Browse content similar to 01/03/2013. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
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The Pop Art legend Roy Lichtenstein gets the Tate treatment, as over | :00:20. | :00:24. | |
150 works go on view. Richard Gere plays the villain in a film about | :00:24. | :00:30. | |
greed and deception in the world of finance. 475? So we made a good | :00:30. | :00:33. | |
deal. Fellow actor Jeremy Irons voices | :00:33. | :00:38. | |
concerns about the waste washing up on some of the world's most | :00:38. | :00:41. | |
beautiful shores. Historically we have always buried our trash. It | :00:41. | :00:46. | |
seems that now we sometimes don't dig, we just dump. | :00:46. | :00:50. | |
A writer's account of victimisation at the hands of an on-line stalker. | :00:50. | :00:55. | |
In a real-life story that exposes the peril of the internet. At a | :00:55. | :00:59. | |
certain point I did realise I was becoming the object of some kind of | :00:59. | :01:04. | |
obsession. And from Bake-off to sitcom, Sue Perkins's new series | :01:04. | :01:09. | |
about an awkward vet, struggling with her sexuality. I don't want to | :01:09. | :01:17. | |
spend my weekends playing catch with a load of big-tited children. | :01:17. | :01:21. | |
Joining me is Kerry Shale, the actor, author and journalist, Alex | :01:21. | :01:25. | |
Preston, and Heather McGregor, also known as the Financial Times | :01:25. | :01:30. | |
columnist, Mrs Moneypenny, and the presenter of SuperScrimpers on | :01:30. | :01:34. | |
Channel 4. You can join the debate on twittwiter. | :01:34. | :01:39. | |
Mickey Mouse and Donald book had never been seen on the roles of -- | :01:39. | :01:46. | |
Donald Duck had never been seen on the walls of art galleries, Roy | :01:46. | :01:51. | |
Lichtenstein changed all that. He put them in eye-catching canvasses | :01:51. | :01:57. | |
that reflected the post-war consumer boom. The Tate Modern has | :01:58. | :02:03. | |
the first major Lichtenstein retrospective in 20 years. | :02:03. | :02:08. | |
When Roy Lichtenstein xibgted his giant comic book canvasses in the | :02:08. | :02:15. | |
early 1960s he divided opinion. Some considered him a genius, but | :02:15. | :02:25. | |
:02:25. | :02:26. | ||
one magazine dubbed him one of the worst artists in America. | :02:27. | :02:32. | |
The comic book image is the black lines around everything, the more | :02:32. | :02:36. | |
or less primary colours. All of this was to symbolise what we were | :02:36. | :02:43. | |
really getting into, a kind of ready-made and plastic era. | :02:43. | :02:48. | |
Taking us from Lichtenstein's pre- pop days, to his rarely seen | :02:48. | :02:54. | |
Chinese landscapes of the mid-1990s, Tate Modern's retrospective tells | :02:54. | :03:02. | |
the story of his 40-year career, in 13 dazzling rooms. Schooled as an | :03:02. | :03:04. | |
abstract expressionist, Lichtenstein stumbled on his | :03:04. | :03:07. | |
signature style almost by accident, when his son challenged him to | :03:08. | :03:12. | |
paint something as good as a Mickey Mouse cartoon. There followed three | :03:12. | :03:17. | |
years of highly controversial comic strip works. | :03:17. | :03:22. | |
By applying his trained painting skill to the banal, Lichtenstein | :03:22. | :03:26. | |
challenged artistic snobry his use of bold black lines, primary | :03:26. | :03:36. | |
:03:36. | :03:38. | ||
colours, and b Ben-Day dots. He didn't stop at comic strips, he | :03:38. | :03:43. | |
applied the same style to many other subjects. Pastiches of iconic | :03:43. | :03:50. | |
works by modern masters like Picasso and Matisse, reworkings of | :03:50. | :03:55. | |
the traditional female nude. Landscapes and even sculpture. This | :03:55. | :03:58. | |
new retrospective represents over a billion pounds worth of art. Does | :03:58. | :04:07. | |
Lichtenstein deserve his reputation as a legend? | :04:07. | :04:12. | |
These images are so familiar, aren't they, the reproductions have | :04:12. | :04:15. | |
been reproduced. Account original still have any kind of impact? | :04:15. | :04:20. | |
Definitely. I remember when I first saw Whaam!, was a photograph of it | :04:20. | :04:26. | |
in a magazine. And then years later, many years ago, when I first went | :04:26. | :04:32. | |
to the Tate, and I Whaam! In person for the first time, I was | :04:32. | :04:36. | |
completely knocked out. Reproductions can't do it justice. | :04:36. | :04:41. | |
You can't see the Ben Day dots properly all the stuff is gigantic | :04:41. | :04:45. | |
and works because of that. But I remember when I was seeing the | :04:45. | :04:48. | |
exhibition this time, I in theed people, everyone takes photos on | :04:48. | :04:52. | |
their phones now. And I was kind of angry, because I thought be in the | :04:52. | :04:56. | |
moment, just look at it, it is huge, don't reduce it to that. But I | :04:56. | :05:00. | |
thought that's part of the joke of Lichtenstein, he would approve of | :05:00. | :05:03. | |
that. That it would be rero duced again in a different way. -- | :05:03. | :05:07. | |
reproduced again in a different way. That is the secret of his genius, | :05:07. | :05:12. | |
that it is a copy of a copy of a copy, it will always be copied. | :05:12. | :05:16. | |
you have the same attitude to the originals? I was familiar with all | :05:16. | :05:21. | |
the Pop Art, I had seen it in one dimension in magazines and books | :05:21. | :05:25. | |
and things. I had also been to the Tate and seen Whaam!, and to the | :05:25. | :05:29. | |
Met and seen one of his pictures there. Nothing prepared me for | :05:29. | :05:32. | |
seeing all of those pictures together. For two reasons, first of | :05:33. | :05:39. | |
all, when I saw it, I realised actually he's not just a copy book, | :05:39. | :05:44. | |
a coppic book copy. He can actually compose pictures. He can use colour. | :05:44. | :05:50. | |
