Tanika Gupta interview

In The Guardian, Lyn Gardner talks to playwright Tanika Gupta about her new play Sugar Mummies and her career so far.

Sugar Mummies is characterised by the same clear-eyed, no-nonsense approach that has been a feature of Gupta's work over the years. In the theatre, that has included plays about the ebb and flow of family life, such as Inside Out for women's theatre company Clean Break or The Waiting Room at the National Theatre, while for TV she has written many episodes of Grange Hill and EastEnders. The soaps have paid the bills and helped Gupta hone her craft as she has raised three children - but she also finds writing them "frustrating", as her heart has always been in the theatre.

ITV to air Marchant dramas

ITV is to return to single dramas with a series of one-offs from Bafta award-winning writer Tony Marchant.

The ITV head of drama, Nick Elliott, snapped up Whistleblowers, made by independent producer Carnival, after the BBC decided against commissioning the six-part drama.

More from Ben Dowell for Media Guardian (free registration required).

Web auteurs

Even as David Lehre’s “MySpace: The Movie,” an 11-minute parody of the social-networking Web site, spawned a high-profile feeding frenzy, some of the Hollywood agents, managers and lawyers who were clamoring to represent him didn’t know much about who he was, what he did or what they would do if they got him. But they wanted him anyway.

“It’s their fear of not being a part of it,” said Scott Vener, Mr. Lehre’s manager, who first discovered him on the video-sharing Web site YouTube, where “MySpace” became an Internet phenomenon.

In The New York Times, John Clark investigates Hollywood's new interest in film-makers who use MySpace and YouTube to make their mark.

“MySpace: The Movie” first appeared on YouTube on Jan. 31 and since then has had millions of hits, enough viewers to rival big-budget films or TV shows. Mr. Lehre, who is 21 and lived at his parents’ home in Washington, Mich., when he created the video, shot it there with friends. He scored the music himself so he wouldn’t have to deal with copyright issues, designed the graphics and Googled any technical questions he had. This development and distribution process makes even independent films, with their retinue of maxed-out credit cards and frenzied film festivals, look positively mainstream in comparison.

The Net is particularly conducive to short-form comedy — skits, parodies, satires, even stand-up acts — because surfers tend to look at video in small increments. But so far television, especially cable, has been more receptive than the feature film world to these possibilities. Mr. Lehre signed with Fox and will produce a sketch-oriented television show that is set in his hometown and features his friends.

Alfred Bradley Award

BBC Radio Drama is looking for talented writers based in the North of England, with compelling stories to tell. You could win a bursary of up to £6000, have your work produced on BBC Radio 4, secure a six month mentorship with a Radio Drama Producer and have the opportunity to develop future commissions...

You can apply for the Alfred Bradley Award (by submitting a 45-minute original radio play) if you were born, brought up or are currently based in the North of England and have never had a play produced by BBC Radio Drama. The closing date for entries is 3 November 2006.

Full details from BBC Writersroom.

Writing in games - event at BAFTA

Following last year’s highly successful inaugural event, The Writers' Guild of Great Britain in conjunction with BAFTA will be holding another computer games industry forum on 11 September 2006.

Full details and an application form for tickets are on the Guild website.

The Funny Farm

The Guardian is inviting readers to send in two minutes of comedy (stand-up, a sitcom extract etc) for a pre-Edinburgh Festival collection.

It should be no longer than two minutes if it's audio (in an MP3 file, please) - or 1,000 words if it's written down. We will then put the best on our podcast and up on the website just before the festival starts. So dust off that script and send it to culture@guardian.co.uk. You have until July 28. Go on, give us a smile.

Jonathan Harvey interview

Playwright and Coronation Street writer Jonathan Harvey, interviewed by Tim Teeman in The Times.

As a boy Jonathan Harvey was mad about drawing. One day he did a sketch of some cavemen, which failed to impress his teacher. “Jonathan Harvey, cavemen did not wear stilettos,” she admonished him crisply. But he didn’t learn, and, in one guise or another, cavemen in stilettos have been figuring in his writing ever since. Harvey’s skill is to find the exuberant in the everyday, a glitter-ball in the drabbest council flat.

BBC Vision

The BBC has announced organisational changes to enable implementation of its Creative Future content strategy launched last April.

One of the main changes is the creation of BBC Vision.

BBC Television, Factual & Learning and Drama, Entertainment & Children's come together in a new group, BBC Vision, led by Jana Bennett.

This group will be responsible for in-house multi-media production, commissioning and audio visual services, including the TV channel portfolio, and digital services like High Definition and Interactive.

Multi-media, 360 degree production, under a single Production Head, will be more closely aligned to – while still physically separate from – the 360 degree commissioning teams.

Commissioning will be grouped under four controllers of: Fiction (drama, comedy, BBC Film and programme acquisitions), Entertainment, Knowledge (including all factual and Learning) and Children's.

There's plenty more where that came from and, if you like this kind of thing, you can read Director General Mark Thompson's speech to staff (free registration required).

Jon East interview

Head of Children's BBC Drama, Jon East, is interviewed for the BBC Writersroom.

Heard and not seen

Prompted by the broadcast of Joanna Murray Smith's play, Honour, The Daily Telegraph's Gillian Reynolds sings the praises of drama being heard and not seen.

The listener is probably alone, doesn't know the expression on a face or a character's movements but, once the right connection is made, can imagine it all, directing, pointing the inner eye's camera, getting close-ups at all the right times. What the author has written, what the characters are saying becomes personal, collaborative, creative and we become passionately attached.

EastEnders all-time low

EastEnders fell to its lowest ever audience ...[on Thursday] night attracting just 3.9 million viewers, falling foul of an special hour-long Emmerdale episode.

The BBC1 flagship soap, which has picked up a Bafta and an National Television Award over the past year, only managed to pull in a little over half the audience that the Yorkshire-based drama did.

More from The Stage.

Armando Iannucci on sitcom

In The Times, Armando Iannucci tells Stephen Armstrong about his fears for the future of the sitcom.

“Just as it gets more daring and varied in format and technique, and just as audiences get more and more sophisticated in the breadth of comedy they’re willing to watch, viewing figures for comedy shows are in decline,” he said. “Less comedy is being made for the mass-audience channels, BBC1 and ITV, while the commissioning of comedy shows (for these two channels) is increasingly in the hands of TV professionals from outside comedy production, under pressure from advertisers and schedulers not to take risks.”

Alfred Fagon Award

Celebrating nine successful years as a presence in Black British Theatre, the Award is dedicated to providing inspiration and validation for playwrights of Caribbean descent, who are resident in the UK. Set up in memory of the late Jamaican playwright and actor Alfred Fagon, the Award seeks to discover a wide variety of writing talent.

