Monthly Archives: March 2013

How to write a bestseller

By Matt Millikan | Monday March 25 2013 in ARTS HUB.

Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Project has been sold to over 34 countries worldwide.

Writing a bestseller isn’t easy. The market is unpredictable and misses are far more common than hits. It’s almost impossible to know what’s going to take off. Who would’ve thought boy wizards could enchant entire countries or that angsty vampires would drain parents’ pockets worldwide. Who expected to be tantalised by badly written S&M? All the basis of blockbuster books, but could anyone have guessed?

Graeme Simsion probably didn’t guess the world was going to adore Don Tillman, the looking-for-love genetics professor with undiagnosed Asperger’s in his debut novel, The Rosie Project. He might not have intended to, but Simsion wrote a bestseller through a combination of planning, support and hard work. Oh, and a little talent as well.

After winning the 2012 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, Simsion’s unlikely romantic comedy started a bidding war among publishers. After the dust settled, Text prevailed and published the book at the end of January this year. The rights have already been sold in over 34 different countries for an estimated 1.8 million dollars. At the moment The Rosie Project is sitting atop bestseller lists around the country and shows no signs of slipping.

‘It’s been absolutely extraordinary,’ he tells us from his house in Fitzroy. ‘When I was shortlisted for the Premier’s Award, that’s the point where everything changed. I wrote it as popular fiction, so the fact that it was getting noted in a literary context I said, “Wow, it’s really jumped a level”. So it’s just been extraordinary. Every month has taken it all to a higher level that I hadn’t really expected.’

 

Since publication it ‘hasn’t stopped’ for the former data modeller. Simsion had visited ten bookshops the day before we spoke. In February he appeared in three sessions at the Perth Writers Festival, went to London for a week and toured four cities in America.

But that whirlwind wasn’t on Simsion’s mind in 2007 when he enrolled in a Diploma of Screenwriting at RMIT. Before beginning classes, he knew he’d need a story to apply the teachings to. Inspired by a friend ‘who struggled socially’, The Rosie Project started life as a screenplay.

‘I essentially had five years working on the screenplay, going through all sorts of stages with it, going from a drama to a comedy to changing the plot,’ he explains. ‘The only thing you’d recognise from the original story is Don. So there was a lot of time as I was learning the craft. This was my school project as it were, so it started off very rough and it got better as I got better.’

Budding writers hoping to emulate Simsion’s success should take note of the book’s beginning as a screenplay. The Rosie Project is almost cinematic in its structure, and when proposed this he agrees that screenwriting informed his literary approach.

‘There’s a tremendous emphasis on story and story structure in screenwriting. Twenty years ago when Hollywood films were analysed, they found that they had generic structures. It’s not quite connect-the-dots but it’s very close. You’ve got to know where to put the turning points, inciting incidents.’

With a screenplay time is of the essence. With only 90 minutes in the typical romantic comedy, you’ve got to move quickly to tell the story. In an era where people read less and infer information in snippets, speed, and its literary counterpart pace is paramount.

‘Screenwriting above all informed the idea of story structure. It tends to make you write in scenes, which is a very visual sort of way of writing and makes you conscious of pace. You get into the scene as late as you can and you get out as early as you can to tell a story.’

By the time he’d finished Screenwriting, Simsion moved to Professional Writing and Editing and took novel writing classes. There he adapted his screenwriting skills into a literary context. Armed with three chapters of The Rosie Project, he workshopped the first and when his class reacted favourably, he offered up the next two. All but one person took him up on his offer.

‘At that point I thought, you know what? It doesn’t matter if my writing is a bit awkward or unpolished, if people are laughing and want to turn the pages then we’ve got a foundation that we can build upon and that gave me a lot of confidence.’

Humour isn’t an easy thing to master, and when asked Simsion again mentions The Rosie Project’s beginning. Despite technically being a drama, people laughed along with Don. Simsion learned from comic Tim Ferguson that if you’ve got a funny character, comedy will just happen. ‘I never felt I had to create gags, after you’ve written it, you refine it but the basic humour comes out of Don’s personality.’

Therein lies another of The Rosie Project’s strengths – Don. As Simsion has mentioned, almost everything about the original story has changed apart from the protagonist. The strong central character and his unique voice is inevitably a huge contributor to the success of the book.

‘I’ve heard it said that a character is a third of yourself, a third of someone you know and a third made-up. My experiences inform Don. I’m not as extreme as him, but I’m male, I’ve got a physics degree, I’ve worked in academia and in technical fields. I have a specific friend whose voice I channelled initially, so basically I took my friend’s voice as a core and added things on and then slowly I got to know Don and he evolved his own distinct mannerisms.’

