To drink or not to drink ...
I've been working on a new TV project about alcohol, having a few planning meetings and thinking through my own attitude to booze. It's a 60-minute authored personal exploration of a subject rarely out of the headlines; but because it is partly my personal journey and I am still trying to work out my own ideas, I find myself talking to just about everyone these days about their relationship with alcohol. I'm working with Ronan Feely and Brian Henry Martin from Doubleband Films, and will be reunited with Mark Garrett, who was the cameraman on Frozen North, the documentary I presented back in 2005 about climate change. If there is such a thing as TV magic, Mark is the wizard; so this will be fun. Ronan and Brian are brimming over with ideas. We start filming on Friday.
Before then, I really need to sit still for a long time and think more about where this journey may take me. One of the difficulties posed by a personal exploration on screen is that the presenter needs to decide how much to give of his or her own personal story. This is a story that has touched my own family quite significantly, and I need to negotiate with myself a little to arrive at a settled attitude on how much of that personal stuff I can draw on for the purposes of the programme. As I found out when I presented Sorry For Your Trouble, which examined out relationship with death, a personal exploration format has the potential to touch a lot of people in the audience. So many people wrote to me, phoned the 大象传媒, and stopped me in the street after that documentary was screened because the storied nature of the exploration connected with their own personal stories. Much of that is down to the expert direction of Michael Beattie, who was a delight to work with on the project. If you're out for a drink in Belfast on Friday night, you may bump into our crew in one of the city's better-known venues. I may be wearing a hidden camera.
Most of today was taken up with writing -- a commentary for a radio series about the book of Genesis, which should be broadcast sometime after Easter. I'm up to chapter 17; just 33 to go. John Simpson is producing it, and he's a dab-hand at editing and mixing. We have the actor reading the text of Genesis. Jim has an amazing voice; deep, rich and always authoratative. He has played Einstein in Star Trek, Bishop Brennan in Father Ted, and voiced up the whole of Ulysses in an audio book -- so it's about time he became the voice of God. I spent a hilarious couple of hours a few months ago with Jim and John in studio 3 at Broadcasting House advising hem on how to pronounce Hebrew proper nouns (I knew those Hebrew classes would pay off eventually).
I'm off now to the Queen's Film Theatre: we're just about to record an audience and panel event on the ethics and politics of the global oil trade following a screening of . You can hear that on Sunday morning.
Comments
How will you represent or interview 'non drinkers'?
I've seen numerous programmes on alcoholics and on binge drinkers.I'd suggest that most of the TV programmes I've seen would encourage young people to drink, or young people watching them would think of them as being humorous.
It'd be interesting to see an alternative to what is probably accepted as 'the norm' here in Northern Ireland.I'd love to see the media trying to change peoples attitudes so that 'the norm' of binge drinking etc would be seen as unacceptable behaviour.
How will you represent or interview 'non drinkers'?
I've seen numerous programmes on alcoholics and on binge drinkers.I'd suggest that most of the TV programmes I've seen would encourage young people to drink, or young people watching them would think of them as being humorous.
It'd be interesting to see an alternative to what is probably accepted as 'the norm' here in Northern Ireland.I'd love to see the media trying to change peoples attitudes so that 'the norm' of binge drinking etc would be seen as unacceptable behaviour.
In addition to the question from "CyberScribe": Are normal people who like to have a beer with dinner or after they get home from work going to be represented?
Moderation is a lost art or perhaps just a lost word.
I thought 'Sorry For Your Trouble' was a lovely programme - very halpful.
As for alcohol - it's not easy to talk about it if alcoholism affects your family, because it is often seen as a weakness of character rather than as an illness.
I think documentaries tend to focus on binge drinkers, or people who are at the very end of their battle with the disease. They don't often look at functional alcoholics - people who have responsible jobs, roles in the community - and who would never be seen drunk. I suppose, by definition, those people won't come forward.
But in the same way that the mental health commercial is good, because it tries to remove the preconception that anyone with mental health issues is odd - it would be good to look at society's ideas about what an alcoholic looks like.
(I read somewhere that the alcoholic actually metabolises alcohol differently. No idea if that's true, and Google didn't find me a reference - but I'd be interested to know if it's factual. Why do some people become addicted, and others not?)
I too thought it was halpful, but anyway, Cyberscribe wanting the 大象传媒 to change people's attitudes represents every socialist's dream sentiment, and my worst nightmare.
I've lived in Belfast and abroad, and I can't find Northern Irish attitudes to alcohol anywhere else. This blending of evangelicalism and teetotalism in particular is rare enough: everywhere else I've been, evangelical Christians seem to have no problem with consuming alcohol. Weird.
William did you read the article about Max Lucado in the 鈥淟ife Times鈥 magazine September 2002 called 鈥淏ooks and Beer鈥 about his personal dilemma and encounter with alcohol and whether To drink or not to drink, it was write using a chapter from his book called 鈥淭ravelling Light鈥 as a basis. He admits in the book that not to drink was based more on genealogy than theology.