You may start with a blank page, but that’s not where you start.
You may not remember everything you’ve ever read, everything you’ve ever watched, but at some point they did pass through your mind. And my belief is that they all leave something behind.
Sometimes it’s just a shadow. Sometimes it’s a presence that is way more definite, way more tangible.
I grew up watching the BBC in the 70s and 80s.
From that time four writers stick in my mind. Dennis Potter, Mike Leigh, Jack Rosenthal and Alan Bennett. If their work was on, I’d watch it.
Way back then I had no thoughts about being, or becoming, a writer. I watched their work for the stories, for the characters, for the glimpses of lives that weren’t my own. And because, even then, I knew that what I was watching was better than everything else that was on.
But saying that I was glimpsing lives that weren’t ‘my own’ doesn’t give the whole picture.
Something was always recognisable in the stories.
Something always connected. Even in Mike Leigh’s work, where the characters were often more caricatures, there was stuff that you knew, that resonated.
When I think about what might validate any piece of work I produce the biggest criteria for success is that it connects. I think that’s part of the legacy of growing up watching Potter, Leigh, Rosenthal and Bennett.
Of that group, Dennis Potter, is the anomaly.
He didn’t do jokes. And he invented new realities in ways that the other three didn’t. ‘Pennies From Heaven’, ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ and ‘The Singing Detective’ are still seared into my mind. They are supreme acts of imagination. And I encountered them when I was at an age when I was more open to having my mind opened.
Alan Bennett wrote brilliant, funny, poignant plays.
And he also wrote ‘Talking Heads’. It was a series of televised monologues that changed the game. There was before ‘Talking Heads’ and there was after ‘Talking Heads’.
I bring this up now because even before I started writing the first of the scripts for The Lockdown Theatre Company I knew that Mr Bennett would always be lurking around somewhere in the background of whatever I did. But I was honest enough with myself to know that the similarity was more likely to be in the format of the films, not the quality of the writing.
All of which brings me to the latest film – ‘Spotify vs Top of the Pops’ featuring Lesley Wilcox. I wanted to work with Lesley because she was incredibly helpful when I was looking for an actor who could do a Gloucestershire accent for the script ‘Hill 235’.
So I called her up.
We had a chat. And not very long after that a script emerged.
The script came out of the conversation we’d had. Some of it was the substance of what was said, but more of it was about tone. And then there was a lot of invention. But watching the film back three years later what is abundantly clear is that when I was writing the script Alan Bennett was somewhere in the room. Possibly holding a macaroon.
Or maybe he was holed up in a van parked up on the drive. Because that’s just the kind of thing he would do.
Coming next Friday: The Puzzle
But first here’s ‘Spotify vs Top of the Pops’ featuring Lesley Wilcox. (And Mr Bennett, in the unlikely event of you seeing this, you really should write something for her. She’s quietly brilliant).