My father bought one of these when I was about 13-14 and I wrote a short radio play that we recorded on it called "Lonely Life" about an astronaut lost in space with a time bomb ticking away in his head. We covered it in music from 2001 and I still have the script. Many years later, after writing Doctor Who in the mid 90s, I turned Lonely Life into a feature script called Mirror which was bought by Disney when Francis Ford Coppola attached himself to it to direct. If it had got made it would have been his first sci-fi movie. But of course it floundered in development, Coppola's deal with Disney went south and all the execs moved to Sony. I barely spent any time at all with the great director but the dream alone was worth the ride and I became friends with Fred Fuchs. This picture takes me back to where it started. So now I will try again ...
8 Comments
Martin Jameson
5/10/2010 06:52:59 pm
I still have it, although it doesn't work... the brakes have gone, and if you try to play tapes on it they spew everywhere...
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Matthew
5/10/2010 11:26:40 pm
Sounds like my brain this morning ... :) ... That's amazing Martin and very fitting seeing as you were the one who went on to become a great radio writer/producer. Is there any way we could link to one of your radio plays from here? I think I can put up an audio file on this site.
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martin Jameson
5/10/2010 11:48:07 pm
No can do unfortunately for copyright reasons, but anyone in the UK can tune into my play, prophetically entitled 'Can You Tell Me The Name Of The Prime Minister?' this Friday 14th May, BBC Radio 4, at 2.15pm BST.
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Terina
5/14/2010 08:51:50 am
Hi 'Young Martin' - I was listening to the end of your play on the way back from working with a child at Hunsdon, Harlow, and I found the idea of knowing the prime ministers name pretty interesting as I am dealing with my mum's dementia - and I know that's seen as a fairly classic test ( although I don't think she's actually been asked that question) I shall have to listen to it all on 'play it again.'
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Martin Jameson
5/14/2010 04:23:55 pm
Thanks Terina. The play was one of an occasional series that Radio 4 commission called Rapid Response dramas. Basically they book you for a month before transmission and you are trusted to come up with something topical or generally reflecting the zeitgeist (for want of a better word). Then you write it at double quick speed, and it's recorded a week or so before TX. It's extremely scary! So this one was an extra challenge as it had to be written during the campaign, and recorded before we had the result. I also knew that everything that could be said about the politics would be said, so I decided to come at it from a left field sort of way, using science fiction to explore my very personal emotional response to the last 13 years and the end of new labour. I had been to see Blair give his testimony at the Chilcott Inquiry, and his repeated assertion that we shouldn't ask about 2003, we should ask about 2010 and what would have happened if he hadn't taken us to war. Originally I was going to call the play 'the 2010 defence' and explore that idea head on (but with the opposite conclusion!), but the BBC were nervous of that, and so in the end I went for this more surreal approach. And yes, it was a deliberate use of the Alzheimer's question... and we recorded three endings!! Let me know what you think of the whole thing....
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terina
5/14/2010 11:06:59 pm
'commonsense is on the loose' - I bet you enjoyed writing that ! Yes - liked it - listening to the whole thing. I like the actress who played the psychiatrist. The whole angry , anxious psychotic theme seemed very real and the idea that the My Mal character could heal was a rather lovely idea. ( even though it was against his own wishes and seemed to exhaust him) It did seem a very personal response but one which resonated with many others. Was she laughing at the end because Cameron being PM is such a funny idea or with relief that the real Mal had returned or have I missed the point entirely ?!
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Matthew
5/15/2010 01:57:15 am
I really liked the play Martin and even found it quite moving ... Reminds one of one of the better Twilight Zones and definitely brings a whole new meaning to the words "hung parliament" :) Congratulations brother!
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MArtin Jameson
5/15/2010 09:37:07 am
Thanks Terina, for your lovely comments. The idea at the end was that we had travelled to one of the parallel universes where 'our' Mal had gone when the others had arrived here. Greer said: I hope he's safe, wherever he is...
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