The Transformational Power of Words: Gary Mitchell's Story

Many years ago, I was in the theatre watching a play about The Troubles (the horrific violence and conflict endemic in Northern Ireland). I had no connection to those events, and yet that play was one of the most engaging and thrilling dramatic experiences I have had - in a theatre or on film.

The writer of that work is  Gary Mitchell, a writer who transformed his working-class upbringing into a successful career as a playwright and screenwriter. 

In our conversation, Gary details his self-education, starting with learning five to ten words a day from a dictionary and a thesaurus to becoming one of the most acclaimed dramatists of his generation. You'll also gain insights into how he transformed his experiences during the Troubles in Belfast into universally relatable stories, resulting in his meteoric rise in the world of theatre.
  
We explore the craft of storytelling and the art of translating stories across cultures and find out how language can shape and alter the tone of a story and its interpretation across different societies. We also delve into the impact of Gary's success on his life and community, discussing the challenges he faced when his award-winning plays were misinterpreted and how this ultimately led to a five-year period of hiding for him and his family.
  
And it doesn't end there; we examine the craft of documentary filmmaking and discuss how to make facts meaningful and entertaining and how to find the emotional truth in a moment to fit it into a dramatic scene. 

Gary shares insights into his journey to confidence and success and the intriguing encounter with the legendary Daniel Day-Lewis. Lastly, we explore the technique of creating compelling stories from personal experiences, with believable characters that grip the audience from beginning to end. This episode is a masterclass in storytelling and a glimpse into the life of an exceptional dramatist.

 Find out more about Gary here

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Incidental music composed by Birger Clausen

Transcript

[00:00:00] Nigel: Hello, this is Nigel Levy, and welcome to the Doc Fix Documentary Storytelling Podcast. Today, I'm talking to the playwright and screenwriter, Gary Mitchell. The Guardian Newspaper called him someone  “..whose political thrillers have arguably made him Northern Ireland's greatest playwright." 

[00:00:21] Nigel: And even better than a reviewer, the legendary actor Daniel Day-Lewis once surprised Gary by inviting him to tea, where he regaled him with how much he loved his work. I do [00:00:30] too. 

[00:00:53] Nigel: He's written for the Royal Court Theater, the National Theater, the Donmar Warehouse and great theatrical houses all over the world. [00:01:00] He's also written the award-winning screenplays and, dozens of plays for the radio. 

And he’s also my closest creative collaborator in both drama and drama-documentary. 

We lost touch for a while, and we will talk about this in the podcast, the reason was that - because of the impact of his storytelling  - his home was firebombed, shots were fired, and he and his family had to move between safe houses for five years. When he emerged and approached theatres again, he was met with the response that he couldn't be Gary Mitchell because Gary Mitchell was dead. 

Very much alive and kicking, I talked to him in Rathcoole near Belfast about [00:01:30] the impact these events had on him and his writing, but also how he got into drama, which was not an obvious path, how we work together, melding documentary and fiction storytelling, why words matter so much to him and more.  

[00:01:43] Nigel: While I have you, please do subscribe if you want to know when the next episode is going to emerge. 

[00:01:48] Nigel: And if you want to find out more about me and how I work with people on the documentary storytelling skills. you can find out more at apply.thedocfix.com that's [00:02:00] apply.thedocfix.com. And there are also details in the show notes at the end of this podcast. So here is my conversation with the writer gary mitchell

[00:02:09] Nigel: hello Gary, lovely to see you. Hello 

[00:02:12] Gary: Nigel, lovely to see you too. 

[00:02:14] Nigel: So I'm here sitting in Gary's mum's kitchen, we often have conversations in your mum's kitchen, but we don't often record them. So this is a great opportunity to actually get this down, recorded.

[00:02:26] Nigel: I'm going to try and be a bit more concentrated and focus [00:02:30] on writing and storytelling. Because you, are one of my favourite writers. And I love talking to you about storytelling. It's your perspective on storytelling as a dramatist is so different from mine as a documentary maker.

[00:02:44] Nigel: But I've found a way of working with you that I just find deeply fascinating. Maybe because we're so different. One thing I do know about you, Gary, is that there's nothing in your background that would suggest that you would become a writer. [00:03:00] Is that right? 

[00:03:01] Gary: Absolutely. I went to working class, , Protestant primary school, didn't get anywhere, left school at the age of 15 with no qualifications whatsoever and went out into the world to seek my fortune with nothing.

[00:03:17] Gary: So how 

[00:03:17] Nigel: did you make that transformation then from a boy with nothing into a person who eventually became a very successful dramatist. 

[00:03:28] Gary: Many [00:03:30] failures helped me understand that I needed to improve myself and to improve my skills. to learn and what I started with was I felt that I didn't understand the world.

[00:03:46] Gary: I didn't understand how people communicated to each other. People used a lot of words that I didn't know and I felt really stupid. I bought myself a dictionary and I bought myself a thesaurus and I started learning five, ten [00:04:00] words every day. Learning what they meant, then using them in conversations and just improved myself gradually and very quickly my vocabulary improved and I was able to not only speak and write better, but I was also better equipped to understand what other people were saying to me.

[00:04:20] Gary: So 

[00:04:21] Nigel: complete, a complete self education in the art of writing and communicating. 

[00:04:27] Gary: Communicating first and then [00:04:30] writing after that because obviously once I knew that I had the words to express myself and to explain my ideas to other human beings who seemed to understand them, I thought I should write these down and then I should tell them stories because then they'll understand them as well and maybe I could make money out of that.

[00:04:46] Gary: And the 

[00:04:47] Nigel: background you came up in, you weren't just a working class kid. You grew up in the Rathcoole estate in Belfast. Which is quite near here, but it's not exactly where we are now, and that was a really [00:05:00] tough environment in the we're a very similar age, so it's like the mid to late 70s, or you lived there since you were born in the mid 60s, but it was in the middle of The Troubles, and it was at the heart of some really nasty stuff going on around you.

[00:05:17] Gary: Yeah many people, many historians, maybe even... Documentary filmmakers would say the worst time or the height of the troubles was 1974. And at that point in my life I was [00:05:30] nine. So to be introduced to something as monstrous as that at such a young age, I think it gave me a real kind of understanding of tragedy, horror, thrillers, and comedy believe it or not.

[00:05:44] Nigel: And you wanted to turn that into your own stories. I know we've spoken about this in the past, but you watched a lot of films, didn't you? There was no theatre in your life. That's for sure. No. 

[00:05:57] Gary: No, none. There was no reading books, [00:06:00] and there was no theatre. There was nothing good.

