Thursday 22 November 2012

".....I'm remembering Fables of Forgotten Things."

Paul McGann as "Clarence" and Louise Dumayne as "Eldritch" in "Fables of Forgotten Things"

Four years ago, a little pilot that we shot for very little money and in very little time finally made a public appearance in the graveyard slot on BBC HD.

A LOT has happened since then. I've put on even more weight, quit smoking, started smoking, quit again, worked on all kinds of shows with much bigger...well, with budgets, and I've evolved from a baby writer into an adolescent. Or at least a toddler who knows a couple of swearwords.

I look back at "Fables of Forgotten Things" and see a million things I'd do differently - even when you take the constraints we were under into account. It's too slow. No, really. It's sloooooooowww x 1,000,000. It relies on voiceover which = SATANISM. Some of the dialogue clunks like Marley's chain. And there are evident traces of the trauma I suffered as a four year-old when I caught ten minutes of that Sapphire and Steele episode about the blank-faced man in the top hat:

Would you follow this man in the dead of night?
But I'm still astonished and inspired by what its brilliant director was able to achieve in just four days at one location. I can't believe how kind, generous and gracious our lead Paul McGann was throughout filming. I'm thrilled to have been part of a project that still feels so dark and distinctive. I'm dead bloody proud of the last four lines of dialogue. And there's something about the tone of the whole piece that's truthful to who I am, how I feel and what I want from all this. Truthfulness is, I think, the most precious quality in all stories.

While it's still available (and while the site still exists!), please take the time to check out Fables of Forgotten Things on the soon-to-be-gone BBC Film Network.