Downton Abbey - The complete scripts - Season Two

Published 2013.

This book follows the same format as the first season scripts, offering asides and insights from the author Julian Fellowes, plus text that had to be cut for various reasons, usually overrunning time.

These pages are very useful for budding writers of fiction, students of film, and  the many fans of the TV series itself. This series, then, as Fellowes states in his Foreword, ‘sees our characters face the ultimate test of war. Some are strengthened by the ordeal, a couple are defeated, but all of them are changed.’

In one of the footnotes Fellowes reveals that he borrows ‘my friends’ names relentlessly.’  The intended of Matthew is Lavinia Swire, for example. He used a Northamptonshire friend’s name Lavinia in her memory. The surname Swire is filched from his friend Hugo, MP, whose wife recently gained notoriety from her memoires!

So many of the footnotes hark to Fellowes’s memories of family and friends, for example his great-aunt Isie commented at the end of the war ‘Sometimes it feels as if all the men I ever danced with are dead.’ A poignant vignette (p21).

On reading the scripts it is evident that all of the actors involved add richness and depth to Fellowes’s script. And he is unstinting in praise in several footnotes. And it’s not only the main actors, either. ‘The hall boys and those maids who have no lines take their contribution very seriously and we are lucky that they do. In fact they do a superb job. These parts may not have much in the way of lines, but they are very important to the show.’ (p452) In one case he was sorry that a hall boy’s line had to be cut.

As mentioned in my review of Season One’s scripts, the footnotes also cover historical and sociological issues, all of them of interest. An aside regarding the use of the Marcel waver, regarding long hair being ‘a sign of bondage’ – a statement of femininity but also impracticality: ‘in the Forties so many women were imitating Veronica Lake’s hairstyle and their hair was getting caught up in machines. So ‘she cut off her long seductive locks and with them, I’m afraid, her career.’  (p144)

There’s an amusing aside about working with dogs and children. Not because they will steal the scene. The actor has to be perfect in each take, in the hope that in one of them the dog or child will perform correctly, and only that take will be used. (p163) Another instance is that it is ‘bred into an actor’s bones that when some potential employer asks you if you can do something, you must always say yes and then go off and try to learn to do it…’ (p239)

What is also fascinating is how Fellowes views his characters, ascribing motivation: ‘I don’t blame Mary for failing to see that straight away.’ (p207)

There are a great number of sad scenes, and again some are inspired by the tales from Fellowes’s relatives. One poignant story is about a female relative being coerced into a marriage with a shell-shocked survivor, doing the honourable thing,, and in effect tragically wasting her life. (p285)

When writing about the Titanic incident (which actually started the first season), Fellowes is critical of the trendy modern perspective of viewing the past through the distorted prism of today’s sensitivities: saying of the people on the ‘unsinkable ship’, ‘they were so unbelievably brave. The modern historian is usually a miserabilist and is only happy when reporting how badly everyone behaved, but if he tries this with the Titanic he will be disappointed. I’m not saying nobody behaved badly, but very few did. And in all three classes there were so many examples of staggering courage.’ (p329)

Inevitably, Fellowes regrets some cuts that had to be made. Yet, to be fair, which he always is, he can also appreciate that in many cases they were valid: ‘I think I was wrong and they were right.’ (p359)

The Spanish ‘flu epidemic of 1918-19 tragically figures in the storyline. Bearing in mind this was written in 2012/2013, Fellowes says: that epidemic is ‘almost forgotten today.’ (p435) How times change; since Covid-19 was unleashed from China in 2019 there have been dozens of articles and TV programmes about its more serious precursor!

What shines through these scripts is the author’s empathy for all the characters. Sometimes people are petty, but then they surprise with an act of kindness; others are generous with their time; while some rail against change but have to face its inevitability. And virtually all of these character drawings are conveyed through dialogue (enlivened by flesh and blood actors).  These scripts are a masterclass in drama – and history, in fact.

Again, there are stills from this season (in black and white) and cast and production lists.

Highly recommended.

DOWNTON ABBEY SEASON ONE SCRIPTS - Book review

 DOWNTON ABBEY

THE COMPLETE SCRIPTS – SEASON ONE

 

Creator and writer Julian Fellowes has produced the full shooting scripts of the first three seasons of the phenomenally successful TV series. 

