Welcome back Hanif, from whatever it is that has preoccupied your attention.
It is a worry when the signal of someone with a reliable Internet presence and known health issues abruptly vanishes from the online spectrum. Thereafter you hope that their name won't turn up on the Explore tab of Twitter / X, which in general points either towards death or scandal, or a coincidental sharing of a surname with a Premier League footballer.
In a different life, under a different name, I would submit short stories to an event that existed at the time in London, New York and Hong Kong. There had been other incarnations that had come and gone but these were the three that were active. Occasionally something that I wrote would be accepted and an actor would give a performative reading. In a coup that was eventually stymied by the postponement of the New York event, I once managed to get three stories accepted for performance at the three different events in the same month. In my own quiet way I had gone international. It has been all downhill since then, but if that is the peak then I can live with it.
My involvement in these events began and ended with the writing. What the organiser/director and the chosen actor did with the piece was entirely their business. I liked the surrendering of creative control. I didn't think that I would, but I did. My stories were works of imagination. I wonder whether I would have been less willing to let them go if they had been penned from lived experience.
I made a point of attending the London events where I sat out of the way and made a mental note of what worked and what didn't. In terms of shining a bright light on your fuck ups, there is nothing quite like hearing your writing read back to you by somebody who knows what they are doing. Sometimes it was obvious that the actor had an interpretation of a character or a scene that differed from my own. I found that flattering; the suggestion that something I had created had a life beyond my own conception of it, and dimensions that had not been obvious to me but were apparent to others.
I had the ideal editorial experience working on the Hong Kong story. Very to the point notes – what is the function of this character? Is this sentence redundant? I appreciated that directed focus, guided by insight. I was able to work with that, bring the piece back under the word count and then go another round. I've never had any problems killing my darlings. When I am done writing this I will go back to gutting the short story that I am working on in the hope of making it more tonal. I am throwing away so much.
Reading your account of working in the theatre and on movies cements the idea that creative collaborations work best when the roles are clearly defined in advance. When the lines are not clear, or are blurred, or are shifted at the behest of one party, then it seldom bodes well.
I have been wondering how you are - two weeks have buzzed by but thankfully you have turned up this time with your account of working with directors and being one. You had to come out of each experience with something - and it does seem that building on each experience wasn't key as they were all so diverse. One of your insights (for me) is the difference between working alone and working with others - in this experience you are often forced in or out. Or as you say, you are invited to be involved. It certainly gives me a perspective on Directing. Now as I write this, Death on the Nile has reached its end - perhaps Agatha would have hated it who knows. Just checked her out and she died in 1976 and was born on my birthday! It is a cold March day and the run up to an early Easter - a time of reckoning up. Hope you are OK Hanif you and yours - is your life changing, the same - I finished the Mindfulness course this week which had me going and doing things didn't expect. Amazingly, we were a small group, just five, what is amazing you say - we are all bonded and staying in touch. Working with difficulty is one of the meditative practices and of course the first difficulty for me is me. So a great side effect of the process was relating to each other even though that wasn't the point - I really feel glad about that. I think throughout your story - your life story, this happens to you - your own experience and then the surrounding one. and then all of that. Well it's lurched from escape to the country to a garden rescue programme with Charlie D. a prompt for me to move about I think. Take lots of care Hanif so good to see a dispatch from you - Maddi from the little village x
This was fascinating for me to read as I write picture books. I have to hand my story over to illustrators, so know the feeling well of handing your work over to someone else's interpretation. At first, I found it threatening. But then I came to really enjoy what another creative mind and talent saw in the story. In the world of picture books, a good artist and art director create at least half the experience for the reader.
I wonder if the same doesn't happen with any other work of art. As a writer, one presumptuously thinks that the work they have written is 'theirs'. But that's not entirely true. In the case of fiction, each reader imagines most of the content, how the characters are, the voices, the landscape, and of course the meaning of the story. If it's a poem or a painting, or music, the response can still be more autonomous. It's not the first time that someone close to me congratulates me for such or such writing and asks for details about its origin or meaning. Most of the time, even though as an 'author' I believe to have more authority or control over the details of the work, I have received a rather cold response, bordering on disappointment when not contrary to my 'authorized' version. It's as if suddenly the cast of actors had changed, the tempo of the soundtrack, or the genre of the work.
Dealing with something as complex as a film would be for me like being on the front lines and at the same time being the commanding officer against an army of technicians and actors. Congratulations on your composure and talent, master.
I really enjoyed this piece. I guess a part of writing is having the bravery and clarity to stick to your perspective but also having the flexibility to accept other people's interpretations and ideas.
