I didn't think it was a speech. An email to drama colleagues i thought.

Paul

 To Policy Network colleagues - some of you may be interested in the
> attached speech by Tony Garnett, circulated by my colleague, Cahal
> McLaughlin. It is rather long, so apologies for that - but it resonates
> with many of our concerns.
>
> If anyone saw the Simon Gray evening on BBC4 last night, it will seem even
> more resonant.
>
> best
>
> Máire
>
> ***********************************************
> Dear all,
>
>
> A very pertinent speech by well know tv drama producer Tony Garnett that
> might interest you.
>
>
> Cahal
>
>
> Dr.Cahal McLaughlin
>
> Senior Lecturer
>
> School of Media, Film and Journalism
>
> University of Ulster
>
> Coleraine
>
> Cromore Road
>
> BT52 1SA
>
> 00 44 (0)28703 24018
>
>>
>> Tony Garnett on television drama
>>
>> How to kill creativity while claiming to help it grow: a lesson in
>> New Labour double-think.
>>
>> "...that system is living, in so far as it can endure sustained
>> contradiction. " Hegel
>> If you want to make dramatic fiction for the screen, you must first
>> strangle your creative impulses. The alternative is even more
>> painful. It is to put your creativity at the service of the formula
>> and take instructions from the executive apparatchiks. They need to
>> feed off your creativity, because they have none, and to control it
>> because they are told to.
>>
>> This totalitarian micro-management is not confined to just one area
>> of television - nor even to television. It's just the one I know
>> best. It grew up in the Thatcher years as the bosses recovered
>> their self confidence, and new management was encouraged to crack
>> the whip. It has achieved its apotheosis in the grand years of New
>> Labour's incursion of the market principle into every crevice of
>> our public services. We cannot understand what is happening in
>> screen drama, unless we place it in the context of the wider society.
>>
>> Working in film, whether independent or mainstream cinema, is like
>> dancing through a mine field; and every commercial broadcaster is
>> now racing down market in a desperate attempt to survive. But what
>> is happening at the BBC is the real scandal: because the
>> organisation is bigger than all the rest combined, it is free from
>> direct commercial pressure and its public service obligations carry
>> cultural responsibilities. So there are no excuses.
>>
>> You need a true flair for the perverse to ignore real problems,
>> then to identify as problems those processes which are in fact
>> working well enough. But it takes real genius to apply solutions to
>> these fictional problems in a way which actually does create real
>> problems. Only management consultants, at many thousands of pounds
>> a day, have such chutzpah, and they self-servingly call their
>> alleged solutions Best Practice, because they know they will be
>> called in again to solve the very problems they have just created.
>>
>> At least, in the Seventies (if Huw Weldon's possibly apocryphal
>> story is correct), the consultants were more honest. He recalled
>> being asked by the consultants' top man just how many decision
>> makers there were in the BBC. Decision makers? Yes - people who
>> actually have the power to decide what you make, the core products,
>> for example. So Huw pondered how many producers there were, then
>> came up with a figure of maybe several hundreds, all told. The
>> consultant went white and said, "Just as I thought. I'm afraid that
>> in that case, there is nothing I can do to help you, Mr Weldon."
>>
>> The decision the BBC made in the Eighties, as it attempted to
>> impress its political masters, was to increase the height of the
>> management pyramid, instead of flattening it out. This allowed it
>> to claim that it was becoming more professional, tough-minded and
>> responsible. After Alasdair Milne was sacked and John Birt achieved
>> power, this centralisation was accelerated. By the time New Labour
>> got into its stride, Birt had consultants all over the BBC like a
>> rash. As an institution, it now fitted in perfectly with the
>> ideology of the day. It is no accident that Birt's two jobs since
>> have been at No 10 and at McKinsey's.
>>
>> In fact, though, Birt has been unfairly turned into a wicked uncle.