Creating the book’s titular character was a similar experience. Rosie was originally Clara, a nerdy Hungarian physicist. Deciding the character was too similar to Don, Simsion aimed to create his protagonist’s antithesis. Though not deliberately based on anyone, once Rosie was reborn he noticed an ex-girlfriend and a member of his writers group in the character. ‘And she speaks a little like my daughter, so you draw on what you know.’

Simsion’s daughter isn’t the only family member to impact the book. His wife is also a writer and the two often collaborate. Once he thought the book was done, he read it aloud to his wife over two days and found it still needed work. We wondered how important being married to a like-minded person was to the process.

‘It’s tremendously helpful. We kick story ideas around together. I bring her stuff and she makes suggestions, it’s tremendous to have someone who actually understands what’s involved in writing a story and how it works in a practical sense.

‘There’s a mutual respect for the writing process. If it’s her turn to cook dinner and she’s on a roll, then I’m going to cook dinner. You have respect for each other’s writing. It’s an absolutely huge positive having her support.’

Simsion has been on a roll. Sure to become the stuff of legend, he reportedly finished the manuscript in seven weeks, from writing to refinement. Contrary to what you’d think for someone who appreciates planning, he doesn’t assign time specifically for writing.

‘I fit my writing around other things and I fit other things around my writing. When I was writing The Rosie Project, I just grabbed every moment that I could. So I was sitting in bed writing, on the weekend I would put in eight hours, then I’d have to do the day job, so I’d go three days without doing anything.’

But that’s not to say that he’s writing blind. Using another screenwriting technique, the scene breakdown, he knows what he’s trying to achieve each time he writes.

‘I sit down and say, “I’m working on chapter three, in chapter three Don has to test the sample from Peter Enouch, work out if it’s her father and tell her the bad news.” I have a short statement about what’s going into each scene.’

Many writers simply sit down and let it flow but if it doesn’t flow you’re in trouble – writer’s block. This is the reason for Simsion’s prior planning, and didn’t you know? He’s got a PhD in Creativity Theory.

‘The single most important piece of advice I can give on the creative process is that if you find something that works – stick to it,’ he says very deliberately. ‘If you have brilliant ideas in the shower, take long showers. If you get good ideas when you’re jogging, go for a jog. This isn’t rocket science. If you can write without a plan and it works for you I’m not going to argue, but if it’s not working and you’ve got writer’s block, then try something different. If writing without a plan is not working, think about having a plan.’

When these obstacles are overcome and the manuscript is complete, next comes one of the most important parts in the writing process – rewriting. ‘Good writing is rewriting. If you’re not prepared to do any rewriting then don’t even think about being a writer.’

Simsion admits that other writers have intimidated him in the past. A fan of John Irving, he would pick up an Irving book and think it was beyond him, that he couldn’t ever write that well.

‘That’s absolutely true – you can’t do it with one draft. You can’t go from zero to that, you go form zero to a piece of crap, and then to something not so crappy crap, and then you get something you think is passable and then you polish it, polish it, polish it. You have the power to make it better, repeat as often as necessary until you’ve got a masterpiece.’

He’s got another bit of advice that might be of interest to would-be authors.

‘There’s a lot to be said of having a group around you who can give you feedback on your work. So either join a writers club, enrol in class or do both – I did both.’

And now he’s got a bestseller.

 

Quizzes:

1. Which character are you?

http://quiz.therosieproject.com.au/character.html

2. Are you compatible with Don?

http://quiz.therosieproject.com.au/compat.html

The Rosie Project was released in January 2013 and is available from book stores across Victoria as well as online. Visit the Text Publishing website for more details.

Return of the native: Jane Campion

Top of the Lake starts screening on UKTV on Sunday, March 24.

Susan Chenery – The Australian – March 16, 2013 12:00AM

GREAT flanks of mountains; deep, glassy alpine lakes; primeval forests: the sheer
mythic scale of this remote South Island New Zealand landscape insists it be the
dominant character in any scenario.

Past glaciers and hanging valleys at the head of Lake Wakatipu in central Otago, is
the tiny frontier town of Glenorchy. It was here that Jane Campion came 15 years ago
to visit a friend. “It was quite a profound experience; it is real wilderness.” In the
summer twilight that lingers until after 10 o’clock she walked into the scenery. “It
just was incredibly magical and remote and beautiful”. She had found her spiritual
home in her own country.

