Outspoken Liverpudlian screenwriter Jimmy McGovern, the man behind the controversial Priestand the acclaimed Cracker, tells Michael Dwyerwhy he hates Hollywood and why his Mary, Queen of Scotsscript will soon be filmed in Ireland - without him.
JIMMY McGovern says he has been fascinated by the priesthood ever since his experience of Catholic clergy as a schoolboy in Liverpool.
His first TV drama, Traitors(1990), dealt with Fr Henry Garnett, who was executed for refusing to reveal what he heard in confession about the 1605 Gunpowder Plot.
In Priest(1994), young clergyman Fr Greg (Linus Roache) is assigned to a Merseyside parish where the older Fr Matthew (Tom Wilkinson) is sexually involved with their housekeeper (Cathy Tyson). Fr Greg's sexuality is revealed in a wordless sequence where he takes off his white collar, dons a leather jacket and jeans and goes cruising at a gay nightclub.
Harvey Weinstein bought the US cinema rights for Miramax, which had been acquired by Disney, and Priestopened to a storm of protest. McGovern recalls the controversy with bemusement: "Archbishop Warlock in Liverpool was extremely obstructive at the time. One phone call from him and we could lose all our locations. Years later, he watched Priest. He told his adviser that it was a deeply Catholic film and asked him what was all the fuss about. I heard that from an unimpeachable source.
"I even got death threats in America. Disney was threatened with a boycott. Harvey Weinstein was going up the walls and he even asked us if we could take out all the homosexual scenes. It was just madness."
'I WAS sacked," Jimmy McGovern says frankly when the subject of Mary, Queen of Scotsis raised in our conversation at the recent Celtic Media Festival in Galway. The film, starring Scarlett Johansson in the title role, is set to be shot this year, mostly in Ireland. McGovern developed the screenplay for more than a decade as it went through different backers and directors.
"A few years ago, one of the producers told me Phillip Noyce was interested in directing the film," says McGovern. "He lives in Australia, but I was in Sydney at the time and I met him. We talked about it, but he decided not to make the film. Now he's come on board again, and one of the first things he did was sack me.
"When the film finally got the green light, the writers' strike was on. I was praying for the strike to hold solid so that they would have to shoot my script, but as soon as the strike finished, they brought in another writer. I don't even know who it is."
Clearly, there's something about Mary, Queen of Scotsthat fascinates McGovern - she was a key character in his screenplay for the 2004 TV mini-series Gunpowder, Treason and Plot.
"She was a woman who would damn her immortal soul to get the British throne for her son. So she conspired in the murder of her husband. With my Catholic background, I found that really interesting."
Now 58, McGovern was the fifth of nine children born into a Catholic, working-class family in Liverpool. He worked in a variety of jobs ("anything that paid") and taught for three years at John Lennon's old school, Quarry Bank Comprehensive. He found his vocation when he joined a writers' workshop.
A baptism by fire followed when his first play, City Echoes("a working-class epic") opened to negative reviews. But it caught the attention of producer Phil Redmond, who signed McGovern as a writer on Brookside, one of Channel 4's first series, when it came on the air in 1982.
McGovern wrote more than 80 episodes of Brookside. "There were massive rows," he says, "but I loved the show and gave it everything I had. It was TV in my city."
His subsequent output as a writer has been remarkably prolific, deeply socially concerned and of the highest standard. He scripted Needle(1990), a gritty BBC drama about drug addicts, and 1994's controversial Priest(see panel).
In Cracker(1993-96), McGovern created one of the outstanding British TV series, investing the central character - a criminal psychologist indelibly played by Robbie Coltrane - with all the disillusionment, cynicism and anger he himself was feeling. In 2006, he revived Crackerfor a one-off drama, which he now regrets.
"I think the series was of its time. When I started writing that episode, I think what I had to say was quite brave and quite fresh, but by the time it went on TV, it had all been said - weighing up 30 years of war in Ireland with what happened after 9/11."
Cracker was such a critical and ratings hit that it spawned a US TV version, and the rave reviews for Priestled to many Hollywood offers.
"I said no to them all," McGovern recalls. "I once had an appointment with Michael Mann, and at the last minute, I turned it down because I was exhausted. Every Christmas since then, I've had a card from him. I think the more you turn them down, the more they are interested in you."
McGovern's travails with Mary, Queen of Scotshave affirmed his strong views on Hollywood. "People ask me why I don't work in movies and that's why. That kind of thing happens to writers all the time in Hollywood. I could have been desperate to get this film made. I could have gone through 11 years of hell - and then been sacked. As it turned out, I'm a lot older and more mature now."
Instead, McGovern has immersed himself in writing for TV: drawing on past experience for the excellent Hearts and Minds(1995), starring Christopher Eccleston as an idealistic teacher at an inner-city school; shattering media myths about the Sheffield football stadium disaster in Hillsborough (1996); working with Irvine Welsh on the docudrama Dockers(1999); and with Sunday, marking the 20th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.
By coincidence, Sundaywas transmitted within days of Paul Greengrass's Bloody Sunday. "I think Paul's version was one with which people in my country could be happy," says McGovern. "I think my version was much more accurate, but of course, in England I got battered for it because people didn't want to know that. In Derry, they all praised my version as accurate. I did all the research. I spent years over there and did hundreds of hours of interviews. I'm proud of what we did."
McGovern drew on his memories of an early job at a Lake District hotel for the edgy series The Lakes. "All the drugs the alcohol and the feelings of resentment, were all autobiographical. We were all arrogant young scousers from the city. We fancied our chances and regarded the local lads as sheep-shaggers. There was a lot of violence.
"I liked the first series, but I think we went a bit wild with the second series, which had a lot of other writers on it with competing voices and competing tones. That's why I work as I do on The Street. I tell every writer that there will be a single authorial voice in each episode, and it will be imposed on it by me."
The deserved winner of Bafta and Emmy awards over the past year, The Streetis a riveting series of standalone dramas focusing each week on a different inhabitant of a single terraced street. It was made by the BBC, which McGovern described last autumn as "one of the most racist institutions in England". He added that while there are "a lot of black faces in the BBC", they are working in the canteen.
Never one to pull his punches, McGovern expressed this view during a BBC Five Live interview with Simon Mayo. He objected to remarks made by Mayo after 11-year-old Rhys Jones died when he was shot in the neck by a youth in Liverpool.
"He was having a go at the city," McGovern says. "There's an old argument that Liverpool is somehow more racist than other cities, which I don't believe. Because he had a go at us, I, as a scouser, wanted to speak up for my hometown, and I had a go at the BBC. Well, it's undeniably true. The BBC is institutionally racist. I thought he had a bloody cheek attacking my city when he's in a studio at the BBC where the guy serving coffee to him is probably black. Anyhow, I think he's a bit of a wind-up merchant."
As it happens, McGovern has several current projects with the BBC, among them The Noose, dealing with the first English convicts deported to Australia, and a third series of The Street.
"And we're trying to get an afternoon soap off the ground at the BBC," he says. "We have this team of scouser writers. I believe we can we do very cheap drama and make it good, so good that people will ask why it's not on at night."
