Showcomotion Children's Media Conference

On the Guild website, Jayne Kirkham reports from the sixth annual Showcomotion Children's Media Conference that took place last week.

After the recent years of gloom, especially in children’s television, the conference theme of 'Connect' gave a cautious and practical optimism as it offered bespoke research connecting practitioners with their audience and also with each other as the benefits of cross-discipline learning and partnership became clear.

Free tax guidance

HW Fisher & Company have produced a free tax guide for authors and journalists (pdf) to help you manage your tax affairs and are offering free tax advice to Guild members.

The Authors and Journalists team at HW Fisher & Company have many years’ experience in helping clients minimise their tax liability. If you have a tax query you can call their free tax helpline for Guild members on 020 7874 7876 and quote ‘WG’.

Alternatively, email your query (please quote ‘WG’ in the subject line) to Andrew Subramanian: asubs@hwfisher.co.uk or Barry Kernon: bkernon@hwfisher.co.uk

Please note: while the Guild believes HW Fisher to be a reputable company, we do not accept liability for any advice given.

Paul Feig on comedy writing

In The Guardian, American actor, director and scriptwriter Paul Feig offers nine comedy writing tips.

4. Cut the jokes

"A script packed full of jokes is what a network executive will sign off because it will seem funny on the page. But it won't work when you shoot it because people don't really act that way. A great comedy is about real characters who make you laugh because you appreciate their personalities and how they react to particular situations. They have to be believable human beings, not just vehicles for gags.

The Brothers McLeod

On the Guild website, an article by Myles McLeod (pictured above, right) about his partnership with animator (and brother, on the left) Greg which has led to success including a BAFTA nomination for their short film Codswallop.

We’ve always tried to challenge ourselves to do new types of story, or to use new techniques in our filmmaking. This is partly where Codswallop came from. It was also a very personal project. When you’re working on a lot of other people’s material there is always a level of compromise that has to come with that process. It can be fun to work with a big collaborative group and you learn so much from that interaction. But sometimes you have to go away and make something on your own, just as a kind of selfish artistic act.

(Photo: © BAFTA)

What Guild members are getting up to

SARAH BAGSHAW wrote the last episode of The Royal "Compromising Postitions" going out on ITV1 on Sunday 5th July. She also wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 at 7:00pm on Monday 6th July.

RAY BROOKING wrote the episode of Doctors "Crisis? What Crisis?" going out on BBC1 at 1:45pm on Monday6th July.

RICHARD BURKE wrote the episode of Hollyoaks going out on C4 at 6:30pm on Tuesday 7th July.

PAUL COATES wrote the episode of Hollyoaks going out on C4 at6:30pm on Friday 10th July.

TIM DYNEVOR wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 at 7:00pm on Thursday 9th July.

JAN ETHERINGTON & GAVIN PETRIE are holding a rehearsed reading of two new comedy scripts, as part of the Sunbury & Shepperton Arts Festival on Thursday 16th July at 8 p.m. Tickets £10. Box office 01932 782788 (see wwww.riversidearts.co.uk)

JOHN FAY wrote the episodes 2 and 4 of Torchwood "Children of Earth" going out this week on BBC1 at 9:00pm on Tuesday 7th and Thursday 9th July.

RACHEL FLOWERDAY wrote the episode of EastEnders going out on BBC1 at 8:00pm on Friday 10th July.

STEVE HUGHES wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 at 7:00pm on Wednesday 8th July.

MARK ILLIS wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 at 7:00pm on Tuesday 7th July.

JOHN KERR wrote the episode of Coronation Street going out on ITV1 at 7:30pm on Wednesday 8th July.

MATT LEYS co-wrote "The Great British Foreign Holiday" going out on BBC2 at 8:00pm on Tuesday 7th July.

MOYA O'SHEA'S new play "Room Service" will be performed at the Farnham Rep from 20th till the 23rd of August at 7:30pm with a matinee on 22nd at 3:30pm. For more information please visit www.redgravefarnham.co.uk.

LYN PAPADOPOULOS wrote the episode of Hollyoaks going out on C4 at 6:30pm on Monday 6th July.

JULIAN PERKINS wrote the episode of The Bill "Breaking Point" going out on ITV1 at 8:00pm on Wednesday 8th July.

RHIANNA PRATCHETT wrote the story and dialogue for Overlord 2, Overlord :Minions and Overlord:Dark Legend , now available on Xbox 360, PS3, DS and Wii.

SUE TEDDERN'S radio play In Mates is going out on Radio 4 at 2:15pm on Monday 6th July. The audio pen-friendship of Michelle (Pauline Quirke) in Orpington and Randall on Death Row. Marion and Geoff meets Dead Man Walking. In Mates also stars Gillian Wright, Malcolm Tierney, Annabelle Dowler, Lizzy Watts and Benjamin Askew. Director: Jessica Dromgoole.

JOE TURNER wrote the episodes of Coronation Street going out on ITV1 at 7:30pm and 8:30pm on Monday 6th July.

ANDREW S. WALSH wrote the dialogue for EA’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince available on Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii.

PETER WHALLEY wrote the episodes of Coronation Street going out on ITV1 at 7:30pm and at 8:30pm on Friday 10th July.

KEN YATES' play 'Dust' is the story of a Leeds woman, June Hancock, and her battle against a multinational corporation whose Armley factory spewed asbestos out onto the surrounding streets fatally injuring her and many others.
The play is on first in Armley on 11th July and then at the West Yorkshire Playhouse from 15th - 18th July.

IMDB credits threat resolved

Earlier this week there were reports that the International Movie Database (IMDB) was demoting writer credits to the 'Additional Details' section.

Fortunately, the situation now appears to have been resolved by the Writers Guild of America, as Craig Mazin writes on his blog:

I just received word from Lesley Mackie McCambridge, who runs the WGAw Credits Department, that the issue with IMDB has been resolved. She and her department were on this one before any of us in the blogosphere even knew about it, and IMDB will not be moving forward with any plan to relocate writers’ credits from their rightful position.

Hampstead Theatre's future

With aritstic director Anthony Clarke having stepped down, on The Guardian Theatre Blog Michael Billington calls for the next incumbent to programme a mix of new plays and neglected classics.

At the moment, the only two London theatres to mix new plays with revivals of forgotten work are the Orange Tree and the Finborough. Both, I should add, are hugely successful, but inevitably operate on a smaller scale. Hampstead could do a similar job, and I suspect there are some rich pickings to be had from the 20th century repertory. From Britain alone, I can think of a dozen plays from John Galsworthy, Somerset Maugham, Emlyn Williams and Graham Greene right up to Arnold Wesker, David Hare, Howard Brenton and Trevor Griffiths that are worth another look.

In the comments, however, playwright David Eldridge calls for more fundamental change, arguing that whoever takes over at Hampstead should:

Eschew the awful development culture which has grown around our theatre like bind weed, alongside rampant over-commissing, which sees playwrights increasingly infantalised and treated with little respect. The theatre in general has always been most succcessful when canny artistic teams have backed playwrights to persue a vision. How an earth did our new writing culture become so like the bone-headed TV development regimes? The new AD could take a leaf out of the Bush's renewed commitment to being a play house where they put on the plays they like most and only give the writer notes when the theatre is committed to the play. I think Stephen Dadry said in the early 90s we need "to listen to the kids". These days the kids seem to be required to listen to the theatre...

