A Parting Shot from Dennis Potter
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- čas přidán 10. 12. 2007
- When groundbreaking television writer Dennis Potter learned he was dying of cancer, he sat down with Melvyn Bragg for a final interview. The subject of media mogul Rupert Murdoch came up.
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I play this every few months as a reminder that a just and fair God would have given Rupert the terminal cancers and Dennis another 25 years in the sunshine.
The world is so much bleaker without Dennis Potter. What a fantasticly visionary man and an exceptional writer he was
One of the most astonishing pieces of TV ever. This one moment justifies the whole history of British television. Well done Handwritten Theatre!!
Had this on vhs. Great to see it here. He was bang on about everything he had to say! Yes, Murdoch IS a cancer that KILLS!
A Brilliant mind. True words spoken by this fella. RIP mate. You were fighting a losing cause here.
In recent days people have talked of losing the News of The World as a loss to democracy and I thought - What? A wonderful interview with a wonderful man
In under 4 minutes here is almost all I agree with Potter about TV. A master writer giving a master class
I remember watching this interview when it was first broadcast.
If only we had all heeded your words closer, when you first spoke them, Dennis!
Rupert's on the run now, I reckon. Even though, in the flesh, he outlives you by seventeen years, *you* are the one who will live on when Murdoch is consigned to a forgotten chapter of history.
Looking at the spike in viewers over the past couple of days, I want to thank everybody who's taken the time to listen to Mr. Potter and leave comments. I urge you to watch the complete final interview with Melvyn Bragg. You can find it here on CZcams.
This man has the most soothing voice I've ever heard
What a man! wish I had him as a lecturer!
man speaks the truth!
Media editors and bosses should watch this before starting work every morning.
I remember this interview, but my memory let me down I thought the interviewer was Michael Parkinson, Dennis Potter made me sit up and take note of Murdoch, I have waited for his demise ever since.
How very prescient Potter's musings on the Digger have now become.And how sad he did not live long enough to see the much overdue collapse of NI.DP genuinely loved and apprieciated television and regarded it as a medium that was artistic,intelligent,entertaining and sophisticated if people wanted it to be,and as it often was particularly in the 60's and 70's.Thanks to free market deregualtion,it scarcely is now in the X-Factor/Big Brother culture,but this NI backlash may herald a new start.
Was he right? Or was he right?
Oh... he was so correct. jeremy vine and vanessa feltz have made collateral from this, no doubt. But would you really be wanting to be in the same bed as donald t**+p's people?
Was he not wrong? Neither was he wrong.
In July 1994, one month after Potter's death, Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party. In 2010 Blair became godfather to one of Murdoch's daughters. Tells you all you need to know about the corruption at the heart of British politics.
My God this fabulous man saw the whole thing coming twenty years ago. Listening to him gives you hope and of course a little despair, despair knowing that society is passively backing up that awful Rupert Murdoch. Pity he never realised his wish regarding Murdoch.
Fascinating, it was the beginning of the end of innocence; of being surprised without being manipulated into it. Literally a game being played above our heads and in front of our eyes.
We should cherish the free-thinkers and the eccentrics.
A great pity Dennis Potter didn't survive to share our schadenfreude.
Did you all get to see Karaoke & Frozen Lazarus?
They way his final two works dovetailed his final interview was absolutely brilliant.
As for Singing Detective I think it should be compulsory viewing for all health workers.
Pure visionary, esp. on the matter of Murdoch.
HandwrittenTheatre, this was a rather loving tribute. Really nice work. It's appreciated.
I first saw this when it was first broadcast and viewed it again some time ago. I wanted to show my son so he could understand what a great free thinker Dennis was but although I've searched long and hard to view this entire interview on CZcams again, I cannot find it. Could the wretched finger of Murdoch infiltrated You Tube. Just an aside I also looked for some of the great interviiews with Gore Vidal and many of these also can no longer be found. Now there is another great mind.
Dennis' analysis is even more pertinent now than it ever was.
@herefordmsv .Thank you thank you thank you. You have made me very happy this evening and I am forever in your debt. To watch it again and re live what I thought then as now is a very powerful emotion. I am now able to share with my boys a hero of mine, a man with a philosophy, humanity, clarity and generousity many would do well to understand and aspire to. Thank you.
Still all too relevant today! Murdoch's legacy is appalling manipulation and contamination of free press and the role it plays in informing citizenry.
Hilary Bray I as an ordinary struggling to be middle class American have tried to understand the ability of the press to capture so much following until I learned the way schools are under the control of just one party. The big question is why go to all this control? Why does this one party work so hard in lockstep with the media. What’s the real purpose? And why.
