Elizabeth Oldfield speaks to screenwriter and novelist Frank Cottrell–Boyce. 04/05/2022
Frank Cottrell–Boyce is a screenwriter and novelist. He is best known for his screenplays for 24 Hour Party People, Welcome to Sarajevo and others, his award–winning children’s books, including Millions, and for being the writer of the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, one of many collaborations with his friend, Danny Boyle.
He speaks about his sacramental faith, the place of forgiveness in society, and what he sees as the writer’s calling.
We had a few sound issues with this recording but we hope you agree it is still well worth listening to.
You can read a full transcript here:
Elizabeth
Hello, and welcome to The Sacred. My name is Elizabeth Oldfield, and this is a podcast about our deepest values, the stories that shape us and the people behind the positions in our often divided common life. Every episode I speak to someone who has some kind of public voice or platform. I ask them what they hold sacred, hear a bit about their story, and ponder together what could help us build empathy across our very deep differences. As always, please do rate, review, send an episode to a friend and get in touch via Twitter, Instagram or email to tell me what thoughts these conversations are provoking in you.
Today, you’ll hear from the entirely delightful Frank Cottrell Boyce. Frank is a screenwriter and novelist. He is best known for his screenplays for 24 Hour Party People, Welcome to Sarajevo and others, his award–winning children’s books, including Millions, and for being the writer of the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, one of many collaborations with his friend, Danny Boyle.
We spoke about his sacramental faith, the place of forgiveness in society, and what he sees as the writers’ calling.
Frank, we’re gonna get straight in the deep end. But everyone needs a little bit before digging into their very deepest thing. So, as a writer– this series is full of writers – as a lover of words, how does the word sacred land with you? What kind of feelings and colours does it throw up?
Frank
Oh gosh, um, well, I’m from a sacramental religion, I’m a Catholic. So I have the experience of sacrament a couple of times a week. So that is that kind of weird thing of that – It’s a double word, in the sense that you know, that there are places in the world where an object is sacred or a place is sacred. And I feel that obviously, there are places that I’ve been where I feel a kind of sanctity. But I’m also used to the idea that the sacred can be delivered in a fairly routine way, in a timetabled way, if you just walk a few doors up and open a door. So it’s that feeling that the sacred invades, I guess, if I was trying to formulate it, that the sacred is always there. In my life, it’s just completely accessible. And that it leads to the idea that everybody and everything is sacred in some sense
Elizabeth
Various people have challenged me on this, asking an individual what is sacred to them is…I wouldn’t say erroneous, but many conceptions of the sacred are about the things that gather people, that draw people, that are common to groups and societies. But I do ask individuals what is sacred to them, partly just as, I hope, a little moment of using a bit of our brain or soul that we’re not used to using in everyday conversations, and partly because hearing from a range of people about their best thing, their deepest thing, the threads, or the motifs in the music of their life, is just a way of building up a broader, richer picture of who we are together in our common life. And so it can be a principal or a value. It can be a place or an object, it can be a set of teachings, and none of us really know but off the cuff, what is your guess at what is sacred?
Frank
Well, I wouldn’t miss mass for a million pounds. Like, frankly, I don’t know – that sounds mad because you can just go next week. But if you offer me money not to get to mass, I wouldn’t go somewhere. I wouldn’t miss mass for that. So that makes sense.
Elizabeth
I want you to say more, why not?
Frank
Well, cultural, I mean, that’s just ingrained. And I’m not saying I’ve never missed mass because I occasionally have missed mass for one reason or another. But I wouldn’t consciously turn away. I am conscious of the value of it. So there isn’t anything that you could offer me to exchange for it. There you go, so that makes sense. So I might miss mass because I’ve missed an aeroplane or I’m sick. But I wouldn’t consciously give up the sacrament for a kind of worldly thing. I would see that really clearly, that that would be a turning away. Does that make sense? And it’s like, it’s sort of the opposite of some of the sacred that you’re talking about, because it’s not Ayers Rock, it’s not something you have to pilgrimage to. Yeah, it’s very accessible. But it’s also kind of not negotiable.
Elizabeth
Yeah. Wonderful. I want to try and get a sense of your formative influences, your story. So I’d love you to paint us a bit of a word picture of your childhood, and particularly anything, and you’ve mentioned a kind of religious context, you can talk more about that, and if there’s any kind of political or philosophical ideas in the air that you think have really formed the man you are today.
