Hollywood's buying frenzy

From Jay A. Fernandez for The L.A. Times:

For a while there, the spec market was starting to look as undernourished as your average Hollywood starlet. Well, the industry's body of original work seems to be upping the carbs. When Sony picked up Roland Emmerich and Harald Kloser's apocalyptic "2012" right after the Writers Guild strike ended in February, it was a good, but unsurprising, sign.

But when 27-year-old unknown Brad Ingelsby recently sold his revenge thriller "The Low Dweller" to Relativity Media for $650,000 against $1.1 million (if it is produced), it announced in flashing neon that Hollywood buyers were still very interested in spending big money on original material.

Arts Council grants ask about sexuality

From Dalya Alberge in The Times:

Theatreland will have to give up its bedroom secrets in the quest for funding, under new Arts Council requirements. Organisations applying for grants are being asked to state how many board members are bisexual, homosexual, heterosexual, lesbian or whose inclinations are “not known”.

Audrey Roy, the director of grants, said that the council needed to understand who its audience was and to whom its funding was going. “We see diversity as broader than race, ethnicity, faith and disability,” she said. Question 22 of the Grants for the Arts forms, relating to sexual orientation, was not compulsory, she added, although the form states that it must be answered.

Meanwhile, in The Guardian , Mark Ravenhill wonders whether the focus on sexuality, race and disability means that the biggest diversity issue is being overlooked.

A few days ago, I introduced the subject of diversity into a dinner party conversation. "Let's be honest, darling," a friend said. "There isn't any particular issue to do with diversity in the arts, other than the age-old problem of class. As long as you're from a middle-class background, you're fine."

Wine and privacy had loosened her tongue - I suspect it's not a view that many people would align themselves with publicly. But I realised that I almost entirely agreed with her.

New drama coming to Xbox

From Michael Cieply for The New York Times:

Microsoft, seeking to expand offerings on its Xbox 360 console, has reached an agreement with a company headed by Peter Safran, the veteran Hollywood producer and talent manager, to produce original shows for distribution on the system....

...Mr. Safran said his first round of programs would all be scripted, as opposed to reality shows, and would probably run under 10 minutes. He said he planned initially to focus on genres, like comedy and horror, that appeal to the Xbox 360 audience, which is heavily concentrated from the ages of 14 to 34, and tends to be more male than female. The first shows are expected to be available to viewers by the fall.

Stephen Gallagher interview

If you missed it in the most recent issue of the Guild's magazine, UK Writer, we've now put the interview with Stephen Gallagher on the Guild website.

I like genre but I like the idea of genre-busting even better. Which means meeting the demands of a chosen form and then doing your best to exceed them. Audiences don't come looking for big themes or great characters. They show up for story. But it's the big themes and character work that send them away happy, whether they realise that or not.

Skins: new cast and new writers

From Robin Parker for Broadcast (free registration required)

The creators of Skins have confirmed that they are looking for an entirely new cast when the teen series returns to E4 and Channel 4 next year....

Skins will retain its collaborative writing model, in which up to 20 writers contribute to scripts and which nurtures young talent.

Series three will feature scripts by four writers under 20.

Amazon to force POD authors to use BookSurge

On Writers Weekely, Angela Hoy reports that Amazon's print-on-demand (POD) subsidiary, BookSurge, is telling writers that unless their titles are printed by BookSurge, the buy buttons on Amazon for their titles will be disabled.

A petition has been created to oppose what many people are claiming is an abuse of Amazon's market power.

Amazon's Print-on-Demand publishing company BookSurge is trying to strong arm the rest of the Print-on-Demand industry. They are currently threatening to disable a book's buy button if that book's publishing company does not use the Booksurge Print-on-Demand printing service. They have already done this to PublishAmerica. Can iUnverse, Lulu.com, etc. be far behind? Must authors be forced to to as Amazon says?

This is a conflict of interest for Amazon, and a blatant attempt at a monopoly.
Please sign this petition if you want BookSurge to stop enforcing its print service on the independent publishing industry.

Update (01.04.08): From Publishers Weekly, reporting that Amazon have written to interested parties.

In the letter from the Amazon.com books team, the company reiterated that by using machines that are located in its own fulfillment centers, Amazon can have a title ready for shipment quicker than if it needs to wait for a book to be shipped to its facility. The extra time will permit Amazon to “marry” a title with another product that will be shipped in the same box, in most cases hitting Amazon Prime shipping times. “It isn’t logical or efficient to print a POD book in a third place, and then physically ship the book to our fulfillment centers. It makes more sense to produce the books on site, saving transportation costs and transportation fuel, and significantly speeding the shipment to our customers,” the letter states.

Amazon further notes that if publishers do not want to use BookSurge for pod, they can still sell their titles through the e-tailer as part of it Advantage Program, provided they pre-produce five copies of each title that Amazon will stock in its warehouse. Publishers can also use Amazon’s third party marketplace option to list titles. Amazon is not requiring that pod titles be printed exclusively through BookSurge.

Jez Butterworth interview

In The New York Times, Erik Piepenburg talks to Jez Butterworth about his new play, Parlour Song, and his writing career so far.

Screenwriting and playwriting always strike me as like different sports that I can play. It’s like cricket and football; they don’t really have much to do with each other except a lot of strenuous activity. I can go from doing a play to doing a screenplay and it’s like one feeds the other in some way, I’m not sure exactly how. They come from very different places inside of me, I think. I do a lot of screenwriting with my brother John Henry. There’s a lot of craft involved. There are tricks you can employ in screenwriting to get yourself out of trouble that are useless to you in the theater. I wouldn’t say that playwriting comes from a deeper place, necessarily, but it is certainly more unconscious in me. I once had a laptop computer that had half a play in it and half a film in it, and it was stolen. I could recreate the screenplay word for word, and I couldn’t remember a word of the play.

Directors to launch new organisation

TV, film and new media directors, led by Michael Apted, will launch a new organisation in May called Directors UK, reports Lisa Campbell for Broadcast (free registration required).

Directors UK (D-UK) will officially launch in May with director Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday, The Bourne Ultimatum, United 93) as its president, and writer/director Charles Sturridge (Brideshead Revisited, Longitude, Shackleton) as the chair of its board.

Its vice-chairmen are Simon Berthon and Tim Sullivan, and board members include Peter Kosminsky, Brian Hill and Simon Curtis. It is the first time that UK directors will benefit from a single organisation encompassing everything from pay and conditions to content rights.

Sturridge said: "A very energetic and large group of directors have worked over the past 18 months to launch this new and vital organisation - a single, representative voice for all UK film, TV and new media directors."

Campbell reports that Directors UK has been created out of the Directors' and Producers' Rights Society (DPRS). However, no mention is made in either the article or the accompanying editorial of any relationship with the Directors Guild of Great Britain.

Tilt - radio sketch writers wanted

Tilt is a new topical sketch show that takes you behind the week’s news. And then mucks about with it a bit.

It’s being recorded live every Wednesday night from 26th March til the 1st of May and it’s broadcast on BBC7 the following night at 11:30pm.

Right now they're looking for topical material from new writers to support the core writing team.

Full details are on the BBC Writersroom site.

Seven deadly words of book reviewing

On the New York Times book blog, Bob Harris takes aim at the most overworked words in book reviews.

It’s possible to (mis)use all seven words in a one-sentence book report: “Mario Puzo’s intriguing novel eschews the lyrical as the author instead crafts a poignant tale of family life and muses on the compelling doings of the Mob.”

Howard Brenton on Never So Good

In The Times, David Aaronovitch talks to Howard Brenton about his new play about Harold Macmillan, Never So Good.

Howard Brenton, who once wrote an anti-Thatcher satire provisionally entitled Ditch the Bitch, ended our interview by telling me that Never So Good, far from being a biting attack on the British ruling classes and their disastrous mismanagement of a nation, “is like an apology from my generation, who spat upon...[Macmillan], one of the greatest Prime Ministers we've ever had.”

Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat

In The Guardian, Mark Ravenhill explains how he came to write his series of short plays, first seen as readings at last year's Edinburgh Festival, that will open in London next month as Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat.

My 16 plays seemed to capture a mood in Edinburgh. Presented as readings at breakfast time, they attracted full houses. I was fascinated to eavesdrop on the conversations that took place over the rolls and coffee we were serving. "Oh, you saw plays three and eight? I saw four and 10. What happened in yours? Did you have a headless soldier, too?" It was as if different members of the audience were holding different pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and they needed to pull together if they were going to piece together a bigger narrative. I smiled: it was a pleasing metaphor for life, a metaphor that I'd found accidentally.

BAFTA Craft nominations

Nominations for the BAFTA Television Craft awards have been announced today.

The nominees for the Writer award are:

• Jimmy McGovern – The Street (BBC One/Granada Productions)
• Tony Marchant– The Mark of Cain (Channel 4/Red Production Company)
• Steven Moffat – Doctor Who (Blink) (BBC One/BBC Wales)
• Heidi Thomas – Cranford (BBC One/BBC Drama Productions/WGBH Boston in association with Chestermead Ltd)

Another writer, Mark O'Rowe, is nominated in the Breakthrough Talent category for Boy A (Channel 4/Cuba Pictures), along with the writing team behind Skins (created by Bryan Elsley and Jamie Brittain for E4/Company Pictures)

EastEnders storyline criticised

From BBC News:

A scene in BBC One soap EastEnders [episode written by Simon Ashdown] which showed a character being buried alive has prompted 167 complaints.

The episode, shown at 2000 GMT on Friday night, showed character Max Branning being buried alive in a coffin by his wife and her lover....

The BBC said the number of complaints was proportionately small...

Last month, Ofcom ruled that the soap had breached TV regulations in an episode showing a gang attack on the Queen Vic pub.

Jake Wood as Max Branning in EastEnders (Photo: BBC/Adam Pensotti)

Someone who did enjoy it was The Guardian's TV critic, Nancy Banks Smith.

Max is a man who could hide at will behind a spiral staircase, and Tanya, his long-suffering wife, has suffered long enough. She dispatches Sean, her scruffy lover, to buy a coffin, which proves surprisingly simple ("Cash was it? Got your own transport?") and laces Max's wine with barbiturates. No bon vivant, he quaffs the lot.

Simon Ashdown, the scriptwriter, who is clearly enjoying himself enormously, has read Macbeth to good effect. Tanya and Sean's conversation over the body is staccato and nerve-shredded. "What's that?" "Listen!" "I don't hear anything." An owl hoots, for they are now, of course, in Epping Forest, the traditional place to bury an EastEnder body. All the best people, or in Walford's case the worst, are buried here. Tanya, traditional to a fault, even falls into the open grave in the immemorial fashion of EastEnder widows.

Then she hears a sound. Tap, tap, tap. Max's eyes are open. He says: "Ehwah!" (You deeply suspect that this chilling moment will be resurrected on Harry Hill's TV Burp.) Tanya reminds him, perhaps unnecessarily, that he has been afraid of confined spaces since he was a child. "You'll have hours to think about what you did to me. Bye Max!" And she puts the lid on the coffin. It is not a comfy coffin. No unnecessary money has been lavished on purple satin padding. Let us pray Max remembered to take his mobile.

Melvin Burgess on character blogs

In The Times, author Melvin Burgess explains how he has created fictional video logs alongside his new novel, Sara's Face.

Adapting the blogs was not easy. After the first draft, I had something like twenty minutes running time — an average of five minutes each. No good. Users, I’m told, jump around online so quickly that two minutes is the maximum possible length, preferably one.

I’m not sure about this. Surely the aim should be to get people to linger? An on-going story is a good way of doing that. And how accurate is this stat? If it’s an average, does it tell us much about the people we want to reach? But that’s for another time.

David Lemon blog

Guild member and screenwriter David Lemon has started a blog.

David's first feature, Faintheart, will be playing at Cannes in May.

The new Famous Five

From The Press Association:

Enid Blyton's Famous Five have been reconstructed for the 21st Century.

A new Disney TV series features the offspring of the original ginger beer-loving adventurers - and their dog.

But the Famous Five's children are now multicultural, their enemies include a fake environmentalist, and they are armed with modern gadgets.

The TV series, Famous Five: On the Case, features 12-year-old Anglo-Indian Jo, whose name is "short for Jyoti, a Hindu world meaning light". Countryside-dwelling Jo is the team leader and like her mother George in the original Famous Five - who was thought to be modelled on Blyton herself - a tomboy.

Other characters include Allie, a 12-year-old Californian shopaholic who enjoys going out and getting "glammed up" but is packed off to the British countryside to her cousins. Her mother was Anne in the Famous Five, the reluctant adventurer who has now become a successful art dealer.

Minghella in his own words

As well as the numerous tributes to the writer and director Anthony Minghella (see The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Times and The New York Times), The Guardian today has a selection of his own thoughts about his work.

The first idea I had for Truly Madly Deeply was the image of a Bach duet, because I thought that people coming together to make music was very interesting. A friend of mine had been very sick. He was a pianist and he would meet once a week with a clarinet player to play a duet. I've never experienced the same kind of joy as when you are able to play music with other people. It's such an intense, egalitarian and wonderful experience to sit down and make music with somebody else. So, the first idea was not about a relationship. It was not about bereavement or ghosts. It was about music.

Update: An Anthony Minghella blog has been set up to allow people to post memories and tributes.

Anthony Minghella: 1954-2008

Anthony Minghella, a WGGB member for the past twenty years, has died at the age of 54.

Although he won an Oscar for directing The English Patient, Minghella always said that he saw himself, first and foremost, as a writer. Indeed, he adapted the screenplay for The English Patient from Michael Ondaatje’s novel.

He began his career writing for the stage, and went on to write plays including Whale Music, Two Planks And A Passion, Love Bites and Made In Bangkok.

Minghella first worked in television as a script editor before writing for shows including The Storyteller series and Inspector Morse.

His most celebrated TV work was Truly Madly Deeply which he wrote and directed. Although intended for BBC Two, it went on to receive a cinema release, winning a BAFTA for best screenplay and kickstarting Minghella’s career in feature films.

In 2000 he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Talented Mr Ripley (from the novel by Patricia Highsmith), which he also directed.

Minghella recently completed directing and co-adapting (with Richard Curtis) The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency from the books by Alexander McCall Smith.The film is due to be shown by the BBC over Easter.

Olivia Hetreed, Chair of the Guild's Film Committee, writes:

I first noticed Anthony Minghella’s writing in a dazzlingly well-observed TV drama about failing relationships called What If It’s Raining in 1985 for the new Channel Four. He had been working for Grange Hill as a script editor and writer and soon went on to write the Storyteller series for Henson, produced by Duncan Kenworthy.

Duncan told me what a brilliant writer Anthony was and what a delight to work with. His tremendous talent was confirmed for me by his West End play Made in Bangkok a couple of years later. At the same time he was writing some of the best episodes of Morse. Of course I wasn’t at all jealous.

Truly, Madly, Deeply was one of the first films to break out from TV and hold its own cinematically. Funny and deeply romantic, if rather rough-looking nowadays, its warmth of heart reflected its creator and the performances of Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman, both better known then as stage actors, attested to his ability with performers. He created characters who were fallible, impassioned, sometimes absurd but never less than human and lovable.

Anthony then went on to have a glittering career and achieved tremendously in what is a tragically curtailed life. As a writer, director and producer he was always courteous, humane and passionate. He was generous to other film-makers, a mentor and an inspiration, both in the public domain as Chair of the BFI and in person.

