BBC Blast and BAFTA Screen-Skills bursary

From BBC Blast:

We've partnered with BAFTA to give you the chance to learn the skills to make TV happen.

If you are 16-19 you could win £3000 towards your next venture, get help from BAFTA mentors, and then have it showcased on BBC 2. You could even be in with a chance of winning a "Screen-Skills" award from BAFTA themselves! Get involved by submitting a video (no more than 5 minutes long) by 7th October 2009 that shows your skills in any of these categories [Director of Photography, Composer, Scriptwriter, Editor].

Full details are on the BBC Blast website. The deadline is 7th October.

Screenwriters' Festival 2009

Just a quick reminder that the fourth Screenwriters' Festival will be running from Monday 26th October to Thursday 29th October this year.

The full programme has now been announced, and here's a list of just a few of the confirmed guest speakers:

• Ollie Madden - Vice President of Production, Warner Bros. 
• Steven Moffat - Lead Writer, Doctor Who
• James Schamus - CEO Focus Features
• Christine Langan - Creative Director of BBC Films
• Simon Beaufoy - Writer of The Full Monty and Slumdog Millionaire
• Phil Collinson  - Head of Drama, BBC North
• Kenton Allen - CEO, Big Talk Productions 
• Tessa Ross - Controller of Film and Drama, Channel 4/Film4 
• Ben Stephenson - Controller of BBC Drama Commissioning
• Kate Harwood - Controller of Series and Serials, BBC Drama
• Armando Iannucci - Writer/Director of The Thick of It and I'm Alan Partridge
• Ashley Pharoah - Writer of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes
• Tony Grisoni - Writer of Channel 4's recent Red Riding adaptations

Tickets are still available for either two or all four days.

Original Sin

On the WGGB website, Guild member Steve Hawes tells the story behind his new play, Original Sin, which opens at the Haymarket, Basingstoke on the 16th October.

My new play, Original Sin, was prompted by a decree issued by Pope Boniface VIII in 1298, Periculoso, which required the perpetual enclosure of all nuns.

Boniface (whom, incidentally, Dante consigned to Hell before he died) declared that he wished “…to provide for the dangerous and abominable situation of certain nuns, who, casting off the reins of respectability and impudently abandoning nunnish modesty and the natural bashfulness of their sex, sometimes rove about outside of the monastery.” His provision was to lock them in.

He concluded a wonderfully circular argument with the supposition that nuns would be thereby “… able to serve God more freely, wholly separated from the public and worldly gaze and, occasions for lasciviousness having thus been removed… most diligently safeguard their hearts and bodies in complete chastity.”

In other words they were to be sheltered from those very perils that they otherwise brought on themselves. They couldn’t get out but men could get in. Well, certain men - priests, church officials, inquisitors - usually with the aim of bossing the nuns about, some with more obviously nefarious purpose.

Roman Polanski held in Switzerland

From BBC News:

Film director Roman Polanski has been taken into custody in Switzerland and faces extradition to the US for having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

Mr Polanski, 76, was detained in Zurich on Saturday as he travelled from France to collect a lifetime achievement award at the Zurich Film Festival.

He is being held under a 2005 international alert issued by the US.

As well as a director, Polanski is also a screenwriter, with credits including Rosemary's Baby (from the novel by Ira Levin).

France 24 (by AFP) reports on opposition to his arrest:

Government ministers, movie directors, writers and intellectuals expressed shock and outrage Sunday after the detention of Oscar winning director Roman Polanski in Switzerland on three-decade-old child sex charges.

France and Poland are to ask the United States to drop the charges and consider a presidential pardon over the case, Poland's PAP news agency said, though Polanski has already acknowledged he had sex with the 13-year-old girl in Los Angeles in 1977...

The Swiss film screenwriters and directors association, the ASSR, called the arrest "a judicial scandal which will tarnish Switzerland's reputation around the world."

Update: From The New York Times - In France, a debate about the case.

Andrew Davies defends 'bonnet dramas'

In the face of plans by Ben Stephenson, the controller of BBC drama commissioning, to cut back on period dramas (known as 'bonnet dramas') Emmy award-winning adaptor, Andrew Davies, has defended the genre in the Radio Times.

