Ofcom blocks ITV's children's retreat

The broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, has blocked ITV's plans to reduce children's programming.

ITV had been hoping to cut its weekday afternoon CiTV shows on ITV1 and replace them with adult programming that would be more lucrative in terms of advertising.

The Ofcom ruling comes after a campaign from a number of groups, including the Writers' Guild, who felt that it was vital for children's programming to remain on ITV's flagship channel.

ITV ceased in-house production of children's programmes in June and has so far made no new commissions from independents. A spokesperson said that they would announce plans for 2007 later this year.

Dylan Thomas award shortlist

Six young authors have been named as finalists for the first Dylan Thomas £60,000 award, the world's largest literary prize.

The shortlist includes UK authors Rachel Trezise, Nick Laird, James Scudamore and playwright Lucy Caldwell.

They are joined by American Liza Ward and Zimbabwe-based Ian Holding in the running for the prize, which will be announced in October.

The judges said they had been "blown away" by what they had read.

The six writers - all under 30 to comply with the rules of the award - have been selected from a 14-strong shortlist unveiled in July.

More from BBC News.

Paul Schlesinger interview

In their latest Face2Face video interview, BBC Writersroom talks to the BBC's Head of Radio Entertainment, Paul Schlesinger.

BANG!

The BBC has launched BANG! (British Asian New Generation), a new writing competition for people living in the North of England.

What is BANG?
A new writing competition for writers based in the North of England.

You could win a BBC bursary of up to £1000, a writing mentor, and the chance to have your work produced for the stage.

What are we looking for?
A short drama of up to fifteen minutes for the stage. It will be either a complete piece or an extract of a longer piece. We’d like to see compelling and original stories about the British Asian Experience with great characters, strong dialogue, imagination, an arresting beginning and a satisfying ending.

The deadline is 8 January 2007. For full details visit the BBC Writersroom.

Tennessee Williams premiere

The conventional wisdom about Tennessee Williams, especially among politically correct detractors and gay-liberation activists, is that he was a self-loathing gay man. His homosexual characters are cloaked in heterosexual disguise, the argument goes, and so their humanity is distorted.

Now a premiere of a once-lost work, “The Parade, or Approaching the End of a Summer,” [playing as part of the Tennessee Williams festival in Provincetown USA] provides more evidence that Williams wrote freely about his sexual desires. Completed when he was 29, the play details his own emotional crisis after being dumped (for a woman) by the first great male love of his life, a young Canadian draft dodger named Kip Kiernan.

More from Randy Gener in The New York Times.

The inscrutable Mr Barnes

In The Daily Telegraph, Jasper Rees attempts to uncover the real Julian Barnes.

Of the golden generation of British novelists now within hailing distance of old age, Julian Barnes is much the hardest to pin down. Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan – you know where you are with them, and have done for years.

But the unifying theme of Barnes's work? The through line? If there is such a thing, it's an elegant unknowability, a distaste for the business of sifting through the contents of his own navel.

It's all gone quiet...

On The Guardian's Culture Vulture blog, Lyn Gardner describes the experience of having her first book published.

It is two weeks since my first novel, Into the Woods (David Fickling Books) crept quietly out into the world to a resounding silence. There were no fireworks, no glittering launch party, and no column inches celebrating its arrival. It feels a bit like having been pregnant for a monstrously long time only to discover that nobody takes a blind bit of notice when the baby finally arrives. It's when you announce the pregnancy or, rather, sell your book that the congratulations and the champagne flow. Eighteen months on, all interest has evaporated.

New BBC independent drama execs

As the final part of the a major restructuring, the BBC has announced new senior appointments for independent drama commissioning.

Julie Gardner is appointed Head of Drama Commissioning with special responsibility for implementing a cohesive independent drama strategy across the UK.

In addition to her new role, Julie will continue to executive produce Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures with Russell T Davies.

For the foreseeable future she will continue as Head of Drama, BBC Wales.

Lucy Richer is currently on sabbatical, and in order to enhance London-based independent drama commissioning, Sarah Brandist and Polly Hill are appointed as Commissioning Editors, Independent Drama, across all BBC television channels.

Their responsibilities include the development of new independent drama, alongside the continued development and production of the existing independent drama slate.

In addition, these positions will have special responsibility for developing independent teen drama and drama for the BBC THREE audience: this will include exploiting all opportunities for 360 degree drama commissioning, building on recent successes - with Spooks games available online and on mobile phones.

Following the announcement earlier this year of an in-house drama board, an equivalent board for independent drama commissioning will now be established, to be chaired by Julie Gardner.

Sarah Brandist and Polly Hill will be joined on the independent drama commissioning board by Patrick Spence, who will continue in his role as Head of Drama, Northern Ireland; and Anne Mensah, who will continue in her role as Head of Drama, Scotland.

Between them, Spence and Mensah oversee a dynamic slate which includes Murphy's Law, The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, Sea of Souls, and Waterloo Road.

Ben Stephenson is made Head of Development, Drama Commissioning, reporting to Jane Tranter and Julie Gardner.

New artistics directors for Theatre 503

Directors from two of the West End’s most successful recent plays - Journey’s End and Rock’n’Roll - have been appointed to head south London fringe venue Theatre 503.

Paul Robinson, who is also artistic director of Treatment Theatre company, and Tim Roseman will succeed Paul Higgins, who left the Battersea theatre earlier this year to pursue a freelance career.

More from The Stage.

WGAw rally for reality writers

About 800 Writers Guild of America west members joined a rally yesterday in support of reality show writers in dispute with producers over union recognition, rates and rights, reports Carl DiOrio in The Hollywood Reporter.

Top primetime scribes Marc Cherry ("Desperate Housewives") and Shawn Ryan ("The Shield") were among those addressing the gathering in midtown's Pan Pacific Park, which was followed by a march by the hundreds in attendance past CBS' nearby Los Angeles headquarters.

"The truth of quote-unquote reality shows is that some of them require people to write them," Cherry told a reporter. "I know the networks would like to avoid that reality because it costs them money. But to me, it's just a simple matter of fairness."

Machinima

In The Daily Telegraph, Vicky Frost explores the world of machinima, "the hybrid child of computer games, film and 3D graphics ("machinima" is a portmanteau of machine, cinema and animation."

Using features built into some popular computer game engines, you can "direct" characters and record their movements as if they were actors in a mainstream studio – you can even choose your camera angles. The film is then edited, a smart voice-over added and the finished product uploaded to the internet for the machinima community to view. There are games, such as The Movies, made specifically for this purpose. Many games have the necessary technology, even if it was included for different purposes.

Elif Shafak's characters on trial

Uncle Dikran, Grandma Shushan and Auntie Zeliha may be figments of the novelist Elif Shafak’s imagination but they will all be in the dock this week in a bizarre trial that has become a test for Turkey’s European ambitions and commitment to freedom of speech.

More from Suna Edrem in The Times.

Update: Elif Shafak has been acquitted, reports BBC News.

The proceedings lasted just 40 minutes and ended in utter chaos, the BBC's Sarah Rainsford reports.

The judges said they based their decision on lack of evidence to prove that Ms Shafak "denigrated the Turkish national identity" in her novel, The Bastard of Istanbul.

NewsBiscuit.com

Guild member John O'Farrell has launched a new comedy website, NewsBiscuit.com. He explains the thinking behind the site on BBC News.

