Screenwriters From England

"The trouble in school is that you can do so little to help kids because you come up against this dead end of the educational system. I think a comprehensive system is the only answer for these kids, if it is carried through properly. But education reflects the system, rather than changes it. People say it’s an instrument of social change; well, if it is, it’s a bloody slow one. I think education reflects the class system, and the system has to change before education can."

"I remember years ago when [w:The Price of Coal|The Price of Coal]] was on television one evening [in either 1977 or 1978]. When I got on the bus in Chapeltown the next day it was full of miners coming off shift. I walked down the aisle and they just looked and said nothing. I'm scared to death until one man appointed himself spokesman and said ‘that were alreight, Barry’. I felt like an icon then, I can tell you!"

"Our intention in making Threads was to step aside from the politics and – I hope convincingly – show the actual effects on either side should our best endeavours to prevent nuclear war fail."

"I think it was the first novel I'd actually read in my own time, and of my own volition. I'd actually sat down and read a book, and I was 21. Ridiculous. I can't remember reading anything before."

"I'd never heard of Ernest Hemingway, but when I read his stories I realised there was something special about this simple style, but I couldn’t understand how he got the effect. I realised there was something underneath it, and that's how the whole thing started to unfold for me."

"I thought I would like to show that these kids can do something which is in fact very skillful - not the old tale about them being cobblers and joiners, but something that means they have to get books out of the library. And it’s a technical skill; they’ve actually got to read about it before they can do something like training a hawk. My brother trained a kestrel in these fields at the back, and I wanted to show that kids can do this kind of thing. They can do all kinds of things if only they’re given opportunities."

"It’s funny, when you use tiny sums of money, like when I started off, actually, it is equally as hard, because that money is someone’s money. It’s not a corporation, not a company, you have taken that money from friends or family, however you have raised it. It’s a funny thing coming up through filmmaking that way, it really makes you be responsible and to really appreciate the money that people are putting it."

"Horror movies have been in some way or another doing the same thing for hundreds of years: don't go down to the basement, don’t talk to that stranger, don’t have sex, don’t be a jerk to others. They’re all cautionary tales in one way or another, so the trick these days is getting an audience to invest in your story. If they're not invested in it, you’re just showing them another dark corridor with something that goes “bang” to try and scare them."

"When presented with an audience or a camera, usually [my stammer] disappeared, but by no means all the time. I can show you some outtakes of Blackadder or The Thin Blue Line when I get to some B's followed by a vowel, which is my real bête noire."

"[The French] are so uncompromising in their view of the world, which is why they are such a fantastically rich source of comedy. They are so relentless and so clear in their view of things, and they won't be shoved off that position by anything. What's also good is that, generally speaking, making jokes about the French appears to be something that nobody really minds. The French don't even care, they just go about their lives regardless."

"Personally I suspect that I am highly unlikely to be arrested for whatever laws exist to contain free expression, because of the undoubtedly privileged position that is afforded to those of a high public profile. So my concerns are less for myself, and more for those more vulnerable because of their lower profile. Like the man arrested in Oxford for calling a police horse 'gay'. Or the teenager arrested for calling the Church of Scientology a 'cult'. Or the café owner arrested for displaying passages from the Bible on a TV screen."

"I cry too much and I find it strange. It must be indicative of some issue within me that I’ve yet to identify. Whether it’s crowds or whether it’s people being nice… Hospitals make me cry very, very easily. Merely entering a hospital – just sensing care, you know. People trying to help others, I find, inspires a very emotional response."

"When I was doing Bean more than I've done him in the last few years, I did strange things; like appearing on chat shows in character as Mr. Bean. I remember going to a book signing as Mr. Bean; it was a Mr. Bean book; and I signed it as Mr. Bean. I just wrote "Mr. Bean" in the book rather than Rowan Atkinson. I was there in costume and in character for the entire time; from arriving in the store till leaving it at the end of the book signing; and it was a fantastically kind of freeing experience, because I could just submerge myself in this character and just behave however I liked. And I didn't care what I did or what I said to anyone; I just became this other person, and it was a wonderful sort of freedom. A wonderful kind of fantasy, where you could just be this thoroughly rather unpleasant, selfish man for an hour; in a totally real context rather than in a fictional context. It was rather extraordinary, actually, and something that I found rather pleasing and rather relaxing."

"The victimisation of individuals or corporations or groups of people is a very dangerous and difficult development. The fact that careers can be ruined and reputations can be savaged without any particular responsibility on the part of those who are doing it… we live in strange times."

"It’s the age-old dilemma of being known for doing a certain thing in a certain way. And even if people think, “Well, we could cast him in this role,” then they say, “He just brings a lot of Mr. Bean baggage with him and would people take it seriously?” I can see myself in some Dickensian role, those sorts of characters. But I think I might have burnt my bridges with the outright silliness of so much of what I’ve done."

"All jokes about religion cause offence, so it's pointless apologising for them."

"The problem we have online is that an algorithm decides what we want to see, which ends up creating a simplistic, binary view of society. It becomes a case of either you're with us or against us. And if you're against us, you deserve to be 'cancelled'. It's important that we're exposed to a wide spectrum of opinion, but what we have now is the digital equivalent of the medieval mob roaming the streets looking for someone to burn. So it is scary for anyone who's a victim of that mob and it fills me with fear about the future."

