Product Details

• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: New Video Group
• VHS Release Date: September 26, 1995
• Run Time: 70 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6303614566
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #311,316 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

This video, filmed in April 1994, records the final public words of the genius behind such films as Brimstone and Treacle, Pennies from Heaven, and Dreamchild. It's the last record of a man facing--with dignity, intelligence, and surprisingly good humor--death from cancer. Recorded as a television special by Britain's Channel Four, the documentary can be unsettling. Potter's inflamed hands can barely hold his ever-present cigarette (which he refers to as a "little tube of delight"), and he alternately sips champagne and swigs liquid morphine from an antique hip flask. But for those who have enjoyed Potter's wildly creative work--or those simply interested in the creative process itself--it's a fascinatingly funny glimpse into the mind of a master. Potter begins the show with a moment of mystical insight, describing the plum tree outside his study window as the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, thanks to his quickly approaching death. From there, the conversation gallops across a varied mental landscape. He discusses his controversial teleplays--including Son of Man, whose portrait of Christ as a carpenter evaluating the wood of the cross was debated in the Australian parliament. He jokes with interviewer Melvyn Bragg about his long career, his terrible illness, and the general infirmities of the human condition. And with sarcastic wit, he gently skewers the hypocrisies of religion, politics, television, and the media. --Grant Balfour

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A profound few moments shared with a genius, June 10, 1999

By 

MGB-Rick "ricka" (Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dennis Potter - The Last Interview [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Melvyn Bragg interviews the dying genius playwright Dennis Potter without maudlin and Potter responds without angst as he races death to finish his last duo of plays: Karioke and Cold Lazarus. Sipping morphine to ease the pain of pancreatic cancer, he talks of the clarity and beauty of life that impending death gives, only afraid that he may be cheated by the grim reaper a few pages too early.

Even if you have never seen a Potter play and so have never had the chance to appreciate how good TV drama can really be, you will find this interview deeply moving and memorable. And afterward, read the reviews of the Singing Detective; if you choose to buy that too, you will almost certainly become one of the many with an insatiable appetite for his work.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An extraordinary example of moral and intellectual courage., November 11, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Dennis Potter - The Last Interview [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Dennis Potter's last interview, given in 1994 when he was dying of pancreatic cancer and living on morpheine, cigarettes, and his work, stands, in my judgment, as one of the most extraordinary documentations of moral courage and intellectual honesty ever committed to videotape.

Why?

First, because Potter is unflinchingly honest in his dicussion of his cancer, his childhood, British politics, his work, his failures, God, and Rupert Murdoch. Watch this interview for Potter on Murdoch if for no other reason.

Second, because Potter faces squarely into the prospect of his life's end. No sentimentality. No pathos. Just honesty and integrity and insight. His comments on the basis for his serenity are deeply moving. To say more would be to trivialize them.

Third, because Potter shows what it's like for a human being to pay close attention to the world and try to express something important about it in art. His words are authentic and from the heart. They're spoken through pain, but they emerge, paradoxically, in joy.

And fourth, because Potter's cultural criticism is scathing and acute, yet never brutal. He's no cynic. Yet he makes himself quite clear that cynicism remains a great danger given the commoditization of everyday life, the trivialization of political discourse, the trend toward entertainment as the main purpose of life, and the centralization of control over publishing and broadcasting.

This interview, the actual videotape of Potter speaking, drinking liquid morpheine, chain smoking, and sipping champagne, is essential if you care one whit about literature, cultural criticism, television, or serious drama. Or if you're simply curious about what a truly honest human being looks and sounds like.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Generous Potter, July 17, 2004

By 

Jez Worth (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dennis Potter - The Last Interview [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This Channel 4 "Without Walls" special is probably the best television interview I have ever seen. Potter brings the very best out of Melvyn Bragg, one of the UK's most incisive and intelligent interviewers, and gives fully of himself in what he knew would be his last chance to say his piece about media, society and his own life and work. Bragg himself plays his part wonderfully, unobtrusively and sensitively supporting the frail writer throughout this most important of final tasks. As a valedictory postscript to a brilliant career and as an intimate conversation between two engaged thinkers, this programme is not to be missed.

The transcribed interview (also available) cannot, of course, fully capture what the camera has recorded for posterity: Potter's presence, his humour and the exemplary warmth, courtesy and gratitude he showed to Bragg and to the cameramen and engineers. All of this as his life ebbed away.

In my opinion it is this interview, more even than the final screenplays (Karaoke and Cold Lazarus) that he discusses, that puts the shining seal on Potter's cultural legacy.