Stephen Poliakoff Q&A

The NFT was delighted to offer the first chance to see together two new films (Friends and Crocodiles, Gideon's Daughter) written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff, which collectively constitute an epic examination of how we've arrived at where we are today through stories about changes within work, the rise of celebrity and PR culture, family relationships, grief, loss and major public events that have shaped our world. The previews were attended by members of the cast and production team, some of whom joined Stephen Poliakoff on stage for a Q&A after the screening of Gideon's Daughter.

Interviewed Saturday 14 January by Veronica Taylor 2006

Interview © BFI 2005

Veronica Taylor: Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Oh, the microphone is definitely working this time. Apologies about our technical failure earlier. My name is Veronica Taylor, it's my pleasure to welcome you here tonight for the second of our two screenings. As I tried to say to you earlier, I think this is... certainly it is the first time that these two films have been shown together, and it may well prove to be the only time that they're shown together. So you're very privileged to be here and I'd like to thank the BBC and TalkBack Thames for allowing us this preview. As I also tried to say to you earlier when the microphone wasn't working, after the screening of Gideon's Daughter there'll be a Q&A with the writer/director Stephen Poliakoff and some of the cast. But I've also got Stephen with me now who'd like to say something before the film starts. So please welcome Stephen Poliakoff. [applause]

Stephen Poliakoff: Hi, thank you very much. And we have Jodhi May here who stars in the film with Damian - in the film that you've just seen, and Tom Hardy from Gideon's Daughter who you're about to see and David Westhead who plays a very important role in the film you're about to see and the producer of course, Nicolas Brown the producer of both films. So we'll be here, standing just here afterwards and you can ask us anything. This is an exciting moment for me because you're the first people in this country to see this film and we haven't even had our cast and crew screenings yet or our BBC screening. So apart from the executives, you're the first audience to ever see this film. So that's a very tingly and exciting moment for me ... so I'll see you afterwards. Thank you very much, thank you.

[screening]

VT: Stephen Poliakoff... [applause]... Jodhi May... [applause]... Robert Lindsay... [applause]... We've also got Tom Hardy here... [applause]... and David Westhead... [applause]... And we've also got the producer, Nicolas, as well, thank you... [applause]... I'm sure you've got lots of questions, but just while you're thinking them up I'm just going to start it off by... Stephen's described these two films as being brother and sister films and I just wanted to ask him more about that.

SP: Thank you, thank you. Yes, well, obviously for those of you who have seen both, which I think is most of you, one is clearly a big sweeping story covering 20 years, and one is set in these last months... from 1997. So the idea was really... I mean the films were never designed to be seen together - it's this big marathon for you - they're premiering... one's tomorrow night, that's the first one you saw, Friends & Crocodiles, and then after about six weeks Gideon's Daughter is showing. And that was always the idea ... so if you see one but miss the other or vice versa it doesn't matter because they're separate stories, but if you see them together they form a sort of, hopefully, this big panoramic whole about how - and I mean this in the widest sense - how we've ended up feeling like we do, in a sense, about where we are, and it's presumptuous to speak for everybody, so obviously it was my feelings about why people possibly lost faith in the governing class.

The sense of balancing a film about work and a second film which is about parents and children and about celebrity... the first film which has a work marriage which isn't a conventional love story, and the second film which does have a real love story in it. So that's how they balance, brother and sister, how I thought of them, and we made them without a pause, which was madness, but here we are so... it was a close run thing, we'll tell you. But anyway that's how I see them as complimenting each other.

VT: Shall we have the first question from the audience? Yes, the lady here, can you just wait for the microphone to come to you.

Audience member: Good evening. And thank you first of all for a lovely, lovely treat. My question is I've read that these two films are actually part of a trilogy? And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the third part.

SP: Ah... That's not what I had hoped would be the first question from the audience. So, well, no it's not really a trilogy. I am going to make a third film sometime later on this year, which will be set in the present or the very near present like this...

