This Cultural Life

Oscar-winning film-maker Damien Chazelle talks to John Wilson about his career and cultural influences.As a child, Chazelle first started experimenting with making films using his dad’s old camcorder. After studying filmmaking at Harvard, he drew on his own experiences as a skilful jazz drummer to make his debut feature film Whiplash, about a music student and his abusive teacher. His movie La La Land, a musical in which star-crossed lovers sing and dance through the backstreets of LA, won six more Academy Awards. Damien explains how much that film owes to the Jacques Demy and Michel Legrand's 1964 romantic musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. He also reveals how the Los Angeles paintings of David Hockney, and in particular his 1967 work A Bigger Splash, inspired the feel and the palate of La La Land. Chazelle's latest movie Babylon explores the birth of the film industry itself and the painful transition from silent movies to the talkies, and is inspired, in part, by the classic musical Singin' in The Rain. He also explains how his love of west coat jazz musicians including Stan Getz and Chet Baker has influenced his creative output.Producer: Edwina Pitman

The British born musician, composer and writer Stephen Hough grew up in Cheshire, won the piano section of the very first BBC Young Musician of the Year competition as a teenager, before moving to New York to study at the Juilliard School of Music. Over the last 30 years, Stephen Hough has made more than 60 albums and is globally renowned for his thrilling live performances of a wide classical piano repertoire. Knighted in 2022 for services to music, he is also a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music, holds the International Chair of Piano Studies at his alma mater, the Royal Northern College in Manchester, and is a member of the faculty at The Juilliard School. Stephen talks to John Wilson about some of the most important influences on his musical career, starting with a 1962 LP called Keyboard Giants of the Past. This compilation album, bought for him just after he started to learn the piano aged 6, included artists from the earliest days of recording such as Ignace Paderewski, Vladimir de Pachmann and Sergei Rachmaninoff, all of whom inspired him with their rich artistry and individual styles. He reveals how Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius helped him back into the world of classical music after suffering a breakdown while at Cheetham's School of Music, and began his conversion to Catholicism as a teenager. Stephen also describes how leaving Cheshire for studies at the Juilliard School of Music in New York was his coming-of-age in many ways and how winning the prestigious Naumburg International Piano Competition while a student there, launched his career aged 21.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Whoopi Goldberg is the one of very few people to have won all four of America’s big awards - Emmy, Grammy Oscar and Tony - for her work in film, theatre and television. Brought up by a single mother in a New York housing project, Whoopi Goldberg first made her name on stage with a solo comedy show before making her film debut in an adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Color Purple. Discussing her biggest cultural turning points with John Wilson, she recalls her earliest experiences of acting at the Hudson Guild, a children’s community project. Having struggled at school, she was encouraged by her mother to make the most of free cultural opportunities in the city, including museums and public lectures, which fuelled her fascination with language. She also remembers seeing the Joseph Papp Theatre troupe, which performed free Shakespeare plays in New York parks. Whoopi recalls her friend and mentor Mike Nichols, the director of The Graduate who, after seeing her solo stage show in San Francisco, directed her on Broadway. After that show became a hit, Whoopi Goldberg was invited by Steven Spielberg to perform at his private theatre leading to her casting in the role of Celie in his 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple, a film debut that earned Whoopi Goldberg an Academy Award nomination. Since then, she has made around a hundred films, including Ghost, for which she won an Academy Award, and Sister Act. She has hosted the Academy Awards several times, and has forged a career as an opinionated television personality. Whoopi also talks about her latest movie Till, the story of Mamie Till-Bradley, who pursued justice after the murder of her 14-year old son Emmett in 1955. Producer: Edwina Pitman

