To me [...] the term "costume drama" means something totally pickled. It doesn't interest me in the slightest. What first seized my imagination was t… - Dennis Potter

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To me [...] the term "costume drama" means something totally pickled. It doesn't interest me in the slightest. What first seized my imagination was the myth of Casanova. Everyone's heard of it. But what does it mean? You hear about the office Casanova, the small-town Casanova, the shop-floor Casanova. He was what we describe as a libertine; but he was concerned with religion and sexual freedom, and these are things we have to address ourselves in now.
The libertine is the last possible hero. Traditional heroes are too derisory for words; but the libertine as hero persists. Malice and envy lap their gentle bile around him, but he is the last hero. Of course, I read his memoirs, and I simply don't believe them. They're vain and egotistical, but they are about a man who is hunted by what he is hunting—and that is freedom, expressed in sexual terms.

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About Dennis Potter

Dennis Christopher George Potter (17 May 1935 – 7 June 1994) was an English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist. He is best remembered for scripts which mixed autobiography with social history and fantasy. Potter's plays occasionally incorporated elements of popular culture (characters miming to popular songs) and adult actors performing as children.

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Alternative Names: Dennis Christopher George Potter
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Additional quotes by Dennis Potter

The blossom is out in full now, it’s plum tree, it looks like apple blossom but it’s white. It’s the whitest, frothiest blossomest blossom that ever could be, and I can see it. Things are both more trivial than they ever were and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn’t seem to matter. But the now-ness of everything is absolutely wondrous.

Philip Marlow: You're the girl in all those songs. De-dum.
Nurse Mills: What songs?
Philip Marlow: The songs, the songs, the bloody, bloody songs.
Nurse Mills: I wish I knew what you were talking about.
Philip Marlow: The songs you hear coming up the stair.
Nurse Mills: Sorry?
Philip Marlow: When you're a child, when you're supposed to be asleep. Those songs.

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Nigel: I don't regard clever as a dirty word. Jack: Rule one, it's never clever to appear to be clever. Long words actually hurt people, you know that? Rule two, speak slowly and clearly as though to a group of malignant kids. Rule three, keep it short. Very short. Half-truths take less time than whole ones, old mate. Oh and I see you've let your locks sprout a bit. Get 'em cut, there's a good chap. Rolling stones gather no votes.

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