I was intending to publish some more Unfinished Business but I got hung up on an Unfinished Novel I wrote (some 36,000 words) which needed a polish before I shared it with you.  Now of course I’m deep into the damn thing.  It’ll be awful if I finish it.

Anyway to keep my three loyal readers happy I thought I’d share a lyric I have been working on.  It’s from the non-existent musical Rack of Ages by Irving Boleyn.   It’s not quite finished but you get the drift..

The Tudors

No one wooed like the Tudors

Or screwed like the Tudors

Or rudely chase girls in the nude like the Tudors

No one as rude as the Tudors

Or as crude as the Tudors

Or came quite so quickly unglued as the Tudors.

No one ever had such a bad attitude

They exude turpitude and ingratitude

Nobody ever behaved quite like that

They’d chop off your head at the drop of a hat

They were proud they were loud, they were vain they were mean

One hysterical pregnancy, one virgin queen.

Their quarrels were frequent

Their morals were low

But nobody ever dared to tell them so

No one dared boo the Tudors

Or dared sue the Tudors

Or, except in the bedroom when bare, screw the Tudors

Heads were hewed by the Tudors

Thumbs were screwed by the Tudors

Who was ever in such a bad mood as the Tudors?

The Borgias were gorgeous but not on a par

And don’t even think of a drink at their bar

They made killer cocktails which went far too far

But compared to the Tudors who do they think they are?

Girls were used by the Tudors

And abused by the Tudors

And accused of adulterous views by the Tudors.

First amused by the Tudors

Then confused by the Tudors

Their intimate body parts bruised by the Tudors

The Caesars were geezers

Who killed just for fun

The Romans read omens

And killed by the ton

But compared to the Tudors they weren’t number one

To conclude with the Tudors

Not one dude since the Tudors

Has ever produced such a brood as the Tudors

No one chewed, as the Tudors,

So much food as the Tudors

Or brewed so much beer and then spewed as the Tudors

No one lewd as the Tudors

Could feud as the Tudors

Or had such a bad attitude as the Tudors.

Wives accrued by the Tudors

Lives rued by the Tudors

No one so psychologically screwed as the Tudors!

Chapter One:  Memoirs of a Fax Hunting Man

What do the following have in common?

The Unforgettable Syd Gottleib. 

A film producer so hated there was advance booking for his funeral.

The Writer’s Cut.

The first novel ever written in colour.

A Victorian Musical.

The First Film Ever Made, a feature film shot in Victorian times, recently discovered behind a wall in an old vault in the basement of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

They are all projects I wrote which never saw the light of day.

Like all writers I have trunks full of things which never were.  Some for good reasons.   Some for bad.  I have learned a lot over the years. I have been lied to, stolen from, cheated, misled, robbed, screwed and betrayed, but this is not a tale of revenge, for I have also received some of the greatest support from some of the finest creative people on the planet.  This is a story of self-exploration not recrimination.

I’m interested in the art of art.

How do some things become wildly popular and others sink into the sand never to be seen?

Two tips:

1: Work Harder.

2: There is no such thing as bad work, only unfinished work.

I’m not a very good writer but I’m not a bad re-writer.   This is a most valuable skill and something I learned in my years as a Hollywood screenwriter, where I was paid a fortune to re-write films that were never made.

Another tip:  Persistence pays.

I discovered early, from the Monty Python film writing experience,  that if you put scripts away and then come back to them a few months later it is much easier to see what is wrong, what is not working, what needs cutting, what needs extending and what might be done to improve them.

For instance, the Monty Python film The Holy Grail in its original draft had only a few medieval scenes with King Arthur, but three or four months later it was obvious that this was what the entire film should be, and we dumped about two thirds of the first draft to create the second.

I always adopt this practice in writing.  Even this simple opening chapter has gone through many drafts and revisions.  Ars Est Celare Artem.   The art is in concealing the artistry.  That’s the motto of The Footlights, a Cambridge University comedy club founded in 1883, where I and many others first learned our trade.