First & Foremost.. A brilliant & enlightening ‘memoir ! Am beyond delighted to have the privilege of discovering it.. after shovelling my neighbours driveway & the opportunity to read & reply ! A brief anecdote for you.. a promise to return with another - later .. and an invite to visit a Story Outline underway here on my site - with an explanation of how I wish to proceed in regard to Development & ideally into PreProduction & pursuant Post Production !
The anecdote is from years back & a hard charging DOP I’d never worked with - known as a very fast moving shooter - who’d apparently been warned I was a ‘know it all - writer - wannabe director’. I was on location when he arrived with assistant carrying a director’s chair.. How gracious ! Had a great laugh on seeing ‘Everyone’s a Director’ stencilled on the back !’ I offered it to the Producer & suggested the shooter grab a coffee & would spin him through the Day’s Settings lickedy split.. He started with his preferred action plan & I hit the coffee urn.. where he followed me still trying to talk.. “coffee first”
I’d ’written for the settings & available light progressions through the day.. and told him Sound Recording was ‘scratch track’ for later ‘looping’ John Boorman style as cicadas would fire up as temperature rose in the afternoon.. He was gobsmacked on seeing the Shotlist.. and that I’d make any Director’s Calls while acting as boom operator.. My Continuity Clerk needed to pick up her daughter at Daycare as did my Sound Recordist - at 5 PM so we’d be wrapped by 4 & no exception..
We worked together many times again - when he was available as he was a meticulous Owner Operator with Digital BetaCam & lightning quick handheld shooter.. like I am. We were done at 3:40.. and went for beers after on a sunny patio I knew .. mebbe there’s a moral to the tale.. ? This year the Cicadas will sing again.. in astonishing numbers in southern Ontario Canada.. as a coincidental hatch of the 7 & 12 year version is coming..
ps.. That location is nowhere near an Airport or Flight Route.. what a coincidence .. haha.. The Song Of The Cicadas.. ! 🦎🏴☠️🇨🇦
Having subscribed for a while to a Substack which only offered new writing every blue moon, it's clear that one does not really have to offer one's readers a weekly update. I also subscribe to Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from An American for which she writes every day. I unsubscribed to the less frequently written one, not only because the writing was so meager but because of what he did write - he emerged as a sort of twisted crank, so sad for me, I'd liked him as a writer of fiction. I am not saying he was the Hunter S Thompson of our times, either: that kind of twisted crank would have been engaging. So unless Mr Kureishi really abandons his subscribers, less frequent posts are okay. Not saying I don't miss reading him: I do.
I'm so glad that you are back, Mr. Kureishi and I was so happy to read about your work in film and the theatre. After seeing My Beautiful Launderette and London Kills Me I started to consider you as my favourite writer, even though I read your actual books only much later. Wishing you all the best from Budapest.
Greetings from Southern California, where my students at San Diego State University are reading The Buddha of Suburbia and watching My Beautiful Laundrette. Your post brought me back to my own theatre days, riddled with splinters from rolling around on the wooden floor of a dark chapel performing Picasso's Four Little Girls. Betcha didn't know that Picasso wrote plays too.
Fascinating insight of different processes writers/director work through and how you have to choose your battles wisely! After having read and seen the works mentioned, it is only as I get older I feel less precious about my writing and would consider being open to my work being rewritten in different ways! I’m not writing much at the moment as a new med is wreaking havoc on my concentration (celecoxib - an anti-inflammatory for my lower back and pelvis) and encouraging me to overshare so I’d better stop before I do 🤭So good to hear from you Hanif.
I remember, hanif, the whole mood and feel, the rough edges, of london kills me, and your almost desperate attempts to convey/be in the scene of those outsiders….which defines you from the start. I wonder what it would feel like to go back a million years and watch that film again, those times that were so very creative and free for the best, darker for those who were lost. A million years before globalization and its new conformities and monied values. You’ve done splendid work since, but that film seems to me closest to your dream of yourself…. (What do i know?)
Terrific piece, wonderful combination of vivid memoire and advice for other writers and directors. As a late comer to television I found directing the most painful process of my life. Aged 38 when I joined the BBC, I still wince at the hideous memory of old hand BBC film crews looking bleakly at me as I told them about my carefully thought our shot...
Bob Hoskins said that directing a film was "like being pecked to death by a flock of sparrers...you couldn't even go the khazi without some bleeder coming and asking you a question.."
Welcome back Hanif, from whatever it is that has preoccupied your attention.
