A few weeks ago,
you received a critical award here in London,
the London Standard Film Award,
which was for your outstanding contribution
to British filmmaking.
There are a lot of people who consider you
to have kind of saved the British filmmaking industry.
Well, I think it was more of the award
for the only English-British company that's left.
HandMade Films to me was a signature,
this is gonna be quality stuff.
For me, to make films is my way
to help other people.
It was George Harrison's company.
Well, it doesn't get much cooler than that.
I mean, I spent 25 years in this pop group.
He said to me,
"I'm so grateful that you did this film."
I was like, "You're grateful?"
He came into the entire room,
and it was like meeting royalty for us.
That's what they always say in the papers, "movie mogul".
You know, there's always this battle
between the artists and the money people.
I can't imagine anything more risky
than this business.
And I don't particularly like being the money.
Every film that we've done has been rejected
by everyone in the world.
This was the world that I wanted to be a part
of building HandMade into,
that you literally would,
people would say, "I've got another script."
We'll do it.
♪ What you dream of ♪
HandMade felt like family.
They weren't a big studio.
They did go with quirky, off-beat, atypical stories.
Very good films got made in a very short time.
I can't think of any other period in British filmmaker
which was quite so rich.
It's new, and it's news.
Sheffield's ABC Cinema,
the last word for picture goers.
With 1,300 luxury seats,
with a 60 foot screen doing justice to the epic dramas
of which only the cinema is capable.
It was just nice in those post-war years
to get out the house and go somewhere
where there's all nice golden lights,
and little goldfish swimming in the foyer.
And yeah, we had some really neat cinemas in Liverpool.
In the 50s, they were fabulous places.
Art deco, wonderful places.
And generally, you know, the screens were big,
and it was something quite different
from any other sort of entertainment.
I mean, I went to see everything, of whatever standard.
It didn't matter what is was.
No matter how good or bad it was.
Where you were transported to a different world
for an hour of a half.
The industry had got into a very sorry state by 1982,
under the leadership of two major companies,
Rank and EMI.
When it comes to entertainment,
you can't beat a good film.
I think there were about 23 films made.
Typically in the UK, we make 90 to 120 films a year,
23 films in a year was really, really low.
And at the same time, the number of tickets sold
was going down and down.
The average Briton went to the cinema 11 times a year.
It was down to nought point four visits a year.
So things in the early 80s were really, really grim.
Rank and EMI famously said no to almost everything
that was interesting.
♪ Brian ♪
♪ The babe they call Brian ♪
I remember exactly when the "Life of Brian" idea
rose up in our lives.
We were promoting "Holy Grail",
and we were on a little pub crawl.
There we were sitting, drinking,
and Eric said, "Jesus Christ's Lust for Glory",
and ideas came out very quickly.
Of course, we didn't use most of them because
they were too blasphemous and we never wanted
to pick on Jesus.
In fact, he was okay when you look at the Bible.
It was the followers and the churches
that needed a lot of kicking.
People started reading books, the Bible,
getting ready to go.
And a man called Barry Spikings who worked for EMI,
liked the script very much,
and got EMI to invest some money in it,
and the crew were sound out to Monastir in Tunisia
to start building some of the sets.
We were leaving on a Saturday,
and on Thursday we got the news
that Lord Delfont, Bernie Delfont,
had got around to reading the script.
He said, "You can't do this,
"we can't have EMI involved in something like this,
"it's blasphemous, it's rude,
"it's shameful, it's disgusting."
And there was no way he would be involved
with this non anti Semitic filmmaking.
And ordered Spikings to pull the plug.
When we didn't go to Tunisia,
we suddenly were caught with our pants down, nothing.
So, John Golston set off for America,
and we go around all these people in New York,
and we go to meetings,
and they say "What's it about?"
Well, it's a sort of, and they go, "Out."
You know, it was like selling springtime for Hitler.
Well, thank God that George Harrison
was a big Python fan, that's really it.
And that Eric had gotten over the years
quite close to George.
'Cause I met him out here,
at a screening of "The Holy Grail".
Partied for days.
And he was good fun.
I kept calling him and saying,
"We're looking for this money."
And he said, "No, don't worry, I'll get it."
And I say, yeah, sure, sure.
So I said I know.
As a Python fan, I'd certainly like to see it made.
I asked my manager can you think of how
to get them the money?
And he came back to me in a week,
he said, "I think I know how we can do it.
"We'll be the producers."
George and Denis were a team.
You know, 'cause after The Beatles break up,
there were all sorts of problems
with all sorts of things.
George had met Denis through Peter Sellers,
and Peter said,
"Oh, I know the man, you need help here,
"and finances, whatever it is."
Denis had done something extraordinary,
and basically put George back on his feet financially.
'Cause he's got a vast variety of skills,
as you know.
I mean, he's a highly trained lawyer.
And then he's got training as a merchant banker too.
Denis hadn't come up through the industry,
so I think to most people he was just a bit of a mystery.
And now for something completely different.
The Pythons, having been a big fan,
and still am, really.
Was that true that you sent a telegram
to the BBC?
Mm, nobody ever reacted to it.
But we never, ever received this message.
Oh, I don't remember, something like, you know, fab.
"Fab lads, well done, keep doing it."
I don't know, just some word of encouragement
that at least two people out there enjoyed it.
And you know, the classic thing is I once said,
"George, five million pounds on one film?
"Why?"
He said, "Well, you know, I just wanna see it."
What we did was, we pawned my house
and the office in London,
to get a bank loan,
and that was a bit nerveracking.
If I'd known that, I would've been terrified
about doing the movie.
Thinking that George's house was on the line.
But fortunately, I didn't know about it,
so I was blissfully unaware and I thought,
oh, they can afford that, so that's fine.
Terry Jones was an extremely good
director of comedy, I mean he knew how to shoot comedy,
which is not lots of cutaways and lots of fuss,
just get a group of people, see them interacting
and all that, you know.
Actually, I think we should do it.
And what have they ever given us in return?
The aqueduct.
What?
The aqueduct.
Yeah, yeah, they gave us that, yeah, that's true.
Yeah, and the sanitation.
Oh yeah, the sanitation.
Remember what the city used to be like, Reg?
Yeah, yeah, all right.
I'll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation,
two things the Romans have done!
And the roads!
Well, yeah, obviously the roads go without saying.
But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct,
and the roads...
Irrigation.
Medicine.
Education.
Yeah, yeah, all right.
And the wine.
Yeah, that's the one thing we really would miss,
if the Romans weren't here.
Yeah, but apart from the sanitation,
the medicine, the education, the wine,
public order, irrigation, roads,
a fresh water system and public health,
what have the Romans ever done for us?
George played Mr. Papadopoulos,
the man who had the mount
to give him the mount for the day.
Unfortunately, we couldn't use his voice in the end
because just the general noise,
you couldn't hear anything.
So I had to dub his voice, unfortunately.
"Hello, good evening."
Once The Beatles broke up,
it was clear that George liked the idea
of being part of another group,
and the Python gang was one
that he admired what we did,
he thought it was wonderful.
He got involved, and oddly enough,
as we were editing,
he was there for a bit,
and then he absented himself
'cause he just thought,
well, he thought these guys were geniuses
and they knew exactly what they were doing.
No, there's constant fighting,
and that was always the strength of the group.
He decided maybe it was best to know
a little less about how we worked as a group,
because it was probably as fractious
as "The Beatles" were.
I suppose we weren't interested
the fights within The Beatles,
or we didn't want to know,
we just wanted to know the result,
and I think that's what intrigued him,
the result, not the way to get there.
Well, the new Monty Python film
is entitled "The Life of Brian".
It is a spoof of "The Life of Christ",
and has managed to offend just about
every religious group in the city.
Well, today the Citizen's Committee Against Blasphemy
took to the streets to protest the film.
The rabbis and priests said the film debases Christ,
Judaism, and the Holy scriptures,
and they want the film pulled.
The Jews were marching against us,
the Protestants were marching against us,
the Catholics were marching against us.
We did it all, one film.
They were demonstrating outside of Warner Brother Films
in New York, and everybody was showing
film clips on TV saying how rotten it was,
but actually it was very good,
Christ came out of it fine,
it was completely the point about how
idiotic the people are.
My mother, who's a good Christian,
church every Sunday, she saw the film
and she didn't understand what
people were talking about,
because it wasn't attacking Jesus,
it was attacking all the fools around.
Look, he has given us a sign.
He has given us a shoe.
A shoe is the sign!
Let us follow his example!
What do you mean?
Let us like him, carry one shoe,
and let the other be upon our foot,
for this is his sign
that all who follow him shall do likewise!
No, no, no, no!
The shoe is a sign that we must gather shoes in abundance.
No, no, it is a sign that like Him,
we must think not of the things of the body,
but of the face and head!
Give me your shoe!
No, get off!
It's a sandal!
No, it's not!
Cast it away!
Keep one on!
Clear off!
Which one, this one?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
And, action.
