Imagine a world where the air that we breathe is just another commodity, like food or fuel. Something that can be bought sold according to market forces.
The darkly comic premise that Ben Elton based his first play on – 'Gasping' from 1990 starring Hugh Laurie – has undergone a huge re-write. Re-imagined and modernised, 'Gasp!' relocates to an Australia that's grown giddy on the resources boom. Injected with the sarcastic and sharp wit that made Ben Elton a household name ('The Young Ones', 'Blackadder'), 'Gasp!' is a humorous satire that is ever relevant in today's world.
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A best-selling author, award-winning playwright, television and screen writer, lyricist, stand-up comedian, director and occasional actor, words fail when it comes to Elton. Fresh off a long flight from London, straight into a full day of rehearsals and Elton's inspiration is still outstanding. A story does no justice, so this one's straight from the horse's mouth.
Where did you come up with the idea for ‘Gasping’?
The initial inspiration actually came from a book called ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’, which is an early Edwardian novel. It was written by a man who’s a painter and a decorator in Edwardian England and he wrote about a painter and decorator in Edwardian England who attempted to persuade his friends that they needed to unionise. They all say that the boss owns it and we all work, and that’s the way of the world. One of the examples the character in the book gives to explain to his colleges why it’s not necessarily morally right, that some people can own the food and sell it to those that need the food, is the example of air. Imagine if air was like food or fuel, you’d be as short of breath as you would food and warmth. That’s the example that’s given in this book, which I read when I was a student.
The image lived with me and when I was 27 or 28 I wrote a play based around it, a great big comic farce, a satire about the world of resource and based on the idea that air becomes a resource. It was a very big hit in the late ‘80s – 25 years ago. But I always thought the play – which at the time was almost like a cartoon – was a very sort of bold and unsubtle comic farce and I always thought there was more to the idea. And here I am, this wonderful opportunity to revisit the play because I live in Australia and I’m an Australian and all we talk about is resources. We talk about the mining tax, we talk about the carbon tax, we talk about climate change, we talk about Gina and Clive and Twiggy, and I suddenly thought, this play has really found its home, it needs to be set in Australia in 2014. So I’ve re-written it substantially, because I think its time has come.With the re-write, you’ve modernised it, did you modernise everything, including the physical aspects of the characters?
Well the design is not down to me, I’m not directing it and I’m not designing it. But certainly the piece is set in 2014. It was written in 1989, so that’s 25 years ago and I imagine it will be fully brought up to date. It’s funny to try and describe because it’s the same play, but it’s extremely different. There’s more characters in it, there’s a sort of love interest in it, I’m just better at story telling than I was then. ‘Gasping’ as it was in 1989 – even though it was a big success – was essentially a very long sketch. Since then I’ve written a lot of novels and a lot more TV and directed a film, and I just know more about story telling. I’ve had the rare privilege of being able to take what was and still is a good idea, and do a better job with it. Most people don’t get that chance.
It only came about with me because Kate Cheerry the artistic director for Black Swan State Theatre in Western Australia said to me quite a lot “when are you going to write an Australian play? You live in Australia and you are Australia, could you come up with an Australian play, ‘cause I’d like to commission it” which is very flattering and very nice. In the end I said, “I’ve been thinking and thinking of what I’d like to do, Australia is obsessed with the resource industry, and I am too, we’re all talking about it, we talk about nothing else, the whole of the last election was based around it.” And that’s what lead me to suggest that I re-write ‘Gasping’. I could think of no better Australian play than that.
‘Gasp!’ is relevant today, was ‘Gasping’ equally as relevant in the ‘90s?
No, nothing like as relevant, it was a much more general, much less specific and hence a less biting satire. It was just generally about the sort of way we waste our planet and we aren’t fair with each other. It was much less coarcted comic satire and hence it relied much more on a sort of fasicalness. The only really ‘80s specific part of the comedy was the language which was very much about yuppie speaking. English pissed up yuppies in the city, champagne and Lady Di sort of thing. It was much more general and less target and less good. I think I’m a better writer than I was 25 years ago.
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How much different is writing a stage show to a TV show or a movie or a novel?
Well the writing process is sort of the same for me. And obviously in as much as you have to apply your imagination and your intelligence and be diligent and try to do the best job. So I don’t find writing a novel and writing a play a particularly different process. It’s very inspiring when you get to the fact that you then get to share it with actors and designers and a director, and their input and their creativity doubles with yours and you find it gets even better, that’s something you can’t do with a novel. A novel is a lot more private writing experience; it’s different in the second part of the writing process.
Have you found that from writing stage shows, and working with other creatives, you’ve grown more creative yourself?
I certainly find from working with other people you always learn more and become better at communicating and creating your ideas. So certainly working in theatre both in musical theatre with most recently and most busily ‘We Will Rock You’. And now with getting the chance to work with this company here at QTC, certainly. 'Growing more' is not a term I would use, I don’t know why, I’m just too old for it. I won’t say that I’ve been on a journey either. But I would say that it makes me expand my horizons and you do grow as an artist.
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Do you find that you’re inspired by people older or younger than you?
Oh gosh, what an interesting question, I’ve never be asked anything like that before. I don’t think I could answer that. I’m inspired by everything I hear and everything I say and everything I do. I draw on my experiences to improve myself as a person and as a writer. We all try to be better people each day, I hope so anyway. I couldn’t honestly say. As I get older there are more younger people in my life. Because there’s more of them and I’m now 55, and when ‘Gasping’ was written I was 26-27, so there are a lot more people that are younger than me now then there was then. I really don’t know what the answer to that question is.
Did you inherit your wit and humour from someone in your family or do you feel you’ve been influenced by numerous people?