“A lot of the people who live there have lost their lives in the lake. The lake has a lot
of different personalities; sometimes it is really glassy and other times it is really
broken up and dangerous.” She started thinking about writing a story set in this
place. And it is typical of her sensibility that she would look at the beautiful lake and
visualise a pregnant 12-year-old girl walking into it up to her neck, the central image
of what would become her first foray into television production in more than 20
years:, the six-hour series Top of the Lake.

And it is entirely characteristic, too, given an illustrious career making films about
women with all their eddies, undercurrents, struggles and complexities, that she
would park a tribe of women “who have fallen off the edge of the earth” in a camp
made of containers in a place called Paradise near Glenorchy, with a decidedly blunt
though enigmatic guru, GJ, played by Holly Hunter, with whom Campion had
worked on The Piano (1993), for which they both won Oscars.

Campion’s writing partner Gerard Lee points out that she wrote the child in the lake
scene when her daughter was 13, and about women in their 50s when she was
entering this decade herself. “No, that is personal,” she says briskly. “I personally feel
very angry about the rape of women or any sexual abuse of women. And this is an
opportunity to tell a story where you get to feel the weight of it.” She has known Lee
since film school, has shared all the significant events of her life with him, and he is
her daughter’s godfather. “She is formidable person,” says producer Emile Sherman.
“She is so smart emotionally and intellectually that she just gets everything. I was a
little bit scared of her in the beginning, I had to work out how to phrase my views and
comments as a producer”.

Top of the Lake is a vast, imaginative work that peers beneath the cracks of a
backwoods community, then goes deeper still, into an intense mystery. When they
were writing, Lee and Campion would act out the parts, something they would later
do for startled producers and the actors in rehearsal. “They are bloody hilarious as a
double act,” Wenham says.

When it was ready, they presented it to the producers, Sherman and his partner Iain
Canning, Christian Vesper from the Sundance Channel, and Philippa Campbell from
New Zealand. Ben Stephenson, head of drama at the BBC, had been on board since
the broadcaster’s involvement with Bright Star (2009).

Update on Underground screening

by Mark Poole, 18/3/13

The screening of Underground: The Julian Assange Story at the Nova in Carlton this Sunday evening (17 March 2013) was a sell-out and an entertainiing experience. Director and writer Robert Connolly introduced the film and afterwards Julian Assange’s mother Christine took to the podium with Connolly and Alex Williams, the lead actor who played Julian in the film. Alex’s performance is a knockout and so the film boasts a strong cast, with Laura Wheelwright also excellent as Electra, Assange’s girlfriend, Rachel Griffiths playing Christine Assange and Anthony LaPaglia as Detective Ken Roberts. The hacker friends of Julian’s were also great.

The packed discussion afterwards centred on Assange, with Christine delivering a passionate defence of her son, accusing the Federal Government of abandoning this Australian citizen and failing to support him in any way at all. Also present was one of the organisers of Assange’s forthcoming tilt at getting into the Senate.

Despite originally being made for television, this version of Underground allowed more space for political content and stands up as a feature film. It is taut, well-paced and keeps the audience on the edge of their seats until the end. You can’t say that about many of our recent output.

Speaking to the audience after the film was shown, Connolly said he had been fascinated by the early Assange story which took place before the World Wide Web had been invented. He described how he acquired an antique Commodore 64 computer of the type used by Julian Assange to connect to a US Military site. He gave it to Alex Williams during the rehearsal period, and discovered that after an hour Williams had been unable to work out how to turn it on. However by the end of the rehearsals Alex was programming.

Alex Williams is clearly headed for a big future. He has already gained a Hollywood agent, apparently, after graduating from WAPA. As soon as Connolly screen tested him he was hired for the job of portraying Julian Assange. On the stage, his mother Christine complimented Alex for getting right a lot of the subtleties in how her son behaves, creating an uncanny likeness.

The screening kicked off the CinemaPlus initiative, launched by Robert Connolly and Footprint Films. Under the CinemPlus banner a number of films will be released over the coming months, including The Turning,  described as a bold cinematic event based on Tim Winton’s best-selling collection of short stories. In a landscape where the distribution of Australian films clearly needs a major shakeup, this initiative is welcomed particularly by local filmmakers. And as Robert says, in an era where anyone can pirate anything on their home computer, they have to offer something extra to entice an audience into the cinema.

