moffia reblogged
moffia reblogged
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I’m pro-Gatiss and pro-Moffat. I don’t see much love for The Moff on my dashboard, so here’s an interview from about a month ago where he discusses his approach to writing, his job as showrunner (what the hell that means), and some fun questions (like his favorite tv moment, what DVDs he’d have with him on a desert island, etc.) Good interview.
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The World is a better place with Doctor Who
moffia reblogged
Moffat on Becoming and Being a Writer, and Doctor Who
This is The Cult Den’s latest Moffat interview, and I love it. Usually, when I’m reading interviews, especially Moffat interviews I find myself asking: Damn, why aren’t people just doing their research? This is the fifteenth time I read Moffat answering that question. Now, this one is different. It’s everything boring interviews are not.
There are many reasons why I love this one in particular, but most importantly it is because he talks about how he has become a writer. And it wasn’t easy for him, the BBC didn’t just ring 25-year-old Moffat up and asked him to write a show. Yes, most dads do not have an idea for a TV show. But he was still playing against the odds. And I think most of us have no idea how slim those odds really were. He had one script they would look at and he knew it had to be brilliant. It had to be better than the guy’s who got paid to do the same job. But he did it anyway.
Of course, that’s not the only thing Moffat mentions. Even though (or because?) Moffat is mostly talking about Doctor Who, there are some gems which were new to me. Like his take on Who’s Long Hiatus, how he practically tried to apply to write for his all-time most favourite TV show on the day it got cancelled, how much he adores RTD as a writer and for bringing Who back and for allowing him to write for the show, and the story behind 'The Empty Child's ‘monster’ as well as loads of other more general aspects of Who, and writing.
Another thing. Somehow the original interview comes with typos (sc-fiction? really, is that how we are abbreviating science fiction now? What happened to sci-fi? And whoever had really typed up that interview should learn to distinguish between there and their, and these are just the two things on the top of my really long list) but I decided against correcting them, because… erm, is small, unimportant me supposed to correct an actual, real life journalist? Nope. So, I tried to insert some [sic.]s but I have very likely missed some of them. I just wanted those of you who are really into grammar know. Because the following, actual real life interview published on a real life site is going to be painful.
Anyways. Ladies and gentlemen, I proudly present my latest (in spite of its manifold typos) most favourite thing on the internet:
Wednesday, June 04, 2014
We sent Will Barber-Taylor to the Hay festival and he returned with the longest interview transcription yet! Split into 2 parts, here is Steven Moffat talking to Alan Yentob (From Press Gang to The Empty Child)…
On the 26th of May I was present at Steven Moffat’s chat to Alan Yentob at Hay On Wye about his career.
Before I get started with the conversation, for those who haven’t been to one, I’d like to give a short summing up of what at [sic.] literature festival is like. The big ones are mainly sprawling great events with thousands of tents crammed together over what could be a football pitch. Hundreds of people jostle about the place talking about all sorts of things from high art to the latest Bond film. The Moffat event took place in a large tent that could easily have hosted a production of Macbeth. The majority of the audience were crammed at the back almost as though they feared that being too close to Moffat might result in their extermination by a Dalek. Then, to the tune of some fine music the event began…
"AY: Alright so the thing I’d say about Steven is that he is passionate about two things, storytelling and television. In other words someone who thinks I love television, I believe in it, everything is possible. At the very beginning of your career, your father was a teacher, and your debut came, I don’t know what age you were, when you wrote a show for television for a show called Press Gang.
SM: Yes, I was trying to be a playwright and write plays.
AY: How old were you?
SM: I was 25 or 26. That was sort of my vague ambition. Through this weird series of events, which was my father’s school (breaks off) Do you remember a show called Highway?
AY: I do yes.
SM: Does anyone remember a show called Highway apart from me and you? It was Harry Secombe [Noted Welsh Comedian and member of The Goons along with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan] singing to various children about God, I think. My Dad’s school would be featured on that show and my Dad ever the opportunist said “I’ve got a great idea for a children’s series” about a junior newspaper. Which he didn’t really, what he was doing was educating kids about a children’s newspaper but he just thought what the hell, give it a punt. Two or three years later Bill Ward, the producer of Highway came to my father and said “I’d like to buy that idea for no money and would you let me develop it.” He said yes, and thanks god for my dad, he said as long as you let my son write a sample script for it.
AY: You know what that’s called. Nepotism.
