Preview

Tonight at eight o'clock, Dad's Money will be seen for the first time by a paying audience.  I've washed my good shirt and had a shave.

Bit of a rush now.  More later.

The brothers say hello

This is the film we made for the Fringe press launch, which took place this morning. I don't know whether they used it or not - if they did, it probably looked less grainy than what you'll see below. Next time I upload to youtube, I'll make sure not to compose a shot full of leaves - they take up a lot of memory so the faces become a bit Dietrich. 

This is my homage to all the classic femmes fatales, in their vaseline-blurred beauty. Not that Jerome and Martin need that sort of help. But no matter what it looks like, their comic timing shines through.  I can't wait to rehearse with these two.

On Film-Making

I’m reading this book by Alexander MacKendrick, who directed some of my favourite films including The Ladykillers and The Sweet Smell of Success.  He talks about how the fact a script must be written with words makes one think about it verbally, which is a handicap to mastering the pre-verbal structures of narrative cinema.  We automatically equate thought with reading and writing, rather than visuals.

I think it’s true for theatre too.  You write plays with words.  Writers are also encouraged not to put in too many stage-directions - it can be seen as treading on the director's or the actors' toes - so I tend to stick to dialogue.  In the past I’ve written clever stuff and I've written funny stuff, but what’s engaging about a play isn’t what people say to each other, it’s what they’re feeling as they say it.

Writing Dad’s Money, I’m burying deep into the emotional journeys before I write any words.  Dialogue comes naturally to me, and it’s very hard to hold back from it, but I hope it’s going to make a deeper, more brutal, more beautiful piece when the words finally come.