A matter of life and death

Martin Stannard

pp. 1-18

in: Warwick Gould, Thomas F. Staley (eds), Writing the lives of writers, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1998

Abstract

In 1996 the BBC and Channel 4 showed Dennis Potter's last works: the interrelated television plays Cold Lazarus and Karaoke. At his own request, Potter discussed these with Melvin Bragg. For many viewers, the interview was a moving experience. Potter was dying on screen, breaking off periodically to swig from a bottle of morphine cocktail and to walk about to kill the pain of cancer of the pancreas. His wife was terminally ill. Each day, he said, he rose early to battle with his scripts. He tired very quickly. He was uncertain whether he would get to the finishing line before his body gave out. Nevertheless, he was determined to squander a precious working day on this dialogue with Bragg. It was a political act, a calculated intervention, intended to embarrass the managerial imperialism of the BBC and Channel 4 into co-operative production. Although he succeeded, his own high estimate of the work was not generally reciprocated by critical opinion. We have no idea whether his opus will "live". Of one thing, however, we can be reasonably certain. Those who saw the interview will find it difficult to dissociate the fiction from the circumstances of its production. The man and the work are inevitably connected. How we construct that connection will depend on how we interpret Potter's powerful performance (for it was a "performance") and his writing.