Neil Cross
Neil Cross is
the screenwriter and creator for Luther
(2010), he has also written the film Mama
(2013) and Crossbones (2014).
Cross has really progressed throughout his life, from nothing to an award
winning screenwriter and producer, and developed his work massively during this
time to bigger and better TV shows and films.
Neil
started writing in dirty bedsits when he was young. Slowly he progressed and he
wrote Carrie, his first novel on a
manual typewriter that didn’t have a working “S” button. At this time, he was
living in a caravan with his wife and two children. He wrote it with the
typewriter on his knees in the toilet and when he had finished a page he used
to take it out and write in the “S” with a pen. The book made him quite a bit
of money, with which he brought a big house with an office. However, even when
he was stuck on what to write he would go find a horrible corner somewhere and
sit there, bringing him back to his memories of writing in the caravan toilet.
At one point in his life, Cross thought he had all his ideas that he would ever
have. He thought he was done and wouldn’t write again, which was obviously his
writer’s block talking. He knew it was hard to work from home with his children
around so he tried to keep his work life as well-organised as possible. As he
started so low with hardly even a roof over his head, Cross knew that working
as a writer was a very privileged position and he never took it for granted.
The very
first episode of Luther is about John
Luther returning to work as a DCI after a 7-month suspension. He investigates a
home invasion which resulted in two murders. The bodies were found by their
daughter Alice. Luther questions her and even though she protests her innocence
he is sure it was her who killed them. However, they cannot find the murder
weapon, the gun. Alice is very intelligent and is prepared to play
psychological games with Luther, meanwhile, he is trying to patch things up at
home. The way that Cross has written this first episode can relate to my script
in a few ways. However, the first major difference is that it is the male as
the detective and a female as the suspect and psychopath. But this doesn’t change
the fact that both her and my character, Joseph, are clever in which they can
play with the detectives. For example, when Joseph hides the tights and tips
off the detective, he is being clever and eliminating himself from the crime as
he knows they have no evidence to tie the tights and himself together. The way
that the viewer in Luther can believe
that Luther is onto Alice is the same with my film in which the viewer thinks Miranda,
the detective, is going to catch Joseph out when he is in for questioning. Both
the first episode of Luther and my
short film play with the viewers and keep them on their toes throughout. This is
clever screenwriting on Cross’ behalf and I am happy that I have tried to
create a script where the viewer thinks they know where they’re going with it
and then they don’t.
Allan Cubitt
Allan
Cubitt was the screenwriter and creator of The
Fall (2013), the TV drama series that I based my film on. He is also
well-known for The Boys Are Back (2009)
and Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the
Silk Stocking. (2004).
The Fall became very popular as the series went on
throughout the three seasons. By the end of the last season, viewers had their
eyes glued to the screen. Cubitt got the idea of his main character, the serial
killer Paul Spector, when Russell Williams was arrested in Canada in February
2010 for breaking, entering and shoplifting which then escalated to killing.
The character of Williams is what Cubitt wanted his killer to be like. Cubitt
decided to write The Fall to explore
the fact of violence against women. To be able to write about a serial killer
Cubitt was able to find them interesting in a way. During The Fall he was able to look at the psychology of a person capable
of killing someone in detail, this is why we find out who the killer is at the
beginning, he purposely showed us who the killer was. This idea would have been
difficult to explore if he had kept the killer a secret.
Cubitt is
able to make Spector seem so dark and devious in some parts and other parts he
sounds so innocent. This is something I tried to bring out in my script. When
Joseph was saying about how he didn’t commit the crime I tried to make him
sound innocent and then when he was being devious and tipping them off about the
evidence, he seems slyer. I also show the impact of violence towards women at
the beginning of my film as we see my victim laying on the bed with marks
around her neck, implying the fact that there was violence and she would have fought
to get away but unfortunately failed. This is similar to The Fall as like I said above Cubitt looked at the idea of violence
towards women. One of the reasons why The
Fall worked so well was because Cubitt wrote it without thinking about a
second season and it just happened later on. He wanted the murder case to be
complex not like the majority of the time when there’s violence against women,
it’s usually the dad or the boyfriend. When I researched this it showed me that
Joseph shouldn’t know the victim and that’s what I stuck with throughout the
script.
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