For some inexplicable reason¹ on Friday I got all proactive. I responded to an advert for short film scripts/treatments even though what I have in the way of short scripts I’ve been saving for me to direct. I also contacted a publishing company to see if the rights for a novel were available. In the case of the producer, I don’t think that’s going to really take off – not from anything that’s been said so far but the substitution of of “You know, I’d like to talk about one of your ideas and see whether it’s something we could take further” with the phrase “I’ve got another idea – what about love, sex, drugs and clubbing in London?”

I’m still assuming that it’s an idea for a story and not a proposition from the producer who, from what I can tell, just happens to be young, Italian and female. I haven’t got back to her yet to tell her that I’m old, married and past it².

The question I have to ask myself is whether I want to spend the time coming up with a screenplay for a short film for something that I have little to no interest in (the something in this case being clubbing – the others I’m quite open to offers of³). I don’t know. At the back of my mind, I feel there are better things I could be spending my time on. At the front of my mind too. I’ll think about it. (And try to the part of my subconscious that’s still 20 years old and shouting “young, Italian and female!” at me.)

“Revelation” has seen some progress in that I rewrote a second outline after messing around with the story a bit and got some feedback all of which has been fairly positive although whether that’s just people being nice or honest I’m yet to determine. Mind you, the brief they were given for feedback was more than a little vague, amounting as it did to “do you think it’s got legs?” rather than a “pick apart the story logic as much as you can”. One person did say that it probably wasn’t their type of film on account of (and I’m paraphrasing) the lack of vampires/werewolves/zombies. I did consider telling him to fuck off to Facebook if they wanted that sort of thing but to be perfectly honest, it was very useful feedback. After the treatment, I started on the script. It’s flowing well and I’ve already got 11 pages done. I also had a chat with Andy Coughlan about his latest script and I have to confess I’m very excited about because his premise is very, very good.

The rights for the novel, as it turns out, are “under option by another party.” On the one hand, this is a little unfortunate but, on the other hand, also quite fortunate as I’m not really at a point where I could do anything about them. Then again, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Who knows what this week will bring?⁴

¹ No, not that inexplicable. I really, really, really don’t want to be doing what I’m doing anymore.
² At least one of these isn’t true.
³ Offers of writing about them of course. I’m quite certain I have no idea what you’re sniggering about.
⁴ I do - seeing as it’s the end of June it’ll be end of year accounts, tax and VAT returns mostly.