In 2006 the winner will be awarded £5,000 in recognition of their outstanding achievement in the art of playwriting.

The closing date is 31 August 2006. Full details from the Talawa Theatre Company. Thanks to BBC Writersroom for the link.

Ignite playwriting competition

Ignite is a national playwriting competition aiming to find undiscovered voices for the Scottish Stage. Using a contemporary piece of literature as inspiration, we want you to write a short play scene (not an adaptation of the original source).

The winner will receive six months focused dramaturgical and directorial support, advice and training to develop their scene into a full length play, which will be given a rehearsed reading as part of Glasgow City Council'’s Aye Write Festival, in February 2007.

You have to be Scottish or living in Scotland to apply - closing date 31 August 2006. Full details from the Playwrights' Studio, Scotland. Thanks to BBC Writersroom for the link.

Kay Mellor interview

In The Guardian, Laura Barton speaks to scriptwriter Kay Mellor.

'Everything's set in Yorkshire. It's a decision. It's what I hear when I'm writing." Kay Mellor raises her chin and ruffles her feathers. There is something of the mother hen about her and she talks in an agitated way, as if pecking persistently at something. "I'm passionately northern, I suppose," she concludes, and takes a resolute sip of bloody mary. "God!" she splutters through the late afternoon hum of the Groucho club. "That's strong!"

Pirates writers interviewed

Dylan Callaghan interviews Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest writers, Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, for the WGA.

Terry Rossio: The jumping off point was to look at the story from the point of view of the Jack Sparrow character. People really like the Jack Sparrow character. I think most people think he's a good guy so, is it really true that Jack is a good guy? It's a lot of fun to put Jack in trouble, particularly the kind of trouble that helps reveal what type of character he really is.

Ted Elliot: We've created a fantasy world where we've rejected the Manichaean dualism common to most fantasy worlds. How's that?

When memory becomes history

In The Guardian former Guild President, Alan Plater, explores why the Second World War has such a hold on our imaginations.

A few years ago I had a couple of calls from producers wanting me to write screenplays set in the second world war. I mentioned this to my youngest son, the engineer. "What's with all this obsession about the war?" I asked. "Oh, that's easy," he replied. "We've reached that moment in time when memory becomes history."

Online marketing for plays

How theatre producers are generating word of mouth online, by Jesse Green in The New York Times.

Word of mouth has always been the ideal. But the Internet has provided a new and, some say, vastly improved set of tools to generate it: not just e-mail blasts but also Web sites, banner ads, search-engine pop-ups and blog coverage. In the last few years these tools have reshaped the way the theater reaches its audience.

Gareth Roberts interview

Scriptwriter Gareth Roberts who has written for several soaps and will be writing for the next series of Doctor Who, talks to BBC Writersroom.

Writing Oblivion

American screenwriter and blogger Craig Mazin says that video games writers are getting a bad deal.

I want these guys [the writers of Oblivion] to be treated like kings, because they did great work. What to do, though? Video game writing isn’t covered by the WGAw or ANY union, for that matter. It’s the wild west out there, and that’s the way the employers like it...

Frank Cottrell Boyce interview

In The Guardian screenwriter and children's writer Frank Cottrell Boyce talks to Dina Rabinovitch.

Both of his children's novels are on a big scale - wildly filmic adventures set against family life. A boy finds a million dollars at the bottom of the garden; art treasures and the perfect crime. "I've got kids," Cottrell Boyce says laconically, "I already have a constrained domestic existence. Most of my life is at home or standing outside schools - so of course I wanted to write big adventures, not school gates dramas."

Theatre by diktat

In The Guardian, Peter Gill argues that top-down thinking has created a new form of censorship on new play writing.

The embarrassment caused in the theatre by Channel 4's recent programme The Play's the Thing, which showed a vain attempt to manufacture a West End play from the early offerings of first-time writers, should prove salutary. But I doubt it will. The programme presented in caricature form a set of now common practices, ways of handling new writers, and the desire to create theatre by diktat.

The new interventionism seems to have begun around 1979 as part of a proliferation of new ideas - devised theatre, documentary, attempts at new forms, physical theatre - that had their roots in the 60s. The emphasis on top-down thinking, rather than anything created writer-up, meant that a new form of censorship began to impose itself. This has led to young writers delivering drafts instead of plays, knowing the humiliation that lies in store.

Sphinx Theatre competition

Sphinx Theatre Company is pleased to announce a new award for the playwright who creates the most interesting role for a woman in a new play. This is a scheme designed to create a body of work containing stronger roles for women in contemporary plays.

The winning playwright will be awarded £2000 as well as the commissioning fee and the successful play will be presented as part of the Brave New Roles showcase. 5 additional short-listed writers will also have their pieces performed as part of the award's lunchtime showcase. The winning play will be produced in 2007/2008.

The closing date for entries is 30 September 2006. Full details are on the Sphinx website.

When "yes" turns to "no"

The real magic of Hollywood is not the knee-buckling resonance of a perfect screen kiss or the ability to conjure an army of Orcs from the plains of New Zealand. The real magic of Hollywood, as any agent, screenwriter, director, actor, producer or studio executive will tell you, is that movies get made at all. Especially now.

In The LA Times reports on the growing number of American movies that are having the plug pulled midway through production.

In praise of grotty theatres

In The Daily Telegraph, Robert Gore-Langton is unconvinced by the fashion for modernising old theatres.

There's an age-old connection between poetry and pints, between theatrical creativity and gently decaying playhouses.

I am not entirely convinced by our gleaming new fleet of Lottery-age theatres and museums. It's a question of character. If it's a straight choice between theatrical grottiness and architectural swank, give me the grot.

Jack Rosenthal's Last Act

If you're near a radio, tune in to Radio 4 at 11.30 today for the first part of screenwriter Jack Rosenthal's memoirs, adapted by his daughter Amy. If you miss, it you can Listen Again at your leisure.

In The Times you can read why Maureen Lipman found directing the production a cathartic experience.

"Jack had no idea how loved or valued he was and it’s a shame that the full extent of people’s regard for you sometimes only emerges when you are dead. He wrote with so much honesty and humour and insight into ordinary people’s lives. Now, whenever we perform the autobiography in public, it’s always packed.”

Brits scoop Emmy nominations

British dramas Elizabeth I (written by Nigel Williams), Bleak House (adapted from Charles Dickens by Andrew Davies ), The Girl In The Cafe (written by Richard Curtis) and the comedy series Extras (written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant) have picked up a host of nominations for Primetime Emmys, America's top TV awards.

