12 May 2013
Posted in TV

An obituary by Nick Yapp

The actress and writer Anne Valery, who has recently died, was a long-time member of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain and a key player in the Guild’s unending fight to protect writers from censorship in all its forms.

Her acting career began in 1949 with modest parts in several British films, including that of Clothilde (the girl in the punt) in the Ealing Comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets. Over the next ten years she appeared in nine films and two BBC TV Series (BBC’s Sunday-Night Theatre and The Vise). As a writer, her credits included Emmerdale, Crossroads, Angels, Crown Court and, most significantly, Tenko, for which she and fellow Guild member Jill Hyem wrote the bulk of the 30 episodes.

Every decade involves the Guild in at least one battle against censorship, and a Censorship Appeals Committee became part of the Guild’s armoury from its inception in 1962. There were regular protestations from both the BBC and ITA that they were not in favour of censorship. ‘In the normal sense of the word,’ wrote Huw Wheldon (Controller, Programmes, BBC Television in the late 1960s), ‘there is no censorship in BBC Television.’ But Mary Whitehouse had her followers and her friends within the industry, and an attitude of ‘we know best’ was adopted by many producers and commissioning editors. The Guild Censorship Committee was kept busy.

Valery was Chair of the Guild Censorship Committee in the 1990s, at a time when battle was joined on the issue of quotas in the film and television industries. In an article for Writers’ Newsletter, then the Guild’s journal, Valery argued that contemporary writers for British films and television were facing a threat similar to that created by the Cinematograph Films Bill in 1937 – the Bill that led to the creation of the Screen Writers’ Association, the direct ancestor of the Guild. Failure of the British government to withstand US pressure after WW2 had resulted in an almost complete annihilation of the British film industry. Valery believed the threat had returned, some 50 years later. ‘Already,’ she wrote, ‘the US has swamped our television drama slots with programmes undercutting all others. They dominate satellite television; control BskyB and five national newspapers, provide over 90% of videos; and are taking over our publishing houses… Even radio is not immune…’ In Valery’s opinion, the only way to counter this threat was to follow the European example – the EU had recently directed member states to ensure that at least 51% of programmes transmitted by their television stations was of European origin.

Thatcher did not accept Valery’s view, and that particular battle was lost. But all of us, as members of the Guild today, are grateful to Valery for the role that she played and the work she did on the Guild’s behalf in that particular battle and on a day-by-day basis. There is no Guild Censorship Committee at the moment. It lapses from time to time, but is regularly reformed as and when it is needed. The fight goes on.

Nick Yapp is the author of the Writers' Guild official history, The Write Stuff

12 May 2013
Posted in Events

The Writers’ Guild Wales is hosting a television screenwriting event with top screenwriters and producers. Come and hear the professionals talk about how they made it in the industry and what drives them onwards and upwards. Q& A session to follow. The speakers include writers Rob Gittins, Debbie Moon and James Moran and producers Philip Trethowan (Touchpaper TV) and Nikki Wilson (BBC).

Date: 13 June3-8pm,

Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff

Admission: free to Members, £10 non-members, £10 at the door

Refreshments provided. Places limited to 50

More information and bookings: http://writersguildwales.eventbrite.com

09 May 2013
Posted in Film

By Nick Yapp

Bryan Forbes, who died on 8th May at the age of 86, was a key figure in the history of cinema for more than 30 years. With John Mills, Richard Attenborough and Kenneth More, he was one of the band of actors who refought much of WW2 on the back-lots of British film studios. He was a master of most cinematic trades – a screenwriter, director, producer and key executive, becoming Managing Director of Associated British Productions in 1969.

But he was also one of the group of screenwriters who met at 7 Harley Street in London on 13th May 1959 to create the Television and Screenwriters Guild (TSG), a forerunner of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain. With Ted Willis as Chair and Forbes as Honorary Treasurer, the Guild embarked on an ambitious programme of events to recruit members, among them a series of lectures on writing for the cinema. The lectures were held at the National Film Theatre (2 guineas/£2.10 to attend the whole series, 5 shillings/25p for each individual lecture). Forbes was in illustrious company – other lecturers in the series included the film critic Dilys Powell, the director Karel Reisz, and John Trevelyan, then Secretary of the British Board of Film Censors.