Frank
Okay, I’ve got quite a clear picture of how my childhood went. My mom and dad – my dad just had a very ordinary job. And he went to night school, and eventually became a teacher. So the story of my childhood is I experienced this amazing piece of social mobility, but it wasn’t me. So I’ve always felt lucky. We moved from a little tiny flat, which we shared with my gran near the docks in the river, which still seems like a really romantic and exciting thing to me, to a housing estate which had a garden and we had our own bedrooms and everything. So that seemed full of optimism and full of hope. Nearly everybody on that housing estate had the same story. They’d come from a part of town that was sort of moving past its time in history into the sort of 60s, optimistic forward looking, they were all young. And on Sunday morning about three quarters of the estate would stroll to mass, like the Paseo in Spain. So a sense of belonging, a sense of gratitude. And, God, this sounds really disrespectful, but this estate, to me, it’s a wonderland, it was a wonderland, but it’s also little boxes, you know, there were houses that looked just the same. And then the church was St. Bartholomew’s Rainhill, which is copied from a Basilica in Rome. So you walk through that door, it was like bang, goldleaf, incense. So that sense that I tried to talk about before, that just around the corner, through a door, is something amazing, is really deep in me. And I guess I lived through like, that was sort of the end of a period when people who were bought up Catholic just unquestionably carry on being Catholic. And my generation sort of fell off. But I don’t have a faith journey, I’m afraid really, I just really loved it. I’ve always loved it.
Elizabeth
Do you mind just winding back a few generations or filling in the gaps? Because some listeners who share some of your story will be very familiar. But others might ask, Well, why was there three quarters of that estate all going to Mass? What were the kind of historical and demographic forces?
Frank
Demographically there were people who’ve been rehoused or moved out, or had found a way to move out of the centre of Liverpool, which is a very Irish area, you know, people were assumed to be Irish, whether they were or not. And you lived in Irish culture, whether you were ethnically Irish or not, you know, the priests were Irish, cultural life was Irish. The women, the old women dressed like something from, you know, a lithograph of life in Donegal in the 1890s, well into the 1960s, the old ladies did. So, Catholicism was a cultural thing, as well as a religious thing. And then they sort of moved to the shiny new houses, and it all felt a bit different, I guess.
Elizabeth
I was talking to another author, Jenn Ashworth, we talked quite a lot about class. And she says when she got to Cambridge, a lot of people said, and were there lots of books in your house growing up? So I don’t want to say Frank were there a lot of books in your world…
Frank
I have this amazingly lucky break that my dad was going to night school. And he did a degree through the Open University. I wanted to be with my dad so I would get up – Open University was sort of early morning programmes with guys with bizarre facial furniture. And he was doing an arts course. So I used to get up and sit next to him. So honestly, by the time, I mean, obviously I hadn’t done it with any rigour, but I was very familiar with the fundamentals of – you know, kind of knew my way around stuff quite early. In that sense, it was a very intellectually exciting house.
Elizabeth
And were you writing?
Frank
Yeah, endlessly, all the time. I think it’s a condition rather than a vocation.
Elizabeth
And you’ve touched on the powerful aesthetics of a Catholic childhood. It always feels a very intimate question, a very private question, but the lived experience of the metaphysics, I guess, the presence of God or the saints or what it felt like to you praying as a child?
Frank
I mean, as a child, it was completely unproblematic. You know, you’re just talking… It’s interesting that you mentioned the saints because we had nuns in our primary school who were amazing, absolutely amazing. Brilliant. And they lived happily on that cusp of Catholicism and folk Catholicism which works with kids, doesn’t it? And my first book is about a boy talks to saints and can hear them replying. But that’s very intimate. I feel I had like quite an intimate connection with Francis of Assisi. I didn’t know anyone else called Francis. My dad was called Frank. But I didn’t know anyone else. I just felt like, Okay, we’re buddies
Elizabeth
You are very well known now as a children’s writer, but had this distinguished career as a screenwriter, for some really adult films, you know, Welcome to Sarajevo, 24 Hour Party People, Hilary and Jackie…Tell me, what was the thread that you were pursuing there? How much was it about film? How much was it about the writing? How would you narrate that chapter of your life? Does it feel a long time ago?
