Jubilee: Six Film Scripts

Introduction

INTRODUCTION Michael OTray Jubilee contains the major unrealized film scripts Derek Jarman wrote between 1976 and 1987, as well as the script of Jubilee, which was made in 1978 but, unlike his other dialogue films, has never before been published. The failure of these brilliant scripts to reach the screen was due not only to Jarman's reputation for making provocative films but also to the economic plight of the British film industry after the late 1960s. It is true to say that, for Jarman, scripts were never simply means to ends. They were always intenselypersonal writings that expressed strong beliefs and emotions. When they failed to materialize as films, they were not shelved and forgotten; they remained as projections of his inner world. They always seemed to have a life for him, to be part of himself, and I suspect it was painful for him to leave them behind. For this reason, I believe, Jarman wanted them to be published. He saw it as one of his final acts. He was also a great pillager of his own work, so that images, scenes, and moods found in these scripts were incorporated into his realized films. One of the fascinations of this volume is seeing this process at work. From 1970 until his death in 1994, Jarman made scores of films. This enormous output can be divided very roughly into three broad categories. In the first are the feature films on which his reputation rests: Sebastiane (1976), Jubilee (1978), The Tempest (1979), Caravaggio (1986), The Last of England (1987), War Requiem (1989), The Garden (1990), Edward II (1991), Wittgenstein (1992), and Blue (1993). The second includes films that were more antinarrative in form and often not full-feature length: In the Shadow of the Sun (1974-80), Imagining October (1984), and The Angelic Conversation (1985). The third comprises the many short Super 8 films, including The Art of Mirrors (1973) and Gerald's Film (1976), but also his music videos, especially those done for Marianne Faithfull, The Smiths, and the Pet Shop Boys, and other films like the vii INTRODUCTION sequence for Don Boyd's portmanteau film Aria (1987), his collaborative film The Dream Machine (with Cerith Wyn Evans, John Maybury, and Michael Kostiff, 1984), and the Super 8 compilation Glitterbug (1994). Jarman's film scripts were nearly always written with the strong literary quality we have come to know through his autobiographical writings such as Dancing Ledge and Modern Nature. He had the ability to evoke scenes through the power of language. His scene instructions are studded with ideas and references that reveal how he understood a particular scene's meaning and context. In Jubilee, for instance, he titles scene 9 "H.Q. Healey's Budget Strategy in Ruins," suggesting that the film's depiction of social collapse had some basis in the chaos of the late 1970s when Callaghan's Labour government collapsed. The British film industry has been in massive decline over much of the past thirty years and, like many film directors in this country, Jarman faced a never-ending struggle to gain financial backing. In his case this was frequently exacerbated by the often transgressive nature of his films, which frightened off many potential Wardour Street backers. Jarman's first foray into feature filmmaking, with Sebastiane in 1976, happened at a time when the most talented British filmmakers (like Ken Russell, John Boorman, and Nicholas Roeg) had already left for America in search of financing. Against all odds, Jarman managed to raise funds from friends to make his first three feature films, which established him as a bete noir, assuming the mantle of his mentor, Ken Russell. As Jarman readily admitted, he made Super 8 films and videos not only because he liked the artistic freedom they gave him but also because he had no other choice for many years, especially between the release of The Tempest in 1979 and the making of Caravaggio in 1986—a period when he was starved of backing. It is no accident that three of his scripts in this volume were written during this time. His anger at this situation and the prompting of his producer Nicholas Ward Jackson led him in 1982 to write his first book, Dancing Ledge, which is not only a wonderfully irreverent and entertaining autobiography but also a deeply felt broadside at the British film industry. It is against this background that these scripts should be read. Akenaten was one of Jarman's first...