This Cultural Life

BBC Radio 4
  • 4.9 (42)
  • PERSONAL JOURNALS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY
This Cultural Life

In-depth conversations with some of the world's leading artists and creatives across theatre, visual arts, music, dance, film and more. Hosted by John Wilson.

  1. Thelma Schoonmaker

    NOV 7

    Thelma Schoonmaker

    Thelma Schoonmaker has, for over five decades, been Martin Scorsese’s cutting room collaborator. Having edited his first feature film in 1967, she has worked on every Scorsese movie since Raging Bull, including Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed, Wolf Of Wall Street, right up to his most recent features The Irishman and Killers Of The Flower Moon. As the widow of the legendary British filmmaker Michael Powell, she has also played a key role in the restoration of classic Powell and Pressburger films including The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus and A Matter Of Life And Death. Thelma Schoonmaker has won three Academy Awards, more than any other film editor. Thelma tells John Wilson how enrolling on a six week film making course as a young graduate in New York led to her meeting and helping Martin Scorsese edit a short film he was making. He then asked her to edit his 1967 feature film debut, Who's That Knocking at My Door and their partnership began in earnest. She recalls how she and Scorsese were part of the editing team on Michael Wadleigh's music festival documentary, Woodstock for which she received her first an Oscar nomination for Best Film Editing - the first documentary ever to be nominated in that category. Thelma reveals the process of working with Scorsese in the cutting room and how, through him, she met her late husband Michael Powell, whose films with Emeric Pressburger, both she and Scorsese had so admired from childhood. Producer: Edwina Pitman Archive and music used: The Red Shoes, Powell & Pressburger, 1948 Who's That Knocking at My Door, Martin Scorsese, 1967 I Can't Explain, The Who, Live at Woodstock, 1969 See Me. Feel Me, The Who, Live at Woodstock, 1969 Star Spangled Banner, Jimi Hendrix, Live at Woodstock, 1969 Raging Bull, Martin Scorsese, 1980 Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie-editing, BBC4, 30 August 2005 Passion: Music for The Last Temptation of Christ, Peter Gabriel Sunshine of Your Love, Cream Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana, Pietro Mascagni Love Is Strange, Mickey & Sylvia Layla, Derek & The Dominos A Matter of Life and Death, Powell & Pressburger, 1946 Michael and Martin, BBC Radio 4, 30 June 2005

    44 min
  2. Bill Nighy

    OCT 31

    Bill Nighy

    A star of stage and screen, Bill Nighy has enjoyed a fifty year career and is now among Britain’s most prolific and much loved actors. Acclaimed for National Theatre roles in plays by David Hare and Tom Stoppard, his popular appeal lies with scene-stealing appearances in films including Pirates Of The Caribbean, Harry Potter and, most famously, Love Actually. Bill Nighy has won Bafta and Golden Globe awards and was Oscar nominated for his starring role in the 2022 historical drama Living. His most recent film is Joy in which he plays obstetrician Patrick Steptoe, one of the pioneers of fertility treatment. Bill Nighy talks to John Wilson about some of the earliest influences on his career including a school drama teacher. He also recalls joining the Liverpool Everyman rep company in the 1970s and the influence of playwright David Hare who cast him in many of his works including Pravda, The Vertical Hour and Skylight. Producer: Edwina Pitman

    43 min
  3. Julie Taymor

    OCT 24

    Julie Taymor

    Theatre, opera and film director Julie Taymor is regarded as one of the most imaginative directors and designers working today. Her stage version of the Lion King is the highest grossing show in Broadway history, having made nearly $2 billion, and it recently marked its 25th year in London. The Lion King Julie two Tony Awards, including for best director of a musical in 1997, making her the first woman to do so. Julie Taymor has told Shakespearean stories on stage and the big screen including Titus, starring Anthony Hopkins and The Tempest with Helen Mirren. Her film credits also include Frida, a biopic of painter Frida Kahlo, and the Beatles jukebox musical movie Across The Universe. She tells John Wilson how seeing Rashomon, Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film, as a teenager, was a formative cultural experience. Kurosawa's ingenious approach to narrative opened her eyes for the first time about the possibilities of innovative storytelling. She also recalls how her travels around Indonesia and Bali after graduation, and in particular, witnessing a ceremony in the isolated Balinese village of Trunyan have had a profound impact on her work as a designer and director. Julie reveals how she came up with the ground-breaking concept and some of the designs for the stage version of Disney's The Lion King. She also gives her opinion on some of the difficulties faced by the ill-fated Broadway musical Spider Man: Turn Off The Dark, on which she was co-writer and director until being replaced during its previews. The production, which featured music and lyrics by Bono and The Edge of U2, was ridden with technical and financial problems, and resulted in several legal disputes. Producer: Edwina Pitman

    43 min
  4. Hanif Kureishi

    OCT 17

    Hanif Kureishi

    Novelist, playwright and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi's first screenplay, My Beautiful Launderette brought him Oscar and BAFTA nominations in 1985. Five years later his debut novel The Buddha Of Suburbia, set amidst the social divisions of mid 70’s Britain, became a bestseller and was adapted as a BBC television series. After eleven screenplays including My Son The Fanatic, Venus and The Mother, and nine novels, including Intimacy and the Black Album, his latest book is a memoir called Shattered. It records the year he spent in hospital after a fall on Boxing Day 2022 which has left him paralysed. Hanif talks to John Wilson about the influence of his father, also a writer, who in part inspired his debut novel The Buddha Of Suburbia. He also talks about the influence of Freudian analysis on his writing and how he is coping with the effects of his life-changing accident. Producer: Edwina Pitman

