Alasdair Gray by Robyn Keetley video description, transcript and credits
Video description
The video combines clips and stills from the movie version of Poor Things (2024) and archive film of Alice in Wonderland (1915) and Frankenstein (1910) with images of Alasdair Gray and his work.
The main voiceover is by Robyn Keetley, with additional audio of Alasdair Gray reading from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and talking about his own novel Poor Things. With background contemporary classical music that builds in drama and urgency.
Video transcript
Robyn Keetley: Some stories find you at the right moment. For me, it was the film adaptation of Poor Things. A strange, wonderful and deeply original piece of cinema from Yorgos Lanthimos. But beyond the film's surrealism and dark wit, lay a world I had encountered before. The world of Alasdair Gray.
Alasdair Gray wasn't just an author, he was an artist, a poet, a visionary. His work in the form of words, pictures, and extraordinary ideas has inspired generations. And as I fell down the rabbit hole of his creations once again, I realised just how many others had too.
Alasdair Gray: “Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister in the bank, and of having nothing to do. Once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it. And what is the use of a book, thought Alice, without pictures or conversations?”
Robyn Keetley: But Alasdair Gray's work isn't just something to admire. It is something meant to spark new ideas. It's a creative ecosystem where his inspirations became works of art. And those artworks then go on to inspire others. Over the years countless artists, writers, filmmakers, have been drawn to his complex and compelling creative works. The works inspired by Gray are a testament to how creativity feeds and inspires us. Art always has the power to inspire more art.
Alasdair Gray: “Both as a child and well into my teens, I was only really fascinated by stories that had adventures in them and what would have been called fairy tales. I knew the story of Frankenstein. One of the things that struck me, Mary Shelley's book is of course a fable, a modern myth, and it's not at all realistic. You have, for instance, the business of the scientist working to create, to show himself the equal of God by making Life himself.
In my version one of the heroes of my book, Godwin Baxter, is a slightly monstrous looking person, and the implication is that he is in fact an experimental achievement, created by his father grafting the parts together. I have it that he, by using his father's procedures of grafting which are much in advance of the surgery of the time, grafting the brain of a pregnant woman who's committed suicide into the mother's body, he gives her a new life.”
Robyn Keetley: And so the cycle continues. Decades after Alasdair's books were first published, they've taken on a new life. Winning awards, sparking discussions, and introducing new audiences to his brilliance. Even after his death, Alasdair Gray's work reminds us that art isn't a static thing. It evolves, it inspires, and it finds new ways to be reborn. Who knows where it will go next? Perhaps that's up to us.
Video credits
Music: A Whirlwind of Mystery, Jon Presstone, Publisher: PRESSTONEPUBLISHING
Images:
Poor Things move clips and images courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
Alasdair Gray at home courtesy of Iain Clark
Alasdair Gray with book courtesy of Gunnie Moberg Archive, Orkney Library and Archive
Oran Mor murals courtesy of @MarkWildPhotography
Alasdair Gray courtesy of Alan Dimmick CC BY-SA 4.0
Alice in Wonderland (1915), W.W. Young, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Frankenstein (1910), Thomas Edison, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
A.L. Kennedy, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, CC BY-SA 2.0
Foney Fables LTGC, Leon Schlesinger Productions (later known as Warner Bros. Cartoons (1944-1969)), Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Irvine Welsh, ed g2s • talk, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
Yorgos Lanthimos, Raph PH, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, w:Theodor von Holst, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Poor Things Images, PT Atushi Nishijima