[00:06:03] Gary: But what there was, was television. And on television, you got lots and lots of films. And I was lucky enough that I could go to the cinema and watch lots and lots more films. And that would be my choice of something to do, to watch a good movie, always, or a good TV show. I think my love for them is what led me into wanting to be an actor.

[00:06:26] Gary: And then my failure to make it as an actor is what really led me to [00:06:30] writing. 

[00:06:30] Nigel: But you, the world that you grew up in was very, it was full of drama. Yeah. But there's a big difference between experiencing dramatic events and having the frame of mind to transform that into something that is dramatic, to something that is theatrical.

[00:06:54] Nigel: How did you make that adaptation in your mind, like this is reality, I want to [00:07:00] express it in a way that's dramatic, I want to transform it into something else, how did you do that? 

[00:07:03] Gary: I suppose at a very young age, I was involved in some really terrible things and terrible things happened all around me.

[00:07:11] Gary: And sometimes I was a participant and sometimes I wasn't. But what I discovered was in order to avoid getting into real trouble or going to prison or getting hit by my mom, which would be far worse, I I learned that I could tell a story or a version of the events. [00:07:30] That would make me seem innocent.

[00:07:32] Gary: And I suppose that's where it all really began. But I considered that to be acting. Because I was the one telling the story of what happened. And I changed the events to suit whatever I wanted to get out of or get into at the time. The way I wanted to portray myself I was able to do that by basically telling lies.

[00:07:53] Gary: And that is what storytelling is all about. 

[00:07:56] Nigel: That's interesting. For you it's about telling lies. [00:08:00] But for me, obviously, as a documentary maker, it's about expressing the truth of something. It's obviously not telling lies. You're being a little bit flippant. Because underneath the lie, you're trying to, you're trying to project an idea of something.

[00:08:17] Nigel: Do you see what I mean? There is a thing that you're trying to project by lying. And what I mean by that, let's try and find a better way to continue your comeback of saying it's about lying. Because I know that when I see your [00:08:30] dramas, it's incredibly truthful. And maybe that's just a very early attempt to describe what you were doing as a storyteller.

[00:08:35] Nigel: But you have an idea and you want to express it. And you dramatize it. It's just a different way of getting the truth across. Might be a way of putting it. Yes. 

[00:08:47] Gary: But, equally, sometimes to I'm very terrible at being a part of something and then when it happens, even during [00:09:00] horrible moments in my life, I've had this strange, terrible ability to get outside myself and go, you know what would be better?

[00:09:10] Gary: If I said this and did this, and if that person did this and said this, and I've always been able to correct villains and give them better lines, as if I was creating my own movie on the spot, which would be much better than what happened in reality. And, 

[00:09:28] Nigel: and where did this, the [00:09:30] technique come from? Is it just practice?

[00:09:32] Nigel: Is it just the fact that you watched, you got the dictionary out, you taught yourself words? I just think it's fantastic to say that because most kids are taught words without realizing they're being taught words, but you consciously went through a dictionary. Yeah. How did you pick the good ones by the way?

[00:09:48] Nigel: Because you would have spent a hell of a lot of time There are a lot of words there that won't be so useful. So how did you decide which words you wanted to 

[00:09:56] Gary: learn? Because I used them, I tried to use [00:10:00] them in conversations and I tried to use them to express what I was feeling or thinking or an idea and the ones that landed, I kept and the ones that people just rolled their eyes at or even if you tried to explain it, or over and over again, you just finally realised, no, this word's useless.

[00:10:18] Gary: No one understands what this word means. I'm not going to use it. 

[00:10:22] Nigel: Do you remember any particular words that when you opened the dictionary, you thought, that's a good word? Not really, 

[00:10:27] Gary: but what I did learn was [00:10:30] that you can use words to confuse people. And some people use longer words to seem better educated.

[00:10:41] Gary: But actually, it's a really stupid thing to do because if no one understands what you're saying, then you are not communicating to anyone but yourself. And I found that there was a better way to use smaller words. more expressive words to tell people what you're feeling or what you're thinking or to explain an idea.

[00:10:59] Gary: And the [00:11:00] fastest way to do it is the more entertaining way to do it.

[00:11:02] Gary: I thought, I've increased my vocabulary. I understand books. I can read. I can write a bit.

[00:11:08] Gary: And maybe this is the proper thing for me to do. Maybe write a play or maybe do something. And I saw that there was a competition for a radio play. Which, at the time, I didn't know radio plays existed. So I had to go to the library. I go to the section for radio plays and I read one. [00:11:30] Very quickly I picked up what's happening here.

[00:11:33] Gary: It might sound very obvious but I didn't know this or I didn't realize this. The only thing you need to write down is what you can hear and that's a radio play. So that's what I did. I just copied it. And I taught myself then how to change a stage play into a radio play by taking out everything that you can't hear.

[00:11:54] Gary: And then all of a sudden you had this. And I thought, I'll enter this competition. I had no aspirations of [00:12:00] winning it. I thought that would be impossible because it was for the whole of the UK. And I thought, no, there's bound to be far better writers than me. But what I would like, the BBC promised. That they would send you notes of why you didn't win.

[00:12:16] Gary: And I thought that could be very valuable. So I entered my play and I hoped to get notes. And then I would use those notes and then improve my writing. Or my script. But that didn't happen. What happened instead was a woman [00:12:30] phoned me up and said would you like to come in? You've you've got to the final of the Young Playwrights Festival and I thought it was a prank.

[00:12:40] Gary: I thought somebody was annoying me or playing a joke on me but it wasn't, it was a woman called Pam Brighton and she was an English woman and she loved the script and she loved everything about it and I went in and met her and she told me a very important thing and she said, something I've carried with me from the very first day that I met her [00:13:00] and she said, I want you to imagine a little old lady sitting in her living room in Devon in England.

[00:13:09] Gary: listening to this script and she will not understand what Rathcoole means, what the UDA means, what Protestant means. So can you change this script so that she can understand everything that's happening in it? And that's all I did. I just changed it all for that wee woman in Devon and so when I [00:13:30] submitted the second draft I won that competition because I had learnt that whilst you may think you know everything about your area, when you start explaining it to someone from outside your area, you suddenly realise your limitations. And you have to work very hard to describe what you know to an outsider. 

[00:13:51] Gary: On my doorstep there was murder in mayhem and on a daily basis, but there was always violence. And there was robberies and there was all sorts of [00:14:00] things and they were either occurring or being planned. And it was a very violent place to live. And it was also a very dangerous place to grow up.

