YouSaid · the spoken record

James Graham

lines on the record: 41
first: 2018-05-04
most recent: 2018-05-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“That 20 years ago we would all watch the same TV programs, we would all read the same newspaper, say the same programs, see the same reality. That's now changing. In some ways, that's great and exciting because it's giving loads of different people a voice, but it's also dangerous because your reality is different to my reality and we are walking around in sort of 30 million different countries that don't talk to each other anymore. There are many different reasons to explain Trump and Brexit and what's happening, but I'm convinced one of the reasons why for the first time in my life seeing riots in Charlottesville or seeing people punching each other at political rallies, seeing the torrent of abuse and violence and invective on social media is coming from a place where there is just an unwillingness to even comprehend the value of someone else's point of view, and I don't know how you even begin to fix that. I would love to think that cities of culture and plays and TV dramas where you gather round together”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, hugely fair film. And I don't know how to fix it and playwrights probably can't fix it by themselves, nor can journalists, nor can anyone else. And I don't want to be apocalyptic because I think there was so much good that can come out of the new politics and technology and the way it's linking us together. But there are challenges.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. It's the people you'll never have heard of, really. It's the Matthew Elliot. It's the Dominic Cummings. It's Lucy Thomas's and the Will Straws. Drama, again, I think it's power is it makes what feels far away a bit closer. And I've always felt that to do that, if you take away the famous people and you focus on people who are more recognizable, who exactly who do the grunt work, then it feels more accessible. I'm still writing it, and we start shooting in about three and a half, four weeks, so we will probably hopefully hit the screens about November time.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The opposite, in fact, it's the people who ran the campaigns and the offices. So, how do you set up a campaign office? How do you work out the logo? How do you come up with your slogan? What are the grassroots organizations and how do you compare that with the air campaign in terms of digital and data and social media? And I was very lucky. So we have the first book that came to me was Craig Oliver's Unleashing Demons, which the producers optioned. And then Tim Shipman's book about the campaign from all sides came out. So those guys are on board as consultants and their source material, so that was helpful. But then I just went and met them. I remember, you know, going just before they closed down, wandering around the leave offices and seeing the space and trying to imagine what it must have felt like.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How do you win a campaign, a modern day campaign? I realized I didn't have a clue about that in the same way when I started writing this house, I realized I didn't know how do you vote, how do whips communicate with politicians, how does that building run, where do you go for lunch? Where are the toilets? By looking at that minouche detail stuff, I think you unlock the bigger stuff.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I hope so, unapologetically. I hope by hearing the motivations of those different people political and personal. And actually, they're similar to this house or similar to Inc. I'm a big believer that if you, sort of coming at it from the top down, if you go from the bottom up and you learn about processes and systems, then that's a way of kind of unlocking these big difficult ideological stuff.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, achieve change, and I believe empathy, understanding the other point of view and engaging with them in that way is key to that. And as romantic and naive as it sounds, I do believe that theatre, because it assembles people into a space physically, because it asks you to sit down calmly and quietly and consider something for a couple of hours, and because it demands that you walk in the shoes and the steps of somebody you wouldn't normally do, it unlocks something in your brain that I think we're losing in our normal day-to-day life.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think, I mean, Bertholt Brecht, I'm not comparing myself, obviously. His big thing was that the reason why he didn't like narrative or naturalism is because it lulls the audience into a sense of security and ease and catharsis whereby they get satisfaction at the end of a narrative. It all wraps up really tightly and they can walk out into the street, pleased and not have to worry about it. He wanted to spur his audiences into social action and make you angry by stepping out of the narrative, by stepping out of the naturalism, and seeing the structures and systems that govern us. I think you can do that still, but also create an old-fashioned term in the theatre called empathy. I do think we are struggling for empathy in our national discourse, in our society. I think you're allowed to be angry, and I think we should be angry. There's so many injustices going on. There's so many people who should be furious. But it's how we hold on to that anger and use it in a way that...”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A measurement of the school's quality. We're just seeing a huge decline in school plays and in school trips to theatre, so it's only going to get worse.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's probably true. But, well, if that is the case, then it's failing, then theatre is failing. And I think it is true to an extent. And the way that you fix that is, well, there's two ways that you fix that. You put on stage voices from different communities, backgrounds, whether that's class, whether that's race, whether that's region. And if people know that their stories or people like them are being represented on stage and they're more likely to go and then they're more likely to come back and then they're more likely to write those stories themselves and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. So it's how you find those voices. And then of course I think it's also about this mythology. To me it's always been ludicrous that art is for the elite or that theatre is for the elites and I think the challenge is only going to get harder without turning this into a political rant because of how arts education is changing in state schools and art not being recognized on the e-back as a qualification that's going to get a measurement.