Christopher Hampton

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety six, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a playwright. He has an impeccable pedigree. He wrote his first play at school and saw it performed by the University Dramatic Society while he was at Oxford. He got a first-class degree, went straight to the Royal Court, and over the next seven years wrote plays, The Philanthropist among them, which are highly regarded in modern English theatre. But that's only half the story. Theatre alone has not been able to contain the talents of a man who's since written many successful screenplays, including Dangerous Liaisons, for which he won an Oscar, translated the works of Ibsen and Chekhov, written the book for Sunset Boulevard, and most recently turned to directing films with Carrington, which he also wrote. What I like to do, says the man who seems to have done it all, are things I hadn't done before. He is Christopher Hampton. What you sound like, though, Christopher, is a man who can't say no. Is that more the case?

Christopher Hampton1:21

No, I don't think so. I have uh been known to say no from time to time, but I do probably err on the side of doing too much.

Presenter1:28

Is that because you're you're worried that the offers will stop coming? Is it the sort of freelance mentality?

Christopher Hampton1:33

N not really, because in my twenties when I was having a more ordered existence and living in London and working at the Royal Court and turning in a play every couple of years,

Christopher Hampton1:42

My agent, Margaret Ramsey, who was a legendary figure and a very important person in my life.

Christopher Hampton1:48

He used to ring me up once a week and say, You must do more. You must do more. You can't just rest on your laurels. You can't just turn in these plays every couple of years. You must think what else you want to do.

Christopher Hampton1:59

And slowly this water torture got through to me.

Presenter2:02

But it was also the case, wasn't it, that you and and your good friend David Hare, also a playwright of course, believed that it was impossible to s to survive as a playwright beyond the age of thirty, so he had borrowed time at forty nine.

Christopher Hampton2:11

Oh yes, we used to sit and there we were in our early twenties at the the Royal Court and say, We've got ten years. You know, we used to look at other people's careers.

Christopher Hampton2:22

The theatre burns you up, we used to say. We've got ten years, and uh how are we going to get through the rest of our lives?

Christopher Hampton2:28

And it's true to say that, having had my first play on when I was twenty, at the age of thirty I had a play.

Christopher Hampton2:34

called Treats, which was very poorly received by the critics, and at that moment I thought, well, I've had my ten years and I'd better diversify.

Presenter2:42

But you're obviously very dedicated to your work. You sit at a large table, I read, um and and and write and write most days.

Presenter2:49

But seventy per cent of that work, someone observed, never sees the light of day. It sort of moulders on the shelves.

Christopher Hampton2:56

Is it as much as that? I think I've written um maybe thirty screenplays, of which ten have been have been filmed. So, looked at from one side, that's a very good average, one in three.

Christopher Hampton3:05

On the other hand, there are these twenty scripts.

Presenter3:07

One of which was Carrington, of course.

Christopher Hampton3:08

One of which was Carrington.

Presenter3:09

You wrote, what, seventeen years ago or something?

Christopher Hampton3:11

I I wrote it in nineteen seventy seven, yes. I had a very good year at writing it. I took a whole year off, and wrote the script, and was very proud of it. Um and then it took me seventeen years, too.

Presenter3:22

So how many more potential award winners are are mouldering away on the shelves?

Christopher Hampton3:23

Get it off the ground.

Christopher Hampton3:27

Well, I don't know. I don't really want to spend the rest of my life going through with my back numbers, but there are one or two that I I would quite like to uh resurrect. Um the good thing about scripts is that they continue to exist, and if anyone wants to do them at one time or another, then there they are.

Presenter3:42

Right. Well, here we offer you the opportunity to to stop and to sit back and reflect and look across at everything from the the sort of singular safety of a desert island. Tell me tell me about your music. What's the first record you've chosen?

Christopher Hampton3:54

The first piece I've chosen is a concerto by Vivaldi for four violins.

Christopher Hampton3:59

George Fenton, who r wrote and arranged the music for Dangerous Liaison.

Christopher Hampton4:04

Chose Bach's reworking of this to sprinkle through the film.

Christopher Hampton4:09

And it's a piece I've always loved.

