Sanguine

My third sit down with the Actress today. From the offset she had wanted to talk about the highs and lows of her life and career. After two meetings mainly discussing the former, the time had come for us to concentrate on the latter.

The agent had altered her schedule and was there with us, which turned out to be a good thing. Arriving ahead of the Actress, we discussed the subjects to touch on. When the Actress turned up, as I brought up various areas to talk about, the agent egged her on to reveal more than she perhaps wanted to this early in the game.

For the most part she was very open about her past. A couple of times I had to switch to much more lighter subjects when it became obvious that, after all these years, some of the topics were still too raw to discuss at length. Although by now she was much more comfortable talking to me about her past, there came a point where the tape recorder had to be switched off.

After feeding the Actress’ dog the remains of the lunch provided for us, we touched on the last of the subjects and ended on a happier note. Heading home earlier than expected, with everything I needed for the time being, I got off the tube the stop before West Hampstead and wandered around the O2 Centre on the Finchley Road.

Having seen it repeatedly on the train into town, I figured it was finally worth a look. It turned out to be utterly pointless. Standing outside the VUE cinema on the top floor of the massive space-wasting atrium, reached by an escalator that looked like it had been lifted from a tawdry theme park, I couldn’t find a film I could be bothered to see and went home.

Checking my email, there was a further note from the friend at Granada, continuing his thoughts on the script, that included:

It's a script that exists to be screened. It's not simply a collection of ideas, characters and scenarios. It is a collection of pages which exists to direct an episode.

That’s a good thing, right?