0:00:02 > 0:00:07This programme contains some strong language.
0:00:07 > 0:00:11A distinguished Asian writer is about to have his life story told.
0:00:15 > 0:00:18All sorts of sordidness will emerge.
0:00:19 > 0:00:23He'll be exposed as a vain and philandering tyrant
0:00:23 > 0:00:25whose disturbing private life
0:00:25 > 0:00:29has fuelled the pages of his extensive, scabrous prose.
0:00:31 > 0:00:35"You think you like this writer?", wonders his biographer.
0:00:35 > 0:00:39"Well, see how badly he treated his wife, children and mistresses.
0:00:40 > 0:00:42"Hate him, hate his work."
0:00:44 > 0:00:46Who is this outrageous person?
0:00:46 > 0:00:50He's fiction - to a degree. He's the latest creation
0:00:50 > 0:00:53of an author who delights in literary provocation,
0:00:53 > 0:00:56blurring truth with invention,
0:00:56 > 0:00:59who robs the intimacies of his friends, lovers and family
0:00:59 > 0:01:02to put into his fictional work.
0:01:02 > 0:01:06When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.
0:01:08 > 0:01:10Yeah, too bad for the family, you might say.
0:01:12 > 0:01:14Looking back over the trail of bodies
0:01:14 > 0:01:17and dismembered memories, one wonders what havoc
0:01:17 > 0:01:23will he wreak next, the bold but ruthless writer, Hanif Kureishi?
0:01:33 > 0:01:36Kureishi is known for his sharp and satirical take
0:01:36 > 0:01:40on the big, tough themes of race, family and sexuality.
0:01:42 > 0:01:45He spoke for a generation of Asian immigrants
0:01:45 > 0:01:47and the complexities of integration.
0:01:50 > 0:01:53He foretold the rise of Islamic fundamentalism
0:01:53 > 0:01:56years before the 7/7 London bombs.
0:01:57 > 0:02:00His work over the last four decades
0:02:00 > 0:02:03has consistently upended the traditional immigrant narrative.
0:02:07 > 0:02:09If there is a Kureishi signature,
0:02:09 > 0:02:11it's a dependable knack of raising hackles.
0:02:13 > 0:02:17Being the first to put interracial gay sex on screen.
0:02:19 > 0:02:23Relishing taboos on the ageing libido.
0:02:23 > 0:02:24Three, I said!
0:02:24 > 0:02:28And no licking and burping, you dirty, filthy old shithead.
0:02:30 > 0:02:34But Kureishi has also been reviled for raiding his own life
0:02:34 > 0:02:37for material to put in his fictional work.
0:02:37 > 0:02:38Hi, Alan.
0:02:38 > 0:02:42Friends, lovers and family, though never named, are everywhere
0:02:42 > 0:02:44and very recognisable in his books.
0:02:44 > 0:02:46- Coffee? - Thank you.
0:02:48 > 0:02:51The Bromley Buddha is a dead ringer for his dad.
0:02:52 > 0:02:55His Uncle Omar, the bed-ridden alcoholic
0:02:55 > 0:02:56in My Beautiful launderette.
0:02:58 > 0:03:00Your sister was a bit mad at you
0:03:00 > 0:03:02because she was the whining narcissist,
0:03:02 > 0:03:05she assumed she was anyway, in The Mother.
0:03:07 > 0:03:10For once, believe! Just say something positive!
0:03:10 > 0:03:12Just, you know, make me feel better.
0:03:12 > 0:03:18- Don't be so harsh with me. - I am harsh! I am, I feel harsh.
0:03:18 > 0:03:21And then, of course, there's the question of
0:03:21 > 0:03:25whether or not Intimacy is a book about you and your life
0:03:25 > 0:03:28and your family and the fact that you left your family.
0:03:28 > 0:03:33So you take your own story and you use it, abuse it.
0:03:33 > 0:03:35Everything is material for you, isn't it?
0:03:35 > 0:03:37Writers are trouble, Alan.
0:03:37 > 0:03:42If you look at any writer of any value from Baudelaire to Flaubert
0:03:42 > 0:03:46to... And then later on, Henry Miller, Lawrence...
0:03:46 > 0:03:48A writer is a nuisance.
0:03:48 > 0:03:52But you may well turn up in one of my books without your trousers on,
0:03:52 > 0:03:56but you should be flattered, seems to me, you're in it at all.
0:03:56 > 0:03:59That's what you say to all those people who complain
0:03:59 > 0:04:01about being in your books, is it?
0:04:01 > 0:04:03Well, I've had lots of complaints
0:04:03 > 0:04:05from people who are not in them as well, Alan, you know.
0:04:08 > 0:04:12Hanif Kureishi turns 60 this year and has just written a new book.
0:04:13 > 0:04:15He's called it The Last Word.
0:04:15 > 0:04:20It's a comic novel about two men - a cantankerous old Indian writer
0:04:20 > 0:04:21and his young biographer.
0:04:23 > 0:04:27The book is fiction, but in typical Kureishi style,
0:04:27 > 0:04:31it's already caused a stink about whose life has been plundered,
0:04:31 > 0:04:35who this older writer is who has amazed, provoked, annoyed,
0:04:35 > 0:04:39and betrayed his way through a long and successful career.
0:04:41 > 0:04:44The new book - has it got any relation to reality at all?
0:04:44 > 0:04:47Might I recognise this person, by any chance?
0:04:47 > 0:04:50It seemed to remind me of a writer called VS Naipaul
0:04:50 > 0:04:54and of a book written by a man called Patrick French
0:04:54 > 0:04:58about that writer. Would you say that might be true?
0:04:58 > 0:05:01I would say that it would be inevitable
0:05:01 > 0:05:04that people would think about that,
0:05:04 > 0:05:09and obviously I had to think that they would think about that
0:05:09 > 0:05:11when I was writing the book.
0:05:12 > 0:05:15Erm, I don't know why you find this question interesting, Alan.
0:05:15 > 0:05:16What's interesting about it?
0:05:16 > 0:05:19The idea that you take something from the world
0:05:19 > 0:05:22and make it into something magnificent isn't very interesting.
0:05:22 > 0:05:25That's what we do. You've spent your whole life with artists.
0:05:25 > 0:05:29You know exactly what goes on and you're fascinated by artists.
0:05:29 > 0:05:32Why? What is interesting about that idea?
0:05:32 > 0:05:34It's the transformation that's interesting.
0:05:39 > 0:05:42The son of a Pakistani father and an English mother,
0:05:42 > 0:05:45Kureishi grew up in Bromley in the '60s and '70s,
0:05:45 > 0:05:49and escaped to London in his late teens to be a theatre writer
0:05:49 > 0:05:51at the Royal Court.
0:05:51 > 0:05:54His plays at the time were earnest studies
0:05:54 > 0:05:56of race relations in Britain.
0:05:57 > 0:06:00I always felt, well, you can't shy away from this.
0:06:00 > 0:06:02This is happening to people all the time.
0:06:02 > 0:06:04And if you want to write about England,
0:06:04 > 0:06:06it's a way of coming to terms with England
0:06:06 > 0:06:08because England is very racist.
0:06:08 > 0:06:11- I am an old woman! It is the insult...- Yes.
0:06:11 > 0:06:14- For them, we are not human. - I'm sorry. Sorry.
0:06:14 > 0:06:18Racism pervades everybody in England's life, to some extent.
0:06:18 > 0:06:20So it's a way of coming to grips with what England is,
0:06:20 > 0:06:22it's a way of writing about what England's becoming,
0:06:22 > 0:06:24and a way of showing...
0:06:25 > 0:06:28I wanted to work out through my writing
0:06:28 > 0:06:30why I was a problem for Britain.
0:06:30 > 0:06:34Why I was so difficult for them to understand or to swallow.
0:06:35 > 0:06:39What I figured out in the end was, and it took me ages to get there,
0:06:39 > 0:06:42was that it wasn't me that had to change.
0:06:42 > 0:06:45Britain had to change to accommodate me.
0:06:48 > 0:06:52Kureishi spent ten years scraping a living as a jobbing playwright
0:06:52 > 0:06:53for the Royal Court.
0:06:54 > 0:06:58I was living in a council flat in Barons Court Road.
0:06:58 > 0:07:00I had no money, I'd been on the dole,
0:07:00 > 0:07:03and I just thought, "I don't think I'm really a theatre writer,
0:07:03 > 0:07:05"I don't think I can do this, really."
0:07:05 > 0:07:09And the whole thing was going a bit belly up.
0:07:10 > 0:07:14Then, in the summer of 1981, Hanif's family,
0:07:14 > 0:07:17growing weary of his questionable career choice, offered him
0:07:17 > 0:07:20the opportunity to find a proper job.
