Editing Dennis Potter (section)

==Writing and public career==

===''The Wednesday Play''===
Potter's career as a television playwright began with ''[[The Wednesday Play#The Confidence Course|The Confidence Course]]'' (''[[The Wednesday Play]]'', 1965) which Potter had begun as a novel.<ref>John R. Cook ''Dennis Potter: A Life on Screen'', Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998, p.24</ref> An exposé of the [[Dale Carnegie]] Institute, it drew threats of litigation from that organisation.<ref>Carpenter, p. 143</ref><ref>Gilbert (1998), p. 108, 112</ref> Although Potter effectively disowned the play, excluding it from his ''Who's Who'' entry,<ref>W. Stephen Gilbert, ''The Life and Work of Dennis Potter'', p.107n</ref> it used non-naturalistic dramatic devices (in this case breaking the [[fourth wall]]) which would become hallmarks of Potter's subsequent work. ''The Confidence Course'' script was liked by ''Wednesday Play'' script editor Roger Smith who then commissioned Potter to write what became the second Nigel Barton play for the new anthology series.<ref>Carpenter, p.147</ref>  ''[[The Wednesday Play#Alice|Alice]]'' (also 1965), his next transmitted play, chronicled the relationship between [[Lewis Carroll|Charles Lutwidge Dodgson]], better known by his ''nom de plume'', Lewis Carroll, and his muse [[Alice Liddell]]. The play drew complaints from the descendants of Dodgson, and of Macmillan, the publisher, who objected to the way the relationship was depicted.<ref>Gilbert (1998), p. 24</ref> [[George Baker (British actor)|George Baker]] played Dodgson.

Potter's most highly regarded works from this period were the semi-autobiographical plays ''[[The Nigel Barton Plays#Stand Up, Nigel Barton|Stand Up, Nigel Barton!]]'' and ''[[The Nigel Barton Plays#Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton|Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton]]'', which featured [[Keith Barron]]. The former recounts the experience of a miner's son attending Oxford University where he finds himself torn between two worlds, culminating in Barton's participation in a television documentary. This mirrored Potter's participation in ''Does Class Matter'' (1958), a television documentary made while Potter was an Oxford undergraduate.<ref>Sergio Angelini [http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/810533/ "Stand Up, Nigel Barton (1965)"], BFI screenonline</ref> The second play features the same character standing as a Labour candidate—his disillusionment with the compromises of electoral politics is based on Potter's own experience.<ref name="Angelini">Sergio Angelini [http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1041034/index.html "Vote, Vote, Vote, for Nigel Barton (1965)"], BFI xcreenonline</ref> Both plays received praise from critics but aroused considerable tension at the BBC for their potentially incendiary critique of party politics.<ref name="Angelini"/> In his [[James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture]] in 1993, Potter recalled how he was asked by "several respected men at the corporation why I wanted to shit on the Queen."<ref>Dennis Potter ''Occupying Powers'', 1993 {{page needed|date=October 2014}}</ref>

===First film screenplays===

In 1978, [[Herbert Ross]] was shooting ''[[Nijinsky (film)|Nijinsky]]'' at [[Shepperton Studios]] and invited Potter to write the screenplay for his next project ''Unexpected Valleys''. But after watching ''Pennies from Heaven'' on television one evening, Ross contacted Potter about the prospect of adapting that series for the cinema.<ref>On the DVD commentary for the original television serial, director [[Piers Haggard]] claims he approached Potter during filming of the series with the suggestion of producing a cinematic version starring the original cast. Potter allegedly responded by telling Haggard "there's no point – we've already done it now!".</ref> The film version of ''[[Pennies from Heaven (1981 film)|Pennies from Heaven]]'' was launched at [[Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer|MGM]] as an 'anti-musical' with [[Steve Martin]] and [[Bernadette Peters]] in the lead roles. According to Potter, the studio demanded continual rewrites of the script and made significant cuts to the film after initial test screenings. The film was released in 1981 to mixed critical reaction and was a box-office failure. Potter, however, was nominated for the [[Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay|Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar]] that year.

