Right, transcribing the president's interview can wait. After reading Carolyn Tan's tourist guide to Auchterarder, the nearest town to Gleneagles, I am inspired to launch a Newsnig8t competition. And we are not talking Sudoku....
We are all waiting earnestly for Richard Curtis's TV film The Girl in the Cafe, based on a romance at a G8, summit to be shown next week. In the UK it has already been panned by reviewers (on, er, Newsnight) though the USA liked it.
While reserving judgment, Curtis's film is based in Rekyavik - what we really needed was one set in Auchterarder. So send me your 500 word plot outline for "100% Brigadoon" - a remake of the 1954 musical set at next month's Gleneagles summit. Stereotypes of a) Americans b) Scottish people are obligatory. The set must be cardboard or back-projected - once inside that fence its about as close as you are gonna get to the heather on the hill.
For inspiration click here. Or here. As it says on IMDB:
"Two American hunters, lost in the highlands of Scotland, stumble upon a small town not listed on any map. The village of Brigadoon, by virtue of a powerful prayer, only awakens for one day out of every hundred years. One of the hunters, Tommy, falls in love with one of the townswomen, Fiona, but is afraid to give up everything he knows; she can't leave with him without breaking the spell. Back in New York, Tommy cannot forget Fiona. He returns to Scotland, where his love is so strong that he calls Brigadoon back from the mists so he can join his Fiona."
Critic Pauline Kael's words might help inspire you:
"Probably the material was too precious and fake-lyrical to have worked in natural surroundings, but the way it has been done it's hopelessly stagey."
...or was that just a premonition of the actual Gleneagles summit? For inspiration, read Curtis' account of his film's evolution.
Finally, as one of the characters in the film says:
"You'll never find peace by hating, lad. It only shuts ye off more from the world. And this town is only a cursed place if ye make it so. To the rest of us, 'tis a blessed place!"
Go on... you know ye want to. It will soon be the week-end. Send your entries to me pronto, to arrive NLT 0001 Monday 27 June by email. 500 words max.
