Backstory 5: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1990s

Tom Stoppard: Adventures in Movies

189 First, a little background. The man considered by many to be one of England’s great living playwrights, screenwriters, BBC radio and television contributors, and masters of wordplay was born Tomáš Straussler in Zlin, Czechoslovakia in 1937. Some (Sir) Tom Stoppard stats: • The Stoppard clan moved to Singapore on March 15, 1939, when the Nazis decided to invade Zlin. • Stoppard’s father, Eugene Straussler, died at sea when his ship was attacked by Japanese forces (his mother would later remarry). • Stoppard worked as a theater critic from time to time as a young man. • Stoppard is known for his distinctive humorous writing style but also for his casual sense of couture and tonsorial fashion. • The term Stoppardian refers partly to his wordplay but became part of the vernacular because of this writer’s application of the droll and philosophical conceptual entity. • Stoppard is a human rights activist. Some of the causes in which he has passionately involved himself include protecting the right to political dissent in Central and Eastern Europe, and the fight against psychiatric abuse. This is how the interview transpired: Patrick McGilligan, who lives in the Midwest, came to New York for an appointment to interview Stoppard at Lincoln Center, where The Coast of Utopia, a monumental three-play cycle, was being mounted. Then fate struck. One of the principal actors fell INTERVIEW BY VINCENT LOBRUTTO TOM STOPPARD ADVENTURES IN MOVIES McGilligan_Ch11 8/7/09 11:47 AM Page 189 ill and was not able to go on, throwing Stoppard and the company into a frenzied state. McGilligan’s meeting with Stoppard had to be canceled. A minibarrage of e-mails ensued between McGilligan and me, which concluded with my assignment to interview the formidable Mr. Stoppard while he was still in America and amenable. It struck me as ironic that a guy from Queens (the borough, that is), someone who has seen only a few plays throughout his life—two by Shakespeare, the rest by his favorite scribes, David Mamet, Edward Albee, and Sam Shepard—would get this daunting job. I watched movies and read plays in a compressed time frame until I almost couldn’t tell one from the other but was able to sort them out with clarity and focus due to Stoppard’s distinctive vision of the world he lives and we live in. Next, a series of phone calls sped up and down the phone wires, with Mr. Stoppard always being a gracious gentleman while I faked being calm, cool, and collected. When a date was set, I pushed on to a final prep and, on the day selected and agreed upon, packed my kit bag with tape recorder, McGilligan’s questions, and my questions. Here is what unfolded in the Upper West Side digs, where, one afternoon , Stoppard served me tea and biscuits and answered my questions, all the while delicately smoking Silk Cut cigarettes. (He of course asked me if I did as well—I don’t—and if it would bother me; I said, “No, surely not.”) My nerves calmed as I realized I didn’t need to have two sets of questions clamped in my hand, and the Brit and the American bloke (with differences beyond mediums and country) found they had quite the bit in common. Let’s listen in . . . • • • How did you become a writer? Were you immediately intrigued with literature , theater, and film, as a young man? The first thing was journalism, not simply because I started as a junior reporter. When I was seventeen it occurred to me as a possible occupation. I knew or felt it would suit me instantly. I became a writer by becoming an ordinary young news reporter, and slowly got into feature and humorous writing until I got into pieces where I could use my own voice. I joined the newspaper in 1954, which was around the time the English theater began to become a hot spot in the culture. Thousands of men and women around my age began to think about writing a play. I wrote my first play when I was twenty-three. Kenneth Tynan was at the Observer, Harold Hobson was on the Sunday Times, and the Royal 190 TOM STOPPARD McGilligan_Ch11 8/7/09 11:47 AM Page 190 Court was the hottest theater in the English-speaking world. Then there was the French input. Samuel Beckett was a kind of French...