0:07:22 > 0:07:26Well, there was a friend of my family who had launderettes,
0:07:26 > 0:07:28and he was sent by my family round to see me,
0:07:28 > 0:07:33and he used to take me round these launderettes to show them to me.
0:07:33 > 0:07:36And I think the idea was that I would help him with the launderettes
0:07:36 > 0:07:39or eventually I would take over the launderette business
0:07:39 > 0:07:43and that this would save me from the hopelessness of scribbling.
0:07:44 > 0:07:50It's nothing but a toilet in a youth club. A constant boil on my bum.
0:07:51 > 0:07:54And then I went to Pakistan for the first time.
0:07:54 > 0:07:56I used stay up all night, I couldn't sleep,
0:07:56 > 0:07:59and I used to stay up all night, and I started to write this story
0:07:59 > 0:08:01about these guys that run a launderette together.
0:08:01 > 0:08:05And it seemed to me to be a great story about Thatcherism.
0:08:05 > 0:08:06You know, this is a joke about Thatcherism
0:08:06 > 0:08:09that anybody in Britain can make it.
0:08:09 > 0:08:11All right, get started.
0:08:11 > 0:08:15- Here's the broom. Move it. - I don't only want to sweep up.
0:08:15 > 0:08:16What are you, Labour Party?
0:08:16 > 0:08:19I want to be manager of this place. I think I can do it.
0:08:19 > 0:08:21Please let me.
0:08:28 > 0:08:31Kureishi finished his insomnia-driven screenplay
0:08:31 > 0:08:35in the autumn of 1984, and chancing his arm that he'd get
0:08:35 > 0:08:39one of Britain's up-and-coming drama directors to make it,
0:08:39 > 0:08:41he went round to a house in Notting Hill,
0:08:41 > 0:08:46shoved the script through the letter box, and then quickly ran away.
0:08:53 > 0:08:57- No junk mail.- No scripts.
0:08:57 > 0:08:59We're here.
0:08:59 > 0:09:00- Go on...- Thank you.
0:09:00 > 0:09:03- Glad to see you've been on the bicycle, Stephen.- Absolutely.
0:09:03 > 0:09:05I was out there with Lance this morning.
0:09:05 > 0:09:07Here we are.
0:09:07 > 0:09:11Stephen Frears is now best known for films like The Queen and Philomena.
0:09:11 > 0:09:13Now, boys, do you want some tea?
0:09:13 > 0:09:15But he was directing BBC's Play For Today
0:09:15 > 0:09:18when Hanif was too timid to ring the doorbell.
0:09:18 > 0:09:21- Do you want PG Tips? - Yeah, PG Tips is fine.
0:09:21 > 0:09:22- Regular? - Regular, please.
0:09:22 > 0:09:25So do you remember what you made of...
0:09:25 > 0:09:29When you saw it, when you read it, what was your first instinct?
0:09:31 > 0:09:35- Thank you.- When I realised it was about immigrants,
0:09:35 > 0:09:39if I'm being honest, my heart slightly sank.
0:09:39 > 0:09:41I know you're not supposed to say things like that,
0:09:41 > 0:09:42but it slightly sank.
0:09:42 > 0:09:46And then at a certain moment I started to laugh,
0:09:46 > 0:09:48and then I was all right.
0:09:49 > 0:09:53In other words, it stopped being a sort of bleeding heart film.
0:09:53 > 0:09:54I'm saying dreadful things.
0:09:56 > 0:09:58I remember coming round here and meeting Stephen
0:09:58 > 0:10:02and Stephen walking up and down agitatedly,
0:10:02 > 0:10:06erm...encouraging me to make it more outrageous.
0:10:06 > 0:10:10To make the language bigger, to make the, er...
0:10:10 > 0:10:13To make it ruder, to make it bolder,
0:10:13 > 0:10:16and I found that fantastically encouraging and enlivening.
0:10:16 > 0:10:18Nobody had ever said that to me before.
0:10:18 > 0:10:21It just seemed very, very liberating to me.
0:10:21 > 0:10:23Since when he's been unstoppable.
0:10:23 > 0:10:27The British cinema before that had been films like Passage To India,
0:10:27 > 0:10:30I think David Lean's last film, you know,
0:10:30 > 0:10:32and there had been the Merchant Ivory films.
0:10:32 > 0:10:35- So these are very heavy sort of old-fashioned films...- Yes.
0:10:35 > 0:10:38..about the Empire and India and so on,
0:10:38 > 0:10:43so you come in and make this punky little film about a gay Pakistani...
0:10:43 > 0:10:46That's quite a twist on... In terms of the...
0:10:46 > 0:10:51Yes. Luckily, I was unaware of this revolutionary step I was making.
0:10:51 > 0:10:52To me, it was...
0:10:53 > 0:10:56..you know, rebellious and comic and it made me laugh,
0:10:56 > 0:10:57it was very funny.
0:11:02 > 0:11:05That door you've just taken off. Hang it back.
0:11:06 > 0:11:10I'm just a poor man, this is my room! Let's leave it that way!
0:11:12 > 0:11:16In My Beautiful launderette, Daniel Day-Lewis's character Johnny,
0:11:16 > 0:11:21a one-time National Front activist, now works for a Pakistani landlord.
0:11:23 > 0:11:25But this was written from the inside
0:11:25 > 0:11:28in some way that nothing had been before.
0:11:28 > 0:11:31No-one knew about the Pakistani middle class.
0:11:33 > 0:11:38None of us knew about their enterprise, their Thatcherism,
0:11:38 > 0:11:40that was all completely new, or it was new to me.
0:11:40 > 0:11:42Filthy, imperious swine!
0:11:42 > 0:11:44You scourged dog!
0:11:44 > 0:11:46Enemy of the third world!
0:11:46 > 0:11:48You and your kind, your days are numbered!
0:11:55 > 0:11:57Doesn't look too good, does it, Pakis doing this kind of thing?
0:11:57 > 0:12:01- Why not?- What would your enemies have to say about this, eh?
0:12:01 > 0:12:03Ain't exactly integration, is it?
0:12:04 > 0:12:08I'm a businessman, not a professional Pakistani.
0:12:08 > 0:12:12And there is no question of race in the new enterprise culture.
0:12:16 > 0:12:18I'll forward your mail!
0:12:22 > 0:12:27What about the famous scene, the infamous scene as it was
0:12:27 > 0:12:31to certain members of the community - the kiss, the gay kiss?
0:12:31 > 0:12:36This is a time, 1980s, when people weren't out
0:12:36 > 0:12:38quite in the way that they are today.
0:12:38 > 0:12:43It seemed appropriate, and so I really didn't have any sense of...
0:12:43 > 0:12:45I didn't feel the hand of history on my shoulder
0:12:45 > 0:12:50as Tony Blair would say, it was just a good script.
0:12:50 > 0:12:53- Even when you shot the scene? - The scene?
0:12:53 > 0:12:56Dan Day-Lewis says that all I said was, "Who's on top?"
0:13:03 > 0:13:06Timber's coming tomorrow morning. Getting it cheap.
0:13:07 > 0:13:10I've had a vision of how our place can be.
0:13:10 > 0:13:14Why don't people like launderettes? Because they're like toilets.
0:13:14 > 0:13:16This could be a Ritz among launderettes.
0:13:18 > 0:13:21A launderette as big as the Ritz.
0:13:21 > 0:13:22Oh, yes.
0:13:27 > 0:13:29Homosexuality had been illegal.
0:13:29 > 0:13:32You know, you could go to prison for being a homosexual in England
0:13:32 > 0:13:35and suddenly, joyfully, there were these two men kissing
0:13:35 > 0:13:37and previously, as you know in British films,
0:13:37 > 0:13:40all homosexuals had only been played by Dirk Bogarde.
0:13:40 > 0:13:43And most of them normally killed themselves at the end of the film.
0:13:43 > 0:13:47So this was a celebration of this new '80s sexuality,
0:13:47 > 0:13:49and of course it made Stephen's career.
0:13:51 > 0:13:53It went to New York and when it went to New York
0:13:53 > 0:13:56the reaction was quite different from the reaction over here.
0:13:56 > 0:13:59In other words... You don't remember, you're looking baffled.
0:13:59 > 0:14:00It wasn't, it was a big success.
0:14:00 > 0:14:03It was, and yet there were demonstrations.
0:14:03 > 0:14:04Oh, well, that's just...
0:14:04 > 0:14:08Listen, it's a big city, New York, and there were groups of, um...
0:14:09 > 0:14:10..protesting people, yes.
0:14:10 > 0:14:13"The product of a vile and perverted mind" is what...
0:14:13 > 0:14:16Well, it's hard to disagree with any of those sentiments.
0:14:16 > 0:14:20But it didn't affect box office, thank God.
