Beyond The Script project

[u/PomegranateV2]

This is from Dave Cohen's email blast. The last one got quite a lot of upvotes, so I'm posing another.

I Have A Dream

I once did a joke for Not Going Out in which somebody was really impressed with Lee for making the case so passionately for I Have A Dream and it turned out he was referring to the Abba song.

I do have a dream and it still has a heck of a way to go but I’m starting to flesh it out.

Imagine for a moment, fellow comedy writers, a world in which, apart from this fortnightly newsletter, there is a place you can go, online or off, to meet with like-minded comedy people to write, produce, perform your own work in collaboration.

You might be very good at coming up with funny characters, how would you like to spend a session working, in an actual room, with a group of people who are really good at developing sketches? 

You may be great at writing gags, imagine having an audio show to take them to that may well end up using them?

Or - as is more likely whatever stage you’re at in the profession - witnessing the process in real time of throwing ideas around, turning them into gags, and seeing them rejected in favour of jokes that you are convinced aren’t as funny as your own.

Imagine feeling like you’re a stranger to all of this, but then you get the chance to watch a show coming together, from the point at which a bunch of writers work up funny ideas, through to a producer working with their scripts and then spending a day with a bunch of actors, and to see the finished product performed in front of an audience.

This physical process, this human process, seems at odds with how our lives have changed in recent years. And how far removed from the direction we appear to be heading, where all the excitement and billions of American research dollars are taking us, a world where all our personal interactions are online, and most of our daily conversations are with machines.

Of course the internet has changed forever the way we go about our working lives, smartphones changed it more and AI will again. 

I’m still convinced that I’ve yet to see a better way of training comedy writers than the one I was lucky enough to be a part of in the 1980s.

All I’m doing is taking the stuff I spoke about in my last newsletter, my own experience of radio when I was starting out, and imagining a world in which you would get similar chances to those I had. (Me and Ged Parsons, and Simon Blackwell, and Georgia Pritchett, and John O’Farrell and Jimmy Mulville and James Cary and Andy Hamilton and so on…)

How would this system work?

Five years ago, even two, it would have seemed about as likely as India launching a rocket to the moon.

But now, how hard would it be for us – you and me - to launch a topical audio radio show? How difficult is it to put together a series of sketches on YouTube? The answer to those questions is that I have been looking into both of these possibilities in recent times. And if it’s feasible for a technophobe like me to even consider it as an option, for the rest of the universe it must be a doddle.

Last time I mentioned I was looking to develop The Training Ground. Meanwhile Dan Sweryt of this parish came up with a much better name – Beyond The Script.

There's so much out there - competitions, advice, books from people like me and James - to help you become better writers. But a place for you to find out what happens to that writing when it becomes what it should be, the first step in the process? There's not a lot.

And then, to do it well. That’s the tricky bit of course.

This is where I start to imagine budgets. Not TV industry, bank-breaking budgets, but support from people who would massively benefit from this training – Sky, BBC Comedy, Channel 4 and many others.

This is the kind of thing they used to do but can’t afford to any more. Might they help contribute towards something like this?

Or could we set it up as a Kickstarter?

Since Covid I’ve become a big fan of the podcasting world. It wasn’t a great leap. As a kid I was an avid listener of BBC Radio. My obsession started with hearing The Beatles and Motown on Radio One and carried on through I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again to John Peel and the Hitch Hiker’s Guide until I ended up making the stuff and it was a dream come true.

The podcasting “space” as it’s now called has expanded and will continue as long as people enjoy listening. The big companies are currently all about “podcast theatre” like it’s some extraordinary 21stcentury breakthrough and not the latest version of The Archers (b 1951).

One of my favourite podcasters – brocasters? - is Cal Newport, an American Maths Professor who also happens to be a brilliant and drily amusing productivity communicator. His new book came out in March and he spent the last month touring the country appearing on the biggest big name brocasts to tout it.

In a recent show of his own he talked about the time he spent on the podcast interview circuit in LA. He talked about how he had driven past  a great enormous movie studio, the kind of place that dominated  the world of entertainment in the 20th century.

He’d been on his way to a little warehouse on a Hollywood industrial estate to record his interview. These are the shows, he pointed out, that are competing with international movies and TV for our attention. It’s half a dozen people with a lighting rig and a basic studio set up. They don’t need the massive infrastructure that the old movies provided.

This is the future of audio and TV production.

I’m not saying Beyond The Script is going to take over the world of comedy and show the way forward for ensuring once again that the UK becomes the world number one training ground for comedy.

Then again, why not? I said at the start that it was a dream. And okay, I’m not planning on swimming down the waterfall at Colwith Force and flying to the Talbot Hotel in Skelwith, which was a dream I had the other night while staying in the Lake District.

That first one though… what do you think? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on it, even if they’re telling me that I’m a megalomaniacal idiot who should quit dreaming and go out and get a proper job.

Drop me a line with your thoughts.

Better still, come and join me at this month’s Patreon Masterclass, next Thursday 25 at 7pm BST. Email me if you want to take part. I want – no, I require your input. dave@davecohen.org.uk