Golden Quill Award transcript (to be completed :)

Middle Temple Hall, January 16, 2000
*thanks to Paula Verderame

Sir Derek Jacobi: It was 23 years ago when I played Hamlet for the first time professionally. I was already {} at the plate but I decided to have a go. We opened in the spring of 1977 at the New Theatre in Oxford. I didn't know at the time, but a 16-year-old schoolboy came to one of those performances. He at that time didn't know whether he wanted to be a footballer, a journalist, or maybe an actor. And he said that that production and that performance made him want to be an actor. He said later that it had inspired him. I think merely he sat there saying, "If that's the best professionals can do...."

A couple years later I had a letter - I was still playing Hamlet in a different production at the Old Vic - I had a letter from a student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art asking if he could come along and talk to me about life, and art, and in particular Hamlet. I said yes. This very personable young man walked in - bursting with self-confidence - and out came a notepad and we talked. We talked a great deal, we got on very well. We talked a lot about Hamlet. He left saying that sooner rather than later he would be playing Hamlet himself.

We then fast forward about 18 months or so and the name Kenneth Branagh hit the public hard in a play called Another Country. And suddenly I realized - because his face and his name were in the newspapers - that this was the boy that had come to see me. I met him in passing at Stratford-on-Avon but I didn't really get to know him.

We now go to another dressing room, this time at the Haymarket Theatre. Kenneth came around after the play afterwards and after the obligatory 'Dahling you were wonderful' he said could he take me out to dinner. "Well, yes, I would love to go to dinner with you." During the course of which he said, "I'm going to play Hamlet - remember how I said I was going to play Hamlet? I'm gonna play Hamlet - and he said "I think it only right that you should direct it." Now I had never directed. I was stunned, I was amazed, surprised and excited. I said, "Yeah okay I'll direct you!"

The following months I fell in love, in the nicest possible way. It's an affection that has since only grown over the years. It is an affection mixed with admiration, sometimes with awe, and sometimes with a little jealousy and envy at the prodigious range of his talent and his achievement. I delight in his wit and his humor. And I appreciate his wonderful, streetwise self-mocking self-awareness. It's an attitude that enables him to survive the many brickbats that are thrown by meaner, less daring, and less achieving spirits.

Kenneth is a mover and a shaker, that can seem a little alarming and rather dangerous to mere spectators. Also he achieved his fame and his success at a very young age and in certain quarters that is not looked upon favorably. We who know him of course think otherwise. Tonight he will receive this award - it's one of many he has received, will receive no doubt in his {} career, but I think tonight's award is the rightest, most fittable, given, as it is, in the name of so globally respected and loved an actor as Sir John Gielgud. I wish Ken John's longevity, not the least because I shall be needing the work.

There is much more to say about him and no doubt many other people tonight will say it. To me he will always be the boy with the notepad in the dressing room.

"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end."

Ben Elton: Wonderful, Derek, lovely. Lovely thing to have to follow, ahem. Didn't understand the last bit. My name's Ben Elton, by the way, for the Americans present. I can't figure out why I'm here paying tribute to Ken, quite frankly, because the bloke owes me. He should be here, I should be down there...bathing in it. No, I'll explain - you probably all remember Ken's magnificent film of Much Ado About Nothing. Well I was in it - you probably won't remember that, but I was the bloke standing just behind Michael Keaton, hovering over his shoulder. And he wasn't that easy to understand that close up either.

It's not a {} profession at all actually. (Microphones, there were days when we used to have to project, say Derek, don't you think?)

Ken cast me as Verges and it wasn't a secret, I wasn't his first choice. It was 2 Americans he asked but he thought they'd look better on the poster. Rowan Atkinson turned it down and finally he got to me. And he simultaneously created and destroyed my acting career with that because it was the first and last part I ever got. The phone's not rung since, that was 8 years ago. It's absolutely true - 8 years and I haven't been offered another role since Ken murdered my acting career. But this evening - sorry, I shouldn't go on - this evening's not about the debt that Ken owes me. It's about the debt that Shakespeare owes Ken.

Because, you know, Shakespeare's reputation is not as solid as we might like to think. You know, here the great and the good, the cultured, the very lovely - we all think he's great, Shakespeare, but the truth is - whisper it not loud - throw a brick pretty much anywhere in the English-speaking world and you'll hit someone who thinks that Shakespeare is a boring old git.