This is the book of the first season.

In addition he has added scenes which had to be cut plus countless footnotes commenting on many aspects of the show.

Even if you haven’t seen the series, if you're a writer you could glean a great deal from reading this book’s 396 pages. Laid bare are how dramatists set scenes, cut to new scenes, define character through dialogue and create conflict.

If you’ve seen the show, then this book enriches your experience. You can hear the actors speaking the lines. And while a show is nothing without the writer, credit must be given to all the cast who bring their characters to life, endowing the words with depth and emotion.

Fellowes’s footnotes are very interesting from a social science and historical aspect, as well as being highly entertaining, enlightening and often humorous.

This Season One book contains scripts for Episodes 1 to 7 plus eight colour pages of stills, a cast list, and production credits.

I’m currently watching Season Two and then reading the second book in tandem.

Book review - A Graveyard for Lunatics

Ray Bradbury’s 1990 crime novel A Graveyard for Lunatics is the second in a trilogy, preceded by Death is a Lonely Business and succeeded by Let’s All Kill Constance. 

The cover depicts a detail from Goya's The Madhouse at Saragossa, 1794.

It’s 1954 and the young narrator is a scriptwriter for Maximus Films, a character that echoes Bradbury’s own worship of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Adjacent to the vast film studio complex is Green Glades Cemetery.  Here, one rain-sodden night he witnesses a revelation.

‘I heard a ghost sigh somewhere, but it was only my own lungs pumping like a bellows, trying to light some sort of fire in my chest.’ (p9)

The revelation was a lifelike dummy of the dead studio head J.C. Arbuthnot, who died twenty years ago in a car crash. He enlists his best friend Roy Holdstrom (an inventor of science fiction sets, monsters and special effects) to solve the mystery. On the way he meets wildly eccentric characters, among them a drunken ham Shakespearean actor, J.C., who states, ‘I do not dare, sir. I am.’.

It’s clear that these books are Bradbury’s reminiscences of his time when a young teenager hovering around the periphery of the movies. His early influences were King Kong and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

‘It was like having an affair with Kong, who fell on me when I was thirteen. I had never escaped from beneath his heart-beating carcass.’ (p4)

Bradbury would spend many a day in front of the studio gates of Paramount and Columbia hoping for autographs. He’d watch film stars come and go at the Brown Derby restaurant – and all these places figure in this novel. One of the tragic characters, Clarence is clearly modelled on himself, though older.

‘Instantly my soul flashed out of my body and ran back. It was 1934 and I was mulched in among the ravening crowd, waving pads and pens… pursuing Marlene Dietrich into her hairdresser’s or running after Cary Grant Friday nights…’ (p15)

This book is dedicated to a few folk of his acquaintance, among them some deceased: Fritz Lang and James Hong Howe. And his friend Ray Harryhausen, who was alive when this was written. Roy Holdstrom is modelled on Harryhausen, and the character Fritz Wong is an amalgam of Lang and Howe. The narrator’s investigator pal Crumley is named after the crime writer James Crumley. Manny Leiber (who intended cutting Judas from a Biblical film because he didn’t want to make an anti-Semitic movie!) may well be named after fellow science fiction author Fritz Leiber. There may be other allusions I’ve missed.

The tale is typical Hollywood scandal and cover-up. Nothing new there, then. Fittingly, Crumley states, ‘Sometimes dead folks in graves have more power than live folks above…’ (p186)

The beginning contains some excellent imagery and writing. It starts with the narrator observing there were two cities within a city: ‘one moved restlessly all day while the other never stirred. One was warm and filled with ever-changing lights. One was cold and fixed in place by stones… Maximus Films, the living, and Green Glades Cemetery, the dead…’ (p3)

‘Ten thousand deaths had happened here, and when the deaths were done, the people got up, laughing, and strolled away. Whole tenement blocks were set afire and did not burn…’ (p3)

And: ‘From here Dracula wandered as flesh to return as dust. Here also were the Stations of the Cross and a trail of ever-replenished blood as screenwriters groaned by to Calvary carrying a backbreaking load of revisions, pursued by directors with scourges and film cutters with razor-sharp knives…’ (p4)

Besides transposed reminiscences and mystery, there’s humour: they were looking at a huge display of coffins. ‘How come so many?’ I asked.

