#49 - Simon Blackwell: Writing Veep & The Thick of It, Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Scary Phrase, Emergency Plane Writing, The Genius of Armando Iannucci, Sweary Grannies, & Why Parenting Makes You A Better Creative

I am lucky to introduce today’s guest who has been at the forefront of British comedy for the last two decades.

The man behind hit shows such as Back starring Mitchell and Webb and Sky’s Breeders, his career is long and celebrated but it is his partnership with Armando Innaucci for which he is probably best known.

Together they have brought movies like In The Loop and The Personal History of David Copperfield into the world as well as the now legendary sitcom The Thick of It and its ridiculously acclaimed US cousin Veep which won seventeen Emmy awards during its run. Along the way, he picked up two of them for himself, as well as four BAFTA nominations and an Oscar nomination for In The Loop.

My guest is Mr Simon Blackwell.

Transcript

HOST

Every great film and tv maker began as a red carpet rookie. In this podcast, each episode provides a new conversation with a leading film and tv industry professional deconstructing their creative career and delving into the life lessons and stories they've picked up along the journey. My name is Mike Battle, a film crew member turned screenwriter, and I'll be your host. And this is red carpet bit rookies.

GUESTS INTROS

I was 24 years old when we went over to make Schindler's list. I didn't know what I was doing. I have that still everything I do, impostor syndrome. What I learned from Steven Spielberg is.

Just keep going, push forward no matter how bad things get. And then they casted a young guy named Brad Pitt. Don't think so much. Don't take no for an answer. It was my first meeting with David about Fight Club.

The day that Pixar called, I was ready.

I just picked up the phone and made half a million dollars.

I mean, at the beginning of every job, I kind of think, what if.

I don't have any ideas? Dream come true. Working on a Bond film, I was terrified because I thought, well, what if I just screw this right up? He said, you'll get a script at the end of the week.

HOST

Hello, and welcome to red carpet rookies. I'm lucky to introduce today's guest who has been at the forefront of british comedy for the last two decades, the man behind hit shows such as Back, starring Mitchell and Webb, and Sky's Breeders. His career is long and celebrated, but it is his partnership with Armando Ianucci, for which he is probably best known. Together they have brought movies like in the Loop and the personal history of David Cobfield into the world, as well as the now legendary sitcom the Thick of it and its ridiculously acclaimed us cousin Veep, which won 17 Emmy awards during its run. Along the way, he picked up two of them for himself, as well as four BAFTA nominations and an Oscar nomination for in the Loop. My guest is Mr. Simon Blackwell. How are you doing today?

SIMON

Very well, thank you, Mike. When you talk about it being decades, I still feel quite new to it. And the fact that I have been doing it for 25 years or a bit longer always surprises me.

HOST

Still on the journey, Simon?

SIMON

Yeah, still trying to get better. Good.

HOST

I will get to that. Funny enough, I had a question about that, so we'll get to that one later. Now I ask all of my guests the same first question. Simon, and that is, what did your parents do and did it affect your career choices moving forward?

SIMON

My dad was a wages clerk. He worked for Watney's in London when I was growing up. And my mum, we lived on a Peabody estate in Battersea and my mum worked behind the counter in one of the corner shops on the estate. In those days there were like seven, eight corner shops on the one estate and she was working beyond the camp in one of those. So, yeah, no kind of showbiz, no writing. Yeah, they sort of did jobs rather than have careers.

HOST

Were your parents funny?

SIMON

Yes, they were both really funny. And my dad had a very dry sense of humor. My mum had a very rude sense of humor, as did her mum, my granny. Granny Grunt, she used to call herself. I'm Granny Grunt with the cast on my own constitution and only later did I tweak the rhyme. But yes. And we always watched comedy in the house. That was whatever was on. If good, bad or indifferent, it was a comedy. We would watch it because we liked to laugh. They were funny people and they were sharp and smart and in another era would have gone to university and done different things. That's lovely to hear.