>> The truth is more nuanced. He was resolute and brave in his
>> attempts to bring some proper financial discipline into a
>> ramshackle system. The Gentlemen did not wish to be turned into
>> Players. He was percipient about New Media and the imminent
>> upheavals the Internet would bring, and made sure that the BBC had
>> a head start. It is now reaping the benefits of his detached
>> understanding of the technology. His problem (in addition to a
>> charisma bypass, and an inability to charm and persuade), was to
>> have faith in out of date management theories about structure. So
>> under him, layer upon layer of supervision and new job descriptions
>> were piled onto the programme makers. The old joke that the BBC
>> would be an efficient, well oiled machine if it were not for the
>> pesky programme-makers, seemed to be taken seriously at the top.
>> Better to get rid of them all together, and if that were
>> impractical, at least, supervise the life out of them. It was
>> complicated, because by the Eighties, there was a lot of complacent
>> dead wood in Drama. It was a slack outfit needing a clear out and
>> some inspiring leadership. It got neither, just more irrelevant
>> bureaucratic supervision from senior management.
>>
>> The BBC did become a recognisably modern outfit, at least if you
>> looked at the management charts. The pyramid was tall, reporting
>> was clear right up to the Director General ,and power was where it
>> should safely be, with the grown ups in senior management.
>>
>> There was only one problem. This sort of control is the enemy of
>> creativity. The more you have, the more difficult it is for artists
>> to do original work. This is not to argue against all controls. If
>> your work needs lots of money both to make and to distribute, you
>> should expect to work exactly to an agreed budget and to deliver
>> roughly what you promised. But the main effect of the kind of
>> supervision which penetrates into the details of productions,
>> leading to artistic decisions being made further up the hierarchy,
>> is to stifle the creativity which the organisation is supposed to
>> be encouraging.
>>
>> Senior management still does not understand that detailed
>> supervision by more and more layers, reporting to more and more
>> senior executives, does not result in higher standards. A writer
>> will get notes from a story editor and a producer anyway. The real
>> motive must be neurotic control borne out of fear. Let's make sure
>> everything is safe with no embarrassing surprises. Better to
>> squeeze the life out of it than run the slightest risk of getting
>> into trouble.
>>
>> Let's see how that looks, not from the eagle's perch but from the
>> worm's eye view, the writer. We assume he or she has an idea for a
>> renewable one hour series (that is what they want to buy these days).
>>
>> A pitch is worked up and taken to the BBC executive. There will be
>> some discussion. Could the characters be skewed young? Well,
>> considering they are senior hospital consultants, it might be
>> difficult to go very young, but we will try. I don't mind where
>> it's set, really - I don't want to be prescriptive - but perhaps
>> somewhere other than London? Manchester would be good - it suits
>> our regional production strategy. Could we have a bit of ethnic
>> spread, too, and an attractive woman? And so on. Eventually a pilot
>> script may be commissioned. The writer has a few weeks of bliss,
>> the only time alone with the characters. Then the producer gives
>> notes on the first draft and another is written. It goes to the
>> BBC. Long delay. Maybe months. They are very busy. Then notes from
>> the commissioning editor. After a tactical discussion with the
>> producer about how to avoid alienating the editor, yet stop these
>> silly notes killing the project, a new draft is written. It is
>> submitted. Further long delay. Then more notes, possibly by same
>> editor, or with luck, a higher executive. Finally another meeting,
>> possibly with the writer not present - we can speak more frankly,
>> can't we? More notes, but contradicting the previous ones. First
>> editor now fulsomely backs his boss. The higher you go the more
>> valuable your ideas. Naturally. Yet another draft, or two. More
>> long delays. The senior editor is in America or on away days or
>> waiting to speak to the Controller.
>> You are now maybe two years in. If you are lucky, the show is
>> green lit. But don't think you can just go off and make it. The
>> problem is not the gap between the scale of the production the BBC
>> requires and the budget they allocate. You are used to putting a
>> quart into a pint pot. It is the refusal to accept your suggestion
>> of a writer for episode four and the directors who are turned down.
