I Love It

Breaking Bad

Star Trek

Succession

Game of Thrones

House of Cards

Pulp Fiction

Inglorious Basterds

Reservoir Dogs

Interstellar

Tenet

Inception

Grey’s Anatomy

The Truman Show

Goodfellas

O Brother Where Art Thou

Schitt’s Creek

Homeland

Gentleman Jack

The Godfather

Apocalypse Now

Powell & Pressburger

Don’t get it right, get it written.

“The first rule of writing is park bottom on chair.” — P.G. Woodehouse.

Saturday. 5:36. Winning lottery numbers are about to be announced. I pull out the ticket I bought half-heartedly. Some minor celebrity reads out the numbers, first a six, then two little ducks, twenty-two, two fat ladies, eighty-eight — is this a lottery or a local bingo? — a lot of double digits, and this must be a joke, because there’s no way but, it seems like… you look around the room, surely this is a joke, a chronically unfunny prank, but it does seem, very much, like you have all the numbers required to win the six million pounds on offer. But that can’t be, it surely isn’t possible, six million? Your crushing debt trying to support your mother’s medical bills would be half that, someone must know that, this must be a joke, there’s no way. But again, this C-lister who you vaguely recognise as some minor side-character on something I’m sure is from HBO — The Walking Dead? Game of Thrones? Maybe both? — but fuck that, who cares, this man is telling me I have just won six million pounds, I can bring my mum home, fuck that, I can bring her to a small mansion, pay off my student loans, finally open that bakery she’s always wanted, give my fiancee the wedding of her dreams, finally get my dad that 911 he’s been pining for since he was a teenager, I can afford to pay for my children’s degrees, and, fuck, there’s no way this is real. My girlfriend — fiancee, I have to start actually saying that! — is sat next to me, knees to her chest, smiling vaguely at a book sat in her lap, and as I’m telling her all this she has no response, doesn’t even look up. And so, of course, it transpires that I actually said none of this out loud and was in fact staring at her, gapingly open-mouthed like a hungry fish. I try to speak but nothing comes out. I blaspheme and she finally stirs, asking ‘what?’ as it must sound like I’ve just stubbed my toe, but no, this is real, our lives are about to change for ever. I mustn’t spend it all at once, I tell myself. Keep my menial job, put it into savings, use it to pay off a mortgage and my mother’s medical bills and save the rest.

Short Film

My heart is pounding in my chest and my ears, and even though I’ve done this for years, and been rehearsing for months, I can never quite get over the last-minute stage fright. No amount of preparation truly prepares me for th  “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girl, please turn off your mobile phones relax, and get ready for tonights performance of…” whatever it might be today. My heart rate increases as my mouth dries up, and I can taste the roof of my mouth, which I’d never before noticed had a flavour. The smell of sweat and curtains and stage flooring is an eternal comfort; something not quite explainable. I breathe once, twice, thrice, then step out of the wings, and the play begins. The first few lines of dialogue are always the most difficult to get out, trying to hide my breathlessness while I acclimatise to being in front of the audience. My nerves are on fire, and I almost shiver. At the interval, I exhale deeply, not realising I’d been holding my breath for almost an hour. I drink hungrily from a bottle, relishing the flavour as if straight from a Nordic fjord. Everyone congratulates everyone else on how well everyone has done and, to be fair, this is going better than expected. Then the two-minute call comes for the start of the second half.

“The main difference between the two dramatic structures is that the Three Act is more balanced and simple then the Five Act Structure, making it more ideal for film, television, and short novels.”