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Jan. 7th, 2021
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Jan. 7th, 2021 05:55 pmSo, since the creative portion of my brain is shut down due to the lingering effects of the abject terror of yesterday, let's talk about "Closetspace UK."
Back in 2012, the BBC Writer's Room and Trans Comedy got together to create the Trans Comedy Award. Basically, the award would have given the winner £5000 to help develop their pilot into a possible full series. When I was told about this, I figured I'd thrown my hat into the ring to see what I could do....
Closetspace the webcomic, is actually based on a previous idea I'd called "A Different Perspective" that I wanted to develop for television. Back in 1994. Using my background in being an anime fan, I specifically worked on creating a 26 episode arc story, for one season, cause I figured I'd never get past one season. That's an outline I'm still using today for the webcomic.
To get it done, I sat down and learned scriptwiritng by stealing a bunch of online scripts and figuring out the format, wrote three very basic episodes in scripts, and began looking for an agent. After some talk, it turned out that if this was going to gain any traction, I would likely not only need to move to New York or Los Angeles, but there would be a ton of legwork getting to a position where I could do anything with that script. Not to mention, getting into the Writer's Guild, which was a Catch 22 puzzle to get into.
After learning more about the industry (anything you write will get taken away from you and rewritten, so you need to learn to take the money and run), and some advice from an agent ("It takes a lot of money to get a show done, and I don't see anything here worth that kind of money") I decided it wasn't for me and dropped it for a few years, later working on making it a full fledged comic with a friend, and then later a webcomic in 1997 and finally getting it online in 2001.
I took what was, in essence, the 6th or 7th draft of the original Closetspace pilot, written about 2000 in preparation for the webcomic series, gussied it up and modernized it into a 7th or 8th draft, and sent it in.
In the end, there were probably a few things I could have done better.
Firstly, I should have written a brand new script instead of revising a script that had it's origins sixteen years earlier. TV has changed a lot, and silly things like the "Music Police" in what would have been episode 2, as well as some of the goofier scenes (Remember when Allison did gymanstics and dodged every single bullet from a machine gun in the comic?) wouldn't have played well in the mid 2010s.
Secondly, the script I sent was still based in Texas. I did put in a cover letter saying that "The only things I know about the UK I learned from Dr Who, and I kind of doubt that King John was a shapeshifting robot sent by The Master to steal Magna Carta, so I may need some help in adapting it to the UK." I should have just simply retooled the script AND re-written it.
Based on the emails I got, I managed to get through three passes before they decided the script wouldn't move forward. I know I made it into the last "quarter" of scripts, and since there were about 320, that meant I was at LEAST 80th place. Doesn't sound GOOD, but isn't all that BAD.
There was a very long wait between sending it in and the final dismissal, so I had a lot of time to figure out what I would do to finally get Closetspace done as a series in the UK. The series that did get done, "Boy Meets Girl" was fantastic (even if I had an issue with that very first cold open), and I recommend folks watch it
So what would have changed between Closetspace and Closetspace UK.
1) Mainly I'd need to England-i-fy it:
The comic series takes place in a fictional Hyde Park in Austin. This is a very historic and upscale part of Austin, essentially the first suburb of the city. I would need to find something akin to this in the London area. And the only places I actually had any knew off-hand were Perivale (from Dr Who) or Shepherd's Bush (from Absolutely Fabulous). Perivale of 1989, was the only place I'd ever actually SEEN on TV, and felt way more middle-class than I wanted for the series. And Shepherd's Bush...all I knew was Eddie thought it was swanky. I kind of ended up leaning towards "a newer expensive luxury house" in a corner of Perivale, at least until someone more knowledgable could tell me it didn't fit otherwise.
I haven't really gone into this much in the comic except for one or two scenes, but Allison is Mexican. The original 1990s-era storylines dealt more with having to deal with violent Machismo culture in her family (it also didn't help that in this early version, she was pre-op), which I ended up replacing with the much more personal video game addiction story. I didn't think her being Mexican would translate to UK audiences, So I considered making her Pakistani, who have a lot of race issues in common with the UK as Mexicans do with the US. I also figured a different set of gender issues would play into that as well.
Carrie likely would have BEEN Irish instead of being decended from the Irish.