Having already adapted ''Brimstone and Treacle'' for the stage after the television production was banned by the BBC, Potter set about writing a film version. It was directed by [[Richard Loncraine]], who also directed Potter's ''Blade on the Feather'' at LWT, with [[Denholm Elliott]] reprising his role of Mr. Bates from the original television production, while [[Sting (musician)|Sting]] and [[Joan Plowright]], replaced [[Michael Kitchen]] and [[Patricia Lawrence]] in the roles of Martin Taylor and Mrs Bates respectively. Although a British film made by Potter's own production company (Pennies Productions), the casting of Sting piqued the interest of American investors. As a result, references to Mr Bates' membership of the [[British National Front|National Front]] and a scene discussing racial segregation were omitted—as were many of the non-naturalistic flourishes present in the television production—although the film was much more graphic in its depiction of sexual abuse and rape. The film was not a success at the box office.

Potter's screenplay for ''[[Gorky Park (film)|Gorky Park]]'' (1983) led to his gaining an [[Edgar Award]] from the [[Mystery Writers of America]].

===Works for the BBC in the 1980s===
Potter's career in the early 1980s was spent as a screenwriter for the cinema. He returned to the BBC for a co-production with [[20th Century Fox]], writing the scripts for a widely praised but seldom-seen miniseries of [[F. Scott Fitzgerald]]'s ''[[Tender Is the Night]]'' (1985) with [[Mary Steenburgen]] as Nicole Diver.

''[[The Singing Detective]]'' (1986), featuring [[Michael Gambon]], used the dramatist's own problems with the skin disease [[psoriasis]], for Potter an often debilitating condition leading to hospital admission, as a means to merge the lead character's imagination with his perception of reality.

Following ''[[Christabel (1988 TV drama)|Christabel]]'' (1988), Potter's adaptation of the memoirs of [[Christabel Bielenberg]], his next TV serial, ''[[Blackeyes (TV series)|Blackeyes]]'' (1989) was a major disappointment in his career. A drama about a [[model (person)|fashion model]], it was reviewed as self-indulgent by some critics, and accused of contributing to the [[misogyny]] Potter claimed he intended to expose.<ref name="BFI">{{Cite web|last=Cook|first=John|publisher=BFI Screenonline|title=Potter, Dennis (1935–1994)|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/451441/}}</ref> The critical backlash against Potter following ''Blackeyes'' led to Potter being labelled 'Dirty Den' (after [[Den Watts]], the ''[[EastEnders]]'' character) by the British tabloid press,<ref name=":1">{{cite news|last=Lawson|first=Mark|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-dennis-potter-1421167.html|title=Obituary: Dennis Potter|newspaper=The Independent|date=8 June 1994}}</ref> and resulted in a period of reclusion from television. The serial was adapted into a [[Blackeyes|novel]] (see below),

In 1990, referring to a scene in ''The Singing Detective'', Mary Whitehouse claimed on BBC Radio that Potter had been influenced by witnessing his mother engaging in adulterous sex. Potter's mother won substantial damages from the BBC<ref>{{cite news|url=http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,1074044,00.html|title=Watching the detective|newspaper=The Guardian|first=Mark|last=Lawson|date=2003-10-31}}</ref> and ''[[The Listener (magazine)|The Listener]]''.<ref>John R. Cook ''Dennis Potter: A Life on Screen'', Manchester University Press, 1998, p.350, n.82</ref> Potter had at least at times actually been an admirer of Mrs Whitehouse: the journalist [[Stanley Reynolds]] found in 1973 that he "loves the idea of Mrs Whitehouse. He sees her as standing up for all the people with ducks on their walls who have been laughed at and treated like rubbish by the sophisticated metropolitan minority".<ref>''The Guardian'', 16 February 1973, quoted in W. Stephen Gilbert ''The Life and Work of Dennis Potter'', Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1998, p.145 (originally published as ''Fight and Kick and Bite: Life and Work of Dennis Potter'', London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1995)</ref> In 1979 in an interview for ''[[The South Bank Show]]'', he rejected "the chorus of abuse" suffered by Whitehouse because she accepted the "central moral importance of – to use the grandest word – art".<ref>Ben Thompson (ed) [https://books.google.com/books?id=-r7k88pWzYgC&pg=RA2-PT85 ''Ban This Filth!: Letters From the Mary Whitehouse Archive''], London: Faber, 2012, p.85. Melvyn Bragg's interview with Potter, along with an earlier ''South Bank Show'' item about a 1978 theatre production of (the then banned TV play) ''Brimstone and Treacle'', is included in the DVD set of the dramatist's work for London Weekend Television.</ref>

