This is a very long story and anyone reading who is interested in a career in scriptwriting or filmmaking in the UK might not like a lot of what they read here.
I wrote the original draft of Sober – the movie in 1998. Yes, 1998. Its only just got made in 2023 – when me and the two lead actors self- financed it.
At the time I wrote the script, I was in my early twenties and had already some success as a scriptwriter (even though I was incredibly young). I’d had a short film made and shown on CH4 – the short film starred Ewan McGregor in an early role and was directed by a chap called Justin Chadwick – who would go on to direct some big-ish Hollywood costume dramas and Idris Elba in The Long Walk to Freedom.
The short film (you can see it here) was made as part of a big competition – sponsored by Lloyds Bank – and it got loads of publicity and the full weight of CH4 and Lloyds Bank behind it. The entire process was made into a documentary (which you can watch here), and I got a very quick education about TV and film (some of these lessons still resonate today).
I’d also sold a screenplay to the now quite rightfully disgraced Miramax when they appeared in the UK in the 1990s.
Despite all this early success, there wasn’t a great deal of money in scriptwriting (Miramax paid me £5k for the option on my feature film script) I’d left school at 16 and worked in retail for three years – when I came to write Sober I was working as a picker and despatch guy at the Burton’s Warehouse in Leeds on Hudson Road.
Sober – the movie
Picking and packing clothes for the (now sadly disappeared) Burton’s group was a very physical job, which is great when you’re 21, and I worked alongside some great people – many young, about my age. The job back then was paid weekly! And I always seemed to have some cash in my pocket. I loved working there – and used the three days off we got a week to continue to write scripts. I look back on my two years working at Burton’s fondly.
Sober was one the scripts I wrote while working at Burtons– and it was based partially on a true story – someone I knows wife’s gave birth – and he went for a pint before visiting the hospital – one pint turned to ten and when he finally visited his wife and son – he was very, very drunk.
I took that basic story – and built a feature film script out of it.
The initial idea was to shoot the script myself – do something like Kevin Smith did with Clerks. Even back then in 1998 – I didn’t really want to be a screenwriter I wanted to direct. I thought writing scripts was a way to get into directing.
I entered the finished script (written over six months – and revised over two or three drafts) into UK screenwriting competition – called the Oscar Moore Script Prize.
Oscar Moore was a Guardian journalist and a film fan, when he died a group of friends set up a bursary to help UK scriptwriters get films made – the first year of the competition the genre was ‘Comedy’ and I entered Sober.
The script won the prize – and I was told that judges Duncan Kenworthy (Four Weddings and a Funeral) and Andrew Macdonald (Trainspotting) liked the script enough they would consider making it.
Sober – comedy film set in Leeds
I approached my pal Justin Chadwick and let him read the script – at the time Justin was directing EastEnders, but was considered a young up coming filmmaker to watch. Justin got together two producers with excellent track records and we approached Duncan and Andrew – who set up a meeting and agreed to option the script with a view to making it on video – and on a low budget – which funnily enough was my plan when I first wrote the script BUT – Duncan and Andrew’s idea of a low budget was half a million quid – provided by their backers Universal Pictures (I was planning to shoot it for five grand).
During this time, I landed my first literary agent – and very quickly I found myself writing episode after episode of the Yorkshire TV soap opera Emmerdale.
Writing Emmerdale was wonderful experience – I was the youngest writer they’d ever had – and the money was phenomenal.
Sober the film, rumbled on in the background – Universal dropped the project (too risky) and the script was shopped around every UK producer and production company we could think of – until, it all just fizzled out.
I did various rewrites and rejigs over the years of the same story (even a novel version appeared briefly – written by myself and I’m no novelist).
But – my TV script writing career went from strength to strength – with Sober – as my calling card script opening doors everywhere – I ended up on Family Affairs for Ch5 (anther soap opera which eventually was cancelled) as well as rocking up at EastEnders at the time Alfie and Kat where winning the hearts of the nation (I did a year on Eastenders and mostly wrote Kat and Alfie stuff). I finally landed on Hollyoaks in 2006 / 2007 – just in time to revamp the show (and triple its viewing figures).
Sober remained loved but unmade. And as the years progressed so did other attempts to get a feature film script made:
My own unmade feature film scripts to date are many – over the past two decades I’ve written ten or so original and still unmade feature film scripts (that isn’t counting projects producers have paid me to write) and with each new original script I often, went through a similar process to Sober – initial interest – some actually getting quite close to production- before (just like Sober) everything falls apart.
Over the years I’ve worked as an uncredited writer and script consultant on various feature films on both sides of the Atlantic, and as a script writer for hire – and some of these projects have got made – but in most instances – the finance to get these films made was provided by the family of the director (having a rich mum or dad is the only way to get a film made in the UK – Guy Richie – Chris Nolan – Jon Baird – their parents provided the budgets for their first films). Unlike Guy Richie, my dad wasn’t richer than the Royal Family – so I came unstuck.
The UK film industry – is very busy – but that’s the production arm. Making US studio films in our studios and our countryside and cities – thanks to tax cuts to US producers – the UK film industry gives tax cuts totalling £500m per year to the Americans – while spend on the UK film business is less than £80m per year (divided between usually around 60 legit films – giving them TV level budgets of £2m each in most cases) One recent Avengers film shot in the UK – received more in tax breaks than the ENTIRE UK film business did for the whole year.
We used to have CH4 and BBC films making really good indigenous films back in the 80s and 90s – but like the great BBC drama department that came before it – all that money, and all that talent and ambition has gone from the UK film business – all we make now are low budget TV movies. We haven’t had a proper functioning indigenous film business for decades now.
And that’s where I found myself – bored of working in the trenches of UK TV – and unable to get a film made in a UK film business that didn’t really exist anymore.
And then something happened. It was called WEB 2.0. It was technology. And it was going to change EVERYTHING….
See part two for the continuing tale…