Inside the Shed

On the Guild's website, Richard Bevan speaks to Shed co-founder Eileen Gallagher and writer Maureen Chadwick.

"You’ve got to bring the broadcaster into it early, they’ve got to feel a part of it and be part of that process. There’s no point in sitting in a darkened room writing the best script in the world if there just isn’t the market there. It could be the best script in the world but if it’s not the fashion at the moment broadcasters won’t be interested. You’ve got to pick your production companies and partners very carefully."

Olivia Hetreed on women screenwriters

On Channel 4 News (streamed by Intelligent Media), Guild member Olivia Hetreed (Girl With A Pearl Earring) talks about the lack of opportunities for female screenwriters.

DIY audio books

In The New York Times, Motoko Rich finds writers producing their own audio books.

"The truth is, if you have a Mac at home and the software that comes with it, it doesn't cost much more for you to have a decent little recording set up," said Geoff Shandler, editor in chief of Little, Brown.

Paul Schrader interview

As Taxi Driver is re-released the film's writer, Paul Schrader, talks to Geoffrey Macnab in The Guardian.

"At the time I wrote it [Taxi Driver], I was in a rather low and bad place," Schrader says. "I had broken with Pauline [Kael], I had broken with my wife, I had broken with the woman I left my wife for, I had broken with the American Film Institute and I was in debt." For several weeks, he drifted around LA, living and sleeping in his car, eating junk food, watching porn. Eventually, when his stomach began to hurt badly, he went to the hospital and discovered he had an ulcer.

"When I was talking to the nurse, I realised I hadn't spoken to anyone in weeks ... that was when the metaphor of the taxi cab occurred to me. That is what I was: this person in an iron box, a coffin, floating round the city, but seemingly alone." He claims he wrote the script, which he dashed off in under a fortnight, as self-therapy, to "exorcise the evil I felt within me".

The Edinburgh Writing Awards 2006

Isn’t it amazing that the world’s biggest arts festival, which helped launch the careers of Steven Berkoff, Tom Stoppard, Alan Bennett and Richard Curtis among countless others, has never acknowledged the craft of creative writing? There are prizes for Best Production, Best Actor, Best Comedian, Best New Comedian and Best Just-Starting-Out Comedian. There’s even one for Best Poster.

Dave Cohen explains why the Writers' Guild is joining forces with The List to present The Edinburgh Writing Awards at this year's Fringe.

Pinter's screenwriting

In The Guardian, David Hare argues that Harold Pinter's screenwriting shows how much the screen owes to the stage.

To jump back into the world of Pinter's movies is to remind yourself of a literate mainstream cinema, focused as much as Bergman's is on the human face, in which tension is maintained by a carefully crafted mix of image and dialogue. These are directors' films, where the director's opportunities have been created by a writer. That's what the best film writers do - give directors their chance. Unlike certain of his best-known colleagues, Pinter does not deliberately work with weak directors: this is a writer who boxes his own weight. His collaborators of choice include Joe Losey, Elia Kazan, Karel Reisz, William Friedkin and Jack Clayton. Not exactly the bunch a writer would choose in search of an easy ride.

BBC Films gets the giggles

BBC Films and the BBC's television comedy production department are joining forces to develop comedy feature films, reports Ben Dowell in Media Guardian (free registration required).

The corporation's head of comedy talent, Kenton Allen, and head of comedy, Jon Plowman, will work with TV writers and producers and the head of BBC Films, David Thompson, to produce what Mr Allen called "mainstream comedy feature film hits".

Daytime drama returning to ITV?

Writer (and blogger) David Bishop has spotted a report in Broadcast suggesting that ITV are planning to develop new daytime drama with a budget of around £40,000 - £50,000 per hour.

NB. David's Vicious Imagery blog is well worth a read - and he has excellent taste.

Superman writers

Dylan Callaghan for the WGA talks to Superman Returns writers, Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris

Did any unexpected lessons come from completing this project?

Michael Dougherty: It's interesting, from a technical point of view, I never realized how long it would take to shoot a scene that involves flying or water. I mean, you're a writer, you write this stuff and try and make it as good as possible. But then we found ourselves on set in Sydney, and it would take six hours just to get two shots.

Dan Harris: The scene where Superman's lifting Richard and Lois out of a boat underwater was probably written in two or three lines and took two or three weeks to shoot.

Is this going to affect what you do on the next one?

Dan Harris: I think we're done with water.

Promoting your book online

In The Times, Anthony Thornton reveals the simple secrets behind the succesful online promotion of his book about The Libertines.

[My] website was based on the design of the book and looked pretty slick. But the slickest website in the world can do nothing if nobody knows anything about it. Like Arctic Monkeys and many bands since, we decided to move into MySpace, an online community site (owned by News Corporation, the parent company of The Times) for people to meet and make friends.

I imagined that interest would be minimal — after all, the book wasn’t due out for two months and no one knew it was coming. In the course of the first week a handful of people “made friends” with the book: close mates, hardcore Libertines fans and those who stumbled on it by mistake (some looking for De Sade sites). I sent a message to each one thanking them: it was a simple cour tesy. Suddenly, it mushroomed: first there were five people a day, then 10, then 15 then 25 people wanting to be “friends” with the book. Some asked questions: each received a reply. All my spare hours were spent talking to people who seemed almost as excited about the publication as I was.

Two weeks before publication, the book hit Amazon’s Top Ten bestselling pre-orders.

Lloyd Richards

Lloyd Richards, one of the most influential figures in modern American theater and a pioneering director who brought the plays of Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson to Broadway and championed several generations of young playwrights, died on Thursday in Manhattan.

More from Campbell Robertson The New York Times.

"Lloyd was a consummate teacher, but when it really comes down to it, when you look at his legacy, it's new playwrights," George C. White, the founder of the O'Neill Center, said yesterday. "I can't think of anybody who has been more of a force for developing playwrights since the 1960's."

Sally Wainwright on Jane Hall

Sally Wainwright's new comedy-drama, Jane Hall, comes to ITV this month - after two years on the scheduler's shelf. Wainwright tells Daphne Lockyer in The Times about how her own experiences as a bus driver shaped the show.

"“To be honest, ...[it] was the one thing that I never really wanted to write about, because it was such a grim job. Even now, all these years later, I still have nightmares that IÂ’m driving the bus but I've come off my route and I'’m lost."”

Work-life balance

Mark Ravenhill must have known what he was letting himself in for when he argued in The Guardian that a balanced family life and creativity don't mix.

I have to confront the fact that, although I don't think heroin or bi-polar disorder create art (on the whole I think they make it more difficult), I do believe that there is something about the focused energy that goes into the making of a work of art that doesn't sit well with the balanced life. There is something about the dramatic form that benefits from the flash of inspiration - which means throwing away the real world for a time, to work in a totally concentrated way.

