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Author: W. Stephen Gilbert
Publisher: ABRAMS
ISBN: 1468305611
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 524
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Book Description
The first critical biography of the innovative television writer whose off-kilter creations helped spark the Golden Age of modern television. TV writer Dennis Potter is widely credited with revolutionizing television. The innovative shows he created for the BBC, including The Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven, trailblazed new paths for genre-bending entertainment and demonstrated the creative possibilities of episodic television. Potter also adapted both of those shows into critically acclaimed major motion pictures: Pennies from Heaven starring Steve Martin, and The Singing Detective starring Robert Downey Jr. In The Life and Work of Dennis Potter, W. Stephen Gilbert analyzes Potter’s impressive body of work, emphasizing the dramatic interplay between his life and the medium he loved. At the age of twenty-four, Potter was diagnosed with psoriatic arthopathy, a rare debilitating skin disease whose horrors he portrayed with biting black humor through his alter ego, the character Michael Gambon in The Singing Detective. Gilber traces Potter’s career from its beginnings to his astonishing final interview to Melvyn Bragg, weeks before his death. Unforgettable for its honesty about life, work, and dying, the result was yet another gripping piece of television—and quintessential Dennis Potter. “[T]he late dramatist’s influence can be seen in many places, from Twin Peaks to Mrs. Brown’s Boys.” —The Guardian “Gilbert recalls the lacerating wit, passionate intelligence, and courage behind the television playwright responsible for The Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven.” —Vanity Fair
Author: W. Stephen Gilbert
Publisher: ABRAMS
ISBN: 1468305611
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 524
Get Book Here
Book Description
The first critical biography of the innovative television writer whose off-kilter creations helped spark the Golden Age of modern television. TV writer Dennis Potter is widely credited with revolutionizing television. The innovative shows he created for the BBC, including The Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven, trailblazed new paths for genre-bending entertainment and demonstrated the creative possibilities of episodic television. Potter also adapted both of those shows into critically acclaimed major motion pictures: Pennies from Heaven starring Steve Martin, and The Singing Detective starring Robert Downey Jr. In The Life and Work of Dennis Potter, W. Stephen Gilbert analyzes Potter’s impressive body of work, emphasizing the dramatic interplay between his life and the medium he loved. At the age of twenty-four, Potter was diagnosed with psoriatic arthopathy, a rare debilitating skin disease whose horrors he portrayed with biting black humor through his alter ego, the character Michael Gambon in The Singing Detective. Gilber traces Potter’s career from its beginnings to his astonishing final interview to Melvyn Bragg, weeks before his death. Unforgettable for its honesty about life, work, and dying, the result was yet another gripping piece of television—and quintessential Dennis Potter. “[T]he late dramatist’s influence can be seen in many places, from Twin Peaks to Mrs. Brown’s Boys.” —The Guardian “Gilbert recalls the lacerating wit, passionate intelligence, and courage behind the television playwright responsible for The Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven.” —Vanity Fair
Author: Humphrey Carpenter
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 9780571248322
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 700
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Book Description
Dennis Potter's death in 1994 deprived British television of its most controversial figure. Potter was a prolific writer of genius. Yet while his subversive television plays, such as Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective, scandalized and delighted the nation, they also made him the butt of the tabloids, who nicknamed him 'Dirty Den' for his 1989 serial Blackeyes. Humphrey Carpenter, acclaimed biographer of Tolkien, Auden, Pound, Britten and Robert Runcie, interviewed everyone who came close to Potter, and had exclusive access to Potter's archives, including the many unmade television and film scripts. Carpenter portrays a very different Potter from the aggressive public image: a deeply shy and reclusive man, who was psychologically as well as physically scarred by the illness which struck him down at the age of twenty-six. Potter was a man with a vast interest in sex but also a terrible loathing of it, thanks to an appalling experience he suffered in childhood. Potter was a man much gossiped about. Carpenter's remarkable biography establishes the extraordinary truth behind the rumours; describes Potter's strange, obsessive relationships with women such as Gina Bellman, who played Blackeyes; and gives a vivid portrait of the backstage dramas and fights behind Potter's screen triumphs. 'What is valuable about this book is that it reveals Potter's real private life, which barely features in his plays ... A wonderfully vivid portrait of the man: his generosity and cruelty, his coarseness and tenderness, and the thwarted sexual yearning that underlay everything.' Lynn Barber, Daily Telegraph
Author: John R. Cook
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719054235
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 420
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Book Description
Anthology of key extracts, in Italian - both literary and non-literary.. Introduction and notes in English.. Contains material which would mesh well with various standard set texts, such as Pavese, Bittorini, Calvino, Viganò.. A unique selection - no competing Italian edition.
