Playwright, actor, lecturer, film and TV writer Neil McCarthy spends his days master-penning the stories that come to life every evening on e.tv's soapie
Rhythm City.
The first time I ever spotted Neil was in one of his plays called Storm Riders, which was on at the Baxter theatre when I was at school - it was an official outing type thing. I left the show feeling finished for both him (he wore a hott leather jacket in it) and the play, which was edgy and inspiring.
Since then I've kept tabs on what he's up to and reckoned that seeings as he's the head writer of Rhythm City it would be the perfect excuse to hook up with him for us to get his behind-the-scenes take on the show:
Note the Storm Riders poster in the background - trippy 'cos it just happened to be there.
Tashi: What does a Head Writer do? I've always wondered what it means exactly.
Neil: It means that you’re overseeing and administering the story of a show and maintaining the standards of the overall storytelling.
On Rhythm City I fulfill the function of what’s come to be called the Showrunner - which means you have oversight on all creative aspects of the show so I’m in viewings, I’m looking at what the directors and editors are doing, I’m involved in all principal casting decisions and so on.
Tashi: Do you do the writing or do you tell people what to write?
Neil: I tell people what to write and I re-write what they write when they write badly. I’m very involved with the brainstorming of ideas with the writers.
We’ll meet and decide where the story’s going to go and then the storyliners break the stories down into a beat by beat script of how it’s going to play out on TV so I’m involved in overseeing that and how it’s edited and so on.
This is why I need really good writers because it’s very time-consuming when something doesn’t come out as it should.
Tashi: So what’s an average day like for you?
Neil: A large component, probably about half my week, is looking at scripts and editing - I have to work through about six scripts a week - and then sitting in edit suites and looking at the product that’s about to go out, giving feedback to directors and editors on the work in the studio.
Tashi: What time do you start and finish?
Neil: Well, once I’ve got all my children off to school I’m at my computer by 08h30 and I have to break at the end of the day because I’m involved in more childcare *laughs* but often I end up back at my computer and finish at about 23h00. I try to keep it down to ordinary working hours but it’s not always possible.
Tashi: There’s an excellent quote in
Californication where the lead writer-character Hank Moody says “Being a writer blows - it’s like having homework for the rest of your life.”
Neil: *Laughs* It is, it is.
Tashi: What’s the toughest part of things?
Neil: Coming up with stories - the constant demand, it’s like this ferocious hungry beast that you have to shovel stories into all the time. We in South Africa have developed a unique style of soap opera in that we move through stories much more quickly.
If you compare our soapies to something like Bold and the Beautiful, their stories are spread out over weeks - whereas we move through stories very quickly. It’s happened because most of us who are writing have a background in writing for theatre or single camera drama where our training’s been done in telling stories in a far more compact, vigorous way.
Tashi: How do you come up with all your ideas?
Neil: It’s a process of trial and error. I’m lucky to be working with a team of guys who’re very experienced in various forms of storytelling and we’re very critical of each others suggestions - it’s hard to hold onto ego’s in it because you’re quite likely to get knocked down and told “No, that’s rubbish, it doesn’t make sense start again.”
We also look at what audiences are saying and what they’re enjoying, which characters they’re enjoying - if we’re striking a chord.
Tashi: Do all the writers write together in one big room or do people go off by themselves and bring back what they’ve written?
Neil: We have one specialist guy who works on the story breakdown - a synopsis of each scene in an episode that’s described in detail. Each episode has about four pages of description. That gets handed over to episode writers who actually do the dialogue.
They go off and write the script on their own - they’ve got quite a tight deadline to deliver it - and then the script gets given to the script editor.
He looks at physical continuity issues - if it’s doable on the set, if the story’s making sense and then when he’s done his part I look at it and do a further re-write. It really is a production line process.
Tashi: Do the writers ever act out scenes to see if they work?
Neil: No that would be a disaster - none of them are really actors. Some of the writers have acting background - the dialogue writers sometimes have them but most the people involved in the design of the storyline writers aren’t.
Tashi: The characters you’ve created in Rhythm City - are they representations of you? Do each of them have personality traits that are yours?
Neil: Because it’s such a collective process you can’t say that they represent any one of the people who’ve been engaged in creating them but I do find that when I’m writing other projects, the characters reflect you to some degree.
The best way to make characters come to life is to make them as personal as possible, reflecting a lived experience so inevitably characters that work successfully reflect your experience.
Part of the writers art is to disguise that so that you project them onto other realities in other people’s worlds.
Tashi: You were a creator and writer of
Isidingo - why did you leave?
Neil: It’s a danger with this form - as I said it’s a hungry machine and I just got fatigued after two years of working on it. I suppose the danger also exists on RC - the excitement of getting it up and running, building the characters and watching it grow - it’s very exciting and I’m hooked into that process.
The process of fuelling it and managing it in an ongoing way is a very different challenge so once Isidingo was up and running with a routine - that was the point I thought I wanted to move on to a fresh challenge.
Tashi: Who’s your fave TV writer?
Neil: I don’t think you can beat Aaron Sorkin - the creator of
The West Wing. I think he’s brilliant at taking really dense ideas and rehashing them as human drama - I’m in awe of his work as a TV creator.
Tashi: What’s the best part of creating TV?
Neil: I suppose coming up with a story that really clicks - where you can feel when you’re working on a story, that it’s fresh and different and that you’re moving into a territory that hasn’t been done before.
Then seeing it come out and reading audiences reactions - on TVSA sometimes - and seeing that it’s resonated - seeing that we’ve made a difference to people.
Neil fast facts:Neil created Isidingo alongside Grey Hofmeyr and was Head Writer on the show between 1995 and 1998. Other show's he's head written include
Mzansi 2, Zero Tolerance and
Gaz'lam.
He teaches screenwriting courses for aspiring scriptwriters at Sasani Studio's in Jo'burg. The four-week course runs on Saturday mornings and covers all aspects of TV writing including finding ideas, writing scripts and pitching them to broadcasters.
The next course starts this Saturday (7 June) - you can find out all the details right here:
Creative Industry.
He's a regular guest lecturer at UCT's Graduate School of Film and New Media and The Actor's Centre in Jo'burg.
His plays are studied and performed by university drama students.
He played Dr Mike Bellman in
Jozi H and can currently be seen as Father John in SABC1's
uGugu no Andile.
I first touched him in the flesh in 2003 at an MCQP party (Mother City Queer Project) at the launch of SABC3's reality show The Wedding Show - which he produced:
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