The last time I met him he was preparing to shoot his Precious Ramotswe pilot in Botswana and enthusiastically grappling with the challenges that threw up. His company seemed to have the same mild-mannered, deceptively quiet style as the man himself, while becoming a significant player in the market. His loss is a real blow to cinema and the Arts in this country.

TV drama and comedy funding news

In The Stage, Matthew Hemley reports that Five is reviewing its strategy for original comedy and drama. They plan to move away from scripted comedy and one-off drama.

“Over the last two years we have invested significantly in a number of single dramas and mini-series, but irrespective of their merits, none has gained a significant audience. We concluded that viewers will not come to Five to watch one-off original dramas, because we are not able to establish a reputation for them on the basis of occasional productions.”

The broadcaster said it was looking to commission long running drama series instead of single dramas and mini-series, claiming these will have “sufficient shelf life to attract and build and audience over time”.

Elsewhere in The Stage, Hemley reports that Sky are planning to invest in more high definition drama.

The channel has announced an undisclosed eight-figure commitment to HD drama in 2008 and 2009, which it claims is the one of the largest from any UK broadcaster and is the biggest in Sky’s history.

As part of its slate of new programmes, the broadcaster has announced a six-part series based on Chris Ryan’s book Strike Back, which will be made by Left Bank Pictures, the company formed by award-winning producer of The Queen, Andy Harries.

Sky One will also be bringing the works of author David Almond to the screen for the first time, with a dramatisation of his children’s book Skellig.

Theatre for toddlers

In The Guardian, Mark Fisher explores the boom in theatre for toddlers.

"Children learn and explore through touch," says Heather Fulton, creative artist with Starcatchers, a Scottish company specialising in early-years theatre. "Everything they hold will go in their mouth. So we've been using a lot of food in our work. Tomatoes have a big part."

Arthur C. Clarke: 1917-2008

Arthur C. Clarke, the legendary science fiction writer, has died at the age of 90.

His most famous work was 2001: A Space Odyssey, which he developed along with director Stanley Kubrick. One of the most important science fiction films ever made, its influence can be seen from the fact that the Apollo 13 command module was called Odyssey.

As well as novels (such as Rendezvous With Rama) and numerous short stories, Clarke was also credited with the idea that geostationary satellites would be ideal telecommunications relays. Though he said that he never expected it to happen in his lifetime, this concept has, of course, become central to modern communications technology.

The news of Arthur C Clarke's death came too late last night for many of the British newspapers to include full obituaries today, but there are lengthy tributes in The L.A. Times and by Gerald Jonas in The New York Times.

Mr. Clarke’s influence on public attitudes toward space was acknowledged by American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts, by scientists like the astronomer Carl Sagan and by movie and television producers. Gene Roddenberry credited Mr. Clarke’s writings with giving him courage to pursue his “Star Trek” project in the face of indifference, even ridicule, from television executives.

In his later years, after settling in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Mr. Clarke continued to bask in worldwide acclaim as both a scientific sage and the pre-eminent science fiction writer of the 20th century.

Update (20.03.08): There are now numerous obituaries and tributes online, including in The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and by Anthony Tucker in The Guardian.

Apart from his huge output of fiction and scientific books, Clarke left us his Three Laws. These are touched by the kind of eternal practicality which make his science fiction so effective and reveal his inner convictions:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The limits of the possible can only be found by going beyond them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology may, at first, be indistinguishable from magic.

Nick Green's Cat tale

On The Guardian Books blog, Ann Giles explains how children's author Nick Green responded to being dropped by Faber by self-publishing using Lulu.

Nick Green's first novel, The Cat Kin, was published by Faber last June and went on to garner a glowing review from in The Times and a wave of enthusiasm on Amazon. Six months later, the publisher decided not to bring out the second of Green's proposed trilogy due to poor sales. Poor sales? With a book as good as The Cat Kin, you've got to ask what kind of marketing support the publisher had given it.

Caroline Williams - Miss Guided

Miss Guided trailer


In The L.A. Times, Maria Elena Fernandez talks to Caroline Williams about her new TV comedy series, Miss Guided, that debuts in America this week.

In the brutal TV production world, it's rare for an unknown writer to pen a script at home, show it to a few people, land a United Talent Agency agent and a full-time gig on a hit show [The Office] within a month and have her own series within a year. But that's what happened to Caroline Williams, the creator of ABC's "Miss Guided," a single-camera documentary-style comedy, starring Judy Greer as a woman who returns to her high school to work as a guidance counselor.

"Every step of the way, I was like -- oh well, they'll buy it, but they'll never make it," said Williams while lunching on a turkey sandwich at Bloom Café last week. "Well, they'll make it, but they'll never pick it up. Then, no, they'll pick it up, but they'll never put it on the air. Every step of the way, I was convinced it was dead and I was ready to become an assistant again."

March ALCS payout

A guest post from Gail Renard, Chair of the Guild's TV Committee.

The latest Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) pay-outs should be nestling in your bank accounts, and the print-out of your statements should be plopping onto your door mats now. Approximately £15 million has been paid out to writers of all genres, from TV and radio to books and journals, and is very welcome.

My usual mantra (all together now): this is your money earned from your work, all of which has a value in the commercial marketplace. This is not a gift from the writing gods. So if you have any queries, then please contact ALCS who will be happy to help you, either via email at membership@alcs.co.uk or by phone on 0207 264 5700.

And enjoy your money!

The Bruntwood Playwriting Competition

The Bruntwood Playwriting Competition is now open for entries. The closing date is 13 June 2008.

The Bruntwood Playwriting Competition is a unique opportunity for anyone, aged 18 or over, to enter their original, full-length stageplay in a competition which aims to reward the best plays by writers across the country.

You can be anyone, of any experience, living anywhere in the UK and Ireland. You might never have written a play before. Or, you might have written lots. The key thing is, that entry is totally anonymous, so the competition is absolutely fair and inclusive to everyone.

The Bruntwood Playwriting Competition will offer awards of £15,000 as a First Prize and a following Second Prize of £10,000 and third prize of £7,500. There will also be a special Bruntwood prize of £5,000. This competition represents one the world’s biggest awards for playwriting.

John Wirth interview

For the Writers Guild of America West, Tara de Bach talks to John Wirth, the lead writer on the TV series Terminator: The Sara Conner Chronicles.

How were you able to combine the films' storylines with the television construct?

You have to have rules. I love the Warren Beatty version of Heaven Can Wait, and I'll tell you why -- it has a clearly defined set of rules. Early in the film, Joe Pendleton is in the bathroom looking at himself in the mirror and talking to Mr. Jordan, and he says something to the effect, “So, when I look in the mirror, I see me, but when everyone else looks at me, they see Farnsworth?” Mr. Jordan responds, “That's right, Joe.” It's simple, it's clear, they laid out the rules for the audience and stuck with them throughout the film. With The Sarah Connor Chronicles we are trying to do the same thing. The films abided by a set of rules, a mythology, set out by James Cameron, and we try to abide by them as much as possible. But as the show progresses, and we grow the characters, we're adding to the mythology.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles trailer

Tom Stoppard interview

In The Independent, Ciar Byrn talks to Guild member Sir Tom Stoppard following his receipt of a Dan David Prize, a $1m award from Tel Aviv University.

He finds it difficult – and unnecessary – to analyse his writing in great depth. He does not believe that his personal history and circumstances affect his work: "I write out of my intellectual experience." As a young man, he was much influenced by parody – treasuring a collection of Max Beerbohm parodies called A Christmas Garland, which he found on a barrow on Portobello Road.

Channel 4 plans new teen drama

From Robin Parker in Broadcast (free registration required).

Channel 4 has ring-fenced £10m to spend on programmes for 10-to 15 year-olds over the next two years - with a flagship drama series set to take centre stage.

The broadcaster plans to commission cross-platform content that is "publicly valuable" across a range of genres. Setting aside the cash is an explicit response to Ofcom's concerns that broadcasters are not sufficiently targeting older children and forms part of C4's plan to emphasise its public service credentials to help secure more public money.

