Barry Jones In Search of Lost Time – A Film Story uses the lens of film itself to focus on childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, training Barry’s camera eye on the shaping forces of his character and the key turning points of his life.
Teacher, lawyer, anti-death penalty campaigner, talkback radio and television show host, quiz king, lay preacher, politician, science writer, ambassador, author, public intellectual, twice Labor Party president, National Trust designated living treasure – where did this one-of-a- kind public figure come from?
He questioned his progeny since he was so unlike his parents. His friend Phillip Adams suggested his likely birthplace as the planet Krypton. At six Jones was shocked by the realisation that not all people read books while they walked. While still a boy he wrote a history of the world. Big brained, in the 1960s he became famous as a television Quiz King with an eight year winning streak.
But it had its downside.”My long exposure on television gave me national notoriety but I ran the risk of being dismissed as a mere collector of random chunks of knowledge.” When he entered politics, the cartoonists had a field day.
Although 30 before fully reading Proust and his hypnotic meditation In Search of Lost Time, Barry Jones has chased the arrow of time since childhood and chases it still. Co- Starring with Barry Jones is film itself with film featuring as a major influence on Barry’s life. Film watermarks and time stamps his formative years, progresses his story, re-enacts his character and the characters of his world, maps his social milieu, depicts events, sculpts his emotional landscape and parodies some of his predicaments. And Barry as film critic and cultural commentator is never too far away.