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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Fight And Kick And Bite The Life And Work Of Dennis Potter by W. Stephen Gilbert Fight & Kick & Bite The Life and Works of Dennis Poffer, by W. Stephen Gilbert (Sceptre, £7.99 in UK) Dennis Potter was/is very much an English reputation and an English phenomenon, and one wonders whether the cult which arose around him shortly before his recent death, from pancreatic cancer, is transient or will outlast this century. Originally a working journalist, he was disabled by a rare disease called psoriatic arthropathy and turned to writing plays, mainly for television. His energy and sheer professionalism were unquestioned and apart from his many plays he also turned out TV serials, film scripts and novels. The author of this biography is himself a TV producer as well as a busy journalist and critic, which gives him a special insight into the world in which Potter made his name. He thinks that Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven are the cream of Potter's large output. Plainly he was a "difficult" man, but then he was constantly fighting disease and disablement, as well as troubles in his emotional life, while competing in a notoriously tough, even ruthless medium and milieu. Fight And Kick And Bite: The Life And Work Of Dennis Potter by W. Stephen Gilbert. Introduction: (1) William Shakespeare, Hamlet (London: Arden Shakespeare, 1982), 2, 2, 520. (2) Raymond Williams, Drama from Ibsen to Brecht (London: The Hogarth Press, 1987). (3) His television career began on the 6th of July 1959, when he took up a post as a general trainee with the BBC. His first wrote for BBC Television in 1960 with a Panorama production called ' Between Two Rivers ' and following that he continued to write for TV all the way up to his death on the 7th of June 1994. (4) See, Peter Stead, 'The Public and the Private in Dennis Potter' in The Passion of Dennis Potter: International Collected Essays , ed. by, Vernon W. Gras and John R. Cook (New York: St Martin's Press, 2000), p. 18. (5) John R. Cook, Dennis Potter: A Life on Screen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995). (6) Dave Evans, 'Clenched Fists: The Dennis Potter Homepage' default.htm (25 Aug, 03). (7) Gras and Cook, 'Introduction' p. 9. (8) W. Stephen Gilbert, Fight and Kick and Bite: The Life and Work of Dennis Potter (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1995), p. 267. (9) Philip Marlow in, The Singing Detective by, Dennis Potter (London: Faber and Faber, 1988), pp. 18, 58. (1) William Shakespeare, Hamlet (London: Arden Shakespeare, 1982), 4, 5, 173-174. (2) Dennis Potter, Blue Remembered Hills , dir. Brian Gibson, prod. Kenneth Trodd (BBC1, Play for Today, 30th January, 1979) and, Dennis Potter Blue Remembered Hills: A Play by Dennis Potter (London: Samuel French, 1984). Henceforward all references will be given as BRH and will refer to page numbers in the text. (3) William Wordsworth 'Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood', in, The Norton Anthology Of English Literature Volume 2 , ed. by, M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 2000), p. 287. (4) Dennis Potter and Piers Haggard cited in, W. Stephen Gilbert, Fight, Kick and Bite: The Life and Works of Dennis Potter (London: Hodder and Staughton, 1995), p. 242. (5) Dennis Potter, Intro to BRH, p. v. That Potter follows this innocuous remark with a scathing, somewhat cruel, though also hilarious attack on the acting profession - 'I almost wrote "grown-ups", but then realised I was talking about actors' - obviously marks him as a very particular character (6) Victor Shklovsky, 'Art as Technique', in Modern Literary Theory: A Reader , ed. by, Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh (London: Arnold, 1996), pp. 17-18. (7) Raymond Williams, Drama From Ibsen to Brecht (London: The Hogarth Press, 1987), p. 278. (8) Raymond Williams, 'Realism and Non-Naturalism 1', The Official Programme of The Edinburgh International Television Festival 1977 , Aug. 1977, p. 30, in, John R. Cook, Dennis Potter: A Life on Screen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), p. 27. (9) Respectively: Williams, Drama, p. 279, and Cook, Dennis Potter, p 27. (10) Georg Lukács, Writer and Critic (London: Merlin, 1970), pp 110-148. (11) Williams, Drama, p. 289. (12) Williams, Drama, p. 279. (13) Williams, Drama, p. 279. (14) Graham Fuller, ed. Potter on Potter (London: Faber & Faber, 1994), p. 21. (15) Troy Kennedy Martin, 'First Statement of a New Drama for Television', Encore , 11:2, Mar-Apr. 1964, p. 24. Cited in: Cook, Dennis Potter, pp. 27-30. (16) W. Stephen Gilbert, Fight, Kick and Bite: The Life and Works of Dennis Potter (London: Hodder and Staughton, 1995), p. 