Patrick Marber
Patrick Albert Crispin Marber is an English comedian, playwright, director, puppeteer, actor and screenwriter. After working for a few years as a stand-up comedian, Marber was a writer and cast member on the radio shows On the Hour and Knowing Me, Knowing You, and their television spinoffs The Day Today and Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge. Amongst other roles, Marber portrayed the hapless reporter Peter O'Hanrahahanrahan in both On the Hour and The Day Today.
His first play was Dealer's Choice, which he also directed. Set in a restaurant and based around a game of poker (and partly inspired by his own experiences with gambling addiction), it opened at the National Theatre in February 1995, and won the 1995 Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy.
After Miss Julie, a version of the Strindberg play Miss Julie, was broadcast on BBC television in the same year. In this, Marber moves the action to Britain in 1945, at the time of the Labour Party's victory in the general election, with Miss Julie as the daughter of a Labour peer. A stage version, directed by Michael Grandage, was first performed 2003 at the Donmar Warehouse, London by Kelly Reilly, Richard Coyle and Helen Baxendale. It later had a production at the American Airlines Theatre on Broadway in 2009.
His play Closer, a comedy of sex, dishonesty and betrayal, opened at the National Theatre in 1997, again directed by Marber. This too won the Evening Standard award for Best Comedy, as well as the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards and Laurence Olivier awards for Best New Play. It has proved to be an international success, having been translated into thirty languages. A screen adaptation, written by Marber, was released in 2004, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen.
In Howard Katz, his next play, Marber presented very different subject matter: a middle-aged man struggling with life, death and religion. This was first performed in 2001, again at the National Theatre, but was less favourably received by the critics and has been less of a commercial success than some of his other work. A new production by the Roundabout Theatre Company opened Off-Broadway in March 2007, with Alfred Molina in the title role. A play for young people, The Musicians, about a school orchestra's visit to Russia, was performed for the National Theatre's Shell Connections programme in 2004, its first production being at the Sydney Opera House.
Don Juan in Soho, his contemporary rendering of Molière's comedy Don Juan, opened at the Donmar Warehouse in 2006, directed by Michael Grandage and with Rhys Ifans in the lead role.
He also co-wrote the screenplay for Asylum (2005), directed by David Mackenzie, and was sole screenwriter for the film Notes on a Scandal (2006), for which he earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
In 2004, Marber was Cameron Mackintosh Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University.
“Alice: It's the only way to leave. "I don't love you anymore. Goodbye."Dan: Supposing you do still love them?Alice: You don't leave.”
“We arrive with our...'baggage' and for a while they're brilliant, they're 'Baggage Handlers.' We say, 'Where's your baggage?' They deny all knowledge of it...'They're in love'...they have none. Then...just as you're relaxing...a Great Big Juggernaut arrives...with their baggage. It Got Held Up. One of the greatest myths men have about women is that we overpack.”
“That's the most stupid expression in the world. 'I fell in love'—as if you had no choice. There's a moment, there's always a moment; I can do this, I can give in to this or I can resist it. I don't know when your moment was but I bet there was one.”
“Thank God life ends—we'd never survive it. From Big Bang to weary shag, the history of the world. Our flesh is ferocious...our bodies will kill us...our bones will outlive us.”
“What's so great about the truth? Try lying for a change, it's the currency of the world.”
“Alice: Did you phone her, beg her to come back - when you went for lovely walks?Dan: Yes.Alice: You're a piece of shit.”
“Dan: You've ruined my life.Anna: You'll get over it.”
“I think you owe me something for deceiving me so exquisitely.”
“Anna: Since my opening last year...I'm disgusting.Larry: You're phenomenal. You're so clever.”
“Alice: I don’t love you anymore. Goodbye.Dan: Since when?Alice: Now. Just now.”
“• Dan: I love you. • Alice: Where? • Dan: What? • Alice: Show me. Where is this 'love'? I can't see it, I can't touch it, I can't feel it. I can hear it, I can hear some words but I can't do anything with your easy words.”
“I don't love you anymore. Goodbye.”
“Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off. But it's better if you do.”
“I love everything about you that hurts.”
“She was...disarming.”
“Deception is brutal, I'm not pretending otherwise.”
“I don't want to lie. I can't tell the truth. So it's over.”
“Have you ever seen a human heart? It looks like a fist, wrapped in blood! Go fuck yourself!”
“Where is this love? I can't see it, I can't touch it. I can't feel it. I can hear it. I can hear some words, but I can't do anything with your easy words”
“Everything is a version of something else.”
“I am waiting for a man to come in here and fuck me sideways with a beautiful line like that”