Robert Lindsay: Are we in it, Stephen? [laughter]

SP: Well, I was going to talk to you privately about it! [laughter] In front of 250 people, yes, that's a novel way of negotiating. I'll start with the lowest figure. [laughter] It's going to be separate but it's going to sort of reflect... if one's about work and marriage... and one's about parents and children, the third one will be about sexual and romantic love but I hope in a very - because I haven't written about that for ages, it seems - so I'm going to try to see if I can say something new about that. But set against a contemporary event. But it's not really a trilogy, no, it's just some more of something but it's also not going to be one film, it's going to be a single film and then it's going to have these... what I'm calling aftershocks, sort of extra bits spluttering over the rest... the first film's going to premiere on BBC 1 and the aftershocks are going to be on BBC2, so I'm trying to be innovative within structure as I tried to be in this with just Robert in both, and they're sort of separate but they have a little link. So that's a very boring answer to that question, I'm sorry but I'm not going to tell you anymore. [laughter] So who should I hand this to?

VT: Perhaps this is the time to bring some of the actors in and ask them about working with Stephen. Robert's obviously keen to work with him again. [laughter]

SP: Why don't you ask Jodhi?

Jodhi May: Well, obviously, it's kind of amazing working with Stephen because he's completely brilliant. Can you be more specific maybe?

SP: Well, I think what is quite an interesting thing is that I do rehearse a lot... and with all these actors along here... I mean David has in fact been in three... one on stage, and David was in The Lost Prince [2003], albeit in a smaller role than in this, playing a servant marooned with Gina McKee - and so David is a veteran of working with me - we go back quite a long way - and the other actors here I had worked with before. What is interesting is particularly with Jodhi and Damian, we had a very, very long rehearsal period, and Jodhi and I started rehearsing alone together, didn't we?

JM: Mmm.

SP: In a little room because it was a big leap - well, you should talk for yourself, Jodhi - but it was a big leap, that role, wasn't it, for you?

JM: Yeah, it was absolutely. And I suppose because there's such a journey with that character and there are so many transformations, and it is somebody who is kind of constantly evolving. We had the luxury of having about a week alone together. I mean it was kind of... really just worked out that way, but it was great just to be able to get the foundations of the character there. And normally of course you really don't have that kind of time, especially in television, to rehearse. It's becoming increasingly rare to have that luxury. So... it's invaluable really.

SP: Or movies. People don't really rehearse much in movies either. I mean I think I'm unusual in that... because I come from the theatre that I'm a huge, huge believer in rehearsal. I don't think you can just turn up - and especially with my roles that are quite complicated - and just do it after a little bit of chat. You just have to rehearse. It doesn't mean that you try to rehearse the moves or anything, so we don't try to replicate what we're going to do when we get on the real set but I try to just give the actors confidence, hopefully win their trust, but also encourage them to be at the top end of their talent. And that is altogether about making actors feel really confident.

And I think that - especially with Friends & Crocodiles, which was a very, very difficult, risky relationship, obviously you know... put two charismatic actors on screen for that length of time - and it's not a conventional love story, it's not Pride and Prejudice, they don't go off in the end together, I mean that was something that we were conscious we were... it was trying to attempt those relationships with people that haunt you enormously at work and - especially when you're starting out in your career - make an enormous impression on you, and you may think about - even if you lose touch with them - think about them sometimes every month or so and far more than with an ex-lover. And I really, really always wanted to do a relationship like that, but we needed to be very confident to attempt to bring it off, so the rehearsal was for me too. And obviously with Robert being in both films... was also an interesting challenge ... because in the first film you're part of the action, aren't you? In the second one you're telling the story, so the second one was quite interesting because you were completely removed, mostly, from the action of Gideon's Daughter...