[00:14:09] Gary: But there were people who somehow managed to live their entire life without doing anything. Without getting involved in anything. And somehow, I don't know, their parents or whatever, they managed to guide them through there until they became adults and could leave. Without being touched at all, but they're rare, [00:14:30] most people living there were touched, and touched in a very bad way.

[00:14:33] Gary: Where you're you think other people's nightmares are your everyday life. 

[00:14:39] Nigel: You were drawn as a style, when you moved into writing plays thrillers. Because your life was so intensely dramatic and that was a form that you... But you've got, even though you're writing plays, you said you were inspired by films.

[00:14:55] Nigel: Because I remember when I came to see I think it was The Force of Change. I can't [00:15:00]remember whether I saw it in Belfast or London. I remember watching it and there was a, it was an amazing piece of work and then at the interval, just prior to the interval, you created this moment of dramatic tension.

[00:15:12] Nigel: When, I think it was all centered around a mobile phone and someone had their phone stolen and it had disinformation on it. But it wasn't like anything I'd seen in the theatre before. It was a cinematic moment of intense drama, intense threat [00:15:30] and trauma. And you managed to bring that into the into the theatre.

[00:15:34] Nigel: Were you mainly influenced by film rather than theatre when you began your writing? When you were learning how to 

[00:15:41] Gary: dramatize. Absolutely. I can think of nothing better than watching three, four, five films in a day. I love movies and I'm just appalled that so many bad ones are made these days. When you think about the amount of money being spent on the movie and they forgot to pay somebody to write the script.[00:16:00]

[00:16:00] Gary: But they've got all these great actors and great directors and all these amazing film makers. But they struggle with scripts in my opinion. But I grew up watching fantastic movies, fantastic performances. They were always really exciting. And again I had this notion of why is America the centre of the universe?

[00:16:22] Gary: Because nearly all the films were American. There were some English films. But mainly, the thing that there wasn't, there was no film set [00:16:30] in Northern Ireland about Rathcoole or about Protestant working class people. And that was frustrating for me. But then I thought... Once I started writing, once I had that first play, and I had won that first award, people's reactions to my work was bizarre because, in my mind, I'm talking about something normal, and they're talking to me, their reactions are, that's extraordinary.

[00:16:56] Gary: I can't believe that happened in your life, or what that would be like. [00:17:00] And it might be really thrilling and exciting to them, but it was just a normal day for me. 

[00:17:07] Nigel: But these plays that you were writing, they did connect with an audience, because I know we're leaping ahead a bit, but you very quickly, you were in the Royal National Theatre the Royal, the National Theatre as it's called in the UK, which is the big one, and then the Royal Court Theatre, and then the Donmar Warehouse, and the Abbey in Dublin.

[00:17:26] Nigel: So it really caught on this intensely dramatic [00:17:30] writing that you were doing, these thrillers. Yes. That you were doing. So you wrote them in a way that made, even though they were about Protestant Northern Ireland, they were thrillers. How did you manage to make them universal? 

[00:17:44] Gary: The strange thing about it was they weren't popular within Northern Ireland.

[00:17:49] Gary: So even the fact that I had won the UK award. That was in 1991. I didn't have my first play until 1994, so it was three years later. [00:18:00] But I was still churning out radio plays for Radio 4 and Radio 3 every year. I think I've written about 26 or something. But at that time, getting a play about working class Protestants on in Belfast was just a no.

[00:18:12] Gary: I managed to get one on. And after that, I remember going to a meeting to talk about my second play, and the people who ran the theatre company actually said... We've already done a play about Protestants. That's it over. And I remember thinking, what does that mean? There's only, [00:18:30] how can you only do one play about an entire population and then say that's you done?

[00:18:36] Gary: But I was so I was determined anyway, so I didn't really know what to do. I thought, if I can't get a play on Belfast and I'm writing about working class Protestants. No one outside of Northern Ireland is going to be interested, so why would I? But there was an actor who was in a play in Dublin, he was called Stuart Graham, and he was in a play called Observe the Sons of Ulster, [00:19:00] Marching Towards the Somme, which is the best title I think I've ever heard.

[00:19:04] Gary: And he said he was doing this, and I thought that's fantastic. But he said, the Abbey, they're interested. Could I take your script down and show it to them? And so I thought, if they did that play, they might do mine.

[00:19:16] Gary: So I let him. Anyway, I couldn't lose anything. And he went down there and they loved it. And they said they wanted to do it. And it was really after having a hit play in Dublin [00:19:30] that the world really woke up. Because it was like, it changed my life forever. Because I won the... The inaugural Irish Times Theater Award for Best New Play.

[00:19:39] Gary: I just realised that there was a whole world out there and if you could explain your stories and if you could improve yourself you could get better and nothing can stop you.

[00:19:48] Gary: So I went from there. I was appointed writer in residence in the National Theatre of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which not a lot of people know that's the title of the theatre, but it is. And [00:20:00] when I was there, I wrote more and more plays and I was always determined. I had this determination to explain my community to the rest of the world, particularly the English.

[00:20:11] Gary: You have to write something that, that touches them and makes them feel empathy. Not sympathy, but empathy and maybe a love for the characters and the people and it leads them to at least think of them as normal instead of monsters.

[00:20:26] Nigel: But you were explaining your culture and your background, [00:20:30] but you were doing it in a way that, Other people could empathize with you and we were talking earlier about how you did this and it really interested me that kind of notion of this universality That you found in your stories.

[00:20:41] Nigel: So for one thing they were deeply thrilling because they were thrillers Yes, so you were influenced by the great the Godfather or whatever whatever you were watching on the screen But also you were trying to create something within them like that very first lesson you got how can you make this appeal to?

[00:20:58] Nigel: That woman in Devon. [00:21:00] Yes. Listening to your plays. So what techniques did you use to make, as well as having a great external plot, as I call it, this empathy, this kind of subjective experience. What do you do to create a subjective experience for the audience, so they feel they can be part of this very 

[00:21:17] Gary: alien world?

[00:21:18] Gary: I think you have to whilst you can be specific, you have to look at universal things. You have to look at your bread and butter. Everyone eats food. Everyone has to find the money to buy the food, to make the [00:21:30] food, to eat the food. And just even little simple things like that. You introduce your characters doing these things that everyone can relate to and everyone can understand.

[00:21:39] Gary: That it can be difficult for poor people to do this and it can cause trouble. And striving to get more money than you can earn. causes difficulty. We can all understand that. That is a universal problem. Being poor is universal. Struggling is universal. But then you have to realize that people have brothers and sisters and husbands and [00:22:00] wives all over the world.