The day before I had been trying out the latest 3HD glass, I | :05:50. | :05:55. | |
realised look -- 3D glasses, and when I looked at his pictures I | :05:55. | :05:59. | |
realise I had didn't need them, he painted in 3D. When you got to the | :05:59. | :06:04. | |
end of his life, he was painting in the 1990s, there were paintings you | :06:04. | :06:08. | |
could see. He was using all the techniques he built up before. If | :06:08. | :06:11. | |
we hadn't had a proper retrospective, you would never have | :06:11. | :06:14. | |
seen that chronological development. Of this the point of it, was to see | :06:14. | :06:18. | |
the balance of work through over a period of time? Yes, that is what I | :06:18. | :06:22. | |
found so profoundly disappointing about the show. When you have a | :06:22. | :06:26. | |
retrospective, you want to see the march of genius through time and | :06:26. | :06:29. | |
reinvention. It seemed to me what you got in this receipt trot | :06:29. | :06:37. | |
pective, which I thought was -- retrospective, is it was remarkably | :06:37. | :06:41. | |
pious. Wasn't it fun? The first three rooms were wonderful, someone | :06:41. | :06:47. | |
described it as an acid shock. It was exactly that. You have this | :06:47. | :06:53. | |
mournful picture of Lichtenstein trying to recapture the epiphany | :06:53. | :06:59. | |
moment of Whaam! And Mickey Mouse. It struck me as cynical and an | :06:59. | :07:04. | |
empty perfection to it. I don't buy that. Did you not, I really loved | :07:04. | :07:08. | |
at the end interior with nude leaving -- Interior with Nude | :07:08. | :07:14. | |
Leaving, we had the dots, the colour, the composition, we had the | :07:14. | :07:18. | |
black lines of the Pop Art. Everything was in there. | :07:18. | :07:21. | |
Chinese landscapes, I never thought I would be moved by Roy | :07:21. | :07:24. | |
Lichtenstein, but I was moved by the Chinese landscapes, where | :07:24. | :07:28. | |
almost everything becomes dots. They are gradations of grey, white | :07:28. | :07:32. | |
and black. That is rather good, they were the highlight of the late | :07:32. | :07:37. | |
stage of the exhibition. There was something angelic about it, you | :07:37. | :07:41. | |
knew he was going to die. It was very much a man sitting on a rock | :07:41. | :07:48. | |
looking back. I absolutely agree. The By the mirrors. Still using the | :07:48. | :07:53. | |
dots: The mirrors are what he's about. The self-portrait is anti-T- | :07:53. | :08:00. | |
shirt with a mirror. By all accounts -- an empty T-shirt and a | :08:00. | :08:05. | |
mirror. But all accounts he was a pretty self-effacing guy. What | :08:05. | :08:10. | |
would you hang in the living room? Whaam! I would have a Chinese | :08:10. | :08:14. | |
landscape. I thought they were a great discovery and worth the price | :08:14. | :08:18. | |
of admission to see that. problem I had is he is still all | :08:18. | :08:24. | |
about surface. He said he wanted viewers to be able to take in the | :08:24. | :08:28. | |
whole impression of his work in one blink. And I need my art to do more | :08:29. | :08:34. | |
than that. I want depth. I want abstract Expressionism, I want | :08:34. | :08:39. | |
Jackson Pollock, and my artist to be tortured. There is the sense of | :08:39. | :08:42. | |
detatchment, you talked about the mirror paintings. Absolutely in | :08:42. | :08:46. | |
those it is the very essence of detatchment? It is deceptive. I | :08:46. | :08:51. | |
think the main thing he is, he is fun. He came out of a time with | :08:51. | :08:55. | |
people like the Beatles, who were having fun and had depth at the | :08:55. | :08:59. | |
same time. I think that there is a surprising amount of certainly | :08:59. | :09:02. | |
intellectual depth there which I don't particularly understand, I | :09:02. | :09:07. | |
read three Lichtenstein books this week. But they do, so I won't go on | :09:07. | :09:11. | |
about that, I think they do jump out at you. I love the way the | :09:11. | :09:15. | |
colours are so saturated, that they look different from every angle, | :09:15. | :09:19. | |
and they look different when reproduced. I love his take on | :09:19. | :09:22. | |
reproduction. The fact that he takes a comic strip and turns it | :09:22. | :09:26. | |
into a painting. The value of the paintings, I know we shouldn't | :09:26. | :09:29. | |
judge them. Does it change your view of them within you go around | :09:29. | :09:33. | |
an, Biggs like this knowing they are worth millions and millions of | :09:33. | :09:37. | |
pounds? I have to say, the one thing I still don't get is why they | :09:37. | :09:43. | |
are worth that much money. Because you know, if you look at Jackson | :09:43. | :09:47. | |
Pollock, and others, these are people who also, Jackson Pollock | :09:47. | :09:51. | |
conveniently died in a car crash, which makes everything very, very | :09:52. | :09:54. | |
valuable. Then there is a much shorter life. Where as Lichtenstein | :09:54. | :09:59. | |
painted for years and years and years. Some of it is truly dread of. | :09:59. | :10:02. | |
The first and the last room, his earliest paintings, I wouldn't give | :10:02. | :10:06. | |
tuppence for them. They are all worth a fortune. I don't think they | :10:06. | :10:09. | |
are worth what they say they are. If I had millions of pounds I would | :10:09. | :10:14. | |
definitely be buying one of those Chinese painting. You can make up | :10:14. | :10:18. | |
your own mind on the Lichtenstein retrospective, it is on at the Tate | :10:18. | :10:22. | |
Modern until the 27th of May. Richard Gere's character in the | :10:22. | :10:27. | |
film Arbitrage, has a keen interest in contemporary art, leading him | :10:27. | :10:30. | |
into dangerous territory. That love of risk is his approach to making | :10:30. | :10:36. | |