0:14:23 > 0:14:26There was a wonderful moment when it went for a certificate
0:14:26 > 0:14:31from the censor, and one of them said, "Well, this film is racist,"
0:14:31 > 0:14:33and another one said,
0:14:33 > 0:14:35"It's written by a bloke with a Pakistani father."
0:14:35 > 0:14:37"Oh, well, in that case..."
0:14:37 > 0:14:41So, you know, it completely disarmed people because of its origins
0:14:41 > 0:14:44and because of its authority.
0:14:44 > 0:14:46Authority that wasn't coming from me, that was coming from Hanif
0:14:46 > 0:14:49because he knew what went on.
0:14:54 > 0:14:56The punky little film about a launderette
0:14:56 > 0:14:58was nominated for an Oscar.
0:14:58 > 0:15:01Frears' advice to the young screenwriter had paid off,
0:15:01 > 0:15:05and from now on Kureishi contrived to be ruder,
0:15:05 > 0:15:07funnier and more shocking.
0:15:07 > 0:15:11He soon came up with the gutsy comedy he's best known for -
0:15:11 > 0:15:14the flippant tale of a mixed-race adolescent growing up
0:15:14 > 0:15:16in suburban London.
0:15:18 > 0:15:21Karim Amir is the son of an English mother
0:15:21 > 0:15:23and a philandering Indian father.
0:15:24 > 0:15:29Up for any gratification that sex, drugs and punk might give him,
0:15:29 > 0:15:32the boy tries to forge an identity amid the confusions
0:15:32 > 0:15:36of liberalism and race relations in '70s Britain.
0:15:39 > 0:15:41It's difficult not to associate you
0:15:41 > 0:15:45with the central character, Karim, in The Buddha Of Suburbia,
0:15:45 > 0:15:47this kind of cocky little bastard
0:15:47 > 0:15:51trying to outwit South London's Paki-bashers
0:15:51 > 0:15:55and shag his way out of the deathly suburbs.
0:15:55 > 0:15:57I remember when I first started to write, thinking,
0:15:57 > 0:16:00"How do you write a book about somebody like me?"
0:16:00 > 0:16:05My father had come to Britain, and there was this kid, me,
0:16:05 > 0:16:12growing up in the suburbs, in love with pop but also...an immigrant,
0:16:12 > 0:16:15a Paki, a kid of whom it was always asked all the time,
0:16:15 > 0:16:19"Where do you belong?" or "Where do you come from?"
0:16:19 > 0:16:21And it was rough down there in South London,
0:16:21 > 0:16:23there was a huge amount of racism.
0:16:25 > 0:16:30- She doesn't go out with boys or with wogs. Got it?- Yeah.
0:16:30 > 0:16:33We don't want you blackies coming to this house.
0:16:33 > 0:16:35Have there been many?
0:16:35 > 0:16:36Many what, little coon?
0:16:38 > 0:16:41- Blackies. - We don't like it.
0:16:41 > 0:16:44However many niggers there are, we don't like it.
0:16:44 > 0:16:46We're with Enoch.
0:16:46 > 0:16:48If you lay one of your black hands near my daughter,
0:16:48 > 0:16:51I'll smash it with a...a hammer.
0:16:52 > 0:16:53With a hammer!
0:16:56 > 0:16:59What's terrible about racism, the claustrophobia,
0:16:59 > 0:17:01and I remember the sense of oppression,
0:17:01 > 0:17:03the awful sense of being a victim...
0:17:03 > 0:17:06what's awful about it is...
0:17:06 > 0:17:08how casual it can be.
0:17:08 > 0:17:12And it's the casualness of it that is so shocking, how...
0:17:13 > 0:17:18You know, the teachers when I was at school were incredibly racist.
0:17:18 > 0:17:22I had a teacher that would only refer to me as a Pakistani Pete.
0:17:24 > 0:17:26And then I, cos he was Scottish,
0:17:26 > 0:17:30I used to refer to him as Jock in return, and then he got mad.
0:17:30 > 0:17:33He got really crazy and I got sent to the headmaster.
0:17:33 > 0:17:36And then they wanted to beat me for insulting the teacher.
0:17:36 > 0:17:42- TEACHER:- ..Archbishop of Canterbury. In 604, it was created in Rochester.
0:17:42 > 0:17:44Wake up, Pakistani Pete!
0:17:44 > 0:17:46'So my whole school thing was a catastrophe
0:17:46 > 0:17:49'because of events like that.'
0:17:49 > 0:17:53But it was an unpleasant experience that got into The Buddha Of Suburbia
0:17:53 > 0:17:56and I remember thinking when you have unpleasant experiences,
0:17:56 > 0:17:58the only thing you can do is one, write about them,
0:17:58 > 0:18:01and two, make them comedies, in a sense.
0:18:07 > 0:18:08With My Beautiful Laundrette
0:18:08 > 0:18:13and now The Buddha, Hanif Kureishi was establishing himself
0:18:13 > 0:18:15as a ballsy social satirist,
0:18:15 > 0:18:18unafraid to show Asians as screwed up,
0:18:18 > 0:18:22or to ridicule the racist attitudes often held by native Brits.
0:18:24 > 0:18:28But then, as the '90s were approaching, something happened
0:18:28 > 0:18:31that would de-rail the confidence of multiculturalism
0:18:31 > 0:18:35and the status of writers to express themselves freely.
0:18:36 > 0:18:38On 14th February 1989,
0:18:38 > 0:18:43the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering Muslims
0:18:43 > 0:18:47to kill Kureishi's friend and fellow writer Salman Rushdie
0:18:47 > 0:18:49for his novel, The Satanic Verses.
0:18:51 > 0:18:57The fatwa... A writer writes a book, and a writer is a writer,
0:18:57 > 0:18:59he can write about what he likes,
0:18:59 > 0:19:02that's what we've been talking about, that's what you believe.
0:19:02 > 0:19:04You know, a writer... He's in pursuit of the truth.
0:19:06 > 0:19:08And then what happens?
0:19:08 > 0:19:12The death threat, the fatwa, other writers killed.
0:19:12 > 0:19:13Suddenly...
0:19:14 > 0:19:17..those writers who pursue the truth are imperilled,
0:19:17 > 0:19:19their lives are at risk.
0:19:20 > 0:19:23After the fatwa, then there became lots of talk about
0:19:23 > 0:19:25the idea of the insult.
0:19:27 > 0:19:31You know, the idea of there having to be... Other people having to be,
0:19:31 > 0:19:35as it were, protected from your words.
0:19:35 > 0:19:38I began to think very hard about the point and place
0:19:38 > 0:19:41of a writer in society.
0:19:41 > 0:19:44You know, before that we were, you know, you just wrote.
0:19:44 > 0:19:46And then after that, it became dangerous to write.
0:19:52 > 0:19:56The Salman Rushdie affair took an even more horrific turn today
0:19:56 > 0:19:59when an Iranian cleric offered a million dollar reward
0:19:59 > 0:20:03for the successful assassination of the author of The Satanic Verses.
0:20:04 > 0:20:07A group of writers led by Harold Pinter presented a petition
0:20:07 > 0:20:09at 10 Downing Street.
0:20:09 > 0:20:13Hanif Kureishi, you presented your petition today. What can it achieve?
0:20:13 > 0:20:15Well, as I'm sure you know,
0:20:15 > 0:20:17it's bad enough getting a bad review in the Guardian.
0:20:17 > 0:20:19Being condemned to death for a book you've written
0:20:19 > 0:20:23is obviously a risible matter, if it weren't so deeply serious.
0:20:23 > 0:20:26I suppose what we want to do is to impress on Mrs Thatcher
0:20:26 > 0:20:30the importance of her trying to persuade the Ayatollah
0:20:30 > 0:20:32to repudiate what he said.
0:20:32 > 0:20:34If you were Salman Rushdie, what would you be doing now?
0:20:34 > 0:20:38I'd be hiding under the bed with a sawn-off shotgun next to me.
0:20:38 > 0:20:40Well, after the fatwa, I think we were all frightened.
0:20:40 > 0:20:42We were all frightened in the sense that
0:20:42 > 0:20:43if you wanted to talk about religion
0:20:43 > 0:20:47or if you wanted to talk about radical ideology
0:20:47 > 0:20:51you could really get into trouble, you could put your life at risk.
0:20:51 > 0:20:53I mean, in a way, one wants to be provocative,
0:20:53 > 0:20:56but you don't want people going crazy and wanting to kill you
0:20:56 > 0:20:59for saying something that they disliked.
0:20:59 > 0:21:03So you, at this point, you write the screenplay My Son The Fanatic.
0:21:03 > 0:21:07- Yeah.- Obviously by now, the world seems to have changed,
0:21:07 > 0:21:12and you tackle it with your usual disrespect.