Presenter5:11

Part of Vivaldi's concerto number ten in B minor for four violins, played by the Academy of Ancient Music directed by Christopher Hogwood.

Presenter5:19

and used, um, as you say, in your film Dangerous Liaisons.

Presenter5:24

That began as a piece for the theatre, which you wrote about ten years ago, and it was based on on on this not particularly well known, I think one can say, eighteenth century novel. What was your fascination with that novel and that story in the first place?

Christopher Hampton5:37

I'd come across the the book Les Lies and d'Anjoureurs at Oxford. It was one of my set books for the period that I was studying, which was the l from the late eighteenth century to the twentieth century. And um it was one of those books that that seemed to me to reveal various bleak truths and was beautifully constructed. It was a book that I came back to again and again.

Presenter5:59

But it was in epistolary formation.

Christopher Hampton6:00

Yes, it was, and in fact the two central characters, the Marquise de Merte and the Vicomte de Valmont, never meet.

Christopher Hampton6:08

Because they just write to each other. And so when I proposed it as a play, which I think I did to the National Theatre in the mid-70s.

Christopher Hampton6:15

And there was a lot of head scratching, and people said, Well, you know, I don't know whether this is dramatizable and

Christopher Hampton6:21

Eventually I was offered an open commission by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Christopher Hampton6:25

Um in the mid eighties and I chose to do this.

Presenter6:29

What does an open commission mean?

Christopher Hampton6:31

It means I can write what I like, yes. And uh so I wrote this and they were appalled actually when I told them what I'd done.

Presenter6:36

Viable

Christopher Hampton6:36

Riempo

Presenter6:37

Uh

Christopher Hampton6:37

Well, it turned out that um they had already done a dramatization of Leliès and Lodereuse in the mid-sixties, which had not been one of their great successes.

Christopher Hampton6:45

And therefore the prospect of doing another one was not uh was not something that they

Presenter6:48

You can understand why. I mean, what we've got four hundred pages and practically two hundred letters. How on earth are you going to turn this into a a a piece for the theatre that's going to hold the audience?

Christopher Hampton6:55

Peace has

Christopher Hampton6:57

Yes. Um it was one of those extraordinary events in my life, really, because everything about it was a surprise.

Christopher Hampton7:04

Although in the summer of'85, when we rehearsed it in Stratford, with Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan and Juliet Stevenson and Fiona Shaw and a wonderful cast,

Christopher Hampton7:14

We began to realize, um, rehearsing in our tin hut by the other place theatre and Stratford that something really exceptional was was emerging.

Christopher Hampton7:23

And the fact that it

Christopher Hampton7:25

had the success that it had, um, I think changed a lot of our lives.

Presenter7:29

And then three years later it was made into the film starring of course Glenn Close and and John Malkovich. What what I'd really like to know about is is is how different the two scripts are, the the screenplay and the piece for the theatre.

Christopher Hampton7:42

I think the screenplay is closer to the novel, um because I think the form of a film is somehow closer to a novel. A stage play is a very artificial thing, um and it has its iron laws, um and which you have to conform to somehow.

Christopher Hampton7:55

A film is more fluid, like like a novel. Actually, winds up like a novel too. Now these days, you can put it on the shelf at the end of the pro at the end of the process.

Presenter8:02

But you can also you you can juxtapose you can have a change of scene much more quickly, can't you?

Christopher Hampton8:07

That's right. And uh for example, the ending of the of the film is is much closer to the ending of the novel. The disgrace of the Marquise is very difficult to organise as uh on the stage, and and in the in the stage I sort of implied that she got away with it.

Christopher Hampton8:21

That it was, you know, her life was ruined, but that she'd got away with it. Whereas in the book,

Christopher Hampton8:26

mostly to conform to um you know moral ideas of the time, unleashed a series of terrible punishments on her.

Presenter8:32

Mecha number two.

Christopher Hampton8:33

It's uh from uh Mozart's clarinet concerto.

Christopher Hampton8:37

which he he wrote for an instrument much deeper in range I discovered a few years ago.

Christopher Hampton8:42

Conventional clarinet.

Christopher Hampton8:44

So this is a recording which uses an instrument called the Bassett clarinet.