"It's the revenge of the controllers. The new breed don't have anything like the power [they used to have]. So there's an element of slate-wiping and territory marking.

"I think, in terms of doing the classics, their position is somewhere near what ITV's was ten years ago. Which is, 'yes, we'll do them, but only if they're big, popular warhorses'. So it's going downmarket, I guess.

"I remain, however, fairly optimistic for the future of period drama because it's just such a popular thing. People like bonnets. I don't think you can underestimate that."

Birmingham Book Festival

The Birmingham Book Festival runs from 3rd-29th October.

Events include one run by the Writers' Guild:

Difficult Teenagers: Writing For The Teenage Market

Friday 9th October 7pm

Fazeley Studios, 191 Fazeley Street, Digbeth, Birmingham B5 5SE

Three practitioners share their experiences and discuss the issues around writing for teenagers.

Chris O’Connell from Theatre Absolute, Coventry, author of the award-winning Street Trilogy and the recent plays Hang Lenny Pope & Zero, will talk about the connections the company's work has made with teenage audiences.
David Calcutt has recently written two critically-acclaimed novels for young people, Crowboy & Shadow Bringer and will talk about his writing for this age group.
Marcus Romer of Pilot Theatre Company (winner 2008 TMA Best Show For Young People Award for Looking For JJ), will look at the use of digital media alongside theatre to appeal to a teenage audience.

Free to Guild Members, otherwise £5 (£3.75)

Members please reply to WMidWritersGuild@aol.com to say you’re coming.

Non-members book through the Festival website or on 0121 303 2323


Another event to highlight:

David Edgar – How Plays Work

Tuesday 13th October 7:30pm

Birmingham Conservatoire

David Edgar, President of the Writers’ Guild, pioneered the teaching of playwriting in the UK, founding the first Playwriting Studies course at Birmingham University twenty years ago. This event celebrates the publication of How Plays Work, a book that offers a masterclass for playwrights and playmakers and is a fascinating guide to the anatomy of drama. It also gives an opportunity to discuss the wider implications of teaching playwriting studies in terms of quality, quantity and the expectations of writers.

£3 for Guild members, otherwise £5 (£3.75)

Members please email joanne@birminghambookfestival.org to say you’re going & then pay on the door. Please say you’re a Writers’ Guild member in the email.

Non-members book through the Festival website or on 0121 303 2323

Finally, another event in which the Guild is involved:

The Writers’ Toolkit – Writer Networking Conference

Saturday 21st November 10am-4pm

South Birmingham College, High St Digbeth, Birmingham B5 5SU

The Writers’ Toolkit is an annual gathering for emerging and established writers and anyone working in the writing industry. It offers a unique opportunity to learn about aspects of the business of being a writer and to network with others writing and working in literature development through a mixture of panel discussions and Q&A sessions.

Subjects covered include Understanding Publishing, Pitching Ideas, Social Networking for Writers, Working with the BBC, Writing with Communities, Promoting Poetry, Working with Agents and Writing in the Digital Age. Other individuals and organisations involved include Arts Council England, Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, Arvon Foundation, National Association of Writers in Education, BBC Radio Four, The National Academy of Writing and Bloodaxe Books.

£29 (£23) Including Buffet – book direct with the festival on 0121 246 2770.

Joe Godwin to run BBC children's

From Katherine Rushton for Broadcast:

Joe Godwin has landed the most powerful job in British kids TV, after being named the new director of BBC children’s.

Godwin is currently head of news, factual and entertainment at CBBC but will replace Richard Deverell in November, when he relinquishes his controller of children’s post to become chief operating officer of BBC North full time.

Trevor Rhone 1940-2009

Jamaican playwright and screenwriter Trevor Rhone has died at the age of 69.

Best know for co-writing (with Perry Henzell) the film The Harder They Come, Rhone studied drama in London in the 1960s before returning to Jamaica to write and teach.

His contribution to the country's cultural life is recognised by his friend Guerney Beckford in the Jamaica Observer:

"He was really an icon," Beckford said. "His contribution to theatre cannot be measured. He found Jamaica to be a stage and we were are all actors. He loved Jamaica. His other love was Bella's Gate. He recently built a school and training centre there, and established a trust fund to run the institution. Another side to Trevor Rhone that people don't know is that he helped a lot of people. He would help in small ways, maybe a school fee here, a weeks salary that could last a month there - no one that came to him with open arms would be turned away. But that story he never wanted told."