0:21:12 > 0:21:17I notice with you, you remain in your writing and your statements,
0:21:17 > 0:21:18and in your...
0:21:18 > 0:21:23everything you do, you remain as fearless, some may say as reckless,
0:21:23 > 0:21:24as you ever were.
0:21:24 > 0:21:26I'm very proud of My Son The Fanatic.
0:21:26 > 0:21:29I think it's a very important film and it's a very good film.
0:21:29 > 0:21:33And I was very aware in certain cities, particularly in Birmingham,
0:21:33 > 0:21:37that the Muslim community, the drug community and the prostitutes
0:21:37 > 0:21:41were all, as it were, living in close proximity to each other.
0:21:42 > 0:21:45And the character played by Om Puri is probably a character,
0:21:45 > 0:21:48in some sense, like my dad.
0:21:49 > 0:21:51I mean, he came over from India,
0:21:51 > 0:21:55came over from Pakistan to Britain to do well in Britain and to be liberal.
0:21:55 > 0:22:00A decent, hard-working man, likes women, likes to drink, you know.
0:22:00 > 0:22:03And then suddenly he wakes up one day
0:22:03 > 0:22:06and his son has turned into an arch-puritan.
0:22:12 > 0:22:16Bow down, saying, "Allahu Akbar."
0:22:16 > 0:22:19Place your hands on your knees and say,
0:22:19 > 0:22:23"Subhana Rabbi al-Azeem",
0:22:23 > 0:22:27"Glory to my Lord, the greatest," three times.
0:22:27 > 0:22:30But there is also a sort of understanding in this
0:22:30 > 0:22:34about why this boy might do this, My Son The Fanatic.
0:22:34 > 0:22:37He's portrayed, perfectly understandably,
0:22:37 > 0:22:39as someone who you can understand why he got there
0:22:39 > 0:22:41in some ways as well.
0:22:41 > 0:22:44Well, he feels like somebody who will never belong in England.
0:22:44 > 0:22:47And in a sense, he really makes a meal of it, makes the most of that,
0:22:47 > 0:22:49you might say. He says, "Look, they really don't want us here,
0:22:49 > 0:22:52"they hate us here. Why should we try to be like white boys,
0:22:52 > 0:22:54"because the white boys hate us?
0:22:54 > 0:22:56"What we should do is grasp this new identity",
0:22:56 > 0:22:59and as you know, this is a period of identity politics.
0:22:59 > 0:23:01"This is my identity," he says.
0:23:01 > 0:23:04"I'm a Muslim. Why pretend I'm a white boy?"
0:23:04 > 0:23:07Seriously, these English,
0:23:07 > 0:23:09you would be a fool to run them down.
0:23:09 > 0:23:13- I have been thinking seriously. - Good. Good.
0:23:13 > 0:23:18They say integrate, but they live in pornography and filth
0:23:18 > 0:23:20and tell us how backward we are.
0:23:20 > 0:23:24There's no doubt compared to us, they can have funny habits and all.
0:23:24 > 0:23:28- A society soaked in sex. - Not that I have benefited.
0:23:29 > 0:23:33In a sense, you might say he's sacrificing his soul for his father,
0:23:33 > 0:23:35and it's one of the things I had written about throughout my work,
0:23:35 > 0:23:40fathers and sons. He's giving up a progressive identity,
0:23:40 > 0:23:43as it were, to be purer than his father and to serve God.
0:23:43 > 0:23:45That is the meaning of sacrifice,
0:23:45 > 0:23:47and it really freaked out people in the West
0:23:47 > 0:23:49because they didn't understand sacrifice by then.
0:23:49 > 0:23:51The idea of sacrifice has gone.
0:23:51 > 0:23:54In the end, our cultures, they cannot be mixed.
0:23:54 > 0:23:57Everything is muddling already together, this thing and the other.
0:23:57 > 0:24:00- Some of us are wanting something more besides muddle.- What?
0:24:00 > 0:24:03Belief, purity, belonging to the past.
0:24:04 > 0:24:07I won't bring up my children in this country.
0:24:11 > 0:24:14I remember after the fatwa against Rushdie, I spent time at the mosques
0:24:14 > 0:24:17and colleges with these kids, you know, and you think...
0:24:17 > 0:24:20You could be Jewish, Pakistani, Indian. Whoever you are,
0:24:20 > 0:24:23you've come to Britain. What you want to do is do well for your family,
0:24:23 > 0:24:26you know. You want to make money and your children to be educated
0:24:26 > 0:24:29and so on. These kids, suddenly, though, are turning to the right.
0:24:29 > 0:24:31And they're turning to the far religious right
0:24:31 > 0:24:33and they're going to mosques.
0:24:33 > 0:24:36You go to the mosque and the women are sitting over there
0:24:36 > 0:24:37and the men are sitting over there.
0:24:37 > 0:24:39And I remember being in the Whitechapel mosques
0:24:39 > 0:24:42and seeing these incredible speeches
0:24:42 > 0:24:45by these imams, and they are marching up and down talking for hours
0:24:45 > 0:24:50about Israel, about lipstick, about make-up, about gender,
0:24:50 > 0:24:53about this, that and the other, incredible performances.
0:24:53 > 0:24:55So this wasn't like going to an English church
0:24:55 > 0:24:56where a vicar gives you a sermon.
0:24:56 > 0:24:59What drew you there? Why were you going to the mosques
0:24:59 > 0:25:00to see this happening?
0:25:00 > 0:25:04Because I was fascinated by what these people were up to,
0:25:04 > 0:25:07what was going on. This was happening nearby in my community.
0:25:07 > 0:25:11I used to go to the Shepherd's Bush mosque, you know.
0:25:11 > 0:25:15I remember being in a group of young people in their twenties
0:25:15 > 0:25:19and the argument was - what do you do if your parents don't pray?
0:25:20 > 0:25:23What do you do if your parents aren't observant enough?
0:25:23 > 0:25:28How can we deal with the fact that our parents are liberals
0:25:28 > 0:25:32or they might drink and they break the basic rules of the Koran?
0:25:32 > 0:25:35How can we get them to be more observant?
0:25:35 > 0:25:39And the idea was that you put huge pressure on your mum and dad
0:25:39 > 0:25:40to be more religious.
0:25:46 > 0:25:48What's doing here?
0:25:48 > 0:25:49These boys are not welcome here.
0:25:49 > 0:25:51They're always arguing with the elders.
0:25:51 > 0:25:54They think everyone but them is corrupt and foolish.
0:25:57 > 0:26:00But they are not afraid of the truth. They stand for something.
0:26:02 > 0:26:03We never did that.
0:26:05 > 0:26:07Allahu Akbar.
0:26:09 > 0:26:11I take it you're not a believer,
0:26:11 > 0:26:14you never have been a believer in that sense,
0:26:14 > 0:26:16in the sense that you're not religious.
0:26:16 > 0:26:18I'm a believer in culture.
0:26:20 > 0:26:24Religion is part of culture, right? But it's a small part of culture.
0:26:24 > 0:26:27And there's another part of culture that is, as it were,
0:26:27 > 0:26:29always pushing the boundaries.
0:26:29 > 0:26:32There's another part of culture that says, what are the rules?
0:26:32 > 0:26:35And why are the rules here rather than there?
0:26:35 > 0:26:37Why can we say that rather than that?
0:26:37 > 0:26:40And as a writer, your instinct is to push against the rules to find out,
0:26:40 > 0:26:43in one sense, what they are.
0:26:43 > 0:26:47But also to find out what you can't say, where you can't go.
0:26:47 > 0:26:51And that's in that zone, as it were, of the unspoken,
0:26:51 > 0:26:53it gets really interesting.
0:26:59 > 0:27:02In 1998, Kureishi stepped up his campaign
0:27:02 > 0:27:04to speak the unspeakable truth.
0:27:06 > 0:27:10But this time, the truths he chose to betray were not the concerns
0:27:10 > 0:27:15of race or culture, but marriage and the break-up of his own family.
0:27:20 > 0:27:23"It's the saddest night, for I am leaving and not coming back.
0:27:23 > 0:27:27"Tomorrow morning, when the woman I've lived with for six years
0:27:27 > 0:27:28"has gone to work on her bicycle
0:27:28 > 0:27:32"and our children have taken to the park with their ball,
0:27:32 > 0:27:35"I will pack some things into a suitcase, slip out of my house
0:27:35 > 0:27:40"hoping that no-one will see me and take the tube to Victor's place."
0:27:41 > 0:27:44I'm going to go on because I just want to read this.
0:27:44 > 0:27:48"Then this could be our last evening as an innocent, complete,
0:27:48 > 0:27:52"ideal family. My last night with a woman I've known for ten years,
0:27:52 > 0:27:57"a woman I know almost everything about and want no more of.