>> The demand is for someone coming off a hit, someone in fashion, the
>> flavour of the month. They need to be reassured, so if you are hot
>> you work, if you are not, you are rejected. The pool to pick from
>> naturally reduces. Various 'stars' are suggested, all miscast and
>> most not even stars. There is no point arguing. Of course, the BBC
>> did not invent this system. They copied it from the Hollywood
>> studios. The only difference is that in Hollywood, the poor writer
>> gets jerked around, but he ends up with a swimming pool. Eventually
>> a compromise is negotiated. The producer naturally sees the
>> brilliance of their ideas, so the production starts.
>>
>> There are notes on rushes. Notes on each cut. An executive presence
>> at the each stage of post production. Eventually the show is
>> delivered.
>>
>> This experience is typical. Sometimes it is smoother, sometimes it
>> is worse. It often takes about three years.
>>
>> Remember, these executives are mainly benign people with good
>> intentions, keen to work hard and to achieve. Many are intelligent,
>> some even talented. If they were working properly in the industry,
>> learning their trade, they would become good producers. But what
>> they do is largely unnecessary. They put spanners in the works. In
>> their place should be an experienced grown up whose help would be
>> welcomed, who knows when to do nothing, and whose taste is
>> informed. People like this are difficult to find. But we would need
>> very few of them. This sits uncomfortably with New Labour busyness.
>>
>> The trajectory of energy is in the wrong direction. Instead of
>> erupting upwards in ways which surprise, delight and occasionally
>> shock, it travels censoriously and prescriptively down the pyramid.
>> The writer is left to second guess what might please the power at
>> the top in a grotesque game of pass-the-parcel, of notes that, as
>> they travel from hand to hand, change their meaning on the way.
>>
>> Note-giving is both an art and a craft. It must happen in an
>> atmosphere of earned trust and approval if it is to avoid defensive
>> resistance. It must be specific and concrete. "Make it funnier"
>> will not do. Nor will half-understood jargon from a weekend
>> screenwriters' course. Talk of "narrative arcs" and "epiphanies" ,
>> and the writer will politely nod and go home to stare thoughtfully
>> at the gas oven.
>>
>> The problem is that all executives think they know how to read a
>> screenplay. They were taught to read at school, after all, and have
>> even written stuff. Now e-mails, mostly. They've seen plenty of
>> drama and have strong opinions. Power seems to confirm their
>> ability. I have watched Channel Controllers come and go, over fifty
>> years. Few started in Drama, but something magical happens the
>> moment they are appointed. They instantly become authoritative
>> experts not only on scripts but (especially) on casting. Producers
>> who spend their lives learning about these matters are, of course,
>> humbly grateful for their advice.
>>
>> If the producer does not heed it, the best that can happen is the
>> show is cancelled. The worst is the producer, thought to be too
>> difficult, finds new commissions even more elusive. This is a
>> commercial relationship now in a buyers' market. Behave as the
>> buyer wishes, or get another job. Much better to make the director
>> you think is wrong for the job work, with an actor neither of you
>> wanted, on a screenplay of which the writer is now ashamed.
>>
>> The reality is that over the last twenty five years, producers have
>> lost their role. All the important decisions have been stolen by
>> executives, not because they are now making the shows, but because
>> they have the power. They have reached down, taken the "what" and
>> the "who" questions and answered them to their own satisfaction,
>> leaving the producer with the responsibility for the "how"
>> questions. In army terms, there is a vast officer class, well
>> decorated - you only have to see them strutting proudly at awards
>> ceremonies - with the producer, now an NCO, out on location with
>> the crew, trying to win the war, but hindered by friendly fire.
>>
>> Traditionally, producers could only justify themselves by showing
>> that they had taste, sympathetic detachment, leadership skills and
>> above all the confidence to devolve their own power further down
>> the line, giving room to the writers, directors, actors, DOP's,
>> editors and so on. The very best had a vision for a show which they
>> were able to share with the vision of others. Helping to meld
>> everyone's creativity into an artistic whole is different from
>> handing down diktats from on high, even if they are dressed up as
>> helpful suggestions. Of the three promises you should be wary of,
>> two are of a sexual nature and the third is, "hello, I'm from head
>> office and I'm here to help you." Run for your life.