There are two dozen items up there at the moment and a new lead story will hit the front page every day.

If you don't log on for a few days you can catch up by looking through the archives. There is no subscription charge - this is a completely free service paid for by the bailiffs who will be coming to my house a week on Thursday.

Maybe I'll get back some of the cost of running it from ads or the wildly optimistic link where readers can "donate to keep NewsBiscuit running". (And maybe all the soldiers will stop all their wars and skip around picking wild flowers.)

US networks back "the writer's vision"

At the annual meeting of the Television Critics Association (TCA), held in July at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Pasadena, the CEOs of all the major broadcast networks proclaimed there are no longer any pre-conceived structures or themes guiding the planning of a primetime fall television season. It is an open frontier.

“What we've come to learn is, it is all about the writer,” says Nina Tassler, President, CBS Entertainment. “We're aggressively developing projects year round. We tell writers, 'Bring us your passion projects; bring us the project that excites you.' So, if they bring us something that's serialized, if they bring something that is closed-ended, if they bring something that is unorthodox and unusual, it doesn't matter. If we at the network respond to the quality of the storytelling, and it's a great opportunity for us, we're going to move forward on it. We don't preclude development of any one form over another. The point is: it's about the writer's vision. How does he or she best feel the story is serviced.”

More from Julio Martinez for the Writers Guild of America, west.

Niraj Kapur

On the Writers' Guild of Great Britain website, Guild member Niraj Kapur explains how he has fought expectations about the subjects a British Asian writer should choose.

The biggest misconception producers have about Asians is that we are only capable of writing Asian projects around the ethnic clichés of curry houses, corner shops, Bollywood, arranged marriages, terrorism and racism.

I was born and educated in Northern Ireland. Sixteen challenging years in England followed, including drama school, two years on Income Support, marriage, fatherhood, being a regular game show contestant, joining the Chocolate Tasting Society, collecting rock music and doing unique office jobs. My experiences have been wonderful and varied. Why would I want to limit myself to writing stories about depressing racism or clichéd arranged marriages?

Harman criticises EastEnders scripts

Actor Nigel Harman has expressed his pleasure at performing Harold Pinter (at the Crucible in Sheffield) rather than being 'Little Den' in EastEnders, reports The Stage.

“I’ll be working on a classic piece of literature, where every word, every comma, every piece of punctuation is sacred, and coming from two years where I was basically making up my lines as I went along on EastEnders, it will be amazing.”

Earlier this year, continues The Stage, Harman had another pop at EastEnders scripts.

“How can I put this politely? You’re not always guaranteed a good script at EastEnders. I’ve watched a couple of people deliver lines that were so spectacularly bad, so spectacularly well, it’s bowled me over.”

Robin Hood reinvented

Guild member Dominic Minghella has created a new Robin Hood for the BBC, as Garry Jenkins reports in The Times.

“We wanted Robin Hood to be on the cusp between man and boy. We need to believe he has been off to war and is a leader of men, who has got past his youthful instinct to go off and fight and arrived at a more cerebral, intelligent position. But by the same token we need him to be someone who can hang out with the lads, backflip off the top of a building and snog a girl for the fun of it, too”

Peter Morgan profile

Yet more on Peter Morgan - a profile in The Observer by David Smith.

That was one of the highlights of my life.' Peter Morgan recalls the big impression he made on David Frost during breakfast at Claridge's when researching his first stage play, Frost/Nixon. 'He introduced me to Robin Cook and Madeleine Albright and told them, "Here's one of our promising playwrights, Colin Morgan." Better still was the late Cook's response: "Oh yes, of course."'

Frost/Nixon and Low Winter Sun

I saw Frost/Nixon by Peter Morgan at The Donmar Warehouse last night and was, like the critics, impressed by the skill of the writing, acting and staging.

It was slightly strange to have David Frost portrayed as some kind of hero, however. I wonder if Peter Morgan originally intended this characterisation. Or was it the case that, for the sake of the drama, one of the adversaries had to be triumphant. It couldn't be Nixon, so Frost - not someone, in my opinion, it's easy to care much about - had to come across as a more significant person than he ever actually was. (Maybe I've just seen him too many times on Through The Keyhole.)

One person who I'm sure wasn't at the theatre last night is screenwriter Simon Donald. The first part of his well previewed drama for Channel 4, Low Winter Sun, was on at 9pm. Unfortunately that was the same time as the new series of Extras (written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant) - probably the most heavily promoted series of the year. Donald must have seen enough of Ricky Gervais this week to last him several lifetimes.

Photo: Brian Maccardie and Mark Strong in Low Winter Sun written by Simon Donals (Amanda Searle/Channel 4)

Man Booker Prize shortlist

Several of the favourites failed to make the Man-Booker Prize for Fiction shortlist yesterday, as Louise Jury in The Independent reports.

The selection surprised commentators. John Sutherland, last year's chairman and author of How to Read a Novel, said it was a "bizarre" list that might signal a changing of the literary guard. "If you compare it with last year, the average age is five or 10 years younger. What we may be seeing is a turning of the tide, the older generation giving way to the new."

The six shortlisted books were chosen from a longlist of 19 and are:

• Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss
  
• Kate Grenville - The Secret River
  
• M.J. Hyland - Carry Me Down
  
• Hisham Matar - In the Country of Men
  
• Edward St Aubyn Mother’s Milk
  
• Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

The winner will be announced on Tuesday 10th October.

Can men write good romantic novels?

So now it's clear. The reason Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary were such unromantic flops is because both books were written by men. Big mistake.

There was nothing wrong with the writers. They were good enough in their own ways. It's just that the balance of their chromosomes wasn't up to the job.

If only Sadie Tolstoy or Sharon Flaubert had done the writing, instead of Leo and Gustave, the entire history of Western literature would have been completely different.

And how do we know this? Because Daisy Goodwin, the presenter of Reader, I Married Him, a new BBC4 series on the novel, which will be transmitted this autumn, just about tells us so.

"You can't have a really seriously romantic book written by a man," she says, dismissing in a sentence the murmuring hearts of half humankind. If you're a male writer, Daisy goes on, you lack insight into the ways of women.

More from Ray Connolly in The Daily Telegraph.

Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York

In The LA Times, J.A. Fernandez kicks of his new weekly Scriptland column with a scoop.

I have the new Charlie Kaufman screenplay on my desk.

I've read it — no, lived it. I've been moved and astounded by it. And I'm tortured by the dilemma of what I should or should not say about it here. I feel a bit like Frodo palming the One Ring.

Conor McPherson interview

In The Guardian, Maddy Costa talks to playwright Conor McPherson.

There's a distinctive sound Conor McPherson makes when he describes how he writes plays: a sort of viscous, splurting noise, like something gooey landing, splat, on a table. Plays come "very much from the unconscious for me", he says. "I describe it as coming from the body and your brain is catching up." It starts when an image arrives unprompted in his head; slowly the people it contains start to move and talk, then splurt: there they are on the page.

Send-a-Sketch

Channel 4 have launched a new comedy sketch writing competition in association with Amnesty International.

Using Human Rights as inspiration, we want you to pitch us a funny idea. It might be an animation, sketch, stand up, sitcom or a slapstick routine.

The catch - you have 160 characters to pitch your idea to us.

