Sometimes the plan goes out the window. The plan, in this case, was the one to find actors, write scripts for them, and produce one film a week. The reason it went out the window was one word. Anger.
Or it could have been one name. Boris.
For those of you reading this outside the UK here’s a brief recap on the nation’s Prime Minister at the time The Pandemic struck. Boris Johnson was an Eton-educated, populist politician, who had risen through the ranks of the Conservative Party, become London Mayor, went on to be Foreign Secretary, then lead the Brexit Vote campaign, ousted the existing Conservative Prime Minster, and at the end of 2019 won a massive majority in a General Election on the promise to ‘Get Brexit Done’.
He was also an egotistical, shag-happy buffoon, in love with soundbites, thought rules (and possibly laws) didn’t apply to him, oozed the entitlement and superiority that Eton and the Oxford University of The Bullingdon Club bakes-in, didn’t have the attention span to deal with details, and throughout his career had either massaged the truth, or told lies, and largely got away with it all.
He would have made a great character in a Carry On film. Sid James would have played him. Sid James crossed with Hugh Grant.
Unfortunately the script that landed on all of us in 2020 wasn’t a comedy. So to have a leading man, leading the country, more at home with gags than gravitas was a disaster.
Of course, it has to be said that no-one, and no government, had ever before faced the situation we found ourselves in. So mistakes were bound to be made and the early months were going to be a very steep learning curve.
But still.
At the start, because this was clearly a crisis, and because we were all scared, we looked to the government for authority, reassurance and leadership. Clearly, from what I have written, I was never politically going to be on the side of a Conservative Prime Minister. But I wanted Boris Johnson, and his government, to be good at this.
Let’s pull together, do what we need to do, get through it, then we can go back to arguing about politics once we’re safely on the other side. That was my mind-set.
Unfortunately, if there was a steep learning curve about The Pandemic going on, there was also a steep learning curve going on about the government. Pretty soon I lowered the bar of expectation. Okay, I thought, no-one is going to be good at this, but at least we can be competent.
But as the weeks went on I thought that even competency was out of reach.
When the daily news bulletins are lead by the number of people who had died the day before, to have a government in charge who you believe are incompetent is an awful place to be.
That’s when anger comes in to it.
What crystallized it for me were reports in London’s evening newspaper – The Standard – that bus drivers were dying from Covid.
Red buses are London. They are London in a way that nothing else is. To see a red bus drive along a London street, during rush hour, with no-one on it, said everything about how our city, and indeed our world, had changed.
And now bus drivers were dying.
Buses are also deeply embedded in the Boris Johnson story.
When he was London Mayor one of his major initiatives was the introduction of a new, eco-friendly, hybrid, London bus. They were soon dubbed ‘Boris Buses’. And they did look impressive, if a little larger than life. Shortly after Boris had stopped being Mayor and switched focus to climbing up the greasy pole of national politics, it was decided that the Boris Buses were not a success. They were complex. Expensive to repair. And each one had cost twice as much as a conventional bus would have done. Their days were numbered.
During the Brexit Vote campaign Boris turned up at some events on a bus that had ‘£350 MILLION’ emblazoned on the side. This, apparently, was how much Britain sent to the EU every week. The bus also suggested ‘Let’s fund the NHS instead’. But as soon as the country voted Leave that £350 million figure was shelved. It turned out, as had been argued but ignored at the time, the figure on the bus was bollocks. (Whether the ‘figure’ I’m talking about was the number, or the man, you can decide for yourself).
The last Boris association with buses is just weird. While campaigning to replace fellow Conservative Theresa May as Prime Minister, when asked by an interviewer how he relaxed he said that he made models of buses out wooden wine crates and painted passengers enjoying themselves on them.
So there is a link between Boris and buses.
For me creativity is about connections. Seeing the connections and exploring them. And in the film linked to this piece, creativity is also about anger. And using anger as an energy to fuel what you do.
The plan had been to write scripts for actors to film. I never wanted to make a film myself. But I was angry. And I needed to express that anger.
I wrote the piece late one night. Asked my wife to film me the next day. Didn’t tell her what I’d written. And once the camera was set up I delivered it in one take. And that was that.
In the last two years I have watched all the other films I made in 2020 with The Lockdown Theatre Company many times, and have forwarded them to people I thought might be interested. But this film I’ve watched only once.
I don’t want to go back to where I was when I wrote it.
I think it’s a good piece of work. I’m proud of it. And it absolutely is a product of the time, and the circumstances, we lived through.
Whether it’s wise of me to share as a piece of work today, I don’t know. But if I want to be honest about what 2020 was like creatively, politically and personally, it needs to be included in the films that were made.
Coming next Friday: Empathy. Could that be a by-product of The Pandemic?
But before that here’s the piece I felt compelled to write. ‘Bus’ featuring Rohan Candappa.