SM: Have you seen Sherlock? So Sandra (Bill Ward’s girlfriend) said we will do that, I will read the script but there is absolutely no chance that we will use it. She said, I’ll give it a proper reading and tell him what is wrong with it. So I wrote it but as it turned out she was pretty keen on it as were Central (Producers of Highway and Press Gang) so I found myself quite suddenly at a television station.
AY: It went on and on didn’t it? It was a series about a school newspaper.
SM: Well a junior newspaper, yeah they were attached to the local newspaper rather than the school.
AY: It ran for five or six series didn’t it?
SM: Five years.
AY: Five years, I mean that’s a quite a significant run. Then what happened next with your career? You got married for two years.
SM: Yes and that didn’t work out and I got divorced.
AY: We’ll come back to that.
SM: Ah well it was a weird one after just spending five years working I didn’t know what to do, I’d just sit in my house and wait for someone to phone. Someone phoned me up and got me to write an episode of a show called Stay Lucky and I just said yes because they phoned me up that was all. I was just at their by the phone and they said “Can you write this now?” “Fine, I’ll do that in a year say.” I’d never do that. I was married before Press Gang and owing to the fact that I spent all my time working and being obnoxious and terrible, she left me. She left me because she thought I valued television more than her so I wrote a sitcom about it, which rather proved her point.
AY: I remember it was called Joking Apart. Robert Bathurst played the lead and his deceiving wife was played by Fiona Gillies. While you were doing this, the quote I have, I don’t normally read Wikipedia because it is usually untrue but I thought I’d read this. I don’t know how to say this to such a large crowd; he said “I shagged my way around TV Studios like a mechanical digger”.
SM: I mean ladies, that is some technique that you are all missing out on.
AY: I mean Steven got his revenge, on the person, who had an affair with his wife by making references to him, in fact basing a whole episode around this whole period.
SM: In Press Gang I called somebody after him and injured him a bit.
AY: A typewriter, wasn’t it?
SM: Yeah that’s right, I dropped a typewriter on his foot in fiction but he stole my wife in fact, so he sort of won.
AY: So Joking Apart, you did in a sense, take things from your own life and stick them in your work that is something quite a lot of writers do, is that something you found an enjoyable exercise up to a point? In fact you did it later with Coupling. I mean where do you get these ideas for drama, why did you decide to write a comedy about your own circumstances up to a point?
SM: Well it is the easiest kind of research and if it [sic.] what is preoccupying you at the time I suppose it can be helpful and if you are making bitter, black miserable jokes then it is probably about what has just happened to you. I think whatever is happening to you, even if your writing something mad like Doctor Who that will come out in the script somehow, someway it will be in their [sic.] always. It was just what was important to me. To [sic.] trouble with doing that is that if you write a pilot in a kind of great blackhearted fury about a terrible woman, then you realise you’ve actually written about a very nice woman who married a dickhead. They then commissioned two series and you’re over it by then and you have to go back to it, they say writing is like therapy but then you get better and they ask you to go back.
AY: So this material that you steal from your life. The next step, is a series, a drama called Coupling which was an incredibly successful comedy series that was about a group of friends, in fact quite similar to Friends, not similar but the British version of Friends and here is an interesting sidestep again. Steven is part of a dynasty an amazing dynasty, which I have great admiration for. He met this girl called Sue and he married her and in the meantime he also married his mother in law who is –
SM: That wouldn’t even be legal.
AY: and she is a producer called Beryl Vertue and this woman Beryl Vertue is a marvel she is one of the pioneers of British television involved with Spike Milligan, Till Death Us Do Part, Steptoe and Son she was involved with all of these first as an agent and then as a producer and she managed to do what Steven never managed to do which was to sell these shows to American television. They became absolute hits.
SM: No, no she didn’t just do that, she invented the idea. She changed the format, the world hadn’t encounter[sic.] this were [sic.] you remade a show in another country. It hadn’t been done or thought about before Beryl did it with Steptoe and Son to Sandford and Son and Till Death Us Do Part to All In The Family.
AY: Which were absolutely huge hits on American television in a huge way. I made a program about the transfer of these ideas to American television which one of them was The Office and another was Coupling. Of course Beryl was involved. Let’s hear about this experience. It’s interesting that Steven, Coupling had been on here, this very successful series had been on British television and then he pitched it to American television and somehow it didn’t work out. Why was that do you think?
