My last trip to LA started out as a personal one. Lots of people reached out at the end of last year after the sizzle broke and my email went crazy for a little while. Some of those email conversations lead to some very interesting phone calls and I decided a trip early in 2010 was probably a good idea. January was taken up in Ireland working with Ciaran – something I hope we can get back to later this year – but by February I was in Hollywood with a couple of fun meetings in my diary. Although I take my work seriously I tend to be pretty laid back in general so rather than being phased by some of the people I was in town to see I figured it was best to just jump at the opportunity and make sure I had a good time. As it turned out it went far better than I could have anticipated and if I’d known what some of those meetings would entail I’d probably not have been so confident.

As luck would have it I also managed to take in a few Slingers meetings on the same trip. Toby arrived a few days after me and we doubled up on a couple of things as we make a pretty good double act at this point. It was very cool to talk to so many people who have been in the industry for so long who, after having access to the Slingers bible, wanted to learn more about the world we’d created. Some of the writers on some of my favourite shows are now fans of what we’re trying to do and that’s an incredible confidence boost personally, but also a resounding proof of concept for Slingers.

The trip was also a chance to catch up with some old friends on Leverage and make some new ones. My next trip is probably going to be a lot busier and with a higher alcohol intake. Just working out the dates now for when that will be, but at the end of this month I’m in Portland and San Francisco (and a few places in between – road trip!). So the bottom line is I’ll be popping back to the States on a regular basis this year I think.

The long term plan of moving out there is now just about within reach. Already started getting the flat ship-shape for rental, but there’s a few things to fall into place first. As with the show though things are looking extremely positive.

So about those fun meetings I took…

The upshot of one of them is that I now have management in Los Angeles. Tucker and Evan over at Principato-Young Entertainment took me by surprise by offering to sign me on the spot. I tried my best to talk them out of if, but these guys are not for turning. Once I turned my diary over to them to fill in a few of the gaps my week got very interesting.

For the next few days I found myself pitching to some of the biggest production companies in Hollywood and I’m still coming to terms with how well that went. If I list all the people I saw I’ll come across as more of a name-dropping fuck than I already am, but I’m comfortable in saying that some of my crazier ideas are now sat on some pretty interesting desks. One of those is all ready to jump from the board to first draft so my first feature script should be doing the rounds come April.

The few people I’ve discussed this little whirlwind with have all said the same thing, “You must be overwhelmed…” I’ve actually been too busy with the TV shows and the first feature outline* to reflect on the trip too much. Even on the flight back I was reading a script I’d been asked to give notes on and it’s been non stop since then. The plan is certainly not to get overwhelmed – “Toil, never recoil” as Godefroy used to shout.

And as with everything else there are a few thousand different ways that I can fuck this up so we’ll see how far I get.

I’ll keep you posted.

* I’m writing a horror movie. Weird.

2010 feels like it just got upgraded somehow. Feb’s dead, baby. Feb’s dead.

I just finished putting a new board together for one of several projects I’ve got up on the wall at the moment. Busy year this. I’ll break some of this down and let you know what’s filling my days over the next couple of posts.

Last week over at Sleepydog HQ we had the first development meeting on the project that’s taking shape in the wake of Slingers. No idea how much I can tell you about that at this stage, although we will be blogging from the development room from time to time so stuff is bound to leak a little. I guess it’s safe to say that it’s sci fi (sort of) and police procedural (kinda). But only in the same way that Slingers is a sci fi heist show – we tend to build on those basics pretty fast and as ever are being outrageously ambitious. Hope to introduce you to the show as soon as possible but for now I can’t even tell you where it’s set…

Another meeting on this tomorrow so I’ll tweet when I can. And Toby seems to be in Canada. No idea why…

The UK now has a Hollaback site. Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t need one? This was sent in by Clare:

I’m 23 and dress pretty conservatively -- on Friday at about 9pm I heard ‘Hey’ ‘Hey, look up’ when I was walking home. I did, to a balcony on an upper floor of some block of flats near me. A man in his twenties(?) leant over and did the universal sex sign at me -- you know, the one made with two hands that boys do in school. Then he said ‘I want your pussy’.
I walk past these flats everyday.