It is a worry when the signal of someone with a reliable Internet presence and known health issues abruptly vanishes from the online spectrum. Thereafter you hope that their name won't turn up on the Explore tab of Twitter / X, which in general points either towards death or scandal, or a coincidental sharing of a surname with a Premier League footballer.
In a different life, under a different name, I would submit short stories to an event that existed at the time in London, New York and Hong Kong. There had been other incarnations that had come and gone but these were the three that were active. Occasionally something that I wrote would be accepted and an actor would give a performative reading. In a coup that was eventually stymied by the postponement of the New York event, I once managed to get three stories accepted for performance at the three different events in the same month. In my own quiet way I had gone international. It has been all downhill since then, but if that is the peak then I can live with it.
My involvement in these events began and ended with the writing. What the organiser/director and the chosen actor did with the piece was entirely their business. I liked the surrendering of creative control. I didn't think that I would, but I did. My stories were works of imagination. I wonder whether I would have been less willing to let them go if they had been penned from lived experience.
I made a point of attending the London events where I sat out of the way and made a mental note of what worked and what didn't. In terms of shining a bright light on your fuck ups, there is nothing quite like hearing your writing read back to you by somebody who knows what they are doing. Sometimes it was obvious that the actor had an interpretation of a character or a scene that differed from my own. I found that flattering; the suggestion that something I had created had a life beyond my own conception of it, and dimensions that had not been obvious to me but were apparent to others.
I had the ideal editorial experience working on the Hong Kong story. Very to the point notes – what is the function of this character? Is this sentence redundant? I appreciated that directed focus, guided by insight. I was able to work with that, bring the piece back under the word count and then go another round. I've never had any problems killing my darlings. When I am done writing this I will go back to gutting the short story that I am working on in the hope of making it more tonal. I am throwing away so much.
Reading your account of working in the theatre and on movies cements the idea that creative collaborations work best when the roles are clearly defined in advance. When the lines are not clear, or are blurred, or are shifted at the behest of one party, then it seldom bodes well.
I have been wondering how you are - two weeks have buzzed by but thankfully you have turned up this time with your account of working with directors and being one. You had to come out of each experience with something - and it does seem that building on each experience wasn't key as they were all so diverse. One of your insights (for me) is the difference between working alone and working with others - in this experience you are often forced in or out. Or as you say, you are invited to be involved. It certainly gives me a perspective on Directing. Now as I write this, Death on the Nile has reached its end - perhaps Agatha would have hated it who knows. Just checked her out and she died in 1976 and was born on my birthday! It is a cold March day and the run up to an early Easter - a time of reckoning up. Hope you are OK Hanif you and yours - is your life changing, the same - I finished the Mindfulness course this week which had me going and doing things didn't expect. Amazingly, we were a small group, just five, what is amazing you say - we are all bonded and staying in touch. Working with difficulty is one of the meditative practices and of course the first difficulty for me is me. So a great side effect of the process was relating to each other even though that wasn't the point - I really feel glad about that. I think throughout your story - your life story, this happens to you - your own experience and then the surrounding one. and then all of that. Well it's lurched from escape to the country to a garden rescue programme with Charlie D. a prompt for me to move about I think. Take lots of care Hanif so good to see a dispatch from you - Maddi from the little village x
This was fascinating for me to read as I write picture books. I have to hand my story over to illustrators, so know the feeling well of handing your work over to someone else's interpretation. At first, I found it threatening. But then I came to really enjoy what another creative mind and talent saw in the story. In the world of picture books, a good artist and art director create at least half the experience for the reader.
I wonder if the same doesn't happen with any other work of art. As a writer, one presumptuously thinks that the work they have written is 'theirs'. But that's not entirely true. In the case of fiction, each reader imagines most of the content, how the characters are, the voices, the landscape, and of course the meaning of the story. If it's a poem or a painting, or music, the response can still be more autonomous. It's not the first time that someone close to me congratulates me for such or such writing and asks for details about its origin or meaning. Most of the time, even though as an 'author' I believe to have more authority or control over the details of the work, I have received a rather cold response, bordering on disappointment when not contrary to my 'authorized' version. It's as if suddenly the cast of actors had changed, the tempo of the soundtrack, or the genre of the work.
Dealing with something as complex as a film would be for me like being on the front lines and at the same time being the commanding officer against an army of technicians and actors. Congratulations on your composure and talent, master.
Quite aside from that delicious piece of writing, the photos of you! That face, your hair, such telling expressions. Absolutely gorgeous 💞
I really enjoyed this piece. I guess a part of writing is having the bravery and clarity to stick to your perspective but also having the flexibility to accept other people's interpretations and ideas.
