Peter Morgan Quotes
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There's nothing wrong with anybody from any other country having a perspective on the British royal family. It would be interesting. But I just doubt that they would get the dialogue right.
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There's something about the soul of a country that is somehow connected to the head of state.
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Nixon had lists upon lists upon lists. They were tragic lists saying, 'Smile more,' or, 'Be stronger - remember, it is your job to spiritually uplift the nation.' This understanding of his limitations is heartbreaking.
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Authorised royal biographers are so straitjacketed, deferential, fawning, and unadventurous that they can only be after a knighthood. Or they're completely scurrilous and insolent, like Andrew Morton or Paul Burrell.
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As a child, I grew up the son of German immigrant parents, so I grew up being teased and called 'Fritz' at school. When I married my wife and went to live in Vienna, I was teased for being a Brit.
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Ambition interests me because it's such a surefire indicator of damage.
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It's madness to hand in a script to a director, leave them alone, and for the director not to want the writer there with rehearsals and the shoot.
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There are people who are bound journalistically to a code of ethics that means they can't quote something that isn't sourced, whereas what I do is entirely unsourced. I effectively fictionalise history and yet somehow aim at a greater truth.
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There is something fantastically post-modern about David Frost.
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The films of which I'm most proud I've written are the ones that pivot on forgiveness.
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I can't help slightly falling in love with every character I write about. And I quite like writing about people who are vilified.
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When I started writing the screenplay for 'The Queen,' about the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana, both Stephen Frears, the director, and Andy Harries, the producer, begged me not to put Tony Blair in it.
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There were a couple of things I lost sleep over with the play 'Frost/Nixon,' so I went back and addressed them a bit more in the film.
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It is devastating, losing a parent. I don't really know what the effect is, but I suppose people might call me an ambitious man, and I'd say that an ambitious man is a damaged man.
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My experience is, I do a table reading, and it's literally like it's written in colossal neon lights what's wrong with the screenplay.
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I insist to this day that if you read the screenplay to 'The Queen,' it leaves you in no doubt that we considered her an isolated, out-of-touch, cold, emotionally inaccessible, overprivileged, deluded woman, heading an institution that should immediately be dismantled in any free and fair society.
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I'm constantly having to check my conscience about what I'm writing and the responsibility of what I'm saying.
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If you have distance from the events, then your story can work as an analogy or parable rather than its literal narrative.
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Every dramatist will tell you that they know deep down what happened in the course of making that film and to what degree they took steps that were convenient and to what degree they took steps in telling their story that were dishonest. You know in your heart of hearts.
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I'm not good at fantasy, no. I have been offered stuff, and I can't get my head around it.
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There are many, many things in my work that need redoing - never the structure.
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I quite like the idea - just as an abstract idea - of 12 people's collective life experience and wisdom being this formidable thing. People say juries can be led - I think 12 people from different backgrounds, different races, different genders, different ages, it's hard to hoodwink.
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I'm quick to be upset. My feelings are close to the surface. There is not much gap between a thought and a feeling with me. It makes it difficult for some people. I feel too much.
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As any showrunner will tell you, it is crushing work. It is around the clock. It is like a monastic commitment that you make.