Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [75]
It transpired I was actually on the first floor and not the ground floor. My scrambled brain had not completed the final flight of stairs. The door I was buzzing and kicking was somebody’s front door. The door swung open to reveal an overweight Scottish man in his boxer shorts, not dissimilar to Rab C. Nesbitt.
‘What the fuck are you doin’ bangin’ on ma door?’
I ran for my life. I realized instantly that my explanation would sound absurd and he looked about ready to kill me. So I bolted down the stairs and out of the ajar main door. I sprinted as far as I could before looking behind me, terrified at the prospect of seeing a near naked Scotsman chasing me, but thankfully the coast was clear.
I decided there and then that maybe this drugs malarkey probably wasn’t for me. But I continued to drink and smoke and not attend my lectures. I wasn’t rebelling; I just had no interest in Biology or Chemistry. I received a letter from the department head summoning me to a meeting. I told him I was struggling to adjust to university life and assured him I wanted to be a biologist … or chemist.
At some time during my first year, I watched a Woody Allen film. I had never heard of Woody Allen, but this was the epiphany I had been waiting for. It wasn’t even one of his better films – I think it was Crimes and Misdemeanors – but I was transfixed. I then rented every one of his films every day until I had seen his entire body of work. Nothing had resonated with me as much as Woody Allen. It wasn’t just that he was hysterically funny, it was where the comedy was coming from. He was confused about life and love, he was a loser, a funny loser, like me. I know there is a great deal of difference between this neurotic New York Jew and myself, but I could relate to his insular outlook on the world.
After I watched all Woody Allen’s films, I immediately realized what I was put on this earth to be. I am a writer. I’m going to write a film. For the first time in my life, I worked at something with a passion. I had worked hard on occasion at school, but then it was because I had to, it was expected. Now I was driven and excited. I bought every book about screen-writing I could find and devoured them. As soon as I understood how to structure and lay out a screenplay, I sat down at my computer, a hand-me-down from Steve, and wrote and wrote and wrote until I passed out, then I woke up and carried on. The words and story just gushed out of me, I was so engrossed in it, I felt so creative, so switched on.
The film was a romantic comedy set in Edinburgh. It was called Office Angels and was about a student, Marty, who was a loser in love (ring any bells?). The premise of the film was that everybody has his or her own angel. Angels work in regular offices with phones and faxes and canteens; their job is to find true love for their client. They negotiate with other angels until they have built up enough of a romance file to make a presentation to the Love God (ideally played by Sean Connery; I would have accepted Billy Connolly), who decides whether they have found true love. If they have, their work is done; if not, their clients break up and the angels go back to work. The film jumped between the lives of characters in Edinburgh and how they are affected by the work of their angels. The problem with Marty was that his angel was lousy and lazy, and his mistakes lead to Marty’s appalling love life, but, you guessed it, he gets his girl in the end.
What I enjoyed most about the script was that it was an opportunity for me to create the happy ending that my own life wasn’t providing. I created a fantasy girl, Sasha, well out of my league, and wrote a story where she and I end up together. Real life wasn’t panning out for me, so I created a fantasy. That’s basically what this script was. It was a fantasy of how I wanted things to work out for me, with jokes. I was thrilled with the result and like any writer managed to convince myself I was on for an Academy Award. I gave it to a few select people to read and they all reported back positively. I