Hauling Like A Brooligan

Stephen Gallagher

Interview

I’ve been away on Crusoe business – two good days with the incoming writers followed by three equally productive days scouting locations for the UK scenes – and I find on my return that the WGGB site now carries the interview that Tom Green conducted with me back in January.

(No word of Crusoe in there, by the way – the Eleventh Hour 13-episode order was public knowledge by then, so that gets a mention. But at that stage I hadn’t even had the Crusoe call.)

It was for the Spring issue of UK Writer, the Guild’s own magazine. But if so inclined, the whole world can now read it here.

Someone must have ticked me off the day we did the questions. I don’t know how else to explain a response like,

“There’s a lot we can learn from the American approach to running a series. They don’t just buy stories; they hire writers, and instead of being pieceworkers defending their one story to the hilt, those writers come together and make the show. They’re all part of an efficient production structure and they’re credited accordingly. I can initiate a £4m drama and I don’t even get a pass to let me into the building – I have to be led to the meetings like a chimpanzee in a nappy.”

Even more disturbing is the hint of a developing chimpanzee theme in my thinking. It’s beginning to surface in the most unlikely places…

, , ,

One response to “Interview”

  1. Interesting interview. It was down to Malcolm Edwards that I got my first work published back in [cough, cough]. Angela Carter as well, come to think of it. And J.G. Ballard.