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people what I could do - on time, on budget and with a certain look. I didn’t feel particularly good about that body of work; it was a means to an end, a way of getting on to some sort of ladder.”
Death Machine, a sci-fi piece on which he felt he could legitimately experiment with lighting effects, and then Philip Ridley’s offbeat forest-set fable The Passion Of Darkly Noon further fuelled his CV which was also becoming distinguished with award-winning work in com-
mercials and pop promos (for
the likes of Prince, Madonna, The
Eurythmics, Rod Stewart and
The Pogues).
Like Ridley, Gillies MacKinnon was also from an art school back- ground. Starting with the multi- award winning Small Faces in 1995, de Borman has enjoyed very fruitful on-off collaboration with the Scots director.
“On Small Faces, we seemed
to work very well together,” says
de Borman. Gillies is a great
raconteur and as a storyteller is
very subtle. He tried to promote
the visual side as much as possi-
ble. He’d often reference paint-
ings I’d know as well as Italian
movies like Rocco And His Brothers and Bicycle Thieves.” In spite of the subsequent success of, say, The Full Monty it’s still Small Faces, with its offkilter recreation of a Sixties’ Glasgow setting, that has proved perhaps de Borman’s most potent calling card yet.
Set in Morocco during the 70s, Hideous Kinky, his third and latest film with MacKinnnon, has given de Borman perhaps his biggest, and certain-
ly most exotic, canvas to date. “The light was won- derful especially when you saw it rise over the Atlas Mountains first thing in the morning. We went through lots of paintings, especially Matisse’s in Tunisia, and often duplicated them for interiors in terms of colour generally.
“For the market scenes we decided we wanted the men to be in very similar tones, quite mono- chromatic, while the women should always be
to die for - Ethan Hawke, Diane Venora, Bill Murray, Kyle MacLachlan, Sam Shepard, various members of the (Uma) Thurman family and newcomer Julia Stiles as Ophelia. Yet his previous North Africa sojourn would also rather oddly unlock the key to this fiercely urban North American assignment.
Explains de Borman: “There was a big stall area in Marrakech which at night was entirely lit with bare bulbs and gas lamps. There was smoke
on a huge scale. It was beautiful but very crude lighting. I learnt enormously just from walking around those streets. Hamlet , being shot on super-16 which I thought a great idea, seemed to be just right for that sort of look. Florescent light, bare bulbs, a hand-held feel, incredibly low- budget, gritty in-your-face...”
Despite his growing reputa- tion, and a credit balance sheet that lately includes the long- awaited Bill Forsyth-directed sequel Gregor y’s 2 Girls and Suri (A Man Of No Impor t anc e) Krishnamma’s New Year’s Day, de Borman still sees himself on a learning curve.
“I love colour and sharpness of image,” he says, “but I also want to have the reputation of being able to change styles, to diversify and be quite experimental. To me now, the most important thing is to try and do much
bigger films.” ■ QUENTIN FALK
Hideous Kinky is currently on release in the UK; Trojan Eddie was originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative
JOHN DE BORMAN BSC
bright and colourful. Though it’s quite an intimate story, thankfully it is widescreen so that even with close-ups part of the background would almost always be in shot.”
The setting and substance for de Borman’s most recently completed project could not have been more different: yet another take on Hamlet, this time modern-day in New York, entirely at night, still in Shakespearean verse and with a cast
Photos: top: On the set of The Mighty; inset: Kate Winslet in Hideous Kinky; above from left: Brendan Gleeson in Trojan Eddie; Ethan Hawke as Hamlet; John de Borman with Gillies McKinnon on the set of Hideous Kinky
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