    44 min
  5. Nile Rodgers

    OCT 10

    Nile Rodgers

    Nile Rodgers is one of the most successful and influential figures in popular music. As a songwriter, producer and arranger he has enjoyed a 50 year career with his bands Chic and Sister Sledge, and collaborations with artists including Diana Ross, David Bowie, Duran Duran, Madonna, Daft Punk and Beyoncé. Bringing his 1959 Fender Stratocaster guitar to the This Cultural Life studio, Nile tells John Wilson how the instrument has been the bedrock of almost every record that he worked on, and acquiring the nickname 'The Hitmaker'. He discusses his bohemian upbringing in 1950s New York with his mother and stepfather who were both drug users. He chooses as one of his most important influences his jazz guitar tutor Ted Dunbar who taught him not only about musical technique but also how to appreciate the artistry of a hit tune. “It speaks to the souls of a million strangers” he was told. Nile Rodgers reminisces about his musical partner Bernard Edwards, with whom he set up the Chic Organisation after the pair first met on the club circuit playing with cover bands. He discusses their song writing techniques and the importance of what they called ‘deep hidden meaning’ in lyrics. He also reflects on the untimely death of Bernard Edwards in 1996 shortly after he played a gig with Nile in Tokyo, and why he continues to pay musical tribute to his friend in his globally-touring stage show which includes the songs of Chic and other artists they worked with. Producer: Edwina Pitman

    43 min
  6. Margaret Drabble

    OCT 3

    Margaret Drabble

    The novelist, biographer and critic Dame Margaret Drabble published her debut novel in 1963. She quickly went on to become a bestselling and critically acclaimed chronicler of the lives of modern women in a series of contemporary realist stories, often based on her own life and experiences. Her 19 novels include The Millstone, The Waterfall, The Ice Age and The Radiant Way, and her non-fiction includes books on Thomas Hardy, William Wordsworth and Arnold Bennett. She has also edited the Oxford Companion to English Literature. Dame Margaret tells John Wilson about her upbringing in Sheffield and how winning a scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge, shaped her literary tastes. It was there that she heard the lectures of the academic F R Leavis and first discovered contemporary novels by Angus Wilson and Saul Bellow. She became an actress and worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company before her first novel, A Summer Birdcage, the story of the relationship between two sisters, was published in 1963. She recalls how her literary career began in the wings of the RSC and talks candidly about her often strained relationship with her older sister, the late novelist A S Byatt. Dame Margaret also discusses the influence of her friend, the Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing. Producer: Edwina Pitman

    43 min
  7. Marina Abramović

    SEP 26

    Marina Abramović

    For over more than five decades the Serbian conceptual and performance artist Marina Abramović has used her own body as her artistic medium, exploring the human condition in works that are often feats of endurance, exhaustion and pain. From her earliest works such as Rhythm 0, in which Abramović invited audiences to freely interact with her however they chose, to her long-durational work The Artist is Present, she has put herself in danger at the mercy of audiences all in the name of art. Abramović talks to John Wilson about her unhappy childhood in the former Yugoslavia with strict parents who had both been war heroes. She recalls how at age 14, a dangerous game of Russian roulette led her to Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot and how the book and its author's life sparked her creative imagination. She also reveals how two films, Alain Resnais' enigmatic 1961 French New Wave classic Last Year at Marienbad, and Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1968 movie Teorema, starring Terence Stamp, have inspired aspects of her work. Producer: Edwina Pitman

    43 min
  8. Peter Kosminsky

    SEP 19

    Peter Kosminsky

    Having started out as a current affairs journalist, Peter Kosminsky made his name by telling contemporary social and political stories in the form of television drama. Warriors was about British soldiers in the peace-keeping force in Bosnia; The Government Inspector dramatised the events surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly; The State explored the radicalisation of British Islamists. Kosminsky is also acclaimed for his television adaptations of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy. He has won six BAFTA Awards, including one for his outstanding contribution to British television. Peter talks to John Wilson about the huge influence of his parents. He recalls how his left wing father and his mother who had been a kindertransport child, shaped his interest social justice from the perspective of the outsider, the refugee and the disenfranchised. Seeing Ken Loach's 1975 BBC television drama Days of Hope was a another turning point, and revealed to the 18 year old Kosminsky, the huge emotional power of the medium of television drama. He also explains how a letter from a British soldier in response to his 1999 drama Warriors led to his acclaimed and controversial Channel 4 series The Promise, 11 years later. Producer: Edwina Pitman

    43 min
See All (108)

Hosts & Guests

4.9
out of 5
42 Ratings

About

In-depth conversations with some of the world's leading artists and creatives across theatre, visual arts, music, dance, film and more. Hosted by John Wilson.

Information

  • Creator
    BBC Radio 4
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2024
  • Episodes
    108
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © (C) BBC 2024
  • Show Website
    This Cultural Life

You Might Also Like

To listen to explicit episodes, sign in.

Stay up to date with this show

Sign in or sign up to follow shows, save episodes, and get the latest updates.
Select a country or region

Africa, Middle East, and India

Asia Pacific

Europe

Latin America and the Caribbean

The United States and Canada