#33: How To Become An Expert Screenwriter And Fantasy Author - David Kain

Want to know how to balance being a screenwriter and a fantasy novelist?

Listen to David Kain explain how it's possible to go from studying a PhD in Creative Writing to becoming an in-demand screenwriter and fantasy author. He also discusses the main influences on his work, his take on the growing use of AI in creative spaces, and how he uses outlines to write fiction.

Info about the author:

David Kain is one of the main screenwriters on the 12 part series, 'The City Is Ours', and has written the screenplay for the upcoming horror film, 'Mother's Legacy'. He has also written the choice-based narrative game, 'Paranormal Preparatory School', and the upcoming medieval fantasy novel, 'The Royalists', which will be published in July 2026.

Author Links:

The City Is Ours: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thecityisours/

Paranormal Preparatory School: https://www.choiceofgames.com/paranormal-prep/

Mother's Legacy: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32189733/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Okay, welcome to another episode of What the Haze. I am your host, Hayes Wolfenden, and today I'm here with David Kane. Welcome, David.

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Hi, yeah. Thanks very much for having me. Uh yeah, being excited to be on here. We arranged it a while ago. So it's been nice to have something to look forward to.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Yeah, I know. I'm always checking into my calendar, making sure I've not forgotten anything, I've not double booked anything, and you're right, I've got quite a few lined up. So yeah, thank you. Can you just start, please, by just giving me just a brief like overview of yourself and like you know your career today? Because I know you're involved in, you know, quite a wide variety of projects.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Yeah, so I've been writing for, I think, since I was 11, but I think I guess when things got really serious would have been when I started doing a PhD in creative writing at Northumbria University, and that was about the political novel. And I started writing it, and it was supposed to be about the Northeast and the political situation there, but it ended up being 2016. Happened to fall right in the middle of that, so the novel had to expand its scope considerably during that one year. Um, so that was fun. But then after that, I worked on quite a few projects. So I'd actually started writing my current novel, or the one that's upcoming, during that time. Um, because obviously writing one novel for the PhD, that was going to be way too easy. So let's try and do another one. But I've also been involved with quite a few productions, so for short films, for series. So one of the things that came out, I think, at the start of 2026 was a crime series set in the northwest of England called The City is Ours, which was 12 episodes, kind of um, yeah, really fun, really gritty crime show. So I wrote the first three episodes, then the finale, which was a cool way to work on something, because yeah, everyone, a lot of writers taking responsibility for a couple of episodes. And I also, by accident, got to actually appear very briefly in that. So I appeared twice in episode two, as a character who turns out to be an incredibly inept bodyguard given the events of that episode, which I was told by the director were going to look like it was all my fault, which is quite interesting. Otherwise, I've also been working with some sort of Northeast directors on a horror movie, Mother's Legacy, and that's a very dark, grim, psychological sort of horror. I don't tend to I quite like body horror, I don't like writing it that much, because I think I'm more at home with kind of the psychological, the not being able to trust your own mind, has always been really scary to me, and that's very much what Mother's Legacy is all about. And having made in the Northeast of having a sort of very northeast cast and something where you can really hear the kind of northern enjoy the accents is something I'm really happy with because I've lived here almost all my life. So having that in a horror movie is fantastic. And I'm also can't say as much about it, but I'm also working on some um fantasy series at the moment called Amalia. So I'm the lead writer for that. That's got some really ambitious plans behind it. But in addition to my current fantasy series, The Royalists, which we'll get on to, I'm also writing, or written two of them, and the third one coming up. Sort of three novels that are wrapped up in that IP as well. So that's kind of a trilogy of novels that are connected to that. Yeah, somebody else's fantasy world, which is really cool to do because you've got so much research that someone else has kind of come up with. So that was really interesting. And yeah, at the moment I'm really focusing on the upcoming novel and doing some freelance screenwriting as well. So it's very much based on the both screenwriting and uh novel writing.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Yeah, it sounds fantastic. As you're talking, I just realized we're alumni of the same university. I did you you mentioned Yeah. I had no idea that yeah, I know you you said you got your PhD in creative writing. I got my master's degree in English literature from Northumbria when I had to think about it. It was a few years ago now. It doesn't seem like a few years ago, by the way. I think it was about 2017, off the top of my head. Um maybe not. Maybe 2018. We'd have been checked. So yeah, we were on the I mean I did mine online.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

All right, okay. Wow, fantastic. Yeah, brilliant. Nice to have that link. I don't suppose absolute long shot, because this would be amazing. We were taught by Professor Michael Green at any point because he was my supervisor. So that's fair enough. No, he was brilliant, but they had an amazing English and creative writing team there. So yeah, that was a fantastic place, especially for a postgrad degree where they're really heavy into the research. So that was yeah, lovely in Northumbria.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

Yeah, I did I did English literature there. And I've also got a master's degree in creative writing as well. So we we have got connections. But I did my creative writing MA Manchester Met University because it was mostly in poetry and they were quite, like maybe still are quite renowned for like their poetry angles. So that's why I did that with them. And then I can't remember why I went to Northumbria now. Uh there must have been a reason, but I always quite liked doing if I do another another degree or something, I like to do it at a different university just to get a different experience. So uh but I really like yeah, Northumbria, the MA was great.

SPEAKER_02 5:11

I mean, yeah, going to different places. I mean, did sort of the kind of my undergrad was a Scotch MA, which I guess is sort of resembles a closest to a BA, just with the kind of extra year on there. So yeah, that was like and then the master's and then Northumber. So yeah, three different universities. It's a different culture, you get a bunch of different people with their own different kind of ideas. So it's great to kind of move around and get exposed to that level and so many different ideas and theories and stuff.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Yeah, absolutely. Just out of because I'm I'm actually also interested in doing a PhD in creative writing as well. It's something I'm gonna maybe make a few inquiries about this year, later this year. How do you feel like doing your PhD in creative writing? How do you feel it helps improve, first of all, your writing? But then secondly, how has it helped your career or how is it continuing to help your career?

