2007
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"The double act that has made millions laugh" by Sophie Brodie. |
Telegraph UK, 20 October 2007 | |||
All that matters is that he and Tim Bevan make the movies they love. Next week their latest, the sequel to Elizabeth I, premieres in London.
The stunning costumes and stellar cast are a far cry from Fellner's and Bevan's first cash-strapped productions in the 1980s. Both were public school boys who eschewed university for a career making pop videos. In 1984, Bevan founded Working Title with Sarah Radclyffe and made My Beautiful Laundrette. Fellner's first feature was the controversial Sid and Nancy in 1986. Later, Radclyffe left and in 1992 Fellner joined Bevan. With funding from Dutch conglomerate Polygram, they set about changing British film.
Sixteen years later, they are still churning out hits. Despite their huge success, however, Working Title has no revenue and runs at a loss.
"It's a very, very expensive operation to maintain," says Fellner. He's reluctant to go into detail. However, it appears to work as follows: Working Title is part of US giant GE. Its film subsidiary, NBC Universal, writes a multi-million dollar cheque that Working Title uses to make five films a year. But whenever a film is made, a separate entity owns the rights and revenues from movie theatres and DVD sales are fed back into the distribution arm of NBC. According to GE's annual report, film costs are deferred until they can be offset against gross estimated revenues, calculated using "anticipated release patterns, public acceptance and historical results for similar products". Hence the need for a bankable star.
But if you set the total cost of Working Title's 80-odd movies against the total returns, it is highly lucrative. In 10 years, the company has made $4bn (£1.96bn) at the box office and a further $2bn to $3bn in DVD and TV sales. The average cost to make each movie is $30m, half the Hollywood average. It costs another $30m to market. This suggests total costs over the decade of about $3bn, giving a box office margin of $1bn. "It makes them a lot of money," says Fellner.
This year, Working Title has taken $100m at the UK box office alone for Mr Bean's Holiday, police comedy Hot Fuzz and Atonement, an adaptation of Ian McEwan's war-time novel. It's an impressive score, but dwarfed by annual revenues at NBC, which last year topped $16bn.
Working Title may be loss-making, but Fellner and Bevan look pretty comfortable, despite their mildy chaotic offices in Oxford Street and the fact that when I interview them, both have colds. Oddly, the first topic is politics. Gordon Brown has just called off the election after a swing in the polls to the Tories after their conference.
"These polls are total nonsense," rants Fellner. Bevan agrees with colourful language. They are thinking of "tracking" – an industry term for polling to assess the effect of your movie's pre-marketing, TV ads, billboards etc, on the public. In the past, these have been an accurate guide to opening audience figures. But in the past six months, the results have been meaningless.
Fellner says: "People who go to movies aren't always susceptible to phone calls or being approached on the street so we're not getting the correct information. Nowadays people are all over the place – on the internet or their mobiles. Political pollsters like Mori could be getting poor information for the same reasons."
Another reason Fellner has the Prime Minister on his mind is that, as governor of the British Film Institute, he is hoping for funding to preserve the archive. A week later Culture Secretary James Purnell announced a £25m grant for the BFI. This grant, expectations of further sums to revamp the South Bank and generous tax breaks for UK films has made them warm to the new Prime Minister more than his predecessors.
"The tax credits help us a lot on the bigger films of up to $50m," interjects Bevan.
"When it's on a knife-edge whether the numbers stack up to make a film in this country, then a tax credit of 10pc to 20pc of the budget makes a huge difference. But we're not reliant on them for getting our films made."
The reason they are not, says Fellner, is that the company is in a unique position – it can make non-Hollywood films with Hollywood-size budgets. Bevan says: "We recently made Pride & Prejudice. Any other independent British company would struggle to make it for $8m, but we made it for $20m with a decent star and guaranteed distribution. That is always going to be more successful than the UK film industry equivalent." The movie took $121m at the box office.
Will we ever get to that stage? "You have to accept the film business is basically run from Hollywood," says Fellner, "It's just like auto manufacturers. You can't develop a great car and sell it as an independent. You can develop a great car and make a deal with Mercedes. You should measure our success in talent. Do we have good writers, producers and actors in the UK? Yes we do."
He believes distribution costs are too high to admit new entrants. "Unless you align yourself with these studio giants, you won't get shelf space in Wal-Mart." What about the internet as a means of distribution? "People may be able to compete at that level, but the studios won't let it happen."
Working Title has no plans to release a movie on the net. "The pricing is too complex and arbitrary," says Bevan, pointing to the music industry, where tracks' sales are now governed by technology companies like iTunes rather than big labels. Instead, their next business ventures are in television and theatre. Billy Elliot's transformation into a West End musical has been the catalyst. Are they any other candidates? They're reluctant to say more, but, jokes Bevan, perhaps the Elephant Man musical revue from the Tall Guy might work? Doubtless Jeff Goldblum would be happy to reprise the lead role. | ||||
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"Sir Ben weaves his magic with a Welsh slant" by Rob Driscoll |
Western Mail , 20 October 2007 |
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The Oscar-winning actor says Neil Kinnock was the inspiration for his accent in his latest role – as a shaman. Rob Driscoll met him
HE may be playing a Roman shaman warrior, but Ben Kingsley’s accent in the new costume action-adventure film The Last Legion sounds decidedly Welsh.
That’s because his enigmatic character, Ambrosinus, turns out to be none other than the legendary Merlin – and Sir Ben decided he needed to make him sound as Celtic as possible.
The Oscar-winning star, who recently married for a fourth time, admits he even modelled some of his accent on former Labour leader Neil Kinnock.
”I met someone from North Wales recently and she said my accent for the film was pretty good – but I didn’t realise it was that specific,“ says 63-year-old Kingsley, who won the Best Actor Academy Award in 1982 for his title role in Gandhi. ”But Neil Kinnock’s voice definitely inspired my efforts. I’m a great admirer of his and I have had the pleasure of meeting him, and I love the way he has that Lloyd Georgian, Celtic tone, there’s something beautiful about it.“
Co-starring Colin Firth, Peter Mullan and Indian beauty Aishwarya Rai, The Last Legion is a family-friendly action movie based on the fall of the Roman Empire – combined with the myths of Excalibur and the Knights of the Round Table. The story follows the historically accurate fortunes of 12-year-old Romulus Augustus (played by child actor Thomas Sangster), the last Roman emperor who briefly rules the city before his parents are killed during the capture of Rome, and he is banished to the fortress island of Capri.
Ben Kingsley co-stars as Ambrosinus, the worldly-wise shaman who is a mentor and tutor to Romulus – and it’s a role he took to his heart. ”I love mythology,“ he smiles. ”I love storytelling and I love shamanism, mystery, magic, healing powers – all these things really attract me – and I found all these ingredients in the film and particularly in my character. I responded to this role with my heart.“
Filming took place over 14 weeks, mainly in Tunisia (standing in for Rome) and Slovakia in eastern Europe (which doubled for Britannia), and a lot of work was put into training the main actors to a high standard for the sword fight scenes. Kingsley in particular had his work cut out, as the highly individual Ambrosinus fights with a staff in an unconventional way.
In fact the actor started training in his own garden in Oxfordshire – on the croquet lawn – a couple of months before filming began, to get used to using his stick. ”It’s basically like a shillelagh, an Irish stick,“ he explains.
