BAFTA and BFI Screenwriters’ Lecture: Emma Thompson 20 September 2014 at BFI Southbank [As the audience take their seats Emma where your relationship with words Thompson is already on stage, barefoot comes from. And I think mine comes, yes and dressed down in dungarees and a from reading of course, but from my hooded sweatshirt. The stage is set out father who wrote The Magic like a room, with a chair, writing desk, Roundabout and was an actor who was yoga mat and a box of draft scripts. said, that the BBC gave him these little Emma Thompson silently wanders French films and said, “Would you write around the room, sometimes writing at the scripts for them because we can’t the desk, sometimes practicing yoga put them on in French.” And my father positions, sometimes lounging in the who hated the French openly, was very chair. As the audience settles, she cleans rude in fact to Serge Danot who created the desk and vacuums the floor, before those puppets, there was never much walking off-stage to applause] warmth between them, and he would sit at this funny little machine which he [Clip from The Magic Roundabout] would work with his foot, it was a reel to reel, and he would sit writing these [Applause] scripts. And they were completely, they were nothing to do with the French, the French was very, it was a bit twee you [Emma Thompson returns to the stage in know [does French impression], and also a change of clothes, with Jeremy Brock] they had different names. And the French thought that Dougal was a pun Emma Thompson: As if by magic! on de Gaulle, some of you will know what that means but some of you won’t Jeremy Brock: Emma Thompson, ladies because we’re getting so old. Anyway, and gentlemen. de Gaulle was the President of France at the time. And of cause he wasn’t, dad [Applause] just said that was evidence of their complete egocentricity. But I watched him concentrate, as a little girl I ET: Hello. I just wanted you to know, watched, I stood at his feet just watching without me having to tell you, how I him just sitting there with his headphones write, because that’s how I write. I’ve left on with his old machine for hours and my water over there. This is, I’ve got a hours and hours on end. purple yoga mat, there are rarely chips but it’s a good idea now come to think of it, and I have a little table about that JB: And is that how he scripted it? size, that’s sort of what it looks like. And that’s what I do, I hoover, I find odd ET: And that was how he scripted it. He places to polish, you know places that I just watched the pictures and made haven’t seen in a long time, sometimes things up, which if you think about it parts of my own body. screenplay writing is the same thing only the other way round. JB: That’s a good idea, and why not? JB: And I was thinking, when we talked ET: I think it’s good to know what the about this, there’s something else about process is like. There’s a lot of weeping as language and about how language can well, there’s a lot of crying in foetal be both a positive thing and a positions. dangerous thing. JB: A lot of crying, foetal position crying. ET: Oh yes, absolutely. Well his Erm, darling, The Magic Roundabout, relationship with language was what’s your relationship to that? Tell us a remarkable because he was a working bit about that. class self-made man with very little education, and so he taught himself a lot. He was a deeply articulate man who ET: Well I thought I might as well start at had a very serious stroke when he was 48 the beginning since we’re talking about and stopped being able to speak, and writing, and I think that it’s very then understood that his reliance upon interesting where writing comes from, language was dangerous and 1 BAFTA and BFI Screenwriters’ Lecture: Emma Thompson 20 September 2014 at BFI Southbank sometimes that he had been and used Footlights, that is me and amongst others language quite crudely, often with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, were humour. And I’m aware of my own holed up by snow in the Birmingham reliance upon language and articulacy, Exhibition Centre, and we had been and I’m very aware of that danger that performing at the Philips Small there is that you can be glib, you can be Appliances Campaign dinner, and I was too quick, and I have been I’m sure in about to do a song in a huge Tam o’ the past. But he also taught me Shanter, this size, and a big black mac, something else about it which I’m sure and I was following a stripper who was relates to things we’re going to talk doing the Philips Ladyshave. She was about later, which was that he was sitting on…there were all these writing things for children ostensibly, businessmen, Philips businessmen, all these were, and he made no concession sitting there with their heads in their soup to that whatsoever. He said children are because they were so drunk, watching just people who simply haven’t lived as this stripper with the Philips Ladyshave. long as we have, so there’s no need or That’s what I had to come on after in a reason to talk down to them as though gigantic Tam o’ Shanter doing [sings in they are from another planet. So he Scottish accent] “I worked for 14 years at would use words like “hoist by your own the castle of the mark.” I mean, I died petard” in The Magic Roundabout the death, we all did. And then we were programmes and then get letters from snowed in and we were stuck there, so I ladies saying, “You can’t use language sat and wrote a sketch about a woman like that for children, they won’t being caught in a traffic jam just outside understand it.” And he wrote back to Carshalton. Yes, it wasn’t very funny at these people, he got out the dictionary I the time actually but I tried, I did try. But remember and looked up all the longest that’s when I started writing sketches words he could find and put them into because I was very much influenced by his replies. He also got a letter from a Stephen, Hugh and all that lot and young boy once who said, “I called my Footlights really. sister a mollusc once and my mum hit me,” so he had to write back to this lady JB: And you and Sandi Toksvig when you and say, “You really shouldn’t, because were auditioning… mollusc is not a rude word. ET: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. ET: So I grew up with that. And like Alan Bennett who grew up with a father who JB: Because that’s interesting too I think. would chase a dog out of his butcher’s shop with the words, “Get out of here you filthy lamppost smelling article,” you ET: Yes, well Stephen and Hugh were understand where it all comes from and always so brilliant and funny, and it was it’s interesting. Anyway, I thought it might very difficult to sort of get in sideways divert you. really because they were so wonderful, and Footlights was quite male- dominated. So Sandi Toksvig and I did an JB: No, I really like that, the derivation of all-female revue called Woman’s Hour, it, and we will come back to that. Tell and it wasn’t an overtly feminist review me, you went to university, you started although there were those at the time writing when? How old were you when and they were great too, but we just you started writing? wrote a revue, and got lots of people to help. And we auditioned women ET: Erm, I starting writing, I always wrote, I because we were very exercised by the wrote stories at school. When I started fact that people would say, “Well writing sketches, I was doing sketches women aren’t funny.” And we’d say, with Footlights when I was 18, 19. “Yes they are. They’re very funny. Laugh Actually, I started writing sketches and all the bloody time. Watch a woman just performing sketches when I was 16, and walking down the street and start the first sketch I ever performed was a laughing. Very funny people altogether, monologue by George Mellly. So it’s always funny.” And then we monologues and sketches were what I auditioned quite a lot of women who grew up with. And one time the weren’t funny at all, and so bang went 2 BAFTA and BFI Screenwriters’ Lecture: Emma Thompson 20 September 2014 at BFI Southbank that argument. But that’s all the there’s that Lenny Bruce that we might nature/nurture thing about your have played but we didn’t have time. confidence really, actually, because being funny is all to do with being ET: No. confident and not minding… JB: And it would be quite interesting JB: And not about the male Venus/Mars because you mentioned the George thing at all.