Hampton on Hampton: Conversations with Christopher Hampton - Softcover

Alistair Owen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571214185 ISBN 13: 9780571214181

Publisher: Christopher Hampton, 2005

Synopsis

'A lot of my plays begin as comedies and mutate in the course of the evening, because my instinct is that you have to welcome the audience in and make sure they're sitting comfortably before you can give them an adequate punch on the jaw.'

Since the acclaimed London première of his first play in 1966, Christopher Hampton has established himself as one of Britain's most prominent, and least predictable, dramatists.

From his best-known play, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and its Oscar-winning film version, Dangerous Liaisons, to personal and critical favourites like Total Eclipse and Tales from Hollywood; from his films as writer-director (Carrington, Imagining Argentina) to his work as screenwriter-for-hire (Mary Reilly, The Quiet American); from translations (Art) to musicals (Sunset Boulevard), Hampton eloquently - and entertainingly - explores his varied career with interviewer Alistair Owen, and discusses its recurring theme: the clash of liberal and radical thought, exemplified by his most recent play, The Talking Cure, about the fathers of psychoanalysis, Jung and Freud.

About this title

About the Author

Christopher Hampton was born in the Azores in 1946. He wrote his first play, When Did You Last See My Mother? at the age of eighteen. Since then, his plays have included The Philanthropist, Savages, Tales from Hollywood, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, White Chameleon and The Talking Cure. He has translated plays by Ibsen, Molière, von Horváth, Chekhov and Yasmina Reza (including Art and Life x 3). His television work includes adaptations of The History Man and Hotel du Lac. His screenplays include The Honorary Consul, The Good Father, Dangerous Liaisons, Mary Reilly, Total Eclipse, The Quiet American, Carrington, The Secret Agent and Imagining Argentina, the last three of which he also directed, and A Dangerous Method, based on his play The Talking Cure. Appomattox was first presented on the McGuire Proscenium Stage of the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, USA, in September 2012 as the centrepiece of a major retrospective of his plays and films.

Alistair Owen has written about film for Time Out, the Observer and the Independent on Sunday. He is the author of Smoking in Bed: Conversations with Bruce Robinson, and Story and Character: Interviews with British Screenwriters, both published by Bloomsbury, and a contributor to Faber Playwrights at the National Theatre.

Edition details

• Publisher: Christopher Hampton
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571214185
• ISBN 13: 9780571214181
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280