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 For all you weekend Guardian readers and as a special treat, Leanne Smith excels with a poem written without an Arts Council grant. You'd be mad not to read it...
O, dreadful script, are you so cursed?
When agents none can I persuade
To read you, nor to reimburse
The postage costs or calls I made
To ICM and PFD
Or any agent in West One
In meetings long, their standard plea
While I am left upon the phone
For hours and days and weeks on end
I wait - and more impatient grow
For having nothing else to spend
But time; for agent's lunches slow
In Soho House, with someone's son
Who made a short and never paid
The crew; who now wants taken on
The agent thinks, can I get laid?
So to the ladies she retires
With handbag and a pounding heart
So anxious that she looks perspired
Sprays Gucci Rush on, then departs
While on a shelf, she thinks no more
Of worthy scripts that she must read
But wishing not to shun her chore
She writes a text in which she pleads
The meeting's been a great success
So don't expect me back till five
Put all my calls on hold unless
My mother's dead, else I contrive
To leave this famous person's son
For drunk is he and charlied up
And pain in arse he may become
In which event I'll kick the pup
Out of my flat in Gray's End Road
But not before I have my way
With Justin for the least I'm owed
A decent shag to make my day
Amid the sex, the mobile rings
The agent cuts off Justin's cries
And cruelly, as she is with things
Assumes her scary agent guise
You fuck! Exclaims she at a pitch
While intern cowers in anguished fear
For well she knows she is a bitch
And glad her heart that she's not here
Why call me now, the agent screams
What business is there that can't wait?
An urgent call has come, it seems
From senior partner to debate
The latest on the US fee
Of name director in LA
Insisting he won't work for free
Can she come in without delay?
With Justin passed out on the sack
Snoring; while the agent creeps
Out of her flat, her temper black
And hails a cab in rush hour deep
Her destination Wardour Street
But running late she's forced to run
And out of breath arrives to meet
The deadline set for deal undone
But LA time is hours behind
And while she waits to take the call
She reads a script to take her mind
Off Justin and and his penis small
At random, as it tends to be
The agent picks a weighty draft
And hopes it is a comedy
For in her mood, she needs a laugh
Ten pages in, a smile appears
On her torn face; a novel sight
The hottest script she's read in years
At last, a writer who can write
She shouts, do we know who this is?
The intern shrugs, for knows she not
The writer who, new to the biz
Had unsolicited wrote in
Last October, now it’s May
The agent, disbelieving, snaps
At poor intern who runs away
To Groucho’s where her latest chap
Had earlier arranged to meet
Arriving late, the intern’s stressed
Not knowing that her beau, discreet
Had shagged another – yes, you guessed
Young Justin, laid out on the bed
Has clean forgot his rendezvous
With little intern, who instead
Gets drunk on Beaujoulais Nouveau
Back in the office, agent scrolls
Through rolodex and number finds
Of unknown author who enrols
For late shift at Victoria Wines
The number rings but no reply
The answerphone is on the blink
And agent tries to fathom why
Some writers live just to defy
The rules; or are they just obtuse
These jumped-up hacks, do they not care
That agents take so much abuse?
And with a grudge she turns her stare
To you; poor unregarded script
Still on her desk, third act unread
And there you'll wait, until you're ripped
And tossed in bin, a screenplay dead.
The moral of this sorry tale
Is not to slag the agent's way
But more to say, don't moan and wail
If your hot script's in her in-tray.
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