>>
>> There is a case to be made for the existence of producers, then, by
>> the other creative elements. But there is also a case for their
>> abolition. They were introduced to the BBC by Sydney Newman in the
>> early Sixties. Before that directors carried it all, with the
>> minimum of detailed supervision from Heads of Departments. Like
>> everyone, producers need to be seen to be useful in the eyes of
>> their peers. But the BBC's gradual move to abolish them is another
>> matter. That will be a consequence of management's victory in the
>> campaign to take all decisions as far up the institution and as far
>> away from the creative community as possible.
>>
>> Writers are becoming executives' scribes. Directors are mere bus
>> drivers: only they have the skills to handle such a big vehicle,
>> but they are told which route, where to stop and who is to travel
>> on the bus. Inspectors are never far away to check up on any use of
>> the imagination.
>>
>> To commission a project well you have to predict what a Controller
>> will need a year or more in advance and what an audience will
>> respond to, not always the same thing; and do this on the evidence
>> of a pitch and a few personalities. In addition now are required to
>> micro manage all aspects of a production, expected to give detailed
>> notes on scripts, direction, performances, editing and other
>> technical matters. This would be an impossibly tall order for even
>> the most sophisticated and experienced practitioners. The present
>> commissioners pick up what they can from the professionals they
>> supervise, but they are on a hiding to nothing. Instead they
>> concentrate on the dark arts of executive survival. One day they
>> will wake up and admit that they are just junior cops in a
>> conspiracy to corral creativity and neutralise spontaneity. They
>> will be sad.
>>
>> So the next time you watch a fine piece of TV drama, grateful for
>> the brilliance of the writer, the director, the actors and the
>> crew, remember the aggravation they had to endure and the guile
>> they had to deploy and the energy they had to waste. You will no
>> longer be puzzled at how rare this experience is or be surprised at
>> the formulaic, repetitive, machine made, emotionally dishonest junk
>> food you now get for your license fee. The people making most of
>> this predictable junk called drama would love to be creating
>> something better and more nourishing. But they are not allowed to.
>>
>> They are herded together on an assembly line and given specific
>> functions to perform. They have little choice because high volume
>> shows provide most of the work now. Everyone likes some junk food
>> occasionally. It is immediately satisfying, cheap and addictive. So
>> what that it doesn't nourish you, might even be bad for you with
>> all that fat, sugar and salt? Lighten up, a bit now and again will
>> not kill you. But over the last decade or so the BBC, in perhaps
>> its worst public service dereliction, has skewed its money and
>> airtime decisively towards high volume junk which runs across the
>> year. In addition to "Eastenders" and "Casualty", it now has "Holby
>> City" and numerous other lengthy series. There are very few single
>> pieces or mini series, the kind of original writers' work where a
>> voice can communicate directly with an audience. The BBC has the
>> duty and the resources to make a full range of programmes, but in
>> this shift in balance they expose their opportunistic cynicism.
>> Ratings are their default argument, as though this were the only
>> criterion. By opting to get an audience the easy way they short
>> change both the audience and the programme makers. Better to pack
>> them in with junk. Cost per thousand viewers cannot lie. But a high
>> volume show is a branch of manufacturing. The artists are put at
>> the service of the product. Watch them and weep. They are usually
>> set in a place called Holby and run throughout the year. You will
>> occasionally see bursting out of the bland predictability a scene
>> written, acted and even directed with originality and verve and
>> emotional honesty. It must have escaped being ironed out by the
>> machine.
>>
>> Before the BBC corrupted itself and became just another marketing
>> exercise, it understood that its business was not the
>> commodification of ersatz culture. It understood that we make sense
>> of the world, and of each other, through the telling of stories.
>> The more these stories are authenticated by an author, the more
>> emotionally truthful, the more complex they are, the richer the
>> society which encourages them. The more they are taken from the
>> shelf, unfelt, manipulative and false, the poorer the society which
>> lazily allows them. The BBC, for all its faults, used to take its
>> leading role in our culture seriously. It knew that the very health
>> of a society depended on the quality of its national debate and it
>> knew that the storyteller was a central force in that debate.