The TSG became the Screenwriters Guild in 1961, with Forbes continuing as Treasurer. The early Sixties were dubbed the years of 'Fun and Aggro' by members of the Guild, but times were financially hard. Forbes was a man of vision with high hopes for the Guild’s future. 'We should aim for a staff of at least ten,' Forbes told Guild members, 'so that you can have the sort of service you expect.; That dream has yet to come true, but Forbes worked tirelessly to strengthen the Guild’s financial position, repeating over and over again his mantra: 'We must find more money from somewhere.'

His most ambitious plan, and one that still sets the adrenalin going at the thought of ‘what if it had come true’, was presented to the Guild in 1969. EMI had just bought Associated British from Warner Brothers and had put Forbes in charge. He took his work seriously and was incredibly conscientious about scripts submitted to him, reading up to ten scripts a day even though he found on average that 80% of them were unusable.

To quote from The Write Stuff (the history of the Writers' Guild):

'What Forbes wanted were ideas for low budget, original, comedy films which didn’t fall into the "dreaded mid-Atlantic category". He welcomed unsolicited material, and asked "everybody to believe that every single submission" would be considered. Those writers who showed promise he directed to the Guild, and his great ambition was to make Elstree a Guild studio.'

With Carl Foreman, who had succeeded Willis as President of the Guild, what Forbes hoped to achieve was a Guild shop within the entire British Film Industry, along the lines of what the WGA had set up in the United States. It never happened – well, it hasn’t happened yet – but the 1960s were in many ways a Golden Age for the Guild. The prestigious series of Annual Awards Dinners held at the Dorchester Hotel from 1961 to 1970 helped raise the profile of the Guild to an enormous extent. And it was fitting that in 1962 the first ever Best British Comedy Screenplay Award went to Forbes for Only Two Can Play – a screenplay that was also nominated for a BAFTA that year. From 1971, when he resigned from Associated British, Forbes divided his time between the UK and the USA. The Guild lived on, in no small part thanks to the pioneering work that Bryan Forbes had put in from its earliest days.

If such titles existed as ‘Hero of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain’, that awarded to Forbes would have been First Class.

Nick Yapp is author of The Write Stuff, the history of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain

09 May 2013
Posted in Film

Tributes paid to writer and director who was prominent member of the Writers' Guild

 

(A photo taken at Bryan Forbes's home in Virginia Water - complete with blue plaque in his honour - in the summer of 1997. From left: his daughter Emma Forbes, grand-daughter Lily, Bryan Forbes, Alison V Gray (former General Secretary of the Guild), Alan Drury (former co-Chair of the Guild), Rosemary Anne Sisson (former Chair and President of the Guild)

The writer and director Bryan Forbes has died at the age of 86.

As well as being a noted screenwriter of films such as The League Of Gentleman and King Rat, and directing films including The L-Shaped Room, Forbes also wrote books, acted and was a  founder-member of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain (WGGB).

Forbes was Treasurer of Screenwriters' Guild (the forerunner to the WGGB) from 1959-1962 and President of the WGGB from 1988-1991. He won Guild awards in 1962 for Only Two Can Play and in 1964 for Seance on a Wet Afternoon

Paying tribute to Bryan Forbes, Writers' Guild General Secretary, Bernie Corbett, commented:

'Bryan Forbes was one of the pioneers who set up the Writers’ Guild. He may be remembered now mostly as a great director and film executive, but at heart he was a writer and he never forgot the vital role of the writer. He was on the writer’s side. If film and TV writers now enjoy fair contracts, good fees and royalties and residuals, and proper recognition in their industry, that is the legacy of Forbes and his trailblazing colleagues, and that is why we will never forget Bryan.'

03 May 2013
Posted in Events

Cheryl Taylor, Controller of CBBC, in conversation with award-winning children’s TV writers Debbie Moon and Jonathan Wolfman.

