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 alright, 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.
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“I was just so angry that 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 got Covid for the first time this year, says he could not have imagined how far his words would travel beyond the Twittersphere.
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He was contacted “out of the blue” by writer and director Peter Hedges, whose credits include the Oscar-nominated 1993 film What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, starring Leonardo Di Caprio and just happens to be one of his favourites.
He told the Scot that his tweet had inspired his new film, The Same Storm, which stars Killing Eve lead Sandra Oh and centres on the lives of 25 people during lockdown.
He said: “He [Peter Hedges] had been driving in Manhattan and he saw a cinema and they 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.
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“The next thing was that Peggy Noonan, put it into her column in the Wall Street Journal,” he says.
“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.”
Mr Barr. who now lives in Brighton says he’s even had people repeat it back to him, unaware they are his words.
“You spend all your time writing books and suddenly everyone knows this tweet,” he said.
While his name appears in the credits of the new film he says he hasn’t received any royalties but says he would have donated anything he received to charity.
“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 in North Lanarkshire during the Thatcher years.
“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 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 that I saw and it just blew me away. Here were people who were struggling to make their way.
“When it was Peter Hedges that got in touch, I was like ‘you have got to be joking.”
The new BBC series of the Big Scottish Book Club starts later this month.
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