Frank
It’s just so hard to control film. If you control whether a film gets made, when it gets made, how it gets made, who actually makes it. And as the writer, you have very little input into that. I mean, I’ve always loved movies, and I wanted to be a part of it. I don’t think I’ve always done great work in it, because it’s quite hard to do great work. It’s called the film industry but it’s not really a film industry. It’s really, it’s kind of odd what it is, I can’t really describe what it is without being disparaging. But you know, I’ve just shot a film in Rome this summer, about the Homeless World Cup which I’m really – I don’t know if it’s gonna be a good movie. But I’m proud of having made a film about something as worthwhile as that. That took 11 years to get off the ground. I mean, that’s crazy, isn’t it? That’s not kind of viable, as a way to make a living. So, you know, chaotic, enjoyable, unpredictable.
Elizabeth
Talk to me about politics in that era. And you’ve you mentioned in passing that sort of tribal, fiery period, and I think I’ve picked up some sort of Marxism related…
Frank
From quite a tribal backgrounds politically, you know, it would be impossible not to be feel tribal, although of late, I’ve come to be very anxious about that tribalism. I think, you know, whether it’s social media or Brexit things or whatever, that we seem to be more divided in a more kind of obdurate and unquestioning way than we’ve ever been and around big subjects where nuance is important. And I think if you’ve got anything to give it’s to be generous, and to point to nuance and to point to good on both sides, I think that’s what I’m concerned with. And what I’m tempted by is being tribal, you know, so that’s the ethical battle that’s going on in my life at the moment, but I’m really aware of that. So say, just off the top of my head, like a big issue like Brexit, people have been viciously debating that for the last, what, three, four years. Nobody’s changed their mind. It’s become like, we’re Newtonian fluids, that the more you stamp on them, the harder they get, you know, you can walk on custard if you stamp on it hard enough. And we’ve all turned into custard. And that’s depressing.
Elizabeth
We will definitely come back to that, because I want to hear what helps us but I just want to fill in a few more gaps. Did you really have no kind of faith crisis in your teens or your 20s? The idea that it just has always sat so easily with you, I’m very envious if that’s true
Frank
Because I’m just a bit dim, you know, like, first week at uni, I didn’t go to Mass. I’d been at home, the year before uni my gran was quite ill. And we ended up everyone ended up on a Rota, looking after her, I was really ready to leave home, and for it to be different. And I went to Oxford, which couldn’t have been more different. So I had a kind of week of thinking, right? That’s that. Close that door. And it was horrible. I spent Sunday thinking, Well, this is like being in a Sunday supplements, taste of death ! You know,
Elizabeth
It’s like the dark week of the soul
Frank
Yeah, I had a dark afternoon! I probably went to evening mass in the end. There’s been times when it is just habit, but then I’ve had the nous to realise that you know, training for a marathon is habit, there are going to be crap days when you’ve got to drag yourself up and down the bypass, if you are actually going to run that marathon. So you are going to need your faith so you have to keep in trim. So there’s arid months and years, you know, and then it all comes back to you. So I’m not saying it was sort of enraptured week after week. But I did have a kind of epiphanic moment that I don’t really talk about very much, but I was walking around Sefton Park, and there’s one of those mad – that’s so rude, but like, you know, there’s preachers who preach to the air, and was yelling, and he’s obviously been at sea, you know, yeah, that if you look you can spot that. He was old, but he’s full of energy. And he was telling the story of Pilate and Jesus. And he said, Pilate’s asking Him this question about truth, I can I can still hear him, sorry, I’m doing the voice. But he just went ‘And it’s an intellectual question. And there is no intellectual answer. There is no intellectual answer, because the truth is standing in front of him. And it’s not an intellectual answer. It’s a man.’ And it just absolutely undid me. I was like walking, pushing a pushchair through the park, thinking I might go into the Avery cafe for a cup of tea and this guy…And I never said anything to him afterwards, either. But it just really – because I have quite a strong intellectual life and a very intellectual view of myself – he just seemed to be talking to me. And it was amazing, actually. So you’re talking about the sacred I think that’s the core for me, that the answer is a person. And that person is visible in every person. I love this story about when I was little, when I went to St. Alphonso’s school. And I might have this wrong, actually but please don’t tell me if I have. But I think St. Alphonso was the doorman in the seminary or the monastery where everywhere is, but this is the only thing I know and that whoever knocked on the door, he would say ‘Coming Lord’. Just like before you know who it is, that’s who it is. And that’s to me the answer that I carry around with me, that’s like, at some point, someone who I really can’t see any good in, I just have to keep trying to, you know, whether it’s the other side of the debate about immigration, or wherever, that that’s the sacred, that that person is also sacred.
