Gavin Scott
Encyclopedia
Gavin Scott is a novelist, broadcaster and writer of the Emmy
-winning mini-series The Mists of Avalon
, Small Soldiers
, Working Title
’s The Borrowers
and Sci Fi
’s Legend of Earthsea, spent ten years making films for British television before becoming a screenwriter, creating more than two hundred documentaries and short films for BBC and the commercial TV, including UK’s prestigious Channel 4
. His first assignment in the United States was with George Lucas
, developing and scripting The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles
.
His work ranges from family entertainment (Dangerous Archeologists) to comedy (The Suit, The Book, The Film and the T-Shirt) science fiction and historical dramas.
Scott wrote Krakatoa, a Titanic
-style movie for National Geographic Feature Films, and an eight hour adaptation of War and Peace
for Lux Vida SPA, directed by Robert Dornhelm
(Into the West
, The Ten Commandments).
For Castle Rock
he scripted "Brooke", the saga of an emotionally damaged young 19th century Englishman who set up a dynasty of white rajahs
in Sarawak
, and “First American”, the story of revolutionary war hero Daniel Boone
, who rose above personal tragedy to save America’s western settlements during the Revolutionary War.
He created and executive produced a 22 part television series set in the nineteenth century about the origins of the creative ideas of Jules Verne
, which was broadcast around the world.
His children's film "Pirates of Treasure Island" [AKA "Battle of Treasure Island"] starring Randy Quaid, is released on DVD this year and promoted in an unusual website Gavin created with Jeff Ali: www.treasureislandsummer.com
Born in Hull
, Yorkshire
, Gavin emigrated with his family to New Zealand
in 1961. At 17 he spent a year as a volunteer teacher in the jungles of Borneo
, working with the children of head-hunters, after which he studied history and political science at Victoria University of Wellington
, and journalism at the Wellington Polytechnic. He returned to Britain overland across Asia in 1973, traveling through Sri Lanka
, Kashmir
, Afghanistan
and Iran
, and worked for Shelter
, the British housing charity, before joining the Times Educational Supplement
, from which base he also wrote features for The Times
.
After five years as a reporter and program anchor for BBC Radio Gavin began in 1980 making films for BBC Television’s Newsnight
, covering literary as well as political subjects: among his interviewees, J.B. Priestley, Christopher Isherwood
, Iris Murdoch
and John Fowles
. He then made documentaries on science and culture for series such as Horizon and Man Alive before joining Channel 4 News
, for which he made films until 1990.
Following the death of Maurice Macmillan in 1984, son of the former British Prime Minister and MP for Surrey South West, Gavin Scott was selected and stood as a Liberal here at the Parliamentary Byelection for the Liberal/SDP Alliancehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_West_Surrey_by-election,_1984 and came within 2600 votes of taking the seat from the Conservative candidate Virginia Bottomley who went on to serve in John Major's cabinet.
It was during this time that he started writing novels, including “Hot Pursuit” (about a Russian satellite that crashed in New Zealand) and “A Flight of Lies” (about the hunt for the bones of Peking Man). These were published by Collins, Andre Deutsch, St Martin’s Press and Penguin Books). His novel “Small Soldiers
” was a bestseller for Grosset and Dunlap in 1998, and he has recently written a Dickensian historical novel set in the nineteenth century, “The Adventures of Toby Wey”.
Gavin is also a sculptor, creating shadow boxes similar to those of Joseph Cornell, using mass-produced toys as his medium. He lives with his family in Santa Monica, California.
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
-winning mini-series The Mists of Avalon
The Mists of Avalon (TV miniseries)
The Mists of Avalon is a 2001 miniseries based on the novel of the same name by Marion Zimmer Bradley. It was produced by American cable channel TNT and directed by Uli Edel...
, Small Soldiers
Small Soldiers
Small Soldiers is a 1998 American action/science fiction film directed by Joe Dante starring Gregory Smith and Kirsten Dunst. The film revolves around two teenagers , who get caught in the middle of a war between two factions of sentient action figures, the Gorgonites and the Commando...
, Working Title
Working Title Films
Working Title Films is a British film production company, based in London, UK. The company was founded by Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe in 1983. It produces feature films and several television productions, including films starring comic actor Rowan Atkinson...
’s The Borrowers
The Borrowers (1997 film)
The Borrowers is a 1997 film based on the children's novel of the same name by author Mary Norton. In 1998 it was nominated for the title of Best British Film in the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards, but lost to Gary Oldman's Nil by Mouth...
and Sci Fi
Sci Fi Channel (United States)
Syfy , formerly known as the Sci-Fi Channel and SCI FI, is an American cable television channel featuring science fiction, supernatural, fantasy, reality, paranormal, wrestling, and horror programming. Launched on September 24, 1992, it is part of the entertainment conglomerate NBCUniversal, a...
’s Legend of Earthsea, spent ten years making films for British television before becoming a screenwriter, creating more than two hundred documentaries and short films for BBC and the commercial TV, including UK’s prestigious Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
. His first assignment in the United States was with George Lucas
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
, developing and scripting The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles is an American television series that aired on ABC from March 4, 1992, to July 24, 1993. The series explores the childhood and youth of the fictional character Indiana Jones and primarily stars Sean Patrick Flanery and Corey Carrier as the title character, with...
.
His work ranges from family entertainment (Dangerous Archeologists) to comedy (The Suit, The Book, The Film and the T-Shirt) science fiction and historical dramas.
Scott wrote Krakatoa, a Titanic
Titanic (1997 film)
Titanic is a 1997 American epic romance and disaster film directed, written, co-produced, and co-edited by James Cameron. A fictionalized account of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, it stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson, Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater and Billy Zane as Rose's fiancé, Cal...
