Page 16 - 15_Bafta ACADEMY_Louis Theroux_ok

best of british
thir ty years on
An interviewer once opined to producers Davina Belling and Clive Parsons they had obviously decided to concentrate on making films showing different aspects of con- temporary British youth.
Closer examination of that domestic roll-call which at the time included Scum, Gregory’s Girl, Breaking Glass, Party Party and That Summer suggests, the pair concede, “it was perhaps a reasonable conclusion.”
But in fact, it was, they now add after recently celebrating 30 years of their remarkably durable partnership, Film & General Productions, purely “accidental.”
The idea of the company was “just to survive. The first big moun- tain to climb was to find movies we felt we could get made; hopefully, that would make money. We had no particular long-term plan or strategy.”
Film & General, four decades later, can nowadays boast a very mixed folio, encompassing cine- ma – like Zeffirelli’s Tea With Mussolini as well as director’s latest Callas Forever – and, perhaps even more prolifically, popular tel- evision such as The Queen’s Nose (a sixth series is now in production), Green-Eyed Monster, The Greatest Store In The World and Hallmark’s Hans Christian Andersen.
Like the best ideas, this one started simple and deliberately stayed small, in overhead terms anyway, after the pair first met while working in different depart- ments for Warner Brothers in Wardour Street.
Belling’s background was in theatre, latterly under the aegis of Broadway entrepreneur Alexander Cohen before return- ing to London as assistant to Warner’s Dan Rissner while Parsons, a barrister by training, was the company’s young head of business affairs.
Parsons had the idea of start- ing a company that would put up development money and per- suaded a city financier, Charles Gordon who had successfully financed The Nightcomers to now spread his risk among several pro- ducers in terms of that all-impor- tant ‘seed’ money.
Not long after Parsons and Belling, whom he’d invited to help start the new outfit, eventu-
ally assumed full control of Film & General in 1974 – the year that one of their investments, Confessions of A Window Cleaner, began to pay off handsomely - they started hatching more personally ambi- tious production plans.
They explain
(although it’s not so
easy to convey the
easygoing banter which
regularly punctuates
their dialogue): “We’d
been involved early on
in high-profile films like
Harry & Walter Go To New York and The Girl From Petrovka which gave us quite a bit of visibility especially in Hollywood.
“It seemed to us to be a natu- ral progression from helping other people get their films made to getting them made ourselves because it was, after all, our money we were putting up on a total risk basis.”
Considering their subsequent, mostly youth-orientated, track- record, that first solo production could not have been more differ- ent and less English.
Skirting very close to the cen- sor’s scissors, Inserts, starring Richard Dreyfuss, Bob Hoskins and Jessica Harper, was a provoca- tive black comedy set in 30s Hollywood (but shot in London) about the making of a porn film.
Now off and running there was to be even more controversy when, much later, Parsons and Belling decided to remake Roy Minton/Alan Clarke’s borstal drama Scum which had been filmed, and then rather chicken- heartedly shelved before show- ing, by the BBC two years earlier.
If, as has already been sug- gested, there was no precise strat- egy what became, they would agree, “pre-meditated” was an attempt to work with “new, excit- ing directors.” That had been the case with John Byrum on Inserts and would continue with Brian Gibson (Breaking Glass) and Bill Forsyth (Gregory’s Girl).
The company re-located to Hollywood for a while in the eighties when the pair separately took on new high-profile day jobs at Stephen Friedman’s successful independent, King’s Road.
That period happened to coin- cide with a particularly fallow peri- od in UK film-making but once back here, Film & General steamed ahead even more strong- ly especially in the increasingly fer- tile area of television production.
Has the company changed much across 30 years? “We’ve always been incredibly small, Even while doing seven produc- tions, including two films, in the past two and a half years, there’s only been the two of us plus an assistant and a work experience person. That’s how we’ve man- aged to stay alive for so long.”
So what’s the real secret of their success? According to the effervescent Belling: “I would say I am a good opener and that Clive’s a good closer. That’s what really makes it work.” Enough said. Quentin Falk
across the divide
When Punjabi Girl (Larki Punjabin) opens at cine- mas later this year it will break down a barrier which has been in place for three decades – and it will be due to the influence of a little-known UK film company.
Made in Pakistan and on location in Scotland, the film is due to be screened in India despite the fact that Pakistani movies have been banned in that country for 30 years.
Why Punjabi Girl is managing to leap this seemingly insurmount- able hurdle is because of its con- nection with the British-based company, Paragon Pictures.
“It seemed to us to be a natural progression from helping other people get their films made to getting them made ourselves because it was, after all, our money we were putting up on a total risk basis.”
14