”It is a violent way of fighting, where you use one fist as a fulcrum and you pull the stick around, and by the time you hit your opponent, it’s travelling at quite a speed with a hook on the end, so you can disarm them with it, you can snap wrists with it, you can cut their throats with it – it’s really quite violent! ”I enjoy learning any new discipline, and I particularly enjoyed this sort of martial art. We had very good teachers, so we all felt confident about what we were doing.“
Kingsley also had to have horse-riding lessons before the cameras rolled. ”I had lessons about eight miles from where I live,“ he reveals. ”And when I got to Tunisia, we carried on with the riding lessons, as well as the martial arts. ”The horse riding was the biggest challenge, because I’m nervous of horses. I was bitten by one when I was younger so I’m a bit cautious of them. But I really enjoyed riding my horse on The Last Legion. I thought that was a beautiful image as well, me at the front, Ambrosinus, and the kid holding on to me on the same horse. That’s one of the central images.
”And the fighting’s good because I think it conveys to the younger members of the audience that if anyone comes near this kid I’m really going to smack them hard! I think children need that idea of an adult absolutely defending a child, which is good. It was lovely to have both those sides to my character.“
Kingsley didn’t realise, however, that his character was a thinly disguised version of Merlin until he reached the last two pages of the script. ”I read it because the producer, Dino De Laurentiis, and his whole clan sent it to me,“ he recalls. ” I got to the last page and I jumped out of my seat knowing I would do it. ”I chatted to Dino and his daughter Raffaella. I talked about the Celtic look, the shamanistic look, we talked about the hair and the costume and I said I really wanted him to have a Celtic accent. They said all that sounded good. Funnily enough, the writing seemed to fit the accent like a glove, and I didn’t change many words at all. ”First and foremost, Ambrosinus is an orator. He’s the storyteller in the film. I wanted something very Celtic, British, ancient, and very old world that was at the heart of the story under these same hills and this same sky.“
The Last Legion is the latest in a busy schedules of films that prove Kingsley is more in demand than ever. More recently, he’s been embroiled in decidedly more adult fare – such as his highly memorable, foul-mouthed gangster in Sexy Beast – although he’s no stranger to family fare, either; he played The Hood in the Thunderbirds revamp, and starred as Fagin in Roman Polanski’s version of Oliver Twist a couple of years ago.
Away from the cameras, last month Kingsley married a Brazilian actress little more than half his age – 34-year-old Daniela Barbose de Carneiro, who has had walk-on parts in several UK television dramas, including Casualty. The couple, who had been dating for a year after being introduced by mutual friends in Hollywood, married at a secret ceremony on September 3 in front of just a dozen guests at Eynsham Hall, a few miles from Kingsley’s Oxfordshire home in Spelsbury.
Ask Kingsley how he’s managing the combination of an ever-busy film workload and the need to enjoy his happy new domestic union and, as you might expect, he is as profoundly enigmatic.
”It’s hard, I think, for actors to stay in touch with themselves and their own feelings because they’re so earnestly trying to be inside someone else’s emotional mess that they’re always sorting out. The character’s not their own but it’s a very equal partnership,“ he offers. ”I’m happy to say, so far so good.
”It’s just a question of trying to be alert all the time to the needs of the relationship, as well as our individual needs in our careers, because she’s an actor too.“
And the advantages of one’s spouse being in the same business?
”There are no disadvantages, there are great advantages and an enormous amount of empathy,“ he smiles.
”She knows what I do and she knows how hard it is – how you have to stay on top of so many things, especially now when one crass, careless, stupid comment will be global within two minutes. Not that I’m given to them, but we have to be extra-vigilant.“
The Last Legion is now on general release | |
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"Aishwarya: Film isn't about damsels" |
North Scotland UK , 19 October 2007 | |||
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"I'm little Caesar, actually" |
Daily Mail , 5 October 2007 | ||||||
But, when we meet in a West London hotel, he looks like someone the wind has blown in. Matchit's stick-thin and swamped by baggy jeans, at 5ft 3in he's a good four inches shorter than your average 17-year-old.
"There was a period for two years when people would come up to me at school pretty much every day and say: 'Hey, are you that kid from Love Actually?'," he says. "I find it weird the way people get so excited about celebrity. If my friends are on the phone, their friends will say: 'Is that kid from Love Actually there?' And the phone gets passed round and I have to speak to this stranger asking: 'Are you famous?' I don't know how to answer.
"I've never really been starstruck. I remember at the Love Actually readthrough I didn't realise it was a big film. Suddenly all these people started coming through the door who I recognised from TV. "I remember thinking: 'That's that guy from Notting Hill.'"
"That guy from Notting Hill" was Hugh Grant, who turned out to be a cousin of sorts. "His grandmother and my greatgrandmother are sisters," says Sangster. "He didn't know. I said: 'Apparently, you're my uncle or cousin or something.' We talked about my great-grandmother and he knew her." "Then he kind of remembered my mum and uncle. So for the rest of the shoot he went round saying: 'Hello cousin.' That felt quite cool."
And this is how Sangster is, seemingly underwhelmed by the experience. Indeed, Sir Ben Kingsley, who appears as mentor Ambrosinus in The Last Legion, says of him: "He's a very contained, private child. We have a very gentle, very quiet, respectful relationship off and on the screen."
He continues to live at the home in South London that he bought with his actor parents Mark Sangster and Tasha Bertram, and younger sister Ava. He doesn't do drugs, rarely drinks and has never had a girlfriend.
Indeed, when he shared a limousine with Claudia Schiffer for the New York premiere of Love Actually, he was nonplussed. "That first premiere in New York was incredible," he says. "Long black limos and things. Mine never showed up so I had to share Claudia Schiffer's. "Sometimes there are mobs of girls in the street," he says. "I laugh when they go, 'Oh my God, oh my God' and jump up and down. I've never had a girlfriend. I haven't pushed it away in any way, but it's never come my way."
I wonder what does stir his passions. "Acting," he says. And Sangster is a brilliant actor. His performance in The Last Legion is quite mesmerising. Indeed, the film industry bible Variety credited him with making an "engagingly plucky impression". "I just do what I do. As soon as the clapboard goes or the guy shouts 'action', I immediately switch to another person. I always fit a bit of me into every character I do.
"In The Last Legion, I felt Romulus was a lonely person. I thought of the times I'd been lonely when I'd walk around the playground on my own or sit in the house - if my mum had gone out to a party, my dad was working and my sister was having a sleepover, so I'd have the whole night alone."
Sangster never attended drama school or had acting lessons. He nursed an ambition to act from the age of ten when he saw his parents work together in a play about the life of Edgar Allan Poe in Prague. He was, he says, a rather shy child who was often alone fashioning buildings out of Lego and living within his imagination. "I grew up in a Georgian square in Elephant and Castle. "Dad's in the Lion King at the moment, but I remember him struggling in his career when work dried up. There'd be a change of attitude, a down feeling and then an annoying feeling. It's not nice seeing your mother or father looking depressed."
Sangster, who suffered with mild dyslexia, tolerated school. Film for him was escape. "Film took me to another place. I'd get absorbed by this whole new story. I have a problem with reading. I didn't like it when the class were reading a book and it was my turn to read a paragraph. "I'd feel a flush go through me. The words would start off OK and then it would go wrong. I felt really stupid. "My mum used to read the scripts. I've got no problem learning lines. I look at them the day before I do them."
He began acting at the age of 11 when, after sending some photographs to a friend's agency, he landed a part in the TV series The Adventures Of Station Jim. Several TV roles followed and then came the part in Love Actually when he was 12. Soon, Thomas was earning more than his parents. "I can be cocky sometimes," he says. "I'll say to Mum: 'I'm making more money than you are.' I bought us a little house in Vauxhall and another one in Camberwell."
