Very Naughty Boys [EBK]
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John Kelleher agrees. ‘A lot of us who worked there just thought that there was this fantastic opportunity and amazing people around and amazing material and Denis always seemed to take the wrong option. Having lucked out with his first two movies, he almost got nothing right after that. The more Denis got involved in the making of the films, the more they went downhill. He understood the deals, but I don’t think he understood the movies. But you have to give Denis some credit. If it weren’t for him, I suppose some of those terrific films wouldn’t exist. You can’t knock him completely.’
Or perhaps you can, especially when your name is Stephen Woolley. ‘I think Denis was in a position he shouldn’t have been in. He was like so many people who find themselves in a position of responsibility and power without the experience of what they’re doing. Denis could have been making cheese or been bottling champagne. Denis likes making money. If you’re making money out of sweat shops in Korea or making jeans, after a while you think you’re a fashion designer. Denis had this fantasy that he was a film producer, that he actually knew something about films, and because of his power, because of his access to money, people would allow that fantasy to flourish. I would describe HandMade as a dysfunctional company. The great thing about them was George and Ray, they were fantastically smart, funny and tasteful people who understood other artists. The downside was that you had an accountant running the business and, as anyone will tell you in Hollywood, once it’s in the hands of the lawyers and accountants, the creativity stops flowing.’
Perhaps it wasn’t just ego but O’Brien’s paranoia that stifled the company out of existence. ‘I just thought, what a pity,’ Steve Abbott says, ‘he could have had everything, he could have had something really good but he alienated a lot of people, he wanted to control absolutely everything, so he ended up disillusioning his clients and, over the years, disillusioning very good staff. I suppose Denis was probably paranoid. He wanted control where perversely he could’ve got more by just easing off a bit, certainly in terms of the people in his kingdom. It would have been a great organisation but it foundered and it was always Denis refusing to yield any of the power. It’s such a bloody shame. He had the intelligence, he had the ambition and the foresight and blew it all. He wouldn’t ultimately trust people. I suspect if he had his time again, he’d probably be more paranoid. He’d be worried that too much information was available to enquiring minds in the office like John Reiss.’
But despite the horror stories, the cock-ups, the rows, the betrayals, everything, in fact, that would make for a damn good TV mini-series, HandMade is looked back on almost uniformly with massive fondness and nostalgia. Robbie Coltrane suggests, ‘HandMade produced a lot of good films and with Channel 4 was responsible for a renaissance of low(ish)-budget British filmmaking. There was a sense that they were a spearhead for a lot of talent whose Time Had Come.’
Richard Griffiths is another who looks back on his time with HandMade with great affection. ‘I thought they were wonderful. They were just so brave and daring. They didn’t have big resources or deep pockets, but they would try. And George Harrison, I felt so sorry for him because it was his free-spiritedness that allowed all that work to happen. I felt mostly for him and I just think he was stabbed in the back. Denis particularly fucked him up. And then the Cannon people should have been just put against the wall and shot.
‘It seemed to me, George got nothing out of it except the opportunity to give all these wonderful people the chance to work. I think HandMade was the most important company in the second half of the twentieth century of British cinema.’
Ray Cooper has the last word. ‘Not that George would have wanted it, but I would love to, at long last, have HandMade placed in its rightful position in film history. For me, it played a significant part in redefining what a British film could be... it’s something that happens maybe once every other decade, where great writing, great performances and great film-making all come together to suddenly represent a film that, although is British in its essence, is acceptable in Europe and America. George was very happy with what went on in the early days at HandMade. He was very proud of his films, very proud of Withnail and I, of all the formative films. We didn’t often talk about HandMade afterwards, but if we ever did, it was only in reference to those good years. And he always asked very lovingly after Bruce Robinson and Terry Gilliam... he always asked after his mates.’
After all, that’s how it all began. George Harrison didn’t have to get involved, but HandMade was his vision, his dream, his passion... to help his mates.
POSTSCRIPT
George Harrison died on 29th November 2001 after losing his battle against cancer; he’d been ill for some time. He was 58. Over the course of writing this book I attempted on numerous occasions to contact George for an interview. I encountered a wall of silence, unsurprisingly, from official channels of communication, agents, press people, record companies, etc. Finally I persuaded Ray Cooper, who was still very close to the ex-Beatle, to talk to George on my behalf. It worked, I had a dialogue, of sorts, with the man himself, with Ray acting as my spirited go-between. The music legend’s response to my request for help with the book was, however, disappointing, but somehow typical of the man, given his modest and reclusive nature. He didn’t want to be interviewed. One sensed a reluctance to revisit what were still painful memories. But there was something else, a genuine bemusement as to why I was asking for his participation: “What the bloody hell does he want to talk to me for?” I remember saying to Ray, “Is he kidding? He is rather an important element of the story.”
