Month: May 2011

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Reluctant to reply

I see a lot of adverts on websites like mandy.com requesting screenplays. I read them with optimism. Go back to them looking for a glimmer of possibility, ultimately rejecting them as more trouble than they’re worth.

Am I cutting my nose off to spite my face?

I don’t know. I do know the promised credit, festival submission, and copy of the film, is not enough. If you want my work, I want to be paid, even for a short. Getting paid means ou mean business.

I’m also suspicious of would-be directors who have no writing skill at all, because it seems to me, if they have no writing skill, they have no understanding of how hard it is to actually write something.

How do I know this?

Because every time I have given a director a project screenplay, they’ve requested changes, massive changes, the kind that change the story. If you don’t like the story pass. As if I hadn’t thought about every aspect of the story, every word on the page, and made a conscious decision to write it that way. It seems to me the directors job is to tell the story, as written, not the other way round.

Perhaps I will regret writing this, because it’ll probably alienate potential collaborators, but that’s what I am looking for, collaborators, people who respect what I have done, enough to tell that story, as written.

The posters of these adverts could write the screenplays themselves. That’s why I started writing, I had stories I wanted to direct. Failing that, if they have stories they want to tell, and are unable to put it on paper, they could hire me to write it for them, not take what I’ve written and turn it inside out.

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It’s ‘cause you’re psychopaths!

I see the MiddleClass as psychopaths. When you say the word psychopath, images of axe wielding homicidal maniacs come to mind, but the truth is considerably less histrionic, and comes in the form of the compulsive liar who always gets what they want, the social butterfly who leaves a whirlwind of destruction in their wake, or the “interspecies predator” who controls others to satisfy their own selfish needs.

I have always been suspicious of the MiddleClass, never really able to understand their demeanour, but when I came across Dr. Robert Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist, it all fell into place.

The checklist is the psycho-diagnostic tool most commonly used to assess psychopaths. It is a clinical rating scale of twenty items.

  • Glibness/superficial charm
  • Grandiose sense of self-worth
  • Pathological lying
  • Cunning/manipulative
  • Lack of remorse or guilt
  • Shallow affect
  • Callous/lack of empathy
  • Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
  • Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
  • Parasitic lifestyle
  • Poor behavioural control
  • Promiscuous sexual behaviour
  • Lack of realistic long-term goals
  • Impulsivity
  • Irresponsibility
  • Juvenile delinquency
  • Early behaviour problems
  • Revocation of conditional release
  • Many short-term marital relationships
  • Criminal versatility

When completed, the test subject is scored anywhere between “0” and “40”. The prototypical psychopath scores the maximum “40”. A score above “30” diagnoses the subject as psychopathic. I see scores above “30” manifest all the time in the attitudes and behavior of the MiddleClass. Individual members may not be psychopathic, but as a class it’s a different story. Take that core member of the MiddleClass, bankers, I’d score their behaviour as follows.

  • Glibness/superficial charm (2)
  • Grandiose sense of self-worth (2)
  • Pathological lying (2)
  • Cunning/manipulative (2)
  • Lack of remorse or guilt (2)
  • Shallow affect (2)
  • Callous/lack of empathy (2)
  • Failure to accept responsibility for own actions (2)
  • Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom (2)
  • Parasitic lifestyle (2)
  • Poor behavioural control (2)
  • Promiscuous sexual behaviour (2)
  • Lack of realistic long-term goals (2)
  • Impulsivity (2)
  • Irresponsibility (2)
  • Juvenile delinquency (1)
  • Early behaviour problems (1)
  • Revocation of conditional release (2)
  • Many short-term marital relationships (0)
  • Criminal versatility (2)

That’s a Checklist score of “36”. They should be banged up, but they’re not, they’re allowed go about their business, in the name of the free market, and a profit.

I see scores above “30” in the well dressed politician who demonstrates a complete lack of empathy by admonishing the long term unemployed. There in the grandiose sense of self-worth innate in parents who set up a school for their children, and the bankers who fail to accept responsibility for the whirlwind of destruction they left in their wake.

I have no idea what to do with this insight, but there is some small satisfaction in being able to j’accuse. “It’s ‘cause you’re psychopaths!”

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Embarrassed by The Apprentice

If capitalism were a brand, what kind of brand message is THE APPRENTICE sending? I didn’t sit down and watch last nights episode. It was already on when I got in, and stayed on in the background while I busied myself with other things. In that half aware, peripheral vision, wallpaper kind of state, I was struck by how juvenile it all is.

