John Schlesinger's lecture is based around a ‘few observations about my time in this business’ working in television and film. Schlesinger readily conceeds that he could never ‘understand the difference’ between ‘making television’ and ‘making a film for television’. The one difference is the distinctive audience reaction to the two media: the cinema creates a ‘special experience’.

Schlesinger began in television working on Tonight (‘I got the sack’) and with Huw Weldon on Monitor; the year with Monitor was ‘among the happiest I've ever spent in this profession’. Schlesinger went to America to make Midnight Cowboy. On arrival, he recalls his mix of embarrassment and delight. Embarrassment which prompted him to hide with Julie Christie during the premiere of Far From the Madding Crowd, which flopped badly in the States; delight and irrepressible excitement at meeting celebrities – ‘it is very exciting when you're at a traffic light and Hitchcock's in the next car’. Other films followed: Gorky Park, Marathon Man, The Englishman Abroad and Yanks. Schlesinger confesses to not enjoying shooting a film, but he loved ‘dreaming it all up with the writer’, the editing and ‘the fantasy into reality when you're talking about design’.