money. The thriller, set in the sky describers of Manhattan, sees Gere | :10:36. | :10:40. | |
in a contemporary tale of greed and corruption at the core of the | :10:40. | :10:42. | |
financial industry. Richard Gere won a nomination for | :10:42. | :10:49. | |
the Best Actor Golden Globe for his portrayal of Robert Miller, a | :10:49. | :10:53. | |
charismatic billion Nair who finds himself in trouble after a series | :10:53. | :10:57. | |
of bad decisions. Arbitrage opens as Miller is on the verge of a huge | :10:57. | :11:03. | |
deal to offload his New York hedge fund. A deal that masks a string of | :11:03. | :11:12. | |
deceptions. 475. So we made a good deal. | :11:12. | :11:22. | |
Actually I lied. I would have taken four. The film, the feature debut, | :11:22. | :11:26. | |
Paolo Guerrero, whose parents were stock brokers, shows a man whose | :11:27. | :11:30. | |
life becomes increasingly corrupt. And whose risk-taking has become | :11:30. | :11:34. | |
ever more dangerous. Miller's messy private life means his deceptions | :11:34. | :11:39. | |
don't end at the office door, as he battles to protect his business | :11:39. | :11:42. | |
deal and reputation, he faces increasing pressure, after | :11:42. | :11:49. | |
announcing the suspicion of NYPD detective Bryer, played by Tim Roth. | :11:49. | :11:55. | |
Why did you lease an apartment for Mrs Colt. She needed a place to | :11:55. | :11:59. | |
entertain buyers, she came from Paris. Do you rented an apartment? | :11:59. | :12:06. | |
It was by the holding company. Susan Sarandon plays Ellen Miller, | :12:06. | :12:11. | |
who uses her husband's fortune for philanthropic ends. Her interests | :12:11. | :12:15. | |
lie in protecting the family, it is far from clear if she's complicit | :12:15. | :12:20. | |
in her husband's actions. We vpbtd signed the paper, for some reason | :12:20. | :12:24. | |
they are still on it. It will always be fine, just follow the | :12:24. | :12:29. | |
plan. What is that plan? Confidence equals contract. Following recent | :12:30. | :12:33. | |
high-profile scandals in the financial industry, Arbitrage seems | :12:33. | :12:37. | |
to be a timely examination of corruption in big business. Half of | :12:37. | :12:41. | |
the fund's assets are missinging. Does this tale of a billion Nair | :12:41. | :12:46. | |
with dubious morality give us real insight -- billionare with dubious | :12:46. | :12:52. | |
morality give us a real insight into those who take risks with | :12:52. | :12:59. | |
other people as money. Alex, in a world where we have the | :12:59. | :13:03. | |
Libor scandal, Madoff, all the misks that led to the financial | :13:03. | :13:10. | |
crash, how realistic all the risk that is led to the financial crash, | :13:10. | :13:15. | |
how realistic was all this? You were a trader before? Something I | :13:15. | :13:20. | |
would like to leave behind. This struck me as an extraordinarily | :13:20. | :13:23. | |
disappointing film, a missed opportunity on par with Oliver | :13:23. | :13:29. | |
Stone's Money Never Sleeps, equally disappointing. It seemed entirely | :13:29. | :13:35. | |
divorced from the world of now. And shown up by a recent film Margin | :13:35. | :13:40. | |
Core, a debut director too. It felt as if the director of this will be | :13:40. | :13:45. | |
some how marooned in the 1980. He seemed to show no interest in | :13:45. | :13:49. | |
staying in touch with what was going on in addressing the great | :13:49. | :13:56. | |
issues of the age. In no way engaged with the cred dt crisis, it | :13:56. | :14:01. | |
seemed an extraordinary -- credit crisis, it seemed extraordinarily | :14:01. | :14:04. | |
removed. I was disappointed when I saw this. I was all ready to love | :14:04. | :14:14. | |
it. I loved Margin Call, I loved Wall Street, I loved last year's | :14:14. | :14:19. | |
Inside Job, the Oscar-winning document treatment the two issues I | :14:19. | :14:23. | |
had were, one on the technical level, I didn't believe it at all. | :14:23. | :14:28. | |
There were mistakes? I think there were things that were unbelievable. | :14:28. | :14:33. | |
You know. Such as the post-Madoff and post-crash, that you would be | :14:33. | :14:39. | |
able to invest $100 million in a copper mine and take a hedge on it | :14:39. | :14:46. | |
t and borrow $100 million from the company for somewhere else all | :14:46. | :14:50. | |
without your chief executive not knowing. The FT has a bit of a love | :14:50. | :14:54. | |
affair with Richard Gere, our review irhas previously described | :14:54. | :14:59. | |
him in previous films as -- reviewer has previously described | :14:59. | :15:05. | |
him as someone who has "lack qered grace and fee lean features" I | :15:05. | :15:10. | |
really wanted to love this movie. All that was accurate there is when | :15:10. | :15:15. | |
you are on a private jet have a lid on your coffee pot. One of the | :15:15. | :15:19. | |
risks with Richard Gere in the film is having him as a villain | :15:19. | :15:26. | |
throughout. What did you make of the performance? He's the most | :15:26. | :15:31. | |
gorgeous 64-year-old on the planet. 63. It irritated the hell out of me | :15:31. | :15:37. | |
on many levels. I think he's a good actor but not a great actor. I | :15:37. | :15:41. | |
suspect that this could have been offered to Clooney and people who | :15:41. | :15:45. | |
would have given it more depth. It irritated me because decided to | :15:46. | :15:51. | |
play him cute. I didn't believe that. His eyes were always ciankled | :15:51. | :15:59. | |
and lovable. Wasn't that clever, someone who is villain ous, but you | :15:59. | :16:02. | |
are sympathetic throughout the film to him? I thought the whole movie | :16:02. | :16:12. | |
:16:12. | :16:13. | ||
was cute. You showed the crash scene. I was enjoying it as a | :16:13. | :16:17. | |
Hollywood three-act movie. And when I went off it was when one of the | :16:17. | :16:22. | |