C4 wants a pre-watershed drama for the age group for the second half of 2009. The aim is to combine the cultural impact of the BBC's Grange Hill in its heyday with the slick, multi-media approach of C4's older-skewing Hollyoaks and Skins.

AOL buys Bebo

Bebo, the social networking site that has pioneered the development of short online dramas such as Kate Modern, has been bought by AOL for £417m.

In The Guardian Jemmima Kiss considers the implications of the deal.

It is, perhaps, the end of a cycle - the end of the era of the major league social networks. They will increasingly have to both diversify and differentiate their communities from their rivals; MySpace is already looking increasingly unfocused and is not innovating fast enough. The new players are increasingly niche, whether that is Saga's site for the over-50s, the business community or restaurant reviews.

Jeff Jarvis is more pessimistic.

If history is any guide - and in AOL's case, it certainly is - I fear that Bebo's talented, visionary founders will leave in frustration or firings; AOL will bury the service inside its outmoded portal; and AOL will treat the people inside not as people but as ad inventory.

The end of The Wire

Hailed by many as one of the finest ever TV dramas, The Wire, created by David Simon, came to an end in the US this week with the finale of the fifth and final series.

In The New York Times, Alessandra Stanley reviews the episode (spoilers, obviously) and assesses the show as a whole.

“The Wire” ended at just the right time: too soon. And it’s not that Mr. Simon’s series was the only intelligent drama on television. The difference is that most smart shows try to dazzle viewers with what they don’t know: “House” on Fox throws out the rarest diseases and most far-fetched diagnostic tools to update Sherlock Holmes and “Numb3rs” on CBS twists every crime to fit an advanced mathematical formula.

“The Wire” worked with primary sources that anybody could grasp if they looked closely out the window on the train from New York to Washington. It’s the same view of Baltimore — abandoned row houses, gutted factories and bullet-pocked store fronts — that McNulty takes in when he parks his car and looks down at the city from afar.

“It is what it is,” is what McNulty and others would say to end a conversation. “The Wire” was what it was, and that was a lot.

Top writers back BBC Comedy College

Top writers including Dick Clement and Ian la Frenais have endorsed the new BBC Comedy College scheme which is launched today.

The scheme, which has financial support from BBC Worldwide, is designed for people who have already begun their careers and can demonstrate some achievement, such as broadcast material, a script commission or performance of their work.

Applicants are invited to submit the first ten pages of a half-hour script, or six sketches by the closing date of 14 April. Twelve writers will be interviewed, and the successful six announced on 16 May. They will then be matched with productions, and guaranteed a script commission.

They will also be given a mentor for original work, which will be showcased when the scheme ends in March 2009. There will be two residential workshops during the year, with sessions from leading writers, producers and directors.

Applicants should email their submission, and a writing CV to: CollegeofComedy@bbc.co.uk

Lisa Bowerman - photographer

In the latest issue of the Guild's magazine, UK Writer, the credit was missing from the photo of Stephen Gallagher (left) on page 25.

Lisa Bowerman was the photographer. She does black/white and colour headshots and is also an actress - playing Bernice Summerfield in the Dr Who audio dramas.

Commissioning online drama

More from Broadcast (free registration required): Robin Parker looks at plans for commissioning original online content.

Having reworked international dramas for the UK, Bebo is now looking to commission original content. Sarah Gavin, the network's head of global communications, says she wants the site to have four or five scripted and reality formats at any one time, ideally pitched at slightly different audiences. Sofia's Diary targets teenagers, while Kate Modern appeals more to twentysomethings. In between these demographics, Endemol's reality format The Gap Year is pitched at students.

"People can come to us with trailers already shot or just the kernel of an idea, but it's important they think about what users are doing and how they can interact beyond the show," Gavin adds.

Mark Freeland interview

In Broadcast (free registration required), Katherine Rushton talks to BBC Head Of Comedy, Mark Freeland.

Freeland's next goal is to develop new talent online: "Online comes up behind radio as one of the most important talent training grounds that we've got. By this time next year, if we don't have the most interesting, dynamic, in-house comedy website out there, I'll think we have ignored a huge opportunity.

Galton and Simpson on Hancock, Howerd and Steptoe

David Walliams in Frankie Howerd: Rather You Than Me, written by Peter Harness

BBC Four is shortly to run a Curse Of Comedy season, with new dramas looking at the lives of Tony Hancock, Frankie Howerd and Harry H Corbett and Wilfrid Brambell.

In The Times, legendary scriptwriters Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, who wrote for Hancock and Howerd and created Steptoe, say that what they remember most was the laughter.

We are both very suspicious of the “laugh clown laugh” concept, the Pagliacci syndrome that underneath the motley all comedians are miserable bastards. In our experience the most miserable comics were the rotten ones and thus had plenty to be miserable about. For instance Frankie Howerd, off stage, providing he was talking about himself, was the happiest man you could meet. Wonderful company and a genuinely funny man, which is all that matters. His private life had nothing to do with you, us, or anybody else. His demise wasn't sad; he achieved more than his allotted three score years and ten and could have carried on carrying on for years. There wasn't a grey hair in his wig. As Frank would have said, the only tragedy was that it had to come to an end.

Back in the old East End

On the BBC Writersroom blog, scriptwriter Abi Brown gives an inside account of writing for EastEnders.

There’s always so much to cram into an episode of Eastenders, bit like playing Tetrus - all the pieces need to fit smoothly together and move around the square with ease. 5 different stories are playing at any one time in a typical episode - count them next time you watch. Then there’s the added fun of the scheduler’s notes.

For example:
“Only 3 pages in the Vic please, I know it’s Peggy’s story but, Peggy is not available. Stacey can’t be seen with Steven and Bradley, Bradley can be seen with Stacey - but only in the Allotments. You can only use the Minute Mart if there’s an ‘R’ in the month. Wellard is on holiday…etc”

The Last Standing podcast

Guild Member Darren Rapier has been working with Enfield Young Offenders to create a modern day interpretation of Tosca to complement a new production of the opera at The Albert Hall.

You can listen to a podcast about the project courtesy of The Stage (MP3 file).

Actors needed

Two actors are needed for the reading of new comedy play by Gail Renard and John Sayle at the Writers' Guild Centre, King's Cross, on Saturday March 15th from 10am to 3pm. The parts are Sergeant Jensen, a plod; and Imran Ali, a psychiatrist. A fun time will be had by all. Please contact Gail through: anne@writersguild.org.uk

On heists

Daniel Mays and Jason Statham in The Bank Job, written by Dick Clement & Ian La Frenais

As British film The Bank Job opens in America, Terrence Rafferty in The New York Times considers the enduring appeal of heist movies.

Although the planning of the crime — the recruiting of the team, the diagrams of security systems, the blueprints, the maps of getaway routes — usually takes up a fair amount of screen time and is often terrifically entertaining, nobody in the audience really wants to see the job go exactly as the thieves have doped it out. That would be kind of redundant, and worse, it would feel uncomfortably impersonal. Heist pictures are all about process, technique, mechanics; the blind accidents are what keep them human.

The return of Gavin And Stacey

Ruth Jones, Joanna Page, Matthew Horne and James Corden in Gavin And Stacey (Photo: BBC)

The second series of Gavin And Stacey starts on BBC TV this month and both BBC News and The Observer have profiles of the comedy-drama's creators and stars, James Cordon and Ruth Jones.

Until the BBC insisted on expanding it into a series, Gavin & Stacey had been a one-hour, semi-improvised drama called It's My Day. Jones shows me the original treatment; based around the friends and families of Gavin West and Stacey Shipman (neither related to mass murderers as far as we know), it shows how the comedy evolved from being slightly crude to the sleek, sophisticated version that finally appeared on television. Jones and Corden had fun writing the treatment but neither took it seriously. 'We couldn't have been more casual,' says Corden. 'It was like playing dress-up,' explains Jones. 'We did all the voices ourselves, we acted out every scene."

