Karaoke

by Dennis Potter

Karaoke is set in the present day. Daniel Feeld, a successful screenwriter, is in physical crisis: he is dying. His latest screenplay is being butchered by a patrician director who favours his mistress-star in every scene. But, worse than this, Feeld more than half-imagines that he hears people everywhere speaking his dialogue. Fact and fiction collide. Daniel starts drinking heavily and his real life begins to mirror that of his own screenplay character. Cold Lazarus is set 400 years in the future. Feeld's cryogenically preserved head is being commercially exploited. An American media tycoon realizes the astronomical ratings potential of a TV show in which the 'real' twentieth-century story of Daniel Feeld's life, via his chemically induced memories, can be fed to millions of viewers. Whilst Daniel's 'memories' ebb and flow and the moguls fight over him, a dissident organization of Luddites, RON (Reality or Nothing), seeks to return to what it believes to have been a gentler age - the