Covid tweet that went down a storm is spark for new movie
A MESSAGE on social media by a Scottish author encapsulating his anger about the inequalities revealed and reinforced by the Covid-19 pandemic has provided the inspiration for a new Hollywood film.
Damian Barr says he was furious at being told Covid was “an equaliser” when he tweeted: “We are not all in the same boat, we are in the same storm,” during the first lockdown.
Within minutes the tweet had been shared by hundreds of thousands of people. Celebrities including Star Trek actor George Takai created memes based on his words and the message was later referenced by people ranging from British politicians to US chat show queen Oprah Winfrey.
“I was just so angry that we were just constantly being told we were all in the same boat and I was thinking, no, we are not,” said the 46-year-old writer, who also hosts The Big Scottish Book Club for BBC Scotland.
“I was thinking, I am all right, I can afford my rent, I can afford my food, but there are people in my community who can’t afford to just order stuff in, who don’t have a nice park on their doorstep where they can exercise, who have got chronic illnesses that mean they are more vulnerable.
“I was so angry we were all being told to just lump it and we are all the same now.
“Covid is not an equaliser, it is a revealer and exacerbator of inequalities.
“Experiencing inequality then being told you are not experiencing inequality, we were being gaslit by the [Westminster] Government and we are all being gaslit by the Government now.”
The Lanarkshire-born author, who suffered Covid for the first time this year, says he could not have imagined how far his words would travel beyond the Twittersphere.
He was contacted “out of the blue” by writer and director Peter Hedges, whose credits include the Oscar-nominated film What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, starring Leonardo Di Caprio and which is one of Barr’s favourite films.
Hedges told Barr his tweet had inspired his new film, The Same Storm, which centres on the lives of 25 people during lockdown. The movie stars Sandra Oh, who is best known for her roles in Killing Eve and Grey’s Anatomy.
Barr said: “He [Hedges] had been dining in Manhattan and saw a cinema that had put my words on the front where they announce the movies.
“He said it had stopped him in his tracks and spoke to him about how he was feeling.
“It was a weird thing. I did the tweet and got up and went away from my desk and I watched it being retweeted and shared and it started to go into the hundreds and thousands.
“The next thing was that Peggy Noonan put it into her column in the Wall Street Journal.
“It just seemed to pass from there into common parlance really quickly, and not just in English but in lots of different languages.
“I could see where waves of Covid were hitting around the world dependant on the language I was being tagged in.”
Barr, who now lives in Brighton, said he has had people repeat the message back to him, unaware they are his words.
“You spend all your time writing books and suddenly everyone knows this tweet,” he said.
His name appears in the credits of the new film but he has not received any royalties, although he said he would have donated anything he received to charity.
Barr said: “I wouldn’t feel comfortable making money from it because it’s about inequality. I think it is just something that will follow me throughout my life. If we are able to look back to Covid and all the language that was created, it’s a part of that.”
He said the tweet was consistent with themes and subjects in his novels that “make me angry”.
His best-selling memoir Maggie & Me tells of his experiences growing up gay “in a straight world” in Newarthill, near Motherwell, North Lanarkshire when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.
“Inequality and who gets to tell their stories, that’s what I am concerned about as an author,” he said.
“That is what motivated me to write Maggie & Me. I was told all the time,
‘be ashamed, be quiet, don’t tell anybody about this’.
“In my novel You Will Be Safe Here, I’m telling the story of the hidden history of Empire, which is a shameful episode.
“That [Covid] tweet is consistent with the things that make me angry, the things that make me sit down and write and that’s inequality, that’s history and storytelling.
“Peter Hedges made What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, which
I saw when I was young and it’s an amazing film. It was the first arthouse movie I saw and it just blew me away. Here were people who were struggling to make their way. When it was Peter that got in touch, I was thinking ‘you have got to be joking’.”
The film opens in the US this weekend.
Inequality and who gets to tell their stories, that’s what I am concerned about