-style movie for National Geographic Feature Films, and an eight hour adaptation of War and Peace
War and Peace (miniseries)
War and Peace is a 2007 Russian-French-Italian-German miniseries directed by Robert Dornhelm. It was broadcast in Belgium and in France in four parts during October and November 2007. It was inspired by Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace, which also is divided into four parts...
for Lux Vida SPA, directed by Robert Dornhelm
Robert Dornhelm
Robert Dornhelm is an Austrian film and television director of Romanian ancestry. He has worked on numerous television programmes and has also released such movies as Echo Park, The Venice Project, Der Unfisch, and A Further Gesture...
(Into the West
Into the West (TV miniseries)
Into the West is a 2005 miniseries produced by Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks, with six two-hour episodes . The series was first broadcast in the U.S. on Turner Network Television on six Fridays starting on June 10, 2005...
, The Ten Commandments).
For Castle Rock
Castle Rock
-Islands:*Castle Rock , an island off the coast of the U.S. state of Alaska*Castle Rock, Hong Kong , an island of Hong Kong, part of the Po Toi Islands*Castle Rock , an island in the U.S...
he scripted "Brooke", the saga of an emotionally damaged young 19th century Englishman who set up a dynasty of white rajahs
White Rajahs
White Rajahs refers to a dynasty that founded and ruled the Kingdom of Sarawak from 1841 to 1946, namely the Brookes, who came originally from England. A Rajah is a monarch in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia.-Rulers:...
in Sarawak
Sarawak
Sarawak is one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo. Known as Bumi Kenyalang , Sarawak is situated on the north-west of the island. It is the largest state in Malaysia followed by Sabah, the second largest state located to the North- East.The administrative capital is Kuching, which...
, and “First American”, the story of revolutionary war hero Daniel Boone
Daniel Boone
Daniel Boone was an American pioneer, explorer, and frontiersman whose frontier exploits mad']'e him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. Boone is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now the Commonwealth of Kentucky, which was then beyond the western borders of...
, who rose above personal tragedy to save America’s western settlements during the Revolutionary War.
He created and executive produced a 22 part television series set in the nineteenth century about the origins of the creative ideas of Jules Verne
Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...
, which was broadcast around the world.
His children's film "Pirates of Treasure Island" [AKA "Battle of Treasure Island"] starring Randy Quaid, is released on DVD this year and promoted in an unusual website Gavin created with Jeff Ali: www.treasureislandsummer.com
Born in Hull
Kingston upon Hull
Kingston upon Hull , usually referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It stands on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary, 25 miles inland from the North Sea. Hull has a resident population of...
, Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
, Gavin emigrated with his family to New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
in 1961. At 17 he spent a year as a volunteer teacher in the jungles of Borneo
Borneo
Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is located north of Java Island, Indonesia, at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia....
, working with the children of head-hunters, after which he studied history and political science at Victoria University of Wellington
Victoria University of Wellington
Victoria University of Wellington was established in 1897 by Act of Parliament, and was a former constituent college of the University of New Zealand. It is particularly well known for its programmes in law, the humanities, and some scientific disciplines, but offers a broad range of other courses...
, and journalism at the Wellington Polytechnic. He returned to Britain overland across Asia in 1973, traveling through Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
, Kashmir
Kashmir
Kashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range...
, Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
and Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
, and worked for Shelter
Shelter (charity)
Shelter is a registered charity in England and Scotland that campaigns to end homelessness and bad housing. It gives advice, information and advocacy to people in need, and tackles the root causes of bad housing by lobbying government and local authorities for new laws and policies to improve the...
, the British housing charity, before joining the Times Educational Supplement
Times Educational Supplement
The Times Educational Supplement is a weekly UK publication aimed primarily at school teachers in the UK. It was first published in 1910 as a pull-out supplement in The Times newspaper. Such was its popularity that in 1914, the supplement became a separate publication selling for 1 penny.The TES...
, from which base he also wrote features for The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
.
After five years as a reporter and program anchor for BBC Radio Gavin began in 1980 making films for BBC Television’s Newsnight
Newsnight
Newsnight is a BBC Television current affairs programme noted for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians. Jeremy Paxman has been its main presenter for over two decades....
, covering literary as well as political subjects: among his interviewees, J.B. Priestley, Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed...
, Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
Dame Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about political and social questions of good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious...
and John Fowles
John Fowles
John Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Fowles among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Birth and family:...
. He then made documentaries on science and culture for series such as Horizon and Man Alive before joining Channel 4 News
Channel 4 News
Channel 4 News is the news division of British television broadcaster Channel 4. It is produced by ITN, and has been in operation since the broadcaster's launch in 1982.-Channel 4 News:...
, for which he made films until 1990.
Following the death of Maurice Macmillan in 1984, son of the former British Prime Minister and MP for Surrey South West, Gavin Scott was selected and stood as a Liberal here at the Parliamentary Byelection for the Liberal/SDP Alliance
It was during this time that he started writing novels, including “Hot Pursuit” (about a Russian satellite that crashed in New Zealand) and “A Flight of Lies” (about the hunt for the bones of Peking Man). These were published by Collins, Andre Deutsch, St Martin’s Press and Penguin Books). His novel “Small Soldiers
Small Soldiers
Small Soldiers is a 1998 American action/science fiction film directed by Joe Dante starring Gregory Smith and Kirsten Dunst. The film revolves around two teenagers , who get caught in the middle of a war between two factions of sentient action figures, the Gorgonites and the Commando...
” was a bestseller for Grosset and Dunlap in 1998, and he has recently written a Dickensian historical novel set in the nineteenth century, “The Adventures of Toby Wey”.
Gavin is also a sculptor, creating shadow boxes similar to those of Joseph Cornell, using mass-produced toys as his medium. He lives with his family in Santa Monica, California.