Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Filmmaker known for improvisational style; works include Bleak Moments, Abigail's Party, Nuts in May, and Palme d'Or winner Secrets and Lies.
On the island
Eight records
I think I could sit on my desert island listening to it every so often with some degree of optimism.
We used this music for a play I did at the RSC in Stratford in nineteen seventy four called Babies Grow Old, and it's very near to my heart.
I came to London in the sixties, and one of the things that I and many guys of my age did was to fall in love with Jean Moreau in Jouletime.
Nabucco: Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves
Chorus and Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Giuseppe Sinopoli
I love this because it has an extraordinary kind of passion and an extraordinary again, a sadness that is somehow alloyed with the joy of life.
The Threepenny Opera: The Ballad of Mack the Knife
Brecht and indeed Kurt Weil is an important part of my life, as it probably is of most people who do the sort of thing I do.
Enigma Variations: Intermezzo (Dorabella)
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim
I love its humanity, its range of humour and tragedy and all of those things, and uh I it's very compulsive listening and I could listen to it for a very long time.
Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622: II. AdagioFavourite
Jack Brymer, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham
While I was in Australia, into fact he [my father] died. I had with me a cassette with Mozart's clarinet concerto on one side and the bassoon concerto on the other side. And I just lay in this room in Sydney and just played this cassette backwards and forwards from one end to the other all night.
Pro Cantione Antiqua, Mark Brown
I would like to sit on my island watching the sunset, listening to The Long Day Closes as The Long Day Closes.
In conversation
Presenter asks
5:00Why was Abigail's Party such a phenomenal success?
Well, it was a total fluke, actually. Not to suggest for a moment that it isn't a masterpiece or anything, but the thing was, it had been a theatre play, and all the West End managements wanted to take it into the West End. And Alison Stentman, who was at that time my wife, was pregnant with our first son, as it turned out. And the doctors simply said, There's no way you can go into the West End with this. Forget it. And at this moment, a television play, a studio play, about the Diplock trials in Northern Ireland was pulled for some fairly predictable legal reasons. And Margaret Matheson, the producer, had an empty studio. And she said, Well, why don't you come and do Abigail's party in the studio? It would make a great television play. And I said, Absolute nonsense. It's theatre. It will not translate.
Presenter asks
6:31How do you respond to the accusation that your work [such as Abigail's Party] is patronising or snobbish?
I just think it's complete nonsense, really. … It means that, you know, you cannot look honestly and openly and with a sense of humour about any at any section of society because there's always a reason why you're apparently looking at it from the other side of one particular fence or another. I mean the bottom line is that as far as I'm concerned these films and plays are about us and we are all vulnerable. You know we are all ridiculous and we are all passionate.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
Gabriel García Márquez
I would take One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garccio Marquez, which I I've only read once and I would like to re-read it another few times, and I think it would do me on the island.
The luxury
a fully flushing lavatory with an endless supply of high-quality, eco-friendly toilet rolls
I would like a luxury, fully flushing, lavatory. With an endless supply of high-quality, eco-friendly toilet rolls.
Why was your experience at RADA sterile?
Well, it was. I mean, it was it was a very it was a seminal experience and it was in many ways a great experience. … But radar was old-fashioned in those days. We did little in the way of improvisation work or creative work. It was very much that acting was all about recycling known old ways of doing things. … Just learn the lines, don't fall over the furniture, be professional, and that's that.
Presenter asks
19:52At what point in the process do you decide what the story is going to be about?
Right from the word go. I'm working through all sorts of ongoing ideas that I have. There are people close to me in my life, I can't talk about this in any detail, who have adoption-related experiences. And for that reason, I wanted to make a film that in some way dealt with [it].
Presenter asks
20:54Why don't you tell the actors what the film is about in the beginning?
Because it's important to create for the actor to have the freedom to create a character who is rounded and is not defined by one single notion.
Presenter asks
32:36Do you feel that you are too obsessive about your work?
I think I'm certainly I'm obsessive about it. Um I think anybody who is very involved creatively with what they do, has to be. And I think there's no choice in that.
“I don't think I've ever made a pessimistic film... What motivates all of my films is a strong feeling of hope.”
“My films are bleak. My first film was indeed called Bleak Moments, and they're also joyous. And life is bleak and joyous. Life is comic and tragic and full of despair and full of wonderful, ecstatic moments.”
“I suppose in the end, I think what I try and do is tell it how it is.”