Page 14 - Fujifilm Exposure_7 Alex Thomson BSC_ok

TONY IMI
continued from previous page
One of the big advantages of the job was the shift system which meant you worked two days on and then had one day off. On that day off I’d go out with camera crews from Ealing, helping out with everything.
“Then after about 18 months, another trainee cameraman job came up which, this time round, I got. Before I started they said I’d have to spend six to eight months in a classroom learning all about the job before going ‘on the road.’ I finished as a projectionist on a Friday and when I got home there was a telegram waiting, saying “Go to Scotland - now! I never did see the inside of a classroom.
“I got very lucky at the BBC and
worked on all sorts of things like
Maigret and Dr Finlay’s Casebook.
You were basically a two-man crew. The cameraman was also the DP and as assistant you did clapper and focus as well as drive and make the tea. When you worked with certain cameramen, they would hang their meter around your neck at about 10.30am on cer- tain days and just let you get on with it.
“I first worked with Ken Loach on Three Clear Sundays, about capital punishment and that started our relationship. As well as his projects, there were lots of other Wednesday Plays like Dennis Potter’s Nigel Barton political series.” Finally, in 1968, he col- laborated with director Anthony Page on David Mercer’s The Parachute, a provocative fable set in Germany during the rise of Nazism.
Page had an adaptation of John Osborne’s Inadmissible Evidence coming up as his first feature and wanted Imi to join him. “I was beginning to get itchy feet at the BBC which was a means to an end since I always wanted eventually to do feature films. So, aged 30, I quit the BBC and was suddenly out on my own in a totally different world.”
It proved a rude awakening, as Imi vividly recalls. “I went to meet the producer for the first time and the situation was put to me like this: ‘There’s two sides to this film. There’s the director’s side and my side. Which side are you going to be on?’ I made some fatu- ous remark about how I was on ‘the film’s side’, try- ing desperately to steer a middle course.
“The director and producer never got on at all, endlessly screaming at each other. I went with the director but the politics - the biggest difference between film and TV - were horrific. I eventually left after three weeks or so because of all the nonsense going on, none of which had to do with the good of the film. You could say it was a very fast learning curve.’
Happily, the only way was up after that grim appetiser and three movies with Bryan Forbes (The Raging Moon, International Velvet, The Slipper And The Rose) followed by a trio alongside American director Andy McLaglen (Breakthrough, North Sea Hijack, The Sea Wolves) gave Imi some solid, and often spectacular, feature credentials.
More recently, Imi has become a firm favourite for first-time British directors. There was Paul Anderson’s Shopping, Downtime for Bharat Nalluri and, this summer, Simon Hunter’s Lighthouse, an ambitious if modestly-budgeted suspense thriller shot on some extraordinary rocky sets in a canalside East London studio.
“When I first read it,” says Imi, “it was going to be done in black-and-white which I’d have loved to have done. The problem with low-budget films these days is that you’re doing them for less than half of what you normally get. You’re doing two jobs - lighting and operating - and working probably four times as hard. The important thing was I liked the script and espe-
cially liked Simon who really knows his way round a film camera.
“This has been totally in the studio and I’ve been able to call on all my experience to help make it work. It came in on time, looks good and I think they’ve got an excellent chance with it. It remind- ed me a bit of the old tearing-about BBC days when we had just a skele- ton crew. This was done pretty much that sort of way, except, of course, it was 35mm rather than the old 16mm.”
“Do I have a style? I do best when I’m thinking on my feet. My phi- losophy is that I don’t want my work to intrude on the story. If the story works, everything should work. You can’t beautifully photograph a load of rubbish... well you can, but ulti- mately it means nothing.”
Alongside the features have been a stream of acclaimed televi- sion productions, incuding no less than six for American director John Erman, including Scarlett, the mini-series sequel to Gone With The Wind, and The Sunshine Boys, a curious small screen remake of
the 1976 Oscar-winning comedy.
This time round, Peter Falk and Woody Allen, no
less, took over the roles first created by Walter Matthau and George Burns. According to Imi, “I can hardly remember working with Woody because one never really got to speak to him. In the six weeks we were together on the film I suppose we talked for about 90 seconds. He kept himself to himself, just came on and did his thing. That was it. He simply couldn’t understand about close-ups and cut-ins. ‘Can’t you do all this in just one,’ was his regular cry.
“Peter Falk, an old TV man, on the other hand, revelled in it all. He had prosthetics all over the place. Woody refused to have anything so you had one man who looked about 90 and the other 50 - when both were meant to be 80-year-olds. The producer said we should try and do something about it, try and talk Woody into make-up. I told him he must do a make-up test. ‘Fine,’ Woody said. ‘I’ll do a make-up test so long as I don’t actually have to put on any make-up!” End of story. ■ QUENTIN FALK
Lighthouse was originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative
Photos; Phil Collins and Julie Walters in Buster; centre: Tony Imi; right: Woody Allen, Sarah Jessica Parker, Tony Imi and Peter Falk on the set of The Sunshine Boys. (Courtesy BFI Stills & Posters)
EXPOSURE • 14