If the British film industry were a marathon runner, it’d be Jimmy Saville. Trailing way back, with certain kitsch value, it just wouldn’t be the same without him, but never the less the appeal’s wearing thin and any day now will no longer be a competitor. Or it could be that twat in the fluffy chicken suit.
No doubt the industry’s dying a thousand deaths and the post second world war heyday of Ealing comedies and pictures from the Rank Film Organisation seem like a distant monochrome memory.
So why has a once powerful and influential industry decided to dig its own grave? For exactly that reason, it isn’t dying, it’s inducing slow suicide.
The BFI (British film industry) consists for the most part, of a bunch of prehistoric mummy’s boys who huddle together like a troupe of scouts on a day trip to Loch Lomond in November. It’s a cottage industry, an old boys club and unless one is privileged enough to be born into that world or has the green to play, well, your name’s not down, so you’re not coming in.
Which is a shame, because if these blinkered ‘professionals’ could just take their heads out of each others arses for a couple of minutes, wake up and smell the Earl Grey, they might realise, if they care, that the BFI can be resurrected. But it’ll mean an about face. An openness and willingness to accept new talented members and that’s going to take a lot of humble pie.
Unfortunately, the BFI works more like a family and unlike those misfortunate arguing inbreeds who grace mid-morning TV, the BFI family are simply not estranged. Far too ‘lovey’ and only departing when they do indeed depart. Or when the director yells ‘cut’. As an example, a production not too long ago required an underwater camera operator. Rather than contemplate the CV’s of fully qualified individuals, who happened to stand outside their little clique, the ‘team’ instead decided to go with the production managers inexperienced eighteen year old son who once expressed a fleeting appraisal of how “cool” some of those deep sea shots were in ‘Jaws’. Or he got the job because A) He could swim and B) More importantly, he wasn’t an outsider. This is a local industry for local people, you know.
Can we really believe Jake Scott would’ve helmed a large-scale production like ‘Plunkett & Macleane’ if daddy weren’t Ridley? Could Guy Ritchie so easily pop along to Mrs. Sting’s office and pitch a gangland tale starring an ex-footballer if he weren’t a descendant of the aristocracy?
Of course he and the UK aren’t the only ones to be found guilty of that hand me down assumption. Despite an obvious visual flair, question whether Spike Jonze would be where he is today, had his father’s company not been worth a billion dollars.
This writer has been fortunate enough to work both sides of the BFI, the low end market; the ‘kids’ who really are passionate about their subject and a desire to get ahead and strive through at any cost and the neckerchief wearing brigade who once happened to take a dump in the same honey wagon as David Lean forty years ago, so therefore become life long members. And it’s these dispassionate members who treat filmmaking like a social event and produce ‘nice’ little pictures that few audiences will actually pay to see and with each project hammer in another nail.
Each nail represents another large chunk of UK money lost and each subsequent project suffers. For every ‘Four Weddings’ style hit, there’s a squadron of ‘Rancid Aluminium’s’ that should never have seen the outside of a waste bin. And contrary to popular belief that, yes to a certain extent is true, the BFI will obviously jump on the ‘Lock, Stock’ band wagon and churn out umpteen mockney wannabe turkeys in a vain attempt at turning a profit, this is after all a ‘business’. But more truthful is the fact that many (of the few) UK pictures are made because ‘my friend’ Dickey’s involved.
The notion that ‘this project’ might be a great film and generate some serious box office moolah is unbelievably over looked in favour of how smashingly nice it’ll be for the old team to get together again and talk about the time they worked on such and such, when in fact such and such involved them standing around talking about the time they worked on such and such! Of course this is nigh on exaggeration and amidst the pomposity of it all a film will be made, but for anyone who has ever encountered a ‘real’ film set, this should certainly read as non-defamatory fact. Standing at the foot of the hill, aspiring young talent can telescopically witness this self-destructing behaviour at its peek, whilst held back like an amputee on a rubber coil.