Hanif Kureishi - adapting The Black Album for the stage

In The Guardian, Hanif Kureishi explains how he set about adapting his novel The Black Album for the stage.

We worked on a number of drafts, and it was the usual business of writing: cutting, condensing, expanding, developing, putting in jokes and trying material in different places until the story moved forward naturally. I was particularly keen to keep the banter of students and their often adolescent attitudes, particularly towards sexuality. This was, after all, one of their most significant terrors: that the excitement the west offered would not only be too much for them, but for everyone.

The play opens at the National Theatre later this month.

The death of Moneyball

As Christopher Hampton proved at the Screenwriters' Festival event a couple of weeks back, Hollywood near-miss stories are strangely fascinating.

The demise of Moneyball, despite the commitment of Brad Pitt, is a case in point. Tough for everyone involved, of course, and it's notable how many times the script appears to have been yanked about. IMDB lists four writers (working on adapting a book by Michael Lewis) and Michael Cielpy in The New York Times says that director Steven Soderbergh also wrote a script.

Cielpy reckons the film being pulled just days before shooting was due to start, could signify a new caution among the studios.

The last-minute demise of a high-profile film project, especially one starring an A-list star like Mr. Pitt, is a rare spectacle in Hollywood — one that is painful, expensive and damaging to all involved. It also happened with “Used Guys,” a high-priced comedy at 20th Century Fox in 2006.

But such disasters — this one is estimated to have cost Sony $10 million in development and preproduction costs — may become more common as an increasingly nervous film business comes to terms with a sharp decline in home video revenue, the diminishing power of even the most popular stars to muscle their projects into production and new uncertainty over complicated bets like “Moneyball.”

Blogging writer Ken Levine, however, reckons the project was doomed from the start.

The end of Joost

Eighteen months ago we blogged about the possibility that Joost might be the future of TV.

Using P2P streaming, they looked set to create a new model of broadcasting that would harness the power of file-sharing.

That was then. Now, as Michael Arrington reports for TechCrunch, they've given up.

They over funded ($45 million before they even launched) and they ignored the fact that users were quite willing to sacrifice quality in online video for the convenience of Flash in the browser. Joost waited until late last year to go all Flash - until then users had to use the downloadable Joost software and allow P2P streaming of shows. In the meantime there was no linking to Joost videos. YouTube and Hulu got all that social media and SEO juice that could have gone to Joost.

Not that the traditional media companies will be cracking open the champagne. They've all got their own problems - see ITV's record low-ratings last week, for example.

Update (02.07.2009): Hulu and YouTube home in on landmark UK deals

Angry Robot imprint launches

Genre publishing sometimes falls beneath the mainstream media radar, but Harper Collins seems to be going all out to promote its new imprint, Angry Robot. Well, they've sent me two press releases this week, anyway.

Today marks the launch of HarperCollins' new imprint Angry Robot. We'll be serving up 2-3 red hot novels a month for a new generation of readers who've grown up on Hostel and Hellboy, Battlestar Galactica, Gears of War and World of Warcraft and are now looking for adrenaline-fuelled entertainment in books.

Here's the policy on submissions:

We’re not open to unsolicited proposals at this time. If you’re a budding author and want to get more advice on your work we recommend you check out the amazing on-line novel-in-progress review machine that is Authonomy!

If you have an agent, or you are known to us or recommended to us by someone we know, you are welcome to submit proposals for new novels. We require a brief (two pages max) summary of characters, plot and your intentions/inspiration, in that order — plus the opening five chapters.

And here's some more info from the same page:

We’re publishing novels, either standalone or as part of greater series. We’re not looking to publish novellas, short stories or non-fiction at this time.

All our books are “genre” fiction in one way or another — specifically fantasy, science fiction, horror, and that new catch-all urban or modern fantasy. Those are quite wide-ranging in themselves; we’re looking for all types of sub-genre, so for example, hard SF, space opera, cyberpunk, military SF, alternate future history, future crime, time travel, and more. We have no problem if your book mashes together two or more of these genres; in fact, we practically insist upon it.

We’re publishing books for adults; we’re not looking for any YA or teenage titles to publish. We are happy for our books to cover adult themes, situations and “language”.

They're also on Twitter.

Guild events

A reminder about three upcoming Guild events:

• New writing inspired by 1984 - 2nd July, Kowalsky Gallery, London
• Screenlit East Midlands Event - 3rd July, Nottingham
• West Midlands Branch Meeting - 6th July, Coventry
  

Harold Ramis on Year One

For the Writers Guild of America West, Denis Faye talks to Harold Ramis (co-writer of films including Caddyshack, Stripes, Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day) about his new film (written with Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg), Year One.

What was the genesis of the Year One script?

The influences have been kicking around in my head for my whole life. I include anything that puts characters with a contemporary consciousness in a historical setting, like Mel Brooks – specifically, the 2000 Year Old Man. I thought that was hysterically funny when I was in college. I memorized all that material. And I really admired Life of Brian and Holy Grail.

Then a lot of religious thoughts started kicking around for me as I got older. And then post-9/11, I started thinking about fundamentalism and orthodoxy and the role they play in world conflict. The history of religion seems like an ongoing tragedy of some kind – persecution and injustice, torture, inquisition, and the way religion is used to justify politics.

Then I thought back to an improv that I directed in the ‘70s that had Bill Murray and John Belushi. I had been watching PBS and I didn’t realize that Cro-Magnon – modern man – had co-existed on the planet with Neanderthal. So, I had John and Billy do an improv. Bill played Cro-Magnon like a hipster and John played Neanderthal like a moron. It was very funny, I thought.

So I thought about trying to track some of my religious and political ideas through the dawn of man, and then I thought, Why not Genesis? And I started using the early start of Genesis as a template for these ideas. And it just started coming together in the summer of ‘05.

Guild study shows gender split in radio and TV

After Vamps, Vixens and Feminists and Emily Glassberg Sands' report, here are some statistics produced by the Writers' Guild office (pdf). They looked at the TV and radio writers listed in the Radio Times over six weeks from 23rd May - 3rd July 2009.The bias towards men varies from 80%-20% one week to 65%-35% another. The average is well over 70% in favour of male writers.

Now it's time to ask what you think.

I'm narrowing it down a bit for the moment to TV, theatre and radio as those are the areas that have been discussed most so far. And I'm restricting it to the UK. Feel free to discuss discrimination in books or video games, or any other aspects of the subject, below.