HOST

Is that the granny that used to take you out looking at signs or something like that?

SIMON

Yes, she used to take me and my sister out. She used to say, I've got the pens, let's go out. And she used to take us around the streets of Balarthi to write rude words on street signs. So she'd go, come write bum on there. And so we'd go and write bum on a sign. It was an afternoon well spent. I don't know if any of them still survive, kind of 40 od years later, but, yeah, that was an afternoon's entertainment with my granny.

HOST

She sounds great.

SIMON

She was brilliant. She was very smart and she was very funny. And she had been born in a workhouse and she was, again, in another era, she would have been something else, but she was a child of her times.

HOST

Interesting. Did you have a moment yourself when you kind of realized, quote unquote, you were funny? I know it's a bit of a weird thing to ask that question, but I've noticed it with often comedians and less so writers, but comedy writers, but they often say, like, oh, there was a moment. Actually, I'm kind of making people laugh here. Maybe there's something in this I did.

SIMON

I can remember I used to, at primary school, I used to do impressions, I think, kind of Mike Yarwood style impressions, and I used to make the teachers laugh sometimes with that. And then I think if you're a kid and you make an adult laugh in a proper way, rather than them laughing at you, that they're laughing with you because you've said something funny. I think there were probably a couple of occasions where I've kind of made my mum and dad laugh. I thought, oh, okay, I can do it. I've got an inkling as to what the secret is that allows this sort of magic thing to happen.

HOST

Yeah, that's really interesting. Definitely. Have you ever done stand up through your career?

SIMON

No. It terrifies me. Just the thought of it makes me feel ill. I never want to be on stage. I'm happy to be a writer and I'm always asked, when we're doing shows, do I want to be in the background of this shot and even kind of award things. Sometimes I secretly hope you don't win. You don't have to get up on the stage. No, stand up. I got a great admiration for stand ups and I used to work with a lot of them when I was in radio and doing more kind of gag based stuff early on, and the fact that they could know they got a gig in the evening and they weren't in a cold sweat about it. Used to. I admired that very much. I worked a lot with Chris Addison, who was a touring comic. I couldn't. I couldn't do it. Even if it's to an audience who want to see it, it's difficult. But imagine doing an open sport, just a club, where people aren't necessarily to know who you are. Just brings me out in a cold sweat.

HOST

Yeah, it's funny. I have the same thing and I'm very Bambi like. As I was saying to you before, you went on with my comedy writing, but people read them and they say, oh, this is a funny script, but I definitely don't consider myself to ever be a comedy performer. So I wonder what that line know, because you see comedy writers in interviews and often in a know, they're not necessarily Ricky Gervais in that way. And it's an interesting distance, I guess.

SIMON

What do you think about, I mean, you know, Armando, he's a performer as well, and so he's happy to be on stage, he's happy to be in front of the camera. Tony Roach did stand up for a bit years ago. He did a kind of poetry act, I think, but he never much enjoyed it. But, yeah, I would never call myself a comedian. I'm a comedy writer. Sometimes I say screenwriter to make it sound a little more grand, but I don't write anything that isn't comedy, but I'm not a comedian. I couldn't be on a panel show, for instance. I couldn't be a comedian like David Mitchell can be just funny in that environment.

HOST

Interesting. Yeah. Thank you for opening up on that. Do you remember the first script that you ever did write? So you had that background in funny household. You had Nana making you write funny things. Do you remember the first script you wrote and why you wrote it?