characters, her throw away line was "real life isn't like TV", it was | :16:22. | :16:25. | |
something trashing TV I thought, you know mate, you don't have the | :16:25. | :16:29. | |
right to do that, TV is better than this. The crash was taken from | :16:29. | :16:37. | |
season two of Mad Men. It was taken from Bonfire of the Vanties. In Mad | :16:37. | :16:41. | |
Men he's talking about friend French films, they are drunk, it is | :16:41. | :16:45. | |
a mistress. Well you are right it is Bonfire of the Vanties on | :16:45. | :16:49. | |
steroid. There were moments in the script, when he talked about | :16:49. | :16:52. | |
himself as a patriarch, I don't think people who are patriarchs | :16:52. | :16:58. | |
talk about themselves like that. One doesn't like to construct too | :16:59. | :17:04. | |
many conspiracy theories behind this. Jarecki senior, the two | :17:04. | :17:08. | |
brothers who are directors, their father is a master of the universe, | :17:08. | :17:13. | |
he owns two of the British Virgin Islands, he was a commodities | :17:13. | :17:19. | |
trader. It is more interesting if you think of it as on Eid pal thing | :17:19. | :17:26. | |
going on, here oedipal thing going on here, here is a father bringing | :17:26. | :17:30. | |
havoc upon his family and their father was a banker in the 80s. | :17:30. | :17:34. | |
There is a lot more autobiography in the film. Are there people like | :17:34. | :17:38. | |
Robert Miller? Yes there are. First of all, you know, there are people | :17:38. | :17:44. | |
who use the word "variation margin" in their normal life. I had to stop | :17:44. | :17:48. | |
and replay it to make sure I had heard it. I thought about it | :17:48. | :17:50. | |
afterwards. I thought it was unbelievable, this man is taking | :17:50. | :17:55. | |
unbelievable risk in his personal and professional lie. Then I | :17:55. | :17:58. | |
realised I could name three billionares, who are personal | :17:58. | :18:01. | |
friend of me, who have taken unbelievable risk in their | :18:01. | :18:05. | |
professional life and you ask why. They seem to have everything, why | :18:05. | :18:09. | |
do they do this, and live their lives like this. These people | :18:09. | :18:12. | |
really exist, even now. That is the very nature of the job, isn't it. | :18:12. | :18:15. | |
Some of these financial jobs, you are required to be a risk-taker to | :18:15. | :18:20. | |
make the money in the first place. I don't know a millionaire, let | :18:20. | :18:24. | |
alone a billionare. I imagine there is one on the sofa next to you. | :18:24. | :18:29. | |
Speaking of million, one of the problems with the film is it was | :18:29. | :18:33. | |
pretty cack-handed in the dialogue. One of the characters said you owe | :18:33. | :18:37. | |
me $4.5 million and you want it back. They know it was tonnes of he | :18:37. | :18:46. | |
can position, there was cliches, get this tie -- exposition, there | :18:46. | :18:51. | |
were cliches all over it "get this guy to the hospital". Why are the | :18:51. | :18:55. | |
films poorer when you have the real-life scandal? I think the best | :18:55. | :19:04. | |
thing to have come out of the credit crunch is Jonathan Dees book. | :19:04. | :19:11. | |
He says "these people were rewarded for their work lives, they acted | :19:11. | :19:14. | |
with impunity in their home lives", the novel does it in such a way | :19:14. | :19:19. | |
that makes you root and hate the protaganist. I only hated Gere, I | :19:19. | :19:25. | |
loved his hair and hated film. Along with those films is Queen of | :19:25. | :19:28. | |
Versailles, a few weeks ago. That was a brilliant film. It started | :19:28. | :19:34. | |
off being a celebration of this guy, it ended up being him having a | :19:34. | :19:36. | |
nervous breakdown. He was another billionare. I have heard good | :19:36. | :19:39. | |
things about that. Arbitrage, the film, opened tonight. | :19:39. | :19:44. | |
Now to a disturbing true-life tale of harassment, which reveals the | :19:44. | :19:49. | |
perils of using the Internet. Writer, poet and academic James | :19:49. | :19:54. | |
Lasdun's life was turned upside down when former student turned | :19:54. | :19:57. | |
stalker. Waging a sinister campaign, which he describes as verbal | :19:57. | :20:00. | |
terrorism. He has published an account of his victimisation, that | :20:00. | :20:04. | |
might prove a cautionary tale in the age of on-line trolls and | :20:04. | :20:11. | |
cyberbullying. "Her campaign, it appeared, was no | :20:11. | :20:15. | |
longer for expressing their anger or embarrassing me. But something | :20:15. | :20:19. | |
much more concrete and practical. It was at this time that she | :20:19. | :20:23. | |
conceived that crystal line formation of the true nature of her | :20:23. | :20:29. | |
mission. "I will ruin him". Lasdun first came across Nasreen, as he | :20:29. | :20:33. | |
calls her in the book, when she was a student in his creative writing | :20:33. | :20:37. | |
class. Two years later he received an e-mail asking for advice on the | :20:37. | :20:41. | |
book she was writing, and Lasdun pro-politely obliged. A | :20:41. | :20:45. | |
correspondence began, and it was only when Lasdun felt the need to | :20:45. | :20:48. | |
cool off their friendship, that the tone of her communecations began to | :20:49. | :20:53. | |
change. I began to get concerned when the volume of e-mails went up | :20:53. | :20:59. | |
to every day, then a few a day, then several a day. They weren't | :20:59. | :21:04. | |
hate mails at that point. They were just chatty gossip. But at a | :21:04. | :21:08. | |
certain point I did realise I was becoming the object of some kind of | :21:08. | :21:13. | |
obsession. The first accusation she made was one of plagerism. From | :21:13. | :21:17. | |