Now, this is my theme and I would like to crave your indulgence while I read from the work of considerably less a writer. I'd like to quote from the Black Adder which Richard Curtis and I write and we wrote a special which is on at the Dome at the moment - don't feel that you've got to go and see it - and in the final edit this bit I'm gonna do got cut so this by nature will be a world premiere. And I'm only taking the liberty of quoting mine and Richard's work because it is very relevant to tonight in that Black Adder goes back in time with Bawdrick and finds himself in the Elizabethan times and he meets Shakespeare and having got his autograph and given him a large kick in his amusingly huge Elizabethan bloomers, he holds forth thus - and you have to imagine Rowan Atkinson doing this, not in his Mr. Bean voice for the Americans, in his Black Adder voice, makes it easier to understand - so this is the Black Adder addressing Shakespeare, having kicked him in the bloomers:

"That's for every schoolboy and schoolgirl for the next 400 years you bulby bloomered bastard! Do you have any idea the amount of suffering you're going to cause? The hours sitting on school benches trying to find ONE JOKE in As You Like It. The end-of-term plays wearing tights and wigs saying, "Prithee nobleman here come the Earls of Wessex-Essex-Sussex-Warwick-York-Swindon-Newport and every other bloody county in the United Kingdon" - well they can't tell the fuckers apart! The years trying to stay awake at Stratford, your backside throbbing like a Frenchman's knob, while you try to believe that 2 lovers would be completely unable to recognize each other simply because they are wearing tiny, tiny masks and they've not noticed the 6 people hiding behind the hedge listening to their conversation while all the while some vast, half-drunk, bearded bastard mincer breaks the world's slow-talking record during an hour-and-a-half soliloquy, at the end of which you're none the wiser and it isn't even the interval yet. All I can say is thanks for nothing mate, the only way you got to shag Gwyneth Paltrow was by boring the pants off her."

Black Adder departs with one last bit of advice, telling Shakespeare not to even bother writing Cymbeline because "nobody, not even an ass like Ken Branagh, would even bother with that one!"

Now I'm only reading that - and thank you for your kind reception - to remind us all of how some people really do view Shakespeare. Some people think he's dull, but we know it's not true. Shakespeare is, deservedly, the man of millennium and of course the greatest, most intriguing, the wittiest and most passionate writer that ever lived, or certainly ever wrote in the English language. But you wouldn't necessarily know it by the way sometimes he's been treated over the years.

Shakespeare does owe Ken a debt. Ken, in my opinion, has a unique ability to make Shakespeare what he is. What Shakespeare is, a modern writer. Not just in his ideas but in his language - his language remains modern. The first time I saw a Branagh Shakespeare, I went back to the text afterward because I was convinced that Ken had been playing fast and loose, that he'd been cheating and taking liberties. He hadn't. [Ken had used] word-for-word the text but he made it modern. Making Shakespeare as the Germans say 'unser Shakespeare': "our contemporary". Ken really brings Shakespeare alive. I know Shakespeare a little, but Ken has enhanced my knowledge beyond what I could imagine and indeed my life - he brings him alive more than anyone I can think of in recent years. He's introduced our greatest cultural jewel to wary and very reluctant new audiences and left them delighted, and I cannot think of anybody more deserving of this award. So thank you for that Ken, and I should now, to my great pleasure, invite to the stage Samantha Bond.

Samantha Bond: I'm thrilled to be here at this gorgeous occasion to celebrate a very gorgeous man. Ken and I first met 15 years ago when I played Juliet opposite himself in his first Shakespeare - the first one he directed - which we did at the Lyric Studio in Hammersmith. For those of you who missed our performance I would just like to paraphrase what that esteemed theatrical critic Nicholas de Jongh said: 'Bond and Branagh may not be the best Romeo and Juliet, but they're certainly the quickest."

"Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus' lodging: such a wagoner
As Phaethon would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaway's eyes may wink and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen.
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match,
Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods:
Hood my unmann'd blood, bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold,
Think true love acted simple modesty.
Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.
Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possess'd it, and, though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy'd .."

Bob Hoskins: There are some people in this business that you just can't help being proud of, like the achievements of Ken Branagh. And some of them brought about in the most impossible of conditions, and some of them he even paid for out of his own pocket. Yet all of them leave you breathless. And Ken being the bloke he's always been - I can't help it, but whenever I think of him my chest goes right out to here and I think to myself, "I'm in the same business as him." And Ken Branagh makes me really proud to be in that business. Thank you very much, I'd like to introduce Tim Spall.

Timothy Spall: I've just got some things to read from people that have worked with Ken, and very famous people they are and dignified. This is from Barry Sonnenfeld, I think he's a film director, isn't he. This is what Barry says:

"Kenneth is funny, smart, talented, totally secure and absolutely self-effacing. I had the absolute pleasure of working with him on Wild Wild West. He was supportive and patient, and totally intimidated me. In pre-production I showed him an illustration of a costume I did for his character, which included the drawing of an idea for his facial hair.