I realise this is a television programme, and these people are there as much for entertainment as anything else, but if these are the brightest and the best, Lord Sugar’s business is in trouble. They go about their task like a blind man in a patch of brambles, staggering here, tripping there, because as far as I can tell, they’re so busy trying to elbow their way to the front of the line, they don’t see the others in their team as anything but competition.

The worst of it comes when they get to the boardroom. Where the team with slightly better result is rewarded with a trip to a peep show circus, and the others, the ones who did that bit worse, get to play the greasy spoon blame game.

The post task autopsy is like watching a child caught pinching a sibling. They shift the blame, and obfuscate, while holding their knees together, hoping they will be believed. If they are, it’s off to slime another day. If not, they’re on their bike, doomed to poverty, and the arbitrary nature of the labour market.

If I were the brand manager of capitalism, I’d be embarrassed by The Apprentice, and what it says about my product.

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Infantilizing the political system

I can’t help thinking the royal wedding, no to the alternative voting system, and today’s release of “THE KING’S SPEECH“, are linked in some way.

The royal wedding was marketed as a national event we could all unite behind. A resounding “no” to the alternative vote was affirmation of “business as usual” for the political class. And today’s film release is the icing on the cake of the heroic triumph over adversity myth that surrounds the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

I think the cycle of recent events provides a bloody nose to those of us who would like to see this country as a republic, because it does what the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha always does, distract us from the real and lasting political change needed in this country.

When I tell people I think we should elect our head of state, they look at me like I’m demented. “You want a president (insert the name of the politician you hate the most)?” I would actually like to elect every person who represents me, because if I elect them, I can un-elect them, make them accountable for what they do in my name.

That doesn’t seem to be enough reason for most monarchists. As if wielding my franchise is somehow a silly idea, and I should know better. When I ask them what exactly the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha does for us, all they seem able to come up with is tourism. As if having big houses for commoners to visit is justification for infantilizing the political system in this country.

Ultimately that is what the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha does, it treats the people of this country as a “child or in a way that denies their maturity in age or experience”. I wish we could grow out of it, the way I grew out of crazy hair cuts, but as long as the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha remains in place, we are doomed to suckle on their breast, treated as children unable to emancipate.

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Natured or nurtured?

I have been working through some ideas for a character who is for want of a better word a psychopath. Not the axe wielding homicidal maniac type, more the person who leaves a trail of destruction in his wake.

This got me thinking about whether or not the psychopaths behaviour is something constructed by environment or naturally occurring, is it some genetic deficiency or part of some contemporary malaise?

Is their behaviour natured or nurtured?

I’m not a great believer in nature as the organising force of society. It seems to me we left nature behind when we moved into cities, and allowed every aspect of our lives to be controlled in some way. From birth to death, there is an organising principle in place, a body to categorise, normalise, institution to reward and punish.

I think nurture is the dominant force in our lives, and holds much greater sway than nature. I can see there are some elements of what we do that are natural, that come from some deep genetic imperatives, but from where I stand, the vast majority of our behaviours, the rituals we adhere to, how we interact, are all nurtured into us.

Therefore, if we’re all taught to behave in certain ways by the world around us, the psychopath must be a personality type constructed by society. If that is the case, what lay the foundations for their behaviour? Is it some twisted version of competitiveness, amplified by early setbacks, or a personality trait brought on by repeated rejection by a parent?

I’m guessing it was both, on top of some as yet to undiscovered traumas.

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Beyond three acts

Read this very interesting piece by John Truby at Raindance WHY 3 ACT WILL KILL YOUR WRITING. It made me think about the way my writing has developed.

The first draft of my first feature screenplay was a monster. I think mainly because I tried to stick to the a very rigid three act structure. But as Truby points out “the 3-act structure doesn’t work because it is arbitrary” and “places no emphasis on character”. I think it actually gets in the way of character, it certainly did for me. Subsequent drafts, and subsequent screenplays, have all developed beyond the three act structure.

My most recent screenplay “THE SINGULARITY” has nine very clearly defined sections, one about every ten minutes, and it is every ten minutes, because I structured it that way from the outset.

It felt strange when I started, as if I was a Christian discovering evolution, but once I put the three act structure behind me, I was able to plot a story more in tune with my character.

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