THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.205 - SAM BAIN

Episode Date: September 24, 2023

Adam talks with British comedy writer Sam Bain about working with Jesse Armstrong and collaborating with Chris Morris on Four Lions, venturing into the theatre, what he learned from Buddhist retreats, best and worst plane journeys and whether he would have shouted 'Judas' at Bob Dylan in 1966.This conversation was recorded face to face in London on November 8th, 2017Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and conversation editing.Podcast artwork by Helen GreenRELATED LINKSMARTYN HETT: VICTIM'S FAMILY RECALL MANCHESTER ATTACK 5 YEARS ON by Helen Pidd- 2022 (GUARDIAN)FILMS TO BE BURIED WITH #260 (ADAM BUXTON) - 2023 (OMNY FM)DESERT ISLAND DISCS - ADRIAN EDMONSON - 2023 (BBC SOUNDS) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how are you doing, podcats? It's Adam Buxton here. I'm joining you, guess from where?

Yep, a farm track, that's correct. Can you hear my crunchy boots? On the farm track. I'm here with my best dog friend Rosie, a.k.a. Rosebag, a.k.a. Doglegs. She's doing well. How are you doing though, podcats? I hope you're well. I'm recording this intro quite soon

after I recorded the one for the last episode, which featured a conversation with Jesse Armstrong. As you're aware, this one features a conversation with Jesse's writing partner, Sam Bain. Sam facts, Sam was born in 1971. His father, Bill Bain, was a successful TV director, and his mother, Rosemary Frankow, was an actor who co-starred in the sitcom Terry

and June. That was a fact that was revealed to me by Jesse Armstrong when I was talking to him that I was not previously aware of. And if you've read my memoir, Ramble Book, you'll know that June from Terry and June holds a very special sexy place in my heart, which I didn't mention when I was talking to Jesse. And I won't go into it now because I don't think it's appropriate. But it's in Ramble Book in a chapter called It Started With A Kiss, I think. Anyway, back to Sam. It was while studying at Manchester University in the early 1990s that Sam met Jesse Armstrong, with whom he would go on to write on TV shows like Fresh Meat, Babylon, The Old Guys, and of course, Peep Show, starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb,

with whom Sam and Jesse worked on several other projects, including sketch shows and the film Jesse worked on several other projects, including sketch shows and the film Magicians. In 2010, Sam and Jesse worked with Chris Morris on his comedy film Four Lions about homegrown terrorist jihadis from Sheffield. For the last few years, Sam has been living out in Los Angeles, where he's written a couple of films, Corporate Animals, starring Demi Moore and Ed Helms, and The Stand-In, starring Drew Barrymore. Outside of film and TV, Sam has also written a novel, Yours Truly, Pierre Stone,

which was adapted for Radio 4 in 2017. Sam is also one of the founders and creative directors of the TV production company Various Artists Limited, along with Jesse Armstrong and producers and ex-Channel 4 commissioners Phil Clark and Roberto Troni. Various Artists Limited projects have so far included Michaela Cole's I May Destroy You, Julia Davis's Sally Forever, and the show's Dead Pixels and the current Insomnia rom-com Still Up. Insomnia rom-com still up. My conversation with Sam was recorded face-to-face in London back in November 2017. Yes, 2017. So why did it take so long to come out? Well,

if you're a regular listener, you will know that this is the kind of thing that does sometimes happen with the podcast. And this is one of those times when I got to record a conversation with someone I'm friendly with. I got to know Sam and Jessie. When was it? It was something like 2007. And I was in a pilot written by Sam and Jessie called Ladies and Gentlemen

about the lives and loves of a group of 30-something friends in a pilot written by Sam and Jessie called Ladies and Gentlemen, about the lives and loves of a group of 30-something friends who share a London house in 1865. Yeah, we did the pilot. I can't remember if it was broadcast or not. It was pretty good. Starred Darren Boyd, Rhys Shearsmith, Lucy Punch,

Rosie Cavaliero. Really amazingly talented performers, plus Adam Buxton. It was disappointing when it didn't get commissioned, but it was great fun to do and hang out with those actors and get to know Sam and Jesse a little bit. Anyway, all those years later, I had the opportunity to record with Sam, but because I wasn't tied to a specific date to put it out, as I am sometimes with other guests, it was one of those conversations that ended up sitting in the vault for a while. gone by and I felt as though I'd missed the moment. But then because I was talking to Jesse earlier this year, I went back and listened to that conversation with Sam from 2017. I really

enjoyed it. There was lots in there and I thought that I should just finally put it out. I emailed Sam out in Los Angeles to check he was okay with that. He said, no way, fuck you you and if you put it out you'll hear from my lawyers he didn't he was nice about it the conversation with sam was recorded the morning after i had seen his play the retreat directed by kathy burke and starring adam deacon and as well as talking a bit about the theater we spoke about bud Buddhist retreats, his writing partnership with Jesse, their collaboration with Chris Morris on Four Lions, and how they approached the difficult task of finding comedy in a subject like terrorism, something that had been on everyone's minds more than usual when we spoke, as it was only a few months after the Manchester Arena bombing in May of 2017. In the

conversation Sam mentions the way that the family of one of the victims of the bombings responded after the attack and there's a link in the description to a Guardian article from last year 2022 in which Martin Hett's family recall the attack five years on. Anyway, as far as my conversation with Sam goes, things got lighter. Towards the end, you will hear, among other subjects, Sam's views on Bob Dylan going electric. It's all the latest hot-button topics on this podcast, and I'd forgotten until I listened back that my setup to that question was the longest one I've ever delivered on this podcast,

and perhaps the longest setup to any question ever asked in history. Even though, if I say so myself, I think I did kind of a good job in the setup. And if you listen to it, well, you'll never need to watch another Bob Dylan documentary again, I think. All right, I'll be back to say goodbye at the end. But right now with Sam Bain, here we go. Ramble Chat Let's have a Ramble Chat We'll focus first on this Then concentrate on that Come on, let's chew the fat And have a Ramble Chat

Put on your conversation coat And find your talking hat La, la, la, la, la, la La, la, la, la, la, la so sam we are speaking the day after the press night. Was it the press night of your play? Yeah, it was. The Retreat. Yes.

