an appreciation
Shrouded in a Veil of Privilege
Matthew Scurfield analyses the Survival of the Coolest screenplay
Born into a Cambridge academic family, Matthew has had a distinguished career on the English stage working for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, Theatre de Complicite, Royal National Theatre, English National Opera, The Traverse Theatre Edinburgh, The Mermaid, The ICA, The Royal Court, Steven Berkoff’s London Theatre Group, Birmingham Repertory, Nottingham Playhouse and The Everyman Liverpool. He has also has a string of TV and film credits, including: Kavanagh QC, A Dance to the Music of Time, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Tales from the Crypt, Pie in the Sky, Time after Time, Piglet Files, Blue Heaven, Amy Foster, Dakota Road, Wedekind, 1984, The Jigsaw Man, Raiders of The Lost Ark and McVicar. Matthew is also the author of the forthcoming memoir, I Could Be Anyone.
A boy of innocence shrouded in a veil of privilege falls headlong into a dark night of the soul. His poetry turns the nightmare into a vivid dream of hope and love.
As an actor I seldom read a script straight through because they don’t usually hold my dyslexic attention, but this did. The balance between the poetic and the material world is very well tuned and will have to be totally respected for the overall narrative to make sense. The dialogue is often sweet, like icing on the cake, but a turn of a head, a shift of an eye – the attitude behind the line, the subplot – is crucial, especially within the sanctum of such an esteemed family!
In the film Nil by Mouth, the abuse and addiction is, sadly, easy to comprehend, but in William Pryor’s story it could be seen as hard to get – the subtlety of dysfunction takes on a ghostly almost unobtainable quality – hard to fathom, hard to pin down. Unlike Gary Oldman’s film, the abuse is not at all in your face. We have to see between the lines.
What’s so compelling and understated in Coolest is that the pain creeps up on us unnoticed. Then before we know it, we’re in deep. How could there possibly be a problem? The parents and family have inherited their place at the top of the pile – their only son is educated with the very best and yet still he manages to bring a shameful curse into the great family’s household. Why?
Given the state we find ourselves in today, especially with regards to the higher echelons of society, this could be an important question. Why do such families need black sheep and scapegoats? Where does such need to obliterate the self and to find spirituality come from? Where is the dividing line between an existential jump and a reckless leap? How do we get to see this on the screen – and see it we must – through William’s eyes?
Kind, gentle and intelligent as the parents seem to be, they have not known love in the deepest possible sense and are unable to give the unconditional love so vital for child William’s survival, since they haven’t known it for themselves. As the top dogs we have become supremely cunning at creating a world in which the idea of love is seemingly a part of what we imagine to be a secure environment. To all intents and purposes this works; that is, until the beloved child turns everything sour. Our parents sit at the very top of our intellectual and social pyramid, yet are blind to the effects of their own love (or its lack) and, to some extent, of their own histories. They are distracted, as if trying to catch a slight of hand and, in a few immortal seconds, the streamlined limousine of life ends up in a deadly crash.
This script enables the reader to go with William into those surreal and deeply painful corners. With its poetic insurgence everything is grounded in absolutes. Underlying William’s story we have the culture, the science that helped make the human race the gigantic machine it is today, a machine that has brought irretrievable damage to the planet. Could it be that somewhere inside William understands this and intuitively, unwittingly and unknowingly sees the need for change? By taking his dive of death, maybe he is throwing an essential spanner in the works?
Never far from the backbone of this story is Darwin. He stood out as a groundbreaking pioneer, a biologist and scientist in the broadest sense, a man who stood alone, challenging how we look at the origin of our species. He lived and thought in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, which led to the plundering of dark continents and the creation of a new world. The powerbrokers, the industrialists, inventors, explorers, imperialists and scientists driving this revolution, saw it as their absolute right to go where no man had been before and rule, with total conviction. If this is the kind of commitment his forefathers had, why should William’s commitment to his journey into the interior be any different? It was, after all, his inheritance. Where outer corners of the planet are all but conquered, the inner echelons of our being, where few dare to go, have hardly seen a soul.
When William takes his first step out of the sandpit, we believe in him. We don’t doubt the support he gets from his ethereal doppelganger Atma and his grandmother Gwen. Because we believe them to be true, as does William; their love poetry and spiritual essence take us by the hand and lead us into William’s interior world.
From the beginning the innocence and sensitivity in the character of William is vital. If we are not intrigued by this cool dude who wants to break new ground, we won’t care. The way the actor playing William inhabits the part is pivotal in making the narrative of the film work. He must be seen to be innocent, not naive, but also fearless of the prison of the needle and of the consequences of society’s profound misunderstanding of the nature of addiction. As William says in the loony bin, “I haven’t done anything wrong”. We must believe it, while also understanding how, in the eyes of this great family, he has brought about untold damage.
There is an unnervingly prophetic build up to the Wholly Communion poetry event in the Albert Hall, which culminates in William’s life being sacrificed on the altar of countercultural ideals. It doesn’t matter how good his poetry actually is; what matters is that he looks the part. His belief in himself as über poet takes him to the edge; human blindness pushes him over.
In the wake of unimaginable pain, comes unimaginable courage and clarity. When William has fallen as low as he possibly can, he discovers that his search for love is complete. William begins to see both physically and spiritually. William’s buddy, Angel’s glassblowing provides a powerful visual metaphor of this process. We see William through the eyes and heart of Ophelia, who never judges him, enduring much pain herself to stick with him, his real self, from the beginning.
This script takes us to uncompromising new ground, but to achieve the payoff in all its glory, the ending cannot afford to be at all sentimental. If Ophelia’s unconditional love, William’s return to El Patio, his encounter with the bog pits of Dartmoor and his reunion with Angel are played low key and straight, the ending will be believable. If they are overblown, the pain of the story will be belittled and this sensational story won’t work.
