"To me [...] the term "costume drama" means something totally pickled. It doesn't interest me in the slightest. What first seized my imagination was the myth of Casanova. Everyone's heard of it. But what does it mean? You hear about the office Casanova, the small-town Casanova, the shop-floor Casanova. He was what we describe as a libertine; but he was concerned with religion and sexual freedom, and these are things we have to address ourselves in now. The libertine is the last possible hero. Traditional heroes are too derisory for words; but the libertine as hero persists. Malice and envy lap their gentle bile around him, but he is the last hero. Of course, I read his memoirs, and I simply don't believe them. They're vain and egotistical, but they are about a man who is hunted by what he is hunting—and that is freedom, expressed in sexual terms."
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Playwrights from EnglandLabour Party (UK) politiciansJournalists from EnglandUniversity of Oxford alumniScreenwriters from England
Original Language: English
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Sources
"Potter's Path", The Sunday Times (7 November 1971), p. 38
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dennis_Potter
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Dennis Potter
Dennis Christopher George Potter (17 May 1935 – 7 June 1994) was an English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist. He is best remembered for scripts which mixed autobiography with social history and fantasy. Potter's plays occasionally incorporated elements of popular culture (characters miming to popular songs) and adult actors performing as children.
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