SM: Well I didn’t pitch it at all. My heart wasn’t truly in the idea because I was still working on the British one the idea that there will be another one felt to me strange. So it wasn’t me, it was actually Beryl saying we could make some money out of this if we sell the format. I don’t think it was a very bright decision on their part. It ran for a successful three weeks. They took it and thought “oh it had six people in it” and tried to make it like Friends but it wasn’t terribly like that it was a BBC 2 show that they were trying to make like that. Even had they done it really well I don’t think it would have been a success. Not the words I used at the time. They didn’t do it very well it was a bit of a mess to be honest and people hated it. People who saw it hated it, people who saw the America version and then saw the original hated it. For a brief time the byword for it was “bad American comedy”. Always uncomfortable. I remember I was personally billed four times in the titles for Coupling.
AY: Of course one of the things that happens in American television is you essentially leave it to them to get on with it.
SM: But we did. We did two pilots for it. The first one which were quiet involved with and which was okay but wasn’t very good. They made a second pilot and got rid of us and to be absolutely honest I don’t think that’s a stupid thing to do. You can’t make a TV shows twice once you’ve done it, you’ve done it and you don’t want to go back and make it again. I wasn’t upset or aggrieved at all when they said they were going to do that. They ran with it and to be fair on them, though nobody will believe me when I say it, they wrote some terrific scripts. They wrote some really, really funny scripts. Really good characters and I thought some of them were excellent. I saw the first part of episode three and on that first cut I had that huge pang of resentment when I realise it was really good. They managed to figure out a message I never got right. I hated America for all of a month. But then the network execs came in and gave their notes and I saw another cut and it was an absolute disaster. And they absolutely trashed it on its second cut. Because it required a detailed setup and to get to the funny bits they had cut all the setup so you just had the punchline and you could hear a studio audience laughing but at home they would have thought “What happened?”
AY: When they cut things out and you really don’t know what they have cut out. And that is interesting because the shows all of you know, many of you know Coupling of course, but the shows we all know of Steven’s are Doctor Who and Sherlock which are big hits. They are the big British hits other than Downton [Abbey] on the other side of the Atlantic. They are quintessentially British; they come from either British literature in the case of Sherlock or from British television. I’d like to know about your love affair with Doctor Who. You have this passion for the show. I gather that you applied to be the showrunner at the age of seven. I don’t know if that is true or not.
SM: It is a quote from me and it’s a lie. From a boy to a teenager and then a lonely adult I have been a big fan of Doctor Who. I loved it, loved it. I genuinely have no regrets about anything. I think it is an astonishing show. I remember it going off the air and waiting and waiting for it to come back. At this time I was actually working in television. In fact I was just doing Press Gang and I thought, because for about four and half seconds I was a big name in children’s television, right this is it, I’m going to apply to write for Doctor Who. And they axed it more or less that day. 26 years and I miss it by this much of an afternoon. Russell T Davies was doing exactly the same thing and we both applied for Sylvester McCoy’s last series.
AY: It is fascinating actually that this is a show, Michael Grade stopped it at that point, people came back to do it. It was the passion and enthusiasm and sense of understanding that you and Russell had that helped bring it back. Originally Russell T Davis came to exec show but he also did this with Steven as his accomplice in the first instance.
SM: Junior accomplice.
AY: His, “junior accomplice”, writing the scripts. It is interesting that when you take a great classic that people love and you change it, how do you make it your own but honour its origins?
SM: Well this is what Russell got so right, he didn’t change it at all except so far as it had to fit into modern television. Doctor Who throughout its original 26 years, particularly at its height, was very good at adapting itself to be part of the modern world. It was unsentimental about disposing of our main characters and bringing on new ones. All Russell did was take a look at it say “What they want it Saturday night television, that’s right, they want a family audience that is absolutely right.” He knew the thing to do. He’s probably the best television writer we have anywhere, he also has a profound knowledge of television as you know he watches television all the time, he seems to watch several channels at once while texting you about it. So he knew exactly how to fit Doctor Who into the modern television landscape. The mysterious Doctor, who doesn’t wear silly clothes, sensible clothes for one year only, a girl who feels like she belongs in the world of Holyoakes and Eastenders. So he actually fitted it in perfectly. Billie Piper became the darling of the nation, I mean we always forget now that for the first two years of Doctor Who it was all about Billie. Whenever they wanted a photograph of Doctor Who they wanted a photograph of Billie.
AY: How long did Chris Eccleston do it for?
SM: One year.
AY: That decision to then go for David, how did that happen? Tell us about the process of finding the right man and about how to get him.
