BAFTA & BFI Screenwriters' Lecture Series: Jimmy Mcgovern 1
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BAFTA & BFI Screenwriters’ Lecture Series: Jimmy McGovern 29 September 2015 at Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London Jeremy Brock: Good evening, I’m Jeremy Brock, and on behalf of BAFTA MS: Are you saying you didn’t like it? and the BFI, welcome to the fourth in our current series of International JM: Pardon? Screenwriters Lectures, sponsored by Lucy Guard and the JJ Charitable Trust. MS: Did you not like theatre? We’re also grateful to United Airlines for flying in our international screenwriters. JM: I don’t like theatre, no. But I’ve got to Every generation throws up an say I saw a piece by Andrew Bovell over exceptional talent or two, people in Australia that was magnificent, so I capable of capturing the mood of their mean I loved that. Occasionally you see time. I can think of no single British great piece of theatre, but nine times screenwriter who has subjected his own out of ten it’s boring and they say to you, culture to such an extraordinary and “Oh, you should have been here last dramatic scrutiny as has Jimmy week, it was great.” McGovern. His work is always fiercely honest, incredibly funny, deeply moving, [Laughter] and above all substantive. Jimmy McGovern reveals us to ourselves as no That always happens to me. I just, I was other British writer does. You have only to immature. As men especially I think we think of Cracker, The Lakes, Hillsborough, spend our lives thinking that when we’re The Street, Accused or Banished, all of 30 we’ll be mature, and we’re not. And them governed by an integrity, held when we’re 40 we’ll be mature, and together by great storytelling. The British we’re not. And when we’re 50, surely. Academy is truly honoured to host Jimmy And I’m 66 and I’m still as stupid as ever, McGovern as part of a series that it’s just ridiculous. But I was immature. I celebrates the very greatest hadn’t gone to university or anything like screenwriters in the world. Jimmy will be that, and I think I was so lucky to be in in conversation with the journalist and the right place at the right time, because broadcaster Miranda Sawyer, and then Brookside was done by Mersey TV on as we always do we will open it up to Merseyside, they needed Merseyside questions from the floor. Ladies and writers, and my stint in the theatre had at gentlemen, Jimmy McGovern. least given me a body of work. It was not good, but it demonstrated stamina [Applause] [Laughter] Miranda Sawyer: You alright, Jimmy? You know that was it. And so I think it was Jimmy McGovern: Great, aye great. that really. MS: Okay, I think we should start kind of But for 12 months I didn’t know what I at the beginning. I think we should start was doing, nobody knew what they with Brookside. One of the things that’s were doing on that show. It was the birth known about Brookside, other than it was of Channel 4. We were all young, I think really fantastic at the beginning, was the average age on Brookside for that you started actually quite, you everybody working behind the scenes know, relatively late. It’s not like you was 30, which is incredibly young. And came to Brookside as a 20 year-old, you we were trying to get, form a new came to Brookside in your thirties. Do you independent production company, a think that that was a help or a hindrance new TV drama twice a week, and we when it comes to writing? Did you have didn’t, we had no experience. I just ideas already that you wanted to get in didn’t, and so consequently, the thing there? that I would do then, is I would follow the storylines slavishly, you know because JM: No. I’d done a bit of theatre but I just people who know things had given me couldn’t find a voice in theatre, I just this storyline and I know nothing, so I’ve couldn’t find, I couldn’t understand got to follow the storyline. And without a theatre, I couldn’t write theatre to save word of a lie it took me about nine my life. I didn’t know that at the time. months to realise you’ve got to give of 1 BAFTA & BFI Screenwriters’ Lecture Series: Jimmy McGovern 29 September 2015 at Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London yourself to that storyline. I just didn’t know excavate. Because you’re excavating that, it took me a while to find that out the story, and you’re excavating within even. yourself, to bring yourself to it. How can I make this me? Everything I learnt, I learnt MS: Yeah, but that’s just learning on the there. ’82 to ’89. Honest to God, in those job, that’s the best way to learn isn’t it days, this was even before faxes, I think really. And given I mean, you know, faxes were just about to come out. So we’re not meant to call them soaps are we’d have the storyline meeting the we anymore, but I’m going to call it a Monday and Tuesday, and then they’d soap. There’s just something about work on what was said, they’d start work generating storylines, having to do it on the Wednesday on the storylines, and quite quickly, once you break away from they’d have them ready on the Friday. that idea that you’ve just got to stick to And they’d post them Friday night, and whatever storyline you’re given it must sometimes if they weren’t ready then be quite exhilarating, you must learn a they’d post them on the Saturday lot by doing that. morning. Now, this was in the days on snail post, so you probably got the JM: Yes, it was, to sit… I knew, quite early storylines first thing on Monday. But the on I knew I was worth my place. Even commissioning meeting when you went though my scripts were not good I could in and argued what you needed to write generate story. You know, Monday and your episode, you need an extra Tuesday were the storyline meetings and character, you need an extra location, I we’d have about 12 writers round a mean this is, this is expensive in terms of a table, and all desperately trying to come soap opera so your arguments have got up with ideas, because if you came up to be spot on. But the other writers were with an idea you might get coming in ill-prepared, they got their commissioned. Because if it was your storyline on the Monday and they went idea you’ve got more of a chance of in on the Tuesday having done about getting commissioned, and that meant four hours work. I walked up to Brookside, money and your name on the telly, and it was like a five-mile walk and I did it to so it was all very, very earnest and be fit. I walked to Brookside, got the serious. But I knew I could generate story. stories on the Friday night or even And also, Brookside had an agenda Saturday morning as they were being then, it was political, and so we’d all be printed, and went home and worked all fighting to get our angle on you know. weekend: Saturday, Sunday, Monday. And the tricks I pulled, you know, I would So I went in on the Tuesday, I’d done 24 use, you know the obvious one is, “Listen, hours work on my story - and theirs! I come from here, I’m a working class lad,” [Laughter] [Laughter] I knew more about that block that anybody in the room, and I battered You know, all that stuff. It was all to earn them, I absolutely battered them. And I brownie points and you know. But it was, just got, I got, more times than not I got I could generate story, I became pretty what I wanted because I was so well- good at generating story to such an prepared. And that taught me extent that I could generate story from something, that you haven’t got to be the smallest incident, because often you better, you’ve just to work harder. had to. I had an episode to Brookside to write and the storyline was, ‘Tracy wins a MS: And want it as well. hairdressing competition’ JM: And want it. Oh, I wanted it. Oh my [Laughter] God, I wanted it, I was a mad man. I was, nothing would stop me. By my God, And that was the story, it was just I worked harder than any of them. And I ridiculous. So I could generate, you know think the harder you work the more you you had to explore the minutiae, you learn as well. had to dig as deep as you possibly could. And I think I still do that, to 2 BAFTA & BFI Screenwriters’ Lecture Series: Jimmy McGovern 29 September 2015 at Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London MS: It’s interesting because you, you it’s in case you cause offence. I say, know you just picked a storyline and it “Well that’s my job” was essentially about winning a hairdressing competition, but what [Laughter] Brookside was known for then was all the, it was the controversial storylines That’s my job to cause offence.