His comments drew an angry response from playwright April de Angelis:

...let's find another way to condemn women playwrights who may have the audacity to mother the next generation of Mark Ravenhills, as well as trying to pen a few of their own. Is it our fault that childcare is not free and universal?

And, today, father of four and artistic director of Bristol Old Vic, Simon Reade, insists that his chaotic family life actually enhances his creative work.

Life and work can never be perfectly balanced; the scales are tipped in favour of work. It earns us money; it is tax-deductible; we spend more of our lives with colleagues than we do with family. But it is still worth trying to live a little. I think Ravenhill's assertion that decent art is created in bursts of single-minded intensity is worrying for a playwright: without the fuel of life, artistic inspiration will run out of juice. In short, it will be all work and no play. If you're an artist, you enrich the lives of others. Your own life, therefore, needs to be enriched to start with. Don't believe that the ultimate flash of divine inspiration comes only through being a stressed-out workaholic. That way lies ulcers and a migraine - which you'd never get from bringing up four children while trying to run a theatre.

Being a writer-director

John August talks about completing his first film as a writer-director.

One section of the movie has a combination of scripted and unscripted scenes, which ended up being my favorite thing to shoot. The luxury of having gifted actors and a lot of videotape is that they could simply start having a conversation in character, and seamlessly work in all of the scripted material. One scene had an 18-minute continuous take.

To me, this section was the best synthesis of writing and directing. While I was listening, I had to keep thinking how to steer the scene in an interesting direction. It was a screenwriter’s dream: My characters were alive in front of me, looking for something to talk about.

Fan power

As Dawn C. Chmielewski explains in The LA Times, film-makers are starting to canvas online opinion before they release a final cut.

Long before the summer thriller "Snakes on a Plane" slithers into theaters next month, potentially venomous fans started rattling.

The film's title says just about everything you need to know about the plot: On a transpacific flight, a Hawaiian mobster trying to eliminate a protected witness uncorks a carton of poisonous serpents. But as websites posted details during preproduction and as shooting got underway last summer, B-movie fans began to react. They wanted more creative snake attacks, more gore, more nudity and more of star Samuel L. Jackson's signature four-syllable obscenity.

Theatre at heart of ACE funding bid

Theatre and orchestras will form the cornerstone of Arts Council England’s bid to persuade the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to maintain investment in the cultural sector as part of its imminent spending review.

More from The Stage. As the report goes on to say, there's a real concern that DCMS will be focussing attention on sport rather than the arts in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics.

New TMA rates

New rates have been agreed for writers under the agreement between the Writers' Guild of Great Britain, the Theatrical Management Association (TMA) and the Scottish Society of Playwrights.

The agreement sees rates for writers increase by 3% to reflect the increase in cost-of-living.

The editor's role

In The Daily Telegraph Dan Franklin looks back at the careers of two great literary editors, John Blackwell and Tom Maschler, and considers how the role has changed today.

It is rare to find an editor like John Blackwell these days. John's sort of editing took time - many cigarettes, many beers, much discussion and laughter. The impatient deadlines of modern publishing don't suit such people. Nowadays most publishers have tiny editorial departments and depend heavily on freelances. They may do an excellent job, but it is rare for them to build up quite the same relationship with an author.

In praise of Coward

The Albery Theatre is now the Noël Coward Theatre. In The Daily Telegraph Sarah Crompton explains why the playwright deserves to be honoured.

"I see a straight line from Wilde through Maugham through Coward and through Rattigan to Pinter," [Peter Hall] says. "I think all of them - even when they are Irish - have a species of the English stiff upper lip, which is a metaphor for not expressing emotion in any direct form and disguising it if you can. They are all cryptic, they are all subversively funny and they all have quite strong sentiment."

Slingshot films takes aim

A new British film company, Slingshot, opens for business this week with an ambitious pledge to produce 10 feature films over the next three years - a goal it hopes to achieve with a business model unique to this country: producing and distributing digital feature films.

More from Meg Carter in The Guardian.

"Having crunched the numbers it's clear that within a certain budget range - $5m and below - audiences tend not to care if you spend $5m or $500,000 because neither afford you big stars or glossy special effects: it's all about a story well told," Mr [Arvin] David [ Slingshot managing director] said.

Note: Slingshot doesn't seem to have a website yet.

Update: Thanks you yellowhorse (see comments) for finding the website.

Springer opera defeated?

In The Guardian, Polly Toynbee laments the end of the tour of Jerry Springer: The Opera.

This will be the last chance to see it, as its co-author Stewart Lee says glumly that he doubts it will ever be performed again. It shows how insidiously the tentacles of religious zeal invade every sphere of national life, despite the very small number of religious practitioners in this most secular of nations.

Laurie McCarthy interview

American TV scriptwriter, Laurie McCarthy (90210, CSI, Windfall), interviewed by Denis Faye for the Writers Guild of America, west.

Did working in soaps help you as a writer?

It gives you really good muscles in terms of breaking stories, but I think sometimes the execution of the stories [on daytime drama] is slipshod and very hastily done. It has to be because they're facing five hours of television a week, 52 weeks a year. They don't give it that much care… If you do that too long it becomes a habit. I didn't do it that long, and I learned from really good people how to be more meticulous.

ITV cuts one-off drama

ITV is to scale back production of expensive dramas and makeover shows as part of a drive to save £100m.

The broadcaster said it would reduce production of "underperforming" one or two-part dramas in order to concentrate on long-running series.

It will also show fewer makeover and lifestyle programmes during the day, and aims to buy more US series.

The announcement comes in the same week that ITV announced it would stop making children's programmes in-house.

More from BBC News.

ITV is struggling with falling audience share and advertising revenues. Maggie Brown and Matt Wells take a long, hard look at the network in today's Media Guardian (free registration required).

A place called Writopia

Craig Mazin imagines a better world for scriptwriters...

Just like other studios, Writopia buys film rights to books and plays, purchases specs and commissions scripts from original pitches. Once you enter development with Writopia, though, you notice some immediate differences.

There is one producer and one studio executive assigned to your project. The three of you are a team. All for one, and one for all. You have some job security, as Writopia eschews one-step deals. Writopia’s philosophy is that every professional writer deserves at least two bites at the apple before any decision is made to go with someone else.

It’s nearly impossible that your first draft will unpleasantly surprise them, because Writopia Studios require the writer to first deliver a story treatment. By doing this, the team gets an opportunity to solidify just what this movie really is before the first script is even begun.

