Judith Thompson
interviewed and introduction by Marc Glassman
Judith Thompson has long been one of the country's most respected playwrights. Now with the release of the feature Lost & Delirious, Thompson is gaining recognition for her parallel career in film and television.
As a playwright, Thompson has done it all. She's won the Governor's General Award for Drama twice for The Other Side of the Dark in 1989 and White Biting Dog in 1985, and the Floyd S.Chalmers Canadian Play Award two times for Lion in the Streets in 1991 and I Am Yours in 1987. Numourous actors in her plays have won Doras and she has worked with such talents as Jackie Burroughs, Nancy Palk, Maggie Huculak, Tracy Wright, Graham Greene, and Lisa Repo-Martell over the years. The recipient of the 1988 Toronto Arts Award for Writing and Editing, Thompson has also won the Nelly for Best Radio Drama.
Since her first play The Crackwalker burst on the stage in 1980, Thompson has been recognized as one of the finest and most hard-hitting talents in contemporary theatre. A master of dialogue and character, she has never shied away for graphic content or violent imagery if it worked for the play. As John Bemrose once put it in Maclean's, Thompson has "used infanticide, sexual abuse, suicide, wife-beating and cancer to explore the secret inner life of individuals, but she explores the darkness with such exuberant intelligence, humour and empathy that her plays brim with the healing light of revelation."
For many years, Thompson has been writing scripts for television and cinema, most notably for the Gemini award winning movie of the week Life With Billy, which she co-wrote with John Frizzell. Now, as her script for Lost and Delirious is appearing on screens in North America and her adaptation of Perfect Pie, her most recent play, is poised to be shot by Rhombus Media's Barbara Willis Sweete, Thompson sat down with Canadian Screenwriter to talk about her writing career in film and television.
LOST AND DELIRIOUS
Your script for Lost and Delirious has recently been released as a feature film and Perfect Pie, a play which you've adapted for the screen, is currently in production with Rhombus Media. Both productions centre on the emotions of adolescent girls. What fascinates you about this period in life?
It's about the becoming of the self. It happens all your life, of course, perhaps more intensely in your thirties. When you are in your teens, you start to make decisions about what books to read and what gang you want to be allied with in high school.
Are you pleased with Lea Pool's treatment of Lost and Delirious?
On the whole. It's not exactly what I want, but it's really good. Léa's a beautiful filmmaker and she directed those girls wonderfully.
Some critics find the use of narration to be old-fashioned. Why did you use it in Lost and Delirious?
As a writer, you can use beautiful words and images and they don't sound hokey. Dialogue that would sound over-the-top lyrical is lovely when it's voiced by a narrator. Some reviewers criticized the dialogue as being too poetic but it's absolutely naturalistic. I just didn't dumb it down.
Lost and Delirious is based on The Wives of Bath, a novel by Susan Swan. The book was set in 1963, a very specific time that ended with the assassination of President Kennedy. Why did you change the period to the present?
Because you have to be historical, and those resonances have to be large and strong. There'd be a huge responsibility if it was in the 60s to bring everything in--Paulie would be going on about the Vietnam War. I wanted to poeticize the book, pare it right down to the interior world. And in a boarding school, things don't change that much. There's something timeless about that world. The girls still salute the Queen before lunch.
PHILOSOPHY OF WRITING AND ORIGIN STORIES
You've been described as a writer who thinks about characters as being in her blood. What happens to you when you're having a good day, writing in your office?
When I sit down to write it usually starts coming, sometimes in fits and starts. I think it's a miracle everytime it happens, that it comes out. I believe that writing is in the body, and I also say that it's in my fingers. My history is about my body and cultural history is in my body. I bring my craftsmanship to writing, but I'm lucky because there's a thin screen between my conscious and unconscious life. Maybe that's the result of the epilepsy I had in my youth.
You go to places where other writers refuse to go. Is that difficult for you?
I go into a trance. It's my belief that dreams are a disguised fulfillment of unconscious wishes. So somehow, in some form, you must need to dream the truth about your characters. It's gratifying in some way. I know it's what I have to do. And that's why I have to defend myself to producers and directors. I understand where they're coming from, and it's their film ultimately, but that's why it's so hard for all of us. Every screenwriter will know about this: characters behave in certain ways because they must. My husband (Professor Gregor Campbell of Guelph University) says you shouldn't ever have to explain or defend what you've written. I love that, but of course in film, that's all you do!
Do you think some producers and directors lack respect for writers?
Maybe sometimes yes, especially the ones who say, 'we love the writer. Nothing is more important than story, it all begins with story.' I would rather just have someone say, 'you're the hired hack and please turn out so many pages a day.' Movies suffer terribly due to this lack of respect. We learn as writers that the only way to have your vision respected is to direct the film as well. But I'm not interested in directing films.
The complete interview is available in the printed version of Canadian Screenwriter, Fall 2001.