The thing is, and this may surprize you, but the whole of this video was on You Tube until the last year or so, I know because when my VHS copy of this packed up I was delighted to find it on You Tube. So......someone kindly posted it......and then sometime afterwards, someone somewhere decided to remove it....I wonder why? I wish every young person could see and listen to this man, understand his philosophy, and live by the code he espouses. Please if anyone has the full length version-post it!
Thanks. You should be able to find the entire interview elsewhere on CZcams. There's a published version in a faber and faber paperback, "Seeing The Blossom."
It's been thirteen years since your comment, but you can see the interview in entirety.
I remember watching the interview at the time of broadcast and thinking it was an important commentary on the then current and future state of broadcasting.
When I bought the DVD's of The Singing Detective, I was irked that the BBC had chosen to 'excerpt' parts of the interview but didn't have the courage to include all of it. Too contentious you see...
Yes, I could not agree more, but there is an even greater piece of Dennis Potter's work that we have yet to see on, er, oh yes, youtube. It was the Lecture he delivered to the (?) Oxford Union a short while before he passed away. Please help anyone, and post this, if you can!!!!
Murdoch's 80th birthday is coming up this week. I hope that this video is spread by many as a Happy Birthday to Rupert
Arguably the greatest playwright who has ever lived, and yes I include Shakespeare in that. In 200 years time they will be studying Potter in the same way they study Shakespeare now.
Below my window in Ross, when I'm working in Ross, for example, there at this season, the blossom is out in full now, there in the west early. It's a plum tree, it looks like apple blossom but it's white, and looking at it, instead of saying "Oh that's nice blossom" ... last week looking at it through the window when I'm writing, I see it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be, and I can see it.
Remember watching this ,yes Mr Potter how right you were
I know out of the two who ought to have got Cancer and died in '94 and it certainly wasn't Mr Potter.
i love this man
I no longer posses a TV and I do not read newspapers. Instead I troll through youtube for stuff like this. I cannot watch anything made after about 2000. It is all empty formulae, propaganda and programming. By programming I mean as in a computer, not as in the radio times (if it is still called that). Stumbling across some of Dennis Potter's earlier stuff is a rare blessing.
Every politician should digest this. Dennis was so perceptive.
This mogul Murdoch should be forced to divest himself of ownership of most of his British newspaper titles.
Hello everybody. Please keep on looking for a VHS video of this, post it and make a lot of people very happy. I wonder if any of Mr Potter's family or friends have a copy of this. Just a thought.........................
Things are both more trivial than they ever were, and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn't seem to matter. But the nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous, and if people could see that, you know.
2 dislikes...I never thought Rupert and Wendi had time for CZcams with all the shit they're in now
This man spoke sense before The Guardian lost the plot, and the BBC.
Sadly, yes. But I think in 2023, both have gained renewed courage from the appalling onslaught from right-wing media (not that difficult - the daily mail and the sun aren't that difficult to call out - it's their readers that are the problem). But that's how rupert likes them - perpetual stupid ignorance.
The only thing you know for sure is the present tense, and that nowness becomes so vivid that, almost in a perverse sort of way, I'm almost serene. You know, I can celebrate life.
There's no way of telling you; you have to experience it, but the glory of it, if you like, the comfort of it, the reassurance ... not that I'm interested in reassuring people - bugger that. The fact is, if you see the present tense, boy do you see it! And boy can you celebrate it.
the truth, well put, Murdoch is indeed, a cancerous blight.
Potter and Bragg, two stars.
Prophetic words:
"I would shoot the bugger if I could,
There is no one person more responsible for the pollution of what was already a fairly polluted press and the pollution of the British Press is an important part of the pollution of British Political life and its important part of the cynicism and mis-perception of our own realities that is distroying so much of our political discourse and that is what is happening"........ every person should remember this great mans last words.
For those who don't yet know @herefordmsv has very kindly posted the whole interview in 7 x 10 minute segments. Please join with me and thank this very kind and thoughtful person for taking the trouble to do this on our behalves.
BBC should have guaranteed a free voice and impartiality. When this great man spoke, it was. Not now. The BBC. I left England. I stopped buying Murdoch and I stopped paying the BBC licence fee. I am happier as a result.
I remember this well. When (and it looks like being soon now) Rupert Murdoch finally explodes in a ball of pus and slime, leaving behind nothing but a nasty stain and a bad smell, Dennis will be looking down from heaven and saying......
"GOTCHA!!!"
9 years later, the pussball is still alive. Why do the most cancerous people live so long?