And that's the first play you've written, right? It certainly is. How long did it take you to write that? It took me quite a while, you know, because it's quite a challenging subject and the format I chose is quite difficult. So I kind of raised the bar of competence quite high

for myself my first play because the reason it's difficult format because it's all set in one room in no cuts real time hour and a half and to create a sort of compelling story out of that was quite difficult I found it's quite a tough

sort of framework to have but I sort of wanted to out of that was quite difficult i found it's quite a tough sort of framework to have but i'd sort of wanted to do that for some reason here's the the blurb on the website luke left his high-flying city life to discover serenity in the highlands but he can't escape his past is tony everything wrong with luke's old. Or is he the only one that can really see into his soul? And Tony is Luke's brother. Yeah. And the name of the actor who plays Tony is Adam Deacon. I mean, Tony is the most sort of obviously funny character.

And most of his lines are pretty funny. The audience was really laughing. He's great. Where'd you find Adam Deacon? Because it's directed by Kathy Burke, right? Correct. So did she find the cast or? Well, we did it together.

I mean, she suggested Adam. And immediately that she said his name, I thought, yes. Because I'd worked with him on a show I did with Danny Boyle called Babylon. Right. So he had quite a big part in that. I hadn't worked with him before before but I'd heard of him because he won a BAFTA like a rising star BAFTA a few years ago after his film Another Hood came out oh yeah which was a film that he wrote and directed ah so he's quite a talent Adam yeah

and he's a rapper he's got a big. And he's a bit of a star. And yes, he is an extremely funny and brilliant actor. And so it's been really nice working with him and Cathy. Him and Cathy have a lovely bond. So yeah, he's been great. I have you to thank for introducing me to Cathy. I've met her once or twice in the past. But you and I went out for lunch with her a couple of years ago and that was a really fun afternoon and she was such good company i just thought i'd love to get her on the podcast

and so that's how she uh came to be on it yeah i don't know what's better doing a play with kathy or just having she used to hang out with her really yeah she's just a ledge she's so great and then were you like how does it work you write the thing and then do you more or less hand it over to kathy and she does what she thinks and you check in every now and again or no i was in there in rehearsals every day initially she said right you stay for the first week you fuck off for the second week come back for the third i can imagine her saying that but i think she realised that I wasn't going to be precious at all about the script. She let me stay the whole time.

Okay. Because it was really helpful, actually. Just being there, tweaking, talking, getting all the details right. You know, it's nice to be involved in that. And then did you, why did you go for that sort of real-time, hour-and-a-half, three-way thing? Did you sort of think, well, it's better to keep things manageable as this is your first play rather than being...? Well, I think I just like plays that are quite intense and intimate.

And I just felt like if you're going to do a play, having done a lot of TV and stuff, you might as well do something which is which you could only do in the theater and you know one scene with no cuts where you can go a bit deeper maybe into philosophy and religion and characters to me felt like a good reason to write a play because it felt something that you couldn't do in any other format and I like that feeling when a play is sweeping you along with like you're in the room with the people they're real they're right in front of you that's the feeling I was trying to create with the play and do you like going to the theatre I mean do you go fairly regularly um I do

I have mixed feelings you know there's a scene in Peep Show where Mark and Jeremy go to the theatre and don't have a very good time and Jeremy walks out, which is not completely irrelevant to some of my experiences at the theatre because it can be quite frustrating. I think for me, when theatre's brilliant, it's the best thing ever.

When it's bad, it's like the worst thing ever and you just want to get out and it's terrible. So it can be very up and down, whereas most films or TV are quite good and sort of, yeah, I can watch this, it's no trouble. But a bad play is like being physically attacked somehow. Is it something to do with the fact that you're actually sharing that space

with these other human beings? They're right in front of you. Yeah. And the silliness of it is right up in your face and it's right on the edge like the silliness of pretending to be someone else um is so close to the genius of of that same thing do you know what i mean like uh i think i've talked about this before like when it goes right as you say it's it's wonderful and part of that is that it just feels like such a special thing that human beings can do this for each other that they can interrupt

and disrupt the way we behave and what reality is and what truth is and what it means and everything and we can just pretend to be different but then when it goes wrong you just want to say don't do that it's too real yeah when it's wrong like just want to say don't do that it's too real yeah when it's wrong like if it's bad tv you can literally there's almost nothing more fun than watching a bad tv show and laughing and pointing with your wife or your friends go oh this is so brilliantly terrible look at this but there's no fun for me in a bad play because the people are right there and their humanity is on display i'll tell you what i've been surprised by pleasantly about doing the place i've seen it a few times now i really like theater

audiences because my only other experience of audiences with tv like um sitcoms and sketch shows and they're kind of free tickets and the people are sort of... Bust in. Yeah. Whereas third audiences have made an informed choice. They've chosen to see this production and they're going to give it their full attention. And I'm really grateful for that because that's really all you can ask for in the audience. Just give me your full attention. Hopefully we can reward it

with something entertaining and interesting. And I really appreciate that. I really enjoyed seeing that. And then do you read the reviews the day after your yeah I read the reviews this morning yeah and do you feel is that something you do with all your work yeah I'm just too kind of interested not to really yeah okay and um I think a lot of actors don't read reviews when they're in the show I think that's very wise because you've got to go and do it every night and you've read that you're a human piece of waste.

