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View From The Top Mr Flibble bows and scrapes his way through a conversation with Red Dwarf's original producer, and Granada's current Director of Entertainment - Paul Jackson. |
28 March, 2003
Part two of Mr Flibble's interview with original Dwarf producer Paul Jackson.
Mr Flibble - on hold with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, attempting to report Andrew's head-hitting - killed some time by asking Paul about one of his favourite subjects - his approach to CASTING.
I think with casting - especially when you are casting for something like The Young Ones or Red Dwarf, [when] you've got a script that you think is special - you have a kind of visualisation of the script. The difference here was that, with Young Ones, three of the main characters, four if you include Alexei [Sayle], were kind of written and cast, so it was casting Mike and then the surrounding people.
With Red Dwarf there was no preconception, because it wasn't written for anybody. So you really want a cast which are going to fit the parts as written - but, you hope, expand the part as well, and bring other elements to it.
The writers would have a very clear idea if they got to use a 'blank actor' who would come in and read the part as written; it would still have life, because the writers have a very clear idea of what the characters should be. But what also works brilliantly is when actors come in and actually go in a different direction from what the writers thought. They bring other things to it.
Then you see writers feeding off that and writing to that. I've seen Rob and Doug do this with both Lenny Henry and Tracey Ullman in sketch writing for Three of a Kind. They'd written blank sketches that any two actors could do, and then they'd see Tracy do something and say, 'Hey that's really funny,' and they'd go away and write that [down].
Lenny's driver Dave always used to be around, and that used to be a big joke. They'd say, 'Wait a minute, that's funny,' and a bit of paper would come out and they'd start writing. So it's not a matter of the actor going off and doing his own thing, but it is a matter of the writer understanding what the actor brings to the role and saying, 'that's good, I'll write that, I'll expand on that'. So that's what you're looking for in auditions, in casting - you're not just looking for the ability to do the script, you're looking for something [else], a spark.
Casting makes a huge difference to character. Lister, for example, was written very differently to how he was eventually cast, wasn't he?
Lister was an older character, almost like the Lee Marvin character in Cat Baloo - he'd been there and done it, he'd been around and was weary with the whole thing. He was the old hand. He knew it all, had done it all and had no ambition, but had kind of been kicked by life. He knew his place, as opposed to Rimmer who had this ambition but was never going to achieve it.
In fact we got as far as doing development work with a very successful actor - Alfred Molina. He's 10, 15 years older than Craig I would guess, and he was going to play Lister. When [Rob and Doug] worked with Fred they found that, again, he had very vibrant ideas with what he wanted to do with the part, and in fact I think in the end he just got too far away from what they believed it should be.
They came to a mutual understanding, and Fred was extraordinarily generous about it. Fred really loved the part and really wanted to play Lister, but he understood that they'd got to a point in the actor's requirement where the writing couldn't get, and so they agreed to break off the relationship. That was a very generous gesture of Fred's at the time.
Mr Flibble got the nice lady at the RSPB to take his details. Unfortunately, when he mentioned his name, she hung up. Apparently she'd read some of his interviews and thought he deserved everything he got. Disappointed, Mr Flibble had Andrew ask Paul about crewing a TV series. Do you 'cast' a CREW in the same way as actors?
Very much so. The initial casting of those two was important, and then the further casting of Holly came in as a little accident on the end. Then you build a crew - in the glory days of the BBC, and this still was, you had these fantastic craftspeople still within the BBC. You still can [get them] from the freelance market, but the fact is that they were all sitting there at White City. We got some brilliant people; Peter Wragg, particularly, was a crucial team member. The late Mel Bibby on design. Lighting, sound, cameras - everything was really critical to building a team that loved it, particularly Mel and Peter, because they became so much a part of what is recognised around the world. The look of it is theirs.
Then you had Howard Goodall on music...
I still love that theme tune! The brief to Howard was, "It's a big space/adventure series, but it's fun," and how better could you do that than that theme tune? And the way he's re-worked it... We were lucky to have him doing it.
This was Ed Bye's first directing gig. What made you pick him to direct Red Dwarf?
I'd worked with Ed since he joined the BBC as a runner, floor assistant; he was an AFM [Assistant Floor Manager] on Young Ones, and then I'm pretty sure he went up to production manager. On Three of a Kind we worked together and Ed had become my Number Two.
When we went to Red Dwarf, he agreed to work on it. We did the whole series once, [during] the strike, and we junked it; I think I directed those. By that time Ed was clearly ready to direct - he'd already been doing inserts and small bits - so I was very happy to have him direct the shows [when they were remounted].
I think it worked out very well for the show. By that time I was a fairly well-experienced director, and the fact is that - however much you try not to - you tend to fall for the short-cuts a bit. Ed came along and very quickly was on Doug's wavelength, he got it.
With sitcom direction you want it to support the comedy, not detract from it. Occasionally, not very often, the directing gets too clever - [directors] trying to show they're a potentially great movie director. Johnny Hammond, a famous producer-director for Morcambe and Wise, used to say, "Comedy's in the mid-shot." You don't want to detract from the comedy - and Ed didn't. He found clever, innovative things to do with clever, innovative scripts, whilst supporting the comedy.
