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The Documentary Podcast

In The Studio: Carol Morley

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.32.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Carol Morley is known for films like The Falling, Dreams Of A Life, and her most recent work, Typist Artist Pirate King.

Her next movie is an adaptation of her autobiographical novel Seven Miles Out. It’s about a teenage girl coming to terms with her father's suicide, and not one word of the book has made its way into the screenplay. Carol tells Stephen Hughes why she was surprised by how difficult it was to adapt her own work, and how it brought back thoughts and feelings she thought she'd learned to live with. Carol also reveals that selling a script is harder than writing one, as she waits patiently to hear back from film companies that she’d sent the screenplay to.

Produced and presented by Stephen Hughes

**This programme contains distressing content**

During this interview, Carol speaks frankly about the effect of her father’s suicide upon her. If you need support following anything you’ve hear in this episode, there’s information at bbc.com/actionline and help is also available at befrienders.org.

Transcript

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0:00.0

It's like driving a car under an avalanche, but you're taunting the avalanche rather than trying to get away from it

0:08.4

Amazing sports stories from the BBC World Service

0:13.0

Find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

0:17.0

This is the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service.

0:28.0

The program that investigates the creative process. I would do most things to get money for a film.

0:32.0

It's really not as simple as one yes. It takes many

0:35.9

yes and a thousand knows. It really does. My name is Stephen Hughes and in this episode we're following filmmaker

0:45.2

Carol Morley as she adapt her own novel Seven Miles Out. For some reason I

0:50.3

naively thought I wouldn't have to do much to my book in order to transpose it for

0:56.7

the screen and adapt it for the screen and I found really I began again.

1:01.9

Powell is known for films like The Falling, Dreams of a Life, and Out of Blue.

1:07.0

Seven miles out is her only novel.

1:10.0

It's a story of a young girl called Anne who discovers unknown pleasures in the Manchester

1:19.0

music scene of the 1970s and 80s and 80s.

1:29.0

Anne's formative years are defined by one moment, her father's suicide,

1:31.0

so seven miles out is part fiction, part memoir.

1:35.0

I didn't feel I'd have to go back to that place again.

1:38.0

So I thought, well, I've gone back to that place.

1:39.0

And now I just adapt it into a film not having to go back to that place and I was really mistaken

1:46.0

so I suddenly thrust into excavating the emotions from the time of my father's suicide and it is kind of exploiting the history

1:56.1

and the memories but I feel to be authentic in anything that you do you have to

2:01.1

do deep research and so I really did a lot of research into the times but also

...

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