Parfitt gets teens remit at BBC

The BBC is clearly worried about losing a hold on the nation's youth. First came last week's announcement that, as part of the changes to BBC drama, Diederick Santer will have responsibility for developing younger-skewing drama series and serials (as well as being Executive Producer of EastEnders). Now comes news that Radio One Controller, Andy Parfitt, will have an additional role to "develop ideas for programming and content aimed at 12-16 year olds, which will deliver through existing broadband, TV and radio services."

Announcing the appointment, Mark Thompson said: "Andy's appointment is a significant step in developing the public service vision set out in Creative Future.

"The BBC plays an important role in the early years of many children's lives. But as they reach adolescence this relationship fades as the Corporation hasn't been producing enough content that appeals to them.

"We are now aiming to bridge that gap with high quality content tailored and packaged for them, which we hope will complement existing services provided by the commercial sector."

Aaron Spelling obituaries

The commercial entertainment television shows produced by Aaron Spelling, who has died following a stroke aged 83, generated tens of thousands of screen hours in America and across the world over four decades, but the question remains whether he lowered standards or merely reflected public taste.

More from Christopher Reed in The Guardian.

There are also lengthy obituaries in most other newspapers, including The LA Times and The Daily Telegraph.

The Play's The Thing - reviews

The reviews are in for On The Third Day by Kate Betts, winner of Channel 4's The Play's The Thing contest. And they're not too bad.

Both The Guardian and The Times give it three stars out of five, while Charles Spencer in The Daily Telegraph admits to being "unexpectedly impressed".

All the critics have their reservations about the play and the process, however, with Paul Taylor in The Independent finding little to like about either.

From the point of view of finding new talent, it would have been better to spend the money on a mini-festival at the Bush or the Gate. But that would not have been invidious enough for TV, which will never be theatre's route to rescue.

The final show of the series goes out on Channel 4 on Saturday night.

BBC drama shake-up

John Yorke has been appointed Controller In-House Drama, it was announced today by Director of Drama, Entertainment and Children's Alan Yentob, in a move which will bring together all BBC England In-House Drama Production in a single department.

Yorke will have special responsibility for continuing drama series and singles, and will be joined by Kate Harwood, currently Executive Producer, EastEnders, as Head of Series and Serials.

Diederick Santer is appointed Executive Producer, EastEnders, with additional responsibility for developing younger skewing drama series and serials.

Nicolas Brown will join BBC In-House Drama in the newly-created role of Director of Drama Production and Sally Woodward Gentle becomes Creative Director in charge of all development in the department.

John Yorke, Kate Harwood, Nicolas Brown, Sally Woodward Gentle and Diederick Santer make up the senior management team of the In-House Drama department.

More from the BBC Press Office.

Comment: Nothing stays still for long in TV drama production these days. Yorke returned to the BBC from Channel 4 as Controller of Continuing Drama Series and Head of Independent Drama at the start of 2005 but has clearly developed the clout (partly through reinvigorating EastEnders) to demand a shorter title with an all-consuming remit.

These latest changes come after the departure of the BBC's Head of Drama Series and Serials, Laura Mackie, to ITV earlier this year.

Update: Ben Dowell's report for Media Guardian (free registration required).

Musical saturation

We're used to thinking of Broadway as dominated by musicals and the West End as still offering a home to plays, but the situation has changed, says Mark Shenton on The Stage Newsblog. There are currently just seven plays running in the West End's 39 venues, he says, of which only two are new (one of which is from Channel 4's The Play's The Thing).

We have not only caught up with Broadway in ticket prices, we are now in the inexorable slide to sidelining plays completely in the West End as they do on Broadway. Actually, they have as many plays on Broadway right now as we do: they, too, have seven houses currently hosting plays today (though a couple – Awake and Sing and Doubt — are about to close).

Children's ITV under threat

TV is today expected to tell staff it is closing its inhouse children's production units with the loss of around 30 jobs, in what could be the first step in an eventual withdrawal from children's programming.

All employees who work in the units in London, Manchester and Leeds have been called to a meeting at lunchtime at ITV offices on the South Bank in London.

It is expected they will be told the division will close, with staff being made redundant at the end of their contracts.

More from Liegh Holmwood in Media Guardian (free registration required)

Update: ITV has confirmed it will close its inhouse children's programme-making department, saying it hopes to sell it as a going concern.

The Film Programme

Last week's edition of The Film Programme (click on "Listen Again") on Radio 4 had interviews with screenwriters Deborah Moggach and William Nicholson. Thanks to today's Shooting People for the link.

The Play's The Thing - *spoilers*

If you've been watching Channel 4's The Play's The Thing and are impatient to get to the final Act, the show's forum can help.

The True Life Story of [Your Name Here]

Youngblood, a collective of playwrights under 30, recently devised a novel way to raise money. The team held an auction on eBay offering to write a play about the winning bidder and stage it at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

More from Steven Mcelroy in The New York Times.

Ken Levine on rejection

American comedy writer Ken Levine offers advice on dealing with rejection.

I’ve saved all my rejection letters and wouldn’t you know, a number of the writers who initially said I sucked eventually submitted scripts to me looking for a job years later. (No, I didn’t just send back their rejection letters and flip flop the names…but I wanted to.)

Edinburgh Books Festival announces programme

Searching for an image to encapsulate her festival, director Catherine Lockerbie recalled the famous meeting between the precocious teenage Walter Scott and Robert Burns.

It took place in a literary salon in old Edinburgh, a house crammed with the brightest minds and imaginations of that age, among them James Hutton, the father of modern geology, and pioneering chemist Joseph Black.

"Fast forward to 2006," said Ms Lockerbie, "replace stone walls with tents, and what you have there is the essence of the Edinburgh International Book Festival."

More from Rosemary Goring in The Herald.

The line-up will include Seamus Heaney, William Boyd and Harold Pinter.

Traverse seeks new writers

The Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh is looking for up to 20 writers to take part in a 10 day residency as part of their inaugural emerging artists season. Each writer will be offered a fully paid residency with script development, masterclasses and mentoring by leading playwrights. The closing date for applications is 14 July 2006.

Full details are on the Traverse website.

Five commission improvised sitcom

Scream Films, the independent production house behind Extreme Makeover UK, is making an ad-libbed sitcom for Five.

The project is based on popular German show Schillerstrasse, which has become so popular with viewers there that more than 60 episodes have been made but it is still at pilot stage in the UK.

Five comedy controller Graham Smith explained: “The German version is very, very popular. It is a studio-based sitcom like Friends or My Family, with a live studio audience.”

Each episode of the show has a rough narrative but during the programme the director gives instructions to the actors through earpieces.

