by Lucy V Hay
• ‘Old’ history. In the case of historical figures who lived many generations ago, it would appear scribes get a free rein, as they do with adaptations out of copyright. Even if descendants of that person are still alive, if they have no way of countering your story (especially if that historical figure is part of myth or legend) then again you should be home free (though never take anything for granted; always make sure via extensive research).
• ‘Near’ history. If writing about people who are still alive, or who have died but have direct descendants still living (i.e. siblings, children, grandchildren), it is considered good etiquette to ask for permission to write the story and/or involve them in the development OR ask them to sign an option and/or legal waiver. Money may or may not change hands, dependent on the agreements made. Consulting a lawyer is a good idea in these cases: many solicitors hold free Q&A sessions ‘after hours’ – check the phone book and internet. But even if you have to pay for someone to draw up a letter or contract, a few hundred pounds is worth the investment, since otherwise you may waste many hundreds of hours on a story you end up being unable to use!
Obviously, in the case of both of the above, if a book about the person (fiction or non-fiction) exists, this trumps any agreement the screenwriter may be able to negotiate. That book’s sole use by the writer makes the project an adaptation (even if it’s a non-fiction book), on which an option MUST be paid (unless it’s out of copyright). When considering permissions, then, a writer must ask whether they’re worth pursuing, especially when there’s money involved:
• Investment and distribution. Investors are basically the money men (and women) who fund filmmakers’ endeavours. Sales agents and distributors are essentially the ones responsible for getting finished films into cinemas, on to DVD, streaming services and so on in all the various territories of the world. What investors and distributors want can vary and, for the last decade or so, drama has been a dirty word, with many preferring to pour their resources into projects with much higher potential returns, such as horror and comedy. This means those producers and companies with drama projects have had to find other avenues to get their films financed and made, often as ‘passion projects’ with no money upfront, even for themselves. Again, whilst it’s not outside the realm of possibility for writers to succeed in interesting producers in their ideas for spec drama projects, it is much more likely producers will want to go with their own ideas if they’re having to deal with the ensuing financial hardship. That’s just the reality!
• Hard to pitch! Remember that drama concepts are by their very nature hard to pitch, so scribes often hide behind clichéd descriptions like ‘Character X has to learn to live and love again’, but this rarely tells your pitchee what the story IS or how they can invest in that character’s journey, or why. Equally, writers often finish their pitches for spec drama screenplays with questions, such as ‘Can character X manage to find himself in India, or is it too late for him?’ My immediate response is always, ‘Well, I dunno, can he? How would I know? You’re the writer… but I’m guessing he will, else there won’t be a movie!’ Both times the writer has essentially made their pitch a dead end and, as a result, the producer is AGAIN not likely to go with your idea and/or pages.
• Budgets. Another huge problem for writers in piquing producers’ interest in their spec drama screenplays is the fact that a huge proportion of writers are absolutely clueless about budgets, especially in terms of what is possible for what money when filmmaking. Too often, a writer will blithely tell a producer their drama screenplay is ‘low-budget’, simply because they figure it must be, as it can be shot on location and doesn’t require loads of set dressing or stunts and explosions. Then the producer will come to hear the rest of the pitch or read the screenplay itself and be confronted with twenty or more speaking parts; animals; children; a stack of different locations, both interior and exterior; copyrighted material; not to mention health and safety hazards like driving, or running up and down stairs. All of these things turn a supposedly ‘low-budget drama’ into a medium- or even high-budget one, and just shows the producer a writer has no idea what s/he is talking about. As a result, even if you could have managed to get a read request, you’ve just shot yourself in the foot.
So it’s all very well pitching your amazing life story as a drama screenplay to a producer, agent or filmmaker, because the likelihood they are going to think anything other than ‘So?’ is very small. In addition, as we know already, the average spec drama screenplay is NOT amazing. In fact, the average spec drama screenplay is barely actual drama at all, but a collection of badly realised stereotypes and tropes, thinly disguised as a story. I would even go so far as to say the spec drama screenplay is probably the WORST of all the scripts in the spec pile, which is why so many industry pros automatically shut down at the words, ‘It’s a drama.’ Supersadface. But obviously there ARE ways of getting the movers and shakers interested in your brilliant, well-conceived, well-written spec drama screenplay. Before we look at drama niches, however, I think it’s time to re-evaluate the notion of morality and theme and how different stories and imagery may mean different things to different people, as demonstrated by our fourth case study, Kidulthood.