Theatre and film director Sam Mendes first made his mark when he launched London’s Donmar Warehouse theatre in the early 90s. He has won Olivier and Tony Awards for numerous productions including Cabaret, The Ferryman and most recently, The Lehman Trilogy. He made his cinematic debut directing American Beauty in 1999, and won the first of two Oscars - the second was for the war film 1917. He also directed the two James Bond movies Skyfall and Spectre, and was knighted in 2020.Sam tells John Wilson about his earliest memories of feeling the thrill of live performance, at the London production of Godspell in 1971. Later, how the work of Shakespeare came alive for him while watching productions at the RSC, and in particular, a memorable performance of Antony and Cleopatra starring Michael Gambon and Helen Mirren. He reveals how his directorship of the Donmar Warehouse, which established his reputation as a ground-breaking theatre director, all began with a chance late night stroll around Covent Garden.Seeing Wim Wenders' 1984 film Paris, Texas was to be a formative influence on Sam when he eventually came to direct his debut feature American Beauty and later films including Jarhead and Revolutionary Road. Casting the actor Daniel Craig in his second film Road to Perdition, despite a poor audition was to have a significant impact on both their careers. Sam also talks about moving into writing and making more personal films including 1917 based on the war stories of his grandfather, and Empire of Light, partly inspired by his childhood experiences of witnessing his own mother's struggles with her mental health. Producer: Edwina Pitman

Comedian, actor and composer Tim Minchin wrote the songs for the musical adaptation of the Roald Dahl story Matilda which, after more than a decade of sell-out West End shows, has now also been adapted for the big screen. His stage musical version of the film Groundhog Day earned him an Olivier award and seven Tony nominations on Broadway. He also co-wrote and starred in the television comedy drama series Upright, and has performed solo shows around the world. Tim Minchin tells John Wilson about his most important cultural influences and creative inspirations, starting with his upbringing in Perth, Australia. He recalls his earliest attempts at songwriting, influenced by TS Eliot and 90s grunge rock bands, which led to him writing a musical version of Love's Labour's Lost for a youth theatre company whilst he was still at school. Tim chooses the American singer-songwriter Ben Folds as one of his key influences, and particularly the 1997 Ben Folds Five album Whatever Ever And Ever, Amen. He also cites being commissioned to write the songs for The Royal Shakespeare Company's Matilda The Musical, and working with director Matthew Warchus, as a major turning creative turning point. Perhaps surprisingly, Tim chooses an ill-fated musical project, Larrikins, as another important moment in his career. He reflects on how the animated adventure, which was due to star Hugh Jackman and Margot Robbie, was cancelled by studio bosses and the effect that experience had on him.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Florence Pugh was Oscar and BAFTA nominated for her role as Amy March in the adaptation of Little Women. She has won huge acclaim for films including Midsommer, Lady Macbeth, and the Marvel adventure Black Widow. She also played the lead in the television adaptation of John Le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl. More recently she’s been on the big screen in Don’t Worry Darling, and 18th century Irish drama The Wonder. Florence tells John Wilson how her performing ambitions during a primary school nativity show in which she played Mary with a northern accent, borrowed from her Grimsby-born grandparents. She chooses, as one of her most significant creative inspirations, a woman called Linda Mace who made costumes for all the school productions, and whose store room full of period clothes fuelled Florence’s imaginations. She recalls her breakthrough role in The Falling, about a fainting phenomenon at an English girls’ school in the late 1960s, and how she was inspired by the film’s director Carol Morley. She also pays tribute to casting director Shaheen Baig who helped her secure roles in subsequent films including Lady Macbeth, and remembers working alongside Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson when she played Cordelia in a television version of King Lear. Florence Pugh chooses the song She’s Only Happy In the Sun by the American singer songwriter Ben Harper as source of inspiration, and reflects on her own musical ambitions which started as a teenage singer-songwriter posting videos on YouTube under the name Flossie Rose. She also discusses the pressures of fame, gossip columns and why she’s learned to stop searching for references to herself in social media. Producer: Edwina Pitman

Shirin Neshat is the world’s foremost Iranian-born artist. Best known for her black and white portraits of veiled women, often with hands and faces overlain with intricate Farsi calligraphy, she works primarily as a photographer and filmmaker. A winner of one of the biggest international arts prizes, the Praemium Imperiale, she has shown art in galleries all round the world - except in Iran, as she has lived in exile in America since 1996. As human rights protests continued in Iran, a huge artwork by Shirin, called Women Life Freedom, was shown on billboards at London’s Piccadilly Circus where a rally was staged in support of Iranian protesters. Shirin Neshat tells John Wilson about her upbringing in an artistic, liberal family who lived amidst the conservative and religious Iranian city of Qazvin. She recalls how she was studying art at the University of California, Berkeley, when the Islamic Revolution took place in 1979. With new restrictions imposed on women, including the mandatory veil, she decided to remain in America. Returning to Iran for the first time in 1990, she was shocked by the changes and began to make artworks in response, primarily exploring the theme of power and oppression in two series of works entitled Unveiling and Women Of Allah. Shirin also reveals the huge influence on her work of the Iranian poet and filmmaker Forugh Farrokhzad, who was killed in a car accident in 1967 aged just 32. Producer: Edwina PitmanExtracts from The Wind Will Carry Us by Forugh Farrokhzad, read by Shahrbanou Nilou

