How Serious You Are Mister
How serious you are mister …
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pooh1978 liked this · 8 years ago
More Posts from Coeur-dacier
Generation X, Y and Z. Here we are. Hardly focus. Hardly reckon.
For those who can’t get hold of The Times, or who don’t have paywall access to their website, here is the text of the interview with Mark Gatiss published today (18 July 2015). Transcribed below as an extra bonus:
What I’ve learnt - Mark Gatiss
People have this extraordinary idea that I’m some sort of Renaissance man. They will say, “I always thought you’d play the piano”, but I can’t play a single musical instrument. I don’t speak any foreign languages. I can’t drive. I can’t cook. I can only do two things: act and write.
Life’s too short to tolerate people who have massive mood swings. I literally cannot bear it.
When you’re young and angsty, love seems like the most important thing in the world. I remember ringing this guy I was seeing and having a very stiff conversation. I put the phone down and immediately poured my heart into writing him a thousand-page long letter about it. He said that he was sorry, it’s just there had been other people in the room and he couldn’t really talk. I thought, “Great. Now I look like a nutter.”
Owning a dog is like having a kept idiot. They are just so silly. Ours makes us laugh every day.
Let the people decide. Don’t try to second-guess why programmes such as Sherlock or Doctor Who are so successful. You can’t create a committee to sit down and quantify why they work. It’s too cynical. Conan Doyle never really understood why people liked Sherlock Holmes more than anything else he ever did. But the key is just to give in. You have to think, “What do I know?”
It’s easy to feel like the grass is always greener. As a kid I longed to come from somewhere like Oxford or Cambridge, because it all seemed so pretty. All I wanted was dreaming spires and cloisters. But it does you a lot of good not to have had that. I went to a very ordinary secondary in a grim postwar new town. No privilege at all.
I think the baddies are winning. There is the smell of darkness and corruption in the air.
Every actor has phases. I have entered a patrician phase, playing very Peter Mandelson-esque characters. I get offered a lot now.
Get people’s names right. One of the few things that really bothers me is that people constantly spell my name wrong. They assume it doesn’t matter. Yes, it matters. It’s my bloody name! I’ll get emails begging me to do something and they’ve misspelt it. Those emails instantly disappear.
TV commissioners are inherently timid and frightened of spending money. It makes it very hard to get new ideas off the ground. It’s a bother and a worry.
I’m no saint but I’m grounded, I think. I don’t like bulls***. I don’t like bad people. And I love manners. If I had a motto I could put on a t-shirt, it would be, “Work hard, don’t be a c***”. [which four letter swear word beginning with C that is remains a mystery, thanks prudish editors]
I have something of a love affair with disembodied aliens. As a writer I’ve always been interested in possession and being taken over. Maybe it’s from watching The Exorcist too much as a child. It’s good, though, because they’re quite cheap. You don’t have to spend a fortune on costumes.
The older you get, the faster time passes. I now get a lot of people saying, “Oh, I loved The League of Gentlemen when I was a kid.” It’s rather alarming. When I was 30 my dad rang me up and said, “Wait till you get to 40, son, then it really flies.” And he was quite right.