SPEAKER_02 6:00

So, in terms of the writing, I think one of the most valuable things it gives you is the kind of time and space to focus and really because a huge part, basically, PhD is the idea that you're supposed to become a subject area in what will be just a very narrow field of study, because that's all you can really accomplish in three to four years, is going to be that little, like tiny little niche subject. But you also propose new knowledge or some new theory or some different way of looking at it. Basically, you advance knowledge in some small way that you do it on top of all of these other people's research and things. So having kind of the time and focus to not only really get to know how I'm writing, because a huge amount of the supervisory sessions were looking at how I write for that genre, which for me was political fiction at the time, and sort of seeing, okay, how can we treat this? So it really made me examine my writing constantly. And my supervisor, as I said, Professor Michael Green, did historical fiction, which had a real kinship with uh political fiction. So he was amazing to have around and advise, and he would know other members of staff that would give advice, things like that. So that was fantastic. You get exposed obviously through your own research, you get exposed to so many other writers, so you get this immersed basically in all the stuff they've done, which is again is obviously hugely helpful for your work and getting better at being a writer. So that is having that focus, having that high level of feedback, and having the expectation as well, having to sort of rise to that occasion when in three years' time you have to present your stuff and go, I think it's Freddy, which is a terrifying prospect. So that really concentrates your mind and makes you focus down definitely more than I ever had to before. And in terms of how I helped help my career, I've obviously brought those things forward. So in any kind of writing role, I've been able to call upon those things, even if I'm not doing political fiction, which I haven't done anything directly purely political fiction. It's touched on everything I write now, but it's never been just that genre anymore. So it's bringing that knowledge forward, which is really helpful. But yeah, sometimes it is that kind of it can help when you're doing an application to have that sort of PhD when you can point out how your research has helped you, your methodology has helped you do something, or how having to confront a certain topic has, you know, allowed you to think about various things in a certain way, which can be helpful. Obviously, it depends on the job. But yeah, I think there's definitely been a couple of sort of like screenwriting things where having that PhD has been a really good door opener, and then the stuff I've learned from the PhD has really helped with doing it. So I think those would be the main kind of advantages that it's had.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

Yeah, it sounds excellent. Uh yeah, it's a bit similar to you. I was the same. I did my MA and creative writing again, ostensibly in poetry. But as I finished that, I didn't really I carried on doing the poetry a little bit, but I got into like writing like young adult middle grade and like new adult fiction towards the end of that, and it's just something I've carried on with, to be honest. I think it's kind of interesting how like if you want to support the short and buy my book, Jack Strong and the Red Giant, which is a young adult sci-fi book about a boy called Jack Strong who's being bullied at school, and then one day after getting beaten up by the school bully, after getting abducted by a strange magical spaceship. So at the rest of the novel, we have to grow in confidence and make friends with the various alien girls and boys. Otherwise, when we get to the end of the book, they will all die on this strange, volcano-infested planet. You can do like all kinds of creative writing courses and creative writing degrees. It's just doing the course is what matters. It just gets you more creative. I think it's fantastic. I was going to ask you as well. So how did you see you did this obviously PhD in in creative writing, obviously in political fiction, but then you've got into screenwriting. How how did you get into this you know, this new sphere of writing?

SPEAKER_02 9:53

I mean, I think a lot of it had to do with how accessible screenwriting can be, where I think there's a huge amount. Obviously, there's it's far more kind of there's a far more acknowledged structure to screenwriting. Obviously, you can mess around with that formula and things, but compared to novels, I would say it's a far more narrower kind of form that you can get to learn. And I think that really helps. And the amount of just completely free screenwriting software, it so I really love films. I know you put on the announcement for this sort of movies versus books. So I absolutely love films, love any kind of like just getting into the dialogue, thinking about why they did a certain thing, and that just trans it just got me sort of thinking at one day without anything. Yeah, it would have been kind of about early like 11-12. I just started writing scripts on just like a piece of like pieces of paper and things. But then didn't have the slightest idea how to format it, and then start reading about it. And then from there, there was a lot of kind of free, very easy to use screenwriting software. So uh Caltext and Trelby at the time they were completely free. So I was able to just download those onto my computer, use the internet to find out what I was doing right or wrong, and within a few weeks, if you keep sort of keep doing it, you really have you keep tweaking and keep learning how to change certain things and what you need to do. But purely in terms of the mechanics of writing script, it's that fast to learn. And then it's the case of watching a bunch of films, finding scripts online, which is really easy to do. A lot of them are completely like very freely available. I know uh the Batman screenplay is just available as a PDF online, the Dark Knight as well, I think. There's a bunch of screenplay, like really good screenplays you can find. So yeah, it's one of the easiest and more accessible kind of writing things that you can learn to do, or at least it was in my kind of um experience of that, and having that free software and those access to scripts just made it so easy. So if it hadn't been that easy, I don't know if it would have been as easy to continue. But fortunately, yeah, just got into it. And because I was able to keep working on it, I just absolutely fell in love with it and then got my first client soon after kind of the PhD, and then that was the thing where it quickly went, Oh, and actually I can do this as something where I can write stuff that people will make. People are somehow willing to pay me for screenplays, so that was shattering, but yeah, and just got into it, really.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

It sounds sounds fantastic. I I as you're talking, it it makes me think about like I've written a lot of novels, and I've I do think sometimes maybe I should just, you know, you know, write a screenplay about one of them or something like that. Maybe I don't know. I'm always interested in new ways, you know, to express myself. Maybe I should have a go at that. It does sound really simple, so I should check it out. I'll be honest. I was gonna ask you again, you said about one of your you know the TV shows that you're or dramas that you're working with, The City is ours. What what is that about? And can you tell me more about that, please?

SPEAKER_02 12:44

Yeah, so it's um based in the northwest of England, so kind of I want to say very. I'm not familiar at all. I know it's around Manchester. What's worse, I even drove there once to be on set, and so I must have found it. But so it's I'll be safe and say it's set around Manchester, and it's about kind of crime families. So there's kind of the old-established English crime family, the Newmans, and then they're kind of rivals who are sort of more crime family from overseas, the Akans, and then there are some other sort of players in the middle, and also some rival tensions between gangs, and it's basically set at this period of this upheaval shift in this organized crime structure in this not a tiny area, but still like a fairly kind of small area when the patriarch of one family goes down and both of them are faced with upheaval disasters, and there are these outside players. And yeah, it's it is weirdly a very political piece because not only is a lot of the characters move in very political ways, which I think, especially with me writing for the episodes, that was always going to happen, but everybody was kind of doing that as well. But it was also it had some really good social themes in it as well. So it was dealing with sort of deprivation, it was looking at how young people would be kind of like getting into crime, the role of police in society as well. So and yeah, I think um it really took inspiration for things like line of duty, in terms of kind of that look at street level crime and organized crime and things like that. That was a big inspiration, at least for me it certainly was when I was writing. And yeah, so it's about those kind of the different organized crime groups, the police as well, and the people almost you'd kind of call them civilians, I guess, who were sort of caught in the middle of all of this and how they're navigating it. So and it had some really good dark characters as well. And it wasn't, I wouldn't call sort of grieve it like sort of a globally aggressive violence or gratuitous, but it had these sort of like violent moments, and I think a lot of the time where it was we leave some stuff to the imagination, which we thought was really effective. And yeah, right, a it was a very colourful cast of characters. We had some amazing actors on it as well. Some of the younger actors who were involved were absolutely brilliant. So it was I was on set of some of the younger people's scenes getting filmed, and that was incredible to see that, like how well they did, with I think fairly limited preparation for some of them. So they did an amazing job. And some of the people playing gang leaders were genuinely terrifying. So that was yeah, just incredible to work.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Yeah, I bet. I was gonna ask you as well. I thought that it sounds just really interesting. I've got to say, like, the idea of being a writer and you know, visiting a set, to me, it's like magical. It's like the the the dream becomes reality, and good for you. Like, how did you come up with the idea for this set? Like, again, I I'm thinking about like you know, the PhD political thrillers. What what was the spark that made you go, right?

