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These Are The Times
A Life of Thomas Paine
Screenplay by Trevor Griffiths
ISBN 0 - 85124-695-8
Published by Spokesman
£15 paperback, 195 pages
Dateline: 22nd April, 2005
It's ten years since Trevor Griffiths and Richard Attenborough decided
to make a film about Thomas Paine, the great English writer and radical.
Paine had his fingers in the American Revolution and the French Revolution.
He contributed books and pamphlets of great clarity and wisdom, written
with a breathtaking, compassionate understanding of the human condition.
Paine, Griffiths and Attenborough - the dream team. But not for Holywood.
The film remains unmade. The book is dedicated to Richard Attenborough,
'...comrade and collaborator on this long march.'
Griffiths decision to publish the script was a happy one. Anyone familiar
with this peerless radical playwright's work knows that his stage and
television plays read as well as they play. From the first few lines
These Are the Days takes off like a flock of flamingos. It's
beautiful: riveting, full of colour and movement. Ideas and emotions
jostle with biographical and cultural detail. And it's funny as well.
Here are the first few lines.
An old man sings The World Turned Upside Down, stops abruptly:
'It grieves me we chose the bald eagle for our national symbol...'
Wharfe Street, vivid with life. Two men leg a sedan chair through
the crowd.
OLD MAN'S VOICE: '...he's a bird of bad moral character, generally
poor and often very lousy...' The camera gradually closes on the sedan.
And Benjamin Franklin (for it is he) goes on to suggest that the turkey
would have been more appropriate.
This is a masterwork and without doubt will one day be screened. In
the meantime read the script and see your own production. Have a hanky
ready for the last few pages!
Ray Brown
Ray Brown in a playwright whose play "Living Pretty" is
currently on tour and has just been selected by the British Council
for its Edinburgh Showcase. He is also a BTG reviewer.
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