#david puttnam

[news-buzz]

David Puttnam, 'Chariots of Fire' Producer: His Seville Masterclass  News Buzz

For a brief period, over 1982-86, the U.K. enjoyed a remarkable film renaissance. Four films – “Chariots of Fire,” (1982) “Gandhi,” (1983) “The Killing Fields” (1985) and “The Mission” (1986) – won a total 19 Academy Awards, including Best Picture two years running. All of those films, save “Gandhi,” were produced by David Puttnam. To this day, few figures are more associated with a national…

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday Bill Forsyth the Scottish film director and screenwriter.

Born in Glasgow July 29th 1946 and educated at Knightswood School. On leaving aged 17, he answered an advertisement for a “Lad required for film company” and spent the next eight years helping make short documentary films.

Leaving documentary production in 1977, Forsyth wrote the scripts for Gregory’s Girl and That Sinking Feeling in the hope of breaking into feature films.

Obtaining finance, however, proved frustrating and problematic. The BFI Production Board rejected Gregory’s Girl three times. Forsyth later said, “I remember one torment of a meeting when I tried to explain that Gregory’s Girl was really a structuralist comedy… I suspect my script was too conventional although nobody actually told me as much.”.

That Sinking Feeling was eventually made in 1979 with amateur actors from the Glasgow Youth Theatre, including John Gordon Sinclair (who later took the lead in Gregory’s Girl , its tiny £5,000 budget was raised from a variety of sources.

Forsyth’s distinctive voice as writer-director is already apparent in this tale of a robbery of stainless steel sinks by a gang of unemployed Glasgow teenagers - intensely humanistic and humorous yet with an underlying seriousness of purpose. This ability to create a self-contained yet believable world with a keen sense of the absurd and bizarre in the everyday is perhaps only rivalled by the work of British television writer Alan Plater. The film opened to great popular and critical success at the Edinburgh and London Film Festivals but was unable to secure more widespread distribution.

Gregory’s Girl was Forsyth’s breakthrough film. This acutely observed story of adolescence and first love set in a Scottish new town was rapturously received by both critics and public alike. Forsyth’s reputation seemed to be secured by the success of his next venture, Local Hero, a first collaboration with producer David Puttnam.

In 1999 he made Gregory’s Two Girls as a sequel to Gregory’s Girl, with John Gordon Sinclair playing the same character, but it received mixed reviews.

Gregory's Girl, to me, is still a very funny film, but it feels dated, that's not to say that it hasn't stood the test of time with some folk, indeed The Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) showed a 4k version of the 1980 cult classic last August 1which was followed by a Q&A session with some of the cast including Gordon Sinclair(Gregory), Clare Grogan.

In 2022 the popular Scottish actor Peter Capaldi spoke of how Bill Forsyth saved him from living off pakora and lager after featuring him in Local Hero. The Doctor Who and The Thick Of It star praised the Scots film director in an acceptance speech after receiving a Bafta Scotland Award for Outstanding Contribution to Film & Television.

I love Capaldi's affection for our country, speaking to the audience while holding his Bafta, Capaldi said the award was “for getting lucky, and for being lucky enough to be born in Scotland”.

He said: “Forty years ago I was just up here (in Glasgow) as an art student, living off pakora and lager for breakfast.

“Bill Forsyth scooped me up and put me in Local Hero.

“It was an act of kindness and confidence that baffled me and much of the industry to this day, but I wouldn’t be here without him and nor would a lot of others.”

Capaldi landed this breakthrough film role aged 24 playing Danny Oldsen, a naive young oil industry executive, in the film.

A number of actors, including Dee Hepburn, will be a part of a celebration of the films of Bill Forsyth at the Outwith Festival of music and arts which takes place in Dunfermline from September 3-8. It will also screen That Sinking Feeling and Local Hero at the city’s Carnegie Theatre.

[georgefairbrother]

Remembering British film director and writer Sir Alan Parker CBE, who passed away July 31st, 2020, aged 76.

Born to a working class family in Islington, North London he made his early reputation as a pioneer of creativity in television advertising. He formed a creative partnership with David Puttnam and went on to become one of his generation’s most accomplished film directors.

He directed Jack Rosenthal’s television play, The Evacuees, for the BBC (BAFTA and International Emmy), and his first international cinema success was Bugsy Malone (1976), a musical gangster pastiche featuring a cast of children, including Jodie Foster, Scott Baio, Andrew Paul (The Bill), Bonnie Langford and an uncredited Phil Daniels. He said that he wrote Bugsy Malone out of frustration, as his work was constantly being rejected on the grounds of being 'too parochial'.

He went on to create a commercially successful, diverse and at times controversial body of work, including Midnight Express (written by Oliver Stone: they didn’t get on), Fame, Pink Floyd-The Wall, Mississippi Burning, The Commitments, Evita and Angela's Ashes. His final feature film was The Life of David Gale in 2003.

According to his official website;

"...In all, his films have won nineteen BAFTA awards, ten Golden Globes and ten Oscars...In January 1998, Parker took up his post as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the British Film Institute and in August, 1999 he was appointed first Chairman of the UK Film Council; a position he held for five years...In November, 1995, Parker was awarded with a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the British film industry and he received a knighthood in 2002. He is also an Officier des Arts et des Lettres, awarded by the French Government..."

He was also fascinating to listen to on the subject of the film industry generally, and gave a number of entertainingly grumpy interviews over the years. In the mid 1980s, his Thames TV documentary, A Turnip Head’s Guide to the British Film Industry, which according to his own website ‘lambasted the British film establishment and film critics’, seemed to upset just about everyone but won the British Press Guild award for the year’s best documentary.

He was interviewed by Warner Brothers executives as a potential director for the first Harry Potter, however during a teleconference (from his kitchen table at home) didn’t seem to express enough interest or gratitude at being asked. When a Warner exec told him that lots of directors would just love to do it, Parker said, 'Well go and ask them, then', and that was the end of that.

In conversation with David Puttnam for a BFI function, Alan Parker explained why he gave up making films, and talked a little about his art and drawing.

"…I’m out of it, I’ve had enough, I think it’s time for someone else to do it. I get more pleasure out of doing my art…I’ve been directing since I was 24, and every day was a battle, every day it was difficult, whether you’re fighting the producer who has opinions that you don’t agree with, the studios or whoever it is, because film, unlike art, pure art, film is hugely expensive, and the moment it gets expensive, you have people you have to serve…I’ve been punching out, all my life…to fight for the work…for our right to make our movie, the way we want to do it, and that’s hugely difficult, because it seems that you’re forever punching out. There comes a time, when you think, I don’t want to do that…I showed (a friend) one of my art works, and he said, who’s your audience here? Because that’s what film people think. I said the audience is me, and that’s all I care about, if someone likes my art, fine, if they don’t, fine…If they don’t like my movies, I want to kill ‘em…"

He was Michael Parkinson's first guest on Desert Island Discs in 1986, (a great interview) and featured once again 14 years later talking to Sue Lawley.

