Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Film director best known for the Jason Bourne trilogy; also made acclaimed TV dramas Bloody Sunday and The Murder of Stephen Lawrence.
On the island
Eight records
Main Theme from Lawrence of Arabia
I've had the privilege of spending my life making television and films. So if I'm on my desert island, I'd like to remember all those wonderful times I've had and also what better way to remember that than to listen to one of the great soundtracks of all time.
Well I listened to and I've always listened a lot to blues music and this particular song reminds me very much of being a young man working at Granada Television in my twenties. That was when I first saw BB King play live up in Manchester and it just reminds me of those years when you're making your way and life seems very rich with possibilities and hearing B.B. King live, that's about as good as it gets.
Below the wind southerly, Kathleen Ferrier is um It's a great song about the seafaring life. And it's one of my earliest memories. She was my dad's favorite singer and it speaks to the reality of the seafaring life.
Well, this is uh The Beatles. Couldn't possibly be on a desert island without some some Beatles music because it's run through my life like an arrow. And it reminds me of my brothers and sisters and particularly of my older sister who sadly died about ten years ago. I can absolutely remember her coming back in tears after seeing the Beatles in a concert saying, John touched me and then refusing to wash her hands for about four weeks, sending my mother absolutely demented. So this just reminds me of the explosion of the new.
We're going to hear Fairport Convention meet on the ledge and this reminds me very much of being in the art room. We used to have a record player and this so reminds me of being a teenager, of finding my way, realizing that there were things in life that worked for me and there was a place where I could fit in.
Papageno-Papagena duet (from Die Zauberflöte)
Gottfried Hornik, Janet Perry, Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan (conductor)
Well, on my desert island, I would like to have some opera. I've always loved opera. My dad took me to opera when I was very young. And my favourite opera is Magic Flute. I think it's one of the most sublime pieces of art. And of course, this great life lived by these humans under the conflict of Sorastra and Queen of the Night. I relate to that. How do you make your way under that? And I want to listen to the duet between Papageno and Papagaino because it's a silly folk song, but it reminds you of the joy of humanity and what it is to be alive.
If I Should Fall BehindFavourite
Well, I've always listened to a lot of Bruce Springsteen all my adult life since he arrived in the early mid-70s. And this particular song has a very special meaning for me. It reminds me of a night my wife and I went to see him on this particular tour and he played this song and it's always seemed to me to sum up marriage long-standing relationships and I used this song at our wedding and it speaks to the truths of love and a life shared with my wife Jana.
Well, Bob Dylan is like the Beatles, you know, an arrow through my musical life. And I would certainly, if I was on my desert island, think a lot about my children, and this is a song that he wrote that I think is a perfect song for a father to to his children.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:50Why do you think drama can take you there in a way that facts can't?
Cinema does it because you can be immersed in it. I still believe in the power of that big screen in the dark room. It had a profound effect on me as a small boy … I've never lost that thrill … it's a paradox, and that paradox is intoxicating.
Presenter asks
3:08Is it surprising for you to find yourself as a blockbuster movie director?
Intensely surprising to me, it was never what I thought I would end up doing … that character spoke to me for sure. I loved the fact that Jason Bourne was a sort of oppositional character … I think if you want to understand something of what happened in Britain and America in the early 2000s, the fear, the paranoia, I think the Bourne movies give you a pretty good sense of that.
Presenter asks
7:21Why are you interested in the feeling of threat simply as a human being?
I don't craft those things consciously … it reoccurs in the films I've made again and again, a sort of slow build up and the choreography of conflict … I think I've always had a sense of dread about me inside … these things go back to your childhood … I can remember as a small boy watching Snow White and being absolutely terrified by the witch.
The keepsakes
The book
A Hundred Years of Crystal Palace Kidnapping Club
I've been watching the palace for about fifty years. Traumatic time for you then. It'll give me endless evenings of of joy.
The luxury
My luxury will be to take my guitar, and one of the joys of being on a desert island, if I can have a few song books too, is I'll get the time to sit and get a few songs, learn all the way through as opposed to the tiny fragments, and that'll uh entertain me while I wait to be rescued.
Presenter asks
9:43Tell me a little bit more about your father.
He was a seafarer … He grew up in a very strict Baptist family … he rebelled against that. He went to sea. I think that gave him a freedom … I think they made this pact, unspoken probably, to escape from their families. And they escaped into the seafaring life. And that choice certainly was the defining choice for them, but also I think for all of us.
Presenter asks
17:56Why did you get kicked out of Gravesend Grammar School?
I think you could probably sum it up with being an absolutely huge pain in the ass … I was pretty much falling between the cracks … I ended up having an interview with Doctor Hinton, headmaster of Seven Oaks School … it had this reputation for being brilliantly innovative in its teaching … I owe everything to that school.
Presenter asks
26:46Can you explain what it is like to sit with the families of Stephen Lawrence or Bloody Sunday and watch your film with them?
You feel enormous responsibility, and you hope that you've discharged that responsibility well … I remember showing Doreen Lawrence that film … she fixed me with a most steely look and said, 'There's nothing that you can show that will be the remotest bit like what I experienced. And so don't be sensitive on my account. It's people out there that have to understand the truth.' … We should never forget that this is part of our world and those who are the victims demand to be heard, always, always, always.
“it's a Turbulent thing to do, of course, and it takes a toll on your life and on your family's lives, for sure. And of course it's ultimately rather a puny life'cause you're making something out of sound and light, which is nothing, you know, and you're trying to craft something that has power and power to connect and move people.”
“You're really trying to replicate the experiences that you had when you're in a dark room on your own. Watching cinema, and it becomes A sort of Sisyphian labour, because you're struggling to do something that no matter what you do. can never be as pure or as intense as what you experience as a child.”
“The entire experience, all the anxieties I had in life, all my difficulties to fit in, disappeared and I became absorbed in writing this whatever scenario it was and setting the angle poise lights because we didn't have any proper lights and hearing the film running across the sprockets. And I just found it the most beautiful and peaceful thing that I'd ever done in my entire life.”
“I was going to tell my stories my way I was going to control them entirely and never compromise. And I think that's when you become a filmmaker, not a shooter.”
“And she fixed me with a most steely look and said, There's nothing that you can show that will be the remotest bit like what I experienced. And so don't be sensitive on my account. It's people out there that have to understand the truth.”
“I definitely have a an ability to become heavily internalized. I think that comes from my childhood, you know, so I'm outwardly functioning but but inwardly Alone. I think it's part of the director's syndrome.”