SPEAKER_02 15:29

This is what I'm gonna So do you mean for screenwriting in general or for one of the show, the the 50 hours, yeah. So I yeah, um the idea was actually uh the showrunners um Carl Engwistall. So he had the sort of overarching story idea, but we did have we get given basically as the writers, essentially thing of these things have to happen in the episodes. This is a very broad overview of where the story's going. Beyond that, we want you to kind of go with it. So yeah, coming up with ideas, I knew certain characters have to die at certain points. So without giving too much away, episode one, there was going to be a character death right at the end. And I knew, okay, so I've got this guy, I have to introduce him because it's episode one, and by the end of the episode, they need to be dead. So plotting out, it wasn't a case where I could make an entire episode of just them, but it was I need to get across who this person is, what kind of impact they typically have, and what their personality is. And so that kind of led to the planning out of those scenes. And then it was okay, but I also have to introduce the police and the other gangs. I need to set up some stuff that other writers are going to be dealing with in three episodes time. So I am very much a planner. So in that case, I was able to have those sort of um elements sort of like I knew roughly where the story was going, and my episodes, or almost like chapters, I was able to kind of drill down and think, okay, let's separate out into what needs to happen in this episode in detail and then go into each scene and then decide. So it I mean, that's my focus when writing a screenplay or writing a novel, is I'll start with a broad overview and then I'll focus and magnify it and get right down to the nitty-gritty. And that's just kind of what I did for all three episodes. And for the finale, it's a little bit easier because all the writers have done such a great job that by the time I had to write it, I could just look at their episodes and go, I know exactly where this is. Like they've set it up so well, I know how it has to end. I'll throw it a twist or two, but yeah, the ending's there already. I just have to write it. So that was yeah, uh so yeah, Carl had the idea, but being able to kind of take the broad design and fill it in, that was kind of my role, and that was really cool. And a lot of it was based around characters in each one, so we knew sometimes there would just need to be a focus on one character or a couple of characters, and let them drive the action and then take those themes and spread across the story. So that was kind of the process, I think, for the city, at least for my episodes of the city as ours.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Sounds amazing, I've got to say. Just out of interest, when you're writing an episode for you know screenwriting, how long does that take you? Is it like, I don't know, a few hours, a few days, a few weeks, what um I think a few days is probably safe.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

So I like to do the plan and then kind of I'll try to get that done. That's something I can kind of do the broad overview and then immediately say, okay, I know what's happening, let's move on to a scene-by-scene breakdown of what then is going to happen. Then I like to kind of leave it a day and just kind of let everything almost percolate, because I'll have so many thoughts firing off, so I'll keep writing stuff down. And then a day or two after that is when I'll start actually writing it and I'll check over the plan and make sure everything's okay. But then you're just sitting down, and because I then have a plan written out, and because it's different to a novel where I'm a lot of the time agonizing over words because I kind of think, oh, but if I use this word here, it means something else, this sentence structure and stuff with a screenplay. You still have to make those choices about action and especially with dialogue and little things like that, but it's a much more of a streamlined process. So then yeah, I'd say for an episode that's like 30, 45 pages long, that would be a few days. I'd want to do a few rewrites, have a read through with the person I'm working with, usually, and we'll like sling it back and forth to each other. But if I'm able to focus just on that project, then yeah, that so could be a couple of days, like three, three days, two, three days.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

That's not bad, though. That sounds pretty good, I gotta say. I was gonna ask you as well, I know you you you want to talk about this, but I know you're really keen on writing action scenes. How do you go about writing action scenes? Is there any kind of like way or methodology in your mind about how you you approach them?

SPEAKER_02 19:31

So I really love when an action scene, I mean, especially a fight scene, if it sort of serves the characters and serves the narrative, and if you can kind of express information through that fight scene about the characters, whether it's something the audience knows or whether it's something that you're revealing through that fight scene about the characters. So that always kind of starts with thinking about who the characters are, maybe what ideals they have or what they represent. And obviously, there's so many fantastic sources to take from. I'm a huge fan of the Spartacus series, so it's like Lunds and Vengeance, Lord of the Damned, which because it was based around gladiatorial combat, and then later the Service Revolt, huge sort of action scenes, like very well thought out in terms of the individual one-on-one fights, and they would reveal information about characters. And the other thing I should take inspiration from is professional wrestling, because that is a narrative that's so much of it based around fight scenes and wrestling matches, and you'll have not all of them, but some of the absolute best wrestling matches. For example, two characters who represent different things, and essentially it's an argument where they're beating each other up to have that argument. Other times there'll be narratives like David versus Goliath is a huge favorite. So I like kind of either I'll be kind of coming at it with the knowledge of, okay, so one character represents one thing or has this type of personality, another character has this type of personality or represents this other ideal. How then, if it was an argument, how would that go? And then how can you turn that into a fight scene? Or it might be that um the kind of just the characters themselves, it leads to something like a David versus Goliath contest. So then it's a case of, right, if the hero is the David in this case, how do we write it so that it is, you know, maybe they can beat the villain if that's the case. So how do we do that in a way that feels authentic? And maybe it needs to go along with the themes of the story itself. So there's so much to kind of go into and consider. But whenever I'm doing a fight scene, I really want it to be sort of this is about the characters, and it's the characters almost expressing themselves through the way they fight. So the Royalist has got quite a few action scenes where that has been a real consideration, and you've got people with different fighting styles or different approaches to a fight based on who they are. And then there are scenarios, so there's at least one fight where someone comes, the hero comes to it injured, and then it's kind of like writing that. And the entire question of that fight is how can they win if they have this injured? And it's starting from that. And taking it from there. And yeah, that's usually my approach when doing fight scenes. And I think that can make it so interesting because then it's it feeds into the you know, it lets the story feed into it, it feeds into the story itself, and people reading it will recognise what you're doing as well, which I think when an author does that well, it's one of my favorite things to read.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Yeah, that's a good point. That if yeah, if if an author does, you know, action war violence, whatever you want to call it, really well. It's like I I take my cap off my, yeah, you know what you're doing. I I'll be honest, and I I I really put a lot of I wouldn't say a lot of thought into action scenes. I I I tried to explain. I do think, but I have I have a certain approach to it. And I was influenced by a First World War poetry called Robert Nichols. And he uh he's kind of faded a bit from from like the scene or you know, public consciousness recently. And I've just actually downloaded one of his poetry books. I haven't read him in years, but he wrote a poem, and I can't even remember the title now, and I'm I'm going through his collection and rediscover it. And it's about him going over the top, and it's just like it's anti-war and like pro-war together. It's just this collage of experiences and it's a dreamlike quality to it. It's very confusing. The soldier running over the top, people getting blown up, explosions going off. It's just confusing. And at the end, he has this line, and I've stolen this line many times, I've got to say, it's like, yeah, you know, is it is it good? Oh good, what cool madness in point? And I'm like, oh my god, that's amazing. And so sometimes when I'm when I'm writing scenes, I've got that phrase in my mind, and I've got this this idea of, you know, things happen, but the the protagonist isn't necessarily completely aware of what's going on. It's just too too fast. Like just to give you a bit more of an idea, when I was a kid, I'd just one time I had this fight, right? If you can call it that with a friend of mine, right? It lasted 10 seconds. We threw a bunch of punches. None of us connect, both of us didn't connect. It was just so confusing. It wasn't like we've seen in the movies. And at the end of the 10 seconds, we gave up because we're out of breath. So sometimes I try to put that kind of realism, you know, into the fight scenes and just, you know, sometimes if someone punches, they do sometimes miss that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