Elizabeth
How easy was it to navigate…I guess in the film industry, and maybe since as you’ve been around publishing and films and a big variety of media, you’re one of the first names that come to mind when people think about Catholics or Christians in public life in those fields because it is seen as quite unusual, I think. And…Have you found it difficult or challenging or helpful?
Frank
No. Well, what happened to me was that I wrote the script Millions, as with everything, you know, I wrote that like six years before it got made, which is sort of explicitly Catholic. And I was quite shy of that. And I’d never done that before. And, like, you know, we talk as though we sort of make artistic or ethical choices. But, you know, I had seven kids and I was trying to make a living in a very volatile, untrustworthy, unpredictable industry, you know, like, your choices are not as big as you think they are. But when Millions came out, I sort of, like in shorthand, sort of outed myself as a Catholic. And I was really taken aback by the reaction to that, because people like it, you know, quite surprisingly. I’m now completely open about saying, Well, I’ll say a prayer for you then. People want you to, you know, nobody’s offended by that. And people might be comforted by it. Anyway, I am who I am, you know, so I used to be a bit kind of like, ‘I’ve got to go there, but I must make sure I get mass.’ So I just, you know, now it’s like, ‘yeah, yeah, I’ll come but can you make sure I get mass?’ And yeah, people kind of like it
Elizabeth
I think often, it’s about how you carry it. You have such a palpable undefensiveness about it
Frank
That’s learned though, that’s a privilege.
Elizabeth
I find that if I’m not prickly about my faith, other people don’t get prickly. Whereas if I let myself do the slightly tense, fearful thing, what if they’re going to think I’m a judgmental homophobe or whatever, then completely without any words, sometimes the atmosphere changes, and then everyone feels a bit tense, and then they’re more likely to not want to have it anywhere near them. How we root ourselves to be relaxed about who we are. How did you learn it?
Frank
Well, no, that story I just told you about stepping forward when Millions came out. And just saying, Well, yeah, that’s big. Because there were conversations when he was making it where the boy talks to the saints, and you’d have conversations with funders who would say, so he has to move on from that. And I’d be like, what? Nope, no, why? You know, that seems like a really good solution to me. Why would you want to move on from that? I know exactly what you’re talking about. There’s a pressure on you not to be prickly. Part of my witness is to be nice. Because you’re aware that people sometimes aren’t and that sets things back, you know?
Elizabeth
Am I kind of narrating it correctly, that Millions was the kind of turning point from mainly film that led you down children’s literature?
Frank
Oh, yeah. 100%. Yeah, Danny Boyle took me out to dinner and we were talking about books. And I talked a lot about children’s books. And he said, Well, why haven’t you written one? And I said, you know, hadn’t really had an idea, and he said this is your chance Frank. And then wrote that, so he gave me that push, you know?
Elizabeth
Just narrate the emotional journey for me of being a screenwriter, working mainly in films, to being someone working mainly in children’s literature
Frank
It felt, as soon as I started doing it, it genuinely felt like a vocation. And there’s been times when I kind of torture myself about it thinking, well, like, you know, I’m a relatively successful children’s writer, but you’re not taking over the cultural conversation the way a big movie would, even for a week. So this like, kind of is this like, watercolours? I mean, am I in the kind of Model Boat Club here? But I’m really, really, really, really aware of the strength that I got from the children’s books that I read when I was year 6/7. Those books that now get called middle grade books, the resilience that I got from them, the joy that I got from them, the way they sort of match the world for me, and that this is live ammo. And if you do it just for a few, that’s fine. You know? It felt like, Oh, this is what I’m for. This is what I’m here for.
Elizabeth
What were your favourite children’s books growing up?
Frank
Well, since we’re talking about the sacred, one thing one was the Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Gwynn, which is about a school for wizards. I don’t know if you know that book?
