Work it like Wimbledon

script smarter

The Wimbledon men’s final always makes me cry. I’m sure I’m not the only one.  I am always inspired by the velocity of these athletes, their strength and application and by their powerful will to win. A career in film is a bit like being a tennis pro – years of hitting a ball against a wall for maybe one or two shots at success. So it pays to work like a Wimbledon Champion:

O– LOVE the work you do. Honour each day of training – practice your art whenever you can and relish the chance to write/direct/act on a regular basis. Honing your skills is never wasted and builds consistency – it keeps you match fit.

15 – FIFTEEN reasons to give up are always knocking on your door. So choose to forget you lost the last game and play each moment fresh as it unfolds. My mum used to say ‘Quitters…

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Locke and Calvary – The rise of the literate screenplay

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When is a film not a film?  When it’s a play on words.  I’ve just seen a beautifully written film – and yet it could have been a play – as it revels in language in a way we usually identify with radio or theatre.  Locke is an intense, poetic and visual movie that relies on words for its main impact.

In Locke, written and directed by Steven Knight , our anti-hero (played by Tom Hardy) is trapped behind the wheel of a car for 90 minutes.  The drama occurs not through action but through a series of dialogues – not even face to face but on the phone. The only physical action he takes is driving.

Tom Hardy is the draw here but it was not his face – expressive though that is – that stayed with me. It was his voice, his thoughts that moved me – that and the gap between what he…

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How the Moon Landing was Covered by the Irish Newspapers

Illusory Promise

Today marks the 45^th anniversary of the historic lunar landing by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (ably supported in orbit by pilot Michael Collins), an achievement as momentous as it is distant from the more modest space ambitions of today. The event is being commemorated around the world as part of the #Apollo45 campaign, and I thought it might be interesting to add an Irish perspective by taking a quick look back at how contemporary newspapers here reported on the mission and the crew of Apollo 11.

I was pleased to find that, in the main, they did so with interest and enthusiasm (almost always being careful to preserve the image of Ireland’s neutrality by soliciting comments from Soviet representatives) and all three of the country’s main papers at the time, the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, and the now defunct Irish Press devoted the entirety of their front pages to…

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Star Trek Insurrection: How Michael Piller Wrote it

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Michael Piller, on the set of Star Trek

Today I read a book which was never officially published: Michael Piller’s Fade In: From Idea to Final Draft, the story of how he wrote the underrated yet still disappointing film Star Trek: Insurrection. Though freely available online, at its time of writing (1999) Fade In was apparently ‘suppressed by Paramount’ (TrekCore’s words) and was only released on the Internet because it never found a publisher even after the studio lost interest in it. For his part, Piller considered the book ‘his last great gift to the fans and to aspiring writers everywhere’.

Piller, who died in 2005, wrote some of the best episodes of modern Star Trek  (‘Booby Trap’, ‘The Best of Both Worlds’, ‘Emissary’) as well as un-credited rewrites – in his role as Executive Producer – on scores more. Fade In so is much…

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Initial Thoughts on Sherlock: Series Three

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Sherlock Series Three Publicity photo from the BBC

While I’m going to need to watch all three episodes again, I feel that, on first viewing at least, this has been the best series of Sherlock thus far. It’s been so consistent with its approach and so playful as regards the material and the audience. A real joy to watch!

Yes these episodes have been a bit unconventional in how they fragment their narratives (and I know that this has turned the occasional viewer off), but it’s a deliberate choice on the part of the writers and one which, I think, allows us to read Series Three as a kind of meta-commentary on the way Holmes is constantly re-imagined by popular culture; not just the case of Sherlock by itself, but the use of Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation more generally and, in particular, the changing manner in which we as readers…

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A History of the John McGahern Banning Controversy

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Irish Studies Review

I meant to plug this sooner, but ‘If it was Just Th’oul Book …’: A History of the McGahern Banning Controversy – my article on the banning of John McGahern in 1965 – was published a little while ago in the Irish Studies Review. It’s the first time this crucial event in McGahern’s life has been looked at it any depth, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that, for anyone writing on the author’s life or his importance to Irish culture, this is going to be essential reading. But then, I would say that, wouldn’t I?