It’s grim reading, but you should subscribe or follow the site on Twitter. HollabackNYC now lists 19 sister sites around the world.

And to rub a little salt into the wound it’s also Equal Pay Day today:

the average pay gap between men and women is 17.1%, meaning that while men in work will be paid for the full year, women in work are effectively working for free from today until 2010.

Hollaback’s tagline is “If you can’t slap ‘em, snap ‘em“. I’m honestly surprised it’s only cameras they’re pulling on us. I was going to add Hot Topic by Le Tigre here, but then I spotted this live radio performance of I’m So Excited and it made me smile so much it seemed like a better choice to share:

Women hand me my ass on a plate every single day one way or another, always exceeding my (kinda high) expectations and generally putting the guys I know to shame. How they cope with idiots like me is a mystery, but that they have to cope with fucking idiots like the ones described by Clare is criminal.

Update: Forgot to mention that the still is from GUN CRAZY (1950)

Not one for looking backwards. Fuck 2008. It was a great year, but 2009 is an important one. It’s already been a busy year, but here’s how it’s shaping up.

Amplified09 – We’re running a single session on the 21st of this month at the ICA before beginning the roll out for a series of national events. First session is on Future of Online Video/TV/Film/Etc. This will certainly be my focus for the next 6 months. After that it’ll hopefully fly on its own.

Slingers – My TV show is still sat on a desk in L.A. In the meantime we’re working on a few other concepts from the tail end of 08 that aren’t quite as far along. Also just started on something very British so we’ll be pitching that right here. That and Amp09 should keep me more than busy.

But I’m also off to Bletchley Park with @documentally and BBC radio to raise awareness about its decline (post on that to follow).

Hopefully working with Reuters again – also talking to Channel Four.

Visiting the TeachMeet09 event at BETT. Had my interest in education refreshed via Ken Robinson and have a renewed respect for those teaching with the latest tools and ideas. These are the people who shape the future.

Speaking at a Future Lab event later this month. I’m very critical of the one talking to the many, but this (on paper at least) is a much more conversational event and seemed like fun (don’t have all the details yet).

Still undecided about SXSW this year. The pressure for me to go is building, but while it looks like fun I need a little more than that before I get on a plane. Already have other trips to the States and maybe Canada to fit in.

Keeping my hand in with film stuff (interview I did with Michelle Yeoh should be up next week) and started a new blog: Outpost #31. Wanna do some more screenings and maybe a regular film event if I can fit it in.

Keeping abreast of the London scene mostly via The Tuttle Club and Twitter. Super busy Tuttle tomorrow, but I won’t be able to make them every week anymore. We’ve also rejigged CreativeCoffee Club London and we’re hoping to squeeze even more value out of it this year.

Been asked to guest blog in a couple of places – you can see why I can’t agree to anything regular right now, but I’ll be helping out on a few other online projects that I believe in.

This is probably my busiest year yet, but it’s also the first full year when I do nothing but the good stuff.

Interesting times ahead…

The main reason I was busier than expected while out in San Francisco was that I had the great news that my TV show concept had been very well received by the powers that be. There is now every chance well be shooting a pilot in Canada as early as next year. This took a little time to digest. A good single malt helped.

I had to go back and look at exactly when it was I first put the pin into the board on this particular idea and it turned out to be July. So in just over 4 months we went from what was going to be a comic book to an almost fully realised science fiction TV show. I feel another drink coming on just thinking about that.

In that time I sold the concept (my first TV sale) and was taken on board as creative lead – not only for Slingers but several shows for the same company. Speaking to friends who work out in L.A. this isn’t the kind of thing that happens everyday and at least one of them has probably stopped speaking to me.

I’ve been lucky to be working with people who also embrace the JFDI philosophy which is why I think we’re so far ahead in such a small space of time. It’s similar to the way I’ve been working for that last year or so in social media and once again the learning curve has been a lot of fun to navigate. What’s also been interesting is spotting the problems that traditional television production hits and routing around them in the same way I advise old media to do when embracing new media. The results so far speak for themselves. Right now we’ve not only fleshed out the show through 3 projected seasons, but also have two spin off shows conceptualised – I feel we bring a lot to the table and that’s the main reason we’ve got so far. I’ve been complaining about TV and film for so long now that it feels good to finally get a chance to push some of my ideas in the right direction and have them taken seriously.