So, do you think female writers in the UK (in TV, theatre and radio) are discriminated against? (See poll, right)

NB Emily Glassberg Sands' thesis about gender discrimination in American theatre is now online. Its conclusion is striking:

Scripts bearing female pen-names are deemed by artistic directors to be of lower overall quality and to face poorer economic prospects than otherwise identical scripts bearing male pen-names. In addition, artistic directors believe cast and crew will be less eager to work on a female-written script. Female artistic directors, in particular, deem scripts bearing female pen-names to be poorer fits with their theaters, and to face not only worker discrimination, but also customer discrimination. The severity of the discrimination against female playwrights appears to be more pronounced for women writing about women than for women writing about men.

Facing facts in theatre

On The Guardian Theatre Blog, Paul Allen looks at the rise of verbatim theatre in the north of England.

What does factual drama do that factual journalism or fictitious plays can't? Well, it can make you feel a personal tragedy or social injustice rather than simply understanding it. Whether it changes anything is hard to say, but as you leave the theatre you may certainly feel it should do.

Scene & Heard - Jumping For Joy

In The Times, Dominic Maxwell goes behind the scenes of Scene & Heard, a mentoring project that partners the inner-city children of Somers Town, London with volunteer theatre professionals, including playwrights.

In a Camden community centre, child playwrights aged 9 to 11 sat watching their work being performed for the first time. And I sat there moved to laughter and even the odd tear by bizarre yet beautiful playlets that keep on cutting to the dramatic chase. Animals and inanimate objects are the protagonists, but get over that device and you’ll find characters who are full of refreshingly straightforward human emotions. The writing is about love, loss, family and aspiration.

Scene & Heard's latest production, Jumping For Joy is at Theatro Technis, London NW1 (020-7388 9008) from Thursday 2nd July to Sunday 5th July. Tickets are free but must be reserved in advance.

Is free the future?

A few months ago, Chris Anderson, who coined the concept of the long tail, publihsed an article on Wired.com explaining why 'free' is the future of business.

The rise of "freeconomics" is being driven by the underlying technologies that power the Web. Just as Moore's law dictates that a unit of processing power halves in price every 18 months, the price of bandwidth and storage is dropping even faster. Which is to say, the trend lines that determine the cost of doing business online all point the same way: to zero.

Now in The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell considers Anderson's argument and decides that things aren't quite that simple.

The Times gives away its content on its Web site. But the Wall Street Journal has found that more than a million subscribers are quite happy to pay for the privilege of reading online. Broadcast television—the original practitioner of Free—is struggling. But premium cable, with its stiff monthly charges for specialty content, is doing just fine. Apple may soon make more money selling iPhone downloads (ideas) than it does from the iPhone itself (stuff). The company could one day give away the iPhone to boost downloads; it could give away the downloads to boost iPhone sales; or it could continue to do what it does now, and charge for both. Who knows? The only iron law here is the one too obvious to write a book about, which is that the digital age has so transformed the ways in which things are made and sold that there are no iron laws.

Guild members on Twitter

About time we had a list of Guild members on Twitter as well as the list of blogs.

So, if you're tweeting, post a comment here and I'll start to make a list.

Feel free to recommend other writing-related twitter-ers, too.

Update: The Guild is now on twitter: http://twitter.com/TheWritersGuild

Habib Tanvir 1923-2009

Indian playwright, director and actor Habib Tanvir died earlier this month at the age of 85.

I've not ben able to find many English language obituaries, but Wikipedia has a reasonable biography.

In his exploratory phase, 1970-73, he broke free from one more theatre restriction, he no longer made the folk artists with whom he had been performing all his plays speak Hindi, and instead switched to Chhattisgarhi, a local language, they were more accustomed to. Later, he even started experimenting with 'Pandavani', a folk singing style from the region and temple rituals, making his plays stand out amidst the backdrop of plays which were still using traditional theatre techniques like blocking movements or fixing lights on paper. Soon spontaneity and improvisation became the hallmark of the new style, where the folk artists were allowed greater freedom of expression.

As this article in ThaiIndian news makes clear, he was a hugley important figure in Indian theatre,

What Guild members are getting up to

SIMON J. ASHFORD wrote the episode of Robin Hood “Something Worth Fighting For” going out on BBC1 on Saturday 27 June and 6.45 pm.

SARAH BAGSHAW wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 on Friday 3 July at 7.00 pm.

SAMINA BAIG wrote the episode of EastEnders going out on BBC1 on Monday 29 June at 8.00 pm.

PERRIE BALTHAZAR wrote the episode of Hollyoaks going out on C4 on Wednesday 1 July at 6.30 pm.

JOHN BASHFORD'S new play The Hop Garden" is having a staged reading at the Ludlow Assembly Rooms on Saturday 27th June at 2:30pm. For more information please visit www.ludlowassemblyrooms.co.uk

LEN COLLIN wrote the episode of The Bill going out on ITV1 on Wednesday 1 July at 8.00 pm.

RUPERT CREED'S new drama, Every Time It Rains, draws eyewitness accounts from some of those in Yorkshire whose lives were turned upside down by the floods of 2007. It will be performed at Hull Truck Theatre until 4th July. An article about the making of the play appeared in the Guardian last Friday:

DECLAN CROGHAN wrote the episode of Waking the Dead going out on BBC1 on Wednesday 1 July at 9.00 pm.

SIMON CROWTHER wrote the episode of Coronation Street going out on ITV1 on Friday 3 July at 8.30 pm.

RICHARD DAVIDSON wrote the episodes of EastEnders going out on BBC1 on Tuesday 30 June at 7.30 pm and Thursday 2 July at 7.30 pm.

CLIVE DAWSON wrote the episode of The Bill going out on ITV1 on Thursday 2 July at 8.00 pm.

KEVIN DYER'S Baghdad Zoo, part of the Playhouse Project is on at Dundee Rep and Polka on Tuesday 30th of June and York Theatre Royal on Wednesday 8th July and Plymouth Theatre Royal on Friday 17th July.

CHRIS FEWTRELL wrote the episodes of Coronation Street going out on ITV1 on Wednesday 1 July at 7.30 pm and on Friday 3 July at 7.30 pm.

ADRIAN FLYNN wrote next week's episodes of The Archers going out on BBC Radio 4. Ambridge gets a new resident.

DAWN HARRISON wrote the episode of The Royal going out on ITV1 on Sunday 28 June at 7.00 pm.

JONATHAN HARVEY is really is big down under. Beautiful People got the highest viewing figures.. like, ever.. for a show on ABC2 in Australia!

MARK ILLIS wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1on Monday 29 June at 7.00 pm.

DAVID LANE wrote the episode of Coronation Street going out on ITV1 on Monday 29 June at 8.30 pm.

Congratulations to Guild member KAY MELLOR who has received an OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List (pdf) for services to drama. She is back at her desk now working on a new drama for ITV called Women of a Certain Age.

CAROLINE MITCHELL wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 on Wednesday 1 July at 7.00 pm.

PAUL PARKES wrote the episodes of Noddy "High Tide" and "The Goblin Express" going out on Five on Monday 29th and Tuesday 30th June at 7:45am.

JULIE PARSONS wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 on Thursday 2 July at 7.00 pm.

HEATHER ROBSON wrote the episode of Hollyoaks going out on C4 on Friday 3 July at 6.30 pm.