First & Foremost.. A brilliant & enlightening ‘memoir ! Am beyond delighted to have the privilege of discovering it.. after shovelling my neighbours driveway & the opportunity to read & reply ! A brief anecdote for you.. a promise to return with another - later .. and an invite to visit a Story Outline underway here on my site - with an explanation of how I wish to proceed in regard to Development & ideally into PreProduction & pursuant Post Production !
The anecdote is from years back & a hard charging DOP I’d never worked with - known as a very fast moving shooter - who’d apparently been warned I was a ‘know it all - writer - wannabe director’. I was on location when he arrived with assistant carrying a director’s chair.. How gracious ! Had a great laugh on seeing ‘Everyone’s a Director’ stencilled on the back !’ I offered it to the Producer & suggested the shooter grab a coffee & would spin him through the Day’s Settings lickedy split.. He started with his preferred action plan & I hit the coffee urn.. where he followed me still trying to talk.. “coffee first”
I’d ’written for the settings & available light progressions through the day.. and told him Sound Recording was ‘scratch track’ for later ‘looping’ John Boorman style as cicadas would fire up as temperature rose in the afternoon.. He was gobsmacked on seeing the Shotlist.. and that I’d make any Director’s Calls while acting as boom operator.. My Continuity Clerk needed to pick up her daughter at Daycare as did my Sound Recordist - at 5 PM so we’d be wrapped by 4 & no exception..
We worked together many times again - when he was available as he was a meticulous Owner Operator with Digital BetaCam & lightning quick handheld shooter.. like I am. We were done at 3:40.. and went for beers after on a sunny patio I knew .. mebbe there’s a moral to the tale.. ? This year the Cicadas will sing again.. in astonishing numbers in southern Ontario Canada.. as a coincidental hatch of the 7 & 12 year version is coming..
ps.. That location is nowhere near an Airport or Flight Route.. what a coincidence .. haha.. The Song Of The Cicadas.. ! 🦎🏴☠️🇨🇦
Really interesting piece - especially as I’ve read all the stories and seen all the films - and the pictures are great. Merci ☺️
Having subscribed for a while to a Substack which only offered new writing every blue moon, it's clear that one does not really have to offer one's readers a weekly update. I also subscribe to Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from An American for which she writes every day. I unsubscribed to the less frequently written one, not only because the writing was so meager but because of what he did write - he emerged as a sort of twisted crank, so sad for me, I'd liked him as a writer of fiction. I am not saying he was the Hunter S Thompson of our times, either: that kind of twisted crank would have been engaging. So unless Mr Kureishi really abandons his subscribers, less frequent posts are okay. Not saying I don't miss reading him: I do.
Looking forward to seeing the play (or film) about life after a spinal cord injury…
I'm so glad that you are back, Mr. Kureishi and I was so happy to read about your work in film and the theatre. After seeing My Beautiful Launderette and London Kills Me I started to consider you as my favourite writer, even though I read your actual books only much later. Wishing you all the best from Budapest.
Good piece Hanif. See you very soon xxx Nige
Greetings from Southern California, where my students at San Diego State University are reading The Buddha of Suburbia and watching My Beautiful Laundrette. Your post brought me back to my own theatre days, riddled with splinters from rolling around on the wooden floor of a dark chapel performing Picasso's Four Little Girls. Betcha didn't know that Picasso wrote plays too.
Fascinating insight of different processes writers/director work through and how you have to choose your battles wisely! After having read and seen the works mentioned, it is only as I get older I feel less precious about my writing and would consider being open to my work being rewritten in different ways! I’m not writing much at the moment as a new med is wreaking havoc on my concentration (celecoxib - an anti-inflammatory for my lower back and pelvis) and encouraging me to overshare so I’d better stop before I do 🤭So good to hear from you Hanif.
Much love,
Kate xx
I remember, hanif, the whole mood and feel, the rough edges, of london kills me, and your almost desperate attempts to convey/be in the scene of those outsiders….which defines you from the start. I wonder what it would feel like to go back a million years and watch that film again, those times that were so very creative and free for the best, darker for those who were lost. A million years before globalization and its new conformities and monied values. You’ve done splendid work since, but that film seems to me closest to your dream of yourself…. (What do i know?)
Terrific piece, wonderful combination of vivid memoire and advice for other writers and directors. As a late comer to television I found directing the most painful process of my life. Aged 38 when I joined the BBC, I still wince at the hideous memory of old hand BBC film crews looking bleakly at me as I told them about my carefully thought our shot...
Bob Hoskins said that directing a film was "like being pecked to death by a flock of sparrers...you couldn't even go the khazi without some bleeder coming and asking you a question.."