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What a ‘pity’

Why do we write comedy? To make people laugh. Michael Bentine*** once described laughter as ‘White Magic.’

Why fall in love with a woman you shouldn’t?

Current Project
Writing sketches, around ‘Speed-Dating,’ to be used in a film project with another writer, Andrew Ludlam. The idea is to come up with around 20 minutes of comedy material, to be filmed and sent to producers and agents. We could also offer it to dating Web sites. I’d invent a workshop/audition and we’d pick the performers for a shoot early next year.

Why do we write comedy? How many times do I have to tell you, to make people laugh. OK where do ideas come from? If I hear another writer say from a shop around the corner I’ll set my own cliché on him/her/it/Ben Elton. If you want to write you teach yourself to make ideas happen. How do I do that then? Ask yourself one question ‘What if?’ And off you will go.*

Press Option 1 to hear Option 2. Press star at any time…
It’s funny (the ha ha way) that an emotional experience can lead to something you enjoy writing. The experience for me was an hour or more sitting next to a woman I have such a rapport with and just enjoying being present in her company. Her hair, her laugh, her spirit, and my guilty joy. So that experience came to nothing in the real world and it will gnaw at me for at least another two life times. Anyway. My imagination kicked off around not being able to express myself, what might have been, and how we have become used to being given options.

Everything in the modern life is broken down into a ‘process’ and not experience, or feeling, or instinct. I imagined a couple meeting, at a speed-dating event, and only able to express their mutual attraction through the ruse of pretending to speak to each other on the phone. He is the emotional support person. [www.dreamdrill.com/scratchpad.htm]** She is the sensible vital woman of his dreams. It’s a bit like how can you tell when an English man is being emotionally serious? He puts on a funny voice “I was only joking when I said I love you. HaHa”

Today
Optimism level: high (up)
Work under consideration: 3 (up)
Love interest: 2 (down)
Love for someone: ‘All you good, good, people…****’



*I’d also suggest reading some Edward de Bono (don’t take it too seriously and don’t read them all) and those creative ideas books that pop up at airports (A Whack on the Side of the Head – Roger Von Oech is also a good place to gather some tools).

If someone asks you for an idea. Give them twenty. You’ll start well, get silly, come out the other side, go back to really banal, and end up with something useful and unique. Now repeat eight hundred and four times.

**If the link breaks mail jim ‘at’ dreamdrill.com (replace ‘at’ with the @ symbol)

***One of the original Goons, funny, sane, a lover of people

**** By Embrace