SM: I wasn’t part of that, I didn’t know until twenty minutes before everyone else in the country found out. From what I can recall, they had just worked with David on Casanova [2004 miniseries starring Tennant based on Casanova’s autobiography which Davies adapted for screen] and it was a quirky choice to cast him because believe it or not when they were casting David Tennant for Casanova they said “damn you should have cast someone sexier”. It’s true, that’s what they said.
AY: I know, I mean now you have got Benedict Cumberbatch.
SM: It was the same thing; they said “You should have gone for the sexy Sherlock”.
AY: I know what they mean, I mean I love him but they must have been gobsmacked at it.
SM: Anyway, with David, I think when I watched Casanova I thought well this is fantastic, great drama but he is playing Doctor Who. He’s bloody auditioning for it! In some ways he’s exactly The Doctor. So when they were coming up with the new one they said “Why bother looking their [sic.] he is”. I mean another great thing with David is that he is a massive Doctor Who fan; he really wanted to be a part of it. I would have loved to have seen his face when they, Russell and Julie, took him out and said “Would you like to play The Doctor?” I would have loved to have seen his reaction.
AY: Obviously Russell takes the lead in all this but you have also picked it up and taken it and make the characters try and connect with the world we live in now, one of the things about the essence of Doctor Who is there is fear, excitement, the monsters. Is the future one of the things you worry about?
SM: Well it changes every year, it changes a little every year, it changed very much from the first year to the second from Chris to David. Chris’s Doctor was dressed like a BBC One lead man with short hair and the sensible jacket and one year in, hair jell ridiculous coat the big difference being Doctor Who was no longer excusing itself from being Doctor Who. It was allowed as it has been every year since, to be a bit more Doctor Who. People expect it to be the most out there [sic.], maddest, most bonkers sc- fi show on TV. With the biggest emotions and the biggest drama and it is melodrama and the biggest explosion, people sort of expect that we have to keep hyping it up. There are tons of sc – fi shows out there and you just have to be the boss one. Once again The Doctor is the children’s best friend; people have begun to forget it was ever off the air. I told my son, who is twelve, that Doctor Who was not on the air for sixteen years and he said “No it wasn’t” and I said “Yes it was!” and he said “No it wasn’t” and he just walked off. I mean I wept for sixteen years! So it is different and harder to compare season one to the later seasons. The big difference is that it is sort of ore flippant and sc – fi.
AY: Terry Nation is the man who created the Daleks and it was actually Beryl who was the agent who represented Terry Nations, his mother in law that is a kind of interesting connection to Doctor Who that you have. Tell me about this issue of the special effects that you have, that as you go along you have to invent what the next monster will be, these catalogue of characters what are they going to look like, what they are going to feel like in this science fiction universe. Where do you get those kinds of ideas?
SM: Well who can really say?
AY: You are the writer.
SM: I think the difference between Doctor Who and other sc- fi shows is that it doesn’t take place in space at all. It takes place under your bed and the back of your wall cupboard. While it can be epic and huge there is always something domestic about it. The way The Doctor himself talks isn’t really sciency wyencey he is quite down to earth. You’re travelling around the real world. You think “what can we make out of the ordinary domestic paraphernalia that will be frightening. You don’t have to go into outer space to be scared; you can be scared in your own bedroom at night. That is the mission statement of Doctor Who: as much wet mattresses as possible.
AY: That is the brilliant notion of Doctor Who it is down to Earth which you can’t say about most science fiction. The images of Doctor Who are ones that could appear in a house.
SM: There is a sink plunger sticking out of a Dalek. Sometimes we sit down and say “Should we get rid of that, because it is something you stick down a lav? Should we give it another gun?” and then you think “No we can’t!” “But what does it do?” Nobody knows! We don’t know. Why doesn’t it have two guns? No, have a sink plunger! Why? We try to make ordinary things frightening. Statues are frightening, dummies are frightening. One of the dominant things in Doctor Who is the juxtaposition is very sc – finess and a very ordinary set. A spaceship inside a phone box. A space man who looks like a bloke, slightly eccentric but not very, you have a spaceship, Yetis in the underground.
AY: So The Empty Child, where did that come from?
