Welcome to my online home
I have optioned, sold, or been assigned feature film scripts in the US, the UK and Australia to Oscar-nominated and Palme d’Or, Golden Lion and Golden Globe-winning producers. These include Stealing America (Prod: Michel Shane – I, Robot, Catch Me if You Can), David Redman (Prod: Before the Rain) and All I Want (Prod: Gareth Wiley – Match Point, Vicki, Christina, Barcelona).
Two screenplays have been produced and I have also written two novels, with another coming soon.
I graduated summa cum laude in my MFA program in the prestigious CTVA department at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) in Los Angeles and have taught screenwriting at universities in the US, the UK and Australia.
films
MUGGERS
Premiered at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival and received nomination for the Australian Writers’ Guild’s Best Original Screenplay
“a fresh, funny black comedy with something to say about contemporary society. Savage in its wit, and refreshingly non-PC, it deserves to find an audience for its outlandish originality alone.”
VARIETY
“this often very funny black comedy is inventive, fast-moving and beautifully acted. It also contains a serious sub-text, about the way government cutbacks are impacting on health and educational services. There’s a wonderful ruthlessness to Robert Taylor’s screenplay …”
David Stratton, The Movie Show, SBS TV
David Stratton: ****
Margaret Pomeranz: ***1/2
“Muggers will have you gasping with disgust while howling with laughter.”
Andrew L. Urban, Urban Cinefile
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Brad and Gregor are medical students living in poverty, unable to pay the escalating university fees, books or even food and rent. Worse, they are heavily in debt to knuckle-busting, knee-breaking loan shark, George Albert ‘Roy’ Rogers who wants his money back … now!
With government cutbacks decimating the healthcare and education systems, Brad’s girlfriend has become an escort to pay her way through university.
Their dreams of a career in medicine look finished when they stumble across an esteemed surgeon whose private practice is underpinned by the lucrative human organ market.
The boys want no part of it until a suicide – and his kidneys! – literally land at their feet.
But there is a rival gang comprising of a pair of bent paramedics and the formidable matron from their own hospital supplying the good doctor with organs, and they’re led by none other than their nemesis … Roy Rogers and his henchmen Dale and Trigger.
With the police becoming suspicious and the rival gang closing in, it is scalpels drawn if the boys’ dreams of a career in medicine are to materialise.
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Brad (Matt Day) and Gregor (Jason Barry) are Melbourne med students living in impoverished conditions in a ratty one-room apartment. They’re deeply in debt to loan shark George "Roy" Rogers (Chris Haywood), and they hardly have enough to eat and keep warm. But an opportunity to make money literally falls from the sky: a body, with parts that can be removed and sold, on the quiet, to surgeon Marcus Browning (Rod Mullinar). This is the start of a grisly Burke and Hare-like operation, but things are complicated by a pair of rival human organ dealers, the suspicious Roy, a couple of cops, and Brad’s girlfriend, Sophie (Petra Yared), a fellow student who has to work as a hooker to pay her bills.
This often very funny black comedy is inventive, fast-moving and beautifully acted. It also contains a serious sub-text, about the way government cutbacks are impacting on health and educational services. There’s a wonderful ruthlessness to Robert Taylor’s screenplay, which is beautifully acted by Matt Day, Jason Barry, and a strong supporting cast. Lots of throwaway jokes, like the fact that Roy Rogers’ goons are called Dale and Trigger, and fine widescreen photography by Roger Lanser make this an unexpectedly enjoyable film. Margaret?
MARGARET: Why unexpectedly?
DAVID: Because there was absolutely no buzz about it, was there? We’d heard nothing about it.
MARGARET: No, and it’s been around a while, it was nominated, or submitted for last year’s AFI awards. It didn’t get a single nomination. I find that hard to believe, because I think the performances in this are really good.
DAVID: And it looks great.
MARGARET: I loved the non-PC nature of this screenplay, you know! He does push bounds, and she is a hooker, and no one makes very much of it. And it is dealing in this gruesome area of body parts. I think it’s a lot of fun. I think Jason Barry is a find, I thought he was terrific in it. And I think it’s really shot interestingly.
DAVID: Yeah. I think it’s a very original Australian comedy, and there aren’t that many of those around, are there?
MARGARET: No, not at all. I’m giving this three and a half stars.
DAVID: I’m going to give it four.
Cliffy
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Cliff has run the family farm since he was 13. He has never left the farm. He has never experienced love. Never seen a naked woman, let alone kissed one. He’s a sixty year old virgin.
And the farm is a bog. On a good year Cliff earns minimum wage growing spuds and running a few milkers. On a bad year which is more often than not he earns nothing.
When the potato crop fails – yet again – Cliff, convinced his life is a failure, goes back to his one love, his only talent – running. . He hooks up with his old footy trainer, Wally who hasn’t trained a decent runner in years, and who now lives boozily and alone in his caravan.
He enters the 550 mile Sydney-to-Melbourne footrace. He becomes the local laughing stock and when he is splashed across TV and press training for the big race in gum boots rounding up the milkers on the farm he becomes a national joke.,
Against all odds Cliff qualifies. But waiting for him is history’s greatest distance runner, Ray Reardon. Cliff must run eighteen hours a day, almost four marathons a day, for six days straight, on a sixty year old’s dodgy knees and even dodgier ankles and hips. On the fifth day, Australia wakes to the news that Cliff is in the lead. On the sixth day, and against even greater odds Cliff wins the race and Australia embraces a new national hero – a simple spud farmer, the bush battler.