A Writers' Guild event, Friday, 14 June, 2013 from 7:30pm, Blue Orange Theatre, Birmingham

Our panel will discuss the state of the children’s TV industry, and explore opportunities for children’s writers within the BBC and beyond.

Tickets are free to Writers' Guild members and £5 for non-members. To reserve your place visit the event booking page.

Cheryl Taylor (pictured, above), Controller of CBBC Channel, worked her way to a Commissioner’s role at Channel Four via stints in Comic Relief and BBC Entertainment. At Channel Four she commissioned Spaced and Black Books as well as the first Derren Brown extravaganza in 2000. After a spell as Head of Comedy at Hat Trick Productions she returned to the BBC Comedy Department overseeing award-winning shows such as Gavin and Stacey, The Royle Family and A Matter Of Loaf And Death. Cheryl became BBC Comedy Controller in 2009 and commissioned shows including Citizen Khan, Mrs Brown, Twenty Twelve, Cuckoo, Watson and Oliver, Hebburn and Bad Education. She was appointed Controller CBBC Channel in 2012.

Debbie Moon is a film and television writer living in mid-Wales. She has had over fifty short stories published, and her novel, Falling (Honno Press) was shortlisted for Welsh Book Of The Year. She has written for CBBC's The Sparticle Mystery, and is the creator and lead writer of the RTS-award-winning CBBC fantasy drama series Wolfblood. She also has a couple of feature scripts, and a supernatural drama series, in development.

Jonathan Wolfman came to CBBC from the independent sector to script edit series one of Tracy Beaker Returns and stayed with CBBC in-house drama to script edit the next two series, as well as The Dumping Ground series one, Wolfblood series one and two. He has also overseen scripts for the animation series Pet Squad.

To reserve your place visit the event booking page.

26 April 2013
Posted in Theatre

Theatre Centre invites applications to its two key prizes, the Brian Way Award for Best New Play and the Adrienne Benham Award.

Brian Way Award 2013

Prize: £6,000

Deadline: 31 May 2013 at 12 noon

To promote and celebrate the achievements of playwrights who write for young audiences, Theatre Centre runs the Brian Way Award for the best new play for children and young people.

The prize money is intended to give the winner the time and space to develop a new play without the pressure of deadlines or a commissioning brief.

This year’s award is for a new play which was professionally produced between 1 October 2011 and 31 January 2013. The winner of the award will be expected to undertake an ambassadorial role for Theatre Centre.

Applications may come from the writer, the writer’s representative or the producing company.

Adrienne Benham Award 2013

Prize: £2,000 seed commission and attachment

Deadline: 7 June 2013 at 12 noon

Theatre Centre offers the Adrienne Benham Award, a £2,000 seed commission, to support the work of a promising playwright interested in exploring the Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) sector to develop brilliant new plays for young people, but who has little experience in this field.

This award is intended to steer gifted writers towards young audiences by giving them a seed commission and attachment to Theatre Centre to develop an original idea for young audiences.

Applications may come from the writer or the writer’s representative. <>pFull details on both awards: http://www.theatre-centre.co.uk/events/awards/

23 April 2013
Posted in Film

Richard Bevan on a significant new independent force in British film

With public funding of British movies now mainly in the hands of the BFI, Creative England and regional screen outlets it is encouraging to see a new major independent player on the scene: Cascade Pictures. They are aiming to think big with cinematic features in a broad range of genres. Through its Cascade Media Development arm it intends to make films with medium-to-high-budget British movies for a broad range of different markets.

‘Cascade Writers’ Couch’ recently hosted an event at the 6th BFI Future Film Festival in association with the Met Film School. The event focused on the development process for producers and after a brief presentation, eight producers pitched their projects to a panel that included Cascade’s Sam Cheetham, actress Joanne Froggatt (Emmy-award winner for Downton Abbey), Chris Simon (founder and producer at Embargo Films), and Anthony Alleyne (Writer/director and tutor at the Met Film School).

