I spent five years of my childhood living in England and for some odd reason, I have not tapped into that experience much, but I do have a few ideas in the factory that are set in England. At this point there are two films I have written that are set in England, one is Derby Double and it’s sequel Derby Double Redemption. Scousers would be my second.
Scousers:
I’ve had this idea for well over 20 years or so. I used to work for a radio station in St. Albans Vermont. One of the stations played a lot of oldies from the 1960’s. One of the best bands to come out of that era was Herman’s Hermit’s from Liverpool. One night I am waiting for the break to come so I can play commercials and Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter came on. It’s always been one of my favorite songs and suddenly this song sparked an idea. I wanted to know who Mrs. Brown was and better yet who was her daughter and why was she so lovely, or was she? I also wanted to know more about the boy who was commenting on Mrs. Brown. Enter Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Brown’s daughter Rachel and our protagonist, a ne’er do well named Gerry McNamara and the setting had to be Liverpool and of course I wanted the River Mersey as a backdrop for some scenes.
Now the idea has changed somewhat since I began working on it. For instance, the title. When I found out that Herman’s Hermits had actually made a British Kitchen Sink movie with the name Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter,” I changed the name of the piece and called it Scousers. A Scouse is slang for someone who lives in Liverpool.
When I started working on this, it started as a play set in a pub, but for some reason, I wanted Liverpool to be a backdrop and decided to write a movie.
The premise is pretty simple. Jerry McNamara’s local pub happens to be the Pub that Mrs. Brown runs. Mrs. Brown doesn’t really care for Gerry, because he lives with his mother Dierdra and seems to have no direction in life. He’s on the dole and he breaks woman’s hearts. Mrs. Brown’s biggest fear is that this guy is going to be interested in her mentally ill daughter, Rachel. When the piece starts, Rachel has just gotten out of a mental institution and Mrs. Brown refuses to allow Rachel to come down into the pub. Rachel, rebels and somehow manages to let her mother find a job. She finds a job at a Vet working as an Assistant. Rachel discovers she likes dogs. Jerry finally meets Rachel when he brings Dierdra’s dog down for a check up. Jerry finds Rachel
interesting and a much different girt than one of his usual one night stands. Jerry becomes interested in Rachel and asks her out. When Mrs. Brown finds out, she is dead set against a date of any kind. I haven’t quite figured out where this movie goes from here, although I was tinkering with Jerry’s backstory and found his father had passed away and had been a former British Olympic swimmer. I decided this piece of information would be interesting to play around in. I had this idea that there was some swimming race along the Mersey that Jerry decides to enter. I had written about 40 pages of a movie, but for the moment have scrapped it, because I need to think about it a bit more.
The Script is the thing 