I think it must be virtually impossible. So I think that's very sensible. But for the writer who's essentially my work is over, I think that it would be kind of, yeah, I couldn't not read them really. Okay. And were you happy in general? I mean... The reviews? yeah i couldn't not read them really okay and were you happy in general i mean the reviews yeah um well you know it's early days not all the not all the press have reviewed it yet but there are

some you know people aren't always that nice in reviews you know and there are some phrases that are stuck in my head that probably will never leave of i read earlier so i'm processing that was the exposition really cack handed okay fine cack handed let's just have that then yeah um shallow okay fine maybe the play is shallow okay fine um give us some good ones to counterbalance though yeah no there are some nice ones you know four stars and sort of some lovely ones everyone everyone really said it was funny which to be honest is um a great compliment because how many shows honestly are that funny you know plays not that many that i've seen so but yeah i mean the theater is a slightly different world and i i would have put a large bet in ladbrokes that most if not all the reviews

would mention the word sitcom or sitcom-y in not a particularly praiseworthy kind of way and that is kind of what happened because I think there is a cultural divide between TV and theatre and with comedy especially so it wasn't a huge shock in fact it was predictable

that people would say it was a bit sitcom-y which I regard as a compliment in a way but it wasn't intended as such i think by the reviewers but i feel pretty immunized against any bad reviews or mixed reviews having seen the show with an audience sort of five times now and hearing them laugh and feeling good in the room it's really hard to kind of knock that as an experience. Because, you know, it feels like it works for me, which is a big deal because I had no idea if it would. So I kind of feel pretty good about it.

And the premise of the thing is that this guy, this high-flying city guy, goes off to a retreat because he's having a sort of spiritual crisis. Yeah, a sort of breakdown or crisis. So he's sort of dropping his London lifestyle to go off and live in a hut with no electricity and internet and phones and just kind of do this intense solitary retreat for three months on his own. And that is something that I would imagine a lot of people

have thought about i have yeah well i've done retreats you've done a retreat i've done a few what kind of retreats this guy's on a buddhist retreat yeah that was my retreat so i did a few buddhist retreats i did a silent one it's like a 10 day silent one which is a group retreat when was this how old were you uh so this would be about 2001 so 16 years ago yeah okay so 30 31 years old and a few years later i did a solo retreat up a mountain in spain three weeks doing a hundred thousand mantras whoa eight hours a day of chanting basically meditating i wasn't completely on my own there were people nearby living in a large sort of farmhouse but i did the retreat on

my own and what was it that um led up to you going out the first time and doing your first retreat well um i suppose you know i was uh... It was when me and Jesse started writing together and things were starting to really take off and my workload was increasing and I was just aware that my concentration, my work ethic, as it were, just wasn't really good, very good. I couldn't find it that easy to focus. So I thought I should take my brain in for a tune

up so i went to a local buddhist center i was living in bethnal green did a meditation class and i just really took to it i just thought this is a really interesting tool to use to kind of like improve my mind and if i can improve my mind i can improve everything because everything i do involves my mind so I thought well this is kind of fascinating and so I sort of got into it really from there and did you feel the benefit of it immediately yeah pretty much I mean it's like exercise or anything you know it's practice you don't do one meditation class and sort of nail it you do it I ended up doing a daily practice which I I would do every morning. I did that for several years.

That's when you sort of start to go a bit deeper. But going on retreat is a pretty important experience if you're into meditating, because it's an opportunity to go a lot deeper. Yeah. So is that something you sort of do regularly now? Not so much anymore. I did it really intensively. Then I kind of let it kind of fall away a little bit

because i felt like i'd done what i needed to do but i still meditate i can meditate if i want to but i don't have a sort of you know regular practice like i used to yeah we are sitting in the front room of a friend of mine mark who kindly lets me use his house to record the odd podcast when I'm in London. And he has a little office across the way where he runs his various business ventures. He's a restaurateur and hotelier and very busy guy. And this morning he was in the kitchen while I was pottering around making myself some tea and he was on a work call and he was bollocking someone and some business associate who had come up short with something and he was chewing him out and I felt really awkward I didn't know what to do I thought maybe I shouldn't be here maybe

I'm cramping his bollock style but I don't think I was because he was just going for it. But I was really impressed. He was respectful, but very firm. And the thing that impressed me most was that his voice didn't waver. Have you ever bollocked someone? Oh, man, that's not my idea of fun, bollocking someone. No, I don't think I have. No, I don't think I have.

I mean, yeah, anger is not my kind of like favourite emotion and dealing with it is not my best ability, but I have got better at it over the years. My thing is that I always assume that whatever gripe I have is unreasonable. Yeah. You know what I mean? So I think it's not worth expressing because as soon as I express my dissatisfaction

with any given situation, it will be revealed to me almost immediately that I'm in the wrong. So I don't want to speak up, but it's really stupid because then it just festers. I think if you lose your shit, it's a problem because then you've lost the moral high ground immediately.

You've lost everything. Your shit, the high ground. So even if you have a really good point, but you start screaming like a baby, then it's very hard to bring that back. So I try and avoid that one. Have you ever just lost it in a meeting or anything and had that situation and then realised like,

oh dear, I've just had a meltdown? No, not in a meeting. I mean, me and Jesse, we have a nice working style where we don't really get too kind of fed up with each other, which is why it's lasted 20 years. But I've certainly, you know, on set, when you're shooting and things are very tiring and everyone's knackered and you've been doing it for six weeks,

then things can get a little bit, start to fray at the edges. And I have been occasionally a bit snappy, that's about as far as it gets with me. Yeah. Snappy like the crocodile. Yeah. But in writing in general, I find it's an amazing way to deal with one's own insanity,

because you can create insane situations and have fun with them. And certainly comedy is kind of, when I discovered comedy writing, because you can create insane situations and have fun with them. And certainly comedy is kind of... When I discovered comedy writing, to me it's a bit like discovering a magic spell or alchemy that I could literally take my most painful, humiliating experiences and turn them into gold that people would laugh about and write about on the internet and enjoy, like Peep Show.

