JOHN COLLEE

It's a weird sort of job being a screenwriter. It's more social and collaborative than being a novelist, less ephemeral than a lot of journalism, better conditions than being a poet; but the downside is that most of your output will only be read by a few dozen producers, directors and actors.

 

Many films you write will never be made, and these unproduced scripts remain locked away in studio vaults - available as writing samples to people in the industry, but otherwise just gathering dust.

 

The scripts that do get produced are designed to be invisible. Unlike a book or a documentary, a film is not something you're supposed to contemplate from the outside. It's a totally immersive medium which means that if it's any good the audience will be too absorbed in it to consider how it was crafted.

 

So this website was a way of assembling my output as a writer - mainly as a screenwriter - some fifty scripts of which about twenty made it to the screen in some form or another, often with multiple co-writers. Success has many parents and failure is an orphan. 

 

The rights to the screenplays reside with whoever commissioned them but a password to read the script can often be provided if you send me a message via the contact button, top right.