PAUL ROUNDELL wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 on Tuesday 30 June at 7.00 pm.

CHRIS THOMPSON wrote the episode of Emmerdale that went out on ITV1 on Thursday 25th June at 7:00pm.

Best Picture Oscar nominations doubled

The chances of your new feature film being nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture have just doubled - the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that ten films rather than the previous five will be up for the main gong next year.

Feeling confident?

Female playwrights 'discriminated against' in US

Last week Tracy Brabin blogged from the Vamps, Vixens and Feminists conference in London about issues around sexual equality on TV and the stage.

Now in the New York magazine, Winter Miller reports on a new study, Opening The Curtain On Playwright Gender, by Emily Glassberg Sands that shows discrimination against female writers.

In three separate studies...across 170 pages, Sands finds gender bias on the part of both men and women in script selection and production, and shows that it hurts theaters economically.

You can read more on Emily Glassberg Sands' blog, including the slides from her presentation. Update: As well as Tracy Brabin's report for us, there's now also a piece by Matthew Hemley in The Stage.

Update (29.06.09): You can now download the full text of Glassberg Sand's thesis, with it's striking conclusion that:

Scripts bearing female pen-names are deemed by artistic directors to be of lower overall quality and to face poorer economic prospects than otherwise identical scripts bearing male pen-names. In addition, artistic directors believe cast and crew will be less eager to work on a female-written script. Female artistic directors, in particular, deem scripts bearing female pen-names to be poorer fits with their theaters, and to face not only worker discrimination, but also customer discrimination. The severity of the discrimination against female playwrights appears to be more pronounced for women writing about women than for women writing about men.

Why levies make sense (II)

By Edel Brosnan

Here's the full text of Professor's Patrick Barwise's address to the Federation of Entertainment Uinion's lunchtime conference on Monday (with thanks to Professor Barwise for permission to reproduce in full):

The invitation to speak at this event presented me with a dilemma.

I care passionately about public service broadcasting, by which I mean: a mixed economy providing a wide range of high-quality, universally available programmes, including a high proportion of UK-produced programmes, free-to-air at the point of consumption.

This system is now under threat for reasons we all know: one of its funding sources, TV advertising, is in slow, long-term structural decline and, right now, sharp cyclical decline. The three commercially funded PSBs – ITV, C4 and Five – are therefore having to reduce programme budgets. Meanwhile, the other funding source, the BBC licence fee, is under constant attack and the BBC too is making deep cuts.

At the same time, people like Steve Morrison at All3Media and Kay Withers at ippr have pointed out that there’s a fairly straightforward solution to this problem, by introducing new funding sources – especially industry levies - to complement advertising and the licence fee.

So why did the invitation to speak here in support of these sensible ideas pose a dilemma for me? The reason is the political and ideological context.

As things stand, neither main political party appears even to have considered industry levies as a way of ensuring the survival of PSB, although – as I’ll show shortly – once one starts looking at the numbers, it’s clear that such a levy ought to be a large part of the answer.

The closest either main party has come so far is the Digital Britain proposal of a 50p/month levy on fixed phone lines. But the aim is to earmark that to cover part of the cost of universal, or near-universal, superfast broadband. The benefits of superfast broadband are, in my view, highly questionable, but that’s another story.

The mood music from the Conservatives has so far been no more positive about industry levies, although my hope is that this will change as they come to realise how the Government is missing a trick.

Certainly, the Conservatives have been saying all the right things about the importance of the creative industries. Labour having, so to speak, shot its bolt with Digital Britain, the Conservatives now have the chance to respond with something better – if they can put aside their preconceptions and, to be fair, their justifiable concerns about placating certain newspaper proprietors.

The dilemma for me was therefore as follows: some type of industry levy is – once one looks at the numbers – obviously the right way to go. But by lending it my support in the current political climate, will I lose whatever very limited influence I have among those who determine policy for the communications industries?

Obviously, I’m here today, which means that, after thinking about it, I decided “To hell with that”. I’m an emeritus professor – it’s from the Latin. It means unpaid and fire-proof, and in my case politically independent. If someone in my position can’t speak truth to power, we’ve come to a pretty sorry pass.

So I’m going to make the naïve assumption that the politicians – regardless of what they may have said in the past on these issues – will open their minds and listen to the facts.

The most important of these facts is that the total revenue of the consumer telecoms and technology industries – including fixed and mobile telephony and broadband, internet advertising and hardware sales – is hugely bigger than the whole of broadcasting.

If you take nothing else from this talk, I hope you’ll take this. It explains both the solution and, unfortunately, much of the problem.

To put some numbers on this, in 2007, the total revenue of UK broadcasting – all TV including pay-TV, plus radio – was £12.4 billion. The revenue of consumer telecoms and the internet – in other words, excluding all the revenue from businesses and other organisations – was £27 billion, more than twice as much as the whole of broadcasting. In addition, UK consumers spent a further £15-20 billion on communications hardware.

Note that – to varying degrees – the growth of all these industries relies on the continuing supply of high-quality PSB content. In most cases, that reliance is increasing.

Note also that, even today, telecoms and the internet are much more expensive for the consumer than broadcasting. Even if we exclude the cost of hardware, and despite huge improvements in price-performance, the cost per person per hour of consumer telecoms and the internet in 2007 was still £1.20 – more than ten times the 11 pence per hour for TV and 100 times the 1.2 pence per hour for radio.

That 11 pence per hour for total TV includes pay TV. If we look at just public service television, the cost per hour is even less. Pay TV channels are still watched less than PBS channels but pay TV revenue is now much higher than advertising revenue, which is, in turn, still significantly higher than the proportion of the licence fee that goes to BBC television.

Yes, you did hear that right: despite all the talk of an “imbalance” in favour of the BBC, right now - in the depths of an advertising recession - TV advertising revenue is still significantly more than the proportion of licence fee revenue that goes to BBC Television. If you include the pay TV revenue of Sky and Virgin (which are also commercial TV companies), total commercial revenue – from subscriptions and advertising – is about three times the licence fee revenue of BBC television. So yes, there’s an imbalance, but it’s the opposite of the claim that BBC Television has more resources than commercial TV. Of course their situations are very different, but let’s get the facts right.

The second key fact is that over 90% of the investment in UK production is by the BBC and the commercially funded PSBs. What Ofcom has shown – and is not, I think, in dispute – is that the pressure on budgets means that that investment by these four PSBs is decreasing, despite the fact that people are watching, if anything, more TV than before and the total revenue going into the communications industries is growing.

Of course, other traditional media are also suffering, none more so than local newspapers, because the internet is killing classified advertising. The wider challenge is to ensure the continuation of both public service broadcasting across all genres and professional journalism across all media.

Now I said that the huge scale of the consumer telecoms and technology industries explains both the solution and much of the problem. This is even more the case if one includes pay TV in the equation.

The positive implication is that, if the net is spread widely, even a very small revenue levy can generate enough to fill the PSB funding gap.

