Early morning, not even properly awake my brain grabs the first thought that flits through it and somehow won't let go. Since I'm barely conscious this thought – whatever it is – runs like wildfire, a computer virus that's gained control, a rogue thought running everywhere… This morning it was Shakespeare. I had some image of Shakespeare, I have no idea why. Maybe from the Dr Who episode that had him in a while back. Maybe cos we walked near the Globe a week ago. Or I dunno. But suddenly I was thinking Shakespeare and Time Travel. And then, still lying there, in the bed you understand, eyes not even open yet, I was thinking about what if you could make a movie about Shakespeare travelling in time. This stupid thought then skidded around in many ways I can't even recall but soon became an idea of a movie where Shakespeare arrives in Hollywood and is put to work writing movie scripts. The whole thing seemed to be in the area of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure… (which I can hardly remember.. maybe I didn't even see it).. But in this idea that was happening pretty well unbidden in my head Shakespeare was going round LA to pool parties, heading out to the desert and having script meetings..
But then, off to one side, there was a variation on the idea that it should (or could?) be two modern-day scriptwriters that have somehow gotten hold of Shakespeare, maybe abducting him via time travel and keeping him locked prisoner in a motel and where he can work on scripts for them; they have some heavy deadlines for costume dramas. Before long I was thinking maybe these two guys might have a whole stable of writers from the past locked up there in little rooms – Hemmingway maybe, Austen, Conrad, Tolstoy – all of them working away in their rooms with the curtains drawn, on projects they can hardly understand. The two scriptwriters would be trying to keep their captives a secret but also at the same time they'd have to introduce them to the 'modern world', blowing their minds so speak with information and situations they could use in their scripts. taking them to kewl parties, driving them around in 4×4's, showing them TV, internet gaming etc.. Bill & Ted/The Man Who Fell To Earth… And then I was thinking yeah but how do the two guys get the time-travel to abduct these writers from out of chronology in the first place? What's that all about? Is it like the geeky-kid brother of one of the scriptwriters that's been dabbling in home time travel and offers to help them when they get to the first impossible writing-deadline on some historical movie?… Or?… And then finally (I am waking up more properly by this point) I start wondering the really big question – i.e. why am I even thinking about this stuff in the first place? Its totally stupid.
Shit. If there was a way to direct (and harness) these early morning flashes of mental energy I think they could be pretty useful. But in the meantime I'm destined to produce more half-baked ideas for movies that couldn't really be made and for which there's no particular use, rhyme or reason.