[00:22:01] Gary: So they're universal and you can use them. Once you establish that you don't start off with your big theme or your big boom. You start off by introducing characters that everyone can relate to and a situation that everyone can relate to. And then you put something Incredible and thrilling in the middle of that.

[00:22:20] Gary: That makes it specific and not universal. Something that we, that not very many people would have experience of. And then people get to experience that. [00:22:30] Because they feel I have a wife. This could be me and my wife. And then this terrible thing happens to them. And they think, that could happen to us.

[00:22:38] Gary: And there's no reason why it wouldn't happen to you. You would hope that these terrible things don't happen to anybody. But the reality is that they do. Terrorism exists everywhere in the world. People get murdered everywhere in the world. And it's just, you're lucky if it never happens to you or a member of your family.

[00:22:55] Gary: But you can still, within stories and if it's contextualized [00:23:00] properly in the narrative, you can understand that it didn't, and you thank God that it didn't happen to you, but you can understand how it could happen to you, with a few mistakes. 

[00:23:10] Nigel: I mean you're saying anyone could suffer terrorism anyone could suffer violence but the audience Audiences for plays like that and stories like that might have no experience other than they're a human being. Absolutely. And that's at the heart of what you're doing when you're crafting your narratives.

[00:23:28] Gary: But it could equally be [00:23:30] someone's heart. You're trying to win someone's heart or you're trying to do something.

[00:23:32] Gary: But you're trying to achieve something. And then all these things get in the way to stop you achieving what you want to achieve. And that's relatable to every human. I want something. They don't want me to have it. I have to get it. Everyone relates to that and I think if you can bring people on that journey with you and make it as worse as you possibly can then it's more thrilling for everyone to be involved in thinking How did I overcome [00:24:00] that?

[00:24:00] Gary: In the World Cup final I'm 6 0 down and I somehow win 7 6. It's the same thing as there's a gun pointed to your head, they're going to kill your whole family, and somehow you've to survived this. It's the same thing, it's how big, how much trouble can you get into in 90 minutes, and then somehow at the end, get out of it.

[00:24:20] Nigel: Your work's been translated into other languages, that's right. So there's people in different cultures completely who've connected with your stories. What kind of languages were they translated in? [00:24:30] A 

[00:24:30] Gary: fascinating thing happened when we had As the Beast Sleeps was translated into Hebrew.

[00:24:37] Gary: It was really interesting how, I don't know now, it could be how they characterized it, but it just seemed to be there was a rhythm, there was a lovely rhythm and it came across as quite peaceful and it didn't sound like As the Beast Sleeps at all. It seemed like a very calm version of As the Beast Sleeps.

[00:24:55] Gary: But yet the same play was translated into German. And the [00:25:00] language seemed to be so rough and violent that it seemed more perfect for it. And you really thought, like within five minutes of the German translation, I was going, yeah, this is definitely As the Beast Sleeps. In fact, it's worse. And but, so I learned something that even language and even different cultures, different people.

[00:25:20] Gary: They can still do the same thing, they can tell the same story, but it has an effect on it. There'll always be an effect. 

[00:25:28] Nigel: So you listened to the [00:25:30] plays done in these other languages? And you could hear your play? Yeah. But you didn't know what they were saying? Especially in the Hebrew, I get there's no relation to English, but German?

[00:25:38] Gary: I knew the stories so I knew what they were saying. 

[00:25:41] Nigel: Did they still have the Catholic Protestant thing in the 

[00:25:44] Gary: Israeli version? I'm assuming they did. I was told they did. Because they weren't in the contract. They weren't allowed to change anything. It was a translation. It wasn't an adaption.

[00:25:54] Gary: Do you know what I mean? They were translating it into this language. I'd love to read the [00:26:00]reviews. reviews. I'm trying to

[00:26:00] Gary: think when it was. It was about 1998. 1999. 

[00:26:05] Nigel: So just taking a bit of a leap is to go into your life because your life and your career are intertwined and something happened, didn't it? In your life. 20 years ago. 20 years. It was. It was really when things were really going well.

[00:26:22] Nigel: Things were going well. Yeah. You were having all this success then kinda what happened to change things for you. 

[00:26:27] Gary: I was, I suppose I , [00:26:30] I felt like I was on a whirlwind journey to the top of the world. I was loving life and I was making loads of money and everything was going fantastic, making lots of contacts and getting offered, oh, I dunno.

[00:26:44] Gary: So much money and so many commissions on a daily basis. That was incredible. But I when people love you and love your work, what you learn is there's an equal if not disproportionate [00:27:00] amount of people who hate you at the exact same time whilst listening to your work or watching your work.

[00:27:06] Gary: It's just an automatic reaction. And unfortunately these people had ideas about me that weren't true, but have an element of truth to them. I did win an award. In a Catholic country, which I was accused of doing, which was a betrayal of the Protestant people. And I remember people saying to me, [00:27:30] If Catholics like your work, then it mustn't be Protestant work.

[00:27:33] Gary: It must be anti Protestant, otherwise Catholics wouldn't like it. And, uh, and I said, you know, have you ever heard one of my plays? You ever, you ever seen a play? You ever done anything? No. And it was so that was very difficult, but that grew and grew. Unnoticed. I knew people hated me, obviously.

[00:27:51] Gary: I got an awful lot of abuse. In fact, I remember somebody shot through my window one time. That was about the height of it. But I still [00:28:00] felt like that was just one person and it wouldn't really matter. But I suppose at the height of my success at that time, 20 years ago I came home from England.

[00:28:11] Gary: I was working in England. And I came home early. because Rangers were playing in the Champions League. And I came home to watch them on TV. And while I was watching it, Rangers supporters wearing Rangers scarfs, which are a Protestant football team, in case anyone doesn't know jumped on my [00:28:30] car and firebombed it.

[00:28:31] Gary: And then tried to get into my house and firebombed my house as well. And basically from that moment we had to go into hiding. And in case there was any any doubt as to why this happened, I remember when the police turned up four hours later, my car was a shell, and the first detective came over to me and he said you should stop writing these things.

[00:28:56] Gary: And that was all I really needed to know. That was the kind of encouragement that I [00:29:00] needed. So I knew that I needed to stop writing. And I needed to get my family out of there and go somewhere safe. So we went into hiding for about five years. Which 

[00:29:10] Nigel: is not the best thing to do for your career though, is it?

[00:29:12] Nigel: No, it's not. 