George rang and said, "What are you doing now?"
And I said, well, I'm not doing very much.
He said, well, I think I've got a film company.
Why don't you be me in the office?
Ray was a very special character in this mix,
because he was George's voice in many ways.
Ray was really the guy that knew scripts
better than anybody else.
He was much more to do with
picking the right material for them,
and you know, selecting what to make.
Ray's fantastic in development,
fantastic in post-production,
and on the set, he wouldn't interfere
unless there was creative issues,
because he lets the filmmakers make
what they want to make.
And he became a very, very important bridge
between the artistic, if you'd like,
and the sort of financial priorities,
which were Denis's.
Ray Cooper is one of the most brilliant percussionists
in rock history, and Ray played with Elton John,
and played with everyone.
If you watch him on stage,
the lovely thing is he's extraordinarily diffident
until he's actually on,
and then he's a raving maniac.
It seemed to us to be a very extraordinary leap
that suddenly Ray was now somebody important
in a film company.
Originally, when we needed a name for the company
I thought of calling it British HandMade Films
because I'd seen it on a watermark
on a piece of paper, it said British Handmade Paper.
The sad thing was George wanted to call it
British HandMade Films, but we weren't allowed to.
Which is strange because, you know,
all the nationalized British industries
are all the ones that lose a lot of money,
so I take it that's the reason
you have to lose a lot of money first
before they let you call it British.
So, it was HandMade Films,
and I drew a little logo,
and we were in business.
I met Eric Idle at a party,
and "Life of Brian" had really taken off,
and I said "Hey, you must've made a fortune
"out of "Life of Brian",
"do you want to buy a film?"
And he said, "Yeah, well, let's have a look at it."
I'd always loved American gangster films,
especially Bogart films,
and there's a kind of fantasy
of wanting to write a film noir,
and if Bogart had been a Cockney,
if he'd of been born in East London,
so that was the kind of starting point
character like that.
Well, the idea was presented to me
in a form of a script,
it was given to a friend of mine, Barry Hanson,
who had worked with Barrie Keeffe, a writer.
They had thought of doing a British gangster movie.
He gave me this early script,
one of the first of the many rewrites
we actually eventually did,
and I just thought the central idea was great.
We stumbled on the idea that usually
it's a Mr. Peak, and there's the young contender
gonna overtake him, and that's the power struggle,
but I thought that had been done so often
and was kind of tiresome.
At the same time, there was that Easter weekend coming up,
and on the radio they were talking all the time
about the quietest Good Friday in Belfast
since the troubles had began,
and that started to fall into place then,
setting it against not another Mr. Peak,
but another organization,
and the kind of theme of it was
gangsterism versus terrorism.
Terrorism fighting for an ideal, in quotes,
or gangsterism fighting just for money,
and who's going to win,
so that was the kind of theme.
Bob, was for me, crucial to the part,
and he gave me all the nuances of the character
that I really wanted.
I suppose it was me.
The character was me,
apart from being a gangster.
You know, sort of quite emotional,
sort of always going the stray route.
You know, I didn't have to work hard,
that was who I was.
I wanted him to be a very three dimensional character.
It was strange, because I wrote it before
Thatcher had come to power,
but he was a very much a Thatcherite man, wasn't he?
A personification of all she stood for.
Our country's not an island anymore!
We're a leading European state.
Right!
And I believe that this is the decade
in which London will become Europe's capital.
No other city in the world
has got right in its center,
such an opportunity for profitable progress!
I agreed to do the film because
Barrie said he would make my particular role
much more interesting,
and as often happens...
Have a nice Easter.
Other things were more important at the time,
really none of my questions had been addressed,
so then I was in a very awkward position,
because I kind of signed up for something
only understanding that this would be done,
and it hadn't been done.
You don't get Helen,
someone as intelligent as Helen,
who's obviously intelligent, to play a bimbo.
So, basically the role got developed
while we shot.
Helen's input made the character
a lot stronger than she had been.
She was classy, and she was educated,
and that was her contribution to his world.
We'll plate it up, all right?
You went to school with Princess Anne,
played hockey with her, all that.
There's lacrosse at Benenden,
hockey's frightfully vulgar.
Yes, yes, plenty of that, yeah.
I think she would've preferred
to have had a machine gun at some stage in it,
but I thought she was absolutely wonderful,
and she was the power behind the throne, absolutely.
The great organization,
it was a subsidiary of that,
and we had kind of absolute freedom,
they weren't involved in what we were doing
at all, actually.
And until the film was finished,
the rough cut of it,
Barry Hanson was working with,
he knew what it was all about.
But the people that put the money into it
had no idea until they actually saw it.
I still remember being called to a meeting,
they said "We can't show this film,
"it's IRA propaganda.
"If we show this in our cinemas,
"the IRA will start blowing them up."
I remember saying,
"Well, if it's IRA propaganda,
"why are they going to blow up your cinemas for showing it?"
And they said to me,
"Don't get fucking intellectual with me."
Which I took as a compliment
poorly expressed, of course.
Eventually they said,
"All right, you can buy the film."
I thought well, yeah.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, thanks.
Bob met Eric at a party,
and Eric said "What are you doing?"
And he said, "I just finished this film,
"we can't get it shown."
And it was obviously a very good film,
and it was obviously gonna work with an audience.
And so I just called them up at HandMade and said,
"Listen, you can't lose with this one,
"it's a winner, my boys."
Buy this.
I actually had spoken to George
about "The Long Good Friday",
and he said
"if I would've known it was that violent,
"I wouldn't of taken it on,
"I wouldn't of paid."
Because he never saw it.
But, well, they bought it cheap,
and I said well, get this one in.
I wasn't putting one over on him,
but he said, "If I would've known it was that violent,
"I wouldn't of bought it."
"Chariots of Fire" from England
just won the Best Picture Oscar,
and now another British film will, I predict,
be a very big hit in America,
it is called "A Long Good Friday".
It is a gangster movie,
and it stars Bob Hoskins,
one of Britain's best actors, good morning.
Not expecting anything from America,
I thought they would think it was a
phony imitation of American mobster and gangster films.
Everybody's comparing you do Edward G. Robinson
and Jimmy Cagney, you know?
"Little Caesar", and those great gangster pictures
of the 30s.
What do you feel when you hear yourself
compared to those guys?
Very, very flattered, incredibly flattered.
But we tried to make a really British gangster, you know?
It's very difficult to do a gangster
without slipping into a little bit of Cagney
and Edward G. in there,
'cause they are the gangsters, aren't they?
It was an absolute surprise,
the reaction in America,
and it was delight of course, yeah.
Ladies and gentlemen, in our brief few minutes,
I just wanted you to meet Bob Hoskins
who has flown in from England
to be on the Today program.
I think he is an actor,
already celebrated in Great Britain,
who will become very famous in the United States,
and one of his reasons for that
is his performance in "The Long Good Friday".
It's a terrific gangster movie.
Thank you very much for being with us.
Cheers.
George's passion and enthusiasm and support
in the initial days were that he would pay for,
and-or make the money available,
which was extraordinary.
So there was no,
"Well, we'll look at the script, and yeah,
"now we've gotta go out and get the money,
"and we have to piece that one together and all that,
piece of money's fallen out a bit."
So we did none of that.
It was, if you got a green light at HandMade,
it was because it was gonna go, it was green-lit.
That was it.
If you are involved with HandMade,
the possibilities are quite extraordinary.
You could just come up with a lollipop wrapper,
and say I want to make a film about this character
on the lollipop wrapper.
Yeah?
And then they'll listen.
I used to come across scripts
that were almost car chase sequence
from beginning to end,
and I had no interest.
And George wanted to know there was
a story being told of human dimension.
If I went in to say, Universal,
and said, "Well, I've got this lollipop wrapper,"
"Yeah, Bob, great.
"Lunch?"
You know, it's get out of here.
George was interested in making
stuff that the Pythons wanted to make
collectively, or individually.
All I knew was that Terry Gilliam
came with two sheets of paper with this idea on it,
and it just sounded like a great idea.
Terry came in and said,
"I've got this great idea for a film.
"This kid is in his bedroom,
"and then the cupboard door bursts open,
"a knight comes through,
"and they go through into a time warp
"and they're going from time to time."
I said oh, that's good, yeah.
He says, "Come, we'll go and tell Denis."
So, we went to Cadogan Square
to a meeting with Denis.
Denis looks at me and says,
"How much will it cost?"
There was no script, there was nothing.
So I invented a figure, I said "Three million pounds."
So he said "Okay, off you go."
And that was it, we were making "Time Bandits",
we had no script, we had no nothing.
We just got Terry with a guy coming through a cupboard,
and me inventing a budget, you know,
and that was it, we were off.
Come on!
Who is that?
Return what you have stolen from me.
Return!
Return the map.
It will bring you great danger.
Stop now!
It was the second film Terry had done,
it was a risk for you,
and it was a risk for Denis to take on,
because it was the most expensive movie that you'd done.
