| In
this Special Feature for September, playwright
Alan Pollock provides an insight into the kind
of choices writers have to face.
Alan
is leading a series of Introduction to Playwriting
workshops for Script this Autumn. Visit the STAGE
page to find out more.
MAKING
LIFE DIFFICULT FOR MYSELF
A writer
friend of mine is fond of saying that advice is
rarely useful and never welcome, but here's his:
If you
want to succeed as a writer, listen to whoever's
paying you, do exactly what they tell you, and
do it with a smile. If you have ability, no pride,
and strong facial muscles, you will do well. Suck
it up, saieth the Lord, and thou shalt prosper.
It works for him. He has a house in Hampstead,
one in Tuscany, and several BAFTA nominations.
Once, after
the modest success of my play WHAT DO I GET?,
I was approached by a well-known West End theatre
producer. The play for those of you who missed
it concerned the reunion of three one-time members
of a one-hit punk band, whose one hit had been
licensed, without the permission of the others,
by the charismatic former frontman, for use in
a jeans advert. The play dramatized the fury and
hurt of the other two at what they perceived as
in one case a major slight and in the other
a betrayal of everything the band had formerly
stood for. The producer's suggestion was that
I give the play a happy ending, include 20 hits
from the period and re-package it as a kind of
Never mind the Pollocks, here's the cash' extravaganza.
I didn't know what to say. I tried to imagine
explaining to the actor who had played Keith,
the no-surrender, never say die punk-for-life
whom in fact he greatly resembled, that I had
decided to traduce every single thing I had
said I believed in in exchange for a mountain
of cash.
I tried
to imagine it, but I couldn't.
Don't get
me wrong. It's not the mountain of cash I object
to. Talking to a banker friend of my wife's recently,
I was trying to explain away another, even more
financially ruinous artistic decision, and I could
see that, in an absolutely fundamental
way, he had no idea what I was talking about.
Why would a person actually choose to
be uncomfortable or poor, if they had the
option of being rich ?
Well, the
point is, I didn't choose any of these
things. I do what I do because I am congenitally
incapable of doing anything else.
Action
is character, and character action, as I say in
my classes!
I am drawn
to certain things certain subjects, certain courses
of action because I just can't help myself.
A couple
of years ago I found myself doing a second stint
on a well-known, long-running police drama. About
half way through the process - an episode I was
writing about a stalker - it was decided that
the story wasn't working, and why didn't I
make the policeman the stalker instead? Or
why not make the stalker an alien , I
thought? Or a bear? Or a man in a bear suit? Or
perhaps the whole police station is really an
alien base an advance guard of highly intelligent
beings sent to establish an alien republic on
earth? (TV is actually scarily like this a shiny
scrubbed-down world full of terrifying replicants
who talk only about other TV programmes).
No sooner
had these thoughts formed in my head than they
were out of my mouth. And I was out of a job.
It's not
wealth and success in themselves that
I object to. Far from it. My first, substantial,
piece of writing was a screenplay dealing with
the early 90s gang culture of Manchester, where
I was then living. I believed strongly it was
a story worth telling, and one which, at that
time, had not been dealt with by anyone either
in mainstream film or television. It was liked
by Barry Hanson at Pebble Mill, and found its
way ultimately into the hands of the actor Tim
Roth, who was looking for a project to direct.
Tim Roth!!! Hollywood !!! Red Carpet!!!
I forget
what on that occasion scuppered the deal for
once not my own stupidity but the point I am
making is really a different one. The story I
wanted to tell was one I passionately wanted to
tell, to the exclusion of all others. Its success,
or failure, at the time, was completely irrelevant.
Which brings
me to the point I am really trying to make!
The only
questions a writer should ever ask themselves
are what story am I telling, to whom, and
why? If the answer to the last question
is I want to have swimming pools in more than
one continent', then fine. But be very clear about
what that means. If the answer is I want to try
to communicate what I have discovered about the
world, and about people, honestly and truthfully',
then be very clear about what that means
too.
As a writer,
I am drawn to freaks, outsiders and misfits.
My first
play was about Nico, raddled former icon and front
person of the Velvet Underground, washed up in
Manchester in the mid 1980s. My second was the
punks. My third a glimpse into the life of a con
artist inhabiting a fantasy world at the margins
of society. Last year I wrote a play (Release)
which takes a sympathetic view of the plight of
a tabloid hate figure placed in a West Country
village under an assumed identity. The play has
at the time of writing a well-known director,
but (note to managements!) no theatre as yet.
There are
times when I wonder usually in the middle of
the night -Why don't I just make life easy for
myself? Why don't I just write a nice little vehicle
for Judy or Maggie, or Tom, or Jude?' Well I would
do, I honestly would.
But I can't.
(Like another friend, a Jewish writer, who after
every play says to me: Next time it'll
be Arthur Miller!') I don't set out to make life
difficult for myself. It just happens.
My father,
the most pragmatic of doctors, and a man with
the most mechanistic view of human nature I have
ever encountered, reckons that every choice or
decision taken by individuals is a rational decision
at the moment it is taken.
In writing,
the only irrational decision is to write
something you don't believe in. (What Sartre described
as mauvaise foi). Because you will be
found out.
I have
just finished a play for and about the city of
Coventry my home town set on the night of
the November blitz of 1940. Probably the most
accessible thing I have ever attempted. Part of
the story is that of course Coventry was badly
let down, and shafted in a way that, say, Oxford
or Cambridge would never have been. But part of
the story, too, concerns the complete (if understandable)
breakdown in morale which followed the raid, and
which led to the threat of martial law being imposed
by the Government. It's an uncomfortable story,
but it's part of the story, and so it
had to be told. However unpopular that is going
to make me.
So what
am I saying? As Polonius put it: This above all
else: to thine own self be true.' But look what
happened to him. So what do I know? The actor
who played Keith the one whose integrity I was
so terrified of betraying is now one of the
highest paid voice over artists in the country.
So what do I know? Don't listen to me.
Don't listen to anyone . Just write the
story you have to write, and who knows?
I'll either see you in L.A. or at the dole office.
Alan Pollock
2006
Alan
is a playwright and television writer. His recent
stage plays include The Death of Cool
and All Tomorrow's Parties. He has also
written for The Bill, A&E
and Crossroads.
Special
Features Archive
January
2006 - 'Happy Birthday Script'
April
2006 - The Script/Raw Edge Monologue Competition
winners
June
2006 - Ian Kennedy on writing for the BBC Radio
Drama 'Silver Street.
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