About

Robin Write

Not to be confused with the actress Robin Wright.

Robin Write is an English screenwriter, movie blogger, and Film and TV writer. Interested in story-telling from a young age, Robin wrote short stories as a child. He would later find his creative side, including writing up magazines, and soon that energy would be transferred through film. Robin just wanted to create good characters and tell good stories, and screenwriting was the channel that eventually stuck like glue.

Early Work

In the early 1990s, while in high school and college, Robin casually wrote a number of feature screenplays. These included French vampire fantasy Lamia, multi-character drama Night Club, hospital drama The Passion, and plain-and-simple English romance story Love. He eventually shelved them, regarding them as inadequate, both in preparation and execution. Robin began focusing on short films for a few years, now putting in the time and effort to research and plan them before actually writing. These shorts were also written with an eye to shoot them.

Dialogue-inspired The Talk was followed by Sexbomb, both featuring the same characters, a bunch of friends who clearly do not get along. Sexbomb was shot and produced as a short film in 1995, filmed at Robin’s then home, and produced by the college. Other short screenplays would follow, including In No Particular Order, Girlfriend, Lesson, and Heroes & Villains. Urban Harlots, a crime and drug story, was partially shot late in 1995. As were Double Date, Being Single, Strangers In The Snow, and Class over the next year or so. Many of short films only reached rehearsal or some scene shooting stages.

Influences

Robin’s hands-on experience with screenwriting and film-making was clearly inspired by a love for French cinema, and European, cinema, in particular New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard and Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski. Robin used Godard quotes “A film should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.” and “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.” as title cards on Urban Harlots – but also as a creative blueprint for future, diverse thinking with regards to writing movies. The Kieślowski influence was engulfing, unashamedly imprinting thematics, characterisation, dialogue, story-telling, into his own screenwriting – the Three Colors trilogy in particular is heavily referenced.

Robin was, and is, a fan of Éric Rohmer, Billy Wilder, Robert Towne, Lawrence Kasdan, Paddy Chayefsky, Paul Schrader to name a few, and would perhaps pay homage to some of their work here and there. Even Quentin Tarantino’s emergence fueled some crime-related stories with stylized dialogue early on, but Robin’s writing style was influenced by others in a much bigger way. As a teenager developing that yearning for film-making, his screenwriting life coincided to some extent with the rise of American independent cinema were Hal Hartley, Whit Stillman, and Richard Linklater were huge influences. And still are today.

The creative shadows of Woody Allen, Richard Curtis, Christopher Guest, and Nora Ephron are certainly present in his rare comedic writing, but Robin is significantly a dramatic story-teller.

Themes and Styles

Robin’s feature screenplays are predominantly drama, often focusing on women coping with loneliness, loss or love. Although grounded story-telling, Robin’s earlier work has been known to drift from reality from time to time with characters being angels, or the imagination of a character being part of the narrative.

Assertive, prevalent female characters appear to be the most common protagonist, often alongside or opposing a more isolated, passive male character. They tend to drive the action much more frequently than the men. Even the more passive females are central to the plot and have an important journey to make. Some of the women may not be the main characters too, but carry some of the heavier story-lines in the screenplay.

Discovering, and mending the bonds of, family is typical theme. Though not always central to the story, characters may come from a broken or estranged family, perhaps parents divorced or passed away. They may not have the best relationship with family members or loved ones, or perhaps they do not fully understand them or their needs.

Love also provides a strong force in many of Robin’s screenplays. Whether it be love beating out depression, love pushing you to your dreams, or loving the ones you can’t or shouldn’t have. There are stories of requited, platonic love. And also themes of sibling love and loyalty, and the different ways you feel love as a child and an adult.

London seems to be a popular location in Robin’s screenplays. And New England (well, Boston) provides settings for multiple screenplays also. There tends to be, too, touches of European settings, usually unnamed, France in particular.

Screenplays

Out Of Blue

Having attempted suicide on a bridge in a Parisian Bristol, Billy reminisces over his sadness and failed relationships. His last love story with mysterious girl Georgine leads him back to the scene of the bridge.

Beautiful Friend

Even with her guardian angel to keep her company, Faye Lavender suffers through a lonely childhood. As a young adult in the 1950s, she finds herself drawn to Joe, the quiet, older man who just moved to the neighborhood.

Jennifer Rose and the Coffee Shop Culture

Imaginative Wit grows up spending himself between the two loves of his life; coffee, and the breezy babysitter, Jennifer Rose. Slowly leaving the innocence of his childhood behind, Wit is forced to come to terms with his true feelings when Jennifer Rose returns to UK and back into his life.

Low Down Heaven

Swimming teen prodigy Melanie Wallis, wants nothing more than to represent Australia in the Olympics and find out her father’s true fate in the process. Underestimated by her family and peers, Melanie’s steel-hard determination and an improbable friend only pushes her to set off and achieve her goals.

A Gentle Rise and Fall

With her marriage going nowhere, Jacey returns to work after maternity leave, where she meets the drifting Red. The harsh winter proves fertile ground for a flourishing bond between them, but as the summer approaches, reality drags them apart and forces them to rebuild their lives around each other’s absence.

Ellouise

Opening night of her breakthrough play, Ellouise discovers her husband’s infidelity. In despair she throws him out and cuts off her hair. Ellouise takes her little girl to seek out reclusive, successful playwright Bob Ridley, who is such a broken man it is not the redemption she first hoped for.

American Sinners

Over the course a single day in a New England coastal town, sins gone by and not yet committed of a group of residents come to the surface.

Shebang

Bobby Jinks passes away before making a confession to both his kids. Hanna in her late teens, Ellis is in his later thirties. Their grief varies, he plans his wedding with Donna, she befriends American Massie on the internet. Massie comes to stay in London and becomes a huge distraction in more ways than one.

Love Belle

On the eve of keeping a promise to unbalanced sister Ashley to leave Texas, drifter Travis hooks up with Maya, and they soon marry and have a baby. When tragedy strikes, Travis forces Ashley to leave Texas on her own. After further suffering, Travis goes to track his sister down.

Ruby Fischer

Ruby, 11, has not spoken for months since a near-fatal car accident. Her parents Edward and Marianne are too preoccupied. They take a holiday in England, but abandon Ruby there. Ruby impacts the lives of various people before returning home where she is has to make a great decision.

Monsters and Angels

Hardened Saoirse is trying to rebuild her life in London after a discharge from the army and isolating her Irish family. She starts a relationship with Walter. When he confesses his criminal activity, Saoirse threatens to kill him unless he leaves, not aware she has put herself in great danger.

The Day I Died

Thinking he has seen an angel that grants him a fresh start, drunk old Jimmy stoops to contacting his estranged adult kids to help pay off his debts. His two children travel a great distance to visit their father, believing Jimmy is dying, and share their brutal long lost feelings.

Walk, Don’t Walk

George is successful, happily married, with two kids. Benjamin is alone, an in-over-his-head crook, on the run. When George knocks him over in his car, the badly injured Benjamin bribes him into help him clean up his criminal and family mess. In doing so George is faced with his own demons.

Personal Life

Robin met his current wife of 6 years (married May 2011) when she was residing in Greece. They now live in the UK and have a little girl and baby boy.

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