Yeah, it's I mean, I think you can have that beauty in a fight scene, and it's almost perverse to say, like you can have a fight scene that's beautiful, but you have s you know, something that's well choreographed or someone moving so fantastically, like the image of the kind of knight with a sword who's been trained for years. Of course, there's going to be a weird beauty in how they moon while they're doing something horrifying, like killing people, and you know, probably killing soldiers who are less well-armoured from a far lower point in the feudal system, which is absolutely awful, but there is this beauty to it. And when you were saying about how, like, you know, the sort of like focusing so thoroughly on the fight and losing it, I've done something similar. I think there is a line in the Royalists, it won't be exact, but it is something like like the person's world narrowed to just this like circle around her, and that becomes the world, and anything that steps in that circle dies. And it's that I do for the last couple of years. I've been uh training in Craft of Mag, just I've always wanted to do something like that. And there's a place near me that does it, so that's been amazing for two years. But that is something you experience even in a kind of training. When we get an exercise when it's two people against one, the amount of tunnel vision you have when one person is kind of coming and swinging at you, even though you know in your head there is someone else there as well, your focus narrows completely because it's just that one person. You've got to really the entire point of that exercise, and you have to overcome it, you have to be aware there's other people. And you'll see it in class when people are kind of doing exercises when they're moving around, kind of countering things while retreating. They'll be bumping into other people because they're so focused on the person in front of them. Nothing else seems to kind of exist for them. And it is incredible how much your focus just narrows so much. And that's been amazing for fight scenes as well. You were saying about the realism. There is a there was a point in one, again, my editor had said something where a fight was getting tired, and the editor said, Well, you describe them as training, but it's like several hours a night and everything. Why are they getting tired? What seems like a minute or two into this fight? And I was like, That happens to me. Like, I could go to the gym, I can run stuff for however long. But in starring, when you're constantly thinking and you're moving and you're punching as hard as you can and stuff like that, you get you start breathing hard in a minute, two minutes, and you see it with absolutely everybody. And I was like, no, that's the most realistic thing I've got in this fight scene, and she's gonna be knackered immediately. And she's swinging a sound around, which that's gonna be she's wearing armor. Like, that's gonna tie you out more than just me in shorts and a t-shirt.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Yeah, you know, it reminds me of, and I've not read this book, but I've heard the premise, and I do mean to read it. There's a UK fantasy author called Joe Abercrombie. I'm not sure if you've heard of it.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Definitely had, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

Yeah, he wrote the the first Lord trilogy. Well, one of like the the secondary books, or one of the wider world books, is called, I mean it's called The Heroes. And and I do mean to read it, but I heard that there's a battle and it takes place from the point of view of a like a of a knight. But because they're wearing like a what do you call it, like a helmet with the visor, all they can see of the battle is this restricted view of the visor. And I've I've heard it's a very good book, and and I do mean to to get it at some point. But I'm like, that's so cool. That's that's just that's realism, you know.

SPEAKER_02 27:45

And it fits in with the narrowing of the world down to that, you know, that's such a perfect accompaniment of you literally, you're getting worse, you're getting sort of mental eternal vision, but then you're also getting physical terminal vision, and your head's inside a helmet that's saving your life, but that's got to be so claustrophobic. And already you've got so much to add into a fight scene there, so that's incredible.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, I I'm looking forward to reading that book. So I think that's great to go on to like, you know, the the fantasy series that you're writing or you're finishing right now. Can you tell me a little bit more about that, please?