Elizabeth
No, but I’m writing it down for my seven year old
Frank
So it’s a series. The first two are absolutely extraordinary. And the first one, I can remember, I wasn’t off school very much. And then in year six, I was kept off, I can’t remember why. But I read that in bed, and I could literally feel it rearranging my head. Because he goes to a school for wizards, where there are two strains of magic, one is sort of spectacular and entertaining, and courtly, and it’s the school of illusion. But there’s the other school, which is magic, which demands a proper engagement with the thing that you’re working on. So you can’t change the colour of a flower, or a petal, unless you know its true name. And you have to really understand what it is before you can change it. And you have to also understand that when you change it, the rest of the world would be in some way changed. And it’s really stern. It’s really stern. And so metaphysical, and it’s so much not what magic is in children’s books, which is solutions to problems, you know, or spectacle, it’s literally the opposite of that. It’s like real engagement with how things are, what’s amazing in the world. And the hero sort of falls foul of that division. It’s an amazing book. Absolutely astonishing book. So the follow up to that is The Tombs of Atuan in which the hero has to find, sort of typical trope, find this necklace, the thing, but it’s hidden in this labyrinth,
Elizabeth
What is it they get called, macguffins?
Frank
Yeah. But a girl is in this book, who lives in the labyrinth. And it’s a picture of a hugely powerful religion, like big buildings and labyrinths and stuff like this, that none of the people running it really believe in it anymore, not in an explicit way. But it’s just sort of become this set of practices. And when he comes to find this thing, the girl’s like, ‘well, it’s just the thing.’ ‘No, this is all real. This stuff that you believe it is real.’ It’s a book about that difference between faith and really about the practice and the truth. And I love that. You know, that’s an amazing book, I think. Personally, as well, that you fall into this thing that you think you believe something but you don’t act like you really believe it. Yeah. So it’s like a more, I wouldn’t take like, I know, you could parlay that into a critical thing. But I’m much more interested in like, what it means for me, self–challenge.
Elizabeth
The sort of children’s book news at the moment, although it will have passed hopefully by the time we release this episode, is about – I’m sure it’s just one tiny, slightly bonkers school districts in America, which this thing always is, and then it makes world news – but the amazing graphic novel Maus about the holocaust. There’s been a kerfuffle about whether children should be allowed to read it. And I have a five year old and a seven year old and feel in myself two equal and opposite instincts, one is the sort of anti–censorship. You know, children can cope with more than we think they can. Trying to edit the world too much for them is just pointless. And you know, if you’ve got keen readers, just let them go read. And the other comes from my very strong sense of the power of stories and the power of cultural narratives. And the formation that books, television, advertising, the way we narrate the world, will have on them and what they think a good life is and what they think love looks like and what they think human value is. And I find myself wanting to censor because I want to check what the story is, that what, you know, what does that say about women? What does that say about freedom you know, which is doing the same thing that we are very easy to dismiss. And I know that you homeschooled some of your children, how have you navigated that, I guess personally with your kids, and then as a children’s author in some of those conversations? What is wisdom in the stories that we let our children be exposed?
Frank
So, first of all, it was my wife who home educated. I just stood there. I think you’re right, you know, think this, if we didn’t think stories were important and powerful, why would you write them? Why would you read them? Why would you write them? Why would you cherish them? And if you do think they are then obviously some stories are bad. But that’s different from legislating for it, isn’t it? That’s about the care of your own, and how, and that really governs how I write. And it really governed how I selected for my children, that’s a different thing from trying to buy a book. And Maus in particular is, that seems like a really bad example, because that’s a really beautiful book about a subject that they are going to find out about. And it’s probably better to have found out about, what better way could there be to find out about it to engage empathy without getting mired down in politics and the history of it. Maus cuts to the essentials, isn’t it? I don’t know where that leaves us really. I mean, there is that thing as well that if you say, Oh, let them read whatever, what you’re doing is let the market decide. Which isn’t… The market doesn’t love your kids. You know, on a practical level, my answer would be well, you should be reading what they read. You should be reading with them. And so you should know, it shouldn’t be a surprise, you shouldn’t turn up 10 years later going oh, my kids read that. It was awful.
