I will confess up front. This #WW post is a bit of a rush job….. Like many (most?) of us round these parts, I have a day job that remains a life necessity — the regular wage is required to pay for the mortgage, the constantly rising prices of the basics of living and of course the cinema tickets!

And sometimes this bit of my life takes up a little bit more time in the week than initially planned….

So the subject I intended to write about this month will have to wait until next time. I need to do a little bit of research on my topic in mind – and well I haven’t quite got round to it in time…

But on the plus side, I’ve now created a little bit of suspense and curiosity about my next blog post — whilst simultaneously creating a sense a dread about what will follow in the next few paragraphs…… and although the synchronous creation of mixed emotions in readers and viewers is a technique that can lead to creative disaster, it is also the reason why I love the films created by Jules Furthman and Howard Hawks so much as they do that to me all the time….

Anyway back on topic: sometimes life just gets a just a little bit out of control — not After Hours levels of zaniness — just the everyday ordinary of there being too much to do and not enough time. And as I am one of life’s planners — who generally likes things to be scheduled and organised, and also has a small intolerance for missed deadlines, I am occasionally (ok it happens more than I would like!) to improvise and just roll with it.

I’ve learned to live with life disrupting finally balanced itineraries. But my 20’s were tough — psychologically speaking.

So this is one of those rough and ready, more stream of consciousness style of blog posts. Think B movie, the light is fading, we are all in need of some sleep, but the final scene of the movie needs to be re-written on the spot as the leading actor has got into a tiff with the director and has stormed off the set…..

That’s the emotion I am working with at this moment. As this is a #Writers’ Wednesday blog post and there is less than a hour before this becomes my first #Troubador Thursday post. And #TT really doesn’t carry the same internet resonance as #WW hashtag.

Many of my favourite films are classic examples of planning, process and refinement: Highly polished scripts that went through intensive re-drafts to get every line of dialogue correct. I am thinking of Mario Puzo and Coppola refining The Godfather script 17 times to get the arc perfect for Michael Corleone’s move to the dark side. Or carefully drafted storyboards and design that drove the wonderful compositions and pin perfect narratives created by Hitchcock and Kubrick. Think Pixar. Organisation, craft, collaboration.

But let’s be honest. Those projects that allow for this mode of working are the exception. Film production, particularly at the lower end of the budget spectrum requires near endless tweaking, re-writing, problem solving, changing of plans and sheer just making it up on the spot.

By the way the day job in technology, finance and the business world across all industries is exactly the same. Hence why I have ended up in a ticking clock scenario with my blog post this week…..we are all in a constant state of upagainstadeadlineness.

But to be honest it can be fun too. I’m pretty certain that had this blog had gone to plan, I would never have used a word-phrase thing like upagainstadeadlineness. And I weirdly like the way that looks on the screen: the aesthetics of those tall and short letters next to each other — in ways that they aren’t normally. Now the question I am asking myself is can I get that word-phrase thing I’ve just come up with into my super-serious corporate report tomorrow that has to be submitted tomorrow. I wonder?

So yes I prefer to like deadlines and things going to plan and schedules. I also like it when things go off piste a little too.

True invention and genius can lie in those hectic moments. I adore Casablanca. It seems to me to be an almost perfect example of a certain type of Hollywood movie. Refinement and script-craft just ooze from the screen. So it has always amused me to think that the script was unfinished when filming started. Koch, Julius and Philip Epstein were writing many of the famous scenes direct on the set — and a candidate for the most perfect last line of a movie ever “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship” was not actually in the script, but was thought up after filming was completed and dubbed in later! I always love Ingrid Bergman’s performance in this film too. I adore the sense of ambiguity that she portrays about her shifting affections for Rick and Laszlo. So it really chucklesome and a bit humbling to hear that this wasn’t really part of the plan — but came more from the chaotic process in which character motivations were never really clear and were being changed on set!

Pure movie magic emerged from the mayhem of things simply not going to plan.

Happy Writers’ Wednesday! #WW. Just about…..