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and to provide a context, but I guess it's motivation in a political sense or an ideological sense and what I think drama can do is also ask what they're doing on a humane level, on a personal level.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think it's a limitation, or even that's journalism's job is to respond immediately in the short term and lay out the series of events and what's happened.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think the bar sales of whiskey and brandy went up in the interval because I think people just couldn't quite get their head around it. And I hope, and I truly believe and hope that... We did hold him to account for the decisions that he made, but we didn't paint him as a villain. I just wanted to understand motivations, and I think that is the power of drama and plays and TV dramas that possibly journalism doesn't have. It asks an audience member in the same way when you ask, so that was Bertie Carville, who was so brilliant as Murdoch and he recently won an Olivier Award for it. You go on the same journey as what an actor does. If an actor is playing a character, a politician, even if someone is potentially unsympathetic as Murdoch, the questions they ask are the questions I ask, which is, what do they want? What's stopping them from getting it? And so what do they do about getting it? And that's what we call in that theatrical term motivation. What's my motivation?”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then conversely, I was out, obviously, absolutely terrified, more terrified than taking on governments or politicians or business leaders. I was terrified about the sun and Murdoch and what they would think about me trying to tell their story.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I was nervous for the two exact opposite contradictory reasons. I was nervous about what the theatre community would think and the political network we opened in the Armeida, which is the heart of Islington, Corbyn Territory Guardian reading. Would they accept, would they be willing to take a not a sympathetic look, but a nuanced human look at Rupert Murdoch and try and understand why he did what he did?”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he doesn't have to travel, so we can save his life. They both know that if they get that pair, Jim Callahan will probably survive by one, and Margaret Thatcher won't get into power at that moment in time. And Jack Weatherall knows he shouldn't do this if he does do this, he'll probably lose his job. He'll be destroyed by Margaret Thatcher. But he says, do you know what, Walter? I see it as a principle, a gentleman's agreement, and I'm going to offer you a pair. And not only that, I'm going to offer myself as the pair, the person who doesn't go in and thereby destroying his career. And Walter Harrison was so moved by this that he couldn't take it. So he refused the pair, and they made an agreement between each other that they would never mention this. They wouldn't talk about it for years until one of them died, and it was Mark Darcy who revealed it thirty five or so years later.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's exactly where I first heard it. And then I went to investigate. So so many votes won or lost by one. And then the famous vote at the end of this exhausting five-year period where 17 Labour MPs had died through exhaustion. They'd get to the end almost. It's the vote of no confidence in 1979 where possibly if the Callahan government loses it, they will have to go to the polls and Margaret Thatcher will get in. It's a historic vote. The Labour Party are going to win or lose this by one or two votes. They know this. And there's one sick MP called Doc Broughton who's sick in Leeds. They think if they bring him down he might die on the way. So Walter Harrison, after fighting against his opposite number, Jack Weatherall, for four or five years, goes and sees him and says, I know peering is off, but I'm going to speak to you. I'm going to ask you as an honourable man to bring it back on this one occasion and find a pair for this guy who can't come down.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tell me what the deal was. Well, it was hearing that story that made me want to do it, and actually, how I structured it was I knew that was going to be the final moment in the play and I sort of worked back from that. It was fascinated by the whips, but I was fascinated by the idea of the deputies. They're not running the whip's office, nor they're doing the dog's bodywork of the junior whip. And there's a kind of mythology around those people. So in 74-79, hung parliament, much like we're in now, but even more chaotic and dramatic. So many of those votes were won or lost by one or two people. And it was the age of this institution of peering, as it's called, kind of really sweet gentleman's agreement, whereby if for some reason you can't make it for a valid reason, someone in the opposite party who would have voted the opposite way will step out, therefore canceling out your vote. Because that system collapsed in the 1970s because of the antagonism between the two parties, this was the age when ambulances were having to pull into New Palace Yard with the sick and the dying old MPs to nod through their vote. And it was absolute case.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think, yes, to an extent. Obviously, all of us should constantly challenge it and challenge the traditions and the ridiculous rituals that go on in there. But yes, I felt like we'd started to get into a position where we were dehumanizing our politicians and we didn't see them as people. And, you know, very often they're not drawn from a broad range of people or communities. But I felt like as an optimist and as someone who was hopeful, I don't believe people going into politics for the wrong reasons. And I wanted to somehow find a way to, yes, to humanize them and understand their motivations.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's definitely not that. It's not one of those Olympic things, so small things like they deliberately didn't build new arenas, so they wouldn't be these carbuncles that then get set empty. They regenerated what they had, and it was an amazing coming together of council, artists, local funding businesses. It's not changed everything. But in very small...”