:00:32. > :00:36.On tonight's Review Show... Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock in
:00:36. > :00:39.Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Six
:00:39. > :00:44.months after his death, a huge retrospective of one of Britain's
:00:44. > :00:49.greatest artists, Lucian Freud. Acclaimed novelist Colm Toibin
:00:49. > :00:53.explores how families created the great writers. And a look back at
:00:53. > :01:03.the most celebrated director of them all, Martin Scorsese. And
:01:03. > :01:05.mulling over all of that, this week's panel... The comedian and
:01:05. > :01:08.activist Mark Thomas, who's been building his own political
:01:08. > :01:10.manifesto on Radio Four. Crime novelist Denise Mina, who's
:01:11. > :01:13.currently scripting the graphic novel of The Girl With the Dragon
:01:13. > :01:17.Tattoo. Former Director of the Edinburgh Film Festival, now a
:01:18. > :01:24.writer, Hannah McGill. And journalist, commentator and critic,
:01:24. > :01:27.Sarfraz Manzoor. Good Evening, and welcome to the Review Show.
:01:27. > :01:30.Throughout the programme we'll be luxuriating in the wisdom of Mark,
:01:30. > :01:33.Hannah, Denise and Safraz, but we also want to hear from you, so do
:01:33. > :01:43.get in touch through e-mail or twitter, we're always waiting for
:01:43. > :01:44.
:01:44. > :01:51.one polite enough to read out on air. First up, a film six years in
:01:51. > :01:56.the making. Jonathan Safran Foer burst into the literary world in
:01:56. > :02:01.2002 with his novel everything is illuminated which was later adapted
:02:02. > :02:04.into a hugely popular film starring a Elijah Wood. His second novel,
:02:04. > :02:09.Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, has just undergone the same
:02:09. > :02:15.treatment, this time a starring Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, directed
:02:15. > :02:18.by Stephen Daldry. It is the story of Oskar, a young New York boy
:02:18. > :02:28.struggling to come to terms with the death of his father in the
:02:28. > :02:30.
:02:30. > :02:38.World Trade Centre. Please just a Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks are
:02:38. > :02:44.the parents of the boy. His father is very sensitive to the child's
:02:44. > :02:51.eccentricity, creating adventurous puzzles for him as an attempt to
:02:51. > :02:59.overcome his shyness and idiosyncrasy. Computer consultants.
:02:59. > :03:07.One amateur everything? It is a compliment. Amateur pacifist?
:03:07. > :03:11.Amateur inventor? OK, we are all said. When, after his father's
:03:11. > :03:16.death, Oscar finds a mysterious key his latest adventure becomes clear
:03:16. > :03:20.- to find the lock the key fits as his father's loss challenge to him.
:03:20. > :03:24.A quest through New York ensues, taking the Oscar far from his
:03:24. > :03:29.comfort zone in Manhattan. As much as it is a physical journey for him,
:03:29. > :03:35.at heart, it is an emotional challenge. I am trying to find a
:03:35. > :03:42.lot for this key that was in the envelope that belonged to my father.
:03:42. > :03:48.I am sorry, I don't have anything about the key, or your father.
:03:48. > :03:54.cameos are bound including violet Davies, and now be -- and Max von
:03:54. > :04:04.Sydow, as the mute Llodra, who has received the Oscar not. Do you have
:04:04. > :04:14.a criminal record? Maybe you heard people for a living? What is your
:04:14. > :04:26.
:04:26. > :04:30.Everything is illuminated seemed to please fans, so has Stephen Daldry
:04:30. > :04:40.been as successful with this film which was based on a more complex
:04:40. > :04:42.
:04:43. > :04:49.narrative? And which delves into Mark, it is more than a decade now
:04:49. > :04:57.since 9/11 so do you think it seems a less taboo subject for a film?
:04:57. > :05:00.think it has been less to do for a while. For example, United 93, a
:05:00. > :05:06.great movie about what happened then. So it is not the taboo
:05:06. > :05:11.subject, the problem with this film - and I did try to find positive
:05:11. > :05:13.things about it, which is hard - the problem is it is over
:05:13. > :05:19.sentimentalised, cloying, the characters are not really
:05:19. > :05:23.believable and actually it is vaguely insulting. Did you think it
:05:23. > :05:27.was insulting? I thought it was unbelievably cynical. If it was not
:05:27. > :05:31.for the fact it was based on a Booker would have thought they had
:05:31. > :05:35.deliberately named the child Oscar because they wanted but award! He
:05:35. > :05:39.seemed to be trying to take the right of passage film's structure
:05:39. > :05:43.of a boy who needs to overcome his dad to become a man, then crowbar
:05:43. > :05:48.and use the structure of 9/11 as an excuse for it. I think that is
:05:48. > :05:53.offensive. The you think 9/11 was just crowbar it in? I was a bit
:05:53. > :05:57.more interested in how it portrays parenting and childhood as it is
:05:57. > :06:00.regarded in America at the moment. I think it is a kids' film,
:06:00. > :06:05.completely, that is not necessarily derogatory. I don't think it even
:06:05. > :06:11.tries to make any emotional depth to the adult characters. It has
:06:11. > :06:15.this child to everybody kowtows and facilitates this fantasy, his
:06:15. > :06:18.hypersensitivity, his neediness, to such an extent that by the end you
:06:18. > :06:21.think this is not real life, this is a fantasy where everybody
:06:21. > :06:25.gathers round and says yes, your fantasy of your perfect father and
:06:25. > :06:28.the worst day of all time and the fairy tale of everyone in New York
:06:28. > :06:32.coming together loving each other, everyone conspires to protect him
:06:32. > :06:37.in his fantasy world. For me, that was the scary thing, more than the
:06:37. > :06:40.9/11 stuff, this weird, cosseted child he was not coming up against
:06:40. > :06:48.the real world but actually does being encouraged to live in a
:06:48. > :06:51.fantasy. It is the sense that it is not exactly magic realism, but
:06:51. > :07:00.heightened reality say we should not be too forensic about the
:07:00. > :07:08.detail. -- so we should. Although you can do that in prose, you can't
:07:08. > :07:12.necessarily do it in film and the child comes over as a peculiar, not
:07:12. > :07:15.a peculiar child which are suggested by the autism, but a
:07:15. > :07:18.bizarre construction of childhood which has a very American thing.