‘To bury all the turkeys the studio will make between now and Thanksgiving.’ (p37)

And when turning up at the Brown Derby, the maitre d’ accosts them:  ‘“Of course, you have no reservations?” he observed languidly.

“About this place?” said Roy. “Plenty.”’ (p59)

Lastly: The actor J.C. asks, ‘Was Christ manic-depressive? Like me?’

‘No,’ I said lamely, ‘not nuts. But you’re in the bowl with the almonds and the cashews…’ (p183)

When they confront ‘the Beast’, the lengthy description is poignant. ‘… a face in which two terribly liquid eyes drowned, swimming in delirium, could find no shore, no respite, no rescue… So the eyes floated, anchored in a red-hot lava of destroyed flesh, in a meltdown of genetics from which no soul, however brave, might survive. While all the while, the nostrils inhaled themselves and the wound of mouth cried Havoc, silently, and exhaled.’ (p63)

While Bradbury didn’t shy away from acknowledging the grim underbelly of the world in this book and others, yet he preserved an incorrigible innocence too, encapsulated by Constance, a faded movie star, telling him: ‘How lucky to be inside your skin, so goddamned naïve. Don’t ever change.’ (p131)  She also makes the observation, ‘That’s no hospital. It’s where great elephant ideas go to die. A graveyard for lunatics.’ (p140); hence the book’s title.

Whimsical and sometimes silly, with a plot that barely hangs together for all those depicted years, it’s still a worthy addition to the Bradbury collection, and as hinted at above there’s much to admire. However, if you’ve never read any Ray Bradbury, this is not the best place to start.

Ray Bradbury died 2012, aged 91.

Writing – market - BBC drama

The BBC’s Writersroom has opened its window for unsolicited TV and film drama script submissions. 

The window closes on 24 September 2015. UK residents only!

 

Wikipedia commons

In this link here see the sub-section ‘submission windows’

Do not submit a first draft or a work in progress. Make it the best you possibly can. This is a highly competitive market.

 

More details here

Episode series. Send the first full pilot episode of a series and a brief outline of 1-3 pages of future episodes.

Serial. Send the first episode and a brief outline of 1-3 pages of the remaining serial narrative.

Single drama. Send the complete script.

In the website’s ‘Terms and Conditions’ you will find a wealth of advice, for instance:

‘Length

‘We accept scripts that are at least 30 minutes long, which is a fair length of time to assess a writer's work – it's extremely hard to judge a writer's abilities with a view to BBC broadcast slots if their work is shorter than this… The minute-to-a-page measure of classic screenplay format is a useful rule-of-thumb, but isn't a cast iron formula as it ultimately depends on the style of the piece. Generally speaking a half-hour sitcom would come in between 30 and 35 pages, an hour-long drama between 50-70 pages, and a feature film between 70-120 pages. The best way to judge the length of your script is to time yourself reading it, allowing extra space for action. A group reading or performance is even more useful since each reader, like an actor, may deliver their lines of dialogue at different paces...

‘Script Room reading process

‘BBC Writersroom employs professional script readers to assess all the submitted scripts. They sift the scripts by reading at least the first ten pages. All eligible scripts are considered in this way. If a script doesn't sufficiently hook our attention at the sift stage, it will not be considered further... If a script hooks our reader’s attention, it will progress to the second sift where the first 20-30 pages of scripts are read by another reader. If a script is long-listed it will progress to the full read and feedback stage of the process, where a third reader reads the script and provides feedback.  The reader may then recommend that the script is shortlisted, which means that it will be read and discussed by senior members of the BBC Writersroom team and the writer will be considered for further development.’

Also in the ‘Terms and Conditions’ is a comprehensive bullet point list showing what they do not accept, so make a point of reading this too. And one of the conditions is that they only accept scripts from those resident in the UK.

The website also contains a large library of scripts to browse, so you can see how they’re formatted and how the various writers deal with narrative and dialogue.

Good luck!