SPEAKER_02 28:18

Yeah, so it's called The Royalists, it's basically all I post about at the moment. So I think unless it's the audio quotes collaboration that I've been doing, everything else is just the Royalists. Um, because obviously gotta make people know about it. So it's a medieval fantasy, it would be a high fantasy as well. The kind of more high fantasy element, if the idea is it's gonna come through the trilogy, so they're gonna kind of grow. And they are still kind of present in the first book. But without giving too many of the sort of plot points away, it's about a princess making her way on the run through this fallen kingdom. And she's accompanied by a female knight who's mostly the viewpoint character, and as the other characters develop, you get the viewpoints spread across them. But so basically, this princess's only kind of protectors and companions are this female knight, a priestess, and this peasant thief who falls in with them. And it's about them, in the most broad terms, trying to find a place of safety while they're being hunted, and they don't know who to trust anymore because there's been such a seismic shift. So yeah, kind of dealing with all those problems, and at the same time, a huge part of it is it's a coming of age story for almost all four of them. They all go through these transformative experiences as they go through the travels, and I love writing about stuff like that. And some of them are more obviously transformative than others, some of them are more kind of subtle and character-based, but it's how they kind of change as they go on this journey towards this just trying to find refuge in this safe place. And you have, again, I think sort of similar to the city as ours, you have these kind of really monstrous, colourful figures as well that have had such fun. There are kind of different flavours of villain. There's sort of coming from my horror screenwriting stuff, there are these horror elements that's not the main focus, but it's something that I really wanted to have in there. And obviously, going all the way back to Beowulf and stuff, you've got these kind of horror elements like Grendel, Grendel's Mother the Dragon, and stuff that are presented in really quite scary terms. So I wanted to include those elements as well. And yeah, it just really is that sort of um coming-of-age medieval fantasy story. And it's the first part of a trilogy. I'm halfway through book two at the moment, and we're doing the very final tweets to book one, and that is coming out, God, next month in July. That is terrifying. Uh I know that, I know when it's coming out, and it just every time I think about it, it's the scariest thing in the world. So hopefully that goes away. But it's been amazing writing it. It's I think the no the thing writers often get told is you write the novel that you always wanted to read, and I think the world is the best example of what I've done of doing that myself. I've always wanted to write something like this. And it started out weirdly, because you were talking about turning a novel into a screenplay. It actually started out as a screenplay that I was writing, and this is such a weird uh detail. There's a screenwriting app on my phone, and I was writing a screenplay when I was at the gym at the university while doing the PhD, and then halfway through I thought, this should actually be a novel, honestly. So I started writing it, and it was almost a reaction against having to deal with real-world politics and write about those for my PhD novel. I then started writing a fantasy novel because I was like, I just want to do something else. I want a magical story with good and evil and stuff. And then it matured and it became kind of slightly greyer and stuff, but it came from that place of having to confront real-world politics so much that I wanted to escape into fantasy and still did it through creative writing. So yeah, it's I'm really proud of it, and I absolutely love the story, and I'm really excited to get on with writing the rest of it as well.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Yeah, you sound like passionate about it, I gotta say. Um, and I'm listening to you talking about it. I'm like, yeah, I'd I'd love to read that. I do read quite a bit of fantasy myself. I think I write young adult in the main, but I tend to be very genre focused into sci-fi and fantasy, and I want to say dystopia, but I think dystopia is another branch of sci-fi, really, in many ways. Um what kind of world is it that that's in your book of just out of interest? Is it like, you know, Middle earth or is it like another planet? What what kind of world is it?

SPEAKER_02 32:30

It was the case of I didn't get so thrilling. So I wasn't sort of looking up, I didn't get this far yet, didn't start looking up like what cross would they have in medieval times. I did actually look that up, but not so I try to make it feel as kind of medieval English world as possible. But you had the always had these magical elements, so you had kind of more of a fancy feel, like even the way the castles are described, they are in some ways they're almost like characters. The there's a I mean, a big part of it is a huge part of that country is forest. And that's where I would say probably about 80% of the action the novel takes place is in the forest when they're on the run, which takes on again its own kind of character in how it's described. But then you also have kind of the fantasy elements as well. So elves and dwarves are mentioned. There's a scene where they find this dwarf door in the middle of the forest and it's kind of brushing up against. I mean, it's not a spoiler, it's mentioned the dwarves were hunted to extinction, you know, centuries before, but their technology and like the dwarf doors all sealed up remains, and there are still tunnels underground that can't be accessed. And it's that kind of thing where I want to expand on that in the later books, but I needed to kind of have that fantasy element, and elves and witches get mentioned and things, and you hear at one point it's a campfire story about this great Leviathan, but then there were real-world parallels that they have where it's okay, is that a made-up story or was this something that got taken from real-world events? So it it starts off with the medieval English world, and then fantasy got kind of rooted through it, which I like writing that kind of thing. I do you mentioned sci-fi, like I do want to, and I've got plans to write some science fiction novels when I'm all these fancy novels are done. And I'm looking forward to then creating completely different worlds. But at the ones I'm doing at the moment, I really love kind of creating that recognizable world and then adding the fantasy elements like the guards, the different species and things like that. Um so yeah, that's kind of the setting that we're working with today.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

Yeah, I've got to say, that just sound that sounds excellent. You got me with these dwarf doors. I I also think it is very realistic that like if if we're in a fan, you know, in a fantasy world and there's races like dwarves and and elves, human beings would hunt them to extinction. Why? Because we've done that already. You know, with like, for example, Neanderthals. So I I I like that. But yeah, the dwarf doors and like you get the sense of your magic and curiosity. So yeah, you you've got me. I really is is that able, is that available to for pre-sale? Or was it pre-sale pre-order now?

SPEAKER_02 35:01

Uh yeah, yeah, it is. I can shoot you over the link for that. It's also available on my, it's like the first link on my uh profile. We'll take you straight for the pre-order. I think you can order paperback, um, hard back. There's an option to have me sign it, which is terrifying as well. Uh, because I need to now not screw up my signature. But also the audiobook version. I think that's going to be coming out later, but we've got our audiobook actor. I am having to work out how to pronounce every single different word that we have in there. So that's what I'm doing later this weekend, actually, is just sitting down and saying the words into the microphone and recording them. Because I think we worked out that was the easiest way to do it. But yeah, you can order a lot of different things. That's so interesting. And that'll be coming out, I think. I'll shift it. Perfect, yeah. But I think it's coming out, it's coming out early, July. So yeah, not long now.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

Yeah, it's interesting as well. You said that you've got some sci-fi ideas in your head and you've done a lot of fantasy. For me, it's kind of the other way around. I've got some fantasy ideas that I because I'm my my time is very limited, and I don't feel like I could do them justice at the moment. I feel like I need to be hitting 2,000, 3,000 words a day to be able to bring these worlds into like maybe it's a per excuse, don't get me wrong, but I do mean to get onto it at some point. At the moment, like I've just got like some like sci-fi ideas that you know will be around like 50,000, 60,000 words, it won't take much to get it down, you know. So at the moment I'm focused on that. But uh yeah, one day I'm just gonna have to have to have a go at it and just go. I think this is the thing with fantasy, it it's a project, isn't it? It's a real mission. Yeah. And if it end up halfway through a butt, yeah, yeah, you know, for me, sci-fi, I sci-fi to me comes, at least I think it comes, quite easily. And my mind really ticks over. And I feel like I can be reasonably original with sci-fi. I feel like it's uh easier to be original with sci-fi, but with fantasy, I feel that like you know, there's so many great fantasy books out there. I still don't know if there's so many great sci-fi books out there. I think it's kind of hard because sci-fi in particular is uh you've got that connection with TV and film. You know, if you like sci-fi, oh, maybe you prefer Star Wars or Star Trek, for example. You don't necessarily read it. Whereas fantasy, people tend to prefer, I know obviously the Lord of the Rings is on, you know, as a movie, but people tend to, you know, prefer books and stuff. I don't know. But yeah, I'll have to get onto it, I think, at some point. Um I was gonna ask you as well, David, doesn't it? Obviously, you've got your your life as a screenwriter, your life as a novelist. Is there any one that you prefer or the other, or is it like just a bit half-half?