there she began bringing my agent and his editor -- this editor she | :21:17. | :21:21. | |
had worked with into a strange conspiracy they arey. Then she | :21:21. | :21:26. | |
began with accusations of sexual misconduct. She accused me of | :21:26. | :21:31. | |
having her drugged and raped. That I suppose was the furthest she took | :21:31. | :21:33. | |
the accusations, from there she went on to threats against me, | :21:33. | :21:39. | |
against my children. As well as meticulously recounting | :21:39. | :21:43. | |
the harassment he endured, he takes literary excursions to make sense | :21:43. | :21:50. | |
of his experience. Ranging from erotic obsession to anti-semitism | :21:50. | :21:55. | |
suffered by his own father, the architect, Sir Dennis Lasdun. | :21:55. | :22:01. | |
Yes, the story of her attacks is the spine of the book. And | :22:01. | :22:08. | |
obviously it is quite dramatic. I think it is any way. But off that, | :22:08. | :22:15. | |
I digress, I suppose, into these other topics that arose naturally. | :22:15. | :22:19. | |
Lasdun's book is strikingly honest about his own victimhood. But are | :22:19. | :22:22. | |
there risks and moral issues raised by writing this as a memoir, rather | :22:22. | :22:31. | |
than a novel. This description of Nasreen, the | :22:31. | :22:36. | |
name given to the student turned stalker, as a verbal terrorists. Do | :22:36. | :22:42. | |
you think that was justified, given the way Lasdun describes his | :22:42. | :22:46. | |
experiences? Do I think it was justified calling her a verbal | :22:46. | :22:52. | |
terrorist? My God, yes. The abuse she subjects him to is terrifying, | :22:52. | :22:56. | |
it is horrific. I was hoping at one point. I don't read scary, | :22:56. | :22:59. | |
terrifying books, this was really a very frightening book. I was hoping | :22:59. | :23:04. | |
at one point it was a post-modern novel, so that it was a novel | :23:04. | :23:08. | |
rather than reality. He said this on radio shows, so I can say this, | :23:08. | :23:15. | |
I was stunned by theing, she is still sending the e-mails. He -- by | :23:15. | :23:21. | |
the ending, she is still sending the e-mails. I would be afraid to | :23:21. | :23:27. | |
walk down the street under that. She threatens to kill his kids, it | :23:27. | :23:31. | |
is virulant anti-semitism and accusations of rape. The thing is, | :23:31. | :23:36. | |
is she sane That is the problem with the book. That is the moral | :23:36. | :23:40. | |
issue at the heart. I think it is beautifully written, he's a fine, | :23:40. | :23:45. | |
fine short story writer, wonderful poet. There is an ethical hole at | :23:45. | :23:52. | |
the centre of this book. That is how quickly and speciously, he | :23:52. | :23:55. | |
dismisses the idea that she's mentally ill and actually he should | :23:55. | :23:59. | |
be helping her. He had her family's e-mails and never contacted them. | :24:00. | :24:03. | |
He should have been reaching out to this girl, who was clearly deranged. | :24:03. | :24:08. | |
Instead, what do we look for from our writers, we look for empathy, | :24:08. | :24:15. | |
this guy has no empty. I think he has enormous empathy for her, but | :24:15. | :24:19. | |
it is a disturbing hole in the book. He felt himself in danger, I | :24:19. | :24:22. | |
imagine the professional advice might not have been to get in touch | :24:22. | :24:25. | |
with this woman? He said the professional advice was not to | :24:25. | :24:31. | |
return her e-mails and not to delete them. And to make sure he | :24:31. | :24:34. | |
read them incase she was threatening violence. I don't agree | :24:34. | :24:38. | |
he had a moral responsibility to reach out and help her if he | :24:38. | :24:44. | |
thought she was mentally deranged. She has her own family. I get | :24:44. | :24:47. | |
unbelievable quantities of e-mails for some people I think are | :24:47. | :24:51. | |
seriously off the spectrum. I won't go to the effort of tracking down | :24:51. | :24:57. | |
their families and suggesting they help them. I find one of the | :24:57. | :25:05. | |
reviews said this is a powerful thesis on the power of the internet | :25:05. | :25:10. | |
for harm. Sometimes I feel at the edge of it. Somebody has a Twitter | :25:10. | :25:15. | |
account that purports to be me, they have a picture of me on it and | :25:15. | :25:18. | |
they say things that I would never say. They are allowed to do this, | :25:19. | :25:25. | |
because in the last description of it, it says "parody". This is a | :25:25. | :25:29. | |
modern nightmare that your reputation could be completely | :25:29. | :25:34. | |
trashed. I did keep finding myself holding up the book and saying what | :25:35. | :25:44. | |
would hem -- Hemmingway do? I mean he could delete the e-mail account. | :25:44. | :25:48. | |
He was told by the police not to do that. It seemed to me, that yes, | :25:48. | :25:51. | |
the abuse was horrific. But there are ways that one could have | :25:51. | :25:56. | |
constructed it. It seemed to me he rather wallowed in his own misery. | :25:56. | :26:01. | |
I was struck by the opposite, I I was struck by his generosity and | :26:01. | :26:05. | |
politeness. I thought that he strips himself bare. He strips his | :26:05. | :26:10. | |
motives bare, with the accepting of whether or not she's nuts. But his | :26:10. | :26:15. | |
own motive, like did I give her any, was there any reason she should | :26:15. | :26:20. | |
have become obsessed with me. He was much more polite, and | :26:20. | :26:24. | |
empathetic towards her than I think I would have been. It is one long | :26:24. | :26:28. | |
piece of self-analysis. The thing he did at the beginning, which was | :26:28. | :26:32. | |
to praise her, overtly in the classroom, and then to go and see | :26:32. | :26:40. | |
her two years later. He tries to say...He Tries 0 get a novel | :26:40. | :26:45. | |
