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August 2000 extracts speech
(TG)
The following are extracts from an interview with Tony Garnett,
co-founder and Chairman of World Productions, in August 2000.
Fiction is the nearest you
can get, through the imagination of a writer, to knowing
what it is like to be anotherÉ
"I'm curious about what it's
like being someone else. That's one of the things that
keeps me going in this business. It's a very privileged
job I have, because I'm allowed to do that. Fiction is
the nearest you can get, through the imagination of a
writer, to knowing what it is like to be another. And
that assuages our loneliness as human beings. I'm also
interested in stories, because we need stories in order
to make sense of our lives."
"But there are all sorts of
ways to do it, and I'm not imposing one particular style
on the company. In fact I've experimented with other
thingsÉI was involved in the first two series of 'Ballykissangel',
which is very different from 'This Life' or 'The Cops'
or the new show, 'Attachments'.
Ballykissangel Éis a classic
Hollywood form. In Hollywood it's known as a 'fish out
of water'
"Ballykissangel was thought
up by Kieran Prendiville, and it was more or less a one-liner
which I just knew was good, because it's a classic Hollywood
form. In Hollywood it's known as a 'fish out of water',
and when (Kieran) pitched this idea of a young priest
from an urban parish being sent to a small village in
Ireland, I knew it had possibilities".
So there's a variety of things
being done in the shop nowÉ
"Now I'm quite keen that it
should be a place where producers can do good work that
they believe in, and not just reflect my taste or my
sensibility. I don't want clones of me.
So there's a variety of stuff
being done in the shop now although for many years it
pursued what I was interested in. And the furrow I've
been ploughing most of my life is a sort of distilled
naturalism, where we try to find out what life is really
like for people in the real world, and dramatise it".
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