SIMON

Well, rather than a script, it would have been gags. As I got into writing via BBC radio, there was a show called weekending on when I started out, because I was in my 30s when I started writing, but there was a so called weekending, and you could walk in, literally walk in off the street and go up to a room in the light entertainment department. And there were commissioned writers who wrote most of it, but they would allow non commissioned writers, I e, just people who walked in off the street, to have a go, and they'd say, these are the subjects that the commissioned writers haven't covered. We need gags on these sketches, on these. Go away. And then you'd send them in. If they like them, they would go on that show. And I think at that time, with the Saturday repeat, I think it was like a million people would listen to weekending. So you'd get 15 quid for a joke and you'd also think, well, it's gone out to all of Britain. And so I don't remember any of the early gags, but I remember my excitement at getting on the radio. And I remember also when I got, again, for a non commissioned show, this is a tv show, Rory Bremwich show. I remember getting a joke on there and I remember seeing my name go up at the end in the list of credits. And I was so excited. I didn't sleep for that night. I just lay was. And I thought, oh, ok, I really do want to do this, don't I? Because it felt so good. That's amazing.

HOST

Yeah. I don't know. Did you have thoughts at that time of writing longer form stuff?

SIMON

Well, at that time, the attitude was that there were very distinct. If you were a gag writer and you were over here and you were a narrative writer, a comic narrative writer over here, and the streams didn't cross, and if you were going down the gag writing route, that was where you're going to stay. But then I started, I guess the transition was I did a show called the Kumars at number 42, and for the latter couple of series of that, it was a kind of interview, fake interview show with Sanji Pascal and Mirasa. And the conceit was, was it that Sanchez had a studio in his house and he would interview these celebrities. But in between the interview sections, there were three kind of narrative bits of a story of the week, and I got to write those. So I was writing kind of three acts there, even though each act was only like four or five minutes long. And I was also doing the same thing for a kids show called Bounty Hamster that was on ITV, an animation. And that needed to be a three act structure, but again, in eleven minutes. So I was feeling my way over to writing narrative, but I never had, because I was. When I started out, I already had two kids. I didn't have the sitcom in my back pocket that I've been secretly working on. Everything I worked on, I did to get paid, so I didn't have anything that I was writing secretly that I wasn't being paid for. So I had nothing to offer people. And, I mean, the thing that happened was I just got. I got an email from Armando Inucci. I'd worked on a topical show with him in 1993 called Gash that was going out around the same time as the Iraq war. And I've been a kind of gag rider on that and just sort of items and sketches and things. And then out of the blue, a year later, maybe I got this email saying, I'm doing this sitcom based in Westminster, Jesse Arms. He and Jesse Armstrong are writing episode one. I want Tony Roach to write one. And I wonder whether you two would like to write together as a team. And then I didn't want to be too keen, so I went downstairs and I made a cup of tea and I went back up. I must have waited seven minutes before I replied, yes, please, I would love to do that. And he just took a chance for me. That was Amanda just seeing that I might be able to do it, just do a longer form narrative thing and just taking a punt. And he said, do you want to write with Tony? Tony and I had kind of worked on other shows together, but not as a writing partnership. We'd been on various kind of radio, four things as solo writers, but we knew each other, we were friends. And so it was that really, that started it. So Jesse and me and Tony and Arm and Ian Martin then started doing the thick of it.

HOST

Amazing. Did you sleep that night when you got that email?

SIMON

That was another difficult. You never get any sleep. Simon it was because it was so out of the know and you think these things happen and there's so much luck in this business, really. Of just being in the right place at the right time and things being in just that came absolutely out of nowhere. And I'd wanted to move to narrative. I'd done enough sketches and enough gags and I wanted to try something longer to see if I could do it and to have more time to play with to do comedy.

HOST

Amazing. What was that daily writing process like when you had yourself, Armando, Jesse and Tony in those early days? And how did that collaboration work, especially if you didn't know them particularly well?