I did wonder if I'd need to drop the whole Patricia/Republic of Texas Patriot character. She would be super minor, with only two appearances in the whole series. Patricia's role was to specifically put the characters in immediate danger so we could see who they were, and eventually later to see who they became. The only thing I could think of to equate her two would be the Irish Republican Army, and that's certainly not a place I wanted to go in a comedy. Looking back, though, this is one of the 1990s-era-thinking that wouldn't have worked in 2012 anyways, so she likely would have been removed and a different way to put them into jeopardy would need to be created.
Most of the rest of the series locales translated pretty well, so they would have remained the same.
2) Differentiate it from the webcomic:
The original plan in 1994 was one 26 episode season, so I broke the story arc into five five-episode mini-arcs (with a throwaway episode or double episode somewhere in there). The BBC now have much shorter series, so I was consdering opening it up into five six-episode series. While each would end a bit open ended, they could be re-written into tighter endings leaving them open to continue the next series or a satisfactory conclusion if not.
Which leaves the problem - what do you do when you don't have episodes for a year and a comic that spells out the whole story online? I got the idea of what to do by watching the original Life on Mars from the UK, then seeing how they handled Life on Mars in the US. Many of the stories were the same, but a few pieces here and there were changed. My plan was to keep to the same basic Closetspace story, but change the details, and often the endings, so that reading the comic wouldn't give you the answer to next week's episode.
3) Make it better than the comic.
Twenty years into the webcomic, I 'm kind of locked into what came before. And there's a lot I would have changed had it not contradicted the previous story. Closetspace UK was a way to do that.
I likely would have dropped Allison's video-game addiction and gone back to the originalk story of family politics of being trans when your native culture looks down on that. The Video Game addiction story was something I had just kinda wormed myself out of when I started the webcomic, and I felt that was a good story for Allison to have. In the end, it wasn't as powerful as the family dynamic, and I was going to bring that back. She would have remained post-op, though, and regretful of it.
More of Carrie's workplace would have been included. I have a whole story arc about how her security job is handling her transition, but I never really ended up touching on it because it never fit into the story. I do plan to bring it up eventually in the comic, but it would be the END of what I planned versus what I planned.
3A) Victoria would have been the biggest change to the point that the character might be unrecognizable to comic readers:
While I didn't mean for this to happen, subconsciously I wrote Victoria into the "Magical Negro" trope. In one episode she even calls herself "Miss Carrie's Fairy Godmother." She often comes in, helps Carrie out, and goes away. In the new series, I planned for Victoria to be a more constant best-friend companion. No longer a elder, but maybe a year or two older than her.
Victoria wouldn't have died. In the original storyline and comic, she dies of AIDS, which is, again, very 1990s thinking. First, AIDS isn't the death sentence it was back then. Second, the only reason I killed Victoria was for Carrie to have a true "Hero's Journey" where the mentor dies so the hero can move on. No need to kill her if Victoria is less a mentor and more a friend. Carrie's mother fits the part just as well.
Victoria would not be a drag queen. I'd let her be a drag queen in the original story because in the support groups I was in, drag queens were more than a few of the people needing support. I figured Victoria would be a sympathetic drag queen to Carrie, who also tested the waters in drag. Drag has become a bit offensive to the trans community in the years since the story was written, and the only reason they're in the comic now is that they were in the comic when I first wrote them. In the comic re-thought them in the comic as a troupe of queens who are sympathetic to transfolks through Victoria, Vixen and Carrie. In the series that element would just be gone. The Chez Armand scenes would likely just be various coffee houses.
Victoria would also be trans. This is something I've done as part of my re-think of Victoria for Closetspace UK that has transferred over to the webcomic. In the UK TV Series, she would have been the post-op transwoman Carrie looks up to, and she's only a few years older than her. In the webcomic, we'll find that Victoria was trans through her experience in drag (yes, we'll see her again, eventually).
And that was Closetspace UK. It was something I had no idea how I was going do, living in Washington State, somehow getting to the UK to work on the series, and produce it for essentially $10,000...but who cares? It was fun thinking there was even a chance this could get done. And I got farther than I expected for an American whose only education in British Culture was late Sunday Night viewing on PBS.
