Why I am collecting Dad’s award with him
Isabelle Fraser on the emotional reason why she’ll be collecting her dad’s Bafta tonight
When he was younger, my dad, Nick Fraser, didn’t like documentaries. But as a journalist and author working in New York, he thought he should probably get interested in them. He sensed they were about to become important.
Three decades and hundreds of films later, he is about to receive a Special Award from Bafta in honour of his work. As the editor of the BBC’s Storyville documentary strand for the past 20 years, Dad has commissioned and produced more than 600 films. Over that time, the documentary has changed beyond recognition – from being an afterthought to an art form. Dad recognised the growing hunger for these films early on, especially among young people. To him, documentaries are a means by which we can make sense of the world.
It was in January this year that Dad found out he was to be honoured by Bafta. In February, he had a stroke, aged just 69. That’s why, at tonight’s award ceremony, I will be taking to the stage alongside him to give an acceptance speech on his behalf.
Dad always jokes that documentaries spoiled him. “I can’t deal with most fictional representations any more, because reality seems too interesting,” he once wrote.
Yet it hasn’t always been easy making them. Life at the BBC was a privilege but a slog: with budgets cut, one of his most important jobs was to raise money to get his films made at all.
It was worth it. The programmes Dad produced have won Oscars and Emmys. He has worked with people such as Brad Pitt and John Legend. Some of his films were eccentric, such as Project Nim, about a chimp brought up as a human. Others have become cult hits, like Man on Wire, which told the story of Philippe Petit’s tightrope walk between the Twin Towers in 1974.
Many were politically important, such as India’s Daughter – his 2015 film about Jyoti Singh, the 23-year-old Indian student who was gang-raped and killed in New Delhi in 2012.
Dad travelled to India to meet her parents and the resulting film had to be spirited out of the country to prevent it being confiscated by police. The Indian government banned it from being shown, but after Dad persuaded the BBC to screen it, the documentary was uploaded to the internet and went viral there anyway.
Above all else, Dad loves telling the stories of real people, getting a glimpse into their lives. It meant he was away from home quite a lot during my childhood. Often, he would send a postcard from some strange location or far-flung film festival with just one line scrawled on the reverse: “This place is very boring”. While he loved going on these adventures, he was eager to be back at home with Mum and me. He would bring me trinkets, such as a statue of Chairman Mao or piece of the Berlin Wall – I still have many of them in my childhood bedroom.
Home or abroad, Dad has always been there for me: listening, encouraging me to read; and teaching me about the world through his incredibly deep knowledge of 20th-century history. Since deciding that I wanted to become a journalist, he has been one of my biggest cheerleaders, and he couldn’t be more proud that his only child wanted a career telling stories – just like his own.
It is no coincidence that Dad’s nickname is “Doctor Doc”: the man who will not only help make your film, but give you the idea for the next one. He can’t remember how many documentaries he has watched over the course of his life, but it runs into the tens of thousands. This Bafta is in recognition not just of the programmes he has made, but of a life spent almost entirely immersed in the genre.
Indeed, it was during a talk at Soho House in London on his favourite documentaries – a subject on which he is currently writing a book – that Dad had his stroke. A clot in his brain cut the flow of blood
‘Just as Dad is being celebrated for his storytelling, it has been taken from him’
‘He sat in his hospital bed making notes for Oink!, which celebrates pigs’
to the part that controls language, and his words started coming out wrong. He was rushed to St George’s Hospital in south-west London, the only hospital in the country to offer a 24-hour thrombectomy clinic (a new procedure to remove clots). Mum and I sat in the waiting room, anxious for news. The evening was a masterclass in the best of the NHS. Everything happened so fast: time is brain, as the doctors say.
Dad was incredibly lucky. In the immediate hours after his stroke, he regained some speech. He was keen to talk about Donald Trump and the upcoming French election, but the words were still jumbled. His brain was damaged, despite the miraculous procedure.
Despite being physically unimpaired, the stroke had caused aphasia: as Dad reached into his filing cabinet of words, he would pull out the wrong ones. It also meant that he didn’t realise when he wasn’t making sense. He could start a sentence perfectly, and then would struggle to find the subject of it.
To see my usually erudite father floundering with words has been a profoundly strange experience. In the past, at dinner parties, giving speeches, at home eating breakfast, he would launch into thoughtful, eloquent monologues.
His voracious appetite for reading was reflected in how he spoke at every opportunity, haranguing anyone and everyone about what was on his mind. I began to regret those moments that I had tuned out his lofty words in favour of watching trash television.
But if it is unsettling for me, it is intensely frustrating for him. The stroke has not affected Dad’s enthusiasm one bit and he remains eager to chat.
In the early days, we used a notepad to help him communicate and found that his writing was less badly affected than his speech. He started to read, particularly George Orwell. The clarity of the author’s voice helped bring out his own.
Over the weeks, as I started to better understand his new way of speaking, we could have conversations. His words flow more successfully while talking about things he cares about: Brexit and politics, rather than mundane topics such as what to eat for dinner. That can make speech therapy a trying experience.
But it is working, albeit slowly. Doctors are understandably reluctant to tell you when – or even if – things will get back to “normal” after a stroke, partly because the brain still contains multiple mysteries. Yet I have no doubt that he will regain most of what he lost.
The irony, of course, is that just as Dad is being celebrated for his storytelling, that ability has been taken away from him. Not that we can get him to stop working: as he sat in his hospital bed, he was making notes for his next film, Oink!, which celebrates pigs and will be shown on his new project, Yaddo, a global online streaming platform for documentaries.
In the meantime, I am happy to be his voice when necessary – and will be hugely proud to be up on stage with him as he accepts his Bafta.
The Virgin TV British Academy Television Awards will be broadcast tonight at 8pm on BBC One