Connolly told me that the project began when director Mark Davis of Dateline fame brought the book upon which it is based by Suelette Dreyfus of the same name to Matchbox Pictures, who asked him to take a look. Davis himself had interviewed Julian Assange a number of times, and he is included in one of the clips about the film on the take-home DVD provided to the audience at the screenings.

After the Melbourne season, Underground will screen in Sydney, Byron Bay, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth over the next few months. The screenings will feature ‘value-added’ events such as Q and A sessions, and attendees are given a copy of a DVD with special features including the screenplay of the film, and a QR code which can trigger the director’s commentary which can be heard along with the film.

For more information visit www.undergroundthemovie.com.au.

The Press Kit is here. Underground – Press Kit

Further screenings:

  • Tuesday 19 to Friday 22 March Cinema Nova, Melbourne: 6.45pm
  • Sunday 24 March Palace Brighton Bay, Melbourne: 4.00pm
  • Wednesday 27 March Palace Chauvel, Sydney: 7.00pm
  • Thursday 4 April Palace Electric, Canberra: 7.00pm
  • Friday 5 April Palace Byron Bay: 7.00pm
  • Sunday 7 April   Palace Centro Brisbane: 4.00pm
  • Thursday 11 April Palace Nova Eastend Adelaide: 7.00pm
  • Friday 12 April Luna Leederville Perth: 6.45 pm

MARK POOLE

CinemaPlus: a game changer for indie films?

Underground: The Julian Assange Story is the prototype of a new form of
distribution and exhibition.

Don Groves / 15 March 2013 / SBS FILM

Filmmaker-distributor Robert Connolly aims to create a new paradigm for releasing
Australian films that don’t warrant a wide cinema release and playing up to six
sessions a day. Opening in Melbourne on March 17, Matchbox Pictures’
Underground: The Julian Assange Story is the first release from Connolly’s
CinemaPlus initiative, which entails a select number of special event screenings
around the nation.

That will be followed later this year by The Turning, the omnibus film based on a
Tim Winton novel, and Michael Kantor’s The Boy Castaways, a rock
musical/drama that stars You am I’s Tim Rogers, cabaret performer Paul Capsis and
ARIA Award-winner Megan Washington. Continue reading CinemaPlus: a game changer for indie films?

It’s just not cricket when a local film flops and no one knows why

Karl Quinn

Karl Quinn

National Film Editor for Fairfax Media

Did women stay away in droves or do we just not like sports films? Pondering why Save Your Legs! opened so poorly at the Australian box office despite so many positives.
Still sfrom the motion picture Save Your Legs. Brendan Cowell, Simon Curry and director Boyd Hicklin.Brendan Cowell and Simon Curry in Save Your Legs!

As anyone who follows the Australian film industry knows by now, cricketing comedy Save Your Legs! did about as well in its first week at the local box office as the boys in baggy green did in Hyderabad – that is, it stank. It took just $250,860 in its first week, at an average of $1292 per screen, about one-sixth of the result its distributor would have hoped for.

The question is, why?

Why didn’t they turn up? Maybe the girls had the say last weekend.

Unlike many Australian films, Save Your Legs! had high visibility, thanks to an estimated $1 million spent on P&A (prints and advertising), a substantial investment for a film that reportedly cost about $5 million. It went wide, as they say in the trade, released on 176 screens. There was a social media campaign featuring video ”extensions”, a YouTube page that has had more than 80,000 views, ads on TV and trailers in the cinema. There was a friendly TV partner in the Nine network, powerful commercial partners (including the Commonwealth Bank), and extensive coverage in the media (including this paper). In short, people knew it was out there.

The reviews, while mixed, ran the gamut from ”don’t bother” to ”don’t miss it”. At any rate, as a self-deprecating mid-market comedy with likeable stars (Stephen Curry, Damon Gameau and Brendan Cowell), it should have been relatively critic-proof. So what happened?

Continue reading It’s just not cricket when a local film flops and no one knows why

Warning to Hollywood: Chinese Hackers Want Your Secrets

A top cybersecurity lawyer says the Chinese are after any edge they can get, from
financial details that help with negotiations to reading scripts.

3/7/2013 by Stewart Baker, who practices cybersecurity law at Steptoe & Johnson in
Washington. He has been a top official concerned with cybersecurity policy at the
Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency – THR

Hollywood should be on notice: It’s not just the Pentagon and CIA that are victims of
hackers. They’re targeting more and more private companies. A recent report from

American cybersecurity firm Mandiant linked the Chinese government’s People’s
Liberation Army to massive, sustained intrusions into corporate networks.