===Later film work===

Potter wrote the screenplay for ''[[Dreamchild]]'' (1985), a film which shared themes with his script for the ''Alice'' (1965) television play. In her last film role, [[Coral Browne]] portrayed the elderly Alice Hargreaves who recalls in flashbacks her childhood when she was the inspiration for [[Lewis Carroll]]'s ''[[Alice in Wonderland]]''. Potter adapted his television play ''Schmoedipus'' (1974) for the cinema. The ensuing film, ''[[Track 29]]'' (1988), directed by [[Nicolas Roeg]], was Potter's last filmed American project. However, Potter did provide uncredited script work on ''[[James and the Giant Peach (film)|James and the Giant Peach]]'' (released 1995)—his chief contribution providing dialogue for the sardonic caterpillar. Potter makes a sly reference to this in ''[[Karaoke (play)|Karaoke]]'' when the character Daniel Feeld ([[Albert Finney]]) is invited to provide dialogue for an "arthritic goat" in a children's film.

Potter's reputation within the American film industry following the box office disappointments of ''Pennies from Heaven'' and ''Gorky Park'' ultimately led to difficulty receiving backing for his projects. Potter is known to have written adaptations of ''[[The Phantom of the Opera (novel)|The Phantom of the Opera]]'', ''[[The Mystery of Edwin Drood]]'', ''[[The White Hotel]]'' and his earlier television play ''[[Double Dare (play)|Double Dare]]'' (1976): all these reached the preproduction stage before work was suspended.<ref>Cook ''Dennis Potter: A Life on Screen'', p. 368</ref> More fortunate was ''[[Mesmer (film)|Mesmer]]'' (1993), a [[biographical film]] of the 19th century pseudo-scientist [[Franz Anton Mesmer]]. Potter's film, ''[[Secret Friends]]'' (1991), from his novel, ''Ticket to Ride'', starring [[Alan Bates]], premiered in New York at the [[Museum of Modern Art]] as the gala closing of the [[Museum of Television & Radio]]'s week-long Potter retrospective.

The last film Potter actively worked on was ''Midnight Movie'' (1994), an adaptation of Rosalind Ashe's novel ''Moths''. The film starred [[Louise Germaine]] and [[Brian Dennehy]] (who had appeared respectively in ''Lipstick on Your Collar'' and ''Gorky Park'') and was directed by [[Renny Rye]]. Unable to secure financing from the [[Arts Council of Great Britain|Arts Council]], Potter invested £500,000 in the production; [[BBC Films]] provided the rest of the capital. The film was not given a cinema release owing to a lack of interest from distributors and remained unseen until after Potter's death. It was finally broadcast on BBC2 in December 1994 in the ''[[Screen Two]]'' series, two months after a remake of his [[Lost television broadcast|lost]] 1967 play ''Message for Posterity'' was transmitted.

A film version of ''[[The Singing Detective (film)|The Singing Detective]]'', based on Potter's own adapted screenplay, was released in 2003 by [[Icon Productions]]. [[Robert Downey, Jr.]] played the lead alongside [[Robin Wright|Robin Wright Penn]] and [[Mel Gibson]]. Gibson also acted as producer. Potter's screenplay of ''The White Hotel'' was adapted as a radio play and broadcast in September 2018.<ref>{{cite news|last=Brown|first=Mark|url=https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/aug/03/dennis-potter-adaptation-of-the-white-hotel-to-premiere-on-radio-4|title=Dennis Potter's adaptation of The White Hotel to premiere on Radio 4|work=The Guardian|date=3 August 2018|access-date=3 August 2018}}</ref>

===The media and Rupert Murdoch===

In 1993, Potter was given a half-hour slot in prime time by [[Channel 4]] in their ''[[Opinions (TV series)|Opinions]]'' strand produced by [[Open Media]]. Potter's chosen topic was what he perceived to be a contamination of news media and its effect on declining standards in British television "particularly journalists who criticised his Channel 4 series ''Lipstick on Your Collar''", [[Kelvin MacKenzie]] "the sharp little oaf who edits the Sun" and [[Garry Bushell]] "that sub-literate [[Homophobia|homophobic]], sniggering rictus of a lout".<ref>[https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/diary-5444081.html Diary], ''The Independent'', 23 March 1993</ref> His talk was published in ''[[The Guardian]]'' in abbreviated form as ''"Murdoch's Desolate View of Human Life"''<ref>Dennis Potter, "Murdoch's Desolate View of Human Life", ''The Guardian'', 22 March 1993</ref> [[Craig Brown (satirist)|Craig Brown]] described the programme in the ([[Rupert Murdoch]] owned) ''[[The Sunday Times|Sunday Times]]'':

::"Potter announced at the beginning: 'I'm going to get down there in the gutter where so many journalists crawl... what I'm about to do is to make a provenly vindictive and extremely powerful enemy... the enemy in question is that drivel-merchant, global huckster and so-to-speak media psychopath, Rupert Murdoch... Hannibal the Cannibal.'...