I spoke with the company’s founders Cora Palfrey, Daniel Campos Pavoncelli and Development Consultant of Cascade’s Writers' Couch initiative Sam Cheetham about the organisation’s ambitions.

How did the organisation come about and what are its aims?

Daniel: Mark Fisher who was the Chief Financier of the Icon UK group set up the Cascade group last year. We manage a fund of £40m which we can invest to financially package films. We also have a money chest around £150,000 through Cascade Development to exclusively develop material, whether that’s to option books, scripts or partner up with producers who already have a script. In that instance we can come on board and help develop new drafts and polish up the project and then hopefully everything we develop will be financed by Cascade Pictures.

19 April 2013
Posted in Events

The latest literary event from the Writers' Guild - 20 May

Join literary polymath Stella Duffy for a morning of readings and discussion followed by a delicious two-course meal in Black's private members club. 

13 April 2013
Posted in Theatre

Leading writers back campaign against theatre funding cuts

Over 60 of the UK's best-known writers and other theatrical professionals – including Sir Tom Stoppard, Michael Frayn, Caryl Churchill, Mike Leigh, Sir Richard Eyre and Vicky Featherstone – have signed an open letter to Culture Minister Ed Vaizey, urging him to take seriously a recent report into the threat to new British playwriting posed by the Government's latest round of spending cuts. 

The independent report, In Battalions, researched and written by playwright and Writers' Guild member Fin Kennedy, with support from Oxford University's Helen Campbell Pickford, drew on data from surveys sent to theatres across the country. The results showed venues having to cancel productions, produce fewer new plays, commission fewer writers, and cancel a whole host of creative research and development – from attachment programmes, to open access workshops, to new writer development schemes, to unsolicited script reading. 

As well as cuts closing down entry points to the profession, the report also identified a creeping culture of risk-aversion around new work, as financial instability takes hold. 

Theatre professionals contributing to the report voiced serious concerns about the diminishing opportunities for today's young playwrights to develop their talents and stressed the importance of theatre as the training ground for the TV, radio and film industries. All stand to lose a generation of talent, with writers from less privileged backgrounds particularly badly hit. 

The report was sent to Ed Vaizey's office on 12 February 2013  but its authors have yet to receive a response. 

The open letter to Mr Vaizey expresses disappointment with the Minister's public remarks, in particular a recent speech in which he said that to suggest there is any sort of crisis in the arts is 'rubbish' and 'scaremongering'. 

The letter reads: 'We believe the findings of In Battalions are to be taken seriously. They are representative of a wider trend within our industry. If the next generation of playwrights are not properly supported, this could seriously affect output in a few years’ time, and new plays are vital to the future health of British theatre – not to mention a driver of growth in the economy.'

Fin Kennedy, the report's author said: 'Ed Vaizey and the DCMS have had my report now for two months. That's as long as my researcher and I took to research and write it. We took the project on in our own time in good faith, and in response to comments made to me by Mr Vaizey himself, that Arts Council cuts were having "no effect". He offered to look over any evidence to the contrary, and even to raise it with the Arts Council if I could show there was a problem. I believe we have showed there's a problem, but Mr Vaizey seems unwilling to accept the evidence we have sent him. In an email to one concerned young writer he said: "There is no evidence of any impact on new writing." Anyone who's read my report will see that that's demonstrably untrue. We're still really keen to engage with Mr Vaizey about our ideas for how to fix this problem - he's our Culture Minister after all - but we really do need him to take this issue seriously and to engage with us, as he promised he would.'

The open letter calls on Mr Vaizey to undertake his own research, ending: 'If [your] response is still that there is "no evidence” then we would ask that you provide evidence of your own, which backs up your position as thoroughly as the In Battalions authors have backed up theirs.' 

28 March 2013
Posted in Books and Poetry

Review of Public Lending Right Scheme results in few changes

After two years of dithering and a desultory consultation process, the Government has finally decided the fate of the Public Lending Right scheme – it will cease to be an independent agency and come under the wing of the British Library, but the office and staff in Stockton-on-Tees will carry on as before.