RL: Well, actually, it's the first time I've seen Gideon's Daughter. I saw Friends & Crocodiles a couple months ago and it's a period that I know very well because we're of similar ages, Stephen and I, and I identified with the two stories very much, and actually, watching the end of Gideon's Daughter, I just find it incredibly moving. You're a real contradiction, Stephen, you really are. You're very academic and you're very... you seem to be a diarist of our time but you are also a very tender human being and I think, having a daughter myself, I think I can identify with Gideon's Daughter. I find, actually, the last ten minutes gob-smackingly moving, much in the same way as I watch Lost Prince, very moving. And sometimes I find you a contradiction... you're very academic and then... but I think that's what we all are. I just think it's a brilliant achievement, what he's done to span the two stories... well I hope it goes into a third story and I hope we're all in it. [laughter] I'd like to be in that, wouldn't you?

Audience member: Why Sneath as the connecting character?

SP: Well, I wanted the stories to work in a way that... I mean you sort of believed - the audience - that maybe something like this sort of happened, maybe there was somebody, like Damian's character, that hired a local girl and then she had this amazing journey and he fell. So one went up, one went down. I wanted somebody to say 'was there a story like that?' You know, you think 'is this based on something?' And similarly with Gideon I wanted to feel 'did somebody like that sort of exist?' To get that feeling, to help me write it as well, and to give that sense to the audience, I wanted this gossip... because we all know in every field that you're in, you know, you will know stories, amazing stories about people in your own world which aren't the sort of stories that headline - they're not about Cherie Blair, they're not whatever, but they're extraordinary stories... whether it's about a head teacher who... somebody had a lover and disappeared... you know, all those stories.

So I wanted them to be below the surface of being about Prime Ministers or about film stars or whatever but I wanted them to feel like they might have happened. Or at least the suggestion... where the kernel of the story came from might have been based on something. And therefore I needed this sort of gossipy character, Sneath, played by Robert Lindsay, who might know those stories. I was also very haunted - I don't know if anybody here has read them - but Woodrow Wyatt, who's now dead, who was a columnist and a man of letters, wrote these amazing diaries... he was a confident of Margaret Thatcher and of John Major, of Rupert Murdoch and also a friend of the Queen Mum's, and he wrote these diaries which are amazingly boring, but also incredibly fascinating as he bumbles around British society of the 80s and the 90s. And I thought what if there was somebody like that, but not quite mixing in such a high strata, but a strata down. And that's where the idea came from. Somebody who would know some amazing stories which aren't necessarily about the Queen Mum or something, but about people like Gideon. So that's why I used Sneath.

Audience member: A question for Stephen: in your work you tell stories which, in the hands of somebody else would be very good stories but you turn them into something which grabs the audience and holds them on the edge of their emotional seat. And I was wondering, from conception through production, how your stories grow in your mind?

SP: Well I think a point that Robert makes is that... I mean my scripts don't alter at all in production, I mean I occasionally cut a line or put in a line, I suppose I am quite pedantic about the actors. They don't come up and sort of make up the dialogue, obviously - I'm quite strict about that - but they do sort of warm up. When you read my scripts they're quite spiky, I mean they're very edgy, but something happens... I mean I hope they don't become sentimental but something happens when brilliant casts like are sitting here - and obviously Bill and Miranda - inhabit them and when I'm with the actors. So they become, hopefully, more universal, maybe, to the audience than they would seem on the page. I think that's obviously what I've learnt to do as a director with my own work, as well, I hope, but that is an interesting thing that they sort of warm up a bit and become less spiky when the actors say the lines.

That's one of the reasons that I've worked consistently in television because I can do my own work, my own vision, without having American executives and things, because with both of these films - and especially with The Lost Prince - if American money had been in it more than it was - I mean there was some from PBS in The Lost Prince but they had no artistic control - it would have become unbearably sentimental and mushy and horrible. And so maybe... some of you may think it was but anyway... [laughter] I promise you it would have been 40 times worse... and certainly these films too would have become much more simplified... and they would have had to have gone off at the end with each other in Friends and Crocodiles - as we know there's a new ending for Pride and Prejudice... Pride and Prejudice the greatest love story, other than Shakespeare, in the language and they still have to have a new ending in America, so God knows what they would have done with Friends & Crocodiles. So it is to retain that control and be able to do these, I suppose, hopefully, original stories that aren't like other people's work, that's why I am in television. I am conscious there are other people on the stage that haven't been asked questions, so maybe we can...