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Remaining arenas with the death of trade unions and with the death of working men's clubs and the closing of pubs, it's one of the last places where you could assemble together as a community and look at yourself as a community and make sense of your lives and your family and your politics and your background through storytelling. And it's been the greatest thrill for me to see in Hall the City of Culture last year it regenerate in that way and all the economic and social problems that Hull has had for decades that has never been solved and couldn't be solved by government planning or investment or the attempt to get overseas jobs there. It's plays and dancing and photos and comedy and stand up that's managed to, I mean it's not a...”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which I then studied at university, yeah. And it just for me theatre, which was never elitist, it was never this metropolitan city thing. It was something that you did in pubs and that you did. And so whole truck was great for that because it felt like a working men's club. You didn't have to dress up. You didn't have to, the tickets weren't expensive. And people laughed. People roared with laughter and had a pie and a pint. And it felt like one of the last”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At my school in Mansfield, my drama teacher, Mr. Humphrey, he believed, and the headmaster believed that people in a community like that and working class boys and girls should engage with theatre and should do plays, put on place, be in them, write them.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, we went to Panto like a lot of people, and I started seeing plays at school. But no, it wasn't part of my life. And I think, I mean, it's an obvious thing to say, but it's the liveness. It's some of my first play experiences were at Hull Truck, Hull Truck Theatre, and what was recently the city of Culture.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, there are problems with that. You can't pretend that you have a functioning theatre or a functioning political theatre if tickets are too expensive, or the only people who are going to watch a play are people who already agree with the point of view. So those are challenges you have to try and overcome as a political player.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think laughing is, again, maybe some of them are the angrier political playwrights around would disagree with this, but I think there is something, if you're laughing in a theatre, then it's because you've hit on something that's truthful and something that's real. If you're laughing as an audience member, then you're perceiving something. To be real. And there's this incredible thing that happens when you physically assemble in a space that you don't get when you're watching Netflix on your own on your laptop, or you don't get when you're watching the news on your phone. Something changes. There's a shift and there was a study recently from UCL that the theatre community latched onto because it does feel quite romantic. But they discovered that when you assemble together in a theatre and you watch a play, the rhythm of your heartbeat changes and you start to beat along with the rest of the audience. There's something shifts. And I know that sounds really wet and soft. And of course, I would love that image. But as an idea, I still think gathering people together in a physical space to watch a story about the events of the day is politically provocative and politically important.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I don't see as a public service my primary responsibility, I think, as a playwright is to try and make good drama. I did a play in the West End last autumn called Labour of Love with Martin Freeman playing Blairite MP and Tamsin Gregg, a more traditional left socialist grassroots agent. And I think the toxicity in the Labour Party, and this is not an original thought, but I feel like it's so undermining of the potential of what should be a very broad church to create a huge alliance between different factions and represent hugely different points of views. The fact that it now actively often considers that as a form of betrayal, or that that isn't the point of the Labour Party, the point of the Labour Party is loyalty and party line and messaging I found so depressing, so I had no problem inviting Corbynites and Blairites into a theatre and smashing their heads together.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so. I mean, I remember in 1992, I was 10 years old, and in that famous election, Kinnock V major, everyone expected the Labour Party to win. I won't betray the right of a private franchise, but one of them voted for Kinnick and one of them voted for major. I just remember that conversation being, it wasn't dangerous, it wasn't violent, it wasn't angry, but it was open and curious and uncertain. And I suppose it was the uncertainty for me that I liked growing up in that uncertainty around me. I saw the danger of dogma and the danger of fundamentalism. And, you know, people thought blood was shed. And even during my early 20s, I remember a few streets down from me. There was a murder, one striking miner killed, a miner who'd gone back to work. And this was 20 years after the strike. And for me, just to watch that, now I remember the pain of that that caused in my community, my family, the idea that anyone would die because of the inability to relate or talk or understand someone else's point of view.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's right, and I'm convinced I have never completely been able to articulate this for myself, but Nottinghamshire politically and geographically has always been completely fascinating, particularly the north of Nottinghamshire, where I grew up, which it kind of had a South Yorkshire identity, but a Midlands regional boundary. So most of the miners in the villages where I lived did go on strike, but most of the Nottinghamshire miners obviously broke away for a different union.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was two during the minor strike, so there were no memories of that. But during the 90s, when the physical landscape of your town starts to change, the roads start to lead to holes in the ground rather than places to go to work.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, they weren't political or theatrical really. I grew up in a mining community near Mansford in Nottinghamshire during a time unsurprisingly when it was pretty tough, unemployment, industries closing, great poverty and great despair. And I remember the feeling of voicelessness and the anger of it wasn't just the anger at the economic situation. It was an anger that you felt like you weren't being heard.