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Potter’s final commission came from The Daily Telegraph Arts & Books section, prompted by the TV interview in March, to which he replied on 16 May, after honouring his television commitments: “I am pleased to tell you that I have completed Karaoke and Cold Lazarus – which I regard as essentially one eight-part piece. Now all that effort is of course evaporating into an overwhelming sense of loss, I itch to scribble something.” [34] Immediately he was prompted to consider "the prospect of confronting imminent death" and on 25 May he submitted “my first and last short story” titled "Last Pearls", [35] which was published on 4 June, days before he died. Griffin's Eye, Daily Mirror, 30 November 1989 (reproduced in Dennis Potter - A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter, Faber and Faber 1998, image no. 36) The Singing Detective (1986), featuring Michael Gambon, used the dramatist's own battle with the skin disease psoriasis, for him an often debilitating condition, as a means to merge the lead character's imagination with his perception of reality. Although Potter only produced one play exclusively for theatrical performance ( Sufficient Carbohydrate, 1983 – later filmed for television as Visitors in 1987), he adapted several of his television scripts for the stage. Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton, which featured material from its sister-play Stand Up, Nigel Barton, was premiered in 1966, while Only Make Believe (1973), which incorporated scenes from Angels Are So Few (1970), made the transition to the stage in 1974. Son of Man appeared in 1969 with Frank Finlay in the title role (Finlay would also play Casanova in Potter's 1971 serial) and was restaged by Northern Stage in 2006. [37] Brimstone and Treacle was adapted for the stage in 1977 after the BBC refused to screen the original television version. The play text for Blue Remembered Hills was first published in the collection Waiting for the Boat (with Joe's Ark and Blade on the Feather) in 1984 and has since enjoyed several successful stage performances. Potter proposed to write an "intermedia" stage play for producers Geisler-Roberdeau based on William Hazlitt's Liber Amoris, or The New Pygmalion, but he died before it could be commenced.

A film version of The Singing Detective, based on Potter's own adapted screenplay, was released in 2003 by Icon Productions. Robert Downey, Jr. played the lead alongside Robin Wright Penn and Mel Gibson. Gibson also acted as producer. Potter's screenplay of The White Hotel, adapted as a radio play, was broadcast in September 2018. [27] The media and Rupert Murdoch [ edit ] If you think this female-male contest for ownership of narrative sounds to have come from some sort of literary theory, then I think you are right. But this is not an academic, dry read. It has many pop flourishes such as the already mentioned suspected murder, as well as sex, romance and maybe some dark secrets, too. In fact, at one point, the 'real' author complains of 'embarrassment' at the popular romance turn the tale takes. Interview with Gina Bellman, quoted in Dennis Potter - A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter, Faber and Faber 1998, p.504Potter's Son of Man (The Wednesday Play, 1969), starring the Irish actor Colin Blakely, gave an alternative view of the last days of Jesus, and led to Potter being accused of blasphemy. The same year, Potter contributed Moonlight on the Highway to ITV's Saturday Night Theatre strand. The play centred around a young man who attempts to blot out memories of the sexual abuse he suffered as child in his obsession with the music of Al Bowlly. As well as being an intensely personal play for Potter, it is notable for being his first foray in the use of popular music to heighten the dramatic tension in his work. This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( July 2018) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Burrell, Ian (24 February 1997). "That nice Alan Bennett takes the gloves off for Tory politicians, the Queen Mother - and Dennis Potter". The Independent . Retrieved 10 October 2020.

