Geoff Thompson: Writer – Teacher – Martial artist

Fifteen years working on a script (or many versions of a script), a month away from principle photography (first day of filming), four weeks from finally taking a life-long project onto a five-week-shoot and the director wants me to do another draft?

‘I think we can tighten it a bit,’ he nodding-dogs his head and smiles.

‘Actually, I think you can fuck off a bit!’ I sub-vocalise.

I am sure he could see by my dumfounded, defeated, can’t go-there-again hang-dog expression that I might, probably didn’t, have another polish in me and that, actually, if he asked for one more draft, one more time I might have had martial arts flash-back and knocked that nodding head off his shoulders.

I didn’t of course. I just nodded back and said, ‘OK, one more go.’

This was only my first feature film, and whilst I was still a relative neophyte in the industry I knew enough to understand the old adage that ‘all writing is re-writing’ and I had enough reference points from my varied and colourful background to ken the fact that drilling and polishing is what separates the nearly-good from the really-good and the really-good from those that consistently piss excellence. So we got back to the grind and I silently dreamt that this one might bring the screenwriters nirvana, the locked script. But alas, a week later we were on it again, and a week after that again, and then again, and then finally, on the very eve of the shoot we made some more very minor changes and the director asked the producer to send ‘this one’ out as the shooting draft (the version the cast and crew work directly from). I made a deep sigh of relief and thought, ‘thank **ck for that.’ My relief (I have to admit) at finding the Holy Grail was arrogantly juxtaposed by the thought that ‘all this re-writing and re-writing is so unnecessary.’ And I have to admit also that I continued to harbour this wee small resentment. That is until principle photography when I realised what it’s all about. This was a serious business. Professional people were going spend a chunk of their finite lives working night and day to make my words into a film. I was witness to 200 crew as they began in earnest the spend on a £2 million budget (raised independently through private investors: real people risking real money) and I have to tell you that I was overwhelmed suddenly with gratitude to the director and the producer (who ever-se-gently brought me through draft after draft) because I realised then that there could be no worse feeling than turning up on the first day and seeing your work performed and thinking (knowing) that the script was not quite ready, that we had gone one or two or even three drafts early, that we had pulled the apple from the tree before it was ripe. I spent five blissful weeks on that shoot and there was not a single day, watching these amazing artisans lift my script onto a canvass of glossy celluloid, when I did not think, ‘thank goodness I did all those drafts, thanks goodness we polished and polished.’ Because if we hadn’t let me tell you it would have been a long, long shoot.

The second epiphany actually happened just as early as the first and proved even more instructive, nay profound: one of the lead actors approached me (script in hand, furrowed brow), a couple of days into the shoot and ‘wondered’ if I would mind him changing a small something in his scene. His small something was a great insight, it made such a difference to the character he was playing, and added a new dimension to the scene (it was actually better than what was currently in situ, it enhanced my own words) and I gratefully nodded my accent and said ‘great idea. I love it.’ As he walked away it hit me. The eureka. It cracked me right across my swede. There is no such thing as a locked script! I realised in that very instant that for the next five weeks my script would, if it was any good, continue to evolve and change, and not only was that inevitable, it was also very welcome: It meant that the script could and would and should get better and better. There is no locked script. And even later still, in the editing suite, the shape would change yet again, when the rushes (the scenes we had shot) spoke to the editor and the director and asked, advised (sometimes demanded) that it should evolve.

I realised from this enlightening process that looking for a locked script is a danger to the art of making films, it is tantamount to rushing the process, so now when I am working on a film, no one has to ask me to do a re-write: I am the first person there demanding (begging for) a read through (when the actors read the script to see if it plays), I am the one asking for a re-write, a polish, looking for notes, criticism, critique, suggestions – anything that might help the script work better and get us closer, not to a locked script, rather to a script that is ready to be shot. A script that is mature enough to honour a cast and crew, so that they might work their part of the collaboration, ready for the editor to weave his magic.

I have also allowed the concept of no locked script to spill into my other realities. I realised that my relationships are works in progress, they should never be locked, and they will always need attention. My business regularly gets another draft because if it is not moving forward in this fast economic-river, then it is moving backwards, and drowning. And my health and fitness: it made me realise that it must by necessity go through draft after draft forever, until time in memorial, because that is a film that will take a life-time to wrap. I intend to continue re-writing all aspects of my life, never again looking for the locked script, because not only does the locked script mean your works can no longer expand, but the very act of looking for it creates conflict and anxiety, because it does not exist – there is no such thing as a locked script.

Be well.

Geoff Thompson. 17/05/2008