"I was in my mid-20s went I sold my first script and
in my 40s when I sold my first screenplay, but I'd been writing from the age
of 16."
View trailer
home
page4
playwrites
The writing of
* page5*
Is it necessary to go to LA to be a screenwriter? "No. You've got to be somewhere where they make movies. I think it's more of a test of resolve. Are you willing to make that degree of sacrifice? To put everything on the line for that dream? If you haven't, then maybe you're trying to get into the wrong business. There's a stick-with-it-ness involved. I was in my mid-20s went I sold my first script and in my 40s when I sold my first screenplay, but I'd been writing from
the age of 16. "
Pet peeves? Movie versions of classic TV series. "Mission Impossible" was aweful, it was a write-by-numbers exercise and the resolution was cheap. It was just silly. "The Avengers" missed the whole point of the TV series and didn't get its flavour, it misses the 'Englishness' that was the charm of the original - it was Hollywood's idea of what the original was. "The Fugitive" was fine and worked well and I'm sure the remake of "The Invaders" will work well. There has been a project to make a film version of "The Prisoner", one of my favourite TV series of all time, but my gut feelling is that they'll miss it - they'll try to explain stuff that shouldn't be explained, yet that was one of the essential elements of the series."
If someone said choose your dream cast and write anything you like, who would you have? "In no order of admiration, Rod Steiger, Gene Hackman, Jack Nicolson, Don Johnson (Who I think is under-rated) and Corky Nemec (Who I know is under-rated), from the US. I'd want Sean Connery, Edward Woodward, Bob Hoskins, Patrick Mcgoohan, Honor Blackman, Maggie Smith, from the UK. Honor Blackman was my first screen crush, the first woman martial arts heroine, long before Modesty Blaise and I still use her as a character model.
end