Well, I think Terry is brilliant,
he needs to make films,
and I think we need to make films
with people like him.
I wanted to make a film with a kid
as the main character,
but I didn't think it could hold the film together,
so let's surround him with a gang the same height.
Oh, they used to work for God,
who helped create the universe, and they're bored,
and they want to make money,
and the idea of doing a robbery
and then escaping before the robbery ever happened
just seemed a simple idea,
and it started like that, and then went to Mike.
He kind of just said, "Hey, do you want to
"have a look at this?
"It would be great if you could write it with me,
"because you know, I don't write
"but I've got all these ideas.
"What do you think?"
So, we discussed it, and I quite liked it.
That's him!
You're not gonna rob him?
Yeah, every single penny he's got.
I think the thing is,
we collaborated on what period of history you would see.
Whether that was Napoleon, or it was, you know,
Ancient Greece, or Ancient Rome, whatever,
so I was able to sort of create those
and keep a sort of serious comedy feel
to the historical inset.
So it worked out, and we started writing on it.
There was another issue,
which was very important at the time for HandMade,
it was, was this a Python film,
or was it not a Python film?
I was involved in the film,
so I said we must make quite sure
this isn't a Python film, 'cause it isn't.
I mean, even though four Pythons were in it,
I think, in the end.
"Time Bandits", was that right?
Denis was very excited 'cause he could see
there were a lot of roles
for a lot of Pythons in here.
Like in "Holy Grail".
So from his point of view,
it made real sense.
Very, very tricky area indeed,
and you could feel that you were being
led down some sort of dangerous path here
of having to get the money because it was Python,
but at the same time saying it's not a Python film.
And so, then, the next thing is, okay,
now we need a part for John.
I think it was Denis that might've suggested Robin Hood.
I said, well, Mike's already playing Robin Hood.
"Wouldn't John be a little bit better?"
And Mike being Mike, being a nice guy,
agreed that John would be really good.
Hello, I'm Hood.
It's Robin Hood.
And he was brilliant!
Much, much better than I could ever have done.
And you're a robber too, how long have you been a robber?
4'1.
Good Lord!
Jolly good, 4'1?
Yes.
Well, that is a long time, isn't it?
And then Denis, "Oh, we can't lose Michael,
"he's a Python.
"He's got it on his name tape."
So, I wrote myself in as one of the starstruck lovers,
along with Shelley Duvall.
With memorable lines like...
I must have fruit!
Now we've got three Pythons now,
we're not doing badly.
And maybe that Beatle will get a song or two
in there somewhere.
There weren't any big stars in it really, wasn't there?
Sean Connery.
But he's only bout 5'6, isn't he?
John Cleese was the biggest star of the film,
but he's 6'5.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much!
Thank you very, very, very, very much!
Awful people.
I don't know how you got those people
to be in the film, apart from offering them
probably ludicrous rewards just for show.
Money is the usual thing.
That's why most of our films don't have big stars,
is 'cause we don't give them enough money.
Money is honey.
Well, the Gods must have given you a name.
Oh yeah, Kevin.
Kevin?
Each of these "Time Bandits" had different characters.
One was the bossy one, one kept eating everything.
Terry really fancied me for the part of Og,
so I read for him, so he thought go a bit stupid tonight.
I've got an idea forming in my head.
You haven't had an idea for thousands of years!
I learned a lot from it,
and that's not to go near water or let people
hang you upside down.
They were very dangerous scenes.
Off with safety, it was gone.
Oh, Pansy.
No more what ifs now, Pansy.
I remember just another instance of that.
There's a scene where the Bandits
fall on top of a coach
which Shelley and myself were in.
Shelley was very worried, you know,
about where they're gonna fall,
how they're gonna fall.
So Terry sort of showed her
how they were gonna fall,
and he sort of jumped off onto the coach.
And as I demonstrated this,
as I fell on top of the wagon, I fell wrongly.
But fell through the roof, and knocked Shelley sideways.
I think I almost broke her neck.
I think a few vertebrates popped.
And that was an embarrassing moment.
And she was then off filming for about two days
while they got her better.
And dear Terry was trying to do his best.
"It's not gonna hurt, it's gonna be like this!"
Ahh, crack.
But at least I showed what not to do,
which is as important as showing
what to do in life.
It was stressful because Terry Gilliam
is very demanding.
You're trying to achieve what he's got in his head,
and nobody can achieve it because it's not possible.
And that's the way he works, really,
and sort of pushing the limits,
saying I could do this,
and you say no you can't,
no one can ever do that.
And he does it.
Oh, Terry Gilliam falls out with almost
everyone he's ever met, and doesn't speak to them
for three years, you know?
This is part of Terry's life.
We had a few rows with Terry,
but very small compared to the trouble he's had
with recent films.
Terry Gilliam is never satisfied with anything.
He just made a 45 million dollar film
and he's still complaining.
Didn't have enough money.
He's just a silly old bitch, I mean...
He's very sweet, I took him out to dinner last night.
I paid, of course.
Tight little American git.
During all this time,
I was having this little fight with Denis, as it were.
And this is one I think George has decided
at that point I was a complete, impossible asshole.
Because I said, "Now, Denis,
"Denis, you tried to change the end of this film,
"you cannot change the end of this film.
"The parents blow up,
"because they didn't listen to good advice from their child.
"The parents must be punished."
"There's no way you can have a children's film
"where the parents blow at the end."
I say, "Ah, kids will love it."
And Denis wouldn't stop,
and I became the brick wall that he kept
banging his head against,
to the point that I finally said,
"Denis, you see this piece of film?
"That's the negative, I made that.
"See this 10 penny nail?
"I bought that.
"I could do that.
"If I made it, I can destroy it."
It did stop him for a bit.
But George thought I was completely out of control.
Mom, Dad, it's evil!
Don't touch it!
At the end of "Time Bandits",
we did have a song by George,
and it was a lovely song,
and then Ray Cooper said,
"You know, have you really listened to the lyrics?"
I said, "No, they're lovely, why?"
"Those are George's notes to you,
"and it's all about time,
"don't take up too much time."
Ie, the length of the film is too long.
I should apologize because of my bad behavior.
It was absolutely brilliant.
A typical way of being as tough as George can be,
and very direct and very honest and open,
but being clever at the same time,
disguising it amongst beautiful sounds.
♪ Lucky you got so far ♪
♪ All you owe is apologies ♪
We made the film, and the studio saw the finished film,
and said no.
The executives in Hollywood had all got together
and said, oh it doesn't work, because of this,
because it's got small people.
They couldn't understand who the audience would be.
It wasn't just for kids,
it wasn't an adult film.
Python fans, they're only a small number of people.
They had no intention of releasing it.
Denis decided to release it himself.
Him and George would pay for the release.
He decided to do what became called in the industry,
the Time Bandits Deal.
He did a deal with a company called AVCO Embassy
who didn't have much of a slate at the time.
Which were the smallest of the majors.
They hadn't had a hit in 10 years,
but they had a machine that could deal with distribution,
and so we went with them,
George guaranteed five million dollars prints and ads,
so off we went.
And for Sean Connery to find out
that not only had we financed the film,
but we're now putting up an addition 5.5 million dollars,
wherever he was in the world,
he quickly grabbed the phone and called me,
and he said, "You can't do this,
"I mean you're absolutely mad.
"No one does this."
Well, everyone was looking at the big Christmas movies.
And suddenly, there's a bit of a gap in November,
no one has the big movies yet,
and the summer movies have all gone.
And into that gap, Denis managed
to get "Time Bandits" inserted.
No competition, nothing.
We were on our own.
The film was huge.
We went to number one, and we sat there for weeks,
and it was fantastic 'cause
we just showed all you professionals are wrong again.
And so the money just rolled in.
Those were heady days,
it was heady time at HandMade.
Last week however, HandMade hit the box office charts
with two films in the top five in London.
We had "Life of Brian", a success,
and "Time Bandits", bigger success,
there was no way to stop us.
What HandMade was doing
with those two films in particular,
we're showing people there's other ways
to make films and succeed.
Until Mike started making films.
Oh sorry, what'd I say?
So, Michael Palin, he'd done a TV show
called "Ripping Yarns",
and I was a big fan of that show,
and I once said to him,
why don't you write a big "Ripping Yarn"?
I'd sort of felt it was time
to try and write a film,
and I had this idea about "The Missionary".
It's a story about a missionary,
and he decides to look after fallen women,
or prostitutes, on the East End of London.
So, what do you want me to do, my Lord?
Go amongst prostitutes, Fortescue.
Go to the filthiest streets of London
into the back alleys, and behind the workhouses.
Seek out the harlots and the street walkers,
get to know them, get to understand them,
win their confidences.
Find out why they do what they do,
and stop them doing it.
Richard and I got on quite well.
The idea of working with Michael was just a joy.
We worked on the script together.
I should think I probably contributed half a percent.
Yeah, it was quite collaborative.
And you cast actors like Maggie Smith,
you just know they're gonna deliver.