If you'd like to read the script I sent in, it's here: http://dolari.net/pub/Closetspace(WGA).pdf
Back in 2012, the BBC Writer's Room and Trans Comedy got together to create the Trans Comedy Award. Basically, the award would have given the winner £5000 to help develop their pilot into a possible full series. When I was told about this, I figured I'd thrown my hat into the ring to see what I could do....
Closetspace the webcomic, is actually based on a previous idea I'd called "A Different Perspective" that I wanted to develop for television. Back in 1994. Using my background in being an anime fan, I specifically worked on creating a 26 episode arc story, for one season, cause I figured I'd never get past one season. That's an outline I'm still using today for the webcomic.
To get it done, I sat down and learned scriptwiritng by stealing a bunch of online scripts and figuring out the format, wrote three very basic episodes in scripts, and began looking for an agent. After some talk, it turned out that if this was going to gain any traction, I would likely not only need to move to New York or Los Angeles, but there would be a ton of legwork getting to a position where I could do anything with that script. Not to mention, getting into the Writer's Guild, which was a Catch 22 puzzle to get into.
After learning more about the industry (anything you write will get taken away from you and rewritten, so you need to learn to take the money and run), and some advice from an agent ("It takes a lot of money to get a show done, and I don't see anything here worth that kind of money") I decided it wasn't for me and dropped it for a few years, later working on making it a full fledged comic with a friend, and then later a webcomic in 1997 and finally getting it online in 2001.
I took what was, in essence, the 6th or 7th draft of the original Closetspace pilot, written about 2000 in preparation for the webcomic series, gussied it up and modernized it into a 7th or 8th draft, and sent it in.
In the end, there were probably a few things I could have done better.
Firstly, I should have written a brand new script instead of revising a script that had it's origins sixteen years earlier. TV has changed a lot, and silly things like the "Music Police" in what would have been episode 2, as well as some of the goofier scenes (Remember when Allison did gymanstics and dodged every single bullet from a machine gun in the comic?) wouldn't have played well in the mid 2010s.
Secondly, the script I sent was still based in Texas. I did put in a cover letter saying that "The only things I know about the UK I learned from Dr Who, and I kind of doubt that King John was a shapeshifting robot sent by The Master to steal Magna Carta, so I may need some help in adapting it to the UK." I should have just simply retooled the script AND re-written it.
Based on the emails I got, I managed to get through three passes before they decided the script wouldn't move forward. I know I made it into the last "quarter" of scripts, and since there were about 320, that meant I was at LEAST 80th place. Doesn't sound GOOD, but isn't all that BAD.
There was a very long wait between sending it in and the final dismissal, so I had a lot of time to figure out what I would do to finally get Closetspace done as a series in the UK. The series that did get done, "Boy Meets Girl" was fantastic (even if I had an issue with that very first cold open), and I recommend folks watch it
So what would have changed between Closetspace and Closetspace UK.
1) Mainly I'd need to England-i-fy it:
The comic series takes place in a fictional Hyde Park in Austin. This is a very historic and upscale part of Austin, essentially the first suburb of the city. I would need to find something akin to this in the London area. And the only places I actually had any knew off-hand were Perivale (from Dr Who) or Shepherd's Bush (from Absolutely Fabulous). Perivale of 1989, was the only place I'd ever actually SEEN on TV, and felt way more middle-class than I wanted for the series. And Shepherd's Bush...all I knew was Eddie thought it was swanky. I kind of ended up leaning towards "a newer expensive luxury house" in a corner of Perivale, at least until someone more knowledgable could tell me it didn't fit otherwise.
I haven't really gone into this much in the comic except for one or two scenes, but Allison is Mexican. The original 1990s-era storylines dealt more with having to deal with violent Machismo culture in her family (it also didn't help that in this early version, she was pre-op), which I ended up replacing with the much more personal video game addiction story. I didn't think her being Mexican would translate to UK audiences, So I considered making her Pakistani, who have a lot of race issues in common with the UK as Mexicans do with the US. I also figured a different set of gender issues would play into that as well.
Carrie likely would have BEEN Irish instead of being decended from the Irish.