Presenter9:46

Part of the second movement of Mozart's clarinet concerto played by Anthony Pei with the Academy of Ancient Music, directed by Christopher Hogwood.

Presenter9:55

Your play White Chameleon, um Christopher Hampton, produced at the National about four years ago, was pretty autobiographical, wasn't it, about a young boy?

Christopher Hampton10:03

At least you could say it was entirely autobiographical. Uh having never before written autobiographically, I went um the whole hog, you might say.

Presenter10:13

So it's a young boy in the fifties being brought up in Egypt, Suez.

Christopher Hampton10:17

Yes.

Presenter10:18

being being really finding himself at the centre of of of a conflict.

Christopher Hampton10:23

The happiest time of my childhood was uh this five years that I spent in Egypt. My father was a radio engineer, worked for Cable and Wireless.

Christopher Hampton10:31

It was a bit like being in the army. You were posted around the world, you know, wherever they wanted you to go.

Christopher Hampton10:36

But his favourite.

Christopher Hampton10:37

Posting was Alexandria Wade first gone in in the thirties.

Christopher Hampton10:41

So we wound up there again in the early fifties.

Christopher Hampton10:44

It was a sort of idyllic place too, too.

Presenter10:46

More like my ideal.

Christopher Hampton10:47

Well, it was very cosmopolitan. Boys I was at school with could mostly speak five or six languages.

Christopher Hampton10:53

My parents were very fond of sport, so.

Christopher Hampton10:56

you know, one was always swimming or yachting or going to the sporting club, doing, you know, one thing or another and uh

Christopher Hampton11:03

It was just a very um nice way to grow up.

Presenter11:06

But Chris, the boy in the play, was was beaten up by his school friends, wasn't he?

Christopher Hampton11:07

The boy

Christopher Hampton11:09

Well

Christopher Hampton11:10

Underneath all this, of course, there were political ructions of one sort or another leading towards the Suez Crisis.

Christopher Hampton11:17

And the first crisis that happened was when King Farooq was expelled in fifty two and we were sent back to England, evacuated. So that when the real crisis came in'fifty six, we um were rather blase about it.

Christopher Hampton11:28

and in fact stayed right up to the last minute my mother and I were evacuated on the last boat out.

Christopher Hampton11:33

But naturally, being a British child in Egypt, you got into trouble because the British were sabre rattling and so on. And then when you came back to school in England and repeated repeated what my father had said to me, i. e. that the Suez invasion was completely unjustifiable and

Christopher Hampton11:51

There was no reason for it at all.

Christopher Hampton11:53

You got into trouble in En in England.

Presenter11:55

Well you got beaten up here too.

Christopher Hampton11:57

Not exactly, no, but the headmaster, who's a very kindly man at my at the prep school that I'd sent to, brought me in to his office and said, You mustn't go round saying these sorts of things. Um, you know, our uh people are out there fighting and dying uh for their country and uh you mustn't go round uh

Christopher Hampton12:12

repeating these things that you may have heard somewhere or other.

Christopher Hampton12:15

Um so all this was a very um was a sort of what you might call a political education.

Presenter12:19

So you were a sort of white chameleon and stuck in the middle. Sort of outsider. Did that mean that you wanted to write? Did that make you write? Is there any link there at all?

Christopher Hampton12:27

I don't really think so, because I'd already started to to write at the age of eight or nine in Egypt, the school I was in, which was called the British Boys' School.

Christopher Hampton12:34

Had a drama department.

Christopher Hampton12:36

Um and one of the things we did, we were asked to write plays, e you know, even even at the age of eight or nine, for our class to to perform and I started that's how I started.

Presenter12:46

What sort of thing did you write, then?

Christopher Hampton12:47

I made adaptations from the works of um Edgar Allan Poe, my favourite writer at the time, um concentrating on the blood and guts and leaving out all the philosophical boring bits.

Presenter12:58

But did everybody know that Christopher wanted to be a writer? Was that

Christopher Hampton13:01

Yes, actually my parents were very encouraging about it, um although it was not a

Christopher Hampton13:06

what you would call a literary household. There were there weren't many books in the house, although my father was very fond of the cinema. He

Christopher Hampton13:12

might have been expected to say, Well, you'll never make a living at that but he instead he said well yes, you should start right away. Um he'd say things like you know Conan Doyle started writing when he was fourteen. I have no idea whether this is true or not, but uh it sounded convincing to me. So I felt although this was a a strange ambition, I didn't feel that it was one that was um

Christopher Hampton13:35

Frowned upon.