Others such as Steve Morrison, Kay Withers and Mark Oliver have looked at the options and the numbers more closely than I have. But for a rough idea: consumer telecoms, technology and pay TV have combined annual revenue of roughly £50 billion. A simple 1% levy on that would therefore generate about £500 million per annum. To put this in perspective, the funding gap for C4 in 2012 is roughly £100-150 million per annum. That’s all we need to ensure continuing plurality in PSB.

Of course there will be many executional issues if we take this route: fierce debates about the right combination of levies, spending priorities, market distortion and state aid, accountability, and so on. But don’t let anyone suggest that a levy is inherently difficult or impractical.

For instance, as Steve Morrison has pointed out, only five of the 27 countries in the EU don’t have a levy on the sales of new recording equipment. In alphabetical order, these are Cyprus, Ireland, Luxemburg, Malta, and the UK. Five years ago, Germany already collected 146 million Euros and France 168 million Euros from this source alone. The impact on hardware sales seems to have been minimal. We could probably solve the C4 funding gap if we did this and nothing else.

Are we really so arrogant as a nation, and is Europe now such a dirty word, that we feel we have nothing to learn from the practical experience of Germany, France and the rest of Europe?

When it comes to dubious propaganda about the so-called “race” towards universal fast broadband, I note that we’re all too keen to learn from Johnny Foreigner. But that seems to apply only when he’s throwing money at fat pipes.

And incidentally, when it comes to PSB and TV production, Johnny Foreigner has far less to lose than we do.

This leads me to the negative implication of the huge scale of the telecoms, technology and pay-TV industries, which is that, because of their size, they have enormous resources and lobbying power. In addition, I don’t think you have to be a Marxist or a paranoid schizophrenic to note that the dominant pay-TV operator is controlled by Rupert Murdoch and that this might, at the margin, influence politicians’ willingness to introduce a levy on pay TV, however small and however great the benefits for the British public and the creative industries.

All of this is in an ideological climate which, despite the banking crisis, the Metronet fiasco, and other examples, still insists that the free market is the answer to almost everything.

A further problem is that the power imbalance between public service broadcasting and the big battalions of telecoms, technology and pay TV is also reflected in Whitehall and the Cabinet. The creative industries are represented by DCMS under Ben Bradshaw, who’s been there for just a couple of weeks. The big battalions are represented by the new BIS under Lord Mandelson. Who do you think has more influence in the corridors of power?

So there we have it. The key fact is that consumer telecoms, technology, and pay TV are vastly bigger than public service broadcasting.

On the plus side, this means that even a tiny revenue levy on these industries would generate enough resources to fill the funding gap for PSB and, indeed, local media. The bad news is that it also means that the big battalions’ vast resources and influence seem likely to prevent the introduction of any such levy, however small, unless those in power show the vision and leadership to do what’s right.

Ultimately, it will be up to the politicians, but if enough of us make enough noise about this, reason may prevail despite the powerful forces marshalled against these ideas.

Why levies make sense

By Edel Brosnan

Instead of top-slicing the licence fee, why not fund quality digital content with a levy on ISPs and telecoms companies?

From the NUJ website, on Monday 22nd of June :

The UK government must move the focus of its Digital Britain strategy from infrastructure to quality content.

That was the message delivered to a conference of academics, campaigners and industry representatives, organised by the Federation of Entertainment Unions.

Leading academic Professor Patrick Barwise of the London Business School raised concerns over the government’s focus on pipes rather than people, calling on ministers to look at how small levies on telecoms and technology companies could raise large sums to support the quality content on which they depend.

In particular he highlighted the failure of the Digital Britain report to properly investigate the use of alternative funding models for public service broadcasting outside of the BBC.

He said: “As things stand, neither main political party appears even to have considered industry levies as a way of ensuring the survival of PSB, although – as I’ll show shortly – once one starts looking at the numbers, it’s clear that such a levy ought to be a large part of the answer.

“The closest either main party has come so far is the Digital Britain proposal of a 50p/month levy on fixed phone lines. But the aim is to earmark that to cover part of the cost of universal, or near-universal, superfast broadband. The benefits of superfast broadband are, in my view, highly questionable.”

Mind the funding gap

By Edel Brosnan

No man is an island, and no trade union acts entirely on its own. The Federation of Entertainment Unions is the umbrella group for trades unions in the creative industries, and represents the Writers' Guild of Great Britain, the Musicians' Union, BECTU, the NUJ and the PFA.

For an incisive summary of the future of public-service broadcasting - the problems and some well thought-out solutions, check out this recent report from the IPPR and the Federation of Entertainment Unions.

Polly Toynbee on Digital Britain

By Edel Brosnan

Polly Toynbee had a very good piece in Saturday's Guardian on Digital Britain and the thorny subject of top-slicing the BBC's licence fee. That is: allocating a slice of the licence fee to organisations outside the BBC, to pay for services that are being squeezed out of the media marketplace, like regional news. Up to now, I have been pretty agnostic about the idea of top-slicing - I think it's vital that we protect and promote high-quality public service programming and I also think that Channel 4 is a vital part of the public-service ecosystem.

But in reality, once you look at the figures, it's clear that, in a recession, top-slicing would be a disaster for quality broadcasting and for the BBC. The good news in Digital Britain is that Channel 4's future is a lot more secure than it was even twelve months ago - and there are some interesting ideas about how the Channel 4 funding gap can be filled. But top-slicing is not the solution - other ideas, such as levies, would add new money to the pot, without undermining the BBC.

Ask not what Digital Britain can do for you...

Edel Brosnan presents the first in a series of posts about the Digitial Britain report:

... the big question is what you - and the Guild - should do next, now that Lord Carter's wide-ranging review has been published.

The government hopes that the Digital Britain report will future-proof Britain's creative industries by improving the infrastructure for digital communications and protecting and promoting talent and innovation in the creative industries. So far, so uncontroversial - but while the report is bursting with ideas about improving broadband speeds across the UK, the digital content that people will actually be reading or watching or playing or listening to barely gets a mention. Yet we all know that in any technology, content is king. Ask anyone who works in computers: they'll tell you that software sells hardware, not vice versa. Mobile phones struggled to break out of the early-adopter market till teenagers discovered the joy of texting. There's nothing wrong with the idea of high-speed broadband for all. But a souped-up and speedy 21st-century cart will have trouble going anywhere, if the cart-builders forget that a cart needs a horse.

Today, all content is digital: from guerilla blogs to - well - government reports. You can watch Casualty or The Culture Show on the iPlayer, or listen to shock jocks and Women's Hour on a podcast. You can read Ulysses in ebook form, or download the latest Johnny Depp or Jean-Luc Godard film from a download-to-rent or download-to-own service. (For obvious reasons, the Guild has a zero tolerance policy towards illegal peer-to-peer downloads). Even theatre performances can be streamed live or recorded for YouTube. So if you care about good writing in any medium - as a writer, producer, director, actor or punter - then the Digital Britain report affects you.

More to the point - you can have a real effect on what happens next. Lord Carter's team at the department of Business, Innovation and Skills are looking for reactions and comments on Digital Britain. The deadline for responding to the report is September. Don't be shy: let them know what you think.