Over six decades, Ken Loach has forged a reputation as Britain’s foremost politically-engaged filmmaker, exploring issues of social justice, freedom and power. He has twice won the prestigious Palme d’Or award at the Cannes Film Festival, in 2006 for The Wind That Shakes The Barley, set amidst the Irish struggle for independence, and twenty years later for I, Daniel Blake, a contemporary British story about unemployment and poverty. Ken Loach recalls his Midlands childhood as the son of a factory worker, and annual summer holidays in Blackpool. It was there that he saw end-of-pier variety acts and comedians, including Jewell and Warris, Nat Jackley and Frank Randle, all of whom helped ignited an early passion for storytelling and performance. He recalls how, after studying law at Oxford, he joined the BBC’s Wednesday Play production team, with the aim of creating television drama out of contemporary social issues. His television films Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home, which tackled abortion, unemployment and homlessness, were each seen by over 10 million people, and played an influential part in the public debate about the issues. Loach reveals that Czech cinema of the 1960s, including the films of Miloš Forman, were a huge inspiration on his own filmmaking career, with the use of the naturalistic performances and camera-work that captured the environment from a distance most clearly seen in his classic 1969 film Kes. Ken Loach also chooses as a major influence, the real lives of people whose stories have inspired his films throughout his career, including veterans of the Spanish civil war and Nicaraguans who had seen schools and health centres destroyed by the Contra rebels. Producer: Edwina Pitman

Es Devlin is the world’s foremost set designer, having conceived stage sets for superstar musicians including Beyoncé, Stormzy, Kanye West, U2 and Adele. She has also created sets for opera houses around the world, and for productions at the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and many more. Es also works as an artist in her own right, designing sculptural installation pieces that address issues of social justice and sustainability.For This Cultural Life, Es Devlin remembers a scale model of her home town, Rye in Sussex, that fired her imagination and encouraged her interest in storytelling. She chooses the sleeve of Kate Bush’s 1978 debut album The Kick Inside, which she tried to recreate as a collage in her teenage bedroom. She recalls a career breakthrough when, in 1998, she designed a National Theatre production of Harold Pinter’s play Betrayal, a set which was inspired by Rachel Whiteread’s artwork House, a concrete cast of the interior of a Victorian terraced house in London’s East End, which was demolished in 1994. Her final choice of cultural inspiration is her work with the hip hop artist and producer Kanye West, with whom she collaborated on several spectacular stadium shows. Producer: Edwina PitmanAudio of 'The Story of Rye' with kind permission from The Rye Heritage Centre

Actor and former MP Glenda Jackson reveals the influences and experiences that inspired her work on stage and screen. One of the greatest actors of her generation, Glenda won Academy Awards for Women in Love and A Touch Of Class, and was Oscar nominated for Sunday Bloody Sunday. She has also won Tony, Emmy and Golden Globes awards for her theatre and television work. In 1992 she gave up acting to become a Labour MP, winning her seat five times. But in 2016 she returned to the stage, playing King Lear in London and New York, and to television for a BAFTA winning performance as an elderly women with dementia in Elizabeth Is Missing. Glenda Jackson recalls her working class upbringing in Birkenhead, and how she won a scholarship to the drama school RADA with help from the manager of the Boots chemists’ where she worked at the time. She chooses the director Peter Brook as a major influence on her work, having starred in his radical 1964 stage production of the play Marat/Sade, and the version he subsequently adapted for cinema. She remembers also working closely with the director Ken Russell on several films, including the Oscar-winning Women in Love, adapted from the DH Lawrence novel. Glenda’s comic appearances on the Morecambe and Wise Show in the early 1970s are recalled as career highlights. Glenda Jackson also chooses Margaret Thatcher as huge influence on her life and career, as it was the policies of the former Prime Minister which prompted her to give up acting for 23 years while she served as a Labour MP.Producer: Edwina Pitman