0:27:57 > 0:28:01"Soon, we will be like strangers. No, we can never be that.
0:28:01 > 0:28:05"Hurting someone is an act of reluctant intimacy."
0:28:07 > 0:28:08That's so good, Alan,
0:28:08 > 0:28:11I'm glad you've decided to read my whole book back to me.
0:28:11 > 0:28:13What is the point of reading that back to me?
0:28:13 > 0:28:16I'm reading it to you because I want people to hear it,
0:28:16 > 0:28:17but also, I'm just asking you...
0:28:17 > 0:28:20That's rather beautiful, though. It's rather moving.
0:28:20 > 0:28:21There's no cruelty in that, actually.
0:28:21 > 0:28:23Well, it's true that much of the book...
0:28:23 > 0:28:25What you've read is rather tender, actually.
0:28:25 > 0:28:28I agree with you, and I think much of the book is tender,
0:28:28 > 0:28:31but the fact that details in that
0:28:31 > 0:28:34that are quite clearly details that are recognisably about you
0:28:34 > 0:28:38and your family and your children and your wife...
0:28:39 > 0:28:42- You refer to... - All art is exposure, Alan.
0:28:43 > 0:28:46Hurting other people might be really important.
0:28:54 > 0:28:58Intimacy tells the story of a man preparing to leave his
0:28:58 > 0:29:02"nagging, boring bitch" of a wife and their two small children
0:29:02 > 0:29:04for a younger woman.
0:29:06 > 0:29:08The lines of fiction and autobiography were,
0:29:08 > 0:29:12in the eyes of both his family and the press, blurred.
0:29:13 > 0:29:18Kureishi had himself recently left his partner and his two young boys.
0:29:20 > 0:29:24For a long time afterwards, Kureishi was accused of committing
0:29:24 > 0:29:26the worst kind of literary exploitation.
0:29:30 > 0:29:36My intention was to write a book about how certain relationships
0:29:36 > 0:29:39or certain stages in certain relationships
0:29:39 > 0:29:40can make you monstrous,
0:29:40 > 0:29:43and that we live in a world in which relationships have to end.
0:29:43 > 0:29:47And it's a book about the violence of loss, of waking up in the morning
0:29:47 > 0:29:49and looking at someone and knowing that you hate them.
0:29:52 > 0:29:56You wanted to reveal the most callous aspects of desire
0:29:56 > 0:30:01and what it leads to, and with this book you gave us the line,
0:30:01 > 0:30:07"There are some fucks for which a person would have their partner and children drown in a freezing sea."
0:30:08 > 0:30:11Any in particular?
0:30:11 > 0:30:14That's a wonderful line, Alan. Read that to me...
0:30:14 > 0:30:18If ever I doubt my talent, read that to me over and over again.
0:30:21 > 0:30:24Obviously, Sachin and Carlo were very young at the time.
0:30:24 > 0:30:27What do the boys say about it? About Intimacy?
0:30:29 > 0:30:31You can't protect children from the real world.
0:30:31 > 0:30:35You give them the drip, drip of the real world as they get older.
0:30:36 > 0:30:40And they have to learn, as we all have to learn, that no relationship,
0:30:40 > 0:30:44no adult relationship, no marriage, is a paradise.
0:30:47 > 0:30:49I'm going to read you this passage also.
0:30:50 > 0:30:54"I perch on the edge of the bath and watch my sons, aged five and three,
0:30:54 > 0:30:58"one at each end. They're ebullient and fierce and people say
0:30:58 > 0:31:02"what happy and affectionate children they are.
0:31:02 > 0:31:05"This morning, before I set out for the day,
0:31:05 > 0:31:09"knowing I had to settle a few things in my mind, the elder boy,
0:31:09 > 0:31:12"insisting on another kiss before I closed the door,
0:31:12 > 0:31:15"said, "Daddy, I love everyone."
0:31:17 > 0:31:22"Tomorrow I will do something that will damage and scar them."
0:31:26 > 0:31:27Carlo!
0:31:29 > 0:31:30Sachin!
0:31:35 > 0:31:37Hey, guys. How are you doing? Nice to see you.
0:31:40 > 0:31:45I hope it's not too squalid. Oh... Thank God your mother's not here.
0:31:45 > 0:31:46- She wouldn't like this, no.- No.
0:31:49 > 0:31:52- What do you want to eat? - Fish and chips.
0:31:55 > 0:31:59Carlo and Sachin are Hanif's twin sons, now in their twenties
0:31:59 > 0:32:03and living and studying together at university.
0:32:03 > 0:32:05They were four years old when their dad left their mother
0:32:05 > 0:32:09and wrote about the break-up in his novel Intimacy.
0:32:11 > 0:32:14I remember you coming into my study once
0:32:14 > 0:32:17looking around and saying, "God, is this all you do all day,
0:32:17 > 0:32:18"just sit in here?"
0:32:20 > 0:32:22And that is all you do all day.
0:32:22 > 0:32:25Yeah, well, I make up stuff in my mind.
0:32:25 > 0:32:30I'm reading, at the moment, The Last Word.
0:32:30 > 0:32:34And like, it's really funny, actually.
0:32:34 > 0:32:38Have you read The Buddha Of Suburbia? Sach?
0:32:38 > 0:32:41- Me?- Yeah.- No, no, I haven't read it yet.
0:32:41 > 0:32:44- Are you going to read it? - I will, 100%.
0:32:44 > 0:32:47- It's a good one, it's funny. - Yeah, I know, I know.
0:32:47 > 0:32:49You might be too close or something.
0:32:49 > 0:32:52Yeah, I feel like I'm too close to it to read it now.
0:32:52 > 0:32:55When I wrote my novel Intimacy, I wrote it really quickly
0:32:55 > 0:32:58and I wanted it to be raw, and I just put it out as it was
0:32:58 > 0:33:03without much revision because there's something about its rawness, I guess,
0:33:03 > 0:33:04that I wanted to leave in.
0:33:05 > 0:33:07Um...
0:33:07 > 0:33:09Have you read it?
0:33:09 > 0:33:12No, I certainly wouldn't read it while you're alive
0:33:12 > 0:33:15just cos of all the commotion it caused, because it's, you know,
0:33:15 > 0:33:17directly about Mum.
0:33:17 > 0:33:19So it's quite a raw subject.
0:33:19 > 0:33:22And she obviously wasn't happy with it as well.
0:33:22 > 0:33:26So... I don't know. I think reading it might...
0:33:26 > 0:33:29Well, I'd hope it wouldn't, but reading it might change
0:33:29 > 0:33:34my ideas on you and I wouldn't want that now, especially.
0:33:35 > 0:33:37I wouldn't say that it was...
0:33:38 > 0:33:41..a book about any specific person, but it's about a situation.
0:33:41 > 0:33:43You can say that about any of your books...
0:33:43 > 0:33:46Obviously, it's not going to have her name as the name of the...
0:33:46 > 0:33:51But people know, people can... People knew that it was about Mum.
0:33:51 > 0:33:54- Yeah.- But did you not think about it when you wrote it
0:33:54 > 0:33:57that we would read it one day? You spoke to Mum about that, didn't you?
0:33:57 > 0:33:58- Yeah.- What did she say?
0:34:00 > 0:34:01I can't remember.
0:34:01 > 0:34:04She said, "Don't let Carlo and Sachin read it," didn't she?
0:34:04 > 0:34:07I've never written anything that I would be ashamed of,
0:34:07 > 0:34:11- that I couldn't...- But she's been ashamed of it, though.
0:34:13 > 0:34:15Well, I'm sorry about that.
0:34:17 > 0:34:20As long as the people liked it, I suppose.
0:34:21 > 0:34:24Well, sometimes you have to say things or write things
0:34:24 > 0:34:25that are...
0:34:26 > 0:34:30..I guess on the edge, and that makes them alive, in a particular way.
0:34:40 > 0:34:42Have you mellowed, do you think, as you've got older?
0:34:44 > 0:34:46I haven't fucking mellowed at all.
0:34:46 > 0:34:49I am more annoyed and more bad-tempered and more disagreeable
0:34:49 > 0:34:51than I ever was before. And it seems to me
0:34:51 > 0:34:53that there are more and more things to be annoyed about
0:34:53 > 0:34:56and real things to be annoyed about in the world, actually.
0:34:56 > 0:34:59And I think all these fatuous questions you've been asking me
0:34:59 > 0:35:01about, you know, "Is so and so offended by this,"
0:35:01 > 0:35:03and "So and so offended by that..."
0:35:03 > 0:35:06I don't think anybody could live freely or intelligently
0:35:06 > 0:35:12in the world at all if they pretended to worry all the time about...
0:35:13 > 0:35:15..the feelings of other people.
