“What’s that?” I said, “You’d like me to direct your show this year?” (this conversation is happening at the end of last year, while I’m in the middle of making my first full new show since 2022). “Sure, I can do that, I’m a huge fan of your work. Hold on, got another call coming in. Hey! You want me to direct your show? I’d love to! I love what you do. Give me a second, someone else is ringing. Hello? Say again? You’d like me to direct your show? This is crazy, I was just talking to someone else about directing their show, and like them, I really adore the things you make, so I’d be honoured!”

This is a rough approximation of the process by which I ended up making a show of my own this year at the same time as directing four other shows, as well as a fifth one that I directed last year but which is back at the Fringe this year. One Fringe, six shows. People said it couldn’t be done. “You’re a mad fool,” they said. “In fact, I’ll go further than that, you’re an idiot. This will either drive you insane, or you will end up letting yourself or the other shows down.” Pish, I replied, in my head because this was an imaginary conversation.

“Pish!” I said out loud, in case my imaginary interlocutor hadn’t heard me think it. “It’s a simple case of compartmentalising. Each show will want approximately 1 day of my time per month. That’s 4-5 days per month working on the other shows, leaving me the rest of my time to work on mine and to concentrate on other work and other projects. It’ll be fine, you’ll see.”

“Oh, will I?” replied my imaginary interlocutor, stroking his long beard in a sinister way. “We’ll see about that,” he purred. “We’ll just damn well see about that.” How strange, I thought to myself, I seem to have imagined myself a nemesis. I wonder when we will meet next?

Imevitably, because I’ve taken some time out from making Fringe shows for the last couple of years, I’d forgotten how the work does tend to accumulate around the summer, when the Fringe actually is. So, despite my best efforts to apportion my energy out in a measured way over the last 12 months, June and July have seen me go completely insane (note that I have opted for the “go insane” option over the “let myself and others down” option, because I am a good boy). All this is really just a lengthy explanation for why there was no newsletter last week – it is a state of affairs that is likely to continue, but I will do my best to keep bashing them out when I have the time!

This week, a little update about mine and Miranda’s fourth EGGBOX show at the Pleasance Theatre on the 1st of July! If you’re new to the newsletter, you won’t know what Eggbox is, so let me explain. (Welcome, by the way, if you are new – you seem to have joined at the perfect time, just as I have added a nemesis to the newsletter! Excited to see how he factors into future instalments, it sounds juicy. I must have wronged him in some way? We’ll find out, I guess).

Miranda and I set up Eggbox at the end of 2023 as a space to celebrate the most exciting work coming out of the scripted comedy community at the moment. We use it to screen short comedy films that we’ve found online or at festivals or that friends of ours have made, and we stage live readings of brand new scripts by friends and collaborators. It launched in King’s Place at the end of 2023, and has now played two shows in our new home at the Pleasance, and our fourth show is coming up soon! Every single show has played to big sellout crowds, which is very exciting for a night that’s all about showcasing and celebrating new and developing work.

By showing both ends of the creative process in scripted filmmaking – here’s a brand new script that might one day become an amazing film or pilot, and here are some amazing films and pilots people recently completed – we hoped we’d be building something that really mattered to people.

The lineup for our next show is another absolute CORKER (do people still use this? It has a charming Beano-esque quality that I’m rather fond of), and I’m excited to let you guys know a little bit more about it:

EXCLUSIVE & PREMIERES:

These are the films which aren’t currently available to the public, which it’s our honour to show to the world for the first time!

• The Happiness Chain, written by myself and directed by Ben Kent. Quite a special one, this, because this marks the first time that a script that was once read out at Eggbox has become a film being screened at Eggbox! We hope this happens more and more as it goes on. This is a sort-of sitcom pilot, although I guess if nobody ever pays us to make more it will still stand as a perfectly enjoyable short film in its own right. It’s about friendship, disaster and the pursuit of happiness, and alongside muggins here (I hate people who say “muggins here,” but how else do you refer to yourself in a self-deprecating way? Maybe I will start calling myself Fuggins, to be more original) it co-stars the amazing Kathy Maniura, Huge Davies, Rosalie Minnitt, Phil Ellis and Donna Preston. I wrote more about it here, and I can’t wait to share it.
• Attack Of The Coat, written and directed by Lola-Rose Maxwell. This is such a funny film, and I don’t want to spoil it by saying too much about it. Perhaps it’s enough to know what a wealth of comedy talent there is involved – the cast includes Amy Gledhill, Stevie Martin, Kiell Smith-Bynoe, Graham Dickson, Ed Jones and more. There is an extended riff on a specific scene in The Mask that has long been one of my favourite ridiculous moments in cinema. I hadn’t even realised how much I had always wanted to see a parody of that moment until I saw Attack Of The Coat. Has this enticed you enough? I sure hope so.