SIMON

We would have kind of initial meetings with all of us in a room in Marmando's kind of office in tv centre. And then we'd go off and write very quick first drafts and I mean really quick, like in a week or would. And then we'd kind of swap them around because there was no money for. BBC didn't have the money to do a kind of writers room, american type writers room. We did a kind of writer's room via email. So we would work on each other. Singing arm would be at the center, like Charlie and Charlie's Angels, if the angels were. He would kind of then get the strips back and he would give notes and they'd go out again and it would be this very collaborative process. So much so that when people ask, now, who came up with that joke? Usually you don't know. Sometimes you've got your favorites that you think, yeah, that is mine. But usually you can't tell because it went through so many iterations and through so many brains. Arm always at the center of it. Arm kind of guiding it and getting it to the place he wanted it to be. But it was fun because we were continued to write through the rehearsal process and off the back of the improvisation of the actors. And we would continue to write when we were on set throwing extra lines and stuffed into reworking, coming up with new stuff so you were never finished with it. It was constantly being created. And that included up until the edit as well, when Arm would go in and we'd have probably 60 minutes in the first assembly for a 28 minutes show. And so he'd go and do the final rewrite in the edit. He's a genius in many ways. I think that's one of the main prongs of his genius fork is his editing ability, his ability to get something out of the editor. You think, how the hell did you take an hour's show and make it into half an hour and make it make sense? And you seem to have added stuff to it rather than taking stuff away there's some sort of magic stuff going on there. He did that when he in the loop came in, I think early in the loop, the thing was like three and a half hours or longer, and you'd watch it and you think, well, we need everything in that. We need everything in that to make the story make sense. We can't lose anything. And it came in an hour and a half, and the story made sense. I continued to be sort of amazed at how he does it because I.

HOST

Defined your guy's work as the sort of thing you would say, there's no fat on it.

SIMON

Yes. And once he gets to that, he'd often just cuts the top and the bottom off a scene. He cuts all the kind of the preamble and the post amble, and he just goes for the meat. But you wouldn't know it was that we'd filmed as much as we had. And, of course, as a writer, you need to be prepared to lose all of that material. You need to be prepared for the vast majority of what you write, to never see the light of day. And we tried in the past, we tried putting a kind of file together of jokes and bits we like to use later, and we never did, really, because they never fitted into whatever the later episode was. So you have to be prepared. You had to be prepared on that show and on beep as well, to just go, most of this, I've got to write the first half as if it's the shooting script to try and make it as good as possible. But very little of this is going to go out on the telly, and you just have to kind of square that.

HOST

Is that quite hard mentally, in a way?

SIMON

Yeah, it is. You just have to kind of put the blinkers on and go, I'm writing this shooting script rather than the first draft. I'm going to make this as good as possible, but knowing that there be not just kill your darlings, but kind of a massacre of your darlings will happen, and then you'll come up with new stuff and it will be better. Amanda has always likened it to making a chicken stock, where you kind of put a lot of stuff in and you boil it down, and then you put some more things in and you boil it down, and in the end you've got this very rich thing, and the thick of it has a lot of story going on in it. Each episode, you forget that this moment happened, and this moment happened, and this moment happened, and you think there was three different episodes and it was one because we just stuffed it with story.

HOST

Before we do talk about some veep stuff, because you mentioned it there, and I would love to talk about it. There's one personal question I would love to ask about the making of the thick of it because I'm interested in the character web of it. And personally, I was always intrigued by where you fill gaps in your script with characters, and I never quite got loved him. But Jamie, if I'd have written Malcolm, where was the thinking? Because he is similar in a way. And I always wondered what you guys, your thoughts behind him were.

SIMON

Well, my thought on it was that it was a bit like Frasier and Niles in Frasier, in that when they came up with Frasier and they had to give him a brother, the first thing you'd think about was, let's make the brother completely different to Frasier. But what they did was they made him a haiku, kind of estresso version of Frasier. And that's what Jamie is, I think to Malcolm, he is the haiku version of Malcolm. Malcolm has limits. There are things he won't do, and Jamie is feral. Jamie will do anything. Jamie is uncontrollable. So I always thought of it a bit like that. A bit like Frasier and Niles in that Niles is kind of uber Frasier and Jamie is Uber Malcolm, but he can't survive the way Malcolm can because he goes into Ball of fury.