Presenter13:35

Record number three.

Christopher Hampton13:37

Well, my father was very fond of Buddy Holly, uh, strangely enough.

Christopher Hampton13:42

and uh used to play his records a lot and uh

Christopher Hampton13:46

One of his uh songs that I'm particularly fond of.

Christopher Hampton13:49

Both because I like the tune, and secondly, because I think the sentiment in the title is unarguable. And that's a song called Love Is Strange.

Speaker 413:57

Love.

Speaker 414:01

Love is trying.

Speaker 414:04

Hmm

Christopher Hampton14:04

Mm.

Speaker 414:05

Lot of people

Christopher Hampton14:05

Ada

Speaker 414:10

Take it for a game.

Speaker 414:14

Once you get it, you're in an awful fix.

Speaker 414:21

Mm, after you've had

Presenter14:25

Buddy Holly and Love is Strange. So you went to public school back here in England and then you wrote your first play while you were waiting to go up to Oxford, not least'cause you had a lot of time on your hands'cause you'd been expelled from the sixth floor.

Christopher Hampton14:42

Uh yes, I well it's quite an extreme way of putting it. Um what had happened was that um I had pa I passed my exam into Oxford and uh was looking forward to uh my father was by this time in Zanzibar was looking forward to having two terms at Lansing, just messing about putting on plays and

Christopher Hampton14:59

enjoying myself.

Christopher Hampton15:01

And um my housemaster, who somehow rumbled this, summoned me and said, We think it would be better for you.

Christopher Hampton15:08

And indeed for the school, uh if you left.

Christopher Hampton15:11

Just like that.

Presenter15:11

Just like that.

Christopher Hampton15:12

Mm. So out I went into the world, and um

Presenter15:16

That seemed rather unfair, didn't you question it?

Christopher Hampton15:18

Uh well, I was startled, let's say, um but in fact, looking back on it, it was a very good thing to happen, because that year

Christopher Hampton15:25

which was quite difficult because my father had this knack of being in places where difficult things happen. There was a revolution in Zanzibar, so they became incommunicado. Uh and what I did was um

Christopher Hampton15:37

In a rather kind of film.

Christopher Hampton15:40

obvious way, I suppose. I went to Paris and finished my novel.

Christopher Hampton15:43

uh and began to write this play, When Did You Last See My Mother?

Presenter15:46

What was the novel about, briefly?

Christopher Hampton15:48

It was a school novel, not very good, but rejected by every publisher in London.

Presenter15:52

Still, is that that's mouldering on the shelf as well?

Christopher Hampton15:54

Uh well if I I haven't seen it for a while, and in fact there was a fire at Peggy Ramsey's office.

Christopher Hampton15:59

a few years ago, and she rang me up and said, There's bad news and there's good news. She said the bad news is that um a lot of my archive has been destroyed by this fire, but the good news is I think your novel went up as well.

Presenter16:12

She was pretty a pretty hard taskmaster, wasn't she?

Christopher Hampton16:14

She was a formidable lady, yes.

Presenter16:16

What's the rudest thing she ever said to you?

Christopher Hampton16:18

She didn't actually say it to me. I was standing in the doorway of her office. I'd come to visit her, and I heard her on the phone.

Christopher Hampton16:24

To a young writer, saying, Oh, you don't want to be like Hampton. He wrote one play which was a great success and then sat around for years. Get on with it, dear.

Christopher Hampton16:32

And I said, Peggy, I'm here. And she turned round and looked at me and said, Well, it's true, isn't it?

Presenter16:37

But the play, When Did You Last See Your Mother? um it was eventually premiered at the at the Royal Court now uh and having been performed by Owds but wa was that luck do you think that it was performed at the Royal Court or was it was it just

Christopher Hampton16:48

It was Peggy Ramsey, actually. I took advice at Oxford from a a woman called Elizabeth Sweeting, who was at the Oxford Playhouse, and about getting an agent, because when I'd done the play in Oxford

Christopher Hampton16:58

I got lots of letters from agents.

