway. Strangely, the three characters transposed very easily into supernatural creatures. Mitchell, in his original incarnation, was a recovering sex addict. That translated easily into a vampire who has decided to renounce his nature and is struggling to live a life without blood. George was punctilious and house-proud and fastidious and cautious. Again that worked well for someone who constantly strives to keep the 'chaos' of his curse at bay. While Annie was shy and awkward and lacking in confidence, and there can be no greater knock to someone's confidence than having died.
I wrote a version of the script that was wildly different to what eventually hit the screen. This early draft was really more of a sit-com. The characters were much more established - they already had the house and nice jobs.
After it was done, myself and the producers looked at it and we all agreed it wasn't quite right. So I started again from scratch. I moved all the characters much further back in their stories, and changed the whole tone of the show. I'd written the first version as a comedy, and for the next version I decided that tonally it should be more like a low budget American Independent film. As soon as I did that, it was actually the easiest script I ever wrote.
To what extent did being the creator of No Angels, and writer for the likes of Hotel Babylon and Doctor Who, make it easier for you to then dangle the idea under BBC noses, like some glorious carrot?
Well, in this case, it was the BBC that commissioned the initial idea of the flat-share in the first place. So the door was already open. But in answer to your question, ultimately it's the quality of the script and the strength of the concept that will determine whether or not it gets made... one would hope. Though it'd be disingenuous of me to say that being connected with successful shows doesn't help.
Have sci-fi and horror elements become more accepted in British TV drama? If so, what can we attribute to that change?
I think you can trace it back to Doctor Who, which proved that something high concept can cross into the mainstream and pull in the viewers. If the return of that show hadn't been the success it was, I think sci-fi and fantasy would still be in the wilderness. Before, had you pitched a supernatural or sci-fi project to a broadcaster, they probably have called Security. But suddenly there was - if not an appetite - then certainly a cautious interest in those types of show.
For broadcasters, viewing figures will always be the bottom line. They will follow success, and so unsurprisingly, they wanted to see if they could replicate the popularity of Doctor Who with other formats and shows. Being Human, Primeval, importing Heroes, remaking The Prisoner, Survivors and Blake's 7 - it's unlikely any of these things would have happened if Doctor Who hadn't been such a hit.
Tomorrow, in Part Two: the pressures of publicly-aired pilots, and how Being Human got the green-light for a full series...
The original Being Human BBC press office page
The BBC press office announces the full-series commission
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