Anyone for a screenplay?

Oh come on! Everyone on the planet has thought ‘That would make a good film.’  Something they’ve heard, something they’ve experienced, something they’ve made up, or dreamed. And the thought flashes through the brain: Yep, you can just see it on the big screen.

The moment passes. Aren’t there a billion screenplays out there already? What are the chances? You know 99.9% of those scripts won’t get made. It was a pipedream. Go and do the washing up.

The odds against getting a book accepted by a publisher aren’t much worse. But nowadays you can self-publish. The stigma of the ‘vanity press’ is a thing of the past. Thousands—hundreds of thousands—of people do very well writing and publishing their own books, sometimes with the help of ghostwriters like us.

Producing a well-written book is very affordable. Making your own film is hardly an option (though every now and then someone gets their smartphone out and puts something together which breaks through to a wider audience). But once we’re talking about something that takes a year or two to make and runs for two hours on Netflix, the costs soar out of reach. We’re talking millions of dollars. So we’re back to the land of daydreams. Forget it.

But what if you can’t or won’t? What about all those tales of people getting lucky, getting their idea picked up by the right person?

It does happen. Who remembers the man who thought up Shakespeare in Love? The original script wasn’t up to much, but the idea was brilliant. And after Tom Stoppard had been brought in, the screenplay became brilliant too!

An agent friend of mine was sent the first three chapters of the novel which became Slumdog Millionaire. He got in touch with the author straight away. ‘Send me the rest of it,’ he said. ‘I haven’t written the rest of it,’ came the reply. ‘Well, do,’ my friend told him. The rest, as they say, is cinema history.

So it can happen. And I’m going to tell you another story to underline that fact.

Early in 2023 a very good friend—and fellow writer—asked me for a favour. He’d had dealings with someone we’re going to call Paul. Paul is a middle-aged, middle-class guy, one of millions of ordinary men doing pretty well, living in a nice house, with a family, etc. But suddenly he started talking about a thing he’d done when he was eighteen and wondered whether my friend would help him tell his story.

My friend didn’t fancy it, so he asked me whether I would be interested. I said I’d have a look and a few days later received two and a half pages of bullet points. Extraordinary bullet points. It would indeed be an amazing story. Paul and I spoke on the phone. That first phone call is crucial, and as a ghostwriter you get pretty good at identifying the time-wasters, the fantasists, who are going to prove difficult. Paul passed the test and we agreed to meet.

I lived in Hull; Paul lived in Sussex. We met in Oxfordshire.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘What do you want to do?’ He didn’t know what he wanted to do. I reeled off the possibilities—a book, a radio programme, a documentary; even a podcast. Or maybe a Hollywood blockbuster?

‘Let’s do that,’ he said. We shook on it and got back into our cars to drive home.

In those days I was driving an ancient BMW, which I adored. It not only drove like a dream, but it had a wonderful sound system (my two previous cars had both had cassette players). I love driving to really loud music and had recently caught up with The Killers. A wonderful driving band.

As I got onto the motorway and put my foot down, the thought crossed my mind that I had never written a film script of any kind, let alone a blockbuster. I had, however, been writing novels, plays for stage and radio, biographies and memoirs all my adult life. A film is only a different way of telling a story.

Egged on by the waterfalls of exuberant can-do smash hits, I decided to get started.

What Paul had done as an eighteen-year-old was astonishing: brave, generous, laudable, almost unbelievable. It would indeed have made a good book or an interesting documentary. But it didn’t have the twists and turns, the jeopardy needed for a gripping story. That’s what I concocted over the next two or three hours. I invented a villain, I mapped out a terrifying mission, I worked on a simply stunning finale. And when I reached Lincoln I stopped at a rather dismal Tesco, just before it closed, and bought what I needed: a half bottle of champagne.

Once home, on the other side of the Humber Bridge, I put the bottle in the freezer for twenty minutes and then toasted our inevitable Oscar. I thought Paul should give the acceptance speech.

I started writing the screenplay first thing in the morning.

Three years and fifteen (is it?) versions of the script later, we have now found a young director who loves it. He has just released his own first film to general approval. This is a single-location, small-cast film, which is beautiful, puzzling and gripping. It’s a brilliant start to what will be a brilliant career.

Paul’s blockbuster is a big step up. Any film with more than four camels in it has to be an epic. Ours is an epic. Our director has the confidence to take it on and aims to start filming in Scotland and Morocco (pretending to be somewhere else—sand is sand) next year. Paul has secured £50k in development money, and everybody seems assured that we will raise the remaining £5m we need to complete the project.

There’s no guarantee that we will, but I hope this true story will give those of you with a nagging ambition to get your film made—against all the odds—sufficient inspiration to keep faith with your dream. And, of course, should you decide you need a bit of help, it is fair to say that United Ghostwriters now offer help with screen amidst all the other things we do!