That, to me, is a magic trick which i can't really imagine living without because there's something quite amazing about that and how would that work in practical terms when you and jesse were sat in a room would you tell each other stories oh yeah so we just like carve ourselves up and offer up the most sort of awful things that happen to us a lot of the most embarrassing things in the show happen to me more than jesse i don't know what that says about us that's a great way to start writing a kind of sitcom and we had ian morris who's our script editor for many years who was very forthright about giving up his terrible experiences so it's a great way to write comedy because that's what people relate to you know we've all have embarrassing humiliating horrible moments and seeing other people's is somehow very healing and funny if it's done well

yeah were there ever stories that you would tell that jesse should have said no mate no one's going to relate to that that's just weird i'm not sure i can't think of any particular but quite a few made into the show pretty much uncensored like there's an episode of Peep Show where Mark is burgled and he sits on the burglar and it's quite awkward I did that

I was working in a video shop we got burgled by a guy who came in the back door and I sat on him and he was face up on the floor like in the show right so we had this weird conversation

when I was sitting on him like because all my own experience of fighting was like as a kid so all I could think of to do was sit on his put my knees on put my knees on his shoulders yeah that's right did you ever have that thing um people would do the typewriter so they would some guy would pin you down as you say face up and then he'd sit with his knees on my shoulders and pretend he was typing on my chest and then what's the thing the carriage return or whatever and smack my face it's a high level martial arts move old school i guess that's extinct now because there's no typewriters like that yeah your victorian childhood has been

outdated yeah so now they do them they would just do a mouse i guess just drag their fist or just poke you in the face with their finger, trying to activate your apps. Yeah, escape, escape, escape. Yes. Yes, please. Yep. Yes. What do you think jesse would say if i asked him about your best and worst qualities as a writing partner assuming he was going to be honest with me i think he'd have to praise my punctuation

and spelling and grammar which i think he'd agree is slightly superior to his okay i don't think he'd have a problem with that i think that um we both, you know, work in a very similar way, which is why the partnership works so well. We both have a similar sort of work ethic, similar sense of humour and sensibility. I think probably the best quality for me as a writing partner, I would like to think, is a sort of lack of ego, where if Jesse says that he doesn't like something I've written,

I don't really mind. And I think that is the most valuable thing you bring to any writing partnership or any creative partnership because if you start defending an idea because it's yours you're really in big trouble I think the thing which we always have done and which I would always encourage anyone to do who's collaborating is always put the project as the only thing of importance and whatever anyone says it's going to serve the project make it better is welcome and doesn't matter who says it because all that matters is the project is the script or whatever and so that's i think probably the thing

i feel you're happiest about is i'm able to sort of let go of my own ideas quite quickly in terms of bad qualities as a writing partner again refer you back to the punctuation spelling it's probably quite annoying for him to have all his um grammar questioned but no i think that's a good question i feel like i'm in a job interview the um the answer is there was quite a job no it's fine i think occasionally i can be compared to jesse anyway who is my writing hero in many ways i can be sort of a little bit more oh that'll do you know a little bit more laid back about things and sometimes it really helps to have him going no no we can actually make this better all right then i think occasionally i might sort of stop a bit early in this life of the script whereas he is

has an amazing capacity to sort of keep grinding it out until we get to the best possible joke or script which is what it's all about really how did it work when you were writing with chris morris then on four lines oh yeah well that was a really interesting adventure because i mean you know chris right so ch Chris is, as we know, a one-off, a unique human. And his approach to writing was a surprise to me because he really doesn't have, or he didn't have at the start of that process, a particularly clear idea about where it was going to go

or how it was going to be. What I found really fascinating and kind of inspiring about Chris was that he really just likes to ask himself interesting questions. And he doesn't really know what's going to happen or what the answer's going to be. So his question really to us, which was obviously like every script starts out as a long conversation over several months.

His question was really, could you write a comedy about suicide bombers? I don't know the answer. Let's talk about it and let's see if we can. I like that because he's not married to an outcome. He's not like a man. He said, right, I have to write a comedy about suicide bombers by January. And so we need to write an outline now.

And, you know, he's like, if the answer would be no, we can't. He wouldn't have written it. And he definitely left that as an option. So he had just asked himself this question and then he asked it to you without any commitment to a company or. Exactly. Right. And I really found that quite liberating because it feels like quite pure artistic questioning. You know, it's not like we've committed to make a product for the third quarter of next year and we have to produce it by then.

It's like, I don't know if we can do this it might not work completely possible let's see if it does and if we did write a comedy about sister bombers what would it look like how would it work where would the jokes be how would it function so that was the process of that was talking about the sort of pure comedy application to that particular story or kind of and your initial reaction was pretty confident that it could be done or were you thinking no i wasn't i was just happy to be in a room with him and talking to him because he's a comedy hero and um no i didn't know if it was going to work neither did he which was so refreshing so it was a voyage of discovery for the three of us he'd already had

some ideas for characters it wasn't a complete blank piece of paper he handed us he kind of already knew from early on what the ending ought to look like that would end in how it ends the movie if you haven't seen it spoiler alert but you know death and sort of a siege destruction that goes on and on a high street during the london marathon yeah or just after it yeah the marathon was a sort of i mean we spent a lot of time trying to figure out what their operation should be or what they would be attacking or what they their target would be the marathon was one idea out of many that we talked about. I think the idea of the colourful costumes was why that one won. Uh-huh.