Read the full text of the Digital Britain report here (there's an executive summary too): http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/broadcasting/6216.aspx

Doctor Who novelisations

An enjoyable programme on Radio 4 this morning - On the Outside it Looked Like an Old Fashioned Police Box - in which Mark Gatiss, Doctor Who writer and fan, explores the Doctor Who novelisations of the 1970s and 80s published by Target books.

In an age before DVD and video, the Target book series of Doctor Who fiction was conceived as the chance for children to 'keep' and revisit classic Doctor Who. They were marketed as such, written in a highly visual house style. Descriptive passages did the work of the TV camera and the scripts were more or less faithfully reproduced as dialogue.

The books were as close to the experience of watching as possible, and were adored by a generation of children who grew up transfixed by the classic BBC series. Target Doctor Who books became a children's publishing phenomenon - they sold over 13 million copies worldwide. From 1973 until 1994, the Target Doctor Who paperbacks were a mainstay of the publishing world.

You can listen again online for the next seven days.

The cost of TV drama

With ITV announcing the dropping of Primeval and Demons last week, in The Guardian, Stephen Armstrong looks at the cost pressures facing the TV networks.

Despite ITV performing well in drama this year - it has broadcast the five highest-rating new dramas, Whitechapel, Above Suspicion, Unforgiven, Law & Order: UK and, ironically, Demons - rating success is clearly no longer a measure of survival at the broadcaster. But if ITV is getting rid of relative successes, what will it have left?

Armstrong says that ITV's top rate for primetime drama is now £700k an hour, while the BBC will spend around £400k per hour for BBC3 and BBC4 and £900,000 for BBC1. In America, by contrast, networks will spend up to $5m per hour (about £3.6m at current exchange rates)

"You need to develop the show with budget restrictions in mind from the very beginning - smaller cast, fewer locations - you have to think like a sitcom," says Robert Cooper, the co-founder of Great Meadows, the indie behind Margaret Thatcher - The Long Walk To Finchley. "Then you spread the cost with co-producers - which can be a problem as the British audience can smell a Europudding at 100 paces.

"So far we are on the edge of it having a cultural effect," Cooper believes. "If it does start limiting the subject matter and ambition of TV drama makers then I think we are in trouble. We're looking at a book adaptation, for instance, and that has certain creative demands you simply can't avoid. It may be that TV versions of books are no longer possible."

CBBC Q&A

On the BBC Writersroom site, a question and answer with children's writer Elly Brewer, Steven Andrew (Head Of CBBC Drama and Acquisitions), and Paul Ashton (development manager for the BBC writersroom).

Steven Andrew: The best ideas for me always come from writers who have a really clear sense of wanting to explore something, a particular genre, character, or something about that. And that's what you hang onto. They really know what it is they're trying to do and then you've got a handle on that.

Reminder: the deadline for the CBBC writing competition (New Stories for the Next Generation) is 1st July.

Rupert Creed on Every Time It Rains

In The Guardian, Paul Allen talks to Rupert Creed (playwright and current Guild Treasurer) about his new play, Every Time It Rains, which examines the experiences of those caught up in the Hull floods of 2007.

While the playwright is anxious about doing justice to the experiences of the victims, the theatre's management is concerned about the play's legal content.

Among more than 150 people who responded to Creed's appeal for stories are Michael Barnett, whose son died after being trapped in a 6ft culvert as flood water poured through, and policeman Richard Clark, who was the first person from the emergency services to get to him on 25 June 2007. A former water engineer who wants to preserve his anonymity has also offered his expertise to uncover what exactly happened to the city's drains that day. "Were they simply overwhelmed by the sheer volume of rain," asks Creed, "or were there shortcomings with the infrastructure?"

Bill Gallagher on The Prisoner

On the Writers' Guild website, an interview with screenwriter Bill Gallagher about his new version of The Prisoner (originally created by created by Patrick McGoohan and George Markstein).

Here's the first trailer for The Prisoner. It will be broadcast in America in November but no UK release date has yet been announced by ITV.



Bill also talks about showrunning Lark Rise To Candleford and the rest of his writing career.

Although I learnt the craft of TV writing on fairly conventional series like Casualty and Soldier, Solider my own series have always had a certain strangeness about them. Wokenwell used rather unconventional storytelling and Conviction was about a man coming to terms with his own reality melting down. I like to write things that are mainstream but also a little bit odd. Even Lark Rise To Candleford, which might look very conventional, has quite a few rather unusual storylines.

Photo: John Rogers/BBC

Beyond 'narrative exhaustion'

In The Guardian, screenwriter Paul Schrader looks at how writers can adapt to a world in which people are subject to an ever increasing number of fictional and reality TV narratives.

Writers have always known there are a limited number of storylines. Christopher Booker's Seven Basic Plots popularised the number seven, but others have argued for three, 20 and 36 basic plots - Rudyard Kipling said 69. That's not new. We do tell variations of the same stories over and over. That's not what I mean by the "exhaustion of narrative". What is new is the omnipresence and ubiquity of plot created by media proliferation. We are inundated by narrative. We are swimming in storylines.

Lucy Lumsden is Sky's new Head of Comedy

Lucy Lumsden, currently Head of Comedy Commissioning at the BBC, has been appointed Head of Comedy across the Sky TV channels. Stuart Murphy, Sky's director of programming, said:

Comedy takes time to get right, and it's an art not a science, but with Lucy at the helm it feels like we are giving ourselves the best chance of generating hits which our subscribers will love. I loved working with her before, and can't wait to start working with her again."

Sky certainly seems to be taking original programming more seriously since Murphy's appointment and getting lots of positive media coverage - for example, for the current adaptation (by Neil Biswas) of Martina Cole's novel The Take. Lumsden's appointment is being seen as a real sign of intent in a bid to become a serious force in original comedy.

What Guild members are getting up to

RYAN CRAIG wrote the episode of Robin Hood going out on BBC1 on Saturday 20 June at 6.45 pm.

SIMON CROWTHER wrote the episodes of Coronation Street going out on ITV1 on Friday 26 June at 7.30 and 8.30 pm.

ALISON FISHER wrote the episode of Eastenders going out on BBC1 on Friday 26 June at 6.00 pm.

ADRIAN FLYNN wrote next weeks episodes The Archers on BBC Radio 4. Family loyalties are tested at the Stables.

CHRISSIE GITTINS will be reading from her book of poetry, 'I'll Dress One Night As You' at the Yumchaa Cafe, 45 Berwick Street, Soho, London W1 for the Ride the Word series; with Vincent de Souza, Sue Hubbard, Richard Bardsley and Jay Merrill. Free event, nearest tubes Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road.
Wednesday 24th June from 7.00 - 9.00 pm. All welcome.

DAVID LANE wrote the episode of Coronation Street going out on ITV1 on Monday 22 June at 7.30 pm

JANE MARLOW wrote the episode of Hollyoaks going out on C4 on Thursday 25 June at 6.30 pm.

ANDREW McCULLOCH co-wrote the episode of The Royal going out on ITV1 on Sunday 21 June at 7.00 pm.