I wonder if Sangster, who has made his name playing considerably younger children, worries about growing up.
He has, he says, always been a short child, and his voice has only just broken. "At one point I thought: 'I'm not going to be a little boy anymore.'" "I was always the little boy who cried. Then I thought: 'At least I can move into something else.' " "That excited me. I just enjoy my career for what it is now."
"At the beginning of this year I did Doctor Who. I was 16, and at 16 you're allowed to go away on your own in the UK - usually my mum's with me. It was a great thing to be working as an adult with no tutor. It was cool going to the bar with the guys afterwards.
"There was also a film I was supposed to be doing in South Africa - Master Harold And The Boys. "I'd have been 16 and was supposed to be playing someone who was 17. "It would have been the first time I ever played a role older than myself. "It's supposed to be happening next year and it'll be great to be more grown up."
And I tell this thoroughly likeable young man that I look forward to watching his career grow too.
• The Last Legion is released in cinemas on Oct 19. | |||||||
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"Blake Morrison: interview" by Dave Calhoun |
Time Out London, 2 October 2007 | |||
It must be flattering to be played by Colin Firth? Yes, well Colin is Colin and he’s played writers before. He’d read the book and he’d also read my book about my mother. I didn’t meet Colin until the film was being made, he didn’t feel the need to research me.
The casting of Jim Broadbent as my dad is much more decisive because my father should dominate the film as this larger-than-life person. I tried to write an early version of the screenplay myself and the problem was that I could never write myself, this character of ‘Blake’. Writing a memoir is very different from constructing a character.
You manage to recall so much detail from your childhood. Of course it’s possible that I’ve misremembered some things but I was spending an awful lot of time in my parents’ home when my father died, which was near the house where I spent my childhood. I was surrounded by detail. My parents never chucked anything away, so everything was there. Memories would be triggered just by objects; my father’s stuff on his desk and so on. I think that’s why I included so much detail. If I’d been sitting in London, I wouldn’t have been able to do it.
Would you say this is more an adaptation of your book than a dramatisation of your life? Yes, I think so. David Nicholls rang me up once very briefly when he was working on the script, so it’s not like he was writing a biography of someone he knew, he was working straight from the book.
I was asked my opinion sometimes, and they could choose to ignore it. In an odd way, the book has become my memory of my childhood. Many memories went in there; there’s not a stash of them that I’ve never written about.
A lot of time has passed now, so I feel that I can let go. If it had been two years after the book came out, and three years after my father had died, I would probably feel a lot more possessive, but you’ve got to let them make their own thing of it.
You say in a later afterword to your book that you were surprised how many readers contacted you and treated you as an agony uncle. Do you expect the same again? Well, I think they’ll be writing to Colin instead of me! I’ve had some emails from the film’s website from Colin’s fans, and this morning I had one from someone who asked: ‘How accurate is Gina McKee as your wife as I think I could have done that really well, especially with Colin lying on top of me…’ You realise what the poor guy’s up against.
I do think people will be moved by the film, not everybody, but rather in a Diana way; you know, that some people weeping for Diana were weeping for some loss of their own.
Several writers of your generation have written of their parents since your book – Martin Amis, Hanif Kureishi, Graham Swift, Nick Hornby. Yes, that’s right. I don’t know if it’s our generation or if it’s true of all generations but it’s common to think your parents are very boring and not to be interested in their lives or their past, and then at a certain point, maybe when you have children, you begin to appreciate their other qualities. Then, of course, when they get ill and die, you get really, really curious. When my father died, ordinary objects became very precious to me; I’ve still got some of them, like the pacemaker that was cut out of him after he died. It’s a reappraisal of the relationship, partly out of the guilt that you never did them justice when you were young.
‘And When Did You Last See Your Father?’ opens on Friday. | ||||
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"Rapid response unit" by Andrew Pulver. |
The Guardian, 14 September 2007 | ||||
"We made a conscious effort to keep things as simple as possible," he says. Winterbottom is sitting around waiting to begin a night shoot in Genoa. He doesn't behave especially like a human dynamo: he's cheerful, dressed normally, and looks like any other fortysomething you might see sucking down a cappuccino in a city centre. But you get some indication when he starts talking: words come flooding out in a seemingly endless stream. "When you start out you're a bit at the mercy of outside factors, but by deciding to work through Revolution with Andrew, and by deciding to keep to a small crew and people you know, the process of setting up a film is very simple. Apart from getting the money. So something that seems big and complicated when you start out actually start to get simple as you go on. The more often you make a film the easier it is. That's part of why we make quite a few, and there's usually two or three we're working on at the same time, ones that we want to make, and we try and make them as simply as possible."
Got that? Andrew is Andrew Eaton, the producer partner who has worked on all but one of Winterbottom's films since Go Now in 1995; Revolution is the company they established together that has been the conduit for Winterbottom's output since. (The only exception is the 1997 film Welcome to Sarajevo, with which Winterbottom briefly flirted with FilmFour.) The details of the Winterbottom-Eaton set-up are important, because the way they have chosen to make their films has determined the nature of what they do, and very often sharpened the impact of the films they have made.
In the late 90s, they were among the first high-profile British film-makers to embrace the possibilities of digital film-making, installing editing suites in their production office and creating a virtually self-sufficient in-house operation. At the same time, they concentrated on paring down the number of people they needed to bring with them to shoot the film. And the effect on Winterbottom's film-making was liberating. Unlike, say, Mike Figgis, Winterbottom and Eaton have largely stayed away from digital's visual trickery, preferring to capitalise on the mobility and flexibility the format gives them, forging in the process a semi-documentary form of cinema that is equally at home in 1970s Manchester backstreets and the Karachi slums. His first two digitially shot films, 24 Hour Party People and In This World, were both spectacular achievements in very different ways and stepped his film-making career up from the stolid character dramas for which he had, hitherto, been best known.
So here in Genoa, the smallness of the crew is everything. Deep in the city's old town, wedged in a maze of medieval alleyways, the production has taken over a flat for the purposes of the evening's shoot. And by the standards of a film set, there is hardly anyone here. The cameraman, Marcel Zyskind, sets his own lights, free of the usual squad of riggers, electricians and cablemen. There's someone with a microphone and tape recorder, a couple of people dealing with the actors' costumes and makeup, someone else looking after the props. A few others - sensible-looking people in their 20s, mostly - are waiting tensely out on the stairwell in case they are needed: perhaps to be sent off to look for a bar or cafe that might be used in the next day's shooting. (Pretty soon you realise that everyone appears to be on a neverending quest to find places they can film, Winterbottom included. This is not a production so flush with cash that they can simply go in and rent where they feel like.) The scene Winterbottom is shooting involves his lead actor, Colin Firth, thundering into his small daughter's bedroom; why, he wants to know, has she been scribbling endless pictures of her dead mother?
On set, with the camera turning over, Winterbottom is suddenly a very different figure. The affability has pretty much disappeared; there's no mistaking that he is entirely focused on the task at hand. In a small but telling indication that he really wants to keep on top of things, he has - rather remarkably - a small monitor strapped to his hip. It shows how he has harnessed technology to allow him, literally, to stay light on his feet. All the cumbersome procedures of the conventional film set have been jettisoned; and the actors, in particular, really like it.