::As a performance, it had a lot going for it. I have never seen a talking head on television so immediate or so unabated in its anger. In many ways, it felt like being collared by a madman on the Tube. Filmed disturbingly close to camera, seemingly ad-libbing the entire half-hour, now mumbling, now rasping, Potter somehow managed to cut through the vacuum that on television usually separates viewer from viewee. This made the performance extraordinary."<ref>Craig Brown "Abuse of Privilege", ''The Sunday Times'', 28 March 1993</ref>

===Final works===

The last serial broadcast during Potter's lifetime was the romantic comedy ''[[Lipstick on Your Collar (TV series)|Lipstick on Your Collar]]'' (1993). Set during the [[Suez Crisis]] of 1956 like the much earlier ''Lay Down Your Arms'' (1970), elements of which it recycled, this six-parter did not become a popular success and in it Potter returned to use of lip-synched musical numbers in the manner of ''Pennies from Heaven''. It helped to launch the career of actor [[Ewan McGregor]].<ref name="BFI"/>

On 15 March 1994, three months before his death while his health was deteriorating, Potter gave an interview to [[Melvyn Bragg]], later broadcast on 5 April 1994 by [[Channel 4]]. He had broken most of his ties with the BBC as a result of his disenchantment with Directors-General [[Michael Checkland]] and [[John Birt]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thetvfestival.com/website/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/GEITF_MacTaggart_1993_Dennis_Potter.pdf|title=Occupying Powers|work=MacTaggart Lecture, Edinburgh International Television Festival|date=28 August 1993|access-date=22 October 2016}}</ref> Using a [[morphine]] and [[champagne]] cocktail as pain relief, and [[chain smoking]], he revealed that he had named his cancer "Rupert", after [[Rupert Murdoch]], who Potter said represented so much of what he found despicable about the mass media in Britain.<ref>{{Cite web|last=BFI|title=Interview with Dennis Potter, An (1994) Synopsis|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1055970/synopsis.html}}</ref> He described his work and his determination to continue writing until his death. Telling Bragg that he had two works he intended to finish, he proposed that these works, ''[[Karaoke (TV series)|Karaoke]]'' and ''[[Cold Lazarus]]'', should be made with the rival BBC and Channel 4 working in collaboration, a suggestion which was accepted.<ref name="BFI" />

The Bragg TV interview had revealed the "real" Dennis Potter as gentle and thoughtful and the immediate response was intense. ''The Guardian'' printed a full transcript the next day while Bragg reported: "Thousands of people reacted with phone calls and letters." [[Michael Grade]], Channel 4’s chief executive, said: "I've never known a reaction to a programme like that, achieving such intimacy with an audience. Nothing stacks up against it in terms of impact."<ref>Carpenter, p. 563</ref>

Potter's final commission came from ''The Daily Telegraph Arts & Books'' section, prompted by the TV interview in March, to which he replied on 16 May, after honouring his television commitments: "I am pleased to tell you that I have completed ''Karaoke'' and ''Cold Lazarus'' – which I regard as essentially one eight-part piece. Now all that effort is of course evaporating into an overwhelming sense of loss, I itch to scribble ''something''."<ref>Carpenter, p. 574</ref> Immediately he was prompted to consider "the prospect of confronting imminent death" and on 25 May he submitted "my first and last short story" titled "Last Pearls",<ref>{{Cite book| last=Potter | first=Dennis | year=1994 | title=Seeing the Blossom | place=London | publisher=Faber & Faber, 2nd edition | isbn=0-571-17436-1}}</ref> which was published on 4 June, days before he died.

The two related stories, ''Karaoke'' and ''Cold Lazarus'', were eventually broadcast in 1996. One set in the present and the other in the far future, both feature [[Albert Finney]] as the same principal character. Both series were released on DVD on 6 September 2010.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1zQ2DwAAQBAJ&q=dvd+release+6+September+2010+cold+lazarus+and+karaoke&pg=PT407|title=The Art of Invective: Selected Non-Fiction 1953–94|first=Dennis|last=Potter|date=September 2015|section=Note 336|isbn=978-1-78319-203-8|publisher=[[Oberon Books]]}}</ref>