Norman was going to do it, then for various personal reasons he didn't want to make the journey, at least not on terms that at the time were thought to be workable. There was talk then of putting [Holly] back to being non-visual, of him laying it all down as a vocal track, all kinds of things. I said, "No, it's now another character, Holly interacts, the timing and everything, you've got to have someone in the studio. If Norman doesn't want to be in the studio we'll have to get somebody else."
Hattie was my suggestion. Norman was extremely difficult to replace, and it just seemed to me that there was only one person out there, which was Hattie. I had a big conversation with [Rob and Doug] about whether a woman could do it, but it just seemed to fit. She made it her own, and I'd love to see her back - two Hollys together.
And how did it work with Kryten?
David Ross had done the original brilliantly, but he wasn't available. [Rob and Doug] had seen the potential of Kryten, not least because of the performance that David Ross gave. I'd seen Robert, because I knew him from way back when he was in a group with The Joeys. He'd done his solo piece, Mammon, Robot Born of Woman, which I hadn't seen, but someone had - it might even have been Rob and Doug. Again he just slipped into it and made it his own.
He brought a kind of prissyness to it - which David had got, and which was in the writing, but Robert made it kind of intellectual. David's Kryten was deferential, but Robert's was mechanistically deferential, frightfully polite and frightfully willing to learn. Just so keen.
David Ross is known - from his Alan Bleasedale dramas as well as elsewhere - for playing very empathetic and tragic characters; it would have made Kryten a sad figure to watch week after week...
I think that's a very good point - he was intrinsically whimsical and sad and subservient. Whereas Robert's Kryten had a twinkle in his eye that spelled rebellion... not that he ever could until the most extreme circumstances.
And he enjoys the serving...
He enjoyed it, whereas with David's Kryten it was an imposition. You felt sad for him, that he was so abused. With Robert, how could you feel sad? He begged to do more ironing! (Laughs)
As one of the key players on British TV comedy, have you noticed Red Dwarf's INFLUENCE on the shows that have followed?
It's a very divisive show. I've never heard anybody say they didn't get, say, Peter Cook - but Reeves and Mortimer some people get, some people don't. The vast majority get Red Dwarf, but there are some who say, 'Can't take it at any price, don't get it, not my bag.'
Because it's so 'of itself', I don't think that in terms of writing and performance it has got noticeable echoes. Yet a lot of writers will tell you it's one of their favourite shows. What I think it did do is give ambition, it gave the confidence to writers and performers who never saw sitcom as being settled within the four wall structure.
When you now see the kind of worlds created for, for example, Royston Vasey with The League [of Gentlemen], that confidence to go out and actually shoot filmically, shoot extraordinary stretches of imagination - Red Dwarf was one of the first to do that, and I think in a subconscious way gave other writers the confidence to ask for that, and gave broadcasters the confidence to give them the money to do it.
Bandaging his battered head, Mr Flibble whispered his final question: What have you been up to POST-DWARF?
Noel Gay Television bought out PJP [Paul Jackson Productions], and therefore maintained a relationship with Grant Naylor as kind of a sister company. [At Noel Gay] we did Saturday Live, Bottom was devised at Noel Gay Television, we did some stuff with Ruby [Wax]. Then Carlton asked me to join as director of programmes, so I went off to, eventually, be managing director at Carlton. Noel Gay made some programmes for them, most noticeably Frank Stubbs with Timothy Spall.
I stayed there for about four years, then I had a wonderful year off - did a bit of teaching, a bit of directing. I went to Africa with Comic Relief. I directed a couple of episodes of a Nick Hancock sitcom called Holding the Baby, and a lovely one-off show which I really am fond of called The Office. Not the new Office, it starred Robert Lindsay and was almost silent, very visual. It was about a motorcycle courier firm, it was the broad farce of everything going wrong [for him].
It also gave me the chance to work with a legendary figure in the business, Bill Ward. Bill had been one of the original Ally Pally entertainment producers, and also a friend of my father's. He was exec producer on The Office and that was very weird for me. I remember when I was five years old he bought me a cowboy six-gun and holster - and there I was with him as my EP! (Laughs)
Then I joined the BBC as Controller of Entertainment, which I loved because it was the first time all the media had been put together - so I had radio, television and online all under me. Subsequently, as a result of that, I ended up doing a show on Radio 4, and I'm currently doing another series of that.
I left there and went to work for Granada in Australia for about sixteen months, then I came back here to work [for Granada] as director of entertainment. We do the old standards like Blind Date, You've Been Framed and Stars In Their Eyes, but also newer shows like Ant and Dec's Takeaway, Mr Right, Popstars: The Rivals and Reborn in the USA.
Mr Flibble enjoyed talking to Paul Jackson, and now that it's over... Mr Flibble is very cross.
Skip to Paul Jackson on...
More Paul Jackson on...
- Interview Part 1
- Interview Part 2
Right hand provided by Andrew Ellard