PLR – which pays authors 6p each time one of their books is borrowed from a public library – was an unfortunate victim of the incoming coalition government’s 'bonfire of the quangos' (which also cooked the goose of the UK Film Council, only to transfer most of its functions to the British Film Institute).

PLR Registrar Jim Parker welcomed the announcement: 'The Government realises staff here do a great job and we have had tremendous support from authors from all over the UK.' In fact the overwhelming outcome of the consultation was opposition to any change at all.

According to Culture Minister Ed Vaizey, authors should notice no change to PLR. He claimed that transferring management to the British Library will save £750,000 over 10 years.

Writers’ Guild general secretary Bernie Corbett commented: 'This whole affair has been an unnecessary charade, wasting the time and resources of authors’ organisations and the government to achieve a purely cosmetic change and a saving too small to be measurable – all for the sake of one headline over two years ago.

'In the meantime the government has done precisely nothing to extend the PLR scheme to ebooks and audiobooks, as legislated by the previous government just before the 2010 general election.'

For more information see www.plr.uk.com/allaboutplr/news/whatsNew.htm and www.gov.uk/government/news/ed-vaizey-announces-transfer-of-authors-public-lending-right-to-british-library

22 March 2013
Posted in General

Writers' Guild AGM will be on Friday 14 June

This is the time of year for Writers’ Guild members to think about motions to change the policies or rules of the union, or to put themselves forward as officers or members of the Executive Council.

There is a record number of EC vacancies to be filled this summer, both for national/regional seats and craft sector representatives, so we are hoping to see plenty of new blood coming forward. Please consider seriously whether you could contribute to the Guild in this way.

Details of the vacancies, application forms and instructions for proposing motions can be downloaded below. If you would prefer to have paper copies please contact the Guild office.

The closing date for the receipt of Officer and EC nominations is Thursday 9 May 2013 and the closing date for the receipt of AGM motions is Tuesday 14 May 2013.

The Annual General Meeting of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain will take place in London on Friday 14 June 2013. The full details are in the Notice of Meeting and Preliminary Agenda, which can also be downloaded from our website. The Final Agenda, Annual Report and Accounts will be made available shortly before the AGM, in accordance with the rules of the Guild.

Documents

Nomination forms for EC vacancies

Letter of notice re Writers' Guild AGM - includes provisional agenda and instructions for proposing motions

19 March 2013
Posted in Film

Gavin Grant explains how he took conflict resolution from the office to the screen, and won a Scottish BAFTA New Talent nomination for The State of Greenock

(Photo: Gavin Grant with actor Rowan King filming on location)

There is an acronym in corporate-lingo-jargon known as the BATNA. The letters stand for the ‘Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement’. The theory goes that whichever side in a negotiation has the better BATNA, is therefore in the stronger negotiating position, as they are less likely to settle for an unsatisfactory (albeit fully negotiated) agreement. When I first heard about the BATNA, I was a solicitor who wanted to be a screenwriter. My goal was to somehow negotiate my way to becoming a full-time, paid, screenwriter – even though I naturally assumed this was a totally unrealistic dream. In trying to maintain a level head about my career, I knew I had to work out the best alternative that would make me happy. What was my BATNA?

Back in 2009, I wrote an article for a Scottish legal magazine as part of a feature called ‘Films in Focus’, in which lawyers were asked to reveal their favourite film about the law. When I heard the magazine was running the feature, I remember being very keen to write something – anything – just to get the chance to talk about films and filmmaking. I wanted to avoid the courtroom drama and the predictable Grisham adaptation, so I plumped for the crime thriller Dirty Harry. And I got completely carried away. I effectively wrote a mini academic essay on the right-wing attitudes and ‘rule of law’ themes underpinning the film. Oops. I have always loved movies.

At that time, I was working as a solicitor with Shepherd and Wedderburn LLP. Outside of work, I had developed a growing interest in screenwriting and was attending evening classes at the University of Edinburgh. I became mildly addicted to books about the art and craft of screenwriting. I was learning about the film and TV industry, but, more importantly, I had started writing scripts.