However predictable tomorrow is, and unfortunately for most people, most of the time, it's too predictable, they're locked into whatever situation they're locked into ... Even so, no matter how predictable it is, there's the element of the unpredictable, of the you don't know.
I came back to this interview in general, and this moment in particular because of reading an article about how FOX EWES is in fact to a great extent dictating Trump's policies and decisions on the nations response to the Corona virus. Murdoch has largely been dictating policy in the US since Trump was elected late in 2016. I wish Dennis had been able to fulfill his wish.. but someone else would have just stepped into the breach.
Oh Dennis, Dennis, those Pennies from Heaven...
This has been posted on my FB wall, I have posted it at GU because with what is happening today, Dennis Potter foresaw it.
Yes - what happened to it. I want to see it again too.
rest in peace mr potter - and if you thought it was bad in 1994 thank christ you havent seen the state of british broadcasting in 2010!
perhaps a modern cancer could be called 'cowell'.
We all, we're the one animal that knows that we're going to die, and yet we carry on paying our mortgages, doing our jobs, moving about, behaving as though there's eternity in a sense. And we forget or tend to forget that life can only be defined in the present tense; it is is, and it is now only. I mean, as much as we would like to call back yesterday and indeed yearn to, and ache to sometimes, we can't. It's in us, but we can't actually; it's not there in front of us.
Wise words
@10003949 The full version was up on CZcams at some point, now it seems to exist only in print form in a book from Faber & Faber, "Seeing The Blossom,' and as out of print VHS tapes on eBay
@10003949 I'll be uploading this today. Sadly as with all my Dennis Potter stuff on CZcams I will have to split it into 10 minute segments, but hopefull it wont affect too much the enjoyment of it.
@HandwrittenTheatre. Thanks for confirming it has been removed by someone......but why would anyone do this? Thanks also for the lead, I suppose because I want to share the power of this with my teenage boys anything less than the visual medium...............well you get the rest. Regards
It is so sad that Rupert, this kindly octogenarian philanthropist has been so misunderstood. The film he made with me on my youtube site shows his irrepressible love for the world expressed in his own personal style.
Dr Dub
Some very true words there, resonant now in light of this week's appalling behaviour by Murdoch's empire.
Prophetic
If I get cancer I will take some solace in following Potter's example. I, too, will possess a 'Rupert'; although in fairness to all the good Ruperts, I'll call it Rupertdespicablebastard.
I never got the idea behind making depressing 'situation comedy' programming. That is what made me tune out. If you enjoyed the 'married w/children' or 'lavern&surely you jest' funny. tell me why a depressing life is funny.
there is truth and perception.. perception and truth...WHO
....read the best part of the interview below....read the post at the bottom first and work your way upwards...enjoy
@10003949 Thank you, very welcome
You keep sayng this Hanrwritten but as yet despite many searches I've still not found the full version. Send me the link and I'lll be forever in your debt.
@HandwrittenTheatre where can I find the whole thing? I had the VHS but it got nicked. Thanks
Be quick! Download it. czcams.com/video/OjTnojZQ--0/video.html
If Murdoch is cancer, then Cowell is leprosy
@HandwrittenTheatre Its been removed again for copyright infringement. Whats going on? This will be the second time its been removed. We'll have to start over again.
czcams.com/video/OjTnojZQ--0/video.html
I think that's why we don't get a Jonathan Meades any more - people like Jane Root killed individuality in broadcasting for favour of a "yoof" - their terms - audience.
@stevohorn have a look again because @herefordmsv has very kindly posted the whole thing.
@littleblackpistol Hear, hear. Where are our day's Dennis Potters?
The devil looks after his own.
@roachy333: Here here!
@Remkovanbroekhoven Nu de Volkskrant en de NRC nog!
Sadly there a no new Potters...just Netflix..
Jeremy Vine and Vanessa Feltz seemed to have missed this message from their better.
1 dislike.. Hello Mr Murdoch.
When Murdoch and his equally vile son. Where questioned by the mp's commitee If I may para-quote Indiana Jones in the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull..
"Somewhere out there he, (Dennis) is looking down and laughing at this. : )
@CarajilloDulce Thats because those people are easily led and in certain cases not very intelligent.
No wonder rugby league has gone from the greatest game to shite
@CarajilloDulce really do you have sky? do you enjoy endless cookery shows, qvc, and bent game shows, poker tournaments and idiots from dawn to dusk? thats a monopoly there is no alternative used to be a tv channel or tv show show needed an audience...... not any more!
I happen to disagree with the sentiment but there's no denying that this is interesting television.
He should have got a gun
I'm grateful he didn't trade his pen for a pistol. It was a far greater service to the world to write Cold Lazarus than had he murdered Murdoch.