CASE STUDY 4: THE MORALITY TALE
KIDULTHOOD (2006)
Written by: Noel Clarke
Directed by: Menhaj Huda
Produced by: George Isaac
Budget: £450,000
Q: What’s good about it?
A: The narrative’s structure is smooth and well constructed, hurtling a large cast towards the final showdown with Hollywood precision.
MY LOGLINE: After the suicide of a fellow student, a group of teenagers get the day off school. Mayhem, aggression and, ultimately, a further tragedy follow.
Writing and Selling Kidulthood
Screenwriter of Kidulthood Noel Clarke was perhaps best known as an actor when the movie came out. Kidulthood’s release came at the same time as Noel’s breakthrough role as Mickey, Rose Tyler’s boyfriend, in BBC1’s flagship primetime show Doctor Who. I ask Clarke if he was always attached to the screenplay: ‘I was supposed to play Trife but the director (Menhaj Huda) didn’t want me to, as I was too old. He didn’t want me to play Sam either, but I convinced him I could be intimidating if needed, and the rest is history.’ I wonder if it was particularly challenging, acting in his own screenplay. Noel is quick to disagree: ‘If anything, it was easier, as it was my material.’ As it turns out, Kidulthood coming out at the same time as Dr Who starting again on the BBC was just a happy coincidence: Clarke tells me the screenplay was actually written in 2000/1 and shot in 2004, being in the can a good two years. So why did he write Kidulthood? The answer is refreshingly simple: ‘I saw a play that claimed to be about the age group that I knew about and it annoyed me, so I wrote a story that I wanted to see.’
Kidulthood is renowned for supposedly having a lot of improvisation in it from the young cast, but Noel shoots this down in flames: ‘There was a lot less improvisation in Kidulthood than people think… it was probably 95 per cent scripted.’ The money for the film was raised by its producer, George Isaac, the traditional way, through his contacts. ‘We had no industry help,’ says Noel. When so many movies are accused of glorifying violence, I wonder if this was ever a concern for Clarke: ‘There is a clear moral message in the movie – “If you behave like this, you may die, so behave.” A lot of people missed the message, but that doesn’t mean challenging movies should never be made; you have to make films like this.’ Clarke believes the same of people’s criticisms regarding race in the movie: ‘Kidulthood is not about race, it’s not touched on at all,’ he says. When I ask him why he thinks, then, that some people criticise the representation of young people in the movie, his answer is honest to the bone: ‘People criticise everything. The things that happened in the film happen in real life. Since it’s come out, I’ve been blamed for everything from the London Riots to the Dunblane tragedy (which actually happen
ed in 1996, a decade before Kidulthood came out!)… I’ve literally had people tell me I’m to blame!! The truth is, society informed the film.’
Kidulthood is one of the few British movies to get its own sequel, and probably the only drama, factoring in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004), Mr Bean’s Holiday (2007), Johnny English Reborn (2011) and 28 Weeks Later (2007) (and excluding the James Bonds and Harry Potters!). I ask if Adulthood (2008) was green-lit straight away, after the success of Kidulthood. As if! ‘I actually tried to do other films but nobody really wanted to know about any of those, so I sat down and specced Adulthood because otherwise I may not have got any other film made,’ Noel says wryly. Now, Noel doesn’t ‘just’ write and act, he produces and directs too; what Americans would call a ‘quadruple threat’. Screenwriting, though, is apparently Clarke’s least favourite role of the four: ‘If I was still just an actor, I’d starve. Writing comes from necessity.’ This notion of ‘necessity’ really interests me, because I’m usually surrounded by those who profess to love writing and who seem frustrated by what they perceive as being the devaluing of the screenplay and what writers do by ‘the industry’. In comparison, Clarke presents a scenario that’s subtly different: make your own opportunities, no matter what. As he asserts: ‘I’ve never been one to say there’s a glass ceiling… if there’s glass, I don’t see it. If one door closes for me, I go through the window.’
