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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.
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