Christopher Hampton17:00

And she said, Oh, the only the only agent worth thinking about is Peggy Ramsey, so I sent her the play.

Christopher Hampton17:06

Two or three weeks later, the porter at New College arrived and knocked at my door and said there's someone on the phone. Now this was unprecedented because

Christopher Hampton17:14

You know, you got messages if you were lucky, but for somebody to actually come and knock on your door proved that there was someone formidable on the other end, and it was Peggy Ramsey, and she said, Come to London, dear.

Christopher Hampton17:24

And she had got the pl the Royal Court to agree to put the play on within about six weeks, I think.

Presenter17:28

and it was about two young boys waiting to go up to Oxford.

Christopher Hampton17:30

It was, yes, and it was a rather sort of Jacobean plot. One of them has an affair with the other one's mother, who then commits suicide. It was very, very uh

Christopher Hampton17:38

Lurid and uh I don't think I've ever had such good reviews.

Christopher Hampton17:42

From that day to this.

Presenter17:44

Next piece of music.

Christopher Hampton17:46

I didn't really learn about music at all until I went to school and uh got a record player and began to listen to what other people were listening to, and one of my favorite records was Le Amadeus playing Tubert's string quintet.

Christopher Hampton17:58

And I discovered when I was researching Carrington that it was also a favourite of um Lytton Strache's and Dora Carrington's, so I included it in their film, uh used it and used that recording.

Presenter19:05

Part of the second movement of Schubert's string quintet in C major, played by William Pleith and the Amadeus Quartet.

Presenter19:12

So, Carrington, we said you'd written some seventeen years ago or so, um but despite the success of of dangerous liaisons, the Bacchus didn't jump at it, did they?

Christopher Hampton19:22

No, they didn't jump at anything. Um uh this was a a strange illusion that I had after I had won the Oscar for liaison that uh

Christopher Hampton19:30

that somehow it would get easier.

Presenter19:32

But what were their reservations about Carrington?

Christopher Hampton19:35

I think that uh

Christopher Hampton19:37

The subject matter really, um the sort of unconventional nature of their lives and uh the tragic conclusion, which is always a a thing that disturbs people who uh finance films. They don't like films with unhappy endings.

Presenter19:50

I suppose if you went along to uh an American back and said, I've got this story about a woman who falls in love with a homosexual and then kills herself, it w they would think it was too far-fetched.

Christopher Hampton19:58

No, that's what they said to me. That's what that was the phrase that was used to me in turning it down. I would say, but it's not about that at all. It's about these people who had a sort of experiment in living. It's a very unusual love story.

Presenter20:10

But why were you so fascinated by it?'Cause it's a very small story, isn't it? It's a very small part of the Bloomsbury story as a whole, and indeed all those other characters, the Bells and the Wolves, are very shadowy in your piece. I mean, it's it's a it's a big film, but it's a very s small and tightly focussed piece.

Christopher Hampton20:27

I was just interested in that relationship and the

Christopher Hampton20:30

way two people could make a contract like that and uh um live together very successfully for seventeen years, I think it was, and uh pursue their own uh

Christopher Hampton20:40

Sex lives actually um outside of the marriage in inverted commas.

Christopher Hampton20:45

and still remain entirely devoted to one another.

Presenter20:48

So what what are you saying that it's the it's the sort of triumph of love over sex, is it?

Christopher Hampton20:53

It's uh I suppose uh an ultimate kind of acknowledgement that life is more complicated than it's cracked up to be.

Christopher Hampton20:59

I always think oversimplification is one of the things that gets us into the trouble we get into.

Presenter21:03

And you ended up directing this film yourself. You'd never directed a film before. I mean, it was certainly a very brave thing to do. It might have seemed at that stage foolhardy to

Christopher Hampton21:13

Desperation, I think it was. No, when Mike Newell.

Christopher Hampton21:17

Decided he didn't want to do it. It was at quite a late stage, that's to say, that Emma Thompson and Jonathan Price were already.

Christopher Hampton21:23

attached to the film, and we had specific dates.