:07:18. > :07:25.When I watch American films I think do they have kids there, because
:07:25. > :07:29.they are like little middle-aged men. The character is hyper
:07:29. > :07:32.literate, but it does not work as well on film. I thought the use of
:07:33. > :07:37.this potential suggestion of Asperger's was a bit of a cop out
:07:37. > :07:41.clause in a sense because it meant you had somebody who was supercar
:07:41. > :07:46.precocious, literate, speaks like a 30 year-old, without requiring the
:07:46. > :07:49.majority of wisdom and insight that a 30 Roald would have -- Super
:07:49. > :07:55.precocious. So in the end Sandra Bullock can say bad things happen,
:07:55. > :07:59.we cannot explain them. That is not a good enough. If it is always
:07:59. > :08:02.literally at the Chow's level, it can seem infantile, if they are
:08:02. > :08:12.more sophisticated you think the ABBA writer does not have the
:08:12. > :08:13.
:08:13. > :08:18.child's point of view. I think a child does a good job. -- the child.
:08:18. > :08:22.The thing about his character is it is Berry constructed in a lazy
:08:23. > :08:27.fashion. Self harming, it is just like any kid who has an emotional
:08:27. > :08:30.time is a self harm. If they are precocious they need a bit of
:08:30. > :08:36.knowledge, they need to be naive and then you give them Asperger's.
:08:36. > :08:44.It seems reconstructed. Don't you think we get more depth from the
:08:44. > :08:47.character, the mute man played by Moxey -- Max von Sydow. He has a
:08:47. > :08:50.simpler thing to do because his character is straightforward
:08:50. > :08:54.whereas the child carries the weight of being the audience's
:08:54. > :09:04.fantasy of what it would be like to be a child to anybody would do
:09:04. > :09:05.
:09:05. > :09:09.anything for. -- who anybody. It never comes across as a human.
:09:09. > :09:12.is a self-centred damage because the mother is damaged. The
:09:12. > :09:20.grandmother is damaged. Everything is just about this kid and his
:09:20. > :09:24.needs. But is quite a selfish thing. His 80 year-old grandmother is
:09:24. > :09:27.standing there saying shall I come under there with you, under the bed
:09:27. > :09:31.because he is having a hard time, it is like everybody is going under
:09:31. > :09:36.there with him. This child doesn't seem to care about the people
:09:36. > :09:40.around him. He is horrible. Isn't part of this that when you watch
:09:40. > :09:43.this movie it has been constructed in such a way, we know it is a sad
:09:43. > :09:48.tale, somebody has lost their father in 9/11, it will be sad, but
:09:48. > :09:54.every bit of it underlines it and says this is really sad, but this
:09:54. > :09:57.is really, really sad. They have the idea of the The Falling Man
:09:57. > :10:02.which is the famous image from the World Trade Centre, but they kind
:10:02. > :10:06.of rendering it -- render it in a way it is like the opening sequence
:10:06. > :10:10.of the film. I found that offensive. It was different from the subtlety
:10:10. > :10:15.of the book where the Cha's obsession with the falling and only
:10:15. > :10:18.gradually emerges after time. have the scope of VAT in a book but
:10:19. > :10:22.it just comes over as really cloying and far too much. It would
:10:22. > :10:32.be enough for his father to die. It did not have to be within the
:10:32. > :10:33.
:10:33. > :10:36.context of the tragedy. Not a positive verdict, it is fair to say.
:10:37. > :10:39.Now, when Lucian Freud died in July, he was still hard at work on a
:10:39. > :10:43.painting, characteristically, of a nude man reclining with a dog. That
:10:43. > :10:45.is just one of many works on display at a major new
:10:45. > :10:55.retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery in London. We sent
:10:55. > :11:05.
