Cronenberg's typewriter

Stills from Naked Lunch (Dir. D. Cronenberg, 1991)






Below:

A Polish film poster for Cronenberg's 1986 film The Fly, designed by Eugeniusz Skorwider







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A short interview with John Reppion and Leah Moore on writing for comics




John Reppion and Leah Moore are a married comics-writing team. They are based in the UK, and have been writing for American publications.

Do you ever draw layouts on scripts for each other or the artist?

JOHN REPPION:

The ridiculously strict, long winded process that we have is that we sit down and we discuss everything, we sit down and discuss the story, we make notes about what's gonna happen (the beginning, middle and end kind of thing) then we write down the numbers of the pages and then next to each page we write down what happens on each page then Leah draws a rectangle, we divide that rectangle into how many panels we want on the page, how big they are and then Leah draws little sketches...

LEAH MOORE:

...I do little thumbnails of indecipherable nonsense and whenever he has to type from them he's always like, "What's that there? Is it like a man lying on his back screaming?" No, it’s a horse joyously leaping over a hedge - they're really awful aren't they?

JOHN REPPION:

They're not that bad... you get to do them, I'm not allowed to do them because you can't tell what mine are... Because we talk things through as you're drawing them out, we just have them in our mind more than anything. We divide those sketches up and then basically just sit at separate computers and type them up.

LEAH MOORE:

We grab say four pages each and type four pages and then get another four pages until its all done...

JOHN REPPION:

...and when they're typed up, then we go through and add al the dialogue in. I think most people would just say, write what's happening and just start typing...

LEAH MOORE:

Like; "he is climbing up a building"... yeah, it would probably be a lot more conversational.

JOHN REPPION:

Which you could do if you were writing it on your own I suppose but, if you're two people writing it...

LEAH MOORE:

This might be why it takes us so bloody long to get through a script to be honest.