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Welcome to the site that summarises. We plead with you to watch, or listen for yourselves. This in particular. More than any. How can you summarise the playwright, dramatist & novelist Dennis Potter? Ok - here goes. Three days of trying. Dennis Potter - Brimstone & Treacle...instead of the crippled, the disabled, the dumb & the afflicted being visited & saved by an angel, it's someone else who visits, makes them talk, makes them walk & takes away the pain. It's the Devil.
For 30 years Dennis Potter suffered from an arthritic psoriasis disorder. He was always in & out of hospital, always in pain.
In 1993 his wife Margaret was diagnosed with breast cancer. On Valentines day 1994 Dennis was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer & given only months to live. Margaret passed away on the 29th May 1994. Dennis died 9 days later.
This interview, filmed at the end of March 1994 shows Dennis Potter. It just shows him & he bares his soul. This is powerful, troubling, unsettling & inspirational viewing.
I watched it at the time, all those years ago & can still remember vividly the rollercoaster ride it was. Fuck self help books - just watch this.
Melvyn Bragg deserves a mention. He does what most interviewers couldn't bare to do - he shuts up. He barely speaks. He doesn't need to & that is why this is such powerful viewing. Alan Yentob also interviewed Dennis Potter not long before this but he couldn't do it. He couldn't keep his gob shut long enough to allow what might come out to actually come out & he blew it. Melyn Bragg doesn't.
Dennis Potter on politics, television, Rupert Murdoch, life, staring death in the face, how we yearn for yesterday & face the drudgery of tomorrow & most of the time miss the sheer joy of now - chain smoking, drinking a wine/methadone cocktail & swigging 200 mg strength methadone from a hip flask.
"The blossomiest blossom & the nowness of now..."
Tags: dennis potter melvyn bragg casanova late call the mayor of casterbridge pennies from heaven tender is the night christabel blackeyes lipstick on your collar karaoke cold lazarus 1981 pennies from heaven brimstone and treacle gorky park dreamchild track 29 secret friends midnight movie mesmer the singing detective
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