SM: It’s not real. Russell asked me to do a World War Two thing and he wanted this creepy child in it and said “Set it during the Blitz” so I had to go and do research. I thought “I’ve learned everything about Doctor Who and now I’ve got to go and learn new stuff now”. I thought if I import space monster and robots, as much as I love such things, into World War Two, World War Two will fade into the background, it won’t matter you won’t be looking at the detail of World War Two if you have got a big clanking robot or a purple lizard or something, you’ll be looking at the purple lizard of course you will. So I thought, I have to somehow use the iconography of World War Two to make it sinister and as I was flicking through some children’s picture books that I have chosen to research from I saw a picture of a gas masked boy. I thought “I think that is frightening, I’ll have that.” So that is where it came from. Every [sic.] has seen a gas mask and that is so Doctor Who, this human face, these blank eyes, hasn’t got a proper mouth. You can mass produce them quite cheaply.
AY: You’re always bearing in mind the budget at the BBC.
SM: Or lack thereof.”
moffia reblogged
Steven Moffat’s advise on which book to read: "The Princess Bride, it’s a wonderfull book" but he loves the film too: "…first read the book, then watch the film."
moffia reblogged
Source: sir-mycroft
moffia reblogged
Source: sir-mycroft
moffia reblogged
- Steven Moffat on fanfiction
Trinity College, March 2013. Source: https://soundcloud.com/trinityradio/steven-moffat-talks-to-the#new-timed-comment-at-4453200
For those who think that Steven Moffat’s recent words about fandom and fanfiction show some change of heart. A quote from a year ago.
To summarise: he loves the fact that fanfiction leads people to creating their own stories, although he finds it somewhat disturbing when people send him JohnLock porn.
Ehehehe, This was one of my favourite bits from the Trinity interview. So very funny, and the way he acknowledges the fandom and their works is lovely :-)
moffia reblogged
Thanks to Teresa for her help!
In front of journalists, lucky fans, and disguised Holmes and Mycrofts, Steven Moffat talked about the BBC hit show Sherlock, after the screening of the series 2 first episode ”A Scandal in Belgravia”. To start the event here’s what Steven Moffat has to say about this second series: "Of course I’m not going to reveal a thing about the two upcoming episodes. It is time for Sherlock to confront his demons: love in A Scandal in Belgravia, fear in The Hounds of Baskerville and in the last episode, The Reichenbach Fall, he must face doubt, death … and Moriarty again. And that never ends well." Alain Carrazé (one of the meeting planner) discusses the differences between the two seasons. Season 2 seems more focused on the duo, while the former was more focused on Watson and his meeting with Sherlock. "There is no real change. We have always emphasized their friendship. The first season was a bit about John’s redemption, the veteran haunted by war, and season 2 is more about Sherlock’s fall, when he has to face his own flaws. Weaknesses against which he thought he was immune". A fan rightly points out Steven Moffat’s tendency to adapt iconic characters like Jekyll, Sherlock Holmes and Tintin. Is it voluntary or, on the contrary, a coincidence? "It was not my plan to adapt all the "Greats", or to ruin them as some have said. Jekyll was an opportunity I seized, and I’ve always been a huge fan of Dr Who . Then Mark and I wanted to do Sherlock Holmes. It wasn’t a plan. I do not dig up England’s best characters. And I do not exhume the Belgians! " About this reinterpretation of Moriarty, quite far from Conan Doyle’s, and Andrew Scott, the actor who gives life to the character on screen: "When it comes to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, we stayed very close to the original version. They were just refreshed. The problem with Moriarty is that all the super villains since Conan Doyle’s ones were in fact copies of Moriaty. They all talk the same way, have the same features. The final problem is almost Goldfinger! It is impossible to make a Moriarty identical to the original, without it becoming a pure cliche. It was therefore decided to go in a radically different direction. Originally Moriarty was not in The Great Game, or at least only as Jim, the gay friend who arrives in the lab. But it turned out later that he was actually Moriarty disguised. We had to find someone for that role, that could turn into a psychopathic Moriarty later. So we wrote a scene for the auditions and Andrew Scott played it so well we decided to keep it. And this scene is the swimming pool scene at the end of the first series. " Inlays texts on the screen, one of Sherlock’s hallmarks, as confirmed Steven Moffat, was the idea of director Paul McGuigan. "It was his idea. The first episode we realized was The Great Game, the third of the first series. There was a lot of text messages in this episode and Paul hates doing cutaways on phones, so he decided to make the text messages appear on screen, what I thought was terrible at first. And then, through the editing room, I saw the result and I thought it was brilliant. At that time, because I’m always late on my scripts, I was already writing A Study in Pink. And I loved the idea so much that I included it in my script. I broadened the concept to Sherlock’s