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.