Well, England's very liberal after Africa,
I assure you.
Oh, do you really think so?
I find it very stifling.
Really?
In what way?
Well, I mean, well for instance,
I couldn't just go around saying that
I find you very attractive.
There are many wonderful sequence.
The sequence where Michael goes
to try and raise some money from this old Duke,
and he goes in and the Duke's sitting there,
and Michael's just pitching him this idea
of raising money for his mission.
It's all very well sending out missions
to Indo-China, the Gambia, Somaliland,
when the real problems are here,
under our very noses.
Three quarters of the way through it,
Michael's going, it's one take,
suddenly a maid comes in.
Emote in other's eyes,
but not the beam in our own.
Unless we can take up the battle
to save and enlighten these wretched souls now,
then the darkness of ignorance
we see so clearly in others
will engulf us all!
And then a doctor comes in.
To ignore what is going on,
to pretend nothing is happening.
We can begin the moral revival.
The only line for anyone else is...
I'm awfully sorry, but my husband has died.
Died?
Wonderful scene that Michael wrote
and acted amazingly well.
I'm most frightfully sorry, I shall be going.
Oh no, it's I who should be sorry.
It was really a breach of manners.
I think "The Missionary"
was pretty much how I wanted it to be,
but I realized there was sort of weakness at the end
where they all go off to Scotland.
It wasn't quite as light and as fluent
as it should be.
You know, you need to get off screen
better than you do anything else.
It doesn't matter what the first 10 minutes
of a movie are like really,
most people won't walk out.
And the last 10 minutes, I think 15, I got wrong,
I would say.
Fortescue returned to the mission he loved,
and which had loved him.
So successful was he at filling it with girls,
that in March, 1907, the bishop of London himself
closed it down.
HandMade started out with a talent group
which was the Monty Python group,
and I think that was the model
that HandMade really tried to follow,
which is to back talent,
which is a great model for independent production companies,
it's a really good model if you can do it.
Denis wanted to basically use the Pythons
and control the Pythons,
and provide for the Pythons.
I do remember him entertaining us all one summer,
and he was going to do his pitch
for managing the Pythons, really,
and taking over the Pythons.
And we had a very nice time then,
he was very generous, and we had his pool, and all that,
and then we sat down with his great board,
and Denis drew lots of sort of arrows
and names on the board,
which was sort of mainly consisting of small islands
in the Caribbean region that no one ever heard of,
and this is where Python was gonna be based.
Well, who do we talk to there?
"Oh, don't worry about that, don't worry about that."
And it looked as though by imposing
a sort of structure which meant that Python
had to make this many films over the years,
he couldn't see really that the creative side of Python
was a very messy business.
It wasn't something where you just sat down
and wrote a film like that.
It took a long time for ideas to come through,
a long time for them to be debated,
and the one thing we didn't want to see
in any shape or form was control,
creative control of our work.
When we did discuss all this together,
and do we want Denis to be our manager,
and we decided no,
we didn't want Denis to be our manager.
So that was the kind of crunch point where
HandMade Films really ceased to be a Python company.
Are you sad to have lost Monty Python?
I haven't lost Monty Python,
they're still good friends of mine.
If you mean the fact that we didn't produce
their last film, I'm not sad.
I didn't produce the first two.
It was a pleasure to be able to, at that time,
bail them out of that situation,
and come out of it with a film that was funny.
You know, I'm happy whichever way things turn out,
I don't try to hang onto it.
I'd rather hang onto friendships than business deals.
Are you ready?
And mark it.
It was an idea for a film about a Caribbean island
that discovers Perrier water.
She's gonna blow!
It all sounded terribly funny
over a second bottle of wine.
We've struck fucking Perrier!
Because of our relationship with HandMade,
we mentioned the idea to Denis, and he liked it.
And then basically, now Denis was saying,
"Well, we can do this if you got,
"you know, a bankable cast."
Our first thought for the lead was Michael Caine.
We managed to get the script around,
I won't forget some of those days.
I'd been asked to a party,
and it was in Beverly Hills,
so the whole Brit community was there,
including Michael and Shakira.
And my wife and I walked in, we're saying hi,
and Michael looked at me from across the room,
and he went...
And I went, "Shit."
I didn't stay at the party,
I went straight back up to Dick's house,
which was up the street, and told him.
So, Michael made it happen.
What's this now?
It's the Cascaran national anthem sir.
What are you all doing?
The breast stroke, sir.
You see, these people are all descended
from shipwreck victims.
I'm trying to remember at what point we cast Brenda.
Are you ready, honey?
Brenda was a bit of a name for us.
It's me.
Brenda Vaccaro.
Let's go.
I mean, she's a force of nature.
Okay, so where was I?
Brenda knew the difference between
the Guatemalan accent and the Mexican accent,
so she prepared in that respect.
I didn't.
And I had it made, actually, from Guatemala.
Who would say, instead of "Get me some pins."
she would say, "You know, I need the pins."
I'd say, well honey, we all do.
And I thought this is the only accent
I want to do.
You lied to me when I was a girl in Guatemala!
You weren't a girl, you were never a girl!
I was, you lie!
Let's face it, Delores,
you never fitted into diplomatic life.
You say I embarrassed you.
You're ashamed by me?
I am just saying that things
might have turned out differently
if you hadn't danced the "Cucaracha" topless
at the reception for the Duke of Edinb...
He loved it!
I was worried, because I was worried about the script.
This is not to say there's not many things I like in it,
but I just don't think it pulls it off
as a cohesive whole.
Creatively, it just doesn't add up.
It's not a tone Dick and I use to,
I don't know what film it's trying to be.
Is it trying to be a farce?
Is it trying to be a satire?
Is it trying to be a character driven comedy?
It's a bit of all three, and it falls short.
We were preparing the shoot the anthem
in the United Nations, you know,
and the idea was to get a stellar ensemble to sing.
Suddenly, it became the music, the hangout,
because there was Eric, and George,
there was John Lord from Deep Purple,
Ray Cooper, and Ringo.
Every time I looked around,
one of my heroes was looking back at me,
in my backing band, it was like a dream,
it was extraordinary, really.
I'm sure everybody thought this was
gonna help sell the movie.
It didn't really, did it?
♪ There was a freedom ♪
I don't want to sound totally negative about it,
I want people to go out and buy it
and see it for themselves if they agree or not.
Go and have a look at it.
I know that if you smoke a very large joint,
it's really a fun movie.
I know that most people who enjoyed it have been high.
"Oh man, that film was so awesome."
And then I thought yeah, he's a smoker.
Denis kept going on to me about,
"Michael, Michael, you gotta be in Water.
'You know, it's the Caribbean."
I said, "Well I've got this film
"in which I play a chiropodist."
He said, "Will you come out here?
"I've got all these stars, and all that sort of thing."
And Denis really wouldn't let me go,
kept ringing up when I'd come in late at night,
and Helen would say "Denis is on the phone."
"Hello, Denis, hello."
"Michael, we've written four more lines for you.
"We'll get you out there,
"we really want you to do it."
I said "Denis, no."
It was nice to be asked, but in the end,
I got really fed up with this,
and you know, I got a new cat,
and we called the cat Denis,
so that when I come home late in the evening,
Helen would say "Denis has been on the phone."
I would transfer all my sort of tension
and anger onto the cat.
And I'd think oh, that lovely cat, that Denis.
Jason Gilbert Chilvers.
This country has just emerged
from a Second World War,
a war where millions of people died,
most of them killed by their fellow men.
Not with chiropodist tools.
It's not the tools, it's the will.
He's doing his business again!
I'll trust you to pick up the diarrhea.
Strange place, strange people.
They can understand it.
We ought to let it settle down.
Settle down?
Kill it.
You know, that how I remember "Private Function" happening
was that Alan Bennett rang me up and said, you know,
that he got a film he'd like me to do,
and it sounded very good,
so I went along to a meeting.
And Alan said, "Right, where's the money coming from?"
and I said "Me, you're looking at me?
"You've only asked me to do a part."
So I said, "Well, I'll ask them.
"I'm not sure if it's what they'd want to do."
For you, Michael.
I remember asking George about it,
and I said, you know,
"So, was it the script that persuaded you then, George?"
He said, "No, no.
"I only got up to page four."
And he says, "Just 'cause you were in it,
"I thought it must be all right."
It's about a pig, it's about a very unpleasant part
of British history after the Second World War,
where there was a lot of very nasty behavior going on,
people being sort of cheating, and lying,
and almost shining a light
on a very dark corner of British history.
So, it had a real dark comedy feel to it.
You got something we want.
Something that belongs to us.
Something with four legs,
and a little curly tail.
There were three pigs,
because they were all supposed to have different...
They were all supposed to have different talents, you know.
One could sing, one could dance,
the other one...
Well, I mean, this is how it was put to us really
by the trainers.
In fact, only one of them could act
to any standard at all.
The other two were completely hopeless.
