British Image In British Cinema

[DB7]

Originally posted by Wetherby Pond@May 7 2005, 09:56 AM The great thing about Walker was that he wasn't afraid to be contrary and combative -

Or just plain senile. His diatribe at Fight Club and many other modern films was more OTT than the majority of Mary Whitehouse's outbursts. His judgement of British film was similarly flawed and ignoring distribution difficulties judged solely on box-office takings; which if applied to Men in Black makes it a cinematic masterpiece.

[Steve Crook]

Originally posted by DB7@May 7 2005, 11:59 AM Or just plain senile. His diatribe at Fight Club and many other modern films was more OTT than the majority of Mary Whitehouse's outbursts. His judgement of British film was similarly flawed and ignoring distribution difficulties judged solely on box-office takings; which if applied to Men in Black makes it a cinematic masterpiece.

I think he discovered senility at quite a young age.

Steve

[Wetherby Pond]

Originally posted by DB7@May 7 2005, 11:59 AM Or just plain senile. His diatribe at Fight Club and many other modern films was more OTT than the majority of Mary Whitehouse's outbursts. His judgement of British film was similarly flawed and ignoring distribution difficulties judged solely on box-office takings; which if applied to Men in Black makes it a cinematic masterpiece.

I don't have copies to hand to check, but I distinctly recall his reviews of Ratcatcher and Sixth Happiness giving the lie to that accusation. Both proved that he was quite happy to champion Lottery-backed films if he felt they were actually worth making - even if, as in both those cases, they clearly weren't going to set the box office alight.

But I think you're misrepresenting his main argument: he wasn't concerned so much with box office as with the fact that easy access to finance through the Lottery and tax-avoidance schemes meant that too many British filmmakers became financially irresponsible. They poured all their resources into production while skimping on the boring but nonetheless critical areas of development, distribution and marketing - which financiers didn't care about because all they were interested in was an efficient tax dodge that they could sell to their investors (who, likewise, couldn't care less if their money was going into a film or a widget factory).

Walker's concern was that because the need for box-office accountability was being lessened (or even eliminated), the amount of self-indulgent dreck being turned out by British filmmakers was going through the roof. And by "self-indulgent dreck", I don't mean navel-gazing arthouse product - I mean films that are squarely aimed at the commercial sector, but made by people who don't have the faintest idea about what the market is actually after, because they're too busy posing in Raybans pretending to be the next Tarantino.

You talk about "distribution difficulties", but in my experience if a film is any good to begin with, it will find a distributor with relatively little hassle - I spent several years working in this field and vividly recall the soul-destroying round of film market screenings where I'd have to watch fifty pieces of literally unreleasable shite in order to find one potentially marketable gem. Distribution is certainly a problem in Britain that urgently needs addressing, but it's inextricably linked with the fact that too many filmmakers simply aren't developing their projects properly before they pass the point of no return - they think two script drafts over six months is enough, whereas twenty drafts over six years is much more realistic.

Most critics of the British film industry assume our inability to produce decent films on a consistent basis is to do with lack of money. Walker's argument was that this is largely a red herring: the amount of money is much less important than whether or not it's sensibly apportioned and spent, and whether the people supervising the spending (or supplying the money in the first place) actually know what they're doing. It's not so much a question of "do they have the money?" as "do they deserve the money?" - and in the case of a worryingly high proportion of British filmmakers, the answer is an unambiguous "no".