But be quick. The contest closes at 12 noon today.

lonelygirl15 is YouTube drama

If you're a regular on video upload service YouTube then you're probably familiar with cult favourite lonelygirl15.

She hit all the right buttons. Pretty. Naive. Geeky. Frank. And, it emerged this week, she was not a real person as (most) people had believed. In fact, she was the creation of film-makers Ramesh Flinders, Miles Becket and Grant Steinfeld and was played by actor Jessica Rose.

A glimpse into the future of scripted drama?

Read the full story on Virginia Heffernan's blog for The New York Times.

Midwives attack EastEnders plot

Midwives have attacked the BBC soap EastEnders for its portrayal of the birth of a baby with Down's syndrome.

The Royal College of Midwives said the plot, involving the characters Honey and Billy Mitchell, was unrealistic and would worry expectant couples.

The RCM is angry Honey was shown being refused an epidural when in pain, and being told about her baby's condition without her husband being present.

But a BBC spokeswoman said the scenes were based on real-life experiences.

More from BBC News.

New York Summer Plays Festival 2007

Submissions are now being accepted from writers anywhere in the world for the New York Summer Plays Festival 2007.

Leonardo Padura interview

Leonardo Padura, a 50-year-old journalist-turned-author, has recently won his third Premio Hammett (the International Association of Crime Writers award) for his latest Mario Conde novel. And yet, he says, what he is writing now, with its references to misbehaviour and unconventional sexuality, would never have been published in the stricter Cuba in which he grew up.

More from Duncan Campbell in The Guardian.

Scottish electronic archive plan

The National Library of Scotland has revealed a plan to create an archive of blogs, journals and e-mails written by leading Scots.

Curators insist these could become the manuscripts of the 21st century and have secured a £1.8 million grant for the Scottish Executive to set up a "digital repository".

Blogs and e-mails by leading cultural figures such as JK Rowling, Ian Rankin and Alasdair Gray are already being touted as prime exhibits for the scheme when it is launched in 2008.

More from Angus Howarth in The Scotsman.

John Le Carré interview

In The Sunday Telegraph, John Le Carré revals how a research trip influenced the writing of his new novel The Mission Song.

It was the strangest journey of my life and it always will be. I was looking for fictional characters I had invented, in a country I had never visited. The distant town of my imagination was Bukavu in the eastern Congo, known formerly as Costermansville and built in the early 20th century by Belgian colonialists. It stands at the southern end of Lake Kivu, at 1500 metres the highest and coolest of all Africa's Great Lakes.

Venice award for Morgan

Writer of the moment Peter Morgan has won the Best Screenplay Award at The Venice Film Festival for his script for The Queen.

Photo: Helen Mirren in The Queen, written by Peter Morgan.

Library budgets row

The bestselling novelist Susan Hill yesterday accused senior managers of public libraries of abandoning their commitment to books and manoeuvring to turn library buildings into social centres.

"They have been actively trying for years to get rid of books and introduce almost anything else," she said.

Hill was reacting to an indication that the protection of library book-buying budgets will not be strengthened and may even be diluted in a new government review. The Museums, Libraries and Archives Authority, a government agency, has announced a review of minimum service standards set five years ago.

More from John Ezard in The Guardian.

Product placement in books

Marketers have discovered a novel way to get their word out: embedding products in books.

The latest example is Cathy's Book, a novel due out Oct. 2 about a teen determined to find out why her boyfriend dumps her, then mysteriously disappears.

Procter & Gamble wrote a deal with the authors to include products such as Cover Girl's "Shimmering Onyx" eye shadow and "Metallic Rose" lipstick in exchange for promoting the book on P&G's teen website BeingGirl.com.

More from Laura Petrecca for USA Today.

You might remember that Fay Weldon was the first to pioneer this kind of deal back in 2001 when she was paid to feature Bulgari diamonds in her novel The Bulgari Connection.

Josh Berman interview

Dylan Callaghan, for the Writers Guild of America, west, talks to screenwriter Josh Berman about his new series Vanished.

“With the success of 24 and Lost, studios and networks have been open to more 'out of the box' pitches. Vanished is part thriller, part soap, part mystery. In this new era, I wasn't forced to limit myself to one genre when developing the project.”

World Trade Center

I went to a BAFTA screening of World Trade Center last night and, having read a scathing review in The Guardian ("probably the worst film of the year"), was pleasantly surprised to find it engaging, thoughtful and moving.

As the director Oliver Stone pointed out after the screening, this is not a film about the geopolitics of 9/11 - that might come later. Instead he wanted to make a film about what happened on that day to the people of New York.

Photo: Oliver Stone and Nicholas Cage on the set of World Trade Center

Unusually for Stone he didn't write the screenplay (he often refers to himself as "a dramatist" rather than a director) - that job was done by Andrea Berloff and, surprisingly, it was her first produced feature. There's an interesting piece about her on Variety that explains how she got the job (as ever, her overnight success didn't happen overnight).

"She'd written two biopics, one on Amelia Earhart and one on Harry (Bing) and Caresse Crosby in Paris, and we'd done those (types of films) successfully in the past," Double Features partner Michael Shamberg explains.

"She was not someone we would have fallen for immediately (for the World Trade Center project), but she came back to us having done an enormous amount of research, all on spec, with an enormous amount of enthusiasm, and we said, 'Sure, let's take a chance on Andrea.' "

Shamberg and partner Stacey Sher encouraged Berloff "to take leaps of chance structurally and narratively, but always within the truth. And she just nailed it," Shamberg says.

Pam Ayres interview

In The Daily Telegraph, Cassandra Jardine talks to poet Pam Ayres.

Ever since she became famous, aged 27, for winning Opportunity Knocks in 1975, she has had plenty of detractors.

They call her the doyenne of doggerel, they mock her hayseed Oxfordshire accent with its long flat vowels, they parody her verses with their "ohs" and "ahs" and "mes", but often they miss the point.

Her verse can sometimes seem a trifle tame but, at her best, she is observant, lightly mocking, gently thought-provoking and never heavy or difficult.

Surgically Enhanced, the title poem from her new anthology, is one of her best.

"I stand before the mirror and I feel my spirits sink," it begins.

"I'm so bored with this old body, it's so normal, round and pink,

It hasn't got the shingles nor a heavy chesty cough,

But it needs a few adjustments; a few sections slicing off . . ."

Penguin markets with a serial

Penguin is turning to publishing's past to help usher the industry into the modern era, releasing a novel in serial form to create a buzz online before the complete work is released next year.

Gordon Dahlquist's fantastical gothic mystery "Glass Books of the Dream Eaters" will be sent to buyers in the mail in 10 weekly paperback instalments, each with a cliff-hanger ending, before publication of the full hardcover in January.

More from Jeffrey Goldfarb for Reuters.

Guild leads the way with video games guidelines

The Writers' Guild of Great Britain has launched the world's first comprehensive guidelines for writers in the video games industry and all those who work with them.

The Guidelines include an outline of the industry and the role of the writer, plus detailed advice on in-house and freelance employment models; rates and payments; royalties, residuals and credits. The Guidelines have been written by professional writers who are active and widely credited in the games industry.

The aim is to "promote a writer/producer relationship which will work beyond the short-term with mutual respect, trust and benefit for all parties".