“For example, if the story was for an actor to change a light bulb, then as they mount the stepladder the director informs them that they have vertigo. The audience hears this but the other actors don’t. It is quite a simplistic style of humour,” Smith adds.

More from The Stage.

Timmer leaves ITV drama

Damien Timmer has resigned as head of drama for ITV's London-based drama department.

The network has confirmed that Mr Timmer, the respected head of drama (London) for ITV Productions, handed in his notice to the ITV Productions director, John Whiston.

Mr Timmer and Michelle Buck head the ITV drama department, which makes Lewis, Agatha Christie's Marple and Poirot.

More from Ben Dowell in Media Guardian (free registration required)

Sam Shepard interviewed by Joe Penhall

In 1972, Shepard escaped to London for a couple of years - and it was then that his writing took a quantum leap forward. He was asked to direct his friends Bob Hoskins, Stephen Rea and Kenneth Cranham in his first major play, Geography of a Horse Dreamer, at the Royal Court. "It was a great experience, which changed the way I approached writing, because I started writing for the actors. I'd shape things and move them around and realise what was possible or not possible. You understand the rhythmic structures much better when you work directly with actors. It's like a piece of music, it shifts and changes."

Hemingway said that writing is all about rewriting and, having directed, Shepard learned to rewrite. "With the early stuff I never rewrote anything. It was the arrogance of youth. 'Fuck it, if you don't understand it I'll just write another one.'

"I was riding those plays, like you'd ride a horse. You'd go as hard as you could, then get off and get on another one and go again and not really give a shit about how you're riding them. You'd just leave them wet and go and get on the next one. But then I started to become interested in the form and what was possible. How you have to pay attention to certain details of language, of structure, of rhythm, in order to make a play that wasn't just opening a window and letting wind rush through the room. Now," he concludes, "I love rewriting. I go over and over and over stuff - it's become a fetish."

More in The Guardian.

Sex in video games conference

The first conference of its kind, Sex in Videogames was about creating a market out of disparate interests and niches. As a result, only one question lurked beneath the soul-searching panels on ethics and the somewhat misguided commentaries on sexual desire. That question was whether money could be made from combining two of the most lucrative markets in the world: adult content and video games.

More from Annalee Newitz in Wired.

World Cup Tapes - first winners

The first winners of the BBC's World Cup Tapes monologue contest are being broadcast this week.

The competition is still accepting entries.

The Play's The Thing

Did you see the first episode of The Play's The Thing on Channel Four last night? It's their hunt for a brand new writer, with the winner of a Pop Idol-style contest getting their play staged in the West End.

Because writing doesn't make great TV (What are you going to show? Typing? Tea-making? Lying awake at night?) the focus is on the panel - made up of a producer, an agent and an actor. No writer on the panel, of course.

The Guardian's Nancy Banks-Smith liked it.

You were irresistibly reminded of that scene in The Producers, where Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom are demolishing skyscrapers of scripts in the hope of finding one new play guaranteed to fail. And, suddenly, there it is. A sure-fire, deckle-edged, copper-bottomed flop. Springtime for Hitler. A gay romp with Adolf and Eva. Leo: "Wow! This won't run a week." Max: "A week! This play is guaranteed to close on page four!"

The Play's the Thing (Channel 4) is an unexpected treat at this time of year. Funny, touching and instructive. A producer, Sonia Friedman, an actor, Neil Pearson, and a literary agent, Mel Kenyon, are wading through 2,000-odd plays - some odder than others - by unknown writers. The winning play will be produced in the West End.

Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll

A new play by Tom Stoppard is a major event. With Rock 'n' Roll in previews at the Royal Court, he has been featured in The Independent, The Observer and The Times.

“Prosecuting rock’n’roll musicians [in communist Czechoslovakia] was, if anything, more significant than arresting some famous scientist or academic,” says Stoppard. “Because the scientists, the poet, the essayist were actively opposing the regime, whereas the musicians were just a pain in the arse. What Havel realised was that this represented something very dangerous: now the state could put you into jail simply for being the wrong sort of bloke.”

Garrison Keillor interviewed

Writer and radio star, Garrison Keillor, has written a movie. He's interviewed by Dylan Callaghan for the Writers Guild of America, west.

Radio is a magical medium and movies are very hard work. Radio employs language to the fullest. It addresses mature people with some experience in the world, which they bring to the game, so a few references can produce images more vivid than most of what you'd see on a screen. You can do a monologue on several different levels, and the audience picks up everything and adds their own experience and comes away delighted.

A few times, during this picture, I thought to myself, "I should've tried this as a radio drama." But movies have the oomph of money and sex appeal. Movie stars are the last true celebrities in America. The challenge of movies for me is that I know almost nothing about them. I'm not a major movie fan. I was brought up fundamentalist, and so I associate filmdom with moral squalor and eternal damnation.

Bennett's Tony triumph

Alan Bennett's play The History Boys won six awards at last night's Tony Awards, including Best Play.

Guild statement on agent tax fears

WGGB General Secretary, Bernie Corbett, has issued a statement in response to press reports that writers' agents' fees could lose their tax deductible status.

Update: Richard and Judy have won their case, with the judge ruling that they are "theatrical entertainers". The Guild will be keeping a close eye on any moves that threaten writers' ability to offset agents' fees agaist tax.

Arts manifesto

Britain's cultural leaders have united to launch a manifesto to convince government of the central role played by the arts in the life of the country.

Figures including Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate, Nicholas Hytner from the National Theatre and Tony Hall from the Royal Opera House have put aside differences in the struggle for funding to present one vision of past successes and future potential.

More from Louise Jury in The Independent.

Allan Prior: 1922 - 2006

Long-time Guild member, Allan Prior has died at the age of 84.

Prior was one of the original writers of Z-Cars on BBC One (a series based on a single play by Troy Kennedy Martin) and wrote five of the first ten scripts.

He also created other series, including Stookie, The Charmer (based on a novel by Patrick Hamilton) and Howard's Way (co-created with Gerard Glaister).

There are obituaries in The Times and The Guardian.

Allan Prior, who has died at the age of 84, claimed his place in the pantheon of popular television as one of the founding writers of the BBC-TV police series, Z Cars, a distinction roughly on a par with membership of the 1966 England World Cup team. Developed from a single play by Troy Kennedy Martin, Z Cars was the first cops-and-robbers series to treat policemen as fallible human beings, to get away from the Scotland Yard scene in favour of a raw, sprawling, new-town landscape, and to anticipate the policing by motor car that would soon be general.

