Random Routine - Screenwriter Tom MacRae runs through a day in the life of writing a movie
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 19 October 2021
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Along with Dan Gillespie-Sells, from The Feeling, Tom MacRae wrote the hit musical 'Everybody's Talking About Jamie'. It follows Jamie New who is determined to wear a dress to his school prom night. It's based on a a real story, explored in a BBC documentary. The musical is now a film, also written by Tom, which you can watch on Amazon Prime now.
In this bitesize chunk, you can hear about his writing routine in the sun, how exercise gives him space to think, and why weekends are sacred.
You can listen to the full episode from 2019, by flicking back in your podcast feed.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, happy midweek. It's our random routine back after a little bit of a break, |
| 0:14.3 | birthdays, weddings, that kind of stuff. It's our bite-sized bit of inspiration just to get you |
| 0:19.8 | going. If you flag in after a few days. |
| 0:24.1 | And my name's Dan Simpson. |
| 0:25.1 | Thank you for finding and listening and streaming to us. |
| 0:27.8 | This week, it's the author and the playwright Tom McCray, |
| 0:32.0 | along with Dan Gillespie Sells from The Feeling. |
| 0:35.0 | He wrote the hit musical, Everybody's Talking About |
| 0:37.9 | Jamie, and it's just been made into a movie on Amazon Prime, so this is pretty timely. |
| 0:43.5 | Max Harwood and Sarah Lancashire are fantastic in it, got to say. Richard E. Grant steals the show. |
| 0:51.2 | He's only in about three scenes, and he makes it not all about Jamie, but kind of |
| 0:55.1 | all about him. It is about the boy in the dress who wants to go to his prom in drag. It's based |
| 1:00.8 | on a BBC documentary in which that happens. Tom first came on the show back in 2019 and in the |
| 1:08.0 | main episode which you can find by scrolling down on your feed, we discuss writing musicals and the scripts for that, how it's different to novels, how much he thinks about language and the songs that are in there, and is writing space as well, in the sun, in L.A. I'm exceedingly jealous. |
| 1:26.3 | This one is just a routine, as always, a little bite-sized chunk of inspiration for you. |
| 1:31.3 | And Tom's routine is pretty idyllic, I've got to say. |
| 1:39.3 | I'm filming at the moment. I literally, we're shooting the Jamie movie, so I don't have a normal routine at the moment. Like literally we're shooting the Jamie movie. |
| 1:45.5 | So I don't have a normal routine at the moment. |
| 1:48.0 | But my normal routine when I'm not actually in production is I don't set an alarm. |
| 1:54.1 | I wake up naturally. |
| 1:56.2 | It's often quite late because I'm not very good in the morning. |
| 1:58.6 | But I try to be to be sitting down at my desk by 10.30 because I'm not very good in the morning. But I try to be, uh, to be sitting down at my desk |
... |
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