VT: Are there any questions please for the others?

Audience member: First of all can I thank you for explaining why the millennium was in such a state when it happened. Can I ask Jodhi, was it difficult becoming two, or even three different characters, as you went through your life on that screen?

JM: No... I guess that there's such a... the kind of linchpin is the relationship really between Lizzie and Paul, that in a sense, no. It's just about, what those phases mean, I suppose, in a sense. No, it wasn't really difficult... sorry, I can't think of a more kind of insightful answer than that...

SP: We did shoot it in continuity a bit.

JM: Which helped enormously, yeah.

SP: I suppose the first, the whole garden section - it was shot almost in continuity, by a lucky accident really because we could only get the house at the beginning. This is the sort of thing that happens ...because the films were very tightly budgeted... although, obviously, hopefully, they look quite expensive, they weren't. Were they expensive?

Nicolas Brown: No.

SP: No, they weren't expensive... and money was very tight... but fortunately the best location for us, which was Castle Ashby because we could ride quad bikes around - that's the big house in Northampton - was only available at the beginning of the shoot. So I think that really... it certainly helped me to be able to shoot all that at the beginning. But that again was dictated more by the availability of location than by sensible planning. Nothing in film happens because of sensible planning. It always happens because of money considerations, logistics.

If the house had been available at the end... or, as it happened - because we couldn't find a bloody estate agent and because the weather was so bad - with that swimming pool scene that opens the garden section ... three times we went to try and shoot it and three times we couldn't because it was raining... that resulted in the estate agent being shot on the last day of filming. So Jodhi had to go right back to the beginning for that scene and that shot - which is my personal favourite shot in the film - when she comes in slow motion towards the door was the last shot she did. So I mean, you know, talk about continuity, you know! She'd gone through the whole journey... and then she had to revert to that... you look incredibly young in that shot, it's just amazing... you look about seventeen. Anyway... I mean I know you are incredibly young... [laughter]

JM: Thanks.

SP: In my mind you're 21, you've never grown up. So anyway... sorry, I busted in there, you were talking...

JM: No, it's all right.

RL: She hadn't even started.

SP: She hadn't.

VT: Do you have another question?

Audience member: Have you sold it to America???

SP: Well, it has co-producers in the form of BBC America. I mean BBC America are a rather complicated organisation which are sort of owned by the BBC but they're a sort of commercial enterprise, so it's quite complicated. So it's not like the BBC just selling it to itself, but they've put money in - not a huge amount though - so it will be seen on BBC America. They're getting a bit more profile than they used to and they got some Golden Globe nominations, so it will be seen in America in a few weeks time.

VT: The lady who is here at the front.

Audience member: First of all, thank you very, very much, not just for this evening but forever, for just being such a great writer/director. Does it get easier to get your films made? I mean you talked about choosing subjects that were slightly lower than the radar and actually that, I would have said, epitomises your whole works - they're just below the radar - has it got easier?

SP: No. I mean I think we had a big fight didn't we Nick? Nick will tell you about the fight we had about the money. We had a very interesting time in pre-production... we were short weren't we?

NB: Yeah, I mean everything you ever do there's never enough money and... I mean Stephen can obviously talk about the process of getting his work commissioned. The actual process of making it I don't think ever gets any easier. It's still filming... it's very, very hard work and as Stephen said whatever planning you do tends to go out the window on day one, and you're always struggling to catch up and keep up and in the case of Stephen's work, as you can all see, it's a very particular, very unique vision, and my job is to try and make sure that everybody who is hired to work on it understands that and... or work towards... to start to understand it and achieve that. And that's... as I said it's not like anybody else's.

There are... as you saw there's lots of big parties... when it says there are swan boats... if Stephen said 'there are swan boats on the lake and there's a band playing in the middle of the lake' that's what there's going to be. In a way, it makes it very straightforward. His scripts don't change, the dialogue doesn't change much, the stage directions say exactly what's required. So the job is to go and try and achieve that, and that, I don't think, ever gets any easier, especially when it rains most of the summer and you're trying to shoot outside.