JONATHON MYERSON’s play Qualms airs on BBC Radio 4 at 2.25pm on Thursday 25 June. When a teenager is diagnosed with a terminal condition and his operation is refused financing, he and his parents know exactly what his life is worth.

PHILP PALMER’s drama The Art of Deception begins as part 1 of 5 airs on Monday 22 June at 7.45 pm on BBC Radio 4. Notorious art forger Daniel Ballantyne has agreed to collaborate with a journalist on a book about his life and crimes. So begins a game of cat-and-mouse that will have deadly consequences.

MARC PYE's drama Bully, part of the Moving On series originally shown on daytime TV, and Executive Produced by JIMMY MCGOVERN, gets an evening screening on BBC 1 on Monday 22nd June from 10.35 - 11.20pm.

GILLIAN RICHMOND wrote the episode of EastEnders going out on BBC1 on Monday 22 June at 8.00 pm.

BILL TAYLOR wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 on Friday 26 June at 7.00 pm.

NICK WARBURTON’s four-part radio play, On Marble Fen continues on Friday 26 June at 2.15 pm on BBC Radio 4. In Episode 4, Silver Ribbon, Warwick challenges Jack to a race, and the winner is the first man to reach the cathedral.

GRAHAM WOOLNOUGH's creation, Tea With The Old Queen - The Secret Diaries of Backstairs Billy will be performed at The Barn, West Farm, Southerndown CF32 OPY on Friday 26th June at 7.30pm. Narrated by Hugh Futcher, Produced by Jill James. Free Admission but please RSVP 01656 881 068 to book your seats.

KARIN YOUNG wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 on Tuesday 23 June at 7.00 pm.

Can screenwriting be taught?

A guest post by William M. Akers, author of Your Screenplay Sucks! 100 Ways To Make It Great

Can screenwriting be taught?

Aw, hell yeah! It better be; I’ve been teaching it at Vanderbilt for 15 years. If I say it can’t be taught, they’re gonna stop paying me.

However, I actually do believe it can be taught. You can’t teach someone to be talented, of course, but you can show them a lot about screenwriting. If they listen. If they do what you say. Amazingly enough, a lot of baby writers already think they know all there is to know, and consequently learn very little. Listening, I daresay, can’t be taught.

“There is no one more arrogant than a beginner” - Elizabeth Ashley

Anyway.

What can be taught in screenwriting?

Format can be taught. How to separate character’s voices. Words to avoid that will shout “I’m a bad writer!”. How to construct a character. Stupid mistakes that will sink your script for the reader. How to use outlines. Structure, to a degree. Why cutting dialogue is a good thing. Not to give up. Tricks to get you to generate ideas. How to avoid / deal with writer’s block. How the business works (not that that’s writing, but it is fully half of the success equation.) Methods in rewriting: ways to approach a script, a scene, and a piece of dialogue. Being professional.

A lot can be taught. What can NOT be taught in screenwriting?

How to think up a great idea! An ear for dialogue! How to construct a character an actor will be dying to play! How to have a voice! The correct structure for your story! What genre you’re good at! How to be lucky!!

The difference between what can be learned and innate talent is the tough thing. You can do a lot in a classroom, but the alchemy is up to talent, luck, and sweat.

After I’m done pounding them for a while, my students’s scripts look like scripts, sound like scripts and are not embarrassing. Some are good. A few, over the years, have been great. When they come to me, they know nothing about writing screenplays. I can’t teach someone how to write, but I can teach how to write a screenplay that will pass muster.

A good teacher can get a student to the starting line. That is a lot, by the way. Getting someone to the door, and opening it for them, is a good beginning. What they do in the race is up to their talent and perseverance.

I share these six items from a talk I give called 'Fatal Errors Beginning Writers Make.' Will Aldis is a staggeringly talented writer and I love his list:

Number One: trying to write what you think the biz wants you to write.

Number Two: writing for the cash only.

Number Three: writing to get laid.

Number Four: writing a screenplay because you think it sounds like a cool, hip thing to do. It isn’t.

Number Five: writing about something, anything, other than yourself.

Number Six: taking a screenwriting class from someone who doesn’t fully grasp the horror.

Will Aldis, screenwriter, (Stealing Cars, Keep Coming Back)

Keep Number Six firmly in mind when selecting a teacher, because the very last thing you want is a teacher who gives you any hint that this foolishness is easy.

It isn’t.

William M. Akers blogs at yourscreenplaysucks.wordpress.com

He'll be running a workshop on 'Fatal Errors New (and experienced!) Writers Make!' at the Met Film School in London on Thursday 2nd July 2009

East Midlands Branch event

To all members of the Writers’ Guild based in the East Midlands

‘Guy Hibbert in conversation with David Edgar’

Nottingham – 6.45pm Friday 3rd July 2009

The Writers’ Guild cordially invites you to a special event at the Broadway Media Centre, 14-18 Broad Street, Nottingham, NG13AL on Friday July 3rd between 6.45pm and 8pm.

From 29th June 29th until 5th July Broadway Nottingham is playing host to ScreenLit – an exciting new festival celebrating film, television and writing (see www.broadway.org.uk/festival for more information). The Guild is delighted to support the festival, stay in touch with existing members and also encourage the recruitment of new members.

The event will start with a conversation between playwright David Edgar (President of the Guild) and the award-winning screenwriter Guy Hibbert (Five Minutes of Heaven, Omagh), about writing for the screen. This will be followed by a questions and answers session and a reception that should offer a great opportunity to network with fellow writers from the East Midlands region over a glass of wine.

Our event is FREE but will be followed at 8pm by a ticketed event – a screening of Guy’s new film ‘Five Minutes of Heaven’, winner of the world screenwriting award at the recent Sundance Film Festival. Those interested in purchasing tickets for the 8pm screening of ‘Five Minutes of Heaven’ (£6.20) and/or for the 3pm Paul Schrader Masterclass (£20) can contact Broadway by telephone (01159526611) or book on-line at www.broadway.org/festival

If you are intending to come to the event, please RSVP to Erik Pohl in the Guild office at erik@writersguild.org.uk . Numbers are limited so we will deal with requests on a first come first served basis.

We look forward to seeing you,

Phil Nodding

Guild Executive Council representative for the East Midlands Region

West Midlands Branch meeting

Monday 6th July 2009, 7.45pm, Belgrade Theatre in Coventry

Come and meet Hamish Glenn, Artistic Director of the Coventry Belgrade Theatre who will talk about the theatre since its recent re-opening and plans for the future.

This is also a networking and forward planning event. Discussions will include:

• Feedback from the Writers' Guild West Midlands questionnaire and issues arising - read a short report on the findings here (pdf)
• Ideas for future events and activities.
• The current structure of the West Midlands Branch and opportunities for involvement.
  

This event is free for Guild members. Not a member? Join now!

Please let us know you are coming by emailing Jenny Stephens at: WMidWritersGuild@aol.com

TENacity training in the Midlands

Script, the regional development agency for dramatic writers in the West Midlands, is running a programme of workshops for writers across the West Midlands over the summer.