0:35:19 > 0:35:22Since the scarring episode of his break-up novel,
0:35:22 > 0:35:25whose truth would Kureishi pursue next?
0:35:25 > 0:35:28His subjects, over the last 15 years,
0:35:28 > 0:35:31like the writer himself, have changed.
0:35:31 > 0:35:33They have aged.
0:35:33 > 0:35:39In 2006, he wrote a screenplay about two curmudgeonly old actors who,
0:35:39 > 0:35:42with their heady days of stardom and philandering behind them,
0:35:42 > 0:35:45are looking for other comforts in old age.
0:35:47 > 0:35:50You should try these. You'll never wake up.
0:35:50 > 0:35:52It's the waking up pills I'm looking for.
0:35:52 > 0:35:55Anything blue, I recommend for that.
0:35:55 > 0:35:58White ones give me more of a thrill.
0:35:58 > 0:36:01Mmm. There we are.
0:36:01 > 0:36:08"Do not operate heavy machinery. Keep away from children."
0:36:08 > 0:36:10Biblical advice.
0:36:10 > 0:36:11Here you go, gentlemen.
0:36:11 > 0:36:13Excellent, my dear.
0:36:17 > 0:36:20In recent years, Kureishi has been loyal
0:36:20 > 0:36:22to one significant relationship.
0:36:22 > 0:36:26All his films of late have been collaborations with his old friend
0:36:26 > 0:36:30and Buddha Of Suburbia director, Roger Michell.
0:36:30 > 0:36:34Well, we like each other's company. I like Rog, I like being with him.
0:36:34 > 0:36:38And I can do stuff with Roger that I can't do on my own.
0:36:38 > 0:36:42And he knows, actually, that the best work he does
0:36:42 > 0:36:43is the work that he does with me
0:36:43 > 0:36:46and it makes him crazy because he's dependent on me
0:36:46 > 0:36:47and I'm dependent on him,
0:36:47 > 0:36:50we need each other and we do something good when we're together.
0:36:50 > 0:36:53We are a bit like a married couple in that we bicker and we argue
0:36:53 > 0:36:59and we... It takes us a long time to evolve a script, doesn't it?
0:36:59 > 0:37:03Well, I write what I can and I go as far as I can,
0:37:03 > 0:37:05- and then I give it on to Rog... - Which isn't usually very far.
0:37:05 > 0:37:08Which isn't that far, and then Roger gives me a bollocking.
0:37:08 > 0:37:11And then I have to try... Roger is astounded by the fact
0:37:11 > 0:37:13that I can't guess what he wants.
0:37:16 > 0:37:19He seems to think that I should know already what is in his mind
0:37:19 > 0:37:20what he wants to shoot,
0:37:20 > 0:37:24and then becomes enraged when somehow I haven't been able to do that.
0:37:24 > 0:37:28They're evolutions, really. And I always expect something,
0:37:28 > 0:37:31something interesting and out of the ordinary.
0:37:31 > 0:37:34Horrible, horrible...
0:37:34 > 0:37:37Foul, vile beyond belief.
0:37:37 > 0:37:39What an upset.
0:37:41 > 0:37:45Was the bath too cold or the towel too hot? Was the fish overcooked?
0:37:45 > 0:37:47Fish? Fish?
0:37:47 > 0:37:54Fish? I'd have been lucky to get a fish finger inserted into my rectum.
0:37:54 > 0:37:56Good God!
0:37:56 > 0:37:58Venus, it started off, I remember you telling me,
0:37:58 > 0:38:01it started off as an account of your grumpy breakfasts.
0:38:01 > 0:38:04- Yeah.- So it was really about the old geezers in Venus
0:38:04 > 0:38:07- until, bang, arrived this... - Beautiful young woman.
0:38:07 > 0:38:08..this minger from up north.
0:38:11 > 0:38:16It's really about how the libido never dies. Oddly enough.
0:38:18 > 0:38:24So Peter O'Toole falls in love in some sense with Jodie Whittaker.
0:38:27 > 0:38:29And they have a really good time together
0:38:29 > 0:38:33and they really say good things, interesting things to one another,
0:38:33 > 0:38:37and you might say that is a form of creative, if not libidinous living.
0:38:40 > 0:38:42I will die soon, Venus.
0:38:44 > 0:38:46Can I touch your hand?
0:38:46 > 0:38:50- That's one chat-up line I haven't heard.- I'm impotent, of course.
0:38:50 > 0:38:52Thank Christ.
0:38:52 > 0:38:55I can still take a theoretical interest.
0:38:57 > 0:38:59Basically, that's what you take,
0:38:59 > 0:39:02is the simple conjunction of two people,
0:39:02 > 0:39:05and it's sexual in the widest, broadest sense,
0:39:05 > 0:39:09not only in terms of people's bodies, but in terms of creativity.
0:39:09 > 0:39:12Or you might say in terms of the creativity of living.
0:39:14 > 0:39:15You can touch my hand.
0:39:26 > 0:39:30I mean, the one thing that we need, the one thing that keeps us alive,
0:39:30 > 0:39:31the one thing that drives us,
0:39:31 > 0:39:35the one thing that is worth living for is desire.
0:39:35 > 0:39:38That is the motor of life. Desire, libido.
0:39:45 > 0:39:47Only with your fingers.
0:39:48 > 0:39:50Anything else would make me vomitous.
0:39:52 > 0:39:53You know, we're just getting older,
0:39:53 > 0:39:56and we're getting older in parallel, which is good.
0:39:56 > 0:39:59It's nice to have a kind of ageing buddy
0:39:59 > 0:40:01with whom you can compare notes,
0:40:01 > 0:40:06aches and pains and ailments and marital issues.
0:40:06 > 0:40:08Do you think I am your older brother?
0:40:08 > 0:40:11I think of you more as my younger brother
0:40:11 > 0:40:15who needs a little bit of looking after and, you know,
0:40:15 > 0:40:17needs to be shown to his chair now
0:40:17 > 0:40:19and handed the paper and his glasses.
0:40:19 > 0:40:22But I give you a shove, I think, with some of the writing.
0:40:22 > 0:40:25Yeah, and I think I give you a huge fucking kick up the arse.
0:40:25 > 0:40:27Yeah, you do, actually, yeah.
0:40:32 > 0:40:38Where did you get this notion of a grandmother having sex
0:40:38 > 0:40:41with this sort of, the younger man?
0:40:42 > 0:40:46I think I can remember being, this may be a false or screen memory,
0:40:46 > 0:40:48being in a restaurant with my mum
0:40:49 > 0:40:54and Mum saying about the waiter, who was Indian, of course,
0:40:54 > 0:40:57"Oh, he's got lovely hands," she said.
0:40:57 > 0:41:01And I thought... "Oh, I wonder what it would be like
0:41:01 > 0:41:03to think that nobody would touch you again
0:41:03 > 0:41:05"and whether you would mind about that?"
0:41:07 > 0:41:09We had been talking about anarchy,
0:41:09 > 0:41:13of the trouble that saying certain things causes,
0:41:13 > 0:41:15and I thought "What would happen if this woman decides
0:41:15 > 0:41:18"that she wants to, as it were, resexualise herself?"
0:41:19 > 0:41:22And then you have a story. It's a very simple idea.
0:41:25 > 0:41:26Oh, Darren,
0:41:26 > 0:41:29this cigarette's made my chest all congested.
0:41:29 > 0:41:31Oh, I can't breathe.
0:41:33 > 0:41:35And what would happen if you did breathe?
0:41:37 > 0:41:38Um, I'd say...
0:41:41 > 0:41:44"Would you... Would it be too much trouble?
0:41:46 > 0:41:47"Would you mind?
0:41:50 > 0:41:51"The spare room's...
0:41:54 > 0:41:56"Would you come to the spare room with me?"
0:41:59 > 0:42:00Would you?
0:42:09 > 0:42:12Most writing is about the price we pay for certain passions.
0:42:14 > 0:42:17It's a very simple idea. What happens if this woman decides
0:42:17 > 0:42:20that she wants to be loved by this man?
0:42:20 > 0:42:22And what happens to the rest of the family?
0:42:22 > 0:42:24What chaos does it cause?
0:42:28 > 0:42:29Stand up.
0:42:37 > 0:42:38Are you ready?
0:42:49 > 0:42:52Hanif and Roger came up with the premise
0:42:52 > 0:42:55for their most searing pensionable-age comedy drama
0:42:55 > 0:42:58when their producer Kevin Loader
0:42:58 > 0:43:01sent them away together on a mini-break to Paris.
0:43:01 > 0:43:03What time does the humiliation start?
0:43:03 > 0:43:06I think two is the first scheduled meeting.
0:43:07 > 0:43:10This time, their semi-autobiographical musings
0:43:10 > 0:43:13on the loves and fears of ageing intellectuals
0:43:13 > 0:43:17became a film about a couple weekending in Paris
0:43:17 > 0:43:19to mark their 30 years of marriage.