IMDb Rating: 7.1
“… It was your original script that attracted our interest and green lit development immediately – a first in my time in public broadcasting … On the night of the screening, Cliffy was trending on Twitter with near universal praise … Cliffy was scheduled as the first program to launch an unprecedented Sunday night drama line-up across 26 weeks so the stakes couldn’t have been higher.”
Brett Sleigh, Executive Producer Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC TV)
“the story is so improbable, it does not read like history but like the most beautiful of lies. And it works a treat …”
Graham Blundell, The Australian
books
St Baarlam’s Day
Amazon Rating 4.1
**** “Taylor skilfully applies the forms of political satire to the tale of a band from an East London estate, creating a tale that is likely to appeal to fans of Tom Sharpe, Antony Jay, and Jonathan Lynn.”
Dave Higgins
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Amazon Rating 4.1
Such a simple plan … a young band, St Barlaam’s Day, heavily in debt and desperate to replace their stolen equipment, hatch a plan to kidnap Ivor Greenwood, the secretive director of a powerful right wing think tank.
What could possibly go wrong? No one wants to pay the ransom for starters and Greenwood has friends in very high places, anxious for his return. And powerful enemies who would happily see him dead.
Throw in a stolen Ferrari and a missing bass player; a dogged Welsh police constable and a Russian waste-management oligarch; MI5, the Kremlin and a thumb drive incriminating half of Her Majesty’s Cabinet. And not forgetting the £1.5 million ransom in crisp new twenty pound bills, and the result is outrageous, dangerous and downright hilarious.
“I’ve seen the future of rock’n’roll and its name is … St Barlaam’s Day.” ROLLING STONE magazine
The great pockes
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HENRY VII – yes, the one Shakespeare forgot! – has a problem. Several problems.
His subjects are unhappy with their tax burden, the nobles are unhappy with his leadership and his claim on the throne is shaky at best.
Now he faces the biggest threat to his rule. An epidemic is sweeping England and it is spread by … sexual intercourse!
The Pockes, no less. Or The Great Pockes as it is soon known.
London, Britain, all of Europe is paralysed with fear. Where does it come from? Where will it strike next? How does it spread?
The English blame the French. The French blame the Spanish. The Germans blame everyone and it seems pestilence may lead to war.
Or is this plague – as the Church claims – God’s punishment for sin?
It falls to Robert Bacon, a young barber-surgeon to find a cure. But he reckons without the opposition of Henry’s faction-riven, self-seeking, agenda-driven government – sound familiar? – and the hostility of the Church, and the physicians, alchemists and soothsayers which make up the English medical profession.
Amazon Rating 4.4
***** “R.B. Taylor is a wonderful writer who vividly brings this story of the next big disease following the Black Death to life in all its horror and glory ... I can't help but hope that some enterprising TV producer (like HBO) will decide to transform it into a miniseries based on this wonderful book. Highly recommended for anyone who loves historical fiction.”
J.Burke
***** “This novel sits at the top of the heap. Henry VII and his handlers (oops: consultants) are brilliantly depicted. The action never slows. I defy anyone to read it and still maintain that history is boring.”
Paul D. Garrett
The 2032 Olympic games have been awarded to Brisbane. The rowing will take place on the Fitzroy River in Rockhampton. But there’s one small problem: the Fitzroy is infested with man-eating crocodiles led by the thirty-foot, three-ton monster, Spartacus.
A reptile of this size has not been seen on the planet in 60 million years and croc poachers and smugglers; bounty hunters; a big game-hunting dentist from LA; and the millionaire owner of The Big Croc theme park compete to capture Spartacus – dead or alive.
Then there’s a Full Moon festival run by a bunch of tripping hippies and thousands of drunken tourists are jet-skiing and swimming in the river. Throw in a local property speculator and his Freemason buddies plus the Olympic games commissioners, multi-national corporate sponsors and international media rights holders who are all using the Games to further their agendas.
It falls to local Park Ranger, Eliot Howe a humble entomologist (Specialty: the faecal habits of Aulacopris maximus, the giant Australian dung beetle) to capture the monster.
All will culminate in the hugely anticipated blue riband Women’s Single Sculls final which pits a local rower against the most glamorous, marketable, influential athletes in the world. Social media goes into meltdown and one thing’s for sure – with Spartacus on the loose and six beautiful young women racing for gold the world’s eyes are on Rocky and the 2032 Women’s Final will be the highest-rating sports event in history.
SPARTACUS
COMING SOON …
CONTRIBUTOR
Getting Your Screenplay Noticed
“We loved the fresh, engaging style of your piece.”
Alysoun Owen, Editor
furthermore …
My wife Juliet and I are volunteer Puppy Raisers for Guide Dogs for the Blind and are currently raising our fifth puppy.
The previous puppies all qualified and are helping their owners live the life they choose.
Here I am with our first puppy, Theo, checking out a Gainsborough at the Holburne Museum in Bath. Here are our other three black dogs - Quintin, Luka and Basil and our first yellow bitch, Rosslyn.
Horses are in my blood. One grandfather was a crack stockman, an Overlander who participated in the legendary ‘long drives’ of the 1920’s to 1940’s. Another grandfather served in the 2nd/43rd battalion of Lighthorsemen. My uncle was a successful racehorse trainer and renowned horse whisperer. My dad was the world’s worst punter … though I’m beginning to rival him.
I have a very small share in two racehorses: Mighty Quiet (4 yo mare) and Sheriff’s Court (4 yo gelding and half brother to Sheraz who ran third in 2023 Melbourne Cup.)
Here’s Mighty Quiet recording her maiden win at Bath on 31st October 2024.
Here’s Sherriff’s Court who won at Carlisle on 5th June 2025.
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