Because it felt like it would be funny. I think that was a breakthrough moment. I still remember where we were when we came up with it. I can't remember who came up with it. It doesn't really matter. That's the joy of collaboration. But when we came up with the colourful costumes, the honey monster and all that stuff.

Yeah. I bet it was you, by the way. When we came up with it.ful costumes the honey monster and all that stuff yeah i bet it was you by the way when we came up with that idea we all laughed and it felt like well that will work that will work because it's physical it's visual it's silly but at the same time it's also quite credible that that would be a target. Yes, exactly. So it kind of ticked quite a few boxes at once. Yeah. And that, to me, was the first time I felt like,

yeah, this film actually probably will work. And once we had the ending, then we could go back and sort of build up everything towards that, because obviously the ending is, with most films, is incredibly important to end it well on a climax. So that felt like a breakthrough because we were sort of investing in quite it's quite a traditional comedy really people running around in stupid outfits but because it's played so brilliantly straight by the great cast and all

the rest of it it felt like yeah that's a set piece which will work and we sort of felt a lot more confident i certainly did after that meeting with that sort of scene in mind thinking we've got something to work towards did you have to consult with anyone before you use the london marathon as a plot point good question i mean chris sort of took a huge amount of control we it was quite nice in a way because because chris was the captain of the ship we could just do a very simple, pure thing of just writing. We weren't involved in any of the production. I didn't go to shooting because he was directing it

and I didn't need to be there to help him. He didn't need any help. So that was quite nice. And in a way, when he went away and did all his research, we could just say, that's great, but let's look at the story. Or, you know, we had just a very clear role, which was to help write the script and get the story or you know we had just a very clear role which was to help write the script and get the story right we didn't really have any other role beyond

that because god forbid anything should happen at the marathon then it would feel so weird wouldn't it yeah there is always that massive risk um but you know uh we sent the script to bin laden early on chris managed to get it to Bin Laden and he really liked it. He had some great notes. And he actually, you know, so that was helpful. Felt pretty much a pretty safe ground after Bin Laden read it. How would it work then practically? You and Jesse would write scenes and then would you send them to Chris

and he would sort of write little bits as well? Or were you really writing the bulk of the script? So we wrote we sat the three of us in his office with the laptops and wrote the outline sort of together I think, it's a long time ago now but what I do remember

very clearly is that me and Jesse did write the first draft between the two of us and then showed it to Chris and I think he was really happy with that because as you know writing the first draft is the hardest bit yeah right it's kind of like breaking the ground with the spade and then you can sort of have a bit easier time on the second and third so that was our major contribution after we delivered that first draft he was broadly happy with it he sort of of took, he took back the script,

took ownership of the script and did a lot of drafts, which showing us giving out, giving our notes to him, but coming back in and writing stuff and being in rehearsal and all that. But that was our major contribution. Apart from obviously come out with the story together and helping the characters and all the rest of it. We wrote that draft, which I think took a lot of pressure off him rubber dinghy rapids bro where's that from

that's chris right i i think he just had a theme park idea i don't know he'd maybe met some guys from up north who into theme parks just yeah i can't take any credit for that similarly i think mini baby bells was k van novak i can't remember actually but i can't take credit for some of those brilliant lines yeah well you had so many great performers in there i mean it was um you must have got a lot of good stuff out of them surely yeah it was really interesting because i hadn't met riz before i didn't know know Riz Ahmed at all before the film. And sitting in rehearsals with him, the first day we met him, he had some really strong notes on the character,

like, oh, he wouldn't do this, he wouldn't do that. And it was a little bit of, well, hold on a minute. Yeah, we thought about it pretty hard. Oh, we've been doing this script for a couple of years, mate, and who the hell are you? Yeah. You know, but he was right. And, you know, he he was right. And,

you know, he's a very smart, intelligent guy and obviously super talented as everyone now knows, because he's done so many great things since. And also when actor is playing a role that demanding, you basically have to listen because it's up to them. Whether they're going to say it or not. I mean, you sort of, if you start trying to force people to say things

they don't want to say, you've kind of lost the battle. And generally, if an actor is that good, they will have really, you know, their opinions usually coming from somewhere. So you need to listen. And it was definitely beneficial that we did listen because he was one of the big reasons why that film works i think oh definitely i mean that scene where he's more

or less saying goodbye to his wife in the hospital with the cops standing a couple of feet away yeah it's brilliant i think it's heartbreaking but there's so many things going on you know he's he's so from my perspective he's so deluded but you can't help but sympathize with him because he feels he's doing the right thing and he's yeah i'm so pleased chris allowed the emotion of that film and the sadness of it out because i think one of the key things i can't speak for jesse and, really, but I felt like writing those characters, the key to writing them was re-understanding how huge

and important that cause felt and sort of forgetting, just completely forgetting that it's insane nonsense. Just imagine if you think you're a Jedi warrior or, you know, you're Luke Skywalker, which is how they feel about themselves in the film. They're there being the ultimate hero and what that would mean. And almost inverting the whole idea of being a hero.