There are obituaries in The Times and by Rob Kenner in The New York Times:

...it was the 1972 film “The Harder They Come” that made his name. Directed by Perry Henzell, who also had a writer’s credit, and shot in the gritty streets of Kingston, the movie starred the reggae singer Jimmy Cliff as Ivan, a boy from the country who comes to Kingston with dreams of making it big as a singer but instead becomes a notorious outlaw and dies in a hail of bullets. It became an international cult classic and introduced reggae music to the world before Bob Marley became a household name.

“Trevor’s big contribution was the film’s dramatic structure,” Mr. Henzell’s daughter Justine Henzell said.

The LA Times also has an obituary:

"As a drama school student in London, I had visions of myself as a great tragedian," he told the reference guide Contemporary Authors. "I quickly learnt, however, that classic roles available to black actors were few and far between. And such parts as there were, were invariably written by white authors with little understanding of the black experience.

"My first acting jobs in the professional theater saw me perpetuating negative and stereotyped images of blacks," he added. "My first effort at writing a play was an attempt to find something worthwhile to perform."

What Guild members are getting up to

RANCES BRODY'S crime novel Dying in the Wool, A Kate Shackleton Mystery, will be published in paperback by Piatkus on 1st October. Visit www.frances-brody.com for details. There is a lunchtime signing at Waterstone's, Albion Street, Leeds on Friday 23rd October and a talk and signing at Waterstone's, Bradford Wool Exchange, on Thursday 29th October at 6.30 p.m.

AMELIA BULLMORE'S radio series Craven begins on Radio 4 at 7:45pm on Monday 28th September

ANNA CLEMENTS wrote the episode of Hollyoaks going out on C4 at 6:30pm on Friday 2nd October.

KATE DELIN wrote the episode of Doctors "Wake Up Call" going out on BBC1 at 1:45pm on 28th September.

TIM DYNEVOR wrote the episodes of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 at 7:00pm and 8:00pm on Thursday 1st October.

RACHEL FLOWERDAY wrote the episodes of EastEnders going out on BBC1 at 7:30pm on Thursday 1st and at 8:00pm on Friday 2nd October.

JEREMY FRONT'S dramatisation of fellow guild member SIMON BRETT'S A Charles Paris Mystery: the Dead Side of the Mic concludes on Radio 4 at 11:30pm on Wednesday 30th September.

CHRISSIE GITTINS'S first children's poetry collection Now You See Me, Now You... is now available to buy on Amazon (isbn 9780954328801). The book was shortlisted for the CLPE Poetry Award. It includes two Belmont Poetry Prize winning poems and twenty five credits for poems which have been anthologised. Sample poems and illustrations can be found on the children's poetry page of my website www.chrissiegittins.co.uk

TONY GREEN wrote the episode of Hollyoaks going out on C4 at 6:30pm on Wednesday 30th September.

ANDREW HOLDEN co-wrote the episode of Waking the Dead "End Game" going out on BBC1 at 9:00pm on Sunday 27th September.

JULIE JONES wrote the episode of Coronation Street going out on ITV1 at 8:30pm on Thursday 1st October.

JOHN KERR wrote the episode of Coronation Street going out on ITV1 at 8:30pm on Monday 28th September.

NICK KING wrote the episode of Doctors "The Black Widow" going out on BBC1 at 1:45pm on Tuesday 29th September.

ROB KINSMAN wrote the episode of Doctors "Nobody" going out on BBC1 at 1:45pm on Friday 2nd October.

ANDREW KIRK wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 at 7:00pm on Tuesday 29th September.

CAROLINE MITCHELL wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 at 7:00pm on Wednesday 30th September.

ROLAND MOORE created the period drama series Land Girls and wrote the episode Codes of Honour going out on BBC1 at 6:10pm on Sunday 27th September.