"Kenneth said, 'I like this. I can grow this and look like this. And I know what you're thinking - you're thinking, "You can't look like this, because this is a drawing of a good-looking skinny guy. And you're a fat fuck. Listen, you fat fuck, don't pretend you can look like this because you're a fat fuck!" But I promise you I'll lose weight.'

"He knew his lines, he talked fast, and he made me feel comfortable and relaxed. And his performance is really good. I can't wait to work with him on another project that won't make enough money and no one will like. He's the best, I love him dearly." And that's Barry Sonnenfeld.

We've got a really long letter from Robin Williams here, and it starts "To be, or....uh, line? A warm hand on your quill, Robin."

Francis - Frankie Barber - "Dear Ken, I wish I could say I'm sending this message from Hollywood but in fact I'm sitting in a freezing {} practicing an extremely dodgy cockney accent. had i been there tonight i would have forced you to suffer my willow cabin speech once more, without the pause that Harry Winston said was a crucifiable offense. {} So instead I send all my love and long may you continue to be an inspiration, a phenomenon, and a dirty little bugger And a truly lovely friend. Lots of love, Frankie. P.S. Available the 17th of March.

"Robert DeNiro:

"Dear Ken, Of course congratulations on receiving the Gielgud Award tonight. You know, Ken, [goes into DeNiro impersonation] you may have been honored a few years earlier had you let me play Beatrice. Not that Emma wasn't competent. But we had fun doing Frankenstein, didn't we.
Congratulations again, Ken. You deserve this award, and Shakespeare deserves you. Love, Bob"

This is from Billy Crystal:

"Dear Ken, or is it Sir Kenneth. What can I say about a man who has been to Shakespeare's work what Viagra has been to me. (Cut to Dame Judi Dench laughing, and another angle of Derek Jacobi slightly amused) The first time I saw you was in Henry V, which I thought was a sequel. I thought you were not only a great actor, but an amazing director. Plus I understand you also did the catering. Which is perhaps the most impressive credit of all. So when you called me, and asked me to play the gravedigger in Hamlet, I couldn't have been more terrified. The 3 days we spent together are some of my fondest remembrances of the movie business. Anyone who can make a kid from The Bronx sound like He could be in one-a dem Shakespeare-type plays has got to be some kind of fucking genius. (Cut to Dame Judi Dench groaning, and another angle of Sir Derek laughing.) Bravo Ken, and I'll wear the tights again whenever you need me." - Billy Crystal

Ken you're fantastic, you're a great guy and a brilliant man. You're just great and deserve whatever you get...

Helena Bonham Carter: I've got some messages, from some people who can't be here. Well
actually, I can be here, as you probably can see. So I suppose I should say something, too. But, having known Ken *quite well* I can safely say that he is one of the more extraordinary people of this world. But I won't go on about it. Because he's quite embarassable, and in fact, so am I. But I have some messages. The first one is from that little unknown American director Woody Allen:

"Congratulations to Kenneth on his deserved award. He's one of my best pupils."

A fellow director John Maybury writes:

"Dear Ken, I can sincerely say I'm really jealous of your spectacular career. As an actor- writer-director, autobiograher, etc, etc, etc. So please, for God's sake take a very long holiday and give some of us lesser mortals a go at it for a few years. Lots of love and total admiration, John."

From Ralph Fiennes, fellow actor and rival, possibly?:

"Bravo, for all you have done to make Shakespeare continually exciting,accessible, and contemporary."

And from Ollie Parker, who directed Ken in Othello, well he's written a poem.

"ODE TO KEN: and a Great Deal Is

Today a man who's worth his weight
in Golden Quills is slated.
The service he's done this day
cannot be overstated.
The truth is Kenneth never cowers,
Though green-eyed rivals stare aghast.
I say amen to that sweet powers,
This Belfast boy was built to last.
A message then I give to Ken,
apart from wish him well.
Is keep your powder dry my friend,
then blow 'em all to hell."

Finally, a message from Brian Blessed. God knows where he is, probably up some mountain somewhere.

"Congratulations, Ken. I feel terribly frustrated not to be there, what a great honor. He who is servant to rest, say Ken, never had The Bard had a finer servant than you. How thrilled and happy you must be at your wonderful work. What I love about you most is your profound generosity to everyone associated with your work. You inspire us all. Have a terrific time, Ken. Lots of love to Mum and Dad, and your family. Tell Derek not to stammer. The Germanicus tells me that he is a great Roman. Tell Judi Dench that I will always have a soft spot for her and still fancy her from that Zed Cars episode. Give Mike Williams a big hug from me, and love to everyone there including Touche Turtle. Well done Ken, young man, and don't let Dickie Briers tease you about your Popeye forearms.' Well. that's out.

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