deductions. So I slightly expanded the brilliant idea of Paul. Of course now everyone does, but 99% of the credit goes to Paul McGuigan. " In parallel with the British version of Sherlock there was also screened the movie Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. His feelings about the film version? "I really liked it. I thought I would hate the movie, just having seen the first trailer of the first movie. I have not seen the second one yet. I thought it would be too far from Sherlock Holmes to me. But I saw the film and I really enjoyed it. I think turning Sherlock Holmes into a Hollywood action blockbuster is the right way. And, by the way, I have no problem with that. I think that we must be radical in our adaptations. All reverent and faithful adaptations have already been made. The only reason I have not seen the second is that my thoughts are already busy with our show , and I would sit in the cinema, arms folded, thinking "well, this is not what we did!". " How can we know what’s going on in Sherlock’s mind? "We can’t, because it is a fictional character (laughs in the audience) I think the whole point of Sherlock is that we are never really sure what’s going on in his head. If this was the case, the character would lose his aura. We know what John thinks. But Sherlock is more distant. Does he fall in love with Irene? We don’t know. I think that yes, a little, somehow. He appreciates her. He is fascinated by her. But you never really know. If we knew, it wouldn’t work. All the original stories are told from Dr. Watson’s perspective, save two of them, which are written by Sherlock Holmes. And they don’t work." About his collaboration with Mark Gatiss "We are happy to call ourselves co-writers, but technically, we never are. We always write our scripts separately. Our work is based mainly upon the fact that we talk for hours, at the beginning, about what we would like to do, how we would like to do it. Sometimes we have those conversations before we even know what story we are going to do. And there are also scripts that none of us have written. There’s a scene, I will not tell you which one, that we both wrote. It happened once. I think we’re more efficient that way. That’s how we work." In series 2, it is obvious that Sherlock shows more human aspects of his personality. "If you look at the original stories, there is a progression, initially he is an amoral man, then he’s autistic, cold and humorless until he becomes … well, I would not say he becomes a hero, and he is certainly not a nice man, but he becomes a nicer, warmer, braver, more heroic version of himself. So yes, we let him get through this path, and this year there is much talk about exposing him to terrifying emotions and we will see him become more a man I suppose. A man in the sense that he humanizes himself but also because he becomes more mature. Not that he is the totally mature Sherlock Holmes. As Mark and I used to say, he has twenty years left to become the Sherlock embodied by Basil Rathbone and he is still maturing." Does he read the fanfiction? "No, we do not read them (laughs) and I would not want to be sued so let’s get things clear: we do not read them and it will never be a source of inspiration for us. We like to be influenced not only by the original stories but also by revered film adaptations as The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes or some Universal movies we love. But fanfiction is not an inspiration, because I believe that Sherlock is already a fanfiction itself, no need to add anything! " The artistic director in charge of dubbing Sherlock into French introduces himself along with the actors who double our two heroes, and ask about the very rapid flow of speech of the detective. "Well, sorry, but I will not take away anything! We do not want long speeches - well maybe you want - that drag on. We do not want him to look like he is lecturing, we would rather him spill it like that. And Benedict was very keen on the idea at first. I have a great sympathy for your work, but Benedict himself, must do the work without the text under his eyes. And there were times when it was really hard. So courage. Persevere. But frankly, the French speak so fast! " Throughout the world, fans spontaneously started a movement called # BelieveInSherlock. Poster campaigns, mobilizations on twitter and other videos from flash mobs whose rallying cry was the “Vatican cameo”, launched by Sherlock in A Scandal at Belgravia … Has he heard of it and if so, what does he think? "Yes I am aware. We are sent the photos and I find it very exciting, it is viral marketing we do not have to take care of. We had no idea it would have such an impact. But I really wonder what people who have not seen Sherlock think about that. "Sherlock was real? Whoa! Here’s a new one. And James Bond, he was real too? ". It’s great and really exciting. And Moriarty was real too!" And for the final question, Alain Carrazé risks: What are his feelings about Elementary, CBS’s project of a series which transposes Sherlock Holmes nowadays? Steven Moffat asked his wife, and producer of Sherlock, Sue Vertue.The answer came quickly: “No comment”. This concludes more than thirty minutes of exchanges between the co-creator of Sherlock and fans, who could now go towards the English buffet served for the occasion, leaving Mr. Moffat with the press. Thanks to France 4 for planning this event. b