[00:29:13] Gary: I remember, I think it was about five years later when I was in The Royal Court and a lady said to me, what do you want? I said, I'm here to meet such and such. What's your name? Gary Mitchell. No, Gary Mitchell's dead. No, I'm not. I'm standing here. [00:29:30] No, Gary Mitchell was killed years ago. No, I wasn't.

[00:29:33] Gary: Yeah, it has an impact. Let's say that. It does have an impact. But moving house all the time I moved, I think we moved nine times in the end, and it was because each time we got comfortable, the police would come to us and say they know where you are, so moved far enough.

[00:29:52] Gary: You need to move further away. I'm just like... Okay. Could someone tell us a house where it would be okay to [00:30:00] go and we'll just go there, but they don't do that. It's just... So that process happened, yeah, 20 years ago that happened. Took a long time to get over that. 

[00:30:09] Nigel: We'll be back with Gary in a moment. But I just want to jump in and remind you about The DocFix storytelling program. Which is the reason why I'm recording these interviews with great storytellers. If you want to find out more about the program. Which is there to help anyone. Who's struggling to turn an idea into a great documentary story. You can go to [00:30:30] apply.thedocfix.com. I'll send you a case study. Where I go over exactly the process I use when working on documentary series and films like F1 Drive to Survive for Netflix, Meerkats with Sir David Attenborough. And of course my work with Gary. And if you've got any questions at all, I'll be glad to help. And, now back to Gary where we talk about the difference in storytelling between documentary and fiction And creating truthful and engaging docu-drama[00:31:00]

[00:31:00] Nigel: the difference between how we work is that, I mean I've said this when I teach and it's worth talking about it because it's my theory., I remember saying this many times, because I'm not a fiction writer, it's like a different way of looking at the world.

[00:31:13] Nigel: It's a different mentality. So my theory was that the difference between the dramatic process for fiction writers and documentary makers is for fiction writers you have an idea and then you're trying to create reality.

[00:31:28] Nigel: To express that idea. Real characters, [00:31:30] real people, real events, real sequences, real circumstances. Documentarians take reality and then have to give it meaning. And actually I've found a lot of when I'm teaching documentary makers, for some of them, it feels really alien to take documentary and give it meaning as if you are cheating, somehow.

[00:31:51] Nigel: But the obvious... Answer to that is if you don't do that, you just have a list of meaningless events because what you're doing doesn't mean anything. [00:32:00] And the point I'm making is the end result is the same. You're creating a piece of work that's and meaningful and you're an author and you've, you have something to say and it has to have all those dramatic moments.

[00:32:11] Nigel: In that it has to be suspensful and has to start powerfully and indicate where you're going and the audience is going to wonder what's going to happen next, how it's going to turn out, the climax has got to resolve everything. But documentarians come at it from a completely different place to dramatists.

[00:32:28] Nigel: You're starting [00:32:30] like at either end of this huge line and meeting in the middle. Now, we work together on drama, but you've also worked with me on documentary. Absolutely. What was your experience like of... Writing for documentary and what I mean by that is yeah, docu-dramas that we've done and we've done quite a few of them And I always bring you in and say people say they want dramatised documentary I said, "would you like one of the greatest dramatists who writes [00:33:00] thrillers to write the drama in here?"

[00:33:02] Nigel: They go. All right, then if you Because normally they expect a documentary maker just to knock off. Yeah scenes and sequences without... I am self aware enough to know that I cannot do that because I don't have 25 or 30 years experience doing it. So I brought you in. What was your experience of trying to get that to work?

[00:33:22] Gary: It's difficult because it depends on the real objective. I think documentaries are [00:33:30] basically a list of facts that have been researched. And then you're trying to tell those facts to an audience in as entertaining way as possible. So that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to make facts entertaining as much as you can.

[00:33:47] Gary: Or 

[00:33:47] Nigel: meaningful, I would say. Meaningful. That's where I come from. I always go for entertainment. 

[00:33:51] Gary: Yeah, I know. Whereas what I do is I tell a lie and then I think of a lie and then I try to make everyone [00:34:00] believe that lie is true. 

[00:34:01] Nigel: But there's something in that lie. You're being a bit flippant because there's something in that lie that you think is profoundly important to talk about the nature of things.

[00:34:12] Nigel: Yeah. And I guess in documentary, I hope you're joking, in that what I'm trying to do is take all these facts and find something that is meaningful and important in all these facts. Yeah. And then deliver it in a way that makes a great story. 

[00:34:27] Gary: You're trying to make the facts [00:34:30] meaningful. Yeah. You're saying this is what happened.

[00:34:32] Gary: Anyone can read in a book what happened. And they said, that's what happened. We can Google it. Say what happened, that's what happened. And that's all it is. A list of occurrences. And that's it. But you have to get, what you're doing, you're trying to make people feel that those facts are entertaining.

[00:34:51] Gary: But also important. And that they have meaning today. Even though they didn't happen today, they have meaning. Which is similar to what I'm doing [00:35:00] because I'm trying to give meaning to something that never happened. ever , but carries weight of something that could happen. And that, and also the thing that never happened could change your life if you think about it properly.

[00:35:14] Gary: Because I see the world I believe differently to everyone else because I don't like the world. I don't like the way the world is set up. I don't like the way we live. I think there's so many things wrong. And I like to tackle that every time I'm telling a story. [00:35:30] And I just think there's so many things wrong with the way that we live and so many things wrong with how humans even communicate with each other that it's always there for you to try to tackle it and to try to explain it.

[00:35:45] Nigel: But I'd always say the reason one is interested in a subject, there is a profound reason.

[00:35:52] Nigel: Why you want to make a documentary about a subject. It's not just because that's entertaining or that's an interesting character. You have to look into it [00:36:00] a lot deeper to see what is it about that event that's meaningful. My, my approach to what I do is to be very analytical about that process.

[00:36:10] Nigel: Because I think if you ask the right questions. You will get the right answers. If you have a process by which you can go through and ask questions of the facts, you suddenly, not suddenly, but very quickly, reveal a structure, reveal the meaning, reveal what you really feel about it in a way that actually begins just to lay out [00:36:30] the dramatic structure of the piece.

[00:36:32] Nigel: Yeah, 

[00:36:32] Gary: well, look, there's a simple way, as a documentarian, you say, the king hated the queen, so the king had the queen killed. Now to... To show that on a screen, all you have to do is get the king to say, there's the queen, I hate you, then kill her. And that's as easy as that, you've told the facts and that's it.