The working talent, not all of it, but more than a healthy percentage, is killing it for future generations and these are the culprits to point a finger at and blame for the slow demise of the BFI. It breeds from a multitude of phobias and like Michael Jackson’s oxygen tank makes every effort to keep at bay any parasite that may try to engage. Whereas the wise understand, a little dirt counter attacks unwanted disease.
Take a trip outside the UK and the experience of meeting foreign ‘film folk’ is a breath of fresh air. Exhilarating the senses, it actually makes one feel like a possible part of a team. Welcomed by those who’ll listen, engage and most importantly, be open to new ideas. This is why they are succeeding, whereas the ‘closed’ BFI is failing. Breaking into the film industry in any territory is a hard game to play. But when calls and e-mails are answered and someone at least has the time to tell an individual they are rubbish, it’s far less frustrating than hitting brick walls that have neither ears to listen nor time to tell.
Think of the BFI as ‘The Slaughtered Lamb’ and you’re on the right path. Pray for the individual who will stand-alone in the rain and attempt to help because they genuinely care.
Why else do UK based film makers flee abroad, usually the States, after their first glimmer of success? ‘Billy Elliot’, the biggest Brit hit of recent years, took its director Stephen Daldry to the US for ‘The Hours’, whilst actor Jamie Bell is currently perfecting a deep-south accent for a US indie.
Shouldn’t the BFI be doing all in its power to keep a hold of valuable assets? Or do they all too readily let talent go abroad in a hope that they’ll one day return with cash to pump back in to Britain? Well guess what, they don’t. Take all those wunderkind new hopes of the late seventies and early eighties, the commercial directors, (Parker, Lynne, the Scott brothers) every one departed to Hollyweird and despite popping up every so often to ‘promote’ the BFI, how much do they really care for it?
Who is our Steven Soderbergh, supporting up and coming filmmakers? Where is our Tribecca? Why’s Ewan McGregor making more and more American pictures? When did Sean Connery last appear in a British film? Why did Christopher Nolan and Sam Mendes go directly to the states and bypass their home country? And who can blame them?
Along with organisations like the British Film Council, or more aptly the British Film-Prevention Council, it’s mostly a charade. Read the small print and quite often not only is it a catch-22 to get supposed money from these ‘charities’ but they prefer ten-minute shorts, made on DV! Why?! Any serious film maker will have already made umpteen, often self financed, short films and exhausted the over rated medium that is DV, before trying to raise some kind of realistic budget for a saleable ninety minute motion picture.
British film money is basically recycled and it more often than not goes through the same hands time after time. Do you think government sources allocating money to certain film organisations even realise that it isn’t necessarily distributed fairly? But then, look at how many other UK industries have gone the way of the dodo and with film making already regarded by a large section as ‘a bit of a joke’, why should they care? If a school leaver in this country has ambitions to pursue film work they are laughed at and deemed over-ambitious. If that same kid lives in the States, they are pointed in the direction of the prestigious NYU/UCLA or likewise.
The BFI has a seriously stuck up attitude problem, belittling the majority of those trying to ‘break in’ and needs desperately to open its ears, eyes and most importantly, mind. Followed by its doors.
When this happens, maybe we can once again restore faith in homegrown products and make proper attempts to promote these films and get a decent amount of prints into cinemas, outside of London.
Or the BFI complacently descends into the equivalent of despicable low-end reality television. ‘I’m a Celebrity Pop Idol Dial 999 and Get Me Out of This Big Brother Academy: The Movie’.
We’ve waved goodbye to the production side of Channel 4 films and gone are the picture churning studios of yesteryear. If the BFI believes it can survive solely on the laughable fact that it was once responsible for ‘Brief Encounter’ and ‘The Ladykillers’ it is as mistaken as Jeffrey Archer thinking prison could be avoided because he once wrote crappy books.
Like the mostly unnecessary monarchy, kick out the industry dinosaurs and bring in the open-minded young guns. The revolution needs to start right here and right now, before they kill it dead for those who genuinely care.
MARK WITHERS
May 2003 |