It was very hard working with the pig
because it would be brought onto the set,
and at some stage it would defecate,
usually just before the take,
so we'd have to get everyone out,
clean the carpet, and there was a young lad
who was at the film location every morning
saying "I'd love to get into films.
"Any chance of me getting into films?"
And "No, no, no, no."
And then somebody said,
"Oh, by the way, actually there is something you can do."
And they gave him a bucket, and said,
"When you're on the set, the pig comes on,
"as soon as you see anything appear
"from the pig's backside, get the bucket under there."
And he did, and because of the predictability
of the pig's bowel movements, he could do that.
It saved us an awful lot of time,
and he's the only person I think
on any credits anywhere
who's just been given the credit of "Bucket Boy"
on the film.
No, it's rather nice that on such a public occasion,
the Peter Sellers Award for comedy
will go to a man from "A Private Function", Michael Palin.
I must say, there was considerable friction
between the creative side,
represented by Alan Bennett, the writer,
particularly with Denis.
It was a difficult relationship.
We got the film made, but there was
all sorts of problems over payments
and all that sort of thing.
But anyway, the Evening Standard Film Awards
of 19 whatever it was, '85, or whatever,
won most of the awards,
and it won an award for Denis and George,
who went up and sort of slightly
embarrassingly collected it,
and George called the Duchess of Kent...
Your Majesty.
Your Royal Highness.
You're going one too high.
Oh.
Nothing's too good for you.
She's a bit of a boo.
So, it was all done,
and actually in the end,
it was much more successful I think
than "Water", which disappeared without trace,
it dried up..
Really, it's Mr. O'Brien,
the brains behind HandMade Films.
A few years later, I was with Alan,
and our cat had sadly passed away,
and I told him that I'm a bit sad today,
'cause Denis had died.
And Alan said just direct,
something about his heart rose with elation, the news.
"Oh, your cat, oh the cat, oh.
"Oh, I didn't know that.
"Oh, I'm very sad, that's terrible."
What we have done basically
is simply to take whatever retained earnings
there have been over the year,
and simply re-invest those funds
into an expanded portfolio
so that we went from making one film a year
to three films a year,
and finally up to five films a year.
You know, Denis is into this thing of well,
if we can produce more films,
we can get better distribution deals,
or people will take you more seriously.
Denis was very much wanting to build a studio,
certainly a production entity.
It was driven by him.
It was as if Denis was going off on his own.
There was an aspect of selecting the projects
which was as much money as it was the project itself.
When the company starts getting bigger,
you take on more staff,
and you need to pay more staff,
you need to feed the beast,
and you need them to buy films in
that perhaps you wouldn't normally buy.
You need to make films,
because you gotta keep that wheel turning.
They became just a system
that needed to keep feeding itself.
Sometimes we'll make films which
I go along with because it's the company's decision
that this would be a good film,
but I don't particularly like the script
or the film.
♪ I'm ready ♪
♪ You must be crazy ♪
We went after "Shanghai Surprise"
because I believed that we were playing
the Hollywood game out of London,
and that this would be something
that would be a huge success.
It was a couple of days
away from just shelving the whole thing,
and then suddenly the producer came up
and said "Oh yeah, Madonna's agreed to be in the movie,
"and her husband, Sean Penn, is also gonna be."
And at that time, it sounded like quite a good idea.
I think really "Shanghai Surprise"
was made with the intention of making a blockbuster.
This is a new direction for HandMade.
Because the business side of it
got very excited by it.
It was pre-sold, and it was big business.
I suppose on somebody's decision was,
well, it's probably, this could be good,
from a greed point of view, I think.
The idea, "Hehe, we're gonna have a big hit
"with this famous pop star."
I thought you were a bit hasty
doing a second film about a missionary
before you've got the money from the first one.
We like missionaries.
Two missionaries and a glow in the dark tie salesman
do not just stroll up to people and ask
if they've seen a thousand pounds of opium lying around.
John Kohn, who is quote on quote
the producer in the film,
really hadn't produced films,
he was a writer more so than a producer.
Well, I read this book,
and the book wasn't very good,
but I thought that the book had a kind of,
a Humphrey Bogart-Katherine Hepburn relationship
like in "African Queen".
And I thought it was good ingredients
and the script wrote pretty easily.
The script was terrible.
It was absolutely terrible.
It was not a good script,
and that's where it starts.
That's the foundation of which everything else is done,
that's the structure.
And if that's not right, it's pointless.
Jim Goddard mostly directed television
and on sets, and mostly in the UK.
You know, this was a big film,
and that's why Sean could walk right over him,
you know, basically.
Definitely the problem was a clash of personality,
both very strong characters,
they both wanted the film to look differently.
Jim tried to make it as a comedy,
and Sean was hoping to make it
a dramatic escapism.
But he questioned Jim all the time.
"Why is that, why is it not that way?"
Jim thought that he can tame the stars,
and eventually he couldn't.
Sean Penn has his issues, Madonna had her issues,
the press, they're having a field day,
because I think a lot was going on there.
On the one hand in film,
all publicity is good publicity,
because then everyone's heard of the movie.
On the other hand, should you worry I think,
that it might be interfering with
the business of making the movie,
which in the end, it clearly was.
When it comes down to the wire,
there's only one person who can solve problems,
and that's why we're sending him off to Hong Kong
to see if he can deal with Sean Penn and Madonna
in one week's time.
Well, "Shanghai Surprise" unfortunately
got George involved as well,
and he was brought in to sort of try,
and that was terrible for George,
he didn't want to do that.
He went to Hong Kong, he didn't want to do it.
I mean in some respects,
the press were sort of right saying certain things.
But, they were a bit over the top.
Well, you know, because the stories were getting out,
Sean was not shooting certain days
because he was uptight by something
he read in the paper, so I felt the only way
to smooth things over is to try and get the press
to not get in their head.
Your management contract
is up for sale, did you know that?
And George, would you like to buy it?
I don't know.
You're a little troublemaker, aren't you?
I'm not the only one here,
there's a room full of them.
I mean, the result of the press conference was
they all stopped slagging them off.
But it did have terrible affect
on the film and the crew.
♪ You got into my life ♪
♪ I don't know how you found me ♪
♪ But you didn't stop ♪
Did you get involved in
music in the films?
I got really involved with "Shanghai",
which was another reason it was personally
a sad situation, because I put so much
of my own time into it.
So how do you feel now
that it's more or less finished?
How do I feel?
Shocked and stunned.
And the film didn't do very well,
and I think we have had a bit
of a disaster on our hands.
The problem I have is when we make films
with people who I don't particularly
want to make a film with,
and that's where HandMade has become something else.
It was really not what he wanted.
Madonna, Sean Penn thing, the celebrity thing.
It was one, George wasn't interested in that,
he wanted to see a good comedy
that was sort of played by people he liked and knew.
And preferably, something British
rather than something American.
You know, the beauty of it is
is that we had "Mona Lisa" at the same time,
and quite honestly, one negated the other.
They were so busy making this other
big, huge film,
I just took the time to make "Mona Lisa"
while they were doing this huge thing, you know.
Mona Lisa was a story about
the hypocrisy of SoHo.
How those guys in suits were probably
contributing to the Tory party
who were dealing in drugs and prostitution,
who were actually much bigger criminals
than guys walking around with a swag sack on their back,
you know, if there is such a thing,
a good old honest criminal.
I began to sketch it out about this character
who came out of prison
and the world had changed around him.
Neil had a stab at writing a script,
and he kinda got stuck on it,
wasn't sure where to go.
So I had asked David if he could
have a look at the script
to see if there's anything he could do.
And I was given a treatment,
and it was a third of a page,
it was just that much writing,
and I worked on that.
David wrote this really hard-boiled script,
it was quite savage.
I then thought long and hard about
who could play the part,
discussed it, of course, with Neil,
and Bob's was the name that was noted.
Bob wasn't 100% sure about the script,
so I had to engineer a meeting
between Neil and Bob,
and they hit it off straight away.
The minute I met Bob I said okay,
I'm gonna rewrite this whole thing,
the whole story for this man.
I mean, I really wanted to make a movie
about how man deeply misunderstood women.
I suppose I genuinely didn't understand women
any more than the central character did,
and I wanted to make a film about that, you know?
Yeah?
Do you want mom?
Mom?
What is it, love?
Julie, get inside.
Just...
No you can't.
Listen!
You've been away too fucking long!
Mom, no!
Wait, no, just a minute!
That's all I'm asking for!
She don't know you, George,
and she don't want to know ya!
I don't want to fucking know you!
She's my daughter!
You can't do this to me,
I only came to see her.
Stop!
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry!
Mom!
I loved the script.
And I took it to EMI,
they suddenly decided not to make films,
they weren't into production anymore,
and we were left a bit high and dry.
And there weren't that many stops then.
With EMI going down,
it wasn't like there were a load of places
we could've gone,
and that's what made HandMade special.
He got me the script I think that day,
and I read it overnight, and said this is great,
we've gotta do this movie.
Ray had set up a lunch for George to meet with Neil,
and George had said at the lunch that
this wasn't the kind of script that he liked.