SP: I think that the BBC have specialised... because of the government and things telling them to economise under the new Director General, that they specialise in giving you just too... I mean I'm lucky, obviously in that I'm allowed to do... so far... they've encouraged me to do these things and to do original visions, but then they give you just too little money. It's deliberate... I mean, not much, what's irritating... if it was a million and a half too little then off course you would say we can't make it, but it's always a tiny bit too little like a couple of hundred thousand there but that can bring enormous problems ... I mean it looks lavish, especially in the first film, but there are very few extras there. I mean that party, there were less people at that party than there are in this cinema now - much less - and it required, for it not to look ridiculous, a great deal of careful editing and things. In fact, when we did a little reel to encourage the crew and the cast when we were halfway through, and we showed a montage of the scenes we had shot and I was standing with Damian, and Damian at the end said 'I'm sorry, I don't want to make you cross, Stephen, but there are not nearly enough people at the party.' And this was our lead actor saying that. And we couldn't go back, we'd shot it.

So it's all sleight of hand a bit, and it's - I hope you didn't notice that - but the fact is that I'm always trying to do ambitious things and sort of push, push, push the envelope but try to do it without American money because I know I'm not going to be able to make what I want to make if I have American money. So it's always a deal with the devil but it's always better that way because at least I can sit here and defend my work. And if you don't like it, that's my fault. It's not to do with... 'you know ifonly you could listen to the story... why...' I don't have to say that I did have a different ending but I was forced to change it. I don't have to do that. And I wouldn't do that... I would make Hollywood movies otherwise, because if you are going to have that pain, you might as well make things where you are getting a lot of money. So if that artistic control was taken away then I would stop making television. But I'm lucky. I'm aware I'm very lucky to be allowed to make what I want so... it is a deal with the devil. It's tough though, to make these things for the money.

One thing that I would like to do now ... I would like to bring Tom Hardy in now because one of the interesting things about these films, I think, is that they mix actors that I had worked with before like David, obviously, at the end... and Bill and Miranda I had worked with in The Lost Prince, with people I'd never worked with before. And Tom, I suppose, if there's a character that does personify those times of the late 90s, especially the people that were around, Peter Mandelson and things - naming no names for legal reasons - then it is Tom Hardy's character, isn't it? And do you want to say a little bit about...

Tom Hardy: (Robert Lindsays phone rings)... mobile phones... that was the key into the character, actually...

SP: Whose is going off? It's Robert's isn't it?

TH: ...it was the mobile phone, wasn't it? I was terrified first of all of getting anything wrong really, and I realised... I think what I realised because it's... I'm not allowed to make any statements with somebody's work which is so specific, but the attention to detail with the gadgets and being up to date with absolutely everything that the character that I had to play with it's... new money. Like upwardly mobile, young, I don't know, slightly androgynous...

SP: Driven.

TH: Driven, yes, ambitious, narcissistic, vain character that I had... I was terrified of... because I didn't really know... I'm not the most intelligent person. Do you know what I mean? So I didn't really know the world that I was in. And I remember on the first day I was terrified to see Miranda and Bill, because I think they're amazing and Stephen was there and he said 'Tom, have you seen... did you see the procession? Did you see the flowers - Diana's funeral?' And I was like 'No, I'm sorry, I was in Greece.' And Miranda said 'what, the musical?' [laughter] It's like... 'thanks.' So I wasn't the sharpest cookie in the box. And Andrew had to be, so I was fighting a losing battle. The sort of new economic policies... little things I'd snatched from like being fifteen and thinking 'oh, these people who make money ... coming from nowhere.' Do you know what I mean? They have to run companies and suddenly become huge great PR gurus and stuff. It could well be me... I don't know anything, I would have blagged it... So I'll hide behind a suit and a tie, and lie... which is what I do anyway... lying...