Meanwhile, as The Times reports, the series has been picked up for an American remake by NBC.

Theatre Royal Stratford East

In The Guardian, Maddy Costa profiles the Theatre Royal Stratford East.

It's tempting to view the Theatre Royal as Britain's pre-eminent home to black theatre, but mention this to [Kerry] Michael's associate director, Dawn Reid, and she bristles. "We're not: we do black work, as well as Asian work, as well as everyone else. We do it not because we're told to, but because we think it's necessary. And we have a diverse audience that trusts us. Building trust takes time; it doesn't take the one-off black show for the season." What troubles Reid - particularly because she herself is black - is that such labels carry with them the potential to be overlooked. "The more I get labelled, the more I get made outcast," she says. "Why can't I go in the same pot with the mainstream?"

Power and Gallagher take Crusoe to NBC

Last year it was reported that Power will become the first British production company to make a drama series for a US Network for more than 40 years, after NBC ordered 13 episodes of Robinson Crusoe.

The budget for the 13-episode series is said to be about $35 million. NBC/UMS's portion is estimated to be about $10 million, for which NBC gets domestic rights to "Crusoe."

Power, which will shoulder the rest of the cost, gets international distribution rights.

The deal gives NBC a series for a little more than the price of a high-end drama pilot. (The two-hour pilot of "Lost" reportedly cost $10 million-$12 million).

Now WGGB member and blogger, Stephen Gallagher, has revealed that he will be lead writer on the show.

I don't intend to keep a running production blog and I'm not going to give away any information on how we're tackling it, either. But NBC are buying action-adventure. So don't expect thirteen weeks of a bloke learning to milk a goat.

West End performers "ready to walk out"

From Lalayn Baluch in The Stage:

West End performers are willing to take industrial action if London theatre managers do not agree to a 44% minimum wage hike being demanded by Equity.

The trade union is currently pushing for the existing basic pay rate for actors working in the West End to increase from £381 per week to £550. A new second minimum wage of £650 is also being sought for performers who are required to work on Sundays.

According to Equity president Harry Landis, cast members in shows across the capital have now unanimously rejected a ‘best offer’ increase put forward by the Society of London Theatre

Springer case dismissed by Lords

From BBC News:

The House of Lords has refused to hear a petition of appeal brought by a Christian activist group trying to prosecute the BBC for blasphemy.

Christian Voice had sought to overturn a High Court ruling that prevented it bringing a case against the BBC for screening Jerry Springer - The Opera.

But the petition failed because it did "not raise an arguable point of law of general public importance".

Public willing to pay for downloads

From Booktrade.info:

At the inaugural meeting of the All Party Writers Group last week, the Authors' Licensing & Collecting Society (ALCS) announced the findings of their recent survey into consumer attitudes to creators whose work is re-used in the digital environment.

55% of those questioned in the survey into public attitudes to copyright in the digital age, believe writers and other creators of works that are subsequently made available online should be paid fairly for this digital re-use of their work. Of these, 70% said they would be willing to pay a 'reasonable sum' to be able to download such work.

"It's enormously encouraging," says Dr Ian Gibson MP, Chair of the Group. "If there is consumer will to make sure writers and other creators are rewarded for the work they create which is then made available on-line, it will be far easier to look after writers and ensure they are given fair recognition and reward for their contribution."

Julian Rathbone 1935-2008

The novelist Julian Rathbone has died at the age of 73. His novels Joseph and King Fisher Lives were both nominated for the Booker Prize in the 1970s.

There's an obituary in The Guardian by Nick Coleman.

Rathbone was an old-school libertarian lefty. His detestation of privilege and the structures which maintain it was profound. His contempt for them was expressed by turn frighteningly, wittily and sexily, and often all at once, but never, ever dully or rhetorically. There are crime novels in his canon and there are thrillers, but he was by no means a genre writer. Rather, he deployed a rampant imagination to conceive of worlds he might intrude on to get to what he needed to say.

And here's an interview where Rathbone talks about a variety of his books.

Met Film School Training Scheme

Some last minute notice courtesy of the Cheltenham Screenwriters Festival mailing about the Met Film School Training Scheme.


Writers with some professional experience can apply for the scheme that will support the development of a new script and pay "competitive fees" throughout the process.

The Met Film School Skillset Writers' Training Scheme will support ten talented emerging writers to develop a first draft of a feature film script whilst supporting their creative and professional development through an intensive training programme.

The initial six months will include 1:1 support from both a script supervisor and a producer and professional support, bespoke training courses, masterclasses, readings, workshops, and a series of placements designed to familiarize writers with working practice across the value chain of cinema from production to exploitation.

Five of the writers will then be selected for a further six months of development support. The programme will be delivered by a proven partnership of producers, distributors and training providers with an existing track record of developing scripts and delivering this level and type of training. Additional training and placements will be provided by a range of organisations including Hollywood studios.

The closing date is 10th March 2008.

Reflections on The Death Of Margaret Thatcher

Some things I've learned during the run of my play, The Death Of Margaret Thatcher, which finished last night:

1. There are only two kinds of critics: those who like your play and those who don't
2. They care about English theatre in Tatarstan (although their translation software doesn't seem to work too well)
3. Theatres get very little credit for taking the risk of putting on new work - no wonder lots of places prefer to stick with Noel Coward
4. Someone can cybersquat your play's title (presumably trying to make money from Adwords)
5. Marxists are long on analysis but short on a sense of humour
6. When being interviewed try to avoid wearing a jumper that's the same colour as the background (see clip below, courtesy of AFP)

Character studies got the Oscar nominations

In a piece published before last week's Oscar ceremony Jay A. Hernandez in The L.A. Times identifies a common theme in the Oscar-nominated screenplays.

While taut plotting and visual ingenuity were certainly in abundance in this year's crop of nominated screenplays, it is the writers' compassionate, three-dimensional depictions of the flawed and fearsome, the courageous and resourceful, the bereft and bruised, that most beckoned for reward.

It may seem a facile thing to say, for what story doesn't live or die on the relatable nature of its characters and their actions? But at a time when a battered world cries out for an understanding of humans' most troubling motivations, these deep investigations into the jagged and tender parts of us resonated in the collective psyche with perfect pitch.

Robert B Parker interview

In The Daily Telegraph, Sam Leith meets American crime writer Robert B Parker.

"Dialogue is easy and it chews up a lot of pages," he says. "Describing a room is hard and it slows everything down and it doesn't chew up many pages.

"It's a hell of a lot easier to say 'he said, I said, he said', than to say 'the room was of carved oak, with a patina of blah'. Still, Joan [Parker's wife] is always reminding me to make it more full - don't be so spare with just the dialogue. She says some of the best stuff I do is atmospheric background. I'm good with rain, you know…"

He emits a chuckle from deep in his throat. "Heh… hard not to be good with rain…" Parker takes three months to write a novel. "They bring out three a year and I write four a year, so I'm five or six ahead. If I were to drop dead as we speak there would be books being published well into 2009.

"I do first draft. I don't revise. I don't reread. I send it in. They edit it - and it's valuable if they do, or I'll end up spelling 'cat' dee-oh-gee… heh, y'know, sloppy. But they don't make any significant changes."

Theatre's lack of connection

In The Times, Dominic Dromgoole bemoans a loss of connection between actors and audience.

The present landscape offers little...direct connection. Boutique theatre events put together elegant packages of stars to play to subscriber audiences of the uber-rich, partaking in an interaction that is as far away from theatre as drooling over a porno mag is from making love. It is an interaction based on acquisition rather than connection. Theatre, which is supposed to make us tremble with delight or with terror, becomes a lifestyle accessory.