Zak Penn and Simon Kinberg interview

X-Men: The Last Stand scripters Zak Penn and Simon Kinberg never knew they'd work together on the final installment of the hit 20th Century Fox franchise, and they certainly never dreamed they'd finish it together. “We had never met before X-Men 3,” explains Kinberg, who burst into the biz with last year's Mr. and Mrs. Smith (his thesis at Columbia Film School). “The studio did something that studios do with large, tent-pole movies on a tight schedule, which is, they hire more than one writer to write different drafts simultaneously and eventually hire another writer to cut and paste that together and another and on and on.”

Interview with Penn and Kinberg by Dylan Callaghan for the Writers Guild of America, west.

Romantic comedy

The article by Billy Mernit on writing romantic comedy, published in the Writers' Guild's magazine UK Writer (Spring 2006) is now available on the Guild's website.

Movie producers aren’t interested in scripts that won’t really fill and hold the big screen, so make sure you’ve made your romantic comedy a movie, as opposed to a stillie. Great movies move - and romantic comedy duds talk themselves to death. I know that many of us lovers of the form are drawn to it precisely because it’s often about wonderfully pithy, sharp, delicious repartee. But too much talk can be the difference between a pass (because what you’ve written is more like a play or a TV show) and a green light - because your romantic comedy can really pull people into a multiplex.

The double life of Daniel Handler

Last Wednesday, one of the world's bestselling authors was due to give a reading at a big London bookshop, Waterstone's in Piccadilly - and it was cancelled due to lack of interest. It summed up Daniel Handler's predicament.

Under his own name, which is how Waterstone's billed him, he is just another aspiring author, with a new novel bobbing at about number 4,000 on the Amazon chart. Under the preposterous pen name of Lemony Snicket, he is a superstar, whose 12 children's books, collectively entitled A Series of Unfortunate Events, have all been international bestsellers. When Handler gives a reading as Snicket, he doesn't get cancelled; he gets mobbed.

It must be a weird feeling, like being jealous of yourself.
"It's quite magical actually," Handler says over green tea in a chic London hotel. "You hand over your credit card and very few people recognise your name."

More from Tim De Lisle in The Guardian.

The Artful Writer's mission statement

Sometimes controversial American blog The Artful Writer has issued a Mission Statement. There are currently 459 comments on the post...and counting.

From street to stage

Alecky Blythe explains to Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph why she writes plays using verbatim speech from real people.

Blythe, 33, warmed immediately to the idea of forcing actors to replicate the minutiae of others' speech: "They can't fall into their own speech-patterns. Their egos get lost in the effort of concentrating, which is acting as it should be, but so rarely is." But it's the content rather than the style that most appeals, the chance to get closer to ordinary people, and find out what's going on in their heads.

Bite-sized plays

As a thirty-minute Beckett (Eh Joe) opens in the West End, Dominic Maxwell in The Times looks at the pressures on playwrights to keep it brief.

The fun-sized dramacule could become the art form of the future. As Tom Stoppard admitted on Radio 4 last week, the thing for a playwright to aspire to these days is the compact 90-minutes-straight-through show in the style of Art. And once we get over this whole value-for-money neurosis — Eh Joe’s producers have tried to deal with this by making tickets half the usual West End prices — we’re free to admit that it’s a rare play that wouldn’t benefit from some snips. Savage snips in many cases. And if the purists demur at hacking out 80 per cent of Hamlet to get it down to sitcom length, fine, what’s wrong with seeing an extract instead? Offer a Hamlet of sheer excitement: the show’s breakout hit, the “To be or not to be” soliloquy, followed by a rousing swordfight with Fortinbras. Here in iPodworld, who’s got time for more than that?

The right to sleep

The audience burst into wild applause when two-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler asked a packed house at the Writers Guild Theater, “Can I make the grand statement that all of us here feel that the issue of rampant excessive hours in our business must be addressed as an urgent health and safety issue?”

More from Marsha Scarbrough for Written By.

National Theatre of Scotland triumphs at awards

The new National Theatre of Scotland has picked up six prestigious awards - less than four months after its first public performances.

The company came out on top at the Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland (Cats) ceremony in Dundee.

More from BBC News.

Pitch Factor

As part of the Screenwriters' Festival New Writers Day, here's your chance to take part in THE PITCH FACTOR, in association with Channel 4's IDEASFACTORY. Send us your story ideas for a feature film and win a place on a personal screenwriting coaching session with pitching expert and agent Julian Friedmann, THEN pitch your idea to a high-profile panel of judges, chaired by Oscar®-winning screenwriter, Julian Fellowes.

The closing date is 16 June. Full details from The Screenwriters' Festival.

Publishing faces a digital revolution

An interesting take on the familiar subject of publishing in the digital age, by Motoko Rich in The New York Times.

Hovering above the discussion of all these technologies is the fear that the publishing industry could be subject to the same upheaval that has plagued the music industry, where digitalization has started to displace the traditional artistic and economic model of the record album with 99-cent song downloads and personalized playlists.

Treasury targets "tax perks"

Gordon Brown wants to recoup millions of pounds from celebrities as part of a Treasury drive to reclaim an estimated £97 billion underpaid in tax each year.

HM Revenue & Customs is mounting a test case against Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, the chat show hosts, that will set a legal precedent for television presenters, authors and footballers.

It claims that they have wrongly written off the cost of employing agents against their tax bills and wants to recover a six-figure sum to cover the period back to the late 1990s.

It could affect thousands of big names such as J K Rowling, the author, Jamie Oliver, the television chef, and Frank Lampard and Michael Owen, the England footballers, according to tax experts. In total the Revenue is hoping to recover hundreds of millions of pounds.

More from Robert Winnett and David Leppard in The Sunday Times.

Laverty film wins Palme d'Or

Just in case you missed it, The Wind That Shakes The Barley, directed by Ken Loach from a script by Guild member Paul Laverty, has won the Palme d'Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

Laverty and Loach have worked together on several films before, including Ae Fond Kiss, Sweet Sixteen, My Name Is Joe and Carla's Song.

For a final word on Cannes from a writer's POV, have a look at blogs by two Guild members - Jacob Weinstein and Danny Stack.

A week off

We won't be able to update the blog for the next week. But it will be back to normal from Monday week.

Cannes 2006 - Prize day

It's a strange feature of the Cannes Film Festival that as the speculation and excitement about the competition grows, so the journalists and delegates start to leave. In fact, in terms of the market, the Festival peaks over the first weekend.

However, while there is a slight sense of anti-climax around the Palais this morning, it will soon be gearing up for what is one of the most important events in the French calendar.

Apparently the Jury for the main competition has complete discretion over what awards are given. There are conventions (Best Film, Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay etc), but they can choose to give more than one in a category, or none at all.

