GET UP, STAND UP

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had a problem with erectile dysfunction. But among my other urgent emails today comes a link from Andy, asking me if there’s a blog to be written about a Guardian article on the problem of creeping political correctness and the cult of ‘story’ in TV drama specifically and in scriptwriting generally.

Happy to oblige, Andy.

And here was me thinking that terrorists attacking Glasgow Airport (which is closer to Paisley than Glasgow) was the story du jour, what with John Smeaton enjoying his fifteen minutes by mouthing off about how the ragheads picked the wrong city and how he gladly battered their melt in. Or how, according to a reliable source, a construction worker who intervened was later treated for a strained tendon after kicking one of the terrorists in the nuts. Yeah, that’ll learn the buggers. They’d have had more luck in Edinburgh.

Anyway, I digress. Here’s the link -

film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2110659,00.html

Mark Ravenhill’s piece bemoans the existence of Robert McKee, well-known screenwriting guru and mugger of writers, whose seminal book ‘Story’ he claims is having an adverse affect on the business of scriptwriting. His beef is that McKee’s tome, in the hands of junior development executives, is a blunt instrument with which to give writers what is colourfully known in these parts as a dull yin.

As Ravenhill reminds us, it’s hard to write a script. Most of the people who sit in judgement of scriptwriters are aspiring scriptwriters themselves. Or, more often the case, they’re failed scriptwriters, just like the people who run all these screenwriting seminars or teach on film and media courses or collect their paycheques from public sector script development departments. Seems to me they’re only doing it because they found to their cost (or rather, overdraft) that they don’t have the chops to make a living out of any actual scriptwriting, so they’re forced to pronounce on other people’s work, usually with dire consequences for the script itself.

And there you have it – an entire sector of UK entertainment predicated on failure and open season on those who write by those who don’t. It’s writing by committee. It’s writing by proxy. It’s not so much crafting scripts but taking a sledgehammer to them because they don’t hit their mid act plot points or – ooh missus - the climax comes prematurely. And it’s why we’ve got so much guff clogging up our screens. That’s not to say there’s nothing to be learned from McKee or any of the other (mainly US) scriptmeisters out there touting their theories – some of it is worthwhile, I’m sure. Hell, I’ve been known to read them myself, and even I know a lot of it's pure page-padding waffle.

And while some of the rules of storytelling are universal, some, especially in the context of UK drama, are a joke. Ask yourself - why does America have The West Wing while we have The Thick of It, sadly quarantined on BBC4? No amount of story rejigging could ever make these shows mutually interchangeable. Maybe we need to recognise we have a distinct take on character and all the cultural signifiers and baggage that make us what we are and the Americans what they are. We talk a different language that sometimes doesn’t translate into box-ticking plotting.

And while I’m at it, just how politically correct is the cliché of Glesga baws-oot hardman? You only have to look at the archetypes of your standard British drama to know that the men are either a) limp-dicked and awfully insecure (eg. Richard Curtis) or b) too violently macho for their own good (eg. Paul Abbott) – where in both cases the pill's sugar-coated with so-called humour to mask the bitter lack of truth or substance. Hence the tripe the Sun’s been peddling all week about John Smeaton and his chums taking on Al-Queda in Glasgow with a swift boot to their collective Masonic Halls.

Nae Viagra needed here, pal.