1863-project-art:OC-tober: Day 22Steph Bases Some Of Her Characters On Double Acts: Basil Remington

1863-project-art:OC-tober: Day 22Steph Bases Some Of Her Characters On Double Acts: Basil Remington and Dustin Thatcher, LondiniumI didn’t always look to comedians for how to develop interplay between characters, but this is absolutely where it started and unquestionably the best example of it in anything I’ve written ever. Basil and Dustin didn’t start out this way. In fact, they weren’t even friends at the beginning. Londinium was going to be a more serious project about Basil, a dull, personality-less aristocrat, as he met various people around the city and developed an appreciation for everything. The problem was that the chimney sweep he would occasionally run into asserted himself in the writing process and insisted on being funny, which evolved into the characters developing a working relationship that flat-out became a friendship within a few months of the project’s development. And then, somewhere in the middle of Dustin’s quest to break through Basil’s deadpan and see him show any amusement at anything, he discovered that Basil was actually mercilessly funny too. I was reading the Wikipedia article on double acts at the beginning of January 2007, and by sheer chance I stumbled upon Peter Cook and Dudley Moore being mentioned on there. Their dynamic sounded weirdly close to what I was trying to write between Basil and Dustin, so I used a two-year-old website called YouTube to see what I could find, and came across a ten-minute bit known as the Art Gallery Sketch from a show they had done called Not Only…But Also. That was all I needed to see - there it was. I knew from that moment exactly what I had to do. I say that the one sketch was all I needed to see, but in reality I became obsessed, consumed pretty much all Peter and Dudley’s material that was available, and found out about the BBC’s tape-wiping policy in the process, which may be part of the reason I’m an archivist now (I got really angry). Basil and Dustin changed as a result, too - Basil went from unintentionally funny to intentionally funny to sharpest satirical writer in the country, and Dustin’s musical talent transferred from singing to the piano and he shrunk about five to six inches (early drafts had him at about 5′7.5″). I had them write together, a high point of which was when they wrote a song about a man they both despised and nearly killed themselves with it because they were sort of drunk and thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever done. (It still holds up for them sober.) I should note that Basil and Dustin don’t have the depressing breakup that Peter and Dudley had, though. I couldn’t do that part. That part still hurts me too much. But it’s clear that right here was the breakthrough moment in my writing process, the moment I realized I could turn to the comedians I love so much to see how different types of characters could interact with each other, and this changed everything for me. I have many, many projects and many, many original characters, but it’s well-known that Basil and Dustin are my eternal favorites, and this moment is exactly why. -- source link

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