Presenter21:27

But how did you know you could do it?

Christopher Hampton21:28

I didn't, actually. I had no idea that I could do it. I was in Los Angeles and went into a bookshop and bought a book called First Steps in Directing.

Christopher Hampton21:36

give me a great deal of information. But um I had very good people around me and I was um careful enough to hire people who were very experienced. And I was old enough not to be afraid to say, Well, I don't know, what do you think? at various key moments and not try and bluff it through.

Presenter21:54

Record number five.

Christopher Hampton21:55

Well, this is uh a favourite of mine. Janet Baker has a very beautiful voice, and I have an enormous number of her records.

Christopher Hampton22:02

And I've chosen an aria from the Saint Matthew Passion.

Christopher Hampton22:06

Have mercy, Er Bahma Dich.

Speaker 422:19

All in my God.

Presenter23:09

The aria Er Bahmer dischmein Gott from Bach Saint Matthew Passion sung by Janet Baker with the Munich Bach Orchestra conducted by Karl Richter.

Presenter23:18

Going back again to those early years of playwriting, Christopher, you were panned for your second play, Total Eclipse, which is now coming out as a film. But you had great success with your third play, The Philanthropist. But eventually, aged thirty, there was a kind of block, wasn't there? Was it was this your your your fears coming to pass? Perhaps you wished it upon yourself somehow that you'd had it at thirty.

Christopher Hampton23:41

It could be, but uh I think I was just ready to move on. I mean I've I felt that I'd I'd been at the Rogue Hawk for ten years. The Rogue Hort was a theatre for new writers and new plays, and I felt I wasn't a new writer any more and probably shouldn't just go on having my plays done there.

Christopher Hampton23:56

And in fact the thing that I did

Christopher Hampton23:58

That immediately then was to write Carrington that

Presenter24:00

So it wasn't a real block, then it wasn't.

Christopher Hampton24:01

No, it wasn't a real there was a period of a few months when I couldn't work out what to do next.

Presenter24:07

I thought there was a point at which translation, which you've done a lot of, as I said in the beginning, it w w was a kind of therapy somehow.

Christopher Hampton24:13

No, I'd always done that. I'd started that in nineteen seventy. I think I did my first or actually no, I did my first uh translation in

Christopher Hampton24:20

While I was still at Oxford in'sixty seven' it was a play by Isaac Babel, a Russian play called Maria.

Christopher Hampton24:25

I find translation a sort of therapy. I always have one on the go. I have one doing one at the moment.

Christopher Hampton24:31

Well you just

Presenter24:31

But you just enjoy the precision of it.

Christopher Hampton24:32

Yeah, yes, I suppose in the way some people do crossword puzzles or whatever, it's a it's a great exercise for focusing the mind actually on the specific linguistic problems.

Presenter24:42

But people are less admiring of that kind of work. They're less admiring, I think, of translation and of adaptation than they are of original works.

Christopher Hampton24:52

Yeah.

Presenter24:52

Uh

Christopher Hampton24:53

I I I mean I can understand why, but in fact I think translators are shamefully under-acknowledged and underpaid and

Christopher Hampton25:01

looked down on really in a way that that's not justifiable, they have a tremendously important job to do.

Presenter25:06

What about adapters?

Christopher Hampton25:07

Yeah.

Christopher Hampton25:08

Well, that's um again a a a skill that people, I suppose, tend to underrate. In the end.

Christopher Hampton25:15

The business of putting in front of people for a couple of hours something that will engage them and interest them is so complicated that it doesn't really matter whose name is on the piece of work. It's getting a piece of work that will do that to an audience by whatever means you can.

Presenter25:29

But if we're talking about the way in which someone like you is regarded, I think it is true, isn't it, that that you've been annoyed over the years when people have said, Aren't you going to do another piece of original work, not another adaptation?

Christopher Hampton25:40

Um yes, I suppose so, because it doesn't I don't really see a distinction in the

Presenter25:44

Well the im I suppose the implication is it's a less creative business because you're borrowing somebody else's plot, aren't you? And plotting is perhaps

Christopher Hampton25:51

It's an interesting thing, though, that uh peop people never say that about, let's say, um film directors, which is also a secondary role, interpreting other people's work. I sort of don't spend a lot of time worrying about these categories, and uh and I do have a list of um

Christopher Hampton26:08

Original projects which are slowly thickening in notebooks here and there.