SPEAKER_02 37:53

Definitely more half-half. And I think I kind of go back and forth on the one that I'm doing at the moment, which um is a lot better than kind of writing a novel and thinking, God, I wish I was doing a screenplay, this would be over in like a few days. Or writing a screenplay and thinking, I wish I could get into the psychology and the scenery and stuff. I I love both. I think both of them have their absolute upsides. Like, yeah, with a screenplay, it's also it can be amazing to kind of because it's naturally just far more of a collaborative thing if you're a part of a production. So, you know, I'll write a screenplay, but then obviously we have back and forth with the director or showrunner to what changes they want to make. And then obviously that goes through the lens of an actor who'll look at it and they'll have their own take on things, you'll have conversations with them, and then the rector as well, and then it gets in front of the camera and you've got these kind of different, you know, you'll have challenges and stuff, you'll have opportunities that the set or the technology affords you, or limitations or things. And all of that kind of comes together, and maybe it's similar to what you were imagining or different, but it's I think quite often really different to what you're imagining. It's never quite exactly there, because obviously you've got something in your head, but it's so fantastic to see what it turns into. At the same time, writing a novel, I loved kind of being able to have that control over everything. Because apart from getting the readers to imagine what you're imagining, you can describe everything exactly as it needs to be, and that's the finished product. So, you know, I can describe this great brooding castle that looks like some kind of crouched animal staring at the people who are approaching it. And it's like, yeah, that is now the image. That's not gonna be dictated by what we can film, like if we've got to go to Banbra Castle or some like Sterling Castle to film there, that's gonna change what it looks like, or if we have to use some kind of the effects thing to make the castle, it's no, that's what it looks like. That's officially it. And yeah, being able to have the characters, the scenery, and the interactions exactly the way you want. So yeah, I love the collaboration and that sort of um being a part of one one part of a big thing of screenwriting and the kind of more streamlined experience of kind of writing screenplay. Whereas a novel obviously can take months, can take a year, depending on how long that novel is and how complex it is. I would say usually, just because the amount of uh stuff you've got to cover, there's more research that goes into a novel as well. And I actually really enjoy doing the research. So sometimes for one for um Mage Bane, uh, which is one of the I the sort of books for the person's IP I'm doing, I end up looking up like ancient floating gardens and seeing how the technology works, because I need I was like, this fits in so well with the theme of this novel, I need to know how they work. And I loved researching that. So yeah, kind of both the collaborative element of the screenplay and the just getting in really deep in the descriptive control and everything over the novels. I love both. And thankfully, I tend to prefer whichever one I'm doing at that moment. So I'm very lucky in that regard, and I like to remind myself of that.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

Yeah, it sounds fantastic, I've gotta say. I was gonna ask you as well, obviously, so you're you're a screenwriter, you you're a novelist. What are like the main like, you know, screenwriters or movie directors or authors that have had a big impact on you?

SPEAKER_02 41:08

Um quite bad with screenwriters, I'm afraid. I usually tend to look at sort of directors. So at the moment, because I'm so deep into horror, and a lot of my upcoming projects uh that hopefully are getting made and the ones I'm working on at the moment are horror. Two of the directors I'm so into right now, both Ariaster or Hereditary and Midsummer, because they were just, yeah, trans in terms of transformative experiences, I started watching Hereditary Home Alone with the lights off. And the last 20 minutes had to turn the lights back on because I was that freaked out, and then stayed up until somebody else came home so I could chat to them before going to bed. That's how much that scared me. Um Zach Kregger, who uh did Barbarian and then more recently did Weapons, and he's gonna be working on the Resident Evil movie, or he's made the new Resident Evil movie. Again, it's someone who I think it had that sort of transgressive element that I try to get in my horror while watching it. And I went to see that in my local cinema, uh it would have been around 9 p.m. a little bit before, and it was a full cinema, and you've never heard a room full of people so silent the entire time the film was on. Could have heard a pin drop. It was insane. So yeah, those sort of directors, but I try to kind of look at all the sort of big ones and take themselves. I'll go through like Hirokosaur movies, you know, James Cameron's done two of my favorite movies of all time, Terminator 2 and Aliens. So look at sort of how he can get that emotion into a sort of horror and action narrative because Terminator 2 isn't and aliens are both really emotional movies. So looking at how he binds those together. And Dennis Vilner is doing Dune, again kind of thinking ahead of when I want to work in sci-fi, the scope of what he kind of like created with Dune and things, and also his work on Prisoners, which is an amazing film. So yeah, I really just they're I off the top of my head, they're the kind of ones that I really I think I've kind of taken the most from, just because they offer so much in what they've done. And yeah, like it almost feels like such a cliched list that David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino, they also have their own style that you can't mimic, but you can see how it works and you can see why it works, and it makes you think, like, God, I love Twin Peaks. I've never been so disturbed while watching something, so I had no idea what I was getting into. So yeah, those would be kind of those directors.

SPEAKER_00 43:29

Yeah, David Lynch is a good good one to mention, actually. Twin Peaks, love it, absolutely love it. And yeah, it had quite a big impact on on me, but also it was a novel I wrote, I think it was two can't remember now, two or three novels ago. And when I put in the picture to agent, you know, you've got to put in comparative titles. I didn't do it quite well, done in my wrong. But I just said, yeah, it's influenced by the X files and twinties because. didn't know what else to say because it was it was Twin Peaks was really in my mind about you know getting that small American town surrounded by mountains and forests and the idea of you know the small town and the claustrophobic nature of it all. I didn't know what else to say really, but fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 44:18

Yeah, it's I mean when you realize how much stuff Twin Peaks has influenced. Like I was playing the game, the video game Life is Strange, and just halfway through I realized it's Twin Peaks. Like they're doing Twin Peaks, and that's amazing. So yeah, it's yeah, it's that is an experience to watch, and I really loved it. And it's such a novel approach to some really horrific stuff and some of the really scariest things I've seen. Um and it holds up. So yeah, Twin Peaks is being a big yeah, it's strange.

