"A female Ricky Gervais"... "Bridget Jones on acid"..."the Party Philosopher" - LA reviews for live stand-up and sketch at LA Comedy Fest, The Comedy Store and The Improv in Hollywood....but to be fair Americans laugh delightedly at the mere sound of a Brit vowel, so....Pippa is an award winning writer-actor-director and content creator based in both UK and LA. (Dual citizen).
Her latest short, an American-set bittersweet dramedy, Killing Christmas, which Pippa also produced and performs in, has won Best International Short at Tweetfest, Best Holiday Short at LISFF and Best Performances at WildSound, Toronto and nominated for awards in 15 other international festivals in the last 2 years. Unashamedly the film of the one act play she wrote for an LA studio theatre, it's an uplifting father-daughter redemption story about loss and regret.I’ve been a TV/film/theatre actor since my teens and didn't do my screenwriting MA (at LCC) til my 30s. Before this I wrote some comedy sketches for TV, including the BAFTA winning C 4 UK sketch show SMACK THE PONY, SKY’s NO LIMIT, and London's long running live topical show, NEWSREVUE. I also had a co-written comedy pilot ordered at Radio 4 but for narly political reasons entirely unconnected to writers or our producer, it was never made.
My first short film, BREAKING OUT (dir. by Oscar winner Marienela Maldonaldo), premiered in competition in Cannes, was selected for 20 international festivals & won Best European short at Angers. This and an option on my first feature script ONE WHITE CROW ( a historical/true story pych thriller) got me taken on by Casarotto’s. The feature's been optioned 3 times - by Screen Australia and 2 LA companies, one backed by Fox Searchlight, but yet to be made! It currently has a shopping agreement with an LA Company and is very suitable for a European/UK/US co-pro!
My first proper writing gig was being one half of the writersroom on series 2 and 3 of ground-breaking teen drama, SOFIA’S DIARY, for Sony UK, still the only digital series to go directly onto a terrestrial channel – C5 – and which originated as a plot-interactive Monday to Friday web series on Bebo. (And 8 years before Bandersnatch!)Since then, my supernatural/horror short, THE OTHER SIDE, was produced by the Rutger Hauer Film Factory; I was one of only 2 UK writers selected for European film lab North by Northwest & have been part of the Berlin Talent Campus. I've had commissions from RHI/Hallmark to write a treatment for a 4 hour modern day fantasy/dystopian mini-series based on THE LITTLE MERMAID and Landscape/eOne in the US to create a 10 hour historical drama about the explorers STANLEY & LIVINGSTONE and write the opening hours.I wrote, performed in and produced the short tragicomic film about grief, KILLING CHRISTMAS, based on a play I wrote for an LA theatre in 2019. It has just completed an 18 month run in festivals, winning awards for acting, script and Best Short at WildSound, Tweetfest and LSIFF, and nominated for awards at 15 international festivals.
I’ve also been filming and performing live bits of my dark comedy #MENTAL – the story of a woman’s first brush with serious mental illness. An early web version made the final shortlist for the BBC writers room, longlist of The Vaults Five and shorltist of Sister Film's Screenshot – so hoping someone will give me a hand to get it over the final hurdle soon!I write female-centric material across formats and genres for characters of ALL ages and often with very diverse casts - because I'm fascinated by situations where really eclectic groups of people who would never normally cross paths are united – like AA or a hospital ward - and love multi-stranded ensemble pieces that feed this – or maybe because of it?
Often I write about forms of prejudice, be it around colour, creed, class, age (the under aged and the older aged) and challenge accepted ethical codes.
More often I write about unusual conditions of the mind, mental illness, addiction & ageing & nearly always there's grief , death and painful existential angst. That's the comedies anyway. Boom Boom. I love to treat serious subject matter with a dark comedic tone where possible - to attempt a dance along that tricky tragi-comic-dramatic knife edge, but I also write historical material, psychological thriller, true story docudrama and love a bit of magic realism and 'alternative now' worlds.My UK/Africa-hopping childhood & a lot of life experience has led me to interact with people, places & politics of many kinds: from privileged & powerful to the impoverished, disenfranchised & criminal.
I have personal and professional experience of various addictions, mental & physical disabilities. Having grown up in South Africa, lived in America and being in a 'mixed' marriage I can now claim to have also witnessed 3 brands of racism on 3 separate continents. Which is nice.
I have a passion for satire, am a philosophy (especially ethics) and history (especially 17th-19th century) nerd, an avid reader, Classic bike rider and obsessed with water and a crippling existential angst about death.Watch: KILLING CHRISTMAS - 12' dramedy - https://youtu.be/mNWF1QZCSWI
5' pitch/teaser for SCREENSHOT contest of dark comedy #MENTAL https://youtu.be/iBeYHI0IrwY YTUBE http://www.youtube.com/pippahinchleycomedy(I have been living in LA for years and then had several years oout of action due to serious illnesses (2015 to 2019). Was just trying to reboot career/entire life when covid hit. Everyone's now struggling, of course, but I've lost 5 years and am 5 years older & ageism in the screenwriting world – esp in US – never mind acting – seems to be hitting with a vengeance. I could really do with a chance to build some TV credits on existing /team written series - and I think there are quite a few that I could possibly write for - and to get in front of the TV industry in the UK as a writer, which I have not had the opportunity to do.
Of course, I'm still chasing a feature and original work generally, but credits on existing TV shows is something I should and thought I would have achieved more of by now, had my circumstances over the last 6 years been different.)
I really enjoy script development work and have quite a lot of expereince from reading and coverage, to contest appraisals, analyzing novels for adaptation suitability and working as script consultant with individual film screenwriters and at prod companies in the Uk and US. I'd love to do more of this work within the TV arena.
Credits, reels etc can be seen at - https://pro.imdb.com/name/nm0385478?ref_=hm_prof_photo
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