In the end George agreed to read the manuscript once it was completed and to make any comments that he wished. Alas, this was not to be.
Since the first publication of this book early in 2003 HandMade has continued to exist as a film company, but has totally lost its unique identity. Any hope of recapturing its past glories has failed dismally. The new management took great store in their acquisition of the rights to the children’s fictional character Eloise, the six-year-old protagonist in a series of books written in the 1950s by Kay Thompson, but the results were two unmemorable TV movies in 2003 for the Disney Channel starring Julie Andrews. A proposed feature film, Eloise in Paris starring Uma Thurman and Pierce Brosnan, has so far not materialised.
In 2006, HandMade became a public limited company and with new funds embarked on several co-productions: Highlander: The Source (2007), the fifth instalment of the franchise; the Ellen Burstyn drama The Stone Angel (2007), a totally misguided big screen version of the 1970s children’s TV series Tales of the Riverbank (2008), featuring a host of Brit comedy vocal talent such as Steve Coogan, Miranda Hart and Stephen Fry; Fifty Dead Men Walking (2008), an IRA thriller starring Ben Kingsley; Cracks (2009), a drama set in a strict boarding school with Eva Green and directed by Jordan Scott, daughter of Ridley; and the animation fantasy Planet 51, featuring the voices of past HandMade alumni John Cleese and Gary Oldman. Amongst this hotchpotch of movies were a few critical successes and there were some interesting projects in development, too, such as Hadrian, an epic story of the Roman emperor to be directed by John Boorman, and a biopic of Salvador Dali. Neither of these have seen daylight.
In late 2009, HandMade raised £17 million to pay down debts and to start a new business known as HandMade Kids division. The intention was to tap into the lucrative children’s television and merchandise market and to this end a rather uninspiring deal was broached with Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, to turn her storybook characters into TV stars. Also announced were plans for a documentary series presented by the duchess, retracing the journeys of great women explorers. It was all a far cry from the days of Life of Brian and Time Bandits.
By early 2010 there was deepening confusion over the future of HandMade when it requested that trading in its shares be suspended because of uncertainty over its financial position. It was an all too familiar story, since HandMade had been plagued by problems during its time on the public market
s. In 2008 its shares were suspended because of delays publishing results, a situation replicated in 2009. But the repercussions this time were severe, when three directors resigned from the board, including CEO Patrick Meehan on grounds of ill health.
Listing like a torpedoed battleship, HandMade was ripe for another takeover and in July an offer came in from Jersey-based investment group Horizon Media to buy it for £6.1 million. The company delisted themselves from the London Stock Exchange and re-registered as a private limited company. Once again the new management hoped to recapture past glories by remaking some of HandMade’s most acclaimed films. In the pipeline since 2007 has been a remake of The Long Good Friday, to be directed by Paul W S Anderson of Resident Evil fame and set in Miami. A reimagining of Mona Lisa has been in the planning stages since 2009, with the action shifted to New York under the direction of Larry Clark and featuring Mickey Rourke in the Bob Hoskins role and Eva Green playing the prostitute.
Both projects sound interesting and have real potential, but one can’t help feeling a lack of imagination at play here, rather like if The Beatles got back together and instead of releasing new material simply went back and re-recorded The White Album. What’s the point, really. Well, the point is a very simple one. Over the years the crown jewels in the HandMade film library have become bona fide classics of British cinema and internationally well known and revered. In other words, they’re ripe for exploitation by those who had nothing to do whatsoever with their creation.
In 1999 the British Film Institute surveyed 1,000 people working and performing in the British movie industry to compile a list of the 100 greatest British films. Four HandMade pictures feature, three of which make the top 30. Mona Lisa ranks at number 67, Withnail and I is 29th, Life of Brian is 28th and The Long Good Friday is 21st.
More recently, in 2012, Empire magazine compiled its own list of the 100 top British films. Again HandMade was well represented, this time with two of its films featuring in the top ten. The Long Good Friday was 19th, Withnail and I was 10th, while Life of Brian was 2nd, beaten only by Lawrence of Arabia. This is some achievement, and everyone who worked for HandMade during that golden period should take enormous pride in it. HandMade wasn’t just at the vanguard of a renaissance of British movie-making in the 1980s, far more significantly, it left a lasting cultural legacy. Not since the days of Ealing Studios and those wonderful classics like The Ladykillers and Kind Hearts and Coronets did an independent film company produce a body of work that was so intrinsically British, English almost. It will never be repeated. I just hope in some small way my book can stand as a testament to what was a wonderfully creative and mad period that, once all the dust settled and the lies, the bitterness and the betrayals were forgotten, left us with some of British cinema’s most enduring celluloid memories.