Firth, who himself is fitting his work on Winterbottom's film around shooting scenes on a much bigger-budget number, the adaptation of the Abba musical Mamma Mia!, is unabashed in his appreciation. "He makes it seem like the most obvious way to work of all," he says later. "I appreciate that it is a very tiny unit, and it means everyone is at the heart of the process. You're in touch with the decisions and what's going on. You're part of it in a way that in conventional films is just not the case. For very obvious reasons, there are obstacles in 'normal' film-making: you spend hours waiting for the lighting and the rigging and the setting-up; then you're brought in to make your contribution in very minute pieces and out of sequence. Most actors will tell you on a film like that you're struggling to be where you should be. The waiting has the effect of sapping the energy. It drains you."
As the man at the sharp end of things on Genova, Firth talks through Winterbottom's on-set techniques. Rehearsal is pretty much dispensed with, says Firth - admittedly not especially uncommon in cinema, where freshness is all - but Winterbottom never does a second take of the same shot; when they go through a scene a second time, he always shifts the camera's position. The camera, he says, is also turning over from virtually the second they arrive in any given location. "He doesn't say 'action'; he doesn't say 'cut'; he'll just catch your eye and give you an indication that they are rolling." Nor, it transpires, is there a continuity person around to keep track of what's happening, which means matching shots in the conventional matter is virtually impossible. Hence the apparently casual, semi-random editing style Winterbottom has developed; as much a question of necessity than any aesthetic affectation.
If digital film-making has helped Winterbottom establish an extraordinary level of productivity, it's also helped him extract natural, unforced performances from his cast. That skill became crucial when Winterbottom turned to using non-professional Afghan refugees as the cast for his most radical experiment in stripped-down, on-the-move film-making, In This World. on which he achieved rarely equalled levels of naturalism.
In This World also gave Winterbottom a cause. He's returned to it twice since then - with Road to Guantánamo and A Mighty Heart - and is planning a fourth: an adaptation of former diplomat Craig Murray's celebrated memoir, Murder in Samarkand. But Winterbottom denies he has any special affinity for reactive, issue-based film-making. "Generally speaking, things we've done have been things we just thought were good ideas. We go through phases, obviously. Not all good. When we were doing Mighty Heart, we were driving through Pakistan and it felt kind of similar to In This World. This is when you have moments thinking: we've done this before so why are we doing this? What's the point of doing this again?"
Still, A Mighty Heart represents one of his and Eaton's occasional forays into Hollywood. An adaptation of Mariane Pearl's account of the search for her husband Daniel's kidnappers, it was a project brought to them by Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. "Unusually for the films we've done," says Winterbottom, "it was completely their project. Brad had got the rights to the book in the first place, Angelina knew Mariane, and we were brought in to make the film. There wouldn't be a film without them. It got made because they wanted to make it." Mention of the minor media controversies around the Hollywood pair - the scuffles Jolie's bodyguards got into in Mumbai, the attempt to control journalists' questions before the film's premiere in LA - has the director bristling in defence of his actor. "It's a bit hypocritical of the media to complain about them, because, having witnessed the way the press behaves toward people like that, it is pretty disgusting. All they were trying to do was say: what we want to do is talk about the film, not our babies or private life. They weren't insisting people had to write a good review."
Genova lacks the Hollywood money of A Mighty Heart, but you sense that parsimony is a deliberate choice: with more money comes more interference, and the consequent evaporation of control over what you do. Winterbottom returns to the theme: "With digital, if you have the gear, then costs virtually disappear. Look at 9 Songs; we made it all ourselves and hardly spent anything. But there's still a problem after that; getting a film into the state where it's ready to show in a cinema is still really expensive." But it has its compensations. As the sun goes down over the Ligurian hills, there's no doubt that, after the rigours of the Middle East, Winterbottom and Eaton are enjoying their time in Italy. Is this a film or a holiday, I ask. "The cat's out the bag ..." Eaton says. Winterbottom giggles. "We're trying not to let anyone know. The last two films were in Pakistan and Afghanistan, so we thought, it's a reward."
· A Mighty Heart is released next Friday. Genova will be released next year | |||||
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"Helen Hunt finds two film jobs easier than one" by Cameron French. |
Reuters, 9 September 2007 | ||||
But the laughs are intermingled with pain as the characters deal with past offenses against one another, sometimes finding redemption and sometimes not.
LOVE AND BETRAYAL Hunt, 44, said the film's central message was that you cannot really love unless you have made peace with betrayal.
"I wanted to write a movie about people that I loved that were being crushed and crushing each other while still wanting very badly to be loving," she said.
She took pause before casting Firth, fearing that his dry wit and charm would suck some of the drama out of April's plight.
"I think I was afraid and he was afraid that he's so appealing that the minute he comes on screen you'd stop worrying about April, like she'll be fine, she's going to end up with him," she said.
"I actually wrote the part for someone much less tall, handsome, and appealing."
Hunt, who has a 3-year-old daughter and whose acting career has slowed in recent years, said she saw directing as a second career that will allow her to choose projects carefully.
"I'm having such a rich time at home with my daughter that it would have to be a story that moved me enough to have me say to my family, 'Can we bend ... and flex so that I can do this?'" | |||||
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"Finding Helen" by Jay Stone |
The Ottawa Citizen, 9 September 2007 | ||||
"I went through a divorce that was very different, but I knew what it was like to lose your faith in the ritual of marriage and have that not be there for you on the other side.
"If you look at the Colin Firth character, there are big pieces of myself. There are big pieces that are myself that have nothing to do with anybody else. So all of these characters are me, actually."
Hunt was working on the movie in the years after As Good As It Gets, the film for which she won an Academy Award following a successful TV career in Mad About You.
The Oscar brought new, high profile roles -- in Robert Altman's Mr. T and the Women, in What Women Want, in Cast Away -- but she hasn't been seen much lately.
One reason is Makena Lei.
Hunt says of motherhood: "It's everything I thought it would be, but in 3-D and more potent than you could possibly describe."
The other reason is that she was busy making one of the few films lately that has a meaty role for a woman approaching middle age and trying to sort out the conflicts of love, family, parenthood and childhood.
"I felt like this became, as I rewrote it and rewrote it, a story I was dying to tell."
In Then She Found Me, Hunt plays a teacher whose husband (Matthew Broderick) walks out on her the same day her mother dies. Shortly thereafter, the gaps are filled: she is reunited with her birth mother, who turns out to be a minor TV celebrity, played by Bette Midler, and she meets a parent at the school, played with raggedy charm by Firth, to whom she is attracted.
Despite the big names, it was a tough movie to get made: Hunt says she started with a big film and wound up with one whose budget is very small. "Take what you're imagining and cut it in half. It was crazy.
"I ultimately believe the story was better served given the size of the budget," she says. "That happened over and over. I'd lose an actor and I'd think all was lost, and someone so much more right for the part would emerge. ... A million catastrophes happened that turned into the best thing that could possibly occur."
Hunt wasn't always sure that she would act in the film as well as direct it, because she feared she wouldn't enjoy either role. Eventually, she took the role out of sheer necessity.
"Rather than asking two actors to get their schedules together to rehearse -- for free -- I could just take a cab to Bette Midler's apartment and say, 'Ready to work?' I was always available."
There was also the fact that the role was so juicy, and she hadn't played anything like it before.
"Good stories are very, very, very rare," she says. "I'm glad I didn't give it to someone else to do."
Hunt says she would consider directing another film, or even acting in one if the story was very compelling. But it would have to be very good.
"Anything else stops becoming interesting to me, and I would be leaving my house every day, probably with a stomachache, because I would be leaving this very interesting story I have at home." | |||||
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"St Trinian's girls up to no good" by Ellie Simmonds. |
Oxford Mail , 13 August 2007 | |||
"Russell Brand was lovely. When we were waiting outside I spoke to him and he was very friendly.
