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REBECCA JOHNSON
Rebecca Johnson feels she owes a lot to BAFTA. Due largely to con- nections within the organisation, investment and members’ support, she completed her short film That Sinking Feeling last March and is now develop- ing a self-penned feature.
After securing BAFTA’s event pro- grammer Claire Bennett as a producer, Johnson saw production of That Sinking Feeling gather momentum, eventually boasting Paloma (The Way We Live Now) Baeza and Daniel Newman as stars plus an original score by Michael Nyman.
“Credit where it’s due, Claire was a star,” admits Johnson. “Within six months of her coming on board we had the cash and were shooting. She bumped into Michael Nyman at a BAFTA event and we cajoled him and wore him down to give us a score.
“It was so good for me to have the opportunity as a newcomer of working with somebody so talented and experi- enced. He really listened to me and was a real collaborator. To have that two- way process with someone so gifted was brilliant.”
A journalist by trade (“that’s my day job”), Johnson supplemented her passion for film with writing and various temping jobs. Now she is keen to give up the day job for full- time filmmaking.
“I want to be making feature films but in the meantime I’m just banging on BBC doors, I’m trying to get into TV drama because I’m most interested in storytelling.”
Her own feature is “a
very big ambi-
tious project”
which will
involve filming
in India and
Johnson is
looking at mak-
ing a documentary as research.
She hopes that one day she will be able to offer a hand to another new- comer trying to make their movie.
“Being in the film industry is like being part of an immigrant community or something!” she laughs. “You have to help each other as much as you can and spread information.” ■
LUCY GORDON
If you’re going to begin anywhere on the Hollywood ladder, two good scenes opposite John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale are not a bad toe-hold.
The fact that the film’s called Serendipity and has already taken more than $50m at the US box office also sug- gests the runes are good for Oxford- born Lucy Gordon.
Gordon, now 21, is in fact no stranger to the camera having combined modelling and school from the age of 15. Daughter of a prep school headmaster and a mother who teaches Alexander Technique, she left school a year later to become a full-time model.
“By the time I was 16, I had a pension,” she laughs. Too short for the catwalk, she
has become an immensely successful model for
fashion and cosmetics appearing in magazines like Elle and Vogue. Hating London, where she’d
moved from the family base in Oxford, she crossed to New York and instantly felt at home. With modelling still firm- ly regarded as “a means to an end”, that “end” meaning acting, she began to take classes.
After endless auditions she finally landed a part playing Rita (Mrs Tom Hanks) Wilson’s assistant in a starry if modestly budgeted American indepen- dent film, Perfume. Serendipity fol- lowed and since then there’s been an even juicier, tailor-made role in Shekhar Kapur’s upcoming NorthWest Frontier adventure, The Four Feathers.
Filming Serendipity was at times “nerve-wracking” but not as trying as the film’s New York wrap party: “The bouncers wouldn’t let me in. ‘But I’m in the film,’ I pleaded. ‘You’ve got no ID so
you can’t come in...’”■ BARNEY BROOM
He may have been in the film business “twenty odd years” but Barney Broom appears to have lost none of his enthusiasm for trying to get one of his numerous feature
film ideas made. He’s so enthusias- tic, in fact, that he recently dispensed with merely relying on the right produc- er reading his latest script God Bless America and
instead made a 40 second teaser clip of the film.
“I have an enormous amount of trouble getting people to read things,” admits the writer-director who currently works as a self-con- fessed “hired gun” making business films and commercials.
“I thought the clip was quite a innovative way of getting the idea across and I hope it works.” Screenings on BAFTA’s plasma screens of the black comedy “taster” about an unusual restaurant in Manhattan have so far been encouraging, but Broom has yet to take the project further.
He’s quick to assert that he has no cannibalistic tendencies himself despite the quirky nature of his script. “We’re talking deep, deep black come- dy here; I’m rather fascinated by the perversity of man.”
God Bless America is one of many ideas up his sleeve and Broom has great ambitions for his features. “I’m not particularly interested in making films for three men and their dog – I want lots of people to see my movies.
For now though, he’s looking for a producer to find him the funding to get his “culinary funereal business project” off the ground. “I’m just another guy with a project out there to sell,” he admits. But perhaps his unique selling strategy will mean he’s not out there on his own for long. ■
COMPILED BY JANE CROWTHER
TALENTSPOTTING
FOCUSING ON TOMORROW’S GENERATION OF MOVERS AND SHAKERS
New Talent, New Media
TALENTSPOTTING
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