SKY WEST & CROOKED

SCREENPLAY

My very first commission, selected for what was then the UK Film Council’s Screen West Midlands’ development programme. I was commissioned to write this remake of the John Mills 1965 classic, updating it for 21st Century Britain.

In this version, the story centres on a 16 year old girl (Brydie) with Asperger's Syndrome and her struggles to fit in on her council estate. Her real friends are the younger children on the estate with whom she escapes into an imaginative world where they explore the deeper complexities of life, not least - death. However, her transition to adulthood is accelerated when she meets a handsome traveller and they fall in love.

This experience revealed my appetite for exploring ‘grown up’ issues through the eyes of children. It also introduced me to the original writer’s voice, Mary Hayley Bell. She had previously written ‘Whistle Down the Wind’, a film that my Grandma first showed me when I was a boy and has been engraved on my soul since.