published. As a teacher of Krayivity that gave a moment of -- | :26:45. | :26:49. | |
creativity, that gave me a moment's worry. The issue I had was the | :26:49. | :26:53. | |
first third was like a thriller, and so exciting, and then you go | :26:53. | :27:01. | |
into this rather nice but slightly diminuendo, deGreggss, you get this | :27:01. | :27:05. | |
lovely passage on the train, which I thought was wonderful, but then | :27:05. | :27:10. | |
the trip to DH Lawrence's chapel and the trip to Jerusalem. It did | :27:10. | :27:14. | |
feel it was disappearing off. is how his mind works, isn't t that | :27:14. | :27:20. | |
is how James Lasdun copes with this. Is by going into literary metaphor, | :27:20. | :27:25. | |
and Patricia Highsmith and DH Lawrence, he as trying to make | :27:25. | :27:28. | |
sense through literature. He's trying to regain control of his own | :27:28. | :27:33. | |
life and his own narrative. Through expressing it in the only way he | :27:33. | :27:37. | |
knows how to do it. He does write beautifully. The man can write. | :27:37. | :27:41. | |
God there is a wonderful image he's talking about the Arab quarter of | :27:41. | :27:46. | |
Jerusalem there are old men sitting around with their nargula, he | :27:46. | :27:52. | |
describes it as "their tender creaturely involvement with their | :27:52. | :27:56. | |
pipes", that was the most beautiful image. My favourite use of words | :27:56. | :28:02. | |
was the "unmistakable fin", that said it all. It was under the | :28:02. | :28:07. | |
surface there is the shark. One of the deGreggss is based on anti- | :28:07. | :28:10. | |
semitism, taking it from the Nasreen e-mail into an experience | :28:10. | :28:14. | |
of his father. That I felt of manipulative. I'm suddenly thinking | :28:14. | :28:18. | |
did I get this wrong, I really felt there were moral issues with that. | :28:18. | :28:23. | |
Whey felt he was doing. There was a much more violent anti-semetic | :28:24. | :28:27. | |
attack on his father, the architect of the National Theatre amongst | :28:27. | :28:30. | |
other things. I felt he was some how yolking Nasreen's comments, | :28:30. | :28:34. | |
which of course he has edited and chosen what you see and what you | :28:34. | :28:38. | |
don't. The controlling power of the author. And yolking the very | :28:38. | :28:42. | |
violent attack on his father to Nasreen. I just felt there was | :28:42. | :28:48. | |
something really fishy about this book. We will leave it there. | :28:48. | :28:54. | |
right! Give Me Everything You Have is out now. From a concerted effort | :28:54. | :28:58. | |
to trash a reputation, to the worldwide problems of trash | :28:58. | :29:02. | |
littering the environment. For a new documentary, the Oscar-winning | :29:02. | :29:07. | |
actor, Jeremy Irons, has travelled the globe to visit beauty spots and | :29:07. | :29:12. | |
beaches covered with washed up waste. It challenges us to consider | :29:12. | :29:19. | |
how much packaging and pollution we produce. From Lebanon to Vietnam, | :29:19. | :29:24. | |
from Iceland to France, Irons crosses confidents to survey the | :29:24. | :29:27. | |
effects of today's throw-away culture. Historically we have | :29:27. | :29:33. | |
always buried our trash, but it seems that now we sometimes don't | :29:33. | :29:38. | |
dig we dump. Waste from the ancient Lebanese | :29:38. | :29:43. | |
city has been brought here. To an uncontrolled dump on the edge of | :29:43. | :29:50. | |
the city. Irons investigates the three main solutions to the problem | :29:50. | :29:55. | |
of waste disposal. Sea dumping, landfill and incineration. Which | :29:55. | :30:00. | |
produces the harmful chemical compounds, dioxins. Dioxins are | :30:00. | :30:06. | |
compounds that are made from carbon. Like we are. But they have got some | :30:06. | :30:13. | |
extra bits stuck on. These are chlorine, or bromine molecules, | :30:13. | :30:16. | |
they do not occur naturally in mainstream chemistry of life. If | :30:16. | :30:22. | |
you set fire to them, you start to produce a set of compounds which | :30:22. | :30:29. | |
are very toxic. In Vietnam, Irons meets children born with birth | :30:29. | :30:33. | |
defects, years after the spraying of chemical over forests during the | :30:33. | :30:43. | |
:30:43. | :30:54. | ||
In California he meets people hoping to achieve a target of zero | :30:54. | :30:59. | |
waste. We have now made it mandatory in San Francisco for | :30:59. | :31:03. | |
everyone to participate in our programme, from single family | :31:03. | :31:06. | |
residents, to apartment dwellers to all types of businesses and even | :31:06. | :31:13. | |
visitors. So technically, as a visitor to San Francisco, you are | :31:13. | :31:18. | |
legally obligated in to participate in our separation programme. Will | :31:18. | :31:22. | |
Irons's stark message about the issue of waste make us sit up and | :31:22. | :31:26. | |
listen, or is it human nature to throw away and forget about the | :31:26. | :31:30. | |
consequences. A feature-length documentary about | :31:30. | :31:33. | |
the environment have been suck he isful in recent years, there was | :31:34. | :31:40. | |
AlGor, he's Inconvenient Truth, and End of the Line about fishing. Is | :31:40. | :31:45. | |
this part of that successful tradition? I think so. With | :31:45. | :31:48. | |
Inconvenient Truth, whether or not you agreed it was very powerful and | :31:48. | :31:51. | |
made you question your own belief, so everybody had to have a belief | :31:51. | :31:54. | |
about climate change. I watched this for 20 minutes, stopped, | :31:54. | :32:00. | |
switched it off, went downstairs got all my children in a room | :32:00. | :32:07. | |
together, started it again and made them watch it with me. So they | :32:07. | :32:11. | |
could explain the chemical diagram, and we got to the end and vowed | :32:11. | :32:16. | |