HOST

Interesting. Yeah. Thank you for giving me that answer. I've always been intrigued by that. And speaking of first drafts, you mentioned a little bit back there when you guys were writing them on the thick of it. I heard you in another interview talking about writing a draft for veep when you got on a plane on one end and had to write it on the way over to America. And specifically, I'd love to ask, how did you approach that in the sense of you're sitting there, I presume the story has been broken in front of you already. What do you write first? Did you have a methodology to it?

SIMON

I think I just had to go from beginning to it was an old fashioned British Airways flight that used to go into Baltimore, so it didn't have any kind of, you couldn't plug a MacBook in. So I was fighting the battery as well, that I had to kind of get this thing written and save it before the battery went. So I don't know how much of it we had. We didn't have a lot of it together because it was a crazy season. There were a few crazy seasons on that show, but it was the last one, it was the one that got the Emmy, the writing and everything was being written quickly, and someone else was working on episode nine and someone else was working on episode eight. So I think I just started at the beginning and went through and just tried to whizz through as much as possible. I can't remember how much of a structure there was. There must have been a structure there. But I remember that the plane ride was kind of galvanizing. It sort of made you think, I've got to get something at the end of this.

HOST

Like a school deadline.

SIMON

Yeah, it was just a kind of. We had to, because there were going to be cameras and actors and people there, and then it would then got rehearsed and rewritten and rewritten. But the initial kind of burst of it was on a flight from Heathrow to Baltimore. And sometimes now, when I was know if I'm having trouble with a script on breeders, Toby Welch, my producer on that, sometimes, says, should we book you a pain? Get the next draft out of you if we take you to Baltimore and back.

HOST

Speaking of breeders, how did becoming a parent change your writing through your career? Did it affect it much?

SIMON

Well, I became a parent before I became a writer, and I think I became a writer because I became a parent, because I'd always wanted to be a comedy writer, and I'd always been terrified that I wouldn't be any good. So I never tried it, because I always thought, if you try it and you find out you're lousy, then that's the dream. God. Whereas if you don't try it, you can always have the dream that maybe I could one day do this. But that's putting it off. Putting it off and putting it off. And what I think galvanized me for starting writing was that I had two kids, and they turn your life upside down. Absolutely upside down. So I thought, well, why don't I try and change work upside down and see if I can make a go of writing, see if I've got it in me. So actually becoming a parent made me into a writer. And I wasn't a writer when I was single and no kids, and I had all the time in the world to write. I didn't write a word. But when I just had a couple of hours a night, for instance, when I started on weekending, I would have a couple of hours in the evening between doing all the baby stuff. I would have a couple of hours to get as many settis and gags written as possible. And it focused the mind, and it was that? And it made me a writer. And there's a cliche that the pram in the hall is the enemy of the writer, and I think it's not. It's the friend of the writer, because the little time you have, you want to make count. So that's what I was doing when I started.

HOST

How interesting. I know you guys had a lot of big lunches in the beginning to share your parenting stories between yourself and Martin Freeman. How did you decide what went in? Was there anything that was almost too close to home?

SIMON

I don't think so. I think we just decided if we thought we could make it funny, we would go in. Even if it know, in the initial. In the pilot episode where, you know, Ali thinks Paul might have killed their children, genuinely, we were sort of setting out our stall then as to where we were prepared to go with it. And then I don't think it was ever quite that harsh. For the rest of the four seasons, we wanted to set out that this is where we're prepared to take this comedically. And we think we can get laughs out of the idea of this woman fearing that taking their kids away to kill them. Yeah. So I think no holds bar, really. And nothing was kind of ruled out. If it was emotionally real, if it made sense, if it was an interesting area to explore, then let's see if we can make this dramatical and or make this funny.

HOST

And how did the process of writing it differ from something like the thick of it? Was it quite as. Not a word makes it in as the previous work?

SIMON

No, it was much more conventional in that we would have writers rooms and we would kind of break stories as much as possible. Certainly for the first six or seven episodes of the ten, we would try and get those stories broken and assigned to writers. I'd always write half. I'd write five out of the ten. And it was a very different experience to the thick of it. And it was much more like a kind of conventional writer's room.