P.G. MORGAN won the Emmy for Outstanding Writing in Documentary for the HBO/BBC film ROMAN POLANSKI : WANTED AND DESIRED. The award was shared with director Marina Zenovich and editor Joe Bini.

DAVID NOBBS'S radio comedy The Maltby Collection concludes on Radio 4 at 11:30am on Monday 28th September.

SHARON OAKES wrote the episode of Doctors "Billy Boy" going out on BBC1 at 1:45pm on Thursday 1st October.

HOWARD OVERMAN wrote the episode of Merlin "The Once and Future Queen" going out on BBC1 at 6:40pm on Saturday 26th September.

COLIN WAKEFIELD will be reading from his Verse History of England at an event organised by Poet in the City entitled HEROES AND HEROINES at the National Portrait Gallery on National Poetry Day, Thursday October 8th, at 7:00pm. (www.poetinthecity.co.uk) (www.npg.org.uk/events)

SUE WALKER has her fourth psychological thriller, The Burning, published by Penguin, coming out on October 1st. Set in Edinburgh, it centres around a couple, Rowan and Murray Shaw, and their new home. All seems well until Rowan discovers that the house has a dark past. Forty years earlier, Murray’s school friend lived in the house – until his shocking death in an unexplained arson attack. So, what has drawn Murray back to the scene of such terrible memories and what else is he hiding from his wife? Soon, Rowan finds herself investigating her husband's dark past, wherever it may lead....

LAURA WATSON wrote the episode of EastEnders going out on BBC1 at 8:00pm on Monday 28th September.

VICTORIA WOOD's play Talent is being revived at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London SE1 until 14th November(Box Office 020 7907 7060). Set in the world of a talent contest, it was her breakthrough play, first performed at the Sheffield Crucible in 1978.

Stella Duffy interview

On the WGGB website, an interview with Guild member Stella Duffy by Zoë Fairbairns.

It surprises her when she hears people say they like writing. “I don’t, and neither do most of the published writers I know. I like having written. I don’t go, ‘what a glorious sentence!’ I sit there going, ‘is this good enough, will it sell, does it make me happy and can it make them happy too?”

Photo credit: Geraint Lewis

Tom Stoppard honoured in Japan

Guild member Tom Stoppard has been named as one of the 2009 Praemium Imperiale Laureates by the Japan Arts Association, reports Playbill.com.

The award is worth 15 million yen (approximately $163,000).

Court asked to delay Google Books hearing

From Cade Metz in The Register:

US authors and publishers have asked a federal court to postpone an upcoming hearing set to examine its $125m book-scanning settlement with Google, requesting additional time to address Justice Department concerns over the pact...

The Open Content Alliance - a group of organizations that oppose the project, including Amazon, Microsoft, and the Internet Archive - views today's news an important win.

"This is a huge victory for the many people and organizations who raised significant concerns that this settlement did not serve the public interest, stifled innovation, and restricted competition," reads a statement from the group. "It’s also an enormous loss for Google, which had been saying for months that no changes were necessary to the settlement. Now, that settlement, as we know it, is dead."

Jana Bennett sees 'market failure' in comedy, children's and drama

From Broadcast:

BBC Vision director Jana Bennett has claimed the economic downturn has turned comedy and drama into “market failure” genres.

Speaking at the BBC Vision Forum for in-house and indie producers, Bennett said the crisis in commercial TV funding meant BBC needed to take extra responsibility in previously buoyant genres.

She said: “We used to think of religion, current affairs, and music and arts as the classic market failure genres – areas of output in which the BBC had a special responsibility. To those, we could now legitimately add children’s, comedy, specialist factual and drama. All these genres could be endangered in this tougher commercial world.”

Update: Bennett also said that BBC Children’s budget is set to increase by at least £25m over the next three years thanks to cost savings at the corporation.

Update (24.09.09): Here's the BBC Press release

Jana Bennett also confirmed that BBC Two's drama spend would increase by 50% over the next three years and that the channel would become the home for BBC Films, "to create a core of distinguished fiction on the channel".

And here's the full transcript of Jana Bennett's speech.

John Collee on Creation

In The Scotsman, screenwriter John Collee talks about his new film about Charles Darwin, Creation, which has already provoked controversy in America.