SP: I think that when we first met, you went into a monologue for about an hour, Tom, about the character. I think you had quite an intense connection with it. But... and with David... David's role, obviously grief, I mean the terrible fear that we all have of the death of a child, I was very conscious of taking an emotive thing here. And I mean I just didn't want it to be a device, you know. There are so many serial killer thrillers on television that always start with the death of a child... nearly every week there's one. And I really, really, really thought that if I'm going to use the death of a child it had to have... the grief had to explode really - and it explodes twice - and it's got to be so powerful that these characters are not being patronised. It's not being used as some sort of dramatic device. It is the worst thing, the worst thing that can happen. One of the great... one of the two explosions I used... one was Miranda's speech... she's just, I think, incandescent. I mean, in that scene. I just was so thrilled... I mean I've worked three times with Miranda and she is a genius, she is a great, great actress. It's fantastic to have her in my work and I'm incredibly lucky with this performance. But the other big explosion is David and the pulling of the hair of that council leader down the street and that was a very tricky scene, wasn't it, David, to film? Apart from anything, David, you injured yourself, didn't you?

DW: Yeah, it was a difficult... those things are tricky because you have to do them over and over and over and over again. And obviously you've got to recreate it as closely as you can over and over and over and over again. But with this particular script and this particular scenario it was pretty clear cut, you know? You've just got to get on with it really. And I remember, I don't know, probably about ten years ago I was in a series for the BBC called The Lakes [1997] where I had to react to a child dying, my child dying, and I didn't have children at the time. And I remember saying to the actress that I worked with 'I don't think that if I'd had children that would have been the same scene.' And I think it would probably have been much more violent, much more angry, much more un-understanding of people saying 'you must calm down.' Now I've got two children, seven and four, and so when you've got people standing there and going 'that wasn't the deal, you're not supposed to walk the route, no, what it says on this piece of paper...' you just get them by the hair and drag them down the street.

So it was, in a way, tricky to recreate it over and over again, but actually what was implicit in the scene was not difficult to do. And also because I've worked with Stephen over the years and I know Stephen reasonably well, so I knew the agenda. There was absolutely no way there could be any... there was no permission given, there was no leeway given at all for any tears, any sentiment, any whatever. This man is absolutely furious and the one thing that we discussed very closely at audition, having worked with him twice - once for a year - at audition we discussed white anger. And white anger doesn't come along that often but when it does, and you see it or you experience it, Christ, it's something extraordinary and you do gain sort of like the power of three people, which all made that scene ring very true for me so it wasn't exactly difficult to do. And you just look into Miranda's eyes and you think that with the grief that you see there... we talked, Miranda and I, at length about the levels of grief, the people who split up after children die because, you know, a lot of the time they aren't grieving at the same level or at the same... they don't reach the same stages at the same time. And like Stephen says, Miranda is just a great actress, and if you just look at what she's doing then you say the lines, get on the bike and ride down the street, you know what I mean?

VT: We've still got time for one more question. Yes...

Audience member: [inaudible]

VT: Could everyone here?

Audience member: No.

SP: Well, I'll repeat. It's whether I'm thinking of particular actors when I'm writing it, or what stage I decide - that's the question really - am I thinking about that when I'm writing? No, I don't really think of the actors when I'm writing a script. I try to think - because I write these huge roles, you know, like Bill's role, obviously Miranda's, Jodhi's and Damian's - that if I can't think of anybody that can play it I get very depressed. So I try to think 'well, there are three or four or five who might be able to do this' and I think 'well, it's such a big part, hopefully we'll get one of them.' That's sort of how I think of it but I don't really, because otherwise I think, you start to write for actor's mannerisms, you know, they can be great mannerisms but I want them to... I want to create roles they haven't played before. So I try to think of them... I visualise them in my head as how I might imagine them in life and then think 'who could play that role?'