0:43:21 > 0:43:25- You've got the Euros. - I've got the Euros, have I?
0:43:26 > 0:43:27Don't start.
0:43:29 > 0:43:31You never lose anything.
0:43:31 > 0:43:33I'll lose you in a minute.
0:43:42 > 0:43:47Some audiences have gone to the cinema expecting a feel-good romcom,
0:43:47 > 0:43:52only to find, in Roger and Hanif's world, that moments of levity
0:43:52 > 0:43:56are never far from feel-bad moments of bruising disappointment.
0:44:00 > 0:44:05You know the BAFTA longlist is being announced in ten minutes?
0:44:08 > 0:44:10- Have you got a signal?- Yes.
0:44:11 > 0:44:15Well, I've not had a single e-mail, which doesn't bode well.
0:44:15 > 0:44:17No. I've got the nominations here.
0:44:17 > 0:44:20Make our blood boil.
0:44:20 > 0:44:23Well, we don't make it into the Outstanding British Film Award.
0:44:24 > 0:44:29Directors are Greengrass, Russell, McQueen, Cuaron, Scorsese.
0:44:30 > 0:44:32Roger's always whingeing about something,
0:44:32 > 0:44:34as you will have experienced.
0:44:38 > 0:44:41Best films are 12 Years, American Hustle,
0:44:41 > 0:44:44Captain Philips, Philomena, Gravity.
0:44:44 > 0:44:46How about that? A clean sweep.
0:44:50 > 0:44:52Guys, there's always next year's Oscars.
0:45:04 > 0:45:07That's number 11. Here we go. Number 13, yeah.
0:45:07 > 0:45:09- Hello.- Hello.
0:45:09 > 0:45:11Just mention the film a lot.
0:45:11 > 0:45:12Same questions, same answers, dude.
0:45:12 > 0:45:16How a city like Paris can inspire you?
0:45:16 > 0:45:19A couple are taken out of their environment and sent to Paris.
0:45:19 > 0:45:20Why Paris?
0:45:22 > 0:45:25Le Week-End has gone down well with critics so far,
0:45:25 > 0:45:29but it's a tough sell. It's about a flagging marriage,
0:45:29 > 0:45:31and asks that key Kureishi question -
0:45:31 > 0:45:33choose safety of habit
0:45:33 > 0:45:36or the thrill of escape and re-invention?
0:45:36 > 0:45:40Most stories are about the beginnings of relationships.
0:45:40 > 0:45:43Young, beautiful people kissing and making love.
0:45:43 > 0:45:45This is about two knackered old people who are tired
0:45:45 > 0:45:49and whose kids have left home, who have mostly had their lives
0:45:49 > 0:45:51but they know they've got a bit left.
0:45:51 > 0:45:54But the real question for any of us in any sort of relationship is,
0:45:54 > 0:45:56how do you sustain a relationship?
0:45:56 > 0:45:59Not over a year, not over two years, not over five years,
0:45:59 > 0:46:04but how cam you sustain a relationship for 15, 20 or 30 years?
0:46:04 > 0:46:05- Thank you.- Bye.- Cheers, bye-bye.
0:46:05 > 0:46:07- OK.- Bon.- Next.
0:46:10 > 0:46:13As for the author who can't help
0:46:13 > 0:46:15but weave his own story into his work,
0:46:15 > 0:46:19what are the themes that are driving his writing now?
0:46:19 > 0:46:24Anxiety about career? Age? Libido?
0:46:24 > 0:46:28- Et l'amour. And love. - There you go, baby!
0:46:29 > 0:46:31Jim Broadbent's character was once a radical
0:46:31 > 0:46:34and brilliant academic, but his good looks and career
0:46:34 > 0:46:38are disintegrating. He's fearful of what lies ahead.
0:46:38 > 0:46:42Is he a reflection of Kureishi's present mood?
0:46:42 > 0:46:46I was brilliant at school. Bit of a star at university.
0:46:48 > 0:46:52I have to say I'm amazed by how mediocre I've turned out to be.
0:46:52 > 0:46:55You can draw, you're musical.
0:46:55 > 0:47:01The character played by Jim Broadbent is a rather moving fellow.
0:47:01 > 0:47:03It's not too late for you to find another direction.
0:47:04 > 0:47:09He's obviously intelligent and kind, a decent fellow.
0:47:09 > 0:47:11That makes it much more difficult
0:47:11 > 0:47:14for her to betray him or to leave him.
0:47:14 > 0:47:16People don't change.
0:47:16 > 0:47:19They do. They can get worse.
0:47:21 > 0:47:24But then the voice of agitation comes through.
0:47:24 > 0:47:27And this time the rebel who makes a bid for selfishness
0:47:27 > 0:47:31is Lindsay Duncan's character, a near-retirement teacher
0:47:31 > 0:47:34who is fighting for a third act in her life.
0:47:38 > 0:47:39What's so amusing?
0:47:40 > 0:47:46You're always about to write a book or about to decorate the bathroom
0:47:46 > 0:47:50or about to tell me something which will alter our lives for ever.
0:47:51 > 0:47:55- But you know what you are? - Potential Nobel laureate?
0:47:55 > 0:48:00You are the postman who never knocks.
0:48:00 > 0:48:01And you know why that is?
0:48:01 > 0:48:05Please, darling, lighten my burden of ignorance.
0:48:05 > 0:48:07I'm not sure you've got any balls.
0:48:09 > 0:48:13I really love the character that Lindsay Duncan plays in this film.
0:48:13 > 0:48:16It seems to me that she's really funny.
0:48:16 > 0:48:18She's really sexy and really lively.
0:48:18 > 0:48:22But I've had a lot of complaints from various women
0:48:22 > 0:48:26that she's a sort of cold, frigid bitch and rather mean to him.
0:48:26 > 0:48:28But I always think that if you were married
0:48:28 > 0:48:30to the Jim Broadbent character in this film,
0:48:30 > 0:48:32you would become rather sadistic.
0:48:32 > 0:48:37His masochism makes things much worse.
0:48:38 > 0:48:39Get down!
0:48:47 > 0:48:49People do find it an uncomfortable watch.
0:48:49 > 0:48:52Some people have said that they are very pleased
0:48:52 > 0:48:56they didn't watch it with their partners. And others are saying
0:48:56 > 0:48:59those who did watch it with their partners find themselves
0:48:59 > 0:49:02looking at each other in awful recognition
0:49:02 > 0:49:05every five or ten minutes.
0:49:05 > 0:49:07There's the scene where Jim is on all fours approaching Lindsay
0:49:07 > 0:49:11and she's sort of playing with him, toying with him, possibly.
0:49:12 > 0:49:14Let me smell you.
0:49:19 > 0:49:21Please.
0:49:21 > 0:49:22Just a sniff.
0:49:22 > 0:49:24And if you look at the very end of that scene,
0:49:24 > 0:49:26how Roger's directed the actors...
0:49:26 > 0:49:28You're a naughty dog.
0:49:28 > 0:49:30..it's very telling.
0:49:30 > 0:49:33It finishes on a moment of tenderness and playfulness
0:49:33 > 0:49:38which is not cruel and dark in the most horrible way.
0:49:40 > 0:49:46Other directors might take Hanif's work in a very much kind of crueller
0:49:46 > 0:49:50and more manipulative and less tender direction
0:49:50 > 0:49:52than Roger takes it.
0:49:52 > 0:49:55And you know, that's partly why these films are so wonderful
0:49:55 > 0:49:57and will last.
0:50:01 > 0:50:05I think I probably ameliorate some of his excesses
0:50:05 > 0:50:08and I think that we're good for each other,
0:50:08 > 0:50:10I think we're a good combination.
0:50:13 > 0:50:15I think you're playing with perfection now.
0:50:16 > 0:50:19People say we're sort of Lennon and McCartney, you know,
0:50:19 > 0:50:22and that I write the sweet melodic top line
0:50:22 > 0:50:26and he writes the sort of angry, rasping lyric.
0:50:26 > 0:50:28I suppose there's some truth in that.
0:50:31 > 0:50:34Oh, thank you, sir. Just put that there. That's fine.
0:50:34 > 0:50:36Great. Yeah, lovely. That's all I want.
0:50:38 > 0:50:41See, you're making me look posh, aren't you? Here's this posh bloke
0:50:41 > 0:50:44in this fucking hotel eating his fucking posh breakfast.
0:50:44 > 0:50:46You don't realise.
0:50:48 > 0:50:51It's a very strange life, being a writer.
0:50:51 > 0:50:55You spend most of your time on your own
0:50:55 > 0:51:00sitting in a room bleeding from the ears, just writing.