"I love the notion that there's controversy about it or that it's inspiring debate," says John Collee, who, like Darwin, studied medicine at Edinburgh University and went off on a series of exotic adventures, before pursuing a career as a film writer. "Public acceptance of a scientific truth always lags behind the scientific proof itself."

Creation is released in the UK on Friday.

Diablo Cody 'will sizzle again'

After the worldwide success of her first film, Juno, Diablo Cody became one of Hollywood's best known screenwriters. Now that her second feature script, Jennifer's Body, has fared less well at the box office and with critics, Steven Zeitchik on the Risky Biz blog, warns against writing her off too soon.

There are reasons why the young ones tend to ignite, then flame out (but then sizzle again). Some of it is screenwriters getting so hot they can get anything sold and greenlit. Some of it is about writers drawer-diving for a screenplay that wasn't good enough to get made before their stock rose. And some of it is just about a writer taking a little time to find their voice.

Jennifer's Body is released in the UK on 6th November.

Simon Van Booy wins O'Connor short story prize

From the Irish Examiner:

A British writer Simon Van Booy has won the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award for his collection, Love Begins in Winter. The €35,000 prize is the richest in the world for a short story collection.

Speaking at the award ceremony, held at the Stack Theatre at the Cork School of Music, Mr Van Booy said he was surprised and "very, very grateful" to have won.

Van Booy's debut novel will be published next year.

Emmy Award for Andrew Davies

Andrew Davies's adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel Little Dorrit won seven awards at the American Emmy awards last night, including the prize for Outstanding Miniseries and Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special.

The winners of the Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Comedy Series awards were the same as last year - Mad Men and 30 Rock, respectively.

Update: From Wales Online, Guild member Andrew Davies on winning the award:

“Winning an Emmy is very important as it means people really take notice,” said Davies, whose previous credits include Pride And Prejudice, Tipping The Velvet and Bleak House.

“It’s good for the reputation of British drama and all the people who work in the industry.”

John Wells elected WGAW President

From the Writers Guild of America, West:

The Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) has announced the final results of its 2009 WGAW Officers and Board of Directors election.

The following members were elected to serve as Officers: President – John Wells; Vice President – Tom Schulman; Secretary-Treasurer – David N. Weiss.

"I'm remarkably humbled by the membership returning me to the Presidency of the Guild. I look forward to working with the Board again and to working with David Young and his talented staff to meet the many challenges that lie ahead,” said Wells.

John Wells is a producer and director as well as a highly successful writer. He is best known for his role as executive producer and showrunner of the television series ER.

Wells takes over from Patric M. Verrone as President of the WGAW, a role that he held before from 1999-2001.

Misreading fiction as fact

In The Guardian, following the failure of the case against two Manchester schoolboys based on their diaries, Guild President David Edgar argues that the right to free speech in fiction must be preserved.

A conceptual confusion which has hitherto provided a politician with a populist soundbite, or a tabloid newspaper with a day or two's headlines is now informing the actions of the CPS. Once again, infringement of the principle of free speech has consequences way beyond its presumed constituency.

Mike Stott 1944-2009

Playwright and scriptwriter Mike Stott has died at the age of 65. He wrote stage plays including Funny Peculiar and Ducking Out, TV scripts including Pickersgill People and radio plays and series including Bunn & Co.

There is tribute in The Guardian from Mike Leigh, alongside an obituary by Michael Coveney.

He was best known for one of the most uproariously funny plays of the last half century, Funny Peculiar (capsule summary: "fellatio in the Pennines"), which premiered in a German production in 1973 at the Bochum Schauspielhaus, where the director Peter Zadek was in charge, before storming the Liverpool Everyman in 1975 and then the Mermaid Theatre and the Garrick in London the following year. The play gave riotous expression to Stott's main comic theme, both absurd and liberating – the idea that the permissive society might penetrate the outer reaches of northern, provincial humdrum existence.

No one who saw the 1975 production, directed by Alan Dossor, will forget the sight of Richard Beckinsale as the sexually inquisitive grocer Trevor Tinsley, having fallen into his own cellar while pursued by a village widow, being lovingly serviced under the bedclothes by his wife (played by Julie Walters) while trussed up like a plaster-cast chicken in hospital.