Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Stylish, distinctive, controversial director of BBC film biographies of Elgar, Delius, Rossetti, and features like Women in Love, The Devils.
On the island
Eight records
I've chosen it because it's got tremendous sort of uplift and hope and optimism in it. And uh I remember the the musical Westside Story came out when I was ... not making much of a go of life, everything looked rather bleak. I was a photographer not earning much money. I was a young family growing up and sort of broke. And this musical came out and this number uh sort of cheered me up a lot and sort of gave me hope for the future.
I used to enjoy her films when I was a kid ... And um this particular song I've had a sort of secret uh dream of actually getting up into drag and imitating Cicely Courtenage and I feel on the island there'd be no one around to watch me and I could make a fool of myself and maybe perfect the act so if I was rescued I would be able to actually go on the hall somewhere if hall still existed.
This was an early favourite, it was on seventy eight, I remember, and um ... I I started dancing to it in my mother's parlour before I I knew anything about ballet. I just started improvising. I like the story particularly, and it's it's actually very fitting for this present situation. It's about a mariner washed up on a desert island who um is very sorry for himself for a moment until the most wonderful, most beautiful, fantastic, glamorous nymphette materializes and dances before him
it was the um the N credit music, and it outraged several critics because they said, Oh, the fool's got the wrong Strauss. Uh Gershwin meant Johann Strauss. Well, actually I think I've got the last laugh because Johann Strauss never wrote a symphony, and one of the lyrics does mention the word symphony, so let's listen.
Elgar sort of put me on the map at the BBC and I've I've got a tremendous collection of Elgar records and it's difficult to know which one to take, but I'd I'd like to take his um second symphony because I'd also like something to do on the island and if I played this through I could actually try and think of ways to film it because it's always been a bit of an enigma to me, this piece.
Das Lied von der ErdeFavourite
I've uh often thought of Marla's Song of the Earth. I did a film on Marla up there anyway. And um Song of the Earth would be a sort of like um ... a pastoral symphony, if you like, or a look at the seasons through Mahler and the and the Chinese.
Symphonie sur un chant montagnard français
It's a nice jolly piece to have on the iron. It would remind me of home without actually being too nostalgic, like say Delia's Song of the High Hills might bring tears to the eyes. But this is nice rumpty tump stuff and it's also there's a theme in it that I'd I'd sing along with.
My wife and I when we first went to live in the lakes romantically played this song over and over during candlelight dinners and so forth and and pledged we'd make a film about it, just the two of us. Well we never did get around to that, but um two months ago I did a little programme for the BBC North and although she and I weren't in it, our kids were in it
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:12How important is music to you?
Yes, I I think it is. Whether I'm in a a train with a headset or a walking the hills with a headset or um playing, you know, hi fi on enormous twelve foot speakers and blasting everyone out of the room. Yes, it is very much a part of my life.
Presenter asks
5:59What was the earliest time that you remember making a movie? What was your first effort?
At um the Nautical College Pangbourne I I made a movie about a villain who um steals pennies from blind beggars. I played that part, of course. Who falls in love with a beautiful girl, played by a boy of course, because it was an all-boys school, college. Then there's a sort of tug-of-war between me and the hero for the girl, and we both actually lose her because in the woods there's a sort of Frankenstein monster lurking who kills us both and makes off with the girl into his own lair.
Presenter asks
12:41How do you rate [Sir] Huw Wheldon? Do you enjoy working with him?
Well, he was a great teacher. Yes, I did. He was a great raconteur. He just made you feel good, and he inspired you, because what one really needs is someone to have faith in them, but to have faith and also be able to instruct them, and help them, and guide them, and he was a great teacher.
The keepsakes
The book
William Wordsworth
That's my Bible. I think it's the Bible of a lot of people who love living up there with the mountains, rocks, everything else. You know, it means something.
The luxury
in case life got a little too rough and too impossible to take, I think I'd like to take a quart of brandy. And then I probably wouldn't have any more worries.
Presenter asks
16:43Is it part of a deliberate ploy on your part to actually shock people, to make them sit up and watch?
No, I I I just seem to choose um shocking subjects, or maybe shocking subjects choose me. But I see everything in the world as shocking one way or another, and by shocking I just don't necessarily mean it's an unpleasant experience. I mean, you can get a little electric shock and it makes you jump, but you know you're alive, you're you know, you're you're a bit livelier than you were before you had the shock.
Presenter asks
18:38What is it though that you object to about critics?
Well, in that case it was the fact that he discussed two items that actually weren't in the film, and refused to retract on them during the interview. He just ignored the things.
Presenter asks
21:09Do you feel a sense in which you feel neglected by the British film industry?
I think you could say that. ... I don't think um I I really fit in with it. I mean there are quite a few English directors who don't and they they make films abroad. ... but I'm employed, you know, in America. I do operas in Italy, France, Austria, Australia, you know, so forth. But I've never done one in England.
“I fell in love that was a bit later with Dorothy Lemour, and that's one reason I joined the Merchant Navy. I felt if she wasn't in the South Seas, maybe someone like her was. And and I went to Australia. Unfortunately, the boat didn't stop on the way at any desert islands.”
“I was sort of very despondent, not knowing what to do, thinking there was nothing in life worth doing. When I happened to hear Tchaikovsky's B-flat minor concerto, I didn't know what it was actually. I just thought it was the most amazing sound I'd ever heard. And when the title was announced, I rushed out on my bicycle and bought it and sort of didn't look back. Life took on a a new dimension which has lived with me ever since.”
“I don't well, I don't like Valentino. It's absolutely horrible. ... I went to see it um a couple of years after I'd made it, and and I had to leave half way through. I thought it was the worst trash I'd ever set eyes on. It was rubbish. I thought what idiot made this? This is appalling.”