Author: W. Stephen Gilbert
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780340640470
Category : Authors, English
Languages : en
Pages : 382
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Book Description
Author: Dennis Potter
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780571174362
Category : Authors, English
Languages : en
Pages : 84
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Book Description
Contains the interview between Dennis Potter and Melvyn Bragg conducted on 5 April 1994 on Channel 4 television. Potter knew he had only a few weeks to live so the discussion is of great poignancy and power. Their conversation records Potter's honest dissection of his life and work. This book also contains Potter's celebrated James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 1993 and an earlier BBC2 television interview.
Author: Dennis Potter
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780571170463
Category : Dramatists, English
Languages : en
Pages : 171
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Book Description
If one writer embodies the unique character of British television drama, it is Dennis Potter. Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective amply demonstrate how far he has pushed the frontiers of television drama. In the course of this book, British television's pre-eminent playwright - latterly a novelist and film-maker - talks with passionate erudition, disarming candour and acerbic wit about the early influences that shaped him and led to his pioneering use of non-naturalism to his self-reflexive subversion of film and TV cliches, his controversial approach to sex, politics, religion and the double-edged puritanism of the English condition. The book presents a remarkable portrait of a man for whom writing is, first and foremost, a vocation.
Author: Dennis Potter
Publisher: Random House Incorporated
ISBN: 9780571145904
Category : Detective and mystery television programs
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
The narrative counterpoints life in a hospital ward of a writer crippled by a horrific skin disease with the plot of his atmosperic thriller to the point where fantasy and reality seem to change places.
Author: W. Stephen Gilbert
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780340640487
Category : Dramatists, English
Languages : en
Pages : 382
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Book Description
Author: Dennis Potter
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780571168743
Category : England
Languages : en
Pages : 202
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Book Description
Set in post-war Britain, this Potter screenplay has been made into a C4 TV series. It is the time of Suez and the setting is the War Office - half of the department's incumbents are true army men, British to the core and proud of it, but the remainder are world-weary national servicemen, aching to get into the civvies and the promise of a new life. Post-war austerity is still with us, but the younger style is making itself felt - and Potter's rock 'n' roll music reflects this.
Author: Brett Martin
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143125699
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
The 10th anniversary edition, now with a new preface by the author "A wonderfully smart, lively, and culturally astute survey." - The New York Times Book Review "Grand entertainment...fascinating for anyone curious about the perplexing miracles of how great television comes to be." - The Wall Street Journal "I love this book...It's the kind of thing I wish I'd been able to read in film school, back before such books existed." - Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad and co-creator of Better Call Saul In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the landscape of television began an unprecedented transformation. While the networks continued to chase the lowest common denominator, a wave of new shows on cable channels dramatically stretched television’s narrative inventiveness, emotional resonance, and creative ambition. Combining deep reportage with critical analysis and historical context, Brett Martin recounts the rise and inner workings of this artistic watershed - a golden age of TV that continues to transform America's cultural landscape. Difficult Men features extensive interviews with all the major players - including David Chase (The Sopranos), David Simon and Ed Burns (The Wire), David Milch (NYPD Blue, Deadwood), Alan Ball (Six Feet Under), and Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul) - and reveals how television became a truly significant and influential part of our culture.