The article examines the banning of John McGahern’s novel The Dark in Ireland in 1965, along with the subsequent controversy surrounding its author’s dismissal from his teaching position in Dublin. This so-called McGahern Affair provoked wide-ranging and vigorous debate about both the censorship legislation and…

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Like a Hand on the Shoulder…

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Always a pleasure to engage with the work of the late John McGahern. Here’s a recent piece I wrote for the Irish Examiner on the newest edition of his Collected Stories…

John McGahern – Collected Stories

Collected Stories
John McGahern
Faber; £10.99
Review: Val Nolan

Even in death, John McGahern remains Ireland’s greatest living writer. A strange thing to say, perhaps, but then, as an author known for decade-long silences, it does not feel as if he has truly left us. We might have expected a new novel from him by now if he were still alive but, in place of that, comes this reminder that he is in fact gone. It provokes sadness, yes, but also gratitude for the powerful work which he gifted us in the time available to him.

Famously, McGahern believed that Ireland was less a coherent state than a mosaic of ‘little republics called families’. Something…

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Writing Through Grief

statement from podcaster Gregg Taylor

Well, I’ve been sitting on this decision for quite some time, but here goes. When we start our 10th season of Decoder Ring Theatre in September, our schedule will change to 12 releases per year, each on the first of the month, every month, year-round. The releases will alternate between our two cornerstone series, with a Black Jack Justice on September 1st, a Red Panda Adventure on October 1st and so on.

Now that’s still quite a lot of episodes. But it is less than we have been doing, and it makes me a little sad, and also sorry that it may make some of you a little sad too. If you’re reading this, you’ve almost certainly been pretty invested in what we do over the years, and I feel like you deserve an explanation of how it went down.

Many of you are aware, but others are not, that through this entire adventure to date, I have always had a “full-time job”. Except that I had no idea what full-time meant until I added the second full-time job of radio dramatist…. guy. We’ll work on the job titles later. And of course back when we started I had zero children, and I’ve never taken any time away from the two we now have to do Daddy’s “secret-identity” jobs. So the Gregg you know lives in the hours where it is dark and sensible people are asleep, and that has always worked.

Except it really wasn’t working any more, and something was going to have to give. I began to toy with the idea of dropping the Showcase set for a season or two. They were originally envisioned as a bit of a time-saver… six less episodes to write… but they still took a lot of time. I decided I could live with that change. Except that eighteen episodes a year was a bizarre release schedule… and I began to think about how much better life would be if it were twelve.

This was a hard decision. I love writing the Red Panda stories, and telling six fewer each year was a hard choice. But in terms of the long-term sustainability of the entire project, it was the right choice. Not just from my own state of mind, but frankly the monthly donations are not entirely what they used to be. These are still the folks that keep us on the air, and we love and treasure every single one of ’em past and present, but there are only so many of them and it only goes so far. Fewer recording sessions was more fiscally sustainable. Could I have flogged the donor program more and shepherded it better? Yep. But I’m also not sure when I would have done that. Every moment is spoken for. Even now, writing this, I’ve had to make to conscious decision not to be writing a new episode right now. And no complaints, because I love it, and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Now some of you may say “Yes, but Gregg, if you weren’t also writing comics and novels and making video comic thingies and instead you just shut up and made us some radio shows, you could make twenty-four a year no problem”. Well… maybe. But I think ten years in it’s pretty clear exactly what will happen if I sit in my comfortable chair and do nothing but make radio shows… and we all deserve more. You, me, the characters we love… there are other opportunities and things that they can only reach by my stepping out of the comfort zone and trying the next thing, and the next. But I never want to give this part of it up, and I hope that we’ve arrived at a place where that’s going to be possible.

And looking back at the past twelve months and all that we’ve done together and all that you have to look forward to with the great season we have ahead of us, I’m finally truly glad that we’ve taken this route. There’s some excellent stuff ahead, and I can honestly say that we’ve been able to hit this milestone and keep the quality up where it should be, and continue to try new things and grow. (Also there are some long-time listeners who become characters as Kickstarter rewards soon, and I’m dyin’ to see how that goes over!)

I hope that somewhere down the road we’ll be able to expand our schedule again… heck there are shows I’ve always wanted to try, but Kit & Trixie won’t give up any more space and I’m too scared of both of them to ask. But in the meantime, I thank you for your kind attention, your unflagging friendship, and your continued support.

‘Nuff said

Gregg

 

Padraig McKenna – “Map of Ireland with English translations of County names” on a facebook page called “Rare Irish Stuff”