No Christmas break from writing

Hello,
The day after tomorrow I'll be heading back to London for Christmas at my parents, but the writing doesn't end. They'll be more articles coming up and my http://yarwoodsfictionalworld.blogspot.com blog page has parts of a book I have written on it.

Well, Hope all you bloggers have a good christmas,

Mark Yarwood

Dead Men Don't Laugh

‘Because it seemed like a good idea at the time,’ Simon Dunn says, when asked why he started to perform stand up. ‘It was really an extension of my comedy writing, in that I wanted something more tangible than ratings. So what if four million people laughed at a sketch I wrote, I didn’t hear them. Stand up seemed like a better way of gauging how funny my writing can be.’

Simon lives in Bristol, where the BBC film a lot of their stuff, like Only Fools And Horses, but he has to travel the country in his car to go to gigs for one night and travel back later that same night. He’s lucky in the fact that he has friends spread out through the country, friendships that he made at University in Plymouth.

‘Any gig, anywhere, any time. That should be my motto, but I like sleeping in my bed too much.’ Simon drinks a steaming cup of coffee as he sits at his computer, where he does most of his writing. ‘There was the gig I did in a college cafeteria at midday, to sixteen year olds, as dinner ladies wandered across the stage. And there was a gig in the middle of a field in a hippy commune which was quite an experience too. It had a fully flushing porcelain toilet inside a tree, and cupboards in the hedges made of old washing machines. They didn’t really think I was funny, because these hippies had Vauxhall Corsas and took too much cocaine.’

For Simon substance abuse doesn’t seem to be a problem, and neither does alcohol, as he stopped drinking in his second year at University and has never looked back. For some, it seems, drinking vast amounts of alcohol comes as second nature when they’re about to step on to a stage, but not for this stand up comic. ‘The rush of a big laugh is much better than any hangover inducing vodka binge. I don’t miss drink at all, and there are more than a few comedians who don’t drink either. I think you’re always worried that being drunk will affect your performance and if you have a good one drunk, you might kid yourself alcohol makes you funny. It invariably doesn’t.’

It all started at University in Plymouth, where he would sit in the shared kitchen in the flat that he rented. Hunched over a laptop, with endless cups of coffee in his hands, he would write comedy sketches that he would send off to production companies with the hope of selling some. When asks about his eventual success, he says, ‘This is a terribly dull story. When I was in my final year at University, I wrote some sketches at Christmas, and not quite knowing what to do with them, I sent them off to two production companies. One of them sent them back unread, and a reader at the second one…well, read them. The same week she was promoted to be assistant producer on a show in development, and she was asked if she’d read any good stuff recently. She remembered me. They asked me in for a chat, told me about the show and asked me to write some ideas up. They liked those and commissioned me for the first series of what became Smack The Pony.’

But did he meet any famous people? ‘Yes. The cast. But they weren’t famous yet. And Orlando Bloom, but he wasn’t famous yet either.’

There is a club in Plymouth called Fandangos, which is situated along a parade of hotels, and is tucked underneath one of them. You go down some steps and end up faced with an attractive woman in a booth and pay her six pounds to enter. If you’re lucky, some of the stand ups will be buying drinks at the bar before they go on. These are the nights when Fandangos put on comedy nights, packing the place and you’ll be lucky if you’ll get a seat. Surely this is some kind of fire hazard.

Join the fandangos mailing list and you’ll get all the up and coming gigs reported to you.

On this particular night, waiting to go on stage is Simon and his friend Will Hodgson, who won the Perrier best newcomer at Edinburgh. Some of these guys are new to the game and it can’t be easy for them to stand in front of a crowd, especially like this night, when a large group of young men are intent on heckling everyone who gets up in front of the mike. This is when you have to be prepared. If you start off well they might listen, otherwise you get told to fuck off.

Simon must see plenty of bad acts, surely? ‘Far too many too count. Even established acts are bad. When you see lots of comedy, you get quite snobbish about it all, and that’s why it’s so great to see someone truly original or unique like Will Hodgson or Andrew Lawrence.’

Simon sits across from Will Hodgson and tonight’s compare, sipping his coffee and staring up at the television monitor in the corner that shows a bright colour image of the stage. Nobody can help but stare at the empty stage and the solitary mike standing there. Will Hodgson, with his pink Mohican, sits and watches a DVD on his Laptop. It’s a DVD made of the best bits of Neighbours, the soap opera. They all seem calm, and sit chatting about stuff while watch the audience pile through and sit on the plastic seat arranged for them by the club owner.

The compare goes on and immediately the audience members at the front don’t like him. The compare, who apparently is training to be a teacher, gives them that ‘I’m waiting’ look and tries to struggle on. With Simon it’s a different story. Somehow the audience sit and take notice, probably because he got them laughing straight away, with his mixture of the bizarre and plain observations of life. At one point he starts talking about the Statue of Liberty having enormous erect nipples. The audience laugh loudly.

