#flashback #nostalgia #writing #screenwriting #london #films: MISADVENTURES IN THE SCREENTRADE (London in the ‘90s)

And so it came to pass …

I eventually left my hometown of Hartlepool in 1991 and moved to London. Rather than being an angry young man in search of truth, at almost 30, I was teetering on the cusp of middle-age, bemused and confused. Although I’d known that I wanted to move to The Big Smoke for half of my life, I most certainly didn’t have a clue what I was going to do when I got there. Any of my musical aspirations had long since died on the vine. ?So, I got a job I didn’t like and drank in pubs I did. Any contact with the artistic life was usually via my school friend Jeff Luke’s association with the Brit Art world – I remember Dame Tracey Emin pretending to play cricket as she danced to Booker T & The MGs in a South London pub, arguing with Jeremy Deller about music - and trips to Camden’s Jazz Café, where my then-girlfriend worked and where I saw Astrud Gilberto perform, ?and hanging around Maxim Jakubowski’s Murder One bookshop, where I discovered the likes of Joe L Lansdale and Kinky Friedman …

Any creative endeavours from myself were pretty much dampened by pints of lager. So it went. But early in the 1990s, I had another revelation. American Indie cinema via Tintin Quarantino, Robert Rodriguez, and various others. This was a great time for a certain kind of film – my kind of film - which had been foreshadowed by the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple – Dead in the Heart of Texas – neo noir, dialogue heavy ensembles pieces, shooting, swearing, top tunes ...

I first saw Reservoir Dogs at the Richmond Filmhouse, a venue more suited to twee frocksploitation films, where people walked out. I thought it was great, of course. After it was banned in the UK as part of some scaremongering or other, I bought a dodgy VHS copy of the film, with Swedish subtitles, on a visit to France.

Anyway, around this time being a screenwriter become quite cool, rather than being the film director’s ugly sister, and I even considered having a go myself. I bought books by William Goldman and Sid Field, a book by a bloke that wrote for Cheers, screenplays, Rebel Without a Crew, and all manner of screenwriting carryings on.

?I never actually wrote anything, mind you …

But somehow, some way, I saw an advert for a screenwriting course that was to be held at the London School of Business (School). It was helmed by a ‘professional screenwriter’ - the brilliantly named Randall Flynn. So, I enrolled, and I actually did the course. The other attendees were a nice and mixed bunch, a few from the advertising and media world, and a few waifs and strays such as me.

I enjoyed the course. We watched clips from Bad Timing, Witness, and Silence of the Lambs, and leant about pitching and some other stuff which I’ve forgotten about. And I even wrote an actual screenplay -after a fashion.

The screenplay was called Rain City Moon and was a faux neo noir crime thriller, with, as far as I remember, no discernible story. Somewhere on the way, I sent enquiry letters to various agents and film companied most of whom ignored me but a real-life American called Aaron something or other who worked for Scala Productions asked for a copy of my script. And I sent it off with ideas way, way above my station. I tried to contact the septic a few weeks later and was told that he was no longer working at Scala. And nobody there had a bloody clue about my script. And, of course, I’d sent him my only copy …

As for Randall Flynn, well, he eventually published a short-lived screenwriting magazine that interviewed the bloke that wrote Pretty Woman, and although I kept an eye out for a bit, I never saw him credited as having written a produced screenplay. So, it went.

And on …

? Paul D. Brazill.