:11:05. > :11:11.In the first large-scale display of Freud's work since his death, 130
:11:11. > :11:14.works have been assembled from collections across the world.A
:11:14. > :11:19.arranged chronologically, the exhibition highlights sometimes
:11:19. > :11:23.dramatic changes Freud made in his technique. That early style of
:11:23. > :11:28.painting was painstaking, and it was very - it was incredibly slow,
:11:28. > :11:33.and so quite relatively early on, he abandoned this way of working
:11:33. > :11:36.and moved on to moving much bolder brush strokes.
:11:36. > :11:41.We have in the exhibition Hotel Bedroom, which was the last
:11:41. > :11:48.painting he made sitting down, and we see that he begins to pull out
:11:48. > :11:53.from the subject so that you start to see the interiors. Throughout
:11:53. > :11:56.the exhibition, Freud's obsession with the human body is dramatically
:11:56. > :12:02.in evidence. His first nude was painted in 1966, and he felt
:12:02. > :12:05.himself that he wanted to pull out from the head and start looking at
:12:05. > :12:09.the whole body. The exhibition also highlights the intimate
:12:09. > :12:14.relationship Freud had with his subjects.
:12:14. > :12:18.Some people he got to know through painting them. Others, he'd
:12:18. > :12:25.obviously known for a very long time - for example, his portrait of
:12:25. > :12:28.David Hart -- David Hockney David calculated took 130 hour, so
:12:28. > :12:34.although they were friends already, you get to know someone in a
:12:34. > :12:38.different way through that sitting. One of Freud's most frequent
:12:38. > :12:42.subjects was himself. Self-Portrait shows the importance of him because
:12:43. > :12:48.he felt that he ought to understand the rigours of what he was putting
:12:48. > :12:53.his sitters through. As he got older, the self-portraits became
:12:53. > :12:56.more reflective and moving, and the final self-portrait we have in the
:12:56. > :13:03.exhibition, he almost appears to be engulfed by the wall of paint
:13:03. > :13:06.behind him. So is the inevitable posthumous reassessments are made,
:13:06. > :13:14.does this exhibition justify the claim for Freud as one of the
:13:14. > :13:18.greatest in modern Britain? Denise, this is such a wide-ranging
:13:18. > :13:21.exhibition, but I thought the early pictures, in particular, were
:13:21. > :13:26.really striking, so different from his more famous work. Very
:13:26. > :13:30.different, more stylised, quite flat, plain. The ones that were all
:13:30. > :13:34.about skin I found quite - absolutely beautiful - I mean,
:13:34. > :13:37.really a pleasure to the eye. You wouldn't go walking about with big
:13:37. > :13:41.headphones on listening to the whole history of the painting. You
:13:41. > :13:47.would just look. I find the earlier pictures much more intimate. I
:13:47. > :13:51.don't know how you felt, but the naked ones where you're staring at
:13:51. > :13:55.someone's per kneeum or some intimate part of them, you felt
:13:55. > :14:03.really distant and he was almost trying not to say anything about
:14:03. > :14:07.them, and it actually felt quite cold - an experiment on a surface
:14:07. > :14:12.paint pattern. I thought his attitude was really interesting -
:14:12. > :14:17.he couldn't connect with his mother until she was no longer interested
:14:17. > :14:21.in him because she was depressed. He invited his children in to paint
:14:21. > :14:27.them to have a relationship with him. Even when he does saccharin
:14:27. > :14:32.pictures - children with ducks - Lee is in the background of the
:14:32. > :14:34.portrait leering out. He had things to say. It feels very much he's
:14:34. > :14:38.holding back from the viewer somehow, he's always hiding away.
:14:38. > :14:43.There was a big change in technique, wasn't there, from the early to the
:14:43. > :14:47.later paintings? And he stood up. I like the early stuff. And picked
:14:47. > :14:51.another brush. Picked up a whole set of brushes - I agree. It's good
:14:51. > :14:55.to see the early ones just to see he wasn't born with that signature
:14:55. > :14:58.style and had an entirely different way of painting in the '50s, but I
:14:58. > :15:02.just thought the later stuff was amazing. It is intimate. There was
:15:02. > :15:07.a quote I read which said he liked to think of human beings as animals.
:15:07. > :15:09.I think there is a sense that he's looking at everybody naked as an
:15:09. > :15:13.animal whether they're wearing clothes or not. What was quite
:15:13. > :15:16.interesting is that a lot of the paintings - they don't name who
:15:16. > :15:20.they are. There is a sense he's looking at everybody as a species.
:15:20. > :15:24.Actually at the end of it, we're all just bags of skin. We're all
:15:25. > :15:29.going to die. We're all going to have mottled skin by the end - it
:15:29. > :15:33.felt like a zoological study more than... Not quite a celebration of
:15:33. > :15:37.flesh but a compulsion to paint it. I thought it was a celebration,
:15:37. > :15:43.actually, because this was my first Freud exhibition I have been to. I
:15:43. > :15:46.left it a convert. I adored it. You could chronologically follow his
:15:46. > :15:49.point. You could see those points he made the changing in his paging.
:15:50. > :15:53.The flesh - I became absolutely drawn into this because the detail
:15:53. > :15:58.on it is just incredible, and you just - it got to the point where
:15:58. > :16:01.I'd walk up to a picture of someone with clothes on and say, I don't
:16:01. > :16:06.want to see it. I was just drawn into it. I thought the characters
:16:07. > :16:11.of the people did come out. I think in his mother it came out. When you
:16:11. > :16:14.see portraits of other artists you can really see this character
:16:14. > :16:19.coming through as well as his flair. Were you as drawn in as these
:16:19. > :16:24.pictures? Some of them you're drawn in. They're very, very variable. I
:16:24. > :16:28.prefer the more stylised things earlier on, the fleshy ones. For me,
:16:28. > :16:32.they're very cold and distant. I read a quote from him where he said
:16:32. > :16:35.the head is no different than a hand or a foot. He's not interested
:16:35. > :16:39.in the personality as expressed by the face, but as it's splayed out
:16:40. > :16:43.and you're lying in an awkward position. I find these awkward
:16:43. > :16:46.positionings awkward as a viewer, and they're meant to be, but the
:16:46. > :16:50.feeling of someone in a position they'd never be in in any natural
:16:50. > :16:54.way - sometimes that really works. The Lee Barry one is really great
:16:54. > :16:58.because this was someone who was an artist of his body. Even in those
:16:58. > :17:04.most awkward position, he looks like... Absolutely. They're amazing.
:17:04. > :17:09.He has this great face as well. Some of them - looks like he just
:17:09. > :17:12.had someone lie over there, look awkward and hold a rat and that'll
:17:12. > :17:16.be really weird rather than say something about the picture.
:17:16. > :17:20.you find the distance in the self- portraits because I thought there
:17:21. > :17:26.was a Piersing gaze there? I felt as though I was slagging him off
:17:26. > :17:29.because I loved this exhibition. I don't want to sound like that but I
:17:29. > :17:39.felt he was very influenceded by the expressionists and always
:17:39. > :17:46.denied it. He references Rembrandt. He references Andy Warhol. Why? He
:17:46. > :17:51.was the most vacuous painter ever. The interior after war hole is the
:17:51. > :17:56.least effective group paintings. I really do love it. But I do find
:17:56. > :18:02.he's moving away, and I felt the self-portraits were a cynical
:18:02. > :18:05.reference. He is placing himself in the cannon and doesn't need to do
:18:05. > :18:09.that. I noticed you could really get close to the paints. It's
:18:09. > :18:14.amazing you could literally see - not even just two-dimensional.
:18:14. > :18:19.There was a portrait of I think a woman called Ria, and her face was
:18:19. > :18:23.a mound of paint coming out. Yeah. Just the idea that painting is a
:18:23. > :18:27.physical activity. It's for the sitters and Freud as well.
:18:27. > :18:30.gizical activity for him right up until the very end which is so
:18:30. > :18:34.important because you have that last... That last picture is
:18:34. > :18:38.amazing because it's half finished. There is immense tenderness in
:18:38. > :18:43.those. I thought they were very moving. Very moving indeed. I am
:18:43. > :18:46.glad you all enjoyed that. The Lucian Freud Portraits
:18:46. > :18:48.is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London until
:18:48. > :18:57.27th May, and you can see an exclusive documentary about his
:18:57. > :19:01.life tomorrow night here on BBC Two. Now, New Ways to Kill Your Mother -
:19:01. > :19:03.not an idiot's guide for would be matricides but a new collection of
:19:03. > :19:06.essays by the acclaimed writer Colm Toibin about the relationship
:19:06. > :19:13.between writers and their families -which aims to shed light on some
:19:13. > :19:18.of our greatest, and emotionally complicated, authors. From feuds to
:19:18. > :19:22.funerals, from Jane Austen to Barack Obama, New Girl explores how
:19:22. > :19:27.19th and 20th century writers have written about family relationships.
:19:27. > :19:31.It begins with a 19th century reference to write out parents
:19:31. > :19:36.altogether in favour of aunts citing the works of Jane Austen and
:19:37. > :19:44.Henry James. In most cases, of course, the mother is the dominant
:19:44. > :19:52.character. You cannot rake me. something! Your mother insists.
:19:52. > :19:57.an Irish author himself, Colm Tobin is drawn to writers like the
:19:58. > :20:01.playwright JM Sing whose evangelical domineering mother
:20:01. > :20:07.deplored his literary success. Then there was what Samuel Beckett
:20:07. > :20:10.described as the "savage loving" of his mother. Then of course there is
:20:10. > :20:13.the traditionally fraught paternal relationship. He observes, for
:20:13. > :20:19.instance, the rivalry between Henry James and his father, who tried his
:20:19. > :20:22.own hand at writing, then resented his son's success. More recently
:20:22. > :20:29.James Baldwin and Barack Obama have explored sons and fathers, absent
:20:29. > :20:33.or otherwise, in their work. The deployment of inter-generational
:20:33. > :20:38.dynamics to portray change also an interest to Tobin. In Doyle's
:20:38. > :20:43.writing about his parents, he sees the changing face of Ireland
:20:43. > :20:51.through the course of the 21st century. This the band, is it?
:20:51. > :20:58.Bet you two are shitting yourselves. Tobin revels in the anecdotal value
:20:58. > :21:03.of family. Pul itser prize winning author - loathed his wife, his home
:21:03. > :21:11.in upstate New York and sexuality. Tennessee Williams was throughout
:21:11. > :21:19.his life haunted by the ghost of his sister Rose. Deeply written in
:21:19. > :21:23.his often funny prose, Tobin chart misunhappy family relationships.
:21:23. > :21:26.Safraz, it's almost received wisdom, isn't it, the text should be
:21:27. > :21:32.everything in finding out about writers' lives is a bit of a guilty
:21:32. > :21:37.pleasure, but there is a real power of autobiographical information
:21:37. > :21:42.running through these essays. is. What's interesting is it tells
:21:42. > :21:46.you a lot of people's fiction is inspired by the reality they didn't
:21:46. > :21:50.necessarily write about except in journals in letters. Most of the
:21:50. > :21:54.collection of essays he's published elsewhere - it feels slightly
:21:54. > :21:58.random in terms of the writers he's chosen. I had mixed feelings about
:21:58. > :22:00.it. In a way that was my own failing because I hadn't read all
:22:00. > :22:04.the writers he was talking about. Therefore you could only connect
:22:04. > :22:09.more with certain ones than others. The thing I found more interesting
:22:09. > :22:16.is the little human facts - the stories - come through. John
:22:16. > :22:20.Cheever comes across as a monstrous man who hates women and was having
:22:20. > :22:25.a penis-measuring competitions in college whilst having three kids.
:22:25. > :22:32.Those anecdotes come through. Also coming through is the damage having
:22:32. > :22:35.a family to a writer. It's impressive the range of writers he
:22:35. > :22:41.discusses through the Irish writers right up to John Cheever, Henry
:22:41. > :22:45.James, so on. It is impressive. The problem is unless you know the
:22:45. > :22:49.writers, you're always going to be one step removed. It's always going
:22:49. > :22:52.to be harder to get into it. That was certainly barrier for me to
:22:52. > :22:56.begin with. But it's fantastically gossipy. It's very personalised. I
:22:56. > :23:03.love - there was stuff like the letter us that Yates' father sent
:23:03. > :23:07.his son. "Have you read my poems yet?" What are you doing? There was
:23:07. > :23:13.a certain emotional car crash to this... That it takes a very long
:23:13. > :23:17.time how to write a play, "dad!" There are great moments, "When you
:23:17. > :23:22.have seen my play and seen how good it is perhaps you'll let me give
:23:22. > :23:26.you a few tips -" Whoa! You do begin to see similarities, so the
:23:26. > :23:29.relationship between Yates and his father is like the relationship
:23:29. > :23:33.between Henry James and his father. In a way I think there is a
:23:33. > :23:36.randomness to it, there is a sense of these essays vaguely tied
:23:36. > :23:39.together by the family thing. It doesn't necessarily need to be
:23:39. > :23:42.about writers, just that being nosey about other people's families
:23:42. > :23:46.is great. These families are more likely to have diaries and letters.
:23:46. > :23:49.There is a slightly spurious way of tying it together saying the
:23:49. > :23:55.novelist is trying to kill the parent which I didn't think worked.
:23:55. > :24:00.He starts with this essay about, why is it literary characters seem
:24:00. > :24:04.to have unconventional family set- ups? It's a bit like saying why do
:24:04. > :24:10.action heroes get into car chases? It's the wrong way around. Isn't he
:24:10. > :24:12.saying about 19th century writers the reason why aunts become
:24:12. > :24:16.paramount is if you have a character without the ties of
:24:16. > :24:20.parents, they can become much more independent? I think that's the
:24:20. > :24:24.first chapter which is really more of an introduction before the
:24:24. > :24:28.beginning. That's the only place women appear in a role other than
:24:28. > :24:32.very annoying mothers or the wives of homosexual men, pretty much, so
:24:32. > :24:36.it is a very - it's not ran David Miliband. It's really about men, so
:24:36. > :24:41.- and it's also about - you're talking about the theme of - all
:24:41. > :24:47.writers want to kill their mothers - do they? Do they? That doesn't
:24:47. > :24:51.really work. Doesn't say that. talking about - everybody wants to
:24:51. > :24:56.usurp their parents. There is one line where he says the children of
:24:56. > :24:59.failed artists always try to outshine their father's artistic
:24:59. > :25:04.failures so they can then show their mum they're a better man,
:25:04. > :25:07.things like that and never allowing - but that is one of the lovely
:25:07. > :25:11.things about it is he makes these random statements about thing, then
:25:11. > :25:15.tries to back them up. I found that really exciting. I found the fact
:25:15. > :25:19.that he would just go, no, this is what I think - he was just very
:25:19. > :25:23.bold about it. And I loved the fact that halfway through the book, he
:25:23. > :25:29.suddenly goes, look, happy childhoods might make good citizen,
:25:29. > :25:36.but it doesn't help you when you're staring at a blank page which is
:25:36. > :25:40.essentially at the core. The play by Barry is vaguely inspired by
:25:40. > :25:43.Charles Hawkney. He had three healthy kid, but that wasn't work.
:25:43. > :25:47.Fiction creates necessities, which means you have to have more
:25:47. > :25:51.complication. I think the line of how you take fiction and move on
:25:51. > :25:55.was quite interesting. In that chapter he says everything is
:25:55. > :26:00.byeography because Hinterland is very much based on biography. He
:26:00. > :26:02.says this is all about the writer. I think it's all about him and a
:26:02. > :26:05.kind of autobiography. It's beautiful because of that because
:26:05. > :26:09.he makes those sweeping statements. He really connects - tries to
:26:09. > :26:13.connect - when he talks about Ronnie Doyle, he talks about the
:26:13. > :26:19.fact that he knew someone who knew someone who was the sister of the
:26:19. > :26:22.grandfather - he really tries to make those connections. There is
:26:22. > :26:28.melancholy there in the lives of the writers destroyed by homophobia.
:26:28. > :26:35.He talked about John Cheever... don't know how they had time to do
:26:35. > :26:40.any writing. There was the strain of incredible paranoia and neuroses
:26:40. > :26:46.and fear. That chapter is about being a repressed homosexual and
:26:46. > :26:52.not dealing with it. It's much more about his crisis and Thomas Mann
:26:52. > :26:57.and his insane family - talk about good gossip - generations of incest,
:26:57. > :27:00.suicide and madness - for me, it's more a great piece of gossip than
:27:00. > :27:04.anything else. The whole thing about you needing good drama for
:27:04. > :27:09.fiction, in a way the writers who honour their parents aren't going
:27:09. > :27:12.to make as good of stories. That is true - scope for new work, perhaps.
:27:12. > :27:15.New Ways to Kill Your Mother is out now, published by Picador. Last
:27:15. > :27:18.Sunday, even the sea of stars at the BAFTAS was outshone by a humble
:27:18. > :27:27.speech from one of cinema's living legends. Martin Scorsese. So, in
:27:27. > :27:31.the week he became a BAFTA fellow, we look back at his long career.
:27:31. > :27:37.Martin Scorsese occupies the throne amongst Hollywood royalty. His
:27:37. > :27:42.career now spans over 40 years from first feature, Who's That Knocking
:27:42. > :27:46.at my Door made straight from film school and starring his classmate
:27:46. > :27:53.Harvey Keitel. That girl is bothering you. Shut up. Don't tell
:27:53. > :28:01.me to shut up. You get out. Don't tell me to shut up in my car.
:28:01. > :28:05.his most recent movie, the Oscar- nominated Hugo. Halt!
:28:05. > :28:10.distinctive directing style covers Roman Catholic guilt, redemption,
:28:10. > :28:13.period dramas, music and perhaps a subject close toast his heart,
:28:13. > :28:16.Italian-American immigrants, which can be seen in the early film he
:28:16. > :28:21.made features his mother and father. You were going to show us about the
:28:21. > :28:27.sauce. You were going to show us how to do the sauce. What shall I
:28:27. > :28:33.say? You're going to get up and show it to us. How did you learn
:28:33. > :28:36.it? Throughout his career, he's pushed his film-making techniques
:28:36. > :28:43.to the limit inspiring a whole new generation of filmmakers. For our
:28:43. > :28:51.first two films, Shallow Grave and Train Spotting, we unashamedly
:28:51. > :28:56.stole lots of things. The voice scrover was based on the Good
:28:56. > :29:02.Fellas voice scrover. Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career.
:29:02. > :29:06.critics suggest his weak points lie in his female characters, but he
:29:06. > :29:14.challenged that preconception with Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, a
:29:14. > :29:18.road trip featuring a suburban housewife leaving home with her son,
:29:18. > :29:22.leaving Ellen Bernstein an Oscar. am not going to discuss my sex life
:29:22. > :29:26.with you. I am not going to tell you about mine. Violent psychos and
:29:26. > :29:36.gangsters loom large in his work, and violent movies such as Mean
:29:36. > :29:39.
:29:39. > :29:46.Streets and Good Fellas are perhaps That is a lot of money Fourie kid
:29:46. > :29:51.like you. Anyone asks, you got it in Vegas. Then there is the
:29:51. > :29:54.thought-provoking work, like the last 10 - Macca the Last temptation
:29:54. > :29:58.of Christ, and Shutter Island. Despite the illustrious career it
:29:58. > :30:05.took five Academy Award nominations before Scorsese finally won an
:30:05. > :30:08.Oscar for the departed in 2006. your father were life and saw you
:30:08. > :30:11.here sitting with me I would say he would have a word with me about
:30:11. > :30:21.this. So with Oscar Time approaching and another nomination
:30:21. > :30:28.under his belt, can Scorsese remain at the top? You have got a bit of
:30:28. > :30:34.talent. We have just been talking about family life and I think there
:30:34. > :30:37.was a good example of Scorsese's interest in it with that club with
:30:37. > :30:41.his parents. And you hear his voice and how fast he talks. That is
:30:41. > :30:45.always strikes me about him as a person, this anxiety and drive you
:30:45. > :30:50.get from him, he talks fast, manic, tries to move on to the next thing,
:30:50. > :30:56.do bigger and so on. This varied, long career with this extraordinary
:30:56. > :31:00.range of interests he has. He is always driven on, never satisfied.
:31:00. > :31:04.He never felt he was being appreciated the right way, he
:31:04. > :31:10.wanted the Oscar. So he never sits back. It is that anxiety that is
:31:10. > :31:18.fascinating. It is hard to really remember how revolutionary some of
:31:19. > :31:25.those early films were. Raging Bull was just absolutely outstanding.
:31:25. > :31:35.The way it was shot, the use of black-and-white, the epic filming
:31:35. > :31:35.
:31:35. > :31:40.of the shops were incredible. -- was in -- shops was incredible. --
:31:40. > :31:46.shots was incredible. If you put everything aside, this man started
:31:46. > :31:50.out with Spielberg, Lucas, and he is still churning out films that
:31:50. > :31:55.have been nominated for awards 40 years later. For Hollywood, that is
:31:55. > :32:01.outstanding. I think he is the perfect example of an argument
:32:01. > :32:04.against awards. He did not win awards for the good stuff, started
:32:04. > :32:10.making films that appeal to the awards committees, but it was not
:32:10. > :32:17.as good as the early stuff which was ignored. I am not saying he was
:32:17. > :32:22.doing this now but he was making tremendous stuff, raging Bull, taxi
:32:22. > :32:32.driver, things like the Departed swept the board but they were not a
:32:32. > :32:33.
:32:34. > :32:37.patch on it. I watched Mean Streets and you know that opening line when
:32:37. > :32:44.he says you don't make up for your sins in church, you make up for
:32:44. > :32:51.them at home. Those concepts of redemption, sin, betrayal and how
:32:51. > :32:55.they go through in a gangster film, you talked about it... But it seems
:32:55. > :32:59.to me a lot of people have been affected by the committee we
:32:59. > :33:05.directed but that spirituality and the idea of guilt, retribution and
:33:05. > :33:09.repentance, I don't think they tap into that so much. That element is
:33:09. > :33:19.strong. He is also brilliant stylist and his use of music is
:33:19. > :33:19.
:33:19. > :33:28.easy to take for granted because That use of pop music to undercut
:33:28. > :33:31.something violent, music to evoke memories, that is entirely him.
:33:32. > :33:35.Brilliant style, he loved language and that rapid-fire dialogue and
:33:35. > :33:39.the hilarious use of obscenity, all the things we take for granted,
:33:39. > :33:46.became fashionable in the 1980s and 1990s when everybody was influenced
:33:46. > :33:52.by him. Without him you probably would not have things like the
:33:52. > :33:58.Sopranos, the wire, he is part of the evolution of the series, he is
:33:58. > :34:05.one of the big fossils along the way. A and other films like King of
:34:05. > :34:11.Comedy. Why don't people watch that more? A brilliant film! Scorsese
:34:11. > :34:18.tries out different things all the time and sometimes he fails. Gangs
:34:18. > :34:24.Of New York, New York, New York, you just think oh no! He made
:34:24. > :34:29.Robert De Niro as staff. It seems he chooses somebody and invest some
:34:29. > :34:32.of their best films in them, but I wrote a quote ways of the job of
:34:32. > :34:35.the artist is to make others care about his obsessions, and if you
:34:35. > :34:39.think about his obsessions, religion, his Italian background,
:34:39. > :34:45.cinema, that is what he has revolved around. It is what we have
:34:45. > :34:49.become obsessed with. He is brilliant as a film academic, the
:34:49. > :34:53.document up and preserve of cinema and quite revolutionary in terms of
:34:53. > :34:58.insisting on the preservation and recording of film history, a full-
:34:58. > :35:05.time job in itself. And archives of music, his documentaries about Bob
:35:05. > :35:10.Dylan and George Harrison, keeping the songs alive. This documentary
:35:10. > :35:20.was made by somebody who loves the music and country spat all those
:35:20. > :35:21.
:35:21. > :35:25.influences and see them. -- and can trace back. I suppose he translated
:35:26. > :35:32.that passion for cinema into his latest film. He is one of these
:35:32. > :35:35.people that is an evangelist for more than just the power of cinema
:35:35. > :35:39.but the religious fixation he has with the cinema as a church, the
:35:40. > :35:45.transformative powers of it. I am not drawn to that whole magic of
:35:45. > :35:49.cinema thing, the nostalgia, sentimentality and history of
:35:49. > :35:52.cinema a bit dubious, I like him more when he is being a bit more
:35:52. > :35:58.immediate. But his Love of cinema is infectious and if you want a
:35:58. > :36:02.quick introductory guide to cinema he is the person to go to. And to
:36:02. > :36:07.be 70 making films with that much energy, we were talking about Woody
:36:07. > :36:11.Allen early on, if you think about how stayed his films are compared
:36:11. > :36:15.to the amount of frenetic energy in the editing of a Scorsese film, it
:36:15. > :36:25.is amazing. I am a constant reinvention. Maybe it is a good
:36:25. > :36:27.
:36:27. > :36:30.thing is bonkers. Are we allowed to say that? Allegedly bonkers! Well,
:36:30. > :36:32.I imagine that won't be the last time Scorsese is celebrated!
:36:32. > :36:35.Talking of massively influential figures, yesterday was the 20th
:36:35. > :36:41.anniversary of the death of the seminal novelist Angela Carter. We
:36:41. > :36:47.asked Jeanette Winterson to explain just why she was so important.
:36:47. > :36:52.Angela Carter was exciting, when she published The Magic Toyshop in
:36:52. > :36:55.1967 she was writing her way past the social realism that seemed to
:36:55. > :37:00.be the purpose and method of fiction after its brief modernistic
:37:00. > :37:04.experiment from the likes of Joyce and Wolfie. Experiment which tried
:37:04. > :37:10.to do more than reproduce recognisable situations, and
:37:10. > :37:15.experiment with language and our unconscious, dreaming self. The
:37:15. > :37:22.novel was back to what it could see, there was not much interest in what
:37:22. > :37:28.it could be. Sure, there was Marcus and Calvisano, but British writers
:37:28. > :37:37.in the Sixties played it straight, think Kingsley Amos, or Iris
:37:37. > :37:42.Murdoch. Elsewhere, science fiction writers could get away with
:37:42. > :37:48.alternatives because they were alternative. But cross-
:37:48. > :37:53.fertilisation was not happening. Then along came Angela Carter, and
:37:53. > :37:58.landed into the colourful world of fairy-tales, themselves already
:37:58. > :38:03.pollinated by a rich, irreverent tradition where women met with
:38:03. > :38:09.waltz and men must take advice from cats. She shifted the novel into
:38:09. > :38:13.this different geography of out of scale plays and non-linear time,
:38:13. > :38:18.she re read fairy stories as though they were social realism and she
:38:18. > :38:25.rewrote realism as fairy-tale. In the company of false, filmed by
:38:25. > :38:29.Neil Jordan, her heroine prefers to reshape as a wolf and live with her
:38:29. > :38:38.hunted off lover rather than a return to social acceptability and
:38:38. > :38:42.the nice husband. Her most glorious creation in the Nights At The
:38:42. > :38:46.Circus. Is a giantess who claims to be hatched from an egg and hatches
:38:46. > :38:51.wings. Angela Carter was a feminist but believed women were more than
:38:51. > :38:55.the circumstances, we could be our imaginations. This put her at odds
:38:55. > :38:59.with quite in lot of 1970s feminist thinking which was only interested
:38:59. > :39:08.in gender experience. Angela Carter's politics included a
:39:08. > :39:11.radical wildness, a woman as mythical and magical -- woman as
:39:12. > :39:15.the mythical, magical and dangerous creature. She wrote as if women
:39:15. > :39:19.could fly, should fly and as if language and storytelling were
:39:19. > :39:26.themselves wings to hoist women over the kitchen sink and the way
:39:26. > :39:36.from our domestic dramas and dismal histories. -- away. This was not
:39:36. > :39:40.
:39:40. > :39:43.romantic escapism, but eight re- -- a. Well, that's about all for
:39:43. > :39:46.tonight. Thanks to my guests Mark Thomas and Hannah McGill, Denise
:39:47. > :39:49.Mina and Sarfraz Manzoor. Remember, as ever, you can find out more on
:39:49. > :39:52.all tonight's items on our website, and we'll be tweeting wisdom
:39:52. > :39:57.throughout the week. Sarfraz will be scrutinising tonight's tweets in
:39:57. > :40:00.the Green Room in a second. Next week I'll be here with a stellar
:40:00. > :40:06.line-up including Brian Cox and Mark Millar to discuss the runners
:40:06. > :40:10.and riders in this year's Oscars. In the meantime, at the end of a
:40:10. > :40:14.week that saw the loss of a musical legend we hear from a rising star
:40:14. > :40:24.of the new generation, as part of our new partnership with BBC
:40:24. > :40:40.
:40:40. > :40:50.Introducing. Here's Ruby Goe with I keep my gaze on you. I see my
:40:50. > :41:15.
:41:15. > :41:25.mood and colours, something I can't When I ask for one thing, the
:41:25. > :41:35.others prevail. When I wish for blue skies, the heavens open up.
:41:35. > :41:38.
:41:38. > :41:48.You with Perris just my luck... -- you with her is just my luck...
:41:48. > :41:58.Rushing like thunder, twisted realisation it was always you,
:41:58. > :42:03.
:42:03. > :42:13.What could have been, what should have been, now why is it when I
:42:13. > :42:21.call heads, it is always tales? And when I ask for one thing, the other
:42:21. > :42:31.thing prevails. And when I wish for blue skies, the heavens open up.
:42:31. > :42:46.