"[O]ne must know that pride is one of the seven deadly sins, so one shouldn't exhibit pride in anything...I don't know...what do I get pride and satisfaction from? I can't think of anything I'm absolutely proud of. If I've done jokes that people liked, then that is pleasing and satisfying. I think probably the thing that I enjoyed in the show, the franchise, the brand or whatever you want to call it, the thing that I found the least stressful might be Blackadder, the sitcom I did in the 1980s. That was good because of this feeling of shared responsibility among a lot of really good actors."

"It does seem to me that the job of comedy is to offend, or have the potential to offend, and it cannot be drained of that potential. Every joke has a victim. That’s the definition of a joke. Someone or something or an idea is made to look ridiculous....In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything."

"I am getting older, and [Mr. Bean] naturally has to get older with me, and that's why I've done him very little in recent years. Because I don't particularly want him to get old. I've always seen him as a rather timeless, ageless figure — though, in fact, when we were doing this funeral sketch a few weeks ago, quite a few people said you know there's something about Bean in middle age which feels almost more right; he sort of suits an older outlook."

"(Tove) Jansson was an upper-middle-class bohemian lesbian, living on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland (Klovharu). I was a suburban scouser on a new-build housing estate. It felt as though she was writing just for me."

"That’s it! That’s the utterly random mental chaos I was looking for! No one’s going to predict that response! Anything Else?"

"“I see where you’re going with this, Wil. Bravo!” “Do you?” replied Wil. “Because honestly, Mr. Dinsdale, if you know where I’m going, perhaps you’d be kind enough to give me directions!”"

"Wil had learned as a child that the best way to deal with goons—the more muscle-bound the better—was to confuse them. For while the human bicep was something anyone with a little patience could build up to an impressive size, the human brain was less a variable and more something a person was born with. Goons, in his experience, were rarely born with very large ones."

"“Wil,” said Barry with a weight of sadness that only a parent can know, “I tried as hard as I could.”"

"We all know that life isn’t fair. But life should at least come with a printed copy in large type in case of misunderstandings and overbilling."

"You know, Mr. Dinsdale, this all sounds delightfully bananas but I’m kinda monkeyed out this week."

"He’d carefully judged the measure of his opponent’s resolve, and knew that a man as greedy and weak willed as Marcus James would always be the one to crack first under duress."

"The Quantum Needle was theoretically used to repair any tears in the fabric of the space-time continuum, though how it actually worked in the field was a matter of some debate. When Wil had pressed the question, Mr. Dinsdale had simply mumbled, “quantum physics,” which seemed to be his standard response to any question he didn’t know the answer to."

"Wil knew that he had done something that might never be undone: his Dad might forgive the years of lies, but he would never forgive this one moment of absolute truth."

"But even a man who has paid his rent doesn’t have forever."

"Wil opened his eyes to find Thursday glaring in at him through his window; apparently, the universe was already in a foul mood."

"Hindsight would later suggest to Wil that things coincidentally began to fall down at exactly the same time he began to relax. He wasn’t to know this at the time, of course. Otherwise it would’ve been foresight."

"His museum took a stance against conventional thinking, and the slow death of intellect that comes with mediocrity."

"Wil allowed his voice to trail off. The chances of a rational explanation at this point were in exact proportion to the chances of Lucy believing it."

"Wil had always suspected Mrs. Chappell’s cats were onto something: if one can act as if everything is right with the world while all around clowns dressed in snorkels, flippers, and tutus are throwing bowls of neon-green custard at each other then, by golly, everything is right with the world."

"There was evidence of neither angels nor ambulance workers, which Wil took to be a positive sign."

"Wil had always been a hopeless romantic, with “hopeless” being the operative word."

"Wil tried a vacant stare, just to see if he could beat the old lady at her own game."

"It was apparent that he was out of his league, and that the only way to compete would be to play along until everyone reverted to ignoring him. At that point, he’d be able to slip out the back door and return to his previously scheduled life."

"The cat leaned into Wil’s leg and rubbed a little bit, just to let Wil know that he had officially been given permission to exist."

"The next morning, Wil Morgan awoke from a fitful night’s sleep and a rather disturbing variation of his anxiety dream in which he’d arrived too late to register for the World’s Biggest Failure competition and had been disqualified."

"He was also willing to bet that not a single part of his next three or four minutes was going to make any sense, yet somehow it would all fit quite neatly into Mrs. Chappell’s version of reality."

"He stopped in his tracks to consider what might be Actually Occurring, as opposed to Apparently Occurring."

"Life is not about how you use your eyes; it’s about having vision."

"Your eyes only see what your mind lets you believe!"

"He began to think of better days, all of which lay in the opposite direction from the one he was facing."

"“I think you’re missing the point.” “I think I’m not alone in that.”"

"Wil Morgan awoke from his regular anxiety dream, in which he had just finished second in a World’s Biggest Failure competition."

"Outside, the city streets were gray and sodden. Indeed, Wil often fancied this was the city where they had invented the color gray."