Basically, I would like to keep it comedy,
or films that have some sort of hope, you know?
But he trusted Ray 100%,
and George basically said "Whatever you guys want."
The biggest thing was casting Simone,
the title part of "Mona Lisa",
and we went to see a play that Cathy was in
at the Barbican.
We then met with Cathy,
and she seemed amazing,
and Neil was completely sold on her.
So we sort of offered her up
as the final piece of the jigsaw.
Cathy was rejected by Denis.
And the suggestion from Denis,
he had seen a poster for a James Bond movie
with Roger Moore, and thought that Grace Jones
would make a fantastic choice for the film,
which was a little horrific.
Cathy was wonderful,
and she was right for the role.
I mean, it could've been a named person,
nobody really knew Cathy at that point,
but this is what you have to do,
you have to support that chance.
And Denis says, "Well, all right, if you think so."
Neil Jones said to me,
I'm gonna try and get Michael Caine
to play the boss.
And I said, you've got to be kidding.
HandMade's doing it, you're never gonna afford those wages.
Usually I play leading men in a picture,
and if you do, even though the man is villainous,
you have to give him some sort of sympathetic,
or nice, or kindly side.
But with Mortwell, I didn't have to,
because I was only a small part, so I enjoyed it.
Jesus Christ, George.
What am I doing here, right?
I didn't say that.
I'm sorry.
Don't be sorry, it's bad to be sorry.
Hello, mate.
Hello.
Raschid, this is George.
Of course, we have met.
How did you get on the other night?
Was she good?
Come on, George.
I'm sorry, but I've been trying to contact you.
Wasn't Dudley looking after you?
Well, yeah, yeah, he is,
but I mean, it's nothing like
the personal touch, is there?
Seven years.
This isn't the time.
This is business, George.
Yeah, but we've got a lot to talk about.
So we have, I'll ring you.
You promise?
I promise.
Did you get the rabbit?
Cathy and Bob were terrific together,
and Bob gave Cathy so much.
Because we had to do the scene
on the pier, and he said to me very gently,
"You can do that again, can't ya?"
And it wasn't the director that said that,
but he said it, and I did,
and I started to cry in the scene,
and I thought I can remember distinctly thinking,
"My God, is that what acting's about?
"It's about pain?"
And that's what it involves.
So I really, really do credit him
for gently encouraging me to go there.
I didn't want to go there.
Really, I think I wanted to play safe,
and that's the first time I'd ever cried in work.
You like her, don't you?
Of course I like her.
Yeah, but you like her in that special way.
In the songs.
What songs?
Well, I've sold myself for a couple of dykes.
She needs me, George.
And you needed me to get her.
You ever need someone?
All the time.
When you think of it,
that's a very difficult thing to do,
'cause I had them both wearing ridiculous glasses.
In a context, that could almost be comic,
but actually in a situation
where they're crying to each other,
they played it like a love story
that never actually had a chance to happen
which I thought was marvelous.
So we got it into Cannes Film Festival,
and Bob won the prize for Best Actor,
and then they had to fly him out there.
They were sort of announcing on stage, Bob's progress,
so they were like "Monsieur Bob has arrived at the airport."
They called him Monsieur Bob.
And then they were like, 10 minutes later,
"Monsieur Bob is on the car."
And then 10 minutes later,
"Monsieur Bob is on the quaset."
And the audience would clap,
it was like Bob was the star of the show.
Well, at the time Bob arrived,
the whole place was standing up.
It was an absolutely lovely evening,
and what Cannes set off for Bob
was this sort of avalanche of nominations and awards.
And I had done "The Killing Fields",
and I showed "Withnail and I"
to an old friend of mine in L.A.,
and I said I'd love to get this made.
We took the script into HandMade,
where Denis sort of spat on it and handed it back,
but Ray Cooper, he read it and loved it,
and gave it to George who was flying to New York that night,
and George read it on the plane,
arrived in New York, phoned Ray up,
and said "We're making this."
And so Denis was overridden.
It was a funny story,
and we tend to do things which
other companies don't do,
because first of all,
they're not really that commercial,
and yet, I think if something's really good,
it deserves to be made.
Have you got soup?
Why didn't I get any soup?
Coffee.
Why don't you use a cup like any other human being?
Why don't you wash up occasionally
like any other human being?
How dare you!
How dare you call me inhumane.
I didn't call you inhumane.
You merely imagined it, calm down.
Right, you fucker.
I'm gonna do the washing up.
No, no, you can't!
It's impossible, I swear!
I've looked into it.
Listen to me, listen to me!
There are things in there,
there's a teabag growing!
And you haven't slept in 60 hours,
you're in no state to tackle it.
Wait 'til the morning, we'll go in together.
This is the morning!
Stand aside.
Okay.
My agent at the time was Michael Whitehall,
and he called me up,
and I'd only been with him, I think, for two months.
And he said, "I've read this script,
"the people in the office think it's quite funny,
"and it has an unpronounceable title."
The reason I call him Fatty Grand,
and still do call him Fatty,
when he came in for the job,
he was like a porky, 50s face,
Dirk Bogarde, but very porky Dirk Bogarde,
who was clearly pretty desperate to work.
He said, "Can you read the first page
"of the kitchen scene?"
It came to a line where Withnail says
"Fork it!" about matter that's growing out
of the kitchen sink.
I had the script in one hand,
and with this had an imaginary fork in my hand,
and I went...
"Fork it!"
Like that, and threw the script at me.
And he said, "Have you ever attacked
"any other directors before?"
And I said, "No, not yet."
And I thought, Christ, you've got that line
so 100% right.
If you can do that, you can do the rest,
so you got the part.
But I knew that if I got this part,
it would literally change my life,
and when I did get it, it did.
Keep back, keep back.
The entire sink's gone rotten.
I don't know what's in here.
Ah, ah!
I told you, you've been bitten!
Burned, burned, the fucking kettle's on fire!
There's something floating up.
Fork it!
Slate one.
My audition for it was in Kensington,
and I was like an hour early.
I was all gypsyish and nail varnished up
and stuff like that,
but I had the script.
And my first line is,
"You're looking very beautiful today, man."
And I just thought, right,
you're looking very beautiful today, man.
And I was like, no,
you're looking very beautiful today, man.
I was like, no, I honestly said that one line to myself
over and over again for an hour,
until I said...
You're looking very beautiful, man.
Have you been away?
I was like yeah, that's it, just that line.
And I always attribute that to why I got cast.
It was my first movie, and Richard's, and Paul's,
and Bruce's.
And so...
Nobody knew what the fuck they were doing.
Suddenly I'm up a hill with 80 people,
you know, not knowing my ass from my elbow
as a film director.
I know Bruce got up on a little stool on his first day
which was somewhere in the Late District,
and said, "Hello, I'm Bruce Robinson."
"I know nothing, you all know about
"camera moves and lenses."
He said, "I'm not gonna be one of those
"who walks around going, you know,
"give me a 50, give ma 35 on this."
He said, "I'm not gonna do any of that,
"because I don't know."
"So any help you give me will be gratefully received,
"thank you very much."
And everyone just went like that,
and it was just the best thing he could've done.
Which made everybody feel that
they were prat of a team.
Stop, please, please stop!
Please, stop.
Are you the farmer?
Shut up, I'll deal with this!
We've gone on holiday by mistake.
We're in this cottage here.
Are you the farmer?
Stop saying that, Withnail.
Of course he's the fucking farmer!
The thing about making movies is that
no matter how good the weather is to you,
how good the crew is, how good the script is,
how good the actors are, how good you are,
if you haven't got luck, you're fucked, you know?
And "Withnail" is the only thing I think
I've ever done in my life where we had luck.
First day of filming was on a Monday,
and the generator broke down,
so that was a delay.
Then Denis O'Brien, one of the producers,
announced that we were over-schedule already,
the title had to be changed.
It seemed like everything that could go wrong
the first day was dooming us.
There's two of them here, look.
I knew I was getting what I wanted.
I absolutely knew that what we were doing was right,
and here comes Denis, he hates everything to do with it.
It just isn't funny,
"There's nothing funny in it."
He was awful to this film,
he thought it was funny as bloody lung cancer,
you know, he hated everything about it.
Then I said, "All right, fuck it,
"get somebody else, I'm off."
You know, I do it the way I'm gonna do it
or I'm not doing it,
what do you want me to do?
And I literally did say "Where's the bus?"
And I nearly had a thrombosis.
I said, you can't, I've told everybody.
"It's my only chance to be in a film,
"I'll never be in another in my whole life,
"I've told..."
'Cause it's his only job since 1956.
And he said "Oh, just calm down, I'm grandstanding."
So he called Denis O'Brien's bluff on this.
Ray Cooper, who was up there,
got ahold of Denis, and walked him round the block
on this mountainside.
It was muddy and sloshy and everything else,
and I don't think Denis was very comfortable
in that environment particularly.
