Here’s a recording from 7 Oct 2014 while we’re enjoying dinner.
When Patrick says Next La Scala he’s actually referring to a film called Tomorrow La Scala!
The woman who made Four Last Songs is Francesca Joseph. Before that she made a film for BBC called Next La Scala, and it’s based on Sweeney Todd.
But…
It’s based on her experience. She went through a prison with murderers and had them perform Sweeney Todd. That’s the basis of the film. It’s all these prisoners acting this thing out, about killing and so on.
It’s a beautiful film. If you get a chance to see it, you should check it out. It’s called Next La Scala and she’s the director. You can find it on IMDB.
It’s a good film and because of that she got funding for Four Last Songs.
I’m the son of Patrick of Meadows.
[In response to Tate’s comment] Regarding Four Last Songs: While I initially shared your thought that it would be the story of Pat and Stephanie (I didn’t think about the festival aspect but that’s a natural extension), I realized that it was more focused on the idea of getting new, interesting, local music to play.
Further, while their lives together served – very loosely – as the foundation of the story, it was never intended to be a documentary. Instead their work and location provided the jumping-off point for the resulting light comedy and thus a lot of “Hollywood-isms” (“London-isms” since it was BBC?) were incorporated.
4LS was just a light comedy, but I’m thankful it was “a different premise from the usual ‘two strangers meet and fall in love, with laughs for all’ that appears to mark the genre these days.”
More interesting to me are Patrick’s thoughts on the production of this video, which I will dig up and share one of these days.
FWIW: I wrote up a review of Four Last Songs on Amazon but it’s much too long to post here as a comment in its entirety.
Interesting conversation on a range of topics. It seems that Patrick admitted to being self centered, but proud that as an absentee father his children grew up strong and independent.
As far as “Four Last Songs” – I just didn’t get it. I thought it was to depict the lives of Stephanie and Patrick and how they developed the Paramucical Workshop of Mallorca. The film fell well short of that if that was it’s intended purpose as I was led to believe.
The film crew did spruce-up and paint the apertment, but some on the crew stole Stephanie’s mink coat.