Page 23 - 22_Bafta Academy_John Malkovich_ok

obituaries
some major network spread both here and in the States.
But not even a track record like that inures Eastman and his company from the harsh realities of today’s TV marketplace. “Ten years ago,” he reflected, “you’d have probably had about 20 per cent more budget. It’s very inter- esting to look at the trickle-down effect that has. Every element of your budget must now cost 20 per cent less. Take the crew. Okay, you don’t pay them 20 per cent less but you probably try to get 20 per cent more working time for your money.
“That goes all the way through to what we will expect earn from the show. On something like Rosemary & Thyme, you can’t expect to make it significantly quicker than you used to and still produce the quality. So you have to find a way of acquiring the time, but getting the resources you can into that time at a lesser cost.”
That’s some budgetary/sched- uling balancing act.
Eastman also revealed another big hurdle confronting today’s independents. “It used to be that we could have an idea and it might possibly get made on any of the networks. Nowadays there are very, very few ideas that belong to more than one channel.
“You’ve seen what’s hap- pened with the TV market. ITV and BBC used to take 70 per cent of the viewing figures’ they’re lucky now if they take 50 per cent. Indeed we’ve had week- ends where the non-principal channels have had a majority of viewers in the way the split works.
“The whole of the TV market has fragmented, which is just a replica of what’s happening in America and elsewhere in the world. When you work on devel- oping a TV idea these days you’ve got to be quite clear in your own mind which broadcast- er you think will take it, because the chances are if he doesn’t there won’t be anywhere else to go because it won’t suit any other part of the market.
“The trick to the survival of any indie is to make sure you’re offering them something at a time that’s right and something that’s irresistible.”
As we sat together flanked by shelves full of awards, including BAFTAs and Emmys, I actually had to remind Eastman that 2003 just happened to be his company’s 25th Anniversary. For this tireless chairman, there is no time like the present.
Katharine Hepburn & Gregory Peck
There isn’t space to do proper
justice to these two giants of
American cinema so instead just a short reflection on a pair of remarkable screen actors who were both regular visitors to these shores.
When Anthony Hopkins was making his film debut in The Lion In Winter, he was quietly taken to one side by Hepburn who told him: “I’m going to give you some advice. Why did you play the whole of that scene with the back of your head to the camera? The camera’s yours – use it.” A little fazed, Hopkins asked: ‘How?”
“Favour yourself,” she replied. “Don’t be so modest. You’ve got a good voice, a strong voice. Don’t force it, just let it fall out of you. You don’t need to act in a film. Look at Spencer Tracy.”
Not long after this, Bryan Forbes was directing The Madwoman Of Chaillot with Hepburn in France and in his jour- nal of the time reflected on her thus: “Kate Hepburn is a combina- tion of Jekyll and Hyde, Mary Poppins, Lady Hester Stanhope with perhaps a touch of Gandhi and Falstaff thrown in.”
Hepburn was, in addition to her four Oscars, nominated five times for British Film Academy awards, winning twice – for her same-year performances in Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner and The Lion In Winter and, more than a decade on, in On Golden Pond.
A week after he died in June aged 87, Gregory Peck’s Oscar- winning role as the liberal Southern lawyer Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird was voted the Greatest Heroic Role in the history of film. Peck, who was heroic in the greater proportion of his fifty plus films across six decades, gave an intrigu- ing insight into Mockingbird while shooting The Omen here in 1975.
He told me: “We probably had too much script to start off with. I remember seeing the first cut and
being dismayed because there was half an hour too much.
“The half hour organically did- n’t belong – it tended to dissipate and dilute the overall effect of the piece. After a lot of soul- searching whole sequences came out – great chunks of mate- rial - and it then came down to its true size.
“And,” he concluded with some understatement, “I think it all worked.” Quentin Falk
Alexander Walker
Probably the most controver- sial, surely the most recognis- able but unarguably the doyen of British film critics, Alexander Walker died suddenly in hospital last month aged 73.
Ulster-born, he wrote his weekly column for the London Evening Standard for nearly 43 years and regularly contributed articles on all aspects of film, including Cannes which he attended for nearly 50 years.
A fierce critic of Lottery Funding and, at times, of the BBFC, BAFTA and the BFI, Walker was also the accomplished biogra- pher of, among many others, Stanley Kubrick, Rex Harrison, Vivien Leigh and Audrey Hepburn.
Polly Bide
Polly Bide, Carlton Television’s controller of factual pro- grammes, was not just a tal- ented executive but also a gifted filmmaker in her own right.
At, first, Granada then Thames TV and eventually the BBC, she made many fine programmes notably a pair of Cutting Edge documentaries and an acclaimed series, Great Ormond Street, about terminally-ill children.
In 1998 Bide, who has died of cancer aged 53, was promoted to become the BBC’s chief policy adviser, a year later moving to Carlton where she helped spear- head an impressive roster of doc- umentary programmes.
Ron Wordley
Ron Wordley began his televi- sion career with Anglia TV before becoming sales con- troller for the fledgling Harlech Television when it obtained the Wales and West franchise in 1967.
London-born Wordley, who has died aged 74, became manag- ing director of HTV in 1978 and served as chairman in 1985-86. He was also a director of ITN.
Philip Stone
Bald, steely-looking and soft- spoken, Philip Stone, who has died aged 79, was one of Stanley Kubrick’s favourite actors appearing in A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon and
The Shining.
He was equally in demand on stage and the small screen where among his many roles was chilly Brigadier Davidson in ITV’s hit drama series, The Rat Catchers, about a covert counter-espi- onage team.
John Jympson
After starting in the cutting rooms at Ealing Studios, John Jympson – son of film critic Jympson Harman – graduat- ed to become one of the British film industry’s most distinguished editors.
His many credits include Zulu, A Hard Day’s Night, The Bedford Incident, Where Eagles Dare, Frenzy, Little Shop Of Horrors and A Fish Called Wanda, for which he won the Guild of British Film Editors award. He was 72.
Naomi Chance
Most at home in a mink stole, Naomi Chance was a popular leading lady during the Fifties in British B-movies like The Saint’s Return, Dangerous Voyage and The End Of
The Road.
Later she had a recurring role in BBC’s twice-weekly soap The Newcomers before retiring to live in Devon, the wife of a Surgeon- Captain in the Navy. She was 73.
21