Sam North - Managing Editor
Early Memories of a Hack writer

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I recall being disappointed the world never ended. I still feel cheated that there was no nuclear war, that the world didn’t explode and everyone die. I was banking on it. Didn’t take out a pension plan, why bother? The world was going to end. Never did anyone feel as cheated as I. Apparently I had a never ending fatalism caught at an early age after reading everything Philip K Dick every wrote. Blame my mother, Jo for leaving them around. Other kids built tree houses. I built a bomb shelter.

I wanted to be a writer. Right from the beginning really. Loved telling stories even when I was a kid. Wrote the first novel by hand when I was seventeen, gave it to someone to read, they lost it.
Lost heart. Lost faith with the world for three years. Longer. I went to the USA. Drove across it. Ended up in Hollywood.

In the USA I went to see Grand Funk Railroad. Had front row tickets. The opening song was so bloody loud I passed out. When I woke up I had written 20,000 words and the complete outline of my first novel. It was about Ronald Reagan becoming President of the USA. Everyone thought I was nuts. He was still Govenor of California at the time I think. I submitted the book to a publisher.
'‘The stupidest idea we have ever read. Ronald Reagan as President is just not credible,’ the editor at Collins said. He was later promoted and now runs a major publishing house in London.

I followed it up with a novel about Disneyworld spreading their cultural message all over the world. They even built one in France ending up destroying French culture. In 1973 they said ‘You clearly have no idea of the strength of European culture to resist American ideas.’ I began to think that writing novels may not make me rich after all.

By now the family were beginning to wonder if I was ever going to ‘get a job’. Would I ever finish my education? I enrolled at the London Film School. It was dire. Apparently it still is.

I went to the South of France with my then girlfriend and wrote a screenplay for Alec Guiness instead. Not that he knew that.*Final Accounts. Took it to Hollywood, managed to give it to him whilst he was working on 'Star Wars'. He even read it. 'Absolutely delightful but I am afraid you’ll never get it made dear boy, there's no sex in it.’ He was right of course. *In 1985 I turned it into a radio play and it was nominated for an award.

Later I was at film school in New York on exchange. Pauline Kael gave seminars. We fought. Andrew Sarris droned on about theory, we disagreed. Over the next three years I somehow wrote three novels and three screenplays and couldn’t sell a one. I remember being poor - drinking instant coffee - something I have pledged NEVER to do again. Made friends with John and Grant in London. Amazingly still in touch with John despite lives going in different directions and parts of the planet.

In 1979 I surrendered. I got a job. Driving for Trekamerica. One day, in Texas, I got sick of drunken Australians trying to kill each other in the camp sites and came back home. I discovered they were about to publish one of my novels ‘209 Thriller Road’.

I had been a writer for a decade already and this was my first thing in print. Later still I wrote for radio and somehow had broadcast 35 x 60 minute original dramas. One a month. Crazy. Look back on that period now with fondness and wonder. I still have 15 mouldy tapes of the broadcasts but discovered the masters were all wiped in a 'cost' saving exercise. I have a translucent life.

Still later became a lecturer in film and feature writing. Met Kit who made me write again. She still does, even though sometimes she hates what I write. Sometimes she is right, sometimes she is wrong. But every writer should have such a passionate critic. (Maybe) Twenty odd years later the world is showing signs of ending - Armageddon on Dec 21st 2012 according to the Mayans. Book your window seat now I say.

© Sam North 2001/2002


Drawingof Sam by Niki Daly
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New York Stories

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