It also seemed very natural to spend an afternoon sitting in the sunny garden of our apartment in San Francisco working out the details on another show and then working on the pilot script while drinking vodka at 35,000 feet.

So I guess for the next 18 months or so I’m a TV writer.

I’ll keep you posted.

Yet another plug for the ever awesome Snowmail from Channel Four news here in the UK. Here’s some interesting news on the news that I got last week from Kylie Morris:

I’m going to let you into a small secret today, but an interesting one. This is a milestone in modern television news production. We have moved into half a new newsroom with completely new technology. There’s no paper, there’s no tangible video or film. Everything is digital. And those of us who were mad in the analogue age are now completely crazy in the digital follow-up.

Perhaps I should have made that a singular observation. The potential is fantastic – instant everything and instantly edited everything (perhaps I exaggerate a little). But the human capacity to keep up with it all and to ensure that the journalism does too – that is the real issue. You won’t notice any difference – well, not unless the entire thing blows up and blue smoke starts coming out of my ears. But we certainly hope that we will be able to provide you with an even better Channel 4 News than heretofore. The whole process of change will not be completed until well into April.

This is very cool. Keeping abreast of technology if you’re old media is certainly essential, but so far only The Guardian seem to really grasp what’s going on. This is a great move for Ch4 and I hope their websites now get the chance to step up a notch too.

And just to prove it’s not all high tech sci fi over there, John Snow signed off with this just a few days ago:

Oh, and by the way, if you can’t catch us at seven, why don’t you check your Freeview menu and find Channel 4 Plus One, because we pitch up there at eight. And you could have the soggy Yorkshire pud and the overdone roast beef on your knee, watching it.

And speaking of soggy Yorkshire pudding I’m finding the BBC’s iPlayer horribly underdone:

Late last night I heard via Twitter that Tony Wilson had died and like a lot of people from my generation felt a great wave of sadness.

Today of course most of the tributes have concentrated on his role in music and in particular the Manchester scene. I grew up in Lancashire and hated just about every band that came out of the area with a passion. While friends were listening to the Happy Mondays I’d be trying hard not to laugh and completely failing to understand how anyone could prefer that crap over Anthrax. 1987 saw the release of ‘Among The Living’ and I was supposed to get excited by muppets from Manchester when guys from New York were singing about Judge Dredd and Stephen King novels? Right.

So if anything Wilson played a great part in winding me up for many years as I tried to avoid coming into contact with the music and fans of just about every band he launched.

But his presence was greater than that. As a local news presenter I’d grown up listening to and watching Tony Wilson. In a world of dull as dishwater programming he always brought a much needed boost of vitality to everything he was involved in. Even when a lot of that stuff was cheap and bordering on the ridiculous. I fondly remember him presenting a terrible game show called Remote Control which I believe involved strapping students to a wheel and then spinning them around for a bit. Much earlier than that he’d presented Flying Start in which nervous would be entrepreneurs vied for a couple of quid to get their fledgling businesses off the ground. He also did a fair bit of World in Action and of course Granada Reports (which also exposed me to that bloke off The Krypton Factor and Richard and Judy before they were Richard and Judy).

So music aside (and I was too young to appreciate his role in So It Goes) Wilson was always a TV fixture. And most importantly to me at the time he was the only person on ‘local’ TV who seemed just as good as the ‘real’ reporters on the ‘real’ news in London.

The last thing I saw him do was a cameo in A Cock and Bull Story. It brought him full circle for me, seeing him interviewing again and this time Steve Coogan, playing Steve Coogan who of course played Wilson in 2002’s 24 Hour Party People (a film I still haven’t seen).

So I can forgive him for unleashing the likes of Bez and Shaun Ryder on the world and I really am sorry to see him go so early. To me he was always one of the good guys.