OTHER SHORTS:

Our premieres and exclusives are both slightly longer, bigger films this time round so we only have two of them, but alongside them we have a bunch of amazing shorts we’ve found online or on the festival circuit, including some brilliant super-shorts. I’m not going to say their names or you could just look them up online and defeat the point of coming to the show, but I’ll tease each one with a single word. We’re showing shorts by:

• Hayley Morris – Mourning
• Jazz Emu – Neckwear
• Florence Poppy Deary – Dungarees
• Alun Rhys Morgan – Neighbours
• Mark Drake – Fingers
• Luke McQueen – Hairdryer
• Laura Venditti – Medieval

LIVE SCRIPT READS:

And finally, we’ve got the live readings of three brand new scripts:

• An as-yet-untitled but very funny and exciting new thing by Miranda Holms, a sitcom about an isolated 21st-century community dealing with the return of an actual witches’ coven, and the local MP trying to keep it under wraps. I’ve read quite a bit of it and am really enjoying what she’s cooking up in her writer’s cauldron.
• Snoop by Saima Ferdows and Luke Rollason, a short film about a customs official with a supernatural power that is causing havoc in his relationship. Luke’s last short film recently won a BAFTA, so who knows what heights this one might end up climbing to?
• Scrap by Lizzie Mansfield, a comedy-drama script about an ex walking back into someone’s life with a business proposal. Lizzie’s a brilliant writer and I’ve really enjoyed her scripts and plays in the past, so I’m excited to be showcasing what she’s working on next!

The full cast for the live readings will be announced soon, but will include many of the writers and filmmakers we’re showcasing, including Saima Ferdows, Luke Rollason, Lola-Rose Maxwell and more!

As usual, it’s wall-to-wall bangers, and as usual, we’re already looking at another packed room. The stalls are very nearly sold out, with the circle not far behind, so do get on it unless you want to end up watching from the stinky old balcony! (Apologies to any Pleasance staff reading, your balcony is not stinky, I’m just trying to sell this baby with a mischievous glint in my eye, y’know?)

Tickets to this extravaganza are available here.

A Quick Plug – If you’re not in London then of course you’re unlikely to make it down for Eggbox, but perhaps you live in or near the environs of Manchester? If so, the amazing Sooz Kempner and I are coming to Grub next Thursday for a WIP double-bill of our new shows! Sooz is amazing, and my show is tantalisingly close to its full, completed glory, so this should be a really fun night. Do come on down if you’re free!

A Cool New Thing In Comedy – Sam Nicoresti and pals raised £5000 for Trans Legal Clinic with their fundraising gala Sugar at the Pleasance! An amazing achievement, and the lineup was stacked with absolute legends making brilliant stuff – check them all out, and if you missed the gala like I did, then you could consider making a donation to Trans Legal Clinic here! Huge congrats to Sam and everyone involved for making it happen.

What’s Made Me Laugh The Most – Miranda’s two-year-old niece (my niece too? I suppose so, in a way) insisting that our thumbs were our little fingers and our little fingers were our thumbs. I honestly cried laughing, her timing was impeccable.

Book Of The Week – I’m reading I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith because I found it outside a bookshop for a pound. I can’t say I’m loving it. So far it is mostly about a woman who lives in a castle, and I don’t know if I’ve discerned any plot beyond that yet. Maybe it’ll grow on me. I hear it was made into a lovely film starring Romola Garai and Bill Nighy and a young Henry Cavill, so I’m sure the plot will emerge soon. You wouldn’t cast those guys in a film with no plot. Would you?

Album Of The Week – Luminal by Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe. Eno and Wolfe released two new albums last week, this and the purely ambient Lateral. Lateral is pleasant but is the kind of thing we’ve heard from Eno a million times by this point. Luminal pairs his ambient works with Wolfe’s vocals, and is much more interesting as a result. It might be the most interesting thing he’s put out since his 2014 collaborations with Karl Hyde. I think I just prefer Eno in song mode.

Film Of The Week – Lilo & Stitch. I had absolutely no interest in this until I heard it was directed by Dean Fleischer Camp, director of incredible masterpiece Marcel The Shell With Shoes On. Went in curious to see whether he would manage to wrestle any moments of genuine creative interest out of Disney’s live-action remake IP slop bucket machine. Came out astonished and delighted to report that this is also an incredible masterpiece. I cried my eyes out, I frequently laughed out loud. In a funny way, this is how I’d like to see the IP machine working more often – take a film people are kind of nostalgic for, but which doesn’t feel like it’s had an indelible mark on pop culture and isn’t a “sacred text” that people can’t imagine any other way, and give it to a really talented new voice so they can use the original as a framework to honour while also doing something original that they actually want to do. If more big studios want to offer big paydays to talented filmmakers by working this way to enable them to make more of their own work, then I’m all for it. I loved this.

That’s all for this week! Let me know what you thought, and as ever, if you enjoyed the newsletter enough to send it to a friend or encourage others to subscribe, I’d hugely appreciate it! Take care of yourselves until next time, and all the best,

Joz xx

PS If you value the Therapy Tapes and enjoy what they do, and want to support my work and enable me to keep writing and creating, you can make a one-off donation to my Ko-Fi account, and it’s very gratefully appreciated.

PPS My local cinema always does these big cardboard installations for new kids’ films and I am powerless to resist them:

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