Certainly both, I mean we’re obviously a product of our family. The great debate is nature or nurture. How much are we born, what we are and how much did we become what we are because of the environment we’re in and people we meet. And of course everyone would agree, it’s a bit of both isn’t it? So some of what you are is genetic and it comes from somewhere in your family, and a lot of what you are is about where you’ve been and who you’ve met and all your human experiences. I can’t name a specific person in my family who was like me. There’s obviously wit as in any family, I’m not the only one who’s made other members laugh, so it’s not as though I can say “oh I get my…” Clearly I can write some comedy, silly to pretend I can’t, you’d have to make up your own mind as to how good I am, but I can do it a bit. So I can’t say that I get that from my great grandma on my mothers’ side, I’ve never really analysed it.
You received a bit of criticism for ‘The Wright Way’, how do you deal with people negativity on your work and go out and keep creating?
My son asked me that ‘cause he read it. I didn’t. I’ve not read anything written about me for years ‘cause it just brings you down too much.
I don’t write for success and I don’t write for failure, I don’t write for anyone or anything except myself. And I continue because the only way you can be a good artist and the only way you can pay respect to your audience, whoever they may be, is to say “look, I’ve done the best job I can”. Some people are going to shit on it and some people are going to enjoy it, but what I can tell you is whether the detractors or the fans are right, I ignore both. That doesn’t mean that I ignore criticism, I welcome it. I welcome anything. Believe me ‘The Wright Way’ went through a huge process and I’m very proud of it.
In the long run, what I can say is if it was as bad as what many critics said it was, or it was good as some of the people wrote in defining it said it was, either way, I did my best. I may have got it wrong, and I may not have done. I attempted to do the best I could, and to do the best your can as a writer is to write what you feel inspired to write and not think about whether people are going to be mean about it, or people are going to love it. You’ve just got to ignore that and try to do your best.
So win or lose, everyday I’m looking to the next piece of work, not the last piece of work. I’ve had some big hits in my life and I’ve had some fairly crushing, not failures, but some that were not big hits. You’ve got to take them both with the same equanimity, and I do. I will not be cowed, and nor will I be puffed up with my own self-importance, I’m neither. I don’t think I’m brilliant when people say that my work was good, and I don’t think I’m shit when people say it was rubbish, I just think I’m honest.
Do you think having to be politically correct has affected comedy and the way it’s presented?
Not my comedy, I never tried to be politically correct, and I try and be honest to my own sense or morals and opinions. To me, political correctness is just being respectful and polite. It’s not writing bullying comedy or comedy that demeans. That doesn’t mean you can’t write a joke about big knockers or somebody being of a different race, it just means you can morally justify that joke and it’s not exploitive and cruel and bullying. So it’s all about being decent. It’s not about following rules.
I think the main problem about what people have come to understand as political correctness is that people use supposedly a brave and original stance against stupefying political correctness to be rude, bullying and horrible. Basically what’s happened is there has become, in my opinion, a completely erroneous presumption that the political and social gains whereby we become aware of racism and sexism in comedy, which were all good gains and lead to good comedy. Unfortunately this has been corrupted by the reactionary ethic, which has lead people to “I hate political correctness, why can’t I make a joke about women?” and that then leads into making a deeply sexist and offensive joke. So what I’m saying is I don’t think there ever was political correctness, I don’t think there ever was a time where people were suddenly being forced to avoid sex and race in comedy.
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I’ve done millions of gags about sex and race, but I don’t think they’re brutal and bullying ones. They’re ones where I’m the victim. My own writing is not affected by a desire or a sense of duty to be politically correct. It is effected entirely and exclusively by my own personal sense of right and wrong. But I do think that for many, there is an awareness of a political correctness in their writing, but it hasn’t lead them to write politically correct humour. It’s lead them to do the opposite, which is to write offensive humour. Pretending they’re being ground-breakingly un-pc, and standing up for originality and freedom in arts. I can use the 'c' word because I’m not going to be politically correct. It’s quite complicated.
It pisses me off when I go to a club and see a male comic deliberately doing a wife beating gag and pretending he’s doing it in a post-ironic sense because he’s reacting against a stupefyingly politically correct comedy environment. No. He’s just being a shit comic.
If you could invite three people, dead or alive, to dinner who would they be and would you have a formal sit down, a BBQ or a wild party?
I think if I was going to have three very special people to dinner, probably a formal sit down. Though of course as a wild party maybe I’ll just invite Destiny’s Child. It’s a hard one, if you’re going to get people from history that you would love to meet and chat to, probably best to have a nice dinner and sit around and have a nice chat. Or a BBQ, ‘cause you can chat around a BBQ, but not a wild party. I don’t think the people I would share this dinner party with I would particularly want to have a wild party with.
Who they are? God, I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to be defined by just three. I’m just gonna say Elvis, Shakespeare and Churchill. But I just said that out of the blue. But I’ll stick Mandela in for one of those, but I won’t say which. If I’m gonna chat to Mandela, Shakespeare and Churchill then I want to hear what they’ve got to say. I don’t want some fucking person turning up the Black Eyed Peas so loud that I’m yelling “What’s the Shakespeare? What did you say?”
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Wild parties inevitably have loud music and I don’t like loud music. I prefer chatting to people to shouting at them. For me, the curse of modern society is that for some insane fucking reason, people have come to presume that it’s a good thing to have music too loud. You go into a pub or even a restaurant, certainly at a party, and some idiot will say “turn the music up, you’re all so boring”. But actually, they’re being boring ‘cause all they’re going to be doing is jumping around the middle of the room, where I might be having a really interesting conversation.
I could have chosen another three quite easily, and another three, and another three. I wouldn’t mind talking to some of my ancestors; I think that would be quite interesting.
'Gasp!' plays at QPAC from the 17th November to the 7th December.
