My Life in "My Life in Film"

A script I was working on for Channel 4 survived three commissioning editors before they finally decided to bin it. Almost as if they were looking for a commissioning editor who didn't like my writing. What do they mean, disjointed? And there is a big difference between slow and lyrical! But they were right. Perhaps it was overly avant-garde.

It was around this time that I came up with the idea for a new character: a writer unable to convince the world of his genius. You know, the kind of serial self-deluder who can listen to hours of stinging criticism and remember it seconds later as praise, as proof he is ahead of his time. And then start work on a new script immediately.

I started work on a new script immediately.

The first step was to flesh out my character. And fast, before I had to ask for my old job back at the cinema. What if Arthur Chapel worked in a cinema, I found myself idly wondering. If so, didn't I want the series to look and feel cinematic too? And why stop there? Why not rip off a classic film plot in each episode (although I would want to call it homage). Ready-made storylines. Think of the time it would save me!

There was one small problem. I didn't really believe the same person could witness a murder one week, go insane the next, fly jet planes the week after, then find a suitcase full of money, then suffer an existential crisis, and finally run away to Bolivia.

So I hit on the idea that Art is so immersed in the world of film that he mistakes the most trivial everyday incidents for the most exciting celluloid adventures. And no matter what evidence there is to the contrary, his fervent imagination is able to twist the facts to fit the fiction

I talked the idea over with my flat-mate. He's a projectionist at the same cinema I used to work for. He said it sounded like a modern day Don Quixote. I thanked him and went out and bought the book and tried to read it. And not just to avoid talking to his new girlfriend. I was still new to the world of television: I thought a little intellectualism might go a long way.

If brevity is the soul of wit, then Cervantes is up there with Proust! The book is gigantic, especially in large print, and as I only have schoolboy Spanish and a very weak lower back, I gave up on it. I decided to write the first episode of MY LIFE IN FILM instead. If ever the time came, I reasoned to myself, I would allude to Don Quixote in an enigmatic fashion, rather than refer to it directly.

I finished the first draft of the first episode some time in September 2000. I counted thirty pages, almost as many jokes, and half a dozen typos. Later the same night, I followed my agent home and slipped the script under his door. He won't read anything unless it fits under the door. If it's too long, his mind wanders.

He sent the script to a BBC producer whose name shall remain nameless. And shortly after Paul Schlesinger read it, the BBC optioned the series and commissioned me to write another episode.

This I did. The script was described as slow and disjointed. They were right. Perhaps it was overly avant-garde. Anyway, the trail went dead for a time. And then the BBC appointed a new head of comedy. Oh no, I thought. Not another script binned by another new regime.

Fortunately, Sophie Clarke-Jervoise liked the script as much as I did, and sent it to the number one man, Kris Marshall. The ball started to roll again.