[00:36:52] Gary: What I would prefer to do is I would have scenes with the king and the queen living together, and then let the hatred reveal [00:37:00] itself, so that the audience can go, I think he hates her, and I think she's in danger. And then when she gets killed you go, I knew it. knew that was going to happen. So they're learning, but they have a feeling of teaching themselves and coming to their own conclusions, rather than just being told, these are the facts.

[00:37:18] Gary: And now let's tell you the facts again, but with pictures. 

[00:37:20] Nigel: So there's two ways you can look at it. If it was a contemporary piece. Yes. And you're a very observational filmmaker, which you should be as a documentary maker. And you're [00:37:30] looking at a relationship on screen. You're looking for the subtext.

[00:37:33] Nigel: So you're not expecting people to say things out, say things obviously to each other. You can just see the emotions brewing under the surface. You can see events take place that reveal something deeper. And that's what you're always looking for. Because that's what the audience go. They respond emotionally to an event.

[00:37:52] Nigel: I remember I made a film about a language teacher years ago. And you wanted to show that these young people were learning a language who had, [00:38:00] they were given no hope that they could learn anything. And they felt, so they felt hopeless and the school felt hopeless for them. And I got this amazing man, Michel Thomas, to come in and teach them.

[00:38:11] Nigel: And the most memorable shot in the film was when there was a young girl answering a question that Michel had taught, she had taught her French in two days. She was answering a question and there was a girl in the back of shot listening to her friend and mouthing the correct answer and rolling her eyes that [00:38:30] her friend was like being really slow.

[00:38:32] Nigel: And yet they'd been learning French for two days. Two days. And they'd spent five years failing. So everything was wrapped up in one image. But it wasn't someone saying, Oh, you should get that. I know the answer. It's been two days and why don't you do it? You just saw the look on the face and the exasperation.

[00:38:49] Nigel: And you could build that into a dramatic scene where you saw the two of them together. And you can imagine one of them talking to the other, not mentioning that the other person wasn't any good but they got it, and they'd be [00:39:00] talking around it and she'd try to say it nicely. All this stuff going on, which is subtext, but that's documentary subtext.

[00:39:07] Nigel: That's looking at the characters and really looking at them as human beings and seeing what is bubbling up about the relationship. There's two things. You're trying to find the emotional truth in that moment. Yeah. And then you're fitting that into a bigger narrative. About this is a story about this man who can teach people languages, will he or won't he succeed.

[00:39:28] Nigel: Two things going on. That [00:39:30] big exterior argument that you're making about, is it possible to do this thing? And then the empathy is, what would it feel like to be able to find yourself capable of something you thought you weren't capable of before? Which everyone can empathize with. Yes. Even if they're not learning a language.

[00:39:50] Nigel: So they are very similar. And I'm saying, it's, the documentarian's process is giving meaning. Yes. To the facts, but always being true to the facts. But you have an [00:40:00] idea saying, it's not about kids being taught, but it's about people surviving in a certain situation.

[00:40:05] Nigel: Yeah. How do these two young people survive when, This horror is going on in their environment and there's pressure from their parents to follow them follow that path But you do it through subtext you do it through empathy.

[00:40:22] Gary: But also there's a real problem with an anti dialogue culture Particularly in cinema, [00:40:30] and people hate dialogue because there's so many writers can't write dialogue.

[00:40:35] Gary: And I think where you really have problems is, in real life, people do not say what they mean. And very often, the struggle in humanity is trying to work out what the other person's intentions really are. And you don't do that by listening to what they tell you their intentions are. And if you, I think if you can capture that in a story.

[00:40:57] Gary: And then somehow the audience [00:41:00] learn the intentions of all the characters by not listening to the dialogue because the dialogue is betraying them. It's telling them lies. It's telling them what each character wants them to believe. And that's the best dialogue. And that's what I love. And when I'm, when I tell stories, that's what I'm always trying to do.

[00:41:19] Gary: To mislead everyone, to misguide everyone. So that they jump to all these... Random conclusions, or they take one person's side against the other's side, and they really believe it. [00:41:30] Because they tell their stories with conviction. And then the thrill of it is, that you eventually start to work out, they're all telling lies.

[00:41:38] Gary: And the truth is, A wants B, B wants C, C wants D. And then you work it out and you go, that's beautiful. Without ever saying it. In dialogue. 

[00:41:47] Nigel: It's interesting, by the way, because you mentioned about the king killing the queen. That was a film we made. It was Constantine, wasn't it, who had his wife murdered.

[00:41:56] Nigel: Is that right? Yes. I think it did, because you wrote the Roman [00:42:00] emperor,

[00:42:00] Nigel: Constantine. Let's talk about documentary and drama coming together. It was a very interesting process, because... I was making a documentary about Emperor Constantine, which is a remarkably dramatic, let's say eventful. Yes. Which is different from dramatic. Yeah. So a documentary might represent it as an eventful life.

[00:42:20] Nigel: And working with you, the automatic desire from me is, so let's make it dramatic. Let's make it meaningful. Let's really understand who he is. Now, how can you understand who [00:42:30] he is? He's been dead thousands of years, you have to. Take the reports of how he behaved and what he did and then say what kind of scenes can we create that are 100% emotionally authentic without being literally true because we can't know they're literally true.

[00:42:49] Nigel: A man ordered his wife and his son killed. what can be... unequivocally true about that kind of event. [00:43:00] And then how can we put it in a documentary so it still feels like a documentary? I hope I'm not confusing the listeners these are the circles you go around because when I have someone like you working with me as a dramatist, 

[00:43:11] Nigel: I'm still not sure what the best version of docudrama is. I'm really not. I think in some ways... I think it's better just to do impressionistic stylized renderings of moments because it's just illustrative of a mood and a tone. You do a very stylized representative way. It's out of [00:43:30] focus and out of focus is the thing, is the theme. It's like you can't really see what's going on, but you've got mood and a tone and expression you project into it.

[00:43:40] Nigel: Or you have these docu-dramas that are hyper realized and they are basically like a Hollywood movie but not as good because they have no heart and soul. So they're just like the action sequences you might say a lot of modern films don't have heart and soul in their action sequences, but there's no attempt [00:44:00] There's no ability really to dramatize them and give them subtext and meaning.

[00:44:04] Nigel: It's just the glossy stuff Yeah, and they don't give anything and what we're trying to do is to find this ground middle ground that was true and dramatic in that there was like genuine surprise and drama and suspense and revelation of character But at the same time, talking about people who we couldn't truly know what they were saying.

[00:44:24] Nigel: Were we distorting the truth by dramatising? It's a tricky one. But [00:44:30] there were moments where I really thought we pulled it off. 

[00:44:32] Gary: Yeah. I think that we humanised him and then we humanised his actions. Because if you were just to start off with a man kills his wife and his son... And that's a hard one to come back from.

[00:44:45] Gary: But what we did, we talked about how do we make him a human first. And what we did, we showed him, instead of showing the monster, and have everybody go, bleh, bad monster, what we did was we showed a weak, frail, dying man. And [00:45:00] that gets sympathy, that gets empathy, because we all know that's going to be us one day, if we live long enough to be old and frail.

[00:45:07] Gary: And... So you're on his side immediately, worrying about him and thinking, oh no. And then you realise, , this man did terrible things and he's feeling really bad about what he did. And that makes us then think about, we have an opportunity then to consider what he did. And should he feel bad and is he entitled to forgiveness?

[00:45:29] Gary: [00:45:30] Does he earn that? And I just think it, we opened up so many ideas. By not talking about the facts and not just saying he murdered his wife and his son, which were the facts, 

[00:45:40] Nigel: it's a fascinating form, docudrama. It can go in so many ways. And I always love experimenting with it. Yeah. I always love experimenting.

[00:45:50] Nigel: Visually, it's always interesting to me. And it's trying to, like we've talked about, integrate it into an honest and authentic piece. People can tell [00:46:00] whether it feels right when you're dramatizing. Actually, the big danger is, I think, when people make, when , documentary directors make their first docudrama, they try and audition for drama doing it.

[00:46:12] Nigel: So they destroy docudrama. They just, here's a sequence, this is going to impress a drama producer. And you think, that's a terrible piece of filmmaking overall, but you've got a nice, something showreel. Absolutely. So we yeah, we worked on all sorts of things. Quite a [00:46:30] few documentaries and also, which was quite exciting when I did actually get to do a drama and I was out in LA and I was directing Sharon Stone in that film I made, I got you to work on the script.

[00:46:42] Nigel: Since I met you I thought this is what we really want to do. And what I love was your confidence. I know it sounds odd 'cause I was directing her but anyway, imposter syndrome is a strange thing. So I was out there directing all these movie stars who it was an interesting structured [00:47:00] feature film in that everyone pretty much had to have an Oscar in order to appear.

[00:47:06] Nigel: So we managed to get all these Oscar winners or Oscar nominees.

[00:47:08] Nigel: Yeah, but you never felt uncomfortable ever Writing your work for very big names. Did you never had imposter syndrome? No 

[00:47:20] Gary: It's difficult to not be conceited or to come across as conceited or big headed, but what if I ever said that I was good at something, my mom would hit me a slap in the [00:47:30] head and say don't have an ego son.

[00:47:33] Gary: And so you weren't allowed to really do that when I was young. But. I went through my life failing at everything and every time I knew that someone was better than me, I stopped doing it. I just said, I'm not going to be the best. I'm going to stop doing it. But when I finally landed on writing I grew in confidence and I, I reached the point where I suppose winning loads of awards helps.

[00:47:56] Gary: But I suddenly realized that loads of people really like what I do. And [00:48:00] maybe this is something where I could end up being the best. So I threw everything I had into it. And I think one of the things that you can't do, you can't let, other people's success diminish yours by just cowering in a corner thinking they've won an Oscar, I haven't.

[00:48:17] Gary: They're better than me. I shouldn't be in the same room. You've got to have the confidence and the boldness to say I'm brilliant at what I do. They're brilliant at what they do. I think I could improve listening to them, [00:48:30] and I think they could improve listening to me. And then we all help each other.

[00:48:33] Gary: That's what I've always done with you. You help me be better at what I do, and I hope that I help you be a wee tiny, tiny, tiny bit better at what you do. And, um, it's worked so far, but don't forget we had a convenient, um, I suppose, accident. Because it just happens that I have insomnia, and that I'm awake all night.

[00:48:53] Gary: So when you were working during the day in L. A. As you do, I was at home [00:49:00] in my house struggling to sleep. So when you phoned me and said, Sharon Stone's really struggling with this scene, could you have a look at it? I was like, ha, this is exactly what I should be doing instead of trying to go 

[00:49:12] Nigel: to sleep.

[00:49:14] Nigel: I think it's fascinating to talk about the kind of things that were happening to you. at the height of your first success because you know you're writing screenplays now and you've got a play on at the end for the Belfast International Festival it's the lead play so that's all going great [00:49:30] but I'm going to feed you this but tell me the story about Daniel Day-Lewis.

[00:49:34] Gary: Daniel, this is a very short story, but yeah, I was at a forum or something and I did a speech and I was talking about writing and whatever, and then afterwards I was just getting a cup of tea or something and I was approached by somebody, and it's one of these things where you think, is this actually happening, but somebody came over to me and said, excuse me, someone would like to have a cup of tea with you.

[00:49:58] Gary: And I was like, fair [00:50:00] enough, I'm up for it. I like having tea. Who is this? And he said, Daniel Day-Lewis. And I was like, are there two Daniel Day-Lewises in the world? Because I know one of them is not going to be having tea with me. So I don't know who this other person is. But bizarrely, it was. And he was a tremendously charming person and I was just sitting in awe.

[00:50:23] Gary: And I knew you've got an opportunity here. You will never have this opportunity ever [00:50:30] again. And you should make something of it. Make something happen or do something or make friends with him. And make a contact with him or something. Get his address, get his phone number. All the logical side of your brain is saying that.

[00:50:44] Gary: But in reality... What I did was, I had a cup of tea with a really intelligent, super fella. I really enjoyed it, and I just listened to him the whole time. I don't think I really spoke very much, and then at the end I just said, Lovely to meet you, thanks for having a cup of [00:51:00] tea with me. And that was the end.

[00:51:02] Gary: Never seen him again, except in the big screen, winning Oscars. And 

[00:51:06] Nigel: he was obviously there to compliment you on the plays. And that's why he was, he wanted to speak to you, wasn't 

[00:51:11] Gary: it? Yeah, he did. He said something along the line again, , I'm thinking like, is this really happening or have I been drugged?

[00:51:20] Gary: But he said something along the lines like I'm a big fan of you're work and I'm going. Someone told him to say that he's never heard of me, but he did [00:51:30] and he was lovely and he complimented me on my speech and my work and wished me all the best for the future. Instead of me saying, BE IN MY FUTURE!

[00:51:40] Gary: I said, thank you very much, and I wish you all the best as well, and I don't think you have enough Oscars, go get some more. 

[00:51:47] Nigel: You, you're an idiot. There's, and the same happens let's not make a list, I don't want to make a list of failures, that sounds ridiculous, you've had a lot of success.

[00:51:57] Nigel: Let's look at another very positive way. A lot of [00:52:00] really fantastic actors really admire your work. Let's put it the other way. Yeah. So Kevin Spacey. Yeah. And Helen McCrory and Colin Farrell was in his first play was... In a Little World of Our Own. Which was your play.

[00:52:13] Nigel: Yes. And Jason Isaacs. Who's less, no, maybe he's not less, he's a fantastic actor. Adrian Numbar. Yeah, no yeah, loads of people. Yeah. It's just, it's not to big you up, it's just to say I genuinely find it hysterical. That [00:52:30]these huge 

[00:52:30] Gary: names. I'm not an opportunistic person. I don't see an opportunity.

[00:52:36] Gary: When I meet someone, I don't go, Oh, you could really help my career. I better do something so that you can help my career. I write. in my room. That's all I do. 

[00:52:48] Nigel: But something else since we, there's an area that fascinates me because Shakespeare is really interesting to me and you because [00:53:00] you adapted Shakespeare ages ago for a project that I was involved in. And it was, It's so interesting because basically what you did, which is a wonderful idea, you were asked to take all these Shakespearean characters and extend their life outside of their plays and create this bigger, deeper story involving multiple Shakespeareans and you found a way of making them all interweave.

[00:53:24] Nigel: But what I love about your Shakespeare is it just doesn't come from an academic[00:53:30] study of Shakespeare. No. You didn't really study it in school. You didn't study a huge amount in school at all. I didn't study anything in school. You, by the way, that's yeah, I know you didn't. You should have done, but you you chose not to.

[00:53:42] Gary: Yes, I chose not to for fear of being bullied, for being intelligent. 

[00:53:46] Nigel: So you didn't study at school. And then you took to Shakespeare and you started reading Shakespeare. And you just read it as stories. 

[00:53:55] Gary: It was because I saw Kenneth Branagh doing Shakespeare in movies. And I thought it [00:54:00] was so brilliant.

[00:54:01] Gary: And I thought, the way that he made the films, I thought, that's impossible to be a stage play. That could not have been a stage play. He has changed this stage play into a film. And then, so I went to the library and I got that play. And I read it and I went, he did not change this. This is the way Shakespeare wrote this.

[00:54:20] Gary: And it was brilliant. And I just thought, I'm going to get more of these. And I suppose the attraction for me was Shakespeare plays are [00:54:30] so much more exciting and so much more violent than people believe. Because everyone thinks it's just flowery language and it's really difficult for actors.

[00:54:40] Gary: But in reality, they are the most violent things you'll ever witness and they're brilliant. They are amazing reads and I was fortunate because I live at a time when so many of them have been made into movies. So that's a big advantage that we have now that maybe people didn't have in the past but you can make [00:55:00] things Shakespearean.

[00:55:00] Gary: One of the best compliments I've ever had was when the guy who commissioned me to write that didn't realise that two of the characters were mine and not Shakespeare's.

[00:55:10] Gary: He thought those two characters were actually Shakespeare's from Macbeth and they weren't. I had just made them up and I thought, wow, if people can't tell the difference between my characters and Shakespeare's characters, I'm on to something. 

[00:55:24] Nigel: And you find a connection with him. With his approach to storytelling.

[00:55:28] Gary: I think that the kind [00:55:30] of sprawling Shakespearean setups, I lived through them, except instead of dealing with, I was dealing with kings and queens of empires. I was dealing with kings and queens of estates.

[00:55:42] Gary: Housing estates. But they're still the same. Those people ruled over other people. And they had quarrels and they killed each other. And so I could really relate to Shakespeare's plays in a way I think that was just magical. And it was just incredible to me that he wrote these so many hundred years ago, but he's writing [00:56:00] about kings and queens.

[00:56:01] Gary: And that's again, going to go back to my theory that if you tell the truth if you make it as believable as you possibly can, it doesn't matter if it's kings and queens. It doesn't matter if it's on a housing estate. Somewhere in Northern Ireland, or somewhere in Rotterdam. Or the wee woman in Devon round the corner from her.

[00:56:21] Gary: It doesn't matter, we all understand the complexities. We all understand the contradictions. We all understand the fears, the motives, the [00:56:30] hatred. And that's what makes great stories.

[00:56:33] Nigel: And coming back to this play that you've got on. that you're about to go into rehearsal in September. That touches on that experience that you had 20 odd years ago. Doesn't it? The kind of the subject matter.

[00:56:45] Nigel: Have you ever dealt with that in a play before? 

[00:56:48] Gary: No, but I often do this. I often take elements of reality, things that actually happened to me. And then I allow those events to happen to my characters. The characters aren't me, [00:57:00] they don't represent me, but what happened to me happens to my characters, and then they react differently because they are different characters.

[00:57:08] Gary: And in this one, I have, for example, my car was firebombed and my house was attacked and I had to go into hiding, I don't have that happen in this, I have all the circumstances building up to that moment. , but it's happening to two completely different people who aren't writers who who aren't working class from Rathcoole, who aren't me in other words.

[00:57:29] Gary: But the same [00:57:30] build up and the kind of impact, the psychological trauma that they experience is still very much from reality, but fictionalized. Because then I'm able to control it so that I get the right outcome. 

[00:57:44] Nigel: Gary, it's been absolutely fantastic talking to you about these things. I enjoyed it as well. Thank you, Nigel. My pleasure. I look forward to having many more of these conversations again. Speak to you soon. Thank 

[00:57:56] Gary: you.

[00:57:56] Nigel: I hope you enjoyed that conversation and found it useful.[00:58:00] If you're interested in working with me and The Doc Fix all the links you need or in the notes below. There's a case study you could sign up for that goes into some detail on how the system has been used in some of the TV shows and documentaries I've been involved with. 

[00:58:13] Nigel: And there's a lot of information there you'll find useful. And if you learn something want to get in touch, do let me know. You can send me an email to nigel@thedocfix.com. And I'd be happy to hear from you. And as a last thing, if you're enjoying this podcast and you want to support the show, 

[00:58:28] Nigel: And make sure it's completely free. You could do [00:58:30] a number of things. One is to just share it with someone who you think would benefit from it. That's one way to support it. And number two, take some time to leave a review. If you leave a review for the show on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts, it just helps the algorithm to get in front of people who could benefit from it the most. 

[00:58:49] Nigel: So that's all I've got for you on today's episode. Have a good rest of the day and I'll talk to you soon.