[the-rewatch-rewind]

A movie that is so much better than its reputation implies.

Script below the break

Hello and welcome back to The Rewatch Rewind! My name is Jane, and this is the podcast where I count down my top 40 most frequently rewatched movies in a 20-year period. Today I will be discussing number 9 on my list: Columbia Pictures’ 1987 comedy Ishtar, directed by Elaine May, written by Elaine May, and starring Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman.

Two extremely untalented songwriters, Lyle Rogers (Warren Beatty) and Chuck Clarke (Dustin Hoffman), manage to book a gig in a hotel in Marrakesh, Morocco. But on the way there from New York, when they’re stopped in the fictional bordering country of Ishtar, they encounter both a mysterious woman disguised as a man, later revealed to be left-wing agent Shirra Assel (Isabelle Adjani), who convinces Chuck to give her his passport, and CIA agent Jim Harrison (Charles Grodin), who recruits Chuck to spy for him. Without having any clue what’s going on, Lyle and Chuck become caught between rebels trying to overthrow the Emir of Ishar and the CIA trying to keep him in power, when all they want to do is keep writing songs.

So, first of all, let’s get this out of the way: as I mentioned at the end of last episode, this movie has often been cited as one of the worst films ever made. Aside from the whole question of whether it’s even possible to definitively rank something as subjective and vague as how “good” or “bad” a movie is, for Ishtar in particular, this feels like a highly unfair label. There were a lot of problems with making it, in terms of creative disagreements, political unrest in filming locations, and an enormous budget that kept growing, but plenty of movies with similar issues turn out okay. Most of the negative perceptions of this movie were stirred up by the press before and shortly after the film’s release, and it has been speculated that this was for two main reasons: one, Warren Beatty (who was also the producer) didn’t like dealing with press and had not permitted any reporters on set during filming, which they resented; and two, David Puttnam, who took over as head of Columbia Pictures during production of Ishtar and was well known for despising big-budget pictures, as well has having grudges against both Beatty and Hoffman, allegedly leaked negative stories about production to the media. So the movie was set up to fail at the box office, which it did, grossing just under $14.4 million against a budget of approximately $55 million. But, while there are definitely people who have seen it and not enjoyed it, which is fair enough, most of the people who strongly criticize it have never actually watched it. And despite all the conflict during production, the main people involved in making it still defend it, with Beatty calling it “a very good, not very big, comedy, made by a brilliant woman” and Hoffman quoted as saying, “I liked that film…just about everyone I’ve ever met that makes a face when the name is brought up has not seen it…I would do it again in a second,” and May stating in 2006, “If all of the people who hate Ishtar had seen it, I would be a rich woman today.”

Coincidentally, 2006 also happens to be the year when I first watched Ishtar. Not having been born yet when the film was released, I missed the negative press, and while I’m sure I was somewhat aware that it had a bad reputation, the main thing I knew about it was that my mom really liked it. I know she watched it twice in theaters, so it’s not her fault that its box office performance was so poor. She got it from the library to share with me, and I remember that before we watched it my dad said that he thought this was going to become one of my favorite movies, and he was extremely correct. I thought it was the funniest movie I’d ever seen and I could not get enough of it. I watched it three times in that month alone, then bought the VHS from the local Hollywood Video when they were selling all their tapes for $3 the following month, and had watched it a total of 8 times by the end of that year. I then watched it twice in 2007, twice in 2008, once in 2009, twice in 2010, once in each year from 2012 through 2017, once in 2019, three times in 2020, twice in 2021, and once in 2022. Ishtar was sadly never released on DVD in North America, but it did come out on Blu-ray in 2013, which I naturally also had to buy. I’ve shared this movie with several other people, but none of them have seemed to really get into it the way my mom and I did, which again, is totally reasonable. I get that it’s a weird and ridiculous movie. And there are even parts of it that I don’t like. But the parts that I love make me so happy that I can easily forgive the negative aspects.

The first 20 minutes or so in particular are just incredible. We get the perfect introduction to Chuck and Lyle, both their songwriting backgrounds and their friendship. The movie opens with them working out the lyrics to what will become their main song, trying to figure out a way to describe the concept of “tellin’ the truth,” coming up with such gems as “Tellin the truth is a scary predicament,” “Tellin the truth is a dangerous tunnel,” and my personal favorite “Tellin the truth is a bitter herb” before finally settling on “Tellin the truth can be dangerous business/Honest and popular don’t go hand in hand/If you admit that you can play the accordion/No one will hire you in a rock and roll band!” Once they’ve completed the song, they believe that Rogers and Clarke could become the next Simon and Garfunkel (“Dangerous Business is as good as Bridge over Troubled Water any day of the week!”), so they hire an agent, who thinks he can get them a job in either Honduras (“The last act left because they were nervous about the death squads, but there’s no danger if you don’t drive in the countryside”) or Morocco. While they’re thinking these offers over, we get some flashbacks about how they met and started working together, seeing how they’ve lost money, relationships, and pretty much everything else pursuing songwriting. So despite the fact that we’re clearly meant to be mocking them, we also can’t help but feel sorry for them. Their songs are bad but in a very funny way, and their mutual admiration is surprisingly sweet. The rest of the movie doesn’t quite live up to this intro, but even though the story does kind of fall apart a bit, I’m still thoroughly engaged the whole way through every time.

