14 minutes to understand why Peter O'Toole's madness was actually method.
Peter Medak's films toy with notions of cosplay, masquerade, gamesmanship, and how power and permission structures figure into these human diversions. His filmography includes The Ruling Class (1972), The Changeling (1980), A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1971), The Krays (1990), and others, all which capitalize on these ideas. Sanity is fragile, ephemeral, and suspended from a very thin tether in all his films. This piece gets to the bottom of why Medak centers his work on such themes, and why they carry biographical weight for him personally.
Direction
Kremer crams a career autopsy into 14 breakneck minutes.
Editing
Rapid-fire archival cuts that mirror Medak's fractured psyche.
Director
Daniel Kremer
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Medak was 9 when he escaped Hungary on the Kindertransport; he later learned his entire family died at Auschwitz.
Kremer's title quotes The Ruling Class lyrics directly—Medak's entire filmography is essentially one long cover song of his own survival.
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