Dennis Kelly on writing plays and TV comedy

In The Guardian, Dennis Kelly asks why people find it hard to accept that he writes different kinds of work for stage and TV.

For some people, writing a sitcom seems an odd thing for a playwright to do. My plays aren't comedies, and Pulling isn't theatrical. Neither is it just a day job to pay the rent - I came up with the characters together with my co-writer Sharon Horgan. We write it together, we exec-produce it together: it's ours. And yet telling people from the world of TV that I also inhabit the world of theatre is something I've begun to avoid. Some theatre people seem to conclude that Pulling must be a serious drama, and resolve to ignore anything I say to the contrary. And when a TV executive asked me recently about the plot of DNA, my play, he asked with a big expectant smile on his face. When I'd finished explaining it to him - it's about a group of teenagers who do something very wrong, and then cover it up - the smile was still there, but his eyes were saying, "I don't get it - why's that funny?"

Helen Smith on blogging

The new issue of the Guild's magazine, UK Writer, will be out next week and to whet your appetite we've put one of the articles - writer Helen Smith on why she blogs - on the Guild website.

I like blogging because it gives me an opportunity to organise my thoughts, set down ideas and record little snippets of information or anecdotes about events that interest me – thereby freeing up a larger part of my brain to work on whatever writing project I’m engaged in at the time. It sounds unscientific but it seems to work quite well.

In praise of Red Planet Pictures

On The Stage TV Blog, Mark Wright celebrates the news that Tony Jordan's Red Planet Pictures is developing a new family drama for Saturday evenings on BBC 1.

The point...is in Red Planet we have an independent drama producer that is meeting the challenges of producing modern television drama while casting an eye to the future of the genre. Like Kudos, who Jordan has a very long association with, there appears to be a vibrancy about what they do, and that’s to be applauded.

Fincham replaces Shaps at ITV

From Chris Tryhorn in Media Guardian:

ITV unveiled a bold shakeup of senior management today, hiring former BBC1 controller Peter Fincham to replace Simon Shaps as director of television.

The company has also extended Michael Grade's reign as executive chairman by an extra year to the end of 2010.

And Dawn Airey, the managing director of global content, and Rupert Howell, the managing director of brand and commercial, have been appointed to the company's board with immediate effect.

Writing short film scripts

Given that short films are supposed to be a good entry point for screenwriters there seems to be relatively little advice about writing short film scripts. On his blog, screenwriter writer John August offers his own suggestions as well as a free download of his own short film script, God.

The hero’s fundamental problem/challenge/obstacle needs to occur by the time you get to the 1/3rd mark. So, if your short is meant to be three minutes long, the big event needs to happen on page one. If it’s a 10-minute short, it happens around page three. It’s not that you’re worried about your reader getting bored before then — if you can’t entertain us for three pages, there’s a problem — but rather that if you delay any longer, your story is going to feel lopsided: too much setup for what was accomplished.

Here's some other short film scriptwriting advice, from the BBC Writersroom and The Times.

The ebb and flow of movie receipts

For film industry geeks only, a curiously compelling interactive graphic in The New York Times showing box office receipts 1986-2007.

US writers vote to ratify contract

Having voted earlier this month to end their strike, American screenwriters have now formally ended their dispute with the studios by voting to accept a new contract.

In an open letter to members informing them of the decision, Patric Verrone and Michael Winship, Presidents of the Writers Guild of America West and East respectively, said:

As we close this chapter in our union's history, what we together have accomplished should not be underestimated. The 2008 MBA establishes a beachhead on the Internet and in new media that will guarantee our share of a potentially vast and bountiful future.Writers already are working on new media projects under this agreement and residuals must now be paid for streaming and downloads of our library of films and TV shows.


...We must take our newfound spirit and unity and use it to move our two unions forward. We look to the future and our newly revitalized member engagement to reaffirm writers as the first among equals in the most collaborative art form in history. As the last few weeks proved once and for all, we are all in this together.

Ashes To Ashes script

Keeley Hawes and Philip Glenister in Ashes To Ashes (Photo: BBC/Kudos)

New this week in the BBC Writersroom Script Archive is Matthew Graham's script for the first episode of Ashes To Ashes. You can download it for free as a pdf.

ALEX
So ... let’s hear it .. Your wife..?

GENE
Mrs Hunt left me.

ALEX
Another man?

GENE
You’re half-right.

ALEX
A woman?! She’s a lesb -

GENE
Don’t say that word! Things like
that ... belong in films not in the
home!

Also recently posted is Tony Jordan's recent episode-long monologue for Dot Cotton (pdf).

Cormac McCarthy profile

In The Independent, Boyd Tonkin profiles Cormac McCarthy who, after the success of the Coen brothers' adaptation of his novel No Country For Old Men, could become as influential in film as he is in the world of literature.

Interpretations of his work will spawn like salmon in the stream. And, for the most part, McCarthy will sit tight, look after his son and read more hard science. It seems plausible to state that, whatever its other qualities, his work poses as tough a challenge to the American ideology of optimism, and "the pursuit of happiness", as any major writer in the national canon. Taking its mood and its words from the Old Testament, that frontiersman's dread has long haunted American culture, a gloomy ghost at the feast. Social trauma, and environmental risk, have given it another lease of life.

Next up for the big screen are, according to IMDB, The Road and Blood Meridian.

Suzie Templeton among Oscar winners

At the Oscars last night, the writing awards went to Diablo Cody (Best Screenplay for Juno) and Joel and Ethan Coen (Best Adapted Screenplay for No Country For Old Men, from the book by Cormac McCarthy).

British animator Suzie Templeton won the best animated short film with her version of Peter And The Wolf (co-written with Marianela Maldonado). She told BBC News about the challenge of writing the script.

"Writing to music meant the script was incredibly difficult to write. For me, it felt like writing backwards. Normally you have a concept and it all grows from that one place, it find its own shape, but a piece of music like that has its own complex shape already.

"Prokofiev's story is actually very simple, which is great in a performance with a narrator, because so much is left to the imagination. But in a visual piece everything needs to be told, and you don't want to fill it with just padding. Everything needs to make sense and have meaning. It was the hardest thing I have ever written in my life."

If you've not seen Templeton's film (shown on Channel 4 in the UK), it's well worth seeking out.



Update (26.02.08): In The Times, Ronald Harwood (nominated for his script for The Diving Bell And The Butterfly) gives his impressions of the ceremony.

The theme on the red carpet this year was bosoms. I've never seen so much décolleté. Bustlines were slashed to the navel. I saw a lot of Heidi Klum, for example. Her stylist complimented my wife Natasha on her Armani outfit. Many actresses might just as well have been nude.

ITV1's new drama travails

In Media Guardian, Maggie Brown and Stephen Armstrong ask what has gone wrong with ITV1's recent run of new drama launches, none of which has enjoyed ratings success.

The conclusions seem to be contradictory. On the one hand:

"ITV viewers expect certain things from their Friday night drama," explains Chris Curtis, news editor at TV trade magazine Broadcast. "They like cars and explosions, and shows they know."

And on the other:

"Creating vanilla drama for the masses is no good because the mass audience doesn't exist any more," warns Steven Hesse, managing partner at Orange and Mercedes agency Weapon7.

He thinks the problem is that ITV has to become more experimental. "Create content that connects, entertains and informs the viewer, then embrace new technologies that allow for more targeted distribution."

Perhaps the most telling point is one that adds some context:

An ITV network executive who has recently left says that veteran former drama controller Nick Elliott tended to ignore the contemporary themes and high-concept dramas pioneered by [Jane] Tranter at the BBC. So the channel had a lot of catching up to do.

Update (25.02.08): It's not all bad news, however. Many existing dramas continue to thrive - for example, Taggart has just been recommissioned for another ten 60-minute episodes.

The Guild goes to Downing Street

On the WGGB website, Guild TV Committee Chair, Gail Renard, reports from a reception for women in trade unions held at Number 11 Downing Street.