Writing and doing.  It’s still what I love to do.  To go to your chair first thing in the morning with a blank piece of paper and a pencil and find what is lurking in the depths of your unconscious.  It’s fascinating.  I always compare it to fishing.   You never know what you’re going to catch but you must go regularly to the river bank and wait.

Once you’ve caught something there’s a secondary skill set in deciding what exactly it should be.  I have discovered that projects frequently morph into something else.  For instance:

The Road to Mars began life as an original screenplay in 1982, for Robin Williams, Dan Aykroyd and David Bowie, about two comedians on the road in the future and their adventures with a robot dresser (a 4.5 Bowie).   Science Friction I called it, and many years later (1999) it ended up as a novel about a robot, Carlton, trying to understand the nature of comedy, and write a thesis about it.  He discovers the great parallel force to Gravity is…..Levity.

The Rutland Isles started out as a mocumentary about a group of islands that didn’t exist: Revoluçion, Poluçion, Contracepçion, Paranoia, and the British West Rutland Isles: Flagg, Scab, Muck, and Dull.  A series parodying TV travel documentaries and documentarians with their breathy voices:

FADE IN: FULL SHOT GLORIOUS ISLANDS — DAY

Coconut palms, white sand beaches, gentle roll of the surf, tropical breezes gently lift the fronds.

WIDEN TO REVEAL MELVIN HALL.

He is a very silly man with glasses and unruly hair.

MELVIN

Ever wonder where comedy came from?   Where rock and roll began or who invented the French?   The answer is right here….

He points to a bit of sand.

….in the legendary Rutland Isles.  In the next hour we shall show you the cradle of shopping, the birthplace of dental hygiene, and the home of the multiple orgasm.  We shall take you to a magic land where barter is still a way of life….

EXT. CLEARING IN THE JUNGLE. — DAY

A tradesman with a stall has a large female customer.  She is holding a camel.

FRED

Norm you got change for a camel?

NORM

How much does she owe you?

FRED

About half a dog.

NORM

I can give you two parakeets and a frog.   Or can you break a goat?

EXT. PIER — DAY

Several man are preening, some women are “shopping.”

MELVIN

…a faraway place where women come to buy husbands, and where the men are down by the sea fishing for compliments…..

MAN1

Hello do you like my ass?

MAN2

My legs are nice aren’t they?

LARGE WOMAN

How much for the pair of them?

FRED

Two donkeys and a rottweiler.

EXT. CAMP FIRE — NIGHT

MELVIN

…and we shall show you the cradle of comedy…

A cradle. Parents watch admiringly. A tiny hand comes out of the cradle and gives them the finger.

And so on.

The Rutland Isles began as a TV series before unexpectedly becoming a Hollywood movie,  And Now This,  about a TV News Crew lost and adrift in a mysterious world.  Several drafts and many years later it ended up in 2003 as a CD of songs from the Rutland islands, which sold nearly twelve copies.

The Owl and the Pussycat  was an attempt by me and John Du Prez to write an animated musical for kids, based on the drawings and poems of Edward Lear.  We even got to pitch it to the legendary Stephen Spielberg though he kept going on about Barbara Streisand.  It finally ended up as an Audio Book for Dove, with about ten songs by me and John.  (Still available.)

Shopping we’re always happy when we’re shopping!

We’re always happy when we shop until we drop

In search of bargains we will never stop,!

When God created the Universe

He pulled out all the stops

First He created all mankind

And then She created shops.

The Life of Brian was of course a Monty Python movie, but then in 2005, for five drafts and nine months, it became a Broadway musical, before an unexpected and unanticipated Python veto brought it to a halt.  It ended up as an Oratorio: Not The Messiah (He’s a Very Naughty Boy) that opened in Toronto in 2006 and after many performances including the Sydney Opera House and the Hollywood Bowl, was finally filmed at The Royal Albert Hall in 2009. (On DVD.)