Obviously most people would think of suicide bombers as the ultimate villains, but from their point of view, it's completely the opposite. It's the upside down world. So that's the way into those characters for me is and hopefully there's some poignancy there thinking i'm gonna do all the things the hero does sacrifice his ease and comfort and his family life and stride out with my shining sword to save the world but obviously the horror and irony of it is they're doing the complete opposite

yeah that's the most chilling thing isn't it is that you know the standard villain certainly when we were growing up the villain would always be just like they'd know they were evil and they were just bent on being evil but of course real villains in real life they think they're doing the right thing yeah and that's the scary thing about them because there's no reasoning with them because they're so convinced of their own righteousness we i really wanted to um get into i mean there was you know there's this funny expression of a humanizing that the film humanizes uh-huh or someone i think maybe said that in a review but to me it's kind of a bonkers expression that to humanize because it implies that people aren't human to start with yeah well i suppose the the purpose of the expression is to

uh make the point that that for a lot of people they aren't human they're just caricatures of evil exactly which is just unhelpful yeah help anyone the tabloid you know heroes and villains it just what does it achieve nothing just increases more hatred and ignorance yeah exactly and the policy generally seems to be um especially after 9-11 it was like the war on terror the same as the war on drugs just this thing that has to be dealt with and got rid of and let's not worry about where it came from yeah because it's a thing and it just needs to be swept away yeah i mean like i said i'm not really buddhist anymore but one of the buddhist philosophies that has definitely stayed with me is that thing of realizing that if someone is doing something destructive

they are probably suffering and in pain. And I think that is really helpful. Martin Hett, who was that kid who died in Manchester, his mother has said, I believe, that she felt like the boy who blew himself up and her son were both killed by ISIS. Both the victims of ISIS, the murderer and the victim. Yeah. I find that quite powerful.

Yeah, of course. I mean, because as you say, I just don't think, I suppose everyone has the right to believe that there is such a thing as pure evil and that some human beings can't be reasoned with. But it just doesn't add up. It just seems so clear that we've all got the capacity to do pretty dreadful things

i think the the reason people probably like the idea of pure evil or nice and simple yeah it means you don't have to get involved yeah and thinking about anything you don't have to think about why would someone turn to isis why would someone travel to syria why would someone put on a suicide belt because it's complicated confusing and stressful it's much easier to go they're evil but it's not helpful 1. Skruva avgjørelsen av støttslåset. here's some random questions i wanted to ask you can you do an eddie redmayne voice eddie redmayne no have you seen our fantastic beasts and where to find them but he sort of talks like this i think and also he's in a film called uh jupiter rising yeah i haven't seen that i'm not i'm not really a voice man, to be honest, Adam.

I did a couple of weeks working with Sacha Baron Cohen on Bruno. Oh, right. And everyone around the writing team, none of them actors apart from him, at some point were called upon to do the voice. Yeah. But I could never do it. I mean, they didn't give me too much of a hard time,

but I'm just not a man who can do voices. I can't even do an accent. What would you do then when it was your turn to say some lines in a Bruno style? I would just say them like my normal voice and look quite like I'd failed. Yeah. And everyone else would look at me like I'd failed.

And then we'd just carry on. How's he to work with? Had you worked with him before, Sacha Baron Cohen? No, that was the first time we had worked with him. And I've seen him and done bits and pieces, but that was the substantial two weeks in LA. It was kind of fascinating, actually, because he is actually not a million miles away from Chris Morris

in the sense that he is someone who is figuring stuff out all the time and is never like, I've've got the answer let's do it this way it's always like well what if this what if that what if this and i do respect that that sense of restless questing to just come up with something funnier and better and funnier and better although it can be quite tough on the writing team to be sort of always having to go back and look at it again and but i think you know we actually enjoyed it and he felt i think he felt like we got some stuff done but he does have also a bit like chris an extraordinary for an english person particularly lack of shame or self-consciousness or kind of

he can do things which i would find unimaginable obviously i'm talking about you know the stunts and putting one over on people which would make me want to just die but he doesn't give a shit he really really doesn't and i kind of admire that although it's essentially the kind of thing that you might be able to do if you were a serial killer as well i was gonna say it's sort of it's it's like a trait of psychopathy isn't it almost well it can be used for good or evil put it that way he uses it for comedy which i think is on the side of good yeah but if he was evil he would be quite good at being evil if he chose to be but that's the thing that we as an audience get when we're

watching those things is a glimpse into a mind that operates in a completely different way someone that is just trampling over all the rules that keep normal society going and it's thrilling you know it's why that film has he just really does do that and that is the secret of of his greatest work i think and i think chris has that too chris doesn't really say no to himself some people say no to him but he's like well if i think it's gonna work let's do it let's go and dress in a nappy and put a big red ball on my head and try and buy drugs like in Brass Eye. Yeah.

It's sad that Chris Morris doesn't perform more. Well, I guess the last thing he did was IT Crowd, right? Yeah, that's right. And he had a very funny death, as I recall, jumping out the window. Ah, yeah. But yeah, he is a brilliant performer. I know. Why do you think he's backed away from it? I don't know.

I mean, it's interesting working with Kathy Burke, who's also backed away from performing quite a lot. I think probably, as an actor, you have so little control. You're essentially, especially if you're acting someone else's thing, you're sort of a puppet on a string about it. You can be represented in any way. You can be edited. You can be photographed. You can be...

And I think that element of passivity, if you're really smart, which Kathy and Chris both are, like, why would you put yourself through that when you can do your own thing and write your own thing, direct your own thing? I imagine that's part of it.

Yeah. Well, that makes sense. Best and worst plane trip. Just dropping that one. Best plane trip was probably the trip to LA to work with Sasha. It was the first time I'd ever flown first class. Oh, yeah. They got me a first upper class ticket on Virgin, me and Jesse.

And we enjoyed that. We just had a lot of laughter at the idea that we were turning left rather than right on the plane. And the idea that we were kind of in this now brave new world of the upper class, as it's called on Virgin Atlantic. Yeah, it's so naked. Because it was free, made it ten times as sweet if we paid for it or anything. Yeah, and did that ruin future transatlantic crossings? Oh, yeah, definitely.

We flew economy to Sundance for Lions, which was a long flight trapped with my knees against the chair in front yeah so it does ruin you but it was fun yeah maybe I call that the worst plane trip just because I can't think of another one flying to Sundance with my laptop which is too big for my economy table

for 12 hours you've never been in fear for your life on a plane? No thankfully are you a bad flyerer i was for a bit my mother was a stewardess on boac back in the day that's how she met my dad so presumably she didn't mind flying but i remember that when we used to travel when my dad took us abroad sometimes she got very nervous about flying she didn didn't like it at all. And I remember one time flying through what I recall as a valley of cloud at night.