Elizabeth
I want to touch briefly on the Olympics, opening ceremony. And I know it’s a while ago now, but one of the things I’m very fascinated by is this, the cultural stories, the stories that we tell that are very implicit, and in some ways, novels and books are almost easier to pin down, or discriminate between, or very often their messages are embedded in narrative and beautiful and powerful ways. But it’s the rest that just, I think unconsciously, advertising and News and Newspapers, that has very strong embedded messages about what a good life is and what we should value. And I think the Olympics opening ceremony is the biggest and most lasting and profound statement of the story we at least wanted to tell about ourselves as a nation, for as long as I can remember, the most explicit public statement, and I’d love to just hear a bit about that journey. And the conversations that you had and what you think the legacy of it is
Frank
It seemed to be very forward looking. And then the world seemed to change completely a few weeks later. It seemed to be very open, and embracing and the world became very divided quite quickly afterwards. So fairly ambivalent feelings about that really. It seemed to belong to a different world. And it doesn’t seem to be – like if you put that on now, you would not think that’s what Britain’s like
Elizabeth
There would be huge argument, which I don’t remember at the time, but maybe I wasn’t looking.
Frank
Well, I remember because I was supposed to be – God help me – because I was the one doing least on the day because I’d been the writer, as opposed to someone stitching costumes or directing dancers. I had to go and do the Today programme the next morning, and everyone else has been up to – Well, even I was up too late, but like they were up to like, half six, seven o’clock. And it was sort of geared up to be a huge debate. And in fact, I think they brought Mary Beard in and Giles Coren who was like a paid controversialist at the time, and they both had loved it. So I can still remember John Humphrys looking really disappointed that there was nothing going on in the studio to talk about, you know, but everyone just loved it, didn’t they?
Elizabeth
Could you summarise and – it’s a horrible thing to ask a writer to do – but if there was like a phrase or a few words that you think summed up the statement that that was making, what would it be?
Frank
Wonder. There were two words on the wall, one was wonder, one was visceral. Danny wrote visceral and I put wonder, and had that GK Chesterton line about ‘the world is not perishing for lack of wonders, the world is perishing for lack of wonder’, which goes right back to what I was saying about mass you know, it’s just through a door, it’s just around the corner, the sacred is just there in your life. It’s not buried in, you know, the Ark of the Covenant, or the holy grail or any of those objects. It’s just around the corner. So I love that line and I think that is your job as a writer to remind people that the world is perishing for lack of wonder, and to renew the wonder. Our view of our history has become so narrow and so desiccated. And so much had been forgotten. And it was dead easy to surprise people because there was just stuff that people had forgotten about this country, like, well at the time, the Windrush but, you know, the industrial revolution seemed to have been forgotten. When people were predicting that it was going to be dreadful, because when they thought about English history, they thought, Winston Churchill, the Tudors, that’s it. Two world wars and One World Cup, and they’d forgotten about all the riches, you know?
Elizabeth
You’ve mentioned wonder, unpack for me a little bit, when you’ve written a children’s book, and you’ve wrestled through that whole process, and you get to the end and you think I’m pleased with that. What are the ingredients that are in there? Do you know like your manifesto for children’s literature?
Frank
If I had a manifesto, it would be to sort of give back the things that I got, which a huge thing for me, is small pleasures. So the writers that really stay with me are Toby Yansen, Ursula Gwnn, Miln, actually Just William especially, that idea that there is I think small pleasures, are incredibly fortifying and they will get you through really difficult times. But they’re also portals to wonder, you know, why is it alright? Why is it enough to sit under a tree with a Gobstopper and Jumble the Mongrel and your mates? You know, just why is William yearning for that? You know, what it like? What is behind that yearning? But even if you can’t get to that, then the gobstopper, the tree and the mongrel will do it for you, you know? Or in the Moomin books. It’s coffee and pancakes, isn’t it? Yeah, they have these amazing adventures, and then mommy makes coffee and pancakes. So like, sort of alerting people to small wonders, I think small, small pleasures, I think that’s a huge thing, really fortifying, especially during the pandemic. I did these sort of online writing classes for children on Instagram. And I was really, really aware of like kids who didn’t have gardens and weren’t getting out. And that I did like these crazy writing classes, not to make them better writers, but to make them notice things. Because the more you notice, the happier you’ll be, so it was about noticing where you are and noticing little things and taking pleasure in little things. So I think that’s a simple manifesto. But then the other thing is like creatively, I think the honesty is to write what you – to give yourself up to the process. So sometimes you see kids books, where, you know it’s sort of been mechanical and calculated. And then there are others where you know there’s no clue where it was going, or maybe they may know where it was going, but they have no clue how they’re gonna get there. And it’s really thrilling.
