By Frances-Anne Solomon
Ariel
June 8, 1993
How did we get here, knee-deep in 600 scripts, in an office like a box, scribbled sheets of paper the size of my desk spread precariously over all the walls, cigarette smoke so thick I can hardly see Catharine, my fellow script editor, two feet away puffing obsessively through her third pack of Camels'
We are short listing finalists for the Black Writers Project. The phone rings, and I make the mistake of answering it. 'I'm calling about the Black Writers Project'' an apologetic voice begins.
For the past five months it's been the same. All day my phone rings its little head off, while I sit in my office under siege. Next door, Catharine's phone does the same.
How did we get here'
I had been sitting through a meeting with George Faber, Screenplay executive producer, sulking as usual. Then weighing my words carefully, I said: 'I think we should run a Black Writers' Workshop.' I saw George sit up. His eyes lit up.
Funny how it grew from being a weekend workshop to a six-month development project. That felt more sensible, more useful. More work. But by then I was getting interested, in spite of myself.
On January 11 I came in at midday having forgotten, conveniently, or almost, that the advert for a scheme was due out that day, to find Catharine sitting on the ceiling outside my office screaming murder. From the crack of dawn, all morning, her phone had been ringing off the hook with inquiries.
She had no separate telephone line, and Debbie, the woman she shares an office with wanted her blood. Quick action to negotiate an entire telephone out of the department's supposedly non-existent budget, and then hook it up quickly before Debbie really killed us.
'In quick and urgent conference with Catharine, I tried to instill in her some basic rules about dealing with the Black Public, which we would now never again in life be free of. 'NEVER answer the phone,' I said. 'You'll go mad. Let the ansaphone do it. Then call them back at your convenience when you have time.' 'I can't do that'' said Catharine. 'It wouldn't feel right'' Fine, I thought, she'll learn.
My heart goes out to her as she fields call after call. But five months later it's a different story, a different Catharine; she's tougher, tired, easily irritated, all the liberal baby-fat knocked out by the need to survive. Mmm, growing fast, I think.
That day after the advert appeared, scripts began to come in ' slowly. Worrying, I watched the mailroom closely. I knew they were out there, all the closet writers, the aspiring Spike Lees ' how come they weren't responding' Four weeks in, I whipped out my trusted, tried and true Black Community mailing list and did an urgent mail-out to everyone on earth. About a thousand people. This time the radio stations and black press took the bait, and Catharine became an overnight presenter, appearing on LBC, BBC's Radio Kent and Leeds, Sunrise, Choice and GLR. The phone calls continued unabated, but still only trickles of actual scripts.
Then as the deadline approached, the avalanche began. The post room set aside a whole shelf for the sheaves of scripts which grew from day to day. I would go down every morning to whoops of greeting from the morning to whoops of greeting from the Sorting Gang, then one or two men would help me lug arm-loads of scripts up to the third floor. Then I gave up. The mailmen piled them up in a room adjacent to the post room and promised to deliver them after the deadline. A great day it was when two friends from the post room appeared with a wheelbarrow and deposited three massive sackloads about 5 ft by 3 ft in George's outer office.
'There are three sacks of scripts here!' George shouted down the phone at me. I was hiding at home, terrified to come in to work. Invasion of the Black Script Writers! 'Uh hu,' I said nonchalantly. 'It's exciting, ' George continued, gushing. 'Good, good'' I said and went back into hiding.
Who said there weren't any black writers in Britain'
And still they kept coming. 'Um excuse me, I'm calling about the Black Writers Project is it too late''' No no, it isn't too late, of course you can send id.
One day I moved the piles in my office to my bedside and too to reading scripts before I went to sleep. I began to enjoy it. Days spent in coffee shops and restaurants, moving through stories in a haze, like in my dreams.
Leaving on script to plunge into the world of another, seeking the imaginative kernel in each that made its story unfold and enfold me.
There was loads of rubbish. But through the initial read I didn't judge, just lost myself. So many stories! Many autobiographical, tales to make you weep with their passion and honest. There were the well-written scripts, some stunningly successful in manipulating old conventions.
I felt proud of my people. And there were scripts I hugged to me in the night, silently blessing the writer.
Catharine and I met to begin the task of shortlisting. Which is where we are today. I leave the steaming head-space of my office like a box and make my way past similar boxes in which I see little people doing 'work'. A stab of guilt consumes me. 'I must do some work' ' before I realize that this is work, this reading and screaming and smoking into the night.
I think things are changing, she says cautiously, weighing her words. There was a time when I stood in the middle of the BBC canteen in Birmingham and could not see another Black face anywhere in the sea of white heads.
Now I do see them, carefully speckled around when I'm eating lunch. That day in Birmingham I wanted to burn the place down, an there is a sense in which I cannot believe that I am getting paid now to do this work, legitimately. It feels illegal. Not for no good reason.
For the past seven years I have felt the work I, and others like me, are doing is sub-the-institution, in spite of the Corporation, outside the 'remit'. Or at the very best, a huge and perpetual battle with the status quo.
This time it feels (dangerously) easy.