The compare continues to get grief of the audience and anyone can see him beginning to sweat. Some lads tell, not very politely, to leave the stage. You have to wonder if Simon has seen any violence. ‘I’ve seen threats of violence, but no actual physical fisticuffs. I got threatened in the neck with a sword once, but that was in jest.’

Any fans? Simon thinks for a moment, and then says, ‘I’ve no idea. It’s enough trying to make the audience in front of you laugh, without having to worry about things like fans.’

So, why stand up in front of a live audience? ‘It’s an unfortunate side effect of wanting to be a stand up comedian. Dead audiences are notoriously difficult to entertain.’

A couple of days later, while using MSN messenger, Simon says, ‘Did a good gig last night to eight people. Well, it was a hundred miles away in a market town pub.’

The MSN messenger says Simon is typing a message: ‘We broke down on the way up there, but not for long. Got there and it turns out there was a pool competition being played at the other end of the pub. There were only eight people in the audience and they were mates of the compare. It went very well. In that situation you generally don’t give a shit and so just have a bit of a chatty style. And everyone there is always going to be up for it.’

Isn’t it a weird situation? ‘In some ways, but you still perform and people are enraptured. It was a kumsnot comedy. This is a rubbish pun on the fact that I had a stinking head cold when I performed, which oddly disappeared for the fifteen minutes that I was on stage. It’s back now though, twice as strong. Very strange.’

Simon drinks a cup of coffee in his home in Bristol, sitting facing his laptop, and talks about television and the media in general. ‘BBC Three are running a show called Paparazzi. I don’t know whether it’s supposed to show these photographers in a good light, but it seems to me it just emphasises how vile these men really are. Some of these Paps are becoming celebrities themselves now. Hopefully enough of them will reach celebrity status, so that soon they’ll just end up chasing each other around, and maybe just fuck off. Last night, I witnessed a car accident, which incidentally wasn’t the Paparazzi’s fault. A tramp got hit by a taxi. This was in a perceived “rough” part of town. Within thirty seconds a police car had pulled up. Within three minutes, there were three police cars. An ambulance did eventually show up, but the tramp refused treatment. In all, EIGHT police cars were at the scene. There is little or no point to this recollection.’

Half baked ideas are hard to make funny, Simon comments.

Simon picks up some questions that have been written down for him. The first asks: How do you set about writing comedy? ‘Honestly, I normally procrastinate for weeks on end, then feel guilty about having done nothing, so I sit down and force myself to write something. It’s easier when you are working on productions with deadlines, but doing on spec work is when I become very lazy. Sometimes I get a wind up me, and I have been known to bang out a full length screenplay in two days.’

Another question asks: What are your plans for the future? ‘A project I have been working on is garnering interest at some networks, and so hopefully they’ll give us a development deal and we’ll spend the year writing several sitcom episodes.’

What do you do when you’re not writing? ‘Feel guilty.’

What’s your earliest memory? ‘Sitting on the draining board as a baby, screaming my eyes out because my older brother and sister had tried to give me a bath in the sink using boiling water. Then pouting as my mum rubbed butter on my legs.’

What influenced you the most when growing up? ‘Comedy wise it has to be The Young Ones. I found that hilarious. And still do. When I was five, I remember running round shouting at my brother, “Matt is still a virgin”. He was eight and shouted back, “I’m not. I am not!” I thought I was hilarious because it was making my Dad laugh.’

In Simon’s act, when he performs at the Fandango club, he talks about the moon landings, saying how much he hates people who try and say it didn’t happen. The audience soak it up.

From the Chortle website, these reviews were written about Simon’s stand up routines:

Corky Laputa: ‘Simon writes and delivers very funny stuff. Relaxed stage presence too and a nice bloke to boot.’

Will Hodgson: ‘The sober Yin to my raging Yang, Simon is indeed a very talented writer and performer of comedy and one of the nicest people you will ever meet in comedy. He is currently producing his best material yet and anyone running a club should be booking him post haste.’

Page: ‘Simon was one of the performers on the occasion when I first watched live stand up, and again two weeks later when I first performed. I’ve seen him many times over the last couple of years, always getting better and always refining what he does. He always appears relaxed on stage, even when you know he’s been stressed inside out before the gig, and has thrown away material that many on the circuit would be proud to count amongst their finest work. Never underestimate the power of the quiet man.’

What does Mr. Simon Dunn make of these reviews? ‘Reviews from fellow comedians are the only reviews that count.’

He says this over MSN messenger. Then Messenger says that Simon is typing a message: ‘Having email problems, I’m off, see ya later.’

