PAR FOR THE COURSE

As the nights draw in, thousands of people are looking for ways to keep out of trouble. Or the pub. Or maybe attract a partner. Some might even want get away from the partner they've already got, but that's their business. The rest of us just want to learn something useful like Conversational Polish, Advanced Bellydancing or Emergency First Aid.

Welcome to the wacky world of evening classes.

And when it comes to film-related courses, would-be students are in danger of option paralysis. Me, I gave up counting the number of screenwriting courses on offer - which made me think - if there's that many scriptwriters out there, then how come nobody's making any movies?

One possible reason is that people sign up for this stuff to get out the house, the one place they ought to be if they're so keen on screenwriting. But no, they actually enjoy spending winter nights in unheated, dismal rooms in some underfunded college in say, Coatbridge.

Then again it might be a social thing, a bit of lively chat that begins with genre and plot analysis - but soon deteriorates into an argument about some piece of franchise, like say, Batman Begins, and soon escalates to a riot over whether Liam Neeson's 'tache deserved it's own winnebago.

Maybe night school appeals to a masochistic streak in us, when a student's own efforts come up for a kicking by some smartarse whose greatest hit is a shared writing credit on a 1998 Tartan Short. But who still hasn't written their first feature.

My own pet theory goes like this: as with booze, class As, and 12-step meetings, some folk are simply addicted. In the end it doesn't matter if it's Screenwriting or Quiltmaking (probably more useful) because as pastimes go, it's cheaper than most habits and if you're lucky you might even manage to score some extracurricular nooky.

At least then you'd have something to write about.