When Joe Barton was at junior school, he and his classmates were set a project. After being put into groups and given camcorders, they were instructed to make an advert for toothpaste. “Everyone wanted to be in the advert, whereas I wanted to film it,” says Barton, who at the time was gorging on behind-the-scenes footage of the Indiana Jones films. “All I could think to do was zoom in and out, and I thought: ‘This is great, I’m really doing it, I’m making a film.’ Then I was ill and off school for a week, and when I got back they’d refilmed it. So there I was, from day one, being fucking cancelled.”
As a screenwriter, the 38-year-old Barton is now flying high, but cancellation remains “a theme”. Despite glowing reviews, his 2019 crime thriller Giri/Haji and last year’s teen witch series The Bastard Son & the Devil Himself were both terminated after one series. Then there was his firing from HBO’s TV spin-off of The Batman, mention of which causes his head to drop into his hands. All of which makes the success of his time-travel drama The Lazarus Project, which returns for a second series this month, that much sweeter.