The Great Fitzgerald

If you read John Braine’s book How To Write A Novel, you end up reading a list of novels that he recommends. One of these is The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald. This is the world’s most perfectly written novel. You’ll never write this good. If you’re a writer and you’ve read it, you’re buggered.

I read it once, then read it again. I was working on a building site some years ago and while I mixed up a batch of mortar, I held The Great Gatsby in my hand, transfixed, while big globs of cement welded the pages together.

The Great Gatsby is a First person narrative about Nick Carraway and his new life in New York City where he meets Gatsby and a strange tragedy that unfolds before his eyes. This book, as you read its simple poetic story and critique of the American dream, makes all those detective novels, with their strung out, morose policemen, look like the Beano.

I own and have owned several copies of The Great Gatsby. I can’t go into a second hand book shop without buying an edition I’ve never laid eyes on before. I once bought a nice and thin hard back edition, just because it looked nice. Yes, this is a compulsion. Have you seen Conspiracy Theory with Mel Gibson? They track him, by brain washing him into buying a copy of The Catcher In The Rye every time he enters a book shop. His book shelves are crowded with editions of the book. Spooky. They say that many of the famous assassins of history also owned many copies. I don’t want to know if they owned The Great Gatsby too and how many.

I have so many copies that, when I moved last month, I had to throw away many other books to make room for them in my new home. As I opened a bin bag and threw the worn paper backs inside, I felt evil, condemning these works or art to their grave. For those few moments, I was a Nazi, throwing books on a bonfire.

I have, I’m proud to say, a copy of the Trimalchio, the original version of The Great Gatsby, which has slight alterations. When out shopping with my friend, Cathy, I found the book in a large London book shop, I made my self walk away from it. I noted that it was very expensive at nearly forty pounds and slid it back into the shelf. For a few moments, I was desperately proud of my self. To celebrate, I bought Cathy a coffee and dinner in a local restaurant. She suddenly dipped into her shopping bag and held the bright red and perfect looking copy of Trimalchio out to me, telling me she had snuck off to buy it for me. It was an early birthday present, she said. I gripped it tightly to my chest. Yes, this is very sad.

To understand my obsession you have had to have read Fitzgerald’s finest novel. It starts with a simple statement about Nick Carraway’s relationship with his father, unlike modern novels that always seem to start with a dead body or some similar shocking event. I fear the days of simple, but intriguing stories have gone. It’s like John Doe says in SEVEN, the movie, ‘You have to hit them with a sledgehammer, then you’ll notice you have their strict attention’. He is quite right.

Written many years before the Second World war and not long after the Great War, Fitzgerald even sees an empty future for the rich and mindless, that will come to blame societies problems on the Coloured races. He seems to imagine Tom Buchanan as an almost right wind bigot, the kind that walks the earth in Twenty First Century, spouting about the immigrants wiping us all out.

There is more than just political visions in Gatsby, there are also simple truths, like Carraway’s understanding of Gatsby to be one of those few people you meet in life, that when they look at you and smile, you think everything is going to be all right in the end. They have that ability to take away your doubt. There are so many moments in this book to make you recognise something from your life. I, myself, find so much remembered pain in Gatsby’s own search for his lost love and when he comes in from the rain and confronts Daisy for the first time in five years, my heart always threatens to boil over.

At University, when I studied Literature, I remember being excited when I found out we would be studying The Great Gatsby, knowing that in my own way, I had been taking the book apart and putting it back together like a broken radio for years. I even, when asked to find a quote to illustrate Gatsby’s lost love obsession, read out a whole paragraph, without looking down at the book. I remember the lecturer looking at me strangely.

This book will sting you in the heart and in the next section, make you laugh. I recall Daisy, arranging to meet the rest of the gang at a New York hotel, saying ‘I’ll be the man smoking two cigarettes’. Of course, soon the tragedy is underway and you have to watch Gatsby’s dream sink away from him and the whole world seem to turn grey before his eyes. I have to admit that I ignore most of the ‘American Dream’ stuff and concentrate on the pure emotional poetry of the novel.

So, F Scott Fitzgerald has done it, he has managed to write, in my opinion, the greatest novel ever. Forget Dickens and all the rest, for it is all in The Great Gatsby, everything you need for a good story and I hate Fitzgerald for it and love him at the same time. I even tried to write my own version called THE DANCE TRAGEDY set in modern day England, but of course it was a mere shadow of this great text. It was a good way to learn though; a good way to learn that I’ll never write a book that good, ever and never so young. Fitzgerald was barely twenty five when he published Gatsby, becoming successful and winning over the love of his life, Zelda Sayre. She was probably Fitzgerald’s Daisy and The Great Gatsby is now my Daisy, my lost love.