Copies of the Guidelines will be sent to all Guild members. Extra copies are available from the Writers' Guild of Great Britain, free for members, otherwise £2 per copy. You can also download a copy from the Guild website.

The official launch of the Guidelines will be at the Computer Games Industry Forum organised jointly by the Guild and BAFTA, which takes place at BAFTA in Piccadilly, London, at 7.00pm on Monday 11 September 2006. It is sure to be the most significant event of the year for games writers.

Admission is £5 for Guild members and BAFTA members, £10 for others. To reserve a place in advance, please e-mail events@bafta.org or call 020 7292 5806.

Shoot The Messenger script

Sharon Foster's script for Shoot The Messenger (shown on BBC Two last week) can now be downloaded from the BBC Writersroom.

BBC to hire three more commissioners

The BBC is set to expand its drama commissioning team, making the genre as accessible as possible to programme makers and writers.

It is understood that Corporation drama head Jane Tranter is keen to hire three commissioners to deal with independents, taking the total number of executives to seven.

More from The Stage.

Naguib Mahfouz obituary

Novelist and screenwriter Naguib Mahfouz, winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature, died at the end of last month at the age of 95. There's an interesting obituary in The Economist.

Great writers often seem to haunt their cities. Joyce and Kafka remain ghostly figures on the streets of Dublin and Prague, and the elfin presence of Borges is still glimpsed, through cigarette smoke and tango sweat, in the cafés of Buenos Aires. In the ancient city of Cairo, it is Naguib Mahfouz who does the haunting.

This is not simply because he was a towering literary figure, and the joyous chronicler of a turbulent Egyptian century. Nor is it just because he populated his works—35 novels, more than 20 film scripts and a dozen collections of stories, essays, anecdotes and dreams—with a cast of memorably strong urban characters. Mr Mahfouz himself embodied the essence of what makes the bruising, raucous, chaotic human anthill of Cairo possible.

BBC Vision appointments

Peter Salmon and Jane Tranter will fill new leadership roles in BBC Vision, the BBC's new multimedia content, commissioning and channels group, Jana Bennett, who will be Director of BBC Vision, announced today (5 September 2006).

Peter Salmon joins BBC Vision in October to take on the new role of Chief Creative Officer, BBC Vision Studios.

He will lead BBC Vision's in-house production studios, the biggest integrated multimedia production group in the world. With nearly 5,000 programme-makers throughout the UK, across drama, entertainment, comedy and factual, learning and children's programmes, he will spearhead the BBC's in-house drive to create the highest quality content.

Jane Tranter assumes the new role of Controller, BBC Fiction, leading the group which covers Drama Commissioning, Comedy Commissioning, Programme Acquisitions and BBC Film.

She will build connections between comedy and drama and draw up a more cohesive strategy between BBC Films and Programme Acquisitions, making the most of the planned increase in British film investment.

Within the new Fiction commissioning group, Lucy Lumsden, Controller of Comedy Commissioning, will continue to commission the comedy slate.

More from the BBC.

Recap: The creating of the BBC Vision group was announced as part of the BBC's Creative Future restructuring in July.

Lost showrunners

In Written By magazine, Matt Hoey talks to Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, showrunners on TV series Lost (created by Jeffrey Lieber, J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof).

“So, this thing just happened with J.J. Abrams and they're giving us a shitload of money to write this crazy pilot about a plane crash on an island,” Lindelof remembers telling Cuse in 2004, “and we're going to write it, but they're never going to do it.”

This was during one night in a long-running series of meals at their favorite Mexican restaurant, gossip sessions shared by peers and close friends. They'd been getting together for years. Their relationship began when Cuse read a spec script by an unknown while showrunning his '90s cop series Nash Bridges.

So let's go back: “I was talking to Damon's agent,” Cuse recalls, still amused by the memory of their first encounter. “The agent was saying they have this young writer they were just starting to represent: 'We're very excited about him.' I said, 'Does he have any original material?' and they were, like, 'Let us get back to you.'” Days passed and the agency contacted Cuse again: “Well, we've got a one-act play we can send over.” Cuse immediately responded to Ollie Klublershturf vs. the Nazis: “The pages were funny and well-written, and I was extremely impressed. And then Damon came in and was equally impressive in person, and we just hit it off.” The back story? “Little did I know that Damon wrote this original material for the purpose of the meeting.”

Photo: Walt Disney Company Ltd / Channel 4

The Crack - BBC Radio Cumbria

BBC Radio Cumbria is running a competition for writers either from or resident in Cumbria. Entrants for the contest, called the crack, must submit five-minute plays inspired by classified adverts.

The rise and fall of Lionel Bart

The rise and fall of Lionel Bart, who died aged 68 in 1999, is a classic rags-to-riches-to-rags theatre story. Generally credited with being the father of the modern British musical, Bart wrote probably the best loved of all popular shows in the past century - Oliver!- yet died more or less broke, certainly washed up, living in a house in Acton and on subs from friends, notably the royalty on Oliver! which was arranged for him by the producer Cameron Mackintosh long after he had sold all the rights in his own show.

More from Michael Coveney in The Independent.

Bart's career is currently being celebrated in It's a Fine Life! at the Queen's Theatre in Hornchurch (book by Chris Bond).

Paul Laverty interview

The interview with screenwriter Paul Laverty from the latest issue of the Guild's magazine, UK Writer, is now available online at the Guild's website.

Can you describe your working relationship with Ken Loach?

We’ve been working together now for over ten years now and it’s always been very organic. We’re constantly kicking ideas around. I often prefer to put something down on paper as soon as possible so that it stops being abstract. It could be anything - a rough notion, a premise, a snatch of dialogue or a character idea. Sometimes it’s mostly questions. Somehow on paper it can begin to live, and it’s much easier to talk about something concrete.

We might then spend time talking about the best way to tell the story – there are always so many choices to be made – but when we feel we’re on the right track I’ll go away to write the first draft, though even then it often changes. It’s important to feel free in the moment, and Ken respects that space. If it lives the story should surprise me too.

Keeping racism off TV

Over the past few years, racism has become invisible in television drama. A decade ago, the white characters in Casualty or Corrie would express initial racist hostility to non-white newcomers. Then they would quickly learn that "we are all the same". And, certainly, black characters are now so indistinctly written that this liberal maxim is actually true in soapland.

Sexism, homophobia, a lack of understanding of the disabled - all these prejudices can still be dramatised, and characters educated out of them. But what of the racism that we know exists in our inner cities, our suburbs, our rural villages? No character ever voices it.

There is something dangerous about this. Once a reality is deemed too unpalatable to make it on to our screens, once we make it an invisible force, then it becomes that much more potent.

More from Mark Ravenhill in The Guardian.

Make Your Mark In Film / Cobra Vision competition

Make Your Mark in Film (coordinated by the Make Your Mark campaign - a business-led, government-backed campaign to encourage people in their teens and twenties to have an idea and make it happen) have teamed up with CobraVision to run a screenwriting competition.

The brief is to create a script comprising 10 x 5 minute episodes around the premise of having an idea and making it happen. The competition is open to anyone over 18 and the winner will be paid £3,000.

The closing date for entries is 15 December 2006. Thanks to Shooting People for the link.