HOST

So you didn't have to do the. Is it the top minds thing that you had to do on Veep? I'm interested by that. Awful and amazing.

SIMON

Yes. There would always be a writer on set for Veep, as there always was at the thick of it. And you'd be sitting in the dark behind the flats when they were setting up or filming a scene, and then suddenly you'd hear this Julia call for top minds. Can we get the top minds on? And that meant they needed something else in the script. There was a script problem so you would then walk on out of the dark into the set with the lights on and the crew around you and the cast there and everything. And then they'd say, this line isn't working. It's just not logically that wouldn't happen. And then you have to come up with some alternatives. And it was, the walk on was always like a walk to the scaffold. But then having been a gag writer and having done, I did Graham Norton's show for a few years when he was on Channel four particularly, and it was five nights a week, and he would need a monologue in the evening. And I would be in there with Rob Collie, who was his main writer, Dan Gaster. And you couldn't say, we haven't come up with anything because there were going to be tv cameras on him, and at 06:00 and then it was going to go on channel four at 10:00 so you couldn't not write stuff. And so it was a really useful muscle to develop as a gag writer there. But that also helps on narrative where if someone says, have you got a different line here? You have, you can come up with two or three things and let's see what works. But it's still just the wander in to the fear. Yeah, just to the top minds. And also, there was also just slightly sarcastic to call us because he didn't feel that top for most of the time.

HOST

Yeah. Well, I guess this was your moment to be it. So this was you. Either you were going to be a top mind or not Simon yes.

SIMON

No. And that was the terror of it, that you could just go know, I don't know what you could fall over, but something always happened.

HOST

Amazing. Yeah. And to your point as well, there's that line from Lorne Michaels, the creator of SNL, and he says the shows doesn't go on because it's ready. It goes on because it's, I think it's 08:00 or whatever the time.

SIMON

It's just. Yeah, it was useful to start as a joke writer. It was useful just to know that you could come up with lines. Yeah.

HOST

Amazing. Now, I could speak to you forever, Simon, but we like to wrap up on red carpet rookies with a little questionnaire, which is my own ode to in the actor studio. So it's a bit of a quick fire, if that's okay.

SIMON

Okay.

HOST

The first question is, what is one of the best pieces of advice you've ever been given?

SIMON

That was probably Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, who I work with on peep show and on the old guys and a bit on four lions. And they were. Because I came from a gag writing background. When I came in to write narrative, to write sitcom, I would often go for the gag response to something the character would respond to something with a joke that was an obvious joke. Often, I hope, a funny joke. But Sam and Jesse always would say, what if you dug around next to that joke for a bit and found something that felt more real? Found something that someone would say, would genuinely say in that moment, in their emotional state of that moment, they would say, this thing. Can you find that? And can you make that funny? Because if you can, then it's much rifter for the show and for the audience. And it's a better joke and it takes some looking for. But if you can find it, it's a good thing. And so that's what I got from them, was to just look next to the joke and see if there's a better joke buried under it.

HOST

I like that. Number two, do you have a favorite film or one that just impacted you greatly that you remember?

SIMON

Well, in terms of impacting me, it would be kind of filmic rather than the film. There was a show in, I think it was 1983, called Unknown Chaplin where Charlie Chaplin had famously, they thought, burned all of his rushes because he didn't want anyone to see how he worked. And he used to work on film, use it like a note because he was made so much money that was extortionately expensive, but he could afford to. But they found a lot of reels of stuff that some people had taken away and hadn't burned. And so you suddenly see it's like a great artist yetis. You see this man who is just overflowing with creativity. You see him just. It's a ball of creativity and it's wondrous to look at. And I used to go and watch it if I had it on old vhs tape and I used to go and watch it if I was feeling kind of. I couldn't think of anything. It would be an inspirational thing to just see this guy coming up with gag after gag after gag, most of which he would then throw away because some didn't fit his character, some he thought, logically, that doesn't work. Whereas other comedians would have gone, thank. That's my big jag of the film. And he would come up with loads of those and throw most of them away and keep the absolute gold. So it was narrated by James Mason and it was a fantastic thing. And it's probably out. It's probably downloadable from that.