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He did, and at the time I didn't know. And at the moment we're casting, I'm doing a Brexit TV drama, which I'm still writing. So we're just casting that at the moment. And it's, you know, it is really fun. It is like fantasy football. Well, we don't know yet. I'm afraid. Watch this space.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I suspect they want to show off, and they like the idea that they're going to be played by a famous actor and they like the idea that history in 20, 30 years' time will be recorded in a movie or a TV drama or a play. You know, my job is not to flatter them. My job is not to present their side of events. But I do love to listen. I love to listen to their point of view. And there's no way that any part of my gender is designed to misrepresent them or to project onto them my own point of view.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and that was really helpful. So, for coalition was a channel for drama, which was going out deliberately a few weeks before the 2015 election, but it was about the 2010 negotiations between all the parties to form that government. And I had no access, I had no way in. But I remember writing to you and I remember writing to Peter Mandelson and George Osborne. And to my surprise, you find yourself in 11 Downing Street, sat down opposite George, George liking my mate, and they're willing to give their version of history. And I think it's because unlike going on a news program, unlike being interviewed for a newspaper, they feel like it's maybe a safer space. They can speak off record. And there's something about drama, which makes them feel more comfortable in talking to me, a playwright rather than maybe you a journalist.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I feel quite lucky now because courtesy of people like you and the political community who do seem to want to come and watch the plays, you do start to develop a bit of contact. I wouldn't call them friends. I don't find myself at those kind of dinner parties. But no, when you're starting out, yeah, you just have to start sending letters and start knocking on doors. But I was always surprised at how willing people were to offer their sides of their story. So, for example, and actually I remembered, I don't know if you remember Nick, but you actually helped me when I was writing coalition for. No, I do.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Newspapers or radio or TV news can't. And I think it's about walking in the footsteps of characters and understanding their motivations. And even if it's possible, finding an empathy for people you wouldn't normally be able to empathize with.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Political theatre in particular has a reputation that it is very preachy and dogmatic and you're going to go there and you're going to be lectured at by the point of view of the author and that's never been my intention. I don't think it actually is as bad as people think but no, I agree. I think theatre's strength, unlike any other medium, unlike with respect to yours journalism or with respect to platforms like Twitter or social media, it's a long form platform. And within that space, I think you can have a more nuanced, complicated grey, contradictory conversation about these very difficult issues. My plays, you know, probably between two and three hours long, there'll be different opinions expressed by different characters. And I think that's theatre's strength. And I think if you are going to do plays about the Labour Party or about current affairs or news or Brexit, you've got to ask yourself why, why drama? What about storytelling and narrative can unlock something about this very difficult, complicated issue that new”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but I think I'm just very aware that I think the best way to tackle these difficult issues or these very foreboding institutions, whether it's parliament, whether it's the Sun newspaper, is to try and find a strange kind of back entrance to it. And in the case of this house, it was the whip's office. And it just felt the best way to tackle the rituals and the procedures and the processes and the systems of how that bizarre institution works.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, I know. Well, I remember I was very lucky enough when I first walked into the National Theatre. And, you know, that's like the mecca of new plays. And I'd seen my first day would hear plays there. My first Tom Stoppard plays there. First Alan Bennett's. And it was just after the election in 2010. And I knew I wanted to talk about Hung Parliaments. And, you know, this isn't new. It's what Shakespeare did. It's what Greeks did. But to make sense of the now, you go back to the recent past and look at an equivalent to try and make sense of what's happening. So I wanted to talk about the last time we had a Hung parliament and can it work in that building? But I had no idea when I pitched it to the director, Nick Heitner, who was running the National Theatre at the time that he would go for it. And I was only 28. I wasn't born at the time. But they did.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the conventional wisdom when I was starting to be a playwright was that people certainly in TV and probably theatre too just didn't want to leave work after a long shift and be surrounded by all the depressing news about politics. They wouldn't want to go and spend money and time engaging with that and entertainment. They would want escapism. They would want entertainment that wasn't going to challenge or provoke or remind them of what was happening in the day-to-day. And I guess I just never believed that was true. And I don't know when I became conscious of this, but I always aspired for a kind of political theatre that was provocative, challenging, dangerous, but ultimately entertaining. And I feel like years ago I had to apologize for that a little bit. The entertainment was a cheap word. And I think it gave the illusion that it was soft or it was easier or it wasn't punching hard enough. But I was convinced there was a balance somewhere between theatricality, entertainment, narrative, jokes, humour, music, but still holding the powers of B to account.”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're welcome, and it surprises me too, incidentally. I never expected to be a writer of this kind of stuff or that there would be an audience out there for this kind of thing”
2018-05-04 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The James Graham One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source