never to buy pre-packaged vegtables again. You talk about the diagram, | :32:16. | :32:21. | |
it is a difficult subject to make engaging? It is, but fascinating | :32:21. | :32:24. | |
subject. I did feel this was one of those things. We had a geography | :32:24. | :32:28. | |
teacher that used to come in with terrible hangovers and play these | :32:28. | :32:32. | |
very ernest, and very educational films while he was rubbing his | :32:32. | :32:35. | |
temples in the darkness at the back of the room. This did feel like one | :32:35. | :32:40. | |
of those. The graphics were pretty old fashioned and there was a short | :32:40. | :32:46. | |
of shoestring aesthetic that ran through it. It was a shame I found | :32:46. | :32:50. | |
it educational rather than entertaining. Boy is it educational. | :32:50. | :32:56. | |
Our educator was Jeremy Irons, the actor, taking us through? Yes. I | :32:56. | :33:01. | |
didn't like the film. I found it, it seemed to go on forever, it | :33:01. | :33:06. | |
seemed to go on as long as Gone With The Wind. I thought as a film | :33:06. | :33:10. | |
it was a bad film. It was just one damn thing after another. And | :33:10. | :33:15. | |
Jeremy Irons, bless him, he can be fantastic as an actor, I felt he | :33:15. | :33:19. | |
was acting being Jeremy Irons. At one point he's sitting on a trash | :33:19. | :33:23. | |
mountain, and mumbles to himself "this is appalling", and you think, | :33:23. | :33:26. | |
yes it is appalling, we can see that. It is not his point, I | :33:26. | :33:30. | |
thought it was badly directed. does add light and shade? At one | :33:30. | :33:33. | |
point he tries to walk around a field and measure it. I thought | :33:33. | :33:39. | |
this is not a Charlie chaplain film. Someone in the edit tried to make | :33:39. | :33:44. | |
that funny. I felt the problem with the film of not Jeremy Irons, it | :33:44. | :33:48. | |
went on for a very long time with a lot of negative things. In the end | :33:48. | :33:53. | |
my 14-year-old started playing with an iPad, I said put it away and he | :33:53. | :33:57. | |
said no, it is too depressing. I felt there was endless problems and | :33:57. | :34:00. | |
very little time given to any solution. Absolutely right. That's | :34:00. | :34:04. | |
the problem. I wonder whether it is because they do sort of try to talk | :34:04. | :34:07. | |
about the way you deal with waste. But there doesn't seem to be a | :34:07. | :34:11. | |
sense of looking at why we create all this waste. You know, it remind | :34:11. | :34:15. | |
me, watching this, of one of the greatest novels of the past 25 | :34:15. | :34:25. | |
:34:25. | :34:26. | ||
years, the Underworld, the hero is waste analyst. It uses waste as a | :34:26. | :34:33. | |
metaphor for the rapcious bulimic economy that shoves this out with | :34:33. | :34:38. | |
no regard for the human. If it was an economy celebrated in the age of | :34:39. | :34:43. | |
Lichtenstein, that consumer culture? There is lots of scenes in | :34:43. | :34:49. | |
Mad Man where they leave the trash. The music is all by Vangelis. | :34:49. | :34:52. | |
appalling. I thought the music was very dated. The fact that Vangelis | :34:52. | :34:57. | |
is still alive making music made me feel old. Wasn't understated the | :34:58. | :35:02. | |
music? You could hear it in the clip, there was plianky, plianky, | :35:02. | :35:06. | |
hope, hope, hope at the end. We have to make it more hopeful what | :35:06. | :35:13. | |
can you come up with it. We get four seconds and a bit on San | :35:13. | :35:21. | |
Francisco. My problem is it wasn't political enough, not looking | :35:21. | :35:23. | |
deeply enough at what the underlying causes of this were. But | :35:23. | :35:28. | |
there were moments. The grotesqueness of those flotillas of | :35:28. | :35:34. | |
trash in the doldrums of the north Pacific giant. They felt like | :35:34. | :35:38. | |
exemplary spaces of globalisation. They seemed extraordinary images. | :35:38. | :35:43. | |
This plastic soup they talked about. I never want to eat a prawn again. | :35:43. | :35:49. | |
It is not just enough to point a camera at it. It was astonishing | :35:49. | :35:54. | |
and scary, you have to have political dimension. And sex it up. | :35:54. | :35:59. | |
Al Gore was more sexy an Jeremy Irons. I worry about the sexy thing, | :35:59. | :36:03. | |
I worry that in essentially a polemic film, some aspects are | :36:03. | :36:08. | |
presented as being objective, yes we don't know if they were? | :36:08. | :36:13. | |
deformed babies, that struck me as in terrible taste. It was, I think | :36:13. | :36:20. | |
it does provide a kind of frisson, we saw, but there were babies feet, | :36:20. | :36:24. | |
deformed foetuses in pickle jars in Vietnam. I felt manipulated by that. | :36:24. | :36:28. | |
I thought it was incredibly clunky, and even more so because the rest | :36:28. | :36:33. | |
of the film is so dry. It has nothing to do with trash. They were | :36:33. | :36:39. | |
dumping agent orange as a political act against the vet con. What are | :36:39. | :36:44. | |
we going to do, except buying loose vegtables. When they found the | :36:44. | :36:47. | |
solution, we went to a loose vegtable shop that looked like it | :36:47. | :36:53. | |
was in the part of the world that people would never see the vast | :36:53. | :36:57. | |
majority. And entirelyly populated by people who read the Guardian. | :36:57. | :37:03. | |
This bow hoe utopia. The vast majority of the world can't get | :37:03. | :37:09. | |
their hand on the Guardian or loose vegtables. Let's be realistic about | :37:09. | :37:13. | |
why it happened. We never got that. Trash is in selected cinemas now. | :37:13. | :37:17. | |
She has become something of a national treasure in recent years | :37:17. | :37:23. | |
following her success in the conducting contest, Maestro, and | :37:23. | :37:30. | |
