Richard Butchins's Blog: Angels stand corrected... - Posts Tagged "acting"

I love collaborating on projects. I suppose I have been lucky (or exercised good judgement) in my collaborators, they have all been great to work with. At the moment I am collaborating on a project to write a biography / memoir of the actor Bob Hoskins. I am co authoring with his daughter Rosa and it's a pleasure to work with her. She writes well and has the ability to be objective about the subject she's writing about, which is herself and her Dad, so that's a blessing.

In general I have rather an antipathy toward celeb biographies and memoirs they always seem so self indulgent, and exploitative, in the sense that they are really about cashing in on the fan base of the subject. I suppose this is a perfectly reasonable commercial decision but this commercial imperative means we end up with ghostwritten autobiographies of 23 year old reality TV contestants, which is risible in the extreme.

Of course no one is forced to read them and who am I to say that they are a waste of ink, paper, and e pages? I'd like to think the book Rosa and I write will appeal to a larger audience than just the people that liked Bob Hoskins and his films (I am one of those people) and we are writing with that intention, the back and forth of collaborative writing is fun because you are never sure what you are going to receive in the next email - even if you have discussed what's being written it is still always a surprise and, in this case, always a good one.

If you have never tried collaborative writing I recommend it, as it's a good way to introduce variety and to flex ones editorial muscles in a way you can't do when writing on your own.