And the whole thing was lit up dramatically as if it was from a film, sci-fi film or something, by branches of lightning coming out from the side of this valley. And we're flying down through the middle of it. But it was fairly alarming. And there was a lot of turbulence and there's wind and there was rain lashing the the window from these clouds around us it was very dramatic and everyone was quite quiet because they were frightened and all you could hear in the cabin was my mum sobbing. Oh, man. Because she thought we were fucked. That's not a good sound.

It's really not, is it? I didn't mind because I just thought, well, I was only eight or something. Right, you're not going to die. No one eight ever dies. No, we're not going to die. And I was even thinking through, like, I hope we do go down because then we're going to use the inflatable stairs.

Like in a movie. Yeah. we're going to use the inflatable stairs. Like in a movie. Yeah. We're going to use the slide. God, the dream. That's the dream, isn't it? Being on the slide. We're going to use the slide. First of all, it's going to be like a roller coaster heading down,

and then we're going to use the slide. I can't wait. I was disappointed when everything got calm. Here's a music question. are you a Bob Dylan guy sure Bob Dylan yeah why not yeah why not I love the bit

in that documentary where you know the Manchester Free Trade Hall gig this is Don't Look Back we're talking about

Don't Look Back but there's lots of footage in the Scorsese oh right because obviously it's a pivotal moment, but it's such a pivotal moment culturally as well. It's got so much resonance. So this is, if you're not a big Dylan fan, listeners,

1966, Dylan is playing in the UK. He's just gone electric. So the year before, having made his name as a fokey, playing his acoustic guitar and singing a mixture of traditional songs in the style and tradition of Woody Guthrie. He's singing some songs that are protest songs about civil rights, etc. And he's become a hero for the folk movement. And then suddenly on bringing it all back home and then Highway 61 highway 61 revisited he's he's got an electric sound he's embracing rock and so his gigs in the uk in 66 reflect that first half was an acoustic

performance him just doing his folky thing with his guitar and his harmonica then the second half his band would come on the hawks and they would play the newer stuff like a Rolling Stone, etc. Full on, loud, quite distorted sometimes, you know, but nothing that this folk audience was used to. to the extent that one night in Manchester, he'd just played Ballad of a Thin Man towards the end of the second half of the Electric set, and someone famously shouted, Judas! Because they felt they'd been portrayed by their folk hero. And there's this amazing footage of Dylan saying,

I don't believe you! And then he turns around, you can see him stepping away from the microphone looking at the band and and saying um play it fucking loud and they launch into like a rolling stone you know but this great footage of these young fresh-faced manchester gig goers coming out and sort of going i thought it was terrible he's rubbish and they're really articulate i'm not going to do them justice but it's so weird seeing these concert goers and they're so angry and they're like he lets down he betrayed us it was rubbish that wasn't music what he's playing in there it was

loud it was distorted it was terrible it's not what i paid to see and person after person they're so indignant so my question to you is would you have been one of the people because they're obviously there were some people who loved it would you have been one of the people, because obviously there were some people who loved it, would you have been one of the people, do you think, that would have embraced this new movement, the loud rock, distorted guitars, or would you have been like, no, no, we should carry on doing the nice things? I feel I would have been one of the moaning people.

Right. Because, you know, I bought my ticket. I had a nice evening of folk lined up with my thermos and my shortbread biscuits and my blanket and my spliff. And, you know, just do what's on the ticket, man. It's not all about you. I'm paying your wages. You know, I'm not...

It's like asking for panini and getting spaghetti but what if it's amazing electric spaghetti that you've never had before and you're just like wow he's showing me the way well you know then advertise a different show and i'll think about whether to come and see that but this is what i've paid for yeah that's it isn't it managing expectations should have said on the ticket this show will be in two halves the first an acoustic set and the second a loud amplified electric set with the hawks that's all i'm saying you could have avoided all those difficult emotions if you'd just given someone a leaflet to hand out as everyone came in yeah

well that's i guess the way it would have done. That's one of the many lessons that would have been learned from touring the UK. It's like, eh, next time we go back to the UK, we should make it really clear what we're going to be doing so nobody shouts Judas. The big takeaway is, you know, it's a lesson about advertising and publicity. Yeah.

I wonder which camp I would have been in. I think I probably would have been in the same complaining camp, like, no, no, no, it's not what we want. We want the nice things. When people go out, they want a night out. It's hard enough to arrange a night out the older you get. You want to go for a safe bet, don't you? Especially with Dylan, though.

I mean, nowadays, you go and see Dylan, you're going to be lucky if you recognise any of the songs. Yeah, I did. I did go and sit me out at the hall. Oh, did you? Yeah, a couple of years ago. How was it? It was... Challenging. Yeah.

It wasn't really that much fun. Yeah. I couldn't really hear any of the words. You should have shouted Judas. Yeah, I should have done. That would have sorted him out. Or maybe something a little bit more left-footed, like Doubting Thomas, another of the disciples.

That might have confused him a little bit. Don-field, like Doubting Thomas. Another of the disciples. Might have confused him a little bit. Don't go for the obvious one. John, you're John, the fisherman. What? No, play it fucking loud for that guy who said the confusing thing. This is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website, I see success. Yes, success.

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Yes. Hate. Continue. It's just sick listening to this rubbish now. Bob Dylan was a bastard in the second half. hey welcome back podcats that was the lovely sam bain talking to me way back in 2017 november 2017 ah the good old days. There were no real problems back then, were there? I'm very grateful to Sam for his time and for being cool with me having sat on the episode for so long

and being so badly organised. Thank you, Sam. It's a beautiful, quiet, still day out here in the Norfolk countryside towards the end of September 2023 and I am heading back to pack my bags for a trip to Kent where this week I'm going to do a few days work with Joe Mount of the band Matronomy. Joe has been my sometime musical collaborator over the last year or two, helping me to get some music together for my album.