>>
>> Now, every night, we die a little as we suffer what cynically they
>> call entertainment. They fail to realise that good work is more
>> than that. It lives and feeds our minds long after the
>> entertainment fades.
>>
>> The senior management at the BBC simply do not understand the
>> creative act. This would be a deficiency in any organisation, but
>> in one for which it is the main raison d'etre, it is crippling.
>>
>> In particular, they do not realise that an artist is childlike, not
>> childish. Good parents will erect boundaries, around personal
>> safety, for instance, but will leave room for the children's
>> imagination to flourish. The children, with few material resources,
>> will invent elaborate worlds, not knowing from one moment to the
>> next where their actions will lead. No matter if some prove to be
>> cul de sacs. They will start over and go in another direction. This
>> creative absorption needs room and time. The parents should not
>> interfere, preferably not even eavesdrop. The results are magical
>> and satisfying, not least in the healthy growth of the child.
>>
>> Anal retentive, anxious parents help and stifle. They know best.
>> They cannot relax and trust. They are prescriptive. Play becomes a
>> duty, imagination becomes second hand, the goal of the children
>> degenerates into guessing what will please the parents and earn
>> praise. It is no fun, but the child has to pretend it is fun,
>> because the parent insists that is what it is. In fact it is a
>> lifeless desert. Spontaneity is dead. But the world is safe from
>> the children's journey into the unknown. Dictators first kill the
>> imagination. For the people's good.
>>
>> The BBC management in a previous age existed in another social and
>> political context. There was much to criticise ( and I did ) but
>> when it worked it was largely management by benign neglect. They
>> had the confidence for that. It may have left many problems
>> unattended, but it allowed creativity to breathe, calmly accepted
>> that failure was one of the prices of success and had faith enough
>> in its people not to micromanage them. They were paternalistic, but
>> they had the good sense not to continually open the oven door to
>> check if the soufflé was behaving itself.
>>
>> A personal memory from the Seventies will illustrate the point.
>> Standing at the BBC bar, my Head of Department, Gerald Savory, was
>> also ordering a drink. Haven't seen you for a while, he said. What
>> was I up to? About to go out on location to shoot a couple of films
>> for you, Gerald, was my reply. Who are the writers? There are no
>> writers. What are they about? I don't know yet. The directors will
>> work that up with a few actors over the next few weeks. Oh... well,
>> who are the actors? No one you've ever heard of, Gerald. Who have
>> you got directing? Clutching at straws by now. Just a couple of
>> lads you wouldn't know. What have they done? Nothing really, a low
>> budget little film no one's seen. But I think they have something.
>> Well... Jolly good luck. The next time we spoke was when he saw the
>> finished films.
>>
>> The point is not that all shows were made like this, but that it
>> was possible at all. The directors, by the way, were Les Blair, who
>> went on to have a distinguished career directing "Law and Order", G
>> F Newman's mini series, among many others, and Mike Leigh, who
>> didn't exactly fade away either. Without the BBC neither would have
>> been given a chance to explore their style, creating work in their
>> own way. Would they get a chance in today's BBC? A centralised
>> structure where there are many who can say no and only one who can
>> say yes results in a narrowing of taste on the screen. We need a
>> range of sensibilities at work. This can only be achieved if power
>> to commission and transmit is passed down to more people. The
>> writers will have more chance to find a sympathetic ear and the
>> audience will have a bigger range of tastes to sample.
>>
>> Unfortunately, the BBC hired McKinsey's and ended up as
>> MacDonald's. It used to hold a subtle creative tension between the
>> writer and the audience. The writer was pressed into reaching for a
>> large audience, straining to be both serious and popular; the
>> audience was invited to try the unfamiliar, to be challenged and
>> disturbed, not just spoon fed with the pre-digested and familiar.