Comment: I'm all in favour of competitions, but having read the competiton brief and rules (PDF files) I've got some reservations about this one. It seems you have to submit 50 minutes worth of script - that would be OK if it was a piece that you could use elsewhere (eg a spec feature) but for such a specific brief it's a lot to ask. Why not just one episode and an outline? Also, entrants must sign a release that says:

I hereby give permission that if this screenplay wins the competition, the Competition organisers may make revisions to the screenplay if deemed necessary by the Competition organisers without prior consultation or notification.

In praise of The Sopranos

There's good TV drama, there's great TV drama and there's The Sopranos. Created by David Chase, last night's first episode of the final series was written by Terrence Winter.

As Nancy Banks Smith says in The Guardian, it doesn't get much better than this.

This is the last series of The Sopranos (E4). The first line, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people", is nicely ironic. The opening titles alone are probably the best in television history. The Sopranos assumes a taste for Tom and Jerry, a nodding acquaintance with Gibbon and Mencken and, of course, digital TV.

Photo: WARNER BROS / Channel 4 Television

On the short circuit

It's boom time for short films, says Lisa Rosen in The LA Times.

"There's definitely a feeling that big things are happening for short film, partly because of MySpace and YouTube, but also because of the mobile platforms," said [Shane] Smith [a juror at the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival]. "We're very much behind Asia and Europe in terms of downloading mobile content, but the potential is huge.

"It almost reminds me of the Internet gold rush of the late 20th century; there's an element of that, along with the hope that there's a revenue model in this, that filmmakers won't be burned like they were with the dot-com rush."

Guild website down

The Guild website is down at the moment - we're working on getting it back up as soon as possible.

01/09/06 Update: All fixed and working fine.

Google offers free book downloads

Google...[is] letting consumers download and print free of charge classic novels and many other, more obscure books that are in the public domain.

Using Google's Book Search service, Web surfers hunting titles like Dante's "Inferno" and Aesop's "Fables" will be able to download PDF files of the books for later reading, to run keyword searches or to print them on paper. Up to now, the service only allowed people to read the out-of-copyright books online.

More from Business Week.

Has anyone tried this yet?

Emmy wins for Brits

British shows won a clutch of awards at the Emmy's earlier this week. The Girl In The Café, written and directed by Guild member Richard Curtis, won three awards including for best made-for-TV movie, while Elizabeth I won nine. Helen Mirren, who won an Emmy for her role as the Virgin Queen, praised the writers behind the winning shows, as The Guardian reported.

"Without the writing we can't do it, especially us women," said Mirren as she collected her award at the ceremony in Los Angeles on Sunday night.

"Every one of these great performances by these great actresses in this category were revealed to us by some wonderful writing.

"Women are 50% of the world's population, maybe more. And I know there are many more brilliant performances by women of all ages and all races waiting to be revealed by some great writing, so let's look forward to that."

Elizabeth I, written by...?

Unfortunately, as a letter to The Guardian from Leslie Megahey pointed out, there was one thing they forgot.

Your report on the nine Emmies awarded to the Channel 4 drama Elizabeth I (August 29) is headlined "Great writing is key to success, says Mirren". You go on to quote accolades from Mirren and her co-star Jeremy Irons - "great writing", "wonderful writing" and "without the writing we can't do it". It is a shame you didn't actually manage to mention the screenwriter's name - it is Nigel Williams.

Joseph Stefano obituary

Screenwriter Joseph Stefano, who wrote the script for film classic Psycho, has died at the age of 84.

Stefano began his career as a pianist, singer and dancer but only found real success with his writing - first songs and then screenplays.

He was best known for adapting Robert Bloch's novel Psycho - which director Alfred Hitchcock asked him to rework for the big screen.

More from BBC News.

Chasing the story

In The LA Times, Marvin J. Wolf explains how tough it is to get exclusive rights to a true story.

Remember the story? An Ashland, Ore., family—dad, mom, two kids, his mom and her new husband—go missing on a day trip in a motor home. All-points bulletins, search parties, helicopters, bloodhounds, prayer vigils.

Nada. The search is called off. Hope fades.

Then, 17 days after wrong turns got them lost and snowbound in Oregon's coastal mountains, dad and mom come hiking through the snow, tired but healthy. Miracle in the mountains!

My writing partner stumbles on this story before the national media get it. We see a multigenerational family movie: a marriage fraying around the edges; alienated kids; a grumpy, fault-finding older couple. Two weeks off the map, coping with the elements. Food dwindling, water a problem. Maybe a hint of danger. Then grumpiness emerges as wisdom. Kids blossom under adult attention. Forced to work as a team, the family comes together, one for all and all for one.

In other words, pure movie gold.

Every producer we pitch is interested—if we can get exclusive rights.

John Connolly interview

John Connolly has taken a break from his popular Charlie Parker series of crime novels and ventured into weird new territory with 'The Book of Lost Things'. Tim Martin meets him in Waterford to discuss his change of direction.

More in The Independent.

"Like most first-time writers I never thought that I was going to be published," he says. "It still takes me by surprise to see myself in print, or to see myself still in print." He started out as a journalist - "I didn't write fiction, it was probably my father's realism that said that most people are not going to make a living by writing books" - but discovered over five years that he wasn't cut out for it. "I got frustrated," he says. "I sat down and wrote what became the prologue of Every Dead Thing - I spent about six months writing that prologue and thinking, I'll just go over it one more time, dot all my Is, cross my Ts, and then four-and-a-half years later I had a book. I never thought that anybody would want it. I was just so relieved when somebody did because I really couldn't take being a journalist any more."

Alan Ayckbourn interview

Alan Ayckbourn, still recovering from a stroke, speaks to Alan Strachan The Daily Telegraph.

Traditionally, Ayckbourn never begins a new play until the most recent one has been staged, although, he adds, "I've made a little mental note to myself to write for Christmas 2007 -something wild, a bit potty", so the old fermenting process has evidently begun.

In the meantime, his schedule is awesome. Early next month he will start rehearsals for If I Were You. "I've given myself five weeks rather than the usual four, just to pace myself. And the doctor warned me that you can get unaccountably tired."

Shoot The Messenger

Sharon Foster won the Dennis Potter Award for screenwriting and her first major film has produced a furore true to the spirit of the chain-smoking doyen of TV writers, as BBC News reports.

The film...opens with the line: "Whenever I think about it, everything bad that has ever happened to me has involved a black person."

Director Ngozi Onwurah told the BBC News website that the film deals with issues prevelant in the black community, "but quite often don't talk about in public".

"Part of the role of a writer is having to look at some of the more uncomfortable things in the world that you know," she said.

David Oyelowo in Shoot The Messenger (Photo: Mike Hogan/BBC)

The film will be shown on 30 August on BBC Two.

"This is one of the most racist, demeaning and misrepresentative films ever broadcast and commissioned by the BBC," said Toyin Agbetu, the founder of Ligali, which seeks to challenge "the misrepresentation of African people in the British media".

"African people in Britain are portrayed as a monolithic, belligerent, aggressive, politically naive and intellectually-diminished," he added.

ITV wants to cut children's shows

ITV has sent a written request to broadcasting watchdog Ofcom asking permission to reduce the amount of children's programmes it shows on ITV1.

About eight hours of children's programmes are currently screened on the channel each week.

The ITV network announced it would stop making shows for youngsters two months ago, while children's controller Estelle Hughes resigned last week.