Delivered across the Midlands region, TENacity will draw on the experience of professional playwrights, screenwriters, producers and theatre practitioners, to offer a unique focus on the creative process. Where possible tying into local productions of new work, Script will give writers the chance to learn new skills and ways of working in a practical, dynamic environment.

Full details are available on the Script website.

Graham Greene: screenwriter

Not exactly news, but an interesting article by Terrence Rafferty in The New York Times looking at Graham Greene's approach to adapting his own novels for the screen.

It’s worth noting that Greene’s participation in the making of the film [Brighton Rock] carries at least a faint whiff of corruption too. Seven years earlier, near the end of a stint as the film critic of The Spectator, he had cheekily reviewed a movie called “21 Days,” on which he was himself one of the credited writers. He panned it, concluding with these ringing words: “Let one guilty man, at any rate, stand in the dock, swearing never, never to do it again.”

So in helping bring “Brighton Rock” — one of his favorites among his books — to the screen he was breaking an oath. And he compounded the sin by softening the story’s memorably cruel ending. He appears to have had no compunction about either his perjury or the necessity of doing a little violence to his own novel. Greene compromised gladly and seemed in later years almost to relish the cynical professionalism with which he had done the dirty work of turning literature into film.

Science fiction and fantasy books yet to be screened

On The Guardian TV and Radio blog, Jonathan Wright considers some science fiction and fantasy classics that have yet to adapted for the screen.

Foundation (Isaac Asimov, 1951)

What? A space opera, influenced by Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and built around the concept of psychohistory, the idea that the broad swathes of what's to come can be predicted.

Why? If only because Asimov's idea that humankind's actions en masse are susceptible to socio-mathematical study seems increasingly prescient, although admittedly this in itself may be a point that lacks dramatic impact.

Why not? Because Roland Emmerich, the creative powerhouse behind the idiotic 10,000 BC, Godzilla and Independence Day is already in the frame to direct. Nooooo!

Starring: On the basis of Emmerich's risible American Revolution epic, The Patriot, anyone but Mel Gibson.

William Jones (1953–2009)

On the Guild website, a tribute by Rob Gittins to Welsh scriptwriter William Jones who died earlier this year.

I first met Wil 31 years ago. Over those years we were to spend thousands and thousands of hours together, in offices, in cars, on trains, on ferries, on planes. We probably spent more time together – family excepted – than with anyone else. And what we did for those thousands and thousands of hours was to talk, almost exclusively, about people who didn’t exist. We talked about lives that weren’t really being lived. We made up stories.

Vamps, Vixens and Feminists

By Tracy Brabin

A big thank you to the Sphinx Theatre Company who put in place a fantastic conference yesterday at The National Theatre - ‘Vamps, Vixens and Feminists’, to discuss the Gender Equality Duty that came into force April 07.

A feisty full house of women and men discussed the issues around the biggest change in sex equality legislation since the Equal Pay Act.

The Equality Duty has two main responsibilities:

• to promote equality of opportunity between men and women
• to eliminate unlawful sex discrimination and harassment, including against transsexual people.

Giving due regard to proactive promotion of gender equality within their organisations, public bodies now have a legal obligation to promote equality between men and woman. Something we know – as writers, actors, directors, cinematographers and choreographers etc just doesn’t seem to be happening on the ground.

And there we some galling statistics. Sphinx crunched the numbers and discovered that...

Out of 140 theatre productions, 98 were written by men, 13 by women and the rest mixed collaborations. Of these 140 productions, 97 were directed by men. Out of 1100 roles for actors over the same period, 677 were for men and 423 were for women. And out of the films produced in one year – 250 - 12% were by women writers with only 9% directing them.

However, the most shocking statistic came from Dr Katherine Rake, the Director of the Fawcett Society. She explained that the pay gap between men and women is still so great that compared to men’s salaries, on average, women are, over a year actually working for free from October 31st . If you’re a part-time worker, it’s even worse and you can expect to work ‘for free’ from the end of June.

The Writers' Guild TV Committee added their numbers. Looking at one month’s Radio Times, they discovered out of 179 programmes listed, 129 were written by men and 50 by women - 28% female and 72% male. In radio it was even worse with 37 male writers and 12 female writers – 24% women, 72% men.

To examine how we change this status quo, Baroness Prosser of Battersea OBE (Deputy chair of the Equality and Human Rights Committee) introduced the event with Oona King (ex MP and Head of Diversity for Channel 4) chairing.

There we several exciting sessions, broken down into disciplines.

Director Lucy Pitman-Wallace (Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in 2003) was in a director’s discussion with Giles Croft, (Artistic Director of Nottingham Theatre) and Janet Suzman (award winning actor and director).

Dr Katherine Rake talked to Beatrix Campbell (the acclaimed journalist and playwright), Kate Kinninmont (Chief Executive of Women in Film and Television) and Jean Rogers (Equity’s Vice President).

Dr Viv Rogers (Professor in Theatre Studies at University of Manchester) also talked to Bea Campbell about female stereotyping and much lauded actor Kate Buffery discussed the lack of complex roles for women.

Commissioning drama from women writers, ensuring complex, exciting and challenging parts for women was discussed by BBC Executive Producer Hilary Salmon and Head of Drama at ITV Laura Mackie.

Myself, Tanika Gupta (White Boy, Sugar Mummies) and Colin Teevan ( How Many Miles to Basra, The Seven Pomegranate Seeds) talked to David Edgar about the difficulties that writing for women can entail.

The whole event was at turns depressing, uplifting, empowering and hilarious and I really hope something positive will come from the fabulous energy created by so many intelligent and sparky women and men who know the only way to change anything is to shout out and be heard.

And looking around the packed theatre, thinking of all the experience and talent in the room, I wondered why we didn’t just all collaborate to make shows we want to watch with people we want to work with. As the old saying goes…if the lobster was smarter, she’d know that if she collaborated with the other lobsters in the pot, they might all stand a chance of getting out alive.

Norman Lear on the state of sitcom

For the Writers Guild of America West, Denis Faye talks to Norman Lear, creator of influential American sitcom All In The Family (based on Johnny Speight's Till Death Us Do Part).

Did you ever reach a point with your shows that the networks said, “He’s Norman Lear, just let him do whatever he wants?”

It was much more “Nobody fucks with success.” That’s an old American adage.

Big grant for Perfect Pitch Musicals

From Arts Council England (ACE):

Arts Council is pleased to announce that it is investing in the infrastructure and grassroots of musical theatre, most recently with an award of £188,860 to producers Perfect Pitch Musicals...

Perfect Pitch Musicals is an organisation committed to developing contemporary British musicals by working with writers to develop and showcase their work. Initially the organisation started as a one-off showcase event organised by Andy Barnes, then he received a small Arts Council grant which helped take the project further. This has now developed to an organisation managing a professional network that works with and develops writers and their work, as well as providing performance showcases.

There's some discussion about the grant on The Guardian Theatre Blog, with one comment querying the wisdom of putting so much of the ACE funding for new musicals in the hands of one producer.