>> It was a nuanced, complex relationship. Now the BBC aspires to be
>> Proctor and Gamble. It doesn't take ads for soap flakes. Instead,
>> it makes its programmes as though they were soap flakes. When a
>> senior executive says, without shame or the merest blush, that they
>> do not believe in authors, they believe in strategy, what she means
>> is that they follow the advice of the marketing executives who have
>> pored over focus group results. The programme makers are then
>> instructed to construct a series which will attract young men,
>> because that is the strategy; or told that a show will not be
>> renewed because the large and appreciative audience is too old, and
>> that is against current strategy. The game now is not about the
>> writers having the freedom to make their sense of the world; it is
>> about creating products and brands which the research has indicated
>> will sell.
>>
>> But even on its own depressing criteria, the BBC is failing to
>> embrace the new and the young and the technology - words which give
>> them all an erection at Television Centre. Its early lead in the
>> Internet has become bogged down in supporting traditional
>> television. The internet is not just a new means of distribution
>> and exhibition any more than broadcasting was. That started by
>> putting cameras on West End theatrical plays, but soon creative
>> people were discovering ways of telling stories which were peculiar
>> to television. It broke away from the cinema and the theatre and
>> became itself. The same will happen on the internet. So why hasn't
>> the BBC voted some real money to Drama, instructing them to
>> commission directly for the Internet, in a two footed leap into the
>> future? No one knows what that future will be like, until they try,
>> fail, fail better and then come up with something wonderful and in
>> retrospect obvious. We don't know what sort of stories will work,
>> at what length, with what, if any, audience participation.
>> Individual devices can connect in real time, with each audience
>> member experiencing the same story. Stories can be broken up into
>> different POV's. And so on. At the moment there is no adequate
>> revenue model, so the brave souls who have experimented are not
>> being encouraged. What is stopping the BBC? Why not a batch of low
>> budget dramas made for the internet, focusing on ideas, innovation,
>> the writer and the actor, not the technology, nor the production
>> values? Then broadcast them if you like. But broadcasting is over.
>> It will survive on the internet in a different form. Perhaps the
>> ideology of senior management does not encompass the creative
>> entrepreneur. Like their New Labour masters, they talk the talk of
>> modernity, but deep down they are traditionalists.
>>
>> The BBC is porous. It makes the culture but also the wider culture
>> makes it. Over the past decades there has been a renegotiation
>> between producer and consumer interests throughout society. It
>> continues, made more difficult by the fact that each individual is
>> at work a producer and at leisure a consumer, shifting attitudes
>> accordingly. Guiding and policing this renegotiation have been a
>> priority for New Labour, and consultants from the private sector
>> have seen rich pickings beckoning them into the public sector. We
>> should not deny the reality of the renegotiation, nor the attendant
>> problems. We should regret the policies adopted. They are worse
>> than the disease they purport to cure.
>>
>> I could have written this piece with few changes if I had been a
>> nurse, a teacher, a social worker, a cop or almost anyone in the
>> front line of any public service.
>>
>> I am not suggesting that the lunatics should take over the asylum
>> from the lunatics who now run it. I am suggesting that now, in what
>> one hopes are the death throes of the New Labour diversion, we have
>> an opportunity to slough off totalitarian management, solve our
>> problems in a creative way and let joy replace fear in our national
>> broadcaster.
>>
>> Let the children play.
>>
>> © Tony Garnett 2009
>>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
> Máire Messenger Davies, PhD, FRSA (Professor)
> Director, Centre for Media Research,
> School of Media, Film and Journalism
> University of Ulster
> Cromore Rd, Coleraine BT52 1SA
> Telephone: +44(0)28324069
> www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/media/cmr.html
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> MeCCSA Policy mailing list
> W: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/meccsa-policy.html
>
> Please visit this page to browse list's archives, or to join or leave the
> list.
>
>




Companies Act 2006 : http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/companyinfo

-------------------------------------------------
MeCCSA Policy mailing list
W: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/meccsa-policy.html

Please visit this page to browse list's archives, or to join or leave the list.