The report, which traced many attacks to the PLA’s Shanghai-based Unit 61398, was
devoured in Washington and Silicon Valley. But Hollywood mostly has shrugged off
Chinese cyberspying as someone else’s problem. Continue reading Warning to Hollywood: Chinese Hackers Want Your Secrets

Hollywood Targeted by Chinese Hackers

At least one Burbank studio has been hacked, experts say, and piracy is rampant in
“a culture of copying.”

6:00 AM PST 3/7/2013 by Tim Appelo – THR

Have Chinese hackers invaded Hollywood’s computers, as they have the systems of
Facebook, Apple, The New York Times and more than 100 other major Western
entities? While some studio sources say no, cybersecurity experts tell THR another
story.

“Yes, absolutely,” says cyber-espionage expert Dmitri Alperovitch, former vp threat
research at McAfee and co-founder of CrowdStrike. “I know of major Hollywood
studios that have worked on distribution rights and other negotiations with Chinese
companies and have been hacked before those negotiations had been completed
because the Chinese wanted their negotiation playbook. The other side knows exactly
what they’re planning to do and will cheat and get their way in the negotiation.” Continue reading Hollywood Targeted by Chinese Hackers

The 50 most influential people in Australian television

SMH

Michael Idato

Actress Asher KeddieClout: Asher Keddie is smart and bankable. Photo: James Geer

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/the-50-most-influential-people-20130228-2f9a5.html#ixzz2Mp6Cb3SL

Our expert panel reveals who wields the power in Australian television.

The Oxford dictionary defines ”influence” as the capacity to have an affect on the character, development or behaviour of someone or something. In television, that translates into only one thing: having a hand in the most successful programs.

Yet influence is more complex than mere power. Chief executives have power by virtue of their office. Programmers have it by virtue of their control over the schedule.

The Guide canvassed a panel of experts – critics, executives and industry insiders – to compile the list of the 50 Most Influential People in Television.

Executive producer of The Voice, Julie Ward.She speaks, they listen: Julie Ward, executive producer of The Voice. Photo: Marco Del Grande

This draws together the power partnerships, the deal-makers behind the deals and the new generation of rising stars.

 

US TV’s Midseason Ratings Catastrophe

10:00 AM PST 3/6/2013 by Michael O’Connell – THR

With record-low debuts across the broadcast networks — unless you’ve got Kevin
Bacon in “The Following” — execs are rethinking one of the calendar’s biggest launch
pads.

If fall is the television season’s sink-or-swim deep end, then midseason is the kiddie
pool. Fewer launches, lower ratings expectations and softer competition often pave
the way for such slow-growing hits as Grey’s Anatomy, The Office and, most
recently, Scandal.

But nearly all of the 2012-13 midseason entries have drowned so far and, with the
exception of Fox’s renewed Kevin Bacon hit The Following, have done so in rather
gruesome fashion. Continue reading US TV’s Midseason Ratings Catastrophe

What’s Behind the Dismal Winter at the US Box Office

What’s Behind the Dismal Winter at the US Box Office

5:00 AM PST 3/6/2013 by Pamela McClintock – THR

Theater stocks slide and grosses drop 15 percent as “Jack the Giant Slayer” leads a
season of discontent and a glut of grim action flops leaves few studios unscathed.

When Bryan Singer sat down at his computer in mid-January and read Internet
comments criticizing a new Warner Bros. poster for his big-budget epic Jack the
Giant Slayer, he fumed. He didn’t care for the cartoonish image of the film’s stars
brandishing swords and standing around a swirling beanstalk. So Singer complained
on Twitter. “Sorry for these crappy airbrushed images,” he wrote Jan. 16, irking
Warners’ powerful marketing head Sue Kroll. “They do the film no justice. I’m proud
of the film & our great test scores.” An insider confesses, “Bryan felt like he had to
apologize to his fans.”

The dust-up points to a long and fraught process culminating with the low $27.2
million North American debut of Jack the Giant Slayer during the March 1-to-3
weekend, the latest in a string of dismal 2013 domestic releases. Revenue and
attendance both are down a steep 15 percent from the same period in 2012, wiping
away gains made last year. Jack might have cost far more than any of the other
misses, but in assessing the carnage, there’s a collective sense that Hollywood is
misjudging the moviegoing audience and piling too many of the same types of movies
on top of one another. Continue reading What’s Behind the Dismal Winter at the US Box Office