Elizabeth
There’s a wildness to it. I have the Mary Oliver quote ‘Attention is the beginning of devotion’.
Frank
That’s brilliant. That’s fantastic.
Elizabeth
And you have written a lot about forgiveness. And I’m sure there’ll be another forgiveness related story by the time this comes out, but the recent one is Michael Gove asking for Christian forgiveness for Boris Johnson’s party shenanigans, which is an interesting theological concept to insert into that particular debate. But you’ve been intrigued enough by this concept to write a Bible study about it. Let’s land on our public conversations and our divisions and tribalism. What role could or should forgiveness be playing? And why is it so hard?
Frank
Well, I think it’s so hard because it is a process. And it completely cuts counter to everything that’s in us. So I think – like stories are who we are. So if you look at the stories that we tell ourselves, very, very few of them deal with forgiveness. Our instincts are not to forgive. I think, you know, the saying, if there’s a gun in act one, it has to be fired in act three. We want resolution, and the easiest resolution is victory for one side or the other. And there are very, very few stories, as a storyteller, there are very few, a handful of stories about forgiveness – the prodigal son, Gowain and the Green Knight. And there’s very few of us, because forgiveness is a story about something not happening. So I spent years trying to make a film, The Railway Man, literally 15 years, and I made that film. And in the end, it’s not that great movie, but it’s that thing is like, that’s a story about something that doesn’t happen.
Elizabeth
Because it’s the gun in act one that never gets fired.
Frank
Yeah, you decided not to fire it. That’s such a difficult story to tell. So I think that the starting point is that forgiveness is hard. And it’s inhuman, it’s against nature. And that’s why we have to have grace. You know, and that’s why we have to have the atonement. That’s why you have to have the crucifixion. Because this is not something that comes easily to us. The Gove thing, you know, it’s so interesting, isn’t it, because what he’s really saying is the opposite, like the unkind parts of me, what he’s saying is move on. Well, I do forgive Boris Johnson, because I can look at Boris Johnson and think, Oh, my God, you know, you’re just not on top of this. And for whatever reason, you wanted this job that you’re just not up to, and you don’t understand yourself, and you’re flailing around, and to me looks terrible.
Elizabeth
It must be really hard…
Frank
On a human level, I think it’s impossible not to forgive him for goodness sake, you know, look at him. But at the same time, that doesn’t mean it was alright. And that’s the thing about forgiveness, as opposed to mercy. You can be forgiven. And it’s not all right, those two things can happen, like, mercy is dismissing someone’s sins. And mercy is dismissive. You know, mercy is imperial. It’s like, I’m the Emperor, you can go free. And it’s like, because you’re important. Like, for forgiveness, it has to be – This is not right, but you are forgiven. Those two things, they in a kind of equilibrium with each other.
Elizabeth
I’ve been doing some thinking about this. And I’ve come to the conclusion. I like the concept of sin, I find it helpful. Yeah, brokenness, fracture, it helps me to name the things that are wrong with us and not pretend they’re not happening. And I thought for a long time that talking about sin in public was the problem. I actually think it’s forgiveness that we have more of a problem with, because it does go against our instincts of what justice is like, we certainly have – forgiveness for other people, it’s that. And I see it in my kids. This, like, hunger for fairness involves making sure other people get their justice.
Frank
That’s wild, isn’t it, that they’ll get crosser about somebody else not being told off than they will about themselves being made feel better? See, it’s deep is us I think, you know,
Elizabeth
It’s really deep. And it makes me think about the fact that the Harry Potter books have this incredibly Christological, you know, conclusion of laying down life for love and kind of love conquering death. But there is no forgiveness. Or there’s a sort of strong ambiguity as a kind of explanation rather than forgiving. What is one thing you’ve learned about engaging across our differences, communicating across our divides? And what makes it more likely that those moments are more human, fruitful, productive, and peaceful? If there’s one thing we could all be practising more of what would it be? The trouble is – not the trouble is – the challenge is it’s the stuff that sounds almost boring and trite, like listening, which is in fact incredibly difficult and subversive and powerful. But the language we have for it is very bled dry.