I did wonder if I'd need to drop the whole Patricia/Republic of Texas Patriot character. She would be super minor, with only two appearances in the whole series. Patricia's role was to specifically put the characters in immediate danger so we could see who they were, and eventually later to see who they became. The only thing I could think of to equate her two would be the Irish Republican Army, and that's certainly not a place I wanted to go in a comedy. Looking back, though, this is one of the 1990s-era-thinking that wouldn't have worked in 2012 anyways, so she likely would have been removed and a different way to put them into jeopardy would need to be created.
Most of the rest of the series locales translated pretty well, so they would have remained the same.
2) Differentiate it from the webcomic:
The original plan in 1994 was one 26 episode season, so I broke the story arc into five five-episode mini-arcs (with a throwaway episode or double episode somewhere in there). The BBC now have much shorter series, so I was consdering opening it up into five six-episode series. While each would end a bit open ended, they could be re-written into tighter endings leaving them open to continue the next series or a satisfactory conclusion if not.
Which leaves the problem - what do you do when you don't have episodes for a year and a comic that spells out the whole story online? I got the idea of what to do by watching the original Life on Mars from the UK, then seeing how they handled Life on Mars in the US. Many of the stories were the same, but a few pieces here and there were changed. My plan was to keep to the same basic Closetspace story, but change the details, and often the endings, so that reading the comic wouldn't give you the answer to next week's episode.
3) Make it better than the comic.
Twenty years into the webcomic, I 'm kind of locked into what came before. And there's a lot I would have changed had it not contradicted the previous story. Closetspace UK was a way to do that.
I likely would have dropped Allison's video-game addiction and gone back to the originalk story of family politics of being trans when your native culture looks down on that. The Video Game addiction story was something I had just kinda wormed myself out of when I started the webcomic, and I felt that was a good story for Allison to have. In the end, it wasn't as powerful as the family dynamic, and I was going to bring that back. She would have remained post-op, though, and regretful of it.
More of Carrie's workplace would have been included. I have a whole story arc about how her security job is handling her transition, but I never really ended up touching on it because it never fit into the story. I do plan to bring it up eventually in the comic, but it would be the END of what I planned versus what I planned.
3A) Victoria would have been the biggest change to the point that the character might be unrecognizable to comic readers:
While I didn't mean for this to happen, subconsciously I wrote Victoria into the "Magical Negro" trope. In one episode she even calls herself "Miss Carrie's Fairy Godmother." She often comes in, helps Carrie out, and goes away. In the new series, I planned for Victoria to be a more constant best-friend companion. No longer a elder, but maybe a year or two older than her.
Victoria wouldn't have died. In the original storyline and comic, she dies of AIDS, which is, again, very 1990s thinking. First, AIDS isn't the death sentence it was back then. Second, the only reason I killed Victoria was for Carrie to have a true "Hero's Journey" where the mentor dies so the hero can move on. No need to kill her if Victoria is less a mentor and more a friend. Carrie's mother fits the part just as well.
Victoria would not be a drag queen. I'd let her be a drag queen in the original story because in the support groups I was in, drag queens were more than a few of the people needing support. I figured Victoria would be a sympathetic drag queen to Carrie, who also tested the waters in drag. Drag has become a bit offensive to the trans community in the years since the story was written, and the only reason they're in the comic now is that they were in the comic when I first wrote them. In the comic re-thought them in the comic as a troupe of queens who are sympathetic to transfolks through Victoria, Vixen and Carrie. In the series that element would just be gone. The Chez Armand scenes would likely just be various coffee houses.
Victoria would also be trans. This is something I've done as part of my re-think of Victoria for Closetspace UK that has transferred over to the webcomic. In the UK TV Series, she would have been the post-op transwoman Carrie looks up to, and she's only a few years older than her. In the webcomic, we'll find that Victoria was trans through her experience in drag (yes, we'll see her again, eventually).
And that was Closetspace UK. It was something I had no idea how I was going do, living in Washington State, somehow getting to the UK to work on the series, and produce it for essentially $10,000...but who cares? It was fun thinking there was even a chance this could get done. And I got farther than I expected for an American whose only education in British Culture was late Sunday Night viewing on PBS.
If you'd like to read the script I sent in, it's here: http://dolari.net/pub/Closetspace(WGA).pdf