NOSTALGIA

Addiction to the past

Jun 12, 2026

Every script starts somewhere — with an image, a question, a feeling, or sometimes an irritation that refuses to leave you alone. This article is about the writing of my sci-fi drama, Nostalgia. Beginnings, characters, themes, and the reasons I felt compelled to tell this particular story.

1. THE SPARK

A two-page short script was the starting point for Nostalgia. Written for a competition run by the London Screenwriters’ Festival in 2011, it was long-listed, but went no further.

Whatever. I liked it. I uploaded it to a few writing websites, like the now defunct Circalit, I received some rather nice feedback. The idea of a tortured soul consumed by addiction selling the last of his possessions to buy one last hit seemed to connect.

Character **** Dialogue ***** Concept ***** Writing Style *****
I love this short script… What I love about the story is the way the author sets the stage for how the character needs to get his “fix” from his past - as surely as some are driven by the need for a drug … The story is unique and original in its concept. Loved it! It’s one of the best short-short stories I’ve read.
I loved the story and I took the liberty of recommending it for the Circalit Short Story Anthology... I read a lot of stories on this site and this is one of my favorites.”

When writing the screenplay, I had to decide whether it was going to be set in some bleak, dystopian Brazil-esque future, where being addicted to the past was already established and ruining society, or to set it in present day.

I went with present day, as I wanted the emotion of the story to come from reality. If society had already become a hellhole, then you would probably understand why everyone was opting out of life. I thought it was more interesting to show how something like this would take over an unsuspecting life, and how it would take them to the brink. I also didn’t want it to be endlessly bleak: the story inherently had a lot of heart, so I decided to make it a dual story about a lost love and family politics.

2. THE ORIGINAL PITCH

What would you give to be able to relive your best days? And what if you became addicted to it?

A Christmas Carol is my favourite book, and I always liked the parts where Scrooge is watching moments from his life, reliving the emotions and finding comfort in the people he used to know.

With Nostalgia, I didn’t want to get into Trainspotting levels of what it’s like to deal with addiction, but instead to show how dependency on the past can go too far.

We live in times where Friends is on television all the time - and we still watch it. I must have seen each episode at least 75 times. It’s a fact that re-watching old films and television shows regulates our nervous systems. It’s not called “comfort TV” for nothing. It’s predictable and offers stability. Reducing our cognitive load and managing our emotions more effectively seems to fit the definition of a coping method. Not quite using alcohol or drugs to escape reality or switch off, but it’s playing on the same pitch.

The pitch for the feature film became:

A grief-stricken history lecturer becomes addicted to an experimental device that lets him voyeuristically revisit the past, only to unravel when he begins trespassing into others’ memories and the past starts bleeding into his present.

3. WHAT IS IT REALLY ABOUT?

On one hand, it is a “dangers of technology” tale. Black Mirror did a story with Paul Giamatti which kind of circles some similar themes, but Nostalgia is more “How much of yourself can you leave in the past before the present stops feeling real?”

I’ll admit it was a long, sweaty wait to watch that Black Mirror episode to find out if my script was dead in the water. Thankfully, they took it in different directions. Phew.

Nostalgia is also about depression. That’s not to say it is a depressing story - I think it has a lot of positives to take away from it, but it features many characters who are coping in the way they know best.

There’s a song by Coldplay called 42, and it opens with the line “Those who are dead, are not dead. They’re just living in my head.”

I must have listened to that song 500 times whilst writing Nostalgia.

Who, or what are the dead? Family? Friends? Loved ones? Dreams and hopes? They may all be long gone, but we keep them alive in our minds.

The main character, Paul, is living with a life of disappointment. Emotionally repressed, he is a Scrooge-like character, believing that mankind is best given a large swerve - in particular, his family and their ongoing politics. But then he met Meredith, and colour entered his world… only for it to leave. But he remains stuck in that place.

When Paul discovers that his recently deceased father was a guinea pig for a memory experiment, he sees it as an opportunity to relive his times with Meredith first-hand, but instead he discovers what happens when you go inside other people’s memories.

4. THE INFLUENCES

I’ve already mentioned A Christmas Carol, and the obvious influence, at least in spirit, is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But, as one of my readers commented:

Great premise and well realized. A unique take on a character struggling with grief and regret. Interesting inverse of Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind. A machine that brings forth memories, vs a machine that erases them…

Being John Malkovich and 12 Monkeys were also influences on tone. There’s a sadness to those films (remember Bruce Willis hearing Blueberry Hill?) But it’s a story grounded in everyday realism, so Spike Jonze’s Her also seemed like a relevant film.

Writing, and rewriting Nostalgia was a long journey. It went from script to novel (where I really got to say what I wanted to say), then back to screenplay. I worked on it for years. It’s a very personal script (I mean, aren’t they all? But this one even more so), and weirdly it became a case of life imitating art. Having written the first draft, I kind of went down my own nostalgia grief-hole a couple of years later. The experience of this was funnelled back into the novel. Art’s funny like that.

As always, there was a playlist which provided emotional jumping-off points, and there was some songs which felt like they had been made for this story.

5. THE CHARACTERS I KEPT / LOST

It’s not so much the characters but the script! I wrote a screenplay called Souvenir around 2012 (I think), and it was a non-linear story showing scenes from a relationship, from post-breakup to first meeting to their hopes for a couple’s life together. Again, the plan was to make it into a film (isn’t it always?) - a sort of Before Sunrise but chopped up and flung back together out of sequence, but that script was more of a feeling than a story.

But it stuck with me - I had a soft spot for it - but wondered if these scenes would work better as somebody’s memories. So, with a great deal cut out, Souvenir effectively became Paul and Meredith’s storyline in Nostalgia.

6. WHAT I THINK ABOUT IT NOW

I remember it as emotionally draining to write, as it’s about memory, loss, grief, all those fun things! But it’s actually quite a sharp, funny script, and it goes to unexpected places with characters that play well off each other.

Nostalgia’s structure and characters remained throughout all the rewriting. Interestingly, I think it was me that had changed the most by the end of writing it.

When I first wrote it, I think I saw nostalgia mostly as comfort. Harmless. Looking backwards because the present wasn’t giving you what you needed. But over time - and after going through periods of my own life where I found myself looking backwards a little too often - I started to see the script differently.

I don’t think Nostalgia is saying “move on” or that dwelling on the past is weakness. Memory is one of the ways we stay connected to people. We revisit old films, old songs, old places because they remind us of loved ones, and who we were.

But I do think there’s a point where remembering stops being remembering and starts becoming avoidance. That’s what I connect to most in the script now. Paul isn’t really trying to get the past back. He’s trying to avoid the uncertainty of the present.

I still think it’s one of my most personal scripts.

7. CLOSING THOUGHT

I think there’s a reason stories about memory keep appearing in science fiction. Technology changes, but people don’t. If somebody invented a machine tomorrow that let us revisit our happiest memories exactly as they happened, I don’t think the question would be whether people used it. I think the question would be whether anybody ever wanted to leave. The next question would be how it would be exploited (read Nostalgia to find out!).

We all carry ghosts around with us. Old relationships. Versions of ourselves. Hopes and dreams that never happened. The trick isn’t to turn away from them. It’s letting them sit with us - but not letting them decide the future for us.

If Nostalgia is about anything, maybe it’s that: the past deserves a visit, just don’t buy the beachfront view.

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?