Ofcom said a decision on ITV's request would be made in the autumn.

More from BBC News.

Severance - James Moran

British screenwriter James Moran has his first film, Severance, opening today. He's been blogging since 2003, although at time of writing his last post was on Wednesday before the charity premiere.

I'm trying not to think about it, trying to concentrate on other things, but it's impossible. I am so excited, I can barely articulate myself, and have been forgetting how to speak all day.

Speechless: Claudie Blakey in Severance (Photo: Nick Wall)

TV laughs go belly up

The sitcom in crisis (part 97) by John Plunkett on The Guardian's Organ Grinder blog.

The danger is that if audiences continue to decline then comedy - already a risky business - will be seen by broadcasters as simply not worth the gamble. Performers like Ricky Gervais, who have already taken their radio show to the web, will take their TV shows there as well.

Could YouTube become the new equivalent of the old BBC2/Channel 4 Friday night comedy zone?

Edinburgh Writing Awards 2006 - winners

The Winners of the 2006 Edinburgh Writing Awards run by the Writers' Guild and The List have been announced. Chosen from a shortlist selected from a total of 392 eligible performances, the judging panel has chosen the following winners:

• Best Comedy Writing (Prize: £500): Reginald D Hunter
  
• Best Comedy Newcomer (Prize: £250 plus BBC mentoring scheme): Simon Brodkin
  
• Best Theatre Writing (Prize: £500): Gregory Burke for Black Watch
  
• Best Theatre Newcomer (Prize: £250 plus BBC mentoring scheme): Adam Rapp for Finer Noble Gases

The Awards were presented at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh. In addition to the other prizes, each winner will be offered a year’s free membership to the Guild.

The judging panel consisted of:

• Arthur Smith, comedian (Chair)
• Sally Avens, BBC Drama Producer
• Nick Barley, Editor, The List
• Steve Cramer, Theatre Editor of The List
• Brian Donaldson, Comedy Editor of The List
• Pete Sinclair, comedy writer

Awards ceremony photos

Reginald D Hunter: Best Comedy Writing

Simon Brodkin: Best Comedy Newcomer

Black Watch director John Tiffany accepts the award for Best Theatre Writing on behalf of Gregory Burke.

Adam Rapp: Best Theatre Newcomer

Photos by Luke Watson.

BBC Radio Scotland comedy pulled

The BBC has pulled a radio comedy show featuring sketches of a cow flying into the twin towers and a spoof Rolf Harris drawing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.

BBC Radio Scotland's The Franz Kafka Big Band was due to begin next week but has been removed from the schedules after concerns about its controversial content.

The corporation said the programme's "bold" subject matter required some "fine-tuning" before it could go on air.

More from in Media Guardian (free registration required).

Prison Break - series two

Can hit TV series Prison Break succeed for a second series, asks Edward Wyatt in The New York Times?

Paul T. Scheuring, the series creator and head writer, is confident, for one main reason. “A lot of people,” he said, “are going to be killed.”

“The ramifications of this escape are going to be very obvious, in that we’re not going to try to sustain the show or kind of cheapen it in any way by trying to stretch too much out of the season,” he said.

“Those eight guys who start on the ground running in Season 2,” he added, “virtually none of those will be there in their current iterations, involved in the Season 3 story line.”

Games industry "is failing women"

The videogames industry is continuing to fail women by not producing suitable content, a senior executive at Electronic Arts (EA) has said.

David Gardner, chief operating officer for EA's worldwide studios, was speaking to a conference in Edinburgh.

He said: "We have all been talking about this for a long, long time."

More from Darren Waters on BBC News. He's also keeping a log from the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival, where Gardner's speech was made.

John Heffernan interview

Dylan Callaghan interviews John Heffernan for the Writers Guild of America, west.

Though Snakes on a Plane [Screenplay by John Heffernan and Sebastian Gutierrez, Story by David Dalessandro and John Heffernan] is his first script to reach the big screen, John Heffernan has pretty high expectations. “If someone were to say, 'Here's 60 million dollars,' I'd make a Western,” he says. Yet Heffernan, who graduated from Cornell University with a degree in English literature, is as much a student of Goddard and Bertolucci as he is of Ford and Peckinpah. Starring Samuel Jackson and a mess of slithering reptiles, Snakes on a Plane is an exuberant reflection of his multi-genre affection for cinema.

Tom and Jerry smoking ban

Tom and Jerry can chase each other as much as they like, wielding hammers and axes, but what they must not do, in the eyes of the media watchdog Ofcom, is light up a cigarette. Some 65 years after the quick-tempered cat and opportunistic mouse made their debut in The Midnight Snack, smoking scenes from the series have been cut.

More from Hugh Davies in The Daily Telegraph.

"Buzz" Bezzerides

A new documentary about screenwriter AI "Buzz" Bezzerides will premiere in America this week, reports Susan King for The LA Times.

Though Bezzerides worked with such directors as Nicholas Ray and Jules Dassin, [documentray maker
Filmmaker Spiro] Taraviras says, "he was always in the shadow of the studio. He was an employee of the studio and many times was not given a credit. I think he was not a good businessman. He was believing in the good of the people. But he didn't realize you have to take care of yourself."

Andy Harries on ITV

In Media Guardian (free registration required) Maggie Brown talks to Andy Harries, the ITV controller of drama, comedy and films.

"Don't you think that the ABs [upmarket viewers] have stopped watching ITV because it has become unwatchable? Hundreds of people tell me this. There is too much clutter, and it is putting people off. ITV is so unfashionable. It doesn't have to be like Channel 4, but it should be modern. It looks like a bargain basement."

Throw in the towel

Brace yourselves. On WordPlay, Terry Rossio lists the reasons why aspiring screenwriters why they should just give up. Thanks to The Artful Writer for the link.

I'll always remember a line from Larry Bird's biography. It was right at the beginning, at a description of how Larry came to start playing basketball. Apparently he went out to a court, and just started shooting around with a bunch of friends. The descriptive line then said, "He noticed that his shot always went in."

That's such a powerful line to me, because it indicates the pre-existence of his ability. He didn't practice for years -- not until later, anyway. At first, he just 'noticed' that he had this amazing ability.

It's that magical thing called talent. It's something that you notice you have. You can't invent it, it's got to be there. And if you don't notice it, if people aren't telling you that you have it, you have to consider the probability that it doesn't exist.

And without talent, you'll never make it in this business.

U-571 writer regrets "distortion"

Screenwriter David Ayer has admitted his 2000 film U-571 distorted history and that he would not do it again.

Ayer told BBC Radio 4's The Film Programme that he "did not feel good" about suggesting Americans captured the Enigma code rather than the British.

"It was a distortion... a mercenary decision to create this parallel history in order to drive the movie for an American audience," he said.

More from BBC News.

Respectable

Five's new sitcom [Respectable] is about prostitution. You know the funniest part? The women all love their work

In The Guardian, Kira Cochrane is not amused.

Four female characters, all prostitutes, and all - naturally, this being a comedy - happy hookers, hoofing it up and uttering deathless quips about blowjobs.

Animation writers' royalties

In The LA Times, Jay A. Fernandez looks at why Hollywood animation writers are trying to get the same deals as their live-action counterparts.