With George behind me, I could stand my ground,
probably knowing that Denis could've fired me
and then George would've re-established me the next day.
And he came back here and he said,
"Okay, okay, I'm off."
It immediately galvanized us into a kind of
us against the bad authoritarian ogre,
Denis O'Brien looming over you.
I must have some booze.
I demand to have some booze!
I wouldn't drink that if I was you.
Why not, why not?
Because I don't advise it.
Even the wankers on the site wouldn't drink that,
that's worse than meths.
Nonsense!
This is a far superior drink to meths.
The wankers don't drink it
because they can't afford it.
Have we got anymore?
Liar, what's in your toolbox?
No, we have nothing.
Sit down.
Liar!
You've got antifreeze.
You bloody fool.
You should never mix your drinks!
I knew that the film was the story I had in my head,
and we couldn't get a release on it.
And finally, they did get a release,
and I think it only played for a couple of weeks
and vanished, and that was it.
The whole cult thing of it
didn't happen for a good 10 years after release.
It was like the mid-90s when it started
picking up steam, started getting passed around colleges.
It became this film that was a rites of passage.
You had to go to university, get pissed,
eat a curry, and watch "Withnail and I", you know?
Very weird.
I think Bruce has immodestly thought
he's written a masterpiece,
and directed a masterpiece,
and I don't think there's any change
in that sensibility or viewpoint of his.
And people keep telling him so.
We went out one night in London,
me and Bruce were absolutely assholed drunk,
and we was out on the pavement at one point
having a joint, and Bruce said,
"I don't care what the fuckers do to us,
"we'll always have "Withnail", Ralph!"
And he fucking meant it.
Because he kinda knew that that was gonna be it.
You know?
And that he would then have to have a career
for the next 25 years,
but that was gonna be it.
Yeah.
And what's your ambition for HandMade now?
HandMade?
I don't have many ambitions at all,
not for HandMade, not for anything really.
I think ambition is something
you have to try and get rid of.
As time went on of course,
and the business got bigger,
we were moving into transatlantic filmmaking.
Certainly, one cannot make films today
without being aware of eventual
exploitation in the United States.
And I don't know if this didn't
have a lot to do with that.
George became uneasy as it got bigger
because that wasn't the philosophy.
They seemed to go off the rails a bit.
They were pushing into Hollywood without talent.
Without the ideas, or the risks that they took.
It got too big, perhaps,
and really didn't take George with it.
In my talks with him, I'd say,
"Well, we're doing this in America."
And he would say, "Why?"
I said "Well, I don't know actually, George.
"And I've read the script,
"and I really don't know what we're doing,
"but there must be a good reason for doing it,
"there must be a business reason for doing it."
Which is actually not the right reason to do it.
I think it only makes good sense for us
to diversify our portfolio,
and to take on as many different things as we can.
I think we can still play a contribution
to the film business by going to the States.
I mean, I think we should be open enough,
and certainly geographically open
to go wherever it makes sense for us.
I tried to figure out a way
to do "Powwow Highway" completely independently.
I put together pieces of money,
so I contacted HandMade, I got a response from Denis O'Brien
to say they are very interested in the project,
and meet him at the Bel-Air Hotel next week
to discuss HandMade making the movie.
And I went "Holy shit!".
♪ Well, it's all right ♪
♪ Riding around ♪
Island had "Checking Out",
but it got then passed on to HandMade.
I guess the honeymoon period of that
was meeting Denis and being taken out to dinner,
and how HandMade could best facilitate the film.
On the surface, "Powwow Highway" is a story
about Buddy Red Bow gets a call from his sister
who's been setup in a marijuana bust
to come and get her and her kids.
He and his buddy, Philbert, who has a car,
travel down to Santa Fe and manage to solve the problem.
Jeff Daniels plays a junior exec
for Bonair, an airline company,
and a senior exec in that company played by Allan Havey,
has a heart attack and dies.
This eventually released the hypochondriac in Daniels
and he becomes convinced that maybe he's next in line.
So, it's about panic attacks,
it's about what he goes through
and how that disrupts the whole family.
The fact that it was about two Native people
in a context which had not been tackled before
made me very excited.
Well, I was astonished when I read the script.
Stories like this just don't get told very often,
especially back then.
You know, you're talking close to 30 years ago.
In the United States, it was kind of groundbreaking
in that way.
But a lot of people seemed to be still surprised
at the exploitation that is like
the daily reality of people who live on reserves, you know.
We were filming a sequence in heaven,
the reception for heaven we filmed at Union Station
in Los Angeles, and George was there on that day.
And he said, "Ah, come on, I want to be in the film,
"I want to be in the film."
So, there's this character in the background
who is mopping the floor, and that's George.
I don't think anybody...
And if they didn't know, they wouldn't know it was George,
but he's in the shot.
I had not had any contact with HandMade
during the shooting of the film.
They left us alone until we got into the cutting room.
I don't remember getting notes or anything
to tell me how to shoot and make the film.
That only started when we were cutting the film,
when we started editing.
Shortly before we got done,
producer Jan Wieringa got a call from Denis O'Brien
to say, "You need to send me a VHS copy of the film.
"I will sit down with my editor,
"and let you know what changes you need to make."
So, a VHS copy was shipped off to London,
and then we get notes back,
saying, with a list of all the changes to be made.
There was a lot of discussion
that turned into arguments that I had with Denis O'Brien.
He suggested the cut for a particular scene or scenes,
and I said "I've tried that, I don't think that works."
He would wag his finger.
And I said, "Well, how do you know?"
He said, "Oh, because I've cut it,
"and I know it works, and that's what you should do."
And that's when I realized
he had his own cutting room in London.
I looked at this thing,
and the first cut was like so absurd and so wrong.
I called the producer over and I said,
"Jan, I can't make this cut,
"it just doesn't make any sense."
And we didn't get back to them,
he just assumed that this was what would happen.
That led to a lot of conflict,
but I didn't involve George in that.
I didn't want that to spoil the friendship
that I had with George.
And it wasn't until one day
I got a phone call from Denis O'Brien,
it was at least an hour on the phone arguing,
a fiery argument with O'Brien,
that Olivia, George's wife Olivia
overheard the conversation at the end of the phone call.
She said, "What was all that about?"
And I explained, and she said,
"Does George know about this?'
And I said, "No, she doesn't know anything about this."
And she said, "Well, George must know."
And she then told him.
So then we get a call to say
that Denis is coming to town,
and he wants to see the film.
Okay.
So, we're all kinda like, hm,
this is gonna be interesting.
And you know, set it up,
we went into this screening room,
and lo and behold, you know,
Denis comes in, followed by George,
and we sat down and George said,
"Well, let's take a look."
We rolled the film, and I knew exactly
where all the places were,
and as we sort of got to one of those places,
I sort you know, waited for some response.
Nothing.
Got to another place, nothing.
And the film ended,
George immediately started clapping,
he just sat in his seat and clapped,
and his wife clapped, and he got up,
and he turned to me and he said
"Great, don't change a thing."
And Denis, who was sitting further down,
got up and just walked out of the room.
You know, cold, out of the room.
Never heard from the guy again,
never saw the guy again, that was it.
You know, I'm not interested in telling
somebody what to do.
It's like, what's the point
of having a bass player on a session
and then telling him what to do?
I'd rather keep away from that side.
And that culminated in a screening
of Denis's cut to which George arrived
right on the end of an awful emotional dilemma,
and he sat down next to me before the screening.
He said, "I don't know what to do about this.
"If this doesn't work, it's gonna cost me
"at least a million."
And that was clearly as a result
of whatever discussion or pressure
that had been put on him by Denis O'Brien,
to get his cut of the film
as opposed to the director's cut.
George actually said,
"I don't think it's as good,
"but I don't know what else we can do."
You know, there's always this battle
between the artists and the money people,
and I don't particularly like being the money.
The first thing we did actually,
is we tried to get it into Sundance, and we did,
it was accepted into Sundance.
And yeah, and then they announced that the film
had won the Filmmaker's Trophy.
Sundance was great, and it kind of put us on the map,
and then Denis sold the film to Warner Brothers,
and they blew it.
Warner Brothers played it for one week,
you know, obviously in, I don't know,
some suburb of St. Louis, Missouri,
nobody was gonna go and watch the movie,
and then they pulled it.
When it was all finished and locked,
Jeff Daniels summed it up.
He said, "Well, I think we made a good film,
"you think we made a good film,
"but somewhere between us making it,
"and them showing it, it got fucked."
As it went on, and Denis became more convinced
of his creative skills,
his creative skills were financial, and legal.
They weren't creative in what we did, artistic.
Denis, certainly, I know he's got the wrong nature
to understand watching a film
over and over again.
One of the gifts of being an editor
is if you can, remember what was funny.
Because it's not funny after the fifth of, or,
to me, or 500th viewing.
I remember, he watched something,
he laughed all the way through it.
Next time we ran it, I had changed something,
and that was the only place he laughed.
He was only interested in what was new
that made him laugh.
