Killing Bill Gates: The Writing Process; an incredibly brief breakdown.

Date: 23/07/11
Author: Peter Fellows

In early October 2010, the eight of us got together in a large room at Christchurch house to discuss and pitch ideas for a stage play. We were kicked out of that room fairly promptly, but we managed to find another one (after a brief clash with a couple of business students) and I threw out my idea for a self contained one scene comedy following a group of charity workers planning to kill computer-dude Bill Gates, each for their own dark personal reasons.

I’d originally thought it might work as a sketch, but, as a being of limited creativity, I couldn’t actually think up another decent storyline to pitch to the others. So I went with this one.

Originally, we thought we’d be entering the Camden Fringe. Unrelated to the rest of this blog entry, but I thought I’d throw a fun-fact out there. Just because you don’t care doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter. Ok, in this instance, it probably does mean exactly that actually. Ah.

As ‘the guy with the idea’, I was given permission to nominate two co-writers. This was a very difficult decision, firstly because the other seven are all great comic minds, and secondly because I felt it was important to find two people with a similar style/wavelength as myself.

So I chose Tom Harrison, whose every word is a nugget of comedy adimantium (or some other more valuable, less fictional item), and Sam Hutchinson, for his reliability, attention to detail, and to keep myself and Tom from just writing a huge monologue about paedo midget’s through history.

The other five have all shaped and improved the script since, in rehearsals and in-between drafts.

Five important things to remember about the writing process of ‘Killing Bill Gates’-

1.       We were often inebriated.

2.       We’re good friends, and spent an unnatural amount of time together during the process. Resulting in several ‘Top Gun’ jokes/references.

3.       Some opinions voiced through the characters are definitely those of three male writers’ who (at the time) were single. One character even utters the words ‘women f*** up everything….’ So, basically, apologies to the female side of the race. We aren’t actually sexist, just very, very lonely.

4.       Writing for specific actors, we had to be careful not to slip into comfort zones.

5.       Preferring to separately write a scene each, we would come together to work on each other’s progress. This often meant staying up very late (and me sleeping on their sofa, resulting in a heinous back problem which will only become fully evident in about 2025).

The script was finished around January.

I hope this blog entry hasn’t been too self-indulgent. I’m looking forward to reading everyone else’s opinions of the writing process an’ that, and I hope you are too. Oh yeah, we already established that you don’t actually care. Oh well, that’s fine, if you’ve read this far the joke’s on you.

Cheers x