Frank
I think one thing that’s happened, I hope this doesn’t come over too sort of judgmental or dismissive in any way, is that we’ve started to idolise our own identities. So it’s like, I’m not going to compromise on this, because that’s part of who I am. I think it’s like, can you leave you? If you went into tombstone back in the day, you had to leave your guns at the corral. You know, you could just leave it at the door, while we sort this out? And then come back to who you are. Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it, like so Brexit is not about trade contract or trade deal with the European Union, it’s become about all kinds of other things that it’s got stuck onto. It’s like, if you could leave those aside that would be great.
Elizabeth
Yeah. It’s quite technical, bureaucratic problem
Frank
There are people who want that to happen, you know, want to find divisive…It wasn’t a divisive issue, it was a non–issue, and pump that into a divisive issue. I think that is problematic because there are problems in the world that become insolvable, become insoluble, because each side is over invested in them emotionally. That’s so trying
Elizabeth
Frank Cottrell Boyce, thank you so much for speaking to me on The Sacred.
Frank
Thank you. It’s been really wonderful to be here. Thank you.
Elizabeth
It was so interesting to hear what a difference it makes when you are completely soaked like Frank in such a sacramental faith, where the sacraments are the sacred thing. And it made me do some reading, reminding myself that within Catholicism a sacrament is the definition, it is a means by which God shows His grace and helps people achieve salvation, it actually means a sign of the sacred. And there are seven of them: the mass, obviously, marriage, penance, baptism, confirmation, anointing the sick and when priests get ordained is a little factoid for you today. And I loved the paradox, the richness of Frank’s sense that the sacred is both kind of inspiring and uplifting, but also available on a schedule, just around the corner, this very everyday sense of the sacred. And I was so intrigued by him saying he wouldn’t skip mass for a million pounds. And his line was, that would be a kind of turning away. I mean, there’s something deeply countercultural in that, and very challenging, because as he said, you know, he could just go next week, he’s not giving it up forever. But that not going when he could go, for money, would be sacrilegious, would be a problem. And he’s so clear and calm and committed to this thing, this sacred/ ordinary thing. And honestly, I felt a little bit jealous as a Christian from a less sacramental background.
He has this beautiful description of his childhood. There’s been a few, actually, echoes in episodes in this series, the sense of working class communities as places of really strong belonging, as places of high social capital, I think would be the policy wonk word for it. I wonder if it would still be the case, I fear maybe it wouldn’t.
Many times, when I talk to Catholics, I get such a strong sense of the aesthetics of the faith, maybe because they have all been creatives actually thinking about it – maybe if you’re a Catholic engineer, or politician it’s not so formative. But I love that the vividness of a world of nuns on the cusp of folk–Catholicism and such a strong sense of the presence of the saints, you know, this lush fabric of stories and characters that he was immersed in, it’s sort of no wonder he ended up doing what he’s doing.
And obviously, from my perspective, he spoke so beautifully about Jesus and his faith, and his dark afternoon of the soul. Honestly, he’s one of the most lovely and non–anxious people I’ve ever met. I do think there’s a lesson in there, when he talked about, he’d been hiding his face for years in this sort of quite brutal, super cool film industry world. But when he started talking about it, people were totally fine.
I really, I really valued his honesty, and just naming the relative cultural capital of the industries that he’s moved between, you know, when you’re making films, you can really make something that’s talked about all over the country, and children’s literature is this sort of quieter, it’s seen as having less of a cool factor, I guess, essentially. He used the phrase, you know, am I doing watercolours or like in the model Boat Club, which was just lovely honesty and self–reflection, and I do think it takes a certain kind of stability and a certain kind of low ego to take the less glamorous route, to do the thing 1) you know that you’re really good at and 2) that you actually think has more impact in the long term.
I think the thing that will really stay with me is that GK Chesterton quote ‘the world is not perishing, for lack of wonders, the world is perishing for lack of wonder.’ And honestly, today, I am fighting the temptation not to be completely overwhelmed by the state of the world, to be here today. And prayer helps and my friends help. And listening to other people helps but noticing the wonders of the world helps too, receiving the gifts that we’ve already been given helps too and I think there’s a priestly echo to what he said about writers, their calling to help people notice to say, ‘look over here. Here’s this sacred thing. Here’s this wonder. Here’s this human being. Notice them.’ Good for the soul. Thanks for listening.
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