Christopher Hampton26:13

So I don't feel any particular pressure in this in this respect, although it would certainly be nice if

Christopher Hampton26:18

if, for example, I can manage to establish myself as a film director to direct some some original scripts. Why I haven't done that in the past is that the one time I did spend a year writing an original screenplay, it didn't get made, and that really is heartbreaking.

Presenter26:34

Record number six.

Christopher Hampton26:36

Well, now this is to do with Los Angeles. Um I spent such a lot of time in Los Angeles and I was eventually ob obliged to learn to drive, um something I never got any good at at all.

Christopher Hampton26:46

But as I was um scraping the wheels along the pavement in Los Angeles, I often uh used to have the radio on. One of the um

Christopher Hampton26:54

records of that particular year.

Christopher Hampton26:56

There was something called Angel of the Morning by Juice Newton.

Christopher Hampton27:01

sort of summons up

Christopher Hampton27:03

Los Angeles for me, which isn't entirely pleasurable, but it's such a played such a big part in my life that I feel I ought to be reminded of it.

Speaker 427:10

Just call me Angel of the morning angel. Just touch my cheek before you leave it, baby.

Speaker 427:23

Just call me Angel, a morning angel.

Speaker 427:30

Then slowly turn pale.

Presenter27:38

Juice Newton, an angel of the morning, and um memories of a rented house with a white piano and a pool and

Christopher Hampton27:45

That's right.

Presenter27:46

A year in Hollywood. Do you feel at home in Hollywood? I mean, you go to Oliver Stone's mansion or whatever and I mean, what do you feel about these people when you get there? I can't imagine that you're totally at home in Hollywood.

Christopher Hampton27:57

Um no, but I don't but well, I don't stay there. Uh um I mean, one of the good things about uh working there now is that you just go and you you come back. So you don't have to live there, um to work there, but you do have to work there if you work in

Christopher Hampton28:10

In films and ever since I began with my my first Hollywood film which was an adaptation of uh Graham Green's.

Christopher Hampton28:18

The Honorary Consul, which in America was called Beyond the Limit because the man from Paramount said that out of the three word title The Honorary Consul the American public would only understand one word.

Christopher Hampton28:30

I am.

Christopher Hampton28:31

Uh ever since then I've um

Presenter28:33

That did that depress you or you just shrug and smile?

Christopher Hampton28:37

What you have to tr I suppose learn to do in the end is to protect yourself from the Honorary Consul was.

Christopher Hampton28:42

a project that I was very committed to.

Christopher Hampton28:45

And in the end it was renamed, it was re-edited, new music was put on it.

Christopher Hampton28:50

And it was thumpingly denounced by Graham Greene in a lengthy article which revealed in the last paragraph that he hadn't seen it.

Christopher Hampton28:57

So

Speaker 328:57

Yeah.

Christopher Hampton28:58

So you you just have to take, as it were, the rough with the smooth. I don't know why it took me so long to realize that writing.

Christopher Hampton29:06

The kinds of films I'm interested in.

Christopher Hampton29:09

Writing is the most difficult way in that you could possibly choose.

Presenter29:14

But obviously Hollywood fascinates you. In fact, you'd spotted the potential of Sunset Boulevard before Andrew Lloyd Webber, hadn't you?

Christopher Hampton29:20

I think it was sort of we we were moving along parallel tracks, but I had been asked by the English National Opera if I would like to write an opera for them, libretto.

Christopher Hampton29:30

And I proposed to them Sunset Boulevard, and they were interested in this idea, and I wrote to Paramount.

Christopher Hampton29:37

First of all I wrote to Billy Wilder, who wrote back saying you're a writer. How can you possibly suppose that I retain any rights for the

Presenter29:42

And he did

Christopher Hampton29:43

And he did this piece and he didn't.

Speaker 429:43

Uh

Christopher Hampton29:44

So I wrote to Paramount and they said uh no.

Christopher Hampton29:48

They weren't interested in

Christopher Hampton29:50

selling me the rights or negotiating an option or whatever.

