Who can help the Big Yin?
Billy Connolly might have exhaustive stand-up material and a huge arsenal of wacky antics but writing a screenplay is proving more challenging for the 68-year-old comedy legend.
Connolly revealed to The Daily Record that he is writing his first film but is struggling to hammer his ideas into shape, adding: "I think it's a really good idea and I'm scribbling away. I think I should find somebody to work with on it."
ReelScotland would never let such a plea go unheeded and has headhunted some of Scotland's top screenwriting talent that could become one part of a beautiful creative partnership depending on what the Big Yin has in mind. Who knew writer's block could be so easily resolved?
Romantic comedy
Speaking of working relationships, Connolly could look closer to home. Why not put wife Pamela Stephenson's expertise as an agony aunt to good use in a OAP remake of The Truth About Cats and Dogs?
Medical drama
John Collee has already put words in the Big Yin's mouth as he wrote the screenplay for The Man Who Sued God. Collee has also written about Darwin, the man who ˜killed god,' with his screenplay for Creation. A qualified doctor, Collee may be able to dispense his medical knowledge in ˜The Man Who Never Knew He Had Tourette's.'
Road movie
The Big Yin might need all his powers of persuasion to cadge Paul Laverty from long-time collaborator, Ken Loach. Larverty penned the screenplays for Sweet Sixteen , Carla's Song and My Name is Joe, to name a few. Having hitch-hiked his way across the States as a student, an icebreaker for the two might be Connolly's recently completed series for ITV which sees him motor biking along Route 66. The result: a road movie with a social conscience featuring a purple-bearded biker who bravely makes a cross-country trip, naked, for charity?
Biopic
On second thoughts, Billy (and cinema-goers) might be better off with William Boyd who wrote the screenplay for Chaplin, starring Robert Downey Jr. A rag to riches biopic charting Connolly's meteoric rise should be well within the Any Human Heart novelist's capabilities.
Screwball comedy
John Hodge, who seems to have made a career writing roles for a young Ewan MacGregor (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, A Life Less Ordinary) and one Leonardo DiCaprio (The Beach), surely has the nous to make Connolly's story box office-ready. Perhaps the fellow Glasgow boy will hone a script featuring a young comic getting his big break by telling an ill-advised joke on a flagship TV chat show?