You are in the Special Features section - Jonathan Lynn

Jonathan has written novels and screenplays, received countless awards and accolades, including BAFTAs, and has had a book at the top of the best-sellers list for three years. He has been artistic director at the Cambridge Theatre and directed numerous other West End plays.

Lynn wrote and directed his first feature film CLUE (1985), a comedy/mystery based on the popular board game with an all-star cast. Lynn then directed his own screenplay NUNS ON THE RUN (1990), which starred Eric Idle and Robbie Coltrane, and the acerbic comedy MY COUSIN VINNY (1992). THE DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMAN, starring Eddie Murphy, was released in 1992 and was followed by GREEDY (1994) featuring Michael J. Fox and Kirk Douglas; SGT. BILKO (1996) with Steve Martin and Dan Akroyd; and TRIAL AND ERROR (1997) starring Michael Richards and Charlize Theron. Lynn directed THE WHOLE NINE YARDS (2000), a critical and audience favourite that featured Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry and Amanda Peet, and dominated the US box-office for three weeks.
This was followed by  THE FIGHTING TEMPTATIONS (2003), which he directed. Starring Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Beyonce Knowles, along with an eclectic ensemble cast, the film is an uplifting tour de force of gospel music. The film won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Picture of 2003.

Jonathan's play Collaborators is set for a 2006 run in London's West End.

Digger: Who designed your website? How much input do you have into it? It's rather good. Are you a big user of the Net?

Jonathan: Kristinna Corlin at Tecdezign in Copenhagen.  I never had to go there, we contacted each other by email and phone, very easy.  Obviously I had input into content, but she does all the design. Yes it is, very good, and I recommend her highly.  I do use the net quite a lot.

Digger: How serious is the business of comedy and comedy-writing in your view? 

Jonathan: It’s how I earn my living. What could be more serious than that?  However, to answer your question in the spirit you intended,  I believe that comedy must be about something that matters intensely to the characters.

Digger: What is the longest you ever spent on a single script or an idea within a script?

Jonathan: Twenty years.

Digger: What is your favourite line or situation in a Yes Minister episode? 

Jonathan: “We should always tell the press, freely and frankly, anything that they can easily find out some other way.”
“Cynic the word that an idealist uses to describe a realist.”

Digger: What did you ever have to leave out of an episode because the BBC lawyers considered it too naughty? 

Jonathan: Nothing.

     

Yes Minister's Jim Hacker, Sir Humphrey and Bernard Woolley 

Sir Humphrey

Digger: How much of the characters of Hacker and Humphrey came from Paul and Nigel? 

Jonathan: They acted the characters superbly. But Antony Jay and I wrote them.

Digger: Words and word-play were a big part of Yes Minister, as was the superiority vs inferiority and one-upmanship between Humphrey and Hacker. This seemed to hit a nerve with people as they recognised the bureaucracy and pomposity in their politicians. Why do you think people in politics think so highly of themselves when all the evidence is that the public don't think highly of them at all? 

Jonathan: Narcissism. And denial.

Digger: Was it a kind of vanity that made Mrs Thatcher and company tune-in to watch Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister?

Jonathan: Yes.

Digger: Do you think they could see themselves in the characters and plots? 

Jonathan: No. The politicians thought that we’d nailed the civil servants, and the civil servants thought we’d skewered the politicians.

Digger: What gives you most pleasure - writing, acting, directing?

Jonathan: Whichever I’m not doing.

Digger: What has been your biggest achievement to-date and what would you still like to accomplish? 

Jonathan: Biggest achievement: Surviving without a proper job since 1967.  Apart from that, my novel MAYDAY.   What do I still want to accomplish: I’d like to make films of my screenplays MAYDAY and RITA’S STORY.  I’d like to see my two new plays COLLABORATORS and THE BOTTOM LINE produced successfully. I’m working on all of these ambitions.

Digger: What makes a great comedy? Can you tell us what your favourite comedies and comic moments are? (Two of mine are Nigel Hawthorne with pencils up his nose in The Knowledge and Walter Matthau talking on the phone to his friend's wife in The Odd Couple as if she's his girlfriend.)

Jonathan: Favourite comedies: Chaplin’s CITY LIGHTS. Buster Keaton’s THE GENERAL, Garbo in Lubitch’s NINOTCHKA. THE PHILADELPHIA STORY. HIS GIRL FRIDAY. Billy Wilder’s THE APARTMENT and SOME LIKE IT HOT.  BEING THERE.  TOOTSIE. A SHOT IN THE DARK...   too many movies to list.  On TV: DAD’S ARMY, STEPTOE AND SON, THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW. Recently, THE OFFICE.

