Page 24 - 10_Bafta ACADEMY_Paul McCartney & Heather Mills_ok

Inside 195 Piccadilly & Reviews
SIMON
A PASSION TO WIN
BY SUMNER REDSTONE (SIMON & SCHUSTER, £17.99)
Oft named “The Number One Most Powerful Person in Hollywood,” surely never was there a more unlikely chart-top- per in the sleek, youth-obsessed world of Tinseltown than the venerable author of this compelling memoir.
Boston-born Redstone, now in his late 70s but still apparently unstop- pable, was 64 when, in 1987, he acquired Viacom, the media and enter- tainment engine which now drives household names like MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, UPN, Showtime, Paramount, Blockbuster and, most recently, CBS.
The son of first generation native American born Jewish parents, Redstone had just left high school, the fiercely competitive Boston Latin School, which first instilled in a “pas- sion to win”, when he discovered he was born Rothstein. The name change, he claims, “embarrassed” him.
But Redstone it nevertheless remained as he went on to attend Harvard, then worked as a codebreaker during WW2 before becoming a distin- guished tax lawyer, making today’s equiv-
THE MAKING OF THE ITALIAN JOB
BY MATTHEW FIELD (BATSFORD, £15.99)
Peter Collinson, the late
and too infrequently
great director of The
Italian Job, once told me: “I’m strictly an action-and-cut direc- tor. All that stuff in between [at this point he indicated the yap-yap of dia- logue] doesn’t really interest me.”
Happily, the yap-yap of Troy Kennedy Smith’s script, “You’re only
BRITISH WAR FILMS
1939-45
BY SP MACKENZIE (HAMBLEDON & LONDON, £19.95)
If you thought ‘spin’ was a term of the new millennium, than hark back to the dark days of WW2 when the Armed Services were vying with each other to help make propaganda palatable for hungry cinema audiences.
This useful survey contains an especially enlightening account of
“baftalk”
BY QUENTIN FALK
alent of a million dollars a year by the time he was 30.
The roots of
his second and
most enduring
career originated
in his father’s
ownership of two drive-in theatres. He switched from the law to cinema owner- ship and with the rapidly expanding com- pany now named National Amusements, he helped patent the multiplex.
Redstone’s life, which also once included a near brush with death after a hotel fire which caused 45 per cent of his body to be burned away, is, by any yardstick, an astonishing recitation
of achievement.
Never dull but often a bit scary, his compelling autobiography recounts some epic and prolonged takeover battles notably for Blockbuster and Paramount, which pitted him against Barry Diller, head of the home shopping channel QVC, “a twenty-four-hour rummage sale,” writes Redstone, dismissively.
“Commitment, courage and charac- ter” are the three main characteristics he demands of his executives. Woe betide anyone who doesn’t shape up, as a roll-call of rubbished ex-employees, and opponents too, would testify ■.
supposed to blow the bloody doors off”,
among many verbal gems – matched the
non-stop action in this seminal British
caper movie from 1969, which oddly
bombed in the US.
The author’s painstaking recre-
ation of a 32-year-old legend, which was voted 36th in the BFI’s all-time British list, is packed with details including a useful Q&A with star Michael Caine, who agreed it would be a great film to remake. ■
the making of per- haps the most famous British war film of them all, In Which We Serve.
Playing Captain Kinross, Lord
Mountbatten by
any other name,
Noel Coward
knew he was hardly a ‘natural’ for the role but, he apparently told Michael Powell, “I’m a snob, I know it. I couldn’t bear to have anyone else play Dickie!” ■
BOOKREVIEWS
RELPH
This gives me a great opportu- nity to reflect on the first year of my Chairmanship.
I must say that I set out with some trepidation as I am the first freelance producer to take on this responsibility for many years.
I can’t pretend that it hasn’t been a lot of work, although of course, much of it has
been a great pleasure.
The move to bring our Film Awards
ahead of the
Oscars was a
big challenge
but hopefully
has been a
great success.
We look forward
to building on
that success in
2002. It has
been a great
year for all our
Awards, with
Interactive and
Children’s
having truly
come of age, while the Television Craft Awards took an enormous step forward as well.
We are particularly grateful to Jill James and her Events Committee who have filled the Academy with a whole
Jill James Chairman Events & Education series of very engaging evenings.
Thanks also to Amy Minyard for all the hard work she has put in to making them such a success.
It’s good to report that member- ship numbers seem to be climbing and that the Academy is attracting a younger generation.
’S
I hope you will forgive me if I use this column to make a small protest. Recently the director and leading actor of Before Night Falls were our guests at the Academy for a pre- announced Q&A session. Although the screening itself was well attend- ed, quite a large proportion of the audience walked out at the end leav-
ing our guests totalktoa half empty auditorium. Surely this is no way to treat fellow filmmakers and honoured guests. I would request that in future members who do not wish to stay for Q&A should attend anoth- er screening.
Once again the
Academy will
be closed from August 6-28, but for only three
weeks not the previously announced four. This gives us the opportunity to do some much needed building work.
I would like to take this opportunity of thanking Norma Heyman, Floella Benjamin and Steve Norris, who left Council at the end of June, for their con- tribution and welcome newly-elected members of Council, Grant Dean, Finola Dwyer, Nick Elliott, Martin Freeth and Ayub Khan Din.
In the last issue of ACADEMY,
I paid tribute to Peter Allen who left us at the end of July. Sadly, BAFTA has lost another very loyal and long- serving employee in Judith Parkinson, who began in the accounts department but who recently had been playing an invaluable role overseeing the Academy’s IT, particularly the complicated new vote counting equipment. We will certainly
miss her and wish her all the
best for the future. ■
Simon Relph Chairman of Council
22