Mr Simon Allen, Writer

"Do you know, Simon, the world was a much more interesting place before penicillin...."

2008-12-02T11:44:00.000-08:00

Today I spent three and a half weird, inspiring and hilarious hours in the company of the fourth Doctor!

I was 5 years old when Tom Baker fell to his Anthony Ainley-authored doom and that, coupled with the odd flash of Sapphire and Steele and the death of Adric forms the basis of my early TV memories.

It goes without saying that I never imagined I'd get to meet Tom Baker, let alone work with him but both things happened today and I feel somewhat...well....weirded out, tired and humbled...

It's always fun when you meet someone and they subvert your expectations but it's FANTASTIC when you find them to be exactly as you always imagined. I'm delighted to report that the real Tom Baker is a force of nature, a genuine charmer and a truly incredible storyteller. Although working with him in the studio was an experience in itself, the thing I will remember forever happened long after we'd finished recording.

Walking into a greasy spoon full of unsuspecting lunchtime diners with Tom Baker in search of chips, mischief and booze was quite an experience. It was almost like a surreal episode of Entourage with Tom as a stately, magisterial Vinnie Chase and us as his shameless hangers-on, riding the waves that he creates when he walks into a room.

Every gaze in the room locks onto him....

Everyone falls silent then starts whispering to each other as they try to assess whether or not he's who they think he is...

A couple of nine-year-old children start acting like 40 year-old adults - they know exactly who he is! Why's everyone in the room acting so weird? It's only the Doctor!

People in their 30s and 40s suddenly start acting like children - shy and awestruck....regressed back to 1979...

...and Tom Baker stands there, grand, majestic and yet still modest, totally aware of his effect on people and completely at ease with it...

The waitress tells him that he looks a lot like Tom Baker....

Tom Baker replies that she looks a lot like Sarah Jane...

And then we spend the rest of the afternoon with Tom holding court in the unlikeliest of places (a cafe on Hastings seafront - a bloody good one at that). We have wine, cod and chips. We were going to have ice cream too but we were all stuffed.

It was something that the five year-old me could not possibly have ever imagined.

Deep down, we're all dreamers, we all want to escape, we all want the extraordinary to intrude on our lives and we all want to turn the next corner to find that police box waiting for us.

Today, for 30 or so people in a seaside cafe, it was.

Summer Glau, me and the strange difference between two dimensional mimesis and three dimensional reality

2008-11-12T15:19:00.000-08:00

Issue 21 of Sci Fi Now features an interview with yours truly about Fables in an article called 'the Great British Fantasy'.

Fantasy's the right word because, for half a heartbeat, I got excited about the fact that technically technically TECHNICALLY there's a connection between me and Summer Glau (my favourite female Terminator played by an actress called Summer in the first two seasons of a show called Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles) but then my wife reminded me that it's really a just a connection between a publicity still reproduced on a glossy cover and some obscure text thirty odd pages on that happens to carry my name. A connection that exists only by virtue of the fact that both things are part of the same publication.

In a frank but necessary conversation, she also pointed out that the other people in the magazine have not suddenly become my friends. Apparently, just because two people might be mentioned in articles in the same publication, they don't necessarily know each other and may never actually meet in proper three dimensional life which is where we are now, you see?

In other news, my (female) co-writer and I are perilously close to finishing work on our new young adult supernatural book series which has been one of the most satisfying creative experiences I've ever had and I hope to post about in more detail soon.

In many ways this project above all others has helped me answer a key question about what I'm really interested in and the answer is: bloody all of it! I love it all! The books. The films. The TV shows. All of it! Oh and radio too but I've only ever had one idea for that medium so I'm guessing I'm not a natural fit for it.

Anyway, lots going on and what I've learned this year is that there is always something to write, even in those stray hours between the phone calls and the weeks between the meetings. Even when you're waiting on ten emails.

Best get back to it, eh?

The exhausting TV marathon is finally over!

2008-11-05T11:00:00.001-08:00

Well, like so many others in the last week, I've finally recovered from all those hours spent in front of the television screen, my gaze glued by the promise of a result so seismic in cultural and spiritual significance that it threatened to rewrite the very fabric of reality itself.

Sadly Yvette and the Most Haunted Live team failed to capture a single genuine instance of supernatural activity over their 7 nights of intense investigations in an abandoned asylum. Last week was actually the first time I'd ever watched the show and I found it weirdly compelling.

I've dealt with Antix Productions (who make Most Haunted) a couple of times in my capacity as a Film Liaison Officer and always been impressed by the slick operation while being fascinated by the eerie sincerity of the producers and how it contrasts with the 'eyes rolled, just doing this to get a break in the industry' vibe of the runners.

I ended up watching it by accident and was really impressed by the concept and the way it's executed. It's basically a lo fi, diet Ghostwatch for all the family and it's a brilliantly orchestrated four hours of live television about...well, about something that hopefully might happen and a load of stuff that people say happened but sky + immediately exposes as, well, a bit tenuous ("a sigh!", "a moan!" and "did you feel that? somebody just whacked me across the back of my head"). I kept hoping they'd throw in some genuine horror (perhaps a decapitation or two) but I can see why they don't go all Blair Witch and actually introduce some subtle special effects - that would be far too obvious. Hey, it might even pass as legitimate evidence!