Potter stood as the Labour Party candidate for Hertfordshire East, a safe Conservative Party seat, in the 1964 general election against the incumbent Derek Walker-Smith. By the end of the unsuccessful campaign, he claimed that he was so disillusioned with party politics he did not even vote for himself. Potter now embarked on work as a television playwright. He had begun to suffer in 1962 from a condition known as psoriatic arthropathy causing arthritis to develop in his joints as well as affecting his skin with psoriasis. It also made futile any attempt to follow a conventional career path. Graham Fuller "The Singing Detective: 25 Years On"", Sight and Sound, November 2011 (Updated 6 March 2014) In some regards, it's Potter-does-Potter, really - there's The Enduring Mystery Of Women, rooting and bits of improbable nudity. There's no doubt that though the main male character of the novel shares a name with an Amis, the doddering, farting author is something of a stand-in for the ageing Potter himself: all befuddlement and teddy bear attachment. Potter's career in the early 1980s was spent as a screenwriter for the cinema. He returned to the BBC for a co-production with 20th Century Fox, writing the scripts for a widely praised but seldom-seen miniseries of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night (1985) with Mary Steenburgen as Nicole Diver. Graham Fuller, Angels and Devils: The Dark Dreams of Dennis Potter, Sight & Sound Magazine, July 2014, p.41.

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Potter also directed the four episodes and provided the copious narration in his unmistakable West Country burr. Dennis Potter is arguably the most important creative figure in the history of British television. From 1965 until his death in 1994, he constructed a personal work of such depth and consistency that it will probably never be equalled in the medium.

Potter, Dennis (September 2015). "Note 336". The Art of Invective: Selected Non-Fiction 1953–94. Oberon Books. ISBN 978-1-78319-203-8. In 1990, The Observer newspaper asked several British television screenwriters to nominate the most influential person in the field. Potter was voted the most influential. Davies, who chose Potter, stated that "there can be no writer working in television today, or in any medium, who can claim even half the influence of Dennis Potter." Potter's career as a television playwright began with The Confidence Course ( The Wednesday Play, 1965) which Potter had begun as a novel. [10] An exposé of the Dale Carnegie Institute, it drew threats of litigation from that organisation. [11] [12] Although Potter effectively disowned the play, excluding it from his Who's Who entry, [13] it used non-naturalistic dramatic devices (in this case breaking the fourth wall) which would become hallmarks of Potter's subsequent work. The Confidence Course script was liked by Wednesday Play script editor Roger Smith who then commissioned Potter to write what became the second Nigel Barton play for the new anthology series. [14] Alice (also 1965), his next transmitted play, chronicled the relationship between Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his nom de plume, Lewis Carroll, and his muse Alice Liddell. The play drew complaints from the descendants of Dodgson, and of Macmillan, the publisher, who objected to the way the relationship was depicted. [15] George Baker played Dodgson. There is no writer alive, either in print and certainly not in the media, who ever managed to write works that wove together such mesmerising layers of meta-fiction and autobiography as Dennis Potter did. There are few efforts in Potter’s oeuvre that operate on the level of linear narrative – most are complex works that weave the author in as an integral part of the text.

For One Night Only

Potter's career as a television playwright began with The Confidence Course, an exposé of the Dale Carnegie Institute that drew threats of litigation. Although Potter effectively disowned the play, it is notable for its use of non-naturalistic dramatic devices (in this case breaking the fourth wall) which would become hallmarks of Potter's subsequent work. Broadcast as part of the BBC's The Wednesday Play strand in 1965, The Confidence Course proved successful and Potter was invited for further contributions. His next play, Alice (1965), was a controversial drama chronicling the relationship between Lewis Carroll and his muse Alice Liddell. Potter's most celebrated works from this period are the semi-autobiographical plays Stand Up, Nigel Barton! and Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton; the former the tale of a miner's son going to Oxford University where he finds himself torn between two worlds, the latter featuring the same character standing as a Labour candidate — his disillusionment with the compromises of electoral politics is based on Potter's own experience. Both plays received praise from critics' circles but aroused considerable tension at the BBC for their potentially incendiary critique of party politics. urn:oclc:754509487 Scandate 20100227004343 Scanner scribe12.sfdowntown.archive.org Scanningcenter sfdowntown Worldcat (source edition) Occupying Powers" (PDF). MacTaggart Lecture, Edinburgh International Television Festival. 28 August 1993 . Retrieved 22 October 2016.