Writers of live-action features get royalties when their work is repackaged and sold. But writers of animation don't. Their "ancillary profit participation," as it's known, is paid in multiples of zero.

It's an industry standard evolved over a decades-long debate between the writers and their employers, and in a practical sense, it means that the writers of "Goldmember" get paid a small percentage of every sale of a video or DVD, which can add up to tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, while the writers of "Shrek 2" receive nothing.

This disparity has its roots in the early days of animation, when storyboard artists and animators were the primary creative forces behind projects and screenwriters, if they were used at all, came in to add polish at the end.

Theatre blogs

UK theatre isn't blogged as extensively as film or books but, thanks to Mark Shenton, I've discovered two good ones this week: My London Life, by director Paul Miller and Encore Theatre Magazine, by a whole collection of (anonymous) people.

BBC Sketch Factor

Have you ever listened to a comedy show on the radio and thought; 'I could do that?' Well now you can.

Sketch Factor is a unique opportunity to join the writing team of a brand new sketch show for BBC Radio 4.

The 10 best entrants will be selected to join a writers' academy where they will be mentored by leading comedy writers.

Their work will then be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 early in 2007, as part of a new comedy sketch show, entitled 'Recorded for Training Purposes'.

The closing date for entries is 11 October. Full details are on the the BBC New Talent website.

Update: there's a news report on The Stage.

Head of radio light entertainment Paul Schlesinger told The Stage: “This is investment with a proper end. It is a meaningful search for talent and at the end of it people will end up on radio. It isn’t just extra investment in terms of money but also man hours, from reading and editing scripts to the production and mentoring side.”

New authors face tough times

In The Times, Barry Turner looks at why new writers are finding it harder than ever to get published.

So we have the great paradox of modern publishing. While there are more books published than ever before, it is more difficult to get published than ever before. “The rise of supermarket books and digital delivery is rapid. Some publishers and authors will no longer be able to earn their living in this changed world,” says Tim Hely Hutchinson, chief of the Hodder Headline, Orion, Little Brown and Octopus publishing groups.

Radio rates increase

All BBC radio drama minimum rates have been increased by 2.8 per cent (in line with BBC staff pay rises) with effect from Friday 11 August 2006. The new rates (with the previous rates for comparison) are set out in a document on the Agreements page of the Guild's website.

Edinburgh Writing Awards 2006 - shortlist

The shortlist has been announced for the Edinburgh Writing Awards 2006, run by the Guild and The List.

Comedy - Best Writing

• Reginald D Hunter – Pride & Prejudice & Niggas
• Mark Watson – I’m Worried That I’m Starting To Hate Almost Everyone In The World
• Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, Katie Lyons and Verity Rose Woolnough - The Receptionists
  

Comedy - Best Newcomer

• Simon Brodkin - Everyone But Himself
• Jonny Sweet and Joe Thomas - The Future

Theatre - Best Writing

• Gregory Burke - Black Watch
• Theatre of the Emerging American Moment - Particularly In The Heartland
• Arthur Riordan - Improbable Frequency
  

Theatre - Best Newcomer

• Adam Rapp - Finer Noble Gases
• Network Of Stuff - The Unsinkable Clerk
  

The winners will be announced on 22 August.

Wee gems

Small but perfectly formed, BBC Scotland has launched Wee Gems, a new talent initiative to encourage and develop directing, producing and writing skills within children's drama.

Open to both new and experienced production talent within Scotland, the scheme will see the commission of two 15-minute children's dramas.

The closing date for entries is 22 September 2006. More details from the BBC Press Office.

Students' copyright

The NUJ's London Freelance investigates the problem of universities assuming copyright of students' work.

The universities' enthusiasm for copyright grabs seems to stem from their dealings with patents on scientific discoveries. While patents are a very different animal to copyright, university bureaucracies often lump the two together. Goldsmiths claims ownership of "patentable inventions" software, lectures and designs, but "for the avoidance of doubt the College does not intend to assert any possible ownership of copyright" in written work.

[Guild General Secretary] Bernie Corbett cites "half a dozen instances where students write something of commercial value," usually scripts or treatments for TV companies. The issue comes up at copyright clearance. "Every time the Writers' Guild take up the case... the university have backed away at 100 miles an hour... It's plainly completely ridiculous to claim copyright." Universities are "not really interested in this as a way of generating income... It would be ideal if they had a think about this and didn't ask students to sign up to something unenforceable."

The Guild in Edinburgh

Members and non-members are very welcome to join Guild Assistant General Secretary Christine Paris for a drink and to meet other writers and Guild members at the Logie Baird Bar, Bank Hotel, 1 South Bridge, Royal Mile, Edinburgh at 8.30pm on Friday 18 August and/or from 7pm on Monday 21 August. Please spread the word to other writer friends and colleagues.

Kulvinder Gill wins Guardian comedy competition

Guild member Kulvinder Gill has won first prize in the comedy competition, the Funny Farm, organised by the Guardian Unlimited website. Kulvinder won the competition with an excerpt from his sitcom "The Folks on the Hill", a black comedy about crime and punishment in a dystopian future.

Full details and the first five pages of the script can be read on the Guardian's Culture Vulture blog.

The cost of the Fringe

How much does it cost to stage a show on the Edinburgh Fringe? In The Guardian, Patrick Collinson and Rupert Jones investigate.

The rule of thumb for performers is that if you can sell 150 tickets a day, then the production will keep its financial head above water. Trouble is, the average Fringe performance attracts only 51 people, so ticket sales rarely cover half the cost of a show. Getting 50 punters is no mean feat; this year Edinburgh has 1,867 productions showing at 261 venues, all desperate for your attention.

It's unlikely that anyone hoping to put on a production or stand-up comedy - even a one-man show on a shoestring budget - will do it for less than £5,000-£7,000.

By the way, the next issue of the Guild's magazine, UK Writer, will be taking a closer look at the costs and benefits of the fringe in general.

Summer break

This blog will be taking a short summer holiday. See you in a week.

ITV1 to be streamed on 3 mobile

ITV1 is to be streamed on to mobile phones, a UK first for a terrestrial broadcaster, in an exclusive deal with mobile media company 3.

The move means that the telecoms company’s 3.5 million customers will be able to watch the network’s flagship channel and gaming station ITV Play live on their mobile phones.

More from The Stage.

Midnight Cowboy

David Gritten in The Daily Telegraph speaks to director John Clancy and playwright Tim Fountain about the latter's adaptation of Midnight Cowboy.

"It's strange," Clancy says during a lunch break [during rehearsals]. "Everyone claims to have seen the film, but they can't remember it. The poster [of tall, rangy Voight as Joe and the far smaller Hoffman as Rizzo against a backdrop of skyscrapers] is what they remember. It's such an iconic image."

"And people know that line of Hoffman's when a taxi nearly runs him down," Fountain adds. "You know: 'I'm walking here, I'm walkin'!'"

Edinburgh smoking drama

Actor Mel Smith has pulled back from defying the ban on smoking in public places during a performance at the Edinburgh Fringe.

The star, who plays Churchill in the play Allegiance, had flouted the ban in a photocall at the Assembly Rooms and promised to do the same on stage.

However, he kept his Havana cigar unlit on Monday morning.

Edinburgh City Council had warned that it would shut the whole venue should the law be broken.

More from BBC News.

