Page 27 - Fujifilm Exposure_29 Trial & Retribution_ok

ted John Birt in a grey suit walk through the gates of Ealing surround- ed by a posse of similarly grey-suited, grey-minded men. I could see that guy had arrived to get rid of us.”
Walters admitted that, at 50, and after years of being “cocooned in the BBC world”, he was very nervous about the future. But he needn’t really have worried, for soon after he going free- lance, he landed a plum assignment, A Year In Provence, with John Thaw. Yes, it got mostly mauled by reviewers but, he purred, “the one thing that wasn’t criticised was the camerawork.”
He was at his second home on an island off the West Coast of Finland (Walters’ second wife is Finnish) when, at the back end of the 90s, he was reading through the scripts for a controversial new Channel 4 comedy- drama series called Queer As Folk.
“No, I wasn’t shocked at all. But we had some friends staying with us and they said, ‘you’re not going to shoot this rubbish, are you?’ That made me more determined. There was a lot to it and I think the resulting series was a very important breakthrough in peo- ple’s understanding of others.”
As in his earlier incarnation at the BBC, Walters has continued to ring the changes in a variety of different of assign- ments across the various networks.
Talking of TV generally (“a facto- ry”), he summed up his role: “Because of my long experience, what I suppose I can offer is the ability to help pro- duce quality product quickly. Of course, it helps to have a director who’s on the same wavelength, and a first AD who asks your advice. And if I’ve got a gaffer who knows the way I think, that can save a lot of time too. It’s all about teamwork.”
As he relaxed during the lunch break on Miss Marple - on which he was Once again re-united with Alfie Williams, his grip of 30 years - he told me of a recent experience in Manchester shooting the self-explana- tory BBC series, Spine Chiller.
“It was only the second ever video experience of my life and, after swear- ing I’d never do it again after the first time, I really enjoyed it this time round. I still don’t know how to turn a video camera on and off, but I treat it just like film. Also, I quite enjoy looking at the black-and-white monitor. It’s like watching old films.” ■ QUENTIN FALK
My Fragile Heart was originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative
Kippur War in Israel working for Panorama. “Pretty hairy,” he noted.
But if you were to ask Walters which, for him, was the “most impor- tant” film he did in his BBC, or any other, years for that matter, it would surely be the celebrated documentary, Standing Up For Joe.
“It was about a couple with a child who had cerebral palsy. They scraped enough money together to go to the Peto Institute in Budapest and, to cut a long story short, the film helped cre-
ate an understanding of the problems, and made existing charities re-evalu- ate their approach to Institute’s work.
“The result of that, and another film we made, was such an exodus to Hungary that the British government finally decided to put money into a centre for conductive education in Birmingham. This was a film that actu- ally helped change society’s thinking.”
Then, in 1992, he “finished” with the BBC. Said Walters: “I could see the writing was on the wall the day I spot-
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