0:51:00 > 0:51:04Then you come out and you do 20 interviews a day
0:51:04 > 0:51:08for at least two days and you go back into your room and write again.
0:51:08 > 0:51:11Then you do the same thing in another country.
0:51:12 > 0:51:16And then in another country. One day it's a film, one day it's a book.
0:51:16 > 0:51:17Madness.
0:51:19 > 0:51:22You wouldn't want this work. You really wouldn't.
0:51:25 > 0:51:27Fucking knackering.
0:51:32 > 0:51:37It struck me, watching Le Week-End, that these themes of emasculation
0:51:37 > 0:51:40don't quite ring true with the Kureishi I've come to know.
0:51:41 > 0:51:44Maybe it's neither half of the old married couple
0:51:44 > 0:51:47who speak for his current mood.
0:51:47 > 0:51:49Perhaps he'd rather we thought of him as the wild
0:51:49 > 0:51:54and flamboyant writer who blasts in towards the end of the film,
0:51:54 > 0:51:55screaming for attention.
0:51:55 > 0:51:59Nick Burrows? No, is that really you?
0:51:59 > 0:52:02Under all that terribly un-English passion?
0:52:02 > 0:52:05Good God! Good God! Hello, there!
0:52:05 > 0:52:07There's this sort of conversation going on between
0:52:07 > 0:52:10the Jeff Goldblum character and the Jim Broadbent character.
0:52:10 > 0:52:13The Jeff Goldblum character... You know, he's got the kind of...
0:52:13 > 0:52:16If you like, the Kureishi spirit.
0:52:16 > 0:52:19Well, he's a slightly sort of...
0:52:19 > 0:52:23mad and a bit monstrous.
0:52:23 > 0:52:26And the monstrous characters are always fun.
0:52:26 > 0:52:29He's exactly the sort of person
0:52:29 > 0:52:33that I would really be attracted to as a friend
0:52:33 > 0:52:36because he's so self-deceiving.
0:52:36 > 0:52:40And such a liar, such a cheat and so full of vigour.
0:52:40 > 0:52:43He and Jim were big mates at university,
0:52:43 > 0:52:46so it's as though you see their lives running together.
0:52:46 > 0:52:51That...Jim Broadbent's character thinks, "I could have had that life.
0:52:51 > 0:52:54"That could have been me. Would I have wanted that?"
0:52:55 > 0:52:57She's going to eat me alive.
0:52:59 > 0:53:02I'm not a total idiot.
0:53:02 > 0:53:06But, Nick, I was so depressed,
0:53:06 > 0:53:08and I was just suffocating, I was dying.
0:53:08 > 0:53:13And I was seeing every psychiatrist on the Upper West Side
0:53:13 > 0:53:16until I finally found one who, of course,
0:53:16 > 0:53:20told me what I wanted to hear. And he released me.
0:53:22 > 0:53:24And I slipped away from my wife one morning
0:53:24 > 0:53:27without even taking my toothbrush.
0:53:27 > 0:53:29It was totally insane, and I wound up here.
0:53:29 > 0:53:33But then I decided to do the whole thing all over again.
0:53:33 > 0:53:36Love, marriage and kids.
0:53:36 > 0:53:39And so now here I am,
0:53:40 > 0:53:46enjoying keeping the Mona Lisa fascinated.
0:53:47 > 0:53:50And she adores me. Can't see through me.
0:53:50 > 0:53:55Yet. But we know she will. I mean, she will.
0:53:57 > 0:53:58So am I brave?
0:54:00 > 0:54:01Or am I foolish?
0:54:01 > 0:54:06He drives through life with this force that is really enviable.
0:54:06 > 0:54:09I mean, in a sense, the people you most envy are the people
0:54:09 > 0:54:12who don't care. You know, I want to be Francis Bacon.
0:54:12 > 0:54:17I just want to live entirely as I live and everybody else can go hang.
0:54:17 > 0:54:20- But of course...- You are so animated when you say that.
0:54:20 > 0:54:25But who of us actually has the guts? Who can actually live in that way?
0:54:25 > 0:54:28It's such an enviable thing to be able to do.
0:54:28 > 0:54:33But of course you and I or everybody in the world is,
0:54:33 > 0:54:37you know, nervous and inhibited and worried and anxious.
0:54:38 > 0:54:41Why would you put yourself through all that again?
0:54:44 > 0:54:49Cos I'm vain. Cos I'm just ridiculously vain.
0:54:49 > 0:54:55I want to be adored and waited for and listened to.
0:54:55 > 0:54:57Don't you?
0:55:01 > 0:55:06'I'm delighted that today we can confirm that we are acquiring
0:55:06 > 0:55:09'the personal archives and diaries of Hanif Kureishi.'
0:55:15 > 0:55:19'50 personal diaries, drafts of all his major works,'
0:55:19 > 0:55:21novels, screenplays,
0:55:21 > 0:55:24from My Beautiful Laundrette back in the 1980s
0:55:24 > 0:55:26to his most recent work The Last Word,
0:55:26 > 0:55:29which is already causing much discussion,
0:55:29 > 0:55:32his novel about an ageing writer and his biographer.
0:55:33 > 0:55:36Your writing, your work, your papers
0:55:36 > 0:55:39are all now part of the British Library.
0:55:39 > 0:55:42There's some pretty... Yeah, I sold all my stuff to the British Library,
0:55:42 > 0:55:44and I sold my diaries as well.
0:55:44 > 0:55:47So it's a picture from, really, the early '70s, you know,
0:55:47 > 0:55:51the dinners and the parties, the lovers, the friends, the thoughts.
0:55:51 > 0:55:55There's some very juicy stuff in there you'll find.
0:55:55 > 0:55:57- Some of it about you, Alan, actually. - I look forward to it.
0:55:57 > 0:55:59Going back a long way.
0:55:59 > 0:56:03Is there something... Do you feel in the sense that...
0:56:03 > 0:56:04somehow, the British Library,
0:56:04 > 0:56:08some might say, this writer who likes to make trouble,
0:56:08 > 0:56:12is now sort of being embraced by the establishment?
0:56:12 > 0:56:18There he is, he's placing his life's sort of travails
0:56:18 > 0:56:22and his story in the bosom of the British Library in Bloomsbury?
0:56:22 > 0:56:26Well, it's there as a resource.
0:56:26 > 0:56:30And in a sense, you don't know what is and will not be of value
0:56:30 > 0:56:34until quite some time has passed and how it will be looked at.
0:56:34 > 0:56:37But I think there was a real turning point in the early '80s,
0:56:37 > 0:56:40really, with Midnight's Children and My Beautiful Laundrette
0:56:40 > 0:56:45when British writing and cinema and culture re-invigorated itself
0:56:45 > 0:56:49through diversity, I guess.
0:56:49 > 0:56:52And the experiment that we've engaged in in Britain
0:56:52 > 0:56:58of creating a multi-racial society has been incredibly interesting
0:56:58 > 0:57:01and brave and a strange thing to have done without really
0:57:01 > 0:57:04anyone really planning it or thinking about it.
0:57:04 > 0:57:06And who wouldn't want a record of that?
0:57:07 > 0:57:11It was such an energising, critical moment in our culture,
0:57:11 > 0:57:13when you started to write,
0:57:13 > 0:57:18when your discoveries and your literary work and your plays
0:57:18 > 0:57:20and your films all captured something,
0:57:20 > 0:57:23sometimes ahead of that zeitgeist, ahead of it.
0:57:24 > 0:57:27Do you feel there's another point in your journey
0:57:27 > 0:57:29where you can capture that again,
0:57:29 > 0:57:32or maybe the best years of your life are past?
0:57:34 > 0:57:36Well, I'm still going.
0:57:36 > 0:57:39I can still get it up and I can still write,
0:57:39 > 0:57:41and I still want to write.
0:57:42 > 0:57:47I don't think... I can't see what sort of question...
0:57:47 > 0:57:49What that could mean, in a sense.
0:57:49 > 0:57:54What I would... If I thought now that I'd done my best work,
0:57:54 > 0:57:57what would that mean in terms of what I did tomorrow?
0:57:57 > 0:57:59Would I, as it were, just get up and read the paper
0:57:59 > 0:58:02and have a croissant in a cafe and sit down and look out of the window,
0:58:02 > 0:58:04or would I carry on working?
0:58:04 > 0:58:09I mean, in a sense, the work is the meaning of one's life.
0:58:09 > 0:58:13Art is our sex. It's a reason for living, it's where our desire is.
0:58:14 > 0:58:18So if you give up on that, you're dead.
0:58:26 > 0:58:28INAUDIBLE
0:58:40 > 0:58:41I just want to try something else.
0:58:41 > 0:58:43Make me look thin and happy.
0:58:45 > 0:58:47- If that's what you want. - That's what I want.