So it's the first read through of "You Can Choose Your Friends" on Wednesday and most of the casting decisions have been made and contracts are being negotiated. It's all very exciting. For the moment names must remain a closely guarded secret, but I am very happy with the people we've got so far. Getting most of them together in a room to read through my script will probably make it seem a lot more real.
Having pretty much failed to get anything done in the last three weeks and been in a bit of a dark depression about the whole thing for the last seven days, suddenly the prospect of real actors having to read out some of the rubbish that is in the film at the moment made me get on to my arse (everyone else has to get off their arse to achieve anything, but for writers it's the application of the arse to the seat that means we're doing our stuff finally) and get on with it.
Looming humiliation is the best motivator for writers and comedians and I got a fair amount done. I have til lunchtime tomorrow before the scripts are sent out and I doubt I will get the whole thing up to the standard I would like, but for the moment the first half is looking pretty good and is rocking along quite nicely now. We'll have to see how it sounds on Wednesday though before we start popping open the champagne. Still there is plenty of time to perfect it and every time I turn my attention back to it I seem to find something new to add, making it a bit more subtle and a bit more multi-layered. Fingers crossed it will be firing on all cylinders by February when we shoot it. It'll find it's way on to a TV near you in June 2007 and then you can be the judge of whether my hard work and even harder prevarication were worth it.
So I have once again from utter misery and funkification on Friday, feeling there was too much to be done to the script to make it worth starting work on, to feeling quietly confident and happy on Monday. It's the same old story and the older I get the more I am convinced I am a pathetic and shallow individual. Still there's money to be made writing scripts essentially about that pathetic shallowness. And ultimately it's probably more fun then being deep and contemplative. Perhaps if the script gets read to silence on Wednesday and all the actors pull faces at each other when they think I am not looking then I will become depressed again, but I am looking forward to working the rest of this week away, doing the reading, going to Yorkshire for a couple of gigs (including one in Pocklington where I was born - sold out alas, though there may be some tickets left in Sheffield on Wednesday) and then shutting up shop for Christmas and having some old fashioned shallow fun.
Well I am presenting the Andrew Collings show on Christmas Eve, but that's hardly work is it? Playing some records and talking? Andrew Collings has it easy, I am telling you.
But I had better enjoy my Christmas as I have a feeling that 2007 is going to a bit of a busy time for me. So watch out if you're in London in the next fortnight. I will be drinking and spewing in equal measure. I believe it is what the baby Jesus would have wanted.