In the early days, there were discussions,
but they were collaborative, everyone.
You know, Denis could have a say,
or your ideas were put onto a table,
and given a fair shake.
But then it becomes this is what we want,
this is not a suggestion,
this is actually what we want.
I really don't think that Denis
ever had a bad intention, you know,
I just think he really wanted to build a company.
None of this would've existed
if Denis wasn't around,
but maybe it went too far.
George didn't mind if a film was a flop.
What he was unhappy with,
people that he had a great deal of respect for
in the artistic world coming in,
and then sending them out of the door unhappy
with their experience.
Because after all, I mean, George and Denis were partners,
but it was George Harrison, he was the name.
So how would you account
for HandMade's success?
Has it been successful?
It's done all right, 10 years, George, 18 films.
I think that's the main criteria for its success,
is the fact that it's still here now.
But, you know, have a look at my bank balance.
It's not really that successful.
These films were costing too much,
and they're just not going anywhere.
The key question was like,
how can you afford it?
How can you afford making all these movies
and not making any money back on them?
At some point, these things implode.
All that we knew was that HandMade needed
an injection of capital,
they needed a deal to put them back on their feet.
As far as I'm concerned,
it's just the risk that's involved,
the amount of money and the nerveracking experience
of wondering if you're ever gonna
be able to pay the bank back.
And if they were put back on their feet,
then they needed to re-think their creative strategy
in order to get talent back on board.
Leading up to the 10th anniversary party...
George was very unhappy with the whole situation.
He wasn't very pleased,
he was showing his disenchantment
with what was going on.
I don't see any big mystique
about the film business, in fact,
I don't really think the film business
is all it's cracked up to be, really.
I've been asked to explain why
we're all here at Shepperton.
We're here, of course, to celebrate
10 years of HandMade Films.
So many of you may not be aware of it,
the real founder of HandMade Films
is sadly not with us tonight.
I refer of course, to Sir Bernard Delfont.
Known to his friends as "Sir".
Be it was, one spring morning in 1978,
decided on an impulse to read one of the scripts
this company was filming.
Something which George has never done.
Anyway, Sir didn't like what he read.
It was called "The Life of Brian",
and he thought it blasphemous.
I was given the job of making a speech
to celebrate 10 years of HandMade Films,
and you know, you meet so many interactions
within the company, within the organization,
and the stresses and strains were definitely there.
It was not an absolutely easy to thing to do.
But to know that one of the driving forces
behind the company is someone who knows
all about the trials and tribulations
of showbiz from the artist's point of view,
is actually one of the great attractions
of working for HandMade.
And then George's speech,
which I really thought that was terrific, what he did.
Got my speech here.
Thank you all for coming, now fuck off.
How shall we fuck off?
Oh, yes.
Just fuck off, I don't care,
just get out of here.
Anyway, I'd like to thank all the staff you see,
because all the cripples who work
in those little boxes for tons of months.
When they get home, Denis dances up and down
on their graveyard singing "Hallelujah".
Especially Ray.
I think it was a wake.
I think it was a wake, but it was fun,
it was a fun wake.
I'd like to thank the Pythons
for getting me into all this mess,
another fine mess you got me into.
But really, I love them so much,
they'd be embarrassed if they ever realized.
It felt like the end of something.
You know, feeling that this was an elegy.
Very well, that'll be all,
and it's a pleasure to pretend to be in the film business
in this stupid life.
The cartoon world we're living in.
After the HandMade party,
everybody started seeing the separation happening.
You know, George was not enjoying himself anymore.
"Nuns on the Run" was one last glimpse
of HandMade Films, you know, so.
Like, it was great to be involved with a film
that actually was fun.
Just hold it up, is that in the right place?
The idea of the plot is that these two criminals
work for a gang when they're stealing money
from a rival gang.
They decide instead of giving it to the boss,
they're gonna go off with it themselves.
It all misfires, and then a chase,
and in a hail of bullets,
they run into the nearest building
which turns out to be a convent.
They realize that if they put on nun's habits
they can lie low,
as long as they can get away with it.
♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ♪
And so I sent it to Eric,
and said would you like to do this with Michael Palin?
Well, Eric said he would.
Michael Palin passed, but Eric suggested Robbie Coltrane,
and I thought Robbie was a brilliant idea,
and Robbie liked it,
so then we said what do we do
about getting us financed?
So, Eric said, "Well, I'll give it to my friend George."
And I knew they were friends.
But you know, I'm friends with lots of people,
but most of them won't give me three million quid
if I ask for it.
And George said, "Yeah."
Explain the Trinity.
Well, it's a bit of a bugger.
It was a big success in America
in terms of the critics,
and it would've been a huge box office success
but for one thing that nobody reckoned on.
We had a limited opening for two weeks
and a few screens, and amazing reviews.
And then they said,
"We're going to expand it to a large
"number of screens next week."
And I said, "Oh great, what are we competing against?"
They said, "Nothing, nothing at all,
"there's just this children's film called
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles",
"nobody's gonna go see that."
Unfortunately, everybody went to see that.
It was a colossal hit.
So, we didn't do so well when we expanded.
Let me try and summarize this.
God is his son, and his son is God,
but his son moonlights as a holy ghost,
a holy spirit, and a dove,
and they all sent each other,
even though they're all one in the same thing.
Got it.
What?
You really could be a nun.
Thanks.
Wait a minute.
What I said, does that make any sense to you?
Well, no.
No, and it makes no sense to anybody.
That's why you have to believe it,
that's why you have to have faith.
I mean if it made sense,
it wouldn't have to be a religion, would it?
"Nuns on the Run", yeah.
It was a nice film.
I suppose I'd look at it,
because it was the last film
I was involved in,
but it's the last film that HandMade made
under George's regime.
I almost lost sense that this was a HandMade film.
And it was a HandMade film in the old sense,
but it didn't feel like it,
but it just was this cloud over HandMade at that point.
It must've been in the early 1990s,
I think George told me that HandMade
was gonna be closed down.
The first thing I say about HandMade
is it wasn't a failure, it was a success,
which like all independent production companies,
without exception,
there isn't a single exception to this rule,
neither here nor in the States
that lives beyond a certain lifespan.
10 or 11 years is good enough, you know?
And I would say they were successful.
They ran out of money, they ran out of road.
Well, that happens to all of them.
It would've been nice to think
that we could've remained small.
That would've been the perfect HandMade Films.
Making you know, one or two films a year,
but gems that people would put in their back pocket
and always want to see again and again.
If you analyze the output of HandMade over 11 years,
I think you would say that the talent quotient decreased,
and the enterprise quotient kind of had to increase,
and the fortunes of the company suffered.
But at least films got made,
and I can't think of any other period
in British filmmaking which was quite so rich.
It's a kind of signature, HandMade Films
to me was a signature,
this is gonna be quality stuff,
this is gonna be interesting stuff.
It's gonna be breaking barriers.
George understood passion.
If he was here today, and I wish he was,
he'd be listening to your stories,
and if he thought that
you're absolutely passionate about something,
your dream would come true,
he would make it come true.
Without HandMade, very few of the films
that the all of us here tonight have made
would ever have happened.
I ask you to raise your glasses,
or contact lenses if you wear them.
Drink a toast to HandMade Films.
HandMade films.
Cheers, everybody.
Chin chin.
And that's it, really.
End of story.
My favorite HandMade film and why...
Um...
"The Long Good Friday".
My favorite HandMade film?
"The Long Good Friday".
Because I love that Genre.
Start shooting us, Harold.
Oh, don't be silly.
When I come running for you with me fingers.
My favorite HandMade film
is the first one they made, "Life of Brian", I think.
What have the Romans ever done for us?
World peace.
What?
Peace?
Oh, shut up!
I love "Mona Lisa", I thought "Mona Lisa"
was absolutely wonderful.
Well, what do you do?
Melt it down and eat it?
No, they're ornamental, George.
Ornamental spaghetti?
I loved "The Long Good Friday",
and "Time Bandits".
Do you want to be leader of this gang?
No!
We agreed no leader.
Right, so shut up and do as I say.
"Private Function" is the funniest
of the HandMade films.
I liked "Private Function".
I can put the hounds on two turkeys in Bradford.
Two?
We have got 150 people coming,
and Jesus isn't one of them.
"Mona Lisa" I like, because Bob Hoskins
is in that, wasn't he?
"Long Good Friday" is my favorite,
and I loved the last shot
of Bob Hoskins driven off to his impending death
at the hands of the IRA,
and it's probably Bob's finest moment.
"Shanghai Surprise" was one of the
worst things I've ever seen.
I mean, that was abomination.
And of course, "Withnail and I".
I think it's "Withnail and I".
It's just absolutely iconoclastically a brilliant movie.
I have a heart condition,
if you hit me, it's murder.
The performance of Richard E. Grant,
and just everything about "Withnail" actually
was just fantastic,
and it was a great movie.
I'm gonna be a star!
HandMade made that movie.
♪ So you take me, maybe, sure ♪