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academy interview
“We have an absolute commitment to original filmmaking in this country”
At around £10 million, BBC Films’ annual budget is roughly equivalent to the per-picture salary of your aver- age Hollywood superstar.
The irony isn’t lost on compa- ny head David Thompson but he’d probably point instead to a track record like Billy Elliot, Iris and, more recently, Dirty Pretty Things, Morvern Callar and Anita & Me, which somehow manages to belie that image of compara- tive penury.
“Yes,” he will admit, “it is a tiny sum but it doesn’t expose us to grotesque risks with licence pay- ers’ money. And, of course, it generates much more in terms of co-production. We might only put £800,000-£900,000 into a film but someone else might then come up with four or five million.
“What we can’t do is take on Hollywood, as such, and it would be naïve to think we could. We have a fraction of the budgets of their development and produc- tion. What we can do, though, is something a bit different.
“What we seem to have become particularly known for here and, hopefully, in the States is creating films with strong char- acter parts for women. This is a niche we can operate in.
“Obviously there was Iris and Morvern Callar. Now we’ve got the film about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (with Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig) and Roger Michell’s The Mother; then there’s a new project with Samantha Morton, which is a kind of Brief Encounter set in the future, and an Anthony Minghella script, The Assumption, about a young nun who falls in love with a priest.
“That’s one of the reasons why I think we have a good relationship with Hollywood because they’re hungry for these kind of roles – as indeed British actors are too. So we’re really trying to focus on that.”
Thompson has every right to be chipper about the percep- tion of BBC Films from Over There if the following testimonial is at all typical.
According to Colin Vaines, Miramax’s executive vice-presi-
dent, European production and development: “I love the fact that BBC Films continue to devel- op strong writing voices like that of Steve Knight (Dirty Pretty Things and the forthcoming Eastern Promises).
“I think their approach is absolutely right: develop and back projects which feel distinc- tive and original. It’s those films which stand the best chance of working in the marketplace – not ones which are trying slavishly to copy existing formulas. They have a great track record and are regarded as very serious players in the international marketplace.”
As a BBC man since, in his own words, “the Dark Ages” – actually 1980 when he started with the Open University side before moving on into increas- ingly distinguished documentary then drama – Thompson now talks with a beguiling mixture of corporate caution and upbeat industryspeak.
‘Creatively, we’re prepared to take very big risks,” he says. “Commercially we’re quite cau- tious because we’re the BBC. I think that’s appropriate. We split our risks with other people. I’m very glad, for instance, we’re not in distribution ourselves. That was part of the difficulty FilmFour had. We’re much better teaming up with distributors for each project.”
So, on the one hand, “com- mercial caution”. On the other,
‘feelgood’ filmmaking. “The more upbeat films seem to work better,” he enthuses, disarmingly, as if the observation is revelato- ry. “You know, the sort of films that let you leave the cinema with a spring in your step. The tendency here in the past has been more miserabilist.
“That’s not to say we want to make phoney happy films. For example, we were delighted to have made Sweet Sixteen which was a very tough subject but not depressing. In the UK generally we’ve been too fixated on slight- ly miserabilist films which deal only with pain and the dark side. With our team here we are trying to concentrate on more upbeat films and comedy,” he adds.
Thompson agrees it’s a “diffi- cult balancing act.” Trying to make films that really work in the cinema and which will then work when they come to television isn’t, of course, always the same thing.
“Billy Elliot was a wonderful exception which I wish we could do every year. It was a huge hit in the cinema and then got an audience of 12.5 million when it was shown on TV; that was a 47% share.
“We do, however, need to be more focused on designing films that are real audience pleasers. At the same time we have an absolute commitment to original filmmaking in this country, espe- cially backing people like Lynne
Photos above l-r: David M Thompson; Judi Dench in Iris; Opposite page from top: Anne Reid and Daniel Craig in The Mother; Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig in Ted & Sylvia
6
the gentle touch
BBC Films’ David M Thompson on creation versus caution, risk taking and giving women a strong role. Quentin Falk reports.