The Remains of the Piano was first a film in the mid-eighties, a Merchant Ivory parody, and then finally became a live Radio Musical play from the Forties called What About Dick? which we filmed last year (2012).

I told you I was persistent.

And persistence pays off.

But not always.  For instance:

The Pirates of Penzance  was a Victorian musical movie, which I began writing in 1978 on a beach in Tunisia.   The original screenplay was printed in Victorian copperplate hand writing with full colour Pre-Raphaelite paintings and Victorian photographs.  It purported to be the first film ever made, only recently discovered in a vault at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.  I not only did location scouts to Penzance and St. Michael’s Mount, and found my Pirate ship, I also shot footage of the British Army in their red coats and busbys marching down the Mall, and The Queen’s troop in Victorian hussars uniform firing off field guns in Hyde Park.

The Meaning of Life was first a Monty Python movie, then eight drafts and many lovely songs for a proposed Broadway musical called Spamma Mia!” and then nothing.

Death The Musical began life as Monty’s Requiem, a Requiem Mass for the soul of Monty Python (deceased), then Monty’s Vespers, a sung version of many of the most famous Python sketches turned into lyrics:

Is your wife a goer?

Know what I mean?

Know what I mean?

Know what I mean?

Your wife does she go eh?

Know what I mean?

Nudge nudge wink wink

Say no more.

It then lost the Python element and became In Memoriam, Albert’s Memorial, Closure (Five drafts)  Sadly Missed, Freddie’s Funeral, Just Passing Thru, Say No More! and finally Death and Shakespeare,  which contained a Shakespearian play in Shakespearian verse about the death of Shakespeare.

And now it’s still nothing….

All these musicals had some wonderful songs by John Du Prez and me, all fully demoed, before ending up orphaned in the graveyard of dead songs.  Some of them are really quite good.  But still they languish like lost maidens in a pond.

So persistence helps but a bad idea is still a bad idea.

The difficulty is you can’t always tell whether the idea itself stinks, whether it’s in the right form, or whether it simply hasn’t been done properly.

A writer’s lot is not a happy one.

So this is the story of orphans, a brief history of uncompleted projects, things that were never made, children who refused to grow up and leave the nest.

It’s been bitter sweet.  But that’s another chapter.

In the early 1980’s I spent a fair amount of time learning about the Universe.  As a religious sceptic I found some point to mankind’s existence in contemplating this vast Universe in which we find ourselves, and some comfort for my own certain personal extinction in the study of cosmology.  We are just so tiny we can’t possibly complain, and can only wonder at the vastness of this enormous thing we are unexpectedly a part of.  I mean what are the odds?  And in this shape?  Gratitude seems the only sensible reaction.  Not pissing and moaning that it’s going to end.

We were entering a time of the most fertile expansion of human knowledge.  Indeed the last century has seen the biggest expansion of our knowledge of our cosmos ever.  But back then Black holes were considered dangerous ideas, the Big Bang was a very new theory and there were three main contenders for the ultimate end of the universe: the continued expansion for ever idea, the steady state theory, and the ultimate contraction of the universe, where gravity pulls everything back into the singularity from which we seem to have sprung, where Time’s arrow reverses itself and goes backwards.  Hubble had shown us clearly that the Universe was expanding but for how long might this go on?  We had of course no knowledge of dark matter or dark energy, which we now believe comprises over 80% of the whole rapidly expanding universe….

It was fascinating for me to discover that, with no science or mathematics whatsoever, I could still understand the nature of the debate.  Even join in.  So I collected a series of known knowns and wrote a lyric.  The Galaxy Song would appear in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, which we filmed in 1982,  and is still a reasonable sketch of our state of knowledge of the Universe at that time.