59. Potter in fact stood as a Labour candidate for the Hertfordshire East ward in the general election of 1962. Harold Wilson's Labour Party won the election but Potter failed to gain his seat. (17) Potter, BRH, stage directions, p. 1. (18) This 'familiar unfamiliarity' can be extended across the work of Potter with his frequent use of the 'adults playing children' device, i.e. Stand Up, Nigel Barton (BBC1, The Wednesday Play, Dec 1965) and Cold Lazarus (BBC1 and Channel4, May-June, 1996). (19) A. E. Houseman, 'A Shropshire Lad XL' in This Green Earth: A Celebration of Nature Poetry ed. by William Scammell (Maryport: Ellenbank Press, 1992), p. 102. (20) Dennis Potter, Intro, BRH, p. v. In particular, Wordsworth's 'The things which I could see I now can see no more' ( Intimations , l. 9) with, Houseman's 'The happy highways where I went/ and cannot come again' ('Untitled', l. 8). (21) Houseman, l. 5. (22) Mandy Mason (played by Louise Germaine) in Dennis Potter's Midnight Movie (1993), quoted in, The Passion of Dennis Potter: International Collected Essays , ed. by, Vernon W. Gras and John W. Cook (New York: St Martin's Press, 2000), p. xvii. (23) Cook, p. 114. (24) Dennis Potter, Into, BRH, p. v. (25) Potter, cited in Cook, Dennis Potter, p. 114. (26) BRH, p. 1. (27) Myth is a tricky word to use, but here with an ideological overtone I'm trying to suggest the way in which myth - rather than being seen as fable - can be read as an 'account of origins' and, more importantly, as an 'active form of social organisation'. See, Raymond Williams, Keywords (London: Fontana Press, 1983), p. 211. (28) BRH, p. 2. (29) BRH, pp. 25-26. (30) BRH, p. 14. (31) BRH, p. 19. (32) BRH, p. 17 (33) BRH, p. 34. (34) BRH, pp. 30-31. (35) BRH, p. 4. (36) BRH, pp. 7, 12, 26. (37) BRH, p. 12. (38) All References to this scene, BRH, p. 8. (39) BRH, p. 24. (40) BRH, p. 11. (41) BRH, pp. 11-12. (42) Arthur Koestler, Janus A Summing Up (London: Pan Books Ltd, 1979), p. 5. (43) Koestler, pp. 83-85. Citing Dr Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority (New York, 1974) in Dialogue, Vol 8, No. 3/4 (Washington, 1975). (44) Koestler, p. 89. (45) Koestler, p. 94. (46) As others have pointed out these scenes, especially the squirrel killing, bear much resemblance to the killing of Simon in William Golding's Lord of the Flies (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961), pp. 144- 147. (47) BRH, p. 22. (48) Jasper Rees, The Independent , September 26, 1996, "If the SS cap fits; Why are British actors always being asked to play Nazis? And why do they look so good in the bad guys' clothes? Maybe because the Nazis themselves were so very theatrical." See, http://www.betsyda.com/denisof/sources/indep092796.txt (23, July, 2003). (49) Primo Levi, If This is a Man/The Truce (London: Abacus, 1998), pp. 15, 31. (50) Koestler, p. 85. (51) Koestler, p. 89. (52) Williams later dates this development to a process which took place between the 17th and 19th Centuries, with the term becoming commonplace by the '1830s, at latest', Williams, Keywords , pp. 192-197. (53) Raymond Williams, Culture and Society 1788-1950 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1963), pp. 287-288. (54) Williams, Culture and Society, p. 316. (55) Stuart Hall, 'Notes on Deconstructing the Popular', in, People's History and Socialist Theory ed. by, Raphael Samuel (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), p. 235. (56) Stuart Hall, 'Notes', p. 228. (57) BRH, p. 5. (58) Cook, p. 115. (59) Cook, p. 115. (60) BRH, p. 9, (61) BRH, pp. 6, 11. (62) BRH, pp. 15, 33, 35. (63) John Hamling, ' Pyromania ' see, http://members.ozemail.com.au/ (1) William Shakespeare, Hamlet , 3,4,139. (2) Dennis Potter, The Singing Detective (London: Faber and Faber, 1998). All subsequent references will be given as TSD and will refer to the published script by page. (3) George W. Brandt British Television Drama in the 1980s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 9-10. Also, Wendy Brading, 'Mary Whitehouse: She Fought for Her Beliefs' http://www.thisisessex.co.uk/essex/local_interest/famous_faces/public/mwhitehouse2.html (25 July, 2003). (4) Potter, in, Fuller, p. 10. (6) Joost Hunningher 'The Singing Detective: Who Dun It?' in, British Television Drama in the 1980s , p. 241. (7) Potter in, Fuller, p. 10. (8) Potter in, Humphrey Carpenter, Dennis Potter: A Biography (London: Faber and Faber, 1998), p. 380. (9) Dennis Potter, Lipstick on Your Collar , 2 Vols, dir. Renny Rye, prod. Rosemary Whitman (Whistling Gypsy/Channel 4, Feb-March, 1993). (10) Potter, in, Fuller, pp. 10, 95. (11) Gilbert, pp. 38-39. (12) Potter, in, Fuller, p. 11. (13) Potter had a particularly bad experience with the documentary form after making Between Two Rivers for the BBC's Panorama in 1960.