Saul Dibb, director of Bullet Boy, is interviewed by the Standard’s Nick Curtis:
The scenes of graphic gay sex in boathouses and gated gardens, on coke and on impulse, will inevitably inflame Tunbridge Wells, but Andrew Davies, who wrote the screenplay, has declared that he tried to “control” Dibb, because he believed too much gay sex would be a literal turn-off for the majority of the TV audience.
Quick aside: as noted before, this is the man who took delight in his adaptation of lesbian romp Tipping the Velvet being “filthy”.
“My biggest concern was that people might feel we were ducking it,” ripostes Dibb, “that we weren’t treating them in exactly the same way we would treat a heterosexual sex scene. I wanted them to be as authentic as possible — tender love scenes but also very real.
“I think that the truth is that a lot of straight people are fascinated by what actually happens in gay relationships. Because, unless they’ve had experience of it, or have opened themselves up to asking gay people, you know, what is it that you do, they won’t know.”
He think Davies overestimates the audience’s shockability. In any case, the gay element is just one strand in Hollinghurst’s anatomisation of the Eighties.
Hurrah for Saul Dibb!
- The Line of Beauty starts on 17 May.
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