Loving Billy Victim
An unfinished, half-thought-out pitch from 2001, for a proposed comic anthology called – I think? – Ignite. Very much reflective of my own state of mind at the time.
LOVING BILLY VICTIM
In little over four months, Billy Victim has become the name to drop around ol’ London town. No-one knows where he came from or what his real name is (although he’ll give a different answer everytime someone asks), but what everyone knows is that his first two singles went straight in at number one in the charts and have virtually taken over the airwaves. Along with his band, The 9 O’clock Gang, Billy rips off his favourite bands (the VU, Nick Drake, MC5, Big Star, early Bowie, the usual suspects) to produce noisy angular music that everyone magically digs, from schoolkids to musos, with even the indie-kids tapping their feet under their greasy fringes. Everyone seems to love him (the kids for his attitude and his filmstar looks, the critics for the music itself)… which sadly means that, for Billy, the only way is down.
LOVING BILLY VICTIM is a series of six short (eight pages max) interconnecting stories about what’s going on behind the scenes. It’s a pop series about pop, really. It’s not meant to be high art, but it’s not really meant to be exactly throwaway, either. It’s about the dream, and about the bits that aren’t the dream. It’s about British popular culture. It’s three minutes long, and 45rpm.
Of course.
**
As said above, the series isn’t episodic in the sense of continuing narrative. While the whole thing does feature the same characters, and themes will run between episodes (and there will inevitably be references to things that pop up now and again), each episode should more or less stand on its own. Imagine an anthology series about the same people. It doesn’t penalize people who read, say issue 5, but have never heard of the magazine before then. I think it’s the way to go, at least for the first run (yes, there could be a second; there’d be a set-up for it in one of the episodes, although you might not think so at the time. If such a second series would run, it’d be a continued narrative because of the length of the story I’d be telling). Plus, of course, there’s something about each episode featuring a beginning middle and end that makes it feel like a pop single, you know?
Current thinking about plots:
Episode 1 would be the pilot, for want of a better way to put it. Between three scenes (Billy being interviewed by someone from an NME-type mag, shooting his mouth off and acting like he’s calling all the shots; Billy talking to someone from management post-interview, being told how his “career” is going; Billy talking to his girlfriend about the way everything seems to be slipping out of his control and over his head) the set-up of the series is, well, set up. During the interview with the journalist, the secrecy about Billy’s past will also be brought up, and Billy himself will be shown to be fairly touchy about the whole subject… This will float around the series as a subplot, before being resolved in episode 4.
Episode 2 will be the aftershow party for some kind of showcase gig, where Billy is trapped at the bar by people he’s never met tripping over themselves to tell him he was wonderful.
Episode 3 will be full of Billy’s insomnia brought on by the fear that comes from being told that your album is supposed to sell X number of thousand records, and you can’t think up enough songs to write to fill it.
Episode 4 is where Billy comes clean about why he’s being so secretive about his past, which also sets up a possible second series at the same time.
Episode 5 sees Billy in the Top of The Pops studios for the first time, more than a little letdown by the fact that it’s shite and not as fun as it looked on TV.
Episode 6 is the launch of the album and a lot of nerves about whether it’s number one or not…
Stylistically, this wouldn’t be a loud, “widescreen” style series; the stories would be – for the most part – quiet, insular, personal… reflecting Billy’s own sense of unease with his situation. The exceptions to this rule would be when Billy’s “on”, of course, and then the first person narration captions would disappear to be replaced by something much more uppercase and glossy. The art would also reflect this, shifting panel composition and emphasis as needed…
**
Our characters, as they exist so far:
BILLY VICTIM himself is more or less a nice guy who believes in the dream a bit too much. In interviews, he’s the perfect British popstar: arrogant, witty, charming (Imagine someone like Damon Albarn or John Lennon at their height). The kind of person you’d want to hang around with, the kind you imagine would be great in bed (and he’d never give you any reason to doubt that if he could help it). In real life, it’s not really the same story; he’s insecure and panicky and just like John Shaft, no-one understands him but his woman.
His woman REBECCA SHARP is, as far as anyone is in this story, the real victim. She’s the only person (apart from, arguably, his parents) who takes him that seriously and listens to him. She seems to really love him, and tells him so at many given opportunities, completely unaware that he’s taking advantage of the willing groupies as much as he can. She’s the real heart here. The narrator of a couple of episodes, at least.
His management team are, essentially, Suede’s when I worked with them (long and dull story); the stereotypical media wankers. The big manager we’ll probably never see, but there are more than enough minions to keep us interested. They’re all popstar wannabes who didn’t have the talent or the breaks (or just the guts) to try and go all the way… but they’re all very very excited to be part of the big picture, even if it’s a small part. Overeager and still essentially lackluster, they’ll be in the background just enough to remind Billy of how many units he’s supposed to be shifting of the album and of the many appointments he’s got coming up.
We’ll also see Billy’s parents (who don’t quite understand this whole pop music business, but it keeps their son off the streets, so that’s good) and a smattering of sychophants and journalists, but they’ll stay as faceless and nameless as Billy experiences them. We’ll hear about Billy’s sister, and maybe see her in flashback.
Gah. That’s enough for now. More as I think of it.