Olivia Hetreed reported that the Film Council did research on why there are so few women scriptwriters in film - proportionately less than in TV, which is far from equal. The research showed that more women than men go to the cinema in the UK and therefore talk of not writing for the audience is misguided. Indeed films written by women do better at the box office than films by men. But Olivia pointed out “the film business is a tanker that's slow to turn and because of the money involved, decision makers are understandably if regrettably unwilling to try any new writer, regardless of gender. “

Fiction will win at the Oscars

In The Independent, Boyd Tonkin points out that whoever picks up the statuettes at Sunday night's Oscars, literary fiction is likely to be the biggest winner.

Whoever makes the teary speeches at the Oscars on Sunday, this year – as every year – fiction will win. With the Best Picture category staging a tussle between Ian McEwan (Atonement), Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men) and Upton Sinclair (There Will Be Blood, but in 1927 simply Oil!), Alice Munro joins their company in competition for script and acting awards. Her New Yorker story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" became Away from Her. Under other headings, the novels whose celluloid offspring will vie for glory range from Marjane Satrapi's graphic tale of growing up in revolutionary Iran, Persepolis (animated feature), to Ron Leshem's soldier's tale from Israel's front lines, Beaufort (foreign-language film).

Cynical insiders have a simple explanation of why movie moguls so love the plot of a good book. The studio lawyers will know who made it, and who owns it. Far better to pay the odd fat cheque to writers or estates for rights to unmade movies than risk stepping in the snakepit of lawsuits that can surround an "original" storyline.

Format war victory for Blu-Ray

As The Hollywood Reporter notes, victory for Blu-Ray in the High Definition DVD format war was completed yesterday when Paramount became the sixth and final major Hollywood studio to adopt the Sony-backed standard.

The news followed Toshiba's announcement on Tuesday morning that it would cease the development, manufacture and marketing of its own HD DVD players by the end of March.

Janet Murray, director of Georgia Tech's masters and Ph.D. program in digital media, said a single format supported by all six major studios has a much better chance of success than two rival ones that each take only a chunk of Hollywood.

"It's a big victory for the consumer," she said.

Now that the studios are no longer battling each other over which format is best, Murray said, they can focus on generating awareness among consumers of the many benefits of high-definition media. Murray predicts "a standardization of extras" now that everyone's releasing films on a single format rather than two, each with its own set of capabilities. "This will lead to a much richer experience for viewers," she added.

Whether Blu-Ray is actually any better than HD DVD remains unclear. Perhaps it just had a cooler name.

Trials on stage

In The Independent, barrister and writer John Mortimer reflects on the differences between trials in fact and fiction.

There is, of course, a difference between achieving success on the stage and in the courtroom. Boredom is fatal to any play, lose the interest of the audience for five minutes and you'll never get them back. It is, however, a weapon available to advocates. You can go on and on at a judge and watch him look nervously at the clock, in dread of missing his last train home to Haywards Heath, and when you have reduced him to a suitable state of anxiety he may do what you want in order to be in time for dinner.

BBC dramas on iTunes

Top BBC dramas are being made available for sale on iTunes for the first time. Episodes of shows including Torchwood, Life On Mars, Spooks and Robin Hood will be sold for £1.89. Recently aired programmes, such as Ashes to Ashes, will be available on iTunes after they have been made available on the BBC iPlayer.

The Guild made an agreement with the BBC to cover such arrangements last year.

Meanwhile, the number of programmes downloaded or streamed on demand via BBC iPlayer (also covered by in Guild agreements) has reached 17 million, up to 500,000 a day.

Ashley Highfield, Director of BBC Future Media and Technology, says: "While it's still early days, early indications are that BBC iPlayer is having a significant effect in attracting new users to bbc.co.uk.

"To build on this initial success, we continue to reach out to audiences wherever they are, and we now have BBC-branded 'channels' on Yahoo! and partnerships with MSN and Blinkx going live soon. These enable you to watch highlights and excerpts of BBC programmes, as well as clicking on a link to watch the full programme on BBC iPlayer.

"In addition, we are introducing new features on the BBC iPlayer homepage, including improved navigation options and programme recommendations."

EA seeks to reconnect with creativity

In The New York Times, Seth Schiesel explains why video games giant Electronic Arts is abandoning centralisation in an attempt to put power back into the hands of games writers, designers and developers.

“Frankly, the core of our business, like in any creative business, are the guys and women who are actually making the product,” Mr. Riccitiello [EA's chief executive] said. “You can’t just buy people and attempt to apply some business-school synergy to them. It just doesn’t work. The companies that succeed are those that provide a stage for their best people and let them do what they do best, and it’s taken us some time to understand that. In our business the accountant, the guy in the green eyeshade, is like the guy in the alien movie that eventually gets eaten. If you let him run your business, it is neither inspiring or effective.”

European Film Awards to give screenwriters credit

Following lobbying by the Federation of Screenwriters in Europe (FSE), the European Film Academy (EFA) board has announced that it will mention screenwriters alongside the directors and the production companies in all outgoing materials.

The pledge, received in a letter from EFA director Marion Döring this week, was hailed as a victory for the FSE's European Screenwriting Manifesto.

Read more on the WGGB website.

Alain Robbe-Grillet 1922-2008

Alain Robbe-Grillet, the master of the 'new novel' and key figure of the French avant garde of the 1960s has died at the age of 85. There are obituaries in The Times and by Douglas Johnson in The Guardian.

From the 1950s onwards, a group of French writers, including Claude Simon, Michel Butor and Nathalie Sarraute, challenged the historical idea of the novel. They were hardly in agreement with each other, and it was Robbe-Grillet who made the most explicit statement of what the new novel was about in an essay, Pour Un Nouveau Roman, published in 1963.

His argument was straightforward - that the time had passed for novels to be about characters and individuals. The idea of telling a story, the novel as a narration, was no longer relevant, and any ambition to write a novel that would support a cause or put forward an argument had become inappropriate. The individual no longer played a part in the world, and the rise and fall of men and women or the destiny of families, belonged to a previous time. It was only possible to write like Stendhal if you were actually writing in 1830, and if a modern composer wanted to produce music exactly like that of Beethoven, he would find that no one wanted to listen to it.

What counted was creation, according to Robbe-Grillet. A novel (or a film) should show imagination at work - it should create a mental world not to be confused with the real world.

Adam Brooks interview

On his blog, Billy Mernit talks to screenwriter and director Adam Brooks about his new film, Definitely, Maybe.

I decided to completely change my writing process for this script. I didn’t outline the story, a first for me, and I had no idea which of the three women Will would end up with. When I started I didn’t even have the idea of the flashback structure. It was a bit scary, like not having a safety net, and it took a lot longer to write a first draft. But it was a very satisfying process and ultimately I think it paid off. Usually I write about 150 pages to get to a 120 page draft. With Definitely, Maybe I wrote well over 200 pages. I wrote sections in prose and then adapted them. I wrote in diary form. And for the first time ever I allowed myself to write badly. By which I mean I didn’t put the pressure on myself to write a good scene, just to write the scene - long, rough, and bad as it might be. It’s what I always tell my students, I decided to follow my own advice.

Definitely, Maybe trailer

Stoppard and Albee - lovers of words

In The New York Times, Ben Brantley reflects on the similarities between Edward Albee and Tom Stoppard.

It is one of the livelier paradoxes of the English-speaking theater today that its two most dazzling wordsmiths are incurably suspicious of the language they ply with such flair. No other living playwrights give (and, it would seem, receive) more pleasure from the sounds, shapes and textures of their lavishly stocked vocabularies. And none is more achingly conscious of the inadequacy of how they say what they say.

This contradiction is not just an element of their style; it’s the essence of it. It’s what gives that distinctive, heady tension to their plays, the friction that sends the minds of receptive theatergoers into exhilarated overdrive. It is also what makes actors say that mastering these playwrights’ ornate, fast-footed language requires the sort of hard study demanded by Shakespeare.

