It was always going to be a big ask. Writing a sit-com pilot in three days never seemed likely, especially given that those three days immediately followed the Edinburgh Fringe. But I'd written a few pages before Edinburgh and have fairly good ideas about characters (if not yet any for an opening plot), so maybe I could crack on and get something together by Friday.
Or maybe not.
I was tired and couldn't concentrate and got distracted by all the box moving and unpacking that needs to be done in the house (which in itself is a job which requires a good week or so of work). Where should everything go in the new layout? What should we throw away? Where the Hell are the pans or the tin foil or the plates? The house is of course familiar, but with massive confusing changes and I twice tripped over a new tiny step up to the bathroom that hadn't been there before and hurt my toe. By 5pm I lay down on the bed to watch some telly with my wife and I pretty much fell asleep. Not surprising given I've driven 400 miles and been working flat out for.... well it's hard to work out when I last had a real break or even a proper day off. The comedy world of Rasputin remained untapped for today, though I did catch up on my audio blogs and moved an awful lot of boxes of programmes around. Why am I keeping 20 or so boxes of What is Love, Anyway? programmes? Because I can't bear to recycle them and you never know - maybe one day I'll do these shows again. The 2003 Talking Cock programmes that I stored for nearly a decade finally made some money for SCOPE in this year's previews. Maybe one day I will do a run of old shows in a big theatre somewhere. Luckily there's loads of new cupboard space in the house, but even getting half of the boxes downstairs proved to be quite a workout.
I gave up by the evening time and we watched "Driving Miss Daisy" in bed. It's another film from the Pretty Woman era that I'd never seen before, but it wasn't a good idea given my fatigue. It's quite slow and ponderous, yet then makes massive leaps forwards in time without much actually happening (there's a chance I had fallen asleep though). It's a gentle journey through the history of American prejudice, but one so light and sentimental that it probably doesn't do the subject justice. But Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy are very likeable. I think I could have done with something with more explosions in it tonight! I might do a non-director's cut of the film where I put a few in. Plus some aliens. And a Shrek.
We also watched a bit of Parks and Recreation which hasn't yet grabbed my funny bone but which is growing on me. It's from the same team as The American Office and uses the same faux documentary technique, which I am finding a bit annoying. The spoken bits to camera don't add anything and it's clearly not a documentary because the characters say and do things that they would never do if it was going to go out on TV. I suppose you have to suspend disbelief on that, but I don't think this show (or the Office) gains very much from the cutaway interviews. Lots of people say "Parks and Recreation" is great so I am going to stick with it, but it's not quite doing it for me yet. But I always want to see what happens next so it might be growing on me. They should put a Shrek in it. I can't believe that I totally forgot to do the Shrek joke throughout the whole run of the Edinburgh Fringe podcasts. I hope to bring it back for the forthcoming Leicester Square Theatre ones (damn, I need to book those!)
I won't be turning Ra-Ra-Rasputin into a fly on the wall documentary. I might put a Shrek in it.