HOST

Sounds amazing. Yeah. I like collecting those documentaries often where you can sort of see the creative process happen. Like the beatles one that came out recently with Jackson. I'll have to check that one out.

SIMON

Yeah, no, it's unknown chaplain, and it's 40 years old, but it's a great thing.

HOST

Awesome. Number three, which job in the industry would you do if you weren't doing yours? Talent or relevant?

SIMON

Because I don't think I'm qualified. Justify anything else, really. I've done some script editing. I've done a few script editing jobs for other people, and I like that because before I was a writer, I was a sub editor on magazines and newspapers, and it uses that same muscle. So I think I could be a script editor. I just don't think I've got anything to do anything else on a set. Not a costume designer. No. When you're a writer on set, basically you're just there to get in the way of people doing a proper job. You're just constantly going, sorry. While people are actually doing the work. So, yeah, maybe just a script editing, but anything else.

HOST

Love it. This one's a hard one. If you could work with one person, living or dead, who would it be?

SIMON

Well, about ten years ago, I got a call from someone at the BBC saying, would I like to write a vehicle for Victoria Wood? And I got back saying, that would be lovely. And like a lot of these things, it didn't work out. And then she passed away in, I think, 2016. But I would have loved to have written for her. I, an enormous, enormous fan of her writing, but also of her acting, actually. She was a great actor. Victoria Wood. I think I would have loved to have written for her.

HOST

That's lovely. Number five, what is a book, ideally, sort of career or creativity focused, but doesn't have to be that everyone should.

SIMON

Read in terms of comedy. I think there's a book called the Silent Clowns by Walter Kerr. Walter Kerr, who was the New York Times theater critic in the. He wrote a book in the mid 70s called the Silent Clowns that was analyzing the comedy of chaplain and Keaton and Harold Lloyd and Lauren Hardy. But it's a very difficult thing to analyze comedy without killing it. And he manages to absolutely not kill it, but add extra life to it. And it's about silent comedy, but I think it applies to all humor and all comedy, and it's a great analysis of comedy and humor. And I would recommend that it's still around. I think it's still available, but it's a great essay. And he's someone who loves comedy, and he wants to see how it works and he can explain how it works without killing it, which is a rare thing.

HOST

Excellent. And finally, if you won an Oscar, Simon, who would you thank?

SIMON

Well, when we were nominated in the loop, we got sent a video of Tom Hanks telling you what you should and shouldn't do on the stage if you were lucky enough to win. And one of the things he said you shouldn't do is thank everybody, because he said, there's a thank you camera backstage. So what you were meant to do was say what it meant to you personally. Your reaction should be, what did this, getting this amazing thing means to you? So we had that in mind. We knew we were, but we still had it in mind. But I think if I was allowed to thank anyone, I would thank my wife, Jenny, and I would thank Jack and Dan, my sons, for putting up with me. I think it would be the thank you.

HOST

I would mean amazing. Thank you so much for your time today. This is a very special conversation, Simon, and amazing advice and really interesting, I think, particularly the bit about how you were talking about your parenting and how you came to writing later. Really interesting. Thank you so much.

SIMON

Well, thank you. You're very welcome.

HOST

Thank you for listening to another episode of Red Carpet Rookies. To help us grow and be able to interview more amazing film and tv professionals. Please do subscribe and drop us a rating on the Apple Podcast store, on your iPhone or online if you're an Android user. If you're interested in regular updates, the best thing you can do is to join our mailing list@redcarpetrookies.com, or alternatively, find us on Instagram at red carpet rookies or Twitter at rcrookies pod. I also tweet regularly about my own learnings in the business at Mike Fbattle on Twitter. So please do come and say hi. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.