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Inside 195 Piccadilly & Reviews
MORRELL’S
The indefatigable Doreen Dean, BAFTA’s Assistant Director in charge of film, has had a good year. More members voted in the Orange British Academy Film Awards than ever before. That’s double the previous year.
More videos were sent out by the distributors than ever before, thanks to UIP, Buena Vista, FilmFour and Columbia.
More late nights and weekends than ever before for Doreen, Amanda, Katie and the film team.
Towards Christmas, an ITV Network slot has been promised by CITV for the BAFTA Children’s Awards which Anna Home, Floella Benjamin and an energetic committee have nurtured so passionate- ly over the past four years.
JOHN
BOOKREVIEWS
“baftalk”
BY QUENTIN
FALK
fell, quite naturally, madly in love with
Madonna and I think that is why the picture wasn’t the hit it should have been
because he couldn’t bear to cut away from her. It was a
comedy and everybody knows that you have to cut away to to get laughs on another face...”
This unusual memoir - 20 years after his official autobiography, Up In The Clouds, Gentlemen Please - came about after son Jonathan suddenly discovered more than 10,000 transparencies, stereo slides, prints and negatives in an unused corner of the family attic last year. Wear, tear and the water tank had taken their toll so that just 350 properly survived.
The result is a delightful mixture of formal and informal, official and unoffi- cial, many of which have been expertly snapped by Mills and his beloved wife Mary. These range from pert pre-stardom daughter Hayley to a butt-naked Laurence Olivier wearing just a smile. ■
SEARCHING FOR STARS: RETHINKING BRITISH CINEMA
BY GEOFFREY MACNAB (CASSELL, £45 HBK; £16.99 PBK)
Maintaining the Mills mot if, the actor naturally rates consid- erable mention in this intrigu- ing thesis which ranges from the coolly academic to the shamelessly folksy.
The author believes that unlike vol- umes on generations of Hollywood stars, their British equivalent has, in general, been roundly neglected in favour of everything from studios to social history.
So, of Mills, he writes: “Whether stuck in the middle of the desert (Ice Cold In Alex) or in the frozen climes of the South Pole (Scott of the Antarctic), or at sea (In Which We Serve), or in a pris- oner-of-war camp (The Colditz Story), he is so unfailingly cheerful, brave and hon- est, one gets the sense that if he were to be cast against type, perhaps to play Adolf Hitler or Genghis Khan, we would warm to his performance and have him home for tea nonetheless.” ■
But on the night, a
triumph to their dedica-
tion with a full house at
the Odeon Leicester
Square plus millions at
home and abroad
watching live on Sky
with highlights on the
ITV Network. A salute
indeed to a stunning
range of British and Internationalfilmtalent. Andasalute,too, to Doreen who so richly deserves her very own BAFTA award.
The decision to switch television cov- erage from terrestrial to satellite caused much soul-searching at the Academy. The debate was robust. In the end, the late night slots offered by ITV and BBC had to be weighed
against a broadcaster fast build- ing a reputation as the UK’s leading film channel.
Barry Norman is now a Sky
man; the rights for the Oscars
are in the bag; fourteen chan-
nels devoted entirely to film
plus an enthusiastic
Elisabeth Murdoch nailing
her colours to the BAFTA
mask... it all added up to
the Sky deal, brokered by
Council Chairman Tim Angel, becoming totally irresistible.
With the potent triangle of BAFTA, Orange and Sky working in harness for the next three years to freshen and build the Awards we hope to prove to any doubters that the decision was very much in the long term interest of the Academy, its members and the industry.
Happily, both ITV and BBC are keener than ever to secure the Television Awards - this year in a peak time slot across the ITV Network on May 14. Produced by LWT’s Martin Baker, present- ed by Des Lynam and sponsored by our good friends at Radio Times, it promises to be another star-studded evening.
We are also delighted that the first Television Craft Awards, held at BAFTA on April 30, also won a television outlet thanks to Marcus Plantin and the Granada Group. Full coverage in the next ACADEMY.
Now, new chair- man John Richmond has picked up the baton, making spon- sorship one of his pri- orities. At the time of going to press, he was wearing... well at least half a smile.
Take a bow Steve Morrison, Chief Executive – Granada Media Group, for M2 C2. He coined it in the keynote speech at The Production Show (where the BAFTA stand, inciden- tally, did very good business).
Guiding us gently through his plans for
STILL MEMORIES
BY JOHN MILLS (Hutchinson, £20)
Mills was a mere seventysome- thing – but already ten years a knight – when he jetted off to Hollywood to co-star in 1987 with Madonna in the now long-forgotten, Who’s That Girl?
According to this hugely enjoyable “Autobiography in Photography”, a lot of people asked him just why he was work- ing with the publicity hungry rock icon, fifty years his junior: “I said, for two rea- sons. First is money and secondly I have seen her work and I admire and like her.”
Shame about the film, but diplomatic and old pro to the end, Sir John, now 92, notes, “the director, who was very young,
THE DIRECTOR’S CUT
BY ROY WARD BAKER (REYNOLDS & HEARN, £19.95)
Mills starred in no fewer than six films for this underrated British director beginning with The October Man – Ward Baker’s feature debut – in 1946. Their final collaboration was The Masks Of Death nearly 40 years later.
But perhaps the best-remembered credits for this London-born film-maker, now 84, are the Titanic classic A Night To Remember, the real-life German PoW drama The One That Got Away, the campily cult Western, The Singer Not The Song (with Mills again) and, yes, Hammer’s truly tasty horror, The Vampire Lovers.
Ward Baker, who began his career in the thirties as an assistant to Hitchcock and Carol Reed, has good stories to tell about all of them as well his short but turbulent times in
Hollywood when he
directed Marilyn
Monroe in Don’t
Bother To Knock.
John Morrell Executive Director BAFTA
“NetontheSet”itwasclearthatSteve’s parental maths and science homework has left its mark.
What, you ask, is M2 C2?
“Multi-media content creation” that’s what. And Steve wants Granada’s way of approaching maths in every school. Don’t bet against it, say insiders.
“Maths can be great fun” he insisted, producing a clip of a car crash from
‘Emmerdale’ to demonstrate Pythagoras’ Theorem.
Wish it had been more like that in my
day instead of dry old Chalkie Brown.
Want to know more? Then book early
to check Steve out at calculus at the Academy
on June 15 when he will be presenting one of
BAFTA’s popular Arthur Anderson Masterclasses.
And finally, can I pass on a warm feel- ing. It came over me in the David Lean room a few weeks ago when the National Film and Television School held a fund-raisers’ dinner.
After watching the excellent work of young directors Sarah Gavron and Sasha Snow and enjoying rousing speech-
es from Lord Attenborough, David Elstein and Janet Anderson, I looked round the room to see today’s top
NFTS talent in animated conversa-
tion with Lord A and Alan Parker.
Arms going all over the place.
The young turks and the old pros on common ground. Hard to beat as a raison d’être for BAFTA. ■
PHOTO INSET: BAFTA ATTENDED
WITH A STAND AT THE PRODUCTION SHOW
28