The true pleasure of the show lies in the scrutiny it invites from us. It wants you to sit on the edge of your seat and scour every last pixellated corner of the frame in the hope that the glimmer of camera flash you just caught was really an 'orb' or the video shimmer of the night vision was a spirit stirring in the dark.

And the truth is - we want to look and we want to listen because so many of us want something to be there. And that's how they get you, isn't it? In many ways, Most Haunted is just a logical evolution of the sudden explosion in spiritualism that came about at the turn of the last century, accelerated and amplified through the decades by the tragedy of the two wars. If Hellish Nell was still around, Living TV would give her a chatshow.

For all my cynicism, I did really enjoy watching the show but won't be doing it again (mind you, I've said that about Big Brother every year for the last eight years!).

Oh and well done Senator Obama! I tried to stay up but fell asleep at two and then woke up for the speech and what a speech...

UPDATED AGAIN: SFX, Sci Fi Now, Sci Fi Pulse and Total Sci Fi: Humble Thanks!

2008-09-16T14:20:00.000-07:00

Dreamwatch magazine are pointing their readers to Fables of Forgotten Things in a short but lovely feature on their Total Sci Fi website (read it here). The rambling interview I did with Sci Fi Pulse is here and their original story here. You can read the interview I did for SFX here. Their original story is here. Thanks to all for showing an interest. Thanks also to the people who've left such wonderful comments about the pilot and for the emails! Fables really was a labour of love and it means a great deal to us that, despite all the odds, it's finally being seen and talked about. There's been a real flurry of interest since the film went up on BBC Film Network last week (helped no doubt by the furore surrounding the Paul Mcgann Doctor Who story - is he back? isn't he? I don't know! Hope so though!). Please do check out the interview I did with Sci Fi Now that should be in the November issue - they've got pictures and everything!

The Condition and Fables of Forgotten Things on BBC Film Network!

2008-07-17T11:50:00.000-07:00

The wind has been molesting my TV aerial so it now resembles a crooked finger belonging to the exo-skeletal corpse of a giant celestial cyborg that came here to save mankind but crashed and burned to death in our chimney before making one final, skyward grasp for help from its homeworld as it realised that mankind was beyond redemption. Honestly, that’s just what it looks like. I’ll post a picture if you’re interested. No? Oh. Really? OH. Anyway, as a consequence, I can only pick up one channel so I was just about to cancel my TV licence on the basis that Sky Three should be paying me to watch it when a piece of wondrously good news changed my mind and re-elected me mayor of a town called Hypocrite Creek (I’ve held high office there before). Following its nomination for ‘Best Film’ at the Super Shorts Festival (which was great by the way), ‘the Condition’ is going to be showcased on the BBC Film Network! Of all the great things that have happened in the last year, this is probably in the top five because I’m an absolutely massive fan of the network and many of the amazing films and music videos it features. The good news doesn’t end there though as they’ll also be showcasing Fables of Forgotten Things, the pilot film we made with Paul Mcgann that’s based on our short Fairytale of Forgotten Things! Needless to say, I’m utterly ecstatic about this one because the film hasn’t really been seen by anybody other than the handful of production companies it was sent to when we finished it. They all loved it and we got a development deal but then the pilot was (ironically/tragically) forgotten - despite the fact that it’s a film in its own right. This means that with the Magic Mile, Fairytale and the Message Storm, every film we’ve ever made has been or is on the BBC Film Network! I really have to go on the record and recommend the network to filmmakers. Although selection is by panel (so you can’t just upload a la youtube or shooting people) if you can get through, the exposure is absolutely priceless. Not only do you benefit from associating your work with the infinite majesty of the BBC brand but all kinds of people, both within the BBC and the broader industry, look at the site and see your stuff. Within six months of having our first three films on there we’d been featured on a BBC promo DVD, interviewed for an internal BBC promo video (where we inadvertently resembled a bizarre undead Pet Shop Boys tribute act with me as a zombie Neil Tennant), had the Magic Mile featured in a BBC 1 sting, exchanged around twenty seven words with Alan Yentob* and had two of the films broadcast on BBC2 because the scheduling team saw them on the site. We’re completing all the paperwork and sorting clearances so it’ll be a good month or so before the films are actually up but when they are I’ll post a celebratory story/link/typeofthingjahgetme? here! Peace out! Jahgetme? Peace out!

* the words were:

mine: hi, Alan, loved, the, speech, I’m, one, of, the, filmmakers, featured, on, your, DVD.
his: it’s, not, really, my,DVD, as, such.
mine: but, you, just, said -
his: – I, know.

Send Us What You've Got

2008-05-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

Those dreaded words.

"It's OK."

"We don't need to see anything finished."

"Just said us what you've got."

"Seriously, just send it."
As any screenwriter knows, if you're sending someone 'what you've got' then you're sending them the quality equivalent of a cop show called 'LORUM & IPSUM' about two downtown LA homicide officers whose boss Dolor is gunning for their asses for all them times they bust up the goddamm hood and made the department look like a ganga boy scouts. Actually, there could be material here. The script would probably look something like this:

INT. PRECINCT. NIGHT.

Lorum ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.

LORUM

Ipsum dolor sit amet.

IPSUM

Consectetuer adipiscing elit.

LORUM

Praesent. Muthafucka.

DOLOR

Lorum! Ipsum! Interdum felis eu pede!

Actually, what am I worried about? This rocks!