the enduring popularity of the Great British Bake-Off, Sue Perkins | :37:30. | :37:35. | |
has written material for French & Saunders, but she has written her | :37:35. | :37:43. | |
own sitcom which begins this week. Sue Perkins wrote and stars in | :37:43. | :37:50. | |
Heading Out, which is about Sarah, and a vet. I don't want to spend my | :37:50. | :37:56. | |
weekends playing with big-titted children. Ha ha ha, does she mean | :37:56. | :38:02. | |
us. As her 40th birthday approaches, she find it difficult to still | :38:02. | :38:06. | |
address the issue of her sexuality with her mother. I won't prime but | :38:06. | :38:12. | |
what's their name. Michelle, a French person, and a sales person | :38:12. | :38:17. | |
for a medical company. Oh yes, and what sort of things does he sell? | :38:17. | :38:23. | |
Leg, mainly leg, artificial legs. That's useful. | :38:23. | :38:28. | |
While all those around her think nothing of her sexuality, Sarah | :38:28. | :38:31. | |
herself dreads coming out. At her birthday party thrown by friend, | :38:31. | :38:35. | |
she's presented with a surprise gift, which they hope will help | :38:35. | :38:41. | |
prepare her for speaking to her parents. Life coach and self-styled | :38:41. | :38:45. | |
personal enhancement co-ordinator, Toria. I know we didn't get off on | :38:45. | :38:52. | |
the best footing, which a bloody shame, I'm an awful lot of fun, and | :38:52. | :39:00. | |
crazy with a capital "B". Perkins is keen to emphasise that | :39:00. | :39:05. | |
the theme of sexual identity isn't the whopbl theme. Will this series | :39:05. | :39:10. | |
prove a sweet treat for the audience. | :39:10. | :39:19. | |
Just do it, paint me. Consider yourself redecorated! So Alex, I | :39:19. | :39:22. | |
guess Sue Perkins really is now a modern national treasure, so | :39:22. | :39:29. | |
deserving of her own show? Yeah, I felt that this was much like the | :39:29. | :39:35. | |
Great Bishop Bake-Off it is television comfort food. It is | :39:35. | :39:39. | |
unchallenging, comfortable viewing. I thought it is not pushing any | :39:39. | :39:46. | |
boundaries, it reminded me of the Brittas Empire. Perfectly good. | :39:46. | :39:50. | |
There is so much goodwill surrounding her, that will propel | :39:50. | :39:54. | |
it into perhaps happier waters. are getting a fair number of | :39:54. | :39:59. | |
comedies about awkwardness at the moment. Miranda, for example? | :39:59. | :40:06. | |
this is very bad, I can't reprecontinued -- pretend it is as | :40:06. | :40:15. | |
good as pier Rwanda for the Brittas Empire. It is a group of sketches | :40:15. | :40:18. | |
stitches together for a sitcom. I was doing a sitcom once, and the | :40:18. | :40:23. | |
writer and lead actor said to me, don't do sitcom acting or you will | :40:23. | :40:27. | |
appear to be insane. In sitcom acting everyone is guorning and | :40:27. | :40:30. | |
doing this. That is what they are doing in this. Everybody appears to | :40:30. | :40:34. | |
be crazy. What about the social values in the programme. Sue | :40:34. | :40:36. | |
Perkins, worried about coming out to her mother, all her frepbtdz | :40:37. | :40:43. | |
think being gay is fine. I fine -- Friends think being gay is fine. | :40:43. | :40:47. | |
find that unlikely that you are 40 and not coming out to your parent. | :40:47. | :40:50. | |
You are never coming out or come out long ago. I found the whole | :40:50. | :40:54. | |
thing to be so far out of my comfort zone generally, I wasn't | :40:54. | :40:59. | |
sure if I found it funny or not. I did find it funny explaining my 14- | :40:59. | :41:04. | |
year-old watching it with me what a booty call was. I would like to | :41:04. | :41:10. | |
have been there for that moment. There are differing public | :41:10. | :41:19. | |
attitudes to 0 sexuality, in Eastleigh the victory today and | :41:19. | :41:24. | |
UKIP would have put that down to the backlash on gay marriage. | :41:24. | :41:27. | |
think with regards to gay marriage and homosexuality it is interesting | :41:27. | :41:32. | |
that Sarah is the only person in the whole of her world who has any | :41:32. | :41:38. | |
issue with her sexuality. It feels to me nice to see, let me rephrase | :41:38. | :41:45. | |
that, nice to see two mem women in bed. Nice to have not this panting, | :41:45. | :41:48. | |
Tipping the Velvet moment, and just seeing it as normal. It is very | :41:48. | :41:52. | |
normal, I felt that, it presented it as very mainstream. It is like | :41:52. | :41:56. | |
as though we are seeing only fools and horse, with Rodney gay and | :41:56. | :42:01. | |
Cassandra as a bloke. That is the kind of normality. I totally agree. | :42:01. | :42:07. | |
It is a good thing. I wish I had something that was funnier. I wish | :42:07. | :42:11. | |
it had a sense of reality. The fact she carries the dead cat around | :42:11. | :42:16. | |
through the whole of the first episode, a vet who doesn't care and | :42:16. | :42:20. | |
seem to be interested in animals. thought that was clever as an idea. | :42:20. | :42:26. | |
The fake cat was savageed by a real dog at the end. It just wasn't | :42:26. | :42:31. | |
funny, I applaud the normalisation of things. Jo the physical comedy | :42:31. | :42:36. | |
is not good -- The physical comedy is not as good as Miranda. That is | :42:36. | :42:43. | |
hard to match. Heading Out is on BBC Two. Thanks to my guest, | :42:43. | :42:45. | |
Heather McGregor, Kerry Shale and Alex Preston. Do remember you can | :42:45. | :42:47. | |
find out more about everything we have discussed tonight on the | :42:48. | :42:52. | |
website. And we are looking forward to reading your tweets in the Green | :42:52. | :42:57. | |
Room. We are leaving you tonight with the performance by the great | :42:57. | :43:04. | |
American pianist, who died earlier this week at the age of 73, Clyburn, | :43:04. | :43:11. |