A big part of that is because I’m always amused by characters who think they know exactly what’s going on but actually have no clue. Come to think of it, Cary Grant often played characters like that, although usually not quite to this extent. In Ishtar, Lyle and Chuck are in a completely different world from all the other characters, in the most entertaining way possible. There are several relatively subtle examples of this that took me a few rewatches to notice but are now some of my favorite parts of the movie, like when Lyle is an ice cream truck driver in New York and is so focused on coming up with his next song that he doesn’t notice the crowd of children trying to get him to stop and let them buy ice cream, or when Chuck finds out the American Embassy in Ishtar can’t easily issue him a new passport and punches a hole in the divider between offices and everyone else in the room goes to fix it while he and Lyle keep talking obliviously, or when a ton of pedestrians and cars are very conspicuously following both of them in Marrakech without them ever catching on. And there are more obvious examples, like toward the end when both the CIA and the rebel army have sent Chuck and Lyle into the desert hoping they’ll die there, and even after they’ve gotten lost their main worry is that they’re missing their performance at the hotel. Things like this happen constantly throughout the film, and they’re funny every time. While it’s mostly entertaining, their cluelessness can also be taken as criticism of the average American’s ignorance when it comes to foreign politics. When Jim Harrison mentions Gaddafi, Chuck asks, “Is that near here?” clearly under the impression that Gaddafi is the name of a country rather than the ruler of one. Chuck seems to have the basic understanding that good guys equal Americans and friends of Americans, and bad guys equal communists, while Lyle seems to have even less understanding than that. Jim Harrison and Shirra Assel are their complete opposites, with a much deeper comprehension of the complexities of the tension in the area, albeit with very different perspectives. Jim is often exasperated and bewildered by Chuck and Lyle’s cluelessness, but Shirra, while she sometimes gets a little frustrated with and definitely takes advantage of them, never reveals much disdain toward them the way Jim does. Isabelle Adjani plays Shirra completely straight, as though this is a very serious political thriller, and her gravity makes the film so much funnier. Beatty and Hoffman are similarly committed to their characters’ conviction that the main storyline is their rise to prominence as songwriters. Charles Grodin plays Jim as though he’s the only main character who fully understands what movie he’s in, and wishes he knew how to get out of it. And to me, that is a perfectly hilarious dynamic.

I do want to acknowledge that there are aspects of this movie that are rather racist, particularly the part when Chuck is pretending to be a Moroccan translator at an auction and puts on a vaguely offensive accent, and then speaks gibberish that he imagines sounds like either Arabic or Berber languages. I do think that because we’ve already established him as a particularly ignorant character, the movie isn’t necessarily condoning what he’s doing, and it’s relatively harmless, but I do understand how it could make people uncomfortable. There’s also some vague homophobia in the way both Chuck and Lyle react to Shirra when they think she’s a man, and transphobia when Shirra having breasts is automatically interpreted as her being a woman. I would say these all fall under the “disappointing but not surprising” umbrella, given when this movie was made. But there are other aspects that are pleasantly surprising, such as rather blatant criticism of the CIA for keeping oppressive dictators in power and portraying left-wing rebels as the good guys. So it’s complicated.

And speaking of complicated, let’s get into Ishtar’s portrayals of sex and romance. In the flashback portion, we see that Chuck was dating a woman named Carol (played by Carol Kane) and Lyle was married to a woman named Willa (played very briefly by Tess Harper, who doesn’t even get any lines), but both of them get dumped because they’re more focused on songwriting than their significant others. But in Ishtar and Morocco, both Chuck and Lyle are interested in Shirra – maybe not quite as much as they’re interested in their music, but almost. They both seem to think they’re competing for her affections, but she is clearly not remotely interested in doing anything with either of them beyond getting them to help her overthrow the Emir. Shirra reacts to their unwanted advances by either getting slightly annoyed or using their interest in her to get them to do what she wants. Even at the end of the movie, when she cares about them enough to save their lives, and even enjoy their music, you still don’t get the feeling that she’s interested in them romantically. When Chuck and Lyle are pursuing her, they’re the ones who are portrayed as weird for focusing on romance when there are so many other more important things going on, which is a refreshing break from the amatonormative message of so many movies that romance is the highest goal. Similarly, Chuck and Lyle are clearly sexually attracted to Shirra, but aside from her exposing her breasts to reveal that she’s a woman, there’s nothing sexual that goes on between them. There’s a great conversation between Jim and Chuck when Jim’s describing how Shirra and Lyle were alone in a hotel room together, and Jim is convinced that Shirra seduced Lyle and recruited him to her cause, but Chuck says, “Oh don’t be ridiculous, Lyle’s not a communist; he’s from the South! And I don’t think she’s that kind of girl.” And when Jim points out, “She’s a suspected terrorist,” Chuck responds with, “Granted, but that doesn’t mean she sleeps around!” So the allonormative assumption that everybody’s having sex all the time is portrayed as ridiculous. Of course, when I started enjoying this movie I had no idea that I was aroace or that that was even a thing, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I love this story that had multiple opportunities to go down romantic and/or sexual paths but actively chose not to. Lyle, Chuck, and Shirra all end the movie happy and, at least as far as we know, single, and not enough movies have that kind of ending. When you’re always made to feel like the weird one for not thinking everything should be about romance and sex, it’s so nice to see any characters who try to make this movie become more about those things portrayed as the unreasonable ones.

But don’t get me wrong, the lack of a major romantic storyline is far from the main reason I love this movie; it’s merely the icing on top of a delightfully hilarious cake. There are so many great lines that my mom and I quote to each other constantly, like, “You’d rather have nothing than settle for less” and “My name is Hawk. It’s short for The Hawk” and “The dome of the Emir’s palace in Ishtar is gold. The people have never seen a refrigerator” and “This must be one of those once in a lifetime things, like the glaciers melting.” That last one is in response to a windstorm after they’ve been told there’s no wind in the desert, which they for some reason believed. I’m willing to concede that this movie does not have the best plot, but I also feel like that’s kind of the point. It’s just meant to be silly fun, and in my opinion, it absolutely succeeds at that. Even though the songs are meant to be terrible, I still rather enjoy them, in a so-bad-it’s-good kind of way. The end credits say that there’s a soundtrack available, and I spent a while trying to track one down, until I learned that despite the fact that they apparently recorded full versions of most of the song snippets we hear in the film, the soundtrack was never released, probably because of all the negative reviews. Besides Dangerous Business, which they do sing all of at the end of the movie, the only full song available that I know of is Portable Picnic, which is the expanded version of the “hot fudge love, cherry ripple kisses” song that Lyle comes up with in the ice cream truck. For all the other songs, we have to settle for the little clips in the film and forever wonder how the rest would have gone. Life is full of disappointments.