More strike reflections

In The Guardian, Stephen Armstrong considers the implications of the resolved US writers' strike, including for British productions.

On the upside, Britain will become increasingly important in US TV. British producers own roughly half of the world's reality formats and are already rubbing their hands at the prospect of future deals. The sale of ITV's Secret Diary of a Call Girl to CBS's cable station Showtime marks the first time a UK programme has gone out in its original form on a US-owned station.

US writers go back to work

In The New York Times, Brooks Barnes speaks to American TV writers going back to work after more than three months on strike.

Facing his writing staff on Wednesday for the first time since the end of a 100-day strike, Shane Brennan, the co-executive producer of the CBS drama “NCIS,” asked a question that drew blank stares. “Can anyone remember what we were working on three months ago?”

Meet Jeremy Howe

Writers' Guild meeting with Jeremy Howe, Commissioning Editor for Drama at BBC Radio 4 Venue: The Birmingham Rep, 12 March 2008, 7.30pm

The Writers' Guild invites you to a writers' meeting at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre (centenary suite) on Wednesday 12 March at 7.30pm to hear and question Jeremy Howe, Commissioning Editor for Drama on BBC Radio Four.

The event will be hosted by our President, David Edgar. We do hope you'll join us for this FREE event and stay afterwards to enjoy a glass of wine with fellow writers.

Part of the purpose of this event will be to explore the possibility of establishing a Midlands branch of the Guild. All writers welcome.

Please RSVP to: moe@writersguild.org.uk or on 020 7833 0777, ext. 204

Publisher offers free online books

In The Guardian, Richard Lea reports on an experiment by publisher HarperCollins to release free online version of certain books for a limited time to see how it affects sales.

With Neil Gaiman and Paolo Coelho lined up to be among the first clutch of six titles, it seems as if the publisher is only beginning to catch up with their authors' enthusiasm for free distribution. Coelho, who has promoted free copies of his own work online since 2000, has signed up for HarperCollins to provide an entire book for download every month for one year.

"I believe that online reading helps increase book sales," the author said. "I am very pleased that HarperCollins is able to make my titles available online for my fans to read."

Neil Gaiman, who offers readers free stories on his website and has been running a promotional blog for seven years, is convinced that tasters are "enormously useful". He's running an online vote for readers to determine which of his titles will be given away - a poll currently led by his mythical American fantasy, American Gods.

The Revival of the Audience Sitcom

On the Guild website there's a report on Tuesday's event, The Revival of the Audience Sitcom.

Lucy Lumsden, Controller of BBC Comedy Commissioning, revealed that she was keen to see many more audience sitcom ideas coming up through the system. Far from being an outdated form, it is one, she said, that the BBC attaches enormous importance to.

Evaluating the US writers' strike

As the dust settles following the decision by American screenwriters to end their 100 day strike, commentators are assessing the deal (pdf) which Writers Guild of America members seem likely to accept later this month.

The crucial element, most people agree, is not just that the WGA has gained jurisdiction over new media work, but that there will be a residual payment made.

The press are certainly presenting the strike's resolution as a victory for the writers that will have longer term ramifications. Here's David Carr in The New York Times.

By taking a reflexively hard line in the negotiations from the start, the studios more or less invited the strike, calculating that the writers, a disparate group with varying interests, would quickly splinter. They guessed wrong: despite constant suggestions that cracks were appearing, the center held.

One of the longer-term consequences of the strike that studios will now have to deal with is a group that is remarkably united — from the show runners in possession of lucrative deals to mostly unemployed writers fighting to get into the business.

In The L.A. Times (free registration required), Claudia Eller and Richard Verrier find the argument stated in even stronger terms.

"It [the strike's success] was a defining moment," said economist Harley Shaiken, a professor at UC Berkeley who specializes in labor issues. "It showed that a very disparate group of individuals could act with real solidarity -- and that packed real economic power."

… "They successfully faced down six multinational media conglomerates and established a beachhead on the Internet," said Jonathan Handel, former associate counsel for the Writers Guild of America, West and an attorney at TroyGould. "When you consider what they were initially offered and the enormous odds they faced, that's quite an achievement."

Of course, many writers have suffered during the strike and there may be more short-term pain. However, elsewhere in The L.A. Times, Patrick Goldstein aruges that the residuals provision for new media is key for the longer term: "big triumphs begin as little victories".

Goldstein points out that the Directors' Guild has also emerged with some credit.

With so much historic bad blood between the WGA and the DGA, it wasn't easy for writers to acknowledge how much the DGA's deal set the tone for a successful strike outcome, just as it wasn't easy for the directors to admit that much of their leverage came from the studio's desire to settle with them as a way of undercutting the WGA solidarity. As one of my sardonic screenwriter pals joked: "It's the auteur theory of labor negotiations - we do all the work and the DGA gets all the credit."

Finally, here's writer and blogger Ken Levine's view of what now for writers.

For TV writers on staff...you say goodbye to your family and friends for the next two to three months. Once you enter the studio you will never leave. You might as well be checking in to the Hotel California. Round the clock writing sessions seven days a week to catch up. For the first few days it’ll be great. You’ll be rarin’ to go. By week two you might be looking back nostalgically to those halcyon days when you just picketed in the rain for four hours.

The good news is the final product will be terrific, probably even better than early season episodes when you had more time. Why? Because you won’t have time anymore to address endless notes. There’s a lesson in that of course but those that need to learn the lesson won’t.

With feature writers the amount of interference depends on whether your script is on the fast track or slow. If it’s fast they’ll want the draft TOMORROW. No time for them to say “What if we changed the drugged out rock star to a nun?” But if they’ve been sitting on your draft there’s no hurry then look out. They’ve had four months to obsess over the script. They’ll want you to change the rock star to the nun even if a rock star is not in your screenplay.

Belfast Meets Wales Literary Conference - Day tickets

Day Tickets to the Belfast Meets Wales conference are now available. This Academi conference in association with the Guild’s Welsh Committee will be held in Belfast over the weekend of Friday 29 February – Sunday 2 March 2008.

Speakers will include renowned journalist Peter Taylor; esteemed poets Ciaran Carson, Gwyneth Lewis and Gwyn Thomas; popular and controversial playwrights Gary Mitchell, Ian Rowlands and Martin Lynch; and new stimulating novelists Lucy Caldwell, Glenn Patterson and Catrin Dafydd.

View the full conference programme.

The full conference package costs £210/£190 but Academi is also offering Day Tickets especially for those people living, working and studying in Belfast.

The prices for these tickets are:

- Friday Night (including 3 course evening meal) £30 / £27

- Saturday all day (including lunch and evening meal) £50 / £45

- Sunday morning £12 / £10

Concessionary rates are offered to: students, unwaged, Academi members and Associates. Discounts are also available for large group bookings.

US writers vote to end strike

The membership of the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) and the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) have voted overwhelmingly in favour of lifting the restraining order and ending their 100-day strike. 3,775 writers turned out in Los Angeles and New York to cast ballots or fax in proxies, with 92.5% voting in favor of ending the work stoppage.

“The strike is over. Our membership has voted, and writers can go back to work,” said Patric M. Verrone, president of the Writers Guild of America, West.

“This was not a strike we wanted, but one we had to conduct in order to win jurisdiction and establish appropriate residuals for writing in new media and on the Internet. Those advances now give us a foothold in the digital age. Rather than being shut out of the future of content creation and delivery, writers will lead the way as TV migrates to the Internet and platforms for new media are developed.”

“The success of this strike is a significant achievement not only for ourselves but the entire creative community, now and in the future,” said Michael Winship, president of the Writers Guild of America, East.

“The commitment and solidarity of our members made it happen and have been an inspiration not only to us but the entire organized labor movement. We will build on that energy and unity to make our two unions stronger than ever.”