Exiled pedagogue Matthew Ward once proposed a two-fisted actionfest to the BBC, based on the sort of wish-fulfilment even Robert Fisk enjoys. His synopsis ran thus:
"TEFL teacher in Latin America joins the Cymru Rouge, rises through the ranks and is eventually sent as ambassador to Rutheria with his Ukrainian spouse, where he gets involved in cachaça-induced japes and sinister episodes of physical and mental torture. Maybe Timothy Spall would take the lead? I imagine a twenty-first century Citizen Smith meets Zorra Total."
My response as his agent was to aim higher and sketch out a trailer:
Sod the BBC, that's got Hollywood treatment written all over it:
"(Rumbling Voice, over Rio scenes): Far from the Copacabana (cut to snaggle-toothed peasant riding a goat in a top hat) deep in the forests of Ruthenia, there's monkey juice that needs drinking (close-up of cachaça bottle slamming down on a table surrounded by sweaty men in ill-fitting uniforms).
"And here's the mouth that's going to do it (crash-zoom from across a cellar deep into the throat of a screaming man tied to a Medieval dentist's chair).
"(Clanging noise over smoky screen, with male silhouette slowly emerging) Sean Penn is MC Ward.
"(Unhinged woman, stomping towards camera) Helen Lederer is his made-up scary Ukrainian wife who's nothing at all like Mrs Boyo.
"(Gurning thugs yell in close-up) Keith Allen, Ray Winstone and Ralph Brown are the population of Ruthenia, in..."
I took my 12% and, at Madame Boyo's Hegelian insistence, let The Dialectic do the rest.
Three years later to the day, I've come up with the High Concept.
What makes Matt Ward different to other sheath-rending action heroes?
- Eastwood is carved from teak
- Jack Bauer is Dick Cheney in a wig
- Monk is a mental
So what's Ward? Why, he's a middle-aged English teacher. So let's work his innate pedantry into the script. There's an untapped audience of librarians, Liberal (not Liberal Democrat) Party activists, jazz afficionadoes and mildly autistic teenagers to tap.
So here's some sample dialogue:
(LA police precinct, a uniformed cop hustles the standard pair of remonstrating whores past an office where some sweaty men in bad suits are discussing their new boss)
So here's some sample dialogue:
(LA police precinct, a uniformed cop hustles the standard pair of remonstrating whores past an office where some sweaty men in bad suits are discussing their new boss)
Detective 1: So, what's this Ward guy like?
Detective 2: Lootenant Ward's the kinda sonofabitch who'll rip off your prick and shove it up your ass.
Detective 1: Holy Shit!
Ward (striding through the door in horn-rims and elbow-patches): Correction, gentlemen. I am indeed the kind of son of a bitch who'll rip off your prick and shove it up your ass. But then I'd notice that the prick in question had become flaccid from loss of blood, and therefore impossible to shove up any ass without assistance. So I'd take a stick, and I'd use it to work your prick up your ass. I'd take a prick-sticking stick to stick your prick up your ass - capeesh?
Detectives: Sir!
Will there be more in the next three years? Like the French Revolution, with me it's always too soon to say.
Will there be more in the next three years? Like the French Revolution, with me it's always too soon to say.
