British Comedy Guide

Help, a desperate WHAM! fan Page 2

Quote: Essel @ March 28, 2008, 11:46 AM

The Dead Mother Show

:O You won't forget that name.

And hello!

Quote: Essel @ March 28, 2008, 11:46 AM

Hello,

Thank you for letting me join your very informative website and forum. I am a writer, yes i can say that now and the laughing in my head is getting a little weaker.

After private scribbling i joined a script workshop (a very, very, very good one in Dublin, if anyone happens to come to this neck of the woods) run by the big brained writing talent Stephen Walsh. The workshop produced some scripts and led to a development contract with our national broadcaster, RTE.

I am writing the pilot episode of The Dead Mother Show © with four other writers and we now need a script editor. At least first off we need some recommendations of television comedy script editors, well, recommendations and some diazapam or space hoppers or something, if i'm honest...

All the best

SL

Welcome.

What kind of material are you writing?

Hello, Good evening and welcome

Hello again,

It's a great name and I can say that because it was the idea of co-writer Kathleen King.

We are writing the pilot script for a 25 minute, one ad break comedy. Mother, a controlling machievellian twin-set and pearls warlord has finally died and leaves her vast to the point of bad manners wealth to her son, along with the news that she has also left the money to his brother he never knew he had because she gave him away to the tinkers for being naughty when he was 5 (think Rain Man meets Greek tragedy meets American day time soap story). She has also left a scroll of things they have to do for her before they can inherit.

The style is a bit...ehm...can't quite say yet...little bit grotesque, little bit cartoon, little bit the flow of drama. We are at the stage of writing where there are multiple drafts and scenes and character work going on and it's starting to get gathered back together and we need an objective eye.

Any recommendations?

SL

Quote: Mark @ March 28, 2008, 12:21 PM

Welcome

... from a closet Wham! fan (no one writes lyrics like them - "Gonna live my life, sharp as a knife. I've found my groove and I just can't lose.". Genuis is not too strong a word ;))

Oh and i am actually a closet Smash Hits! problem page sign-offs fan. Everything in the 80s had exclamation marks after it...life was just better.

SL

Sounds like a fun and sustainable premise. One question, you say that the Mother character has died, presumably at the beginning of episode one? Are you going to only refer to her domineering character by description or by flashback etc? I mean, in order to establish how she brought about your situation?

Quote: Tim Walker @ March 29, 2008, 5:46 PM

Sounds like a fun and sustainable premise. One question, you say that the Mother character has died, presumably at the beginning of episode one? Are you going to only refer to her domineering character by description or by flashback etc? I mean, in order to establish how she brought about your situation?

The legacy she has left them shows her character, and it's dropped in anecdotally also. There are versions where she appears as a ghost and a newly evolving version where she appears as the voice in one of the brother's heads -that was written last night and it is growing fantastic legs.

The interview on your site with the writers of the Green Wing has made us keep our heads through the multiple versions - we just keep writing the characters in different scenes (at one stage forcing the two guys to sit at the kitchen table and have breakfast just so we knew which one ate his cornflakes with his mouth open and which one secretly wanted to kill him for it.)

Basically - we are still pressing on the outsides of the glass box of each character till we know where their sides are and it is hard - especially when the premise and the plot can be obstacles to that. Carts and horses. ...

Off for another 4 hour session. I am painting my house at the same time and i plan on handing each writer a roller or brush in the hope that some honest toil helps produce the goods.

Essel

Share this page