I saw Cronica De Una Fuga (written and directed by Israel Adrian Caetano) yesterday. A very powerful account of the experience of four Argentinians held hostage by the military junta in the late 1970s, it's thought by some to be a late contender for the Palme d'Or. There'll be some embarrassment if it does win - most non-French journalists had left before it screened.

While some critics (especially from the UK and America) have complained that it has not been a vintage year, the standard of films that I've seen has been very high.

Even if you don't have any interest in the market side of the Festival I would recommend coming simply to watch films. Full Members of the Guild can get accreditation and it's quite possible to get tickets for most screenings (apart from the evening premieres).

It is not traditionally a Festival for writers but more and more Guild members are coming each year and most seem to find it worthwhile. We'll carry more advice and information about coming to Cannes early next year, in time for the 2007 Festival.

Cannes 2006 - Grand Cru winner

At the Cannes Critics Week Award last night, the first ever Grand Cru Award for the best short film screenplay went to Esmir Filho from Brazil for Alguma Coisa Assim (Something Like That).

The Guild, through our magazine UK Writer, is a partner in the Award.

Making the presentation Claire Dixsaut, editor of La Gazette des Scénaristes, stressed how important it was for writers to get recognition at Cannes, where they are so often overlooked.

Esmir is currently working on his first feature length screenplay.

Owen Atkinson is new ALCS Chief Exec

The Board of the Authors’ Licensing & Collecting Society (ALCS) have announced that Owen Atkinson is its new Chief Executive Officer.

“ALCS is a focused and hard working organisation and I look forward to working with both the Board and our excellent team of staff”, says Owen. “ ALCS’ aim is to promote and protect authors’ rights, ensuring that the voice of the writer is heard and that they receive fair remuneration for the vital role they play in the creative economy, at home and abroad. One of the immediate challenges we face is the development of an equitable licensing framework for the digital environment; we must safeguard the interests of writers, along with all other parties, in disseminating the written word in all its forms.”

Monica Ali interview

The phenomenal success of Brick Lane has allowed Monica Ali to spend more time actually writing. She tells Mick Brown about growing up as a semi-immigrant, learning how not to put a story together and the contrasting lives in her second book, set in a remote Portuguese village.

More from The Daily Telegraph.

Hay Festival

Had enough of Cannes? Now there's another Festival to follow...

Cheltenham Screenwriters' Festival

The Cheltenham Screenwriters' Festival (27-30 June) has announced Film Four as its major sponsor.

"We all know that there can be no great film without great writing", says Heather Rabbatts, education advisor to Channel 4 and board member of The Film Council. "Developing good writing skills is of fundamental importance to this industry and so it is fantastic news that for the first time ever we have a Festival dedicated to the art of screenwriting. This Festival will not only help to develop that key talent, but will also help to support writing in the future."

New Writers Day has confirmed speakers including Oscar winner Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park), new writer / director Dan Reed (Straight Heads) on Surviving Your First Feature, agents Mathew Bates & Julian Friedmann, and comedy legends Laurence Marks & Maurice Grans (Bird of A Feather, News Statesman, Nightingales).

Amazon books on demand

Amazon.com has started a program with publishers that allows out-of-print titles and lower-volume books to be printed and shipped on demand when consumers place orders.

"Customers are coming to Amazon.com detail pages and find they can't buy" an out-of-print book, Greg Greeley, vice president of worldwide media at Amazon.com, said in an interview. "We think this is a great proposition for publishers to address that," said. "It unlocks this great content that is out there that customers haven't been able to buy."

More from The Seattle Times.

Cannes 2006 - Indigènes

Another genre film with a twist.

Indigènes, written by Rachid Bouchareb and Olivier Lorelle and directed by Rachid Bouchareb, is an old fashioned war film - the camaraderie, the harsh realities, death of friends, bravery, final battle etc. It's well constructed, well shot and well acted, but what makes it special is that we are following an African Unit in the French army.

Fiercely patriotic to "mother France", they are met with injustice and bigotry by their own side, even when contributing to major victories. Even after the War they are treated appallingly.

The story does not need much elaboration - the resonances are strong enough to speak for themselves. Given the continuing racial problems that France has, seeing the heroism of African troops fighting under the French flag met with racism and injustice carries a powerful massage for today.

The audience at the screening I attended clapped long and hard.

Cannes 2006 - La Raison Du Plus Faible

Another film in the main competition at Cannes and, based on what I've seen so far, a real contender (written and directed by Lucas Belvaux).

From a writing point of view the real interest is how the script makes use of genre conventions in a very non-genre film. In fact, it starts as a study in small-town Belgian boredom - which promises to make for a very long two hours.

But then the heist story kicks in. Completely convincing, and without the bother about the mechanics of the job that so many mainstream heist films get caught up in. This film is all about character - four men who feel, for very different reasons, marginalised by society. The pacing is great and you could feel the whole audience sitting up in their seats wanting to know what was going to happen next.

I think writing experts can sometimes go overboard on the over-riding importance of genre. But this film showed how tried and trusted methods of storytelling can, along with properly motivated characters and an interesting context, give any life to even the most art-house of films.

Cannes 2006 - Marie Antoinette

One of the great things about watching a press screening is that you are able to arrive at a film without having read any reviews. Often you don't even know what the film is about.

With Marie Antoinette, however, it was hard not to have pre-conceptions. It's written and directed by Sofia Coppola, and since her last film was the brilliant Lost In Translation everyone was excited to see what she'd do with an historical epic.

Unfortunately, though the film looks great, for my taste there just wasn't enough story. Some people at the screening seemed to like it, but it felt to me like watching a child's history book on screen, with some rock music to liven things up.

It made me think how brilliant The Madness Of King George (written by Alan Bennett) is - an historical film that manages to feel contemporary whilst also saying things about the past.

Cannes 2006 - Flandres

The other film I saw yesterday was Flandres, written and directed by Bruno Dumont.

Dumont is from Flanders itself and the film is an extremely unflattering portrait of its inhabitants, or, at least, a selection of them. People hardly speak. They have emotion-free sex in fields. Four young men have to go to (an un-named) war; only a handful of people wave them off.

It's a tough watch. Even at war the men hardly speak and the only real glimmer of emotional warmth comes at the very end. But there is definitely something to it. About what makes us human and how deeply buried real feelings can be.

It was cheered and booed at the press screening - I had sympathies with both sides.

UK films' US market share

[New] Film Council figures show that UK films, with US co-production status, enjoyed a 15.8% market share in the US.

However, UK projects made without US involvement had just a 0.8% share of that market.

Only one of the top 20 biggest-earning UK films of 2005 - The Constant Gardener - was funded without any money from the US.

More from BBC News.