Promising Young Woman

Belonging

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Here’s a thing I did not expect, wrapped up in a lot of things that I did. The lots of things I expected are all to do with how this week, last Monday in fact, there was an awards night. The 29th Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Awards.

I was expecting these lots of things because, in a small way, I’ve been working on the event for close to a year. There were no Guild awards in 2021 because of the pandemic, and this year’s took more planning and more continually changing around than usual, also because of the pandemic.

There was one part I can say was me. I just told you it was the 29th Writers’ Guild Awards. Up until this one, each annual event had been titled with the year in the name. So the last one I did anything for was the Writers’ Guild Awards 2020. Or it could’ve been called the Writers’ Guild Awards 2019 because the ceremony was in January 2020 but it was celebrating writing done chiefly in 2019, and anyway, it was pre-COVID so there’s no chance of remembering.

It was definitely a confusing name, though. It got even more confusing in the planning of this one: the first question was whether these latest awards should honour writing over the last two years, or just sod 2020 and move on. We decided to celebrate both years, to not be beaten by having had to take a year off.

But then the question was whether to call it the Writers’ Guild Awards 2020-2021 or something like that. It was me who said we should drop the years and call it the 29th Writers’ Guild Awards. Okay, I had to find out from Nick Yapp, who wrote the history of the Guild, what number it was, but I am the one who said it should be the XXth Writers’ Guild Awards.

So that’s four words, if you count the number as a word. And all through the night when those four words were on screen, I got a bit ridiculously pleased with myself. At most three other people knew I’d thought of that, and if any of the three remember all this time later, I’ll be ridiculously surprised.

Anyway. Proud of four words.

Imagine if I’d been up for any of the awards.

Other than that, though, it was just fun and a privilege being a little part of the organising group. Seeing clever people at the top of their game, it is brilliant.

So is the night. I tell you, the best evenings I’ve ever had have been at Writers’ Guild Awards and so of course I now expect them to be fantastic. Last time, I wrote dialogue for Hartley Hare. This time, I met Paul Chuckle.

What I also expect, though, is to feel flat afterwards.

Only afterwards. Never during the event itself. The sheer volumetric pressure in that room is so happy that you cannot feel flat. Well, maybe if you don’t win an award you’re nominated for. But the sense of support and even happiness from the whole room for each writer who wins, it is joyous.

I just expect now to feel flattened around a fifth of a second after I leave. There have been some years where I’ve made it an entire second, but only when I’ve walked out with someone.

Because usually I come away with a sense of how all these superb writers, every one of these people you’d like to be just as much as you’d enjoy calling friends, each one is outclassing me as a writer. I would come away with that sense of them being better than me and it is in no way helpful to know that yep, I’m right, they are.

Come on. I just met Emerald Fennell, who wrote Promising Young Woman. I haven’t even seen her film, but I’ve read the script and right there on the page, her words left me shaking. Fantastic. She won for best screenplay this year incidentally, and I was embarrassed to realise she was sitting right behind me because I punched the air and yelled “YES!” when the result was read out.

So I am in a room of the finest writers in the land, I am completely conscious of that throughout, and it does not dent the joy – until between a fifth of a second and a full second after I’ve left.

It has got so that I expect this.

But not this time.

That’s the real unexpected thing. This time, for the first time, I did not leave there thinking I was the weakest, poorest writer. If you want to make a case that I am, I will not only nod in agreement, I will add my name to your petition.

I just didn’t feel it this time.

I felt good.

I felt I’d been where I belonged.

True, I need to write better, and also write more, and I would prefer it if I were able to write something good enough to get me nominated in the XX+1 Writers’ Guild Awards.

But I’ve found a place I think I belong.

Ten favourite scripts of 2021

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I read these and didn’t have to. Wait, no, some I did: award shows are back so there were 30 or so scripts I was required to read. But other than that, so far this year I’ve read 500 scripts for fun and that number, plus it being mid-December, means I feel ready to recommend some reading to you, if I may.

Of those 500, 13 were stage plays, 20 were films, 43 were radio and a mere 424 were TV. What I can’t count or even really manage to guess is how many were written or made in 2021. I would have to say that the answer is not many at all.

This reading is done for pleasure and it’s as I find what I can. Some of the scripts are definitely new, but you also know how long it takes scripts to reach the screen so “new” can still mean a couple of years old. And then at least one script is from 30 years back.

So there’s no statistical analysis here, no rule or reason, no rhyme or plan. But I would like you to know that I found these ten to be immensely good reads. Just to avoid having any semblance of a countdown, let me split this all into the medium that the script was for.

Except for radio. There were a lot of really great radio drama scripts but only a couple that could’ve poked up into my top ten for the year –– and those were part of the judging I did so it’s awkward naming them ahead of the ceremony.

STAGE

Fleabag by Phoebe Waller-Bridge
Sweet Sorrow by Alan Plater

Neither is available online, I’m afraid. I got them from my bookshelves and you’re welcome to pop round.

I do keep a note next to each script I read, the very briefest of lines, ranging from “Okay” upwards and really only so I can look back and re-read the best ones.

Next to Fleabag, which I read on February 14, 2021, I’ve just written the word “Fantastic”. And next to Sweet Sorrow, read on November 4, it says “So good I cried.”

FILM

Promising Young Woman by Emerald Fennell

“Left me shaking,” says my note on February 1. “Wonderful.”

TV
Frasier: Dinner Party by Jeffrey Richman
The Handmaid’s Tale: Offred by Bruce Miller
Inside No 9: The 12 Days of Christine by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith
Press Gang: There are Crocodiles by Steven Moffat
The Queen’s Gambit (Episode 1) by Scott Frank
Schmigadoon! (Pilot) by Cinco Paul & Ken Daurio
Stumptown: Forget it, Dex, it’s Stumptown by Jason Richman

Looking at that list, I think I might go for The Queen’s Gambit, read March 3, as the best. All I’ve written next to it is “So good” but of all the series here, it’s the one I wish I could read the rest of.

I’m surprised to see just how wrenching some of these are. I’d have said I read a lot of comedy this year because a) I needed to 2) they’re quite short and also, er, iii?) they can be so tightly written that it’s fascinating. But apparently I also found time on February 16 for The Handmaid’s Tale which was like reading a knife.

This is the year I finally got into Inside No 9 and I did so because of the scripts. I can remember laughing so much, so very much at A Quiet Night In by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, that I felt light headed as I read it on June 4. But it’s their The 12 Days of Christine, June 6, that sticks with me for how moving it is.

Still, speaking of funny, I was elated on September 19 to find that the script to episode 1 of Schmigadoon! was online. This is a musical comedy about comedy musicals and every frame is a loving nod to a genre of movie I did not realise I knew so well.

Seriously, every frame. And every note. The very opening sound of the first episode made me smile and I can’t say I didn’t stop until the end of the last episode, but it was pretty close.

Whereas Stumptown was upsetting on June 10 – but in a different way to the rest. It is a simply excellent detective series and so much so that you realise how rare that actually is. What’s upsetting is that the pilot went to series, the series is superb, it earned a second series commission –– and was then cancelled before production could start.

It was a scheduling thing and a COVID thing, and if I don’t know the details, I know it was pretty much a tragedy. You do not get great detective shows very often.

I look at my note next to Stumptown and how it just says “Excellent”. I am so good at conveying the worth of a script, clearly.

Mind you, you should see the ones I’m not telling you about and that I never will. One had just had the words “Staggeringly shite” next to it, and that was on a pilot script for a show that then ran for years.

Clearly, I know my stuff.