Haven't made too much progress on the album in the last few months, but the plan is for me and Joe to really knuckle down and tidy up and finish off the bits and pieces I have so far so that we can get them out into the world where they will solve everybody's problems sometime next year. Thanks to those of you who got in touch to offer your services as guitar tutors, by the way, I really appreciate that. So far I have not started any lessons,

although I still intend to do so at some point. I have been practicing quite a bit more. Have I been improving? Hard to tell. Some days, I do think I'm getting better, but then what happens is I will try to play a song in front of another person, and then that's the real test and that that doesn't tend to go quite so well but i do have good fun on my own i'm getting better at playing lazy flies by beck that's from one of my favorite ever albums mutations you got that album god it's good i think of it as a kind of indie pop rock hunky dory and it was produced by nigel godrich who produces radiohead of course and i talked to nigel once about that record and mentioned hunky dory and And I might be getting this wrong, but he said,

yeah, I was trying to go for the same kind of feel, a very warm kind of twinkly, golden feel of production. That's what I get from it. So I'll give you a couple of quick podcast recommendations. One of them was my appearance on Films to be Buried With. You don't have to listen to my appearance, but I was on it. And Films to be Buried With is about films, and it's hosted by the actor and comedian Brett Goldstein, perhaps best known for his role in Ted Lasso. And he's got this podcast in which he talks to various people about the

films that they have loved most over the years in the wake of their imagined demise. And Joe Cornish has been on it. Lots of good people have been on it. Julian Barrett, he was on it. That was a good episode. Anyway, I had a good time and was honored to chat to Brett about, well, a lot of the same films that I've talked about before, if you've read my book, Alien, things like that I mentioned. But there's a few others that I don't think I've spoken about. You might get a couple of good recommendations if you're broadly sympathetic to the kind of things I enjoy. I got quite emotional. It doesn't take much to get me emotional these days.

I am all over the place. I was thinking the other day, like, if I ever get myself cancelled somehow and have to defend myself and do a sort of apology or I don't know what, it's going to be absolutely horrific. I'm going to completely come apart. Because I'm not really able to control my emotions when I do get emotional. It's an absolute disaster area. And I was telling Brett Goldstein about having watched the film Parenthood, the Ron Howard film, with my wife. My wife.

I was on the sofa one evening and Parenthood comes on and it was about halfway through. And it was this scene with a young Joaquin Phoenix phoning up his dad who was divorced from his mom. And I got really upset watching it. My wife was like, what the hell is wrong with you? Anyway, I was telling this story to Brett Goldstein. And then when I was telling the story, I got upset as well. Although they edited it, I listened back and they edited it quite sympathetically. So the worst of my

emotional skidding was excised. But I recommend the podcast. And also, speaking of getting emotional, I would recommend listening to the episode of Desert Island Discs with Adrian Edmondson, if you haven't heard it. I think you can listen to a kind of extended version on BBC Sounds. And my friend Garth sent me the link. I'm not on social media, so perhaps everyone is well aware of this episode of Desert Island Discs, and they've all been raving about it. Wouldn't be surprised.

It was a really good one. It's always an enjoyable show. Lauren does a great job, Lauren Laverne, interviewing people on there. But it was fantastic and very emotional. And I think Garth had sent me the link because he said, oh, hey, reminds me quite a lot of you and some of your stories about boarding school and your dad that's my garth impression and it's true there are a few similarities adrian edmondson who of course played vivian in the young ones and was rick male's comedy partner for a long time and is a great actor and comedian comic actor rather I should say he said I don't know I don't think of myself as a comedian anyway he was sent to boarding school as a young man and uh he was his mind was really scrambled by it like I think I've got a few hang-ups that I can

trace back to boarding school definitely but on the whole I didn't have too bad a time there I was lucky I made some good friends and and it was a nice place but it doesn't sound like it was so nice for Adrian he talks movingly about the impact that that had on his life and he talks about his relationship with his dad, which definitely rang a few bells. And then he talks about his friendship with Rick Mayall. And he gets very emotional. But in Desert Island Discs, they kept everything. They kept all the, like they didn't edit any of that out as far as I can tell.

I don't know, maybe they did, but all the kind of wobbly breathing when Adrian started to get emotional was kept in. But it's very moving indeed. And also the music choices were great. Downtown by Petula Clark. That's a song that I have never properly appreciated until I listened to it there. And I was listening on headphones when I was out at the shops, scanning my nuts in Tesco Metro, as I like to do. And Downtown comes on and suddenly I'm hearing it in headphones for the first time. What a song! Beautifully produced, romantic, emotional,

tuneful, lovely Petula Clark's voice. My dad used to hate Petula Clark. Petula Clark! I don't know what his problem with Petula Clark was. Anyway, perhaps he put me off, and I'd never really given Downtown its due. But what a lovely song. And then, what was the other one? Oh yeah, Bonzo Dog Doodah Band.

I'm bored. Never heard that before. That was amazing. Okay, I should get back. But thank you very much indeed, once again, to Sam Bain. Thanks to Seamusitchell for his production support and conversation editing on this episode thanks to helen green she does the artwork thank you to all at a cast who uh make it possible for me to continue doing the podcast but most of all

thanks to you i really appreciate you coming back and listening right to the end. And I would like to proffer a hug, if that's okay. I am approaching for a hug. I am extending my arms. The hug is happening now. Good to see you. Until next time Take it easy Take a deep breath

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Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Give me a little smile and a thumbs up. Like and subscribe. ស្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប Thank you. Bye.