SPEAKER_00 44:43

You know, uh in Twin Peaks, but just was he? He was just the electrician or something. But he is terrifying. Uh when I first watched that, how would I have been I was in my teens, I was in my teens, you you know, and I was living in a small village just outside of Burnley, so in the northwest of England. All the oh, all the lights switched off because I heard it was scary, switched all the lights off. Outside it is pitch dark. You know, there's the main road, and across from that, there's like moors and hills. And I'm watching it, and within 10 minutes, I've got to put the lights on. This is it's an psychological, you know, terror. It it was I think it was about where Laura Laura Palmer's mum was visited by Laura Palmer's ghost as a horse, as a spectral horse, and it was just it wasn't just terrifying. It was like I would be 14, 15, and even I understood it was like about like grief and the loneliness in the house. Yeah. And I'm alone in my house in the middle of darkness, and I was like, nope, I'm gonna put the lights on. It's terrifying.

SPEAKER_02 45:52

I mean, making people feel that uncomfortable, it sounds awful to say it like that, but it is what I love about you know, watching horror and writing horror. And in the stuff that I've written, there is that I've used the word already, but that transgressive element where you're, you know, invading someone's face, you're like taking away their sense of comfort while watching a film. I remember seeing the woman in black on stage, and that's still one of the scariest things I've ever seen. And I'm sitting in an audience surrounded by people, but I'm watching the stage where I know it's just actors who've been rehearsing, and it's like, yeah, but I'm still scared of what's happening here. Like I'm scared of what they're going to do, even though it can't touch me. So yeah, and to be able to do that is something that I'm always so impressed by, and it's why I have like a focus on horror directors because I'm always amazed when they can do it. And I think we're living in a really good age of horror right now as well, which is fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 46:44

Yeah, The Woman in Black is a really good example. I don't think I saw I saw one of the movie versions, it's not the latest one, I think it's the one before that. Yeah, and I was watching it with my mum and dad, so I wasn't alone. I think we had the lights off. And it's pretty terrifying pretty quickly. Like the guy goes to collect on is it the Will or the House? I can't remember what the term is, wasn't it? And he goes to the house, he leaves the house, he's going away, and he turns around and he sees like the woman's ghost. And oh, is that is that just some just some just some random person? And you realise, no, it's the ghost of this woman. It's like, oh, this is quite terrifying. But the most terrifying element for me was the guy, he gets sick and he's in a fever, and he's in the bed, and he's you know he's having a fever and he's he's he's feverish, he's delusional. And suddenly the woman's ghost just like smashes through the window and it's just over him. Like, and I'm like, what is can I can I go to bed, please? This is terrifying.

SPEAKER_02 47:53

Yeah, getting into the technical elements of what make people scared is such a fun thing to do. Um you have to do it by watching horror or reading horror.

SPEAKER_01 48:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:01

Well, another good one, going back to Twin Peaks. If you remember obviously the pilot episode um finding Laura Palmer's body, and I remember the way the camera panned. I think I think the camera's following, I can't remember the character's name, but that there's a guy and he's fishing, and it's kind of following him. And in the background, you've got like the the bodies in like the plastic sheeting. And I remember thinking as a kid, that's unusual. You it the way it was presented was very stylist stylistically done. And it's you know what it is, and it's like that that sense of suspense grows, you know, the closer you get to it. And it it's I think it's fantastic to be honest, Twin Peaks. Absolutely fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 48:47

Yeah, for writing or looking at the horror and amazing. Yeah. Sorry, go on.

SPEAKER_00 48:51

Yeah, I was gonna say as well, like just a little bit about AI. I know like Martin Scorsese recently has mentioned about using AI in in movie making.

SPEAKER_02 49:02

Uh, what do you think about I mean it's such a big issue. So I am knee-against AI. I think coming coming out as a novelist, you're always gonna be kind of against AI, very against people who have like had AI write their books for them, then calling themselves novelists or kind of taking credit. Obviously, we're talking about filmmaking in this case. So I remember that quote, and I think he was talking about he was using it specifically to create storyboards. And that strikes me as so unusual because that is, you know, you do have people who can do that for you relatively quickly. And, you know, how much is that time difference? So that was always freaked me out. I think there's the issue of kind of I mean just outside of it, there is the sort of like the issue of the power and water usage. So like the amount of water that's used to cool things, even in a closed system, and then make the stuff and the energy that takes, what that's gonna do to the environment. So, you know, there's that, which I think sort of major ways to deal with that is a huge reason I'm against it. There's the ethical side where even if you're saying, oh, AI won't be taking away jobs, it'll be changing the nature of the jobs, that really isn't what we've seen so far. So again, that's the reason I'm so dead set against it, because you can say, oh, it's it's making people's jobs easier, but I think in a society such as what we live, where the really important thing is the bottom line, the big equation is gonna lead to, oh, it is cheaper if we use AI to instead of people's who we employ. So people's jobs are gonna vanish, which I'm hugely against. I know people have lost their jobs because of AI. I've had one case where my entire team was made redundant. We don't know whether it was because of AI, but we suspect that it probably was. Obviously, we can't prove that element, but it's all even if you kind of leave those things aside, which you shouldn't, it's getting into there is just such an inherent, as it is now, almost soullessness about AI. I think I've seen Darren Aronofsky's film project about Civil War, not Civil War, uh, the revolution, and it just looked awful. Which sounds so mean, but it really did every part of it looked so fake, and I couldn't get into it. And images online, I think obviously there's an audience for it, so it's I'm not that audience. So that's kind of like hard for me to argue for it, but also argue against it, is you know, I'm coming at it from that case of it's not for me. I mean, yeah, the one thing I do kind of kind of see where the uh people come from is it is something where it is massively uh I mean, not in the case of Marx Corsair's gas, but I mean, you know, someone like him is like, no, you can pay this person, you can afford to get somebody who can really translate your thoughts onto the page, it should not be a problem for you, of all filmmakers. I understand that it is a case in some cases where this technology is going to lower the barrier for entry for people who want to make films, because some of the things they want to make would just literally be impossible, and they wouldn't be able to get the money for it, they wouldn't be able to get the kind of team support behind it. AI can offer them those things, and I don't love that it would be the answer, but it is an answer. And it feels quite cruel to then say, oh, my answer to you then is just you should not make your film. So I I'm quite against it. I do understand where certain people are coming from in terms of the access that they can offer and the opportunities it will give some people to make films. I'm still not incredibly happy about it, but it's such a complex issue. And the world Scorsese is mentioning it in terms of what it can give him, because I don't think he needs it. But I am quite against it. I mean, obviously I'm coming in a writer's perspective, where I'm very and I think so many writers are kind of disregarding their stuff against AI. There's also the question of theft as well, and that AI is kind of like taking from all these different sources, and I think ethically that's very iffy. And it also stylistically leads to the problem of it's gonna give you an average and an amalgamation of all the stuff it takes. Eventually things are gonna start to look very much the same as well. So I would say right now, in the way it is, I'm against it.