My Take on Kidulthood
Kidulthood ultimately tells the contrasted stories of duo protagonists Trevor, aka ‘Trife’, and Alisa, both 15. The set-up introduces us to both of them, but also to the movie’s catalyst character, Katie, a white girl who is being bullied mercilessly at school by girls in her and Alisa’s class, led by the cruel and violent Shaneek: the privileged Katie sticks out like a sore thumb at the inner city school and does little to defend herself as the bullies get stuck in (we get the feeling this is a regular occurrence). Alisa is present at Katie’s beating and, though she does not join in, does nothing to intervene either. We learn the reason for Alisa’s reticence is because she has problems of her own: Alisa is pregnant by Trife, whom she slept with a few weeks earlier. Outside the classroom, Sam, a local hoodlum and school leaver who still wants to rule the roost, accosts Trife and friends Jay and Moony. When Sam also harangues Katie on the way out of school, it proves too much: Katie returns home and kills herself. This leads to school being cancelled the next day for all the students, so they can supposedly mourn their lost colleague. Of course, none do: instead they prepare for a party at the equally privileged Blake’s house (who miraculously somehow manages to escape the same violence Katie endures).
I think there are two things that Kidulthood does especially well, which most drama spec screenplays generally do not, the first being structure. The set-up is extremely smooth, introducing us to the characters, their world views and their place in the movie’s story world without us ever feeling that’s actually what’s going on. This is a rare treat in drama, especially with a large cast (too often spec screenwriters and filmmakers don’t believe a reader or viewer will remember names, so introduce us to characters via the overused device of captions of their names on screen à la Trainspotting [1996]). Blake’s party then occupies the resolution, or Act Three; thus what happens during the afternoon prior to the party provides the majority of the conflict of Act Two, which is then paid off in Act Three and leads to the death of Trife at Sam’s hands.
Considering the large cast, Clarke does a brilliant job of interweaving all the characters’ journeys together, with their paths crossing over in the course of Acts One and Two, so the party essentially becomes a showdown of epic proportions, all the characters clashing together. In doing this, the plot point of the gun is set up and paid off with Hollywood-style precision: we see Trife deliver the converted firearm to his gangster Uncle Curtis in the car in Act One, then again at Curtis’s den in Act Two (when Katie’s brother, Lenny, and Trife cross paths). The gun is then paid off at Blake’s party in Act Three: Lenny arrives, brandishing it and threatening Sam for his part in Katie’s suicide. This prompts the bleeding and mortally wounded Trife to yell, ‘He’s not worth it!’ Of course, Sam can’t keep his mouth shut and Lenny attempts to kill him anyway, only for the gun to misfire in his hand, underlining the film’s strong moral message: ‘Crime and violence do not pay.’ The second element that I think is very well done in Kidulthood is the characters’ journeys. As a script editor, I believe the likes of Alisa, Trife, Becky, Sam, Jay and friends are spot on within the movie’s story world, for the following reasons:
• It’s Romeo and Juliet, updated. In the great tradition of the Bard, Trife and Alisa are star-crossed lovers: circumstance, their friends, families and opposing world views will come between them, so even when they get back together at Blake’s party, we just know it will end badly for them… which, of course, it does.
• Plot message versus character world view. If the plot’s message is the aforementioned ‘crime and violence do not pay’, the characters (unusually) reflect another world view: ‘Stay true to yourself.’ This is illustrated especially well by the character of Alisa, who unlike the others breaks away from the shackles of her peers’ expectations and does what she thinks is right instead. Disturbed by Katie’s suicide and the fact she did nothing to stop Shaneek and the bullies, for the rest of the movie Alisa starts pushing back, especially against her best friend, good-time-girl Becky. Becky places all manner of temptations in Alisa’s path throughout the course of the day they’re off school, to little or no avail. Though Alisa gets off to a rocky start, she rejects Becky’s world view as the film progresses, the biggest flashpoint being the moment in the tube train when she yells at Shaneek in the carriage, to the onlooking Becky’s abject horror. This isolates Alisa from her best friend more and more, so that by the time the party arrives that evening, she and Becky are no longer friends. Alisa, however, is unrepentant. Instead, the tear-stained and humiliated Becky finds Alisa later at the party and says: ‘I’m sorry.’ Alisa nods sagely: ‘Yes. You are.’
Compare Alisa then to Trife, whose own story is contrasted against his pregnant ex’s throughout the film. Kicking off Act Two with a phone call to Alisa where he tells her to get lost, Trife is troubled by Katie’s suicide, having had a ‘thing’ with her before (Katie’s oblivious father mistakes Sam for Trife at the school gates). This sets Trife on the path to self-destruction that not even making up with Alisa at Blake’s party can steer him away from. Though Trife doubts his place in his Uncle Curtis’s gangster world and actively doesn’t want to carve up the face of the guy on the snooker table, Trife is afraid – pardon the pun – of losing face himself. This scene is excruciatingly up close and personal in terms of violence, with Trife’s own pain at visiting this heinous act on another human being totally visible, yet he does it anyway. Trife does not stay true to himself, unlike Alisa. As a result, just like Becky, he ‘gets what he deserves’, hence Trife’s desperate last warning to Lenny about Sam: ‘He’s not worth it!’
• Eliciting audience emotion. Drama screenplays concerning young people frequently have characters making important realisations about their place in the world and Kidulthood is no exception. There is a strong sense of morality and justice to the movie, but crucially we are still gutted when Trife dies in Alisa’s arms, as this lays to waste their hopes and dreams, or any chance of Trife’s potential redemption. I think what’s so poignant about this element of the film is that Alisa is a realist: at the party, she tells Trife they have to ‘at least try’ to have a relationship for the baby’s sake, suggesting she means if not as lovers, then as friends. Alisa is mature and has a level head on her shoulders; we know she will essentially be alone with Trife gone, since her own mother is so unwitting and Becky has already proved she will do nothing but let Alisa down. Alisa’s entire future is ripped from her and the baby, all because of a stupid vendetta between Trife and Sam. It’s a tragic waste and makes us angry, but that’s what good drama screen
plays do: they elicit emotions in the viewer, even negative ones.
• Gritty realism versus sensationalism? Whilst it’s certainly true Kidulthood takes about a year’s worth of teen crises and compresses them into a single day, it’s important to remember movies are a representation of ‘real life’ NOT real life. As Noel himself insists, these things are happening already and have been for decades; I see nothing in Kidulthood I have not read about in the news; heard from working with teenagers as a teacher; or experienced first-hand myself, such as underage drinking or teenage pregnancy. But, again, Kidulthood is not about being in a gang; it is instead a doomed love story between Trife and Alisa.
• Story world reversal. What’s also refreshing about Kidulthood is the fact white people occupy the secondary and peripheral roles people of colour traditionally play in mainstream films. Instead of a predominantly white cast, with just a few PoCs, the story world is reversed. This is particularly obvious in the infamous snooker table scene. A powerful man of colour, Uncle Curtis has a white henchman holding the unfortunate guy down, in readiness for Trife to cut his face as part of his gruesome initiation into Curtis’s world. In addition, though white characters like Jay and Becky may perform important role functions, neither of them occupies the same story space or drives the action like protagonists Trife and Alisa, or antagonists like Sam and Uncle Curtis.
What We Can Learn from Kidulthood
Write Tips:
• Noel wrote Kidulthood because he was annoyed with another creative work, which he felt was not truthful about the world he knew about. This can be a really great catalyst for kick-starting writing your own drama screenplay: think WHY you felt that piece had no emotional truth and how you would do it differently and why. But don’t forget to research too and see if that alternative version has been done already!