We’re thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point/ We go round every two hundred million years…

While contemplating these incredible facts I made my own scientific discovery.  I was simultaneously self-educating myself about Earth science and Biology and the origins of life on the planet and I became interested in mass extinctions, which have occurred fairly regularly in pre-historic times.  In particular the Permian extinction, which caused the loss of almost 98% of life on this planet.  What caused that?  The extinction of the dinosaurs was getting a lot of traction in public interest, although not yet proven as a cometary event.  I knew the earth passed regularly through cometary debris fields, which caused the amazing and spectacular shooting star showers that I observed with such joy in the clear summer skies of Provence, and I wondered if the sun itself might pass through similar galactic debris fields.  Might this not cause mass extinctions on our planet?   I was seeking some kind of regular pattern and was wondering vaguely if there might not be seasons of the sun: spring when life emerged, summer, fall and then winter when extinctions occurred. In order to see if that might be remotely possible I wanted to know how many times the sun had been round the galaxy and nowhere could I find such a figure.  So I made a very simple calculation.  I divided the time of our solar circumnavigation of the Milky Way Galaxy, “We go round every two hundred million years,” by the estimated age of our sun.  In those days 4.5 billion years was the accepted figure.  I was shocked by the result.  In a universe where extremely large numbers (millions of billions) were common the result of my simple maths was staggering.  The number of times the sun has been round the Galaxy is only twenty-two and a half!   That’s it.  That’s all!  I couldn’t believe it.  I checked and rechecked my figures.   4,500,000,000 divided by 200,000,000 is approximately 22.5.

A little later I was reading Timescale by the science writer Nigel Calder and on the 3rd March 1984 with much trepidation I wrote to him:

Dear Nigel Calder ,

I am enjoying Timescale very much and I know I shall continue to enjoy it for many years. On the strength of this unsolicited compliment I wonder if you can help me with a hopeless layman’s question which has been bothering me for years? If the Solar System is four and a half thousand million years old, and the period of our galactic orbit is two hundred million years, then we have only orbited the galaxy twenty two and a half times.  It seems such a ridiculously low number is it right?

He replied almost immediately on the 8^th March 1984

Dear Eric Idle

Right: it’s not many times around the galactic maypole, since the Earth began. The figure for the period of the Sun’s orbit still seems to be about 200 million years, so Mother Earth is indeed a flighty 22 galactic years old. And by my reckoning the universe itself is about 67 galactic years old, scarcely old enough to run a Coal Board. Perhaps I should have made something of this in Timescale.

I ‘m glad you like the book and it was very nice of you to write. To return the compliment: you must know that Python’s ECT has cured many a case of terminal earnestness in people like me. Seeing that science is a game played with crazy ideas, I sometimes wonder how much of the current breakneck rate of discovery is due to your cerebral anarchism….

He then went on to propose we collaborate on a musical about Halley, whose comet was due to return a year later.  He concluded:

I’d love to meet for a chat – about Halley if you like, or real science if you prefer.

I replied on May 13^th 1984

Dear Nigel Calder,

Thank you for your very kind  letter. I felt very proud that you were able to affirm my  tentative cosmological questionings.  I shall now proceed to bigger and better things – calculating the age of Fred Hoyle,  and the number of years it takes to circumnavigate  Patrick Moore.

I must also thank you for your book on Halley, which I very much enjoyed.  Your musical sounds interesting, though I personally have taken time off from delving into the past and am now optimistically researching the future.

(an obscure reference to The Road to Mars.)

I’m  sorry it has taken me  so long to reply.  Like the  comets I wander about a lot, except that  I can rarely  predict where I will turn up – clearly pre-Copernican  journeyings…. I do hope we can meet when I return…

So I was right!   And it’s possible that I was the very first to observe this.

I shared this correspondence recently with Professor Brian Cox and said on the basis of this I thoroughly expected to get my invitation to join the Royal Society.  He replied:

I will ensure that membership forms are dispatched.

So on the strength of that early discovery I think it’s time to update the figures.

We now believe the Sun is 5.7 billion years old. So to calculate the number of times our star has been round the galaxy take the age of the sun: 5,700,000,000 years and divide it by the time it takes to complete one circuit of the Milky Way: 200,000,000.

Result:   28 and a half circuits.

You get it all here folks….