Christopher Hampton29:54

Uh and a while later I w I was having lunch with Andrew Lloyd Webber and told him about this and uh he said um uh that the person who was

Christopher Hampton30:02

In fact, negotiating with Paramount for the Rights was himself.

Christopher Hampton30:06

So I said, Well, when you get round to doing it, um, let me know. And he did.

Presenter30:11

Boo Music

Christopher Hampton30:13

Well, I've chosen uh the closing aria from an opera by Philip Glass about Gandhi called Satchya Graha, which I saw in San Francisco. Um and it's a very, very peaceful piece of music which I think uh

Christopher Hampton30:26

Would calm the troubled brow when things got hard.

Christopher Hampton30:30

on the island, um, you know, after the typhoon or whatever.

Speaker 431:12

Ashoya Jones with God the Son's come on a day.

Presenter31:27

The end of Philip Glass's opera Sutya Graha, sung by Douglas Perry with the New York City Opera Orchestra conducted by Christopher Keane.

Presenter31:35

So, Christopher Hampton, you're a writer, a playwright, a translator, an adapter, a lyricist, and a director. Which of your bodies of work are you proudest of? Is it possible to say?

Christopher Hampton31:46

Not really. There are plays of mine that I'm very pleased with, and films as well. So.

Christopher Hampton31:52

Um it's hard to say. I mean, I suppose Carrington gave me most sense of achievement because it was germinated over such a long, long period.

Christopher Hampton31:59

But um Les Liaison d'Angerose and the film of that were also uh things that I'm very proud of. Um so it's difficult to say. You plunge into these different things and uh and you you never quite know which which ones are going to work and which ones aren't.

Presenter32:13

But you're happy to keep plunging.

Christopher Hampton32:15

Oh yes, thanks.

Presenter32:16

What about Hampton as Robinson Crusoe? That's not a comfortable image, I suspect.

Christopher Hampton32:20

No, I think not very good at all. I I don't think I would I'm not very practical. I'm useless with my hands. Um

Christopher Hampton32:27

Can't see straight. It's rather a gloomy prospect, I'm afraid.

Presenter32:30

What about mentally? Will you cope?

Christopher Hampton32:33

I think probably that wouldn't be so bad. Um and since one has plenty of time to do everything, um eventually one might get the knack of um you know weaving the roof of the hut or whatever one's supposed to do.

Presenter32:45

So you're looking forward to it, really?

Christopher Hampton32:47

Well, I like the sea, I like the sun, so um so it would have its compensations.

Presenter32:53

Last record

Christopher Hampton32:54

Well the last record is is from Mozart's Requiem. In fact it's I think the last piece that Mozart ever wrote. It's the Lacremosa.

Presenter34:01

Part of the Lacrymosa from Mozart's Requiem performed by the Chorus and Orchestra of the Academy of Ancient Music, again directed by Christopher Hogwood. If you could only take one of those eight records.

Christopher Hampton34:12

Uh well I think it would have to be the Bach, um the Janet Baker actually, because it's uh for some reason uh my favourite piece of music.

Presenter34:20

What about a book?

Christopher Hampton34:22

Well, at Oxford my special subject was uh Proust, a la Recherche d'Etemperdu, so uh I've never yet come across a novel that's as

Christopher Hampton34:30

compendious and as astute about the human

Christopher Hampton34:33

Spirit and its difficulties, and it's sort of inexhaustible, I think, so uh so I think that's the book I would take.

Presenter34:40

But you've already read it. I think you must be one of the few castaways to want to take it, having already read it.

Christopher Hampton34:46

Um yeah, I suppose so. Maybe I could um amuse myself doing a translation of it.

Presenter34:51

And what about a luxury?

Christopher Hampton34:53

Well, I suppose a restaurant is out of the question.

Presenter34:55

Well, as long as you run it yourself, can you cook?

Christopher Hampton34:57

No, no, that's why I asked for a restaurant. Um I suppose actually, boringly, it would probably have to be an inexhaustible supply of black notebooks and parker pens.

Presenter35:06

Christopher Hampton, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Christopher Hampton35:09

Thanks very much.

Speaker 335:18

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio4.