HANDMADE FILMOGRAPHY
MONTY PYTHON’S LIFE OF BRIAN (1979)
Director
Terry Jones.
Producer
John Goldstone.
Screenplay
Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.
Cast
Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Carol Cleveland, Ken Colley, Gwen Taylor, Charles McKeowan, Neil Innes, Chris Langham, Spike Milligan, George Harrison.
Running Time
93 minutes.
THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY (1980)
Director
John Mackenzie.
Producer
Barry Hanson.
Screenplay
Barrie Keefe.
Cast
Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, Dave King, Bryan Marshall, Derek Thompson, Eddie Constantine, Pierce Brosnan, Paul Freeman.
Running Time
105 minutes.
TIME BANDITS (1981)
Director
Terry Gilliam.
Producer
Terry Gilliam.
Screenplay
Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin.
Cast
John Cleese, Sean Connery, Shelley Duvall, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Michael Palin, Ralph Richardson, David Warner, Peter Vaughn, Craig Warnock, David Rappaport, Jim Broadbent.
Running Time 113 minutes.
MONTY PYTHON LIVE AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL (1982)
Director
Terry Hughes.
Producer
Terry Hughes.
Screenplay
Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin.
Cast
Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Carol Cleveland, Neil Innes.
Running Time
11 minutes.
SCRUBBERS (1982)
Director
Mai Zetterling.
Producer
Don Boyd.
Screenplay
Roy Minton and Mai Zetterling.
Cast
Amanda York, Chrissie Cotterill, Elizabeth Edmonds, Honey Bane, Kathy Burke, Robbie Coltrane, Dana Gillespie, Pam St. Clement.
Running Time
93 minutes.
THE MISSIONARY (1982)
Director
Richard Loneraine.
Producer
Neville C. Thompson and Michael Palin.
Screenplay
Michael Palin.
Cast
Michael Palin, Maggie Smith, Trevor Howard, Denholm Elliott, Graham Crowden, David Suchet, Michael Hordern, Phoebe Nicholls, Timothy Spall, Neil Innes, Frances Barber, David Leland.
Running Time
86 minutes.
PRIVATES ON PARADE (1982)
Director
Michael Blakemore.
Producer
Simon Relph.
Screenplay
Peter Nichols, based upon his own play.
Cast
John Cleese, Denis Quilley, Michael Elphick, Joe Melia, Nicola Pagett, John Standing, Simon Jones, Neil Pearson, Julian Sands.
Running Time
113 minutes.
BULLSHOT (1983)
Director
Dick Clement.
Producer
Ian La Frenais.
Screenplay
Ron House, Alan Shearman and Diz White.
Cast
Alan Shearman, Diz White, Ron House, Frances Tomelty, Michael Aldridge, Mel Smith, Billy Connolly, Geoffrey Bayldon, Ray Cooper, Nicolas Lyndhurst.
Running Time
88 minutes.
A PRIVATE FUNCTION (1984)
Director
Malcolm Mowbray.
Producer
Mark Shivas.
Screenplay
Alan Bennett.
Cast
Michael Palin, Maggie Smith, Denholm Elliott, Richard Griffiths, Tony Haygrath, Bill Paterson, Liz Smith, Alison Steadman, Jim Carter, Pete Postlethwaite, Don Estelle.
Running Time
94 minutes.
WATER (1984)
Director
Dick Clement.
Producer
Ian La Frenais.
Screenplay
Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais and Bill Bersky.
Cast
Michael Caine, Valerie Perrine, Brenda Vaccaro, Leonard Rossiter, Billy Connolly, Fred Gwynne, Maureen Lipman.
Running Time
95 minutes.
MONA LISA (1986)
Director
Neil Jordan.
Producer
Stephen Woolley and Patrick Cassavetti.
Screenplay
Neil Jordan and David Leland.
Cast
Bob Hoskins, Cathy Tyson, Michael Caine, Robbie Coltrane, Clarke Peters, Sammi Davis.
Running Time
104 minutes.
SHANGHAI SURPRISE (1986)
Director
Jim Goddard.
&nb
sp; Producer
John Kohn.
Screenplay
John Kohn and Robert Bentley.
Cast
Madonna, Sean Penn, Paul Freeman, Richard Griffiths.
Running Time
97 minutes.
WITHNAIL AND I (1987)
Director
Bruce Robinson.
Producer
Paul Heller.
Screenplay
Bruce Robinson.
Cast
Richard E. Grant, Paul McGann, Richard Griffiths, Ralph Brown, Michael Elphick.
Running Time
108 minutes.
BELLMAN AND TRUE (1987)