This movie is obviously not for everyone, but that’s true of pretty much every movie. The haters are going to keep hating, but it’s nice that there are multiple generations of audiences now who weren’t around for the negative press and can still discover and appreciate the fun silliness of it. Probably the worst result of the bad reviews and poor box office performance is the fact that Elaine May never directed another movie after Ishtar. (I mean, I guess technically she still could, but given that she’s in her 90s now, that seems unlikely.) And like, yes, by all accounts she was responsible for a significant amount of the conflict on set and prompted much of the overspending, but I can’t help thinking of several prominent male directors who have a reputation for working similarly and are hailed as geniuses, even if they direct an occasional flop. I do think part of it was that May herself was discouraged, both because she had such a rough time on set and because of the horrible media response, so she might not have wanted to direct again even if given the chance. But I don’t think it’s inaccurate to attribute at least some of the negativity aimed at her to sexism. Even now, 35 years post-Ishtar, there are still so few female directors in Hollywood, and when they succeed it’s taken as an anomaly, but when they fail it’s like, “goodbye,” and that needs to change. This is my most frequently rewatched movie that was directed by a woman, and one of only three in my entire top 40, along with Mamma Mia! (directed by Phyllida Lloyd) and Frozen (co-directed by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck, who is a man, so I guess it would be more accurate to say there are only two and a half female-directed films in my top 40). I could definitely do better at seeking out films that were directed by women, but also, way more movies could be directed by women in the first place. Anyway, my point is, Ishtar probably wouldn’t have been quite so maligned if it had been made by a man, but it also probably wouldn’t have turned out nearly as enjoyable to me, so while I hate that it destroyed her career, I’m mostly very glad that Elaine May wrote and directed Ishtar.

Thank you for listening to me discuss why I love this unfairly maligned movie. To be clear, I’m not saying anybody is wrong for not liking Ishtar; all I’m saying is, I’ve watched it 28 times, and I haven’t gotten tired of it yet. I didn’t watch any movies exactly 29 times, but I did watch two movies exactly 30 times, so next week I will be talking about the shorter of those two. As always, I will leave you with a quote from that next movie: “Life is but an empty bubble.”

[capsulas]

Enya - Orinoco Flow (Official 4K Music Video) Enya - Orinoco Flow (Official 4K Music Video) Subscribe to the Enya channel for the latest official music videos, Interviews and live performances here - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNIlkuT0DYEc8aFbv3YcvdQ See more official videos from Enya here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA06AD2A95F7A3EDE Follow Enya: https://www.instagram.com/official_enya Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/officialenya Twitter - https://twitter.com/official_enya Soundcloud - https://soundcloud.com/enya Lyrics: Let me sail, let me sail, let the Orinoco flow Let me reach, let me beach on the shores of Tripoli Let me sail, let me sail, let me crash upon your shore Let me reach, let me beach far beyond the Yellow Sea Sail away, sail away, sail away Sail away, sail away, sail away Sail away, sail away, sail away Sail away, sail away, sail away From Bissau to Palau in the shade of Avalon From Fiji to Tiree and the isles of Ebony From Peru to Cebu, feel the power of Babylon From Bali to Cali, far beneath the Coral Sea Turn it up, turn it up, turn it up Turn it up, turn it up, turn it up Turn it up, turn it up, turn it up Sail away, sail away, sail away Sail away, sail away, sail away Sail away, sail away, sail away Sail away, sail away, sail away From the North to the South, Ebudau unto Khartoum From the deep sea of clouds to the island of the Moon Carry me on the waves to the land I've never been Carry me on the waves to the land I've never seen We can sail, we can sail with the Orinoco flow We can sail, we can sail Sail away, sail away, sail away We can steer, we can near with Rob Dickins at the wheel We can sigh, say goodbye, Ross and his dependencies We can sail, we can sail Sail away, sail away, sail away We can sail, we can sail Sail away, sail away, sail away Sail away, sail away, sail away Sail away, sail away, sail away Sail away, sail away, sail away Sail away, sail away, sail away Enya was born Eithne Ni Bhraonain in Donegal, Ireland. Enya studied classical music at college under private tuition. On leaving college she was asked by Producer Nicky Ryan to join her siblings in their family band. She did so for a short time, but found it too restrictive musically, and so in 1982 she joined Nicky Ryan and Roma Ryan in a creative and business partnership. Enya's first commission was to write a score for Sir David Puttnam for his film "The Frog Prince". Then, the triumvirate secured the soundtrack to the BBC documentary series 'The Celts'. Enya was then signed by Warner Music and all three by EMI Music Publishing. The first album of this contract was "Watermark" with the hit single "Orinoco Flow". This was followed by "Shepherd Moons", "The Memory of Trees", "Paint the Sky With Stars", "A Day Without Rain" which produced the single, "Only Time". #Enya #OrinocoFlow #4K #BossBaby2 #BossBaby via YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTrk4X9ACtw

[ulkaralakbarova]

An American oil company sends a man to Scotland to buy up an entire village where they want to build a refinery. But things don’t go as expected. Credits: TheMovieDb. Film Cast: Felix Happer: Burt Lancaster Mac: Peter Riegert Urquhart: Denis Lawson Ben: Fulton Mackay Oldsen: Peter Capaldi Stella: Jennifer Black Marina: Jenny Seagrove Moritz: Norman Chancer Geddes: Rikki Fulton Watt: Alex Norton Victor: Christopher Rozycki Rev Macpherson: Gyearbuor Asante Cal: John M. Jackson Donaldson: Dan Ammerman Roddy: Tam Dean Burn Ricky: John Gordon Sinclair Pauline: Caroline Guthrie Iain: Jimmy Yuill Mrs Wyatt: Karen Douglas Skipper: Kenny Ireland Mrs Fraser: Sandra Voe Fountain: Harlan Jordan Peter: Charles Kearney Gideon: David Mowat Anderson: John Poland Linda Fraser: Ann Scott-Jones Mr Bulloch: Ian Stewart Jonathan: Jonathan Watson Fraser: Dave Anderson Andrew: Ray Jeffries Edward: James Kennedy Sandy: Willie Joss Russian Girl: Tanya Ticktin Old Lady: Edith Ruddick Switchboard Operator: Betty Macey Switchboard Operator: Michelle McCarel Switchboard Operator: Anne Thompson Ace Tone: Brian Rowan Ace Tone: Mark Winchester Ace Tone: Alan Clark Ace Tone: Alan Darby Ace Tone: Roddy Murray Ace Tone: Dale Winchester Baby: Luke Coulter Crabbe: Buddy Quaid Film Crew: Producer: David Puttnam Original Music Composer: Mark Knopfler Lighting Camera: Chris Menges Editor: Michael Bradsell Screenplay: Bill Forsyth Art Direction: Frank Walsh Associate Producer: Iain Smith Production Design: Roger Murray-Leach Art Direction: Ian Watson Art Direction: Adrienne Atkinson First Assistant Director: Jonathan Benson Camera Operator: Michael Coulter Property Master: Arthur Wicks First Assistant Editor: Jim Howe Boom Operator: Mike Tucker Movie Reviews: CinemaSerf: Burt Lancaster is the multi-millionaire oil magnate “Felix Happer” who despatches one of his minions (Peter Riegert) to Scotland to buy up a village to turn it into an oil refinery. Once he arrives, he is taken for a bit of a ride by the canny locals as they try to milk him for as much cash as they can. In the days before cell phones; he has to call his boss from the phone box reporting his lack of progress and some astronomical sightings until eventually Happer comes over himself and immediately strikes up a rapport with Fulton Mackay who lives on the beach (and who is steadfastly refusing to sell). It is is simple story very well told with a slightly unpredictable, happy ending and a brilliant score from Mark Knopfler. Filipe Manuel Neto: **Slow, with boring characters and dialogues and a disjointed script, this film does not justify the “hype” around it.** This is one of those indie films that has won over a legion of self-confessed admirers. It’s a film that everyone speaks highly of, as if it were a solid masterpiece. I didn’t know that when I saw it for the first time, so I saw it without a lot of expectations. I’m glad I did it: despite recognizing some merits, I am convinced that the film has been well overrated. The proof is the way it fell into oblivion! If we exclude fans and movie nerds who know everything (and when they don’t, they make it up) who really remembers this movie? The film revolves around a story that is very simple: in the north of Scotland, there is a small bay with a beach and a sleepy village. When a rich oil entrepreneur decides to buy all that to build a huge refinery and a terminal for oil tankers, all those people are expectant, wanting to sell what they have for the best price. Only two people disagree: a marine biologist who want to preserve and study the local, and an old simpleton who owns a good part of that beach. The film had some potential, but it lacks solidity and a good script. Time is spent in sterile dialogue, rambling about comets, constellations and flirting. It is also very unbelievable, as a project like this would never be so consensual, there are always those who oppose it for financial or ecological reasons, or mere nostalgia. If director Bill Forsyth decided to close his eyes to the insipidity and fragility of ...

[thoughtlessarse]

We are all “funding hate”, according to a Byline Times analysis that reveals the Government is by far the biggest spender on GB News advertising. Despite GB News often platforming racists and conspiracy theorists, and facing record numbers of Ofcom investigations, more than £1 million of UK taxpayer money has been spent on almost 10,500 ads since the channel launched in summer 2021. That works out at an annual cost of around £340,000 to taxpayers, who subsidise a network owned by a Dubai hedge fund and billionaire Conservative Party donor Paul Marshall, which posted losses of £73 million in its first two years. Excluding Sky – which bought more ads than the government but at a cheaper rate, due to it being a GB News ad sales partner – the second-biggest GB News advertiser was MoneySuperMarket. The price comparison website company bought around a third of the number of commercials, although it stopped advertising on the station last July.

continue reading

None of the ads were of a political nature since that would be against the rules but then GBNews is just one big ad for the Tories.

[ghassanrassam]

Producer David Puttnam 1941-

[qudachuk]

Bitter court battle begins over home in exclusive mews where film producer Sir David Puttnam lives

[virtualcollectionblizzardblr]

I found this on NewsBreak: UK’s status as cinematic powerhouse at risk, warns Oscar winner David Puttnam

I found this on NewsBreak: UK’s status as cinematic powerhouse at risk, warns Oscar winner David Puttnam

[filmes-online-facil]

Assistir Filme Memphis Belle - A Fortaleza Voadora Online fácil

Assistir Filme Memphis Belle - A Fortaleza Voadora Online Fácil é só aqui: https://filmesonlinefacil.com/filme/memphis-belle-a-fortaleza-voadora/

Memphis Belle - A Fortaleza Voadora - Filmes Online Fácil

Um grupo de jovens tripulantes da segunda guerra mundial, liderados por Matthew Modine e Eric Stoltz, saiu ileso de 24 perigosas missões num avião B-17, também conhecido como "Memphis Belle". Mas ainda falta uma última e quase suicida missão para eles voltarem como verdadeiros heróis: Bombardear Dresden, uma cidade fortemente defendida que invariavelmente causa muitas baixas, na Alemanha de Hitler, em plena luz do dia. É este emocionante episódio verídico que inspirou David Puttnam e Catherine Wyler a realizarem este filme, mostrando as dúvidas, incertezas e determinação de jovens que resolveram desafiar o perigo dos céus.

[scotianostra]

On November 1st 1969 Morag Siller the actress, voice artist, and radio personality was born in Edinburgh.

Morag was adopted along with her twin brother, soon after birth, she also had two older sisters and a brother who were adopted separately. She was brought up in the Morningside area of Edinburgh and was educated at nearby James Gillespie’s High School, where she wanted to be a policewoman but fell short of the, then height restriction at 5'4" at the time.

Now usually when putting these together I tell you that the persons acting earned them a place on Taggart, Morag never appeared on Taggart but I read that on her way home from school, she came across a television crew filming an episode of Scottish police drama and thought “I want to do that” and so she caught the acting bug. A few of her friends had been asked earlier to be in background scenes but she was too late in finding out and was gutted to miss out.

She joined Edinburgh Youth Theatre and took classes at the Edinburgh Acting School with the future This Life star Daniela Nardini. Leaving school at 17, she headed for London, where she trained at the Sylvia Young School and at Rada.

While studying she got her first paid role as a dancer in David Puttnam’s film Memphis Belle. From there Morag starred in many theatre productions as well as TV roles in amongst others, Hetty Wainthrop Investigates, The Bill, Trial and Retribution and Marchlands. She also had recurring roles in Casualty, as Leona, a lonely bag lady, Emerdale as Marilyn Dingle and maybe for fans of the Scottish drama serial, Monarch of the Glen you might recall her as champagne-swigging Flora Kilwillie, of which she remembered spending most of her time “getting bitten by midges and falling in lochs”.

In 2005 she married Tim Nicholson, a classical musician. They had been about to adopt a child in 2011 when Morag was diagnosed with breast cancer.

She became a patron of two cancer charities, for which she organised fundraisers, and had hoped to resume the adoption process. But the cancer returned and she was told it was incurable.

Morag Siller sadly passed away at the age of 46 on April 15th 2016.

[listeningto]

Schau dir "The reality of climate change | David Puttnam | TEDxDublin" auf YouTube an

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this Week #111 (Year 3/Week 7):

3 More young Robert De Niro - 2 accompanied by Ennio Morricone:

🍿 I finally found a good free copy of Bertolucci’s Novecento (”1900"), the full 5+ hours version, which I haven’t seen since it premiered. What an old-fashioned film-watching joy!

Retelling the history of Italy’s juggling the two opposing forces of fascism and communism as told through the lives of two men, one a land owner’s son and the other, still handsome peasant Gérard Depardieu. With lots of homoerotic subtext, De Nero frontal nudity, and other complex class-struggle subtexts. And with Ennio Morricone’s sweeping score and Vittorio Storaro’s spectacular canvases. 9/10.

🍿 The mission, one of the Vatican “15 recommended films about religion”. About a Spanish slave trader who turned Jesuit missionary in 1750′s Paraguay, full of search for redemption, Penance and struggles with faith. Exotic-Porn, shot beautifully out in the jungle. Produced during David Puttnam’s successful reign of the time. Featuring Liam Neeson and Goodfellas "Morrie" as the heavy. But like most films from the 1980′s, it lost all its luster for me. 4/10.

🍿 Greetings, Brian De Palma’s 2nd film, the first American film to receive an X rating and De Nero’s first major role. This ‘how to dodge the Vietnam war draft’ satire was so amateurish, I couldn’t stand more than 15 minutes of it.

🍿

All That Breathes, a new award-winning and Oscar-nominated Hindi language documentary. It poetically tells of 2 unassuming Indian brothers who rescue and treat injured black kite birds. 100% Rotten Tomato rating. The trailer.

🍿

2 more by Luca Guadagnino:

🍿 Bones and all, love among the cannibals. A vulnerable love story of two young, pretty outcasts who share an affinity for flesh eating. I loved his style in ‘A bigger splash’, ‘I am love’, and ‘Call me by your name’, but this horror-comedy was hollow and unnecessary. 3/10.

🍿 Guadagnino’s second feature, Melissa P. A semi-pornographic ‘erotic drama’ about a 15-year-old girl’s journey of sexual discoveries. It opens with her masturbating in her room, and soon it moves on to her giving a blow-job to some jerk, being forced to participate in a threesome, gangbangs and in a bit of S&M. All in the name of her right to explore her desires, and told mostly from an off-putting (gay?) male gaze point of view. 4/10.

🍿

Alice's Wonderland, the first Walt Disney short film, released exactly 100 years ago, in 1923, a seminal year for Hollywood and for movie making.

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The creatures, my 9th by Agnès Varda, an experimental fantasy pairing Catherine Deneuve with Michel Piccoli, a year before ‘Belle de Jour’. He’s a science-fiction writer, and she’s his wife who went mute after a car accident. The line between reality and the writer’s vision for his book are blurred, but the effort feels dated and forced. Too artsy. 3/10 

🍿  

Life after death, a slight drama-comedy from Finland about an emotionally-stunted widower who wants to move on as soon as his wife dies, against his son’s need to mourn for her longer. 3/10     

🍿

Vesper, my first film from Lithuania (In English, unfortunately). A somehow different post-apocalyptic Sci-fi story about a 13-year-old bio-hacker girl who lives in the forest with her paralyzed father. Organic tech and biological magic. 4/10.

🍿

“... Is that dress is what you are going to wear in the concentration camp?...”

First watch: Ernst Lubitsch’s 1942 Nazi farce To be or not to be. Making fun of Hitler the Hollywood way, by showing Gestapo officers as lecherous buffoons, Ha ha ha. Carole Lombard’s last film, and with young, good-looking Robert Stack. To paraphrase another quote from the comedy: What Lubitsch did to Shakespeare here, the Nazis were doing to Poland. 2/10   

🍿

2 With Elliott Gould:

🍿 I was planning to follow-up with the Mel Brooks’ 1983 remake, but the original left such a bad taste in my mouth, that instead I randomly started a documentary in which Brooks stars - the irresistible The Automat. What a joyful surprise! A super-nostalgic love letter to the Horn & Hardart restaurant chain which thrived in NYC and Philadelphia in the first half of the last century. Absolutely enchanting from start to finish. With a delightful cover song, written and performed by Mel Brooks. (Photo Above). 8/10.  

🍿 American History X, a very disappointing first watch. What may have been a courageous and nuanced analysis of contemporary racial hatred, rehabilitation and tolerance, seems didactic and quaint 25 years later - just like the shocking Nazi swastika tattoos. 1998 extremism is 2023 slice of life. 3/10.

🍿

A hard day, a Korean thriller about a young, corrupt policeman who runs over a guy while drunk driving, and then, trying to cover the killing, buries the body in the coffin of his mother who had died the same day. Standard, unbelievable execution about the always-corrupt Korean Police force. 3/10

🍿

First watch: Cult classic Myra Breckinridge, “one of the worst films ever made” and the mess that brought Mae West out of her 27-year retirement. A confused early ‘70′s look at sexual roles, sex change operations, female-on-male anal rape, femdom and Hollywood. A complete waste of talent. 2/10.

RIP, Raquel Welch!

🍿

The concept sounds intriguing: A lowly Irish ‘Extra’ playing an English soldier on the set of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Barry Lyndon’ falls in love with an assistant director. The trailer looked dope. But the short Kubrick by candlelight was undeveloped and underwhelming. 2/10.

🍿

Marc Maron X 2:

🍿 Not being very familiar with comedian Marc Maron, but he opened his latest stand up From Bleak to Dark with this line: I don’t want to be negative, but I don’t think anything’s ever gonna gets better again, which captured my sentiment so perfectly, I was immediately hooked. Genial observations, well-delivered!

🍿 Since he‘s also an accomplished actor, I looked for something he played in. Unfortunately, I picked Get a Job (2016), because it also starred my crush Anna Kendrick (and dozens of other names, Bryan Cranston, John Cho, Nicholas Braun). But this cringy sit-com style dud was so listless, I could only last 25 minutes, before adding it to my “Too-Horrible-Couldn’t Finish-List”. 1/10.

🍿

I felt compelled to watch Game Night again, for the 3rd (!) time, and I’m not sure why. The relationship between Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams is so cute, and the story develops organically and perfectly. It’s such a fun and infectious action-comedy!

🍿

Some YouTuber Watched Every Oscar Best Picture Winner, so we don’t have to.

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Lavatory Lovestory, a cute Oscar-nominated Russian Short about a lonely, romantic lady who works at a public toilet, a subject that is told not too often on film.

🍿

So this week I saw 2 great movies: Bertolucci’s '1900', the documentary ‘The Automat’, one repeat offender ‘Game night’ for the 4th time, plus Marc Maron’s stand-up ‘From Bleak to dark’. That’s a fairly typical number of good ones per week.

But I came to realize that most of the many other movies I watch every week are simply terrible. Under normal circumstances, and if I wasn’t on a mission (which I’m not sure yet what it is), I would never spend time on them.

Maybe I’ll try one week to only watch ‘Great’ movies, see how it feels to go through only the 'Best of the best'.

🍿

(My complete movie list is here)

[saturdaynightmatinee]

CALIFICACIÓN PERSONAL: 7.5 / 10

Título Original: The Killing Fields

Año:  1984

Duración: 136 min

País: Reino Unido  

Dirección: Roland Joffé

Guion: Bruce Robinson

Música: Mike Oldfield

Fotografía: Chris Menges

Reparto: Sam Waterston, Haing S. Ngor, Craig T. Nelson, John Malkovich, Athol Fugard, Julian Sands, Spalding Gray, Bill Paterson, Graham Kennedy, Katherine Krapum Chey, Oliver Pierpaoli, Edward Entero Chey, Tom Bird, Monirak Sisowath, Lambool Dtangpaibool, Ira Wheeler, David Henry, Patrick Malahide, Nell Campbell, Joan Harris, Joanna Merlin, Jay Barney, Mark Long, Sayo Inaba, Mow Leng, Chinsaure Sa, Hout Ming Tran, Thach Suon, Neevy Pal

Productora: Goldcrest Films, International Film Investors, Enigma Films. Productor: David Puttnam. Distribuidora: Warner Bros.

Género: Drama; Biography, History

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087553/

TRAILER:

[back-and-totheleft]

‘There’s still a presence out there reminding people not to speak about JFK’s killing’

Oliver Stone is not a fan of “cancel culture”. “Of course I despise it,” the Oscar winning filmmaker says, as if utterly amazed that anyone needs to ask him such a dumb question. “I am sure I’ve been cancelled by some people for all the comments I’ve made…. it’s like a witch hunt. It’s terrible. American censorship in general, because it is a declining, defensive, empire, it (America) has become very sensitive to any criticism. What is going on in the world with YouTube and social media,” he rants. “Twitter is the worst. They’ve banned the ex-President of the United States. It’s shocking!” he says, referring to Donald Trump’s removal from the micro-blogging platform.

It’s a Saturday lunchtime in the restaurant of the Marriott Hotel on the Croisette in Cannes. The American director is in town for the festival premiere this week of his new feature documentary JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, in which he yet again pores over President John F Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963.

“I am a pin cushion for American-Russian peace relations… I had four f***ing vaccines: two Sputniks and two Pfizers,” Stone gestures at his arm. The rival super-powers may remain deeply suspicious of one another, but Stone is loading himself up with potions from both sides of the old Iron Curtain.

He has recently been travelling in Russia (hence the Sputnik jabs) where he has been making a new documentary about how nuclear power can save humanity. He also recently completed a film about Kazakhstan’s former president Nursultan Nazarbayev which – like his interviews with Vladimir Putin – has been roundly ridiculed for its deferential, softly-softly approach toward a figure widely regarded as a ruthless despot.

Dressed in a blue polo shirt, riffing away about the English football team one moment and his favourite movies the next, laughing constantly, the 74-year-old Oscar-winning director of Platoon, Wall Street, Natural Born Killers et al is a far cheerier presence than his reputation as a purveyor of dark conspiracy thrillers might suggest. He is also very outspoken. For all his belligerence, though, Stone isn’t as thick-skinned as you might imagine. I wonder if he was hurt by the scorn that came his way when his feature film JFK was released in 1991.

“I was more of a younger man. It was painful to me,” the director sighs as he remembers being attacked by such admired figures as newscaster Walter Cronkite and Hollywood power broker Jack Valenti for listening to the “hallucinatory bleatings” of former New Orleans DA Jim Garrison when JFK came out. “It was quite shocking actually because I thought the murder was behind us. I did think there was a feeling that 30 years later, we can look at this thing again without getting excited. But I was way wrong.”

Garrison, of course, was the real-life figure portrayed by Kevin Costner in the film; he was the original proponent of the theory that the CIA were involved in the killing of the US president, after his 1966 investigation. Garrison wrote the book On the Trail of the Assassins, on which the movie was partly based.

Even the director’s fiercest detractors will find it hard to dismiss the evidence he has assembled about the JFK assassination in the new documentary. Once I’d seen it and heard him hold forth, I came away thinking that only flat-earthers can possibly still believe that Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy all on his own. It’s that convincing.

Stone blitzes you with facts and figures about the Kennedy killing and its aftermath. At times, he himself seems to be suffering from information overload. “I am sorry. There are so many people,” he apologises for not immediately remembering the name of Kennedy’s personal physician, George Burkley, who was present both at Parkland Hospital, where Kennedy was first taken, and then at Bethesda, where the autopsy took place. Burkley was strangely reticent when giving evidence to the Warren Commission.

“I think there’s still a presence out there which reminds people not to speak. I’ve heard that in, of all places, Russia,” Stone says. He was startled to discover that the Russians knew all about his new documentary long before it was discussed in the mainstream press. “They said, ‘We heard about it.’ I said, ‘How?’ They said, ‘We have our contacts in the American intelligence business. They are not very happy about it.’”

Stone believes that no US president since Kennedy died has been “able to go up against this militarised sector of our economy”. Even Trump “backed down at the last second” and declined to release all the relevant documents relating to the assassination. “He announced, ‘I’m going to free it up, blah blah blah, big talk, and then a few hours before, he caved to CIA National Security again.”

The veteran filmmaker expresses his frustrations at historians like Robert Caro, author of a huge (and hugely respected) multi-volume biography of President Lyndon Johnson, for ignoring the evidence that has been turned up about the assassination.

“I can’t say [LBJ] was involved in the assassination,” explains Stone, “but it certainly suited him that Kennedy was not there anymore and he covered up by appointing the Warren Commission and doing all the things he did.”

Stone tried to cast Marlon Brando in JFK in the role as the deep throat source Mr X, eventually played by Donald Sutherland.

“I realise now I am grateful that he turned it down because he knew better than I that he would make 20 minutes out of that 14-minute monologue and it wouldn’t have worked.”

Nevertheless, he filled the film with famous faces. He thought that having familiar actors would make it easier for audiences to engage with what was an immensely complicated story.

Getting Stone to stop talking about JFK is like trying to pull a bone from a mastiff’s jaws. To change the subject slightly, I ask if he is still in touch with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. He is and is utterly horrified at how Assange is being treated, especially given that Siggi the Hacker, a key witness in the extradition case against Assange, admitted recently that he lied. Stone praises Assange’s partner Stella Morris as “the best wife you could ever have. She really is smart, she’s a lawyer … he has two children. He can’t even touch them or see them. It’s barbaric. It indicates America is declining faster than we know. It is just cutting off dissent.”

The mood lightens when I invite Stone to discuss some of his favourite films. He recently tweeted a list of these, which included Darling starring Julie Christie, Joseph Losey’s Eva starring Stanley Baker and Jeanne Moreau, and Houseboat, a frothy comedy starring Cary Grant and Sophia Loren. “I love films, always have. People don’t know that side of me. I could go on forever.”

Between his darker and more contentious efforts, Stone has made a few genre films himself, for example the underrated thriller U-Turn starring Sean Penn and Jennifer Lopez. He notes, though, that even when he tried a sports movie, he ended up right back in the firing line. The NFL was furious about his 1999 American Football film, Any Given Sunday. “They (the NFL) are arrogant, very rich people who close down any dissent, so I had to change uniforms and names… but they got the point.”

Last year, Stone published the first volume of his autobiography, Chasing the Light, which took him from childhood up to his Oscar triumph with Platoon. It was well received but it didn’t make nearly a big enough splash for his liking. “There was a curtain of silence about that. Maybe it is Covid… it was not reviewed by many people,” he says. “I wish the timing had been better. The publisher was terrible. They didn’t really promote anything. So now I have to start over again if I am going to do a second book, which I would love to do. But I have to find the right publisher.”

The book contains a barbed account of Stone’s experiences as a young screenwriter working in London for British director Alan Parker and producer David Puttnam on Midnight Express. “I wrote about it in the book, so you got my point of view. They were not very friendly people. I gave my criticism of Parker that he had a chip on his shoulder. He was from a poor side of the English. There is this phenomenon you see in England of hating the upper classes until they approve of you.”

No, they didn’t stay in touch. “And Puttnam is a Lord, right? He reminds me of Tony Blair. He is such a weasel.” For once, Stone feels he has overstepped the mark. He doesn’t want to call Puttnam a weasel after all. “Put it this way, Tony Blair is a weasel. I wouldn’t trust Tony Blair. Puttnam is a supporter of Blair. Let’s leave it at that.”

On matters English, he isn’t that keen on soccer either. He watched the semi-final between England and Denmark but had no intention of tuning into the final.

“Soccer is a different kind of game. It’s a different aesthetic. It is constant movement. The United States game allows you to re-group after every play and go into a huddle and so it becomes about strategy. I still enjoy it although people think I am brutal.”

Ask him why he so relishes American Football and he replies that he “grew up with violence in America … we were banging – cowboys and Indians, a lot of killing and that stuff. How do you get away from that? We weren’t playing with dolls.”

Stone’s feelings about the US are deeply ambivalent. He is old enough to remember a time in the late 1940s and early 1950s when “everything in America was golden” and part of him still seems to love the country but his mother was French and he talks about the US as a nation now in near terminal decline.

Perhaps surprisingly, his real political hero isn’t JFK. It’s the former President of France, Charles de Gaulle. “He said no to NATO and he said no to America. He understood the dangers of being a satellite country to America. You have no power in Europe. Don’t kid yourself. The EU is just an artificial body that was amazingly stupid in cutting off Russia and cutting off China too now.”

He doesn’t much like Boris Johnson either. “Boris, listen. He’d simply throw you in jail in a second.” He rails against the English for holding Assange in Belmarsh prison.

When he is not on a crusade or unravelling a conspiracy, Stone relaxes through Buddhist meditation. “Moderation in all things,” the man who came up with the phrase “greed is right, greed works” says with no evident sense of irony. He enjoys hanging out with his friends. “I have a nice life. I’m lucky,” he says before quickly adding, “I wish I had been more honoured and respected in my lifetime, but it seems that I took a course that is in conflict with the American Empire.”

Stone’s films have had relatively few strong female characters. Ask if he welcomes the #MeToo movement and the challenging of old gender norms and he gives a typically contrary answer. “It cuts both ways, though. There are reasons for patriarchy through the centuries,” he says. “Tribes tend to have a strong leader. You need strong leaders, but I do see the feminine impulse as being important, especially when situations become too militant. The feminine impulse, I’m talking about the maternal impulse not the Hillary Clinton/Margaret Thatcher version of feminism. They’re men. They’re not women,” he says. “I don’t want women in politics who want to be men. If a woman is a woman, she should be a woman and bring her maternalism. It’s a leavening influence.”

The director deplores the rush to judge historical figures about past misdeeds from a contemporary point of view. “I am conservative in that way… don’t expect to rejudge the entire society based on your new values.”

He met with Harvey Weinstein in Cannes a few years ago to discuss a potential Guantanamo Bay TV series. “At that point, maybe he knew he was on the ropes; he was delightfully charming and humble.” The project was scuppered by the scandal that that engulfed the former Miramax boss, who is now behind bars as a convicted sex offender. Stone’s gripes with Weinstein are less to do with his sexual offences than with the way that he attacked films like Born on the Fourth of July and Saving Private Ryan to boost his own movies.

“The press loved him [Weinstein]. Don’t forget, they loved him in the 1990s,” he says, remembering the disingenuous way in which Weinstein portrayed himself as the underdog taking on the big, bad Hollywood system.

“I think he robbed Cruise of the Oscar, frankly,” Stone huffs at the intensive Weinstein lobbying which saw Daniel Day-Lewis win the Academy Award for Best for My Left Foot, denying Tom Cruise for Born on the Fourth of July in the process.

Stone acknowledges his status in Hollywood has diminished. “All that’s gone. The people have changed,” he says of the days when the studios doted on him and his films were regularly awards contenders. Now, he’ll often finance his work out of Europe. He is developing a new feature film (he won’t say what it is). “Never say die, never say it’s over,” he says of his career.

Stone is based in Los Angeles and also has “a place in New York”. During the pandemic, he still managed to travel to Russia to make his nuclear power/clean energy documentary. “I got my shots over there because the EU is so f***ing stupid,” he says of the of the Europeans’ refusal to recognise the Sputnik vaccine. “It’s ridiculous, part of the political madness of this time.”

Now, he is putting all his energy into his new documentary about nuclear power. He waves away the idea that the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters show what can go wrong – they were accidents.

“Accidents you learn from. If there were not a few crashes, how would you fly?” he says. It’s a line that somehow seems to express his entire philosophy of life.

-Geoffrey Macnab interviews Oliver Stone, The Independent, Jul 15 2021 [x]