SPEAKER_00 53:02

Uh so yeah. Do you think there's anything we can do, like certainly for people with you know in the creative spaces, is there anything we can do to stop it or slow it down or restrict, you know, where and how it's used in some ways?

SPEAKER_02 53:18

Um, I'm not entirely sure. I think um I think it's a case of it's gonna be it's a huge factor is gonna be what it does to the money and what it ends up costing people to use, the effect it has. I think it's eventually gonna be quite like very expensive to run and use, so that's gonna be an issue. I think if people refuse to go and see stuff that has AI in, but how will you tell that would possibly have an issue? I think it all has to do with what it's gonna do, bottom line, really. Yeah, that's all I know about that.

SPEAKER_00 53:46

Yeah, no, I I mean, yeah, the reason it asks is because I I'm a little bit on this issue. I'm not confident that that we can do much. Just like you know, we we've got cars and not not horses. I just think it's happening. I think with creative spaces, I I think it's interesting because I think the audience is powerful, you know. If the audience, yeah, they might not want to see something with I AI in it, they actually might not think it's any good, which is which is stronger. I I'm wary of like AI novels in particular. Let me say it. That could definitely come through. It's like it's like this I I know at the moment, like AI, it's not very good at writing, to be honest. It's not it's not very good to say at writing a novel. But at some point in the future, probably quite soon, it's gonna get better. And to say it right, if it writes a really good novel, you know, if it writes the next Harry Potter, whatever, you know, I don't mean Harry Potter 8, I mean the new magic series that everybody wants to read. If it writes that and we love it, or we being, you know, the the readership, I'm not sure what we can do. I'm not convinced it will ever do that though. Without a subconscious, can it really have the ideas and have the language? I'm not too sure.

SPEAKER_02 55:15

I doubt it will. I don't know what things are gonna look like ten years from now or beyond. I do know, at the moment, with AI as it stands now, I can't imagine it ever doing anything that is kind of rivals what human creativity could do, which is, I think, a very optimistic outlook. I think, you know, obviously as a writer and screenwriter I'm biased. I'm on the side of kind of human creativity, but you know, I think there's tremendous value. And, you know, I think if people are writing, they're doing it because they love writing. So I think there'd be that resistance to so many of the basically delegating the task to the machine, because it's not it's not a task for them. It's it's something they're passionate about, it's something they love doing, it's something that they themselves want to create. And that absolutely matters to authors and screenwriters. So there'll always be that human creativity, and I think it's such a hard thing to to sort of yeah, like take on. You know, it's an amalgamation of all things we've ever experienced, all the art we've absorbed and stuff, but it's mixed together in a way that AI really can't do. So yeah, I think it's a positive outlook, at least in that sort of sphere.

SPEAKER_00 56:21

Okay. Right before we finish, I'm gonna introduce a new segment which is like uh a quick, quick answer round. I'm just gonna ask you five questions. It's just binary choices, you know, for example, red or green, choose red, for example, or green. Let's do it. Um based on one of your answers, what's up? I'm very happy to be a part of this uh new round. Yeah, I just thought I just thought it up a few days ago. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But it might be interesting, I think. Yeah, just ask you five questions and then based upon just one of the answers, I'll just, you know, ask you a few further questions, I think. Let's see how it goes. I've just got a I'm gonna bring the paper a bit closer to me. Right. Okay, very quickly. Movies or films? Uh movies. Spielberg or Scorsese. Ooh, despite what we said about in Scorsese. North or South? Fiction or non-fiction? And Outline or Pants? Outline. Yeah, okay. Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 57:19

Why Scorsese? Goodfellas is one of my favorite movies. I love what Spielberg's done. The second Goodfellas kicks off, I know I'm just sitting for an amazing time. Joe Pesci, Liberty Leota, Rob De Niro. Yeah, I absolutely love it. So it's always it's always going to be still sazy, just on the strength of that. I love Casino as well. I don't know how Killers of the Flower Moon was an amazing thing. I couldn't believe how fast that went by getting the late of this, but yeah, still safety.

SPEAKER_00 57:45

Yeah, I've not seen Killers of the Flower Moon. I don't know. Since I'm living in China and I'm I'm married and I've got a young kid, the amount of time I have for watching movies is really short, but I do want to watch that. I'd recommend it. It's all the Irishman. Yeah. I like the Irishman a lot.

SPEAKER_02 58:03

I did enjoy it. I think Goodfellas still tossed for me, but uh partners well, God almost forgot that.

SPEAKER_00 58:09

Goodfellas? Yeah, I was gonna say about Goodfellas. It's the music as well. It's like the soundtrack, and like I heard about Scorstazy. He was writing the screenplay, and I think he was dictating to someone else who was who was typing it up or writing it down. And the scene, like after the robbery, after the lunch that looks loved hands a height, and Jimmy Burt, Robert De Niro decides he's gotta kill everybody so that he can, you know, not get arrested by the police. And so I say, you know, Robert De Niro smokes a cigarette, and then he said, dream. And the person dictating is like, what are you talking about? And it's the music, you know, so he's he starts smoking, it's like and it's like, wow, where where does he get that from? Because he's thinking of the scene, and then the the music just pops into his head, and it you're right, it's perfect. And that and again, you don't let montage, you know. I remember uh Team America once, you know, laid into and satirized montages, but in Goodfellas, the montage of the people getting killed, you know, same with casino.

SPEAKER_02 59:25

It's the exact way to do it.

SPEAKER_00 59:27

End of montages.

SPEAKER_02 59:29

It's the exact right way to do it in that situation. Yeah, I love it.

SPEAKER_00 59:33

Yeah, casino's a great movie as well. I don't know what what what the end scene, terrifying. Yeah. That's that's horror. That's horror. And it really happened. It really happened as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:43

I mean, yeah, so did Goodfellas as well, like to an extent. So yeah, it is that kind of horror of the everyday. Chilling.

SPEAKER_00 59:50

Yeah, chilling indeed. Right, okay. I think we can wrap things up there, David. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. Okay. Looking forward to getting this out later this week. Brilliant.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:02

Well, sorry. I'll say thanks so much for having me. It's been amazing. It's been lovely talking to you.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:06

Yeah, fantastic. I'm gonna check out some more of your stuff as well. I'll be checking out, yeah, maybe later today, maybe tomorrow. The Royalists really, really sounds good. I gotta say, top notch fantasy, I gotta say. Right, see you later. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye.