0:00:26 > 0:00:29ORCHESTRAL INTRODUCTION
0:00:33 > 0:00:35MAN SINGS COMIC OPERA
0:01:11 > 0:01:16And then all this is going on in the kitchen at the same time, you see.
0:01:30 > 0:01:34When you give him the soup, if you could do it like that,
0:01:34 > 0:01:39go, "Hello, are you hungry for soup?"
0:01:42 > 0:01:48Si, si, with, with, with gloves.
0:01:59 > 0:02:03It's almost impossible to say what my next guest is and what he does.
0:02:03 > 0:02:05Someone once said of him that he plays with the world
0:02:05 > 0:02:08like an inventive child with a box of plasticine.
0:02:08 > 0:02:11It was a brave attempt to describe the scope of his interests
0:02:11 > 0:02:12and his achievements.
0:02:22 > 0:02:24He is one of those rare and enviable human beings
0:02:24 > 0:02:27who excels at everything he tries.
0:02:27 > 0:02:28His first love was medicine.
0:02:28 > 0:02:30And that's the paradox of the brain,
0:02:30 > 0:02:33because although it has no experience of itself,
0:02:33 > 0:02:36although it has no immediate sensations of its own,
0:02:36 > 0:02:39it's only because we have an organ like this
0:02:39 > 0:02:41that we can have any sensations at all,
0:02:41 > 0:02:43or any experiences, for that matter.
0:02:43 > 0:02:46And after becoming a doctor, switched to the stage
0:02:46 > 0:02:48and became famous on both sides of the Atlantic
0:02:48 > 0:02:50as one of the Beyond The Fringe team.
0:02:50 > 0:02:51I wonder how many of these people
0:02:51 > 0:02:53have realised that Jonathan Miller's a Jew.
0:02:55 > 0:02:58Well, in fact I'm not really a Jew, just Jew-ish,
0:02:58 > 0:03:00not the whole hog, you see.
0:03:00 > 0:03:03Ladies and gentlemen, Doctor Jonathan Miller.
0:03:42 > 0:03:43And there is the garden.
0:03:46 > 0:03:51When we first came into this house, nearly 50 years ago,
0:03:51 > 0:03:58that magnolia tree was only about as high as the first joint,
0:03:58 > 0:04:02and it's now reached up almost to the top level of the house.
0:04:08 > 0:04:12My father was one of the founders of child psychiatry.
0:04:12 > 0:04:16That ensued as a result of the work that he did
0:04:16 > 0:04:19during the First World War with what was then called shell shock,
0:04:19 > 0:04:23which we now call, you know, post-traumatic disorders.
0:04:23 > 0:04:27And in fact, one of his drawings is one of his patients in,
0:04:27 > 0:04:30I think, 1920, drowsing under hypnosis.
0:04:30 > 0:04:35And I've got a bust upstairs
0:04:35 > 0:04:38of another one of his shell-shocked patients which he did.
0:04:39 > 0:04:41The dignity of this man is amazing
0:04:41 > 0:04:44and I do think it's a rather remarkable piece of handwork
0:04:44 > 0:04:46on my father's part.
0:04:48 > 0:04:51My father, when he came back from France,
0:04:51 > 0:04:54he worked in a hospital near the Tate Gallery
0:04:54 > 0:04:57and there were a lot of patients suffering from shell shock.
0:04:57 > 0:05:03And you see these decorously seated people at the ends of their beds,
0:05:03 > 0:05:05but just look what it's titled,
0:05:05 > 0:05:09Ward 7 Hysterics.
0:05:11 > 0:05:13Did he want you to be a doctor?
0:05:13 > 0:05:17I think that he was pleased that I became a doctor,
0:05:17 > 0:05:19I think he was more pleased that I was becoming what,
0:05:19 > 0:05:24I think I rather flinchingly call, an intellectual.
0:05:24 > 0:05:26Did he approve of your work in the theatre?
0:05:26 > 0:05:28I think he was very bewildered by the fact that
0:05:28 > 0:05:30I had drifted away from it.
0:05:30 > 0:05:32And I can remember when I was nearly 40,
0:05:32 > 0:05:35going to him in his consulting room where he would meet me,
0:05:35 > 0:05:36and he would ask me,
0:05:36 > 0:05:39"Have you decided what you're going to be yet?"
0:05:39 > 0:05:45This is a portrait of, ah, my mother by Bernard Meninsky.
0:05:45 > 0:05:49Um, I think it was done shortly before I was born.
0:05:51 > 0:05:54She published her first novel when she was only 22 or 23.
0:05:54 > 0:05:56I didn't know she was a novelist,
0:05:56 > 0:05:58and she used to sit on the other side of the table,
0:05:58 > 0:06:01when I was a little boy, typing, and I just thought she was a typist.
0:06:02 > 0:06:06Both of them were from immigrant Jewish origins,
0:06:06 > 0:06:09so that I had these two parents who were in fact,
0:06:09 > 0:06:15you know, old-fashioned sort of Jewish Bloomsbury intellectuals.
0:06:15 > 0:06:17I sense that there wasn't an enormous amount of warmth,
0:06:17 > 0:06:19which is so different from our family,
0:06:19 > 0:06:21where there was an enormous amount of love and warmth.
0:06:21 > 0:06:23And I think that that was so different
0:06:23 > 0:06:24to the way he'd been brought up,
0:06:24 > 0:06:28and I think it was quite a sort of cold, hard, academic environment.
0:06:30 > 0:06:35We were living in St John's Wood and I went to a prep school just,
0:06:35 > 0:06:39ah, ah, near us, and then I went to St Paul's.
0:06:43 > 0:06:47I was in the biology form with two or three friends,
0:06:47 > 0:06:51Oliver Sacks and Eric Korn
0:06:51 > 0:06:54and a number of other north London Jewish boys
0:06:54 > 0:06:57who just were passionate about biology.
0:06:57 > 0:07:01This very tall gangly figure with red hair
0:07:01 > 0:07:05came up to me and introduced himself,
0:07:05 > 0:07:09and we became fast friends pretty quickly.
0:07:09 > 0:07:14He impressed me then much as he does now,
0:07:14 > 0:07:16he charms,
0:07:16 > 0:07:18he informs,
0:07:19 > 0:07:22he very rarely mocks.
0:07:22 > 0:07:27We fell under the influence of this extraordinary biology teacher
0:07:27 > 0:07:33called Mister Pask, who simply disregarded the standard curriculum
0:07:33 > 0:07:36and just went on teaching us and teaching us everything he could,
0:07:36 > 0:07:40and made us dissect and do experiments
0:07:40 > 0:07:43and do a lot of microscopy and what was called histology,
0:07:43 > 0:07:47making sections of plants and animals and staining them
0:07:47 > 0:07:51and he allowed us to take extremely short lunch hours
0:07:51 > 0:07:54and he didn't acknowledge weekends.
0:07:54 > 0:07:57On a Saturday at, during the winter, and the early spring,
0:07:57 > 0:08:00we had to go to the Natural History Museum.
0:08:14 > 0:08:17This is a museum I heard about
0:08:17 > 0:08:21almost as soon as I came to Florence.
0:08:21 > 0:08:25It revived my original interest at school in zoology.
0:08:26 > 0:08:30Gradually I made my way through and I became absolutely astounded
0:08:30 > 0:08:36by the astonishing collection of specimens,
0:08:36 > 0:08:38it just seemed extraordinary.
0:08:42 > 0:08:48We each had phyla, our groups of animals of our own.
0:08:48 > 0:08:55Um, for Eric it was sea cucumbers, or Holothuroideans,
0:08:55 > 0:09:00for me it was cephalopods, you see them all around here,
0:09:00 > 0:09:02sort of cuttlefish and things,
0:09:02 > 0:09:05for Jonathan it was polychaetes,
0:09:05 > 0:09:09and these are rather elaborate worms,
0:09:09 > 0:09:11some of them brilliantly coloured.
0:09:11 > 0:09:15Jonathan was fascinated by their symmetry.
0:09:20 > 0:09:22So on we go,
0:09:22 > 0:09:26rising up the evolutionary tree,
0:09:26 > 0:09:29and we're now coming to, ah, the insects.
0:09:32 > 0:09:34And now, of course,
0:09:34 > 0:09:38we arrive at this astonishing collection of vertebrates.
0:09:39 > 0:09:42And this was where my breath was taken away,
0:09:42 > 0:09:45by this extraordinary display.
0:09:46 > 0:09:50It's almost as if it's an illuminated static version
0:09:50 > 0:09:53of Noah's Ark.
0:09:57 > 0:10:02We know now that none of these are the product of creation,
0:10:02 > 0:10:08that each one, each individual is a self-made individual,
0:10:08 > 0:10:11it is not designed by anyone,
0:10:11 > 0:10:16it is the product of a genetic process.
0:10:16 > 0:10:19And I suppose it must have been very hard
0:10:19 > 0:10:25in the early history of humanity, to conceive how these could come about
0:10:25 > 0:10:30by anything other than a craftsman, anything other than a creator.
0:10:30 > 0:10:32And really, this astonishing revolution
0:10:32 > 0:10:37that took place in thought at the end of the 19th century,
0:10:37 > 0:10:43with the publication of The Origin Of Species in 1859,
0:10:43 > 0:10:46at least opened the gate
0:10:46 > 0:10:50to an alternative way of visualising the variety that we see.
0:10:55 > 0:11:00We were all in love with evolutionary biology and Darwin,
0:11:00 > 0:11:04we were all atheists then and Pask was an atheist,
0:11:04 > 0:11:07although we also felt there was nothing much to discuss,
0:11:07 > 0:11:10I mean, Darwin was much more interesting.
0:11:11 > 0:11:15We would go up to the Scottish Marine Biological Station
0:11:15 > 0:11:18in the Clyde Estuary, a place called Millport,
0:11:18 > 0:11:21and study marine biology and collect animals
0:11:21 > 0:11:23and classify them and dissect them,
0:11:23 > 0:11:27and in the evening we would go out and collect sea urchins.
0:11:27 > 0:11:30The sea urchins came in from the deep water
0:11:30 > 0:11:33to spawn on the rocky shore by the biological station,
0:11:33 > 0:11:35and we used to collect them as they made perfect models
0:11:35 > 0:11:38for watching the process of fertilisation and development
0:11:38 > 0:11:39back in the lab.
0:11:45 > 0:11:48We would collect their eggs and their sperms and fertilise them,
0:11:48 > 0:11:53and watch them dividing, and I became acquainted with something
0:11:53 > 0:11:56which has remained a sort of passionate interest of mine,
0:11:56 > 0:11:58which is the history of embryology,
0:11:58 > 0:12:02how do things make themselves from such unpromising beginnings.
0:12:10 > 0:12:14He we were seeing something which neither Aristotle nor Harvey
0:12:14 > 0:12:15had been able to visualise,
0:12:15 > 0:12:19a single cell surrounded by a fluttering halo of sperm,
0:12:19 > 0:12:22only one of which would eventually succeed
0:12:22 > 0:12:25in piercing the membrane of the egg and fertilising it.
0:12:29 > 0:12:32For Jonathan it has a rather extra significance,
0:12:32 > 0:12:36because he took Rachel for a week to Millport in the holidays.
0:12:36 > 0:12:41And I think that a certain amount of cementing was done there.
0:12:44 > 0:12:49I think our gang all fell in love with Rachel,
0:12:49 > 0:12:51as Jonathan did.
0:12:51 > 0:12:53There's my wife looking at things.
0:12:54 > 0:12:58Have you found, have you found anything you liked?
0:12:58 > 0:13:01- But have you seen... come on. - I like that table, have you seen?
0:13:01 > 0:13:04- It's a wonderful table.- No let's go, let's go and have a look.
0:13:04 > 0:13:06And in a somewhat,
0:13:06 > 0:13:10a sometimes turbulent and unpredictable and brilliant
0:13:10 > 0:13:14and hyper-manic sort of life, Rachel has been, I think,
0:13:14 > 0:13:19this wonderful anchor in serenity and hearth and home.
0:13:19 > 0:13:24I don't think centrifugal Jonathan could have done so much,
0:13:24 > 0:13:28had it not been for Rachel there at the centre.
0:13:28 > 0:13:30For clamping things.
0:13:30 > 0:13:32And there's another here, that, that one was here.
0:13:32 > 0:13:34Oh, it's wonderful, yes.
0:13:38 > 0:13:40CHOIR SINGS HYMN: "Immortal, Invisible"
0:14:00 > 0:14:04He came up and read medicine,
0:14:04 > 0:14:06so at St John's College,
0:14:06 > 0:14:12a foxy looking fellow you see, still very young, rather keyed up,
0:14:12 > 0:14:17talked a great deal about the mind, it was always the mind in those days.
0:14:17 > 0:14:20And he liked to talk about scientific things,
0:14:20 > 0:14:22and philosophical things.
0:14:27 > 0:14:30This is Second Court, St John's.
0:14:30 > 0:14:34I used to study, from time to time,
0:14:34 > 0:14:38in what used to be a sort of annexe to the library over there.
0:14:38 > 0:14:41And I remember reading, not medicine,
0:14:41 > 0:14:44but reading Gilbert Ryle's Concept Of Mind,
0:14:44 > 0:14:49and there I was, a medical student reading philosophy.
0:14:49 > 0:14:53And I think that happened to my father when he came here,
0:14:53 > 0:14:58I don't think my father, when he arrived here in about 1907,
0:14:58 > 0:15:01was determined to do medicine.
0:15:01 > 0:15:04I'm not absolutely certain.
0:15:04 > 0:15:06But what he did in his first two years,
0:15:06 > 0:15:09was to do a thing called the moral science tripos,
0:15:09 > 0:15:12which meant that he was studying philosophy.
0:15:12 > 0:15:17And my father's supervisor when he was doing the moral science tripos,
0:15:17 > 0:15:20was a man called W H R Rivers.
0:15:20 > 0:15:26Now Rivers had been a researcher in vision and then, quite unexpectedly,
0:15:26 > 0:15:31in 1898, a colleague of his, who was a zoologist,
0:15:31 > 0:15:33who'd been studying molluscs
0:15:33 > 0:15:39and invertebrate animals in the Torres Strait,
0:15:39 > 0:15:42up in the northern tip of Queensland,
0:15:42 > 0:15:47came running back and met with Rivers and explained to him
0:15:47 > 0:15:51that the culture of the Torres Straits was rapidly disintegrating,
0:15:51 > 0:15:53"So I want you to come back with me
0:15:53 > 0:15:59"and record this culture, before it vanishes."
0:15:59 > 0:16:03So Rivers went back with this zoologist
0:16:03 > 0:16:06and also with my wife's great-uncle,
0:16:06 > 0:16:09a man called Seligman, who was a doctor,
0:16:09 > 0:16:10and a couple of other people,
0:16:10 > 0:16:12and they went out to the Torres Strait
0:16:12 > 0:16:17and started, virtually, British social anthropology.
0:16:17 > 0:16:20And they came back and wrote this book.
0:16:20 > 0:16:25And many years later, in 1998,
0:16:25 > 0:16:27100 years after that expedition,
0:16:27 > 0:16:29I went back to the Torres Strait myself
0:16:29 > 0:16:31and did a documentary about the people.
0:16:32 > 0:16:37What do you think was the value of recording the social practices
0:16:37 > 0:16:40and the rituals, because you all knew how to do them anyway?
0:16:40 > 0:16:42What did you feel was important
0:16:42 > 0:16:44about it being written down and recorded?
0:16:44 > 0:16:46Well, to be honest,
0:16:46 > 0:16:49today we go back to those six volumes to tell us what we dance.
0:16:49 > 0:16:52- Really?- Yeah, it was a gap.
0:16:52 > 0:16:55Do you feel the anthropologists got it wrong at any time?
0:16:55 > 0:16:57- They asked the wrong questions.- Ah.
0:16:57 > 0:16:59Tell me some of the wrong questions.
0:16:59 > 0:17:02- There are things that we don't want to tell them.- Uh-huh.
0:17:03 > 0:17:05Yeah, there were practices that is,
0:17:05 > 0:17:07even I cannot speak in front of the camera.
0:17:09 > 0:17:11Well now, what sort of practices, ah?
0:17:11 > 0:17:14- It's a taboo thing, you know, yeah.- Yes.
0:17:29 > 0:17:30When I was at Cambridge,
0:17:30 > 0:17:33I became associated with what was then a secret society
0:17:33 > 0:17:36called The Apostles, of which I became a member.
0:17:36 > 0:17:40I mean, it's something that you can't really talk about very much,
0:17:40 > 0:17:43cos it still has a certain sort of discreet,
0:17:43 > 0:17:45if not secrecy, a sort of modesty.
0:17:45 > 0:17:48There were are, there's King's.
0:17:50 > 0:17:53It met in King's College,
0:17:53 > 0:17:55in the rooms of EM Forster,
0:17:55 > 0:18:00as it happened, on Sunday nights, and we went there and read a paper,
0:18:00 > 0:18:05each person a paper, to each his own opinions, you see,
0:18:05 > 0:18:10about usually some topical, sometimes outrightly philosophical subject.
0:18:10 > 0:18:11Really, I really must ask,
0:18:11 > 0:18:14I really must ask not so much why questions,
0:18:14 > 0:18:17not so much why questions, as how questions.
0:18:19 > 0:18:20And it seems to be the philosophers,
0:18:20 > 0:18:23or at least they like to call themselves philosophers,
0:18:23 > 0:18:25philosophers who start by asking why questions,
0:18:25 > 0:18:29end up by only speaking to the sort, ah, ah, Friday got into bed with me,
0:18:29 > 0:18:32or to take one from real life, um...
0:18:36 > 0:18:38There's too much Tuesday in my beetroot salad,
0:18:38 > 0:18:40something that I cannot eat.
0:18:40 > 0:18:43He was a joker par excellence,
0:18:43 > 0:18:45who made a lot of jokes,
0:18:45 > 0:18:48very funny jokes, and that's one of the reasons,
0:18:48 > 0:18:52right from the start, why we cherished his company.
0:18:52 > 0:18:57He was an extremely funny man and still is very, very funny.
0:19:01 > 0:19:04When I was a very small boy, when I was about 12,
0:19:04 > 0:19:11I discovered that I have a certain capacity to imitate clucking hens,
0:19:11 > 0:19:15and also was rather a good imitator
0:19:15 > 0:19:19of the sound of trains going along.
0:19:20 > 0:19:23IMITATES TRAIN
0:19:26 > 0:19:28I don't know where that came from.
0:19:30 > 0:19:32At about 5.00 or 6.00 in the morning,
0:19:32 > 0:19:35you can often hear extremely depressed sounds
0:19:35 > 0:19:36coming from the lion house.
0:19:36 > 0:19:39You can often hear these sounds of acute leonine depression
0:19:39 > 0:19:42echoing over the empty park, it's sort of,
0:19:42 > 0:19:45Oooh, God!
0:19:45 > 0:19:49Oooooooooohhhhhh ohhh!
0:19:53 > 0:19:55He's an amazing mimic.
0:19:55 > 0:19:59And one of the things that you see when you watch The Zoo At Winter,
0:19:59 > 0:20:01and I remember as a child being taken to the zoo with him,
0:20:01 > 0:20:03is that he liked to pretend to be the animals.
0:20:03 > 0:20:05MIMICS MONKEY
0:20:12 > 0:20:14Quiet then, the public's coming in.
0:20:14 > 0:20:17If I'd bring my friends over, you always wanted him to be funny,
0:20:17 > 0:20:20but in fact they actually loved him being serious,
0:20:20 > 0:20:22because he would come and he'd go, "What are you interested in?"
0:20:22 > 0:20:25And they'd say, "Well I'm thinking of doing, ah, biology at Oxford."
0:20:25 > 0:20:28And so then he's say, "Well, do you know about?"
0:20:28 > 0:20:29And you'd go, oh, God no, please,
0:20:29 > 0:20:32and then two hours later, they had learnt everything
0:20:32 > 0:20:34there was to know about biology from my father.
0:20:34 > 0:20:37And they would come out going, "Oh, I'm just so inspired,"
0:20:37 > 0:20:40and you just think, I wish he'd been funny with them.
0:20:40 > 0:20:42A lot of my life has been yielding
0:20:42 > 0:20:46to unsolicited invitations to do things
0:20:46 > 0:20:52and yielding rather weak-mindedly to these invitations.
0:20:52 > 0:20:56Um, and when I was working as a house surgeon,
0:20:56 > 0:21:00as my first job at University College,
0:21:00 > 0:21:03I was working in casualty when,
0:21:03 > 0:21:08a man who worked for the Edinburgh Festival, John Bassett,
0:21:08 > 0:21:13who had been at Oxford with Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett,
0:21:13 > 0:21:18asked if I would like to participate in a late night revue
0:21:18 > 0:21:23at the Edinburgh Festival, because the officials of the festival
0:21:23 > 0:21:27were getting exasperated by the way in which the fringe productions
0:21:27 > 0:21:30were outshining the official productions,
0:21:30 > 0:21:35so would I come and do something which was beyond the fringe.
0:21:35 > 0:21:37- Perkins.- Sir?
0:21:37 > 0:21:39- I want you to lay down your life. - Yes, Sir.
0:21:39 > 0:21:42We need a futile gesture at this stage.
0:21:44 > 0:21:46- It'll raise the whole tone of the war.- Yes, Sir.
0:21:46 > 0:21:48- Get up on a crate, Perkins.- Sir.
0:21:48 > 0:21:49- Pop over to Bremen.- Yes, Sir.
0:21:49 > 0:21:51- Take a shufty.- Yes.
0:21:51 > 0:21:53- Don't come back.- Right you are.
0:21:55 > 0:21:59Goodbye, Perkins. God, I wish I was going too.
0:21:59 > 0:22:02Goodbye, Sir, or is it au revoir?
0:22:02 > 0:22:04No, Perkins.
0:22:13 > 0:22:16The show was so astonishingly successful
0:22:16 > 0:22:20and it got written up as if it was a great breakthrough in comedy.
0:22:20 > 0:22:26And we were almost immediately invited to come and do it in London.
0:22:38 > 0:22:40It's absolutely spiffing, it really had my feet tapping.
0:22:40 > 0:22:42Now let's get down to God.
0:22:44 > 0:22:46God, God, who is he? Where is he?
0:22:46 > 0:22:48And above all, why is he?
0:22:48 > 0:22:52- And of course, why is he above all?- Now...
0:22:52 > 0:22:55I didn't realise you could laugh at the army, the Queen,
0:22:55 > 0:22:59the Prime Minister, ah, the police,
0:22:59 > 0:23:03every single authority figure was held up for mockery.
0:23:03 > 0:23:05And that just, it was so liberating
0:23:05 > 0:23:07that I know what people say when they say,
0:23:07 > 0:23:10"Oh, Python changed my life," because that changed my life,
0:23:10 > 0:23:13and I guess I wanted to be a comedian from that moment.
0:23:13 > 0:23:16Have you got any questions you'd like to fire off about God, Dudley?
0:23:16 > 0:23:17Ah, yes, well, vicar...
0:23:17 > 0:23:21Oh, now don't call me vicar, call me Dick. That's the sort of vicar I am.
0:23:27 > 0:23:31And he did a sort of, it was very physically funny,
0:23:31 > 0:23:35and he's, this sort of way he talks, and his high intelligence
0:23:35 > 0:23:38and his wit were, was just electrifying.
0:23:38 > 0:23:40In the old days, in the old days,
0:23:40 > 0:23:43people used to think of the saints as pious old milksops.
0:23:43 > 0:23:46But they weren't, they weren't, the old saints were rough,
0:23:46 > 0:23:49toothless, ah, as you were. They were, they were tough,
0:23:49 > 0:23:52ruthless tearaways who knew where they were going.
0:23:52 > 0:23:54Matthew, Mark, Luke and John...
0:23:54 > 0:23:56ALL: Went through life with their head screwed on.
0:23:56 > 0:23:59BOTH: They went outside with nothing on, had a bathe in the...
0:23:59 > 0:24:00Thank you very much.
0:24:13 > 0:24:16At that time, New York was very exciting.
0:24:16 > 0:24:19I became acquainted with New York intellectuals,
0:24:19 > 0:24:21with the people who were founding the New York Review Of Books,
0:24:21 > 0:24:25for whom I wrote, and working for The New Yorker,
0:24:25 > 0:24:28and at the same time going up from time to time to go on grand rounds
0:24:28 > 0:24:33at Mount Sinai Hospital in neurology.
0:24:33 > 0:24:37Um, and the freedom of being able to cross disciplines
0:24:37 > 0:24:41in ways which I think would have been much more difficult in England,
0:24:41 > 0:24:45and meeting all sorts of very interesting people,
0:24:45 > 0:24:47both in the theatre,
0:24:47 > 0:24:52but also writers and authors and musicians and comedians.
0:24:54 > 0:24:59And when I came back to England, I thought well,
0:24:59 > 0:25:02well it might have been rather nice to learn how to make film.
0:25:02 > 0:25:06So I went and managed to get an interview with Huw Wheldon,
0:25:06 > 0:25:11who was the editor and presenter of Monitor,
0:25:11 > 0:25:14this was this famous arts programme.
0:25:14 > 0:25:15Good evening.
0:25:15 > 0:25:19For a long time we've wanted to make a film about a drama school.
0:25:19 > 0:25:22And I was asking him questions about where I could get
0:25:22 > 0:25:25a sort of training in film making.
0:25:25 > 0:25:28Already, you see, I was yielding to showbiz
0:25:28 > 0:25:31and beginning to think that perhaps I was going to do more of that
0:25:31 > 0:25:32and less of medicine.
0:25:32 > 0:25:36And he said, "Yes, yes, well you could do that,"
0:25:36 > 0:25:40and he looked very meditative, and then suddenly said,
0:25:40 > 0:25:44"How would you like to, ah, present and edit, ah, Monitor?"
0:25:44 > 0:25:48We were fascinated by it and I think you will be too.
0:25:48 > 0:25:51The chutzpah of Huw Weldon suggesting it actually,
0:25:51 > 0:25:55and the chutzpah of Jonathan accepting it, is equally surprising.
0:25:55 > 0:25:58Because, ah, to actually introduce a programme weekly and edit it,
0:25:58 > 0:26:01to choose what's to go in as well as to actually front it,
0:26:01 > 0:26:05find intelligent things to say, but of course that's not a problem for Jonathan,
0:26:05 > 0:26:08he didn't have any problem finding intelligent things to say, it was having to stop him.
0:26:08 > 0:26:12As a novice, as an outsider,
0:26:12 > 0:26:17I was not bound by the formal conventions of people who had,
0:26:17 > 0:26:20as it were, climbed slowly through the television ladder.
0:26:20 > 0:26:23Um, and it seemed to me that there were alternative ways
0:26:23 > 0:26:26of shooting interviews, including for example,
0:26:26 > 0:26:29in a programme I did about Peter Brook's rehearsals
0:26:29 > 0:26:31for the Marat/Sade,
0:26:31 > 0:26:35ah, I didn't want to have a fixed camera set up like we have here,
0:26:35 > 0:26:37I said, "Why don't we just walk around
0:26:37 > 0:26:39"and have the camera on someone's shoulder
0:26:39 > 0:26:43"and, ah, just deal with it in a very vernacular way."
0:26:43 > 0:26:46And it seems that, that you've got a special problem here
0:26:46 > 0:26:49in which every actor in the play is mad.
0:26:51 > 0:26:55I began to move into areas which Wheldon had,
0:26:55 > 0:26:59had really not exactly abstained from,
0:26:59 > 0:27:01but which he didn't involve himself with.
0:27:04 > 0:27:07Because I'd been and spent so much time in New York,
0:27:07 > 0:27:09I was interested in the New York Intelligentsia.
0:27:11 > 0:27:14And I got attacked for doing my first long interview,
0:27:14 > 0:27:17a full length programme of interviewing Susan Sontag,
0:27:17 > 0:27:19and no-one had ever heard of her,
0:27:19 > 0:27:22they didn't know who she was, and they were absolutely outraged
0:27:22 > 0:27:24by what they thought was this,
0:27:24 > 0:27:27this New York sort of feminist pretension.
0:27:27 > 0:27:31I moseyed over to Philip Johnson's modest stash on Park.
0:27:31 > 0:27:36The Seagram Building gleamed like a switchblade in the autumn sun.
0:27:54 > 0:27:58I done something out of just being out,
0:27:58 > 0:28:01outside that old movie theatre,
0:28:01 > 0:28:04which I, I, I don't think I, I would have got, if I'd been inside.
0:28:04 > 0:28:06Inside, no, no, no.
0:28:08 > 0:28:11Ah, ah, after, after all, ah, art, art itself is,
0:28:11 > 0:28:17is essentially phoney, I know that, ah, I mean I know that,
0:28:17 > 0:28:20that true phoniness has a kind of reality of its own.
0:28:20 > 0:28:24Um, but, but I think that really if, if you're a critic, it,
0:28:24 > 0:28:28it's much more relevant to talk about what it's like being a critic.
0:28:28 > 0:28:32Yes, yes, be, be, to, to talk about oneself in fact.
0:28:32 > 0:28:33I think so, yes.
0:28:33 > 0:28:37I would salute Jonathan for, and take the piss out of it as well,
0:28:37 > 0:28:41but I would also congratulate him for, for doing that sort of thing.
0:28:41 > 0:28:45I think, yeah, I think it was just going out on a limb
0:28:45 > 0:28:47and good, good for them.
0:28:53 > 0:28:58Within a year of Jonathan relinquishing the editorial reins
0:28:58 > 0:29:00and the editorial sludge, as you might call it,
0:29:00 > 0:29:04of having to be worrying about things week in and week out,
0:29:04 > 0:29:06there he was making films for us,
0:29:06 > 0:29:09including a marvellous film called The Drinking Party.
0:29:12 > 0:29:15I was speaking to a colleague of mine called Leo Aylen,
0:29:15 > 0:29:20who was a, a classicist, who said, "Wouldn't it be interesting to do
0:29:20 > 0:29:24"a dramatisation of the symposium, or, and call it The Drinking Party."
0:29:24 > 0:29:27And I thought of a way of doing this,
0:29:27 > 0:29:31without having people dressed in awful classical costumes.
0:29:31 > 0:29:34Intellectuals in the subsequent couple of thousand years
0:29:34 > 0:29:38had often re-performed Plato's dialogues
0:29:38 > 0:29:40as a celebration of his importance.
0:29:40 > 0:29:42And I thought,
0:29:42 > 0:29:45well wouldn't it be interesting to stage it at a school
0:29:45 > 0:29:47and have boys having a reunion,
0:29:47 > 0:29:50and I'll just have this group of old boys coming back
0:29:50 > 0:29:53with their master, played by Leo McKern,
0:29:53 > 0:29:56who also was going to play Socrates,
0:29:56 > 0:29:59so that we would perform and discuss the symposium.
0:29:59 > 0:30:05So, I propose that as love is the oldest,
0:30:05 > 0:30:09so is love the most honourable of the gods,
0:30:09 > 0:30:14and most powerful in assisting men to achieve honour and happiness,
0:30:14 > 0:30:17both here and hereafter.
0:30:22 > 0:30:23THUNDER RUMBLES
0:30:23 > 0:30:26And then I had to accommodate myself to the fact
0:30:26 > 0:30:28that we had a rainstorm in the middle of the show,
0:30:28 > 0:30:29and that stopped us.
0:30:29 > 0:30:30And then I suddenly realised
0:30:30 > 0:30:32there was something absolutely wonderful
0:30:32 > 0:30:35about the way in which we had placed umbrellas
0:30:35 > 0:30:37over the dining table, outdoors on the terrace.
0:30:37 > 0:30:41And, ah, so I shot five or six different shots
0:30:41 > 0:30:45of these wonderful umbrellas overlapping with one another,
0:30:45 > 0:30:47and I began at that moment,
0:30:47 > 0:30:50although it might be seem by hindsight,
0:30:50 > 0:30:52to establish my interest in abstract formats.
0:30:54 > 0:30:58He'd somehow become a top-line director overnight -
0:30:58 > 0:30:59I don't know how he did it,
0:30:59 > 0:31:01because he didn't do lots of 15-minute short films,
0:31:01 > 0:31:04in the way that Ken Russell and John Schlesinger had both done,
0:31:04 > 0:31:06and he could handle actors.
0:31:06 > 0:31:09So I don't think that I would have been in the least bit surprised
0:31:09 > 0:31:11when he came back and said, "I want to do Alice in Wonderland."
0:31:15 > 0:31:18It seemed to me, the more I read it again,
0:31:18 > 0:31:22to be the expression of all sorts of Victorian attitudes
0:31:22 > 0:31:26to the mystery and the mysterious sanctity of childhood,
0:31:26 > 0:31:32seeing things which he or she would, as they grew up, would see no more.
0:31:32 > 0:31:37And I thought, well let's do it with a lot of interesting actors,
0:31:37 > 0:31:40as if they were, in fact, all people with whom this child
0:31:40 > 0:31:45would have been acquainted as the daughter of an Oxford Don.
0:31:50 > 0:31:55So I decided to get rid, at one stroke, of all the animal heads,
0:31:55 > 0:31:59I simply wanted to make it a sort of melancholy journey to growing up.
0:32:06 > 0:32:12I was very fortunate in the speed with which I was able to choose,
0:32:12 > 0:32:15ah, the person who played Alice.
0:32:15 > 0:32:20We advertised in newspapers and hundreds of photographs arrived,
0:32:20 > 0:32:24and then this rather extraordinary, solemn child,
0:32:24 > 0:32:28who I think was no older than about 13, turned up.
0:32:28 > 0:32:32And within about 20 minutes I said, "That's the girl."
0:32:32 > 0:32:34Anne-Marie Mallik.
0:32:34 > 0:32:36Jonathan? Hello.
0:32:36 > 0:32:38Well, hello, long time no see.
0:32:38 > 0:32:40Very long time, 40 something years.
0:32:40 > 0:32:42How very nice to see, yes it, it is.
0:32:42 > 0:32:46The first time we met was when you came to the BBC.
0:32:46 > 0:32:47Yes.
0:32:47 > 0:32:53And, ah, can you remember what I, what I asked you to do?
0:32:53 > 0:32:56You asked me to recite something.
0:32:56 > 0:32:57Really?
0:32:57 > 0:32:59You did, I think it was You Are Old, Father William.
0:32:59 > 0:33:01Oh, how extraordinary.
0:33:01 > 0:33:04You are old, Father William, the young man said,
0:33:04 > 0:33:06and you're hair's become very white.
0:33:07 > 0:33:10And yet you incessantly stand on your head,
0:33:10 > 0:33:13do you think at your age it is right?
0:33:13 > 0:33:15You explained very clearly about being in a dream
0:33:15 > 0:33:19and no facial expression and what, all of that.
0:33:19 > 0:33:20Yes.
0:33:20 > 0:33:23- Which was therefore relatively easy.- Yes.
0:33:23 > 0:33:24Em, or seemed, in...
0:33:24 > 0:33:26But nevertheless, I mean,
0:33:26 > 0:33:28although I perhaps didn't ask you to do anything
0:33:28 > 0:33:31in a way conspicuously expressive,
0:33:31 > 0:33:36whatever you did was in fact absolutely naturally expressive,
0:33:36 > 0:33:40and you managed to carry off this wonderful sort of solemn,
0:33:40 > 0:33:42mirthless appearance,
0:33:42 > 0:33:45not amused by anything that you were surrounded by.
0:33:45 > 0:33:46Yes.
0:33:46 > 0:33:48And talking to people.
0:33:48 > 0:33:50And of course you had the opportunity
0:33:50 > 0:33:52to meet all these extraordinarily famous actors as well.
0:33:52 > 0:33:56No room, no room, no room.
0:33:56 > 0:33:58There's no room, no.
0:33:58 > 0:34:01There's plenty of room.
0:34:01 > 0:34:02Oh, oh.
0:34:02 > 0:34:04Have some wine.
0:34:04 > 0:34:07- I don't see any wine. - There isn't any.
0:34:07 > 0:34:09It wasn't very civil of you to offer it.
0:34:09 > 0:34:12It wasn't very civil of you to sit down before you're invited.
0:34:12 > 0:34:14I thought you did invite me,
0:34:14 > 0:34:18and anyway, the table's laid for a great deal more than three.
0:34:18 > 0:34:23Ah, your, erm, your, your hair wants cutting.
0:34:23 > 0:34:25You shouldn't make personal remarks. It's very rude.
0:34:25 > 0:34:28You didn't seem in the least bit impressed,
0:34:28 > 0:34:32or made anxious by the fact that you were dealing with someone
0:34:32 > 0:34:37who was so well known - you just simply were the person you were playing.
0:34:37 > 0:34:42Yes, I suppose that was a benefit of having much older parents.
0:34:42 > 0:34:43Ah, yes.
0:34:43 > 0:34:49Because they had friends who were older as well,
0:34:49 > 0:34:52and reasonably important people in their own lifestyles,
0:34:52 > 0:34:56so I'd always been there as a small child with,
0:34:56 > 0:34:59with people who were aware of their own consequence.
0:34:59 > 0:35:02INDISTINCT NOISE
0:35:02 > 0:35:03SHE HAMMERS ON DOOR
0:35:07 > 0:35:10You'll never make them people hear in there, you see,
0:35:10 > 0:35:12cos they're, like they're making too much noise themselves.
0:35:12 > 0:35:15I mean you, you follow what I mean, you can hear them.
0:35:15 > 0:35:18Well how am I to get in, then?
0:35:19 > 0:35:21There were moments in which the performers,
0:35:21 > 0:35:27quite spontaneously, came up with a paradoxical speech,
0:35:27 > 0:35:31which seemed to be consistent with Carroll's own logic.
0:35:33 > 0:35:34Oh, excuse me a moment, ah,
0:35:34 > 0:35:38something seems to be cropping up in this, ah, area over here.
0:35:38 > 0:35:42He was a logician and he loved logical jokes.
0:35:42 > 0:35:46And there was this moment in which John Bird, playing the frog footman,
0:35:46 > 0:35:48he said, and this came completely spontaneously,
0:35:48 > 0:35:51I didn't have to tell him, he just came up with it, he said...
0:35:51 > 0:35:54Now then, I'll tell you what I'll do,
0:35:54 > 0:35:58I'll tell you what I'll do for you, nothing.
0:35:58 > 0:36:00How's that, any good to you at all, nothing?
0:36:00 > 0:36:03I mean I wouldn't be able to do it straight away, em,
0:36:03 > 0:36:04I'll say that, you see,
0:36:04 > 0:36:06I couldn't, couldn't possibly do it straight away,
0:36:06 > 0:36:09because I've got all these things cropping up, you see,
0:36:09 > 0:36:10I have to deal with.
0:36:10 > 0:36:13I, well I mean you saw just now that something cropped up there,
0:36:13 > 0:36:14you see, and I get,
0:36:14 > 0:36:18that's the same type of thing I get cropping up all the time, you see.
0:36:18 > 0:36:21So naturally I've got my hands full but, ah,
0:36:21 > 0:36:23if I was to do nothing for you,
0:36:23 > 0:36:26I can't promise I could, but if I was to do nothing for you,
0:36:26 > 0:36:29I'd have to sort of find the time, you see, when I could squeeze it in.
0:36:29 > 0:36:30Do you see what I mean?
0:36:30 > 0:36:33I think you're absolutely idiotic.
0:36:33 > 0:36:38Well, maybe I am, maybe I'm not.
0:36:40 > 0:36:43Jonathan is a great encourager of that sort of thing, and indeed,
0:36:43 > 0:36:48the more canonical the thing he's dealing in,
0:36:48 > 0:36:53or he's, that, ah, the more he, he likes to kind of, em,
0:36:55 > 0:36:57manipulate the edges of it.
0:36:57 > 0:37:00I think most people who liked the film
0:37:00 > 0:37:03felt that it actually had reproduced
0:37:03 > 0:37:06this curious inconsequential disconnectedness of dreaming.
0:37:06 > 0:37:09- Yes.- That somehow you were in one place and then,
0:37:09 > 0:37:14without having to be transported, or without having to go anywhere,
0:37:14 > 0:37:16you found yourself somewhere else.
0:37:16 > 0:37:18Else, yes.
0:37:19 > 0:37:20WHISPERS:
0:37:20 > 0:37:24The trial's beginning, the trial's beginning.
0:37:27 > 0:37:30CHOIR SING: "Immortal, Invisible"
0:38:03 > 0:38:06You see I based all these rooms in a court...
0:38:06 > 0:38:09no courtroom would have had these, it was half based on
0:38:09 > 0:38:15what a girl of your age at that time would have imagined.
0:38:15 > 0:38:17- Hold your tongue.- I won't.
0:38:17 > 0:38:20Off with her head! Off with her head!
0:38:20 > 0:38:22Off with her head!
0:38:22 > 0:38:23Off with her head!
0:38:23 > 0:38:26Off with her head!
0:38:26 > 0:38:29Off with her head!
0:38:29 > 0:38:31DUCKS QUACK
0:38:35 > 0:38:36DUCKS QUACK
0:38:38 > 0:38:40CHURCH BELLS CHIME
0:38:43 > 0:38:46- Are you glad you did it, in the end? - Oh, hugely glad I did it.
0:38:58 > 0:39:01Jonathan Miller, who produced Alice in Wonderland for television,
0:39:01 > 0:39:04is tackling Sheridan's School For Scandal
0:39:04 > 0:39:06for his theatre debut in the provinces.
0:39:06 > 0:39:08It's very pleasant to come to a new town,
0:39:08 > 0:39:11and it's very pleasant to come to a town which has got
0:39:11 > 0:39:12a great reputation for theatre,
0:39:12 > 0:39:15and where you know that you'll find fresh talent,
0:39:15 > 0:39:18which isn't quite so shop-soiled as the London talent is.
0:39:19 > 0:39:22When I first worked with him, which was at the Nottingham Playhouse,
0:39:22 > 0:39:25he was really beginning to direct
0:39:25 > 0:39:27and for a very, very, very bright man,
0:39:27 > 0:39:31he never talked down to you when you were a young actress,
0:39:31 > 0:39:34so he sort of made you feel confident about yourself,
0:39:34 > 0:39:37and felt that you could sort of do anything really.
0:39:37 > 0:39:40I found that the actors with whom I worked
0:39:40 > 0:39:46were amazingly tolerant of my amateur status,
0:39:46 > 0:39:50and found that I actually brought to the rehearsal
0:39:50 > 0:39:54a sort of playful, ah, inventiveness,
0:39:54 > 0:39:57which perhaps was entirely due to the fact
0:39:57 > 0:39:59that I had not been trained.
0:40:20 > 0:40:22Oh, that's new.
0:40:22 > 0:40:23Jonathan Miller of that ilk!
0:40:23 > 0:40:27That's, ah, yes, now how long ago is it since we...?
0:40:27 > 0:40:29Ho-ho, 1988.
0:40:29 > 0:40:32But you weren't here when Larry was here, were you?
0:40:32 > 0:40:33No, sadly not.
0:40:33 > 0:40:35And that's 40 years ago, I think,
0:40:35 > 0:40:37when I was first here working for him.
0:40:40 > 0:40:42I was rehearsing something, and someone said,
0:40:42 > 0:40:44"Laurence Olivier's on the phone."
0:40:44 > 0:40:45And I said, "Oh, pull the other one."
0:40:45 > 0:40:48And he said, "Oh, no, no, seriously, he's on the phone."
0:40:48 > 0:40:50And indeed it was Laurence Olivier,
0:40:50 > 0:40:53and he was inviting me to come to the National
0:40:53 > 0:40:55to direct a production of the Merchant of Venice.
0:40:57 > 0:40:59I remember him saying to me, "Dear Jonathan,"
0:40:59 > 0:41:03and he had decided by that time he was going to play Shylock,
0:41:03 > 0:41:06he said, "We must at all costs avoid offending the Hebrews,
0:41:06 > 0:41:09"God I love them so."
0:41:09 > 0:41:12And, ah, I said, well the best way of avoiding offending them
0:41:12 > 0:41:17is not to come on looking like something out of Oliver.
0:41:17 > 0:41:22Ah, and so we got him to dress like an ordinary businessman.
0:41:24 > 0:41:26Hath not a Jew eyes?
0:41:30 > 0:41:33Hath not a Jew hands,
0:41:33 > 0:41:34organs,
0:41:34 > 0:41:36dimensions,
0:41:36 > 0:41:39senses,
0:41:40 > 0:41:43affection,
0:41:43 > 0:41:44passions?
0:41:46 > 0:41:48If you prick us, do we not bleed?
0:41:50 > 0:41:52Tickle us, do we not laugh?
0:41:52 > 0:41:55If you poison us, do we not die?
0:41:55 > 0:41:59And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
0:41:59 > 0:42:03If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.
0:42:03 > 0:42:06There's a wonderful moment in the, in the play
0:42:06 > 0:42:09when he hears that Antonio's ships have been sunk,
0:42:09 > 0:42:12and he has to say, "Is it true, is it true?"
0:42:12 > 0:42:14And, ah, he had a moment of triumph,
0:42:14 > 0:42:18and I reminded him of a wonderful little piece of newsreel
0:42:18 > 0:42:20I'd seen of Hitler in Compiegne,
0:42:20 > 0:42:24the surrender of France, when Hitler suddenly did this funny little jig.
0:42:24 > 0:42:27I said, "It would be rather nice to,
0:42:27 > 0:42:29"for you to do a funny little jig like that,
0:42:29 > 0:42:32"and it would be rather ironic, though probably undetectable
0:42:32 > 0:42:37"to the audience, for you, a Jew, to be representing Hitler."
0:42:39 > 0:42:41In luck, in luck?
0:42:41 > 0:42:45Hath an argosy cast away, coming from Tripolis.
0:42:46 > 0:42:47HE LAUGHS HYSTERICALLY
0:42:47 > 0:42:51He sank, he died.
0:42:51 > 0:42:52HE CONTINUES LAUGHING
0:42:52 > 0:42:55Is it true, is it true?
0:42:56 > 0:43:00I think one of the things which I brought to performance
0:43:00 > 0:43:03and to the directing of performance,
0:43:03 > 0:43:07was prompted and inspired by the, ah, training I'd received
0:43:07 > 0:43:11not as a theatre person, but as a doctor.
0:43:11 > 0:43:14I'd been taught to look for the small details,
0:43:14 > 0:43:18which people, the, the, ah, the,
0:43:18 > 0:43:21which, by means of which the doctor infers what might be wrong,
0:43:21 > 0:43:24little tiny details of how people carry themselves,
0:43:24 > 0:43:27how they talk, what they can't do, what they can do.
0:43:27 > 0:43:32And that, it seemed to me that these negligible details
0:43:32 > 0:43:35which you're trained to keep your eye open for
0:43:35 > 0:43:39were absolutely all that the theatre was about.
0:43:39 > 0:43:43I explored one play, King Lear, three times with him,
0:43:43 > 0:43:48and Jonathan told a story of working on geriatric wards
0:43:48 > 0:43:51with very old, very ill people
0:43:51 > 0:43:56who had sometimes senile dementia, but they have a memory of something.
0:43:56 > 0:43:59And even though, and he remembered one old man
0:43:59 > 0:44:02whose daughter came to see him,
0:44:02 > 0:44:05and at the end of the time when they could,
0:44:05 > 0:44:09when they had to leave, the visitors left, he got out of bed,
0:44:09 > 0:44:13because he was a gent, and saw her to the door,
0:44:13 > 0:44:17quite unaware that he didn't have any pyjama bottoms on.
0:44:17 > 0:44:21And it was that sort of human detail
0:44:21 > 0:44:27and endearing detail that Jonathan tried to weave in to what he did.
0:44:28 > 0:44:34Pray, do not mock me, I'm a very foolish, fond old man,
0:44:34 > 0:44:37four score and upward, ah, not an hour more nor less.
0:44:39 > 0:44:45And to deal plainly, ah, I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
0:44:47 > 0:44:50Methinks I should know you,
0:44:50 > 0:44:53and know this man,
0:44:56 > 0:45:00yet I am doubtful for I am mainly ignorant what place this is.
0:45:03 > 0:45:09All the strength I have, I remembers not these garments,
0:45:09 > 0:45:12nor I know not where I did lodge last night.
0:45:37 > 0:45:38Well, of course as a medical student,
0:45:38 > 0:45:42I became accustomed to this sort of thing which, ah,
0:45:42 > 0:45:46I think the, the ordinary person would find quite repulsive.
0:45:46 > 0:45:52But when you realise that these are not actually dead human beings,
0:45:52 > 0:45:56but are models made with meticulous detail
0:45:56 > 0:45:59by a craftsman working in wax,
0:45:59 > 0:46:02they perhaps are slightly less repulsive,
0:46:02 > 0:46:04if indeed they're repulsive at all.
0:46:18 > 0:46:23There's something very touching about these muscular creatures here,
0:46:25 > 0:46:30in spite of having lost their skin, they stand with a dignity
0:46:30 > 0:46:35which is inconsistent with their predicament.
0:46:37 > 0:46:39Hello.
0:46:43 > 0:46:45The details are quite astonishing.
0:46:45 > 0:46:48It's very hard to understand how they were made.
0:46:50 > 0:46:53But it's amazing that so few people come to see them.
0:46:57 > 0:46:58But this, of course,
0:46:58 > 0:47:04raises deeply interesting questions about the nature of disgust,
0:47:04 > 0:47:08what it is for something to be disgusting, rather than interesting,
0:47:08 > 0:47:13and whether or not disgust is compatible
0:47:13 > 0:47:17with aesthetic interest,
0:47:17 > 0:47:21whether you can look at these things without in fact recoiling
0:47:21 > 0:47:25from the fact that we have a suspicion about interiors
0:47:25 > 0:47:30and we feel that they are disgusting.
0:47:31 > 0:47:33The only way in which we can make an inventory
0:47:33 > 0:47:35of all these furnishings and fittings,
0:47:35 > 0:47:38is by having a look inside someone else,
0:47:38 > 0:47:40and that's exactly what I've done here.
0:47:41 > 0:47:44All right, let's make a start somewhere,
0:47:44 > 0:47:46so let's have a look at the heart.
0:47:47 > 0:47:50Well, you can see at once that it's nothing like an orange,
0:47:50 > 0:47:53or a grapefruit, I mean it's not even heart shaped,
0:47:53 > 0:47:56in fact it hasn't got any particular shape at all,
0:47:56 > 0:48:00it's just a flabby mass, covered with fat.
0:48:00 > 0:48:03That's because it's empty of blood now and it's dead,
0:48:03 > 0:48:05but when it was filled with blood and active,
0:48:05 > 0:48:10this organ was contracting and expanding 70 times a minute,
0:48:10 > 0:48:12for the best part of 70 years,
0:48:12 > 0:48:16propelling blood around the person's body in one direction.
0:48:27 > 0:48:31Jonathan was really the consummate teacher,
0:48:31 > 0:48:34this is really what he wanted to do, he wanted to teach.
0:48:36 > 0:48:39I was determined with the designer, Colin Lowrie,
0:48:39 > 0:48:43to build a set which was the inside of Jonathan's head.
0:48:43 > 0:48:47And, ah, this was really a, a room, a place, a jumble,
0:48:47 > 0:48:51a sort of thing when, which existed and didn't really exist at all,
0:48:51 > 0:48:54that we could change and move around and add things to, and so on.
0:48:54 > 0:48:59If I light a fire on this rather impressive piece of machinery here,
0:49:03 > 0:49:05energy is released in the form of heat and some light,
0:49:05 > 0:49:07and of course rather a lot of sound.
0:49:07 > 0:49:10I was interested in the philosophical principles
0:49:10 > 0:49:13which had guided, ah, medical development
0:49:13 > 0:49:19and particularly my interest in what I would call models and metaphors,
0:49:19 > 0:49:22the way in which models and metaphors
0:49:22 > 0:49:26have actually been one of the most important motifs
0:49:26 > 0:49:28which have stimulated medical advances.
0:49:31 > 0:49:34It's much easier these days for a scientist to be right,
0:49:34 > 0:49:36since he has such a wealth of engines and machines
0:49:36 > 0:49:39from which to draw fruitful analogies.
0:49:40 > 0:49:42We find it hard to say what something is,
0:49:42 > 0:49:44unless we can say what it's like.
0:49:44 > 0:49:48Confronted by some natural process, whose working are mysterious,
0:49:48 > 0:49:51scientists often try to explain their action
0:49:51 > 0:49:55by comparing them with something which they clearly understand,
0:49:55 > 0:49:57and for obvious reasons, we find it easier to understand processes
0:49:57 > 0:50:01for which we, ourselves, are responsible.
0:50:01 > 0:50:02In the ancient world,
0:50:02 > 0:50:06the furnace was one of the few metaphors available,
0:50:06 > 0:50:08but as we'll see in a later programme,
0:50:08 > 0:50:11when pumps began to be widely used during the sixteenth century,
0:50:11 > 0:50:14scientists were presented with a completely new model
0:50:14 > 0:50:18for thinking about the action of the heart.
0:50:18 > 0:50:22We used to sit together in the set, usually after the shoot,
0:50:22 > 0:50:26and work out what it, what it was we were going to do.
0:50:26 > 0:50:29and some of them he could interact with,
0:50:29 > 0:50:32and some of them had to be done with graphics or in a special set up.
0:50:32 > 0:50:36So the idea of using 500 red Ford Fiestas as blood cells
0:50:36 > 0:50:38seemed like a pretty good idea to me.
0:50:39 > 0:50:45The red cells spend their active life cruising through the highways of the circulation.
0:50:45 > 0:50:47But it's not simply an idle joyride,
0:50:47 > 0:50:51because the red cells are small, commercial vehicles,
0:50:51 > 0:50:55transporting their precious cargo of oxygen from lungs to tissues.
0:50:55 > 0:51:00Like motor cars, though, they wear out, they begin to falter
0:51:00 > 0:51:03and have to be replaced. Their useful lifespan is only about 120 days,
0:51:03 > 0:51:08after which they become fragile and inefficient.
0:51:08 > 0:51:13But the derelict blood cells can't be left abandoned on the kerbside in the busy bloodstream,
0:51:13 > 0:51:16as this would lead to a pile up, or a thrombosis.
0:51:17 > 0:51:20On holiday, if you found a dead rabbit on the road,
0:51:20 > 0:51:24he would stop the car, put it in, throw it into the back of the car,
0:51:24 > 0:51:27we'd all go home, and then it would be nailed to a breadboard
0:51:27 > 0:51:31and he would open this thing up and, you know,
0:51:31 > 0:51:32and show us everything, you know,
0:51:32 > 0:51:35"Here's the aorta, and here's the heart."
0:51:35 > 0:51:40And, for me, actually, that's what, at that age, made me think I wanted to be a doctor.
0:51:40 > 0:51:42I was hugely inspired by that.
0:51:42 > 0:51:45So of course, when it came to him doing a postmortem on a human body
0:51:45 > 0:51:48on The Body In Question, I was like, "I've seen all that before."
0:51:49 > 0:51:53The subject of this postmortem was a 70-year-old man,
0:51:53 > 0:51:56who died three days after being admitted to hospital,
0:51:56 > 0:51:59suffering from sudden breathlessness.
0:51:59 > 0:52:03When I attended an autopsy and asked the pathologist questions,
0:52:03 > 0:52:05that did break new ground,
0:52:05 > 0:52:08and I don't think that anyone was particularly offended by it,
0:52:08 > 0:52:10I think they were rather intrigued by it.
0:52:11 > 0:52:14You notice it's a yellow, rather waxy-looking liver.
0:52:14 > 0:52:17So this is a liver in which fatty change has begun to occur?
0:52:17 > 0:52:18Fatty change is occurring, yes.
0:52:18 > 0:52:23So one of the things that pathologists look for in an organ of this sort is fatty change,
0:52:23 > 0:52:26which is a sign of congestion, also of low oxygen in the blood.
0:52:26 > 0:52:31When this begins to happen, the cells begin to alter their metabolism
0:52:31 > 0:52:35and fat begins to accumulate in the cells, and this produces a change
0:52:35 > 0:52:38which actually in the classical picture is called a nutmeg liver.
0:52:38 > 0:52:41For some reason pathologists seem to have this tendency of...
0:52:41 > 0:52:43Of naming things after food and fruit,
0:52:43 > 0:52:47and we have sugar icing spleen, sago spleen,
0:52:47 > 0:52:51bread and butter pericardium, pericarditis.
0:52:51 > 0:52:53So really a full meal can be had, yes.
0:52:53 > 0:52:57Suddenly this man who was seen as a bit of a comedian
0:52:57 > 0:53:04and so on and so forth, this cast him again as this doctor figure,
0:53:04 > 0:53:07and that stirred up people out there who had various things
0:53:07 > 0:53:09they wanted to talk to him about,
0:53:09 > 0:53:11and one of them was Ivan Vaughan.
0:53:15 > 0:53:19The hurdles which confront Ivan each day may include loose shoelaces,
0:53:19 > 0:53:25a slightly sweaty T-shirt, unleashed dogs, roads, food and even closed doors.
0:53:25 > 0:53:28Things that we think of as means to an end,
0:53:28 > 0:53:31loom large enough for Ivan to become ends in themselves.
0:53:33 > 0:53:35Ivan has Parkinson's disease.
0:53:35 > 0:53:39I just felt it was a great privilege to be with someone
0:53:39 > 0:53:43who was prepared to be as eloquently forthcoming as he was
0:53:43 > 0:53:45about what it was like to get up in the morning,
0:53:45 > 0:53:49knowing that he had a great, not reluctance,
0:53:49 > 0:53:52I mean he was eager to start,
0:53:52 > 0:53:57but nevertheless, there was something which prevented him from inaugurating movements.
0:53:59 > 0:54:02And he took me through the, as it were,
0:54:02 > 0:54:06domestic problems of getting up, in the knowledge that you would have
0:54:06 > 0:54:09a difficulty in starting anything.
0:54:09 > 0:54:11And then he showed me how, in fact,
0:54:11 > 0:54:15this could be overcome by all sorts of little schemes.
0:54:15 > 0:54:19If I was to hang the keys out and you were to make a snatch for them, would that get you going?
0:54:19 > 0:54:21It'd be disastrous if you suddenly lowered them.
0:54:21 > 0:54:25- Ah, I see, yes, because then you'd go down to the floor?- Yeah.
0:54:25 > 0:54:27- So don't do that, will you? - All right, so...
0:54:27 > 0:54:30- That's not high enough.- That's not high enough? Now, how's that?
0:54:30 > 0:54:33- That's too near to me. - That's too near.- A bit further away. - Yeah.
0:54:41 > 0:54:43It's so mysterious.
0:54:43 > 0:54:47It was the most extraordinary and diverting and illuminating week
0:54:47 > 0:54:49that I spent with him,
0:54:49 > 0:54:52and it's what I would have liked to have done, had I stayed in medicine.
0:54:52 > 0:54:57It's that sort of interactive collaboration
0:54:57 > 0:55:02which I think a great deal of very interesting neuropsychology consists of.
0:55:02 > 0:55:05Every time I pass a hospital, I feel as a Catholic must do,
0:55:05 > 0:55:07who's lapsed and hasn't taken communion when he goes past.
0:55:07 > 0:55:11I feel, erm, a tremendous sense of agony
0:55:11 > 0:55:13every time I, I read a medical journal,
0:55:13 > 0:55:15or open one of my books again
0:55:15 > 0:55:17and see some of the materials of medicine,
0:55:17 > 0:55:20or read about cases, or discuss cases with my wife.
0:55:20 > 0:55:22This is a source of great agony to me.
0:55:22 > 0:55:26He always says, which he's been saying for 50 years,
0:55:26 > 0:55:31that he will sort of get back to medicine.
0:55:31 > 0:55:37But in a way he's never left it, and I think that...
0:55:39 > 0:55:43..that there is a double or multiple career, here.
0:55:43 > 0:55:46What do they have for breakfast?
0:55:46 > 0:55:48And that's a boa constrictor, you see.
0:55:48 > 0:55:52But there is a little tiny one, so let's have a look at the small one.
0:55:52 > 0:55:57I mean, the clinical life could not contain him,
0:55:57 > 0:56:01and I think the theatre life and the directing life
0:56:01 > 0:56:04doesn't entirely contain him.
0:56:04 > 0:56:07he's had to go in many directions at once.
0:56:08 > 0:56:10That's a boa constrictor as well?
0:56:10 > 0:56:11That's a boa constrictor as well, yes.
0:56:17 > 0:56:18Can I hold him?
0:56:18 > 0:56:21Yes, just open your hand, just put him in your hand.
0:56:23 > 0:56:26I think it's quite right she should be scared, anyway.
0:56:26 > 0:56:28Absolutely, I think that's rather good.
0:56:28 > 0:56:31- I mean, it should appear repulsive to her.- Yes.
0:56:31 > 0:56:33Won't people know it's a boa constrictor?
0:56:33 > 0:56:38Oh, good heavens, no. You may get an occasional cry from some ophidiologist, who may say,
0:56:38 > 0:56:41"Dear Sir, in a recent so-called production of Antony And Cleopatra,
0:56:41 > 0:56:44"I saw a boa constrictor passed off as an asp.
0:56:44 > 0:56:47"If this is the sort of thing for which they can expect us to pay
0:56:47 > 0:56:50"an extra £15 of licence fee, they've got another thing coming.
0:56:50 > 0:56:54"They mention asps, I expect to see them. Yours sincerely,
0:56:54 > 0:56:55"Disappointed, Esher."
0:56:55 > 0:56:58I got a call from him to observe him in his production
0:56:58 > 0:57:02of Antony And Cleopatra, and direct All's Well That Ends Well.
0:57:02 > 0:57:05And when I arrived, I realised that he'd given the BBC
0:57:05 > 0:57:07a tremendous shock.
0:57:09 > 0:57:12That whole institutional structure was more or less
0:57:12 > 0:57:15circumvented by the way he organised it,
0:57:15 > 0:57:17which was that he opened the offices,
0:57:17 > 0:57:20and he created an office where there were designers in one corner,
0:57:20 > 0:57:23script editors in another, people casting in the other.
0:57:23 > 0:57:25And he created this tremendous buzz.
0:57:25 > 0:57:29- It'll be a gorse.- Well, where you would have vegetation
0:57:29 > 0:57:32or fragments like that, you see, perhaps not quite so defined as that.
0:57:32 > 0:57:35Right, so you want really Greek renaissance folk music?
0:57:35 > 0:57:38Yes, that's right, yeah, Greek renaissance folk music.
0:57:38 > 0:57:41Yeah, a sort of Tudor bouzouki, you know?
0:57:41 > 0:57:42HE LAUGHS
0:57:42 > 0:57:47Now, please do regard this as a fumble through.
0:57:47 > 0:57:48Absolutely no...
0:57:48 > 0:57:53I mean, anyway, I don't want any acting in the production anyway,
0:57:53 > 0:57:56so please don't start it now.
0:57:56 > 0:57:58Are we allowed to act if we feel like it?
0:57:58 > 0:58:02If you, if you suddenly get this divine afflatus, then go with it.
0:58:02 > 0:58:03LAUGHTER
0:58:03 > 0:58:07Get thee to Gloucester, Essex. Do thee to Wessex, Exeter.
0:58:07 > 0:58:09Fair Albany to Somerset must eke his route.
0:58:09 > 0:58:11And Scroop, do you to Westmorland,
0:58:11 > 0:58:14where shall bold York, enrouted now for Lancaster,
0:58:14 > 0:58:19with forces of our Uncle Rutland enjoin his standard with sweet Norfolk's host.
0:58:19 > 0:58:20Fair Sussex,
0:58:20 > 0:58:22Ugh!
0:58:22 > 0:58:24LAUGHTER
0:58:24 > 0:58:26Get thee to Warwicksbourne, and there with frowning purpose,
0:58:26 > 0:58:29tell our plan to Bedford's tilted ear.
0:58:29 > 0:58:31LAUGHTER
0:58:31 > 0:58:34That he shall press with most insensate speed
0:58:34 > 0:58:37and join his warlike effort to bold Dorset's side.
0:58:37 > 0:58:40I, most royally, shall now to bed,
0:58:40 > 0:58:43to sleep off all the nonsense I've just said.
0:58:47 > 0:58:50Bad-a-bum-bum-ba.
0:58:50 > 0:58:51Roger Norrington rang me up and said,
0:58:51 > 0:58:54"Would you like to come and direct an opera?"
0:58:54 > 0:58:57And I said, "Well I, I have never directed an opera,
0:58:57 > 0:59:01"I've never had any ambition to do it, and I don't know how to do it."
0:59:01 > 0:59:03OPERA SINGING
0:59:03 > 0:59:06I was totally familiar with Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms
0:59:06 > 0:59:10and so forth, but I knew nothing about opera and I can't read music.
0:59:10 > 0:59:14And he assured me that he could, so that would be all right.
0:59:14 > 0:59:18Yes, it's on that that you unfreeze.
0:59:18 > 0:59:21'I like to work in forms of theatre
0:59:21 > 0:59:27'where there is not an obligation to be spuriously glamorous.
0:59:27 > 0:59:31'And I think that, in a company which is small,
0:59:31 > 0:59:34'and which doesn't have a big house,'
0:59:34 > 0:59:37and where there's a very close association between the orchestra
0:59:37 > 0:59:39and the players on the stage,
0:59:39 > 0:59:42it's much easier to have a direct form of drama,
0:59:42 > 0:59:46where all that you attend to is the drama and the music, and nothing else.
0:59:46 > 0:59:50CHORAL SINGING
0:59:51 > 0:59:57He had this tremendous vision about how pieces should look
0:59:57 > 1:00:02and what they should be like, and, of course, the history.
1:00:02 > 1:00:03Orfeo doesn't take place anywhere,
1:00:03 > 1:00:05it doesn't take place in classical Greece,
1:00:05 > 1:00:07it doesn't take place in modern times,
1:00:07 > 1:00:10it didn't actually take place in the seventeenth century.
1:00:10 > 1:00:13Where it does take place is in the seventeenth century imagination,
1:00:13 > 1:00:15and you have to use the idioms of the seventeenth century
1:00:15 > 1:00:19imagination in order to reproduce a visual counterpart of the music.
1:00:23 > 1:00:26HE SINGS IN ITALIAN
1:00:30 > 1:00:33# As you cause my bitter torment
1:00:33 > 1:00:37# And the cause of my contentment
1:00:37 > 1:00:41# And the source of every sweetness... #
1:00:41 > 1:00:45Jonathan had a marvellous idea visually.
1:00:45 > 1:00:50Very often he found an artist of the same period, and this was
1:00:50 > 1:00:55a very brilliant solution, he used Poussin, the French artist
1:00:55 > 1:00:59who, who moved to Italy, he had worked there most of his life.
1:01:16 > 1:01:20Over the years I've become preoccupied
1:01:20 > 1:01:22with the astonishing brilliance
1:01:22 > 1:01:26of these bas-relief statues of choristers.
1:01:35 > 1:01:40I think this one here is so amazing, this is what is called in art
1:01:40 > 1:01:47historical terms, contrapposto, that one figure is facing this way,
1:01:47 > 1:01:52one that way, this one is back to us, but his head
1:01:52 > 1:01:58slightly turned to the side, and this one turned over his shoulder.
1:01:59 > 1:02:04And it makes the most wonderful sort of dancing circle,
1:02:04 > 1:02:07and this serves as a wonderful inspiration
1:02:07 > 1:02:09for staging a choral group.
1:02:09 > 1:02:12One of the things that happens with groups is that they tend
1:02:12 > 1:02:13to all face in the same direction.
1:02:13 > 1:02:16What I like to do is to break the line,
1:02:16 > 1:02:19so that it's always slightly jiggly, that's right, you see, that's,
1:02:19 > 1:02:22and so that if you're here singing, I think you need to be a little bit
1:02:22 > 1:02:23more facing in that direction,
1:02:23 > 1:02:25so that you can corroborate his remarks, you see,
1:02:25 > 1:02:28so there's a relationship backwards and forwards
1:02:28 > 1:02:32between groups and also, eye lines within groups. OK.
1:03:39 > 1:03:44When I was asked to do Rigoletto, I knew that I had misgivings
1:03:44 > 1:03:50about setting it in this, these hypothetical, non-existent pasts,
1:03:50 > 1:03:53having been backdated by their composers and by their librettists.
1:03:53 > 1:03:55I said, "Well, how am I going to do it?"
1:03:55 > 1:03:58My wife reminded me of that scene in Some Like It Hot,
1:03:58 > 1:04:01where the policeman accuses George Raft
1:04:01 > 1:04:05of having done the St Valentine's Day Massacre, or the equivalent of it.
1:04:05 > 1:04:08So maestro, where were you at three o'clock on St Valentine's Day?
1:04:08 > 1:04:09Me, I was at Rigoletto.
1:04:09 > 1:04:12And he turns to his bodyguard and goes, "Ain't that so?"
1:04:12 > 1:04:14And the bodyguard goes, "That's right."
1:04:14 > 1:04:16We was with you at Rigoletto's.
1:04:16 > 1:04:17Honest.
1:04:19 > 1:04:27And I thought well actually, the world of Mafia thugs and dukes
1:04:27 > 1:04:32is indistinguishable from the world of Medici thugs.
1:04:32 > 1:04:36And the Italian aristocracy, who are now, of course,
1:04:36 > 1:04:39very distant from their predecessors,
1:04:40 > 1:04:43where just one way or another were thugs, Mafia thugs.
1:04:47 > 1:04:50The main thing is he has a tremendous sense of humour
1:04:50 > 1:04:53in relation to his subject, the melodrama is treated with humour.
1:04:53 > 1:04:58And you howl with recognition and laughter,
1:04:58 > 1:05:01and at the same time with pathos.
1:05:05 > 1:05:09The way he identifies the Duke with the jukebox is a perfect way
1:05:09 > 1:05:12of characterising the Duke's shallowness.
1:05:13 > 1:05:15# Women abandon us
1:05:15 > 1:05:18# Why should it hurt them
1:05:19 > 1:05:23# If we desert them when it's all over
1:05:24 > 1:05:26# Women make fools of us, laugh in our faces... #
1:05:26 > 1:05:29It's got to be somewhere where, in fact,
1:05:29 > 1:05:34some way of revisualising the work occurs precisely because there is
1:05:34 > 1:05:38a high degree of correspondence from the social structures,
1:05:38 > 1:05:43from which it's come, and the social structures into which you put it.
1:05:43 > 1:05:45That's why I would never change Don Giovanni -
1:05:45 > 1:05:49the social structures of Don Giovanni are inconsistent
1:05:49 > 1:05:50with anything in modern times.
1:05:50 > 1:05:52And the same with The Marriage of Figaro.
1:05:52 > 1:05:54But when it comes to Cosi Fan Tutte,
1:05:54 > 1:05:56I've done five different production of it,
1:05:56 > 1:05:59most of which have been traditionally set in the 18th century.
1:06:13 > 1:06:16I suddenly decided I must do it a different way.
1:06:42 > 1:06:45I think it was the first occasion, perhaps,
1:06:45 > 1:06:48that a mobile telephone was used on stage,
1:06:48 > 1:06:51and I thought, there's a particular, recitative,
1:06:51 > 1:06:54I might be able to actually just start by speaking to someone,
1:06:54 > 1:07:00some imaginary seventh cast member on the telephone.
1:07:00 > 1:07:04And the following day I went in and there was immediate response to it.
1:07:04 > 1:07:07MOBILE PHONE RINGS
1:07:07 > 1:07:09AUDIENCE LAUGHS
1:07:16 > 1:07:19We live in the time of works which are in
1:07:19 > 1:07:25what I've frequently described as being in their afterlife,
1:07:25 > 1:07:30a life which could not have been anticipated by their makers.
1:07:42 > 1:07:45Almost as soon as I came into this room,
1:07:45 > 1:07:48I was struck by the echoing solitude of the place,
1:07:48 > 1:07:53and my eye was drawn immediately to this sculpture here,
1:07:53 > 1:07:57by someone I had never heard of before.
1:07:57 > 1:08:01He's a Gothic sculptor of the early 14th century,
1:08:01 > 1:08:06Tino Di Camaino, and it has a strange sort of chastity
1:08:06 > 1:08:09which is absolutely remarkable.
1:08:09 > 1:08:14As I turned round this sculpture, my eye was drawn, of course,
1:08:14 > 1:08:20to this fragmented picture here on the wall, it's by Orcagna,
1:08:20 > 1:08:26which is painted at almost the same period as this sculpture by Tino.
1:08:26 > 1:08:29No doubt when the whole thing was complete, it would have had
1:08:29 > 1:08:31the picture of the Last Supper going along here,
1:08:31 > 1:08:35of which you see only a fragment on this side.
1:08:35 > 1:08:41I know that if Orcagna had lived another three or four hundred years,
1:08:41 > 1:08:46and had seen the fading and disintegration of his artwork,
1:08:46 > 1:08:48he would have been appalled that
1:08:48 > 1:08:52anyone would have come in and regarded it of any interest.
1:08:52 > 1:08:56But it's precisely because it's enigmatically broken up
1:08:56 > 1:08:59that it's attractive to the modern eye,
1:08:59 > 1:09:01it's a picture which is in its afterlife,
1:09:01 > 1:09:06like so many of the plays and operas which I have directed.
1:09:17 > 1:09:21Lemmon's in London for the best of all possible reasons,
1:09:21 > 1:09:24to star for the first time ever on the West End Stage.
1:09:24 > 1:09:27And for his debut he's certainly going the whole hog,
1:09:27 > 1:09:31playing the lead in America's most famous, certainly longest,
1:09:31 > 1:09:34most harrowing, all-time theatrical marathon,
1:09:34 > 1:09:37Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night.
1:09:37 > 1:09:41Happily, his director Jonathan Miller is not a man to be phased
1:09:41 > 1:09:45by the hallowed reverence with which Americans regard the play.
1:09:48 > 1:09:51I think I'd probably had a talk to Jack Lemmon about it some time,
1:09:51 > 1:09:53and thought wouldn't it be interesting to do this play,
1:09:53 > 1:09:58which has been represented by the, the guardians
1:09:58 > 1:10:03of the O'Neill tradition, the custodians of the orthodox,
1:10:03 > 1:10:09to be the American equivalent of Greek drama,
1:10:09 > 1:10:12that it has to be played at great lengths,
1:10:12 > 1:10:15that it should last at least three and a half hours,
1:10:15 > 1:10:20and that it is, in fact, Greek drama cast in an American format.
1:10:20 > 1:10:23He felt, why would a relatively drunk Irish family,
1:10:23 > 1:10:26who had been having the same arguments
1:10:26 > 1:10:29for years and years and years,
1:10:29 > 1:10:32wait politely for the end of every sentence?
1:10:32 > 1:10:35If you know what the argument is and you know where someone is going.
1:10:35 > 1:10:39So he encouraged us to kind of overlap.
1:10:39 > 1:10:42Now the deal was, you have to make your point,
1:10:42 > 1:10:45and you have to be heard, so sometimes that meant
1:10:45 > 1:10:47that you'd repeat a line three times,
1:10:47 > 1:10:50because another actor would still be trying to make their point.
1:10:50 > 1:10:55And what it did was, it created for us an extraordinarily... spontaneous...
1:10:55 > 1:10:59because it never had to be at the same moment,
1:10:59 > 1:11:03it could just continue to evolve. And, for us it was extraordinary,
1:11:03 > 1:11:06because it made the play very alive.
1:11:06 > 1:11:09Sneer at every damn thing in the world except yourself.
1:11:09 > 1:11:12That's not true, Papa, you can't hear me talking to myself...
1:11:12 > 1:11:14The ingratitude, the violence...
1:11:14 > 1:11:16I could see that one coming, how many thousands of times?
1:11:16 > 1:11:19God, if you once, you would get ambition in your head...
1:11:19 > 1:11:21Oh, all right, Papa, I'm a bum, whatever you'd like,
1:11:21 > 1:11:23so long as it stops the argument. Yeah, let's forget about me.
1:11:23 > 1:11:25You know, you are young, you...
1:11:25 > 1:11:28Look, I'm not interested in this subject, and neither are you.
1:11:28 > 1:11:30You are young, you could still make your mark.
1:11:30 > 1:11:35You had the talent once to be a fine actor, you have it still.
1:11:35 > 1:11:36You are my son.
1:11:41 > 1:11:43If it hadn't been for you responding to this young upstart,
1:11:43 > 1:11:46coming up to you at a table, after your lecture...
1:11:46 > 1:11:49- And asking for an audition. - And asking for an audition,
1:11:49 > 1:11:50my career would be very different.
1:11:50 > 1:11:53Well, it would have been different I think, but I mean,
1:11:53 > 1:11:56as you well know, and as everyone knows,
1:11:56 > 1:11:58you would have made your way into the theatre,
1:11:58 > 1:12:01because you, as I recognised when I rather, first of all,
1:12:01 > 1:12:04unwillingly gave you an audition, which I had to do a half an hour
1:12:04 > 1:12:06- before the official auditions happened.- That's right.
1:12:06 > 1:12:09You read for five or six minutes and I gave you the part.
1:12:09 > 1:12:11Yeah, that's right.
1:12:11 > 1:12:13A lot of people would say no, and a lot of people do say no...
1:12:13 > 1:12:15Well they, yes, that's quite true.
1:12:15 > 1:12:17Because there's like a way to do it and yadda-yadda,
1:12:17 > 1:12:18but we broke the rules, and why not?
1:12:18 > 1:12:21Well, breaking the rules is what it's all about.
1:12:21 > 1:12:22We're glad to have you back...
1:12:22 > 1:12:24CHURCH BELLS PEAL
1:12:24 > 1:12:28Look, again, look, let's look at that. Isn't it beautiful?
1:12:28 > 1:12:31I love the way it's worn, look at the way that is worn.
1:12:31 > 1:12:35But it's also such a wonderful piece of abstract sculpture, you see.
1:12:37 > 1:12:39Oh, it's fantastic.
1:12:39 > 1:12:43When I began doing artwork, I began photographing things like this,
1:12:43 > 1:12:46and then began thinking it would be nice to make things
1:12:46 > 1:12:47out of something like that,
1:12:47 > 1:12:51by just simply having that and perhaps adding a splotch of colour.
1:12:51 > 1:12:54My eye was drawn to this, now here's the,
1:12:54 > 1:12:59it's there are part of the, um, the railing of this restaurant.
1:12:59 > 1:13:03When I was working in Santa Fe, I used to go out with the man
1:13:03 > 1:13:07who ran the estate and isolated things like that,
1:13:07 > 1:13:11because we found them in, we found them in rubbish dumps.
1:13:11 > 1:13:17And so, I would, I would put them on to his pickup truck
1:13:17 > 1:13:21and we'd go back and assemble them with something else, welding them.
1:13:32 > 1:13:34Yeah, there it only works,
1:13:34 > 1:13:37because we, we're back into an unsupported thing again.
1:13:39 > 1:13:42It's not bad.
1:13:42 > 1:13:44I know, it is interesting what, what happens
1:13:44 > 1:13:46when it gets swivelled around, you know.
1:13:46 > 1:13:48I think that's pretty good.
1:13:48 > 1:13:49- I like that.- Yeah, so do I.
1:13:49 > 1:13:52He's not saying it's about anything, you know,
1:13:52 > 1:13:57he's not saying this is called Opus No 23 and it's,
1:13:57 > 1:14:00it's encouraging you to, like the bricks in the Tate,
1:14:00 > 1:14:02to think spatially about the space that is,
1:14:02 > 1:14:03he's not saying any of that.
1:14:03 > 1:14:06That's what it is, it's a piece of metal,
1:14:06 > 1:14:09but if you want to take away those thoughts about it,
1:14:09 > 1:14:11as rubbish, as texture, as looking at things more closely,
1:14:11 > 1:14:14then you're very welcome to do so. And that's great, you know,
1:14:14 > 1:14:18it's a feet on the ground attitude towards creativity.
1:14:18 > 1:14:23In the old days, when I came out from anywhere where
1:14:23 > 1:14:27we were living, I would come out with a Stanley knife in the dark
1:14:27 > 1:14:31and take off, shave off or cut off
1:14:32 > 1:14:36pieces of ruined posters on the walls,
1:14:36 > 1:14:40and I would take them and pack them away,
1:14:40 > 1:14:45and take them back to London, and reassemble them as collage.
1:14:48 > 1:14:52And here is my mess of a studio.
1:14:53 > 1:14:57And as you can see, the things that I have been making show that
1:14:57 > 1:15:02I am absolutely committed to abstract configurations which bear
1:15:02 > 1:15:07a very straightforward relationship to the abstract configurations
1:15:07 > 1:15:12of the prints and pictures which I have collected for other reasons.
1:15:12 > 1:15:17Because I'm absolutely fascinated by the sort of thing which
1:15:17 > 1:15:22Kurt Schwitters did and this is the great German artist of the 1920s
1:15:22 > 1:15:29and '30s, who introduced a great deal of typographic collage.
1:15:30 > 1:15:33Now I found these lumps of timber, and I also found
1:15:33 > 1:15:39bits and pieces of sanded circle, used for grinding,
1:15:39 > 1:15:43and it was falling to bits, and I placed it on that,
1:15:43 > 1:15:44put colours behind it,
1:15:44 > 1:15:49and then assembled bits and pieces of now antique typography.
1:15:54 > 1:15:58Now, as far as the proprietors of this place are concerned,
1:15:58 > 1:16:00that is a piece of wreckage.
1:16:00 > 1:16:04Frame it very carefully, and the perspective,
1:16:04 > 1:16:06the false perspective,
1:16:06 > 1:16:09that is the most wonderful piece of abstract sculpture.
1:16:12 > 1:16:14Whoop-de-doo.
1:16:15 > 1:16:17My attention is drawn to this,
1:16:17 > 1:16:20first of all, that is the most wonderful object there.
1:16:22 > 1:16:25Now, pull back, reframe,
1:16:27 > 1:16:31so just have that and that and that,
1:16:33 > 1:16:36and you've got a piece of wonderful sculpture.
1:16:36 > 1:16:39It's a most beautiful object that, now.
1:16:39 > 1:16:44What is so interesting, you pass by these things,
1:16:44 > 1:16:46and you don't notice them,
1:16:46 > 1:16:50and then your attention is drawn to one of them,
1:16:50 > 1:16:55and then you see that one as an example of a type,
1:16:55 > 1:16:59and the type then draws your attention,
1:16:59 > 1:17:02and you think, "I could do a whole exhibition devoted
1:17:02 > 1:17:09"to twenty or thirty of these ways in which a lock is framed by the door."
1:17:09 > 1:17:12Zoop, here we are, here's another one.
1:17:12 > 1:17:17You see there it's got this added thing there and then that,
1:17:17 > 1:17:21and then this piece of shiny metal,
1:17:21 > 1:17:23and that thing there.
1:17:23 > 1:17:27Pull back and, ah, there's your artwork.
1:17:27 > 1:17:33On this sideboard are some of the things I've collected.
1:17:33 > 1:17:38And none of them are valuable objects, they're, they're what,
1:17:38 > 1:17:44I suppose you would have called junk at the time when I spotted them.
1:17:44 > 1:17:48I think I picked this up in Florence,
1:17:48 > 1:17:52nearly 20 years ago, in the same area where we walked around.
1:17:52 > 1:17:54Oh, it's a key.
1:17:54 > 1:17:56Oh it's a, it's a key.
1:17:56 > 1:17:59And that's the backside of the lock.
1:17:59 > 1:18:01Rachel, I think I'm going to have to get that.
1:18:01 > 1:18:03FAINTLY: Yeah, I can see it in your eyes.
1:18:03 > 1:18:07It's a most wonderful object that, you see, isn't it?
1:18:07 > 1:18:09It's lovely, absolutely.
1:18:09 > 1:18:13- E quanto?- Centocinquanta. - How much is that?
1:18:13 > 1:18:18- Too much, a hundred and fifty. - Oh no, no, oh, it's so beautiful.
1:18:21 > 1:18:24Ah, no I can't afford it.
1:18:24 > 1:18:30There's something about its abstract format which appealed to me,
1:18:30 > 1:18:33I love the, this spiral spring here
1:18:33 > 1:18:36and the arrangement of the rectangles,
1:18:36 > 1:18:38which are superimposed on something
1:18:38 > 1:18:40which was never intended to be seen,
1:18:40 > 1:18:42it actually was meant to be seen from in front,
1:18:42 > 1:18:44where it actually exercised its function,
1:18:44 > 1:18:47it was a thing for locking a door.
1:18:47 > 1:18:50Well, I'm not interested in locking a door,
1:18:50 > 1:18:54the door for which it was a lock has vanished,
1:18:54 > 1:18:57and it now becomes an abstract object,
1:18:57 > 1:19:02which has altered its visibility in its afterlife,
1:19:02 > 1:19:04in its subsequent existence.
1:19:08 > 1:19:12Now, this is all an example of what Nelson Goodman calls
1:19:12 > 1:19:15"autographic works," these are works which are made and the extent
1:19:15 > 1:19:19to which they survive depends on the survival
1:19:19 > 1:19:22of the material out of which they are made,
1:19:22 > 1:19:26as opposed to what he calls "allographic works,"
1:19:26 > 1:19:31which are things like plays and operas,
1:19:31 > 1:19:37in which nothing exists until the work is reperformed
1:19:37 > 1:19:40in subsequent performances.
1:19:40 > 1:19:44He called me up, he was on the phone, and he said, he said,
1:19:44 > 1:19:48"I'm doing the Mikado, and I'd like you to come and be Ko-Ko."
1:19:48 > 1:19:51And I said, "Wow, what are you going to do with the Mikado?"
1:19:51 > 1:19:52And he said,
1:19:52 > 1:19:55"I'm going to get rid of all that Japanese nonsense for a start."
1:19:55 > 1:19:57And I thought, well, this I have to see.
1:20:10 > 1:20:12I'd never seen a Gilbert and Sullivan,
1:20:12 > 1:20:15but then I hadn't seen many operas anyway,
1:20:15 > 1:20:18and the last operas I think I would be likely to see
1:20:18 > 1:20:21is these coy English, sort of sillinesses.
1:20:21 > 1:20:24I cannot believe the Japanese world,
1:20:24 > 1:20:27people with these potty training names like
1:20:27 > 1:20:32Nanki-Poo and Pooh-Bah - "have we done our Nanki-Poos?"
1:20:32 > 1:20:34I mean, it was ridiculous to set it in Japan.
1:20:34 > 1:20:37And I suddenly remembered that Groucho Marx had taken
1:20:37 > 1:20:41part in a version of The Mikado, he'd played Ko-Ko in it.
1:20:41 > 1:20:43So I began to think, as I said,
1:20:43 > 1:20:49"Well, actually, how about Duck Soup, Freedonia, rather than Japan?"
1:20:51 > 1:20:53# We'll give them a rousing cheer
1:20:53 > 1:20:55# To show him we're glad he's here
1:20:55 > 1:20:58# Hail, hail Freedonia... #
1:20:58 > 1:21:02There's a moment when Groucho gets summoned
1:21:02 > 1:21:05and comes down to the meeting in Duck Soup.
1:21:11 > 1:21:15And I make the entrance of The Mikado exactly like that,
1:21:15 > 1:21:18I based it entirely on what happened in Duck Soup.
1:21:26 > 1:21:29And he mixed that, the Duck Soup, the Marx Brothers,
1:21:29 > 1:21:30and the black and white look,
1:21:30 > 1:21:32and the sort of crazy, you know, behaviour.
1:21:32 > 1:21:34And he wanted everybody to talk like the queen,
1:21:34 > 1:21:38so they talked a bit like that in English received accents,
1:21:38 > 1:21:42which in those days everybody spoke like, particularly at the BBC.
1:21:42 > 1:21:44# Taken from the county jail
1:21:44 > 1:21:51# By a set of curious chances Liberated then on bail,
1:21:51 > 1:21:55# On my own recognizances... #
1:21:55 > 1:22:01Eric had reluctance about being in the opera,
1:22:01 > 1:22:03because he didn't think he could sing well enough.
1:22:03 > 1:22:05But it turned out he could sing perfectly well enough
1:22:05 > 1:22:08to do a Gilbert and Sullivan,
1:22:08 > 1:22:12there are no great challenges to the voice.
1:22:12 > 1:22:15And he was very funny and we had a very good time together.
1:22:15 > 1:22:19In your anxiety to carry out my wishes,
1:22:19 > 1:22:23you have beheaded the heir to the throne of Japan.
1:22:24 > 1:22:28Yes, there should be, as if this is, "Yes, I have, in way,"
1:22:28 > 1:22:35you know, there's a bit of that sort of feeling of the hand movements
1:22:35 > 1:22:40used to say, "Yeah, well, ooh, now, I..." Stop it, stop that!
1:22:40 > 1:22:44They were filming a documentary and I remember making him laugh,
1:22:44 > 1:22:46and he rolled around the floor.
1:22:46 > 1:22:49I think I grovelled, I think I was just doing a grovel,
1:22:49 > 1:22:52and he went, he just completely went.
1:22:52 > 1:22:56Come, come my fellow, don't distress yourself.
1:22:56 > 1:22:58LAUGHTER
1:23:05 > 1:23:07He just was completely out of control,
1:23:07 > 1:23:10rolling around the floor, laughing and laughing and laughing,
1:23:10 > 1:23:14and I thought, "Oh, I made Jonathan Miller laugh, I'm very happy now."
1:23:20 > 1:23:26OK. I think we should have a break for coffee soon.
1:23:26 > 1:23:29AUDIENCE LAUGHS
1:23:40 > 1:23:43It's fun, that's all.
1:23:43 > 1:23:46I, beg to offer an unqualified apology.
1:23:46 > 1:23:51It's a funny musical, or at least I made it funny,
1:23:51 > 1:23:53as opposed to facetious.
1:24:08 > 1:24:13I suppose there is a paradox about a Jewish atheist undertaking to
1:24:13 > 1:24:20produce and direct something which is the epitome of a Christian story.
1:24:20 > 1:24:23It's a riveting story, whether you believe
1:24:23 > 1:24:26in its metaphysics or not is beside the point.
1:24:26 > 1:24:28And it happens also to be,
1:24:28 > 1:24:31perhaps some of the most beautiful music,
1:24:31 > 1:24:34some of the most dramatically convincing
1:24:34 > 1:24:36and eloquent music ever written.
1:25:04 > 1:25:06Peter hears the cock crow for the third time
1:25:06 > 1:25:09and realises that the prediction of him betraying,
1:25:09 > 1:25:14or denying Christ, actually was true, and he has this extraordinary moment
1:25:14 > 1:25:19when the, the alto and the violin come and play the Erbarme Dich
1:25:19 > 1:25:21I said, "Wouldn't it be a good idea
1:25:21 > 1:25:24"if you actually brought the violin across the stage
1:25:24 > 1:25:27"and played it into the ear of the grieving figure of Peter?"
1:25:37 > 1:25:41I don't think there'd ever been an acted Matthew Passion before,
1:25:41 > 1:25:46it was immensely impressive and, and sort of devout people were,
1:25:46 > 1:25:53were reduced to, you know, tears and, and rapture and
1:25:53 > 1:25:57I remember Jonathan saying after, his success there,
1:25:57 > 1:26:02he said, "Not, not bad for an old Jewish atheist,"
1:26:02 > 1:26:06a phrase which I have appropriated for myself.
1:27:14 > 1:27:17In some ways, looking back at what happened to me
1:27:17 > 1:27:20as a result of yielding to the invitation
1:27:20 > 1:27:25to be in Beyond The Fringe, and then one thing led to another,
1:27:25 > 1:27:31I lapsed out of my biology and medicine and, er, neurology.
1:27:31 > 1:27:36And I think I will always have some sort of misgiving about
1:27:36 > 1:27:40having left what my father was cut out to do,
1:27:40 > 1:27:45and what I feel still I was really cut out to do.
1:27:45 > 1:27:48He's full of regrets, I think, as a person.
1:27:48 > 1:27:50He, whenever I meet him now,
1:27:50 > 1:27:54he seems unhappy with the way the world is,
1:27:54 > 1:27:57and I think he feels slightly unhappy about the way
1:27:57 > 1:27:59the world has treated him.
1:27:59 > 1:28:03I think this is completely unjustified, the world loves him,
1:28:03 > 1:28:07and this borne out by the television audiences that his programmes
1:28:07 > 1:28:10have got over the years, it's borne out by his operas,
1:28:10 > 1:28:12which people flock to go and see,
1:28:12 > 1:28:14and are repeated over and over again.
1:28:14 > 1:28:15AUDIENCE APPLAUD
1:28:25 > 1:28:29As he ages, there is just more and more of him I think in,
1:28:29 > 1:28:33in terms of experience and with the perspective and depth,
1:28:33 > 1:28:35and I think people like Jonathan should,
1:28:35 > 1:28:38should live till they're two hundred.
1:29:07 > 1:29:14Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd