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You've seen The Full Monty and Four Weddings and a Funeral, and you reckon you could have a go. After all, the British film industry is booming, isn't it? You know you don't stand a chance of raising the money to make it yourself, so you think the best bet is to write the script and send it to a production company that'll pay you a large wad for the privilege of making it. Maybe, you've even written the script. Maybe, even, I'm about to read it.
Chances are, if you send your script to a few places at once, I'll get to read it. As a freelance script-reader, I've read more than 1,500 film scripts over the past four years. (Three made it to the screen.) And if I read another script called Ceilidh Nights or Ragga Boys, I'll shoot myself or, better still, the writer.
The trouble is, if you want to write a commercial British movie, you've got to find a British setting. And since Britain's a small place, there aren't that many. I've read them all, many times. So here's my top 10 clichéd genres for a British Screenplay. If your script falls into one of these categories, it doesn't mean it's instantly in the bin, but one spelling mistake and it will be. So beware.
see here for a note on spelling mistakes
1. Celtic Blarney
Our city-dwelling hero goes back to where he grew up: an unspoilt village on the Celtic fringes. He finds love with an old flame who still lives there, and there is a lot of gentle comedy with yokels in the local bar. The village is threatened by a cynical multinational bent on developing it, but this is thwarted by our hero with the overt assistance of benign magical creatures such as kelpies or leprechauns.
2. More tea, vicar?
A tumbledown stately home is occupied by aristocratic English eccentrics who have lived there for centuries. A long-lost American relative comes to stay, opening up opportunities for farcical misunderstandings and a Hollywood co-production. The American's no-nonsense thinking saves the property from financial ruin.
3. Give 'em both barrels, guv
Ageing cockney villains re-unite for one last heist that will allow them to retire in style to the Costa. But one is sleeping with another's missus and a third is a police informer.
4. Gray Flannel shirts
A sensitive kid goes through the trauma of adolescence in this wartime or post-war period drama. Closely based on the writer's personal memories, it features a first kiss, a heartbreak, a coming-of-age. Recently, scripts set in the seventies and eighties have begun to emerge, but whatever the case the film will feature school uniform and the pop hits of the period.
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5. Snack, crack and pot
A searing thriller set on one of Britain's tough council estates. The young protagonist runs the gauntlet of domestic abuse, gang war, drug dealing, joyriding, corrupt coppers and a Mr Big who runs a crime network from the office of the local nightclub. Thumping with a drum'n'bass soundtrack.
6. TLA movies
TLA is a Three-Letter Acronym. Three-Letter Acronyms include SAS, KGB, IRA, CIA, MI5, MI6., you name it. A TLA movie involves at least three of these organisations coming into explosive confrontation in a conspiracy thriller that goes right to the heart of the British politico-military establishment. The writer usually claims to have an SAS background.
7. Shrink me now, untie me later
The protagonist leads an intellectual, bohemian lifestyle and has a complex sexuality. Through as series of byzantine relationships and explicit sexual encounters, he/she tries to make sense of his/her identity. All the characters in these scripts are equally baroque and sexually adventurous, and the writer clearly believes that anyone who isn't like that is repressed. Often set in New York, but increasingly in Notting Hill.
8.Biopics
The story of a famous historical figure, usually a novelist or monarch. The first scene starts on the protagonist's death-bed. We then flashback to their birth and basically have one scene for every year of their life until finally arriving back at the first scene, by which point the protagonist has died
9. Cheesy the Clown and his Bumper-car blues
Circuses, fairgrounds and fading seaside resorts offer boundless opportunities for whimsical cinema. The melancholic misfits of these places lead such bittersweet lives. Cheesy the Clown harbours unrequited love for a trapeze artist, but she falls to her death and now his only friend in the world is a dwarf. Together they organise one last show and all the lights shine on the old pier once again.
10. We're students so we must be cool
Most often written by film students obeying the mantra "Write About What You Know". A bunch of layabouts live in a shared house, talk interminably about dope and Star Wars, and have surreal nightmarish experiences when they try to go to the toilet. Nothing much happens, but there are lots of Tarantino references and an alien abduction at the end.
A final word. The script graveyard is full of skeletons like these, but occasionally one makes it to the screen, only to become an instant classic. Of the scripts I've read that were made, I recommended that all three should have been strangled at birth. So don't despair: your script might just reach a script-reader who is sympathetic, or whose jaded negativity is ignored
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