Digger: And do you think that comedy can be split into formulae and specific groupings?

Jonathan: There is always some formula that can be made to apply. How relevant is a formula? Not very.  For instance, YES MINISTER is, like Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, a comedy about a master who is less able than his servant.  How far does that get you in creating the show? Not far. My film MY COUSIN VINNY was described to me by the studio as “a fish out of water” comedy. They like that phrase “fish out of water” in Hollywood, but what does it really say about the film. In my mind, the film was about class, and about the unforgivable risk of a mistake being made in a death penalty case. But then, I’m British.

      

Eddington, Hawthorne and Fowlds who played Jonathan's scripts so superbly

Digger: Is it worth trying to analyse why something is funny or should we just laugh at it?

Jonathan: It’s worth analyzing why something is funny if you create comedy as a profession. If not, why bother?  But it is worth analysing what a comedy is saying about society.  That’s the point of it. 

Digger: For example, Fawlty Towers and Yes Minister are funny on a number of levels - the slapstick or farcical element, the relationships, in-jokes and familiarity with the characters and their motivations, the situations, misunderstandings and word-play and so on. How do good writers manage to cram so much into each episode which makes them worth watching again and again?

Jonathan: In both series the structure of each script was carefully and meticulously planned in advance.

Digger: Who were your inspirations for being a writer?

Jonathan: Harold Pinter. Kingsley Amis. P.G.Wodehouse. Neil Simon.

Digger: You now live in America. What are the major differences between our two nations in your view?

Jonathan: America’s bigger.

Digger: How has your work been received there?

Jonathan: As a director, pretty well. As a writer – well, satirical comedy (which is what I write) seeks to illuminate things that are wrong with society with a view to making them change for the better. That’s not really understood or appreciated here. As Tocqueville said: “America is in a perpetual state of self-applause.”

Digger: Some great comedy has come out of the Jewish condition and tradition. I am thinking of The Marx brothers, Woody Allen, Jack Rosenthal and so on. Why do you think that is?

Jonathan: Education, by means of argument and debate, has always been central to Jewish life. Comedy is argument and debate. As Tom Stoppard once said when asked why he became a playwright “Writing a play is the only way I can disagree with myself without being accused of inconsistency.”

Digger: Has Hollywood won you over or are you going to come back here at some stage (!) and write another comedy?

Jonathan: I wrote a play called COLLABORATORS which I hope will be produced in London next year. I’ve written a film comedy called MODERN MARRIAGE, set partly in England.

Digger: How would you describe the state of British TV and British comedy?

Jonathan: I have no idea. I’m out of touch with it.

Digger: America has taken some of our shows, such as Steptoe, Reggie Perrin, Till Death..., Coupling and re-made them but the re-makes lost the essence of the British ones which was their Britishness. There is a lot said about comedy not travelling well which I don't happen to agree with. I say if it's funny and well-presented it will travel and that these shows should not have been muddled with but screened as they were. What is your view?

Jonathan: Some tv comedy shows have been remade in America and worked well, though differently, like “Till Death...” and “Steptoe.” Others have failed dismally. Those that fail are the ones that are dependent on the personality of the original star.  For instance, how do you find somebody else to play Basil Fawlty? I think it’s impossible.

Digger: What makes you laugh, what makes you sad and what makes you angry?

Jonathan: Answer to all three questions:  Hypocrisy.

Digger: What would be your ideal day?

Jonathan: Mind your own business.

Digger: Who do you think is going to win the up-coming British election and why?

Jonathan: What’s the difference between two Conservative parties?

Digger: How are you at dealing with red-tape and bureaucracy?

Jonathan: Bad.

Digger: And what do you think of people who don't use plain English but hide behind phrases and language to divert and befuddle?

Jonathan: Tiresome.

Digger: If you could arrange a dinner party with ten of the 'top people' from any century, living or dead, real or fictional, who would be there and why?

Jonathan: I wouldn’t. There would be so many inflated egos in the room that nobody would listen to anybody else. But if I had to, and if I thought anybody would get a word in edgewise, I would ask: Jane Austen, Winston Churchill, Jack Benny, Isaiah Berlin and Adam Smith.