The Guardian looks at the impact of the smoking ban on other shows.

In Red Shift's acclaimed original production of Get Carter, "everybody smoked their heads off all the way through it," says director Jonathan Holloway. But not in Edinburgh. Likewise the Fringe hit Bill Hicks: Slight Return, the poster for which depicts actor Chas Early as the late stand-up with a cigarette drooping raffishly from his mouth. The show was returning to Edinburgh, its pre-publicity claimed, "in defiance of the smoking ban". But reality bit, and faced with the threat of a £200 fine, the posthumous Hicks has had to stub out the ciggies.

Literary Consultancy Competition

The Literary Consultancy has contacted us about the following competition:

The Literary Consultancy’s script division is launching a new competition open to writers of theatre and radio drama.

Winners will be judged by TLC’s team of script readers who have worked with the BBC, The National Theatre, The Royal Court, Hampstead Theatre and more. Our script readers have a proven track record within the industry and include prestigious names such as Marcie Kahan, Olwen Wymark, Julia Stoneham and Frankie Bailey.

The competition is open to all writers and entry is free. 5 prize winners will receive a full written critique of their script and then meet with one of our industry insiders for further professional advice. See below for competition rules.

Founded in 1996 and partially funded by the Arts Council England, The Literary Consultancy (otherwise known as TLC) has a first class reputation for supporting writers at all levels.

COMPETITION RULES

Please send a hard copy of up to 60 pages of a theatre or radio play: this could comprise the entire script or just an extract (but please send the first 60 pages). Entries must be typed please and laid out in the appropriate format, on one side of the A4 page only. Email submissions will not be accepted.

• In your covering letter please enclose your contact details, including phone number and email address, plus brief information about you and your writing experience.
• Entry is free, but if you want your script returned to you please include an sae.
• We will only notify the five winners of the competition.
• The judges of the competition will be drawn from our pool of readers.
  

Please send your entries to: Patsy Trench, The Literary Consultancy, Play Competition, Diorama Arts, No 1 Euston Centre, London NW1 3JG. The deadline is 31 October 2006.
The winners will be notified by 30 November 2006.

Further information about TLC and its work can be found on www.literaryconsultancy.co.uk

The competition is supported by The Peggy Ramsay Foundation. For further details please contact Patsy Trench on 020 7813 4330 or email patsy@literaryconsultancy.co.uk

Gregory Burke's new play

In The Guardian, Gregory Burke explains why his new play is about the Black Watch regiment.

There is a pride in Scotland - romanticised perhaps, but a pride none the less - about our military traditions. Scotland has always provided a percentage of the British Army disproportionate to its population's size. Where does this martial culture sit alongside the shortbread-tin version of the Highlands, or the socialist glory of the former industrial areas? What is the enduring appeal of regiments like the Black Watch?

Manipulating the bestsellers list

In The Times, Nicholas Clee reveals how authors manipulate the Amazon bestsellers list to boost their book's appeal.

Children's writing competition

Lion Children's Books is on the hunt for a new author...The competition asks for never-before-published writers to submit their stories for children by 31st October 2006

Full details on the Lion Hudson website - NB they are a Christian publisher.

David Edgar on Desert Island Discs

David Edgar, playwright and former Guild President, is currently on Desert Island Discs on Radio 4. Sadly, unlike with most Radio 4 output, if you miss it you can't listen again online.

The Welsh language and trade unions

Gareth Miles, former Chair of the Guild’s Welsh Committee, will be speaking at an open discussion on the importance of the Welsh language in the history of the trades union movement in Wales and how to promote the use of Welsh throughout Trade Unions.

The meeting will take place at the Societies Pavilion, Monday 7 August 10.00 – 11.00 am as part of the National Eisteddfod, Felindre, Swansea.

Tinniswood Award shortlist

The shortlist has been announced for the Tinniswood Award 2005, the radio drama prize administered by the Writers' Guild of Great Britain and the Society of Authors.

The shortlisted dramas are:

• A Certain Age (The Brother) by Lynne Truss
  
• Beast by Nick Warburton
  
• Dead Code: Ghosts of the Digital Age by Jeff Noon
  
• Getting the Joke by Neil Brand
  
• Last Loves by Rony Robinson and Sally Goldsmith

The winner will be announced at a ceremony in London on 3 October.

All our yesterdays

Want to find out about British history? Look no further than its theatre. As the National Youth Theatre celebrates its 50th anniversary with six new plays marking every decade since the 1950s, Michael Billington examines the concerns - and the blindspots - of Britain's postwar dramatists.

More in The Guardian.

In short, 1960s theatre put large swathes of British life on stage. It also launched, through the emerging fringe, a whole generation of new writers, including Trevor Griffiths, Howard Brenton and David Halliwell. But two vital areas went unexplored. The Royal Court discovered a first-rate Jamaican writer in Barry Reckord, whose Skyvers, dealing with life in a bog-standard comprehensive, was excitingly revived earlier this year. Even so, Britain's simmering racial tensions went largely unrecorded. And, although Caryl Churchill was busy writing radio plays, British theatre - shockingly - remained a male club. The stage did a lot to pin down social change in the 60s - but, if you were female or black, the chances were your voice went unheard.

John Yorke interview

On BBC Writersroom you can watch a video interview with John Yorke, Controller of Continuing Drama Series and Head of Independent Drama walking, walking around the set of EastEnders and giving a mini-lecture on how to write drama.

I don't think there is any doubt that the BBC is going the way of making drama that is faster, younger and, for want of a better word, sexier.

Wounded Warriors Writers’ Program

One of the last places that Michael Jernigan, a former Marine corporal, might have expected to find himself last week was a theater program in this small wooded town. But then a lot of unexpected things have happened since his Humvee was bombed outside Mahmudiya, Iraq, in August 2004, and shrapnel shot through his eyes and into his brain.

Yet on this morning Mr. Jernigan, 26 and blind, is walking down the spacious hallway of a former public high school, a sensing stick to guide him in one hand and a tape recorder in the other. He has used the recorder to dictate a 15-minute story about his life in St. Petersburg, Fla., as a struggling college student turned recruit, and about what has happened since the explosion. Out of that material, he plans to create a two-and-a-half-minute monologue.

More on the Wounded Warriors Writers' Program from Donna Kornhaber and David Kornhaber in The New York Times.

Apolitical drama

Daniel Brocklehurst's series Sorted is the latest TV drama to shun the politics of the workplace, argues Paul Donovan on the Comment pages of The Guardian.

The growing suspicion must be that, in true BBC style, the unions have been airbrushed out of Sorted. While the makers of the programme would no doubt declare that it is a fictional account made to entertain the public, there remains the question of authenticity.

David Gemmell obituary

Fantasy novelist David Gemmell, best known for stories such as Legend and Waylander, has died at the age of 57.

Gemmell had heart bypass surgery two weeks ago and appeared to be making a good recovery, according to his publisher Transworld.

His career began in 1984 with Legend, a tale of a fortress under siege. He wrote 30 novels in total.

Transworld managing director Larry Finlay said Gemmell was "writing at the peak of his powers".

More from BBC News.

Revised Guild Rule Book

The Writers' Guild of Great Britain Rule Book has now been revised, incorporating the rule changes agreed at the Annual General Meeting in May this year.

You can download the new version from the Guild's website.