"The whole experience was really good. We had to get up early but I didn't mind that. I definitely want to do it again."
Her mum Jenny Moorman, 43, added: "She loved every minute of it. The whole experience of being in a film was fantastic for her. Drama is her favourite lesson at school. She loves doing lots of accents and putting on voices - she's very confident."
Longfields Primary School pupil Toni Purnell, 11, of Fritwell, was another of the Perform! pupils taking part.
She said: "The best part was running around London with a hockey stick. It was tiring but it was really fun at the same time."
About 15 Perform! students were also picked as extras, including Jenni Sowerby, of Bicester and Katie Buchholz, of Murcott.
St Trinian's is due to be released in cinemas this Christmas. It also stars comedian Stephen Fry, Harry Potter actor Toby Jones, and Calendar Girls and Bridget Jones's Diary star Celia Imrie.
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"Father figures" by Aidan Smith. |
Scotland on Sunday, 5 August 2007 | |||
Morrison virtually founded the genre by writing the daddy, And When Did You Last See Your Father? It's just been made into a fine film.
So, Blake Morrison - 57, poet, and a soft-spoken native of God's own country (not Scotland, but some place called Yorkshire) - how does it feel when you see yourself blown up 50ft high on the silver screen and bearing more than a passing resemblance to cerebral hunk Colin Firth?
"When I tell people who's playing me, the laughter generally lasts about five minutes," he sighs. "Any longer and I start to feel a bit offended. The only time I've seen the film, a woman sensed my hurt. 'It's not that you're so ugly,' she said, 'it's just that every man in Britain probably fantasises about being played by Colin Firth.'"
Morrison will see the movie again in Edinburgh when it gets a Film Festival premiere and he's also due at the Book Festival for his latest work, South Of The River. That is his big London book, his Blair Years book, but it's fiction. AWDYLSYF? was an unflinching, hugely moving memoir of fatherly omniscience ("I may not be right, Blake, but I'm never wrong"), disastrous camping holidays, light adultery and grief.
A long time coming - the book was published in 1993 - the film is directed by Anand Tucker from a screenplay by David Nicholls and stars Jim Broadbent as Morrison's father Arthur, GP, garden-shed boffin and professional Yorkshireman.
"I'm incredibly happy with it," says Morrison. "They've kept the characters' names and also the title. There's American money in it and for the States it may have to lose the And, but at least it won't be Bye, Pop.
"The film starts like the book with my father queue-jumping at Oulton Park [the car-racing track] by hanging his stethoscope from the rear-view mirror and shouting "Make way for a doctor!" and embarrassing us all. And it's true to the book at the end as well with him bossing me around in my new London home and directing operations for the fixing of a chandelier - the last time I saw him as Dad."
Firth did not consult Morrison beforehand, but they spoke after filming. The author remembers that he forgot to compliment the actor on his performance and says he will rectify this by letter. In the book, Morrison didn't leave much out, even describing a scene where he masturbates in the bath while the old man is dying. "Ah yes. I didn't know how Colin would feel about that, but it's in the film."
Broadbent did ask some questions. "He wanted to know how my father spoke and dressed but, interestingly, his story was similar. His father was overbearing and charismatic with an eye for the ladies just like mine. He also drove an Alvis, as Dad did, though not as grand as the model in the film. You'd think I grew up in Gosford Park, but that's the movies."
The extraordinary thing about Morrison's tale was its ordinariness. Everyone has a father but more of us than Morrison first thought seemed to have dads who were self-taught intellectuals (Arthur Morrison was only ever seen reading Jaws and never finished it) and serial blaggers; called their sons "prize fatheads" and grumbled about "bloody wogs". An entire sleeping constituency of sons contacted him with their experiences of "domineering old sods", one even accusing him of plagiarism. The media, as it is wont to do, appointed him an expert in fatherhood. "I felt like an agony aunt when once I'd dreamed of being TS Eliot."
As well as the male confessional, Morrison could lay claim to having invented the biography of the unremarkable, but this wasn't a calculated move. As an act of catharsis, he was compelled to write about the man who invented the waterproof sleeping bag that was supposed to render the tent redundant.
Why, then, this urge to write about fathers? "When we were young we were impatient with our parents," he says. "Now we want to atone for our callowness, to take measure of them, to understand which parts of them live on in us."
For publishers, the dad fad may have passed, but Morrison still believes in what is now called 'life writing'. "Fiction leans towards the exotic and biography to celebrity, so how else do we learn about ordinary life? Not Big Brother..."
AWDYLSYF? also caught the wave of New Dad. As a profile of Morrison pointed out at the time of publication of South Of The River, Tony Blair then caught the wave of New Dad, although both now seem old.
Morrison, a father himself, smiles at this. "I wasn't a New Dad. I know men who do two days' childcare a week but if I didn't have five days at my work I thought I was selling out. That's very old-fashioned isn't it?"
Very Arthur Morrison, perhaps. So is he turning into his father? "I look older than he did at my age, which is pretty horrifying. I'd like to think I've inherited some of his energy although I lack his confidence. I don't have his belligerence and noise although I imagine I'll become grumpy.
"Dad wasn't remote, like many fathers of his age, but the trick is not to go too much the other way, taking over people's affairs, barging in, keeping the children as babies. That was what Dad was like and I've got to watch it in myself."
Morrison laughs. Is he thinking of the scene in the film where father interrupts his son's reading of Dostoyevsky or his teenage fumbles with the housemaid?
"I thought I was distanced from Dad's death. The book helped with that, as did the passing of time. But when I was on set they showed me the rushes and it was the deathbed scene. The way Jim Broadbent held his teeth was uncannily like my Dad - normally in complete control but suddenly slack-jawed. That brought it all back." A pause, then a laugh. "He may not have been right, but he was never wrong."
• And When Did You Last See Your Father?, Dominion, August 23 and Filmhouse, August 25. Blake Morrison is at the Book Festival on August 22 www.edfilmfest.org, www.edbookfest.co.uk | ||||
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"Film moves author to tears" by Coreena Ford. |
Sunday Sun, 22 July 2007 | |||
Watching Jim play his dying father became too much at one point for Blake, who now lives in London.
He said: ”I was shown a little clip of Jim on his death bed, as it were, and it was uncannily similar to a memory I had, to the extent that I was quite tearful watching it.“
Veteran actor Jim, who won an Oscar in 2002 for his role in Iris, read And When Did You Last See Your Father? to prepare for the film, and said he was taken aback by the similarities between Blake’s dad and his own.
He said: ”Blake’s father was an exact contemporary of my own father – they were born in the same year, had an awful lot of similar experiences and similar characteristics, a love of old cars — and I started listing all of the coincidences in the back of the book. ”I was a bit of a cheat because I used my own father rather than Arthur, who I had never met or knew.“
While on set, Blake found himself talking about relationships with mums and dads with almost every member of the cast and crew, and he hopes the film will encourage viewers to contemplate their own parents. He added: ”The particulars of the Morrison family don’t matter. . . what is important, about the book and the film is the universal resonance about father son relationships.“
And When Did You Last See Your Father? is out in cinemas on October 5. | ||||
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"Not acting, just being" by Shireena Al Nowais |
Gulf News Report, 10 April 2007 | |||
New movies "I also have two new movies coming up. One is with Penelope Cruz and another one is You Kill Me, which we start filming two weeks from now. It is a romantic comedy where I play an alcoholic gangster who can't shoot strait," he says animatedly.
I quite like seeing Kingsley play a "serious role" like the tortured Jew (Schindler's List) or ostracised Iranian (House of Sand and Fog). He, however, likes to do it all, including comedy. "I enjoy all my roles enormously.
Important "I loved my role in The Last Legion because the film is about British mythology which is an important part of the British culture. It is where history and mythology meet. My character is part of King Arthur's circle of advisers. And (in the movie) while the Roman Empire is collapsing at the same time another empire is rising."
It is worth mentioning that few actors can portray an Iranian, Indian, Arab prince, Jew or Turk like Sir Ben. "It is intuition," he says.
Close Doubting that an actor can perfect the role of a foreign character by sheer intuition, I insist that he must have an Arab, Indian or Iranian friend who has coached him in his roles.
"No, it is intuition," he repeats. "I try to emphasise and be intuitive in the roles I play. When I was given the role of Behrani in House of Sand and Fog, I got very close to the characters that were playing my son and wife and they would tell me that I resembled a friend or a relative and their encouragement really helped me.
Isolation "On a subconscious level," he explains, "I am always watching others and very interested in everyone and everything around me. I find boundaries on the grounds of race, colour or religion confusing. I find isolation difficult and like to travel and go everywhere, but at times I do get homesick."
Growing up Ben Kingsley was born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, and grew up in Pendlebury, Salford, then in Lancashire.
His father, Harji Bhanji, was a Kenyan-born medical doctor of Indian (Gujarati Hindu) descent, and his mother, Anna Lyna Mary, was a fashion model and actress.
Alexander Siddig: The image of Arabs Alexander Siddig plays a small role in The Last Legion (Theodorus Andronikos). He has also played several diverse characters over a long and varied career. And yet despite his years in the business, he remains a breath of fresh air in Hollywood. This dashing actor is one of very few people in Hollywood it seems who sees how preposterous the portrayal of Arab Muslims is.
Portrayal "In western movies Arabs are solely fundamentalist religious zealots or they are these really good people. I would like a much more three dimensional image of Arabs. I want them to be normal like me and you. They don't have to be either really good or really bad."
For the time being, Siddig says he is happy playing Arab roles. "I don't feel like I am being typecast in Arab roles. That would be like asking a woman if she feels that she is being typecast in a woman's role. But for now, I am happy playing these roles."
Siddig has just finished filming Doomsday. "It is an action horror movie. The kind that they will love in this part of the world," he says. This shows you just how well he understands us Arabs. Some readers may recall Siddig's biggest role as Dr Bashir in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and so may know that he is no stranger to genre roles.
Arabic accent Born to an English mother and Sudanese father, Siddig gave a great performance as Prince Nasir in Syriana despite the fact that, as I pointed out, his Arabic accent was hilarious.
Yet in all fairness, at least you could understand what he was saying which is more than I could say about George Clooney.
"I know I can't speak Arabic," Siddig says. "But we see it as a brave thing to do, you want to do it and you go for it."
Thomas Sangster Who could forget the adorable Thomas Sangster and his crush in Love Actually? Still adorable, Sangster looks a lot older than he did in Nanny McPhee and Love Actually.
In The Last Legion this 16 year old plays a different and central role in the film.
Relate "I didn't find the role hard. I was able to relate to the character which is what I try to do in all my roles. The character (Romulus Augustus) is kind of a lonely boy and his mother and father want him to become powerful. So I sort of sympathise with him."
He enjoyed doing the movie "because ancient Rome was built for us, it wasn't blue screen or anything like that."
Future roles Asked about the future roles he'd like to play, he says: "I'd like to play the quirky, strange, evil characters because the baddies are always cool in movies."
I find it hard to believe that someone as cute as Thomas Sangster could ever be a convincible baddie. But more important, Thomas Sangster is single. | ||||
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"Harold Pinter: Not a word out of place" by Louise Jury |
The Independent UK, 22 February 2007 |
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In a rare interview, Harold Pinter tells Louise Jury why precision is the key to a play's success .
Harold Pinter's plays make him laugh. They may be famed for their pauses and an air of unspecified menace, but the Nobel laureate thinks reverential fans are simply missing the joke. "I think there has been a curious solemnity about [productions of] my work. I don't know why. It's inexplicable," he says. "I do think my work is funnier than most people are led to believe. I laugh, anyway."
He points to the production of one of his earliest plays, The Dumb Waiter (from 1957) currently at the Trafalgar Studios, London) to make his point. "This excellent production by Harry Burton with two great performances [from Lee Evans and Jason Isaacs] gets an enormous amount of laughs," he says.
And while many critics hated Pinter's People, an evening of Pinter sketches assembled by the stand-up Bill Bailey with a cast of fellow comedians including Sally Phillips, the author himself leaps to the show's defence. "I'm all for it. I admire these people in Pinter's People. I really think they're a great bunch - they're so robust and energetic. I think they were terrific." He certainly prefers an enthusiastic approach, as demonstrated at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, to an awed one. "I don't want to be deferred to," he says.
He insists the humour is intrinsic and works regardless of where the works are being performed. "I've seen a number of plays in the past in a number of different languages and it's interested me greatly that the laughs are always there in the same places - in Serbo-Croat, in French, Portuguese, Italian, Greek... It's a tribute to the translation, obviously, but it seems to me endemic in the work."
Anyone wishing to test Pinter's claim will certainly get the opportunity over the next few months. Forthcoming productions include Old Times with Neil Pearson and Janie Dee, directed by Peter Hall, which begins a tour at the Theatre Royal Brighton on Tuesday, while the Sheffield Crucible's staging of The Caretaker with the former EastEnder Nigel Harman transfers to the Tricycle, London, next month. In June, the Donmar will present his love-triangle play Betrayal, and the National Theatre will revive The Hothouse the following month.
Off-stage, Pinter's deftness as a screenwriter will be evident in the new film adaptation of Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth, which stars Michael Caine and Jude Law with a brief - "about two minutes" - appearance by Pinter himself. He will be acting again for Radio 3 in The Homecoming, directed by Thea Sharrock, with a cast including Michael Gambon, Samuel West, Rupert Graves and Gina McKee.
And next Monday, More4 is presenting a double-bill of programmes dedicated to the 76-year-old actor-playwright-director's work. Gambon, again, takes the lead in another all-star cast featuring Colin Firth, James Fox, Julia McKenzie, James Bolam, Sophie Okonedo and Penelope Wilton in the first television production of Celebration. Pinter's play, set in a fancy West End restaurant, premiered at the Almeida in 2002. The screening will be followed by a film by his Dumb Waiter director (and - a very important bond - fellow cricket-lover) Harry Burton, which explores Pinter's works and working methods.
"There's a lot going on," the playwright says. "It's the busiest year of my life." Ask him why and he's less clear, though he muses on the suggestion that his strong political stance, crystallised in his Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech, has added to his prominence.
But the flurry of interest is certainly keeping him busy. After marking his 75th birthday two years ago with a shower of accolades topped by the Nobel, many would have opted for a gentle slide into grand old age. Not so Pinter. Despite suffering two brushes with death in recent years, through cancer of the oesophagus and a rare skin-disease, he returned to the stage last October with a compelling, sell-out, performance of Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape at the Royal Court.
He is closely involved with many of the productions in the pipeline. When I spoke to him he was planning to see a run-through of Old Times on Tuesday and intended to pop into the editing suite for Sleuth. He will be taking a hand in the casting for both Betrayal, to be directed by Roger Michell, and Hothouse, under the ex-Royal-Court director Ian Rickson. "I have to say, I'm very proud of my work," he says, without any obvious arrogance. "I'm very happy about good productions."
His pleasure appears to stem partly from an abiding love of fellow actors. "I find working in rehearsals with actors terrific," he explains in the film for More4. "They're an extraordinary body of people. They're not only intelligent but responsible and informed. They know their onions, really."
Of course, Pinter himself began as an actor, training at Rada, "disastrously", and then at Central School, and was on the gruelling treadmill of regional rep when he wrote his first play, The Room, exactly 50 years ago.
He was encouraged by his east-London schoolfriend Henry Woolf, and inspired by a party in Fulham, London, where the flamboyant homosexual writer Quentin Crisp was a fellow guest. "We were only there for about 10 minutes but it left an extraordinary impression on me," he recalls on film. He told Woolf about the encounter and said: "'One day I might write a play about this extraordinary image."
He was quickly held to account. Woolf returned to Bristol University, where he was studying, and told the drama department that he knew of this "marvellous new play" that would cost little to mount. They readily agreed so he told Pinter to write it. Pinter, not unreasonably, protested that he had not produced a play before and it would take six months. But the first draft was done in two days and The Room was duly his debut as a writer, aged 26. Woolf directed.
The Birthday Party followed and, though it famously closed within a week, a subsequent rave review from Harold Hobson in The Sunday Times marked the beginning of Pinter's acclaimed writing career. He was, Hobson said, "the most original, disturbing and arresting talent in theatrical London". Five decades of plays now acknowledged as classics followed.
What emerges from Burton's film is how practical Pinter is as a playwright. He defends the precision of his writing to the hilt, telling actors in a workshop: "If the text isn't right, it certainly hits the author, I can tell you. The least word wrong stands out, you know. I don't want to appear like a stern headmaster [but] it's not helpful for you to get the text wrong..."
But many of his observations are those of the writer who can, and does, perform what he writes. He notes the difference it makes to an actor - and hence the performance - whether members of the cast sit or stand, for instance.
He recalls, with admiration, hearing Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud discuss their respective lunches just before going on stage to perform in the 1975 production of No Man's Land, the work's premiere. "There's so much bullshit talked about preparing for your part and your role. Those were actors who knew that when you got on the stage you acted, not before."
He adds that he thinks that some directors and actors have become hung up on his legendary pauses and silences, to the detriment of the work. "I don't want them just to be on the page, I want them to be vitally part of what's happening on stage," he says. "These damn silences and pauses are all to do with what's going on and what's happening, and if they don't make sense I cut them. When I act in my own plays, I have cut half of them actually."
The combative side of Pinter is also evident as he describes acting as, "a contest with the audience", as to who is in charge. "I had an idea of what would shut an audience up through being an actor," he says, adding: "It doesn't always work, by the way. You can't regulate an audience."
He remains passionately political. "I've always been a political playwright. I haven't always written political plays but I've always been a political person," he says. "There's a very low anger that resides in any respectable, intelligent person in this society about what goes on, and how impotent we seem to be to correct what goes on, and how we give power to people who don't deserve to possess power because they abuse it, and manipulate it, and treat people with contempt, and treat international law with contempt."
His conviction commands respect. Only the brave would risk dissent. Yet he also happily tells stories against himself, remembering an interval of No Man's Land when he was pinned into a corner in an overcrowded bar by a couple who stood in silence for five minutes before the husband observed: "Oh well, not as boring as the normal Pinter, I suppose."
Perhaps he has mellowed. "I'm getting on in life, so I do want to put my feet up," he tells me. In conversation, he speaks openly and touchingly of his 31 years with Lady Antonia Fraser, his wife. They both enjoy playing bridge, though his health problems mean he can no longer enjoy playing tennis and cricket.
He has declared that he has written enough plays, but is still writing poems and hopes, possibly, to do one or two political articles in response to "the ghastliness of the world". He remains as strongly opposed to the war in Iraq as he ever was.
The television production of Celebration fills him with delight. "I do think Celebration is a very funny play, and it's really wonderfully expressed in this programme. I'm really pleased with them."
Part of his willingness to speak apparently stems from his respect for Burton, whom he first met in 1981 when the latter, still a teenager, was asked to play for the Gaieties Cricket Club - an institution that remains close to the playwright's heart. Fiercely loyal to those who become his friends, Pinter says: "He's not only a bloody good cricketer, he turns out to be a good actor and a very, very good director. I hope that he goes on to direct many, many things." And not just by himself. "There are other writers," he says, wryly.
The dramatist seems equally thrilled about doing The Homecoming on Radio 3 alongside "one of the great comic actors of all time" in Gambon.
"I start in a couple of weeks. Michael Gambon is going to play my brother and I'm very much looking forward to it," he says. "I'm playing the old man. Since I'm now an elderly man, I'm ready for it."
Harold Pinter's 'Celebration', followed by 'Working with Pinter', shows at 9pm on More4 on Monday 26 February | |
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"The hardest fight of all for a Falklands hero" |
The Observer, 14 January 2007 | |||
Directed by Sir Richard Eyre, who went on to become director of the National Theatre, the 1988 drama provoked one of the most bitter rows in the corporation's history. Its account of the central character, played by a young Colin Firth, saw the BBC accused of left-wing subversion, while the Army, fuming at Lawrence's willingness to give details of what hand-to-hand combat was actually like, orchestrated a whispering campaign to discredit him.
The MoD threatened an injunction against the programme, demanding a controversial scene be cut hours before broadcast.
While Simon Weston, the Welsh Guardsman whose recovery from 49 per cent burns became proof of the government's duty of care, Lawrence became the angry rebel, the man who told it how it was: a hero of the left wing, a thorn in the establishment's side.
Now, in his first major interview for almost 20 years after taking a vow of silence and emigrating to Australia before returning to rural Hampshire four years ago, Lawrence has decided to speak out again. There is little sign of age mellowing his ire.
Some questions will always nag him. What does the Falklands war now mean for a country familiar with the threat of al-Qaeda and suicide bombers? Is the campaign a mere historical footnote in which more than 900 men died in three weeks, but whose geopolitical resonance carried little further than Buenos Aires and London?
'It seems a strange, odd war now,' admits Lawrence. 'Then, there was no talk of insurgency and the like. The Falklands was a conventional conflict, comparable with 1918, British soldiers versus Argentinan soldiers, all dressed in battle uniform. It feels so old-fashioned now.'
He remembers calling Weston's mother after hearing that she, too was disenchanted with the Thatcher government's response to its war wounded. 'She had travelled to RAF Brize Norton four times to pick up her son and, in the end, the media had to tell her which plane he was on. But she never spoke out. She knew Simon was going to be their pin-up boy and, as a mother, she had to get what she could for her son.'
Lawrence has watched what he describes as the increasing manipulation of the reporting of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, the 'economic rationalisation' of the MoD that he feels has compromised the British army at a time when servicemen have never been under greater stress. But, most of all, the 46-year-old has followed closely the way the MoD treats its war wounded and is aghast at the closure of its military hospitals and the army's belated acknowledgement that war carries psychological as well as physical scars. A 12-inch acrylic strip might hold his skull together, but his mind remains full of vigour.
'I am concerned for our soldiers. As always, some grey men with a Biro and a calculator make the decisions,' he said.
Last Thursday morning, a letter arrived from the army's pensions agency. It began: 'Dear Mr Lawrence, I have paid £10 into your account.' Lawrence walked stiffly across the kitchen, his limp from his paralysed left leg obvious, to inspect again the cold language of officialdom.
'Now that's what they call a Christmas bonus. That's pretty damn symbolic don't you think?' he grimaced, sucking on a cigarette, contemplating again how close to breaking point his sense of abandonment by the army nearly brought him and the stark fact that his body has been ruined for longer than it was ever fully functional.
Occasionally, Lawrence leafs through his scrapbook crammed with yellowing newsprint chronicling the campaign alongside his own personal battle. Handwritten letters from friends and strangers offering their support are found among pictures of young men sunbathing on the deck of Canberra as it steamed towards the Falklands in the spring of 1982. There are images of the Sir Galahad listing heavily; photographs of a laughing officer called Lawrence who would shortly lose all feeling in his left side; and some of Firth, playing Lawrence in Tumbledown, smiling as fake blood streaks his scalp.
And there are more. Messages from the Queen, the US Embassy and high-ranking officers offering their praise and wonder for Lawrence's bravery, alongside notes from his father, who served in the RAF and defended his son against the MoD with vehemence, but who died a month ago. Such memories of a time a generation ago.
The last major battle of the Falklands always promised to be one of its most fraught. The Argentinians had prepared a last stand at the summit of Tumbledown Hill, a sharp cone of rock jutting from the island's peat and the central feature on the road to Port Stanley. As dawn bleached the grey clouds on 14 June 1982, Lawrence led two platoons of the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards along the west flank towards enemy positions. A fierce fire-fight ensued. Lawrence shot 14 Argentinians, before running out of ammunition. Undeterred, he stormed their defences, stabbing three with his bayonet. Sensing that surrender was imminent, Lawrence scaled Tumbledown's rocky pinnacle and, with the adrenaline of battle still flushing through his young frame, hollered: 'Now that was fun'. The Argentinian garrison in port Stanley would surrender in 90 minutes.
Unbeknown to Lawrence, though, a single sniper had managed to slip the net. A high-velocity round passed through the rear of his skull, emerging at his hairline above his right eye. Lawrence lay on the thin cover of snow on the exposed mountaintop for six hours as colleagues pushed his brains inside his broken head.
Airlifted off Tumbledown, Lawrence was left outside a makeshift operating theatre with no painkillers. Two days from his 22nd birthday, he assumed he was the last to be operated on because he was the least likely to survive.
In the documentary, which the BBC said last week it was considering re-screening as part of its 25th anniversary coverage, the re-enactment of Lawrence killing soldiers with a broken bayonet prompted widespread opprobrium. For Lawrence, it was a fuss over nothing. It was what soldiers did; they killed people. 'There are so many different levels of killing. You can shoot someone using a night sight from 60 yards and watch a guy fall over.
'It's not morally very hard to pull a trigger, but it is physically hard to get people to die, because usually they don't want to. The ultimate level is bayoneting, because there is a physical link between the two of you. The cleanliness of television goes out of the window. You don't stab them in the stomach, twist and withdraw.
'They grab on to the blade, it stabs them in the mouth, catches them everywhere', he said, his gaze wandering outside to the rolling hills of the Hampshire countryside.
When repatriated to Britain, Lawrence was almost totally paralysed and spent a year in a wheelchair. His recovery has amazed everyone who has met him. But the mental anguish would prove harder to overcome. If Tumbledown asked a nation whether it should feel guilty about sending young men to kill with broken bayonets, it also asked whether enough help was given to the wounded and veterans who left the army to trudge back to civvy street.
In the 90-minute programme, which was watched by 10.5 million 19 years ago, Lawrence endures symptoms described by psychiatrists as similar to the trauma of parental separation; anxiety, rage, emotional reconciliation. Even now, Lawrence believes that soldiers who thrive on the white-hot pride of their bravery are still not encouraged to seek help when they are struggling to cope.
Lawrence also worries that those in Afghanistan and Iraq are fighting a cause too few understand or support, a dynamic that can easily erode soldiers' sanity: 'The bottom line is that replacing military hospitals with NHS wards is an insult. If NHS hospitals were considered the best in Europe, then fine, but sadly they are not.'
The returning hero of Tumbledown expected he would be looked after by the military establishment. After all, he had been awarded the Military Cross, which hangs in the downstairs bathroom of the family home. But he felt like the army's abnormal child. Lawrence was not invited to the Lord Mayor's victory parade, while his wheelchair was tucked into the shadows at the service of remembrance at St Paul's, because his injuries were insufficiently telegenic. Even now, he has no official disabled badge or letter from the army recognising his circumstances and the nature of his injuries.
'It is such little things that can degrade you,' he said, pulling at another cigarette with his right hand, his paralysed left arm hanging in a sling, his left hand obscured with a black glove. 'There's a nail coming through my hand. I was doing some heavy work and the titanium bent in my arm and pushed the nail up to make a tent of skin the top of my hand.'
Lawrence has attempted to discover what happened to all his comrades in the Falklands. Via the South Atlantic Medal Association, he requested MoD funding for a definitive assessment of what effect the war had exerted among the veterans: Where were they living? Had they married? Divorced? How many were still alive? The government refused to support the project. All that is known is that, during the ensuing 25 years, more Falklands veterans have committed suicide than the 255 that died during hostilities.
Lawrence wrote When The Fighting Is Over with his father, the best-seller that would form the inspiration for Tumbledown. It was John Lawrence who most resolutely defended his son during the fallout from the programme.
Seven days after the death of his father, his mother, Jean, suffered a stroke that paralysed her right-hand side. Lawrence sought military help for his mother, who also served in the RAF, in the hope that the sacrifice and service displayed by his family might secure her a bed at the military rehabilitation centre at Headley Court, Surrey. She was refused.
'They talk about an extended family, but they cannot extend that help when you most need support. If you look at modern corporations like ICI or Microsoft, you'd expect to be looked after. Why not the army?'
Marion still wonders how many lives her husband has left. He was the indestructible teenager in Northern Ireland, the one who always stumbled across the paramilitary bomb caches, the one who craved the gunfights.
'I would hate going to bed, in case the shoot-out at the OK Corral kicked off while I was sleeping,' said Lawrence. One morning shortly after they met, Marion received a sequence of three answering machine messages from him.
The first described Lawrence being woken up by a passing motorcyclist in Sydney after falling asleep in his jeep at traffic lights. In the second he mumbled about nearly dropping off again. The third, from hospital, was confirmation that Lawrence had broken his back after veering off the road.
Lawrence was always regarded as a tearaway and, aged 16, was 'expelled' from Scottish public school Fettes, which the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, had attended a few years earlier, and admits he only joined the army to appease his father. Lawrence discovered he was a gifted soldier and that he loved military life. The Scots Guard became his life, his family.
Lawrence not only offers proof of the human spirit's indomitably, but also that love can be found after it has been lost.
Disillusioned with the attacks on his credibility following Tumbledown, he moved to Sydney in 1989 to make a fresh start with his then wife, Tina, and their two children. But new pressures arose. Over time, the relationship crumbled amid squabbles over money and the demands of a young family.
Lawrence remained optimistic. His near-death experience had benefited the lieutenant with an unswerving self-confidence. Psychologists have told him that he suffers from 'reduced inhibition', which, he gleefully admits, allows him to be candid and curse a lot.
Lawrence met Marion, the daughter of a senior executive with HSBC, at the Cannes film festival in 1994. She had been living in Australia and was one of the few Britons who failed to recognise the former Falklands officer. They clicked immediately, moving back to England in 2002, where they spent 15 months designing and converting t | ||||