There have been one or two exceptions but very, very few. In fact the only exception of an actor that I really had in my head was Tim Spall in Shooting the Past [1999] - I don't know if you've seen my photographic library story - but Tim was wonderful in that, and that was purely because my wife, Sandy Welch, who is a writer, had dramatised Our Mutual Friend [1998], which Tim Spall was in after he'd been very ill, after Secrets & Lies [1996] came about, that was the first job he did. And I'd never met Tim - and she said 'you and Tim would sort of get on great.' And I was just writing Shooting the Past and the part... I was writing the part as a rather thin-faced sort of aesthete and the whole - just as she said it - the whole part changed, it went 'pop!' in my brain and I wrote it not knowing - because Tim is a very, very busy actor - when he was available, and in fact he, of course, played it. And then he was in Perfect Strangers [2001] and he's become a great friend.

That's the only time... and that was quite dangerous really because I changed the role - I just transformed it in my head because of a chance remark - but I've been very, very lucky... I'm incredibly lucky to have such amazing actors in my work, especially over the recent years. I mean Robert... the leading actor here doing, well, an important part, a crucial part and especially important in Gideon's Daughter, but he isn't playing Damian's role or Bill's role. To have Robert in the work, who I think is amazing in both films, a very, very generous performance... and really helps the two films work, gives it a sort of centre... and obviously the youngish woman sitting next to me, her performance... particularly a revelation I think. I'm particularly proud of what Jodhi did in Friends & Crocodiles because it is, I think, of all the roles, in both films, it's the most difficult part and I really want to pay public tribute to her performance, as indeed all the others. Anyway... so I'm lucky to get these actors ... I'm quite, quite demanding... before it turns into a mutual admiration society - I want to thank you for coming, if that is indeed the last question... there is usually time for one more, which is usually... often the most difficult question...

Audience member: Following on from your question I'd like to ask you - first of all congratulations on two brilliant films - but I'd also like to ask you... I notice that you'd got two different musical directors and composers on both your films and I'm wondering equally in a similar line to the previous question: at what point do you bring your musical directors/composers in to your movies? Do you bring them in throughout the whole production or do they come in at the end?

SP: No, actually they're the same. Adrian Johnston wrote the music and Terry Davies conducted both scores.

Audience member: I'm sorry, I didn't notice.

SP: It's good that you asked that question because Adrian is an incredibly important part of my recent success - if you want to call it that. His scores - which go right back... especially for Shooting the Past, Perfect Strangers, The Lost Prince and these two films - are an integral, integral part and ... immediately after I've finished I give the script to Adrian and we start talking about the music. I mean he doesn't write the music until about ten minutes before the dub but nevertheless - as all composers do, they are the worst, composers, about that, all composers that I've ever worked with, it's always ten minutes before they're... you know. But nevertheless he thinks about it a great deal and we listen to bits, and it is a crucial element.

The score is particularly good in Gideon's Daughter, I think it's one of the loveliest scores I've ever had in any of my work and 'it is commercially available', says he - I promised Adrian I'd mention that and I have. So if I hadn't asked for a last question I would have forgotten, so thank God for that. I can go home... all right then. It's a very, very important element in my work. And it's all to do with - Robert's point, in a way, as well - that the work becomes less cerebral when the actors start... I mean I don't actually consider myself an academic sort of person because all my work is told through character, and character and personal stories are at the heart of everything I write, but that has to be backed up with emotion and the score, that isn't sentimental but is moving, I mean that is, I think, a great achievement of Adrian's in this film. And in Friends & Crocodiles, that end music is just lovely and just brings the whole sense of - hopefully - 'yes I see... I'm glad I've gone on this journey.' I think the music, for me, says 'I'm glad I've gone on this journey' at the end of Friends & Crocodiles.' Anyway, thank you for asking that question.

VT: Thank you, Stephen. Thanks to all our guests. [applause] I wanted to thank, obviously, the actors for coming along, giving up their time as well, and to Nicolas and to Stephen, of course. Long may you be able to make films that have ideas and, as you say, emotions and that you still have the clout with television companies. I think we all care about television people here, and it's wonderful you still are able to make work of that nature and I'm so pleased that we're able to show it here tonight. And thank you for coming. [applause]